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BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCCXCVI. FEBRUARY 1857. Vol. LXXXI.
The Russian Empire has two gates,
through which her armies may march
on their mission of territorial aggrandisement.
These are not on her
western front. Cossack absolutism,
the sway of Muscovite principles,
may yet spread to the Atlantic; but,
territorially, Russia will never extend
her rule westwards in Europe beyond
the limits of the Slavonian race. The
case is different along her southern
frontier. Occupying the vast territories
constituting that officina gentium
from whence issued the invading
hordes which overthrew in succession
all the old governments of the
civilised world—Hindoo, Persian,
Roman, Saracenic, Byzantine—the
Russian Empire still seeks expansion
in the same direction. Half imbedded
in its southern frontier lies the
Black Sea, forming a barrier to landward
progress nearly 800 miles long,
and compelling the downward pressure
of the colossal empire to divide
into an eastern and western stream.
Once the Black Sea is fairly enclasped
by the dominions of the Czar, and
the Bosphorus closed against hostile
fleets, this inland sea will be no longer
an obstacle, but a facility, to the
southern advance of the Muscovite legions:
but at present it is as we say,—an
impassable expanse which must be
turned by marching round its flanks.
The regions to the east and west of
this sea are the two Gates of Russia,
through which the ambition of the
Czars has sought and will continue
to seek expansion. The one gate
opens into Europe, the other into
Asia. The former at present is shut—the
latter stands open.
When at war with a restless and
ambitious power—with a young and
growing state whose rulers and people
still prefer territorial extension to
commercial development, it is wise,
when closing one’s own frontier
against attack, to leave open some
other channel into which the energies
of the foe may be directed. This is
what the Continental Governments
did at the close of the late war. The
French Emperor, having served his
own immediate purpose in the war,
and fearing to face the eventualities
which a prosecution of the contest
might have produced, resolved abruptly
to close it after the fall of Sebastopol.
With this end in view, no further
blow was allowed to be struck in
the Crimea; and, at the same time, not
a regiment was allowed to be sent to
relieve Kars, or to support Omar Pasha
in his important invasion of Georgia.
Russia was proud, and would rather
push the war to extremities than consent
to humiliating terms of peace.
The measures of the French Government
saved her from such humiliation.
The fall of Sebastopol was
made a barren victory in the Crimea,
and was allowed to be balanced in
some measure by the fall of Kars in
Armenia; and these facts, duly improved
at the Congress of Peace, resulted
in that Treaty of Paris which
the Moniteur eulogised as “humiliating
to none.” The fall of Kars, and
the withholding of support from Omar
Pasha’s invasion of Georgia, enabled
the Continental Powers, while shutting
the door against Russia in Europe,
to leave wider open than ever
her gate into Asia. The representatives
of England, we hope, struggled
against this decision, but they
struggled vainly: (when it comes to
a question of votes, the interests of
the Continental Powers must always
override those of insulated Britain).[1]
And now we already begin to perceive
the consequence. Russian prestige
is greater than ever throughout
western Asia. The capture
of Kars enabled General Mouravieff
for ten months to keep possession of
that fortress and the surrounding
region,—to distribute far and wide
hand-bills announcing the triumph of
the Czar, and representing it, by a
colourable lie, as a victory over the
arms of England. The wavering allegiance
of the Kurdish tribes of Armenia
has been half-won to the Czar.
Persia has gone wholly over to the
same side. A renewed onset is being
made to complete the subjugation of
the Caucasus, and render the isthmus
between the Euxine and Caspian a
broad highway for Russian advance.
From Soujouk-kale to Erivan, from
Erivan to the mouth of the Araxes,
and thence northwards along the
shores and upon the islands of the
Caspian, an unusual mustering of
troops and din of warlike preparation
is going on. The eastern Gate of
Russia already creaks on its hinges.
Perhaps while we write, the Muscovite
battalions are once more entering
the thrice-despoiled territories of
Persia,—this time all the more dangerously
for her, and ominously for
us, that they enter not as enemies
but in the guise of friends.
It is long since Russia began to
foray southwards by her eastern
Gate. And it is important to note
this, for it is only by the light of the
past that we shall properly comprehend
the true character of Russian
aggression in this quarter. It is
needless to rail at such aggression,
for it is alike natural and inevitable.
Russia lies between Europe and Asia
like a vast lake, whose waters are
slowly but steadily increasing, and
which, hemmed in by steep banks on
its western side, must inevitably
overflow into the vast unbulwarked
regions of Central Asia. As Russian
wealth, population, and resources
increase, the Muscovite tide will
swell out more and more into
the territories of Turkistan, and encroach
more and more upon the native
sovereignty of Persia. The tide
will never recede,—for it is but the
overflowings of the great fountains
of Slavonian life, which promise, for
ages to come, to continue pouring
forth their populating streams into
the half-vacant basins of Asia. Russian
domination over the tribes of
the Steppes and the organised communities
of Persia and Anatolia is a
mere question of time, which may be
as surely predicted as that the Russian
population will one day be double
and treble what it is now. That population
will for centuries have
room to spread eastward across the
Asiatic continent; but it will take
that course reluctantly, and will prefer
to foray southwards, until it reach
a limit where other portions of the
European race have become too firmly
consolidated to be driven from their
ground.
Commerce and ambition alike impel
Russia to go forth conquering
through her eastern gates. A century
and a half ago the Czar Peter
perceived this, and laid down the
outlines of a vast plan of Asiatic
conquest for the guidance of his imperial
successors. By an error common
to minds of high speculative
and imaginative power—to whom,
seeing clearly the future, distant
events often appear too near and
their realisation too easy—Peter himself
does not seem to have adequately
appreciated the obstacles to his projects,
and by a bold dash at Khiva
in 1717, attempted to win a vantage-ground
which was not destined to be
gained by Russia until the present day.
The armed mission which he sent
to that Khanate, to establish relations
with the natives and to seize a
gold mine, easily reached their destination;
but being outwitted by the
Khivans, they were induced to separate
into detached parties, and were
then cut to pieces. Six years afterwards
witnessed the real commencement
of his schemes of aggression.
It was in 1723–25, when the power
of Persia was prostrated by the revolt
of the Affghans and the attacks
of the Turks, that Russia first struck
her fangs into her prey; and during
the dismemberment of Persia which
then occurred, the Russian forces
seized the territories of the Shah
lying between the Caspian and the
Black Seas. The martial genius of
Nadir Shah temporarily checked the
progress of Muscovite ambition, and
in 1735 compelled the Empress Anne
to resign the captured provinces before
they had been Russianised. But
in due time the advances of Russia
were resumed in a more subtle form;
and in 1774 the Empress Catherine
commenced a series of intrigues with
the states lying to the south of the
Caucasus, with a view to induce them
to throw off their allegiance to Persia,
and to place themselves under the
protectorate of Russia. All the usual
Muscovite seductions and threats
were had recourse to: missions and
subsidies were first employed, then the
erection of fortresses, and ultimately
the introduction of troops; and so
successful were those arts that, in
1773, Mingrelia, Imeritia, and Georgia
accepted the Russian protectorate.
For twelve years Persia submitted
to this unjust domination; and
when at length, in 1795, Aga Mahomed
Khan attempted to recover
the Trans-Caucasian provinces, the
Russians were victorious and pushed
their way still farther along the
shores of the Caspian. Thus, ere the
death of Catherine, Russia was paramount
all over the isthmus between
the Caspian and Black Seas, and
had secured for herself the long-coveted
gate through which she was
to push southwards. The advanced
posts of Persia and Turkey had been
first sapped and then carried, and
now Russia was brought in contact
with the main body of those empires.
The ten years’ war with Persia, which
terminated in 1814 by the peace of
Gulistan, accomplished apparently
little,—Russia having then fighting
enough in Europe; but during its continuance
Muscovite power was consolidated
on the isthmus (the Circassians
alone remaining unsubdued), and Persia
surrendered the right of having
ships of war on the Caspian, which
handed over that sea to the exclusive
domination of Russia. Twelve years
more, and again there was war. The
treaty which closed the former war became
the occasion for commencing a
new one, furnishing fresh triumphs
to Russia; and at the close of hostilities
in 1828, by the treaty of Turkomanchai,
the provinces of Erivan
(with the strong fortress of that name)
and Nakchivan were ceded to the
Czar,—thus extending the Muscovite
frontier to the banks of the
Araxes; while possession was kept
of the province of Talish beyond
that river, and a heavy indemnity (!)
was exacted for the expenses of the
war. To sum up,—in the period
between 1774 and 1828, Russia advanced
her frontier a thousand miles
into Asia; so that the Russian regiment
stationed at her farthest frontier-post,
on the western shore of the
Caspian, has as great a distance to
march back to Moscow as onward
to Attock on the Indus, and is actually
farther from St Petersburg than
from Lahore, the capital of the Punjaub.
Any one who has seen an empty
bottle thrown into a river, will have
perceived that at first the vessel
shows great repugnance to be immersed
by the fluid, and ever strives
to leap towards, and keep itself buoyant
by, the air; but that at last there
comes a moment when, the invading
water having fairly overbalanced the
rival element, all struggle ceases, and
the vessel, losing all motive power of
its own, drifts along helplessly as if
it were actually part of the engulfing
stream. It was in 1828 that this
turning-point came to Persia. Prior
to that time British influence had
been paramount at the Court of Teheran.
Of the state of matters before
Paskewitch’s conquests, we read:
“Russia has always viewed with undisguised
jealousy the ascendancy of
English influence in the councils of
Persia. She has not hesitated, at
different times, to make it matter of
formal complaint even that Persian
troops are commanded by English
officers, clothed in English uniforms,
and supplied with English arms. In
short, the whole machinery of the
Persian government is put in motion
immediately or remotely by English
agents and by English influence.”
How Russia has turned the tables
upon us since this was written twenty-seven
years ago! Moral as well as
material causes, we are sorry to say,
contributed to produce this result. It
was inevitable that the influence of
Russia, with her contiguous frontier
and great military power, should one
day predominate over that of Britain
in Central Asia; but it is to be regretted
that we ourselves should have
furnished discreditable proofs of our
inferiority. By the treaty of Gulistan
in 1814, England pledged herself
that Russia should fulfil the engagement
to restore Talish; but Russia
evaded doing so, and, either from
weakness or bad faith, we took no
steps to compel fulfilment of the
promise. Again, at the breaking-out of
the war in 1826, England was bound
by treaty to assist Persia against any
European power with an army from
India, or to pay an annual subsidy of
£100,000; yet England broke her
pledge, on the plea that Persia had
provoked the war, although a more
transparent case of wolf and lamb
never existed. Well might Mr Kaye
remark of this proceeding, that “the
backwardness of England was of dubious
honesty, as it doubtless was of
dubious expediency.” And Sir Harford
Jones did not much exaggerate
the consequences, when he said, that
by the treaty of 1828 “Persia was
delivered, bound hand and foot, to the
Court of St Petersburg.”
The turning-point being passed,
then began those demonstrations and
expeditions against Herat, which
have since, not without reason, occasioned
us so much disquietude. To
annex Herat is the most natural object
of Persian ambition, and it is at
the same time one which perfectly
coincides with the views of the Russian
government. Geographically as
well as politically, Herat belongs to
Affghanistan, of which it is the door.
So far from being an appanage of the
Shahs, it was, under the successors
of Timour, the seat of a great empire;
and in the early part of last
century, the Affghans even extended
their rule by conquest over Persia.
Nadir Shah, however, when he set
free his country, retaliated by capturing
Herat, and planting there a Persian
colony; and though the city
quickly returned into the possession
of its natural owners, the Affghan
power no sooner began to decline
than the Persian monarchs cast covetous
eyes upon this important frontier
city. So formidable was the Affghan
power even at the commencement of
the present century, that the principal
object of the treaties between our
Indian government and Persia was,
that each might help the other if attacked
by the dreaded mountaineers;
but the civil wars which thereafter
broke into fragments the Affghan
empire, and arrayed clan against clan,
and chief against chief, not only destroyed
its aggressive power, but
exposed the country to the attack of
foreign arms and influence. So matters
stood when the treaty of Turkomanchai
first demonstrated to the
Court of Teheran that Russia was
more potent than England in Central
Asia, and that it was better policy to
propitiate the former than the latter.
Accordingly, in 1832, Persia commenced
preparations to attack Herat,
and a Russian officer of engineers was
ready to accompany the expedition.
An early exertion of British influence
succeeded in preventing the enterprise
being carried out; but just
four years afterwards, in 1836, the
project was revived,—the Russian
ambassador at the same time urging
the Shah to make haste, lest Britain
should again interpose. Sir Henry
Ellis, who was then our envoy at the
Persian court, lost no time in apprising
his government of what was in
preparation, and of urging them to
take vigorous measures to frustrate
the project. His own remonstrances
with the Persian government were
vain; a quarrel was even picked with
him à l’Orientale—a horseman under
his protection being seized by the Persian
Government, just as the wife of
Mirza Hashem was eighteen months
ago; and, ultimately, like Mr Murray,
he felt compelled to strike his flag,
and withdraw from Teheran. Meanwhile
the Shah had set out on his famous
expedition against Herat, with
the Russian ambassador Simonich in
his train; while Captain Vicovich, a
secret agent of the Russian government,
armed with a holograph letter
from the Czar, was busily endeavouring
to procure the support of the
Affghan chiefs. Fortunately, Eldred
Pottinger, a young lieutenant of the
Bombay artillery, was then in Herat,
and conducted the defence of the place
with a courage and ability which have
immortalised his name. So interested
was Russia in this attack on Herat,
that she remitted £25,000 of the
debt contracted by Persia in 1828, in
order that it might be expended in
fitting out the expedition, and engaged
to remit the remainder if the
expedition proved successful. The
Russian Embassy accompanied the
expedition, a body of Russian
troops (styled “deserters”) aided
in the siege, and the assaults were
led by Russian officers. But all
was in vain. From the first investment
in November 1836 to the
final raising of the siege in September
1837, three desperate assaults
were made upon the town, and were
repulsed by the garrison, led by the
heroic Pottinger,—the assailants on
one of those occasions losing 1700
men. These bloody repulses, combined
with the appearance of a British
force in the Persian Gulf, the
seizure of the island of Karrak,
and a threat of active hostilities on
our part, at length led the Shah
and his counsellors to abandon
the enterprise. Simultaneously with
these events in Asia, the dispute
arising from the capture of the
“Vixen” in the Black Sea showed
the irritation subsisting between the
British and Russian Governments.
And it is instructive to note that all
the time that the Russian ambassador
was instigating the Shah to attack
Herat, and that Russian money,
officers, and troops, were assisting
him in the enterprise, Count Nesselrode
professed to agree with the
British Government as to the viciousness
of the course pursued by
the Persian monarch, and affirmed
that the conduct of the Russian
ambassador and agents was in opposition
to his instructions! A good
illustration of the truth of Karamsin’s
remark, that it is a maxim of
the Russian government to repudiate
the conduct of its officers until their
project is accomplished,—thus preventing
opposition until it is too late
for other governments to interfere.
Although this attempt upon Herat
was foiled, it naturally occasioned our
Indian Government much disquiet;
and it was with a view to strengthen
our influence in that important region
that the ill-fated invasion of
Affghanistan was undertaken. Both
in a political and military point of
view, the expedition was characterised
by the grossest blunders; and
the disastrous retreat from Cabool
only served to augment the ascendancy
of Russia at the Court of Teheran.
Indeed, to so low an ebb had
all other foreign influence sunk at that
court, that M. Ferrier records that,
during his residence in Persia, both
British and French subjects were in
the practice of employing the good
offices of the Russian ambassador, as
they knew that their own envoys were
powerless at court. When war broke
out between Russia and the Allies in
Europe, and troops from India were
being brought to the battle-fields of
the Crimea, it was only natural that
Russia should seek to convert her
ascendancy at the Persian Court
into a means of disquieting us on the
side of India. Etiquette is everything
in the East, and when Asiatic
governments become hostile, they
almost always choose to testify their
feelings by putting a slight on the
representative of the Power whom
they mean to defy. In this way the
“Mrs Hashem affair” was not so unimportant
as it appears to European
eyes; and from the animus displayed
on this and previous occasions by the
Persian Government, it is clear that
had Mr Murray continued at his
post, he would only have been subjected
to fresh demands and contumely.
It was the last of a series
of insults directed against the British
Government; and to those who
assume it as the cause of the present
war, it is sufficient to say that not
even the Persian Government regards
it in that light, or alleges it as
a pretext for its attack upon Affghanistan.
The fall of Kars, in fact,
threw Persia completely into the
arms of Russia; and the old design
of attacking Herat and extending
Persian influence over Affghanistan
was eagerly revived. It is alleged
that, in prospect of the war in
Europe continuing, an arrangement
had been made by which a
Russian army was to land at Astrabad,
and support the Shah in his
advance towards our Indian frontier.
There is much probability in the
statement; and it is certain that
Persian vessels on the Caspian assisted
the Russians in conveying warlike
stores for the use of Mouravieff’s
army,—thus breaking the neutrality
which the Shah professed so greatly
to respect. But, leaving the conjectured
connivance between Persia and
Russia during the war to be revealed
at a future time, let us look simply
at the overt acts of the former
Power, and endeavour to set forth
what actually occurred. With this
view we must give our readers a
glimpse into Affghan politics and
the state of matters at Herat.
At the commencement of the present
century, Affghanistan and Cashmere,
with parts of Khorassan and
Scinde, were united under the rule
of Zeeman Shah, grandson of that
Ahmed Shah who with his Affghans
broke the power of the Mahrattas
at the terrible battle of Paniput in
1761. But the days of the Dooraunee
Empire were numbered, and an era
of suicidal convulsions was about to
commence. Zeeman was deposed, and
his brother Mahmoud succeeded. The
royal family belonged to the Suddozee
tribe, whose rivals in the state were
the great clan of the Barukzees, headed
by Futteh Khan and his twenty
brothers, one of the youngest of whom
was Dost Mahomed. Futteh Khan
was prime-minister, and proved a
maire du palais to the roi fainéant.
In the struggles that ensued, Futteh
Khan was barbarously murdered by
the Suddozees; but finally the Barukzee
brothers triumphed, and by 1823
had partitioned the country among
themselves,—Dost Mahomed, whose
abilities had raised him to the foremost
place among his brethren, obtaining
Cabool as his share. One
corner alone of their old empire remained
to the fallen Suddozee race—namely,
the principality of Herat,
to which place the deposed Mahmoud
retired with his son, Prince
Kamram. The prince in due course
succeeded his father, and was ruling
Herat, with one Yar Mahomed for
his vizier, when the Persians attacked
the place in 1837. On Kamram’s
death, the sceptre departed from the
Suddozees, and fell peaceably into
the hands of the old vizier, Yar
Mahomed, who had long been the
virtual ruler; and who at his decease,
a few years ago, transmitted his power
to his son, Mahomed Said—a weak
and dissolute wretch, willing to barter
the independence of Herat for Persian
support; but whose myrmidons,
seeing him immersed in sensuality,
took advantage of his apathy so to
tyrannise over the community that
all classes wished for a revolution.
Persia resolved that the revolution
should come from her side; and the
Persian envoy at Herat became prime
director of the enterprise. It was
his custom to take a ride of twenty
or thirty miles every afternoon, returning
to the city about ten at night,
the gate being regularly opened to
him. On these occasions he was
escorted by about a hundred horsemen,
and generally rode towards
Gorian, on the road to Meshed, the
Persian capital of Khorassan. Now,
there was stationed between Gorian
and Meshed, for the purpose of keeping
in check the wild Turkomans, a
certain Prince Yusoof, nephew to the
departed Shah Kamram, and therefore
well fitted to be the instrument
for effecting a revolution in Herat.
With this prince and Esa Khan, a
chief of Herat, the Persian envoy
arranged the plans for a surprise;
and when all was ready, he was
joined on his ride one afternoon by
Prince Yusoof and a body of Persian
cavalry. The first quarter of the
night was passed when they arrived
at the gates of Herat; and on admission
being given to the envoy
as usual, his escort sabred the guard,
and the Prince with his cavalry rushed
in, took possession of the city, and
advanced against the Arg citadel.
The besotted ruler, in his cups, shot
the servant who first reported to him
that the enemy was in the city, but
at length, arousing himself, ordered
a charge when it was too late. The
result was that he and all his relatives
were captured and put to death;
and Prince Yusoof, a member of the
royal Suddozee race, mounted the
throne of Herat. His first act was
to thank the Shah for his success,
and to beg him to continue his protection
and freely command his services;—to
which the Shah replied by
assuring him of aid against his present
or future enemies, and informing
him that all the commanders of the
Persian forces in Khorassan had been
strictly enjoined to watch over his
welfare, and punish the disturbers of
his dominion.[2]
It may easily be believed that Dost
Mahomed of Cabool, and his brother
chiefs of the Barukzee clan, by
no means relished the appearance
of a prince of the Suddozee line at
Herat. The Persian Government
had placed him there as a means of
establishing its influence in Affghanistan,
and as a thorn in the side of
the old Ameer; and one of the
prince’s first acts was to push forward
a detachment to take possession
of Furrah, a town half-way on the
road to Candahar. Upon this, the
Barukzee chiefs resolved to forget
their disagreements, and unite to
prevent the encroachments of the
common foe. Indeed, the aspect of
affairs had begun to look menacing
for the independence of Affghanistan.
Not only had Herat been revolutionised
by Persian agency, but
Khiva had fallen under the domination
of Persia and Russia; and
the king of Bokhara was so concerned
by these menacing events,
and by the increasing number of
Persian troops in Khorassan, that
a letter from Bokhara (Sept. 1855)
states that “owing to his disquiet
he frequently fails in going to the
Friday prayers in the Great
Mosque.” Kokan, the third and
remaining state of Central Asia, was
likewise apprehensive of a Muscovite
attack; and several Russian
agents were reported to be wandering
about in Turkistan as petty traders,
professing themselves Jews. The
danger had been early descried by
the shrewd old Ameer of Cabool,
who had sent a friendly embassy and
presents to the king of Khiva; but
ere they arrived the king had been
killed, the Russians and Persians
were in possession, and the Affghan
embassy was treated with the utmost
contumely. Indeed, the ambitious
projects of the Persian government
had been revealed to himself by an
offer from the Shah to aid him
with money and troops against all
foreign powers, if he would consent
to own the suzerainty of Persia.
Turning a deaf ear to the insidious
proposal, the old Ameer sent a
trusty messenger to Mahomed Said
at Herat, a short time before that
prince’s death, to warn him of his
danger from Persia; but that dissolute
wretch being in his cups when
the messenger arrived, ordered his
beard to be shaved, and nearly had
him blown out of the mouth of a
cannon! Turning to the British,
Dost Mahomed contracted with our
Indian Government a treaty of general
amity, but failed to obtain from it
the guarantee which he desired for
the independence of Affghanistan and
Herat.
It is manifest that the Persian
government was resolved to find or
make a pretext for the actual invasion
of Affghanistan. In December
1855, when Prince Yusoof was still
its obedient vassal, the Teheran
Official Gazette announced the intention
of the government to despatch
an army to Herat,—alleging in excuse
that Dost Mahomed had made
himself master of Candahar, to the
prejudice of the relatives of the deceased
sirdar of that place, Kohendil
Khan (a half-brother of Dost Mahomed,
who with his family leant
much to Persia), and that he meditated
an attack upon Herat. In the same
article it was insinuated that these
proceedings on the part of the Dost
were instigated and aided by the British
Government; nevertheless the
Persian Court, following the usual
Muscovite ruse, professed its desire
to maintain inviolate its position of
neutrality. In a subsequent manifesto,
published before despatching
the army, the Shah represented Mr
Murray’s retirement as a mere personal
misunderstanding, and explained
the Herat expedition as one
undertaken at the urgent entreaty of
Prince Yusoof, in order to save the
place from the threatened attack of
Dost Mahomed’s forces. In refutation
of these allegations, it is sufficient
to say that neither the Ameer
nor a single soldier of his had been
within 200 miles of Herat, and that
he had made no preparations for such
an attack. The Persian Government
at the same time announced its intention
of despatching a corps of
20,000 men to Candahar, to reinstate
Kohendil Khan’s son in the
government.
Last spring the Persian army commenced
its march to Herat, and in
due course reached its destination.
At Gorian, thirty miles to the
west of Herat, they met and cut
up a body either of Affghans or of
Turkoman cavalry coming to the assistance
of the menaced city. Prince
Yusoof inclined to favour the Persian
cause; and with his consent
the first Persian detachment that
arrived, under Sano Khan, was admitted
into the city. But the Barukzee
party is strong in Herat; the
Alekozee clan, to which Yar Mahomed
belonged, and of which Esa
Khan is a chief, likewise declared
against the Persians; and the result
was that Sano Khan was ejected, and
preparations made for a vigorous defence.
Messengers were sent to Dost
Mahomed, then at Candahar, and
to the British Commissioner in
Scinde, urgently entreating aid; and
several successful sorties were made,
blowing up the Persian magazines,
and destroying their supplies. The
defence was conducted jointly by
Prince Yusoof and Esa Khan. Meanwhile
the main body of the Persian
army arrived under Murad
Mirza, the commander-in-chief, raising
the besieging force to 30,000
men; but it was not till the end
of August that any serious action
took place. Of the two great
sects which divide the Mahomedan
world, the Persians belong to one
(Sheahs) and the Affghans and Turks
to the other (Sunnees). A portion of
the population of Herat, probably
descendants of the Persian colony
planted by Nadir Shah, are Sheeites;
and betwixt certain chiefs of this sect
and their co-religionists without, a
secret correspondence was opened;
and it was concerted that about noon,
when Esa Khan and his chief officers
were at prayers in the mosque, a
body of Persians should surprise and
take possession of one of the gates
and the tower which commanded it.
On the 29th August the attempt was
made with success, and the gate and
tower were seized by a detachment
of the besieging force; but the main
body remained inactive, and Esa
Khan, hastily collecting his troops,
gallantly led them against the enemy.
The mêlée was so confused that the
Persians were unable to use their
muskets, and, overpowered by the
rush of the Affghans, armed with
hanjars, were driven out with great
slaughter. Being pursued by the Affghans
beyond the gates, the routed
Persians suffered still more severely,
till they were carried off by a brigade
sent to their rescue. Reinforcements,
however, continued to arrive to the
besieging army; intrenchments were
thrown up around each gate, to make
the blockade complete; and a native
eyewitness states that “the Persians
built barracks for their troops, so
that there are so many buildings in
the camp that it appears to form
another city rivalling Herat.” M.
Buhler, a French officer, who was
sent to the camp with special recommendations
from the Shah, gave an
impulse of energy to the whole army;
and by his advice the trenches were
pushed far in advance, till at several
points the head of the boyau was
within from ten to fifteen yards of
the ditch. Discouragement began to
spread in the city; provisions were
scarce; the Sheeites were deserting
and taking service with the enemy;
the succours promised by Dost Mahomed
were not forthcoming, and
defections were reported among the
Affghan chiefs. Finding his affairs
desperate, Prince Yusoof made an attempt
to escape from the city—other
accounts say he was ejected by the
Affghans; and, being taken by the
Persians, was sent as a prisoner to
Teheran, where he received the pardon
of the Shah.
The defence now devolved wholly
upon Esa Khan, who appears to have
acted throughout with much gallantry.
But it was impossible to avert
the fall of the place. By the third
week of October a considerable breach
had been made at the foot of one of
the numerous towers which flank the
walls of the town; but in order to
reach that spot it was necessary to
carry an advanced work, which had
been erected at a former time by the
advice of British officers. The Persian
attacking columns, composed of
picked troops, rushed forward to the
assault with intrepidity; and the
Affghans, though they stood the first
shock, were soon obliged to give way.
Upon this, seeing that further resistance
was impossible, Esa Khan (25th
October) surrendered, and Herat was
taken possession of by the Persians.
Nor was Herat the goal of Persian
aggression. At an early period of the
siege, a Persian corps had been pushed
forward to Furrah, an Affghan town
about 180 miles due south from
Herat, at the point where the main
road turns eastward towards Candahar.
Furrah, although surrounded
by a high earthen rampart, appears
to have been captured without opposition;
and thereafter a further advance
was made towards Geerishk
(a town lying between Furrah and
Candahar, and within 60 miles of the
latter city), where some skirmishing
took place between the Persians and
the advanced guard of the Ameer’s
forces,—about 8000 of whom were
stationed for the defence of Candahar.
The latest intelligence reports
that the Persian army has greatly
extended itself in Affghanistan. It
has pushed southwards from Furrah,
taking possession of the province of
Seistan—as well as eastwards, threatening
Khelat and Candahar. And
the result of these successes, following
the capture of Herat, has been to
induce not a few of the Affghan chiefs
to lean to Persia as the winning side,—among
others, Sultan Mahomed,
the ex-chief of Peshawur, who was
caught intriguing with the Persians
against his brother the Ameer, and
by the latter was summarily ordered
off to Cabool.
Independently of any treaty forbidding
Persia to invade Affghanistan,
it is obvious that the British had
as clear a right to defend that country
as the Persians had to attack it. Our
aid, moreover, had been urgently solicited
by the Affghans themselves.
A proclamation of war, accordingly,
was made at Calcutta, on the 1st of
November; and a fortnight afterwards
a naval expedition was despatched
from Bombay for the Persian
Gulf, where the island of Karrak
(seized in the former war) has
been reoccupied, and the town and
port of Bushire taken possession of.
In the proclamation of war (as is too
commonly the case in diplomatic documents),
the reasons of common-sense
and national interest are passed
over in silence; and the whole ground
of hostilities is made to rest upon
the convention concluded between
Colonel Sheil and the Persian Government
in January 1853—of which
more anon. As it is important to
note the terms of the proclamation,
we quote its principal clauses. After
referring to the convention of 1853,
it proceeds as follows:—
“By those articles the Persian Government
engaged not to send troops to
Herat on any account, unless foreign
troops—that is, troops from the direction
of Cabool or Candahar, or other
foreign country—should invade Herat.
In the event of troops being sent, the
Persian Government engaged that the
said troops should not enter the city of
Herat; and that, on the return of the
foreign troops towards their own territory,
the Persian troops should be immediately
withdrawn from the neighbourhood
of Herat to Persian soil.
“The Persian Government also engaged
to abstain from all interference whatsoever
in the internal affairs of Herat,
whether ‘in taking possession, or occupying,
or assuming the sovereignty, or
governing, except in so far as interference
existed between the two parties during
the lifetime of the late Yar Mahomed.’
“And, lastly, the Persian Government
engaged to relinquish all pretension
to and demand for the coinage, or
the reading of the Khootbeh, or any
other acknowledgment of allegiance or
subjection on the part of the people of
Herat to the government of Persia.
“It was, at the same time, stipulated
that, so long as there should be no interference
of any sort whatever on the part
of the British Government in the affairs
of Herat, the engagements contracted
by the Persian Government, as aforesaid,
should remain in full force and
effect. On the other hand, it was agreed
in the name of the British Government,
that ‘if any foreign power, such as the
Affghans or others,’ should wish to interfere
with, or take possession of Herat,
the British Government, on the requisition
of the Persian Ministers, would not
object to restrain such foreign power by
friendly advice, ‘so that Herat might remain
in its own state of independence.’
“While the British Government has
faithfully and constantly adhered to the
obligations which it accepted [?] under the
agreement of January 1853, the Government
of Persia has manifested a deliberate
and persevering disregard of the
reciprocal engagements, by which at the
same time it became bound, and is now
endeavouring to subvert by force the
independence of Herat, which was the
declared object of the agreement in question.”
Herat, the proximate cause of this
war, needs a word of description.
The Times asks, “Where is Herat?”
and as it is obvious that every year
will give the British nation a livelier
interest in that part of the world,
it may be useful to give a general
sketch of the locality. Let us say,
then, that Affghanistan, with its
five millions of a warlike race, intervenes
like a huge quadrangular
mountain-citadel between India and
Persia,—and that Herat is the only
gate by which entrance can be obtained
to this citadel from the west.
The lofty Suleiman range of mountains,
running parallel with the
Indus, bounds Affghanistan on the
east; the still more lofty range of
the Hindoo Koosh (a continuation of
the Himalayas) bounds it on the
north; to the south, the sandy plains
of Beloochistan stretch between it and
the sea; and on the west it is separated
from Persia by the deserts of
Khorassan. Across those deserts the
only passage for an army is to be found
at their north side, where two or three
routes exist more or less practicable
for troops. These routes all converge
and unite as they approach the north-west
angle of Affghanistan, where
stands Herat. This city, then,
is the door which must be opened
before entrance can be obtained to
the quadrangular mass of mountains,
valleys, and waterless plateaus
which constitute Affghanistan. Its
situation is one of great military
and commercial importance. The
peaceful files of the caravan, and the
dread battalions of war, alike pass
through it on their march from India
to Persia, or from Persia to India.
The long camel-trains from Delhi,
Mooltan, and Lahore pass through it,
bearing the merchandise of India and
the manufactures of England to the
distant towns and oases of Persia
and Turkistan; and so completely is
Herat a gateway of commerce that it
is called Bunder, or Port,—although
the only sea upon which it borders
are seas of sand. The march of conquest
has passed through it from time
immemorial. The cavalry-host of
Timour and the disciplined army of
Nadir Shah, in their invasions of
India, went and came by this route;
and though Alexander the Great,
Gengis Khan, and Baber marched by
Balkh, and crossed the Hindoo Koosh
immediately to the north of Cabool,
the route by Herat is the only one
practicable for an army with the usual
complement of artillery. The country
around Herat affords an admirable
halting-place for armies. It is a spacious
plain, thirty miles long and half
as broad, once studded with villages,
and still exhibiting a fair expanse of
gardens, vineyards, and corn-fields;
while the Herat river and “the
bright waters of small running
streams [canals?] lighten the pleasant
landscape,” and fertilise the plain. In
the hamlets and gardens around,
the celebrated attar, or otto of roses,
is manufactured; and such is the
profusion of this regal flower that
Herat has been styled the City of
Roses. In the midst of the plain
stands the city, now much fallen from
its olden prosperity, but still containing
a population of about fifty thousand,
and destined ever to retain
much wealth and importance from
lying in the track of the caravans.
Its staple commodities are silk, assafœtida,
and saffron; and the principal
merchants of the place are Hindoos.
Like most Asiatic towns, there is
much dirt and desolation within; yet
water, that prime necessity of Oriental
life, is so abundant that almost
every house has a fountain, besides
the public ones in the bazaars. The
city, which forms a square, each side
of which is about a mile long, is
strongly fortified for an Eastern town,
being encircled by a solid bastioned
earthen wall and wet ditch; and within
there is a citadel, a square castle
built of burnt brick, elevated on a
mound, sufficiently strong to constitute
a rallying-point, but incapable of
separate defence. Abundant crops of
wheat and barley, and every kind of
fruit known in Persia, are supplied by
the fertile region around; and though
cattle are not very numerous, there are
large flocks of the broad-tailed sheep
so well known and prized in Central
Asia. Thus no better camping-ground
and quarters could be found for an
army; and as an intermediate station
between the deserts on the west and
the Affghan mountains on the east,
it is for such a purpose invaluable.
It is a vast place d’armes, where all
assaulting columns from the west
must unite and recruit before making
their final attack upon the defences
of our Indian empire. To speak in
miniature, it is just such a place as a
skilful defender of India would desire
to cover with a horn-work, in order
to prevent the enemy from getting
possession of a spot where they could
collect their forces under cover, and
from which they could so advantageously
push forward their assault upon
our interior works of defence.
“We have a garden, which is India;
the walls are the fortified towns
of Tartary and Affghanistan. Let the
Russians once seize them, and our
garden is theirs.” So said Sir Richmond
Shakspere to the Khan of
Khiva, in language not more finely
figurative than true; and M. Ferrier,
the French officer who lately wandered
with the caravans throughout that
region, and who has elaborately speculated
on the future of Russian and
Anglo-Indian power in the East, adds,
“I believe he is right.” In the imperial
policy of Russia, designs upon
India have been very long cherished.
First sighted by the genius of Peter,
and first practically contemplated by
the madman Paul; talked of by Alexander
and Napoleon, and sketched
out like a grand dream by the latter,
the invasion of India is a design never
laid aside at the Court of St Petersburg.
But apart from the question
of design, look at the mere facts.
Russia is advancing farther and farther
into Asia, nearer and nearer to
the bulwarks of our Indian empire.
“If we go on at this rate,” said Baron
Brunow to Sir John Hobhouse, in
1837, “the Cossack and the Sepoy
will soon meet on the banks of the
Oxus.” They will so meet some day.
Russia knows this, and intends this;
and it were well that the grand issue
to which things are tending should
be timeously perceived in England.
Nothing can stop the progress of
Russia through Central Asia,—one
might as well think of stopping the
welling of a fountain or the movement
of a glacier. And before this generation
pass away, Russia will have organised
the forces of Persia on her
side, and be sitting in armed leaguer
around our mountain outworks of
Affghanistan. For we hardly contemplate
the possibility of the British
Government being so demented as to
allow these hostile powers to effect
a lodgment in the Affghan territories.
When engaged in a desperate war
with Great Britain in Europe, it was
most natural for Russia to seek to
disquiet us on the side of India. But
even before the war, our Government
had felt the serious inconveniences
resulting from the downfall of British
ascendancy at the Court of Teheran.
Persia is lastingly covetous of Herat;
and knowing that Russia, now the
dominant power in Central Asia, is
secretly but assuredly in favour of the
project, it was with difficulty that the
Shah could be induced to keep his
hands off the coveted city, or to pay
ordinary respect to our embassy,
which was always on the watch to
thwart him. Rarely has the foreign
policy of this country been more actively
and beneficially directed than
during the nine months that Lord
Malmesbury presided at the Foreign
Office; and it is to this statesman that
we owe the “convention” of January
1853, by which Persia bound herself
to abstain from attacking, occupying,
or making any claim of sovereignty
over Herat. This convention was
signed by the Persian Government,
but was never ratified by ours. An
attempt is being now made to show
that this non-ratification is of no importance,
as the convention was simply
a pledge on the part of Persia,
and was duly signed by her. But
this is not true,—for it contained a
reciprocal agreement on the part of
the British Government to restrain
any Affghan power from attacking
Herat; therefore, not being ratified
by our Government, the whole convention
is null. The question naturally
arises,—Why was not the
treaty ratified? The explanation of
this unusual and unfortunate circumstance
demands consideration. Diplomacy
often keeps secret from one
generation what is duly revealed to
the next, (when the information is
useless); and probably it will ere
long be known that this country was
nearer a rupture with Russia in 1852
than the public are aware of. In an
article on the Aberdeen Ministry
(July 1855), we mentioned the anti-Russian
policy of Lord Derby’s Administration
as a secret cause of the
abrupt overthrow of the Conservative
rule. Russian influence prevented
the appointment of Lord de Redcliffe
to the Foreign Office; and anecdotes
are current which indicate that the
differences between the two Governments
were so great as to threaten
even a warlike result. Persia, in
fact, was giving us serious provocations,
and went the length of officially
announcing her intention to regard
Herat as an appanage, which
she would maintain by force of arms
against any Affghan power that might
contest her claim. If we are to believe
M. Ferrier, a Russian force of
5000 men was simultaneously (autumn
of 1852) landed at Astrabad,
and advanced eastwards up the
river Attruck (which forms the
boundary between Persia and Turkistan),
and was only recalled upon an
ultimatum to that effect being presented
by England at St Petersburg.
At that time the British Government
threatened to break off diplomatic
relations with the Court of
Teheran, and directed Colonel Sheil
to intimate that hostile measures
would be had recourse to in the event
of Persia making any attack upon the
independence of Affghanistan. The
result of this firmness on the part of
the British Government was, that
the Persian Government gave up its
pretensions to Herat, and signed the
terms of treaty required by Colonel
Sheil. The treaty was concluded in
January 1853, but in the preceding
month a change of Ministry had taken
place in England. Lord Aberdeen and
the “Coalition” had displaced Lord
Derby; and philo-Russianism and
implicit faith in the word and policy
of the Czar had become the order of
the day. Therefore, say we, the
treaty was never ratified. If there
be another explanation, let it be
stated, and let blame fall upon the
right shoulders. But this much is
certain, that in consequence of the
non-ratification of that treaty, the
proclamation of war with Persia
issued by our Government is groundless;
for it founds wholly upon a
violation of that treaty, and the treaty
is utterly null.
When the war in Europe commenced,
the Shah, flattered by Russia,
saw in it a favourable opportunity for
reviving his projects against Herat
and Affghanistan; and so he plunged
into the present quarrel. Despite
his professions of neutrality, the
crafty Persian is said to have followed
the diplomatic and strategic
counsels of the Russian Government;
and there is reason to believe
that, but for the intervention of
the Paris negotiations, a Russian
armament would have crossed the
Caspian early in spring, and occupied
the Persian towns of Amol and
Astrabad,—the goal of the expedition
being Herat. The Peace of
Paris, though it stopped the actual
entrance of the Russians into Persia,
allowed the Court of St Petersburg
to make a great addition to her forces
on the Caspian; and at the beginning
of November, immediately after the
fall of Herat, orders were given at St
Petersburg to assemble an army of
40,000 men on the Persian frontiers.
Prince Bariatinski was appointed
Lieutenant-General of the Caucasian
provinces, with ampler powers
than his predecessors. All the war-steamers
on the Caspian have been
fully manned by the arrival of seamen
from the naval ports. The war-magazines
throughout the whole region, in
part exhausted by the war, have been
refilled; and it appears that both
troops and stores have of late been
transported by water to Astrabad,
or the islands adjoining it. The
“fiery” Chruleff commands the corps-d’armée
echeloned from Bakou to
Erivan, along the verge of the Persian
frontier; and as the principal weight
of the Russian armaments is accumulated
in this quarter, it is to be expected
that the main intervention (if
there be one) will take place from
this point. Several staff-officers have
been despatched into the adjoining
Persian province of Mazanderan, to
reconnoitre the passage for troops and
to draw topographical plans; and in
the event of invasion, it is designed
to occupy strongly the defiles of the
Caspian Gates and of Komis, as it is
by these two points that the centre
of Persia can be approached. While
these preparations are in progress,
the semi-official letters from St
Petersburg which appear in the
Continental journals, boast that,
despite the noisy demonstrations of
England, Russia, owing to her silent
preparations, will be able to take the
upper hand of us in Persia; and the
Russian journal Le Nord points to
Persia “as a field of battle upon
which, one day or other, there will
be measured the relative strength of
two great powers, which are at the
same time European and Asiatic;
and where will be ultimately decided
the fortunes of Russia.”
The long-debated question as to the
possibility of Russia attacking India
is now universally regarded as solved
in the affirmative. Those who once so
stoutly denied it, must have been
men who could not look beyond the
present hour, and conceived that the
world would stand still ever as it
was in their day. Every decade of
years has been removing some difficulty
which these men thought insuperable.
In these days of railways,
telegraphs, and steam-navigation (of
all of which Russia is availing herself),
the remaining difficulties will
vanish still more rapidly. Russia is
not ready for an actual onset upon
our Indian empire, but she is both
ready and willing to engage with us
in warlike rivalry for ascendancy
over the intervening region of Persia,
and will push forward her
Asiatic vassals against the Indian
ramparts which she herself is not
yet ready to assail. The policy of
Russia is a game of centuries. She
will not spring too soon; she has
learnt that grand secret of success—to
wait. But waiting, with her, is not
inaction; and her approaches towards
India are now sufficiently far advanced
to cause us active disquietude. She
has begun in earnest to push forward
her tirailleurs against us preparatory
to the pitched battle. She will
continue to throw Persia against
our first parallel of defence, Affghanistan;
and, if unopposed, will carry
the sap of bribery and coercion
through that mountain-rampart up
to the very plains of India. Henceforth
we may look for a series of
harassing attacks, increasing in magnitude—wandering
Turkomans and
civilised Persians being alike pressed
into the service, until Russia descend
herself into the arena, and press the
assault with all her forces. It is at
present only an affair of outposts;
but such skirmishes often decide the
issue of the ensuing battle, by allowing
one side or other to seize posts
of vantage which dominate over the
rest of the field. Such a post is
Herat; and if we do not get the
Persians quickly expelled from it, we
shall give them time to fortify and
maintain it until the Russians also
may arrive on the scene,—in which
case the contest around its walls
would at once assume most formidable
proportions.
It is important to note the means
and routes by which the Russians
may advance to Affghanistan. It
has been far too much the custom
of geographers, as well as of the
multitude, to regard all unknown
regions as desert. Blank expanses in
maps, undotted by the tiny circles
which represent towns, we are too
apt to look upon as uninhabitable
solitudes, forgetful that the ignorance
of the chart-maker may have as much
to do with the matter as any want
of population and fertility in the
region itself. In this way we have
been accustomed, from our schooldays
upwards, to regard the whole
interior of Africa as an expanse of
arid sand, whereas the recent explorations
of Dr Livingstone and others
show it to be in many parts one of
the most luxuriant regions of the
earth. We suspect that a larger
portion of Central Asia will be found
habitable and fertile than is now believed;
and we shall see immediately,
on the testimony of M. Ferrier
and others, corroborated by the inductions
of common sense, that not
only the routes from the Caspian to
Herat, but also those viâ Khiva and
the Oxus, do not lie through such
arid wastes as is commonly supposed.
Omne ignotum pro deserto seems to
be as common a notion in geography,
as is the tendency in other sciences
to make synonymous terms of the
unknown and the wonderful.
In describing the routes by which
Russia is advancing towards the
mountain-portals of India, let us start
from the heart of the Czar’s empire,
viz., St Petersburg and Moscow,—twin
capitals, already united to one
another by railway, and soon about to
be similarly united with the western
and southern frontiers of the empire.
From Moscow, the ancient and semi-Asiatic
capital of Russia, the route
stretches north-east to the banks of
the Volga at Nishni-Novgorod,—the
water-gate to Central Asia, and
the scene of the great fair to which
traders annually repair from all parts
of northern and central Asia. The
projected Moscow and Novgorod
railway will encounter no engineering
difficulties; for the country is an undulating
plain, diversified by low
hills, none of which rise more than
five hundred feet above the sea-level.
From Novgorod the route
to Asia is by water, on the broad
and vast stream of the Volga, upon
which ply steamboats and craft of
all kinds, in numbers already great,
and yearly increasing; and by this
cheapest of all kinds of conveyance,
stores and troops are annually transported
to and from the Persian frontiers.
Sixteen or seventeen hundred
miles of this watery highway, running
south-eastwards, bring us to Astrakan,
where the Volga debouches
into the Caspian Sea. Here a long
sheet of water opens out, extending
nearly 700 miles from north to
south, and varying from 100 to 250
miles in breadth. With the exception
of a part of the western coast
adjoining the mouth of the Terek,
the shores are said to be bold, and
the water so deep that in some places
450 fathoms will not reach the bottom.
This inland sea is in the exclusive
possession of Russia. No
ship of war can sail its waters unless
it bear the Russian flag. Indeed
Persia, forbidden by treaty to have
armed vessels of her own in that sea,
has for a long time been compelled to
invoke the assistance of the Russian
war-ships, as a means of coercing the
Turkomans on the eastern coast;
the consequence of which has been,
that not only the Turkomans, but the
population of the Persian provinces
adjoining the Caspian, have learnt to
stand more in awe of the Russians
than of their natural rulers. The
islands of the Caspian virtually belong
to Russia, and two important
insular groups, one in the bay of
Balkan, half-way down the eastern
side of the sea, and another in the
bay of Astrabad, in the south-eastern
corner, have just been seized by the
Muscovites, as if in preparation for
ulterior movements on the adjoining
portions of the mainland.
From the shores of the Caspian,
Russia is preparing to advance by
two grand converging lines upon
Affghanistan. Of these lines, one
sets out from the north-eastern shores
of the Caspian, the other from its
south-eastern extremity. The latter,
starting from Astrabad and proceeding
straight to Herat, seems to
us designed for the main attack;
the former, proceeding viâ Khiva
and the Oxus, as a supporting
flank-movement. Along either of
these lines Russian corps may make
an early advance for the purpose of
skirmishing, causing disquiet, and
weakening British prestige in Affghanistan;
or even, in concert with
Persia, of taking permanent possession
of Herat, if we are so tardy in
our movements as to allow of her
doing so. But the real attack, the
solid and deliberate charge which
meditates no recoiling, will not be
made by Russia until she have converted
Persia into a vassal state,
and efficiently organised her forces
and resources. This she will seek
to do by keeping the Shah on the
throne, but subjecting the Persian
army to Russian officers and drill,
and pulling the wires of the puppet
government from St Petersburg.
The accomplishment of all this by
Russia is, in our opinion, a mere
question of time; and, once accomplished,
it will be found that in absorbing
Persia our great Asiatic rival
has most formidably added to his
strength. The Persian army at present
consists of 80,000 infantry; an
artillery which, like that of all
Asiatic nations, is better than
its infantry; and clouds of cavalry,
that can perform marches of sixty
or seventy miles a-day for several
successive days, without inconvenience—thus
being able to pass over
tracts wholly impracticable to ordinary
troops, and make most effective
surprises. The raw material of the
Persian army is excellent. “If
regularly disciplined,” says Sir John
M‘Neill, “and led by a competent
number of European officers of intelligence
and activity, there are few
armies that, in a campaign in Asia,
could boast of any great superiority
over that of Persia. The men are
singularly tractable, orderly, and obedient,—active,
contented, and intelligent,—capable
of enduring extraordinary
fatigue and privations,—easily
fed, and maintained at a moderate
cost,—by no means wanting in
courage or enterprise, and capable of
perfect attachment to their officers,—in
short, admirable materials for soldiers.”
Such is the Power which
Russia is moulding to her purposes,—over
which she is likely immediately
to get a still firmer hold,—and
which will march by her side, or as
a vanguard, in her onsets upon Affghanistan.
So that, while a Russian
corps advances from Astrabad as the
base of its Trans-Caspian operations,
the military forces of the Shah will
advance from the heart of Persia,
and both together march by contiguous
and parallel routes to Herat.
From the Caspian to Herat is a
distance of not quite six hundred
miles. Part of this distance the
Russians might travel by water, up
the river Goorgan, and the still larger
Attruck river,—both of which fall
into the Caspian a little to the north
of Astrabad, and the courses of which
run due eastwards in the direction
of Herat. Independently of these
routes by water, which might be of
use for nearly a third part of the
way, three parallel lines of road lead
through northern Khorassan to Herat.
On all of these a scarcity of water,
necessitating long marches, occurs at
some points; but they are constantly
travelled by the caravans, and have
been repeatedly traversed by Persian
armies and their artillery without
difficulty. We could easily accumulate
testimony, from the personal
observations of Burnes, Conolly,
M‘Neill, and Ferrier, to show that
the region between the Caspian and
Herat is no desert, that the food-supplies
are sufficiently abundant,
and the roads quite practicable for
armies; but, not to speak of more
ancient cases, we think the simple
fact that Persian armies have repeatedly
made the journey both
backwards and forwards within the
last thirty years, renders the tendering
of such proof mere pedantry
and supererogation. Let it suffice,
then, to quote the compendious affirmation
of Sir John M‘Neill, who,
writing from Meshed, in the very
heart of these routes, and speaking
of the region to the east of Herat
as well as to the west of it, says:
“The country between the frontiers
of Persia and India is far more productive
than I had imagined it to be;
and I can assure your lordship there
is no impediment, either from the
physical features of the country or
from deficiency of supplies, to the
march of a large army from the
frontiers of Georgia to Candahar, or,
as I believe, to the Indus.”
And so we reach Herat, by the
main line of Russo-Persian attack.
The other line of attack by which
the Russians are advancing towards
Affghanistan starts from the northern
instead of the southern extremity of
the Caspian, stretching across to the
Aral Sea, making Khiva and its
fertile oasis a base of operations, and
thereafter ascending the great river
Oxus to Balkh,—from whence a road
leads due south, crossing the Hindoo
Koosh at Bameean, to Cabool.
In order to facilitate the crossing
of the steppes between the Caspian
and Aral Seas, the Russians
have been slowly preparing three
distinct routes for the march of
troops. One of these ascends the
course of the navigable river Yemba
(which falls into the Caspian at its
north-eastern corner), to a point
where the river approaches the Aral
Sea; and from that point there has
been dug a line of wells, around
which military colonies of Cossacks
have been settled, across the steppe
to the sea. These colonies of Cossacks,
says M. Ferrier, “cultivate the
surrounding soil, and create resources
which never existed before;
so that in a few years an army will
be able to obtain sufficient food and
forage in all their encampments, and
will reach the Aral Sea without
difficulty.” To the south of this line
of wells lie two others,—one reaching
from the river Ourloo Irghiz (a
tributary of the Caspian), and tending
towards the northern part of
the Aral Sea; the other commencing
from two points (Mangishlak and
Dash-killeh) on the eastern shore of
the Caspian, and uniting half-way in
one line, which thence proceeds in
the direction of Khiva, at the southern
end of the Aral Sea. On the
Aral, as on the Caspian, the Russians
have already established a flotilla,
which will serve to navigate the great
Oxus river,—indeed, it is said that
they even have steamers already plying
upon that river. “The outposts
of the Orenburg corps,” says a Russian
letter, “extend to the very extremity
of the country of Turan,
upon the rivers Oxus and Jaxartes;
and the military flotilla of the Sea of
Aral is brought by the above-named
rivers to the frontiers of India.”
By this means the Russians will in
due time advance south-eastwards
up its course,—past Bokhara, which
will fall, as Khiva has already fallen,
under their domination—up to Balkh,
where the Oxus ceases to be navigable,
and which they must make
a point d’appui before pushing
southwards by the Bameean and
five other more difficult passes to
Cabool. It was by these passes
through the Hindoo Koosh that
Alexander, Baber, and Timour made
their way into Affghanistan; but
as the armies of the two latter were
chiefly composed of Tartar horse, and
that of the former had no artillery
(though heavily baggaged), the success
of their invasions is no test of
the practicability of this route for a
modern army; and it appears that,
even if undefended, the Bameean
passes are only traversable by a force
armed with light or mountain artillery.
As Russia, when she establishes
herself at Balkh, will have the
whole cavalry of Khiva, Bokhara,
and the Turkomanian steppes on her
side, it is obvious that the least slip
made in the defence—the least opening
left in the line of the Hindoo
Koosh, would in such circumstances
involve most embarrassing consequences
to the defenders. Nevertheless
it is equally obvious that
such a quarter is ill suited to be
made the object of the main attack,
and that it is rather to be regarded
as a flank movement subsidiary to,
and in support of, the main line of
Russo-Persian attack, viâ Astrabad
and Meshed, against Herat.
One important object which, it
seems to us, Russia has in advancing
by Khiva and the Oxus, is the power
which it will confer of winning or
coercing the hardy tribes of Turkistan,
which she will thus, as it were,
catch in a net between her two lines
of advance. Horses, cattle, and
camels are the staple products of the
region, and will thus be procured in
great abundance; while the horsemen
of the steppes, greedy of gain
and fond of warlike adventure,
would readily join in any enterprise
against the regions of the south.
For such auxiliaries, and even for a
European corps, there is another
route from the Oxus than that which
leads to the Bameean passes of the
Hindoo Koosh. Instead of proceeding
all the way up the Oxus to
Balkh, and thence crossing the mountains
to Cabool, this other route
leaves the banks of the Oxus at
Charjooee (half-way between the Aral
Sea and Balkh), and strikes due southwards
by Merv to Herat. The desert
between Charjooee and Merv was
crossed by Burnes in 1832, and does
not present the difficulties which he
anticipated. It is crossed almost
annually by the khans of Khiva and
Bokhara, at the head of expeditions
sometimes numbering ten or twelve
thousand horse; and M. Ferrier, who
believes this route practicable for an
army, states, that in the winter and
spring even the desert steppes are
covered with sufficient herbage to
meet the requirements of an army.
From Charjooee to Merv is about 130
miles; from Merv to Herat, about
240,—in all, 370. But the difficulties
of the route terminate at Merv,
where there is a well-watered oasis;
and from thence the expeditionary
force could march along the banks
of the Morghab river for nearly the
whole way to Herat.
Thus, while flank-attacks might be
made by the passes of the Hindoo
Koosh upon Cabool, everything conspires
to show that the main attack
upon Affghanistan must take place
by Herat. We have already described
the importance of this place.
“Herat,” said Captain Conolly,
twenty-seven years ago, “could be
made a place of considerable strength.
Nothing can exceed the plenty and
excellence of the supplies from the
valley; and an army might be garrisoned
there for years with every
necessary within its reach.” That is
just what the Russians will do with
it, if ever it falls into their power.
They will establish themselves there,—solidify
their communications
with the Caspian, by improving the
roads and sinking wells,—push forward
the sap of bribery and fair
promises through Affghanistan, and
excite disquiet and disaffection in
India, until all things are ready for
the grand assault and invasion. On
the other hand, were Herat maintained
by a British army, it would
be almost impossible for either Persian
or Russian to win a footing in its
fertile valley. For it is one of the necessities
of desert travelling, that an
army can never march in a united
body. It must advance in separate
divisions, by different routes, or with
intervals of one or more days’ march
between each corps, from the difficulty
of maintaining a large force at
any one halting-place, and in order
that the scanty wells may have time
to refill themselves. The consequence
is, that were an efficient force concentrated
about Gorian, at the western
extremity of the Herat valley,
it could attack the invading army
with decisive advantage as the wearied
corps came up in succession,
or by separate routes, from their
thirsty march through northern
Khorassan.
Other topics connected with the
war in Asia invite attention, and may
be treated of in a future article. It
will suffice for the present to have
directed attention to the slow and sure
advance of a rival European Power
towards our Indian “garden,”—to
the circumstances out of which has
arisen the present war with Persia—and
the immense importance of Herat
as the door of Affghanistan and key to
the mountain-portals of our Indian
empire. As to the merits of the
war with Persia, we have clearly
expressed ourselves. The grounds
upon which our Government, in the
proclamation of war, has justified a
recourse to hostilities, are quite inadmissible;
for they are founded upon
a treaty which never was ratified.
But, though wrong in its plea, the
British Government was perfectly
justified in having recourse to hostilities,—nay,
more, it was imperatively
called upon by the interests
of the empire to take such a course.
It is a strange misfortune that the
treaty of 1853 was never ratified
by the Aberdeen Government, and
in such circumstances it was a
grievous error of the present Government
to found upon a document
so obviously null. But the grand
and simple justification of hostilities
remains—namely, that apart from all
conventions, if Persia choose to attack
Affghanistan, we have an equal right
to act in its defence; and that every
principle of national interest concurred
in urging us so to act. It
will be a sad day for our Indian
empire when Persia succeeds in
establishing her power in Affghanistan.
As to the military measures of the
Government, the least that we can
say is that they have failed in warding
off the most pressing danger. Not
only Herat, but the whole western
front of Affghanistan, embracing a
third of the entire region, is in the
hands of the Persians, who are doubtless
consolidating their position there.
The expedition to the Persian Gulf is
a most important movement as regards
ulterior results, but all the
measures of actual defence for Affghanistan
have been marked by a dilatoriness
which has rendered them
fruitless. The plan of the Government
was, that a select band of
officers should proceed to Herat to
aid in its defence,—and had they
gained that city in time it would
have been saved; but although
Herat held out much longer than was
anticipated, the Persians were masters
of it before the British officers
had set out on their journey!
Money and arms, too, were ordered
by the Home Government to be
transmitted to Dost Mahomed, in
order that he might manœuvre to
raise the siege; but so tardily was
the resolution taken that even yet no
news has arrived of these supplies
having reached Candahar! The fact
is, our Indian Government ought to
have been left to deal with Persia
when that Power makes any attack
upon Affghanistan; for in no other
way can the requisite celerity of movement
be attained. An army from the
Caspian can reach Herat before the
news of its starting can reach England,
and Herat be easily captured
before an answer from Downing
Street be received at Bombay! In
truth, even with the entire direction
of affairs committed to the Indian
Government, the chances are, that
our measures of defence will be taken
too late. The frontier of the Indus
is too distant from Herat to allow of
our maintaining that watch over its
independence which is imperatively
demanded by a regard for the safety
of India. In 1839 our army, including
a short halt at Khelat, took from the
23d February to the 25th April to
march from Shikarpoor on the Indus
to Candahar—about sixty days, a
period that would suffice to bring an
army to Herat from the Caspian; and
other four hundred miles intervene
between Candahar and Herat. In fact,
the journey from the Indus to Herat
is fully a half longer than that from
Astrabad to the same place. These
facts suggest grave reflections, which
we cannot enter upon at the close of
an article. But let the Government
and public of this country lay this to
heart, that a Russian corps could be
landed at Astrabad, and be far on its
march to Herat, before any intelligence
of the event could reach England,
or even India; and that the
presence of a couple of Russian brigades,
and a few engineers of the
Todleben school, could hold the
earthen defences of Herat for years
against any force which we could
bring against it. Even if the present
danger blow over, these are facts
which demand the most earnest attention
of the Government and our
military authorities.
SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE.—NO. I. THE SAD FORTUNES OF THE REVEREND AMOS BARTON. — PART II.—CHAPTER V. — CHAPTER VI. — CHAPTER VII. — CHAPTER VIII. — CHAPTER IX. — CHAPTER X. — CONCLUSION.
153
The Rev. Amos Barton, whose sad
fortunes I have undertaken to relate,
was, you perceive, in no respect an
ideal or exceptional character, and
perhaps I am doing a bold thing to
bespeak your sympathy on behalf of
a man who was so very far from
remarkable,—a man whose virtues
were not heroic, and who had no undetected
crime within his breast;
who had not the slightest mystery
hanging about him, but was palpably
and unmistakably commonplace;
who was not even in love, but had
had that complaint favourably many
years ago. “An utterly uninteresting
character!” I think I hear a lady
reader exclaim—Mrs Farthingale, for
example, who prefers the ideal in
fiction; to whom tragedy means
ermine tippets, adultery, and murder;
and comedy, the adventures of some
personage who is “quite a character.”
But, my dear madam, it is so very
large a majority of your fellow-countrymen
that are of this insignificant
stamp. At least eighty out of a
hundred of your adult male fellow-Britons
returned in the last census,
are neither extraordinarily silly, nor
extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily
wise; their eyes are neither
deep and liquid with sentiment, nor
sparkling with suppressed witticisms;
they have probably had no hairbreadth
escapes or thrilling adventures;
their brains are certainly not
pregnant with genius, and their passions
have not manifested themselves
at all after the fashion of a volcano.
They are simply men of complexions
more or less muddy, whose conversation
is more or less bald and disjointed.
Yet these commonplace
people—many of them—bear a conscience,
and have felt the sublime
prompting to do the painful right;
they have their unspoken sorrows,
and their sacred joys; their hearts
have perhaps gone out towards their
first-born, and they have mourned
over the irreclaimable dead. Nay, is
there not a pathos in their very insignificance,—in
our comparison of
their dim and narrow existence with
the glorious possibilities of that human
nature which they share?
Depend upon it, my dear lady, you
would gain unspeakably if you would
learn with me to see some of the
poetry and the pathos, the tragedy
and the comedy, lying in the experience
of a human soul that looks out
through dull grey eyes, and that
speaks in a voice of quite ordinary
tones. In that case, I should have
no fear of your not caring to know
what farther befell the Rev. Amos
Barton, or of your thinking the
homely details I have to tell at all
beneath your attention. As it is, you
can, if you please, decline to pursue
my story farther; and you will easily
find reading more to your taste, since
I learn from the newspapers that
many remarkable novels, full of
striking situations, thrilling incidents,
and eloquent writing, have appeared
only within the last season.
Meanwhile, readers who have begun
to feel an interest in the Rev. Amos
Barton and his wife, will be glad to
learn that Mr Oldinport lent the
twenty pounds. But twenty pounds
are soon exhausted when twelve are
due as back payment to the butcher,
and when the possession of eight extra
sovereigns in February weather is an
irresistible temptation to order a new
greatcoat. And though Mr Bridmain
so far departed from the necessary
economy entailed on him by the
Countess’s elegant toilette and expensive
maid, as to choose a handsome
black silk, stiff, as his experienced
eye discerned, with the genuine
strength of its own texture, and not
with the factitious strength of gum,
and present it to Mrs Barton, in
retrieval of the accident that had
occurred at his table, yet, dear me—as
every husband has heard—what
is the present of a gown, when you
are deficiently furnished with the
et-ceteras of apparel, and when, moreover,
there are six children whose
wear and tear of clothes is something
incredible to the non-maternal
mind?
Indeed, the equation of income
and expenditure was offering new
and constantly accumulating difficulties
to Mr and Mrs Barton; for
shortly after the birth of little Walter,
Milly’s aunt, who had lived with her
ever since her marriage, had withdrawn
herself, her furniture, and her
yearly income, to the household of
another niece; prompted to that step,
very probably, by a slight “tiff” with
the Rev. Amos, which occurred while
Milly was up-stairs, and proved one too
many for the elderly lady’s patience
and magnanimity. Mr Barton’s temper
was a little warm, but, on the other
hand, elderly maiden ladies are known
to be susceptible; so we will not suppose
that all the blame lay on his
side—the less so, as he had every
motive for humouring an inmate
whose presence kept the wolf from
the door. It was now nearly a year
since Miss Jackson’s departure, and,
to a fine ear, the howl of the wolf
was audibly approaching.
It was a sad thing, too, that when
the last snow had melted, when the
purple and yellow crocuses were
coming up in the garden, and the
old church was already half pulled
down, Milly had an illness which
made her lips look pale, and rendered
it absolutely necessary that she should
not exert herself for some time. Mr
Brand, the Shepperton doctor so
obnoxious to Mr Pillgrim, ordered
her to drink port-wine, and it was
quite necessary to have a charwoman
very often, to assist Nanny
in all the extra work that fell upon
her.
Mrs Hackit, who hardly ever paid
a visit to any one but her oldest and
nearest neighbour Mrs Patten, now
took the unusual step of calling at
the vicarage one morning; and the
tears came into her unsentimental
eyes as she saw Milly seated pale and
feeble in the parlour, unable to persevere
in sewing the pinafore that
lay on the table beside her. Little
Dickey, a boisterous boy of five, with
large pink cheeks and sturdy legs,
was having his turn to sit with
Mamma, and was squatting quiet
as a mouse at her knee, holding
her soft white hand between his
little red, black-nailed fists. He
was a boy whom Mrs Hackit, in
a severe mood, had pronounced
“stocky” (a word that etymologically,
in all probability, conveys some
allusion to an instrument of punishment
for the refractory); but seeing
him thus subdued into goodness, she
smiled at him with her kindest
smile, and, stooping down, suggested
a kiss—a favour which Dickey
resolutely declined.
“Now do you take nourishing
things anuff?” was one of Mrs
Hackit’s first questions, and Milly
endeavoured to make it appear that
no woman was ever so much in
danger of being over-fed and led
into self-indulgent habits as herself.
But Mrs Hackit gathered one fact
from her replies, namely, that Mr
Brand had ordered port-wine.
While this conversation was going
forward, Dickey had been furtively
stroking and kissing the soft white
hand; so that at last, when a pause
came, his mother said, smilingly, “Why
are you kissing my hand, Dickey?”
“It id to yovely,” answered Dickey,
who, you observe, was decidedly backward
in his pronunciation.
Mrs Hackit remembered this little
scene in after days, and thought with
peculiar tenderness and pity of the
“stocky boy.”
The next day there came a hamper
with Mrs Hackit’s respects; and on
being opened, it was found to contain
half-a-dozen of port-wine and two
couples of fowls. Mrs Farquhar, too,
was very kind; insisted on Mrs
Barton’s rejecting all arrow-root but
hers, which was genuine Indian, and
carried away Sophy and Fred to stay
with her a fortnight. These and other
good-natured attentions made the
trouble of Milly’s illness more bearable;
but they could not prevent it
from swelling expenses, and Mr
Barton began to have serious thoughts
of representing his case to a certain
charity for the relief of needy curates.
Altogether, as matters stood in
Shepperton, the parishioners were
more likely to have a strong sense
that the clergyman needed their material
aid, than that they needed his
spiritual aid,—not the best state of
things in this age and country, where
faith in men solely on the ground of
their spiritual gifts has considerably
diminished, and especially unfavourable
to the influence of the Rev.
Amos, whose spiritual gifts would
not have had a very commanding
power even in an age of faith.
But, you ask, did not the Countess
Czerlaski pay any attention to her
friends all this time? To be sure
she did. She was indefatigable in
visiting her “sweet Milly,” and sitting
with her for hours together; and it
may seem remarkable to you that she
neither thought of taking away any
of the children, nor of providing for
any of Milly’s probable wants; but
ladies of rank and of luxurious habits,
you know, cannot be expected to surmise
the details of poverty. She put
a great deal of eau-de-Cologne on
Mrs Barton’s pocket-handkerchief,
rearranged her pillow and footstool,
kissed her cheeks, wrapped her in
a soft warm shawl from her own
shoulders, and amused her with
stories of the life she had seen
abroad. When Mr Barton joined
them, she talked of Tractarianism, of
her determination not to re-enter the
vortex of fashionable life, and of her
anxiety to see him in a sphere large
enough for his talents. Milly thought
her sprightliness and affectionate
warmth quite charming, and was
very fond of her; while the Rev.
Amos had a vague consciousness that
he had risen into aristocratic life, and
only associated with his middle-class
parishioners in a pastoral and parenthetic
manner.
However, as the days brightened,
Milly’s cheeks and lips brightened
too; and in a few weeks she was
almost as active as ever, though
watchful eyes might have seen that
activity was not easy to her. Mrs
Hackit’s eyes were of that kind, and
one day that Mr and Mrs Barton
had been dining with her for the
first time since Milly’s illness, she
observed to her husband—“That
poor thing’s dreadful weak an’ delicate,
she won’t stan’ havin’ many
more children.”
Mr Barton, meanwhile, had been
indefatigable in his vocation. He
had preached two extemporary sermons
every Sunday at the workhouse,
where a room had been fitted up for
divine service, pending the alterations
in the church; and had walked the
same evening to a cottage at one or
other extremity of his parish to deliver
another sermon, still more extemporary,
in an atmosphere impregnated
with spring-flowers and perspiration.
After all these labours
you will easily conceive that he was
considerably exhausted by half-past
nine o’clock in the evening, and that a
supper at a friendly parishioner’s, with
a glass, or even two glasses, of brandy-and-water
after it, was a welcome
reinforcement. Mr Barton was not
at all an ascetic; he thought the
benefits of fasting were entirely confined
to the Old Testament dispensation;
he was fond of relaxing himself
with a little gossip; indeed, Miss
Bond, and other ladies of enthusiastic
views, sometimes regretted that Mr
Barton did not more uninterruptedly
exhibit a superiority to the things of
the flesh. Thin ladies, who take little
exercise, and whose livers are not
strong enough to bear stimulants,
are so extremely critical about one’s
personal habits! And, after all, the
Rev. Amos never came near the
borders of a vice. His very faults
were middling—he was not very ungrammatical.
It was not in his nature
to be superlative in anything;
unless, indeed, he was superlatively
middling, the quintessential extract
of mediocrity. If there was any one
point on which he showed an inclination
to be excessive, it was confidence
in his own shrewdness and
ability in practical matters, so that
he was very full of plans which were
something like his moves in chess—admirably
well calculated, supposing
the state of the case were otherwise.
For example, that notable plan of
introducing anti-dissenting books into
his lending library did not in the
least appear to have bruised the head
of Dissent, though it had certainly
made Dissent strongly inclined to
bite the Rev. Amos’s heel. Again,
he vexed the souls of his churchwardens
and influential parishioners
by his fertile suggestiveness as to
what it would be well for them to do
in the matter of the church repairs,
and other ecclesiastical secularities.
“I never see the like to parsons,”
Mr Hackit said one day in conversation
with his brother churchwarden
Mr Bond; “they’re al’ys for meddlin’
wi’ business, an’ they know no moor
about it than my black filly.”
“Ah,” said Mr Bond, “they’re too
high learnt to have much common-sense.”
“Well,” remarked Mr Hackit, in
a modest and dubious tone, as if
throwing out a hypothesis which
might be considered bold, “I should
say that’s a bad sort o’ eddication as
makes folks onreasonable.”
So that, you perceive, Mr Barton’s
popularity was in that precarious
condition, in that toppling and contingent
state, in which a very slight
push from a malignant destiny would
utterly upset it. That push was not
long in being given, as you shall hear.
One fine May morning, when Amos
was out on his parochial visits, and
the sunlight was streaming through
the bow-window of the sitting-room,
where Milly was seated at her sewing,
occasionally looking up to glance at
the children playing in the garden,
there came a loud rap at the door,
which she at once recognised as the
Countess’s, and that well-dressed lady
presently entered the sitting-room,
with her veil drawn over her face.
Milly was not at all surprised or
sorry to see her; but when the
Countess threw up her veil, and
showed that her eyes were red and
swollen, she was both surprised and
sorry.
“What can be the matter, dear
Caroline?”
Caroline threw down Jet, who
gave a little yelp; then she threw
her arms round Milly’s neck, and
began to sob; then she threw herself
on the sofa, and begged for a
glass of water; then she threw off
her bonnet and shawl; and, by the
time Milly’s imagination had exhausted
itself in conjuring up calamities,
she said—
“Dear, how shall I tell you? I
am the most wretched woman. To
be deceived by a brother to whom I
have been so devoted—to see him
degrading himself—giving himself
utterly to the dogs!”
“What can it be?” said Milly, who
began to picture to herself the sober
Mr Bridmain taking to brandy and
betting.
“He is going to be married—to
marry my own maid, that deceitful
Alice, to whom I have been the
most indulgent mistress. Did you
ever hear of anything so disgraceful?
so mortifying? so disreputable?”
“And has he only just told you of
it?” said Milly, who, having really
heard of worse conduct, even in her
innocent life, avoided a direct answer.
“Told me of it! he had not even
the grace to do that. I went into
the dining-room suddenly and found
him kissing her—disgusting at his
time of life, is it not?—and when
I reproved her for allowing such
liberties, she turned round saucily,
and said she was engaged to be married
to my brother, and she saw no
shame in allowing him to kiss her.
Edmund is a miserable coward, you
know, and looked frightened; but
when she asked him to say whether
it was not so, he tried to summon up
courage and say yes. I left the room
in disgust, and this morning I have
been questioning Edmund, and find
that he is bent on marrying this
woman, and that he has been putting
off telling me—because he was
ashamed of himself, I suppose. I
couldn’t possibly stay in the house
after this, with my own maid turned
mistress. And now, Milly, I am
come to throw myself on your charity
for a week or two. Will you take
me in?”
“That we will,” said Milly, “if
you will only put up with our poor
rooms and way of living. It will be
delightful to have you!”
“It will soothe me to be with you
and Mr Barton a little while. I feel
quite unable to go among my other
friends just at present. What those
two wretched people will do I don’t
know—leave the neighbourhood at
once, I hope. I entreated my brother
to do so, before he disgraced himself.”
When Amos came home, he joined
his cordial welcome and sympathy to
Milly’s. By-and-by the Countess’s
formidable boxes, which she had carefully
packed before her indignation
drove her away from Camp Villa,
arrived at the vicarage, and were deposited
in the spare bedroom, and in
two closets, not spare, which Milly
emptied for their reception. A week
afterwards, the excellent apartments
at Camp Villa, comprising dining and
drawing rooms, three bedrooms and
a dressing-room, were again to let,
and Mr Bridmain’s sudden departure,
together with the Countess
Czerlaski’s installation as a visitor
at Shepperton Vicarage, became a
topic of general conversation in the
neighbourhood. The keen-sighted
virtue of Millby and Shepperton saw
in all this a confirmation of its worst
suspicions, and pitied the Rev. Amos
Barton’s gullibility.
But when week after week, and
month after month, slipped by without
witnessing the Countess’s departure—when
summer and harvest had
fled, and still left her behind them
occupying the spare bedroom and the
closets, and also a large proportion
of Mrs Barton’s time and attention,
new surmises of a very evil kind
were added to the old rumours, and
began to take the form of settled
convictions in the minds even of Mr
Barton’s most friendly parishioners.
And now, here is an opportunity
for an accomplished writer to apostrophise
calumny, to quote Virgil,
and to show that he is acquainted
with the most ingenious things which
have been said on that subject in
polite literature.
But what is opportunity to the
man who can’t use it? An unfecundated
egg, which the waves of time
wash away into nonentity. So, as
my memory is ill-furnished, and my
note-book still worse, I am unable to
show myself either erudite or eloquent
à propos of the calumny whereof the
Rev. Amos Barton was the victim.
I can only ask my reader, did you
ever upset your ink-bottle, and watch,
in helpless agony, the rapid spread
of Stygian blackness over your fair
manuscript or fairer table-cover?
With a like inky swiftness did gossip
now blacken the reputation of the
Rev. Amos Barton, causing the unfriendly
to scorn and even the friendly
to stand aloof, at a time when difficulties
of another kind were fast
thickening around him.
One November morning, at least
six months after the Countess Czerlaski
had taken up her residence at
the vicarage, Mrs Hackit heard that
her neighbour Mrs Patten had an
attack of her old complaint, vaguely
called “the spasms.” Accordingly,
about eleven o’clock, she put on her
velvet bonnet and cloth cloak, with a
long boa and a muff large enough to
stow a prize baby in; for Mrs Hackit
regulated her costume by the calendar,
and brought out her furs on the
first of November, whatever might be
the temperature. She was not a
woman weakly to accommodate herself
to shilly-shally proceedings. If
the season didn’t know what it ought
to do, Mrs Hackit did. In her best
days, it was always sharp weather at
“Gunpowder Plot,” and she didn’t
like new fashions.
And this morning the weather was
very rationally in accordance with
her costume, for as she made her way
through the fields to Cross Farm,
the yellow leaves on the hedge-girt
elms, which showed bright and golden
against the low-hanging purple clouds,
were being scattered across the grassy
path by the coldest of November
winds. “Ah,” Mrs Hackit thought
to herself, “I dare say we shall have
a sharp pinch this winter, and if we
do, I shouldn’t wonder if it takes the
old lady off. They say a green Yule
makes a fat churchyard; but so does
a white Yule too, for that matter.
When the stool’s rotten enough, no
matter who sits on’t.”
However, on her arrival at Cross
Farm, the prospect of Mrs Patten’s
decease was again thrown into the
dim distance in her imagination, for
Miss Janet Gibbs met her with the
news that Mrs Patten was much better,
and led her, without any preliminary
announcement, to the old
lady’s bedroom. Janet had scarcely
reached the end of her circumstantial
narrative how the attack came on
and what were her aunt’s sensations—a
narrative to which Mrs Patten,
in her neatly plaited night-cap, seemed
to listen with a contemptuous resignation
to her niece’s historical inaccuracy,
contenting herself with occasionally
confounding Janet by a
shake of the head—when the clatter
of a horse’s hoofs on the yard pavement
announced the arrival of Mr
Pillgrim, whose large, top-booted person
presently made its appearance up-stairs.
He found Mrs Patten going
on so well that there was no need to
look solemn. He might glide from
condolence into gossip without offence,
and the temptation of having Mrs
Hackit’s ear was irresistible.
“What a disgraceful business this
is turning out of your parson’s,” was
the remark with which he made this
agreeable transition, throwing himself
back in the chair from which
he had been leaning towards the
patient.
“Eh, dear me!” said Mrs Hackit,
“disgraceful enough. I stuck to Mr
Barton as long as I could, for his
wife’s sake; but I can’t countenance
such goings on. It’s hateful to see
that woman coming with ’em to service
of a Sunday, and if Mr Hackit
wasn’t churchwarden and I didn’t
think it wrong to forsake one’s own
parish, I should go to Knebley church.
There’s a many parish’ners as do.”
“I used to think Barton was only
a fool,” observed Mr Pillgrim, in a
tone which implied that he was conscious
of having been weakly charitable.
“I thought he was imposed
upon and led away by those people
when they first came. But that’s impossible
now.”
“O, it’s as plain as the nose in
your face,” said Mrs Hackit, unreflectingly,
not perceiving the equivoque
in her comparison,—“coming
to Millby, like a sparrow perchin’
on a bough, as I may say, with her
brother, as she called him; and then,
all on a sudden, the brother goes off
wi’ himself, and she throws herself
on the Bartons. Though what could
make her take up wi’ a poor notomise
of a parson, as hasn’t got enough to
keep wife and children, there’s one
above knows—I don’t.”
“Mr Barton may have attractions
we don’t know of,” said Mr Pillgrim,
who piqued himself on a talent for
sarcasm. “The Countess has no maid
now, and they say Mr Barton is handy
in assisting at her toilette—laces her
boots, and so forth.”
“Tilette, be fiddled!” said Mrs
Hackit, with indignant boldness of
metaphor; “an’ there’s that poor
thing a-sewing her fingers to the
bone for them children—an’ another
comin’ on. What she must have
to go through! It goes to my heart
to turn my back on her. But she’s
i’ the wrong to let herself be put
upon a’ that manner.”
“Ah! I was talking to Mrs Farquhar
about that the other day.
She said, ‘I think Mrs Barton a
v-e-r-y w-e-a-k w-o-m-a-n.’” (Mr Pillgrim
gave this quotation with slow
emphasis, as if he thought Mrs Farquhar
had uttered a remarkable sentiment.)
“They find it impossible
to invite her to their house while
she has that equivocal person staying
with her.”
“Well!” remarked Miss Gibbs,
“if I was a wife, nothing should
induce me to bear what Mrs Barton
does.”
“Yes, it’s fine talking,” said Mrs
Patten, from her pillow; “old maids’
husbands are al’ys well-managed. If
you was a wife you’d be as foolish
as your betters, belike.”
“All my wonder is,” observed Mrs
Hackit, “how the Bartons make
both ends meet. You may depend
on’t she’s got nothing to give ’em;
for I understand as he’s been havin’
money from some clergy charity.
They said at first as she stuffed Mr
Barton wi’ notions about her writing
to the Chancellor an’ her fine friends
to give him a living. Howiver, I
don’t know what’s true an’ what’s
false. Mr Barton keeps away from
our house now, for I gave him a bit
o’ my mind one day. Maybe he’s
ashamed of himself. He seems to
me to look dreadful thin an’ harassed
of a Sunday.”
“O, he must be aware he’s getting
into bad odour everywhere. The
clergy are quite disgusted with his
folly. They say Carpe would be
glad to get Barton out of the curacy
if he could; but he can’t do that
without coming to Shepperton himself,
as Barton’s a licensed curate;
and he wouldn’t like that, I suppose.”
At this moment Mrs Patten showed
signs of uneasiness, which recalled
Mr Pillgrim to professional attentions;
and Mrs Hackit, observing
that it was Thursday, and she must
see after the butter, said good-by,
promising to look in again soon, and
bring her knitting.
This Thursday, by the by, is the
first in the month—the day on which
the clerical meeting is held at Millby
Vicarage; and as the Rev. Amos
Barton has reasons for not attending,
he will very likely be a subject
of conversation amongst his clerical
brethren. Suppose we go there, and
hear whether Mr Pillgrim has reported
their opinion correctly.
There is not a numerous party to-day,
for it is a season of sore throats
and catarrhs; so that the exegetical
and theological discussions, which are
the preliminary of dining, have not
been quite so spirited as usual; and
although a question relative to the
Epistle of Jude has not been quite
cleared up, the striking of six by
the church clock, and the simultaneous
announcement of dinner,
are sounds that no one feels to be
importunate.
Pleasant (when one is not in the
least bilious) to enter a comfortable
dining-room, where the closely-drawn
red curtains glow with the double
light of fire and candle, where glass
and silver are glittering on the pure
damask, and a soup-tureen gives a
hint of the fragrance that will presently
rush out to inundate your
hungry senses, and prepare them, by
the delicate visitation of atoms, for
the keen gusto of ampler contact!
Especially if you have confidence in
the dinner-giving capacity of your
host—if you know that he is not a
man who entertains grovelling views
of eating and drinking as a mere satisfaction
of hunger and thirst, and,
dead to all the finer influences of the
palate, expects his guests to be brilliant
on ill-flavoured gravies and the
cheapest Marsala. Mr Ely was particularly
worthy of such confidence,
and his virtues as an Amphitryon
had probably contributed quite as
much as the central situation of Millby
to the selection of his house as a
clerical rendezvous. He looks particularly
graceful at the head of his
table, and, indeed, on all occasions
where he acts as president or moderator—a
man who seems to listen
well, and is an excellent amalgam of
discrepant ingredients.
At the other end of the table, as
“Vice,” sits Mr Fellowes, rector and
magistrate, a man of imposing appearance,
with a mellifluous voice,
and the readiest of tongues. Mr Fellowes
once obtained a living by the
persuasive charms of his conversation,
and the fluency with which he
interpreted the opinions of an obese
and stammering baronet, so as to
give that elderly gentleman a very
pleasing perception of his own wisdom.
Mr Fellowes is a very successful
man, and has the highest character
everywhere except in his own
parish, where, doubtless, because his
parishioners happen to be quarrelsome
people, he is always at fierce
feud with a farmer or two, a colliery
proprietor, a grocer who was once
churchwarden, and a tailor who formerly
officiated as clerk.
At Mr Ely’s right hand you see a
very small man with a sallow and
somewhat puffy face, whose hair is
brushed straight up, evidently with
the intention of giving him a height
somewhat less disproportionate to
his sense of his own importance than
the measure of five feet three accorded
him by an oversight of nature.
This is the Rev. Archibald Duke, a
very dyspeptic and evangelical man,
who takes the gloomiest view of mankind
and their prospects, and thinks
the immense sale of the “Pickwick
Papers,” recently completed, one of
the strongest proofs of original sin.
Unfortunately, though Mr Duke was
not burdened, with a family, his
yearly expenditure was apt considerably
to exceed his income; and the
unpleasant circumstances resulting
from this, together with heavy meat
breakfasts, may probably have contributed
to his desponding views of
the world generally.
Next to him is seated Mr Furness,
a tall young man, with blond hair
and whiskers, who was plucked at
Cambridge entirely owing to his genius;
at least, I know that he soon
afterwards published a volume of
poems, which were considered remarkably
beautiful by many young
ladies of his acquaintance. Mr Furness
preached his own sermons, as
any one of tolerable critical acumen
might have certified by comparing
them with his poems: in both, there
was an exuberance of metaphor and
simile entirely original, and not in
the least borrowed from any resemblance
in the things compared.
On Mr Furness’s left you see Mr
Pugh, another young curate, of much
less marked characteristics. He had
not published any poems; he had not
even been plucked; he had neat black
whiskers and a pale complexion;
read prayers and a sermon twice
every Sunday, and might be seen any
day sallying forth on his parochial
duties in a white tie, a well-brushed
hat, a perfect suit of black, and well-polished
boots—an equipment which
he probably supposed hieroglyphically
to represent the spirit of Christianity
to the parishioners of Whittlecombe.
Mr Pugh’s vis-à-vis is the Rev.
Martin Cleves, a man about forty—middle-sized,
broad-shouldered, with
a negligently tied cravat, large irregular
features, and a large head,
thickly covered with lanky brown
hair. To a superficial glance, Mr
Cleves is the plainest and least clerical
looking of the party; yet, strange
to say, there is the true parish priest,
the pastor beloved, consulted, relied
on by his flock; a clergyman who is
not associated with the undertaker,
but thought of as the surest helper
under a difficulty, as a monitor who
is encouraging rather than severe. Mr
Cleves has the wonderful art of preaching
sermons which the wheelwright
and the blacksmith can understand,
not because he talks condescending
twaddle, but because he can call a
spade a spade, and knows how to disencumber
ideas of their wordy frippery.
Look at him more attentively
and you will see that his face is a
very interesting one—that there is a
great deal of humour and feeling
playing in his grey eyes, and about
the corners of his roughly cut mouth:—a
man, you observe, who has most
likely sprung from the harder working
section of the middle class, and
has hereditary sympathies with the
checkered life of the people. He
gets together the working men in his
parish on a Monday evening, and
gives them a sort of conversational
lecture on useful practical matters,
telling them stories, or reading
some select passages from an agreeable
book, and commenting on them;
and if you were to ask the first labourer
or artisan in Tripplegate what
sort of man the parson was, he would
say,—“a uncommon knowing, sensible,
free-spoken gentleman; very
kind an’ good-natur’d too.” Yet for
all this, he is perhaps the best Grecian
of the party, if we except Mr
Baird, the young man on his left.
Mr Baird has since gained considerable
celebrity as an original writer
and metropolitan lecturer, but at that
time he used to preach in a little
church something like a barn, to a
congregation consisting of three rich
farmers and their servants, about
fifteen labourers, and the due proportion
of women and children. The
rich farmers understood him to be
“very high learnt;” but if you had
interrogated them for a more precise
description, they would have said
that he was “a thinnish-faced man,
with a sort o’ cast in his eye, like.”
Seven, altogether: a delightful
number for a dinner party, supposing
the units to be delightful, but everything
depends on that. During dinner,
Mr Fellowes took the lead in
the conversation, which set strongly
in the direction of mangold-wurzel
and the rotation of crops; for Mr
Fellowes and Mr Cleves cultivated
their own glebes. Mr Ely, too, had
some agricultural notions, and even
the Rev. Archibald Duke was made
alive to that class of mundane subjects
by the possession of some potato
ground. The two young curates
talked a little aside during these discussions,
which had imperfect interest
for their unbeneficed minds;
and the transcendental and near-sighted
Mr Baird seemed to listen
somewhat abstractedly, knowing
little more of potatoes and mangold-wurzel
than that they were some
form of the “Conditioned.”
“What a hobby farming is with
Lord Watling!” said Mr Fellowes,
when the cloth was being drawn.
“I went over his farm at Tetterley
with him last summer. It is really
a model farm; first-rate dairy, grazing
and wheat land, and such splendid
farm-buildings! An expensive
hobby, though. He sinks a good
deal of money there, I fancy. He
has a great whim for black cattle,
and he sends that drunken old Scotch
bailiff of his to Scotland every year,
with hundreds in his pocket, to buy
these beasts.”
“By the by,” said Mr Ely, “do
you know who is the man to whom
Lord Watling has given the Bramhill
living?”
“A man named Sargent. I knew
him at Oxford. His brother is a
lawyer, and was very useful to Lord
Watling in that ugly Brounsell affair.
That’s why Sargent got the
living.”
“Sargent,” said Mr Ely. “I know
him. Isn’t he a showy, talkative
fellow; has written travels in Mesopotamia,
or something of that sort?”
“That’s the man.”
“He was at Witherington once,
as Bagshawe’s curate. He got into
rather bad odour there, through some
scandal about a flirtation, I think.”
“Talking of scandal,” returned Mr
Fellowes, “have you heard the last
story about Barton? Nisbett was
telling me the other day that he
dines alone with the Countess at six,
while Mrs Barton is in the kitchen
acting as cook.”
“Rather an apocryphal authority,
Nisbett,” said Mr Ely.
“Ah,” said Mr Cleves, with good-natured
humour twinkling in his
eyes, “depend upon it, that is a corrupt
version. The original text is,
that they all dined together with six—meaning
six children—and that
Mrs Barton is an excellent cook.”
“I wish dining alone together may
be the worst of that sad business,”
said the Rev. Archibald Duke, in a
tone implying that his wish was a
strong figure of speech.
“Well,” said Mr Fellowes, filling
his glass and looking jocose, “Barton
is certainly either the greatest gull in
existence, or he has some cunning
secret,—some philtre or other, to
make himself charming in the eyes
of a fair lady. It isn’t all of us that
can make conquests when our ugliness
is past its bloom.”
“The lady seemed to have made a
conquest of him at the very outset,”
said Mr Ely. “I was immensely
amused one night at Granby’s, when
he was telling us her story about
her husband’s adventures. He said,
‘When she told me the tale, I felt I
don’t know how,—I felt it from the
crown of my head to the sole of my
feet.’”
Mr Ely gave these words dramatically,
imitating the Rev. Amos’s fervour
and symbolic action, and every
one laughed, except Mr Duke, whose
after-dinner view of things was not
apt to be jovial. He said:
“I think some of us ought to remonstrate
with Mr Barton on the
scandal he is causing. He is not only
imperilling his own soul, but the souls
of his flock.”
“Depend upon it,” said Mr Cleves,
“there is some simple explanation of
the whole affair, if we only happened
to know it. Barton has always impressed
me as a right-minded man,
who has the knack of doing himself
injustice by his manner.”
“Now I never liked Barton,” said
Mr Fellowes. “He’s not a gentleman.
Why, he used to be on terms
of intimacy with that canting Prior,
who died a little while ago;—a fellow
who soaked himself with spirits, and
talked of the Gospel through an
inflamed nose.”
“The Countess has given him more
refined tastes, I dare say,” said Mr
Ely.
“Well,” observed Mr Cleves, “the
poor fellow must have a hard pull to
get along, with his small income and
large family. Let us hope the Countess
does something towards making
the pot boil.”
“Not she,” said Mr Duke; “there
are greater signs of poverty about
them than ever.”
“Well, come,” returned Mr Cleves,
who could be caustic sometimes, and
who was not at all fond of his reverend
brother Mr Duke, “that’s something
in Barton’s favour at all events.
He might be poor without showing
signs of poverty.”
“Mr Duke turned rather yellow,
which was his way of blushing, and
Mr Ely came to his relief by observing:
“They’re making a very good
piece of work of Shepperton Church.
Dolby, the architect, who has it in
hand, is a very clever fellow.”
“It’s he who has been doing Coppleton
Church,” said Mr Furness.
“They’ve got it in excellent order
for the visitation.”
This mention of the visitation suggested
the Bishop, and thus opened
a wide duct, which entirely diverted
the stream of animadversion from
that small pipe—that capillary vessel,
the Rev. Amos Barton.
The talk of the clergy about their
Bishop belongs to the esoteric part
of their profession; so we will at
once quit the dining-room at Millby
Vicarage, lest we should happen to
overhear remarks unsuited to the
lay understanding, and perhaps dangerous
to our repose of mind.
I dare say the long residence of
the Countess Czerlaski at Shepperton
Vicarage is very puzzling to you
also, dear reader, as well as to Mr
Barton’s clerical brethren; the more
so, as I hope you are not in the least
inclined to put that very evil interpretation
on it which evidently
found acceptance with the sallow
and dyspeptic Mr Duke, and with
the florid and highly peptic Mr
Fellowes. You have seen enough,
I trust, of the Rev. Amos Barton,
to be convinced that he was more
apt to fall into a blunder than into a
sin—more apt to be deceived than
to incur a necessity for being deceitful:
and if you have a keen eye for
physiognomy, you will have detected
that the Countess Czerlaski loved
herself far too well to get entangled
in an unprofitable vice.
How, then, you will say, could
this fine lady choose to quarter herself
on the establishment of a poor
curate, where the carpets were probably
falling into holes, where the
attendance was limited to a maid
of all work, and where six children
were running loose from eight o’clock
in the morning till eight o’clock in
the evening? Surely you must be
misrepresenting the facts.
Heaven forbid! For not having a
fertile imagination, as you perceive,
and being unable to invent thrilling
incidents for your amusement, my
only merit must lie in the faithfulness
with which I represent to you
the humble experience of an ordinary
fellow-mortal. I wish to stir
your sympathy with commonplace
troubles—to win your tears for real
sorrow: sorrow such as may live
next door to you—such as walks
neither in rags nor in velvet, but in
very ordinary decent apparel.
Therefore, that you may dismiss
your suspicions of my veracity, I
will beg you to consider, that at the
time the Countess Czerlaski left
Camp Villa in dudgeon, she had
only twenty pounds in her pocket,
being about one-third of the income
she possessed independently of her
brother. You will then perceive
that she was in the extremely inconvenient
predicament of having quarrelled,
not indeed with her bread
and cheese, but certainly with her
chicken and tart—a predicament all
the more inconvenient to her, because
the habit of idleness had quite
unfitted her for earning those necessary
superfluities, and because, with
all her fascinations, she had not
secured any enthusiastic friends
whose houses were open to her, and
who were dying to see her. Thus
she had completely checkmated herself,
unless she could resolve on
one unpleasant move—namely, to
humble herself to her brother, and
recognise his wife. This seemed
quite impossible to her as long as
she entertained the hope that he
would make the first advances;
and in this flattering hope she remained
month after month at Shepperton
Vicarage, gracefully overlooking
the deficiencies of accommodation,
and feeling that she was
really behaving charmingly. “Who,
indeed,” she thought to herself,
“could do otherwise with a lovely,
gentle creature like Milly? I shall
really be sorry to leave the poor
thing.”
So, though she lay in bed till ten,
and came down to a separate breakfast
at eleven, she kindly consented
to dine as early as five, when a hot
joint was prepared, which coldly
furnished forth the children’s table
the next day; she considerately prevented
Milly from devoting herself
too closely to the children, by insisting
on reading, talking, and walking
with her; and she even began to
embroider a cap for the next baby,
which must certainly be a girl, and
be named Caroline.
After the first month or two of
her residence at the Vicarage, the
Rev. Amos Barton became aware—as,
indeed, it was unavoidable that
he should—of the strong disapprobation
it drew upon him, and the
change of feeling towards him which
it was producing in his kindest
parishioners. But, in the first place,
he still believed in the Countess as a
charming and influential woman, disposed
to befriend him, and, in any
case, he could hardly hint departure
to a lady guest who had been kind
to him and his, and who might any
day spontaneously announce the termination
of her visit; in the second
place, he was conscious of his own
innocence, and felt some contemptuous
indignation towards people
who were ready to imagine evil of
him; and, lastly, he had, as I have
already intimated, a strong will of
his own, so that a certain obstinacy
and defiance mingled itself with his
other feelings on the subject.
The one unpleasant consequence
which was not to be evaded or
counteracted by any mere mental
state, was the increasing drain on
his slender purse for household expenses,
to meet which the remittance
he had received from the
clerical charity threatened to be
quite inadequate. Slander may be
defeated by equanimity; but courageous
thoughts will not pay your
baker’s bill, and fortitude is nowhere
considered legal tender for beef.
Month after month the financial
aspect of the Rev. Amos’s affairs
became more and more serious to
him, and month after month, too,
wore away more and more of that
armour of indignation and defiance
with which he had at first defended
himself from the harsh looks of faces
that were once the friendliest.
But quite the heaviest pressure of
the trouble fell on Milly—on gentle,
uncomplaining Milly—whose delicate
body was becoming daily less fit
for all the many things that had to
be done between rising up and lying
down. At first, she thought the
Countess’s visit would not last long,
and she was quite glad to incur
extra exertion for the sake of making
her friend comfortable. I can
hardly bear to think of all the rough
work she did with those lovely
hands—all by the sly, without letting
her husband know anything about
it, and husbands are not clairvoyant—how
she salted bacon, ironed shirts
and cravats, put patches on patches,
and redarned darns. Then there was
the task of mending and eking out
baby linen in prospect, and the
problem perpetually suggesting itself
how she and Nanny should manage
when there was another baby, as
there would be before very many
months were past.
When time glided on, and the
Countess’s visit did not end, Milly
was not blind to any phase of their
position. She knew of the slander;
she was aware of the keeping aloof
of old friends; but these she felt
almost entirely on her husband’s
account. A loving woman’s world
lies within the four walls of her own
home; and it is only through her
husband that she is in any electric
communication with the world beyond.
Mrs Simpkins may have looked
scornfully at her, but baby crows
and holds out his little arms none
the less blithely; Mrs Tomkins may
have left off calling on her, but
her husband comes home none the
less to receive her care and caresses;
it has been wet and gloomy out of
doors to-day, but she has looked well
after the shirt buttons, has cut out
baby’s pinafores, and half finished
Willy’s blouse.
So it was with Milly. She was
only vexed that her husband should
be vexed—only wounded because he
was misconceived. But the difficulty
about ways and means she felt
in quite a different manner. Her
rectitude was alarmed lest they
should have to make tradesmen
wait for their money; her motherly
love dreaded the diminution of comforts
for the children, and the sense
of her own failing health gave exaggerated
force to these fears.
Milly could no longer shut her
eyes to the fact, that the Countess
was inconsiderate, if she did not
allow herself to entertain severer
thoughts; and she began to feel that
it would soon be a duty to tell her
frankly that they really could not
afford to have her visit farther prolonged.
But a process was going
forward in two other minds, which
ultimately saved Milly from having
to perform this painful task.
In the first place, the Countess was
getting weary of Shepperton—weary
of waiting for her brother’s overtures
which never came; so, one fine morning,
she reflected that forgiveness
was a Christian duty, that a sister
should be placable, that Mr Bridmain
must feel the need of her advice, to
which he had been accustomed for
three years, and that very likely “that
woman” didn’t make the poor man
happy. In this amiable frame of
mind she wrote a very affectionate
appeal, and addressed it to Mr Bridmain,
through his banker.
Another mind that was being
wrought up to a climax was Nanny’s,
the maid of all work, who had a
warm heart and a still warmer temper.
Nanny adored her mistress: she had
been heard to say, that she was
“ready to kiss the ground as the
missis trod on;” and Walter, she
considered, was her baby, of whom
she was as jealous as a lover. But
she had from the first very slight
admiration for the Countess Czerlaski.
That lady, from Nanny’s
point of view, was a personage
always “drawed out i’ fine clothes,”
the chief result of whose existence
was to cause additional bed-making,
carrying of hot water, laying of
table-cloths and cooking of dinners.
It was a perpetually heightening
“aggravation” to Nanny that she
and her mistress had to “slave”
more than ever, because there was
this fine lady in the house.
“An’ she pays nothin’ for’t neither,”
observed Nanny to Mr Jacob Tomms,
a young gentleman in the tailoring
line, who occasionally—simply out of
a taste for dialogue—looked into the
vicarage kitchen of an evening. “I
know the master’s shorter o’ money
than iver, an’ it maks no end o’
difference i’ th’ housekeepin’—her
bein’ here, besides bein’ obliged to
have a charwoman constant.”
“There’s fine stories i’ the village
about her,” said Mr Tomms. “They
say as Muster Barton’s great wi’ her,
or else she’d niver stop here.”
“Then they say a passill o’ lies, an’
you ought to be ashamed to goo an’
tell ’em o’er again. Do you think as
the master as has got a wife like the
missis, ‘ud goo runnin’ arter a stuck
up piece o’ goods like that Countess,
as isn’t fit to black the missis’s shoes?
I’m none so fond o’ the master, but
I know better on him nor that.”
“Well, I didn’t b’lieve it,” said
Mr Tomms, humbly.
“B’lieve it? you’d ha’ been a ninny
if yer did. An’ she’s a nasty stingy
thing, that Countess. She’s niver
giv me a sixpence or an old rag
either, sin’ here she’s been. A-lyin’
a bed an’ a-comin’ down to breakfast
when other folks wants their dinner!”
If such was the state of Nanny’s
mind as early as the end of August,
when this dialogue with Mr Tomms
occurred, you may imagine what it
must have been by the beginning of
November, and that at that time a
very slight spark might any day
cause the long smouldering anger to
flame forth in open indignation.
That spark happened to fall the
very morning that Mrs Hackit paid
the visit to Mrs Patten, recorded in
the last chapter. Nanny’s dislike of
the Countess extended to the innocent
dog Jet, whom she “couldn’t
a-bear to see made a fuss wi’ like a
Christian. An’ the little ouzle must
be washed, too, ivery Saturday, as if
there wasn’t children enoo to wash,
wi’out washin’ dogs.”
Now this particular morning it
happened that Milly was quite too
poorly to get up, and Mr Barton
observed to Nanny, on going out,
that he would call and tell Mr Brand
to come. These circumstances were
already enough to make Nanny anxious
and susceptible. But the Countess,
comfortably ignorant of them,
came down as usual about eleven
o’clock to her separate breakfast,
which stood ready for her at that
hour in the parlour; the kettle singing
on the hob that she might make
her own tea. There was a little jug
of cream, taken according to custom
from last night’s milk, and specially
saved for the Countess’s breakfast.
Jet always awaited his mistress at
her bedroom door, and it was her
habit to carry him down stairs.
“Now, my little Jet,” she said,
putting him down gently on the
hearth-rug, “you shall have a nice,
nice breakfast.”
Jet indicated that he thought that
observation extremely pertinent and
well-timed, by immediately raising
himself on his hind-legs, and the
Countess emptied the cream-jug into
the saucer. Now there was usually
a small jug of milk standing on the
tray by the side of the cream, and
destined for Jet’s breakfast, but this
morning Nanny, being “moithered,”
had forgotten that part of the
arrangements, so that when the
Countess had made her tea, she
perceived there was no second jug,
and rang the bell. Nanny appeared,
looking very red and heated—the
fact was, she had been “doing up”
the kitchen fire, and that is a sort
of work which by no means conduces
to blandness of temper.
“Nanny, you have forgotten Jet’s
milk; will you bring me some more
cream, please?”
This was just a little too much for
Nanny’s forbearance.
“Yes, I dare say. Here am I wi’
my hands full o’ the children an’ the
dinner, and missis ill a-bed, and Mr
Brand a-comin’; and I must run o’er
the village to get more cream, because
you’ve giv it to that nasty little
blackamoor.”
“Is Mrs Barton ill?”
“Ill—yes—I should think she is ill,
an’ much you care. She’s likely to be
ill, moithered as she is from mornin’
to night, wi’ folks as had better be
elsewhere.”
“What do you mean by behaving
in this way?”
“Mean? Why, I mean as the
missis is a slavin’ her life out an’
a-sittin’ up o’ nights, for folks as are
better able to wait of her, i’stid o’
lyin’ a-bed an’ doin’ nothin’ all the
blessed day, but mek work.”
“Leave the room, and don’t be insolent.”
“Insolent! I’d better be insolent
than like what some folks is,—a-livin’
on other folks, an’ bringin’ a
bad name on ’em into the bargain.”
Here Nanny flung out of the room,
leaving the lady to digest this unexpected
breakfast at her leisure.
The Countess was stunned for a
few minutes, but when she began to
recall Nanny’s words, there was no
possibility of avoiding very unpleasant
conclusions from them, or of
failing to see her position at the
Vicarage in an entirely new light. The
interpretation too of Nanny’s allusion
to a “bad name” did not lie out of
the reach of the Countess’s imagination,
and she saw the necessity of
quitting Shepperton without delay.
Still, she would like to wait for her
brother’s letter—no—she would ask
Milly to forward it to her—still
better, she would go at once to London,
inquire her brother’s address at
his banker’s, and go to see him without
preliminary.
She went up to Milly’s room, and,
after kisses and inquiries, said—“I
find, on consideration, dear Milly,
from the letter I had yesterday, that
I must bid you good-by and go
up to London at once. But you
must not let me leave you ill, you
naughty thing.”
“O no,” said Milly, who felt as if a
load had been taken off her back, “I
shall be very well in an hour or two.
Indeed, I’m much better now. You
will want me to help you to pack. But
you won’t go for two or three days?”
“Yes, I must go to-morrow. But
I shall not let you help me pack, so
don’t entertain any unreasonable projects,
but lie still. Mr Brand is coming,
Nanny says.”
The news was not an unpleasant
surprise to Mr Barton when he came
home, though he was able to express
more regret at the idea of parting
than Milly could summon to her
lips. He retained more of his original
feeling for the Countess than
Milly did, for women never betray
themselves to men as they do to each
other; and the Rev. Amos had not a
keen instinct for character. But he felt
that he was being relieved from a
difficulty, and in the way that was
easiest for him. Neither he nor
Milly suspected that it was Nanny
who had cut the knot for them, for
the Countess took care to give no
sign on that subject. As for Nanny,
she was perfectly aware of the relation
between cause and effect in the
affair, and secretly chuckled over her
outburst of “sauce,” as the best
morning’s work she had ever done.
So on Friday morning, a fly was
seen standing at the Vicarage gate,
with the Countess’s boxes packed
upon it; and presently that lady herself
was seen getting into the vehicle.
After a last shake of the hand to Mr
Barton, and last kisses to Milly and
the children, the door was closed;
and as the fly rolled off, the little
party at the Vicarage gate caught a
last glimpse of the handsome Countess
leaning and waving kisses from
the carriage window. Jet’s little
black phiz was also seen, and doubtless
he had his thoughts and feelings
on the occasion, but he kept them
strictly within his own bosom.
The schoolmistress opposite witnessed
this departure, and lost no
time in telling it to the schoolmaster,
who again communicated the news to
the landlord of “The Jolly Colliers,”
at the close of the morning school-hours.
Nanny poured the joyful
tidings into the ear of Mr Farquhar’s
footman, who happened to call with
a letter, and Mr Brand carried them
to all the patients he visited that
morning, after calling on Mrs Barton.
So that before Sunday, it was very
generally known in Shepperton
parish, that the Countess Czerlaski
had left the Vicarage.
The Countess had left, but alas!
the bills she had contributed to swell
still remained; so did the exiguity
of the children’s clothing, which also
was partly an indirect consequence
of her presence; and so, too, did the
coolness and alienation in the parishioners,
which could not at once
vanish before the fact of her departure.
The Rev. Amos was not exculpated—the
past was not expunged.
But, what was worse than all, Milly’s
health gave frequent cause for alarm,
and the prospect of baby’s birth was
overshadowed by more than the usual
fears. The birth came prematurely,
about six weeks after the Countess’s
departure, but Mr Brand gave favourable
reports to all inquirers on the
following day, which was Saturday.
On Sunday, after morning service,
Mrs Hackit called at the Vicarage to
inquire how Mrs Barton was, and
was invited up-stairs to see her. Milly
lay placid and lovely in her feebleness,
and held out her hand to Mrs
Hackit with a beaming smile. It
was very pleasant to her to see her
old friend unreserved and cordial
once more. The seven months’ baby
was very tiny and very red, but
“handsome is that handsome does,”—he
was pronounced to be “doing
well,” and Mrs Hackit went home
gladdened at heart to think that the
perilous hour was over.
The following Wednesday, when
Mr and Mrs Hackit were seated
comfortably by their bright hearth,
enjoying the long afternoon afforded
by an early dinner, Rachel, the
housemaid, came in and said—
“If you please ‘m, the shepherd
says, have you heard as Mrs Barton’s
wuss, and not expected to live?”
Mrs Hackit turned pale, and
hurried out to question the shepherd,
who, she found, had heard the sad
news at an alehouse in the village. Mr
Hackit followed her out and said,
“Thee’dst better have the pony-chaise,
and go directly.”
“Yes,” said Mrs Hackit, too much
overcome to utter any exclamations.
“Rachel, come an’ help me on wi’
my things.”
When her husband was wrapping
her cloak round her feet in the pony-chaise,
she said—
“If I don’t come home to-night, I
shall send back the pony-chaise, and
you’ll know I’m wanted there.”
“Yes, yes.”
It was a bright frosty day, and by
the time Mrs Hackit arrived at the
Vicarage, the sun was near its setting.
There was a carriage and pair standing
at the gate, which she recognised
as Dr Madeley’s, the physician from
Rotherby. She entered at the kitchen
door, that she might avoid knocking,
and quietly question Nanny. No one
was in the kitchen, but, passing on,
she saw the sitting-room door open,
and Nanny, with Walter in her arms,
removing the knives and forks, which
had been laid for dinner three hours
ago.
“Master says he can’t eat no
dinner,” was Nanny’s first word.
“He’s never tasted nothin’ sin’
yesterday mornin’, but a cup o’ tea.”
“When was your missis took
worse?”
“O’ Monday night. They sent for
Dr Madeley i’ the middle o’ the day
yesterday, an’ he’s here again now.”
“Is the baby alive?”
“No, it died last night. The
children’s all at Mrs Bond’s. She
came and took ’em away last night,
but the master says they must be
fetched soon. He’s up-stairs now,
wi’ Dr Madeley and Mr Brand.”
At this moment Mrs Hackit heard
the sound of a heavy, slow foot, in
the passage; and presently Amos
Barton entered, with dry despairing
eyes, haggard and unshaven. He
expected to find the sitting-room as
he left it, with nothing to meet his
eyes but Milly’s work-basket in the
corner of the sofa, and the children’s
toys overturned in the bow-window.
But when he saw Mrs Hackit come
towards him with answering sorrow
in her face, the pent-up fountain of
tears was opened; he threw himself
on the sofa, hid his face, and sobbed
aloud.
“Bear up, Mr Barton,” Mrs
Hackit ventured to say at last,
“bear up for the sake o’ them dear
children.”
“The children,” said Amos, starting
up. “They must be sent for.
Some one must fetch them. Milly
will want to......”
He couldn’t finish the sentence,
but Mrs Hackit understood him and
said, “I’ll send the man with the
pony-carriage for ’em.”
She went out to give the order,
and encountered Dr Madeley and
Mr Brand, who were just going.
Mr Brand said: “I am very glad
to see you are here, Mrs Hackit. No
time must be lost in sending for the
children. Mrs Barton wants to see
them.”
“Do you quite give her up, then?”
“She can hardly live through the
night. She begged us to tell her
how long she had to live; and then
asked for the children.”
The pony-carriage was sent; and
Mrs Hackit, returning to Mr Barton,
said she should like to go up-stairs
now. He went up-stairs with her and
opened the door. The chamber
fronted the west; the sun was just
setting, and the red light fell full upon
the bed, where Milly lay with the
hand of death visibly upon her. The
feather-bed had been removed, and
she lay low on a mattress with her
head slightly raised by pillows. Her
long fair neck seemed to be struggling
with a painful effort; her features
were pallid and pinched, and her
eyes were closed. There was no one
in the room but the nurse, and the
mistress of the free school, who had
come to give her help from the
beginning of the change.
Amos and Mrs Hackit stood beside
the bed, and Milly opened her eyes.
“My darling, Mrs Hackit is come
to see you.”
Milly smiled and looked at her
with that strange, far-off look which
belongs to ebbing life.
“Are the children coming?” she
said, painfully.
“Yes, they will be here directly.”
She closed her eyes again.
Presently the pony-carriage was
heard; and Amos, motioning to Mrs
Hackit to follow him, left the room.
On their way down stairs, she suggested
that the carriage should remain
to take them away again afterwards,
and Amos assented.
There they stood in the melancholy
sitting-room—the five sweet children,
from Patty to Chubby—all, with their
mother’s eyes—all, except Patty, looking
up with a vague fear at their
father as he entered. Patty understood
the great sorrow that was
come upon them, and tried to check
her sobs as she heard her papa’s
footsteps.
“My children,” said Amos, taking
Chubby in his arms, “God is going
to take away your dear mamma from
us. She wants to see you to say
good-by. You must try to be very
good and not cry.”
He could say no more, but turned
round to see if Nanny was there with
Walter, and then led the way up-stairs,
leading Dickey with the other
hand. Mrs Hackit followed with
Sophy and Patty, and then came
Nanny with Walter and Fred.
It seemed as if Milly had heard
the little footsteps on the stairs, for
when Amos entered her eyes were
wide open, eagerly looking towards
the door. They all stood by the bedside—Amos
nearest to her, holding
Chubby and Dickey. But she
motioned for Patty to come first,
and clasping the poor pale child by
the hand, said,—
“Patty, I’m going away from you.
Love your papa. Comfort him; and
take care of your little brothers and
sisters. God will help you.”
Patty stood perfectly quiet, and
said, “Yes, mamma.”
The mother motioned with her
pallid lips for the dear child to lean
towards her and kiss her; and then
Patty’s great anguish overcame her,
and she burst into sobs. Amos drew
her towards him and pressed her
head gently to him, while Milly
beckoned Fred and Sophy, and said
to them, more faintly:—
“Patty will try to be your mamma
when I am gone, my darlings. You
will be good, and not vex her.”
They leaned towards her, and she
stroked their fair heads, and kissed
their tear-stained cheeks. They cried
because mamma was ill and papa
looked so unhappy; but they thought,
perhaps next week things would be
as they used to be again.
The little ones were lifted on the bed
to kiss her. Little Walter said, “Mamma,
mamma,” and stretched out his
fat arms and smiled; and Chubby
seemed gravely wondering; but
Dickey, who had been looking fixedly
at her, with lip hanging down,
ever since he came into the room,
now seemed suddenly pierced with
the idea that mamma was going
away somewhere; his little heart
swelled, and he cried aloud.
Then Mrs Hackit and Nanny took
them all away. Patty at first begged
to stay at home and not go to Mrs
Bond’s again; but when Nanny reminded
her that she had better go to take
care of the younger ones, she submitted
at once, and they were all
packed in the pony-carriage once
more.
Milly kept her eyes shut for some
time after the children were gone.
Amos had sunk on his knees, and
was holding her hand while he watched
her face. By-and-by she opened
her eyes, and, drawing him close to
her, whispered slowly,
“My dear—dear—husband—you
have been—very—good to me. You—have—made
me—very—happy.”
She spoke no more for many hours.
They watched her breathing becoming
more and more difficult, until
evening deepened into night, and until
midnight was past. About half-past
twelve she seemed to be trying
to speak, and they leaned to catch
her words.
“Music—music—didn’t you hear
it?”
Amos knelt by the bed, and held
her hand in his. He did not believe
in his sorrow. It was a bad dream.
He did not know when she was gone.
But Mr Brand, whom Mrs Hackit
had sent for before twelve o’clock,
thinking that Mr Barton might probably
need his help, now came up
to him and said,—
“She feels no more pain now.
Come, my dear sir, come with me.”
“She isn’t dead?” shrieked the
poor desolate man, struggling to
shake off Mr Brand, who had taken
him by the arm. But his weary,
weakened frame was not equal to resistance,
and he was dragged out of
the room.
They laid her in the grave—the
sweet mother with her baby in her
arms—while the Christmas snow lay
thick upon the graves. It was Mr
Cleves who buried her. On the first
news of Mr Barton’s calamity, he
had ridden over from Tripplegate to
beg that he might be made of some
use, and his silent grasp of Amos’s
hand had penetrated like the painful
thrill of life-recovering warmth to the
poor benumbed heart of the stricken
man.
The snow lay thick upon the graves,
and the day was cold and dreary; but
there was many a sad eye watching
that black procession as it passed
from the vicarage to the church, and
from the church to the open grave.
There were men and women standing
in that churchyard who had bandied
vulgar jests about their pastor, and
who had lightly charged him with
sin; but now, when they saw him following
the coffin, pale and haggard,
he was consecrated anew by his great
sorrow, and they looked at him with
respectful pity.
All the children were there, for
Amos had willed it so, thinking that
some dim memory of that sacred moment
might remain even with little
Walter, and link itself with what he
would hear of his sweet mother in
after years. He himself led Patty
and Dickey; then came Sophy and
Fred; Mr Brand had begged to carry
Chubby, and Nanny followed with
Walter. They made a circle round
the grave while the coffin was being
lowered. Patty alone of all the children
felt that mamma was in that
coffin, and that a new and sadder life
had begun for papa and herself. She
was pale and trembling, but she
clasped his hand more firmly as the
coffin went down, and gave no sob.
Fred and Sophy, though they were
only two and three years younger,
and though they had seen mamma in
her coffin, seemed to themselves to be
looking at some strange show. They
had not learned to decipher that terrible
handwriting of human destiny,
illness and death. Dickey had rebelled
against his black clothes, until he
was told that it would be naughty to
mamma not to put them on, when he
at once submitted; and now, though
he had heard Nanny say that mamma
was in heaven, he had a vague notion
that she would come home again to-morrow,
and say he had been a good
boy, and let him empty her workbox.
He stood close to his father,
with great rosy cheeks and wide open
blue eyes, looking first up at Mr
Cleves and then down at the coffin,
and thinking he and Chubby would
play at that, when they got home.
The burial was over, and Amos
turned with his children to re-enter
the house—the house where, an hour
ago, Milly’s dear body lay, where the
windows were half-darkened, and
sorrow seemed to have a hallowed
precinct for itself, shut out from the
world. But now she was gone; the
broad snow-reflected daylight was in
all the rooms; the Vicarage again
seemed part of the common working-day
world, and Amos, for the first
time, felt that he was alone—that
day after day, month after month,
year after year, would have to be
lived through without Milly’s love.
Spring would come, and she would
not be there; summer, and she would
not be there; and he would never
have her again with him by the fireside
in the long evenings. The seasons
all seemed irksome to his thoughts;
and how dreary the sunshiny days
that would be sure to come! She
was gone from him; and he could
never show her his love any more,
never make up for omissions in the
past by filling future days with tenderness.
O the anguish of that thought, that
we can never atone to our dead for
the stinted affection we gave them,
for the light answers we returned to
their plaints or their pleadings, for
the little reverence we showed to that
sacred human soul that lived so close
to us, and was the divinest thing God
had given us to know!
Amos Barton had been an affectionate
husband, and while Milly was
with him, he was never visited by
the thought that perhaps his sympathy
with her was not quick and
watchful enough; but now he re-lived
all their life together, with that terrible
keenness of memory and imagination
which bereavement gives,
and he felt as if his very love needed
a pardon for its poverty and selfishness.
No outward solace could counteract
the bitterness of this inward woe.
But outward solace came. Cold faces
looked kind again, and parishioners
turned over in their minds what they
could best do to help their pastor. Mr
Oldinport wrote to express his sympathy,
and enclosed another twenty-pound
note, begging that he might
be permitted to contribute in this
way to the relief of Mr Barton’s mind
from pecuniary anxieties, under the
pressure of a grief which all his parishioners
must share; and offering
his interest towards placing the two
eldest girls in a school expressly
founded for clergymen’s daughters.
Mr Cleves succeeded in collecting
thirty pounds among his richer clerical
brethren, and, adding ten pounds
himself, sent the sum to Amos, with
the kindest and most delicate words
of Christian fellowship and manly
friendship. Miss Jackson forgot old
grievances, and came to stay some
months with Milly’s children, bringing
such material aid as she could
spare from her small income. These
were substantial helps, which relieved
Amos from the pressure of his money
difficulties; and the friendly attentions,
the kind pressure of the hand,
the cordial looks he met with everywhere
in his parish, made him feel
that the fatal frost which had settled
on his pastoral duties, during the
Countess’s residence at the Vicarage,
was completely thawed, and that the
hearts of his parishioners were once
more open to him.
No one breathed the Countess’s
name now; for Milly’s memory hallowed
her husband, as of old the
place was hallowed on which an
angel from God had alighted.
When the spring came, Mrs Hackit
begged that she might have Dickey
to stay with her, and great was the
enlargement of Dickey’s experience
from that visit. Every morning he
was allowed—being well wrapped up
as to his chest, by Mrs Hackit’s own
hands, but very bare and red as to
his legs—to run loose in the cow
and poultry yard, to persecute the
turkey-cock by satirical imitations of
his gobble-gobble, and to put difficult
questions to the groom as to
the reasons why horses had four legs,
and other transcendental matters.
Then Mr Hackit would take Dickey
up on horseback when he rode round
his farm, and Mrs Hackit had a
large plumcake in, cut ready to meet
incidental attacks of hunger. So
that Dickey had considerably modified
his views as to the desirability
of Mrs Hackit’s kisses.
The Miss Farquhars made particular
pets of Fred and Sophy, to
whom they undertook to give lessons
twice a-week in writing and geography;
and Mrs Farquhar devised
many treats for the little ones.
Patty’s treat was to stay at home,
or walk about with her papa; and
when he sat by the fire in an evening,
after the other children were
gone to bed, she would bring a stool,
and placing it against his feet, would
sit down upon it and lean her head
against his knee. Then his hand
would rest on that fair head, and he
would feel that Milly’s love was not
quite gone out of his life.
So the time wore on till it was
May again, and the church was quite
finished and reopened in all its new
splendour, and Mr Barton was devoting
himself with more vigour
than ever to his parochial duties.
But one morning—it was a very
bright morning, and evil tidings
sometimes like to fly in the finest
weather—there came a letter for
Mr Barton, addressed in the Vicar’s
handwriting. Amos opened it with
some anxiety—somehow or other he
had a presentiment of evil. The
letter contained the announcement
that Mr Carpe had resolved on coming
to reside at Shepperton, and that,
consequently, in six months from that
time Mr Barton’s duties as curate in
that parish would be closed.
O, it was hard! Just when Shepperton
had become the place where he
most wished to stay—where he had
friends who knew his sorrows—where
he lived close to Milly’s grave. To
part from that grave seemed like parting
with Milly a second time; for
Amos was one who clung to all the
material links between his mind and
the past. His imagination was not
vivid, and required the stimulus of
some actual perception.
It roused some bitter feeling, too,
to think that Mr Carpe’s wish to
reside at Shepperton was merely a
pretext for removing Mr Barton, in
order that he might ultimately give
the curacy of Shepperton to his own
brother-in-law, who was known to be
wanting a new position.
Still, it must be borne; and the
painful business of seeking another
curacy must be set about without
loss of time. After the lapse of some
months, Amos was obliged to renounce
the hope of getting one at
all near Shepperton, and he at length
resigned himself to accepting one in
a distant county. The parish was in
a large manufacturing town, where
his walks would lie among noisy
streets and dingy alleys, and where
the children would have no garden
to play in, no pleasant farmhouses
to visit.
It was another blow inflicted on
the bruised man.
At length the dreaded week was
come, when Amos and his children
must leave Shepperton. There was
general regret among the parishioners
at his departure: not that any
one of them thought his spiritual
gifts pre-eminent, or was conscious
of great edification from his ministry.
But his recent troubles had
called out their better sympathies,
and that is always a source of love.
Amos failed to touch the spring
of goodness by his sermons, but he
touched it effectually by his sorrows;
and there was now a real bond between
him and his flock.
“My heart aches for them poor
motherless children,” said Mrs
Hackit to her husband, “a-goin’
among strangers, an’ into a nasty
town, where there’s no good victuals
to be had, and you must pay dear to
get bad ‘uns.”
Mrs Hackit had a vague notion
of a town-life as a combination of
dirty backyards, measly pork, and
dingy linen.
The same sort of sympathy was
strong among the poorer class of
parishioners. Old stiff-jointed Mr
Tozer, who was still able to earn a
little by gardening “jobs,” stopped
Mrs Cramp, the charwoman, on her
way home from the Vicarage, where
she had been helping Nanny to pack
up the day before the departure,
and inquired very particularly into
Mr Barton’s prospects.
“Ah, poor mon,” he was heard to
say, “I am surry fur ’im. He hedn’t
much here, but he’ll be wuss off
theer. Half a loaf’s better nor ne’er
‘un.”
The sad good-byes had all been said
before that last evening; and after all
the packing was done and all the
arrangements were made, Amos felt
the oppression of that blank interval
in which one has nothing left to
think of but the dreary future—the
separation from the loved and familiar,
and the chilling entrance on the
new and strange. In every parting
there is an image of death.
Soon after ten o’clock, when he
had sent Nanny to bed, that she
might have a good night’s rest before
the fatigues of the morrow, he stole
softly out to pay a last visit to
Milly’s grave. It was a moonless
night, but the sky was thick with
stars, and their light was enough to
show that the grass had grown long
on the grave, and that there was a
tombstone telling in bright letters on
a dark ground, that beneath were
deposited the remains of Amelia, the
beloved wife of Amos Barton, who
died in the thirty-fifth year of her age,
leaving a husband and six children
to lament her loss. The final words
of the inscription were, “Thy will
be done.”
The husband was now advancing
towards the dear mound from which
he was so soon to be parted, perhaps
for ever. He stood a few minutes
reading over and over again the
words on the tombstone, as if to
assure himself that all the happy and
unhappy past was a reality. For
love is frightened at the intervals of
insensibility and callousness that encroach
by little and little on the dominion
of grief, and it makes efforts
to recall the keenness of the first
anguish.
Gradually, as his eye dwelt on the
words, “Amelia, the beloved wife,”
the waves of feeling swelled within
his soul, and he threw himself on the
grave, clasping it with his arms and
kissing the cold turf.
“Milly, Milly, dost thou hear me?
I didn’t love thee enough—I wasn’t
tender enough to thee—but I think
of it all now.”
The sobs came and choked his
utterance, and the warm tears fell.
Only once again in his life has
Amos Barton visited Milly’s grave.
It was in the calm and softened
light of an autumnal afternoon, and
he was not alone. He held on his
arm a young woman, with a sweet,
grave face, which strongly recalled
the expression of Mrs Barton’s, but
was less lovely in form and colour.
She was about thirty, but there
were some premature lines round
her mouth and eyes, which told of
early anxiety.
Amos himself was much changed.
His thin circlet of hair was nearly
white, and his walk was no longer
firm and upright. But his glance
was calm, and even cheerful, and his
neat linen told of a woman’s care.
Milly didn’t take all her love from
the earth when she died. She had
left some of it in Patty’s heart.
All the other children were now
grown up, and had gone their
several ways. Dickey, you will be
glad to hear, had shown remarkable
talents as an engineer. His cheeks
are still ruddy, in spite of mixed
mathematics, and his eyes are still
large and blue; but in other respects
his person would present no marks
of identification for his friend Mrs
Hackit, if she were to see him; especially
now that her eyes must be
grown very dim, with the wear of
more than twenty additional years.
He is nearly six feet high, and has
a proportionately broad chest; he
wears spectacles, and rubs his large
white hands through a mass of shaggy
brown hair. But I am sure you have
no doubt that Mr Richard Barton is
a thoroughly good fellow, as well as
a man of talent, and you will be glad
any day to shake hands with him,
for his own sake as well as his
mother’s.
Patty alone remains by her father’s
side, and makes the evening sunshine
of his life.
TICKET-OF-LEAVE. A LETTER TO IRENÆUS.
173
Christmas Eve, 1856.
My dear Irenæus,—A merry
Yule-tide, and may the young year
use you as well as the old ones, and
so you will do very well! So you
did not ask me to eat my Christmas
dinner with you; yours is strictly a
family party. The Rector, and the
Rose and rose-buds of Devon, and a
spinster cousin of yours, a kind of
benignant Banshee of your house,
who comes to light not when any
one is going to die, but whenever all
the members of your family are going
to live—particularly well: kissed
under the mistletoe like the rest, and
blushing like the evening when the
Reverend Celsus unbends so far as to
acknowledge that relic of heathendom,
the wicked parasitical plant
with which the fair god Balder was
slain. Well, Irenæus, an old bachelor
at Christmas is not much unlike the
mistletoe; he cannot live by himself;
has no roots of his own, and must
find some family oak to fix himself
upon. He cannot dine drearily in
his rooms, or sulk at his club on
Christmas day: he must turn parasite
for the nonce; and then it is his duty
like the mistletoe to promote the fun
as much as possible. Irenæus, if no
eyes but thine were destined to look
at this page, I might tell thee where
I ate my Christmas dinner, but my
letter is peculiarly circumstanced.
There is a grave old lady called
Maga looking over my shoulder
while I write, and I am obliged to
be circumspect in consequence. But
if I could have eaten two Christmas
dinners, as young ladies in town go
to two or even more balls of a night,
I certainly should like to have eaten
my second with you; or had I the
power to divide myself, my wraith
or double should have sat down with
you, uninvited as Banquo’s ghost,
but rather more cheerfully; that is, if
a wraith or double possesses digestive
organs, and organs capable of
digesting a Christmas dinner. Howbeit
I can picture in imagination the
cheerfulness of your fireside; the delighted
scream of the children at the
blazing pudding, puzzled to know
how they were to eat fire, especially
with a grandpapa whose name implies
that he is not a fire-eater himself,
although I suspect him of being
so in spite of his name;—the blind
man’s buff and hunt-the-slipper with
Irenæus obliged to pay forfeit and remove
a taper from a basin of water
with his mouth; the Christmas tree,
that prettiest of all modern importations
from Germany, like many other
pretty things a little dangerous, liable
to set people a-fire—hung round with
the gifts which the little ones believe
came from the Babe of Bethlehem;
and when the little ones are gone to
bed, the quiet rubber in the corner,
which Irenæus has on principle, because
the Puritans think cards wicked
at all times, and especially on Christmas
day; not that he cares much about
it himself, for he only plays for postage
stamps. I know that Christmas is a
good time with you, Irenæus, not coming,
but come; like that Christmas
of the heathen Romans—
When round the lonely cottage
Roars loud the tempest’s din,
And the good logs of Algidus
Roar louder yet within.
When the oldest cask is opened,
And the largest lamp is lit;
When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
And the kid turns on the spit;
When young and old in circle
Around the fire-brands close;
When the girls are wearing baskets,
And the lads are shaping bows.
Might not Macaulay have said that
the girls were also shaping beaux in
their imaginations? Forgive me—but
on such a subject and at such a time,
the saturnalia of our year—even a pun
is pardonable, however despicable in
itself. How strange is the power of
suggestion! I meant not when I sat
down to write, to wish you more
than the compliments of the season,
but I see now that I am in for a long
letter, and so are you. I do not
mean to cross it, and thus you will
have no excuse for not reading it
through. “The good logs of Algidus”
have suggested to me your
wood-fire, the very poetry of fires,
and your wood-fire has suggested
your wood-cutter, and your wood-cutter
has suggested a ticket-of-leave
man; and as I have been thinking
somewhat lately on this subject of
tickets-of-leave, I by these presents
take you by the button, and compel
you to listen to the matter of my
ruminations, even as that eternal
gossip detained Horace, when he
was walking in the sacred road
“according to his wont.” I still
think your experiment with regard
to that man a dangerous one. Had
you been a preserver of game, you
would have done better to have made
him a gamekeeper, on the principle
of “set a thief to catch a thief,” as he
got into trouble by poaching with
aggravations. The most sensible
proposition I have seen yet, with regard
to ticket-of-leave men, was that
of some speaker at a country public
dinner, who proposed that they should
be made policemen. No other scheme
has appeared to me to hold water in
the slightest degree. You get a parcel
of jail-birds together, till their
cage or “jug,” as it is affectionately
called by the fraternity, is inconveniently
full. In order to relieve its superabundance,
you select the mildest
specimens, or those who appear so to
the chaplain, clip a feather of their
wings and let them fly again about
society at large, forgetting that a
clipt feather will soon grow again.
You give them a ticket-of-leave—to
be at large, and they naturally give a
large interpretation to the term, so
that a ticket-of-leave has become like
an indulgence in the worst times of
Popery, the principal difference being
that those who granted indulgences
were wise enough to get paid for
them beforehand, while those who
grant tickets-of-leave are fools enough
to do it for nothing, and earn into
the bargain the maledictions of all
timid old gentlemen, and the anathemas
of all elderly ladies, if elderly
ladies be ever sufficiently unguarded
to utter anathemas, as the Council of
Trent did. The other day poor Mrs
Seacole, of Crimean memory,
“Spake a bitter jest”
in the court of bankruptcy, and asked
for her ticket-of-leave, adding that
she did not mean to garotte any one
in consequence; it being generally
understood that a ticket-of-leave
would be interpreted by the public
to be a license to garotte with impunity,
giving a sacred or sacrosanct
character to the bearer, like that of
a Briton with a Foreign Office passport,
an ancient Roman tribune or a
modern Swiss idiot, the latter two
classes of people licensed to make
themselves disagreeable to others to
any extent within or without reasonable
bounds. We have all heard of
Le spectre rouge, and how it has
frightened the French people from
their impropriety, bending their necks
to the stern yoke of absolutism. The
same honourable position appears to
be occupied now in England by the
spectre denominated Ticket-of-leave.
Oh, for the brush of a limner that
I might portray him, as he is portrayed
to the imagination of Materfamilias
Tomkins, whose husband is
a worthy clerk in the City, and has to
walk every evening to a white-washed
cottage at Bow, running the gauntlet
of all the white-washed blackguards
of Whitechapel on the road to it! I
claim no originality in wishing for a
limner’s brush to eke out the weakness
of my words, the conceit is as
old as Anacreon. I naturally turn as
a model to that ode in which the
poet apostrophises his mistress—
Ἄγε Ζωγράφων ἄριστε
Γράφε Ζωγράφων ἄριστε
Τεχνοκοίρανε ῥόδειε
Ἀπεοῦσαν ὡς ἂν εἴπω
Γράφε τὴν ἐμὴν ἑταίραν,
with questionable compliment, calling
upon the best animal painter,
the Landseer of Samos, to paint her
according to description in her absence.
But I find as I read on, that
the glorifications of feminine loveliness
can scarcely be paraphrased so
as to do for Bill Sykes. Here is one
that will serve my purpose better, addressed
to some graceless youth of
the poet’s acquaintance, I mean the
Ode to Bathyllus. I suppose a confederate
speaking to the painter or
photographer, though a case not likely
to happen, in fact, unless he wished
to turn Queen’s evidence.
Ἐἰς Βάθυλλον.
Γράφε μοι Βάθυλλον οὕτω
Τὸν ἑταῖρον ὡς διδάσκω
Λιπαρὰς κόμας ποίησον
Τὰ μὲν ἔνδοθεν μελαίνας,
Τὰ δ’ ες ἄκρον ἡλιωσας
Ἕλικας δ’ ἐλαυθέρους μοι
Πλοκάμων, ἀτακτα συνθεὶς,
Ἄφες, ὡς θέλωσι, κεῖσθαι
Απαλὸν δὲ καὶ δροσῶδες
Στεφέτω μέτωπον, ὀφρὺς
Κυανωτέρη δρακόντων.
Μέλας ὄμμα γοργὸν ἔστω,
Κεκερασμένον γαλήνῃ*
Τὸ μὲν ἐξ Ἄρηος ἕλκον
Το δε τῆς καλῆς Κυθήρης
Ἵνα τις τὸ μὲν φοβῆται
Τὸ δ’ ἀπ’ ἐλπίδος κρεμᾶται.
Ῥοδίνην δ’, ὁποια μῆλον
Χνοΐην ποίει παρειήυ*
Ερυθημά δ’ ὡς ἄν Αἰδοῦς
(Λύνασαι) πάλιν ποίησον.
Τὸ δὲ χεῖλος, οὐκ ἔτ’ οἶδα
Τίνι μοι τροπῳ ποιήσεις * *
Ἁπαλὸν, γέμοντε πειθοῦς ——
Τὸ δὲ πᾶν, ὁ κηρὸς αὐτὸς
Ἐχέτω λαλῶν σιωπῇ.
Μετὰ δὲ πρόσωπον ἔστω
Τὸν Ἀδώνιδος παρελθὼν,
Ἐλεφάντινος τράχηλος.
Μεταμάζιον δε ποίει
Δίδυμάς τε χεῖρας Ἑρμοῦ;
Πολυδεύκεος δε μηροὺς
Λιονυσίην δὲ νηδύν.
Φθονερηὺ ἔχεις δὲ τέχνηυ,
Ὅτι μὴ τὰ νῶτα δεῖξαι,
Δύνασαι* τὰ δ’ ἦν ἀμείνω.
Τί πόδας με δεῖ δί δάσκειν;
Λάβε μισθὸν, ὅσσον εἴπῃς.
Τὸν Ἐκηβόλον δὲ τοῦτον
Καθελὼν, ποίει Βάθυλλον.
Ὅτε δ’ ἐς Σαμου ποτ’ ἐλθης
Γράφε Φοῖβον ἐκ Βαθύλλον.
On Bill Sykes.
(After Anacreon.)
Paint me, Cruikshank, Doyle, or Leech,
Sykes, my pal, as now I teach.
Paint his hair, smut-black and sleek,
Methodistically meek,
Sheared as round a beechen bowl
On the temples; at the pole,
Topknot like a blacking-brush
Which no comb shall tear or crush;
So the porcupine his quill
Droops or upright sets at will.
Paint a clammy forehead now
Heavy, villanously low;
Eyebrows like a coat threadbare;
Eyelids innocent of hair,
Proof against the grease of bear.
Goggle eyes of sullen glare,
Overspread with oily calm
When he sings the prison-psalm;
Piglike in their want of passion;
Catlike in their hue and fashion;
Which to some suggest resistance,
And to some respectful distance.
With his cheek if art can grapple,
Paint it like a stale pine-apple,
Blotched, and mountainous and yellow,
Never blushing (trust the fellow)
Save when liquor spreads the rose
Sidewards from his blushing nose.
Deeply in your medium dip
When you paint the blubber lip,
Mute, yet eloquent of sin,
Blistered with sulphuric gin.
Paint a bloated figure-head,
As found drowned in Thames’ bed.
Let a flashy kerchief deck
Hippopotamus’s neck.
Paint a chest, the dread of Peelers,
Paint his vice-like, vicious feelers,
Paint his legs, short, bowed, and staunch;
Paint a bacchanalian paunch,
Pity that you cannot turn,
Paint at once both stem and stern;
With those pockets, which in doubt
Beaks and traps turn inside out,
Keeping snugly under hatches
Centrebits, and files and matches,
Crowbars, keys and all the things
Good for opening locks and springs.
Paint me last those high-low’d feet
Wary of policeman’s beat.
When you’ve finished my commission,
Take it to the Exhibition.
Surely their Hanging Committee
Must on William Sykes take pity,
Else you might break in by night
And unfix some city knight,
Some lock-jawed pre-Raphaelite,
Some interior, landscape, plan,
“Portrait of a gentleman.”
So may soar in pride of place
Our Bill Sykes’s gallows face,
Not transported, but in fine
Hung precisely on the line.
But, in sober earnest, I think the
portrait of Ticket-of-leave, if it appeared
on the walls of the Royal
Academy, might produce unpleasant
consequences to ladies in an interesting
condition, as happened when
Æschylus brusquely exhibited his
Eumenides at Athens, so great a
horror has been engendered in the
public mind by the creature’s late
misdoings. The word “ticket” was
not in very good odour before, between
pawnbrokers’ tickets and lottery
tickets. But it was only disreputable;
now it has become formidable.
People will ask tremblingly
for tickets of leave for admission to
lectures, concerts, and the opera.
They will fancy that every person
travelling by railroad in possession
of his ticket, bears also a ticket-of-leave;
and should the omnibus companies
adopt them, as in Paris, they
will certainly prove fatal to their
traffic. Joking apart, I am not sorry,
for some reasons, for this panic and
its causes. It serves to explode,
with other things that have occurred
of late, the bubbles of progress
and human perfectibility. The other
day we were almost argued into a
belief in universal peace, and we
have been disenchanted by a war
as barbaric as any that has been
waged before in pomp and circumstance.
Now people are beginning
to grow sick of the humanity-hobby,
and to allow that after all there are
some worse remedies for moral disease
than honest hanging. Calcraft
is likely to have his declining years
consoled by an increasing reverence
for his profession, and even to be
looked upon in the end as a most
indispensable member of society.
The “London Scoundrel,” if his language
was as unobjectionable as his
real meaning, has a chance of finding
an echo in the popular heart, for the
sovereign people has as much objection
as any other monarch to have its
prerogatives invaded by having its
gullet compressed, or its ten-pound
house burglariously entered. Domitian
fell when he began to be an object
of terror to the cobblers, and so, it is
to be hoped, will that modern Domitian,
the ticket-of-leave man. He
has at length succeeded in moving
the masses, and the masses will come
down on his head and crush him.
Things were, indeed, come to a pretty
pass. It required almost court interest
to get hanged, and to get
transported for life nearly as much
as would suffice to get a subordinate
clerkship in the Treasury. The judges
seemed to have got universally bitten
with the mania for lecturing, and
a lecture from the bench was the
panacea for all weaknesses which
endangered or destroyed the lives
and properties of peaceable subjects.
Sent to jail, the prisoner was petted,
and every encouragement given him
to renew his visit. In the severest
light, he was only looked upon as a
patient, put upon the moral sick-list,
and dieted with the same care and
tenderness that patients are in the
best regulated hospitals, so that there
was often rather more trouble in
getting him out than there was in
getting him in. Not that matters
are very much mended as yet. Notwithstanding
the feeding and the
petting, there are a class of detenus
who, like spirited footmen,
do not much like indoor work, or
too much of it at one time. A craving
for physical and intellectual exercise
impels them to seek for means
of release. Their trump cards in
playing this trick are the chaplain
and the doctor, or both, one after the
other. The king and queen are
played, and then to follow suit out
comes the knave. Bill Sykes is contrite,
avows that his late course of
life is a warning to him, carefully
stifles oaths unutterable, before uttered
in conversation with the chaplain,
the king of hearts. Chaplain
pleads for his release, and half believes
that he will go to the Antipodes, if
he goes at all, only as a missionary.
Doctor, an old woman, of course, and
so of the feminine gender, the queen
of hearts, feels his pulse, looks at his
tongue, thinks prison-fare, confinement,
and early hours are destroying
his constitution and affecting his
spirits. Doctor advises change of
air and scene for the invalid, and so
the patient leaves the hospital. A
month afterwards back he comes
again, being taken ill of a burglary,
committed in delicate health at
twelve o’clock on a night in January,
and maliciously reported by
the people in his own neighbourhood
to be a dangerous character,
albeit in official estimation a saintly
valetudinarian.[3]
In the days of our fathers the ends
of justice were defeated by making
the punishments for crime not so
much too heavy as too indiscriminating.
Now they are defeated not
so much by being too light as also
by being too indiscriminating. Yet
given the proper amount of discrimination,
and they would still carry
a little extra weight with advantage.
The great mistake is in regarding
the offence and not the offender.
The adage that one man may steal
an ox, while another is hanged for
looking over the hedge, is an illustration
of our criminal code as applied
in past and present times.
During the Great Exhibition, a
gentleman of good family got into
a passion with a policeman who attempted
to stop his horses, most
probably adding some of the insolence
of office, and cut him over
the face with his whip. His offence
was grave, but without malice prepense.
The magistrate sent him to
prison, and treated him like a common
felon; and the newspapers
eulogised the bright example of
equal justice to rich and poor, and
adjudged the administrator of the
law a place in history beside Judge
Gascoyne, who committed the king’s
son. But in their intercourse with
the professional ruffian, the skins
of “unboiled lobsters” are not rated
at so high a figure. Then they do
not appear in the light of inviolable
tribunes of the people. Some
time ago I recollect reading of a
wretch called Cannon, who infested
Southwark, and was the bugbear
of the street in which he lived by
a habit he had of butting the passers-by
with his head like a bull, establishing,
by the terror of his name,
a Cannon Street of his own on the
Surrey side of the water. This Minotaur,
often convicted, nearly killed a
policeman in the execution of his
duty, and evidently intended to do it
outright. He was neither hanged
nor transported, and so trivial was
his sentence that it is the only circumstance
of the case which has
faded from my memory.
There was a yet more flagrant case
the other day. It is so choice a morceau
to illustrate my position, that I
have copied it circumstantially, if not
verbatim, from the Times.
Middlesex Sessions.Before
the Assistant-Judge at the Guildhall,
Westminster.
Mary Horrigan, 17, and John
Regan, 24 (lady first, gentleman
afterwards), were indicted for unlawfully
(!) assaulting and beating William
Thorne, a constable of the Metropolitan
force, whilst in the execution
of his duty; and the prisoner
Regan was further indicted for unlawfully
assaulting and wounding
George Anderson. The circumstances
were these. Regan went to
light his dudheen (he is an Emerald-Islander
from his name) at the shop
of Mr Bills, fishmonger, 27 Great
Wild Street, Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields;
Anderson (probably a Northerner),
the fishmonger’s assistant, being engaged
very properly in sweeping the
shop. He went outside with the
sawdust, and the Hibernian hit him
on the mouth. Next day Regan, still
unsatisfied, came again and brought
a shillelah; Anderson dodged the
shillelah; and then Regan hit him
on the mouth again with his fist.
Thorne, the policeman, who was on
duty near, was called in; Regan came
in without being called, and Anderson,
being at home, naturally followed,
Regan observing to him in strong
language, “I’ll have your life before
12 o’clock to-night; you had better
get the police to watch, for your life
is in my hands.” Upon this Thorne,
who knew the antecedents of the Regan,
went to the station-house for
more power, and returned to Wild
Street with P. C. Williams, 133 F.
They saw the Regan in Lincoln
Street flourishing his sapling in one
hand and a big knife in the other,
apparently prepared for all emergencies.
He was heard to exclaim that
he would have the something’s life,
and that he should like to see the
policeman who would dare to take him.
Thorne said that he would venture
to attempt it, and caught hold of his
shillelah-arm, when Regan made a
pass at him with the knife, saying,
“There, take a bit of cold steel.”
The knife passed through his great-coat,
but fortunately coming in contact
with one of the metal buttons of the
under coat, was bent. The Regan
gave a fiendish howl, calling to some
one to go and fetch Mike. Enter the
Horrigan, a nymph doubtless inferior
in reputation to the general run of
her sisters of the sister isle, armed
with a brindled bull-terrier, who answered
to the abbreviation of the
archangel’s name. She did not merely
set him but threw him at P. C. Williams,
who was helping Thorne to
pacify the Regan. The dog seized
Williams by the leg and forced him
to let go the other brute, and Thorne
was knocked down and kicked;
the frail prisoner encouraging his
male assailants to “give it him.” In the
affray the prisoners were rescued by a
large crowd of companions. The dog
bit Thorne’s leg several times before
he could get away. How these wild
beasts were caught at last does not
appear. The Saxon jury found Horrigan
guilty of a common assault, and
the Regan of all the counts.
What was the sentence? Did the
Assistant-Judge put on the black cap
and condemn Regan to hang by the
neck till he was dead, and Horrigan
to be whipped and put to bed? Not
a bit of it. He did not do much, but
he said a great deal. He was bitten,
like Sir Robert Peel, with the lecturing
mania.
“The assistant Judge said that
the prisoner Regan was a most dangerous
character (a new light having
dawned upon him); for within the
last six years he had been convicted
no less than nine times for assaults
on the police, and he had been dealt
with by magistrates (very mild ones)
in summary convictions; he had
aimed a blow at the policeman with
a knife (fact), which had providentially
(very proper) been stopped by
a button (bathos), or there could be
but little doubt that it would have
penetrated the flesh (knives will do
so), and caused the man to drop
down dead (another possibility approaching
to probability), in which
case he would have been tried (certainly)
and hanged for murder (by no
means so certainly.) Such offences
must be visited with a long imprisonment
(a little stronger), and he
therefore sentenced him to imprisonment
and hard labour for eighteen
calendar (not lunar) months. As the
Jury (gentle jury) had only found
Horrigan guilty of a common assault
(a little sarcastic), he should sentence
her to imprisonment (poor
caged dove!) for four months (three
times four make twelve, and twelve
months a year, and seventeen years
Miss Horrigan’s life; so that, should
she expire at the expiration of her
term, a one-and-fortieth portion
of her valuable life will have to
pass in duresse. Poor Miss Horrigan!)”
I suppose I need not tell you,
Irenæus, that the parentheses are my
own. The magistrate made a proper
distinction between sauce for the
goose and sauce for the gander; but
he did not spice it highly enough for
either. He should have kept a rod in
pickle for the woman, and the man
he should certainly have promoted
to the post of honour par excellence.
Among certain savages people change
names as the Germans drink brotherhood,
by way of compliment. I do
not know the name of the assistant
Judge; but I think yours, Irenæus,
would suit him to a nicety, and you
had better take his. On the part of
those who execute and administer
the law, this tenderness towards
malefactors is more intelligible
than it is in the case of other
members of society. Were the
abolition of the police force voted
by public acclamation to-morrow,
each man agreeing to watch for
himself over his own person and
property, and at liberty to do justice
to any extent on all aggressors,
there is no doubt about it that
all crime would quickly cease, as
the criminals are, after all, a ridiculous
minority of the people, as may
be judged by the statistics of the
memorable 10th of April 1848,
when the peace-keepers mustered
as ten to one to the peace-disturbers;
and this is one great argument in
favour of an unpaid magistracy and
an unpaid constabulary. In Guernsey,
where, to the best of my knowledge—and
I speak from information
gained many years ago—the police
functions are undertaken by amateurs,
no such outrages on person or
property are ever heard of. It was
even a dangerous matter then to
attempt a comparatively innocent
lark in a place where any one convicted
of breaking a lamp had to
pay for all the lamps broken since
the last conviction, and where some
of our party nearly frightened to
death, or to taking a fishing-boat to
France in stormy weather, a fellow-undergraduate—who
had broken a
lamp by accident, while engaged in
the edifying amusement of displacing
the lamp-covers—by forging a
summons from the Royal Court of
Guernsey, with “God save the
Queen” in large letters at the bottom.
We were nearly overdoing the
joke, for our friend was on the way
to the Royal Court to make a clean
breast of it; and when we told him
we had concocted the summons ourselves,
he was for some time too
frightened to believe it, and might
have implicated the whole party.
It must be borne in mind that the
abolition of a criminal population
would lead to an economical outcry
for the abolition of all paid magistrates
and paid policemen, and we
cannot expect that a class of men
will take pains to destroy their own
body, although such conduct is not
unheard of in individuals. It is only
on such a principle that we can account
for the existence in the heart
of our civilisation of that imperium
in imperio—the kleptocracy of
England—the definite number of
thousands of convicted thieves at
large, somewhat outnumbering, I believe,
the legislative body of Athenian
citizens, all “known to the police,” and
yet living in perfect security under
the wing and eyes of the law, until
they commit some fresh escapade.
Surely it is nonsense to talk of habeas
corpus in reference to these
gentry. We expect too much of human
nature. We expect men-catchers
as a body to be more disinterested
than rat-catchers. And rat-catchers,
it is well known, have a habit of
transferring the rodential population
of one barn to another, that they
may get another job. This is quite
enough to account for the ticket-of-leave
system.
We have probably the finest detective
police in the world; the trouble
they take in tracing crime, and bringing
it home to the offender, is scarcely
credible to any one who does not
know the facts, or has not read
Dickens’s masterly sketches of their
proceedings. The detective, like a
stanch huntsman, runs his fox to
earth, digs him out, bags him, but
then bolts him for another run. Thus
the same fox, like the carted deer,
will serve for many days’ sport, and
perhaps grow old in the service, and
get to enjoy the chase as much as
those who pursue him. The public,
however, have begun to grow rather
weary of this fun, crying “what is
sport to you is death to us,” and
adopting the ultima ratio of writing
letters to the Times and other newspapers,
proposing ingenious plans for
self-defence, and even retaliation,—some
of them likely to be considered
by the mealy-mouthed as a little
bordering on the diabolical. For
instance, one correspondent of the
Morning Post proposes that persons
going about London or its suburbs
by night, should wear an antigarotte
collar, on the principle of the collars
worn by sheep-dogs in the Pyrenees
to protect them from wolves; the
said collar to be set round with
barbed fish-hooks, which will fix
themselves under the epidermis of the
human boa constrictor’s hands when
he attempts to throttle, and the said
fish-hooks to be previously prepared
by taking them to the nearest dissecting-room,
and steeping them in some
decomposed subject, so that the garotter
will be certain to die under the
poison, as occasionally happens to
medical students who unwarily prick
their fingers in dissection. A correspondent
of the Times, more mild in
disposition, advises holding the chin
tight to the chest and shouting for
the police (who of course are in the
area-kitchen below, but too well
occupied to hear). Another, more
practical, recommends that a wrestling
dodge should be tried on the
garotter, the patient throwing back
his right leg, and entwining it
with that of the operator, who will
thus be thrown on his back, with the
patient above him, to work his will
on him. Another suggests to the
consideration of athletic persons like
you, Irenæus, the possibility of catching
the arm of the operator, and
holding it tight, bending the back
and throwing him over the head of
the intended victim, breaking his
back against the flags, if possible, in
the fall. Another suggests wearing
hob-nailed boots, and shin-kicking;
another, of Levantine propensities,
a dirk in the sleeve. I wonder that
none of them has suggested, on the
principle of setting a thief to catch a
thief, the dog-fancier. I would buy the
ugliest procurable bull-dog, crossed
in one generation with a terrier, faithful
and stanch, and sure to make
his teeth meet in the calf of any
aggressor. It is pleasanter to get
rough work done for one than to
do it oneself. That Mike who figured
in our police report, would be
exactly the fellow for us; the only
fear is, that he would recognise his
older master in the garotter, and as
the Saxons treated Napoleon at Leipsic,
go over to the enemy in the crisis
of action.
With respect to burglars, it is
really time, now that one policeman
has been convicted of burglary, for the
public to take the law into their own
hands. It has been done in one
or two instances, where we would
least expect it, by the softer sex.
One young lady having found the
head of a man poking through the
shutter, diminished it, as the classics
would say, with a crowbar; another,
rather too precipitous, and without
asking “wha it is at my bower door?”
shot her unexpected sweetheart, not
named Finlay, in mistake for the expected
cracksman. Chains, bolts,
and locks are of little use, except to
make a noise. Bells are troublesome
for the servants to put up, and give
false alarms in windy nights. I propose
three things. A little dog,
a big dog, and a revolver. The little
dog to wake the big one, who sleeps
soundly, especially after dinner, and
the big dog to wake the many-mouthed
barker, and assist in a
scuffle, if a scuffle ensues. As a
further precaution, I would suggest
some rather unintelligible notice,
such as “burglars decimated on these
premises,” large enough to be read by
moonlight; if in Runic characters, so
much the better, for crime is naturally
superstitious. Timid persons might
act in this way, but bolder ones might
sit up in ambush, place some plate on
the hall table, and leave a window
temptingly open, trusting to their
accuracy of fire to give a good account
of the intruder, when once in
their power. As I observed before,
the interest the constabulary and
magistracy take in the preservation,
propagation, and general encouragement
of blackguards is perfectly intelligible;
it would be even more so
if, like the preservers of game, they
had a battue for their amusement
once in a way; but much less intelligible
to me is the interest that
the humanitarians and model-prison
people take in the same direction.
Those persons who are for reforming
the human race, should reflect
that we all want reform more
or less, and efforts of that kind are
much more likely to be successful
with the simply vicious, like nineteen
in every twenty of us, than with
the wholly criminal. But benevolence
must be eccentric to gain a
hearing in Exeter Hall. As Thomas
Carlyle justly observes in his Latter
Day pamphlets, these jail-sweepings
are the worst possible investment for
benevolence. These people might as
well invest their money in coaches
to oppose the rail, but that in simply
worldly matters they are far more
sagacious. But it is intolerable
that they should exercise their Promethean
philanthropic turn to the
detriment of society at large, furnishing
a premium on crime, and
putting it into the heads of quiet
Dorsetshire labourers that it pays
better to break the law and get into
Pentonville prison, than to attempt
to support a wife and family by
honest labour on twelve shillings
a-week. A “Dorsetshire labourer,”
writing to the Times, has discovered
that the detenus (I use the
polite French word) in that Model
prison get each for the sum of his
rations for fifteen months 213 pounds
of beef, 248 pounds of mutton, 81
pounds of beef-shins for soup, and
for luncheons and severe teas no less
than 655 mutton chops, 432 pints of
porter, extra allowance. How these
figures would have made the mouths
of our poor heroes in the Crimea
water, whom we were starving while
we petted our criminals! What a
frightful expenditure of honest stolid
oxen, and innocent sheep and lambs,
and sound wholesome malt, on dishonest
men, ox-like only in their
stolidity, sheepish only in their hypocrisy,
and committing positive
sacrilege while they unappreciatingly
imbibed the heavy-wet which furnishes
thews and sinews to the
ploughman or the artisan! What a
holocaust of God’s creatures offered
on the altar of his enemy! The
bread of affliction and the water of
affliction is the proper diet for these
worthies, not bœuf à-la-mode, or
cotelettes à la jardinière, or Barclay
and Perkins’ extra stout. Why did
they not do the thing well at once,
and order them rations of Burgundy,
venison, and turtle? They might
by these means make them too
aldermanic to commit any of the
more active crimes again, especially
if the treadmill be abolished, and
thereby benefit society; whereas by
only going half-way they merely
keep them in good condition, good
working order for committing fresh
offences. And any parsimony is
unaccountable, considering that
the money lavished on the appetites
of these hungry villains does
not come out of the pockets of
the visiting magistrates, except so
far as they are units in the aggregate
of the tax-payers of Great
Britain. On the whole, I think it
would have been decidedly more
economical to have ordered them
ortolans, truffles, and hock, and
champagne to wash them down
with. They will perhaps balance
the account better in future. I
have been lately much struck with
the extreme tenderness of our age
and nation, and reluctance to take
human life when it has become
worthless both to the individual and
to society, as contrasted with men’s extreme
heedlessness of exposing valuable
human life, or letting it go to be
destroyed by a hundred preventible
accidents. While it requires almost
Court interest to get hanged, the
commonest regulations to insure the
safety of railway passengers are disregarded;
and during the continuance
of the late gales it was perfectly
awful to read the list of shipwrecks,
where all on board perished, including
two crews of heroes who went
in life-boats to rescue seamen in
distress, most of which might be
prevented by the construction of
harbours of refuge along the coast
at proper intervals by the very hands
of the very scoundrels in question,
forced into doing some good to their
kind against their will. Even Palmer
seemed to have some chance of
getting off, when a short time before
we had sacrificed the flower of our
army by the most abominable official
mismanagement. And although such
an argument would not have much
weight with the peace-party, who
would endure all things without
flinching, both from Russians and
rascals, it seems to me a much
stronger measure to sacrifice some
thousands of good men and true,
both of ourselves and of the enemy,
in an international war, than to obliterate
judicially a few hundreds of
scoundrels who are doing all the
harm they can to society. But I
am not advocating at present severe
measures. I only ask, why it is
necessary to pet criminals? why,
instead of putting them out of
harm’s way, they are put in harm’s
way as much as possible by Pentonville
indulgences, tickets of leave,
and the like, perpetuating the corruptions
of a society quite bad enough
if left to its mere vices, and multiplying
it as they perpetuate it, each
criminal forming a nucleus round
which others may gather, like cases
of sporadic cholera, until they have
gained such a head that they are
too much for us all, and will be calling
out, when Lord John Russell’s new
Reform scheme comes on, for members
analogous to those of the Universities
to represent their corporate
body, perhaps even for life-peerages
for their higher graduates? Imagine
Bill Sykes, Member for the “Minority”[4]
of Lambeth, and my Lords
Erebus and Terror sitting cheek-by-jowl
with the Archbishop of Canterbury!
Or, perhaps, these gentlemen
will end by swelling tickets-of-leave
to the dimensions of the Red
Spectre of Paris, and after a few days
of barricades and blood, we shall find
installed in the new palace of Westminster,
a select provisional government
of garotters, burglars, and murderers!
There would be no question
then of the social position of our humanitarian
apostles, for even the
moderados of villany will be superseded
by the exaltados and swindlers;
fraudulent bankers and adulterators
of food will find themselves, for the
first time, in the company of honest
men, swept away in the general deluge.
These people are either to be
punished or not to be punished. If
they have done nothing worthy of
death or bonds, but only contracted
a kind of moral measles which will
give way to kind treatment and easy
remedies, why put them in the close
air of a prison at all? The virtue of
a close sick-room is entirely exploded
in the medical world, and only lingers
in the opinions of superannuated
monthly nurses. Why not put money
in their purses, and pay their passages
to some country where their antecedents
are not known, and they will
have a chance of living by honest
means, which they have not here,
even if they were to wish it? Why
condemn them, if they do not wish
to punish them, to the moral disease
in perpetuity, inoculating others at
the same time? Is it that they wish
to keep them as interesting specimens,
too valuable to the moral physiologist
to be let go? If so, it is
really time to interfere with the tastes
of these pseudo-philanthropists, and
to tell them that society has the same
objection to their museums of abomination
under its nose, as it has to
tanyards and slaughter-houses near
the public thoroughfares, or the putrifaction
of the body of the great river-god
who dwells in the Thames. As
Gulliver recoiled from the embrace
of the philosophers of Laputa, so will
society recoil from the contact of those
humanitarians who are engaged in a
task of reconstruction or regeneration,
equally hopeless, and equally
offensive to the public senses. But
and if these persons deserve punishment
condign—if there is such a thing,
and I am old-fashioned enough to believe
it, as justice, human and divine—if
impunity in crime inevitably reacts
to the deterioration of human
society, and pagan Nemesis has a
living existence even for those who
have discarded the divine authority
of the Old Testament, I do think
that nearly all the punishments
enacted by law for offences, at least
as administered by our magistrates,
are most silly and inadequate; powerless,
both for prevention and cure,
and only calculated to reproduce the
evil they profess to abate. A system
which would be comparatively harmless
in a country of sparse population
like Norway or Canada, becomes
multifariously pernicious in a bee-hive
of human beings like that in which
it is our destiny to breathe or try to
breathe. It was a great principle
with that famous schoolmaster Dr
Arnold, who was withal a most humane
and charitable man, in his conduct
of a public school, to get rid as
soon as possible of all pupils who,
from his knowledge of human nature,
he saw to be doing more harm than
good to their companions and themselves
by remaining, even before they
were convicted of any overt infraction
of law. Not that such cases are
necessarily irreclaimable, but that in
such a crowded place, the worst
chance of reformation is given them,
and the evil they do to others is indefinitely
multiplied. With private
tutors, or under the eye of parents,
they might do better. He judged
very much from physiognomy and
physiology, nor was he often wrong.
The consequence of his judicious system
of weeding was, that he sent out
into the world, as the rule, a class of
high-minded and virtuous students,
though, in the innocence of their hearts,
generally Whigs and something more,
being led to believe that the world in
general was as much to be trusted as
themselves, and their friends, and
their beloved master. What is the
population of London at the present
day? How much above two millions,
which is about the whole population
of Norway? The drainage of the
vast metropolis is a difficult problem
in these days, but how much more
difficult the problem of keeping the
great Babylon sweet with such a
cesspool of moral miasma festering
in its vitals? Even a simple alien
act, giving the executive the power
of dismissing them from the focus
of centralisation, would be better
than the present system, as they
would be easier to deal with when
scattered abroad, and not living in
a compact phalanx of opposition to
all good government, shoulder to
shoulder, as at present. It is perfectly
frightful to think that the
worst criminals are now often rescued
from the officers of justice by
a mob of bystanders, which implies
that every individual in it is either a
contemptible coward, or sympathises
to the full extent with the crime they
are committing. I should think, in
charity to human nature, the former
supposition the more probable, the
metropolitan population having been
panic-stricken by the long-continued
impunity of those who set the law at
defiance. Some time ago one Italian
stabbed another in Rupert Street,
and no one dared, although many
persons witnessed the attempt at
murder, to assist the police in arresting
the offender. This is nearly as
bad as the state of things said to
exist at Rome, where the witnesses of
an assassination run away as fast as
they can, because it is the rule to
arrest the nearest person on suspicion.
British freedom is no doubt a fine
thing, but like other fine things it
has its drawbacks. It is one thing
to leave the press unfettered and
suppress the press-gang, and another
to leave a university of convicted
malefactors chartered and privileged
to educate the young, and grant
degrees to the old, in the heart of
our metropolis: a Stinkomalee of
rascaldom acting quite as much
under the sanction of Government
as Lord Brougham’s creation in
Gower Street. This unquestionably
diabolical university has more colleges
than Oxford and Cambridge
put together. It has its St Giles’
college, which answers to Christ
Church or Trinity; its Bethnal Green
college; its Tooley Street college;
its City of London college; its
slow colleges and fast colleges; its
aristocratic Belgravian college, and
its ecclesiastical Westminster college,
a truly close foundation; its suburban
colleges, situated half-pleasantly in
the country, like St John’s, and Worcester,
and Wadham at Oxford. It
has its professors, who are better
paid than ours at Oxford—professors
of burglary, professors of highway
robbery, professors of the gentler art
of picking pockets, professors of stealing
and receiving stolen goods, many
of them on a more liberal principle
than that adopted by our old universities—dissenters
from the Church
of England, and even of the Hebrew
persuasion—and it has its realisation
of the dreams of Mrs Colonel Bloomer
in a strong staff of rights-of-women
female professors, abominable she-devils
who, having passed through
and outlived every phase of infamy
themselves, make it the last business
of their lives to indoctrinate innocent
freshwomen from the English counties,
and if they cannot succeed in
tempting them to moral suicide at
home, do not scruple to use force and
pack them off to Hamburg or Paris
to be drugged and terrified into
children of hell. Surely, if such an
university must exist, it is strange
that it is not thought advisable to
put it under Government superintendence,
and appoint regius professorships
of Desmoterian History and
Pastoral Demonology; Readerships in
the “Mysteries of London,” the “Newgate
Calendar,” and the “Memoirs of
Harriet Wilson;” fellowships of felons,
vacated like an Oxford fellowship
by matrimony, but by no means
by any of its imitations; chairs of
Theoretical Toxicology and Clinical
practice, combined with the whole
art of child-murder. We cannot help
wondering at the disinterestedness of
a ministry, and that a Whig ministry,
which overlooks such an abundantly
fertile field of patronage, and so
splendid an opportunity of providing
outlying relatives and dependents
at the expense of the nation. And
what a fatal mistake it was to hang
Palmer! He was just the man for
the Chancellor of this liberal university
of Alsatia, for that must be its
most unchristian name. But to speak
more seriously, if British freedom is
not competent to put down such a
state of things, and is for ever condemned
to halt on one side, going
about like the goddess Pœna of Horace,
with a club-foot, would it be
so very strong a measure to perform
Tiefenbach’s operation on British
freedom, and cut the shrunken sinew,
or to put it on horseback and give it
free action for a limited period? The
Romans used to appoint a dictator
in times of emergency whenever there
was a Gallicus tumultus (which we
might translate a French émeute),
or even for the purpose of driving a
nail into some door, and yet Roman
freedom emerged from the temporary
eclipse as bright as ever, perhaps
even clearer and brighter.
Might we not appoint a dictator for
the purpose of knocking the nail on
the head once for all, a strong responsible
Hercules, who would turn the
New River into the Augean stable of
our social nuisances, and sweep them
away once and for ever? Such men
are to be found; at all events we
might find a brook which would do
the work of Hercules’s river, even
Rajah Brooke of Borneo, the man
who destroyed by one blast, like that
of the destroying angel, some thousands
of pestilent pirates. Such a
man would, I take it, make short
work with the “characters known to
the police.” He might proceed either
by secret fraud or open force. I should
think he would prefer the latter. He
might either, as Lord Shaftesbury
did, call a public meeting of thieves,
say in St Martin’s Hall, surround
them with soldiers, and destroy them,
as the Corcyræan democratical party
in Thucydides did their political opponents;
or he might lay all the heavy
lighters in the Thames, which are so
much in the way of its navigation, under
an embargo, and have such a noyade
at the river’s mouth as would turn
the Goodwin Sands into corn and pasture
land, superseding from thenceforth
all necessity for lighthouses—an
immense saving to the nation, and
rendering the destruction of the villains
of one generation a blessing
to posterity, and a source of permanent
security to mariners of all nations!
And he would surely make
short work of the tumbling down of
all those streets, alleys, and courts of
the metropolis known to be inhabited
only by two-legged, four-legged, and
six-legged vermin, scorching their
sites with fire, and sowing the contaminated
ground with salt; and
he would burn with fire the gin-palaces,
or Persian Jin-temples—(what
a glorious illumination
they would make, far better than
that we had for the Peace!)—and
feed the flames of their burning
with all the poisoned products concocted
by our adulterators of food,
till all are consumed, the usual
consumers standing by and applauding
their great deliverance; and he
would break down all the altars of
Mormonism, Socialism, and hideous
Infidelity, and burn Holywell Street
with fire, and scatter to the winds
the ashes of all ungodly and immoral
publications, both letter-press and
pictorial; and purify with the waters
of lustration, so as to make them
available for honest purposes, the
Circumlocution offices, the Stock Exchange,
the sanctimonious Banks,
&c. &c.; in short, he would do all
desirable good, and do away with
all undesirable evil. And then,
after his London season was over,
during the continuance of which
we would put the town in a state of
siege, we would send him to star it
in the provinces, and, to the tune of
solemn music, perform the same
office of lustration by all the other
great towns of the British empire.
I fear that were such a proposition
mooted in the Imperial Parliament,
it would be pooh-pooh’d by the Ministry,
and received with derisive
cheers by the Opposition, and voted
unconstitutional by all, the consideration
of it being perpetually adjourned
to this day six months; and yet it
is difficult to see how it can be any
use to entertain the question of what
we shall do with our criminals, without
some such preliminary expurgation
and purification.
Just as all measures for the diminution
of the burden of our taxation are
frustrated by the incubus of the national
debt, so must all measures for
the disposition of our rascals be rendered
abortive by the enormous stock
of them in hand becoming more
morally putrescent and offensive the
longer they endure, and effectually
stopping the way of all sanitary and
salutary improvement. It would seem,
indeed, somewhat desirable that all
questions of the day, now that the
Russians have given us a little breathing-time,
should be postponed to this,
that our lay Legislature should turn
away their attention from Committees
of Supply, and our bench of
Bishops from deciding on Liddell
and Westerton, Ditcher and Denison
cases, questions about more or less
candles on the altar, boughs or flowers
in the church, presence or absence of
a cross, until this awful Frankenstein-ghost
of our social condition is effectually
exorcised and sent back to the
place whence it came. But grant,
for supposition’s sake, that it be done,
that we have thus had one thorough
sweeping and cleaning, painting and
whitewashing, so as to be able to keep
our house in order for the future by
ordinary sweeping down of cobwebs,
and the time come for us to consider
what we are to do with our criminals,
I should very much like to hear what
your cool head and practical wisdom,
Irenæus, has to say on this subject;
and awaiting your reply, I venture,
in the mean time, to lay before you
my ruminations on this all-important
matter. We must first take a glance
at the nature of crime. Now crime
is happily not the rule but the exception
with men; it is otherwise with
vice. Most men are more or less
vicious, from those who suffer from
delirium tremens down to those who
take snuff; but few men, and fewer
women, are criminal. Those that are
so make such a fuss in the world, and
succeed so well in establishing their
importance, that they seem much
more numerous than they are. The
criminal classes, then, may be divided
into the corrigible and the incorrigible,
as, indeed, may the vicious
classes, to which you and I belong,
being one of us affected with the
cacoethes scribendi, and the other
with the evil habit of taking tobacco;
and corrigible crime partakes of the
nature of vice, just as incorrigible
vice partakes of the nature of crime,
and is apt to be resolved into it, as
all the diseases of Athens were resolved
into the plague. This division
is, of course, as old as the
hills and Aristotle, and I do not lay
the slightest claim to originality in
making it. Now it seems to me that
our laws, in dealing with offences
rather than offenders, take no cognisance
of this division of human
character, as to corrigible and incorrigible,
except accidentally, and perhaps
only by rule, in one case, that of
homicide, where malice prepense is
supposed to give it the character of
wilful murder. But it strikes me
that a murderer is by no means of
necessity an incorrigible character,
though the punishment of death may
be just as the lowest in proportion to
his offence. A man has sustained
some grievous wrong from another,
say that a scamp has run away with
his wife; he cherishes his vengeance,
he bides his time, he watches for him,
and without going through the etiquette
of a formal challenge, shoots
him as you and I would be sorry to
shoot a dog. Well, that man is a
murderer, and I do not deny that,
for the safety of society, he ought
to be hung, and yet I know that
he has lived honourably hitherto,
if not very religiously and faithfully,
in all the relations of life. He is
certainly by no means one of the incorrigible
class, nor is, as far as we
can see, the forgiveness of Heaven
out of the reach of his repentance.
But here is a miscreant who has
committed no act of violence, and
whom, but for his aquiline features,
you might take for a seedy dissenting
minister, whose life has been
passed till he is grey in discounting
bills for foolish youths, and making
them and their families miserable for
life. He does not perhaps even cheat
in his vile trade, but he pinches and
pares and tortures with interest and
compound interest, perhaps, in some
cases, making the greenhorn into a
parricide in thought by his post-obits,
a fair specimen of an accomplished
usurer, placed by Dante in a circle of
the Inferno inhabited by very bad
company indeed, and pelted with
flakes of fiery snow. Well, I say
that this man, though scarcely a lawbreaker,
is an incorrigible criminal,
an enemy of his kind, and it would
be no more than justice to deal with
him accordingly. Or take the case
of thieving: one man steals a sheep,
as Charles II. did at Boscobel, because
he wants it to eat, or his little
ones want it: he is corrigible. Another
steals a widow’s mite in a bank,
having seduced her into trusting him
with it by a life of religious hypocrisy:
this man is incorrigible, or corrigible
only by the crank and a long course
of penal discipline. Or take the very
bad case of poisoning: a young woman
was hung some years ago at
Bristol for poisoning an old one who
had frightfully and systematically
maltreated her: no doubt the law
did right, if it is right to hang women
at all; but I do not look upon
the case as necessarily incorrigible.
But look at the case of a baker or a
grocer who poisons the food of multitudes,
at all events succeeding so
far that he injures their health, and
all for the sake of making a slight
profit, from utter, cold, unmitigated
selfishness. I say that such a man is
incorrigible, and deserves to be hung,
though whether or not it would be
expedient to hang him is another
question. Again, there is a manifest
difference between old and young
offenders committing the same crime,
and I believe the usual practice recognises
this difference. It does indeed
seem to me unjust to punish at
all little children, whom, in the spirit
of our glorious constitution, we have
left to be brought up by vicious
parents, without being taught the
difference between right and wrong,
or rather, with having been taught
to transpose these from the very
first. We are all by nature liars
and thieves, as much as these little
children, and unless we had been
taken in hand by kind parents and
friends, who imitated in this only
the example of a Greater, who ordered
little children to be brought to
Him, we should inevitably have grown
up in the same moral ignorance. At
the same time, a certain weight
must be given to the fact that vice
engenders vice as virtue does virtue,
and that the human race is brutified
by generations of evil living, as it
deteriorates by living in a bad climate
for many generations. The
low stupid animal configuration is
a sad puzzle to the philanthropist,
the ragged schoolmaster, and the
keeper of the juvenile prison; and
the actually abandoned children of
the metaphorically abandoned, appear
often as hopeless of receiving
instruction in better things as the
Bushman or the New Guinea savage.
Not that we need absolutely despair
of any human being who retains a
vestige of the human, which is indeed
also a vestige of the godlike.
He is still something more than an
ourang-outang. Only when he fairly
declares war against society, we have
a manifest right to take his life, as
we have the life of our enemies in
international war, and on the principle
of self-defence, not only against
physical injury, but moral contamination.
Now war is declared
against society by certain definite
overt acts, such as murder, and
the existence of the incorrigible character,
perpetually asserting, whether
with truth or not, its incorrigibility.
Although some who commit great
crimes are doubtless corrigible, yet
the world is not strong enough to pardon
them, considering the greatness,
or rather extreme dangerousness, of
the acts they commit. And it is
not the danger to life and property
on which I would lay the greatest
stress; it is the danger of their
example to the crowd of waverers
between guilt and innocence, which
in fact comprises perhaps a quarter
of mankind. Now, as long as they
live, they are objects of a certain
interest, and at least noticeable;
whereas, had they ceased to live, they
would be virtually and personally
forgotten. If Madame Laffarge had
been put to death for the poisoning
of her husband, the crime of poisoning
would have been in a manner put
to death with her; whereas her perpetual
imprisonment is a perpetual
reminder of her offence. But it
seems to some hard to put to death
political offenders. So it is, if we
consider the persons only and not
the offence. But rebellion against
established government is an act so
very inconvenient to the interests
of society that the law is doubtless
in the right in making it a capital
offence. And yet a rebel may be a
glorious hero and genuine patriot.
But no one ought to be allowed to
assume this character cheaply. If
he plays at all, he must stake his all,
and be prepared, if he loses, for loss
of head and confiscation of property.
I readily admit that he may be a holy
martyr if he loses, even as he is sure
to be a very great man indeed if he
wins: but no less should be the stake
he plays for. Although I have a very
high opinion of the French Emperor,
and think that, having won, he most
fully deserves to wear the position he
holds, I think he would equally have
deserved a bullet or the guillotine
had he been unlucky. Nothing has
done more harm in the case of murder
than the foolish plea of insanity,
and I do, from my heart, hope that
Verger will suffer death for the murder
of the Archbishop of Paris, a
crime indeed complicated with sacrilege
as committed at the altar of
God, and parricide as committed by
a priest against a spiritual father.
The weak conduct of the poor Archbishop
to this ungrateful ruffian, in
suffering him to be appointed to a
cure of souls, in spite of his manifest
incorrigibleness, was well commented
upon by the Times, and illustrates
forcibly my general position. The
man who murdered Mr Drummond
some years ago (Macnaughten)
ought to have been hung, as he had
destroyed his moral sense by bad
habits before he became insane, and
his madness was evidently the child
of his badness. Between the labials
b and m there is not so wide a difference
that the words are not often
interchanged, and it would do no
great harm in the world to kill, once
in the way, a mad murderer, even if
he is morally innocent, while it is
productive of unending harm to suffer
a bad one, who is assuredly morally
guilty, to escape. It seems to me,
then, that murder, no matter whether
its subject be corrigible or not, always
demands death; in case of
treason the sentence must depend on
political expediency. Our Government
was quite strong enough to
pardon Smith O’Brien, and doubtless
did infinitely more good by remitting
his sentence than by executing it;
but still he would have no reason to
complain had he been shot after a
court-martial, by Inspector Trant, in
the very cabbage-garden of the widow
Cormack. Our Government did not
so well in mitigating the penalties of
the Chartists Frost and Co., who exposed
a number of misguided men
to be shot down, keeping out of fire
themselves, and are still, as it appears,
engaged in plotting mischief against
the State. Arson should always be
capital, because it is a crime of such
portentous consequences, so easy to
effect in these days of phosphoric
appliances, and so entirely out of
the pale of ordinary temptations.
Whether any other offence should be
punished with death should be decided
by a reference to the character
of the offender, and the circumstances
under which it is committed. There
are a great many crimes which, though
slight in themselves, are evidences of
a dangerous and hopeless brutality of
character, and are even more so when
committed in a state of intoxication,
because it is in such a state that the
real nature shows itself most strongly.
I would cite as an example some
furious assault on a wife by a drunken
husband, who had starved her
first to gratify his selfish appetites.
Society might surely do without such
a character, in a state of things where
even the innocent have such a hard
fight for existence. Again, it is difficult
to decide on incorrigibility, and
we are expressly forbidden by a
higher law to judge the heart of man;
but when incorrigibility is for ever
declaring itself, and declaring war
against society in the devil’s name, I
think we should be justified, even if
each overt offence were small in
itself, and again, considering the
difficulty of feeding our population,
in putting it quietly out of the way.
When Babylon was besieged, the
government adopted the ungallant
expedient of killing all the women
except enough to bake bread for the
fighting garrison; and as our modern
Babylon is at present in a normal
state of siege from the legions of
darkness, perhaps the question is
worth entertaining whether its incorrigible
male population might not be
abated by some short and summary
method, even after our one great
imaginary sweeping. Still, I will
not insist on this point, for I fear to
shock your feelings, Irenæus, and
the prejudices which you imbibed in
your early intercourse with the Society
of Friends. And I cannot help
imagining the reverend Celsus at my
elbow with a face of unusual severity,
admonishing me on religious grounds
that we ought not to cut off from
the wicked the hope of repentance,
for we can never tell whether there
be still room for it or not. Of course
this argument would be tantamount
to advocating the entire abolition of
capital punishment. But what would
you substitute? Solitary confinement?
Would you convert a man
by making him infallibly insane?
Perpetual imprisonment and hard
labour in company with others? Is
he likely to think of his latter end
in the company of those like himself?
He is much more likely to laugh to
scorn with them everything connected
with it. What makes most
of us so careless in these matters is,
not that we believe we shall live for
ever in this life, but that we do not
know, for the next half-century or
less, exactly when we shall die. But
place certain death before our eyes at
the distance of a month or so, and
we should think it time, one and all,
to make some arrangement of our
affairs both for this world and the
next. A prisoner confined in solitude
or condemned to penal servitude for
life is not likely to do himself any
good, neither can he do good to the
State, for keeping him and guarding
him probably cost more than his
hopeless labour. I forbear the deduction.
It is a stern one, but I
believe it to be true. The prisoner
may ask for “a long day,” and have
it, and benefit of clergy ought to be
denied to none by those who have the
thief on the cross before their eyes;
nor ought the services of a national
church, which buries all, as she baptises
all, in charitable hope. Secondary
punishments are of course a
question of much detail and arrangement,
and many plans have been
proposed with regard to them, more
or less sensible. It seems to me that
means must be taken to banish from
the country all criminals but the
young and those convicted of trifling
offences, or under great temptation,
and to banish them for ever.
First, they ought, properly classified
and supervised, to be set to
useful public works, and work out at
home the term of their punishment,
and then granted a passage to certain
stated regions of the earth, not necessarily
colonies, where the people
would not object to receive them, if
there were inhabitants already, and
where they might, as it were, begin
a new life under fairer auspices. Return
to this country, under any circumstances
whatever, should be punished
by another and a very long
lease of penal servitude. Nor should
that penal servitude be too light, else
it would be resorted to in some cases
in order to effect an ultimate emigration.
It should be very severe, but
not untempered by relaxation both
of mind and body; nor should the
chaplain be the only reformer. I
would have the musician, and even
the actor of Shakespeare, to aid
his efforts. Reparation and reformation
are the two main objects of
secondary punishments; nor is the
more selfish protection of society, although
important, to be weighed in
the balance with them. If a crime
is committed, according to divine
law, it has to be expiated, sooner or
later, in the person of the offender;
and it can be no harm for human law
to endeavour to be in harmony with
the divine. After expiation, forgiveness
may come, but not without it,
both from man and God. God may
forgive in any case, even the worst;
but in the worst cases, man, conscious
of his weakness, must submit
to be unforgiving. As to lesser punishments,
I have often wondered why
that excellent summary process of
flogging has fallen into such disrepute.
Why should we have mercy
on the skin of a man who has no
mercy on the skin of his wife, and
invest it with sacerdotal sanctity?
And ought not cruelty to animals to
be punished in kind, by scourging
the animal that is cruel? As for the
noble Stocks, which has become in
most villages a significant ruin, it is
a machine which seems to have been
created expressly to curb the national
vice of drunkenness. Put your silly
Helot by all means in the stocks, and
let all our young village Spartans
have a good stare at him, especially
at the time when he is beginning to
get sick and sorry. No rotten eggs,
if you please, far less a stone in a
snowball! The poor fellow cannot
run after you, and is sufficiently punished
by the degrading exposure. I
have no more time or paper, or I
would say even more, Irenæus, on
this subject of punishments; but I
think you can see my general drift.
After all, prevention is better than
cure; and I would rather put another
strain on our British freedom, and
take away by force from their parents
all the children who are being brought
up under notoriously evil auspices;
beginning by transporting them to
be out of the way, and then bringing
them back in ten or fifteen years’
time, if they wished to come back,
to some other spot at home, far from
the habitat of their parents, and not
this till the death of their parents
had been ascertained. But even they
would perhaps do better in a new
country, as would some of us, who
have but a sort of struggle to live
here, and yet very little of a moral
nature the matter with us.
Farewell,
Your ever
Tlepolemus.
THE ATHELINGS; OR, THE THREE GIFTS. BOOK III.—PART IX. — CHAPTER I.—AN OLD STORY. — CHAPTER II.—A CRISIS. — CHAPTER III.—CHARLIE’S PREPARATIONS. — CHAPTER IV.—GOING AWAY. — CHAPTER V.—THE OLD WOOD HOUSE. — CHAPTER VI.—AN ADVENTURER. — CHAPTER VII.—LORD WINTERBOURNE.
189
“Now, mother,” said Charlie,
“I’m in real earnest. My father
would tell me himself if he were
here. I want to understand the
whole concern.”
Mrs Atheling and her son were in
Charlie’s little room, with its one
small lattice-window, overshadowed
and embowered in leaves—its plain
uncurtained bed, its small table,
and solitary chair. Upon this chair,
with a palpitating heart, sat Mrs
Atheling, and before her stood the
resolute boy.
And she began immediately, yet
with visible faltering and hesitation,
to tell him the story she had told
the girls of the early connection
between the present Lord Winterbourne
and the Atheling family.
But Charlie’s mind was excited and
preoccupied. He listened, almost
with impatience, to the sad little
romance of his father’s young sister,
of whom he had never heard before.
It did not move him at all as it had
moved Agnes and Marian. Broken
hearts and disappointed loves were
very far out of Charlie’s way; something
entirely different occupied his
own imagination. He broke forth
with a little effusion of impatience
when the story came to an end. “And
is this all? Do you mean to say this
is the whole, mother? And my father
had never anything to do with him
but through a girl!”
“You are very unfeeling, Charlie,”
said Mrs Atheling, who wiped her
eyes with real emotion, yet with a
little policy too, and to gain time.
“She was a dear innocent girl, and
your father was very fond of her—reason
enough to give him a dislike,
if it were not sinful, to the very name
of Lord Winterbourne.”
“I had better go on with my packing,
then,” said Charlie. “So, that
was all? I suppose any scamp in
existence might do the same. Do
you really mean to tell me, mother,
that there was nothing but this?”
Mrs Atheling faltered still more
under the steady observation of her
son. “Charlie,” said his mother,
with agitation, “your father never
would mention it to any one. I may
be doing very wrong. If he only
were here himself to decide! But if I
tell you, you must give me your word
never so much as to hint at it again.”
Charlie did not give the necessary
pledge, but Mrs Atheling made no
pause. She did not even give him
time to speak, however he might
have been inclined, but hastened on
in her own disclosure with agitation
and excitement. “You have heard
Papa tell of the young gentleman—he
whom you all used to be so
curious about—whom your father
did a great benefit to,” said Mrs
Atheling, in a breathless hurried
whisper. “Charlie, my dear, I
never said it before to any creature—that
was him.”
She paused only a moment to take
breath. “It was before we knew
how he had behaved to dear little
Bride,” she continued, still in haste,
and in an undertone. “What he did
was a forgery—a forgery! people
were hanged for it then. It was
either a bill, or a cheque, or something,
and Mr Reginald had written
to it another man’s name. It happened
when Papa was in the bank,
and before old Mr Lombard died—old
Mr Lombard had a great kindness
for your father, and we had
great hopes then—and by good fortune
the thing was brought to Papa.
Your father was always very quick,
Charlie, he found it out in a moment.
So he told old Mr Lombard of it in
a quiet way, and Mr Lombard consented
he should take it back to Mr
Reginald, and tell him it was found
out, and hush all the business up. If
your Papa had not been so quick,
Charlie, but had paid the money at
once, as almost any one else would
have done, it all must have been
found out, and he would have been
hanged, as certain as anything—he,
a haughty young gentleman, and a
lord’s son!”
“And a very good thing, too,” exclaimed
Charlie; “saved him from
doing any more mischief. So, I suppose
now, it’s all my father’s blame.”
“This Lord Winterbourne is a
bad man,” said Mrs Atheling, taking
no notice of her son’s interruption—“first
he was furious to William,
and then he cringed and fawned to
him; and of course he had it on his
conscience then about poor little
Bride, though we did not know—and
then he raved, and said he was desperate,
and did not know what to do
for money. Your father came home
to me, quite unhappy about him; for
he belonged to the same country, and
everybody tried to make excuses for
Mr Reginald, being a young man,
and the heir. So William made it
up in his own mind to go and tell
the old lord, who was in London
then. The old lord was a just man,
but very proud. He did not take it
kind of William, and he had no regard
for Mr Reginald; but for the
honour of the family he sent him
away. Then we lost sight of him
long, and Aunt Bridget took a dislike
to us, and poor little Bride was
dead, and we never heard anything
of the Lodge or the Hall for many a
year; but the old lord died abroad,
and Mr Reginald came home Lord
Winterbourne. That was all we ever
knew. I thought your father had
quite forgiven him, Charlie—we had
other things to think of than keeping
up old grudges—when all at
once it came to be in the newspapers
that Lord Winterbourne was a political
man, that he was making
speeches everywhere, and that he
was to be one of the ministry. When
your father saw that, he blazed up
into such an anger! I said all I
could, but William never minded
me. He never was so bitter before,
not even when we heard of little
Bride. He said, Such a man to govern
us and all the people!—a forger!
a liar!—and sometimes, I think, he
thought he would expose the whole
story, and let everybody know.”
“Time enough for that,” said
Charlie, who had listened to all this
without comment, but with the
closest attention. “What he did
once he’ll do again, mother; but
we’re close at his heels this time, and
he won’t get off now. I’m going to
Oxford now to get some books. I
say, mother, you’ll be sure, upon
your honour, not to tell the girls?”
“No, Charlie,” said Mrs Atheling,
with a somewhat faint affirmation;
“but, my dear, I can’t believe in it.
It can’t be true. Charlie, boy! if
this was coming true, our Marian—your
sister, Charlie!—why, Marian
would be Lady Winterbourne!”
Charlie did not say a word in return;
he only took down his little
travelling-bag, laid it at his mother’s
feet to be packed, and left her to that
business and her own meditations;
but after he had left the room, the
lad returned again and thrust in his
shaggy head at the door. “Take care
of Marian, mother,” said Charlie, in
a parting adjuration; “remember my
father’s little sister Bride.”
So he went away, leaving Mrs
Atheling a good deal disquieted. She
had got over the first excitement of
Miss Anastasia’s great intelligence
and the sudden preparations of
Charlie. She had scarcely time
enough, indeed, to give a thought to
these things, when her son demanded
this history from her, and sent her
mind away into quite a different
channel. Now she sat still in Charlie’s
room, pondering painfully, with
the travelling-bag lying quite unheeded
at her feet. At one moment
she pronounced the whole matter perfectly
impossible—at the next, triumphantly
inconsequent, she leaped
to the full consummation of the hope,
and saw her own pretty Marian—dazzling
vision!—the lady of Winterbourne!
and again the heart of the
good mother fell, and she remembered
little Bride. Louis, as he was now,
having no greater friends than their
own simple family, and no pretensions
whatever either to birth or fortune,
was a very different person from
that other Louis who might be heir
of lands and lordship and the family
pride of the Riverses. Much perplexed,
in great uncertainty and pain,
mused Mrs Atheling, half-resentful
of that grand discovery of Miss
Anastasia, which might plunge them
all into renewed trouble; while
Charlie trudged into Oxford for his
Italian grammar—and Louis and
Marian wandered through the enchanted
wood, drawing homeward—and
Rachel sang to the children—and
Agnes wondered by herself over
the secret which was to be confided
only to mamma.
That night Charlie had need of
all his diplomatic talents. Before
he returned from Oxford, his mother,
by way of precaution lest Agnes
should betray the sudden and mysterious
visit of Miss Anastasia to
Marian, contrived to let her elder
daughter know mysteriously, something
of the scope and object of the
sudden journey for which it was
necessary to prepare her brother,
driving Agnes, as was to be supposed,
into a very fever of suppressed
excitement, joy, triumph,
and anxiety. Mrs Atheling, conscious,
hurried, and studying deeply not to
betray herself—and Agnes, watching
every one, stopping questions, and
guarding off suspicions with prudence
much too visible—were quite enough
of themselves to rouse every other
member of the little company to
lively pursuit after the secret. Charlie
was assailed by every shape and form
of question: Where was he going—what
was he to do? He showed no
cleverness, we are bound to acknowledge,
in evading these multitudinous
interrogations; he turned an impenetrable
front upon them, and made
the most commonplace answers, making
vast incursions all the time into
Hannah’s cakes and Mamma’s bread-and-butter.
“He had to go back immediately
to the office; he believed he had got
a new client for old Foggo,” said
Charlie, with the utmost coolness;
“making no secret of it at all,” according
to Mamma’s indignant commentary.
“To the office!—are you only going
home, after all?” cried Marian.
“I’ll see when I get there,” answered
Charlie; “there’s something
to be done abroad. I shouldn’t wonder
if they sent me. I say, I wish
you’d all come home at once, and
make things comfortable. There’s
my poor father fighting it out with
Susan. I should not stand it if it
was me.”
“Hold your peace, Charlie, and
don’t be rude,” said Mrs Atheling.
“But, indeed, I wish we were at
home, and out of everybody’s way.”
“Who is everybody?” said Louis.
“I, who am going myself, can wish
quite sincerely that we were all at
home; but the addition is mysterious—who
is in anybody’s way?”
“Mamma means to wish us all
out of reach of the Evil Eye,” said
Agnes, a little romantically.
“No such thing, my dear. I daresay
we could do him a great deal
more harm than he can do us,” said
Mrs Atheling, with sudden importance
and dignity; then she paused
with a certain solemnity, so that
everybody could perceive the grave
self-restraint of the excellent mother,
and that she could say a great deal
more if she chose.
“But no one thinks what I am
to do when you are all gone,” said
Rachel; and her tearful face happily
diverted her companions from investigating
and from concealing the
secret. There remained among them
all, however, a certain degree of excitement.
Charlie was returning
home to-morrow—specially called
home on business!—perhaps to go
abroad upon the same! The fact
stirred all those young hearts with
something not unlike envy. This
boy seemed to have suddenly leaped
in one day into a man.
And it was natural enough that,
hearing of this, the mind of Louis
should burn and chafe with fierce
impatience. Charlie, who was perfectly
undemonstrative of his thoughts
and imaginations, was a very boy to
Louis—yet there was need and occasion
for Charlie in the crowd of
life, when no one thought upon this
fiery and eager young man. It was
late that night when Louis left this
only home and haven which he had
ever known; and though he would
fain have left Rachel there, his little
sister would not remain behind him,
but clung to his arm with a strange
presentiment of something about to
happen, which she could not explain.
Louis scarcely answered a word to
the quiet talk of Rachel as they
went upon their way to the Hall.
With difficulty, and even with impatience,
he curbed his rapid stride to
her timid little footsteps, and hurried
her along without a glance at the surrounding
scene, memorable and striking
as it was. The broad moonlight
flooded over the noble park of Winterbourne.
The long white-columned
front of the house—which was a great
Grecian house, pallid, vast, and
imposing—shone in the white light
like a screen of marble; and on the
great lawn immediately before it
were several groups of people, dwarfed
into minute miraculous figures by
the great space and silence, and the
intense illumination, which was far
more striking and particular than
the broader light of day. The chances
were that Louis did not see them,
as he plunged on, in the blindness
of preoccupation, keeping no path,
through light and shadow, through
the trees and underwood, and across
the broad unshaded greensward,
where no one could fail to perceive
him. His little sister clung to his
arm in an agony of fear, grief, and
confidence—trembling for something
about to happen with an overpowering
tremor—yet holding a vague
faith in her brother, strange and
absorbing. She said, “Louis, Louis!”
in her tone of appeal and entreaty.
He did not hear her, but struck
across the broad visible park, in the
full stream of the moonlight, looking
neither to the right hand nor to the
left. As they approached, Rachel
could not even hear any conversation
among the groups on the lawn; and
it was impossible to suppose that
they had not been seen. Louis’s
abrupt direct course, over the turf
and through the brushwood, must
have attracted the notice of bystanders
even in the daylight; it
was still more remarkable now, when
noiseless and rapid, through the intense
white radiance and the perfect
stillness, the stately figure of the
young man, and his timid, graceful
little sister, came directly forward in
face of the spectators. These spectators
were all silent, looking on with
a certain fascination, and Rachel
could not tell whether Louis was
even conscious that any one was
there.
But before they could turn aside
into the road which led to the Hall
door—a road to which Rachel most
anxiously endeavoured to guide her
brother—they were suddenly arrested
by the voice of Lord Winterbourne.
“I must put a stop to this,” said his
lordship suddenly and loudly, with
so evident a reference to themselves,
that even Rachel stopped without
knowing it. “Here, young fellow,
stop and give an account of yourself—what
do you mean by wandering
about my park at midnight, eh? I
know your poaching practices. Setting
snares, I suppose, and dragging
about this girl as a protection. Get
into your kennel, you mean dog; is
this how you repay the shelter I have
given you all your life?”
“It would be a fit return,” said
Louis. He did not speak so loud, but
with a tremble of scorn and bitterness
and intense youthful feeling in his
voice, before which the echo of his
persecutor’s went out and died, like
an ignoble thing. “If I were, as you
say,” repeated the young man—“setting
snares for your game, or for your
wealth, or for your life, you know it
would be a fit return.”
“Yes, I live a peaceful life with
this villanous young incendiary
under my roof!” said Lord Winterbourne.
“I’ll tell you what, you
young ruffian, if nothing better can
restrain you, locks and bars shall.
Oh, no chance of appealing to my
pity, with that fool of a girl upon
your arm! You think you can defy
me, year after year, because I have
given charity to your base blood.
My lad, you shall learn to know me
better before another week is over
our heads. Why, gentlemen, you
perceive, by his own confession, I
stand in danger of my life.”
“Winterbourne,” said some one
over his shoulder, in a reproving
tone, “you should be the last man in
the world to taunt this unfortunate
lad with his base blood.”
Lord Winterbourne turned upon
his heel with a laugh of insult which
sent the wild blood dancing in an
agony of shame, indignation, and
rage even into Rachel’s woman’s
face. “Well,” said the voice of their
tyrant, “I have supported the hound—what
more would you have? His
mother was a pretty fool, but she
had her day. There’s more of her
conditions in the young villain than
mine. I have no idea of playing the
romantic father to such a son—not I!”
Louis did not know that he threw
his sister off his arm before he sprang
into the midst of these half-dozen
gentlemen. She did not know herself,
as she stood behind clenching
her small fingers together painfully,
with all the burning vehemence of a
woman’s passion. The young man
sprang forward with the bound of a
young tiger. His voice was hoarse
with passion, not to be restrained.
“It is a lie—a wilful, abominable lie!”
cried Louis fiercely, confronting as
close as a wrestler the ghastly face of
his tyrant, who shrank before him.
“I am no son of yours—you know I
am no son of yours! I owe you the
hateful bread I have been compelled
to eat—nothing more. I am without
a name—I may be of base blood—but
I warn you for your life, if you
dare repeat this last insult. It is a
lie! I tell every one who condescends
to call you friend; and I appeal to
God, who knows that you know it is
a lie! I may be the son of any other
wretch under heaven, but I am not
yours. I disown it with loathing
and horror. Do you hear me?—you
know the truth in your heart, and so
do I!”
Lord Winterbourne fell back, step
by step, before the young man, who
pressed upon him close and rapid,
with eyes which flamed and burned
with a light which he could not bear.
The insulting smile upon his bloodless
face had not passed from it yet.
His eyes, shifting, restless, and uneasy,
expressed nothing. He was not a
coward, and he was sufficiently quick-witted
on ordinary occasions, but he
had nothing whatever to answer to
this vehement and unexpected accusation.
He made an unintelligible
appeal with his hand to his companions,
and lifted up his face to the
moonlight like a spectre, but he did
not answer by a single word.
“Young man,” said the gentleman
who had spoken before, “I acknowledge
your painful position, and that
you have been addressed in a most
unseemly manner—but no provocation
should make you forget your
natural duty. Lord Winterbourne
must have had a motive for maintaining
you as he has done. I put it
to you calmly, dispassionately—what
motive could he possibly have had,
except one?”
“Ah!” said Louis, with a sudden
and violent start, “he must have had
a motive—it is true; he would not
waste his cruel powers, even for
cruelty’s sake. If any man can tell
me what child it was his interest to
bastardise and defame, there may be
hope and a name for me yet.”
At these words, Lord Winterbourne
advanced suddenly with a singular
eagerness. “Let us have done with
this foolery,” he said in a voice which
was certainly less steady than usual;
“I presume we can all be better employed
than listening to the vapourings
of this foolish boy. Go in, my
lad, and learn a lesson by your folly
to-night. I pass it over, simply because
you have shown yourself to be
a fool.”
“I, however, do not pass it over,
my lord,” said Louis, who had calmed
down after the most miraculous fashion,
to the utter amazement of his
sister. “Thank you for the provision
you have given us, such as it is.
Some time we may settle scores
upon that subject. My sister and I
must find another shelter to-night.”
The bystanders were half disposed
to smile at the young man’s heroical
withdrawal—but they were all somewhat
amazed to find that Lord Winterbourne
was as far as possible from
sharing their amusement. He called
out immediately in an access of passion
to stop the young ruffian, incendiary,
mischief-maker;—called
loudly upon the servants, who began
to appear at the open door—ordered
Louis to his own apartment with the
most unreasonable vehemence, and
finally turned upon Rachel, calling
her to give up the young villain’s
arm, and for her life to go home.
But Rachel was wound to the
fever point as well as her brother.
“No, no, it is all true he has said,”
cried Rachel. “I know it, like Louis;
we are not your children—you dare not
call us so now. I never believed you
were our father—never all my life.”
She exclaimed these words hastily
in her low eager voice, as Louis drew
her arm through his, and hurried her
away. The young man struck again
across the broad park and through
the moonlight, while behind, Lord
Winterbourne called to his servants
to go after the fugitives—to bring
that fellow back. The men only
stared at their master, looked helplessly
at each other, and went off on
vain pretended searches, with no
better intention than to keep out of
Louis’s way, until prudence came
to the aid of Lord Winterbourne.
“I shall scarcely think my life in
safety while that young fool wanders
wild about the country,” he said to
his friends, as he returned within
doors; but his friends, one and all,
thought this a very odd scene.
Meanwhile Louis made his rapid
way with his little sister on his arm
out over the glorious moonlit park of
Winterbourne, away from the only
home he had ever known—out to the
night and to the world. Rachel, leaning
closely upon him, scarcely so
much as looked up, as her faltering
footstep toiled to keep up with her
brother. He, holding his proud
young head high, neither turned nor
glanced aside, but pressed on straight
forward, as if to some visionary certain
end before his eye. Then they
came out at last to the white silent
road, lying ghostlike under the excess
of light—the quiet road which
led through the village where all the
houses slept and everything was still,
not a curl of smoke in the moonlight,
nor a house-dog’s bark in the silence.
It was midnight, vast and still, a
great desolate uninhabited world.
There was not a door open to them,
nor a place where they could rest.
But on pressed Louis, with the rapid
step and unhesitating course of one
who hastened to some definite conclusion.
“Where are we going—where
shall we go?” said poor little
Rachel, drooping on his shoulder.
Her brother did not hear her. He
was not selfish, but he had not that
superhuman consideration for others
which might have broken the fiery
inspiration of his own momentous
thoughts, and made him think of the
desolate midnight, and the houseless
and outcast condition which were
alone present to the mind of Rachel.
He did not see a vast homeless solitude—a
vagabond and disgraceful
wandering, in this midnight walk.
He saw a new world before him, such
as had never glanced before across his
fancy. “He must have had a notion”
he muttered to himself. Rachel
heard him sadly, and took the
words as a matter of course. “Where
are we to go?”—that was a more immediately
important question to the
simple mind of Rachel.
The Old Wood Lodge was as deep
asleep as any house in the village.
They paused, reluctant, both of them,
to awake their friends within, and
went back, pacing rapidly between
the house of the Athelings and that of
the Rector. The September night
was cold, and Rachel was timid of
that strange midnight world out of
doors. They seemed to have nothing
for it but pacing up and down upon
the grassy road, where they were at
least within sight of a friendly habitation,
till morning came.
There was one light in one window
of the Old Wood House; Rachel’s
eye went wandering to it wistfully,
unawares: If the Rector knew—the
Rector, who once would have been
kind if Louis would have let him.
But as if in very response to her
thoughts, the Rector, when they
came back to this point again, was
standing, like themselves, in the
moonlight, looking over the low wall.
He called to them rather authoritatively,
asking what they did there—but
started, and changed his tone
into one of wondering interest and
compassion when Rachel lifted her
pale face to him, with the tears in
her eyes. He hastened to the gate
at once, and called them to enter.
“Nay, nay, no hesitation—come in
at once, that she may have rest and
shelter,” said the Rector in a peremptory
tone, which for the first
time in his life Louis had no thought
of resenting. He went in without a
word, leading his little sister. Perhaps
it was the first great thing that
ever had been done in all her life for
Rachel’s sake—for the sake of the
delicate girl, who was half a child
though a woman in years,—for sake
of her tenderness, her delicate frame,
her privilege of weakness. The two
haughty young men went in silently
together into this secluded house,
which never opened its doors to any
guest. It was an invalid’s home, and
some one was always at hand for its
ailing mistress. By-and-by Rachel,
in the exhaustion of great excitement,
fell asleep in a little quiet room
looking over that moonlit park of
Winterbourne. Louis, who was in
no mood for sleep, watched below,
full of eager and unquiet thoughts.
They had left Winterbourne Hall
suddenly; the Rector asked no further
questions, expressed no wonder,
and left the young man who had repelled
him once, with a lofty and
dignified hospitality, to his meditations
or repose.
Charlie Atheling was not at all of
an imaginative or fanciful turn of
mind. His slumbers were not disturbed
by castle-building—he wasted
none of his available time in making
fancy sketches of the people, or
the circumstances, among which he
was likely to be thrown. He was
not without the power of comprehending
at a glance the various features
of his mission; but by much the
most remarkable point of Charlie’s
character was his capacity for doing
his immediate business, whatever that
might be, with undivided attention,
and with his full powers. On this
early September morning he neither
occupied himself with anticipations
of his interview with Miss Anastasia,
nor his hurried journey. He did not
suffer his mind to stray to difficult
questions of evidence, nor wander
off into speculations concerning what
he might have to do when he reached
the real scene of his investigation.
What he had to do at the moment he
did like a man, bending upon his serious
business all the faculties of his
mind, and all the furrows of his brow.
He got up at six o’clock, not because
he particularly liked it, but because
these early morning hours had become
his habitual time for extra
work of every kind, and sat upon
Hannah’s bench in the garden, close
by the kitchen door, with the early
sun and the early wind playing hide-and-seek
among his elf-locks, learning
his Italian grammar, as if this
was the real business for which he
came into the world.
“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to
do”—that was Charlie’s secret of
success. He had only a grammar,
a dictionary, and a little New Testament
in Italian—and he had not at
this moment the slightest ambition
to read Dante in the original—but
with steady energy he chased those
unknown verbs into the deep caverns
of his memory—a memory which
was prodigious, and lost nothing
committed to it. The three books
accompanied him when he went in to
breakfast, and marched off in his
pocket to Oxford when it was time
to keep his appointment with Miss
Anastasia. Meanwhile the much-delayed
travelling-bag only now began
to get packed, and Mrs Atheling,
silently toiling at this business, felt
convinced that Susan would mislay
all the things most important for
Charlie’s comfort, and very much
yearned in her heart to accompany
her son home. They were to meet
him at the railway, whence he would
depart immediately, after his interview
with Miss Rivers; and Charlie’s
secret commission made a considerable
deal of excitement in the quiet
little house.
Miss Anastasia, who was much too
eager and impetuous to be punctual,
had been waiting for some time, when
her young agent made his appearance
at the office of her solicitor. After
she had charged him with being too
late, and herself suffered conviction
as being too early, the old lady proceeded
at once to business; they
were in Mr Temple’s own room, but
they were alone.
“I have made copies of everything
that seemed to throw light upon my
late father’s wanderings,” said Miss
Anastasia—“not much to speak of—see!
These papers must have been
carefully weeded before they came to
my hands. Here is an old guidebook
marked with notes, and here a
letter dated from the place where he
died. It is on the borders of Italy—at
the foot of the Alps—on the way
to Milan, and not very far from there.
You will make all speed, young
Atheling; I trust to your prudence—betray
nothing—do not say a word
about these children until you find
some certain clue. It is more than
twenty years—nearly one-and-twenty
years—since my father died; but a rich
Englishman, who married among
them, was not like to be forgotten in
such a village. Find out who this
Giulietta was—if you can discover
the family, they might know something.
My father had an attendant,
a sort of courier, who was with us
often—Jean Monte, half a Frenchman
half an Italian. I have never
heard of him since that time; he
might be heard of on the way, and
he might know—but I cannot direct
you, boy—I trust to your own
spirit, your own foresight, your
own prudence. Make haste, as if it
was life and death; yet if time will
avail you, take time. Now, young
Atheling, I trust you!—bring clear
evidence—legal evidence—what will
stand in a court of law—and as sure
as you live your fortune is made!”
Charlie did not make a single protestation
in answer to this address.
He folded up carefully those fragments
of paper copied out in Miss Anastasia’s
careful old-fashioned lady’s
hand, and placed them in the big
old pocket-book which he carried
for lack of a better.
“I don’t know much of the route,”
said Charlie,—“over the Alps, I suppose,”
and for once his cheek flushed
with the youthful excitement of the
travel. “I shall find out all about
that immediately when I get to
town; and there is a passport to be
seen after. When I am ready to start—which
will be just as soon as the
thing can be done—I shall let you
know how I am to travel, and write
immediately when I arrive there;—I
know what you mean me to do.”
Then Miss Anastasia gave him—(a
very important part of the business),—two
ten-pound notes, which was a
very large sum to Charlie, and
directed him to go to the banking-house,
with which she kept an account
in London, and get from them a
letter of credit on a banker in Milan,
on whom he could draw, according to
his occasions. “You are very young,
young Atheling,” said Miss Rivers;
“many a father would hesitate to
trust his son as I trust you; but I’m
a woman and an optimist, and have
my notions: you are only a boy, but
I believe in you—forget how young
you are while you are about my
business—plenty of time after this for
enjoying yourself—and I tell you
again, if you do your duty, your fortune
is made.”
The old lady and the youth went
out together, to where the little
carriage and the grey ponies stood at
the solicitor’s door. Charlie, in his
present development, was not at all
the man to hand a lady with a grace
to her carriage; nor was this stately
gentlewoman, in her brown pelisse, at
all the person to be so escorted; but
they were a remarkable pair enough,
as they stood upon the broad pavement
of one of the noblest streets of
Christendom. Miss Anastasia held
out her hand with a parting command
and warning, as she took her seat and
the reins.—“Young Atheling, remember!
it is life and death!”
She was less cautious at that moment
than she had been during all
their interview. The words fell upon
another ear than his to whom they
were addressed. Lord Winterbourne
was making his way at the moment
with some newly arrived guests of his,
and under the conduct of a learned
pundit from one of the colleges, along
this same picturesque High Street;
and, in the midst of exclamations of
rapture and of interest, his suspicious
and alarmed eye caught the familiar
equipage and well-known figure of
Miss Anastasia. Her face was turned
in the opposite direction,—she did not
see him,—but a single step brought
him near enough to hear her words.
“Young Atheling!” Lord Winterbourne
had not forgotten his former
connection with the name, but the remembrance
had long lain dormant
in a breast which was used to potent
excitements. William Atheling,
though he once saved a reckless young
criminal, could do no harm with his
remote unbelievable story to a peer of
the realm;—a man who had sat in
the councils of the State. Lord Winterbourne
had begun his suit for the
Old Wood Lodge with the most contemptuous
indifference to all that
could be said of him by anyone of this
family; yet somehow it struck him
strangely to hear so sudden a naming
of this name. “Young Atheling!”
He could not help looking at the
youth,—meeting the stormy gleam in
the eyes of Charlie, whose sudden
enmity sprung up anew in an instant.
Lord Winterbourne was sufficiently
disturbed already by the departure of
Louis, and with the quick observation
of alarm remarked everything. He
could understand no natural connection
whatever between this lad
and Miss Anastasia. His startled
imagination suggested instantly that
it bore some reference to Louis, and
what interpretation was it possible to
give to so strange an adjuration—“It
is life and death!”
“Charlie, my dear boy,” said Mrs
Atheling, with a slight tremble in her
voice, “I suppose it may be months
before we see you again.”
“I can’t tell, mother; but it will
not be a day longer than I can help,”
said Charlie, who had the grace to be
serious at the moment of parting.
“There’s only one thing, you know,—I
must do my business before I
come home.”
“And take care of yourself,” said
Mrs Atheling; “take great care when
you are going over those mountains,
and among those people where bandits
are—you know what stories we have
read about such robbers, Charlie,—and
remember, though I should be
very glad to hear good news about
Louis, Louis is not my own very boy,
like you.”
“Hush, mother—no need for naming
him,” said Charlie; “he is of more
moment than me, however, this
time—for that’s my business. Never
fear—thieves may be fools there as
well as at home, but they’re none such
fools as to meddle with me. Now,
mother, promise me, the last thing,—Agnes,
do you hear?—don’t tell Marian
a word, nor him. I’ll tell old
Foggo the whole story, and Foggo
will do what he can for him when he
gets to London; but don’t you go
and delude him, telling him of this,
for it would just be as good as ruin if
I don’t succeed; and it all may come
to nothing, as like as not. I say,
Agnes, do you hear?”
“Yes, I hear, very well; but I
am not given to telling secrets,”
said Agnes, with a little dignity.
Charlie only laughed as he arranged
himself in the corner of the second-class
carriage, and drew forth his
grammar: there was no time for
anything more, save entreaties that
he would write, and take care
of himself; and the train flashed
away, leaving them somewhat dull
and blank in the reaction of past
excitement, looking at each other,
and half reluctant to turn their
faces homeward. Their minds hurried
forth faster than either steam
or electricity to the end of Charlie’s
journey. They went back with very
slow steps and very abstracted minds.
What a new world of change and
sudden revolution might open upon
them at Charlie’s return!
Mrs Atheling had some business
in the town, and the mother and
daughter pursued their way silently
to that same noble High Street
where Charlie had seen Lord Winterbourne,
and where Lord Winterbourne
and his party were still
to be caught sight of, appearing
and reappearing by glimpses as they
“did” the halls and colleges. While
her mother managed some needful
business in a shop, Agnes stood rather
dreamily looking down the
stately street; its strange old-world
mixture of the present and the past;
its union of all kinds of buildings;
the trim classic pillars and toy cupolas
of the eighteenth century—the
grim crumbling front of elder days—the
gleams of green grass and waving
trees through college gateways—the
black-gowned figures interrupting the
sunshine—the beautiful spire striking
up into it as into its natural element,—a
noble hyacinthine stem of immortal
flowers. Agnes did not know much
about artistic effect, nor anything
about orders of architecture, but the
scene seized upon her imagination, as
was its natural right. Her thoughts
were astray among hopes and chances
far enough out of the common way—but
any dream of romance could
make itself real in an atmosphere
like this.
She was pale,—she was somewhat
of an abstracted and musing aspect.
When one took into consideration her
misfortune of authorship, she was in
quite a sentimental pose and attitude—so
thought her American
acquaintance, who had managed to
secure an invitation to the Hall,
and was one of Lord Winterbourne’s
party. But Mr Endicott had “done” all
the colleges before, and he could afford
to let his attention be distracted by
the appearance of the literary sister of
the lady of his love.
“I am not surprised at your abstraction,”
said Mr Endicott. “In this,
indeed, I do not hesitate to confess,
my country is not equal to your
Island. What an effect of sunshine!
what a breadth of shade! I cannot
profess to have any preference, in respect
to Art, for the past, picturesque
though it be—a poet of these days,
Miss Atheling, has not to deal with
facts, but feelings; but I have no
doubt, before I interrupted you, the
whole panorama of History glided before
your meditative eye.”
“No, indeed; I was thinking more
of the future than of the past,” said
Agnes hurriedly.
“The future of this nation is obscure
and mysterious,” said Mr Endicott,
gathering his eyebrows solemnly.
“Some man must arise to lead
you—to glory—or to perdition! I
see nothing but chaos and darkness;
but why should I prophesy? A past
generation had leisure to watch the
signs of the times; but for us ‘Art is
long and time is fleeting,’ and happy
is the man who can snatch one burning
experience from the brilliant
mirage of life.”
Agnes, a little puzzled by this
mixture of images, did not attempt
any answer. Mr Endicott went on.
“I had begun to observe, with a
great deal of interest, two remarkable
young minds placed in a singular
position. They were not to be met,
of course, at the table of Lord Winterbourne,”
said the American with
dignity; “but in my walks about the
park I sometimes encountered them,
and always endeavoured to draw
them into conversation. So remarkable,
in fact, did they seem to me,
that they found a place in my letters
from England; studies of character
entirely new to my consciousness.
I believe, Miss Atheling, I had once
the pleasure of seeing them in your
company. They stand—um—unfortunately
in a—a—an equivocal relationship
to my noble host.”
“Ah! what of them?” cried Agnes
quickly, and with a crimsoned
cheek. She felt already how difficult
it was to hear them spoken of, and
not proclaim at once her superior
knowledge.
“A singular event, I understand,
happened last night,” continued Mr
Endicott. “Viscount Winterbourne,
on his own lawn, was attacked and
insulted by the young man, who
afterwards left the house under very
remarkable circumstances. My noble
friend, who is an admirable example
of an old English nobleman, was at
one time in actual danger, and I believe
has been advised to put this
fiery youth—”
“Do you mean Louis?” cried
Agnes, interrupting him anxiously.
“Louis!—do you mean that he has
left the Hall?”
“I am greatly interested, I assure
you, in tracing out this romance of
real life,” said Mr Endicott. “He
left the Hall, I understand, last evening—and
my noble friend is advised
to take measures for his apprehension.
I look upon the whole history
with the utmost interest. How
interesting to trace the motives of
this young mind, perhaps the strife
of passions—gratitude mixing with
a sense of injury! If he is secured, I
shall certainly visit him: I know no
nobler subject for a drama of passion;
and dramas of the passions are
what we want to ennoble this modern
time.”
“Mother!” cried Agnes, “mother!
come; we have no time to lose—Mr
Endicott has told me—Mamma,
leave these things to another time.
Marian is alone; there is no one to
support her. Oh, mother, mother!
make haste! We must go home!”
She scarcely gave a glance to Mr
Endicott as he stood somewhat surprised,
making a study of the young
author’s excitable temperament for
his next “letter from England”—but
hastened her mother homeward, explaining,
as she went, though not very
coherently, that Louis had attacked
Lord Winterbourne—that he had
left the Hall—that he had done
something for which he might be
apprehended. The terror of disgrace—that
most dread of all fears to
people in their class—overwhelmed
both mother and daughter, as they
hastened, at a very unusual pace,
along the road, terrified to meet himself
in custody, or some one coming
to tell them of his crime. And
Marian, their poor beautiful flower,
on whom this storm would fall so
heavily—Marian was alone!
Louis passed the night in the Rector’s
library. He had no inclination for
sleep; indeed, he was almost scornful
of the idea that he could sleep under
his new and strange circumstances;
and it was not until he roused himself,
with a start, to see that the pale
sheen of the moonlight had been succeeded
by the rosy dawn of morning,
that he knew of the sudden, deep
slumber, that had fallen upon him.
It was morning, but it was still a long
time till day; except the birds among
the trees there was nothing astir, not
even the earliest labourer, and he
could not hear a sound in the house.
All the events of the previous night
returned upon Louis’s mind with all
the revived freshness of a sudden
awaking. A great change had passed
upon him in a few hours. He started
now at once out of the indefinite
musings, the flush of vain ambition,
the bitter brooding over wrong
which had been familiar to his mind.
He began to think with the earnest
precision of a man who has attained
to a purpose. Formerly it had been
hard enough for his proud undisciplined
spirit, prescient of something
greater, to resolve upon a plan
of tedious labour for daily bread, or
to be content with such a fortune as
had fallen to such a man as Mr
Atheling. Even with love to bear
him out, and his beautiful Marian to
inspire him, it was hard, out of all
the proud possibilities of youth, to
plunge into such a lot as this. Now
he considered it warily, with the full
awakened consciousness of a man.
Up to this time his bitter dislike and
opposition to Lord Winterbourne
had been carried on by fits and
starts, as youths do contend with
older people under whose sway they
have been all their life. He took no
reason with him when he decided
that he was not the son of the man
who opposed him. He never entered
into the question how he came to
the Hall, or what was the motive
of its master. He had contented
himself with a mere unreasoning
conviction that Lord Winterbourne
was not his father; but only one
word was wanted to awaken the
slumbering mind of the youth, and
that word had been spoken last night.
Now a clear and evident purpose became
visible before him. What was
Lord Winterbourne’s reason for keeping
him all his life under so killing
a bondage? What child was there
in the world whom it was Lord
Winterbourne’s interest to call illegitimate,
and keep in obscurity?
His heart swelled—the colour rose
in his face. He did not see how
hopeless was the search—how entirely
without grounds, without information,
he was. He did not perceive
how vain, to every reasonable
individual, would seem the fabric he
had built upon a mere conviction of
his own. In his own eager perception
everything was possible to that
courage, and perseverance indomitable,
which he felt to be in him; and, for
the first time in his life, Louis came
down from the unreasonable and
bitter pride which had shut his heart
against all overtures of friendship.
Friendship—help—advice—the aid
of those who knew the world better
than he did—these were things to be
sought for, and solicited now. He
sat in the Rector’s chair, leaning upon
the Rector’s writing-table; it was
not without a struggle that he overcame
his old repugnance, his former
haughtiness. It was not without a
pang that he remembered the obligation
under which this stranger had
laid him. It was his first effort in
self-control, and it was not an easy
one; he resolved at last to ask counsel
from the Rector, and lay fully before
him the strange circumstances in
which he stood.
The Rector was a man of capricious
hours, and uncertain likings.
He was sometimes abroad as early
as the earliest ploughman; to-day it
was late in the forenoon before he
made his appearance. Breakfast had
been brought to Louis, by himself, in
the library; in this house they were
used to solitary meals at all hours—and
he had already asked several
times for the Rector, when Mr Rivers
at last entered the room, and saluted
him with stately courtesy. “My sister,
I find, has detained your sister,” said
the Rector. “I hope you have not
been anxious—they tell me the young
lady will join us presently.”
Then there was a pause; and then
Mr Rivers began an extremely polite
and edifying conversation, which
must have reminded any spectator of
the courtly amity of a couple of Don
Quixotes preparing for the duello.
The Rector himself conducted it with
the most solemn gravity imaginable.
This Lionel Rivers, dissatisfied and
self-devouring, was not a true man.
Supposing himself to be under a
melancholy necessity of disbelieving
on pain of conscience, he yet submitted
to an innumerable amount of
practical shams, with which his conscience
took no concern. In spite of
his great talents, and of a character
full of natural nobleness, when you
came to its foundations, a false tone,
an artificial strain of conversation, an
unreal and insincere expression, were
unhappily familiar enough to the dissatisfied
clergyman, who vainly tried
to anchor himself upon the authority
of the Church. Louis, on the contrary,
knew nothing of talk which
was a mere veil and concealment of
meaning; he could not use vain
words when his heart burned within
him; he had no patience for those
conversations which were merely intended
to occupy time, and which
meant and led to nothing. Yet it
was very difficult for him, young,
proud, and inexperienced as he was,
without any invitation or assistance
from his companion, to enter upon
his explanation. He changed colour,
he became uneasy, he scarcely answered
the indifferent remarks addressed
to him. At length, seeing
nothing better for it, he plunged
suddenly and without comment into
his own tale.
“We have left Winterbourne
Hall,” said Louis, reddening to his
temples as he spoke. “I have long
been aware how unsuitable a home
it was for me. I am going to London
immediately. I cannot thank you
enough for your hospitality to my
sister, and to myself, last night.”
“That is nothing,” said the Rector,
with a motion of his hand. “Some
time since I had the pleasure of saying
to your friends in the Lodge that
it would gratify me to be able to
serve you. I do not desire to pry
into your plans; but if I can help
you in town, let me know without
hesitation.”
“So far from prying,” said Louis
eagerly, interrupting him, “I desire
nothing more than to explain them.
All my life,” and once again the red
blood rushed to the young man’s face,—“all
my life I have occupied the
most humiliating of positions—you
know it. I am not a meek man by
nature; what excuse I have had if a
bitter pride has sometimes taken possession
of me, you know——”
The Rector bowed gravely, but did
not speak. Louis continued in haste,
and with growing agitation, “I am
not the son of Lord Winterbourne—I
am not a disgraced offshoot of your
family—I can speak to you without
feeling shame and abasement in the
very sound of your name. This has
been my conviction since ever I was
capable of knowing anything—but
Heaven knows how subtly the snare
was woven—it seemed impossible,
until now when we have done it, to
disengage our feet.”
“Have you made any discovery,
then? What has happened?” said the
Rector, roused into an eager curiosity.
Here, at the very outset, lay
Louis’s difficulty—and he had never
perceived it before.
“No; I have made no discovery,”
he said, with a momentary disconcertment.
“I have only left the
Hall—I have only told Lord Winterbourne
what he knows well, and I
have known long, that I am not
his son.”
“Exactly—but how did you discover
that?” said the Rector.
“I have discovered nothing—but
I am as sure of it as that I breathe,”
answered Louis.
The Rector looked at him—looked
at a portrait which hung directly
above Louis’s head upon the wall,
smiled, and shook his head. “It is
quite natural,” he said; “I can sympathise
with any effort you make to
gain a more honourable position, and
to disown Lord Winterbourne—but
it is vain where there are pictures of
the Riverses to deny your connection
with my family. George Rivers himself,
my lord’s heir, the future head
of the family, has not a tithe as much
of the looks and bearing of the blood
as you.”
Louis could not find a word to say
in face of such an argument—he
looked eagerly yet blankly into the
face of the Rector—felt all his pulses
throbbing with fiery impatience of
the doubt thus cast upon him—yet
knew nothing to advance against so
subtle and unexpected a charge of
kindred, and could only repeat, in a
passionate undertone, “I am not
Lord Winterbourne’s son.”
“I do not know,” said the Rector,
“I have no information which is not
common to all the neighbourhood—yet
I beg you to guard against delusion.
Lord Winterbourne brought
you here while you were an infant—since
then you have remained at the
Hall—he has owned you, I suppose,
as much as a man ever owns an illegitimate
child. Pardon me, I am
obliged to use the common words.
Lord Winterbourne is not a man of
extended benevolence, neither is he
one to take upon himself the responsibility
or blame of another. If you
are not his son, why did he bring you
here?”
Louis raised his face from his
hands which had covered it—he was
very pale, haggard, almost ghastly.
“If you can tell me of any youth—of
any child—of any man’s son,
whom it was his interest to disgrace
and remove out of the way,” said the
young man with his parched lips,
“I will tell you why I am here.”
The Rector could not quite restrain
a start of emotion—not for
what the youth said, for that was
madness to the man of the world—but
for the extreme passion, almost
despair, in his face. He thought it best
to soothe rather than to excite him.
“I know nothing more than all the
world knows,” said Mr Rivers: “but,
though I warn you against delusions,
I will not say you are wrong when
you are so firmly persuaded that you
are right. What do you mean to do
in London—can I help you there?”
Louis felt with no small pang this
giving up of the argument—as if it
were useless to discuss anything so
visionary—but he roused himself to
answer the question: “The first
thing I have to do,” he said quickly,
“is to maintain my sister and myself.”
The Rector bowed again, very solemnly
and gravely—perhaps not
without a passing thought that the
same duty imposed chains more galling
than iron upon himself.
“That done, I will pursue my inquiries
as I can,” said Louis: “you
think them vain—but time will prove
that. I thank you now, for my sister’s
sake, for receiving us—and now
we must go on our way.”
“Not yet,” said the Rector. “You
are without means of course—what,
do you think it a disgrace, that you
blush for it?—or would you have me
suppose that you had taken money
from Lord Winterbourne, while you
deny that you are his son? For this
once suppose me your friend; I will
supply you with what you are certain
to need; and you can repay me—oh,
with double interest if you
please!—only do not go to London
unprovided—for that is the maddest
method of anticipating a heartbreak;
your sister is young, almost a child,
tender and delicate—let it be, for her
sake.”
“Thank you; I will take it as you
give it,” said Louis. “I am not so
ungenerous as you suppose.”
There was a certain likeness between
them, different as they were—there
was a likeness in both to these
family portraits on the walls. Before
such silent witnesses Louis’s passionate
disclaimer, sincere though it
was, was unbelievable. For no one
could believe that he was not an offshoot
of the house of Rivers, who
looked from his face and the Rector’s
to those calm ancient faces on the
walls.
“They have left the Hall.”
That was all Marian said when she
came to the door to meet her mother
and sister, who paused in the porch,
overcome with fatigue, haste, and
anxiety. Mrs Atheling was obliged
to pause and sit down, not caring
immediately to see the young culprit
who was within.
“And what has happened, Marian,—what
has happened? My poor
child, did he tell you?” asked Mrs
Atheling.
“Nothing has happened, mamma,”
said Marian, with a little petulant
haste; “only Louis has quarrelled
with Lord Winterbourne; but, indeed,
I wish you would speak to him.
Oh, Agnes, go and talk to Louis; he
says he will go to London to-day.”
“And so he should; there is not
a moment to be lost,” said Agnes,—“I
will go and tell him; we can
walk in with him to Oxford, and see
him safely away. Tell Hannah to
make haste, Marian,—he must not
waste an hour.”
“What does she mean,—what
is the matter? Oh, what have you
heard, mamma?” said Marian, growing
very pale.
“Hush, dear; I daresay it was
not him,—it was Mr Endicott, who
is sure to hate him, poor boy; he
said Lord Winterbourne would put
him in prison, Marian. Oh,” said
Mrs Atheling, getting up hurriedly,
“he ought to go at once to Papa.”
But they found Louis, whom they
all surrounded immediately with terror,
sympathy, and encouragement,
entirely unappalled by the threatened
vengeance of Lord Winterbourne.
“There is nothing to charge me
with; he can bring no accusation
against me; if he did ever say it, it
must have been a mere piece of
bravado,” said Louis; “but it is
better I should go at once without
losing an hour, as Agnes says. Will
you let Rachel stay? and you, who
are the kindest mother in the world,
when will you have compassion on
us and come home?”
“Indeed, I wish we were going
now,” said Mrs Atheling; and she
said it with genuine feeling, and a
sigh of anxiety. “You must tell
Papa we will not stay very long;
but I suppose we must see about
this lawsuit first; and I am sure I
cannot tell who is to manage it now,
since Charlie is gone.”
“Shall you go to Papa at once,
Louis?” asked Marian, who was very
anxious to conceal from every one
the tears in her downcast eyes.
“Surely, at once,” said Louis.
“We are in different circumstances
now; I have a great deal to ask any
one who knows the family of Rivers.
Do you know it never before occurred
to me that Lord Winterbourne
must have had some powerful inducement
for keeping me here,
knowing as well as I do that I am
not his son.”
Mrs Atheling and Agnes turned a
sudden guilty look upon each other;
but neither had betrayed the secret;—what
did he mean?
“Unless it was his interest in some
way—unless it was for his evident
advantage to disgrace and disable
me,” said Louis, groping in the dark,
when they knew one possible solution
of the mystery so well, “I am
convinced he never would have kept
me as he has done at the Hall.”
He spoke in a tone different to that
which he had used to the Rector,
and very naturally different—for
Louis here was triumphant in the
faith of his audience, and did not
hesitate to say all he felt, nor fear
too close an investigation into the
grounds of his belief. He spoke fervently;
and Marian and Rachel
looked at him with the faith of enthusiasm,
and Mrs Atheling and
Agnes with wonder, agitation, and
embarrassment. But, as he went on,
it became too much for the self-control
of the good mother. She
hurried out on pretence of superintending
Hannah, and was very
soon followed by Agnes. “I durst
not stay, I should have told him,”
said Mrs Atheling, in a hurried
whisper. “Who could put so much
into his head, Agnes? who could
lead him so near the truth?—only
God! My dear child, I believe in it
all now.”
Agnes had believed in it all from
the first moment of hearing it, but so
singular a strain was upon the minds
of both mother and daughter, knowing
this extraordinary secret which
the others did not know, that it was
not wonderful they should give a
weight much beyond their desert to
the queries of Louis. Yet, indeed,
Louis’s queries took a wonderfully
correct direction, and came very near
the truth.
It was a day of extreme agitation
to them all, and not until Louis, who
had no travelling-bag to pack, had
been accompanied once more to the
railway, and seen safely away, with
many a lingering farewell, was any
one able to listen to, or understand,
Rachel’s version of the events of last
night. When he was quite gone—when
it was no longer possible to
wave a hand to him in the distance,
or even to see the flying white plume
of the miraculous horseman who
bounded along with all that line of
carriages, the three girls came home
together through the quiet evening
road—the disenchanted road, weary
and unlovely, which Marian marvelled
much any one could prefer to
Bellevue. They walked very close
together, with Marian in the midst,
comforting her in an implied, sympathetic,
girlish fashion—for Rachel,
though Louis had belonged to her so
very much longer, and was her sole
authority, lawgiver, and hero, instinctively
kept her own feelings out of
sight, and took care of Marian. These
girls were very loyal to their own visionary
ideas of the mysterious magician
who had not come to either of
them yet, but whose coming both anticipated
some time, with awe and
with smiles.
And then Rachel told them how
it had fared with her on the previous
night. Rachel had very little to say
about the Rector; she had given him
up conscientiously to Agnes, and with
a distant and reverent admiration of
his loftiness, contemplated him afar
off, too great a person for her friendship.
“But in the morning the maid
came and took me to Miss Rivers—did
you ever see Miss Rivers?—she is
very pale—and pretty, though she is
old, and a very, very great invalid,”
said Rachel. “Some one has to sit
up with her every night, and she has
so many troubles—headaches, and
pains in her side, and coughs, and
every sort of thing! She told me all
about them as she lay on the sofa in
her pretty white dressing-gown, and
in such a soft voice as if she was quite
used to them, and did not mind. Do
you think you could be a nurse to any
one who was ill, Agnes?”
“She has been a nurse to all of us
when we were ill,” said Marian, rousing
herself for the effort, and immediately
subsiding into the pensiveness
which the sad little beauty would not
suffer herself to break, even though
she began in secret to be considerably
interested about the interior of the
mysterious Wood House, and the invisible
Miss Rivers. Marian thought
Louis would not be pleased if he could
imagine her thinking of any one but
him, so soon after he had gone away.
“But I don’t mean at home—I mean
a stranger,” said Rachel, “one whom
you did not love. I think it must be
rather hard sometimes; but do you
know I was very nearly offering to be
nurse to Miss Rivers, she spoke so
kindly to me? And then Louis will
have to work,” continued the faithful
little sister, with tears in her eyes;
“you must tell me what I can do,
Agnes, not to be a burden upon Louis.
Oh, do you think any one would give
me money for singing now?”
Lord Winterbourne, all his life, had
been a man of guile; he was so long
experienced in it, that dissimulation
became easy enough to him, when he
was not startled or thrown suddenly
off his guard. Already every one
around him supposed he had quite
forgiven and forgotten the wild escapade
of Louis. He had no confidant
whatever, not even a valet or a steward,
and his most intimate associate
knew nothing of his dark and secret
counsels. When any one mentioned
the ungovernable youth who had fled
from the Hall, Lord Winterbourne
said, “Pooh, pooh—he will soon discover
his mistake,” and smiled his
pale and sinister smile. Such a face
as his could not well look benign; but
people were accustomed to his face,
and thought it his misfortune—and
everybody set him down, as, in this
instance at least, of a very forgiving
and indulgent spirit, willing that the
lad should find out his weakness by
experiment, but not at all disposed to
inflict any punishment upon his unruly
son.
The fact was, however, that Lord
Winterbourne was considerably excited
and uneasy. He spent hours
in a little private library among
his papers—carefully went over
them, collating and arranging again
and again—destroyed some, and
filled the private drawers of his
cabinet with others. He sent orders
to his agent to prosecute with all
the energy possible his suit against
the Athelings. He had his letters
brought to him in his own room,
where he was alone, and looked over
them with eager haste and something
like apprehension. Servants,
always sufficiently quick-witted under
such circumstances, concluded
that my lord expected something,
and the expectation descended accordingly
through all the grades of
the great house; but this did not
by any means diminish the number
of his guests, or the splendour of his
hospitality. New arrivals came constantly
to the Hall—and very great
people indeed, on their way to Scotland
and the moors, looked in upon
the disappointed statesman by way
of solace. He had made an unspeakable
failure in his attempt at statesmanship;
but still he had a certain
amount of influence, and merited a
certain degree of consideration. The
quiet country brightened under the
shower of noble sportsmen and fair
ladies. All Banburyshire crowded
to pay its homage. Mrs Edgerley
brought her own private menagerie,
the newest lion who could be heard
of; and herself fell into the wildest
fever of architecturalism—fitted up
an oratory under the directions
of a fellow of Merton—set up an
Ecclesiological Society in the darkest
of her drawing-rooms—made
drawings of “severe saints,” and
purchased casts of the finest “examples”—began
to embroider an
altar-cloth from the designs of one of
the most renowned connoisseurs in
the ecclesiological city, and talked
of nothing but Early English, and
Middle Pointed. Politics, literature,
and the fine arts, sport, flirtation, and
festivity, kept in unusual excitement
the whole spectator county of
Banbury, and the busy occupants of
Winterbourne Hall.
In the midst of all this, the Lord
of Winterbourne spent solitary hours
in his library among his papers, took
solitary rides towards Abingford,
moodily courted a meeting with
Miss Anastasia, even addressed her
when they met, and did all that
one unassisted man could do to gain
information of her proceedings. He
was in a state of restless expectation,
not easy to account for. He knew
that Louis was in London, but not
who had given him the means to go
there; and he could find no pretence
for bringing back the youth, or asserting
authority over him. He waited
in well-concealed but frightfully-felt
excitement for something, watching
with a stealthy but perpetual
observation the humble house of the
Athelings and the Priory at Abingford.
He did not say to himself
what it was he apprehended, nor
indeed that he apprehended anything;
but with that strange certainty
which criminals always seem
to retain, that fate must come some
time, waited in the midst of his gay,
busy, frivolous guests, sharing all
the occupations round him, like a
man in a dream,—waited as the
world waits in a pause of deadly
silence for the thunderclap. It would
rouse him when it came.
It came, but not as he looked for
it. Oh blind, vain, guilty soul, with
but one honest thought among all
its crafts and falsehoods! It came
not like the rousing tumult of the
thunder, but like an avalanche from
the hills; he fell under it with a
groan of mortal agony; there was
nothing in heaven or earth to defend
him from the misery of this
sudden blow. All his schemes, all
his endeavours, what were they
good for now?
FROM PERA TO BUCHAREST.
205
The map of Europe sufficiently
explains why Bucharest, by no means
the smallest or least interesting capital
in this division of the globe’s surface,
is unquestionably the least visited
and known. Situate beyond the
lands of the Austrian, the Russian,
and the Turk, it is remote from every
place to which business or pleasure
attracts travellers. Distant from
frequented highways, the paths to it
are long and wearisome. Down the
Danube from Vienna, or up it from
Constantinople, or across Roumelia
and Bulgaria, with rough and savage
posting, are the three best but still untempting
routes. And in Western
Europe, people generally know and
care extremely little about Moldavia
and Wallachia, provinces concerning
which little has been written, save in
the ephemeral pages of newspapers.
The late war has done something to
improve our acquaintance with them;
but still there exists concerning them
an enormous amount of ignorance,
even amongst persons otherwise well
informed. It is not long since we met
with such persons, who imagined a
Hospodar to be sort of savage chief,
dressed in sheep’s-skin, and took
Boyards to be minor barbarians, inhabiting
caves, and living by plunder
and the chase. This is far, indeed,
from the fact. The Moldo-Wallachians
are amongst the greatest ramblers
of our time; there are few members
of the upper classes who do not
quit their own country for some weeks
or months every year, and those who
have met with them in Vienna and
Paris, and in their favourite summer
haunts, the baths of France and Germany,
will have found them to be
usually people of much external polish,
of luxurious habits and profuse expenditure,
speaking French fluently,
and (although often with a bad accent
and a deficiency of refinement) almost
as their native tongue, and anxious
to elevate their race and country
in the eyes of foreigners, who, they
well know, are little acquainted with
and apt to depreciate them. At
home they are a good-natured, courteous
and hospitable people, to whom
a stranger needs but slight introduction
to be sure of friendly welcome
and attention. And if the introduction
be a special one, or the foreigner’s
qualities, name or position, recommend
him particularly to the
notice, and open to him the heart, of
the Danubian magnate, he will find
himself feasted, caressed, and cherished
to an unbounded extent; he
will be bidden to repasts savoury of
the skill of exotic artists; he will be
supplied with horses and escorted to
promenades, and made welcome at
whatever hour he present himself,
and made acquainted with all the
pretty women and eligible men in the
country—bans, vorniks, logothetes,
postelniks, or by whatever other uncouth-sounding
titles they may be
known. Certainly whoever goes to
the Principalities with the idea that
he is proceeding to an uncivilised
and unpleasant country, will be most
agreeably surprised before he has sojourned
there three days. The rural
districts may not much interest him;
the roads, or their absence, may provoke
his malediction, and he will not
be very loud in praise of the inns; if
he enter by way of Galatz, he will
doubtless pronounce that flourishing
town to be the ugliest and most
wearisome place in which ever the
convenience or caprice of the Austrian
Lloyds’ Steam Company compelled a
disgusted traveller to lose forty-eight
hours; the small country towns will
hardly attract him much, unless it be
those which, like Giurgevo, are memorable
for actions of war; but the capitals,
and especially Bucharest, will
offer him pleasures, amusements, and
even comforts he did not anticipate
when plunging into this frontier land
of the Christian and the Turk. The
Wallachians have a local proverb to
the effect that he who once drinks of
the water of the Dumbrovitza, will
never drink of any other. The Dumbrovitza
is a turbid, narrow, poplar-and-willow-fringed
streamlet that
flows through Bucharest, valueless
for navigation, and having waters of
no very pleasant flavour or attractive
limpidity; but the metaphor is more
transparent than the stream, and intimates
the seductions of the gay,
idle, insouciant, dissipated, and, if
truth must be told, wicked capital of
Wallachia.
Even in our luxurious day, wanderers
beyond railways, and into
regions little trodden, occasionally
find ample cause for complaint of
miscalled houses of entertainment.
The inns about the Lower Danube
are rather of a savage sort, and those
at Giurgevo and Galatz, especially at
the former place, are decidedly bad;
a Spanish posada is not exactly the
kind of hostelry one would select for
a long sojourn; even in comfortable
Germany, when one gets off the main
tracks, one often finds rough commons
and hard quarters in the small towns
and village gasthaüser. But I suppose
there is no inn in the world,
ranking as the first in a capital city,
from which a person of ordinary
palate, patience, and purse, feels
more rejoiced to escape than from
the much-trumpeted Hôtel d’Angleterre,
at Pera, Constantinople. Doubtless
the author of Eothen little
thought, when vaunting the activity,
resources, and polyglot accomplishments
of his travelling attendant,
that he was providing future fame
and custom for one of the most
detestable caravanserais to which,
for want of a better, Englishmen ever
thronged. Missiri’s hotel, the best
in Pera, is one of the worst and
dearest in Europe. Small rooms,
bad wines, unwholesome dinners of
a bastard French description, enormous
charges, and gross impertinence,
constitute the programme of
an establishment which, during the
war, was so overwhelmed with custom
that it frequently rejected, in
one morning, as many guests as
would have filled it from cellar to
garret. The notion had got abroad
that it was the only possible inn in
Pera; that at all the others you
were poisoned, and plundered, and
flea-bitten to an unendurable extent;
in short, that it was the correct house
of resort. When an idea of this
kind takes root amongst Englishmen,
argument and proof are alike in vain
to eradicate it. The truth is that
there were other hotels, very little,
if at all worse, than that of Angleterre,
and where, if the dining-room
was rather smaller, the civility was
certainly much greater. But this
was not credited; and the English
flocked to Missiri’s, until no Englishman
who could possibly find room—though
it were but a shakedown in a
subterranean suite, to which lastcomers
were consigned—would go
elsewhere, because at Missiri’s alone
was he sure to find his acquaintances
and countrymen. So that the hotel
had literally the pick of the innumerable
English passing to and from the
Crimea, or abiding for a time in Constantinople.
It was in the position
of a dealer who finds ten times as
many buyers as his stock will supply,
and who sells at his own price, delivering
his goods with a grumble
and a snarl, as if he reproached himself
at the last moment with not having
been more extortionate. The
cool insolence with which this great,
crowded, noisy, comfortless tavern
rejected every species of complaint,
however well founded, bidding malcontents
to go farther and fare worse,
the unblushing assurance with which
the most exorbitant charges were defended
and maintained, the grudging
surliness with which the merest trifle
was conceded when out of the established
routine of the house, the impertinent
opposition frequently made
to the private arrangements of guests,
caused one to sigh for the comforts
and civility of an English village inn
or French provincial hostelry—each
fifth-rate in its own country; but oh!
how superior in all essentials to the
best hotel at Pera!
From this, most joyfully, on a morning
early in May, did I turn my steps,
followed by two porters bearing my
moderate baggage, and descend that
precipitous and perilous street which,
its surface agreeably varied by loose
paving-stones, dead rats, and deep
holes, is the most direct route to the
Bosphorus. The journey is not fifteen
minutes long, but one passes through
much variety. The upper part of the
street is rather busy. First comes
the Russian embassy, then scraping
and cleaning preparatory to the reception
of a new ambassador. It
was used, during the war, as a hospital
for French officers. A little
lower down are the English postoffice
and the French army post;
also some French buvettes or wineshops,
with inscriptions on their windows
and walls, such as one sees at
the barriers and in the faubourgs of
Paris, announcing the excellence and
price of the wine and absinthe vended
within. A hotel succeeds to the
English post, and just opposite to
it are some tottering uninhabited
houses, such as there are many of in
Pera, uselessly encumbering ground
of immense building value, and
threatening to fall into the balconies
over the way. Below this the street
gets narrow, and assumes a solitary
and mysterious aspect. Armenian
families dwell here; and here, as
may be known by the close latticeshutters
that defend every opening,
are the houses of Mussulmans. No
sign of life at door or window, and
few passengers in the street. You
meet perhaps a porter toiling up with
one of those tremendous loads, which
Turks alone have the power and
knack of bearing; his sinewy brown
legs bare, and the sweat raining from
his shaggy eyebrows; further on, you
come upon a group of British cavalry
officers, just across from Scutari, upon
luncheon and lounging intent; lower
down you overtake a commissariat
official in blue uniform, with velvet facings,
rosy, and inclined to corpulence,
as commissaries should be, and not
unfrequently are. He is in command
of a small party of soldiers, escorting
a string of Turks, laden with specie
for the Crimea. Then you are in
your turn overtaken by one in staff
uniform, mounted on a handsome
Arab, too good to be knocked about
amongst these abominable pavements
and holey places, and followed by an
interpreter in cap of red and gold. It is
the gallant and popular Major B——
one of Charles James Napier’s Scinde
lambs, who reigns supreme over the
depot of the Turkish Contingent on
the Bosphorus, and is on his way to
Stamboul to smoke the pipe of peace
and hold converse of grave import
with the worthy Seraskier Mehemet
Rushdi Pasha—one of the few honest
and disinterested statesmen, be it said
en passant, of whom Turkey at the
present day can boast. And now a
short turn to the left and another to
the right take us through a series of
old-clothes shops, in and outside of
which is exhibited the most extraordinary
collection of cast-off garments
and ancient rags that the eccentric
fancy of a crazy painter ever threw
together. Houndsditch would stare
aghast at the motley museum of
toggery, to which all the nations of
the earth have contributed. Then we
got into Pipe Street; so christened
from the occupation of its inhabitants,
who are seen sitting in their
open shops, which are exactly like
wooden boxes with one side taken
out, kneading and moulding red
clay, and gilding and carving it with
much cunning, and fashioning cherry
and jasmin sticks, and fitting mouthpieces
of glass and amber, and so
composing the tchibouk—instrument
well beloved by Turks, and well
enough suited to a sedate people,
sedentary in habits and composed in
motions, but ill adapted to Western
vivacity and briskness, and a very
sorry exchange for the commodious
cigar. After passing Pipe Street, one
gets into the region of strong scents.
We will give a wide berth, if you
please, to that butcher’s shop which
forms the corner; but, wide though
it be, it suffices not, and we are nearly
knocked down by the whiff that overtakes
us. We pass a block of grimy,
tumbledown houses, at whose open
windows and doors are seen what we
at first take to be a party of boys in
gaudy masquerade dresses. They are
Armenian women, tawdrily attired,
for the most part in jackets and loose
trousers, having upon their heads
fantastical caps of gaudy embroidered
cloth, and in their mouths
large paper cigars. This street is
known amongst the British, and
particularly the maritime portion of
the population of Pera, Galata, and
Tophaneh, as Kummupjonni Street,
a name on whose etymology we are
pondering when we are enveloped
and assailed by such a diabolical and
horrible stench that all reflection and
reasoning are at once expelled from
our head. It is like passing Death’s
laboratory, just as a bottle of Concentrated
Essence of Cholera is broken.
How anybody can live for a day
within a thousand yards of this
dreadful exhalation appears miraculous.
Yet the neighbourhood is
densely peopled, and the author of
the perfume, a fabricator of a mess
of faded vegetables soaked in fetid
vinegar—a preparation much approved
and consumed by the Turks—stands
in his shop looking healthy
and comely, and seemingly unaffected
by the miasma he evokes from a sort
of sewer into which the superfluous
acids and steaming residue of his
cauldron flow through a greasy grating.
We fly with a shudder, the
effluvia pursuing us, and it is hours
before the reminiscence entirely
leaves our nostrils, chased thence by
the fresh breezes of the Euxine.
The Ferdinando Primo, Austrian
Lloyds’ steamer, advertised to sail at
noon that day, was smoking at her
anchorage hard by Seraglio Point
when I pushed off from the dilapidated
jetty of Tophaneh. As my
caïque neared her I saw there was
no need for hurry, or chance of her
sailing at the appointed time. She was
environed, besieged, blockaded, by a
flotilla of the miscellaneous craft that
swarm in the Golden Horn. Of all
places in the world, I believe Constantinople,
its harbour and environs,
to be that which affords most studies
for the painter, whether his taste be
for landscape, groups, physiognomy,
or buildings, and there were a thousand
to be found here in the congregation
of boats and miscellany
of races that pressed, splashed, rubbed,
ground, screamed, scolded, and
swore against the sides of the slovenly
Austrian craft, whose decks were a
chaos of lumber and a hive of humanity.
My two athletic and picturesque
Greeks, in their red skull-caps, loose
shirts, and short trousers of striped
muslin, their berry-brown breasts and
magnificent legs bare, their splendid
mustaches—which a British Guardsman
would have thought cheap at a
twelvemonth’s pay—twisting out,
like the tendrils of a vine, on either
side of their classical countenances,
drove the nozzle of their slender skiff
into a narrow opening in the outer
line of boats and lighters, which were
five or six deep around the steamer,
following up the intrusion by a volley
of those colloquial amenities common
amongst the boatmen, porters,
robbers, beggars, and canaille of Constantinople—that
is to say, amongst
nine-tenths of the entire population
of that most disreputable capital and
its suburbs. The Billingsgate of the
Bosphorus must be heard and understood
for its richness to be appreciated;
its furious vehemence makes
every stranger wonder that it so
rarely leads to blows. In the case
of my oarsmen it did not even lead
to a passage to the vessel’s gangway.
Turkish women, looking like bundles
of particoloured rags cast into the
bottom of boats, scarcely vouchsafed
a glance of their calm serious dark
eyes at the noisy intruders; lightermen
opposed to us the passive resistance
of their heavy-laden barges;
three dirty-faced English merchant
sailors, extricating themselves from
the press, brought their heavy broadbottomed
ship’s-boat against the
bows of our caïque, making her lose
what little vantage she had gained,
at which I thought my Greeks would
have torn out their mustaches, or
committed suicide on the spot, or
done some other desperate deed in
the excess of their frantic fury. And
here, before quitting Constantinople,
perhaps, and I hope, for ever (for
Stamboul, which in Turkish estimation
is but one remove from Paradise,
is a most detestable residence to a
civilised Christian), I will just destroy
a popular delusion, originating,
I believe, with Byron, with respect
to the convenience and agreeableness
of the “light caïque,” that description
of boat being about the most
uncomfortable I am acquainted with.
I do not here refer to fine, roomy,
eight-oared caïques, in which you sit
on well-cushioned benches and with
perfect convenience, six or eight persons
if you please, whilst in front of
you are your eight or ten rowers, and
in rear, on an elevated poop, the
helmsman with an umbrella, at sight
of which parasol, and of the multitudinous
oars, and at the general
aspect of the whole, the guards turn
out wherever you pass, and arms are
presented to you all the way up the
Bosphorus, no matter who or what
you are, because you might be a
pasha, punctilious in matters of etiquette,
in which case the soldiers
might get the stick for omitting the
proper forms. But to keep up a
craft of this sort, with its numerous
crew, is no slight expense, and is
usually done only by ambassadors,
by wealthy Turkish functionaries,
and by contractors for the supply of
the army in the East. Therefore, in
speaking of caïques, I refer to the
common sort, hired for the trip or
day by ordinary people, and having
one, two, or three rowers. In these
cranky things you sit down on rugs
or cushions of questionable purity,
your head on a level with the gunwale,
your body forming the letter
L, since your legs are stretched out
before you, and your back kept bolt
upright by the perpendicular front of
the poop. The only way to be tolerably
comfortable in these boats is
to sit cross-legged, like a Turk, a
posture to which few Europeans ever
habituate themselves. In hot weather
you lose the breeze, owing to your
being so low in the boat, whilst the
glare of the sun is terrific; in winter,
if there is the least sea on, you are
sure to get a ducking, and may not
improbably get capsized, for although
the boatmen on the Bosphorus are
generally skilful, the caïque is unsafe
from its extreme sharpness and narrowness,
and no year passes without
accidents, especially between Constantinople
and Scutari.
The arrangements of the Austrian
Lloyds, up the Danube from Constantinople
to Vienna, are certainly
not better than are to be expected
from a company enjoying a complete
monopoly. Now that the Danube is
open, it is to be hoped, for the sake
of the public, that an opposition line
will be started. This would be a
considerable undertaking, and of
course the Austrian company would
do its utmost to impede and embarrass
its competitor’s operations; but
still I think that a good line of
foreign boats might, by energy and
perseverance, overcome all difficulties.
The Austrian Lloyds is not in
favour with the public, and its present
system can please none but the
shareholders, who annually divide
large profits. Its prices are extremely
high, and the accommodation
it offers is very indifferent. Now
that Paris is less than sixty hours’
railway from Pesth, the route to
Constantinople by the Danube ought
to be able to compete with that by
Marseilles or Trieste. Doubtless
many persons, especially of those
who fear sea-sickness, would prefer
it to Mediterranean and Adriatic
buffetings, if in other respects it
offered the same advantages as the
passage by sea. At present the Danube
route is fully thirty per cent
dearer than that by Marseilles. It
is at best but a long and tedious
journey up or down the Danube;
and when to its monotony and weariness
are added the very worst style
of German cuisine (such as prevails
on board most of the boats), and a
system of sleeping accommodation
by which the passengers are ranged
on a double row of shelves, in a
stifling atmosphere replete with entomological
torments, and with one
washing-basin for each thirty persons—and
this for five or six days
together—travellers unused to roughing
it will be apt in preference to risk
the swell in the Gulf of Lyons, the
smart gales that sometimes blow off
Sicily’s shores and amongst the isles
of Greece, and the heavy gusts not
unfrequent in the Sea of Marmora.
Then in summer the boats on the
Danube do not run often enough.
The fast boat (and the slow ones are
out of the question for persons going
any distance, and serve only for goods
and aborigines) runs but once a-week,
and is consequently often so overcrowded
that people are compelled
to sleep on sofas and tables, and even
on deck. This I myself have seen.
On such occasions the officers of the
boat are in the habit of selling their
cabins for the voyage at very handsome
prices. And the boats are also
badly timed. You wait never less
than one, generally two, sometimes,
I was there assured, three days at
Galatz, where the sea-boat from Constantinople
leaves you, and the river-boat
takes you up. All this surely
requires amendment, now that there
is so great an increase of intercourse
between Eastern and Western Europe.
Such amendment would perhaps be
made by the Austrians if they once
saw their present monopoly as carriers
seriously menaced. Austria has
long been jealous of maintaining influence
in Moldo-Wallachia; and the
general opinion in those principalities
is that she will do her utmost to
filter her way into the country, and
gain a permanent footing there by
appropriating as many public establishments,
such as railroads, banks,
and lines of fluvial navigation, as she
can get into her hands. The more
suspicious see in these projects a
hope and design of ultimate annexation;
but this must be so remote a
prospect, that it is more reasonable
to attribute them to the expectation
of present profit.
I was informed, on landing at
Giurgevo, that a little old gentleman,
of imperious air, and with a full
white beard, who seemed to be keeping
everybody in motion for his own
special service, was one of the greatest
boyards in Moldavia. This was
the first opportunity I had had of
observing a boyard on his own dunghill,
and I thought I ought to have felt
more impressed upon the occasion.
I confess I should have taken him
for an old Jew, possibly for a dealer
in cast-off raiment. I now learned
that the beard was the distinguishing
mark of the boyard, and of this I
had further proof as I proceeded
towards Bucharest. That city was
the destination of three or four of my
fellow-travellers from Galatz, and we
at once informed ourselves as to the
best means of getting there. A diligence
would start immediately, we
were told, so we hastily devoured a
bad breakfast, and were in readiness
to start; not so the diligence, which
was shown to us standing near
the inn, and looking as unlike a
move as if it had merely been placed
there to ornament the neighbourhood.
Occasionally a Tartar-looking personage,
fantastically clothed in sackcloth,
emerged from a tumbledown
shed, approached the vehicle, gazed
at it admiringly, and then again disappeared.
After this had been repeated
at intervals for about an hour
and a half, eight horses, or rather
ponies, entangled in a quantity of
rope-work, were brought into the
yard and attached to the diligence,
which was evidently an old German
carriage, deemed past work in its
own country, but still good enough
for the Danubian Principalities; still
there were no signs of loading our
luggage, but presently appeared a
cart, in which we were informed it
was to be transported. In most
countries, but especially in the East,
imprudent is the traveller who suffers
himself to be separated from his kit,
and we protested accordingly, but in
vain. The diligence had its full complement
of passengers, and that it
should also carry their baggage, and
reach Bucharest that night, or without
a breakdown, was entirely out
of the question; so, after stipulating
that the cart should keep up with
the diligence, we were fain to submit
to the unsatisfactory arrangement.
It is but forty-two miles from
Giurgevo to Bucharest, and as we
started before eleven o’clock, and
were told that we should change
horses twice on the road, we thought
ourselves justified in believing the
assurance given us that we should
reach the latter place by five in the
afternoon. Our team was not a very
promising one. The eight horses, of
all sizes, and in most diversified
harness, some of the leaders being
without bits, were driven by two wildlooking
postilions in sheepskin caps,
and started off at a good pace. But
all sign of a road disappeared almost
as soon as we got out of Giurgevo.
There was a mere wheel-track across
the plain. For some distance our
course lay through pastures, where
grazing is allowed on payment of
about a zwanziger, or eightpence
English, per head of cattle, for six
months. When we got off the level
and upon an undulating surface, our
way was through little copses, and
the track was frequently so narrow
that the oak saplings almost brushed
into the carriage as we passed. The
road was nowhere very picturesque,
but here and there it was pretty
enough, and the woods were thickly
fringed with wildflowers; not, however,
in the profusion that existed
when I again travelled along the
same track at the beginning of July,
when we drove literally through
fields of blossom, marigolds, and
hollyhocks, and purple flowers growing
like lavender, and feathery grey
flowers, and beds of pinks. Then,
however, I journeyed through the
densest clouds of that insidious white
dust which is one of the plagues of
Bucharest and its environs. Now, a
shower the night before had soaked
the soil, which is there of a sticky
tenacious nature, so entirely without
admixture of stones and pebbles that
I do not believe you could gather a
bushel of these on the whole road
from Giurgevo to Bucharest. In
winter the ground is so deep that
there is almost an end to travelling,
except in light carriages with many
horses, and the transport of merchandise
and produce is nearly suspended;
this is owing to the want of roads,
of which but very few miles have
been made in Wallachia during the
whole period of Prince Stirbey’s hospodarship,
although large sums have
annually been set aside for the purpose.
In winter, tracks, passable
enough in summer, become quagmires.
This was not the case on the
day of our journey, but still there
was mud enough to retard our progress,
and we got on but slowly,
looking anxiously out for a relay.
At last we ascertained that we should
change horses but once, instead of
twice or three times, and glad were
we when, after crossing a bridge over
a shallow stream, we pulled up at a
road-side inn. We looked for fresh
posters, but none appeared; we were
invited to alight, and presently the
truth transpired, which was that we
were to go right through to Bucharest
with the same eight weary
garrons, and, to enable them to perform
this feat, we were to halt for a
time where we now were. This was
a nuisance, but grumbling was useless.
I was amused, and perfectly
astonished, at the plan adopted to invigorate
our cattle for their second
long stage. After they had devoured
a copious feed of corn, they were
freed from all harness, and driven
like so many oxen into the river.
After unlimited drink and much
splashing and soaking, a mounted
man rode into the river on the other
side, and drove them out, and they
came scampering, capering and kicking
up to the diligence, and submitted
themselves to be rubbed down
and harnessed with the usual docility
of Moldo-Wallachian horses.
It was a Sunday, a hot and beautiful
day, and the inhabitants of the
straggling village were making the
most of the holiday. The inn,
a mere road-side winehouse and
baiting place, which a few weeks
later was sacked and partly destroyed
by a detachment of Austrian soldiers
that was marching through, was full
of peasants eating and drinking.
The sound of music and festivity, a
short distance off, attracted us, and
we soon came upon a wedding-party,
dancing and making merry outside
the dwelling of the bride’s family.
The dance that seemed most in
favour was neither graceful nor
diversified in its figures; the dancers
formed a circle, holding hands, and
alternately closed in and spread out,
increasing or diminishing the circumference.
This seemed the whole of
the dance, which, however, was
nearly broken up by such an event as
the approach of four or five strangers,
one of them an officer in uniform,
and another having a rather luxuriant
beard, which immediately caused
him to be taken for a boyard of the
first feather. The women seemed
bashful—they were certainly shy and
not pretty, and it struck me that
some of them would have been the
better for soap and water. Their
dress, which was that common
amongst their class in Wallachia,
consisted of a shirt, fastened round
the neck and completely covering
the upper part of their persons.
From the waist downwards they were
dressed like the women of nearly all
countries—that is to say, they wore a
lot of petticoats—but, above the waist,
the chemise was their only covering.
This costume has rather a striking
effect, until one gets used to it. To
very well made women, who do not
require the support of the corset—and
many such are to be found
amongst the Wallachian peasantry—it
is far from unbecoming, since it displays
the contour and graces of the
form far better than any artificial
tightening; but in the case of women
past a certain age, and who have
been addicted to child-bearing, stays
are missed, and the coup d’œil is by
no means satisfactory. The shirt is
sometimes of a material which,
without being indecently transparent,
allows a slight flesh tint to transpire;
but these shirts are usually
thickly sprinkled with stars or other
devices worked in gold or silver, and
this is, I believe, considered the strict
national costume. The usual ornaments
of the women of the lower
classes are gold and silver coins, and
even the mixed metal piastres. They
are pierced and strung, and worn as
necklaces, and also in the form of a
sort of cap or broad circlet over the
hair. In full dress, a Wallachian
peasant girl thus usually carries her
dowry on her person. The temptation
of these rosaries of ducats and
dollars sometimes proved too strong
for the virtue of the Austrian occupants
of the Principalities, and many
stories did I hear, too many of them
well authenticated, of poor girls being
stripped of their little fortune by
the rude hand of a brutal Kaiserlich.
To judge from the quantity of coin,
chiefly Turkish and Austrian, displayed,
by the ladies of the wedding-party,
they were rather well-to-do
people of their class. The bride
wore several of the large gold Turkish
coins, as big as Spanish ounces, to
say nothing of a quantity of smaller
money. She was brought up to be
shown to us, quite as a matter of
course, and kissed the hand of our
bearded companion, who, admonished
by some little murmur of Backshish!
that reached his ears, had to requite
the compliment in specie. Backshish
is quite as much in favour in the
Christian provinces on the Danube as
in any other part of Turkey. I must
say that, even if the bride’s kiss had
been on his lips instead of his hand,
it would hardly have been worth the
money, for she was an ordinary-looking
damsel, much surpassed in beauty
by many of her bridesmaids and companions.
Doubtless she was lovely
in the eyes of the bridegroom, a
sheepish but good-tempered-looking
young fellow, who seemed immensely
gratified by the honour of our visit,
and especially by the condescension
of the pseudo-boyard. We were
given to drink, and for aught I know,
so rapidly did our popularity increase,
we should have been invited to supper,
had not much whip-cracking,
and jingling, and shouting, warned
us that our carriage was ready and
our time up. Our horses had had an
hour and a half’s rest, thanks to
which they managed to perform the
rest of the journey, and brought
us, soon after eight of the clock, to
the barrier of Bucharest the well-beloved.
The undulating nature of the ground
on which Bucharest is built renders
it difficult to obtain from any point
of the environs a full view of the city.
One of the best I have seen is a lithograph
published at Vienna, taken
from the river bank, and having the
metropolitan church, which stands
on an eminence, in the centre of the
picture. After passing the barrier,
one proceeds for a considerable distance
over open ground, diversified
with gardens, but sparingly sprinkled
with houses, and giving little the idea
of a town. Indeed, except in the very
heart of the place, in the great principal
street, the Mogosöe, in the
Leipsick street and a few other shop
streets, the Wallachian capital has
much more the look of a large
straggling village than of a city. It
seems as if pains had been taken to
avoid the compactness which, as economising
distances, is generally held
desirable in a large town. It is full
of gardens and enclosures, and of
open spaces of waste ground. Every
house of any size and pretensions has
a garden, and usually a large one. The
effect produced is very rural and
pleasing; the masses of brick and
mortar are few, foliage and flowers
are everywhere. Earthquakes being
of no unfrequent occurrence here (although
some years have elapsed since
one occurred sufficiently violent to do
much damage), few houses are built
more than one story high. Thus it
is easy to understand that Bucharest,
with a population of 100,000, or
according to the highest estimate
120,000 souls, includes within its
barriers an area said to be equal to
two-thirds of that of Paris. Were it
a commercial place, the distances
would be extremely inconvenient;
as it is, and for the mere purposes of
social intercourse, the inhabitants
spend a very large portion of their time
in carriages, the more so as it can
hardly be said that there is any particular
quarter prescribed by fashion
as the residence of the upper classes,
who are scattered in very opposite
directions. If it be true, as Sam
Slick says, that the way to estimate
a capital is by its private carriages,
Bucharest should rank pretty high,
for there, more than anywhere else,
is a carriage almost a necessary of
life; and as the expense of keeping it
is not great, forage being abundant
and horses cheap, most families in
easy circumstances have at least two
vehicles—one for the husband, the
other for the wife. When there is
only one the lady generally takes it,
and the husband contents himself
with a hired birja—a light calèche,
drawn by two horses, which you engage
by the day or hour. In most
places this mode of engagement would
imply a very moderate rate of speed;
but the birja-drivers, most of whom
are Russians, spurred by the hopes
of a backshish, go at an astonishing
rate, and a foreigner is more apt—until
he becomes aware of their skill
in driving and of the unfrequency of
accidents—to check their speed than
to urge them to increased haste over
the broken pavement and many holes
and round the sharp corners of the
streets of Bucharest.
One sees few old buildings in
Bucharest, the last bad earthquake
having upset nearly all the lofty and
ancient fabrics. There are many
large handsome houses, but the style
of building is generally plain. The
eye with difficulty gets accustomed
to the strange contrasts met with at
every step. Hard by spacious mansions,
the residence of wealthy boyards,
one almost literally stumbles
over low Bulgarian huts, constructed
half above and half under the ground.
There are generally large courts in
front of the better class of houses,
and down one side of them frequently
extends a range of low mean buildings,
used as stables and offices,
which shock the eye by their juxtaposition
to the principal and handsome
edifice. The streets are of extraordinary
irregularity, and a stranger
is long in learning his way about the
town; the more so as he rarely
walks, the mud in winter, and the
dust, heat, and distances in summer,
putting that mode of locomotion
nearly out of the question. The
badness of the pavement, and its
total absence from a great portion
of the streets, is accounted for by
the size of the town, which would
require an enormous paving rate to
be levied on its comparatively scanty
population. Moreover, in Wallachia,
and especially under its recent ruler,
money levied for useful public objects
has but too often been diverted from
its original destination, and scandalously
misapplied, sometimes to purposes
of political corruption. And
even where public works have been
executed, it has been at an exaggerated
cost, explicable only by a system
of robbery unparalleled elsewhere
than in the East. Thus the very
handsome opera-house, quite worthy
of a first-rate European capital, filled
the pockets of architects and contractors,
and government officials,
and might have been erected three
or four times over for the sums
that were embezzled and swallowed
up in its construction. The exhospodar
Stirbey, in the sort of
justification he has recently published,
boasts of this theatre as one
of the benefits conferred on Bucharest
during his reign. As far as the
fact of its erection goes, there it
stands, to speak for itself, an extremely
handsome house, luxuriously
fitted up, with lobbies, staircases,
and saloons on a magnificent scale,
and whose only fault is that, in their
anxiety for an imposing effect, the
designers have made the boxes so
lofty that it never looks well filled.
But touching the cost, Prince Stirbey
is mute, although it is well known
in Wallachia how monstrous it was,
and how large a portion of it was
absorbed by the most barefaced peculation.
It is not only as regards the buildings
composing it, but in a thousand
other respects, that Bucharest is par
excellence the city of contrasts. Some
of the most striking of these are
vividly summed up in a few lines by
the late French Consul-general at
Bucharest, M. Poujade, in one of
his interesting contributions to the
Revue des Deux Mondes.[5] “One
sees,” he says, “palaces, or at least
handsome hotels, and frightful hovels;
carriages from the workshops of
Binder or Clochez, drawn by coachmen
in sumptuous livery, and enormous
Transylvanian carts, enclosing
a population like that of Noah’s Ark,
and drawn by eight, ten, twenty horses
or mares, with their colts playing
around them at full liberty; fiery
high-bred Russian and Hungarian
horses, and huge red-eyed buffaloes;
elegant men and women dressed according
to the latest Parisian fashion,
and peasants in much the same
costume as the Dacians wore two
thousand years ago; dirty Albanians
perambulating the streets selling
braga (a fermented drink), and shops
in which are displayed the bonbons
of Boissier, and the gastronomical
delicacies of Potel and Chabot;
monks smoking their pipes at the
winehouse, and on the tombs, in the
cemeteries that exist in the very heart
of the town, side-by-side with gypsies,
and with itinerant musicians (laoutari)
dressed in long flowing cloaks,
the violin, mandoline, or pandean-pipes
suspended to their girdle, ready
to sell their services at a baptism, a
marriage, or a burial. Oriental life,
which is departing, and European
life, which replaces it, are here associated,
and succeed each other as in
a panorama.” This is a very well
dashed-off glimpse of Bucharest, with
true and lifelike tints, like one of
Preziosi’s capital aquarelles of Constantinople
streets. Such contrasts
and details might be multiplied
almost infinitely; for the physiognomy
of Bucharest has a thousand
different faces, both by day and by
night. The gypsies alluded to by M.
Poujade are a singular feature of the
sketch, tawny wild figures dwelling
by preference like ghouls in the graveyards,
housing themselves also under
ragged canvass on those desert plots of
ground which abound in Bucharest,
or taking up temporary quarters in
the shells of unfinished houses. A
stranger, unacquainted with their dialect,
can gain but little insight into
their usages and customs. Borrow
should go amongst them; he would
find a rich field for observation. They
work, many of them, as bricklayers;
the women hang about, tawny dishevelled
creatures, with infants tugging
at their yellow breasts. The children,
when a little older, are almost
like the young of animals. You are
driving down the busiest street of
Bucharest on a sultry summer noon.
You have just passed an elegant
carriage with a pair of spanking
bays; a most correct coachman on
the box; a strapping chasseur, bearded,
befeathered, and sword-bearing,
in the rumble; within, a couple of
princesses (the Wallachians freely
translate their native titles into the
highest current in Western Europe)
attired in the last fashions from
Longchamps: the whole turn-out
would be perfectly in place in Hyde
Park or the Bois de Boulogne.
From the door of a shop full of cravats,
perfumery, and other “nouveautés
de Paris,” the mere sight of which
transports you to Regent Street or
the Boulevards, a couple of dandies
with well-waxed mustaches have just
waved to you a yellow-kid salutation.
Twenty paces further, in a shallow
recess of the street, you come to a
bronze pump, under and around
which are collected a group of gypsy
urchins, nearly of the same colour as
the metal, with thin legs, prominent
abdomens, and monkey features, and
all as naked as they were born. It
is hard to believe that any more
exact link than this will ever be
found between man and the baboon.
The creatures are in a state of perfect
animal enjoyment. The thermometer
is at 100° in the shade at
the very least, and they are rushing
in and out of the gush of bright cold
water from the fountain, their dingy
bodies sparkling in the sun, their
monkey features grinning like chimney-piece
ornaments. Their bath
over, they will run naked through
the streets to where their mothers’
kettle boils, and lie down to sleep in
the dust, in the shadow of a tombstone.
One is tempted to think that,
in that climate, a cool pump, a shady
nook, and the absence of raiment,
constitute the perfection of human
happiness.
I believe that every foreigner
who visits Bucharest in the fine
season carries away with him a
most agreeable impression of the
place. In winter, when the snow
lies deep, and the streets are sloughs,
and the wolves prowl hungrily in the
fields around the town, and occasionally
risk themselves in the suburbs
and carry off a stray child, the attraction
may be less, even though that is
the gay season, when balls and suppers
abound, and masquerades occur
almost every night. But in early
summer, before the scorching sun has
embrowned the foliage and driven
away the wealthier of the inhabitants,
nothing can be more agreeable than
this rural city, belted with pleasant
meadows and promenades, and nestling
in a net-work of gardens and a
bower of vines. During my two
months’ stay I saw many English and
French pass through, chiefly officers
from the Crimea or Constantinople,
who chose that route home; and all
seemed delighted with their visit, and
appeared to depart with regret. Bucharest
is a city of idleness, and life
there is arranged so as to while away as
agreeably as possible the superabundant
leisure. The usual dinner-hour
is three or four o’clock, and after that
meal many persons go to take ice
or a stroll in a large and delightful
public garden in the centre of the
town—also a benefit bequeathed to
Bucharest by Prince Stirbey’s administration,
at the cost of the unrequited
labour of thousands of unfortunate
serfs. The best society,
however, frequents this garden but
little, or remains there but a short
time, proceeding, about seven o’clock,
to the agreeable drive known as the
Chaussée, a road out of the town
which is a continuation of the main
street, with plantation and a garden
on either side, and further on, an
avenue of trees separating it from
luxuriant pastures. It is here that an
idea is best formed of the luxury and
wealth of Bucharest, whither, in fact,
nearly all the rich people of the province
repair to spend their money.
On the Chaussée assemble the fashionables
of the Wallachian capital,
a few of the men mounted on fine
horses, but most of them, and all the
ladies, in elegant carriages of Vienna
and Paris build. This, of a summer
evening, is the focus of flirtation, and
the source and centre of not a little
scandal. After a few turns up and
down, at as rapid a pace as the
throng of vehicles will permit, the
ladies generally draw up by the side
of the footpath, and either alight and
walk, or receive visits in their open
carriages. Amongst the crowd of
dashing equipages were conspicuous,
this last summer, those of the hospodar,
known from afar by the scarlet
liveries of the servants, and those
of the foreign diplomatic agents,
most of them with chasseurs or
richly attired Albanians. The numerous
Austrian uniforms added to the
animation of the scene, some of the
young staff-officers driving handsome
curricles and tilburies, whilst the
crowd was completed by the humble
but ubiquitous birja. As the daylight
waned, the crowd diminished,
although, in the fine summer evenings,
not a few promenaders remained
till after dark, strolling amongst the
trees, or seated in the carriages, enjoying
the pleasant coolness; and
here and there vacant vehicles, whose
absent owners were well known,
afforded pretext of malicious comment
to lingering scandal-mongers.
Towards nine o’clock, the Chaussée
was generally nearly deserted,
and, on driving into town, many
of the carriages might be seen
drawn up at the door of the
Tortoni of Bucharest, from which
excellent ices and refreshments were
brought out to the fair occupants.
A few, braving the heat, would
thence proceed to the theatre, where
a French company had replaced the
Italians; whilst the men betook
themselves to the Rouman Circle, a
newly established club, or proceeded
to join parties of a few friends, a sort
of Spanish conversational tertulia,
which replace, when the season of
gaiety is over, assemblies of a more
numerous and pretentious description.
Night in Bucharest is not without
peculiarities which forcibly strike the
stranger. For those persons who insist
upon pedestrian exercise, it is
the best time for a stroll, for although
the heat often but partially departs
with daylight, the dust is less, and
moreover at evening, the Chaussée,
the avenues to it, and some of the
principal streets, as well as those
leading to the Tchismedjiou or public
garden, are watered in a sort of primitive
way, by men with carts who
draw off the water into churn-shaped
tubs and dash it over the thirsty soil
and heated pavements. Of a clear
warm night, when the streets and
gardens are bathed in the bright silver
light of a Wallachian moon, the
people of Bucharest may be said to
live in the open air. Every window
is open, and they stand outside their
houses or gossiping at the doors.
They are an early-rising population,
and by eleven the streets are nearly
deserted and stillness reigns. One
very curious practice which prevails
is that of sleeping in the streets.
Walking along between ten and
eleven one warm dark evening (gas
is unknown in Bucharest, and oil
lamps are dim, few, and far between)
I suddenly found myself trampling
upon cushions. On investigation, the
soft substance proved to be a mattress.
Fortunately no one was as
yet sleeping on it. It occupied the
whole width of the narrow pavement,
and I stepped off into the carriageway.
Just then a man issued from
an open door, with a coverlet on his
arm; he was making his bed. Several
other beds were arranged in succession
close to the walls of the
houses; it was an al fresco dormitory.
Doubtless in a hot climate the
plan has its advantages, securing
fresh air and avoiding troublesome
domestic insects. The risk of being
trampled upon is small in a city
where scarcely a soul is seen in the
streets after midnight. I was informed,
just as I was leaving Bucharest,
that these out-of-door slumberers
are chiefly Jews, there very numerous,
and that they have a summer festival
which lasts about a fortnight and commemorates
the passage of the desert
by the children of Israel, during which
they do not sleep under a roof, and
that a tradition exists amongst them
that a child conceived during that
period will be the Messiah. This
tale was told me by Christians, and I
by no means vouch for its correctness,
but it is curious, and I was
afterwards sorry I had not had time
to ascertain positively, by inquiry of
the Wallachian Hebrews, whether
such a custom and belief really exist
amongst them.
Many of the street-sleepers have a
small dog beside their couch, which
rushes out, barking furiously, if one
inadvertently steps too near its master’s
couch. The precaution must,
one would think, be as destructive of
slumber as it may be useful against
marauders, the more so as the bark of
the vigilant sentry is usually echoed
by that of numerous vagrant curs of
all breeds and sizes which at night
infest the streets of Bucharest, and
frequently molest the pedestrian. It
is very difficult to throw stones at
these animals, for there are none to
be had, as the benighted and exasperated
stranger frequently finds when,
returning late to his lodging, he is
beset by dogs of every description,
from the diminutive yelping terrier
to animals of a really formidable size
and deep-mouthed aggressive bark,
and stoops to seek a missile. These
wild ownerless dogs, formerly so numerous
and even dangerous in Constantinople,
but now greatly thinned
and wholly daunted there by the
deadly blows and rough usage they
have received at the hands of French
soldiers and British mariners, are
still plentiful at Bucharest, where,
however, they can hardly be considered
dangerous; at least I never
heard of their devouring a human
being in the latter place, as they have
occasionally been known to do in the
Turkish capital—especially when the
said being had thought proper to
take an overpowering quantity of
strong drink and to lie down in the
gutter to sleep it off; but still they
are numerous, bold, and noisy enough
to alarm a timid person, and one
sometimes hears the affrighted scream
of a belated child or woman beset by
these persevering plagues. They are
more troublesome than bloodthirsty;
but, although the noise they make is
a most sleep-destroying nuisance, nobody
seems to think of taking measures
to expel them, even from his
own premises. At the hotel where I
lived, half-a-dozen of them had taken
up their quarters in the large courtyard
round which the house was
built. Some of them were supposed,
I believe, to belong to hostlers or
hangers-on about the establishment;
but I could not find out that their
putative owners took any charge of
them, and certainly they did not prevent
them from raising the most
diabolical din at hours when the inmates
of the hotel might be supposed
buried in sleep, or at least courting it.
The gates of the yard were often left
open; street-walking dogs would
sneak in, predatorily minded and
lured by the rank odours of the Wallachian
kitchen, and desperate conflicts
were the frequent result, the
said canine encounters being attended
with an amount of barking, snarling,
howling, and yelling, enough to waken
the dead. I do not believe it woke
the Bucharestians, although the complaints
of the sleepless strangers
staying in the house were loud and
frequent.
Beside the dogs, the most lively
and noisy creature in the streets of
Bucharest of a night is the watchman
or chinny-accolo, a compound
word which I write as pronounced,
and possibly with much offence
against correct orthography. The
newcomer to the Wallachian capital,
returning home late, is startled by
the sudden apparition of a dilapidated
figure which emerges from a
dark nook or crazy sentry-box, strikes
a heavy staff upon the pavement and
hoarsely shouts chinnyaccoloooo! the
last syllable being drawn out ad
libitum, and relinquished as if with
regret. Then the figure usually repeats
the chinny, with a short exasperated
stress on the first syllable, as
if he were angry with or insisting
upon something. The foreigner has
a vague idea that this discordant and
unintelligible cry is of the nature of
a Qui vive? or Who goes there?—as
in fact it is—but, observing that the
vociferator has no firearms, and consequently
cannot requite silence with
a shot, and being moreover in total
ignorance how he should reply, he
usually walks quietly on; and the
guardian of the night, perceiving that
he is not a member of the dangerous
classes, retreats into his nook and
suffers him to pass without further
question. The Moldo-Wallachians
are an inoffensive and honest race—even
now, that they have been to a
certain extent demoralised by foreign
military occupations—crime is not
frequent amongst them, and the
chinnyaccolos have little to do. Now
and then they make a charge upon
an unusually noisy troop of dogs, but
their principal employment seems
to be that of covering up the sleepers
upon the pavement, when restless
slumbers, the result perhaps of an
unquiet conscience or a heavy supper,
may cause them to toss their blankets
abroad.
As, if I remember rightly, Murray’s
Hand-book for Turkey, by no
means the best of his collection, is
extremely brief and unsatisfactory in
its notice of Bucharest, I may perhaps
be rendering a service to persons
whom this imperfect sketch of
its attractions may induce to pay a
summer visit to that pleasant city,
if I devote a few lines to the subject
of hotels. In the first place, it is to
be observed that furnished lodgings
are not to be had in Bucharest,—at
least they were unobtainable in the
spring and summer of 1856; but that
was perhaps owing to the number of
Austrian officers who were billeted
upon the houses of the inhabitants.
Unless, therefore, you had a friend to
give you quarters, you had no resource
but to stop at an hotel. The
best of these is the Hôtel de Londres,
a large house built expressly
for an inn, and where one finds good
and lofty apartments, clean and
tolerably well-furnished, at high
prices; but Bucharest, especially
since the war, is by no means a
cheap place. The hotel is of enormous
size, and full of long galleries
and spacious landing-places. The
rooms are without bells, and the
mode of summoning the servants is
original and inconvenient. On each
landing-place is a bell-rope, below
which is a dial-plate, having around
it the numbers of the neighbouring
rooms. When you require anything
you have to issue forth from your
apartment, ring this bell, once for
waiter, twice for boots, thrice for
chambermaid, and turn the needle
of the dial to the number of your
room. But it frequently happens
that before the servant answers your
call, somebody else gives a pull at
the rope, and shifts the needle to his
number; so that you soon find that
the only way of getting attended to
is, after ringing, to lie in wait at
your door, and, on the appearance of
the slave, to rush out, collar him
drag him into your room, and release
him only upon his solemn promise to
do what you require before he even
looks at the dial. This is not a comfortable
state of things; but bell-hangers
are scarce in Wallachia, and
domestics generally bad. Even in
the better class of private houses,
good attendance is secured only by
keeping what in England would be
considered an unreasonable number
of servants for the requirements of
the family. The Wallachian domestics
are lazy, and imported foreigners
soon rival them in this respect. I
tried the experiment of hiring one of
the latter sort, but found he would
do nothing but sleep in the porter’s
lodge, and, when compelled to work,
took sick immediately; so I was
compelled to get rid of him, and to
revert to the system of lying in ambush
for waiters. Upon the whole,
however, one may be worse put up
than at the Hôtel de Londres,
where there is great civility, and a
desire to oblige; but hotel-keeping
is a science that has still much progress
to make in the cities of Moldavia
and Wallachia. I cannot say
much for the cooking; and the Hôtel
de France, in the Mogosöe Street, is
in that respect considered superior,
and passes for a first-rate French
restaurant, although in Vienna or
Paris it would be set down as a
gargote, and indeed a good dinner
is to be obtained there only by ordering
it beforehand, and paying rather
more than you would for a sumptuous
banquet at the Trois Frères.
Early in the month of June, in a
cloud of dust and a blaze of heat,
commenced and concluded the annual
mosh or fair of Bucharest. The
articles exposed for sale were not calculated
to give an exalted idea of
the manufacturing progress of the
province, whose best reliance for prosperity
is evidently upon its agricultural
produce. The staple commodities
were wicker-baskets, of a
wearisome monotony of form, pots of
red earth, not even glazed, and the
rough-hewn, churn-shaped buckets
here universally used, in houses,
baths, for street-watering, &c. Anything
more primitive than these
various articles cannot be imagined;
they are just what one might expect
to find amongst a newly-discovered
tribe of Indians, which, lurking in a
remote corner of the backwoods, had
avoided all intercourse with the
pale-faces. Any idea of ornament
seems utterly alien to the minds of
the peasants who manufacture these
useful but uncouth objects, which
are brought to town in carts as antediluvian
as themselves,—clumsy,
heavy vehicles, roofed in with
boughs. The only other things I
could discover in the fair which were
manifestly native productions (the
toys and trumpets smelt of Germany),
were rings of coarse, coloured
glass, to thrust over the hand and
wear as bracelets, much the sort of
thing one might look for upon the
ebon arm of the Queen of the Cannibal
Islands, or dangling from the obtuse
snout of some central-African
slave-dealing sovereign. There were
also chimney-piece ornaments formed
of clay, and representing zoological
monsters, of which traditions may
possibly have been handed down
from the days of the Dacians.
Shows there were, too: a camel
ridden by a monkey, and a gentleman
who sat upon the topmost of a
pyramid of bottles, and balanced
plates upon his nose and chin; and,
in the corner of a tent, the emanations
from which were far from fragrant,
Punch, the ubiquitous, set up
his house, attracted a delighted
audience, and went through the celebrated
drama of his serio-comic existence,
slightly varied from the
English version, but including even
a larger amount of domestic dissension,
violent deaths, and desperate
struggles with the enemy of mankind;
the whole winding up with
the appearance of a monstrous head—a
cross, apparently, between a Skye
terrier and a snapping turtle—which
caught the reprobate Polichinello by
the nose, and dragged him screaming
into the showman’s box. The streets
of the fair were formed of huts of
branches, some of them neatly
enough made, and comprising two
rooms, but which quickly lost their
fresh verdant aspect, the foliage becoming
embrowned by the sun, and
coated with dust. Inside these wigwams
a promiscuous throng ate,
drank, cooked their food, danced,
slept, suckled babies, played upon
rude musical instruments, and contrived
to exist in an atmosphere
and amongst odours that might have
stifled an habitual inhabitant of a
slaver’s hold, or a daily passenger
through the richest streams of Galata.
The mere smell of the sausages
dropping their unctuous superabundance
into the wood-fires over which
they grizzled, was a week’s dinners to
a hungry man. Except in the evening,
when the beau monde, deserting
the Chaussée, drives to the fair, the attendance
is almost exclusively of the
lower orders,—peasants in their
round sheepskin caps and antique
costume, which has scarcely varied
since Trajan’s day, many of them
stalwart, fine-looking men, with features
telling of their Italian origin;
women in more various attire, not
generally very becoming, although
one head-dress, consisting of a thin
white shawl gathered over the head,
with the ends drooping behind, is not
ungraceful. The most original and
characteristic female dress there
worn was the one I have already described,—the
shirt, often of a fine and
transparent texture, sprinkled with
stars or sprigs worked in gold or
silver, whilst round the waist are
fastened petticoats and a variety of
coloured aprons, worn both before
and behind. Besides the peasantry,
Wallachian soldiers in their ugly
uniforms, nursemaids with children,
and a few white-coated Austrians,
made up the morning attendance at
the fair. On the last day the fun
terminated with an evening entertainment
annually given by the Aga
or prefect of police, in a space enclosed
with hedges and flags, and
lighted with coloured lamps, where
music played, and people walked
about and ate ices under tents, and
where the hospodar came, with gorgeous
liveries and a numerous escort,
to admire his own portrait hung up
in a marquee, and where the aga
himself narrowly escaped apoplexy
from the violence of his exertions and
effervescence of his hospitality; and
people who had no tickets jockeyed
the sentries, leapt the ditches, and
got in through gaps in the hedges,
until at last (this being essentially
a popular festival) every one was admitted
who chose to walk in; and ragged
boys and Wallachian “roughs”
were seen elbowing boyards of fabulous
lineage, and making disorderly
and destructive onslaughts upon
trays of sweetmeats; and, finally,
everybody got extremely dusty and
tired, and began to wish he had
not come, and to long to escape;
and there was a general rush for
everybody’s carriage, which nobody
could find, and people betook themselves
to bed, and the mosh was at
an end in Bucharest for that year.
At the period of my arrival in
the Principalities, the Moldo-Wallachians
were in a fever of impatience
to get rid of the Austrian
occupation, to them most odious.
The war was over, and they could
not understand why a foreign army
should still be imposed upon them,
occasioning them great expense and
still greater annoyance. Absorbed
by domestic considerations, they did
not appreciate or even discern those
important European ones which induced
the Allies to maintain an
Austrian force on the Russian frontier
until the terms of the Treaty of
Paris should be carried out. Much
as they themselves have suffered from
Muscovite bad faith and encroachment,
their exasperation at the prolonged
presence of their detested
military guests blinded them to the
probability that Russia might seek
to evade the conditions she had
agreed to. It must be owned that
the conduct of the Austrian army
of occupation had been such as to
explain the furious eagerness of the
Moldo-Wallachians for its departure.
Its bearing had certainly not been
that becoming friends and allies in
peaceable provinces inhabited by an
extremely docile and quiet race.
Had the imperial legions conquered
the country after fierce opposition,
and found themselves surrounded by
scowling foes, whose hatred was to
be kept from dangerous manifestation
by fear alone, their conduct
might have been comprehensible.
But when they arrived there was
no particular ill-feeling towards
them, and they had only themselves
to thank for the bitter one which
afterwards arose. The general order
by which, at the end of last May, the
Emperor of Austria congratulated
his army in Moldo-Wallachia on its
military spirit and endurance of privations,
excited the laughter of all
who were aware of the real circumstances
of the case. There was little
to endure for troops whose requirements
and exactions were so great
as to constitute a most onerous burthen
on the people; and it is but a
poor military spirit that is testified
by cruel ill-treatment of unoffending
civilians. At the very time that the
order appeared, no one could pass
a few weeks in the Principalities
without becoming convinced, by personal
observation, that the general
tone and demeanour of the Austrian
soldiery in their intercourse with the
people were overbearing and aggravating,
and that the least show of
opposition led to brutality and violence.
The people of those provinces
are neither dogged nor disobliging;
a word, if they understand it, generally
suffices to procure obedience
where it is due; but they are not
particularly quick of comprehension,
and, on the other hand, the Austrians
were prone to exact more than they
were entitled to, and to enforce, by
blows, unreasonable demands or illunderstood
orders. If the behaviour
of the officers was better, although
this was by no means invariably
the case, few of them took pains
to restrain their men, but looked
on with indifference and without
interference. Of this I could cite
many examples which came under
my own notice, and others
vouched for by indisputable testimony.
On one of the first days of
June, an old white-haired Wallachian
peasant was driving a cart through
one of the most frequented streets of
Bucharest, when he somehow got in
the way of an Austrian soldier similarly
engaged. He was immediately
assailed in the fiercest manner,
thrown to the ground, and violently
beaten. A German shopkeeper,
standing at his door, witnessed this
cruelty and appealed to an officer
who was passing, entreating him to
check it. “Das geht mich nicht an”—it
is no business of mine—was the
cool reply, and the soldier was left
to satiate his fury. As for the bystanders
interfering, none would
think of doing so, for the Austrians
invariably carry their side-arms, and
instances are abundant of their
promptitude in using them against
unarmed and defenceless persons.
The Turkish soldiers in the provinces
used not to carry their bayonets and
sabres when off duty, but just before
the return of Stirbey from Vienna to
Bucharest, and within a month afterwards,
no less than sixty-nine of
them were wounded by Austrians,
and it was found necessary to authorise
them to wear their side-arms.
Last summer, a well-known English
officer, who holds high rank in the
Turkish service, was riding in the
suburbs of Bucharest, in a sort of
half uniform, but without arms, when
he overtook an Austrian soldier, carrying
his musket sloped over his
shoulder and protruding far behind
him. As he passed, the man made
a sudden movement of his body,
which caused the musket to swing
round and strike the officer a violent
blow. This was doubtless unintentional,
but the blow was so sharp
that the officer involuntarily apostrophised
the man in English, forgetting
that he would not understand him,
and asked him what he meant. Instead
of apologising, the soldier
looked steadily at him and fixed his
bayonet. There was nothing for it
but to ride on, and complaint to the
fellow’s superiors would have been
of little avail. About this same
time there occurred, at the Wallachian
town of Busco, an outrage in
which three civilians were wounded,
and whose circumstances were
rather curious. An Austrian soldier
drank in a wine-shop, and, notwithstanding
the host’s opposition, left
it without paying and ran off. He
was pursued, and, being somewhat
intoxicated, he ran into a mill-stream,
where he would have been
drowned but for the exertions of his
pursuers. Other soldiers came up,
and the rescuers were sabred; because,
argued these military sophists,
if their comrade had not been pursued
he would not have run, and
consequently would not have fallen
into the water and nearly lost his life.
I had scarcely set foot in Moldavia
when, at Galatz, numerous
instances of Austrian misconduct
were related to me, my informants
being some of the principal local
authorities, and their statements
being corroborated by a foreign
consul, who was by no means ill-disposed
to the Austrians, and indeed
took a more favourable view
of their general conduct than almost
any other person I met with in the
Principalities. But regard to truth
compelled him to admit that of the
incidents in question. A battalion
had arrived two days before, to take
its quarters in the town, and on
such occasions there were invariably
complaints to the civil authorities
from persons who had been wounded
or beaten by the soldiers. It
was no uncommon practice with
them to accept money in lieu of
lodging from the persons on whom
they were billeted, and then to go
and insist violently on admission
into quarters to which they had no
claim. Instances were cited of gross
misconduct on the part of officers.
On two different occasions these gentlemen,
having had billets assigned
them in two of the best houses in
the place, refused to accept the comfortable
rooms allotted to them, and
insisted on occupying the apartment
of the lady of the house. Compliance
being refused with the caprice
of one of them, he forgot himself
so far as to draw his sword,
and finding the door of the room he
coveted locked, he endeavoured to
kick it open. The mistress of the
house, the Countess P—, behaved
with great spirit. “Put up your
sword, sir,” she said; “your Emperor
did not give it you to be thus
used.” It was very rare that the
least redress could be obtained for
such insults and outrages, any more
than for the many grave offences
against person and property, the
robberies and murders, that were
clearly brought home to Austrian
soldiers. In Wallachia especially,
the perpetrators of such crimes were
certain of impunity; for Prince
Stirbey, long devoted to Russia,
had become the tool of Austria, by
whose influence he hoped to be
maintained in power after his term
of office should have expired. Had
he done his duty as ruler of the
Principality, he would have made
such forcible representations as must
assuredly have led to a diminution
of the evil. Instead of this, with
him whatever the Austrians did was
well done, and the strongest proofs
of their excesses, frequently laid before
him, were by him smothered
and suppressed. This was notably
the case with respect to a disgraceful
affair that occurred on the 31st May
at Buseo, a town on the road from
Bucharest to the Wallachian frontier.
A body of Austrian lancers,
marching through, required carts for
their baggage. Some slight delay
occurred in providing them, and this
being reported to the officer commanding,
he is said to have replied:
“You have got arms; take carts.”
Thus licensed, the Austrians seized
some carts which were just leaving
the town, laden with the baggage
and military-chest of a Wallachian
regiment; the slender baggage-guard,
although it made little show of
resistance, was mercilessly sabred,
and some civilians and soldiers without
arms were also cut down. The
prefect of the town was beaten and
ill-treated, and the officer commanding
the Wallachians, who reached
the place after the affray was over,
was charged and ridden down by the
playful Austrians. Prince Stirbey’s
body-surgeon, sent over specially to
look to the wounded, reported, with
the counter-signature of an Austrian
surgeon, that there were twenty
Wallachians wounded, some very
dangerously. Amongst the twenty
men there were upwards of a hundred
and twenty wounds; showing
the deliberate cruelty and ferocity of
the Austrians, for not one-third of
the wounded were armed when they
were thus barbarously assailed. The
report of the medical men was seen
by various persons in Bucharest;
the indignation was general, and
was shared and vehemently expressed
even by some of the hospodar’s
own household and clique; it was
thought impossible that so shameful
a massacre should be overlooked;
nevertheless, no steps were taken to
obtain the punishment of the guilty.
The first remark of the officer who
replaced the Wallachian minister-of-war,
then absent, was, that the Wallachians
were wrong—that they
should humour (ménager) the Austrians.
Stirbey said it was an unfortunate
affair, and forbade the newspapers
to speak of it; and so it was
hushed up, as all similar occurrences
had invariably been.
Abandoned by their prince and
natural protector to the tender mercies
of foreign intruders and tyrants,
the Wallachians testified their hatred
and anger by the only means in
their power. They excluded the
Austrians from their society, and
refused to have any intercourse
with them. The offensive strangers
were sent to Coventry; only in a
very few houses was an Austrian
uniform ever seen, and those were
the houses of persons known by their
connection with or partiality to Austria,
and who got little credit with
their fellow-countrymen by their
deviation from the rule tacitly but
generally laid down. The Austrians
knew that they were detested, and
requited the aversion shown them by
being as insolent and disagreeable as
they could. For all parties it was a
most uncomfortable state of things,
resulting in constant mutual annoyances.
In June, the Austrian
infantry regiment of Constantine
gave an entertainment to General
Coronini, then commanding in chief
in the Principalities. Marquees were
pitched on a grassy plain, at a short
distance from Bucharest, and there
were bands of music, rifle-practice,
fireworks, and other amusements.
Numerous invitations were distributed,
but scarcely any Wallachians
went, and the consequence was a
lamentable deficiency of ladies. A
Wallachian nobleman of high rank,
and notorious for his Austrian addictions,
gave a dinner to General Coronini
before his departure. It was
not thought necessary to inform all
the persons invited of the occasion of
the banquet; probably because it
was thought that, if they knew it,
some of them would refuse to attend.
The consequence was that a portion
of the guests, upon seeing whom they
were assembled to honour, considered
that a trick had been played
them; and one of them, a member
of one of the oldest and most distinguished
families of the country—not
of Fanariot origin, but of pure Rouman
blood—kept his seat, and left
his glass untasted, when the health
of the Austrian commander was proposed.
I might cite many other examples
of the bad feeling and petty
warfare between Wallachians and
Austrians. The physical superiority
being all on the side of the armed
foreigners, it was seldom that force
was opposed to their aggressions.
The only instance I remember was
in the case of a plucky little French
architect, settled at Bucharest. Some
soldiers in his house ill-treated his
servant-maid and child, and upon his
interfering, one of them raised his
arm as if to strike him. But the
Frenchman, although a very small
man, was a master in the science of
the savate; his blood was up, and he
cared nothing for odds. A tremendous
kick in the belly laid one soldier
on his back; another was knocked
into a well in the yard, and a third
kicked out of the place. In short,
the Frenchman completely cleared
his premises, but, for some time afterwards,
he was obliged to have a
sentry to protect his house, for the
Austrians came to force their way in
and massacre him.
The murder, in cold blood and
broad daylight, by a party of Austrians,
of one of the French soldiers
in charge of the telegraph, was followed
by a serious investigation, and
the guilty persons were severely
punished. This was a lesson which
doubtless had its effect. At about
the same time the number of Austrian
troops in the Principalities was
diminished by the departure of several
regiments. Stirbey also was removed
from power, to the great and
universal joy of the Wallachians, and
was succeeded by Prince Alexander
Ghika, a man of very moderate capacity,
but well-meaning and honest,
and who certainly is incapable of
shielding or conniving at Austrian
misconduct. Since then outrages
have been much less frequent, and
the Moldo-Wallachians do not appear
to have particular grounds of
complaint. A foreign military occupation
is of course, and must inevitably
be, to a certain degree, a burthen
and a nuisance to the country that
undergoes it.
Independently of the very sufficient
reasons already exposed, the
people of the Principalities had, or
believed themselves to have, a strong
political motive for desiring the departure
of the Austrian army. A
project for the union of the two provinces
under a foreign prince had
been put forward, and was ardently
advocated and agitated by persons
who imagined that they saw in its
realisation the regeneration of their
country. To this project the Austrian
government was understood to
be decidedly opposed; the Austrian
political agent at Bucharest declared
his disapproval of it in the most
public and contemptuous manner,
and with that overbearing insolence
of tone which the subserviency
of the hospodar emboldened him
upon all occasions to assume;
the Austrian officers, including a
body of engineers and their assistants,
then occupied in making a
trigonometrical survey of the country,
were generally accused of inciting
the lower orders against the Union.
Such opposition to a plan which they
somewhat hastily believed would
prove a panacea for all the many griefs
they have so long suffered under,
greatly increased the irritation of the
Moldo-Wallachians. Their minds
were set upon the Union, and dazzled
by visions of the prosperity and power
it was to bring in its train. They already
beheld Rouman nationality
restored and established on a firm
basis, and an agricultural Belgium
arising in the East, which should
rival that of the West in good government,
tranquillity, and wealth.
They beheld the men of their race,
of whom several millions now dwell
in Transylvania, Bukovina, the Banat,
and Bessarabia, and also in Podolia,
Hungary, and Macedonia, flocking
back to the provinces whence many
of them originally emigrated, and
supplying the labour which alone is
wanted to make Moldo-Wallachia
the granary of Europe. There can
be no question that the Roumans
have preserved their nationality to
an extent that is surprising, when we
consider the bloody struggle they
have had to maintain against Turks
and Tartars, Poles and Magyars, and
the numerous races amongst which
they have been scattered, often in far
inferior numbers. There seems to
be an innate sentiment of nationality
amongst the lower orders, of which
they themselves have not the intelligence.
In emigration (and, owing to
the oppressions of foreign armies and
native chiefs, emigrations have been
frequent and extensive) they preserve
their native usages, often even when
bad, sooner than adopt foreign ones.
The same is the case with their language.
In Bulgaria, Transylvania, and
elsewhere, they still speak the Rouman.
One of the most intelligent and distinguished
of living Wallachians, John
Ghika, now governor of Samos, estimates
the Rouman race (in an interesting
pamphlet, published at Paris
under the anagrammatic pseudonyme
of G. Chainoi) at nearly twelve millions.
Of these, barely five millions
dwell in Wallachia and Moldavia,
where there is not only room for, but
need of, at least double the population.
In presence of these facts and
figures, the chiefs of the national
party in these provinces built up a
scheme, of which the principal heads
were: the union of the two Principalities
into a constitutional monarchy,
under a foreign prince not
belonging to the royal family of any
one of the countries bordering on
Moldo-Wallachia,—that is to say,
neither Austrian nor Russian; the independence
of the new kingdom to
be guaranteed by the European
powers; a standing army sufficiently
strong to defend the frontier in case
of foreign aggression, at least until
such time as succours might arrive
from the guaranteeing powers. And
that the rights of Turkey might not
wholly be lost sight of, it was proposed
to continue paying her the
tribute to which she is entitled, or to
buy it off by a sum once paid down.
Thus constituted, it was argued, Moldavia
and Wallachia would form a
much more solid bulwark for Turkey
against Russian aggression, than they
do in their present unsettled dependence.
This is the rose-colour view of the
question of the Union taken by the
politicians of the Principalities, and
especially by a knot of ardent young
men who would fain apply political
theories imbibed during their education
and residence in foreign countries,
and for which they do not
perceive that their own is not yet
ripe. Nearly a year ago they had
gone so far as earnestly to discuss
what prince should be placed over
them, and warmly to debate whether
one or two legislative chambers
were preferable. Their eagerness
blinded them to the fact that it
would be scarcely possible to form
an electoral constituency worthy of
the name. The peasants, who compose
the great mass of the population,
are ignorant and degraded to a
degree which renders them wholly
unfit to be intrusted with the freeman’s
rights of voting. They are by
no means naturally vicious or destitute
of good qualities, but these have
had neither fair play nor cultivation.
The Danubian serf—for, although
nominally emancipated, he is no better
than a serf—has been systematically
oppressed and trampled upon.
He is wholly uneducated, accustomed
to blind obedience, unrequited toil,
and many stripes—in fact, a slave.
To give him a vote would be to place
it at the disposal of the boyard on
whose estate he lives. There exists,
certainly, a class of small proprietors,
especially in the mountainous parts
of Wallachia, which might be taken
advantage of as a sort of link between
the ignorant and too often drunken
peasant and the higher ranks. The
artisans and people of the towns
might also have votes, but at the
best it would be a lame business, and
it would be hard to prevent the real
influence from being concentrated in
the hands of the boyards, who hitherto
have shown themselves anything
but disposed to ameliorate the condition
of their inferiors, and who
would thus have it in their power to
impose upon the constitutional sovereign
such measures as were most to
their own advantage. Before seeking
to establish in so backward a country
as Moldo-Wallachia that constitutional
liberty for whose permanent
enjoyment so few of the most civilised
kingdoms of Europe have as yet
shown themselves ripe, a vast deal
has to be done by a government of a
more absolute nature. The intellectual
progress of the people—or, it
should rather be said, their escape
from utter moral darkness—needs to
be facilitated by juster dealing and
material improvements. Schools and
roads are wanted, and a ruler who
will check with a strong hand the
oppressions and cruelties of the boyards,
and the villanies of the middlemen
and usurers to whom the unfortunate
boor sells his future labour
for bread and brandy. The earnings
of the peasants, especially of those
composing what are called the second
and third classes, are so small that
their existence appears a miracle.
In the event of failure of crops,
murrain amongst cattle, or any other
of the serious but not unfrequent
calamities to which agriculturists are
liable—also in the event of a military
occupation, which is worse than
hail or rot—the most fortunate class
of peasants cannot expect to pull
through the year without incurring
debt. As to the man of the lowest
class, he is invariably and at all
times in debt. He gets small loans
from the Jew and Greek middlemen,
at enormous interest, which is added
to the capital every two or three
months. His only means of payment
is by labour, for which his taskmaster,
profiting by his misery, credits
him at a very low rate, until, from
less to more, he sinks into the condition
of absolute serfdom, and finds
his whole year’s toil the property of
another.
To examine in detail the social and
political condition of the Danubian
Principalities, would cover much
paper, and probably be of small interest
to English readers; but it may
be possible to give in short compass
a clear general notion of their position
relatively to Turkey. The
original treaties by which they accepted
the protection and suzerainty
of the Porte, and which date from the
sixteenth century, have long since
been infringed and set at naught.
According to these treaties, a tribute
was to be the sole acknowledgment
of Turkish supremacy; the
Sultan was forbidden to interfere in
the local administration, and the provinces
were to elect their own princes.
In defiance of this contract, the
elective right was long ago set
aside, the odious rule of the Greeks
of the Fanar was introduced, and the
post of hospodar became the prize of
the highest bidder. The office became
so profitable, owing to the unscrupulous
means of enriching themselves
resorted to by these Fanariot
princes, that it was soon the object
of eager competition. A system of
intrigue and bribery was introduced
which gave rise to continual changes
in the government of the Principalities,
and accustomed the Porte to
look upon them as farms to be let to
the highest bidders. The Greek
farmers were deposed and recalled
whenever the offers and promises of
others of their countrymen appeared
more advantageous.
“From the period at which this
system was introduced, to the beginning
of the present century,” says
Wilkinson (whose work, although
now of old date, will be found valuable
by persons desirous of tracing
from an early period the not uninteresting
history of the Principalities),[6]
“being a space of ninety years, Wallachia
alone has passed through the
hands of forty different princes, independently
of the time it was occupied
by the Russians, from 1770 to
1774, by the Austrians and Russians
from 1789 to 1792, and by the Russians,
again, from 1806 to 1812. The
evils which naturally arose from such
a state of things weighed so heavily
on the two nations, that the court of
Russia, already authorised by the
treaty of Kainardjik[7] to interfere in
their behalf, insisted at the peace of
Jassy, in 1792, that the Porte should
engage to maintain the princes of
Moldavia and Wallachia in their
respective stations for the space of
seven years, and should not molest
them in any manner previously to the
expiration of that term.”
In the sequel this agreement was
by no means regularly observed, and
its frequent infractions by Turkey
led to continual remonstrances from
Russia. The former power had long
completely lost sight of the obligations
imposed upon her by her
treaties with the Principalities, and
no stronger proof of this can be
adduced than her cession to Russia,
by the treaty of Bucharest, in
1812, of nearly half Moldavia, from
the Dniester to the Pruth, now forming
the Russian province of Bessarabia,
a portion of which has been restored
by the recent treaty of Paris.
According to the capitulations, which
to this very day are legally in force,
the Porte had no more right to dispose
of that territory than it had to
grant the temporary sovereignty of
the provinces to the greedy and
venal Greeks of the Fanar. But the
stipulated immunities and autonomy
of the Moldo-Wallachians had long
been disregarded and trodden under
foot; they could do nothing against
the power of Turkey; and Russia,
whilst seeming to sympathise with
them, joyfully beheld, in the oppressive
and illegal conduct of their
suzerain, a means of herself acquiring
influence amongst them, and perhaps
of eventually bringing them
under her own rule. To do this
she reckoned upon the services and
assistance of her party amongst the
boyards, the majority of whom,
although claiming to be old nobility,
are of mushroom origin and Greek
descent. For the last 150 years the
services of the boyards are to be
sought, not in the patriotic annals of
their country, but in the archives of
the Fanar or of St Petersburg. It
was from those amongst them devoted
to Russia, and including Bibesco
and Stirbey, upstart names now held
in abhorrence in Wallachia, that were
selected the members of the commission
appointed, at the close of the
war that commenced in 1828, to draw
up, under the superintendence of Kisseleff,
the Organic Regulations or new
Constitution of the Principalities.
This constitution professed to vindicate
and insure the rights of the
peasantry; but, although plausible
enough in the letter, the manner in
which it practically worked may be
inferred from the new and extensive
emigration that quickly followed its
promulgation, and from the wholesale
departure of rich Bulgarian
colonies, which, encouraged by the
just rule of Gregory Ghika, had
settled in Wallachia previously to
1828.
From the date of the treaty of
Adrianople until the commencement
of the late war, Russia was all-powerful
in the Principalities, and
that period, of nearly a quarter of a
century, is marked by repeated acts
of base submission on the part of
Turkey, humiliating to herself, and
treacherous to the provinces to which
she had promised protection and the
maintenance of their rights. In 1839
a firman granted to Russia the right
of controlling the acts of the Rouman
National Assembly. In the same
year Alexander Ghika was dismissed
from the hospodariat, because he
was displeasing to Russia. In 1844,
the Wallachian Assembly was suspended
for having rejected a project
of law by which the monopoly of
working the mines of the province
would have been secured to a Russian
company. Finally, in 1849, the
Porte subscribed the Sened of Balta
Liman, by which she upset all the
institutions of the Principalities, and
made a Russian commissioner their
legislator and administrator.
For a period extending far beyond
the memory of the oldest man
amongst them, the Moldavians and
Wallachians have thus been the sport
of rival and intriguing powers. They
have been deceived and oppressed
by the Porte, and sold again and
again to the best bidder; they have
been the prey of the vilest Greek adventurers,
who have done their best
to introduce amongst them their own
principles of falsehood and corruption;
they have been taxed and
squeezed by successive foreign rulers,
who saw in their brief period of
power only a favourable opportunity
of filling their pockets; they have
been harassed and impoverished by
foreign military occupations, which
ceased only to be renewed. Russia,
whilst affecting, with crocodile tears,
to commiserate and deplore their unhappy
condition, has secretly fomented
their vexations, griefs, and miseries,
in hopes of their ultimately throwing
themselves into her arms. The
triumph of the Allies has at last
delivered them, at least for the time,
from these conflicting and noxious
influences, and given them hopes that
Europe will do something to secure
their future welfare. Something ought
to be, and it is to be hoped will be,
done for them; but important considerations
may render it impossible to
grant them all that they, carried
away, after long suffering, by the
prospect of a brighter future, desire
and demand. There should be secured
to them the opportunity and means
of moral and material improvement,
and as much liberty and self-government
as they are fitted to enjoy and
able to make good use of. Their
sudden elevation, after they have so
long been sunk in degradation and
almost in slavery, into a constitutional
kingdom on the model of Belgium or
Piedmont, whilst the most sagacious
amongst them possess as yet scarcely
the rudiments of political education,
would be at best, and setting apart
considerations of European policy
that oppose themselves to it and
demand due weight, a hazardous
experiment, and one which for their
own sakes it may be thought hardly
advisable to try, since it is of a class
that has hitherto been found more
fertile in failures than in successes. It
is one which the majority of the
powers who are to decide upon the
question are not likely to risk.
Russia is understood to be favourable
to the project, but that alone
is a sufficient reason for regarding
it with mistrust. She doubtless
reckons on the powerful influences
and successful intrigues she might
bring to bear on a young kingdom
adjoining her own frontier. France
has somewhat ostentatiously put
herself forward as an advocate of
the Union under a foreign prince;
but it is now more than suspected
that Russian arguments have had
undue weight with certain prominent
members of the French government
and advisers of the French Emperor.
England, Austria, and Turkey, and
also Sardinia, will oppose the dangerous
scheme, and with good reason;
for although the Moldo-Wallachians,
who have an abundantly high opinion
of their own capacities and merits,
imagine that, were their wishes complied
with, they should within a very
short time offer to Europe the edifying
example of an Oriental Belgium,
it is feared by those who know them
best that there would be at least as
great a chance of their scandalising
it by the deplorable spectacle of a
second Greece.
LETTERS FROM A LIGHTHOUSE.—NO. I.
227
My dear Ebony,—If you still retain
in your composition one drop of
the milk of human kindness, the reappearance
of an old contributor,
whom doubtless you long ago considered
as irretrievably lost or strayed,
must impart to you a thrill of pleasure.
At all events, it ought to do
so: for, though I say it, there seems
to have been a sad falling-off in
power and stamina since I withdrew
from the literary ring. Nine years
ago, when I regularly stained paper
in your service, the world was brisk
and bustling. All of us had drunk
more or less deeply of the Circean
cup of speculation; and though the
hour of retribution, or rather of paying
up calls, was nigh at hand, we
had not yet been summoned to partake
of the soda-water of repentance.
The political game was fast and
exciting. There was a clear, distinct,
and obvious contest of principles;
and it was a real gratification
to see how valiantly men on either
side would stand forth and fisticuff
their opponents. The forehead of
the Manchester Goliath was a first-rate
mark for the sling of the Conservative
David; and many a time
have I groaned with pleasure over the
prostrate carcass of a Quaker Philistine.
All things seemed flourishing,
when a heavy shadow passed over
me and my fortunes. Don’t be
alarmed. I have no intention of
troubling you with details which I
did not think it necessary at the
time to divulge to a Court of Bankruptcy.
I have no creditors now.
The misfortunate creatures who arrogated
to themselves that absurd
and empty title, have long since
bolted also. In fact, if I had not
been an ass, I might easily have got
rid of the whole of them by adopting
the simple expedient of tarrying
incognito for the space of a twelvemonth
at Dalnacardoch, where a
friend of mine, a duiniewassail of
the house of M‘Tavish, who was
largely engaged in the process of
illicit distillation, would willingly
have afforded me shelter. However,
I committed the grievous mistake of
outrunning, not the constable, but
my creditors. I shall never forget
the kind manner in which you acceded
to my request for an advance
of an hundred pounds, on the
strength of future articles. Your
liberality was not thrown away, for
the money you gave me materially
facilitated my departure, and enabled
me to take my leave with that
calmness, decorum, and equanimity
which become a gentleman. I mention
this for the purpose of showing
you that I am not oblivious of such
favours, though I should be the last
man in the world to insult you by
hinting at repayment after the lapse
of so much time. Indeed you will
not expect to receive any such paltry
proposal, as the debt must be long
ago prescribed. But what is friendship,
if not based upon gratitude
and confidence? Therefore understand,
that, if you print this letter
or any other lucubration of mine, I
shall consider myself your creditor
(at a short date) on the same terms
as before; unless, indeed, you have
raised the literary tariff since the
period of our former connection, in
which case I shall gladly avail myself
of any reasonable increment.
Business first—pleasure afterwards.
That was always my motto;
and I already feel that I can write
more easily, and express myself
more felicitously, now that I have
discharged this debt upon my conscience.
I have been, it is true, a
little out of practice; for amongst
the various kinds of thirst which
affected the Californian diggers and
the Norfolk Island whalers, with
whom respectively I sojourned for
considerable periods, I did not observe
that for literature exorbitantly
developed. Neither were the
Bashi-Bazouks, in which honourable
corps of irregulars I held an honourable
commission, and whom I might,
could, would, or should have led on
to glory, had they not preferred devoting
their energies to the expiscation
of hen-roosts, the discovery of
secret cellars, and such-like baubles—neither,
I say, were the Bashi-Bazouks
a hard-reading set. Indeed
they rather appeared to incline to
the tenets of that capital old cock,
Caliph Omar, whom it is the fashion
to abuse because he burned the
Alexandrian library. I am sure
that if he were alive again, and
could contrive to make a bonfire
of every book that has been printed
since Gutenberg drew his first proof-sheet,
he would be regarded as a blessed
benefactor by every man who now
earns his livelihood by handling the
pen. Positively my mouth waters at
the bare idea of such a thing! Living
authors would then have the whole
monopoly, and might fix their own
prices; and we should have none of
those rascally reprints of the works
of the defunct, which interfere so
materially with our sales. But indulgence
in such extravagant dreams
is useless, and even criminal. I
simply mean to observe that, while
among my friends the Bashis, I had
not much opportunity of giving my
nights and days to the study of Addison,
or Alison, or Tennyson, or
Emerson, or any other son of woman
born; so that, perhaps, my style may,
for some little time, appear deficient
in grace and polish. But since I
came here (I shall presently tell you
what I mean by here, and how I
obtained the exceedingly desirable
situation which I now enjoy), I have
had plenty leisure for reading, and
have gradually unstacked a pile of
reviews, big enough, and I must add
heavy enough, to sink a respectable
steam-tug. I have read, sir, very
nearly through the whole periodical
literature of Great Britain published
during the last eight years; and I
have arrived at the deliberate conclusion
that the said floating literature
has been gradually becoming
water-logged, and is in great danger
of disappearing, like the mysterious
islet on Lochlomond.
Time was when the Quarterlies
supplied a stock of reading, which,
if not very pungent, was at least
easy of digestion, suited to the comprehension
of the numerous class
of consumers who do not affect unusual
profundity, and occasionally
relieved by a touch of something
which it was possible to mistake for
humour. But all that has disappeared.
The new brood of contributors
are much too learned for their
audience, and you might as well
look for liveliness at an undertaker’s
wedding, as within the pages
of a Quarterly Review. I read a
number of one of them—I won’t specify
which—no later than last night,
under the reflector; and, do you
know, it positively gave me a fit of
colic. Six or eight fellows, each more
heavy-sterned than the other, trudged
by in succession, bearing burdens of
bosh upon their shoulders; just as I
have seen, on a tearing wet day, some
of my Bashi-Bazouks straggle in
from a plundering expedition, one
bending beneath a load of dripping
mats not worth an asper, another
sweating under the abandoned pack-saddle
of a camel, and a third carrying
a dead goat in an advanced stage
of putrefaction. I protest to you,
Ebony, that I have a very great regard
in the abstract for the ancients,
and am willing to take (or affect) as
much interest in their quondam
doings as can possibly be expected
from a gentleman whose fortune it
was to be born some two thousand
years or so after their time; but is it
reasonable to expect me to wade
through some thirty or forty mortal
pages devoted to the subject of the
Peloponnesian war? I like the Orientals,
who, after all, have some
sound notions on the subjects of
coffee and tobacco; but why should
I be solicited to bother my brains
with criticisms upon the Coptic grammar?
My chief objection to Egypt
is its fleas; but, at a pinch—or rather
in spite of innumerable pinches—I
might bring myself to submit
even to that nuisance, and enjoy in
comparative tranquillity the really
salubrious air of the heritage of the
Pharaohs, provided I were not perpetually
pestered by jabbering about
hieroglyphs, and monoliths, and Orus,
and Osiris, and the beetles, and the
Ibis, and the leeks, and the crocodiles,
and Necho, and Psammis, and Rhamses
(who was no relation of the Dalhousies),
and other myths, reptiles,
vegetables, and divinities, who at one
time molested the Delta. I had the
pleasure, a couple of years ago, of kicking,
after various warnings, a British
antiquarian out of a coffee-house in
Cairo; and he ought to feel very
grateful to me for having done so, as
otherwise he would have been poniarded
to a certainty at a later period
of the evening. Well, sir; last night,
in the course of my reading, I recognised
my old friend, in the pages of
the review, by marks which I hold
to be infallible: for you must know
that, before my patience gave way
altogether, I had imparted to him
divers startling details touching discoveries
in Upper Egypt, which occurred
to me (I was drinking rum
and water at the time, and the lymph
of the Nile from a porous jar is, I
assure you, when properly qualified,
very seductive tipple) as extremely
probable to be made in localities
whereof I had not the slightest knowledge;
and—will you believe it?—the
caitiff has actually embodied in
his article the results of my sublime
and extemporaneous researches! If
it ever should be my lot to fall in
with him near Nineveh, he may expect
a sterner measure of justice and
retribution. Next comes an ecclesiastical
monomaniac, maundering—O
me—about the Council of Chalcedon!
I thought we really had done with
councils. Most of us of the Protestant
way of thinking, are well pleased
to be rid, once and for ever, of a controversy
which was understood to
have been settled at the Reformation;
and we are entitled to object
to its revival. So about Italian history.
We don’t want to hear about
Duke Sforza this, or Count Paolo
that;—the record of their crimes, intrigues,
murders, rapes, and adulteries
ought to have no manner of interest,
and really has none, except to a few
antiquarians with diseased appetites;—and
if deeds of this kind are worthy
of promulgation at this time of
day, I am serious in thinking that we
do injustice to such native heroes as
Turpin and Abershaw, by giving the
foreigners a decided quarterly preference.
Next I observe that an awful
deal of drivel is current about Niebuhr
and the Romans. I know something
about Niebuhr; and I always
esteemed him a prig. He was a regular
old, pottering, professional German
humbug—one of your why-and-wherefore
men, who looked regularly
twice at each side of his kalbs-braten,
and would not have taken upon trust
an ordinary report of a police trial
from the columns of the Times. He
was as little susceptible of poetical
feeling or inspiration as an ink-fish
or a polypus; and thought—for the
conceit of the animal was unbounded—that
he knew far more about Roman
history than either Livy or Ovid. It
humbly appears to me that, in dealing
with the history of such remote
times, the man who, without absolute
information enabling him to substitute
truth for falsehood, flies in the
face of tradition, is a blockhead.
Tradition is much older than he is,
and infinitely more respectable; and
if he cannot disprove it by evidence,
he is bound to let it stand. What is
the use of all this captious infidelity?
What does Niebuhr give us in exchange
for the story of Romulus and
Remus, or any of the glowing early
legends of Rome, which, despite of
the ultra-grammarian tendencies of
too many pedagogues, have, for centuries,
roused the curiosity and emulation
of our youth, except the vision
of a duffle-clad professor, with a pipe
in his mouth, attempting, in uncleanly
fashion, to blow away the settled
belief of ages! And all this passes
current under the title of profound
criticism! Then what with philology,
archæology, ontology, epistemology,
and æsthetics, a plain fellow
like myself feels as though he had
lodged surreptitiously in Bedlam.
Lads, in their second year at college,
patter away in a jargon more perplexing
than that of the swell-mob
or the gypsies, and discuss the science
of mind instead of occupying themselves
with the gustative enjoyment
of tarts. One very marked feature
of the age is the growth and excessive
multiplication of what are facetiously
called philosophical institutes.
I conjecture, from the multitude
of advertisements and circulars
which have reached me, that there is
now hardly a village throughout the
country without its lecture-room, for
the purpose of affording an easy vent
to the available talent and ready impudence
of the district. Lairds,
dominies, dissenting ministers, enthusiastic
excisemen, and philanthropic
collectors of the revenue,
seem to avail themselves with the
utmost eagerness of these opportunities
of displaying the vast treasures
of thought and information stored up
in their respectable brains; and they
rant, declaim, speculate, or mumble
over every imaginable subject—politics,
poetry, religion, or railways,
causality, cookery, or consciousness.
Noble lords and members of the
House of Commons, of all shades of
opinion, have been pressed into the
service. One day Lord John Russell
drones upon the subject of history;
on the next, Sir Robert Peel
is heard spouting the poetry of Mrs
Hemans. And on all sides, from
every corner, nook, and cranny, rises
a dreary hum about education, which
possibly might be considered as a
hopeful symptom, provided any two
people could be found to agree as to
the exact meaning of the term.
Far be it from me to object to this
general expansion of the public mind.
I fully concur in the observation
made a few weeks ago by the chairman
of the Cowcaddens’ Mechanics
Institute, that every man possesses,
upon some particular topic, a stock
of information which he is bound to
communicate for the advantage of
his fellow-creatures: and, along with
him, I expect the advent of the time
when the number of the British
lecturers shall exceed that of their
collective audiences. I sometimes
experience a feeling of regret that
my present circumstances and position
preclude me from taking an
active hand in the game, so long as
there is a chance of profit. I am
quite certain that I could get up a
stunning course upon less than a
fortnight’s warning; and by shifting
my ground dexterously from one institute
to another, I have no doubt
that I should be able to pick up
guineas as fast as a pigeon gathers
peas. But, after all, it is a great
matter to bear a contented mind. I
never envied any one, being of opinion
that there is always a skeleton in
the closet; and recent events have
convinced me that this is the true
philosophy. Look at Paul the
banker, Sadleir, Redpath, Cameron—what
has been the upshot of all
their wealth and prosperity? Hang
me if I would not rather cut kelp at
sixpence a-day than be a director of
the Bank of England! Then as to
power—what is the good of that?
Nobody in our time has had a longer
lease of it than Johnny Russell, and
yet where is his reputation now?
Where be his followers, the men who
used to cheer him so vociferously—who
were so lavish of their adulation,
so perfectly slavish to his will?
Dancing at the back of Palmerston,
like so many fantoccini, and shrugging
their shoulders with affected
pity for the misfortunes of their
former leader! Where is Cobden
now? No man in my day, barring
O’Connell, had a larger personal following
than the redoubted crumpler-up
of Russia, but somehow his adherents
have melted from him, like
snow at the breath of the thaw.
Surely it would be better never to
rise from obscurity at all, than, after
a splendid meridian, to shiver in the
eve of life under the cold shadows of
contumely and neglect.
It is my belief that you men who
dwell amidst the whirl and turmoil
of public affairs, who are constantly
engaged either in attack or defence,
and whose brains are consequently
kept spinning like a whirligig, are
quite unfitted to take a philosophic
view of any immediate subject, or to
pronounce a candid opinion upon its
merits. You are like the warriors
on the plain of Troy, thrusting,
foining, and contending for the armour
of those who are down; and
amidst the dust and stour of the
battle, it is physically impossible that
you can see anything at the distance
of twenty yards. Very different is
the position of us Olympians, who,
from our elevated perch, in clear
weather, can survey complacently all
that is passing beneath, without
allowing party feeling, or affection,
or prejudice, to distort our deliberate
judgments.
“For we lie beside our nectar, and the bolts are hurl’d
Far below us in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl’d
Round our golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world.”
But I forget that you are no Œdipus,
and necessarily must think me crazy,
unless I condescend to explanation.
Know, then, that after my return
from the wars, without accepting a
Pashalik, which was the very least
that those ungrateful infidels should
have offered me, I found myself
nearly as much out at elbows as the
Copper Captain or the redoubted
Bobadil. Arrearages there were none;
and I found myself wandering about
the streets of London, with a magnificent
beard, a seedy greatcoat, galligaskins
that had seen better days,
and a very few shillings in my pocket.
I believe—at least I have been told—that
the British public was exceedingly
excited and gratified by the
return of the soldiers from the
Crimea, and that all sorts of hospitalities
were lavished upon the victors
of Alma and Inkermann. Be that
as it may, I can conscientiously aver
that I did not profit, to the extent
of a single beefsteak, by my military
renown. True, I did not belong to
the regulars, or even to the German
Legion. I never saw Sebastopol, nor
was I quartered at Heligoland. But
that was no fault of mine. Had I,
with my brave Bashis, been moved
forward to the van of fight, I flatter
myself that—but I will not pursue
the subject further. Suffice it to
say, that I received no medals, and
no allowances, and that I was twice
requested by the police to exhibit
my ticket-of-leave. Suspicion is a
horrid thing, and apt to unsettle
even the best-regulated mind. I
began to ponder within myself whether
it were worth while to be suspected
without a cause; and had
Mephistopheles displayed his usual
diabolic activity on the night of the
display of fireworks, I really do
think that I might have been overpersuaded
to try my hand at the
garotte. I was, however, such a very
dilapidated Faustus, that the demon
passed me by as if I were not worth
his notice; and with the return of
morning, virtue reassumed her sway.
I then bethought me that in other
and more fortunate days I was
known to certain individuals now
holding office under the beneficent
administration of the Whigs; and,
as it was notorious that some very
loose fish had recently been patronised
by that respectable faction,
I thought it not impossible that
they might cast a few crumbs of
comfort in the way of a meritorious
veteran who was always ready to
serve his country for an extremely
moderate consideration. So, after
making what toilet I could, I laid
siege to the public offices, being
fully determined that my old besetting
sin of modesty should not
this time, at all events, prove a bar
to my advancement, and that no
one whom I was privileged to accost
should hereafter be able to plead
ignorance as an excuse for having
overlooked my claims. Nor was I
at all particular as to the kind of
employment. Any of the newly-created
offices in the gift of the
Secretary of the War Department
would have suited me like a kid-glove.
Had my godfathers and
godmothers been gifted with sufficient
prescience to bestow upon me
the name of Dowb, I might possibly
have been taken care of; but, alas!
I had no part or portion in that
sacred monosyllable. Flights of harpies
had been before me; and they
had swept away even the most insignificant
remnants of the banquet. Go
where I might, I met with nothing
save incivility and official insolence;
until at last one friend, more true
than the others, purchased my evacuation
of his lobby, in which I had
permanently encamped myself, by
procuring for me a nomination as an
assistant light-keeper. Yes—you
may well stare, and drop the paper
as you read! “Is it possible,” you
will say—or you ought to say—“that
our ancient and illustrious contributor,
a man of such varied learning
and minute accomplishment, &c. &c.,
should be so depressed by fortune
as to immure himself within the
narrow precincts of a lonely Pharos?”
Well—why not? The work is easy
and regular, provided you can keep
awake; and the pay and perquisites
by no manner of means to be despised.
Government is good enough to find
us in all manner of victual and appurtenances
(save liquor, which is
somewhat churlishly prohibited); you
have comfortable lodgings, prime air,
wholesome exercise in ascending the
stair, and the most magnificent of
sea-views, either in calm or in storm.
Add to this, your absolute immunity,
nowhere else to be enjoyed in the British
islands, from all visits of those disagreeable
savages the tax-gatherers;
and it will require no exorbitant
stretch of fancy to imagine worse
quarters. The society, no doubt, is
limited, but then it has the advantage
of being select. Archy M‘Craw,
my principal, is a superannuated
sergeant of a Highland regiment, who
remembers Waterloo, and has a
settled belief in the authenticity of
Ossian; and when he produces his
stores of anecdote about Picton and
Fingal—heroes whose deeds he is
rather apt to confound—he is anything
but stupid company. His
helpmate, Elspeth, is a nice tidy old
body, somewhat addicted to snuff
and the perusal of Boston’s Fourfold
State, but extremely obliging; and
her talents in the concoction of an
Irish stew are by no means despicable.
Like all genuine Highlanders,
M‘Craw has a proper respect for birth
and education; and as he knows that
my circumstances are now somewhat
altered from what they have been,
he is courteous in his demeanour,
and, instead of trying to impose upon
me, as a newcomer, additional labour,
I observe that he is most
anxious to lighten my burden. So
upon the whole we get on capitally,
and I do not know that I was ever
more comfortable than now. I was
always a consumer of the midnight
oil, which the Government now provides
for me gratis; and I have
plenty of time for reading in the long
watch beneath the glow of the reflectors.
As for the wind and rain—of
which, it must be confessed, there is
rather a superabundance here—one
becomes used to them after a certain
period of probation; indeed I rather
like a storm, as the roaring of the
elements tends to stir poetical ideas,
which otherwise might be apt to
stagnate. I wrote a most capital
description of an eruption of Vesuvius,
a few nights ago, during one of
the most violent gales that ever
swept this Sound. Then, during the
daytime, after polishing the mirrors
and making up the log-book, I have
plenty of leisure for meditation. Our
lighthouse is perched upon a cliff
some three hundred feet above the
sea, and there is a long sloping hillside
behind, where our cattle and
ponies graze, which leads down to
the beach. There is prime fishing
all about; and the sea-fowl are so
prolific in the matter of eggs, that,
at the proper season, it would not be
difficult, from our rocks alone, to
furnish a daily ration of omelette to
every soldier in the British army.
Then there is a reef on which the
seals at ebb-tide come up to bask,
and, as I have not parted with my
rifle, I have had some pretty sport,
and have even turned an honest
penny by the disposal of the peltry.
On the whole, I should say, after
much experience of life in different
phases, that there is no more agreeable
post for a man who unites in
himself the combined characters of
philosopher, sportsman, and student,
than that of a keeper of a lighthouse;
and I would not, with my present
feelings, change places with the
venerated Palmerston. I warrant
me I am much more comfortable
while reading the columns of the
Magazine (by the way, do not forget
to send me the numbers in future—I
have borrowed the last few from
the parish minister), by the mild
effulgence of the Stella maris, than
he is while compelled, long after
midnight, to listen to the dreary
debates in the House of Commons,
cursing all the while the imbecility
of his supporters, who attempt to
copy his jocular manner, without
possessing a tithe of his ability. If
the noble viscount had been but ten
years younger, I would have strenuously
recommended him to isolate
himself for a twelvemonth in a lighthouse.
If he were to undergo such a
contemplative ordeal, I am ready to
stake my life that on his emergence
he would make a clean sweep of
such preposterous and exhaustive
satellites as the two Peels, Bernal
Osborne, Sir Charles Wood, Vernon
Smith, and Mr Robert Lowe; and
would have tried at least to reconstruct
his Administration on the
principle of common sense, if he
could not command a more exalted
kind of talent. But the Premier, with
all his dexterity, official experience,
and sleight-of-hand, is, for the present,
like a theatrical manager at the head
of a most sorry corps dramatique, the
members of whom he must shift as
occasion requires; and were his own
performances not extremely adroit,
he could hardly hope to escape the
envenomed hiss which is the sure
signal of dissolution.
I will tell you why I make these
observations. The last mail brought
me an account of a discourse, lately
delivered by the present Sir Robert
Peel, at the opening of some kind of
museum in the neighbourhood of
Birmingham, which you, as the conductor
of an important organ of public
opinion, are bound to notice in
terms of the severest reprobation.
However disposed men may be
in this indulgent country of ours,
to pass over youthful follies, or to
palliate more matured eccentricities,
some guarantee is required
that those who are advanced to
responsible offices, and who are
paid servants of the Crown, shall,
in that capacity, maintain ordinary
decorum, and, whatever their private
impressions, impulses, or desires may
be, conform to that decency which is
the duty of all officials. Sir Robert
Peel was among the number of those
selected to represent the Court of St
James’s at the recent coronation of
the Emperor of Russia: a ceremony
of no ordinary mark and significance,
occurring as it did immediately
after the termination of the war. Of
the wisdom of the selection made, I
need say nothing, as I believe upon
that point there is no divided
opinion in the public mind. But
whether the choice was good or bad,
judicious or extremely imprudent,
the fact remains that Sir Robert
Peel went to Russia, as a member
of the Legation sent by Her Majesty
Queen Victoria, to give a
pledge and testimony of renewed
amity between two of the mightiest
nations of Europe. From a man
intrusted with so high a function,
not only is the utmost degree of circumspection
required during the
period occupied by the discharge of
his duties, but an entire suppression
of his private and personal opinions.
Gentlemen connected with the press,
or adventurous tourists who went to
Moscow in a private capacity, were
perfectly free on their return to lay
before the public their impressions
and sentiments. Some of them have
done so; but in so far as I have had
the opportunity of observing, in no
instance has anything been written
which could by possibility give offence
to Russia, or tend to increase
the irritation which will sometimes
linger even after peace has been restored.
But Peel stood altogether in
a different position. He was not only
a subordinate member of the Ministry,
but a special delegate; and therefore
he was doubly bound to use caution,
and to abstain from unguarded
speech. Yet no sooner does this
favoured statesman return to his own
country, than we find him, on an
occasion quite unsuited for the introduction
of such a topic, commenting
upon his Russian experiences in
terms which would have disgraced
the meanest mountebank that ever
spouted on a platform. Everything
in Russia, according to Sir Robert
Peel, is deception and imposture.
The Empress, by a fine stroke of
humour, was represented by him as
appearing at the coronation “with
her hair dishevelled, looking like
Norma in the opera.” Not in coarser,
but not in better taste is his reference
to the Archduke Constantine. “The
Marble Palace is the residence of
that ‘frank and open-hearted sailor,’
Constantine. How I laughed when
I read that description of Constantine’s
character! With all respect to
his highness, I must say that I
never saw a man who gave me
less of the impression of a ‘frank
and open-hearted sailor.’ It is all
soft sawder, you know.” Now,
setting aside the ineffable vulgarity
of the man’s discourse, I would just
ask what kind of sensation would be
created in England, if a representative
from the United States, sent to attend
the coronation of Queen Victoria, had,
on his return home, used such offensive
language? Why, the whole
British press, from Land’s End to
John o’ Groat’s, would have been vociferous
in denunciation of the outrage,
as a breach not only of public
duty, but of private manners; and
Judge Lynch would have been recommended
to take immediate steps
for the punishment of the insolent
offender. I have no great faith in
the plenitude of American courtesy;
but I do verily believe that
it would be impossible to find, within
the compass of Yankee-land,
a single man of ordinary education
and breeding, who, after having
been accredited as was this individual,
Peel, would so have spoken of the
royal family of Great Britain. The
effect of such a speech as this, upon
foreigners, must be twofold. In the
first place, they cannot but consider
it, proceeding from the mouth of a
member of the Administration, as a
pregnant sign that a bad and rancorous
feeling towards Russia still exists
among the British people. In the
second place, they will take it as a
proof of the assertion which ere now
has been made, that the British aristocracy
are no longer pre-eminently
distinguished for politeness, courtesy,
and high-toned chivalry; for we cannot
expect foreigners to be intimately
acquainted with the antecedents of
the house of Peel.
“I look upon it,” says Machiavelli,
“as one of the greatest points of discretion
in a man, to forbear injury
and threatening, especially in words.
Neither of them weakens the enemy;
but threatening makes him more cautious,
and injury the more inveterate
and industrious to revenge it. Nothing
provokes and incenses a man so
highly as to have his imperfections
reaped up: whether in earnest or in
jest, ’tis the same thing. Nam facetiæ
asperæ, quando nimium ex vero traxere,
acrem sui memoriam relinquunt.
For biting raillery, especially with a
tincture of truth, leaves an ill impression
on the memory.” I do not, of
course, suppose that Peel has any
acquaintance with the writings of
the famous Florentine; but he may,
possibly, have looked into the works
of Lord Bacon; and if so, it is a pity
that he has forgotten the following
passage: “As for jest, there be certain
things which ought to be privileged
from it; namely, religion,
matters of state, great persons, any
man’s present business of importance,
and any case which deserveth pity.
Yet there be some that think their
wits have been asleep except they
dart out somewhat that is piquant
and to the quick. That is a vein
which would be bridled;
Parce puer stimulis, et fortius utere loris.
And, generally, men ought to find
the difference between saltness and
bitterness. Certainly, he that hath
a satirical vein, as he maketh others
afraid of his wit, so he had need be
afraid of others’ memory.” The conclusion
of which last sentence Sir
Robert Peel has peculiar reason to
study.
But this is not all. It was not
enough for the Palmerstonian protegé
to insult Russia—he must also
have a fling at the representatives of
our nearer allies. The following is
his account of Count de Morny, the
representative of France. “We were
presented at the coronation by Count
de Morny, the French ambassador, a
spick-and-span man of considerable
aplomb, and who, by the way, is
one of the greatest speculators in the
world. He speculates in everything,
and bought a lot of pictures to sell
again and make a profit of.” The
intense indecency of this is only
equalled by its vulgarity. No man
with the real feelings of a gentleman
would so have spoken publicly of
another, for whose good offices he
was, moreover, indebted. “Spick-and-span
man!” Why, the veriest bagman
that ever perambulated the Midland
Counties would blush if convicted
of having used such language.
I should like to know what Sir
Robert Peel would have thought if
Count de Morny, at some public
meeting in France, had regaled his
audience by personal allusions of a
similar kind, for which there is no
lack whatever of current material.
Presently comes the turn of the
ambassador sent by the uncle of
Queen Victoria. “Then came the
ambassador of the smallest kingdom
in Europe—Belgium—the Prince de
Ligne, the very picture of swelling
insignificance; so swelling, indeed,
that he could not, for the life of him,
look down from the contemplation
of his own importance.” Apart from
the shameless personality of this
sketch, which at once betrays the
parvenu, the man has contrived in
this sentence to exhibit a degree of
ignorance sufficient to entitle him to
a pluck if he offered himself for examination
as a candidate for a portership
in a public office. Belgium
is so far from being the smallest
kingdom in Europe, that, in point of
population and revenue, which have
always been considered the proper
tests of the greatness of a state, it
is superior to Portugal, Denmark,
Bavaria, Hanover, Saxony, Würtemburg,
and Greece. It has a larger
population than Holland; a larger
revenue than Naples, Sweden, or Sardinia;
and a larger territorial extent
than three of the kingdoms which I
have mentioned. It is to be hoped
that this instance of stupid and gross
blunder on the part of a man who
was shoved by paternal interest into
important and diplomatic situations,
will convince Sir Charles Trevelyan
of the necessity of extending his system
of examination beyond the rank
of mere subordinates. However much
Peel may in other respects resemble
the renowned Katterfelto, who was
the most famous jack-pudding of his
day, he certainly has not acquired
the secret of consummate dexterity
and manipulation. It is highly improbable
that the repute of the Prince
de Ligne will suffer from the scratches
of so coarse and clumsy a caricaturist.
To this succeeds a touch of Tartuffe.
“Then the representative of Naples,
of whom, IN CHARITY, I will say
nothing.” It is to be hoped, for the
credit of Drayton Manor, that the
representative of Naples will be inspired
with the like Christian forbearance.
Lastly comes the poor
Turkish representative, of whom our
pattern Englishman says: “You
could not look at him without feeling
that he was the representative of
an effete and worn-out nation.” If
nations are to be judged by their
representatives, and if Great Britain
is to be estimated according to the
intellectual measurement of Peel, I
protest that I would rather inscribe
myself in the universal register as a
Dog-ribbed Indian, than as a native
of these islands.
But what incenses me more than
anything else, is the excessive malignity
exhibited by this flippant and
absurd young man while speaking of
Admiral Sir Charles Napier. It is
not for me to hazard an opinion
whether the admiral acted wisely or
over-cautiously in abstaining from an
attack upon Cronstadt, although the
evidence, in so far as it has been
made public, appears to be strong in
his justification. The antecedents of
Sir Charles Napier are such that it
would be work of supererogation now
to insist upon the courage, intrepidity,
and daring, which he has so
often conspicuously displayed. Of
his former laurels, honourably gained
and universally acknowledged, no
breath of slander can deprive him. If
old age is to be considered as a disqualification
for public service, then
the blame rests solely with the Lords
of the Admiralty, who intrusted the
charge of the Baltic fleet to a man on
the verge of seventy. They ought to
have known that if desperate service
was required, a younger man than
Napier would have been a more fitting
leader; but I am not aware that
service of that kind was expected, or
that it was necessary in that stage of
the war to attempt such a hazardous
exploit as the bombardment of Cronstadt,
unless the chances of success
appeared greater than those of failure.
Any serious disaster sustained
by our fleet in the Baltic would have
been not only a triumph to Russia,
but an immense political advantage;
the maintenance of the blockade was
undeniably the chief object of the expedition;
and therefore, the admiral
was bound to weigh the consequences
deliberately before attempting
any extraordinary enterprise. Sir
Charles Napier says that, with the
force at his disposal, he did not
consider himself justified in attacking
Cronstadt; and in that view he
was fortified by the opinion of the
French admiral. Since then, the
Earl of Dundonald, one of the bravest
and most daring of British sailors,
has expressed his deliberate opinion
that Napier was perfectly right in
abstaining from any such attempt,
because, in all human probability,
the result would have been futile, if
not disastrous. With such authorities
at his back, Sir Charles Napier
might well afford to despise the insinuations
of his silly persecutor; and
I wish that he had done so, instead
of flying into a passion, because he
has been assailed by an insect. His
evident annoyance served only to increase
the malignity of the wasp who
pursued him; until, in an evil hour
for himself, the venomous creature
committed a mistake, which ought,
for the remainder of his existence, to
put a stop to his buzzing. Sir Robert
Peel had the temerity to assert that,
in the course of conversation, the
Archduke Constantine stated to him
(Peel) that if Napier had attacked Cronstadt,
the fortress must have fallen.
Upon this, Napier writes to the Archduke,
and receives in reply a letter
distinctly stating that no such conversation
took place! This, I must
needs remark, gives a most serious
complexion to the matter. Either
the Archduke or Sir Robert Peel
must be guilty of deliberate falsehood.
Peel states that such a conversation
was held—the Archduke
denies it in toto. Which of them are
we to believe?
All I can say is, that it seems to
me a very unlikely thing that, under
any circumstances, the Archduke
should have selected an underling of
the legation, with whom he had no
previous acquaintance, as the depositary
of his confidences; and tenfold
more extraordinary, that he should
have made so singular a revelation.
What was the use of it? What
could be his object? Had Constantine
anything to gain by exposing
the weakness or want of preparation
of his country, in a matter so serious
as the main defence and bulwark of
St Petersburg? or is he so very
“frank and open-hearted,” as to be
in the habit of blurting out state-secrets
to every Tom-noddy who may
arrive from England? I cannot
answer those questions, satisfactorily
to myself; and no more, I venture to
think, can you. But, observe this,
that the matter, as it now stands, is
of a nature exceedingly grave. If the
Archduke Constantine held no conversation
of the kind alleged with
Sir Robert Peel (and we have his
express denial of it), in what terms
shall we characterise the assertion
made by the latter for the evident
purpose of blasting the reputation of
one of the oldest and most distinguished
of the British admirals? If
Constantine did hold such a conversation
with Peel, then the latter has
obviously violated the conventional
courtesies of society, by publishing
what must, in any point of view, be
held as a private communication.
Lord Palmerston, however jauntily
he may ride the public horse, would
do well to pay some attention to its
shoeing. Whatever may be the indiscretions
of such men as Sir Charles
Napier—however imprudent they
may be in their squabbles with the
Admiralty or other boards—they
have at all events won, by honourable
and dangerous service, that hold on
the nation’s heart, that no man of
generous feeling, whatever his party
may be, will allow them to be wantonly
assailed by an understrapper
or buffoon, whose continuance in
office must be an additional disgrace
to the Ministry, who were imprudent
enough to elevate him to a position
for which he was obviously and notoriously
unfit.
Let me now, for a few moments,
direct your attention to another subject.
It is one of considerable importance
and vast interest to the
public, who during the last twelve
months have expended large sums
in the fortification of their dwelling-houses,
to the no small delight and
emolument of the ironmongers and
locksmiths. The old adage, that an
Englishman’s house is his castle,
which at first was a mere figure of
speech, has now been actually realised.
What with bolts, bars, chains,
screws, iron-shutters, and alarum-bells,
our private mansions are as
well secured as Newgate; and the
burglars, in their more recent attempts,
have been reduced to the unartistic
device of breaking through
side-walls, in order to arrive at the
plate-chests. But this state of comparative
security has been dearly
purchased. Many old ladies, of nervous
temperament, have expired in
paroxysms of terror, caused by the
slamming of doors and the creaking
of hinges during the silent watches
of the night. I have heard of one
timorous gentleman, who coughed
himself to death in consequence of
a cold contracted from incarceration
in the coal-cellar, to which donjon-keep
he had fled, alarmed by a sound
which resembled the rasping of a file.
Innumerable Blowsalindas threatened
to abandon their places, unless a
policeman was allowed to sleep in
the house; and in one unfortunate
instance, a brace of glaziers, who
had gone early to work, and were
engaged in cleaning the windows,
were shot right and left by an eccentric
colonel of militia. At length,
by the aid of Chubb and his coadjutors,
who must have realised colossal
fortunes during the panic, men are
tolerably safe within doors, and can
retire to roost without the dread of
being wakened about three in the
morning by the gleam of a lantern
carried by a gentleman who has
modestly veiled his countenance
with crape, but who, being armed
with a carving-knife, needs not to
employ many arguments before you
make surrender of your movables.
But alas! the same degree of security
does not exist without. If you tarry
at your club until the witching hour
of midnight, in the enjoyment of the
conversation of some facetious friend,
or seduced by the charms of roasted
oysters, the chances are that, on your
return homeward, you are garotted
before you reach the second lamppost.
It is not pleasant to feel your
weazand contract under the gripe of
one brawny ruffian, while a second
trips up your heels, bringing your
occiput into violent contact with
the pavement or the kerbstone: it
is not profitable to lose your watch,
your note-case, and your purse, in so
ignominious a manner; and it is
decidedly disagreeable to be compelled
to walk about for the next
fortnight with your eyes protruding
from your head like those of a
lobster, and an expression of countenance
which would infallibly lead
a stranger to conjecture that you had
been ordered for execution, and been
cut down, in consequence of the
arrival of a reprieve, before the vital
spark was extinguished. Many an
excellent gentleman and pious Christian
has recently walked the streets,
after sunset, under the influence of
those terrors so well described by
Coleridge, who, I think, must have
been garotted in his day;—
“Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.”
Under such circumstances, fear
becomes a positive duty; and the
apparition of an intoxicated apprentice
staggering suddenly from a
common stair, is enough to make
Julius Cæsar betake himself to his
heels. I have seen a good deal of
foreign cities, the repute of which is
by no means creditable, but I give
you my word that I would rather
thread the streets of Lisbon or Pera,
after nightfall, than perambulate
those of an English town, under the
operation of the system now pursued
with regard to the disposal of
criminals.
What are you all about, that you
submit to lead a life of perpetual
fear, suspicion, and bondage? Do
you not see that the remedy is in
your own hands, and that it is a
very plain one? Can anything be
more absurd than the assemblage of
meetings for the purpose of taking
into consideration schemes of education,
projects for the diffusion of
knowledge, further reforms in the
constitution, or even the readjustment
of the taxes, before demanding
from the Government that they shall
fulfil their first duty, which is that
of adequately protecting the lives
and property of the lieges? Have
you not had warning enough of the
hideous results of that system of
ticket-of-leave which no one but an
absolute idiot can now have the
temerity to defend? Why, the papers
daily teem with accounts of murders,
garottings, housebreakings, and the
like, to an extent which never, in my
remembrance at least, was paralleled;
and yet certain wiseacres,
who hold the office of Ministers, and
style themselves statesmen, very
calmly tell you that the system of
tickets of leave has not yet had a
fair trial! And so you, Ebony, and
your friends, and all the honest men
throughout the country, are to be
exposed to the imminent danger of
being throttled, robbed, or murdered,
in order that a parcel of obstinate
prigs in high places may have
an opportunity of solving what they
are pleased to call an interesting
social problem! I should like to know
what is the use of a Government if
it does not provide for the safety of
the subject in life, limb, and property.
Has it indeed come to this,
that an army of desperate convicts
is to be let loose upon the respectable
classes of society, for the purpose
of ascertaining whether they
have got rid of their old tendencies
towards crime, the experiment being
measured by the number of throats
which are cut, of houses which are
broken into and pilfered, of ladies
and gentlemen who are burked in
the streets, and of tradesmen’s tills
that are plundered, compared with
the number of the convicts who are
released from prison contrary to the
sentence which they have received?
Had Swift introduced such a picture
of pragmatic imbecility in his voyage
of Gulliver to Laputa, men
would have laughed at it as an utterly
impossible extravaganza. It
would at once have been said that
in no civilised country in the world—nay,
for that matter, in no country
however barbarous, for the sense of
justice is instinctive to man—would
the executive be allowed, except in
extraordinary and isolated cases, to
interfere with the judgments pronounced
by its judicial tribunals.
Yet, what is the fact? Our judges
are practically told that these sentences
are of no avail. Having
heard the case with all its concomitant
circumstances, which almost
invariably indicates the real character,
habits, and tendencies of the
accused—and having received the
verdict of the jury—they apportion
the punishment, not for vengeance,
but, according to the righteous
and humane spirit of our laws, for
the safety of society, and for a
solemn warning to others. Now, I
say—and I am ready to maintain the
argument against all the doctrinaires
in Christendom and Heathenesse—that
if you allow any functionary or
official, who knows nothing of the
circumstances elicited at the trial,
to alter arbitrarily the sentence
pronounced by a competent court, a
fatal, or, at all events, a very serious
blow will be struck at the best interests
of society. Look, for example,
at the procedure in cases where a
capital sentence has been pronounced.
The Secretary of State, to whom memorials
praying for a mitigation of
punishment are sent, never ventures,
on his own responsibility, to advise
the Sovereign to exercise her prerogative
of mercy, without communication
with the judge before whom
the case was tried. This practice is
laudable and necessary—laudable,
because it gives the judge an opportunity
of stating the existence of any
mitigating circumstances—and necessary,
because otherwise the dignity
and authority of a Supreme Court
could not possibly be maintained.
Can any reason be stated why the
like precautions should be dispensed
with in cases where the punishment
falls short of a capital one? We have
seen, of late years, a considerable relaxation
in our criminal code; inasmuch
as many offences which were
formerly capital, are now visited by
arbitrary punishment only. There
can be no doubt whatever that the
change was righteous, humane, and
such as befitted a Christian nation,
although late occurrences give some
colour to the opinion that the relaxation
was carried too far. But,
be that as it may, it is difficult to see—and
I, for one, fairly confess that I
am utterly unable to see—why relaxation
of statutory penalties, and
substitution of minor punishments,
should carry along with it the right
of disregarding the sentence which
the court has actually pronounced.
Twenty years ago a man would have
been hanged for commission of an
offence, for which, now, he receives
the sentence of seven, ten, or fourteen
years’ transportation. Is the relaxation
of the law any reason for dispensing
with the precautions which
were previously used before a criminal
was admitted to mercy? In the
old times, a man was executed, and
there was an end of him. Society
had no more to fear, at least from his
particular atrocity or depredations.
But, under the new system, the sentences
of the judges, pronounced after
a deliberate investigation of the case,
are virtually handed over for the revisal
of the chaplains of jails and penitentiaries,
who are utterly ignorant of
the facts which were elicited at the
trial. It is a gross mistake to suppose
that ignorance, or want of education,
are the most fertile causes of crime.
Petty larcenies and wretched thefts—picking
of pockets, and abstraction
of articles exhibited at shop-doors—are
undoubtedly the province of the
children of the destitute, and for them
reformatory and ragged schools are
imperatively required. But crime, in
the higher branches, is a regular profession,
to attain eminence in which
a man must be as dexterous, wary,
provident, and careful, as if he were
engaged in any lawful business. Nay,
he must be more so; because, being
constantly liable to detection, he is
compelled to strain his ingenuity to
the utmost, and so calculate every
step which he makes towards the attainment
of his object. It is a mere
farce, an utter delusion, and a perfect
abandonment of common sense, to
expect that such men will ever return
to the paths of common industry, or
be contented with humble gains. They
have an absolute pride in the exercise
of their profession; and they are not
haunted by remorse in consequence
of what they do. Their moral perceptions
are utterly blunted; and that
being the case, it is in vain to hope
that they will be converted from the
error of their ways by occasional
visits from the chaplain of the jail.
Very rarely indeed does a felon of
this stamp make any progress during
the period of his incarceration towards
amendment. Orderly conduct
and respectful demeanour are the
necessary results of strict prison discipline;
but they are not by any
means to be taken as symptoms of
actual improvement. Nay, the convict
has a direct inducement to assume
a decorous, respectful, and
even repentant manner, because he
hopes, through the recommendation
of the chaplain, to obtain a remission
of his punishment. It is no
disrespect to the clergy to say that,
as a body, they are very liable to
imposition. A clever scoundrel, if
he addresses himself artfully to the
task, can hardly fail to make a
favourable impression. He can soon
acquire the tricks of interlarding his
discourse with Scriptural terms and
phraseology, of counterfeiting humility,
and of shamming penitence.
Now, to let loose upon society men of
this stamp, under tickets of leave, is
simply to encourage further violence
and depredation. I do not say that
every convicted sinner must necessarily
be thereafter a felon; but I
do say that, after more than one
conviction, his case is, humanly
speaking, hopeless. In nine cases
out of ten, such men emerge from
the jails and penitentiaries to steal,
rob, and swindle as before.
Philo-convicts of the maudlin school—for
I will not call them philanthropists—say
that the frequent relapse
into crime of liberated prisoners, is
very much owing to the fact, that
no one, who is acquainted with their
previous history, will give them employment.
I grant that. If the gods
had provided me with sufficient income
to keep a butler, I certainly
should be chary of engaging an individual
who had just completed his
sentence for embezzling the silver
spoons of his previous master. If I
were a tradesman, I should decline
taking the extra trouble of watching
the motions of a young Barnwell,
who was recommended to me by the
fact that he had robbed his employer’s
till. And I further tell the
philo-convicts, that, in utterly and
entirely refusing to trust a convict,
I am acting not only prudentially
to myself, but wisely as regards
society; because so long as an
honest man remains without employment,
it is bad policy and worse
morals to give the preference to an
attainted thief. To act otherwise,
is practically to deny that good
character is to be considered as an
element in the selection of servants—a
position which may suit the
present Ministry, seeing that some
of their appointments have been
made altogether irrespective of character,
but which never will be adopted
by the great body of the public.
I accept, however, the fact that
ticket-of-leave men and other convicts
have little chance in this country
of obtaining employment through
the usual channels, even though they
should be sincere in their wishes to
return to the ways of industry. Well,
then, what is the obvious deduction
from this fact? Is it not that the
Government have been guilty of a
grievous dereliction of duty in commuting
the sentences of prisoners,
and letting them loose upon society
before the appointed time? It is all
very well for officials to wring their
hands; to tell us that the colonies
will no longer receive prisoners from
the mother country; that transportation,
at least in the old directions, is
now impossible; and finally, to fix a
stupid stare upon the public, and
ask it what is to be done with the
convicts? The public ought sternly
to reply that the disposal of the convicts
is a matter which the Government
must look to; but that at
all hazards life and property must
be protected. I deny in toto that
you, or I, or any of us, are bound to
tell the Government what they ought
to do in regard to the disposal of
convicts. I say it is monstrous and
intolerable that society should be
left in a state of siege and panic,
exposed to violence and outrage
which seems to be every day on the
increase, until the Government shall
determine whether any remote colonial
possession is available for purposes
of transportation, or whether
convicts ought not to be employed in
public works within the boundaries
of Great Britain. I do not underrate
the importance of these questions.
I do hope that the Government will
very soon make up their minds to
adopt some one intelligible and consistent
course. But I protest against
these questions being mixed up with
that of the system of ticket-of-leave,
which has nothing whatever to do
with them. It may be a point of
consideration for the custodiers of a
menagerie, or travelling collection of
wild beasts, whether it would be most
advisable for them to proceed north,
or south, or east, or west, or otherwise
to sell and disperse their animals
among the different zoological gardens;
but what right have they,
pending their resolution, to open the
doors of the cages, and let wolves,
tigers, and hyenas loose on the neighbouring
fields? And yet that is
precisely what our Government has
done with the wild animals of which
it is the custodier! Their wicked and
dangerous tendencies were known
and established. They were tried for
outrages on society, convicted, and
sentenced to restraint; and yet the
Government, because a difficulty has
arisen abroad, consider themselves
entitled to disregard the sentences of
the law, and again to deluge society
with experienced adepts in crime.
One of the soundest arguments for
the old system of transportation was
that, by removing hardened, expert,
and practised criminals from the
country, there was so much the better
chance of reforming those who were
merely beginners in crime. All that
is now forgotten. Scholars in larceny
will never lack teachers so long as
the present infamous system is persevered
in; young cracksmen will
find leaders to organise them into
regular gangs, and the function of
the reformatories will be over.
I suspect that very few of the
general public are aware of the extent
to which the system of ticket-of-leave
has been carried. Blue-books
are by no means lively reading; and
yet, without consulting the blue-books,
it is impossible adequately to
understand the precise situation in
which we are placed with regard to
convicts at large. Let me therefore
note down a few facts extracted from
the evidence given before the Select
Committee on Transportation last
year.
Mr Waddington, permanent Under-Secretary
of State for the Home Department,
tells us that, up to March
1856, there were no less than FIVE
THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO
convicts, who had been sentenced
to transportation, discharged
upon the public under licenses or
tickets of leave! How many more
have since received their tickets I
cannot say, but judging from the
numbers of former years, there cannot
now be fewer than from seven to
eight thousand criminals, equivalent
to a respectable army, who are left to
forage for themselves. Mr Waddington
says very jauntily,—“The Committee
are aware, no doubt, that
these persons under sentence of transportation
are persons who had been,
most of them, two or three times
convicted that we know of; they may
have been convicted oftener than
that, but they are almost all of them
old offenders, and therefore it was
highly probable that, upon being
thrown back into society, a great portion
of them would misconduct themselves
in a very serious manner.” This
is, indeed, plain-speaking with a vengeance!
Here you have an admission
that the Government expected, as the
result of their experiment, that a large
portion of the ticket-of-leave men
would return to their old courses;
that is, would steal, rob, assault, and
garotte as before! At whose expense,
pray? At the expense of that
Issachar the public, who having
borne the burden of their previous
offences, were next to bear that of
their offences in time to come! Here
is a beautiful conflict between the law
and the executive. “John Noakes,”
says the judge at the trial, “you have
been convicted no less than six times
in competent courts. You are a hardened,
brutal, and irreclaimable criminal.
You cannot be allowed, for
the interests of society, to remain
longer in the country. Therefore
your sentence is, that you be transported
for the period of fourteen
years.” Noakes leaves the dock, after
having delivered himself of an irreverent
remark touching the judge’s
eyes, and a facetious reference to being
herring-ponded. But there is yet
a door of exit. “John Noakes,” says
the beautifully paternal government
with which we are blessed, “you
have doubtless been convicted six
times already, but we are willing to
think that, on the whole, you are a
harmless and rather well-intentioned
fellow. It is true that you have been
sentenced to transportation for fourteen
years; but at present there is
some difficulty in finding quarters for
you abroad, and it would be both inconvenient
and expensive to keep you
in custody at home. So, upon the
whole, we think the best course is to
set you at liberty. Here is a ticket
of leave for you, which you will please
accept, on the understanding that, if
you are again convicted, that leave
will be revoked. You may not perhaps
be able to find employment, but
that is your look-out—so good-by to
you.” John Noakes quits the prison,
repairs straightway to the “Jack
Sheppard” public-house, where he
falls in with some of his old associates,
plans a new burglary; and on
the following night the premises of
a respectable jeweller are broken
into, and property abstracted to the
value of a couple of thousand pounds!
Mr Waddington, however, thinks
that the effect of the system “has been
at least as good as any reasonable person
could have anticipated, considering
the nature of the offenders who
have been discharged;” and he
states it to be a fact that out of 5152
liberated on ticket-of-leave, only 447
have been reported for misconduct;
that is, have found their way back to
prison. Now, I must confess that I
can see in this no ground for congratulation,
even supposing that no
more than 447 have again betaken
themselves to unlawful courses within
the short space of two and a half
years. But we have no right whatever
to suppose anything of the kind.
We learn from other evidence that
the ticket-of-leave men are scattered
all over the kingdom, without any
mark or method by which the police
can recognise them; consequently a
much larger number than the above
may have been apprehended and
tried for new offences without the
knowledge of the authorities. “I
think,” says Sir Archibald Alison,
who, as sheriff and criminal judge of
Lanarkshire, can speak on this subject
with authority—“I think that
the number of ticket-of-leave men
who are proved in courts to be concerned
in crime, bears a very small
proportion to the number of those
who do commit crime; for this
reason, that they are not known.”
In the appendix to the second report
there are some valuable documents
touching the habits of ticket-of-leave
men. Here for example is
an abridgment of the report of the
Superintendent of the F. Division of
the London police, on the habits of
the liberated criminals in his district.
“R. W.: Constant associate of
thieves; no lawful occupation; once
convicted of assault. E. M.: Does
not follow any occupation, and is
well suspected of being a thief. J.
W.: Immediately on his return, cohabited
with a notorious thief and
prostitute, and does not follow any
awful occupation at present. C. G.:
Does not follow any lawful calling.
Since his return has been the constant
and daily associate of thieves
and other notoriously bad characters.
J. C.: Keeper of a shop for the sale
of second-hand clothes, and has frequently
been seen in the company of
convicted thieves. J. G.: Lodges
with a convicted thief, and is supposed
to gain his living by hawking
obscene cards, &c. T. C.: Employed
as a messenger or porter, and appears
to be gaining an honest living.
T. N.: Was liberated on ticket of
leave about two months since; at
present does not follow any employment.”
So that out of eight ticket-of-leave
men resident in this Division, and
known to the police, six are supposed
to have fallen back on their
old courses; one is doing well; and
one has been liberated for so short a
time that, according to the Superintendent,
“no decided opinion can be
expressed relative to him.”
Mr Hill, Q. C., Recorder of Birmingham,
caused a special report to
be prepared by the police of that
town relative to the habits of the
ticket-of-leave men known to reside
there, their number being nineteen.
The report bears that of these, eight
were considered good, nine bad, and
two doubtful.
The impression left upon my mind
by the perusal of these and similar
returns, is that at least one half of
the liberated convicts are at this moment
preying upon the public. I
again quote from Alison’s evidence:
“I should say, from what I have seen,
that the ticket-of-leave system has had
the very worst possible effects in Scotland;
that it has sent back the most
talented, the most dangerous, and the
most formidable class of depredators;
and that they are either concerned in
the greatest crimes themselves, or
that they lead others to the commission
of the same description of
crimes.”
If the good folks of Great Britain
choose to submit to this monstrous
wrong and most iniquitous system—if
they are willing without complaint
or murmur to see the dangerous
classes, the convicted felons, let loose
among them, to resume the functions
of the pick-lock and the crowbar, the
garotte and the bludgeon, and to destroy
all chance of the success of reformatory
schools—it is no business
of mine. No burglar will ever think
of breaking into a lighthouse, and I
feel quite assured that what little
property I have is in perfect safety.
But if they, on the contrary, are convinced
that the whole system is a
rank imposture and delusion, and
that they, the people of character
and property, are left at the mercy of
a rapidly increasing army of convicted
scoundrels, in order to be experimented
on for the gratification of a
few pragmatic doctrinaires, let them
make their voices audible, and the
Ministry must at once succumb.
Never, within my recollection, has
there been so fitting an object for
agitation, never so imperative a reason
for it. And I do hope that they
will not allow themselves to be humbugged
or bamboozled by any difficulties,
real or pretended, about the
disposal of the convicts. I am quite
aware that there are difficulties; but
with these it is the express duty of
the Government to grapple.
Now, Ebony, I have done for the
present. You see this has been but
a rambling kind of letter, but I hope
in future to be more concise. Send
me as much periodical literature as
you can, and a few boxes of cigars, if
you have any to spare, as a token of
your continued friendship. I do not
think it prudent, under existing circumstances,
to adhibit my real name
and address, as that might awaken,
in certain bosoms, expectations which
never can be realised; so I must even
find a sobriquet connected with my
present humble though highly useful
and honourable situation. “Pharos”
is too Egyptian for my taste—“Hesperus”
too maudlin. “Lucifer” is a
title already appropriated, to which
I desire to lay no manner of claim;
and therefore I shall modestly subscribe
myself, your sincere well-wisher,
Phosphorus.
Pictarnie Lighthouse,
North Britain.
LORD ST LEONARDS. [8]
243
Some little time ago might have
been seen in the corner of a weekly
legal periodical the following brief
intimation: “Early in January 1857
will be published the Thirteenth Edition
of Sugden’s Law of Vendors and
Purchasers of Estates, with important
additions. This Edition will contain
between eleven and twelve hundred
cases, in addition to those in the last
Edition.... The Author has bestowed
great pains on this Edition.”
The book now lies before us; and in
the preface we find this observation:
“Every case cited I have perused in
the original Report, and every line of
the book has been written by myself,”
that book being a royal octavo
volume of 720 closely-printed pages,
and those cases—as we vouch, after
curiously counting the table of cases—amounting
to upwards of four
thousand six hundred! And who,
it may be asked, is this very laborious
author? No other than Lord St
Leonards, so lately Lord High Chancellor,
now in his seventy-fifth year,
yet having the inclination and the
power, mental and physical, thus
to occupy the intervals of leisure
occurring in the discharge of his
judicial and legislative duties as a
member of the House of Lords! The
career of such a man we commend
to the studious attention of some
future historian of the Lives of the
Lord Chancellors; and in the mean
time shall supply him with some
authentic materials, collected in the
course of careful inquiry, and personal
observation.
We believe that England never
before saw, living at once, three such
remarkable subjects for the portraiture
of some future Lord Campbell,
as the three ex-Chancellors
now adorning the House of Lords—Lords
Lyndhurst, Brougham, and St
Leonards,—Lord Campbell himself
being a distinguished member of that
House, for a brief space Lord Chancellor
of Ireland, and now the learned
and upright Lord Chief Justice of
England. At some future time we
may ourselves attempt sketches of
Lords Lyndhurst, Brougham, and
Campbell; but our present concern
is with that one of the aforesaid
three ex-Chancellors whose name
stands at the head of this article.
Without attributing to him the attractive
and dazzling characteristics
of Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham
as orators and statesmen—the latter,
too, a prodigy of versatility and
power—we shall, by a plain narrative
of facts, establish the pretensions
of Lord St Leonards to be regarded
as a great lawyer, whose name will
be ranked with those of Lord Hardwicke
and Lord Eldon; while, in
several respects, his career is more
remarkable and more instructive than
that of either. The race of great
lawyers in England is but too evidently
dying out. Perhaps we see
the last of them in Lord St Leonards,
who may be said to have exhibited
as great legal, as the late Duke of
Wellington military, genius. And
the former has this signal characteristic,
that throughout the whole of his
long, arduous, and distinguished career
as advocate, judge, and legislator, he
has never intermitted the labours of
legal authorship; but brought forth
works of practical and profound erudition,
contributing to develop law
as a science, aiding the studies, and
facilitating the practice and administration
of that law, by every
member of the profession. Under
this fourfold aspect, therefore, of
author, advocate, judge, and legislator,
we propose to exhibit a sketch
of the life and labours of Lord St
Leonards,—tracing him from his first
book and his first brief, to his last
edition of that first book; to his last
brief; to his last judgment as Lord
High Chancellor; and the most recent
of a long series of Acts of Parliament,
of the highest practical importance,
contributed by him to the
Statute-book.
Edward Burtenshaw Sugden was
born in the year 1781; and having
duly entered himself a student of
Lincoln’s Inn, such was the use he
had made of his time, and such his
marvellous aptitude for the acquisition
of legal knowledge—for which,
indeed, his intellect may be said to
have exhibited a sort of elective
affinity—that before he had reached
his twenty-second year, as he himself
has left on record,[9] he had
written his Vendors and Purchasers
of Estates—which was published in
February 1805,—i. e. in his twenty-fourth
year! It is an octavo volume
of 461 pages. We have seen a copy
of it bearing the date 1805; and no
person, competent to judge, can read
its terse and thoroughly practical
exposition of the leading principles
applicable to so difficult and unwieldy
a subject, without wondering
how the youthful author could have
acquired the requisite knowledge
and facility in using it. He was a
pupil of the late eminent conveyancer,
Mr Duval, but we are not aware at
what age he entered the chambers of
that gentleman. Let us now, however,
leap over a good half-century,
and look for a moment at the account
of this early performance, given
by its author on the 10th of this
present January 1857, in the highly
interesting preface to the edition now
under consideration:—
“After the lapse of half a century
since the first publication of this work,
I am about to send forth a thirteenth
edition of it. Determined at my outset
in life to write a book, I was delighted
when I hit upon the subject now before
the reader—the Law of Vendors and
Purchasers. The title promised well;
and many portions of the law had not
previously been embodied in any treatise.
Modern law-treatises were indeed
few at that period. When this work
was announced for publication, nearly
the universal opinion was that it would
be a failure, as the subjects to be considered
were too multifarious for one
treatise. Nothing dismayed, I laboured
diligently; and with the aid of Lincoln’s
Inn library, in which a considerable portion
of the book was written—for my
own shelves were but scantily furnished—I
at length finished the work in its original
shape. My courage then failed me.
The expense of publication was certain,
and success I thought more than doubtful;
and it was not without some difficulty
that I could be persuaded to refrain
from committing the manuscript to
the flames, and to join with a bookseller
in incurring the risk of publishing
it at half profit and loss, as it is termed.
As soon as the book was printed, another
bookseller bought my interest in the
edition, and thus relieved me from my
obligations. The amount I received as
the price of the edition was small, but I
have never since received any sum with
anything approaching to the same satisfaction.
The book was certainly the
foundation of my early success in life.”
Who does not envy the veteran
(not lagging lazily on the stage) this
retrospect, and thank him for a
glimpse of his autobiography? He
proceeds to tell us that this first edition
was sold “at once;” that a
greatly enlarged one was published
in June 1806—both before he was
called to the bar; the third in a year
afterwards, in 1808; the fourth in
1813; and five new and very large
editions at regular intervals of four
years, till 1834;—“all these six appearing,”
he continues, “while I was in
full practice at the bar, and could ill
afford the time required to re-edit
the work.” On returning from Ireland,
in 1835, after his first Chancellorship,
“I had,” he says, “for the
first time in my professional life, full
leisure, and revised the whole work
with great care;” and published a
tenth edition, in three volumes royal
8vo, in 1839. “While yet a second
time in office in Ireland” (as to which
we shall have by-and-by to say much
that is interesting), “I prepared and
published, on the 1st May 1846” (that
is, while holding the Irish Seals),
“the eleventh edition, compressed
into two volumes.” A twelfth, in a
greatly compressed form, in one small
octavo volume, a work of very great
labour, appeared in June 1851,—every
portion, including even index
and table of cases, being his own exclusive
personal handiwork. Six
months afterwards he became Lord
Chancellor of Great Britain; and
now, at the opening of the new year,
1857, we have, as a sort of parting gift,
of infinite value to the profession of
the law, this thirteenth edition, “the
last,” he says, though he is in full
health and vigour, “that I can expect
to publish.... To restore the work
to its original shape as a treatise, and
at the same time preserve its character
as a concise and practical view of
the subject” (the form which the
twelfth edition had assumed), “I have
spared neither time nor labour.”
Those only can judge of the labour
and time required for such a task,
who are in the habit of perusing all
the voluminous reports of our many
courts. The twelfth edition contained
some five hundred cases not
quoted in the eleventh; and upwards
of twelve hundred cases are included
in this thirteenth which were not
in the twelfth. “This collection of
cases is the fruit of upwards of half
a century of research and labour;—every
case” (as we have seen), “I have
perused in the original report, and
every line of the book has been written
by myself. I doubt not that
there are errors which have escaped
me, but I have endeavoured to
leave behind me this, my first work,
in a shape in some sense worthy
of the acceptance of the members
of the profession to which I have
the honour to belong; and I know,
by a long experience, that I may
safely rely on their indulgence.” Such
is the first glimpse we obtain of Edward
Sugden, starting on his career
as an author,—during half a century’s
overwhelming labour and anxiety as
a Chancery counsel, as an active
member of the House of Commons,
and as thrice a Lord Chancellor.
Blackwood’s Magazine is not the
fitting expositor, in detail, of this
great law-treatise, stamped by the
unanimous and uninterrupted approbation,
for half a century, of the
whole legal profession, of every rank—by
judges, counsel, and solicitors,
alike in courts of law and equity.
We think there must at this moment
be extant some thirty or forty thousand
copies of the various editions of
the “Vendors and Purchasers;” and
we entertain little doubt that, as soon
as this last is seen, no member of the
profession, who can afford to procure
it, will be long without doing so. To
the general reader we may intimate
that this work is of an intensely practical
character; and the art of condensation
which it manifests can go no
further. Its sweep is immense. The
gifted author exhibits the power of
grasping the whole subject, however
extensive and complicated, and yet
applying accurate—and the latest—legal
knowledge to the minutest exigency,—from
the terse, clear, cautious,
and yet decisive enumeration
of the profoundest principles of
equity, down to a question of costs,—in
all the variety of subdivisions of
that somewhat expensive luxury,—whether
as “costs” simpliciter, or as
“costs, charges, and expenses!” Probably
no book of the kind has ever
stood on a lawyer’s shelves, or was
constantly in hand, in which so few
errors have been detected; while
able and experienced lawyers could
point to great numbers of opinions and
doubts from time to time expressed
by the author, which have afterwards
been sanctioned by judicial decision,
and are always entertained and canvassed
with the utmost respect—the
respect due to one bringing the results
of vast practical and scientific
knowledge and experience to bear
upon the ordinary exigencies of litigation.
It has facilitated the labour,
and alleviated the anxieties and responsibilities
of tens of thousands
of practitioners during half a century:[10]
and those of 1857,—students
as well as practitioners—now see a
new edition, thoroughly remodelling
the work, and adapting it to existing
exigencies with scrupulously conscientious
personal care and labour, by
an author who so lately administered
justice as Lord High Chancellor, to
the admiration of all.
Shortly after the original appearance
of this work, its author, then
seeking practice as a conveyancer
under the bar, received a Case for his
opinion, in consequence of a solicitor’s
having cancelled the work. Mr
Sugden’s opinion differed from that
which, though given by an eminent
counsel, had dissatisfied his client,
and proved to be correct. In a short
time he found himself in large and
rapidly increasing business. Two
years after the appearance of his
book, namely in 1807, he was called
to the bar; and the first trace of him
in the reports is to be found in the
14th volume of Vesey Junior’s Reports
of Cases in Chancery, p. 302,
on the 18th March in that year, in
the case of Browne v. Like, which
was, in fact, the first case he ever
argued, and before that very eminent
judge, Sir William Grant, then Master
of the Rolls. Mr Sugden’s senior
on that occasion was Sir Samuel
Romilly, who left him to open the
case. He has since said, that when
he first rose, at the corner of the
back bench in that dusky little court,
his knees shook under him; but if
this were so, he disguised his nervousness,
and spoke, as we have heard,
with apparent calmness and self-possession,—so
effectually arguing
the first of the two points in dispute,
and the main one, that, on his
proceeding to the second, to his
surprise, Mr Richards, subsequently
Chief Baron of the Exchequer, who
led for the defendant, turned round
and told him that they should
abandon that point; thereby so encouraging
the young counsel, that, in
a more lively and confident frame of
mind, he proceeded to his second
point. His opponents were unable to
answer his lucid argument; and after
a few words in reply from Sir Samuel
Romilly, the court decided in favour
of the plaintiff, and thus enjoyed
Mr Sugden his prædulce decus primo
certamine! This his first case
was a small affair in point of the
property involved, but has its special
interest, as far as he is concerned—not
only as occasioning his maiden
effort, but because it affected a branch
of the law which, not long afterwards,
fell under his vigorous assault, as
most vexatious and oppressive—the
enrolling of Annuities. The facts were
shortly these: An uncle had bequeathed
to his niece, for her sole
and separate use, a life interest in
the dividends on a small sum in the
Funds, vested in trustees for that purpose.
Soon afterwards she married,
and, with her husband’s concurrence,
bonâ fide sold to Mr Sugden’s client,
for £140, twenty pounds a-year of
the aforesaid dividends; but no
memorial of the deed of sale was
enrolled according to the Act then
in force, and since repealed. The
two questions were, whether the
lady had power to sell these dividends?
and whether the transaction
was a “sale, out and out,” or the grant
of an annuity? in the former case
requiring no enrolment. The first
point was given up,[11] and the second
decided against the defendant. Mr
Sugden’s second case in court, as far
as we have been able to trace him,
was the well-known one of Sloane v.
Cadogan, in the Rolls Court in the
year 1808. His own outline of his
elaborate argument is to be found
in the appendix to the “Vendors and
Purchasers.” Those clients of Mr
Sugden who are still living, tell of
the peace of mind which ensued
their securing his services as their
conveyancer; so prompt, correct, decisive,
was he as an adviser, and, as a
draftsman, neat, concise, and elegant.
In his case, confidence was not a
plant of slow growth. His practice
grew apace in chambers, and he began
more and more frequently to appear,
not only in courts of equity,
but in those of common law, to argue
questions connected with conveyancing,
and the law of real property:
quickly conciliating the respect of
opponents, and of the bench, by his
exact and extensive knowledge, and
masterly use of it. Great as was
the pressure of his chamber practice,
and constantly increasing as were
his appearances in court, Mr Sugden
yet found time to prepare two
new editions of his “Vendors and
Purchasers,” as we have seen, in the
years 1806 and 1808, that of the latter
year in a far more systematic
form than any of the former had exhibited,
being, as he now tells us, “the
first divided into sections, with the
placita numbered.” And as if even
all this were not sufficient, the selfsame
year 1808 saw another important
work of his, of a much higher order
than his former one, as of a more
abstruse and scientific character—his
Treatise on Powers. This elaborate
and systematic work, which
we regard as eminently characteristic
of its author’s legal genius, at once
elevated him—now in his twenty-seventh
year—to a conspicuous position
in the foremost rank of living
lawyers. It has ever since continued
a text-book of the highest repute—we
might almost say, though in its
authors lifetime, of authority—and
has passed through seven large editions,
every one prepared by the indefatigable
author, who, in his preface
to the first edition, modestly
pleaded, “as an excuse for any inaccuracies
in it, the necessity of devoting
his time to other labours, from
which moments were snatched for
this performance.” He is here speaking
of his labours as a conveyancer in
full practice, whose toils are severe
and unremitting; requiring a close
exclusive attention, if he would not
run the risk of making shipwreck of
his reputation by perilling, or actually
sacrificing, the important interests
confided to his skilled experience.
To such a master of his art
as Mr Sugden, these toils would be
lightened as far as their troublesome
nature admitted. The Practical
Treatise on Powers, we regard
as one of the most remarkable performances
on record in the literature
of the law, especially as that
of a conveyancer comparatively so
youthful. The attempt to give a
mere general reader a fair notion of
what the lawyer means by “powers,”
would be about as hopeful as to
explain to a young lady the doctrine
of differential calculus. To form an
idea of this kind of “Power,” he must
be apprised of the nature of “Use,”
of a “Trust,” of the old common law,
and after a great statute. Blackstone,
that exquisitely elegant expositor of
everything susceptible of exposition,
declared it “impracticable,” in the
plan of his Commentaries, “to pursue
the doctrine of Uses through all
the refinements and niceties which
the ingenuity of times abounding in
subtle distinctions, deduced from this
child of the imagination;” “a notion
transplanted,” he elsewhere tells us,
“into England from the civil law
about the close of the reign of Edward
III., by means of the foreign
ecclesiastics, who introduced it to
evade the statutes of mortmain.”
Would our non-legal readers set out
with us, if we were so disposed, to
follow this ignis fatuus? Doubtless
they would be as unwilling to follow
as we to lead. Suffice it to say, therefore,
that the introduction of Uses and
Trusts produced a great revolution
in the transfer and modification of
landed property, forming “a law
whereupon,” says Lord Bacon, in his
Reading on the Statute of Uses, “the
inheritances of this realm are tossed
at this day, like a ship upon the sea,
in such sort that it is hard to say
which bark will sink, and which will
get to the haven.” It has, however,
constituted the main-spring of the
delicate and complex machinery of the
conveyancer—to whose craft, directly
or indirectly, fortunate reader!
you are indebted at this moment for
the safe enjoyment of your estates,
however small, however large. Yet
it would be interesting to an historical
and reflecting reader, to contemplate
the great wrestling-match between
the Legislature and the astute
Chancery lawyers of the day—how
each in his turn defeated the other,
and how it ultimately contributes
to the present division between our
systems of law and equity. “Uses”
and “Powers” are the means by which
our existing method of “settling” real
estates is effected and maintained,
enabling, as they do, the possessor
to chalk out the future enjoyment of
it in as many contingencies, and for
as long a period, as the policy of the
law admits; and no little of the intricacy
of the existing system is due
to the exacting ambition or far-seeing
beneficence of owners of property.
Now, “Sugden on Powers” forms a
sine quâ non of the practical conveyancer;
and if the student, after
acquiring a knowledge of the doctrine
of Uses, of which that of Powers, says
St Leonards, is only a branch that has
greatly surpassed in growth its parent
stock, he will find that three-fourths
of his difficulties have vanished.
We heard some years ago, and now
know it as a fact, that the late Sir
Robert Peel once laughingly told Sir
Edward Sugden, at dinner, that he
had, from what he had heard of the
difficulty of this book, regarded it as
a sort of legal Euclid; and having
ascertained, he said, that the third
section of the first chapter was the
Pons Asinorum of lawyers, he had
resolved to master it! So having sat
down for that purpose, he succeeded,
as he averred, and had found out
all about borrescimus referentes!—“Scintilla
juris.” The aforesaid
section has the inviting heading—“Of
Scintilla Juris,” a matter which
has exercised, harassed, and well-nigh
split the heads of a whole army of
judges—of Lord Bacon even, who
seems to speak of it, Sir Edward
tells us, in a contemptuous tone. Sir
Edward himself characterises it as a
fiction, invented by perverse astuteness
to escape a difficulty which itself
only had created. When a man
had indicated the future enjoyment
of his property, in certain specified
contingencies, the antique conveyancer,
putting on a pair of huge
magnifying-glasses, fancied he detected
in that man, who himself
imagined that he had exhausted
himself of all connection with the
property, a lambent spark of interest—a
mere metaphysical entity—a momentary
seisin, adequate to “feed the
use.”
“Over this invention,” says a masterly
living writer on conveyancing (Mr
Hayes), “the old judges cast the veil of
Latinity, and prudently withdrew it, under
the learned appellation of ‘Scintilla
juris,’ from profane examination! Westminster
Hall resounded with the debate.
The speeches of the eleven judges, who
delivered their opinions seriatim, occupied
six days! The Lord Chief-Justice
Popham declared that not to cherish the
scintilla juris would be to cast the whole
commonwealth into a sea of troubles,
and endanger it with utter confusion
and drowning.” “The commonwealth,”
adds the sarcastic writer, himself a first-rate
conveyancer, “had little to fear, but
common sense was in imminent danger
of perishing between the conflicting elements
of fire and water.”
The “Scintilla” has learned advocates
and opponents to this hour; among
the latter being Lord Bacon, Lord St
Leonards, Mr Fearne, Mr Butler, Mr
Preston, and Mr Hayes—a sort of
legal galaxy. Still, however, to
change the figure, the indurated
stump of this doctrine retains a sort
of tenacious vitality in the prolific
subsoil of legal ingenuity. While
thus dismissing a matter, savouring,
as the unlearned and irreverent
reader might presumptuously imagine,
somewhat of the mighty dispute
between Tweedledum v. Tweedledee—let
us intimate that the
“Treatise on Powers” is divided into
nineteen elaborate chapters, each
distributed into sections, so disposed,
and so treating an extensive and
complicated subject, as to be almost
equally adapted for elementary and
practical purposes. It is a masterly
combination of legal subtlety with
the strongest common-sense, applied
with the utmost exactness to
practical exigencies—not, as he himself
intimated, perversely suggesting
doubts, but supplying solutions for
real difficulties. Of these solutions
it were easy to cite many instances
of judicial adoption, such as will
readily occur to any well-informed
professional reader.
“The author regrets,” he says, in the
preface to the sixth edition (1836),
“that he has upon so many points
differed from persons for whom he
entertains unfeigned respect, but he has
rather considered the principle of the
rule than the weight due to the authority
by whom it was pronounced; and
his own erroneous impressions may
readily be corrected; for it is but in few
instances that he has given an opinion
without stating the reasons upon which
it is grounded.”
And in another part of the same
preface to this, his favourite performance,
occurs the following interesting
passage:—
“We have many admirable treatises;
but, for the most part, our legal authors
want either experience or time, and it
ever must be so; for if a man do not
write on law while he is young, he probably
never will; and if at an advanced
period he revise his early productions,
with the advantage of reputation and
increased experience, time, without
which nothing important can be accomplished
upon legal subjects, is no longer
at his command. And, besides, a counsel
in actual practice can seldom write
freely upon decisions in which he has
been engaged. If he find fault with a
decision against him, it may be imputed
to partial or perverted views; and if he
disapprove of any in which he has been
successful, the criticism from such a
quarter might afford the groundwork of
an appeal.”
The third edition (1821) was dedicated,
by permission, to Lord Chancellor
Eldon, than whom no one entertained
a greater respect for the
learning of the author,[12] who thus
justly and eloquently eulogised that
great judge:—
“I felt the presumption of addressing
such a request”—to be allowed to
dedicate to him the work—“to a judge
who has so often excited the admiration
of the Bar, by a display, without effort,
of an extent of knowledge in every
branch of jurisprudence, which the life
of man appears to be insufficient to acquire.
If these considerations deterred
me from making the application, I was
encouraged to it by that judicial mildness
and gravity—that urbanity and
attention to the youngest counsel in the
Court—the true mark of a great mind—which
operate so powerfully to make
your Lordship beloved by the Bar, and
soften the splendour which profound
knowledge, high character, and dignity
shed around you.”
In the year following that which
saw the third edition of the “Vendors
and Purchasers,” and the first of the
“Treatise on Powers”—namely, in the
year 1809—Mr Sugden found time to
write a valuable little work for the
guidance of lay gentlemen in the
management of their estates, entitled
“A Series of Letters to a Man of
Property, on Sales, Purchases, Mortgages,
Leases, Settlements, and Devises
of Estates;” in a thin octavo
volume, consisting of twelve letters,
all of a practical character, perfectly
intelligible to a non-professional man,
and admirably calculated to enlighten
him as to the nature of these
all-important transactions. This
work, which passed through six large
editions, has been long out of print;
and but for the wise saw concerning
“the last straw which breaks the
camel’s back,” we might venture to
intimate that Lord St Leonards
would confer a very great favour on
the lay public by reproducing these
letters, adapted to the existing and
greatly-altered state of our laws. We
regard a work of this description,
undertaken as it was by a lawyer of
first-rate attainments and practice,
as a very unassuming and disinterested
service rendered to those who
stand not a little in need of it. Three
years afterwards—namely, in the
year 1811—Mr Sugden gave to the
profession an edition of the posthumous
work of Chief Baron Gilbert
on “Uses and Trusts”—which derived
all its real value from the careful revision
and “Introduction” of the
accomplished Editor. These notes
and introduction are of a most elaborate
character, ably epitomising the
law to which they relate,—chiefly to
springing and shifting uses, and the
law of perpetuities.
Between the years 1812 and 1836,
we find Mr Sugden, from time to
time, publishing pamphlets on subjects
of great practical importance—such
as the mischievous operation of
the then (1812) existing Annuity
Act, which, as we have already intimated,
he succeeded in getting expunged
from the statute-book, as
productive of intolerable vexation
and ruinous litigation—himself
drawing the act (53 Geo. III. c. 141)
in the ensuing year which repealed
it, and substituted a better system.[13]
Other subjects to which he thus addressed
himself were the improvement
of the administration of justice in the
Court of Equity; the law of wills;
the rate of interest and redeemable
annuities; the appellate jurisdiction
of the Court of Chancery and the
House of Lords (1835); and on the
late Mr Humphreys’ proposal to repeal
the Laws of Real Property, and
substitute a new code (1826), which
Mr Sugden encountered with great
power. His pamphlet, which was
very elaborate, attracted much attention,
and passed through three editions.
With the exception of these
minor and intermitting literary exertions,
and preparing new editions of
his great works, we now lose sight of
Mr Sugden as an author—thus, as it
were, only occasionally showing his
head above the deep waters of Chancery
practice—till a period to which
we must in due time refer.
During his practice as a conveyancing
counsel for about eight years,
he more and more frequently varied
its oppressive monotony, by going into
courts of law to argue questions relating
to real property. It was about
the year 1812 that he took to arguing
special cases in the Common
Courts—a work at that time of great
labour and anxiety, and very little
profit. His first case may be seen
reported as Goodtitle v. White, 15
East’s Reports, p. 174 (A.D. 1812).
Here he was pitted against and defeated
his formidable brother conveyancer,
Mr Preston. In 1815 he argued
in the same court, Wright v. Barlow,
3 Maule and Selwyn’s Rep. 512, but
could not succeed in inducing the
court to overrule one of its own decisions.
In the latter year he argued
the celebrated case of Doe v.
Jesson, 5 Maule and Selwyn’s, 95, and
again failed to convince the court;
but on appeal, Lord Eldon and Lord
Redesdale reversed the decision, on
grounds suggested and argued by
Mr Sugden. Another case argued
in the same year, and reported in
the same volume (p. 482), was that
of Doe v. Roach, in which, after
an arduous argument, Mr Sugden
convinced Lord Ellenborough, and
succeeded. He continued to argue
cases in the Common Law Courts
till the year 1822, when he finally
relinquished the practice. All the
cases reported in the latter year
are reported in the fifth volume of
Barnewall and Alderson’s Reports.
One of them, Beard v. Westcott, p.
801, affords an excellent specimen of
his close and lucid reasoning. Here
he not only again defeated his astute
opponent, Mr Preston, but prevailed
on the King’s Bench to differ
from the Common Pleas, though the
opinion of the latter had been supported
by the judgment of the Master
of the Rolls, Sir William Grant.
Three other cases, in courts of equity,
afford instructive specimens of the
power of this great legal reasoner—Bengough
v. Edridge, 1 Simon’s Rep.
207, 227; Cholmondley v. Clinton, 2
Merivale, 221, 241; Lord Deerhurst v.
The Duke of St Albans, 5 Madd.,
243.[14] He at length began to consider
whether he would not altogether
quit chamber for court practice; a
very bold step, indeed, for one who,
with a large family to support, was
realising an ample income, which he
was about to surrender, perhaps for
ever. It may be well imagined that this
afforded matter for anxious and painful
deliberation. His chambers were
crowded with pupils, his tables groaned
under “papers,” and most, if not
all, the leading solicitors were his
confiding and devoted clients—bringing
him far more business than he
could by any effort conscientiously
dispose of, and which he therefore
declined. A distinguished member
of the profession besought him
with the utmost, and almost tearful
urgency, not to take a step which
he believed, with many others,
would prove fatal to his prosperity.
We have heard that the late Vice-Chancellor
of England, then Mr
Shadwell, made no secret of his opinion,
that Mr Sugden’s appearance
at the bar would be a complete failure;
he at length made up his mind, and
passed the Rubicon. Shortly before he
did so, he said to our informant, an
eminent living Queen’s Counsel, with
whom he was one night walking
home, “I am going to give up conveyancing,
and go to the bar. I
don’t know whether it will answer,
but I will try.” This was said
with an air of great resolution; and
it is for us to tell the issue. The
intrepid aspirant after forensic honours
found himself in a moment deserted
by almost every client of importance,
who appeared to feel personally
offended at being, as it were,
suddenly left in the lurch by their
favourite conveyancer, on whom they
had been accustomed to rely so long
and so implicitly. For a very short
time the forebodings of evil appeared
being realised; and he had to sit
in court, day after day, witnessing
his once stanch clients pouring
their briefs into the hands of other
counsel, without vouchsafing a solitary
one to the new-fledged one!
Whatever inward mortification or apprehension
he but too probably experienced,
he concealed; saying, perhaps,
within himself, If the great solicitors
will not have me, perhaps some small
one may, one fine day, give me an
opportunity of showing that they will
not slight me with impunity. By-and-by
came Mr Sugden’s opportunity;
he was intrusted by a “small” solicitor
with a “small” brief; and it may
be supposed with what perfect preparation
such a man would come into
court. On his consummate knowledge
of the law of real property he consciously
stood, as upon a rock; and
his rigorous logic enabled him to
wield that knowledge with irresistible
effect. It did not take long to
show those former clients, who stood
aloof from him, that they were making
a mistake—which we may be
sure their deserted counsel would give
them more and more frequent opportunities
of feeling. A few exhibitions
of his easy mastery over business, his
steady self-possession and resolution,
and the influence he was visibly acquiring
over the court, soon began
to put a different complexion on matters;
and the commiserating smile,
perchance, of supercilious rivals somewhat
suddenly began to settle into an
expression of something like a well-founded
anxiety! Mr Sugden advanced
rapidly into practice of the highest
class. Every moment, during which
he was not actually employed in
court, he might have been seen sitting
there answering cases, generally
of an intricate and troublesome kind,
buried in their details, undisturbed by
all the hubbub around him, for he was
always distinguished by the power of
abstraction. All was thenceforth plain
sailing. His old clients became as
anxious to secure his services in
court, as formerly in chambers. A few
years afterwards—namely, in the year
1822—he received a silk gown from
Lord Eldon, thereby taking another
decisive step in advance, surrendering
junior for leading business. In this
year, also, appeared, edited wholly
and elaborately by himself, the sixth
edition of his “Vendors and Purchasers”—though
how he found time
to do so, at such an anxious crisis of
his fortunes, and with such uninterrupted
demands on his time and energies,
it is not easy to discover. His
silk gown was a splendid success,
silencing sneers and whispering disparagements
from every quarter. A
consummate knowledge of the principles
and details of real-property law,
and conveyancing, and equity; rapidity
of perception; conscientious devotion
to the interests of his clients;
imperturbable coolness and self-possession;
the pith and brevity of his
arguments, and lucid exposition of
the most involved facts—all combined
to invest his advocacy with
such charms in the eyes of anxious
solicitors and their clients, that retainers
were soon showered on Mr
Sugden from all quarters—and it was
almost always a race between rival
solicitors who should first retain him!
As though his cup of labour were
not yet brimful, on the 20th February
1828 Mr Sugden was elected a member
of Parliament for the borough
of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis,
after a ten days’ expensive and harassing
contest. He was returned
twice afterwards for the same place,
once on being appointed Solicitor-General.
Mr Sugden sustained three
other severe election contests, one for
the Rape of Bramber in 1826, and
two for the borough of Cambridge,
against the present Lord Monteagle.
He also sate for the borough of St
Mawes (extinguished by Schedule A)
during the period of the Reform Bill
debates, and twice for Ripon, after
his first retirement from the office of
Lord Chancellor of Ireland, in 1835,
as we shall presently mention,—representing
that borough at the time of
his second and final acceptance of
the Irish Seals, in 1841. We doubt
whether any man ever underwent
greater labour than Mr Sugden
throughout the harassing but prosperous
twelve or thirteen years following
his attaining the rank of King’s
Counsel, particularly during the period
of his sitting in the House of
Commons. We first saw him one
morning in the court of Sir Lancelot
Shadwell, then the only Vice-Chancellor;
and, without at first knowing
who he was, were forcibly struck by
his care-worn countenance. His manner
was calm, but he looked harassed,
as though he had sate up the whole
night. And perhaps he had! He
has often been known to return to his
house, then in Guildford Street, Russell
Square, from the House of Commons,
at three o’clock in the morning,
having been engaged incessantly in
court all the previous day till he went
to the House; and at six o’clock his
servant would bring candles to his
bedside, when he would sit up to
read his briefs. At a quarter to nine
o’clock he would be seen at Westminster,
holding five or six consultations
before ten o’clock, when the
Lord Chancellor’s and Vice-Chancellor’s
courts opened; then he was retained
probably in every case in either
court, which he would be addressing
incessantly. At the rising of the
court, a little after four, he would
betake himself to the House of Commons,
and remain here often till two
o’clock in the morning, or later, reading
his briefs in a room at the coffee-house
at Bellamy’s of that day, during
the intervals of his attending the debates,
snatching a hasty dinner at
any moment that served. Once he
returned home at half-past six o’clock
in the morning, and went to bed till
eight o’clock, when he rose to prepare
for such another day as the one before!
How mortal flesh and blood—how
any mortal brain, could stand
such tear and wear as this, seems a
mystery; but he was blessed with
a fine constitution, and was of
temperate and abstemious habits.
The income which he derived from
these labours, as may easily be believed,
was very large. His fees were
often enormous. The business rejected
at his chambers’ door must have
amounted to many thousands a-year.
In the great case of Small v. Attwood
he received four thousand guineas,
and accepted the retainer only very
reluctantly, and after having several
times refused it. To protect himself
as much as possible, he refused, for a
long time, for any consideration, to
go into other courts than his own,
and never would give an opinion on
a case, except in consultation with
another counsel. The facility with
which he despatched business was
most remarkable; and that not cursory
and slovenly reading of his papers,
but really mastering and exhausting
them. One evening after
dinner, without leaving the room, he
began to read his briefs for the ensuing
day, which was a “Motion” day;
but those intrusted to him were generally
of difficulty and importance.
He continued reading brief after brief
as long as they were supplied to him,
in successive bags, by his clerk. Having
at length despatched them all,
he saw himself surrounded with so
many as astonished himself. He had
the curiosity to count them; and in
three hours and a half’s time he had
thoroughly read thirty-five! By this
time it was eleven o’clock; and instead
of dropping exhausted into bed,
he called a coach, and went down to
the House of Commons! We have
heard that when this little feat was
recalled to his recollection, he vouched
for its truth; but added, with a
smile, that he never could have attacked
such a number of briefs, had
they been brought before him all at
once, instead of in successive bagfuls!
But what, after all, is such
a life as this, but one of splendid
slavery?
In the year 1829, Mr Sugden was
appointed Solicitor-General, succeeding
the late amiable and learned Sir
Nicholas Tindal, on his receiving the
appointment of Chief-Justice of the
Common Pleas,[15] thereby, of course,
superadding to his private professional
labours the onerous cares of
office. He received, as usual, the
honour of knighthood, but did not
retain office long. Passing over an
interval of five years, we arrive at the
year 1834, when Sir Edward Sugden’s
name appears for the last time
that we have been able to discover in
the Law Reports, as counsel. He had
ceased to attend the Rolls Court long
before he retired from the Bar; and
his last argument in the Vice-Chancellor’s
Court is that of Cash v. Dean
and Chapter of Ely, 7 Simon’s Rep.
211 (A. D. 1834); and his last before
the Lord Chancellor was the well-known
case of Kennedy v. Green, 3
Myhere and Keen, 699, in the same
year. At the close of his judgment in
this latter case, Lord Brougham, as
Chancellor, took leave of the Bar.
The seventh volume of Simon’s
Cases, above referred to, incidentally
affords some evidence of the extent,
at that time, of Sir Edward’s business:
the volume contains thirty-five
cases, of which he appeared as counsel
in twenty-seven! On quitting
the Bar, he returned fees exceeding a
thousand guineas.
On the 13th January 1835 Sir Edward
Sugden was induced[16] to accept
the appointment of Lord Chancellor
of Ireland; a post, however, which
he filled only three months, but long
enough to exhibit the highest judicial
qualities, and to cause general
regret at being deprived of such services.
On returning from Ireland he
found himself, as we have seen, “for
the first time in his professional life,
in full leisure,” seizing the opportunity
thoroughly to revise his “Vendors
and Purchasers,” of which, in
1839, he published a new edition—the
tenth—in three royal octavo volumes.
In addition to this, he read and
critically examined every reported
decision of all the courts of law and
equity. In 1837 he reappeared in the
House of Commons as member for
the borough of Ripon, taking an
active part in the more important
subjects of legislative discussion, particularly
those with which he was so
pre-eminently qualified to deal. In
the month of October 1841, however,
he finally retired from the House of
Commons, on being appointed a
second time Lord Chancellor of Ireland—a
post which he occupied till
the month of July 1846. We believe
we speak the universal opinion of
the Irish Bar, and indeed of the general
public of Ireland, that it was a fortunate
day that saw this great and upright
magistrate a second time in its
supreme seat of justice, to occupy it
for a period of five years. We feel
justified in attributing, not now for
the first time, the utmost weight to
the judgment of the Bench and Bar of
Ireland. They are acute, dexterous,
and learned, and capable of appreciating
thoroughly a display of the highest
judicial qualifications. Sir Edward
himself declared on one occasion,
recently, that he could never mention
the Bar of Ireland but in cordial
terms of affection and respect;
and that, when he finally quitted
Ireland, he had experienced not one
unkind or disrespectful expression
towards himself, nor witnessed any
personal disagreement among themselves.
He was undoubtedly exact
and severe in maintaining that order
in his court, without which, while
justice is administered with difficulty,
judicial decisions may fail to
command the prompt respect and
consideration which are their due.
Himself profoundly attentive to what
went on, involving such important
interests, he also required that counsel
should receive no interruption,
and that they should address themselves,
with all due brevity and
closeness, to the real points at issue.
An attentive and watchful Bar has
a most salutary effect on both judge
and counsel; and a court gravely
and decorously ordered in all things,
produces a fitting impression, as
well on the public as on even the
most disappointed suitor. Sir Edward’s
great reputation as an equity
lawyer stimulated counsel to make
fitting exertions, and a protracted
desultory volubility found no encouragement
or even toleration in
the court of Lord Chancellor Sugden,
whose presence put even the
ablest of his Bar on their mettle:
while his deep attention repaid
their pains in preparing and condensing
their arguments. We are
not, however, left to the expression
of our own opinion. His first chancellorship
lasted for only three
months,—viz. from the 13th January
to the 22d April 1835; and
on the latter day, after having pronounced
an important judgment,
with a view to securing the due and
economical administration of justice
in the courts of equity, the Attorney-General
rose and asked if his lordship
intended to sit again? and
being answered in the negative, thus
addressed the Chancellor:—[17]
“My Lord, I should do great injustice
to my own feelings, and, I am persuaded,
to those of the Bar of Ireland, if I
allowed your lordship to retire from
that seat without attempting, however
feebly, to convey to your lordship
the impression of the deep sense which
we entertain of the eminent ability and
dignity of demeanour with which you
have discharged the important duties of
your high office. Short as has been the
period of your lordship’s elevation, it has
afforded ample opportunity for the display
of judicial powers of the highest degree
of excellence. Had that period been
still shorter—had it been limited to the
observation of a single day—it would
have been sufficient to have impressed
us with an indelible conviction of the
profound, extensive, and accurate learning,
the patience and discrimination, the
masterly exposition and application of
the authorities and principles of equity,
and, above all, of the ardent love of justice,
and elevated tone of moral feeling,
which marked and distinguished your
judgments. I have only to add our
acknowledgments for your uniform
urbanity and kindness, and to assure
your lordship that you bear with you our
regret at your retirement, and our most
anxious wishes for your future happiness
and welfare.”
To this affecting address the
Chancellor, declaring that he had
been “totally unprepared for it,”
made a brief and dignified reply,[18]
acknowledging the uniform kindness
and attention of the Bar; after
which one of the most eminent of
the solicitors rose and expressed
their concurrence in the sentiments
which had been so eloquently expressed
by the Bar.
Sir Edward Sugden’s second return
to Ireland as Lord Chancellor
afforded him a more extended opportunity
of exhibiting judicial and
administrative power. It is perhaps
needless to say, that he manifested
throughout the same acuteness,
strength, stretch, and exactness
of legal judgment, which had
elicited, at the close of his former
brief tenure of the Seals, the
spontaneous and weighty approbation
of all legal circles in Ireland.
Every one of his judgments appealed
from, was affirmed by the House of
Lords, with the exception of two,
and a single point in a third. The
propriety of even these few reversals,
however, is gravely questionable, and
is denied by Sir Edward himself; who
elaborately examines the grounds
on which they proceeded, in his
Treatise on the Law of Property, as
administered in the House of Lords,[19]
and thereby enables those who are
competent to do so, to pronounce
an opinion for themselves.
Two of his judgments in the year
1843 were attended by incidents so
remarkable, as testified to us by
those who were present and vouch
for the facts, that we mention them.
In the case of Box v. Jackson,
Drury’s Reports 42–85, the case was
deemed by the Chancellor of such
difficulty and importance, that he requested
the present distinguished
Lord-Justice of Ireland, Mr Blackburn,
then Master of the Rolls, to
assist him in hearing it. On a subsequent
day the decision was given—the
Master of the Rolls reading an
elaborate written judgment; at the
close of which the Chancellor,
“without the assistance of a single
note of any sort,”[20] says our informant,
“proceeded instanter to deliver his
judgment, extending over seventeen
pages, and comprising at once a
luminous and minute critical examination
of a long series of decisions,
by Lord Hardwicke and other great
authorities, from the year 1739 to
1818!” The point was, whether, by
analogy to a fine at common law,
the court had power to take the
consent of a married woman, and by
force of it give effect to a transfer
by her of her equitable reversionary
interest in stock: the Chancellor deciding,
concurrently with the Master of
the Rolls, in the negative. Immediately
after delivering this judgment,
the court adjourned for the usual brief
interval; and on the Chancellor’s return,
the whole Bar rose up to do
him honour! The other case is
that of Stackpoole v. Stackpoole,
4 Drury and Warren’s Rep. 320;
in which, at the close of a learned
argument by the most eminent
counsel in Ireland, on the Chancellor’s
inquiring whether the parties
wished him to decide the question,
or send a case to a court of law,
and being informed that “it was the
general wish that his lordship should
decide the case at once,” he did so
instanter, and elaborately, though it
happened that he had not taken a
single note of any argument, or case
cited by counsel![21] Such an effect
had the Chancellor’s promptness and
felicity of judgment in delivering his
vivâ voce judgments, that, on his beginning
to deliver written judgments,
the present Mr Justice Moore, on the
part of the Bar, requested him to continue
delivering judgments vivâ voce.
It must not, however, be supposed
that the Chancellor of Ireland was
so absorbed with his judicial, as to
be unmindful of the important duties
devolving upon him in his administrative
capacity. It were equally
invidious and unjust to make or
insinuate comparisons between Sir
Edward Sugden and his predecessors
or successors, in this latter case, or
in any other respect; but all practical
professional people in Ireland
know under what obligations the
public were placed, by their Chancellor,
during the period referred to.
In conjunction with the then Master
of the Rolls, Mr Blackburn, he consolidated
all the Orders of the Irish
Court of Chancery, repealing all
preceding ones, so as to render it unnecessary
any longer to refer to a
long series of Orders, many of them
obscure, and totally inconsistent
with each other. This proved a
great relief to the suitor, and was a
work of much labour; but, undoubtedly,
no little had been previously accomplished
by Lord Plunket. Another
great benefit conferred by the Chancellor,
was in respect of the grievous burthens
inflicted upon suitors in
equity, under the name of Searches
for Incumbrances. He put an end
to this grievance by issuing an
order allowing solicitors a sufficient
fixed charge for such searches; while
their costs in other matters were placed
on a new and equitable footing,
as between them and their clients.
Again, tenants of land, over which
Receivers were appointed by the
Court of Chancery, were subjected
to serious hardships, in respect of the
payment of their rents, or the reduction
of them in hard times. These
evils were effectually redressed by
orders, and otherwise, of the Chancellor.
Various other beneficial
changes in the existing order of
things were introduced by the Chancellor,
beyond our province here to
specify, but the effect of which is
felt to this day. Infinitely to his
honour were his unintermitted and
powerful exertions in behalf of lunatics.
The public minutes and
orders, after his visits to the public
and private asylums, where he made,
personally, minute and laborious
inquiries, pointing out what required
a remedy, and affording that remedy
where he had the power, would fill
a not inconsiderable volume. He
took a special interest in the district
asylums, and in the proceedings for
the custody of criminal and pauper
lunatics. Nothing, in fact, relating
to this unhappy class of our fellow-creatures,
escaped the humanely
watchful eye of the Chancellor, who
issued orders calculated to subject the
proceedings of all in authority in these
institutions to publicity and responsibility.
It is difficult sufficiently to
estimate the amount of benefit thus
conferred upon this large and deplorably
afflicted class, and who, as will
hereafter be seen, appear to have
been always subjects of Sir Edward
Sugden’s special solicitude, both judicial
and legislative.
How it may be now, we profess
not to be able to say; but it is well
known that the magistrates of Ireland
occasioned the Chancellor, at the
troublous time of which we are speaking,
almost as much anxiety and
trouble as his judicial duties. He instituted
an order of procedure in appointing
magistrates, which operated
most advantageously; his evident object
being to conciliate the respect of
all classes for the vigorous and faithful
administration of justice, as well
by these as by all other functionaries.
He superseded magistrates without
hesitation, whatever their position or
influence, if he thought that the public
interest required it; of which a
memorable instance is on record,
greatly to his honour, in respect
of his resolute and impartial spirit.
We allude to his dismissal of a nobleman
of the Chancellor’s own political
party, and his agent and
brother magistrate, from the commission,
for intemperate conduct
towards each other on the bench.
The matter was brought before the
House of Lords, but the Government
upheld their Chancellor with a high
hand. It was, however, in the Repeal
year, 1843, that the greatest
amount of anxiety and responsibility
was thrown on the Chancellor of that
then distracted portion of the empire.
In compliance with the views of the
Government, he refused to appoint
any man a magistrate who belonged
to the Repeal Association; and in consequence
of their acts and speeches,
superseded on the same day Lord
French and Mr O’Connell. A storm
was of course the immediate result.
The Chancellor’s letter conveying
their dismissal was read in the House
of Lords by Lord Brougham, who
defended Sir Edward in a generous
spirit, amidst repeated cheering; and
it was indeed a most satisfactory and
conclusive statement of the principles
on which Sir Edward had proceeded.
Acting upon them, he almost immediately
afterwards removed numerous
other magistrates, amongst whom
were Mr Morgan John O’Connell, and
Mr Smith O’Brien, for presiding at
tumultuous Repeal meetings. When
Mr Daniel O’Connell seemed bent on
raising the standard of civil war at
Clontarf, on the 8th October 1843,
the Lord-Lieutenant (Earl De Grey)
and the Chancellor went to England,
to consult definitively with the Government
on the threatening state
of affairs; but on hearing of the meeting
so appointed, returned instanter
to Ireland. They pronounced the
meeting illegal, and took steps so
formidable and decisive, that Mr
O’Connell and his agitation were
crushed together. All this, however,
is matter of history—that of a very
momentous period. The calmness
and strength of the Chancellor’s
judgment, backed by his immense
reputation, rendered a service to the
menaced cause of order and good
government never to be forgotten.
His judicial and administrative
duties not being sufficient to satisfy
this helluo laborum—as surely we
may with justice style him—he devoted
himself at every spare moment
to the systematic revision of his
“Treatise on Vendors and Purchasers,”
and the compression of it into two
volumes, instead of the three into
which it had swollen in the preceding
edition.
In July 1846, Sir Edward a second
time resigned the Irish seals, with
the regret and applause of the whole
country, and especially of the legal
profession. His administration of
justice was pronounced to be unequalled
in Ireland, even organs of
public opinion not favourable to his
party giving him in several respects
the palm over no less a distinguished
predecessor than Lord Redesdale.
“He never,” says one of these now
lying before us, “mixed himself up in
the party-politics of the country: he
had no followers or connections there;
was ruled by no clique, and ear-wigged
by no favourites. He was
distinguished as a great Chancery
reformer as well as a great Chancery
judge. He reformed the Master’s
offices, and established a tribunal for
the taxation of costs. In matters
of lunacy, and in the Accountant-General’s
department, he introduced
large and sweeping changes, some of
which have been followed in England
by Lord Cottenham.”
Relieved from the pressure of
judicial and parliamentary business,
Sir Edward betook himself to his
lovely retreat on the banks of the
Thames—Boyle Farm; but how his
leisure for the next three years was
spent, is attested by a large royal
octavo volume of nearly 800 pages,
now before us, entitled A Treatise on
the Law of Property, as administered
in the House of Lords, published on
the 11th January 1849. We doubt
whether any more remarkable work
has been given to the legal profession
during the present century, having regard
to the qualifications of its author,
the pains he has bestowed on it,
and the commensurate interest, difficulty,
and importance of the subject-matter.
The general reader must
needs take this for granted, as we
have no means of giving him detailed
proofs of our assertion. Imagine
a lawyer like Sir Edward
Sugden, who, previously to having
been twice made Lord Chancellor
of Ireland, as we have seen him,
had been facile princeps as a real-property
and equity lawyer at the
bar for nearly forty years,—dealing
with every case of the least importance,—sitting
down with the pressure
upon him of his own reputation,
and a delicate sense of responsibility;
imagine, we say, such a man devoting
all his faculties to the task of
weighing in the critical balance
every decision of the supreme Court
of Appeal during the last thirty
years, with a view to developing them
into a systematic treatise on the Law
of Real and Personal Property, in
respect of all the great moot-points
started and disposed of during that
long interval by this august tribunal,
and thereby placing that law
on a solid foundation! We know of
no book entitled to be studied with
greater attention and deference by
any lawyer, from a Lord Chancellor,
Chief-Justice, and Judge, down to
the ranks of such of the junior bar as
are capable of understanding and
appreciating a performance of so high
an order. Not a case is here dealt
with which has not been evidently
mastered in all its bearings, as if the
writer had had the responsibility of
adjudicating upon it: the facts and
arguments, often of rare complication
and difficulty, are in every instance
stated by himself, and with so much
brevity and clearness as to bring the
point at issue at once before competent
eyes. Take, for instance, the
great case of Doe v. Perratt, decided
by the Court of King’s Bench in 1826,
occupying fifty-two pages in the fifth
volume of Barnwell and Cresswell’s
Reports; and seventy-one in the sixth
volume of Manning and Granger—argued
twice before the House
of Lords, with the opinions of the
judges, summoned to attend, declared
by Lord Cottenham so much at variance,
that “it was impossible that
authority could be more equally
divided.” The whole history of the
case, the points of difference, and the
main point itself, are disposed of with
masterly precision in fewer than eight
pages; whereas, without such assistance,
it would require any man many
hours to master the case; “a careful
study of which,” concludes the author,
“though it may perplex the student,
will amply repay his trouble.” We
had marked no fewer than twenty-one
cases, all of greater or less permanent
interest and importance, thus
admirably dealt with, explaining
difficulties, and pointing out where
they are open to grave doubts; but,
we are bound to say, without losing
sight of the deference due to the
exalted tribunal on whose decisions,
nevertheless, he is sitting in judgment—moreover,
he who was destined
so soon after himself to occupy
the Woolsack. To two only of the
cases referred to can we briefly
allude, as richly repaying the best
attention which the reader can bestow
upon them. The first is Gibson
v. D’Este (pp. 614, 649), which is,
so to speak, placed on the rack of
an excruciating legal criticism, and
demonstrated, as we think, to be a
faulty decision. The other case is
that of Howard v. Lord Digby (p.
162), also disapproved of by the
author, all after a rigorous examination.
It is highly interesting, if for
no other reason, for exhibiting a
vivid contrast between the characteristic
methods of dealing with
legal subjects, by Lord Brougham
and Lord St Leonards; the one vigorous,
graphic, and even dramatic—the
other dry and cold, but with a certain
Saxon purity and vigour about
his style of expression. The subject
is that of the right to pin-money;
and Sir Edward has for once deviated
so very far from his wont, as to enliven
his work by an interesting
note from his learned and accomplished
friend Sir George Rose, as
to the origin of pin-money. To a
great extent, the author, as he explains,
has relied on his own copious
and authentic notes of the arguments
in cases where he was himself engaged
as counsel—and gives us, thus,
accounts of cases decided between
1821 and 1826, not elsewhere to be
found reported. The subjects are
classified as relating to contract
deeds, and settlements; testamentary
dispositions; powers, in deeds as
well as wills; and the rights and
liabilities of lessors and lessees,
mortgagers, and mortgagees, vendors
and purchasers, husbands and wives.
How long the author was occupied
with preparing this work we know
not; but we think no other living
man would have ventured to do so
under ten or even twenty years’ deep
consideration. But where is he that
could bring to bear upon the task
such vast stores of experience and
learning? Shortly after the appearance
of this magnum opus, the Times
newspaper (10th Dec. 1850) commenced
a leading article with the
following allusion—equally applicable
at the present moment, and for
the last five years—to the veteran
in repose:—
“The name of Sir Edward Sugden is
at once the ornament and reproach of
the legal annals of this country. Unrivalled
in the depth and minuteness of
his knowledge of the more abstruse
branches of the law, unequalled for
logical power and critical acumen in discharging
the duties of an advocate, a
writer of the rarest excellence, a judge
of unwearied diligence, and of authority
second to none, he has been condemned
by the vicissitudes of party and our
wretched system of political judgeship,
to pass the latter years of his valuable
life in comparative obscurity and retirement;
and this has happened at a time
when great lawyers and great men of all
kinds are growing scarce among us.
Mediocrity is, if backed by party influence,
everywhere triumphant, while one
of the greatest legal geniuses that has
ever adorned the bench, is carelessly flung
aside, as if the country were too affluent
in talent to require the aid of his extraordinary
abilities!”
The occasion of this article was a
speech delivered the day before at a
county meeting in Surrey by Sir
Edward Sugden—the only time in his
life, as he stated, of his having done
so—on the subject of the Papal Aggression.
“That speech,” continues
the editor, “appears to us one of the
best which has been delivered on the
occasion; combining a spirit of toleration
and charity with a masterly
exposure of the hollow sophisms of
the Romanists and their pseudo-liberal
apologists, and an exposition of
the law showing indisputably that
whatever difficulty may lie in the
way of punishment, there is no doubt
that an offence has been committed.”
The speech in question deserved this
eulogy, and had instant and great
weight with the country at large, and
the Legislature.
In less than a month’s time afterwards,
Sir Edward Sugden made a
second public appearance of quite a
new sort—to vindicate the law of the
land, which he himself had presumed
to make such, against certain groundless
accusations by Mr Dickens, in
one of his tales, in a chapter headed
“The Martyrs of Chancery.” The
sprightly and gifted novelist had fluttered
into the dusky regions of fact
and law, with which he was necessarily
unfamiliar; and he, as well as
others who laboured under similar
misconception on the subject of imprisonment
for contempt of court, was
at once silenced by Sir Edward’s lucid
and authoritative account of the true
state of the case.[22] To that subject,
however, we shall have to advert again,
in considering Sir Edward Sugden in
another phase—that of legislator.
So determined was Sir Edward to
illustrate the modest motto he had
chosen—Labore vinces—that the
same year, 1851, of which we
have been speaking, beheld two
more elaborate works of his appearing
respectively in the months
of June and December. The former
was An Essay on the New Real
Property Statutes, of the last few
years, in one small octavo volume—a
work so highly esteemed as to
find its place at once in every lawyer’s
library. The latter was a Concise
and Practical View of the Law of
Vendors and Purchasers of Estates,
being a condensation of the two large
volumes of the existing work into
one octavo volume of upwards of 700
pages, being “an attempt,” as he
states in the preface, “to compress
the whole of the law on this important
subject, into as narrow a compass as
appeared compatible with accuracy
and distinctness”—for which purpose
“many portions of the original work
have been rewritten, and every proposition
added or retained, has been
anxiously considered. The references,
in some places, occupy nearly as much
space as the text in its compressed
form; but the writer was unwilling
to deprive the student and the practitioner
of any portion of a collection
of cases which,” he adds, “it
has required many years and much
reading to bring together.” He also
added no fewer than five hundred
new cases! This work was not
long in following the fortune of
its predecessors, and was in time
succeeded by that admirable contribution
to legal literature, which
appeared at the commencement of
the present month of January, and of
which we have already spoken. We
have compared it with the “Concise
View,” and the edition at large which
that concise view followed, and
have no hesitation in expressing our
opinion that the alterations introduced
are of great magnitude, and
materially enhance the value of the
work as a comprehensive, accurate,
and authoritative statement of the
law on this all-important subject.
The second chapter, for instance, is
entirely new, consisting of an elaborate
and luminous exposition of
“Sales to Railway Companies,”
and containing “the law, so far
as it places a Company, and an
owner of land, in the relation of vendor
and purchaser” (p. 57). The
work is, in short, a perfect masterpiece
of practical jurisprudence,
more worthy than ever of the deference
which has been paid to it for so
long a series of years by even judicial
authorities.[23] Before, however, quitting
Sir Edward in his literary
capacity—seeing him, as an ex-Lord
High Chancellor of Great Britain
devoting himself as patiently
and laboriously to the re-editing and
reconstruction of his earliest publication,
as if his professional interests
and reputation depended upon it entirely—let
us offer one word of suggestion
to those whom it may concern.
Let a young gentleman, who
has just donned his wig and gown,
study to imitate the example of this
great living sage; and if he must turn
author at a period when he is
really only commencing as learner,
let him well consider the nature
of the work which he proposes to
offer to a learned profession. Let
it not consist of hasty and flimsy
comments on newly-enacted statutes,
or on heads of law already bristling
with text-books; but let a real want
be looked for, and then let due time
and consideration be devoted to supplying
it. Thus it was that Edward
Burtenshaw Sugden planted the acorn
which he has lived to see flourishing
in full vigour as the oak.
Within little more than a year after
the Times newspaper had pointed to
Sir Edward Sugden’s name as at once
“the ornament and the reproach of the
country,” that name had ceased to be
a reproach; for the month of February
1852—within only a few weeks
of his laborious appearance as an
author, on the formation of the Earl
of Derby’s Administration—saw Her
Majesty deliver the Great Seal into
his hands, those of as profoundly
learned a Chancellor as ever served
any of her predecessors. When, as
Lord St Leonards, he first took his
seat at Lincoln’s Inn, the spacious
hall was so densely crowded with
professional men, collected to see and
do honour to the greatest lawyer of
the age, that numbers were unable
to get within the doors. The new
Chancellor settled into the office,
as it were, in a moment, as quietly
as if he had occupied it for years.
In fact, a more thoroughly businesslike
Chancellor never held the Great
Seal, as all with whom he had to do
found out very soon. His practical
penetrating sagacity, and boundless
learning, rendered the appearance
before him of the most able
and experienced counsel, a matter,
for them, of serious moment. They
were somewhat peremptorily taught
to come to the point as soon as possible,
before one who puffed away the
chaff from the wheat in a moment;
who was always ready for work, and
looked askance at suggested adjournments
or postponements. The first
appeal case before him in the House
of Lords, on the 10th March 1852,
only a week after he had taken his
seat on the Woolsack, was that of
De Beauvoir v. De Beauvoir (reported
in the third volume of the House
of Lords’ Cases, p. 524), involving
the right to nearly six hundred
thousand pounds, dependent on the
construction of a singular and obscurely-worded
will. The matter
was argued at great length by eminent
counsel; but when they, and
all others, expected that the Chancellor
would, as had been usual, ask
for the “papers,” and “take time to
consider,” he rose from the Woolsack,
and delivered at once an admirable
judgment, luminous and conclusive,
occupying nearly twenty pages of
the printed Report—going at length
into, ably commenting on, and felicitously
distinguishing a number of
cases cited—as may be seen on reference
to the report; which, we have
personally ascertained from the learned
reporter who took it down in
short-hand, is given as it fell from
the Chancellor’s lips. One of the
most eminent solicitors in England
recently observed, that he was concerned
in an appeal arising out
of a suit of many years’ standing,
which had gradually become so complicated
that neither counsel nor
solicitor could really understand it!
After lengthened argument before
the Lord Chancellor, he rose from
the Woolsack, as our informant and
all others supposed, to move that
judgment should be postponed to a
future day; but—“nothing of the
sort,” said the solicitor; “he immediately
began to deliver judgment,
which sounded as if he were reading
off a chapter of his book on Powers.
He cut us up root and branch. I saw
only too clearly where we had all
gone wrong; and had not a word to
say, though he dismissed our appeal
with costs!” How Lord St Leonards
discharged his duties in his own
court, it may be safely left to every
practitioner in it to say. His manner
was somewhat dry and quiet,
but had real judicial dignity. Nothing
could exceed the patience and
attention with which he listened
to every counsel who really addressed
himself to the merits of
the case under consideration, but
who, at the same time, had knowledge
and tact enough to see how
early and tenaciously the Chancellor
had grasped these merits, and to
shape his course accordingly. No
suitor ever had to complain that his
case, how tangled and multifarious
soever, had not been completely
ransacked in quest of its merits,
down to even the minutest details.
And conclusive evidence of the sterling
quality of the judgments which
he pronounced—not after time taken
to consider, but at the close of the
argument—is afforded by the fact,
that not one of them was reversed,
or even qualified, on appeal. There
is one interesting passage to be
found in the evidence of Lord St
Leonards himself, before the Lords’
Appellate Jurisdiction Committee of
last session:—
“I could not myself have performed
the duties of the office which I filled,
except by disposing, as far as I was
competent, of the cases as soon as the
argument had closed; for otherwise I
should have had the whole arguments
operating and weighing upon my mind,
night and day, till I had disposed of
them; and the effect was, that there
was no delay in giving judgment. Despatch
is not undue haste. With a knowledge
of the law on the part of the
judge, and undivided attention to the
arguments, I believe that, in a great
majority of cases, a perfect master of
the law may dispose of the greater proportion
of them as soon as the arguments
are closed.”[24]
In the great case of Egerton v.
Brownlow,[25] we are not certain whether
Lord St Leonards delivered a
vivâ voce or a written judgment; but
there it is, on record, a fine specimen
of judicial reasoning applied to a
question lying, however, very nearly
on the confines of legislation. Before
quitting Lord St Leonards in
his judicial capacity, we must indicate
the great service he did by his
several rules and orders, whenever
he deemed them necessary, in order
to improve and quicken procedure
in equity. Short, too, as was his
tenure of the Great Seal, he disposed
of such patronage as fell to his lot
with a scrupulous regard to individual
fitness, of which we could cite
several instances of gentlemen promoted
without any solicitation whatever,
and to their own surprise. In
another particular the conduct of
Lord St Leonards is worthy of observation,—his
objection to the facile
and profuse creation of Queen’s Counsel,
against which, as having a mischievous
and derogatory tendency, he
appears to have long set his face. In
1835, in his letter to Lord Melbourne
on the Appellate Jurisdiction, we
find him saying,—“I believe the
true way to recruit the Inner Bar
is not by batches, but by steadily
advancing individuals, as their claims
appear, by the exhibition of talents,
learning, good conduct, and a command
of business;” and he traces
one cause of “the evil of excessively
long speeches by counsel, to the
great competition at the bar, since
the number has received such large
additions.” Acting uniformly on these
principles when in Ireland, he did
not wait to be solicited for a silk
gown, as for a favour, by any gentleman
possessing proper claims, but at
the proper moment offered it to him;
thereby infinitely enhancing its significance
and value. While holding
the Great Seal in England, he found
the Inner Bar full, and did not appoint
a single Queen’s Counsel.
In considering Lord St Leonards
as a legislator, it is not our intention
to dwell on his parliamentary
speeches, though they have been
many and important. That against
the bill of 1853, imposing duties on
succession to property, as well as
the protest which he entered in the
Journals of the House, appears to
us unanswerable. His speech on
projected improvements in the administration
of the law, on the
16th November 1852, gave universal
satisfaction; and that on life-peerages,
on the 7th February 1856, was
a calm but excruciating exposure of
not only the impolicy, but the illegality
of that step. The speeches,
indeed, on that subject, of the Earl
of Derby, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord St
Leonards, and Lord Campbell, will
ever reflect bright credit on the hereditary
branch of the Legislature.
In sketching the character of a
late luminary,[26] we “asked, with sorrowful
sincerity and reluctance,
what did he ever do to advance the
interests of the profession to which
he belonged?—and what page in
the Statute-Book attests his handiwork?”
In the case of the distinguished
person now before the reader,
the former question has been
abundantly answered in the foregoing
pages; and the latter admits of
as conclusive and triumphant an answer,
by a simple reference to the
chief acts of parliament for which
Lord St Leonards is responsible, and
many of which were drawn by his
own hand. We have taken some
trouble to insure correctness,—but
if we have made any material errors
or omissions, we must trust to some
future opportunity to correct them.
Those which we cite will be found of
an eminently practical character,
conferring great and permanent advantage
on the community, and redressing
evils with which his vast
knowledge of business, and unwavering
watchfulness, peculiarly qualified
him to deal.
(1.) The Annuity Act of 1813
(statute 53 Geo. III., c. 141), itself
recently repealed, together with the
Usury Laws, was drawn by Lord St
Leonards, following out those views
which he had urged in his pamphlet
of 1812. That act had the signal
merit of putting an end to a floodtide
of ruinous and disgraceful litigation,
for which Mr Sugden richly
deserved the thanks of the country.
(2.) The statute 6 Geo. IV., c. 93
(1825), to “render valid certain decrees
and orders at the Rolls Court,”
rendered necessary in consequence
of Chief Baron Richards and other
judges having sate during Sir Thomas
Plumer’s illness at the Rolls Court,
without legal authority. To avert
the public scandal of avoiding so
many important judicial acts, Mr
Sugden, with Lord Eldon’s consent,
prepared this bill, which became a
law at the close of the session in
which it had been introduced. (3.)
The next statute is one reflecting peculiar
lustre on the name of its framer—that
of 1 Will. IV. c. 36 (1830)—in
itself a code, having for its main
objects to prevent long and continued
imprisonment for contempt; to afford
assistance and relief to parties
poor and ignorant; and prevent
obstinate parties from impeding the
course of justice after the decree or
order of the Court. This act was,
two years afterwards, greatly extended
by (4.) Stat. 4 Will. IV. c. 58.
Had these been the only acts for
which the country is indebted to
Lord St Leonards, he would have
earned an enduring title to their
gratitude.
Having humanely provided a legislative
remedy, he made the noblest
personal efforts to carry it into prompt
effect, frequently visiting the Fleet
Prison—(how he found the time is
hard to understand)—seeing and conversing
with the impoverished prisoners,
giving them wise advice, and
himself actually paying, out of his
own purse, the costs for which they
were incarcerated, so as to procure
their immediate discharge—and even
assisting them afterwards! The scandal
of throwing a man into prison for
not “answering,” and then leaving him
there to rot out the rest of his life,
thank Heaven, can no longer exist.
When Chancellor of Ireland, Sir Edward
Sugden extended this admirable
measure to that country, by (5.) Stat.
5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 16 (1835), the Government
taking charge of the bill.
(6.) Stat. 1 Will. IV. c. 46 (1830),
amending the laws relating to Illusory
Appointments, restored the law
to its original state, putting the rule
at law and in equity on the same
footing with respect to appointments:
a provision removing at
once a prolific source of litigation,
and enabling a parent or trustee to
act so as best to meet the exigencies
of a family, and give children aid
and provision in proportion to their
actual wants. (7.) Stat. 1 Will. IV.
c. 47 (1830), consolidates and amends
the law for payment of debts out of
real estate—one of great importance,
and a considerable step in advance,
the Legislature having since gone
still farther in that direction. (8.)
Stat. 1 Will. IV. c. 60 (1830), is
another act of great importance, investing
courts of equity with ampler
powers than they had possessed,
with regard to trustees and mortgagees,
and enabling them to make
a perfect title to whatever they sold.
This act Sir Edward undertook
at the request of Lord Eldon; and
the Legislature have since gone much
farther in that direction. (9.) Stat.
1 Will. IV., c. 65, extended to Ireland
by (10) 5 and 6 Will. IV., c. 17,
arms courts of equity with very useful
powers over the property of infants,
married women, and lunatics.
(11.) Stat. 2 and 3 Vict., c. 11, extended
to Ireland by (12.) Stat. 7 and
8 Vict., c. 90, with careful modifications,
conferred a vast boon on purchasers,
and greatly facilitated the
transfer of land—providing as it did
a complete registration of various
kinds of incumbrances, collected in
one office, and allowing them to be
searched for a mere nominal sum—a
shilling. These acts were (in
1855) followed by (13.) Stat. 18 and
19 Vict., c. 15, conferring on purchasers
further important provisions
for their protection. (14.) Stat. 5
and 6 Vict., c. 123, for the first time
required private lunatic asylums to
have a licence, and placed them under
salutary restraints and supervision.
This act had to encounter fierce opposition,
but succeeded, followed up, as
we have already seen, by the Chancellor’s
vigilant personal attention,
in greatly ameliorating the condition
and management of lunatics. (15.)
Stat. 8 and 9 Vict., c. 115, appointed
a taxing-master for the Irish Court
of Chancery, thereby greatly relieving
the overburdened Masters of the
Court. This has since been carried
much farther. (16.) Stat. 15 Vict., c.
24, after a vehement opposition, put
an end to an evil utterly intolerable,
and has proved one of the greatest
blessings to the people, afforded by
modern legislation. It puts an end
to the incessant defeat of wills by
petty technical objections, embracing
every evil conceivable to occur
through haste, ignorance, or accident.
The editors of the new edition of the
Standard Text-Book on Wills (Jarman),
omit a long chapter of decisions
of this kind, as “it is almost impossible
that the validity of any will
should hereafter turn upon them.”
(17.) Stat. 15 Vict., c. 48, amends the
law relating to the property of
lunatics. (18.) Stat. 15 Vict., c. 80,
abolishes the Masters’ offices, and expedites
the business of the Court of
Chancery. (19.) Stat. 15 Vict., c. 86,
amends the practice and course of
proceeding in the Court of Chancery.
(20, 21, 22.) Stat. 16 and 17 Vict., c.
70, is for the regulation of proceedings
under commissions of lunacy,
and consolidating the former acts,—and
itself constitutes a most important
code; c. 96, for regulating the
care and treatment of lunatics; c.
97, consolidating and amending the
laws relating to lunatic asylums for
counties and boroughs, and the maintenance
and care of pauper lunatics.
When these three acts were passed,
Lord St Leonards declared, in his
place in the House of Lords, that no
other country possessed such excellent
provisions for the care of lunatics
and of their property—and none
more minutely and anxiously careful
than those which secure the welfare
of pauper lunatics. He might have
added, that the preparation of these
enactments entailed upon himself
protracted and exhausting labour.
(24) Stat. 16 and 17 Vict., c. 98,
provides for the further relief of
suitors in the Court of Chancery,
appropriating its unclaimed funds to
the relief of the suitors, to whom
they properly belong. This, also, is
a very important act. Lastly, (25.)
Stat. 17 and 18 Vict., c. 60, has for
its humane object to make more
effectual provisions for preventing
cruelty to animals.—Here ends, as
far as we know, the catalogue of Lord
St Leonards’ contributions to the
Statute-Book of his country: twenty-five
in number, and those not showy,
rash, and slovenly, but deeply-considered
and skilfully framed; the
result of great forensic and judicial
experience, or, in some instances,
masterly developments of alterations
and improvements contemplated by
others. We are, moreover, inclined
to consider Lord St Leonards largely
entitled to credit for the original
suggestion of that bold enactment
which called into existence the Incumbered
Estates Court in Ireland.
Unless, indeed, we are mistaken,
he lately claimed the paternity of
that measure, in speaking in the
debate for renewing the powers of
the Commissioners. It is said that
in his original sketch of the proposed
Court, transmitted to the late Sir
Robert Peel, he observed that the
Court ought to exist only until the mischief
should have been remedied; that
it was, as regarded property, what
the suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act was with reference to personal
liberty. It is, however, undoubtedly
possible that the existing scheme
may have been devised by the Government
before they became possessed
of Sir Edward Sugden’s
communication to Sir Robert Peel;
though this has not hitherto been
asserted. And these legislative labours
have been continued during
a long series of years, while Lord St
Leonards was either burthened with
enormous practice at the bar, or absorbed
with judicial cares as twice
Chancellor of Ireland, and afterwards
of England (his is the only
instance on record of such promotion;)
or as a law-lord sitting on Appeals;
or engaged from time to time
writing profound and universally
accepted treatises on the law, or
carefully adapting them to successive
variations in that law. The patience,
the self-denial, the indomitable industry
and resolution with which his
great endowments and acquirements
have been and continue to be devoted
to the service of his profession and of
his country, will enshrine his name
in the memory of his countrymen,
long after he shall have passed away
from the scene of his untiring exertions.
As author, advocate, judge,
and legislator, he appears to exhibit
a combination of claims to our respect
and gratitude, that is unique.
Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.
ENDNOTES:
1. These views are not an after-thought, but will be found expressed in our article
on “The Peace,” written before the Treaty of Paris was ratified. Inter alia, alluding
to the probable results of the Treaty, we observed—“By guarding the line of
the Danube, while leaving open the Transcaucasian frontier and the shores of Anatolia,
you change the main line of Russian advance from the western to the eastern
side of the Black Sea. You divert it from Europe into Asia, and by so doing change
the Powers by whom such southward progress brings her into collision. On the
Danube, Russia has Austria for a rival; but for Asia Minor, Austria has no concern,—there
Russia will meet no rival but Great Britain, who will be left to struggle with
her single-handed.” And we characterised this as “the best method for directing the
march of Russia from Europe into Asia, and thereby not only freeing France and her
Austrian alliance from the rivalry and pressure of the Czar, but of raising a new and
permanent source of antagonism between Russia and England,—every step of the
former of those Powers necessarily bringing her nearer to the Indian empire, and
line of communication therewith, of the latter. The general public, alive only to
the interests of the moment, may underrate the importance of this stipulation, but
its consequences will be none the less momentous because not immediate. It is a
legacy of hostility between Russia and England which the future will duly honour.”—(May
1856, p. 617.)
2. The relation subsisting between Prince Yusoof and the Shah was openly acknowledged
by the latter, who, even as reported by the Teheran Rouz Namé, or official
journal of court news, thus addressed the Prince, when subsequently captured by
the Persian army which besieged Herat:—“At that time we considered thee as one of
our faithful servants, and thou wert under the shadow of our protection; and as it
was for the advantage of our kingdom, and of the independence of Herat, to resist
the overwhelming march of Dost Mahomed Khan, we therefore sent thee the
reinforcements which thou didst require.”
6. Wilkinson’s Wallachia and Moldavia: London, 1820.
7. The treaty of Kainardjik (10th July 1775) gave the right of interference in the
affairs of the Principalities to the Russian ministers resident at Constantinople, and
bound the Porte to pay regard to their representations.
8. A Concise and Practical Treatise of the Law of Vendors and Purchasers of
Estates. By Edward Sugden (now Lord St Leonards). 13th Edition. 1 vol.
royal 8vo. 1857. Sweet, London.
Practical Treatise of Powers. By the Right Honourable Sir Edward Sugden.
2 vols. 8vo. 7th Edition. 1845.
The Law of Uses and Trusts. By the late Chief Baron Gilbert; with Notes,
References, and an Introduction, by Edward Burtenshaw Sugden, Esq., Barrister-at-Law.
1 vol. 8vo. 3d Edition. 1811.
A Treatise of the Law of Property, as Administered by the House of Lords. By
Sir Edward Sugden. 1 vol. royal 8vo. 1849.
An Essay on the New Statutes relating to Real Property. By Sir Edward Sugden.
1 vol. 8vo. 1852.
A Series of Letters to a Man of Property on Sales, Purchases, Mortgages, Leases,
Settlements, and Devises of Estates. By Sir Edward B. Sugden. 1 vol. 8vo. 6th
Edition.
Pamphlets, &c.
Speeches, &c.
9. Preface to the fourth edition of the “Vendors and Purchasers” quoted in the
preface to the thirteenth edition. In justice to the memory of the late Mr Preston,
one of the most eminent conveyancers that ever lived, it should be stated that he
also in early life published—we believe in his twenty-first year (1791)—an elementary
treatise on the Quantity of Estates, which has, with modifications in successive
editions, continued even to the present time a standard text-book in the profession.
In its original form it may be regarded as the anatomy of the body of real-property
law—and a doubt may be entertained whether subsequent editions were
improvements on the first. This book laid the foundation, in his case also, of an
enormous practice and great wealth; but never, as in the case of his distinguished
contemporary, led to judicial office.
10. It is well known that for a single edition, Sir Edward Sugden once received the
sum, unprecedented in the writers of law books, of four thousand guineas!
11. The uncle might have prohibited his niece from thus alienating, or “anticipating,”
as it is called, any portion of what he had bequeathed her, but had not thought
fit to do so. A woman who has thus property in equity, is the creature of equity,
and may have as much or as little capacity of dealing with it, as her donor may
have chosen to confer upon her. Possibly this was something like the argument
of Mr Sugden, which is not given by the reporter.
12. Lord Eldon once sent for Mr Sugden into his private room, during the argument
of an important case in which he was not concerned, to ask his opinion concerning
the main point of law involved in it—relating, if we are correctly informed,
to “springing uses.” Mr Sugden’s impression differed from that of Lord Eldon,
who ultimately yielded to Mr Sugden’s.
14. The principles involved in all these cases are elaborately discussed by Lord St
Leonards himself in his Treatise of the Law of Property, to be afterwards noticed.
15. H. B. had a caricature representing “A Meeting in the Pleas”—between Sir
James Scarlett, Attorney-General, and Sir Edward Sugden, Solicitor-General,
with Sir N. Tindal on the Bench, and Sir Charles Wetherall and Mr Brougham in
the wings.
16. Sir Edward Sugden was twice offered office by the Whigs, but he declined it.
17. Lloyd and Goold’s Reports of the High Court of Chancery, tempore Sugden,
pp. 380–1.
19. See them—Stokes v. Heron, p. 236; Shaw v. Lawless, p. 394; Creed v.
Creed, p. 428.
20. This reminds us of the prodigious effort of Lord Lyndhurst, C., in the case of
Small v. Attwood, which had been argued by Sir Edward Sugden.
21. In the course of his judgment he pronounced the late Lord Kenyon, “one of the
most consummate Real Property lawyers that ever adorned the Bench.”—P. 350.
22. See the Letter in the Times of 7th January 1851.
23. We could fill a page with references to cases in courts of law and equity in
which such judicial deference is paid to the “Vendors and Purchasers.” One or two
of the latter instances may be seen in Matthews v. Bowles, 6 Hare’s Rep. 111; Wykes
v. Lee, 3 Drury, 396. We should add that, with a dignified modesty, credit has
never been taken, in new editions, for the adoption of rules which had been laid
down by the author, or for the approbation bestowed on the work.