Transcriber’s Notes
This e-text is based on The Works of Thomas Hood, Vol. I, published in 1882. Inconsistent and uncommon spelling and hyphenation have been retained; punctuation and typographical errors have been corrected. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the sections in which their respective footnote anchors are situated.
THE WORKS
OF
THOMAS HOOD.
COMIC AND SERIOUS, IN PROSE AND VERSE, WITH ALL THE ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS.
EDITED, WITH NOTES,
BY HIS SON AND DAUGHTER.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
WARD, LOCK, & CO., WARWICK HOUSE,
SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
NEW YORK: 10 BOND STREET.
PREFACE.
IT is now many years ago, nay, more than half a century, since Thomas Hood first began to wield the pen which was to do such good service to literature. The first scrap of his boyish versifying that can now be traced, consists of a sort of rhyming description of Dundee, after the manner of Anstey’s Bath Guide, and this is dated 1815.[1] That he was prematurely cut off by disease, accelerated by overwork while in the very prime of his mental powers, is now well known. The Works he left behind have gradually but steadily risen in popular esteem and circulation ever since his death,—in other countries besides his own, and on both sides of the Atlantic,—so that there are now few writers of this century better appreciated and becoming more widely known than Thomas Hood.
I believe that one part at least of the secret of this great and increasing value for his writings, lies in the fact, that like our great Shakespeare, and even another deep writer and thinker of our own time,—Thackeray,—he wrote such pure, vigorous, intelligible English. He speaks in his works to the great mass of the people in a tongue they can understand and thoroughly feel. However far his abundant fancy and versatile humour may lead him from the track, there is no obscurity to puzzle as well as dazzle. And this almost severe plainness of expression serves him well in such poems, for instance, as the “Song of the Shirt,” where the repetition of the homeliest phrases make the intensity of the suffering stand out in a more appalling reality.
It is with a view to meeting the wants of all classes of readers and spreading the knowledge of Thomas Hood’s Works still farther, that the present edition has been planned, in a cheap form that will place it within everybody’s reach. The publishers have already issued editions of all the Works, either complete, or in separate volumes, to suit every taste.
The present edition embraces the complete Works with the original illustrations, and also includes some hitherto unpublished dramatic fragments. It will be issued in a convenient periodical form, to be obtained at the option of the purchaser either in Monthly Parts, or Quarterly Volumes. The last generation will no doubt welcome in the old familiar form the Author’s quaint wood-cut illustrations, as well as the humorous illustrations of George Cruickshank to the “Epping Hunt,” with those by Harvey to “Eugene Aram;” and the present generation are still too recently mourning the loss of John Leech’s graceful pencil, to pass carelessly by his admirable drawings in the “Whimsicalities.” The completeness and low price of this edition will, it is hoped, place it in the hands of most readers.
FRANCES FREELING BRODERIP.
[1] See “Memorials of Thomas Hood,” 2nd Edition.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
THE present arrangement of my Father’s works for a complete and uniform edition has not been determined on without due deliberation. It appeared to me that for the requirements of those—who do not care to trace his career as a writer from his first connection with Literature, and to note the gradual development of a genius which, at the time of his death, had not arrived at its fulness—enough is to be found in the edition of the “Serious Poems;” of those of “Wit and Humour;” of the “Whims and Oddities;” and of two volumes of “Hood’s Own,” already published by Messrs. Moxon.
I have therefore considered it best, when called upon to prepare a complete and uniform series of his writings, to throw the materials collected into a form which shall be of interest to more than the general reader. By republishing his works in the order in which they were written, as far as my most diligent search and most earnest endeavours can establish it, I believe I shall meet the wishes of many of my Father’s admirers and readers, who have contracted, from the perusal of his works, an almost friendlike interest, that will be gratified by tracing step by step the bent of his mind, the progress of his intellect, and the maturing of his powers.
It may be urged that I have reprinted fugitive articles that might well have been omitted without detriment to the Series. To this I might answer by pleading that it is only natural that I should place greater store by what my Father has written, than one not so nearly related to him would do.
But believing, as I do, that the less laboured writings of an author are among the surest indices of his thought and the best tests of his genius, I have omitted nothing that I thought would assist the real student of Literature, and its ministers—literary men—to a true estimate of my Father—whether as an author or a man; holding always in recollection that quaint wise saying of Selden’s, anent similar trifles—“Take a straw, and throw it up into the air, you may see by that which way the wind is; which you shall not do by casting up a stone.”
Wherever I have been able to find anything of interest bearing upon the works, I have added it as briefly as possible in my notes—giving any alterations of the text, any fragments connected with or relating to portions of it and such explanations of allusions contained in it, as seemed advisable.
As far as lies in my power, I have left out nothing that may interest the thoughtful and studious, while I have endeavoured not to weary the cursory reader with long annotations.
I have no wish, and indeed no need to deprecate criticism—for whenever it has been my task to prepare anything connected with my Father for publication, I have always met with a reception that proved to me how fully my critics have understood the difficulties which I have encountered. The kindly spirit in which the “Memorials” of my Father were received, encourages me to hope that my sincere desire to perform what I really feel as a sacred duty and responsibility, will be looked on with the same indulgence; for it should be remembered that many, nay most of those contemporaries of my Father, who could have pointed out where his scattered writings were to be found, are dead.
To those intimate acquaintances of his who survive, and who have assisted me most materially in my arduous yet most grateful undertaking, as well as to numerous friends,—many unknown to me in the flesh,—who have so readily answered my appeals, through the public press, for information and assistance, I tender my most heartfelt thanks,
And am,
Very truly theirs,
THOMAS HOOD.
THE MERRY THOUGHT.
PREFACE:
BEING AN INAUGURAL DISCOURSE ON A CERTAIN SYSTEM OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY.
COURTEOUS READER!
Presuming that you have known something of the Comic Annual from its Child-Hood, when it was first put into half binding and began to run alone, I make bold to consider you as an old friend of the family, and shall accordingly treat you with all the freedom and confidence that pertain to such ripe connexions.
How many years is it, think you, “since we were first acquent?”
“By the deep nine!” sings out the old bald Count Fathom with the lead-line: no great lapse in the world’s chronology, but a space of infinite importance in individual history. For instance, it has wrought a serious change on the body, if not on the mind, of your very humble servant;—it is not, however, to bespeak your sympathy, or to indulge in what Lord Byron calls “the gloomy vanity of drawing from self,” that I allude to my personal experience. The Scot and lot character of the dispensation, forbids me to think that the world in general can be particularly interested in the state of my Household Sufferage, or that the public ear will be as open to my Maladies as to my Melodies. The simple truth is, that, being a wiser but not sadder man, I propose to admit you to my Private View of a system of Practical Cheerful Philosophy, thanks to which, perchance, the cranium of your Humorist is still secure from such a lecture as was delivered over the skull of Poor Yorick.
In the absence of a certain thin “blue-and-yellow” visage, and attenuated figure,—whose effigies may one day be affixed to the present work,—you will not be prepared to learn that some of the merriest effusions in the forthcoming numbers have been the relaxations of a gentleman literally enjoying bad health—the carnival, so to speak, of a personified Jour Maigre. The very fingers so aristocratically slender, that now hold the pen, hint plainly of the “ills that flesh is heir to:”—my coats have become great coats, my pantaloons are turned into trousers, and, by a worse bargain then Peter Schlemihl’s, I seem to have retained my shadow and sold my substance. In short, as happens to prematurely old port wine, I am of a bad colour with very little body. But what then? That emaciated hand still lends a hand to embody in words and sketches the creations or recreations of a Merry Fancy: those gaunt sides yet shake heartily as ever at the Grotesques and Arabesques and droll Picturesques that my Good Genius (a Pantagruelian Familiar) charitably conjures up to divert me from more sombre realities. It was the whim of a late pleasant Comedian, to suppose a set of spiteful imps sitting up aloft, to aggravate all his petty mundane annoyances; whereas I prefer to believe in the ministry of kindlier Elves, that “nod to me and do me courtesies.” Instead of scaring away these motes in the sunbeam, I earnestly invoke them, and bid them welcome; for the tricksy spirits make friends with the animal spirits, and do not I, like a father romping with his own urchins,—do not I forget half my cares whilst partaking in their airy gambols? Such sports are as wholesome for the mind as the other frolics for the body. For on our own treatment of that excellent Friend or terrible Enemy the Imagination, it depends whether we are to be scared and haunted by a Scratching Fanny, or tended by an affectionate Invisible Girl—like an unknown love, blessing us with “favours secret, sweet, and precious,” and fondly stealing us from this worky-day world to a sunny sphere of her own.
This is a novel version, Reader, of “Paradise and the Pen,” but it is as true as it is new. How else could I have converted a serious illness into a comic wellness—by what other agency could I have transported myself, as a Cockney would say, from Dullage to Grinage? It was far from a practical joke to be laid up in ordinary in a foreign land, under the care of Physicians quite as much abroad as myself with the case; indeed the shades of the gloaming were stealing over my prospect; but I resolved, that, like the sun, so long as my day lasted, I would look on the bright side of everything. The raven croaked, but I persuaded myself that it was the nightingale: there was the smell of the mould, but I remembered that it nourished the violets. However my body might cry craven, my mind luckily had no mind to give in. So, instead of mounting on the black long-tailed coach horse, she vaulted on her old Hobby that had capered in the Morris-Dance, and began to exhort from its back. To be sure, said she, matters look darkly enough; but the more need for the lights. Allons! Courage! Things may take a turn, as the pig said on the spit. Never throw down your cards, but play out the game. The more certain to lose, the wiser to get all the play you can for your money. Come—give us a song! chirp away like that best of cricket-players, the cricket himself. Be bowled out or caught out, but never throw down the bat. As to Health, it’s the weather of the body—it hails, it rains, it blows, it snows, at present, but it may clear up by-and-by. You cannot eat, you say, and you must not drink; but laugh and make believe, like the Barber’s wise brother at the Barmecide’s feast. Then, as to thinness, not to flatter, you look like a lath that has had a split with the carpenter and a fall out with the plaster; but so much the better! remember how the smugglers trim the sails of the lugger to escape the notice of the cutter. Turn your edge to the old enemy, and mayhap he won’t see you! Come—be alive! You have no more right to slight your life than to neglect your wife—they are the two better halves that make a man of you! Is not life your means of living? so stick to thy business and thy business will stick to thee. Of course, continued my mind, I am quite disinterested in this advice—for I am aware of my own immortality but for that very reason, take care of the mortal body, poor body, and give it as long a day as you can!
Now, my mind seeming to treat the matter very pleasantly as well as profitably, I followed her counsel, and instead of calling out for relief according to the fable, I kept along on my journey, with my bundle of sticks,—i.e. my arms and legs. Between ourselves, it would have been “extremely inconvenient,” as I once heard the opium-eater declare, to pay the debt of nature at that particular juncture; nor do I quite know, to be candid, when it would altogether suit me to settle it, so, like other parties in narrow circumstances, I laughed, and gossiped, and played the agreeable with all my might; and as such pleasant behaviour sometimes obtains a respite from a human creditor, who knows but that it may prove successful with the Universal Mortgagee? At all events, here I am, humming “Jack’s Alive!” and my own dear skilful native physician gives me hopes of a longer lease than appeared from the foreign reading of the covenants. He declares indeed, that, anatomically, my heart is lower hung than usual—but what of that? The more need to keep it up! So huzza! my boys! Comas and Momus for ever! No Heraclitus! Nine times nine for Democritus! And here goes my last bottle of Elixir at the heads of the Blue Devils—be they Prussian blue or indigo, powder-blue or ultramarine!
Gentle reader, how do you like this Laughing Philosophy? The joyous cheers you have just heard, come from a crazy vessel that has clawed, by miracle, off a lee-shore, and I, the skipper, am sitting down to my grog, and recounting to you the tale of the past danger, with the manœuvres that were used to escape the perilous Point. Or rather, consider me as the Director of a Life Assurance, pointing out to you a most beneficial policy, whereby you may eke out your natural term. And, firstly, take precious care of your precious health,—but how, as the housewives say, to make it keep? Why, then, don’t care and smoke-dry it—or pickle it in everlasting acids—like the Germans. Don’t bury it in a potato-pit, like the Irish. Don’t preserve it in spirits, like the Barbadians. Don’t salt it down, like the Newfoundlanders. Don’t pack it in ice, like Captain Back. Don’t parboil it in Hot Baths. Don’t bottle it, like gooseberries. Don’t pot it—and don’t hang it. A rope is a bad Cordon Sanitaire. Above all, don’t despond about it. Let not anxiety “have thee on the hyp.” Consider your health as your best friend, and think as well of it, in spite of all its foibles, as you can. For instance, never dream, though you may have a “clever hack,” of galloping consumption, or indulge in the Meltonian belief, that you are going the pace. Never fancy every time you cough, that you are going to coughy-pot. Hold up, as the shooter says, over the heaviest ground. Despondency in a nice case is the over-weight that may make you kick the beam and the bucket both at once. In short, as with other cases, never meet trouble half-way, but let him have the whole walk for his pains; though it should be a Scotch mile and a bittock. I have even known him to give up his visit in sight of the house. Besides, the best fence against care is a ha! ha!—wherefore take care to have one all round you wherever you can. Let your “lungs crow like Chanticleer,” and as like a GAME cock as possible. It expands the chest, enlarges the heart, quickens the circulation, and “like a trumpet makes the spirit dance.”
A fico then for the Chesterfieldian canon, that laughter is an ungenteel emotion. Smiles are tolerated by the very pinks of politeness; and a laugh is but the full-blown flower of which a smile is the bud. It is a sort of vocal music—a glee in which everybody can take a part:—and “he who bath not laughter in his soul, let no such man be trusted.” Indeed, there are two classes of Querists particularly to be shunned; thus when you hear a Cui Bono? be sure to leave the room; but if it be Quid Rides? make a point to quit the house, and forget to take its number. None but your dull dogs would give tongue in such a style,—for, as Nimrod says in his “Hunt after Happiness,” “A single burst with Mirth is worth a whole season of full cries with Melancholy.”
Such, dear reader, is the cheerful Philosophy which I practise as well as preach. It teaches to “make a sunshine in a shady place,” to render the mind independent of external foul weather, by compelling it, as old Absolute says, to get a sun and moon of its own. As the system has worked so well in my own case, it is a duty to recommend it to others; and like certain practitioners, who not only prescribe but dispense their own medicines, I have prepared a regular course of light reading, whereof I now present the first packet, in the humble hope that your dull hours may be amused, and your cares diverted, by the laughing lucubrations which have enlivened Hood’s Own.
DOCTORS’ COMMONS.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface
The Pugsley Papers
An Ancient Concert; by a Venerable Director
A Letter from an Emigrant
Sonnet on Steam; by an Under-Ostler
A Report from Below
The Last Shilling
Ode to M. Brunel
The Death of the Dominie
Over the Way
A Plan for Writing Blank Verse in Rhyme, in a Letter to the Editor
A Letter from a Market Gardener to the Secretary of the Horticultural Society
Domestic Asides; or Truth in Parenthesis
Black, White, and Brown
Composed on Reading a Diary lately published
The Last Wish
The Devil’s Album
The Schoolmaster Abroad
The Lost Heir
The Observer
The Contrast
John Day; a pathetic ballad
The Parish Revolution
The Furlough; an Irish anecdote
Number One; versified from the prose of a Young Lady
The Drowning Ducks
An Assent to the Summut of Mount Blank
Sally Simpkin’s Lament; or John Jones’s Kit-Cat-Astrophe
A Horse-Dealer
The Fall
The Illuminati
Sonnet
The Steam Service
A Lay of Real Life
A Valentine. The Weather—To P. Murphy, Esq., M.N.S.
The Elland Meeting
Poem,—from the Polish
A Step-father
Conveyancing
A Letter from a Settler for Life in Van Diemen’s Land
Sonnet
A Serio-Comic Reminiscence
Epicurean Reminiscences of a Sentimentalist
Saint Mark’s Eve—A tale of the olden time
I’m not a Single Man
A Greenwich Pensioner
The Burning of the Love Letter
Sketches on the Road
The Apparition
The Discovery
Little O’P.—An African Fact
The Debutante
The Angler’s Farewell
Popping the Question
Sea Song
The Black and White Question
Stanzas on Coming of Age
The Pillory
A singular Exhibition at Somerset House
The Yeomanry
An Unfavourable Review
Look before you Leap
Ode—To the Advocates Removal of Smithfield Market
Drawn for a Soldier
Ode for St. Cecilia’s Eve
Reflections on Water
A Blow-up
The Wooden Leg
The Ghost—A very Serious Ballad
A Tale of the Great Plague
Ode to Madame Hengler, Firework-maker to Vauxhall
Rhyme and Reason
The Double Knock
A Foxhunter
Bailey Ballads
Lines to Mary—No. I
No. II.
No. III.
Letter—from a Parish Clerk in Barbadoes to one in Hampshire, with an Enclosure
French and English
Our Village
The Scrape Book
A True Story
The Sorrows of an Undertaker
The Carelesse Nurse Mayd
To Fanny
The Fancy Fair
Poems, by a Poor Gentleman
Stanzas—written under the Fear of Bailiffs
Sonnet—written in a Workhouse
Sonnet—A Somnambulist
Fugitive Lines on Pawning my Watch
The Life of Zimmerman (by Himself)
The Portrait; being an apology for not making an Attempt on my own Life
The Compass, with Variations
Summer—A Winter Eclogue
Pair’d not match’d
The Duel—A Serious Ballad
The Rope Dancer—An Extravaganza, after Rabelais
Sonnet to Vauxhall
Ode to Mr. Malthus
A Good Direction
The Pleasures of Sporting
There’s no Romance in that
The Abstraction
A Waterloo Ballad
Miller Redivivus
A Zoological Report
Literary Reminiscences
Shooting Pains
The Schoolmaster’s Motto
HOOD’S OWN:
OR, LAUGHTER FROM YEAR TO YEAR.
A PASTORALE IN A FLAT.
THE PUGSLEY PAPERS.
HOW the following correspondence came into my hands must remain a Waverley mystery. The Pugsley Papers were neither rescued from a garret, like the Evelyn,—collected from cartridges, like the Culloden,—nor saved, like the Garrick, from being shredded into a snow storm at a Winter Theatre. They were not snatched from a tailor’s shears, like the original parchment of Magna Charta. They were neither the Legacy of a Dominie, nor the communications of My Landlord,—a consignment, like the Clinker Letters, from some Rev. Jonathan Dustwich,—nor the waifs and strays of a Twopenny Post Bag. They were not unrolled from ancient papyri. They were none of those that “line trunks, clothe spices,” or paper the walls of old attics. They were neither given to me nor sold to me,—nor stolen,—nor borrowed and surreptitiously copied,—nor left in a hackney coach, like Sheridan’s play,—nor misdelivered by a carrier pigeon,—nor dreamt of, like Coleridge’s Kubla Khan,—nor turned up in the Tower, like Milton’s Foundling MS.,—nor dug up,—nor trumped up, like the eastern tales of Horam harum Horam, the son of Asmar,—nor, brought over by Rammohun Roy,—nor translated by Doctor Bowring from the Scandinavian, Batavian, Pomeranian, Spanish, or Danish, or Russian, or Prussian, or any other language dead or living. They were not picked from the Dead Letter Office, nor purloined from the British Museum. In short, I cannot, dare not, will not, hint even at the mode of their acquisition: the reader must be content to know, that, in point of authenticity, the Pugsley Papers are the extreme reverse of Lady L.’s celebrated Autographs, which were all written by the proprietor.
No. I.—From Master RICHARD PUGSLEY, to Master ROBERT ROGERS, at Number 132, Barbican.
DEAR BOB,
Huzza!—Here I am in Lincolnshire! It’s good-bye to Wellingtons and Cossacks, Ladies’ double channels, Gentlemen’s stout calf, and ditto ditto. They’ve all been sold off under prime cost, and the old Shoe Mart is disposed of, goodwill and fixtures for ever and ever. Father has been made a rich Squire of by will, and we’ve got a house and fields, and trees of our own. Such a garden, Bob!—It beats White Conduit.
Now, Bob, I’ll tell you what I want. I want you to come down here for the holidays. Don’t be afraid. Ask your Sister to ask your Mother to ask your Father to let you come. It’s only ninety mile. If you’re out of pocket money, you can walk, and beg a lift now and then, or swing by the dickies. Put on cordroys, and don’t care for cut behind. The two prentices, George and Will, are here to be made farmers of, and brother Nick is took home from school to help in agriculture. We like farming very much, it’s capital fun. Us four have got a gun, and go out shooting: it’s a famous good un, and sure to go off if you don’t full cock it. Tiger is to be our shooting dog, as soon as he has left off killing the sheep. He’s a real savage, and worries cats beautiful. Before Father comes down, we mean to bait our bull with him.
There’s plenty of New Rivers about, and we’re going a fishing as soon as we have mended our top joint. We’ve killed one of our sheep on the sly to get gentles. We’ve a pony, too, to ride upon when we can catch him, but he’s loose in the paddock, and has neither mane nor tail to signify to lay hold of. Isn’t it prime, Bob? You must come. If your Mother won’t give your Father leave to allow you,—run away. Remember, you turn up Goswell Street to go to Lincolnshire, and ask for Middlefen Hall. There’s a pond full of frogs, but we won’t pelt them till you come, but let it be before Sunday, as there’s our own orchard to rob, and the fruit’s to be gathered on Monday.
If you like sucking raw eggs, we know where the hens lay, and mother don’t; and I’m bound there’s lots of birds’ nests. Do come, Bob, and I’ll show you the wasps’ nest, and everything that can make you comfortable. I dare say you could borrow your father’s volunteer musket of him without his knowing of it; but be sure anyhow to bring the ramrod, as we have mislaid ours by firing it off. Don’t forget some bird-lime, Bob—and some fish-hooks—and some different sorts of shot—and some gut and some gunpowder and a gentle box, and some flints,—some May flies, and a powder horn,—and a landing net and a dog-whistle—and some porcupine quills, and a bullet mould—and a trolling-winch, and a shot-belt and a tin can. You pay for ’em, Bob, and I’ll owe it you.
Your old friend and schoolfellow,
RICHARD PUGSLEY.
No. II.—From the Same to the Same.
DEAR BOB,
When you come, bring us a ’bacco-pipe to load the gun with. If you don’t come, it can come by the waggon. Our Public House is three mile off, and when you’ve walked there it’s out of everything. Yours, &c.,
RICH. PUGSLEY.
No. III.—From Miss ANASTASIA PUGSLEY, to Miss JEMIMA MOGGRIDGE, at Gregory House Establishment for Young Ladies, Mile End.