CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

CONTENTS

[HAMPSTEAD HEATH.]
[BY MEAD AND STREAM.]
[THE MUSE OF PARODY.]
[TWO DAYS IN A LIFETIME.]
[GLIMPSES OF THE SCOT ABROAD.]
[IS SMOKING INJURIOUS TO HEALTH?]
[TO A CHILD.]

No. 5.—Vol. I.

Price 1½d.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1884.

HAMPSTEAD HEATH.

Hampstead Heath! What a world of delight seemed concentrated in that name in the days of childhood, when donkey-riding was not yet too undignified an amusement, and a gallop ‘cross country’ through the bracken and furze struck terror into the heart of nurse or parent, and covered the rider with glory! Such feats of horsemanship now belong to the irrevocable past; but yet no part of the great ‘province of houses’ known as London brings such pleasant memories as the quaint old village on its northern outskirts and the wild breezy heath that bounds it. Even now, Hampstead is rather in London, than of it, and keeps up customs that have died out elsewhere. There, on the fifth of November, a gallant procession takes its way through its steep winding streets, and the centuries mingle with as little regard to accuracy as they might do in a schoolboy’s dream the night before an examination in history. Gallant Crusaders in chain-mail, with the red cross embroidered on their flowing white mantles, jostle very nineteenth-century Guardsmen, who in their turn seem to feel no surprise at seeing Charles I. in velvet doublet and lace collar talking amicably to a motley, spangled harlequin. But were the inhabitants in this their yearly carnival to picture the history of their village and of the notable personages who have lived in it, they might make a pageant as long and varied as any that imagination can invent.

The manor of Hampstead was given by Edward the Confessor to the monks of Westminster; and subsequent monarchs conferred on them the neighbouring manors of Belsize and Hendon. It was at Hendon Manor-house that Cardinal Wolsey made his first halt when journeying from Richmond to York after his disgrace. At that time, however, Hampstead itself had no great claim to notice, its inhabitants being, we are told, chiefly washerwomen, whose services were in great demand among the inhabitants of London. That this peaceful if humble occupation could be carried on, proves at least that the wolves which, according to Dame Juliana Berners’s Boke of St Albans, abounded among the northern heights of London in the fifteenth century, had been exterminated by the end of the sixteenth. The wild-boar lingered longer; and so late as 1772, we hear of the hunting of a deer in Belsize Park. This, however, can scarcely be regarded as genuine sport, as it is advertised to take place among other amusements intended to allure visitors to Belsize House, which had been opened as a pleasure-house by an energetic individual of the name of Howell. He describes in his advertisement all the attractions of the place, and promises for the protection of visitors that ‘twelve stout fellows completely armed will patrol between Belsize and London.’

Early in the eighteenth century chalybeate wells were discovered at Hampstead, and as they were recommended by several physicians, the hitherto quiet village became a fashionable and dissipated watering-place. Idle London flocked there: youths who were delighted to show their finery in a new place; girls who were young enough to delight in the prospect of dancing all night; gamblers of both sexes; wits and fops. They danced, lost their money at cards and dice, talked scandal of each other, and drank of the chalybeate well, which Sam Weller has characterised for all generations as ‘water with a taste of warm flat-irons,’ till Hampstead lost its novelty, and the company went elsewhere to go through the same programme.

Among the crowd of nonentities that frequent the Hampstead Wells there is one notable figure, that of Richard Steele. In 1712, Steele retired from London to a small house on Haverstock Hill, on the road to Hampstead. Here, doubtless, his friend and fellow-labourer Addison visited him; and the two would find in the humours and follies of the company at the Wells material for the next number of the Tatler, the publication of which had now been going on for three years. Let us picture the two friends passing together through the gay company—Steele, radiant, we may be sure, in gay apparel, seizing at once on the humorous characteristics of the scene; while Addison would tone down his companion’s exuberant fancy, and draw his own thoughtful moralisings from the follies he witnessed. On summer evenings they would walk on the Heath, and admire the view across the swelling green slopes to the town of Harrow, where one day was to be educated my Lord Byron, a young gentleman who would win greater fame as a poet than even Addison’s acquaintance—a protégé to begin with, an enemy at last—the lame Catholic gentleman, Mr Alexander Pope.

The friendship between Steele and Addison must ever remain a puzzle. They had talent in common, Steele having the more original genius, Addison the more cultivated taste; but otherwise there seems no point of contact between the natures of graceless, impulsive, erring, loving Dick, and his cold, conscientious, methodical comrade. To our century, as to his own, Steele is ‘Dicky;’ the king made him Sir Richard, and on the strength of his title he took a fine house in Soho Square, and swaggered more than ever, and increased his expenses and his debts, but to all the world he was Dicky Steele still; whereas, had the honour of a baronetcy befallen Mr Secretary Addison, can we doubt that to all posterity he would have been known as ‘Sir Joseph?’ Yet these two men, unlike each other as they were, united to perform in an unobtrusive fashion a great work; they purified English literature, and did much to reform English manners. In a society which had learned to regard truth, honesty, and virtue as absurd, they showed, not the wickedness of vice—no one would have listened to that—but its folly. When the fops and gamblers found that they, as well as the honest men they sneered at, could be made the subject of satire, they began to doubt if their cherished amusements were such essential characteristics of ‘men of spirit’ as they had fancied. The gulf that lies between the comedies of Wycherley and those of Sheridan was first opened by the gentle raillery of the Tatler and the Spectator. The later dramatist had no keener moral sense than the earlier, but he lived in an atmosphere which, though by no means pure, was healthier than that breathed by his predecessor; and in which it was necessary that virtue, however weak, should in the end defeat the vice that tried to trade upon its feebleness.

Of the clear-cut grace of style that distinguished the writing of the Spectator there is no need to speak; it still remains the model of English prose, while the tiny, whitish-brown sheet, the perusal of which used to add to the flavour of Belinda’s morning chocolate, was the progenitor of the immense mass of periodical literature that surrounds us to-day. But if the two friends had done nothing more than give us—Steele the first sketch, Addison the finished portrait, of old-fashioned, kind, eccentric Sir Roger de Coverley, they would have deserved a high and loving place in our memory.

Thirty years later, the figure of another literary man was to be seen at Hampstead. Not so gorgeous as Dick, not so precise as Addison, is slovenly, tea-drinking, long-worded Samuel Johnson; but he is their legitimate successor, nevertheless. He, too, is a man of letters, living by the produce of his pen, and appealing for support to the public, and not to the kindness or charity of private patrons. Indeed, he scorns such condescending patronage, as a certain stinging letter to Lord Chesterfield remains to testify. In 1748, Mrs Johnson, for the sake of the country air, took lodgings at Hampstead; and there her husband wrote his satire, The Vanity of Human Wishes. Johnson did not spend all his time at Hampstead, for he was obliged to return and drudge in smoky London in order to provide for her comfort. Boswell tells us that ‘she indulged in country air and good living at an unsuitable expense; and she by no means treated her husband with that complacency which is the most engaging quality in a wife.’ Yet Johnson loved faithfully and mourned sincerely the querulous, exacting woman, a quarter of a century older than himself, and cherished an undoubting belief in her beauty; while all save him perceived that if she had ever possessed any—which they doubted—it had long disappeared.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, Hampstead became the dwelling-place of two famous lawyers, both of them Scotch—Lords Erskine and Mansfield. Thomas Erskine, youngest son of the tenth Earl of Buchan, and ‘a penniless lad with a lang pedigree,’ began life as a midshipman; but disliking the service, he, after his father’s death, invested the whole of his little patrimony in the purchase of an ensigncy in the 1st Foot. When, some years later, he felt his true vocation to be the bar, he was burdened with the responsibility of a wife and children; and it was only by the exercise of economy nearly approaching privation that he succeeded in maintaining himself during the three years’ study that must elapse before he was called to the bar. Even when he received his qualification, it seemed that he was to fail through lack of opportunity to display his talents; but opportunity came at last, and his brilliant career led to the Lord Chancellorship of England, a peerage, and the Order of the Thistle. All the power of his oratory and of his ever-increasing influence was devoted to the promotion of freedom, civil and religious. He stood up boldly for the independence of juries against the bullying of judges; he advocated concessions to the Catholics; and carrying his love of mercy and justice beyond the human race, he brought into parliament a bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals. The measure failed; for popular feeling on the subject was then such as is expressed in the famous couplet—

Things is come to a pretty pass,

When a man mayn’t wollop his own jackass.

But before Erskine died, it had become law.

William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, was the eleventh of the fourteen children of Viscount Stormont, of the castle of Scone, in Perthshire. So poor was his lordship, that, as we are told by Mansfield’s biographer, the only fare he could provide for those fourteen mouths—which though high-born, were every whit as hungry as if they had been peasants’—was oatmeal porridge. The family was Jacobite in politics, so its fortunes were little likely to improve; but by the influence of Bishop Atterbury, who was at heart a Jacobite too, little Willie was admitted to Westminster School. He made good use of his time there; and by listening to the debates in Westminster Hall he became enamoured of the law, and resolved to devote himself to it. Difficulties enough lay before him; but by the aid of an indomitable perseverance, a gentle manner, and a voice so musical that none could listen to it unmoved, he conquered them all. Throughout his legal career he was noted for strict integrity and justice. He advocated free trade and religious toleration, and used every effort in his power to decrease the waste of time and money in the business of law-courts; but his greatest title to honour is that he was the first to decide that no slave could remain a slave on English soil.

Early in this century, the year after Waterloo was fought, Hampstead was familiar with the forms of three men to whom life gave only scorn, insult, and disappointment, yet whose memory lingers about it and makes it hallowed ground. In 1816, Leigh Hunt lived at Hampstead in a part called the Vale of Health; and there Keats, who lodged in the village, and Shelley were his frequent visitors. Each of the three was more or less a martyr. For the crime of describing the Prince Regent—whose memory as George IV. is not highly honoured—as an ‘Adonis of fifty,’ Hunt was thrown into prison; while the political reviews and journals abused his graceful poems and scholarly essays as if they had been firebrands, to extinguish which every exertion must be made. They succeeded in torturing him, in reducing him to poverty and dependence, but they did not succeed in changing Leigh Hunt’s convictions. He would not bow down to the Adonis of fifty.

Shelley was rather a visitor than a resident at Hampstead Heath; but Keats composed not a few of his poems here. The sorrows of his sorrowful life had not yet reached their climax in 1816. Already he was struggling with poverty, disease, and hopeless, passionate love; but he had not yet published those poems which were to rouse such wrath in the bosoms of a few critics, and such delight in thousands of readers. But at Hampstead most of them were written. Here he breathed life into the long dead myth of Endymion, surrounding it with such a wealth of description as seems scarcely possible to a youth of such limited experience. Can commonplace Hampstead Heath, the chosen resort of Bank-holiday excursionists, be the prototype of that Grecian valley where the goddess of night stooped to kiss Endymion! Here were written the sad story of The Pot of Basil and the legend of The Eve of St Agnes; here, in 1819, was composed that most exquisite Ode to a Nightingale, which, even were it his only production, might place Keats among our greater poets.

The memory loves to trace the footsteps of departed greatness; but even did no such recollections as these endear Hampstead Heath, it would still be precious as a spot where half-asphyxiated Londoners may inhale a fresh untainted breeze, and children may romp to their hearts’ content. ‘I like Hampstead Heath much better than Switzerland,’ says a small boy in one of Du Maurier’s sketches in Punch. ‘But you haven’t seen Switzerland,’ objects his sister, a practical young lady a year or two older. ‘O yes; I have seen it on the map,’ is his reply. And if he had really visited Switzerland, the little fellow would perhaps still have preferred the broken, sandy soil, the grass and ferns, of Hampstead Heath.

Du Maurier is the Heath’s own artist. He lives on its borders, and most of the backgrounds of his out-of-door sketches are borrowed from its scenery. He may daily be seen there—till lately accompanied by his dog Chang, the great St Bernard whose portrait has so often appeared in the pages of Punch. But, alas! Chang is no more; he has fallen a victim to consumption and heart-disease, and Hampstead weeps for him. Seldom has any dog been so widely lamented. ‘He is mourned by a large circle of friends,’ said the World, ‘and the family of which he was so long a member is inconsolable for his loss.’

BY MEAD AND STREAM.

BY CHARLES GIBBON.

CHAPTER VII.—AN UNLOVED LIFE.

It was a little time before the father spoke again. But without being able to see his face, even without being able to hear him breathe, Philip felt that he was struggling with something in himself. Perhaps it was only a struggle to regain that composure of manner which he had temporarily lost. In this he succeeded. But was that all Mr Hadleigh was struggling with in those few moments of silence? At anyrate, when he spoke, his voice was steadier than before; more like its ordinary tone, but without its hardness.

‘Before I proceed, may I ask what was the purport of the two letters you received?’

‘The one was simply urging me on no account to fail to start in the Hertford Castle as arranged, and assuring me of such welcome as I might desire.’

‘That was not much to write about. And the other?’

‘The other inclosed a note which I am to deliver personally to a firm of solicitors in the City, and requesting that I should bring with me the packet they would intrust to my care.’

‘Is that all?’

‘That is all, sir.’

‘One question more. Are you very anxious to make this journey, which may end in nothing? Is there no one here who could persuade you to give it up altogether?’

Philip was a good deal perplexed as to how he should answer this question. There was Some one who could have persuaded him to stay at home; but the sweet voice of that Some one was again whispering in his ear, ‘It was your mother’s wish that you should go;’ and besides, there was the natural desire of youth to see strange countries and peoples.

‘I thought, sir, that this question of my going out to Uncle Shield had been all settled long ago,’ he replied awkwardly, for he knew that any reference to the command laid upon him by his mother always disturbed his father.

‘That is not an answer to my questions.’

‘Well, I consider it my duty to go.’

‘And you wish to go?’

‘I do—now. Even setting aside the prospects he holds out to me, I feel that I must go.’

The father made a mental note of the fact that his son gave no reply to the second question; but he did not press it farther at this moment. He seemed to draw breath, and then went on in a low voice: ‘I think, Philip, you have not found me an exacting parent. Although I have never failed to point out to you the way in which it would please me most to see you walk, I have never insisted upon it. And I will own that on your part your conduct has been up to a certain point satisfactory.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘That certain point is your procrastination in the choice of your future career. You have shown that you do not care about business—and my own conviction is that you are unfitted for it—and you will not decide upon a profession. Although you have dabbled in medicine and law, you have not entered earnestly upon the study of either. I have been patient with this wavering state of mind which you have displayed ever since you left the university. I do not wish to force you into any occupation which you may dislike, and would, therefore, certainly fail in; for then you would console yourself by blaming me for being the cause of your failure.’

‘Oh, no, no—do not think me so ungrateful.’

‘But I did hope,’ continued the father calmly, without heeding the interruption, ‘that before you came to think of marriage, you would have settled with yourself upon some definite course of action in the future.’

‘Your reproaches are just, sir,’ answered Philip earnestly and with some agitation, ‘and I deserve them. But this journey will decide what I am to be and do.’

‘I did not mean to reproach you,’ said the father, and again there was that distant note of sadness which sounded so strangely in his voice; ‘but it seemed to me right to remind you of these things before telling you the rest. I reproach myself more than you.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Listen. My young life was passed in a home which had been suddenly stricken down from wealth and ease to poverty. On every hand I heard the one explanation given for my father’s haggard looks, my mother’s wasting illness, for my poor sister’s white face and constant drudgery with her needle, and for my own unsatisfied hunger; and that explanation was—the want of money.... I resolved that I should conquer this demon that was destroying us all—I resolved that I should have money.’

Here he paused, as if the memory of that time of misery proved too painful for him. Philip’s sympathetic nature was drawn closer to his father at that moment than it had ever been before. He rose impulsively and grasped his arm. In the darkness the forms of the two men were indistinguishable to each other; but with that sympathetic touch each saw the other clearly in a new light.

‘My poor father,’ murmured Philip, clenching his teeth to keep down the sob that was in his throat.

There was silence; and at that moment a pale gleam of moonlight stole across the room. But it seemed only to darken the corner in which the two men stood.

By-and-by Mr Hadleigh gently removed his son’s hand.

‘Sit down again, Philip, or go over to the window so that I may see you.’

Philip walked quietly to a place opposite the window, and putting his hands behind him, rested them on the ledge of a bookcase, leaning back so that the light fell full upon his frank, handsome face, making it look very pale in his anxiety. He knew that his father was gazing earnestly at him, and as he could not see him, he was glad to hear his voice again, which in some measure took away the uncomfortable feeling produced by the singular position.

‘You know that I gained my object,’ Mr Hadleigh proceeded, with a mingling of bitterness and regret in his voice; ‘but at what a cost!... All the lightness of heart which makes the lives of even the poorest children happy at times—all the warmth of hope and enthusiasm which brightens the humblest youth, were gone. It was not hope that led me on: it was determination. All emotion was dead within me: at twenty I was an old man; and in the hard grasping struggle with which I fought against the demon Poverty, and won the favour of the greater demon, Wealth—even love itself was sacrificed.’

He paused again; but this time Philip did not speak or move. There was something so pitiful as well as painful in this confession that he was dumb.

‘They—father, mother, sister—all died before I had broken down the first barrier between me and fortune. I shed no tears: each death in poverty hardened me more and more.... It was—your mother who enabled me to break down the first barrier’——

‘Ah, I am glad of that,’ exclaimed the son with a burst of happy relief.

‘Wait. I did not know what love was: I did not love her.’ (Philip started, but remained silent.) ‘She had money: I married her for it. She did not love me; but she had quarrelled with the man she did love, and accepted me in her mad chagrin. We understood each other, and I was content—she was not. From the day of her marriage to the day of her death, her life was one weary lamentation that in her moment of passion I had crossed her path—a life of self-scourging and regret for the man she loved. I saw it, and knew it; but I did not know what love was, and I could not pity it. I did know something of hate; and I believed she hated me.... Had she only cared for me a little, it might have been different,’ he added in a lower voice, and as if speaking to himself.

‘You wrong her, father, you wrong her,’ said Philip in a husky, tremulous voice.

‘It may be; but I did not know then, what I understand too well now. A pity, a pity—for it might have been so different! As it was, her brother turned from her too, and would not forgive her. He hated me—he hates me: because the lover she had deserted was his close friend; and whilst I prospered, his friend failed. In a few years the man had lost everything he possessed, and died—some say by his own hand: killed by me, as your mother seemed to believe, and as Austin Shield does believe. I had ruined his life, he said, and I was as much responsible for his death, as if I had given him poison or shot him. These were the last words Shield ever spoke to me.’

‘It must have been in mere passion. He cannot believe that now, or he would not send for me.’

‘I do not know. I went on my way, unheeding his words, and would have forgotten him, but for your mother’s grief. I had no home-life; but I did my duty, as it seemed to me. The money which had been brought to me was repaid with compound interest: all that money could buy was at your mother’s command: all that she could wish for her children was supplied to them, and you all seemed satisfied. But I was not with you—you were hushed and lifeless in my presence, and seemed only happy in my absence. Sitting in this room, I have heard your voices raised in gladness, and if I passed in amongst you, seeking for that strange something which the Demon Wealth with all his gold could not supply, it seemed as if the Demon sat upon my shoulder, frightening you and rendering you speechless. So I lived alone, although so near you, and my Familiar became kinder and kinder to me, until I wearied of him. I sought I did not know what, and could not find it.’

He stopped, breathing heavily, as if suppressing his emotion.

‘Oh, if you had only spoken to us as you are speaking to me now, father!’ cried Philip, so earnestly that it sounded like a reproach.

‘It would have been better,’ was the sad reply. ‘I tell you these things that you may understand the proposal I am about to make to you. I now know what love is, and as too often happens, the knowledge comes too late. But it will help me in my effort to make two people happy. Can you guess who they are?’

‘I am afraid you must inform me.’

‘Yourself and Ma—Miss Heathcote. I propose that you should stay at home and marry as soon as may be agreeable to the lady. I shall settle upon you a sufficient fortune to enable you to live comfortably; but I shall expect you to enter some profession. Do you consent?’

Here was a proposal at which Philip’s whole nature jumped gleefully. But that voice was in his ears, and he overcame the temptation.

‘It was my mother’s wish that I should go, if my uncle ever summoned me,’ he said in a respectful but decisive voice, ‘and I must go.’

‘So be it,’ rejoined the father, and there was a note of bitterness in his tone; ‘I shall not again attempt to alter your plans.’

There was a peculiar emphasis on the ‘I.’

CHAPTER VIII.—‘WILL YOU SPEAK THAT WORD?’

Madge was singing as she dressed in her pretty little room, filled with the exhilarating breath of the early morning, which the wide open window admitted freely. This was no dainty lady’s chamber full of costly nick-knacks. Everything in it was useful, and everything was so bright and simple, that glancing into it on a winter’s day, one might have imagined that summer still lingered here.

As she stood at the chintz-draped toilet-table she could see the green glades apparently rising amidst the trees, one glade half in shadow, another with its dewdrops glistening like diamonds in the morning sunshine. Beyond that on the high ground were yellow plains of ripe grain, relieved by black and gray patches, which she knew to be fields of beans and tares. Down below there, at the foot of the meadows, the calmly flowing river sent silver flashes through every space left by the willows and elms. Farther on, she saw the stumpy tower of the old village church struggling to raise its head through a mass of ivy. And to all this her window, with its surrounding network of rose-tree branches, formed a suitable frame.

It was not a blithe song she was singing, and yet the hope that was in her voice and in her eyes took away from it all thought of sadness. It was that now old-fashioned but once popular song of the Soldier’s Tear, and she dwelt with sympathy on the lines, ‘Upon the hill he turned, to take a last fond look.’ She repeated them dreamily again and again, and then her face would brighten into smiles when the happier picture presented itself of the time when she should stand on the top of the hill, or at the more probable although more prosaic railway station, welcoming Philip home.

Ah, it was much better to think of that. And then, what was a year, or what were two years, to reckon in their young lives, when all the succeeding years would be theirs to pass together—always together—no matter what Aunt Hessy might say? Besides, there would be his letters! He would speak to her in them every day, and she would speak to him every day. Of course, the ridiculous postal arrangements would not permit them to receive the letters on the day they were written; but when they were delivered, they would contain a full record of their daily lives.

Up from the barnyard came the loud voice of one of the labourers, rising above the obstreperous squeaking of the pigs he was feeding, as he drawled out a verse of some rustic ballad—

Ow Mary Styles, Ow Mary Styles,

It’s ’long ov yow I’m dying,

But if yow won’t have me at last,

Why, then, there’s no use crying.

A delightful combination of sentiment and philosophy, thought Madge, smiling.

Then came the other sounds which intimated that another day’s work of the farm had begun. The milk-cans rattled as they were whirled out of the dairy to the waiting carts; merry jests were passed between the men and maids; harness clattered and clanked as the horses were put into the carts or reaping-machine; and there was much horse-language mingling with the confusion of dialects as the harvest hands turned out to the fields. The melancholy ‘moo’ of the cows rose from the barn as, having been milked, they were driven out to the meadows; the cocks, although they had been crowing since daybreak, crowed with louder defiance than ever, now that their hens were cackling and clucking around them; and the ducks emitted their curious self-satisfied ‘quack’ as they waggled off to the pond.

All these sounds warned Madge that she was somewhat later than usual in getting downstairs.

She was a little startled when she discovered on the hall table a letter bearing the Ringsford Manor crest; for she knew at once it was not from Philip, and feared that some mishap might have befallen him. She knew it was not from him, because he never used this crest, although all the other members of the family did. It had been the outcome of Miss Hadleigh’s vanity, to which the others took kindly, whilst Philip laughed at it.

She learned that the note had been delivered about half an hour ago by young Jerry Mogridge, who left a special message that the ‘flunkey’ who gave it to him said it was to be given to her the moment she came down. She was surprised to find that it was from Philip’s father, and still more surprised by its contents.

My Dear Miss Heathcote—The unusual hour at which this will be delivered will at once apprise you that the motive which prompts it is an important one. I cannot tell you how important it is in my eyes; and I hope and believe that you will not only appreciate the motive, but cordially sympathise with it.

Only a few hours ago I had to ask your assistance in a matter which entirely concerned myself; in the present instance I have to ask your assistance in a matter on which, I believe, your own happiness depends. You shall judge for yourself; and your answer will enable me to decide a question which has of late occupied my mind a great deal.

You have not hitherto heard me raise any objection to the journey Philip is about to make. To-day I decided that he ought not to go away. But after a long and painful conversation with him, I find that no words of mine can move him from his purpose.

Now, my dear Miss Heathcote, will you help me to hold him back from this useless enterprise?

I think you will—unless I am mistaken as to the nature of your feelings in regard to him.

My first and chief reason for desiring to keep him at home is my anxiety to see you and him happy—to see you two united, and him, under your influence, working earnestly in some profession.

I fear there is much danger that this desire of mine will never be realised, if he is permitted to spend a year with one who would delight in thwarting any wish of mine. You know his impulsive and impressionable nature. You are too young for experience to have taught you—and I earnestly trust it may never teach you—that absence, change of scene, and adverse counsels are not the most favourable conditions for keeping the most honest man steadfast.

Pray, do not misunderstand me. I do not doubt Philip. He is honest; but with such a nature as his, I think the trial of his honesty is too severe; and I object to it all the more because it is absolutely unnecessary. My proposal to him is that he should abandon this journey, that he should enter a profession at once, and that you should be married at as early a date as you may be inclined to fix. I need not say that you will be provided with ample means.

In the course of my life, few of the desires springing from my affections have been gratified. I beg of you to gratify this one. Although he resolutely declines to forego his purpose for my sake, I feel assured that you have only to speak one word—‘stay’—and he will forego it for yours.

Will you speak that word?

Believe me, your humble servant,
Lloyd Hadleigh.

There was something so pathetic and yet so strange in this appeal of the father that she should keep his son near him, that Madge was pained as well as bewildered. Keep Philip at home!—marry him!—be happy!—help to steady his impulsive nature and influence him in some good work! What else was there that she could desire more? How beautiful the visions were that these suggestions conjured up. Her face brightened as if a blaze of sunshine fell upon it ... and then it suddenly darkened.

She, too, like Philip remembered the dead mother’s wish, and hesitated. But the question presented itself: if his mother had been alive now and had understood all the circumstances, would she have insisted upon this wish—which seemed to cause the father so much anxiety—being carried out?

She read the letter again, and this time her cheeks flushed a little at the doubt of her implied in the words, ‘unless I am mistaken as to the nature of your feelings.’ The unpleasant sensation was only momentary. How could he—how even could Philip—realise her feelings? But she also became conscious of a certain vagueness in the reasons given for the anxiety expressed by Mr Hadleigh. Were she to grant the appeal, would it not be a proof of her want of faith in Philip? That idea was enough to make her answer ‘no’ at once.

And yet she hesitated. The poor old man was evidently very much in earnest. (She always thought of Mr Hadleigh as an old man, older than Uncle Dick, although he was twenty years younger than the latter.) To say ‘no’ would cause him much pain: to say ‘yes’ would afford him much happiness, and at the same time bring about the completion of her own.

There was a yelping of dogs, and above it the stentorian voice of her uncle shouting: ‘Down, Dash, down—here, Rover, here—be quiet, Tip, you brute.’

The door opened, dogs rushed in and bounded round Madge in wild delight. They were followed by Uncle Dick, his fresh ruddy face beaming with the happiness of health and content.

‘What are you dreaming about, Madge? Breakfast ready? We are as hungry as if we had been starving for a week. Thought I should have met you in the meadow as usual. What’s the matter?’

‘I am trying to solve a riddle, uncle.’

‘What!’ he exclaimed with a burst of laughter, ‘at this time in the morning. O ho! I see Master Philip was here too long yesterday.’

‘Will you try it?’

‘Don’t be a fool. Call the Missus and let’s have breakfast.’

‘To please me, uncle,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm.

‘Well, what is it?’

‘Suppose somebody asked you to do something that you wanted to do yourself, what would you say?’

‘That’s easily answered—yes, of course.’

‘But, suppose there were reasons connected with other people on account of which you ought to say “no,” what would you do?’

‘Please myself.—Now, let’s have our victuals, and confound your riddles, or I’ll send for the doctor and the parson at once.’

There was not much help to Madge in this easy settlement of the difficulty. But she had a maxim which did help her: whenever you have a doubt as to which of two courses you should take, choose the one which is least agreeable to yourself. She decided to follow it in this instance, as she had done in many others of less importance.

THE MUSE OF PARODY.

Reader, are you of those who cannot tolerate their favourite authors or their favourite poems being parodied? A lady-friend of the writer’s lately said, in regard to one of the best-known poems of a distinguished poet: ‘I admired and liked it once; but I can hardly read it now, since I saw that dreadful parody of it that appeared in Punch.’ If you are of this sensitive class, we fear this article is not for you. But we feel pretty sure of an audience; for we know that the large majority of readers can relish a clever parody without in the least losing their enjoyment in or respect for the thing parodied. And it is well that it is so; for parody in some shape and to some extent is early as the beginnings of literature itself; and if the fame of poets depended on their immunity from travesty, every poet that has ever won his bays, and whose reputation now rests secure and impregnable, would have been laughed out of court long since.

In speaking of modern English parody, one’s thoughts turn first, almost inevitably, to the brothers Horace and James Smith, who, in Rejected Addresses, may be regarded as the first to practise parody in a systematised fashion, as a vehicle of fun and humour. The Rejected Addresses won high praise from Jeffrey, who pronounced the parody on Crabbe ‘an exquisite and masterly imitation;’ while the poet himself declared it to be ‘admirably done.’ We shall give a short extract from it, which we think hits off Crabbe’s manner in a way that fully justifies Jeffrey’s criticism:

John Richard William Alexander Dwyer

Was footman to Justinian Stubbs, Esquire;

But when John Dwyer listed in the Blues,

Emanuel Jennings polished Stubbs’s shoes.

Emanuel Jennings brought his youngest boy

Up as a corn-cutter—a safe employ;

In Holywell Street, St Pancras, he was bred

(At number twenty-seven, it is said),

Pacing the pump, and near the Granby’s Head.

He would have bound him to some shop in town,

But with a premium he could not come down.

Pat was the urchin’s name—a red-haired youth,

Fonder of purl and skittle-grounds than truth.

In regard to the parody of Sir Walter Scott in Rejected Addresses, the poet himself said: ‘I must have done it myself, though I forget on what occasion.’ Here are a few lines descriptive of the Drury Lane Theatre on fire:

At length the mist awhile was cleared,

When lo! amid the wreck upreared,

Gradual a moving head appeared,

And Eagle firemen knew

’Twas Joseph Muggins, name revered,

The foreman of their crew.

Loud shouted all in signs of woe,

‘A Muggins to the rescue, ho!’

And poured the hissing tide.

Thackeray was especially happy and especially funny in his Irish burlesques. Larry O’Toole, a parody of the rollicking Irish bacchanalian songs with which Charles Lever made us so familiar, admirably hits the medium between close imitation and high burlesque. There is a dash in it both of Larry O’Hale and the Widow Malone. We quote two of the three verses:

You’ve all heard of Larry O’Toole,

Of the beautiful town of Drumgoole.

He had but one eye

To ogle ye by;

Och, murther, but that was a jew’l!

A fool

He made of the girls, this O’Toole.

’Twas he was the boy didn’t fail,

That tuck down purtaties and mail;

He never would shrink

From any sthrong dthrink;

Was it whisky or Drogheda ale,

I’m bail

This Larry would swallow a pail.

Moore’s well-known lines—

I never nursed a young gazelle

To glad me with its soft dark eye,

But when it came to know me well,

And love me, it was sure to die—

have been frequently parodied. Here is one version which, we think, is not very familiar:

I never had a piece of toast

Particularly long and wide,

But fell upon the sanded floor,

And always on the buttered side.

The following is by Mr H. C. Pennel, author of Puck on Pegasus:

I never roved by Cynthia’s beam,

To gaze upon the starry sky,

But some old stiff-backed beetle came,

And charged into my pensive eye.

And oh! I never did the swell

In Regent Street among the beaus,

But smuts the most prodigious fell,

And always settled on my nose!

In those two delightful volumes, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass, ‘Lewis Carroll’ gives us some capital travesties. Mr Southey’s poem beginning ‘“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,’ is so familiar, that every reader will appreciate the point of the burlesque, without needing the original before him:

‘You are old, Father William,’ the young man said,

‘And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head—

Do you think at your age it is right?’

‘In my youth,’ Father William replied to his son,

‘I thought it might injure the brain;

But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,

Why, I do it again and again.’

The old nursery song, ‘“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,’ the same writer has likewise burlesqued:

‘Will you walk a little faster?’ said a whiting to a snail;

‘There’s a porpoise close behind me, and he’s treading on my tail.

See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!

They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance?

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance?’

The late Mr J. R. Planché, whose innumerable fairy extravaganzas were so full of fun and humour, was also an expert in parody. We give the first verse of a burlesque by him of the once popular song, When other Lips:

When other lips and other eyes

Their tales of love shall tell—

Which means the usual sort of lies

You’ve heard from every swell;

When, bored with every sort of bosh,

You’d give the world to see

A friend whose love you know will wash,

Oh, then remember me!

The funniest burlesque of Wordsworth’s We are Seven, with which we are acquainted, is by Mr H. S. Leigh:

‘I thought it would have sent me mad

Last night about eleven.’

Said I: ‘What is it makes you bad?

How many apples have you had?’

She answered: ‘Only seven.’

‘And are you sure you took no more,

My little maid?’ quoth I.

‘Oh, please, sir, mother gave me four,

But they were in a pie.’

‘If that’s the case,’ I stammered out,

‘Of course you’ve had eleven.’

The maiden answered with a pout:

‘I ain’t had more nor seven.’

Here are four lines from a travesty of Tennyson’s May Queen—

‘You may lay me in my bed, mother—my head is throbbing sore;

And mother, prithee, let the sheets be duly aired before;

And if you’d do a kindness to your poor desponding child,

Draw me a pot of beer, mother—and, mother, draw it mild.’

It is not necessary to name the original of the following. We quote two of the three verses which compose the whole:

He wore a brace of pistols, the night when first we met;

His deep-lined brow was frowning beneath his wig of jet;

His footsteps had the moodiness, his voice the hollow tone,

Of a bandit chief, who feels remorse, and tears his hair alone.

I saw him but at half-price, but methinks I see him now,

In the tableau of the last act, with the blood upon his brow.

A private bandit’s belt and boots, when next we met, he wore;

His salary, he told me, was lower than before;

And standing at the O. P. wing, he strove, and not in vain,

To borrow half a sovereign, which he never paid again.

I saw it but a moment—and I wish I saw it now—

As he buttoned up his pocket with a condescending bow.

Tennyson’s well-known lyric, Home they brought her warrior dead, has been thus amusingly parodied by Mr Sawyer:

Home they brought her sailor son,

Grown a man across the sea,

Tall and broad, and black of beard,

And hoarse of voice as man may be.

Hand to shake, and mouth to kiss,

Both he offered ere he spoke;

But she said: ‘What man is this

Comes to play a sorry joke?’

Then they praised him, called him ‘smart,’

‘Tightest lad that ever stept;’

But her son she did not know,

And she neither smiled nor wept.

Rose, a nurse of ninety years,

Set a pigeon-pie in sight;

She saw him eat: ‘’Tis he, ’tis he!’

She knew him—by his appetite.

The following clever parody of Wordsworth’s Lucy is but little known. It was written by Hartley Coleridge, and reappeared some years ago in Notes and Queries. We shall quote the first verse of the original:

She dwelt among the untrodden ways,

Beside the banks of Dove;

A maid whom there were none to praise,

And very few to love.

We give two of the three verses composing the parody:

He lived among the untrodden ways,

To Rydal Mount that lead;

A bard whom there were none to praise,

And very few to read.

Unread his works—his Milk-white Doe

With dust is dark and dim;

It’s still in Longman’s shop; and oh!

The difference to him!

From a parody of Tennyson’s Mariana, which appeared in an Australian paper, we take the concluding verse. The burden of the original ballad, it will be remembered, runs:

She only said: ‘My life is dreary;

He cometh not,’ she said;

She said: ‘I am aweary, aweary—

I would that I were dead!’

They lifted him with kindly care;

They took him by the heels and head;

Across the floor, and up the stair,

They bore him safely to his bed.

They wrapped the blankets warm and tight,

And round about his nose and chin

They drew the sheets, and tucked them in,

And whispered: ‘Poor old boy—Good-night!’

He murmured: ‘Boys, oh, deary, deary,

That punch was strong,’ he said;

He said: ‘I am aweary, aweary—

Thank heaven, I’ve got to bed!’

An American magazine published some years ago a series of burlesques of the old nursery rhymes, of which we give specimens:

Little Jack Horner,

Of Latin no scorner,

In the second declension did spy

How of nouns there are some

Which, ending in um,

Do not make their plural in i.

Jack and Jill

Have studied Mill,

And all that sage has taught too;

Now both promote

Jill’s claim to vote,

As every good girl ought to.

The case for the evolutionists is thus tersely put by an American poet, parodying Sing a song of Sixpence: