Olla Podrida

It would be a double charity, charity to those who would willingly embrace the life, and charity to those who might require their assistance. It is well known how difficult it is to obtain a sick nurse in London. It is an avocation seldom embraced by people, until they are advanced in years, and all feeling has been dried up by suffering or disappointment. Those who undertake the task are only actuated by gain, and you can expect but eye-service. Not being very numerous, and constantly in demand, they are overworked, and require stimulants in their long watchings. In fact, they drink and dose—dose and drink again.

But how different would it be if the establishments, which I have referred to, were formed! those who are wealthy would send for one of the sisters when required, and if the illness were tedious, her services could be replaced by another, so that over-fatigue might not destroy watchfulness and attention to the patient. You would at once feel that you had those in your house in whom you could confide. If your means enabled you, you would send a sum to the funds of the charity in return for the service performed, and your liberality would enable them to succour those who could only repay by blessings. A very small subscription would set afloat such a charity, as the funds would so rapidly come in; and if under the surveillance of the medical men who attended the hospitals, it would soon become effective and valuable. I trust if this should meet the eye of any real philanthropist who has time to give, which is more valuable than money, that he will turn it over in his mind:– the founder would be a benefactor to his country.

Chapter Twelve

May 25.

“A man cannot die more than once,” is an old apothegm, and it would appear bold to dispute it; but still there are lives within lives, such as political lives, literary lives, etcetera, and there is also such a thing as being dead in the eye of the law; so that it is evident that a man can die twice, that is, once professionally or legally, and once naturally.

I presume, like all other scribblers, I must meet my literary death, that is, when I have written myself down, or have written myself out. I have no objection, for I am very weary of my literary existence, although authors are not so in general; on the contrary, they can perceive in themselves no sign of decay when it is apparent to every body around them. Literary decay is analogous to the last stage of a consumption, in which you believe you are not going to die, and plan for the future as if you were in perfect health. And yet to this complexion must all authors come at last. There is not a more beautiful, or more true portrait of human nature, than the scene between the Archbishop of Grenada and Gil Blas, in the admirable novel of Le Sage. Often and often has it been brought to my recollection since I have taken up the pen, and often have I said to myself, “Is this homily as good as the last?” (perhaps homily is not exactly the right term my writings.) The great art in this world, not only in writing, but in everything else, is to know when to leave off. The mind as well as the body must wear out. At first it is a virgin soil, but we cannot renew its exhausted vigour after it has borne successive crops. We all know this, and yet we are all archbishops of Grenada. Even the immortal Walter Scott might have benefited by the honesty of Gil Blas, and have burnt his latter homilies; but had he had such an unsophisticated adviser, would he not, in all probability, have put him out by the shoulders, wishing him, like the venerable hierarch, “a little more taste and judgment.”

Since I have been this time abroad, I have made a discovery for which all prose writers ought to feel much indebted to me. Poets can invoke Apollo, the Muses, the seasons, and all sorts and varieties of gods and goddesses, naked or clothed, besides virtues and vices, and if none of them suit, they may make their own graven image, and fall down before it; but we prose writers have hitherto had no such advantage, no protecting deity to appeal to in our trouble, as we bite our pens, or to call upon to deliver us from a congestion of the brain. Now being aware that there were upwards of three hundred and fifty thousand canonised saints on the Roman calendar, I resolved to run through the catalogue, to ascertain—if there was one who took prose authors under his protection, and to my delight, I stumbled upon our man. By-the-bye, Tom Moore must have known this, and he has behaved very ill in keeping him all to himself. But I must introduce him. It is the most holy, and the most blessed, Saint Brandon. Holy Saint Brandon inspire me, and guide my pen while I record thy legend! In the first place, let me observe that our patron saint was an Irishman, and none the worse for that, as Ireland has had as good saints as any in the calendar. And it is now clear that he does protect us prosaic writers, by the number of reporters and gentlemen of the press which have been sent over from the sister kingdom. But to proceed.

Saint Brandon, it appears, was a reading man, and amused himself with voyages and travels; but Saint Brandon was an unbeliever, and thought that travellers told strange things. He took up the Zoology of Pliny, and pursued his accounts of “Antres vast, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders.” He read until his patience was exhausted, and, in a fit of anger, he threw the manuscript into the flames. Now this was a heavy sin, for a man’s book is the bantling of his brain, and, to say the least, it was a literary-infanticide. That very night an angel appeared to him, and as a penance for his foul crime (in the enormity of which every author will agree with the angel), he was enjoined to make the book over again, no easy task in those days, when manuscripts were rare, and the art of book-making had not been invented. The sinner, in obedience to the heavenly mission, goes to work; he charters a vessel, lays in provisions for a seven years’ voyage, and with a crew of seven monks, he makes sail, and after going round the world seven times, during which the world went round the sun seven times, he completed his task in seven volumes folio, which he never published, but carried his manuscript away with him to prove that he had performed his penance. For this miraculous voyage—and certainly with such a ship’s company, it was a miracle—he was canonised, and is now the patron saint of all prose authors, particularly those whose works are measured by the foot-rule.

And now that I have made known to my fraternity that we also have a saint, all they have to do is to call upon him six or seven times, when their brains are at sixes and sevens. I opine that holy Saint Brandon made a very hazard-ous voyage, for it is quite clear that, in the whole arrangement, it was—seven’s the main.

Chapter Thirteen

En route, May 26.

Passed Waterloo—was informed that two days before the Marquis of Anglesey had arrived there, and stayed a short time to visit the cemetery of his leg; a regular family visit of course, as all the members were present.

May 27.

Slept at Namur. The French are certainly superior to us in the art of rendering things agreeable. Now, even in the furnishing of a common apartment, there is always something to relieve the eye, if not to interest you. I recollect when I was last in London, in furnished apartments, that as I lay awake in the morning, my eye caught the pattern of the paper. It was a shepherdess with her dog in repose, badly executed, and repeated without variation over the whole apartment. Of course I had nothing to do but to calculate how many shepherdesses and dogs there were in the room, which, by counting the numbers in length and breadth, squaring the results, and deducting for door and windows, was soon accomplished. But how different was the effect produced by the paper of the room in which I slept last night! It was the history of Dunois, the celebrated bastard of France, who prays in his youth that he may prove the bravest of the brave, and be rewarded with the fairest of the fair. This was not the true history, perhaps, of Dunois; but I am drawing the comparison between the associations and reminiscences conjured up by this decoration in opposition to the dull and tasteless recapitulation of the English manufacture. From the latter I could not extract a bare idea, except that shepherdesses are, as a race, extinct, and that Lord Althorp had taken the tax off shepherds’ dogs, by way of a bonus, to relieve a distressed capital of some hundred millions, to which the agricultural interest had very properly replied, “Thank you for nothing, my Lord;” but from the sight of the French paper what a host of recollections started up at the moment! The mind flew back to history, and was revelling in all the romance of chivalry, from King Arthur and his Knights, to the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

“Yet, after all,” thought I, at the end of a long reverie, “divest chivalry, so called, of its imposing effect, examine well into its nature and the manners of the times, and it must be acknowledged that the modern warfare has a much greater claim than the ancient to the title of chivalry. In former times men were cased in armour of proof, and, before the discovery of gunpowder, had little to fear in a mélée, except from those who, like themselves, were equally well armed and equally protected, and even then only from flesh wounds, which were seldom mortal. The lower classes, who served as common soldiers, were at the mercy of the mounted spearsmen, and could seldom make any impression upon their defences. In those days, as in the present, he who could command most gold carried the day, for the gold procured the steel harness, and a plump of spears brought into the field was more than equal to a thousand common men. He who had the best tempered armour was the most secure, and that was it be only procured by gold. He who could mount and case in iron the largest number of his followers was the most powerful, and, generally speaking, the most lawless. Divest chivalry of its splendour, which threw a halo round it, and it was brutal, and almost cowardly. Single combats did certainly prove courage; but even in them, skill, and more than skill, personal strength, or the best horse, decided the victory. In fact, although not the origin, it was the upholder of the feudal system, in which might was right; and we may add, that the invention of gunpowder, which placed every man upon a level, if not the cause of, certainly much assisted to break up the system. How much more of the true spirit of chivalry is required in the warfare of the present day, in which every man must stand for hours to be shot at like a target, witnessing the mowing down of his comrades, and silently filling up the intervals in the ranks made by their deaths, exposed to the same leaden messengers; a system of warfare in which every individual is a part of a grand whole, acting upon one concerted and extended plan, and forced a hundred times to exhibit the passive and more perfect bravery of constancy, for once that he may forget his danger in the ardour of the charge! When shall we learn to call things by their right names?”

Liege, May 28.

Our landlord is a most loyal man, but there is a reason for it. Leopold took up his quarters at this hotel in his way to Spa. In every room we have upon every article of fayence—“Leopold, with the Genius of Belgium crowning him with laurels, while Truth is looking on.” Every plate, every dish, is impressed with this proof print of loyalty. But this is not all, as the man said in the packet, “Oh, no!” All the wash-hand basins, jugs, and every other article required in a bed-chamber, have the same loyal pattern at the bottom. Now it appeared to me, when I went to bed, that loyalty might be carried too far; and what may have been intended as respect, may be the cause of his Majesty being treated with the greatest disrespect; and not only his sacred Majesty, but the glorious Belgian constitution also. As for poor Truth, she is indeed said to sojourn at the bottom of a well; but in this instance, it would, perhaps, be as well that she should not be insulted—I am wrong, she always is, and always will be, insulted, when she appears in the purlieus of a court, or in the presence of a king.

After all, mine is a strange sort of Diary. It is not a diary of events, but of thoughts and reminiscences, which are thrown up and caught as they float to the surface in the whirlpool of my brain. No wonder!—events are but as gleanings compared to the harvest of many years, although so negligently gathered into store. I have been puzzling myself these last two hours to find out what a man’s brain is like. It is like a kaleidoscope, thought I; it contains various ideas of peculiar colours, and as you shift them round and past, you have a new pattern every moment. But no, it was not like a kaleidoscope, for the patterns of a kaleidoscope are regular, and there is very little regularity in my brain, at all events.

It is like a pawnbroker’s shop, thought I, full of heterogeneous pledges; and if you would take anything out, experience stands at the counter, and makes you pay her compound interest, while many articles of value are lost for ever, because memory cannot produce the duplicate.

And then I compared it to almost every thing, but none of my comparisons would hold good. After all, thought I, I have been only playing at “What are my thoughts like?” which is a childish game; and how can I possibly find out what my brain is like, when my brain don’t choose to tell? So I rose, and opening the window, lighted my cigar, and smoked myself into a reverie, as I watched the smoke ascending from the chimneys of the good town of Liege.

And this is the city which travellers pass through, describing it as a mere manufacturing town, thought I. A city which has, in its time, produced a greater moral influence upon society than any other in existence—a city that has led the van in the cause of religion and liberty. Liege presents a curious anomaly among the states of Europe. It is the only town and province, with the exception of Rome, which has been, for centuries, ruled by the clerical power. But be it recollected, that at the very period that Christianity was offering up her martyrs at the blood-stained arena of the Coliseum, it was from Liege (or rather Tongres, for Liege was not then built) that she was spreading wide her tenets, unpersecuted and unrestrained, for she was too far removed from idolatry and imposture to be regarded. The province of Liege was the cradle of the Christian faith. From the earliest records there were bishops at Tongres; and it was about five hundred years after Christ, that Saint Monulphe, the reigning bishop, founded the city of Liege. From that time until the French Revolution, this town and these fertile provinces had always remained under clerical authority.

Although these prince-bishops proved that, upon necessity, they could change the crosier for the coat of mail, still, as by endowments and benefactions they increased their revenues, so did they, by the mildness of their sway, induce thousands to settle in their territory; and to increase their population (which was to increase their wealth), they first granted to their citizens those privileges and liberties, which have, upon their precedent, been obtained by force or prayers by others. The very boast of the English of the present day, that every man’s house is his castle, was the sacred grant of one of the bishops to the citizens at Liege, long before the feudal system had been abolished in our island.

I may also observe, for it is to be gained from the chronicles of this province, that the time at which it may be said that the primitive Christian church first fell into error, appears to have been about one thousand years after the death of our Saviour. And as I thought of all this, and a great deal more, and smoked my cigar, I felt a great deal of respect for the good old city of Liege; and then I wandered back to the country I had passed through the day before, excelling in all lovely scenery. I had seen it before, but it was many years ago; and it may be seen many times without the least degree of satiety. I do not know any scenery which raises up such pleasurable sensations as that of the Valley of Meuse, taking it the whole way from Namur to Liege, and from Liege to Spa. It is not so magnificent as the Rhine, to which it bears a miniature resemblance. It is not of that description creating a strong excitement, almost invariably succeeded by depression; but it is of that unchanging and ever-pleasing, joyous description, that you are delighted without being fatigued, and have stimulus sufficient to keep you constantly in silent admiration without demanding so much from the senses as to weary them. If I could have divested myself from the knowledge that I was in motion, and have fancied that the scene was moving past, I could have imagined myself seated at one of our large theatres, watching one of Stanfield’s splendid panoramas. But the lighted end of my cigar at last approximated so near to my nose, that I was burnt out of my reverie; I took the last save—all whiffs, tried to hit an old woman’s cap with the end of it, as I tossed it into the street, and retreated to the diurnal labour of shaving—of all human miseries, certainly, the “unkindest cut of all”—especially when the maids have borrowed your razor, during your absence, to pare down the apex of their corns.

Chapter Fourteen

Liege.

I have been reading the “Salmonia” of Sir Humphry Davy: what a pity it is that he did not write more! there are so many curious points started in it. I like that description of book, which, after reading a while, you drop it on your knee, and are led into a train of thought which may last an hour, before you look for the page where you left off. There are two cases argued in this work, which led me into a meditation. The one is, a comparison between reason and instinct, and the other, as to the degree of pain inflicted upon fish by taking them with the hook. Now it appeared to me, in the first question, what has been advanced is by no means conclusive, and although it is the custom to offer a penny for your thoughts, I shall give mine for nothing, which is perhaps as much as they are worth, (I say that, to prevent others from making the sarcastic remark), and in the second question, I think I can assist the cause of the lovers of the gentle art of angling—why gentle, I know not, unless it be that anglers bait with gentles, and are mostly gentle-men.

But before I attempt to prove that angling is not a cruel sport, I must first get rid of “reason and instinct.” Of reason most undoubtedly a philanthropist would reply, “Be it so;” nevertheless, I will argue the point, and if I do not succeed, I have only to hedge back upon Solomon, and inquire, “If man was born to misery as the sparks fly upwards, why are not the inferior classes of creation to have their share of it?”

I do not think that any one can trace out the line of demarcation between reason and instinct. Instinct in many points in wonderful, especially among insects, but where it is wonderful, it is a blind obedience, and inherited from generation to generation. We observe, as in the case of the bees, that they obey the truest laws of mathematics, and from these laws they never have deviated from their creation, and that all animals, as far as their self-defence or their sustenance is concerned, show a wonderful blind obedience to an unerring power, and a sagacity almost superior to reason. But wonderful as this is, it is still but instinct, as the progenitors of the race were equally guided by it, and it is handed down without any improvement, or any decay in its power. Now if it could be asserted that the instinct of animals was only thus inherited from race to race, and could “go no farther,” the line of demarcation between reason and instinct would at once be manifest, as instinct would be blindly following certain fixed laws, while reason would ever be assisted by memory and invention. But we have not this boasted advantage on the side of reason, for animals have both memory and invention, and, moreover, if they have not speech, they have equal means of communicating their ideas. That this memory and invention cannot be so much exercised as our own, may be true, but it is exercised to an extent equal to their wants, and they look no further; that is to say, that if any want not prepared for, or anything should take place interfering with their habits and economy, instinct will enable them to meet the difficulty. There is nothing more wonderful than the application of mechanical power by ants. No engineer could calculate with greater nicety, and no set of men work together with such combination of force. After they have made ineffectual attempts to remove a heavy body, you will observe them to meet together, consult among themselves, and commence an entire new plan of operations. Bees, also, are always prepared to meet any new difficulty. If the sphinx atropos, or death’s head moth, forces its way into the hive, the bees are well known, after having killed it with their stings, to embalm the dead body with wax—their reason for this is, that the body was too large for them to remove through the passage by which it entered, and they would avoid the unpleasant smell of the carcass. It may be argued, that instinct had always imparted to them this knowledge; but if so, they must have had a fresh accession of instinct after they had been domiciled with men: for it is well known that the hole in the tree, in which the wild bees form their cells, is invariably too small to admit any animal larger than themselves, and the bodies of such sized animals they could remove with as much ease as they do the bodies of their own dead.

I could cite a hundred instances, which would prove that animals have invention independent of the instinct handed down from generation to generation. I will, however, content myself with one instance of superior invention in the elephant, which occurred at Ceylon. Parties were employed felling timber in the forests of Candia, and this timber, after having been squared, was dragged to the depôt by a large party of elephants, who, with their keepers, were sent there for that purpose. This work was so tedious, that a large truck was made, capable of receiving a very heavy load of timber, which might be transported at once. This truck was dragged out by the elephants, and it was to be loaded. I should here observe, that when elephants work in a body, there is always one who, as if by common consent, takes the lead, and directs the others, who never refuse to obey him. The keepers of the elephants, and the natives, gave their orders, and the elephants obeyed; but the timber was so large, and the truck so high on its wheels, that the elephants could not put the timber in the truck according to the directions given by the men. After several attempts, the natives gave up the point, and retiring to the side of the road as usual, squatted down, and held a consultation. In the meantime, the elephant who took the lead summoned the others, made them drag two of the squared pieces to the side of the truck, laid them at right angles with it, lifting one end of each on the truck, and leaving the other on the ground, thus forming the inclined plane. The timber was then brought by the elephants, without any interference on the part of the keepers or natives, who remained looking on, was pushed by the elephants with their foreheads up the inclined plane, and the truck was loaded. Here then is an instance in which the inventive instinct of the animal—if that term may be used—was superior to the humbler reasoning powers of the men who had charge of them.

That animals have the powers of memory as well as man, admits of no dispute. In elephants, horses, and dogs, we have hourly instances of it: but it descends much lower down—the piping bullfinch, who has been taught to whistle two or three waltzes in perfect concord, must have a good memory, or he would soon forget his notes. To detail instances of memory would therefore be superfluous; but, as it does occur to me while I write, I must give an amusing instance how the memory of a good thrashing overcame the ruling passion of a monkey, which is gluttony, the first and only instance that I ever saw it conquered.

I had on board a ship which I commanded, a very large Cape baboon, who was a pet of mine, and also a little boy, who was a son of mine. When the baboon sat down on his hams, he was about as tall as the boy was when he walked. The boy having tolerable appetite, received about noon a considerable slice of bread and butter, to keep him quiet till dinner-time. I was on one of the carronades, busy with the sun’s lower limb, bringing it in contact with the horizon, when the boy’s lower limbs brought him in contact with the baboon, who having, as well as the boy, a strong predilection for bread and butter, and a stronger arm to take it withal, thought proper to help himself to that to which the boy had been already helped. In short, he snatched the bread and butter, and made short work of it, for it was in his pouch in a moment. Upon which the boy set up a yell, which attracted my notice to this violation of the articles of war, to which the baboon was equally amenable as any other person in the ship; for it is expressly stated in the preamble of every separate article, “All who are in, or belonging to.” Whereupon I jumped off the carronade, and by way of assisting his digestion, I served out to the baboon monkey’s allowance, which is, more kicks than halfpence. The master reported that the heavens intimated that it was twelve o’clock; and with all the humility of a captain of a man-of-war, I ordered him to “make it so;” whereupon it was made, and so passed that day. I do not remember how many days it was afterwards that I was on the carronade as usual, about the same time, and all parties were precisely in the same situations,—the master by my side, the baboon under the booms, and the boy walking out of the cabin with his bread and butter. As before, he again passed the baboon, who again snatched the bread and butter from the boy, who again set up a squall, which again attracted my attention. Looked round, and the baboon caught my eye, which told him plainly that he’d soon catch what was not “at all my eye;” and he proved that he actually thought so, for he actually put the bread and butter back into the boy’s hands. It was the only instance of which I ever knew or heard of a monkey being capable of self-denial when his stomach was concerned, and I record it accordingly. (Par parenthèse:) it is well known that monkeys will take the small-pox, measles, and I believe the scarlet fever; but this poor fellow, when the ship’s company were dying of the cholera, took that disease, went through all its gradations, and died apparently in great agony.