Bentley's Miscellany, Volume II

Next morning, to the great surprise of the islanders, the body of the female was found separated from those of her unfortunate companions, and lying on the surface of the ground. It was believed that the lady had been disinterred by that party who had opposed the bodies being buried on the island, and the corpse was once more returned to its kindred clay, and the grave securely filled up.

The second morning came, and great was the astonishment of the inhabitants when it was ascertained that the same occurrence had taken place, and the grave had surrendered its dead. The body was inhumed once more, and, to guard against trickery, and secure the corpse from being disturbed, a watch was placed around the grave.

But when the daylight broke on the third morning, lo! the body of the unknown had again burst its cerements, and lay once more upon the surface of the ground. The vigilance of the guard had proved unavailing, and the consternation of the islanders was unbounded. A grand conclave assembled, and, after much consideration and debate, it was decided that the departed female had been a religieuse; and, that as she had eschewed all communion with the coarser sex while living, so, true to her vows, even after death she had evaded the society of man. Believing her to be a gentlewoman of extra holiness, who had departed "in the pride of her purity," it was shrewdly conjectured that there was nothing to prevent her from working miracles. The sick were accordingly brought forward, and a touch from the blessed finger of the defunct nun – for such she proved – removed every malady the flesh is heir to, and left the island without an invalid. To atone for the irreverential mode in which the lady had been treated on former occasions, a magnificent funeral was decreed her; a stone monument was erected over the sainted remains; and, that posterity should not be excluded from the virtues of her clay, an opening was left in the south side of the tomb, whence the faithful could obtain a portion of her ashes, and the sick be cured of their ailments. It being considered that one so particular after death would not, when alive, have ventured upon sea with any but the servants of religion, the other six bodies were honourably interred, and a tomb raised to their memory, while "the Church of the Seven" was built to their joint honour, and dedicated to the whole.

To this day the sanctity of the lady's grave remains unimpaired. The ashes retain their virtue; the pious resort thither to pray, the sick to procure relief from their sufferings. When it is necessary to obtain the holy dust for devout or medicinal purposes, application is made to the oldest member of a particular family, who have enjoyed from time immemorial the blessed privilege of dispensing the saint's clay. The name of the family is Doogan; and the reason why this high prerogative rests with this favoured lineage is, because their ancestors were the first converts of St. Colomb Kill, and the first of the islanders who received baptism at his hands.

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LEGENDS OF THE TORRY ISLANDERS

Torry Island, situated on the north-west coast of Ireland, is probably the least known of any of her Majesty's European possessions. Although so near the main, the communication is difficult and infrequent. The island has but one landing-place, and that can only be entered with leading winds, while, during the prevalence of the others, it is totally unapproachable.

Within the memory of people still alive, the natives of Torry were idolaters. They were ushered into life, and quitted it for the grave, without either rite or ceremony. Marriage was, à la Martineau, nothing but "a civil contract," and their notions of the Deity, rude and untutored as Kamschatdales or New Zealanders. Latterly, priests from the main have occasionally landed on the island, and there introduced the formulæ of religion; but visits dependent on winds and waves are "few and far between," and the state of Torry may still be termed more than demi-savage. When some adventurous beadsman ventures on a clerical descent, during his brief sojourn he finds that his office is no sinecure: children are to be christened by the score; and couples, who took each other's words, to be married by the dozen. During the long interregnum, a large arrear of omitted ceremonies has accrued, and the daring clerk returns from this "ultima Thule" a weary, if not a wiser man.

Nothing can be more wretched than the appearance of the island and its inhabitants: the one, cold, barren, and uncultivated; the other, ugly, dwarfish, and ill-shapen. The hovels are filthy to a degree; and all within and about Torry is so sterile and inhospitable, that a dread of being wind-bound deters even the hardiest mariner from approaching its rock-bound shores.

That "holy men" should venture among the Heathen, is, as it ought to be; and that savans will go desperate lengths to obtain bones, oyster-shells, and other valuable commodities, is equally true. For spiritual and scientific Quixotes, Torry opens an untried field; and any philosopher who can digest dog-fish, and possesses a skin impervious to entomological assaults, may here discover unknown treasures: none having yet been found – for none have sought them.

It was, probably, expectations such as these that induced the late Sir Charles Geisecke to visit this unfrequented island. Whether his geological discoveries compensated his bodily sufferings, the gentleman who perpetrated his biography leaves a scientific mystery. Certain it is, that in after-life the worthy knight never touched upon this portion of his wanderings without shuddering at the recollection.

Three days he sojourned among the aborigines, and three nights he sheltered in the chief man's hovel. He left Ards House33 in good spirits, and fat as a philosopher should be; and when he returned, his own dog, had he possessed one, would not have recognised his luckless owner. He came out a walking skeleton, and the ablutions he underwent would have tried the patience of a Mussulman. He had lost sleep; well, that could be made up for. He lost condition; that too might be restored. But to lose hair, to be clipped like a recruit, and have his garments burned at the point of a pitch-fork, – these indeed would daunt the courage of the most daring entomologist.

Pat Hegarty, the knight's guide, used to recount the sufferings they underwent. Their afflictions by day were bad enough; but these were nothing, compared to their nocturnal visitations. "My! what a place for fleas!" said an English femme de chambre who happened to be an accidental listener. "How numerous they must have been!"

"Numerous!" exclaimed the guide, "mona mon diaoul, if they had only pulled together, they would have dragged me out of bed!"

Since the knight's excursion, Torry has been more frequently visited. In executing the Ordnance survey, a party of Sappers and Miners were encamped upon the island, and the engineer officer in command amused many of his solitary hours by collecting traditionary tales from the narration of an old man, who was far more intelligent than the rest of the inhabitants. The two foregoing legends were taken from the patriarch's lips, and they afford an additional proof of that fondness which man, in his savage state, ever evinces for traditions that are wonderful and wild.

SONG OF THE MONTH. No. XII

December, 1837All hail to thee, thou good old boy, December!Sick of that sullen, sulky Dan November,The very sight of thy bald, reverend, jolly,Irreverend head, bright crown'd with holly,Makes one forswear, as fudge, all melancholy, —Thou gladdening, glowing, glorious old December!Grey Nestor of the Months! brethren eleven,Joint heirs with thee of Eighteen Thirty-seven,Knock'd up by Time, enjoy oblivious slumbers, —Old Monthlies out of print – the scarce back numbers,Sold out – not one a shop or shelf encumbers,While thou art but just publish'd – "No. XII. – December!""Hail, Thane of" Time! – thou genial, warm old sireOf Eighteen Thirty-eight! – Yule log and sea-coal fireBe thine, as glad burnt-offerings in thy praise;Long nights – (thou dost not look for length of days) —Be thine, old Joy, wassail'd in various waysOf warm, bright welcome, to hail thy stay, December!Welcome once more, old Master of the Revels, —Pickwick of all the Pleasures! – The blue devils,Blue looks, blue noses, hide their uncomely faces;Old Gout throws by his crutch – tries cinquepaces;And Youth and Age, Love, Joy, and all the GracesAre getting parties up, to honour thee, December!Sir-Loins grow fatter; plums, like good St. Stephen,Are suff'ring martyrdom; the spongy leavenIs working puddingwards; old wines, choice cellars,Old coats, new gowns, shawls, cloaks, clogs, logs, umbrellas,Young girls, old girls, old boys, and old young fellars,Are brushing up to welcome thee, December!Game, poultry, turkeys, pigs, and country cousinsThe Town's great maw will swallow down by dozens;Aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, nieces, nevies,Will all be book'd and brought up by "the heavies,"With other birds of passage, in large levies,On Christmas-day, to honour thee, December!Bright hearths, bright hearts, bright faces, and bright hollyWill welcome thee, and make thy sojourn jolly!The merry misletoe, in hall and kitchen,Will make the ugliest of mugs bewitchin';And who won't kiss them, may he die a ditch in,For he's no friend of thine, warm-hearted old December!Once more, all hail! with all thy sports and pastimes,Though few old sports are left us in these last times! —May one fair Virgin Girl – the loved at sight one —Twelve days from Christmas-tide, her heart a light one,As Queen, choose her a King, and choose the right one,To our great joy, and hers, agreeable old December!C.W.

OLIVER TWIST;

OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS

BY BOZILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK

CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH

HOW OLIVER PASSED HIS TIME IN THE IMPROVING SOCIETY OF HIS REPUTABLE FRIENDS

About noon next day, when the Dodger and Master Bates had gone out to pursue their customary avocations, Mr. Fagin took the opportunity of reading Oliver a long lecture on the crying sin of ingratitude, of which he clearly demonstrated he had been guilty to no ordinary extent in wilfully absenting himself from the society of his anxious friends, and still more in endeavouring to escape from them after so much trouble and expense had been incurred in his recovery. Mr. Fagin laid great stress on the fact of his having taken Oliver in and cherished him, when without his timely aid he might have perished with hunger; and related the dismal and affecting history of a young lad whom in his philanthropy he had succoured under parallel circumstances, but who, proving unworthy of his confidence, and evincing a desire to communicate with the police, had unfortunately come to be hung at the Old Bailey one morning. Mr. Fagin did not seek to conceal his share in the catastrophe, but lamented with tears in his eyes that the wrong-headed and treacherous behaviour of the young person in question had rendered it necessary that he should become the victim of certain evidence for the crown, which, if it were not precisely true, was indispensably necessary for the safety of him (Mr. Fagin), and a few select friends. Mr. Fagin concluded by drawing a rather disagreeable picture of the discomforts of hanging, and, with great friendliness and politeness of manner, expressed his anxious hope that he might never be obliged to submit Oliver Twist to that unpleasant operation.

Little Oliver's blood ran cold as he listened to the Jew's words, and imperfectly comprehended the dark threats conveyed in them: that it was possible even for justice itself to confound the innocent with the guilty when they were in accidental companionship, he knew already; and that deeply-laid plans for the destruction of inconveniently-knowing, or over-communicative persons, had been really devised and carried out by the old Jew on more occasions than one, he thought by no means unlikely when he recollected the general nature of the altercations between that gentleman and Mr. Sikes, which seemed to bear reference to some foregone conspiracy of the kind. As he glanced timidly up, and met the Jew's searching look, he felt that his pale face and trembling limbs were neither unnoticed nor unrelished by the wary villain.

The Jew smiled hideously, and, patting Oliver on the head, said that if he kept himself quiet, and applied himself to business, he saw they would be very good friends yet. Then taking his hat, and covering himself up in an old patched great-coat, he went out and locked the room-door behind him.

And so Oliver remained all that day, and for the greater part of many subsequent days, seeing nobody between early morning and midnight, and left during the long hours to commune with his own thoughts; which, never failing to revert to his kind friends, and the opinion they must long ago have formed of him, were sad indeed. After the lapse of a week or so, the Jew left the room-door unlocked, and he was at liberty to wander about the house.

It was a very dirty place; but the rooms up stairs had great high wooden mantel-pieces and large doors, with paneled walls and cornices to the ceilings, which, although they were black with neglect and dust, were ornamented in various ways; from all of which tokens Oliver concluded that a long time ago, before the old Jew was born, it had belonged to better people, and had perhaps been quite gay and handsome, dismal and dreary as it looked now.

Spiders had built their webs in the angles of the walls and ceilings; and sometimes, when Oliver walked softly into a room, the mice would scamper across the floor, and run back terrified to their holes: with these exceptions, there was neither sight nor sound of any living thing; and often, when it grew dark, and he was tired of wandering from room to room, he would crouch in the corner of the passage by the street-door, to be as near living people as he could, and to remain there listening and trembling until the Jew or the boys returned.

In all the rooms the mouldering shutters were fast closed, and the bars which held them were screwed tight into the wood; the only light which was admitted making its way through round holes at the top, which made the rooms more gloomy, and filled them with strange shadows. There was a back-garret window, with rusty bars outside, which had no shutter, and out of which Oliver often gazed with a melancholy face for hours together; but nothing was to be descried from it but a confused and crowded mass of house-tops, blackened chimneys, and gable-ends. Sometimes, indeed, a ragged grizzly head might be seen peering over the parapet-wall of a distant house, but it was quickly withdrawn again; and as the window of Oliver's observatory was nailed down, and dimmed with the rain and smoke of years, it was as much as he could do to make out the forms of the different objects beyond, without making any attempt to be seen or heard, – which he had as much chance of being as if he had been inside the ball of St. Paul's Cathedral.

One afternoon, the Dodger and Master Bates being engaged out that evening, the first-named young gentleman took it into his head to evince some anxiety regarding the decoration of his person (which, to do him justice, was by no means an habitual weakness with him;) and, with this end and aim, he condescendingly commanded Oliver to assist him in his toilet straightway.

Oliver was but too glad to make himself useful, too happy to have some faces, however bad, to look upon, and too desirous to conciliate those about him when he could honestly do so, to throw any objection in the way of this proposal; so he at once expressed his readiness, and, kneeling on the floor, while the Dodger sat upon the table so that he could take his foot in his lap, he applied himself to a process which Mr. Dawkins designated as "japanning his trotter-cases," and which phrase, rendered into plain English, signifieth cleaning his boots.

Whether it was the sense of freedom and independence which a rational animal may be supposed to feel when he sits on a table in an easy attitude, smoking a pipe, swinging one leg carelessly to and fro, and having his boots cleaned all the time without even the past trouble of having taken them off, or the prospective misery of putting them on, to disturb his reflections; or whether it was the goodness of the tobacco that soothed the feelings of the Dodger, or the mildness of the beer that mollified his thoughts, he was evidently tinctured for the nonce with a spice of romance and enthusiasm foreign to his general nature. He looked down on Oliver with a thoughtful countenance for a brief space, and then, raising his head, and heaving a gentle sigh, said, half in abstraction, and half to Master Bates,

"What a pity it is he isn't a prig!"

"Ah!" said Master Charles Bates. "He don't know what's good for him."

The Dodger sighed again, and resumed his pipe, as did Charley Bates, and they both smoked for some seconds in silence.

"I suppose you don't even know what a prig is?" said the Dodger mournfully.

"I think I know that," replied Oliver, hastily looking up. "It's a th – ; you're one, are you not?" inquired Oliver, checking himself.

"I am," replied the Dodger. "I'd scorn to be anythink else." Mr. Dawkins gave his hat a ferocious cock after delivering this sentiment, and looked at Master Bates as if to denote that he would feel obliged by his saying anything to the contrary. "I am," repeated the Dodger; "so's Charley; so's Fagin; so's Sikes; so's Nancy; so's Bet; so we all are, down to the dog, and he's the downiest one of the lot."

"And the least given to peaching," added Charley Bates.

"He wouldn't so much as bark in a witness-box, for fear of committing himself; no, not if you tied him up in one, and left him there without wittles for a fortnight," said the Dodger.

"That he wouldn't; not a bit of it," observed Charley.

"He's a rum dog. Don't he look fierce at any strange cove that laughs or sings when he's in company!" pursued the Dodger. "Won't he growl at all, when he hears a fiddle playing, and don't he hate other dogs as ain't of his breed! Winkin! Oh, no!"

"He's an out-and-out Christian," said Charley.

This was merely intended as a tribute to the animal's abilities, but it was an appropriate remark in another sense, if Master Bates had only known it; for there are a great many ladies and gentlemen claiming to be out-and-out Christians, between whom and Mr. Sikes's dog there exist very strong and singular points of resemblance.

"Well, well!" said the Dodger, recurring to the point from which they had strayed, with that mindfulness of his profession which influenced all his proceedings. "This hasn't got anything to do with young Green here."

"No more it has," said Charley. "Why don't you put yourself under Fagin, Oliver?"

"And make your fortun' out of hand?" added the Dodger, with a grin.

"And so be able to retire on your property, and do the genteel, as I mean to in the very next leap-year but four that ever comes, and the forty-second Tuesday in Trinity-week," said Charley Bates.

"I don't like it," rejoined Oliver timidly; "I wish they would let me go. I – I – would rather go."

"And Fagin would rather not!" rejoined Charley.

Oliver knew this too well; but, thinking it might be dangerous to express his feelings more openly, he only sighed, and went on with his boot-cleaning.

"Go!" exclaimed the Dodger. "Why, where's your spirit? Don't you take any pride out of yourself? Would you go and be dependent on your friends, eh?"

"Oh, blow that!" said Master Bates, drawing two or three silk handkerchiefs from his pocket, and tossing them into a cupboard, "that's too mean, that is!"

"I couldn't do it," said the Dodger, with an air of haughty disgust.

"You can leave your friends, though," said Oliver, with a half-smile, "and let them be punished for what you did."

"That," rejoined the Dodger, with a wave of his pipe, – "that was all out of consideration for Fagin, 'cause the traps know that we work together, and he might have got into trouble if we hadn't made our lucky; that was the move, wasn't it, Charley?"

Master Bates nodded assent, and would have spoken, but that the recollection of Oliver's flight came so suddenly upon him, that the smoke he was inhaling got entangled with a laugh, and went up into his head, and down into his throat, and brought on a fit of coughing and stamping about five minutes long.

"Look here!" said the Dodger, drawing forth a handful of shillings and halfpence. "Here's a jolly life! what's the odds where it comes from? Here, catch hold; there's plenty more where they were took from. You won't, won't you? oh, you precious flat!"

"It's naughty, ain't it, Oliver?" inquired Charley Bates. "He'll come to be scragged, won't he?"

"I don't know what that means," replied Oliver, looking round.

"Something in this way, old feller," said Charley. As he said it, Master Bates caught up an end of his neckerchief, and, holding it erect in the air, dropped his head on his shoulder, and jerked a curious sound through his teeth, thereby indicating, by a lively pantomimic representation that scragging and hanging were one and the same thing.

"That's what it means," said Charley. "Look how he stares, Jack; I never did see such prime company as that 'ere boy; he'll be the death of me, I know he will." And Master Charles Bates having laughed heartily again, resumed his pipe with tears in his eyes.

"You've been brought up bad," said the Dodger, surveying his boots with much satisfaction when Oliver had polished them. "Fagin will make something of you, though; or you'll be the first he ever had that turned out unprofitable. You'd better begin at once, for you'll come to the trade long before you think of it, and you're only losing time, Oliver."

Master Bates backed this advice with sundry moral admonitions of his own, which being exhausted, he and his friend Mr. Dawkins launched into a glowing description of the numerous pleasures incidental to the life they led, interspersed with a variety of hints to Oliver that the best thing he could do, would be to secure Fagin's favour without more delay by the same means which they had employed to gain it.

"And always put this in your pipe, Nolly," said the Dodger, as the Jew was heard unlocking the door above, "if you don't take fogles and tickers – "

"What's the good of talking in that way?" interposed Master Bates; "he don't know what you mean."

"If you don't take pocket-hankechers and watches," said the Dodger, reducing his conversation to the level of Oliver's capacity, "some other cove will; so that the coves that lose 'em will be all the worse, and you'll be all the worse too, and nobody half a ha'p'orth the better, except the chaps wot gets them – and you've just as good a right to them as they have."

"To be sure, – to be sure!" said the Jew, who had entered unseen by Oliver. "It all lies in a nutshell, my dear – in a nutshell, take the Dodger's word for it. Ha! ha! he understands the catechism of his trade."

The old man rubbed his hands gleefully together as he corroborated the Dodger's reasoning in these terms, and chuckled with delight at his pupil's proficiency.

The conversation proceeded no farther at this time, for the Jew had returned home accompanied by Miss Betsy, and a gentleman whom Oliver had never seen before, but who was accosted by the Dodger as Tom Chitling, and who, having lingered on the stairs to exchange a few gallantries with the lady, now made his appearance.

Mr. Chitling was older in years than the Dodger, having perhaps numbered eighteen winters; but there was a degree of deference in his deportment towards that young gentleman which seemed to indicate that he felt himself conscious of a slight inferiority in point of genius and professional acquirements. He had small twinkling eyes, and a pock-marked face; wore a fur cap, a dark corduroy jacket, greasy fustian trousers, and an apron. His wardrobe was, in truth, rather out of repair; but he excused himself to the company by stating that his "time" was only out an hour before, and that, in consequence of having worn the regimentals for six weeks past, he had not been able to bestow any attention on his private clothes. Mr. Chitling added, with strong marks of irritation, that the new way of fumigating clothes up yonder was infernal unconstitutional, for it burnt holes in them, and there was no remedy against the county; the same remark he considered to apply to the regulation mode of cutting the hair, which he held to be decidedly unlawful. Mr. Chitling wound up his observations by stating that he had not touched a drop of anything for forty-two mortal long hard-working days, and that he "wished he might be busted if he wasn't as dry as a lime-basket!"