Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 327, January, 1843

"These loungers have a phraseology peculiar to themselves. A short time since, if one of them was asked how he was, the answer would have been, 'we are in force to-day;' if his wife was enquired after, 'she is in high preservation;' if asked how often he had been at the opera, 'it is my second opera.' They also say, perhaps, speaking of some illustrious hero, 'he's a fine brave fellow, but he ties his handkerchief most shockingly.' I also remember being one day in Hyde Park, when a gentleman rode up to one of these loungers, and after exchanging salutations, the former said to the latter, I wish much to have the pleasure of seeing you—are you engaged next Wednesday? Upon which the other turned round to a little half starved groom, and said, 'John, am I engaged next Wednesday?'

"The women of fashion," observes this writer, "are just as great and as insipid idlers, in their way, as are the male triflers. They seldom walk in the streets, but are almost always cooped up in their carriages, driving about the streets, and leaving their cards at the houses of their friends, whom they never think of seeing, although they may be at home at the time; thence they proceed to the most expensive jewellers, where they order a piece of plate or a trinket; thence to some fashionable milliner."

This picture is not altogether like, but some of the features may certainly be easily reorganized; if we substitute sherry, a chop, and a club in Pall-Mall, for white spruce beer, sandwiches, and a tavern; replacing the curricle and footman by a cab and tiger, the remainder, with trivial alterations, may stand good of the fashionable idler of to-day, as of him of the last century.

In childhood, nay, even in infancy, for all I can see to the contrary, the physique of persons of fashion is sufficiently distinctive and characteristic of the class. If you walk in the parks and gardens, and notice these young thoroughbreds exercising under the care of their nurses, their tutors, and their nursery governesses, you will be perfectly convinced that they are as easily to be distinguished in all their points and paces from the children of the mobility, as is a well-blooded Arabian from a Suffolk punch.

The small oval head, clustered with rippling ringlets, as Alfred Jennyson calls them; the clear laughing eye, the long fair neck, the porcelain skin, warmed with the tenderest tinge of pink, so transparent withal that you almost see the animal spirit careering within; the drooping shoulder, the rounded bust, clean limbs, well-turned ankle, fine almost to a fault, the light springy step, the graceful easy carriage, the absence of sheepishness or shyness, an air cheerful without noise, a manner playful without rudeness, and you have the true son or daughter of the Englishman of fashion.

Then, how characteristic of the class of which these children are the rising hope, is the taste displayed in their dress; they are attired with costly simplicity; or, if a fond mamma indulges in any little extravagance of childish costume, you see that it is the extravagance of taste; there is no tawdriness, no over-dressing, no little ones in masquerade, they dress appropriately, and, at the same time, distinctively.

Pretty souls! Many a time and oft have we wandered forth of the turbulent town, less to brace our unstrung nerves by the elastic air—less to bathe our wearied eyes in the green light of earth's bosom, than to drive away sad thoughts in the contemplation of your innocent gambols; with our stick; delight we to launch your mimic barks from the sandy shores of Serpentine; with you, glad are we to make haste, expecting the fastest sailer on the further shore; with you, we exult, once more a boy, in the speed of our trim-built favourite.

We love the old Newfoundland dog, ay, and the old footman, as much as you do, and could hang like you about both their necks; we wish you would not think us too big a boy to "stop" for you at single-wicket; imaginary hoops we trundle in your gleesome train; like you, we have a decided aversion to "taw," considering it not young-gentleman-like; we, too, forgetting that the governess is single and two-and-thirty, wonder on earth what can make governess so cross; we love you, when we see you hand in hand squiring your little sister, saluting your little sister's little friends, carrying their little parasols, and helping them over little stony places, like little gentlemen. Happy, happy dogs! we envy neither your birth nor the fortune that awaits you, nor repine we that our fate condemns us to tug the unremitting oar against that tide of fortune upon which, with easy sail, you will float lightly down to death; the whole heart, the buoyant spirit, the conscience yet unstung by mute reproach of sin; these things we envy you—not the things so mean a world can give, but the things which, though it cannot give, soon—alas, how soon—it takes away!

Contrast these children with the children of Mr Deputy Stubbs of the ward of Farringdon Within, or common Councillor Muggs of Bassishaw; they really do not look like animals of the same species.

The rising Stubbses and Muggses have heads shaped like a China orange, croppy hair, chubby chins, chubby cheeks, and blazing red and chubby noses—short, pursy, apoplectic necks, like their fathers—squab, four-square figures, mounted upon turned legs, with measly skins; so that, taken altogether, they are exceedingly offensive and disagreeable. Then they eat, these young, Stubbses and Muggses, how they do eat! then they are dressed, how they are dressed! five different tartans, four colours in velvet, seven sorts of ribbons, and a woolpack of fleecy hosiery, as if there wasn't another Stubbs or Muggs in existence; then how they annoy and infest, with bad manners and noise, the deputies and common-councilmen who visit at Stubbses and Muggses; how the maids "drat them" all day long, and how Mrs Stubbs and Mrs Muggs hate Mr Sucklethumb, the butterman, because he never "notices the child."

Another extraordinary phenomenon you cannot fail to observe in the children of the aristocracy; they seem to skip over the equivocal period, the neutral ground of human life, and emerge from the chrysaloid state of childhood, into the full and perfect imago of little lords and gentlemen, and little ladies, without any of those intermediate conditions of laddism, hobble-de-hoyism, or bread-and-butterishness, so prominently characteristic of the approaching puberty of the rest of the rising generation. Your Eton boy is not a boy, he is a young gentleman; your Lady Louisa is not a girl, she is only not yet "come out;" how to account for the peculiarity I know not, except the knowledge of the fact, that attention to the petites morales forms so great a part of the education of our rising aristocracy, and is considered so vitally important to their proper carriage, as well in their set as out of it, that their children are as far advanced in this particular at fifteen, as the children of middling people at twenty-five. The petticoat-string by which the youth of the non-fashionable class is tied to their mother, is a ligature not in use among the fashionable world; from the earliest period professional persons are employed in their education, and the mother never shows in the matter. Whether this, or any other peculiarity of the class, be an advantage or a disadvantage, natural or unnatural, right or wrong, it is not for the writer to say; he only points out what he has observed; and if he has failed to state it properly, let him be properly corrected.

Our aristocratic youth we take the liberty to classify, as they do coaches, of which they are so passionately fond, into

1. FAST,

2. SLOW.

The fast youths have several degrees of swiftness, from the railway pace, down through imperceptible gradations, to ten miles an hour, at which rate of going the fast fellows end, and the slow fellows begin.

Of these last there are also many varieties, from the tandem and tax-cart down to the waggon and dog-truck; and it cannot be denied, that as regards the former more especially, there is a great similarity between the youths themselves and the vehicles they govern; they go very fast, don't know what they are driving at, are propelled in any direction by much more sagacious animals than themselves, and are usually empty inside. The fast fellows are divided, moreover, into the occasional and permanently fast; and first of the occasional fast fellows:—

These form a very considerable proportion of our fashionable youth, and combine the gentleman with a dash of the petit-maitre, overlaying a naturally good disposition with a surface of scampishness, which, however, they lay down when they marry, and thenceforward they belong altogether to the slow school.

The permanently fast fellows deserve a more detailed notice, since they are always before the police magistrates and the public, in one shape or another; and although often committing themselves, are seldom or never committed.

The members of this class it is who furnish the democratic Sunday papers with a never-ending succession of articles, headed "THE ARISTOCRACY AGAIN," "BRUTALITY OF THE HIGHER CLASSES," "DEPRAVITY OF THE NOBBY ONES," and the like and it is from these fast fellows, unfortunately, that a great many ignorant people draw their conclusions of fashionable life and conversation in general, extending the vices of a few shameless profligates to the entire of the little world, commonly called the great.

The permanently fast fellows, or, as we think their general demeanour entitles them to be called, "Blackguard Nobs," are a lot of little, scrubby, bad-blooded, groom-like fellows, who have always, even from childhood, been incorrigible, of whom nursery governesses could make nothing, and whose education tutors abandoned in despair; expelled from Eton, rusticated at Cambridge, good for nothing but mischief in boyhood, regularly bred scamps and profligates in youth, and, luckily for mankind, generally worn-out before they attain the wrong side of forty. A stable is their delight, almost their home, and their olfactories are refreshed by nothing so much as by the smell of old litter, to which attar of roses is assafoetida in comparison.

Their knowledge of horses, which they get at second-hand from Field, or some of the other crack veterinaries, is their only pride, and indeed the only thing they imagine any man ought to be proud of; they reverence a fellow who has a good seat in his saddle, and delight in horsemanship, because horsemanship requires no brains; driving a "buggy" in good style is respectable, but "shoving along" a four-in-hand the highest exercise of human intellect, as for Milton and Shakspeare, and such inky-fingered old prigs, who never had a good horse in their lives, they despise such low fellows thoroughly. Their chief companions, or rather, their most intimate friends, are the fellows who hang about livery stables, betting-rooms, race-courses, and hippodromes; crop-eared grooms, chaunters, dog-stealers, starveling jockeys, blacklegs, foreign counts, breeders, feeders; these are all "d—d honest fellows," and the "best fellows in the world," although they get their living by cheating the fast fellows, who patronize them.

Of money, they know no more than that it is a necessary instrument of their pleasures, and must be got some how or anyhow; accordingly, they are on intimate terms with a species of shark called a bill-discounter, who commits upon them every sort of robbery, under the sanction of the law; and who also is always a "d—d honest fellow."

They can be sufficiently liberal of their money, whenever they have any, to all who do not want, or who do not deserve it; if a prize-fighter becomes embarrassed in his circumstances, or a jockey is "down upon his luck," it is quite refreshing to see the madness with which the fast fellows strike for a subscription; an opera-dancer out of an engagement, or an actress in the same interesting condition, provided they are not modest women, have, they think, a claim upon their generosity—and perhaps they have.

They think it ungentlemanly to cheat, or, as they call it, "stick" any of their own set, except in matters of horse-flesh; but "sticking" any body out of their own set, especially tradesmen, is considered an excellent joke, and the "sticker" rises several degrees in public estimation.

We should be doing great injustice to the fast fellows if we omitted a brief notice of their accomplishments. Driving is, of course, the chief; and, by long experience and impunity, wonderfully grand exploits are achieved by the fast fellows in this department.

One of the most original is to get into a strong cab, with a very powerful horse, lamps lit, tiger inside, and to go quietly along, keeping a sharp look-out for any night cabman who may be "lobbing," as the phrase is, off his stand, the moment the "game," who is generally one part asleep and three parts drunk, is espied, put your horse to full gallop, and, guiding your vehicle with the precision fast fellows alone attain, whip inside the cabwheel, and take it off. The night cab comes down by the run, the night cabman tumbles off, breaking his nose or neck, as it may happen, and you drive off as if the devil kicked you. When you have gone a couple of miles, make a circumbendibus back again to the night-house frequented by your set, and relate the adventure, with the same voice and countenance as a broker quotes the price of stocks; then order a cool bottle of claret with the air of a man who has done a meritorious action!

Another accomplishment, at which not a few of the fast fellows excel, is that of imitating upon a key-bugle various animals, in an especial manner the braying of an ass: when the fast fellows drive down to the Trafalgar at Greenwich, the Toy at Hampton Court, or the Swan at Henley upon Thames, the bugle-player mounts aloft, the rest of the fast fellows keeping a lookout for donkeys; when one is seen, a hideous imitative bray is set up by the man of music, and his quadrupedal brother, attracted by the congenial sound, rushes to the roadside—mutual recognition, with much merriment, is the result.

The fast fellow who does this best, is considered one of the immortals; and we are not without expectation, in due time, of seeing his talent rewarded by a pension.

Breaking bells, twisting knockers, and "knapping" rail-heads, has descended so low of late that the fast fellows are ashamed of it, and have resigned it to the medical students, patriotic young members of Parliament, and others of the imitative classes; but there yet exists, or very lately existed, a collection of these and various other surreptitiously acquired properties, known among the fast fellow by the title of ——'s Museum, every article being ticketed artistically, and the whole presenting an example of devotion to the cause of science, we believe, without a parallel.

These are a few of the comparatively innocent amusements of the fast fellows; others there are of graver character, which we need not refer to, especially as the fast school is fast wearing itself out, and many of the fast fellows already begin to "put on the drag," and go at a more reasonable pace.

Their ignorance, with the single exception of horse-flesh, is appalling. Nobody who does not know the fast fellows, would credit that men could by any possibility grow up in such absolute ignorance of whatever a gentleman is expected to know; whatever a gentleman is expected not to know, they have at their tongues' and fingers' ends.

Intellectual men, of whatever description, they regard with the most perfect indifference—an indifference too passive for contempt; they affect to wonder, or probably do wonder, what such men are for, or why people sometimes talk about them. Books they find convenient for putting under the legs of barrack-room tables, to bring them to a level, and think they are made of different sizes for that purpose; but no fast fellow was ever yet detected in looking into one of them, to see whether there was any thing inside. Such as have been taught to spell, employ part of the Sunday in deciphering the smutty jokes of the Satirist, and pronounce the jokes "d—d good," and the paper "a d—d honest paper." If they happen, by any chance, to come into contact with one of the slow school, or any body who has been taught to read, they have a method of silencing his battery, which they think "capital." If a man should say in their company, that Chaucer was a great poet, one will immediately enquire, "how much?" while another wishes to know if Chaucer is entered for the "Derby?" "How much?" is the invariable slang, whenever a man gets the bit out of his mouth, or, in other words, talks of any thing but horses.

There is no novelty in this; it is only a second edition of Dean Swift's "new-fashioned way of being witty," which, in his fashionable day, was called "a bite." "You must ask a bantering question," he informs Stella, "or tell some damned lie in a serious manner, and then they will answer or speak as if you were in earnest; then cry you, 'there's a bite.' I would not have you undervalue this, for it is the constant amusement in court, and every where else among the great people; and I let you know it, in order to have it obtain amongst you, and teach you a new refinement."

If they accept an invitation from Lord Northampton to go to one of his soirées, which they sometimes do for a "lark," their antics are vastly amusing; they put on grave, philosophic faces, and mimic the savans to the life; if the noble president, thinking he is doing the polite thing, points out to them a poet, for example, or a professor, they have a knack of elevating the shoulders, looking at the man with a pitying air, and whispering the words "poor beast," with a tone and manner quite inimitable. Indeed this is one of the few clever things they do, and on or off the stage we have never seen any thing like it.

If Dickens were to die—an event that, we hope and trust, may not occur these fifty years, the fast fellows would have some such conversation upon the event, as follows:—

A. So, Dickens, I hear, is dead.

B. How much?

C. What's that?

A. Why, Pickwick, to be sure.

B. Oh! Eh? Pickwick—Moses—Bath coach—I know.

C. Pickwick—near Chippenham? Paul Methven lives there—I know.

A. No—no—I tell you, he's a man that writes.

B. Is he? He may be. How should I know?

C. Well—it's a d——d hard case, that, at the beginning of the season, I should have lost a d——d good tiger. Has any body got a d——d small tiger for sale?

As we are in the humour for dialogue, we may as well give a verbatim report of our last interview with Lord——, who had been a fast fellow in his youth. We encountered him on the sunny side of St James's Street, the other day, tottering to Brookes's: although we don't expect you to believe it, what passed was, as we recollect it, exactly as follows:—

"Well, my Lord, I hope your gout is better?"

"Eh—how are you? Well, I think I am better, d'ye know."

"Glad to hear it."

"Thankee—thankee—d'ye know, eh, I've changed my doctor?"

"Well, and how d'ye like your new one?"

"Capitally—eh—d'ye know, he's a clever fellow. Young—eh—but clever—very. D'ye know, eh—he corresponds regularly with—eh—with Sir Humphrey Newton and Sir Isaac Davy!"

THE DREAM OF LORD NITHSDALE

BY CHARLES MACKAY

[Lord Nithsdale, as is well known, was condemned to death for his participation in the Rebellion of 1715. By the exertions of his true-hearted wife, Winifred, he was enabled to escape from the Tower of London on the night before the morning appointed for his execution. The lady herself—noble soul!—has related, in simple and touching language, in a letter to her sister, the whole circumstances of her lord's escape. The letter is preserved in the Appendix to "Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song," page 313 to 329—London, 1810.]

"Farewell to thee, Winifred, dearest and best! Farewell to thee, wife of a courage so high!— Come hither, and nestle again in my breast, Come hither, and kiss me again ere I die!— And when I am laid bleeding and low in the dust, And yield my last breath at a tyrant's decree, Look up—be resign'd—and the God of the just Will shelter thy fatherless bairnies and thee!" She wept on his breast, but, ashamed of her tears, She dash'd off the drops that ran warm down her cheek; "Be sorrow for those who have leisure for tears— O pardon thy wife that her soul was so weak! There is hope for us still, and I will not despair, Though cowards and traitors exult at thy fate; I'll show the oppressors what woman can dare, I'll show them that love can be stronger than hate!" Lip to lip, heart to heart, and their fond arms entwined, He has kiss'd her again, and again, and again; "Farewell to thee, Winifred, pride of thy kind, Sole ray in my darkness, sole joy in my pain!" She has gone—he has heard the last sound of her tread; He has caught the last glimpse of her robes at the door;— She has gone, and the joy that her presence had shed, May cheer the sad heart of Lord Nithsdale no more. And the prisoner pray'd in his dungeon alone, And thought of the morn and its dreadful array, Then rested his head on his pillow of stone, And slumber'd an hour ere the dawning of day. Oh, balm of the Weary! Oh, soother of pain! That still to the sad givest pity and dole; How gently, oh sleep! lay thy wings on his brain, How sweet were thy dreams to his desolate soul! Once more on his green native braes of the Nith, He pluck'd the wild bracken, a frolicsome boy; He sported his limbs in the waves of the Frith; He trod the green heather in gladness and joy;— On his gallant grey steed to the hunting he rode, In his bonnet a plume, on his bosom a star; He chased the red deer to its mountain abode, And track'd the wild roe to its covert afar. The vision was changed. In a midsummer night He roam'd with his Winifred, blooming and young; He gazed on her face by the moon's mellow light, And loving and warm were the words on his tongue. Thro' good and thro' evil, he swore to be true, And love through all fortune his Winnie alone; And he saw the red blush o'er her cheek as it flew, And heard her sweet voice that replied to his own. Once more it has changed. In his martial array, Lo, he rides at the head of his gallant young men! And the pibroch is heard on the hills far away, And the clans are all gather'd from mountain and glen. For exiled King Jamie, their darling and lord, They raise the loud slogan—they rush to the war. The tramp of the battle resounds on the sward— Unfurl'd is the banner—unsheath'd the claymore! The vision has fled like a sparkle of light, And dark is the dream that possesses him now; The morn of his doom has succeeded the night, And the damp dews of death gather fast on his brow. He hears in the distance a faint muffled drum, And the low sullen boom of the death-tolling bell; The block is prepared, and the headsman is come, And the victim, bareheaded, walks forth from his cell.— No! No! 'twas a vision! his hour was not yet, And waking, he turn'd on his pallet of straw, And a form by his side he could never forget, By the pale misty light of a taper he saw. "'Tis I! 'tis thy Winifred!"—softly she said, "Arouse thee, and follow—be bold, never fear! There was danger abroad, but my errand has sped, I promised to save thee—and lo I am here!" He rose at the summons, and little they spoke, The gear of a lady she placed on his head; She cover'd his limbs with a womanly cloak, And painted his cheeks of a maidenly red. "One kiss, my dear lord, and begone!—and beware! Walk softly—I follow!" Oh guide them, and save, From the open assault, from the intricate snare, Thou, Providence, friend of the good and the brave! They have pass'd unsuspected the guard at the cell, And the sentinel band that keep watch at the gate; One peril remains—it is past—all is well! They are free; and her love has proved stronger than hate. They are gone—who shall follow?—their ship's on the brine, And they sail unpursued to a far friendly shore, Where love and content at their hearth may entwine, And the warfare of kingdoms divide them no more.