Kitabı oku: «Nuts and Nutcrackers», sayfa 10
A NUT FOR THE KINGSTOWN RAILWAY
If the wise Calif who studied mankind by sitting on the bridge at Bagdad, had lived in our country, and in our times, he doubtless would have become a subscriber to the Kingstown railway. There, for the moderate sum of some ten or twelve pounds per annum, he might have indulged his peculiar vein, while wafted pleasantly through the air, and obtained a greater insight into character and individuality, inasmuch as the objects of his investigation would be all sitting shots, at least for half an hour. Segur’s “Quâtre Ages de la Vie” never marked out mankind like the half-hour trains. To the uninitiated and careless observer, the company would appear a mixed and heterogeneous mass of old and young, of both sexes – some sickly, some sulky, some solemn, and some shy. Classification of them would be deemed impossible. Not so, however; for, as to the ignorant the section of a mountain would only present some confused heap of stone and gravel, clay and marl; to the geologist, strata of divers kinds, layers of various ages, would appear, all indicative of features, and teeming with interests, of which the other knew nothing: so, to the studious observer, this seeming commixture of men, this tangled web of humanity, unravels itself before him, and he reads them with pleasure and with profit.
So thoroughly distinctive are the classes, as marked out by the hour of the day, that very little experience would enable the student to pronounce upon the travellers – while so striking are the features of each class, that “given one second-class traveller, to find out the contents of a train,” would be the simplest problem in algebra. As for myself, I never work the equation: the same instinct that enabled Cuvier, when looking at a broken molar tooth, to pronounce upon the habits, the size, the mode of life and private opinions of some antediluvian mammoth, enables me at a glance to say – “This is the apothecaries’ train – here we are with the Sandycoves.”
You are an early riser – some pleasant proverb about getting a worm for breakfast, instilled into you in childhood, doubtless inciting you: and you hasten down to the station, just in time to be too late for the eight o’clock train to Dublin. This is provoking; inasmuch as no scrutiny has ever enabled any traveller to pry into the habits and peculiarities of the early voyager. Well, you lounge about till the half-after, and then the conveniency snorts by, whisks round at the end, takes a breathing canter alone for a few hundred yards, and comes back with a grunt, to resume its old drudgery. A general scramble for places ensues – doors bang – windows are shut and opened – a bell rings – and, snort! snort! ugh, ugh, away you go. Now – would you believe it? – every man about you, whatever be his age, his size, his features, or complexion, has a little dirty blue bag upon his knees, filled with something. They all know each other – grin, smile, smirk, but don’t shake hands – a polite reciprocity – as they are none of the cleanest: cut little dry jokes about places and people unknown, and mix strange phrases here and there through the dialogue, about “demurrers and declarations, traversing in prox and quo warranto.” You perceive it at once – it is very dreadful; but they are all attorneys. The ways of Providence are, however, inscrutable; and you arrive in safety in Dublin.
Now, I am not about to take you back; for at this hour of the morning you have nothing to reward your curiosity. But, with your leave, we’ll start from Kingstown again at nine. Here comes a fresh, jovial-looking set of fellows. They have bushy whiskers, and geraniums in the button-hole of their coats. They are traders of various sorts – men of sugar, soap, and sassafras – Macintoshes, molasses, mouse-traps – train-oil and tabinets. They have, however, half an acre of agricultural absurdity, divided into meadow and tillage, near the harbour, and they talk bucolic all the way. Blindfold them all, and set them loose, and you will catch them groping their way down Dame-street in half an hour.
9½. – The housekeepers’ train. Fat, middle-aged women, with cotton umbrellas – black stockings with blue fuz on them; meek-looking men, officiating as husbands, and an occasional small child, in plaid and the small-pox.
10. – The lawyers’ train. Fierce-looking, dictatorial, categorical faces look out of the window at the weather, with the stern glance they are accustomed to bestow on the jury, and stare at the sun in the face, as though to say – “None of your prevarication with me; answer me, on your oath, is it to rain or not?”
10½. – The return of the doctors. They have been out on a morning beat, and are going home merry or mournful, as the case may be. Generally the former, as the sad ones take to the third class. These are jocose, droll dogs; the restraint of physic over, they unbend, and chat pleasantly, unless there happen to be a sickly gentleman present, when the instinct of the craft is too strong for them; and they talk of their wonderful cures of Mr. Popkins’s knee, or Mr. Murphy’s elbow, in a manner very edifying.
11. – The men of wit and pleasure. These are, I confess, difficult of detection; but the external signs are very flash waistcoats, and guard-chains, black canes, black whiskers, and strong Dublin accents. A stray governess or two will be found in this train. They travel in pairs, and speak a singular tongue, which a native of Paris might suppose to be Irish.
A NUT FOR THE DOCTORS
hould you ask, Who is the greatest tyrant of modern days? Mr. O’Connell will tell you – Nicholas, or Espartero. An Irish Whig member will reply, Dan himself. An attaché at an embassy would say, Lord Palmerston, – “’Tis Cupid ever makes us slaves!” A French deputé of the Thiers party will swear it is Louis Philippe. Count D’Orsay will say, his tailor. But I will tell you it is none of these: the most pitiless autocrat of the nineteenth century is – the President of the College of Physicians.
Of all the unlimited powers possessed by irresponsible man, I know of nothing at all equal to his, who, mero motu, of his own free will and caprice, can at any moment call a meeting of the dread body at whose head he stands, assemble the highest dignitaries of the land – archbishops and bishops, chancellors, chief barons, and chief remembrancers – to listen to the minute anatomy of a periwinkle’s mustachios, or some singular provision in the physiology of a crab’s breeches-pocket: all of whom, luto non obstante, must leave their peaceful homes and warm hearths to “assist” at a meeting in which, nine cases out of ten, they take as much interest as a Laplander does in the health of the Grand Lama; or Mehemet Ali in the proceedings of Father Mathew.
By nine o’clock the curtain rises, displaying a goodly mob of medical celebrities: the old ones characterised by the astute look and searching glance, long and shrewd practice in the world’s little failings ever confers; the young ones, anxious, wide awake, and fidgetty, not quite satisfied with what services they may be called on to render in candle-snuffing and crucible work; while between both is your transition M.D. – your medical tadpole, with some practice and more pretension, his game being to separate from the great unfeed, and rub his shoulders among the “dons” of the art, from whose rich board certain crumbs are ever falling, in the shape of country jaunts, small operations, and smaller consultings. Through these promiscuously walk the “gros bonnets” of the church and the bar, with now and then – if the scene be Ireland – a humane Viceroy, and a sleepy commander of the forces. Round the room are glass cases filled with what at first blush you might be tempted to believe were the ci-devant professors of the college, embalmed, or in spirits; but on nearer inspection you detect to be a legion of apes, monkeys, and ourangoutangs, standing or sitting in grotesque attitudes. Among them, pleasingly diversified, you discover murderers’ heads, parricides’ busts in plaster, bicephalous babies, and shapeless monsters with two rows of teeth. Here you are regaled with refreshments “with what appetite you may,” and chat away the time, until the tinkle of a small bell announces the approach of the lecture.
For the most part, this is a good, drowsy, sleep-disposing affair of an hour long, written to show, that from some peculiarity lately discovered in the cerebral vessels, man’s natural attitude was to stand on his head; or that, from chemical analysis just invented, it was clear, if we live to the age of four hundred years and upwards, part of our duodenum will be coated with a delicate aponeurosis of sheet iron.
Now, with propositions of this kind I never find fault. I am satisfied to play my part as a biped in this breathing world, and to go out of it too, without any rivalry with Methuselah. But I’ll tell you with what I am by no means satisfied, – nor shall I ever feel satisfied – nor do I entertain any sentiment within a thousand miles of gratitude to the man who tells me, that food – beef and mutton, veal, lamb, &c. – are nothing but gas and glue. The wretch who found out the animalculæ in clean water was bad enough. There are simple-minded people who actually take this as a beverage: what must be their feelings now, if they reflect on the myriads of small things like lobsters; with claws and tails, all fighting and swallowing each other, that are disporting in their stomachs? But only think of him who converts your cutlet into charcoal, and your steak into starch! It may stick to your ribs after that, to be sure; but will it not stick harder to your conscience? With what pleasure do you help yourself to your haunch, when the conviction is staring you in the face, that what seems venison is but adipose matter and azote? That you are only making a great Nassau balloon of yourself when you are dreaming of hard condition, and preparing yourself for the fossil state when blowing the froth off your porter.
Of latter years the great object of science would appear to be an earnest desire to disenchant us from all the agreeable and pleasant dreams we have formed of life, and to make man insignificant without making him humble. Thus, one class of philosophers labour hard to prove that manhood is but monkeyhood – that a slight adaptation of the tail to the customs of civilized life has enabled us to be seated; while the invention of looking-glasses, bear’s grease, cold cream, and macassar, have cultivated our looks into the present fashion.
Another, having felt over our skulls, gravely asserts, “There is a vis à tergo of wickedness implanted in us, that must find vent in murder and bloodshed.” While the magnetic folk would make us believe that we are merely a kind of ambulating electric-machine, to be charged at will by the first M. Lafontaine we meet with, and mayhap explode from over-pressure.
While such liberties are taken with us without, the case is worse within. Our circulation is a hydraulic problem; our stomach is a mill – a brewing vat – a tanner’s yard – a crucible, or a retort. You yourself, in all the resplendent glory of your braided frock, and your decoration of the Guelph, are nothing but an aggregate of mechanical and chemical inventions, as often going wrong as right; and your wife, in the pride of her Parisian bonnet, and robe à la Victorine, is only gelatine and adipose substance, phosphate of lime, and a little arsenic.
Now, let me ask, what remains to us of life, if we are to be robbed of every fascination and charm of existence in this fashion? And again – has medical science so exhausted all the details of practical benefit to mankind, that it is justified in these far-west explorations into the realms of soaring fancy, or the gloomy depths of chemical analysis? Hydrophobia, consumption, and tetanus are not so curable that we can afford to waste our sympathies on chimpanzees: nor is this world so pleasant that we must deny ourselves the advantage of all its illusions, and throw away the garment in which Nature has clothed her nakedness. No, no. There was sound philosophy in Peter, in the “Tale of a Tub,” who assured his guests that whatever their frail senses might think to the contrary, the hard crusts were excellent and tender mutton; but I see neither rhyme nor reason in convincing us, that amid all the triumphs of turtle and white bait, Ardennes ham and pâté de Strasbourg, our food is merely coke and glue, roach, lime, starch, and magnesia.
A NUT FOR THE ARCHITECTS
“God made the country,” said the poet: but in my heart I believe he might have added – “The devil made architects.” Few cities – I scarcely know of one – can boast of such environs as Dublin. The scenery, diversified in its character, possesses attraction for almost every taste: the woody glade – the romantic river – the wild and barren mountain – the cultivated valley – the waving upland – the bold and rocky coast, broken with promontory and island – are all to be found, even within a few miles of the capital; while, in addition, the nature of our climate confers a verdure and a freshness unequalled, imparting a depth and colour to the landscape equal to the beauty of its outline.
Whether you travel inland or coastwise, the country presents a succession of sites for building, there being no style of house for which a suitable spot cannot readily be found; and yet, with all this, the perverse taste of man has contrived, by incongruous and ill-conceived architecture, to mar almost every point of view, and destroy every picturesque feature of the landscape.
The liberty of the subject is a bright and glorious prerogative; and nowhere should its exercise be more freely conceded than in those arrangements an individual makes for his own domestic comfort, and the happiness of his home.
That one man likes a room in which three people form a crowd, and that another prefers an apartment spacious as Exeter Hall, is a matter of individual taste, with which the world has nothing whatever to do. Your neighbour in the valley may like a cottage not larger than a sugar-hogshead, with rats for company and beetles for bed-fellows; your friend on the hill-side may build himself an imaginary castle, with armour for furniture, and antique weapons for ornaments; – with all this you have no concern – no more than with his banker’s book, or the thoughts of his bosom: but should the one or the other, either by a thing like a piggery, or an incongruous mass like a jail, destroy all the beauty and mar all the effect of the scenery for miles round, far beyond the precincts of his own small tenure – should he outrage all the principles of taste, and violate every sentiment of landscape beauty, by some poor and contemptible, or some pretentious and vulgar edifice – then, do I say, you are really aggrieved; and against such a man you have a just and equitable complaint, as one interfering with the natural pleasures and just enjoyments to which, as a free citizen of a free state, you have an indubitable, undeniable right.
That waving, undulating meadow, hemmed in with its dark woods, and mirrored in the fair stream that flows peacefully beneath it, was never, surely, intended to be disfigured with a square house like a salt-box, and a verandah like a register-grate: the far-stretching line of yellow coast that you see yonder, where the calm sea is sleeping, land-locked by those jutting headlands, was never meant to be pock-marked with those vile bathing lodges, with green baize draperies drying before them.
Was that bold and granite-sided mountain made thus to be hewed out into parterres for polyanthuses, and stable-lanes for Cockneys’ carmen? – or is the margin of our glorious bay, the deep frame-work of the bright picture, to be carved into little terraces, with some half-dozen slated cabins, or a row of stiff-looking, Leeson-street-like houses, with brass knockers and a balcony? Forbid it, heaven! We have a board of wide and inconvenient streets, who watch over all the irregularities of municipal architecture, and a man is no more permitted to violate the laws of good taste, than he is suffered to transgress those of good morals. Why not have a similar body to protect the fairer part of the created globe? Is Pill-lane more sacred than Bray-head? Has Copper-alley stronger claims than the Glen-of-the-Downs? Is the Cross-poddle more classic ground than Poolaphuca?
A NUT FOR A NEW COLONY
If you happen to pass by Dodd’s auction-room, on any Wednesday, towards the hour of three in the afternoon, the chances are about seven to one that you hear a sharp, smart voice articulating, somewhat in this fashion: – “A very handsome tea-service, ladies. What shall I say for this remarkably neat pattern? One tea-pot, one sugar-bowl, one slop-basin, and twelve cups and saucers. – Show them round, Tim,” &c.
Now it is with no intention of directing the public eye to the “willow pattern,” that I have alluded to this circumstance. It is simply, because that thereby hangs an association, and I have never heard the eloquent expatiator on china, without thinking of the Belgian navy, which consists of – “One gun-boat, one pinnace, one pilot, one commodore, and twelve little sailors.” Unquestionably, there never was a cheaper piece of national extravagance than this, nor do I believe that any public functionary enjoys a more tranquil and undisturbed existence than the worthy “ministre de la marine,” whose duty it is to preside over the fleet I have mentioned. Once, and once only do I remember that his quiet life was shaken by the rude assault of political events: it was when the imposing force under his sway undertook a voyage of discovery some miles down the Scheldt, which they did alike to the surprise and admiration of the whole land.
After a day’s peaceful drifting with the river’s current, they reached the fort of Lillo, where, more majorum, as night was falling, they prudently dropped anchor, having a due sense of the danger that might accrue “from running down a continent in the dark.” There was, besides, a feeling of high-souled pride in anchoring within sight, under the guns, as it were, of the Dutch fort – the insolent Dutch, whom they, with some aid from France – as the Irishman said of his marriage, for love, and a trifle of money – had driven from their country; and, although the fog rendered everything invisible, and the guns were spiked, still the act of courage was not disparaged; and they fell to, and sang the Brabançon, and drank Flemish beer till bed-time.
Happy and patriotic souls! little did you know, that amid your dreams of national greatness, some half-dozen imps of Dutch middies were painting out the magnificent tricolor streaks that adorned your good craft, and making the whole one mass of dirty black.
Such was the case, however; and when day broke, those brilliant emblems of Belgian independence had vanished, and in their place a murky line of pitch now stood.
Homeward they bent their course, sadder and wiser men; and, to their credit be it spoken, having told their sorrows to their sage minister, they have lived a life of happy retirement, and never strayed beyond the peaceful limits of the Antwerp basin.
Far be from me the unworthy object of drawing before the public gaze the blissful and unpretending service, that shuns the noontide glitter of the world’s applause, and better loves the quiet solitude of their own unobtrusive waters; and had they thus remained, nothing would have tempted me to draw them from their obscurity. But alas! national ambition has visited even the seclusion of this service. Not content with coasting voyages, some twelve miles down their muddy river – not satisfied with lording it over fishing smacks and herring wherries, this great people have resolved on becoming a maritime power in blue water, and running a race of rivalry with England, France, and Russia; and to it they have set in right earnest.
They began by purchasing a steam-vessel, which happens to turn out on such a scale of size, as to be inadmissible into any harbour they possess. By dint of labour, time, cost, and great outlay, they succeeded, after four months, in getting her into dock. But alas! if it took that time to admit her, it takes six months to let her out again; and, when out, what are they to do with her?
When Admiral Dalrymple turned farmer, he mentions in one of his letters, the sufferings his unhappy ignorance of all agricultural pursuits involved him in, and feelingly tells us: “I have given ten pounds for a dunghill, and would now willingly give any man twenty, to tell me what to do with it.” This was exactly the case with the Belgians. They had bought a steam-ship, they put coals in her, and a crew; and then, for the life and soul of them, they did not know what to do with them.
They desired an export trade – a débouché for their Namur cutlery and Verviers’ frieze. But where could they go? They had no colonies. Holland had, to be sure: but then, they had quarrelled with Holland, and there was no use repining. “What can’t be cured,” &c. Besides, if they had lost a colony, they had gained a cardinal; and if they had no merchantmen, they had at least high-mass; and if they were excluded from Batavia, why they had free access to the “Abbé Boon.”
There were, however, some impracticable people engaged in traffic, who would not listen to these great advantages, and who were obstinate enough to suppose that the country was as prosperous when it had a market for its productions, as it was when it had none. And although the priests, who have multiplied some hundredfold since the revolution, were willing “to consume” to any extent, yet, unhappily, they were not as profitable customers as their ci-devant friends beyond sea.
Nothing then remained but to have a colony, and after much consideration, long thought, and anxious deliberation, it was announced to the chamber that the Belgians had a colony, and that the colony was called “Guatemala.”
When Sancho Panza appealed to Don Quixote, to realise his promised dream of greatness, you may remember, he always asked for an island: “Make me governor of an island!” There was something defined, accurate, and tangible, as it were, in the sea-girt possession, that suggested to the honest squire’s mind the idea of perfect, independent rule. And in the same way, the Belgians desired to have an island.
Some few, less imaginative, suspected, however, that an island must always have its limit to importation quicker attained than a continent, and they preferred some vast, unexplored tract, like India, or Central America, where the consumption of corduroy and cast-iron might have an unexhausted traffic for centuries.
Now, it is a difficult condition to find out that spot on a map which should realise both expectations. Happily, however, M. Van de Weyer had to deal with a kind and confiding people, whose knowledge of geography is about equal to a blind man’s appreciation of scarlet or sky-blue. Not only, therefore, did he represent to one party, the newly-acquired possession as an island, and to the other as a vast continent, but he actually shifted its locale about the globe, from the tropics to the north-pole, with such admirable dexterity, that not only is all cavil silenced about its commercial advantages, but its very climate has an advocate in every taste, and an admirer in every household. Steam-engines, therefore, are fabricated; cannon are cast; railroads are in preparation; broadcloth is weaving; flax is growing; lace is in progress, all through the kingdom, for the new colony of Guatemala, – whose only inhabitants are little grateful for the profound solicitude they are exciting, inasmuch as, being but rats and sea-gulls, their modes of living and thinking give them a happy indifference about steam-travelling, and the use of fine linen.
No matter; – the country is prospering – shares are rising – speculations are rife – loans are effected every day in the week, and M. Van de Weyer sleeps in the peaceful composure of a man who knows in his heart, that even if they get their unwieldy craft to sea, there is not a man in the kingdom who could, by any ingenuity, discover the whereabout of the far-famed Guatemala.
