Kitabı oku: «Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851», sayfa 22

THE WARNINGS OF THE PAST

 
Faint dream-like voices of the spectral Past
Whisper the lessons of departed ages;
Each gathering treasured wisdom from the last,
A long succession of experienced sages
 
 
They steal upon the statesman as he sleeps,
And chant in Fancy's ear their warning numbers;
When restless Thought unceasing vigil keeps,
Trimming her taper while the body slumbers.
 
 
They bid him listen to the tales they tell
Of nations perish'd and embalm'd in story;
How inly rotting they were sapp'd and fell,
Like some proud oak whilome the forest's glory.
 
 
Sepulchral ruins crumble where a maze
Of busy streets once rang with life's commotion;
Where sculptured palaces in bygone days
Were gorged with spoils of conquer'd earth and ocean.
 
 
For Faction rent the seamless robe of Peace,
And, parting children of a common mother,
Bade fealty and loving concord cease
To link the hearts he sever'd from each other.
 
 
Such is the burden of those solemn notes
That issue from the haunted graves of nations;
Where, spread by Time, a vailing shadow floats
O'er spirits preaching from their ruin'd stations.
 

THE PIE SHOPS OF LONDON

From time immemorial the wandering pieman was a prominent character in the highways and byways of London. He was generally a merry dog, and was always found where merriment was going on. Furnished with a tray about a yard square, either carried upon his head or suspended by a strap in front of his breast, he scrupled not to force his way through the thickest crowd, knowing that the very centre of action was the best market for his wares. He was a gambler, both from inclination and principle, and would toss with his customers, either by the dallying shilli-shally process of "best five in nine," the tricksy manœuvre of "best two in three," or the desperate dash of "sudden death!" in which latter case the first toss was destiny – a pie for a halfpenny, or your halfpenny gone for nothing; but he invariably declined the mysterious process of "the odd man;" not being altogether free from suspicion on the subject of collusion between a couple of hungry customers. We meet with him frequently in old prints; and in Hogarth's "March to Finchley," there he stands in the very centre of the crowd, grinning with delight at the adroitness of one robbery, while he is himself the victim of another. We learn from this admirable figure by the greatest painter of English life, that the pieman of the last century perambulated the streets in professional costume; and we gather further, from the burly dimensions of his wares, that he kept his trade alive by the laudable practice of giving "a good pennyworth for a penny." Justice compels us to observe, that his successors of a later generation have not been very conscientious observers of this maxim. The varying price of flour, alternating with a sliding-scale, probably drove some of them to their wit's end; and perhaps this cause more than any other operated in imparting that complexion to their productions which made them resemble the dead body of a penny pie, and which in due time lost them favor with the discerning portion of their customers. Certain it is that the perambulating pie business in London fell very much into disrepute and contempt for several years before the abolition of the corn-laws and the advent of free trade. Opprobrious epithets were hurled at the wandering merchant as he paraded the streets and alleys – epithets which were in no small degree justified by the clammy and clay-like appearance of his goods. By degrees the profession got into disfavor, and the pieman either altogether disappeared, or merged in a dealer in foreign nuts, fruits, and other edibles which barred the suspicion of sophistication.

Still the relish for pies survived in the public taste, and the willing penny was as ready as ever to guerdon the man who, on fair grounds, would meet the general desire. No sooner, therefore, was the sliding-scale gone to the dogs, and a fair prospect of permanence offered to the speculator, in the guarantee of something like a fixed cost in the chief ingredient used, than up sprung almost simultaneously in every district of the metropolis a new description of pie-shops, which rushed at once into popularity and prosperity. Capital had recognized the leading want of the age, and brought the appliances of wealth and energy to supply it. Avoiding, on the one hand, the glitter and pretension of the confectioner, and on the other the employment of adulterated or inferior materials, they produced an article which the populace devoured with universal commendation, to the gradual but certain profit of the projectors. The peripatetic merchant was pretty generally driven out of the field by the superiority of the article with which he had to compete. He could not manufacture on a small scale in a style to rival his new antagonists, and he could not purchase of them to sell again, because they would not allow him a living margin – boasting, as it would appear with perfect truth, that they sold at a small and infinitesimal profit, which would not bear division.

These penny-pie shops now form one of the characteristic features of the London trade in comestibles. That they are an immense convenience as well as a luxury to a very large section of the population, there can be no doubt. It might be imagined, at first view, that they would naturally seek a cheap locality and a low rental. This, however, is by no means the universal practice. In some of the chief lines of route they are to be found in full operation; and it is rare indeed, unless at seasons when the weather is very unfavorable, that they are not seen well filled with customers. They abound especially in the immediate neighborhood of omnibus and cab stations, and very much in the thoroughfares and short-cuts most frequented by the middle and lower classes. But though the window may be of plate-glass, behind which piles of the finest fruit, joints and quarters of the best meat, a large dish of silver eels, and a portly china bowl charged with a liberal heap of minced-meat, with here and there a few pies, lie temptingly arranged upon napkins of snowy whiteness, yet there is not a chair, stool, or seat of any kind to be found within. No dallying is looked for, nor would it probably be allowed. "Pay for your pie, and go," seems the order of the day. True, you may eat it there, as thousands do; but you must eat it standing, and clear of the counter. We have more than once witnessed this interesting operation with mingled mirth and satisfaction; nay, what do we care? – take the confession for what it is worth —pars ipsi fuimus– we have eaten our pies (and paid for them too, no credit being given) —in loco, and are therefore in a condition to guarantee the truth of what we record. With few exceptions (we include ourselves among the number), there are no theoretical philosophers among the frequenters of the penny-pie shop. The philosophy of bun-eating may be very profound, and may present, as we think it does, some difficult points; but the philosophy of penny-pie eating is absolutely next to nil. The customer of the pie-shop is a man (if he is not a boy) with whom a penny is a penny, and a pie is a pie, who, when he has the former to spend or the latter to eat, goes through the ceremony like one impressed with the settled conviction that he has business in hand which it behoves him to attend to. Look at him as he stands in the centre of the floor, erect as a grenadier, turning his busy mouth full upon the living tide that rushes along Holborn! Of shame or confusion of face in connection with the enviable position in which he stands he has not the remotest conception, and could as soon be brought to comprehend the differential calculus as to entertain a thought of it. What, we ask, would philosophy do for him? Still every customer is not so happily organized, and so blissfully insensible to the attacks of false shame; and for such as are unprepared for the public gaze, or constitutionally averse from it, a benevolent provision is made by a score of old play-bills stuck against the adverse wall, or swathing the sacks of flour which stand ready for use, and which they may peruse, or affect to peruse, in silence, munching their pennyworths the while. The main body of the pie-eaters are, however, perfectly at their ease, and pass the very few minutes necessary for the discussion of their purchases in bandying compliments with three or four good-looking lasses, the very incarnations of good-temper and cleanly tidiness, who from morn to night are as busy as bees in extricating the pies from their metallic moulds, as they are demanded by the customers. These assistants lead no lazy life, but they are without exception plump and healthy-looking, and would seem (if we are to believe the report of an employer) to have an astonishing tendency to the parish church of the district in which they officiate, our informant having been bereaved of three by marriage in the short space of six months. Relays are necessary in most establishments on the main routes, as the shops are open all night long, seldom closing much before three in the morning when situated in the neighborhood of a theatre or a cab-stand. Of the amount of business done in the course of a year it is not easy to form an estimate. Some pie-houses are known to consume as much flour as a neighboring baker standing in the same track. The baker makes ninety quartern loaves from the sack of flour, and could hardly make a living upon less than a dozen sacks a week; but as the proportion borne by the crust of a penny-pie to a quartern loaf is a mystery which we have not yet succeeded in penetrating, we are wanting in the elements of an exact calculation.

The establishment of these shops has by degrees prodigiously increased the number of pie-eaters and the consumption of pies. Thousands and tens of thousands who would decline the handling of a scalding hot morsel in the public street, will yet steal to the corner of a shop, and in front of an old play-bill, delicately dandling the tit-bit on their finger-tips till it cools to the precise temperature at which it is so delicious to swallow – "snatch a fearful joy." The trades man, too, in the immediate vicinity, soon learns to appreciate the propinquity of the pie-shop, in the addition it furnishes to a cold dinner, and for half the sum it would have cost him if prepared in his own kitchen. Many a time and oft have we dropped in, upon the strength of a general invitation, at the dinner-table of an indulgent bibliopole, and recognized the undeniable patés of "over the way" following upon the heels of the cold sirloin. With artisans out of work, and with town-travelers of small trade, the pie-shop is a halting-place, its productions presenting a cheap substitute for a dinner. Few purchases are made before twelve o'clock in the day; in fact the shutters are rarely pulled down much before eleven; yet even then business is carried on for nearly twenty hours out of the twenty-four. About noon the current of custom sets in, and all hands are busy till four or five o'clock; after which there is a pause, or rather a relaxation, until evening, when the various bands of operatives, as they are successively released from work, again renew the tide. As these disappear, the numberless nightly exhibitions, lecture-rooms, mechanics' institutes, concerts, theatres, and casinos, pour forth their motley hordes, of whom a large and hungry section find their way to the pie-house as the only available resource – the public-houses being shut up for the night, and the lobster-rooms, oyster saloons, "shades," "coal-holes," and "cider-cellars," too expensive for the multitude. After these come the cab-drivers who, having conveyed to their homes the more moneyed classes of sight-seers and play-goers, return to their stands in the vicinity of the shop, and now consider that they may conscientiously indulge in a refreshment of eel-pies, winding up with a couple of "fruiters," to the amount at least of the sum of which they may have been able to cheat their fares.

Throughout the summer months the pie trade flourishes with unabated vigor. Each successive fruit, as it ripens and comes to market, adds a fresh impetus to the traffic. As autumn waxes every week supplies a new attraction and a delicious variety; as it wanes into winter, a good store of apples are laid up for future use; and so soon as Jack Frost sets his cold toes upon the pavement, the delicate odor of mince-meat assails the passer-by, and reminds him that Christmas is coming, and that the pieman is ready for him. It is only in the early spring that the pie-shop is under a temporary cloud. The apples of the past year are well-nigh gone, and the few that remain have lost their succulence, and are dry and flavorless. This is the precise season when, as the pieman in "Pickwick" too candidly observed, "fruits is out, and cats is in." Now there is an unaccountable prejudice against cats among the pie-devouring population of the metropolis: we are superior to it ourselves, and can therefore afford to mention it dispassionately, and to express our regret that any species of commerce, much more one so grateful to the palate, and so convenient to the purse, should periodically suffer declension through the prevalence of an unfounded prejudice. Certain it is that penny-pie eating does materially decline about the early spring season; and it is certain too, that of late years, about the same season, a succession of fine Tabbies of our own have mysteriously disappeared. Attempts are made with rhubarb to combat the depression of business; but success in this matter is very partial – the generality of consumers being impressed with the popular notion that rhubarb is physic, and that physic is not fruit. But relief is at hand; the showers and sunshine of May bring the gooseberry to market; pies resume their importance; and the pieman backed by an inexhaustible store of a fruit grateful to every English palate, commences the campaign with renewed energy, and bids defiance for the rest of the year to the mutations of fortune.

We shall close this sketch with a legend of the day, for the truth of which, however, we do not personally vouch. It was related and received with much gusto at an annual supper lately given by a large pie proprietor to his assembled hands.

Some time since, so runs the current narrative, the owner of a thriving mutton-pie concern, which, after much difficulty, he had succeeded in establishing with borrowed capital, died before he had well extricated himself from the responsibilities of debt. The widow carried on the business after his decease, and throve so well, that a speculating baker on the opposite side of the way made her the offer of his hand. The lady refused, and the enraged suitor, determined on revenge, immediately converted his baking into an opposition pie-shop; and acting on the principle universal among London bakers, of doing business for the first month or two at a loss, made his pies twice as big as he could honestly afford to make them. The consequence was that the widow lost her custom, and was hastening fast to ruin, when a friend of her late husband, who was also a small creditor, paid her a visit. She detailed her grievance to him, and lamented her lost trade and fearful prospects. "Ho, ho!" said her friend, "that 'ere's the move, is it? Never you mind, my dear. If I don't git your trade agin, there aint no snakes, mark me – that's all!" So saying, he took his leave.

About eight o'clock the same evening, when the baker's new pie-shop was crammed to overflowing, and the principal was below superintending the production of a new batch, in walks the widow's friend in the costume of a kennel-raker, and elbowing his way to the counter dabs down upon it a brace of huge dead cats, vociferating at the same time to the astonished damsel in attendance, "Tell your master, my dear, as how them two makes six-and-thirty this week, and say I'll bring t'other four to-morrer arternoon!" With that he swaggered out and went his way. So powerful was the prejudice against cat-mutton among the population of that neighborhood, that the shop was clear in an instant, and the floor was seen covered with hastily-abandoned specimens of every variety of segments of a circle. The spirit-shop at the corner of the street experienced an unusually large demand for "gees" of brandy, and interjectional ejaculations not purely grammatical were not merely audible, but visible, too, in the district. It is averred that the ingenious expedient of the widow's friend, founded as it was upon a profound knowledge of human prejudices, had the desired effect of restoring "the balance of trade." The widow recovered her commerce; the resentful baker was done as brown as if he had been shut up in his own oven; and the friend who brought about this measure of justice received the hand of the lady as a reward for his interference.

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. ¹²

Book VI. – INITIAL CHAPTER

"Life," said my father, in his most dogmatical tone, "is a certain quantity in time, which may be regarded in two ways – 1st, as life Integral; 2d, as life Fractional. Life integral is that complete whole, expressive of a certain value, large or small, which each man possesses in himself. Life fractional is that same whole seized upon and invaded by other people, and subdivided among them. They who get a large slice of it say, 'a very valuable life this!' those who get but a small handful say, 'so, so, nothing very great!' those who get none of it in the scramble exclaim, 'Good for nothing!'"

"I don't understand a word you are saying," growled Captain Roland.

My father surveyed his brother with compassion – "I will make it all clear even to your understanding. When I sit down by myself in my study, having carefully locked the door on all of you, alone with my books and thoughts, I am in full possession of my integral life. I am totus, teres, atque rotundus– a whole human being – equivalent in value we will say, for the sake of illustration, to a fixed round sum – £100, for example. But when I come forth into the common apartment, each of those to whom I am of any worth whatsoever, puts his fingers into the bag that contains me, and takes out of me what he wants. Kitty requires me to pay a bill; Pisistratus to save him the time and trouble of looking into a score or two of books; the children to tell them stories, or play at hide and seek; the carp for bread-crumbs; and so on throughout the circle to which I have incautiously given myself up for plunder and subdivision. The £100 which I represented in my study is now parceled out; I am worth £40 or £50 to Kitty, £20 to Pisistratus, and perhaps 30s. to the carp. This is life fractional. And I cease to be an integral till once more returning to my study, and again closing the door on all existence but my own. Meanwhile, it is perfectly clear that, to those who, whether I am in the study, or whether I am in the common sitting-room, get nothing at all out of me, I am not worth a farthing. It must be wholly indifferent to a native of Kamtschatka whether Austin Caxton be or be not rased out of the great account-book of human beings.

"Hence," continued my father – "hence, it follows that the more fractional a life be —id est, the greater the number of persons among whom it can be subdivided – why, the more there are to say, 'a very valuable life that!' Thus, the leader of a political party, a conqueror, a king, an author who is amusing hundreds or thousands, or millions, has a greater number of persons whom his worth interests and affects than a Saint Simon Stylites could have when he perched himself at the top of a column; although, regarded each in himself, Saint Simon, in his grand mortification of flesh, in the idea that he thereby pleased his Divine Benefactor, might represent a larger sum of moral value per se than Bonaparte or Voltaire."

Pisistratus. – "Perfectly clear, sir, but I don't see what it has to do with My Novel."

Mr. Caxton. – "Every thing. Your novel, if it is to be a full and comprehensive survey of the 'quicquid agunt homines' (which it ought to be, considering the length and breadth to which I foresee, from the slow development of your story, you meditate extending and expanding it), will embrace the two views of existence, the integral and the fractional. You have shown us the former in Leonard, when he is sitting in his mother's cottage, or resting from his work by the little fount in Riccabocca's garden. And in harmony with that view of his life, you have surrounded him with comparative integrals, only subdivided by the tender hands of their immediate families and neighbors – your Squires and Parsons, your Italian Exile and his Jemima. With all these, life is more or less the life Natural, and this is always more or less the life integral. Then comes the life Artificial, which is always more or less the life fractional. In the life Natural wherein we are swayed but by our own native impulses and desires, subservient only to the great silent law of virtue (which has pervaded the universe since it swung out of chaos), a man is of worth from what he is in himself – Newton was as worthy before the apple fell from the tree as when all Europe applauded the discoverer of the Principle of Gravity. But in the life Artificial we are only of worth inasmuch as we affect others. And, relative to that life, Newton rose in value, more than a million per cent. when down fell the apple from which ultimately sprang up his discovery. In order to keep civilization going, and spread over the world the light of human intellect, we have certain desires within us, ever swelling beyond the ease and independence which belong to us as integrals. Cold man as Newton might be (he once took a lady's hand in his own, Kitty, and used her fore-finger for his tobacco-stopper; great philosopher!) – cold as he might be, he was yet moved into giving his discoveries to the world, and that from motives very little differing in their quality from the motives that make Dr. Squills communicate articles to the Phrenological Journal upon the skulls of Bushmen and wombats. For it is the property of light to travel. When a man has light in him, forth it must go. But the first passage of Genius from its integral state (in which it has been reposing on its own wealth) into the fractional, is usually through a hard and vulgar pathway. It leaves behind it the reveries of solitude, that self-contemplating rest which may be called the Visionary, and enters suddenly into the state that may be called the Positive and Actual. There, it sees the operations of money on the outer life – sees all the ruder and commoner springs of action – sees ambition without nobleness – love without romance – is bustled about, and ordered, and trampled, and cowed – in short, it passes an apprenticeship with some Richard Avenel, and does not yet detect what good and what grandeur, what addition even to the true poetry of the social universe, fractional existences like Richard Avenel's bestow; for the pillars that support society are like those of the Court of the Hebrew Tabernacle – they are of brass it is true, but they are filleted with silver. From such intermediate state Genius is expelled and driven on in its way, and would have been so in this ease had Mrs. Fairfield (who is but the representative of the homely natural affections, strongest ever in true genius – for light is warm) never crushed Mr. Avenel's moss-rose on her sisterly bosom. Now, forth from this passage and defile of transition into the larger world, must Genius go on, working out its natural destiny amidst things and forms the most artificial. Passions that move and influence the world are at work around it. Often lost sight of itself, its very absence is a silent contrast to the agencies present. Merged and vanished for a while amidst the Practical World, yet we ourselves feel all the while that it is there; is at work amidst the workings around it. This practical world that effaces it, rose out of some genius that has gone before; and so each man of genius, though we never come across him, as his operations proceed in places remote from our thoroughfares, is yet influencing the practical world that ignores him, forever and ever. That is genius! We can't describe it in books – we can only hint and suggest it, by the accessaries which we artfully heap about it. The entrance of a true Probationer into the terrible ordeal of Practical Life is like that into the miraculous cavern by which, legend informs us, St. Patrick converted Ireland."

Blanche. – "What is that legend? I never heard of it."

Mr. Caxton. – "My dear, you will find it in a thin folio at the right on entering my study, written by Thomas Messingham, and called 'Florilegium Insulæ Sanctorum,' &c. The account therein is confirmed by the relation of an honest soldier, one Louis Ennius, who had actually entered the cavern. In short, the truth of the legend is undeniable, unless you mean to say, which I can't for a moment suppose, that Louis Ennius was a liar. Thus it runs: 'St. Patrick, finding that the Irish pagans were incredulous as to his pathetic assurances of the pains and torments destined to those who did not expiate their sins in this world, prayed for a miracle to convince them. His prayer was heard; and a certain cavern, so small that a man could not stand up therein at his ease, was suddenly converted into a Purgatory, comprehending tortures sufficient to convince the most incredulous. One unacquainted with human nature might conjecture that few would be disposed to venture voluntarily into such a place; – on the contrary, pilgrims came in crowds. Now, all who entered from vain curiosity, or with souls unprepared, perished miserably; but those who entered with deep and earnest faith, conscious of their faults, and if bold, yet humble, not only came out safe and sound, but purified, as if from the waters of a second baptism.' See Savage and Johnson, at night in Fleet-street; – and who shall doubt the truth of St. Patrick's Purgatory!" Therewith my father sighed – closed his Lucian, which had lain open on the table, and would read nothing but "good books" for the rest of the evening.