Book: Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

J >> John Wilson >> Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2




In mercy to our readers and ourselves, we shall endeavour to prevent
ourselves from pursuing this argument any further--and perhaps quite
enough has been said to show that Dr Kitchiner's assertion, that persons
who live in the country have firmer health and finer spirits than the
inhabitants of towns--is exceedingly problematical. But even admitting
the fact to be as the Doctor has stated it, we do not think he has
attributed the phenomenon to the right cause. He attributes it to "their
enjoying plenty of sound sleep." The worthy Doctor is entirely out in
his conjecture. The working classes in the country enjoy, we don't doubt
it, sound sleep--but not plenty of it. They have but a short allowance
of sleep--and whether it be sound or not, depends chiefly on themselves;
while as to the noises in towns and cities, they are nothing to what one
hears in the country--unless, indeed, you perversely prefer private
lodgings at a pewterer's. Did we wish to be personal, we could name a
single waterfall who, even in dry weather, keeps all the visitors from
town awake within a circle of four miles diameter; and in wet weather,
not only keeps them all awake, but impresses them with a constantly
recurring conviction during the hours of night, that there is something
seriously amiss about the foundation of the river, and that the whole
parish is about to be overflowed, up to the battlements of the old
castle that over-looks the linn. Then, on another point, we are
certain--namely, that rural thunder is many hundred times more powerful
than villatic. London porter is above admiration--but London thunder
below contempt. An ordinary hackney-coach beats it hollow. But, my
faith! a thunderstorm in the country--especially if it be mountainous,
with a few fine Woods and Forests, makes you inevitably think of that
land from whose bourne no traveller returns; and even our town readers
will acknowledge that country thunder much more frequently proves mortal
than the thunder you meet with in cities. In the country, few
thunderstorms are contented to pass over without killing at least one
horse, some milch-kine, half-a-dozen sucking pigs or turkeys, an old
woman or two, perhaps the Minister of the parish, a man about forty,
name unknown, and a nursing mother at the ingle, the child escaping with
singed eyebrows, and a singular black mark on one of its great toes. We
say nothing of the numbers stupified, who awake the day after, as from a
dream, with strange pains in their heads, and not altogether sure about
the names or countenances of the somewhat unaccountable people whom they
see variously employed about the premises, and making themselves pretty
much at home. In towns, not one thunderstorm in fifty that performs an
exploit more magnanimous than knocking down an old wife from a
chimney-top--singeing a pair of worsted stockings that, knit in an
ill-starred hour, when the sun had entered Aries, had been hung out to
dry on a line in the backyard, or garden as it is called--or cutting a
few inches off the tail of an old Whig weathercock that for years had
been pecking the eyes out of all the airts the wind can blaw, greedy of
some still higher preferment.

Our dear deceased author proceeds to tell his Traveller how to eat and
drink; and remarks, "that people are apt to imagine that they may
indulge a little more in high living when on a journey. Travelling
itself, however, acts as a stimulus; therefore less nourishment is
required than in a state of rest. What you might not consider
intemperate at home, may occasion violent irritation, fatal
inflammations, &c., in situations where you are least able to obtain
medical assistance."

All this is very loosely stated, and must be set to rights. If you shut
yourself up for some fifty hours or so in a mail-coach, that keeps
wheeling along at the rate of ten miles an hour, and changes horses in
half a minute, certainly for obvious reasons the less you eat and drink
the better; and perhaps an hourly hundred drops of laudanum, or
equivalent grain of opium, would be advisable, so that the transit from
London to Edinburgh might be performed in a phantasma. But the free
agent ought to live well on his travels--some degrees better, without
doubt, than when at home. People seldom live very well at home. There is
always something requiring to be eaten up, that it may not be lost,
which destroys the soothing and satisfactory symmetry of an
unexceptionable dinner. We have detected the same duck through many
unprincipled disguises, playing a different part in the farce of
domestic economy, with a versatility hardly to have been expected in one
of the most generally despised of the web-footed tribe. When travelling
at one's own sweet will, one feeds at a different inn every meal; and,
except when the coincidence of circumstances is against you, there is an
agreeable variety both in the natural and artificial disposition of the
dishes. True that travelling may act as a stimulus--but false that
therefore less nourishment is required. Would Dr Kitchiner, if now
alive, presume to say that it was right for him, who had sat all day
with his feet on the fender, to gobble up, at six o'clock of the
afternoon, as enormous a dinner as we who had walked since sunrise forty
or fifty miles? Because our stimulus had been greater, was our
nourishment to be less? We don't care a curse about stimulus. What we
want, in such a case, is lots of fresh food; and we hold that, under
such circumstances, a man with a sound Tory Church-and-King stomach and
constitution cannot over-eat himself--no, not for his immortal soul.

We had almost forgot to take the deceased Doctor to task for one of the
most free-and-easy suggestions ever made to the ill-disposed, how to
disturb and destroy the domestic happiness of eminent literary
characters. "An introduction to eminent authors may be obtained," quoth
he slyly, "from the booksellers who publish their works."

The booksellers who publish the works of eminent authors have rather
more common sense and feeling, it is to be hoped, than this comes
to--and know better what is the province of their profession. Any one
man may, if he chooses, give any other man an introduction to any third
man in this world. Thus the tailor of any eminent author--or his
bookseller--or his parish minister--or his butcher--or his baker--or his
"man of business"--or his house-builder--may, one and all, give such
travellers as Dr Kitchiner and others, letters of introduction to the
said eminent author in prose or verse. This, we have heard, is sometimes
done--but fortunately we cannot speak from experience, not being
ourselves an eminent author. The more general the intercourse between
men of taste, feeling, cultivation, learning, genius, the better; but
that intercourse should be brought about freely and of its own accord,
as fortunate circumstances permit, and there should be no impertinent
interference of selfish or benevolent go-betweens. It would seem that Dr
Kitchiner thought the commonest traveller, one who was almost, as it
were, bordering on a Bagman, had nothing to do but call on the publisher
of any great writer, and get a free admission into his house. Had the
Doctor not been dead, we should have given him a severe rowing and
blowing-up for this vulgar folly; but as he is dead, we have only to
hope that the readers of the Oracle who intend to travel will not
degrade themselves, and disgust "authors of eminence," by thrusting
their ugly or comely faces--both are equally odious--into the privacy of
gentlemen who have done nothing to exclude themselves from the
protection of the laws of civilised society--or subject their fire-sides
to be infested by one-half of the curious men of the country, two-thirds
of the clever, and all the blockheads.




DR KITCHINER.

THIRD COURSE.


Having thus briefly instructed travellers how to get a look at Lions,
the Doctor suddenly exclaims--"IMPRIMIS, BEWARE OF DOGS!" "There have,"
he says, "been many arguments, _pro_ and _con_, on the dreadful disease
their bite produces--it is enough to prove that multitudes of men,
women, and children have died in consequence of having been bitten by
dogs. What does it matter whether they were the victims of bodily
disease or mental irritation? The life of the most humble human being is
of more value than all the dogs in the world--dare the most brutal cynic
say otherwise?"

Dr Kitchiner always travelled, it appears, in chaises; and a chaise of
one kind or other he recommends to all his brethren of mankind. Why,
then, this intense fear of the canine species? Who ever saw a mad dog
leap into the mail-coach, or even a gig? The creature, when so
afflicted, hangs his head, and goes snapping right and left at
pedestrians. Poor people like us, who must walk, may well fear
hydrophobia--though, thank Heaven, we have never, during the course of a
tolerably long and well-spent life, been so much as once bitten by "the
rabid animal!" But what have rich authors, who loll in carriages, to
dread from dogs, who always go on foot? We cannot credit the very
sweeping assertion, that multitudes of men, women, and children have
died in consequence of being bitten by dogs. Even the newspapers do not
run up the amount above a dozen per annum, from which you may safely
deduct two-thirds. Now, four men, women, and children, are not "a
multitude." Of those four, we may set down two as problematical--having
died, it is true, _in_, but not _of_ hydrophobia--states of mind and
body wide as the poles asunder. He who drinks two bottles of pure
spirit every day he buttons and unbuttons his breeches, generally dies
_in_ a state of hydrophobia--for he abhorred water, and knew
instinctively the jug containing that insipid element. But he never dies
at all _of_ hydrophobia, there being evidence to prove that for twenty
years he had drank nothing but brandy. Suppose we are driven to confess
the other two--why, one of them was an old woman of eighty, who was
dying as fast as she could hobble, at the very time she thought herself
bitten--and the other a nine-year-old brat, in hooping-cough and
measles, who, had there not been such a quadruped as a dog created,
would have worried itself to death before evening, so lamentably had its
education been neglected, and so dangerous an accomplishment is an
impish temper. The twelve cases for the year of that most horrible
disease, hydrophobia, have, we flatter ourselves, been satisfactorily
disposed of--eight of the alleged deceased being at this moment engaged
at various handicrafts, on low wages indeed, but still such as enable
the industrious to live--two having died of drinking--one of extreme old
age, and one of a complication of complaints incident to childhood,
their violence having, in this particular instance, been aggravated by
neglect and devilish temper. Where now the "multitude" of men, women,
and children, who have died in consequence of being bitten by mad dogs?

Gentle reader--a mad dog is a bugbear; we have walked many hundred times
the diameter and the circumference of this our habitable globe--along
all roads, public and private--with stiles or turnpikes--metropolitan
streets and suburban paths--and at all seasons of the revolving year and
day; but never, as we padded the hoof along, met we nor were over-taken
by greyhound, mastiff, or cur, in a state of hydrophobia. We have many
million times seen them with their tongues lolling out about a
yard--their sides panting--flag struck--and the whole dog showing
symptoms of severe distress. That such travellers were not mad we do not
assert--they may have been mad--but they certainly were fatigued; and
the difference, we hope, is often considerable between weariness and
insanity. Dr Kitchiner, had he seen such dogs as we have seen, would
have fainted on the spot. He would have raised the country against the
harmless jog-trotter. Pitchforks would have gleamed in the setting sun,
and the flower of the agricultural youth of a midland county, forming a
levy _en masse_, would have offered battle to a turnspit. The Doctor,
sitting in his coach--like Napoleon at Waterloo--would have cried "_Tout
est perdu--sauve, qui peut!_"--and re-galloping to a provincial town,
would have found refuge under the gateway of the Hen and Chickens.

"The life of the most humble human being," quoth the Doctor, "is of more
value than all the dogs in the world--dare the most brutal cynic say
otherwise?"

This question is not put to us; for so far from being the most brutal
Cynic, we do not belong to the Cynic school at all--being an Eclectic,
and our philosophy composed chiefly of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and
Peripateticism--with a fine, pure, clear, bold dash of Platonicism. The
most brutal Cynic, if now alive and snarling, must therefore answer for
himself--while we tell the Doctor, that so far from holding, with him,
that the life of the most humble human being is of more value than all
the dogs in the world, we, on the contrary, verily believe that there is
many a humble dog whose life far transcends in value the lives of many
men, women, and children. Whether or not dogs have souls, is a question
in philosophy never yet solved; although we have ourselves no doubt on
the subject, and firmly believe that they have souls. But the question,
as put by the Doctor, is not about souls, but about lives; and as the
human soul does not die when the human body does, the death of an old
woman, middle-aged man, or young child, is no such very great calamity,
either to themselves or to the world. Better, perhaps, that all the dogs
now alive should be massacred, to prevent hydrophobia, than that a human
soul should be lost;--but not a single human soul is going to be lost,
although the whole canine species should become insane to-morrow. Now,
would the Doctor have laid one hand on his heart and the other on his
Bible, and taken a solemn oath that rather than that one old woman of a
century and a quarter should suddenly be cut off by the bite of a mad
dog, he would have signed the warrant of execution of all the packs of
harriers and fox-hounds, all the pointers, spaniels, setters, and
cockers, all the stag-hounds, greyhounds, and lurchers, all the
Newfoundlanders, shepherd-dogs, mastiffs, bull-dogs, and terriers, the
infinite generation of mongrels and crosses included, in Great Britain
and Ireland--to say nothing of the sledge-drawers in Kamtschatka, and in
the realms slow-moving near the Pole? To clench the argument at
once--What are all the old women in Europe, one-half of the men, and
one-third of the children, when compared, in value, with any one of
Christopher North's Newfoundland dogs--Fro--Bronte--or O'Bronte?
Finally, does he include in his sweeping condemnation the whole brute
creation, lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, elephants, rhinoceroses,
hippopotami, camelopardales, zebras, quaggas, cattle, horses, asses,
mules, cats, the ichneumon, cranes, storks, cocks-of-the-wood, geese,
and how-towdies?

"Semi-drowning in the sea"--he continues--"and all the pretended
specifics, are mere delusions--there is no real remedy but cutting the
part out immediately. If the bite be near a blood-vessel, that cannot
always be done, nor when done, however well done, will it always prevent
the miserable victim from dying the most dreadful of deaths. Well might
St Paul tell us to '_beware of dogs_.' First Epistle to Philippians,
chap. iii., v. 2."

Semi-drowning in the sea is, we grant, a bad specific, and difficult to
be administered. It is not possible to tell, _a priori_, how much
drowning any particular patient can bear. What is mere semi-drowning to
James, is total drowning to John;--Tom is easy of resuscitation--Bob
will not stir a muscle for all the Humane Societies in the United
Kingdoms. To cut a pound of flesh from the rump of a fat dowager, who
turns sixteen stone, is within the practical skill of the veriest
bungler in the anatomy of the human frame--to scarify the fleshless
spindle-shank of an antiquated spinstress, who lives on a small annuity,
might be beyond the scalpel of an Abernethy or a Liston. A large
blood-vessel, as the Doctor well remarks, is an awkward neighbour to the
wound made by the bite of a mad dog, "when a new excision has to be
attempted"--but will any Doctor living inform us how, in a thousand
other cases besides hydrophobia, "the miserable victim may always be
prevented from dying?" There are, probably, more dogs in Britain than
horses; yet a hundred men, women, and children are killed by kicks of
sane horses, for one by bites of insane dogs. Is the British army,
therefore, to be deprived of its left arm, the cavalry? Is there to be
no flying artillery? What is to become of the horse-marines?

Still the Doctor, though too dogmatical, and rather puppyish above, is,
at times, sensible on dogs.

"Therefore," quoth he, "never travel without a good tough Black Thorn in
your Fist, not less than three feet in length, on which may be marked
the Inches, and so it may serve for a measure.

"Pampered Dogs, that are permitted to prance about as they please, when
they hear a knock, scamper to the door, and not seldom snap at unwary
visitors. Whenever _Counsellor Cautious_ went to a house, &c., where he
was not quite certain that there was no Dog, after he had rapped at the
door, he retired three or four yards from it, and prepared against the
Enemy: when the door was opened, he desired, if there was any Dog, that
it might be shut up till he was gone, and would not enter the House till
it was.

"_Sword_ and _Tuck Sticks_, as commonly made, are hardly so good a
weapon as a stout Stick--the Blades are often inserted into the Handles
in such a slight manner, that one smart blow will break them out;--if
you wish for a _Sword-Cane_, you must have one made with a good
Regulation Blade, which alone will cost more than is usually charged for
the entire Stick.--I have seen a Cane made by Mr PRICE, _of the Stick
and Umbrella Warehouse, 221, in the Strand_, near Temple Bar, which was
excellently put together.

"A powerful weapon, and a very smart and light-looking thing, is _an
Iron Stick_ of about four-tenths of an inch in diameter, with a Hook
next the Hand, and terminating at the other end in a Spike about five
inches in length, which is covered by a Ferrule, the whole painted the
colour of a common walking-stick; it has a light natty appearance, while
it is in fact a most formidable Instrument."

We cannot charge our memory with this instrument, yet had we seen one
once, we hardly think we could have forgot it. But Colonel de Berenger
in his _Helps and Hints_ prefers the umbrella. Umbrellas are usually
carried, we believe, in wet weather, and dogs run mad, if ever, in dry.
So the safe plan is to carry one all the year through, like the Duke.

"I found it a valuable weapon, although by mere chance; for, walking
alone in the rain, a large mad dog, pursued by men, suddenly turned upon
me, out of a street which I had just approached; by instinct more than
judgment, I gave point at him severely, opened as the umbrella was,
which, screening me at the same time, _was an article from which he did
not expect thrusts_; but which, although made at guess, for I could not
see him, turned him over and over, and before he could recover himself,
his pursuers had come up immediately to despatch him; the whole being
the work of even few seconds; but for the umbrella the horrors of
hydrophobia might have fallen to my lot."

There is another mode, which, with the omission or alteration of a word
or two, looks feasible, supposing we had to deal not with a bull-dog,
but a young lady of our own species. "If," says the Colonel, "you can
seize a dog's front paw neatly, and immediately squeeze it sharply, he
cannot bite you till you cease to squeeze it; therefore, by keeping him
thus well pinched, you may lead him wherever you like; or you may, with
the other hand, seize him by the skin of the neck, to hold him thus
without danger, provided your strength is equal to his efforts at
extrication." But here comes the Colonel's infallible _vade-mecum_.

"Look at them with your face from between your opened legs, holding the
skirts away, and running at them thus backwards, of course head below,
stern exposed, and above all growling angrily; most dogs, seeing so
strange an animal, the head at the heels, the eyes below the mouth, &c.,
are so dismayed, that, with their tails between their legs, they are
glad to scamper away, some even howling with affright. I have never
tried it with a thorough-bred bull-dog, nor do I advise it with them;
though I have practised it, and successfully, with most of the other
kinds; it might fail with these, still I cannot say it will."

Thus armed against the canine species, the Traveller, according to our
Oracle, must also provide himself with a portable case of instruments
for drawing--a sketch and note-book--paper--ink--and PINS--NEEDLES--AND
THREAD! A ruby or Rhodium pen, made by Doughty, No. 10, Great Ormond
Street--pencils from Langdon's of Great Russell Street--a folding
one-foot rule, divided into eighths, tenths, and twelfths of inches--a
hunting-watch with seconds, with a detached lever or Dupleix escapement,
in good strong silver cases--a Dollond's achromatic opera-glass--a
night-lamp--a tinder-box--two pair of spectacles, with strong silver
frames--an eye-glass in a silver ring slung round the neck--a
traveller's knife, containing a large and a small blade, a saw, hook for
taking a stone out of a horse's shoe, turnscrew, gun-picker, tweezers,
and long corkscrew--galoches or paraloses--your own knife and fork, and
spoon--a Welsh wig--a spare hat--umbrella--two great-coats, one for cool
and fair weather (_i.e._ between 45 deg. and 55 deg. of Fahrenheit), and another
for cold and foul weather, of broad cloth, lined with fur, and
denominated a "dreadnought."

Such are a few of the articles with which every sensible traveller will
provide himself before leaving _Dulce Domum_ to brave the perils of a
Tour through the Hop-districts.

"If circumstances compel you," continues the Doctor, "to ride on the
outside of a coach, put on two shirts and two pair of stockings, turn up
the collar of your great-coat, and tie a handkerchief round it, and have
plenty of dry straw to set your feet on."

In our younger days we used to ride a pretty considerable deal on the
outside of coaches, and much hardship did we endure before we hit on the
discovery above promulgated. We once rode outside from Edinburgh to
London, in winter, without a great-coat, in nankeen trousers _sans_
drawers, and all other articles of our dress thin and light in
proportion. That we are alive at this day, is no less singular than
true--no more true than singular. We have known ourselves so firmly
frozen to the leathern ceiling of the mail-coach, that it required the
united strength of coachman, guard, and the other three outsides, to
separate us from the vehicle, to which we adhered as part and parcel.
All at once the device of the double shirt flashed upon us--and it
underwent signal improvements before we reduced the theory to practice.
For, first, we endued ourselves with a leather shirt--then with a
flannel one--and then, in regular succession, with three linen shirts.
This concluded the Series of Shirts. Then commenced the waistcoats. A
plain woollen waistcoat without buttons--with hooks and eyes--took the
lead, and kept it; it was closely pressed by what is, in common palaver,
called an under-waistcoat--the body being flannel, the breast-edges
bearing a pretty pattern of stripes or bars--then came a natty red
waistcoat, of which we were particularly proud, and of which the effect
on landlady, bar-maid, and chamber-maid, we remember was
irresistible--and, fourthly and finally, to complete that department of
our investiture, shone with soft yet sprightly lustre--the
double-breasted bright-buttoned Buff. Five and four are nine--so that
between our carcass and our coat, it might have been classically said of
our dress--"Novies interfusa coercet." At this juncture of affairs began
the coats, which--as it is a great mistake to wear too many coats--never
exceeded six. The first used generally to be a pretty old coat that had
lived to moralise over the mutability of human
affairs--thread-bare--napless--and what ignorant people might have
called shabby-genteel. It was followed by a plain, sensible, honest,
unpretending, commonplace, everyday sort of a coat--and not, perhaps, of
the very best merino. Over it was drawn, with some little difficulty,
what had, in its prime of life, attracted universal admiration in
Princes Street, as a blue surtout. Then came your regular olive-coloured
great-coat--not braided and embroidered _a la militaire_--for we scorned
to sham travelling-captain--but _simplex munditiis_, plain in its
neatness; not wanting then was your shag-hued wraprascal, betokening
that its wearer was up to snuff--and to close this strange eventful
history, the seven-caped Dreadnought, that loved to dally with the
sleets and snows--held in calm contempt Boreas, Notus, Auster, Eurus,
and "the rest"--and drove baffled Winter howling behind the Pole.

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