Book: Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

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




The same principle of accumulation was made applicable to the neck. No
stock. Neckcloth above neckcloth--beginning with singles--and then
getting into the full uncut squares--the amount of the whole being
somewhere about a dozen: The concluding neckcloth worn cravat-fashion,
and flowing down the breast in a cascade, like that of an
attorney-general. Round our cheek and ear, leaving the lips at liberty
to breathe and imbibe, was wreathed, in undying remembrance of the
bravest of the brave, a Jem Belcher Fogle--and beneath the
cravat-cascade a comforter netted by the fair hands of her who had
kissed us at our departure, and was sighing for our return. One hat we
always found sufficient--and that a black beaver--for a lily castor
suits not the knowledge-box of a friend to "a limited constitutional and
hereditary monarchy."

As to our lower extremities--One pair only of roomy shoes--one pair of
stockings of the finest lamb's-wool--another of common close worsted,
knit by the hand of a Lancashire witch--thirdly, Shetland hose. All
three pair reaching well up towards the fork--each about an
inch-and-a-half longer than its predecessor. Flannel drawers--one pair
only--within the lamb's-wool, and touching the instep--then one pair of
elderly casimeres, of yore worn at balls--one pair of Manchester white
cords--ditto of strong black quilt trousers, "capacious and serene"--and
at or beneath the freezing-point, overalls of the same stuff as
"Johnny's grey breeks"--neat but not gaudy--mud-repellers--themselves a
host--never in all their lives "thoroughly wet
through"--frost-proof--and often mistaken by the shepherd on the wold,
as the Telegraph hung for a moment on the misty upland, for the philibeg
of Phoebus in his dawn-dress, hastily slipt on as he bade farewell to
some star-paramour, and, like a giant about to run a race, devoured the
cerulean course of day, as if impatient to reach the goal set in the
Western Sea.




DR KITCHINER.

FOURTH COURSE.


Pray, reader, do you know what line of conduct you ought to pursue if
you are to sleep on the road? "The earlier you arrive," says the Doctor,
"and the earlier after your arrival you apply, the better the chance of
getting a good bed--this done, order your luggage to your room. A
travelling-bag, or a 'sac de nuit,' in addition to your trunk, is very
necessary; it should be large enough to contain one or two changes of
linen--a night-shirt--shaving apparatus--comb, clothes, tooth and hair
brushes, &c. Take care, too, to see your sheets well aired, and that you
can fasten your room at night. Carry firearms also, and take the first
unostentatious opportunity of showing your pistols to the landlord.
However well-made your pistols, however carefully you have chosen your
flint, and however dry your powder, look to the priming and touch-hole
every night. Let your pistols be double-barrelled, and with spring
bayonets."

Now, really, it appears to us, that in lieu of double-barrelled pistols
with spring bayonets, it would be advisable to substitute a brace of
black-puddings for daylight, and a brace of Oxford or Bologna sausages
for the dark hours. They will be equally formidable to the robber, and
far safer to yourself. Indeed we should like to see duelling
black-puddings, or sausages, introduced at Chalk-Farm;--and, that
etiquette might not be violated, each party might take his antagonist's
weapon, and the seconds, as usual, see them loaded. Surgeons will have
to attend as usual. Far more blood, indeed, would be thus spilt, than
according to the present fashion.

The Doctor, as might be expected, makes a mighty rout--a prodigious
fuss--all through the Oracle, about damp sheets; he must immediately see
the chambermaid, and overlook the airing with his own hands and eyes.
He is also an advocate of the warming-pan--and for the adoption, indeed,
of every imaginable scheme for excluding death from his chamber. He goes
on the basis of everything being as it should not be in inns--and often
reminds us of our old friend Death-in-the-Pot. Nay, as Travellers never
can be sure that those who have slept in the beds before them were not
afflicted with some contagious disease, whenever they can they should
carry their own sheets with them--namely, a "light eider-down quilt, and
two dressed hart-skins, to be put on the mattresses, to hinder the
disagreeable contact. These are to be covered with the traveller's own
sheets--and if an eider-down quilt be not sufficient to keep him warm,
his coat put upon it will increase the heat sufficiently. If the
traveller is not provided with these accommodations, it will sometimes
be prudent not to undress entirely; however, the neckcloth, gaiters,
shirt, and everything which checks the circulation, must be loosened."

Clean sheets, the Doctor thinks, are rare in inns; and he believes that
it is the practice to "take them from the bed, sprinkle them with water,
fold them down, and put them into a press. When they are wanted again,
they are, literally speaking, shown to the fire, and, in a reeking
state, laid on the bed. The traveller is tired and sleepy, dreams of
that pleasure or business which brought him from home, and the remotest
thing from his mind is, that from the very repose which he fancies has
refreshed him, he has received the rheumatism. The receipt, therefore,
to sleep comfortably at inns, is to take your own sheets, to have plenty
of flannel gowns, and to promise, and take care to pay, a handsome
consideration for the liberty of choosing your bed."

Now, Doctor, suppose all travellers behaved at inns on such principles,
what a perpetual commotion there would be in the house! The kitchens,
back-kitchens, laundries, drying-rooms, would at all times be crammed
choke-full of a miscellaneous rabble of Editors, Authors, Lords,
Baronets, Squires, Doctors of Divinity, Fellows of Colleges, Half-pay
Officers, and Bagmen, oppressing the chambermaids to death, and in the
headlong gratification of their passion for well-aired sheets, setting
fire so incessantly to public premises as to raise the rate of insurance
to a ruinous height, and thus bring bankruptcy on all the principal
establishments in Great Britain. But shutting our eyes, for a moment,
to such general conflagration and bankruptcy, and indulging ourselves in
the violent supposition that some inns might still continue to exist,
think, O think, worthy Doctor, to what other fatal results this system,
if universally acted upon, would, in a very few years of the transitory
life of man, inevitably lead! In the first place, in a country where all
travellers carried with them their own sheets, none would be kept in
inns except for the use of the establishment's own members. This would
be inflicting a vital blow, indeed, on the inns of a country. For mark,
in the second place, that the blankets would not be long of following
the sheets. The blankets would soon fly after the sheets on the wings of
love and despair. Thirdly, are you so ignorant, Doctor, of this world
and its ways, as not to see that the bed-steads would, in the twinkling
of an eye, follow the blankets? What a wild, desolate, wintry appearance
would a bedroom then exhibit!

The foresight of such consequences as these may well make a man shudder.
We have no objections, however, to suffer the Doctor himself, and a few
other occasional damp-dreading old quizzes, "to see the bed-clothes put
to the fire in their presence," merely at the expense of subjugating
themselves to the derision of all the chambermaids, cooks, scullions,
boots, ostlers, and painters. (The painter is the artist who is employed
in inns, to paint the buttered toast. He always works in oils. As the
Director-General would say--he deals in buttery touches.) Their feverish
and restless anxiety about sheets, and their agitated discourse on damps
and deaths, hold them up to vulgar eyes in the light of lunatics. They
become the groundwork of practical jokes--perhaps are bitten to death by
fleas; for a chambermaid, of a disposition naturally witty and cruel,
has a dangerous power put into her hands, in the charge of blankets. The
Doctor's whole soul and body are wrapt up in well-aired sheets; but the
insidious Abigail, tormented by his flustering, becomes in turn the
tormentor--and selecting the yellowest, dingiest, and dirtiest pair of
blankets to be found throughout the whole gallery of garrets (those for
years past used by long-bearded old-clothesmen Jews), with a wicked leer
that would lull all suspicion asleep in a man of a far less inflammable
temperament, she literally envelopes him in vermin, and after a night of
one of the plagues of Egypt, the Doctor rises in the morning, from top
to bottom absolutely tattooed!

The Doctor, of course, is one of those travellers who believe that
unless they use the most ingenious precautions, they will be uniformly
robbed and murdered in inns. The villains steal upon you during the
midnight hour, when all the world is asleep. They leave their shoes down
stairs, and leopard-like, ascend with velvet, or--what is almost as
noiseless--worsted steps, the wooden stairs. True, that your breeches
are beneath your bolster--but that trick of travellers has long been "as
notorious as the sun at noonday;" and although you are aware of your
breeches, with all the ready money perhaps that you are worth in this
world, eloping from beneath your parental eye, you in vain try to cry
out--for a long, broad, iron hand, with ever so many iron fingers, is on
your mouth; another, with still more numerous digits, compresses your
windpipe, while a low hoarse voice, in a whisper to which Sarah
Siddons's was empty air, on pain of instant death enforces silence from
a man unable for his life to utter a single word; and after pulling off
all the bed-clothes, and then clothing you with curses, the ruffians,
whose accent betrays them to be Irishmen, inflict upon you divers wanton
wounds with a blunt instrument, probably a crow-bar--swearing by Satan
and all his saints, that if you stir an inch of your body before
daybreak, they will instantly return, cut your throat, knock out your
brains, sack you, and carry you off for sale to a surgeon: Therefore you
must use pocket door-bolts, which are applicable to almost all sorts of
doors, and on many occasions save the property and life of the
traveller. The corkscrew door-fastening the Doctor recommends as the
simplest. This is screwed in between the door and the door-post, and
unites them so firmly, that great power is required to force a door so
fastened. They are as portable as common cork-screws, and their weight
does not exceed an ounce and a half. The safety of your bedroom should
always be carefully examined; and in case of bolts not being at hand, it
will be useful to hinder entrance into the room by putting a table and
chair upon it against the door. Take a peep below the bed, and into the
closets, and every place where concealment is possible--of course,
although the Doctor forgets to suggest it, into the chimney. A friend of
the Doctor's used to place a bureau against the door, and "thereon he
set a basin and ewer in such a position as easily to rattle, so that, on
being shook, they instantly became _molto agitato_." Upon one alarming
occasion this device frightened away one of the chambermaids, or some
other Paulina Pry, who attempted to steal on the virgin sleep of the
travelling Joseph, who all the time was hiding his head beneath the
bolster. Joseph, however, believed that it was a horrible midnight
assassin, with mustaches and a dagger. "The chattering of the crockery
gave the alarm, and the attempt, after many attempts, was abandoned."

With all these fearful apprehensions--in his mind, Dr Kitchiner must
have been a man of great natural personal courage and intrepidity, to
have slept even once in his whole lifetime from home. What dangers must
we have passed, who used to plump in, without a thought of damp in the
bed, or scamp below it--closet and chimney uninspected, door unbolted
and unscrewed, exposed to rape, robbery, and murder! It is mortifying to
think that we should be alive at this day. Nobody, male or female,
thought it worth their while to rob, ravish, or murder us! There we lay,
forgotten by the whole world--till the crowing of cocks, or the ringing
of bells, or blundering Boots insisting on it that we were a Manchester
Bagman, who had taken an inside in the Heavy at five, broke our repose,
and Sol laughing in at the unshuttered and uncurtained window showed us
the floor of our dormitory, not streaming with a gore of blood. We
really know not whether to be most proud of having been the favourite
child of Fortune, or the neglected brat of Fate. One only precaution did
we ever use to take against assassination, and all the other ills that
flesh is heir to, sleep where one may, and that was to say inwardly a
short fervent prayer, humbly thanking our Maker for all the
happiness--let us trust it was innocent--of the day; and humbly
imploring his blessing on all the hopes of to-morrow. For, at the time
we speak of, we were young--and every morning, whatever the atmosphere
might be, rose bright and beautiful with hopes that, far as the eyes of
the soul could reach, glittered on earth's, and heaven's, and life's
horizon!

But suppose that after all this trouble to get himself bolted and
screwed into a paradisaical tabernacle of a dormitory, there had
suddenly rung through the house the cry of FIRE--FIRE--FIRE! how was Dr
Kitchiner to get out? Tables, bureaus, benches, chairs, blocked up the
only door--all laden with wash-hand basins and other utensils, the whole
crockery shepherdesses of the chimney-piece, double-barrelled pistols
with spring bayonets ready to shoot and stab, without distinction of
persons, as their proprietor was madly seeking to escape the roaring
flames! Both windows are iron-bound, with all their shutters, and over
and above tightly fastened with "the cork-screw fastening, the simplest
that we have seen." The wind-board is in like manner, and by the same
unhappy contrivance, firmly jammed into the jaws of the chimney, so
egress to the Doctor up the vent is wholly denied--no fire-engine in the
town--but one under repair. There has not been a drop of rain for a
month, and the river is not only distant but dry. The element is
growling along the galleries like a lion, and the room is filling with
something more deadly than back-smoke. A shrill voice is heard
crying--"Number 5 will be burned alive! Number 5 will be burned alive!
Is there no possibility of saving the life of Number 5?" The Doctor
falls down before the barricado, and is stretched all his hapless length
fainting on the floor. At last the door is burst open, and landlord,
landlady, chambermaid, and boots--each in a different key--from manly
bass to childish treble, demand of Number 5 if he be a murderer or a
madman--for, gentle reader, it has been a--Dream.

We must hurry to a close, and shall perform the short remainder of our
journey on foot. The first volume of the Oracle concludes with
"Observations on Pedestrians." Here we are at home--and could, we
imagine, have given the Doctor a mile in the hour in a year-match. The
strength of man, we are given distinctly to understand by the Doctor, is
"in the ratio of the performance of the restorative process, which is as
the quantity and quality of what he puts into his stomach, the energy of
that organ, and the quantity of exercise he takes." This statement of
the strength of man may be unexceptionably true, and most philosophical
to those who are up to it--but to us it resembles a definition we have
heard of thunder, "the conjection of the sulphur congeals the matter."
It appears to us that a strong stomach is not the sole constituent of a
strong man--but that it is not much amiss to be provided with a strong
back, a strong breast, strong thighs, strong legs, and strong feet. With
a strong stomach alone--yea, even the stomach of a horse--a man will
make but a sorry Pedestrian. The Doctor, however, speedily redeems
himself by saying admirably well, "that nutrition does not depend more
on the state of the stomach, or of what we put into it, than it does on
the stimulus given to the system by exercise, which alone can produce
that perfect circulation of the blood which is required to throw off
superfluous secretions, and give the absorbents an appetite to suck up
fresh materials. This requires the action of every petty artery, and of
the minutest ramifications of every nerve and fibre in our body." Thus,
he remarks, a little further on, by way of illustration, "that a man,
suffering under a fit of the vapours, after half an hour's brisk
ambulation, will often find that he has walked it off, and that the
action of the body has exonerated the mind."

The Doctor warms as he walks--and is very near leaping over the fence of
Political Economy. "Providence, he remarks, furnishes materials, but
expects that we should work them up for ourselves. The earth must be
laboured before it gives its increase, and when it is forced to produce
its several products, how many hands must they pass through before they
are fit for use! Manufactures, trade, and agriculture, naturally employ
more than nineteen persons out of twenty; and as for those who are, by
the condition in which they are born, exempted from work, they are more
miserable than the rest of mankind, unless they daily and duly employ
themselves in that VOLUNTARY LABOUR WHICH GOES BY THE NAME OF EXERCISE."
Inflexible justice, however, forces us to say, that although the Doctor
throws a fine philosophical light over the most general principles of
walking, as they are involved in "that voluntary labour which goes by
the name of exercise," yet he falls into frequent and fatal error when
he descends into the particulars of the practice of pedestrianism. Thus,
he says, that no person should sit down to a hearty meal immediately
after any great exertion, either of mind or body--that is, one might
say, after a few miles of Plinlimmon, or a few pages of the Principia.
Let the man, quoth he, "who comes home fatigued by bodily exertion,
especially if he feel heated by it, throw his legs upon a chair, and
remain quite tranquil and composed, that the energy which has been
dispersed to the extremities may have time to return to the stomach,
when it is required." To all this we say--Fudge! The sooner you get hold
of a leg of roasted mutton the better; but meanwhile, off rapidly with
a pot of porter--then leisurely on with a clean shirt--wash your face
and hands in gelid--none of your tepid water. There is no harm done if
you should shave--then keep walking up and down the parlour rather
impatiently, for such conduct is natural, and in all things act
agreeably to nature--stir up the waiter with some original jest by way
of stimulant, and to give the knave's face a well-pleased stare--and
never doubting "that the energy which has been dispersed to the
extremities" has had ample time to return to the stomach, in God's name
fall to! and take care that the second course shall not appear till
there is no vestige left of the first--a second course being looked on
by the judicious moralist and pedestrian very much in the light in which
the poet has made a celebrated character consider it,--

"Nor fame I slight--nor for her favours call--
She comes unlook'd for--if she comes at all."

To prove how astonishingly our strength may be diminished by indolence,
the Doctor tells us, that meeting a gentleman who had lately returned
from India, to his inquiry after his health he replied, "Why,
better--better, thank ye--I think I begin to feel some symptoms of the
return of a little English energy. Do you know that the day before
yesterday I was in such high spirits, and felt so strong, I actually put
on one of my stockings myself?"

The Doctor then asserts, that it "has been repeatedly proved that a man
can travel further for a week or a month than a horse." On reading this
sentence to Will Whipcord--"Yes, sir," replied that renowned Professor
of the Newmarket Philosophy, "that's all right, sir--a man can beat a
horse!"

Now, Will Whipcord may be right in his opinion, and a man may beat a
horse. But it never has been tried: There is no match of pedestrianism
on record between a first-rate man and a first-rate horse; and as soon
as there is, we shall lay our money on the horse--only mind, the horse
carries no weight, and he must be allowed to do his work on turf. We
know that Arab horses will carry their rider, provision and provender,
arms and accoutrements (no light weight) across the desert, eighty miles
a-day, for many days--and that for four days they have gone a hundred
miles a-day. That would have puzzled Captain Barclay in his prime, the
Prince of Pedestrians. However, be that as it may, the comparative
pedestrian powers of man and horse have never yet been ascertained by
any accredited match in England.

The Doctor then quotes an extract from a Pedestrian Tour in Wales by a
Mr Shepherd, who, we are afraid, is no great headpiece, though we shall
be happy to find ourselves in error. Mr Shepherd, speaking of the
inconveniencies and difficulties attending a pedestrian excursion, says,
"that at one time the roads are rendered so muddy by the rain, that it
is almost impossible to proceed;"--"at other times you are exposed to
the inclemency of the weather, and by wasting time under a tree or a
hedge are benighted in your journey, and again reduced to an
uncomfortable dilemma." "Another disadvantage is, that your track is
necessarily more confined--a deviation of ten or twelve miles makes an
important difference, which, if you were on horseback, would be
considered as trivial." "Under all these circumstances," he says, "it
may appear rather remarkable that we should have chosen a pedestrian
excursion--_in answer to which, it may be observed, that we were not
apprised of these things till we had experienced them_." What! Mr
Shepherd, were you, who we presume have reached the age of puberty, not
apprised, before you penetrated as a pedestrian into the Principality,
that "roads are rendered muddy by the rain?" Had you never met, either
in your experience of life, or in the course of your reading, proof
positive that pedestrians "are exposed to the inclemency of the
weather?" That, if a man will linger too long under a tree or a hedge
when the sun is going down, "he will be benighted?" Under what serene
atmosphere, in what happy clime, have you pursued your preparatory
studies _sub dio_? But, our dear Mr Shepherd, why waste time under the
shelter of a tree or a hedge? Waste time nowhere, our young and unknown
friend. What the worse would you have been of being soaked to the skin?
Besides, consider the danger you ran of being killed by lightning, had
there been a few flashes, under a tree? Further, what will become of
you, if you addict yourself on every small emergency to trees and
hedges, when the country you walk through happens to be as bare as the
palm of your hand? Button your jacket, good sir--scorn an
umbrella--emerge boldly from the sylvan shade, snap your fingers at the
pitiful pelting of the pitiless storm--poor spite indeed in Densissimus
Imber--and we will insure your life for a presentation copy of your Tour
against all the diseases that leapt out of Pandora's box, not only till
you have reached the Inn at Capel-Cerig, but your own home in England
(we forget the county)--ay, till your marriage, and the baptism of your
first-born.

Dr Kitchiner seems to have been much frightened by Mr Shepherd's picture
of a storm in a puddle, and proposes a plan of alleviation of one great
inconvenience of pedestrianising. "Persons," quoth he, "who take a
pedestrian excursion, and intend to subject themselves to the
uncertainties of accommodation, by going across the country and visiting
unfrequented paths, will act wisely to carry with them a _piece of
oil-skin_ to sit upon while taking refreshments out of doors, which they
will often find needful during such excursions." To save trouble, the
breech of the pedestrian's breeches should be a patch of oil-skin. Here
a question of great difficulty and importance arises--Breeches or
trousers? Dr Kitchiner is decidedly for breeches. "The garter," says he,
"should be below the knee, and breeches are much better than trousers.
The general adoption of those which, till our late wars, were
exclusively used by 'the Lords of the Ocean,' has often excited my
astonishment. However convenient trousers may be to the sailor who has
to cling to slippery shrouds, for the landsman nothing can be more
inconvenient. They are heating in summer, and in winter they are
collectors of mud. Moreover, they occasion a necessity for wearing
garters. Breeches are, in all respects, much more convenient. These
should have the knee-band three quarters of an inch wide, lined on the
upper side with a piece of plush, and fastened with a buckle, which is
much easier than even double strings, and, by observing the strap, you
always know the exact degree of tightness that is required to keep up
the stocking; any pressure beyond that is prejudicial, especially to
those who walk long distances."

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