Book: Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2

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




What kind of a Winter--we wonder--are we to have in the way of wind and
weather? We trust it will be severe. As summer set in with his usual
severity, Winter must not be behindhand with him; but after an
occasional week's rain of a commendably boisterous character, must come
out in full fig of frost. He has two suits which we greatly admire,
combining the splendour of a court-dress with the strength of a work-day
garb--we mean his garments of black and his garments of white frost. He
looks best in the former, we think, on to about Christmas--and the
latter become the old gentleman well from that festival season, on to
about the day sacred to a class of persons who will never read our
Recreations.

Of all the months of the year, November--in our climate--whether in town
or country, bears the worst character. He is almost universally thought
to be a sour, sulky, sullen, savage, dim, dull, dark, disconsolate, yet
designing month--in fewer words, a month scarcely fit to live. Abhorring
all personalities, we repent having sometimes given in to this national
abuse of November. We know him well--and though we admit at once that he
is no beauty, and that his manners are at the best bluff, at the worst
repulsive, yet on those who choose to cultivate his acquaintance, his
character continues so to mellow and ameliorate itself, that they come
at last, if not to love, to like him, and even to prefer his company "in
the season of the year," to that of other more brilliant visitors. So
true is it with months and men, that it requires only to know the most
unpleasant of them, and to see them during a favourable phasis, in order
to regard them with that Christian complacency which a good heart sheds
over all its habits. 'Tis unlucky for November--poor fellow!--that he
follows October. October is a month so much admired by the world, that
we often wonder he has not been spoiled. "What a glorious October!"
"Why, you will surely not leave us till October comes!" "October is the
month of all months--and, till you see him, you have not seen the
Lakes." We acknowledge his claims. He is often truly delightful; but,
like other brilliant persons, thinks himself not only privileged to be
at times extremely dull, but his intensest stupidity is panegyrised as
wit of the first water--while his not unfrequent rudeness, of which many
a common month would be ashamed, passes for the ease of high birth or
the eccentricity of genius. A very different feeling indeed exists
towards unfortunate November. The moment he shows his face, all other
faces are glum. We defy month or man, under such a trial, to make
himself even tolerably agreeable. He feels that he is no favourite, and
that a most sinister misinterpretation will be put on all his motions,
manners, thoughts, words, and deeds. A man or a month so circumstanced
is much to be pitied. Think, look, speak, act as he will--yea, even more
like an angel than a man or a month--every eyebrow arches--every nostril
distends--every lip curls towards him in contempt, while blow over the
ice that enchains all his feelings and faculties, heavy-chill
whisperings of "who is that disagreeable fellow?" In such a frozen
atmosphere, eloquence would be congealed on the lips of an
Ulysses--Poetry prosified on those of an Apollo.

Edinburgh, during the dead of Summer, is a far more solitary place than
Glenetive, Glenevis, or Glenco. There is not, however, so much danger of
being lost in it as in the Moor of Rannoch--for streets and squares,
though then utterly tenantless, are useful as landmarks to the pilgrim
passing through what seems to be

"A still forsaken City of the Dead!"

But, like a frost-bound river suddenly dissolved by a strong thaw, and
coming down in spate from the mountains to the low lands, about the
beginning of November life annually re-overflows our metropolis, with a
noise like "the rushing of many chariots." The streets, that for months
had been like the stony channels of dried-up streams--only not quite so
well paved--are again all a-murmur, and people addicted to the study of
political economy begin to hold

"Each strange tale devoutly true"

in the Malthusian theory of population. What swarms keep hovering round
the great Northern Hive! Add eke after eke to the skep, and still seems
it too small to contain all the insects. Edinburgh is almost as large as
London. Nay, don't stare! We speak comparatively; and as England is
somewhere about six times more populous than Scotland, you may, by
brushing up your arithmetic, and applying to the Census, discover that
we are not so far wrong in our apparent paradox.

Were November in himself a far more wearifu' month than he is, Edinburgh
would nevertheless be gladsome in the midst of all his gloom, even as a
wood in May with the Gathering of the Clans. The country flows into the
town--all its life seems to do so--and to leave nothing behind but the
bare trees and hedges. Equipages again go glittering along all the
streets, squares, circuses, and crescents; and one might think that the
entire "nation of ladies and gentlemen"--for King George the Fourth, we
presume, meant to include the sex in his compliment--were moving through
their metropolis. Amusement and business walk hand-in-hand--you hardly
know, from their cheerful countenances, which is which; for the Scots,
though a high-cheeked, are not an ill-favoured folk in their
features--and though their mouths are somewhat of the widest, their
teeth are white as well as sharp, and on the opening of their ruddy
lips, their ivory-cases are still further brightened by hearty smiles.
'Twould be false to say that their figures are distinguished by an air
of fashion--for we have no court, and our nobles are almost all
absentees. But though, in one sense, the men are ugly customers, as they
will find

"Who chance to tread upon their freeborn toe,"

yet, literally, they are a comely crew, and if formed into battalions in
marching order, would make the National Guard in Paris look like

"That small infantry
Warr'd on by cranes."

Our females have figures that can thaw any frost; and 'tis universally
allowed that they walk well, though their style of pedestrianism does
not so readily recall to the imagination Virgil's picture of Camilla
flying along the heads of corn without touching their ears, as the
images of paviers with post-looking mallets driving down dislodged
stones into the streets. Intermingling with the lighter and more elastic
footsteps of your Southron dames, the ongoings of our native virgins
produce a pleasant variety of motion in the forenoon melee that along
the Street of Princes now goes nodding in the sun-glint.

"Amid the general dance and minstrelsy"

who would wear a long face, unless it were in sympathy with his length
of ears? A din of multitudinous joy hums in the air; you cannot see the
city for the houses, its inhabitants for the people; and as for finding
one particular acquaintance in the crowd, why, to use an elegant simile,
you might as well go search for a needle in a bottle of hay.

But hark! a hollow sound, distant, and as yet referred to no distinct
place--then a faint mixture of a clear chime that is almost music--now a
tune--and at last, rousing the massy multitude to enthusiasm, a military
march, swelling various, profound, and high, with drum, trombone,
serpent, trump, clarionet, fife, flute, and cymbal, bringing slowly on
(is it the measured tramp of the feet of men, or the confused trampling
of horses?) banners floating over the procession, above the glitter of
steel, and the golden glow of helmets. 'Tis a regiment of
cavalry--hurra! the Carbineers! What an Advanced Guard!

"There England sends her men, of men the chief,"

still, staid, bold, bronzed faces, with keen eyes, looking straight
forward from between sabres; while beneath the equable but haughty
motion of their steeds, almost disciplined as their riders, with long
black horse-hair flowing in martial majesty, nod their high Roman
casques. The sweet storm of music has been passing by while we were
gazing, and is now somewhat deadened by the retiring distance and by
that mass of buildings (how the windows are alive, and agaze with
faces!) while troop after troop comes on, still moving, it is felt by
all, to the motion of the warlike tune, though now across the Waterloo
Bridge sounding like an echo, till the glorious war-pageant is all gone
by, and the dull day is deadened down again into the stillness and
silence of an ignoble peace.

"Now all the youth of Scotland are on fire!"

All her cities and towns are rejoicing in the welcome Winter; and mind,
invigorated by holidays, is now at work, like a giant refreshed, in all
professions. The busy bar growls, grumphs, squeaks, like an old sow with
a litter of pigs pretending to be quarrelling about straws. Enter the
Outer or the Inner House, and you hear eloquence that would have put
Cicero to the blush, and reduced Demosthenes to his original stutter.
The wigs of the Judges seem to have been growing during the long
vacation, and to have expanded into an ampler wisdom. Seldom have we
seen a more solemn set of men. Every one looks more _gash_ than another,
and those three in the centre seem to us the embodied spirits of Law,
Equity, and Justice. What can be the meaning of all this endless
litigation? On what immutable principles in human nature depends the
prosperity of the Fee-fund? Life is strife. Inestimable the blessing of
the great institution of Property! For without it, how could people go
together by the ears, as if they would tear one another to pieces? All
the strong, we must not call them bad passions, denied their natural
element, would find out some channels to run in, far more destructive to
the commonweal than lawsuits, and the people would be reduced to the
lowest ebb of misery, and raised to the highest flow of crime. Our
Parliament House here is a vast safety-valve for the escape of the foul
steam that would otherwise explode and shatter the engine of the State,
blowing the body and members of society to smash. As it is, how the
engine works! There it goes! like Erickson's Novelty or Stephenson's
Rocket along a railroad; and though an accident may occur now and then,
such as an occasional passenger chucked by some uncalculated collision
into the distant horizon, to be picked up whole, or in fragments, by the
hoers in some turnip-field in the adjacent county, yet few or none are
likely to be fatal on a great scale; and on goes the Novelty or Rocket,
like a thought, with many weighty considerations after it, in the shape
of waggons of Christians or cottons, while Manufactures and Commerce
exult in the cause of Liberty and Locomotion all over the world.

But to us utter idlesse is perfect bliss. And why? Because, like a lull
at sea, or _lown_ on land, it is felt to descend from Heaven on man's
toilsome lot. The lull and the lown, what are they when most profound,
but the transient cessation of the restlessness of winds and waters--a
change wrought for an hour of peace in the heart of the hurricane!
Therefore the sailor enjoys it on the green wave--the shepherd on the
greensward; while the memory of mists and storms deepens the
enchantment. Even so, Idlesse can be enjoyed but by those who are
permitted to indulge it, while enduring the labours of an active or a
contemplative life. To use another, and a still livelier image--see the
pedlar toiling along the dusty road, with an enormous pack, on his
excursion; and when off his aching shoulders slowly falls back on the
bank the loosened load, in blessed relief think ye not that he enjoys,
like a very poet, the beauty of the butterflies that, wavering through
the air, settle down on the wildflowers around him that embroider the
wayside! Yet our pedlar is not so much either of an entomologist or a
botanist as not to take out his scrip, and eat his bread and cheese with
a mute prayer and a munching appetite--not idle, it must be confessed,
in that sense--but in every other idle even as the shadow of the
sycamore, beneath which, with his eyes half-open--for by hypothesis he
is a Scotsman--he finally sinks into a wakeful, but quiet half-sleep.
"Hallo! why are you sleeping there, you _idle_ fellow?" bawls some
beadle, or some overseer, or some magistrate, or perhaps merely one of
those private persons who, out of season and in season, are constantly
sending the sluggard to the ant to learn wisdom--though the ant, Heaven
bless her! at proper times sleeps as sound as a sick-nurse.

We are now the idlest, because once were we the most industrious of men.
Up to the time that we engaged to take an occasional glance over the
self-growing sheets of The Periodical, we were tied to one of the oars
that move along the great vessel of life; and we believe that it was
allowed by all the best watermen, that

"We feather'd our oars with skill and dexterity."

But ever since we became an Editor, our repose, bodily and mental, has
been like that of a Hindoo god. Often do we sit whole winter nights,
leaning back on our chair, more like the image of a man than a man
himself, with shut eyes, that keep seeing in succession all the things
that ever happened to us, and all the persons that we ever loved, hated,
or despised, embraced, beat, or insulted, since we were a little boy.
They too have all an image-like appearance, and 'tis wondrous strange
how silent they all are, actors and actresses on the stage of that
revived drama, which sometimes seems to be a genteel comedy, and
sometimes a broad farce, and then to undergo dreadful transfiguration
into a tragedy deep as death.

We presume that the Public read in her own papers--we cannot be but hurt
that no account of it has appeared in the "Court Journal"--that on
Thursday the 12th current, No. 99 Moray Place was illuminated by our
annual Soiree, Conversazione, Rout, Ball, and Supper. A Ball! yes--for
Christopher North, acting in the spirit of his favourite James
Thomson,--

"No purpose gay,
Amusement, dance, or song he sternly scorns;
For happiness and true philosophy
Are of the social, still, and smiling kind."

All the rooms in the house were thrown open, except the cellars and the
Sanctum. To the people congregated outside, the building, we have been
assured, had all the brilliancy of the Bude Light. It was like a palace
of light, of which the framework or skeleton was of white unveined
marble. So strong was the reflection on the nocturnal heavens, that a
rumour ran through the City that there was a great fire in Moray Place,
nor did it subside till after the arrival and departure of several
engines. The alarm of some huge conflagration prevailed during most part
of the night all over the kingdom of Fife; while, in the Lothians, our
illumination was much admired as an uncommonly fine specimen of the
Aurora Borealis.

"From the arch'd roof,
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed
With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light
As from a sky. The hasty multitude
Admiring enter'd."

We need not say who received the company, and with what grace SHE did
so, standing at the first landing-place of the great staircase in sable
stole; for the widow's weeds have not _yet_ been doffed for the robes of
saffron--with a Queen-Mary cap pointed in the front of her serene and
ample forehead, and, to please us, a few pearls sprinkled among her
hair, still an unfaded auburn, and on her bosom one star-bright diamond.
Had the old General himself come to life again, and beheld her then and
there, he could not have been offended with such simple ornaments. The
weeds he would have felt due to him, and all that his memory was fairly
entitled to; but the flowers--to speak figuratively--he would have
cheerfully acknowledged were due to us, and that they well became both
face and figure of his lovely relict. As she moved from one room to
another, showering around her serene smiles, we felt the dignity of
those Virgilian words,

"Incedit Regina."

Surely there is something very poetical in the gradual flowing in of the
tide of grace, elegance, and beauty, over the floors of a suite of
regal-looking rooms, splendidly illuminated. Each party as it comes on
has its own peculiar picturesqueness, and affects the heart or
imagination by some novel charm, gently gliding onward a little while by
itself, as if not unconscious of its own attractions, nor unproud of the
gaze of perhaps critical admiration that attends its progressive
movement. We confess ourselves partial to plumes of feathers above the
radiant braidings of the silken tresses on the heads of virgins and
matrons--provided they be not "dumpy women"--tall, white, blue, and pink
plumes, silent in their wavings as gossamer, and as finely delicate,
stirred up by your very breath as you bend down to salute their
cheeks--not with kisses--for they would be out of order both of time and
place--but with words almost as tender as kisses, and awakening almost
as tender a return--a few sweet syllables breathed in a silver voice,
with blushing cheeks, and downcast eyes that, when again uplifted, are
seen to be from heaven.

A long hour ago, and all the mansion was empty and motionless--with us
two alone sitting by each other's side affectionately and respectfully
on a sofa. Now it is filled with life, and heard you ever such a happy
murmur? Yet no one in particular looks as if he or she were speaking
much above breath, so gentle is true refinement, like a delightful
fragrance

"From the calm manners quietly exhaled."

Oh! the atrocious wickedness of a great, big, hearty, huge, hulking,
horse-laugh, in an assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, gathered
gracefully together to enjoy the courtesies, the amenities, the
urbanities, and the humanities of cultivated Christian life! The pagan
who perpetrates it should be burnt alive--not at a slow fire--though
that would be but justice--but at a quick one--that all remnants of him
and his enormity may be instantly extinguished. Lord Chesterfield has
been loudly laughed at with leathern lungs for his anathema against
laughter. But though often wrong, there his lordship was right, and for
that one single rule of manners he deserves a monument, as having been
one of the benefactors of his species. Let smiles mantle--and that
sweet, soft, low sound be heard, the _susurrus_. Let there be a
many-voiced quiet music, like that of the summer moonlight sea when the
stars are in its breast. But laughter--loud peals of laughter--are like
breakers--blind breakers on a blind coast, where no verdure grows except
that of tangle, and whatever is made into that vulgarist of all
commodities, kelp.

'Tis not a literary conversazione, mind ye, gentle reader; for we leave
that to S. T. Coleridge, the Monarch of the Monologue. But all
speak--talk--whisper--or smile, of all the speakable, talkable,
whisperable, and smileable little interesting affairs, incidents, and
occurrences, real or fabulous, of public, private, demi-public, or
demi-semi-private life. Topics are as plentiful as snow-flakes, and melt
away as fast in the stream of social pleasure,

"A moment white, then gone for ever!"

Not a little scandal--much gossip, we daresay; but as for scandal, it
is the vulgarest error in the world to think that it either means, or
does any harm to any mortal. It does infinite good. It ventilates the
atmosphere, and prevents the "golden-fretted vault" from becoming "a
foul congregation of vapours." As for gossip, what other vindication
does it need, than an order for you to look at a soiree of swallows in
September on a slate-roof, the most innocent and white-breasted
creatures that pay

"Their annual visits round the globe,
Companions of the sun,"

but such gossipers that the whole air is a-twitter with their talk about
their neighbours' nest--when--whew! off and away they go, winnowing
their way westwards, through the setting sunlight, and all in perfect
amity with themselves and their kind, while

"The world is all before them, where to choose,
And Providence their guide."

And, madam, you do not matronise--and, sir, you do not
patronise--_waltzing_? 'Tis very O fie-fieish, you think--and in danger
of becoming very, very faux-papa-ish!

"Oh! the great goodness of the knights of old,"

whose mind-motto was still--

"_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_"

Judging by ourselves, 'tis a wicked world we unwillingly confess; but be
not terrified at trifles, we beseech you, and be not gross in your
censure of innocent and delicate delights. Byron's exquisitely sensitive
modesty was shocked by the sight of waltzing, which he would not have
suffered the Guiccioli, while she was in his keeping, to have indulged
in even with her own husband. Thus it is that sinners see sin only where
it is not--and shut their eyes to it when it comes upon them open-armed,
bare-bosomed, and brazen-faced, and clutches them in a grasp more like
the hug of a bear than the embrace of a woman. Away with such mawkish
modesty and mouthing morality--for 'tis the slang of the hypocrite.
Waltzing does our old eyes good to look on it, when the whole Circling
Flight goes gracefully and airily on its orbit, and we think we see the
realisation of that picture (we are sad misquoters) when the Hours--

"Knit by the Graces and the Loves in dance,
Lead on the eternal spring!"

But the Circling Flight breaks into airy fragments, the Instrumental
Band is hushed, and so is the whole central Drawing-room; for,
blushingly obedient to the old man's beck, THE STAR OF EVE--so call we
her who is our heart's-ease and heart's-delight--the granddaughter of
one whom hopelessly we loved in youth, yet with no unreturned
passion--but

"The course of true love never yet ran smooth"--

comes glidingly to our side, and having heard our wish breathed
whisperingly into her ear--a rare feature when small, thin, and delicate
as a leaf--just as glidingly she goes, in stature that is almost
stateliness, towards her Harp, and assuming at once a posture that would
have charmed Canova, after a few prelusive touches that betray the hand
of a mistress in the divine art, to the enchantment of the white motions
of those graceful arms and fingers fine, awakes a spirit in the strings
accordant to the spirit in that voice worthy to have blended with St
Cecilia's in her hymning orisons. A Hebrew melody! And now your heart
feels the utter mournfulness of these words,

"By Babel's streams we sat and wept!"

How sudden, yet how unviolent, the transitions among all our feelings!
Under no other power so swift and so soft as that of Music. The soul
that sincerely loves Music, offers at no time the slightest resistance
to her sway, but yields itself up entirely to all its moods and
measures, led captive by each successive strain through the whole
mysterious world of modulated air. Not a smile over all that hush.
Entranced in listening, they are all still as images. A sigh--almost a
sob--is heard, and there is shedding of tears. The sweet singer's self
seems as if she felt all alone at some solitary shrine--

"Her face, oh! call it fair, not pale!"

Yet pale now it is, as if her heart almost died within her at the
pathos of her own beautiful lament in a foreign land, and lovelier in
her captivity never was the fairest of the daughters of Zion!

How it howls! That was a very avalanche. The snow-winds preach charity
to all who have roofs overhead--towards the houseless and them who
huddle round hearths where the fire is dying or dead. Those blankets
must have been a God-send indeed to not a few families, and your plan is
preferable to a Fancy-Fair. Yet that is good too--nor do we find fault
with them who dance for the Destitute. We sanction amusements that give
relief to misery--and the wealthy may waltz unblamed for behoof of the
poor.

Again, what a howling in the chimney! What a blattering on the windows,
and what a cannonading on the battlements! What can the night be about?
and what has put old Nox into such a most outrageous passion? He has
driven our Winter Rhapsody clean out of our noddle--and to-morrow we
must be sending for the slater, the plumber, and the glazier. To go to
bed in such a hurly-burly, would be to make an Ultra-Toryish
acknowledgment, not only of the divine right, but of the divine power of
King Morpheus. But an Ultra-Tory we are not--though Ultra-Trimmers try
to impose upon themselves that fiction among a thousand others; so we
shall smoke a cigar, and let sleep go to the dogs, the deuce, the devil,
and the Chartists.




STROLL TO GRASSMERE.

FIRST SAUNTER.


Companion of the Crutch! hast thou been a loving observer of the weather
of our island-clime? We do not mean to ask if you have from youth been
in the daily practice of rising from your study-chair at regular
intervals, and ascertaining the precise point of Mercury's elevation on
the barometrical scale. The idea of trusting, throughout all the
fluctuations of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in which we
live, to quicksilver, is indeed preposterous; and we have long noticed
that meteorologists make an early figure in our obituaries. Seeing the
head of the god above the mark "fair," or "settled," out they march in
thins, without great-coat or umbrella, when such a thunder-plump falls
down in a deluge, that, returning home by water and steam, they take to
bed, and on the ninth day fever hurries them off, victims to their
confidence in that treacherous tube. But we mean to ask have you an eye,
an ear, and a sixth sense, anonymous and instinctive, for all the
prognosticating sights and sounds, and motions and shapes, of nature?
Have you studied, in silence and solitude, the low, strange, and
spirit-like whisperings, that often, when bird and bee are mute, come
and go, here and there, now from crag, now from coppice, and now from
moor, all over the sultry stillness of the clouded landscape? Have you
listened among mountains to the voice of streams, till you heard them
prophesying change? Have you so mastered the occult science of mists, as
that you can foretell each proud or fair Emergency, and the hour when
grove, precipice, or plain, shall in sudden revelation be clothed with
the pomp of sunshine? Are all Bewick's birds, and beasts, and fishes
visible to your eyes in the woods, wastes, and waves of the clouds? And
know ye what aerial condor, dragon, and whale, respectively portend? Are
the Fata Morgana as familiar to you as the Aberdeen Almanac? When a
mile-square hover of crows darkens air and earth, or settling loads
every tree with sable fruitage, are you your own augur, equally as when
one raven lifts up his hoary blackness from a stone, and sails sullenly
off with a croak, that gets fiercer and more savage in the lofty
distance? Does the leaf of the forest twinkle futurity? the lonely
lichen brighten or pale its lustre with change? Does not the gift of
prophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? The
prescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms when
the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty
for wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, is
beginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in the
blue of a midsummer's meridian day?

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