Book: Blackwood\'s Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX.

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Meantime Jack was skipping up and down upon the tombstone, calling out
to his myrmidons--"Good friends! Sweet friends! Let me not stir your
spirits up to mutiny. Though that cairn of granite stones lies very
handy and inviting, I pray you refrain from it. Touch it not. I humbly
entreat my friend with the dirty shirt not to break the sconce of the
respectable gentleman whom I have in my eye, with that shillelah of
his--though I must admit that he is labouring under strong and just
provocation." "For mercy's sake, my dear sir!" he would exclaim to a
third--"don't push my respected friend the justice into yonder
puddle--the one which lies so convenient on your right hand there;
though, to be sure, the ground _is_ slippery, and the thing _might_
happen, in a manner without any one's being able to prevent it." And so
on he went, taking care to say nothing for which the justices could
afterwards venture to commit him to Bridewell; but, in truth, stirring
up the rabble to the utmost, by nods, looks, winks, and covert speeches,
intended to convey exactly the opposite meaning from what the words
bore.

At last by main force, and after a hard scuffle, the constables
contrived to force the schoolhouse door open, and so to make way for the
justices, the usher, and those of Jack's family who, as we have seen
already, had made up their minds to give the usher possession, to enter.
But having entered, the confusion and bedevilment was ten times worse
than even in the churchyard itself. The benches were lined with a pack
of overgrown rascals in corduroy vestments, and with leather at the
knees, from all the neighbouring villages; in a gallery at one end sat a
Scotch bagpiper, flanked by a blind fiddler, and an itinerant performer
on the hurdygurdy, accompanied by his monkey--who in the course of his
circuit through the village, had that morning received a special
retainer, in the shape of half a quartern of gin, for the occasion;
while in the usher's chair were ensconced two urchins of about fourteen
years of age, smoking tobacco, playing at all fours, and drinking purl,
with their legs diffused in a picturesque attitude along the
writing-desk. One of the justices tried to command silence--till the
Squire's commission to the usher should be read; but no sooner had he
opened his mouth than the whole multitude burst forth as if the
confusion of tongues had taken place for the first time; twenty spoke
together, ten whistled, as many more sang psalms and obscene songs
alternately; the bagpiper droned his worst; the fiddler uttered notes
that made the hair of those who heard them stand on end; while the
hurdygurdy man did his utmost to grind down both his companions, in
which task he was ably assisted by the grinning and chattering of the
honourable and four-footed gentleman on his left. Meantime stones,
tiles, and rafters, pewter pint-pots, fragments of slates, rulers, and
desks, were circulating through the schoolhouse in all directions, in
the most agreeable confusion.

One of the justices tried to speak, but even from the first it was all
dumb show; and scarcely had he proceeded through two sentences, when his
oration was extinguished as suddenly and by the same means as the
conflagration of the Royal Palace at Lilliput. After many attempts to
obtain a hearing, it became obvious that all chance of doing so in the
schoolhouse was at an end; and so the usher, the justices, and the rest,
adjourned to the next ale-house, where they had the usher's commission
quietly read over in presence of the landlord and the waiter, and handed
him over the keys of the house before the same witnesses; of all which,
and of their previous deforcement by a mob of rapscallions, they took
care to have an instrument regularly drawn out by a notary-public.
Thereafter they ordered a rump and dozen, being confident that as the
day was bitterly cold, and the snow some feet deep upon the ground, the
courage of the rioters would be cooled before they had finished dinner;
and so it was, for towards evening, the temperature having descended
considerably beneath the freezing point, the mob, who had now exhausted
their beer and gin, and who saw that there was no more fun to be
expected for the day, began to disperse each man to his home, so that
before nightfall the coast was clear; on which the justices, with the
_posse comitatus_, escorted the usher to the schoolhouse, opened the
door, put him formally in possession, and, wishing him much good of his
new appointment, departed.

But how did Jack, you will ask, bear this rebuff on the part of his own
kin? Why, very ill indeed; in truth, he became furious, and seemed to
have lost all natural feelings towards his own flesh and blood. He
summoned such of his family as had given admission to the usher before
him, called a sort of court-martial of the rest of his relations to
enquire into their conduct; and, notwithstanding the accused protested
that they had the highest respect and regard for Jack, were his humble
servants to command in all ordinary matters, and only acted in this
instance in obedience to the justices' warrant, (the which, if they had
disobeyed, they were certain to have been at that moment cooling their
heels in the stocks,) Jack, who was probably worked up to a kind of
frenzy by his more violent of his inmates, kicked them out of the room,
and sent a set of his myrmidons after them, with instructions to tear
their coats off their backs, strip them of their wigs and small-clothes,
and turn them into the street. Against this the unlucky wights appealed
to the justices for protection, who, to be sure, sent down some
policemen, who beat off the mob, and enabled them to make their doors
fast against Jack and his emissaries. But beyond that they could give
them little assistance; for though Jack and his abettors could not
actually venture upon a trespass by forcing their way within doors, they
contrived to render the very existence of all who were not of their way
of thinking miserable. If it was an usher who, in spite of all their
efforts to exclude him, had fairly got admittance into the schoolhouse,
they set up a sentry-box at his very door, in which a rival usher held
forth on Cocker and the alphabet; they drew off a few stray boys from
the village school, and this detachment, recruited and reinforced by all
the idlers of the neighbourhood, to whom mischief was sport, was
studiously instructed to keep up a perpetual whistling, hooting,
howling, hissing, and imitations of the crowing of a cock, so as to
render it impossible for the usher and boys within the school to hear or
profit by one word that was said. If the scholars within were told to
say A, the blackguards without were bellowing B; or if the usher asked
how many three times three made, the answer from the outside would be
"ten," or else that "it depended upon circumstances." Every week some
ribald and libellous paragraph would appear in the county newspaper,
headed "Advertisement," in such terms as the following:--"We have just
learned from the best authority, that the usher of a school not a
hundred miles off from Hogs-Norton, has lately been detected in various
acts of forgery, petty larceny, sedition, high treason, burglary, &c.
&c. If this report be not officially contradicted by the said usher
within a fortnight, by advertisement, duly inserted and paid for in this
newspaper, we shall hold the same to be true." Or sometimes more
mysteriously thus:--"Delicacy forbids us to allude to the shocking
reports which are current respecting the usher of Mullaglass. Christian
charity would lead us to hope they were unfounded, but Christian verity
compels us to state that we believe every word of them." And though Jack
and his editor sometimes overshot their mark, and got soused in damages
at the instance of those whom they had libelled, yet Jack, who found
that it answered his ends, persevered, and so kept the whole
neighbourhood in hot water.

You would not believe me were I to tell you of half the tyrannical and
preposterous pranks which he performed about this period; but some of
them I can't help noticing. He had picked up some subscriptions, for
instance, from charitable folks in the neighbourhood, to build a school
upon a remote corner of North Farm, where not a single boy had learned
his alphabet within the memory of man; and what, think ye, does he do
with the money, but insists on clapping down the new school exactly
opposite the old school in the village, merely to spite the poor usher,
against whom he had taken a dislike--though there was no more need to
build a school there than to ship a cargo of coals for Newcastle. Again,
having ascertained that one of his servants had been seen shaking hands
with some of Jack's family with whom he had quarrelled as above
mentioned, he refused to give him a character, though the poor fellow
was only thinking of taking service somewhere in the plantations.

Notwithstanding all Jack's efforts, however, it sometimes happened that
when an usher was appointed he could not get up a sufficient cabal
against him, and that even the schoolboys, knowing something of the man
before, had no objection to him. In such cases Jack resorted to various
schemes in order to cast the candidate upon his examinations. Sometimes
he would shut him up in a small closet, telling him he must answer a
hundred and fifty questions, in plane and spherical trigonometry, within
as many minutes, and that he would be allowed the assistance of
Johnson's Dictionary, and the _Gradus ad Parnassum_, for the purpose. At
other tines he would ask the candidate, with a bland smile, what was his
opinion of things in general, and of the dispute between him (Jack) and
the Squire in particular; and if that question was not answered to his
satisfaction, he remitted him to his studies. When no objection could be
made to the man's parts, Jack would say that he had scruples of
conscience, because he doubted whether his commission had been fairly
come by, or whether he had not bribed the Squire by a five-pound note to
obtain it. At last he did not even take the trouble of going through
this farce, but would at once, if he disliked the look of the man's
face, tell him he was busy at the moment;--that he might lay the
Squire's letter on the table, and call again that day six months for an
answer. He no longer pretended, in fact, to any fairness or justice in
his dealings; for though those who sided with him might be guilty of all
the offences in the calendar, Jack continued to wink so hard, and shut
his ears so close, as not to see or hear of them; while as to the
unhappy wights who differed from him, he had the eyes of Argus and the
ear of Dionysius, and the tender mercies of a Spanish inquisitor,
discovering _scandalum magnatum_ and high treason in ballads which they
had written twenty years before, and in which Jack, though he received a
presentation copy at the time, had never pretended, up to that moment,
to detect the least harm.

The last of these freaks which I shall here mention took place on this
wise. Jack had never been accustomed to invite any one to his assemblies
but the ushers who had been appointed by the Squire, and it was always
understood that they alone had a vote in all vestry matters. But when
John quarrelled with his family, as above mentioned, and a large part of
the oldest and most respectable of his relatives drew off from him, it
occurred to Jack that he could bring in a set of new auxiliaries, upon
whose vote he could count in all his family squabbles, or his deputes,
with Squire Bull; and the following was the device he fell upon for that
end.

Here and there upon North Farm, where the village schools were crowded,
little temporary schoolhouses had been run up, where one or two of the
monitors were accustomed to teach such of the children as could not be
accommodated in the larger school. But these assistants had always been
a little looked down upon, and had never been allowed a seat at Jack's
board. Now, however, he began to change his tone towards them, and to
court and flatter them on all occasions. One fine morning he suddenly
made his appearance on the village green, followed by some of his
hangers on, bearing a theodolite, chains, measuring rods, sextants,
compasses, and other instruments of land-surveying. Jack set up his
theodolite, took his observations, began noting measurements, and laying
down the bases of triangles in all directions, then, having summed up
his calculations with much gravity, gave directions to those about him
to line off with stakes and ropes the space which he pointed out to
them, and which in fact enclosed nearly half the village. In the course
of these operations, the usher, who had witnessed these mathematical
proceedings of Jack from the window, but could not comprehend what the
man would be at, sallied forth, and accosting Jack, asked him what he
meant by these strange lines of circumvallation. "Why," answered Jack,
"I have been thinking for some time past of relieving you of part of
your heavy duties, and dividing the parish-school between you and your
assistant; so in future you will confine yourself to the space outside
the ropes, and leave all within the inclosure to him." It was in vain
that the usher protested he was quite equal to the duty; that the boys
liked him, and disliked his assistant; that if the village was thus
divided, the assistant would be put upon a level with him, and have a
vote in the vestry, to which he had no more right than to a seat in the
House of Commons. Jack was not to be moved from his purpose, but gave
orders to have a similar apportionment made in most of the neighbouring
villages, and then inviting the assistants to a party at his house, he
had them sworn in as vestrymen, telling them, that in future they had
the same right to a seat at his board as the best of John's ushers had.
Here again, however, he found he had run his head against a wall, and
that he was not the mighty personage he took himself for; for, on a
complaint to the justices of the peace, a dozen special constables were
sent down, who tore up the posts, removed the ropes, and demolished all
Jack's inclosures in a trice.

These frequent defeats rendered Jack nearly frantic. He now began to
quarrel even with his best friends, not a few of whom, though they had
gone with him a certain length, now left his house, and told him plainly
they would never set foot in it again. He burst forth into loud
invectives against Martin, who had always been a good friend to his
penny subscriptions, and more than once had come to his assistance when
Jack was hard pressed by Hugh, a dissenting schoolmaster, between whom
and Jack there had long been a bloody feud. Jack now denounced Martin in
set terms; accused him of being in the pay of Peter, with whom he said
he had been holding secret conferences of late at the Cross-Keys; and of
setting the Squire's mind against him (Jack)--whereas poor Martin, till
provoked by Jack's abuse to defend himself, had never said an unkind
word against him. Finding, however, that, with all his efforts, he did
not make much way with the men, Jack directed his battery chiefly
against the women, who were easily caught by his sanctimonious air, and
knowing nothing earthly of the subject, took for gospel all that Jack
chose to tell them. He held love-feasts in his house up to a late hour,
at which he generally harangued on the subject of the persecutions which
he endured. He vowed the justices were all in a conspiracy against him;
that they were constantly intruding into his grounds, notwithstanding
his warnings that spring-guns were set in the premises; that on one
occasion a tall fellow of a sheriff's officer had made his way into his
house and served him with a writ of _fieri facias_ even in the midst of
one of his assemblies, a disgrace he never could get over; that he could
not walk ten yards in any direction, or saunter for an instant at the
corner of a street, without being ordered by a policeman to move on; in
short, that he lived in perpetual terror and anxiety--and all this
because he had done his best to save them and their children from the
awful scourge of deboshed and despotical ushers. At the conclusion of
these meetings he invariably handed round his hat, into which the silly
women dropped a good many shillings, which Jack assured them would be
applied for the public benefit, meaning thereby his own private
advantage.

Jack, however, with all his craze, was too knowing not to see that the
women, beyond advancing him a few shillings at a time, would do little
for his cause so far as any terms with Squire Bull was concerned; so,
with the view of making a last attack upon the Squire, and driving him
into terms, he began to look about for assistance among those with whom
he had previously been at loggerheads. It cost him some qualms before he
could so far abase his stomach as to do so; but at last he ventured to
address a long and pitiful letter to Hugh, in which he set forth all his
disputes with John, and dwelt much on his scruples of conscience; begged
him to forget old quarrels, and put down his name to a Round Robin,
which he was about to address to the Squire in his own behalf. To this
epistle Hugh answered as follows:--"Dearly beloved,--my bowels are
grieved for your condition, but I see only one cure for your scruples of
conscience. Strip off the Squire's livery, and give up your place, as I
did, and your peace of mind will be restored to you. In the mean time, I
do not see very well why I should help you to pocket the Squire's wages,
and do nothing for it. Yours, in the spirit of meekness and
forgiveness--HUGH." After this rebuff, Jack, you may easily believe, saw
there was little hope of assistance from that quarter.

As a last resource, he called a general meeting of his friends, at which
it was resolved to present the proposed Round Robin to John, signed by
as many names as they could muster; in which Jack, who seemed to be of
opinion that the more they asked the greater was their chance of getting
something at least, set forth the articles he wanted, and without which,
he told John, he could no longer remain in his house; but that he and
his relatives and friends would forthwith, if this petition was
rejected, walk out, to the infinite scandal of the neighbourhood,
leaving the Squire without a teacher or a writing-master within fifty
miles to supply their place. They demanded that the Squire should give
up the nomination of the ushers entirely, though in whose favour they
did not explain; and that Jack was in future to be a law unto himself,
and to be supreme in all matters of education, with power to himself to
define in what such matters consisted. On these requests being conceded,
they stated that they would continue to give their countenance to the
Squire as in times past; otherwise the whole party must quit possession
incontinently. Jack prevailed on a good many to sign this
document--though some did not like the idea of walking out, demurred,
and added after the word _incontinently_, "i.e. when convenient,"--and
thus signed, they put the Round Robin under a twopenny cover, and
dispatched it to "John Bull, Esquire"--with haste.

If they really thought the Squire was to be bullied into these terms by
this last sally, they found themselves consumedly mistaken; for after a
time down came a long and perfectly civil letter from the Squire's
secretary, telling them their demands were totally out of the question,
and that the Squire would see them at the antipodes sooner than comply
with them.

Did Jack then, you will ask, walk out as he had threatened, when he got
the Squire's answer? Not he. He now gave notice that he intended to
apply for an Act of Parliament on the subject: and that, in the
meantime, the matter might stand over. Meantime, and in case matters
should come to the worst, he is busily engaged begging all over the
country, for cash to erect a new wooden tenement for him, in the event
of his having to leave his old one of stone and lime. Some say even that
he has been seen laying down several pounds of gunpowder in the cellar
of his present house, and has been heard to boast of his intention to
blow up his successor when he takes possession; but for my own part, and
seeing how he has shuffled hitherto, I believe that he is no nearer
removing than he was a year ago. Indeed he has said confidentially to
several people, that even if his new house were all ready for him, he
could not, with his asthmatic tendency, think of entering it for a
twelvemonth or so, till the lath and plaster should be properly
seasoned. Of all this, however, we shall hear more anon.

* * * * *




PAUL DE KOCKNEYISMS.

BY A COCKNEY.


When any one thinks of French literature, there immediately rises before
him a horrid phantasmagoria of repulsive objects--murders, incests,
parricides, and every imaginable shape of crime that horror e'er
conceived or fancy feigned. He sees the whole efforts of a press,
brimful of power and talent, directed against every thing that has
hitherto been thought necessary to the safety of society, or the
happiness of domestic life--marriage deliberately written down, and
proved to be the cause of all the miseries of the social state: and
strange to say, in the crusade against matrimony, the sharpest swords
and strongest lances are wielded by women. Those women are received into
society--men's wives and daughters associate with them--and their books
are noticed in the public journals without any allusions to the
Association for the prevention of vice, but rather with the praises
which, in other times and countries, would have been bestowed on works
of genius and virtue. The taste of the English public has certainly
deteriorated within the last few years; and popularity, the surest index
of the public's likings, though not of the writer's deservings, has
attended works of which the great staple has been crime and
blackguardism. A certain rude power, a sort of unhealthy energy, has
enabled the writer to throw an interest round pickpockets and murderers;
and if this interest were legitimately produced, by the exhibition of
human passions modified by the circumstances of the actor--if it arose
from the development of one real, living, thinking, doing, and suffering
man's heart, we could only wonder at the author's choice of such a
subject, but we should be ready to acknowledge that he had widened our
sphere of knowledge--and made us feel, as we all do, without taking the
same credit for it to ourselves that the old blockhead in France does,
that being human, we have sympathies with all, even the lowest and
wickedest of our kind. But the interest those works excite arises from
no such legitimate source--not from the development of our common
nature, but from the creation of a new one--from startling contrasts,
not of two characters but of one--tenderness, generosity in one page;
fierceness and murder in the next. But though our English _tastes_ are
so far deteriorated as to tolerate, or even to admire, the records of
cruelty and sin now proceeding every day from the press--our English
_morals_ would recoil with horror from the deliberate wickedness which
forms the great attraction of the French modern school of romance. The
very subjects chosen for their novels, by the most popular of their
female writers, shows a state of feeling in the authors more dreadful to
contemplate than the mere coarse raw-head-and-bloody-bones descriptions
of our chroniclers of Newgate. A married woman, the heroine--high in
rank, splendid in intellect, radiant in beauty--has for the hero a
villain escaped from the hulks. There is no record of his crimes--we are
not called upon to follow him in his depredations, or see him cut
throats in the scientific fashion of some of our indigenous rascals. He
is the philosopher,--the instructor--the guide. The object of _his_
introduction is to show the iniquity of human laws--the object of _her_
introduction is to show the absurdity of the institution of marriage.
This would never be tolerated in England. Again, a married woman is
presented to us--for the sympathy which with us attends a young couple
to the church-door, only begins in France after they have left it: as a
child she has been betrothed to a person of her own rank--at five or six
incurable idiocy takes possession of her proposed husband--but when she
is eighteen the marriage takes place--the husband is a mere child still;
for his intellect has continued stationary though his body has reached
maturity--a more revolting picture was never presented than that of the
condition of the idiot's wife--her horror of her husband--and of course
her passion for another. The most interesting scenes between the lovers
are constantly interrupted by the hideous representative of matrimony,
the grinning husband, who rears his slavering countenance from behind
the sofa, and impresses his unfortunate wife with a sacred awe for the
holy obligations of marriage.

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