by Jason Jones.
Originally published in The Argosy (Strahan & Co.) vol.1 #1 (Dec 1865).
De Quincey, in his paper On War, tells a ridiculous story of a man who tried to "pass round" a nuisance. There was a heap of rubbish in his garden. Not knowing that his neighbour was in his garden just on the other side, No. 1 flung the rubbish over the wall to No. 2. Then No. 2 protested. But No. 1 insisted that he should pass it on to No. 3. No. 2 refused. So here, says De Quincey, was a casus belli at once.
Just now a gas explosion has taken place at Nine Elms, and some of the newspapers are insisting that the gas people must take their works out of town. Thus bone-boilers and vitriol-makers must go out of town, we all know. Then, we all of us go out of town for pure air. Just so, we send the sewage to Barking Creek, and then go down the river for a blow. When I was a very young turtle indeed, the cemetery clamour was at its height. "Take your corpses out of town," said the city folks; "we won't have your sulphuretted hydrogen here!" Companies took up the cry, and the cemeteries were made. I used to wonder very much about these things. By and by, it was evident the town would catch up with the cemeteries; and what was the next thing to be done? I have lived to hear this asked, and have not lived long either. What is Highgate cemetery but a monster church-yard out at Highgate?
The cemetery business can hardly be the solution of our difficulty about the dead. Shifts turning on remoteness never serve us. Western Australia grumbles at receiving our convicts at last: and we are always getting into little difficulties about "passing on" our nuisances. One curious point is how the complaints and alarms occasionally die out. There is a street which I sometimes pass through, and never without hearing something which reminds me that there is a madhouse on one side of it. Yet the neighbourhood is quite full of houses. When the small-pox hospital was removed from Battle-bridge, (King's Cross), to the Liverpool-road, Islington, there was a terrible hue-and-cry among the Islingtonians about it ; but the population in the neighbourhood of Cloudesley-square has certainly not thinned,—though people delicate in mind and body complain of the occasional accidents of the proximity of a fever hospital.
People will fall ill, and there must be hospitals. People will die, and they must be buried, (or burned, or something). People will be born, and they must live near each other, and carbonize the air. I cannot help the suspicion that we have got only half the truth on these matters. Nobody wants to swallow poison, in poisonous quantity, but that the ordinary accidents of existence must have injurious consequences to ordinary health may be doubted, It is not good for human beings to be too close to each other; but it is not good to be too far off. You will never persuade Stephen that he is any the worse for leaning with his cheek on Chloe's, and his arm round her waist, let chemistry and physiology say what they like. Superstitious old women tell me that a room is never properly warmed for habitation until it has had somebody in it for a time. "My good soul," I say, "that is a bull—all it comes to is, that a room is never fit for habitation until it has been inhabited!" "Then, sir," says my old woman, "people didn't ought to go out of rooms! What was houses made for if it isn't to live in?"
The other day, at about five o'clock p.m., I was in an omnibus which was a little over an hour in making its way from Cornhill, through Gracechurch-street, to London Bridge. That was a very long detention; but similar delays have often happened to me. The reasons we all know; and they have been a thousand times discussed. But there is no. reason why the notions, call them fancies, which have occurred to thousands of people for remedying our street inconveniences should not be kept alive by constant repetition until something is done. As thus: The heavy traffic ought to be carried on rails underground; it is absurd to have it crossing crowded thoroughfares, with the certainty that now and then a bridge will fall in, or a train leap over a parapet upon the foot passengers below. Again: streets might be crossed by light bridges at frequent intervals to facilitate crossing. Could not some enterprising tradesman take up this idea? Suppose he had a shop on each side of the street, could he not run an ornamental bridge from side to side? What an advertisement it would be to him!
The widening of the streets is obvious; but then, this is only passing things on. The houses must go somewhere; and the planetary space is limited. The globe is only twenty-four thousand miles round, remember! We must economise. But how, is the question. A section of London, from the summit of a railway-bridge to the lowest point underground to which the Londoner "subdues nature," will soon be an alarming spectacle. Imagine the course which an underground line has even now to take. Think of the manner in which the ground is honey-combed with drain-pipes, water-pipes, and gas-pipes. Think of the coming atmospheric lines. Can you escape a shuddering thrill of general blow-up-iness and collapse-and-smash-iness? I cannot. We pity people who live in volcanic and earthquaky countries. But what if civilization is coming to a similar complexion? What if London, when the population is, say five millions, and it is engineered all over, above, below, and in the middle, should explode? Electric agency will probably be more used then than it is now, and in ways not anticipated by the vulgar. Now conceive all London electrified; all the gasometers exploding; all the water-pipes bursting; all the plugs up, and the turnkeys gone mad or crushed; all the railway arches falling in, and all the trains smashing down among the omnibuses and cabs and people! What a catastrophe! The crash would be sure to climb up to Sydenham: the Crystal Palace itself must go, and what a noise all that glass would make, falling in! It would be like the smashing of a kitchen dresser to the falling of a house. "That won't happen in our time." Well, I don't know; that is your remark, not mine; but one thing wit happen in our time. The Victoria Tower will "settle" and fall down. That I do distinctly prophesy. I have watched that tower like a father; and it has most distinctly the physiognomy of an edifice that contemplates self-destruction. Do you laugh? Very well. Stone the prophetic man, do! You will build me a tomb some day; and the coming New Zealander, looking on London smashed, will moralise on the epitaph which records that I was the man who foretold the fall of the Victoria Tower.
By-the-bye, should you be surprised to hear that there are numbers of cabmen in London who do not know it? (I speak advisedly when I say numbers). "Drive to the Victoria Tower," I have said sometimes. Then the horse's head is turned the wrong way. "Hallo!" I exclaim, "where are you going to?" Says the cabman—"Through Billingsgate, ain't it, sir?"
After all the fuss that was made by the newspapers about the choice of Mr. Mill for Westminster, it is a little amusing to see how little account is taken of him in the estimates just now being made of the probable strength of the Liberal party for debating purposes in the House of Commons. If Mr. Fitzjames Stephen had been returned for Harwich, it would have been greater; but Mr. Mill is a real power for debating purposes. Some people professed to be surprised that he should be a good and ready speaker, with none of the faults which the House of Commons dislikes; but the surprise was idle. Mr. Mill's style has precisely the characteristics which indicate his other qualifications. He is prompt—almost too prompt—so overflowing is his mind; he is quiet; he is what people call unassuming; and, better still, the terror of his name will keep snobs in awe. When they are gathered in numbers, they do not mind "hunting" a moderately great celebrity; but Mr. Mill they will stand in awe of. When I say he is what people call unassuming, I mean that there is no obvious assumption about him. In plain fact, he has entire confidence in himself, and a sense of superiority which is not to be entirely hidden. But an acute man may do, inoffensively, a world of snubbing, if he is only quiet in manner.
This evening as I was comfortably sitting over the fire, with my Pall Mall Gazette (reading in fact that article of the 11th on Public Charities), comes a neat little letter, addressed in a female hand, with three neat little initials in the corner. It purports that my votes and interest are earnestly solicited for a lady, aged sixty,—whose father kept a highly respectable school, and was the author of "many useful works." One knows exactly what those works were like, and how very little their copyrights fetched! Now, as this lady has only four hundred and sixty-three votes, and wants about four thousand, it seems to me that somebody must invest a small fortune in stamps. Nor is this the worst of it; for my votes are already promised, to a lady equally deserving and doubtless equally unfortunate; for her friends represent that she has nothing certain but the interest of fifty pounds in a savings bank; which interest, subdivided, is somewhere about a penny per diem. Thus large sums are not merely spent but probably wasted in soliciting these votes; and I think a charity managed on this principle won't be long in becoming, what the Pall Mall Gazette wittily calls an Alpaca—"something between the decidedly good and the decidedly bad charities—the goats and the sheep." A plan which may in the future become a real curse, as it is now an awful nuisance.
For instance, suppose the subscribers to such charities increased in any sort of proportion to our population; and suppose postage ever got reduced to a halfpenny the half ounce! It seems to me that cases of softening of the brain might not unfrequently occur about the periods of the closing canvass, and the postman be delayed an hour in his rounds, as he is on St. Valentine's Day. Had not kind people, who set about to gather votes for these poor ladies, better calculate what the stamps and paper cost them at the six or eight successive polls for which it seems necessary to work, and reckon the same at compound interest. It really would amount to something considerable, and I think in many cases it would really be that "bird in the hand" familiarly said to be "worth two in the bush."
I was talking to-day to my poetical friend about humour. The fact is, he is rather fastidious, and cannot endure anything with a touch of coarseness; whereas there are some jokes (always supposing that they do not trench on the ground of morals) which I am quite willing to laugh at provided other people choose to make them. Of course some of us have a character to keep up for poetical genius, or for solid thought, or for this, that, or the other specialité; but I am not sorry that Artemus Ward freely throws into our minds certain ingredients in which their natural composition may be (mind I don't say are) wholly wanting. Fer instance, when he tells us that, during an attack of mountain fever at Salt Lake City, his nose became so sharp that he didn't dare stick it into other people's business for fear it would stay there, I recognise the delightful force and simplicity of the illustration; and what is more, I should not be at all sorry if various folks were deterred by the same pointed objection from prying into what does not concern them.
Rumpel Stiltskin, in the German story, being in a naughty passion, stamped his left leg so fast into the floor that it took both his hands to draw it out again (and that with much difficulty). It strikes me that it would be a charming retribution, for sticking noses into other people's affairs, if broken tips were the frequent result.
One whose bright and delicate genius is yet held in fond remembrance by all who came under its spell, once observed, apropos of plagiarism, "It is always easy to steal an idea or an American copyright." Now I was going to say that I could forgive the theft of Artemus Ward; but as I see that his travels among the Mormons are edited by Mr. Hingston, his companion and agent while "on the Rampage," one may suppose that Mr. Hotten, the publisher, has acted in this matter like "a London citizen of credit and renown." American humour has indeed such a peculiar flavour that one must needs import it. It can't be grown at home! Its roots were originally transplanted from the racy soil of our own counties—English, Irish, and Scotch; but these roots have pushed out vigorously in the virgin earth, and have assimilated elements for which our intellectual chemistry has as yet hardly a name. What, for instance, is the special quality of the irresistible absurdity of the anecdote of the rail-splitter, who could put up so many rails in a day that it took him two days to walk back to the place whence he started? Whence comes the exquisite flavour of the world-famous story of the coon who came meekly down on hearing the mere name of Colonel John Smith? And wherein, as compared with English humour, with "Hudibras," "Rejected
Addresses," or the "Needy Knife-Grinder," arise the brilliant repartees of that master of satiric verse, James Russell Lowel? The Biglow Papers are more or less known among us; but not many are acquainted with that wonderfully clever poem, published in his collected verse, upon the literary society of Boston, in which he describes Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and many others under assumed names.
Talking of Lowel's satiric poem reminds me of his charming lines on "Philothea," his name for a fair and famous American philanthropist (Mrs. Child). How must not she, if she be yet living, how must not all our noble-hearted friends in the North rue this terrible rebellion in Jamacia! Shade of Uncle Tom! Inspire the leaders of the Press with mercy; let them not point a moral nor adorn a tale with this unhappy event, before a thorough investigation of causes has fixed the blame in the right place. Other mobs have been bloodthirsty, and exceedingly civilized peoples have sent victims to the stake in shirts painted over with lively devils. The Septembrisenes were perfectly white in their skins before they had smeared themselves with the blood of Marie Thérèse de Lamballe; their hair was not woolly, and their physiognomy was that of thin-lipped Gaul. It strikes me that the man who put out little Prince Arthur's eyes with red-hot irons was probably a pure Saxon retainer; and he who threatened to boil Isaac of York over a slow fire was of the finest Norman blood. Whatever atrocities, then, these unhappy negroes have committed, let the sharp punishment of the law upon individuals whitewash the race at large; and let us remember that we too have done queer things in our time, and that in a tolerably impartial way. Two hundred or more years ago we went to Drogheda under Oliver Cromwell, and remarkable feats we did there. Wexford also underwent what a highly liberal and enlightened historian of modern days calls "the same barbarous fate." Our colonial wars have been none of the gentlest; and if we have not exactly smoked Arabs like hams in a chimney, we have been in times past utterly reckless of the native races. Why or wherefore these unhappy darkies have disgraced themselves and their cause before the eyes of all the world, we know not yet; perhaps some fancied grievance had long rankled in their hearts before they "hung up the fiddle and the bow," and took to villainous weapons and cruel outrage. Away with them to the gallows or the hulks if you will, O strict human justice! but forget not that the negro is still "a man and a brother."
Was there a deep half-conscious satire in the minds of the friends of poor Tom Sayers when they mounted the great brown dog in a mail-phaeton as chief mourner? Did they mean to say, in bitter burlesque, that the honest brute was better than the brutalized man? that he at least would behave like a gentleman, and look with wistful eyes over his crape collar, and indulge in his dumb heart in a longing for his old master, which gin-and-water would not quench? Mr. Gladstone's Greeks may have taught the world to reverence life; the reverence for death is wide as humanity itself. To lose this is to lose the last vestige of civilization. Yet out of the heart of London came a mob to follow their chosen champion to the grave, divested of this last remnant of humanity. "Like a mob at a Newgate hanging," that is bad enough—surging round the gallows like a sea of scum, foaming up mire and dirt; but to my thinking, this funeral-party was worse, for there was the absence of the miserable excitement of murderous passion. In cold blood and open day they trampled, with curses, over the graves, played at leap-frog with the tombs, hooted and yelled and whistled, and kicked the ornaments from the monuments. Has it ever occurred to any one, apropos of this Jamaica insurrection, what would be the state of things if such men and women were let loose on London?
Certainly the Undergraduates of Christchurch ought not to be advised to know on which side their bread is buttered. They have a fair right to require it should be well spread on both surfaces, considering the price they pay their butler! That functionary's ideas on the cost of provisions must be curiously inverted. He lives in the midst of war prices; eightpence for a threepenny loaf (we now quote Cambridge) is surely more than anything inflicted on us by Napoleon the First, dreadful ogre as he was. The College butler is a gigantic relic of Protection; for him Mr. Cobden has preached in vain. In the matter of beer, also, he has managed to brew a nice little storm. Is it possible that he is descended from Fo-Fe-Fum, and sits in the buttery singing that he smells the blood of Englishmen; that
Be they alive, or be they dead,
I'll grind their bones to make me bread.