by George Augustus Sala (uncredited).
Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.8 #180 (03 Sep 1853).
Some years, ten or a dozen ago, during the Repeal agitation conducted by the late Mr. O'Connell, an outburst of retrospective patriotism and poesy took place in a ballad furnished with the title, "Who fears to speak of 'Ninety-eight?" It was first published in a newspaper, and referred, I suppose, to the unhappy rebellion which in that year desolated the fairest portion of Ireland; but I have never read it, nor, beyond its title, have I anything more to do with it here. It awakens no partisan feelings within me, and might as well be the song of The Boyne Water, or the Shan van Vaugh, Vinegar Hill, or Croppies lie down—intensely orange, or vividly green, for any effect it could have on my susceptibilities.
'Ninety-eight was not an annus mirabilis, although Nelson's great victory at Aboukir was won in its autumn. But every year was one of wonder then, and the age was one of marvels. Dynasties and thrones were being pounded up by the French armies like rotten bones in mortars. Wherever over the globe there were no wars, there were, at least, rumors of wars. And yet the world wagged, and the seasons came and went. There were as many wet and sunny days under republics as there had been under monarchies—in anarchy as in tranquillity. The months brought their same tribute of fruit, or flowers, or grain; and were the same months, though the calendar had been remodelled, and they were henceforth to be Fructidors, Thermidors, or Ventoses. And it was the same death that kings suffered on the scaffold and soldiers in the field that a poor shepherd or a servant maid suffers to-day, and that you and I may suffer to-morrow. Sleeves and hose may alter, but legs and arms remain the same. Hunger was hunger and thirst thirst in 'Ninety-eight as it is in 'Fifty-three.
The other day, rambling about, I stumbled upon an odd volume of an old Magazine for my favourite 'Ninety-eight. This was at a book-stall close to the Four Courts, Dublin; and I immediately became its possessor at the outlay of sevenpence sterling. The book-stall keeper, who was quite a Sir Charles Grandison of bibliopoles, politely offered to send my purchase home for me, but I took it to my habitat myself, and revelled in 'Ninety-eight half that night.
I found my Mag. to be in the hundred and third volume of its age, a very respectable antiquity even in 'Ninety-eight; and, had it lived to the present day, it would have been a very Methuselah among Mags; but the work went the way of all waste paper, I am afraid, years ago. I cannot pretend to give you any detailed description of its contents; for, as per title-page they included letters, debates, antiquity, philosophy, mechanics, husbandry, gardening, fifteen more subjects, and "other arts and sciences," besides "an impartial account of books in several languages," the "state of learning in Europe," and the "new theatrical entertainments" of 'Ninety-eight. And mark that my Mag was only a half-year's volume, from June to December. So I will say very little about philosophy or husbandry, the state of European learning, and the new theatrical entertainments of 'Ninety-eight, merely culling as I go on what seems to me curious, principally among the domestic occurrences of my year, and which may interest even those who have no peculiar solicitude concerning 'Ninety-eight.
First, I found a frontispiece elegantly engraved on copperplate, representing a wood or bosky thicket, in which reposed a lady in the costume of Queen Elizabeth, but much handsomer; behind her the poet Dante; by her side a lady in a Grecian costume, name unknown; and around her a lion, several sheep, and a rabbit. In the foreground a hideous dwarf in a fancy dress, whom I was uncertain whether to take for the fabulist Esop or the Polish Count Borulawski, was presenting a laurel wreath to a gentleman in a full bottomed wig, large cuffs, ruffles, shorts and buckles, who seemed very anxious to get the wreath indeed, and was incited thereto by the poet Horace; who egged him on with a large scroll, backed up by another gentleman, of whose person or dress nothing was visible but a very voluminous wig looming above his friend's shoulder, and was on that account perhaps intended as an allegory of Mr. Charles James Fox. On reference to my Mag. for an explication of this engraving, I was informed that it was emblematic of Summer, and some lines from the Seasons followed the information; but as I could not see what he of the wig and ruffle had to do with summer and Queen Elizabeth, I considered it and passed it over as a mystery of 'Ninety-eight, to be solved by future study and research.
Mrs. Muscadine writes to the editor during June, complaining of the mania for volunteering. She bewails the fact that her husband, and all the husbands of her acquaintance, have now the same squareness of the shoulders to the body and the front, their heels are all in a line, and their thumbs are all as far back as the seams of their trousers. She complains that her husband's affections are completely alienated from her by the rival charm of one Brown Bess, and that at prayer time he calls out "front rank, kneel!" for all of which she rates the Duke of York heartily, but good humouredly. I wonder whether the reembodiment of the Militia, or the recollections of Chobham will call forth any Mrs. Muscadines in 'Fifty-eight. Next I find a long biography of John Wilkes. Wilkes died in the year before. In addition to his biography, my Mag. has this month a notice of Dr. Farmer, the author of the Essay on the learning of Shakspeare, also deceased in 'Ninety-seven. In the House of Lords, on the twenty-eighth of March (my Mag. only reports it in June), the Bishop of Rochester attributes the numerous applications for divorces, which have recently taken place in their lordships' House, to the Jacobinical principles which had been inculcated from France. In the House of Commons, on the third of April, on a motion for leave to bring in a bill for the abolition of the slave trade at a period to be specified, which had been moved by Mr. Wilberforce, there are eighty-three ayes, and eighty-seven noes—majority for the middle passage, the barracoons, the bilboes, and the cartwhip, four.
April the twenty-fifth, in a social little committee of ways and means, Mr. Pitt moves for a trifle of twelve millions eight hundred and fifty-seven thousand pounds sterling for the army. He states, pleasantly, that he thought last Christmas that ten millions or so might have done; but that "into the particulars of that sum he will not now enter." Considerate, this, of the pilot that weathered the storm. To make things pleasant he claps on, in the same cosy little committee, the "additional tax upon salt," and the "additional duty upon tea," and the "tax on armorial bearings," "which," says Mr. Pitt, "rests upon a principle exceedingly different," which in truth it does.
Three-fourths of this month's number of my Mag. are occupied with a narrative of the events of the Irish rebellion, and of the battle of Vinegar Hill. They belong to history.
On May the third the Whig Club dine together at the Freemasons' Tavern, London, Mr. Fox in the chair. They are all very merry, and Mr. Fox gives the "Sovereignty of the People" (the Habeas Corpus Act has just been suspended). The Duke of Norfolk, on his health being drunk, sensibly observes, that "where the people have no rights, the nobility have no privileges worth enjoying;" and the Duke of Bedford in a neat speech intimates that the meeting is respectable. Mr. Erskine is rather glum; and when his health is drunk, coupled with "Trial by Jury," he contents himself with merely thanking the company, telling them that they know the reason why he is silent. Whereupon Mr. Sheridan (indefatigable in the pursuit of a joke under difficulties) gets up and proposes, "Our absent friend, the Habeas Corpus;" at which it needs no very retrospective effort of second sight to see the bumpers tossed off, and hear them jingled lustily by the Whig Club.
The suspension of "our absent friend" authorises, on the first of June, the arrest by Townsend, the Bow-street officer, of Mr. Agar, a barrister, Mr. Curran (the son of the Curran), Mr. Stewart, and the Hon. V.B. Lawless (now Lord Cloncurry, and still alive I think), all under the authority of the Duke of Portland's warrant on a charge of treasonable practices. Failing our "absent friend," justice, in the shape of Mr. Townsend, lays hold of Mr. Lawless's French valet and of his papers. Mr. Lawless was taken in St. Alban's Place, Pall Mall,—that peaceful, shady, tranquil little thoroughfare, hard by the Opera Arcade, the Patmos of half-pay officers. 'Tis as difficult for me to fancy an arrest for high treason in St. Alban's Place, as to picture the rotting skulls of Jacobites over Temple Bar; yet both have been almost within the memory of man.
On the seventh of June three persons named Reeves, Wilkinson, and Adams, are hanged in front of Newgate. All for forgery. My Mag, says that this was " the most awful example of justice ever witnessed." Doubtless; but the example, however awful, was not efficacious enough to prevent its repetition many many more times in 'Ninety-eight. On the eighth of June there is another awful example (though my Mag. does not say so) on Pennenden Heath, one O'Coigley being hanged for high treason, in carrying on an improper correspondence with the French.
The next day dies, in Newgate, Dublin, of his wounds, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, son of the Duke of Leinster. On the twenty-first of May a proclamation offering a thousand pounds reward for his capture had been issued. Through the treachery of a servant-girl the place of his retreat was made known. A Captain Ryan, Mr. Swan, a magistrate, and the well-known Major Sirr, went with three coaches and some soldiers, as privately as possible to the house of one Murphy, a feather-dresser, in Thomas-street. There they found Lord Edward lying on a bed, without his coat and shoes. He feigned, at first, to surrender; but a desperate struggle ensued, he being provided with a cut-and-thrust dagger. With this he gave Captain Ryan seven wounds between the collar and the waistband, and Swan the justice too. He was at last disabled by a pistol-shot from Major Sirr; overpowered, conducted to the castle, and thence to Newgate, where, as I have said, he died on the ninth of June. Captain Ryan died of his wounds two days before his prisoner. Major Sirr lived till within a short period of the present day. He was for many years one of the Dublin city magistrates, and sat in the Carriage Court to determine disputes and hear complaints against that eccentric race of beings, the Dublin car-drivers. He was of course cordially hated by all the cabbies. One Jehu, a most inveterate declarer of the thing which was not, on being remonstrated with by the usher of the Court for tergiversation (to use a mild word) retorted "Musha then! Cock him up with the truth! It's more than I ever told the likes of him!" Singularly enough Major Sirrs last moments were spent among his enemies. He was taken mortally ill while riding in an inside car, and was scarcely carried from it before he died: it was even currently reported that he did actually die in the vehicle. A short time after his death a car-driver was summonsed (or, as the carman calls it, "wrote by the polls") for stumping a brother whip, i.e. inveigling a fare away from him. "I wouldn't a minded his stumping me," said the complainant; "but didn't he call out, when the lady was getting into the kyar, that it was mine was the kyar that the black ould major died in? And one couldn't stand that yer honour!"
In the month of July my Mag. has great news from the Convict Settlement at Botany Bay. Not the least curious among these is the notification of the appointment of the notorious George Barrington the pickpocket to be a peace-officer or superintendent of convicts—with a grant of thirty acres of land, and a warrant of emancipation. Barrington had rendered considerable services to the executive during a mutiny on the passage out, and since his arrival in the colony had behaved himself to the entire satisfaction of the authorities. I believe he died a magistrate, in easy circumstances, and universally respected.
But the most noteworthy item in this Antipodean budget, is the account of the opening of a theatre at Sydney; the manager (Mr. John Sparrow), the actors and actresses and the majority of the audience being convicts. Of the men Green, and of the women Miss Davis, best deserved to be called actors. The first performance appropriately commenced with the "Fair Penitent," and on another occasion the "Revenge," and the "Hotel," were presented. The dresses were chiefly made by the company themselves; but some veteran costumes and properties from the York Theatre were among the best that made their appearance. The motto of these histrionic exiles was modest and well chosen, being "We cannot command, but will endeavour to deserve success." I suppose that it was on this occasion that the celebrated prologue, the production of Mr Barrington, was spoken, in which wore to be found the appropriate lines:—
"True patriots we, for be it understood
"We left our country for our country's good."
The authorities on licensing the undertaking gave the manager to understand that the slightest infraction of propriety would be visited by the banishment of the entire company to another settlement, there to work in chains. The coercive mastership of the revels is somewhat akin to the theatrical discipline in use in the Italian provinces under Austrian yoke, where refractory tenors are not unfrequently threatened with the bastinado by the military commandant, and prima donnas in the sulks are marched off to the guard-house between two files of Croat Grenadiers. The principal drawback to the prosperity of the Sydney theatricals seems, according to my Mag., to have been the system of accepting at the doors, in lieu of the price of admission, as much flour, beef, or rum, as the manager chose to consider an equivalent. It was feared that this would act like gambling, as an inducement to the convicts to rob; and more serious evil arose in the frequent losses of watches and money by the respectable portion of the audience during the performances, and in the advantage some of the worst of the fair penitents took of the absence of the inhabitants at the theatre to break into their houses, and rob them of their contents.
On the twenty-eighth of July my constant Mag. returns to the "Awful Examples." Two gentlemen, barristers and brothers, Henry and John Sheares, are hanged and decapitated in Dublin for high treason. At the last moment an urgent appeal was made to the Government for mercy, were it even to one of the brothers, and with an offer on their parts to make ample confessions; but the Government replied "That they had a full knowledge of everything that could come out in confession, and that the law must take its course." Which the law does.
July the twenty-first, William Whiley is flogged through the fleet at Portsmouth for mutiny on board Her Majesty's ship Pluto. On the same day, Brian, for the same mutiny on board the same ship, is hanged at the yard-arm.
July the twenty-third, McCann is tried for high treason in Dublin, as being the author of some treasonable papers found in the house of Mr. Oliver Bond. He is found guilty, sentenced to death, and hanged on the nineteenth of August. On the twenty-sixth, Michael William Byrne is also tried for the same offence, and the jury, after five minutes' consideration, find him guilty. He is impenitent, and exclaims, "with a warm accompaniment of action," that "he glories in the event of his trial." He is executed on the twenty-fifth of August. "Several other persons," adds my Mag. as if weary of particularising the examples, "have also been hanged for high treason during the present month."
On the thirty-first of July, the Blenheim, a whale ship, arrives at Hull from the Greenland seas. Passing Whitebooth Roads the Nonsuch and Redoubt men-of-war, guard-ships, fire several shot into her (as a species of welcome to England, home, and beauty, I presume), but without effect. Three boats are then manned and sent towards her, for the purpose of impressing the seamen of the Blenheim; but these opinionated mariners "agree to differ" from the men-of-war's men, and arming themselves with harpoons, Greenland knives, and spears, resolutely oppose their coming on board. The Nautilus sloop of war, having, by this time, joined the other two, also sends a boat, and fires more than thirty shot into her "with intent to bring her to," but without effect. A deadly struggle ensues; and the seamen of the whale ship fire a swivel, loaded with grapeshot, into the men-of-war's boat, and desperately wound two men and an officer; and at last their opponents row off. One of the wounded men dies in the hospital the next night, and the life of another is despaired of; whereupon, a coroner's jury sit on the body of the seaman deceased, and return a verdict of wilful murder against a person unknown. Meanwhile, the crew of the Blenheim have reached the shore and concealed themselves—none of them being wounded. I wonder, if any one of them had been killed, and the same coroner's jury had sat on the corpse, what would have been the verdict upon him. I must not omit to state that, the day after this abominable affray, warrants are issued for the apprehension of such of the Blenheim's crew as had been identified by the crews of the men-of-war boats. My Mag. does not state if they are captured or not; but our friend the Habeas Corpus being still absent, I am not without misgiving for them if they are arrested.
On the second of August an event takes place with which most readers of the annals of the stage must be familiar. Mr. John Palmer, a favourite actor, while enacting the part of the "Stranger" in the Liverpool theatre, drops down dead upon the stage. He is buried on the thirteenth, at Warton near Liverpool, and on his tombstone (with questionable taste) are engraven these awfully significant words—
"There is another and a better world!"
My Mag., to add to the vulgar horror of the catastrophe, states that these very words were the last he uttered on earth; but a reference to the text of the Stranger will show that the words in question are in the part of Mrs. Haller.
On the sixth of September, my Mag. chronicles the result of six informations heard before the magistrates at Bow Street, London, and laid by the Stamp Office against a Mr. Williams, for suffering, in his room in Old Round Court, Strand, sundry persons to read the Daily Advertiser, and other newspapers, for the consideration of one penny each. The offence being held to be clearly made out, Mr. Williams is convicted in the penalty of five pounds on each information; "which is certainly sufficient," sagely concludes my Mag., "to convince the proprietors of reading rooms that newspapers must not be among the number of the publications which they suffer to be read for hire, or, as they call it (my Mag. is ironical) admission money." From which it would appear likewise that even penny news-rooms have had their persecutions and their martyrs. Ludicrously and inconsistently enough my Mag. in thus pleasantly recording Mr. Williams' malpractices, does so in a "Historical Chronicle," clearly news, and taxable accordingly, but of which the Stamp Office does not take the slightest notice.
On September eleventh, at six o'clock in the evening, the north-east bank of the New River bursts near Hornsey-house, and inundates a circuit of four miles of meadow land.
On the 17th September, Robert Ladbrook Troys is tried for forgery. Guilty. Death. On the same day John Collins is indicted at the instance of the Stamp Office for forging a plate to counterfeit the "two shilling hat stamps." The principal evidence against him is that of a Jew, Barnard Solomons, who acknowledges his having suffered about two years previously, three months' imprisonment for coining counterfeit halfpence. For the forgery of the " two shilling hat stamps" the verdict on John Collins is, Guilty. Death. The next day, the 18th, twenty-five men are tried on board the ship Gladiator, at Portsmouth, for mutiny. Nineteen are found Guilty. Death, Thirteen are executed; two are to have two hundred lashes; two one hundred, and one is acquitted. On the twentieth, Mr. Silvester, the common-serjeant at the Old Bailey, pronounces judgment (Death) upon ten men and four women. Twenty-six are to be transported, twenty-six imprisoned, and two whipped. And so from month to month 'Ninety-eight pursues the even tenor of its way. The "awful example" harvest is unvaryingly fruitful; but it would be wearisome to continue recording the statistics of each hemp crop.
Mr. Sabatier, impressed with the prevalence of poverty and crime in 'Ninety-eight, attempts to elucidate their causes. One great cause of poverty according to this gentle man is in "buying of unprofitable food." "Tea and bread and butter," he says, "is a very unprofitable breakfast for working people." Cheese and porter are still worse: "The former of these have very little nourishment, and the latter is costly." Unfortunately Mr. Sabatier does not point out the profitable food. A paramount cause of poverty is keeping a pig; "a pig, if it runs about, consumes time in looking after it; it frequently gets into the pound; and eats up the scraps of the family where there should be none; it occasions the boiling of victuals merely for the sake of the pot-liquor; and then this stunted, half-starved creature must be fattened." I wonder that in Mr. Sabatier's virtuous indignation against the pig, he did not add in aggravation of its crimes that it squeaks in infancy and grunts when grown up, and that in feeding, it puts its foot in the trough, quite ungenteelly. Giving children pence to buy tarts is, in Mr. Sabatier's eyes, a heinous ofience, and invariably productive of poverty. He clenches his argument by a moral piece on the downfall of the eldest son of a peer, who was reduced by improvidence (beginning with penny tarts) to the sad necessity of enlisting as a common soldier.
The causes of crime, Mr. Sabatier ascribes, among others, to fixing the same punishment to different crimes, the greater of which has a tendency to conceal the lesser: To impunity as in unconditional pardon, or in commuting death into transportation: To the confinement of prisoners before trial in idleness and bad company: To allowing legal passages for escape: To proscribing a man's character by visible dismemberment, such as public whipping, the pillory, or the stocks: To legalising, or rather not prohibiting pawn-brokers "and other receivers:" To permitting profligate characters to fill the religious ministry: To non-residence and neglect of incumbents: To permitting mendicity: To suffering seditionists to escape punishment: To allowing temptations to lie in the way of poor people, such as game and wood in forests: To the sale of spirituous liquors and lottery-tickets: To levying high duties on foreign commodities, and thereby encouraging smuggling. Among a variety of notions eminently germane to 'Ninety-eight Mr. Sabatier, as it will be seen, is in some respects many many years in advance of it.
So I lay by my Mag. for the present. Years hence perhaps our grandchildren may take up some exploded magazine for this present year; and, as they turn it cursorily over, wonder how such things, therein recorded, could ever have been. I sincerely trust, however, that little advanced as we may be, 'Fifty-three has not evinced any symptoms of retrogression towards 'Ninety-eight.