The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume I Part 39

DEAR SIR,

I read your account of this unfortunate Being, and his forlorn piece of self-history, with that smile of half-interest which the Annals of Insignificance excite, till I came to where he says "I was bound apprentice to Mr. William Bird, an eminent writer and Teacher of languages and Mathematics," &c.--when I started as one does on the recognition of an old acquaintance in a supposed stranger. This then was that Starkey of whom I have heard my Sister relate so many pleasant anecdotes; and whom, never having seen, I yet seem almost to remember.

For nearly fifty years she had lost all sight of him--and behold the gentle Usher of her youth, grown into an aged Beggar, dubbed with an opprobrious t.i.tle, to which he had no pretensions; an object, and a May game! To what base purposes may we not return! What may not have been the meek creature's sufferings--what his wanderings--before he finally settled down in the comparative comfort of an old Hospitaller of the Almonry of Newcastle? And is poor Starkey dead?----

I was a scholar of that "eminent writer" that he speaks of; but Starkey had quitted the school about a year before I came to it. Still the odour of his merits had left a fragrancy upon the recollection of the elder pupils. The school-room stands where it did, looking into a discoloured dingy garden in the pa.s.sage leading from Fetter Lane into Bartlett's Buildings. It is still a School, though the main prop, alas! has fallen so ingloriously; and bears a Latin inscription over the entrance in the Lane, which was unknown in our humbler times. Heaven knows what "languages" were taught in it then; I am sure that neither my Sister nor myself brought any out of it, but a little of our native English. By "mathematics," reader, must be understood "cyphering." It was in fact a humble day-school, at which reading and writing were taught to us boys in the morning, and the same slender erudition was communicated to the girls, our sisters, &c. in the evening. Now Starkey presided, under Bird, over both establishments. In my time, Mr. Cook, now or lately a respectable Singer and Performer at Drury-lane Theatre, and Nephew to Mr. Bird, had succeeded to him. I well remember Bird. He was a squat, corpulent, middle-sized man, with something of the gentleman about him, and that peculiar mild tone--especially while he was inflicting punishment--which is so much more terrible to children, than the angriest looks and gestures. Whippings were not frequent; but when they took place, the correction was performed in a private room adjoining, whence we could only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened the decorum and the solemnity. But the ordinary public chastis.e.m.e.nt was the bastinado, a stroke or two on the palm with that almost obsolete weapon now--the ferule. A ferule was a sort of flat ruler, widened at the inflicting end into a shape resembling a pear,--but nothing like so sweet--with a delectable hole in the middle, to raise blisters, like a cupping-gla.s.s. I have an intense recollection of that disused instrument of torture--and the malignancy, in proportion to the apparent mildness, with which its strokes were applied. The idea of a rod is accompanied with something ludicrous; but by no process can I look back upon this blister-raiser with any thing but unmingled horror.--To make him look more formidable--if a pedagogue had need of these heightenings--Bird wore one of those flowered Indian gowns, formerly in use with schoolmasters; the strange figures upon which we used to interpret into hieroglyphics of pain and suffering. But boyish fears apart--Bird I believe was in the main a humane and judicious master.

O, how I remember our legs wedged in to those uncomfortable sloping desks, where we sat elbowing each other--and the injunctions to attain a free hand, unattainable in that position; the first copy I wrote after, with its moral lesson "Art improves Nature;" the still earlier pothooks and the hangers some traces of which I fear may yet be apparent in this ma.n.u.script; the truant looks side-long to the garden, which seemed a mockery of our imprisonment; the prize for best spelling, which had almost turned my head, and which to this day I cannot reflect upon without a vanity, which I ought to be ashamed of--our little leaden inkstands, not separately subsisting, but sunk into the desks; the bright, punctually-washed morning fingers, darkening gradually with another and another ink-spot: what a world of little a.s.sociated circ.u.mstances, pains and pleasures mingling their quotas of pleasure, arise at the reading of those few simple words--"Mr. William Bird, an eminent Writer and Teacher of languages and mathematics in Fetter Lane, Holborn!"

Poor Starkey, when young, had that peculiar stamp of old-fas.h.i.+onedness in his face, which makes it impossible for a beholder to predicate any particular age in the object. You can scarce make a guess between seventeen and seven and thirty. This antique cast always seems to promise ill-luck and penury. Yet it seems, he was not always the abject thing he came to. My Sister, who well remembers him, can hardly forgive Mr. Thomas Ranson for making an etching so unlike her idea of him, when he was a youthful teacher at Mr. Bird's school. Old age and poverty--a life-long poverty she thinks, could at no time have so effaced the marks of native gentility, which were once so visible in a face, otherwise strikingly ugly, thin, and care-worn. From her recollections of him, she thinks that he would have wanted bread, before he would have begged or borrowed a halfpenny. If any of the girls (she says) who were my school-fellows should be reading, through their aged spectacles, tidings from the dead of their youthful friend Starkey, they will feel a pang, as I do, at ever having teased his gentle spirit. They were big girls, it seems, too old to attend his instructions with the silence necessary; and however old age, and a long state of beggary, seem to have reduced his writing faculties to a state of imbecility, in those days, his language occasionally rose to the bold and figurative, for when he was in despair to stop their chattering, his ordinary phrase was, "Ladies, if you will not hold your peace, not all the powers in heaven can make you." Once he was missing for a day or two; he had run away. A little old unhappy-looking man brought him back--it was his father--and he did no business in the school that day, but sate moping in a corner, with his hands before his face; and the girls, his tormentors, in pity for his case, for the rest of that day forbore to annoy him. I had been there but a few months (adds she) when Starkey, who was the chief instructor of us girls, communicated to us as a profound secret, that the tragedy of "Cato" was shortly to be acted by the elder boys, and that we were to be invited to the representation. That Starkey lent a helping hand in fas.h.i.+oning the actors, she remembers; and but for his unfortunate person, he might have had some distinguished part in the scene to enact; as it was, he had the arduous task of prompter a.s.signed to him, and his feeble voice was heard clear and distinct, repeating the text during the whole performance. She describes her recollection of the cast of characters even now with a relish. Martia, by the handsome Edgar Hickman, who afterwards went to Africa, and of whom she never afterwards heard tidings,--Lucia, by Master Walker, whose sister was her particular friend; Cato, by John Hunter, a masterly declaimer, but a plain boy, and shorter by the head than his two sons in the scene, &c. In conclusion, Starkey appears to have been one of those mild spirits, which, not originally deficient in understanding, are crushed by penury into dejection and feebleness. He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to Society, if Fortune had taken him into a very little fostering, but wanting that, he became a Captain--a by-word--and lived, and died, a broken bulrush.

C. L.

III.--TWELFTH OF AUGUST

(1825)

_To the Editor of the Every-Day Book_

THE HUMBLE PEt.i.tION OF AN UNFORTUNATE DAY

Sir,

I am a wronged _Day_. I appeal to you as the general patron of the family of the _Days_. The candour with which you attended to the expostulations of a poor relative of ours--a sort of cousin thrice removed[53]--encourages me to hope that you will listen to the complaint of a _Day_ of rather more consequence. I am the _Day_, Sir, upon which it pleased the course of nature that your gracious Sovereign should be born. As such, before his Accession, I was always observed and honoured.

But since that happy event, in which naturally none had a greater interest than myself, a flaw has been discovered in my t.i.tle. My l.u.s.tre has been eclipsed, and--to use the words of one of your own poets,--

I fade into the light of common _day_.

[53] Twenty-ninth _day_ of February [see page 349].

It seems, that about that time, an Impostor crept into Court, who has the effrontery to usurp my honours, and to style herself the _King's-birth-Day_, upon some shallow pretence that, being _St.

George's-Day_, she must needs be _King-George's-Day_ also.

_All-Saints-Day_ we have heard of, and _All-Souls-Day_ we are willing to admit; but does it follow that this foolish _Twenty-third of April_ must be _All-George's-Day_, and enjoy a monopoly of the whole name from George of Cappadocia to George of Leyden, and from George-a-Green down to George Dyer?

It looks a little oddly that I was discarded not long after the dismission of a set of men and measures, with whom I have nothing in common. I hope no whisperer has insinuated into the ears of Royalty, as if I were any thing Whiggishly inclined, when, in my heart, I abhor all these kind of Revolutions, by which I am sure to be the greatest sufferer.

I wonder my shameless Rival can have the face to let the Tower and Park Guns proclaim so many big thundering fibs as they do, upon her Anniversary--making your Sovereign too to be older than he is, by an hundred and odd _days_, which is no great compliment one would think.

Consider if this precedent for ante-dating of Births should become general, what confusion it must make in Parish Registers; what crowds of young heirs we should have coming of age before they are one-and-twenty, with numberless similar grievances. If these chops and changes are suffered, we shall have _Lord-Mayor's-Day_ eating her custard unauthentically in May, and _Guy Faux_ preposterously blazing twice over in the Dog-_days_.

I humbly submit, that it is not within the prerogatives of Royalty itself, to be born twice over. We have read of the supposit.i.tious births of Princes, but where are the evidences of this first Birth? why are not the nurses in attendance, the midwife, &c. produced?--the silly story has not so much as a Warming Pan to support it.

My legal advisers, to comfort me, tell me that I have the right on my side; that I am the true Birth-_Day_, and the other _Day_ is only kept.

But what consolation is this to me, as long as this naughty-_kept creature_ keeps me out of my dues and privileges?

Pray take my unfortunate case into your consideration, and see that I am restored to my lawful Rejoicings, Firings, Bon-Firings, Illuminations, &c.

And your Pet.i.tioner shall ever pray,

_Twelfth Day of August_.

IV.--THE a.s.s

(1825)

_For Hone's Every-Day Book_

Mr. Collier, in his "Poetical Decameron" (Third Conversation) notices a Tract, printed in 1595, with the author's initials only, A. B., ent.i.tled "The n.o.blenesse of the a.s.se: a work rare, learned, and excellent." He has selected the following pretty pa.s.sage from it. "He (the a.s.s) refuseth no burthen, he goes whither he is sent without any contradiction. He lifts not his foote against any one; he bytes not; he is no fugitive, nor malicious affected. He doth all things in good sort, and to his liking that hath cause to employ him. If strokes be given him, he cares not for them; and, as our modern poet singeth,

'Thou wouldst (perhaps) he should become thy foe, And to that end dost beat him many times; He cares not for himselfe, much lesse thy blow.'"[54]

[54] Who this modern poet was, says Mr. C., is a secret worth discovering.--The wood-cut on the t.i.tle of the Pamphlet is--an a.s.s with a wreath of laurel round his neck.

Certainly Nature, foreseeing the cruel usage which this useful servant to man should receive at man's hand, did prudently in furnis.h.i.+ng him with a tegument impervious to ordinary stripes. The malice of a child, or a weak hand, can make feeble impressions on him. His back offers no mark to a puny foeman. To a common whip or switch his hide presents an absolute insensibility. You might as well pretend to scourge a school-boy with a tough pair of leather breeches on. His jerkin is well fortified. And therefore the Costermongers "between the years 1790 and 1800" did more politicly than piously in lifting up a part of his upper garment. I well remember that beastly and b.l.o.o.d.y custom. I have often longed to see one of those refiners in discipline himself at the cart's tail, with just such a convenient spot laid bare to the tender mercies of the whipster. But since Nature has resumed her rights, it is to be hoped, that this patient creature does not suffer to extremities; and that to the savages who still belabour his poor carcase with their blows (considering the sort of anvil they are laid upon) he might in some sort, if he could speak, exclaim with the philosopher, "Lay on: you beat but upon the case of Anaxarchus."

Contemplating this natural safeguard, this fortified exterior, it is with pain I view the sleek, foppish, combed and curried, person of this animal, as he is trans.m.u.ted and disnaturalized at Watering Places, &c.

where they affect to make a palfrey of him. Fie on all such sophistications!--It will never do, Master Groom. Something of his honest s.h.a.ggy exterior will still peep up in spite of you--his good, rough, native, pineapple coating. You cannot "refine a scorpion into a fish, though you rince it and scour it with ever so cleanly cookery."[55]

[55] Milton: _from memory_.

The modern poet, quoted by A. B., proceeds to celebrate a virtue, for which no one to this day had been aware that the a.s.s was remarkable.

One other gift this beast hath as his owne, Wherewith the rest could not be furnished; On man himselfe the same was not bestowne, To wit--on him is ne'er engendered The hatefull vermine that doth teare the skin And to the bode [body] doth make his pa.s.sage in.

And truly when one thinks on the suit of impenetrable armour with which Nature (like Vulcan to another Achilles) has provided him, these subtle enemies to _our_ repose, would have shown some dexterity in getting into _his_ quarters. As the bogs of Ireland by tradition expel toads and reptiles, he may well defy these small deer in his fastnesses. It seems the latter had not arrived at the exquisite policy adopted by the human vermin "between 1790 and 1800."

But the most singular and delightful gift of the a.s.s, according to the writer of this pamphlet, is his _voice_; the "goodly, sweet, and continual brayings" of which, "whereof they forme a melodious and proportionable kinde of musicke," seem to have affected him with no ordinary pleasure. "Nor thinke I," he adds, "that any of our immoderne musitians can deny, but that their song is full of exceeding pleasure to be heard; because therein is to be discerned both concord, discord, singing in the meane, the beginning to sing in large compa.s.se, then following on to rise and fall, the halfe note, whole note, musicke of five voices, firme singing by four voices, three together or one voice and a halfe. Then their variable contrarieties amongst them, when one delivers forth a long tenor, or a short, the pausing for time, breathing in measure, breaking the minim or very least moment of time. Last of all to heare the musicke of five or six voices chaunged to so many of a.s.ses, is amongst them to heare a song of world without end."

There is no accounting for ears; or for that laudable enthusiasm with which an Author is tempted to invest a favourite subject with the most incompatible perfections. I should otherwise, for my own taste, have been inclined rather to have given a place to these extraordinary musicians at that banquet of nothing-less-than-sweet-sounds, imagined by old Jeremy Collier (Essays, 1698; Part. 2.--On Music.) where, after describing the inspirating effects of martial music in a battle, he hazards an ingenious conjecture, whether a sort of _Anti-music_ might not be invented, which should have quite the contrary effect of "sinking the spirits, shaking the nerves, curdling the blood, and inspiring despair, and cowardice and consternation." "Tis probable" he says, "the roaring of lions, the warbling of cats and screech-owls, together with a mixture of the howling of dogs, judiciously imitated and compounded, might go a great way in this invention." The dose, we confess, is pretty potent, and skilfully enough prepared. But what shall we say to the a.s.s of Silenus (quoted by TIMS), who, if we may trust to cla.s.sic lore, by his own proper sounds, without thanks to cat or screech-owl, dismaid and put to rout a whole army of giants? Here was _Anti-music_ with a vengeance; a whole _Pan-Dis-Harmonicon_ in a single lungs of leather!

But I keep you trifling too long on this Asinine subject. I have already past the _Pons Asinorum_, and will desist, remembering the old pedantic pun of Jem Boyer, my schoolmaster:--

a.s.s _in praesenti_ seldom makes a WISE MAN _in futuro_.

C. L.

V.--IN RE SQUIRRELS

(1825)

_For the Every-Day Book_

What is gone with the Cages with the climbing Squirrel and bells to them, which were formerly the indispensable appendage to the outside of a Tinman's shop, and were in fact the only Live Signs? One, we believe, still hangs out on Holborn; but they are fast vanis.h.i.+ng with the good old modes of our ancestors. They seem to have been superseded by that still more ingenious refinement of modern humanity--the Tread-mill; in which _human_ Squirrels still perform a similar round of ceaseless, improgressive clambering; which must be nuts to them.

We almost doubt the fact of the teeth of this creature being so purely orange-coloured, as Mr. Urban's correspondent gives out. One of our old poets--and they were pretty sharp observers of nature--describes them as brown. But perhaps the naturalist referred to meant "of the colour of the Maltese orange,"[56] which is rather more obfuscated than your fruit of Seville, or Saint Michael's; and may help to reconcile the difference. We cannot speak from observation, but we remember at school getting our fingers into the orangery of one of these little gentry (not having a due caution of the traps set there), and the result proved sourer than lemons. The Author of the Task somewhere speaks of their anger as being "insignificantly fierce," but we found the demonstration of it on this occasion quite as significant as we desired; and have not been disposed since to look any of these "gift horses" in the mouth.

Maiden aunts keep these "small deer" as they do parrots, to bite people's fingers, on purpose to give them good advice "not to venture so near the cage another time." As for their "six quavers divided into three quavers and a dotted crotchet," I suppose, they may go into Jeremy Bentham's next budget of Fallacies, along with the "melodious and proportionable kinde of musicke," recorded in your last number of another highly gifted animal [see page 358].

C. L.