Letter XX.—To Mrs Hedgehog, New York.
Dear Grandmother,—September’s so near we can almost put our hand upon it, and yet I’m in London. It’s a dreadful confession of poverty, but I can’t help it. If I’m not ashamed to be seen on my stand, I’m not a licensed cabman. The only comfort there is, everybody that stays in town must be as poor as myself, and that, according to some folk’s notions, is a blessing to think of. A purse that was dropped on the pavement of Regent Street lay there a week, and was at last picked up by a policeman. London never looked so poor and dull; for all the world like a fine lady in an undress gown, with all her paint wiped off. The opera is shut up, and the manager has had a silver bed-candlestick given him by lords and dukes, because he has been so full of public spirit as to make his own fortune. By the way, grandmother, I don’t know how it is with the player-folks in New York; but here with us, if a man or woman want a bit of plate they’ve only to take a theatre. A playhouse is a short cut to a silversmith’s. There isn’t a London manager who isn’t plated after this fashion, which shows there is no place for true gratitude like the green-room; but I ask your pardon for talking of such matters, knowing what a low place you think the theatre. Parliament, like a goose that has been set upon too many eggs, has risen with half of ’em come to nothing. But this, grandmother, is the old trick. When the Parliament first opens, and Ministers come down with new law after law, why, what busy, bustling folks they seem! What a look of business it gives to the whole thing! But half of ’em is only for show; just so many dummies to take in what shopkeepers call “an enlightened public.” You know the bottles of red and blue that they have in apothecaries’ shops? Well, half the folks think ’em physic, when they’re nothing in the world but coloured water. Sir James Graham’s Medical Bill was just one of these things: nothing real in it; but something made up for show; just to give a colouring to business. Talking of Parliament, a dreadful accident happened at the prorogation. You know it’s the privilege of the Duke of Argyll to bear the royal crown before the Queen. Certain folks came into the world with certain privileges of the kind. One has a right to stir the royal tea-cup on the day of the coronation, another to put on the Queen’s pattens whenever she shall walk in the city, another to present the monarch with a pint of periwinkles when he shall visit Billingsgate; and so forth: all customs of the good old times, when people thought kings and queens were angels in disguise, who had kindly left heaven just to give poor mortals here a lift—in fact, to make the world endurable. Well, the Duke of Argyll, walking backwards with the crown—going straightforwards not being at all the thing in the Court—fell, poor old gentleman, down some steps, and falling, dropt the crown! Pheugh! There was a shower of pearls and diamonds; for all the precious stones came rattling on the floor, just as if the Queen, like the little girl in the fairy story, had been talking jewels. There were thoughts, I’m told, of calling in the police to keep off the mob of peers; but altogether they behaved themselves very well, and not a precious stone was found missing. The accident, however, caused a great fuss; and I’m told, in order to prevent its happening again, Madame Tussaud has offered to make a Duke of Argyll in wax, that, fitted up with proper wheels and springs, may be made to go backwards with no fear of a tumble. Should the thing succeed—and I don’t see why it shouldn’t—it would be a great saving in the way of salaries to the country, if a good many other Court officers were manufactured after the like fashion.
I’d almost forgotten to say that the King of the Dutch has been on a visit to us—and, as I’ve heard, a very decent sort of king he is. Of course he played while here at a little bit of soldiering; guards and grenadiers were turned out in Hyde Park, that he might review their helmets and bearskin caps. Isn’t it odd, grandmother, that the first show kings and princes, when they come to us, want to stare at is a show of soldiers? just to see how nicely men are armed and mounted to kill men! They don’t mean any harm by it, of course; but still—I can’t help thinking it—it does appear to me, if Beelzebub was to go into a strange country—if, indeed, there is any country he’s not yet visited—the sight he’d first like to see would be the sight of men taught the best way of cutting men’s throats. And then (if he came here to London) he’d go down to Woolwich Marshes, to see what they call rocket-practice, and wouldn’t he rub his hands, and switch about his tail, to see how rockets and shells split, break, tear away everything before ’em, showing what pretty work they’d make of a solid square of living flesh, standing for so many pence a day to be made a target of? You’d think it would be some wicked spirit that would enjoy this fun; but no, grandmother, it isn’t so; quite the contrary; it’s kings and princes. And yet I should like to have some king come over here who wouldn’t care to go a-soldiering in Hyde Park; who wouldn’t think of rocket-practice; but who, on the contrary, would go about to our schools and our hospitals, and our asylums, and all places where man does what he can to help man; to assist and comfort him like a fellow-creature, and not to tear him limb from limb like a devil.
Our Queen has gone to Germany to see where Prince Albert was born. Well, there’s something pretty and wife-like in the thought of this, and I like this. There was a dreadful fear among some of the nobs in Parliament, that while the Queen was away the kingdom would drop to pieces. But it isn’t so: the tax-gatherer calls just the same as ever. The Queen took ship, and landed at Antwerp—at the Quai Vandyke; now, Vandyke, you must know, was a famous painter; and abroad, they’ve a fashion of naming streets and places after folks that’s called geniuses. We haven’t come to that yet. Only think of our having a Hogarth Square, or a Shakspere instead of a Waterloo Bridge! And then for statues in the streets, we don’t give them to authors and painters, but only to kings and dukes that don’t pay their debts.
Still, I do feel for her Gracious Majesty. Dear soul! Isn’t it dreadful that a gentlewoman can’t step abroad—can’t take boat, but what there’s a hundred guns blazing, firing away at her,—as if the noise of cannon and the smell of gunpowder was like the songs of nightingales and the scent of roses! How royalty keeps its hearing, I can’t tell. When the dear lady got upon the Rhine, there were the guns blazing away as though heaven and earth were come together. It’s odd enough that people will think a great noise is a great respect; and that the heartiest welcome can only be given by gunpowder. It seems that the folks were putting up a statue to a musician named Beethoven, and the Queen of England and the Prince were just in time to pay their respects to the bronze. Mr Beethoven while alive was nobody; but it’s odd how a man’s worth is raked up from his coffin! And so it’s a great comfort to great men who, when in this world, are thought very small indeed, to think how big they’ll be upon earth after they’ve gone to heaven; a comfort for ’em, when they may happen to want a coat, to think of the suit of bronze or marble that kings and queens will afterwards give ’em. If, now, there’s any English composer, any man with a mind in him, forced, for want of better employment—forced to give young ladies lessons on the piano when he should be doing sonatas and sinfonias, and that sort of thing,—why, I say, it must be a comfort to him to know that folks can honour genius when it’s put up by way of statue in the market-place.
One of the prettiest stories I’ve heard of the jaunt is this, that the Queen and Albert went in a quiet way to visit the Prince’s old schoolmaster—if this isn’t enough to make all schoolmasters in England hold their heads up half a yard higher! Besides, it mayn’t show a bad example to high folks who keep tutors and governesses.
Altogether the Queen must be pleased with her trip, and I should think not the less pleased where the folks made the least noise; although, from what I read in one of the papers, everybody doesn’t think so; for the writer complains that there was “no shouting or noise, only that eternal bowing which so strikes a traveller, and which would make one believe that beings across the Channel were formed with some natural affinity between their right hands and their hats.” Really, to my mind there’s something more pleasing, more rational-like, in one human creature quietly bowing to another, than in shouting and hallooing at him like a wild Indian. But, then, people do so like noise!
You’ll be sorry to hear, grandmother, that your pets, the bishops, are again in trouble. I’m sure of it, bishops were never intended to have anything to do with money: they always tumble into such mistakes whenever they touch it. How is it to be expected that they should know the mystery of pounds, shillings, and pence,—they who can’t abide earthly vanities—they who are always above this world, though they never go up, as I hear, with Mr Green in his balloon? Well, it seems that the bishops have had a mint of money put into their hands that they may build new churches for their fellow-sinners, whom they call spiritually destitute. Well, would you think it?—in a moment of strange forgetfulness, they’ve laid out so much money upon palaces for themselves, that they can’t build the proper number of churches for the poor? The bishops have taken care of the bishops—and for the spiritually destitute, why, they may worship in highways and byways, in fields and on commons. Of course the bishops never meant this. No; it has all come about from their knowing nothing of the value of money. Still, what’s called the lower orders won’t believe this. And isn’t it a shocking thing to consider that the poor man may look at Bishop So-and-so with a grudge in his eye, saying to himself, “Yes, you’ve built yourself a fine house—you’ve got your fine cedars, and all that King Solomon talks about, in your own palace; but where’s my sittings in the church?—where, bishop, is my bench in the middle aisle?”
This is so dreadful to think of, that I can’t write any further upon it—and so no more from your affectionate grandson,
Juniper Hedgehog.