Merrie England in the Olden Time, by George Daniel

     * This club consists of more than fifteen hundred members.
     Their orgies are celebrated every Monday evening throughout
     the year. The chair is taken at nine, and vacated at twelve.

APOTHEOSIS OF UNCLE TIM'S BRAN NEW BUTTONS AND BLUE.=

CHAPTER IX.

Gentle Reader! we promised thee at the outset of our journey pleasant companions by the way, and as an earnest of that promise, we have introduced Benjamin Bosky and Uncle Tim. We would now bespeak thy courtesy for others that are soon to follow. In passing happily through life, half the battle depends upon the persons with whom we may be associated. And shall we carry spleen into the closet?—grope for that daily plague in our books, when it elbows and stares us in the face at every turn? To chronicle the “Painful Peregrinations” of Uncle Timothy through this livelong day, would exhibit him, like “Patience,” not sitting “on a monument, smiling at grief,” but lolling in Mr. Bosky's britschka, laughing (in his sleeve!) at the strange peculiarities of the Muffs, and listening with mild endurance to the unaccountable antipathies of Mrs. Flumgarten. Now the Fubsys might be called, par excellence, a prudent family.

Good store of prudence had the Fubsy family. Their honest scruples always prevented them from burning their fingers. They were much too wise to walk into a well. They kept on the windy side of the law. They were vastly prone to measure other people's morality by the family bushel, and had exceedingly grand notions touching their self-importance; (little minds, like little men, cannot afford to stoop!) which those who have seen a cock on a dunghill, or a crow in a gutter, may have some idea of.

Nothing pleased Mrs. Flumgarten. Mr. Bosky's equipage she politely brought into depreciating comparison with the staring yellow and blue, brass-mounted, and screw-wigged turn-out of her acquaintances the Kickwitches, the mushroom aristocracy of retired “Putty and Lead!” And when Mr. Muff, who was no herald, hearing something about Mr. Bosky's arms being painted on the panels, innocently inquired whether his legs were not painted too?—at which Uncle Timothy involuntarily smiled—the scarlet-liveried pride of the Fubsys rushed into her cheeks, and she bridled up, wondering what there was in Mr. Muffs question to be laughed at. Knowing the susceptibility of Mrs. Flumgarten's nervous system, Uncle Timothy desired John Tomkins to drive moderately slow. This was “scratching away at a snail's pace! a cat's gallop!”

“A little faster, John,” said Uncle Timothy, mildly. This was racing along like “Sabbath-day, pleasure-taking, public-house people in a tax-cart!” Not an exhibition, prospect, person, or thing, were to her mind. The dinner, which might have satisfied Apicius, she dismissed with “faint praise,” sighing a supplementary complaint, by way of errata, that there “was no pickles!”—and the carving—until the well-bred Mrs. Flumgarten snatched the knife and fork out of Uncle Timothy's hands—was “awful! horrid!” Then she never tastes such sherry as she does at her cousins' the Shufflebothams; and as for their black amber (Hambro'?) grapes, oh! they was fit for your perfect gentlefolks!—An inquiry from mine host, whether Uncle Timothy preferred a light or a full wine, drew forth this jocular answer, “I like a full wine, and a full bottle, Master Boniface.”—“So do I,” added the unguarded Mr. Muff. This was “tremendious!”

The two ladies looked at each other, and having decided on a joint scowl, it fell with annihilating blackness on the master-mason, and Mrs. Muff trod upon his toes under the table, a conjugal hint that Mr. Muff had taken enough! Mrs. Flumgarten had a momentary tiff with Mrs. Muff upon some trifling family jealousy, which brought into contest their diminutive dignities; but as the fond sisters had the good fortune to be Fubsys, and as the Fubsys enjoyed the exclusive privilege of abusing one another with impunity, the sarcastic compliments and ironical sneers they so lovingly exchanged passed for nothing after the first fire. The absence of Mr. Flumgarten, a scholar and a gentleman, who had backed out of this party of pleasure, (?) left his lady at a sad loss for one favourite subject in which she revelled, because it annoyed him; consequently there were no vulgar impertinent hits at “your clever people!” This hiatus led to some melancholy details of what she had suffered during her matrimonial pilgrimage.

“Suffered!” muttered the middle-aged gentleman, indignantly. “Yes, Madam Zantippe, you have suffered! But what? Why, your greeneyed illiterate prejudices to mar all that makes the domestic hearth intellectual and happy! Yes! you have reduced it to a cheerless desert, where you reign the restless fury of contradiction and discord!”

Master Guy Muff, the eldest born of Brutus, a youth who exhibited a capacious development of the eating and drinking organs, with a winning smile that would have made his fortune through a horse-collar, emerged from his post of honour behind the puffed sleeves and rustling skirts of “ma's,” and aunt's silk gowns.

“Don't be frightened, Guy,” said Mrs. Flumgarten, soothingly; “it's only Mr. Timwig.”

Original

“I hope, young gentleman,” said uncle Timothy, (for looking at the lump of living lumber, he did not venture to suppose,) “that you learn your lessons, and are perfect in your exercises.”

“Speak your Christmas-piece to Mr. Timtiffin, do, dear Guy!” said “ma,” coaxingly.

Mrs. Muff took this as an affront to her own particular jazey, which was bushily redolent of both; she darted a fierce frown à la Fubsy at the interrogator, that awed him to silence.

The subdued master-mason felt the full force of this line, to which his son Guy's appropriate pronunciation and personal stare gave a new reading. Here the juvenile spouter broke down, upon which Mrs. Flumgarten took his voice under her patronage, and having prevailed on him to try a song, the “young idea” began in an excruciating wheeze, as if a pair of bellows had been invited to sing, the following morceau. “More so,” said Mrs. Muff, encouragingly, “because pa said it was almost good enough to be sung a Sundays after Tabernacle.”

“Ah!” cried Aunt F. approvingly, “that is a song! None of your frothy comic stuff that some folks (!!) is so fond of.”

She now entertained Uncle Timothy with an account, full of bombast and brag, of some grand weddings that had recently been celebrated in the Fubsy family,—the Candlerigs having condescended to adulterate the patrician blood of St. Giles's in-the-Fields with the plebeian puddle of the City Gardens, the sometime suburban retreat of the Fubsys, where they farmed a magnificent chateau, which, like the great Westphalian Baron de Thunder-tan-trounck's, had a door and a window. Uncle Timothy, to change the subject, called on Mr. Brutus Muff for a song.

“I never heered Mr. Muff sing, Mr. Timwig,” chimed the sisters simultaneously.

“Indeed! Then, ladies, it will be the greater novelty. Come, my good sir; but first a glass of wine with you.”

“Oh, Mr. Timwiddy, you will make Mr. Muff quite top-heavy! It must only be a half a glass,” said Mrs. Muff, authoritatively.

“The top half, if you please, madam,” said the middle-aged gentleman; and he poured out the “regal purple stream” till it kissed, without flowing over, the brim. Mr. Muff brought the bumper to a level with his lips, and, as if half ashamed of what he was doing, put both halves out of sight!

The bland looks and persuasive tones of Uncle Timothy, to say nothing of the last bumper, had wrought wonders on the master-mason. He looked Silenus-like and rosy, and glanced his little peering eyes across the table—Mrs. Muff having a voice too in the affair—for an assenting nod from the fierce black velvet turban of his better and bigger half. But Mrs. Muff made no sign, and he paused irresolute; when another kind word from the middle-aged gentleman encouraged him, at all hazards, to begin with,

“You shan't sing another line, that you shan't, Brutus!” vociferated Mrs. Muff. But the Cockney Roman, undaunted and vocal, went on singing,

“Where could he have learned such a rubbishing song? A man, too, after pa's own heart!” sighed Mrs. Muff.

“Have you no compassion for my poor nerves?” remonstrated Mrs. Muff, pathetically.

“None vhatsumdever,” replied the stoical Brutus. “Vhat compassion have you ever had for mine?”

“I'll send,” cried Mrs. Flumgarten, furiously, “for one of the L division.”

“You may send to Old Nick for one of the L division!” shouted the valiant Mr. Muff, aspirating with particular emphasis the letter L.

And now, my invaluable spouse, as I carn't conwenienly sing you any more moral lessons, I'll tipple you two or three!” And Mr. Muff, with admirable coolness and precision, filled himself a bumper. “First and foremust, from this day henceforrer'd, I'm determined to be my own lord and master.

“Imprimis and secondly, I don't choose to be the hen-pecked, colly woffling, under-the-fear-of-his-vife-and-a-broomstick Jerry Sneak and Pollycoddle, that the Vhitechapel pin-maker vas! You shan't, like his loving Lizzy, currycomb my precious vig, and smuggle my last vill!”

“Don't purwoke me, Mrs. Flumgarten, into 'fending and proving, or I shall let the cat out of the bag, and the kittens into the bargain! By the Lord Harry, I'll peach, Mrs. Muff!”

Mrs. Flumgarten's unruly member was about to pour upon the master-mason a flood of Fubsyean eloquence, when Prudence, the family guardian angel, took her by the tongue's tip, as St. Dunstan took a certain ebony gentleman by the nose. She telegraphed Mrs. Muff, and Mrs. Muff telegraphed the intelligent Guy. Just as Brutus was fetching breath for another ebullition, with his hand on the decanter for another bumper, he found himself half throttled in the Cornish hug of his affectionate and blubbering first-born! When a chimney caught fire, it was a custom in Merrie England to drop down it a live goose, in the quality of extinguisher! And no goose ever performed its office better than the living Guy. He opened the flood-gates of his gooseberry eyes, and played upon pa so effectually, that Mr. Muff's ire or fire was speedily put out; and when, to prevent a coroner's inquest, the obedient child was motioned by the ladies to relax his filial embrace, the mollified master-mason began to sigh and sob too. The politic sisters now proposed to cut short their day's pleasure!—Uncle Timothy, to whom it was some consolation, that while he had been sitting upon thorns, his tormentors too were a little nettled, seeing bluff John Tomkins in the stable-yard grooming con amore one of Mr. Bosky's pet bloods, called out, “John! Tm afraid we were too many this morning for that shying left-wheeler. Now, if he should take to kicking—”

Herodotus (who practised what he preached) said, “When telling a lie will be profitable, let it be told!”—“He may lie,” said Plato, “who knows how to do it in a suitable time.” So thought John Tomkins! who hoping to frighten his unwelcome customers into an omnibus, and drive home Uncle Timothy in capital style, so aggravated the possible kickings, plungings, takings fright, and runnings away of that terrible left-wheeler, that the accommodating middle-aged gentleman was easily persuaded by the ladies to lighten the weight and diminish the danger, by returning to town by some other conveyance. And it was highly entertaining to mark the glum looks of John when he doggedly put the horses to, and how he mischievously laid his whipcord into the sensitive flanks of the “shying left-wheeler,” that honoured every draft on his fetlocks, and confirmed the terrifying anticipations and multiplications of the veracious John Tomkins!

“Song sweetens toil, however rude the sound,”—and John sweetened his by humming the following, in which he encored himself several times, as he drove Mrs. Flumgarten and family, to town.

CHAPTER X.

Give me a woman as old as Hecuba, or as ugly as Caifacaratadaddera, rather than Mrs. Flumgarten! Were the annoyance confined to herself, I should cry, 'Content,'—for she who sows nettles and thorns is entitled to reap a stinging and prickly harvest. Ill temper should ride quarantine, and have a billet de santé, before it is let loose upon society.”

These were among the ruminations of Uncle Timothy as he sauntered homeward through the green fields. Two interesting objects lay before him: the village church and grave-yard, and a row of ancient almshouses, the pious endowment of a bountiful widow, who having been brought to feel what sorrow was, had erected them, as the last resting-place but one, for the aged and the poor.

There dwelt in our ancestors * a fine spirit of humanity towards the helpless and the needy. The charitable pittance was not doled out to them by the hand of insolent authority; but the wayfarer, heart-weary, and foot-sore, claimed at the gates of these pious institutions ** (a few of which still remain in their primitive simplicity) his loaf, his lodging, and his groat, which were dispensed, generally with kindness, and always with decency. Truly we may say, that what the present generation has gained in head (and even this admission is subject to many qualifications), it has lost in heart!!

     * “Before the Reformation, there were no Poor's Rates. The
     charitable dole, given at the religious houses, and the
     church-ale in every parish, did the business.

     “In every parish there was a Church-house, to which belonged
     spits, pots, &c. for dressing provision. Here the
     housekeepers met, and were merry, and gave their charity.
     The young people came there too, and had dancing, bowling,
     shooting at butts, &c. Mr. A. Wood assures me, that there
     were few or no almshouses before the time of Henry the
     Eighth; that at Oxon, opposite Christchurch, was one of the
     most ancient in England.”—Aubrey MSS.

     ** Was it ever intended—is it just—is it fitting, that the
     Masterships of St. Cross at Winchester, and St. Katharine's,
     London, should be such sumptuous sinecures?

A grave had just received its “poor inhabitant the mourners had departed, and two or three busy urchins, with shovels and spades, were filling in the earth; while the sexton, a living clod, nothing loth to see his work done by proxy, looked, with open mouth and leaden eyes, carelessly on. Uncle Timothy walked slowly up the path, and pausing before the “narrow cell,” enforced silence and decency by that irresistible charm that ever accompanied his presence. His pensive, thoughtful look, almost surprised the gazers into sympathy. Who was the silent tenant? None could tell. He was a stranger in the village; but their pastor must have known something of his story; for his voice faltered whilst reading the funeral service, and he was observed to weep. Uncle Timothy passed on, and continued his peregrination among the tombs. How grossly had the dead been libelled by the flattery of the living! Here was “a tender husband, a loving father, and an honest man,” who certainly had never tumbled his wife out at window, kicked his children out of doors, or picked his neighbour's pocket in broad daylight on the King's highway; yet was he a hypocritical heartless old money-worshipper! There lay a “disconsolate widow,” the names of whose three “lamented husbands” were chiselled on her tombstone! To the more opulent of human clay, who could afford plenty of lead and stone,—perchance the emblems of their dull, cold heads and hearts,—what pompous quarries were raised above ground! what fulsome inscriptions dedicated! But the poor came meanly off. Here and there a simple flower, blooming on the raised sod, and fondly cherished, told of departed friends and kindred not yet forgotten! And who that should see a rose thus affectionately planted would let it droop and wither for want of a tear?

A monument of chaste and simple design attracted his attention. It was to the memory of a gentle spirit, whom he mourned with a brother's love. Four lines were all that had been thought essential to say; but they were sufficiently expressive.

The “Giver of every good and perfect gift” had taken her daughter before she knew sin or sorrow. Her epitaph ran thus:—

A. deep and holy calm fell upon Uncle Timothy, with a sweet assurance that a happier meeting with departed friends was not far distant. And as the guardianship of ministering angels was his firm belief and favourite theme, his secret prayer at this solemn moment was, that they might save him from the bodily and mental infirmities, the selfishness and apathy of protracted years. He read the inscriptions over again, with a full conviction of their truthfulness. They were his own.

At an obscure corner—and afar off—Truth, for a wonder, had written an epitaph upon one who loved, not his species, but his specie!

And at no great distance was a tomb entirely overgrown with rank weeds, nettles, and thorns; and there was a superstitious legend attached to it, that they all grew up in one night, and though they had been several times rooted up, still, in one night, they all grew up again! Stones had been ignominiously cast upon it; and certain ancient folks of the village gravely affirmed that, on the anniversary of the burial of the miserable crone, the Black Sanctus * was performed by herself and guardian spirits!

     * Isaac Reed informs us (see note upon Chapman's Widow's
     Tears, in Dodsley's Old Plays) that “the Black Sanctus was
     a hymn to Saint Satan, written in ridicule of Monkish
     luxury.” And Tarlton (see News out of Purgatory) quotes it
     in “the Tale of Pope Boniface.”

     “And' upon this there was a general mourning through all
     Rome: the cardinals wept, the abbots howled, the monks
     rored, the fryers cried, the nuns puled, the curtezans
     lamented, the bels rang, the tapers were lighted, that such
     a Blacke Sanctus was not seene a long time afore in Rome.”,

     The Black Sanctus here said to be performed was of a
     different kind. It was assuredly “a hymn to Satan,” in which
     the crone and the most favoured of her kindred took the
     base; Hypocrisy leading the band, and Avarice scraping the
     fiddle.

     “The rest God knows—perhaps the Devil”

A yew-tree stretched forth its bare branches over the tomb, which in one night also became withered and blasted!

Original

At the porch of the entre almshouse sat an aged female in awidows garb, and beside her the village pastor. From the earnestness of his address, he seemed to be exhorting her to resignation; but the tears that fell from her eyes proved how hard was the task! Though Uncle Timothy would not have done homage to the highest potentate in Christendom for all the wealth and distinction that he or she could bestow, he felt his knees tremble under him at the sacredness of humble sorrow. He walked up the neat little flower garden, and having read the grateful memorial inscribed over the ancient doorway to the charitable foundress, was about to speak, when the words, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted,” fell like the dews of heaven upon his ear! The widow looked up—she hushed every sigh—she wiped away every tear—the divine potency of the promise sustained her, and she wept no more.

Little ceremony did Uncle Timothy use towards the good pastor and his comforted mourner. His address began with a simple question, who was the brother that he had so recently consigned to the grave?

“This poor widow's only son! The story, sir, is brief and mournful. Bankruptcy and ruin hurried her husband to the grave. This asylum opened its door to receive her; and here, though reviewing the past with fond regret, she became grateful for the present, and hopeful for the future. Her son, a youth of fine intellect, submitted to the ill-paid drudgery of an office where the hands, not the head, were required; and he delighted to spare from his narrow pittance such additional comforts for his mother as were not contemplated by the pious foundress in those primitive times. He would hasten hither on beautiful summer evenings after the business of the day, to trim her little garden, surprise her with some frugal luxury, and see that she was happy. The Sabbath he never omitted passing under this roof, and he led her to my pew,—for she is a gentlewoman, sir,—where she sat with my family. Consumption seized his frame; and what privations did he endure, what fatigues did he brave, to conceal the first fatal symptoms from his mother! Of a melancholy temperament, endued with all the fine sensibilities of genius, death, under much less unprosperous circumstances, would have been a welcome visitor; but to die—and leave—no matter. I promised to take upon myself the solemn charge, should the dreaded moment arrive. It has arrived, and that promise, by the blessing of my God, I will faithfully redeem.”

Uncle Timothy was not an envious man—he knew envy by name only. But if at this particular moment his heart could have been anatomised, O, how he envied the good pastor!

He was obliged to absent himself from business; and as his employers were no-work-no-pay philanthropists, he was left to his own slender resources, and retired here to die.”

“Who sustained my lost son in his long sickness, comforted him, and received his last sigh? Ah! sir—But I dare not disobey your too strict injunction.

“It is not many evenings since that I accompanied my dear young friend in one of his solitary rambles. The sun was setting in golden splendour, and tinged the deep blue clouds that appeared like mountains rising above one another. 'Yon glorious orb,' he cried, with sacred fervour, 'emblem of immortality!

A few days after I was called to his bed-side; the hand of death had seized him; he recognised me, smiled, and gently pressed my hand. 'Every misery missed,' he whispered, 'is a mercy!' A faint struggle, and a short sigh succeeded, and he was gone to his rest!”

“What a poor figure would this simple record of good works, lively faith, and filial piety make in a modern obituary, where incoherent ravings are eagerly noted down by officious death-bed gossipers, and wrought into a romance, always egotistical, and too often profane! To you, madam,” added Uncle Timothy, “consolation and hope have been brought by a heaven-appointed messenger. Something, however, remains to be done in a worldly sense. But I see our friend is on the eve of departure; what I was about to propose shall be submitted to him when we are alone. In the mean time, you will please to consider this humble roof but as a temporary home. It abounds in sad remembrances, which change of scene may soften down, if not entirely dispel. I have a dear, affectionate relative, who would deeply regard you, were it only for your sorrow. And as there 'is a special providence in the falling of a sparrow,' I cannot doubt that some good spirit directed me hither. God bless you! We shall very soon meet again.”

And locking the kind pastor's arm in his own, he hurried down the little garden, pausing for a moment to gather a pale rose, which he placed in his bosom.