صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني
[merged small][ocr errors]

In the same way the doubleheaded eagle of Austria might seem to emblematise a certain duplicity in policy that an ungenerous public is so apt to attribute to that empire. But, I say, there are no such lessons for us. These scraps of blurred and adhesive nastiness display nothing but a gallery of European ugliness, which we are only reconciled to by remembering that they are obliged to intermarry.

But once more: if the object be to have some reminder of mighty potentates and powers, why not hit upon something more characteristic and more distinctive than this? And easy to do so. Is it not certain that all sovereigns, however little use of them they may make, occasionally wear shoes and boots Why not make a collection of the old ones when they are cast-offs? I take it that even that thrifty prince the ex-Duke of Modena, does not go beyond twice soling and vamping, and that something must remain, which, if not available for a march, might be useful in a

museum.

Surely Louis Napoleon must have many pairs besides those he gives to Victor Emmanuel; and imagine what a treasure would be one of the Pope's old slippers, sanctified by the countless kisses of true believers! Think of the pride of a collector in showing the jack-boot with which the Emperor Nicholas kicked one of his marshals; or the shoes in which President Lincoln ran away from Washington when he heard of Lee's advance! And

should we descend to smaller "deer" and extend the collection to great celebrities, it might be curious to have a sight of that pair of Lord Russell's "high-lows" which Mr Disraeli tried on in '59, and found he couldn't walk in.

In a word, shoes might be eminently suggestive, and there is no end to the speculation one would be led into by a critical examination of the wearer's mode of walkingwhether he went gingerly on his toes like the French Emperor, stamped like a Czar, or shuffled like his Holiness.

In the King of Prussia's case we should, I am certain, find that he had occasionally got his " Bluchers" on the wrong foot, and that Victor Emmanuel's progress was considerably impeded by his attempts to wear some pairs that were ordered for the Duke of Tuscany and the King of Naples, and even a pair of satin slippers of the Princess of Parma's.

Nor would it be without its lesson to mark that, when in Poland, the Austrian Emperor never wore any but Russia leather.

Interesting, too, to see that pair of strong shoes the King of Italy ordered when he was thinking of walking to Rome, but which he countermanded when he found he should not go farther than Florence.

These, I say, would teach us something; and if there be sermons in stones, there might be homilies in shoes.

It is true every one could not so easily be a collector of these as of postage-stamps, but they could be photographed, and in this way made available to the million. For all purposes of interest, and as matter for conversation, how much better would they be than these shabby and unsuggestive scraps of dirty paper! The Sultan's slippers would be a chapter of the Arabian Nights at once; and I am only withheld, by my characteristic discretion, from hinting at what wondrous interiors we might catch a glimpse of by slipping on that pair of Spanish

boots with the red heels, and letting them lead our steps up certain backstairs in the Escurial.

But I trust I have said enough to show that a great mine of psychological investigation has yet to be

worked, and a most interesting museum to be formed, without entailing any heavy cost or charge, but simply bearing in mind the timehonoured apophthegm, that there is nothing like leather."

66

THE PEOPLE WHO COME LATE.

Will any one tell me who are the people who habitually come late to dinner? Are they merely erratic, abnormal instances, or are they, as I opine, a class? Any treatment that we may adopt towards them should mainly depend on to which category they belong.

While Thuggee prevailed in India, it was a considerable time before it was ascertained that men were banded together for assassination. It seemed so horrible, that nothing short of an overwhelming conviction would have induced one to accept it as a fact. At last, however, the whole organisation was reveal ed, and it was shown that men were led into this fearful compact, not through menace or threat, but of their own free will, and actually, at times, with a zeal and eagerness that savoured of insanity. Now, I am curious to know if our social destroyers be Thugs. Are they members of a secret society banded together to interfere with human happiness, and render what ought to be the pleasantest portion of our lives, periods of anxiety, irritation, and discomfort ?

I have given the matter much consideration, for I have been taught some cruel experiences of its hardships, and I incline to believe that these men are really a distinct section of society-that they regard life from the same point of view, take the same estimate of their own social claims, and almost invariably adopt the same tactics in their dealings with the world.

The story of Alcibiades and his dog has another reading from that usually accorded it. When that clever man upon town cut a piece off his dog's tail to divert the scandal

mongers of Athens from attending to his more serious derelictions, he showed how thoroughly he understood the fact, that men of eminence will ever be exposed to the libellous tongues of the smaller people around them, and that it is a wise policy to throw out for them some bait, in the pursuit of which they may lose sight of more important booty.

But there are folk who have no resemblance whatever to Alcibiades-who are neither clever, nor witty, nor genial, nor amusing; and when they cut an inch off their dog's tail, they do it simply and purely that, by this small singularity, they may attract to themselves a degree of notice which nothing in their lives or characters could possibly warrant; they do it that they may be in men's mouths for a passing moment, and enjoy the notoriety they imagine to be fame.

It is to this category your late man belongs. He calculates coolly on the ills his want of punctuality produces-the vexation, the dreariness, the ennui. He ponders over the irritation of the host and weariness of the guests; he feels that he has driven a cook to the verge of despair, and made an intended pleasure a positive penalty; he knows well how he will be canvassed by the company, his merits weighed, and his claims discussed, and that the "finding will not be the decision of an overfavourable jury; and yet is he repaid for all the censure and detraction that awaits him-for every question as to his status and every doubt of his capacity-by the single fact that he has made himself important. Great crimes have been committed through no other incen

tive than the insensate passion for notoriety, and it is the self-same desire of small minds that leads to the offence I stigmatise. These creatures, unable to amuse, incapable to interest, without even one of the qualities that have an attraction for society, are still able, by merely interfering with the pleasure of others, to make themselves remembered and noteworthy.

That I am not unwarrantably severe on them, I appeal to all who either give dinners or eat those of their friends. To the former I ask, and ask confidently, Are not the people who keep you waiting almost invariably the least valued of your acquaintance? Is not the man who arrives late, the man who need not arrive at all? Has the creature who has destroyed the fish and ruined the entrée, one, even one, quality to indemnify you for the damage?

Take the late men of your acquaintance, and answer me, Have you ever met one of them able, by the charm of his converse or the captivation of his manners, to obliterate the memory of the dreary forty-five minutes your friends sat in the condemned cell of your drawing-room, longing for the last pang to be over?

If your experiences be happy in this respect, mine are not. I openly proclaim that my late men are the bores of my acquaintance. Tardy in coming, and drearier when they come, they open the curious question, whether one would be sorrier if they died, or more miserable that they are alive?

If any doubt could be entertained as to the studied intention of this practice, it is at once dispelled by the mode of the late man's entrée. It is not in the least like his approach whose coming has been delayed by some unfortunate mischance or some unforeseen casualty: there is no confusion, no eager anxiety to explain or apologise. Far from it: he makes a sort of triumphal entry, and, with chest protruded and head erect, declares the pride he feels in being of suffi

cient consequence to have curdled the milk of human kindness in some dozen natures, and converted a meeting for pleasure into a penalty and a suffering.

Next to these in point of annoyance are they who send you their apologies an hour before your dinner, and they too are a class—a distinctly organised class. These people forget that in all dinners worth the name, the company are apportioned as carefully as the crew of a racing-boat, and you can no more add to than diminish their number. The quality of the "bow oar" cannot be transferred to "the stroke," nor can two be seated on one bench, or one place be left vacant. To destroy the symmetry of your dinner, the "trim," so to say, of the company, is a serious offence, and doubly so when committed with prepense and malice aforethought; and yet there are people who do this, on the same calculation as the "Late comers," that they may enjoy the importance of being arraigned for their absence, and revel in the consciousness that the company they could not have charmed by their presence has been totally damped and dispirited by their absence for so is it, nothing short of superhuman geniality can conquer the gloom of an empty place.

I remember once-it was a long time ago—a dinner in an Irish country-house, of which an Archbishop was to have formed the great gun. Besides his Episcopal dignity he was a man of weight and influence, which gave him a standing in the country it behoved county members to look to. He was also a great horticulturist, and fond of country life and pursuits. Our host understood well all these varied claims, and took great pains to make his dinner-party of such material as might best consort with his great guest's humour. What, however, was his discomfiture to find that his Grace's chaplain arrived to make the Archbishop's apologies,and convey his sincere regret at some untoward impediment to the pro

mised pleasure! He brought with him, however, an enormous gourd or pumpkin grown in the Episcopal hothouse; and this, with an air of well-assumed admiration, our host directed should be placed in the chair which his Grace ought to have occupied, directing to the comely vegetable much of his talk during the dinner; and when the time of coffee came, saying as they arose, "In all my experience of his Grace, I never knew him so agreeable as to-day."

We are not, however, all of us able to pay off, by a smart epigram like this, our dreary defaulters; and I own I feel a deep humiliation at the thought of how much pleasure, how much social enjoyment, how much actual happiness, is at the disposal of people who can contribute so wonderfully little to them all.

There is another feature of the case not to be entirely overlooked. In the deference you show by waiting for the late comer, or in your distress at the absence of him who comes not at all, your other guests fancy they detect some deep sense of obligation to the man who usurps so much of authority over you, and they infer at once that he is your patron or your protector, that he has lent you money or dragged you out of some awkward scrape or other, and that you are bound over, under the very heaviest of recognisances, to treat him with all deference and respect.

I am certain that I have suffered once or twice in my life, if not oftener, from this pleasant imputation, and it has obliged me to curtail my madeira at dinner lest I should be seized with an apoplexy. In England, I believe, there is no hour for dinner. Your eight o'clock may be half-past, may be nine, perhaps ten; but abroad, over the Continent generally, the hour named is the hour really intended, and especially so at Embassies and Legations; so that the London insouciance of arriving within threequarters of an hour of the time is simply bad manners or ignorance.

I rejoice to say that the impertinence of the late man would meet no toleration there. Short of royalty, or something like its representative, none would be waited for; but still, to be peremptory in such matters, one must be a man of a certain mark or standing. The Minister can do with dignity what in the Secretary would be pedantry or pretension; and, in fact, in small things as well as in great, it is very pleasant to stand on a high rung of the ladder called life.

They who so stand, have the law in their own hands; and I own I rejoice whenever I witness its severe administration, and mark the shame and confusion with which a late man shuffles to his place amongst the seated guests, and tries to cover by an apology that which he had planned to execute as a triumph.

We had an old Irish Chief-Baron once, whose practice it was to have the late arrivals shown into a room where a dessert was laid out, and informed that dinner was over, and the company had assembled in the drawing-room. In this way they might reflect over dried figs and filberts, and realise to their own conscience-stricken intelligences the enormity of the offence.

I may close this by a malapropos which once occurred to Lord Ponsonby, at Vienna. He was to dine at Prince Metternich's, but arrived by some mischance very late. There was, however, one more guest yet to come, Baron Seebach, the Saxon Minister, with whom the hostess was very intimate. She was exceedingly shortsighted; and as Lord Ponsonby came forward, not catching his name, and believing him to be Seebach, she met him abruptly, and cried out, "Oh! vieux scélérat, pourquoi est-ce que vous venez si tard?" It need not be said what were the shame and confusion on either side.

I conclude now with the hope that, if I have not made the late man punctual, I have at least persuaded his host that he ought not to wait for him.

LIFE IN AN ISLAND.

THIS island is not a desolate island, nor far from the boundaries of civilisation; neither is it one of the insulated fortresses which are more of man's making than God's. No position under heaven can be more glorious than that in which this rock reposes-“like a vessel eternally at anchor" - regarding from its lofty heights that bay which once in a lifetime intoxicates every man who looks upon it, and rouses even the most languid soul into a sense of beauty ineffable and beyond description. It is Naples which lies in the depth of that wonderful bow, radiant in the sunshine. It is Vesuvius which rises in front of us, blue and splendid, now and then exhaling out of his burning bosom a deep breath that shows white against the sky like a man's breath in an English Christmas. That is Posilipo, the first break in the even arch of coast, which afterwards goes wavering out and in, as if, like the spectator, confused with so much loveliness, widening out at Baiæ, casting forth sweet headlands here and there to secure its possessions, finally stretching into the lower heaven of sea, the lingering Cape of Messina. Even there it seems the admiring earth cannot have enough of it, but, dropping Procida humbly by the shore, like an apology, goes out rejoicing to another mountain-head, and there breaks off in a climax, unable to exert herself further. All this we have in daily vision, uninterrupted, except by mists and clouds, which often add more beauty than they take away, from our island at the other arm of the bay. And not only this, but on the other side the noble Sorrento promontory, and the low shadowy coast yonder under Vesuvius, where Pompeii keeps funeral watch over her dead. If there is any nobler combination in the world, imagina

tion, being overtasked, cannot conceive of it. This is what we contemplate from Capri in the blaze of the early summer, in its fresh morning tints, in its sunset splendours, in grand apparel of cloud and storm, in ineffable fulness of peace. So that it is no common lot to begin with, to live thus suspended midway between heaven and the sea on this divine island, from which, if one's ears were but sharp enough, one might still hear out to seaward the terrible sweetness of the Siren's song.

The holiday travellers who traverse Switzerland in crowds, or who make an annual rush through Germany, have, in most cases, a different kind of reminiscences to record from those who linger about Italy-sometimes, it is true, out of pure love of the country, but oftener from sadder motives, in the languor that follows a great calamity, or the acuter misery which precedes one. Even the artist in his wanderings is distinct from the tourist-so that there is some excuse for the readiness with which everybody who has crossed the Alps records his experiences. Life is more leisurely over that great boundary-line, if not among the awakened Italians, at least among the English visitors, to whom, even at the utmost stretch of speed, it is impossible to do the country of art in a few weeks. The difference, indeed, between the tranquil incidents of Italian journeys, and the breathless bustle into which an astonished traveller drops of a sudden who comes over one of the Alpine passes the wrong way, and drops without any preparation into Zurich, or Lucerne, or Geneva, is too remarkable not to strike the most casual observer. The crowd which rushed out of London yesterday, and has to rush back again tomorrow, is constantly thwarting its own endeavours to see everything

« السابقةمتابعة »