The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 written by Charles Lamb

C >> Charles Lamb >> The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25

Had I crawled forth a rescued victim from the rack in the horrible
dungeons of the Inquisition,--had I heaved myself up from a half
bastinado in China, or been torn from the just-entering, ghastly
impaling stake in Barbary,--had I dropt alive from the knout in
Russia, or come off with a gashed neck from the half-mortal,
scarce-in-time-retracted cimeter of an executioneering slave in
Turkey,--I might have borne about the remnant of this frame (the
mangled trophy of reprieved innocence) with credit to myself in any
of those barbarous countries. No scorn, at least, would have mingled
with the pity (small as it might be) with which what was left of me
would have been surveyed.

The singularity of my case has often led me to inquire into the
reasons of the general levity with which the subject of hanging is
treated as a topic in this country. I say, as a topic: for let the
very persons who speak so lightly of the thing at a distance be
brought to view the real scene,--let the platform be bona fide
exhibited, and the trembling culprit brought forth,--the case is
changed; but as a topic of conversation, I appeal to the vulgar jokes
which pass current in every street. But why mention them, when the
politest authors have agreed in making use of this subject as a
source of the ridiculous? Swift, and Pope, and Prior, are fond of
recurring to it. Gay has built an entire drama upon this single
foundation. The whole interest of the _Beggar's Opera_ may be said to
hang upon it. To such writers as Fielding and Smollett it is a
perfect _bonne-bouche_.--Hear the facetious Tom Brown, in his
_Comical View of London and Westminster_, describe the _Order of the
Show at one of the Tyburn Executions_ in his time:--"Mr. Ordinary
visits his melancholy flock in Newgate by eight. Doleful procession
up Holborn Hill about eleven. Men handsome and proper that were never
thought so before, which is some comfort however. Arrive at the fatal
place by twelve. Burnt brandy, women, and sabbath-breaking, repented
of. Some few penitential drops fall under the gallows. Sheriffs' men,
parson, pickpockets, criminals, all very busy. The last concluding
peremptory psalm struck up. Show over by one."--In this sportive
strain does this misguided wit think proper to play with a subject so
serious, which yet he would hardly have done if he had not known that
there existed a predisposition in the habits of his unaccountable
countrymen to consider the subject as a jest. But what shall we say
to Shakspeare, who, (not to mention the solution which the
_Gravedigger_ in _Hamlet_ gives of his fellow-workman's problem,) in
that scene in _Measure for Measure_, where the _Clown_ calls upon
_Master Barnardine_ to get up and be hanged, which he declines on the
score of being sleepy, has actually gone out of his way to gratify
this amiable propensity in his countrymen; for it is plain, from the
use that was to be made of his head, and from _Abhorson's_ asking,
"Is the axe upon the block, sirrah?" that beheading, and not hanging,
was the punishment to which _Barnardine_ was destined. But Shakspeare
knew that the axe and block were pregnant with no ludicrous images,
and therefore falsified the historic truth of his own drama (if I may
so speak), rather than he would leave out such excellent matter for a
jest as the suspending of a fellow-creature in mid-air has been ever
esteemed to be by Englishmen.

One reason why the ludicrous never fails to intrude itself into our
contemplations upon this mode of death, I suppose to be, the absurd
posture into which a man is thrown who is condemned to dance, as the
vulgar delight to express it, upon nothing. To see him whisking and
wavering in the air,

"As the wind you know will wave a man;"[1]

to behold the vacant carcass, from which the life is newly dislodged,
shifting between earth and heaven, the sport of every gust; like a
weathercock, serving to show from which point the wind blows; like a
maukin, fit only to scare away birds; like a nest left to swing upon
a bough when the bird is flown: these are uses to which we cannot
without a mixture of spleen and contempt behold the human carcass
reduced. We string up dogs, foxes, bats, moles, weasels. Man surely
deserves a steadier death.

[Footnote 1: Hieronimo in the Spanish Tragedy.]

Another reason why the ludicrous associates more forcibly with this
than with any other mode of punishment, I cannot help thinking to be,
the senseless costume with which old prescription has thought fit to
clothe the exit of malefactors in this country. Let a man do what he
will to abstract from his imagination all idea of the whimsical,
something of it will come across him when he contemplates the figure
of a fellow-creature in the daytime (in however distressing a
situation) in a nightcap. Whether it be that this nocturnal addition
has something discordant with daylight, or that it is the dress which
we are seen in at those times when we are "seen," as the Angel in
Milton expresses it, "least wise,"--this, I am afraid, will always be
the case; unless, indeed, as in my instance, some strong personal
feeling overpower the ludicrous altogether. To me, when I reflect
upon the train of misfortunes which have pursued men through life,
owing to that accursed drapery, the cap presents as purely frightful
an object as the sleeveless yellow coat and devil-painted mitre of
the San Benitos.--An ancestor of mine, who suffered for his loyalty
in the time of the civil wars, was so sensible of the truth of what I
am here advancing, that on the morning of execution, no entreaties
could prevail upon him to submit to the odious dishabille, as he
called it, but he insisted upon wearing, and actually suffered in,
the identical, flowing periwig which he is painted in, in the gallery
belonging to my uncle's seat in ----shire.

Suffer me, Mr. Editor, before I quit the subject, to say a word or
two respecting the minister of justice in this country; in plain
words, I mean the hangman. It has always appeared to me that, in the
mode of inflicting capital punishments with us, there is too much of
the ministry of the human hand. The guillotine, as performing its
functions more of itself and sparing human agency, though a cruel and
disgusting exhibition, in my mind has many ways the advantage over
_our way_. In beheading, indeed, as it was formerly practised in
England, and in whipping to death, as is sometimes practised now, the
hand of man is no doubt sufficiently busy; but there is something
less repugnant in these downright blows than in the officious
barber-like ministerings of _the other_. To have a fellow with his
hangman's hands fumbling about your collar, adjusting the thing as
your valet would regulate your cravat, valuing himself on his menial
dexterity----

I never shall forget meeting my rascal,--I mean the fellow who
officiated for me,--in London last winter. I think I see him now,--in
a waistcoat that had been mine,--smirking along as if he knew me----

In some parts of Germany, that fellow's office is by law declared
infamous, and his posterity incapable of being ennobled. They have
hereditary hangmen, or had at least, in the same manner as they had
hereditary other great officers of state; and the hangmen's families
of two adjoining parishes intermarried with each other, to keep the
breed entire. I wish something of the same kind were established in
England.

But it is time to quit a subject which teems with disagreeable
images----

Permit me to subscribe myself, Mr. Editor,

Your unfortunate friend,

PENSILIS.

* * * * *

ON THE MELANCHOLY OF TAILORS.

"Sedet, asternumque sedebit,
Infelix Theseus." VIRGIL.

That there is a professional melancholy, if I may so express myself,
incident to the occupation of a tailor, is a fact which I think very
few will venture to dispute. I may safely appeal to my readers,
whether they ever knew one of that faculty that was not of a
temperament, to say the least, far removed from mercurial or jovial.

Observe the suspicious gravity of their gait. The peacock is not more
tender, from a consciousness of his peculiar infirmity, than a
gentleman of this profession is of being known by the same infallible
testimonies of his occupation. "Walk, that I may know thee."

Do you ever see him go whistling along the footpath like a carman, or
brush through a crowd like a baker, or go smiling to himself like a
lover? Is he forward to thrust into mobs, or to make one at the
ballad-singer's audiences? Does he not rather slink by assemblies and
meetings of the people, as one that wisely declines popular
observation?

How extremely rare is a noisy tailor! a mirthful and obstreperous
tailor!

"At my nativity," says Sir Thomas Browne, "my ascendant was the
earthly sign of Scorpius; I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn,
and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me." One would
think that he were anatomizing a tailor! save that to the latter's
occupation, methinks, a woollen planet would seem more consonant, and
that he should be born when the sun was in Aries.--He goes on; "I am
no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise of
company." How true a type of the whole trade! Eminently economical of
his words, you shall seldom hear a jest come from one of them. He
sometimes furnishes subject for a repartee, but rarely (I think)
contributes one _ore proprio_.

Drink itself does not seem to elevate him, or at least to call out of
him any of the external indications of vanity. I cannot say that it
never causes his pride to swell, but it never breaks out. I am even
fearful that it may swell and rankle to an alarming degree inwardly.
For pride is near of kin to melancholy!--a hurtful obstruction from
the ordinary outlets of vanity being shut. It is this stoppage which
engenders proud humors. Therefore a tailor may be proud. I think he
is never vain. The display of his gaudy patterns, in that book of his
which emulates the rainbow, never raises any inflations of that
emotion in him, corresponding to what the wig-maker (for instance)
evinces, when he expatiates on a curl or a bit of hair. He spreads
them forth with a sullen incapacity for pleasure, a real or affected
indifference to grandeur. Cloth of gold neither seems to elate, nor
cloth of frieze to depress him--according to the beautiful motto
which formed the modest imprese of the shield worn by Charles Brandon
at his marriage with the king's sister. Nay, I doubt whether he would
discover any vainglorious complacence in his colors, though "Iris"
herself "dipt the woof."

In further corroboration of this argument--who ever saw the wedding
of a tailor announced in the newspapers, or the birth of his eldest
son?

When was a tailor known to give a dance, or to be himself a good
dancer, or to perform exquisitely on the tight-rope, or to shine in
any such light and airy pastimes? to sing, or play on the violin?

Do they much care for public rejoicings, lightings up, ringing of
bells, firing of cannons, &c.?

Valiant I know they can be; but I appeal to those who were witnesses
to the exploits of Eliot's famous troop, whether in their fiercest
charges they betrayed anything of that thoughtless oblivion of death
with which a Frenchman jigs into battle, or whether they did not show
more of the melancholy valor of the Spaniard, upon whom they charged;
that deliberate courage which contemplation and sedentary habits
breathe?

Are they often great newsmongers?--I have known some few among them
arrive at the dignity of speculative politicians; but that light and
cheerful every-day interest in the affairs and goings-on of the
world, which makes the barber[1] such delightful company, I think is
rarely observable in them.

[Footnote 1: Having incidentally mentioned the barber in a comparison
of professional temperaments, I hope no other trade will take
offence, or look upon it as an incivility done to them if I say, that
in courtesy, humanity, and all the conversational and social graces
which "gladden life," I esteem no profession comparable to his.
Indeed, so great is the goodwill which I bear to this useful and
agreeable body of men, that, residing in one of the Inns of Court
(where the best specimens of them are to be found, except perhaps at
the universities), there are seven of them to whom I am personally
known, and who never pass me without the compliment of the hat on
either side. My truly polite and urbane friend Mr. A----m, of
Flower-de-luce Court, in Fleet Street, will forgive my mention of him
in particular. I can truly say that I never spent a quarter of an
hour under his hands without deriving some profit from the agreeable
discussions which are always going on there.]

This characteristic pensiveness in them being so notorious, I wonder
none of those writers, who have expressly treated of melancholy,
should have mentioned it. Burton, whose book is an excellent abstract
of all the authors in that kind who preceded him, and who treats of
every species of this malady, from the _hypochondriacal_ or _windy_
to the _heroical_ or _love-melancholy_, has strangely omitted it.
Shakspeare himself has overlooked it. "I have neither the scholar's
melancholy (saith Jaques), which is emulation; nor the courtier's,
which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is politic; nor the lover's,
which is all these:" and then, when you might expect him to have
brought in, "nor the tailor's, which is," so and so, he comes to an
end of his enumeration, and falls to a defining of his own
melancholy.

Milton likewise has omitted it, where he had so fair an opportunity
of bringing it in, in his _Penseroso_.

But the partial omissions of historians proving nothing against the
existence of any well-attested fact, I shall proceed and endeavor to
ascertain the causes why this pensive turn should be so predominant
in people of this profession above all others.

And first, may it not be, that the custom of wearing apparel being
derived to us from the fall, and one of the most mortifying products
of that unhappy event, a certain _seriousness_ (to say no more of it)
may in the order of things have been intended to be impressed upon
the minds of that race of men to whom in all ages the care of
contriving the human apparel has been intrusted, to keep up the
memory of the first institution of clothes, and serve as a standing
remonstrance against those vanities which the absurd conversion of a
memorial of our shame into an ornament of our persons was destined to
produce? Correspondent in some sort to this, it may be remarked, that
the tailor sitting over a cave or hollow place, in the caballistic
language of his order is said to have _certain melancholy_ regions
always open under his feet.--But waiving further inquiry into final
causes, where the best of us can only wander in the dark, let us try
to discover the efficient causes of this melancholy.

I think, then, that they may be reduced to two, omitting some
subordinate ones, viz.:

The sedentary habits of the tailor.--
Something peculiar in his diet.--

First, his _sedentary habits_.--In Dr. Norris's famous narrative of
the frenzy of Mr. John Dennis, the patient, being questioned as to
the occasion of the swelling in his legs, replies that it came "by
criticism;" to which the learned doctor seeming to demur, as to a
distemper which he had never read of, Dennis (who appears not to have
been mad upon all subjects) rejoins, with some warmth, that it was no
distemper, but a noble art; that he had sat fourteen hours a day at
it; and that the other was a pretty doctor not to know that there was
a communication between the brain and the legs.

When we consider that this sitting for fourteen hours continuously,
which the critic probably practised only while he was writing his
"remarks," is no more than what the tailor, in the ordinary pursuance
of his art, submits to daily (Sundays excepted) throughout the year,
shall we wonder to find the brain affected, and in a manner
overclouded, from that indissoluble sympathy between the noble and
less noble parts of the body which Dennis hints at? The unnatural and
painful manner of his sitting must also greatly aggravate the evil,
insomuch that I have sometimes ventured to liken tailors at their
boards to so many envious Junos, _sitting cross-legged to hinder the
birth of their own felicity_. The legs transversed thus
[Illustration: X lying on its side] crosswise, or decussated, was
among the ancients the posture of malediction. The Turks, who
practise it at this day, are noted to be a melancholy people.

Secondly, his _diet_.--To which purpose I find a most remarkable
passage in Burton, in his chapter entitled "Bad diet a cause of
melancholy." "Amongst herbs to be eaten (he says) I find gourds,
cucumbers, melons, disallowed; but especially CABBAGE. It causeth
troublesome dreams, and sends up black vapors to the brain. Galen,
_Loc. Affect_, lib. iii. cap. 6, of all herbs condemns CABBAGE. And
Isaack, lib. ii. cap. 1, _animae gravitatem facit_, it brings
heaviness to the soul." I could not omit so flattering a testimony
from an author who, having no theory of his own to serve, has so
unconsciously contributed to the confirmation of mine. It is well
known that this last-named vegetable has, from the earliest periods
which we can discover, constituted almost the sole food of this
extraordinary race of people.

BURTON, _Junior_.

* * * * *

HOSPITA

ON THE IMMODERATE INDULGENCE OF THE PLEASURES
OF THE PALATE.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE REFLECTOR."

MR. REFLECTOR,--My husband and I are fond of company, and being in
easy circumstances, we are seldom without a party to dinner two or
three days in a week. The utmost cordiality has hitherto prevailed at
our meetings; but there is a young gentleman, a near relation of my
husband's, that has lately come among us, whose preposterous behavior
bids fair, if not timely checked, to disturb our tranquillity. He is
too great a favorite with my husband in other respects, for me to
remonstrate with him in any other than this distant way. A letter
printed in your publication may catch his eye; for he is a great
reader, and makes a point of seeing all the new things that come out.
Indeed, he is by no means deficient in understanding. My husband says
that he has a good deal of wit; but for my part I cannot say I am any
judge of that, having seldom observed him open his mouth except for
purposes very foreign to conversation. In short, sir, this young
gentleman's failing is, an immoderate indulgence of his palate. The
first time he dined with us, he thought it necessary to extenuate the
length of time he kept the dinner on the table, by declaring that he
had taken a very long walk in the morning, and came in fasting; but
as that excuse could not serve above once or twice at most, he has
latterly dropped the mask altogether, and chosen to appear in his own
proper colors, without reserve or apology.

You cannot imagine how unpleasant his conduct has become. His way of
staring at the dishes as they are brought in, has absolutely
something immodest in it: it is like the stare of an impudent man of
fashion at a fine woman, when she first comes into a room. I am
positively in pain for the dishes, and cannot help thinking they have
consciousness, and will be put out of countenance, he treats them so
like what they are not.

Then again he makes no scruple of keeping a joint of meat on the
table, after the cheese and fruit are brought in, till he has what he
calls _done with it_. Now how awkward this looks, where there are
ladies, you may judge, Mr. Reflector,--how it disturbs the order and
comfort of a meal. And yet I always make a point of helping him
first, contrary to all good manners,--before any of my female friends
are helped, that he may avoid this very error. I wish he would eat
before he comes out.

What makes his proceedings more particularly offensive at our house
is, that my husband, though out of common politeness he is obliged to
set dishes of animal food before his visitors, yet himself and his
whole family (myself included) feed entirely on vegetables. We have a
theory, that animal food is neither wholesome nor natural to man; and
even vegetables we refuse to eat until they have undergone the
operation of fire, in consideration of those numberless little living
creatures which the glass helps us to detect in every fibre of the
plant or root before it be dressed. On the same theory we boil our
water, which is our only drink, before we suffer it to come to table.
Our children are perfect little Pythagoreans: it would do you good to
see them in their nursery, stuffing their dried fruits, figs,
raisins, and _milk_, which is the only approach to animal food which
is allowed. They have no notion how the substance of a creature that
ever had life can become food for another creature. A beefsteak is an
absurdity to them; a mutton-chop, a solecism in terms; a cutlet, a
word absolutely without any meaning; a butcher is nonsense, except so
far as it is taken for a man who delights in blood, or a hero. In
this happy state of innocence we have kept their minds, not allowing
them to go into the kitchen, or to hear of any preparations for the
dressing of animal food, or even to know that such things are
practised. But as a state of ignorance is incompatible with a certain
age, and as my eldest girl, who is ten years old next Midsummer, must
shortly be introduced into the world and sit at table with us, where
she will see some things which will shock all her received notions, I
have been endeavoring by little and little to break her mind, and
prepare it for the disagreeable impressions which must be forced upon
it. The first hint I gave her upon the subject, I could see her
recoil from it with the same horror with which we listen to a tale of
Anthropophagism; but she has gradually grown more reconciled to it,
in some measure, from my telling her that it was the custom of the
world,--to which, however senseless, we must submit, so far as we
could do it with innocence, not to give offence; and she has shown so
much strength of mind on other occasions, which I have no doubt is
owing to the calmness and serenity superinduced by her diet, that I
am in good hopes when the proper season for her _debut_ arrives, she
may be brought to endure the sight of a roasted chicken, or a dish of
sweet-breads for the first time without fainting. Such being the
nature of our little household, you may guess what inroads into the
economy of it,--what resolutions and turnings of things upside down,
the example of such a feeder as Mr. ---- is calculated to produce.

I wonder, at a time like the present, when the scarcity of every kind
of food is so painfully acknowledged, that _shame_ has no effect upon
him. Can he have read Mr. Malthus's Thoughts on the Ratio of Food to
Population? Can he think it reasonable that one man should consume
the sustenance of many?

The young gentleman has an agreeable air and person, such as are not
unlikely to recommend him on the score of matrimony. But his fortune
is not over-large; and what prudent young woman would think of
embarking hers with a man who would bring three or four mouths (or
what is equivalent to them) into a family? She might as reasonably
choose a widower in the same circumstances, with three or four
children.

I cannot think who he takes after. His father and mother, by all
accounts, were very moderate eaters; only I have heard that the
latter swallowed her victuals very fast, and the former had a tedious
custom of sitting long at his meals. Perhaps he takes after both.

I wish you would turn this in your thoughts, Mr. Reflector, and give
us your ideas on the subject of excessive eating, and, particularly,
of animal food.

HOSPITA.

EDAX ON APPETITE.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE REFLECTOR."

MR. REFLECTOR,--I am going to lay before you a case of the most
iniquitous persecution that ever poor devil suffered.

You must know, then, that I have been visited with a calamity ever
since my birth. How shall I mention it without offending delicacy?
Yet out it must. My sufferings, then, have all arisen from a most
inordinate appetite----

Not for wealth, not for vast possessions,--then might I have hoped to
find a cure in some of those precepts of philosophers or
poets,--those verba et voces which Horace speaks of:--

"quibus hunc lenire dolorem
Possis, et magnam morbi deponere partem;"

not for glory, not for fame, not for applause,--for against this
disease, too, he tells us there are certain piacula, or, as Pope has
chosen to render it,

"Rhymes, which fresh and fresh applied,
Will cure the arrant'st puppy of his pride;"

nor yet for pleasure, properly so called: the strict and virtuous
lessons which I received in early life from the best of parents,--a
pious clergyman of the Church of England, now no more,--I trust have
rendered me sufficiently secure on that side:----

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25