Chapter I: Part 1

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832

CONDUCTED DY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

NO. 125.—VOL. III. SATURDAY, MAY 22, 1886. PRICE 1½_d._]

COACHING-DAYS.

The old stagecoaches, having served their day and generation, are now a thing of the past, save such as are used for pleasure by societies like the Coaching Club. The relics of these bygone days are to be found in roomy inns, with their broad gates, their commodious yards, and extensive stabling, which have been rendered comparatively useless and deserted by the diversion of the traffic that maintained them. Our fathers and grandfathers can yet interest us by relating stories of their experiences in the old slow coaches with six inside, the improved fast coaches and flying machines running twelve miles per hour with four inside passengers; or the crawling, lumbering stage-wagon, which carried merchandise and the poorer passengers, and which was considered to have travelled quickly if it rolled over four miles of road per hour.

Previous to the introduction of coaches, journeys were performed on horseback or by postchaise, and goods were carried on packhorses. Stow says that the Earl of Arundel introduced coaches into England about 1580; but some give the honour to Boonen, a Dutchman, who is said to have used this class of vehicle so early as 1564. These coaches, however, were for private use, and it was not until 1625 that they were let for hire at the principal inns. In 1637, there were fifty hackney-coaches in London and Westminster, and soon after, stagecoaches came into general use. Here is a copy of an old coachbill of that date: ‘YORK FOUR DAYES.—Stagecoach begins on Monday, the 18th of March 1678. All that are desirous to pass from London to York, or return from York to London, or any other place on that road, let them repair to the _Black Swan_ in Holborn in London, and the _Black Swan_ in Cony Street in York. At both which places they may be received in a stagecoach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which performs the whole journey in Four Days (if God permit) and sets forth by Six in the Morning. And returns from York to Doncaster in a Forenoon; to Newark, in a Day and a Half; to Stamford, in Two Days; and from Stamford to London, in Two Days more.’

Nearly one hundred years after, the coaches were called ‘machines,’ and the fast ones, ‘flying machines;’ while, to continue the metaphor, one man thus advertises his coach—‘Pruen’s Machine will begin flying as follows: Hereford Machine, in a day and a half, twice a week, sets out from the _Redstreak-tree Inn_ in Hereford, Tuesday and Thursday mornings, at 7 o’clock; and from the _Swan with Two Necks_, Lad Lane, London, every Monday and Wednesday evenings. Insides £1. Outsides, half-price. Jan. 5, 1775.’

During these palmy days, they had not the good macadamised roads that we now enjoy. In winter, the roads were often so bad that the coaches could not run, but were laid up, like ships during an arctic frost. If the roads were defined at all, it was most frequently by ditches, into which many a luckless outsider has been thrown by the numerous coach accidents of the period. In many places, there was no road boundary at all, for we read that Ralph Thoresby the antiquary lost his way between York and Doncaster; and the diarist Pepys between Newbury and Reading. A writer in 1770 thus speaks of the Lancashire roads: ‘I know not, in the whole range of language, terms sufficiently expressive to describe this awful road. Let me most seriously caution all travellers who may accidentally propose to travel this terrible country, to avoid it as they would a pestilence; for a thousand to one they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings-down, as they will here meet with ruts, which I actually measured, four feet deep, and floating with mud, in summer-time.’

Besides the dangers of bad roads, the drivers did not render life, limb, and property anymore secure by the furious driving which opposition coaches inspired. As in rival ocean steamers, competition led to a speed not compatible with safety. In Driffield (East Yorkshire) churchyard there is a tombstone to the memory of the guard of a coach who was killed by the coach being overturned; and the way in which the local newspaper speaks of the accident, leads you to believe there had been racing between it and another coach. Richard Wood, of the _Reindeer_ and _Ram Inns_, High Street, Doncaster, in his advertisements, says that his coaches are the best—the horses keep good time—and _no racing_.

These days were the days of highwaymen and footpads. Lady Walpole in her Letters relates how she and Lady Browne were robbed of their purses, when going to the Duchess of Montrose. ‘After the thief had gone, Lady Browne was most fearful lest he should return and wreak vengeance; “for,” said she, “I always prepare for such-like people, and carry an old purse filled with bad money, which I give them, and so save my good money.” Her fears were groundless, however, for we reached our journey’s end without further mishap.’ These highwaymen were a source of great danger and trouble to coach-travellers, in spite of precautions to guard against them. A post-office notice issued in York, October 30, 1786, says with regard to the mailcoach passengers: ‘Ladies and gentlemen may depend on every care and attention being paid to their safety. They will be guarded all the way by His Majesty’s servants, and on dark nights, a postillion will ride on one of the leaders.’ There is also a note to the effect that the guard was well armed.

During very wet weather and on low-lying roads, it was most unpleasant to drive through deep water; while, to add one misfortune to another, the trace might break or something else give way; and the mishap must be mended before we could get on to dry land. The writer has heard of the water over the axle-trees; and on one occasion it ran into the coach, and all but set afloat two old ladies who were inside. Their dismay may be easily imagined, and their supplications to the coachman to stop were quite affecting. Those on the outside were nearly as much to be pitied; for it had rained without ceasing all day—that kind of pitiless rain which comes down straight in solid stripes, like the water from a shower-bath, which in nautical language goes by the appellation of ‘raining marlin-spikes with their points downwards.’ The only difference between the outsiders and the old ladies being, that while they got it from below, the outsiders got it from above.

A good story has been told of four young undergraduates who had taken the four inside seats of the Oxford coach ‘Defiance.’ Just as the coach was about to start, a very pretty girl came up, attended by her grandfather, and asked if she could have an inside seat. As all the seats were occupied, the guard was unable to grant her request; but the young gentlemen inside vowed they would bear any amount of crushing and discomfort for her sake. The fare was paid, and she gently handed in her grandfather, saying: ‘Mind you thank the young gentlemen, grandpa!’ The feelings of the young gallants can be better imagined than described; but the coach drove off amid a general chorus of anger and dismay.

A gentleman-coachman gives the following incident: ‘In or about November 1834, I got upon the “Albion” coach, which ran from Birkenhead to London. There was no one on the box, a most unusual thing, so I got by the side of the coachman. “I suppose you know what kind of a load we’ve got, sir?” said he. “No,” I answered; “they look a queer lot! What are they?”—“Why,” said he, “they’re all jail-birds.” “Where are they going?” said I.—“Why, to Botany Bay; and I wish they were there now, for they are inclined to give some trouble, and would do if they had not got ‘ruffles’ on; but they’re pretty safe, I think.” They had two turnkeys with them; and there was no one else on the coach but these worthies, their keepers, myself, coachman, and guard. I left the coach at Wolverhampton, and a lucky thing for me it was; for, before reaching Walsall, the horses shied at some sparks flying across the road from a blacksmith’s shop, bolted, ran against a post, and upset the coach. No one was killed; but the coachman ultimately died of the injuries then received. During the confusion caused by the accident, and whilst another coach and coachman were being got ready to take them on, some of the convicts contrived to get files and other implements, and by these means put their handcuffs into such condition that they could slip them whenever they chose to do so. At a given signal they freed themselves, sprang upon and overpowered their keepers, guard, and coachman, handcuffed them, cut the traces, let loose the horses, and decamped. The greater number of them were, however, recaptured.’

With what ease, rapidity, and comfort we now perform our journeys, is best shown by contrast with the way in which our grandfathers thought wonders were performed. On a cold day in winter, your hands were frozen, your feet were frozen, your very mouth felt frozen; and, in fact, you felt frozen all over. Sometimes, with all this cold, you were also wet through—your hat wet through; your coat wet through; the lame wrapper that was meant to keep your neck warm and dry, wet through; and you felt wet through to your very bones. Only twenty minutes was allowed for dinner; and by the time you had got your hands warm enough to be able to untie your neck-wrapper, and had got out of your greatcoat, which, being wet, clung most tenaciously to you, the time for dinner was half-gone. Before you had eaten one quarter of what you could have consumed, if your mouth had been in eating trim, and if your hands had been warm enough to handle your knife and fork, the coachman would put in his head and say: ‘Now, gentlemen, if you please; the coach is ready.’ After this summons, having struggled into your wet greatcoat, bound your miserable wet wrapper round your miserably cold neck, having paid your half-crown for the dinner you had the will but not the time to eat, with sixpence for the waiter, you wished your worthy host good-bye, grudging him the half-crown he had pocketed for your miserable dinner. You then again mounted your seat, to be rained and snowed on, and almost frozen to death before you reached your journey’s end.

The following is from _Notes and Queries_, August 1856: ‘There being persons who seriously lament the good old time of coaches, when they could travel leisurely and securely, see the country, and converse with the natives, it may be well to register some of the miseries before they are altogether effaced from the memory.

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.

It is certainly not desirable that the good of coaches should be interred with their bones; neither is it by any means to be wished that the evil should entirely cease to live after them, so as to render us indifferent, and thankless, and insensible to the superior advantages of modern locomotion. (1) Although your place has been contingently secured days before, and you have risen with the lark, yet you see the ponderous vehicle arrive full, full, full; and this, not unlikely, more than once. (2) At the end of a stage, beholding the four panting, reeking, foamy animals, which have dragged you twelve miles; and the stiff, galled, scraggy relay, crawling and limping out of the yard. (3) Being politely requested, at the foot of a tremendous hill, to ease the horses, by getting out and walking. (4) An outside passenger resolving to endure no longer the pelting of the pitiless storm, takes refuge inside, to your consternation, with dripping hat, saturated cloak, and soaked umbrella. (5) Set down with a promiscuous party to a meal, bearing no resemblance to that of a good hotel save in the charge; and no time to enjoy it. (6) Closely packed in the coach, “cabined, cribbed, confined” with five companions morally or physically obnoxious, for two or three comfortless days and nights. (7) During a halt, overhearing the coarse language of the hostlers and tipplers at the roadside pothouse; and besieged by beggars exposing their mutilations. (8) Roused from your nocturnal slumber by the horn or bugle, the lashing and cracking of whip, a search for parcels under your seat, and solicitous drivers. (9) Discovering at a diverging point in your journey that the other coach you wished to take runs only every other day, or has finally stopped. (10) Clambering from the wheel to your elevated seat by various iron projections. (11) After threading the narrowest streets of an ancient town, entering the innyard by a low gateway, requiring great care to escape decapitation. (12) Seeing the luggage piled up “Olympus high,” so as to occasion an alarming oscillation. (13) Having the reins and whip placed in your unpractised hands, while coachee indulges in a glass and a chat. (14) When dangling at the extremity of a seat, overcome with drowsiness. (15) Exposed to piercing draughts, owing to a refractory glass; or, _vice versâ_, being in a minority, you are compelled, for the sake of ventilation, to thrust your umbrella accidentally through a pane. (16) At various seasons, suffocated with dust and broiled by a powerful sun; or cowering under an umbrella in a drenching rain; or petrified by cold; or torn by fierce winds; or struggling through snow; or wending your way through perilous floods. (17) Perceiving that a young squire is receiving an initiatory practical lesson in the art of driving, or that a jibing horse or a race with an opposition coach is endangering your existence. (18) Losing the enjoyment or employment of much precious time, not only on the road but also from consequent fatigue. (19) Interrupted before the termination of your hurried meal by your two rough-coated, big-buttoned, many-caped friends, the coachman and guard, who hope you will remember them.’

No doubt these olden times had their delights as well as discomforts, and old coachmen still speak enthusiastically of the charm of a bright moonlight night in summer-time, in which, not marred by the beat of the horses’ feet or the rumble of the wheels, you heard sounds, saw sights, and felt conscious of perfumes that are unknown to railway travellers. Yes, though many may greatly regret that steam has superseded horse-flesh, that the grimy engine-driver and stoker have displaced the coachman, that the discordant, screeching whistle is heard instead of the long mellow horn, the balance is in our favour, in spite of all the annoyances to which we are subjected by the stupidity and carelessness of railway officials, or by the red-tapeism and apparent indifference of railway directors.

IN ALL SHADES.

CHAPTER XXVII.

On the morning when Harry Noel was to arrive in Trinidad, Mr Dupuy and Edward Hawthorn both came down early to the landing-stage to await the steamer. Mr Dupuy condescended to nod in a distant manner to the young judge—he had never forgiven him that monstrous decision in the case of Delgado _versus_ Dupuy—and to ask chillily whether he was expecting friends from England.

‘No,’ Edward Hawthorn answered with a bow as cold as Mr Dupuy’s own. ‘I have come down to meet an old English friend of mine, a Mr Noel, whom I knew very well at Cambridge and in London, but who’s coming at present only from Barbadoes.’

Mr Dupuy astutely held his tongue. _Noblesse_ did not so far impose upon him as to oblige him to confess that it was Harry Noel he, too, had come down in search of. But as soon as the steamer was well alongside, Mr Dupuy, in his stately, slow, West Indian manner, sailed ponderously down the special gangway, and asked a steward at once to point out to him which of the passengers was Mr Noel.

Harry Noel, when he received Mr Dupuy’s pressing invitation, was naturally charmed at the prospect of thus being quartered under the same roof with pretty little Nora. Had he known the whole circumstances of the case, indeed, his native good feeling would, of course, have prompted him to go to the Hawthorns’; but Edward had been restrained by a certain sense of false shame from writing the whole truth about this petty local race prejudice to his friend in England; and so Harry jumped at once at the idea of being so comfortably received into the very house of which he so greatly desired to become an inmate. ‘You’re very good, I’m sure,’ he answered in his off-hand manner to the old planter. ‘Upon my word, I never met anything in my life to equal your open-hearted West Indian hospitality. Wherever one goes, one’s uniformly met with open arms. I shall be delighted, Mr Dupuy, to put up at your place—Orange Grove, I think you call it—ah, exactly—if you’ll kindly permit me.—Here, you fellow, go down below, will you, and ask for my luggage.’

Edward Hawthorn was a minute or two too late. Harry came forward eagerly, in the old friendly fashion, to grasp his hand with a hard grip, but explained to him with a look, which Edward immediately understood, that Orange Grove succeeded in offering him superior attractions even to Mulberry. So the very next day found Nora and Harry Noel seated together at lunch at Mr Dupuy’s well-loaded table; while Tom Dupuy, who had actually stolen an hour or two from his beloved canes, dropped in casually to take stock of this new possible rival, as he half suspected the gay young Englishman would turn out to be. From the first moment that their eyes met, Tom Dupuy conceived an immediate dislike and distrust for Harry Noel. What did he want coming here to Trinidad? Tom wondered: a fine-spoken, stuck-up, easy-going, haw-haw Londoner, of the sort that your true-born colonist hates and detests with all the force of his good-hater’s nature. Harry irritated him immensely by his natural superiority: a man of Tom Dupuy’s type can forgive anything in any other man except higher intelligence and better breeding. Those are qualities for which he feels a profound contempt, not unmingled with hatred, envy, malice, and all uncharitableness. So, as soon as Nora had risen from the table and the men were left alone, West Indian fashion, to their afternoon cigar and cup of coffee, Tom Dupuy began to open fire at once on Harry about his precious coloured friends the Hawthorns at Mulberry.

‘So you’ve come across partly to see that new man at the Westmoreland District Court, have you?’ he said sneeringly. ‘Well, I daresay he was considered fit company for gentlemen over in England, Mr Noel—people seem to have very queer ideas about what’s a gentleman and what’s not, over in England—but though I didn’t like to speak about it before Nora, seeing that they’re friends of hers, I think I ought to warn you beforehand that you mustn’t have too much to say to them if you want to get on out here in Trinidad. People here are a trifle particular about their company.’

Harry looked across curiously at the young planter, leaning back in awkward fashion with legs outstretched and half turned away from the table, as he sipped his coffee, and answered quietly, with some little surprise: ‘Why, yes, Mr Dupuy, I think our English idea of what constitutes a gentleman does differ slightly in some respects from the one I find current out here in the West Indies. I knew Hawthorn intimately for several years at Cambridge and in London, and the more I knew of him the better I liked him and the more I respected him. He’s a little bit too radical for me, I confess, and a little bit too learned as well; but in every other way, I can’t imagine what possible objection you can bring against him.’

Tom Dupuy smiled an ugly smile, and gazed hard at Harry Noel’s dark and handsome face and features. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, a malevolent light gleaming hastily from his heavy eyes, ‘we West Indians may be prejudiced; they say we are; but still, we’re not fond somehow of making too free with a pack of niggers. Now, I don’t say your friend Hawthorn’s exactly a nigger outside, to look at: he isn’t: he’s managed to hide the outer show of his colour finely. I’ve seen a good many regular white people, or what passed for white people’—and here he glanced significantly at the fine-spoken Londoner’s dark fingers, toying easily with the amber mouthpiece of his dainty cigar-holder—‘who were a good many shades darker in the skin than this fellow Hawthorn, for all they thought themselves such very grand gentlemen. Some of ’em may be coloured, and some of ’em mayn’t: there’s no knowing, when once you get across to England; for people there have no proper pride of race, I understand, and would marry a coloured girl, if she happened to have money, as soon as look at her. But this fellow Hawthorn, though he seems externally as white as you do—and a great deal whiter too, by Jove—is well known out here to be nothing but a coloured person, as his father and his mother were before him.’

Harry Noel puffed out a long stream of white smoke as he answered carelessly: ‘Ah, I daresay he is, if what you mean is just that he’s got some remote sort of negro tinge somewhere about him—though he doesn’t look it; but I expect almost all the old West Indian families, you know, must have intermarried long ago, when English ladies were rare in the colonies, with pretty half-castes.’

Quite unwittingly, the young Englishman had trodden at once on the very tenderest and dearest corn of his proud and unbending West Indian entertainers. Pride of blood is the one form of pride that they thoroughly understand and sympathise with; and this remote hint of a possible (and probable) distant past when the purity of the white race was not quite so efficiently guaranteed as it is nowadays, roused both the fiery Dupuys immediately to a white-heat of indignation.

‘Sir,’ Mr Theodore Dupuy said stiffly, ‘you evidently don’t understand the way in which we regard these questions out here in the colonies, and especially in Trinidad. There is one thing which your English parliament has not taken from us, and can never take from us; and that is the pure European blood which flows unsullied in all our veins, nowhere polluted by the faintest taint of a vile African intermixture.’

‘Certainly,’ Mr Tom Dupuy echoed angrily, ‘if you want to call us niggers, you’d better call us niggers outright, and not be afraid of it.’

‘Upon my word,’ Harry Noel answered with an apologetic smile, ‘I hadn’t the least intention, my dear sir, of seeming to hint anything against the purity of blood in West Indians generally; I only meant, that if my friend Hawthorn—who is really a very good fellow and a perfect gentleman—does happen to have a little distant infusion of negro blood in him, it doesn’t seem to me to matter much to any of us nowadays. It must be awfully little—a mere nothing, you know; just the amount one would naturally expect if his people had intermarried once with half-castes a great many generations ago. I was only standing up for my friend, you see.—Surely,’ turning to Tom, who still glared at him like a wild beast aroused, ‘a man ought to stand up for his friends when he hears them ill spoken of.’

‘Oh, quite so,’ Mr Theodore Dupuy replied, in a mollified voice. ‘Of course, if Mr Hawthorn’s a friend of yours, and you choose to stand by him here, in spite of his natural disabilities, on the ground that you happened to know him over in England—where, I believe, he concealed the fact of his being coloured—and you don’t like now to turn your back upon him, why, naturally, that’s very honourable of you, very honourable.—Tom, my dear boy, we must both admit that Mr Noel is acting very honourably. And, indeed, we can’t expect people brought up wholly in England’—Mr Dupuy dwelt softly upon this fatal disqualification, as though aware that Harry must be rather ashamed of it—‘to feel upon these points exactly as we do, who have a better knowledge and insight into the negro blood and the negro character.’

‘Certainly not,’ Tom Dupuy continued maliciously. ‘People in England don’t understand these things at all as we do.—Why, Mr Noel, you mayn’t be aware of it, but even among the highest English aristocracy there are an awful lot of regular coloured people, out-and-out mulattoes. West Indian heiresses in the old days used to go home—brown girls, or at anyrate young women with a touch of the tar-brush—daughters of governors and so forth, on the wrong side of the house—you understand’—Mr Tom Dupuy accompanied these last words with an upward and backward jerk of his left thumb, supplemented by a peculiarly ugly grimace, intended to be facetious—‘the sort of trash no decent young fellow over here would have so much as touched with a pair of tongs (in the way of marrying ’em, I mean); and when they got across to England, were snapped up at once by dukes and marquises, whose descendants, after all, though they may be lords, are really nothing better, you see, than common brown people!’

He spoke snappishly, but Harry only looked across at him in mild wonder. On the calm and unquestioning pride of a Lincolnshire Noel, remarks such as these fell flat and pointless. If a Noel had chosen to marry a kitchen-maid, according to their simple old-fashioned faith, he would have ennobled her at once, and lifted her up into his own exalted sphere of life and action. Her children after her would have been Lincolnshire Noels, the equals of any duke or marquis in the United Kingdom. So Harry only smiled benignly, and answered in his easy off-hand manner: ‘By Jove, I shouldn’t wonder at all if that were really the case now. One reads in Thackeray, you know, so much about the wealthy West Indian heiresses, with suspiciously curly hair, who used to swarm in London in the old slavery days. But of course, Mr Dupuy, it’s a well-known fact that all our good families have been awfully recruited by actresses and so forth. I believe some statistical fellow or other has written a book to show that if it weren’t for the actresses, the peerage and baronetage would all have died out long ago, of pure inanition. I daresay the West Indian heiresses, with the frizzy hair, helped to fulfil the same good and useful purpose, by bringing an infusion of fresh blood every now and then into our old families.’ And Harry ran his hand carelessly through his own copious curling black locks, in perfect unconsciousness of the absurdly malapropos nature of that instinctive action at that particular moment. His calm sense of utter superiority—that innate belief so difficult to shake, even on the most rational grounds, in most well-born and well-bred Englishmen—kept him even from suspecting the real drift of Tom Dupuy’s reiterated innuendoes.

‘You came out to Barbadoes to look after some property of your father’s, I believe?’ Mr Dupuy put in, anxious to turn the current of the conversation from this very dangerous and fitful channel.

‘I did,’ Harry Noel answered unconcernedly. ‘My father’s, or rather my mother’s. Her people have property there. We’re connected with Barbadoes, indeed. My mother’s family were Barbadian planters.’

At the word, Tom Dupuy almost jumped from his seat and brought his fist down heavily upon the groaning table. ‘They were?’ he cried inquiringly. ‘Barbadian planters? You don’t mean to say, then, Mr Noel, that some of your own people were really and truly born West Indians?’

‘Why on earth should he want to get so very excited about it?’ Harry Noel thought to himself hastily. ‘What on earth can it matter to him whether my people were Barbadian planters or Billingsgate fishmongers?’—‘Yes, certainly, they were,’ he went on to Tom Dupuy with a placid smile of quiet amusement. ‘Though my mother was never in the island herself from the time she was a baby, I believe, still all her family were born and bred there, for some generations.—But why do you ask me? Did you know anything of her people—the Budleighs of the Wilderness?’

‘No, no; I didn’t know anything of them,’ Tom Dupuy replied hurriedly, with a curious glance sideways at his uncle.—‘But, ’pon my honour, Uncle Theodore, it’s really a very singular thing, now one comes to think of it, that Mr Noel should happen to come himself, too, from a West Indian family.’

As Harry Noel happened that moment to be lifting his cup of coffee to his lips, he didn’t notice that Tom Dupuy was pointing most significantly to his own knuckles, and signalling to his uncle, with eyes and fingers, to observe Harry’s. And if he had, it isn’t probable that a Lincolnshire Noel would even have suspected the hidden meaning of those strange and odd-looking monkey-like antics.

By-and-by, Harry rose from the table carelessly, and asked in a casual way whether Mr Dupuy would kindly excuse him; he wanted to go and pay a call which he felt he really mustn’t defer beyond the second day from his arrival in Trinidad.

‘You’ll take a mount?’ Mr Dupuy inquired hospitably. ‘You know, we never dream of walking out in these regions. All the horses in my stable are entirely at your disposal. How far did you propose going, Mr Noel? A letter of introduction you wish to deliver, I suppose, to the governor or somebody?’

Harry paused and hesitated for a second. Then he answered as politely as he was able: ‘No, not exactly a letter of introduction. I feel I mustn’t let the day pass without having paid my respects as early as possible to Mrs Hawthorn.’

Tom Dupuy nudged his uncle; but the elder planter had too much good manners to make any reply save to remark that one of his niggers would be ready to show Mr Noel the way to the district judge’s—ah—dwelling-place at Mulberry.

As soon as Harry’s back was turned, however, Mr Tom Dupuy sank back incontinently on the dining-room sofa and exploded in a loud burst of boisterous laughter.

‘My dear Tom,’ Mr Theodore Dupuy interposed nervously, ‘what on earth are you doing? Young Noel will certainly overhear you. Upon my word, though I can’t say I agree with all the young fellow’s English sentiments, I really don’t see that there’s anything in particular to laugh at in him. He seems to me a very gentlemanly, well-bred, intelligent—— Why, goodness gracious, Tom, what has come over you so suddenly? You look for all the world as if you were positively going to kill yourself outright with laughing about nothing!’

Mr Tom Dupuy removed his handkerchief hastily from his mouth, and with an immense effort to restrain his merriment, exclaimed in a low suppressed voice: ‘Why, now, Uncle Theodore, do you mean to tell me you don’t see the whole joke! you don’t understand the full absurdity of the situation?’

Mr Dupuy gazed back at him blankly. ‘No more than I understand why on earth you are making such a confounded fool of yourself now,’ he answered contemptuously.

Tom Dupuy calmed himself slowly with a terrific effort, and blurted out at last, in a mysterious undertone: ‘Why, the point of it is, don’t you see, Uncle Theodore, the fellow’s a coloured man himself, as sure as ever you and I are standing here this minute!’

A light burst in upon Mr Dupuy’s benighted understanding with extraordinary rapidity. ‘He is!’ he cried, clapping his hand to his forehead hurriedly in the intense excitement of a profoundly important discovery. ‘He is, he is! There can’t be a doubt about it! Baronet or no baronet, as sure as fate, Tom, my boy, that man’s a regular brown man!’

‘I knew he was,’ Tom Dupuy replied exultantly, ‘the very moment I first set eyes upon that ugly head of his! I was sure he was a nigger as soon as I looked at him! I suspected it at once from his eyes and his knuckles. But when he told me his mother was a Barbadian woman—why, then, I knew, as sure as fate, it was all up with him.’

‘You’re quite right, quite right, Tom; I haven’t a doubt about it,’ Mr Theodore Dupuy continued helplessly, wringing his hands before him in bewilderment and horror. ‘And the worst of it is I have asked him to stop here as long as he’s in Trinidad! What a terrible thing if it were to get about over the whole island that I’ve asked a brown man to come and stop for an indefinite period under the same roof with your cousin Nora!’

Tom Dupuy was not wanting in chivalrous magnanimity. He leaned back on the sofa and screwed his mouth up for a moment with a comical expression; then he answered slowly: ‘It’s a very serious thing, of course, to accuse a man offhand of being a nigger. We mustn’t condemn him unheard or without evidence. We must try to find out all we can about his family. Luckily, he’s given us the clue himself. He said his mother was a Barbadian woman—a Budleigh of the Wilderness. We’ll track him down. I’ve made a mental note of it!’

Just at that moment, Nora walked quietly into the dining-room to ask the gentlemen whether they meant to go for a ride by-and-by in the cool of the evening. ‘For if you do, papa,’ she said in explanation, ‘you know you must send for Nita to the pasture, for Mr Noel will want a horse, and you’re too heavy for any but the cob, so you’ll have to get up Nita for Mr Noel.’

Tom Dupuy glanced at her suspiciously. ‘I suppose since your last particular friend fell over the gully that night at Banana Garden,’ he said hastily, ‘you’ll be picking up next with a new favourite in this fine-spoken, new-fangled, haw-haw, English fellow!’

Nora looked back at him haughtily and defiantly. ‘Tom Dupuy,’ she answered with a curl of her lip (she always addressed him by both names together), ‘you are quite mistaken—utterly mistaken. I don’t feel in the least prepossessed by Mr Noel’s personal appearance.’

‘Why not? Why not?’ Tom inquired eagerly.

‘I don’t know by what right you venture to cross-question me about such a matter; but as you ask me, I don’t mind answering you. Mr Noel is a shade or two too dark by far ever to take my own fancy.’

Tom whistled low to himself and gave a little start. ‘By Jove,’ he said, half aloud and half to himself, ‘that was a Dupuy that spoke that time, certainly. After all, the girl’s got some proper pride still left in her. She doesn’t want to marry him, _although_ he’s a brown man. I always thought myself, as a mere matter of taste, she positively preferred these woolly-headed mulattoes!’

JOHN HULLAH.

In 1870, when Mrs John Hullah was canvassing on behalf of Miss Garrett, M.D., then a candidate for the London School Board, several persons suggested that Mrs Hullah herself should have been proposed—‘For it’s a name that ought to be on the Board.’ That the name of Hullah must at one time have been a household word might be gathered from Lord Wharncliffe’s statement in the House of Lords, that between the end of 1841 and July 1842, fifty thousand persons were enlisted as musical students under the superintendence of Mr Hullah and his pupils. Very early in life, Mr Hullah’s thoughts had been occupied with the great problem of popularising the noble and refining art of music, and this problem it was his life’s labour to deal with, bringing to the task considerable wisdom and culture, magnificent patience, and generous enthusiasm. At a time when musical culture was very limited indeed, Hullah stood forward to proclaim that this evil was readily curable, that almost any child might learn to sing on scientific principles, so as to be able to pursue the study after leaving school, and that music deserved to be dealt with systematically, instead of being treated as a mere ‘relaxation from severer studies.’ As showing how these ideas were promoted during a long and busy career, the _Life of John Hullah_, now published by his widow (London: Longmans), and including a few pages of autobiography, will be welcome not only to musicians but to social reformers, and all who have any respect for the pioneers of progress.

On the authority of Grove’s _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_, Mr Hullah informs us that he first saw the light in the city of Worcester, on the 27th of June 1812. In a private school, he received a remarkably good education in English literature, but apparently in nothing else; and his future career was still an open question, when it was suggested, by a musical family very intimate with the Hullahs, that John should be trained to the profession of music. Accordingly, he became a pupil of William Horsley, the celebrated glee-writer. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Hullah himself ventured on the composition of a glee; and in 1833, he became a student at the Royal Academy of Music, then possessing, in his opinion, a reputation which it has never exceeded. Here, among his fellow-students, he met Miss Fanny Dickens, sister of the novelist, and shortly afterwards he appears to have become intimately acquainted with Charles Dickens himself. Mr Hullah’s first marriage took place on December 20, 1838; and early in the following year, the idea of a popular method of teaching singing began to engage his attention. He went to Paris to observe the method of M. Wilhem, and soon afterwards began teaching on a small scale at the Normal School at Battersea. Through Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, the sympathy of many influential persons was secured, and Hullah awoke to find himself famous. All classes from royalty downward were eager for information as to the new method. Lectures were required in all parts of the country; and owing probably to Mr Hullah’s own enthusiasm, very many of his pupils became teachers.

In 1844, Hullah became Professor of Music at King’s College, London, an office which he filled with acceptance for thirty years. He held similar appointments at Bedford College and Queen’s College, two well-known schools for girls; and, indeed, was associated with F. D. Maurice in the founding of the latter institution.

The erection of St Martin’s Hall, the scene of his most public labours, was an enterprise entered upon by him with characteristic light-heartedness. ‘To the work carried out in St Martin’s Hall,’ says Mrs Hullah, ‘is undoubtedly traceable the present all but universal study of music by every class in England; but it may certainly be said that for the chief director of that early movement, splendidly as he was supported and encouraged by his immediate friends, the results were ruinous in every way.’ In this costly building he took up his residence, in order to be near the scene of his classes and concerts, and for more than fourteen years he carried on a severe struggle for the cause which lay so near his heart. In 1861, when the Hall was destroyed by fire, and ‘Mr Hullah, now past his prime, stood a ruined man in the midst of a large family,’ a host of influential friends—including Charles Dickens, Henry Chorley, Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth, Sir Arthur Helps, and Mr (now Lord) Coleridge—rallied round him, and gave him a new start in life.

In 1861, Hullah published his Royal Institution Lectures on _The History of Modern Music_, a work which met with a cordial reception, and has since been translated into Italian by Alberto Visetti. Hullah’s failure in 1865 to gain the appointment of Professor of Music at Edinburgh was apparently as crushing as any misfortune could be to so buoyant a nature. There was scarcely a spot in the world which he would have chosen for his home in preference to Edinburgh. His lectures at the Philosophical Institution and his numerous concerts had made him well known there, and gained him many warm friends, who apparently encouraged him to suppose that his election was certain. There can be no doubt that he would have been a brilliant professor and an honour to the university; for he was a man of wide culture and boundless enthusiasm for his art. That ‘capacity for general appreciation,’ which he pointed to in Mendelssohn, was very properly cited by a friend as the striking feature in Hullah’s own character. Natural scenery, poetry, painting, and especially architecture, all found in him a thoughtful appreciation.

But admirably as he was fitted for such a professorship, perhaps the post which he received in 1872 of government Inspector of Music was even more suited to call forth his best talents and energies. His great objects were, firstly, to abolish singing by ear; and secondly, to encourage the formation of mixed choirs. He wished women to have more systematic training in choirs, so as to supersede the passionless soprano of boys and the falsetto counter-tenor of men. What he did towards the promotion of a scientific method of singing, may be judged from the fact, that during nine years, he examined sixteen thousand male and female students who expected to become teachers, and in that case would probably give their pupils the benefit of his system. His official position brought him into delicate relations with the advocates of other singing methods, but although of course we find occasional depreciatory remarks, his tone is generally very fair. Referring to the tonic sol-fa system, he went so far on one occasion as to recommend the government to refuse their sanction to ‘a notation or alphabet absolutely unknown out of Great Britain, the closest acquaintance with which fails to enable its possessors to read music as it is written by musicians.’ This seems at first sight inconsistent with his repeated deprecation of ‘any attempt to enforce on the musical instructors in training-schools directly or indirectly the adoption of any particular method of instruction, books, or exercises whatever;’ but possibly his meaning was that the tonic sol-faists, however their course might begin, should ultimately include in it a knowledge of the old notation—a provision to which they could not possibly object.

As a composer, Hullah attained no great distinction. In 1836, _The Village Coquettes_—an opera for which Charles Dickens supplied the libretto, and Hullah the music—was very successfully produced at the St James’s Theatre, where it ran for sixty nights. It was also played in Edinburgh under the management of Mr Ramsay. Charles Kingsley praised very highly Hullah’s setting of _The Three Fishers_, a song which is still met with in concert programmes. Among his other songs, which, as Mrs Hullah mentions, generally reflected his sadder moods, _The Storm_ and _The Sands of Dee_ are probably the best known.

Mrs Hullah has wisely restricted herself to a bare outline of her husband’s lifework, thus bringing her book within reach of his many pupils and admirers. Had a larger scope been permissible, a most interesting volume might have been produced consisting of reminiscences of his distinguished friends. We should have had a peep at the genial author of _Friends in Council_, for between Helps and Hullah there existed a life-long intimacy. We hear almost nothing of Mendelssohn; and of Spohr, we are simply told that ‘he did not play very well.’ The simple fact of a dinner with Meyerbeer is recorded; and we also hear of Samuel Rogers and Tom Moore as visitors at Mr Hullah’s house. His friend Mr Chorley having reported the discovery of ‘a new composer, Gounod by name,’ Hullah went to Paris, and reported favourably but cautiously concerning M. Gounod’s abilities. ‘A great original musical genius,’ he writes, ‘is such a creation, that one is slow to come to any conclusion.’

Hardly one of the good stories Hullah was constantly picking up has found its way into this volume. Being gifted with elocutionary and dramatic power, he could repeat a story very effectively, and once boasted that he had correctly given a Scottish anecdote involving two distinct dialects.

In 1876, Hullah received the degree of LL.D. from the university of Edinburgh, being presented to the Chancellor by his old friend, Professor Douglas Maclagan. ‘It is fitting,’ said Professor Maclagan, ‘that the university of Edinburgh, which alone, of the universities of Scotland, possesses a chair of Music, should show a practical acknowledgment of past musicians by recognising one of the fine arts in the person of this most adequate representative.’

In 1880, Hullah had a stroke of paralysis, which partially disabled his left leg and arm; but after a short rest, his marvellous energy forced him again into active work. Even at the age of seventy, he resented the idea of retirement; and it was not until he had accepted Mr Gladstone’s offer of a Civil List pension, that he fully realised that his lifework was over. He died in the midst of his family, at Malvern wells, on the 21st of February 1884.

John Hullah devoted his whole energies to a cause in which he had a profound faith. It was doubtless to typify this devotion that he adopted the witty device and motto which appear on the title-page of Mrs Hullah’s book. The ladder referred to in the motto, ‘Per scalam ascendimus,’ is of course the musical scale, by means of which Hullah knew he could greatly benefit his fellow-countrymen. With remarkable courage and tenacity he pursued this object, triumphing wonderfully over both apathy and obloquy. His name will probably not be permanently associated with the great work of giving to all British school children a rudimentary musical education on a thoroughly scientific basis; but the principle was fearlessly maintained by him when it had scarcely any other supporter, and all our future efforts must rest on the sound foundation which he laid.

In conclusion, we may add that it is matter of congratulation that the teaching of music in elementary schools is no longer left merely to private enterprise, but now forms a branch of the work done under the auspices of the Education Department. Government encourages musical tuition by a grant of money even to infant schools, ‘if the scholars are satisfactorily taught to sing by note’—that is, ‘by the standard, or any other recognised, notation.’ In this way the culture and the love of music will be sure to enter more than ever into the everyday life of our homes and communities.

THE HERRING-FISHERY AND FISHERMEN.

IN TWO PARTS.—PART II.

Until recent years, many curious customs and superstitions prevailed among the fisher-people, and in a year of scarcity it was nothing uncommon to see in the streets of Fraserburgh, Peterhead, or any of the Moray Firth ports, a considerable procession, headed by several representative men, some on horseback, and others on foot, bearing flags and symbols of the trade. The leaders were always comically and fantastically attired; and while some had a number of herrings suspended by the tail from their hat-brims, others had their clothes stuck full of burrs; and all this demonstration was deemed to have sufficient virtue in it to cause the herrings to rise and go into the nets! Up to the time that such exhibitions were common, no class was more superstitious than fishermen, and many practical jokes were perpetrated at their expense. The seafaring classes had a pious horror of hares and swine, and contact with them was held as portending some serious disaster or evil; and if any jocular cooper or fishcurer, anxious at a dull time in the fishing-season to relieve the monotony of their daily life, surreptitiously placed a leg of either of those animals on board a boat, its discovery led to the greatest commotion among the crew, who would not on any account go to sea that night, lest some dreadful accident should befall the craft.

After a period of scarcity, the unexpected arrival of a successful craft in the early forenoon with the report that the fleet had at length met a large shoal of fish and secured heavy takes, spreads like wildfire through the town; and the excitement manifested by all, from the largest fishcurer to the smallest fisher-boy, is intense. The piers are soon crowded with visitors, interested spectators, and those directly engaged in the trade; and the effect produced by the loud-toned dialect spoken by the local fisherwomen mingling with the distinctive pronunciation of the natives of Fife, Berwickshire, Banff, and Moray, in addition to the highly pitched Gaelic of the Highland girls, is unusually strange. As the boats round the breakwater, they are eagerly scanned by many anxious faces; and on reaching the pier, the crews of those craft that have been fortunate in securing unusually heavy takes receive, in a homely way, the congratulations of their relatives, and form the centre of attraction to all those loungers about the harbour who have nothing particular to do.

One of the first evidences of a successful fishing is the activity of the fisherwomen running hither and thither in hot haste armed with a plentiful supply of food for the bread-winners, which is soon after the boat’s arrival put on board, and hastily partaken of ere the hard day’s work commences. Before the meal is finished, the carters are waiting at the pier-side; and should all the herrings be shaken out of the nets, the men at once don their oilskins, and placing themselves in a convenient position to fill the baskets in the boat’s hold, the work of discharging commences. The skipper stands upon the pier to haul the baskets ashore, an operation in which he is often assisted by his wife, who on many occasions takes the lion’s share of the work. After working some time in the hold, the men gradually become covered with the silvery scales of the fish till their clothing assumes the appearances of a coat of mail, in which their stalwart figures and superb physique stand out in striking relief. Should the harvest of the sea be landed in larger quantities than usual, the stir both on the piers and in the curing-yards correspondingly increases; and amid a babel of tongues and uproarious good-humour, the stream of carts loaded with herrings goes on incessantly; while fishcurers, whose heads are almost turned with the pressure of business, rush to and fro issuing orders to their servants and fishermen.

On being brought into the yards, the herrings are emptied into large square wooden boxes called ‘forelands,’ many of which are under a roof, so that the women who gut the fish may be protected from the heat of the sun or the inclemency of the weather. To those who see them for the first time in a heavy fishing-night, the gutters count one of the sights of the trade; and their persons, as they appear clad in oilskins and besmeared with blood from head to foot, reminds one of an Indian in his war-paint fresh from battle. These women, from a life-long experience, show the greatest dexterity in their work; and the rapidity with which they seize a herring, enter the knife at its gills, remove the gut, and throw the offal into one tub and the fish into another, is one of the features of the business, and, in the eyes of a stranger, appears part of a juggler’s education. In the course of an afternoon and evening, one crew of women—comprising two gutters and one packer—will have a good many rows of barrels at their credit, representing earnings of from ten to twenty shillings. On all occasions when the fishing is heavy, these women are obliged to work at any hour; and as it often happens that the boats are late in arriving, curing operations go on all night, rendering a curing-yard, if not a pretty, an interesting sight. From end to end of the premises are rows of forelands heaped with herrings, whose silvery scales glitter in the light thrown from the blazing naphtha lamps suspended overhead, the rays of which, again, play upon the surface of the water in the harbour in a way that recalls memories of historic cities by sea and lake.