Chapter II: Part 2

‘I assure you,’ said a gentleman high in this department, ‘it is scarcely possible to take up a handful of letters without finding one with coin in it, despite the facilities afforded by the money-order system. All this is very distressing to us. The temptation it throws in the way of sorters, carriers, and other humble _employés_ is greater than they ought to be subjected to. Seventy men have been discharged for dishonesty from the District Office alone during the past two years.’

‘But the public do use the Money-Order Office extensively?’

This question was startlingly answered by reference to a Parliamentary Return which showed that there were issued and paid in England and Wales alone, during the year which ended on the 5th of January, 1849, 6,852,911 Post-office orders for sums amounting to the enormous aggregate of 13,678,377_l._ 3_s._ 1_d._

Taking up a thin card-board box of artificial flowers, which had been shaken into the form of an irregular rhomboid, under the pressure of several pounds’ weight of letters and newspapers, a ‘sub-president’ remarked—‘The faith the public have in us is extraordinary. Here is an article which is designed to go safely to Dublin; yet not one single precaution, except this thin piece of twine, is taken by the sender to ensure its preservation. Here, again, is a pair of white satin shoes, fast losing their colour from friction with damp newspapers and the edges of books. The other day the toe of a similar packet protruded from its very thin casing, and the stamper not being able to stop his hand in time, ornamented it, in vividly blue ink, with the words, “York, Feb. 1, 1850, D.” You will see by this Parliamentary Return of the articles found in the Dead-Letter Office what curious things are trusted to our care.’

The obliging gentleman then produced the document. Its lists showed, amongst other articles,—tooth-picks, tooth-files, fishing-flies, an eye-glass, brad-awls, portraits, miniatures, a whistle, corkscrews, a silver watch, a pair of spurs, a bridle, a soldier’s discharge and sailors’ register tickets, samples of hops and corn, a Greek MS., silver spoons, gold thread, dinner, theatre, and pawn tickets, boxes of pills, shirts, night-caps, razors, all sorts of knitting and lace, ‘doll’s things,’ and a vast variety of other articles, that would puzzle ingenuity to conjecture.

‘Besides carelessness we have to contend against ignorance,’ was remarked as the visitors were introduced to the ‘blind’ table, and to the hawk-eyed gentleman who presides at it. ‘He is provided, you perceive, with a small library of local and general Directories, Court Guides, Army, Navy, and Clergy Lists; and much he needs them, as will be seen by these fac-similes.’ Several transcripts of curiously addressed letters were then produced. ‘Where would you or I have sent a letter

For
George Miller

boy on board H M S
Amphirtrite Vallop
a Rayzor or Ellesware
]

certainly not to its proper destination, which turned out to be the “Amphitrite,” Valparaiso, or elsewhere? Who but our friend here would have found out that another boy in her Majesty’s naval service said to be on board

_H.M. Steem Friegkt
Vultur Uncon or els ware_,

belonged to the Steam Frigate Vulture, at Hong Kong? Few would think that

_Mr. Weston
Osburn Cottage
Ilawait_

was a neighbour of her Majesty, and lived at Osborne Cottage, Isle of Wight.’

The following additional epistolary puzzles were then read, amidst, as reporters say, ‘loud laughter:’

_Mr. Laurence
New Land
Ivicum_ (High Wycombe).

_W. Stratton
Commonly
Ceald teapot_
(We presume as a total abstinence man.)
_Weelin_ (Welwyn).

_Thom Hoodless
3 St. Ann Ct
Searhoo Skur_ (Soho Square).

The ingenious orthographies _Ratlifhaivai_ and _Ratlef Fieway_ went straight to the proper parties in Ratcliffe Highway; but it is a wonder how—

_Mr. Dick
Bishop Cans
ner the Wises_

got his letter, considering that his place of abode was near Devizes.

For the next specimen of spelling there is some excuse. ‘In England,’ says a French traveller, ‘what they write “Greenwich,” they pronounce “Grinitch,” and I am not quite sure that when they set down “Solomon,” they do not pronounce it “Nebuchadnezzar.”’ ‘I much question,’ continued one of the amateur Post-Office inspectors, ‘if either of us had never seen the name of the place to which the following superscription applies, that we should not have spelt it nearly similarly to the correspondent of—

Peter Robertson
2 Compney 7 Batilian
Rolyl Artirian
_Owilige_
England.

‘Although the writer’s ear misled him grievously in the other words, he has recorded the sound into which we render _Woolwich_ with curious correctness.’

‘Innocent simplicity baulks us as much as ignorance,’ remarked the head of the hieroglyphic department. ‘Here are one or two specimens of it:—

_To Mr. Michl
Darcy
In the town of
England._

‘A schoolboy sends from Salisbury,

_To My Uncle Jon
in London._

‘Another addressed the highest personage in the realm—no doubt on particular business—as

_Miss
Queene Victoria
of England._’

While this amusement was going forward, the bustle in the adjoining rooms had reached its climax. It was approaching eight o’clock, and the ‘Miller and his Men’ above stairs were delivering their sacks from the mouth of the ever-revolving mill at an incessant rate. These, filled nearly to the mouth with newspapers, were dragged to the tables, which the brass label fastened to the corner of each bag marked as its own, to have the letters inserted. Our friends rushed to where they saw ‘Edinburgh’ painted up on the walls, and there they beheld their yellow, green, and red letters in separate packets, though destined for the same place; just as they had come in at first from Fleet Street. The bundles were popped in a trice into the Edinburgh bag, which was sealed and sent away. Exactly the same thing was happening to every bundle of letters, and to every bag on the premises.

The clock now struck eight, and the two visitors looked round in astonishment. Had they been guests at the ball in ‘Cinderella,’ when _that_ clock struck they would not have been more astonished; for hardly less rapidly did the fancy dresses of the postmen disappear, and the lights grow dim. This is the most striking peculiarity of the extraordinary establishment. Everything is done on military principles to minute time. The drill and subdivision of duties are so perfect, that the alternations throughout the day are high pressure and sudden collapse. At five minutes before eight the enormous offices were glaring with light and crowded with men; at ten minutes after eight the glass slipper had fallen off, and there was hardly a light or a living being visible.

‘Perhaps, however,’ it was remarked as our friends were leaving the building, ‘an invisible individual is now stealthily watching behind the ground glass screen. Only the other day he detected from it a sorter secreting 140 sovereigns.’

It is a deplorable thing that such a place of observation should be necessary; but it is hardly less deplorable—and this should be most earnestly impressed upon the reader—that the public, now possessed of such conveniences for remitting money, by means of Post-Office Orders and Registered Letters, should lightly throw temptation in the way of these clerks, by enclosing actual coin. No man can say that, placed in such circumstances from day to day, he could be stedfast. Many may hope they would be, and believe it; but none can be sure. It is in the power, however, of every conscientious and reflecting mind, to make quite sure that it has no part in this class of crimes. The prevention for this one great source of misery is made easy to the public hand; and it is the public’s bounden duty to adopt it. They who do not, cannot be blameless.

Such is the substance of information obtained by our friends before they took leave of the mighty heart of the postal system of this country.

In conclusion, they beg it to be understood that their experimental letters were _not_ Valentines.

ABRAHAM AND THE FIRE-WORSHIPPER.

~A Dramatic Parable.~

SCENE—_The inside of a Tent, in which the Patriarch_ ABRAHAM
_and a_ PERSIAN TRAVELLER, _a Fire-Worshipper, are sitting
awhile after supper_.

_Fire-Worshipper_ (_aside_). What have I said, or
done, that by degrees
Mine host hath changed his gracious countenance,
Until he stareth on me, as in wrath!
Have I, ’twixt wake and sleep, lost his wise lore?
Or sit I thus too long, and he himself
Would fain be sleeping? I will speak to that.
(_Aloud._) Impute it, O my great and gracious lord,
Unto my feeble flesh, and not my folly,
If mine old eyelids droop against their will,
And I become as one that hath no sense
Ev’n to the milk and honey of thy words.—
With my lord’s leave, and his good servant’s help,
My limbs would creep to bed.

_Abraham_ (_angrily quitting his seat_). In this tent, never.
Thou art a thankless and an impious man.

_Fire-W._ (_rising in astonishment_). A thankless
and an impious man! Oh, sir,
My thanks have all but worshipp’d thee.

_Abraham._ And whom
Forgotten? like the fawning dog I feed.
From the foot-washing to the meal, and now
To this thy cramm’d and dog-like wish for bed,
I’ve noted thee; and never hast thou breath’d
One syllable of prayer, or praise, or thanks,
To the great God who made and feedeth all.

_Fire-W._ Oh, sir, the God I worship is the Fire,
The god of gods; and seeing him not here,
In any symbol, or on any shrine,
I waited till he blessed mine eyes at morn,
Sitting in heaven.

_Abraham._ Oh, foul idolator!
And darest thou still to breathe in Abraham’s tent?
Forth with thee, wretch: for he that made thy god,
And all thy tribe, and all the host of heaven,
The invisible and only dreadful God,
Will speak to thee this night, out in the storm,
And try thee in thy foolish god, the Fire,
Which with his fingers he makes lightnings of.
Hark to the rising of his robes, the winds,
And get thee forth, and wait him.
[_A violent storm is heard rising._

_Fire-W._ What! unhoused!
And on a night like this! me, poor old man,
A hundred years of age!

_Abraham_ (_urging him away_). Not reverencing
The God of ages, thou revoltest reverence.

_Fire-W._ Thou hadst a father:—think of his grey hairs,
Houseless, and cuff’d by such a storm as this.

_Abraham._ God is thy father, and thou own’st not him.

_Fire-W._ I have a wife, as aged as myself,
And if she learn my death, she’ll not survive it,
No, not a day; she is so used to me;
So propp’d up by her other feeble self.
I pray thee, strike us not both down.

_Abraham_ (_still urging him_). God made
Husband and wife, and must be own’d of them,
Else he must needs disown them.

_Fire-W._ We have children,
One of them, sir, a daughter, who, next week,
Will all day long be going in and out,
Upon the watch for me; she, too, a wife,
And will be soon a mother. Spare, oh spare her!
She’s a good creature, and not strong.

_Abraham._ Mine ears
Are deaf to all things but thy blasphemy,
And to the coming of the Lord and God,
Who will this night condemn thee.
[_Abraham pushes him out; and remains alone, speaking._
For if ever
God came at night-time forth upon the world,
’Tis now this instant. Hark to the huge winds,
The cataracts of hail, and rocky thunder,
Splitting like quarries of the stony clouds,
Beneath the touching of the foot of God.
That was God’s speaking in the heavens,—that last
And inward utterance coming by itself.
What is it shaketh thus thy servant, Lord,
Making him fear, that in some loud rebuke
To this idolator, whom thou abhorrest,
Terror will slay himself? Lo, the earth quakes
Beneath my feet, and God is surely here.
[_A dead silence; and then a still small voice._

_The Voice._ Abraham!

_Abraham._ Where art thou, Lord? and who is it that speaks
So sweetly in mine ear, to bid me turn
And dare to face thy presence?

_The Voice._ Who but He
Whose mightiest utterance thou hast yet to learn?
I was not in the whirlwind, Abraham;
I was not in the thunder, or the earthquake;
But I am in the still small voice.
Where is the stranger whom thou tookest in?

_Abraham._ Lord, he denied thee, and I drove him forth.

_The Voice._ Then didst thou do what God himself forbore.
Have I, although he did deny me, borne
With his injuriousness these hundred years,
And couldst thou not endure him one sole night,
And such a night as this?

_Abraham._ Lord! I have sinn’d,
And will go forth, and if he be not dead,
Will call him back, and tell him of thy mercies
Both to himself, and me.

_The Voice._ Behold, and learn!

[_The Voice retires while it is speaking; and a fold of the tent
is turned back, disclosing the_ FIRE-WORSHIPPER, _who is calmly
sleeping, with his head on the back of a house-lamb_.

_Abraham._ O loving God! the lamb itself’s his pillow,
And on his forehead is a balmy dew,
And in his sleep he smileth. I, meantime,
Poor and proud fool, with my presumptuous hands,
Not God’s, was dealing judgments on his head,
Which God himself had cradled!—Oh, methinks
There’s more in this than prophet yet hath known,
And Faith, some day, will all in Love be shown.

THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE.

As one half of the world is said not to know how the other half lives, so it may be affirmed that the upper half of the world neither knows nor greatly cares how the lower half amuses itself. Believing that it does not care, mainly because it does not know, we purpose occasionally recording a few facts on this subject.

The general character of the lower class of dramatic amusements is a very significant sign of a people, and a very good test of their intellectual condition. We design to make our readers acquainted in the first place with a few of our experiences under this head in the metropolis.

It is probable that nothing will ever root out from among the common people an innate love they have for dramatic entertainment in some form or other. It would be a very doubtful benefit to society, we think, if it could be rooted out. The Polytechnic Institution in Regent Street, where an infinite variety of ingenious models are exhibited and explained, and where lectures comprising a quantity of useful information on many practical subjects are delivered, is a great public benefit and a wonderful place, but we think a people formed _entirely_ in their hours of leisure by Polytechnic Institutions would be an uncomfortable community. We would rather not have to appeal to the generous sympathies of a man of five-and-twenty, in respect of some affliction of which he had had no personal experience, who had passed all his holidays, when a boy, among cranks and cogwheels. We should be more disposed to trust him if he had been brought into occasional contact with a Maid and a Magpie; if he had made one or two diversions into the Forest of Bondy; or had even gone the length of a Christmas Pantomime. There is a range of imagination in most of us, which no amount of steam-engines will satisfy; and which The-great-exhibition-of-the-works-of-industry-of-all-nations, itself, will probably leave unappeased. The lower we go, the more natural it is that the best-relished provision for this should be found in dramatic entertainments; as at once the most obvious, the least troublesome, and the most real, of all escapes out of the literal world. Joe Whelks, of the New Cut, Lambeth, is not much of a reader, has no great store of books, no very commodious room to read in, no very decided inclination to read, and no power at all of presenting vividly before his mind’s eye what he reads about. But, put Joe in the gallery of the Victoria Theatre; show him doors and windows in the scene that will open and shut, and that people can get in and out of; tell him a story with these aids, and by the help of live men and women dressed up, confiding to him their innermost secrets, in voices audible half a mile off; and Joe will unravel a story through all its entanglements, and sit there as long after midnight as you have anything left to show him. Accordingly, the Theatres to which Mr. Whelks resorts, are always full; and whatever changes of fashion the drama knows elsewhere, it is always fashionable in the New Cut.

The question, then, might not unnaturally arise, one would suppose, whether Mr. Whelks’s education is at all susceptible of improvement, through the agency of his theatrical tastes. How far it is improved at present, our readers shall judge for themselves.

In affording them the means of doing so, we wish to disclaim any grave imputation on those who are concerned in ministering to the dramatic gratification of Mr. Whelks. Heavily taxed, wholly unassisted by the State, deserted by the gentry, and quite unrecognised as a means of public instruction, the higher English Drama has declined. Those who would live to please Mr. Whelks, must please Mr. Whelks to live. It is not the Manager’s province to hold the Mirror up to Nature, but to Mr. Whelks—the only person who acknowledges him. If, in like manner, the actor’s nature, like the dyer’s hand, become subdued to what he works in, the actor can hardly be blamed for it. He grinds hard at his vocation, is often steeped in direful poverty, and lives, at the best, in a little world of mockeries. It is bad enough to give away a great estate six nights a-week, and want a shilling; to preside at imaginary banquets, hungry for a mutton chop; to smack the lips over a tankard of toast and water, and declaim about the mellow produce of the sunny vineyard on the banks of the Rhine; to be a rattling young lover, with the measles at home; and to paint sorrow over, with burnt cork and rouge; without being called upon to despise his vocation too. If he can utter the trash to which he is condemned, with any relish, so much the better for him, Heaven knows; and peace be with him!

A few weeks ago, we went to one of Mr. Whelks’s favourite Theatres, to see an attractive Melo-Drama called MAY MORNING, OR THE MYSTERY OF 1715, AND THE MURDER! We had an idea that the former of these titles might refer to the month in which either the Mystery or the Murder happened, but we found it to be the name of the heroine, the pride of Keswick Vale; who was ‘called May Morning’ (after a common custom among the English Peasantry) ‘from her bright eyes and merry laugh.’ Of this young lady, it may be observed, in passing, that she subsequently sustained every possible calamity of human existence, in a white muslin gown with blue tucks; and that she did every conceivable and inconceivable thing with a pistol, that could anyhow be effected by that description of fire-arms.

The Theatre was extremely full. The prices of admission were, to the boxes, a shilling; to the pit, sixpence; to the gallery, threepence. The gallery was of enormous dimensions (among the company, in the front row, we observed Mr. Whelks); and overflowing with occupants. It required no close observation of the attentive faces, rising one above another, to the very door in the roof, and squeezed and jammed in, regardless of all discomforts, even there, to impress a stranger with a sense of its being highly desirable to lose no possible chance of effecting any mental improvement in that great audience.

The company in the pit were not very clean or sweet-savoured, but there were some good-humoured young mechanics among them, with their wives. These were generally accompanied by ‘the baby,’ insomuch that the pit was a perfect nursery. No effect made on the stage was so curious, as the looking down on the quiet faces of these babies fast asleep, after looking up at the staring sea of heads in the gallery. There were a good many cold fried soles in the pit, besides; and a variety of flat stone bottles, of all portable sizes.

The audience in the boxes was of much the same character (babies and fish excepted) as the audience in the pit. A private in the Foot Guards sat in the next box; and a personage who wore pins on his coat instead of buttons, and was in such a damp habit of living as to be quite mouldy, was our nearest neighbour. In several parts of the house we noticed some young pickpockets of our acquaintance; but as they were evidently there as private individuals, and not in their public capacity, we were little disturbed by their presence. For we consider the hours of idleness passed by this class of society as so much gain to society at large; and we do not join in a whimsical sort of lamentation that is generally made over them, when they are found to be unoccupied.

As we made these observations the curtain rose, and we were presently in possession of the following particulars.

Sir George Elmore, a melancholy Baronet with every appearance of being in that advanced stage of indigestion in which Mr. Morrison’s patients usually are, when they happen to hear, through Mr. Moat, of the surprising effects of his Vegetable Pills, was found to be living in a very large castle, in the society of one round table, two chairs, and Captain George Elmore, ‘his supposed son, the Child of Mystery, and the Man of Crime.’ The Captain, in addition to an undutiful habit of bullying his father on all occasions, was a prey to many vices: foremost among which may be mentioned his desertion of his wife, ‘Estella de Neva, a Spanish lady,’ and his determination unlawfully to possess himself of May Morning; M. M. being then on the eve of marriage to Will Stanmore, a cheerful sailor, with very loose legs.

The strongest evidence, at first, of the Captain’s being the Child of Mystery and the Man of Crime was deducible from his boots, which, being very high and wide, and apparently made of sticking-plaister, justified the worst theatrical suspicions to his disadvantage. And indeed he presently turned out as ill as could be desired: getting into May Morning’s Cottage by the window after dark; refusing to ‘unhand’ May Morning when required to do so by that lady; waking May Morning’s only surviving parent, a blind old gentleman with a black ribbon over his eyes, whom we shall call Mr. Stars, as his name was stated in the bill thus * * * * * *; and showing himself desperately bent on carrying off May Morning by force of arms. Even this was not the worst of the Captain; for, being foiled in his diabolical purpose—temporarily by means of knives and pistols, providentially caught up and directed at him by May Morning, and finally, for the time being, by the advent of Will Stanmore—he caused one Slink, his adherent, to denounce Will Stanmore as a rebel, and got that cheerful mariner carried off, and shut up in prison. At about the same period of the Captain’s career, there suddenly appeared in his father’s castle, a dark complexioned lady of the name of Manuella, ‘a Zingara Woman from the Pyrenean mountains; the wild wanderer of the heath, and the pronouncer of the prophecy,’ who threw the melancholy baronet, his supposed father, into the greatest confusion by asking him what he had upon his conscience, and by pronouncing mysterious rhymes concerning the Child of Mystery and the Man of Crime, to a low trembling of fiddles. Matters were in this state when the Theatre resounded with applause, and Mr. Whelks fell into a fit of unbounded enthusiasm, consequent on the entrance of ‘Michael the Mendicant.’

At first we referred something of the cordiality with which Michael the Mendicant was greeted, to the fact of his being ‘made up’ with an excessively dirty face, which might create a bond of union between himself and a large majority of the audience. But it soon came out that Michael the Mendicant had been hired in old time by Sir George Elmore, to murder his (Sir George Elmore’s) elder brother—which he had done; notwithstanding which little affair of honour, Michael was in reality a very good fellow; quite a tender-hearted man; who, on hearing of the Captain’s determination to settle Will Stanmore, cried out, ‘What! more bel-ood!’ and fell flat—overpowered by his nice sense of humanity. In like manner, in describing that small error of judgment into which he had allowed himself to be tempted by money, this gentleman exclaimed, ‘I ster-ruck him down, and fel-ed in er-orror!’ and further he remarked, with honest pride, ‘I have liveder as a beggar—a roadersider vaigerant, but no ker-rime since then has stained these hands!’ All these sentiments of the worthy man were hailed with showers of applause; and when, in the excitement of his feelings on one occasion, after a soliloquy, he ‘went off’ _on his back_, kicking and shuffling along the ground, after the manner of bold spirits in trouble, who object to be taken to the station-house, the cheering was tremendous.

And to see how little harm he had done, after all! Sir George Elmore’s elder brother was NOT dead. Not he! He recovered, after this sensitive creature had ‘fel-ed in er-orror,’ and, putting a black ribbon over his eyes to disguise himself, went and lived in a modest retirement with his only child. In short, Mr. Stars was the identical individual! When Will Stanmore turned out to be the wrongful Sir George Elmore’s son, instead of the Child of Mystery and Man of Crime, who turned out to be Michael’s son, (a change having been effected, in revenge, by the lady from the Pyrenean Mountains, who became the Wild Wanderer of the Heath, in consequence of the wrongful Sir George Elmore’s perfidy to her and desertion of her), Mr. Stars went up to the Castle, and mentioned to his murdering brother how it was. Mr. Stars said it was all right; he bore no malice; he had kept out of the way, in order that his murdering brother (to whose numerous virtues he was no stranger) might enjoy the property; and now he would propose that they should make it up and dine together. The murdering brother immediately consented, embraced the Wild Wanderer, and it is supposed sent instructions to Doctors’ Commons for a license to marry her. After which, they were all very comfortable indeed. For it is not much to try to murder your brother for the sake of his property, if you only suborn such a delicate assassin as Michael the Mendicant!

All this did not tend to the satisfaction of the Child of Mystery and Man of Crime, who was so little pleased by the general happiness, that he shot Will Stanmore, now joyfully out of prison and going to be married directly to May Morning, and carried off the body, and May Morning to boot, to a lone hut. Here, Will Stanmore, laid out for dead at fifteen minutes past twelve, P.M., arose at seventeen minutes past, infinitely fresher than most daisies, and fought two strong men single-handed. However, the Wild Wanderer, arriving with a party of male wild wanderers, who were always at her disposal—and the murdering brother arriving arm-in-arm with Mr. Stars—stopped the combat, confounded the Child of Mystery and Man of Crime, and blessed the lovers.

The adventures of ‘RED RIVEN THE BANDIT’ concluded the moral lesson of the evening. But, feeling by this time a little fatigued, and believing that we already discerned in the countenance of Mr. Whelks a sufficient confusion between right and wrong to last him for one night, we retired: the rather as we intended to meet him, shortly, at another place of dramatic entertainment for the people.

AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF
MAD^{LLE} CLAIRON.

The occurrence related in the letter which we are about to quote, is a remarkable instance of those apparently supernatural visitations which it has been found so difficult (if not impossible) to explain and account for. It does not appear to have been known to Scott, Brewster, or any other English writer who has collected and endeavoured to expound those ghostly phenomena.

Clairon was the greatest tragedian that ever appeared on the French stage; holding on it a supremacy similar to that of Siddons on our own. She was a woman of powerful intellect, and had the merit of effecting a complete revolution in the French school of tragic acting; substituted an easy, varied, and natural delivery for the stilted and monotonous declamation which had till then prevailed, and being the first to consult classic taste and propriety of costume. Her mind was cultivated by habits of intimacy with the most distinguished men of her day; and she was one of the most brilliant ornaments of those literary circles which the contemporary Memoir writers describe in such glowing colours. In an age of corruption, unparalleled in modern times, Mademoiselle Clairon was not proof against the temptations to which her position exposed her. But a lofty spirit, and some religious principles, which she retained amidst a generation of infidels and scoffers, saved her from degrading vices, and enabled her to spend an old age protracted beyond the usual period of human life, in respectability and honour.

She died in 1803, at the age of eighty. She was nearly seventy when the following letter was written. It was addressed to M. Henri Meister, a man of some eminence among the literati of that period; the associate of Diderot, Grimm, D’Holbach, M. and Madame Necker, &c., and the _collaborateur_ of Grimm in his famous ‘Correspondence.’ This gentleman was Clairon’s ‘literary executor;’ having been intrusted with her Memoirs, written by herself, and published after her death.

With this preface we give Mademoiselle Clairon’s narrative, written in her old age, of an occurrence which had taken place half a century before.

* * * * *

‘In 1743, my youth, and my success on the stage, had drawn round me a good many admirers. M. de S——, the son of a merchant in Brittany, about thirty years old, handsome, and possessed of considerable talent, was one of those who were most strongly attached to me. His conversation and manners were those of a man of education and good society, and the reserve and timidity which distinguished his attention made a favourable impression on me. After a green-room acquaintance of some time I permitted him to visit me at my house, but a better knowledge of his situation and character was not to his advantage. Ashamed of being only a _bourgeois_, he was squandering his fortune at Paris under an assumed title. His temper was severe and gloomy; he knew mankind too well, he said, not to despise and avoid them. He wished to see no one but me, and desired from me, in return, a similar sacrifice of the world. I saw, from this time, the necessity, for his own sake as well as mine, of destroying his hopes by reducing our intercourse to terms of less intimacy. My behaviour brought upon him a violent illness, during which I showed him every mark of friendly interest, but firmly refused to deviate from the course I had adopted. My steadiness only deepened his wound; and unhappily, at this time, a treacherous relative, to whom he had intrusted the management of his affairs, took advantage of his helpless condition by robbing him, and leaving him so destitute that he was obliged to accept the little money I had, for his subsistence, and the attendance which his condition required. You must feel, my dear friend, the importance of never revealing this secret. I respect his memory, and I would not expose him to the insulting pity of the world. Preserve, then, the religious silence which after many years I now break for the first time.

‘At length he recovered his property, but never his health; and thinking I was doing him a service by keeping him at a distance from me, I constantly refused to receive either his letters or his visits.

‘Two years and a half elapsed between this period and that of his death. He sent to beg me to see him once more in his last moments, but I thought it necessary not to comply with his wish. He died, having with him only his domestics, and an old lady, his sole companion for a long time. He lodged at that time on the Rempart, near the Chaussée d’Antin; I resided in the Rue de Bussy, near the Abbaye St. Germain. My mother lived with me; and that night we had a little party to supper. We were very gay, and I was singing a lively air, when the clock struck eleven, and the sound was succeeded by a long and piercing cry of unearthly horror. The company looked aghast; I fainted, and remained for a quarter of an hour totally insensible. We then began to reason about the nature of so frightful a sound, and it was agreed to set a watch in the street in case it were repeated.

‘It was repeated very often. All our servants, my friends, my neighbours, even the police, heard the same cry, always at the same hour, always proceeding from under my windows, and appearing to come from the empty air. I could not doubt that it was meant entirely for me. I rarely supped abroad; but the nights I did so, nothing was heard; and several times, when I came home, and was asking my mother and servants if they had heard anything, it suddenly burst forth, as if in the midst of us. One night, the President de B——, at whose house I had supped, desired to see me safe home. While he was bidding me “good night” at my door, the cry broke out seemingly from something between him and me. He, like all Paris, was aware of the story; but he was so horrified, that his servants lifted him into his carriage more dead than alive.

‘Another time, I asked my comrade Rosely to accompany me to the Rue St. Honoré, to choose some stuffs, and then to pay a visit to Mademoiselle de St. P——, who lived near the Porte Saint-Denis. My ghost story (as it was called) was the subject of our whole conversation. This intelligent young man was struck by my adventure, though he did not believe there was anything supernatural in it. He pressed me to evoke the phantom, promising to believe if it answered my call. With weak audacity I complied, and suddenly the cry was heard three times with fearful loudness and rapidity. When we arrived at our friend’s door both of us were found senseless in the carriage.

‘After this scene, I remained for some months without hearing anything. I thought it was all over; but I was mistaken.

‘All the public performances had been transferred to Versailles on account of the marriage of the Dauphin. We were to pass three days there, but sufficient lodgings were not provided for us. Madame Grandval had no apartment; and I offered to share with her the room with two beds which had been assigned to me in the avenue of St. Cloud. I gave her one of the beds and took the other. While my maid was undressing to lie down beside me, I said to her, “We are at the world’s end here, and it is dreadful weather; the cry would be somewhat puzzled to get at us.” In a moment it rang through the room. Madame Grandval ran in her night-dress from top to bottom of the house, in which nobody closed an eye for the rest of the night. This, however, was the last time the cry was heard.

‘Seven or eight days afterwards, while I was chatting with my usual evening circle, the sound of the clock striking eleven was followed by the report of a gun fired at one of the windows. We all heard the noise, we all saw the fire, yet the window was undamaged. We concluded that some one sought my life, and that it was necessary to take precautions against another attempt. The Intendant des Menus Plaisirs, who was present, flew to the house of his friend, M. de Marville, the Lieutenant of Police. The houses opposite mine were instantly searched, and for several days were guarded from top to bottom. My house was closely examined; the street was filled with spies in all possible disguises. But, notwithstanding all this vigilance, the same explosion was heard and seen for three whole months always at the same hour, and at the same window-pane, without any one being able to discover from whence it proceeded. This fact stands recorded in the registers of the police.

‘Nothing was heard for some days; but, having been invited by Mademoiselle Dumesnil[1] to join a little evening party at her house near the _Barrière blanche_, I got into a hackney-coach at eleven o’clock with my maid. It was clear moonlight as we passed along the Boulevards, which were then beginning to be studded with houses. While we were looking at the half-finished buildings, my maid said, “Was it not in this neighbourhood that M. de S—— died?” “From what I have heard,” I answered, “I think it should be there”—pointing with my finger to a house before us. From that house came the same gunshot that I had heard before. It seemed to traverse our carriage, and the coachman set off at full speed, thinking we were attacked by robbers. We arrived at Mademoiselle Dumesnil’s in a state of the utmost terror; a feeling I did not get rid of for a long time.’

[Footnote 1: The celebrated tragedian.]

[Mademoiselle Clairon gives some further details similar to the above, and adds that the noises finally ceased in about two years and a half. After this, intending to change her residence, she put up a bill on the house she was leaving; and many people made the pretext of looking at the apartments an excuse for gratifying their curiosity to see, in her every-day guise, the great tragedian of the Théâtre Français.]

‘One day I was told that an old lady desired to see my rooms. Having always had a great respect for the aged, I went down to receive her. An unaccountable emotion seized me on seeing her, and I perceived that she was moved in a similar manner. I begged her to sit down, and we were both silent for some time. At length she spoke, and, after some preparation, came to the subject of her visit.

‘“I was, mademoiselle, the best friend of M. de S——, and the only friend whom he would see during the last year of his life. We spoke of you incessantly; I urging him to forget you,—he protesting that he would love you beyond the tomb. Your eyes which are full of tears allow me to ask you why you made him so wretched; and how, with such a mind and such feelings as yours, you could refuse him the consolation of once more seeing and speaking to you?”

‘“We cannot,” I answered, “command our sentiments. M. de S—— had merit and estimable qualities; but his gloomy, bitter, and overbearing temper made me equally afraid of his company, his friendship, and his love. To make him happy, I must have renounced all intercourse with society, and even the exercise of my talents. I was poor and proud; I desire, and hope I shall ever desire, to owe nothing to any one but myself. My friendship for him prompted me to use every endeavour to lead him to more just and reasonable sentiments: failing in this, and persuaded that his obstinacy proceeded less from the excess of his passion than from the violence of his character, I took the firm resolution to separate from him entirely. I refused to see him in his last moments, because the sight would have rent my heart; because I feared to appear too barbarous if I remained inflexible, and to make myself wretched if I yielded. Such, madame, are the motives of my conduct,—motives for which, I think, no one can blame me.”

‘“It would indeed,” said the lady, “be unjust to condemn you. My poor friend himself in his reasonable moments acknowledged all that he owed you. But his passion and his malady overcame him, and your refusal to see him hastened his last moments. He was counting the minutes, when at half-past ten, his servant came to tell him that decidedly you would not come. After a moment’s silence, he took me by the hand with a frightful expression of despair. ‘Barbarous woman!’ he cried; ‘but she will gain nothing by her cruelty. As I have followed her in life, I shall follow her in death!’ I endeavoured to calm him;—he was dead.”

‘I need scarcely tell you, my dear friend, what effect these last words had upon me. Their analogy to all my apparitions filled me with terror, but time and reflection calmed my feelings. The consideration that I was neither the better nor the worse for all that had happened to me, have led me to ascribe it all to chance. I do not, indeed, know what _chance_ is; but it cannot be denied that the something which goes by that name has a great influence on all that passes in the world.

‘Such is my story; do with it what you will. If you intend to make it public, I beg you to suppress the initial letter of the name, and the name of the province.’

* * * * *

This last injunction was not, as we see, strictly complied with; but, at the distance of half a century, the suppression of a name was probably of little consequence.

There is no reason to doubt the entire truth of Mademoiselle Clairon’s narrative. The incidents which she relates made such a deep and enduring impression on her mind, that it remained uneffaced during the whole course of her brilliant career, and, almost at the close of a long life spent in the bustle and business of the world, inspired her with solemn and religious thoughts. Those incidents can scarcely be ascribed to delusions of her imagination; for she had a strong and cultivated mind, not likely to be influenced by superstitious credulity; and besides, the mysterious sounds were heard by others as well as herself, and had become the subject of general conversation in Paris. The suspicion of a trick or conspiracy never seems to have occurred to her, though such a supposition is the only way in which the circumstances can be explained; and we are convinced that this explanation, though not quite satisfactory in every particular, is the real one. Several portentous occurrences, equally or more marvellous, have thus been accounted for.

Our readers remember the history of the Commissioners of the Roundhead Parliament for the sequestration of the royal domains, who were terrified to death, and at last fairly driven out of the Palace of Woodstock, by a series of diabolical sounds and sights, which were long afterwards discovered to be the work of one of their own servants, Joe Tomkins by name, a loyalist in the disguise of a puritan. The famous ‘Cock-lane Ghost,’ which kept the town in agitation for months, and baffled the penetration of multitudes of the divines, philosophers, and literati of the day, was a young girl of some eleven or twelve years old, whose mysterious knockings were produced by such simple means, that their remaining so long undetected is the most marvellous part of the story. This child was the agent of a conspiracy formed by her father, with some confederates, to ruin the reputation of a gentleman by means of pretended revelations from the dead. For this conspiracy these persons were tried, and the father, the most guilty party, underwent the punishment of the pillory.

A more recent story is that of the ‘Stockwell Ghost,’ which forms the subject of a volume published in 1772, and is shortly told by Mr. Hone in the first volume of his ‘Every Day Book.’ Mrs. Golding, an elderly lady residing at Stockwell, in Surrey, had her house disturbed by portents, which not only terrified her and her family, but spread alarm through the vicinity. Strange noises were heard proceeding from empty parts of the house, and heavy articles of furniture, glass and earthenware, were thrown down and broken in pieces before the eyes of the family and neighbours. Mrs. Golding, driven by terror from her own dwelling, took refuge, first in one neighbouring house, and then in another, and thither the prodigies followed her. It was observed that her maid-servant, Ann Robinson, was always present when these things took place, either in Mrs. Golding’s own house, or in those of the neighbours. This girl, who had lived only about a week with her mistress, became the subject of mistrust and was dismissed, after which the disturbances entirely ceased. But the matter rested on mere suspicion. ‘Scarcely any one,’ says Mr. Hone, ‘who lived at that time listened patiently to the presumption, or without attributing the whole to witchcraft.’ At length Mr. Hone himself obtained a solution of the mystery from a gentleman who had become acquainted with Ann Robinson many years after the affair happened, and to whom she had confessed that she alone had produced all these supernatural horrors, by fixing wires or horse-hairs to different articles, according as they were heavy or light, and thus throwing them down, with other devices equally simple, which the terror and confusion of the spectators prevented them from detecting. The girl began these tricks to forward some love affair, and continued them for amusement when she saw the effect they produced.

Remembering these cases, we can have little doubt that Mademoiselle Clairon’s maid was the author of the noises which threw her mistress and her friends into such consternation. Her own house was generally the place where these things happened; and on the most remarkable occasions where they happened elsewhere, it is expressly mentioned that the maid was present. At St. Cloud it was to the maid, who was her bed-fellow, that Clairon was congratulating herself on being out of the way of the cry, when it suddenly was heard in the very room. She had her maid in the carriage with her on the Boulevards, and it was immediately after the girl had asked her a question about the death of M. de S—— that the gunshot was heard, which seemed to traverse the carriage. Had the maid a confederate—perhaps her fellow-servant on the box—to whom she might have given the signal? When Mademoiselle Clairon went a-shopping to the Rue St. Honoré, she probably had her maid with her, either in or outside the carriage; and, indeed, in every instance the noises took place when the maid would most probably have been present, or close at hand. In regard to the unearthly cry, she might easily have produced it herself without any great skill in ventriloquism, or the art of imitating sounds; a supposition which is rendered the more probable, as its realisation was rendered the more easy, by the fact of no words having been uttered—merely a wild cry. Most of the common itinerant ventriloquists on our public race-courses can utter speeches for an imaginary person without any perceptible motion of the lips; the utterance of a mere sound in this way would be infinitely less difficult.

The noises resembling the report of firearms (very likely to have been unconsciously, and in perfect good faith, exaggerated by the terror of the hearers) may have been produced by a confederate fellow-servant, or a lover. It is to be observed, that the first time this seeming report was heard, the houses opposite were guarded by the police, and spies were placed in the street, but Mademoiselle Clairon’s own house was merely ‘examined.’ It is evident that these precautions, however effectual against a plot conducted from without, could have no effect whatever against tricks played within her house by one or more of her own servants.

As to the maid-servant’s motives for engaging in this series of deceptions, many may have existed and been sufficiently strong; the lightest, which we shall state last, would probably be the strongest. She may have been in communication with M. de S——’s relations for some hidden purpose which never was effected. How far this circumstance may be connected with the date of the first portent, the very night of the young man’s death, or whether that coincidence was simply accidental, is matter for conjecture. The old lady, his relative, who afterwards visited Clairon, and told her a tale calculated to fill her with superstitious dread, _may_ herself have been the maid-servant’s employer for some similar purpose; or (which is at least equally probable) the tale may have had nothing whatever to do with the sound, and may have been perfectly true. But all experience in such cases assures us that the love of mischief, or the love of power, and the desire of being important, would be sufficient motives to the maid for such a deception. The more frightened Clairon was, the more necessary and valuable her maid became to her, naturally. A thousand instances of long-continued deception on the part of young women, begun in mere folly, and continued for the reasons just mentioned, though continued at an immense cost of trouble, resolution, and self-denial in all other respects, are familiar to most readers of strange transactions, medical and otherwise. There seem to be strong grounds for the conclusion that the maid was the principal, if not the sole agent in this otherwise supernatural part of this remarkable story.

THE WAYSIDE WELL.

O! The pretty wayside well,
Wreathed about with roses,
Where, beguiled with soothing spell,
Weary foot reposes.

With a welcome fresh and green,
Wave thy border grasses,
By the dusty traveller seen,
Sighing as he passes.

Treads the drover on thy sward,
Comes the beggar to thee,
Free as gentleman or lord
From his steed to woo thee.

Thou from parching lip dost earn
Many a murmured blessing;
And enjoyest in thy turn
Innocent caressing.

Fair the greeting face ascends,
Like a naiad daughter,
When the peasant lassie bends
To thy trembling water.

When she leans upon her pail,
Glancing o’er the meadow,—
Sweet shall fall the whispered tale,
Soft the double shadow!

Mortals love thy crystal cup;
Nature seems to pet thee,—
Seething Summer’s fiery lip
Hath no power to fret thee.

Coolly sheltered, hid from smirch,
In thy cavelet shady,
O’er thee in a silver birch
Stoops a forest lady.

To thy glass the Star of Eve
Shyly dares to bend her;
Matron Moon thy depths receive,
Globed in mellow splendour.

—Bounteous Spring! for ever own
Undisturbed thy station,—
Not to thirsty lips alone
Serving mild donation.

Never come the newt or frog,
Pebble thrown in malice,
Mud, or withered leaves, to clog
Or defile thy chalice;

Heaven be still within thy ken,
Through the veil thou wearest,—
Glimpsing clearest, as with men,
When the boughs are barest!

A BUNDLE OF EMIGRANTS’ LETTERS.

A scheme has been propounded by MRS. CHISHOLM, a lady to whose great exertions in reference to the emigration of the poor, especially of her own sex, the public is much indebted,—for the establishment of what it is proposed to call ‘A Family Colonisation Loan Society.’

The design is based, in the main, upon three positions. First ‘that it is melancholy to reflect that thousands of British subjects should wander about, more like spectres than beings of flesh and blood; and that hundreds should die from starvation, while our vast colonies could provide abundantly for them.’ Secondly, ‘that in England a society is much needed, the great moral aim of which should be to check crime, by protecting and encouraging virtue.’ Thirdly, ‘that the zealous endeavours of the charitable, _combined with the industrious and frugal efforts of the working classes themselves_,’ could accomplish great ends in the way of emigration.

For these leading considerations, it is proposed that the projected society should assist persons desiring to emigrate, by loans of money for two years or longer without interest. That these loans should be made to friendly parties or groups of approved individuals, acquainted with the character of each other, and becoming jointly and severally responsible for the loans made to them. That agents should be appointed in different parts of Australia, to maintain a general knowledge of the emigrants so assisted, and a general communication with them; and that the advances should always bear a certain proportion to the amount of the funds raised by the emigrants themselves, or by their friends in the Colonies, at the time of their making application for assistance to quit this country.

The re-uniting of various members of one family when some have emigrated, while others have been left at home; and the removal of the difficulty too often found in raising sufficient funds to effect this re-union, is one important object of Mrs. Chisholm’s scheme. And it must not be forgotten that money lent and repaid, would be lent again and again; and thus the good effected by one small sum would become quite incalculable.