Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 368, June 1846

"This is a shocking business, madam!" I began.

It was the signal for a flood.

"When did you arrive?" she sobbed.

"An hour since."

"And you have heard of it?"

"Of the elope" —

"Oh, don't, don't, don't speak of it!" shrieked the lady. "It turns me sick. He has married a beggar – the daughter of an impostor and a swindler."

"Can it be true?"

"Oh, you have been very dilatory and foolish, Mr Wilson," suddenly exclaimed Mrs Twisleton in a clear sharp tone, which had nothing of the softness of tears about it. "Had I been a man, I would have saved my friend from certain infamy. Mr Wilson, I gave you full warning – ample time. You cannot deny it."

I sighed.

"And now you have come to Bath again, what do you mean to do?"

I thought for a second or two, and then sighed again.

"Take my advice, sir; it's a woman's, but not the worse for that. If you stay here till doomsday, you can't alter what is unalterable. The fool's married by this time. The general has broken up his establishment and has decamped!"

"Impossible!"

"That may be, but what I tell you is the truth, nevertheless. The mail leaves Bath at eleven o'clock. Return by it to London. See Lord Railton as soon as you arrive. Make the best you can of this wretched business, and prepare him to meet his son without a curse. You need not tell him all you know about the general. He will find that out quickly enough; nor need you mention my insignificant name at all. The old man has feeling left in him; and the mother doats upon her namby-pamby boy. Obtain their pardon for your friend, and you will do that friend a service which he will never forget, and can never sufficiently repay."

I reflected for a moment; the advice seemed sound. I determined to adopt it. Bewildered and vexed, I quitted the lady's house, and walked mechanically about the town, from street to street. An hour or two were yet at my disposal – heavy, irritating hours, converted into ages by my impatience and anxiety. Chance or fate conducted me to the abode of General Travis. I stopped before the door, as purposeless as I had just approached it. To curse the hour that had connected poor Sinclair with the proprietor of that late magnificent and extravagant establishment, was a natural movement. I cursed, and proceeded on my walk. I had not, however, advanced a few steps, before, looking back, I became aware of a light gleaming from one of the windows of the house. I returned. Some information might be gained from the servant left in charge of the place; possibly a clue to the mystery in which, without any valid reason, I had myself become entangled. I found the door of the mansion ajar. I knocked, but no one answered; I repeated the summons with as little success, and then I walked boldly in – and up-stairs, in order to place myself at once in communication with the apartment in which I had perceived the faint illumination. Opening the drawing-room door, I perceived, as much to my disgust as astonishment – the Yahoo!

That dark gentleman was drunk; there was no doubt of it. He was sitting at a table that was literally covered with food, of which he had taken to repletion. His coat was off, so was his cravat, and the collar of his shirt unbuttoned. Perspiration hung about his cheeks, and his face looked very oily. Decanters of wine were before him; a pewter jug of ale; and bottles containing more or less of ardent spirits. There was a wild expression in his eye, but the general glow of his visage was one of fuddled sottishness. He saluted me with a grin.

"Who the debil are you?" he politely asked.

"I was looking," I answered, "for a servant."

"D – n him serbant," exclaimed the Yahoo, speaking in his drunkenness like a very nigger. "I gib him a holyday. What are you got to say to dat? What do you want?" he proceeded. "Sit down. Enjoy yerself. What do you take? Deblish good rum, and no mistake."

Hold a candle to the Devil is a worldly maxim, which I had never an opportunity of practising to the letter until now. Much might be learned by humoring the monster – nothing by opposing him. I sat down and drank his health.

"Thankee, old boy," said he. "I'm deblish glad to see you, upon my soul. Gib us your hand. How many are you got?"

"Two," said I.

"That's a lie," replied the nigger hastily. "I see four. But neber mind, I'm not partickler. Gib us two of 'em. I say, old boy," he continued, "don't you eat nothing? D – d sweet. Sure to make you sick. Him drink much as him like."

"You wait the general's return, I presume?" said I, in the vain hope of eliciting something from this black moving barrel.

The gentleman tried to look me full in the face; but his eyes rolled involuntarily, and prevented him. He contrived, however, to effect what he intended for a knowing wink, whilst he thrust out his cheek with the end of his tongue.

"Oh yes, in course," he answered. "I wait till him come back. Him wait d – d long while. He! he! he!"

"His departure was very sudden," I continued.

"Oh, bery! All them departure's bery sudden. Missy General go bery sudden – Missy Elinor go bery sudden – rum go bery sudden," he concluded, drinking off a glassful.

"I saw the general to-day. We met on the road. He told me every thing."

"Stupid old codger! Him can't keep his own counsel. Dat him business, not mine. Deblish cleber old codger!"

"He was much affected," said I. "The elopement of his child is a serious blow to him."

The nigger performed the same pantomime as before; winking his eye, and enlarging his cheek.

"Blow not so bad as a punch on the head, old boy. Deblish cleber old codger," repeated the Yahoo, laughing immoderately. "Deblish cleber 'Gustus too!"

"Who is he?" I inquired.

The nigger attempted to rise in his chair, and to make a profound bow, but failed in both attempts.

"I'm 'Gustus!" said he, "at your sarvice – take a glass of wine with you!"

I pledged the gentleman, and he continued.

"You know Massa Sinclair?"

"A little."

"Big jackass, Massa Sinclair. Awful big. He no run away with Missy Elinor, Missy run away with him. Massa General run away with both. 'Gustus do it all."

I groaned.

"You ain't well? Take glass rum? Bery good rum!"

"And so you did it all, Augustus? You must be a clever fellow!"

"I think so. If you could but have seen us this morning. I and Massa General looking over the banisters whilst Missy Elinor was running away; and Massa Sinclair in de hall, trembling all over like a ninny, for fear Massa General should see him – Massa General and me splitting sides all the time. D – d good! like a play. He! he! he!"

I groaned again.

"Sure you are not well, old boy? Try the bitters."

"I have had enough," said I. "I must begone."

"Don't hurry, old fellow. Can't ask you again. Go to town to-morrow. Meet General Travis to-morrow night. Him sewed up. 'Gustus neber desert him."

"The general will not return then?"

"Him too good judge!"

"And Mr Sinclair and the lady?"

"They married by this time. I say, old boy, let's drink their health."

"No, no, no. Tell me whither do they go!"

"No, no, no! – I say yes, yes, yes," roared the intoxicated monster. "Drink it, you rascal," he added, "or I'll kick you down stairs."

My blood was boiling in a moment. The nigger staggered to me, and touched the collar of my coat. His hand was scarcely there, before I took him by the neck, and flung him like a loathsome reptile from me. He fell at the foot of the table, but in his passage to the ground he grasped a decanter of wine, which he hurled at my head. It passed me, met the door, and flew in a thousand pieces about the room. Sick at heart, I took the opportunity to retire.

Never shall I forget the morning upon which I stood in Grosvenor Square, knocker in hand, about to present myself before the father of Rupert Sinclair, and to acquaint him with the disgrace that had come to his family, by the alliance of the previous day. The feelings of the hour return with all their painful vividness as I recall the time. A lazy porter, richly attired, opened the door, and rang a bell in the hall, which brought to me his lordship's valet. The latter received my card, and after a quarter of an hour's absence, returned with the information, that his lordship was particularly busy with the Director of the Opera, and could not be seen by any one that morning. Every little circumstance is indelibly imprinted on my memory, stamped there by the peculiar anxiety under which I laboured. I respectfully submitted that my business was even more important than that of the Director, and requested the valet to return with my urgent request to his lordship for one short interview.

"His lordship doesn't know you," said the valet.

"Not know me!" I exclaimed, forgetting at the moment how little it was to his lordship's interest to remember me. "There," I exclaimed "take this card to him." I had written upon it —Late tutor to the Hon. Rupert Sinclair.

Another quarter of an hour, and I was admitted. His lordship was evidently angry at the interruption. My heart was fluttering. He extended to me one finger, by way of compromise, which I reverently touched, offered me no seat, but asked me my business.

I began – continued – and ended without the least hinderance on his lordship's part. I spoke without reserve of my own share in the unfortunate business, taking particular care, however, not to say one word to the disparagement of Elinor, or that might unneccessarily excite Lord Railton against his erring son. I told him of Rupert's illness, of our having proceeded to Bath in company – of his recovery – his meeting with Elinor – her beauty – his devotion. I pleaded his youth, his ardent nature – referred to the past as irretrievable, to the future as full of happiness for Mr Sinclair, provided his lordship would look with forgiving kindness upon his act; and used all the eloquence I could command to move what I conceived to be at least a heart of flesh to pity and sympathy for its own blood and offspring.

Lord Railton heard me to the end, with a knitted brow and closed lips. When I had finished, he asked me sternly if I had any thing more to say.

"Nothing," I replied.

Whereupon his lordship rang the bell.

The valet again appeared.

Lord Railton again held out his finger, as at our meeting. I was about to take it, when his lordship moved it quickly – pointed to the door – and said – "Show that person out!"

For a second I stood astounded and confused. In another second I found myself breathing on the sunny side of Grosvenor Square. How I reached it, I no longer remember.

THE PEOPLE. 72

Mr Cobden, in the House of Commons, has given us a definition of the term which heads this article: – The People are the inhabitants of towns. "I beg to tell the honourable member for Limerick," said the arch-leaguer, a few evenings since, "and the noble lord, the member for Lynn, and the two hundred and forty members who sit behind him, that there are other parties to be consulted with regard to their proposition – that there are The People; I don't mean the country party, but the people living in the towns, and who will govern this country."

"What is the city," says Shakspeare, "but the People?" – "True, the people are the city."

Against Mr Cobden we pit Mr D'Israeli, who defines the people to be the country gentlemen. Against Shakspeare, we bring M. Michelet, who, in an affectionate dedication of his latest work to his fellow-labourer and friend, M. Edgar Quinet, modestly acquaints the said M. Edgar, that The People are neither more nor less than the author of the book and the gentlemen to whom it is inscribed: —

"Recevez-le donc, ce livre du Peuple, parce qu'il est vous, parce qu'il est moi. Par vos origines militaires, par la mienne, industrielle, nous représentons nous-mêmes, autant que d'autres peut-être, les deux faces modernes du Peuple, et son récent avénement."

There is, in truth an extensive amount of cant afloat just now, both here and elsewhere, on this subject of The People. It is the staple commodity of your newspaper-mongers, and the catchpenny song of the streets. Agitators feed upon it, politicians play upon it, our needy brethren of the quill pay outstanding debts with it. It is one of the few things that pay at all in an age of fearful competition, and one that always will pay whilst poor human nature holds the purse-strings. The wretched beggarman of Ireland famishes for a crust, yet he has his farthings to spare for the greedy hypocrite who flatters his vanity, and heaps laudations on his social importance. John Howard made four pilgrimages to Germany, five to Holland, three to France, two to Italy, with the simple object of mitigating the physical sufferings of his fellow creatures; he visited Spain, Portugal, the United States, and Turkey, with the same practical and praiseworthy purpose. He passed days in pest-houses and lazarettos, and finally laid down his life in the blessed work of charity at Cherson in the Crimea. Nous avons changé tout cela. Philanthropy is a luxurious creature now-a-days. She is passive rather than active; she does not work – she talks. Her disciples take no journeys, unless it be to Italy for their own pleasure; they sit at home in satin dressing-gowns, supported on velvet, feeding on turtle. They tell the labouring classes – whom they style the bone and sinew of the land – that though they talk prose, and lead prosaic lives, they are nevertheless first-rate poets, that though rough at the surface, they are the gentlest of creation "at the core;" that though dull, they are quick; though ugly, handsome; though stupid, vastly clever; though commoners in the last degree, yet nobles of God, and nature's grandees of the very first class. It is gratifying to believe all this, and the charge is only threepence a-week, or a shilling a-month. Open as we all are to flattery, who would not pay so trifling a sum for the pleasure of so sweet a dream? If you cannot relieve our sufferings, it is something to create an inordinate self-esteem. If you cannot afford us a shilling from your pockets, it is much that your goose-quill can convert us into birds of Paradise. The successful writers of the day are those who have nauseously fawned upon the million for the sale of their "sweet voices" and their halfpence.

There is not one of these popular authors who has had the manliness to suggest, supposing that he has the head to discover, a remedy for the evils which every honest mind perceives in the social condition of the humbler classes. The most they have done is to drag further into the light miseries which every one saw without their aid – to point out exultingly distinctions of rank, which have always been, and can never cease to be – to remove bonds of sympathy, that united for mutual benefit one class with another – and to widen as far as possible the breach that has arisen between the governed and the governing of this great empire. We do them injustice – they have accomplished more. In seasons of difficulty and trial, in those periods of convulsion and danger, to which all great societies are liable, and a large mercantile community like our own is especially subject, they have assuaged alarm and appeased hunger by writing books with a moral; such a moral as that upon which The Chimes was founded, and which the snarling author of Mrs Caudle's Lectures loves to inculcate: we mean the moral that teaches the loveliness of all that lies in the hovel, the hatefulness of all that dwells in the palace; the sublimity of vulgarity, and the ridiculousness of high birth; the innate virtues of ignorance and poverty, and the equally essential wickedness of wealth and rank. Such are the exertions of modern philanthropy! Such are the self-denying, humble, and glorious achievements of the successors of John Howard!

There are two classes of philanthropists very busy just now on this side the English Channel: viz., that composed of men who are particularly anxious that no laws whatever should be passed for the effectual punishment of the midnight assassin in Ireland; and that which stands up for the murderer in England, denying the right of the legislator to punish any man with death, and the expediency of the punishment, provided the right be conceded. Should society be restored to tranquillity, and crime be expurgated by the success of these gentlemen's endeavours, it is very clear that France will take the wrong track, by following the counsel of the belligerent M. Michelet, according to whose views, peace and order are to be obtained only by the proclamation of war, and the shedding of blood for the glory of his native country. "My only hope," says the valiant historian, "is in the flag." Every time, he tells us, that he sees the bayonets of the French army, his heart bounds within him. "Glorious army! pure swords! holy bayonets!" upon which the eyes of the world are fixed, and which will eventually save that world by – cutting the throats of all the enemies of France.

M. Michelet has obtained some celebrity in Europe: amongst the learned and the reading public by his histories; amongst the masses by that remarkable work styled Priests, Women, and Families, which met with many readers and elaborate notices in this country, and was reviewed in the pages of this Magazine as recently as August last. We paid our tribute of respect to an effort which, whatever might be its faults – and serious faults it had – was distinguished by a commanding eloquence, a manly energy, and an uncompromising zeal worthy of the cause which the historian had undertaken; viz., the restoration of woman to her spiritual and social rights – rights invaded by the stranger, trampled upon by priestcraft. We did not stay to inquire into the motives by which the indignant professor of the College of France had been actuated. It may have been, that, to avenge a slight inflicted upon him by the Jesuits, the learned teacher aimed a blow at the entire Roman Catholic Church; that having repudiated the sentiments of his early life – sentiments which attached him affectionately to the religion, poetry, and traditions of the middle ages – he burned with the new fire of a convert or an apostate, and sought to establish the sincerity of his conversion by deadly home-thrusts at the party he had forsaken. It was sufficient for us that a scholar and a Frenchman had manfully advanced to the rescue of his fellow-countrywomen; that he had detected the errors that lay at the heart of their social condition; that he had noted the hindrances that affected domestic purity and peace; and bravely undertook, if possible, to remove, at all events to expose and brand them.

There is great peril attending the career of any man who acquires the reputation of a reformer of abuses. It is easier to acquire that reputation than to sustain it. It is well when the necessity gives birth to the reformer; but it is ill when the reformer, in order to live, is forced to create the necessity. There was ease and grace, simplicity and truthfulness, honesty and ardour, in that defence of woman, to which the champion was urged by the conviction that he entertained of her wrongs. Few of these qualities remain in the work now before us – a work suggested by any thing rather than the crying evils of the community to which the author belongs; a work that may have been written for money – with the mere object of book-making – to bamboozle the million, to inspire it with cock-like crowing; certainly, with no hope of regenerating France, of removing one feather's weight from the load of calamity to which her people, in common with the people of all the nations of the earth, are mysteriously doomed.

We do not pretend to understand the motives which have carried M. Michelet to his task; neither can we distinctly discern the object which it is his purpose to reach. His book is divided into three parts, which are again subdivided into chapters. There is a great appearance of connexion, and indeed an affectation of logical cohesion in the structure, but there is really and essentially no union whatever of the several divisions. Part I. is styled, "Of Bondage and Hatred;" Part II., "Enfranchisement by Love – Nature;" and Part III., "Friendship." Each part is an essay, complete, so to speak, in itself, more or less distinct; intelligible at times, but as often vague, dark, and paradoxical; most satisfactory where it treats of simple, well-known facts – least successful where it deals in the crudest theories, which are not tedious only because they are ridiculous and amusing.

The spirit that pervades the entire book is that of intolerable conceit – individual and national. We can pardon the author of The History of France much, but we will never forgive in him a vice that has ceased to be supportable in the most ignorant of his countrymen. It is impossible to conceive a philosopher and scholar so irritated and perverted by thin-skinned vanity as M. Michelet appears throughout this volume; and indeed we cannot do his intellect the injustice of supposing him to believe the jargon that has fallen from his pen. The heart, we fear, rather than the intellect, is at fault, when he who has the ear of the people approaches it with accents that inflame its lowest passions, rather than correct and guide, and bring to usefulness and good, its best and noblest instincts.

Every thing is perfect in France; nothing is perfect elsewhere. This is the theme of the song which M. Michelet circulates throughout the empire. The people are nevertheless wretched, in poverty, and in bondage; they are doomed to evil government; their social state is one of tyranny and cruel persecution. An historian, sprung from the people, has deemed it his duty to proclaim these facts, and to write a book which shall go far to remove the evils he complains of; yet, at the outset of the work, he announces, to our astonishment, that France is beyond all other lands the favoured land of heaven, the mistress of the world, the paragon of countries. We turn back a page, and ask – Was it for this that the student stepped from his retirement, or was it to prove facts the very opposite to these? If France be indeed so pre-eminently good and great, why write so many pages to prove that she lies in bondage? If the literature of France be perfect, her army pure, her people great, her religion the only true revelation of God's purposes and will, wherefore complain and cry aloud, and seek to remedy a condition already so enviable, to elevate a character already so super-eminent? Is it that France is too self-loving to hear of her faults even from her own offspring, or that she will not take her wholesome medicine without the gilding that removes its flavour, and hides its ugliness? Is she a child, and must the teacher flatter her as a child; coax, pacify, and bribe her as a child, in order to work her reformation and secure her happiness?

Let us for awhile follow the author of The People, as he traces bondage and hatred throughout the social scheme of France, and gather from him, as well as we may, the remedies he has for their destruction; so shall we do him greater justice, and obtain, if they be within grasp, the intention and the object of his undertaking.

"If we would know," says M. Michelet, "the inmost thought, the passion of the French Peasant, it is very easy. Walk any Sunday into the country, and follow him. Look! he is yonder before us! It is two o'clock; his wife is at vespers, and he is in his Sunday's clothes. I warrant you he is going to see his mistress!" His mistress! Yes; but tropically. The peasant's mistress is his Land; he loves it with intensest delight, with procreative love. Happy for France that it is so; for let it once cease, and the land is barren from that instant. She brings forth because she is loved. "La terre le veut ainsi, pour produire; autrement, elle ne donnerait rien, cette pauvre terre de France, sans bestiaux presque et sans engrais." By Love, the reader will understand needful care and culture, but he will err in the interpretation. It is something far more poetical and French. The peasant having arrived face to face with his mistress, "folds his arms, stops, looks serious and thoughtful; he looks a long, long time, and seems to forget himself; at last, if he fancies himself overlooked, if he perceives any body passing, he moves slowly away; after a few steps, he stops, turns round, and casts upon his land one last profound and melancholy look: but to the keen-sighted, that look is full of passion, full of heart, full of devotion. If that be not love, (!) by what token shall we know it in this world? It is love – do not laugh." It were indeed very easy to laugh, but, thus intreated, we forbear, and proceed. To love is to covet possession. To have a bit of land, means "you shall not be a mercenary, to be hired to-day and turned off to-morrow. You shall not be a serf for your daily bread. You shall be free!" To acquire that land, the peasant will consent to any thing, even to lose sight of it. To obtain it he will sell his life, and go to meet death in Africa. The peasant is very aspiring; he has been a soldier; he believes in impossibilities. The acquisition of land is for him a combat; "he goes to it as he would to the charge, and will not retreat. It is his battle of Austerlitz; he will win it; it will be a desperate struggle, he knows, but he has seen plenty of these under his old commander;" and accordingly this brave and warlike peasant borrows money of a usurer at seven, eight, or ten per cent, to purchase a piece of earth that shall bring him in two. "Heroic man – are you surprised, if, meeting him on that land which devours him, you find him so gloomy?" Certainly not. "If you meet him," says M. Michelet – heroic and sublime as he is – "do not ask him your road; if he answers, he may perhaps induce you to turn your back on the place you are going to." It is the way with atrabilious heroes. What is to be done? "We must take serious measures for defending the nobility;" that is to say – the peasantry who are in the hands of the usurers. Alter the laws. This "vast and profound," but very much involved "legion of peasant-soldier proprietors," are the People: the people are France. France is a principle, "a great political principle. It must be defended at any cost. As a principle, she must live. Live for the salvation of the world (!!) In the midst of his difficulties, the peasant learns to envy the town workman. He sees him on Sunday walking about like a gentleman, and thinks he is as free as a bird; he believes that a man who carries his trade with him, not caring a straw for the seasons, is a lord of the creation: he remembers his own liabilities to the usurer – and, lo! we have arrived at bondage and hatred, No. 1.