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

Johnson's bed-rooms are, even the best of them, of moderate size, while the small ones are very small indeed; and into these small rooms he has stuck large four-post beds, that make them darker and more inconvenient than they naturally are, and leave room for hardly any of the usual evolutions of the toilette. What, indeed, with the big chests of drawers, like the big sideboard in the dining-room, it is as much as you can do to get about conveniently between the bed and the side walls; though one good thing the builder and furnisher have certainly effected – you can open the bed-room door, and you can stir the fire, and you can almost pull up the window-blind, without quitting the protection of the counterpane; and this on a cold morning is something.

Mrs Johnson says that the arrangement of the area gate in Paragon Place is perfection itself; for she can see the butcher's boy as he comes for his orders of a morning, while sitting at the breakfast-table, through the green blinds, and that the policeman dares not stop there, during daylight at least – she should be much too sharp upon him; so that the cook is twice as punctual as when they lived in the city. True; these are points of household management that have their weight; but then Mrs J. forgets that the dustman rings his bell there at most inconvenient hours, that the dirty coalheaver spoils the pavement once a month, and that it is a perpetual running up and down those stone steps, to shut the gate and keep dogs and beggars out, all day. However, the railings and the gate are not part of the house; and, if people like to have their back-doors under their eyes, why, there is no accounting for their taste.

We could not help thinking, the last time we went over to Paris, that our friend Dubois, the wine-merchant – him from whom we get our Chambertin, and who has about the same relative income as Johnson – was much better housed. His cellars are down at the Halle aux Vins, like every body else's; and he is shut up there in his little box of a counting-house nine hours every day of his life; but he lives, now that he has moved from the Marais, in the Rue Neuve des Mathurins, which leads out of the Chaussée d'Antin. Here he has a premier, as they call it in Paris – or a first-floor, as we should term it in London; and he pays 2000 francs, or £80 a-year for it, with about 100 francs of rates and taxes. For this he has two drawing-rooms, a dining-room, a study, six bed-rooms, kitchens, and cellars; some of the rooms look into the street, the rest run round the ample court-yard of the house. To get at him you go up a flight of stone stairs that four people can easily mount abreast; when you enter his door, from the little hall paved with stone and marble, you pass from the sitting-rooms one into the other – for they all form a suite; while the bed-rooms lie mostly along a corridor, into which they open. Once up the two flights of stairs that lead to the doorway, and the mounting, whether for masters or servants, is done with. The kitchen is at the furthest end, away from the other rooms, and is approached by a back staircase from the court-yard. There are no beggars nor dogs, nor butcher's boys, nor other bores, except what the concierge at the gateway allows to come in; and though the street is rather noisy, being in a fashionable quarter, yet the court-yard is perfectly quiet, and free from all plagues of organs, singers, &c. The rooms are, one and all, twelve feet high; their Windows down to the ground; the floors of solid oak, polished till you can slide on them; the doors are in carved oak, painted white and richly gilt; the chimney-pieces are all marble – none of the flimsy thin slabs of Paragon Place, but good solid blocks, cut out from the red quarries of the Pyrenees; with polished brass dogs in the fireplaces, and large logs of flaming wood across then. The drawing-rooms are hung in silk on the walls; the other rooms are tastefully papered. There is abundance of good furniture, which, from the ample size of the apartments – the principal room being thirty feet by twenty – sets off the proportions of the dwelling without blocking it up. Dubois has not a four-post bed in his house; no more has any man in France. They are all those elegant and comfortable things which we know a French bed to be; and the long sweeping folds of the red and white curtains that come down to the floor from the ceiling, form a graceful contrast to the curves of the other furniture. The walls are all of good solid stone, two feet thick on the outside; the house has been built these fifty years, and is of a better colour than when first put up; the windows are richly ornamented in their frames without, and form commodious recesses for settees within. You may dine twenty, and dance forty people here! or you may throw your rooms open, give a soirée, (no boiled mutton affair, remember; but music, dancing, and cards; coffee, ice, and champagne,) and cram each room full of people, and the landlord will never fear for the safety of his building.

Now, there are three other sets of apartments in the same house, and above Dubois, not so lofty as his, but nearly as commodious, and all with their proportionate degree of elegance and solid comfort. Dubois has not got a house at Dieppe, it is true; but then, like all Frenchmen, he is so absorbed in his dear Paris, that he hardly cares to stir out from it. If ever he does, he runs off to Vichy or Mont Dor for a fortnight in the saison des eaux, and he is contented.

But then, you will say, Dubois lives, after all, in another man's house – he is only a lodger; whereas Johnson dwells in what the law calls his "castle." Be it so; for the same money we would rather have the positive advantages of the one, en société, than the tasteless and inconvenient isolation of the other.

And, after all, is Johnson more decidedly at home in his own house, than Dubois is in his "appartement?" What does it matter whether you have people living on each side of you, with their street doors so close to yours that their wives or their daughters pop up their noses above the green blinds every time a cab or a jarvey drives up; or whether you have people who come in at the same gateway with yourself, and go up the same stairs, it is true, and who live either above or below you, and who can, if they like, run out on their landings to see who is thumping at your door panels? Upon our conscience as honest folks, who have lived in half the capitals of Europe, to say nothing of those of our own islands, we never found the slightest intrusion on privacy arising from the collecting of several families in the same house, in Paris, Rome, Florence, or Vienna. All we know is, and we often think of it agreeably, that these continental houses seemed to us like so many social colleges, and that the having a set of rooms with a common staircase, used to put us in mind of our old Christ Church, and of Garden Court in the Temple. 'Tis true, that in the one set of rooms we had no fellow-inmates except our dog, and every now and then a joyous set of fellows that would have made any place tolerable; that in the other there was our old laundress and bed-maker, and our "boy," and for a short time our "man," and actually, upon our honour it is true, we did once see a client in them! whereas, in our continental suites of chambers, we are en famille with wife, bairns, and "bounes" to boot, and that we did parfois try the elasticity or the stretching powers of our camere pretty considerably, and did cram therein no end of guests. But on the whole, we have fairly made the experiment in propriâ personâ; we have weighed well friend Johnson's castellated independence, and l'ami Dubois's social contiguation; – and, rent for rent, we prefer the latter. If we must live with two neighbours within a few feet of us, we would rather have one under us on the ground floor, and one above us on the second, and ourselves in the midst on the first, and all three clubbing together to live in a little palazzo: – we would rather have this, than be crammed in between Mr A and Mr B, each of us in a third or fourth rate kind of house, with poor thin walls, small low rooms, dirty areas, melancholy gardens, shabby-genteel fronts, ugly backs, and little comfort.

It may be said, and justly, that the idea of a man living in his own castle is applicable only to that state of society when large towns do not exist, inasmuch as the idea can be nothing more than an idea, and can hardly ever approach to a reality, the moment men begin to congregate themselves together in cities. Doubtless, it is indispensable to all our notions of comfort, and of the due independence of social life – it is, indeed, one of the main elements of the constitution of a family, that a certain degree of isolation should be maintained and respected; but we submit to the candid observer, that the only difference between English cities and continental ones in this respect is, that Englishmen aim at "horizontal" independence, foreigners at "vertical." Englishmen form their line of location every man shoulder to shoulder, or rather, elbows in ribs; foreigners mostly get upon one another's backs and heads, and form a living pyramid like the clown and boys at Astley's. By this arrangement, however, it comes to pass, that for the same number of inhabitants much more ground is occupied by an English than by a continental town; and also, that each single dwelling is of mean, or, at the most, moderate architectural appearance, the great condition of elevation being wanting, and the power of ornamentation being generally kept closely under by the limitation of each individual's pecuniary resources. Practically, we contend, there is quite as much comfort (we think, indeed, in many cases more) in the continental manner of arranging houses as in the English one: while the former allows of and encourages architectural display, and indeed requires a much more solid system of construction; but the latter leads to the running up of cheap, slight, shabby-genteel houses, and represses all attempts at external ornament as superfluous from its expense. Upon this subject, we appeal to the experience of all who have dwelt for any length of time on the Continent, not to those who merely run across the water for six weeks or so, and come back as blind as they went; but rather to those who have given themselves time and opportunity enough for the film of national prejudice to wear away from before their eyes, and have been at length able to use that natural good sense with which most Englishmen are blessed by Providence. To them we would say, that the plan of several families tenanting one large dwelling, clubbing together, as it were, for the erection of a handsome and commodious edifice, and just so far sacrificing their independence as to consent occasionally to run up against their neighbour in the common court-yard, or perchance to see his coat-tails whisking by their door up or down stairs, is the more sensible of the two. There is practically a great saving of walls, of spaces of support, as the architects term it, in this plan: great saving in roofing; and, from the mere dimensions of the building, a certain degree of grandeur is necessarily given to it. This plan requires the edifice to be built court-fashion, and sometimes will admit of a good garden being appended: it also requires that a most useful servant, a porter, in a suitable lodge, should be kept by the little social community; and every body knows what an useful body the porter, or concierge, as the French call him, may be made. Just as bachelors join together in clubs to the great promotion of their individual comfort, and certainly to the outward advantage of a city, so should families join together for their civic residences; they would all derive benefit from their mutual support, and the appearance of a town would be immediately improved.

We do not say that any joining together of houses should take place in country, nor even in suburban residences. No; there let every man have a house to himself; the foundation of the whole system is quite different: and there is also a certain class of persons who should always have separate dwellings in a town; but to these subjects we will revert on another occasion. We will only allude to one objection which the fastidious Englishman will be sure to raise: if you live under the same roof with one or more families he will say, you must necessarily be acquainted with all the members of the same: you must, in fact, know what they are going to have for dinner, and thus must be acquainted with all the secrets of their household economy. Well, so one would undoubtedly expect to be the case: unfortunately, however, for the theory, the practical working of the thing is just the contrary: we do not know of any town where so much isolation is kept up as in Paris, though there men crowd together under the same roof like bees into the common hive. We have lived ourselves, between the epochs of our bachelor or embryo state, and that of our full-blown paternal maturity, on every floor of a Parisian house, from the entresol just over the stable, where we could lean out of our window of a morning, smoke our hookah, and talk to the "Jockey Anglais" who used to rub down our bit of blood, up to the Septième, where in those celestial regions we could walk about upon our little terrace, look over the gardens of the Tuileries, ('twas in the Rue de Rivoli, gentle reader!) all the way to St Cloud and Meudon, one of the sweetest and gayest prospects in the world, by the by, and hold soft communings either with the stars or our next neighbours – (but thereon hangs a tale!) and yet never did we know the name even of any other soul in the house, nor they ours. Oh! we have had many an adventure up and down that interminable staircase, when we used to skip up two hundred and twenty steps to get to our eyry; many a blow-up with our old porter: she was a good soul, too, was old Madame Nicaise; many a time have we seen flounces and redingotes coming in and out of doors as we went up or down; but actually we cannot call to mind the reality, the living vision of a single individual in that vasty mansion. On the contrary, we used to think them all a set of unsociable toads, and, in our days of raw Anglicism, we used to think that we might be just as well called in to "assist" at some of the charming soirées which we used to hear of from the porter: we did not then know that a Parisian likes to be "chez lui" as he calls it, quite as much as an Englishman. We should have lived on in that house, gentle reader, ad infinitum; but one day on going up-stairs, we saw in ominous letters, on a new brass plate, "au troisième, de la cour," Legrand, Tailleur. Horror of horrors! 'twas our own man! we had not paid him for two years: we gave congé that evening, and were off to the Antipodes.

"ROGUES IN OUTLINE."

Birbone I

Signor Rusca

"Rusca the lawyer, an exceeding knave." – Pope.

"Currunt verba licet, manus est velocior illis

Nondum linguâ suâ, dextra peregit opus." – Martial.

A more knowing man in his way than Signor Avocato Rusca R – it would not be easy to find; so first-rate is he in his style, though his style may not be quite first-rate! His father intended him for a lawyer, whilst nature qualified him for a cheat; and, as there seemed to be nothing absolutely incompatible in the prosecution of these two professions,

"He sought, without offence to either,How he might deal in both together;"

in doing which for a season, he accumulated much useful knowledge, besides laying the foundation of his future fortune. Whether in his earlier career he followed the practice of his learned predecessor, Paulus, and sought, like him, to augment his fees by pleading in a hired Sardonyx,74 we have not heard; but his passion for jewels, none who have seen him without his gloves (and we never saw him otherwise) can for a moment doubt.

"Tight girt with gems, in massive mountings set,Beneath their weight his tumid fingers sweat."

When he had come to find that his dealings as dealer better repaid the cost of his earlier education than the teasing uncertainties of the law, a sense of filial duty perhaps, and of inclination certainly, led him ultimately to give up all his time and talents, together with whatever little money he had accumulated, legally or otherwise, to the acquisition of practical archæology. He had seen enough of antiquarian transactions already, to convince him of the unlimited credulity of a certain class of connoisseurs – this knowledge was important, and he began to apply it presently. Having made himself a competent scholar, (he could quote Horace, and had Seneca's75 moral precepts at his finger-ends;) being plausible in speech, and knowing the market-price of every ancient relic by rote, he could not but succeed; he succeeded accordingly – and is now considered throughout Italy as a mezzo galant'uomo of first-rate abilities and tact!

By putting himself early under efficient tutelage at Rome, and doing as they did there, he soon outstripped most of his masters in his art; the art, that is, of buying "uncertain merchandise," as low as duplicity can buy of ignorance and want; and of re-selling at as high a price as credulity will pay to cunning.76 His unusual astuteness made it really diverting, when you knew your man, to have dealings with him, otherwise it was likely to turn out an expensive amusement. Our acquaintance with him began in the full maturity of his powers, when his mode of cross-questioning false witnesses who brought him soi-disant antiques to sell, and his lawyer-like mode of eliciting the truth, were capital. How he would lie! and what lungs he had to lie with! immensa cavi spirant mendacia folles! What action! what volubility of tongue! what anecdotes! and then only to see how he would look a false Augustus in the face, and discern that wily sovereign from a thousand counterfeits; or when a sly forger brought him a modern gold coin, carefully coated in mould – how he knew by instinct that it was an imposture, and would not condescend to exhume and expose the fraud. Like all knaves, he would take incredible pains to prove that there was not a more honest man than himself breathing – and when he considered himself to have quite established this on his own showing, he would sometimes speak with "honest indignation" of men who were palpable rogues: assuring you all the while, that it gave him pain thus to bear testimony against his neighbour, but then every honest man owed it to his Pope and to the people to expose Birbonism. On one occasion, when he had a large batch of silver Emperors for sale, we said we must see about their prices in Mionnet.77 Upon which, with a look of frightened honesty, he asked us if "we really knew what we were talking of?" "Perfectly," we replied. "Well, sir," continued he, "Mionnet was a Frenchman; did you ever know an honest Frenchman?" "Not as many as we could have wished to know; but we had known some." "We had in that case," he confessed, "the advantage over him —he never had! As to Mionnet's book, it was written, at least so thought Rusca, with a frightfully corrupt view, being published during the French occupancy of Italy, for the joint benefit of Mr M. and the Bibliotheque du Roi. I admit," quoth our lawyer, "that the French only entertained a natural wish (nay, sir, as far as the mood was optative merely I commend it as a highly laudable one) in desiring to have the best monetary collection in Europe; but was it honourable, or just, to pledge this Mionnet to affix such prices for rare and better specimens, (such as I have the honour to show you here!) when both they and he knew them to be preposterous, and then to launch forth this misguiding book as a guide? This precious book, sir, was in the hands of all M – 's myrmidons, and the only book of appeal then extant; this– (thumping his fist, by way of emphasis, upon our copy of it) – this, which has been the ruin of Italy, and is the degradation of France! I only wish you could hear my friend Sestini (quel numen degli numismcatici) inveigh against this man and his prices, with less reluctance, I assure you, than I feel in doing it, and much more powerfully too, because he knows so much more; but come now, if you won't think me vain, I will show you the difference between honesty and dishonesty. I wish it was of some one else I was about to speak, but truth compels me here to introduce my own name. Last week that pleasant countryman of yours, Lord X – , – do you know him? (we did for a goose!) – comes to buy some gold coins of me; one of the lot he fixed upon was a Becker, and so of course only worth what it weighed. He had purchased it for fifty Napoleons of me, and we went to his bankers together for the payment. There, having duly received the money, I requested him to let me see once more the coins he had just purchased of me – there might have been a dozen – and instantly picking out the Becker, I pushed him over his fifty Napoleons again, and said, "Milord, I cannot let you have that coin." "Why?" says he, alarmed and in anger. "Because it is false, Milord! – and I was quite grieved," added our ingenuous informant, "to see how much Lord X – was disconcerted at this disclosure." "You did not let so pretty a coin go a-begging, I dare say?" said we with laudable curiosity and interest. "No, two days ago in comes Coco – you know Coco?" we smiled. Know Coco! did we know St Peter's? did we know the Pope? for whom did Rusca take us, we wonder? "He came," prosecuted Signor R – , "to see if I had by me any first-rate imitations from the antique, for he knew a gentleman who might fancy something of the sort; and, as soon as he had set eyes upon this Becker, he must have it; it was just the thing to tempt Lord X – ; and so I let him have it for five times its supposititious value, but not for a tenth of what Lord X – would, I knew, buy it for a second time as an undoubted antique; and lest that rogue should at any time take liberties with my name, (for he is capable of anything,) and say he had been duped by Avocato Rusca into the purchase of a false thing for a true, here is a document with his name to it, which I then and there caused him to sign, which proves the contrary. I met him to-day, and he seems much pleased with Lord X – 's liberality, who has bought the coin!!" The above is a sample of Avocato Rusca's confessions, and of his somewhat original notions of honesty! Once, however, our honest friend forgot himself in a purchase we made of him. And no wonder, for we had also forgotten ourselves; for the time when we transacted business was the gloaming, and the room being dark had lent its aid to the deception. We had also an engagement to dine out, and it was getting late, and we were in a hurry. But that same night, on returning from our party, we had looked again at what we had bought, and then, first perceiving our mistake, determined, if possible, to repair it by repairing early next morning to the Minerva Hotel, there to surprise him in his dressing-gown, by which bold coup-de-main (having pre-arranged in our own minds what we should take away with us in lieu of what we brought back) we carried our point at last! – and hardly carried it; for while the new batch and the old confronted each other on his table, the one being fair, the other like himself, ill-favoured in appearance, we saw his restless glance move wistfully from the one to the other. Three times in one minute his countenance fell; he coughed, he hesitated, he cospetto'd once, he wished we had made known our mind over night; he cospetto'd again, and finally was about to reconsider the affair, when, not to be foiled by a rogue, we threw it upon his honour, (of which he had not a particle,) and, by the extravagance of such a compliment, prevailed. "He had never cheated us before," (which was strictly true; but the reason, which the reader will have no difficulty to guess, we did not think it necessary or prudent to assign;) would he, after so long an acquaintance with us, change his tactics now? – we need not ask him – we were "persuasissimi" that he would not, neither did he! We removed the temptation out of his way as soon as we could, and felt, as we went home, that we had achieved that morning as great a piece of diplomacy, and as difficult, as ever did Lord Palmerston when he was minister for our foreign affairs; and grateful were we to Apollo, the god of medicine, who had for once assisted us to overreach Mercury, the god of rogues.