Tales from Blackwood Volume Iv Part 9

"I have not yet made up my mind. These election matters put everything else out of one's head. Let me see--August is approaching, and I half promised the Captain of M'Alcohol to spend a few weeks with him at his shooting-quarters."

"Are you aware, Dunshunner, that one of your bills falls due at the Gorbals Bank upon Tuesday next?"

"Mercy upon me, Bob! I had forgotten all about it."

I did not go to the Highlands after all. The fatigue and exertion we had undergone rendered it quite indispensable that my friend Robert and I should relax a little. Accordingly we have both embarked for a short run upon the Continent.

BOULOGNE-SUR-MER, _12th August 1847_.

FIRST AND LAST

BY WILLIAM MUDFORD.

[_MAGA._ FEBRUARY 1829.]

Take down from your shelves, gentle reader, your folio edition of Johnson's Dictionary,--or, if you possess Todd's edition of Johnson, take down his four ponderous quartos; turn over every leaf, read every word from A to Z, and then confess, that in the whole vocabulary there are not any two words which awaken in your heart such a crowd of mixed and directly opposite emotions as the two which now stare you in the face--FIRST and LAST! In the abstract, they embrace the whole round of our existence: in the detail, all its brightest hopes, its n.o.blest enjoyments, and its most cherished recollections; all its loftiest enterprises, and all its smiles and tears; its pangs of guilt, its virtuous principles, its trials, its sorrows, and its rewards. They give you the dawn and the close of life, the beginning and the end of its countless busy scenes. They are the two extremities of a path which, be it long, or be it short, no man sees at one and the same moment. Happy would it be for us, sometimes, if we could--if we _could_ behold the end of a course of action as certainly as we do the beginning; but oftener, far oftener, would it be our curse and torment, unless, with the foresight or foreknowledge, we had the power to avert the end.

But let me not antic.i.p.ate my own intentions, which are to portray, in a few sketches, the links that hold together the _first_ and _last_ of the most momentous periods and undertakings of our lives; to trace the dawn, progress, and decline of many of the best feelings and motives of our nature; to touch, with a pensive colouring, the contrasts they present; to stimulate honourable enterprises by the examples they furnish; and to amuse by the form in which the truths they supply are embodied. I shall begin with a subject not exactly falling within the legitimate scope of my design, but it will serve as an appropriate introduction, and I shall call it

THE FIRST AND LAST DINNER.

Twelve friends, much about the same age, and fixed by their pursuits, their family connections, and other local interests, as permanent inhabitants of the metropolis, agreed, one day when they were drinking their wine at the Star and Garter at Richmond, to inst.i.tute an annual dinner among themselves, under the following regulations: That they should dine alternately at each other's houses on the _first_ and _last_ day of the year; that the _first_ bottle of wine uncorked at the _first_ dinner, should be recorked and put away, to be drunk by him who should be the _last_ of their number; that they should never admit a new member; that, when one died, eleven should meet, and when another died, ten should meet, and so on; and that, when only one remained, he should, on those two days, dine by himself, and sit the usual hours at his solitary table; but the _first_ time he so dined alone, lest it should be the only one, he should then uncork the _first_ bottle, and, in the _first_ gla.s.s, drink to the memory of all who were gone.

There was something original and whimsical in the idea, and it was eagerly embraced. They were all in the prime of life, closely attached by reciprocal friends.h.i.+p, fond of social enjoyments, and looked forward to their future meetings with unalloyed antic.i.p.ations of pleasure. The only thought, indeed, that could have darkened those antic.i.p.ations was one not very likely to intrude itself at that moment, that of the hapless wight who was destined to uncork the _first_ bottle at his lonely repast.

It was high summer when this frolic compact was entered into; and as their pleasure-yacht skimmed along the dark bosom of the Thames, on their return to London, they talked of nothing but their _first_ and _last_ feasts of ensuing years. Their imaginations ran riot with a thousand gay predictions of festive merriment. They wantoned in conjectures of what changes time would operate; joked each other upon their appearance, when they should meet,--some hobbling upon crutches after a severe fit of the gout,--others poking about with purblind eyes, which even spectacles could hardly enable to distinguish the alderman's walk in a haunch of venison--some with portly round bellies and tidy little brown wigs, and others decently dressed out in a new suit of mourning for the death of a great-granddaughter or a great-great-grandson. Palsies, wrinkles, toothless gums, stiff hams, and poker knees, were bandied about in sallies of exuberant mirth, and appropriated, first to one and then to another, as a group of merry children would have distributed golden palaces, flying chariots, diamond tables, and chairs of solid pearl, under the fancied possession of a magician's wand, which could transform plain brick, and timber, and humble mahogany, into such costly treasures.

"As for you, George," exclaimed one of the twelve, addressing his brother-in-law, "I expect I shall see you as dry, withered, and shrunken, as an old eel-skin, you mere outside of a man!" and he accompanied the words with a hearty slap on the shoulder.

George Fortescue was leaning carelessly over the side of the yacht, laughing the loudest of any at the conversation which had been carried on. The sudden manual salutation of his brother-in-law threw him off his balance, and in a moment he was overboard. They heard the heavy splash of his fall, before they could be said to have seen him fall. The yacht was proceeding swiftly along; but it was instantly stopped.

The utmost consternation now prevailed. It was nearly dark, but Fortescue was known to be an excellent swimmer, and, startling as the accident was, they felt certain he would regain the vessel. They could not see him. They listened. They heard the sound of his hands and feet.

They hailed him. An answer was returned, but in a faint gurgling voice, and the exclamation "Oh G.o.d!" struck upon their ears. In an instant two or three, who were expert swimmers, plunged into the river, and swam towards the spot whence the exclamation had proceeded. One of them was within an arm's length of Fortescue: he saw him; he was struggling and buffeting the water; before he could be reached, he went down, and his distracted friend beheld the eddying circles of the wave just over the spot where he had sunk. He dived after him, and touched the bottom; but the tide must have drifted the body onwards, for it could not be found!

They proceeded to one of the nearest stations where drags were kept, and having procured the necessary apparatus, they returned to the fatal spot. After the lapse of above an hour, they succeeded in raising the lifeless body of their lost friend. All the usual remedies were employed for restoring suspended animation; but in vain; and they now pursued the remainder of their course to London in mournful silence, with the corpse of him who had commenced the day of pleasure with them in the fulness of health, of spirits, and of life! Amid their severer grief, they could not but reflect how soon one of the joyous twelve had slipped out of the little festive circle.

The months rolled on, and cold December came with all its cheering round of kindly greetings and merry hospitalities; and with it came a softened recollection of the fate of poor Fortescue; _eleven_ of the twelve a.s.sembled on the last day of the year, and it was impossible not to feel their loss as they sat down to dinner. The very irregularity of the table, five on one side, and only four on the other, forced the melancholy event upon their memory.

There are few sorrows so stubborn as to resist the united influence of wine, a circle of select friends, and a season of prescriptive gaiety.

Even those pinching troubles of life, which come home to a man's own bosom, will light up a smile, in such moments, at the beaming countenances and jocund looks of all the rest of the world; while your mere sympathetic or sentimental distress gives way, like the inconsolable affliction of a widow of twenty closely besieged by a lover of thirty.

A decorous sigh or two, a few becoming e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, and an instructive observation upon the uncertainty of life, made up the sum of tender posthumous "offerings to the _manes_ of poor George Fortescue," as they proceeded to discharge the more important duties for which they had met. By the time the third gla.s.s of champagne had gone round, in addition to sundry potations of fine old hock, and "capital madeira,"

they had ceased to discover anything so very pathetic in the inequality of the two sides of the table, or so melancholy in their crippled number of eleven.

The rest of the evening pa.s.sed off to their hearts' content.

Conversation was briskly kept up amid the usual fire of pun, repartee, anecdote, politics, toasts, healths, jokes, broad laughter, erudite disquisitions upon the vintage of the wines they were drinking, and an occasional song. Towards twelve o'clock, when it might be observed that they emptied their gla.s.ses with less symptoms of palating the quality of what they quaffed, and filled them again with less anxiety as to which bottle or decanter they laid hold of, they gradually waxed moral and tender; sensibility began to ooze out; "Poor George Fortescue!" was once more remembered; those who could count, sighed to think there were only eleven of them; and those who could see, felt the tears come into their eyes, as they dimly noted the inequality of the two sides of the table.

They all agreed, at parting, however, that they had never pa.s.sed such a happy day, congratulated each other upon having inst.i.tuted so delightful a meeting, and promised to be punctual to their appointment the ensuing evening, when they were to celebrate the new-year, whose entrance they had welcomed in b.u.mpers of claret, as the watchman bawled "past twelve!"

beneath the window.

They met accordingly; and their gaiety was without any alloy or drawback. It was only the _first_ time of their a.s.sembling after the death of "poor George Fortescue," that made the recollection of it painful; for, though but a few hours had intervened, they now took their seats at the table as if eleven had been their original number, and as if all were there that had been ever expected to be there.

It is thus in everything. The _first_ time a man enters a prison--the _first_ book an author writes--the _first_ painting an artist executes--the _first_ battle a general wins--nay, the _first_ time a rogue is hanged (for a rotten rope may provide a second performance, even of that ceremony, with all its singleness of character), differ inconceivably from their _first_ repet.i.tion. There is a charm, a spell, a novelty, a freshness, a delight, inseparable from the _first_ experience (hanging always excepted, be it remembered), which no art or circ.u.mstance can impart to the _second_. And it is the same in all the darker traits of life. There is a degree of poignancy and anguish in the _first_ a.s.saults of sorrow, which is never found afterwards. Ask the weeping widow, who, "like Niobe all tears," follows her fifth husband to the grave, and she will tell you that the _first_ time she performed that melancholy office, it was with at least five times more lamentations than when she last discharged it. In every case, it is simply that the _first_ fine edge of our feelings has been taken off, and that it can never be restored.

Several years had elapsed, and our eleven friends kept up their double anniversaries, as they might aptly enough be called, with scarcely any perceptible change. But, alas! there came one dinner at last, which was darkened by a calamity they never expected to witness, for on that very day their friend, companion, brother almost, was hanged! Yes! Stephen Rowland, the wit, the oracle, the life of their little circle, had, on the morning of that day, forfeited his life upon a public scaffold, for having made one single stroke of his pen in a wrong place. In other words, a bill of exchange which pa.s.sed _into_ his hands for 700 pa.s.sed _out_ of them for 1700; he having drawn the important little prefix to the hundreds, and the bill being paid at the banker's without examining the words of it. The forgery was discovered,--brought home to Rowland,--and though the greatest interest was used to obtain a remission of the fatal penalty (the particular female favourite of the prime-minister himself interfering), poor Stephen Rowland was hanged.

Everybody pitied him; and n.o.body could tell why he did it. He was not poor; he was not a gambler; he was not a speculator; but phrenology settled it. The organ of _acquisitiveness_ was discovered in his head, after his execution, as large as a pigeon's egg. He could not help it.

It would be injustice to the ten to say, that even wine, friends.h.i.+p, and a merry season, could dispel the gloom which pervaded this dinner. It was agreed beforehand that they should not allude to the distressing and melancholy theme; and having thus interdicted the only thing which really occupied all their thoughts, the natural consequence was, that silent contemplation took the place of dismal discourse, and they separated long before midnight. An embarra.s.sing restraint, indeed, pervaded the little conversation which grew up at intervals. The champagne was not in good order, but no one liked to complain of its being _ropy_. A beautiful painting of Vand.y.k.e which was in the room, became a topic of discussion. They who thought it was _hung_ in a bad place, shrunk from saying so; and not one ventured to speak of the _execution_ of that great master. Their host was having the front of his house repaired, and at any other time he would have cautioned them, when they went away, as the night was very dark, to take care of the _scaffold_; but no, they might have stumbled right and left before he would have p.r.o.nounced that word, or told them not to _break their necks_. One, in particular, even abstained from using his customary phrase, "this is a _drop_ of good wine;" and another forbore to congratulate the friend who sat next him, and who had been married since he last saw him, because he was accustomed on such occasions to employ figurative language and talk of the holy _noose_ of wedlock.

Some fifteen years had now glided away since the fate of poor Rowland, and the ten remained; but the stealing hand of time had written sundry changes in most legible characters. Raven locks had become grizzled--two or three heads had not as many locks altogether as may be reckoned in a walk of half a mile along the Regent's Ca.n.a.l--one was actually covered with a brown wig--the crow's-feet were visible in the corner of the eye--good old port and warm madeira carried it against hock, claret, red burgundy, and champagne--stews, hashes, and ragouts, grew into favour--crusts were rarely called for to relish the cheese after dinner--conversation was less boisterous, and it turned chiefly upon politics and the state of the funds, or the value of landed property--apologies were made for coming in thick shoes and warm stockings--the doors and windows were more carefully provided with list and sand-bags--the fire more in request--and a quiet game of whist filled up the hours that were wont to be devoted to drinking, singing, and riotous merriment. Two rubbers, a cup of coffee, and at home by eleven o'clock, was the usual cry, when the fifth or sixth gla.s.s had gone round after the removal of the cloth. At parting, too, there was now a long ceremony in the hall, b.u.t.toning up great-coats, tying on woollen comforters, fixing silk handkerchiefs over the mouth and up to the ears, and grasping st.u.r.dy walking-canes to support unsteady feet.

Their fiftieth anniversary came, and death had indeed been busy. One had been killed by the overturning of the mail, in which he had taken his place in order to be present at the dinner, having purchased an estate in Monmouths.h.i.+re, and retired thither with his family. Another had undergone the terrific operation for the stone, and expired beneath the knife--a third had yielded up a broken spirit two years after the loss of an only-surviving and beloved daughter--a fourth was carried off in a few days by a _cholera morbus_--a fifth had breathed his last the very morning he obtained a judgment in his favour by the Lord Chancellor, which had cost him his last s.h.i.+lling nearly to get, and which, after a litigation of eighteen years, declared him the rightful possessor of ten thousand a-year--ten minutes after he was no more. A sixth had perished by the hand of a midnight a.s.sa.s.sin, who broke into his house for plunder, and sacrificed the owner of it, as he grasped convulsively a bundle of Exchequer bills, which the robber was drawing from beneath his pillow, where he knew they were every night placed for better security.

Four little old men, of withered appearance and decrepit walk, with cracked voices, and dim, rayless eyes, sat down, by the mercy of Heaven (as they themselves tremulously declared), to celebrate, for the fiftieth time, the first day of the year--to observe the frolic compact which, half a century before, they had entered into at the Star and Garter at Richmond! Eight were in their graves! The four that remained stood upon its confines. Yet they chirped cheerily over their gla.s.s, though they could scarcely carry it to their lips, if more than half full; and cracked their jokes, though they articulated their words with difficulty, and heard each other with still greater difficulty. They mumbled, they chattered, they laughed (if a sort of strangled wheezing might be called a laugh); and when the wines sent their icy blood in warmer pulse through their veins, they talked of their past as if it were but a yesterday that had slipped by them,--and of their future, as if it were a busy century that lay before them.

They were just the number for a quiet rubber of whist; and for three successive years they sat down to one. The fourth came, and then their rubber was played with an open dummy; a fifth, and whist was no longer practicable; _two_ could play only at cribbage, and cribbage was the game. But it was little more than the mockery of play. Their palsied hands could hardly hold, or their fading sight distinguish, the cards, while their torpid faculties made them doze between each deal.

At length came the LAST dinner; and the survivor of the twelve, upon whose head fourscore and ten winters had showered their snow, ate his solitary meal. It so chanced that it was in his house, and at his table, they had celebrated the first. In his cellar, too, had remained, for eight-and-fifty years, the bottle they had then uncorked, recorked, and which he was that day to uncork again. It stood beside him. With a feeble and reluctant grasp he took the "frail memorial" of a youthful vow; and for a moment memory was faithful to her office. She threw open the long vista of buried years; and his heart travelled through them all;--their l.u.s.ty and blithesome spring--their bright and fervid summer--their ripe and temperate autumn--their chill, but not too frozen winter. He saw, as in a mirror, how, one by one, the laughing companions of that merry hour at Richmond, had dropped into eternity. He felt all the loneliness of his condition (for he had eschewed marriage, and in the veins of no living creature ran a drop of blood whose source was in his own); and as he drained the gla.s.s which he had filled, "to the memory of those who were gone," the tears slowly trickled down the deep furrows of his aged face.

He had thus fulfilled one part of his vow, and he prepared himself to discharge the other, by sitting the usual number of hours at his desolate table. With a heavy heart he resigned himself to the gloom of his own thoughts--a lethargic sleep stole over him--his head fell upon his bosom--confused images crowded into his mind--he babbled to himself--was silent--and when his servant entered the room, alarmed by a noise which he heard, he found his master stretched upon the carpet at the foot of the easy-chair, out of which he had slipped in an apoplectic fit. He never spoke again, nor once opened his eyes, though the vital spark was not extinct till the following day. And this was the LAST DINNER.

THE DUKE'S DILEMMA.

A CHRONICLE OF NIESENSTEIN.

[_MAGA._ SEPTEMBER 1853.]

The close of the theatrical year, which in France occurs in early spring, annually brings to Paris a throng of actors and actresses, the disorganised elements of provincial companies, who repair to the capital to contract engagements for the new season. Paris is the grand centre to which all dramatic stars converge--the great bazaar where managers recruit their troops for the summer campaign. In bad weather the mart for this human merchandise is at an obscure coffee-house near the Rue St Honore; when the sun s.h.i.+nes, the place of meeting is in the garden of the Palais Royal. There, pacing to and fro beneath the lime-trees, the high contracting parties pursue their negotiations and make their bargains. It is the theatrical Exchange, the histrionic _Bourse_. There the conversation and the company are alike curious. Many are the strange discussions and original anecdotes that there are heard; many the odd figures there paraded. Tragedians, comedians, singers, men and women, young and old, flock thither in quest of fortune and a good engagement.

The threadbare coats of some say little in favour of recent success or present prosperity; but only hear them speak, and you are at once convinced that _they_ have no need of broadcloth who are so amply covered with laurels. It is delightful to hear them talk of their triumphs, of the storms of applause, the rapturous bravos, the boundless enthusiasm, of the audiences they lately delighted. Their brows are oppressed with the weight of their bays. The south mourns their loss; if they go west, the north will be envious and inconsolable. As to themselves--north, south, east, or west--they care little to which point of the compa.s.s the breeze of their destiny may waft them. Thorough gypsies in their habits, accustomed to make the best of the pa.s.sing hour, and to take small care for the future so long as the present is provided for, like soldiers they heed not the name of the town so long as the quarters be good.

It was a fine morning in April. The sun shone brightly, and, amongst the numerous loungers in the garden of the Palais Royal were several groups of actors. The season was already far advanced; all the companies were formed, and those players who had not secured an engagement had but a poor chance of finding one. Their anxiety was legible upon their countenances. A man of about fifty years of age walked to and fro, a newspaper in his hand, and to him, when he pa.s.sed near them, the actors bowed--respectfully and hopefully. A quick glance was his acknowledgment of their salutation, and then his eyes reverted to his paper, as if it deeply interested him. When he was out of hearing, the actors, who had a.s.sumed their most picturesque att.i.tudes to attract his attention, and who beheld their labour lost, vented their ill-humour.

"Balthasar is mighty proud," said one; "he has not a word to say to us."

"Perhaps he does not want anybody," remarked another; "I think he has no theatre this year."

"That would be odd. They say he is a clever manager."

"He may best prove his cleverness by keeping aloof. It is so difficult nowadays to do good in the provinces. The public is so fastidious! the authorities are so shabby, so unwilling to put their hands in their pockets. Ah, my dear fellow, our art is sadly fallen!"

Whilst the discontented actors bemoaned themselves, Balthasar eagerly accosted a young man who just then entered the garden by the pa.s.sage of the Perron. The coffehouse-keepers had already begun to put out tables under the tender foliage. The two men sat down at one of them.