Nuts and Nutcrackers

A NUT FOR A NEW COLONY

If you happen to pass by Dodd’s auction-room, on any Wednesday, towards the hour of three in the afternoon, the chances are about seven to one that you hear a sharp, smart voice articulating, somewhat in this fashion: – “A very handsome tea-service, ladies. What shall I say for this remarkably neat pattern? One tea-pot, one sugar-bowl, one slop-basin, and twelve cups and saucers. – Show them round, Tim,” &c.

Now it is with no intention of directing the public eye to the “willow pattern,” that I have alluded to this circumstance. It is simply, because that thereby hangs an association, and I have never heard the eloquent expatiator on china, without thinking of the Belgian navy, which consists of – “One gun-boat, one pinnace, one pilot, one commodore, and twelve little sailors.” Unquestionably, there never was a cheaper piece of national extravagance than this, nor do I believe that any public functionary enjoys a more tranquil and undisturbed existence than the worthy “ministre de la marine,” whose duty it is to preside over the fleet I have mentioned. Once, and once only do I remember that his quiet life was shaken by the rude assault of political events: it was when the imposing force under his sway undertook a voyage of discovery some miles down the Scheldt, which they did alike to the surprise and admiration of the whole land.

After a day’s peaceful drifting with the river’s current, they reached the fort of Lillo, where, more majorum, as night was falling, they prudently dropped anchor, having a due sense of the danger that might accrue “from running down a continent in the dark.” There was, besides, a feeling of high-souled pride in anchoring within sight, under the guns, as it were, of the Dutch fort – the insolent Dutch, whom they, with some aid from France – as the Irishman said of his marriage, for love, and a trifle of money – had driven from their country; and, although the fog rendered everything invisible, and the guns were spiked, still the act of courage was not disparaged; and they fell to, and sang the Brabançon, and drank Flemish beer till bed-time.

Happy and patriotic souls! little did you know, that amid your dreams of national greatness, some half-dozen imps of Dutch middies were painting out the magnificent tricolor streaks that adorned your good craft, and making the whole one mass of dirty black.

Such was the case, however; and when day broke, those brilliant emblems of Belgian independence had vanished, and in their place a murky line of pitch now stood.

Homeward they bent their course, sadder and wiser men; and, to their credit be it spoken, having told their sorrows to their sage minister, they have lived a life of happy retirement, and never strayed beyond the peaceful limits of the Antwerp basin.

Far be from me the unworthy object of drawing before the public gaze the blissful and unpretending service, that shuns the noontide glitter of the world’s applause, and better loves the quiet solitude of their own unobtrusive waters; and had they thus remained, nothing would have tempted me to draw them from their obscurity. But alas! national ambition has visited even the seclusion of this service. Not content with coasting voyages, some twelve miles down their muddy river – not satisfied with lording it over fishing smacks and herring wherries, this great people have resolved on becoming a maritime power in blue water, and running a race of rivalry with England, France, and Russia; and to it they have set in right earnest.

They began by purchasing a steam-vessel, which happens to turn out on such a scale of size, as to be inadmissible into any harbour they possess. By dint of labour, time, cost, and great outlay, they succeeded, after four months, in getting her into dock. But alas! if it took that time to admit her, it takes six months to let her out again; and, when out, what are they to do with her?

When Admiral Dalrymple turned farmer, he mentions in one of his letters, the sufferings his unhappy ignorance of all agricultural pursuits involved him in, and feelingly tells us: “I have given ten pounds for a dunghill, and would now willingly give any man twenty, to tell me what to do with it.” This was exactly the case with the Belgians. They had bought a steam-ship, they put coals in her, and a crew; and then, for the life and soul of them, they did not know what to do with them.

They desired an export trade – a débouché for their Namur cutlery and Venders’ frieze. But where could they go? They had no colonies. Holland had, to be sure: but then, they had quarrelled with Holland, and there was no use repining. “What can’t be cured,” &c. Besides, if they had lost a colony, they had gained a cardinal; and if they had no merchantmen, they had at least high-mass; and if they were excluded from Batavia, why they had free access t the “Abbé Boon.”

There were, however, some impracticable people engaged in traffic, who would not listen to these great advantages, and who were obstinate enough to suppose that the country was as prosperous when it had a market for its productions, as it was when it had none. And although the priests, who have multiplied some hundredfold since the revolution, were willing “to consume” to any extent, yet, unhappily, they were not as profitable customers as their ci-devant friends beyond sea.

Nothing then remained but to have a colony, and after much consideration, long thought, and anxious deliberation, it was announced to the chamber that the Belgians had a colony, and that the colony was called “Guatemala.”

When Sancho Panza appealed to Don Quixote, to realise his promised dream of greatness, you may remember, he always asked for an island: “Make me governor of an island!” There was something defined, accurate, and tangible, as it were, in the sea-girt possession, that suggested to the honest squire’s mind the idea of perfect, independent rule. And in the same way, the Belgians desired to have an island.

Some few, less imaginative, suspected, however, that an island must always have its limit to importation quicker attained than a continent, and they preferred some vast, unexplored tract, like India, or Central America, where the consumption of corduroy and cast-iron might have an unexhausted traffic for centuries.

Now, it is a difficult condition to find out that spot on a map which should realise both expectations. Happily, however, M. Van de Weyer had to deal with a kind and confiding people, whose knowledge of geography is about equal to a blind man’s appreciation of scarlet or sky-blue. Not only, therefore, did he represent to one party, the newly-acquired possession as an island, and to the other as a vast continent, but he actually shifted its locale about the globe, from the tropics to the north-pole, with such admirable dexterity, that not only is all cavil silenced about its commercial advantages, but its very climate has an advocate in every taste, and an admirer in every household. Steam-engines, therefore, are fabricated; cannon are cast; railroads are in preparation; broadcloth is weaving; flax is growing; lace is in progress, all through the kingdom, for the new colony of Guatemala, – whose only inhabitants are little grateful for the profound solicitude they are exciting, inasmuch as, being but rats and sea-gulls, their modes of living and thinking give them a happy indifference about steam-travelling, and the use of fine linen.

No matter; – the country is prospering – shares are rising – speculations are rife – loans are effected every day in the week, and M. Van de Weyer sleeps in the peaceful composure of a man who knows in his heart, that even if they get their unwieldy craft to sea, there is not a man in the kingdom who could, by any ingenuity, discover the whereabout of the far-famed Guatemala.

A “SWEET” NUT FOR THE YANKEES

Lord Chesterfield once remarked that a thoroughly vulgar man could not speak the most common-place word, nor perform the most ordinary act, without imparting to the one and the other a portion of his own inborn vulgarity. And exactly so is it with the Yankees; not a question can arise, no matter how great its importance, nor how trivial its bearings, upon which, the moment they express an opinion, they do not completely invest with their own native coarseness, insolence, and vulgarity. The boundary question was made a matter of violent invective and ruffian abuse; the right of search was treated with the same powers of ribaldry towards England; and now we have these amiable and enlightened citizens defending the wholesale piracy of British authors, not on the plausible but unjust pretext of the benefit to be derived from an extended acquaintance with English literature; but, only conceive! because, if “English authors were invested with any control over the republication of their own books, it would be no longer possible for American editors to alter and adapt them as they do now to the American taste.” However incredible this may seem, the passage formed part of a document actually submitted to congress, and favourably received by that body. This is not the place for me to dwell on the unprincipled usurpation by which men who have contributed nothing to the production of a work, assume the power of reaping its benefits, and profiting by its success. The wholesale robbery of English authors has been of late well and ably exposed. The gifted and accomplished author of “Darnley” and “The Gipsy” has devoted his time and his talents to the subject; and although the world at large have few sympathies with the wrongs of those who live to please them, yet the day is not distant when the rights of a large and influential body, who stamp the age with the image of their own minds, can be no longer neglected, and the security of literary property must become at least as great as of mining scrip, or the shares in a rail-road.

My present business is with the Yankee declaration, that English authors to be readable in America must be passed through the ordeal of re-writing. I scarcely think that the annals of impertinence and ignorance could equal this. What! is it seriously meant that Scott and Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Rogers, Bulwer, James, Dickens, and a host of others, must be converted into the garbage of St. Giles, or the foetid slang of Wapping, before they can pass muster before an American public? Must the book reek of “gin twist,” “cock tail,” and fifty other abominations, ere it reach an American drawing-room? Must the “bowie-knife and the whittling-stick” mark its pages; and the coarse jest of some tobacco-chewing, wildcat-whipping penny-a-liner disfigure and sully the passages impressed with the glowing brilliancy of Scott, or the impetuous torrent of Byron’s genius? Is this a true picture of America? Is her reading public indeed degraded to this pass? I certainly have few sympathies with brother Jonathan. I like not his spirit of boastful insolence, his rude speech, or his uncultivated habits; but I confess I am unwilling to credit this. I hesitate to believe in such an amount of intellectual depravity as can turn from the cultivated writings of Scott and Bulwer to revel in the coarseness and vulgarity of a Yankee editor, vamping up his stolen wares with oaths from the far west, or vapid jests from life in the Prairies. Again, what shall I say of those who follow this traffic? Is it not enough to steal that which is not theirs, to possess themselves of what they have no right or claim to? Must they mangle the corpse when they have extinguished life? Must they, while they cheat the author of his gain, rob him also of his fair fame? “He who steals my purse steals trash,” but how shall I characterise that extent of baseness that dares to step in between an author and his reputation – inserting between him and posterity their own illiterate degeneracy and insufferable stupidity?

Would not the ghost of Sir Walter shudder in his grave at the thought of the fair creations of his mind – Jeanie Deans and Rebecca – Yankeefied into women of Long Island, or damsels from Connecticut? Is Childe Harold to be a Kentucky-man? and are the vivid pictures of life Bulwer’s novels abound in, to be converted into the prison-discipline school of manners, that prevail in New York and Boston, where, as Hamilton remarks, “the men are about as like gentlemen, as are our new police?” What should we say of the person who having stolen a Rembrandt or a Vandyke from its owner, would seek to legalise his theft by daubing over the picture with his own colours – obliterating every trace of the great master, and exulting that every stroke of his brush defaced some touch of genius, and that beneath the savage vandalism of his act, every lineament of the artist was obliterated? I ask you, would not mere robbery be a virtue beside such a deed as this? Who could compare the sinful promptings to which want and starvation give birth to, to the ruffian profligacy of such barbarity? And now, when I tell you, that not content with this, not satisfied to desecrate the work, the wretch goes a step farther and stabs its author – what shall I say of him now, who, when he had defaced the picture, marred every effect, distorted all drawing, and rendered the whole a chaotic mass of indistinguishable nonsense, goes forth to the world, and announces, “This is a Rembrandt, this is a Vandyke: ay, look at it and wonder: but with all its faults, and all its demerits, it is cried up above our native artists; it has got the seal of the old world’s approval upon it, and in vain we of younger origin shall dare to dissent from its judgments.” Now, once more, I say, can you show the equal of this moral turpitude? and such I pledge myself is the conduct of your transatlantic pirates with respect to British literature. Mr. Dickens, no mean authority, asserts that in the same sheet in which they boast the sale of many thousand copies of an English reprint, they coarsely attack the author of that very book, and heap scurrility and slander on his head.

Yes, such is the fact; not satisfied with robbery, they murder reputation also. And then we find them expatiating in most moving terms over the superiority of their own neglected genius!

A NUT FOR THE SEASON – JULLIEN’S QUADRILLES

A very curious paper might be made by any one who, after an absence of some years from Ireland, should chronicle his new impressions of the country, and compare them with his old ones. The changes time works everywhere, even in a brief space, are remarkable, but particularly so in a land where everything is in a state of transition – where the violence with which all subjects are treated, the excited tone people are wont to assume on every topic, are continually producing their effects on society – dismembering old alliances – begetting new combinations. Such is the case with us here; and every year evidences by the strange anomalies it presents in politics, parties, public feeling, and private habits, how little chance there is for a prophet to make a character by his predictions regarding Ireland. He would, indeed, be a skilful chemist who would attempt the analysis of our complex nature; but far greater and more gifted must he be, who, from any consideration of the elements, would venture to pronounce on the probable results of their action and re-action, and declare what we shall be some twenty years hence. Oh, for a good Irish “Rip van Winkle,” who would at least let us look on the two pictures – what we were, and what we are. He should be a Clare man – none others have the same shrewd insight into character, the same intuitive knowledge of life; none others detect, like them, the flaws and fractures in human nature. There may be more mathematical genius in Cork, and more classic lore in Kerry; there may be, I know there is, a more astute and patient pains-taking spirit of calculation in the northern counties; but for the man who is only to have one rapid glance at the game, and say how it fares – to throw a quick coup-d’oeil on the board, and declare the winner, Clare for ever!

Were I a lawgiver, I would admit any attorney to practise who should produce sufficient evidence of his having served half the usual time of apprenticeship in Ennis. The Pontine marshes are not so prolific of fever, as the air of that country of ready-witted intelligence and smartness; and now, ere I return from my digression, let me solemnly declare, that, for the opinion here expressed, I have not received any money or moneys, nor do I expect to receive such, or any place, pension, or other reward, from Tom Steele or any one else concerned.

Well, we have not got this same western “Rip van Winkle,” nor do I think we are likely to do so, for this simple reason, that if he were a Clare man, he ‘d never have been caught “napping;” so, now, let us look about us and see if, on the very surface of events, we shall not find something to our purpose. But where to begin, that’s the question: no clue is left to the absentee of a few years by which to guide his path. He may look in vain even for the old land-marks which he remembered in boyhood; for somehow he finds them all in masquerade.

The goodly King William he had left in all the effulgence of his Orange livery, is now a cross between a river-god and one of Dan’s footmen. Let him turn to the Mansion-house to revive his memory of the glorious hip, hip, hurra’s he has shouted in the exuberance of his loyalty, and straightway he comes plump against Lord Mayor O’Connell, proceeding in state to Marlborough-street chapel. He asks who are these plump gentlemen with light blue silk collars, and well-rounded calves, whose haughty bearing seems to awe the beholders, and he is told that he knew them of old, as wearing dusky black coats and leather shorts; pleasant fellows in those days, and well versed in punch and polemics. The hackney-coaches have been cut down into covered cars, and the “bulky” watchmen reduced to new police. Let him turn which way he will – let it be his pleasure to hear the popular preacher, the eloquent lawyer, or the scientific lecturer, and if his memory be only as accurate as his hearing, he will confess “time’s changes;” and when he learns who are deemed the fashionable entertainers of the day – at whose boards sit lords and baronets most frequently, he will exclaim with the poet —

“Pritchard ‘s genteel, and Garrick ‘s six feet high.”

Well, well, it’s bad philosophy, and bad temper, too, to quarrel with what is; nowhere is the wisdom of Providence more seen than in the universal law, by which everything has its place somewhere; the gnarled and bent sapling that would be rejected by the builder, is exactly the piece adapted for the knee timber of a frigate; the jagged, ill-formed rock that would ill suit the polished portico, is invaluable in a rustic arch; and, perhaps, on the same principle, dull lawyers make excellent judges, and the people who cannot speak within the limits of Lindley Murray, are admirable public writers and excellent critics; and as Doctor Pangloss was a good man “because he knew what wickedness was,” so nothing contributes to the detection of faults in others, like the daily practice of their commission by ourselves; and never can any man predict failure to another with such eloquence and impressiveness, as when he himself has experienced what it is to be damned.

Here I am in another digression, and sorry am I not to follow it out further; but for the present I must not – so now, to try back: I will suppose my absentee friend to have passed his “day in town,” amazed and surprised at the various changes about him; I will not bewilder him with any glance at our politics, nor puzzle him with that game of cross corners by which every one seems to have changed his place; nor attempt any explanation of the mysterious doctrine by which the party which affects the strongest attachment to the sovereign should exult in any defeat to her armies; nor how the supporters of the government contribute to its stability, by rabid attacks on its members, and absurd comparisons of their own fitness for affairs, with the heads of our best and wisest. These things he must have remembered long ago, and with respect to them, we are pretty much as we were; but I will introduce him to an evening party – a society where the élite of Dublin are assembled; where, amid the glare of wax lights, and the more brilliant blaze of beauty, our fairest women and most gifted and exalted men are met together for enjoyment. At first blush there will appear to him to have been no alteration nor change here. Even the very faces he will remember are the same he saw a dozen years ago: some pursy gentlemen with bald foreheads or grey whiskers who danced before, are now grown whisters; a few of the ladies, who then figured in the quadrille, have assumed the turban, and occupy an ottoman; the gay, laughing, light-hearted youth he formerly hobnobbed with at supper, is become a rising barrister, and has got up a look of learned pre-occupation, much more imposing to his sister than to Sir Edward Sugden; the wild, reckless collegeman, whose name was a talisman in the “Shades,” is now a soft-voiced young physician, vibrating in his imitation of the two great leaders in his art, and alternately assuming the “Epic or the Lake” school of physic. All this may amuse, but cannot amaze him: such is the natural current of events, and he ought to be prepared for it. The evening wears on, however; the frigid politeness and ceremonious distance which we have for some years back been borrowing from our neighbours, and which seem to suit our warmer natures pretty much as a suit of plate armour would a danseuse in a ballet – this begins to wear off, and melt away before the genial heat of Irish temperament; “the mirth and fun grow fast and furious;” and a new dance is called for. What, then, is the amazement, shall I say the horror, of our friend to hear the band strike up a tune which he only remembered as associated with everything base, low, and disgraceful; which, in the days of his “libertine youth,” he only heard at riotous carousals and roistering festivals; whose every bar is associated with words – ay, there’s the rub – which, in his maturer years, he blushes to have listened to! he stares about him in wonderment; for a moment he forgets that the young lady who dances with such evident enjoyment of the air, is ignorant of its history; he watches her sparkling eye and animated gesture, without remembering that she knows nothing off the associations at which her partner is, perhaps, smirking; he sees her vis-à-vis exchanging looks with his friend, that denote their estimation of the music; and in very truth, so puzzled is he, he begins to distrust his senses. The air ceases, and is succeeded by another no less known, no less steeped in the same class of associations, and so to the conclusion. These remembrances of past wickedness go on “crescendo,” till the finale caps the whole with a melody, to which even the restraints of society are scarcely able to prevent a humming accompaniment of concurring voices, and – these are the Irish Quadrilles! What can account for this? What special pleading will find an argument in its favour? When Wesley objected to all the good music being given to the devil, he only excused his adoption of certain airs which, in their popular form, had never been connected with religious words and feelings; and in his selection of them, was rigidly mindful to take such only as in their character became easily convertible to his purpose: he never enlisted those to which, by an unhappy destiny, vulgarising and indelicate associations have been so connected as to become inseparably identified; and although the object is widely different, I cannot see how, for the purposes of social enjoyment, we should have diverged from his example. If we wished a set of Irish quadrilles, how many good and suitable airs had we not ready at our hands? Is not our national music proverbially rich, and in the very character of music that would suit us? Are there not airs in hundreds, whose very names are linked with pleasing and poetic memories, admirably adapted to the purpose? Why commit the choice, as in this case, to a foreigner who knew nothing of them, nor of us? And why permit him to introduce into our drawing-rooms, through the means of a quadrille band, a class of reminiscences which suggest levity in young men, and shame in old ones? No, no: if the Irish quadrilles are to be fashionable, let it be in those classic precincts where their merits are best appreciated, and let Monsieur Jullien’s popularity be great in Barrack-street!