Just after this period I fell in with a new set of acquaintances, accounts of whom may not be uninteresting. I forget what it was that introduced me to Mr. Hill, proprietor of the Monthly Mirror; but at his house at Sydenham I used to meet his editor, Du Bois; Thomas Campbell, who was his neighbor; and the two Smiths, authors of The Rejected Addresses. I saw also Theodore Hook, and Mathews, the comedian. Our host was a jovial bachelor, plump and rosy as an abbot; and no abbot could have presided over a more festive Sunday. The wine flowed merrily and long; the discourse kept pace with it; and next morning, in returning to town, we felt ourselves very thirsty. A pump by the road-side, with a plash round it, was a bewitching sight.
They who knew Mr. Campbell only as the author of Gertrude of Wyoming, and the Pleasures of Hope, would not have suspected him to be a merry companion, overflowing with humor and anecdote, and any thing but fastidious. These Scotch poets have always something in reserve. It is the only point in which the major part of them resemble their countrymen. The mistaken character which the lady formed of Thomson from his Seasons is well known. He let part of the secret out in his Castle of Indolence; and the more he let out, the more honor it did to the simplicity and cordiality of the poet's nature, though not always to the elegance of it. Allan Ramsay knew his friends Gay and Somerville as well in their writings, as he did when he came to be personally acquainted with them; but Allan, who had bustled up from a barber's shop into a bookseller's, was "a cunning shaver;" and nobody would have guessed the author of the Gentle Shepherd to be penurious. Let none suppose that any insinuation to that effect is intended against Campbell. He was one of the few men whom I could at any time have walked half a dozen miles through the snow to spend an evening with; and I could no more do this with a penurious man than I could with a sulky one. I know but of one fault he had, besides an extreme cautiousness in his writings, and that one was national, a matter of words, and amply overpaid by a stream of conversation, lively, piquant, and liberal, not the less interesting for occasionally betraying an intimacy with pain, and for a high and somewhat strained tone of voice, like a man speaking with suspended breath, and in the habit of subduing his feelings. No man felt more kindly toward his fellow-creatures, or took less credit for it. When he indulged in doubt and sarcasm, and spoke contemptuously of things in general, he did it, partly, no doubt, out of actual dissatisfaction, but more perhaps than he suspected, out of a fear of being thought weak and sensitive; which is a blind that the best men very commonly practice. He professed to be hopeless and sarcastic, and took pains all the while to set up a university (the London).
When I first saw this eminent person, he gave me the idea of a French Virgil. Not that he was like a Frenchman, much less the French translator of Virgil. I found him as handsome, as the Abbé Delille is said to have been ugly. But he seemed to me to embody a Frenchman's ideal notion of the Latin poet; something a little more cut and dry than I had looked for; compact and elegant, critical and acute, with a consciousness of authorship upon him; a taste over-anxious not to commit itself, and refining and diminishing nature as in a drawing-room mirror. This fancy was strengthened in the course of conversation, by his expatiating on the greatness of Racine. I think he had a volume of the French poet in his hand. His skull was sharply cut and fine; with plenty, according to the phrenologists, both of the reflective and amative organs: and his poetry will bear them out. For a lettered solitude, and a bridal properly got up, both according to law and luxury, commend us to the lovely Gertrude of Wyoming. His face and person were rather on a small scale; his features regular; his eye lively and penetrating; and when he spoke, dimples played about his mouth; which, nevertheless, had something restrained and close in it. Some gentle puritan seemed to have crossed the breed, and to have left a stamp on his face, such as we often see in the female Scotch face rather than the male. But he appeared not at all grateful for this; and when his critics and his Virgilianism were over, very unlike a puritan he talked! He seemed to spite his restrictions; and, out of the natural largeness of his sympathy with things high and low, to break at once out of Delille's Virgil into Cotton's, like a boy let loose from school. When I had the pleasure of hearing him afterward, I forgot his Virgilianisms, and thought only of the delightful companion, the unaffected philanthropist, and the creator of a beauty worth all the heroines in Racine.
Campbell tasted pretty sharply of the good and ill of the present state of society, and, for a bookman, had beheld strange sights. He witnessed a battle in Germany from the top of a convent (on which battle he has left us a noble ode); and he saw the French cavalry enter a town, wiping their bloody swords on the horses' manes. He was in Germany a second time—I believe to purchase books; for in addition to his classical scholarship, and his other languages, he was a reader of German. The readers there, among whom he is popular, both for his poetry and his love of freedom, crowded about him with affectionate zeal; and they gave him, what he did not dislike, a good dinner. Like many of the great men in Germany, Schiller, Wieland, and others, he did not scruple to become editor of a magazine; and his name alone gave it a recommendation of the greatest value, and such as made it a grace to write under him.
I remember, one day at Sydenham, Mr. Theodore Hook coming in unexpectedly to dinner, and amusing us very much with his talent at extempore verse. He was then a youth, tall, dark, and of a good person, with small eyes, and features more round than weak; a face that had character and humor, but no refinement. His extempore verses were really surprising. It is easy enough to extemporize in Italian—one only wonders how, in a language in which every thing conspires to render verse-making easy, and it is difficult to avoid rhyming, this talent should be so much cried up—but in English it is another matter. I have known but one other person besides Hook, who could extemporize in English; and he wanted the confidence to do it in public. Of course, I speak of rhyming. Extempore blank verse, with a little practice, would be found as easy in English as rhyming is in Italian. In Hook the faculty was very unequivocal. He could not have been aware of all the visitors, still less of the subject of conversation when he came in, and he talked his full share till called upon; yet he ran his jokes and his verses upon us all in the easiest manner, saying something characteristic of every body, or avoiding it with a pun; and he introduced so agreeably a piece of village scandal upon which the party had been rallying Campbell, that the poet, though not unjealous of his dignity, was, perhaps, the most pleased of us all. Theodore afterward sat down to the pianoforte, and enlarging upon this subject, made an extempore parody of a modern opera, introducing sailors and their clap-traps, rustics, &c., and making the poet and his supposed flame, the hero and heroine. He parodied music as well as words, giving us the most received cadences and flourishes, and calling to mind (not without some hazard to his filial duties) the commonplaces of the pastoral songs and duets of the last half century; so that if Mr. Dignum, the Damon of Vauxhall, had been present, he would have doubted whether to take it as an affront or a compliment. Campbell certainly took the theme of the parody as a compliment; for having drank a little more wine than usual that evening, and happening to wear a wig on account of having lost his hair by a fever, he suddenly took off the wig, and dashed it at the head of the performer, exclaiming, "You dog! I'll throw my laurels at you."
Mathews, the comedian, I had the pleasure of seeing at Mr. Hill's several times, and of witnessing his imitations, which, admirable as they were on the stage, were still more so in private. His wife occasionally came with him, with her handsome eyes, and charitably made tea for us. Many years afterward I had the pleasure of seeing them at their own table; and I thought that while Time, with unusual courtesy, had spared the sweet countenance of the lady, he had given more force and interest to that of the husband in the very plowing of it up. Strong lines had been cut, and the face stood them well. I had seldom been more surprised than on coming close to Mathews on that occasion, and seeing the bust which he possessed in his gallery of his friend Liston. Some of these comic actors, like comic writers, are as unfarcical as can be imagined in their interior. The taste for humor comes to them by the force of contrast. The last time I had seen Mathews, his face appeared to me insignificant to what it was then. On the former occasion he looked like an irritable in-door pet: on the latter, he seemed to have been grappling with the world, and to have got vigor by it. His face had looked out upon the Atlantic, and said to the old waves, "Buffet on; I have seen trouble as well as you." The paralytic affection, or whatever it was, that twisted his mouth when young, had formerly appeared to be master of his face, and given it a character of indecision and alarm. It now seemed a minor thing; a twist in a piece of old oak. And what a bust was Liston's! The mouth and chin, with the throat under it, hung like an old bag; but the upper part of the head was as fine as possible. There was a speculation, a lookout, and even an elevation of character in it, as unlike the Liston on the stage, as Lear is to King Pippin. One might imagine Laberius to have had such a face.
The reasons why Mathews's imitations were still better in private than in public were, that he was more at his ease personally, more secure of his audience ("fit though few"), and able to interest them with traits of private character, which could not have been introduced on the stage. He gave, for instance, to persons who he thought could take it rightly, a picture of the manners and conversation of Sir Walter Scott, highly creditable to that celebrated person, and calculated to add regard to admiration. His commonest imitations were not superficial. Something of the mind and character of the individual was always insinuated, often with a dramatic dressing, and plenty of sauce piquante. At Sydenham he used to give us a dialogue among the actors, each of whom found fault with another for some defect or excess of his own. Kemble objecting to stiffness, Munden to grimace, and so on. His representation of Incledon was extraordinary: his nose seemed actually to become aquiline. It is a pity I can not put upon paper, as represented by Mr. Mathews, the singular gabblings of that actor, the lax and sailor-like twist of mind, with which every thing hung upon him; and his profane pieties in quoting the Bible; for which, and swearing, he seemed to have an equal reverence.
One morning, after stopping all night at this pleasant house, I was getting up to breakfast, when I heard the noise of a little boy having his face washed. Our host was a merry bachelor, and to the rosiness of a priest might, for aught I knew, have added the paternity; but I had never heard of it, and still less expected to find a child in his house. More obvious and obstreperous proofs, however, of the existence of a boy with a dirty face, could not have been met with. You heard the child crying and objecting; then the woman remonstrating; then the cries of the child snubbed and swallowed up in the hard towel; and at intervals out came his voice bubbling and deploring, and was again swallowed up. At breakfast, the child being pitied, I ventured to speak about it, and was laughing and sympathizing in perfect good faith, when Mathews came in, and I found that the little urchin was he.
Of James Smith, a fair, stout, fresh-colored man, with round features, I recollect little, except that he used to read to us trim verses, with rhymes as pat as butter. The best of his verses are in the Rejected Addresses; and they are excellent. Isaac Hawkins Browne with his Pipe of Tobacco, and all the rhyming jeux-d'esprit in all the Tracts, are extinguished in the comparison; not excepting the Probationary Odes. Mr. Fitzgerald found himself bankrupt in non sequiturs; Crabbe could hardly have known which was which, himself or his parodist; and Lord Byron confessed to me, that the summing up of his philosophy, to wit, that
was very posing. Mr. Smith would sometimes repeat after dinner, with his brother Horace, an imaginary dialogue, stuffed full of incongruities, that made us roll with laughter. His ordinary verse and prose were too full of the ridicule of city pretensions. To be superior to any thing, it should not always be running in one's head.
His brother Horace was delicious. Lord Byron used to say, that this epithet should be applied only to eatables; and that he wondered a friend of his (I forget who) that was critical in matters of eating, should use it in any other sense. I know not what the present usage may be in the circles, but classical authority is against his lordship, from Cicero downward; and I am content with the modern warrant of another noble wit, the famous Lord Peterborough, who, in his fine, open way, said of Fenelon, that he was such a "delicious creature, he was forced to get away from him, else he would have made him pious!" I grant there is something in the word delicious which may be said to comprise a reference to every species of pleasant taste. It is at once a quintessence and a compound; and a friend, to deserve the epithet, ought, perhaps, to be capable of delighting us as much over our wine, as on graver occasions. Fenelon himself could do this, with all his piety; or rather he could do it because his piety was of the true sort, and relished of every thing that was sweet and affectionate. A finer nature than Horace Smith's, except in the single instance of Shelley, I never met with in man; nor even in that instance, all circumstances considered, have I a right to say that those who knew him as intimately as I did the other, would not have had the same reasons to love him. Shelley himself had the highest regard for Horace Smith, as may be seen by the following verses, the initials in which the reader has here the pleasure of filling up:
Horace Smith differed with Shelley on some points; but on others, which all the world agree to praise highly, and to practice very little, he agreed so entirely, and showed unequivocally that he did agree, that, with the exception of one person (Vincent Novello), too diffident to gain such an honor from his friends, they were the only two men I had then met with, from whom I could have received and did receive advice or remonstrance with perfect comfort, because I could be sure of the unmixed motives and entire absence of self-reflection, with which it would come from them. Shelley said to me once, "I know not what Horace Smith must take me for sometimes: I am afraid he must think me a strange fellow: but is it not odd, that the only truly generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker! And he writes poetry, too," continued Shelley, his voice rising in a fervor of astonishment; "he writes poetry and pastoral dramas, and yet knows how to make money, and does make it, and is still generous!" Shelley had reason to like him. Horace Smith was one of the few men, who, through a cloud of detraction, and through all that difference of conduct from the rest of the world, which naturally excites obloquy, discerned the greatness of my friend's character. Indeed, he became a witness to a very unequivocal proof of it, which I shall mention by-and-by. The mutual esteem was accordingly very great, and arose from circumstances most honorable to both parties. "I believe," said Shelley on another occasion, "that I have only to say to Horace Smith that I want a hundred pounds or two, and he would send it me without any eye to its being returned; such faith has he that I have something within me, beyond what the world supposes, and that I could only ask his money for a good purpose." And Shelley would have sent for it accordingly, if the person for whom it was intended had not said Nay. I will now mention the circumstance which first gave my friend a regard for Horace Smith. It concerns the person just mentioned, who is a man of letters. It came to Mr. Smith's knowledge, many years ago, that this person was suffering under a pecuniary trouble. He knew little of him at the time, but had met him occasionally; and he availed himself of this circumstance to write him a letter as full of delicacy and cordiality as it could hold, making it a matter of grace to accept a bank-note of £100 which he inclosed. I speak on the best authority, that of the obliged person himself; who adds that he not only did accept the money, but felt as light and happy under the obligation, as he has felt miserable under the very report of being obliged to some; and he says, that nothing could induce him to withhold his name, but a reason, which the generous, during his lifetime, would think becoming.
I have said that Horace Smith was a stockbroker. He left business with a fortune, and went to live in France, where, if he did not increase, he did not seriously diminish it; and France added to the pleasant stock of his knowledge.
On returning to England, he set about exerting himself in a manner equally creditable to his talents and interesting to the public. I would not insult either the modesty or the understanding of my friend while he was alive, by comparing him with the author of Old Mortality and Guy Mannering: but I ventured to say, and I repeat, that the earliest of his novels, Brambletye House, ran a hard race with the novel of Woodstock, and that it contained more than one character not unworthy of the best volumes of Sir Walter. I allude to the ghastly troubles of the Regicide in his lone house; the outward phlegm and merry inward malice of Winky Boss (a happy name), who gravely smoked a pipe with his mouth, and laughed with his eyes; and, above all, to the character of the princely Dutch merchant, who would cry out that he should be ruined, at seeing a few nutmegs dropped from a bag, and then go and give a thousand ducats for an antique. This is hitting the high mercantile character to a niceity—minute and careful in its means, princely in its ends. If the ultimate effect of commerce (permulti transibunt, &c.) were not something very different from what its pursuers imagine, the character would be a dangerous one to society at large, because it throws a gloss over the spirit of money-getting; but, meanwhile, nobody could paint it better, or has a greater right to recommend it, than he who has been the first to make it a handsome portrait.
The personal appearance of Horace Smith, like that of most of the individuals I have met with, was highly indicative of his character. His figure was good and manly, inclining to the robust; and his countenance extremely frank and cordial; sweet without weakness. I have been told he was irascible. If so, it must have been no common offense that could have irritated him. He had not a jot of it in his appearance.
Another set of acquaintances which I made at this time used to assemble at the hospitable table of Mr. Hunter, the bookseller, in St. Paul's Church-yard. They were the survivors of the literary party that were accustomed to dine with his predecessor, Mr. Johnson. They came, as of old, on the Friday. The most regular were Fuseli and Bonnycastle. Now and then, Godwin was present: oftener Mr. Kinnaird the magistrate, a great lover of Horace.
Fuseli was a small man, with energetic features, and a white head of hair. Our host's daughter, then a little girl, used to call him the white-headed lion. He combed his hair up from the forehead; and, as his whiskers were large, his face was set in a kind of hairy frame, which, in addition to the fierceness of his look, really gave him an aspect of that sort. Otherwise, his features were rather sharp than round. He would have looked much like an old military officer, if his face, besides its real energy, had not affected more. There was the same defect in it as in his pictures. Conscious of not having all the strength he wished, he endeavored to make out for it by violence and pretension. He carried this so far, as to look fiercer than usual when he sat for his picture. His friend and engraver, Mr. Houghton, drew an admirable likeness of him in this state of dignified extravagance. He is sitting back in his chair, leaning on his hand, but looking ready to pounce withal. His notion of repose was like that of Pistol:
Agreeably to this over-wrought manner, he was reckoned, I believe, not quite so bold as he might have been. He painted horrible pictures, as children tell horrible stories; and was frightened at his own lay-figures. Yet he would hardly have talked as he did about his terrors, had he been as timid as some supposed him. With the affected, impression is the main thing, let it be produced how it may. A student of the Academy told me, that Mr. Fuseli coming in one night, when a solitary candle had been put on the floor in a corner of the room, to produce some effect or other, he said it looked "like a damned soul." This was by way of being Dantesque, as Michael Angelo was. Fuseli was an ingenious caricaturist of that master, making great bodily displays of mental energy, and being ostentatious with his limbs and muscles, in proportion as he could not draw them. A leg or an arm was to be thrust down one's throat, because he knew we should dispute the truth of it. In the indulgence of this willfulness of purpose, generated partly by impatience of study, partly by want of sufficient genius, and, no doubt, also by a sense of superiority to artists who could do nothing but draw correctly, he cared for no time, place, or circumstance, in his pictures. A set of prints, after his designs, for Shakspeare and Cowper, exhibit a chaos of mingled genius and absurdity, such as, perhaps, was never before seen. He endeavored to bring Michael Angelo's apostles and prophets, with their superhuman ponderousness of intention, into the common-places of modern life. A student reading in a garden, is all over intensity of muscle; and the quiet tea-table scene in Cowper, he has turned into a preposterous conspiracy of huge men and women, all bent on showing their thews and postures, with dresses as fantastical as their minds. One gentleman, of the existence of whose trowsers you are not aware till you see the terminating line at the ankle, is sitting and looking grim on a sofa, with his hat on and no waistcoat. Yet there is real genius in his designs for Milton, though disturbed, as usual, by strainings after the energetic. His most extraordinary mistake, after all, is said to have been on the subject of his coloring. It was a sort of livid green, like brass diseased. Yet they say, that when praised for one of his pictures, he would modestly observe, "It is a pretty color." This might have been thought a jest on his part, if remarkable stories were not told of the mistakes made by other people with regard to color. Sight seems the least agreed upon, of all the senses.
Fuseli was lively and interesting in conversation, but not without his usual faults of violence and pretension. Nor was he always as decorous as an old man ought to be; especially one whose turn of mind is not of the lighter and more pleasurable cast. The licenses he took were coarse, and had not sufficient regard to his company. Certainly they went a great deal beyond his friend Armstrong; to whose account, I believe, Fuseli's passion for swearing was laid. The poet condescended to be a great swearer, and Fuseli thought it energetic to swear like him. His friendship with Bonnycastle had something child-like and agreeable in it. They came and went away together, for years, like a couple of old schoolboys. They, also, like boys, rallied one another, and sometimes made a singular display of it—Fuseli, at least, for it was he that was the aggressor.
Bonnycastle was a good fellow. He was a tall, gaunt, long-headed man, with large features and spectacles, and a deep, internal voice, with a twang of rusticity in it; and he goggled over his plate, like a horse. I often thought that a bag of corn would have hung well on him. His laugh was equine, and showed his teeth upward at the sides. Wordsworth, who notices similar mysterious manifestations on the part of donkeys, would have thought it ominous. Bonnycastle was passionately fond of quoting Shakspeare, and telling stories; and if the Edinburgh Review had just come out, would give us all the jokes in it. He had once an hypochondriacal disorder of long duration; and he told us, that he should never forget the comfortable sensation given him one night during this disorder, by his knocking a landlord, that was insolent to him, down the man's staircase. On the strength of this piece of energy (having first ascertained that the offender was not killed) he went to bed, and had a sleep of unusual soundness. Perhaps Bonnycastle thought more highly of his talents than the amount of them strictly warranted; a mistake to which scientific men appear to be more liable than others, the universe they work in being so large, and their universality (in Bacon's sense of the word) being often so small. But the delusion was not only pardonable, but desirable, in a man so zealous in the performance of his duties, and so much of a human being to all about him, as Bonnycastle was. It was delightful one day to hear him speak with complacency of a translation which had appeared of one of his books in Arabic, and which began by saying, on the part of the translator, that "it had pleased God, for the advancement of human knowledge, to raise us up a Bonnycastle." Some of his stories were a little romantic, and no less authentic. He had an anecdote of a Scotchman, who boasted of being descended from the Admirable Crichton; in proof of which, the Scotchman said he had "a grit quantity of table-leenen in his possassion, marked A. C., Admirable Creechton."
Kinnaird, the magistrate, was a stout, sanguine man, under the middle height, with a fine, lamping black eye, lively to the last, and a person that "had increased, was increasing, and ought to have been diminished;" which is by no means what he thought of the prerogative. Next to his bottle he was fond of his Horace; and, in the intervals of business at the police-office, would enjoy both in his arm-chair. Between the vulgar calls of this kind of magistracy, and the perusal of the urbane Horace, there must have been a gusto of contradiction, which the bottle, perhaps, was required to render quite palatable. Fielding did not love his bottle the less for being obliged to lecture the drunken. Nor did his son, who succeeded him in taste and office. I know not how a former poet-laureat, Mr. Pye, managed; another man of letters who was fain to accept a situation of this kind. Having been a man of fortune and a member of Parliament, and loving his Horace to boot, he could hardly have done without his wine. I saw him once in a state of scornful indignation at being interrupted in the perusal of a manuscript by the monitions of his police-officers, who were obliged to remind him, over and over again, that he was a magistrate, and that the criminal multitude were in waiting. Every time the door opened, he threatened and he implored
Had you quoted this to Mr. Kinnaird, his eyes would have sparkled with good-fellowship: he would have finished the verse and the bottle with you, and proceeded to as many more as your head could stand. Poor fellow, the last time I saw him, he was an apparition formidably substantial. The door of our host's dining-room opened without my hearing it, and, happening to turn round, I saw a figure in a great coat literally almost as broad as it was long, and scarcely able to articulate. He was dying of a dropsy, and was obliged to revive himself, before he was fit to converse, by the wine that was killing him. But he had cares besides, and cares of no ordinary description; and, for my part, I will not blame even his wine for killing him, unless his cares could have done it more agreeably. After dinner that day, he was comparatively himself again, quoted his Horace as usual, talked of lords and courts with a relish, and begged that God save the King might be played to him on the piano-forte; to which he listened, as if his soul had taken its hat off. I believe he would have liked to die to God save the King, and to have "waked and found those visions true."
The main object of this poem is to impress the beautiful and animating fact, that the greatest visible agent in our universe, the Sun, is also one of the most beneficent; and thus to lead to the inference, that spiritual greatness and goodness are in like proportion, and its Maker beneficence itself, through whatever apparent inconsistencies he may work. The Sun is at once the greatest Might and Right that we behold.
A secondary intention of the poem is to admonish the carelessness with which people in general regard the divinest wonders of the creation, in consequence of being used to their society—this great and glorious mystery, the Sun, not excepted. "Familiarity," it is said, "breeds contempt." To which somebody emphatically added, "With the contemptible." I am far from meaning to say that all who behold the Sun with too little thought are contemptible. Habit does strange things, even with the most reflecting. But of this I am sure, that in proportion as any body wishes to prove himself worthy of his familiarity with great objects, he will not be sorry to be reminded of their greatness, especially as reverence need not diminish delight; for a heavenly "Father" can no more desire the admiration of him to be oppressive to us, than an earthly one; else fatherliness would be unfatherly, and sunshine itself a gloom.
When the Florentines crowded to some lectures of Galileo, because they were on a comet which had just made its appearance, the philosopher was bold enough to rebuke them for showing such a childish desire to hear him on this particular subject, when they were in the habit of neglecting the marvels of creation which daily presented themselves to their eyes.
[A] Rapturous—transporting, carrying away. The reader can take the word either in its spiritual or material sense, or both; according as he agrees or disagrees with Keppler and others respecting the nature of the planetary bodies.
[B] Alluding to a central sun; that is to say, a sun governing other suns, which is supposed to exist in the Constellation Hercules.
Traveling in the Bush one rainy season, I put up for the night at a small, weather-bound inn, perched half way up a mountain range, where several Bush servants on the tramp had also taken refuge from the down-pouring torrents. I had had a long and fatiguing ride over a very bad country, so, after supper, retired into the furthest corner of the one room, that served for "kitchen, and parlor, and all," and there, curled up in my blanket, in preference to the bed offered by our host, which was none of the cleanest; with half shut eyes, I glumly puffed at my pipe in silence, allowing the hubble-bubble of the Bushmen's gossip to flow through my unnoting ears.
Fortunately for my peace, the publican's stock of rum had been some time exhausted, and as I was the latest comer, all the broiling and frying had ceased, but a party sat round the fire, evidently set in for a spell at "yarning." At first the conversation ran in ordinary channels, such as short reminiscences of old world rascality, perils in the Bush. Till at length a topic arose which seemed to have a paramount interest for all. This was the prowess of a certain Two-handed Dick the Stockman.
"Yes, yes; I'll tell you what it is, mates," said one; "this confounded reading and writing, that don't give plain fellows like you and me a chance; now if it were to come to fighting for a living, I don't care whether it was half-minute time and London rules, rough and tumble, or single stick, or swords and bayonets, or tomahawks—I'm dashed if you and me, and Two-handed Dick, wouldn't take the whole Legislative Council, the Governor and Judges—one down t'other come on. Though, to be sure, Dick could thrash any two of us."
I was too tired to keep awake, and dozed off, to be again and again disturbed with cries of "Bravo, Dick!" "That's your sort!" "Houray, Dick!" all signifying approval of that individual's conduct in some desperate encounter, which formed the subject of a stirring narrative.
For months after that night this idea of Two-handed Dick haunted me, but the bustle of establishing a new station at length drove it out of my head.
I suppose a year had elapsed from the night when the fame of the double-fisted stockman first reached me. I had to take a three days' journey to buy a score of fine-wooled rams, through a country quite new to me, which I chose because it was a short-cut recently discovered. I got over, the first day, forty-five miles comfortably. The second day, in the evening, I met an ill-looking fellow walking with a broken musket, and his arm in a sling. He seemed sulky, and I kept my hand on my double-barreled pistol all the time I was talking to him; he begged a little tea and sugar, which I could not spare, but I threw him a fig of tobacco. In answer to my questions about his arm, he told me, with a string of oaths, that a bull, down in some mimosa flats, a day's journey ahead, had charged him, flung him into a water-hole, broken his arm, and made him lose his sugar and tea bag. Bulls in Australia are generally quiet, but this reminded me that some of the Highland black cattle imported by the Australian Company, after being driven off by a party of Gully Rakees (cattle stealers), had escaped into the mountains and turned quite wild. Out of this herd, which was of a breed quite unsuited to the country, a bull sometimes, when driven off by a stronger rival, would descend to the mimosa flats, and wander about, solitary and dangerously fierce.
It struck me, as I rode off, that it was quite as well my friend's arm and musket had been disabled, for he did not look the sort of man it would be pleasant to meet in a thicket of scrub, if he fancied the horse you rode. So, keeping one eye over my shoulder, and a sharp look-out for any other traveler of the same breed, I rode off at a brisk pace. I made out afterward that my foot friend was Jerry Johnson, hung for shooting a bullock-driver the following year.
At sun-down, when I reached the hut where I had intended to sleep, I found it deserted, and so full of fleas, I thought it better to camp out; so I hobbled out old Gray-tail on the best piece of grass I could find, which was very poor indeed.
The next morning, when I went to look for my horse, he was nowhere to be found. I put the saddle on my head and tracked him for hours; it was evident the poor beast had been traveling away in search of grass. I walked until my feet were one mass of blisters; at length, when about to give up the search in despair, having quite lost the track on stony ground, I came upon the marks quite fresh in a bit of swampy ground, and a few hundred yards further found Master Gray-tail rolling in the mud of a nearly dry water-hole as comfortably as possible. I put down the saddle and called him; at that moment I heard a loud roar and crash in a scrub behind me, and out rushed, at a terrific pace, a black Highland bull charging straight at me. I had only just time to throw myself on one side flat on the ground as he thundered by me. My next move was to scramble among a small clump of trees, one of great size, the rest were mere saplings.
The bull having missed his mark, turned again, and first revenged himself by tossing my saddle up in the air, until, fortunately, it lodged in some bushes; then, having smelt me out, he commenced a circuit round the trees, stamping, pawing, and bellowing frightfully. With his red eyes, and long, sharp horns, he looked like a demon; I was quite unarmed, having broken my knife the day before; my pistols were in my holsters, and I was wearied to death. My only chance consisted in dodging him round the trees until he should be tired out. Deeply did I regret having left my faithful dogs Boomer and Bounder behind.
The bull charged again and again, sometimes coming with such force against the tree that he fell on his knees, sometimes bending the saplings behind which I stood until his horns almost touched me. There was not a branch I could lay hold of to climb up. How long this awful game of "touchwood" lasted, I know not; it seemed hours; after the first excitement of self-preservation passed off, weariness again took possession of me, and it required all the instinct of self-preservation to keep me on my feet; several times the bull left me for a few seconds, pacing suddenly away, bellowing his malignant discontent; but before I could cross over to a better position he always came back at full speed. My tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, my eyes grew hot and misty, my knees trembled under me, I felt it impossible to hold out until dark. At length I grew desperate, and determined to make a run for the opposite covert the moment the bull turned toward the water-hole again. I felt sure I was doomed, and thought of it until I grew indifferent. The bull seemed to know I was worn out, and grew more fierce and rapid in his charges, but just when I was going to sit down under the great tree, and let him do his worst, I heard the rattle of a horse among the rocks above, and a shout that sounded like the voice of an angel. Then came the barking of a dog, and the loud reports of a stockwhip, but the bull, with his devilish eyes fixed on me, never moved.
Up came a horseman at full speed; crack fell the lash on the black bull's hide; out spirted the blood in a long streak. The bull turned savagely—charged the horseman. The horse wheeled round just enough to baffle him—no more—again the lash descended, cutting like a long, flexible razor, but the mad bull was not to be beaten off by a whip: he charged again and again; but he had met his match; right and left, as needed, the horse turned, sometimes pivoting on his hind, sometime on his fore-legs.
The stockman shouted something, leapt from his horse, and strode forward to meet the bull with an open knife between his teeth. As the beast lowered his head to charge, he seemed to catch him by the horns. There was a struggle, a cloud of dust, a stamping like two strong men wrestling—I could not see clearly; but the next moment the bull was on his back, the blood welling from his throat, his limbs quivering in death.
The stranger, covered with mud and dust, came to me, saying as unconcernedly as if he had been killing a calf in a slaughter-house, "He's dead enough, young man; he won't trouble any body any more."
I walked two or three paces toward the dead beast; my senses left me—I fainted.
When I came to myself, my horse was saddled, bridled, and tied up to a bush. My stranger friend was busy flaying the bull.
"I would like to have a pair of boots out of the old devil," he observed, in answer to my inquiring look, "before the dingoes and the eagle hawks dig into his carcase."
We rode out of the flats up a gentle ascent, as night was closing in. I was not in talking humor; but I said, "You have saved my life."
"Well, I rather think I have," but this was muttered in an under tone; "it's not the first I have saved, or taken either, for that matter."
I was too much worn out for thanking much, but I pulled out a silver hunting-watch and put it into his hand. He pushed it back, almost roughly, saying, "No, sir, not now; I shalln't take money or money's worth for that, though I may ask something some time. It's nothing, after all. I owed the old black devil a grudge for spoiling a blood filly of mine; besides, though I didn't know it when I rode up first, and went at the beast to take the devil out of myself as much as any thing—I rather think that you are the young gentleman that ran through the Bush at night to Manchester Dan's hut, when his wife was bailed up by the Blacks, and shot one-eyed Jackey, in spite of the Governor's proclamation."
"You seem to know me," I answered; "pray, may I ask who you are, if it is a fair question, for I can not remember ever having seen you before."
"Oh, they call me 'Two-handed Dick,' in this country."
The scene in the roadside inn flashed on my recollection. Before I could say another word, a sharp turn round the shoulder of the range we were traversing, brought us in sight of the fire of a shepherd's hut. The dogs ran out barking; we hallooed and cracked our whips, and the hut-keeper came to meet us with a fire-stick in his hand.
"Lord bless my heart and soul! Dick, is that thee at last? Well, I thought thee were't never coming;" cried the hut-keeper, a little man, who came limping forward very fast with the help of a crutch-handled stick. "I say, Missis, Missis, here's Dick, here's Two-handed Dick."
This was uttered in a shrill, hysterical sort of scream. Out came "Missis" at the top of her speed, and began hugging Dick as he was getting off his horse, her arms reached a little above his waist, laughing and crying, both at the same time, while her husband kept fast hold of the stockman's hand, muttering, "Lord, Dick I'm so glad to see thee." Meanwhile, the dogs barking, and a flock of weaned lambs just penned, ba'aing, made such a riot, that I was fairly bewildered. So, feeling myself one too many, I slipped away, leading off both the horses to the other side of the hut, where I found a shepherd, who showed me a grass paddock to feed the nags a bit before turning them out for the night. I said to him, "What is the meaning of all this going on between your mate and his wife, and the big stockman?"
"The meaning, stranger: why, that's Two-handed Dick, and my mate is little Jemmy that he saved, and Charley Anvils at the same time, when the blacks slaughtered the rest of the party, near on a dozen of them."
On returning, I found supper smoking on the table, and we had made a regular "bush" meal. The stockman then told my adventure, and, when they had exchanged all the news, I had little difficulty in getting the hut-keeper to the point I wanted; the great difficulty lay in preventing man and wife from telling the same story at the same time. However, by judicious management, I was able to gather the following account of Two-handed Dick's Fight and Ride.
"When first I met Dick he was second stockman to Mr. Ronalds, and I took a shepherd's place there; it was my second place in this country, for you see I left the old country in a bad year for the weaving trade, and was one of the first batch of free emigrants that came out, the rest were chiefly Irish. I found shepherding suit me very well, and my missis was hut-keeper. Well, Dick and I got very thick; I used to write his letters for him, and read in an evening, and so on. Well, though I undertook a shepherd's place, I soon found I could handle an ax pretty well. Throwing the shuttle gives the use of the arms, you see, and Dick put into my head that I could make more money if I took to making fences; I sharpening the rails, and making the mortice-holes, and a stranger man setting them. I did several jobs at odd times, and was thought very handy. Well, Mr. Ronalds, during the time of the great drought, five years ago, determined to send up a lot of cattle to the north, where he had heard there was plenty of water and grass, and form a station there. Dick was picked out as stockman; a young gentleman, a relative of Mr. Ronalds, went as head of the party, a very foolish, conceited young man, who knew very little of bush life, and would not be taught. There were eight splitters and fencers, besides Charley Anvils, the blacksmith, and two bullock drivers.
"I got leave to go because I wanted to see the country, and Dick asked. My missis was sorely against my going. I was to be storekeeper, as well as do any farming and work, if wanted.
"We had two drays, and were well armed. We were fifteen days going up before we got into the new country, and then we traveled five days; sometimes twenty-four hours without water, and sometimes had to unload the drays two or three times a day, to get over creeks. The fifth day we came to very fine land; the grass met over our horses' necks, and the river was a chain of water-holes, all full, and as clear as crystal. The kangaroos were hopping about as plentiful as rabbits in a warren; and the grass by the river side had regular tracks of the emus, where they went down to drink.
"We had been among signs of the blacks, too, for five days, but had not seen any thing of them, although we could hear the devils cooing at nightfall, calling to each other. We kept regular watch and watch at first—four sentinels, and every man sleeping with his gun at hand.
"Now, as it was Dick's business to tail (follow) the cattle, five hundred head, I advised him to have his musket sawed off in the barrel, so as to be a more handy size for using on horseback. He took my advice; and Charley Anvils made a very good job of it, so that he could bring it under his arm when hanging at his back from a rope sling, and fire with one hand. It was lucky I thought of it, as it turned out.
"At length the overseer fixed on a spot for the station. It was very well for water and grass, and a very pretty view, as he said, but it was too near a thicket where the blacks would lie in ambush, for safety. The old bushmen wanted it planted on a neck of land, where the waters protected it all but one side, and there a row of fence would have made it secure.
"Well, we set to work, and soon had a lot of tall trees down. Charley put up his forge and his grindstone, to keep the ax sharp, and I staid with him. Dick went tailing the cattle, and the overseer sat on a log, and looked on. The second day a mob of blacks came down on the opposite side of the river. They were quite wild, regular myals, but some of our men with green branches, went and made peace with them. They liked our bread and sugar; and after a short time we had a lot of them helping to draw rails, fishing for us, bringing wild honey, kangaroos, rats, and firewood, in return for butter and food, so we began to be less careful about our arms. We gave them iron tomahawks, and they soon found out that they could cut out an opossum from a hollow in half-an-hour with one of our tomahawks, while it took a day with one of their own stone ones.
"And so the time passed very pleasantly. We worked away. The young men and gins worked for us. The chiefs adorned themselves with the trinkets and clothes we gave them, and fished and hunted, and admired themselves in the river.
"Dick never trusted them; he stuck to his cattle; he warned us not to trust them, and the overseer called him a blood-thirsty, murdering blackguard for his pains.
"One day, the whole party were at work, chopping and trimming weather-boards for the hut; the blacks helping as usual. I was turning the grindstone for Charley Anvils, and Dick was coming up to the dray to get some tea, but there was a brow of a hill between him and us: the muskets were all piled in one corner. I heard a howl, and then a scream—our camp was full of armed blacks. When I raised my head, I saw the chief, Captain Jack, we called him, with a broad ax in his hand, and the next minute he had chopped the overseer's head clean off; in two minutes all my mates were on the ground. Three or four came running up to us; one threw a spear at me, which I half parried with a pannikin I was using to wet the grindstone, but it fixed deep in my hip, and part of it I believe is there still. Charley Anvils had an ax in his hand, and cut down the first two fellows that came up to him, but he was floored in a minute with twenty wounds. They were so eager to kill me, that one of them, luckily, or I should not have been alive now, cut the spear in my hip short off. Another, a young lad I had sharpened a tomahawk for a few days before, chopped me across the head; you can see the white hair. Down I fell, and nothing could have saved us, but the other savages had got the tarpaulin off, and were screaming with delight, plundering the drays, which called my enemies off. Just then, Dick came in sight. He saw what was the matter; but although there were more than a hundred black devils, all armed, painted, bloody, and yelling, he never stopped or hesitated, but rode slap through the camp, fired bang among them, killing two, and knocking out the brains of another. As he passed by a top rail, where an ax was sticking, he caught it up. The men in the camp were dead enough; the chief warriors had made the rush there, and every one was pierced with several spears, or cut down from close behind by axes in the hands of the chiefs. We, being further off, had been attacked by the boys only. Dick turned toward us, and shouted my name, I could not answer, but I managed to sit up an instant; he turned toward me, leaned down, caught me by the jacket, and dragged me on before him like a log. Just then Charley, who had crept under the grindstone, cried, 'Oh, Dick, don't leave me!' As he said that, a lot of them came running down, for they had seen enough to know that, unless they killed us all, their job would not be half done. As Dick turned to face them, they gave way, and flung spears, but they could not hurt him: they managed to get between us and poor Charley. Dick rode back a circuit, and dropped me among some bushes on a hill, where I could see all. Four times he charged through and through a whole mob, with an ax in one hand, and his short musket in the other. He cut them down right and left, as if he had been mowing; he scared the wretches, although the old women kept screeching and urging them on, as they always do. At length, by help of his stirrup leather, he managed to get Charley up behind him. He never could have done it, but his mare fought, and bit, and turned when he bid her, so he threw the bridle on her neck, and could use that terrible left arm of his. Well, he came up to the hill, and lifted me on, and away we went for three or four miles, but we knew the mare could not stand it long, so Dick got off, and walked. When the blacks had pulled the drays' loads to pieces, they began to follow us, but Dick never lost heart—"
"Nay, mate," interrupted Dick, "once I did; shall never forget it, when I came to put my last bullet in, it was too big."
"Good Heavens!" I exclaimed, "what did you do?"
"Why, I put the bullet in my mouth, and kept chawing and chawing it, and threatening the black devils all the while, until at last it was small enough, and then I rammed it down, and dropped on my knee, and waited until they came within twenty yards, and then I picked off Captain Jack, the biggest villain of them all."
Here Dick, being warmed, continued the story: "We could not stop; we marched all evening and all night, and when the two poor creturs cried for water, as they did most of the night, as often as I could I filled my boots, and gave them to drink. I led the horse, and traveled seventy miles without halting for more than a minute or two. Toward the last they were as helpless as worn-out sheep. I tied them on. We had the luck to fall in with a party traveling just when the old mare was about giving in, and then we must all have died for want of water. Charley Anvils had eighteen wounds, but, except losing two fingers, is none the worse. Poor Jemmy, there, will never be fit for any thing but a hut-keeper; as for me, I had some scratches—nothing to hurt; and the old mare lost an ear. I went back afterward with the police, and squared accounts with the blacks.
"And so, you see, stranger, the old woman thinks I saved her old man's life, although I would have done as much for any one; but I believe there are some gentlemen in Sydney think I ought to have been hung for what I did. Any how, since that scrimmage in the bush, they always call me 'Two-handed Dick.'"