The Press. — London, England, 1856-10-25 00:00:00

THE PRESS. 1026 Mr. Halliwell's derivation for " howdy " is fantastic ; and it would be more natural, if driven for a fanciful root, to take it from the contraction " howd'ye," which in Johnson follows the actual word "howdy." The deri vation by Jamieson settles the point. This volume has ethnological interest, but much of its materials may be found already in print. It chief value is the close indication of the similarity between the Norwegian and Cumberland proper names. Many of the words cited as local by the author are, we can assure him, common to various parts of Eng land ; and if the volume should reach another edition, it would be of advantage to make a closer comparison of his Cumberland vocabu lary with "Todd's Johnson." The Eighteenth Century ; or, Illustrations of the Manners and Customs of our Grandfathers. By Alexander Andrews. London : Chap man and Hall. THERE is something peculiar in the pride which this generation takes in fancying itself superior to the generations of times past. The reverse is commonly the case. The golden age of poets is always an antique age. There is no more frequent complaint in every epoch of the worltrs history than tile degene racy of the period in which the complainers live. If wealth has declined, fond reference is made to the splendour of a more prosperous day. If wealth has increased, there is an outcry against the increase of luxury, and sumptuary laws are passed to restrain excess. It is amusing in our own annals to read in Hollinushed how that luxury had so in creased in his time that every decent house had come to be supplied with a chimney, and to be furnished with silver plate instead of woolen platters. "Alas !" says the chronicler, " men formerly were content to dwell in houses " built of willow, now they must have oak ; " but see the change, for our men that were " formerly of oak are now become willow." Tile reputations a the present time, in letters, arts, and statesmanship, commonly pale before tme reputations of previous times. Augustus dies not reign in an Augustan age. Stars do not shine until night spreads her mantle over the earth. But in our day the lautlator temporis acti exists not. It is the present, not the past, which is lauded. Progress is deified. Society is never weary of wondering what its fathers would have said of this invention or that. The people of the last age are regarded as little better than barbarians. They had neither gas, nor omnibuses, nor railways, nor policemen. Steam was in its infancy. It is we who are blessed with the happiness of living in the maturity of the beneficent giant. The circumstances which might modify this admiration of the present are overlooked. In the plenitude of useful inventions we forget the paucity of great men. The greater coin modiousness of life more than compensates for the absence of intellectual stimulants The particulars collected by Mr. Andrews of the social life of the last century are really curious. In reading them we can scarcely believe that they refer to a state comparatively so recent. It is hardly an exaggeration of the author to state, that " were it possible for us " to retrace but three steps [generations?) in " the ladder of time we should alight into a " world which we should not recognise as our " own." The book opens with a chapter on " Fashionable Life." Holborn in the last century was not disdained by fashion, and Bloomsbury was aristocratic. There is an old hair-dresser now living in Tavistock-street, Covent-garden, who loves to dilate on the thriving state of his trade in his father's day, when the street was blocked up with Court equipages, and the youthful princesses thought that no purchases eculd be made save in that now dirty and neglected thoroughfare. Chel sea and Hampstead were thought quite far enough off for a country residence, and fashion resorted to Islington to " drink the " waters Swift, in his ".Journal to Stella," repeatedly alludes to " Addison's country house at Chelsea ; " and, on taking lodgings there himself, talks of the beautiful scent of tho new•made hay around, and says he gets quite sunburnt in his journeys to and fro, and whenever he stays late in London, he congratulates himself on having no money, so that he cannot be robbed on his way home. That this was no burlesque, the following confirmatory extracts will show : . . . ".Many persons arrived in town from their country houses in Marybone."—Daily Journal, October 15, 1728. " The Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole comes to town this day from Chelsea."—lbid. Among the advertisements of sales in the folio edition of the Spectator, the mansion of Streatfr, junior, is de• scribed as " his country house, being near Bolton-row, in Piccadilly." The \Vest-end was not then quite so expensive as at present. In 1710 Swift wrote Stella that he had taken lodgings in Bury-street, " the " first, floor, a dining-room and bed chamber," " plaguy dear " at eight shillings a week! A peep into the past would be gratifying in one respect. How delightful would it be to witness the Mull in St. James's filled with promenaders in such dresses us are now re served for the Court on a birthday. We could find it in our heart to dispense with railroads, gas, and the rest of our civilisation for a twelvemonth, to obtain one view of Boling broke in his habit as he lived : He was dressed in the extremity of fashion, and wore a light blue velvet coat, with immense cuffs, richly em• brAdered with silver; amber-coloured stockings, crimson leather shoes, fastened with diamond buckles, and a diamond hilted sword, with a long silken tassel dangling from the handle. His cravat was of point lace, and his hands were almost hidden by exaggerated ruffles of the same material ; his hat was laced with silver, and feathered at the edges, sod he wore his own brown hair in ringlets of some eighteen or twenty inches in length, tied behind with a long streaming ribbon ; his handkerchief, which he carried in his hand, was strongly perfumed, and he diffused an odour around him as he walked, as if he had just risen from a bath of roses. Powder and patches were the monstrosities of a later date. The consumption of the former for the heads of soldiers under the Hano verian dynasty was sufficient to feed a city : The consumption of powder by these soldiers was some thing enormous—not, gentle reader, gunpowder, but flour, with which their hair was dressed. It was calculated that, inasmuch as the military force of England and the colo nies was, including cavalry, infantry, militia, and fencibles, 2.50,000, and each man used a pound of flour per week, the quantity consumed in this way was 6,5(N) tons per annum ; capable of sustaining 50,000 persons on bread, and pro ducing 3,059,353 quartern loaves. One of the most curious chapters is that on "Mortgage and Funeral Customs." The an thor is, however, incorrect in his statement that there was little in the funeral customs of the last century different from our own day. The room of death was commonly converted into a show-room. While it is observed that— " the bodies of persons of distinction and of "wealthy merchants and tradesmen were some " times lai i out amidst black velvet hangings, " with wax candles beside the coffins, and the " doors of their houses thrown open for the " public and their neighbours to come and " look at them," sufficient stress is not laid on the fact that the corpse was usually exposed. We have known persons who went through the crush at the house-door of John Wesley, to behold the venerable preacher laid out in his shroud. George Selwyn, it is well known, never missed an opportunity of witnessing one of these lugubrious spectacles. Ordina rily the corpse seems to have been gut up for the occasion with great care. And Betty give this cheek a little red — One need not sure look ugly when one's (lead, referred to what was a common practice, as well as the couplet quoted by our author : When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend The wretch who living saved a candle's end. Croker, in the Good Natured Man, relates how he has just been to view his old friend in his coffin, and what a pleasant corpse he made. A publication of 1750 speaks of the habit of certain persons whose trade it was to 'bedizen the dead body, and make what " the ladies call a charming corpse." But in that kind of " lying-in-state " there was, at least, some reason, as the features of the de ceased were beheld for the last time. In modern day the undertaker's trappings are alone seen, and a grossly vulgar spectacle, devoid of all meaning and reverence, is sub stituted for what must commonly have been an affecting ceremony. The Fleet marriages were one of the most curious characteristics of the century. Shop-windows in Fleet street and Litigate-hill often displayed a notice that weddings were " performed within." Ladies incautiously walking in that locality wcro SATURDAY, sometimes seized and married against their will. Running footmen lingered into the present century, and " vital's" were common much later. The notorious "old Q." seems to have been one of the last who kept runners in his service. It is said that he used to watch their paces from his balcony in Piccadilly before he engaged them. Their performances wero sometimes extraordinary, " three score miles " a day and seven miles an hour." It is rather wonderful that sedan-chairs should have gone out, than that they should have remained so long. It was a great convenience to be taken by them into the interior of houses. The parades of Bath made their use indispensable, and in Bath they lingered longest. They were the ordinary mode of conveyance thirty or forty years ago, and probably sonic few re main in use still. The rush among the chair men on the stands when " chair" was called is one of the most amusing recollections of our youth. A curious story of a 'duel is related here on the authority of the Westminster Journal, Feb. 19, 1774 : Wednesday a duel was fought behind Montagne house, between two journeymen lace weavers. The com batants entered the field, accompanied by their seconds, when, the usual ceremonies being gone through, one of the parties discharged his pistol, the ball from which took away part of the sleeve of his antagonist's coat ; and then, like a man of courage, without waiting for the fire belly.: returned, made the best of his way off the field. The quarrel began at a public•house, about the mode of cooking a dish of sprats, one insisting on having them tried, and the other on having them broiled. With the assistance of some friends, the sum of three shillings was raised to pro cure the use of pistols to decide this important contest. To such a pitcn is the must honourable profession of duelling arrived ! Of this practice the last instances have most likely been witnessed in our own day. We do not recollect a case for sonic years past. Crime is a fertile subject, and supplies one of the must amusing chapters. It is doubtful, judging by recent complaints, whether we are much safer from burglaries than householders were in the last century, but we are, at least, tree from highwaymen : Colonel Landmann, in his " Adventures and Recol• lections," relates, that on one tine Sunday afternoon, about 1790, as a gentleman sat on his terrace at Black heath, among hosts of promenaders, a fashionably dressed person, mounted on a fine horse, rode up, and exclaiming aloud, " How are you, my dear fellow? What a ding time it is since you gave me a call ! Come and dine with me tomorrow ; you will meet some good fellows," — added, in a fierce "aside," that, if he did not quietly deliver up his watch and purse, he was a dead man, at the same time drawing a pistol stealthily from his pocket. The gentleman knew that there was no resource but to comply; and the highwayman, exclaiming aloud that he was " a damned good fellow," cantered gaily away unsus pected. _ _ . Horace Walpole relates a similar story to Mann (Sep tember 30th, 1750 :—" 1 was sitting in my own dining room on Sunday night—the clock had not struck eleven— when I heard a loud cry of ' Stop thief!' A highwayman had attacked a postchai,e in Piccadilly, within fitly yards of the house The fellow was pursued, rode over the watchman, almost killed him, and escaped." The cowardice of the persons attacked, in so generally complying with the highwayman's demand, is more surprising than the audacity of the " gentlemen of the road." Mr. Andrews is rather too fond of exclaim ing in his references to the past—What bar barism ! What credulity ! and the like. When relating the success of quack doctors in the last century, he marvels at the simplicity of our fathers. But is it certain that we are nut as much quack-ridden as ever? Have we not our mesmerism, table-turning, spirit-ntpping, &c.? Modes of quackery have changed, but the thing itself flourishes as strongly as ever. An examination of the points on which we agree with the people of the last century would, we are inclined to think, disclose more curious facts, and suggest more matter for thought, than details of points of difference. Another fault in Mr. Andrews's book is his fondness for vile puns. In that respect, at least, the last age was superior to us. The book, however,is pleasing. It shows some research, and agreeably indicates the transition of manners for the last century and a half. The second title, " Manners and Customs of our " Grandfathers," is erroneous, as its matter, it will be seen from our quotations, concerns customs and manners dating from the com mencement of the last century. , modern day the undertaker's trappings are least, the last age was superior to us. The book, now dirty and ne glected thoroughfare. Chel- alone seen, and a grossly vulgar spectacle, however, is It shows some research, sea and Hampstead were thought quite far devoid of all meaning and reverence, is sub- and agreeably indicates the transition of enough off for a country residence, and pleasMg. stituted for what must commonly have been manners for the last century and a half. Tho fashionl - resorted n t:l:li n lgtlt s : Ild — ri:k ';;" an affecting ceremony. The Fleet marriages second title, " Manners and Customs of our " waters":— were one of the m os t c ur i ous c h arac t er i s ti cs " G ran df a th ers ," i s erroneous, as i ts matter, it I Swift, in his "-Jour na l to S te ll a ," repeatedly alludes to " Addison's co un t r y h ouse at Chelsea ; " an d, on taking of the century. Shop-wi n d ows i n Fl ee t s t ree t w ill b e seen f rom our quotat i ons, concerns lodging there himself, t a lk s o f t h e b eaut if u l scent o f t h e and Ludgate-hill often display e d a no ti ce that cus t oms an d manners d at i ng f rom t h e coin - s new-made hay around, and s a y s h e gets qu i te sun b urn t i n weddings were " performed within. Ladies mencement of the last c en t ur y. his journeys to and f ro , an d w h enever he stays l ate i n incau t ious l y wa lk ing in that locality were ._, .. , e... , ......................—..... „ ow -- ____ ------ " --