The Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1860-05-19 00:00:00

THE DAILY TIMRS, SATURDAY, MAY

LITERATURE.

THE BADDINGTON PEERAGE : Wuo WON AND
TKO WORE IT. A STORY OF THE Best AND THE
WORST SOtIETY.. By• George Augustus Sala. In three
volumes. London ! Charles S, Skeet, King William-
street, Strand.
• The skeleton of this story appeared in weekly chapters
in the columns of the Illustrated Mies from February
to December, 18571 butt in the volumes. jdst published,
the, author has clothed the skeleton with a little sounder
flesh, the story having been
,Wholly recast, revised, and
almbst entirely rewtitten. life* chapters have been
hterpolated, discrepancies amended, exuberances pruned
down, and many exaggerations and improbabilities got
rid of. There is a great peculiarity in Mr. Sala's
style of writing—p'quant, racy, pungent, witty and
sarcastic. Take, for instance, his description of the
following marriage :
A FASHIONABLE WEDDING.
_ _

One Tuesday, in. the month of November,-1330, there
was a grand wedding at St. George's, Hanover-square—
so grand, indeed, that Mr. Scrattle, the beadle—that
stern boy-compeller, with the large bright waistcoat—
had not later than that Morning
.expressed his surprise
to Mrs. Mistfit, landlady of the. Silver Fish public_
house, that the parties about to be joined togetherin holy
matrimony were not " titled folk ;'" for, as Mr.
Scrattle observed, "the dressins was perdigious, least-
ways' like a lord (as there is two follerin, and a
real lord the bridegroom's best man. looks), and the
bridesmaids, which you could measure twice your harm
on. their sleeves, lettin' alone 'ats with ribbing enough
to set you up, mum, us an 'aberdasher's shop ; likewise
more earridges as was seen since the day that Lord
ViscoUnt Baddingtm—and a noble gentleman he was—
. married Miss Truepcnny, ten years ago come Christmas."
There was no possibility of 'mistaking the bride's
carriage—it was so grand. It was a chariot with four
grays ; and the whole' equipage may be emphatically
characterised as " shiny." . For metal and glass,
and rubbing and polishing, and rich, smooth stuffs, had
been employed with so lavish a hand in that connubial
caravan, that you could see yourself in the- window-
panes, the. panels, the horses' coats, the harness, the
crimson jackets and brilliant tops of the postilions, their
rubicund faces, white, fluffy, silky hats,• shining spurs,
and glistening favours, the very rumble and imperial,
and 'axle-boxes, even.

Lord Viscount Badclington's carriage horses . were
rubbing their noses against the rumble of 'the bride's'
chariot, sympathising doubtless with their noble owner,
who was, at that very moment .of time, engaged in
saluting the bride in the vestry. His lordship's carriage
was sympathetic too. It had a gouty look : his lordship
was afflicted with podagra. It was very yellow : his
lordship's complexion Was that of an over-ripe shaddock.
It shook a good deal : so did his lordship. It was very
soft and luxurious, very warm and very lazy-looking,
very lofty and quite empty; all of which the world
(which I do not believe) said were characteristics of his
lordship. -- •
There was the carriage .of the bride's papa and
4
inamma, cosy arm, unpretentious, hitt wealthy-looking
—0 ! quite Crcesns-like in yellowness. There was the
private carriage of Sir William Guy, Baronet, of Old-
tress Manor, in the county of. Kent, and • member of
Parliament for the borough of -Mayford, which imposing
coach (plum-coloured; .turned up with scarlet). was not.
on the present occasion (and for certain reasons) in the
occupany of its proprietor, but.had brought to this most
fashionable wedding, Compton Guy, Esq., the baronet's
only brother, and a cornet in his Majesty's 'Horse
Guards Blue. '
There was old Lady Tottringham's carriage, with the
well-itiown pair of vicious black horses which fought
with and. bit each other as they trotted ; the carriage
was at every wedding-7nobody exactly knew why; and
there Were half-a-dozen more carriages and chariots
belonging to nameless •notabilities-,the "supers" of
fashion, they may be called, whose principal occupation,
it would scorn, is to be rich, and drive about leaving
cards, and fill up the backgrounds at births, and deaths,
and marriages, whenever fashion is born, or is 'Wedded,
or buried,
It had apparently snowed white favours during the
night, so plentifully Were those tokens of bridal felicity
displayed, on hats . and. jackets, in button-holes and
horses' cars. Young girls in the crowd looked with
a sniffing. roguish envy on those-satin rosettes, thinking,
perhaps, how many cap-ribbons had been spoiled for the
decoration of • grooms, and porters, and lacqueys ;
thinking, perchance, _ how -agreeable it would be to.haYe

a displary Of similar white favours at one's own wedding,
instead of sitting up half the night in the milliner's
stifling workroom, making them.
The elements had been favourable to fashion on this
joyful occasAan. There.was a November crimson fire-
ball in the heavens - like an- artificial firework that
'fashion could order and pay for; and the sky was of
that reluctantly cerulean tint that resembles a rather
yellow -muslin ivindo*Zurtaili through. Which the sun is
shining,i But though pasSably fine overhead: there was
under foot as rich a, stratum of good, thick, clinging
mid as any covetous Crossing sweeper would desire to
see and make a harvest by. There had been several
political meetings of some low people called Radicals,
during the past week--,-fellows who wanted to be repre-
sented, or something of that sort, and were very trouble-
some; and the elements, again acting with fashionable
high-Toryism, had come down upon the rogues with
rain, and had so drenched then, that they had remained,
perforce, in their squalid homes.
Everything that Mr. Sala writes has a wonderful
originality about it ; in fact, the powerfully depicted
scene in this work, " Fracas in High Life," has caused
great sensation in Belgravia. It was certainly a real
incident ; but we are authorised to state that it has no
application whatever to the noble family on whom
malicious gossip has fitted the allusion.

Mr. Sala evidently has studied the peculiar cha-
raateristics of niany of the fair sex, as the following
extract will show :

FEMINTNE BOUNCING.
There is a process known in feminine warfare as
" bouncing," which may be othetWise defined as a
moral charge-of the female heavy horse: The strongest
man will-draw :back when a lady "bounces" at him.
Mrs. Falcon commenced her onslaught by that favourite
movement.

"I wish to know, Mr. Falcon," she asked, in a high,
shrill voice, and "bouncing" as sbe spoke, "whether
my house—our house, I mean—is to be turned into an
hospital, 'a workhouse, a rag-shop, for all the vile
drunken wretches you- may choose to pick off the
streets ?"

For all reply, her husband sat down at the further
end of the table, and with a trembling hand, filled a
tumble full of wine, which he drank greedily, moodily
gazing at his wife meanwhile.
"Will you answer me,Mr. Falcon ?" his wife con.

tinned, in a yet higher, shriller tone. "Who is this
woman ? Where does she come from ? What does
she want here ? Why does . your confidential surgeon,
Mr. Fleem, come down to this room, and tell me I am
not to seek admittance to the chamber where you have
presumed to harbour her ? I demand to know. I
insist upon knowing !"
" The woman is dangerously ill," her hu.sbaud
answered wearily, leaning his head on his hand. "It
would be as cruel as unsafe to leave her. Ask your-
self—ask Mr. Fleem ! Besides," he added, more to
himself than to her, "I know something of her."
"Know something cf her !" the indignant matron
retorted, and only, sok, seemed, restrained from bouncing
bodily as well as morally at Mr. Falcon, by the inter-
position of some sixteen good solid feet of breakfast table
between her and her spouse. "Know something of
her ! I have not the slightest doubt you do. More of
her than you ought to do. Enough to be ashamed of
yourself for, lam convinced. But not hear it, Mr.
Falcon ; either she leaVes this house,. within an hour,
or Ido !" • - •

" Will you hold your tongue, woman ?" her husband
at the End of the table cried out, starting up from his
seat so suddenly that the chair fell heavily to the '',,round.
" Woman! hold my tongue ! This languageto me !
to your wife! to the mother of your children! Ugh !
you wretch !"
" Mrs. Falcon," the husband of that lady remarked,
stepping as he spoke from the station be had occupied,
and clasping one of her arms very tightly and very
sternly, "I don't think, during the twenty years of
Cur marriage, I have ever given signs of a disposition
to ill-treat you ; but, by the Lord! if you don't sit.
down in that chair and hold your tongue, except to
answer my questions, I'll leave such marks on you as
you,and I will both be sorry for !"
There was that in his eye, his blanched cheek, his
set lips, which gave indubitable proof that be was in
earnest, and thoroughly so. The bounce was taken
out of Mrs. Gervase Falcon at once-7-perhaps for good
and all; and she sat down as she was desired, tacitly
indignant, but quite obedient.

The success that has-, always attended the emanations
of Mr. Sala's fertile pen may in a great measure be
attributed to their singularity. Every thing that he
attempts is well done and neatly executed : even the very
"copy" which is generally given to his publishers is
closely, legibly, beautifully, and singularly written—a
very uncommon thing for a popular writer such as
George Augustus.Sala. In delineation of character, he
is unequalled by any living writer.
ZILLAH THE BETRAYED.
Zillah' the betrayed was a flat-footed, shambling,
Leaning-Tower-of-Pisa of a man, about forty, all
askew, like that celebrated sample of architecture not
quite right in its head. The top of Zillah's head was
not quite right either, for it was fiat on the surface,
with a round fleshy ,nob like a dome dominating a
city. You had frequent opportunities of remarking
this curious feature- on Zillah's head formation ; for
he (he was a he) continually taking off a hat with a
rusty crape band to it, and a brimquite vandyked with
long fingering, extract a cotton pocket-handketchief
literally snuff-coloured, for it had only the colour of the
snuff wherewith it was impregnated, and wiping with it
his face, which, though pale, was in a state of perpetual
. perspiration. Desperately pock-marked was Zillah the
betrayed, and the few tufts of hair he possessed, chiefly
about the temples and the humps of the maxillaries.,
were in colour as' red as the foxes' of the' field. He bad
a. flaming red nose, set amidships in his face,--a nose
that was a very cairn of crimson cherry stones, a very
standard rose-tree of grog-blosiiorns. An a.pter simile
might perhaps be found, were I to compare that rubicund
truncated cone to a big beet-root set up on one end in
the middle of a ploughed field, with twinkling little
eyes on either side, like field mice eagerly watching, and
anxious to nibble it.

The attire of Zillah the betrayed was black in hue,
but of the rustiest and most woe-begone. There were
more button holes than buttens on the breast of his coat,
though that garment was closed right up to the neck,
and more pins than either. His trousers had "knees"
to them. You know what -" knees" arc—unsightly
protuberances and bagging of the cloth on the region
of the patella, due somewhat to bad tailoring in prin.
cipianz; hut more to long and unrelieved wear. They
were terribly frayed roun the bottom edges ; and, from
one leg of the trousers being much longer than the
other, grievous cause for suspicion was warranted that
the braces of Zillah the betrayed were in an abnormal
condition. Zillah had gloves of brown Berlin ; but his
fingers peeped through them. His hat above the rusty
crape band was shiny enough ; but one skilled in such
matters might have ,known that the lustre was due to
thefriction of a wet brush. Zillah carried in that hat,
by the way, besides the snuff-coloured handkerchief, a
quantity of blue-wore foolscap. paper, wrapped up in a
ragged neWspaper. Finally; from head to heel of him,
soap and water were as evidently inimical to his habits

a; everybody's enemy is said to be to holy water ; and
there no more appeared about him, at his neck or his
wrists, the sign of a shirt than there appeared a sail
during the first two days that Mr. Dibden's ship, name
unknown, lay in the Bay of Biscay. Such was Zillah
the betrayed.
THE FASHIONABLE FOOTMAN.
There stood in the mud—the vile plebeian mud—a
shapely man, six feet in height, broad shoulders, beef-
asserting chest, lusty calves clad in silk, like pink
balustrades supporting an architrave of plush. Large,
glossyo protruding whiskers, wings to the calm edifice
of his, face-‘-whiskers that an ambitions little foot-page
rdight be tempted to lay hold of, that lad might
pull himself up to footmanhood,—a good solid
head, with plenty of front and plenty of back,
and bushels of powder. White teeth, white
glovee, white neckcloth, white favours, a delicate
bloom on each cheek, a pensive but complacent smile,
and the largest cocked hat that ever was seen since the
lamented demise of his late Royal Highness the Duke
of York. Such was the outward semblance of john,
whose name might have been Peter, as he stood in
his varnished, silver-buckled shoes, grrcefully reclining
on his gold-tipped bamboo, and waiting for his masters
and'mistresses to conk out of church. He had the mien
and bearing. of a prince; yet who would have thought
that this prince was not proud, but was in secret affable,
and had, only five minute 4 since, condescended to cross
the road with Tummas, his companion, and to partake
at that thirsty " Silver Fish," of Geneva and cloves ?
SARAH COLLETT, THE BEAUTY OF
MALLOWS CRAY.

Sarah Collett, the beauty of Mallows Cray, was the
daughter of old Daddy Collett, the schoolmaster of the
Cray. She was not a piquante beauty, a fragile beauty
a beauty, the "irregularity of whose features was
redeemed by expression ;" she was simply a most
beautiful young woman, who " felt her life in every
limb ;" who, but a step removed from the condition
of a peasant, moved, and looked, and talked like
a Queen who, reared among boors, was royally
gtaceful, dignified, haughty; who, in fine, was one
of those rare and perfect gems to be found oft-times
in the oddest. humblest, plainest caskets, and which
seem thrown there, hidden there, in SOT/ie sly caprice of
nature, arid are brought forth to the world by times to
be encircled with gorgeous settings and tributary jewels.
The girl had no accomplishments ; for, with a won-
derful natural capacity, she was as lazy as she was
beautiful. She could neither dance, nor play, nor
paint, nor sing as those frivolities are understood by
the polite world; yet she would be quite at home in the
boudoir of a duchess; and her little cottage keeping-
room looked like a palace-chamber as she sat in it.
Fond of finery, she had few pence to purchase any, and
went perforce plainly clad ; but the trashiest trinket
shone on her magnificent figure as the famous collier
might have shone on the wretched Marie Antoinette;
and she had but to let her black hair down, to be
enveloped in the mantle of an empress.
The girl was proud, and vain, and passionate; and
if she possessed any heart at all, it was as hard as the
nether millstone : but . she simulated love—as the
priests of heathen temples simulated piety—that she
might have incense for her altars and offerings for her
shrines. She might, under other influences, hare been
a Semiramis, a Lals, a Phryne, a Dubarry, a Pompa-
dottr, a Vittoria Colonna, or a second Catherine ; yet
she was but a schoolmaster's daughter.

Mr. Sala has evidently made himself acquainted with
some of the bights which may or might have been seen

by him in this Tarsus of the World." The music-
hall described as the Apollo Belvidere will, we have no
doubt, be recognised by our readers as alluding to an
establishment in this town.,
APOLLO BELVIDERE MUSIC-HALL.

It was a huge building, one of those overgrown places
of miscellaneous amusement that you only find in a
provincial metropolis. The windows were one blaze
of light. Crowds of people were passing in and out :
ragged boys, mechanics, sailors--English and foreign—
cheap Liverpool dandies, and women in satin dresses,
and bonnets covered with artificial flowers.

The professor gazed at the exterior of the building
with the stale and accustomed air of one biasW to the
outside as well as the inside of places.of public amuse-
ment. He waited patiently in the dark shadow of the
portico, till from a door adjoining the grand entrance—
a humble little door always on the swing—there glided
a female figure muffled up in some garment resembling
a mantilla. And this figure, after a momentary pause,
was swiftly but cautiously followed down the gas-lit
street by Professor Jachinio:
The entertainments at the Apollo Belvidere were
varied, not very refined, not very edifying, but decidedly.
entertaining. What more was wanted ? Mr. De
Joskins understood the taste of the town, and catered
for it skilfully. So, while the company at the two
theatres were playing to empty benches, and the
Mechanics Institute was falling into debt and decay
for want of Members, the Apollo Belvidere was crowded
every night. Ladies and gentlemen sang comic songs
and duets ; sometimes (on gala nights especially)
mounted on the backs of donkeys, or with geese under
their arms. There were short comic interludes, panto-
mimes, and burlettas. All sorts of people danced all
sorts of dances • pas seals, pas de deux, pas of as many
choregraphers as Mr. De Joskins chose to engage. He
had formerly been a clown to a circus ; had promoted
himself to the lesseeship of a beer-shop ; after .an
unusually successful bespeak, had riven to the great
altitude of licensed Victuallerclom ; and so migrated
naturally into some theatrical management. Recitations
from the poets were to be heard at the Apollo Belvidere,
also ditties cbaunted in the Liverpudlian crambo, and
in Tim Bobbin's Lancashire dialect. Graceful youths
of both sexes danced on spades, on stilts, in Highland
kilts, in clogs, and in fetters. Professors of renown
exercised elaborate hornpipes, amid diagrams of broad,
swords, and mazes of eggs and crockery-were, all with-
out cutting their shins or breaking the eggs and tea-
things. There was a string-band and a wind-band at
the Apollo Belvidere, a gorgeously-coloured and villan-
ously-drawn act-drop, and a glittering chandelier.
There was a rock-harmonicon, a set of musical glasses,
and a Church organ. Only nigger-dancing and singing,
the bones and the banjo, walking on the ceiling and
balancing on the perch. were amusements not intro-
duced from the United States. Between fifteen hun-
dred and two thousand people nightly patronised the
Apollo Belvidere, where they smoked tobacco, drank
stout, and runt and water, sometimes called for " Rule
Britannia," and sometimes fought. The Apollo Belvi-
dere had formerly been a chapel,

Mr. Sala in his travels turns everything-to account,
as every good writer should do. It certainly is a great
gift, and evidently shows that Mr. Sala makes the most
of everything he hears and sees. His description of
Liverpool is certainly not complimentary, but strikingly
original.

LIVERPOOL v. MANCHESTER. •
Now, in those days, there was a great city of ships on
the river Mersey, in England—a city which was vast
and astonishing to look upon then, but which has grown
inconceivably vaster and more astonishing in our own
day. Once a marshy pool, the resort of that now
fabulous wild-fowl the Liver, which stalked about on its
attenuated legs in places where now are Custom House,
long-rooms, and Exchange flags—where merchants,
ship-owners, and cotton-brokers meet and chaffer over
their money-bargains ;—once an inconsiderable seaport,
muddy and fishy, and to the "running" of 'contraband
cognac, and surreptitious silk goods much addicted ;
then enriching and enlarging itself by a grim per-
severance in not the most reputable branches of com-
merce and industry in the world, snch as crimping,
kidnapping, and especially slave-trading ;—theeinties! aibrignet
emporium of tride, famous among maritime
unrepresented in Parliament, and in the municipal scale
weighing not half so much as some mouldy little-
cathedral town in an agricultural county with the grass
growing
in its High-street, and an. enlightened con.;
stittiency of sartorial and sutorial pot-wallopers, not
half so much, perhaps, as Grampeund's dilapidated
hovels, or Old. Sarum's ruined walls ;—and then at last
Liverpool, twenty years since as now, Empress of
Marts, sending forth galleons and caravels, hi-remes
and tri-remes, to the uttermost ends of the earth—with
its Tyae on the Lancashire, and its Sidon on the Cheshire
coast;. with its acres of docks, its miles of ships, ships,
ships, and still more ships ; its bursting bonding ware-
houses, its gabbling 'Change, its narrow lanes choked
up with men feverishly, breathlessly, pursuing Mam-
mon ; its overflowing shops ; its merchant-palaces,
crime-and-wretchedness-breathing cellars ; foundries,
ship-yards, taverns, jails, wealth, squalor, magnificence,

and dirt.
In those days Liverpool had a sister (who lives and
flourishes greatly to this day), called Manchester, living
some five-and-twenty miles off. This -sister being as
comely, and famous, and prosperous as she and the
commencement of her splendour having been nearly
coeval with her own, it was not unnatural that she should
hate her heartily ' • a thing which occurs sometimes
among brothers and sisters, made of quite, other materials
than bricks and mortar. She contemptuously called her
sister's sons " Manchester men," while her own offspring
she denominated " Liverpool gentlemen." Her sister
was not slow to retort. Liverpool having spoken
slightingly of Salford, Manchester abused Birkenhead,
(both sisters agreed in denouncing Warrington.) Liver-
pool said Manchester was grimy with smoke, and
disfigured with cotton fluff. Manchester said that
Liverpool reeked with the odour of tar and hemp,
and that the blood of enslaved niggers cried for ven-
geance from beneath the very pedestal of Huskisson's
statue. In truth the sisters were as reciprocally rude
as the celebrated saucepan was to the kettle of prover-
bial philosophy :—not Tupper's.
Their rivalry -was meteorological, too. Manchester
gloried in having more rainy, and more dreadfully
rainy, days than any other town under the sign of
Aquarius. Forthwith Liverpool enlisted under the
united banners of Leo and Seorpio - and while her
sister drenched you with rain, she baked or broiled you
with fierce sunshine.

Not long ago there was a great stir in Church-stre,la
and the various streets in this town, from the fact of a
street Cicero announcing a great fight between Tom
Sayers and the Benicia Poy for the 1w charge of a
a'peny. Our attention, like that of the many, is often
attracted by the manner in which such important

anouncements are made. Such sights are now daily
getting more uncommon from the fact that the cheap
press is now fairly established, the, penny paper being
now purchased by the million ; but the description of a
street Cicero,- as given by Mr. Sala is most laughable
and decidedly good.

A STREE' CICERO.
•He was n very ragged fellow„ this street Cicero, but
his lungs were made of leather ; and thus ran his tale,
continuous, if ever a tale were such
" Hegstrawordinerry noose, hunpaaraliled and him-
petuous hescape from Noogate yesterday mornin' at a
quarter past sevin "avin' took advantage of the plumbers
and glaziers which was a whitewashinin' the yard hover
against the sessions-'ouse lowerin' himself by a rope
and runnin' along four houses, which the leads of one
was found by. the pieruan, has stated in hevidence before
the Lord Mayor and Court of Aldermen.
"Purchase the begstraworlinerrfbeicape (the 'death
and fire-hunter' went on, after taking a fresh breath) of
John Pollyblank the sellibrated forger and suspected
hincendiary bein' also Itemised of hother crimes. Pur-
chase the hegScape of John Pollyblank, only hckalled
since the days of Jack Sheppard and the old Pretender
which got out of the Tower of London while the gate
was hopened for the purpis of bringin' in soft soap to
wash the lions bein' in wimmen's clothes and concealed

in a warmin' pan. Purchase the hescape of JohnPolly-
blank hall the perticklers and honly a 'apeny."
Many of our readers have witnessed, "we have no
doubt, a bal masque, either in London or Paris; and