CHAPTER CIII.
A FEW PARTICULARS CONCERNING NO. 113 BISHOPSGATE STREET WITHIN; AND OF THE FAMILY AT THAXTED GRANGE.
Opinion is the rate of things,
From hence our peace doth flow;
I have a better fate than kings,
Because I think it so.
KATHERINE PHILIPS.
The house wherein Mr. Allison realized by fair dealing and frugality the modest fortune which enabled him to repurchase the homestead of his fathers, is still a Tobacconists, and has continued to be so from “the palmy days” of that trade, when King James vainly endeavoured by the expression of his royal dislike, to discountenance the newly-imported practice of smoking; and Joshua Sylvester thundered from Mount Helicon a Volley of Holy Shot, thinking that thereby “Tobacco” should be “battered, and the Pipes shattered, about their ears that idly idolize so base and barbarous a weed, or at least-wise overlove so loathsome vanity.” For he said,
“If there be any Herb in any place
Most opposite to God's good Herb of Grace,
'Tis doubtless this; and this doth plainly prove it,
That for the most, most graceless men do love it.”
Yet it was not long before the dead and unsavoury odour of that weed, to which a Parisian was made to say that “sea-coal smoke seemed a very Portugal perfume,” prevailed as much in the raiment of the more coarsely clad part of the community, as the scent of lavender among those who were clothed in fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: and it had grown so much in fashion, that it was said children “began to play with broken pipes, instead of corals, to make way for their teeth.”
Louis XIV. endeavoured just as ineffectually to discourage the use of snuff-taking. His valets de chambre were obliged to renounce it when they were appointed to their office; and the Duke of Harcourt was supposed to have died of apoplexy in consequence of having, to please his Majesty, left off at once a habit which he had carried to excess.
I know not through what intermediate hands the business at No. 113 has past, since the name of Allison was withdrawn from the firm; nor whether Mr. Evans, by whom it is now carried on there, is in any way related by descent with that family. Matters of no greater importance to most men have been made the subject of much antiquarian investigation; and they who busy themselves in such investigations must not be said to be ill employed, for they find harmless amusement in the pursuit, and sometimes put up a chance truth of which others, soon or late, discover the application. The house has at this time a more antiquated appearance than any other in that part of the street, though it was modernized some forty or fifty years after Mr. Bacon's friend left it. The first floor then projected several feet farther over the street than at present, and the second several feet farther over the first; and the windows, which still extend the whole breadth of the front, were then composed of small casement panes. But in the progress of those improvements which are now carrying on in the city with as much spirit as at the western end of the metropolis, and which have almost reached Mr. Evans's door, it cannot be long before the house will be either wholly removed, or so altered as no longer to be recognized.
The present race of Londoners little know what the appearance of the city was a century ago;—their own city, I was about to have said; but it was the city of their great grandfathers, not theirs, from which the elder Allisons retired in the year 1746. At that time the kennels (as in Paris) were in the middle of the street, and there were no foot paths; spouts projected the rain-water in streams against which umbrellas, if umbrellas had been then in use, could have afforded no defence; and large signs, such as are now only to be seen at country inns, were suspended before every shop, from posts which impeded the way, or from iron supports strongly fixed into the front of the house. The swinging of one of these broad signs in a high wind, and the weight of the iron on which it acted, sometimes brought the wall down; and it is recorded that one front-fall of this kind in Fleet-street maimed several persons, and killed “two young ladies, a cobler, and the King's Jeweller.”
The sign at No. 113 was an Indian Chief, smoking the calumet. Mr. Allison had found it there; and when it became necessary that a new one should be substituted, he retained the same figure,—though if he had been to chuse he would have greatly preferred the head of Sir Walter Raleigh, by whom, according to the common belief, he supposed tobacco had been introduced into this country. The Water-Poet imputed it to the Devil himself, and published
A Proclamation,
Or Approbation,
From the King of Execration
To every Nation,
For Tobacco's propagation.
Mr. Allison used to shake his head at such libellous aspersions. Raleigh was a great favorite with him, and held indeed in especial respect, though not as the Patron of his old trade, as St. Crispin is of the Gentle Craft, yet as the founder of his fortune. He thought it proper, therefore, that he should possess Sir Walter's History of the World, though he had never found inclination, or summoned up resolution, to undertake its perusal.
Common sense has been defined by Sir Egerton Brydges, “to mean nothing more than an uneducated judgement, arising from a plain and coarse understanding, exercised upon common concerns, and rendered effective rather by experience, than by any regular process of the intellectual powers. If this,” he adds, “be the proper meaning of that quality, we cannot wonder that books are little fitted for its cultivation.” Except that there was no coarseness in his nature, this would apply to Mr. Allison. He had been bred up with the notion that it behoved him to attend to his business, and that reading formed no part of it. Nevertheless he had acquired some liking for books by looking casually now and then over the leaves of those unfortunate volumes with which the shop was continually supplied for its daily consumption.
——Many a load of criticism,
Elaborate products of the midnight toil
Of Belgian brains,1
went there; and many a tome of old law, old physic, and old divinity; old history as well; books of which many were at all times rubbish; some, which though little better, would now sell for more shillings by the page than they then cost pence by the pound; and others, the real value of which is perhaps as little known now, as it was then. Such of these as in latter years caught his attention, he now and then rescued from the remorseless use to which they had been condemned. They made a curious assortment with his wife's books of devotion or amusement, wherewith she had sometimes beguiled, and sometimes soothed the weary hours of long and frequent illness. Among the former were Scott's “Christian Life,” Bishop Bayly's “Practice of Piety,” Bishop Taylor's “Holy Living and Dying,” Drelincourt on Death, with De Foe's lying story of Mrs. Veal's ghost as a puff preliminary, and the Night Thoughts. Among the latter were Cassandra, the Guardian and Spectator, Mrs. Rowe's Letters, Richardson's Novels and Pomfret's Poems.
1 AKENSIDE.
Mrs. Allison had been able to do little for her daughter of that little, which, if her state of health and spirits had permitted, she might have done; this, therefore, as well as the more active duties of the household, devolved upon Elizabeth, who was of a better constitution in mind as well as body. Elizabeth, before she went to reside with her brother, had acquired all the accomplishments which a domestic education in the country could in those days impart. Her book of receipts, culinary and medical, might have vied with the “Queen's Cabinet Unlocked.” The spelling indeed was such as ladies used in the reign of Queen Anne, and in the old time before her, when every one spelt as she thought fit; but it was written in a well-proportioned Italian hand, with fine down-strokes and broad up-ones, equally distinct and beautiful. Her speech was good Yorkshire, that is to say, good provincial English, not the worse for being provincial, and a little softened by five and twenty years residence in London. Some sisters, who in those days kept a boarding school of the first repute in one of the midland counties, used to say, when they spoke of an old pupil, “her went to school to we.” Miss Allison's language was not of this kind,—it savoured of rusticity, not of ignorance; and where it was peculiar, as in the metropolis, it gave a raciness to the conversation of an agreeable woman.
She had been well instructed in ornamental work as well as ornamental penmanship. Unlike most fashions, this had continued to be in fashion because it continued to be of use; though no doubt some of the varieties which Taylor the Water-Poet enumerates in his praise of the Needle, might have been then as little understood as now:
Tent-work, Raised-work, Laid-work, Prest-work, Net-work.
Most curious Pearl, or rare Italian Cut-work,
Fine Fern-stitch, Finny-stitch, New-stitch and Chain-stitch,
Brave Bred-stitch, Fisher-stitch, Irish-stitch and Queen-stitch,
The Spanish-stitch, Rosemary-stitch and Maw-stitch,
The smarting Whip-stitch, Back-stitch and the Cross-stitch.
All these are good, and these we must allow;
And these are every where in practice now.
There was a book published in the Water Poet's days, with the title of “School House for the Needle;” it consisted of two volumes in oblong quarto, that form being suited to its plates “of sundry sorts of patterns and examples;” and it contained a “Dialogue in Verse between Diligence and Sloth.” If Betsey Allison had studied in this “School House,” she could not have been a greater proficient with the needle than she became under her Aunt's teaching: nor would she have been more
——versed in the arts
Of pies, puddings and tarts,2
if she had gone through a course of practical lessons in one of the Pastry Schools which are common in Scotland, but were tried without success in London, about the middle of the last century. Deborah partook of these instructions at her father's desire. In all that related to the delicacies of a country table, she was glad to be instructed, because it enabled her to assist her friend; but it appeared strange to her that Mr. Bacon should wish her to learn ornamental work, for which she neither had, nor could foresee any use. But if the employment had been less agreeable than she found it in such company, she would never have disputed, nor questioned his will.
2 T. WARTON.
For so small a household, a more active or cheerful one could no where have been found than at the Grange. Ben Jonson reckoned among the happinesses of Sir Robert Wroth, that of being “with unbought provision blest.” This blessing Mr. Allison enjoyed in as great a degree as his position in life permitted; he neither killed his own meat nor grew his own corn; but he had his poultry yard, his garden and his orchard; he baked his own bread, brewed his own beer, and was supplied with milk, cream and butter from his own dairy. It is a fact not unworthy of notice, that the most intelligent farmers in the neighbourhood of London, are persons who have taken to farming as a business, because of their strong inclination for rural employments; one of the very best in Middlesex, when the Survey of that County was published by the Board of Agriculture, had been a Tailor. Mr. Allison did not attempt to manage the land which he kept in his own hands; but he had a trusty bailiff, and soon acquired knowledge enough for superintending what was done. When he retired from trade he gave over all desire for gain, which indeed he had never desired for its own sake; he sought now only wholesome occupation, and those comforts which may be said to have a moral zest. They might be called luxuries, if that word could be used in a virtuous sense without something so to qualify it. It is a curious instance of the modification which words undergo in different countries, that luxury has always a sinful acceptation in the southern languages of Europe, and lust an innocent one in the northern; the harmless meaning of the latter word, we have retained in the verb to list.
Every one who looks back upon the scenes of his youth, has one spot upon which the last light of the evening sunshine rests. The Grange was that spot in Deborah's retrospect.
