They arrived in the evening of the first day of their pedestrianism at a little inn among the mountains. They were informed they could have no beds; and that the only parlour was occupied by two gentlemen, who meant to sit up all night, and would, perhaps, have no objection to their joining the party. A message being sent in, an affirmative answer was very politely returned; and on entering the apartment they discovered Mr. O’Scarum and Major O’Dogskin engaged in a deep discussion over a large jug of wine.
‘Troth, now,’ said Mr. O’Scarum, ‘and this is a merry meeting, sure enough, though it’s on a dismal occasion, for it’s Miss Melincourt you’re looking for, as we are too, though you have most cause, Mr. Forester; for I understand you are to be the happy man. Troth, and I did not know so much when I came to your fête, or, perhaps, I should have been for arguing the point of a prior claim (as far as my own consent was concerned) over a bit of neat turf, twelve yards long; but Major O’Dogskin tells me, that by getting muzzy, and so I did, sure enough, on your old Madeira, and rare stuff it is, by my conscience, when Miss Melincourt was in your house, I have sanctioned the matter, and there’s an end of it: but, by my soul, I did not mean to have been cut out quietly: and the Major says, too, you’re too good a fellow to be kilt, and that’s true enough: so I’ll keep my ammunition for other friends; and here’s to you and Miss Melincourt, and a happy meeting to you both, and the devil take him that parts you, says Harum O’Scarum.’— ‘And so says Dermot O’Dogskin,’ said the Major. ‘And my friend O’Scarum and myself will ride about till we get news of her, for we don’t mind a little hardship. — You shall be wanting some dinner, joys, and there’s nothing but fat bacon and potatoes; but we have made a shift with it, and then here is the very creature itself, old sherry, my jewels! troth, and how did we come home by it, think you? I know what it is to pass a night in a little inn in the hills, and you don’t find Major O’Dogskin turning out of the main road, without giving his man a couple of kegs of wine just to balance the back of his saddle. Sherry’s a good traveller, and will stand a little shaking; and what would one do without it in such a place as this, where it is water in the desert, and manna in the wilderness?’
Mr. Forester thanked them very warmly for their good wishes and active exertions. The humble dinner of himself and his party was soon despatched; after which, the Major placed the two little kegs on the table and said, ‘They were both filled to-day; so, you see, there is no lack of the good creature to keep us all alive till morning, and then we shall part again in search of Miss Melincourt, the jewel! for there is not such another on the face of the earth. Och!’ continued the Major, as he poured the wine from one of the kegs into a brown jug; for the house could not afford them a decanter, and some little ale tumblers supplied the place of wine-glasses, ‘ Och! the ould jug that never held anything better than sour ale: how proud he must feel of being filled to the brim with sparkling sherry, for the first and last time in the course of his life!’
CHAPTER XXX
THE PAPER-MILL
TAKING LEAVE OF Mr. O’Scarum and Major O’Dogskin, they continued their wandering as choice or chance directed: sometimes penetrating into the most sequestered valleys; sometimes returning into the principal roads, and investigating the most populous districts. Passing through the town of Gullgudgeon, they found an immense crowd assembled in a state of extreme confusion, exhibiting every symptom of hurry, anxiety, astonishment, and dismay. They stopped to inquire the cause of the tumult, and found it to proceed from the sudden explosion of a paper-mill, in other words, the stoppage of the country bank of Messieurs Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company. Farmers, bumpkins, artisans, mechanics, tradesmen of all descriptions, the innkeeper, the lawyer, the doctor, and the parson; soldiers from the adjoining barracks, and fishermen from the neighbouring coast, with their shrill-voiced and masculine wives, rolled in one mass, like a stormy wave, around a little shop, of which the shutters were closed, with the word BANK in golden letters over the door, and a large board on the central shutter, notifying that ‘Messieurs Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company had found themselves under the disagreeable necessity of suspending their payments’; in plain English, had found it expedient to fly by night, leaving all the machinery of their mill, and all the treasures of their mine, that is to say, several reams of paper, half a dozen account-books, a desk, a joint-stool, and inkstand, a bunch of quills, and a copper-plate, to satisfy the claims of the distracted multitude, who were shoaling in from all quarters, with promises to pay, of the said Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company, to the amount of a hundred thousand pounds.
Mr. Fax addressed himself for an explanation of particulars to a plump and portly divine, who was standing at a little distance from the rest of the crowd, and whose countenance exhibited no symptoms of the rage, grief, and despair which were depicted on the physiognomies of his dearly-beloved brethren of the town of Gullgudgeon.
‘You seem, sir,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘to bear the general calamity with Christian resignation.’
‘I do, sir,’ said the reverend gentleman, ‘and for a very orthodox reason — I have none of their notes — not I. I was obliged to take them now and then against my will, but I always sent them off to town, and got cash for them directly.’
‘You mean to say,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘you got a Threadneedle Street note for them.’
‘To be sure, sir,’ said the divine, ‘and that is the same thing as cash. There is a Jacobin rascal in this town, who says it is a bad sign when the children die before the parent, and that a day of reckoning must come sooner or later for the old lady as well as for her daughters; but myself and my brother magistrates have taken measures for him, and shall soon make the town of Gullgudgeon too hot to hold him, as sure as my name is Peppertoast.’
‘You seriously think, sir,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘that his opinion is false?’
‘Sir,’ said the reverend gentleman, somewhat nettled, ‘I do not know what right any one can have to ask a man of my cloth what he seriously thinks, when all that the world has to do with is what he seriously says.’
‘Then you seriously say it, sir?’ said Mr. Fax.
‘I do, sir,’ said the divine; ‘and for this very orthodox reason, that the system of paper-money is inseparably interwoven with the present order of things, and the present order of things I have made up my mind to stick by, precisely as long as it lasts.’
‘And no longer?’ said Mr. Fax.
‘I am no fool, sir,’ said the divine.
‘But, sir,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘as you seem to have perceived the instability of what is called (like lucus a non lucendo’) the firm of Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company, why did not you warn your flock of the impending danger?’
‘Sir,’ said the reverend gentleman, ‘I dined every week with one of the partners.’
Mr. Forester took notice of an elderly woman who was sitting with a small handful of dirty paper, weeping bitterly on the step of a door. ‘Forgive my intrusion,’ said he; ‘I need not ask you why you weep; the cause is in your hand.’—’ Ah, sir!’ said the poor woman, who could hardly speak for sobbing, ‘all the savings of twenty years taken from me in a moment; and my poor boy, when he comes home from sea—’ She could say no more: grief choked her utterance.
‘Good God!’ said Mr. Fax, ‘did you lay by your savings in country paper?’
‘O sir!’ said the poor woman, ‘how was I to know that one piece of paper was not as good as another? And everybody said that the firm of Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company was as good as the Bank of England.’ She then unfolded one of the promises to pay, and fell to weeping more bitterly than ever. Mr. Forester comforted her as well as he could; but he found the purchasing of one or two of her notes much more efficacious than all the lessons of his philosophy.
‘This is all your fault,’ said a fisherman to his wife; ‘you would be hoarding and hoarding, and stinting me of my drop of comfort when I came in after a hard
day’s work, tossed and beaten, and wet through with salt water, and there’s what we’ve got by it.’
‘It was all your fault,’ retorted the wife; ‘when we had scraped together twenty as pretty golden guineas as ever laid in a chest, you would sell ’em, so you would, for twenty-seven pounds of Mr. Smokeshadow’s paper; and now you see the difference.’
‘Here is an illustration,’ said Mr. Fax to Mr. Forester, ‘of the old maxim of experience teaching wisdom, or, as Homer expresses it, peyOev Sc TE νηπιος Ιγνω.’
‘We ought now to be convinced,’ if not before,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘that what Plato has said is strictly true, that there will be no end of human misery till governors become philosophers or philosophers governors; and that all the evils which this country suffers, and, I fear, will suffer to a much greater extent, from the bursting of this fatal bubble of paper-money — this chimerical symbol of imaginary riches — are owing to the want of philosophy and true political wisdom in our rulers, by which they might have seen things in their causes, not felt them only in their effects, as even the most vulgar man does: and by which foresight, all the mischiefs that are befalling us might have been prevented, ‘Very hard,’ said an old soldier,’very, very hard: — a poor five pounds, laid up for a rainy day, — hardly got, and closely kept — very, very hard.’
‘Poor man!’ said Mr. Forester, who was interested in the soldier’s physiognomy, ‘let me repair your loss. Here is better paper for you; but get gold and silver for it as soon as you can.’
‘God bless your honour,’ said the soldier, ‘and send as much power as goodwill to all such generous souls. Many is the worthy heart that this day’s work will break, and here is more damage than one man can mend. God bless your honour.’
A respectable-looking female approached the crowd, and addressing herself to Mr. Fax, who seemed most at leisure to her, asked him what chance there seemed to be for the creditors of Messieurs Smokeshadow, Airbubble, Hopthetwig, and Company. ‘By what I can gather from the people around me,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘none whatever.’ The lady was in great distress at this intelligence, and said they were her bankers, and it was the second misfortune of the kind that had happened to her. Mr. Fax expressed his astonishment that she should have been twice the victim of the system of paper-coinage, which seemed to contradict the old adage about a burnt child; and said it was for his part astonishing to him how any human being could be so deluded after the perils of the system had been so clearly pointed out, and amongst other things, in a pamphlet of his own on the Insubstantiality of Smoke. ‘Indeed,’ she said, ‘she had something better to do than to trouble herself about politics, and wondered he should insult her in her distress by talking of such stuff to her.’
‘Was ever such infatuation?’ said Mr. Fax, as the lady turned away. ‘This is one of those persons who choose to walk blindfold on the edge of a precipice, because it is too much trouble to see, and quarrel with their best friends for requesting them to make use of their eyes. There are many such, who think they have no business with politics; but they find to their cost that politics will have business with them.’
‘A curse light on all kite-flyers!’ vociferated a sturdy farmer. ‘Od rabbit me, here be a bundle o’ trash, measters! not worth a voive-and-zixpenny dollar all together. This comes o’ peapermills. “I promise to pay,” ecod! O the good old days o’ goulden guineas, when I used to ride whoame vrom market wi’ a great heavy bag in my pocket; and when I whopped it down on the old oak teable, it used to make zuch a zound as did one’s heart good to hear it. No promise to pay then. Now a man may eat his whole vortin in a zandwich, or zet vire to it in a vardin rushlight. Promise to pay! — the lying rascals, they never meant to pay: they knew all the while they had no effects to pay; but zuch a pretty, zmooth-spoken, palavering zet o’ fellers! why, Lord bless you! they’d ha’ made you believe black was white! and though you could never get anything of ’em but one o’ their own dirty bits o’ peaper in change vor another, they made it out as clear as daylight that they were as rich as zo many Jews. Ecod! and we were all vools enough to believe ’em, and now mark the end o’t.’
‘Yes, father,’ said a young fop at his elbow, ‘all blown, curse me!’
‘Ees,’ said the farmer, ‘and thee beest blown, and thee mun zell thy hunter, and turn to the plough-tail; and thy zisters mun churn butter, and milk the cows, instead of jingling penny-vorties, and dancing at race-balls wi’ squires. We mun be old English varmers again, and none o’ your voine highflying promise-to-pay gentlevolks. There they be — spell ’em: I promise to pay to Mr. Gregory Gas, or bearer, on demand, the zum d voive pounds. Gullgudgeon Bank, April the virst. Vor Zinokeshadow, Airbubble, Zelp and Coinpany, Hemy Hopthetwig. Entered, William Walkoff. And there be their coat o’ arms: two blacksmiths blowing a vorge, wi’ the chimney vor a crest, and a wreath o’ smoke coming out o’t; and the motto, ‘You CAN’T CATCH A BOWLFUL.’ Od rabbit me! here be a whole handvul of ’em, and I’ll zell ’em all vor a voive-and-zixpenny dollar.’
The ‘Jacobin rascal,’ of whom the reverend gentleman had spoken, happened to be at the farmer’s elbow. ‘I told you how it would be,’ said he, ‘Master Sheepshead, many years ago; and I remember you wanted to put me in the stocks for my trouble.’
‘Why, I believe I did, Mr. Lookout,’ said the farmer, with a very penitent face; ‘but if you’ll call on me zome day we’ll drown old grudges in a jug o’ ale, and light our poipes wi’ the promises o’ Measter Hopthetwig and his gang.’
‘Not with all of them I entreat you,’ said Mr. Lookout.
‘I hope you will have one of them framed and glazed, and suspended over your chimney, as a warning to your children, and your children’s children for ever, against “the blessed comforts of paper-money”’
‘Why, Lord love you, Measter Lookout,’ said the farmer, ‘we shall ha’ nothing but peaper-money still, you zee, only vrom another mill like.’
‘As to that, Master Sheepshead,’ replied Mr. Lookout, ‘I will only say to you in your own phrase, MARK THE END O’T.’
‘Do you hear him?’ said the Rev. Mr. Peppertoast; ‘do you hear the Jacobin rascal? Do you hear the libellous, seditious, factious, levelling, revolutionary, republican, democratical, atheistical villain?’
CHAPTER XXXI
CIMMERIAN LODGE
AFTER A WALK of some miles from the town of Gullgudgeon, where no information was to be obtained of Anthelia, their path wound along the shores of a lonely lake, embosomed in dark pine-groves and precipitous rocks. As they passed near a small creek, they observed a gentleman just stepping into a boat, who paused and looked up at the sound of their approximation; and Mr. Fax immediately recognised the poeticopolitical, rhapsodicoprosaical, deisidaemoniacoparadoxographical, pseudolatreiological, transcendental meteorosophist, Moley Mystic, Esquire, of Cimmerian Lodge. This gentleman’s Christian name, according to his own account, was improperly spelt with an e, and was in truth nothing more nor less than
That Moly,
Which Hermes erst to wise Ulysses gave; and which was, in the mind of Homer, a pure anticipated cognition of the system of Kantian metaphysics, or grand transcendental science of the luminous obscure; for it had a dark root, which was mystery; and a white flower, which was abstract truth: it was called Moly by the gods, who then kept it to themselves; and was difficult to be dug up by mortal men, having, in fact, lain perdu in subterranean darkness till the immortal Kant dug for it under the stone of doubt, and produced it to the astonished world as the root of human science. Other persons, however, derived his first name differently; and maintained that the e in it showed it very clearly to be a corruption of Mole-eye, it being the opinion of some naturalists that the mole has eyes, which it can withdraw or project at pleasure, implying a faculty of wilful blindness, most happily characteristic of a transcendental metaphysician; since, according to the old proverb, None are so blind as those who worit see. But be that as it may, Moley Mystic was his name, and Cimmerian Lodge wa
s his dwelling.
Mr. Mystic invited Mr. Fax and his friends to step with him into the boat, and cross over his lake, which he called the Ocean of Deceitful Form, to the Island of Pure Intelligence, on which Cimmerian Lodge was situated: promising to give them a great treat in looking over his grounds, which he had laid out according to the topography of the human mind; and to enlighten them, through the medium of ‘darkness visible,’ with an opticothaumaturgical process of transcendentalising a cylindrical mirror, which should teach them the difference between objective and subjective reality, Mr. Forester was unwilling to remit his search, even for a few hours; but Mr. Fax observing that great part of the day was gone, and that Cimmerian Lodge was very remote from the human world; so that if they did not avail themselves of Mr. Mystic’s hospitality, they should probably be reduced to the necessity of passing the night among the rocks, sub fove frigido, which he did not think very inviting, Mr. Forester complied; and with Mr. Fax and Sir Oran Haut-ton stepped into the boat. The reader who is deficient in taste for the bombast, and is no admirer of the obscure, may as well wait on the shore till they return. But we must not enter the regions of mystery without an Orphic invocation.
Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock Page 28