Books: Isaac Bickerstaff
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Richard Steele >> Isaac Bickerstaff
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I accepted his kind offer, and immediately took him with me in a
hack to White's.
-----
White's Chocolate-house, May
13.
We got in hither, and my companion threw a powder round us, that
made me as invisible as himself; so that we could see and hear all
others, ourselves unseen and unheard.
The first thing we took notice of was a nobleman of a goodly and
frank aspect, with his generous birth and temper visible in it,
playing at cards with a creature of a black and horrid countenance,
wherein were plainly delineated the arts of his mind, cozenage, and
falsehood. They were marking their game with counters, on which we
could see inscriptions, imperceptible to any but us. My Lord had
scored with pieces of ivory, on which were writ, "Good Fame, Glory,
Riches, Honour, and Posterity!" The spectre over-against him had on
his counters the inscriptions of "Dishonour, Impudence, Poverty,
Ignorance, and Want of Shame." "Bless me!", said I; "sure, my Lord
does not see what he plays for?" "As well as I do," says Pacolet.
"He despises that fellow he plays with, and scorns himself for
making him his companion." At the very instant he was speaking, I
saw the fellow who played with my Lord hide two cards in the roll of
his stocking. Pacolet immediately stole them from thence; upon
which the nobleman soon after won the game. The little triumph he
appeared in, when he got such a trifling stock of ready money,
though he had ventured so great sums with indifference, increased my
admiration. But Pacolet began to talk to me. "Mr. Isaac, this to
you looks wonderful, but not at all to us higher beings: that
nobleman has as many good qualities as any man of his order, and
seems to have no faults but what, as I may say, are excrescences
from virtues. He is generous to a prodigality, more affable than is
consistent with his quality, and courageous to a rashness. Yet,
after all this, the source of his whole conduct is, though he would
hate himself if he knew it, mere avarice. The ready cash laid
before the gamester's counters makes him venture, as you see, and
lay distinction against infamy, abundance against want; in a word,
all that is desirable against all that is to be avoided."
"However," said I, "be sure you disappoint the sharpers to-night,
and steal from them all the cards they hide." Pacolet obeyed me,
and my Lord went home with their whole bank in his pocket.
IV.--RECOLLECTIONS.
It is remarkable that I was bred by hand, and ate nothing but milk
till I was a twelvemonth old; from which time, to the eighth year of
my age, I was observed to delight in pudding and potatoes; and,
indeed, I retain a benevolence for that sort of food to this day. I
do not remember that I distinguished myself in anything at those
years but by my great skill at taw, for which I was so barbarously
used that it has ever since given me an aversion to gaming. In my
twelfth year, I suffered very much for two or three false concords.
At fifteen I was sent to the university, and stayed there for some
time; but a drum passing by, being a lover of music, I listed myself
for a soldier. As years came on, I began to examine things, and
grew discontented at the times. This made me quit the sword, and
take to the study of the occult sciences, in which I was so wrapped
up that Oliver Cromwell had been buried, and taken up again, five
years before I heard he was dead. This gave me first the reputation
of a conjurer, which has been of great disadvantage to me ever
since, and kept me out of all public employments. The greater part
of my later years has been divided between Dick's coffee-house, the
Trumpet in Sheer Lane, and my own lodgings.
-----
From my own Apartment, June 5.
There are those among mankind who can enjoy no relish of their being
except the world is made acquainted with all that relates to them,
and think everything lost that passes unobserved; but others find a
solid delight in stealing by the crowd, and modelling their life
after such a manner as is as much above the approbation as the
practice of the vulgar. Life being too short to give instances
great enough of true friendship or good-will, some sages have
thought it pious to preserve a certain reverence for the Manes of
their deceased friends; and have withdrawn themselves from the rest
of the world at certain seasons, to commemorate in their own
thoughts such of their acquaintance who have gone before them out of
this life. And indeed, when we are advanced in years, there is not
a more pleasing entertainment than to recollect in a gloomy moment
the many we have parted with that have been dear and agreeable to
us, and to cast a melancholy thought or two after those with whom,
perhaps, we have indulged ourselves in whole nights of mirth and
jollity. With such inclinations in my heart I went to my closet
yesterday in the evening, and resolved to be sorrowful; upon which
occasion I could not but look with disdain upon myself, that though
all the reasons which I had to lament the loss of many of my friends
are now as forcible as at the moment of their departure, yet did not
my heart swell with the same sorrow which I felt at that time; but I
could, without tears, reflect upon many pleasing adventures I have
had with some, who have long been blended with common earth. Though
it is by the benefit of nature that length of time thus blots out
the violence of afflictions; yet with tempers too much given to
pleasure, it is almost necessary to revive the old places of grief
in our memory; and ponder step by step on past life, to lead the
mind into that sobriety of thought which poises the heart, and makes
it beat with due time, without being quickened with desire, or
retarded with despair, from its proper and equal motion. When we
wind up a clock that is out of order, to make it go well for the
future, we do not immediately set the hand to the present instant,
but we make it strike the round of all its hours, before it can
recover the regularity of its time. Such, thought I, shall be my
method this evening; and since it is that day of the year which I
dedicate to the memory of such in another life as I much delighted
in when living, an hour or two shall be sacred to sorrow and their
memory, while I run over all the melancholy circumstances of this
kind which have occurred to me in my whole life.
The first sense of sorrow I ever knew was upon the death of my
father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was
rather amazed at what all the house meant than possessed with a real
understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I
went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping
alone by it. I had my battledore in my band, and fell a-beating the
coffin, and calling Papa; for, I know not how, I had some slight
idea that he was locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms,
and, transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was
before in, she almost smothered me in her embrace; and told me in a
flood of tears, "Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no
more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he could
never come to us again." She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble
spirit, and there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness
of her transport which, methought, struck me with an instinct of
sorrow, which, before I was sensible of what it was to grieve,
seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever
since. The mind in infancy is, methinks, like the body in embryo;
and receives impressions so forcible that they are as hard to be
removed by reason as any mark with which a child is born is to be
taken away by any future application. Hence it is that good-nature
in me is no merit; but having been so frequently overwhelmed with
her tears before I knew the cause of any affliction, or could draw
defences from my own judgment, I imbibed commiseration, remorse, and
an unmanly gentleness of mind, which has since ensnared me into ten
thousand calamities; and from whence I can reap no advantage, except
it be that, in such a humour as I am now in, I can the better
indulge myself in the softness of humanity, and enjoy that sweet
anxiety which arises from the memory of past afflictions.
We, that are very old, are better able to remember things which
befell us in our distant youth than the passages of later days. For
this reason it is that the companions of my strong and vigorous
years present themselves more immediately to me in this office of
sorrow. Untimely or unhappy deaths are what we are most apt to
lament: so little are we able to make it indifferent when a thing
happens, though we know it must happen. Thus we groan under life,
and bewail those who are relieved from it. Every object that
returns to our imagination raises different passions, according to
the circumstance of their departure. Who can have lived in an army,
and in a serious hour reflect upon the many gay and agreeable men
that might long have flourished in the arts of peace, and not join
with the imprecations of the fatherless and widow on the tyrant to
whose ambition they fell sacrifices? But gallant men, who are cut
oft by the sword, move rather our veneration than our pity; and we
gather relief enough from their own contempt of death, to make it no
evil, which was approached with so much cheerfulness, and attended
with so much honour. But when we turn our thoughts from the great
parts of life on such occasions, and instead of lamenting those who
stood ready to give death to those from whom they had the fortune to
receive it; I say, when we let our thoughts wander from such noble
objects, and consider the havoc which is made among the tender and
the innocent, pity enters with an unmixed softness, and possesses
all our souls at once.
Here, were there words to express such sentiments with proper
tenderness, I should record the beauty, innocence, and untimely
death of the first object my eyes ever beheld with love. The
beauteous virgin! how ignorantly did she charm, how carelessly
excel! Oh, Death! thou hast right to the bold, to the ambitious, to
the high, and to the haughty; but why this cruelty to the humble, to
the meek, to the undiscerning, to the thoughtless? Nor age, nor
business, nor distress can erase the dear image from my imagination.
In the same week, I saw her dressed for a ball, and in a shroud.
How ill did the habit of death become the pretty trifler! I still
behold the smiling earth--A large train of disasters were coming on
to my memory, when my servant knocked at my closet-door, and
interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine, of the
same sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday next at
Garraway's coffee-house. Upon the receipt of it I sent for three of
my friends. We are so intimate that we can be company in whatever
state of mind we meet, and can entertain each other without
expecting always to rejoice. The wine we found to be generous and
warming, but with such a heat as moved us rather to be cheerful than
frolicsome. It revived the spirits, without firing the blood. We
commended it till two of the clock this morning; and having to-day
met a little before dinner, we found that, though we drank two
bottles a man, we had much more reason to recollect than forget what
had passed the night before.
V.--MARRIAGE OF SISTER JENNY.
From my own Apartment, September 3O.
I am called off from public dissertations by a domestic affair of
great importance, which is no less than the disposal of my sister
Jenny for life. The girl is a girl of great merit and pleasing
conversation: but I being born of my father's first wife, and she
of his third, she converses with me rather like a daughter than a
sister. I have indeed told her that if she kept her honour, and
behaved herself in such a manner as became the Bickerstaffs, I would
get her an agreeable man for her husband; which was a promise I made
her after reading a passage in Pliny's "Epistles." That polite
author had been employed to find out a consort for his friend's
daughter, and gives the following character of the man he had
pitched upon. "Aciliano plurimum vigoris et industriae quanquam in
maxima verecundia: est illi facies liberalis, multo sanguine, multo
rubore, suffusa: est ingenua totius corporis pulchritudo et quidam
senatorius decor, quae ego nequaquam arbitror negligenda: debet
enim hoc castitati puellarum quasi praemium dari." "Acilianus," for
that was the gentleman's name, "is a man of extraordinary vigour and
industry, accompanied with the greatest modesty: he has very much
of the gentleman, with a lively colour, and flush of health in his
aspect. His whole person is finely turned, and speaks him a man of
quality; which are qualifications that, I think, ought by no means
to be overlooked, and should be bestowed on a daughter as the reward
of her chastity."
A woman that will give herself liberties need not put her parents to
so much trouble; for if she does not possess these ornaments in a
husband she can supply herself elsewhere. But this is not the case
of my sister Jenny, who, I may say without vanity, is as unspotted a
spinster as any in Great Britain. I shall take this occasion to
recommend the conduct of our own family in this particular.
We have, in the genealogy of our house, the descriptions and
pictures of our ancestors from the time of King Arthur, in whose
days there was one of my own name, a knight of his round table, and
known by the name of Sir Isaac Bickerstaff. He was low of stature,
and of a very swarthy complexion, not unlike a Portuguese Jew. But
he was more prudent than men of that height usually are, and would
often communicate to his friends his design of lengthening and
whitening his posterity. His eldest son Ralph, for that was his
name, was for this reason married to a lady who had little else to
recommend her but that she was very tall and very fair. The issue
of this match, with the help of high shoes, made a tolerable figure
in the next age, though the complexion of the family was obscure
till the fourth generation from that marriage. From which time,
till the reign of William the Conqueror, the females of our house
were famous for their needlework and fine skins. In the male line
there happened an unlucky accident in the reign of Richard III., the
eldest son of Philip, then chief of the family, being born with a
hump-back and very high nose. This was the more astonishing,
because none of his forefathers ever had such a blemish, nor indeed
was there any in the neighbourhood of that make, except the butler,
who was noted for round shoulders and a Roman nose; what made the
nose the less excusable was the remarkable smallness of his eyes.
These several defects were mended by succeeding matches: the eyes
were open in the next generation, and the hump fell in a century and
a half, but the greatest difficulty was how to reduce the nose,
which I do not find was accomplished till about the middle of the
reign of Henry VII., or rather the beginning of that of Henry VIII.
But while our ancestors were thus taken up in cultivating the eyes
and nose, the face of the Bickerstaffs fell down insensibly into
chin, which was not taken notice of, their thoughts being so much
employed upon the more noble features, till it became almost too
long to be remedied.
But length of time, and successive care in our alliances, have cured
this also, and reduced our faces into that tolerable oval which we
enjoy at present. I would not be tedious in this discourse, but
cannot but observe that our race suffered very much about three
hundred years ago, by the marriage of one of our heiresses with an
eminent courtier, who gave us spindle-shanks and cramps in our
bones; insomuch, that we did not recover our health and legs till
Sir Walter Bickerstaff married Maud the milkmaid, of whom the then
Garter King-at-Arms, a facetious person, said pleasantly enough,
"that she had spoiled our blood, but mended our constitutions."
After this account of the effect our prudent choice of matches has
had upon our persons and features, I cannot but observe that there
are daily instances of as great changes made by marriage upon men's
minds and humours. One might wear any passion out of a family by
culture, as skilful gardeners blot a colour out of a tulip that
hurts its beauty. One might produce an affable temper out of a
shrew, by grafting the mild upon the choleric; or raise a
jack-pudding from a prude, by inoculating mirth and melancholy. It
is for want of care in the disposing of our children, with regard to
our bodies and minds, that we go into a house and see such different
complexions and humours in the same race and family. But to me it
is as plain as a pikestaff, from what mixture it is that this
daughter silently lours, the other steals a kind look at you, a
third is exactly well behaved, a fourth a splenetic, and a fifth a
coquette.
In this disposal of my sister, I have chosen with an eye to her
being a wit, and provided that the bridegroom be a man of a sound
and excellent judgment, who will seldom mind what she says when she
begins to harangue, for Jenny's only imperfection is an admiration
of her parts, which inclines her to be a little, but very little,
sluttish; and you are ever to remark that we are apt to cultivate
most, and bring into observation what we think most excellent in
ourselves, or most capable of improvement. Thus, my sister, instead
of consulting her glass and her toilet for an hour and a half after
her private devotion, sits with her nose full of snuff and a man's
nightcap on her head, reading plays and romances. Her wit she
thinks her distinction, therefore knows nothing of the skill of
dress, or making her person agreeable. It would make you laugh to
see me often, with my spectacles on, lacing her stays, for she is so
very a wit, that she understands no ordinary thing in the world.
For this reason I have disposed of her to a man of business, who
will soon let her see that to be well dressed, in good humour, and
cheerful in the command of her family, are the arts and sciences of
female life. I could have bestowed her upon a fine gentleman, who
extremely admired her wit, and would have given her a coach and six,
but I found it absolutely necessary to cross the strain; for had
they met, they had entirely been rivals in discourse, and in
continual contention for the superiority of understanding, and
brought forth critics, pedants, or pretty good poets. As it is, I
expect an offspring fit for the habitation of the city, town or
country; creatures that are docile and tractable in whatever we put
them to.
To convince men of the necessity of taking this method, let any one
even below the skill of an astrologer, behold the turn of faces he
meets as soon as he passes Cheapside Conduit, and you see a deep
attention and a certain unthinking sharpness in every countenance.
They look attentive, but their thoughts are engaged on mean
purposes. To me it is very apparent, when I see a citizen pass by,
whether his head is upon woollen, silks, iron, sugar, indigo, or
stocks. Now this trace of thought appears or lies hid in the race
for two or three generations.
I know at this time a person of a vast estate, who is the immediate
descendant of a fine gentleman, but the great grandson of a broker,
in whom his ancestor is now revived. He is a very honest gentleman
in his principles, but cannot for his blood talk fairly; he is
heartily sorry for it; but he cheats by constitution, and
over-reaches by instinct.
The happiness of the man who marries my sister will be, that he has
no faults to correct in her but her own, a little bias of fancy, or
particularity of manners which grew in herself, and can be amended
by her. From such an untainted couple we can hope to have our
family rise to its ancient splendour of face, air, countenance,
manner, and shape, without discovering the product of ten nations in
one house. Obadiah Greenhat says, "he never comes into any company
in England, but he distinguishes the different nations of which we
are composed." There is scarce such a living creature as a true
Briton. We sit down, indeed, all friends, acquaintance, and
neighbours; but after two bottles you see a Dane start up and swear,
"the kingdom is his own." A Saxon drinks up the whole quart, and
swears he will dispute that with him. A Norman tells them both, he
will assert his liberty; and a Welshman cries, "They are all
foreigners and intruders of yesterday," and beats them out of the
room. Such accidents happen frequently among neighbours' children,
and cousin-germans. For which reason I say study your race, or the
soil of your family will dwindle into cits or 'squires, or run up
into wits or madmen.
VI.--PROFESSIONAL: A CASE OF SPLEEN.
White's Chocolate House, October 12.
It will be allowed me that I have all along showed great respect in
matters which concern the fair sex; but the inhumanity with which
the author of the following letter has been used is not to be
suffered:--
"Sir,
"Yesterday I had the misfortune to drop in at my Lady Haughty's
upon her visiting-day. When I entered the room where she receives
company, they all stood up indeed; but they stood as if they were to
stare at, rather than to receive me. After a long pause, a servant
brought a round stool, on which I sat down at the lower end of the
room, in the presence of no less than twelve persons, gentlemen and
ladies, lolling in elbow-chairs. And, to complete my disgrace, my
mistress was of the society. I tried to compose myself in vain, not
knowing how to dispose of either my legs or arms, nor how to shape
my countenance, the eyes of the whole room being still upon me in a
profound silence. My confusion at last was so great, that, without
speaking, or being spoken to, I fled for it, and left the assembly
to treat me at their discretion. A lecture from you upon these
inhuman distinctions in a free nation will, I doubt not, prevent the
like evils for the future, and make it, as we say, as cheap sitting
as standing.
"I am, with the greatest respect, Sir,
"Your most humble, and
"Most obedient servant,
"J. R.
"Oct. 9.
"P.S.--I had almost forgot to inform you that a fair young lady sat
in an armless chair upon my right hand, with manifest discontent in
her looks."
Soon after the receipt of this epistle, I heard a very gentle knock
at my door. My maid went down and brought up word "that a tall,
lean, black man, well dressed, who said he had not the honour to be
acquainted with me, desired to be admitted." I bid her show him up,
met him at my chamber-door, and then fell back a few paces. He
approached me with great respect, and told me, with a low voice, "he
was the gentleman that had been seated upon the round stool." I
immediately recollected that there was a joint-stool in my chamber,
which I was afraid he might take for an instrument of distinction,
and therefore winked at my boy to carry it into my closet. I then
took him by the hand, and led him to the upper end of my room, where
I placed him in my great elbow-chair, at the same time drawing
another without arms to it for myself to sit by him. I then asked
him, "at what time this misfortune befell him?" He answered,
"Between the hours of seven and eight in the evening." I further
demanded of him what he had ate or drank that day? He replied,
"Nothing but a dish of water-gruel with a few plums in it." In the
next place, I felt his pulse, which was very low and languishing.
These circumstances confirmed me in an opinion, which I had
entertained upon the first reading of his letter, that the gentleman
was far gone in the spleen. I therefore advised him to rise the
next morning, and plunge into the cold bath, there to remain under
water till he was almost drowned. This I ordered him to repeat six
days successively; and on the seventh to repair at the wonted hour
to my Lady Haughty's, and to acquaint me afterwards with what he
shall meet with there: and particularly to tell me, whether he
shall think they stared upon him so much as the time before. The
gentleman smiled; and, by his way of talking to me, showed himself a
man of excellent sense in all particulars, unless when a cane-chair,
a round or a joint-stool, were spoken of. He opened his heart to me
at the same time concerning several other grievances, such as being
overlooked in public assemblies, having his bows unanswered, being
helped last at table, and placed at the back part of a coach, with
many other distresses, which have withered his countenance, and worn
him to a skeleton. Finding him a man of reason, I entered into the
bottom of his distemper. "Sir," said I, "there are more of your
constitution in this island of Great Britain than in any other part
of the world: and I beg the favour of you to tell me whether you do
not observe that you meet with most affronts in rainy days?" He
answered candidly, "that he had long observed, that people were less
saucy in sunshine than in cloudy weather." Upon which I told him
plainly, "his distemper was the spleen; and that though the world
was very ill-natured, it was not so bad as he believed it." I
further assured him, "that his use of the cold bath, with a course
of STEEL which I should prescribe him, would certainly cure most of
his acquaintance of their rudeness, ill-behaviour, and
impertinence." My patient smiled and promised to observe my
prescriptions, not forgetting to give me an account of their
operation.
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