



Produced by Donald Lainson





ROUNDABOUT PAPERS

By William Makepeace Thackeray




CONTENTS


ROUNDABOUT PAPERS


On a Lazy Idle Boy

On Two Children in Black

On Ribbons

On some late Great Victories

Thorns in the Cushion

On Screens in Dining-Rooms

Tunbridge Toys

De Juventute

On a Joke I once heard from the late Thomas Hood

Round about the Christmas Tree

On a Chalk-Mark on the Door

On being Found Out

On a Hundred Years Hence

Small-Beer Chronicle

Ogres

On Two Roundabout Papers which I intended to Write

A Mississippi Bubble

On Letts's Diary

Notes of a Week's Holiday

Nil Nisi Bonum

On Half a Loaf--A Letter to Messrs. Broadway, Battery and Co., of New
York, Bankers

The Notch on the Axe.--A Story a la Mode. Part I Part II Part III

De Finibus

On a Peal of Bells

On a Pear-Tree

Dessein's

On some Carp at Sans Souci

Autour de mon Chapeau

On Alexandrines--A Letter to some Country Cousins

On a Medal of George the Fourth

"Strange to say, on Club Paper"

The Last Sketch




ROUNDABOUT PAPERS.




ON A LAZY IDLE BOY.


I had occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the little old town
of Coire or Chur, in the Grisons, where lies buried that very ancient
British king, saint, and martyr, Lucius,* who founded the Church of St.
Peter, on Cornhill. Few people note the church now-a-days, and fewer
ever heard of the saint. In the cathedral at Chur, his statue appears
surrounded by other sainted persons of his family. With tight red
breeches, a Roman habit, a curly brown beard, and a neat little gilt
crown and sceptre, he stands, a very comely and cheerful image: and,
from what I may call his peculiar position with regard to Cornhill, I
beheld this figure of St. Lucius with more interest than I should have
bestowed upon personages who, hierarchically, are, I dare say, his
superiors.

     * Stow quotes the inscription, still extant, from the table
     fast chained in St. Peter's Church, Cornhill; and says, "he
     was after some chronicle buried at London, and after some
     chronicle buried at Glowcester"--but, oh! these incorrect
     chroniclers! when Alban Butler, in the "Lives of the
     Saints," v. xii., and Murray's "Handbook," and the Sacristan
     at Chur, all say Lucius was killed there, and I saw his tomb
     with my own eyes!

The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end of the world--of
the world of to-day, the world of rapid motion, and rushing railways,
and the commerce and intercourse of men. From the northern gate, the
iron road stretches away to Zurich, to Basle, to Paris, to home. From
the old southern barriers, before which a little river rushes, and
around which stretch the crumbling battlements of the ancient town, the
road bears the slow diligence or lagging vetturino by the shallow Rhine,
through the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently over the Splugen
to the shores of Como.

I have seldom seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm, and pastoral, than
this remote little Chur. What need have the inhabitants for walls
and ramparts, except to build summer-houses, to trail vines, and hang
clothes to dry on them? No enemies approach the great mouldering gates:
only at morn and even the cows come lowing past them, the village
maidens chatter merrily round the fountains, and babble like the
ever-voluble stream that flows under the old walls. The schoolboys,
with book and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the gymnasium,
and return thence at their stated time. There is one coffee-house in the
town, and I see one old gentleman goes to it. There are shops with no
customers seemingly, and the lazy tradesmen look out of their little
windows at the single stranger sauntering by. There is a stall with
baskets of queer little black grapes and apples, and a pretty brisk
trade with half a dozen urchins standing round. But, beyond this, there
is scarce any talk or movement in the street. There's nobody at the
book-shop. "If you will have the goodness to come again in an hour,"
says the banker, with his mouthful of dinner at one o'clock, "you can
have the money." There is nobody at the hotel, save the good landlady,
the kind waiters, the brisk young cook who ministers to you. Nobody is
in the Protestant church--(oh! strange sight, the two confessions are
here at peace!)--nobody in the Catholic church: until the sacristan,
from his snug abode in the cathedral close, espies the traveller eying
the monsters and pillars before the old shark-toothed arch of his
cathedral, and comes out (with a view to remuneration possibly) and
opens the gate, and shows you the venerable church, and the queer old
relics in the sacristy, and the ancient vestments (a black velvet
cope, amongst other robes, as fresh as yesterday, and presented by that
notorious "pervert," Henry of Navarre and France), and the statue of St.
Lucius who built St. Peter's Church, on Cornhill.

What a quiet, kind, quaint, pleasant, pretty old town! Has it been
asleep these hundreds and hundreds of years, and is the brisk young
Prince of the Sidereal Realms in his screaming car drawn by his snorting
steel elephant coming to waken it? Time was when there must have been
life and bustle and commerce here. Those vast, venerable walls were
not made to keep out cows, but men-at-arms, led by fierce captains, who
prowled about the gates, and robbed the traders as they passed in and
out with their bales, their goods, their pack-horses, and their wains.
Is the place so dead that even the clergy of the different denominations
can't quarrel? Why, seven or eight, or a dozen, or fifteen hundred years
ago (they haven't the register at St. Peter's up to that remote period.
I dare say it was burnt in the fire of London)--a dozen hundred years
ago, when there was some life in the town, St. Lucius was stoned here
on account of theological differences, after founding our church in
Cornhill.

There was a sweet pretty river walk we used to take in the evening
and mark the mountains round glooming with a deeper purple; the shades
creeping up the golden walls; the river brawling, the cattle calling,
the maids and chatter-boxes round the fountains babbling and bawling;
and several times in the course of our sober walks we overtook a lazy
slouching boy, or hobble-dehoy, with a rusty coat, and trousers not too
long, and big feet trailing lazily one after the other, and large lazy
hands dawdling from out the tight sleeves, and in the lazy hands a
little book, which my lad held up to his face, and which I dare say
so charmed and ravished him, that he was blind to the beautiful sights
around him; unmindful, I would venture to lay any wager, of the lessons
he had to learn for to-morrow; forgetful of mother, waiting supper, and
father preparing a scolding;--absorbed utterly and entirely in his book.

What was it that so fascinated the young student, as he stood by the
river shore? Not the Pons Asinorum. What book so delighted him, and
blinded him to all the rest of the world, so that he did not care to see
the apple-woman with her fruit, or (more tempting still to sons of Eve)
the pretty girls with their apple cheeks, who laughed and prattled round
the fountain! What was the book? Do you suppose it was Livy, or the
Greek grammar? No; it was a NOVEL that you were reading, you lazy, not
very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible boy! It was D'Artagnan locking
up General Monk in a box, or almost succeeding in keeping Charles the
First's head on. It was the prisoner of the Chateau d'If cutting himself
out of the sack fifty feet under water (I mention the novels I like best
myself--novels without love or talking, or any of that sort of
nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, escaping, robbery, and
rescuing)--cutting himself out of the sack, and swimming to the island
of Monte Cristo. O Dumas! O thou brave, kind, gallant old Alexandre! I
hereby offer thee homage, and give thee thanks for many pleasant hours.
I have read thee (being sick in bed) for thirteen hours of a happy day,
and had the ladies of the house fighting for the volumes. Be assured
that lazy boy was reading Dumas (or I will go so far as to let the
reader here pronounce the eulogium, or insert the name of his favorite
author); and as for the anger, or it may be, the reverberations of
his schoolmaster, or the remonstrances of his father, or the tender
pleadings of his mother that he should not let the supper grow cold--I
don't believe the scapegrace cared one fig. No! Figs are sweet, but
fictions are sweeter.

Have you ever seen a score of white-bearded, white-robed warriors, or
grave seniors of the city, seated at the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout, and
listening to the story-teller reciting his marvels out of "Antar" or the
"Arabian Nights?" I was once present when a young gentleman at table put
a tart away from him, and said to his neighbor, the Younger Son (with
rather a fatuous air), "I never eat sweets."

"Not eat sweets! and do you know why?" says T.

"Because I am past that kind of thing," says the young gentleman.

"Because you are a glutton and a sot!" cries the Elder (and Juvenis
winces a little). "All people who have natural, healthy appetites, love
sweets; all children, all women, all Eastern people, whose tastes
are not corrupted by gluttony and strong drink." And a plateful of
raspberries and cream disappeared before the philosopher.

You take the allegory? Novels are sweets. All people with healthy
literary appetites love them--almost all women;--a vast number of
clever, hard-headed men. Why, one of the most learned physicians in
England said to me only yesterday, "I have just read So-and-So for
the second time" (naming one of Jones's exquisite fictions). Judges,
bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, are notorious novel-readers; as
well as young boys and sweet girls, and their kind, tender mothers. Who
has not read about Eldon, and how he cried over novels every night when
he was not at whist?

As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether HE will like
novels when he is thirty years of age. He is taking too great a glut of
them now. He is eating jelly until he will be sick. He will know most
plots by the time he is twenty, so that HE will never be surprised when
the Stranger turns out to be the rightful earl,--when the old waterman,
throwing off his beggarly gabardine, shows his stars and the collars of
his various orders, and clasping Antonia to his bosom, proves himself
to be the prince, her long-lost father. He will recognize the
novelist's same characters, though they appear in red-heeled pumps and
ailes-de-pigeon, or the garb of the nineteenth century. He will get
weary of sweets, as boys of private schools grow (or used to grow, for
I have done growing some little time myself, and the practice may have
ended too)--as private school-boys used to grow tired of the pudding
before their mutton at dinner.

And pray what is the moral of this apologue? The moral I take to be
this: the appetite for novels extending to the end of the world; far
away in the frozen deep, the sailors reading them to one another during
the endless night;--far away under the Syrian stars, the solemn sheikhs
and elders hearkening to the poet as he recites his tales; far away in
the Indian camps, where the soldiers listen to ----'s tales, or ----'s,
after the hot day's march; far away in little Chur yonder, where the
lazy boy pores over the fond volume, and drinks it in with all his
eyes;--the demand being what we know it is, the merchant must supply it,
as he will supply saddles and pale ale for Bombay or Calcutta.

But as surely as the cadet drinks too much pale ale, it will disagree
with him; and so surely, dear youth, will too much novels cloy on thee.
I wonder, do novel-writers themselves read many novels? If you go into
Gunter's, you don't see those charming young ladies (to whom I present
my most respectful compliments) eating tarts and ices, but at the proper
eventide they have good plain wholesome tea and bread-and-butter. Can
anybody tell me does the author of the "Tale of Two Cities" read novels?
does the author of the "Tower of London" devour romances? does the
dashing "Harry Lorrequer" delight in "Plain or Ringlets" or "Sponge's
Sporting Tour?" Does the veteran, from whose flowing pen we had the
books which delighted our young days, "Darnley," and "Richelieu," and
"Delorme,"* relish the works of Alexandre the Great, and thrill over the
"Three Musqueteers?" Does the accomplished author of the "Caxtons" read
the other tales in Blackwood? (For example, that ghost-story printed
last August, and which for my part, though I read it in the public
reading-room at the "Pavilion Hotel" at Folkestone, I protest frightened
me so that I scarce dared look over my shoulder.) Does "Uncle Tom"
admire "Adam Bede;" and does the author of the "Vicar of Wrexhill" laugh
over the "Warden" and the "The Three Clerks?" Dear youth of ingenuous
countenance and ingenuous pudor! I make no doubt that the eminent
parties above named all partake of novels in moderation--eat
jellies--but mainly nourish themselves upon wholesome roast and boiled.

     * By the way, what a strange fate is that which befell the
     veteran novelist!  He was appointed her Majesty's Consul-
     General in Venice, the only city in Europe where the famous
     "Two Cavaliers" cannot by any possibility be seen riding
     together.

Here, dear youth aforesaid! our Cornhill Magazine owners strive to
provide thee with facts as well as fiction; and though it does not
become them to brag of their Ordinary, at least they invite thee to a
table where thou shalt sit in good company. That story of the "Fox"* was
written by one of the gallant seamen who sought for poor Franklin under
the awful Arctic Night: that account of China** is told by the man
of all the empire most likely to know of what he speaks: those pages
regarding Volunteers*** come from an honored hand that has borne the
sword in a hundred famous fields, and pointed the British guns in the
greatest siege in the world.

     * "The Search for Sir John Franklin.  (From the Private
     Journal of an Officer of the 'Fox.')"

    