Some Roundabout Papers(绕圈的文件)

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Some Roundabout Papers

Some Roundabout

Papers

by Thackeray

Some Roundabout Papers

ON SOME CARP AT SANS

SOUCI

We have lately made the acquaintance of an old lady of ninety, who

has passed the last twenty-five years of her old life in a great metropolitan

establishment, the workhouse, namely, of the parish of Saint Lazarus.

Stay -- twenty-three or four years ago, she came out once, and thought to

earn a little money by hop- picking; but being overworked, and having

to lie out at night, she got a palsy which has incapacitated her from all

further labour, and has caused her poor old limbs to shake ever since.

An illustration of that dismal proverb which tells us how poverty

makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows, this poor old shaking body

has to lay herself down every night in her workhouse bed by the side of

some other old woman with whom she may or may not agree. She

herself can't be a very pleasant bed-fellow, poor thing! with her shaking

old limbs and cold feet. She lies awake a deal of the night, to be sure, not

thinking of happy old times, for hers never were happy; but sleepless

with aches, and agues, and rheumatism of old age. "The gentleman gave

me brandy-and- water," she said, her old voice shaking with rapture at the

thought. I never had a great love for Queen Charlotte, but I like her

better now from what this old lady told me. The Queen, who loved snuff

herself, has left a legacy of snuff to certain poorhouses; and, in her

watchful nights, this old woman takes a pinch of Queen Charlotte's snuff,

"and it do comfort me, sir, that it do!" Pulveris exigui munus. Here is a

forlorn aged creature, shaking with palsy, with no soul among the great

struggling multitude of mankind to care for her, not quite trampled out of

life, but past and forgotten in the rush, made a little happy, and soothed in

her hours of unrest by this penny legacy. Let me think as I write. (The

next month's sermon, thank goodness! is safe to press.) This discourse

will appear at the season when I have read that wassail-bowls make their

appearance; at the season of pantomime, turkey and sausages, plum-

puddings, jollifications for schoolboys; Christmas bills, and

Some Roundabout Papers

reminiscences more or less sad and sweet for elders. If we oldsters are

not merry, we shall be having a semblance of merriment. We shall see

the young folks laughing round the holly-bush. We shall pass the bottle

round cosily as we sit by the fire. That old thing will have a sort of

festival too. Beef, beer, and pudding will be served to her for that day also.

Christmas falls on a Thursday. Friday is the workhouse day for coming

out. Mary, remember that old Goody Twoshoes has her invitation for

Friday, 26th December! Ninety is she, poor old soul? Ah! what a

bonny face to catch under a mistletoe! "Yes, ninety, sir," she says, "and

my mother was a hundred, and my grandmother was a hundred and two."

Herself ninety, her mother a hundred, her grandmother a hundred and

two? What a queer calculation!

Ninety! Very good, granny: you were born, then, in 1772.

Your mother, we will say, was twenty-seven when you were born, and

was born therefore in 1745.

Your grandmother was thirty-five when her daughter was born, and

was born therefore in 1710.

We will begin with the present granny first. My good old creature,

you can't of course remember, but that little gentleman for whom you

mother was laundress in the Temple was the ingenious Mr Goldsmith,

author of a "History of England," the "Vicar of Wakefield," and many

diverting pieces. You were brought almost an infant to his chambers in

Brick Court, and he gave you some sugar-candy, for the doctor was always

good to children. That gentleman who well-nigh smothered you by

sitting down on you as you lay in a chair asleep was the learned Mr S.

Johnson, whose history of "Rasselas" you have never read, my pour soul;

and whose tragedy of "Irene" I don't believe any man in these kingdoms

ever perused. That tipsy Scotch gentleman who used to come to the

chambers sometimes, and at whom everybody laughed, wrote a more

amusing book than any of the scholars, your Mr Burke and your Mr

Johnson, and your Dr Goldsmith. Your father often took him home in a

chair to his lodgings; and has done as much for Parson Sterne in Bond

Street, the famous wit. Of course, my good creature, you remember the

Gordon Riots, and crying No Popery before Mr Langdale's house, the

Some Roundabout Papers

Popish distiller's, and that bonny fire of my Lord Mansfield's books in

Bloomsbury Square? Bless us, what a heap of illuminations you have

seen! For the glorious victory over the Americans at Breed's Hill; for the

peace in 1814, and the beautiful Chinese bridge in St James's Park; for

the coronation of his Majesty, whom you recollect as Prince of Wales,

Goody, don't you? Yes; and you went in a procession of laundresses to

pay your respects to his good lady, the injured Queen of England, at

Brandenburg House; and you remember your mother told you how she

was taken to see the Scotch lords executed at the Tower. And as for your

grandmother, she was born five months after the battle of Malplaquet, she

was; where her poor father was killed, fighting like a bold Briton for the

Queen. With the help of a "Wade's Chronology," I can make out ever so

queer a history for you, my poor old body, and a pedigree as authentic as

many in the peerage-books.

Peerage-books and pedigrees? What does she know about them?

Battles and victories, treasons, kings, and beheadings, literary gentlemen,

and the like, what have they ever been to her? Granny, did you ever hear

of General Wolfe? Your mother may have seen him embark, and your

father may have carried a musket under him. Your grandmother may

have cried huzza for Marlborough; but what is the Prince Duke to you,

and did you ever so much as hear tell of his name? How many hundred

or thousand of years had that toad lived who was in the coal at the defunct

exhibition? -- and yet he was not a bit better informed than toads seven or

eight hundred years younger.

"Don't talk to me your nonsense about Exhibitions, and Prince Dukes,

and toads in coals, or coals in toads, or what is it?" says granny. "I know

there was a good Queen Charlotte, for she left me snuff; and it comforts

me of a night when I lie awake."

To me there is something very touching in the notion of that little

pinch of comfort doled out to granny, and gratefully inhaled by her in the

darkness. Don't you remember what traditions there used to be of chests

of plate, bulses of diamonds, laces of inestimable value, sent out of the

country privately by the old Queen, to enrich certain relatives in M-ckl-

nb-rg Str-l-tz? Not all the treasure went. Non omnis moritur. A poor

Some Roundabout Papers

old palsied thing at midnight is made happy sometimes as she lifts her

shaking old hand to her nose. Gliding noiselessly among the beds where

lie the poor creatures huddled in their cheerless dormitory, I fancy an old

ghost with a snuff-box that does not creak. "There, Goody, take of my

rappee. You will not sneeze, and I shall not say 'God bless you.' But

you will think kindly of old Queen Charlotte, won't you? Ah! I had a

many troubles, a many troubles. I was a prisoner almost so much as you

are. I had to eat boiled mutton every day: entre nous, I abominated it.

But I never complained. I swallowed it. I made the best of a hard life.

We have all our burdens to bear. But hark! I hear the cock-crow, and

snuff the morning air." And with this the royal ghost vanishes up the

chimney -- if there be a chimney in that dismal harem, where poor old

Twoshoes and her companions pass their nights -- their dreary nights, their

restless nights, their cold long nights, shared in what glum companionship,

illumined by what a feeble taper!

"Did I understand you, my good Twoshoes, to say that your mother

was seven-and-twenty years old when you were born, and that she married

your esteemed father when she herself was twenty-five? 1745, then, was

the date of your dear mother's birth. I daresay her father was absent in

the Low Countries, with his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland,

under whom he had the honour of carrying a halberd at the famous

engagement of Fontenoy -- or if not there, he may have been at Preston

Pans, under General Sir John Cope, when the wild Highlanders broke

through all the laws of discipline and the English lines; and, being on the

spot, did he see the famous ghost which didn't appear to Colonel Gardner

of the Dragoons? My good creature, is it possible you don't remember

that Doctor Swift, Sir Robert Walpole (my Lord Orford, as you justly say),

old Sarah Marlborough, and little Mr Pope, of Twitnam, died in the year of

your birth? What a wretched memory you have! What? haven't they a

library, and the commonest books of reference at the old convent of Saint

Lazarus, where you dwell?"

"Convent of Saint Lazarus, Prince William, Dr Swift, Atossa, and Mr

Pope, of Twitnam! What is the gentleman talking about?" says old goody,

with a "Ho! ho!" and a laugh like a old parrot -- you know they live to be

Some Roundabout Papers

as old as Methuselah, parrots do, and a parrot of a hundred is

comparatively young (ho! ho! ho!). Yes, and likewise carps live to an

immense old age. Some which Frederick the Great fed at Sans Souci are

there now, with great humps of blue mould on their old backs; and they

could tell all sorts of queer stories, if they chose to speak -- but they are

very silent, carps are -- of their nature peu communicatives. Oh! what has

been thy long life, old goody, but a dole of bread and water and a perch on

a cage; a dreary swim round and round a Lethe of a pond? What are

Rossbach or Jena to those mouldy ones, and do they know it is a

grandchild of England who brings bread to feed them?

No! Those Sans Souci carps may live to be a thousand years old and

have nothing to tell but that one day is like another; and the history of

friend Goody Twoshoes has not much more variety than theirs. Hard

labour, hard fare, hard bed, numbing cold all night, and gnawing hunger

most days. That is her lot. Is it lawful in my prayers to say, "Thank

heaven, I am not as one of these"? If I were eighty, would I like to feel

the hunger always gnawing, gnawing? to have to get up and make a bow

when Mr Bumble the beadle entered the common room? to have to listen

to Miss Prim, who came to give me her ideas of the next world? If I

were eighty, I own I should not like to have to sleep with another

gentleman of my own age, gouty, a bad sleeper, kicking in his old dreams,

and snoring; to march down my vale of years at word of command,

accommodating my tottering old steps to those of the other prisoners in

my dingy, hopeless old gang; to hold out a trembling hand for a sickly

pittance of gruel, and say, "Thank you, ma'am," to Miss Prim, when she

has done reading her sermon. John! when Goody Twoshoes comes next

Friday, I desire she may not be disturbed by theological controversies.

You have a fair voice, and I heard you and the maids singing a hymn very

sweetly the other night, and was thankful that our humble household

should be in such harmony. Poor old Twoshoes is so old and toothless

and quaky, that she can't sing a bit; but don't be giving yourself airs over

her, because she can't sing and you can. Make her comfortable at our

kitchen hearth. Set that old kettle to sing by our hob. Warm her old

stomach with nut-brown ale and a toast laid in the fire. Be kind to the

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SomeRoundaboutPapers1SomeRoundaboutPapersbyThackeraySomeRoundaboutPapers2ONSOMECARPATSANSSOUCIWehavelatelymadetheacquaintanceofanoldladyofninety,whohaspassedthelasttwenty-fiveyearsofheroldlifeinagreatmetropolitanestablishment,theworkhouse,namely,oftheparishofSaintLazarus.Stay--twenty-threeorfouryear...

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