EXTRACT FROM AUGUSTUS DE SALA'S NEW NOVEL "THE BADDINGTON PEERAGE."

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVII, Issue 1350, 16 November 1860, Page 5

EXTRACT FROM AUGUSTUS DE SALA'S NEW NOVEL "THE BADDINGTON PEERAGE."

Thirty years since there stood (it stands now) in London town, an inconsiderable slip of a thoroughfare which was (and is still) one of the channels of communication between the grand street that Nash, Prince of Architects, built for George the Fourth, and the grander square erected by some other Vitruvius or Palladio — whose name I never knew, but who was probably a German — for George the First. The great street is all stucco, and the great square is all red brick ; but my inconsiderable slip inclined (and inclines still) more to the dinginess of the last than to the flimsiness of the first. This street (as it was, and is, and is to be, 1 presume, to the end of genteel Time, I will speak of it in the present tense) is not a handsome street. It is not a wide street. It has shops — shops both small and mean. A grocer, who sells candles, lives at one of the corners. He i«s not a wholesale grocer, not an Italian warehouseman ; and his groceries are of so small a description, as to warrant the suspicion that he was, at no very remote period of time, a chandler's shopkeeper. Nearly opposite to him there is a barber (he calls himself a peruke-maker but he slaves, but for three halfpence ; selling also valentines in the season, kites, penny canes, and cheap periodicals all the year round.) There was, when I first knew the street, a greengrocer's within its precincts. There lire yet several lodgin houses, a boot-shop, and two taverns that flaunt its gentility. Yet, with all these plebian drawbacks, Little Maddox-street, Hanover square, was, in eighteen hundred and thirty, as it now is in eighteen hundred and sixty — the most fashionable street in the greatest city in the world. For in that formal, grey-stone, big-wig church of St. George's, right over against the street I have named, Fashion — etherial, capricious, beauteous, glittering, happy Fashion — has, for upwards of a century, erected a high altar for the solemnisation of matrimony. Since the death of Queen Anne, Fashion has elected to be married at St. George's. Fashion flutters and faints, and is flounced and furbelowed, there. It sign its name in the register ; its jewelled hand trembling, its peachy cheeks blushing through the roseate cosmetics prepared by Mr. Atkinson, of Old Bond-street ; it leaves an odour of millefleurs in the vestry, it comei forth, smiling and ikirt-trailing, all lace and rich silks, and gems, and perfect felicity (of course), down these fashion-worn vestry-room steps, to where the lightly hung chariots, with their gleaming wheels, and footmen in embroidery, are waiting ; to where the silky skinned-horses curvet in their armoried harness, pawing and stamping, and champing their bits proudly, yet .not with such a grace and dignity as are in the special gifts of those other long-tailed, long-maned, coal-black steeds, which Mr. Eesuvgam, the undertaker, who lives only next door to the vestry-room, in Mill-street, owns ; steeds which, in the course of time and business, have not unfrequently to curvet and stamp at Fashion's door, when the shutters aie up and the blinds are down — when there are to be no move marriages, or givingg away in marriage, and when Fashion is no longer Fashion, but Mortality. ' ' You know that the vettryroom is tout the second entrance — the baok-door, in fact — of this aristocratic

Temple ; that in stately George-street, with its tall, ■'lining windows, and red brick fronts with stone dressings, are the portico of the fane, and the broad flight of stone steps. I could never justly understand why the wedding procession should, so to speak, sneak out of the back-door, when, round the corner, it could come down to its chariots triumphantly, with room for coaches and six to turn, with ample space for a crowd to admire — for the charity boys to be ranged in line — far the beadle, in his scarlet and lace, to be seen to advantage— for the bride to shine forth in all her beauty, youth, happiness, wealth — for the brilliant following to show their gay feathers in all their iridescence — for all the spectatois to shout, and throw up their caps, if so they listed. But Fashion ha 3 said that it will come down those stops ; and Fashion is an institution of so Eleusinian and inscrutable a nature, that it bafflles reason and calmly crushes consistency. Its laws, whatever they may be, and whoever framed them, are as those of the Medes and Persians. It is not for us, plebians as we are, to question them ; and they will endure, my brother, long after you and I have done with the two first sections of the first column of the Times supplement (obtaining perchance not so much as a fleeting notice in the third compartment of that column), and are out of Fashion altogether. On Tuesday in the month of November, eighteen hundred and thirty, there was a grand wedding at St. George's Hanover-square, — so grand, indeed, that Mr. Scrattle, the beadle — that stern boy-coinpeller, with the large bright waistcoat — had not later than that morning expressed his surprise to Mrs. Muffit, landlady of the Silver Fish public-house, that the parties about to be joined together in holy matrimony were not "titled folk ;" for, as Mr. Scrattle observed, " the dressins was perdigious, least ways like a lord (as there is Two follerin, and a real lord the bridegroom's best-man looks), and the bridesmaids, which you could measure twice your harm on their sleeves, lettin' alone 'ats with robbing enough to set you up, mum, in an 'aberdashers shop ; likewise more carriages as was seen since the day that Lord Viscount Baddington — and a noble gentleman he was — married Miss Truepenny, ten years ago come Christmas." A score of carriages at least — no pill box-looking broughams ; no dowdy clarences fit only for nursemaids to take their charges an airing in ; no perched up cabriolets, with conceited horses and Belf-sufficient tigers ; no compromises between chariots and flys — but real roomy, thirty-years-ago carriages. They were mostly bright yellow, or of that peculiar shade of green known as " snuffy." They were addicted to red wheels ; they had a leaning to hammer - cloths, trimmed with fringe like that which my lord, the chimney sweep, wears on his coat on May-day ; they were bountifully plastered with the heraldic patchwork of their noble owneis; they were, to say the truth, clumsy, ugly, old-fashioned vehicles, but they were comfortable, substantial, and luxurious. What has become of them now ? I know many of them fell into decadence and hackney-coach-hood ; but what has become of the hackney-coaches themselves ? Where are they gone ? Have they been transplanted and transported far beyond the seas? .Aie the aristocracy of the Cannibal islands borne to his anthropophagic majesty's levees in those bygone- equipages ? Are they driven by Cumanchee coachman in some out of the way South American republic, so happy that it is never heard of in Europe ? Are they the roosting places of fowls in backyards beyond mortal ken ? Or are they indeed utterly broken up and scatteied ? There was no possibility of mistaking the bride's carriage — it was so grand. It was a chariot with four grays ; and the whole equipage may be emphatically characterised as "shiny." For metal and glass, and rubbing and polishing, and rich, smooth stuffs, had been employed with so lavish a hand in that connubial caiaran, that you could see yourself in the windowpanes, the panels, the horses' coats, the harness, the crimson jackets and brilliant tops of the postilions, their rubicund faces, white, fluffy, silky hats, shining spurs and glistening favours, the very rumble and imperial and axle boxes, even. The vehicle diffused a perfume of affluence — Fashionable affluence, mmd — that floated through Maddox-street, and was wafted up Mill-street, across Conduit-street, and so into Saville-row, where it stole , into faded consulting rooms of pippin-faced old sages of the fashionable faculty, and made those wise old ravens cluckle even as they coughed, thinking that Fashion, being married, would have children that would have .chicken-pox and croup, and other ailments, from, which even infant Fashion is not exempt What does it matter if this effulgent equipage came indeed from a job-master's, and had its ordinary habitation in a livery stable instead of the coach-house of a grand seigneur, and had in its time conveyed pleblian couples — the sons and daughters of enriched Piccadilly tradesmen, perhaps, 1 from humbler temples of Hymen ' The banquet provided by Mr. Gunter is as succulent as the one dressed for us by our own professed cook. The stock of wine sent in half an hour ago by Messrs. Fortnum and Mason is as racy and enlivening as though it had lain for years in the dusty bins of our own cellar. Borrowed plate shines as brightly as our own silver, which we have not had time to send for from the bankers' ; Mrs. Buck, of Covenfc Garden, will accommodate us with bouquets as bright and sweet-smelling as those grown in our own conservataries at Ealing or Roehampton. People job a good many things now a-days besides horses. Borrowed plumes are much worn this month — though I have not seen that announcement as yet in the Follet or the Journal dcs Modes ; and I don't think we are a thousand miles distant from a favoured country, where a man may job titles and decorations that shall stand him in as good stead as the coronet of a Howard or the riband of the Garter. Lord Viscount Baddingtou's carriage-horses were rubbing their noses against the rumble of the bride's chariot, sympathising doubtless with their noble owner, who was at that very moment of time engaged in saluting the bride in the vestry. His lordship's carriage was sympathetic too. It had a gouty look . his lordship was affected with podagra. It was very yellow : his lordship's complexion was that of an over-ripe shaddock. It shook a good deal : so did Ms lordship. It was very soft and luxurious, very warm and lazy looking, very lofty and empty; all of" which the world (which I do not believe) said were characteristics of his loidship. There was the carriage of the bride's papa and mama, cosy and unpretentious but wealthy-looking — 0 ! quite Croesus like in yellowness. There was the private carriage of Sir William Guy, Baronet, of Old-tr«ss-manor, in tue county of Kent, and member of parliament for the borough of Mayford, which imposing 9oach (plum-coloured, turned up with scarlet) was not on the present ocension (and for certain reasons) in the occupancy of its proprietor, but had brought to this most fashionable wedding, Compton Guy, Esq., the baronet's only brother, and a cornet in his Majesty's Horse guards Blue. There was old Lady Trottingham's - carriage, with the well known pair of vicious black horses which fought with and bit each other as they trotted ; the carriage was at every wedding — nobody exactly knew why ; and theie were half-a-dozen more carriages and chariots belonging to nameless notabilities — the "supers" of fashion, they may be called, whose principal occupation it would seem, is to be rich, and drive about, leaving cards, and fill up the backgrounds at births, aud deaths, aud marriages, whenever Fashion is born, ci is wedded, or buried.

Capture of Whales by means of Prussio Acid.— A very interesting paper has just been published by Profersor Christison, the result of some experiments suggested as long as 1831 by Messrs. W. and G-. Young, of Leitli, for the capture of whales by means of poison, the agent being hydrocyanic, or prussic acid. This poison was contained in glass tubes, in quantity about two ounces. Among other difficulties, one was ts discharge the poison from the glass tubes at the right time. After various trials, the plan fixed upon was to attach firmly to each side of the harpoon, near the blade, one end of a stiong copper wire, the other end of which passed obliquely over the tube, thereby securing it in its place, then through an oblique hole in the shaft, close to the upper end of the tube, and, finally to a bight in the rope, where it was firmly secured. By these means the rope could not be drawn tight, as it would when the harpoon attached to it struck the whale, without crashing the tubes ; the poison would then enter the whale, and death ensue. The Messrs. Young accordingly sent a quantity of tubes charged with the poison by one of their ships engaged in the Greenland fishery, and on meeting with a fine whale the harpoon was skilfully and deeply buried in its body ; the whale immediately " sounded," or dived perpendicularly downwards, but in a very short time the rope relaxed, and the whale rose to the surface quite dead ; but the men were so appalled by the terriffic effect of the poisoned harpoon, that they declined to use any more of them. Subsequent experiments tend to convince the learned piofessor that ■uccess will be established in this method of capturing whales. — Pharmaceutical Journal. The Secretary of the Atlantic Telegraph Company announce s that an attempt is being made this summer to restore communication through the cable, (2060 miles in length,) and that an expedition ha* been already sent out for that purpose. It is asserted that the wire may be lifted for any depth' and examined. . , „*- > Ihe Derby exhibits all the crowd and madness of a carnival; the *' Onks," the ease, the comtort, the elegance, and the more tranquil enjoyment of the well-regulated balhoom. People who~have gone rcgulaily all the lives to the Derby, butjiiue neglected the Oaks, know nothing, in iact of the inner life of Epsom Downs.— Daily Netos.