JOURNAL OF 1814

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21882, 18 August 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

JOURNAL OF 1814

BY ELSIE K. MORTON

TALES OF OLD ENGLAND

One of the most depressing features of the work of a journalist is the realisation of its irnpermanence, its impersonality from the point of view of the public. The man or woman who builds a house, makes a dress, writes a book, preaches a sermon, paints a picture or digs a ditch has created some kind of memorial to the hours of toil expended, but what in the world so dead, so far as the average reader is concerned, as the "special" you wrote for yesterday's paper, the outcome of hours, or oven days, of research and careful thought? Who ever reads old newspapers, save those hardened sons and daughters of ink, who, in course of reference to the files for confirmation of some necessary detail, become absorbed in the story of life as lived in days gone by, pre-war daj's, stories of "fifty years ago," a hundred years ago! But it is not everybody who has the chancd of going through the old files, nor everybody who would accept the opportunity even if it were offered. "We find it hard enough to keep up with the present," most people would say, "without delving into the dead old past!" They would not believe you if vou told them in all seriousness that the past is never really dead, that in a it lives with us still, because we can no more escape its effects than we can sow our crops, grain or tares, and avoid the reaping of the harvest. That is why old books, old journals, old diaries, old newspaper files are so interesting. They give you the long view, a truer perspective. You find in them so much quaint humour, so many instance's of judgments reversed in the fulfilment of the years, so many queer, vivid stories of real life in an age that seems to us now utterly primitivo and remote.

Days of Trouble That is why I deeply cherish, and resist every impulse to "unhoard" in each successive spring-cleaning, my old "European Magazine and Lorklon Review, Containing Portraits and Views, Biography, Anecdotes. Literature, History, State Papers, Gazettes, Politics, Arts, Manners and Amusements of the Age. Foreign, Domestic and Literary Intelligence. July t.o December, 1814." Those months take us back to a most interesting and momentous period of the Regency, in which.England was facing extraordinary difficulties in her foreign and domestic life, with her King insane, Bonaparte hatching more trouble on Elba, British soldiers burning the Capitol City of Washington, the Luddites fomenting trouble in industrial aivas at home, and that Royal young rebel, Princess Charlotte, as a result of family ructions, throwing the whole august Parliament and Church of England into a fit of hysterics by dashing down the back stairs of Warwick House one summer evening "with but her hat and pelisse on," and rushing off to her mother in a hackney coach! It took the combined eloauence of the Bishop of Salisbury, the Prince Regent, and the great Lords of England—thev scolded the poor girl all night!—to get her back home, and heaven only knows what might have happened to England if they had failed! Anyway, there it is, all set down in black and white, even to closing mention of that poor lady, Mrs:"Lewis, the naughty princess' attendant, having followed her Royal mistress with her night-robes, and her distraught grandmother, the Queen, having to retire hastily, from a card r party on receipt of the astounding news. . . Good journalism, that! A Flood of Beer

In the same month, July, appeers an obituary of more than ordinary interest, even after the passing of one hundred and twenty years —that of a maiden lady aged 82, -who had vowed many years befor-j her death that no " he-fellow " should ever touch her, living or dead. She was evidently a good hater, for it is related that ten years before she died, sho " purchased a coffin in which, whenever she felt illness, she immediately deposited herself, thus ensuring the gratification of her peculiar sensibility. The coffin, however, was not exclusively appropriated to the reception of her mortal repiains, but served also the useful purpose of her wardrobe and the depository of her bread and cheese." Evidently one of the early feminists, and an exceptionally strong-minded old lady! They were of sturdy stuff, these Old Englanders! A strange and exciting incident, with tragic sequel, is recorded ,the following October, the bursting of a huge beer vat in the cellars of Messrs. Henry Meux and Company, in Banbury Street, St. Giles. In a moment the street was swept with a frightful tidal wave of beer, amounting in volume to the contents of three thousand five hundred barrels. The spirtuous flood swept everything before it, totally demolishing two houses. In the first floor of one a mother and daughter were at tea. The mother was killed on the spot, the daughter swept away through a partition and dashed to pieces. A female servant was suffocated, and several others were drowned. " The crowd that collected from the time of the accident to a late hour was immense, and three of the brewery employees were rescued by men who had to wade up to the middle through the beer." No fewer than eight lives, those of seven women and one boy, were lost in this extraordinary catastrophe.

For Music Lovers 1 One more extract from this remarkable volume, from a section headed " Impartial and Critical Review of Musical Publications." Two pleasing compositions, " Let India Boast her Plumes " and " Days of Yore, a Divertimento for the Piano Forte," are reviewed with high favour. But the critic shows his strict impartiality in a two-column review of Six Country Dances and Thirteen Waltzes, Composed by Beethoven. One gathers the Great Master has yet come into his own in Old England. Number One of the dances is described as " a nonsensical trifle, without one bar of good melody among sixteen, and these some of the most wretchedly monotonous as ever characterized the scribble of a musical amateur. . . . Number Three is not quito so contemptible as the two former, but not worth criticism. . . . Number Six is not a bad melody, although most thoroughly hackneyed. As for the Waltzes, Number One is no harm not yet much good. . . . Number Four is not objectionable, but has 110 masterly trait whatsoever. . . . Number Eight contains nothing that would incite any hearer to more than one trial of it, and the same is true of Number Nine. Number Thirteen, the last of the Set, makes no amends whatever for the foregoing trash If those who have established their reputation as composers upon the continent are really desirous of/ improving us islanders by the result of their studies, it is strange that such despicable productions should appear among us with the name of Beethoven! It is certain that our musical press in England teems with the most disgraceful compositions under the denomination of Music, but Nonsense changes not its nature because it emanates from the pen of a German." Poor Beethoven . . . . poor England!