The Autocratic Idler.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 40, 1 October 1892, Page 976

The Autocratic Idler.

(WITH DEMOCRATIC NOTES.)

No. IV.—A CURIOSITY IN THE CIVIL SERVICE OF NEW ZEALAND.

THE Publie Service Association of Wellington had, awhile since, a social oi a rather novel kind. It is none of my business—and, anyhow, it is rather late in the day -to describe it; but, as I begin this roundabout paper at the precise point where everything should properly begin, namely, at the beginning ; and as, before a proper beginning, even the earth itself was without form, and void, it becomes unavoidable that a word or two should be said about this assembly. Moreover, as a particular and very ancient book was there displayed to meet the gaze of New Zealand youths and maidens, who never in their lives before, saw so old and venerable a thing outside the works of nature (which are somewhat older), an explanation becomes essential to show how so antiquated a relie of past ages came to present itself in the Civil Service, where, as we all know, curiosities of any kind (to say nothing of fossils), are altogether unknown ? The gathering — some 600 people I should say—partook of the nature of a conversazione ; and science, art, recreation, and instruction —and even religion, (as represented in the book referred to)— for once, at all events, shook bands in delightful harmony. On various tables were displayed innumerable machines for abolishing the pen from every department: for printing railway tickets at a time, coming, when the multitude will be able to travel at reasonable rates : photographs of a few of the ugliest, as well as a larger nnmber of the pleasantest, faces, in the metropolis: electric bells, that the cry for poor ‘ Sarah !’ would be no more heard : signals designed to annihilate time and remove the word ‘ danger ’ from any dictionary of a civilised people: formidable firearms (contributed by the Defence Department) warranted to kill at any possible range (these implements, I observed, were a source of fascination to innumerable fair, ethereal, and delicately - constructed creatures, also warranted to kill at any reasonable distance) (1) : Orpheus glees : instrumental quartette: intelligent conversation (by no means a common thing) ■ light refreshment: one or two nicely-arranged little speeches; and a beautiful clear moonlight air to smoke in, when overpowered by the crush. There were, besides, a host of other l ' interesting things—one of them being this great dingy brown book—a family Bible, printed three hundred years ago (2).

It was, of course, this latter circumstance that drew a crowd round the volume, all the evening. In these days we find the Bible everywhere (3): in Bengal, Hongkong, Samoa, Greenland : in the wigwams of the savage ; in prison eells, and ladies’ bureaux : in army barracks and in sleeping cribs on board the Thunderer or the Orlando : in female reformatories and maidens’ chambers: in, in short, almost every private house, and public institution throughout Christendom and savagedom. But ye do not see every day a Bible printed about the time that imperious Elizabeth was contemplating the execution of Mary ; when magnificent pirates like Drake were sweeping the seas ; and when Lord Howard of Effingham, with 150 ships of the line, and 14,000 men was sailing into Cadiz Bay, there to annihilate the proud Spaniard, and to burn and destroy his beautiful city (4).

Bound up with the volume is the Book of Common Prayer ; various quaint treatises and Acts, and the * Whole Booke of Psalemes, collected into English meeter, compared with the Hebrewe, with apt notes to sing them, withal ; as set forth and allowed to be snng in all churches, of all the people together ; as also before and after sermons, and moreover in private bouses, for their godly solace and comfort; laying apart all ungodly songs and ballads, which tend only to the nonrisbing of vice, and corruption of youth.’ Although printed years before, the book does not appear to have become a • family ’ matter until 1601. In that year • Mr Gee and I was marryed, upon a Thursday, in ye weeke of Easter, being 8L George’s day Aprill ye 26. ’ And then follow the numerous births and deaths in the Gee family ; after which the Bible appears to have eome into the circle of a family named Marshall. • Evans Marshall, eon of Dinah and John Marshall, was born’d on sth June, of a Friday ; has had cow pox, measles, whooping cough.' ‘ John Marshall died 3rd April at a quarter before twelve o’eloek p.ns., after seven bonrs’ illness, aged 54 yearn. ’ But the most human entry in the book is the following : • Dinah Marshall, wife of John Marshall, died at eleven o’eloek on Sunday morning the 12th at Queensborough, of a broken heart (5).' Afterwards the book cornea into the family of Mr Newenham, and so to the sunny skies of the South and to these fair isles of the Pacific.

A Frenchman—a gentleman named M. Sobibres—has left ns a record of the manners and customs of the people in tbo«e bygone days. He was a great traveller, for those times. He went from Pari* to Rome, where, * having been requested to do so ’ by Cardinal Barherin, be became a Roman Catholic—a pleasing instance of French politeness. Rome he found • fnll of hungry and thirsty creatures’—just as London is, or Svdnev, or New York, in this present era. Being a literary man and a learned man, he s is. of course, a poor man—and we find the same mle obtain three centuries later. * They give lace cuffs,’ be said, *to a man without a shirt; and lonly wish they would send mehread, for the butter they are so ready to snpply me with.’ On landing at Dover he was greeted with • strange bowls ’ and eries of ‘ French dogs.’ The windows of the English honses, he was surprised to note, were low, and without shutters, * which shows that the inhabitants don’t fear insnlt or revenge.’ And yon may be sure that * the pretty girls in the shops of the mercers in the Strand ’ did not escape compliments from this old French masher of past ages. But the English cooking disgusted the eater of frogs. * The tables of the greatest lords,’ he reflects, • are covered only with large pieces of meat ’ and, in those date the use of forks was unknown. In the theatre * the best places are in the pit, where ’ —much to his surprise— * men and women sit together. The English write comedies,’ he records, • supposed to last 25 years: when they show yon the marriage of a prince in the first act, they exhibit, without any interval, the finest and most heroic deeds of his son.’ Highwaymen and noble robbers of the Robin Hood kind—gallant men and daring plunderers —abounded ; and he was even warned to beware of them on the journey from London to Oxford. A beverage made from sassafras, and sold hot, at stalls in the streets, just as coffee is now, was drank by everybody ; and the peculiar thing about this is, that, without any obvious cause, the custom suddenly ceased, and the stalls disappeared. At Westminster our visitor saw the heads of malefactors stuck on poles in the towers ; but, —as a scientific compensation—he was shown at the observatory in St. James’s Park, Saturn's rings and Jupiter's moons.

Nearly two hundred years later, life in London was not much altered. Hogarth, in bis pictures, tells the story. But perhaps you would like to know how Sunday was spent in London even so late as one hundred yea<s since! In that surprisingly interesting collection of quaint descriptions, • Chambers’ Book of Dxys,’ a writer records the doings of the population of that even then greatest of cities, within the twenty-four hours of the Sabbath. Fiom 12 to 1 am., be says, watchmen are taking fees from housebreakers, for liberty to commit burglaries, and for giving the burglars notice if any one is likely to interrupt their villainies. Between two and three in the morning most private shops in and around London (of which there are far too many), where gin is sold, in open defiance of Act of Parliament, are now filled with the worst classes. Young fellows stealing staves from the watchmen on their rounds ; and other watchmen at half-past two, calling out * three o’clock and all is well !’ Later, poor people are carrying their dead children, nailed up in small deal boxes, to bury privately in fields, and so save the exorbitant parish dues. Further on in the morning, the space near Antholius Chapel is crowded with fishwomen who are washing stinking mackerel to make customers believe the fish are all alive and have come in on the morning’s tide ; and great numbers ot people of both sexes are at Birds’ Nest Fair (6) held every Sunday morning. It is now clear day, and beggars, who have put on their woful visages, and also managed their sores so as to strike the beholder, are carrying wads of straw that they may take their seats to beg charity from all good Christiana for the remainder of the day. About this time, also, beggars are going to parish nurses to hire helpless infanta at 4d per day and persuade the passers-by that they are their own, and have been eome time siek and fatherless. Between 8 and 9 o’clock, servants to ladies of quality are washing and combing such lapdogs as are to go to church with their mistresses that morning ; and from 10 to 11 the churchyards are filled with the congregations reading the tombstones and eating goosel-erries. From 11 to 12, fine fans, rich brilliants, white bands, envious eyes, and enamelled snuff boxes are displayed in moot places of worship; where (remarks the chronicler) * people of fashion endure the intolerable fatigue with wonderful seeming patience ;’ and, one hour later, idle apprentices who have played under gateways during divine service are begging the text from old women at the church doors, to carry home to their too inquisitive parents and masters, while the

Mall in St. James' Park is auueh crowded by Piennhnion picking their teeth and counting the trees, for dinner I But all the jaws of the English common people, (continues the writer) are in full employment about thia hour ; although some of the wives of genteel mechanics, (under pretence of devotion) go to their apartments to take a nap and a dram ; after which they chew lemon peel ‘ to prevent being smelt.*

In the afternoon, ladies abound in the parks ' reading plays and romances, and making paint for their faces;* while the friends of criminals under sentence of death at Newgate give money to the turnkeys to get a sight of them, and present them with white caps with black ribbons and nosegays and oranges, that they may make a decent appearance up Holborn, on the road to the other world; ehureh bells and tavern bells all the time, keeping time with each other ; also, ‘ pawnbrokers’ wives are now dressing themselves in their customers’ wearing apparel, rings, and watches, in order that they may make a good figure ; and some thousands of people, mostly women and children, are walking backwards and forwards on Westminster bridge * for the benefit of the air.’ Towards evening the officials of the various theatres go round to all the noblemen’s houses to let them know what the performance is to be next day ; the public houses are in full employment; the taverns about the Royal Exchange being crowded with merchants, who do as much business on Sunday evening as they do at the Exchange on week days. From Bto 9 o'clock it appears, black eyes and broken heads are exhibited pretty freely in the public streets ; and young highwaymen are preparing to set out to attack such coaches as are worth meddling with ; while between 11 and 12 the gaming tables at Charing Cross begin to fill with men and women of desperate fortunes; bullies, rogues, fools, and gamesters. Finally we get this remarkable entry : * Sunday night—One third of the inhabitants of London fast asleep and almost penniless. Twelve o’clock and all is well !’

You see how greatly these people differed from us in countless ways, and how remarkably like we are to them, in not a few things I Time goes past, a thousand years are gone ; manners, customs, are transformed, but humanity remains pretty much the same. And those hearts that beat and fluttered, three bundled, one hundred, years ago, under garments that we should not know how to put on, or to get inside of, were in no human way different from the hearts that beat and flutter to-day, under modern and extra superfine stays and waistcoats ! Coarse, densely ignorant, even brutal as they were, I am not quite sure that in some admirable attributes they had not the advantage of us. Such as they were, there they were—nor did they pretend to be other than they were. Of such stuff were they, they made England great among the nations and queen of the wide ocean ; and even woman had a hand in those vast achievements, for imperious, resolute, changeable, far - weing Elisabeth ruled in those days, as well as governed.

Take note also (if your note book be not already full, for I am sure I have given you plenty of material to jot down and think over, supposing you do think, as it is only politeness to imagine), take note of the curious way in which poor Dinab Marshall, who died of a broken heart in 1601, in England, gets mentioned in the Graphic newspaper, and gets talked about in New Zealand centuries afterwards ! A few faded lines in an old book, written evidently by one whose pen, also, would soon pass from his fingers for evermore ; and written, too, at an outlandish and remote corner of the Isle of Sheppey,—a few faltering, straggling, infirm words, now faded and yellow and red with age, like poplar leaves at autumn time, were the cause of it and the source of it all ! But the pretty lady • reading romances and making paint for her face ’ of a Sunday in St. James’s Park, London, owes her late renown to Chambers. The Park is there to this day. The old elm tree under which she sought shelter is probably not there. The seat on which she reelined is certainly gone, ever so many years ago. The romances are quite shrivelled up by this time. The pretty face is gone also; and, as for the paint, that, I feel sure, was kissed off her cheeks by eome charming rogue, even the same Sunday evening, for they were addicted to this most reprehensible practice in 1601, although we, of course, would not tolerate such a thing for a moment. Anyhow, not of a Sunday! H.R.R.

(1) One poor youth, to my knowledge, was mortally wounded.

(2) The volume is the property of Mr W. H. Newenham, of the Defence Department, Wellington. (3) Three hundred years ago the Bible was read by everybody throughout Christendom, who could lay eyes on the book, which, in those days was not easy to do. We have altered all that: we send the Bible all over the earth :to Burmab ;to China ;to Fiji ; to Timbuctoo. We ask these people to read it—and we don’t read it ourselves : we ask them to believe it entirely—and we don’t believe it entirely ourselves ; we reqnest them to understand it thoroughly and we don’t agree in interpreting it, ourselves.

(4) This * little adventure ’ (as the historian of those days called it), cost Spain the whole of her navy, as got together after the destruction of the Armada, and 30,000,000 ducats which Queen Elizabeth got the greater part of. She did not in the least object to the seafaring doings of Drake and other heroic marauders. She took the plunder—her share of it—and called her brave captain * a dear naughty man 1* (5) There were skeletons in cupboards in 1601 just as in 1892. Also, as a consequence sometimes—broken hearts. (6) A bird-fancier’s resort.