The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 328, August 23, 1828

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

DINNERS

A Family Dinner! Pot-luck, as it is called, in Scotland—when the man's wife is in the sulks, the wife's man proportionably savage, the children blear-eyed from the recent blubber in the nursery—the governess afraid to lift her eyes from her plate—the aunt sourer than the vinegar cruet—and we—alas! the stranger, stepping in to take pot-luck—we, poor old Christopher North, thanklessly volunteering to help the cock-y-leekie, that otherwise would continue to smoke and steam unstirred in its truly classical utensil! What looking of inutterable things! As impossible to break the silence with your tongue, as to break pond-ice ten inches thick with your knuckle. In comes the cock that made the cock-y-leekie, boiled down in his tough antiquity to a tatter. He disappears among the progeny, and you are now tied to the steak. You find there employment sufficient to justify any silence; and hope during mastication that you have not committed any crime since Christmas, of an enormity too great to be expiated by condemnation to the sulks.

A Literary Dinner! apparently the remains of the Seven Young Men sprinkled along both sides of the table—with here and there "a three-times skimmed sky-blue" interposed; on each side of the Lord of the Mansion, a philosopher—on each hand of the lady, a poet—somewhere or other about the board, a Theatrical Star—a Strange Fiddler—an Outlandish Traveller—and a Spanish Refugee. As Mr. Wordsworth rather naughtily sayeth,

 
"All silent, and all damn'd!"
 

Still the roof does not fall, although the chandelier burns dim in sympathy,

 
"And all the air a solemn stillness holds."
 

Will not a single soul in all this wide world, as he hopes to be saved, utter so much as one solitary syllable? Oh! what would not the lady and the gentleman of the house give even for a remark on the weather from the mouth of poet, philosopher, sage, or hero! Hermetically sealed! Lo! the author of the very five-guinea quarto, that lay open, in complimentary exposure, at a plate, up stairs on the drawing-room table—with his round unmeaning face "breathing tranquillity"—sound asleep! With eyes fixed on the ceiling, sits at his side the profound Parent of a Treatise on the Sinking Fund. The absent gentleman, who has kept stroking his chin for the last half hour, as if considering how he is off for soap,—would you believe it,—has just returned from abroad, and has long been justly celebrated for his conversational talents in all the coteries and courts of Europe. If that lank-and-leather-jawed gentleman, with complexion bespeaking a temperament dry and adust, and who has long been sedulously occupied in feeling the edge of his fruit-knife with the ball of his thumb—do not commit suicide before September,—Lavater must have been as great a goose as Gall. You might not only hear a mouse stirring—a pin dropping—but either event would rouse the whole company like a peal of thunder. You may have seen Madame Toussaud's images,—Napoleon, Wellington, Scott, Canning, all sitting together, in full fig, with faces and figures in opposite directions, each looking as like himself as possible, so that you could almost believe you heard them speak. You get rather angry—you wonder that they don't speak. Even so with those living images. But the exhibition is over—the ladies leave the room—and after another hour of silence, more profound than that of the grave, all the images simultaneously rise up and—no wonder people believe in ghosts—disappear.

A Return Dinner! Thirty people of all sorts and sizes, jammed—glued together—shoulder to shoulder—knee to knee—all with their elbows in each other's stomachs—most faces as red as fire, in spite of all those floods of perspiration—two landed gentlemen from the Highlands—a professor—four officers, naval and military, in his Majesty's and in the Company's service—some advocates—two persons like ministers—abundance of W.S.'s of course—an accoucheur—old ladies with extraordinary things upon their heads, and grey hair dressed in a mode fashionable before the flood—a few fat mothers of promising families—some eldest daughters now nubile—a female of no particular age, with a beard—two widows, the one buxom and blooming, with man-fond eyes, the other pale and pensive, with long, dark eye-lashes, and lids closed as if to hide a tear—there they all sit steaming through three courses—well does the right hand of the one know what the left hand of the other is doing—there is much suffering, mingled with much enjoyment—for though hot, they are hungry—while all idea of speaking having been, from the commencement of the feast, unanimously abandoned—you might imagine yourself at an anniversary GAUDEAMUS of the Deaf and Dumb.—Blackwood's Mag.

THE SCOLD

IMITATED FROM BERNI

 
To dine on devils without drinking,
To want a seat when almost sinking,
To pay to-day—receive to-morrow,
To sit at feasts in silent sorrow,
To sweat in winter—in the boot
To feel the gravel cut one's foot,
Or a cursed flea within the stocking
Chase up and down—are very shocking:
With one hand dirty, one hand clean,
Or with one slipper to be seen:
To be detain'd when most in hurry,
Might put Griselda in a flurry;—
But these, and every other bore,
If to the list you add a score,
Are not so bad, upon my life,
As that one scourge—a scolding wife!
 

New Monthly Magazine.

SELECT BIOGRAPHY

LEDYARD THE TRAVELLER

Concluded from page 113

Ledyard was one of the marines who were present at Cook's death, of which he gives an account (as appears from extracts of his journal already mentioned,) somewhat different from that in the authentic narrative of the voyage—and different, also, we must add, from his own private journal, which, at least the portion of it relating to that event, is still in the Admiralty. It must be mentioned in favour of Ledyard's sagacity, that the visit to Nootka Sound suggested to him the commercial advantages to be derived from a trade between the north-west coast of America and China; and the views which he took of this subject very much influenced the succeeding events of his life.

Towards the end of December, 1782, we find Ledyard serving on board a king's ship in Long Island Sound, from which he obtained leave of absence to visit his mother; but, either from a sense of duty and honour, which obliged him not to act with the enemies of his country, or from a dislike of the service, he never returned. He had conceived, and now began to endeavour to execute, the grand project of a trading voyage to Nootka; for this purpose he went to New York and Philadelphia, and, after addressing himself to various individuals, he prevailed at last on the Honourable Robert Morris to promise him a ship. The projected voyage, however, was ultimately abandoned.

Finding, nevertheless, that they all failed him, and heartily sick of the want of enterprise among his own countrymen, he resolved to try his fortune in Europe. He visited Cadiz, from thence took a passage to Brest, and from Brest to L'Orient, where he was successful in prevailing on some merchants to fit out a ship for his north-west adventure; but this project also failed, and Ledyard became once more the sport of accident.

He now proceeded to Paris, where he was received with great kindness by Mr. Jefferson, the American minister, who so highly approved of his favourite scheme of an expedition to the north-west coast, that, we are told by his biographer, the journey of Lewis and Clarke, twenty years afterwards, had its origin in the views which Jefferson received from Ledyard. Here, also, he met with the notorious Paul Jones, who was looking after the proceeds of the prizes which he had taken and carried into the ports of France. This adventurer entered warmly into his views, and undertook to fit out two vessels for the expedition. It was settled that Jones was to command the vessels, and carry the furs to the China market, while Ledyard was to remain behind and collect a fresh cargo ready for their return, after which he meant to perambulate the continent of America, and show his countrymen the path to unbounded wealth. Jones, it seems, was so much taken with the plausibility of a scheme, which presented at once the prospect of adventure, fame, and profit, that he advanced money to Ledyard to purchase a part of the cargo for the outfit; but, being suddenly called away to L'Orient, to look after his prize concerns, his zeal for this grand scheme began to cool, and, in a few months, the whole fabric fell to the ground.

Ledyard now felt himself a sort of wandering vagabond, without employment, motive, or means of support; the supplies he had received from Jones had ceased, and he was compelled to become a pensioner on the bounty of the American minister and a few friends. It would appear, however, from some lively letters written by him at Paris, that his flow of spirits did not forsake him.

"The two Fitzhughs," he says, "dine with me to-day in my chamber, together with our worthy consul, Barclay, and that lump of universality, colonel Franks. But such a set of moneyless rascals have never appeared, since the epoch of the happy villain Falstaff. I have but five French crowns in the world; Franks has not a sol; and the Fitzhughs cannot get their tobacco money. Every day of my life," he continues, "is a day of expectation, and, consequently, a day of disappointment; whether I shall have a morsel of bread to eat at the end of two months, is as much an uncertainty as it was fourteen months ago, and not more so."

While in this state of penury he received a visit, the object of which was so creditable to a gentleman still living, and not unknown in the annals of science, that it gives us pleasure to print the story in Ledyard's own words:—

"Permit me to relate to you an incident. About a fortnight ago, Sir James Hall,⁸ an English gentleman, on his way from Paris to Cherbourg, stopped his coach at our door, and came up to my chamber. I was in bed at six o'clock in the morning, but having flung on my robe de chambre, I met him at the door of the ante-chamber. I was glad to see him, but surprised. He observed, that he had endeavoured to make up his opinion of me, with as much exactness as possible, and concluded that no kind of visit whatever would surprise me. I could do no otherwise than remark, that his opinion surprised me at least, and the conversation took another turn. In walking across the chamber, he laughingly put his hand on a six livre piece, and a louis d'or that lay on my table, and with a half stifled blush, asked me how I was in the money way. Blushes commonly beget blushes, and I blushed partly because he did, and partly on other accounts. 'If fifteen guineas,' said he, interrupting the answer he had demanded, 'will be of any service to you, there they are,' and he put them on the table. 'I am a traveller myself, and though I have some fortune to support my travels, yet I have been so situated as to want money, which you ought not to do. You have my address in London.' He then wished me a good morning and left me. This gentleman was a total stranger to the situation of my finances, and one that I had, by mere accident, met at an ordinary in Paris."

Ledyard observes, that he had no more idea of receiving money from this gentleman than from Tippoo Saib. "However," he says, "I took it without any hesitation, and told him, I would be as complaisant to him if ever occasion offered."

His schemes for a north-west voyage, either for trade or discovery, being now wholly abandoned, he set about planning, as the only remaining expedient, a journey by land through the northern regions of Europe and Asia, then to cross Behring's Straits to the continent of America, to proceed down the coast to a more southern latitude, and to cross the whole of that continent from the western to the eastern shore. The empress of Russia was applied to for her permission and protection, but while waiting for her answer Ledyard received an invitation to London from his eccentric friend, Sir James Hall. He found, on his arrival there, that an English ship was in complete readiness to sail for the Pacific Ocean, in which Sir James had procured him a free passage, and to be put on shore at any spot he might choose on the north-west coast. The amiable baronet, moreover, presented him with twenty guineas, as Ledyard says, pro bono publico, and with which he tells us, "he bought two great dogs, an Indian pipe, and a hatchet." In a few days the vessel went down the Thames from Deptford, and Ledyard thought it the happiest moment of his life; but such is the uncertainty of human expectations, while he was indulging in day-dreams of the fame and honour which awaited him, he was once more doomed to suffer the agonies of a disappointment to his hopes, the more severe, as being so near their consummation—the vessel was seized by a custom-house officer, brought back, and exchequered.

This was undoubtedly the most severe blow he had yet received; but Ledyard never desponded—no sooner was one of his castles demolished, than he set about building another. "I shall make the tour of the globe," he says, "from London eastward, on foot." To aid him in this object, a subscription was raised by Sir Joseph Banks, Sir James Hall, and some others. By this means he arrived at Hamburgh; whence he writes to colonel Smith:—"Here I am with ten guineas exactly, and in perfect health. One of my dogs is no more: I lost him in my passage up the river Elbe, in a snow storm: I was out in it forty hours in an open boat."