Mirror of the Months Part 1

Mirror of the Months.

by Peter George Patmore.

PREFACE.

As the first few pages of this little volume will sufficiently explain its purport, the reader would not have been troubled with any prefatory remarks, but that, since its commencement, two existing works have been pointed out to me, the plans of which are, in one respect, similar to mine: I allude to the Natural History of the Year, by the late Dr. Aikin and his Son; and The Months, by Mr. Leigh Hunt.

I will not affect any obligations to these agreeable little works, (I mean as a writer); because I feel none; and I mention them here, only to add, that if, on perusing them, either, or both united, had seemed to supersede what I proposed to myself in mine, I should immediately have abandoned my intention of writing it. But the above-named works, in the first place, relate to country matters exclusively. In the next place, the first of them details those matters in the form of a dry calendar, professedly made up from other calendars which previously existed, and _not_ from actual observation; and the second merely throws gleams of its writer's agreeable genius over such of those matters as are most susceptible of that treatment: while both occupy no little portion of their s.p.a.ce by quotations, sufficiently appropriate no doubt, but from poets whose works are in everybody's hands.

THE MIRROR OF THE MONTHS, therefore, does not interfere with the abovenamed works, nor do they with it. It is in substance, though certainly not in form, a Calendar of the various events and appearances connected with a Country and a London life, during each successive Month of the Year. And it endeavours to impress upon the memory such of its information as seems best worth retaining, by either placing it in a _picturesque_ point of view, or by connecting it with some a.s.sociation, often purely accidental, and not seldom extravagant perhaps, but not the less likely to answer its end, if it succeed in changing mere dry information into amus.e.m.e.nt.

I may perhaps be allowed to add, in extenuation of the errors and deficiencies of this little volume, that it has been written entirely from the personal observations of one who uses no note-book but that which Nature writes for him in the tablets of his memory; and that when printed books have been turned to at all, it has only been with a view to solve any doubt that he might feel, as to the exact period of any particular event or appearance.

It is also proper to mention, that the four first Months have appeared in a periodical work. In fact, it was the favourable reception they met with there which induced the careful re-writing of them, and the appearance of the whole under their present form.

MIRROR OF THE MONTHS.

JANUARY.

Those "Cynthias of a minute," the Months, fleet past us so swiftly, that though we never mistake them while they are present with us, yet the moment any one of them is gone by, we begin to blend the recollection of its features with those of the one which preceded it, or that which has taken its place, and thus confuse them together till we know not "which is which." And then, to mend the matter, when the whole of them have danced their graceful round, hand in hand, before us, not being able to think of either separately, we unite them all together in our imagination, and call them the Past Year; as we gather flowers into a bunch, and call them a bouquet.

Now this should not be. Each one of the sweet sisterhood has features sufficiently marked and distinct to ent.i.tle her to a place and a name; and if we mistake these features, and attribute those of any one to any other, it is because we look at them with a cold and uninterested, and therefore an in.o.bservant regard. The lover of Julie could trace fifty minute particulars which were wanting in the portrait of his mistress; though to any one else it would have appeared a likeness: for, to common observers, "a likeness" means merely a something which is not so absolutely _un_like but what it is capable of calling up the idea of the original, to those who are intimately acquainted with it.

Now, I have been for a long while past accustomed to feel towards the common portraits of the Months, of which so many are extant, what St.

Preux did towards that of his mistress: all I could ever discover in them was the particulars in which they were _not_ like. Still I had never ventured to ask the favour of either of them to sit to me for her picture; having seen that it was the very nature of them to be for ever changing, and that, therefore, to attempt to _fix_ them, would be to trace the outline of a sound, or give the colour of a perfume.

At length, however, my unwearied attendance on them, in their yearly pa.s.sage past me, and the a.s.siduous court that I have always paid to each and all of their charms, has met with its reward: for there is this especial difference between them and all other mistresses whatever, that, so far from being jealous of each other, their sole ground of complaint against their lovers is, that they do not pay equal devotion to each in her turn; the blooming MAY and the blushing JUNE disdain the vows of those votaries who have not previously wept at the feet of the weeping APRIL, or sighed in unison with the sad breath of MARCH. And it is the same with all the rest. They present a sweet emblem of the _ideal_ of a happy and united human family; to each member of which the best proof you can offer that you are worthy of _her_ love, is, that you have gained that of her sisters; and to whom the best evidence you can give of being able to love either worthily, is, that you love all. This, I say, has been the kind of court that I have paid to the Months--loving each in all, and all in each. And my reward (in addition to that of the love itself--which is a "virtue," and therefore "its own reward") has been that each has condescended to watch over and instruct me, while I wrote down the particulars of her brief but immortal life--immortal, because ever renewed, and bearing the seeds of its renewal within itself.

These instructions, however, were accompanied by certain conditions, without complying with which I am not permitted to make the results available to any one but myself. For my own private satisfaction I have liberty to personify the objects of my admiration under any form I please; but if I speak of them to others, they insist on being treated merely as portions or periods of their beautiful parent the YEAR, as _she_ is a portion of TIME, the great parent of all things; and that the facts and events I may have to refer to, shall not be essentially connected with _them_, but merely be considered as taking place during the period of their sojourn on the earth respectively.

I confess that this condition seems to savour a little of the fastidious, not to say the affected. And, what is still more certain, it cuts me off from a most fertile source of the poetical and the picturesque. I will frankly add, however, that I am not without my suspicions that this latter may have been the very reason why this condition was imposed upon me; for I am by no means certain that, if I had been left to myself, I should not have subst.i.tuted cold abstractions and unintelligible fictions (or what would have seemed such to others), in the place of that simple _information_ which it is my chief object to convey.

Laying aside, then, if I can, all ornamental figures of speech, I shall proceed to place before the reader, in plain prose, the princ.i.p.al events which happen, in the two worlds of Nature and of Art, during the life and reign of each month; beginning with the nominal beginning of the dynasty, and continuing to present, on the birthday of each member of it, a record of the beauties which she brings in her train, and the good deeds which she either inspires or performs.

Hail! then, hail to thee, JANUARY!--all hail! cold and wintry as thou art, if it be but in virtue of thy first day. THE DAY, as the French call it, par excellence; "Le jour de l'an." Come about me, all ye little schoolboys, that have escaped from the unnatural thraldom of your taskwork--come crowding about me, with your untamed hearts shouting in your unmodulated voices, and your happy spirits dancing an untaught measure in your eyes! Come, and help me to speak the praises of New Year's Day!--_your_ day--one of the three which have, of late, become yours almost exclusively, and which have bettered you, and been bettered themselves, by the change. Christmas-day, which _was_; New-year's-day, which _is_; and Twelfth-day, which _is to be_; let us compel them all three into our presence--with a whisk of our imaginative wand convert them into one, as the conjurer does his three glittering b.a.l.l.s--and then enjoy them all together,--with their dressings, and coachings, and visitings, and greetings, and gifts, and "many happy returns"--with their plum-puddings, and mince-pies, and twelfth cakes, and neguses--with their forfeits, and fortune-tellings, and blind-man's-buffs, and snap-dragons, and sittings up to supper--with their pantomimes, and panoramas, and new penknives, and pastrycooks' shops--in short, with their endless round of ever new nothings, the absence of a relish for which is but ill supplied, in after life, by that feverish hungering and thirsting after excitement, which usurp without filling its place. Oh! that I might enjoy those nothings once again in fact, as I can in fancy! But I fear the wish is worse than an idle one; for it not only may not be, but it ought not to be. "We cannot have our cake and eat it too," as the vulgar somewhat vulgarly, but not the less shrewdly, express it. And this is as it should be; for if we could, it would neither be worth the eating nor the having.

If the reader complains that this is not the sober style which I just now promised to maintain, I cannot help it. Besides, it was my subject that spoke then, not myself; and it spoke to those who are too happy to be wise, and to whom, therefore, if it were to speak wisely, it might as well not speak at all. Let them alone for awhile, and they will grow too wise to be happy; and then they may be disposed and at leisure to listen to reason.

In sober sadness, then, if the reader so wills it, and after the approved manner of modern moral discourses, the subject before us may be regarded under three distinct points of view; namely, January in London--January in the country--and January in general. And first, of the first.

Now--but before I proceed further, let me bespeak the reader's indulgence at least, if not his favour, towards this everlasting monosyllable, "Now," to which my betters have, from time to time, been so much indebted, and on which I shall be compelled to place so much dependence in this my present undertaking. It is the pa.s.s word, the "open sesame," that must remove from before me all lets and impediments; it is the charm that will alternately put to silence my imagination when it may be disposed to infringe on the office of my memory, and awaken my memory when it is inclined to sleep; in fact, it is a monosyllable of infinite avail, and for which, on this as on many other occasions, no subst.i.tute can be found in our own or any other language; and if I approve, above all other proverbs, that which says, "There's nothing like the time present," it is partly because "the time present" is but a periphrasis for NOW!

Now, then, the cloudy canopy of sea-coal smoke that hangs over London, and crowns her queen of capitals, floats thick and threefold; for fires and feastings are rife, and every body is either "out" or "at home,"

every night.

Now schoolboys don't know what to do with themselves till dinner-time; for the good old days of frost and snow, and fairs on the Thames, and furred gloves, and skaiting on the ca.n.a.ls, and sliding on the kennels, are gone by; and for any thing in the shape of winter one might as well live in Italy at once!

Now, on the evening of Twelfth-day, mischievous maid-servants pin elderly people together at the windows of pastry-cooks' shops, thinking them "weeds that have no business there."

Now, if a frosty day or two does happen to pay us a flying visit, on its way home to the North Pole, how the little boys make slides on the pathways, for lack of ponds, and, it may be, trip up an occasional housekeeper just as he steps out of his own door; who forthwith vows vengeance, in the shape of ashes, on all the slides in his neighbourhood; not, doubtless, out of vexation at his own mishap, and revenge against the petty perpetrators of it, but purely to avert the like from others!

Now, Bond Street begins to be conscious of carriages; two or three people are occasionally seen wandering through the Western Bazaar; and the Soho Ditto is so thronged, that Mr. Trotter begins to think of issuing another decree against the inroads of single gentlemen.

Now, linen drapers begin to "sell off" their stock at "fifty per cent.

under prime cost," and continue so doing all the rest of the year; every article of which will be found, on inspection, to be of "the last new pattern," and to have been "only had in that morning!"

Now, oranges are eaten in the dress-circle of the great theatres, and inquiries are propounded there, whether "that gentleman in black"

(meaning Hamlet) "is Harlequin?" And laughs, and "La! Mammas!" resound thence to the remotest corners of the house; and "the G.o.ds" make merry during the play, in order that they may be at leisure to listen to the pantomime; and Mr. Farley is consequently in his glory, and Mr. Grimaldi is a great man; as, indeed, when is he not?

Now, newspapers teem with twice-ten-times-told tales of haunted houses, and great sea-snakes, and mermaids; and a murder is worth a Jew's eye to them; for "the House does not meet for the despatch of business till the fifth of February." And great and grievous are the lamentations that are heard in the said newspapers, over the lateness of the London season, and its detrimental effects on the interests of the metropolis; but they forget to add--"erratum--for _metropolis_, read _newspapers_."

Now, Moore's Almanack holds "sole sovereign sway and mastery" among the readers of that cla.s.s of literature; for there has not yet been time to nullify any of its predictions; not even that which says, "we may expect some frost and snow about this period."

Finally, now periodical works put on their best attire; the old ones expressing their determination to become new, and the new ones to become old; and each makes a point of putting forth the first of some pleasant series of essays (such as this, for example!), which cannot fail to fix the most fugitive of readers, and make him her own for another twelve months at least.

Let us now repair to the country. "The country in January" has but a dreary sound, to those who go into "the country" only that they may not be seen "in town." But to those who seek the country for the same reason that they seek London, namely, for the good that is to be found there, the one has at least as many attractions as the other, at any given period of the year. Let me add, however, that if there _is_ a particular period when the country puts forth fewer of her attractions than at any other, it is this; probably to try who are her real lovers, and who are only false flatterers, and to treat them accordingly. And yet--

Now, the trees, denuded of their gay attire, spread forth their thousand branches against the gray sky, and present as endless a variety of form and feature for study and observation, as they did when dressed in all the flaunting fashions of midsummer. Now, too, their voices are silent, and their forms are motionless, even when the wind is among them; so that the low plaintive piping of the robin-redbreast can be heard, and his hiding-place detected by the sound of his slim feet alighting on the fallen leaves. Or now, grown bolder as the skies become more inclement, he flits before you from twig to twig silently, like a winged thought; or like the brown and crimson leaf of a cherry-tree, blown about by the wind; or perches himself by your side, and looks sidelong in your face, pertly, and yet imploringly,--as much as to say, "though I do need your aid just now, and would condescend to accept a crum from your hand, yet I'm still your betters, for I'm still a bird."

Now, one of the most beautiful sights on which the eye can open occasionally presents itself: we saw the shades of evening fall upon a waste expanse of brown earth, shorn hedge-rows, bare branches, and miry roads, interspersed here and there with a patch of dull melancholy green. But when we are awakened by the late dawning of the morning, and think to look forth upon the same, what a bright pomp greets us! What a white pageantry! It is as if the fleecy clouds that float about the sun at midsummer had descended upon the earth, and clothed it in their beauty! Every object we look upon is strange and yet familiar to us--"another, yet the same!" And the whole affects us like a vision of the night, which we are half conscious _is_ a vision: we know that it is _there_, and yet we know not how long it may remain there, since a motion may change it, or a breath melt it away. And what a mysterious stillness reigns over all! A white silence! Even the "clouted shoon" of the early peasant is not heard; and the robin, as he hops from twig to twig with undecided wing, and shakes down a feathery shower as he goes, hushes his low whistle in wonder at the unaccustomed scene!

Now, the labour of the husbandman is, for once in the year, at a stand; and he haunts the alehouse fire, or lolls listlessly over the half-door of the village smithy, and watches the progress of the labour which he unconsciously envies; tasting for once in his life (without knowing it) the bitterness of that _ennui_ which he begrudges to his betters.

Now, melancholy-looking men wander "by twos and threes" through market-towns, with their faces as blue as the ap.r.o.ns that are twisted round their waists; their ineffectual rakes resting on their shoulders, and a withered cabbage hoisted upon a pole; and sing out their doleful pet.i.tion of "Pray remember the poor gardeners, who can get no work!"

Now, the pa.s.sengers outside the Cheltenham night-coach look wistfully at the Witney blanket-mills as they pa.s.s, and meditate on the merits of a warm bed.

Now, people of fashion, who cannot think of coming to their homes in town so early in the season, and will not think of remaining at their homes in the country so late, seek out spots on the seash.o.r.e which have the merit of being neither town _nor_ country, and practise patience there (as Timon of Athens did), en attendant the London winter, which is ordered to commence about the first week in spring, and end at midsummer!

But we are forgetting the garden all this while; which must not be; for Nature does not. Though the gardener can find little to do in it, _she_ is ever at work there, and ever with a wise hand, and graceful as wise.

The wintry winds of December having shaken down the last lingering leaves from the trees, the final labour of the gardener was employed in making all trim and clean; in turning up the dark earth, to give it air; pruning off the superfluous produce of summer; and gathering away the worn-out attire that the perennial flowers leave behind them, when they sink into the earth to seek their winter home, as Harlequin and Columbine, in the pantomimes, sometimes slip down through a trapdoor, and cheat their silly pursuers by leaving their vacant dresses standing erect behind them.

All being left trim and orderly for the coming on of the new year. Now (to resume our friendly monosyllable) all the processes of nature for the renewal of her favoured race, the flowers, may be more aptly observed than at any other period. Still, therefore, however desolate a scene the garden may present to the _general_ gaze, a particular examination of it is full of interest, and interest that is not the less valuable for its depending chiefly on the imagination.

Now, the bloom-buds of the fruit trees, which the late leaves of autumn had concealed from the view, stand confessed, upon the otherwise bare branches, and, dressed in their patent wind-and-water-proof coats, brave the utmost severity of the season,--their hard unpromising outsides, compared with the forms of beauty which they contain, reminding us of their friends the b.u.t.terflies when in the chrysalis state.

Now, the perennials, having slipped off their summer robes, and retired to their subterranean sleeping-rooms, just permit the tops of their naked heads to peep above the ground, to warn the labourer from disturbing their annual repose.

Now, the smooth-leaved and tender-stemmed Rose of China hangs its pale, scentless, artificial-looking flowers upon the cheek of Winter; reminding us of the last faint bloom upon the face of a fading beauty, or the hectic of disease on that of a dying one; and a few chrysanthemums still linger, the wreck of the past year,--their various coloured stars looking like faded imitations of the gay, glaring China-aster.