Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General

In Knickerbocker’s ‘History of New York’ we have a very graphic description of the ship in which the first Dutch explorers sailed for the shores of North America. “The vessel was called the Goede Vrouw (Good Woman), a compliment to the wife of the President of the West India Company, who was allowed by every one, except her husband, to be a sweet-tempered lady – when not in liquor. It was, in truth, a gallant vessel of the most approved Dutch construction – made by the ablest ship-carpenters of Amsterdam, who, as is well known, always model their ships after the fair forms of their countrywomen. Accordingly, it had one hundred feet in the keel, one hundred feet in the beam, and one hundred feet from the bottom of the stern-post to the taffrel. Like the beauteous model, who was declared to be the greatest belle of Amsterdam, it was full in the bows, with a pair of enormous cat-heads, a copper-bottom, and withal a prodigious poop.”

It is, however, with her sailing qualities we are more interested than with her build. “Thus she made as much lee-way as head-way – could get along nearly as fast with the wind ahead as at poop, and was particularly great in a calm.” Would not one say, in reading this description, that the humorist was giving prophetically a picture of the England of the present day, making as much lee-way as head-way, none the better, wherever the winds came from, and only great in a calm? The very last touch he gives is exquisite. “Thus gallantly furnished, she floated out of harbour sideways, like a majestic goose.” Can anything be more perfect; can anything more neatly typify the course the vessel of the State is taking, “floating out sideways, like a majestic goose!” amidst the jeers and mockeries of beholding Europe.

Our whole policy consists in putting forward some hypothetical case, in which, if certain other states were to do something which would cause another country to do something else, then England would be found in that case – God forgive me!

I was going to quote some of that balderdash which reminds one of ‘The Rivals,’ where Acres says, “If you had called me a poltroon, Sir Lucas!”

“Well, sir, and if I had?”

“In that case I should have thought you a very ill-bred man.”

See what it is to have a literary Foreign Secretary; see how he goes back to our great writers, not alone for his style, but his statesmanship. We have been insulted, mocked, and sneered at; our national honour derided, our national strength defied; but we are told it is all right: our policy is a “masterly inactivity,” and the Funds are at ninety-one and one-eighth!

The ‘Times.’ too, is of the same cheery and encouraging spirit, and philosophically looks on the misfortunes of our friends pretty much as friends’ misfortunes are usually regarded in life – occasions for a tender pity, and a hopeful trust in Providence. Let them – the writer speaks of the Allied armies – let them go on in the career of rapine and cruelty; let them ravage the Duchies and dismember Denmark; but a time will come when the terrible example of unlawful aggression shall be retorted upon themselves, and the sorrows of Schleswig be expiated on the soil of the Fatherland.

“They are going to hang Larry,” cried the wife of a condemned felon to the lawyer, who had hurried into court, having totally forgotten he had ever engaged to defend the prisoner.

“Let them hang him, and I’ll make it the dearest hanging ever they hanged.”

These may be words of comfort in Downing Street. I wonder what the Danes think of them?

A NEW HANSARD

There is an annual publication called the ‘Wreck Register,’ which probably few of us have ever seen, if even heard of. Its object is to record all the wrecks which have occurred during the preceding year, accompanying the narrative by such remarks or observations as may contribute to explain each catastrophe, or offer likelihood of prevention in future. It is, though thoroughly divested of any sensational character, one of the dreariest volumes one can take up. Disaster follows disaster so fast, that at length the reader begins to imagine that shipwreck is the all but invariable event of a voyage, and that they who cross the ocean in safety are the lucky mortals of humanity.

Fortunately, however, long as the catalogue of misfortune is, this is not the case, and we have the satisfaction of learning that the percentage of loss is decreasing with every year. The higher knowledge and attainments of merchant captains, and the increase of refuge harbours, are the chief sources of this security. The old ignorance, in which a degree or two of latitude more or less was a light error in a ship’s reckoning, is now unheard of, and they who command merchant-ships in our day are a very well informed and superior order of men. With reference to the conduct and capacity of these captains, this ‘Wreck Register,’ is a very instructive publication. If, for instance, you find that Captain Brace, who was wrecked on the Azores in ‘52, was again waterlogged at sea in ‘61, and ran into an iceberg off Newfoundland in ‘62, you begin, mayhap unfairly, to couple him too closely with disaster, and you turn to the inquest over his calamities to see what estimate was formed of his conduct. You learn, possibly, that in one case he was admonished to more caution; in another, honourably acquitted; and in the last instance smartly reprimanded, and his certificate suspended for six months or a year. Now, though you have never heard of Captain Brace in your life, nor are probably likely to encounter him on sea or land, you cannot avoid a certain sense of relief at the thought that so unlucky a commander, to say the least of it, is not likely for a while to imperil more lives, and that the warning impressed by his fate will also be a salutary lesson to many others.

It was in reflecting over this system of inquiry and sentence, that it occurred to me what to admirable thing it would be to introduce the ‘Wreck Register’ into politics, and to have a yearly record of all parliamentary shipwrecks; all the bills that foundered, the motions that were stranded, the amendments lost in a fog! – to be able to look back and reflect over the causes of these disasters, investigating patiently how and why and where they happened, and asking ourselves, Have we any better security for the future? are we better acquainted with the currents, the soundings, or the headlands? and, above all, what amount of blame, if any, is attributable to the commander?

If we find, for instance, that the barque Young Reform, no matter how carefully fitted out for sea – new sheathed and coppered, with bran-new canvass, and a very likely crew on board – never leaves the port that she does not come back crippled; and that old and experienced captains, however confidently they may take the command at first, frankly own that they’ll never put foot in her again, you very naturally begin to suspect that there’s something wrong in her build. She is either too unwieldy, like the Great Eastern, or she is too long to turn well, or she requires such incessant repair; or, most fatal of all, she is entered for a trade where nobody wants her; and therefore you resolve that, come what will, you’ll avoid her.

What an inestimable benefit to the student of politics would a few such brief notices be, instead of sending him, as we send him now, to the dreary pages of Hansard! Imagine what a neat system of mnemonics would grow out of the plan, when, instead of poring over interminable columns of tiresome repetition, you had the whole narrative in few words – thus: “Barque Reform, John Russell, commander, lost A.D. 1854 The Commissioners seeing that this vessel was built for the most part of old materials, totally unseaworthy, are of opinion that she ought not to have sailed at all; and severely censure the commander, J. R, for foolhardiness and obstinacy, he having, as it has been proved, acted in entire opposition to ‘his owners.’ On the pressing recommendation, however, of the owners, and at the representation that E. has been long in the service, and is, although too self-confident, a very respectable man, his certificate has been restored to him.”

Lower down comes the entry: —

“The Young Reform. – This was a full-rigged ship, in great part constructed on the lines of the barque lost in 1854. She sailed on the 28th February 1859, commanded by Captain Dizzy. No insurance could be effected upon her on any terms, as the crew were chiefly apprentices, and a very mutinous spirit aboard. She put back, completely crippled, after three days’ stormy weather; and though the commander averred that some enemies of his owners had laid down false buoys in the channel, he was not listened to by the Commissioners, who withheld his certificate. Has never been employed since, and his case by many considered a very hard one.”

Of course, all the small class of coasting vessels – railroad bills and suchlike – suffer great losses. They are usually ill-found and badly manned; but now and then we come upon curious escapes, where a measure slips through unobserved, like a blockade-runner; and it is ten to one in such cases they have that crafty old pilot Pam on board, who has been more than fifty years at sea, and is as wide awake now as on his first day.

What analogies press in on every hand! Look at the way each party bids for and buys up the old materials of the other, fancying they have some “lines” of their own that will turn out a clipper to beat everything. And think of those “Sailors’ Homes,” where old salts chew their quids at ease – those snug permanent Under-Secretaryships, those pleasant asylums in the Treasury or the Mint! Picture to your mind the dark den in Downing Street, where the Whipper-in confers in secret, and have you not at once before you the shipping-office, and the crimp, and the “ordinary seaman” higgling for an extra ten shillings of wages, or begging that his grog may not be watered? And, last of all, see the old lighthouse-keepers, the veteran First Clerks who serve every Administration, and keep their lamps bright for all parties – a fine set of fellows in their way, though some people will tell you that they have their favourites too, and are not so brisk about the fog-signals if they don’t like the skipper.

I think I have done enough to show that such a work as I speak of would redound to public benefit; and I only ask, if my suggestion be approved of, that I may be remembered as the inventor, and not treated as Admiralty Lords do the constructors of new targets, testing the metal and torturing the man. Bear in mind, therefore, if the political ‘Wreck Register’ be ever carried into execution, its device must be “O’Dowdius fecit.”

It might not be amiss, in the spirit that has suggested this improvement, to organise in connection with the proceedings of the House a code of signals on the plan of Admiral Fitzroy’s storm-signals, and which, from the great tower, or some similar eminence, might acquaint members what necessity for their presence existed. Fancy, for instance, the relief an honourable gentleman would experience on seeing the fine-weather flag up, and knowing thereby that something of no moment was being discussed – a local railroad, a bill to enable some one to marry his grandmother, or a measure for Ireland! Imagine the fog-signal flying, and see how instantaneously it would he apprehended that D. G. was asking the noble Lord at the head of the Government a question so intensely absurd as to show a state of obscurity in his own faculties, in comparison to which fog is a thin atmosphere! Or mark what excitement would be felt as the storm-drum was hoisted, telling how the Government craft was being buffeted and knocked about, and the lifeboat of the Opposition manned to take charge of the ship if abandoned! What a mercy to those poor, hard-worked, harassed, and wearied “whips”! what a saving there would be in club-frequenting and in cab-hire! Now would the lounger, as he strolled along Pall-Mall, say, “No need to hurry.” “light airs of wind from the east” means a member for Galway and some balderdash about the Greeks. “Thick weather in the Channel” implies troubles in Ireland – nothing very new or interesting. “Dirty weather to the east’ard” would show mischief in the Danubian provinces, and a general sense of unquiet in the regions of the Sultan Redcliffe. These are hints which I have not patented, and the chances are that “My Lords” will speedily adopt them, and call them their own.

FOREIGN CLUBS

How is it, will any one tell me, that all foreign Clubs are so ineffably stupid? I do not suspect that we English are pre-eminent for social gifts; and yet we are the only nation that furnishes clubable men. Frenchmen are wittier, Germans profounder, Russians – externally at least – more courteous and accommodating; and yet their Clubs are mere tripots – gambling establishments; and, except play, no other feature of Club-life is to be found in them.

To give a Club its peculiar “cachet” – its, so to say, trade-mark – you require a class of men who make the Club their home, and whose interest it is that all the internal arrangements should be as perfect, as well ordered, and frictionless as may be. Good furniture, good servants, good lighting, good cookery, well-adjusted temperature, and a well-chosen cellar, are all essentials. In a word, the Club is to be the realisation of what we all think so much of – comfort. Now, how very few foreigners either understand or care for this! Every one who has travelled abroad has seen the “Cercle,” or “L’Union,” or whatever its name be, where men of the highest station – ministers, ambassadors, generals, and suchlike – met to smoke and play whist, with a sanded floor, a dirty attendance, and yet no one ever complained. They drank detestable beer, and inhaled a pestilent atmosphere, and sat in draughts, without a thought that there was anything to be remedied, or that human skill could or need contrive anything better for their accommodation.

When these establishments were succeeded by the modern Club, with its carpeted floor, silk hangings, ormolu lamps, and velvet couches, the change was made in a pure spirit of Anglomanie; somebody had been over to London, and come back full of the splendours of Pall-Mall. The work of imitation, so far as decoration went, was not difficult. Indeed, in some respects, in this they went beyond us, but there ended the success. The Club abroad is a room where men gamble and talk of gambling, but no more; it is not a Club.

For the working of the Club, as for that of constitutional government, a special class are required. It, is the great masses of the middle ranks in England, varied enough in fortune, education, habits, and tastes, but still one in some great condition of a status, that supply the materials for the work of a parliamentary government; and it is through the supply of a large community of similar people that Clubs are maintained in their excellence with us.

For the success of a Club you need a number of men perfectly incapable of all life save such as the Club supplies; who repair to the Club, not alone to dine and smoke and sup, and read their paper, but to interchange thought in that blended half-confidence that the Club imparts; to hear the gossip of the day told in the spirit of men of their own leanings; to ascertain what judgments are passed on public events and public characters by the people they like to agree with; – in fact, to give a sort of familiar domestic tone to intercourse, suggesting the notion that the Club is a species of sanctuary where men can talk at their ease. The men who furnish this category with us are neither young nor old, they are the middle-aged, retaining some of the spring and elasticity of youth, but far more inclining to the solidity of riper years. If they frequent the Opera, it is to a stall, not to the coulisses, they go. They are more critical than they used to be about their dinners, and they have a tendency to mix seltzer with their champagne. They have reached that bourne in which egotism has become an institution; and by the transference of its working to the Club, they accomplish that marvellous creation by which each man sees himself and his ways and his wants and his instincts reflected in a thousand varied shapes.

Now, there are two things no nation of the Continent possesses – Spring, and middle-aged people. You may be young for a good long spell – some have been known, by the judicious appliances of art, to keep on for sixty years or so; but when you do pass the limit, there is no neutral territory – no mezzo termine. Fall out of the Young Guard, and you must serve as a Veteran. The levity and frivolity, the absence of all serious interest in life, which mark the leisure classes abroad, follow men sometimes even to extreme old age. The successive changes of temperament and taste which we mark at home have no correlatives abroad. The foreigner inhabits at sixty the same sort of world he did at six-and-twenty: he does not dance so much, but he lingers in the ballroom, and he is just as keenly alive to all the little naughty talk that amused him forty years ago, and folly as much interested to hear that the world is just as false and as wicked as it used to be when he was better able to contribute to its frailty and wickedness.

Not one of these men, with their padded pectorals and dyed whiskers, will admit that they are of an age to require comfort. They are ardent youths all of them, turning night into day as of old, and no more sensible of fatigue from late hours, hot rooms, and dissipation, than they were a quarter of a century back.

Can you fancy anything less clubable than a set of men like this? You might as well set before me the stale bon-bons and sugar-plums of a dessert for a dinner, as ask me to take such people for associates and companions. The tone of everlasting trifling disgraces even idleness; and these men contrive in their lives to reverse the laws of physics, since it is by their very levity that they fall.

The humoristic temperament is the soul of Club-life. It is the keen appreciation of others in all their varied moods and shades of feeling that imparts the highest enjoyment to that strange democracy, the Club; and foreigners are immensely deficient in this element. They are infinitely readier, smarter, and wittier than Englishmen. They will hit in an epigram what we would take an hour to embrace in an argument; but for the racy pleasure of seeing how such a man will listen to this, what such another will say to that, how far individuality, in fact, will mould and fashion the news of the day, and assimilate its mental food to its own digestive powers, there is nothing like the Englishman – and especially the Englishman of the Club.

There is nothing like Major Pendennis to be found from Trolhatten to Messina, and yet Pendennis is a class with us; and it is in the nicely-blended selfishness and complaisance, the egotism and obligingness, that we find the purest element of Club-life.

The Parisian are the best – far and away the best – of all foreign Clubs; best in their style of “get-up,” decoration, and arrangement, and best also in tone and social manner. The St Petersburg Club is the most gorgeous, the habits the most costly, the play the highest. It is not very long since that a young Russian noble lost in one evening a sum equal to a hundred thousand pounds. The Vienna Club is good in its own stiff German way; but, generally speaking, German Clubs are very ill arranged, dirty, and comfortless. The Italian are better. Turin, Naples, and Florence have reasonably good Clubs. Home has nothing but the thing called the English Club, a poorly-got-up establishment of small whist-players and low “points.”

It is a very common remark, that costume has a great influence over people’s conduct, and that the man in his shooting-jacket will occasionally give way to impulsive outbursts that he had never thought of yielding to in his white-cravat moments. Whether this be strictly true or not, there is little doubt that the style and character of the room a man sits in insensibly affects his manner and his bearing, and that the habits which would not be deemed strange in the low-ceilinged chamber, with the sanded floor and the “mutton lights,” would be totally indecorous in the richly-carpeted room, a blaze of wax-light, and glittering with decoration. Now this alternating between Club and Café spoils men utterly. It engenders the worst possible style – a double manner. The over-stiffness here and the over-ease there are alike faulty.

The great, the fatal defect of all foreign Clubs is, the existence of some one, perhaps two tyrants, who, by loud talk, swagger, an air of presumed superiority and affectation of “knowing the whole thing,” browbeat and ride rough-shod over all their fellows. It is in the want of that wholesome corrective, public opinion, that this pestilence is possible. Of public opinion the Continent knows next to nothing in any shape; and yet it is by the unwritten judgments of such a tribunal that society is guided in England, and the same law that discourages the bully supports and encourages the timid, without either the one or the other having the slightest power to corrupt the court, or coerce its decrees. Club-life is, in a way, the normal school for parliamentary demeanour; and until foreigners understand the Club, they will never comprehend the etiquette of the “Chamber.”

A HINT FOR C. S. EXAMINERS

I have frequently heard medical men declare that no test of a candidate’s fitness to be admitted as a physician was equal to a brief examination at the bedside of a sick man. To be able to say, “There is a patient; tell us his malady, and what you will do for it,” was infinitely better than long hours spent in exploring questions of minute anatomy and theoretical physic. In fact, for all practical purposes, it was more than likely he would be the best who would make the least brilliant figure in an examination; and the man whose studies had familiarised him with everything from Galen to John Hunter, would cut just as sorry a figure if called on to treat a case of actual malady.

It cannot possibly be otherwise. All that mere examination can effect, is to investigate whether an individual has duly prepared himself for the discharge of certain functions; but it never can presume to ascertain whether the person is one fitted by nature, by habit, by taste, or inclination, for the duties before him. Why, the student who may answer the most abstruse questions in anatomy, may himself have nerves so weak as to faint at the sight of blood. The physician who has Paracelsus by heart, may be so deficient in that tact of eye, or ear, or touch, as to render his learning good for nothing. Half an hour in an hospital would, however, test these qualities. You would at once see whether the candidate was a mere mass of book-learning, or whether he was one skilled in the aspect of disease, trained to observe and note all the indications of malady, and able even instantaneously to pronounce upon the gravity of a case before him. This is exactly what you want. No examination of a man’s biceps and deltoid, the breadth of his chest or the strength of his legs, would tell you whether he was a good swimmer – five minutes in deep water would, however, decide the matter.

Now, I shall not multiply arguments to prove my position. I desire to be practical in these “O’Dowdiana,” and I strive not to be prosy. What I would like, then, is to introduce this system of – let us call it – Test-examination, into the Civil Service.

I have the highest respect for the pedagogues of Burlington House. I think highly of Ollendorff and I believe Colenso’s Arithmetic a great institution. I venerate the men who invent the impossible questions; but I own I have the humblest opinion of those who answer them. I’d as soon take a circus-horse, trained to fire a pistol and sit down like a dog, to carry me across a stiff country, as I’d select one of these fellows for an employ which required energy, activity, or ready-wittedness. There is no such inefficiency as self-sufficiency; and this is the very quality instilled by the whole system. Ask the veterans of the Admiralty, the War Office, the Board of Trade, and the Customs, and you will get but the same report, that for thorough incompetency and inordinate conceit there is nothing like the prize candidate of a Civil Service examination. Take my word for it, you could not find a worse pointer than the poodle which would pick you out all the letters of the alphabet.

What I should therefore suggest is, to introduce into the Civil Service something analogous to this clinical examination; something that might test the practical fitness of the candidate, and show, not whether the man has been well prepared by a “grinder,” but whether he be a heaven-born tide-waiter, one of Nature’s own gaugers or vice-consuls.

I know it is not easy to do this in all cases. There are employments, too, wherein it is not called for. Mere clerkship, for instance, is an occupation of such uniformity that a man is just like a sewing-machine, and where, the work being adjusted to him, he performs it as a matter of routine. There are, however, stations which are more or less provocative of tact and ready-wittedness, and which require those qualities which schoolmasters cannot give nor Civil Service examiners take away; such as tact, promptitude, quickness in emergency, good-natured ease, patience, and pluck above all. These, I say, are great gifts, and it would be well if we knew how to find them. Let us take, by way of illustration, the Messenger Service. These Foreign Office Mercuries, who travel the whole globe at a pace only short of the telegraph, are wonderful fellows, and must of necessity be very variously endowed. What capital sleepers, and yet how easily awakened! What a deal of bumping must their heads be equal to! What an indifference must they be endowed with to bad roads and bad dinners, bad servants and bad smells! How patient they must be here – how peremptory there! How they must train their stomach to long fastings, and their skins to little soap! What can Civil Service examination discover of all or any of these aptitudes? Is it written in Ollendorf, think you, how many hours a man can sit in a caleche? Will decimal fractions support his back or strengthen his lumbar vertebrae? What system of inquiry will declare whether the weary traveller will not oversleep himself, or smash the head of his postilion for not awaking him at a frontier? How will you test readiness, endurance, politeness, familiarity with ‘Bradshaw’ and Continental moneys?

I think I have hit on a plan for this, suggested to me, I frankly own, by analogy with the clinical system. I would lay out the Green Park – it is convenient to Downing Street, and well suited to the purpose – as a map of Europe, marking out the boundaries of each country, and stationing posts to represent capital cities. At certain frontiers I would station representatives of the different nations as distinctly marked as I could procure them: that is to say, I’d have a very polite Frenchman, a very rude and insolent Prussian, a sulky Belgian, a roguish Italian, and an extremely dirty Russian. Leicester Square could supply all. It being all duly prepared, I’d start my candidate, with a heavy bag filled with its usual contents of, let us say, a large box of cigars, a set of fire-irons, twenty pots of preserved meats, a case of stuffed birds, four cricket-balls, and a photograph machine, some blue-books, and a dozen of blacking. I’d start him with this, saying simply, “Vienna, calling at Stuttgart and Turin;” not a word more; and then I’d watch my man – how he’d cross the Channel – how he’d cajole Moossoo – and whether he’d make straight for the Rhine or get entangled in Belgian railroads. I’d soon see how he dealt with the embarrassments of the roads and relished the bad diet; and not alone would I test him by hardships and hunger, fatigue and occasional upsets; but I’d try his powers of self-resistance by surrounding him with dissolute young attachés given to blind hookey and lansquenet. I’d have him invited to ravishing orgies, and tempted in as many ways as St Anthony; and all these after long privations. Then, I’d have him kept waiting either under a blazing sun or a deep snow, or both alternately, to test his cerebral organisation; and I’d try him with impure drinking water and damp sheets; and, last of all, on his return, I’d make him pass his accounts before some old monster of official savagery, who would repeatedly impugn his honesty, call out for vouchers, and d – n his eyes. The man “who came out strong” after all these difficulties I would accept as fully equal to his responsibilities, for it would not be alone in intellectuals he had been tested: the man’s temper, his patience, his powers of endurance, his physical strength, his resources in emergency, his readiness to meet difficulty, and, last of all, his self-devotion in matters of official discipline, enabling him to combine with all the noble qualities of a man the submissive attractions of a spaniel.

“Are you sure,” asks some one, “that all these graces and accomplishments can be had for £500 per annum?” Not a doubt of it. It is a cheap age we live in; and if you wanted a shipload of clever fellows for a new colony, I’d engage to supply you on easier terms than with the same number of gardeners or strong-boned housemaids.

Last of all, this scheme might be made no small attraction in this economical era – what is called self-supporting; for the public might be admitted to paid seats, whence they could learn European geography by a new and easy method. “Families admitted at a reduced rate – Schools and Seminaries half-price.”

OF SOME OLD DOGS IN OFFICE

Whenever the Budget comes on for discussion there are some three or four speakers, of whom Mr Williams of Lambeth is sure to be one, ready to suggest certain obvious economies by the suppression of some foreign missions, such as Dresden, Hanover, Stuttgart, &c. They have not, it is true, anything forcible or pungent to say on the subject; but as they say the same thing every year, the chances are that, on the drip-drip principle, they will at last succeed either in abolishing these appointments, or reducing the salaries of those who hold them.

Ministers of course defend them, and Opposition leaders, who hope one day to be Ministers, will also blandly say a word or two in their favour. For my own part, I don’t think the country cares much about the matter, or interests itself more deeply who drones away life at Hanover than who occupies an apartment at Hampton Court. In each case it is a sort of dowager asylum, where antiquated respectability may rest and be thankful.