Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine – Volume 55, No. 341, March, 1844

It seems to be the custom for the king's physician to taste the draught prescribed for him, and an attenpt being made to do this by the British, the sick monarch generously forbade it.

"'What need is there now of this?' he exclaimed reproachfully. 'Do I not know that you would administer to Sahela Selasse nothing that could do him mischief?'"

The reader will probably remember an almost similar act of confidence of Alexander the Great in his physician. An opportunity was now taken of urging him to an act of humanity, however strongly opposed to the habits of the country, and to the interests of the man. It was represented to him that his uncles and brothers had been immured in a dungeon during the thirty years of his reign, and that no act could be more honourable to himself, or acceptable to Heaven, than the extinction of this barbarous custom.

"'And I will release them,' returned the monarch, after a moment's debate within himself. 'By the Holy Eucharist I swear, and by the Church of the Holy Trinity in Koora Gadel, that if Sahela Selasse arise from this bed of sickness, all of whom you speak shall be restored to the enjoyment of liberty.'"

Fortunately he did arise from that bed of sickness, and he honourably determined to keep his promise. The royal captives were seven, and the British mission were summoned to see their introduction into the presence. They had been so exhausted by long captivity, that at first they seemed scarcely to comprehend freedom. They had been manacled, and spent their time in the fabrication of harps and combs, of which they brought specimens to lay at the feet of their monarch. This touching interview concluded with a speech of the king to the embassy—

"'My children, you will write all that you have seen to your country, and will say to the British Queen, that, though far behind the nations of the White Men, from whom Ethiopia first received her religion, there yet remains a spark of Christian love in the breast of the King of Shoa.'"

We have thus given a rapid and bird's-eye view of a work, which we regard as rivaling in interest and importance any "book of travels" of this century. The name of Abyssinia was scarcely more than a recollection, connected with the adventurous ramblings of Bruce, for the romantic purpose of discovering the source of the Nile. His narrative had also been wholly profitless—attracting public curiosity in a remarkable degree at he time, no direct foundation of European intercourse was laid, and no movement of European traffic followed. But giving Bruce all the credit, which was so long denied him, for fidelity to fact, and for the spirit of bold adventure which he exhibited in penetrating a land of violence and barbarism, the mission of Major Harris at once establishes its object on more substantial grounds. It is not a private adventure, but a public act, rendered natural by the circumstances of British neighbourhood, and important for the opening of Abyssinia and central Africa to the greatest civilizer which the world has ever seen—the commerce of England. There are still obvious difficulties of transit, between the coast and the capital, by the ordinary route. But if the navigation of the Gochob, or the route from Tajura, should once be secured, the trade will have commenced, which in the course of a few years will change the face of Abyssinia; limit, if not extinguish, that disgrace of human nature—the slave trade; and, if not reform, at least enlighten, the clouded Christianity of the people.

As the author was commissioned, not merely as a discoverer, but a diplomatist, it is to be presumed that on many interesting points he writes under the restraints of diplomatic reserve. But he has told us enough to excite our strong interest in the beauty, the fertility, and the capabilities of the country which he describes; and more than enough to show, that it is almost a British duty to give the aid of our science, our inventions, and our principles, to a monarch and a people evidently prepared for rising in the scale of nations.

We have a kind of impression, that some general improvement is about to take place in the more neglected portions of the world, and that England is honoured to be the chief agent in the great work. Africa, which has been under a ban for so many thousand years, may be on the eve of relief from the misery, lawlessness, and impurity of barbarism; and we are strongly inclined to look upon this establishment of British feeling, and intercourse in Abyssinia, as the commencement of that proud and fortunate change. All attempts to enter Africa by the western coast have failed. The heat, the swamps, the rank vegetation, and the unhealthy atmosphere, have proved insurmountable barriers. The north is fenced by a line of burning wilderness. But the east is open, free, fertile, and beautiful. A British factory in Abyssinia would be not merely a source of infinite comfort to the people, by the communication of European conveniences and manufactures, but a source of light. British example would teach obedience and loyalty to the laws, subordination on the part of the people, and mercy on that of the sovereign.

But we have also another object, sufficiently important to determine our Government in looking to the increase of our connexion with Eastern Africa. It is certainly a minor one, but one which no rational Government can undervalue. The policy of the present French King is directed eminently to the extension of commercial influence in all countries. To this policy, none can make objection. It is the duty of a monarch to develop all the resources of his country; and while France exerts herself only in the rivalry of peace, her advance is an advance of all nations. But her extreme attention, of late years, to Africa, ought to open our eyes to the necessity of exertion in that boundless quarter. On the western coast, she had long fixed a lazy grasp; but that grasp is now becoming vigorous, and extending hour by hour. Her flag flies at Golam, 250 miles up the Senegal. She has a settlement at Gori; she has lately established a settlement at the mouth of the Assinee, another at the mouth of the Gaboon, and is on the point of establishing another in the Bight of Benin; when she will command all Western Africa.

She is not less active on the eastern shore. At Massawah, on the coast of Abyssinia, she is fast monopolizing the trade in gold and spices. She has purchased Edh, and is endeavouring to purchase Brava. Her attention to Northern Abyssinia is matter of notoriety, and we must regard this system, not so much with regard to advantages which such possessions might give to ourselves, as to their prejudice to us in falling into rival hands. The possession of Algeria should direct the eye of Europe to the ulterior objects of France; the first change of masters in Egypt, must be looked to with national anxiety; and the transmission of the great routes of Africa into her hands, must be guarded against with a vigilance worthy of the interests of England and Europe.

If the river shall be found navigable to any extent, what an opening is thus presented to both the Merchant and the philanthropist; a soil surpassed by none in the world, a climate varying only 1º in the mean temperature of summer and winter, and presenting an average of 55-1/2º, and a population who could hardly fail to feel the advantages of commerce and civilization. From such a point as Aden offers, access is promised to the very heart of Africa, and thence to the sources of the mighty rivers which find an outlet on the western side of the continent; thus not merely benefiting the British merchant in a remarkable degree, but rapidly abolishing the slave trade, by giving employment to the people, wealth to the native trader, and a new direction to the powers of the country and the mind of its unhappy population.

On the whole consideration of the subject, we feel convinced, that Eastern Africa is the safe and the natural point for British enterprise; that it is the most direct and effective point for the extinction of the cruel traffic in human flesh; and that it is the most promising and productive point for the establishment of that substantial connexion with the governments of the interior, which alone can be regarded as worth the attention of the statesman.

Insignificant stations on the coast, to carry on a peddling traffic, are beneath a manly and comprehensive policy. We must penetrate the mountains, ascend the rivers, and reach the seats of sovereignty. We must, by a large and generous self-interest, combine the good, the knowledge, and the virtue of the population with our own; and we must lay the foundation of our permanent influence over this fourth of the globe, by showing that we are the fittest to communicate the benefits, and establish the example of civilized society.

To those who desire to go into more minute details, we recommend an accompanying volume by the missionaries Isenberg and Krapf—the latter of whom acted as interpreter to the embassy. A capital geographical memoir is also given by Mr M'Queen, the well-known African geographer.

On the whole, it is highly gratifying to our respect for British soldiership; to see works of this rank proceeding from our military men. They have great opportunities, and may thus render national services in peace, not less important than their enterprise in war. The East India Company offers inducements of the most important order, to the accomplishment and scientific activity of its officers; and Major Harris must feel the distinction of having been selected for a mission of such interest, as well as the high gratification of having conducted it to so benevolent, solid, and satisfactory a close.

A WORD OR TWO OF THE OPERA-TIVE CLASSES

BY LORGNON

"Vai, ch'avete gl'intelletti sani,
Mirate la dottrina che s'asconde,
Sotto queste coperte, alte e profonde!"—BERNI.

In the course of social transition, professions, like dogs, have their day. A calling honourable in one century, becomes infamous in the next; and vocations grow obsolete, like the fashioning of our garments or figures of speech. In barbarous communities, the strong man is king:—

"Le premier roi fut un soldat heureux."

Where human statute is beginning to prize the general weal, the legist is of high account, and the priest paramount. Higher civilization engenders the influence of the man of letters, the artist, the dramatist, the wit, the poet, and the orator. Or when, with a wisdom surpassing the philosophy of the schools, we tumble down to prose, and assume the leathern apron of the utilitarian—the civil engineer, or operative chemist, starts up into a colossus. Sir Humphrey Davy, and Sir Isambert Brunel, are the true knights of modern chivalry; and Sir Walter—our Sir Walter—never showed himself more shrewd than in his exclamation to Moore—"Ah, Tam!—it's lucky, man, we cam' sae soon!" Great as was his influence, equaling that of the other two great Sir Walters, Manny and Raleigh, in their several epochs of valour and enterprise, it is likely enough, that, if born a century later, the MSS. of the Scotch novels would have been chiefly valuable to light the furnace of some factory!

So much in exposition of the fact, that, so long as the world possessed only three of what we choose to call quarters, an executioner was an officer of state; and that, now it possesses five, the female of highest renown, and greatest power of self-enrichment, is the danseuse, or opera-dancer!

Many intermediary callings have disappeared. The domestic chaplain of a lordly household is now nearly as superfluous as its archers or falconers; and the court calendars of former reigns record a variety of places and perquisites, which, did they still exist, would be unpalatable to modern courtiers, though compelled to earn their daily cakes, however dirty. Just as the last golden pippin of the house of Crenie was preserved in wax for the edification of posterity, a watchman has been deposited, with his staff and lantern, in the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, or the Museum of the Zoological, or United Service Club, or some other of your grand national collections, as a specimen of the extinct Dogberry or Charley of the eighteenth century; and in process of time, as much and more also will probably be done to a parish beadle, a theatrical manager, a lord chamberlain—and other public functionaries whom it might not be altogether safe to enumerate.

Among them, however, there is really some satisfaction in hinting at the hangman!—For, hear it, ye sanguinary manes of our ancestors:—"Les bourreaux s'en vont!" Executioners are departing! We shall shortly have to commemorate in our obituaries, and signalize by the hands of our novelists—"the last of the Jack Ketches." In these days of ultra-philanthropy, the hangman scarcely finds salt to his porridge, or porridge to salt.

Exempli gratia. In the course of last year, a patient of the lower class was admitted into the lunatic ward of the public hospital at Marseilles, whose malady seemed the result of religious depression. In that supposition, the usual means of relief were resorted to, and he was at length discharged as convalescent; when, to attest the perfectness of his cure, he went and hanged himself! A procès verbal was, as usual, made out, and the supposed fanatic proved to be the ex-executioner of Lyons! Tender-hearted people instantly ascribed his melancholy to qualms of conscience. But it appeared in evidence, that, since the accession of the citizen king, the trade of the hangman had become a dead failure; and the disconsolate bankrupt was accordingly forced to take French leave of a world wherein bourreaux can no longer turn an honest penny!

Yet, less than three centuries ago, his predecessors were men of mark and consideration. Our own King Hal took more heed of his executioner than of half the counties over whose necks his axe was suspended; while Louis XI., a legitimate sovereign of France, used to dip in the dish with Tristan Hermite and Olivier le Dain. A few reigns later, and the hangman of the French metropolis (who shares with its diocesan the honour of being styled "Monsieur de Paris") was respected as the most accomplished in Europe. The treasons of its civil wars had created so many executions, that a Gascon, wishing to prove that his father had been beheaded as a nobleman, instead of hanged like a dog or a citizen, asserted the decollation to have been so expertly executed en Grève, that the sufferer was unconscious of his end. "Shake yourself," exclaimed the executioner; and, on his lordship's making the attempt, his head rolled into the dust.

This adroitness was the result of competition. In that day there were degrees of hangmen, and promotion might be accomplished. Not only had the king his executioner, and the Lorraines theirs—the court and the city—the abbot of St Germain des Près—the abbot of this, and the abbot of that—but various communities and Signories, having right of life and death over their vassals, kept an executioner for purposes of domestic torture, as they kept a seneschal to carve their meats; or as people now keep a chef or a maître d'hôtel. In those excellent olden times of Europe, hangmen, doubtless, carried about written characters from lord to lord, certifying their experience with rope and axe—branding-iron and thong. So long as the Inquisition afforded constant work for able hands, a good hangman out of place must have been a treasure! Had there been register-offices or newspaper advertisements, there probably would have appeared—

"WANTS A SITUATION—An able-bodied, middle-aged man, without encumbrance, who can have an undeniable character from his last situation, as headsman, hangman, and general executioner. He is accustomed to the use of thumbikins and the most approved and fashionable modes of torture; and officiated for many years as superintendent of the wheel of a foreign prince, renowned for the neatness of his rack. Drawing and quartering in all their branches. Pressing to death performed in the most economical style. Impalement in the Turkish manner; and the pile, as practised by the best Smithfield hands, &c. &c. &c."

Independent, indeed, of the high prosperity and vast perquisites of such posts as executioner of the Tower of London or the Grève of Paris, there was honour and satisfaction in the office. A royal master knew when he was well served. Henry III. stood by, in his chateau of Blois, to see, not only the heads severed from the dead bodies of the Duke and Cardinal de Guise, but their flesh cut into small pieces, preparatory to being burned, and the ashes scattered to the winds. "His majesty," says an eyewitness, "stood in a pool of blood to witness the hacking of the bodies."

This Italian gusto for the smell of blood, appears to have been introduced into the palaces of France from those of Italy by alliance with the Medici—those ennobled pawnbrokers of the middle ages, whose parvenu taste engendered the fantastic gilding of the renaissance, which they naturalized in the Tuileries and at Fontainbleau, in common with the stiletto and acqua tofana of their poisoners, and the fatalism of their judicial astrology.

But enough of Catharine de Medicis and her sanguinary son—enough of Henry Tudor and his savage daughters—enough of the monstrous professions flourishing in their age of monstrosities. And turn we for relief to the exquisite vocation completing the antithesis—the vocation whose execution is that of pas de zéphyrs, and the tortures of whose infliction are the tortures of the tender heart!

The calling of the danseuse, we repeat, is among the most lucrative of modern times, and nearly the most influential. The names of Taglioni and Elssler are as European, nay, as universal, as those of Wellington and Talleyrand-Metternich or Thiers; and modern statesmanship and modern diplomacy show pale beside the Machiavelism of the coulisses.

With what pomp of phraseology are the triumphs and movements of these danseuses announced, by the self-same journal which despatches, with a stroke of the pen, the submission of a province or revolution of a kingdom! One poor halfpenny-worth, or half a line, suffices for the death of a sultana; while fiery columns precede the departure and arrival of the steamer honoured by conveying across the Atlantic some ethereal being, whose light fantastic toe is to give the law to the United States. Her appearance in the Ecclesiastic States, on the other hand, is announced in Roman capitals; and her triumphal entry into St Petersburg received with regiments of notes of admiration!!!

Were Taglioni, by the malediction of Providence, to break her leg, what corner of the civilized earth but would sympathize in the casualty? Or were Elssler epidemically carried off, on the same day with the Pope, the Archbishop of Dublin, a chancellor of an university, an historiographer, or astronomer-royal—which would be most cared for by society at large, or to which would the public journals distribute the larger share of their dolefuls?

Nor is it alone the levities of Europe which have encompassed with a gaseous atmosphere of enthusiasm these idols of the day. We appeal to our sober, plodding, painstaking brother Jonathan. We move for returns of the sums he has expended on his beloved Fanny, and for notes of the honours conferred upon her, not only on the boards of his theatres and in the publicity of his causeways, but amid the august nationalities of his senate! "Fanny Elssler in Congress" has become as historical as the name of Washington! As if for the purpose of proving that extremes meet, the democrats of the New World were demonstrating the wildest infatuation in favour of one dancer, while the great autocrat of the Old was exhibiting a similar fervour in honour of another. La Gitana became all but presidentess of the Transatlantic republic; La Bayadère depolarized the tyrant of the Poles! But, above all, the Empress of Russia—albeit, the lightest of sovereigns and coldest of women—was carried so far by her enthusiasm as to fasten a bracelet of gems on the fair arm of Taglioni; while the Queen-Dowager of England conferred a similar honour on the Neapolitan dancer Cerito!

Now, what queen or princess, we should like to know, has lavished necklace, or bracelet, or one poor pitiful brooch, on Miss Edgeworth or Miss Aitkin, Mrs Somerville or Joanna Baillie, or any other of the female illustrations of the age, saving these aerial machines which have achieved such enviable supremacy? Mrs Marcet, who has taught the young idea of our three kingdoms how to shoot; Miss Martineau, who has engrafted new ones on our oldest crab-stocks, might travel from Dan to Beersheba without having a fatted calf or a fatted capon killed for them, at the public expense. But let Taglioni take the road, and what clapping of hands—what gratulation—what curiosity—what expansion of delight!

The only wonder of all this is, that we should wonder about the matter. Dancing constitutes that desideratum of the learned of all ages—an universal language. Music, which many esteem much, is nearly as nationalized in its rhythm as dialect in its words; whereas the organs of sight are cosmopolitan. The eye of man and the foot of the dancer include between them all nations and languages. The poetry of motion is interpreted by the lexicon of instinct; and the unimpregnable grace of a Taglioni becomes omnipotent and catholic as that of

"The statue that enchants the world!"

Who can doubt that the names of these sorceresses of our time will reach posterity, as those of the Aspasias and Lauras of antiquity have reached our own—as having held philosophers by the beard, and trampled on the necks of the conquerors of mankind—as being those for whom Solon legislated, and to whom Pericles succumbed?

Pausanius tells us of the stately tomb of the frail Pythonice in the Vica Sacra; and we know that Phryne offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes, by Alexander overthrown. And surely, if modern guide-books instruct us to weep in the cemetery of Père la Chaise over the grave of Fanny Bias, history will say a word or two in honour of Cerito, who proposed through the newspapers, last season, an alliance offensive and defensive with no less a man than Peter Borthwick, Esq. M.P., (Arcades ambo!) to relieve the distress of the manufacturing classes of Great Britain! It is true such heroines can afford to be generous; for what lord chancellor or archbishop of modern times commands a revenue half as considerable?

Why, therefore—O Public! why, we beseech thee, seeing that the influence of the operative class is fairly understood, and undeniably established among us—why not at once elevate choriography to the rank of one of the fine arts?—Why not concentrate, define, and qualify the calling, by a public academy?—since all hearts and eyes are amenable to the charm of exquisite dancing, why vex ourselves by the sight of what is bad, when better may be achieved? Be wise, O Pubic, and consider! Establish a professor's chair for the improvement of pirouetters. We have hundreds of professor's chairs, quite as unavailable to the advancement of the interests of humanity, and wholly unavailable to its pleasures. Neither painters nor musicians acquire as much popularity as dancers, or amass an equal fortune. Why should they be more highly protected by the state?

To disdain this exquisite art, is a proof of barbarism. The nations of the East may cause their dances to be performed by slaves; but two of the greatest kings of ancient and modern times, the kings after God's own heart and man's own heart—David and Louis le Grand—were excellent dancers, the one before the ark, the other before his subjects.

Never, perhaps, did the art of dancing attain such eminent honours in the eyes of mankind, as during the siècle doré of the latter monarch. At an epoch boasting of Molière and Racine, Bossuet and Fénélon, Boileau and La Fontaine, Colbert and Perrault, (the fairy talisman of politics and architecture,) the court of Versailles could imagine no manifestation of regality more august, or more exquisite, than that of getting up a royal ballet; and the father of his people, Louis XIV., was, in his youth, its coulon.

How amusing are the descriptions of these entrées de ballet, circumstantially bequeathed us by the memoirs of the regency of Anne of Austria! The cardinal himself took part in them; but the chief performers were the young King, his brother Gaston d'Orleans, and the maids of honour, figuring as Apollo and the Muses, or Hamadryads adoring some sylvan divinity. Who has not sympathized in the joy of Madame de Sevigné, at seeing her fair daughter exhibit among the coryphées! Who has not felt interested in the jetées and pas de bourrées of the ancien régime, when accomplished at court by Condés, Contis, Montpensiers, Montmorencys, Rohans, Guises! The Marquis de Dangeau first recommended himself to the favour of the royal master whose courts he was destined to journalize for posterity, by the skill of his pas de basques; and long before the all but conjugal influence of the lovely La Vallière commenced over the heart of the grand monarque, his early love, and more especially his passion for the beautiful niece of the Cardinal, may be traced to the rehearsals and rondes de jambes of Maitz and Fontainbleau.

The reign of Madame de Maintenon (la raison même) over his affections, declared itself by the sudden transfer of a ballet-opera, expressly composed by Rameau and Quinault for the beauties of the court, to the public theatre of the Palais Royal. No more noble figurantes at Versailles! Louis le Pirouettiste's occupation was gone; and the maître des ballets du roi arrayed himself in sackcloth and ashes. But, lo! the glories of his throne took wing with the loves and graces; ballets and victories being effaced on the same page from the annals of his reign.

During the minority of Louis XV., the same royal dansomania was renewed. The regent, Duke of Orleans, entertained the same notions of kingly education, on this head, as his predecessor the cardinal; and Louis le Bien-aimé, like his great-grandfather before him, was the best dancer of his realm. Such dancing as it was! such exquisite footing! In the upper story of the grand gallery at Versailles, hang several pictures representing these court ballets; Cupids in coatees of pink lustring, with silver lace and tinsel wings, wearing full-bottomed wigs and the riband of the St Esprit; or Venuses in hoops and powder, whose minauderies might afford a lesson to the divinities of our own day for the benefit of the omnibus box.

Some of these groups, by Mignard, Boucher, and their imitators, are charming studies as tableaux de genre. But in nothing, by the way, are they more remarkable than in their decency. The nudities of the present times appear to have been undreamed of in the philosophy of Versailles. That simple-hearted, though strong-minded American writer, Miss Sedgwick, who has published an account of her consternation as she sat with Mrs Jameson in the stalls of our Italian opera, might have witnessed the royal performance unabashed. On being told, as she gazed upon the intrepid self-exposure of Taglioni, "qu'il fallait être sage pour danser comme ça," Miss S. observes, that it requires to be more or less than woman, and proposes to divide the human species into men, women, and OPERA-DANCERS, little suspecting that half her readers translate such a classification into "men, women, and ANGELS;" or that they would see herself and her sister moralist go down in the President without a pang, provided Elssler and Taglioni were saved from the deep!

Natural enough! we repeat it—natural enough! To create a good dancer, requires the rarest combination of physical and mental endowments. Graceful as the forms transmitted to us by the pottery of Etruria and the frescoes of Herculaneum, she must unite with the strength of an athlete, the genius of a first-rate actress. That even moderate dancing demands immoderate abilities, is attested by the exhibition of human ungainliness disfiguring all the court balls of Europe. There may be seen the representatives of the highest nobility, tutored by the highest education, shuffling over the polished floor with stiffened arms and bewildered legs—often out of time—always out of place—as if acting under the influence of a galvanic battery. Not one in ten of them rises even to mediocrity as a dancer. A few degrees lower in the social scale, and it would be not one in twenty. Amid the shoving, shouldering, shuffling mob of dancers in an ordinary ball-room, the absence of all grace amounts even to the ludicrous. Forty years long have people been dancing the quadrilles now in vogue, which consist of six favourite country-dances, fashionable in Paris at the close of the last century, and then singly known by the names they still retain—"La Poule, L'Eté, Le Pantalon, Le Trenis," &c. &c. To avoid the monotony of dancing each in succession, for hours at a time, down a file of forty couple, it was arranged that every eight couple should form a square, and perform the favourite dances, in succession, with the same partner—a considerable relief to the monotony of the ball-room. Yet, after all this experience, if poor Monsieur le Trenis (after whom one of the figures was named, and who, during the consulate, died dancing-mad in a public lunatic asylum) could rise, sane, from the dead, it would be enough to drive him mad again to see how little had been acquired, in the way of practice, since his decease. The processes and varieties of the ball-room are just where he left then on his exit!