About eight the next morning, Ephraim, awaking, of course, in a sad condition, both of mind and body, sets himself immediately about arranging the appearance of the shop, “so as to secure the credit of the concern.” In spite of all his ingenuity, however, it maintains a poverty-stricken appearance, which circumstance excites some most unreasonable suspicions in the mind of Mr. Bluff’s clerk, upon his calling at ten, with Pester & Co.’s bill (three hundred and sixteen pounds, seventeen shillings), and receiving, by way of payment, a check upon his own banking-house for that amount—Mr. Snook having written this check before his departure with the goods, and left it with Ephraim. On reaching the bank, therefore, the clerk inquires if Mr. Peter Snook’s check is good for three hundred and sixteen pounds odd, and is told that it is not worth a farthing, Mr. S. having overdrawn for a hundred. While Mr. Bluff and his assistants are conversing on this subject, Butt, the gin-dealer, calls to thank the banker for having recommended him a customer—which the banker denies having done. An explanation ensues, and “stop thief!” is the cry. Ephraim is sent for, and reluctantly made to tell all he knows of his master’s proceedings on the day before—by which means a knowledge is obtained of the other houses, who (it is supposed) have been swindled. Getting a description of the barge which conveyed the goods from Queenhithe, the whole party of the creditors now set off in pursuit.
About dawn the next morning they overtake the barge, a little below Gravesend—when four men are observed leaving her, and rowing to the shore in a skiff. Peter Snook is found sitting quietly in the cabin, and, although apparently a little surprised at seeing Mr. Pester, betrays nothing like embarrassment or fear.
“Ah, Mr. Pester! is it you? Glad to see you, sir. So you’ve been taking a trip out o’ town, and are going back with us? We shall get to Billingsgate between eight and nine, they say; and I hope it won’t be later, as I’ve a bill of yours comes due to-day, and I want to be at home in time to write a check for it.”
The goods are also found on board, together with three men in the hold, gagged and tied hand and foot. They give a strange account of themselves. Being in the employ of Mr. Heaviside, a lighterman, they were put in charge of “The Flitter,” when she was hired by Peter Snook, for a trip to Gravesend. According to their orders, they took the barge, in the first instance, to a wharf near Queenhithe, and helped to load her with some goods brought down in carts. Mr. Snook afterward came on board, bringing with him two fierce-looking men, and “a little man with a hooked nose” (Ephraim). Mr. S. and the little man then “had a sort of jollification” in the cabin, till the latter got drunk and was carried ashore. They then proceeded down the river, nothing particular occurring till they had passed Greenwich Hospital, when Mr. S. ordered them to lay the barge alongside a large black-sided ship. No sooner was the order obeyed than they were boarded by a number of men from said ship, who seized them, bound them, gagged them, and put them in the hold.
The immediate consequence of this information is, that Peter is bound, gagged, and put down into the hold in the same manner, by way of retaliation, and for safe keeping on his way back to the city. On the arrival of the party, a meeting of the creditors is called. Peter appears before them in a great rage, and with the air of an injured man. Indeed, his behavior is so mal à propos to his situation as entirely to puzzle his interrogators. He accuses the whole party of a conspiracy.
“Peter Snook,” said Mr. Pester, solemnly, from the chair, “that look does not become you after what has passed. Let me advise you to conduct yourself with propriety. You will find it the best policy, depend on ‘t.”
“A pretty thing for you, for to come to talk of propriety!” exclaimed Peter; “you, that seed me laid hold on by a set of ruffians, and never said a word, nor given information a’terwards! And here have I been kept away from business I don’t know how long, and shut up like a dog in a kennel; but I look upon ’t you were at the bottom of it all—you and that fellow with the plum-pudding face, as blowed me up about a cask of gin! What you both mean by it, I can’t think; but if there’s any law in the land, I’ll make you remember it, both of you—that’s what I will.”
Mr. Snook swears that he never saw Jobb in his life, except on the occasion of his capture in “The Flitter,” and positively denies having booked out any parcel of goods at the house of Jobb, Flashbill, & Co. With the banker, Mr. Bluff, he acknowledges an acquaintance—but not having drawn for the two hundred and seventy pounds odd, or having ever overdrawn for a shilling in his life. Moreover, he is clearly of opinion that the banker has still in his hands more than a hundred and fifty pounds of his (Mr. Snook’s) money. He can designate several gentlemen as being no creditors of his, although they were of the number of those from whom his purchases had been made for the “whacking” shipping out, and although their goods were found in “The Flitter.” Ephraim is summoned, and testifies to all the particulars of his master’s return, and the subsequent packing, cart-loading, and embarkation as already told—accounting for the extravagances of Mr. Snook as being “all along of that Miss Bodkin.”
“Lor’, master, hi’s glad to see you agin,” exclaimed Ephraim. “Who’d ha’ thought as’t would come to this?”
“Come to what?” cried Peter. “I’ll make ’em repent of it, every man Jack of ’em, before I’ve done, if there’s law to be had for love or money!”
“Ah, sir,” said Ephraim, “we’d better have stuck to the retail. I was afraid that shipping consarn wouldn’t answer, and tell’d you so, if you recollect, but you wouldn’t harken to me.”
“What shipping concern?” inquired Peter, with a look of amazement.
“La! master,” exclaimed Ephraim, “it ain’t of any use to pretend to keep it a secret now, when every body knows it. I didn’t tell Mr. Pester, though, till the last, when all the goods was gone out of the shop, and the sheriff’s officers had come to take possession of the house.”
“Sheriff’s officers in possession of my house!” roared Peter. “All the goods gone out of the shop! What do you mean by that, you rascal! What have you been doing in my absence?” And he sprang forward furiously, and seized the trembling shopman by the collar with a degree of violence which rendered it difficult for the two officers in attendance to disengage him from his hold.
Hereupon, Mr. Snap, the attorney, retained by the creditors, harangues the company at some length, and intimates that Mr. Snook is either mad or acting the madman for the purpose of evading punishment. A practitioner from Bedlam is sent for, and some artifices resorted to—but to no purpose. It is found impossible to decide upon the question of sanity. The medical gentleman, in his report to the creditors, confesses himself utterly perplexed, and, without giving a decision, details the particulars of a singular story told him by Mr. Snook himself, concerning the mode of his escape from drowning after he fell overboard from the “Rose in June.” “It is a strange, unlikely tale to be sure,” says the physician, “and if his general conversation was of that wild, imaginative, flighty kind which I have so often witnessed, I should say it was purely ideal; but he appears such a plain-spoken, simple sort of a person, that it is difficult to conceive how he could invent such a fiction.” Mr. Snook’s narration is then told, not in his very words, but in the author’s own way, with all the particulars obtained from Peter’s various recitations. We give it only in brief.
Upon tumbling overboard, Mr. Snook (at least according to his own story) swam courageously as long as he could. He was upon the point of sinking, however, when an oar was thrust under his arm, and he found himself lifted in a boat by a “dozen dark-looking men.” He is taken on board a large ship, and the captain, who is a droll genius, and talks in rhyme somewhat after the fashion of the wondrous Tale of Alroy, entertains him with great cordiality, dresses him in a suit of his own clothes, makes him drink in the first place, a brimmer of “something hot,” and afterward plies him with wines and cordials of all kinds, at a supper of the most magnificent description. Warmed in body and mind by this exce
llent cheer, Peter reveals his inmost secrets to his host, and talks freely and minutely of a thousand things; of his man Ephraim and his oddities; of his bank account, of his great credit; of his adventures with Miss Bodkin; of his prospects in trade; and especially of the names, residences, etc., etc.; of the wholesale houses with whom he is in the habit of dealing. Presently, being somewhat overcome with wine, he goes to bed at the suggestion of the captain, who promises to call him in season for a boat in the morning, which will convey him to Billingsgate in full time for Pester & Co.’s note. How long he slept is uncertain—but when he awoke a great change was observable in the captain’s manner, who was somewhat brusque, and handed him over the ship’s side into the barge where he was discovered by the creditors in pursuit, and which he was assured would convey him to Billingsgate.
This relation, thus succinctly given by us, implies little or nothing. The result, however, to which the reader is ingeniously led by the author, is, that the real Peter Snook has been duped, and that the Peter Snook who made the various purchases about town, and who appeared to Ephraim only during the morning and evening twilight of the eventful day, was, in fact, no other person than the captain of “the strange, black-sided ship.” We are to believe that, taking advantage of Peter’s communicativeness, and a certain degree of personal resemblance to himself, he assumed our hero’s clothes while he slept, and made a bold and nearly successful attempt at wholesale peculation.
The incidents of this story are forcibly conceived, and even in the hands of an ordinary writer would scarcely fail of effect. But, in the present instance, so unusual a tact is developed in the narration, that we are inclined to rank “Peter Snook” among the few tales which (each in its own way) are absolutely faultless. It is a Flemish home-piece of the highest order—its merits lying in its chiaroscuro—in that blending of light and shade and shadow, where nothing is too distinct, yet where the idea is fully conveyed—in the absence of all rigid outlines and all miniature painting—in the not undue warmth of the coloring—and in a well-subdued exaggeration at all points—an exaggeration never amounting to caricature.
THE QUACKS OF HELICON—A SATIRE1
A SATIRE, professedly such, at the present day, and especially by an American writer, is a welcome novelty indeed. We have really done very little in the line upon this side of the Atlantic—nothing certainly of importance—Trumbull’s clumsy poem and Halleck’s “Croakers” to the contrary notwithstanding. Some things we have produced, to be sure, which were excellent in the way of burlesque, without intending a syllable that was not utterly solemn and serious. Odes, ballads, songs, sonnets, epics, and epigrams, possessed of this unintentional excellence, we could have no difficulty in designating by the dozen; but in the matter of directly-meant and genuine satire, it cannot be denied that we are sadly deficient. Although, as a literary people, however, we are not exactly Archilocuses—although we have no pretensions to the —although, in short, we are no satirists ourselves, there can be no question that we answer sufficiently well as subjects for satire.
We repeat, that we are glad to see this book of Mr. Wilmer’s; first, because it is something new under the sun; secondly, because, in many respects, it is well executed; and thirdly, because in the universal corruption and rigmarole amid which we gasp for breath it is really a pleasant thing to get even one accidental whiff of the unadultered air of truth.
The “Quacks of Helicon,” as a poem and otherwise, has many defects, and these we shall have no scruple in pointing out—although Mr. Wilmer is a personal friend of our own, and we are happy and proud to say so—but it has also many remarkable merits—merits which it will be quite useless for those aggrieved by the satire—quite useless for any clique, or set of cliques, to attempt to frown down, or to affect not to see, or to feel, or to understand.
Its prevalent blemishes are referable chiefly to the leading sin of imitation. Had the work been composed professedly in paraphrase of the whole manner of the sarcastic epistles of the times of Dryden and Pope, we should have pronounced it the most ingenious and truthful thing of the kind upon record. So close is the copy, that it extends to the most trivial points—for example, to the old forms of punctuation. The turns of phraseology, the tricks of rhythm, the arrangement of the paragraphs, the general conduct of the satire—every thing—all—are Dryden’s. We cannot deny, it is true, that the satiric model of the days in question is insusceptible of improvement, and that the modern author who deviates therefrom, must necessarily sacrifice something of merit at the shrine of originality. Neither can we shut our eyes to the fact, that the imitation, in the present case, has conveyed, in full spirit, the higher qualities, as well as, in rigid letter, the minor elegances and general peculiarities of the author of “Absalom and Achitophel.” We have here the bold, vigorous, and sonorous verse, the biting sarcasm, the pungent epigrammatism, the unscrupulous directness, as of old. Yet it will not do to forget that Mr. Wilmer has been shown how to accomplish these things. He is thus only entitled to the praise of a close observer, and of a thoughtful and skilful copyist. The images are, to be sure, his own. They are neither Pope’s nor Dryden’s, nor Rochester’s, nor Churchill’s—but they are moulded in the identical mould used by these satirists.
This servility of imitation has seduced our author into errors, which his better sense should have avoided. He sometimes mistakes intentions; at other times he copies faults, confounding them with beauties. In the opening of the poem, for example, we find the lines—
Against usurpers, Olney, I declare
A righteous, just, and patriotic war.
The rhymes war and declare are here adopted from Pope, who employs them frequently; but it should have been remembered that the modern relative pronunciation of the two words differs materially from the relative pronunciation of the era of the “Dunciad.”
We are also sure that the gross obscenity, the filth—we can use no gentler name—which disgraces the “Quacks of Helicon,” cannot be the result of innate impurity in the mind of the writer. It is but a part of the slavish and indiscriminating imitation of the Swift and Rochester school. It has done the book an irreparable injury, both in a moral and pecuniary view, without effecting any thing whatever on the score of sarcasm, vigor, or wit. “Let what is to be said, be said plainly.” True; but let nothing vulgar be ever said or conceived.
In asserting that this satire, even in its mannerism, has imbued itself with the full spirit of the polish and of the pungency of Dryden, we have already awarded it high praise. But there remains to be mentioned the far loftier merit of speaking fearlessly the truth, at an epoch when truth is out of fashion, and under circumstances of social position, which would have deterred almost any man in our community from a similar Quixotism. For the publication of the “Quacks of Helicon,”—a poem which brings under review, by name, most of our prominent literati, and treats them, generally, as they deserve (what treatment could be more bitter?)—for the publication of this attack, Mr. Wilmer, whose subsistence lies in his pen, has little to look for—apart from the silent respect of those at once honest and timid—but the most malignant open or covert persecution. For this reason, and because it is the truth which he has spoken, do we say to him, from the bottom of our hearts, “God speed!”
We repeat it:—it is the truth which he has spoken; and who shall contradict us? He has said unscrupulously what every reasonable man among us has long known to be “as true as the Pentateuch”—that, as a literary people, we are one vast perambulating humbug. He has asserted that we are clique-ridden; and who does not smile at the obvious truism of that assertion? He maintains that chicanery is, with us, a far surer road than talent to distinction in letters. Who gainsays this? The corrupt nature of our ordinary criticism has become notorious. Its powers have been prostrated by its own arm. The intercourse between critic and publisher, as it now almost universally stands, is comprised either in the paying and pocketing of blackmail, as the price of a simple forbearance, or in a direct system of pett
y and contemptible bribery, properly so called—a system even more injurious than the former to the true interests of the public, and more degrading to the buyers and sellers of good opinion, on account of the more positive character of the service here rendered for the consideration received. We laugh at the idea of any denial of our assertions upon this topic; they are infamously true. In the charge of general corruption there are undoubtedly many noble exceptions to be made. There are, indeed, some very few editors who, maintaining an entire independence, will receive no books from publishers at all, or who receive them with a perfect understanding, on the part of these latter, that an unbiassed critique will be given. But these cases are insufficient to have much effect on the popular mistrust; a mistrust heightened by late exposures of the machinations of coteries in New York—coteries which, at the bidding of leading booksellers, manufacture, as required from time to time, a pseudo-public opinion by wholesale, for the benefit of any little hanger-on of the party, or pettifogging protector of the firm.
We speak of these things in the bitterness of scorn. It is unnecessary to cite instances, where one is found in almost every issue of a book. It is needless to call to mind the desperate case of Fay—a case where the pertinacity of the effort to gull—where the obviousness of the attempt at forestalling a judgment—where the wofully over-done be-Mirrorment of that man-of-straw, together with the pitiable platitude of his production, proved a dose somewhat too potent for even the well-prepared stomach of the mob. We say it is supererogatory to dwell upon “Norman Leslie,” or other by-gone follies, when we have, before our eyes, hourly instances of the machinations in question. To so great an extent of methodical assurance has the system of puffery arrived, that publishers, of late, have made no scruple of keeping on hand an assortment of commendatory notices, prepared by their men of all work, and of sending these notices around to the multitudinous papers within their influence, done up within the fly- leaves of the book. The grossness of these base attempts, however, has not escaped indignant rebuke from the more honorable portion of the press; and we hail these symptoms of restiveness under the yoke of unprincipled ignorance and quackery (strong only in combination) as the harbinger of a better era for the interests of real merit, and of the national literature as a whole.
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