Mirror of the Months. P. G. Patmore
newspapers have become a nonentity; and those writers who are “constant readers” find their occupation gone.
Now, the stones of Bond Street dance for joy, while they “prate of the whereabout” of innumerable wheels; which latter are so happy to meet again after a long absence, that they rush into each other’s embraces, “wheel within wheel,” and there’s no getting them asunder.
Now, the Italian Opera is open, and the house is full; but if asked on the subject, you may safely say that “nobody was there;” for the flats that you meet with in the pit evidently indicate that their wearers appertain to certain counters and counting-houses in the city, or serve those that do—having “received orders” for the Opera in the way of their business.
Now, a sudden thaw, after a week’s frost, puts the pedestrians of Cheapside into a pretty pickle.
Now, the trottoir of St. James’s Street begins to know itself again; the steps of Raggett’s are proud of being pressed by right honourable feet; and the dandies’ watch-tower is once more peopled with playful peers, peering after beautiful frailties in furred pelisses.
Now, on fine Sundays, the citizens and their wives begin to hie them to Hyde Park, and having attained Wellington Walk, fancy that there is not more than two pins to choose between them and their betters on the other side the rail; while these latter, having come abroad to take the air (of the insides of their carriages), and kill the time, and cure the vapours, permit inquisitive equestrians to gaze at them through plate-glass, and fancy, not without reason, that they look like flowers seen through flowing water: Lady O——, for example, like an overblown rose; Lady H——, like a painted-lady pea; the Countess of B——, like a newly-opened apple-blossom; and her demure-looking little sister beside her, like a prim-rose.
Now, winter being only on the wane, and spring only on the approach, Fashion, for once in the year, begins to feel herself in a state of interregnum, and her ministers, the milliners and tailors, don’t know what to think. Mrs. Bean shakes her head like Lord Burleigh, and declines to determine as to what may be the fate of future waists; and Mr. Stultz is equally cautious of committing himself in the affair of collars; and both agree in coming to the same conclusion with the statesman in Tom Thumb, that, “as near as they can guess, they cannot tell!” Now, therefore, the fashionable shops are shorn of their beams, and none can show wares that are strictly in season, except the stationer’s. But his, which for all the rest of the year is dullest of the dull, is now, for the first fourteen days, gayest of the gay; for here the poetry of love, and the love of poetry, are displayed under all possible and impossible forms and metaphors,—from little cupids creeping out of cabbage-roses, to large overgrown hearts stuffed with double-headed arrows, and uttering piteous complaints in verse, while they fry in their own flames. And this brings us safe back to the point from which we somewhat prematurely set out; for Now, on good Saint Valentine’s eve, all the rising generation of this metropolis, who feel that they have reached the age of indiscretion, think it full time for them to fall in love, or be fallen in love with. Accordingly, infinite are the crow-quills that move mincingly between embossed margins,
“And those rhyme now who never rhymed before, And those who always rhymed now rhyme the more;”
to the utter dismay of the newly-appointed twopenny postman the next morning; who curses Saint Valentine almost as bitterly as does, in her secret heart, yonder sulky sempstress, who has not been called upon for a single twopence out of all the two hundred thousand[1] extra ones that have been drawn from willing pockets, and dropped into canvas bags, on this eventful day. She may take my word for it that the said sulkiness, which has some show of reason in it to-day, is in the habit of visiting her pretty face oftener than it is called for. If it were not so, she would not have had cause for it now.
But good Bishop Valentine is a pluralist, and holds another see besides that of London:
“All the air is his diocese,
And all the chirping choristers
And other birds are his parishioners:
He marries every year
The lyrique lark, and the grave whispering dove;
The sparrow, that neglects his life for love;
The household bird with the red stomacher;
He makes the blackbird speed as soon
As doth the goldfinch or the halcyon.”
Let us be off to the country without more ado; for who can stay in London in the face of such epithets as these, that seem to compel us, with their sweet magic, to go in search of the sounds and sights that they characterise? “The lyric lark!” Why a modern poet might live for a whole season on that one epithet! Nay, there be those that have lived on it for a longer time, perhaps without knowing that it did not belong to them!—“The sparrow that neglects his life for love!” “The household bird, with the red stomacher!”—That a poet who could write in this manner, for pages together, should be almost entirely unknown to modern readers (except to those of a late number of the Retrospective Review), would be somewhat astonishing, if it were not for the consideration that he is so well known to modern writers! It would be doing both parties justice if some one would point out a few of the coincidences that occur between them. In the mean time, we shall be doing better in looking abroad for ourselves into that nature to which he looked, and seeing what she offers worthy of particular observation, in the course of this last month of winter in the Country, though it is the first in London. Not that we shall, as yet, find much to attract our attention in regard to the movements of the above-named “parishioners” of good Bishop Valentine; for though he gives them full authority to marry now as soon as they please, Frost forbids the bans for the present; and when there is no love going forward in the feathered world, there is little or no singing. On the contrary, even the pert sparrows still go moping and sulking about silently, or sit with ruffled plumes and drooping wings, upon the bare branches, watching all day long for their scanty dole of crums, and thinking of nothing else. The “lyric lark,” indeed, may already be heard; the thrush and blackbird begin to practise their spring notes faintly; and the yellow-hammer, the chaffinch, and the wren, utter a single stanza or so, at long intervals: but all this can scarcely be called singing, but rather talking of it; for
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