LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 190, 18 January 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

CIGAKTTTES AND COFFEE. Poets are mostly feeble folk. Certainly there are Titans amongst them; but they are few and far between, and the vast majority are but empty-headed pigmies with a talent for jingling words together. So I think ; and I fancy I am about right. Therefore, when Clarence Dewdrop blushingly confessed awhile ago that he had enlisted, adopting the tasty designation by which I indicate him, in the vast army of martyrs whom the Athenceum every now and then contemptuously bundles together in its mangling machine under the common heading of ' Minor Poets,' I told the boy, without much circumlocution that he was a fool, but softened the blow by consenting to listen to some of his rubbish while we discussed our post-prandial cigarettes and coffee under the pleasant shade of the weeping ash, standing in tented verdure on my lawn overhanging the limpid waters of the Wye. Yet was there a certain soothing in his murmuring measures. They flowed on dulcetly enough, and the jingles rippled softly at the end of every line, so that I dozed away into a dreamland that yet was a reality; and while he discoursed sweetly of Love, and Ladies, and Wine, and Woodlands, in what he was pleased to call ' A Roundelay of a Holiday' —pretty title, is it not?—my thoughts wandered off to somewhat similar subjects and experiences of my own; only that the scenes were remote from that weeping ash, the incidents were real, and so far superior to the sickly fancies of the lad at my feet; and the people they once more set as if in life before me had long since been scattered like my cigarette-ash caught in the whirling embrace of the summer south wind, playing through the leafy chinks of our retreat. This is how the first of those recollections came to me: A jovial picnic by a great Indian ' tank, as any mass of water from a duck-pond up to a lake is called in our eastern dependency; mighty forest trees waving their topmast branches gently.in the upper breeze; a dense tropical foliage, shutting out the country on both sides of the long bund; behind, rich gardens, gorgeous with colour, cooled by , countless rivulets of fair water flowing in

marble-like conduits of chunam, and pleasant os Malimoud's fabulous Al Jannat ; a splendid palace of the old Mogul Emperors stretching its chambers, its domes, its delicate traceries, and its fantasies of architecture on the right and on the left; in front the great expanse of deepest blue water, faintly rippled with the passing kiss of the heated air, and glorious with the reflected. tints of the azure sky; beyond the lake's farthest bounds the great rugged mountains stretching their craggy peaks heavenward, and beyond them again a misty greyness, indicative of the far-distant Snowy Range; and in the sweet shade 'fair women and brave men,' enjoying such a holiday of delight as is only known to those whose everyday lives are passed amidst the dreary sandstorms and parching hot winds of a military qantonment in the plains. The feast is over. The remnants of the banquet lie scattered in silver and china decorated with the brightest flowers; and watchful native servants, marvellous in tinted raiment, with gold-lace turbans and cummerbunds, keep watchful eyes on one another as they gather up the 'mess-traps," and count over the various pieces. Empty champange and claret bottles, by the dozen, are being replaced by full ones laid handy to the attendants on the scattered knots of revellers; and mixed drinks of cunning decoction are constantly being borne up to the bund by deft 'boys,' skilled in the mixing thereof. Fragrant Manillas, not, mayhap, altogether without a suspicion of Malwa opium in their composition, send up a rich incense of delicate perfume to join the balmy air; and—mention it not in the mess of a native regiment, for therein is the practice abominated—even the common pipe of English custom is not wanting to some untutored ' griffs' fresh out from home. Shade of that great and good man; Beau Brummel! what do these persons, doubtless calling themselves gentlemen, wear, and in the company of ladies too? Ay demi! where is the 'fashion,'where is the ' style,' where are the ' manners,' that were once supposed to be essential to the English officer? Fled to the four winds of the Great Sandy Desert lying below the wondrous country of the Five Waters—fled, and nothing worthy of the name to occupy their place. The masterpieces of sartorial art from the studio of Poole are possibly being devoured by white ants in the distant camp; the elegant stove-pipe creations of Lincoln and Bennett are most likely at the bottom of the Red Sea, riddled with revolver-bullets, for which they formed not inappropriate targets; while the emanations from thß saloons of Hoby have long since adorned the shrivelled shanks of the couta-wallah or dog-boy. The great tailor has been forced to give place to a nondescript garment of coarse cotton fabric called dungaree, loose and wide, and open all over, and displaying plenty of flannel shirt; Lincoln and Bennett have been ousted by an uncouth fabrication uncouthly called a topi; and Hoby's best work has had its nose put out of joint by brown leather abominations made from the hide of the sambhur. And the ladies, married, or still merely aspirants for the 'happy state,' are in much the same pickle. Certes they are dressed more like English ladies than the men are like English gentlemen; yet would they be rejected at even a village flower show, while an appear ance in the Row in their present guise would infallibly lead to their speedy confinement in the nearest lunatic asylum. But withal they are happy these outcasts. For there is flirting, and fun, and frolic; there are love passages, and there is chaff; there is billing and cooing, and there is serious conversation; and, later on, when the picnic has been digested, the soda and B. consumed, the Manilla smoked out, and the cool evening breeze set in at sundown, there is dancing to the strains of a detachment of the band; and the ' twinkling feet' show little sign of lassitute or failing energies. And as the gloom of night comes on with all the startling rapidity of eastern olimes, Chinese lanterns glimmer out from the overhanging branches, casting a weird fantastic glamour over the hurrying dancers; and the stolid natives, standing onlooking with folded arms, marvel at the brazen impudence—so they are pleased to term it, when they do not use stronger expressions—of the English ladies, and wonder how long such conduct will be permitted to scandalise the world. Away from the dance I wander through the pleasant moonlit walks of the deserted garden, and, as I come out suddenly on a vista of the cold, placid lake, lying fair and white under the beams of the Queen of the Night, I see walking before me towards the milky wavelets, Charlie Gordon of ' Ours,' and linked on his arm the fair form of Bell Aylmer, the pet of the cantonment. Holiday time indeed for them —holiday of body and spirit—and as they glide on to the water's brink, unconscious, they bear with them the blessing and best wishes of the only observer. Softly I turn away and join the dancing revellers ; nor is it until the wine-crowned supper in the old marble palace is more than half-finished that I can find it in my heart to disturb that first lovewalk. And in the dead of the night we start away on our road home—our glorious holiday over—rather inclined to be noisy, mayhap, and waking up the drtary echoes of the Indian small hours with wild songs of the far home-land, with wild shouts of the Englishman of youth and health after a day's pleasuring, and with the somewhat branditied strains of a regimental band never remarkable for ultra-sobriety. Two months later—for things come to pass very speeddy in India—l stood, wet, trembling, and aguecold by the side of a grave with two feet of water covering its bottom ; and as the storm of the rainy season beat down on my uncovered face, and the parson droned away at his dreary job, there was a deep sadness at my heart, and more than one tear on my face, for I was ' assisting ' at the funeral of Charlie and Bell Gordon, who died, as the legend on the double coffin said, ' one fortnight after marriage, aged respectively twenty-four and eighteen years, of Asiatic cholera. May they rest' in peace !' And that was the end of the first holiday dream evolved from my cigarette and coffee, mellowed with the tuneful anodyne of Clarence Dewdrop's jingles. * * * * ' Who's for the shore ?' Ah ! who wasn't for the shore after those long weary weeks at sea ? And accordingly we bounced into the boats—some fifteen or twenty of us—and were speedily landed in that fussy little attempt at a seaport—James' ToAvn, St Helena. A mad race up the street- oh, the luxury of once mote stretching one's legs on Mother Earth !—to the chief hotel, for an English lunch, with English beer on draught, and English people (mixed, however, with more than their share of coal-black niggers) to

stare at us to their hearts' content, as wild young savages on their way home from ' India's burning shore.' A wild scamper on wilder ponies away up over the breezy downs leading to Longwood, with the wild blood beating furiously at our hearts under the excitement, the unwonted exercise, and the fresh returning joy born of green fields, and rich gardens, and copses, . and woods, and hills, and streams, and all the thousand-and-one delights of a deliverance from the sea aad a restoration to dry land, even though for only a few short hours. Racing over the glorious springy sward; tearing at breakneck speed down this valley, up that hill; pummelling the nags over fences that no nigger hand could have ever made them face ; dashing over ditches and drains helter skelter ; shrieking, shouting, yelling, in the torrent flow of long pent-up spirits—away we flew, far more like a pack of crazed schoolboys on their first day at home, than officers and gentlemen of her Most Gracious Majesty's service. Longwood—that lonesome living tomb of the mightiest conqueror of modern days—was ' done' as I venture to say it has seldom been done before, albeit there was no disrespect whatever shown to the memory of the Great Soldier of Fortune. And then came a glorious gallop over the level, a welter in which successful frolic was the only prize, a sweeps in which all depended £on the men—nothing on the nags, which were, indeed, if truth must out, but sorry specimens of horse flesh, though wild and devilish in temper and tricks as any circus mule. And a wayside inn ! absolutely a genuine wayside inn ! —with beer on tap, and a barmaid, and fresh eggs, and butter, and 'soft tommy,'—and fruit—just like England ; and oh ! did we not eat and drink and be merry, for to-morrow we must go to sea again ! So we carried on until ' A general thought within us wrought, That 'twas getting time to go,' and up we mounted again to pursue our journey, and ' Our way'o'er the hills to find.-' - Gaily caracoled we along by a different route to that which we had come, taking the farther side of the Long Valley, that we might view the evil-smelling James' Town in all aspects. Thus came we to be trapped in an orchard kept by a female harpy in the guise of a deceitful lady, who invited us to enter and inspect her wares. Simple Simonlike, we accepted the proffered hospitality, ate to bursting point—some of us, I fear—and were astounded when about to depart at the production of a tremendous bill, which we were requested to settle forthwith. But even when haggling over it were ye rewarded ; for one of us spied, hidden under some trees, a certain young gentleman out of whom we were anxious to take a rise. He was no other than the chaplain on board our ship—an unpleasant glimmering ' light,' who gave himself airs—and with him was pretty Minnie Carey, whom he had induced to accompany him with, no doubt, nefarious intentions of love-making. Then paid we our bill with glee; but we ' took it out of that young cleric. A moment's consultation produced our plan of action. A bribe, and hey preste ? the gig in which the couple had come up from James' Town was driving quietly but rapidly away by a back road—empty. Then we discoursed that innocent young couple on the approach of nierht, on the length and dangers of the road, on the melancholy robberies and murders for which the island was, in the reign on earth of the Man in the Moon, notorioua j in fact, we ' established a funk,' and then suggested an immediate start for the port. Boldly did they call for their trap—but, lo you ! it was no?i est; In deep commiseration we suggested, in our mercy, that the couple should ride on two of the wickedest little nags we had, whose former cavaliers could well walk into the town. That parson yellowed visibly. He had all the voyage through been boasting of his horsemanship ; now he had to give proof of it. A side saddle waa borrowed from the harpy—at a figure; jolly Minnie Carey, a stunning little equestrienne, hopped on to it like a robin on to a twig; while Sir Pardoner, with rueful visage, scrambled up on a beast possessed of at least seven devils to his one interior economy. In our wild racings over the hills we had discovered that this animal, on being touched in flank with "the point of a stick, stopped dead short and flung both his huuL legs violently in the air—an amiable trait in his character, of which we proceeded to avail ourselves. Firstly, we urged speed; secondly, we gradually worked it up to racing pitch, our noble equestrian holding on like grim death fore and aft to the pummel and cantel of the saddle; thirdly, on the steepest part of a nice rolling grassy hill we touched our trap beast on the flank: he pulled up, pitched his hind quarters heavenward, and in a second Sir Pardoner had flown over his ears like a rocket from a tube, and was rolling gracefully down hill in a limpsy ball, screaming dismally the while in the direction of Jamer Town below! Minnie Carey—was it in girlish nature to do otherwise ?—nearly fell from her saddle Avith suppressed laughter, but would have pulled up had we not tickled. her nag to keep him going, and the whole party swept past that crumpled up evangelical at full gallop, he lying swearfally on the sward, where his roll had come to an end against a jutting rock. Sir Pardoner epoke no more of horsemanship; nor did he ever pickup lost ground with dainty^Minnie Carey, who, soon after our arrival in England, married—another fellow; neither did that airful 'light' forbid the banns. So ended the second holiday dream, born of tobacco, coffee, and jingles. To he continued.