University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.

Katharine Philips.

The house wherein Mr. Allison realized by fair dealing
and frugality the modest fortune which enabled him to repurchase
the homestead of his fathers, is still a Tobacconist's,
and has continued to be so from “the palmy days”

of that trade, when King James vainly endeavored, by the
expression of his royal dislike, to discountenance the newly-imported
practice of smoking; and Joshua Sylvester thundered
from Mount Helicon a Volley of Holy Shot, thinking
that thereby “Tobacco” should be “battered, and the Pipes
shattered, about their ears that idly idolize so base and barbarous
a weed, or at least-wise overlove so loathsome vanity.”
[23] For he said, —
Yet it was not long before the dead and unsavory odor of
that weed, to which a Parisian was made to say that “sea-coal
smoke seemed a very Portugal perfume,” prevailed as
much in the raiment of the more coarsely clad part of the
community, as the scent of lavender among those who were
clothed in fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: and
it had grown so much in fashion, that it was said children
“began to play with broken pipes, instead of corals, to make
way for their teeth.”

Louis XIV. endeavored just as ineffectually to discourage
the use of snuff-taking. His valets de chambre were obliged
to renounce it when they were appointed to their office;
and the Duke of Harcourt was supposed to have died of
apoplexy in consequence of having, to please his Majesty,
left off at once a habit which he had carried to excess.

I know not through what intermediate hands the business
at No. 113 has passed, since the name of Allison was withdrawn
from the firm; nor whether Mr. Evans, by whom it
is now carried on there, is in any way related by descent
with that family. Matters of no greater importance to most

men have been made the subject of much antiquarian investigation;
and they who busy themselves in such investigations
must not be said to be ill-employed, for they find
harmless amusement in the pursuit, and sometimes put up a
chance truth of which others, soon or late, discover the application.
The house has at this time a more antiquated
appearance than any other in that part of the street, though
it was modernized some forty or fifty years after Mr. Bacon's
friend left it. The first floor then projected several
feet farther over the street than at present, and the second
several feet farther over the first; and the windows, which
still extend the whole breadth of the front, were then composed
of small casement panes. But in the progress of
those improvements which are now carrying on in the city
with as much spirit as at the western end of the metropolis,
and which have almost reached Mr. Evans's door, it cannot
be long before the house will be either wholly removed, or
so altered as no longer to be recognized.

The present race of Londoners little know what the
appearance of the city was a century ago; — their own city,
I was about to have said; but it was the city of their great-grandfathers,
not theirs, from which the elder Allisons retired
in the year 1746. At that time the kennels (as in
Paris) were in the middle of the street, and there were
no footpaths; spouts projected the rain-water in streams,
against which umbrellas, if umbrellas had been then in use,
could have afforded no defence; and large signs, such as are
now only to be seen at country inns, were suspended before
every shop,[24] from posts which impeded the way, or from
iron supports strongly fixed into the front of the house.
The swinging of one of these broad signs in a high wind,
and the weight of the iron on which it acted, sometimes

brought the wall down; and it is recorded that one front-fall
of this kind in Fleet Street maimed several persons,
and killed “two young ladies, a cobbler, and the King's
jeweller.”

The sign at No. 113 was an Indian Chief smoking the
calumet. Mr. Allison had found it there; and when it
became necessary that a new one should be substituted, he
retained the same figure, — though, if he had been to
choose, he would have greatly preferred the head of Sir
Walter Raleigh, by whom, according to the common belief,
he supposed tobacco had been introduced into this country.
The Water-Poet imputed it to the Devil himself, and published

Mr. Allison used to shake his head at such libellous aspersions.
Raleigh was a great favorite with him, and held,
indeed, in especial respect, though not as the Patron of his
old trade, as St. Crispin is of the Gentle Craft, yet as the
founder of his fortune. He thought it proper, therefore,
that he should possess Sir Walter's History of the World,
though he had never found inclination, or summoned up
resolution, to undertake its perusal.

Common sense has been defined by Sir Egerton Brydges,
“to mean nothing more than an uneducated judgment, arising
from a plain and coarse understanding exercised upon
common concerns, and rendered effective rather by experience,
than by any regular process of the intellectual powers.
If this,” he adds, “be the proper meaning of that quality,
we cannot wonder that books are little fitted for its cultivation.”
Except that there was no coarseness in his nature,
this would apply to Mr Allison. He had been bred up with

the notion, that it behoved him to attend to his business,
and that reading formed to part of it. Nevertheless he had
acquired some liking for books, by looking casually now and
then over the leaves of those unfortunate volumes with
which the shop was continually supplied for its daily consumption.

went there; and many a tome of old law, old physic, and
old divinity; old history as well; books of which many
were at all times rubbish; some which, though little better,
would now sell for more shillings by the page than they
then cost pence by the pound; and others, the real value
of which is perhaps as little known now, as it was then.
Such of these as in latter years caught his attention, he now
and then rescued from the remorseless use to which they
had been condemned. They made a curious assortment
with his wife's books of devotion or amusement wherewith
she had sometimes beguiled, and sometimes soothed,
the weary hours of long and frequent illness. Among
the former were Scott's “Christian Life,” Bishop Bayly's
“Practice of Piety,” Bishop Taylor's “Holy Living and
Dying,” Drelincourt on Death, with De Foe's lying story
of Mrs. Veal's ghost as a puff preliminary, and the Night
Thoughts. Among the latter were Cassandra, the Guardian
and Spectator, Mrs. Rowe's Letters, Richardson's Novels,
and Pomfret's Poems.

Mrs. Allison had been able to do little for her daughter
of that little, which, if her state of health and spirits had
permitted, she might have done; this, therefore, as well as
the more active duties of the household, devolved upon Elizabeth,
who was of a better constitution in mind as well

as body. Elizabeth, before she went to reside with her
brother, had acquired all the accomplishments which a
domestic education in the country could in those days
impart. Her book of receipts, culinary and medical, might
have vied with the “Queen's Cabinet Unlocked.” The
spelling indeed was such as ladies used in the reign of
Queen Anne, and in the old time before her, when every
one spelt as she thought fit; but it was written in a well-proportioned
Italian hand, with fine down-strokes and broad
up-ones, equally distinct and beautiful. Her speech was
good Yorkshire, that is to say, good provincial English, not
the worse for being provincial, and a little softened by five-and-twenty
years' residence in London. Some sisters, who
in those days kept a boarding-school of the first repute, in
one of the midland counties, used to say, when they spoke
of an old pupil, “her went to school to we.” Miss Allison's
language was not of this kind, — it savored of rusticity, not
of ignorance; and where it was peculiar, as in the metropolis,
it gave raciness to the conversation of an agreeable
woman.

She had been well instructed in ornamental work as well
as ornamental penmanship. Unlike most fashions, this had
continued to be in fashion because it continued to be of use;
though no doubt some of the varieties which Taylor, the
Water-Poet, enumerates in his praise of the Needle, might
have been then as little understood as now: —

There was a book published in the Water-Poet's days,

with the title of “School House for the Needle”; it consisted
of two volumes in oblong quarto, that form being
suited to its plates “of sundry sorts of patterns and examples”;
and it contained a “Dialogue in Verse between
Diligence and Sloth.” If Betsey Allison had studied in
this “School House,” she could not have been a greater
proficient with the needle than she became under her
Aunt's teaching: nor would she have been more
if she had gone through a course of practical lessons in one
of the Pastry Schools which are common in Scotland, but
were tried without success in London, about the middle of
the last century. Deborah partook of these instructions at
her father's desire. In all that related to the delicacies of
a country table, she was glad to be instructed, because it
enabled her to assist her friend; but it appeared strange to
her that Mr. Bacon should wish her to learn ornamental
work, for which she neither had, nor could forsee any use.
But if the employment had been less agreeable than she
found it in such company, she would never have disputed,
nor questioned his will.

For so small a household, a more active or cheerful
one could nowhere have been found than at the Grange.
Ben Jonson reckoned among the happinesses of Sir Robert
Wroth that of being “with unbought provision blest.” This
blessing Mr. Allison enjoyed in as great a degree as his
position in life permitted; he neither killed his own meat
nor grew his own corn; but he had his poultry-yard, his
garden and his orchard; he baked his own bread, brewed
his own beer, and was supplied with milk, cream, and butter
from his own dairy. It is a fact not unworthy of notice,
that the most intelligent farmers in the neighborhood of
London are persons who have taken to farming as a business,

because of their strong inclination for rural employments;
one of the very best in Middlesex, when the Survey
of that County was published by the Board of Agriculture,
had been a tailor. Mr. Allison did not attempt to manage
the land which he kept in his own hands; but he had a
trusty bailiff, and soon acquired knowledge enough for
superintending what was done. When he retired from
trade he gave over all desire for gain, which indeed he had
never desired for his own sake; he sought now only wholesome
occupation, and those comforts which may be said to
have a moral zest. They might be called luxuries, if that
word could be used in a virtuous sense without something so
to qualify it. It is a curious instance of the modification
which words undergo in different countries, that luxury has
always a sinful acceptation in the southern languages of
Europe, and lust an innocent one in the northern; the
harmless meaning of the latter word, we have retained in
the verb to list.

Every one who looks back upon the scenes of his youth,
has one spot upon which the last light of the evening sunshine
rests. The Grange was that spot in Deborah's retrospect.