INTRODUCTION TO THE GIANT CHRONICLES
Once upon a time, that is to say, in this our time, — the exact
year, month, and day are of no matter, — there dwelt in the city of
London a substantial citizen, who united in his single person the
dignities of wholesale fruiterer, alderman, common-councilman, and
member of the worshipful Company of Patten-makers; who had
superadded to these extraordinary distinctions the important post
and title of Sheriff, and who at length, and to crown all, stood
next in rotation for the high and honourable office of Lord Mayor.
He was a very substantial citizen indeed. His face was like the
full moon in a fog, with two little holes punched out for his eyes,
a very ripe pear stuck on for his nose, and a wide gash to serve
for a mouth. The girth of his waistcoat was hung up and lettered
in his tailor's shop as an extraordinary curiosity. He breathed
like a heavy snorer, and his voice in speaking came thickly forth,
as if it were oppressed and stifled by feather-beds. He trod the
ground like an elephant, and eat and drank like — like nothing but
an alderman, as he was.
This worthy citizen had risen to his great eminence from small
beginnings. He had once been a very lean, weazen little boy, never
dreaming of carrying such a weight of flesh upon his bones or of
money in his pockets, and glad enough to take his dinner at a
baker's door, and his tea at a pump. But he had long ago forgotten
all this, as it was proper that a wholesale fruiterer, alderman,
common-councilman, member of the worshipful Company of Patten-makers, past sheriff, and, above all, a Lord Mayor that was to be,
should; and he never forgot it more completely in all his life than
on the eighth of November in the year of his election to the great
golden civic chair, which was the day before his grand dinner at
Guildhall.
It happened that as he sat that evening all alone in his counting-house, looking over the bill of fare for next day, and checking off
the fat capons in fifties, and the turtle-soup by the hundred
quarts, for his private amusement, — it happened that as he sat
alone occupied in these pleasant calculations, a strange man came
in and asked him how he did, adding, “If I am half as much changed
as you, sir, you have no recollection of me, I am sure.”
The strange man was not over and above well dressed, and was very
far from being fat or rich-looking in any sense of the word, yet he
spoke with a kind of modest confidence, and assumed an easy,
gentlemanly sort of an air, to which nobody but a rich man can
lawfully presume. Besides this, he interrupted the good citizen
just as he had reckoned three hundred and seventy-two fat capons,
and was carrying them over to the next column; and as if that were
not aggravation enough, the learned recorder for the city of London
had only ten minutes previously gone out at that very same door,
and had turned round and said, “Good night, my lord.” Yes,
he had said, ‘my lord;’ — he, a man of birth and education,
of the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law, — he
who had an uncle in the House of Commons, and an aunt almost but not
quite in the House of Lords (for she had married a feeble peer, and made
him vote as she liked), — he, this man, this learned recorder, had
said, ‘my lord.’ “I'll not wait till to-morrow to give
you your title, my Lord Mayor,” says he, with a bow and a smile;
“you are Lord Mayor de facto, if not de jure.
Good night, my lord!rdquo;
The Lord Mayor elect thought of this, and turning to the stranger,
and sternly bidding him “go out of his private
counting-house,” brought forward the three hundred and seventy-two
fat capons, and went on with his account.
“Do you remember,” said the other, stepping forward, —
“Do you remember little Joe Toddyhigh?”
The port wine fled for a moment from the fruiterer's nose as he
muttered, “Joe Toddyhigh! What about Joe Toddyhigh?”
“I am Joe Toddyhigh,” cried the visitor.
“Look at me, look hard at me, — harder, harder. You know me now?
You know little Joe again? What a happiness to us both, to meet the
very night before your grandeur! O! give me your hand, Jack, — both
hands, — both, for the sake of old times.”
“You pinch me, sir. You're a-hurting of me,” said the
Lord Mayor elect pettishly. “Don't, — suppose anybody should
come, — Mr. Toddyhigh, sir.”
“Mr. Toddyhigh!” repeated the other ruefully.
“Oh! don't bother,” said the Lord Mayor elect, scratching
his head. “Dear me! Why, I thought you was dead. What a fellow
you are!”
Indeed, it was a pretty state of things, and worthy the tone of
vexation and disappointment in which the Lord Mayor spoke. Joe
Toddyhigh had been a poor boy with him at Hull, and had oftentimes
divided his last penny and parted his last crust to relieve his
wants; for though Joe was a destitute child in those times, he was
as faithful and affectionate in his friendship as ever man of might
could be. They parted one day to seek their fortunes in different
directions. Joe went to sea, and the now wealthy citizen begged
his way to London, They separated with many tears, like foolish
fellows as they were, and agreed to remain fast friends, and if
they lived, soon to communicate again.
When he was an errand-boy, and even in the early days of his
apprenticeship, the citizen had many a time trudged to the Post-office to ask if there were any letter from poor little Joe, and
had gone home again with tears in his eyes, when he found no news
of his only friend. The world is a wide place, and it was a long
time before the letter came; when it did, the writer was forgotten.
It turned from white to yellow from lying in the Post-office with
nobody to claim it, and in course of time was torn up with five
hundred others, and sold for waste-paper. And now at last, and
when it might least have been expected, here was this Joe Toddyhigh
turning up and claiming acquaintance with a great public character,
who on the morrow would be cracking jokes with the Prime Minister
of England, and who had only, at any time during the next twelve
months, to say the word, and he could shut up Temple Bar, and make
it no thoroughfare for the king himself!
“I am sure I don't know what to say, Mr. Toddyhigh,” said
the Lord Mayor elect; “I really don't. It's very inconvenient.
I'd sooner have given twenty pound, — it's very inconvenient,
really.”
A thought had come into his mind, that perhaps his old friend might
say something passionate which would give him an excuse for being
angry himself. No such thing. Joe looked at him steadily, but very
mildly, and did not open his lips.
“Of course I shall pay you what I owe you,” said the Lord
Mayor elect, fidgeting in his chair. “You lent me — I think it
was a shilling or some small coin — when we parted company, and that of
course I shall pay with good interest. I can pay my way with any man,
and always have done. If you look into the Mansion House the day after
to-morrow, — some time after dusk, — and ask for my private clerk,
you'll find he has a draft for you. I haven't got time to say anything
more just now, unless,” — he hesitated, for, coupled with a
strong desire to glitter for once in all his glory in the eyes of his
former companion, was a distrust of his appearance, which might be more
shabby than he could tell by that feeble light, — “unless you'd
like to come to the dinner to-morrow. I don't mind your having this
ticket, if you like to take it. A great many people would give their
ears for it, I can tell you.”
His old friend took the card without speaking a word, and instantly
departed. His sunburnt face and gray hair were present to the
citizen's mind for a moment; but by the time he reached three
hundred and eighty-one fat capons, he had quite forgotten him.
Joe Toddyhigh had never been in the capital of Europe before, and
he wandered up and down the streets that night amazed at the number
of churches and other public buildings, the splendour of the shops,
the riches that were heaped up on every side, the glare of light in
which they were displayed, and the concourse of people who hurried
to and fro, indifferent, apparently, to all the wonders that
surrounded them. But in all the long streets and broad squares,
there were none but strangers; it was quite a relief to turn down a
by-way and hear his own footsteps on the pavement. He went home to
his inn, thought that London was a dreary, desolate place, and felt
disposed to doubt the existence of one
true-hearted man in the whole worshipful Company of Patten-makers.
Finally, he went to bed, and dreamed that he and the Lord Mayor elect
were boys again.
He went next day to the dinner; and when in a burst of light and
music, and in the midst of splendid decorations and surrounded by
brilliant company, his former friend appeared at the head of the
Hall, and was hailed with shouts and cheering, he cheered and
shouted with the best, and for the moment could have cried. The
next moment he cursed his weakness in behalf of a man so changed
and selfish, and quite hated a jolly-looking old gentleman opposite
for declaring himself in the pride of his heart a Patten-maker.
As the banquet proceeded, he took more and more to heart the rich
citizen's unkindness; and that, not from any envy, but because he
felt that a man of his state and fortune could all the better
afford to recognise an old friend, even if he were poor and
obscure. The more he thought of this, the more lonely and sad he
felt. When the company dispersed and adjourned to the ball-room,
he paced the hall and passages alone, ruminating in a very
melancholy condition upon the disappointment he had experienced.
It chanced, while he was lounging about in this moody state, that
he stumbled upon a flight of stairs, dark, steep, and narrow, which
he ascended without any thought about the matter, and so came into
a little music-gallery, empty and deserted. From this elevated
post, which commanded the whole hall, he amused himself in looking
down upon the attendants who were clearing away the fragments of
the feast very lazily, and drinking out of all the bottles and
glasses with most commendable perseverance.
His attention gradually relaxed, and he fell fast asleep.
When he awoke, he thought there must be something the matter with
his eyes; but, rubbing them a little, he soon found that the
moonlight was really streaming through the east window, that the
lamps were all extinguished, and that he was alone. He listened,
but no distant murmur in the echoing passages, not even the
shutting of a door, broke the deep silence; he groped his way down
the stairs, and found that the door at the bottom was locked on the
other side. He began now to comprehend that he must have slept a
long time, that he had been overlooked, and was shut up there for
the night.
His first sensation, perhaps, was not altogether a comfortable one,
for it was a dark, chilly, earthy-smelling place, and something too
large, for a man so situated, to feel at home in. However, when
the momentary consternation of his surprise was over, he made light
of the accident, and resolved to feel his way up the stairs again,
and make himself as comfortable as he could in the gallery until
morning. As he turned to execute this purpose, he heard the clocks
strike three.
Any such invasion of a dead stillness as the striking of distant
clocks, causes it to appear the more intense and insupportable when
the sound has ceased. He listened with strained attention in the
hope that some clock, lagging behind its fellows, had yet to
strike, — looking all the time into the profound darkness before
him, until it seemed to weave itself into a black tissue, patterned
with a hundred reflections of his own eyes. But the bells had all
pealed out their warning for that once, and the gust of wind that
moaned through the place seemed cold and heavy with their iron
breath.
The time and circumstances were favourable to reflection. He tried
to keep his thoughts to the current, unpleasant though it was, in
which they had moved all day, and to think with what a romantic
feeling he had looked forward to shaking his old friend by the hand
before he died, and what a wide and cruel difference there was
between the meeting they had had, and that which he had so often
and so long anticipated. Still, he was disordered by waking to
such sudden loneliness, and could not prevent his mind from running
upon odd tales of people of undoubted courage, who, being shut up
by night in vaults or churches, or other dismal places, had scaled
great heights to get out, and fled from silence as they had never
done from danger. This brought to his mind the moonlight through
the window, and bethinking himself of it, he groped his way back up
the crooked stairs, — but very stealthily, as though he were
fearful of being overheard.
He was very much astonished when he approached the gallery again,
to see a light in the building: still more so, on advancing
hastily and looking round, to observe no visible source from which
it could proceed. But how much greater yet was his astonishment at
the spectacle which this light revealed.
The statues of the two giants, Gog and Magog, each above fourteen
feet in height, those which succeeded to still older and more
barbarous figures, after the Great Fire of London, and which stand
in the Guildhall to this day, were endowed with life and motion.
These guardian genii of the City had quitted their pedestals, and
reclined in easy attitudes in the great stained glass window.
Between them was an ancient cask, which seemed to be full of
wine; for the younger Giant, clapping his huge hand upon it, and
throwing up his mighty leg, burst into an exulting laugh, which
reverberated through the hall like thunder.
Joe Toddyhigh instinctively stooped down, and, more dead than
alive, felt his hair stand on end, his knees knock together, and a
cold damp break out upon his forehead. But even at that minute
curiosity prevailed over every other feeling, and somewhat
reassured by the good-humour of the Giants and their apparent
unconsciousness of his presence, he crouched in a corner of the
gallery, in as small a space as he could, and, peeping between the
rails, observed them closely.
