The Romany Rye

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Whether the rage for gentility is most prevalent amongst the upper,
middle, or lower classes it is difficult to say; the priest in the
text seems to think that it is exhibited in the most decided manner
in the middle class; it is the writer's opinion, however, that in
no class is it more strongly developed than in the lower: what
they call being well-born goes a great way amongst them, but the
possession of money much farther, whence Mr. Flamson's influence
over them. Their rage against, and scorn for, any person who by
his courage and talents has advanced himself in life, and still
remains poor, are indescribable; "he is no better than ourselves,"
they say, "why should he be above us?"--for they have no conception
that anybody has a right to ascendency over themselves except by
birth or money. This feeling amongst the vulgar has been, to a
certain extent, the bane of two services, naval and military. The
writer does not make this assertion rashly; he observed this
feeling at work in the army when a child, and he has good reason
for believing that it was as strongly at work in the navy at the
same time, and is still as prevalent in both. Why are not brave
men raised from the ranks? is frequently the cry; why are not brave
sailors promoted? The Lord help brave soldiers and sailors who are
promoted; they have less to undergo from the high airs of their
brother officers, and those are hard enough to endure, than from
the insolence of the men. Soldiers and sailors promoted to command
are said to be in general tyrants; in nine cases out of ten, when
they are tyrants, they have been obliged to have recourse to
extreme severity in order to protect themselves from the insolence
and mutinous spirit of the men,--"He is no better than ourselves:
shoot him, bayonet him, or fling him overboard!" they say of some
obnoxious individual raised above them by his merit. Soldiers and
sailors, in general, will bear any amount of tyranny from a lordly
sot, or the son of a man who has "plenty of brass"--their own term-
-but will mutiny against the just orders of a skilful and brave
officer who "is no better than themselves." There was the affair
of the "Bounty," for example: Bligh was one of the best seamen
that ever trod deck, and one of the bravest of men; proofs of his
seamanship he gave by steering, amidst dreadful weather, a deeply-
laden boat for nearly four thousand miles over an almost unknown
ocean--of his bravery, at the fight of Copenhagen, one of the most
desperate ever fought, of which after Nelson he was the hero: he
was, moreover, not an unkind man; but the crew of the "Bounty"
mutinied against him, and set him half naked in an open boat, with
certain of his men who remained faithful to him, and ran away with
the ship. Their principal motive for doing so was an idea, whether
true or groundless the writer cannot say, that Bligh was "no better
than themselves;" he was certainly neither a lord's illegitimate,
nor possessed of twenty thousand pounds. The writer knows what he
is writing about, having been acquainted in his early years with an
individual who was turned adrift with Bligh, and who died about the
year '22, a lieutenant in the navy, in a provincial town in which
the writer was brought up. The ringleaders in the mutiny were two
scoundrels, Christian and Young, who had great influence with the
crew, because they were genteelly connected. Bligh, after leaving
the "Bounty," had considerable difficulty in managing the men who
had shared his fate, because they considered themselves "as good
men as he," notwithstanding, that to his conduct and seamanship
they had alone to look, under Heaven, for salvation from the
ghastly perils that surrounded them. Bligh himself, in his
journal, alludes to this feeling. Once, when he and his companions
landed on a desert island, one of them said, with a mutinous look,
that he considered himself "as good a man as he;" Bligh, seizing a
cutlass, called upon him to take another and defend himself,
whereupon the man said that Bligh was going to kill him, and made
all manner of concessions; now why did this fellow consider himself
as good a man as Bligh? Was he as good a seaman? no, nor a tenth
part as good. As brave a man? no, nor a tenth part as brave; and
of these facts he was perfectly well aware, but bravery and
seamanship stood for nothing with him, as they still stand with
thousands of his class; Bligh was not genteel by birth or money,
therefore Bligh was no better than himself. Had Bligh, before he
sailed, got a twenty-thousand pound prize in the lottery, he would
have experienced no insolence from this fellow, for there would
have been no mutiny in the "Bounty." "He is our betters," the crew
would have said, "and it is our duty to obey him."

The wonderful power of gentility in England is exemplified in
nothing more than in what it is producing amongst Jews, Gypsies,
and Quakers. It is breaking up their venerable communities. All
the better, some one will say. Alas! alas! It is making the
wealthy Jews forsake the synagogue for the opera-house, or the
gentility chapel, in which a disciple of Mr. Platitude, in a white
surplice, preaches a sermon at noon-day from a desk, on each side
of which is a flaming taper. It is making them abandon their
ancient literature, their "Mischna," their "Gemara," their "Zohar,"
for gentility novels, "The Young Duke," the most unexceptionably
genteel book ever written, being the principal favourite. It makes
the young Jew ashamed of the young Jewess, it makes her ashamed of
the young Jew. The young Jew marries an opera-dancer, or if the
dancer will not have him, as is frequently the case, the cast-off
Miss of the Honourable Spencer So-and-so. It makes the young
Jewess accept the honourable offer of a cashiered lieutenant of the
Bengal Native Infantry; or, if such a person does not come forward,
the dishonourable offer of a cornet of a regiment of crack hussars.
It makes poor Jews, male and female, forsake the synagogue for the
sixpenny theatre or penny hop; the Jew to take up with an Irish
female of loose character, and the Jewess with a musician of the
Guards, or the Tipperary servant of Captain Mulligan. With respect
to the gypsies, it is making the women what they never were before-
-harlots; and the men what they never were before--careless fathers
and husbands. It has made the daughter of Ursula the chaste take
up with the base drummer of a wild-beast show. It makes Gorgiko
Brown, the gypsy man, leave his tent and his old wife, of an
evening, and thrust himself into society which could well dispense
with him. "Brother," said Mr. Petulengro to the Romany Rye, after
telling him many things connected with the decadence of gypsyism,
"there is one Gorgiko Brown, who, with a face as black as a tea-
kettle, wishes to be mistaken for a Christian tradesman; he goes
into the parlour of a third-rate inn of an evening, calls for rum
and water, and attempts to enter into conversation with the company
about politics and business; the company flout him and give him the
cold shoulder, or perhaps complain to the landlord, who comes and
asks him what business he has in the parlour, telling him if he
wants to drink to go into the tap-room, and perhaps collars him and
kicks him out, provided he refuses to move." With respect to the
Quakers, it makes the young people like the young Jews, crazy after
gentility diversions, worship, marriages, or connections, and makes
old Pease do what it makes Gorgiko Brown do, thrust himself into
society which could well dispense with him, and out of which he is
not kicked, because unlike the gypsy he is not poor. The writer
would say much more on these points, but want of room prevents him;
he must therefore request the reader to have patience until he can
lay before the world a pamphlet, which he has been long meditating,
to be entitled "Remarks on the strikingly similar Effects which a
Love for Gentility has produced, and is producing, amongst Jews,
Gypsies, and Quakers."

The Priest in the book has much to say on the subject of this
gentility-nonsense; no person can possibly despise it more
thoroughly than that very remarkable individual seems to do, yet he
hails its prevalence with pleasure, knowing the benefits which will
result from it to the church of which he is the sneering slave.
"The English are mad after gentility," says he; "well, all the
better for us; their religion for a long time past has been a plain
and simple one, and consequently by no means genteel; they'll quit
it for ours, which is the perfection of what they admire; with
which Templars, Hospitalers, mitred abbots, Gothic abbeys, long-
drawn aisles, golden censers, incense, et cetera, are connected;
nothing, or next to nothing, of Christ, it is true, but weighed in
the balance against gentility, where will Christianity be? why,
kicking against the beam--ho! ho!" And in connection with the
gentility-nonsense, he expatiates largely, and with much contempt,
on a species of literature by which the interests of his church in
England have been very much advanced--all genuine priests have a
thorough contempt for everything which tends to advance the
interests of their church--this literature is made up of pseudo
Jacobitism, Charlie o'er the waterism, or nonsense about Charlie
o'er the water. And the writer will now take the liberty of saying
a few words about it on his own account.

CHAPTER VI

On Scotch Gentility-Nonsense--Charlie o'er the Waterism.

Of the literature just alluded to Scott was the inventor. It is
founded on the fortunes and misfortunes of the Stuart family, of
which Scott was the zealous defender and apologist, doing all that
in his power lay to represent the members of it as noble,
chivalrous, high-minded, unfortunate princes; though, perhaps, of
all the royal families that ever existed upon the earth, this
family was the worst. It was unfortunate enough, it is true; but
it owed its misfortunes entirely to its crimes, viciousness, bad
faith, and cowardice. Nothing will be said of it here until it
made its appearance in England to occupy the English throne.

The first of the family which we have to do with, James, was a
dirty, cowardly miscreant, of whom the less said the better. His
son, Charles the First, was a tyrant--exceedingly cruel and
revengeful, but weak and dastardly; he caused a poor fellow to be
hanged in London, who was not his subject, because he had heard
that the unfortunate creature had once bitten his own glove at
Cadiz, in Spain, at the mention of his name; and he permitted his
own bull-dog, Strafford, to be executed by his own enemies, though
the only crime of Strafford was, that he had barked furiously at
those enemies, and had worried two or three of them, when Charles
shouted, "Fetch 'em." He was a bitter, but yet a despicable enemy,
and the coldest and most worthless of friends; for though he always
hoped to be able, some time or other, to hang his enemies, he was
always ready to curry favour with them, more especially if he could
do so at the expense of his friends. He was the haughtiest, yet
meanest of mankind. He once caned a young nobleman for appearing
before him in the drawing-room not dressed exactly according to the
court etiquette; yet he condescended to flatter and compliment him
who, from principle, was his bitterest enemy, namely, Harrison,
when the republican colonel was conducting him as a prisoner to
London. His bad faith was notorious; it was from abhorrence of the
first public instance which he gave of his bad faith, his breaking
his word to the Infanta of Spain, that the poor Hiberno-Spaniard
bit his glove at Cadiz; and it was his notorious bad faith which
eventually cost him his head; for the Republicans would gladly have
spared him, provided they could put the slightest confidence in any
promise, however solemn, which he might have made to them. Of
them, it would be difficult to say whether they most hated or
despised him. Religion he had none. One day he favoured Popery;
the next, on hearing certain clamours of the people, he sent his
wife's domestics back packing to France, because they were Papists.
Papists, however, should make him a saint, for he was certainly the
cause of the taking of Rochelle.

His son, Charles the Second, though he passed his youth in the
school of adversity, learned no other lesson from it than the
following one--take care of yourself, and never do an action,
either good or bad, which is likely to bring you into any great
difficulty; and this maxim he acted up to as soon as he came to the
throne. He was a Papist, but took especial care not to acknowledge
his religion, at which he frequently scoffed, till just before his
last gasp, when he knew that he could lose nothing, and hoped to
gain everything by it. He was always in want of money, but took
care not to tax the country beyond all endurable bounds; preferring
to such a bold and dangerous course, to become the pensioner of
Louis, to whom, in return for his gold, he sacrificed the honour
and interests of Britain. He was too lazy and sensual to delight
in playing the part of a tyrant himself; but he never checked
tyranny in others save in one instance. He permitted beastly
butchers to commit unmentionable horrors on the feeble, unarmed,
and disunited Covenanters of Scotland, but checked them when they
would fain have endeavoured to play the same game on the numerous
united, dogged, and warlike Independents of England. To show his
filial piety, he bade the hangman dishonour the corpses of some of
his father's judges, before whom, when alive, he ran like a
screaming hare; but permitted those who had lost their all in
supporting his father's cause, to pine in misery and want. He
would give to a painted harlot a thousand pounds for a loathsome
embrace, and to a player or buffoon a hundred for a trumpery pun,
but would refuse a penny to the widow or orphan of an old Royalist
soldier. He was the personification of selfishness; and as he
loved and cared for no one, so did no one love or care for him. So
little had he gained the respect or affection of those who
surrounded him, that after his body had undergone an after-death
examination, parts of it were thrown down the sinks of the palace,
to become eventually the prey of the swine and ducks of
Westminster.

His brother, who succeeded him, James the Second, was a Papist, but
sufficiently honest to acknowledge his Popery, but upon the whole,
he was a poor creature; though a tyrant, he was cowardly, had he
not been a coward he would never have lost his throne. There were
plenty of lovers of tyranny in England who would have stood by him,
provided he would have stood by them, and would, though not
Papists, have encouraged him in his attempt to bring back England
beneath the sway of Rome, and perhaps would eventually have become
Papists themselves; but the nation raising a cry against him, and
his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, invading the country, he
forsook his friends, of whom he had a host, but for whom he cared
little--left his throne, for which he cared a great deal--and
Popery in England, for which he cared yet more, to their fate, and
escaped to France, from whence, after taking a little heart, he
repaired to Ireland, where he was speedily joined by a gallant army
of Papists whom he basely abandoned at the Boyne, running away in a
most lamentable condition, at the time when by showing a little
courage he might have enabled them to conquer. This worthy, in his
last will, bequeathed his heart to England--his right arm to
Scotland--and his bowels to Ireland. What the English and Scotch
said to their respective bequests is not known, but it is certain
that an old Irish priest, supposed to have been a great-grand-uncle
of the present Reverend Father Murtagh, on hearing of the bequest
to Ireland, fell into a great passion, and having been brought up
at "Paris and Salamanca," expressed his indignation in the
following strain:- "Malditas sean tus tripas! teniamos bastante del
olor de tus tripas al tiempo de tu nuida dela batalla del Boyne!"

His son, generally called the Old Pretender, though born in
England, was carried in his infancy to France, where he was brought
up in the strictest principles of Popery, which principles,
however, did not prevent him becoming (when did they ever prevent
any one?) a worthless and profligate scoundrel; there are some
doubts as to the reality of his being a son of James, which doubts
are probably unfounded, the grand proof of his legitimacy being the
thorough baseness of his character. It was said of his father that
he could speak well, and it may be said of him that he could write
well, the only thing he could do which was worth doing, always
supposing that there is any merit in being able to write. He was
of a mean appearance, and, like his father, pusillanimous to a
degree. The meanness of his appearance disgusted, and his
pusillanimity discouraged the Scotch when he made his appearance
amongst them in the year 1715, some time after the standard of
rebellion had been hoisted by Mar. He only stayed a short time in
Scotland, and then, seized with panic, retreated to France, leaving
his friends to shift for themselves as they best could. He died a
pensioner of the Pope.

The son of this man, Charles Edward, of whom so much in later years
has been said and written, was a worthless ignorant youth, and a
profligate and illiterate old man. When young, the best that can
be said of him is, that he had occasionally springs of courage,
invariably at the wrong time and place, which merely served to lead
his friends into inextricable difficulties. When old, he was
loathsome and contemptible to both friend and foe. His wife
loathed him, and for the most terrible of reasons; she did not
pollute his couch, for to do that was impossible--he had made it so
vile; but she betrayed it, inviting to it not only Alfieri the
Filthy, but the coarsest grooms. Doctor King, the warmest and
almost last adherent of his family, said, that there was not a vice
or crime of which he was not guilty; as for his foes, they scorned
to harm him even when in their power. In the year 1745 he came
down from the Highlands of Scotland, which had long been a focus of
rebellion. He was attended by certain clans of the Highlands,
desperadoes used to free-bootery from their infancy, and,
consequently, to the use of arms, and possessed of a certain
species of discipline; with these he defeated at Prestonpans a body
of men called soldiers, but who were in reality peasants and
artizans, levied about a month before, without discipline or
confidence in each other, and who were miserably massacred by the
Highland army; he subsequently invaded England, nearly destitute of
regular soldiers, and penetrated as far as Derby, from which place
he retreated on learning that regular forces which had been hastily
recalled from Flanders were coming against him, with the Duke of
Cumberland at their head; he was pursued, and his rearguard
overtaken and defeated by the dragoons of the duke at Clifton, from
which place the rebels retreated in great confusion across the Eden
into Scotland, where they commenced dancing Highland reels and
strathspeys on the bank of the river, for joy at their escape,
whilst a number of wretched girls, paramours of some of them, were
perishing in the waters of the swollen river in an attempt to
follow them; they themselves passed over by eighties and by
hundreds, arm in arm, for mutual safety, without the loss of a man,
but they left the poor paramours to shift for themselves, nor did
any of these canny people after passing the stream dash back to
rescue a single female life,--no, they were too well employed upon
the bank in dancing strathspeys to the tune of "Charlie o'er the
water." It was, indeed, Charlie o'er the water, and canny
Highlanders o'er the water, but where were the poor prostitutes
meantime? IN THE WATER.

The Jacobite farce, or tragedy, was speedily brought to a close by
the battle of Culloden; there did Charlie wish himself back again
o'er the water, exhibiting the most unmistakable signs of
pusillanimity; there were the clans cut to pieces, at least those
who could be brought to the charge, and there fell Giles Mac Bean,
or as he was called in Gaelic, Giliosa Mac Beathan, a kind of
giant, six feet four inches and a quarter high, "than whom," as his
wife said in a coronach she made upon him, "no man who stood at
Cuiloitr was taller"--Giles Mac Bean the Major of the clan Cattan--
a great drinker--a great fisher--a great shooter, and the champion
of the Highland host.

The last of the Stuarts was a cardinal.

Such were the Stuarts, such their miserable history. They were
dead and buried in every sense of the word until Scott resuscitated
them--how? by the power of fine writing and by calling to his aid
that strange divinity, gentility. He wrote splendid novels about
the Stuarts, in which he represents them as unlike what they really
were as the graceful and beautiful papillon is unlike the hideous
and filthy worm. In a word, he made them genteel, and that was
enough to give them paramount sway over the minds of the British
people. The public became Stuart-mad, and everybody, specially the
women, said, "What a pity it was that we hadn't a Stuart to
govern." All parties, Whig, Tory, or Radical, became Jacobite at
heart, and admirers of absolute power. The Whigs talked about the
liberty of the subject, and the Radicals about the rights of man
still, but neither party cared a straw for what it talked about,
and mentally swore that, as soon as by means of such stuff they
could get places, and fill their pockets, they would be as Jacobite
as the Jacobs themselves. As for Tories, no great change in them
was necessary; everything favouring absolutism and slavery being
congenial to them. So the whole nation, that is, the reading part
of the nation, with some exceptions, for thank God there has always
been some salt in England, went over the water to Charlie. But
going over to Charlie was not enough, they must, or at least a
considerable part of them, go over to Rome too, or have a hankering
to do so. As the Priest sarcastically observes in the text, "As
all the Jacobs were Papists, so the good folks who through Scott's
novels admire the Jacobs must be Papists too." An idea got about
that the religion of such genteel people as the Stuarts must be the
climax of gentility, and that idea was quite sufficient. Only let
a thing, whether temporal or spiritual, be considered genteel in
England, and if it be not followed it is strange indeed; so Scott's
writings not only made the greater part of the nation Jacobite, but
Popish.

Here some people will exclaim--whose opinions remain sound and
uncontaminated--what you say is perhaps true with respect to the
Jacobite nonsense at present so prevalent being derived from
Scott's novels, but the Popish nonsense, which people of the
genteeler classes are so fond of, is derived from Oxford. We sent
our sons to Oxford nice honest lads, educated in the principles of
the Church of England, and at the end of the first term they came
home puppies, talking Popish nonsense, which they had learned from
the pedants to whose care we had entrusted them; ay, not only
Popery but Jacobitism, which they hardly carried with them from
home, for we never heard them talking Jacobitism before they had
been at Oxford; but now their conversation is a farrago of Popish
and Jacobite stuff--"Complines and Claverse." Now, what these
honest folks say is, to a certain extent, founded on fact; the
Popery which has overflowed the land during the last fourteen or
fifteen years, has come immediately from Oxford, and likewise some
of the Jacobitism, Popish and Jacobite nonsense, and little or
nothing else, having been taught at Oxford for about that number of
years. But whence did the pedants get the Popish nonsense with
which they have corrupted youth? Why, from the same quarter from
which they got the Jacobite nonsense with which they have
inoculated those lads who were not inoculated with it before--
Scott's novels. Jacobitism and Laudism, a kind of half Popery, had
at one time been very prevalent at Oxford, but both had been long
consigned to oblivion there, and people at Oxford cared as little
about Laud as they did about the Pretender. Both were dead and
buried there, as everywhere else, till Scott called them out of
their graves, when the pedants of Oxford hailed both--ay, and the
Pope, too, as soon as Scott had made the old fellow fascinating,
through particular novels, more especially the "Monastery" and
"Abbot." Then the quiet, respectable, honourable Church of England
would no longer do for the pedants of Oxford; they must belong to a
more genteel church--they were ashamed at first to be downright
Romans--so they would be Lauds. The pale-looking, but exceedingly
genteel non-juring clergyman in Waverley was a Laud; but they soon
became tired of being Lauds, for Laud's Church, gew-gawish and
idolatrous as it was, was not sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous
for them, so they must be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still
calling themselves Church-of-England men, in order to batten on the
bounty of the church which they were betraying, and likewise have
opportunities of corrupting such lads as might still resort to
Oxford with principles uncontaminated.

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