Reprinted Pieces
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Charles Dickens >> Reprinted Pieces
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In regard of the potter, popularly so called (says the plate), you
don't mean to say you have forgotten that a workman called a
Thrower is the man under whose hand this grey dough takes the
shapes of the simpler household vessels as quickly as the eye can
follow? You don't mean to say you cannot call him up before you,
sitting, with his attendant woman, at his potter's wheel - a disc
about the size of a dinner-plate, revolving on two drums slowly or
quickly as he wills - who made you a complete breakfast-set for a
bachelor, as a good-humoured little off-hand joke? You remember
how he took up as much dough as he wanted, and, throwing it on his
wheel, in a moment fashioned it into a teacup - caught up more clay
and made a saucer - a larger dab and whirled it into a teapot -
winked at a smaller dab and converted it into the lid of the
teapot, accurately fitting by the measurement of his eye alone -
coaxed a middle-sized dab for two seconds, broke it, turned it over
at the rim, and made a milkpot - laughed, and turned out a slop-
basin - coughed, and provided for the sugar? Neither, I think, are
you oblivious of the newer mode of making various articles, but
especially basins, according to which improvement a mould revolves
instead of a disc? For you MUST remember (says the plate) how you
saw the mould of a little basin spinning round and round, and how
the workmen smoothed and pressed a handful of dough upon it, and
how with an instrument called a profile (a piece of wood,
representing the profile of a basin's foot) he cleverly scraped and
carved the ring which makes the base of any such basin, and then
took the basin off the lathe like a doughy skull-cap to be dried,
and afterwards (in what is called a green state) to be put into a
second lathe, there to be finished and burnished with a steel
burnisher? And as to moulding in general (says the plate), it
can't be necessary for me to remind you that all ornamental
articles, and indeed all articles not quite circular, are made in
moulds. For you must remember how you saw the vegetable dishes,
for example, being made in moulds; and how the handles of teacups,
and the spouts of teapots, and the feet of tureens, and so forth,
are all made in little separate moulds, and are each stuck on to
the body corporate, of which it is destined to form a part, with a
stuff called 'slag,' as quickly as you can recollect it. Further,
you learnt - you know you did - in the same visit, how the
beautiful sculptures in the delicate new material called Parian,
are all constructed in moulds; how, into that material, animal
bones are ground up, because the phosphate of lime contained in
bones makes it translucent; how everything is moulded, before going
into the fire, one-fourth larger than it is intended to come out of
the fire, because it shrinks in that proportion in the intense
heat; how, when a figure shrinks unequally, it is spoiled -
emerging from the furnace a misshapen birth; a big head and a
little body, or a little head and a big body, or a Quasimodo with
long arms and short legs, or a Miss Biffin with neither legs nor
arms worth mentioning.
And as to the Kilns, in which the firing takes place, and in which
some of the more precious articles are burnt repeatedly, in various
stages of their process towards completion, - as to the Kilns (says
the plate, warming with the recollection), if you don't remember
THEM with a horrible interest, what did you ever go to Copeland's
for? When you stood inside of one of those inverted bowls of a
Pre-Adamite tobacco-pipe, looking up at the blue sky through the
open top far off, as you might have looked up from a well, sunk
under the centre of the pavement of the Pantheon at Rome, had you
the least idea where you were? And when you found yourself
surrounded, in that dome-shaped cavern, by innumerable columns of
an unearthly order of architecture, supporting nothing, and
squeezed close together as if a Pre-Adamite Samson had taken a vast
Hall in his arms and crushed it into the smallest possible space,
had you the least idea what they were? No (says the plate), of
course not! And when you found that each of those pillars was a
pile of ingeniously made vessels of coarse clay - called Saggers -
looking, when separate, like raised-pies for the table of the
mighty Giant Blunderbore, and now all full of various articles of
pottery ranged in them in baking order, the bottom of each vessel
serving for the cover of the one below, and the whole Kiln rapidly
filling with these, tier upon tier, until the last workman should
have barely room to crawl out, before the closing of the jagged
aperture in the wall and the kindling of the gradual fire; did you
not stand amazed to think that all the year round these dread
chambers are heating, white hot - and cooling - and filling - and
emptying - and being bricked up - and broken open - humanly
speaking, for ever and ever? To be sure you did! And standing in
one of those Kilns nearly full, and seeing a free crow shoot across
the aperture a-top, and learning how the fire would wax hotter and
hotter by slow degrees, and would cool similarly through a space of
from forty to sixty hours, did no remembrance of the days when
human clay was burnt oppress you? Yes. I think so! I suspect
that some fancy of a fiery haze and a shortening breath, and a
growing heat, and a gasping prayer; and a figure in black
interposing between you and the sky (as figures in black are very
apt to do), and looking down, before it grew too hot to look and
live, upon the Heretic in his edifying agony - I say I suspect
(says the plate) that some such fancy was pretty strong upon you
when you went out into the air, and blessed God for the bright
spring day and the degenerate times!
After that, I needn't remind you what a relief it was to see the
simplest process of ornamenting this 'biscuit' (as it is called
when baked) with brown circles and blue trees - converting it into
the common crockery-ware that is exported to Africa, and used in
cottages at home. For (says the plate) I am well persuaded that
you bear in mind how those particular jugs and mugs were once more
set upon a lathe and put in motion; and how a man blew the brown
colour (having a strong natural affinity with the material in that
condition) on them from a blowpipe as they twirled; and how his
daughter, with a common brush, dropped blotches of blue upon them
in the right places; and how, tilting the blotches upside down, she
made them run into rude images of trees, and there an end.
And didn't you see (says the plate) planted upon my own brother
that astounding blue willow, with knobbed and gnarled trunk, and
foliage of blue ostrich feathers, which gives our family the title
of 'willow pattern'? And didn't you observe, transferred upon him
at the same time, that blue bridge which spans nothing, growing out
from the roots of the willow; and the three blue Chinese going over
it into a blue temple, which has a fine crop of blue bushes
sprouting out of the roof; and a blue boat sailing above them, the
mast of which is burglariously sticking itself into the foundations
of a blue villa, suspended sky-high, surmounted by a lump of blue
rock, sky-higher, and a couple of billing blue birds, sky-highest -
together with the rest of that amusing blue landscape, which has,
in deference to our revered ancestors of the Cerulean Empire, and
in defiance of every known law of perspective, adorned millions of
our family ever since the days of platters? Didn't you inspect the
copper-plate on which my pattern was deeply engraved? Didn't you
perceive an impression of it taken in cobalt colour at a
cylindrical press, upon a leaf of thin paper, streaming from a
plunge-bath of soap and water? Wasn't the paper impression
daintily spread, by a light-fingered damsel (you KNOW you admired
her!), over the surface of the plate, and the back of the paper
rubbed prodigiously hard - with a long tight roll of flannel, tied
up like a round of hung beef - without so much as ruffling the
paper, wet as it was? Then (says the plate), was not the paper
washed away with a sponge, and didn't there appear, set off upon
the plate, THIS identical piece of Pre-Raphaelite blue distemper
which you now behold? Not to be denied! I had seen all this - and
more. I had been shown, at Copeland's, patterns of beautiful
design, in faultless perspective, which are causing the ugly old
willow to wither out of public favour; and which, being quite as
cheap, insinuate good wholesome natural art into the humblest
households. When Mr. and Mrs. Sprat have satisfied their material
tastes by that equal division of fat and lean which has made their
MENAGE immortal; and have, after the elegant tradition, 'licked the
platter clean,' they can - thanks to modern artists in clay - feast
their intellectual tastes upon excellent delineations of natural
objects.
This reflection prompts me to transfer my attention from the blue
plate to the forlorn but cheerfully painted vase on the sideboard.
And surely (says the plate) you have not forgotten how the outlines
of such groups of flowers as you see there, are printed, just as I
was printed, and are afterwards shaded and filled in with metallic
colours by women and girls? As to the aristocracy of our order,
made of the finer clay-porcelain peers and peeresses; - the slabs,
and panels, and table-tops, and tazze; the endless nobility and
gentry of dessert, breakfast, and tea services; the gemmed perfume
bottles, and scarlet and gold salvers; you saw that they were
painted by artists, with metallic colours laid on with camel-hair
pencils, and afterwards burnt in.
And talking of burning in (says the plate), didn't you find that
every subject, from the willow pattern to the landscape after
Turner - having been framed upon clay or porcelain biscuit - has to
be glazed? Of course, you saw the glaze - composed of various
vitreous materials - laid over every article; and of course you
witnessed the close imprisonment of each piece in saggers upon the
separate system rigidly enforced by means of fine-pointed
earthenware stilts placed between the articles to prevent the
slightest communication or contact. We had in my time - and I
suppose it is the same now - fourteen hours' firing to fix the
glaze and to make it 'run' all over us equally, so as to put a good
shiny and unscratchable surface upon us. Doubtless, you observed
that one sort of glaze - called printing-body - is burnt into the
better sort of ware BEFORE it is printed. Upon this you saw some
of the finest steel engravings transferred, to be fixed by an after
glazing - didn't you? Why, of course you did!
Of course I did. I had seen and enjoyed everything that the plate
recalled to me, and had beheld with admiration how the rotatory
motion which keeps this ball of ours in its place in the great
scheme, with all its busy mites upon it, was necessary throughout
the process, and could only be dispensed with in the fire. So,
listening to the plate's reminders, and musing upon them, I got
through the evening after all, and went to bed. I made but one
sleep of it - for which I have no doubt I am also indebted to the
plate - and left the lonely Dodo in the morning, quite at peace
with it, before the bandy-legged baby was up.
OUR HONOURABLE FRIEND
WE are delighted to find that he has got in! Our honourable friend
is triumphantly returned to serve in the next Parliament. He is
the honourable member for Verbosity - the best represented place in
England.
Our honourable friend has issued an address of congratulation to
the Electors, which is worthy of that noble constituency, and is a
very pretty piece of composition. In electing him, he says, they
have covered themselves with glory, and England has been true to
herself. (In his preliminary address he had remarked, in a
poetical quotation of great rarity, that nought could make us rue,
if England to herself did prove but true.)
Our honourable friend delivers a prediction, in the same document,
that the feeble minions of a faction will never hold up their heads
any more; and that the finger of scorn will point at them in their
dejected state, through countless ages of time. Further, that the
hireling tools that would destroy the sacred bulwarks of our
nationality are unworthy of the name of Englishman; and that so
long as the sea shall roll around our ocean-girded isle, so long
his motto shall be, No surrender. Certain dogged persons of low
principles and no intellect, have disputed whether anybody knows
who the minions are, or what the faction is, or which are the
hireling tools and which the sacred bulwarks, or what it is that is
never to be surrendered, and if not, why not? But, our honourable
friend the member for Verbosity knows all about it.
Our honourable friend has sat in several parliaments, and given
bushels of votes. He is a man of that profundity in the matter of
vote-giving, that you never know what he means. When he seems to
be voting pure white, he may be in reality voting jet black. When
he says Yes, it is just as likely as not - or rather more so - that
he means No. This is the statesmanship of our honourable friend.
It is in this, that he differs from mere unparliamentary men. YOU
may not know what he meant then, or what he means now; but, our
honourable friend knows, and did from the first know, both what he
meant then, and what he means now; and when he said he didn't mean
it then, he did in fact say, that he means it now. And if you mean
to say that you did not then, and do not now, know what he did mean
then, or does mean now, our honourable friend will be glad to
receive an explicit declaration from you whether you are prepared
to destroy the sacred bulwarks of our nationality.
Our honourable friend, the member for Verbosity, has this great
attribute, that he always means something, and always means the
same thing. When he came down to that House and mournfully boasted
in his place, as an individual member of the assembled Commons of
this great and happy country, that he could lay his hand upon his
heart, and solemnly declare that no consideration on earth should
induce him, at any time or under any circumstances, to go as far
north as Berwick-upon-Tweed; and when he nevertheless, next year,
did go to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and even beyond it, to Edinburgh; he
had one single meaning, one and indivisible. And God forbid (our
honourable friend says) that he should waste another argument upon
the man who professes that he cannot understand it! 'I do NOT,
gentlemen,' said our honourable friend, with indignant emphasis and
amid great cheering, on one such public occasion. 'I do NOT,
gentlemen, I am free to confess, envy the feelings of that man
whose mind is so constituted as that he can hold such language to
me, and yet lay his head upon his pillow, claiming to be a native
of that land,
Whose march is o'er the mountain-wave,
Whose home is on the deep!
(Vehement cheering, and man expelled.)
When our honourable friend issued his preliminary address to the
constituent body of Verbosity on the occasion of one particular
glorious triumph, it was supposed by some of his enemies, that even
he would be placed in a situation of difficulty by the following
comparatively trifling conjunction of circumstances. The dozen
noblemen and gentlemen whom our honourable friend supported, had
'come in,' expressly to do a certain thing. Now, four of the dozen
said, at a certain place, that they didn't mean to do that thing,
and had never meant to do it; another four of the dozen said, at
another certain place, that they did mean to do that thing, and had
always meant to do it; two of the remaining four said, at two other
certain places, that they meant to do half of that thing (but
differed about which half), and to do a variety of nameless wonders
instead of the other half; and one of the remaining two declared
that the thing itself was dead and buried, while the other as
strenuously protested that it was alive and kicking. It was
admitted that the parliamentary genius of our honourable friend
would be quite able to reconcile such small discrepancies as these;
but, there remained the additional difficulty that each of the
twelve made entirely different statements at different places, and
that all the twelve called everything visible and invisible, sacred
and profane, to witness, that they were a perfectly impregnable
phalanx of unanimity. This, it was apprehended, would be a
stumbling-block to our honourable friend.
The difficulty came before our honourable friend, in this way. He
went down to Verbosity to meet his free and independent
constituents, and to render an account (as he informed them in the
local papers) of the trust they had confided to his hands - that
trust which it was one of the proudest privileges of an Englishman
to possess - that trust which it was the proudest privilege of an
Englishman to hold. It may be mentioned as a proof of the great
general interest attaching to the contest, that a Lunatic whom
nobody employed or knew, went down to Verbosity with several
thousand pounds in gold, determined to give the whole away - which
he actually did; and that all the publicans opened their houses for
nothing. Likewise, several fighting men, and a patriotic group of
burglars sportively armed with life-preservers, proceeded (in
barouches and very drunk) to the scene of action at their own
expense; these children of nature having conceived a warm
attachment to our honourable friend, and intending, in their
artless manner, to testify it by knocking the voters in the
opposite interest on the head.
Our honourable friend being come into the presence of his
constituents, and having professed with great suavity that he was
delighted to see his good friend Tipkisson there, in his working-
dress - his good friend Tipkisson being an inveterate saddler, who
always opposes him, and for whom he has a mortal hatred - made them
a brisk, ginger-beery sort of speech, in which he showed them how
the dozen noblemen and gentlemen had (in exactly ten days from
their coming in) exercised a surprisingly beneficial effect on the
whole financial condition of Europe, had altered the state of the
exports and imports for the current half-year, had prevented the
drain of gold, had made all that matter right about the glut of the
raw material, and had restored all sorts of balances with which the
superseded noblemen and gentlemen had played the deuce - and all
this, with wheat at so much a quarter, gold at so much an ounce,
and the Bank of England discounting good bills at so much per
cent.! He might be asked, he observed in a peroration of great
power, what were his principles? His principles were what they
always had been. His principles were written in the countenances
of the lion and unicorn; were stamped indelibly upon the royal
shield which those grand animals supported, and upon the free words
of fire which that shield bore. His principles were, Britannia and
her sea-king trident! His principles were, commercial prosperity
co-existently with perfect and profound agricultural contentment;
but short of this he would never stop. His principles were, these,
- with the addition of his colours nailed to the mast, every man's
heart in the right place, every man's eye open, every man's hand
ready, every man's mind on the alert. His principles were these,
concurrently with a general revision of something - speaking
generally - and a possible readjustment of something else, not to
be mentioned more particularly. His principles, to sum up all in a
word, were, Hearths and Altars, Labour and Capital, Crown and
Sceptre, Elephant and Castle. And now, if his good friend
Tipkisson required any further explanation from him, he (our
honourable friend) was there, willing and ready to give it.
Tipkisson, who all this time had stood conspicuous in the crowd,
with his arms folded and his eyes intently fastened on our
honourable friend: Tipkisson, who throughout our honourable
friend's address had not relaxed a muscle of his visage, but had
stood there, wholly unaffected by the torrent of eloquence: an
object of contempt and scorn to mankind (by which we mean, of
course, to the supporters of our honourable friend); Tipkisson now
said that he was a plain man (Cries of 'You are indeed!'), and that
what he wanted to know was, what our honourable friend and the
dozen noblemen and gentlemen were driving at?
Our honourable friend immediately replied, 'At the illimitable
perspective.'
It was considered by the whole assembly that this happy statement
of our honourable friend's political views ought, immediately, to
have settled Tipkisson's business and covered him with confusion;
but, that implacable person, regardless of the execrations that
were heaped upon him from all sides (by which we mean, of course,
from our honourable friend's side), persisted in retaining an
unmoved countenance, and obstinately retorted that if our
honourable friend meant that, he wished to know what THAT meant?
It was in repelling this most objectionable and indecent
opposition, that our honourable friend displayed his highest
qualifications for the representation of Verbosity. His warmest
supporters present, and those who were best acquainted with his
generalship, supposed that the moment was come when he would fall
back upon the sacred bulwarks of our nationality. No such thing.
He replied thus: 'My good friend Tipkisson, gentlemen, wishes to
know what I mean when he asks me what we are driving at, and when I
candidly tell him, at the illimitable perspective, he wishes (if I
understand him) to know what I mean?' - 'I do!' says Tipkisson,
amid cries of 'Shame' and 'Down with him.' 'Gentlemen,' says our
honourable friend, 'I will indulge my good friend Tipkisson, by
telling him, both what I mean and what I don't mean. (Cheers and
cries of 'Give it him!') Be it known to him then, and to all whom
it may concern, that I do mean altars, hearths, and homes, and that
I don't mean mosques and Mohammedanism!' The effect of this home-
thrust was terrific. Tipkisson (who is a Baptist) was hooted down
and hustled out, and has ever since been regarded as a Turkish
Renegade who contemplates an early pilgrimage to Mecca. Nor was he
the only discomfited man. The charge, while it stuck to him, was
magically transferred to our honourable friend's opponent, who was
represented in an immense variety of placards as a firm believer in
Mahomet; and the men of Verbosity were asked to choose between our
honourable friend and the Bible, and our honourable friend's
opponent and the Koran. They decided for our honourable friend,
and rallied round the illimitable perspective.
It has been claimed for our honourable friend, with much appearance
of reason, that he was the first to bend sacred matters to
electioneering tactics. However this may be, the fine precedent
was undoubtedly set in a Verbosity election: and it is certain that
our honourable friend (who was a disciple of Brahma in his youth,
and was a Buddhist when we had the honour of travelling with him a
few years ago) always professes in public more anxiety than the
whole Bench of Bishops, regarding the theological and doxological
opinions of every man, woman, and child, in the United Kingdom.
As we began by saying that our honourable friend has got in again
at this last election, and that we are delighted to find that he
has got in, so we will conclude. Our honourable friend cannot come
in for Verbosity too often. It is a good sign; it is a great
example. It is to men like our honourable friend, and to contests
like those from which he comes triumphant, that we are mainly
indebted for that ready interest in politics, that fresh enthusiasm
in the discharge of the duties of citizenship, that ardent desire
to rush to the poll, at present so manifest throughout England.
When the contest lies (as it sometimes does) between two such men
as our honourable friend, it stimulates the finest emotions of our
nature, and awakens the highest admiration of which our heads and
hearts are capable.
It is not too much to predict that our honourable friend will be
always at his post in the ensuing session. Whatever the question
be, or whatever the form of its discussion; address to the crown,
election petition, expenditure of the public money, extension of
the public suffrage, education, crime; in the whole house, in
committee of the whole house, in select committee; in every
parliamentary discussion of every subject, everywhere: the
Honourable Member for Verbosity will most certainly be found.
OUR SCHOOL
WE went to look at it, only this last Midsummer, and found that the
Railway had cut it up root and branch. A great trunk-line had
swallowed the playground, sliced away the schoolroom, and pared off
the corner of the house: which, thus curtailed of its proportions,
presented itself, in a green stage of stucco, profilewise towards
the road, like a forlorn flat-iron without a handle, standing on
end.
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