4 OCTOBER 1873, Page 21

THE SHUTTLECOCK PAPERS.*

WE do not mean to disparage these lively papers when we say that they certainly are the very lightest reading we were ever entertained with. There is not, in the proper sense of those words, an idea, a thought, or an opinion to be found anywhere in the volume, and the descriptions are the slightest possible sketches of simplest acts in well known places and under circumstances within the experience of most of us. S'ensations are the things with which the author seems most commonly imbued, and which he is greatest in describing with a picturesque and humorous vividness. Our feeling in laying down the volume,—it should be laid down frequently and returned to at distant intervals,—is of having had a gossip with, or rather having heard a gentle chatter from a clever, humorous young Sybarite, in the intervals of his

puffs at his pipe, under a big tree on a lawn on a summer after-

noon, as described by our author in the paper, "Ninety in the Shade." It is mixed sense and nonsense from a mind full of pleasurable recollections, too lazy during the prattle to be morbid about truth, intensely sensitive to comfort and discomfort, but refined by poetic feeling and an appreciation of beauty, and fired occasionally by a manly impulse towards exertion. If a book may be tested by the standard itself proposes, the Shuttlecock Papers are a success ; for it is modestly sent forth only as "a book for an idle hour," "simply intended to amuse," and to "be the means of whiling away dull moments." And these the book is or can accomplish. Mr. Ashby-Sterry, however, is fit for better work than this, if we are not mistaken. His perception is quick and delicate, his humour lively, his experience in travel not incon- siderable; why not weave these into a story more enduring and more powerful than these airy trifles ? Some faults we notice which are certainly not insuperable. His exaggerations often pass the limits of humour, and become outrageous and absurd ; and one of his defects is the tendency to drain a well of illustration completely dry, fetching the last drops from an im- mense distance, and turning pleasant satisfaction into wearied repletion. The following extract from an account of a walk in a north-easterly gale will illustrate both these positions at once :— " It is no affectation to call this walk in a stiff north-easterly gale a cruise. You have to study the wind just as if you were in a sailing vessel, you have to double reef your top-sails ; it is necessary for you to belay your hat with a stout halyard, you are obliged to tack up back streets and occasionally to run into taverns under stress of weather. The brisk breeze and the salt spray scudding across the road make you feel intensely nautical. You are half a mind to chew a quid of tobacco in order that you may expectorate in true sailor-like fashion. You have • The Shuttlecock Papers. By J. Ashby-Sterry. London : 'Maley Brothers. Mk an intense desire to say something about shivering year timbers, and an inconceivable disposition to talk about stun-sail booms, belaying your sprit-sail keel, holy-stoning your scuppers, reefing your binnacle, clewing up your bow-sprit, splicing the main gaff, letting go your mizen hatchway, porting your main truck, baling out your bobstay, coiling up your mainyard, paying off your jib-boom, and making your companion ladder taut. You have an unaccountable inclination to request every one either to ' Avast ! ' or Belay !' and to salute every man you meet as ' Messmate ' or 'My hearty!' with the superadded question of 'What cheer ? ' You think that to claw off a lee shore must be an indescribable luxury, and fancy that to brail up your jury- mast must be the summum bonum of all earthly happiness. You are battered about 'like a shuttlecock, you are blown about like a straw, you stagger like a drunken man, your clothes feel as if they would blow right off you every minute or split into ribands. You have visions of your coat being blown over the West Pier, your trousers whirled madly along the Esplanade, your hat wafted under the wheels of a passing fly, and your waistcoat careering madly up Preston Street, whilst your moustachios tug violently at your lips till you think they will be torn up by the roots, and you will never see them any more."

Had our author been contented with the two first sentences, or at most added a very choice selection of the rest, we should have been amused with the passage and pleased with the playful picture of his sensations ; but worked to death as it is, we are obliged to grow grumpy and to be annoyed with its silliness. Mr. Ashby-Sterry has, too, a trick of beginning and ending a series of paragraphs with the same form of words —a very tiresome affectation, and seldom effective, suggesting the Irishman's entreaty to the audience, when the sentimental man was Ringing the refrain, " Give that wreath to me," " Arrah, then, if you plase, will no one give him the wreath till he makes his mind say ?" Here we have "Let the coals glow, let the embers blaze, let the logs crackle, let the sparks glitter, let the flames roar, and the merry gas-jets sing their plaintive lullaby, and let me dream and ponder o'er the fancies of firelight," repeated, ad nauseam, at the beginning of each paragraph ; and here, again, seventeen in succession end with the question, " What is the use of wishing?" The same want of simplicity appears in other ways. In the paper entitled "Sun Pictures," it is pretended, of course, that the sketches are photographs, in which there is no harm ; but we object to the little affectation of breaking off abruptly with, "I am very sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but the collodion has entirely peeled off the corner of the plate, and I cannot show you any more of this Italian sun-picture ;" or "This sun-picture, ladies and gentlemen, is scarcely sufficiently developed yet, but I fancy it will be a very good one when it is perfected."

But though Mr. Ashby-Sterry's papers are so slight—we are amused with his dignifying them with the name of articles—and notwithstanding the exaggerations and repetitions, many of them are withotit doubt not merely amusing—though this is far their most marked feature—but also fanciful and lifelike, and their generally soothing and dreamy effect is much enhanced by the absolute absence of anything that requires thought. Here and there we gain 'bits of information, as in the paper called "With Hocky Dockly," in which odd corners of old London are unearthed for our entertainment ; or in that entitled "The Rows of Great Yarmouth," for which we should be really grateful, had we any chance of visiting that apparently quaintest of quaint English towns. We must give our readers a glimpse of this paper about so curious a place, though Mr. Ashby-Sterry somewhat spoils it by breaking out into jokes, when we would fain have only his picturesque description :—

" The Rows do not consist of half-a-dozen show streets which can be easily explored : they comprise the whole of the old town of Yarmouth: that is to say the town proper as formerly bounded by the fortifications. I believe I am somewhat understating the number of these alleys, for they are nothing more, when I give the total as one hundred and fifty- six. They rim parallel to one another, or nearly so, and are bounded by the quay on the river Yare on the west and King Street on the east ; they are intersected by a street which runs nearly their whole length.

It is only when one comes to Rows bearing such names as Ramp, Globe, Gallon Can, Kitty Witches, Hans Hering, Castle, George and Dragon, and Conga that one can have a distinct idea of the quaintness and picturesqueness of these extraordinary passages. In former times all tho Rows were named, and it was only at the beginning of the present century that they were numbered. This is greatly to be re- gretted, as No. 10, Hans Hering Row, sounds certainly more in harmony with the quaint characteristics of the place than No. 10, Row 89. Many of these Rows are so narrow that you can easily touch both sides of the way as you pass along. Imagine being able to shako hands with two friends living on opposite sides of the street at the same time. Fancy if your lady-love only lived over the way, the rapture with which you could press her pouting lips from the upper window whilst her father, a brave old salt in the mercantile marine,' was smoking. his pipe in serene unconsciousness on the ground floor. This might easily be done, as many of the houses all but touch in the upper stories. Kitty Witches Row gradually narrows as you proceed; so narrow is it at the exit that a bread-shouldered man has to turn sideways in order to get out. What the inhabitants did in the days of hoops and crino- lines I am unable to say. Wheelbarrows cannot travel, in this limited space comfortably, and for heavy work the inhabitants employ an

ancient form of cart, which is long and narrow, with the wheels under

the body, in order to take up as little room as possible . There is scarcely one of these Rows down which you may walk without finding much to entertain you. From their entrances they appear at their worst, and there are some that at first glance you would scarcely venture to inspect. They are all tolerably clean, though viewed from the outside many of them have the aspect of a Drury Lane court ; this, however, disappears as you proceed. They appear to be well drained, there are no offensive smells such as you encounter in the back streets of a Con- tinental town. I am informed that all the inhabitants are very healthy, ' and though I explored nearly every nook and corner, Imet with nothing but politeness and a desire to impart information on the part of the natives. Most of these Rows have houses on both sides : some of them on only one. In the latter case the houses are faced by a wall which generally stands very much out of the perpendicular, a wall which has bosses, and bumps, and swellings, and cracks. Sometimes it possesses a delicious combination of red brick overgrown with yellow and green_ moss and white fungus : it is frequently supported by stout iron braces kept in their places by rusty rivets of a gigantic size, or propped up by stalwart beams from the opposite houses. I found myself under one of these walls, and gazed up to see if there was any chance of the whole affair coming down upon my head, and I saw long tangled grass growing on the top of it, and gigantic elms stretching their branches over the pathway. Opposite is a quaint window, with mullions' of ancient green glass, and a doorway which looks as if it had been made out of the sternpost of a man-of-war. You drive under a timbered house built right across this Row, and you will become conscious of a pleasant smell of brewing."

The most amusing papers are those—as usual with our cynical and not too charitable natures—which have a spice of human miseries in them, such as those descriptive of the delights of a spring cleaning, and a house full of painters and decorators ; or the miseries of mid-Channel on a stormy night ; on the pursuit of a hat in an easterly gale on the Brighton Parade ; on the search for a musical air for a young lady, or about a stroll with a St. Bernard :— " If you ever were the possessor of a big dog, and were in the habit of taking him out for a walk, especially if you deemed it more prudent to have him in a chain, you would have a distinct and painful idea of what being i taken in tow really means. Beg the possessor of a big St. Bernard, who is quite capable of knocking me down and gobbling me up whenever he pleases, I can speak with authority on this subject. I try and make people think, though I know they do not believe me, that I take the brute out for a walk. It is nothing of the kind ; he takes me out for a walk. A walk, indeed! It is a run, and a pretty hard one too, accompanied with a severe contest for mastery between dog and man, generally terminating in favour of the former.

Let us, by the way, warn Mr. Ashby-Sterry against the danger of falling into imitation of Mr. Burnand, which is apparently imminent, as witness, amongst others, the following passage from "Hunting the air "

" Miss Clarry was charmed with the song when I sang it over to her. 'It's very nice, indeed,' said she, 'but I don't quite know the air ; if you will tell me the name of it, I will got the music.' racy that I forget the exact name of it, but it can be easily got at any music-seller's. I tell her that I think Charles Mathews used to sing it in The Golden Fleece. I am not sure, however, that it was The Golden Fleece. Miss Clarry says, '0, ma will be sure to know.' When questioned, mamma at once replies she knows it was in The Golden Fleece, and then she almost fancies it was in Patter versus Clatter, and then she becomes perfectly certain it was sung by some one else—she cannot recollect his name—in The Miller and his Men. The musical conductor happens to look in, and I ask him about it ; he says he knows the song by name, but forgets how it goes. Will I hum it over for him ? I reply, 0 yea!' and say I fancy it goes somehow like this :— Itumtitum, toodlety, toodlety, toodlety, IMmtitam, toodlety, toodlety,

He shakes his head and says 'Ah; that was not the one he meant, he thinks I must be wrong, it ought to go

Fal the ral la/, fal the ral /al, Tel the ral, tat the ral—lal, /al!'

But he says the best way would be to inquire of Messrs. Oboe and Tympanum, the music publishers. They would be sure to have it, or if not, could tell you whore to procure it. Miss Clarry says, with one of her sweetest smiles, • 0, if you would, I should be so much obliged, it would be such a pity, you know, not to have it right, especially as. you

have written such nice words.'" _

Mr. Ashby-Sterry has a righteous horror of ordinary young-lady singing, and is bitter on glee-singers, and on one unfortunate glee called "Spring's Delights," to which we confess a partiality, but which has apparently roused his especial indignation, and which he attacks bitterly in several places ; nevertheless he gener- ously accords one whole and pleasant paper to "A Quiet Evening and a Little Music." The descriptions of scenery are somewhab meagre, though it is evidently thoroughly appreciated. If Mr. Ashby-Sterry had not so firm a conviction that his mission is to be funny, we should, we think, have often been delighted by word- pictures, for he clearly has the feeling for the aspects and influ- ences of nature. There is, for instance, a charming passage about a lovely summer evening on the Thames in the "Sun-Pictures," and such passages as this are not rare, either about Englanctor Italy:—

" Listening to the rush and the ripple of the waves, dreams of other summer nights come back to me. I remember once starting to walk from Old Windsor to Staines many years ago. It was a lovely-moon-

light night, it was hot and still. I took my course by the side of the river, I mooned and dawdled, I did not care how long it took me. At one o'clock in the morning I sat down on some felled logs opposite the Ankerwycke bend. What a night it was ! How grand were those old poplars with their long reflections in the swirling stream, those spread- ing chestnuts with their vast black shadows, those nodding reeds silvered by the moonlight ! Not a sound to be heard but the occasional plash • of a fish, the faint roar of the weir in the distance, the tiny flutter of leaves once again. I sat me down, I lit up a pipe, and I mused and pondered as I have been doing this evening."

But the only stroke of original genius is evoked by this Sybarite's affinity to everything thoroughly delicious, cosy, and comfortable. "Still Summer Nights," "Firelight Fancies," "Bathing at Fort- rush," "Ninety in the Shade," and others that tell of moments given over to indulgence, earned doubtless by those unwonted exertions so praiseworthy, if rare, in men of an epicurean type. The paper designated "Hot Coals in the Land of Nod" especially ex- hibits this genius. There is not only a wealth of indolent enjoyment -in the loving description of the luxury of a bedroom fire, but there is true artistic feeling and observation in the suggestions for obtain- ing the ridhest colouring, the warmest reflections, the most glow- ing lights and picturesques shadows that the very shabbiest appointments of the simplest bedroom will almost always furnish, and he deserves our lasting gratitude for even suggesting—a wild and baseless suggestion we sadly fear—that this priceless comfort, this inestimable luxury, this solace of all solaces, whether to • fatigue, disappointment, or grief, can be purchased at no higher price than the sacrifice of bedroom candles.