Thomas Hood

“ But woe, deep water and woe to him,
That she snareth like Peter Fin!
Her head is crowned with pretty sea-wares,
And her locks are golden loose,
And seek to her feet, like other folks' heirs,
To stand, of course, in her shoes!
And all day long she combeth them well,
With a sea-shark's prickly jaw;
And her mouth is just like a rose-lipped shell,
The fairest that man e'er saw!
And the Fishmonger, humble as love may be
Hath planted his seat by her side;
"Good even, fair maid! Is thy lover at sea,
To make thee so watch the tide?" ”

“ She look’d as siren ought to look,
A sharp and bitter shrew,
To sing deceiving lullabies
For mariners to rue,—
But when he saw her lips apart,
It chill’d him through and through!
With either hand he stopp’d his ears
Against her evil cry;
Alas, alas, for all his care,
His doom it seem’d to die,
Her voice went ringing through his head
It was so sharp and high!
He thrust his fingers farther in
At each unwilling ear,
But still in very spite of all,
The words were plain and clear;
“I can’t stand here the whole day long,
To hold your glass of beer!” ”

“ There is an anecdote related of Thomas Hood to the effect that when he was just upon the point of dying, his friend, Mr. F.O. WARD, visited him, and, to amuse him, related some of his adventures in the low parts of the metropolis in his capacity as a sanitary commissioner. "Pray desist," said Hood; "your anecdote gives me the back-slum-bago." The proximity of death could no more deprive poor Artemus of his power to jest than it could Thomas Hood. ”

“ The Farmer, resting his elbows upon the board, with his face between his hands, gazed wistfully on his wife,—scooping her eyes, as it were, out of their sockets, stripping the flesh off her cheeks, and in fancy converting her whole head into a mere Caput Mortuum. The Dame, leaning back in her high arm-chair, regarded the Yeoman quite as ruefully,—by the same process of imagination picking his sturdy bones, and bleaching his ruddy visage to the complexion of a plaster cast. ”

“ Thou hast smoothed, alas, the path to the Old Bailey!
And to the stony bowers
Of Newgate, to encourage the approach,
By caravan or coach,—
Hast strewed the way with flints as soft as flowers.
Who shall dispute thy name!
Insculpt in stone in every street,
We soon shall greet
Thy trodden down, yet all unconquered fame!
Where’er we take, even at this time, our way,
Nought see we, but mankind in open air,
Hammering thy fame, as Chantrey would not dare;—
And with a patient care
Chipping thy immortality all day! ”

“ Thomas Hood has fulfilled his task as Editor remarkably well. His arrangement of the material at his command is most satisfactory, and his notes—not many—are always succinct and to the purpose." Morning Post.
"But what an ingenious and whimsical punster was Hood, and what an exquisite lyrist! Fantastic ideas that would never occur to any other man, came naturally to him." ”

“ You have a right to be sick—You’ve a right to go to the side every five minutes—you’ve a right to DIE of it! But it’s the reverse with me—I have no right of the sort!”
“WHAT RIGHT HAVE YOU IN MY STEEL TRAP?”
“O certainly not, Sir,” said the pomposity, offended in his turn. “You are indubitably the best judge of your own privileges. I only beg to be allowed to remark, that where I felt I had so little right, I should hesitate to intrude myself.” So saying, he bowed very formally, and commenced his retreat to the cabin, while the Skipper pretended to examine the compass very minutely. ”

“ Neither could she help hearing some such shocking ill-bred remarks as, “Vy don’t the frizzle-vigged old Guy get into the gemman’s drag?” Still the pride of the Normans sustained her. She seemed to draw a sort of supplementary neck out of her bosom, and sat more rigidly erect than ever, occasionally favouring the circle, like a mad bull at bay, with a most awful threatening look, accompanied ever by the same five words:
“I CHOOSE to be alone.”
It is easy to say choose, but more difficult to have one’s choice. The blackberry boys chose to remain ”

“ The most that can be done now for the dear, dead poet, is to waft his fame, on the breath of honest applause, to circles of men outside of the serried ranks which have already closed in upon his shrine.
It appears from the researches of his children that he was born May 23, 1799.
It rarely happens in the history of genius that the verdict of posterity becomes unanimous within its own generation. Yet, this is true of Thomas Hood. ”

“ Just like the windows with their Christmas holly.
“All claret marks,”—thought he—Tom knew his forte—
“Are red—this colour CANNOT come from Port!”
One thing was plain; with such a face as his,
’Twas quite impossible to ever greet
Good Mrs. Brown; nay, any party meet,
Altho’ ’twas such a parti-coloured phiz!
As for the public, fancy Sarcy Ned,
The coachman, flying, dog-like, at his head,
With “Ax your pardon, Sir, but if you please—
Unless it comes too high—
Vere ought a fellow, now, to go to buy
The t’other half, Sir, of that ‘ere green cheese?” ”

“ It would seem therefore, when we recall Thomas Hood's aptitudes and frequent miscellaneous practice in the same line, that a certain tendency towards fine art, as well as towards literature, ran in the family. The consumption which killed James appears to have been inherited from his mother; she, and two of her daughters, died of the same disease; and a pulmonary affection of a somewhat different kind became, as we shall see, one of the poet's most inveterate persecutors. ”

“ The man in black looked at his watch.
The coachman pulled out a handful of silver, and began to count out a portion, preparatory to offering to return the woman her fare if she would get down—when a cheering voice hailed him from above.
“It’s all right, Tom—jump up—the lady’s creeping into the boot.”
“She won’t like that, I guess,” muttered Tom to himself, but in a second the money jingled back into his pocket, and he was on his box in the twinkling of an eye. Away went the coach over the brow of the hill, and began to spin down the descent with an impetus increasing at every yard. ”

“ Of all old women hard of hearing,
The deafest, sure, was Dame Eleanor Spearing!
On her head, it is true,
Two flaps there grew,
That served for a pair of gold rings to go through,
But for any purpose of ears in a parley,
They heard no more than ears of barley.
No hint was needed from D.E.F.
You saw in her face that the woman was deaf;
From her twisted mouth to her eyes so peery,
Each queer feature asked a query;
A look that said in a silent way,
"Who? and What? and How? and Eh? ”

“ It would appear that, in the later years of Hood's life, he was not on entirely good terms with some members of his wife's family, including his old friend John Hamilton Reynolds. What may have caused this I do not find specified: all that we know of the character of Hood justifies us in thinking that he was little or not at all to blame, for he appears throughout a man of just, honorable, and loving nature, and free besides from that sort of self-assertion which invites a collision. Every one, however, has his blemishes ”

“ For blue is chilly, and akin to white:
Also he leaves some tinges on his lips,
Which he hath kiss'd with such cold frosty nips.
LXIII.
"Surely," quoth she, "he sleeps, the senseless thing,
Oppress'd and faint with toiling in the stream!"
Therefore she will not mar his rest, but sing
So low, her tune shall mingle with his dream;
Meanwhile, her lily fingers task to twine
His uncrispt locks uncurling in the brine.
LXIV.
"O lovely boy!"—thus she attuned her voice,—
"Welcome, thrice welcome, to a sea-maid's home,
My love-mate thou shalt be, and true heart's choice ”

“ Well, I’d got it in my coat pocket, and was walking back, just by Bow Church, no more thinking of green silk pelisses than you are, Sir, at this moment—upon my honour I wasn’t—when something gave a pop and a splash, and I heard a female scream. I was afraid to look round and when I did, you might have knocked me down with a straw. You know, Tom (addressing me,) I’m not made of brass,—for the minute I felt more like melted lead—heavy and hot. ”

“ The daughter droops; art has had her Almack’s, and nature establishes a Free and Easy. Grace throws herself, skow-wow any-how, on an ottoman, and Good Breeding crosses her legs. Roses begin to relax, and Curls to unbend themselves; the very Candles seem released from the restraints of gentility, and getting low, some begin to smoke, while others indulge in a gutter. Muscles and sinews feel equally let loose, and by way of a joke, the cramp ties a double-knot in Clarinda’s calf. ”

“ The last time as ever I see him, poor thing;
was with my own blessed Motherly eyes,
Sitting as good as gold in the gutter,
a-playing at making little dirt pies.
I wonder he left the court where he was better off
than all the other young boys,
With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster-shells,
and a dead kitten by way of toys.
When his father comes home, and he always comes home
as sure as ever the clock strikes one,
He'll be rampant, he will, at his child being lost ”

“ We must now glance again at Hood's domestic affairs. His first child had no mundane existence worth calling such; but has nevertheless lived longer than most human beings in the lines which Lamb wrote for the occasion, On an Infant dying as soon as born. A daughter followed, and in 1830 was born his son, the Tom Hood who became editor of the comic journal Fun, and died in 1874. At the time of his birth, the family was living at Winchmore Hill: thence they removed about 1832, to the Lake House, Wanstead, a highly picturesque dwelling, but scanty in domestic comforts. ”

“ Small sympathy would the philosopher have had with the temperament of such a man, say, as Thomas Hood, who always wrote most at night, when all was quiet and the children were asleep. "I have a room to myself," exclaims Hood, triumphantly, in a letter describing a change of lodgings, "which will be worth £20 a year to me,—for a little disconcerts my nerves." ”

“ And beasts depriv’d of what she had intended.
They could not even prey
In their own way;
A hardship always reckon’d quite prodigious.
Thus he revolv’d—
And soon resolv’d
To give them freedom, civil and religious.
That night there was no country cousins, raw
From Wales, to view the lion and his kin;
The keeper’s eyes were fix’d upon a saw;
The saw was fix’d upon a bullock’s shin:
Meanwhile with stealthy paw,
Pug hastened to withdraw
The bolt that kept the king of brutes within.
Now, monarch of the forest! thou shalt win
Precious enfranchisement—thy bolts are undone ”

“ The black wretch had seriously inclined her ear to the whole lecture, grinning and blubbering by turns. The Judge with his black cap, the Counsel and their wigs, the twelve men in a box, and Jack Ketch himself—whom she associated with that pleasant West Indian personage, John Canoe—had amused, nay, tickled her fancy; the press-room, the irons, the rope, and the Ordinary, whom she mistook for an overseer, had raised her curiosity, and excited her fears ”

“ Hood now concentrated every available man for his final attack on Thomas, who had odds of twenty thousand in his favor. Hood marched his thirty-five Page 378 thousand up to Nashville, where he actually invested the fifty-five thousand Federals. By this time even Grant was so annoyed at what seemed to him unreasoning delay that he sent Logan to take command at once and "fight." But on the fifteenth of December Thomas came out of his works and fought Hood with determined skill all day. ”

“ And yet the tackle held,
'Till both my legs began to bend like winkin.
My eyes! but she took in enough to founder!
And there's my timbers straining every bit,
Ready to split,
And her tarnation hull a-growing rounder!
Well, there—off Hertford Ness,
We lay both lash'd and water-logg'd together,
And can't contrive a signal of distress;
Thinks I, we must ride out this here foul weather,
Tho' sick of riding out—and nothing less;
When, looking round, I sees a man a-starn:—
Hollo! ”

“ Is Wisdom’s adopted dwelling!”
The reputation of Thomas Hood as a wit and humourist rests on his writings chiefly. His recorded sayings are few, for in general society he was shy and reserved, seldom making a joke, or doing it with so grave a face that the witticism seemed an accident, and was in many cases possibly allowed to pass unnoticed, for a great number of people do not recognise a joke that is not prefaced by a jingle of the cap and bells. ”

“ Then there was the constant dread that in his practising, cut six would either come home to him, or do a mischief to his neighbours; and after a reviewing there was no bearing him, it put him so up in his stirrups, and on coming home he’d think nothing of slivering off all the hollyoaks as he brandished and flourished up the front garden. Another thing, and that was no trifle, was the accidents; she couldn’t tell how it was, whether he thought too much of himself and too little of his horse, but he always got a tumble with the yeomanry, though he’d fox-hunt by the year together without a fall. ”

“ The ensuing Spring, throughout which the poet lay seemingly almost at the last gasp day by day, was a lovely one. At times he was delirious; but mostly quite clear in mind, and full of gentleness and resignation. "Dying, dying," were his last words; and shortly before, "Lord, say 'Arise, take up thy cross, and follow me.'" On the 3d of May 1845 he lay dead.
Hood's funeral took place in Kensal Green Cemetery: it was a quiet one, but many friends attended. His faithful and loving wife would not be long divided from him. ”