Punch: Punch (22.1852)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

219

GOLD IN ENGLAND. (PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL!)

[FROM AN UNCONSCIOUS CORRESPONDENT.]

" Bustard Inn, Salisbury Plain, May {Date not legible).
" Dearest Eliza,

" I have now been here a week, and it is all truer and truer—
all—all—that Roger declared to us. All—but say nothing. Say
nothing, my treasure, but only think what you '11 have! A door-scraper
of gold—a knocker of the virgin metal—whatever you will, only be a
woman, and, as long as you can. keep the secret; for any way it won't
last. This morning the Bishop' of * * * * arrived with a pickaxe,
a cradle, and a Mackintosh sack. It is now only four o'clock, and he
has returned to the inn to salmon and lamb-chops (people can't be par-
ticular here) to dinner, with five-and-twenty ounces. But so it is—ALL
SALISBURY PLAIN, the whole breadth of it, and as for the
depth, nobody pretends to fathom it—IS ONE MASS OF GOLD,
with just a thin coat of green grass over it! When this fact becomes
generally known in London, won't the City be a wilderness ! Already,
1 can count ten distinguished stockbrokers in Guernsey-frocks,
navigators' overhauls, and gutta-percha wide-awakes. Our neighbour,
Mr. Uriah Mitckmammon—you know he had left home on a visitation,
as his wife said, having a call at the Land's End—well, here he is, with
a beard as long as a prophet's, in a suit of doeskin, and sleeping out at
nights in a tent, with saddle-bags full of gold-dust for a pillow. When
the news has fairly got wind, I dread to think on the skrimmages
that '11 happen.

" Wonderful are the ways of fate ! Here has Salisbury Plain been
growing gold for thousands of years—for I'm told it takes at least five
hundred years to grow an ounce of scale-gold, whilst two or three
thousand, at least, go to the raising of nuggets—(a nugget, my
precious, is a lump of virgin ore, about as big as a respectable potato)—
here has been this very Plain, with the Druids in their white linen
gowns (as you once saw 'em at Covent Garden in Norma), cutting their
mistletoes and performing their church-service, with never so much as
| a notion of the glory that was under 'em.

I "As it pours_ with rain, and I've done my thirty ounces to-day, I will
snatch a few minutes from Plutus to give to the wife of my bosom.
Well, I han't told you how the gold was first found out—but this
is it.

"Mr. * * * (as the post's no longer safe from here, I don't name
some names), a most respectable lawyer of Salisbury, much given to
sheep, if only for their parchment, used to come up here to stay at the
Bustard, and to take his walks and contemplations on the Plain,
i thinking, no doubt—for he has the credit of being uncommon serious—
of this world and the others. Mr. * * * *, as I've said, having a fancy
| for sheep, was partic'larly struck with one black-faced wether; that
j somehow would look at Mr. * * * * just as his late partner (a very
j sharp practitioner, but now defunct) used to look across the desk, in
! his office days and bus'ness-hours, right at him. There is among
j heathen people a notion that some folks that die come back to this
| world again, upon all fours, as beasts. Well, Mr. * * * * looking in
j the black face of that wether—only his fancy, of course—did think the
j sheep a striking likeness to his partner. But when the wether went
bolt up to a lump or boss in the ground, and kept licking and licking
j it, and looking up and looking up in the face of Mr. * * * *, as much
j as to say, ' how nice,' and with every look and every smack of the
mouth, looking more and more like the aforesaid late partner,—Mr.
I * * * * followed the sheep, and saw a lump of bright yellow stuff in
the midst of stone, with the grass licked clean off it. Well, being
above the greed of gold, Mr. * * * * just for the curiosity of the
thing, goes back to the Bustard, and says nothing, but borrows a pick-
axe ; with which he picks off a lump of about twenty pound, which
he puts in his handkerchief, and takes back with him to his room in
Salisbury, still saying nothing.

"The next day.one of the Canons of the Cathedral calls on Mr. * * * *
about Church bus'ness. (Four boys had been put in the Ecclesiastical
Court for playing at shove-halfpenny in the Cloisters.) Well, there lay
the lump of yellow stuff, Mr. * * * * thinking nothing about it; for
to him it was shining lumber—nothing better. "Hallo," says the
Canon, surprised out of himself, ' why, that's a lump of gold—yea,
gold of Ophir!' * Not of Ophir,' says the simple-minded attorney,
because 1 knocked it off with a pickaxe from a bigger lump on the
Plain.' 'Bless me!' cried the Canon, 'you don't say so!' 'On the
Plain,' repeats the simple lawyer; ' but as for gold, why, that's impos-
sible.' * Well, now I look again,' says the Canon, * it's rubbish—yes,

A Shower of Benedictions.

Last week the Archbishop of Paris was blessing a bundle of Eagles
and Flags,—this week he has been busy blessing a heap of busts of the
President. If this shower continues, Louis Napoleon will find the
b rench Church quite a Blessing.

nothing more than pyrites of iron, with mica, schistus, rag, rubble, and
a dash of pudding-stone.' ' I know nothing of these things,' said the
lawyer; and began to look out some papers; whereupon the Canon
remembered that he'd got a particular appointment (how he'd come
to forget it, he couldn't tell) with his Lordship the Bishop ; and so the
case of brawling in church, otherwise the case of shove-halfpenny,
must for a day or two stand over. The very Dext morning, a
man as like the Canon as the Canon's two thumbs are like one
another—was seen with a donkey and panniers, a pickaxe, and
a spade, taking their way like two pilgrims across the Plain. For
a whole week the Canon's knocker was tied up with an old black
kid-leather glove, and straw laid down afore the door; he was
so dreadful ill with jaundice. Then another Canon fell sick; and then
another; then a Prebend, and then a Dean; that, anybody not in
the secret, would have thought the whole established Church of
Salisbury was in the hands of the doctors! But not a bit of it—every
one of 'em, for all the muffled knockers and the straw—every one of
'em was perspiring away on Salisbury Plain, as if they were turning
up potatoes of virgin gold at the diggings!

" And still the secret leaks out, and every hour brings new arrivals.
You can't think who's here dressed for the mines. In the paper

you sent me I read that -, and -, and twenty other M.P.s,

had ' paired off:' yes—and here they are, with not even the time to
wash themselves, rocking their cradles, and bringing up thumping
fortunes.

" I Ve done very well—altogether about 1000 ounces of virgin ore:
I hope to make the 1000 ounces 10,000 before the Plain gets full wind,
when, I take it, the rush will be dreadful. At present it's certain that
Mr. Disraeli knows nothing about it, or wouldn't he dissolve Parlia-
ment ? 1 hate slander; but the Earl of D**by was said to be laid
up last week with the gout; and yet, such is the malice of human
nature, when hungry for gold, a miner—a tall, fiery-looking man—was
yesterday pointed out to me as the noble Earl—his valet doing the
part of his master in London in his flannels. By this you may imagine
the state of morals that gold has brought us to ! If gold is the root of
evil, England will be fuller and fuller of wickedness!

" The day before yesterday there was a dreadful riot. A barrister of
high standing (a real Q. C.) was charged with entering the tent of

Doctor--, a Prebend of St.--, London, and stealing from the

gold bags of the Reverend Gentleman, who showed fight with a courage,
as a brother divine and miner observed, worthy of the cause.

" All things are getting dreadfully dear, which has brought down
upon us a crowd of suttler-women, who wish to pass themselves off as
the lower orders. But it won't do ; there's more than one born lady
who sells rum to the miners at half-a-sovereign a glass; whilst
champagne has gone off at two ounces the bottle—the corks drawn by
an Earl's daughter!

" Gambling is beginning to show its hydra-head. Three M.P.s (I
won't name names, but they are all pairers-off) have started a table
with pea-and-thimbles ; and, call as you will, there is no police.

" Since I began my letter—for I've been called away a dozen times—
one entire side of Holywell Street has arrived; and I hear all the
Minories may be expected to-morrow.

" In another month, and London will be a skeleton city. In the
meanwhile, I shall trust in fate and my pickaxe, and am off for an hour
or two, before night sets in, to rock my cradle.

" Your affectionate Husband,

"P.S. Three Members of the Archaeological Society have arrived;
and—assured of the treasure that will turn up—have determined to
blast Stonehenge to-morrow."

Mr. Punch gives this letter as communicated to him at the last
moment before going to press. Hence, Mr. Punch has not time to
verify, or disprove, any of the statements made by the writer; but
Mr. Punch cannot refrain from calling upon the philosophic mind of
London to endeavour to imagine the moral revolution—the topsy-
turviness of all respectability, the chaos of all time-honoured conven-
tionalities, that would inevitably take place—were it to be discovered
that Salisbury Plain was really and tangibly a Plain of Gold! Mr.
Punch must be permitted to shudder at the consequences to London
morals and London society.

Consoling.

The Electors of St. Alban's are but little affected by the loss of their
franchise. They consider that their Borough has caused so deep an
impression in the House, that the Government cannot fail to re-
Member it.