Various
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461
This self-examination was not encouraging; the case was decidedly queer; and as I sat thus pondering in the dark, with the spoon in my hand, I am quite sure that no malefactor in a dungeon could have envied my reflections. In fact, the evidence was so dead against me, that I began to doubt my own innocence. What was I here for if my intentions had really been honest? Why should I desire to come into any individual's area-window instead of the door? And how came it that all this silver-plate had found its way into my pockets? I was angry as well as terrified: I was judge and criminal in one; but the instincts of nature got the better of my sense of justice, and I rose suddenly up, to ascertain whether it was not possible to get from the window into the street.
As I moved, however, the horrible booty I had in my pockets moved likewise, appearing to me to shriek, like a score of fiends, 'Police! police!' and the next instant I heard a quick footstep ascending the stair. Now was the fateful moment come! I was on my feet; my eyes glared upon the door; my hands were clenched; the perspiration had dried suddenly upon my skin; and my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth. But the footstep, accompanied by a gleam of light, passed—passed; and from very weakness I sat down again, with a dreadful indifference to the screams of the plate in my pockets. Presently there were more footsteps along the hall; then voices; then drawing of bolts and creaking of locks; then utter darkness, then silence—lasting, terrible, profound. The house had gone to bed; the house would quickly be asleep; it was time to be up and doing. But first and foremost, I must get rid of the plate. Without that hideous corpus delicti, I should have some chance. I must, at all hazards, creep down into the hall, find my way to the lower regions, and replace the accursed thing where I found it. It required nerve to attempt this; but I was thoroughly wound up; and after allowing a reasonable time to elapse, to give my enemies a fair opportunity of falling asleep, I set out upon the adventure. The door creaked as I went out; the plate grated against my very soul as I descended the steps; but slowly, stealthily, I crept along the wall; and at length found myself on the level floor. There was but one door on that side of the hall, the door which led to the area-room—I recollect the fact distinctly—and it was with inexpressible relief I reached it in safety, and grasped the knob in my hand. The knob turned—but the door did not open: it was locked; it was my fate to be a thief; and after a moment of new dismay, I turned again doggedly, reached the stair, and re-entered the apartment I had left.
It was like getting home. It was snug and private. I had a chair there waiting me. I thought to myself, that many a man would take a deal of trouble to break into such a house. I had only sneaked. I wondered how Jack Shepherd felt on such occasions. I had seen him at the Adelphi in the person of Mrs Keeley, and a daring little dog he was. He would make nothing of getting down into the street from the window, spoons and all. I tried this: the shutters were not even closed, and the sash moving noiselessly, I had no difficulty in raising it. I stepped out into the balcony, and looked over. Nothing was to be seen but a black and yawning gulf beneath, guarded by the imaginary spikes of an invisible railing. Jack would have laughed at this difficulty; but then he had more experience in the craft than I, and was provided with all necessary appliances. As for me, I had stupidly forgotten even my coil of rope. The governor's house, I found, had either no balcony at all, or it was too far apart to be reached. Presently I heard a footstep on the trottoir, a little way off. It was approaching with slow and measured pace: the person was walking as calmly and gravely in the night as if it had been broad day. Suppose I hailed this philosophical stranger, and confided to him, in a friendly way, the fact that the baronet, without the slightest provocation, had locked me up in his house, with his silver spoons in my pocket? Perhaps he would advise me what to do in the predicament. Perhaps he would take the trouble of knocking at the door, or crying fire, and when the servants opened, I might rush out, and so make my escape. But while I was looking wistfully down to see if I could not discern the walking figure, which was now under the windows, a sudden glare from the spot dazzled my sight. It was the bull's-eye of a policeman; and with the instinct of a predatory character, I shrunk back trembling, crept into the room, and shut the window.
By this time I was sensible that there was a little confusion in my thoughts, and by way of employing them on practical and useful objects, I determined to make a tour of the room. But first it was necessary to get rid, somehow or other, of my plunder—to plant the property, as we call it; and with that view I laid it carefully, piece by piece, in the corner of a sofa, and concealed it with the cover. This was a great relief. I almost began to feel like the injured party—more like a captive than a robber; and I groped my way through the room, with a sort of vague idea that I might perhaps stumble upon some trap-door, or sliding-panel, which would lead into the open air, or, at worst, into a secret chamber, where I should be safe for any given number of years from my persecutors. But there was nothing of the kind in this stern, prosaic place: nothing but a few cabinets and tables, and couches, and arm-chairs, and common-chairs, and devotional-chairs; and footstools, and lamps, and statuettes, and glass-shades, and knick-knacks; and one elaborate girandole hung round with crystal prisms, which played such an interminable tune against each other when I chanced to move them, that I stumbled away as fast as I could, and subsided into a fauteuil so rich, so deep, that I felt myself swallowed up, as it were, in its billows of swan's down.
How long I had been in the house by this time, I cannot tell. It seemed to me, when I looked back, to form a considerable portion of a lifetime. Indeed, I did not very well remember the more distant events of the night; although every now and then the fact occurred to me with startling distinctness, that all I had gone through was only preliminary to something still to happen; that the morning was to come, the family to be astir, and the housebreaker to be apprehended. My reflections were not continuous. It may be that I dozed between whiles. How else can I account for my feeling myself grasped by the throat, to the very brink of suffocation, by a hand without a body? How else can I account for sister Laura standing over me where I reclined, pointing to the stolen plate on the sofa, and lecturing me on my horrible propensities till she grew black in the face, and her voice rose to a wild unearthly scream which pierced through my brain?
When this fancy occurred, I started from my recumbent posture. A voice was actually in my ears, and a living form before my eyes: a lady stood contemplating me, with a half-scream on her lips, and the colour fading from her cheek; and as I moved, she would have fallen to the ground, had I not sprung up and caught her in my arms. I laid her softly down in the fauteuil. It was the morning twilight. The silence was profound. The boundaries of the room were still dim and indistinct. Is it any wonder that I was in some considerable degree of perplexity as to whether I was not still in the land of dreams?
'Madam,' said I, 'if you are a vision, it is of no consequence; but if not, I want particularly to get out.'
'Offer no injury,' she replied, in a tremulous voice, 'and no one will molest you. Take what you have come for, and begone.'
'That is sooner said than done. The doors and windows below are locked and bolted; and beneath those of this room the area is deep, and the spikes sharp. I assure you, I have been in very considerable perplexity the whole of last night;' and drawing a chair, I sat down in front of her. Whether it was owing to this action, or to my complaining voice, or to the mere fact of her finding herself in a quiet tête-à-tête with a housebreaker, I cannot tell; but the lady broke into a low hysterical laugh.
'How did you break in?' said she.
'I did not break: it is far from being my character, I assure you. But the area-window was open, and so I just thought I would come in.'
'You were attracted by the plate! Take it, for Heaven's sake, desperate man, and go away!'
'I did take some of it, but with no evil intention—only by way of amusement. Here it is;' and going to the sofa, I drew off the cover, and shewed her the plant.
'You have been generous,' said she, her voice getting quaverous again; 'for the whole must have been in your power. I will let you out so softly that no one will know. Put up in your pockets what you have risked so much to possess, and follow me.'
'I will follow you with pleasure,' said I, 'were it all the world over;' for the increasing light shewed me as lovely a creature as the morning sun ever shone upon; 'but as for the plunder, you must excuse me there: I never stole anything before, and, please Heaven, I never will again!'
'Surely you are a most extraordinary person,' said the young lady suddenly, for the light seemed to have made a revelation to her likewise: 'you neither look nor talk like a robber.'
'Nor am I. I am not even a robber—I am nothing; and have not property in the world to the value of these articles of plate.'
'Then if you are not a robber, why are you here?—why creep in at the area-window, appropriate other people's spoons, and get locked up all night in their house?'
'For no other reason, than that I was in a hurry. I had come home from Barcelona, and was going in to my guardian's, next door, when your unfortunate area-window caught my eye, with the plate on the table inside. In an instant, I was over the rails and in through the window like a harlequin, with the intention of giving the family a pleasing surprise, and my old monitress, sister Laura, a great moral lesson on the impropriety of her leaving plate about in so careless a way.'
'Then you are Gerald, my dear Laura's cousin, so longingly expected—so beloved by them all—so'–Here the young lady blushed celestial rosy red, and cast down her eyes. What these two girls could have been saying to each other about me, I never found out; but there was a secret, I will go to death upon it.
She let me out so quietly, that neither her father nor the servants ever knew a syllable about the matter. I need not say how I was received next door. The governor swept down another sob with another guffaw; mamma bestowed upon me another blessing and another kiss; and Laura was so rejoiced, that she gave me another hearty cry, and forgot to give me another lecture. My next four years were spent to more purpose than the last. Being less in a hurry, I took time to build up a flourishing business in partnership with Laura's husband. As for the baronet's daughter—for we must get everybody into the concluding tableau—why there she is—that lady cutting bread and butter for the children, with as matronly an air as Werter's Charlotte: she is my wife; and we laugh to this day at the oddity of that First Interview which led to so happy a dénouement.
VISIT TO A CHOCOLATE MANUFACTORY
Birmingham, so says the Times, is famous for 'lacquered shams;' and any one who has sojourned for a while in the huge, smoky toy-shop will add—for not a few genuine realities! To walk from factory to factory, from workshop to workshop, and view the extraordinary mechanical contrivances, the ingenious adaptations of means to ends, to say nothing of the eager spirit of application manifested by the busy population, produces an impression on the mind of no common character. Besides which, the town itself, so ill-arranged and ugly, is a spectacle; and in the people that inhabit the dismal streets, the visitor may find studies in morality as well as manufactures.
We have something to say about one of the realities alluded to above—not the making of pens, or tea-pots, or papier-maché; but of something in which breakfasts are implicated all over the kingdom—the making of cocoa and chocolate as carried on by Messrs Cadbury, Brothers. These gentlemen having kindly invited us to a sight of their establishment, we took the opportunity of witnessing their processes for converting raw produce into an acceptable article of diet, aided by the ample explanations of one of the partners. Such a manufacture seems out of place among bronze and brass and hardware, but the factory stands away from the fuliginous quarter, on the verge of Edgbaston—that Belgravia of Birmingham—where sunshine and blue sky are not perpetually hidden by smoke. What we saw there is worth the telling, as we hope to shew.
Here, however, we must say a few words concerning the raw material. It appears that the Spaniards were the first Europeans who tasted chocolate; it was part of their spoil in the conquest of Mexico. Bernardo de Castile, who accompanied Cortez, describing one of Montezuma's banquets, says: 'They brought in among the dishes above fifty great jars made of good cacao, with its froth, and drank it, the women serving them with a great deal of respect;' and similar jars were served to the guards and attendants 'to the number of two thousand at least.' The Spaniards enjoyed the rare beverage, and with a slight transformation of the native Mexican term Chacoc-atl, they introduced chocolate, as they named it, into Spain, monopolising the article for a time, and it was only by slow degrees that the knowledge of it spread into other parts of Europe. Gage, an old traveller who had visited the tropics, writing in 1630, remarks: 'Our English and Hollanders make little use of it, when they take a prize at sea, as not knowing the secret virtue and quality of it for the good of the stomach.' In the reign of Charles II., it was so much esteemed in England that Dr Stubbe published a book, entitled The Indian Nectar, or a Discourse concerning Chocolata, &c., giving a history of the article, and many curious notions respecting its 'secret virtue;' and recommending his readers to buy it of one Mortimer, 'an honest, though poor man,' who lived in East Smithfield, and sold the best kind at 6s. 6d. the pound, and commoner sorts for about half that price. Of course, none but the wealthy could drink it; indeed, we find writers of the past century alluding to it as an aristocratic beverage.
Linnæus was so fond of chocolate, that he called it food for the gods in the distinguishing name which he gave to the tree that produces it—Theobroma cacao. The tree is a native of tropical America, but is now largely cultivated in other parts of the world. It grows from twelve to sixteen feet high, with evergreen leaves, and fruit of a deep orange colour when ripe, resembling a cucumber in shape, and containing from ten to thirty seeds. These seeds are the cacao-nuts or cocoa-nibs of commerce; in the trade, they are commonly spoken of as cocoa-nuts. The best kind are brought from Trinidad; and such has been the effect of lowering the duty, which was formerly 4s. per pound, to one penny, the present charge, that the quantity imported in the year ending January 5, 1852, amounted to 6,773,960 pounds. Among the colonial produce shewn in the Great Exhibition, cocoa-nuts held a conspicuous place; and it ought to be understood, that from such as these cocoa and chocolate are made—both from the same article.
To return to the factory. We first saw a storehouse filled with bags of nuts or nibs, two hundredweight in each, the only kinds used on the premises being those from Trinidad and Grenada. In an adjoining room, imbedded in a huge mass of brickwork, are four cylindrical ovens rotating slowly over a coke-fire, each containing a hundredweight of nuts, which were undergoing a comfortable process of roasting, as evidenced by an agreeable odour thrown off, and a loss of 10 per cent. in weight at the close of the operation, which lasts half an hour. Thus, in a day of ten hours, the four ovens will roast two tons of nuts, the prime mover being a twenty-horse steam-engine. The sight was one that would have gladdened Count Rumford's heart, for the cylinders and their fittings comprised all the economical principles of his roaster—certainty of effect without waste of fuel.
The next step is to crack or break the nuts in what is called the 'kibbling-mill.' The roasting has made them quite crisp, and with a few turns of the whizzing apparatus, they are divested of their husk, which is driven into a bin by a ceaseless blast from a furious fan; while the kernels, broken into small pieces, fall, perfectly clean, into a separate compartment, where their granulated form and rich glossy colour give them a very tempting appearance. The husk is repacked in the empty bags, and exported to Ireland, where it is sold at a low price to the humbler classes, who extract from it a beverage which has all the flavour of cocoa, if not all its virtues.
Thus prepared, the mass of broken nut is ready for more intimate treatment, which is carried on in a large room where shafts, wheels, and straps keep a number of strange-looking machines in busy movement. Some of these are double-cylinders, highly heated by a flow of steam between the inner and outer cases—an arrangement by which any degree of temperature can be produced in the interior. Inside of cacti works an armed iron-breaker, which, as soon as a quantity of the cracked nuts is introduced, begins to rotate, and, by the combined influence of heat and pressure, liberates the oil of the cocoa bean, and soon reduces the mass to a liquid which flows, 'thick and slab,' into a pan placed to receive it, leisurely as a stream of half-frozen treacle. In this state it is ready for grinding between the millstones, to which it is successively transferred, being poured into 'hoppers,' which, like the cylinders, are heated by steam. The cocoa flows rapidly from the stones in a fluid smooth as oil; but it is the best kinds only that are favoured with the most trituration, the commoner sorts being more summarily dismissed. At the time of our visit, a pair of new stones were in course of erection, which of themselves will turn off a ton of chocolate per day.
The process, so far, is that employed for all kinds of cocoa and chocolate, the nuts, as before stated, being the basis of all: the variety depends on subsequent admixture, the best kinds being, of course, the purest and most delicately flavoured. Up to this point, we have the cocoa in its native condition, merely altered in form; but now it has come to the stage of sophistication.
A given portion of the cocoa liquid is poured into a pan, and weighed with other ingredients, which consist, in the main, of arrow-root, sago, and refined sugar—the latter reduced to an impalpable powder—besides the flavouring substances. The quality depends entirely on the proportions of these ingredients, and on their unexceptionable character. The unpractised eye may not detect any difference between a cake of genuine chocolate, and another two-thirds composed of red earth and roasted beans. We have seen documentary evidence laid before the Board of Excise, shewing that a certain manufacturer of cocoa used every week a ton of a species of umber for purposes of adulteration; and recent investigations have shewn, that such practices are only too frequent. No wonder that muddy and insoluble grounds are found at the bottom of breakfast-cups! No one pretends that manufactured chocolate or cocoa is unmixed; but it is a satisfaction to know, that the admixture is not only of good quality, but nutritious.
The necessary quantities having been weighed and duly stirred together with a large wooden spoon, are poured into a mould nearly three feet in length, about nine inches wide, and from three to four inches deep; and in from four to five hours the mass is sufficiently solid to bear removal, when it is turned out as a large cake or block, which might very well pass for a huge sun-baked brick from Nineveh. In this way any number of cakes may be produced, those made on one day being finally worked up on the next, by which time they have become somewhat more hardened.
In this final process, the cakes are laid one at a time in what resembles a chaff-cutting machine, except, instead of the ordinary broad knife wielded by grooms, that a wheel, armed with four sharp blades, whirls round at the open end. The block of cocoa, held by machinery, advances with a slow continuous motion, until it touches the blades on the wheel, when immediately a cloud of most delicate slices or shavings is thrown off, as rapidly as sparks from a knife-grinder's wheel. Cake after cake is thus comminuted, at the rate of a ton per day from a single machine. The shavings are collected as fast as they fall, and passed through a sieve, which reduces them to that coarse powdery form so well known to all consumers of soluble chocolate. It is then put into barrels, and despatched without delay to the packing-room by means of a railway.
That there is something in a name, is as true of cocoa and chocolate as of other things, and the difference of name implies, in most instances, a difference of manufacture. Hence there is a variety of processes going on within the building, the results of which are shewn in 'Cocoa Paste,' 'Rock Cocoa,' 'Eating Vanilla Chocolate,' 'Penny Chocolate,' 'French Bonbons,' 'Flaked Cocoa,' 'Homœopathic,' &c. So numerous are the sorts, that a purchaser is as much puzzled in his choice as an untravelled Cockney with a Parisian bill of fare. The making of the flaked cocoa is peculiarly interesting, and is, we were informed, peculiar to this establishment. To see how the amorphous mass comes from the mill in long curling ribbons, uniform in thickness and texture, is a sight that provokes astonishment, as much by the rapidity of the operation as by the ease with which it appears to be accomplished, but which has only been arrived at by a persevering circumvention of vexatious difficulties.