“From which well-known fact of ornithology,” continues the student, “I am
driven to infer that in their choice of habitat nightingales are guided
not so much by considerations of latitude as of good taste.” Borrow’s
anger is evidently melting away. The talk runs still upon nightingales,
and the student mentions the attempt to settle them in Scotland once made
by Sir John Sinclair, who introduced nightingales’ eggs from England into
robins’ nests in Scotland, in the hope that the young nightingales, after
enjoying a Scotch summer, would return to the place of their birth, after
the custom of English nightingales. “And did they return?” says Borrow,
with as much interest as if the honour of his country were involved in
the question. “Return to Scotland?” says the student quietly; “the
entire animal kingdom are agreed, you know, in never returning to
Scotland. Besides, the nightingales’ eggs in question were laid in
Norfolk.” Conquered at last, Borrow extends the hand of brotherhood to
the impudent student (whose own private opinion, no doubt, is that
Norfolk is more successful in producing Nelsons than nightingales), and
proceeds without more ado to tell how “poor Jerry Abershaw,” on being
captured by the Bow Street runners, had left his good sword behind him as
a memento of highway glories soon to be ended on the gallows tree.
(By-the-bye, I wonder where that sword is now; it was bought by Mr.
Adolphus Levy, of Alton Lodge, at the closing of the Bald-Faced Stag.)
From Jerry Abershaw Borrow gets upon other equally interesting topics,
such as the decadence of beer and pugilism, and the nobility of the now
neglected British bruiser, as exampled especially in the case of the
noble Pearce, who lost his life through rushing up a staircase and
rescuing a woman from a burning house after having on a previous occasion
rescued another woman by blacking the eyes of six gamekeepers, who had
been set upon her by some noble lord or another. Then, while the ale
sparkles with a richer colour as the evening lights grow deeper, the talk
gets naturally upon “lords” in general, gentility nonsense, and
“hoity-toityism” as the canker at the heart of modern civilization.
II.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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