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At that period also pleasure-palaces were erected for the sovereign people; circuses, theaters, baths wherein were collected statues, paintings, animals, musicians, acrobats, all the treasures and all the oddities of the world; pantheons of opulence and curiosity; genuine bazaars where the liking for what was novel, heterogeneous, and fantastic ousted the feeling of appreciation for simple beauty.
Such a man might secure himself a niche in history at less cost and with less trouble than he could obtain a large estate and a share in the commission of the peace for a midland county. But there is no need to restrict ourselves simply to oddities, although oddities of this sort acquire a grandeur of their own at the touch of wealth.
Miss Harriet Martineau thus describes the scene before the entrance of the Queen: 'The stone architecture contrasted finely with the gay colours of the multitude. From my high seat I commanded the whole north transept, the area with the throne, and many portions of galleries, and the balconies, which were called the vaultings. Except the mere sprinkling of oddities, everybody was in full dress.
He was glad to get out of it so, for he was uneasy about his friend, both as to his nerve, which might fail him, and his Scotch oddities, which would not. "That would be hardly true," said Mr Graham, "seeing I never got beyond a licence." "Nobody here knows the difference between a licentiate and a placed minister; and if they did they would not care a straw. So we'll just say clergyman."
It was the old cry, still remembered accurately; and the response was immediate. The rush of travellers from the Long Walk nearly took him off his feet. From the house came streams of silent figures, families from the shrubberies, tourists from the laurels by the scullery windows, and throngs of breathless oddities from the kitchen-garden.
After a few days the weather changed again and became glorious. Even the Oddities would now join the crowd that hung out on the alighting-board, and would sing of work among the merry, merry blossoms till an untrained ear might have received it for the hum of a working hive. Yet, in truth, their store-honey had been eaten long ago.
Where would then have been his frolicsome enthusiasm that nothing could dispirit; his inveterate oddities of thought, speech, and action, which made all his friends laugh at him and bless him in the same breath; his affections, so manly in their firmness, so womanly in their tenderness, so childlike in their frank, fearless confidence that dreaded neither ridicule on the one side, nor deception on the other?
All its curiosities, lapses, oddities, anachronisms, slips and misprints have been discovered by commentators galore, and the number of books it has brought into existence is stupendous.
But this evening we are alone, and the absence of the band of mousmes, whose familiar little faces formed a bond of union between this holiday-making people and ourselves, separates and isolates us more than usual from the profusion of oddities in the midst of which we seem to be lost.
Monsieur the Curé's cassock seemed a cabinet of oddities. First he pulled from this ingenious hiding-place a crucifix, which he replaced; then a knot of white ribbon which he also restored; and finally a tiny pocket or bag of what had been cream-colored satin embroidered with small bunches of heartsease, and which was aromatic with otto of roses.
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