Walters, H. G. "Man and His Walking Stick," The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 285, July/December 1898, London.

PRIMEVAL man, though paleolithic, probably added to his resources in stone one of wood in the shape of a bough hacked from a tree or picked up as a windfall. He probably first pointed this as a weapon, then one day stuck the end into a stone with a hole in it, and thus had a hammer. In old age, if he were allowed to reach it, it probably occurred to him to lean on the stick. And the fashion still prevalent, we believe, among some savage tribes of making the bouche inutiles disappear by filling those of others with their possession did not prevail. Perhaps it did. You can "hazard a wide solution," according to your own theories, about paleolithic man, and nobody can contradict you.

‘When we arrive at the age of civilisation, and thenceforward for many a century, the stick is the symbol, in various more or less elaborate forms, of authority-the argumenium baculinum the most potent of all and the most frequent.

However, the main object of this article is to glance at the walking-stick in its (comparatively) modern phase, at some of its curious fashions, and at a few of the walking-sticks which have become historic. Let us first look, however, from a socially philosophic point of view, at the evidence of character which a walking stick nowadays shows. You will have ample opportunity in your next progress through any West End thoroughfare of verifying or disputing these conclusions. We say West End, because in the unfashionable and toiling quarters sticks, save with age, crabbed or otherwise, or callow but boisterous youth (which in certain streets appears to have returned to savagery), are rare. People have other things to carry, e.g. tools, parcels, baskets, provisions, and generally "portable property," and don’t want walking-sticks.

The way in which a man carries his stick is proof of his manners, or want of them. And as the manners are the man (outwardly, at any rate), the deduction is easy. The man who has a habit of carrying his walking-stick horizontally under his arm, so that when he whisks round, which be constantly does to look behind him or stare in shop windows, it hits anybody near him, is, equally with him who swings it round and round, an enemy of the human race. Not Piccadilly but Patagonia is his proper haunt, though he would soon get the nonsense knocked out of him there. He never apologises to anyone whom he hits, but glares and grunts, as if they were the aggressors and he the victim, if he is looked at remonstratingly. He is evidently of a selfish and brutal disposition, and his stick should be smashed, which we once saw done on a Sunday afternoon by a victim who was muscular and intrepid.

He who carries his stick hanging on his arm (the crooks at the top are ugly, but fashionable at this time) is at any rate inoffensive, if somewhat affected-probably a man of conventionalism, if not (like the recipient of a testimonial who gave it as a reason (or merely saying "Thank you") "afflicted with a morbid desire for originality."

The quasi-military man, who carries his stick over his shoulder as if it were a drawn sabre, is one whom it is well not to walk behind, for he has a trick of wheeling round, as if to reconnoitre his rear, and bringing his stick sharply into contact with the nearest head: "Why don’t you get out or the way, then?" is his usual graceful apology. As for him who whirls his stick round and round by the handle, he is simply, in the streets of London, a dangerous nuisance, if not an idiot. But such a specimen is rare; he usually bas so unpleasant an experience at an early stage of his career as suffices to tame him.

Thus much of the present. Returning to the past, we may probably be accurate in mentioning the sixteenth century as that in which the walking-stick became not merely a useful implement, but an article of fashion, dignity, and luxury. For ages before doubtless the stick used for walking was at a certain age common among all nations, but in the majority of cases only on account of the necessity implied in the riddle of the sphinx as to the animal that in the afternoon walked on three legs. With the Tudor days the stately walking-staff becomes the accompaniment of rank and of the sword. It is a symbol of authority as well. Thenceforward we find it growing in fashion. In the seventeenth century it is gold-headed and made of rare woods. It is a sign of leadership. Thus, to take one of its latest and unworthiest instances, that remarkable old patriot, Simon Lord Lovat, ere laying his crafty grey head on the block with Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori on his plausible lips, delivers his staff, as symbol of authority over the clan, to his nearest of kin.

For a long period there was little variety among Englishmen in the material used for the majority of walking-sticks. The "oaken towel," as it was pleasantly termed when an enemy was to be "rubbed down," shared popularity with the crabtree cudgel, which, among rural folk especially, was much valued, and classic from the conflict in Hudibras, when

With many a stiff thwack, many a bang.
Hard crabtree on old iron rang.

Classic. too, is that stout oaken stick which sturdy Dr. Johnson, who, like Knox, "never feared the face of living man," provided himself with when he went to the pit of the little theatre in the Haymarket in full view of Foote, who bad announced his intention of "taking him off" on the stage-an intention which. in view of the stick, he did not carry into effect. There is a classic crabtree, too, which was used by Smollett’s "Uncle Bat." These sticks, oak and crabtree, were those carried by the majority, especially in the country, throughout the seventeenth and a large part of the eighteenth century. But in London and the circles of fashion the cane was, during the latter part of the seventeenth and all the eighteenth century, the only wear.

Every beau was

Justly vain
Of the nice conduct of a clouded cane;

and it was, as a general rule, only used as an affectation, even as the patches were by the belles. In the Tatler there are various allusions to this phase of fashion, and the subsequent pictures of Hogarth show how accurately he hit off the characteristics of the day. Thus, in the number for October 6, 1709, it is observed that "a cane is part of the dress of a prig" (this, by the way, shows the erroneous notion prevalent that "priggishness" is a modern word), and always worn "upon a button, for fear he should be thought to have an occasion for it or be esteem’d really and not genteely a cripple." In the number for November 18 a rural squire in town is sketched who is the prototype of one of the pavement nuisances I have already described. "His arms naturally swang at an unreasonable distance from his sides, which, with the advantage of a cane that he brandished in a great variety of irregular motions, made it unsafe for anyone to walk within several yards of him. And under date of December 5 there is an amusing sketch of "a lively, fresh-coloured young man" who was among the applicants to Isaac Bickentaff’s Court of Censorship for licence to use "canes, perspective glasses, snuff-boxes, orange flower waters, and the like ornaments of life." This young man had his cane banging on his fifth button, and was "an Oxford scholar who was just enter’d at the Temple." He argued that he could do as he liked with his cane, provided he did not break the peace with it. "That he never took it off his button unless it were to hold it over the head of a drawer, point out the circumstances of a story, or for other services of the like nature," which shows that the eighteenth century stick-flourisher had some habits foreign to his modern successor.

The elaborate nature of the fashionable cane is shown by the description of that of another applicant, also described as a "prig," who asserted that a great part of his behaviour depended upon it, and that he did not know how to be good company without "knocking it on his shoe, leaning one leg upon it" (this is a modern instance), "or whistling with it in his mouth." This cane was "very curiously clouded. with a transparent amber head, and a blue riband to hang it upon his wrist," and the Clerk of the Court was ordered to "lay it up and deliver out to him a plain joint headed with walnut."

As the eighteenth century went on, a remarkable development of walking-stick marked its progress. Johnson, Goldsmith, and their compeers deemed a good stick, it has been said, as necessary as a coat. The umbrella, the modern Londoner’s necessity, was very rarely seen. It took a long time to wear down the general ridicule poured on its first specimen carried by Jonas Hanway at the end of the preceding century; and the stick was indeed as great a necessity, for the footpad abounded in the ill-lighted, policeless London of the last century, when. returning from various places like Sadler’s Wells, pleasure seekers had to be escorted by patrols. The mob, too, was always ready for an uproar, and a knowledge of single-stick was an advantage and a common accomplishment, while displays of it by professional artists at Hockley-in-the-Hole (the site of which an old public-house and its yard now occupy, so far as we know) were as popular amusements as are football matches now.

But there was one sort of walking-stick which became for a time "immensely popular-that carried behind ladies of fashion, painted, patched, and hooped, by their footmen. It would be difficult to persuade Jeames de la Pluche to carry one now, whatever the inducement of wages and perquisites. It resembled the modern footman’s cane in length, being six feet high, but in nothing else. Various woods were used-as, for instance, an elm sapling, in which the natural excrescences were taken advantage of. In parts they were painted and gilt. Huge knobs formed their tops, and these were carved into heads of grotesque kinds. Each of them was selected, if possible, with natural excrescences along the stem. These were carved into smaller heads, and glass eyes were added, the whole effect being, as far as possible, terrorising. Early in the century there were Mohocks, later on footpads, who had no idea of chivalry, and looked on ladies as facile victims, in the one case of brutal sport, in the other of brutal robbery. Provided the footmen carrying them could and would use them, these huge sticks were weapons which might in either case be very effective.

With the Nabob era of the last century, when the returned Anglo-Indian who had shaken the pagoda tree with much effect, and came back to England with an immense fortune, a liver complaint, and a desire for a seat in Parliament, was a common character in novel and play, the bamboo cane or genuine rattan became a familiar object. Long ere that time, however, one class used long gold-headed canes as their professional adjuncts-the physicians. Popular tradition explained the elaborate gold beads as containing some potent prophylactic which the physicians kept to themselves. In the case of the running footmen who preceded the carriages of the wealthy in the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century, and who performed remarkable feats of celerity, the long canes they earned did really have large hollow heads, in which were stimulants, certainly needed by themselves, these, too, on occasion (accidents being common on the majority of the roads, which were of the vilest till the end of the last century) being useful for others. With the early years of the present century-the days of the Regency-we see from contemporary caricatures various whimsical fashions with the "bucks" and "dandies" of the time in the shape of walking-sticks- mostly of a very light description, much more for show than use-but with one new fashion, that of having a quizzing glass, as it was termed, set in the handle. Then, in the ridiculous attitude which he affected, his head thrown back by his enormous neckcloth into his high-collared coat, the dandy raised the handle of his stick to his eye and looked patronisingly at the beauties and the horses in the Row or Ring.

There are many phases of the French Revolution. One of them is that of sticks. The cane of the ancien regime was a dainty, fairylike wand, which matched monseigneur’s exquisite snuff-box and jewelled rapier. The vulgar cudgel was unknown to nous autres, though the rhapsodies of Rousseau in the woods, which he paints more as if they were scenic than actual ones, must have made him sigh for the stick cut from some bough by the honest rustic. When the Terror came–with its net of suspects, its delators, its deadly lists handed each night to grim-visaged Fouquier Tinville, its triumvirate dominated by the smartly dressed, bilious-eyed, cat-like man who was a greater despot than any of the kings whom the mad multitude tore from their tombs at St. Denis- the bludgeon came too. It was significant. The band of shaggy-spencered, red-capped, wooden-shoed ruffians, whose cockades and profanities evidenced their patriotism, and whose main object was to guard the popular idol, Maximilien Robespierre, from being immolated by some whim of his devotees, were armed with big sticks which would fell like a bullock any citizen who ventured to think a rigime of blood better fitted for Central Africa–then, indeed, an unknown and terrible region–than for civilised Paris, the (self-styled) "hub of the universe." Handling these bludgeons, the bodyguard of "the sea-green incorruptible" stood outside the door of his modest lodgings. They certainly would not use them as walking-sticks–the citizen of the Terror would have deemed anything of that sort a concession to aristocratic prejudices. But the point is this. The Ninth Thermidor comes. To the immense joy of the many millions the arch-fiend who was the idol of the fierce thousands who dominated by sheer terrorism on the one side, sheer lethargy on the other, the millions, is sent with his colleagues to that axe which the up-to-date Londoner may gaze on to-day at a famous exhibition, and which had sheared off hundreds of heads at his bidding, sometimes whole families, from the oldest to the youngest. Then comes the reaction, and the riot of the jeunesse doree and the incroyables. These reproduce the bludgeon of the discomfited and savage Jacobins, but in shape of walking-stick. For you may use a walking-stick now; the signs of luxury and ancient associations are seen reappearing on every side. The walking-stick of the merveilleux or inroyable was a most remarkable thing. It was knotted and twisted, naturally or artificially, its thickness above suggesting the sansculotte’s bludgeon, but tapering off at the lower end. Gaily decorated with coloured ribbons at the handle, this sort of walking-stick required "living up to," as Punch’s aesthete said years ago of the blue china teapot. It matched the costume, the bright coloured long swallow-tailed coat, the voluminous white neckcloth, the breeches with ribbons, the top boots, the frill and ruffles, and the enormous cocked hat. But the stick, despite its rococo appearance, suggested a combination between the savagery of the immediate past and the foppery of the immediate present, and was typical of the transitional state of Paris until the iron hand of the First Consul, already imperious, reticent, haughty, demeaning himself as master in every word and action, lifted France, as be truly said, "from the gutter," and made her feel that no despotism should be tolerated but his own.

The early years of this century in our own land were more distinguished, so far as contemporary prints, caricatures, and the like show, by the general popularity of the walking-stick than by that–which marks the later portion–of the umbrella. The walking-stick of native woods, curiously carved about handle or head, rivaled bamboo and foreign canes, which soon became favourites with men of substance and mature age. Oak and hazel have always held their own. Holly was almost an equal favourite. The ground ash has constantly been used by country folk of all degrees having any association with horses or cattle. At one time it was fashionable in London simplex munditiis, just the plain supple elastic stick, but with gold band round the top to give it a mark of distinction. At present the hazel seems fashionable. Those who use it are not in the majority of cases, we surmise, aware of the magic lore always associated with the hazel and its nuts, as to which much might be written. Orange and lemon wood find favour with some. Curious sticks there are too, if this be not a "bull," made of huge cabbage stalks from the Channel Islands. The blackthorn has always found Ireland true to it, as the needle to the pole, while some part of Scotland likes the rowan. This is a tree of much magical legend. Twigs of it nailed on cowhouse or stable act as does the horseshoe elsewhere, and the herd boy or girl often carries a rowan stick with a bit of red thread attached, to ward off from the cattle the evil eye, warlocks, or witches.

The medical student’s stick of the past generations–be it understood, those limned by Albert Smith–was of a kind peculiar to the budding members of the profession. Mr. Bob Sawyer and his compeers delighted in short pea-jackets with deep pockets,wherein reposed an equally short stick. This was by courtesy known as a walking-stick, but in reality should have been termed a wrenching-stick. Its chief use, according to tradition, was to insert in door-knockers and by a certain amount of leverage twist them off, to carry away as trophies of the wild hospital days. Also it was useful as a handy argument in a scrimmage; while carried in the pocket, the end sticking out, it gave a fast aspect to its possessor, which he prized in proportion to his youthfulness.

It will be noticed by those who study old prints of the last and seventeenth centuries that the walking-staff was nearly as high in many cases as the owner’s head. This throws light on one social feature of the past which has been painted in the strongest language by, among others, Arthur Young, whose autobiography has lately been published–the infamous state of the roads. Ditches, gullies, ruts, and the like abounded, and in many cases the pedestrian had to leap across them. Then it was that the length of a tough and reliable walking-stick was of much value. It could be used as a leaping pole; also as a sounder of depth where water had to be forded. Of freaks in sticks many might be mentioned. We recollect seeing a most curious one made of iron and greatly prized by its possessor, the head consisting of miniatures of sovereigns past and present, accurately cast.

F.G. Walters.