§§§§§§
````， ``№w ）;
， ！
S . ***
ſº s
·ſ · * * *:·3:eſe sºğ:
*..*- . . . . „ ' ? - - - - .： ， ！~~~
ſaesº v vsº • • • ………”，-，- （ ， ~，~u šis
-. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ::. . . . -， *, **
*************--saestº！……***-s！！！！！！！！！！！！--******
-،º ： * .~---~--~--~- ------~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~~ * * * * * · *ae

， ， ， ' &ſ.
******" : '$'）;
* * · · · ·, èº，
× × . . . '
, ， *
«-★ → → → • • •ºff，
z; ***, ** * * *， º*?&&&&· «
-.ºffſ&3&-
$2;*
§§§） .
·***
§ ' ' ）;
:::::* ,
•• • •
. , * · * * * · * * * , , ，
、¿?
*“,s},; : **,* ，
, （ſ’）, º

și „ſ.
« *
i 1 , † •
s
i
ſ.jſ)|-
|-|×
{|
Ř
}，
RY DUEL.
GLEBU
THE WIN
Sketches.

SKETCHES BY BOZ.
EVERY-DAY LIFE AND EVERY-DAY
PEOPLE.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
NEW YORK :
R. WORTHINGTON, PUBLISHER.
1884.
PIR E E A C E .
*m-mºmºmº-mºms
*~.
THE whole of these Sketches were written and pub.
lished, one by one, when I was a very young man.
They were collected and re-published while I was still
a very young man; and sent into the world with all
their imperfections (a good many) on their heads
They comprise my first attempts at authorship—with
the exception of certain tragedies achieved at the
mature age of eight or ten, and represented with great
applause to overflowing nurseries. I am conscious of
their often being extremely crude and ill-considered,
and bearing obvious marks of haste and inexperience;
particularly in that section of the present volume which
is comprised under the general head of Tales. .
But as this collection is not originated now, and was
very leniently and favourably received when it was
first made, I have not felt it right either to remodel or
expunge, beyond a few words and phrases here and
there. -
October, 1850.
CONTENTS.
—º-
SEVEN SKETCHES FROM OUR PARISH.
**-
‘CHAPTER I. PAGE
The Beapºn. The Parish ENGINE. The Schoolmaster. 1
CHAPTER II.
THE CURATE. THE OLD LADY. THE HALF-PAY CAPTAIN. ... 6
CHAPTER III.
THE FOUR SISTERs º e e º o e e . 12.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ELECTION FOR BEADLE . º e º e º . 17
CHAPTER. W.
THE BROKER's Ms. © e w te e º gº . 24
CHAPTER WI.
THE LADIES' societies º e º º º e º . 34
CHAPTER VII.
OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR . t º o © • , 4()
viii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXII.
GIN-SHOPS
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE PAWNBROKER's SHOP
CHAPTER XXIV.
CRIMINAL COURTS .
CHAPTER XXV.
A VISIT TO NEwgATE .
CHARACTERS
CHAPTER I.
Thoughts about People
CHAPTER II.
A CHRISTMAS DINNER .
CHAPTER III.
THE NEW YEAR
^,
CHAPTER IV.
MISS EVANs sº THE EAGLE
CHAPTER W.
THE PARLOUR ORATOR . -
CHAPTER WI.
THE HOSPITAL PATIENT
PAGE
178
. 184
192
196
216
221
226
. 236
CONTENTS.
ix.
CHAPTER VII.
THE MISPLACED ATTACHMENT OF MIR. JoHN DouncL
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MISTAKEN MILLINER. A. TALE OF AMBITION .
CHAPTER IX.
THE DANCING ACADEMY ... •
CHAPTER X.
SHABBY-GENTEEL PEOPLE
CHAPTER XI.
MAKING A NIGHT OF IT
CHAPTER XT
THE PRISONERS’ WAN
TALES.
CHAPTER T.
TITE IROARDING-House '.
CHAPTER II.
MR. MINNS AND HIs Cousin
CHAPTER III.
SENTIMENT
CHAPTER IV.
THE TUGGS's AT RAMSGATE .
PAGE
240
246
269
273
311
322
334
X: CONTENTS. g |
CHAPTER W. PAGE
HoRATIO SPARKINS * tº g * * sº ge . 355
CHAPTER WI.
THE BLACK WELL . . tº tº * g © o . 371
CHAPTER WIT.
THE STEAM Excursion . . ... • . gº Q * . 383
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL . ſº e g tº . 406
CHAPTER IX.
MRS. JosLPH PortER . e º dº * > © . 423
CHAPTER X.
A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF MR. WATRINS TOTTLE tº . 433
CHAPTER XI.
THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING . ſº e Q tº . 470
CHAPTER XII.
THE DRUNKARD's DEATII g tº tº tº tº C . 486
LIST OF II LUSTRATIONS.
•=-
PAGE
THE BROKER'S MAN e R . GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 24
HACKNEY COACH STANDs . g Ditto. 79
THOUGHTs ABOUT PEOPLE 2. te Ditto. 211
THE DANCING ACADEMY te e Ditto. 252
THE WINGLEBURY DUEL * te I)itto. 406
MR. WATKINS TOTTLE AND MISS LILLERTON Ditto. 433
SEQETOEIES BY EOZ.
OUIR PATRISH.
CHAPTER I.
THE BEADLE. THE PARISH ENGINE, THE SCHOOLMASTER.
ETOW much is conveyed in those two short words—
“The Parish l’ And with how many tales of
distress and misery, of broken fortune and ruined hopes,
too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful
knavery, are they associated! A poor man with small
earnings, and a large family, just manages to live on
from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to
day; he has barely sufficient to satisfy the present
cravings of nature, and can take no heed of the future.
His taxes are in arrear, quarter day passes by, another
Quarter day arrives; he can procure no more quarter
for himself, and is summoned by—the parish. His
goods are distrained, his children are crying with cold
and hunger, and the very bed on which his sick wife is
lying, is dragged from beneath her. What can he do?
To whom is he to apply for relief? To private charity?
To benevolent individuals? Certainly not—there is his
parish. There are the parish vestry, the parish in-
firmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers, the
1
2 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
parish beadle. Excellent institutions, and gentle, kind-
hearted men. The woman dies—she is buried by the
parish. The children have no protector—they are taken
care of by the parish. The man first neglects, and
afterwards cannot obtain, work—he is relieved by the
parish; and when distress and , drunkenness have
done their work upon him, he is maintained, a harmless
babbling idiot, in the parish asylum.
The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps the
most, important member of the local administration.
He is not so well off as the churchwardens, certainly,
nor is he so learned as the vestry-clerk, nor does he
order things quite so much his own way as either of
them. But his power is very great, notwithstanding;
and the dignity of his office is never impaired by the
absence of efforts on his part to maintain it. The beadle
of our parish is a splendid fellow. It is quite delightful
to hear him, as he explains the state of the existing
poor laws to the deaf old women in the board-room-pas-
sage on business nights; and to hear what he said to
the senior churchwarden, and what the senior church-
warden said to him ; and what “we” (the beadle and
the other gentlemen) came to the determination of
doing. A miserable-looking woman is called into the
board-room, and represents a case of extreme desti-
tution, affecting herself—a widow, with six small
children. “Where do you live?” inquires one of the
overseers. “I rents a two-pair back, gentlemen, at
Mrs. Brown's, Number 3, Little King William’s-alley,
which has lived there this fifteen year, and knows me
to be very hard-working and industrious, and when my
poor husband was alive, gentlemen, as died in the hos-
pital”—“Well, well,” interrupts the overseer, taking
a note of the address, “I’ll send Simmons, the beadle,
to-morrow morning, to ascertain whether your story is
correct; and if so, I suppose you must have an order
into the House—Simmons, go to this woman's, the first
thing to-morrow morning, will you?” Simmons bows
assent, and ushers the woman out. Her previous ad-
miration of “the board ” (who all sit behind great
books, and with their hats on) fades into nothing
before her respect for her lace-trimmed conductor;
and her account of what has passed inside, increases
—if that be possible—the marks of respect, shown by
THE PARISH ENGINE. 3
the assembled crowd to that solemn functionary.
As to taking out a summons, it’s quite a hopeless
case if Simmons attends it, on tº: of the parish.
He knows all the titles of the Lord Mayor by heart;
states the case without a single stammer: and it is
even reported that on one occasion he ventured to
make a joke, which the Lord Mayor’s head footman
(who happened to be present) afterwards told an inti-
mate friend, confidentially, was almost equal to One
of Mr. Hobler's.
See him again on Sunday in his state-coat and Cocked
hat, with a large-headed staff for show in his left
hand, and a small cane for use in his right. How porn-
º he marshals the children into their places! and
how demurely the little urchins look at him askance
as he surveys them when they are all seated, with a
#. of the eye peculiar to beadles! The churchwar-
ens and overseers being duly installed in their cur-
tained pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket,
erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and
divides his attention between his prayer-book and the
boys. Suddenly, just at the commencement of the
communion service, when the whole congregation is
hushed into a profound silence, broken only by the
voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is heard
to ring on the stone floor of the aisle with astounding
clearness. Observe the generalship of the beadle. His
involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into
one of perfect indifference, as if he were the only
person present who had not heard the noise. The
artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right leg now
and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the
money ventures to make one or two distinct dives
after it; and the beadle, gliding softly round, Salutes
his little round head, when it again appears above the
seat, with divers double knocks, administered with
the came before noticed, to the intense delight of three
young men in an adjacent pew, who cough violently
at intervals until the conclusion of the sermon.
Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity
of a parish beadle—a gravity which has never been
disturbed in any case that has come under our Ob-
servation, except when the services of that particularly
useful machine, a parish fire-engine, are required:
4 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
then indeed all is bustle. Two little boys run to the
beadle as fast as their legs will carry them, and report
from their own personal observation that some neigh-
bouring chimney is on fire; the engine is hastily got out,
and a plentiful supply of boys being obtained, and
harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle over the
pavement, the beadle, running—we do not exaggerate
—running at the side, until they arrive at some house,
Smelling strongly of soot, at the door of which the
beadle knocks with considerable gravity for half an
hour. No attention being paid to these manual appli-
cations, and the turn-cock having turned on the water,
the engine turns off amidst the shouts of the boys; it
pulls up once more at the workhouse, and the beadle
‘‘ pulls up ’’ the unfortunate householder next day, for
the amount of his legal reward. We never saw a
parish engine at a regular fire but once. It came up
in gallant style—three miles and a half an hour, at
least; there was a capital supply of water, and it was
first on the spot. Bang went the pumps—the people
cheered—the beadle perspired profusely; but it was
unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to
pº the fire out, that nobody understood the process
y which the engine was filled with water; and that
eighteen boys and a man, had exhausted themselves
in pumping for twenty minutes, without producing
the slightest effect! -
The personages next in importance to the beadle, are
the master of the workhouse and the parish school-
master. The vestry-clerk, as everybody knows, is a
short, pudgy little man, in black, with a thick gold
watch-chain of considerable length, terminating in two
large Seals and a key. He is an attorney, and generally
in a bustle; at no time more so than when he is hurry-
ing to Some parochial meeting, with his gloves crumpled .
up in One hand, and a large red book under the other
arm. As to the churchwardens and overseers, we ex-
clude them altogether, because all we know of them
is, that they are usually respectable tradesmen, who
Wear hats with brims inclined to flatness, and who
Occasionally testify in gilt letters on a blue ground, in
Some conspicuous part of the church, to the important
fact of a gallery having been enlarged and beautified,
Or an organ rebuilt. .
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 5
The master of the workhouse is not, in our parish—
nor is he usually in any other—one of that class of men
the better part of whose existence has passed away,
and who drag out the remainder in some inferior
situation, with just enough thought of the past to feel
degraded by, and discontented with, the present. We
are unable to guess precisely to our own satisfaction
what station the man can have occupied before; we
should think he had been an inferior sort of attorney’s
clerk, or else the master of a national school—what-
ever he was, it is clear his present position is a change
for the better! His income is small certainly, as the
rusty black coat and threadbare velvet collar demon-
strate: but then be lives free of house-rent, has a
limited allowance of coals and candles, and an almost
unlimited allowance of authority in his petty king-
dom. He is a tall, thin, bony man; always wears shoes
and black cotton stockings with his surtout; and eyes
you as you pass his parlour window, as if he wished
you were a pauper, just to give you a specimen of his
power. He is an admirable specimen of a small tyrant:
morose, brutish, and ill-tempered; bullying to his in-
feriors, cringing to his superiors, and jealous of the
influence and authority of the beadle.
Our schoolmaster is just the very reverse of this
amiable official. He has been one of those men one
occasionally hears of, on whom misfortune seems to
have set her mark; nothing he ever did, or was con-
cerned in, appears to have prospered. A rich old
relation who had brought him up, and openly announced
his intention of providing for him, left him 10,000l. in
his will, and revoked the bequest in a codicil. Thus
unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for
himself, he procured a situation in a public office. The
young clerks below him, died off as if there were a plague
among them; but the old fellows over his head, for the
reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting,
lived on and on, as if they were immortal. He specu-
lated and lost. He speculated again, and won—but
never got his money. His talents were great; his dis-
position, easy, generous, and liberal. His friends
profited by the one, and abused the other. Loss suc-
ceeded loss; misfortune crowded on misfortune; each
Successive day brought him nearer the verge of hope-
6 , SKETCHES BY BOZ.
less penury, and the quondam friends who had been
warmest in their professions, grew strangely cold and
indifferent. He had children whom he loved, and a
wife on whom he doted. The former turned their backs
on him; the latter died broken-hearted. He went with
the stream—it had ever been his failing, and he had
not courage sufficient to bear up against . So many
shocks—he had never cared for himself, and the only
being who had cared for him, in his poverty and dis-
tress, was spared to him no longer. It was at this period
that he applied for parochial relief. Some kind-hearted
man who had known him in happier times, chanced to
be churchwarden that year, and through his interest he
was appointed to his present situation.
He is an old man now. Of the many who once
crowded round him in all the hollow friendship of boon
companionship, some have died, some have fallen like
himself, some have prospered—all have forgotten him.
Time and misfortune have mercifully been permitted to
impair his memory, and use has habituated him to his
present condition. Meek, uncomplaining, and zealous
in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to
hold his situation long beyond the usual period; and he
will no doubt continue to hold it, until infirmity renders
him incapable, or death releases him. As the grey-
headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny
side of the little court-yard between school hours, it
would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his
former friends to recognise their once gay and happy
associate, in the person of the Pauper Schoolmaster.
CHAPTER II.
THE CURATE. THE OLD TADY. THE HALF-PAY CAPTAIN.
W. commenced our last chapter with the beadle of
our parish, because we are deeply sensible of the
importance and dignity of his office. We will begin the
present, with the clergyman. Our curate is a young
gentleman of Such prepossessing appearance, and fasci-
nating manners, that within one month after his first
appearance in the parish, half the young-lady inhabi-
/
THE CURATE. y
tants were melancholy with religion, and the other half,
desponding with love. Never were so many young ladies
seen in our parish-church, on Sunday before; and never
had the little round angels' faces on Mr. Tomkins’s monu-
ment in the side aisle, beheld such devotion on earth as
they all exhibited. He was about five-and-twenty when
he first came to astonish the parishioners. He parted
his hair on the centre of his forehead in the form of a
Norman arch, wore a brilliant of the first water on the
fourth finger of his left hand (which he always applied
to his left cheek when he read prayers), and had a deep
Sepulchral voice of unusual solemnity. Innumerable
were the calls made by prudent mammas on our new
Curate, and innumerable the invitations with which he
was assailed, and which, to do him justice, he readily
accepted. If his manner in the pulpit had created an
impression in his favour, the sensation was increased
tenfold, by his appearance in private circles. Pews in
the immediate vicinity of the pulpit or reading-desk
rose in value; sittings in the centre aisle were at a pre-
mium : an inch of room in the front row of the gallery
could not be procured for love or money; and some
eople even went so far as to assert, that the three Miss
Browns, who had an obscure family pew just behind
the churchwardens’, were detected, one Sunday, in the
free seats by the communion-table, actually lying in
wait for the curate as he passed to the vestry ! He
began to preach extempore sermons, and even grave
papas caught the infection. He got out of bed at half-
past "twelve o’clock one winter’s night, to half-baptise
a Washerwoman’s child in a slop-basin, and the grati-
tude of the parishioners knew no bounds—the very
churchwardens grew generous, and insisted on the
parish defraying the expense of the watch-box on wheels
which the new curate had ordered for himself, to per-
form the funeral service in, in wet weather. He sent
three pints of gruel and a quarter of a pound of tea to a
poor woman who had been brought to bed of four small
children, all at once—the parish were charmed. He
got up a subscription for her—the woman’s fortune was
made. He spoke for one hour and twenty-five minutes,
at an anti-slavery meeting at the Goat and Boots—the
enthusiasm was at its height. A proposal was set on
feot for presenting the curate with a piece of plate, as a
*
S SKETCHES BY BOZ.
mark of esteem for his valuable services rendered to the
parish. The list of subscriptions was filled up in no
time; the contest was, not who should escape the con-
tribution, but who should be the foremost to subscribe.
A Splendid silver inkstand was made, and engraved
with an appropriate inscription; the curate was invited
to a public breakfast at the before-mentioned Goat and
Boots; the inkstand was presented in a meat speech by
Mr. Gubbins, the ex-churchwarden, and acknowledged
by the curate in terms which drew tears into the eyes
of all present—the very waiters were melted.
One would have supposed that, by this time, the
theme of universal admiration was lifted to the very
Fº of popularity. No such thing. The curate
egan to Cough; four fits of coughing One morning
between the Litany and the Epistle, and five in the
afternoon service. Here was a discovery—the curate
was consumptive. How interestingly melancholy! If
the young ladies were emergetic before, their sympathy
and Solicitude now knew no bounds. Such a man as
the curate—such a dear—such a perfect love—to be
consumptive! It was too much. Anonymous presents
of black currant jam, and lozenges, elastic waistcoats,
bosom friends, and Warm stockings, poured in upon the
curate until he was as completely fitted out, with
winter clothing, as if he were on the verge of an expe-
dition to the North Pole: verbal bulletins of the state
of his health were circulated throughout the parish
half-a-dozen times a day; and the curate was in the
very zenith of his popularity. &
About this period, a change came over the spirit of
the parish. A very quiet, respectable, dozing old
gentleman, who had officiated in our chapel of ease for
twelve years previously, died one fine morning, without
having given any notice whatever of his intention.
This circumstance gave rise to counter-sensation the
first; and the arrival of his successor occasioned coun-
ter-sensation the second. He was a pale, thin, cadav-
erous man, with large black eyes, and long straggling
black hair: his dress was slovenly in the extreme, his
manner ungainly, his doctrines startling; in short, he
was in every respect the antipodes of the curate.
Crowds of our female parishioners flocked to hear him:
at first, because he was so odd-looking, then because
THE OLD LADY. 9
his face was so expressive, then because he preached
so well; and at last, because they really thought that,
after all, there was something about him which it was
quite impossible to describe. As to the curate, he was
all very well; but certainly, after all, there was no
denying that—that—in short, the curate wasn’t a
novelty, and the other clergyman was. The incon-
stancy of public opinion is proverbial: the congregation
migrated one by one. The curate coughed till he was
black in the face—it was in vain. He respired with
difficulty—it was equally ineffectual in awakening
sympathy. Seats are once again to be had in any part
of our parish church, and the chapel-of-ease is going
to be enlarged, as it is crowded to suffocation every
Sunday !
The best known and most respected among our par-
ishioners, is an old lady, who resided in our parish long
before our name was registered in the list of baptisms.
Our parish is a suburban one, and the old lady lives in
a neat row of houses in the most airy and pleasant part
of it. The house is her own; and it and everything
about it, except the old lady herself, who looks a little
older than she did ten years ago, is in just the same
state as when the old gentleman was living. The little
front parlour, which is the old lady’s ordinary sitting-
room, is a perfect picture of quiet neatness: the carpet
is covered with brown Holland, the glass and picture-
frames are carefully enveloped in yellow muslin; the
table-covers are never taken off, except when the leaves
are turpentined and bees’ waxed, an operation which is
regularly commenced every other morning at half-past
nine o’clock—and the little nichacs are always arranged
in precisely the same manner. The greater part of
these are presents from little girls whose parents live
in the same row; but some of them, such as the two
old fashioned watches (which never keep the same
time, one being always a quarter of an hour too slow,
and the other a quarter of an hour too fast), the little
picture of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold
as they appeared in the Royal Box at Drury-lane
Theatre, and others of the same class, have been in the
old lady's possession for many years. Here the old
lady sits with her spectacles on, busily engaged in
needlework—near the window in summer time; and if
10 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
she sees you coming up the steps, and you happen to be
a favourite, she trots out to open the street door for you
before you knock, and as you must be fatigued after
that hot walk, insists on your swallowing two glasses
of sherry before you exert yourself by º If you
call in the evening you will find her cheerful, but rather
more serious than usual, with an open Bible on the
table, before her, of which “Sarah,” who is just as
meat and methodical as her mistress, regularly reads
two or three chapters in the parlour aloud.
The old lady sees scarcely any company, except the
little girls before noticed, each of whom has always a
regular fixed day for a periodical tea-drinking with her,
to which the child looks forward as the greatest treat
of its existence. She seldom visits at a greater distance
than the next door but one on either side; and when
she drinks tea here, Sarah runs out first and knocks a
double knock, to prevent the possibility of her “Missis’s”
catching cold by having to wait at the door. She is
very scrupulous in returning these little invitations, and
when she asks Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so, to meet Mr. and
Mrs. Somebody-else, Sarah and she dust the urn, and
the best china tea-service, and the Pope Joan board;
and the visitors are received in the drawing-room in
great state. She has but few relations, and they are
scattered about in different parts of the country, and she
seldom sees them. She has a son in India, whom she
always describes to you as a fine, handsome fellow—so
like the profile of his poor dear father over the sideboard,
but the old lady adds, with a mournful shake of the head,
that he has always been one of her greatest trials, and
that indeed he once almost broke her heart; but it
pleased God to enable her to get the better of it, and
she would prefer your never mentioning the subject to
her, again. She has a great number of pensioners; and
on Saturday, after she comes back from market, there
is a regular levee of old men and women in the passage,
waiting for their weekly gratuity. Her name always
heads the list of any benevolent subscriptions, and hers
are always the most liberal donations to the Winter
Coal and Soup Distribution Society. She subscribed
twenty pounds towards the erection of an organ in our
parish church, and was so overcome the first Sunday the
children sang to it, that she was obliged to be carried
- - f
THE HALF-PAY CAPTAIN. 11
out by the pew-opener. Her entrance into church on
Sunday is always the signal for a little bustle in the side
aisle, occasioned by a general rise among the poor peo-
ple, who bow, and curtsy until the pew-opener has
ushered the old lady into her accustomed seat, dropped
a respectful curtsy, and shut the door: and the cere-
mony is repeated on her leaving church, when she
walks home with the family next door but one, and
talks about the sermon all the way, invariably opening
the conversation by asking the youngest boy where the
text Was. a -
Thus, with the annual variation of a trip to some
quiet place on the sea-coast, passes the old lady’s life.
It has rolled on in the same unvarying and benevo-
lent course for many years now, and must at no distant
period be brought to its final close. She looks forward
to its termination, with calmness and without appre-
hension. She has everything to hope and nothing to
fear. *.
A very different personage, but one who has rendered
himself very conspicuous in our parish, is one of the
old lady’s next door neighbours. He is an old naval offi-
cer on half-pay, and his bluff and unceremonious be-
haviour disturbs the old lady’s domestic economy, not a
little. In the first place, he will smoke cigars in the
front court, and when he wants something to drink with
them—which is by no means an uncommon circumstance
—he lifts up the old lady’s knocker with his walking-
stick, and demands to have a glass of table ale, handed
over the rails. In addition to this cool proceeding, he
is a bit of a Jack of all trades, or to use his own words,
“A regular Robinson Crusoe; ” and nothing delights
him better than to experimentalise on the old lady’s
property. One morning he got up early, and planted
three or four roots of full-grown marigolds in every
, bed of her front garden, to the inconceivable aston-
ishment of the old lady, who actually thought when
she got up and looked out of the window, that it was
Some Strange eruption which had come out in the night.
Another time he took to pieces the eight-day clock on
the front landing, under pretence of cleaning the works,
which he put together again by some undiscovered proc-
ess in so wonderful a manner, that the large hand has
done nothing but trip up the little one ever since. Then
12 SKETCHES BY BOZ. \
he took to breeding silk-worms, which he would bring
in two or three times a day, in little paper boxes, to
show the old lady, generally dropping a worm or two at
every visit. ... The consequence was, that one morning a
very stout silk-worm was discovered in the act of walk-
ing up-stairs—probably with the view of inquiring
after his friends, for, on further inspection, it appeared
that some of his companions had already found their
way to every room in the house. The old lady went to
the sea-side in despair, and during her absence he com-
#. effaced the name from her brass door-plate, in
is attempts to polish it with aqua-fortis.
But all this is nothing to his seditious conduct in public
life. He attends every vestry meeting that is held;
always opposes the constituted authorities of the parish,
denounces the profligacy of the churchwardens, contests
legal points against the vestry-clerk, will make the tax-
gatherer call for his money till he won’t call any longer,
and then he sends it: finds fault with the sermon every
Sunday, says that the organist ought to be ashamed of
himself, offers to back himself for any amount to sing
the psalms better than all the children put together,
male and female; and, in short, conducts himself in the
most turbulent and uproarious manner. The worst of
it is, that having a high regard for the old lady, he wants
to make her a convert to his views, and therefore walks
into her little parlour with his newspaper in his hand,
and talks violent politics by the hour. He is a chari-
table, open-hearted old fellow at bottom, after all; so,
although he puts the old lady a little out occasionally,
they agree very well in the main, and she laughs as
much at each feat of his handiwork when it is all over,
as anybody else.
CHAPTER III.
T H E F O U R S IS T E R S .
HE row of houses in which the old lady and her
troublesome neighbour reside, comprises, beyond all
doubt, a greater number of characters within its cir-
cumscribed limits, than all the rest of the parish put
together. As we cannot, consistently with our present
THE FOUR SISTERS. 13
plan, however, extend the number of our parochial
sketches beyond six, it will be better, perhaps, to select
the most peculiar, and to introduce them at once without
further preface. -
The four Miss Willises, then, settled in our parish
thirteen years ago. It is a melancholy reflection that
the old adage, “time and tide wait for no man,” applies
with equal force to the fairer portion of the creation;
and willingly would we conceal the fact, that even
thirteen years ago, the Miss Willises were far from *
juvenile. Our duty as faithful parochial chroniclers,
however, is paramount to every other consideration,
and we are bound to state, that thirteen years since,
the authorities in matrimonial cases considered the
youngest Miss Willis in a very precarious state, while
the eldest sister was positively given over, as being far
beyond all human hope. Well, the Miss Willises took
a lease of the house; it was fresh painted and papered
from top to bottom: the paint inside was all wainscoted,
the marble all cleaned, the old gratestaken down, and reg-
ister-stoves, you could see to dress by, put up; four trees
were planted in the back garden, several small baskets
of gravel sprinkled over the front one, vans of elegant
furniture arrived, spring blinds were fitted to the win-
dows, carpenters who had been employed in the various
preparations, alterations, and repairs made confidential
statements to the different maid-servants in the row,
relative to the magnificent scale on which the Miss
Willises were commencing; the maid-servants told
their ‘‘ Missises,” the Missises told their friends, and
vague rumors were circulated throughout the parish,
that No. 25, in Gordon-place, had been taken by four
maiden ladies of immense property.
At last, the Miss Willises moved in; and then the ‘‘ call-
ing ” began. The house was the perfection of neatness—
so were the four Miss Willises. Every thing was formal,
stiff, and cold—so were the four Miss Willises. Not a
single chair of the whole set was ever seen out of place—
not a single Miss Willis of the whole four was ever seen
out of hers. There they always sat, in the same places,
doing precisely the same things at the same hour. The
eldest Miss Willis used to knit, the second to draw, the
two others to play duets on the piano. They seemed to
have no separate existence, but to have made up their
14 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
minds just to winter through life together. They were
three long graces in drapery, with the addition, like
a school-dinner of another long grace afterwards—the
three fates with another sister—the Siamese twins
multiplied by two. The eldest Miss Willis grew bilious—
the four Miss Willises grew bilious immediately. The
eldest Miss Willis grew ill-tempered and religious—the
four Miss Willises were ill-tempered and religious
directly. ' Whatever the eldest did, the others did, and
whatever any body else did, they all disapproved of; and
thus they vegetated—living in Polar harmony among
themselves, and, as they sometimes Went out, or saw
company “in a quiet-way ’’ at home, occasionally iceing
the neighbours. Three years passed over in this way,
when an unlooked for and extraordinary phenomenon
occurred. The Miss Willises showed symptoms of
summer, the frost gradually broke up; a complete thaw
took place. Was it possible? one of the four Miss
Willises was going to be married!
Now, where on earth the husband came from, by what
feelings the poor man could have been actuated, or by
what process of reasoning the four Miss Willises suc-
ceeded in persuading themselves that it was possible
for a man to marry One of them, without marrying them
all, are questions too profound for us to resolve: certain
it is, however, that the visits of Mr. Robinson (a gentle-
man in a public office, with a good salary and a little
property of his own, beside) were received—that the
four Miss Willises were courted in due form by the said
Mr. Robinson—that the neighbours were perfectly fran-
tic in their anxiety to discover which of the four Miss
Willises was the fortunate fair, and that the difficulty
they experienced in Solving the problem was not at all
lessened by the announcement of the eldest Miss
Willis, “We are going to marry Mr. Robinson.”
It was very extraordinary. They were so completely
identified, the one with the other, that the curiosity of
the whole row—even of the old lady herself—was
roused almost beyond endurance. The subject was dis-
cussed at every little card-table and tea-drinking. The
old gentleman of silk-worm notoriety did not hesitate
to express his decided opinion that Mr. Robinson was
of Eastern descent, and contemplated marrying the
whole family at once; and the row, generally, shook
THE FOUR SISTERS. 15
their heads with considerable gravity, and declared
the business to be very mysterious. They hoped it
might all end well; it certainly had a very singular
appearance, but still it would be uncharitable to express
any opinion without good grounds to go upon, and cer-
tainly the Miss Willises were quite old enough to judge
for themselves, and to be sure people ought to know
their own business best, and so forth. -
At last, one fine morning, at a quarter before eight
o'clock, A. M., two glass-coaches drove up to the Miss
Willises’ door at which Mr. Robinson had arrived in a
cab ten minutes before, dressed in a light blue coat and
double-milled kersey pantaloons, white neckerchief,
pumps, and dress-gloves, his manner denoting, as
appeared from the evidence of the housemaid at No.
23, who was sweeping the door-steps at the time, a con-
siderable degree of nervous excitement. It was also
hastily reported on the same testimony, that the cook
who opened the door, wore a large white bow of
unusual dimensions, in a much Smarter head-dress than
the regulation cap to which the Miss Willises invaria-
bly restricted the somewhat excursive taste of female
servants in general.
The intelligence spread rapidly from house to house.
It was quite clear that the eventful morning had at
length arrived; the whole row stationed themselves
behind their first and second floor blinds, and waited
the result in breathless expectation. -
At last the Miss Willises' door opened; the door of the
first glass-coach did the same. Two gentlemen and a
pair of ladies to correspond—friends of the family, no
doubt; up went the steps, bang went the door, off went
the first glass-coach, and up came the Second.
The street-door opened again; the excitement of the
whole row increased—Mr. Robinson and the eldest Miss
Willis. “I thought so,” said the lady at No. 10; “I
always said it was Miss Willis!”—“Well, I never!”
ejaculated the young lady at No. 18 to the young lady
at No. 17—“Did you ever, dear!” responded the young
lady at No. 17 to the young lady at No. 18. “It’s too
ridiculous!” exclaimed a spinster of an uncertain age,
at No. 16, joining in the conversation. But who shall
portray the astonishment of Gordon-place, when Mr.
Robinson handed in all the Miss Willises, one after
16 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
the other, and then squeezed himself into an acute
angle of the glass-coach, which forth with proceeded at
a brisk pace, after the other glass-coach, which other
glass-coach had itself proceeded, at a brisk pace, in
the direction of the parish church. Who shall depict
the perplexity of the clergyman, when all the Miss
Willises knelt down at the communion table, and
repeated the responses incidental to the marriage serv-
ice in an audible voice—or who shall describe the
confusion which prevailed, when—even after the
difficulties thus occasioned had been adjusted—all the
Miss Willises went into hysterics at the conclusion of
the ceremony, until the sacred edifice resounded with
their united wailings!
As the four sisters and Mr. Robinson continued to
occupy the same house after this memorable occasion,
and as the married sister, whoever she was, never ap-
peared in public without the other three, we are not
guite clear that the neighbours ever would have dis-
covered the real Mrs. Robinson, but for a circumstance
of the most gratifying description, which will happen
occasionally in the best-regulated families. Three
quarter-days elapsed, and the row, on whom a new
light appeared to have been bursting for some time, be-
gan to speak with a sort of implied confidence on the
subject, and to wonder how Mrs. Robinson—the young-
est Miss Willis that was—got on; and servants might
be seen running up the steps, about nine or ten o’clock
every morning, with “Missis’s compliments, and wishes
to know how Mrs. Robinson finds herself this morn-
ing?” And the answer always was, “ Mrs. Robinson’s
compliments, and she’s in very good spirits, and doesn’t
find herself any worse.” The piano was heard no
longer, the knitting-needles were laid aside, drawing
was neglected, and mantua-making and millinery, on
the Smallest scale imaginable, appeared to have be-
come the favourite amusement of the whole family.
The parlour wasn’t quite as tidy as it used to be, and if
you called in the morning, you would see lying on a
table, with an old newspaper º thrown over
them, two or three particularly small caps, rather
larger than if they had been made for a moderate-sized
doll, with a small piece of lace, in the shape of a horse-
shoe, let in behind: or perhaps a white robe, not very
\ \ , \ \
THE FOUR SISTERS. 17
large in circumference, but very much out of propor-
tion in point of length, with a little tucker round the
top, and a frill round the bottom; and once when we
called, we saw a long white roller, with a kind of blue
margin down each side, the probable use of which, we .
were at loss to conjecture. Then we fancied that Mr.
Dawson, the surgeon, etc., who displays a large lamp
with a different colour in every pane of glass, at the
corner of the row, began to be knocked up at night
oftener than he used to be; and once we were very
much alarmed by hearing a hackney-coach stop at Mrs.
Robinson’s door, at half-past two o'clock in the morn-
ing, out of which there emerged a fat old woman, in a
cloak and night-cap, with a bundle in One hand, and
a pair of pattens in the other, who looked as if she had
been suddenly knocked up out of bed for some very
Special purpose.
When we got up in the morning we saw that the
knocker was tied up in an old white kid glove; and we,
in our innocence (we were in a state of bachelorship
them), wondered what on earth it all meant, until we
heard the eldest Miss Willis, in propriá persond, say,
with great dignity, in answer to the next inquiry, “My
compliments, and Mrs. Robinson’s doing as well as can
be expected, and the litttle girl thrives wonderfully.”
And then, in common with the rest of the row, our
curiosity was satisfied, and we began to wonder it had
never occurred to us what the matter was, before.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EI.ECTION FOR BEADLE.
GREAT event has recently occurred in our par-
ish. A contest of paramount interest has just
terminated; a parochial convulsion has taken place.
It has been succeeded by a glorious triumph, which the
conntry—or at least the parish—it is all the same—will
long remember. We have had an election; an election
for beadle. The supporters of the old beadle system
have been defeated in their stronghold, and the advo-
2
18 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
cates of the great new beadle principles have achieved
a proud victory.
Our parish, which, like all other parishes, is a little
world of its own, has long been divided into two parties,
whose contentions, slumbering for a while, have never
failed to burst forth with unabated vigour, on any occa-
sion on which they could by possibility be renewed.
Watching-rates, lighting-rates, paving-rates, sewers'-
rates, church-rates, poor's-rates—all sorts of rates, have
been in their turns the subjects of a grand struggle; and
as to questions of patronage, the asperity and determi-
nation with which they have been contested is scarcely
credible.
The leader of the official party—the steady advocate
of the churchwardens, and the unflinching supporter of
the overseers—is an old gentleman who lives in our row.
He owns some half-dozen houses in it, and always
walks on the Opposite side of the way, so that he may
be able to take in a view of the whole of his property
at once. He is a tall, thin, bony man, with an inter-
rogative nose, and little restless perking eyes, which
appear to have been given him for the sole purpose of
peeping into other people’s affairs with. He is deeply
impressed with the importance of our parish business,
and prides himself, not a little, on his style of address-
ing the parishioners in vestry assembled. His views
are rather confined than extensive; his principles more
narrow than liberal. He has been heard to declaim
very loudy in favour of the liberty of the press, and
advocates the repeal of the stamp duty on newspapers,
because the daily journals who now have a monopoly
of the public, never give verbatim reports of vestry :
meetings. He would not appear egotistical for the
world, but at the same time he must say that there are
speeches—that celebrated speech of his own, on the
emoluments of the Sexton, and the duties of the office,
for instance—which might be communicated to the pub-
lic, greatly to their improvement and advantage.
His #". opponent in public life is Captain Purday,
the old naval officer on half-pay, to whom we have
already introduced our readers. The captain being a
determined opponent of the constituted authorities,
whoever they may chance to be, and our other friend
being their steady supporter, with an equal disregard of
THE ELECTION FOR BEADLE. 19
their individual merits, it will readily be supposed, that
occasions for their coming into direct collision are
neither few nor far between. They divided the vestry
fourteen times on a motion for heating the church with
warm water instead of coals; and made speeches about
'liberty and expenditure, and prodigality and hot water,
which threw the whole parish into a state of excite-
ment. Then the captain, when he was on the visiting
committee, and his opponent overseer, brought forward
certain distinct and specific charges relative to the man-
agement of the workhouse, boldly expressed his total
want of confidence in the existing authorities, and
moved for ‘‘ a copy of the recipe by which the paupers’
soup was prepared, together with any documents relat-
ing thereto.” This the overseer steadily resisted; he
fortified himself by precedent, appealed to the estab-
lished usage, and declined to produce the papers, on the
ground of the injury that would be done to the public
Service, if documents of a strictly private nature, pass-
ing between the master of the workhouse and the cook,
were to be thus dragged to light on the motion of any
individual member of the vestry. The motion was lost
by a majority of two; and then the captain, who never
, allows himself to be defeated, moved for a committee of
inquiry into the whole subject. The affair grew serious:
the question was discussed at meeting after meeeting,
and vestry after vestry; speeches were made, attacks
repudiated, personal defiances exchanged, explanations
received, and the greatest excitement prevailed, until
at last, just as the question was going to be finally
decided, the vesty found that somehow or other, they
had become entangled in a point of form, from which it
Was impossible to escape with propriety. So, the motion
was dropped, and everbody looked extremely important,
and seemed quite satisfied with the meritorious nature
Of the whole procceding. -
This was the state of affairs in our parish a week or
two since, when Simmons, the beadle, suddenly died.
The lamented deceased had over-exerted himself, a day
Or two previously, in conveying an aged female, highly
intoxicated, to the strong room of the workhouse. The
excitement thus occasioned, added to a severe cold,
which this indefatigable officer had caught in his
capacity of director of the parish engine, by inadvert-
20 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
ently playing over himself instead of a fire, proved too
much for a constitution already enfeebled by age; and
the intelligence was conveyed to the Board one evening
that Simmons had died, and left his respects. -
The breath was scarcely out of the body of the
deceased functionary, when the field was filled with
competitors for the vacant office, each of whom rested
his claims to public support, entirely on the number and
extent of his family, as if the office of beadle were orig-
inally instituted as an encouragement for the propaga-
tion of the human species. “Bung for Beadle. Five
small children!”—“Hopkins for Beadle. Seven Small
children! !”—“Timkins for Beadle. Nine small chil-
dren!!!” Such were the placards in large black letters
on a white ground, which were plentifully pasted on
the walls, and posted in the windows of the principal
shops. Timkins's success was considered certain: sev-
eral mothers of families half promised their votes,
and the nine small children would have run over the
course, but for the production of another placard,
announcing the appearance of a still more meritorious
candidate. “Spruggins for Beadle. Ten small children
(two of them twins), and a wife!!!” There was no
resisting this; ten Small children would have been
almost irresistible in themselves, without the twins, but
the touching parenthesis about that interesting produc-
tion of nature, and the still more touching allusion to
Mrs. Spruggins, must ensure success. Spruggins was
the favourite at once, and the appearance of his lady,
as she went about to solicit votes (which encouraged
confident hopes of a still further addition to the house
of Spruggins at no remote period), Increased the gen-
eral prepossession in his favour. The other candidates,
Bung alone excepted, resigned in despair. The day of
election was fixed; and the canvass proceeded with
briskness and perseverance on both sides.
The members of the vestry could not be supposed to
escape the contagious excitement inseparable from the
Occasion. The majority of the lady inhabitants of the
parish declared at Once for Spruggins; and the quomalam.
Overseer took the same side, on the ground that men
with large families always had been elected to the
office, and that although he must admit, that, in other
respects, Spruggins was the least-qualified candidate
THE ELECTION FOR BEADLE. 21
of the two, still it was an old practice, and he saw no
reason why an old practice should be departed from.
This was enough for the captain. He immediately
sided with Bung, canvassed for him personally in all
directions, wrote squibs on Spruggins, and got his
butcher to skewer them up on conspicuous joints in his
shop-front; frightened his neighbour, the old lady, into
a palpitation of the heart, by his awful denunciations of
Spruggins's party; and bounced in and out, and up and
down, and backwards and forwards, until all the sober
inhabitants of the parish thought it inevitable that he
must die of a brain fever, long before the election
began.
The day of election arrived. It was no longer an in-
dividual struggle, but a party contest between the ins
and outs. The question was, whether the withering
influence of the overseers, the domination of the church-
wardens, and the blighting despotism of the vestry-
clerk, should be allowed to render the election of beadle
a form—a nullity: whether they should impose a vestry-
elected beadle on the parish, to do their bidding and
forward their views, or whether the parishioners, fear-
lessly asserting their und&ubted rights, should elect an
independent beadle of their own.
The nomination was fixed to take place in the vestry,
but so great was the throng of anxious spectators, that
it was found necessary to adjourn to the church, where
the ceremony commenced with due solemnity. The ap-
pearance of the church-wardens and overseers, and the
ex-churchwardens, and ex-overseers, with Spruggins
in the rear, excited general attention. Spruggins was
a little thin man, in rusty black, with a long pale face,
and a countenance expressive of care and fatigue,
which might either be attributed to the extent of his
family or the anxiety of his feelings. His opponent
appeared in a cast-off coat of the captain’s—a blue coat
with bright buttons: white trousers, and that descrip-
tion of shoes familiarly known to the appellation of
‘‘high-lows.” There was a serenity in the open coun-
tenance of Bung—a kind of moral dignity in his con-
fident air—an “I wish you may get it ’’ sort of ex-
pression in his eye—which infused animation into his
Supporters, and evidently dispirited his opponents.
The ex-churchwarden rose to propose Thomas Sprug-
*A
22 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
gins for beadle. He had known him long. He had
had his eye upon him closely for years; he had watched
him with twofold vigilance for months. (A parishioner
here suggested that this might be termed “taking a
double sight,” but the observation was drowned in loud
cries of “Order!”) He would repeat that he had had
his eye upon him for years, and this he would say,
that a more well-conducted, a more well-behaved, a
more sober, a more quiet man, with a more well-regu-
lated mind he had never met with. A man with a
larger family he had never known (cheers). The
parish required a man who could be depended on
(“Hear!” from the Spruggins side, answered by ironical
cheers from the Bung party). Snch a man he now
proposed (“No,” “Yes”). He would not allude to indi-
viduals (the ex-churchwarden continued, in the cele-
brated negative style adopted by great Speakers.) He
would not advert to a gentleman who had once held a
high rank in the service of his majesty; he would not
say that that gentleman was no gentleman; he would
not assert, that that man was no man; he would
not say that he was a turbulent parishoner; he would
not say that he had grossly "misbehaved himself, not
nly on this, but on all former occasions; he would
not say that he was one of those discontented and
treasonable spirits, who carried confusion and dis-
order wherever they went; he would not say that he
harboured in his heart envy, and hatred, and malice,
and all uncharitableness. No! He wished to have
everything comfortable and pleasant, and therefore,
he would say nothing about him (cheers).
The captain replied in a similar parliamentary style.
He would not say, he was astonished at the speech they
had just heard; he would not say he was disgusted
(cheers). He would not retort the epithets which had
been hurled against him (renewed cheering); he would
not allude to men once in office, but now happily out of
it, who had mismanaged the workhouse, ground the
paupers, diluted the beer, slack-baked the bread, boned
the meat, heightened the work, and lowered the soup
(tremendous cheers). He would not ask what such men
deserved (a voice “Nothing a-day, and find them-
selves!”). He would not say, that one burst of general
indignation should drive them from the parish they
THE EI, ECTION FOR BEAT) LE. 23
polluted with their presence (“Give it him!”). He
Would not allude to the unfortunate man who had been
proposed—he would not say, as the vestry's tool, but as
Beadle. He would not advert to that individual’s family;
he would not say, that nine children, twins, and a wife,
were very bad examples for pauper imitation (loud
cheers). He would not advert in detail to the qualifi-
cations of Bung. The man stood before him, and he
would not say in his presence, what he might be dis-
posed to say of him if he were absent. (Here Mr.
Bung telegraphed to a friend near him, under cover of
his hat, by contracting his left eye, and applying his
right thumb to the tip of his nose.) It had been ob-
jected to Bung that he had only five children (“Hear,
hear!” from the opposition). Well; he had yet to learn
that the legislature had affixed any precise amount of
infantine qualification to the office of beadle; but taking
it for granted that an extensive family were a great
requisite, he entreated them to look to facts, and com-
pare data, about which there could be no mistake.
Bung was 35 years of age. Spruggins—of whom he
wished to speak with all possible respect—was 50. Was
it not more than possible—was it not very probable—
that by the time Bung attained the latter age, he might
See around him a family, even exceeding in number
and extent that to which Spruggins at present lay claim
(deafening cheers and waving of handkerchiefs)? The
captain concluded, amidst loud applause, by calling
upon the parishioners to sound the tocsin, rush to the
poll, free themselves from dictation, or be slaves for
€Ver. -
On the following day the polling began, and we never
have had such a bustle in our parish since we got up
our famous anti-slavery petition, which was such an
important one, that the House of Commons ordered it
to be printed, on the motion of the member for the dis-
trict. The captain engaged two hackney-coaches and
a cab for Bung’s people—the cab for the drunken voters,
and the two coaches for the old ladies, the greater
portion of whom, Owing to the captain’s impetuosity,
were driven up to the poll and home again, before they
recovered from their flurry sufficiently to know, with
any degree of clearness, what they had been doing.
The opposite party wholly neglected these precautions,
24 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
and the consequence was, that a great many ladies who
were walking leisurely up to the church—for it was a
very hot day—to vote for Spruggins, were artfully de-
coyed into the coaches, and voted for Bung. The
captain’s arguments, too, had produced considerable
effect: the attempted influence of the vestry produced
a greater. A threat of exclusive dealing was clearly
established against the vestry-clerk—a case of heartless
and profligate atrocity. It appeared that the delin-
quent had been in the habit of purchasing six penn'orth
of muffins, weekly, from an old woman who rents a
Small house in the parish, and resides among the
Original settlers; on her last weekly visit, a message
was conveyed to her through the medium of the cook,
couched in mysterious terms, but indicating with suffi-
cient clearness, that the vestry clerk’s appetite for
muffins, in future, depended entirely on her vote on the
beadleship. This was sufficient: the stream had been
turning previously, and the impulse thus administered
directed its final course. The Bung party ordered one
shilling's-worth of muffins weekly for the remainder of
the old woman’s natural life; the parishioners were loud
in their exclamations; and the fate of Spruggins was
sealed.
It was in vain that the twins were exhibited in
dresses of the same pattern, and night-caps to match,
at the church door: the boy in Mrs. Spruggins’s right
arm, and the girl in her left—even Mrs. Spruggins her-
self failed to be an object of sympathy any longer. The
majority attained by Bung on the gross poll was four
hundred and twenty-eight, and the cause of the par-
ishioners triumphed.
CHAPTER V.
T H E B R O K E R 'S M A. N.
HE excitement of the late election has subsided, and
our parish being once again restored to a state of
comparative tranquillity, we are enabled to devote our
attention to those parishioners who take little share in
2. % º º º % - % :
%% ºft §%
% % % * * % *
£4% ºº:
Éſ.
ãº
ºxº~~~~ **º-ºººººººººººººººº - A.
IlliliſDIIIHTITILTTTTTTTTTTTIII Ž
%
% #
A. ãº
ºğ
*
2-
º
|
|º
*
ſ is
|
|AE
!rº- I.
%
:.**
%
º
% %
# %
# %%
º
tº
%
%
a r;
*
Aſ
§g
ſ
*º
Ž
|
ſ§
ź-
|ºr
%->
%
5
º
ºſ
|
%
%
%
Ž
%
g
THE BROKER’s MAN.
Sketches.

THE BROKER'S MAN. 25
our party contests or in the turmoil and bustle of public
life. And we feel sincere pleasure in acknowledging
here, that in collecting materials for this task we have
been greatly assisted by Mr. Bung himself, who has
imposed on us a debt of obligation which we fear we
can never repay. The life of this gentleman has been
one of a very chequered description: he has undergone
transitions—not from grave to gay, for he never was
grave—not from lively to severe, for severity forms no
part of his disposition; his fluctuations have been be-
tween poverty in the extreme, and poverty modified,
or, to use his own emphatic language, ‘‘ between nothing
to eat and just half enough.” He is not, as he forcibly
remarks, “One of those fortunate men who, if they
were to dive under one side of a barge stark-naked,
would come up on the other with a new suit of clothes
on, and a ticket for soup in the waistcoat-pocket:”
neither is he one of those, whose spirit has been broken
beyond redemption by misfortune and want. He is just
one of the careless, good-for-nothing, happy fellows,
who float, cork-like on the surface, for the world to
play at hockey with: knocked here, and there, and
every where: now to the right, then to the left, again
up in the air, and anon to the bottom, but alway re-ap-
pearing and bounding with the stream buoyantly and
merrily along. Some few months before he was pre-
vailed upon to stand a contested election for the Office
of beadle, necessity attached him to the service of a
broker and on the opportunities he here acquired of as-
certaining the condition of most of the poorer inhabi-
tants of the parish, his patron, the captain, first
grounded his claims to public support. Chance threw
the man in our way a short time since. We were, in
the first instance, attracted by his prepossessing impu-
dence at the election; we were not surprised, on further
acquaintance, to find him a shrewd knowing fellow,
with no inconsiderable power of observation; and, after
conversing with him a little, were somewhat struck (as
we dare say our readers have frequently been in other
cases) with the power some men seem to have, not only
of sympathising with, but to all appearance of under-
standing feelings to which they themselves are entire
strangers. We had been expressing to the new func-
tionary our surprise that he should ever have served in
26 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
the capacity to which we have just adverted, when we
gradually led him into one or two professional anec-
dotes. As we are induced to think, on reflection, that
they will tell better in nearly his own words, than with
any attempted embellishments of ours, we will at once
entitle them
MR. BUNG’S NARRATIVE.
. “It’s very true, as you say, sir,” Mr. Bung com-
menced, “that a broker's man’s is not a life to be en-
vied; and in course you know as well as I do, though
you don’t say it, that people hate and Scout ’em because
they’re the ministers of wretchedness, like, to poor
people. But what could I do, sir? The thing was no
worse because I did it, instead of somebody else; and
if putting me in possession of a house would put me in
possession of three and sixpence a day, and levying a
distress on another man’s goods would relieve my dis->
tress and that of my family, it can’t be expected but
what I’d take the job and go through with it. I never
liked it, God knows; I always looked out for something
else, and the moment I got other work to do, I left it. If
there is anything wrong in being the agent in such
matters—not the principal, mind you—I’m sure the
business, to a beginner like I was, at all events, carries
its own punishment along with it. I wished again and
again that the people would only blow me up, or pitch
into me—that I wouldn’t have minded, it's all in my
way: but it's the being shut up by yourself in one room
for five days, without so much as an old newspaper to
look at, or anything to see Out o' the winder but the
roofs and chimneys at the back of the house, or any-
thing to listen to, but the ticking, perhaps, of an old
Dutch clock, the sobbing of the missis, now and then,
the low talking of friends in the next room, who speak
in whispers, lest ‘the man’, should overhear them, or
perhaps the occasional Opening of the door, as a child
peeps in to look at you, and then runs half-frightened
away—It’s all this, that makes you feel sneaking
somehow, and ashamed of yourself; and then, if it’s
winter time, they just give you fire enough to make you
think you’d like more, and bring in your grub as if they
wished it 'ud choke you—as I dare say they do, for the
THE BROKER'S MAN. ~ 27
matter of that most heartily. If they’re very civil, they
make you up a bed in the room at night, and if they
don’t, your master sends one in for you; but there you
are, without being washed or shaved all the time,
shunned by everybody, and spoken to by no one, unless
some One comes in at dinner time, and asks you whether
you want any more, in a tone as much as to say “I hope
you don’t,” or, in the evening, to inquire whether you
wouldn’t rather have a candle, after you’ve been sitting
in the dark half the night. When I was left in this
way, I used to sit, think, think, thinking, till I felt as
lonesome as a kitten in a washhouse copper with the lid
on; but I believe the old brokers’ men who are regularly
trained to it, never think at all. I have heard some on
'em say, indeed, that they don’t know how!
“I put in a good many distresses in my time (con-
tinued Mr. Bung), and in course I wasn’t long in find-
ing, that Some people are not as much to be pitied as
others are, and that people with good incomes who get
into difficulties, which they keep patching up day after
day, and week after week, get so used to these sort of
things in time, that at last they come scarcely to feel
them at all. I remember the very first place I was put
in possession of, was a gentleman’s house in this parish
here, that everybody would suppose couldn’t help hav-
ing money if he tried. I went with old Fixem, my old
master, 'bout half arter eight in the morning; rang the
area-bell; servant in livery opened the door: “Governor
at home?”—“Yes, he is,’ says the man; ‘but he's break-
fasting just now.’ ‘Never mind,” says Fixem, ‘just you
tell him there’s a gentleman here, as wants to speak to
him partickler.’ So the servant he opens his eyes, and
stares about him always—looking for the gentleman as
it struck me, for I don’t think anybody but a man as
was stone-blind would mistake Fixem for one; and as
for me, I was as seedy as a cheap cowcumber. Hows-
'ever, he turns round, and goes to the breakfast-parlour,
which was a little smug sort of room at the end of the
passage, and Fixem (as we always did in that profes-
sion), without waiting to be announced, walks in arter
him, and before the servant could get out—‘ Please, sir,
here’s a man as wants to speak to you,” looks in at the
door as familiar and pleasant as may be. ‘Who the
devil are you, and how dare you walk into a gentle-
28 a SKETCHES BY BOZ.
man’s house without leave?” says the master, as fierce
as a bull in fits. “My name,’ says Fixem, winking to
the master to send the servant away, and putting the
warrant into his hand folded up like a note, “My name’s
Smith,’ says he, ‘and I called from Johnson’s about
that business of Thompson’s’—‘Oh,’ says the other,
quite down on him directly, “How is Thompson P’ says
he;” Pray sit down, Mr. Smith: John leave the room.’
Out went the servant; and the gentleman and Fixem
looked at one another till they couldn’t look any longer,
and then they varied the amusements by looking at me,
who had been standing on the mat all this time. ‘Hun-
dred and fifty pounds, I See,” said the gentleman at last.
* Hundred and fifty pound,” said Fixem, ‘besides cost of
levy, sheriff's poundage, and all other incidental ex-
penses.”—‘Um,” says the gentleman, ‘I shan’t be able
to settle this before to-morrow afternoon.”—“Very sorry;
but I shall be obliged to leave my man here till them,”
replies Fixem, pretending to look very miserable over
it. ‘That’s very unfort’nate,’ says the gentleman, “for
I have got a large party here to-night, and I’m ruined
if those fellows of mine get an inkling of the matter—
just step here, Mr. Smith,’ says he, after a short pause.
So Fixem, walks with him up to the window, and after
a good deal of whispering, and a little chinking of
suverins, and looking at me, he comes back and says,
“Bung, you’re a handy fellow, and very homest I know.
This gentleman wants an assistant to clean the plate
and wait at table to-day, and if you’re not particularly
engaged,” says old Fixem, grinning like mad, and shov-
ing a couple of Suverins into my hand, “he’ll be very
glad to avail himself of your services.’ Well, I laughed;
and the gentleman laughed, and we all laughed; and I
went home and cleaned myself, leaving Fixem there,
and when I went back, Fixem went away, and I
polished up the plate, and waited at table, and gam-
moned the servants, and nobody had the least idea I
was in possession, though it very nearly came out after
all; for one of the last gentlemen who remained, came
down stairs into the hall where I was sitting pretty late
at night, and putting half-a-crown into my hand, says,
‘Here my man,’ says he, “ run and get me a coach, will
you?' I thought it was a do, to get me out of the house,
and was just going to say so, Sulkily enough, when the
THE BROKER'S MAN. 29
gentleman (who was up to everything) came running
down stairs, as if he was in great anxiety. “Bung,”
says he, pretending to be in a consuming passion. “Sir,’
says I. * Why the devil ain’t you looking after that
plate’—‘I was just going to send him for a coach for
me,’ says the other gentleman. “And I was just a going
to say,’ says I– Amy body else, my dear fellow,’ in-
terrupts the master of the house, pushing me down the
passage to get out of the way—‘any body else; but I
have put this man in possession of all the plate and
valuables, and I cannot allow him on any consideration
whatever, to leave the house. Bung, you scoundrel,
go and count those forks in the breakfast-parlour in-
stantly.’ You may be sure I went laughing pretty
hearty when I found it was all right. The money was
paid next day, with the addition of something else for
myself, and that was the best job that I (and I suspect
old Fixem too) ever got in that line.
“But this is the bright side of the picture, sir, after
all,” resumed Mr. Bung, laying aside the knowing look,
and flash air, with which he had repeated the previous
anecdote—‘‘ and I’m sorry to say, it’s the side one sees
very, very, seldom, in comparison with the dark one.
The civility which money will purchase, is rarely
extended to those who have none; and there’s a con-
solation even in being able to patch up One difficulty to
make way for another, to which very poor people are
strangers. I was once put into a house down George's-
yard—that little dirty court at the back of the gas-works;
and I never shall forget the misery of them people, dear
me! It was a distress for half a year’s rent—two pound
ten I think. There was only two rooms in the house,
and as there was no passage, the lodgers up-stairs
always went through the room of the people of the
house, as they passed in and out; and every time they
did so—which, on the average, was about four times
every quarter of an hour—they blowed up quite fright-
ful: for their things had been seized too, and included
in the inventory. There was a little piece of inclosed
dust in front of the house, with a cinder-path lead-
ing up to the door, and an open rain-water butt on One
side. A dirty striped curtain, on a very slack string,
hung in the window, and a little triangular bit of broken
looking-glass rested on the sill inside. I suppose it was
f
30 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
meant for the people's use, but their appearance was so
wretched, and so miserable, that I’m certain they
never could have plucked up courage to look themselves
in the face a second time, if they survived the fright of
doing so once. There was two or three chairs, that
might have been worth, in their best days, from eight-
pence to a shilling a-piece; a small deal table, an old
corner cupboard with nothing in it, and one of those
bedsteads which turn up half way, and leave the bottom
legs sticking out for you to knock your head against,
or hang your hat upon; no bed, no bedding. There
was an old sack, by way of rug, before the fire-place,
and four or five children were grovelling about, among
the sand on the floor. The execution was only put in
to get ’em out of the house, for there was nothing to
take to pay the expenses; and here I stopped for three
days, though that was a mere form too: for, in course,
I knew, and we all knew, they could never pay the
money. In one of the chairs, by the side of the place
where the fire ought to have been, was an old 'ooman—
the ugliest and dirtiest I ever see—who sat rocking her-
self backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards,
without once stopping, except for an instant now and
then, to clasp together the withered hands which, with
these exceptions, she kept constantly rubbing upon her
knees, just raising and depressing her fingers con-
vulsively, in time to the rocking of the chair. On the
other side sat the mother with an infant in her arms,
which cried till it cried itself to sleep, and when it
'woke, cried till it cried itself off again. The old
°ooman’s voice I hever heard: she seemed completely
stupified; and as to the mother's, it would have been
better if she had been so too, for misery had changed
her to a devil. If you had heard how she cursed the
little naked children as was rolling on the floor, and
seen how savagely she struck the infant when it cried
with hunger, you’d have shuddered as much as I did.
There they remained all the time: the children ate a
morsel of bread once or twice, and I gave 'em best part
of the dinners my missis brought me, but the woman
ate nothing; they never even laid on the bedstead, nor
was the room swept or cleaned all the time. The neigh-
bours were all too poor themselves to take any notice
of 'em, but from what I could make out from the abuse
t
{ • * ~4
THE BROKER'S MAN. 31
of the woman up-stairs, it seemed the husband had been
transported a few weeks before. When the time was
up, the landlord and old Fixem too, got rather fright-
ened about the family, and so they made a stir about
it, and had 'em taken to the workhouse. They sent the
sick couch for the old 'ooman, and Simmons took the
children away at night. The old 'ooman went into the
infirmary, and very soon died. The children are all in
the house to this day, and very comfortable they are in
Comparison. As to the mother, there was no taming
her at all. She had been a quiet, hard-working woman,
I believe, but her misery had actually drove her wild;
so after she had been sent to the house of correction
half-a-dozen times, for throwing inkstands at the over-
seers, blaspheming the churchwardens, and smashing
everybody as came near her, she burst a blood-vessel
One mornin', and died too; and a happy release it was,
both for herself and the old paupers, male and female,
which she used to tip over in all directions, as if they
were so many skittles, and she the ball.
“Now this was bad enough,” resumed Mr. Bung,
taking a half-step towards the door, as if to intimate
that he had nearly concluded. “This was bad enough,
but there was a sort of quiet misery—if you understand
what I mean by that, sir—about a lady at one house
I was put into, as touched me a good deal more. It
doesn’t matter where it was exactly: indeed, I’d rather
not say, but it was the same sort o' job. I went with
Fixem in the usual way—there was a year’s rent in
arrear; a very small servant-girl opened the door, and
three or four fine-looking little children was in the
front parlour we were shown into, which was very
clean, but very scantily furnished, much like the chil-
dren themselves. “Bung,” says Fixem to me, in a low
voice, when we were left alone for a minute, ‘I know
something about this here family, and my opinion is,
it’s no go.” “Do you think they can’t settle?” says I,
Quite anxiously; for I liked the looks of them children.
Fixem shook his head, and was just about to reply,
when the door opened, and in came a lady, as white as
ever I see any one in my days, except about the eyes,
which were red with crying. She walked in, as firm as
I could have done; shut the door carefully after her,
and sat herself down with a face as composed as if it
32. SKETCHES BY BOZ.
was made of stone. ‘What is the matter, gentlemen?’
says she, in a surprisin’ steady voice. ‘Is this an ex-
ecution?”—“It is, mum,’ says Fixem. The lady looked
at him as steady as ever: she didn’t seem to have under-
stood him. “It is, mum,’ says Fixem again; “this is my
warrant of distress, mum,’ says he, handing it over as
polite as if it was a newspaper which had been bespoke
arter the next gentleman.
“The lady’s lip trembled as she took the printed
paper. She cast her eye over it, and old Fixem began to
explain the form, but I saw she wasn’t reading it, plain
enough, poor thing. ‘Oh, my God!’ says she, Suddenly
a-bursting out crying, letting the warrant fall, and hid-
ing her face in her hands, ‘Oh, my God! what will be-
come of us!” The noise she made, brought in a young
lady of about nineteen or twenty, who, I suppose, had
been a-listening at the door, and who had got a little
boy in her arms: she sat him down in the lady’s lap,
without speaking, and hugged the poor little fellow to
her bosom, and cried over him, 'till even old Fixem put
on his blue spectacles to hide the two tears that was a-
trickling down, one on each side of his dirty face. “Now,
dear ma,’ says the young lady, “you know how much
you have borne. For all our sakes—for pa’s sake,”
says she, “don’t give way to this!”—“No, no, I won't!’
says the lady, gathering herself up hastily, and drying
her eyes; ‘l am very foolish, but I’m better now—much
better.” And then she roused herself up, went with us
into every room while we took the inventory, opened
all the drawers of her own accord, sorted the children’s
little clothes to make the work easier; and, except
doing every thing in a strange sort of hurry, seemed as
calm and composed as if nothing had happened. When
we came down-stairs again, she hesitated a minute or
two, and at last says, “Gentlemen,” says she, “I am
afraid I have done wrong, and perhaps it may bring
you into trouble. I secreted just now,” she says, “the
only trinket I have left in the world—here it is.’ So
she lays down on the table, a little miniature mounted in
gold. ‘It’s a miniature,” she says, “ of my poor dear
father! I little thought once, that I should ever thank
God for depriving me of the original; but I do, and
have done for years back, most fervently. Take it
away, sir,’ she says, ‘it’s a face that never turned from
THE BROKER'S MAN. 33
me in sickness or distress, and I can hardly pear to
turn from it now, when God knows, I suffer both in no
ordinary degree.’ I couldn’t say nothing, but I raised
my head from the inventory which I was filling up, and
looked at Fixem; the old fellow nodded to me sig-
nificantly, so I ran my pen through the ‘Mini’ I had
just written, and left the miniature on the table.
“Well, sir, to make short of a long story, I was left in
possession, and in possession I remained; and though I
was an ignorant man, and the master of the house a
clever one, I saw what he never did, but what he
would give worlds now (if he had 'em) to have seen in
time. § saw, sir, that his wife was wasting away, be-
neath cares of which she never complained, and griefs
she never told. I saw that she was dying before his
eyes; I knew that one exertion from him might have
saved her, but he never made it. 'I don’t blame him; I
don’t think he could rouse himself. She had so long
anticipated all his wishes, and acted for him, that he
was a lost man when left to himself. I used to think
when I caught sight of her, in the clothes she used to
wear, which looked shabby even upon her, and would
have been scarcely decent on any one else, that if I was
a gentleman it would wring my very heart to see the
woman that was a smart j merry girl when I courted
her, so altered through her love for me. Bitter cold and
damp weather it was, yet though her dress was thin, and
her shoes none of the best, during the whole three days,
from morning to-night, she was out of doors running
about to try and raise the money. The money was
raised, and the execution was paid out. The whole
family crowded into the room where I was, when the
money arrived. The father was quite happy as the in-
convenience was removed—I daresay he didn’t know
how; the children looked merry and cheerful again;
the eldest girl was bustling about, making preparations
for the first comfortable meal they had had since the
distress was put in; and the mother looked pleased to
See them all so. But if ever I saw death in a woman’s
face, I saw it in hers that night.
“I was right, sir,” continued Mr. Bung, hurriedly
passing his coat-sleeve over his face, “the family grew
more prosperous, and good fortune arrived. But it was
too late, Those children are motherless now, and their
3
34 - SKETCHES BY BOZ.
father would give up all he has since gained—house,
home, goods, money: all that he has, or ever can have,
to restore the wife he has lost.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE LADIES’ SOCIETIES.
OU. Parish is very prolific in ladies’ charitable
institutions. In winter, when wet feet are com-
mon and colds not scarce, we have the ladies’ soup dis-
tribution society, the ladies’ coal distribution society,
and the ladies’ blanket distribution society; in summer
when stone fruits flourish and stomach aches prevail,
we have the ladies’ dispensary, and the ladies’ sick
visitation committee; and all the year round we have
the ladies’ child’s examination society, the ladies’ bible
and prayer-book circulation society, and the ladies’
childbed-linen monthly loan society. The two latter
are decidedly the most important; whether they are
productive of more benefit than the rest, is not for us
to say, but we can take upon ourselves to affirm, with
the utmost solemnity, that they create a greater stir,
and more bustle than all the others put together.
We should be disposed to affirm, on the first blush of
the matter, that the bible and prayer-book society is
not so popular as the child-bed linen society; the bible
and prayer-book society has, however, considerably
increased in importance within the last year or two,
having derived some adventitious aid from the factious
opposition of the child’s examination society; which
factious opposition originated in manner following:—
When the young curate was popular, and all the un-
married ladies in the parish took a serious turn, the
charity children all at once became objects of pe-
culiar and especial interest. The three Miss Browns
(enthusiastic admirers of the curate), taught, and exer-
cised, and examined and re-examined the unfortunate
children, until the boys grew pale, and the girls con-
sumptive with study and fatigue. The three Miss
Browns, stood it out very well, because they relieved
each other; but the children having no relief at all,
THE LADIES’ SOCIETIES. 35
exhibited decided symptoms of weariness and care.
The unthinking part of the parishioners laughed at all
this, but the more reflective portion of the inhabitants
abstained from expressing any opinion on the subject
until that of the curate had been clearly ascertained.
The º was not long wanting. The curate
preached a charity sermon on behalf of the charity
school, and in the charity sermon aforesaid, expatiated
in glowing terms on the praiseworthy and indefatiga-
ble exertions of certain estimable individuals. Sobs
were heard to issue from the three Miss Browns’ pew;
the pew-opener of the division was seen to hurry down
the centre aisle to the vestry door, and to return imme-
diately, bearing a glass of water in her hand. A low
moaning ensued; two more pew-openers rushed to the
spot, and the three Miss Browns, each supported by a
pew-opener, were led out of the church, and led in
again after the lapse of five minutes with white pocket-
handkerchiefs to their eyes, as if they had been attend-
ing a funeral in the churchyard adjoining. If any
doubt had for a moment existed, as to whom the
allusion was intended to apply, it was at Once removed.
The wish to enlighten the charity children became
universal, and the three Miss Browns were unanimously
besought to divide the school into classes, and to assign
each class to the superintendence of two young
ladies.
A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little
patronage is more so; the three Miss Browns appointed
all the old maids, and carefully excluded the young
ones. Maiden aunts triumphed, mammas were reduced
to the lowest depth of despair, and there is no telling
in what act of violence the general indignation against
the three Miss Browns might have vented itself, had
not a perfectly providential occurrence changed the
tide of public feeling. Mrs. Johnson Parker, the
mother of seven extremely fine girls—all unmarried—
hastily reported to several other mammas of several
other unmarried familes, that five old men, six old
women, and children innumerable, in the free seats
near her pew, were in the habit of coming to church
every Sunday, without either bible or prayer-book.
Was this to be borne in a civilised country? Could such
things be tolerated in a Christian land? Never? A
36 . SKETCHES BY BOZ.
ladies’ bible and prayer-book distribution Society was
instantly formed: président, Mrs. Johnson Parker;
treasurers, auditors, and secretary, the Misses Johnson
Parker; subscriptions were entered into, books were
bought, all the free-seat people provided there with, and
when the first lesson was given out, on the first Sunday
succeeding these events, there was such a dropping of
books, and rustling of leaves, that it was morally
impossible to hear one word of the service for five
minutes afterwards.
The three Miss Browns, and their party, saw the
approaching danger, and endeavoured to avert it by
ridicule and sarcasm. Neither the old men nor the old
women could read their books now they had got them,
said the three Miss Browns. Never mind; they could
learn, replied Mrs. Johnson Parker. The children
couldn’t read either, suggested the three Miss Browns.
No matter; they could be taught, retorted Mrs. Johnson
Parker. A balance of parties took place. The Miss
Browns publicly examined—popular feeling inclined
to the child’s examination society. The Miss Johnson
Parkers publicly distributed—a re-action took place in
favour of the prayer-book distribution. A feather
would have turned the scale, and a feather did turm it.
A missionary returned from the West Indies; he was to
be presented to the Dissenters' Missionary Society on
his marriage with a wealthy widow. Overtures were
made to the Dissenters by the Johnson Parkers. Their
object was the same, and why not have a joint meeting
of the two societies? The proposition was accepted.
The meeting was duly heralded by public announce-
ment, and the room was crowded to Suffocation. The
missionary appeared on the platform; he was hailed
with enthusiasm. He repeated a dialogue he had heard
between two negroes, behind a hedge, On the subject
of distribution societies; the approbation was tumul-
tuous. He gave an imitation of the two negroes in
broken English; the roof was rent with applause.
From that period we date (with one trifling exception)
a daily increase in the popularity of the distribution
society, and an increase of popularity which the feeble
and impotent opposition of the examination party, has
only tended to augment. - #
Now, the great points about the childbed-linen
THE LADIES’ SOCIETIES. 3?
monthly loan society are, that it is less dependent on
the fluctuations of public opinion than either the distri-
bution or the child’s examination; and that, come what
may, there is never any lack of objects on which to
exercise its benevolence. Our parish is a very popu-
lous one, and, if anything, contributes, we should be
disposed to say, rather more than its due share to the
aggregate amount of births in the metropolis and its
environs. The consequence is, that the monthly loan
society flourishes, and invests its members with a most
enviable amount of bustling patronage. The society
(whose only notion of dividing time, would appear to
be its allotment into months) holds monthly tea-drink-
ings, at which the monthly report is received, a secre.
tary elected for the month ensuing, and such of the
monthly boxes as may not happen to be out on loan for
the month, carefully examined.
We were never present at one of these meetings, from
all of which it is scarcely necessary to say, gentlemen
are carefully excluded; but Mr. Bung has been called
before the board once or twice, and we have his
authority for stating, that its proceedings are conducted
with great order and regularity: not more than four
members being allowed to speak at one time on any
pretence whatever. The regular committee is com-
posed exclusively of married ladies, but a vast number
of young unmarried ladies of from eighteen to twenty-
five years of age, respectively, are admitted as honorary
members, partly because they are very useful in re-
lenishing the boxes, and visiting the confined; partly
i. it is highly desirable that they should be
initiated, at an early period, into the more serious and
matronly duties of after-life; and partly because,
prudent mammas have not unfrequently been known
to turn this circumstance to wonderfully good account
in matrimonial speculations.
In addition to the loan of the monthly boxes (which
are always painted blue, with the name of the society
in large white letters on the lid), the society dispense
occasional grants of beef-tea, and a composition of
warm beer, Spice, eggs, and Sugar, commonly known
by the name of ‘‘ caudle,” to its patients. And here
again the services of the honorary members are called
into requisition, and most cheerfully conceded. Depu-
38 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
tations of twos or threes are sent - out to visit the
patients, and on these Occasions there is such a tasting
of caudle and beef-tea, such a stirring about of little
messes in tiny saucepans on the hob, Such a dressing
and undressing of infants, such a tying, and folding,
and pinning; such a nursing and warming of littl legs
and feet before the fire, such a delightful confusion of
talking and cooking, bustle, importance, and officious-
mess, as never can be enjoyed in its full extent but on
similar occasions.
In rivalry of these two institutions, and as a last ex-
piring effort to acquire parochial popularity, the child’s
examination people determined, the other day, on
having a grand public examination of the pupils; and
the large school-room of the national seminary was, by
and with the consent of the parish authorities, devoted
to the purpose. Invitation circulars were forwarded to
all the principal parishioners, including, of course, the
heads of the other two societies, for whose especial be-
hoof and edification the display was intended, and a
large audience was confidently anticipated on the oc-
casion. The floor was carefully scrubbed the day
before, under the immediate superintendence of the
three Miss Browns; forms were placed across the room
for the accommodation of the visitors, specimensin writ-
ing were carefully selected, and as carefully patched and
touched up, until they astonished the children who had
written them, rather more than the company who read
them; sums in compound addition were rehearsed and
re-rehearsed until all the children had the totals by
heart; and the preparations altogether were on the most
laborious and most comprehensive scale. The morning
arrived: the children were yellow-soaped and flannelled,
and towelled, till their faces shone again; every pupil’s
hair was carefully combed into his or her eyes, as the
case might be; the girls were adorned with snow-white
tippets, and caps bound round the head by a single
purple ribbon: the necks of the elder boys were fixed
into collars of startling dimensions.
The doors were thrown open, and the Misses Brown
and Co. were discovered in plain white muslin dresses,
and caps of the same—the child’s examination uniform.
The room filled: the greetings of the company were
loud and cordial. The distributionists trembled, for
THE LADIES’ SOCIETIES. 39
their popularity was at stake. The eldest boy fell for-
ward, and delivered a propitiatory address from behind
his collar. It was from the pen of Mr. Henry Brown;
the applause was universal, and the Johnson Parkers
were aghast. The examination proceeded with success,
and terminated in triumph. The child’s examination
Society gained a momentary victory, and the Johnson
Parkers retreated in despair.
A secret council of the distributionists was held that
º with Mrs. Johnson Parker in the chair, to con-
sider of the best means of recovering the ground they
had lost in the favour of the parish. What could be
done? Another meeting! Alas! who was to attend it?
The Missionary would not do twice; and the slaves
were emancipated. A bold step must be taken. The
parish must be astonished in some way or other; but no
one was able to suggest what the step should be. At
length, a very old lady was heard to mumble, in indis-
tinct tones, “Exeter Hall.” A sudden light broke in
upon the meeting. . It was unanimously resolved, that
a deputation of old ladies should wait upon a celebrated
orator, imploring his assistance, and the favour of a
speech; and that the deputation should also wait on two
or three other imbecile old women, not resident in the
parish, and entreat their attendance. The application
was successful, the meeting was held: the orator (an
Irishman) came. He talked of green isles—other shores—
vast Atlantic—bosom of the deep—Christian charity—
blood and extermination—mercy in hearts—arms in
hands—altars and homes—household gods. He wiped
his eyes, he blew his nose, and he quoted Latin. The
effect was tremendous—the Latin was a decided hit.
Nobody knew exactly what it was about, but everybody
knew it must be affecting, because even the orator was
overcome. The popularity of the distribution society
among the ladies of our parish is unprecedented; and
the child’s examination is going fast to decay.
-
40 SKETCHES BY BOZ
CHAPTER VIE.
OUIR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR.
WE are very fond of Speculating, as we walk through
4, a street, on the character and pursuits of the people
who inhabit it; and nothing so materially assists us in
these speculations as the appearance of the house doors.
The various expressions of the human countenance
afford a beautiful and interesting study; but there is
something in the physiognomy of street-door knockers,
almost as characteristic, and nearly as infallible.
Whenever we visit a man for the first time, we contem-
plate the features of his knocker with the greatest curi-
osity, for we well know, that between the man and his
knocker, there will inevitably be a greater or less degree
of resemblance and sympathy. jº
For instance, there is one description of knocker that
used to be common enough, but which is fast passing
away—a large round One, with the jolly face of a con-
vivial lion smiling blandly at you, as you twist the sides
of your hair into a curl, or pull up your shirt-collar while
you are waiting for the door to be opened, we never saw
that knocker on the door of a churlish man—So far as
our experience is concerned, it invariably bespoke hos-
pitality and another bottle.
No man ever saw this knocker on the door of a small
attorney or bill-broker; they always patronise the other
lion; a heavy ferocious-looking fellow, with a counte-
nance expressive of Savage stupidity—a sort of grand
master among the knockers, and a great favourite with
the selfish and brutal.
Then there is a little pert Egyptian knocker, with a
long thin face, a pinched up nose, and a very sharp chin;
he is most in vogue with your government-office people,
in light drabs and starched cravats: little spare priggish
men, who are perfectly satisfied with their own opinions,
and consider themselves of paramount importance,
OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR. 41
We were greatly troubled a few years ago, by the
innovation of a new kind of knocker, without any face
at all, composed of a wreath, depending from a hand or
small truncheon. A little trouble and attention, however,
enabled us to overcome this difficulty, and to reconcile
the new system to our favourite theory. .You will
invariably find this knocker on the doors of cold and
formal people, who always ask you why you don’t come,
and never say do.
Eyerybody knows the brass knocker is common to
suburban villas, and extensive boarding-schools; and
having noticed this genus we have recapitulated all the
most prominent and strongly-defined species.
Some phrenologists affirm, that the agitation of a
man’s brain by different passions, produces correspond-
ing developments in the form of his skull. Do not let
us be understood as pushing our theory to the length of
asserting, that any alteration in a man’s disposition
would produce a visible effect on the feature of his
knocker. Our position merely is, that in such a case,
the magnetism which must exist between a man and
his knocker, would induce the man to remove, and
seek some knocker more congenial to his alteredfeelings.
If you ever find a man changing his habitation without
any reasonable pretext, depend upon it, that, although
he may not be aware of the fact himself, it is because
he and his knocker are at variance. This is a new
theory, but we venture to launch it, nevertheless, as
being quite as ingenious and infallible as many thousand
of the learned speculations which are daily broached
for public good and private fortune-making.
Entertaining these feelings on the subject of knockers,
it will be readily imagined with what consternation we
viewed the entire removal of the knocker from the
door of the next house to the one we lived in, some time
ago, and the substitution of a bell. This was a calamity
we had never anticipated. The bare idea of anybody
being able to exist without a knocker, appeared so wild
and visionary, that it had never for One instant entered
Our imagination. º
We sauntered moodily from the spot, and bent our
steps towards Eaton Square, then just building. What
was our astonishment and indignation to find that bells
were fast becoming the rule, and knockers the excep-
42 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
tion! Our theory trembled beneath the shock. We
hastened home; and fancying we foresaw in the Swift
progress of events, its entire abolition, resolved from
that day forward to vent our speculations on Our next-
door neighbours in person. The house adjoining ours
on the left hand was uninhabited, and we had, there-
fore, plenty of leisure to observe our next door neigh-
bours on the other side.
The house without the knocker was in the occupation
of a city clerk, and there was a neatly-written bill in
the parlour window intimating that lodgings for a
single gentleman were to be let within.
It was a meat, dull little house, on the shady side of
the way, with new, narrow floor.cloth in the passage,
and new, narrow stair-carpets up to the first floor.
The paper was new, and the paint was new, and the
furniture was new; and all three, paper, paint, and fur-
niture, bespoke the limited means of the tenant. There
was a little red-and-black carpet in the drawing-room,
with a border of flooring all the way round; a few
stained chairs and a pembroke table. A pink shell
was displayed on each of the little sideboards, which,
with the addition of a tea-tray and caddy, a few more
shells on the mantelpiece, and three peacock’s feathers
tastefully arranged above them, completed the decora-
...tive furniture of the apartment.
This was the room destined for the reception of the
single gentleman during the day, and a little back room
on the same floor was assigned as his sleeping apart-
ment by night.
The bill had not been long in the window, when a
stout good-humoured looking gentleman, of about five-
and-thirty, appeared as a candidate for the tenancy.
Terms were soon arranged, for the bill was taken down
immediately after his first visit. In a day Qr two the
single gentleman came in, and shortly afterwards his
real character came Out.
First of all, he displayed a most extraordinary par-
tiality for sitting up till three or four o'clock in the
morning, drinking whiskey-and-water, and Smoking
cigars; then he invited friends home, who used to come
at ten o’clock, and begin to get happy about the small
hours, when they evinced their perfect contentment by
singing Songs with hałf-a-dozen verses of two lines
OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR. 43
each, and a chorus of ten, which chorus used to be
shouted forth by the whole strength of the company,
in the most enthusiastic and vociferous manner, to the
reat annoyance of the neighbours, and the special
discomfort of another single gentleman overhead.
Now, this was bad enough, occurring as it did three
times a week on the average, but this was not all; for
when the company did go away, instead of walking
quietly down the street, as anybody else’s company
would have done, they amused themselves by making
alarming and frightful noises, and counterfeiting the
shrieks of females in distress; and One night, a red-faced
gentleman in a white hat knocked in the most urgent
manner at the door of the powdered-headed old gentle-
man at No. 3, and when the powder-headed old gentle-
man, who thought one of his married daughters must
have been, taken ill prematurely, had groped down
stairs, and after a great deal of unbolting and key-
turning, opened the street-door, the red faced man in
the white hat said he hoped he’d excuse his giving
him so much trouble, but he’d feel obliged if ho’
favour him with a glass of cold spring water, and
the loan of a shilling for a cab to take him home,
on which the old gentleman slammed the door and
went up-stairs, and threw the contents of his water
jug out of window—very Straight, only it went over
the wrong man; and the whole street was involved
in confusion.
A joke's a joke; and even practical jests are very
capital in their way, if you can only get the other
party to see the fun of them; but the population of our
street were so dull of apprehension, as to be quite lost
to a sense of the drollery of this proceeding; and the
consequence was, that Our next-door neighbour was
obliged to tell the single gentleman, that unless he gave
up entertaining his friends at home, he really must be
compelled to part with him. The single gentleman
received the remonstrance with great good humour,
and promised from that time forward, to spend his
evenings at a coffee-house—a determination which
afforded general and unmixed satisfaction.
The next night passed off very well, everybody being
delighted with the change; but on the next, the noises
were renewed with greater spirit than ever. The single
44 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
;
gentleman’s friends being unable to see him in his own
house every alternate night, had come to the conclusion
of seeing him home every night; and what with the dis-
cordant greetings of the friends at parting, and the
noise created by the single gentleman in his passage
up-stairs, and his subsequent struggles to get his
boots off, the evil was not to be borne. So, our next-
door neighbour gave the single gentleman, who was a
very good lodger in other respects, notice to quit; and
the single gentleman went away, and entertained his
friends in other lodgings.
The next applicant for the vacant first floor, was of a
very different character from the troublesome single
gentleman who had just quitted it. He was a tall, thin,
young gentleman, with a profusion of brown hair, red-
dish whiskers, and very slightly developed mustaches.
He wore a braided surtout, with frogs behind, light
gray trousers, and wash-leather gloves, and had alto-
gether rather a military appearance. So unlike the
roystering single gentleman! Such insinuating man-
ners, and such a delightful address! So seriously dis-
osed, too! When he first came to look at the lodgings,
e inquired most particularly whether he was sure to
be able to get a seat in the parish church; and when he
had agreed to take them, he requested to have a list of
the different local charities, as he intended to subscribe
his mite to the most deserving among them. Our next-
door neighbour was now perfectly happy. He had got
a lodger at last, of just his own way of thinking—a
serious, well-disposed man, who abhorred gaiety, and
loved retirement. He took down the bill with a light
i heart, and pictured in imagination a long series of
quiet Sundays, on which he and his lodger would ex-
change mutual civilities and Sunday papers.
The serious man arrived, and his luggage was to
arrive from the country next morning. He borrowed a
clean shirt and a prayer-book, from our next-door
neighbour, and retired to rest at an early hour, requost-
ing that he might be called punctually at ten o’clock
next morning—not before, as he was much fatigued.
He was called, and did not answer; he was called
again, but there was no reply. Our next-door neigh-
bour became alarmed, and ºst the door open. The
serious man had left the house mysteriously; carry-
oUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR. 45
ing with him the shirt, the prayer-book, a tea-spoon,
and the bed-clothes. -
Whether this occurrence, coupled with the irregular-
... ities of his former lodger, gave our next-door neighbour
an aversion to single gentlemen, we know not; we only
know that the next bill which made its appearance in
the parlour window intimated generally, that there
were furnished apartments to let on the first floor. The
bill was soon removed. The new lodgers at first attracted
our curiosity, and afterwards excited our interest.
They were a young lad of eighteen or nineteen, and
his mother, a lady about fifty, or it might be less. The
mother wore a widow’s weeds, and the boy was also
clothed in deep mourning. They were poor——very poor;
for their only means of support arose from the pittance
the boy earned, by copying writings, and translating
for booksellers.
They had removed from some country place, and
settled in London; partly because it afforded better
chances of employment for the boy, and partly,
perhaps, with the natural desire to leave a place where
they had been in better circumstances, and where their
poverty was known. They were proud under their re-
verses, and above revealing their wants and privations
to strangers. How bitter those privations were, and
how hard the boy worked to remove them, no one ever
knew but themselves. Night after night, two, three,
four hours after midnight, could we hear the raking
up of the scanty fire, or the hollow and half-stified
cough, which indicated his being still at work; and day
after day, could we see more plainly that nature had
set that unearthly light in his plaintive face, which is
the beacon of her worst disease.
Actuated, we hope, by a higher feeling than mere
curiosity, we contrived to establish, first an acquaint-
ance, and then a close intimacy, with the poor stran-
gers. Our worst fears were realised; the boy was sink-
ing fast. Through a part of the winter, and the whole
of the following spring and summer, his labours were
unceasingly prolonged: and the mother attempted
to procure needlework embroidery—anything for bread.
A few shillings now and then, were all she could earn.
The boy worked steadily on; dying by min-utes, but
never once giving utterance to complaint or murmur.
46 SKETCHES BY BOz.
One beautiful autumn evening we went to pay our
customary visit to the invalid. His little remaining
strength had been decreasing rapidly for two or three
days preceding, and he was lying on the sofa at the
open window, gazing at the setting Sun. His mother
had been reading the Bible to him, for she closed th
book as we entered, and advanced to meet us. -
“I was telling William,” she said, “that we must
manage to take him into the country Somewhere, so that
he may get quite well. He is not ill, you know, but he
is not very strong, and has exerted himself too much
lately.” Poor thing! The tears that streamed through
her fingers, as she turned aside, as if to adjust her close
widow’s cap, too plainly showed how fruitless was the
attempt to deceive herself.
We sat down by the head of the sofa, but said noth-
ing, for we saw the breath of life was passing gently
but rapidly from the young form before us. At every
respiration, his heart beat more slowly.
The boy placed one hand in ours, grasped his mother's
arm with the other, drew her hastily towards him, and
fervently kissed her cheek. There was a pause. He
sunk back upon his pillow, and looked long and earn-
estly in his mother’s face. -
“Willaim, William!” murmured the mother after a
.# interval, “don’t look at me so—speak to me,
ear!”
The boy Smiled languidly, but an instant afterwards
his features resolved into the same cold, solemn gaze.
“William, dear William! rouse yourself, dear; don’t
look at me. So, love—pray don't! Oh, my God! what
shall I do!” cried the widow, clasping her hands in
agony—‘‘ my dear boy! he is dying!” +
. . The boy raised himself by a violent effort, and folded
his hands together—“Mother! dear, dear mother, bury
me in the open fields—anywhere but in these dreadful
streets. I should like to be where you can see my
grave, but not in these close crowded streets; they have
killed me; kiss me again, mother; put your arm round
my neck—” -
He fell back, and a strange expression stole upon his
features; not of pain or suffering, but an indescribable
fixing of every line and muscle.
The boy was dead.
THE STREETS-MORNING. 4?
SCENES,
CHAPTER I.
THE STREETS-MORNING.
Th; appearance presented by the streets of London
- an hour before Sun-rise, on a summer’s morning,
is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate
pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pur-
suits of business, cause them to be well acquainted
with the scene. There is an air of cold, solitary des-
olation about the noiseless streets which we are ac-
customed to see thronged at other times by a busy,
eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely-shut build-
ings, which throughout the day are swarming with
life and bustle, that is very impressive.
The last drunken man, who shall find his way home
before sun-light, has just staggered heavily along,
roaring out the burden of the drinking song of the
previous night : the last houseless vagrant whom
penury and police have left in the streets, has coiled
up his chilly limbs in some paved corner, to dream
of food and warmth. The drunken, the dissipated,
and the wretched have disappeared; the more sober
and orderly part of the population have not yet awak-
ened to the labours of the day, and the stillness of
death is over the streets; its very hue seems to be im-
parted to them, cold and lifeless as they look in the
grey, sombre light of daybreak. The coach-stands in
the larger"thoroughfares are deserted: the night-houses
are closed; and the chosen promenades of profligate
misery are empty.
48 SKETCHES BY BOZ,
An occasional policeman may alone be seen at the
Street-corners, listlessly gazing on the deserted pros-
pect before him; and now and then a rakish-looking cat
runs stealthily across the road and descends his own
area with as much caution and slyness—bounding first
On the water-butt, then on the dust-hole, and then
alighting on the flag-stones—as if he were conscious
that his character depended on his gallantry of the pre-
ceding night escaping public observation. A partially
Opened bedroom-window here and there, bespeaks the
heat of the weather, and the uneasy slumbers of its
OCCupant; and the dim scanty flicker of the rush-light,
through the window-blind, denotes the chamber of
watching or sickness. With these few exceptions, the
streets , present no signs of life, nor the houses of
habitation.
An hour wears away; the spires of the churches and
roofs of the principal $iii.; are faintly tinged with
the light of the rising sun; and the streets, by almost
imperceptible degrees, begin to resume their bustle and
animation. , Market-carts roll slowly along: the sleepy
waggoner impatiently urging on his tired horses, or
vainly endeavouring to awaken the boy, who, luxuri-
ously stretched on the top of the fruit-baskets, forgets
in happy Oblivion, his long-cherished curiosity to behold
the wonders of London.
Rough, Sleepy-looking animals of strange appearance,
something between Ostlers and hackney-coachmen, be-
gin to take down the shutters of the early public-
houses; and little deal tables, with the ordinary prepa-
rations for a street breakfast, make their appearance
at the customary stations. Numbers of men and
women (principally the latter), carrying upon their
heads heavy baskets of fruit, toil down the park side of
Piccadilly, on their way to Covent Garden, and, fol-
lowing each other in rapid succession, form a long
straggling line from thence to the turn of the road at
Knightsbridge.
Here and there, a bricklayer's labourer, with the
day’s dinner tied up in a handkerchief, walks briskly
- to his work, and occasionally a little knot of three or
four schoolboys on a stolen bathing expedition rattle
merrily over the pavement, their boisterous mirth con-
trasting forcibly with the demeanour of the little
THE STREETS MORNING 49
sweep, who, having knocked and rung till his arm
aches, and being interdicted by a merciful legislature
from endangering his lungs by calling out, sits
patiently down on the door-step until the housemaid
may happen to awake. e
Covent Garden market, and the avenues leading to it
are thronged with carts of all sorts, sizes, and descrip-
tions, from the heavy lumbering waggon, with its four
stout horses, to the jingling costermonger's cart with
its consumptive donkey. The pavement is already
strewed with decayed cabbage-leaves, broken hay-
bands, and all the indescribable litter of a vegetable
market; men are shouting, carts backing, horses neigh-
ing, boys fighting, basket-women talking, piemen ex-
patiating on the excellence of their pastry, and donkeys
braying. These and a hundred other sounds form a
compound discordant enough to a Londoner's ears, and
remarkably disagreeable to those of country gentlemen
who are sleeping at the Hummums for the first time.
Another hour passes away, and the day begins in
good earnest. The servant of all work, who, under the
plea of sleeping very soundly, has utterly disregarded
“Missis’s” ringing for half an hour previously, is
warned by Master (whom Missis has sent up in his
drapery to the landing-place for that purpose) that it’s
half-past six, whereupon she awakes all of a sudden,
with well-feigned astonishment, and goes down stairs
very sulkily, wishing, while she strikes a light, that
the principle of spontaneous combustion would extend
itself to coals and kitchen range. When the fire is
º she opens the Street-door to take in the milk,
when, by the most singular coincidence in the world,
she discovers that the servant next door has just taken
in her milk too, and that Mr. Todd's young man over
the way, is, by an equally extraordinary chance, taking
down his master’s shutters. The inevitable conse-
quence is, that she just steps, milk-jug in hand, as far
as the next door, just to say “good morning,” to Betsy
Clark, and that Mr. Todd's young man just steps over
the way to say “good morning ” to both of 'em; and as
the aforesaid Mr. Todd's young man is almost as good-
looking and fascinating as the baker himself, the con-
versation quickly becomes very interesting, and prob-
ably would become more so, if Betsy Clark's Missis,
-- 4.
50 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
who always will be a followin’ her about, didn't give an
angry tap at her bedroom window, on which Mr. Todd's
young man tries to whistle coolly, as he goes back to
his shop much faster than he came from it; and the
two girls run back to their respective places, and shut
their street-doors with surprising softness, each of
them poking their heads out of the front parlour-
window, a minute afterwards, however, Ostensibly
with the view of looking at the mail which just then
passes by, but really for the purpose of catching another
glimpse of Mr. Todd's young man, who being fond of
mails, but more of females, takes a short look at the
mails, and a long look at the girls, much to the Satis-
faction of all parties concerned.
The mail itself goes on to the coach-office in due
course, and the passengers who are going out by the
early coach, stare with astonishment at the passengers
who are coming in by the early coach, who look blue
and dismal, and are evidently under the influence of
that odd feeling produced by travelling, which makes
the events of yesterday morning seem as if they had
happened at least six months ago, and induces people
to wonder with considerable gravity whether the friends
and relations they took leave of a fortnight before,
have altered much since they left them. The coach-
office is all alive, and the coaches which are just going
out are surrounded by the usual crowd of Jews and
nondescripts, who seem to consider, Heaven knows
why, that it is quite impossible any man can mount a
coach without requiring at least six-penny-worth of
oranges, a penknife, a pocket-book, a last-year’s an-
nual, a pencil-case, a piece of Sponge, and a Small series
of caricatures.
Half an hour more, and the Sun darts his bright rays
cheerfully down the still half-empty streets, and shines
with sufficient force to rouse the dismal laziness of the
apprentice, who pauses every other minute from his
task of sweeping out the shop and watering the pave-
ment in front of it, to tell another apprentice similarly
employed, how hot it will be to-day, or to stand with
his right hand shading his eyes, and his left resting on
the broom, gazing at the “Wonder,” or the “Tally-ho,”
or the ‘‘ Nimrod,” or some other fast coach, till it is out
of sight, when he re-enters the shop, envying the pas-
THE STREETS--MORNING. 51
sengers on the outside of the fast coach, and thinking
of the old red brick house “down in the country,”
where he went to school: the miseries of the milk and
water, and thick bread and scrapings, fading into noth-
ing before the pleasant recollection of the green field
the boys used to play in, and the green pond he was
caned for presuming to fall into, and other schoolboy
associations.
Cabs, with trunks and band-boxes between the drivers’
legs and outside the apron, rattle briskly up and down
the streets on their way to the coach-offices or steam-
packet wharfs; and the cab-drivers and hackney coach-
men who are on the stand polish up the ornamental
part of their dingy vehicles—the former wondering
how people can prefer “them wild beast cariwans of
homnibuses, to a riglar cab with a fast trotter,” and
the latter admiring how people can trust their necks
into one of “ them crazy cabs, when they can have a
'spectable 'ackney cotche with a pair of 'orses as won’t
run away with no vun; ” a consolation unquestionably
founded on fact, seeing that a hackney coach-horse
never was known to run at all, “except,” as the smart
cabman in front of the rank observes, “except one,
and he runs back’ards.”
The shops are now completely opened, and apprentices
and shopmen are busily engaged in cleaning and deck-
ing the windows for the day. The bakers’ shops in
town are filled with servants and children waiting for
the drawing of the first batch of rolls—an operation
which was performed a full hour ago in the suburbs;
for the early clerk population of Somers and Camden
towns, Islington, and Pentonville, are fast pouring into
the city, or directing their steps towards Chancery-
lane and the Inns of Court. Middle-aged men, whose
Salaries have by no means increased in the same pro-
portion as their families, plod steadily along, appar-
ently with no object in view but the counting-house;
knowing by sight almost everybody they meet or over-
take, for they have seen them every morning (Sundays
excepted) during the last twenty years, but speakin
to no one. If they do happen to overtake a persona
º they just exchange a hurried salutation,
and keep walking on either by his side, or in front
of him, as his rate of walking may chance to be. As
52 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
to stopping to shake hands, or to take the friend’s
arm, they seem to think that as it is not included in
their salary, they have no right to do it. Small office
lads in large hats, who are made men before they are
boys, hurry along in pairs, with their first coat care-
fully brushed, and the white trousers of last Sunday
plentifully besmeared with dust and ink. It evidently
requires a considerable mental struggle to avoid invest-
ing part of the day’s dinner-money in the purchase of
the stale tarts so temptingly exposed in dusty tins at
the pastry-cook’s doors; but a consciousness of their
Own importance and the receipt of seven shillings
a-week, with the prospect of an early rise to eight, comes
to their aid, and they accordingly put their hats a little
more on One side, and look under the bonnets of all
the milliners’ and staymakers’ apprentices they meet
—poor girls!—the hardest worked, the worst paid, and
too often, the worst used class of the community.
Eleven o’clock, and a new set of people fill the
streets. The goods in the shop-windows are invitingly
arranged; the shopmen in their white neckerchiefs and
spruce coats, look as if they couldn’t clean a window
if their lives depended on it; the carts have disappeared
from Covent Garden; the waggoners have returned,
and the costermongers repaired to their ordinary
“beats” in the suburbs; clerks are at their offices, and
gigs, cabs, Omnibuses, and saddle-horses, are convey-
ing their masters to the same destination. The streets
are thronged with a vast concourse of people, gay and
shabby, rich and poor, idle and industrious; and we
come to the heat, bustle, and activity of NOON.
CHAPTER II.
THE STREETS-NIGHT.
Bº. the streets of London, to be beheld in the very
height of their glory, should be seen on a dark,
dull, murky winter’s night, when there is just enough
damp gently stealing down to make the pavement
greasy, without cleansing it of any of its impurities;
and when the heavy lazy mist, which hangs Over every
THE STREETS-NIGHT. 53
Object, makes the gas-lampg look brighter, and the bril-
liantly lighted shops more splendid, from the contrast
they present to the darkness around. All the people
who are at home on Such a night as this, seem disposed
to make themselves as Snug and comfortable as pos-
sible; and the passengers in the streets have excellent.
reason to envy the fortunate individuals who are seated
by their own firesides. :
In the larger and better kind of streets, dining-parlour
curtains are closely drawn, kitchen fires blaze brightly
up, and savoury steams of hot dinners salute the nostrils
of the hungry wayfarer, as he plods wearily by the area
railings. In the suburbs, the muffin-boy rings his way
down the little street, much more slowly than he is
wont to do; for Mrs. Macklin, of No. 4, has no sooner
opened her little street-door, and screamed out, “ Muf-
fins !” with all her might, than Mrs. Walker, at No. 5,
puts her head out of the parlour-window, and screams
“Muffins !” too; and Mrs. Walker has scarcely got the
words out of her lips, than Mrs. Peplow, over the way,
lets loose Master Peplow, who darts down the street,
with a velocity which nothing but buttered muffins in
E.P. could possibly inspire, and drags the boy
ack by main force, whereupon Mrs. Macklin and Mrs.
Walker, just to save the boy trouble, and to say a few
neighbourly words to Mrs. Peplow at the same time,
run over the way and buy their muffins at Mrs. Peplow’s
door, when it appears from the voluntary statement of
Mrs. Walker, that her “ kittle’s just a biling, and the
cups and Sarsers ready laid,” and that, as it was such
a wretched night out o' doors, she'd made up her mind
to have a nice hot comfortable cup o' tea—a determina-
tion at which, by the most singular coincidence, the
other two ladies had simultaneously arrived.
After a little conversation about the wretchedness of
the weather and the merits of tea, with a digression
relative to the viciousness of boys as a rule, and the
amiability of Master Peplow as an exception, Mrs.
Walker sees her husband coming down the street; and
as he must want his tea, poor man, after his dirty
walk from the Docks, she instantly runs across, muffins
in hand, and Mrs. Macklin does the same, and after a
few words to Mrs. Walker, they all pop into their little
houses, and slam their little street-doors, which are not
s
54 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
opened again for the remainder of the evening, except
to the nine o’clock ‘‘ beer,” who comes round with a
lantern in front of his tray, and says, as he lends Mrs.
Walker “Yesterday’s 'Tiser,” that he’s blessed if he
can hardly hold the pot, much less feel the paper,
for it's one of the bitterest nights he ever felt, 'cept
the night when the man was frozen to death in the
Brick-field. . -
After a little prophetic conversation with the police-
man at the street-corner, touching a probable change in
the weather, and the setting in of a hard frost, the nine
o'clock beer returns to his master’s house, and employs
himself for the remainder of the evening in assiduously
stirring the tap-room fire, and deferentially taking
part in the conversation of the worthies assemble
round it. i - -
The streets in the vicinity of the Marsh-gate and
Victoria. Theatre present an appearance of dirt and
discomfort on such a night, which the groups who
lounge about them in no degree tend to diminish.
Even the little block-tin temple sacred to baked pota-
toes, surmounted by a splendid design in variegated
lamps, looks less gay than usual; and as to the kidney-
pie stand, its glory has quite departed. The candle in
the transparent lamp, manufactured of oil-paper, em-
bellished with “characters,” has been blown out fifty
times, so the kidney-pie merchant, tired with running
backwards and forwards to the next wine vaults, to get
alight, has given up the idea of illumination in despair,
and the only signs of his “whereabout,” are the
bright sparks, of which a long irregular train is
whirled down the street every time he opens his port-
able oven to hand a hot kidney-pie to a customer.
A Flat fish, oyster, and fruit venders linger hopelessly
in the kennel, in vain endeavouring to attract cus-
tomers; and the ragged boys who usually disport
themselves about the streets stand crouched in little
knots in Some projecting doorway, or under the canvas
blind of the cheesemonger's, where great flaring gas-
lights, unshaded by any glass, display huge piles of
bright red, and pale yellow cheeses, mingled with
little five-penny dabs of dingy bacon, various tubs of
weekly Dorset, and cloudy rolls of “best fresh.”
Here they amuse themselves with theatrical con-
THE STREETS_NIGHT. 55
verse, arising out of their last half-price visit to the
Victoria gallery, admire the terrific combat, which is
nightly encored, and expatiate on the inimitable man-
ner in which Bill Thompson can ‘‘come the double
monkey,” or go through the mysterious involutions of
a sailor’s hornpipe,
It is nearly eleven o’clock, and the cold thin rain
which has been drizzling so long, is beginning to pour
down in good earnest; the baked-potato man has de-
parted—the kidney-pie man has just walked away
with his warehouse on his arm—the cheesemonger has
drawn in his blind, and the boys have dispersed. The
constant clicking of pattens on the slippy and uneven
}. and the rustling of umbrellas, as the wind
lows against the shop-windows, bear testimony to the
inclemency of the night; and the policeman, with his
oil-skin cape buttoned closely round him, seems as he
holds his hat on his head, and turns round to avoid the
gust of wind and rain which drives against him at the
Street-corner, to be very far from congratulating him-
self on the prospect before hjm.
The little chandler’s shop with the cracked bell be-
hind the door, whose melancholy tinkling has been regu-
lated by the demand for quarterns of sugar and half-
ounces of coffee, is shutting up. The crowds which
have been passing to and fro during the whole day, are
rapidly dwindling away; and the noise of shouting
and quarrelling which issues from the public-houses, is
almost the only sound that breaks the melancholy still-
mess of the night.
There was another, but it has ceased. That wretched
woman with the infant in her arms, round whose meagre
form the remnant of her own scanty shawl is carefully
wrapped, has been attempting to sing some popular
ballad, in the hope of wringing a few pence from the
compassionate passer-by. A brutal laugh at her weak
voice is all she has gained. The tears fall thick and
fast down her own pale face; the child is cold and
hungry, and its low half-stified wailing adds to the
misery of its wretched mother, as she moans aloud, and
sinks despairingly down, on a cold damp door-step.
Singing ! How few of those who pass such a miserable
creature as this, think of the anguish of heart, the sink-
ing of soul and spirit, which the very effort of singing
56 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
produces. Bitter mockery ! Disease, neglect, and star-
vation, faintly articulating the words of the joyous
ditty, that has enlivened your hours of feasting and
merriment. God knows how often It is no subject of
jeering. The weak tremulous voice tells a fearful tale
of want and famishing; and the feeble singer of this
roaring song may turn away, only to die of cold
and hunger.
One o’clock Parties returning from the different
theatres foot it through the muddy streets; cabs, hack-
ney-coaches, carriages, and theatre Omnibuses, roll
swiftly by; watermen with dim dirty lanterns in their
hands, and large brass plates upon their breasts, who
have been shouting and rushing about for the last two
hours, retire to their watering-houses, to Solace them-
selves with the creature comforts of pipes and purl;
the half-price pit and box frequenters of the theatres
throng to the different houses of refreshment; and chops,
kidneys, rabbits, oysters, stout, cigars, and “goes” in-
numerable, are served up amidst a noise and confusion
of smoking, running, knife-clattering, and waiter-chat-
tering, perfectly indescribable.
The more musical portion of the play-going commu-
nity, betake themselves to some harmonic meeting. As
a matter of curiosity let us follow them thither for a
few moments.
In a lofty room of spacious dimensions, are seated
some eighty or a hundred guests knocking little pewter
measures on the tables, and hammering away with the
handles of their knives, as if they were so many trunk-
makers. They are applauding a glee, which has just
been executed by the three “professional gentlemen’’
at the top of the centre-table, one of whom is in the
chair—the little pompous man with the bald head just
emerging from the collar of his green coat. The others
are seated on either side of him—the stout man with the
small voice, and the thin-faced dark man in black. The
little man in the chair is a most amusing personage,
such condescending grandeur, and Such a voice
“Bass!” as the young gentleman near us with the blue
stock forcibly remarks to his companion, “bass! I b'lieve
you; he can go down lower than any man; so low some-
times that you can’t hear him.” And so he does. To
hear him growling away, gradually lower and lower
THE STREETS NIGHT. 57
down,’till he can’t get back again, is the most delightful
thing in the world, and it is quite impossible to witness
unmoved the impressive solemnity with which he pours
forth his soul in “My 'art's in the 'ighlands,” or “The
brave old Hoak.” The stout man is also addicted to
sentimentality, and warbles “Fly, fly from the world,
my Bessy, with me,” or some such song, with lady-like
Sweetness, and in the most seductive tones imaginable.
“Pray give your orders, gen’lmen—pray give your
orders,”—says the pale-faced man with the red head;
and demands for “goes” of gin and “goes” of brandy,
and pints of Stout, and cigars of peculiar mildness, are
vociferously made from all parts of the room. The “pro-
fessional gentlemen” are in the very height of their
glory, and bestow condescending nods, or even a Word
or two of recognition on the better known frequenters
of the room, in the most bland and patronising man-
ner possible.
That little round-faced man, with the Small brown
Surtout, white stockings and shoes, is in the comic line;
the mixed air of self-denial, and mental consciousness
of his own powers, with which he acknowledges the call
of the chair, is particularly gratifying. “Gen’lmen,”
says the little pompous man, accompanying the word
with a knock of the president’s hammer on the table—
‘‘ Gen’lmen, allow me to claim your attention—Our
friend, Mr. Smuggins will oblige.”—“ Bravo ! ” shout
the company; and Smugggins, after a considerable
quantity of coughing by way of Symphony, and a most
facetious sniff or two, which afford general delight,
sings a comic song, with a fal-de-ral—tol-de-rol chorus
at the end of every verse, much longer than the verse
itself. It is received with unbounded applause, and
after some aspiring genius has volunteered a recitation,
and failed dismally therein, the little pompous man
gives another knock, and says, “Gen’lmen, we will at-
tempt a glee, if you please.” This announcement calls
forth tumultuous applause, and the more emergetic
Spirits express the unqualified approbation it affords
them, by knocking one or two stout glasses off their
legs—a humorous device; but one which frequently
Occasions some slight altercation when the form of pay-
ing the damage is proposed to be gone through by
the Waiter,
58 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Scenes like these are continued until three or four
o'clock in the morning; and even when they close, fresh
ones open to the inquisitive novice. But as a descrip-
tion of all of them, however slight, would require a
volume, the contents of which, however instructive,
would be by no means pleasing, we make our bow, and
drop the curtain. ... a
CHAPTER III.
SHOPS AND THEIR TENANTS.
WHA'ſ inexhaustible food for speculation, do the
streets of London afford! We never were able
to agree with Sterne in pitying the man who could
travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say that all was
barren; we have not the slightest commiseration for the
man who can take up his hat and stick, and walk from
Covent Garden to St. Paul’s Churchyard, and back into
the bargain, without deriving some amusement—we had
almost said instruction—from his perambulation. And
yet there are such beings: we meet them every day.
Large black stocks and light waistcoats, jet canes and
discotented countenances, are the characteristics of the
race; other people brush quickly by you, steadily plod-
ding on to business, or cheerfully running after pleas-
ure. These men linger listlessly past, looking as happy
and animated as a policeman on duty. Nothing seems
to make an impression on their minds: nothing short of
being knocked down by a porter, or run over by a cab,
will disturb their equanimity. You will meet them on
a fine day in any of the leading thoroughfares: peep
through the window of a west-end cigar-shop in the
evening, if you can manage to get a glimpse between
the blue curtains which intercept the vulgar gaze, and
you see them in their only enjoyment of existence.
There they are lounging about, on round tubs and pipe-
boxes, in all the dignity of whiskers and gilt watch-
guards; whispering soft nothings to the young lady in
amber, with the large ear-rings, who, as she sits behind
the counter in a blaze of adoration and gas-light, is the
SHOPS AND THEIR TENANTS. 59
admiration of all the female servants in the neigbour-
hood, and the envy of every milliner’s apprentice
within two miles round.
One of Our principal amusments is to watch the gradual
progress—the rise or fall—of particular shops. We
have formed an intimate acquaintance with several, in
different parts of town, and are perfectly acquainted with
their whole history. We could name off-hand, twenty at
least, which we are quite sure have paid no taxes for
the last six years. They are never inhabited for more
than two months consecutively, and, we verily believe,
have witnessed every retail trade in the directory.
There is one, whose history is a sample of the rest, in
whose fate we have taken especial interest, having had
the pleasure of knowing it ever since it has been a shop.
It is on the Surrey side of the water—a little distance
beyond the Marsh-gate. It was originally a substantial,
good-looking private house enough; the landlord got
into difficulties, the house got into Chancery, the tenant
went away, and the house went to ruin. At this period
Our acquaintance with it commenced: the paint was all
worn off; the windows were broken, the area was green
with neglect and the overflowings of the water-butt;
the butt itself was without a lid, and the street-door
was the very picture of misery. The chief pastime of
the children in the vicinity had been to assemble in a
body on the steps, and take it in turn to knock loud
double-knocks at the door, to the great satisfaction of
the neighbours generally, and especially of the nervous
old lady next door but one. Numerous complaints
were made, and several small basins of water dis-
charged over the offenders, but without effect. In this
state of things, the marine-store dealer at the corner of
the street, in the most obliging manner took the knocker
off, and sold it: and the unfortunate house looked more
wréched than ever.
We deserted our friend for a few weeks. What was
our surprise, on our return, to find no trace of its exist-
ence! In its place was a handsome shop, fast approach-
ing to a state of completion, and on the shutters were
large bills, informing the public that it would shortly be
opened with “an extensive stock of linen-drapery and
haberdashery.” It opened in due course; there was the
name of the proprietor “ and Co.” in gilt letters, almost
6() SKETCHES BY BOZ.
too dazzling to look at. Such ribbons and shawls! and.
two such elegant young men behind the counter, each
in a clean collar and white neck-cloth, like the lover in
a farce. As to the proprietor, he did nothing but walk
up and down the shop, and hand seats to the ladies,
and hold imporant conversations with the handsomest
of the young men, who was shrewdly suspected by the
neighbours to be the “Co.” We saw all this with sor-
row; we felt a fatal presentiment that the shop was
doomed—and so it was. Its decay was slow but sure.
Tickets gradually appeared in the windows; then rolls
of flannels, with labels on them, were stuck outside the
door; then a bill was pasted on the street-door, intimat-
ing that the first floor was to let unfurnished; then one
of the young men disappeared altogether, and the other
took to a black neckerchief, and the proprietor took to
drinking. The shop became dirty, broken panes of
glass remained unmended, and the stock disappeared
piecemeal. At last the company’s man came to cut off
the water, and then the linendraper cut off himself,
leaving the landlord his compliments and the key.
The next occupant was a fancy stationer. The shop
was more modestly painted than before, still it was
meat ; but somehow we always thought, as we passed,
that it looked like a poor and struggling concern. We
wished the man well, but we trembled for his success.
He was a widower evidently, and had employment
elsewhere, for he passed us every morning on his road
to the city. The business was carried on by his eldest
daughter. Poor girl she needed no assistance. We
occasionally caught a glimpse of two or three children,
in mourning like herself, as they sat in the little parlour
behind the shop; and we never passed at night without
seeing the eldest girl at work, either for them, or in
making some elegant little trifle for sale. We often
thought, as her pale face looked more sad and peºive
in the dim candle-light, that if those thoughtless females
who interfere with the miserable market of poor
creatures such as these, knew but one-half of the
misery they suffer, and the bitter privations they endure,
in their honourable attempts to earn a scanty subsist-
ence, they would, perhaps, resign even opportunities
for the gratification of vanity, and an immodest love of
self-display, rather than drive them to a last dreadful
SHOPS AND THEIR TENANTS. 61
resource, which it would shock the delicate feelings of
these charitable ladies to hear named. te
But we are forgetting the shop. Well, we continued
to watch it, and every day showed too clearly the in-
creasing poverty of its inmates. The children were
clean, it is true, but their clothes were threadbare and
shabby; no tenant had been procured for the upper
part of the house, from the letting of which, a portion
of the means of paying the rent was to have been
derived, and a slow, wasting consumption prevented
the eldest girl from continuing her exertion. Quarter-
day arrived. The landlord had suffered from the ex-
travagance of his last tenant, and he had no compassion
for the struggles of his successor; he put in an execu-
tion. As we passed one morning, the broker's men
were removing the little furniture there was in the
house, and a newly posted bill informed us it was again
“To Let.” What became of the last tenant we never
could learn ; we believe the girl is past all suffering,
º beyond all sorrow. God help her We hope
Słlé IS.
We were somewhat curious to ascertain what would
be the next stage—for that the place had no chance of
succeeding now, was perfectly clear. The bill was
Soon taken down, and some alterations were being
made in the interior of the shop. We were in a fever
of expectation; we exhausted conjecture—we imagined
all possible trades, none of which were perfectly recon-
cilable with our idea of the gradual decay of the tene-
ment. It opened, and we wondered why we had not
guessed at the real state of the case before. The shop
—not a large One at the best of times—had been con-
verted into two: one was a bonnet-shape maker's, the
Other was opened by a tobacconist, who also dealt in
walking-sticks and Sunday newspapers; the two were
separated by a thin partition, covered with tawdry
Striped paper.
The tobacconist remained in possession longer than
any tenant within our recollection. He was a red-
faced, impudent, good-for-nothing dog, evidently ac-
Customed to take things as they came, and to make
the best of a bad job. He sold as many cigars as he
could, and smoked the rest. He occupied the shop as
long as he could make peace with the landlord, and
62 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
when he could no longer live # iet, he very coolly
locked the door, and bolted himself. From this period
the two little dens have undergone innumerable
changes. The tobacconist was succeeded by a theatri-
cal hair-dresser, who ornamented the window with a
great variety of “characters,” and terrific combats. The
bonnet-shape maker gave place to a green-grocer, and
the histrionic barber was succeeded in his turn, by a
tailor. So numerous have been the changes, that we have
of late done little more than mark the peculiar but cer-
tain indications of a house being poorly inhabited. It
has been progressing by almost imperceptible degrees.
The occupiers of the shops have gradually given up
room after room, until they have only reserved the little
parlour for themselves. First there appeared a brass
late on the private door, with “Ladies’ School”
egibly engraved thereon; shortly afterwards we ob-
served a second brass plate, then a bell, and then
another bell.
When we paused in front of our old friend, and ob-
served these signs of poverty, which are not to be
mistaken, we thought as we turned away, that the
house had attained its lowest pitch of degradation. We
were wrong. When we last passed it, a “ dairy” was
established in the area, and a party of melancholy
looking fowls were amusing themselves by running in
at the front door, and out at the back one.
CHAPTER IV.
S C O T L A N D - Y A. R. D.
COTLAND-YARD is a small—a very small—tract of
land, bounded on one side by the river Thames, on
the other by the gardens of Northumberland House:
abutting at one end on the bottom of Northumberland-
street, at the other on the back of Whitehall-place.
When this territory was first accidentally discovered
by a country gentleman who lost his way in the
Strand, Some years ago, the original settlers were found
to be a tailor, a publican, two eating-house keepers,
and a fruit-pie maker; and it was also found to contain
SCOTLAND-YARD. 63
a race of strong and bulky men, who repaired to the
wharfs in Scotland-yard regularly every morning,
about five or six o'clock, to fill heavy waggons with coal
with which they proceeded to distant places up the
country, and supplied the inhabitants with fuel. When
they had emptied their waggons, they again returned
for a fresh supply; and this trade was continued
throughout the year.
As the settlers derived their subsistence from minis-
tering to the wants of these primitive traders, tho
articles exposed for sale, and the places where they
were sold, bore strong outward marks of being ex-
pressly adapted.to their tastes and wishes. The tailor
displayed in his window a Lilliputian pair of leather
gaiters, and a diminutive round frock, while each
doorpost was appropriately garnished with a model of
a coat-Sack. The two eating-house keepers exhibited
joints of a magnitutde, and puddings of a solidity,
which coalheavers alone could appreciate; and the
fruit-pie maker displayed on his well-scrubbed window-
board large white compositions of flour and dripping,
ornamented with pink stains, giving rich promise of the
fruit within, which made their huge mouths water, as
they lingered past.
But the choicest spot in all Scotland-yard was the
old public-house in the corner. Here, in a dark vain-
Scotted-room of ancient appearance, cheered by the glow
of a mighty fire, and decorated with an enormous
clock, whereof the face was white, and the figures
black, sat the lusty Coalheavers, quaffing large draughts
of Barclay's best, and puffing forth volumes of smoke,
which wreathed heavily above their heads, and involved
the room in a thick dark cloud. From this apartment
might their voices be heard on a winter’s night, pen-
etrating to the very bank of the river, as they shouted
out some sturdy chorus, or roared forth the burden of a
popular song; dwelling upon the last few words with a
strength and length of emphasis which made the very
roof tremble above them. g.
Here, too, would they tell old legends of what the
Thames was in ancient times, when the Patent Shot
Manufactory wasn’t built, and Waterloo-bridge had
never been thought of; and then they would shake their
heads with portentous looks, to the deep edification of
64 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
the rising generation of heavers, who crowded round
them, and wondered where all this would end; whereat
the tailor would take his pipe solemnly from his mouth,
and say, how that he hoped “it might end well, but
he very much doubted whether it would or not, and
couldn’t rightly tell what to make of it—a mysterious
expression of opinion, delivered with a semi-prophetic
air, which never failed to elicit the fullest concurrence
of the assembled company; and so they would go on
drinking and wondering till ten o’clock came, and with
it the tailor’s wife to fetch him home, when the little
party broke up, to meet again in the same room, and
say and do precisely the same things On the following
evening at the same hour. -
About this time the barges that came up the river
began to bring vague rumours to Scotland-yard of
somebody in the city having been heard to say, that the
..Lord Mayor had threatened in so many words to pull
down the old London-bridge, and build up a new one.
At first these rumours were disregarded as idle tales,
wholly destitute of foundation, for nobody in Scotland-
yard doubted that if the Lord Mayor contemplated any
such dark design, he would just be clapped up in the
Tower for a week or two, and then killed off for high
treaSOn.
By degrees, however, the reports grew stronger, and
more frequent, and at last a barge, laden with numerous
chaldrons of the best Wallsend, brought up the positive
intelligence that several of the arches of the old bridge
were stopped, and that preparations were actually in
progress for constructing the new One. What an ex-
citement was visible in the old tap-room on that mem-
orable might ! Each man looked into his neighbour's
face, pale with alarm and astonishment, and read
therein an echo of the sentiments which filled his own
breast. The oldest heaver present proved to demon-
stration, that the moment the piers were removed, all
the water in the Thames would run clean off, and leave
a.dry gully in its place. What was to become of the
coal-barges—of the trade of Scotland-yard—of the very
existence of its population ? The tailor shook his head
more Sagely than usual, and grimly pointing to a knife
on the table, bid them wait and see what happened.
He said nothing—not he; but if the Lord Mayor didn’t
SCOTLAND-YARD. 65
fall a victim to popular indignation, why he would be
rather astonished ; that was all. tº
They did wait; barge after barge arrived, and still
no tidings of the assassination of the Lord Mayor. The
first stone was laid: it was done by a Duke—the King’s
brother. Years passed away, and the bridge was
opened by the King himself. In course of time, the .
piers were removed; and when the people in Scotland-
yard got up next morning in the confident expectation
of being able to step over to Pedlar's Acre without
wetting the soles of their shoes, they found to their
unspeakable astonishment that the water was just
where it used to be.
A result so different from that which they had antic-
ipated from this first improvement, produced its full
effect upon the inhabitants of Scotland-yard. One of
the eating-house keepers began to court public opinion,
and to look for customers among a new class of people.
He covered his little dining tables with j. and
got a painter’s apprentice to inscribe something about
hot joints from twelve to two, in one of the little panes
of his shop-window. Improvement began to march
with rapid strides to the very threshold of Scotland-
yard. A new market sprung up at Hungerford, and
the Police Commissioners established their office in
Whitehall-place. The traffic in Scotland-yard increased,
fresh members were added to the House of Commons,
the Metropolitan Representatives found it a near cut,
and many other foot passengers followed their example.
We marked the advance of civilisation, and beheld it
with a sigh. The eating-house keeper who manfully
resisted the innovation of table-cloths, was losing
#. every day, as his opponent gained it, and a
eadly feud sprung up between them. The genteel
One no longer took his evening’s pint in Scotland-yard,
but drank gin and water at a “parlour” in Parliament-
street. The fruit-pie maker still continued to visit the
old room, but he took to smoking cigars, and began to
call himself a pastry.cook, and to read the papers. The
old heavers still assembled round the ancient fireplace,
but their talk was mournful; and the loud song and
the joyous shout were heard no more. -
And what is Scotland-yard now 2 How have its old
customs changed; and how has the ancient simplicity
-- 5 * #
66 SKETCHES BY BOZ. ---
of its inhabitants faded away ! The old tottering
public-house is converted into a spacious and lofty
“wine-vaults’ gold leaf has been used in the construc-
tion of the letters which emblazon its exterior, and the
poet's art has been called into requisition, to intimate
that if you drink a certain description of ale you must
hold fast by the rail. The tailor exhibits in his window
the pattern of a foreign-looking brown Surtout with silk
buttons, a fur collar and fur cuffs. He wears a stripe
down the outside of each leg of his trousers; and we have
detected his assistants (for he has assistants now) in the
act of sitting on the shop-board in the same uniform.
At the other end of the little row of houses a boot-
maker has established himself in a brick box, with the
additional innovation of a first floor; and here he ex-
poses for sale, boots—real Wellington boots—an article
which a few years ago, none of the Original inhabitants
had ever seen or heard of. It was but the other day,
that a dress-maker opened another little box in the
middle of the row; and, when we thought that the spirit
of change could produce no alteration beyond that, a
jeweller appeared, and not content with exposing gilt
rings and copper bracelets Out of number, put up an
announcement, which still sticks in his window, that
“ladies’ ears may be pierced within.” The dress-maker
º a young lady who wears pockets in her apron;
and the tailor informs the public that gentlemen may
have their own materials made up.
Amidst all this change, and restlessness, and innova-
tion, there remains but one old man, who seems to
mourn the downfall of this ancient place. He holds no
; converse with human kind, but, seated on a wooden
bench at the angle of the wall which fronts the cross-
ing from . Whitehall-place, watches in silence the
gambols of his sleek and well-fed dogs. He is the pre-
siding genius of Scotland-yard. Years and years have
rolled over his head; but, in fine weather or in foul, hot
or cold, wet or dry, hail, rain, or snow, he is still in his
accustomed spot. Misery and want are depicted in his
countenance; his form is bent by age, his head is grey
with length of trial, but there he sits from day to day,
brooding over the past; and thither he will continue to
drag his feeble lilnbs, until his eyes have closed upon
Scotland-yard, and upon the world together,
SEVEN DIALS. 6%
A few years hence, and the antiquary of another
generation looking into some mouldy record of the strife
and passions that agitated the world in these times,
may glance his eye over the pages we have just filled:
and not all his knowledge of the history of the past,
not all his black-letter lore, or his skill in book-collect-
ing, not all the dry studies of a long life, or the dusty
Volumes that have cost him a fortune, may help him to
the whereabouts, either of Scotland-yard, or of any one
of the landmarks we have mentioned in describing it.
CHAPTER V.
SEVEN DIALS.
We have always been of opinion that if Tom King
and the Frenchman had not immortalised Seven Dials,
Seven Dials would have immortalised itself. Seven
Dials the region of song and poetry—first effusions,
and last dying speeches: hallowed by the names of
Catnach and of Pitts—names that will entwine them-
selves with Costermongers, and barrel organs, when
penny magazines shall have superseded penny yards of
song, and capital punishment be unknown
Look at the construction of the place. The gordian
knot was all very well in its way: so was the maze of
Hampton Court; so is the maze at the Beulah Spa: so were
the ties of stiff white neckcloths, when the difficulty of
getting one on, was only to be equalled by the apparent
impossibility of ever getting it off again. But what in-
volutions can compare with those of Seven Dials?
Where is there such another maze of streets, courts,
lanes, and alleys? Where such a pure mixture of
Englishmen and Irishmen, as in this complicated part
of London? We boldly aver that we doubt the veracity
of the legend to which we have adverted. We can
suppose a man rash enough to inquire at random—at a
house with lodgers too—for a Mr. Thompson, with all
but the certainty before his eyes, of finding at least two
or three Thompsons in any house of moderate dimen-
sions; but a Frenchman—a Frenchman in Seven Dials!
- | 1
68 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Pooh! He was an Irishman. Tom King's education
had been neglected in his infancy, and as he couldn’t
understand half the man said, he took it for granted he
was talking French.
The stranger who finds himself in “The Dials” for
the first time, and stands Belzoni-like, at the entrance
of seven obscure passages, uncertain which to take,
will see enough around him to keep his curiosity and
attention awake for no inconsiderable time. From the
irregular square into which he has plunged, the streets
and courts dart in all directions, until they are lost in
the unwholesome vapour which hangs over the house-
tops, and renders the dirty perspective, uncertain and
confined; and lounging at every corner, as if they came
there to take a few gasps of such fresh air as has found
its way so far, but is too much exhausted already, to
be enabled to force itself into the narrow alleys around,
are groups of people, whose appearance and dwellings
would fill any mind but a regular Londoner's with
astonishment.
On one side, a little crowd has collected round a
couple of ladies, who having imbibed the contents of
various “three-outs " of gin and bitters in the course
of the morning, have at length differed on. Some point
of domestic arrangement, and are on the eve of settling
the quarrel satisfactorily, by an appeal to blows, greatly
to the interest of other ladies who live in the same
house, and tenements adjoining, and who are all par-
tisans on one side or other.
“Vy don’t you pitch into her, Sarah?” exclaims one
half-dressed matron, by way of encouragement. ‘‘Vy
don’t you? if my 'usband had treated her with a drain
last night, unbeknown to me, I'd tear her precious eyes
out—a wixen l’
“What's the matter, ma’am?” inquires another old
woman, who has just bustled up to the spot.
“Matter!” replies the first speaker, talking at the ob-
noxious combatant, “matter! Here’s poor dear Mrs.
Sulliwin, as has five blessed children of her own, can’t
go out a charing for One arternoon, but what hussies
must be a comin', and ’ticing avay her oun’’usband, as
she's been married to twelve year come next Easter
Monday, for I see the certificate ven I was a drinkin’ a
cup'o tea vith her, only the werry last blessed Ven’sday
SEVEN DIALs, 69
as ever was sent. I’appen'd to say promiscúously “Mrs.
Sulliwin,’ says I–’’ - . .
“What do you mean by hussies?” interrupts a
champion of the other party, who has evinced a strong
inclination throughout to get up a branch fight on her
own account (“Hooroar,” ejaculates a pot-boy in pa-
renthesis, “put the kye-bosk on her, Mary!”), “What
do you mean by hussies?” reiterates the champion. ..?
“Niver mind,” replies the opposition expressively,
“niver mind; you go home, and ven you’re quite sober
mend your stockings.” .
This somewhat personal allusion, not only to the
lady’s habits of intemperance, but also to the state of
her wardrobe, rouses her utmost ire, and she accord-
ingly complies with the urgent request of the bystanders
to “pitch in,” with considerable alacrity. The scuffle
became general, and terminates in minor play-bill
phraseology, with “arrival of the policemen, interior
of the station-house, and impressive dénouement.”
In addition to the numerous groups who are idling
about the gin-shops and squabbling in the centre of the
road, every post in the open space has its occupant, who
leans against it for hours, with listless perseverance. It
is odd enough that one class of men in London appear
to have no enjoyment beyond leaning against posts.
We never saw a regular bricklayer's labourer take any
other recreation, fighting excepted. Pass through St.
Giles's in the evening of a week-day, there they are in
their fustian dresses, spotted with brickdust and white-
wash, leaning against posts. Walk through Seven Dials
On Sunday morning: t; they are again, drab or light
corduroy trousers, Blucher boots, blue coats, and great
yellow waistcoats, leaning against posts. The idea of
a man dressing himself in his best clothes, to lean
against a post all day! s -
The peculiar character of these streets, and the close
resemblance each one bears to its neighbour, "by no
means tends to decrease the bewilderment in which the
unexperienced wayfarer through “The Dials” finds
himself involved. He traverses streets of dirty, strag-
gling houses, with now and then an unexpected court
composed of buildings as ill-proportioned and deformed
as the half-naked children tº: wallow in the kennels.
Here and there, a little dark chandler's shop, with a
70 - SKETCHES BY BOZ.
cracked bell hung up behind the door to announce
the entrance of a customer, or betray the presence of
some young gentleman in whom a passion for shop tills
has developed itself at an early age; others, as if for
support, against some handsome lofty building, which
usurps the place of a low dingy public-house ; long
rows of broken and patched windows expose plants that
may have flourished when “The Dials’ were built, in
vessels as dirty as “The Dials” themselves; and shops
for the purchase of rags, bones, old iron, and kitchen
stuff, vie in cleanliness with the bird-fanciers and rab-
bit-dealers, which one might fancy so many arks, but
for the irresistible conviction that no bird in its
proper senses, who was permitted to leave one of them,
would ever come back again. Brokers’ shops, which
would seem to have been established by humane indi-
viduals, as refuges for destitute bugs, interspersed with
announcements of day-schools, penny theatres, petition-
writers, mangles, and music for balls or routs, com-
plete the “still life” of the subject ; and dirty men,
filthy women, squalid children, fluttering shuttlecocks,
noisy battle-doors, reeking pipes, bad fruit, more than
doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed dogs and
anatomical fowls, are its cheerful accompaniments.
If the external appearance of the houses, or a glance
at their inhabitants, present but few attractions, a
closer acquaintance with either is little calculated to
alter one’s first impression. Every room has its sepa-
rate tenant, and every tenant is, by the same mysterious
dispensation which causes a country curate to “increase
and multiply ’’ most marvelously, generally the head of
a numerous family. -
The man in the shop, perhaps, is in the baked “jemmy”
line, or the firewood and hearth-stone line, or any other
line which requires a floating capital of eighteenpence
or thereabouts: and he and his family live in the shop,
and the small back parlour behind it. Then there is an
Irish labourer and his family in the back kitchen,
and a jobbing man—carpet-beater and so forth—with
his family in the front one. In the front one-pair, there’s
another man with another wife and family, and in the
back one-pair, there’s “a young 'oman as takes in tam-
bour-work, and dresses quite genteel,” who talks a good
deal about “my friend,” and can’t “abear anything
SEVEN DIALS. 71
low.” The second floor front, and the rest of the
lodgers, are just a second edition of the people below,
except a shabby-genteel man in the back attic, who has
his half-pint of coffee every morning from the coffee-
shop next door but one, which boasts a little front den
called a coffee-room, with a fire-place, over which is an
inscription, politely requesting that, “to prevent mis-
takes,” customers will “please to pay on delivery.” The
shabby-genteel man is an object of some mystery, but
as he leads a life of seclusion, and never was known to
buy anything beyond an occasional pen, except half-
pints of coffee, penny loaves, and ha'porths of ink, his
fellow lodgers very naturally suppose him to be an
author; and rumours are current in the Dials, that he
writes poems for Mr. Warren.
Now any body who passed through the Dials on a hot
summer's evening, and saw the different women of the
house gossiping on the steps, would be apt to think that
all was harmony among them, and that a more primi-
tive set of people than the native Diallers could not be
imagined. Alas! the man in the shop ill-treats his
family; the carpet-beater extends his professional pur-
suits to his wife; the one-pair front has an undying
feud with the two-pair front, in consequence of the two-
pair front persisting in dancing Over his (the One-pair
front's) head, when he and his family have retired for
the night; the two-pair back will interfere with the
front kitchen’s children; the Irishman comes home
drunk every other night, and attacks everybody; and
the one-pair back screams at everything. Animosities
spring up between floor and floor; the very cellar asserts
his equality. Mrs. A. “Smacks ' Mrs. B.’s child, for
“making faces.” Mrs. B. forthwith throws cold water
Over Mrs. A.’s child, for ‘‘ calling names.” The hus-
bands are embroiled—the quarrel becomes general—an
* is the consequence, and a police-officer the
result:
72 SKETCHES BY BOZ,
CHAPTER WI.
MEDITATIONS IN MONMOUTH STREET.
WE have always entertained a particular attach-
ment towards Monmouth Street, as the only true
and real emporium for second-hand wearing appare!.
Monmouth-street is venerable from its antiquity, and
respectable from its usefulness. Holywell-street we
despise; the red-headed and red-whiskered Jews who
forcibly haul you into their squalid houses, and thrust
you into a suit of clothes, whether you will or not, we
detest.
The inhabitants of Monmouth-street are a distinct
class; a peaceable and retiring race, who immure them-
selves for the most part in deep cellars, or small back
parlours, and who seldom come forth into the world,
except in the dusk and coolness of evening, when they
may be seen seated, in chairs on the pavement, smok-
ing their pipes, or watching the gambols of their en-
gaging children as they revel in the gutter, a happy
troop of infantine scavengers. Their countenances
bear a thoughtful and a dirty cast, certain indications
of their love of traffic; and their habitations are distin-
guished by that disregard of Outward appearance, and
neglect of personal comfort, so common among people
who are constantly immersed in profound speculations,
and deeply engaged in Sedentary pursuits.
We have hinted at the antiquity of out favourite spot.
“A Monmouth-street laced coat" was a by-word a
century ago, and still we find Monmouth-street the
same. Pilot great-coats with wooden buttons, have
usurped the place of the ponderous laced coats with full
skirts; embroidered waistcoats with large flaps, have
yielded to double-breasted checks with roll-collars; and
three-cornered hats of quaint appearance, have given
place to the low crowns and broad brims of the coach-
MEDITATIONS IN MONMOUTH STREET. 73
man school; but it is the times that have changed, not
Monmouth-street. Through every alteration and every
change, Monmouth-street has still remained the burial-
place of the fashions; and such, to judge from all pres-
ent appearances, it will remain until there are no more
fashions to bury.
We love to walk among these extensive groves of the
illustrious dead, and to indulge in the speculations to
which they give rise; now fitting a deceased coat, then
a dead pair of trousers, and anon the mortal remains of
a gaudy waist-coat, upon some being of Our Own con-
juring up, and endeavouring from the shape and fashion
of the garment itself, to bring its former owner before
our mind’s eye. We have gone on speculating in this
way, until whole rows of coats have started from their
pegs, and buttoned up, of their own accord, round the
waists of imaginary wearers; lines of trousers have
jumped down to meet them; waistcoats have almost
burst with anxiety to put themselves on; and half an
acre of shoes have jail; found feet to fit them, and
gone stumping down the street with a noise which has
fairly awakened us from our pleasant reverie, and
driven us slowly away, with a bewildered stare, an
object of astonishment to the good people of Monmouth-
Street, and of no slight suspicion to the policeman at
the opposite street corner.
We were occupied in this manner the other day,
endeavouring to fit a pair of lace-up half-boots on
an ideal personage, for whom, to say the truth, they
were full a couple of sizes too small, when our eyes
happened to alight on a few suits of clothes ranged out-
side a shop-window, which it immmediately struck us,
must at different periods have all belonged to, and been
worn by, the same individual, and had now, by one of
those strange conjunctions of circumstances which will
occur sometimes, come to be exposed together for sale
in the same shop. The idea, seemed a fantastic one,
and we looked at the clothes again, with a firm deter-
mination not be easily led away. No, we were right;
the more we looked, the more we were convinced of
the accuracy of our previous impression. There was
the man’s whole life written as legibly on those clothes,
as if we had his autobiography engrossed on parchment
before us.
*4 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
The first was a patched and much-soiled skeleton
suit; one of those straight blue cloth cases in which
small boys used to be confined before belts and tunics
had come in, and old notions had gone out: an ingenious
contrivance for displaying the full symmetry of a boy’s
figure, by fastening him into a very tight jacket, with
an ornamental row of buttons over each shoulder, and
then buttoning his trousers over it, so as to give his
legs the appearance of being hooked on, just under the
armpits. This was the boy’s dress. It had belonged
to a town boy, we could see; there was a shortness
about the legs and arms of the Suit, and a bagging at
the knees, peculiar to the rising youth of London
streets. A small day-school he had been at, evidently.
If it had been a regular boys’ school they wouldn’t have
let him play on the floor so much, and rub his knees
so white. He had an indulgent mother, too, and plenty
of halfpence, as the numerous smears of some sticky
substance about the pockets, and just below the chin,
which even the salesman’s skill could not succeed in
disguising, sufficiently betokened. They were de-
cent P.": but not overburdened with riches, or he
would not have so far outgrown the suit when he passed
into those corduroys with the round jacket; in which
he went to a boys’ school, however, learnt to write—and
in ink of pretty tolerable blackness, too, if the place
where he used to wipe his pen might be taken as
"evidence.
A black suit and the jacket changed into a diminutive
coat. His father had died, and the mother had got the
boy a message-lad’s place in Some office. A long-worn
suit that one; rusty and threadbare before it was laid
aside, but clean and free from soil to the last. Poor
woman! We could imagine her assumed cheerfulness
over the scanty meal, and the refusal of her own small
portion, that her hungry boy might have enough. Her
constant anxiety for his welfare, her pride in his
growth, mingled sometimes with the thoughts almost
too acute to bear, that as he grew to be a man his old
affection might cool, old kindnesses fade from his mind,
and old promises be forgotteta—the sharp pain that
even then a careless word or a cold look would give
her—all crowded on our thoughts as vividly as if the
very scene were passing before us.
MEDITATIONS IN MONMOUTH STREET. 75
These things happen every hour, and we all know it;
and yet we felt as much sorrow when we saw, or
fancied we saw—it makes no difference which—the
change that began to take place now, as if we had just
conceived the bare possibility of such a thing for the
first time. The next suit, Smart but Slovenly; meant
to be gay, and yet not half so decent as the threadbare
apparel; redolent of the idle lounge, and the black-
guard companions, told us, we thought, that the widow’s
comfort had rapidly faded away. We could imagine
that coat—imagine! we could see it; we had seen it a
hundred times—Sauntering in company with three or
four other coats of the same cut, about some place of
profligate resort at night.
We dressed from the same shop-window in an instant,
half a dozen boys of from fifteen to twenty; and
putting cigars into their mouths, and their hands into
their pockets, watched them as they sauntered down
the street, and lingered at the corner, with the
obscene jest, and the oft-repeated oath. We never
lost sight of them, till they had cocked their hats a lit-
tle more on One side, and Swaggered into the public-
house; and then we entered the desolate home, where
the mother sat late in the night, alone; we watched her,
as she paced the room in feverish anxiety, and every
now and then opened the door, looked wistfully into the
dark and empty Street, and again returned, to be again
and again disappointed. We beheld the look of .
patience with which she bore the bruitish threat, may,
even the drunken blow; and we heard the agony of
tears that gushed from her very heart, as she sank upon
her knees in her solitary and wretched apartment.
A. long period had elapsed, and a greater change had
taken place, by the time of casting off the suit that
hung above. It was that of a stout, broad-shouldered,
Sturdy-chested man; and we knew at once, as any body
would, who glanced at that broad-skirted green coat,
with the large metal buttons, that its wearer seldom
walked forth without a dog at his heels, and some idle
ruffian, the very counterpart of himself, at his side.
The vices of the boy had grown with the man, and we
fancied his home then—if such a place deserve the name.
We saw the bare and miserable room, destitute of
furniture, crowded with his wife and children, pale,
76 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
hungry, and emaciated; the man cursing their lamen-
tations, staggering to the tap-room, from whence he
had just returned, followed by his wife, and a sickly
infant, clamouring for bread; and heard the street-
wrangle and noisy recrimination that his striking her
occasioned. And then imagination led us to some me-
tropolitan workhouse, situated in the midst of crowded
streets and alleys, filled with noxious vapours, and
ringing with boisterous cries, where an old and feeble
woman, imploring pardon for her son, lay dying in a
close dark room, with no child to clasp her hand, and
no pure air from heaven to fan her brow. A stranger
closed the eyes that settled into a cold unmeaning
glare, and strange ears received the words that mur-
mured from the white and half-closed lips.
A coarse round frock, with a worn cotton neckerchief,
and other articles of clothing of the commonest de-
scription, completed the history. A prison, and the
sentence—banishment or the gallows. What would
the man have given then, to be once again the con-
tented humble drudge of his boyish years; to have re-
stored to life, but for a week, a day, an hour, a minute,
only for so long a time as would enable him to say one
word of passionate regret to, and hear One sound of
heartfelt forgiveness from, the cold and ghastly form
that lay rotting in the pauper's grave! The children
wild in the streets, the mother a destitute widow; both
deeply tainted with the deep disgrace of the husband
and father’s name, and impelled by sheer necessity,
down the precipice that had led him to a lingering
death, possibly of many years’ duration, thousands of
miles away. We had no clue to the end of the tale;
but it was easy to guess its termination.
We took a step or two further on, and by way of re-
storing the naturally cheerful tone of our thoughts, be-
gan fitting visionary feet and legs into a cellar-board
full of boofs and shoes, with a speed and accuracy that
would have astonished the most expert artist in leather,
living. There was one pair of boots in particular—a
jolly, good-tempered, hearty-looking pair of tops, that
excited our warmest regard; and we had got a fine,
red-faced, jovial fellow of a market-gardener into them,
before we had made their acquaintance half a minute.
They were just the very thing for him. There were
MEDITATIONS IN MONMOUTH STREET, 77
his huge fat legs bulging over the tops, and fitting
them too tight to admit of his tucking in the loops he
had pulled them on by ; and his knee-cords with an
interval of stocking; and his blue apron tucked up round
his waist; and his red neckerchief and blue coat, and a
white hat stuck on one side of his head; and there he
stood with a broad grin on his great red face, whistling
away, as if any other idea but that of being happy and
comfortable had never entered his brain.
. This was the very man after our own heart; we knew
all about him; we had seen him coming up to Covent-
garden in his green chaise-cart, with the fat tubby little
horse, half a thousand times; and even while we cast
an affectionate look upon his boots, at that instant, the
form of a coquettish servant-maid suddenly sprung into
a pair of Denmark satin shoes that stood beside them,
and we at once recognised the very girl who accepted
his offer of a ride, just on this side the Hammersmith
suspension-bridge, the very last Tuesday morning we
rode into town from Richmond.
A very smart female, in a showy bonnet, stepped into
a pair of grey cloth boots, with black fringe and bind-
ing, that were studiously pointing out their toes on the
other side of the top-boots, and seemed very anxious to
engage his attention, but we didn't observe that our
friend the market-gardener appeared at all captivated
with these blandishments; for beyond giving a knowing
wink when they first began, as if to imply that he
quite understood their end and object, he took no
further notice of them. His indifference, however, was
amply recompensed by the excessive gallantry of a
very old gentleman with a silver-headed stick, who
tottered into a pair of large list shoes, that were stand-
ing in one corner of the board, and indulged in a va-
riety of gestures expressive of his admiration of the
lady in the cloth boots, to the immeasurable amuse-
ment of a young fellow we put into a pair of long-
quartered pumps, who we thought would have split the
coat that slid łº to meet him, with laughing.
We had been looking on at this little pantomime with
great satisfaction for some time, when, to our unspeak-
able astonishment, we perceived that the whole of the
characters, including a numerous corps de ballet of boots
and shoes in the back-ground, into which we had been
78 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
hastily thrusting as many feet as we could press into
the service, were arranging themselves in Order for
dancing; and some music striking up at the moment, to
it they went without delay. It was perfectly delight-
ful to witness the agility of the market-gardener. Out
went the boots, first on one side, then on the other, then
cutting, then shuffling, then setting to the Denmark
satins, then advancing, then retreating, then going
round, and them repeating the whole of the evolutions
again, without appearing to Suffer in the least from the
violence of the exercise.
Nor were the Denmark Satins a bit behindhand, for
+hey jumped and bounded about, in all directions; and
though they were neither so regular, nor so true to the
time as the cloth boots, still, as they seemed to do it
from the heart, and to enjoy it more, we candidly con-
fess that we preferred their style of dancing to the
other. But the old gentleman in the list shoes was the
most amusing object in the whole party; for, besides
his grotesque attempts to appear youthful, and amorous,
which were sufficiently entertaining in themselves, the
young fellow in the pumps managed so artfully that
every time the old gentleman advanced to salute the lady
in the cloth boots, he trod with his whole weight on the
old fellow’s toes, which made him roar with anguish,
and rendered all the others like to die of laughing.
We were in the full enjoyment of these festivities
when we heard a shrill, and by no means musical voice,
exclaim, “Hope you’ll know me agin, imperence!” and
on looking intently forward to see from whence the
sound came, we found that it proceeded, not from the
young lady in the cloth boots, as we had at first been
inclined to suppose, but from a bulky lady of elderly
appearance who was seated in a chair at the head of
the cellar-steps, apparently for the purpose of super-
intending the sale of the articles arranged there.
A barrel Organ which had been in full force close
behind us, ceased playing; the people we had been
fitting into the shoes and boots took to flight at the in-
terruption; and as we were conscious that in the depth
of our meditations we might have been rudely staring
at the old lady for half an hour without knowing it, we
took to flight too, and were soon immersed in the
• deepest obscurity of the adjacent “Dials.”
- sº
ſ §
|
/ (. £) Š-2
2'ſ Yºjč
'...' . -
* ſ t
.*-----"
__- ** Nº
(,,2,…, 2 Gruksham!
}*}
HACRNEY COACH STANDS.
Sketches.
* - *
- --sº • *-r-
t e ..:* * *- :- | - - **s-- T.-- *-* *** - — , |
f : * = . ~~~~ $ - *_--------- ~~
23:-->–sse. ...<r a tº - T. ºry • * * * ;:-
-- ... . . . . . . . ... "...,’”
l zº]] - ; ; – 2-’ ti'y'
- - * * : A
* 9 • * * : -- "






























HACKNEY-COACH STANDS. 79
t
CHAPTER VII.
HACKNEY-COACH STANDs.
WE maintain that hackney-coaches, properly so
called, belong solely to the metropolis. We may
be told, that there are hackney-coach stands in Edin-
burgh; and not to go quite so far for a contradiction to
Our position, we may be reminded that Liverpool, Man-
chester, “ and other large towns” (as the Parliamentary
phrase goes), have their hackney-coach stands. We
readily concede to these places, the possession of certain
Vehicles, which may look almost as dirty, and even go
almost as slowly, as London hackney-coaches: but that
they have the slightest claim to compete with the
º; either in point of stands, drivers, or cattle,
we indignantly deny.
Take a regular, ponderous, rickety, London hackney-
coach of the old school, and let any man have the bold-
ness to assert, if he can, that he ever beheld any object
On the face of the earth which at all resembles it, unless,
indeed, it were another hackney-coach of the same date.
We have recently observed on certain stands, and we
Say it with deep regret, rather dapper green chariots,
and coaches of polished yellow, with four wheels of the
Same colour as the coach, whereas it is perfectly
notorious to every one who has studied the subject,
that every wheel ought to be of a different colour, and
a different size. These are innovations, and, like other
miscalled improvements, awful signs of the restlessness
of the public mind, and the little respect paid to our
time-honoured institutions. Why should hackney-
coaches be clean? Our ancestors found them dirty, and
left them so. Why should we, with a feverish wish to
“keep moving,” desire to roll along at the rate of six
miles an hour, while they were content to rumble over
the stones at four? These are solemn considerations.
Hackney-coaches are part and parcel of the law of the
80 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
land; they were settled by the Legislature; plated and
numbered by the wisdom of Parliament.
Then why have they been swamped by cabs and
omnibuses. Or why should people be allowed to ride
quickly for eightpence a mile, after Parliament had
come to the solemn decision that . they should pay a
shilling a mile for riding slowly? We pause for a
reply;-and, having no chance of getting one, begin a
fresh paragraph.
Our acquaintance with hackney-coach stands is of
long standing. . We are a walking book of fares, feeling
ourselves half-bound, as it were, to be always in the
right on contested points. We know all the regular
watermen within three miles of Covent-garden by sight,
and should be almost tempted to believe that all the
hackney-coach horses in that district knew us by sight
too, if one-half of them were not blind. We take great
interest in hackney-coaches, but we seldom drive, hav-
ing a knack of turning ourselves over, when we attempt
to do so. We are as great friends to horses, hackney-
coach and otherwise, as the renowned Mr. Martin, of
costermonger notoriety, and yet we never ride. We
keep no horse, but a clothes-horse; enjoy no saddle so
much as a saddle of mutton; and, following our own
inclinations, have never followed the hounds. Leaving
these fleeter means of getting over the ground, or of
depositing oneself upon it, to those who like them, by
hackney-coach stands we take our stand.
There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window
at which we are writing; there is only one coach on it
now, but it is a fair specimen of the class of vehicles to
which we have alluded—a great, lumbering, square
concern of a dingy yellow colour (like a bilious bru-
nette), with very small glasses, but very large frames;
the panels are ornamented with a faded coat of arms,
in º: something like a dissected bat, the axletree is
red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box
is partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multi-
plicity of capes, and some extraordinary-looking clothes;
and #: straw, with which the canvas cushion is stuffed
is sticking up in several places, as if in rivalry of the
hay, which is peeping through the chinks in the boot.
The horses, with drooping heads, and each with a mane
and tail as Scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out
h ACKNEY_COACH STANDS. 81
rocking-horse, are standing patiently on some damp
Straw, Occasionally wincing, and rattling the harness;
and, now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to the -
ear of his companion, as if he were saying, in a whisper,
that he jº like to assassinate the coachman. The
coachman himself is in the watering-house; and the
waterman, with his hands forced into his pockets, as
far as they cam possibly go, is dancing the “double
shuffle,” in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm.
The servant-girl, with the pink ribbons, at No. 5,
opposite, Suddenly opens the street door, and four small
children forthwith rush out, and scream “Coach!” with
all their might and main. The waterman darts from
the pump, seizes the horses by their respective bridles,
and drags them, and the coach too, round to the house,
shouting all the time for the coachman at the very top,
or rather very bottom of his voice, for it is a deep bass
growl. A response is heard from the tap-room; the
coachman, in his wooden-soled shoes, makes the street
echo again as he runs across it; and then there is such
a struggling, and backing, and grating of the kennel, to
get the coach-door opposite the house-door, that the
children are in perfect ecstasies of delight. What a
commotion! The old lady, who had been stopping there
for the last month, is going back to the country. Out
comes box after box, and one side of the vehicle is
filled with luggage in no time; the children get into
everybody’s way, and the youngest, who has upset him-
self in his attempts to carry an umbrella, is borne off
wounded and kicking. The youngsters disappear, and
a short pause ensues, during which the old lady is, no
doubt, kissing them all round in the back parlour. She
appears at last, followed by her married daughter, all
the children, and both the servants, who, with the joint
assistance of the coachman and waterman, manage to
get her safely into the coach. A cloak is handed in,
and a little basket, which we could almost swear con-
tains a small black bottle, and a paper of sandwiches.
Up go the steps, bang goes the door, “Golden-cross,
Charing-cross, Tom,” says the waterman, “Good bye,
grandma,” cry the children, off jingles the coach at the
rate of three miles an hour, and the mamma and chil-
dren retire into the house, with the exception of one
little villain, who runs up the street at the top of his
6
82 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
speed, pursued by the servant; not ill-pleased to have
such an opportunity of displaying her attractions. She
brings him back, and, after casting two or three-gra-
cious glances across the way, which are either intended
for us or the potboy (we are not quite certain which)
shuts the door, and the hackney-coach stand is again
at a stand still. -
We have been frequently amused with the in-
tense delight with which “a servant of all work,”
who is sent for a coach, deposits herself inside; and
the unspeakable gratification which boys, who have
been despatched on a similar errand, appear to derive
from mounting the box. But we never recollect to have
been more amused with a hackney-coach party, than
one we saw early the other morning in Tottenham-
court-road. It was a wedding party, and emerged
from one of the inferior streets near Fitzroy-square.
There were the bride, with a thin white dress, and a
great red face; and the bridesmaid, a little, dumpy,
good-humoured young woman, dressed, of course, in the
same appropriate costume: and the bridegroom and his
chosenfriend, in blue coats, yellow waistcoats, white trou-
sers, and Berlin gloves to match. They stopped at the
corner of the street, and called a coach with an air of
indescribable dignity. The moment they were in, the
bridesmaid threw a redshawl; which she had, no doubt,
brought on purpose, negligently over the number on
the door, evidently to delude pedestrians into the belief
that the hackney-coach was a private carriage; and
away they went, perfectly satisfied that the imposition
was successful, and quite unconscious that there was
a great staring number stuck up behind, on a plate as
large as a schoolboy’s slate. A shilling a mile!—the
ride was worth five, at least, to them. *
What an interesting book a hackney-coach might pro-
duce, if it would carry as much in its head as it does
in its body! The autobiography of a broken-down
hackney-coach would surely be as amusing as the
autobiography of a broken-down hackneyed dramatist;
and it might tell as much of its travels with the pole,
as others have of their expeditions to it. How many
stories might be related of the different people it had
conveyed on matters of business or profit—pleasure or
pain! And how many inelancholy tales of the same
DOCTORS’ COMMONS. 83
people at different periods! The country-girl—the
showy, over-dressed woman—the drunken prostitute!
The raw apprentice—the dissipated spendthrift—the
thief!
Talk of cabs! Cabs are all very well in cases of ex-
pedition, when it’s a matter of neck or nothing, life or
death, your temporary home or your long one. But,
beside a cab's lacking that gravity of deportment which
SO peculiarly distinguishes a hackney-coach, let it
never be forgotten that a cab is a thing of yesterday,
and that he never was anything better. A hackney-
cab has always been a hackney-cab, from his first
entry into public life; whereas a hackney-coach is a
remnant of past gentility, a victim to fashion, a hanger-
on of an old English family, wearing their arms, and,
in days of yore, escorted by men wearing their livery,
stripped of his finery and thrown upon the world, like
a once-Smart footman when he is no longer Sufficiently
juvenile for his office, progressing lower and lower in
the scale of four-wheeled degradation, until at last it
Comes to—a stand /
CHAPTER VIII.
D O C T O RS' C O M M O N S.
WAºNº. without any definite object, through St.
Paul’s Churchyard, a little while ago, we hap-
pened to turn down a street entitled “Paul’s-chain,”
and keeping straight forward for a few hundred yards,
found ourself, as a natural consequence, in Doctors’
Commons. Now Doctors’ Commons being familiar by
name to everybody, as the place where they grant
marriage-licences to love-sick couples, and divorces to
unfaithful ones; register the wills of people who have
any property to leave, and punish hasty gentlemen who
call ladies by unpleasant names, we no sooner discovered
that we were really within its precincts, when we felt a
laudable desire to become better acquainted there with;
and as the first object of our curiosity was the Court,
whose decrees can even unloose the bonds of matri-
84 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
mony, we procured a direction to it; and bent our steps
thither without delay.
Crossing a quiet and shady court-yard, paved with
stone, and frowned upon by old red brick houses, on
the doors of which were painted the names of sundry
learned civilians, we paused before a small, green-
baized, brass-headed-nailed door, which yielding to our
gentle push, at Once admitted us into an old quaint-
looking apartment, with sunken windows, and black
carved, wainscotting, at the upper end of which, seated
On a raised platform, of semicircular shape, were about
a dozen Solemn-looking. gentlemen, in crimson gowns
and wigs.
At a more elevated desk in the centre, sat a very fat and
red-faced gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose
dignified appearance announced the judge; and round
a long green-baized table below, something like a bil-
liard-table without the cushions and pockets, were a
number of very self-important-looking personages, in
stiff neckcloths, and black gowns with white fur collars,
whom we at once set down as proctors. At the lower
end of the billiard-table was an individual in an arm-
chair, and a wig, whom we afterwards discovered to be
the registrar; and seated behind a little desk, near the
door, were a respectable-looking man in black, of about
twenty stone weight or thereabouts, and a fat-faced,
Smirking, civil-looking body, in a black gown, black
kid gloves, knee shorts, and silks, with a shirt-frill in
his bosom, curls on his head, and a silver staff in his
hand, whom we had no difficulty in recognising as the
officer of the Court. The latter, indeed, speedily set
onr mind at rest upon this point, for, advancing to our
elbow, and opening a conversation forth with, he had
communicated to us, in less than five minutes, that he
was the apparitor, and the other the court-keeper; that
this was the Arches Court, and therefore the counsel
wore red gowns, and the proctors fur collars; and that
when the other courts sat there, they didn’t wear red
gowns or fur collars either; with many other scraps of
intelligence equally interesting. Besides these two
officers, there was a little thin old man, with long
grizzly hair, crouched in a remote corner, whose duty,
our communicative friend informed us, was to ring a
large hand-bell when the Court opened in the morning,
DOCTORS COMMONs. S5
and who, for aught his appearance betokened to the
contrary, might have been similarly employed for the
last two centuries at least.
The red-faced gentleman in the tortoise-shell spec-
tacles had got all the talk to himself just then, and
very well he was doing it, too, only he spoke very fast,
but that was habit; and rather thick, but that was good
living. So we had plenty of time to look about us.
There was one individual who amused us mightily.
This was one of the bewigged gentlemen in the red robes,
who was straddling before the fire in the centre of the
Court, in the attitude of the brazen Colossus, to the
complete exclusion of every body else. He had
gathered up his robe behind, in much the same manner
as a slovenly woman would her petticoats on a very
dirty day, in order that he might feel the full warmth
of the fire. His wig was, put on all awry, with the tail
Straggling about his neck, his scanty grey trousers and
short black gaiters, made in the worst possible style,
imparted an additional inelegant appearance to his un-
couth person; and his limp, badly starched shirt-collar
almost obscured his eyes. We shall never be able to
claim any credit as a physiognomist again, for, after a
careful scrutiny of this gentleman’s countenance, we
had come to the conclusion that it bespoke nothing but
conceit and silliness, when our friend with the silver
staff whispered in our ear that he was no other than a
doctor of civil law, and Heaven knows what besides.
So of course we were mistaken, and he must be a very
talented man." He conceals it so well though—perhaps
with the merciful view of not astonishing ordinary
people too much—that you would suppose him to be one
of the stupidest dogs alive. e
The gentleman in the spectacles having concluded his
judgment, and a few minutes having been allowed to
elapse, to afford time for the buzz in the Court to sub-
side, the registrar called on the next cause, which was
“the office of the Judge promoted by Bumple against
Sludberry.” A general movement was visible in the
Court, at this announcement, and the obliging func-
tionary with silver staff whispered us that “there
would be some fun now, for this was a brawling
case.”
We were not rendered much the wiser by this piece of
86 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
information, till we found by the opening speech of the
counsel for the promoter, that, under a half-obsolete
statute of one of the Edwards, the court was em-
powered to visit with the penalty of excommunication,
any person who should be proved guilty of the crime
of “brawling,” or “Smiting,” in any church, or vestry
adjoining thereto; and it appeared, by Some eight-and-
twenty affidavits, which were duly referred to, that on
a certain night, at a certain vestry-meeting, in a certain
parish particularly set forth, Thomas Sludberry, the
party appeared against in that suit, had made use of,
and applied to Michael Bumple, the promoter, the
words “You be blowed; ” and that, on the said Michael
Bumple and others remonstrating with the said Thomas
Sludberry on the impropriety .# his conduct, the said
Thomas Sludberry repeated the aforesaid expression,
“You be blowed; ” and furthermore desired and re-
quested to know whether the said Michael Bumple
“wanted anything for himself; ” adding, “that if the
said Michael Bumple did want anything for himself,
he, the said Thomas Sludberry, was the man to give
it him; ” and at the same time making use of other
heinous and sinful expressions, all of which, Bumple
submitted, came within the intent and meaning of the
Act; and therefore he, for, the soul’s health and chast-
ening of Sludberry, prayed for sentence of excommu-
nication against him accordingly.
Upon these facts a long argument was entered into,
on both sides, to the great edification of a number of
persons interested in the parochial squabbles, who crowd-
ed the court; and when some very long and grave
Speeches had been made pro and con, the red-faced
gentleman in the tortoiseshell spectacles took a re-
view of the case, which occupied half an hour more,
and then pronounced upon Sludberry the awful sen-
tence of excommunication for a fortnight, and payment
of the costs of the suit. Upon this, Sludberry, who
Was a little, red-faced, sly-looking, ginger-beer seller,
addressed the court, and said, if they’d be good enough,
to take off the costs, and excommunigate him for the
term of his natural life instead, it would be much
lmore Convenient to him, for he never went to church
at all. To this appeal the gentleman in the spectacles
made no other reply than a look of virtuous indignation;
DOCTORS’ COMMONS. 8%
and Sludberry and his friends retired. As the man
with the silver staff informed us that the court was on
the point of rising, we retired too—pondering, as we
walked away, upon the beautiful spirit of these an-
cient ecclesiastical laws, the kind and neighbourly
feelings they are calculated to awaken, and the strong
attachment to religious institutions which they cannot
fail to engender.
We were so lost in these meditations, that we had
turned into the street, and run up against a door-post,
before we recollected where we were walking. On
looking upwards to see what house we had stumbled
upon, the words, “Prerogative-Office,” written in large
characters, met our eye; and as we were in a sight-
seeing humour and the place was a public One, we
walked in.
The room into which we walked, was a long, busy-
looking place, partitioned off, on either side, into a
variety of little boxes, in which a few clerks were en-
gaged in copying or examining deeds. Down the centre
of the room were several desks nearly breast high,
at each of which, three or four people were standing,
poring over large volumes. As we knew that they
were searching for wills, they attracted our attention
at Once.
It was curious to contrast the lazy indifference of
the attorneys’ clerks who were making a search for
some legal purpose, with the air of earnestness and in-
terest which distinguished the strangers to the place,
who were looking up the will of some deceased relative;
the former pausing every now and then with an im-
patient yawn, or raising their heads to look at the
people who passed up and down the room; the latter .
stooping over the book, and running down column after
column of names in the deepest abstraction. -
There was one little dirty-faced man in a blue apron,
who after a whole morning’s search, extending some
fifty years back, had just found the will to which he
wished to refer, which one of the officials was reading
to him in a low hurried voice from a thick vellum book
with large clasps. It was perfectly evident that the
more the clerk read, the less the man with the blue
apron understood about the matter. When the volume
was first brought down, he took off his hat, smoothed
§§ SKETCHES BY BOZ.
down his hair, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and
looked up in the reader's face with the air of a man who
had made up his mind to recollect every word he heard.
The first two or three lines were intelligible enough;
but then the technicalities began, and the little man
began to look rather dubious. Then came a whole
string of complicated trusts, and he was regularly at
sea. As the reader proceeded, it was quite apparent
that it was a hopeless case, and the little man, with
his mouth Open and his eyes fixed upon his face, looked
on with an expression of bewilderment and perplexity
irresistibly ludicrous. - -
A little further on, a hard-featured old man with a
deeply wrinkled face, was intently perusing a lengthy
jº, the aid of a pair of horn spectacles; occasion-
ally pausing from his task, and slily noting down some
brief memorandum of the bequests contained in it.
Every wrinkle about his toothless mouth, and sharp
keen eyes, told of avarice and cunning. His clothes
were nearly threadbare, but it was easy to see that he
wore them from choice and not from necessity; all his
looks and gestures down to the very small pinches of
snuff which he every now and then took from a little
tin canister, told of wealth, and penury, and avarice.
As he leisurely closed the register, put up his spec-
tacles, and folded his scraps of paper in a large leathern
pocket-book, we thought what a nice hard bargain he
was driving with some poverty-stricken legatee, who,
tired of waiting year after year, until some life-interest
should fall in, was selling his chance, just as it began
to grow most valuable, for a twelfth part of its worth.
It was a good speculation—a very safe one. The old
man Stowed his pocket-book carefully in the breast of
his great-coat, and hobbled away with a leer of triumph.
That will had made him ten years younger at the lowest
computation.
Having commenced our observations, we should cer-
tainly have extended them to another dozen of people
at least, had not a sudden shutting up and putting
away of the worm-eaten old books, warned us that the
time for closing the office had arrived; and thus de-
prived us of a pleasure, and spared our readers an
infliction. .
We naturally fell into a train of reflection as we
LONDON RECREATIONS 89
walked homewards, upon the curious old records of
likings and dislikings; of jealousies and revenges; of
affection defying the power of death, and hatred pur-
sued beyond the grave, which these depositaries Con-
tain; silent but striking tokens, some of them, of
excellence of heart, and nobleness of soul; melancholy
examples, others, of the worst passions of human nature.
How many men as they lay speechless and helpless on
the bed of death, would have given worlds but for the
strength and power to blot out the silent evidence of
animosity and bitterness, which now stands registered
against them in Doctors’ Commons! -
CHAPTER IX.
LONDON RECREATIONS.
HE wish of persons in the humbler classes of life to
ape the manners and customs of those whom for-
tune has placed above them, is often the subject of re-
mark, and not unfrequently of complaint. The incli-
nation may, and no doubt does, exist to a great extent,
among the small gentility—the would-be aristocrats—
of the middle classes. Tradesmen and clerks, with
fashionable novel-reading families, and circulating-
library-subscribing daughters, get up Small assemblies
in humble imitation of Almack's, and promenade the
dingy “large room” of some second-rate hotel with as
much complacency as the enviable few who are privi-
leged to exhibit their magnificence in that exclusive
haunt of fashion and foolery. Aspiring young ladies,
who read flaming accounts of some “fancy fair in high
life,” suddenly grow desperately charitable; visions of
admiration and matrimony float before their eyes; some
wonderfully meritorious institution, which, by the
strangest accident in the world, has never been heard
of before, is discovered to be in a languishing con-
dition; Thompson’s great room, or Johnson’s nursery-
ground is forthwith engaged, and the aforesaid young
ladies, from mere charity, exhibit themselves for three
days, from twelve to four, for the small charge of one
shilling per head With the exception of these classes
90 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
of society, however, and a few weak and insignificant
persons, we do not think the attempt at imitation to
which we have alluded, prevails in any great degree.
The different character of the recreations of different
classes, has often afforded us amusement; and we have
chosen it for the subject of our present sketch, in the
hope that it may possess some amusement for Our
readers.
If the regular City man, who leaves Lloyd’s at five
o'clock, and drives home to Hackney, Clapton, Stam-
ford-hill, or elsewhere, can be said to have any daily
recreation beyond his dinner, it is his garden. He
never does anything to it with his own hands; but
he takes great pride in it not withstanding; and if you
are desirous of paying your addresses to the youngest
daughter, be sure to be in raptures with every flower
and shrub it contains. If your poverty of expression
compel you to make any distinction between the two
we would certainly recommend your bestowing more
admiration on his garden than his wine. He always
takes a walk round it, before he starts for town in
the morning, and is particularly anxious that the fish-
pond should be kept specially neat. If you call on
him on Sunday in summer-time, about an hour before
dinner, you will find him sitting in an arm-chair, on
the lawn behind the house, with a straw hat on, read-
ing a Sunday paper. A short distance from him you
will most likely observe a handsome paroquet in a large
brass-wire cage; ten to one but the two eldest girls are
loitering in One of the side walks accompanied by a
couple of young gentlemen, who are holding parasols
over them—of course only to keep the sum off—while
the younger children, with the under nursery-maid, are
strolling listlessly about, in the shade. Beyond these
occasions, his delight in his garden appears to arise
more from the consciousness of possession than actual
enjoyment of it. . When he drives you down to dinner
on a week-day, he is rather fatigued with the occupa-
tions of the morning, and tolerably cross into the
bargain; but when the cloth is removed, and he has
drank three or four glasses of his favourite port, he
orders the French windows of his dining-room (which
of course look into the garden) to be opened, and
throwing a silk handkerchief over his head, and lean-
LONDON RECREATIONS. 91
ing back in his arm-chair, descants at considerable
length upon its beauty, and the cost of maintaining it.
This is to impress you—who are a young friend of the
family—with a due sense of the excellence of the garden,
and the wealth of its owner; and when he has exhausted
the subject, he goes to sleep.
There is another and a very different class of men,
whose recreation is their garden. An individual of
this class, resides some short distance from town—say
in the Hampstead-road, or the Killburn-road, or any
other road where the houses are small and neat, and
have little slips of back garden. He and his wife—who
is as clean and compact a little body as himself—have
occupied the same house ever since he retired from
business twenty years ago. They have no family.
They once had a son, who died at about five years old.
The child’s portrait hangs over the mantelpiece in the
best sitting-room, and a little cart he used to draw
about, is carefully preserved as a relic.
In fine weather the old gentleman is almost constantly
in the garden; and when it is too wet to go into it, he
will look out of the window at it by the hour together.
He has always something to do there, and you will see
him digging, and sweeping, and cutting, and planting,
with manifest delight. In spring time, there is no end
to the sowing of seeds, and sticking little bits of wood
over them, with labels, which look like epitaphs to
their memory; and in the evening, when the sun has
gone down, the perseverance with which he lugs a great
watering-pot about is perfectly astonishing. The only
other recreation he has, is the newspaper, which he
peruses every day, from beginning to end, generally
reading the most interesting pieces of intelligence to
his wife, during breakfast. The old lady is very fond
of flowers, as the hyacinth-glasses in the parlour-win-
dow, and geranium-pots in the little front court, testify.
She takes great pride in the garden too: and when one
of the four fruit-trees produces rather a larger goose-
berry than usual, it is carefully preserved under a wine-
glass on the sideboard, for the edification of visitors,
who are duly informed that Mr. So-and-so planted the
tree which produced it, with his own hands. On a sum-
mer's evening, when the large watering-pot has been
filled and emptied some fourteen times, and the old
92 SKETCHES BY BOz.
couple have quite exhausted themselves by trotting
about, you will see them sitting happily together in the
little summer-house, enjoying the calm and peace of
the twilight, and watching the shadows as they fall
upon the garden, and gradually growing thicker and
more sombre, obscure the tints of their gayest flowers
—no bad emblem of the years that have silently rolled
over their heads, *...* in their course the bright-
est hues of early hopes and feelings which have long
since faded away. These are their only recreations,
and they require no more, . They have within them-
selves, the materials of comfort and content; and the
only anxiety of each, is to die before the other.
This is no ideal sketch. There used to be many old
people of this description; their numbers may have
diminished, and may decrease still more. Whether
the course female education has taken of late days
—whether the pursuit of giddy frivolities, and empty
nothings, has tended to unfit women for that quiet
domestic life, in which they show far more beautifully
than in the most crowded assembly, is a question we
should feel little gratification in discussing: we hope
not.
Let us turn now, to another portion of the London
population, whose recreations present about as strong
a contrast as can well be conceived—we mean the Sun-
day pleasurers; and let us beg Our readers to imagine
themselves stationed by Our side in Some well-known
rural “ Tea-gardens.”
The heat is intense this afternoon, and the people, of
whom there are additional parties arriving every mo-
ment, look as warm as the tables which have been re-
cently painted, and have the appearance of being red-
hot. What a dust and noise! Men and women—boys
and girls—sweethearts and married people—babies in
arms, and childen in chaises—pipes and shrimps—cigars
and periwinkles—tea and tobacco. Gentlemen, in
alarming waistcoats, and steel watch-guards, prom-
enading about, three abreast, with Surprising dignity
(or as the gentleman in the next box facetiously ob-
serves, “cutting it uncommon fat!”)—ladies, with
great, long, white pocket-handkerchiefs like small
table-cloths, in their hands, chasing one another on the
grass in the most playful and interesting manner, with
LONDON RECREATIONS. 93
the view of attracting the attention of the aforesaid
gentlemen—husbands in perspective Ordering bottles of
ginger-beer for the objects of their affections, with a
lavish disregard of expense; and the said objects wash-
ing down huge quantities of “shrimps” and “winkles,”
with an equal disregard of their own bodily health and
subsequent comfort—boys, with great silk hats just
balanced on the top of their heads, smoking cigars,
and trying to look as if they liked them—gentlemen in
pink shirts and blue waistcoats, occasionally upsetting
either themselves or somebody else, with their own,
C8,116 S. -
Some of the finery of these people provokes a Smile,
but they are all clean, and happy, and disposed to be
good-natured and sociable. Those two motherly-look-
ing women in the Smart pelisses, who are chatting so
confidentially, inserting a “ma’am’ at every fourth
word, scraped an acquaintance about a quarter of an
hour ago; it originated in admiration of the little boy
who belongs to one of them—that diminutive specimen
of mortality in the three-cornered pink satin hat with
black feathers. The two men in the blue coats and
drab trousers, who are walking up and down, Smoking
their pipes, are their husbands. The party in the op-
posite box are a pretty fair specimen of the generality
of the visitors. These are the father and mother, and
old grandmother; a young man and woman, and an
individual addressed by the euphonious title of “Uncle
Bill,” who is evidently the wit of the party. They
have some half-dozen children with them, but it is
scarcely necessary to notice the fact, for that is a mat-
ter of course here. Every woman in “the gardens,”
who has been married for any length of time, must
have had twins on two or three occasions; it is im-
possible to account for the extent of juvenile popula-
tion in any other way. -
Observe the inexpressible delight of the old grand-
mother, at Uncle Bill’s splendid joke of “tea for four:
bread and butter for forty;” and the loud explosion of
mirth which follows his wafering a paper “pigtail” on
the waiter’s collar. The young man is evidently “keep-
ing company ” with Uncle Bill’s niece: and Uncle Bill’s
hints—such as “Don’t forget me at the dinner, you
know,” “I shall look out for the cake, Sally,” “I’ll be
94 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
od-father to your first—wager it’s a boy,” and So
orth, are equally embarrassing to the young people,
and delightful to the elder ones. . As to the old grand-
mother, she is in perfect ecstasies, and does nothing
but laugh herself into fits of coughing, until they have
finished the “gin-and-water warm with,” of which
Dncle Bill ordered “glasses round ’ after tea, “just to
keep the night air out, and do it up comfortable and
riglar arter sitch an as-tonishing hot day!”
It is getting dark, and the people begin to move. The
field leading to town is quite full of them; the little
hand-chaises are dragged wearily along, the children
are tired, and amuse themselves and the company gell-
erally by crying, or resort to the much more pleasant
expedient of going to sleep—the mothers begin to wish
they were at home again—Sweethearts grow more sen-
timental than ever, as the time for parting arrives—the
gardens look mournful enough, by the light of the two
lanterns which hang against the trees for the conven-
ience of smokers—and the waiters, who have been run-
ning about incessantly for the last six hours, think they
feel a little tired, as they count their glasses and their
gallmS. &
C H A P T E R X.
T H E R I V E R.
Ç G A R. you fond of water?” is a question very fre-
Quently asked, in hot summer weather, by am-
phibious-looking young men. “Very,” is the general
reply. “Ain’t you?”—“Hardly ever off it,” is the
response, accompanied by Sundry adjectives, expressive
of the speaker's heartfelt admiration of that element.
Now, with all respect for the opinion of society in gen-
eral, and cutter clubs in particular, we humbly suggest
that some of the most painful reminiscences in the
mind of every individual who has occasionally disported
himself on the Thames, must be connected with his
aquatic recreations. Who ever heard of a successful
water-party?—or to put the question in a still more intel-
ligible form, who ever saw one? We have been on
water excursions out of number, but we solemnly
THE RIVER, 95
declare that we cannot call to mind one single occasion
of the kind, which was not marked by more miseries
than any one would suppose could reasonably be
crowded into the space of Some eight or nine hours.
Something has always gone wrong. Either the cork of
the Salad-dressing has come out, or the most anxiously
expected member of the party has not come out, or the
most disagreeable man in company would come out, or
a child or two have fallen into the water, or the gentle-
man who undertook to steer has endangered every
body’s life all the way, or the gentlemen who volun-
teered to row have been “out of practice,” and per-
formed very alarming evolutions, putting their oars
down into the water and not being able to get them up
again, or taking terrific pulls without putting them in
at all; in either case, pitching over on the backs of their
heads with startling violence, and exhibiting the soles
of their pumps to the “sitters” in the boat, in a very
humiliating manner. -
We grant that the banks of the Thames are very
beautiful at Richmond and Twickenham, and other dis-
tant havens, often sought though seldom reached; but
from the “Red-us * back to Blackfriar’s-bridge, the
scene is wonderfully changed. The Penitentiary is a
noble.building, no doubt, and the sportive youths who
“go in ’’ at that particular part of the river, on a sum-
mer’s evening, may be all very well in perspective; but
when you are obliged to keep in shore coming home,
and the young ladies will colour up, and look persever-
ingly the other way, while the married dittoes cough
slightly, and stare very hard at the water, you feel
awkward—especially if you happen to have been
attempting the most distant approach to Sentimental-
ity, for an hour or two previously. -
Although experience and suffering have produced in
our minds the result we have just stated, we are by no
means blind to a proper sense of the fun which a looker-
on may extract from the amateurs of boating. What
can be more amusing than Searl’s yard on a fine Sunday
morning? It’s a Richmond tide, and some dozen boats
are preparing for the reception of the parties who have
engaged them. Two or three fellows in great rough
trousers and Guernsey shirts, are º them ready by
easy stages; now coming down the yard with a pair of
96 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Sculls and a cushion—then having a chat with the
“jack,” who, like all his tribe, seems to be wholly in-
capable of doing anything but lounging about—then
going back again, and returning with a rudder-line and
a stretcher—then solacing themselves with another
chat—and then wondering, with their hands in their
capacious pockets, “where them gentlemen’s got to as
Ordered the six.” One of these, the head man, with the
legs of his trousers carefully tucked up at the bottom, to
admit the water, we presume—for it is an element in
which he is infinitely more at home than on land-–is
Quite a character, and shares with the defunct oyster-
swallower the celebrated name of “Dando.” Watch
him, as taking a few minutes’ respite from his toils, he
negligently seats himself on the edge of a boat, and fans
his broad bushy chest with a cap scarcely half so furry.
Look at his magnificent, though reddish whiskers, and
mark the somewhat native humour with which he
“chaffs” the boys and prentices, or cunningly gammons
the gen’lm’n into the gift of a glass of gin, of which we
verily believe he swallows in One day as much as any
six ordinary men, without ever being one atom the
worse for it.
But the party arrives, and Dando relieved from his
state of uncertainty, starts up into activity. They ap-
proach in full aquatic costume, with round blue jackets,
striped shirts, and caps of all sizes and patterns, from
the velvet skull-cap of French manufacture, to the
easy head-dress familiar to the students of the old
spelling-books, as having, on the authority of the por-
trait, formed part of the costume of the Reverend Mr.
Dilworth. -
This is the most amusing time to observe a regular
Sunday water-party. There has evidently been up to
this period no inconsiderable degree of boasting on
everybody’s part relative to his knowledge of naviga-
tion; the sight of the water rapidly cools their courage,
and the air of self-denial with which each of them
insists on Somebody else’s taking an oar, is perfectly
delightful. At length, after a great deal of changing
and fidgeting, consequent upon the election of a stroke-
Oar: the inability of one gentleman to pull on this side,
of another to pull on that, and of a third to pull at all,
the boat’s crew are seated, “Shove her off!” cries the
THE RIVER, 9%
cockswain, who looks as easy and comfortable as if he
were steering in the Bay of Biscay. The order is
obeyed; the boat is immediately turned completely
round, and proceeds towards Westminster-bridge,
amidst such a plashing and struggling as never was .
seen before, except when the Royal George went down. .
“Back wa’ater, sir,” shouts Dando, “Back wa’ater, .
you sir, aft; ” upon which everybody thinking he must
be the individual referred to, they all back water, and
back comes the boat, stern first, to the spot whence it
started. “Back water, you sir, aft; pull round, you
sir, for’ad, can’t you?” shouts Dando, in a frenzy of
excitement. “Pull round, Tom, can’t you?” re-echoes
one of the party. “Tom an’t for’ad,” replies another.
“Yes, he is,” cries a third; and the unfortunate young
man, at the imminent risk of breaking a blood-vessel,
pulls and pulls, until the head of the boat fairly lies in
the direction of Vauxhall-bridge. “That’s right—now
pull all on you!” Shouts Dando again, adding, in an
undertone, to somebody by him, “Blowed if hever I see
sich a set of muffs!” and away jogs the boat in a zigzag
direction, every one of the six oars dipping into the
water at a different time; and the yard is once more
clear, until the arrival of the next party.
A well-contested rowing-match on the Thames, is a
very lively and interesting scene. . The water is studded
with boats of all sorts, kinds, and descriptions; places
in the coal-barges at the different wharfs are let to
crowds of spectators, beer and tobacco flow freely
about; men, women, and children wait for the start in
breathless expectation, cutters of six and eight oars
glide gently up and down, waiting to accompany their
protégés during the race; bands of music add to the
animation, if not to the harmony of the scene; groups
of watermen are assembled at the different stairs, dis-
cussing the merits of the respective candidates: and the
prize wherry which is rowed slowly about by a pair of
skulls, is an object of general interest.
Two o'clock strikes, and everybody looks anxiously
in the direction of the bridge through which the candi-
dates for the prize will come—half-past two, and the
general attention which has been preserved so long
begins to flag, when suddenly a gun is heard, and the
noise of distant hurra'ing ºns each bank of the river
98 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
—every head is bent forward—the noise draws nearer
and nearer—the boats which have been waiting at the
bridge start briskly up the river, and a well-manned
galley shoots through the arch, the sitters cheering on
the boats behind them, which are not yet visible.
“Here they are,” is the general cry—and through
darts the first boat, the men in her stripped to the skin,
and exerting every muscle to preserve the advantage
they have gained—four other boats follow close astern;
there are not two boats' length between them—the
shouting is tremendous, and the interest intense. “Go
on, Pink”—“Give it her, Red ”—“Sulliwin for ever’—
“Bravo! George”—“Now, Tom, now—now--now-why
don’t your partner stretch out?”—“Two pots to a pint
on Yellow,” &c., &c. Every little public-house fires its
gun, and hoists its flag; and the men who win the heat,
come in, amidst a Splashing and shouting, and banging
and confusion, which no one can imagine who has not
witnessed it, and of which any description would con-
vey a very faint idea.
One of the most amusing places we know, is the steam-
wharf of the London Bridge, or St. Katharine’s Dock
Company, on a Saturday morning in Summer, when
the Gravesend and Margate steamers are usually
crowded to excess; and as we have just taken a glance
at the river above bridge, we hope our readers will not
object to accompany us on board a Gravesend packet.
Coaches are every moment setting down at the en-
trance to the wharf, and the stare of bewildered
astonishment with which the “fares” resign themselves
and their luggage into the hands of the porters, who
seize all the packages at Once as a matter of course,
and run away with them, heaven knows where, is
laughable in the extreme. A. Margate boat lies along
side the wharf, the Gravesend boat (which starts first)
lies alongside that again; and as a temporary commu-
nication is formed between the two, by means of a
plank and hand-rail, the natural confusion of the scene
is by no means diminished.
‘‘ Gravesend?” inquires a stout father of a stout
family, who follow him, under the guidance of their
mother, and a servant, at the no small risk of two or
three of them being left behind in the confusion,
‘‘ Gravesend?” -
THE RIVER, - 99
“Pass on, if you please, sir,” replies the attendarit—
“other boat, sir.” - - -
Hereupon the stout father, being rather mystified,
and the stout mother rather distracted by maternal
anxiety, the whole party deposit themselves in the
Margate boat, and after having congratulated himself
on having secured very comfortable seats, the Stout
father sallies to the chimney to look for his luggage,
which he has a faint recollection of having given some
man, something, to take somewhere. No luggage,
however, bearing the most remote resemblance to his
own, in shape or form, is to be discovered; on which
the stout father calls very loudly for an officer, to whom
he states the case, in the presence of another father of
another family—a little thin man—who entirely con-
curs with him (the stout father) in thinking that it’s
high time something was done with these steam com-
panies, and that as the Corporation Bill failed to do it,
something else must; for really people’s property is not
to be sacrificed in this way; and that if }. luggage
isn’t restored without delay, he will take care it shall
be put in the papers, for the public is not to be the victim
of these great monopolies. To this, the officer, in his turn,
replies, that that company, ever since it has been St.
Kat’rine's Dock Company, has protected life and prop-
erty; that if it had been the London Bridge Wharf Com-
pany, indeed, he shouldn’t have wondered, seeing that
the morality of that Company (they being the ºppº
can’t be answered for, by no one; but as it is, he’s con-
vinced there must be some mistake, and he wouldn’t
mind making a solemn oath afore a magistrate, that
the gentleman 'll find his luggage afore he gets to
Margate.
Here the stout father, thinking he is making a capi-
tal point, replies, that as it happens, he is not going to
Margate at all, and that “Passenger to Gravesend º
was on the luggage, in letters of full two inches long;
on which the officer rapidly explains the mistake, and
the stout mother, and the stout children, and the ser-
want, are hurried with all possible despatch on board the
Gravesend boat, which they reach just in time to dis-
cover that their luggage is there, and that their com-
fortable seats are not. Then the bell, which is the sig-
nal for the Gravesend boat starting, begins to ring most
100 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
furiously: and people keep time to the bell, by running
in and out of our boat at a double-quick pace. The bell
stops; the boat starts: people who have been taking
leave of their friends on board, are carried away against
their will; and people who have been taking leave of
their friends on shore, find that they have performed a
very needless ceremony, in consequence of their not
being carried away at all. The regular passengers who
have season-tickets, go below to breakfast; people who
have purchased morning papers, compose themselves
to read them; and people who have not been down the
river before, think that both the shipping and the water
look a great deal better at a distance.
When we get down about as far as Blackwall, and
begin to move at a quicker rate, the Spirits of the pas-
sengers begin to rise in proportion. Old women who
have brought large wicker hand baskets with them, set
seriously to work at the demolition of heavy sandwiches,
and pass round a wine-glass, which is frequently re-
plenished from a flat bottle like a sº
with considerable glee: handing it first to the gentle-
man in the foraging cap, who plays the harp–partly as
an expression of satisfaction with his previous exertions,
and partly to induce him to play “Dumbledumbdeary,”
for “ Alick” to dance to; which being done, Alick, who
is a damp earthy child in red worsted socks, takes cer-
tain small jumps upon the deck, to the unspeakable
satisfaction of his family circle. Girls who have brought
the first volume of some new novel in their reticule,
become extremely plaintive, and expatiate to Mr. Brown,
Ol' yº, Mr. O’Brien, who has been looking over them,
on the blueness of the sky, and brightness of the
water: on which Mr. Brown or Mr. O’Brien, as the case
may be, remarks in a low voice that he has been quite
insensible of late to the beauties of nature—that his
whole thoughts and wishes were centred in one object
alone—whereupon the young lady looks up, and failing
in her attempt to appear unconscious, looks down again;
and turns over the next leaf with great difficulty, in
order to afford opportunity for a lengthened pressure of
the hand.
Telescopes, sandwiches, and glasses of brandy-and-
water cold without, begin to be in great requisition;
and bashful men who have been looking down the
ASTLEY’S. 101
hatchway at the engine, find to their great relief, a sub-
ject, on which they can converse with one another—
and a copious one too—Steam.
“Wonderful thing steam, sir.” “Ah! (a deep-drawn
sigh) it is indeed, sir.” “Great power, sir” “Immense
—immense!” “Great deal dome by steam, Sir.” Ah!
(another sigh at the immensity of the subject, and a
knowing shake of the head) you may say that, sir.”
“Still in its infancy, they say, sir.” Novel remarks of
this kind, are generally the commencement of a con-
versation which is prolonged until the conclusion of the
trip, and, perhaps, lays the foundation of a Speaking
acquaintance between half a dozen gentlemen, who,
having their families at Gravesend, take season tickets
for the boat, and dine on board regularly every after-
IlOOIl,
CHAPTER XI.
ASTLEY’8.
E never see any very large, staring, black Roman
capitals, in a book, or shop-window, or placarded
on a wall, without their immediately recalling to our
mind an indistinct and confused recollection of the
time when we were first initiated in the mysteries of
the alphabet. We almost fancy we see the pin’s point
following the letter, to impress its form more strongly
on our bewildered imagination; and wince involun-
tarily, as we remember the hard knuckles with which
the reverend old lady who instilled into our mind the
first principles of education for ninepence per week, or
ten and sixpence per quarter, was wont to poke our
juvenile head occasionally, by way of adjusting the
confusion of ideas in which we were generally in-
volved. The same kind of feeling pursues us in many
other instances, but there is no place which recals so
strongly our recollections of childhood as Astley’s. It
was not a “Royal Amphitheatre * in those days, nor
had Ducrow arisen to shed the light of classic taste and
portable gas over the sawdust of the circus; but the
whole character of the place was the same, the pieces
102 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
, were the same, the clown’s jokes were the same, the
riding-masters were equally grand, the comic perform-
ers equally witty, the tragedians equally hoarse, and
the “highly-trained chargers” equally spirited. Astley’s
has altered for the better—we have changed for the
worse. Our histrionic taste is gone, and with shame
we confess, that we are far more delighted and amused
with the audience, than with the pageantry we Once SO
highly appreciated.
We like to watch a regular Astley’s party in the
Easter or Midsummer holidays—pa and ma, and nine
or ten children, varying from five foot six to two foot
eleven: from fourteen years of age to four. We had
just taken our seat in one of the boxes, in the centre of
the house, the other night, when the next was occupied
by just such a party as we should have attempted to
describe, had we depicted our beau idéal of a group of
Astley’s visitors.
First of all, there came three little boys and a little
girl, who in pursuance of pa’s directions, issued in a
very audible voice from the box-door, occupied the front
row; then two more little girls were ushered in by a
young lady, evidently the governess. Then came three
more little boys, dressed like the first, in blue jackets
and trousers, with lay-down shirt-collars; then a child
in a braided frock and high state of astonishment, with
very large round eyes, open to their utmost width, was
lifted over the seat—a process which occasioned a con-
siderable display of little pink legs—then came ma and
pa, and then the eldest son, a boy of fourteen years
old, who was evidently trying to look as if he did not
belong to the family.
The first five minutes were occupied in taking the
shawls off the little girls, and adjusting the bows which
ornamented their hair; then it was providentially dis-
covered that one of the little boys was seated behind
a pillar and could not see, so the governess was stuck
behind the pillar, and the boy lifted into her place.
Then pa drilled the boys, and directed the stowing
away of their pocket-handkerchiefs; and ma, having
first nodded and winked to the governess to pull the
girls' frocks a little more off their shoulders, stood up
to review the little troop—an inspection which appeared
to terminate much to her own satisfaction, for she looked
ASTLEY'S, 103
with a complacent air at pa, who was standing up at
the further end of the seat. Pa returned the glance,
and blew his nose very emphatigally; and the poor
governess peeped out from behind the pillar, and tim-
idly tried to catch ma's eye, with a look expressive of
her high admiration of the whole family. Then two of
the little boys, who had been discussing the point
whether. Astley’s was more than twice as large as
Drury Lane, agreed to refer it to “George " for his de-
cision; at which “George,” who was no other than the
young gentleman before noticed, waxed indignant and
remonstrated in no very gentle terms on the gross im-
propriety of having his name repeated in so loud a
voice at a public place, on which all the children
laughed very heartily, and one of the little boys wound
up by expressing his opinion that “ George began to
think himself quite a man now,” whereupon both pa
and ma laughed too; and George (who carried a dress-
cane and was cultivating whiskers) muttered that
“William always was encouraged in his impertinence; ”
and assumed a look of profound contempt, which lasted
the whole evening.
The play began, and the interest of the little boys
knew no bounds. Pa was clearly interested, too, al-
though he very unsuccessfully endeavoured to look as
if he wasn’t. As for ma, she was perfectly overcome
by the drollery of the principal comedian, and laughed
till every one of the immense bows on her ample cap
trembled, at which the governess peeped out from be-
hind the pillar again, and whenever she could catch
ma’s eye, put her handkerchief to her mouth, and ap-
peared, as in duty bound, to be in convulsions of laugh-
ter also. Then when the man in the splendid armour
vowed to rescue the lady or perish in the attempt, the
little boys applauded vehemently, especially one little
fellow who was apparently on a visit to the family, and
had been carrying on a child’s flirtation, the whole
evening, with a small coquette of twelve years old,
who looked like a model of her mamma on a reduced
scale; and who in common with the other little girls
(who generally speaking have even more coquettish-
ness about them than much older ones) looked very
properly shocked when the knight's squire kissed the
princess's confidential chamber-maid,
104 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
When the scenes in the circle commenced, the chil-
dren were more delighted than ever; and the wish to see
what was going forward, completely conquering pa’s
dignity, he stood up in the box, and applauded as
loudly as any of them. Between each feat of horse-
manship, the governess leant across to ma, and retailed
the clever remarks of the children on that which had
preceded: and ma, in the openness of her heart, offered
the governess an acidulated drop, and the governess,
gratified to be taken notice of, retired behind her pillar
again with a brighter countenance: and the whole
party seemed quite happy, except the exquisite in the
back of the box, who, being too grand to take any in-
terest in the children, and too insignificant to be taken
notice of by any body else, occupied himself from time
to time, in rubbing the place where the whiskers ought
to be, and was completely alone in his glory.
We defy any one who has been to Astley’s two or
three times, and is consequently capable of º
ing the perseverance with which precisely the same
jokes are repeated night after night, and season after
season, not to be amused with One part of the perform-
ances at least—we mean the scenes in the circle. For
ourself, we know that when the hoop, composed of jets
of gas, is let down, the curtain drawn up for the con-
venience of the half-price on their ejectment from the
ring, the orange-peel cleared away, and the sawdust
shaken, with mathematical precision, into a complete
circle, we feel as much enlivened as the youngest child
present; and actually join in the laugh which follows
the clown’s shrill shout of “Here we are!” just for old
acquaintance’ sake. , Nor can we quite divest ourself
of our old feeling of reverence for the riding-master,
who follows the clown with a long whip in his hand,
and bows to the audience with graceful dignity. He is
none of your second-rate riding-masters in nankeen
dressing-gowns, with brown frogs, but the regular
gentleman-attendant on the principal riders, who al-
ways wears a military uniform with a table-cloth inside
the breast of the coat, in which costume he forcibly re-
minds one of a fowl trussed for roasting. He is—but
why should we attempt to describe that of which no
description can convey an adequate idea? Everybody
knows the man, and everybody remembers his polished
ASTLEY'S. 105
boots, his graceful demeanour, stiff, as some misjudg-
ing persons have in their jealousy considered it, and
the splendid head of black hair, parted high on the
forehead, to impart to the countenance an appearange of
deep thought and poetic melancholy. His soft and pleas-
ing voice, too, is in perfect unison with his noble bearing,
as he humours the clown by indulging in a little badi-
nage; and the striking recollection of his own dignity,
with which he exclaims, “Now, sir; if you please, in-
quire for Miss Woolford, sir,” can never be forgotten.
The graceful air, too, with which he introduces Miss
Woolford into the arena, and after assisting her to the
saddle, follows her fairy courser round the circle, can
never fail to create a deep impression in the bosom of
every female servant present.
When Miss Woolford, and the horse, and the Orches-
tra, all stop together to take breath, he urbanely takes
art in some such dialogue as the following (commenced
y the clown): “I say, sir!”—“Well sir?” (it’s always
conducted in the politest manner.)—“Did you ever
happen to hear I was in the army, sir?”—“No, sir.”—
“Oh, yes, sir—I can go through my exercise, sir.” –
“Indeed, sir!”—“Shall I do it now, sir?”—“If you
please, sir; come, sir—make haste” (a cut with the long
whip, and “Ha' done now—I don’t like it,” from the
clown). Here the clown throws himself on the ground,
and goes through a variety of gymnastic convulsions,
doubling himself up, and untying himself again, and mak-
ing himself look very like a man in the most hopeless ex-
treme of human agony, to the vociferous delight of the
gallery, until he is interrupted by a second cut from
the long whip, and a request to see “what Miss Wool-
ford’s stopping for?” On which, to the inexpressible
mirth of the gallery, he exclaims, “Now, Miss Wool-
ford, what can I come for to go, for to fetch, for to
bring, for to carry, for to do, for you, ma’am?”
On the lady’s announcing with a sweet Smile that she
wants the two flags, they are with sundry grimaces, pro-
cured and handed up; the clown facetiously observing
after the performance of the latter ceremony—‘‘ He,
he, ho! I say, sir, Miss Woolford knows me; she smiled
at me.” Another cut from the whip, a burst from the
Orchestra, a start from the horse, and round goes
Miss Woolford again on her graceful performance, to
106 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
the delight of every member of the audience, young or
old. The next pause affords, an opportunity for
similar witticisms, the only additional fun being that
of the clown making ludicrous grimaces at the riding-
master every time his back is turned; and finally quit-
ting the circle by jumping Over his head, having pre-
viously directed his attention another way.
Did any of our readers ever notice the class of people,
who hang about the stage-doors of our minor theatres
in the day-time. You will rarely pass one of these en-
trances without seeing a group of three or four men
conversing on the pavement, with , an indescribable
public-house-parlour Swagger, and a kind of conscious
air, peculiar to people of this description. They always
seem to think they are exhibiting; the lamps are ever
before them. That young fellow-in the faded brown
coat, and very full light green trousers, pulls down the
wristbands of his check shirt, as Ostentatiously as if it
were of the finest linen, and cocks the white hat of the
summer-before-last as knowingly over his right eye, as
if it were a purchase of yesterday. Look at the dirty
white Berlin gloves, and the cheap silk-handkerchief
stuck in the bosom of his threadbare coat. Is it pos-
sible to see him for an instant, and not come to the con-
clusion that he is the walking gentleman who wears a
blue surtout, clean collar, ...; white trousers, for half
an hour, and then shrinks into his worn-Out Scanty
clothes: who has to boast night after night of his splen-
did fortune, with the painful consciousness of a pound
a-week and his boots to find; to talk of his father's
mansion in the country, with a dreary recollection of
his own two-pair back, in the New Cut; and to be envied
and flattered as the favoured lover of a rich heiress,
remembering all the while that the ex-dancer at home
is in the family wéy, and out of an engagement?
Next to him, perhaps, you will see a thin pale man,
with a very long face, in a suit of shining black,
thoughtfully knocking that part of his boot which once
had a heel, with an ash stick. He is the man who does
the heavy business, such as prosy fathers, virtuous ser-
vants, curates, landlords, and so forth.
By the way, talking of fathers, we should very much
like to see some piece in which all the dramatis per-
sonae were orphans. Fathers are invariably great
* ASTLEY’S. 107
nuisances on the stage, and always have to give the
hero or heroine a long explanation of what was done
before the curtain rose, usually commencing with—“It
is now nineteen years, my dear child, since your bles-
sed mother (here the old villain’s voice falters) confided
you to my charge, You were then an infant,” &c., &c.
Or else they have to discover, all of a sudden, that
somebody whom they have been in constant com-
munication with, during three long acts, without the
slightest suspicion, is their own child; in which case
they exclaim, “Ah! what do I see? This bracelet!
That smile! These documents! Those eyes! Can I
believe my senses?—It must be!—Yes—it is, it is
my child!”—“My father!” exclaims the child; and
they fall into each other’s arms, and look over each
other’s shoulders, and the audience give three rounds of
applause.
To return from this digression we were about to say
that these are the sort of people whom you see talking
and attitudinising, outside the stage-doors of our minor
theatres. At Astley’s they are always more numerous
than at any other place. There is generally a groom
or two, sitting on the window-sill, and two or three
dirty shabby-genteel men in checked neckerchiefs, and
Sallow linen, lounging about, and carrying, perhaps,
under One arm, a Priº of stage shoes badly wrapped
up in a piece of old newspaper. Some years ago we
used to stand looking, open-mouthed, at these men, with
a feeling of mysterious curiosity, the very recollection
of which provokes a smile at the moment we are
writing. We could not believe, that the beings of light
and elegance, in milk-white tunics, salmon-coloured
legs, and blue scarfs, who flitted on sleek cream-
coloured horses before our eyes at might, with all the
aid of lights, music, and artificial flowers, could be the
pale, dissipated-looking creatures we beheld by day.
We can hardly believe it now. Of the lower class of
actors we have seen something, and it requires no great
exercise of imagination to identify the walking gentle-
man with the “dirty swell,” the comic singer with the
public-house chairman, or the leading tragedian with
drunkenness and distress; but these other men are
mysterious beings, never seen out of the ring, never
beheld but in the costume of gods and sylphs. With
108 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
$
the exception of Ducrow, who can scarcely be classed
among them, who ever knew a rider, at Astley's, or
saw him but on horseback? Can our friend in the mili-
tary uniform, ever appear in threadbare attire, or
descend to the comparatively un-wadded costume of
every-day life? Impossible! We cannot—we will not
—believe it.
CHAPTER XII.
G R E E N W I C H F A I B. .
F the Parks be “the lungs of London,” we wonder
what Greenwich Fair is—a periodical breaking out,
we suppose, a sort of spring rash: a three days’ fever
which cools the blood for six months afterwards, and
at the expiration of which London is restored to its old
habits of plodding industry, as suddenly and completely
as if nothing had ever happened to disturb them.
In our earlier days, we were a constant frequenter of
Greenwich Fair, for years. We have proceeded to and
returned from it, in almost every description of vehicle.
We cannot conscientiously deny the charge of having
once made the passage in a Spring van, accompanied
by thirteen gentlemen, fourteen ladies, an unlimited
Inumber of children, and a barrel of beer; and we have
a vague recollection of having in later days, found
ourself the eighth outside, on the top of a hackney-
coach, at something past four o’clock in the morning,
with a rather confused idea of Our Own name, or
place of residence. We have grown older since then,
and quiet, and steady; liking nothing better than to
spend our Easter, and all our other holidays, in some
quiet nook, with people of whom we shall never tire;
but we think we still remember something of Green-
wich Fair, and of those who resort to it. At all events
we will try. -
The road to Greenwich during the whole of Easter
Monday, is in a state of perpetual bustle and noise.
Cabs, hackney-coaches, “shay ” carts, coal-waggons,
stages, Omnibuses, sociables, gigs, donkey-chaises—all
crammed with people (for the question never is, what
the horse can draw, but what the vehicle will hold), roll
t -º- *-*
~ y < * **
GREEN WICH FAIR. 109
along at their utmost speed; the dust flies in clouds,
ginger-beer corks go off in volleys, the balcony of every
ublic-house is crowded with people, Smoking and
rinking, half the private houses are turned into tea-
shops, fiddles are in great request, every little fruit-shop
displays its stall of gilt gingerbread and penny toys;
turnpike men are in despair; horses won’t go on, and
wheels will come off; ladies in “carawans” scream
with fright at every fresh concussion, and their admir-
ers find it necessary to sit remarkably close to them, by
way of encouragement; servants of all-work, who are
Inot allowed to have followers, and have got a holiday
for the day, make the most of their time with the faith-
ful admirer who waits for a stolen interview at the
corner of the street every night, when they go to fetch
the beer—apprentices grow sentimental, and straw-
bonnet makers kind. Everybody is anxious to get on,
and actuated by the common wish to be at the fair, or
in the park, as soon as possible.
Pedestrians linger in groups at the roadside, unable
to resist the allurements of the stout proprietress of
the “Jack-in-the-box, three shies a penny,” or the more
splendid offers of the man with three thimbles and a
pea on a little round board, who astonishes the bewil-
dered crowd with some such address as, “Here’s the
sort o' game to make you laugh seven years arter
you’re dead, and turn ev’ry air on your ed grey vith de-
light! Three thirmbles and vun little pea—with a vun,
two, three, and a two, three, Vun: catch him who can,
look on, keep your eyes Open, and niver say die! niver
mind the change, and the expense, all fair and above
board: them as don’t play can’t vin, and luck attend
the ryal sportsman! Bet any gen’lm’n any sum of
money, from half-a-crown up to a suverin, as he doesn’t
Iname the thimble as kivers the peal.” Here some
greenhorn whispers his friend that he distinctly saw the
pea roll under the middle thimble—an impression which
is immediately confirmed by a gentleman in top-boots,
who is standing by, and who, in a low tone, regrets his
Own inability to bet in consequence of having unfortu-
Inately left his purse at home, but strongly urges the
stranger not to neglect such a golden opportunity. The
“ plant ’’ is successful, the bet is made, the stranger of
course loses; and the gentleman with the thimble con-
110 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
soles him, as he pockets the money, with an assurance
that it’s “all the fortin of war! this time I vin, next
time you win: niver mind the loss of two bob and a
bender! Do it up in a small parcel, and break out in a
fresh place. Here's the sort o' game,” &c.—and the
eloquent harangue, with such variations as the Speak-
er's exuberant fancy suggests, is again repeated to the
gaping crowd, reinforced by the accession of several
Inew COmerS. tº t
The chief place of resort in the day-time, after the
public-houses, is the park, in which the principal amuse-
ment is to drag young ladies up the steep hill which leads
to the observatory, and then drag them down again, at
the very top of their speed, greatly to the derangement
of their curls and bonnet-caps, and much to the edifica-
tion of lookers-on from below. “Kiss in the Ring,”
and “Threading my Grandmother's Needle,” too, are
sports which receive their full share of patronage.
Love-sick swains, under the influence of gin-and-water,
and the tender passion, become violently affectionate:
and the fair objects of their regard enhance the value
of stolen kisses, by a vast deal of struggling, and holding
down of heads, and cries of “Oh! Ha' done, then, George
—Oh, do tickle him for me, Mary—Well, I never !”
and similar Lucretian ejaculations. Little old men and
women, with a small basket under one arm, and a wine-
glass without a foot, in the other hand, tender “a drop
o' the right sort” to the different groups; and young
ladies, who are persuaded to indulge in a drop of the
aforesaid right sort, display a pleasing degree of reluc-
tance to taste it, and cough afterwards with great
propriety.
The old pensioners, who, for the moderate charge of
a penny, exhibit the mast-house, the Thames and ship-
ping, the place where the men used to hang in chains,
and other interesting sights, through a telescope, are
asked questions about objects within the range of the
glass, which it would puzzle a Solomon to answer; and
requested to find out particular houses in particular
streets, which it would have been a task of some diffi-
culty for Mr. Horner (not the young gentleman who ate
mince-pies with his thumb, but the man of Colosseum
notoriety) to discover. Here and there, where some
three or four couple are sitting on the grass together,
GREENWICH FAIR. 111
you will see a sun-burnt woman in a red cloak “telling
fortunes” and prophesying husbands, which it requires
no extraordinary observation to describe, for the
originals are before her. Thereupon the lady Con-
cerned laughs and blushes, and ultimately buries her
face in an imitation cambric handkerchief, and the
gentleman described looks extremely foolish, and
squeezes her hand, and fees the gipsy liberally; and the
gipsy goes away, perfectly satisfied herself, and leav-
ing those behind her perfectly satisfied also: and the
prophecy, like many other prophecies of greater im-
portance, fulfils itself in time.
But it grows dark: the crowd has gradually dispersed,
and only a few stragglers are left behind. The light
in the direction of the church shows that the fair is
illuminated; and the distant noise proves it to be filling
fast. The spot, which half an hour ago was ringing
with the shouts of boisterous mirth, is as calm and quiet
as if nothing could ever disturb its serenity; the fine
old trees, the majestic building at their feet, with the
noble river beyond, glistening in the moonlight, appear
in all their beauty, and under their most favourable
aspect; the voices of the boys, singing their evening
hymn, are borne gently on the air; and the humblest
mechanic who has been lingering on the grass so
pleasant to the feet that beat the same dull round from
week to week in the paved streets of London, feels
Fº to think as he surveys the scene before him, that
e belongs to the country which has selected such a
spot as a retreat for its oldest and best defenders in the
decline of their lives.
Five minutes' walking brings you to the fair; a scene
calculated to awaken very different feelings. The en-
trance is occupied on either side by the vendors of
gingerbread and toys: the stalls are gaily lighted up,
the most attractive goods profusely disposed, and un-
bonneted young ladies, in their zeal for the interest of
their employers, seize you by the coat, and use all the
blandishments of “ Do, dear ’’—“There’s a love *-
“Don’t be cross, now,” &c., to induce you to purchase
half a pound of the real spice nuts, of which the ma-
jority of the regular fair-goers carry a pound or two as a
present Supply, tied up in a cotton pocket-handkerchief.
Occasionally you pass a deal table, on which are ex-
112 - SKETCHES BY BOZ.
posed pen'orths of pickled salmon (fennel included), in
little white saucers: oysters, with shells as large as
cheese-plates, and divers specimens of a species of Snail
(wilks, we think they are called), floating in a SOme-
what bilious-looking green liquid. Cigars, too, are in
great demand; gentlemen must Smoke, of course, and
here they are, two a penny, in a regular authentic
cigar-box, with a lighted tallow candle in the centre.
magine yourself in an extremely dense crowd, which
swings you to and fro, and in and out, and every way
but the right one; add to this the screams of women,
the shouts of boys, the clanging of gongs, the firing of
pistols, the ringing of bells, the bellowings of Speaking-
trumpets, the squeaking of penny dittos, the noise of a
dozen bands, with three drums in each, all playing
different tunes at the same time, the hallooing of show-
men, and an occasional roar from the wild-beast shows;
and you are in the very centre and heart of the fair.
This immense booth, with the large stage in front, so
brightly illuminated with variegated lamps, and pots
of burning fat, is “Richardson’s,” where you have a
melo-drama (with three murders and a ghost), a panto-
mime, a comic song, an overture, and some incidental
music, all done in five-and-twenty minutes.
The company are now promenading outside in all the
dignity of wigs, spangles, red-ochre, and whitening!
. See with what a ferocious air the gentleman who per-
sonates the Mexican chief, paces up and down, and
with what an eye of calm dignity the principal tragedian
gazes on the crowd below, or converses confidentially
with the harlequin! The four clowns, who are engaged
in a mock broadsword combat, may be all very well for
the low-minded holiday-makers; but these are the
people for the reflective portion of the community.
They look so noble in those Roman dresses, with their
yellow legs and arms, long black curly heads, bushy
eyebrows, and scowl expressive of assassination, and
vengeance, and everything else that is grand and
solemn. Then, the ladies—were there ever such inno-
cent and awful-looking beings; as they walk up and
down the platforms in twos and threes, with their arms
round each other’s waists, or leaning for support on
one of those majestic men! Their spangled muslin
dresses and blue satin shoes and sandals (a leetle the
GREEN WICH FAIR. *113
worse for wear) are the admiration of all beholders;
and the playful manner in which they check the ad-
vances of the clown, is perfectly enchanting.
“Just a-going to begin Pray come for’erd, come
for’erd,” exclaims the man in the countryman’s dress,
for the seventieth time : and people force their way up
the steps in crowds. The band suddenly strikes up, the
harlequin and columbine set the example, reels are
formed in less than no time, the Roman heroes place
their arms a-kimbo, and dance with considerable agility;
and the leading tragic actress, and the gentleman who
enacts the “swell” in the pantomime, foot it to perfec-
tion. “All in to begin,” shouts the manager, when no
more people can be induced to “come for’erd,” and away
rush the leading members of the company to do the
dreadful in the first piece.
A change of performance takes place every day dur-
ing the fair, but the story of the tragedy is always
pretty much the same. There is a rightful heir, who
loves a young lady, and is beloved by her; and a wrong-
ful heir, who loves her too, and isn’t beloved by her;
and the wrongful heir gets hold of the rightful heir,
and throws him into a dungeon, just to kill him off when
convenient, for which purpose he hires a couple of assas-
sins—a good One and a bad one—who, the moment they
are left alone, get up a little murder on their own ac-
count, the good One killing the bad one, and the bad one
wounding the good One. Then the rightful heir is dis-
covered in prison, carefully holding a long chain in his
hands, and seated despondingly in a large arm-chair;
and the young lady comes in to two bars of soft music,
and embraces the rightful heir; and then the wrongful
heir comes in to two bars of quick music (technically
called “a hurry"), and goes on in the most shocking
manner, throwing the young lady about, as if she was
nobody, and calling the rightful heir “Ar-recreant—ar-
wretch !” in a very loud voice, which answers the double
purpose of displaying his passion, and preventing the
sound being deadened by the sawdust. The interest
becomes intense; the wrongful heir draws his sword,
and rushes on the rightful heir; a blue smoke is seen, a
gong is heard, and a tall white figure (who has been
all this time behind the arm-chair, covered over with a
table-cloth), slowly rises to the tune of “Oft in the stilly
8
114, SKETCHES BY BOZ.
night.” This is no other than the ghost of the rightful
heir’s father, who was killed by the wrongful heir’s
father, at sight of which the wrongful heir becomes
apoplectic, and is literally struck ‘‘ all of a heap,” the
stage not being large enough to admit of his falling
down at full length. Then the good assassin Staggers
in, and says he was hired in conjunction with the bad
assassin, by the wrongful heir, to kill the rightful heir;
and he's killed a good many people in his time, but he’s
very sorry for it, and won’t do so any more—a promise
which he immediately redeems by dying off hand, with-
out any nonsense about it. Then the rightful heir
throws down his chain; and then two men, a sailor, and
a young woman (the tenantry of the rightful heir) come
in, and the ghost makes dumb motions to them, which
they, by supernatural interference, understand—for no
one else can; and the ghost (who can’t do anything
without blue fire) blesses the rightful heir and the young
lady, by half suffocating them with smoke: and then a
muffin bell rings, and the curtain drops.
The exhibitions next in popularity to these itinerant
theatres are the travelling menageries, or, to speak more
intelligibly, the “Wild-beast shows,” where a military
band in beef-eaters’ costume, with leopard-skin caps,
play incessantly; and where large highly coloured repre-
sentations of tigers tearing men’s heads open, and a lion
being burnt with red-hot irons to induce him to drop his
victim, are hung up outside, by way of attracting visitors.
The principal officer at these places is generally a
very tall, hoarse man, in a scarlet coat, with a cané inv
his hand, with which he occasionally raps the pictures
we have just noticed, by way of illustrating his descrip-
tion—something in this way. “Here, here, here; the
lion, the lion (tap), exactly as he is.represented on the
canvas outside (three taps): no waiting, remember; no
deception. The fe-ro-cious lion (tap, tap) who bit off the
gentleman’s head last Cambervel vos a twelve-month,
and has killed on the awerage three keepers a-year ever
since he arrived at matoority. No extra charge on this
account recollect; the price of admission is only six-
pence.” This address never fails to produce a consid-
eration sensation, and sixpences flow into the treasury
with wonderful rapidity. -
The dwarfs are also objects of great curiosity, and as
GREENWICH FAIR. $15
a dwarf, a giantess, a living skeleton, a wild Indian,
‘‘ a young lady of singular beauty with perfectly white
hair and pink eyes,” and two or three other natural
Curiosities, are usually exhibited together for the small
charge of a penny, they attract very numerous au-
diences. The best thing about a dwarf is, that he has
always a little box, about two feet six inches high, into
Which, by long practice, he can just manage to get, by
doubling himself up like a boot-jack; this box is painted
Outside like a six-roomed house, and as the crowd see
him ring a bell, or fire a pistol out of the first floor
window, they verily believe that it is his ordinary town
residence, divided like other mansions into drawing-
rooms, dining-parlour, and bed-chambers. Shut up in
this case, the unfortunate little object is brought out to
delight the throng by holding a facetious dialogue with
the proprietor : in the course of which, the dwarf (who
is always particularly drunk) pledges himself to sing a
Comic song inside, and pays various compliments to the
ladies, which induce them to “come for’erd” with great
alacrity. As a giant is not so easily moved, a pair of
indescribables of most capacious dimensions, and a huge
shoe, are usually brought out, into which two or three
stout men get all at once, to the enthusiastic delight of
the crowd, who are quite satisfied with the solemn assur-
ance that these habiliments form part of the giant's
every-day costume.
The grandest and most numerously frequented
booth in the whole fair, however, is “The Crown and
Anchor’—a temporary ball-room—we forget how many
hundred feet long, the price of admission to which is
One shilling. Immediately on your right hand as you
enter, after paying your money, is a refreshment place,
at which cold beef, roast and boiled, French rolls, stout,
wine, tongues, ham, even fowls, if we recollect right,
are displayed in tempting array. There is a raised
orchestra, and the place is boarded all the way down,
in patches, just wide enough for a country-dance.
There is no master of the ceremonies in this artificial
Eden—all is primitive, unreserved, and unstudied. The
dust is blinding, the heat insupportable, the company
Somewhat noisy, and in the highest spirits possible:
the ladies, in the height of their innocent animation,
dancing in the gentlemen’s hats, and the gentlemen,
116 SKETCHES BY BOz.
Hºng “the gay and festive scene” in the ladies’
Yonnets, or with the more expensive ornaments of false
noses, and low-crowned, tinder-box looking hats: play-
ing children’s drums, and accompanied by ladies on
the penny trumpet. - -
| The noise of these various instruments, the Orchestra,
the shouting, the “scratchers” and the dancing, is
#. bewildering. The dancing itself, beggars
escription—every figure lasts about an hour, and
the ladies bounce up and down the middle, with a
degree of spirit which is quite indescribable. As to the
gentlemen, they stamp their feet against the ground,
every time “hands four round” begins, go down the
middle and up again, with cigars in their mouths, and
silk handkerchiefs in their hands, and whirl their
partners round, nothing loath, Scrambling and falling,
and embracing, and knocking up against the other cou-
ples, until they are fairly tired out, and can move no
Onger. The same Scene is repeated again and again
(slightly varied by an occasional “row”) until a late hour
at night: and a great many clerks and 'prentices find
themselves next morning with aching heads, empty
pockets, damaged hats, and a very imperfect recollec-
tion of how it was, they did not get home.
CHAPTER XIII.
P. R. I V A. T E T H E A T R E S.
ICHARD THE THIRD.—DUKE OF GLO’STER, 27.,
EARL OF RICHMOND, 11., DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM,
15s. CATESBY, 12s., TRESSELL, 10s. 6d., LORD STANLEY,
5s. LORD MAYOR OF LONDON, 2s. 6d.” e
Such are the written placards wafered up in the
gentlemen’s dressing-room, or the green-room (where
there is any), at a private theatre; and such are the
sums extracted from the shop till, or overcharged in
the office expenditure, by the donkeys who are pre-
vailed upon to pay for permission to exhibit their
lamentable ignorance and boobyism on the stage of a
private theatre. This they do, in proportion to the scope
afforded by the character for the display of their im-
PRIVATE THEATRES. 117
becility. For instance, the Duke of Glo'ster is well
worth two pounds, because he has it all to himself; he
must wear a real sword, and what is better still, he
must draw it, several times in the course of the piece.
The soliloquies alone are well worth fifteen shillings;
then there is the stabbing King Henry—decidedly
cheap at three-and-sixpence, that’s eighteen-and-six-
pence; bullying the coffin-bearers—say eighteen-pence,
though it’s worth much more—that’s a pound. Then
the love scene with Lady Ann, and the bustle of the
fourth act, can’t be dear at ten shillings more—that’s
only one pound ten, including the “off with his head!”
—which is sure to bring down the applause, and it is very
easy to do—“Orf with his ed” (very quick and loud;—
then slow and sneeringly)—“So much for Bu-u-u-uck-
ingham!” Lay the emphasis on the “uck; ” get your-
self gradually into a corner, and work with your right
hand, while you’re saying it, as if you were feeling
your way, and it’s sure to do. The tent scene is con-
fessedly worth half-a-sovereign, and so you have the
fight in, gratis, and everybody knows what an effect
may be produced by a good combat. One—two—three
—four—over; then, one—two—three—four—under; then
thrust; then dodge and slide about; then fall down
On one knee; then fight upon it; and then get up again
and stagger. You may keep on doing this, as long
as it seems to take—say ten minutes—and then fall
down (backwards, if you can manage it without hurt-
ing yourself), and die game: nothing like it for pro-
ducing an effect. They always do it at Astley’s and
Sadler’s Wells, and if they don’t know how to do this
sort of thing, who in the world does? A small child,
or a female in white, increases the interest of a com-
bat materially—indeed, we are not aware that a reg-
ular terrific broad-sword combat could be done without;
but it would be rather difficult, and somewhat unusual,
to introduce this effect in the last scene of Richard the
Third, so the only thing to be done, is, just to make
the best of a bad bargain, and be as long as possible
fighting it out.
The principal patrons of private theatres are dirty
boys, low copying-clerks in attorneys’ offices, capacious-
headed youths from city counting-houses, Jews whose
business, as lenders of fancy dresses, is a sure passport
118 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
to the amateur stage, shop-boys who now and then
mistake their master’s money for their own; and a
choice miscellany of idle vagabonds. The proprietor
of a private theatre may be an ex-scene-painter, a low
coffee-house-keeper, a disappointed eighth-rate actor, a
retired smuggler, or an uncertificated bankrupt. . The
theatre itself may be in Catherine-street, Strand, the
purlieus of the city, the neighbourhood of Gray’s-inn-
lane, or the vicinity of Sadler’s Wells; or it may, per-
haps, from the chief nuisance of some shabby Street, on
the Surrey side of Waterloo bridge. .*
The lady performers pay nothing for their characters,
and it is needless to add, are usually selected from One
class of society ; the audiences are necessarily of
much the same character as the performers, who
receive, in return for their contributions to the
management, tickets" to the amount of the money
they pay.
All the minor theatres in London, especially the
lowest, constitute the centre of a little stage-struck
neighbourhood. Each of them has an audience exclu-
sively its own; and at any you will see dropping into
the pit at half-price, or swaggering into the back of a
box, if the price of admission be a reduced one, divers
boys of from fifteen to twenty-One years of age, who
throw back their coat and turn up their wristbands,
after the portraits of Count D’Orsay, hum tunes and
whistle when the curtain is down, by way of persuad-
ing the people near them, that they are not at all
anxious to have it up again, and Speak familiarly of
the inferior performers as Bill Such-a-one, and Ned So-
and-so, or tell each other how a new piece called The
Unknown Bandit of the Invisible Caverm, is in rehearsal;
how Mr. Palmer, is to play The Unknown Bandit, how
Charley Scarton is to take the part of an English sailor,
and fight a broadsword combat with six unknown
bandits at . One and the same time (one theatrical
sailor is always equal to half a dozen men at least);
how Mr. Palmer and Charley Scarton are to go through
a double hornpipe in fetters in the second act; how the
interior of the invisible cavern is to occupy the whole
extent of the stage; and other town-surprising theat-
rical announcements. These gentlemen are the ama-
teurs—the Richards, Shylocks, Beverleys, and Othellos
PRIVATE THEATREs. 119
—the Young Dorntons, Rovers, Captain Absolutes, and
Charles Surfaces—of a private theatre. ... *
See them at the neighbouring public-house or the
theatrical coffee-shop! They are the kings of the place,
Supposing no real performers to be present: and roll
about, hats on One side, and arms a-kimbo, as if they
had actually come into possession of eighteen shillings
a-week, and a share of a ticket-night. If one of them
does but know an Astley’s supernumerary he is a happy
fellow. The mingled air of envy and admiration with
which his companions will regard him, as he converses
familiarly with some mouldy-looking man in a fancy
neckerchief, whose partially corked eyebrows, and
half-rouged face, testify to the fact of his having just
left the Stage or the circle, sufficiently shows in what
high admiration these public characters are held.
With the double view of guarding against the dis-
govery of friends or employers, and enhancing the
interest of an assumed character, by attaching a high-
Sounding name to its representative, these geniuses
assume fictitious names, which are not the least amus-
ing part of the play-bill of a private theatre. Belville,
Melville, Treville, Berkeley, Randolph, Byron, St. Clair,
and so forth, are among the humblest; and the less
imposing titles of Jenkins, Walker, Thompson, Barker,
Solomons, &c., are completely laid aside. There is
Something imposing in this, and it is an excellent
apology for Shabbiness into the bargain. A shrunken,
faded coat, a decayed hat, a patched and soiled pair of
trousers—may even a very dirty shirt (and none of these
appearances are very uncommon among the members
of the corps dramatique), may be worn for the purpose
of disguise, and to prevent the remotest chance of
recognition. Then it prevents any troublesome in-
Quiries or explanations about employment and pursuits;
every body is a gentleman at large for the occasion,
and there are none of those unpleasant and unnecessary
distinctions to which even genius must occasionally
succumb elsewhere. As to the ladies (God bless them),
they are quite above any formal absurdities; the mere
circumstance of your being behind the scenes is a
sufficient introduction to their society—for of course
they know that none but strictly respectable persons
would be admitted into that close fellowship with them
120 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
which acting engenders. They place implicit reliance
on the manager, no doubt; and as to the manager, he is
all affability when he knows you well,—or, in other
words, when he has pocketed your money once, and
entertains confident hopes of doing so again.
A quarter before eight—there will be a full house to-
night—six parties in the boxes, already; four little boys
and a woman in the pit: and two fiddles and a flute in
the orchestra; we have got through five overtures
since seven o’clock (the hour fixed for the commence-
ment of the performances), and have just begun the
sixth. There will be plenty of it, though, when it does
begin, for there is enough in the bill to last six hours
at least.
That gentleman in the white hat and checked shirt,
brown coat and brass buttons, lounging behind the
stage-box on the O. P. side, is Mr. Horatio St. Julian,
alias Jem Larkins. His line is genteel comedy—his
father's, coal and potato. He does Alfred Highflier in the
last piece, and very well he’ll do it—at the price. The
party of gentlemen in the opposite box, to whom he has
just nodded, are friends and supporters of Mr. Bever-
ley (otherwise Loggins), the Macbeth of the night. You
observe their attempts to appear easy and gentlemanly,
each member of the party, with his feet cocked upon
the cushion in front of the box! They let them do these
things here, upon the same humane principle which
permits poor people’s children to knock double knocks
at the door of an empty house—because they can’t do
it anywhere else. The two stout men in the centre
box, with an opera-glass ostentatiously placed before
them, are friends of the proprietor—opulent country
managers, as he confidentially informs every individual
among the crew behind the curtain—opulent country
managers looking out for recruits; a representation
which Mr. Nathan, the dresser, who is in the manager's
interest, and has just arrived with the costumes, offers
to confirm upon oath if required—corroborative evi-
dence, however, is quite unnecessary, for the gulls
believe it at once.
The stout Jewess, who has just entered, is the mother
of the pale bony little girl with the necklace of blue
glass beads sitting by her; she is being brought up to
“the profession.” Pantomime is to be her line, and
PRIVATE THEATRES. 121
she is coming out to-night, in a hornpipe after the
tragedy. The short thin man beside Mr. St. Julian,
whose white face is so deeply seared with the small-
pox, and whose dirty shirt-front is inlaid with open-
work, and embossed with coral studs like lady-birds, is
the low comedian and comic singer of the establish-
ment. The remainder of the audience—a tolerably
numerous one by this time—are a motley group of
dupes and "blackguards.
The footlights have just made their appearance: the
wicks of the six little oil lamps round the only tier of
boxes are being turned up, and the additional light
thus afforded serves to show the presence of dirt, and
absence of paint, which forms a prominent feature in
the ... audience part of the house. As these prepara-
tions, howevor, announce the speedy commencement
of the play, let us take a peep “behind,” previous to
the ringing up.
The little narrow passages beneath the stage are
neither especially clean nor too brilliantly lighted; and
the absence of any flooring, together with the damp
mildewy smell which pervades the place, does not con-
duce in any great degree to their comfortable appear-
ance. Don’t fall over this plate-basket—it's one of the
“properties”—the caldron for the witches’ cave; and
the three uncouth-looking figures, with broken clothes-
props in their hands, who are drinking gin-and-water
out of a pint pot, are the weird sisters. This miser-
able room, lighted by candles in sconces placed at
lengthened intervals round the wall, is the dressing-
room, common to the gentlemen performers, and the
square hole in the ceiling is the trap-door of the stage
above. You will observe that the ceiling is ornamented
with the beams that support the boards, and tastefully
hung with cobwebs. e
The characters in the tragedy are all dressed, and
their own clothes are scattered in hurried confusion
over the wooden dresser which surrounds the room.
That snuff-shop-looking figure, in front of the glass, is
Banquo: and the young lady with the liberal display
of legs, who is kindly painting his face with a hare’s
foot, is dressed for Fleance. The large woman, who is
consulting the stage directions in Cumberland’s edition
of Macbeth, is the Lady Macbeth of the night; she is al-
122 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
ways selected to play the part, because she is tall and
stout, and looks a little like Mrs. Siddons—at a consider-
able distance. That stupid-looking milksop, with light
hair and bow legs—a kind of man whom you can war-
rant town-made—is fresh caught; he plays Malcolm to
.# just to accustom himself to an audience. He
will get on better by degrees; he will play Othello in a
month, and in a month more, will very probably be ap-
prehended on a charge of embezzlement. The black-
eyed female with whom he is talking so earnestly, is
dressed for the “gentlewoman.” It is her first appear-
ance, too—in that character. The boy of fourteen,
who is having his eyebrows smeared with soap and
whitening, is Duncan, King of Scotland; and the two
dirty men with the corked countenances, in very sold
green tunics, and dirty drab boots are the “ army.”
“Look sharp below there, gents,” exclaims the
dresser, a red-headed and red-whiskered Jew, calling
through the trap, “they’re going to ring up. The flute
says he’ll be blowed if he plays any more, and they’re
getting precious noisy in front.” A general rush im-
mediately takes place to the half-dozen little steep
steps leading to the stage, and the heterogeneous group
are soon assembled at the side scenes, in bréathless
anxiety and motley confusion.
“Now,” cries the manager, consulting the written
list which hangs behind the first P. S. wing, “Scene 1,
open country—lamps down—thunder and lightning—all
ready, White?” [This is addressed to one of the army.]
“All ready.”—“Very well. Scene 2, front chamber.
Is the front chamber down?”—“Yes.”—“Very well.”
—“Jones” (to the other army who is up in the flies).
“Hallo!”—“Wind up the open country when we ring
up.”—“I’ll take care.”—“Scene 3, back perspective
with practical bridge, Bridge ready, White? Got the
tressels there?”—“All right.”
“Very well. Clear the stage,” cries the manager,
hastily packing every member of the company into the
little space there is between the wings and the wall,
and one wing and another. “Places, places. Now
then, Witches—Duncan—Malcolm—bleeding officer—
where’s the bleeding officer?”—“Here!” replies the
officer, who has been rose-pinking for the character.
“Get ready, then; now, White, ring the second music-
f |
VAUXHALL-GARDENS BY DAY. 123
bell.” The actors who are to be discovered, are hastily
arranged, and the actors who are not to be discovered
place themselves, in their anxiety to peep at the house,
just where the whole audience can see them. The bell
rings, and the orchestra, in acknowledgment of the
call, play three distinct chords. The bell rings—the
tragedy (!) opens—and our description closes. sº
CHAPTER XIV
WAUYEIALL-GARDENS BY DAY.
HERE was a time when if a man ventured to won-
der how Vauxhall-gardens would look by day, he
was hailed with a shout of derision at the absurdity of
the idea. Vauxhall by daylight! A porter-pot with-
out porter, the House of Commons without the Speaker,
a gas-lamp without the gas—pooh, nonsense, the thing
was not to be thought of. It was rumoured, too, in
those times, that Vauxhall-gardens by day were the
scene of secret and hidden experiments; that there
carvers were exercised in the mystic art of cutting a
moderate-sized ham into slices thin enough to pave the
whole of the grounds; that beneath the shade of the
tall trees, studious men were constantly engaged in
chemical experiments, with the view of discovering
how much water a bowl of negus could possibly bear;
and that in some retired nooks, appropriated to the
study of ornithology, other sage and learned men were,
by a process known only to themselves, incessantly
employed in reducing fowls to a mere combination of
skin and bone.
Vague rumours of this kind, together with many
others of a similar nature, cast over Vauxhall-gardens
an air of deep mystery; and as there is a great deal in
the mysterious, there is no doubt that to a good many
people, at all events, the pleasure they afforded was
not a little enhanced by this very circumstance.
Of this class of people we confess to having made
one. We loved to wander among these illuminated
groves, thinking of the patient and laborious researches
which had been carried on there during the day, and
124 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
witnessing their results in the suppers which were
served up beneath the light of lamps and to the sound
of music, at night. The temples and saloons and cos-
moramas and fountains glittered and sparkled before
our eyes; the beauty of the lady singers and the ele-
ant deportment of the gentlemen, captivated our
hearts; a few hundred thousand of additional lamps
dazzled our senses; a bowl or two of reeking punch be-
wildered our brains; and we were º:
In an evil hour the proprietors of Vauxhall-gardens
took to opening them by day. We regretted this, as
rudely and harshly disturbing that veil of mystery
which had hung about the property for many years,
and which none but the noonday Sun, and the late Mr.
Simpson, had ever penetrated. We shrunk from going;
at this moment we scarcely know why. Perhaps a
morbid consciousness of approaching disappointment—
perhaps a fatal presentiment—perhaps the weather:
whatever it was, we did not go until the second or third
announcement of a race between two balloons tempted
us, and we went.
We paid our shilling at the gate, and then we saw for
the first time, that the entrance, if there had ever been .
any magic about it at all, was now decidedly disen-
chanted, being, in fact, nothing more nor less than a
combination of very roughly-painted boards and saw-
dust. We glanced at the Orchestra and Supper-room
as we hurried past—we just recognised them, and that
was all. We bent our steps to the firework-ground;
there, at least, we should not be disappointed. We
reached it, and stood rooted to the spot with morti-
fication and astonishment. That the Moorish tower—
that wooden shed with a door in the centre, and daubs
of crimson and yellow all round, like a gigantic watch-
case! That the place where night after night we had
beheld the undaunted Mr. Blackmore make his terrific
ascent, surrounded by flames of fire, and peals of artil-
lery, and where the white garments of Madame Some-
body, (we forget even her name now), who nobly de-
voted her life to the manufacture of fireworks, had so
often been seen fluttering in the wind, as she called up
a red, blue, or party-coloured light to illumine her
temple! . That the—but at this moment the bell rung;
the people scampered away, pell-mell, to the spot from
VAlJXIHALL-GARDENS BY DAY. 125
whence the sound proceeded; and we, from the mere
force of habit, found ourself running among the first,
as if for very life.
It was for the concert in the orchestra. A Small
party of dismal men in cocked hats were “executing”
the overture to Tancredi, and a numerous assemblage
of ladies and gentlemen, with their families, had
rushed from their half-emptied stout mugs in the Sup-
er boxes, and crowded to the spot. Intense was the
ow murmur of admiration when a particularly small
gentleman, in a dress coat, led on a particularly
tall lady in a blue Sarcenet pelisse and bonnet of the
same, ornamented with large white feathers, and forth-
with commenced a plaintive duet.
We knew the small gentleman well; we had seen a
lithographed semblance of him, on many a piece of
music, with his mouth wide open as if in the act of
singing; a wine-glass in his hand; and a table with two
decanters and four pine-apples on it in the background,
The tall lady, too, we had gazed on, lost in raptures of
admiration, many and many a time—how different
people do look by daylight, and without punch, to be
Sure! It was a beautiful duet: first the small gentle-
man asked a question, and then the tall lady answered
it; then the small gentleman and the tall lady sang
together most melodiously; then the small gentleman
went through a little piece of vehemenge by himself,
and got very tenor indeed, in the excitement of his
feelings, to which the tall lady responded in a similar
manner; then the small gentleman had a shake or two,
after which the tall lady had the same, and then they
both merged imperceptibly into the original air: and
the band wound themselves up to a pitch of fury, and
the Small gentleman handed the tall lady out, and the
applause was rapturous.
The comic singer, however, was the especial favour-
ite; we really thought that a gentleman, with his dinner
in a pocket-handkerchief, who stood near us, would
have fainted with excess of joy. A marvellously
facetious gentleman that comic singer is; his dis-
tinguishing characteristics are, a wig approaching to
the flaxen, and an aged countenance, and he bears the
name of one of the English counties, if we recollect
right. He sang a very good song about the seven ages,
126 - SKETCHES BY BOZ.
the first half-hour of which afforded the assembly the
purest delight; of the rest we can make no report, as
we did not stay to hear any more.
We walked about, and met with a disappointment at
every turn; our favourite views were mere patches of
paint; the fountain that had sparkled so showily by
lamp-light, presented very much the appearance of a
water-pipe that had burst; all the ornaments were
dingy, and all the walks gloomy. There was a spectral
attempt at rope-dancing in the little open theatre. The
sun shone upon the Spangled dresses of the performers,
and their evolutions were about as inspiriting and ap-
propriate as a country-dance in a family-vault. So we
retraced our steps to the firework-ground, and mingled
with the little crowd of people who were contemplating
Mr. Green.
Some half-dozen men were restraining the impetuosity
of one of the balloons, which was completely filled, and
had the car already attached; and as rumours had gone
abroad that a Lord was “going up,” the crowd were
more than usually anxious and talkative. There was
one little man in faded black, with a dirty face and a
rusty black neckerchief with a red border, tied in a
narrow wisp round his neck, who entered into conversa-
tion with every body, and had something to say upon
every remark that was made within his hearing. He
was standing with his arms folded, Staring up at the
balloon, and every now and then vented his feelings of
reverence for the aéronaut, by saying, as he looked
round to catch somebody’s eye, “He’s a rum 'un is
Green; think o’ this here being up’ards of his two hun-
dredth ascent; ecod the man as is ekal to Green never
had the toothache yet, nor won’t have within this hun-
dred year, and that’s all about it. When you meets
with real talent, and native, too, encourage it, that’s
what I say;” and when he had delivered himself to this
effect, he would fold his arms with more determination
than ever, and stare at the balloon with a sort of ad-
miring defiance of any other man alive, beyond him-
self and Green, that impressed the crowd with the
opinion that he was an Oracle.
“Ah, you’re very right, sir,” said another gentleman,
with his wife, and children, and mother, and wife’s
sister, and a host of female friends, in all the gentility
TVATUXHALL-GARDENS BY DAY 12?
of white pocket-handkerchiefs, frills, and Spencers,
“Mr. Green is a steady hand, sir, and there’s no fear
about him.”
“Fear!” said the little man: “ isn’t it a lovely º
to see him and his wife a going up in One balloon, an
his own son and his wife a jostling up against them in
another, and all of them going twenty or thirty mile in
three hours or so, and then coming back in pochayses?
I don’t know where this here science is to stop, mind
you; that’s what bothers me.”
Here there was a considerable talking among the
females in the spencers. - g
“What's the ladies a laughing at, sir?” inquired the
little man, condescendingly.
“It’s only my sister Mary,” said one of the girls, “as
says she hopes his lordship won’t be frightened when
he’s in the car, and want to come out again.”
“Make yourself easy about that there, my dear,”
replied the little man. “If he was so much as to move
a inch without leave, Green would jist fetch him a crack
over the head with the telescope, as would send him
into the bottom of the basket in no time, and stun him
till they come down again.”
“Would he, though?” inquired the other man.
“Yes, would he,” replied the little one, “and think
nothing of it, neither, if he was the king himself.
Green’s presence of mind is wonderful.”
Just at this moment all eyes were directed to the
preparations which were being made for starting. The
car was attached to the second balloon, the two were
brought pretty close together, and a military band com-
menced playing, with a zeal and fervour which would
render the most timid man in existence but too happy
to accept any means of quitting that particular spot of
earth on which they were stationed. Then Mr. Green,
sen., and his noble companion entered one car, and Mr.
Green, jun., and his companion the other; and then the
balloons went up, and the aërial travellers stood up,
and the crowd outside roared with delight, and the two
gentlemen who had never ascended before, tried to
wave their flags, as if they were not nervous, but held
on very fast all the while; and the balloons were wafted
gently away, our little friend solemnly protesting, long
after they were reduced to mere specks in the air, that
128 SKETCHES BY BOz.
he could still distinguish the white hat of Mr. Green.
The gardens disgorged their multitudes, boys ran u
and down screaming “bal-loon ; ” and in all the tººd;
thoroughfares people rushed out of their shops into the
middle of the road, and having stared up in the air at
two little black objects till they almost dislocated their
necks, walked slowly in again, perfectly satisfied.
The next day there was a grand account of the ascent
in the morning papers, and the public were informed
how it was the finest day but four in Mr. Green’s re-
membrance; how they retained sight of the earth till
they lost it behind the clouds; and how the reflection of
the balloon. On the undulating masses of vapour was
gorgeously picturesque; together with a little science
about the refraction of the sun’s rays, and some
mysterious hints respecting atmospheric heat and
eddying currents of air.
There was also an interesting account how a man in a
boat was distinctly heard by Mr. Green, jun., to exclaim,
“My eye l’’ which Mr. Green, jun., attributed to his
voice rising to the balloon, and the Sound being thrown
back from its surface into the car: and the whole con-
cluded with a slight allusion to another ascent next
Wednesday, all of which was very instructive and very
amusing, as our readers will see if they look to the
Fº If we have forgotten to mention the date, they
ave only to wait till next Summer, and take the account
of the first ascent, and it will answer the purpose
equally well.
CHAPTER XV.
E. A. R. L. Y. C. O A. C. H. E. S.
WE have often wondered how many months' in-
cessant travelling in a post-chaise, it would take
to kill a man; and wondering by analogy, we should
very much like to know how many months of constant
travelling in a succession of early coaches, an unfortu-
nate mortal could endure. Breaking a man alive upon
the wheel, would be nothing to breaking his rest, his
peace, his heart—everything but his fast—upon four ;
EARLY COACHIES. 129
and the punishment of Ixion (the Only practical person,
by the by, who has discovered the secret of the perpet-
ual motion) would sink into utter insignificance before
the one we have suggested. If we had been a powerful
churchman in those good times when blood was shed
as freely as water and men were mowed down, like
grass, in the sacred cause of religion, we would have
Iain by very quietly till we got hold of some especially
obstinate miscreant, who positively refused to be con-
verted to our faith, and then we would have booked
him for an inside place in a small coach, which
travelled day and night: and securing the remainder of .
the places for stout men with a slight tendency to
coughing and Spitting, we would have started him forth
on his last travels: leaving him mercilessly to all the
tortures which the waiters, landlords, coachmen,
guards, boots, chambermaids, and other familiars on
his line of road, might think proper to inflict.
Who has not experienced the miseries inevitably con-
sequent upon a summons to undertake a hasty journey?
You receive an intimation from your place of business
—wherever that may be, or whatever you may be—-
that it will be necessary to leave town without delay.
You and your family are forthwith thrown into a state
of tremendous excitement; an express is immediately
despatched to the washerwoman’s; every body is in a
bustle; and you, yourself, with a feeling of dignity
which you cannot altogether conceal, Sally forth to the
booking-office to secure your place. Here a painful
consciousness of your own unimportance first rushes on
your mind—the people are as cool and collected as if
nobody were going out of town, or as if a journey of a
hundred odd miles were a mere nothing. You enter a
mouldy-looking room, ornamented with large posting-
bills; the greater part of the place enclosed behind a huge
lumbering rough counter, and fitted up with recesses
that look like the dens of the smaller animals in a
travelling menagerie, without the bars. Some half-
dozen people are “booking ” brown-paper parcels,
which one of the clerks flings into the aforesaid recesses
with an air of recklessness which you, remembering
the new carpet-bag you bought in the morning, feel
considerably annoyed at; porters looking like so many
Atlases, keep rushing in and out, with large packages on
9
I 30 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
their shoulders; and while you are waiting to make the
necessary inquiries, you wonder what on earth the
booking-office clerks can have been before they were
booking-office clerks; one of them with his pen behind
his ear, and his hands behind him, is standing in front
of the fire, like a full-length portrait of Napoleon; the
other with his hat half off his head, enters the passen-
gers’ names in the books with a coolness which is in-
expressibly provoking; and the villain whistles—act-
ually whistles—while a man asks him what the fare is
Outside—all the way to Hollyhead —in frosty Weather
too P. They are clearly an isolated race, evidently
possessing no sympathies or feelings in Common with
the rest of mankind. Your turn comes at last, and
having paid the fare, you tremblingly inquire—“What
time will it be necessary for me to be here in the
morning P”—“Six o'clock,” replies the whistler, care-
lessly pitching the sovereign you have just parted with
into a wooden bowl on the desk. “Rather before than
arter,” adds the man with the semi-roasted unmention-
ables, with just as much ease and complacency as if the
-whole world got out of bed at five. You turn into the
street, ruminating as you bend your steps homewards
on the extent to which men become hardened in cruelty
by custom. -
If there be one thing in existence more miserable
than another, it most unquestionably is the being com-
pelled to rise by candle-light. If you ever doubted the
fact, you are painfully convinced of your error, on the
morning of your departure. You left strict orders, over-
night, to be called at half-past four, and you have done
nothing all night but doze for five minutes at a time,
and start up Suddenly from a terrific dream of a large
church-clock with the small hand running round, with
astonishing rapidity, to every figure on the dial-plate.
At last; completely exhausted, you fall gradually into a
refreshing sieep—your thoughts grow confused—the
stage-coaches, which have been “going off” before your
eyes all night, become less and less distinct, until they
go off altogether; one moment you are driving with all
the skill and Smartness of an experienced whip—the
next you are exhibiting, à la Ducrow, on the off leader;
anon you are closely muffled up, inside, and have just
recognised in the person of the guard an old school-
EARLY COACHES. 131
fellow, whose funeral, even in your dream, you remem-
ber to have attended eighteen years ago. At last you
fall into a state of complete oblivion, from which you
are aroused, as if into a new state of existence, by a
singular illusion. You are apprenticed to a trunk-
maker; how, or why, or when, or wherefore, you don’t
take the trouble to inquire; but there you are, pasting
the lining in the lid of a portmanteau. Confound that
other apprentice in the back shop, how he is hammering!
—rap, rap, rap—what an industrious fellow he must be!
you have heard him at work for half an hour past,
and he has been hammering incessantly the whole
time. Rap, rap, rap, again—he's talking now—what’s
that he said? Five o’clock! You make a violent ex-
ertion, and start up in bed. The vision is at once dis-
pelled; the trunk-maker's shop is his own bed-room,
and the other apprentice your shivering servant, who
has been vainly endeavouring to wake you for the last
Quarter of an hour, at the imminent risk of breaking
either his own knuckles or the panels of the door.
You proceed to dress yourself, with all possible
despatch. The flaring flat candle with the long snuff,
gives light enough to show that the things you want,
are not where they ought to be, and you undergo a
trifling delay in consequence of having carefully packed
up one of your boots in your over anxiety of the pre-
ceding night. You soon complete your toilet, however,
for you are not particular on such an occasion, and you
shaved yesterday evening; so, mounting your Petersham
great-coat, and green travelling-shawl, and grasping
your carpet-bag in your right hand, you walk lightly
down stairs, lest you should awaken any of the family,
and after pausing in the common sitting-room for one
moment, just to have a cup of coffee (the said common
sitting-room looking remarkably comfortable, with
every thing out of its place, and strewed with the crumbs
of last night’s Supper), you undo the chain and bolts of
the street-door, and find yourself fairly in the street.
A thaw, by all that is miserable! The frost is com-
plely broken up, You look down the long perspective
of Oxford-street, the gas-lights mournfully reflected
On the wet pavement, and can discern no speck in the
road to encourage the belief that there is a cab or a .
coach to be had—the very coachmen have gone home
132 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
in despair. The cold sleet is drizzling down with that
gentle regularity, which betokens a duration of four-
and-twenty hours at least; the damp hangs upon the
house-tops, and lamp-posts, and clings to you like an
invisible cloak. The water is “ coming in ’’ in every
area, the pipes have burst, the water-butts are running
over; the kennels seem to be doing matches against
time, pump-handles descend of their own accord,
horses in market-carts fall down, and there's no one to
help them up again, policemen look as if they had been
carefully sprinkled with powdered glass; here and there
a milk-woman trudges slowly along, with a bit of list
round each foot to keep her from slipping; boys who
“don’t sleep in the house,” and are not allowed much
out of it, can’t wake their masters by thundering at the
shop-door, and cry with the cold—the compound of ice,
snow, and water on the pavement, is a couple of inches
thick—nobody ventures to walk fast to keep himself
warm, and nobody could succeed in keeping himself
warm if he did. - -
It strikes a quarter past five as you trudge down
Waterloo-place on your way to the Golden-cross, and
you discover, for the first time, that you were called
about an hour too early. You have not time to go back;
there is no place open to go into, and you have, there-
fore, no resource but to go forward, which you do, feel-
ing remarkably satisfied with yourself, and everything
about you. You arrive at the office, and look wistfully
up the yard for the Birmingham High-flier, which, for
aught you can see, may have flown away altogether,
for no preparations appear to be on foot for the depart-
ure of any vehicle in the shape of a coach. You wander
into the booking-office, which with the gas-lights and
blazing fire, looks quite comfortable by contrast—that
is, to say, if any place can look comfortable at half-past
five on a winter’s morning. There stands the identical
book-keeper in the same position as if he had not
moved since you saw him yesterday. As he informs
you, that the coach is up the yard, and will be
brought round in about a quarter of an hour, you leave
your bag, and repair to “The Tap *—not with any ab-
Surd idea of warming yourself, because you feel such a
result to be utterly hopeless, but for the purpose of pro-
curing some hot brandy-and-water, which you do,
EARLY COACHES. 133
when the kettle boils! an event which occurs exactly
two minutes and a half before the time fixed for the
starting of the coach. *
The first stroke of six peals from St. Martin’s church
steeple, just as you take the first sip of the boiling
liquid. You find yourself at the booking-office in two
seconds, and the tap-waiter finds himself much Com-
forted by your brandy-and-water, in about the same
period. The coach is out; the horses are in, and the
guard and two or three porters are stowing the luggage
away; and running up the steps of the booking-office
and down the steps of the booking-office, with breath-
less rapidity. The place, which a few minutes ago,
was so still and quiet, is now all bustle; the early ven-
ders of the morning papers have arrived, and you are
assailed on all sides with shouts of “Times,” gen’lm’n,
Times,” “Here's Chron — Chron — Chron,” “ Herald,
ma'am,” “Highly interesting murder, gen’lm’n,” “Curi-
ous case o’ breach o’ promise, ladies.” The inside pas-
sengers are already in their dens, and the outsides,
with the exception of yourself, are pacing up and down
the pavement to keep themselves warm ; they consist
of two young men with very long hair, to which the
sleet has communicated the appearance of crystallised
rats’ tails, one thin young woman cold and peevish, one
old gentleman ditto ditto, and something in a cloak
and cap, intended to represent a military officer; every
member of the party with a large stiff shawl over his
chin, looking exactly as if he were playing a set of
Pan’s pipes.
‘‘Take off the clothes, Bob,” says the coachman,
who now appears for the first time, in a rough blue
great-coat, of which the buttons behind are so far
apart, that you can’t see them both at the same
time. “Now, gen’lm’n,” cries the guard, with the
way-bill in his hand. “ Five minutes behind time
already!” Up jump the passengers—the two young
men smoking like lime-kilns, and the old gentleman
grumbling audibly. The thin young woman is got upon
the roof, by dint of a great deal of pulling, and push-
ing, and helping and trouble, and she repays it by ex-
pressing her solemn conviction that she will never be
able to get down again.
“ All right,” sings out the guard at last, jumping up
j 34 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
as the coach starts, and blowing his horn directly after-
wards, in proof of the soundness of his wind. “Let
'em go, Harry, give 'em their heads,” cries the coach-
man—and off we start as briskly as if the morning were
“all right,” as well as the coach: and looking forward
as anxiously to the termination of Our journey, as we
fear our readers will have done, long since, to the con-
clusion of Our paper. ":
CHAPTER XVI.
OMNIBUSES.
IT is very generally allowed that public conveyances
afford an extensive field for amusement and obser-
vation. Of all the public conveyances that have been
constructed since the days of the Ark—we think that is
the earliest on record—to the present time, commend us
to an omnibus. A long stage is not to be despised, but
there you have only six insides, and the chances are,
that the same people go all the way with you—there is
no change, no variety. Besides, after the first twelve
hours or so, people get cross and sleepy, and when you
have seen a man in his nightcap, you lose all respect
for him; at least that is the case with us. Then on
smooth roads people frequently get prosy, and tell long
stories, and even those who don’t talk, may have very
unpleasant predilections. We once travelled four hun-
dred miles, inside a stage-coach, with a stout man, who
had a glass of rum-and-water warm, handed it at the
window at every place where we changed horses. This
was decidedly unpleasant. Wo have also travelled
occasionally, with a small boy of a pale aspect, with
light hair, and no preceptible neck, coming up to town
from School under the protection of the guard, and
directed to be left at the Cross Keys till called for. This
is, perhaps, even worse than rum-and-water in a close
atmosphere. Then there is the whole train of evils
consequent on a change of the coachman ; and the
misery of the discovery—which the guard is sure to
make the moment you begin to doze—that he wants
a brown-paper parcel, which he distinctly remembers
OMNIBUSES. 135
to have deposited under the seat on which you are
reposing. A great deal of bustle and groping takes
place, and when you are thoroughly awakened, and
severely cramped, by holding your legs up by an almost
supernatural exertion, while he is looking behind
them, it suddenly occurs to him that he put it in the
fore-boot. Bang goes the door; the parcel is immedi-
ately found; off starts the coach again; and the guard
plays the key-bugle as loud as he can play it, as if in
mockery of your wretchedness.
Now, you meet with none of these afflictions in an
omnibus; Sameness there can never be. The pas-
sengers change as often in the course of One journey
as the figures in a kaleidoscope, and though not so
glittering, are far more amusing. We believe there is
no instance on record, of a man’s having gone to
sleep in one of these vehicles. As to long stories,
would any man venture to tell a long story in an
Omnibus P and even if he did, where would be the
harm 2 nobody could possibly hear what he was talk-
ing about. Again; children, though Occasionally, are
not often to be found in an omnibus; aſid even when
they are, if the vehicle be full, as is generally the case,
somebody sits upon them, and we are unconscious of
their presence. Yes, after mature reflection, and
considerable experience, we are decidedly of opinion,
that of all known vehicles, from the glass-coach in
which we were taken to be christened, to that sombre
caravan in which we must one day make our last
earthly journey, there is nothing like an Omnibus.
We will back the machine in which we make our
daily peregrination from the top of Oxford Street to the
city, against any “bus” on the road, whether it be for
the gaudiness of its exterior, the perfect simplicity of its
interiðr, or the native coolness of its cad. This young
gentleman is a singular instance of self-devotion ; his
somewhat intemperate zeal on behalf of his employers,
is constantly getting him into trouble, and occasionally
into the house of correction. He is no sooner emanci-
pated, however, than he resumes the duties of his
profession with unabated ardour. His principal distinc-
tion is his activity. His great boast is, “that he can
chuck an old gem’lm’n into the buss, shut him in, and
rattle off, afore he knows where it’s a going to ”—a
I36 - SKETCHES BY BOZ.
feat which he frequently performs, to the infinite
amusement of every one but the old gentleman con-
cerned, who somehow or other, never can see the joke
of the thing. - -
We are not aware that it has ever been precisely
ascertained, how many passengers Our Omnibus will
contain. The impression on the cad’s mind, evidently
is, that it is amply sufficient for the accommodation of
any number of persons that can be enticed into it.
“Any room?” cries a very hot pedestrian. “Plenty o’
room, sir,” replies the conductor, gradually opening the
door, and not disclosing the real State of the case until
the wretched man is on the steps. “Where?” inquires
the entrapped individual, with an attempt to back out
again. “Either side, sir,” rejoins the cad, shoving him
in, and slamming the door. “All right, Bill.” Retreat
is impossible; the new-comer rolls about, till he falls
down somewhere, and there he stops. .
As we get into the city a little before ten, four or five
of our party are regular passengers. We always take
them up at the same places, and they generally occupy
the same seats; they are always dressed in the same
manner, and invariably discuss the same topics—the
increasing rapidity of cabs, and the disregard of moral
obligations evinced by Omnibus men. There is a little
testy old man, with a powdered head, who always sits
on the right hand side of the door as you enter, with
his hands folded on the top of his umbrella. He is
extremely impatient, and sits there for the purpose of
keeping a sharp eye on the cad, with whom he generally
holds a running dialogue. He is very officious in help-
ing people in and out, and always volunteers to give
the cad a poke with his umbrella, when any one wants to
alight. He usually recommends ladies to have six-pence
ready, to prevent delay; and if anybody puts a window
down, that he can reach, he immediately putsit up again.
“Now, what are you stopping for?” says the little
old man every morning, the moment there is the
slightest indication of “pulling up * at the corner of
Regent-street, when some such dialogue as the following
takes place between him and the cad:
“What are you stopping for?”
Here the cad whistles and affects not to hear the
question,
OMNIBUSES. 13;
“I say [a poke], what are you stopping for?”
‘‘ For passengers, sir. Ba—nk.—Ty.
‘‘I know you’re stopping for passengers; but you’ve
no business to do so. Why are you stopping?”
“Vy, sir, that’s a difficult question. I think it is
because we prefer stopping here to going on.” -
“Now mind,” exclaims the little old man, with great
vehemence, “I’ll pull you up to-morrow; I’ve often
threatened to do it; now I will.”
“Thankee, sir,” replies the cad, touching his hat with
a mock expression of gratitude;—“werry much obliged
to you indeed, sir.” Here the young men in the Omni-
bus laugh very heartily, and the old gentleman gets
very red in the face, and seems highly exasperated.
The stout gentleman in the white neckcloth, at the
other end of the vehicle, looks very prophetic, and says
that something must shortly be done with these fellows,
or there’s no saying where all this will end; and the
shabby-genteel man with the green bag, expresses his
entire concurrence in the opinion, as he has done regu-
larly every morning for the last six months.
A second Omnibus now comes up, and stops immedi-
ately behind us. Another old gentleman elevates his
cane in the air, and runs with all his might towards our
Omnibus; we watch his progress with great interest;
the door is opened to receive him, he suddenly disap-
pears—he has been spirited away by the opposition.
Hereupon the driver of the opposition taunts our people
with his having “regularly done’em out of that old swell,”
and the voice of the “old swell” is heard, vainly pro-
testing against this unlawful detention. We rattle off,
the other omnibus rattles after us, and every time we
stop to take up a passenger, they stop to take him too;
sometimes we get him; sometimes they get him; but
whoever don’t get him, say they ought to have had
him, and the cads of the respective vehicles abuse one
another accordingly.
As we arrive in the vicinity of Lincoln’s-inn-fields,
Bedford-row, and other legal haunts, we drop a great
many of our original passengers, and take up fresh ones,
who meet with a very sulky reception. It is rather
remarkable that the people already in an Omnibus,
always look at new-comers, as if they entertained
some undefined idea that they have no business to come
138 SKETCHES BY BOz.
in at all. We are quite persuaded the little old man
has some notion of this kind, and that he considers their
entry as a sort of negative impertinence.
Conversation is now entirely dropped; each person
gazes vacantly through the window in front of him,
and everybody thinks that his opposite neighbour is
staring at him. If one man gets out at Shoe-lane, and
another at the corner of Farringdon-street, the little
old gentleman grumbles, and suggests to the latter,
that if he had got out at Shoe-lane too, he would have
saved them the delay of another stoppage; whereupon
the young men laugh again, and the old gentleman
looks very solemn, and Says nothing more till he gets to
the Bank, when he trots off as fast as he can, leaviug
us to do the same, and to wish, as we walk away, that
we could impart to others any portion of the amuse-
ment we have gained for ourselves.
CHAPTER XVII
TEIE LAST CAB-DRIVER, AND THE FIRST OMNIBUS CAD.
Fall the cabriolet-drivers whom we ever had the
honour and gratification of knowing by sight—and
Our acquaintance in this way has been most extensive—
there is one who made an impression. On Our mind which
can, never be effaced, and who awakened in our bosom
a feeling of admiration and respect, which we entertain
a fatal presentiment will never be called forth again by
any human being. He was a man of most simple and
prepossessing appearance. . He was a brown-whiskered,
white-hatted, no-coated cabman; his nose was generally
red, and his bright blue eye not unfrequently stood out
in bold relief against a black border of artificial work-
manship; his boots were of the Wellington form, pulled
up to meet his corduroy knee-Smalls, or at least to
approach as near them as their dimensions would admit
of; and his neck was usually garnished with a bright
yellow handkerchief. . In summer he carried in his
mouth a flower; in winter, a straw—slight, but to a
contemplative mind, certain indications of a love of
nature, and a taste for botany. º
His cabriolet was gorgeously painted—a bright red;
THE LAST CAB-IDRIVER,. 139
and wherever he went, City or West End, Paddington
or Holloway, North, East, West, or South, there was
the red cab, bumping up against the posts at the street
Corners, and turning in and out, among hackney-
Coaches, and drays, and carts, and waggons, and Omni-
buses, and contriving by some strange means or other,
to get out of places which no other vehicle but the red
cab could ever by any possibility have contrived to get
into at all. Our fondness for that red cab was unbounded.
How we should have liked to see it in the circle at
Astley’s! Our life upon it, that it should have performed
Such evolutions as would have put the whole com-
pany to shame—Indian chiefs, knights, Swiss peasants,
and all.
Some people object to the exertion of getting into
cabs, in: others object to the difficulty of getting out
of them; we think both of these are objections which
take their rise in perverse and ill-conditioned minds.
The getting into a cab is a very pretty and graceful
process, which, when well performed, is essentially
melodramatic. First, there is the expressive pantomime
of every one of the eighteen cabmen on the stand, the
moment you raise your eyes from the ground. Then
there is your own pantomime in reply—quite a little
ballet. Four cabs immediately leave the stand, for
your especial accommodation; and the evolutions of
the animals who draw them, are beautiful in the extreme,
as they grate the wheels of the cabs against the curb-
stones, and sport playfully in the kennel. You single
Out a particular cab, and dart swiftly towards it. One
bound, and you are on the first step; turn your body
lightly round to the right, and you are on the second;
bend gracefully beneath the reins, working round to
the left at the same time, and you are in the cab. There
is no difficulty in finding a seat: the apron knocks you
comfortably into it at once, and off you go.
The getting out of a cab, is, perhaps, rather more
complicated in its theory, and a shade more difficult in
its execution. We have studied the subject a great
deal, and we think the best way is, to throw yourself
Out and trust to chance for alighting on your feet. If
you make the driver alight first, and then throw your-
self upon him, you will find that he breaks your fall
materially. In the event of your contemplating an
140 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
offer of eightpence, on no account make the tender, or
show the money, until you are safely on the pavement.
It is very bad policy attempting to save the fourpence.
You are very much in the power of a cabman, and he
considers it a kind of fee not to do you any wilful
damage. Any instruction, however, in the art of getting
Out of a cab, is wholly unnecessary if you are going
any distance, because the probability is, that you will
be shot lightly out before you have completed the
third mile. - -
We are not aware of any instance on record in which
a cab-horse has performed three consecutive miles
without going down once. ... What of that? It is all ex-
citement. And in these days of derangement of the
nervous system and universal lassitude, people are con-
tent to pay handsomely for excitement; where can it be
procured at a cheaper rate?
But to return to the red cab; it was omnipresent.
You had but to walk down Holborn, or Fleet-street, or
any of the principal thoroughfares in which there is a
great deal of traffic, and judge for yourself. You had
hardly turned into the street, when you saw a trunk or "
two, lying on the ground: an uprooted post, a hat-box,
a portmanteau, and a carpet-bag, strewed about in a
Very picturesque manner: a horse in a cab standing by,
looking about him with great unconcern; and a crowd,
shouting and screaming with delight, cooling their
flushed faces against the glass windows of a chemist’s
shop.–“What's the matter here, can you tell me?”—
“O’ny a cab, sir,”—“Anybody hurt, do you know?”—
“O’ny the fare, sir. I see him a turnin’ the corner, and
Ises to another gen’lm’n, “that’s a reg’lar little oss that,
and he’s a comin’ along rayther sweet, an’t he?’—
“He just is,’ ses the other gen’lm’n, ven bump they
comes agin the post, and out flies the fare like bricks.”
Need we say it was the red cab; or that the gentleman
with the straw in his mouth, who emerged so coolly
from the chemist’s shop and philosophically climbing
into the little dickey, started off at full gallop, was the
red cab’s licensed driver? s
The ubiquity of this red cab, and the influence it ex-
ercised over the risible muscles of justice itself, was
perfectly astonishing. You walked into the justice-
room of the Mansion-house; the whole court resounded
THE LAST CAB-DRIVER, 141
with merriment. The Lord Mayor threw himself back
in his chair, in a state of frantic delight at his own joke;
every vein in Mr. Hobler's countenance was swollen
with laughter, partly at the Lord Mayor's facetious-
ness, but more at his own; the constables and police-
officers were (as in duty bound) in ecstasies at Mr.
Hobler and the Lord Mayor combined; and the very
paupers, glancing respectfully at the beadle’s counte-
nance, tried to smile, as even he relaxed. A tall,
weazen-faced man, with an impediment in his speech,
would be endeavouring to state a case of imposition
against the red cab's driver; and the red cab's driver,
and the Lord Mayor, and Mr. Hobler, would be having
a little fun among themselves, to the inordinate delight
of everybody but the complainant. In the end, justice
would be so tickled with the red-cab-driver’s native
humour, that the fine would be mitigated, and he would
go away full gallop, in the red cab, to impose on some-
body else without loss of time.
The driver of the red cab, confident in the strength of
his own moral principles, like many other philosophers,
was wont to set the feelings and opinions of Society at
complete defiance. Generally speaking, perhaps, he
would as soon carry a fare safely to his destination, as
he would upset him—sooner, perhaps, because in that
case he not only got the money, but had the additional
amusement of running a longer heat against some
smart rival. But society made war upon him in the
shape of penalties, and he must make war upon society
in his own way. This was the reasoning of the red-
cab-driver. So, he bestowed a searching look upon the
fare, as he put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, when
he had gone half the mile, to get the money ready; and
if he brought forth eightpence, out he went.
The last time we saw our friend was one wet evening
in Tottenham court-road, when he was engaged in a
very warm and somewhat personal altercation with a
loquacious little gentleman in a green coat. Poor fel-
lowl there were great excuses to be made for him: he
had not received above eighteenpence more than his
fare, and consequently laboured under a great deal of
very natural indignation. The dispute had attained a
pretty considerable height, when at last the loquacious
little gentleman, making a mental calculation of the
142 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
distance, and finding that he had already paid more
than he ought, avowed his unalterable determination
to “pull up ’’ the cabman in the morning.
“Now, just mark this, young man,” said the little
gentleman, “I’ll pull you up, to-morrow morning.”
“No! will you though?” said our friend with a
SIle62T.
“I will,” replied the little gentleman, “mark my
words, that’s all. If I live till to-morrow morning, you
shall repent this.” *
There was a steadiness of purpose, and indignation
of speech, about the little gentleman, as he took an
angry pinch of snuff, after this last declaration, which
made a visible impression on the mind of the red-cab-
driver. He appeared to hesitate for an instant. . It
was only for an instant; his resolve was soon taken,
“You’ll pull me up, will you?” said our friend.
“I will,” jºinº the little gentleman, with even
greater vehemence than before.
“Very well,” said our friend, tucking up his shirt-
sleeves very calmly. “There’ll be three veeks for that.
Wery good ; that’ll bring me up to the middle o’ next
month. Three veeks more would carry me on to my
birthday, and then I’ve got ten pound to draw. I may
as well get board, lodgin', and washin’ till then, Out of
the county, as pay for it myself; Consequently here
Oes!”
g So, without more ado, the red-cab-driver knocked the
little gentleman down, and then called the police to
take himself into custody with all the civility in the
world.
A story is nothing without the sequel; and therefore
we may state, that to our certain knowledge, the
board, lodging and washing were all provided in
due course. We happen to know the fact, for it came
to Our knowledge thus: We went over the House of
Correction for the County of Middlesex shortly after,
to witness the operation of the silent system; and
looked on all the “wheels' with the greatest anx-
iety, in search of our long-lost friend. He was nowhere
to be seen, however, and we began to think that the
little gentleman in the green coat must have relented,
when as we were traversing the kitchen-gården, which
lies in a sequestered part of the prison, we were startled
THE LAST CAB-DRIVER, 143
by hearing a voice, which apparently proceeded from
the wall, pouring forth its soul in the plaintive air of
‘‘ all round my hat,” which was then just beginning to
form a recognised portion of our national music
We started—“What voice is that?’” said we.
The Governor shook his head. -
“Sad fellow,” he replied, “very sad. He positively
refuses to work on the wheel; so, after many trials, I
was compelled to order him into solitary confinement.
He says he likes it very much, though, and I am afraid
he does, for he lies on his back on the floor, and sings
Comic songs all-day!” - •
Shall we add that our heart had not deceived us; and
that the comic singer was no other than our eagerly-
sought friend, the red-cab-driver. -
We have never seen him since, but we have strong
reason to suspect that this noble individual was a distant
relative of a waterman of Our acquaintance, who, on
one occasion, when we were passing the coach-stand
over which he presides, after standing very quietly
to See a tall man struggle into a cab, ran up very
briskly when it was all over (as his brethren invari-
ably do), and, touching his hat, asked, as a matter of
course, for “a copper for the waterman.” Now, the
fare was by no means a handsome man; and, waxing
very indignant at the demand, he replied—“Money!
What for? Coming up and looking at me, I sup-
pose?”—“Well, sir,” rejoined the waterman, with a
smile of immovable complacency, “That’s worth two-
ence.”
p This identical waterman afterwards attained a very
prominent station in Society; and as we know some-
thing of his life, and have often thought of telling
what we do know, perhaps we shall never have a
better opportunity than the present.
Mr. William Barker, then, for that was the gentle-
man’s name, Mr. William Barker was born — but
why need we relate where Mr. William Barker was
born, or when? Why scrutinise the entries in parochial
ledgers, or seek to penetrate the Lucinian mysteries
of lying-in hospitals 2 Mr. William Barker was born,
or he had never been. There is a son—there was a
father. There is an effect—there was a cause. Surely
this is sufficient information for the most Fatima-like
144 SRETCHES BY BOZ.
curiosity; and, if it be not, we regret our inability to
supply any further evidence on the point. Can there
be a more satisfactory, or more strictly parliamentary
course ? Impossible.
We at once avow a similar inability to record at
what precise period, or by what particular process,
this gentleman’s §§ of William Barker became
corrupted into “Bill Boorker.” Mr. Barker acquired a
high standing, and no inconsiderable reputation,
among the members of that profession to which he
more peculiarly devoted his energies; and to them
he was generally known, either by the familiar appel-
lation of “Bill Boorker,” or the flattering designation
of “Aggerawatin Bill,” the latter being a playful and
expressive sobriquet, illustrative of Mr. Barker’s great
talent in “aggerawatin * and rendering wild such
subjects of Her Majesty as are conveyed from place to
place, through the instrumentality of omnibuses. Of
the early life of Mr. Barker little is known, and even that
little is involved in considerable doubt and obscurity. A
want of application, a restlessness of purpose, a thirst-
ing after porter, a love of all that is roving and cadger-
like in nature, shared in common with many other great
geniuses, appear to have been his leading character-
istics. The busy hum of a parochial free school, and
the shady repose of a country gaol, were alike ineffi-
cacious in producing the slightest alteration in Mr.
Baker's disposition. His feverish attachment to change
and variety, nothing could repress; his native daring
no punishment could subdue.
If Mr. Barker can be fairly said to have had any
weakness in his earlier years, it was an amiable one—
love; love in its most comprehensive form—a love of
ladies, liquids, and pocket-handkerchiefs. It was no
Selfish feeling; it was not confined to his own posses-
- Sions, which but too many men regard with exclusive
Complacency. No; it was a nobler love—a general
principle. It extended itself with equal force to the
property of other people.
There is something very affecting in this. It is still
more affecting to know, that such philanthropy is but
imperfectly rewarded. Bow-street, Newgate, and Mill-
bank, are a poor return for general benevolence, evinc-
ing itself in an irrepressible love for all created objects.
\ \ , ; , \ ,
THE LAST CAB-DRIV.E.R. 145
Mr. Barker felt it so. After a lengthened interview
with the highest legal authorities, he quitted his un-
grateful country, with the consent, and at the expense
of its Government; proceeded to a distant shore; and
there employed himself, like another Cincinnatus, in
clearing and cultivating the soil—a peaceful pursuit, in
which a term of seven years glided almost imper-
ceptibly away.
Whether, at the expiration of the period we have just
mentioned, the British Government required Mr. Bar-
ker’s presence here, or did not require his residence
abroad, we have no distinct means of ascertaining. We
should be inclined, however, to favour the latter posi-
tion, inasmuch as we do not find that he was advanced
to any other public post on his return, than the post at
the corner of the Haymarket, where he officiated as
assistant-waterman to the hackney-coach stand.
Seated, in this capacity, on a couple of tubs near the
curb-stone, with a brass-plate, and number suspended
round his neck by a massive chain, and his ankles curi-
Ously enveloped in haybands, he is supposed to have
made those observations on human nature which exer-
cised so material an influence over all his proceedings
in later life.
Mr. Barker had not officiated for many months in this
capacity, when the appearance of the first omnibus
caused the public mind to go in a new direction, and
prevented a great many hackney-coaches from going
in any direction at all. The genius of Mr. Barker at
once perceived the whole extent of the injury that
would be eventually inflicted on cab and coach
stands, and, by consequence, on watermen also, by the
progress of the system of which the first omnibus was
a part. He saw, too, the necessity of adopting some
more profitable profession; and his active mind at once
perceived how much might be done in the way of en-
ticing the youthful, and unwary, and shoving the old
and helpless, into the wrong buss, and carrying them
off, until, reduced to despair, they ransomed themselves
by the payment of sixpence a-head, or, to adopt his own
figurative expression in all its native beauty, “till they
was rig’larly done over, and forked out the stumpy.”
An opportunity for realising his fondest anticipations
soon presented itself. Rumours were rife on the hack-
10
146 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
ney-coach stands, that a buss was building, to run from
Lison-grove to the Bank, down Oxford-street and Hol-
born; and the rapid increase of busses on the Padding-
ton-road, encouraged the idea. Mr. Barker Secretly and
cautiously inquired in the proper quarters. The report
was correct; the “Royal William” was to make its first
journey on the following Monday. It was a crack affair
altogether. An enterprising young Cabman, of estab-
lished reputation as a dashing whip—for he had
compromised with the parents of three scrunched chil-
dren, and just “worked out ’’ his fine for knocking .
down an old lady—was the driver; and the Spirited pro-
Fº knowing Mr. Barker’s qualifications, appointed
im to the vacant office of cad on the very first appli-
cation. The buss began to run, and Mr. Barker entered
into a new suit of clothes, and on a new sphere of
action.
To recapitulate all the improvemonts introduced by
this extraordinary man, into the Omnibus system—
gradually, indeeed, but surely—would occupy a far
greater space than we are enabled to devote to this im-
perfect memoir. To him is universally assigned the
original suggestion of the practice which afterwards
became so general—of the driver of a second buss keep.
ing constantly behind the first one, and driving the pole
of his vehicle either into the door of the other, every
time it was opened, or through the body of any lady or
gentleman who might make an attempt to get into it;
a humourous and pleasant invention, exhibiting all that
originality of idea and fine bold flow of spirits so con-
spicuous in every action of this great man.
Mr Barker had opponents of course; what man in
public life has not? But even his worst enemies cannot
deny that he has taken more old ladies and gentlemen
to Paddington who wanted to go to the Bank, and more
old ladies and gentlemen to the Bank who wanted to
go to Paddington, than any six men on the road; and
however much malevolent spirits mayºpretend to doubt
the accuracy of the statement, they well know it to be
an established fact, that he has forcibly conveyed a
variety of ancient persons of either sex, to both places,
who had not the slightest or most distant intention of
going anywhere at all.
Mr. Barker was the identical cad who nobly distin-
THE LAST CAB-DRIVER, - 14?
guished himself, some time since, by keeping a trades-
man on the step—the omnibus going at full speed all
the time—till he had thrashed him to his entire satis-
faction, and finally throwing him away when he had
quite done with him. Mr. Barker it ought to have been,
who honestly indignant at being ignominiously ejected
from a house of public entertainment, kicked the land-
lord in the knee, and thereby caused his death. We
Say it ought to have been Mr. Barker, because the action
Was not a common One, and could have emanated from
no Ordinary mind.
It has now become matter of history; it is recorded in
the Newgate Calendar; and we wish we could attribute
this piece of daring heroism to Mr. Barker. We regret
being compelled to state that it was not performed by
him. Would, for the family credit we could add, that
it was achieved by his brother!
It was in the exercise of the nicer details of his pro-
fession, that Mr. Barker’s knowledge of human nature
was beautifully displayed. He could tell at a glance
where a passenger wanted to go to, and would shout the
name of the place accordingly, without the slightest
reference to the real destination of the vehicle. He
knew exactly the kind of old lady that would be too
much flurried by the process of pushing in, and pulling
Out of the caravan, to discover where she had been put
down, until too late; had an intuitive perception of
what was passing in a passenger’s mind, when he
inwardly resolved to “pull that cad up to-morrow morn-
ing; ” and never failed to make himself agreeable to
female servants, whom he would place next the door,
and talk to all the way. C
Human judgment is never infallible, and it would
Occasionally happen that Mr. Barker experimentalised
with the timidity or forbearance of the wrong person,
in which case a summons to a police-office, was, on
more than 'One occasion, followed by a committal to
prison. It was not in the power of trifles such as these,
however, to subdue the freedom of his spirit. As soon
as they passed away, he resumed the duties of his pro-
fession with unabated ardour.
We have spoken of Mr. Barker and of the red-cab-
driver in the past tense. Alas! Mr. Barker has again
become an absentee; and the class of men to which they
148 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
both belonged are fast disappearing. Improvement has
Peered beneath the aprons of our cabs, and penetrated
to the very innermost recesses of our omnibuses. Dirt
and fustian will vanish before cleanliness and livery.
Slang will be forgotten when civility becomes general:
and that enlightened, eloquent, Sage, and profound
body, the Magistracy of London, will be deprived of
half their amusement, and half their occupation.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A PARLIAMENTARY SEETCH.
WE hope our readers will not be alarmed at this
rather ominous title. We assure them that
we are not about to become political, neither have we
the slightest intention of being more prosy than usual—
if we can help it. It has occurred to us that a slight
sketch of the general aspect of “the House,” and the
crowds that resort to it on the night of an important
debate, would be productive of Some amusement; and
as we have made some few calls at the aforesaid house
in our time—have visited it quite often enough for our
purpose, and a great deal too often for Our Own personal
eace and comfort—we have determined to attempt the
ãº. Dismissing from our minds, therefore, all
that feeling of awe, which vague ideas of breaches of
privilege, Serjeant-at-arms, heavy denunciations, and
still heavier fees, are calculated to awaken, we enter
at once into the building, and upon our subject.
Half-past four o’clock—and at five the mover of the
Address will be “on his legs,” as the newspapers
announce sometimes by way of novelty, as if speakers
were occasionally in the habit of standing on their heads.
The members are pouring in, one after the other, in
shoals. The few spectators who can obtain standing-
room in the passages, Scrutinise them as they pass, with
the utmost interest, and the man who can identify a
member occasionally, becomes a person of great im-
portance. Every now and then you hear earnest
whispers of “That's Sir John Thomson.” “Which?
him with the gilt order round his neck?” “No, no;
A PARLIAMENTARY SEETCH. 149
that’s one of the messengers—that other with the yellow
gloves, is Sir John Thomson.” “Here’s Mr. Smith.”
“Lor!” “Yes, how d'ye do, sir?—(He is our new
member)—How do you do, sir?” r. Smith stops:
turns round, with an air of enchanting urbanity (for
the rumour of aii intended dissolution has been very
extensively circulated this morning); seizes both the
hands of his gratified constituent, and, after greeting
him with the most enthusiastic warmth, darts into the
lobby with an extraordinary display of ardour in the
ublic cause, leaving an immense impression in his
avour on the mind of his “fellow-townsman.”
The arrivals increase in number, and the heat and noise
increase in very unpleasant proportion. The livery ser-
vants form a complete lane on either side of the passage,
and you reduce yourself into the smallest possible space
to avoid being turned out. You see that stout man
with the hoarse voice, in the blue coat, queer crowned,
broad-brimmed hat, white corduroy breeches, and great
boots, who has been talking incessantly for half an
hour past, and whose importance has occasioned no
Small quantity of mirth among the strangers. That is
the great conservator of the peace of Westminster.
You cannot fail to have remarked the grace with which
he saluted the noble, Lord who passed just now, or the
excessive dignity of his air, as he expostulates with
the crowd. He is rather out of temper now, in con-
sequence of the very irreverent behaviour of those two
young fellows behind him, who have done nothing
but laugh all the time they have been here.
“Will they divide to-night, do you think, Mr.—?”
timidly inquires a little thin man in the crowd, hoping
to conciliate the man of office.
“How can you ask such questions, sir?” replies the
functionary, in an incredibly loud key, and pettishly
grasping the thick stick he carries in his right hand.
‘‘Pray do not, sir, I beg of you; pray do not, sir.” The
little man looks remarkably out of his element, and the
uninitiated part of the throng are in positive convul-
Sions of laughter.
Just at this moment, some unfortunate individual
appears, with a very Smirking air, at the bottom of the
long passage. He has managed to elude the vigilance
of the special constable down stairs, and is evidently
150 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
congratulating himself on having made his way so
far. ()
“Go back, sir—you must not come here,” shouts the
hoarse one, with tremendous emphasis of voice and
gesture, the moment the offender catches his eye.
The stranger pauses. - -
“Do you hear, sir—will you go back?” continues the
official dignitary, gently pushing the intruder some
half-dozen yards. . º
“Come, don’t push me,” replies the Stranger, turning
angrily round. º *
“I will, sir.”
“You WOn’t Sir.”
“Go out, sir.”
“Take your hands off me, sir.”
“Go out of the passage, sir.”
“You’re a Jack-in-office, sir.”
“A what?” ejaculates he of the boots. -
“A Jack-in-office, sir, and a very insolent fellow,’
reiterates the stranger, now completely in a passion.
“Pray do not force me to put you out, sir,” retorts the
other—“pray do not—my instructions are to keep this
passage clear—it's the Speaker's orders, sir.”
“D–n the Speaker, sir!” shouts the intruder.
“Here, Wilson!—Collins!” gasps the officer, actually
paralysed at this insulting expression, which in his
mind is all but high treason; “take this man out—take
him out, I say! How dare you, sir?” and down goes
the unfortunate man five stairs at a time, turnin
round at every stoppage, to come back again, an
denouncing bitter vengeance against the commander-
in-chief, and all his supernumaries. e
“Make way, gentlemen, pray make way for the
Members, I beg of you!” shouts the zealous officer,
turning back, and preceding a whole string of the lib-
eral and independent.
You see this ferocious-looking gentleman, with a com-
§.” almost as sallow as his linen, and whose large
lack moustache would give him the appearance of a
figure in a hair-dresser's window, if his countenance
possessed the thought which is communicated to those
waxen caricatures of the human face divine. He is ar’
militia-officer, and the most amusing person in the
House, Can anything be more exquisitely absurd than
...→ - 4 . . .
A PARLIAMENTARY SKETCH. 151
the burlesque grandeur of his air, as he strides up to
the lobby, his eyes rolling like those of a Turk’s head
in a cheap Dutch clock? He never appears without
that bundle of dirty papers which he carries under his
left arm, and which are generally supposed to be the
miscellaneous estimates for 1804, or some equally im-
portant documents. He is very punctual in his attend-
ance at the House, and his self-satisfied “He-ar-He-ar,”
is not unfrequently the signal for a general titter.
This is the gentleman who once actually sent a mes-
senger up to the Strangers’ gallery in the old House of
* Commons, to inquire the name of an individual who
was using an eye-glass, in order that he might com-
plain to the Speaker that the person in question was
quizzing him! On another occasion, he is reported to
have repaired to Bellamy’s kitchen—a refreshment
room, where persons who are not Members are admitted
On Sufferance, as it were-and perceiving two or three
ſº at supper, who he was aware were not Mem-
ers, and could not in that place very well resent his
behaviour, he indulged in the pleasantry of sitting with
his booted leg on the table at which they were supping!
He is generally harmless, though, and always amusing.
By dint of patience, and some little interest with our
friend the constable, we have contrived to make our
way to the Lobby, and you can just manage to catch an
occasional glimpse of the House, as the door is opened
for the admission of Members. It is tolerably full
already, and little groups of Members are congregated
ºther here, discussing the interesting topics of the
8, W. -
That smart-looking fellow in the black coat with vel-
vet facings and cuffs, who wears his D’Orsay hat so
rakishly, is “Honest Tom,” a metropolitan representa-
tive; and the large man in the cloak with the white
lining—not the man by the pillar: the other, with the
light hair hanging over his coat-collar behind,-is his
colleague. The quiet, gentlemanly-looking man in the
blue surtout, grey trousers, white neckerchief and
#. whose closely-buttoned coat displays his manly
gure and broad chest to great advantage, is a very
well-known character. He has fought a great many
battles in his time, and conquered like the heroes of
old, with no other arms than those the gods gave him.
152 SRETCHES BY BOZ.
The old, hard-featured man who is standing near him,
is really a good specimen of a class of men now nearly
extinct. He is a country Member, and has been from
time whereof the memory of man is not to the con-
trary. Look at his loose, wide, brown coat, with capa-
cious pockets on each side; the knee-breeches and
boots, the immensely long waistcoat, and silver watch-
chain dangling below it, the wide-brimmed brown hat,
and the white handkerchief tied in a great bow, with
straggling ends Sticking out beyond his shirt-frill. It
is a costume one seldom sees nowadays, and when
the few who wear it have died off, it will be quite
extinct. He can tell you long stories of Fox, Pitt,
Sheridan, and Canning, and how much better the House
was managed in those times, when they used to get up
at eight or nine o’clock, except on regular field-days, of
which everybody was apprised beforehand. He has a
great contempt for all young Members of Parliament, and
thinks it quite impossible thatra man can say anything
worth hearing unless he has sat in the House for fifteen
years at least, without saying anything at all. He is
of opinion that “that young Macaulay’ was a regular
imposter; he allows that Lord Stanley may do some-
thing one of these days, but “he’s too young, sir—too
young.” He is an excellent authority on points of pre-
cedent, and when he grows talkative after his wine,
will tell you how Sir Somebody. Something, when he
was whipper-in for the Government, brought four men
out of their beds to vote in the majority, three of whom
died on their way home again; how the House once
divided on the question that fresh candles be now
brought in; how the Speaker was once upon a time left
in the chair by accident, at the conclusion of business,
and was obliged to sit in the House by himself for three
hours, till some Member could be knocked up and
brought back again, to move the adjournment; and a
great many other anecdotes of a similar description.
There he stands, leaning on his stick; looking at the
throng of Exquisites around him with most profound
contempt: and conjuring up, before his mind’s eye, the
scenes he beheld in the old House in days gone by, when
his own feelings were fresher and brighter, and when,
as he imagines, wit, talent, and patriotism flourished
more brightly, too.
A PARLIAMENTARY SKETCH. 153
You are curious to know who that young man in the
rough great-coat is, who has accosted every Member
who has entered the House since we have been stand-
ing here. He is not a Member; he is only an “heredi-
tary bondsman,” or, in other words, an Irish correspond-
ent of an Irish newspaper, who has just procured, his
forty-second frank from a Member whom he never saw
in his life before. There he goes again—another! Bless
the man, he has his hat and pockets full already.
We will try our fortune at the Strangers' gallery,
though the nature of ſhe debate encourages very little
hope of success. What on earth are you about? Hold-
ing up your order as if it were a talisman at whose
command the wicket would fly open? Nonsense. Just
preserve the order for an autograph, if it be worth
keeping at all, and make your appearance at the door
with your thumb and forefinger expressively inserted
in your waistcoat-pocket. This tall stout man in black
is the door-keeper. “Any room?”—“Not an inch—
two or three dozen gentlemen waiting down stairs on
the chance of somebody’s going out.” Pull out your
purse—“Are you quite sure there’s no room?”—“I’ll
go and look,” replies the door-keeper, with a wistful
glance at your purse, ‘‘ but I’m afraid there’s not.”
He returns, and with real feeling assures you that it
is morally impossible to get near the gallery. It is of
no use waiting. When you are refused admission into
the Strangers’ gallery at the House of Commons,
under such circumstances, you may return home
thoroughly satisfied that the place must be remarkably
full indeed.*
Retracing our steps through the long passage, de-
scending the stairs, and crossing Palace-yard, we halt
at a small temporary door-way adjoining the King's
entrance to the House of Lords. The order of the
sergeant-at-arms will admit you into the Reporters’
gallery, from whence you can obtain a tolerably good
view of the House. Take care of the stairs, they are
none of the best; through this little wicket—there. As
soon as your eyes become a little used to the mist of
the place, and the glare of the chandeliers below you,
you will see that Some unimportant personage on the
*This paper was written before the practice of exhibiting Members of Parlia-
ment, Iiko other curiosities, for the small charge of half-a-crown, was abolished,
154 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
-*
Ministerial side of the House (to your right hand) is
speaking, amidst a hum of voices and confusion which
would rival Babel, but for the circumstance of its being
all in One language.
The “hear, hear,” which occasioned that laugh, pro-
ceeded from our warlike friend with the moustache; he
is sitting on the back seat against the wall, behind the
Member who is speaking, looking as ferocious and in-
tellectual as usual. Take One look around you, and
retire! The body of the House and the side galleries
are full of Members; some, with their legs on the back
of the opposite seat; some, with theirs stretched out to
their utmost length on the floor; some going out, others
coming in; all talking, laughing, lounging, coughing,
O-ing, questioning, or groaning; presenting a conglom-
eration of noise and confusion, to be met with in no
other place in existence, not even excepting Smithfield
on a...market-day, or a cockpit in its glory. -
But let us not omit to notice Bellamy’s kitchen, or, in
other words, the refreshment-room, common to both
Houses of Parliament, where Ministerialists and Oppo-
sitionists, Whigs and Tories, Radicals, Peers, and De-
structives, strangers from the gallery, and the moro
favoured strangers from below the bar, are alike at
liberty to resort; where divers honourable Members
prove their perfect independence by remaining during
the whole of a heavy debate, solacing themselves with
the creature comforts; and whence they are summoned
by whippers-in, when the House is on the point of
dividing; either to give their “conscientious votes” on
questions of which they are conscientiously innocent of
knowing anything whatever, or to find a vent for the
playful exuberance of their wine-inspired fancies, in
boisterous shouts of ‘‘Divide,” occasionally varied with
a little howling, barking, crowing, or other ebullutions
of senatorial pleasantry.
When you have ascended the narrow staircase which,
in the present temporary House of Commons, leads to
the place we are describing, you will probably observe
a couple of rooms on your right hand, with tables spread
for dining. Neither of these is the kitchen, although
they are both devoted to the same purpose; the kitchen
is further on to our left, up these half-dozen stairs. Be-
fore we ascend the staircase, however, we must request
A PARLIAMENTARY SKETCH. 155
you to pause in front of this little bar-place with the
sash-windows; and beg your particular attention to the
steady honest-looking old fellow in black, who is its
sole occupant. Nicholas (we do not mind mentioning
the old fellow’s name, for if Nicholas be not a public
man, who is?—and public men’s names are public prop-
erty)—Nicholas is the Butler of Bellamy’s, and has
held the same place, dressed exactly in the same man-
ner, and said precisely the same things, ever since the
oldest of its present visitors can remember. An ex-
cellent servant Nicholas is—an unrivalled compounder
of salad-dressing—an admirable preparer of soda-water
and lemon—a special mixer of cold grog and punch
—and, above all, an unequalled judge of cheese. If
the old man have such a thing as vanity in his compo-
sition, this is certainly his pride; and if it be possible
to imagine that any thing in this world could disturb
his impenetrable calmness, we should say it would be
the doubting his judgment on this important point.
We needn’t tell you all this, however, for if you have
an atom of observation, one glance at his sleek, know-
ing-looking head and face—his prim white neckerchief,
with the wooden tie into which it had been regularly
folded for twenty years past, merging by imperceptible
degrees into a small-plaited shirt-frill—and his Com-
fortable-looking form encased in a well-brushed suit of
black—would give you a better idea of his real character
than a column of our poor description could convey.
Nicholas is rather out of his element now; he cannot
see the kitchen as he used to in the old House; there,
one window of his glass-case opened into the room, and
then, for the edification and behoof of more juvenile
questioners, he would stand for an hour together,
answering deferential questions about Sheridan, and
Perceval, and Castlereagh, and Heaven knows who
beside, with manifest delight, always inserting a
“Mister’ before every commoner’s name.
Nicholas, like all men of his age and standing, has a
great idea of the degeneracy of the times. He seldom
expresses any political opinions, but we managed to
ascertain, just before the passing of the Reform Bill,
that Nicholas was a thorough Reformer. What was
our astonishment to discover shortly after the meeting
of the first reformed Parliament, that he was a most
156 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
inveterate and decided Tory! It was very odd: some
men change their opinions from necessity, others from
expediency, others from inspiration; but that Nicholas
should undergo any change in any respect, was an
event we had never contemplated, and should have
considered impossible. His strong opinion against the
clause which empowered the metropolitan districts to
return Members to Parliament, too, was perfectly
unaccountable.
We discovered the secret at last; the metropolitan
Members always dined at home. The rascals! As for
giving additional Members to Ireland, it was even .
worse—decidedly unconstitutional. Why, sir, an Irish:
Member would go up there, and eat more dinner than
three English Members put together. He took no wine;
drank table-beer by the half-gallon: and went home to
Manchester-buildings, or Milbank-street, for his whis-
key-and-water. And what was the consequence? Why
the concern lost—actually lost, Sir—by his patronage.
A queer fellow is Nicholas, and as completely a part
of the building as the house itself. We wonder he ever
left the old place, and fully expected to see in the
papers, the morning after the fire, a pathetic account
of an old gentleman in black, of decent appearance,
who was seen at one of the upper windows when the
flames were at their height, and declared his resolute
intention of falling with the floor. He must have been
got out by force. However, he was got out—here he
is again, looking as he always does, as if he had been
in a bandbox ever since the last session. There he is,
at his old post every night, just as we have described
him: and, as characters are Scarce, and faithful ser-
vants scarcer, long may he be there say we!
Now, when you have taken your seat in the kitchen,
and duly noticed the large fire and roasting-jack at
one end of the room—the little table for washing glasses
and draining jugs at the other—the clock over the win-
dow opposite St. Margaret's Church—the deal tables
and wax candles—the damask table-cloths and bare
floor—the plate and china. On the tables, and the grid-
iron on the fire; and a few other anomalies peculiar to
the place—we will point out to your notice two or three
of the people present, whose station or absurdities
render them the most worthy of remark.
A PARLIAMENTARY SEETCH. 157
It is half-past twelve o’clock, and as the division is
not expected for an hour or two, a few Members are
lounging away the time here, in preference to standing
at the bar of the House, or sleeping in one of the side
galleries. That singularly awkward and ungainly-
looking man, in the brownish-white hat, with the
straggling black trousers which reach about half-way
down the leg of his boots, who is leaning against the
meat-screen, apparently deluding himself into the be-
lief that he is thinking about something, is a splendid
sample of a Member of the House of Commons concen-
trating in his own person the wisdom of a constituency.
Observe the wig, of a dark hue but indescribable colour,
for if it be naturally brown, it has acquired a black tint
by long service, and if it be naturally black, the same
cause has imparted to it a tinge of rusty brown; and
remark how very materially the great blinker-like
spectacles assist the expression of that most intelligent
face. Seriously speaking, did you ever see a counten-
ance so expressive of the most hopeless extreme of
heavy dulness, or behold a form so strangely put to-
ether? He is no great speaker: but when he does ad-
ress the House, the effect is absolutely irresistible.
The small gentleman with the sharp nose, who has
just saluted him is a Member of Parliament, an ex-
Alderman, and a sort of amateur fireman. He, and
the celebrated fire-man’s dog, were observed to be re-
markably active at the conflagration of the two Houses
of Parliament—they both ran up and down, and ila
and out, getting under people's feet, and into every-
body’s way, fully impressed with the belief, that they
were doing a great deal of good, and barking tre-
mendously. The dog went quietly back to his kennel
with the engine, but the gentleman kept up such an
incessant noise for some weeks after the occurrence,
that he became a positive nuisance. As no more par-
liamentary fires have occurred, however, and as he
has consequently had no more opportunites of writing
to the newspapers to relate how, by way of preserv-
ing pictures, he cut them out of their frames, and
performed other great national services, he has grad-
ually relapsed into his old state of calmness.
That female in black—not the one whom the Lord’s-
Day-Bill Baronet has just chucked under the chin;
158 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
t
the shorter of the two—is “Jane: ” the Hebe of Bella-
my’s. Jane is as great a character as Nicholas, in her
way. Her leading features are a thorough contempt
for the great majority of her visitors; her predomi-
nant quality, love of admiration, as you cannot fail to
observe, if you mark the glee with which she listens
to something the young Member near her mutters
somewhat unintelligibly in her ear (for his speech is
rather thick from some cause or other), and how play-
fully she digs the handle of a fork into the arm with
which he detains her, by Way of reply. :
Jane is no bad hand at repartees, and showers them .
about, with a degree of liberality and total absence of
reserve or constraint, which occasionally excites no
small amazement in the minds of strangers. She cuts
jokes with Nicholas, too, but looks up to him with a
great deal of respect; the immovable solidity with
which Nicholas receives the aforesaid jokes, and looks
on at certain pastoral friskings and rompings (Jane's
only recreations, and they are very innocent too) which
occasionally take place in the passage, is not the least
amusing part of his character.
The two persons who are seated at the table in the
corner, at the farther end of the room, have been con-
stant guests here, for many years past; and one of
them has feasted within these walls, many a time,
with the most brilliant characters of a brilliant period.
He has gone up to the other House since then; the
greater part of his boon companions have shared
Yorick’s fate, and his visits to Bellamy’s are compar-
atively few. - * *
If he really be eating his supper now, at what hour
can he possibly have dined! A second solid mass of
rump-steak has disappeared, and lie eats the first in four
minutes and three quarters, by the clock over the win-
dow. Was there ever such a personification of Fal-
staff! Mark the air with which he gloats over that
Stilton as he removes the napkin which has been
placed beneath his chim to catch the superfluous gravy
of the steak, and with what gusto he imbibes the
porter which has been fetched, expressly for him, in
the pewter pot. Listen to the hoarse sound of that
voice, kept down as it is by layers of solids, and
deep draughts of rich wine, and tell us if you
t º —s &
PUBLIC DINNERs. 159
ever saw such a perfect picture of a regular gourmand;
and whether he is not exactly the man whom you
would pitch upon as having been the partner of Sheri-
dan’s parliamentary carouses, the volunteer driver of
the hackney-coach, that took him home, and the
involuntary upsetter of the whole party? **
What an amusing contrast between his voice and ap-
pearance, and that of the spare Squeaking old man, who
sits at the same table, and who elevating a little cracked
bantam sort of voice to its highest pitch, invokes dam-
nation upon his own eyes or somebody else’s at the
commencement of every sentence he utters. “The
Captain,” as they call him, is a very old frequenter of
Bellamy’s; much addicted to stopping “after the House
is up * (an inexpiable crime in Jane's eyes), and a com-
plete walking reservoir of spirits and water. -
The old Peer—or rather, the old man—for his peerage
is of comparatively recent date—has a huge tumbler of
hot punch brought him; and the other damns and drinks,
and drinks and damns, and Smokes. Members arrive
every moment in a great bustle to report that “The
Chancellor of the Exchequer’s up,” and to get glasses of
brandy-and-water to sustain them during the division;
people who have ordered Supper, countermand it, and
prepare to go down stairs, when suddenly a bell is
heard to ring with tremendous violence, and a cry of
“Di-vi-sion!” is heard in the passage. This is enough;
away rush the members pell-mell. The room is cleared
in an instant; the noise rapidly dies away; you hear
the creaking of the last boot on the last stair, and are
left alone with the leviathan of rump-steaks.
CHAPTER XIX
P U B L I C D IN N E R. S.
LL public dinners in London, from the Lord
A- Mayor's annual banquet at Guildhall, to the
Chimney-sweepers’ anniversary at White Conduit
House; from the Goldsmiths' to the Butchers', from the
Sheriffs’ to the Licensed Victuallers', are amusing
160 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
scenes. Of all entertainments of this description, how-
ever, we think the annual dinner of some public charity
is the most amusing. At a Company’s dinner, the
people are nearly all alike—regular old stagers, who
make it a matter of business, and a thing not to be
laughed at. At a political dinner, everybody is disa-
greeable, and, inclined to Speechify—much the same
thing, by the by; but at a charity dinner you see people
of all sorts, kinds, and descriptions. The wine may
not be remarkably Special, to be sure, and we have
heard some hard-hearted monsters grumble at the col-
lection; but we really think the amusement to be de-
rived from the occasion, Sufficient to counterbalance
even these disadvantages.
Let us suppose you are induced to attend a dinner of
this description—“Indigent Orphans' Friends’ Benevo-
lent Institution,” we think it is. The name of the
charity is a line or two longer, but never mind the rest.
You have a distinct recollection, however, that you
urchased a ticket at the Solicitation of some charitable
riend: and you deposit yourself in a hackney-coach,
the driver of which—no doubt that you may do the
thing in style—turns a deaf ear to your earnest en-
treaties to be set down at the corner of Great Queen-
street, and persists in carrying you to the very door of
the Freemasons’, round which a crowd of people are as-
sembled to witness the entrance of the indigent or-
phans’ friends. You hear great Speculations as you pay
the fare, on the possibility of your being the noble
Lord who is announced to fill the chair On the occasion,
and are highly gratified to hear it eventually decided
that you are only a “wocalist.”
The first thing that strikes you, on your entrance, is
the astonishing importance of the committee. You ob-
serve a door on the first landing, carefully guarded by
two waiters, in and out of which stout gentlemen with
very red faces keep running, with a degree of speed
highly unbecoming the gravity of persons of their
years and corpulency. You pause, quite alarmed at the
bustle, and thinking, in your innocence, that two or
three people must have been carried out of the dining-
room in fits, at the very least. You are immediately un-
deceived by the water—“Up-stairs, if you please, sir;
this is the committee-room.” Up-stairs you go, accord-
PUBLIC DINNERS. 161
ingly; wondering, as you mount, what the duties of
the committee can be, and whether they ever do any-
thing beyond confusing each other, and running over
the waiters.
Having deposited your hat and cloak, and received a
remarkably small scrap of pasteboard in exchange
(which, as a matter of course, you lose, before you re-
quire it again), you enter the hall, down which there
are three long tables for the less distinguished guests,
with a cross table on a raised platform at the upper end
for the reception of the very particular friends of the
indigent Orphans. Being fortunate enough to find a
plate without anybody’s card in it, you wisely seat
yourself at once, and have a little leisure to look about
you. Waiters, with wine-baskets in their hands, are
placing decanters of sherry down the tables, at very
respectable distances; melancholy-looking saltcellars,
and decayed vinegar-cruets, which might have belonged
to the parents of the indigent Orphans in their time, are
scattered at distant intervals on the cloth; and the
knives and forks look as if they had done duty at every
public dinner in London since the accession of George
the First. The musicians are now scraping and grating
and screwing tremendously—playing no notes but notes
of preparation; and several gentlemen are gliding along
the side of the tables, looking into plate after plate
with frantic eagerness, the expression of their coun-
tenances growing more and more dismal as they meet
with everybody’s card but their own. -
You turn round to take a look at the table behind you,
and—not being in the habit of attending public din-
ners—are somewhat struck by the appearance of the
party on which your eyes rest. One of its principal
members appears to be a little man, with a long and
rather inflamed face, and grey hair brushed bolt upright
in front; he wears a wisp of black silk round his neck,
without any stiffener, as an apology for a neckerchief,
and is addressed by his companions by the familiar
appellation of “Fitz,” or some such monosyllable. Near
him is a stout man in a white neckerchief and buff
waistcoat, with shining dark hair, cut very short in
front, and a great round healthy-looking face, on which
he studiously preserves a half-sentimental simper. Next
him, again, is a large-headed man, with black hair and
* * - 11. -
162 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
bushy whiskers; and opposite them are two or three
others, one of whom is a little round-faced person, in a
dress-stock and blue under-waistcoat. There is some-
thing peculiar in their air and manner, though you
could hardly describe what it is; you cannot divest your-
self of the idea that they have come for some other
purpose than mere eating and drinking. You have no
time to debate the matter, however, for the waiters (who
have been arranged in lines down the room, placing
the dishes on table), retire to the lower end; the dark
man in the blue coat and bright buttons, who has the
direction of the music, looks up to the gallery, and calls
out ‘‘ band’” in a very loud voice; out burst the orchestra,
up rise the visitors, in march fourteen stewards, each
with a long wand in his hand, like the evil genius in a
pantomime; then the chairman, then the titled visitors;
they all make their way up the room, as fast as they
can, bowing and Smiling, and Smirking, and looking re-
markably amiable. The applause ceases, grace is said,
the clatter of plates and dishes begins; and every one
appears highly gratified, either with the presence of the
distinguished visitors, or the commencement of the
anxiously expected dinner. -
As to the dinner itself—the mere dinner—it goes off
much the same everywhere. Tureens of soup are
emptied with awful rapidity—waiters take plates of tur-
bot away, to get lobster-sauce, and bring back plates of
Jobster-sauce without turbot; people who can carve poul-
try, are great fools if they own it, and people who can’t,
have no wish to learn. The knives and forks form a
pleasing accompaniment to Auber's music, and Auber's
music, would form a pleasing accompaniment to the
dinner, if you could hear anything besides the cymbals.
The substantials disappear—moulds of jelly vanish like
lightning—hearty eaters wipe their foreheads, and ap-
pear rather overcome with their recent exertions—
people who have looked very cross hitherto, become
remarkably bland, and ask you to take wine in the most
friendly manner possible—old gentlemen direct your
attention to the ladies' gallery, and take great pains to
impress you with the fact that the charity is always
#.º. favoured in this respect—every one appears
isposed to become talkative—and the hum of conver-
sation is loud and general,
PUBLIC DINNERS. 163
“Pray, silence, gentlemen, if you please, for Nom
nobis 1’’ shouts the toast-master with stentorian lungs—a
toast-master’s shirt-front, waistcoat, and neckerchief,
by the by, always exhibit three distinct shades of cloudy-
white. —“Pray, silence, gentlemen, for Nom nobis/’”
The singers, whom you discover to be no other than the
very party that excited your curiosity at first, after
“pitching ” their voices immediately begin too-tooing
most dismally, on which the regular old stagers burst
into occasional cries of “Sh—Sh—waiters 1—Silence,
waiters—stand still, waiters—keep back, waiters,” and
other exorcisms, delivered in a tone of indignant re-
monstrance. The grace is soon concluded, and the
company resume their seats. The uninitiated portion
of the guests applaud. Non mobis as vehemently as if
it were a capital comic song, greatly to the scandal and
indignation of the regular diners, who immediately at-
tempt to quell this sacrilegious approbation, by cries of
“Hush, hush l’’ whereupon the others, mistaking these
Sounds for hisses, applaud more tumultuously than
before, and, by way of placing their approval be-
yond the possibility of doubt, shout “Encore l’ most
vociferously.
The moment the noise ceases, up starts the toast-
master:—‘‘ Gentlemen, charge your glasses, if you
please!” Decanters having been handed about, and
glasses filled, the toast-master proceeds, in a regular
ascending scale;—“Gentlemen—air—you—all charged?
Pray—silence—gentlemen—for-the–cha—i-r!” The
chairman rises, and, after stating that he feels it quite
unnecessary to preface the toast he is about to propose
with any observations whatever, wanders into a maze
of sentences, and flounders about in the most extra-
ordinary manner, presenting a lamentable spectacle of
mystified humanity, until he arrives at the words,
“ constitutional sovereign of these realms,” at which
elderly gentlemen exclaim “Bravo!” and hammer the
table tremendously with their knife-handles. “Under
any circumstances, it would give him the greatest
pride, it would give him the greatest pleasure—he might
almost say, it would afford him satisfaction [cheers] to
propose that toast. What must be his feelings, then,
when he has the gratification of announcing, that he
has received her Majesty’s commands to apply to the
164 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Treasurer of Her Majesty’s Household, for her Majesty's
annual donation of 25l., in aid of the funds of this
charity!” This announcement (which has been regu-
larly made by every chairman, since the first founda-
tion of the charity, forty-two years ago) calls forth the
most vociferous applause; the toast is drunk with a
great deal of cheering and knocking; and “God Save
the Queen’’ is sung by the “professional gentlemen;”
the unprofessional gentlemen joining in the chorus, and
giving the national anthem an effect which the news-
papers, with great justice, describe as “perfectly
electrical.” ſº -
. The other “ loyal and patriotic” toasts having been
drunk with all due enthusiasm, a comic song having
been well sung by the gentleman with the small necker-
chief, and a sentimental one by the second of the party,
we come to the most important toast of the evening—
“Prosperity to the charity.” Here again we are com-
pelled to adopt newspaper phraseology, and to express
our regret at being “precluded from giving even the
substance of the noble lord’s observations.” Suffice it
to say, that the speech, which is somewhat of the
longest, is rapturously received; and the toast having
been drunk, the stewards (looking more important than
ever) leave the room, and presently return, heading a
procession of indigent Orphans, boys and girls, who
walk round the room, curtseying, and bowing, and
treading on each other's heels, and looking very much
as if they would like a glass of wine apiece, to the high
gratification of the company generally, and especially
of the lady patronesses in the gallery. Eacewnt chil-
dren, and re-enter stewards, each with a blue plate in
his hand. The band plays a lively air; the majority of
the company put their hands in their pockets and look
rather serious, and the noise of sovereigns, rattling on
crockery, is heard from all parts of the room.
After a short interval, occupied in singing and toast-
ing, the Secretary puts on his spectacles, and proceeds
to read the report and list of subscriptions, the latter
being listened to with great attention. “Mr. Smith,
One guinea—Mr. Tompkins, one guinea—Mr. Wilson,
One guinea—Mr. Hickson, one guinea—Mr. Nixon, one
guinea—Mr. Charles Nixon, one guinea—[hear, hear!]
—Mr. James Nixon, one guinea—Mr. Thomas Nixon,
\ ,
PUBLIC DINNERS. 165
one pound one [tremendous applause]. Lord Fitz Binkle,
the chairman of the day, in addition to an annual
donation of fifteen pounds—thirty guineas [prolonged
knocking: several gentlemen knock the stems off their
wine-glasses, in the vehemence of their approbation].
Lady Fitz Binkle, in addition to an annual donation of
ten pound—twenty pound ’ [protracted knocking and
shouts of ‘‘Bravo!”]. The list being at length con-
cluded, the chairman rises and proposes the health of
the secretary, than whom he knows no more zealous or
estimable individual. The secretary, in returning
thanks, observes that he knows no more excellent indi-
vidual that the chairman—except the senior officer of
the charity, whose health he begs to propose. The
senior officer in returning thanks, observes that he
knows no more worthy man than the secretary—except
Mr. Walker, the auditor, whose health he begs to pro-
pose. Mr. Walker, in returning thanks, discovers some
other estimable individual to whom alone the senior
officer is inferior—and so they go on toasting and laud-
ing and thanking: the only other toast of importance
being “The Lady Patronesses now present!” on which
all the gentlemen turn their faces towards the ladies’
gallery, shouting tremendously; and little priggish men,
who have imbibed more wine than usual, kiss their
hands and exhibit distressing contortions of visage.
We have protracted our dinner to so great a length,
that we have hardly time to add one word by way of
grace. We can only entreat our readers not to imagine,
because we have attempted to extract some amusement
from a charity dinner, that we are at all disposed to
underrate, either the excellence of the benevolent in-
Stitutions with which London abounds, or the estimable
motives of those who support them,
166 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
CHAPTER XX.
T H E F I R S T O F M A. Y.
“Now ladies, up in the sky-parlour: only once a year, if you please?”
YOUNG LADY WITH BRASS LADLE.
“Sweep—sweep—s W-e-ep?'"
ILLEGAL WATCHWORD,
THE first of May! There is, a merry freshness in the
sound, calling to our minds a thousand thoughts of
all that is pleasant and beautiful in nature, in her most
delightful form. What man is there, over whose mind
a bright spring morning does not exercise a magic in-
fluence—carrying him back to the days of his childish
sports, and conjuring up before him the old green field
with its gently-waving trees, where the birds sang as
he has never heard them since—where the butterfly
fluttered far more gaily than he ever sees him now, in
all his ramblings—where the sky seemed bluer, and
the sun shone more brightly—where the air blew more
freshly over greener grass, and sweeter-smelling flowers
—where everything wore a richer and more brilliant hue
than it is ever dressed in now! Such are the deep feel-
ings of childhood, and such are the impressions which
every lovely object stamps upon its heart! The hardy
traveller wanders through the maze of thick and path-
less woods, where the sun’s rays never shone, and
heaven’s pure air never played; he stands on the brink
of the roaring waterfall, and, giddy and bewildered,
watches the foaming mass as it leaps from stone to
stone, and from crag to crag; he lingers in the fertile
plains of a land of perpetual sunshine, and revels in
the luxury of their i. breath. But what are the
deep forests, or the thundering waters, or the richest
landscapes that bounteous nature ever spread, to charm
the eyes, and captivate, the Senses of man, compared
A
THE FIRST OF MAY. 167
with the recollection of the old scenes of his early
youth? Magic scenes indeed, for the fancies of child-
hood dressed them in colours brighter than the rain-
bow, and almost as fleeting!
In former times, spring brought with it not only such
associations as these, connected with the past, but
sports and games for the present—merry dances round
rustic pillars, adorned with emblems of the season,
and reared in honour of its coming. Where are they
now! Pillars we have, but they are no longer rustic
ones; and as to dancers, they are used to rooms, and
light. and would not show well in the open air. Think
of the immorality, too! What would your sabbath
enthusiasts say, to an aristocratic ring encircling the
Duke of York’s column in Carlton-terrace—a grand
pousette of the middle classes, round Alderman Waith-
man’s monument in Fleet-street, or a general hands-
four-round of ten-pound householders, at the foot of the
Obelisk in St. George's-fields? Alas! romance can
make no head against the riot act; and pastoral sim-
plicity is not understood by the police.
Well; many years ago we began to be a steady and
matter-of-fact sort of people, and dancing in spring
being beneath our dignity, we gave it up, and in course
of time it descended to the sweeps—a fall certainly,
because though sweeps are very good fellows in their
way, and moreover very useful in a civilised commu-
nity, they are not exactly the sort of people to give the
tone to the little elegances of society. The sweeps,
however, got the dancing to themselves, and they kept
it up, and handed it down. This was a severe blow to
the romance of spring-time, but, it did not entirely de-
stroy it, either; for a portion of it descended to the
sweeps with the dancing, and rendered them objects of
great interest. A mystery hung over the sweeps in
those days. Legends were in existence of wealthy
gentlemen who had lost children, and who, after many
years of sorrow and suffering, had found them in the
character of sweeps. Stories were related of a young
boy who, having been stolen from his parents in his in-
fancy, and devoted to the occupation of chimney-
sweeping, was sent, in the course of his professional
career, to sweep the chimney of his mother’s bedroom;
and how, being hot and tired when he came out of the
168 gº SKETCHES BY BOZ.
chimney, he got into the bed he had so often slept in
as an infant, and was discovered and recognised
therein by his mother, who once every year of her
life, thereafter, requested the pleasure of the company
of every London sweep, at half-past one o’clock, to
roast beef, plum-pudding, porter, and sixpence.
Such stories as these, and there were many such,
threw an air of mystery round the sweeps, and pro-
duced for them some of these good effects which
animals derive from the doctrine of transmigration of
souls. No One (except the masters) thought of ill-treat-
ing a sweep, because no one knew who he might be, or
what nobleman’s or gentleman’s son he might turn out.
Chimney-sweeping was, by many believers in the mar-
Vellous, considered as a sort of probationary term at an
earlier or later period of which, divers young noblemen
were to come into possession of their rank and titles;
and the profession was held by them in great respect
accordingly.
We remember, in our young days, a little sweep about
our own age, with curly hair and white teeth, whom we
devoutly and sincerely believed to be the lost son and
heir of some illustrious personage—an impression which
was resolved into an unchangeable conviction on our
infant mind, by the subject of our speculations inform-
ing us, One day, in reply to our question, propounded a
few moments before his ascent to the summit of the
kitchen chimney, “that he believed he’d been born in
the vurkus, but he’d never know’d his father.” We felt
certain from that time forth, that he would one day be
owned by a lord; and we never heard the church-bells
ring, or saw a flag hoisted in the neighbourhood, with-
out thinking that the happy event had at last occurred,
and that his long-lost parent had arrived in a coach and
six, to take him home to Grosvenor-Square. He never
came, however; and, at the present moment, the young
gentleman in question is settled down as a master Sweep
in the neighbourhood of Battle-bridge, his distinguish-
ing characteristics being a decided antipathy to wash-
ing himself, and the possession of a pair of legs very
jºuate to the support of his unwieldy and corpulent
OCly
The romance of spring having gone out before our
time, we were fain to console ourselves as we best could
THE FIRST OF MAY. 169
with the uncertainty that enveloped the birth and
parentage of its attendant dancers, the sweeps; and we
did console ourselves with it, for many years. But,
even this wretched source of comfort received a shock,
from which it has never recovered—a shock, which has
been, in reality, its death-blow. We could not disguise
from ourselves the fact that whole families of sweeps
were regularly born of sweeps, in the rural districts of
Somers Town and Camden Town—that the eldest son
succeeded to the father’s business, that the other
branches assisted him therein, and commenced on their
own account, that their children again, were educated
to the profession; and that about their identity there
could be no mistake whatever. We could not be blind,
we say, to this melancholy truth, but we could not bring
ourselves to admit it, nevertheless, and we lived on for
some years in a state of voluntary ignorance. We were
roused from our pleasant slumber by certain dark in-
sinuations thrown out by a friend of ours, to the effect
that children in the lower ranks of life were beginning
to choose chimney-sweeping as their particular walk;
that applications had been made by various boys to the
constituted authorities, to allow them to pursue the
object of their ambition with the full concurrence and
sanction of the law; that the affair, in short, was be-
coming one of mere legal contract. We turned a deaf
ear to these rumours at first, but slowly and surely they
stole upon us. Month after month, week after week,
nay, day after day, at last, did we meet with accounts
of similar applications. The veil was removed, all
mystery was at an end, and chimney-sweeping had be-
come a favourite and chosen pursuit. There is no
longer any occasion to steal boys; for boys flock in
crowds to bind themselves. The romance of the trade
has fled and the chimney-sweeper of the present day,
is no more like unto him of thirty years ago, than is a
Fleet-street pickpocket to a Spanish brigand, or Paul
Pry to Caleb Williams.
This gradual decay and disuse of the practice of lead-
ing noble youths into captivity, and compelling them
to ascend chimneys, was a severe blow, if we may so
speak, to the romance of chimney-sweeping, and to the
romance of spring at the same time. But even this was
not all, for Some few years ago the dancing on May-day
170 SKETCHES BY BOz.
began to decline; small sweeps were observed to con-
gregate in twos or threes, unsupported by a ‘‘green,”
with no “My Lord” to act as master of the ceremonies,
and no “My Lady” to preside over the exchequer.
Even in companies where there was a ‘‘green” it was
an absolute nothing—a mere spout—and the instru-
mental accompaniments rarely extended beyond the
shovels and a set of Pan-pipes, better known to the
many as a “mouth-organ.”
These were signs of the times, portentous Omens of a
coming change; and what was the result which they
shadowed forth? Why, the master sweeps, influenced by
a restless Spirit of innovation, actually interposed their
authority, in Opposition to the dancing, and substituted
a dinner—an anniversary dinner at White Conduit
House—where clean faces appeared in lieu of black
Ones Smeared with rose pink; and knee cords and tops
Superseded nankeen drawers and rosetted shoes.
entlemen who were in the habit of riding shy
horses; and steady-going people, who have no vagrancy
in their souls, lauded this alteration to the skies, and
the conduct of the master sweeps was described as
beyond the reach of praise. But how stands the real
fact? Let any man deny, if he can, that when the
cloth had been removed, fresh pots and pipes laid
upon the table, and the customary loyal ind patriotic
toasts proposed, the celebrated Mr. Sluffen, of Adam-
and-Eve-court, whose authority not the most malignant
of our opponents can call in questioſ, expressed him-
self in a manner following: “That now he’d cotcht
the cheerman’s hi, he wished he might be jolly vell
blessed, if he worn’t a goin’ to have his innings, vich
he would say these here obserwashuns—that how some
mischeevus coves as know’d muffin about the consarn,
had tried to sit people agin the mas'r swips, and take
the shine out o’ their bis’nes, and the bread out o’ the
traps o' their preshus kids, by a makin’ o' this here
remark, as chimblies could be as well swept by 'sheenery
as by boys; and that the makin’ use o' boys for that
there purpuss vos babareous; Vereas, he 'ad been a
chummy—he begged the cheerman’s parding for usin’
such a Wulgar hexpression—more nor thirty year—he
might say he’d been born in a chimbley—and he know’d
uncommon well as 'sheenery vos vus nor o’ no use:
THE FIRST OF MAY. 171
and as to kerhewelty to the boys, every body in the
chimbley line know’d as well as he did, that they liked
the climbin’ better nor nuffin as vos.” From this day,
we date the total fall of the last lingering remnant of
May-day dancing, among the élite of the profession:
and from this period we commence a new era in that
portion of our spring associations, which relates to the
1st of May.
We are aware that the unthinking part of the popu-
lation will meet us here, with the assertion, that danc-
ing on May day still continues—that “greens” are
annually seen to roll along the streets—that youths
in the garb of clowns, precede them, giving vent to the
ebullitions of their sportive fancies; and that lords and
ladies follow in their wake.
Granted. We are ready to acknowledge that in out-
ward show, these processions have greatly improved:
we do not deny the introduction of solos on the drum:
we will even go so far as to admit an additional fan-
tasia on the triangle, but here our admissions end.
We positively deny that the sweeps have art or part
. in these proceedings. We distinctly charge the dust-
men with throwing what they ought to clear away,
into the eyes of the public. We accuse scavengers,
brick-makers, and gentlemen who devote their energies
to the costermongering line, with obtaining money
once a year, under false pretences. We cling with
peculiar fondness to the custom of days gone by, and
have shut out conviction as long as we could, but it
has forced itself upon us; and we now proclaim to a
deluded public, that the May-day dancers are not
sweeps. The size of them, alone, is sufficient to re-
pudiate the idea. It is a notorious fact that the widely-
spread taste for register-stoves has materially increased
the demand for small boys; whereas the men, who,
under a fictitious character, dance about the streets on
the first of May nowadays, would be a tight fit in a
kitchen flue, to say nothing of the parlour. This is .
strong presumptive evidence, but we have positive
proof–the evidence of our own senses. And here is
our testimony.
Upon the morning of the second of the merry month
of May, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight
hundred and thirty-six, we went out for a stroll, with
172 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
a kind of forlorn hope of seeing something or other
which might induce us to believe that it was really
spring, and not Christmas. After wandering as far as
Copenhagen House, without meeting any thing calcu-
lated to dispel our impression that there was a mistake
in the almanacks, we turned back down Maiden-lane,
with the intention of passing through the extensive
colony lying between it and Battle-bridge, which is
inhabited by proprietors of donkey-carts, boilers of
horseflesh, makers of tiles, and sifters of cinders;
through which colony we should have passed, without
stoppage or interruption, if a little crowd gathered .
round a shed had not attracted our attention, and
induced us to pause.
When we say a “shed,” we do not mean the conser-
vatory sort of building, which, according to the old song,
Love tenanted when he was a young man, but a wooden
house with windows stuffed with rags and paper, and
a small yard at the side, with one dust-cart, two baskets,
a few shovels, and little heaps of cinders, and frag-
ments of china and tiles, scattered about it. Before
this inviting spot we paused; and the longer we looked,
the more we wondered what exciting circumstance it
could be, that induced the foremost members of the
crowd to flatten their noses against the parlour window,
in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of what was
going on inside. After staring vacantly about us for
some minutes, we appealed, touching the cause of this
assemblage, to a gentleman in a suit of tarpauling, who
was smoking his pipe On Our right hand; but as the only
answer we obtained was a playful inquiry whether our
mother had disposed of her mangle, we determined to
await the issue in silence. -
Judge of our virtuous indignation, when the street
door of the shed opened, and a party emerged therefrom,
clad in the costume and emulating the appearance, of
May-day sweeps! *g
The first person who appeared was “my lord,” hab-
ited in a blue coat and bright buttons, with gilt paper
tacked over the seams, yellow knee-breeches, pink cot-
ton stockings, and shoes; a cocked hat, ornamented with
shreds of various-coloured paper, on his head, a bouquet,
the size of a prize cauliflower in his button-hole, a long
Belcher handkerchief in his right hand, and a thin cane
THE FIRST OF MAY. 173
**
... a few paces forward, and butted at the “green,
in his left. A murmur of applause ran through the crowd
(which was chiefly composed of his lordship's personal
friends), when this graceful figure made his appearance,
which swelled into a burst of applause as his fair partner
in the dance bounded forth to join him. Her ladyship
was attired in pink crape over bed-furniture, with a low
body and short sleeves. The symmetry of her ankles
was partially concealed by a very perceptible pair of
frilled trousers; and the inconvenience which might
have resulted from the circumstance of her white satin
shoes being a few sizes too large, was obviated by their
being firmly attached to her legs with strong tape
Sandals.
Her head was ornamented with a profusion of arti-
ficial flowers; and in her hand she bore a large brass
ladle, wherein to receive what she figuratively denomi-
nated “the tin.” The other characters were a young
gentleman in girl’s clothes and a widow’s cap; two
clowns who walked upon their hands in the mud, to
the immeasurable delight of all the spectators; a man
with a drum; another man with a flageolet; a dirty
woman in a large shawl, with a box under her arm for
the money, and last, thqugh not least, the “green,”
animated by no less a personage than our identical
friend in the tarpauling suit.
The man hammered away at the drum, the flageolet
squeaked, the shovels rattled; the “green’’ rolled about,
pitching first on one side and then on the other; my
lady threw her right foot over her left ankle, and her
left foot over her right ankle, alternately; my lord j
25 all
then a few paces backward upon the toes of the crowd,
and then went to the right, and then to the left, and
then dodged my lady round the “green; ” and finally
drew her arm through his, and called upon the boys to
shout, which they did lustily—for this was the dancing.
We passed the same group, accidentally, in the even-
ing. We never saw a ‘‘green º’ so drunk, a lord so
uarrelsome (no: not even in the house of peers after
inner), a pair of clowns so melancholy, a lady so
muddy, or a party so miserable.
How has May-day decayed!
174 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
CHAPTER XXI.
BROKERS’ AND MARINE-STORE SHOPS.
WHEN we affirm that brokers’ shops are strange
places, and that if an authentic history of their
contents could be procured, it would furnish many a
page of amusement, and many a melancholy tale, it is
necessary to explain the class of shops to which we
allude. Perhaps when we make use of the term
“Brokers’ Shop,” the minds of our readers will at once
picture large, handsome warehouses, exhibiting a long
perspective of French-polished dining-tables, rosewood
chiffoniers, and mahogany wash-hand-stands, with an
occasional vista of a four-post bedstead and hangings,
and an appropriate fore-ground of dining-room chairs.
Perhaps they will imagine that we mean an humble
class of second-hand furniture repositories. Their
imagination will then naturally lead them to that
street at the back of Long-acre, which is composed
almost entirely of brokers’ shops; where you walk
through groves of deceitful, showy-loooking furniture,
and where the prospect is occasionally enlivened by a
bright red, blue, and yellow hearth-rug, embellished"
with the pleasing device of a mail-coach at full speed,
or a strange animal, supposed to have been originally "
intended for a dog, with a mass of worsted-work in his
mouth, which conjecture has likened to a basket of
flowers.
This, by the by, is a tempting article to young wives
in the humbler ranks of life, who have a first-floor
front to furnish—they are lost in admiration, and hardly
know which to admire most. The dog is very beauti-
ful, but they have a dog already on the best tea-tray,
and two more on the mantelpiece. Then, there is
something so genteel about that mail-coach; and the
passengers outside (who are all hat) give it such an air
of reality
BROKERS’ AND MARINE STORE SHOPS. 175
The goods here are adapted to the taste, or rather to
the means, of cheap purghasers. There are some of the
most beautiful looking Fembroke tables that were ever
beheld: the wood as green as the trees in the Park, and
the leaves almost as certain to fall off in the course of
a year. There is also a most extensive assortment of
tent and turn-up bedsteads, made of stained wood; and
innumerable specimens of that base imposition. On
Society—a sofa bedstead.
A turn-up bedstead is a blunt, honest piece of furni-
ture; it may be slightly disguised with a sham drawer;
and sometimes a mad attempt is even made to pass it
off for a book-case; ornament it as you will, however,
the turn-up bedstead seems to defy disguise, and to in-
sist on having it distinctly understood that he is a turn-
up bedstead, and nothing else—that he is indispensably
necessary, and that being so useful, he disdains to be
Ornamental. f
How different is the demeanour of a sofa bedstead.
Ashamed of its real use, it strives to appear an article
of luxury and gentility—an attempt in which it miser-
ably fails. It has neither the respectability of a sofa,
nor the virtues of a bed; every man who keeps a sofa.
bedstead in his house, becomes a party to a wilful and
designing fraud—we question whether you could insult
him more, than by insinuating that you entertain the
least suspicion of its real use.
To return from this digression, we beg to say, that
neither of these classes of brokers’ shops, form the
subject of this sketch. The shops to which we advert,
are immeasurably inferior to those on whose outward
appearance we have slightly touched. Our readers
must often have observed in some by-street, in a poor
neighbourhood, a small dirty shop, exposing for sale
the most extraordinary and confused jumble of old,
worn-out, wretched articles, that can well be imagined.
Our wonder at their ever having been bought, is only
to be equalled by our astonishment at the idea of their
ever being sold again. On a board, at the side of the
door, are placed about twenty books—all odd volumes;
and as many wine-glasses—all different patterns;
several locks, an old earthenware pan, full of rusty
keys; two or three gaudy chimney-ornaments—cracked,
of course; the remains of a lustre, without any drops;
176 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
a round frame like a capital O, which has once held a
mirror; a flute, complete with the exception of the
middle joint; a pair of curling-irons; and a tinder-box.
In front of the shop-window, are ranged some half-
dozen high-backed chairs, with spinal complaints and
wasted legs; a corner cupboard; two or three very dark
mahogany tables with flaps like mathematical prob-
lems; some pickle-jars, some surgeons' ditto, with gilt
labels and without stoppers; an unframed portrait of
some lady who flourished about the beginning of the
thirteenth century, by an artist who never flourished at
all; an incalculable host of miscellanies of every de-
scription, including bottles and cabinets, rags and
bones, fenders and street-door knockers, fire-irons,
wearing-apparel and bedding, a hall-lamp, and a room-
door. Imagine, in addition to this incongruous mass,
a black doll in a white frock, with two faces—one look-
ing * street, and the other looking down, Swinging
over the door; a board with the squeezed-up inscription
“Dealer in marine stores,” in lanky white letters,
whose height is strangely out of proportion to their
width; and you have before you precisely the kind of
shop to which we wish to direct your attention.
Although the same heterogeneous mixture of things
will be found at all these places, it is curio's to observe
how truly and accurately some of the minor articles
which are exposed for sale—articles of wearing-apparel,
for instance—mark the character of the neighbourhood.
Take Drury-lane and Covent-garden for example.
This is essentially a theatrical neighbourhood. There
is not a potboy in the vicinity who is not, to a greater
or less extent, a dramatic character. The errand-boys
and chandler’s-shop-keepers’ sons, are all stage-struck:
they “get up * plays in back kitchens hired for the
purpose, and will stand before a shop-window for hours,
- Contemplating a great staring portrait of Mr. Somebody
or other, of the Royal Coburg Theatre, “as he appeared
in the character of Tongo the Denounced.” The con-
sequence is, that there is not a marine-store shop in
the neighbourhood, which does not exhibit for sale some
faded articles of dramatic finery, such as three or four
pairs of soiled buff boots with turn-over red tops, here-
tofore worn by a “fourth robber,” or “fifth mob; ” a
pair of rusty broad-swords, a few gauntlets, and certain
\ \ .
BROKERS AND MARINE-STORE SHOPS. 177
resplendent ornaments, which, if they were yellow in-
stead of white, might be taken for insurance plates of .
the Sun Fire-office. There are several of these shops
in the narrow streets and dirty courts, of which there
are so many near the national theatres, and they all
have tempting goods of this description, with the addi-
tion, perhaps, of a lady’s pink dress covered with
Spangles; white wreaths, stage shoes, and a tiara, like
a tin lamp reflector. They have been purchased of
some wretched supernumeraries, or sixth-rate actors,
and are now offered for the benefit of the rising gen-
eration, who, on condition of making certain weekly
payments, amounting in the whole to about ten times
their value, may avail themselves of such desirable
bargains.
Let us take a very different quarter, and apply it to
the same test. Look at a marine-store dealer’s, in that
reservoir of dirt, drunkenness, and drabs: thieves,
oysters, baked potatoes, and pickled salmon—Ratcliff-
highway. Here the wearing-apparel is all nautical.
Rough blue jackets, with mother-of-pearl buttons, oil-
skin hats, coarse checked shirts, and large canvas
trousers that look as if they were made for a pair of
bodies instead of a pair of legs, are the staple commod-
ities. Then, there are large bunches of cotton pocket-
handkerchiefs, in colour and pattern unlike, any one
ever saw before, with the exception of those on the
backs of the three young ladies without bonnets who
passed just now. The furniture is much the same as
elsewhere, with the addition of one or two models of
ships, and some old prints of naval engagements in still
older frames. In the window, are a few compasses, a
small tray containing silver watches in clumsy thick
cases; and tobacco-boxes, the lid of each ornamented
with a ship, or an anchor, or some such trophy. A
sailor generally pawns or sells all he has before he has
been long ashore, and if he does not, some favoured
companion kindly saves him the trouble. In either
case, it is an even chance that he afterwards uncon-
Sciously repurchases the same things at a higher price
than he gave for them at first.
Again: pay a visit with a similar object, to a part of
London, as unlike both of these as they are to each
other. Cross over to the Surrey side, and look at such
12
178 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
shops of this description as are to be found near the
Ring’s Bench prison, and in “the Rules.” How differ-
ent, and how strikingly illustrative of the decay of
some of the unfortunate residents in this part of the
metropolis' Imprisonment and neglect have done their
work. There is contamination in the profligate deni-
zens of a debtor's prison; old friends have fallen off;
the recollection of former Pºiº has passed away;
and with it all thoughts for the past, all care for the
future. First, watches and rings, then cloaks, coats,
and all the more expensive articles of dress, have found
their way to the pawnbrokers. That miserable resource
has failed at last, and the sale of some trifling article
at one of these shops, has been the only mode left of
raising a shilling or two, to meet the urgent demands
of the moment. Dressing-cases and writing-desks, too
old to pawn but too good to keep; guns, fishing-rods,
musical instruments, all in the same condition; have
first been sold, and the sacrifice has been but slightly
felt. But, hunger must be allayed, and what has
already become a habit, is easily resorted to, when an
emergency arises. Light articles of clothing, first of
the ruined man, then of his wife, at last of their
children, even of the youngest, have been parted with,
piecemeal. There they are, thrown carelessly together
until a purchaser presents himself, old, and patched
and repaired, it is true; but the make and materials
tell of better days; and the older they are, the greater
. ºry and destitution of those whom they once
a,CiOI’IlêOl.
CHAPTER XXII
GIN-SHOPS.
T is a remarkable circumstance, that different trades
appear to partake of the disease to which elephants
and dogs are especially liable, and to run stark, staring
raving mad, periodically. The great distinction be-
tween the animals and the trades, is, that the former
run mad with a certain degree of propriety—they are
Very regular in their irregularities. We know the
GIN-SHOPS. 179
period at which the emergency will arise, and provide
against it accordingly. If an elephant run mad, we
are all ready for him—kill or cure—pills or bullets—
calomel in conserve of roses, or lead in a musket-barrel.
If a dog happen to look unpleasantly warm in the sum-
mer months, and to trot about the shady side of the
streets with a quarter of a yard of tongue hanging out
of his mouth, a thick leather muzzle, which has been
previously prepared in compliance with the thoughtful
injunctions of the Legislature, is instantly clapped over
his head, by way of making him cooler, and he either
looks remarkably unhappy for the next six weeks, or
becomes legally insane, and goes mad, as it were, by
act of Parliament. But these trades are as eccentric
as comets; nay, worse, for no one can calculate on the
recurrence of the strange appearances which betoken
the disease. Moreover, the contagion is general, and
the quickness with which it diffuses itself, almost
incredible.
We will cite two or three cases in illustration of our
meaning. Six or eight years ago, the epidemic began
to display itself among the linen-drapers and haber-
dashers. The primary symptoms were an inordinate
love of plate-glass, and a passion for gas lights and
gilding. The disease gradually progressed, and at last
attained a fearful height. Quiet dusty old shops in
different parts of town, were pulled down; spacious
premises with stuccoed fronts and gold letters, were
erected instead; floors were covered with Turkey car-
ets; roofs, supported by massive pillars; doors,
nocked into windows; a dozen squares of glass into
one; one shopman into a dozen; and there is no know-
ing what would have been done, if it had not been for-
tunately discovered, just in time, that the Commis-
sioners of Bankrupt were as competent to decide such
cases as the Commissioners of Lunacy, and that a little
confinement and gentle examination did wonders. The
disease abated. It died away. A year or two of com-
parative tranquillity ensued. Suddenly it burst out
again among the chemists; the symptoms were the
same, with the addition of a strong desire to stick the
royal arms over the shop-door, and a great rage for
mahogany, varnish, and expensive floor-cloth. Then,
the hosiers were infected and began to pull down their
180 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
shop-fronts with frantic recklessness. The mania again
died away, and the public began to congratulate them-
selves on its entire disappearance, when it burst forth
with ten-fold violence among the publicans, and
keepers of “wime-vaults.” From that moment it has
spread among them with unprecedented rapidity, ex-
hibiting a concatenation of all the previous symptoms;
onward it has rushed to every part of town, knocking
down all the old public-houses, and depositing splendid
mansions, stone balustrades, rosewood fittings, immense
lamps, and illuminated clocks, at the corner of every
Street.
The extensive scale on which these places are estab-
lished, and the ostentatious manner in which the busi-
ness of even the smallest among them is divided into
branches, is amusing. A handsome plate of ground
glass in one door directs you “To the Counting-house;”
another to the “Bottle Department:” a third to the
“Wholesale Department; ” a fourth to the “Wine Pro-
menade;” and so forth, until we are in daily expecta-
tion of meeting with a ‘‘ Brandy Bell,” or a ‘‘ Whiskey
Entrance.” Then, ingenuity is exhausted in devising
attractive titles for the different descriptions of gin;
and the dram drinking portion of the community as
they gaze upon the gigantic black and white announce-
ments, which are only to be equalled in size by the
figures, beneath them, are left in a state of pleasing
hesitation between “ The Cream of the Valley,” “The
Out and Out,” “The No Mistake,” “The Good for Mix-
ing,” “The real Knock-me-down,” “The celebrated
Butter Gin,” “The regular Flare-up,” and a dozen
other equally inviting and wholesome liqueurs. Al-
though places of this description are to be met with in
every second street, they are invariably numerous and
splendid in precise proportion to the dirt and poverty
of the surrounding neighbourhood. The gin-shops in
and near Drury-lane, Holborn, St. Giles’s, Covent-garden
and Clare-market, are the handsomest in London.
There is more of filth and squalid misery mear those
great thoroughfares than in any part of this mighty
city.
We will endeavour to sketch the bar of a large gin-
shop, and its ordinary customers, for the edification of
such of our readers as may not have had opportunities
– GIN SHOPS 1SI
of observing such scenes; and on the chance of find-
ing one well suited to our purpose, we will make for
Drury-lane, through the narrow streets and dirty courts
which divide it from Oxford-street, and that classical
spot adjoining the brewery at the bottom of Totten-
ham-court-road, best known to the initiated as the
“Rookery.” -
The filthy and miserable appearance of this part of
London can hardly be imagined by those (and there
are. many such) who have not witnessed it. Wretched
houses with broken windows patched with rags and
paper: every room let out to a different family, and in
many instances to two or even three—fruit and
“sweet-stuff º' manufacturers in the cellars, barbers
and red-herring-venders in the front parlours, cob-
blers in the back; a bird-fancier in the first floor,
three families on the second, starvation in the attics,
Irishmen in the passage, a “musician’’ in the front
kitchen, and a charwoman and five hungry children
in the back one—filth everywhere—a gutter before the
houses, and a drain behind—clothes drying and slops
emptying from the windows: girls of fourteen or fifteen
with matted hair, walking about barefoot, and in white
great-coats, almost their only covering; boys of all
ages, in coats of all sizes and no coats at all; men and
Women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel,
lounging, scolding, drinking, Smoking, squabbling,
fighting, and swearing.
You turn the corner. What a change! All is light
and brilliancy. The hum of many voices issues from
that splendid gin-shop which forms the commencement
of the two streets opposite; and the gay building with
the fantastically ornamented parapet, the illuminated
clock, the plate-glass windows surrounded by stucco
rosettes, and its profusion of gas-lights in richly-gilt
burners, is perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the
darkness and dirt we have just left. The interior is
even gayer than the exterior. A bar of French-
polished mahogany, elegantly carved, extends the
whole width of the place; and there are two side-aisles
of great casks, painted green and gold, enclosed within
a light brass rail, and bearing such inscriptions as “Old
Tom, 549; ” “Young Tom, 360; ” “Samson, 1421”—the
figures agreeing, we presume, with “gallons,” under-
182 SKETCHES BY BOZ. ©
stood. Beyond the bar is a lofty and spacious saloon,
full of the same enticing vessels, with a gallery run-
ning round it, equally well furnished. On the counter,
in addition to the usual spirit apparatus, are two or
three little baskets of Čakes and biscuits, which are
carefully secured at top with wicker-work, to prevent
their contents being unlawfully abstracted. Behind it,
are two showily-dressed damsels with large necklaces,
dispensing the spirits and “compounds.” They are as-
sisted by the ostensible proprietor of the concern, a
stout coarse fellow in a fur cap, put on very much
on one side to give him a knowing air, and to dis-
play his sandy whiskers to the best advantage.
The two old washerwomen, who are seaſed on the
little bench to the left of the bar, are rather over-
come by the head-dresses and haughty demeanour of
the young ladies who officiate. They receive their half-
quartern of gin and peppermint with considerable def-
erence, prefacing a request for “one of them soft bis-
cuits,” with a “Jist be good enough, ma'am.” They
are quite astonished at the impudent air of the young
fellow in a brown coat and bright buttons, who, usher-
ing in his two companions, and walking up to the bar
in as careless a manner as if he had been used to
green and gold ornaments all his life, winks at one
of the young ladies with singular coolness, and calls
for a “ Kervorten and a three-out glass,” just as if the
place were his own. “Gin for you, sir?” says the
young lady when she has drawn it: carefully looking
every way but the right one, to show that the wink
had no effect upon her. “For me, Mary, my dear,” re-
plies the gentleman in brown. “My name ain't Mary,
as it happens,” says the young girl, rather relaxing as
she delivers the change. “Well, if it ain’t, it ought
to be,” responds the irresistible one; .''. All the Mary's
as ever I see, was handsome gals.” Here the young
lady, not precisely remembering how blushes are man-
aged in such cases, abruptly ends the flirtation by ad-
dressing the female in the faded feathers who has just
entered, and who, after stating explicitly, to prevent
any subsequent misunderstanding, that “this gentle-
man pays,” calls for “a glass of port wine and a bit of
Sugar.”
Those two old men who came in “just to have a
GIN SHOPS. 183
drain,” finished their third quartern a few seconds ago;
they have made themselves crying drunk; and the fat
comfortable-looking elderly women, who had “a glass
of rum Srub '' each, having chimed in with their com-
plaints, on the hardness of the times, one of the women
as agreed to stand a glass round, jocularly observing
that “grief never mended no broken bones, and as good
people’s wery scarce, what I says is, make the most on
'em, and that’s all about it!” a sentiment which appears
to afford unlimited satisfaction to those who have
nothing to pay.
It is growing late and the throng of men, women, and
children, who have been constantly going in and out,
dwindles down to two or three occasional stragglers—
cold, wretched-looking creatures, in the last stage of
emaciation and disease. The knot of Irish labourers at
the lower end of the place, who have been alternately
shaking hands with, and threatening the life of each
of her, for the last hour, become furious in their disputes,
and finding it impossible to silence one man, who is
particularly anxious to adjust the difference, they resort
to the expedient of knocking him down and jumping
on him afterwards. The man in the fur-cap and the
ot-boy rush out; a scene of riot and confusion ensues;
alf the Irishmen get shut out, and the other half get
shut in; the pot-boy is knocked among the tubs in no
time; the landlord hits everybody, and everybody hits
the landlord; the barmaids scream; the police come in;
the rest is a confused mixture of arms, legs, staves,
torn coats, shouting, and struggling. Some of the
party are borne off to the station-house, and the
remainder slink home to beat their wives for complain-
ing, and kick the children for daring to be hungry.
We have sketched this subject very slightly, not only
because our limits compel us to do so, but because, if it
were pursued farther, it would be painful and repulsive.
Well-disposed gentlemen, and charitable ladies, would
alike turn with coldness and disgust from a description
of the drunken besotted men, and wretched broken-down
miserable women, who form no inconsiderable portion
of the frequenters of these haunts; forgetting, in the
pleasant consciousness of their own rectitude, the
poverty of the one, and the temptation of the other.
Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but wretched-
184 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
ness and dirt are a greater; and until you improve the
homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch
not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his own
misery, with the pittance which, divided among his
family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-
shops will increase in number and splendour. If Tem-
perance Societies would suggest an antidote against
hunger, filth, and foul air, or could establish dispen-
saries for the gratuitous distribution of bottles of Lethe-
water, gin palaces would be numbered among the
things that were.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE PAWNBROKER'S SHOP.
OF the numerous receptacles for misery and distress
with which the streets of London unhappily abound,
there are, perhaps, none which present such striking
scenes as the pawnbrokers’ shops. The very nature
and description of these places occasions their being but
little known, except to the unfortunate beings whose
profligacy or misfortune drives them to seek the tem-
porary relief they offer. The subject may appear, at
first sight, to be anything but an inviting one, but we
venture on it nevertheless, in the hope that, as far as
the limits of our present paper are concerned, it will
present nothing to disgust, even the most fastidious
reader. -
There are some pawnbrokers’ shops of a very superior
description. There are grades in pawning as in every-
thing else, and distinctions must be observed even in
poverty. The aristocratic Spanish cloak and the plebeian
calico shirt, the silver fork, and the flat iron, the muslin
cravat and the Belcher neckerchief, would but ill assort
together; so, the better sort of pawnbroker calls himself
a silversmith, and decorates his shop with handsome
trinkets and expensive jewellery, while the more humble
money-lender boldly advertises his calling, and invites
observation. It is with pawnbrokers’ shops of the latter
class, that we have to do. We have selected one for
our purpose, and will endeavour to describe it.
THE PAWNBROKER'S SHOP. 185
º
The pawnbroker’s shop is situated near Drury Lane,
at the corner of a court, which affords a side entrance
for the accommodation of such customers as may be
desirous of avoiding the observation of the passers-by,
or the chance of recognition in the public street. It is
a low, dirty-looking, dusty shop, the door of which
stands always doubtfully, a little way open, half invit-
ing, half repelling the hesitating visitor, who, if he be
as yet uninitiated, examines one of the old garnet
brooches in the Swindow for a minute or two with af-
fected eagerness, as if he contemplated making a pur-
chase; and then looking cautiously round to ascertain
that no one watches him, hastily slinks in; the door
closing of itself after him, to just its former width.
The shop front and the window panes bear evident
marks of having been once painted; but what the
colour was originally, or at what date it was probably
laid on, are at this remote period questions which may
be asked, but cannot be answered. Tradition states that
the transparency in the front door which displays at night
three red balls on a blue ground, Once bore also, inscribed
in graceful waves, the words “Money advanced on plate,
jewels, wearing apparel, and every description of prop-
erty,’” but a few illegible hieroglyphics are all that
now remain to attest the fact. The plate and jewels
would seem to have disappeared, together with the an-
nouncement, for the articles of stock which are displayed
in some profusion in the window, do not include any
very valuable luxuries of either kind. A few old china.
cups; some modern vases, adorned with paltry paintings
of three Spanish cavaliers playing three Spanish guitars;
or a party of boors carousing: each boor with one leg
painfully elevated in the air, by way of expressing his
perfect freedom and gaiety; several sets of chessmen,
two or three flutes, a few fiddles, a round-eyed portrait
staring in astonishment from a very dark ground; some
gaudily-bound prayer-books and testaments, two rows
of silver watches quite as clumsy and almost as large
as Ferguson’s first; numerous old-fashioned table and
tea spoons, displayed, fan-like, in half-dozens; strings
of coral with great broad gilt snaps; cards of rings and
brooches, fastened and labelled separately, like the
insects in the British Museum; cheap silver penholders
and Snuff-boxes, with a masonic star, complete the
186 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
jewellery department; while five or six beds in smeary
clouded ticks, strings of blankets and sheets, silk and
cotton handkerchiefs, and wearing apparel of every
description, form the more useful, though even less
ornamental, part, of the articles exposed for sale. An
extensive collection of planes, chisels, saws, and other
carpenters’ tools, which have been pledged, and never
redeemed, form the foreground of the picture; while
the large frames, full of ticketed bundles, which are
dimly seen through the dirty casement up-stairs—the
squalid neighbourhood—the adjoining houses Straggling,
shrunken, and rotten, with one or two filthy, unwhole-
some-looking heads, thrust out of every window, and
old red pans and stunted plants exposed on the totter-.
ing parapets, to the manifest hazard of the heads of the
passers-by-the noisy men loitering under the archway
at the corner of the court, or about the gin-shop next
door—and their wives patiently standing on the curb-
stone, with large baskets of cheap vegetables slung
round them for sale, are its immediate auxiliaries.
If the outside of the pawnbroker's shop be calculated
to attract the attention, or excite the interest, of the
speculative pedestrian, its interior cannot fail to produce
the same effect in an increased degree. The front door,
which we have before noticed, opens into the common
shop, which is the resort of all those customers whose
habitual acquaintance with such scenes renders them
indifferent to the observation of their companions in
poverty. . The side-door opens into a small passage
from which some half-dozen doors (which may be se-
cured Ön the inside by bolts) open into a corresponding
number of little dens or closets, which face the counter.
Here the more timid or respectable portion of the crowd
shroud themselves from the notice of the remainder,
and patiently wait until the gentleman behind the
counter, with the curly black hair, diamond ring, and
double silver watch-guard shall feel disposed to favour
them with his notice—a consummation which depends
considerably on the temper of the aforesaid gentleman
for the time being.
At the present moment, this elegantly-attired indi-
vidual is in the act of entering the duplicate he has just
made out, in a thick book; a process from which he is
diverted occasionally, by a conversation he is carrying
THE PAWNBROKER's SHOP 18%
on with another young man similarly employed at a
little distance from him, whose allusions to “that last
bottle of soda-water last night,” and “how regularly
round my hat he felt himself when the young ‘ooman
gave 'em in charge,” would appear to refer to the con-
sequences of some stolen joviality of the preceding
evening. The customers generally, however, seem un-
able to participate in the amusement derivable from
this source, for an old sallow-looking woman, who has
been leaning with both arms on the counter with a
small bundle before her, for half an hour previously,
suddenly interrupts the conversation by addressing the
jewelled shopman—“Now, Mr. Henry, do make haste,
there’s a good soul, for my two grandchildren’s locked
up at home, and I’m afeer'd of the fire.” The shopman
slightly raises his head, with an air of deep abstraction,
and resumes his entry with as much deliberation as if
he were engraving. “You’re in a hurry, Mrs. Tatham,
this ev’rlin', an’t you?” is the only notice he deigns to
take, after the lapse of five minutes or so. “Yes, I am
indeed, Mr. Henry; now, do serve me next, there’s a good
creetur. I wouldn’t worry you, only it’s all along o'
them botherin’ children.” “What have you got here?”
inquires the shopman, unpinning the bundle—“old con-
cern, I suppose—pair o' stays and a petticut. You must
look up somethin’ else, old 'ooman; I can’t lend you
anything more upon them, they’re completely worn Out
by this time, if it’s only by putting in, and taking Out
again, three times a week.” “Oh! you’re a rum un, you
are,” replies the old woman, laughing extremely, as in
duty bound; “I wish I’d got the gift of the gab like
you; see if I’d be up the spout so often then! No, no;
it an’t the petticut; it’s a child’s frock and a beautiful
silk-ankecher as belongs to my husband. He gave four
shillin’ for it, the werry same blessed day as he broke
his arm.” “What do you want upon these?” inquires
Mr. Henry, slightly glancing at the articles, which in
all probability are ji acquaintances. “What do you
want upon these?”—“Eighteenpence.”—“Lend you
ninepence.”—“Oh, make it a shillin’; there’s a dear—
do now!”—“Not another farden.”—“Well, I suppose I
must take it.” The duplicate is made out, one ticket
pinned on the parcel, the other given to the old woman;
the parcel is flung carelessly down into a corner, and
j88 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
some other customer prefers his claim to be served
without further delay.
The choice falls on an unshaven, dirty, sottish-looking
fellow, whose tarnished paper-cap, stuck negligently
over one eye, communicates an additionally repulsive
expression to his very uninviting countenance. He
was enjoying a little relaxation from his sedentary pur-
suits a quarter of an hour ago, in kicking his wife up the
court. He has come to redeem some tools:—probably
to complete a job with, on account of which he has
already received some money, if his inflamed counte-
nance and drunken stagger, may be taken as evidence
of the fact. Having waited some little time, he makes
his presence known by venting his ill-humour on a
ragged urchin, who, being unable to bring his face on a
level with the counter by any other process, has em-
ployed himself in climbing up, and then hooking him-
self on with his elbows—an uneasy perch, from which
he has fallen at intervals, generally alighting on the
toes of the person in his immediate vicinity. In the
present case, the unfortunate little wretch has received
a cuff which sends him reeling to the door; and the
donor of the blow is immediately the object of general
indignation. - - -
“What do you strike the boy for, you brute?” ex-
claims a slip-shod woman, with two flat-irons in a little
basket. “Do you think he's your wife, you willin?”—“Go
and hang yourself!” replies the gentleman addressed,
with a drunken look of Savage stupidity, aiming at the
same time a blow at the woman which fortunately misses
its object. “Go and hang yourself; and wait till I come
and cut you down.”—“Cut you down,” rejoins the
woman, “I wish I had the cutting of you up, you waga-
bond! (loud.) Oh! you precious wagabondſ (rather
louder.) Where’s your wife, you willin? (louder still;
women of this class are always sympathetic, and work
themselves into a tremendous passion on the shortest
notice.) Your poor dear wife as you uses worser nor a
dog—strike a woman—you a man! (very shrill;) I wish
I had you—I’d murder you, I would, if I died for it!”—
“Now be civil,” retorts the man fiercely. “Be civil, you
wiper!” ejaculates the woman contemptuously, “An’t
it shocking?” she continues, turning round, and appeal-
ing to an old woman who is peeping out of one of the
THE PAWNBROKER'S SHOP. 189.
little closets we have before described, and who nas not
the slightest objection to join in the attack, possessing,
as she does, the comfortable conviction that she is
bolted in. “An’t it shocking, ma’am? (Dreadful! says
the old woman in a parenthesis, not exactly knowing
what the question refers to.). He’s gotº a wife, ma'am,
as takes in mangling, and is as 'dustrious and hard-
working a young 'ooman as can be, (very fast) as lives
in the back-parlour of our 'ouse, which my husband and
me lives in the front one (with great rapidity)—and we
hears him a beaten’ on her sometimes when he comes
home drunk, the whole night through, and not only a
beaten her, but beaten' his own child too, to make her
more miserable—ugh, you beast! and she, poor creetur,
won’t swear the peace agin him, nor do nothin', because
she likes the wretch arter all—worse luck!” Here as
the woman has completely run herself out of breath,
the pawnbroker himself, who has just appeared behind
the counter in a grey dressing-gown, embraces the
favourable opportunity of putting in a word:—“Now I
won’t have none of jhis sort of thing on my premises!”
he interposes with an air of authority. “Mrs. Mackin,
keep yourself to yourself, or you don’t get fourpence
for a flat iron here; and Jinkins, you leave your ticket
here till you’re sober, and send your wife for them two
planes, for I wont have you in my shop at no price; so.
make yourself scarce, before I make you scarcer.”
This eloquent address produces any thing but the
effect desired; the women rail in concert; the man hits
about him in all directions, and is in the act of estab-
lishing an indisputable claim to gratuitous lodgings
for the night, when the entrance of his wife, a
wretched worn-out woman, apparently in the last
stage of consumption, whose face bears evident marks
of recent ill-usage, and whose strength seems hardly
equal to the burden—light enough God knows!—of the
thin sickly child she carries in her arms, turns his
cowardly rage in a safer direction. “Come home,
dear,” cries the miserable creature, in an imploring
tone; do come home, there’s a good fellow, and go to
bed.”—“Go home yourself,” rejoins the furious ruffian.
“Do come home quietly,” repeats the wife, bursting
into tears. “Go home yourself,” retorts the husband
again, enforcing his argument by a blow which sends
190 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
the poor creature flying out of the shop. Her “natural
protector” follows her up the court, alternately venting
is rage in accelerating her progress, and in knocking
the little scanty blue bonnet of the unfortunate child
over its still more scanty and faded-looking face.
In the last box, which is situated in the darkest and
most obscure corner of the shop, considerably removed
from either of the gas-lights, are a young delicate
girl of about twenty and an elderly female, evidently
her mother from the resemblance between them, who
stand at some distance back, as if to avoid the obser-
vation even of the shopman. It is not their first visit
to a pawnbroker's shop, for they answer without a
moment’s hesitation the usual questions, put in a rather
respectful manner, and in a much lower tone than
usual, of “What name shall I say?—Your own property,
of course?—Where do you live?—Housekeeper or
lodger?” They bargain too, for a higher loan than the
shopman is at first inclined to offer, which a perfect
stranger would be little disposed to do; and the elder
female urges her daughter on, in scarcely audible
whispers, to exert her utmost powers of persuasion to
obtain an advance of the Sum, and expatiate on the
value of the articles they have brought to raise a
present supply upon. They are a small gold chain
and a “Forget me not * ring: the girl’s property, for
they are both too small for the mother; given her in
better times; prized, perhaps, once, for the giver's
sake, but parted with now without a struggle; for want
has hardened the mother, and her example has hard-
ened the girl, and the prospect of receiving money,
coupled with the recollection of the misery they have
both endured from the want of it—the coldness of old
friends—the stern refusal of some, and the still more
galling compassion of others—appears to have obliter-
ated the consciousness of self-humiliation, which the
idea of their present situation would once have
aroused.
In the next box, is a young female, whose attire,
miserably poor, but extremely gaudy, wretchedly cold,
but extravagantly fine, too plainly bespeaks her station.
The rich satin gown with its faded trimmings, the
worn-out thin shoes, and pink silk stockings, the sum-
mer bonnet in winter, and the sunken face, where a
| \ •- 4
THE PAWNBROKER'S SHOP. 191
daub of rouge only serves as an index to the ravages
of Squandered health never to be regained, and lost
happiness never to be restored, and where the practised
Smile is a wretched mockery of the misery of the heart,
cannot be mistaken. There is something in the glimpse
she has just caught of her young neighbour, and in
the sight of the little trimkets she has offered in pawn,
that seems to have awakened in this woman’s mind
some slumbering recollection, and to have changed,
for an instant, her whole demeanour. Her first hasty
impulse was to bend forward as if to scan more min-
utely the appearance of her half-concealed companions;
her next on seeing them involuntarily shrink from her,
to retreat to the back of the box, cover her face with
her hands, and burst into tears. s
There are strange chords in the human heart which
will lie dormant through years of depravity and
wickedness, but which will vibrate at last to some slight
circumstance apparently trivial in itself, but con-
nected by some undefined and indistinct association,
with past days that can never be recalled, and with
bitter recollections from which the most degraded
creature in existence cannot escape.
There has been another spectator, in the person of a
woman in the common shop; the lowest of the low ;
dirty, unbonneted, flaunting and slovenly. Her curi-
osity was at first attracted by the little she could see
of the group; then her attention. The half intoxicated
leer changed to an expression of Something like inter-
est, and a feeling similar to that we have described,
appeared for a moment, and only a moment, to extend
itself even to her bosom.
Who shall say how soon these women may change
places? The last has but two more stages—the hospi-
tal and the grave. How many females situated as
her two companions are, and as she may have been
Once, have terminated the same wretched course, in
the same wretched manner. One is already tracing
her footsteps with frightful rapidity. How soon may
the other follow her example! How many have done
the same!
192 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
CHAPTER XXIV
C R. I. M I N A L C O U R T S .
WE shall never forget the mingled feelings of awe
and respect with which we used to gaze on the
exterior of Newgate in our schoolboy days. How
dreadful its rough heavy walls, and low massive
doors, appeared to us—the latter looking as if they
were made for the express purpose of letting people in
and never letting them out again. Then the fetters
Over the debtors’ door, which we used to think were a
bond fide set of irons, just hung up there for conveni-
ence' sake, ready to be taken down at a moment’s notice,
and riveted on the limbs of some refractory felon!
We were never tired of wondering how the hackney-
coachmen on the opposite stand could cut jokes in the
resence of such horrors, and drink pots of half-and-
alf so near the last drop. -
Often have we strayed here, in sessions time, to
catch a glimpse of the whipping-place, and that dark
building on one side of the yard, in which is kept the
gibbet with all its dreadful apparatus, and on the door
of which we half expected to see a brass plate, with
the inscription “Mr. Ketch; ” for we never imagined
that the distinguished functionary could by possibility
live anywhere else! The days of these childish dreams
have passed away, and with them many other boyish
ideas of a gayer nature. But we still retain so much
of our original feeling, that to this hour we never pass
the building without something like a shudder.
What London pedestrian is there who has not, at
some time or other, cast a hurried glance through the
wicket at which prisoners are admitted into this gloomy
mansion, and surveyed the few objects he could discern,
with an indescribable feeling of curiosity? The thick
door, plated with iron and mounted with spikes, just low
CRIMINAL COURTS. 193
enough to enable you to see, leaning over them, an ill-
looking fellow, in a broad-brimmed hat, belcher hand-
kerchief and top-boots: with a brown coat, something
between a great-coat and a “ sporting * jacket, on his
back, and an immense key in his left hand. Perhaps
you are lucky enough to pass just as the gate is being
opened; then, you see on the other side of the lodge,
another gate, the image of its predecessor, and two or
three more turnkeys, who look like multiplications of
the first One, seated round a fire which just lights up
the whitewashed apartment sufficiently to enable you
to catch a hasty glimpse of these different objects. We
have a great respect for Mrs. Fry, but she certainly
Ought to have written more romances than Mrs.
Radcliffe. -
We were walking leisurely down the Old Bailey,
Some time ago, when, as we passed this identical gate,
it was opened by the officiating turnkey. We turned
quickly round, as a matter of course, and saw two per-
sons descending the steps. We could not help stopping
and observing them. --
They were an elderly woman of decent appearance,
though evidently poor, and a boy of about fourteen or
fifteen. The woman was crying bitterly; she carried a
small bundle in her hand, and the boy followed at a
short distance behind her. Their little history was
obvious. The boy was her son, to whose early com-
fort she had perhaps sacrificed her own—for whose sake
she had borne misery without repining, and poverty
without a murmur—looking steadily forward to the
time, when he who had so long witnessed her struggles
for himself might be enabled to make some exertions
for their joint support. He had formed dissolute con-
nexions; idleness had led to crime; and he had been
committed to take his trial for some petty theft. He
had been long in prison, and after receiving sometrifling
additional punishment, had been ordered to be dis-
charged that morning. It was his first offence, and his
poor old mother, still hoping to reclaim him, had been
waiting at the gate to implore him to return home.
We cannot forget the boy; he descended the steps
with a dogged look, shaking his head with an air of
bravado and obstinate determination. They walked a
few paces, and paused. The woman put her hand upon
194 SKETCHES BY BOZ,
his shoulder in an agony of entreaty, and the boy sul-
lenly raised his head as if in refusal. It was a brilliant
morning, and every object looked fresh and happy in the
broad, gay Sun-light; he gazed around him for a few mo-
ments, bewildered with the brightness of the scene, for
it was long since he had beheld anything save the
gloomy walls of a prison. Perhaps the wretchedness
of his mother made some impression on the boy's heart;
perhaps some undefined recollection of the time when
he was a happy child, and she his Only friend, and best
companion, crowded on him—he burst into tears; and
covering his face with One hand, and hurriedly placing
the other in his mother’s, walked away with her.
Curiosity has occasionally led, us into both Courts at
the Old Bailey. Nothing is so likely to strike the per-
son who enters them for the first time, as the calm
indifference with which the proceedings are conducted;
every trial seems a mere matter of business. There is
a great deal of form, but no compassion; considerable
interest, but no sympathy. Take the Old Court for
example. There sit the Judges, with whose great dig-
nity everybody is acquainted, and of whom therefore
we need say no more. Then, there is the Lord Mayor in
the centre, looking as cool as a Lord Mayor can look,
with an immense bouquet before him, and habited in all
the splendour of his office. Then, there are the Sheriffs,
who are almost as dignified as the Lord Mayor himself;
and the Barristers, who are quite dignified enough in
their own opinion; and the spectators, who having paid
for their admission, look upon the whole scene as if it
were got up especially for their amusement. Look upon
the whole group in the body of the Court—some wholly
engrossed in the morning papers, others carelessly con-
versing in low whispers, and, others, again, quietly
dozing away an hour—and you can scarcely believe that
the result of the trial is a matter of life or death to one
wretched being present. But turn your eyes to the
dock; watch the prisoner attentively for a few moments;
and the fact is before you, in all its painful reality.
Mark how restlessly he has been engaged for the last
ten minutes, in forming all sorts of fantastic figures with
the herbs which are strewed upon the ledge before him;
observe the ashy paleness of his face when a particular
witness appears, and how he changes his position and
CRIMINAL COURTS. 195
wipes his clammy forehead, and feverish hands, when
the case for the prosecution is closed, as if it were a
relief to him to feel that the jury knew the worst.
The defence is concluded; the judge proceeds to sum
up the evidence; and the prisoner watches the counte-
nances of the jury, as a dying man, clinging to life to
the very last, vainly looks in the face of his physician
for a slight ray of hope. They turn round to consult;
you can almost hear the man’s heart beat, as he bites
the Stalk of rosemary, with a desperate effort to appear
composed. They resume their places—a dead silence pre-
vails as the foreman delivers in the verdict—“Guilty l’”
A shriek bursts from, a female in the gallery; the
prisoner casts one look at the quarter from whence the
noise proceeded; and is immediately hurried from the
dock by the gaoler. The clerk directs one of the officers
of the court to “take the woman out,” and fresh business
is proceeded with, as if nothing had occurred.
No imaginary contrast to a case like this, could be as
complete as that which is constantly presented in the
New Court, the gravity of which is frequently disturbed
in no small degree, by the cunning and pertinacity of
juvenile offenders. A boy of thirteen is tried, say for
picking the pocket of some subject of her Majesty, and
the offence is about as clearly proved as an offence
can be. He is called upon for his defence, and contents
himself with a little declamation about the jurymen
and his country—asserts that all the witnesses have
committed perjury, and hints that the police force
generally, have entered into a conspiracy ‘‘ again” him.
However probable this statement may be, it fails to con-
vince the Court, and some such scene as the following
then takes place : . -
Court : Have you any witnesses to speak to your
character, boy?
Boy : Yes, my Lord; fifteen gen’lm’n is a vallen out-
side and vos a vaten all day yesterday, vich they told
me the night afore my trial vos a comin' On.”
Court : Inquire for these witnesses.
Here, a stout beadle runs out, and vociferates for the
witnesses at the very top of his voice; for you hear his
cry grow fainter and fainter as he descends the steps
into the court-yard below. After an absence of five
minutes, he returns, very warm and hoarse, and in-
196 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
forms the Court of what it knew perfectly well before—
namely, that there are no such witnesses in attendance.
Hereupon the boy sets up a most awful howling; screws
the lower part of the palms of his hands into the corners
of his eyes; and endeavours to look the picture of in-
jured innocence. The jury at once find him “guilty,”
and his endeavours to Squeeze out a tear or two are
redoubled. The governor of the gaol then states, in
reply to an inquiry from the bench, that the prisoner
has been under his care twice before. This the urchin
resolutely denies in Some such terms as—“S’elp me,
gen’lm’n, I never vos in trouble afore—indeed, my
Lord, I never vos. It’s all a howen to my having a twin
brother, vich has wrongfully got into trouble, and vich
is so exactly like we, that no vun ever knows the differ-
ence at ween us.”
This representation, like the defence, fails in produc-
ing the desired effect, and the boy is sentenced, perhaps,
to seven years’ transportation. Finding it impossible
to excite compassion, he gives vent to his feelings
in an imprecation bearing reference to the eyes of
‘‘ old big vig!” and as he declines to take the trouble of
walking from the dock, is forthwith carried out, con-
gratulating himself on having Succeeded in giving
everybody as much trouble as possible.
CHAPTER XXV.
A W I SIT TO N E W G A T E .
“r THE force of habit * is a trite phrase in every body’s
mouth; and it is not a little remarkable that those
who use it most as applied to others, unconsciously
afford in their own persons singular examples of the
power which habit and custom exercise over the minds
of men, and of the little reflection they are apt to
bestow on subjects with which every day’s experience
has rendered them familiar. If Bedlam could be sud-
denly removed like another Aladdin’s palace, and set
down on the space now occupied by Newgate, scarcely
one man out of a hundred, whose road to business every
A VISIT TO NEWGATE. - 19%
morning lies through Newgate-street, or the Old Bailey,
would pass the building without bestowing a hasty
glance on its small, grated windows, and a transient
thought upon the condition of the unhappy beings im-
mured in its dismal cells; and yet these same men, day
by day, and hour by hour, pass and repass this gloomy
depository of the guilt and misery of London, in One
perpetual stream of life and bustle, utterly unmindful
of the throng of wretched creatures pent up within it—
nay, not even knowing, or if they do know, not heeding,
the fact, that as they pass one particular angle of the
massive wall with a light laugh or a merry whistle, they
stand within one yard of a fellow-creature, bound and
helpless, whose hours are numbered, from whom the
last feeble ray of hope has fled for ever, and whose
miserable career will shortly terminate in a violent and
shameful death. Contact with death even in its least
terrible shape, is solemn and appalling. How much
more awful is it to reflect on this near vicinity to the
dying—to men in full health and vigour, in the flower
of youth or the prime of life, with all their faculties and
perceptions as acute and perfect as your own; but
dying nevertheless—dying as Surely—with the hand of
death imprinted upon them as indelibly—as if mortal
disease had wasted their frames to shadows, and cor-
ruption had already begun]
It was with some such thoughts as these that we de-
termined, not many weeks since, to visit the interior of
Newgate—in an amateur capacity, of course; and,
having carried our intention into effect, we proceed to
lay its results before our readers, in the hope—founded
more upon-the nature of the subject, than on any pre-
sumptuous confidence in our own descriptive powers—
that this paper may not be found wholly devoid of in-
terest. We have only to premise, that we do not intend
to fatigue the reader with any statistical accounts of
the prison; they will be found at length in numerous re-
ports of committees, and a variety of authorities of
equal weight. We took no notes, made no memoranda,
measured none of the yards, ascertained the exact
number of inches in no particular room: are unable
even to report of how many apartments the gaol is
composed.
We saw the prison, and saw the prisoners; and what
198 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
we did see, and what we thought, we will tell at Once
in our own way. X- • . < * x
Having delivered our credentials to the servant who
answered our knock at the door of the governor’s
house, we were ushered into the “office;” a little room,
on the right-hand side as you enter, with two windows
looking into the Old Bailey: fitted up like an ordinary
attorney’s office, or merchant’s counting-house, with
the usual fixtures—a wainscoted partition, a shelf or
two, a desk, a couple of stools, a pair of clerks, an
almanack, a clock, and a few maps. After a little delay,
occasioned by sending into the interior of the prison for
the officer whose duty it was to conduct us, that func-
tionary arrived; a respectable-looking man of about
two or three and fifty, in a broad-brimmed hat, and full
suit of black, who, but for his keys, would have looked
quite as much like a clergyman as a turnkey. We were
disappointed; he had not even top-boots on. Following
our conductor by a door opposite to that at which we
had entered, we arrived at a small room without any
other furniture than a little desk, with a book for
visitors’ autographs, and a shelf, on which were a few
boxes for papers, and casts of the heads and faces of
the two notorious murderers, Bishop and Williams; the
former, in particular, exhibiting a style of head and set
of features, which might have afforded sufficient moral
grounds for his instant execution at any time, even had
there been no other evidence against him. Leaving
this room also, by an opposite door, we found ourself in
the lodge which opens on the Old Bailey; one side of
which is plentifully garnished with a choice collection
of heavy sets of irons, including those worn by the re-
doubtable Jack Sheppard—genuine; and those said to
have been graced by the sturdy limbs of the no less
celebrated Dick Turpin–doubtful. From this lodge,
a heavy Oaken-gate, bound with iron, studded with
nails of the same material, and guarded by another
turnkey, opens on a few steps, if we remember right,
which terminate in a narrow and dismal stone passage,
running parallel with the Old Bailey, and leading to
the different yards, through a number of tortuous and
intricate windings, guarded in their turn by huge gates
and gratings, whose appearance is sufficient to dispel
at once the slightest hope of escape that any new comer
A VISIT TO NEWGATE. 199
may have entertained; and the very recollection of
which, on eventually traversing the place again, in-
volves one in a maze of confusion.
It is necessary to explain here, that the buildings in
the prison, or in other words the different wards—form
a square, of which the four sides abut respectively on
the Old Bailey, the old College of Physicians (now form-
ing a part of Newgate-market), the Sessions-house, and
Newgate-street. The intermediate space is divided
into several paved yards, in which the prisoners take
such air and exercise as can be had in such a place.
These yards, with the exception of that in which prison-
ers under sentence of death are confined (of which we
shall presently give a more detailed description), ran
parallel with Newgate-street, and consequently from
the Old Bailey, as it were, to Newgate-market. The
woman’s side is in the right wing of the prison nearest
the Sessions-house. As we were introduced into this
part of the building first, we will adopt the same order,
and introduce our readers to it also.
Turning to the right, then, down the passage to which
we just now adverted, omitting any mention of inter-
vening º if we noticed every gate that was
unlocked for us to pass through, and locked again as .
soon as we had passed, we should require a gate at
every comma—we came to a door composed of thick
bars of wood, through which were discernible, passing
to and fro in a narrow yard, some twenty women: the
majority of whom, however, as soon as they were aware
of the presence of strangers, retreated to their wards.
One side of this yard is railed off at a considerable
distance, and formed into a kind of iron cage, about
five feet ten inches in height, roofed at the top, and
defended in front by iron bars, from which the friends
of the female prisoners communicate with them. In
one corner of this singular-looking den, was a yellow,
haggard, decrepit old woman in a tattered gown that
j once been black, and the remains of an old straw
bonnet, with faded ribbon of the same hue, in earnest
conversation with a young girl—a prisoner, of course—
of about two-and-twenty. It is impossible to imagine
a more poverty-stricken object, or a creature so borne
down in soul and body, by excess of misery and desti-
tution as the old woman, The girl was a good-looking
200 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
robust female, with a profusion of hair streaming about
in the wind—for she had no bonnet on—and a man’s
silk pocket-handkerchief loosely thrown over a most
ample pair of shoulders. The old woman was talking
in that low, stifled tone of voice which tells so forcibly
of mental anguish; and every now and then burst into
an irrepressible sharp, abrupt cry of grief, the most
distressing sound that ears can hear. . The girl was
perfectly unmoved. Hardened beyond all hope of
redemption, she listened doggedly to her mother’s
entreaties, whatever they were: and beyond enquiring
after “Jem,” and eagerly catching at the few halfpence
her miserable parent had brought her, took no more
apparent interest in the conversation than the most
unconcerned spectators. Heaven knows there were
enough of them, in the persons of the other prisoners
in the yard, who were no more concerned by what was
passing before their eyes, and within their hearing,
than if they were blind and deaf. Why should they
be? Inside the prison, and out, such scenes were too
familiar to them, to excite even a passing thought,
unless of ridicule or contempt for feelings which they
had long since forgotten.
A little further on, a squalid-looking woman in a
slovenly thick-bordered cap, with her arms muffled in
a large red shawl, the fringed ends of which Straggled
nearly to the bottom of a dirty white apron, was com-
municating some instructions to her visitor—her daugh-
ter evidently. The girl was thinly clad, and shaking
with the cold. Some ordinary word of recognition
passed between her and her mother when she appeared
at the grating, but neither hope, condolence, regret, nor
affection was expressed on either side. The mother
whispered her instructions, and the girl received them
with her pinched-up half-starved features twisted into
an expression of careful cunning. It was some scheme
for the woman’s defence that she was disclosing,
perhaps; and a sullen Smile came over the girl’s face for
an instant, as if she were pleased: not so much at the
probability of her mother's liberation, as at the chance
of her “getting off º' in spite of her prosecutors. The
dialogue was soon concluded; and with the same care-
less indifference with which they had approached each
other, the mother turned towards the inner end of the
A VISIT TO NEWGATE . 201
yard, and the girl to the gate at which she had entered.
The girl belonged to a class—unhappily but too exten-
sive—the very existence of which, should make men's
hearts bleed. Barely past her childhood, it required
but a glance to discover that she was one of those
children, born and bred in neglect and vice, who have
never known what childhood is: who have never been
taught to love and court a parent's smile, or to dread a
parent's frown. The thousand nameless endearments
of childhood, its gaiety and its innocence, are alike
unknown to them. They have entered at Once upon the
stern realities and miseries of life, and to their better
nature it is almost hopeless to appeal in aftertimes, by
any of the references which will awaken, if it be only
for a moment, some good feeling in Ordinary bosoms,
however corrupt they may have become. Talk to them
of parental solicitude, the happy days of childhood, and
the merry games of infancy! Tell them of hunger and
the streets, beggary and stripes, the gin-shop, the
station-house, and the pawnbroker's, and they will
understand you. &
Two or three women were standing at different parts
of the grating, conversing with their friends, but a very
large proportion of the prisoners appeared to have no
friends at all, beyond such of their old companions as
might happen to be within the walls. So, passing
hastily down the yard, and pausing only for an instant
to notice the little incidents we have just recorded, we
were conducted up a clean and well-lighted flight of
stone stairs to one of the wards. There are several in
this part of the building, but a description of one is a
description of the whole.
It was a spacious, bare, whitewashed apartment,
lighted of course, by windows looking into the interior
of the prison, but far more light and airy than one
could reasonably expect to find in such a situation.
There was a large fire with a deal table before it, round
which ten or a dozen women were seated on wooden
forms at dinner. Along both sides of the room ran a
shelf; below it, at regular intervals, a row of large
hooks were fixed in the wall, on each of which was
hung the sleeping-mat of a prisoner: her rug and blanket
being folded up, and placed on the shelf above. At
night, these mats are placed on the floor, each beneath
202 SKETCHES BY BOZ
the hook on which it hangs during the day; and the
ward is thus made to answer the purposes both of a
day-room and ºpiº apartment. Over the fire-place,
was a large sheet of pasteboard, on which were dis-
played a variety of texts from Scripture, which were
also scattered about the room in Scraps about the size
and shape of the copy-slips which are used in schools.
On the table was a sufficient provision of a kind of
stewed beef and brown bread, in pewter dishes, which
are kept perfectly bright, and displayed on shelves in
great order and regularity when they are not in use.
The women rose hastily, on our entrance, and retired
in a hurried manner to either side of the fireplace.
They were all cleanly—many of them decently—attired,
and there was nothing peculiar, either in their appear-
ance or demeanour. One or two resumed the needle-
work which they had probably laid aside at the com-
mencement of their meal; others gazed at the visitors
with listless curiosity; and a few retired behind their
companions to the very end of the room, as if desirous
to avoid even the casual observation of the strangers.
Some old Irish women, both in this and other wards, to
whom the thing was no novelty, appeared perfectly
indifferent to Our presence, and remained standing
close to the seats from which they had just risen; but
the general feeling among the females seemed to be
one of uneasiness during the period of our stay among
them: which was very brief. Not a word was uttered
during the time of our remaining, unless, indeed, by
the wardswoman in reply to some question which we
put to the turnkey who accompanied us. In every
ward on the female side, a wardswoman is appointed
to preserve Order, and a similar regulation is adopted
among the males. The wardsmen and wards women
are all prisoners, selected for good conduct. They
alone are allowed the privilege of sleeping on bedsteads;
a small Stump bedstead being placed in every ward for
that purpose. On both sides of the gaol, is a small
receiving-room, to which prisoners are conducted on
their first reception, and whence they cannot be re-
moved until they have been examined by the surgeon
of the prison.*
* The regulations of the prison relative to the confinement of prisoners during
the day, their Sleeping at night, their taking their meals, and other matters of
gaol economy, have been all altered—greatly for the better—since this sketch was
first published, -
4
A VISIT TO NEWGATE. 203
Retracing our steps to the dismal passage in which
we found ourselves at first (and which, by the by, con-
tains three or four dark cells for the accommodation of
refractory prisoners), we were led through a narrow
yard to the “School”—a portion of the prison set apart
for boys under fourteen years of age. In a tolerable-
sized room, in which were writing-materials and some
copy-books, was the school-master, with a couple of his
pupils; the remainder having been fetched from an
adjoining apartment, the whole were drawn up in line
for our inspection. There were fourteen of them in
all, some with shoes, some without; some in pinafores
without jackets, others in jackets without pinafores,
and one in scarce anything at all. The whole number,
without an exception we believe, had been committed
for trial on charges of pocket-picking; and fourteen
such terrible little faces we never beheld.—There was
not one redeeming feature among them—not a glance
of honesty—not a wink expressive of anything but the
gallows and the hulks, in the whole collection. As to
anything like shame or contrition, that was entirely
out of the question. They were evidently quite grati-
fied at being thought worth the trouble of looking at;
their idea appeared to be, that we had come to see
Newgate as a grand affair, and that they were an in-
dispensable part of the Show; and every boy as he
“fell in ’’ to the line, actually seemed as pleased and
important as if he had done something excessively
meritorious in getting there at all. We never looked
upon a more disagreeable sight, because we never
saw fourteen such hopeless creatures of neglect,
before,
On either side of the school-yard is a yard for men,
in one of which—that towards Newgate-street—pris-
oners of the more respectable class are confined. Of the
other, we have little description to offer, as the differ-
ent wards necessarily partake of the same character.
They are provided, like the Wards on the women’s side,
with mats and rugs, which are disposed of in the same
manner during the day; the only very striking differ-
once between their appearance and that of the wards
inhabited by the females, is the utter absence of any
employment. Huddled together on two opposite forms,
by the fireside, sit twenty men perhaps; here, a boy in
204 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
livery; there, a man in a rough great-coat, and top-
boots; farther on, a desperate-looking fellow in his
shirt sleeves, with an old Scotch cap upon his shaggy
head; near him again, a tall ruffian, in a Smock-frock;
next to him, a miserble being of distressed appear-
ance, with his head resting on his hand;—all alike in
one respect, all idle and listless. When they do leave
the fire, sauntering moodily about, lounging in the
window, or leaning against the wall, vacantly swinging
their bodies to and fro. With the exception of a man
reading an old newspaper, in two or three instances,
this was the case in every ward we entered.
The only communication these men have with their
friends, is through two close iron gratings, with an in-
termediate space of about a yard in width between the
two, so that nothing can be handed across, nor can the
prisoner have any communication by touch with the
person who visits him. The married have a separate
grating, at which to see their wives, but its construction
is the same.
The prison chapel is situated at the back of the gov-
ernor’s house: the latter having no windows looking into
the interior of the prison. Whether the associations
connected with the place—the knowledge that here a
portion of the burial Service is, On some dreadful occa-
sions, performed Over the quick and not upon the dead
—cast over it a still more gloomy and Sombre air than
art has imparted to it, we know not, but its appearance
is very striking. There is something in a silent and
deserted place of worship, Solemn and impressive at
any time; and the very dissimilarity of this one from
any we have been accustomed to, only enchances the
impression. The meanness of its appointments—the
bare and Scanty pulpit, with the paltry painted pillars
on either side—the women’s gallery with its great heavy.
curtain—the men's with its unpainted benches and
dingy front—the tottering little table at the altar, with
the commandments on the wall above it, scarcely legi-
ble through the lack of paint, and dust and damp—so
unlike the velvet and gilding, the marble and wood, of
a modern church—are strange and striking. There is
one object, too, which rivets the atterition and fasci-
nates the gaze, and from which we may turn horror-
stricken in vain, for the recollection of it will haunt us,
t
• *
A VISIT TO NEWGATE. - 205
waking and sleeping, for a long time afterwards.
Immediately below the reading-desk, on the floor of the
chapel, and forming the most conspicuous object in its
little area, is the condemned pew; a huge black pen, in
which the wretched people, who are singled out for
death, are placed, on the Sunday preceding their execu-
tion, in sight of all their fellow-prisoners, from many of
whom they may have been separated but a week before,
to hear prayers for their own souls, to join in the re-
sponses of their own burial service, and to listen to an
address, warning their recent companions to take ex-
ample by their fate, and urging themselves, while there
is yet time—nearly four-and-twenty hours—to “turn,
and flee from the wrath to come!” Imagine what have
been the feelings of the men whom that fearful pew has
enclosed, and of whom, between the gallows and the
knife, no mortal remnant may now remain! Think of the
hopeless clinging to life to the last, and the wild despair,
far exceeding in anguish the felon’s death itself, by which
they have heard the certainty of their speedy transmis-
sion to another world, with all their crimes upon their
heads, rung into their ears by the officiating clergyman!
At one time—and at no distant period either—the
coffins of the men about to be executed, were placed in
that pew upon the seat by their side, during the whole
service. It may seem incredible, but it is true. Let us
hope that the increased spirit of civilisation and human-
ity which abolished this frightful and degrading cus-
tom, may extend itself to other usages equally bar-
barous; usages which have not even the plea of utility
in their defence, as every year's experience has shown
them to be more and more inefficacious.
Leaving the chapel, descending to the passage SO
frequently, alluded to, and crossing the yard before
noticed as being allotted to prisoners of a more respect-
able description than the generality of men confined
here, the visitor arrives at a thick iron gate of great
size and strength. Having been admitted through it by
the turnkey on duty, he turns sharp round to the left,
and pauses at another gate; and having passed this last
barrier, he stands in the most terrible part of this gloomy
building—the condemned ward.
The press-yard, well known by name to newspaper
readers, from its frequent mention in accounts of exe-
206 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
cutions, is at the corner of the building, and next to
the ordinary’s house, in Newgate-street: running from
Newgate-street, towards the centre of the prison, par-
allel with Newgate-market. It is a long, narrow court,
of which a portion of the wall in Newgate-street forms
one end, and the gate the other. At the upper end, on
the left-hand—that is, adjoining the wall in Newgate-
stroet—is a cistern of water, and at the bottom a double
grating (of which the gate itself forms a part) similar to
that before described. Through these grates the pris-
oners are allowed to see their friends; a turnkey always
remaining in the vacant space between, during the
whole interview. Immediately on the right as you enter,
is a building containing the press-room, day-room, and
cells; the yard is on every side surrrounded, by lofty
walls guarded by chevaua de frise; and the whole is
under the constant inspection of vigilant and experi-
enced turnkeys.
In the first apartment into which we were conducted—
which was at the top of a staircase, and immediately
over the press-room—were five-and-twenty or thirty
prisoners, all under sentence of death, awaiting the
result of the recorder’s report—men of all ages and ap-
pearances, from a hardened old offender with Swarthy
face and grizzly beard of three days’ growth, to a hand-
some boy, not fourteen years old, and of singularly
youthful appearance even for that age, who had been
condemned for burglary. There was nothing remark-
able in the appearance of these prisoners. One or two
decently dressed men were brooding with a dejected
air over the fire; several little groups of two or three
had been engaged in conversation at.the upper end of
the room, or in the windows; and the remainder were
crowded round a young man seated at a table, who
appeared to be engaged in teaching the younger ones
to write. The room was large, airy, and clean. There
was very little anxiety or mental suffering depicted in
the countenance of any of the men;–they had all been
sentenced to death, it is true, and the recorder’s
report had not yet been made; but we question
whether there was a man among them, notwithstand-
ing, who did not know that although he had undergone
the ceremony, it never was intended that his life
should be sacrificed. On the table lay a Testament, but
A VISIT TO NEWGATE. 20:
there were no tokens of its having been in recent use.
In the press-room below, were three men, the nature
of whose offences rendered it necessary to separate
them, even from their companions in guilt. It is a
long, sombre room, with two windows sunk into the
stone wall, and here the wretched men are pinioned on
the morning of their execution, before moving towards
the scaffold. The fate of one of these prisoners was
uncertain; some mitigatory circumstances having come
to light since his trial, which had been humanely rep-
resented in the proper quarter. The other two had
nothing to expect from the mercy of the crown; their
doom was sealed ; no plea could be urged in extenuation
of their crime, and they well knew that for them there
was no hope in this world. “The two short ones,” the
turnkey whispered, “were dead men.”
The man to whom we have alluded as entertaining
Some hopes of escape, was lounging at the greatest
distance he could place between himself, and his com-
panions, in the window nearest to the door. He was
probably aware of our approach, and had assumed an
air of courageous indifference; his face was purposely
averted towards the window, and he stirred not an inch
while we were present. The other two men were at
the upper end of the room. One of them, who was
imperfectly seen in the dim light, had his back towards
us, and was stooping over the fire, with his right arm .
on the mantel-piece, and his head sunk upon it. The
other was leaning on the sill of the farthest window.
The light fell full upon him, and communicated to his
pale, haggard face and disordered air, an appearance
which, at that distance, was ghastly. His cheek rested
upon his hand ; and, with his face a little raised, and
his eyes widely staring before him, he seemed to be
unconsciously intent on counting the chinks in the
opposite wall. We passed this room again afterwards.
The first man was pacing up and down the court with
a firm military step—he had been a soldier in the foot-
guards—and a cloth cap thrown jauntily on one side of
his head. He bowed respectfully to our conductor, and
the salute was returned. The other two still remained
in the same position we have described, and were as
motionless as statues.*
* These two men were executed shortly afterwards. The other was respited
during her Majesty's pleasure. y
208 - SKETCHES BY BOZ.
A few paces up the yard, and forming a continuation
of the building, in which are the two rooms we have
just quitted, lie the condemned cells. The entrance is
by a narrow and obscure staircase leading to a dark
passage, in which a charcoal stove casts a lurid tint
over the objects in its immediate vicinity, and diffuses
something like warmth around. From the left-hand
side of this passage, the massive door of every cell On
the story opens; and from it alone can they be ap-
proached. There are three of these passages, and
three of these ranges of cells, one above the other; but
in size, furniture, and appearance they are all precisely
alike. Prior to the recorder's report being made, all
the prisoners under sentence of death are removed
from the day-room at five o’clock in the afternoon, and
locked up in these cells, where they are allowed a can-
dle until ten o’clock; and here they remain until seven
next morning. When the warrant for a prisoner's exe-
cution arrives, he is removed to the cells and confined
in one of them until he leaves it for the scaffold. He
is at liberty to walk in the yard; but, both in his walks
and in his cell, he is constantly attended by a turnkey,
who never leaves him on any pretence. • -
We entered the first cell. It was a stone dungeon,
eight feet long by six wide, with a bench at the upper
end, under which were a common rug, a bible, and
prayer-book. An iron candlestick was fixed into the
wall at the side; and a small high window in the back
admitted as much air and light as could struggle in
between a double row of heavy, crossed iron bars. It
contained no other furniture of any description.
Conceive the situation of a man, spending his last
night on earth in this cell. Buoyed up with some vague
and undefined hope of reprieve, he knew not why—
indulging in Some wild and visionary idea of escaping,
he knew not how—hour after hour of the three pre-
ceding days allowed him for preparation, has fled with
a speed which no man living would deem possible, for
none but this dying man can know. He has wearied
his friends with entreaties, exhausted the attendants
with importunities, neglected in his feverish restless-
mess the timely warnings of his spiritual consoler; and
now that the illusion is at last dispelled, now that
etermity is before him and guilt behind, now that his
A VISIT TO NEWGATE. 209
fears of death amount almost to madness, and an over-
whelming sense of his helpless, hopeless State rushes
upon him, he is lost and stupefied, and has neither
thoughts to turn to, nár power to call upon, the
Almighty Being, from whom alone he can seek mercy
and forgiveness, and before whom his repentance can
alone avail. º
Hours have glided by, and still he sits upon the same
stone bench with folded arms, heedless alike of the
fast-decreasing time before him, and the urgent en-
treaties of the good man at his side. The feebie light
is wasting gradually, and the deathlike stillness of the
street without, broken only by the rumbling of some
passing vehicle which echoes mournfully through the
empty yards, warns him that the night is waning fast
away. The deep bell of St. Paul’s strikes—one! He
heard it; it has roused him. Seven hours left! He
paces the narrow limits of his cell with rapid strides,
cold drops of terror starting on his forehead, and every
muscle of his frame quivering with agony. Seven
hours | He suffers himself to be led to his seat, me-
chanically takes the bible which is placed in his hand,
and tries to read and listen. No: his thoughts will
wander. The book is torn and soiled by use—and like
the book he read his lessons in, at school, just forty
years ago! He has never bestowed a thought upon it,
perhaps, since he left it as a child: and yet the place,
the time, the room—nay, the very boys he played with,
crowd as vividly before him as if they were scenes of
yesterday; and some forgotten phrase, some childish
word, rings in his ears like the echo of one uttered but
a minute since. The voice of the clergyman recals him
to himself. He is reading from the sacred book its
solemn promises of pardon for repentance, and its awful
denunciation of obdurate men. He falls upon his knees
and clasps his hands to pray. Hush! what sound was
that? He starts upon his feet. It cannot be two yet.
Hark! Two quarters have struck;-the third—the
fourth. It is! Six hours left. Tell him not of repent-
ance! Six hours' repentance for eight times six years
of guilt and sin! He buries his face in his hands, and
throws himself on the bench. *
Worn with watching and excitement, he sleeps, and
the same unsettled State of mind pursues him in his
14 *
21() - SKETCHES BY BOZ
dreams. An insupportable load is taken from his
breast; he is walking with his wife in a pleasant field,
with the bright sky above , them, and a fresh and
boundless prospect on every side—how different
from the stone walls of Newgate! She is looking—
not as she did when he first saw her for the last
time in that dreadful place, but as she used when he
loved her—long, long ago, before misery and ill-treat-
ment had altered her looks, and vice had changed his
nature, and she is leaning upon his arm, and looking
up into his face with tenderness and affection——and he
does not strike her now, nor rudely shake her from
him. And oh! how glad he is to tell her all he had for-
gotten in that last hurried interview, and to fall on his
knees before her and fervently beseech her pardon for
all the unkindness and cruelty that wasted her form
and broke her heart! The scene suddenly changes.
He is on his trial again: there are the judge and jury,
and prosecutors, and witnesses, just as they were before.
How full the court is—what a sea of heads—with a
gallows, too, and a scaffold—and how all those people
stare at him / Verdict, “Guilty.” No matter; he will
escape.
The night is dark and cold, the gates have been left
open, and in an instant he is in the street, flying from
the scene of his imprisonment like the wind. The
streets are cleared, the open fields are gained and the
broad wide country lies before him. Onward he dashes
in the midst of darkness, over hedge and ditch, through
mud and pool, bounding from spot to spot with a speed
and lightness, astonishing even to himself. At length
he pauses; he must be safe from pursuit now: he will
stretch himself on that bank and sleep till sunrise.
A period of unconsciousness succeeds. He wakes,
cold and wretched. The dull grey light of morning
is stealing into the cell, and falls upon the form of the
attendant turnkey. Confused by his dreams, he starts
from his uneasy bed in momentary uncertainty. It is
but momentary. Every object in the narrow cell is too
frightfully real to admit of doubt or mistake. He is
the condemned felon again, guilty and despairing; and
in two hours more will be dead.
$
{
,ºgºſ
ſſ:
į
}}
}}
§
TS ABOUT PEOPLE.
TEIOUGH
Sketches.

THOUGHTS ABOUT PEOPLE. 211
CHARACTERS.
CHAPTER I.
THOUGHTS AIBOUT PEOPLE.
IT is strange with how little notice, good, bad, or in-
different, a man may live and die in London. He
awakens no sympathy in the breast of any single per-
son; his existence is a matter of interest to no one save
himself; he cannot be said to be forgotten when he
dies, for no one remembered him when he was alive.
There is a numerous class of people in this great mes
tropolis who seem not to possess a single friend, and
whom nobody appears to care for. Urged by impera-
tive necessity in the first instance, they have resorted
to London in search of employment, and the means of
subsistence. It is hard, we know, to break the ties
which bind us to our homes and friends, and harder
still to efface the thousand recollected of happy days
and old times, which have been slumbering in our
bosoms for years, and only rush upon the mind, to
bring before it associations connected with the friends
we have left, the scenes we have beheld too probably
for the last time, and the hopes we once cherished, but
may entertain no more. These men, however, happily
for themselves, have long forgotten such hº
Old country friends have died or emigrated; former
correspondents have become lost, like themselves, in
the crowd and turmoil of some busy city; and they
have gradually settled down into mere passive creatures
of habit and endurance.
We were seated in the enclosure of St. James's Park
the other day, when our attention was attracted by a
man whom we immediately put down in our own mind
212 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
as one of this class. He was a tall, thin, pale person,
in a black coat, scanty grey trousers, little pinched-up
gaiters, and brown beaver gloves. He had an umbrella
in his hand—not for use, for the day was fine—but, evi-
dently, because he always carried one to the office in
the morning. He walked up and down before the little
patch of grass on which the chairs are placed for hire,
not as if he were doing it for pleasure or recreation, but
as if it were a matter of compulsion, just as he would
walk to the office every morning from the back settle-
ments of Islington. It was Monday; he had escaped
for four-and-twenty hours from the thraldom of the
desk; and was walking here for exercise and amuse-
ment—perhaps for the first time in his life. We were
inclined to think he had never had a holiday before,
and that he did not know what to do with himself,
Children were playing on the grass: groups of people
were loitering about, chatting and laughing; but the
man walked steadily up and down, unheeding and un-
heeded, his spare pale face looking as if it were in-
capable of bearing the expression of curiosity or
interest.
There was something in the man’s manner and ap-
pearance which told us, we fancied, his whole life, or
rather his whole day, for a man of this sort has no
variety of days. We thought we almost saw the dingy
little back office into which he walks every morning,
hanging his hat on the same peg, and placing his legs
beneath the same desk: first, taking off that black coat
which lasts the year through, and putting on the One
which did duty last year, and which he keeps in his
desk to save the other. There he sits till five o’clock,
working on, all day, as regularly as the dial Over the
mantelpiece, whose loud ticking is as monotonous as
his whole existence: only raising his head when some
one enters the counting-house or when, in the midst of
some difficult calculation, he looks up to the ceiling as
if there were inspiration in the dusty skylight with a
#. knot in the centre of every pane of glass. About
ve, or half-past, he slowly dismounts from his accus-
tomed stool, and again changing his coat, proceeds to
his usual dining-place, somewhat near Bucklersbury. .
The waiter recites the bill of fare in a rather con-
fidential manner—for he is a regular customer—and
THOUGHTS APOUT PEOPLE 213
after inquiring “What's in the best cut P” and “What
was up last P” he orders a small plate of roast beef,
with greens, and half-a-pint of porter. He has a small.
plate to-day, because greens are a penny more than
potatoes, and he had “two breads” yesterday, with the
additional enormity of “a cheese’’ the day before,
This important point settled, he hangs up his hat—he
took it off the moment he sat down—and bespeaks
the paper after the next gentleman. If he can get it
while he is at dinner, he eats with much greater zest;
balancing it against the water-bottle, and eating a bit
of beef, and reading a line or two, alternately. Exactly
at five minutes before the hour is up, he produces a
shilling pays the reckoning, carefully deposits the
change in his waistcoat-pocket (first deducting a penny
for the waiter), and returns to the office, from which,
if it is not foreign post night, he again sallies forth,
in about half an hour. He then walks home, at his
usual pace, to his little back room at Islington, where
he has his tea; perhaps Solacing himself during the
meal with the conversation of his landlady’s little boy,
whom he occasionally rewards with a penny, for solv-
ing problems in simple addition. Sometimes, there is
a letter or two to take up to his employer's, in Russell-
square; and then, the wealthy man of business, hearing
his voice, calls out from the dining-parlour, “Come
in, Mr. Smith;” and Mr. Smith, putting his hat at the
feet of one of the hall chairs, walks timidly in, and
being condescendingly desired to sit down, carefully
tucks his legs under his chair, and sits at a consider-
able distance from the table while he drinks the glass
of sherry which is poured out for him by the eldest
boy, and after drinking which, he backs and slides
out of the room, in a state of nervous. agitation, from
which he does not perfectly recover, until he finds
himself once more in the Islington-road. Poor, harm-
less creatures such men are; contented but not happy;
broken-spirited and humbled, they may feel no pain,
but they never know pleasure.
Compare these men with another class of beings
who, like them, have neither friend nor companion,
but whose position in society is the result of their own
choice. These are generally old fellows with white
heads and red faces, addicted to port wine and Hes-
214 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
sian boots, who from Some cause, real or *...*.
generally the former, the excellent reason being that
they are rich, and their relations poor—grow suspicious
of every body, and do the misanthropical in chambers,
taking great delight in thinking themselves unhappy,
and making every body they come near, miserable.
You may see such men as these, any where; you will
know them at coffee-houses by their discontented
exclamations and the luxury of their dinners; at
theatres, by their always sitting in the same place
and looking with a jaundiced eye on all the young
people near them; at church, by the pomposity with
which they enter, and the loud tone in which they
repeat the responses; at parties, by their getting cross
at whist and hating music. An old fellow of this kind
will have his chambers splendidly furnished, and col-
lect books, plate, and pictures about him in profusion;
not so much for his own gratification, as to be supe-
rior to those who have the desire, but not the means,
to compete with him. . He belongs to two or three
clubs, and is envied and flattered, and hated by the
members of them all. Sometimes he will be appealed
to by a poor relation—a married nephew perhaps—for
some little assistance: and then he will declaim with
honest indignation on the improvidence of young
married people, the worthlessness of a wife, the inso-
lence of having a family, the atrocity of getting into
debt with a hundred and twenty-five pounds a-year,
and other unpardonable crimes; winding up his exhor-
tations with a complacent review of his own conduct,
and a delicate allusion to parochial relief. He dies,
some day after dinner, of apoplexy, having bequeathed
his property to a Public Society, and the Institution
erects a tablet to his memory, expressive of their admi-
ration of his Christian conduct in this world, and their
comfortable conviction of his happiness in the next.
But, next to our very particular friends, hackney-
coachmen, cabrmen and cads, whom we admire in pro-
portion to the extent of their cool impudence and
perfect Self-possession, there is no class of people who
amuse us more than London apprentices. They are no
longer an Organised body, bound down by solemn
compact to terrify his majesty’s subjects whenever it
pleases them to take offence in their heads and staves
THOUGHTS ABOUT PEOPLE 215
in their hands. They are only bound, now, by inden-
tures; and, as to their valour, it is easily restrained by
the wholesome dread of the New Police, and a per-
spective view of a damp station-house, terminating in
a police-office and a reprimand. They are still, how-
ever, a peculiar class, and not the less pleasant for
being inoffensive. Can any one fail to have noticed
them in the streets on Sunday? And were there ever
Such harmless efforts at the grand and magnificent
as the young fellows display! We walked down the
Strand, a Sunday or two ago, behind a little group;
and they furnished food for our amusement the whole
way. They had come out of some part of the city; it
was between three and four o’clock in the afternoon;
and they were on their way to the Park. There were
four of them, all arm-in-arm, with white kid gloves like
so many bridegrooms, light trousers of unprecedented
patterns, and coats for which the English language has
yet no name—a kind of cross between a great-coat and
a surtout, with the collar of the one, the skirts of the
Other, and pockets peculiar to themselves.
Each of the gentlemen carried a thick stick with a
large tassel at the top, which he occasionally twirled
gracefully round; and the whole four, by way of look-
ing easy and unconcerned, were walking with a para-
lytic Swagger irressistibly ludicrous. One of the party
had a watch about the size and shape of a reasonable
Ribstone pippin, jammed into his waistcoat-pocket,
which he carefully compared with the clocks at St.
Clement’s and the New Church, the illuminated clock
at Exeter Change, the clock of St. Martin’s Church,
and the clock of the Horse Guards. When they at last
arrived in St. James’s Park, the member of the party
who had the best made boots on, hired a second chair
expressly for his feet, and flung himself on this two
pennyworth of sylvan luxury with an air which levelled
all distinctions between Brookes’s and Snooks’s, Crock-
ford’s and Bagnigge Wells. º
We may smile at such people, but they can never
excite our anger. They are usually on the best terms
with themselves, and it follows almost as a matter of
course, in good humour with every one about them.
Besides, they are always the faint reflection of higher
lights; and, if they do display a little occasional foolery
216 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
in their own proper persons, it is surely more tolerable
than precocious puppyism in the Quadrant, whiskered
dandyism in Regent-street and Pall-mall, or gallantry
in its dotage any where.
C. H. A. P T E R II.
A. C. H. R. I S T M A S D IN N E R .
HRISTMAS time ! That man must be a misan-
thrope indeed, in whose breast something like a
jovial feeling is not roused—in whose mind some pleas-
ant associations are not awakened—by the recurrence
of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that
Christmas is not to them what it used to be; that each
succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope,
or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed
away; that the present only serves to remind them
of reduced circumstances and straitened incomes—
of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and
of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and
misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences.
There are few men who have lived long enough in the
world, who cannot call up such thoughts any day in
the year. Then do not select the merriest of the three
hundred and sixty-five, for your doleful recollections,
but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire—fill the
glass and send round the song—and if your room be
Smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass
be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine,
put a good face on the matter, and empty it off-hand,
and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to
sing, and thank God it’s no worse. Look On the merry
faces of your children (if you have any) as they sit
round the fire. One little seat may be empty; one
slight form that gladdened the father's heart, and
roused the mother’s pride to look upon, may not be
there. Dwell not upon the past; think not that one
short year ago, the fair child now resolving into dust,
sat before you, with the bloom of health upon its cheek
and the gaiety of infancy in its joyous eye. Reflect
A CHRISTMAS DINNER. 217
upon your present blessings—of which every man has
many—not on your past misfortunes, of which all men
have some. Fill your glass again, with a merry face
and contented heart. Our life on it, but your Christmas
shall be merry, and your new year a happy one!
Who can be insensible to the out-pourings of good
feeling, and the honest interchange of affectionate
attachment, which abound at this season of the year P
A Christmas family-party! We know nothing in
nature more delightful! There seems a magic in the
very name of Christmas. Petty jealousies and discords
are forgotten; Social feelings are awakened, in bosoms
to which they have long been strangers; father and
son, or brother and sister, who have met and passed
with averted gaze, or a look of cold recognition, for
months before, proffer and return the cordial embrace,
and bury their past animosities in their present happi-
ness. Kindly hearts that have yearned towards each
other, but have been withheld by false notions of pride
and self-dignity, are again reunited, and all is kindness
and benevolence! Would that Christmas lasted the
whole year through (as it ought), and that the prejudices
and passions which deform our better nature, were never
called into action among those to whom they should
ever be strangers!
The Christmas family-party that we mean, is not a
mere assemblage of relations, got up at a week or two’s
notice, originating this year, having no family prece-
dent in the last, and not likely to be repeated in the
next. No. It is an annual gathering of all the acces-
sible members of the family, young or old, rich or poor;
and all the children look forward to it, for two months
beforehand, in a fever of anticipation. Formerly, it
was held at grandpapa’s; but grandpapa getting old, and
grandmamma getting old too, and rather infirm, they
have given up housekeeping, and domesticated them-
selves with uncle George; so, the party always takes
place at uncle George's house, but grandmamma sends
in most of the good things, and grandpapa always will
toddle down, all the way to Newgate-market, to buy
the turkey, which he engages a porter to bring home
behind him in triumph, always insisting on the man’s
being rewarded with a glass of spirits, over and above
his hire, to drink “a merry Christmas and a happy new
218 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
year ” to aunt George. As to grandmanma, she is very
secret and mysterious for two or three days beforehand,
but not sufficiently so to P. rumours getting
afloat that she has purchased a beautiful new cap with
pink ribbons for each of the servants, together with
sundry books, and pen-knives, and pencil-cases, for the
younger branches; to say nothing of divers secret addi-
tions to the order originally given by aunt George at
the pastry-cook’s, such as another dozen of mince-pies
for the dinner, and a large plum-cake for the children.
On Christmas-eve, grandmanma is always in excel-
lent spirits, and after employing all the children, during
the day, in stoning the plums, and all that, insists,
regularly every year, on uncle George coming down
into the kitchen, taking off his coat, and stirring the
pudding for half an hour or so, which uncle George
good-humouredly does to the vociferous delight of the
children and servants. The evening concludes with a
glorious game of blind-man’s buff, in an early stage of
which grandpapa takes great care to be caught, in
order that he may have an opportunity of displaying
his dexterity.
On the following morning, the old couple, with as
many of the children as the pew will hold, go to church
in great state: leaving aunt George at home dusting
decanters and filling castors, and uncle George carrying
bottles into the dining-parlour, and calling for cork-
screws, and getting into everybody’s way.
When the church-party return to lunch, grandpapa
produces a small sprig of misletoe from his pocket, and
tempts the boys to kiss their little cousins under it—a
proceeding which affords both the boys and the old
gentleman unlimited satisfaction, but which rather
outrages grandmanma’s ideas of decorum, until grand-
papa says, that when he was just thirteen years and
three months old he kissed grandmamma under a mis-
letoe too, on which the children clap their hands, and
laugh very heartily, as do aunt George and uncle George;
and grandmamma, looks pleased, and says, with a
benevolent Smile, that grandpapa was an impudent
young dog, on which the children laugh very heartily
again, and grandpapa more heartily than any of them.
But all these diversions are nothing to the subsequent
excitement when grandmamma in a high cap, and slate-
A CHRISTMAS DINNER 21%)
coloured silk gown; and grandpapa with a beautifully
plaited shirt-frill, and white neckerchief; seat them-
selves on one side of the drawing-room fire, with uncle
George's children and little cousins innumerable, seated
in the front, waiting the arrival of the expected visitors.
Suddenly a hackney-coach is heard to stop, and uncle
George who has been "looking out of the window,
exclaims “ Here’s Jane! ” On which the children rush
to the door, and helter-skelter down stairs; and uncle
Robert and aunt Jane, and the dear little baby, and the
nurse, and the whole party, are ushered up stairs amidst
tumultuous shouts of “Oh, my!” from the children, and
frequently repeated warnings not to hurt baby from
the nurse. And grandpapa, takes the child, and grand-
mamma kisses her daughter, and the confusion of this
first entry has scarcely subsided, when some other
aunts and uncles with more cousins arrive, and the
grown-up cousins flirt with each other, and so do the
little cousins too, for that matter, and nothing is to be
heard but a confused din of talking, laughing, and
merriment.
A hesitating double knock at the street-door, heard
during a momentary pause in the conversation, excites
a general inquiry of “Who’s that?” and two or three
children, who have been standing at the window, an-
nounce in a low voice, that it’s “poor aunt Margaret.”
Upon which, aunt George leaves the room to welcome
the new comer; and grandmamma draws herself up,
rather stiff and stately; for Margaret married a poor man
without her consent, and poverty not being a 'sufficient
weighty punishment for her offence, has been discarded
by her friends, and debarred the society of her dearest
relatives. But Christmas has come round, and the
unkind feelings that have struggled against better dis-
positions during the year, have melted away before its
genial influence, like half-formed ice beneath the morn-
ing sun. It is not difficult in a moment of angry feeling
for a parent to denounce a disobedient child; but, to banish
her at a period of general good will and hilarity, from
the hearth, round which she has sat on so many anni-
versaries of the same day, expanding by slow degrees
from infancy to girlhood, and then bursting, almost
imperceptibly, into a woman, is widely different. The
air of conscious rectitude, and cold forgiveness, which
220 SKETCHES BY BOZ. .
the old lady has assumed, sits ill upon her; and when
the poor girl is led in by her sister, pale in looks and
broken in hope—not from poverty, for that she could
bear, but from the consciousness of undeserved neglect,
and unmerited unkindness—it is easy to see how much
of it is assumed. A momentary pause succeeds; the
girl breaks suddenly from her sister and throws herself,
sobbing, on her mother’s neck. The father steps hastily
forward, and takes her husband's hand. Friends crowd
round to offer their hearty congratulations, and happi-
mess and harmony again prevail.
As to the dinner, it's perfectly delightful—nothing
goes wrong, and everybody is in the very best of spirits,
and disposed to please and be pleased. Grandpapa re-
lates a circumstantial account of the purchase of the
turkey, with a slight digression relative to the purchase
of previous. turkeys, on former Chrismas-days, which
grandmanma corroborates in the minutest particular.
Uncle George tells stories, and carves poultry, and takes
wine, and jokes with the children at the side-table, and
winks at the cousins that are making love, or being
made love to, and exhilarates everybody with his good
humour and hospitality; and when, at last, a stout ser-
vant staggers in with a gigantic pudding, with a Sprig
of holly in the top, there is such a laughing, and shout-
ing, and clapping of little chubby i.i. and kicking up
of fat dumpy legs, as can only be equalled by the ap-
plause with which the astonishing feat of pouring
lighted brandy into mince-pies, is received by the
younger visitors. Then the dessert ——and the wine !—
and the fun | Such beautiful speeches, and such songs,
from aunt Margaret's husband, who turns out to be such
a nice man, and so attentive to grandmammal Even
grandpapa not only sings his annual song with unpre-
cedented vigour, but on being honoured with an unani-
mous encore, according to annual custom, actually comes
out with a new one which nobody but grandmanma
ever heard before; and a young Scape-grace of a cousin,
who has been in some disgrace with the old people, for
certain heinous sins of omission and commission—ne-
glecting to call, and persisting in drinking Burton ale—
astonishes everybody into convulsions of laughter by
volunteering the most extraordinary comic songs that
ever were heard. And thus the evening passes, in a
THE NEW YEAR. 221
strain of rational good-will and cheerfulness, doing more
to awaken the sympathies of every member of the party
in behalf of his neighbour, and to perpetuate their good
feeling, during the ensuing year, than half the homilies
that have ever been written, by half the Divines that
have ever lived.
-—-4
CHAPTER III.
T H E N E W Y E. A. R.
EXT to Christmas-day, the most pleasant annual
epoch in existence is the advent of the New Year.
There are a lachrymose set of people who usher in the
New Year with watching and fasting, as if they were
bound to attend as chief mourners at the obsequies of
the old one. Now, we cannot but think it a great deal
more complimentary, both to the old year that has rolled
away, and to the New Year that is just beginning to
dawn upon us, to see the old fellow out, and the new
one in, with gaiety and glee.
There must have been some few occurrences in the
past year to which we can look back, with a smile of
cheerful recollection, if not with a feeling of heartfelt
thankfulness. And we are bound by every rule of jus-
tice and equity to give the New Year credit for being a
#. one, until he proves himself unworthy the confi-
ence we repose in him. t
This is our view of the matter; and entertaining it,
notwithstanding our respect for the old year, one of the
few remaining moments of whose existence passes away
with every word we write, here we are, seated by our
fireside on this last night of the old year, one thousand
eight hundred and thirty-six, penning this article with
as jovial a face as if nothing extraordinary had hap-
#. or was about to happen, to disturb our good
TITY1OUII’.
Hackney-coaches and carriages keep rattling up the
street and down the street in rapid succession, convey-
ing, doubtless, Smartly dressed coachfuls to crowded
parties; loud and repeated double knocks at the house
with green blinds, opposite, announce to the whole
222 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
neighbourhood that there's one large party in the
street at all events; and we saw through the window,
and through the fog too, till it grew so thick that we
rung for candles, and drew our curtains, pastrycooks'
men with green boxes on their heads. and rout-furni-
ture-warehouse-carts, with cane seats and French lamps,
hurrying to the numerous houses where an annual fes-
tival is held in honour of the occasion.
We can fancy one of these parties, we think, as well
as if we were duly dress-coated and pumped, and had
just been announced at the drawing-room door.
Take the house with the green blinds for instance.
We know it is a quadrille party, because we saw Some
men taking up the front drawing-room carpet while
we sat at breakfast this morning, and if further evi-
dence be required, and we must tell the truth, we just now
saw one of the young ladies “doing ” another of the
young ladies’ hair, near one of the bed-room windows,
in an unusual style of splendour, which nothing else
but a quadrille party could possibly justify.
The master of the house with the green blinds is in
a public office; we know the fact by the cut of his coat,
the tie of his neckcloth, and the self-satisfaction of
his gait—the very green blinds themselves have a
Somerset-House air about them.
Hark!—a cab! That’s a junior clerk in the same
office; a tidy sort of young man, with a tendency to
cold and corns, who comes in a pair of boots with black
cloth fronts, and brings his shoes in his coat-pocket,
which shoes he is at this very moment putting on in
the hall. Now, he is announced by the man in the pas-
sage to another man in a blue coat, who is a disguised
messenger from the office.
The man on the first landing precedes him to the
drawing-room door. “Mr. Tupple!” shouts the mes-
senger. “How are you, Tupple?” says the master of
the house, advancing from the fire, before which he
had been talking politics and airing himself. “My
dear, this is Mr. Tupple (a courteous salute from the
lady of the house); Tupple, my eldest daughter; Julia,
my dear, Mr. Tupple; Tupple, my other daughters; my
son, sir; ” Tupple rubs his hands very hard, and smiles
as if it were all capital fun, and keeps constantly bow-
ing and turning himself round, till the whole family
THE NEW YEAR. 223
have been introduced, when he glides into a chair, at
the corner of the sofa, and opens a miscellaneous con-
versation with the young ladies upon the weather, and
the theatres, and the old year, and the last new mur-
der, and the balloon, and the ladies' sleeves, and the
festivities of the season, and a great many other topics
of small talk.
More double knocks! what an extensive party: what
an incessant hum of conversation and general sipping
of coffee! We see Tupple now, in our mind’s eye, in
the height of his glory. He has just handed that stout
old lady’s cup to the servant; and now, he dives among
the crowd of young men by the door, to intercept the
other servant, and secure the muffin-plate for the old
lady’s daughter, before he leaves the room; and now,
a.S #. passes the sofa, on his way back, he bestows a
glance of recognition and patronage upon the youn
ladies, as condescending and familiar as if he .
known them from infancy.
Charming person Mr. Tupple—perfect ladies’ man—
such a delightful companion too! Laugh!—nobody ever
understood papa’s jokes half So well as Mr. Tupple,
who laughs himself into convulsions at every fresh
burst of facetiousness. Most delightful partner! talks
through the whole set! and although he does seem at
first rather gay and frivolous, so romantic and with
so much feeling! Quite a love. No great favourite
with the young men, certainly, who sneer at, and
affect to º him; but every body knows that’s only
envy, and they needn’t give themselves the trouble to
depreciate his merits at any rate, for Ma says he shall
be asked to every future dinner-party, if it’s only to
talk to people between the courses, and distract their
attention when there is any unexpected delay in the
kitchen.
At supper, Mr. Tupple shows to still greater advan-
tage than he has done throughout the evening, and when
Pa requests every one to fill their glasses for the pur-
pose of drinking happiness throughout the year, Mr.
Tupple is so droll: insisting on all the young ladies
having their glasses filled, notwithstanding their re-
peated assurances that they never can, by any pos-
sibility, think of empting them: and subsequently
begging permission to say a few words on the senti-
224 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
ment which had just been uttered by Pa—when he
makes one of the most brilliant and poetical speeches
that can possibly be imagined, about the old year and
new one. After the toast has been drunk, and when
the ladies have retired, Mr. Tupple requests that every
gentleman will do him the favour of filling his glass,
for he has a toast to proposes on which all the gentle-
men cry “Hear! hear!” and pass the decanters accord-
ingly: and Mr. Tupple being informed by the master
of the house that they are all charged, and waiting
for his toast, rises, and begs to remind the gentlemen
present, how much they have been delighted by the
dazzling array of elegance and beauty which the draw-
ing-room has exhibited that night, and how their
senses have been charmed, and their hearts captivated,
by the bewitching concentration of female loveliness
which that very room has so recently displayed (Loud
cries of “Hear!”) Much as he (Tupple) would be disposed
to deplore the absence of the ladies, on other grounds,
he cannot but derive some consolation from the re-
flection that the very circumstance of their not bein
present, enables him to propose a toast, which he j
have otherwise been prevented from giving—that toast
he begs to say is—“The Ladies!” (Great applause.)
The Ladies! among whom the fascinating daughters
of their excellent host are alike conspicuous for their
beauty, their accomplishments, and their elegance.
He begs them to drain a bumper to “The Ladies, and
a happy new year to them!” (Prolonged approbation;
above which the noise of the ladies dancing the Span-
ish dance among themselves, Over-head, is distinctly
audible).
The applause consequent on this toast, has scarcely
subsided, when a young gentleman in a pink under-
waistcoat, sitting towards the bottom of the table, is
observed to grow very restless and fidgety, and to
evince strong indications of some latent desire to give
vent to his feelings in a speech, which the wary Tupple
at once perceiving, determines to forestal by speaking
himself. He, therefore, rises again, with an air of
solemn importance, and trusts he may be permitted to
propose another toast (unqualified approbation, and Mr.
Tupple proceeds). He is sure they must all be deeply
impressed with the hospitality—he may say the splen-
THE NEW YEAR. 225
dour—with which they have been that night received
by their worthy host and hostess. (Unbounded ap-
plause.) Although this is the first occasion on which
he has had the pleasure and delight of sitting at that
board, he has known his friend Dobble long and inti-
mately; he has been connected with him in business—
he wishes every body present knew Dobble as well as
he does. (A cough from the host.) He (Tupple) can
lay his hand upon his (Tupple's) heart, and declare his
confident belief that a better man, a better husband,
a better father, a better brother, a better son, a better
relation in any relation of life, than Dobble, never ex-
isted. (Loud cries of “ Hear!”) They have seen him
to-night in the peaceful bosom of his family: they
should see him in the morning, in the trying duties of
his office, Calm in the perusal of the morning papers,
uncompromising in the signature of his name, dignified
in his replies to the inquiries of Stranger applicants,
deferential in his behaviour to his superiors, majestic
in his deportment to the messengers. (Cheers.) When
he bears this merited testimony to the excellent quali-
ties of his friend Dobble, what can he say in approach-
ing such a subject as Mrs. Dobble? Is it requisite for
him to expatiate on the qualities of that amiable
woman? No; he will spare his friend Dobble’s feelings;
he will spare the feelings of his friend—if he will allow
him to have the honour of calling him so—Mr. Dobble,
junior. (Here Mr. Dobble, junior, who has been pre-
viously distending his mouth to a considerable width,
by thrusting a particularly fine Orange into that feature,
Suspends Operations, and assumes a proper appearance
of intense melancholy.) He will simply say—and he is
quite certain it is a sentiment in which all who hear
him will readily concur—that his friend Dobble is as
superior to any man he ever knew, as Mrs. Dobble is
far beyond any woman he ever saw (except her daugh-
ters); and he will conclude by proposing their worthy
“Host and Hostess, and may they live to enjoy many
more new years!”
The toast is drank with acclamation; Dobble returns
thanks, and the whole party rejoin the ladies in the
drawing-room Young men who were too bashful to
dance before supper, find tongues and partners; the
musicians exhibit unequivocal symptoms of having
& 1ö
226 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
drunk the new year in, while the company were out;
and dancing is kept up, until far into the first morning
of the new year.
We have scarcely written the last word of the pre-
vious sentence, when the first stroke of twelve, peals
from the neighbouring churches. There certainly—we
must confess it now—is something awful in the sound.
Strictly speaking, it may not be more impressive now,
than at any other time; for the hours steal as swiftly
on, at other periods, and their flight is little heeded.
But, we measure man’s life by years, and it is a solemn
knell that warns us we have passed another of the land-
marks which stand between us and the grave. Dis-
guise it as we may, the reflection will force itself
on our minds, that when the next bell announces the
arrival of a new year, we may be insensible alike of
the timely warning we have so often neglected, and of
all the warm feelings that glow within us now.
CHAPTER IV.
MISS EVANS AND THE EAGLE.
R. SAMUEL WILKINS was a carpenter, a jour-
L neyman carpenter of Small dimensions, decidedly
below the middle size—bordering, perhaps, upon the
dwarfish. His face was round ānā Shining, and his
hair carefully twisted into the outer corner of each eye,
till it formed a variety of that description of semi-curls,
usually known as “aggerawators.” . His earnings were
'all-sufficient for his wants, varying from eighteen
shillings to one pound five, weekly—his manner unde-
niable—his sabbath waistcoats dazzling. No wonder
that, with these qualifications, Samuel Wilkins found
favour in the eyes of the other sex; many women have
been captivated by far less substantial qualifications.
But, Samuel was proof against their blandishments,
until at length his eyes rested on those of a Being for
whom, from that time forth, he felt fate had destined
him. He came, and conquered—proposed, and was
accepted—loved, and was beloved. Mr. Wilkins “kept
company ” with Jemima Evans,
|MISS EVANS AND THE EAGLE. T22?
Miss Evans (or Ivins, to adopt the pronunciation most
in vogue with her circle of acquaintance) had adopted
in early life the useful pursuit of shoe-binding, to
which she had afterwards superadded the occupation of
a straw-bonnet maker. Herself, her maternal parent,
and two sisters, formed an harmonious quartett in the
most secluded portion of Camdentown; and here it was
that Mr. Wilkins presented himself, one Monday after-
noon, in his best attire, with his face more shining and
his waistcoat more bright than either had ever ap-
peared before. The family were just going to tea, and
were so glad to see him. It was quite a little feast;
two ounces of seven-and-sixpenny green, and a quarter
of a pound of the best fresh; and Mr. Wilkins had
brought a pint of shrimps, neatly folded up in a clean
belcher, to give a zest to the meal, and propitiate
Mrs. Ivins. Jemima was “cleaning herself "up-stairs;
so Mr. Samuel Wilkins sat down and talked domestic
economy with Mrs. Ivins, whilst the two youngest Miss
Ivinses poked bits of lighted brown paper between the
bars under the kettle to make the water boil for tea.
“I wos a thinking,” said Mr. Samuel Wilkins, during
a pause in the conversation—“I wos a thinking of tak-
ing J’mima to the Eagle to-night.”—“O my l’exclaimed
Mrs. Ivins. “Lor! how nice!” said the youngest Miss
Ivins. “Well, I declare!” added the youngest Miss
Ivins but one. “Tell J’mima to put on her white mus-
lin, Tilly,” screamed Mrs. Ivins, with motherly anxiety;
and down came J’mima herself soon afterwards in a
white muslim gown carefully hooked and eyed, a little
red shawl, plentifully pinned, a white straw bonnet
trimmed with red ribbons, a small necklace, a large
pair of bracelets, Denmark satin shoes, and open-
worked stockings; white cotton gloves on her fingers,
and a cambric pocket-handkerchief, carefully folded
up, in her hand—all quite genteel and ladylike. And
away went Miss Jemima Ivins and Mr. Samuel Wilkins,
and a dress cane, with a gilt knob at the top, to the ad-
miration and envy of the street in general, and to the
high gratification of Mrs. Ivins, and the two youngest
Miss Ivinses in particular. They had no sooner turned
into the Pancras road, than who should Miss J’mima
Ivins stumble upon, by the most fortunate accident in
the world, but a young lady as she knew, with her
228 SKETCHES BY Boz.
young man,—And it is so strange how things do turn
out sometimes—they were actually going to the Eagle
too. So Mr. Samuel Wilkins was introduced to Miss
J’mima Ivins's friend’s young man, and they all walked
on together, talking, and laughing, and joking away
like anything; and when they got as far as Pentonville,
Miss Ivins's friend’s young man would have the ladies
go into the Crown, to taste some shrub, which, after a
great blushing and giggling, and hiding of faces in
elaborate pocket handkerchiefs, they consented to do.
Having tasted it once, they were easily prevailed upon
to taste it again; and they sat out in the garden
tasting shrub, and looking at the Busses alternately, till
it was just the proper time to go to the Eagle; and then
they resumed their journey, and walked very fast, for
fear they should loose the beginning of the concert in
the rotunda.
“How ev’rly l’” said Miss Jemima Ivins, and Miss
Jemima Ivins's friend, both at once, when they had
passed the gate and were fairly inside the gardens.
There were the walks, beautifully gravelled and planted
—and the refreshment-boxes, painted and ornamented
like so many Snuff-boxes—and the variegated lamps
shedding their rich light upon the company’s heads—
and the place for dancing ready chalked for the com-
pany’s feet—and a Moorish band playing at one end of
the gardens—and an opposition military band playing
away at the other. Then, the waiters were rushing to
and fro with glasses of negus, and glasses of brandy-
and-water, and bottles of ale and bottles of stout; and
ginger-beer was going off in one place, and practical
jokes were going on in another; and people were crowd-
ing to the door of the rotunda; and in short the whole
scene was, as Miss J’mima Ivins, inspired by the novelty,
or the shrub, or both, observed—‘‘ one of dazzling excite-
ment.” As to the concert-room, never was anything
half so splendid. There was an orchestra for the
singers, all paint, gilding, and plate-glass; and such an
Organ! Miss J’mima Ivins's friend’s young man whis-
ered it had cost “four hundred pound,” which Mr.
amuel Wilkins said was “not dear neither;” an opinion
in which the ladies perfectly coincided. The audience
were seated on elevated benches round the room, and
crowded into every part of it; and everybody was eat-
MISS EVANS AND THE EAGLE. 229
ing and drinking as comfortably as possible. Just
before the concert commenced, Mr. Samuel Wilkins
ordered two glasses of rum-and-water “ warm with—”
and two slices of lemon, for himself and the other young
man, together with “a pint o' sherry wine for the ladies,
and some sweet caraway-seed biscuits;” and they would
have been quite comfortable and happy, only a strange
gentleman with large whiskers would stare at Miss
J’mima Ivins, and another gentleman in a plaid waist-
coat would wink at Miss J’mima Ivins's friend; on
which Miss J’mima Ivins's friend’s young man exhibited
symptoms of boiling over, and began to mutter about
“ people’s imperence,” and “swells out o' luck; ” and to
intimate, in oblique terms, a vague intention of knock-
ing somebody’s head off; which he was only prevented
from announcing more emphatically, by both Miss
J’mima Ivins and her friend threatening to faint away
on the spot if he said another word. .
The concert commenced—overture on the organ.
“How solemn!” exclaimed Miss J’mima Ivins, glanc-
ing perhaps unconsciously, at the gentleman with the
whiskers. Mr. Samuel Wilkins who had been mutter-
ing apart for some time past, as if he were holding a
confidential conversation with the gilt knob of the
dress cane, breathed hard—breathing vengeance per-
haps, but said nothing. “The soldier tired,” Miss
Somebody in white satin. “Ancore!” cried Miss
J’mima Ivin’s friend. “Ancore!” shouted the gentle-
man in the plaid waistcoat immediately, hammering
the table with a stout-bottle. Miss J’mima Ivins's
friend’s young man eyed the man behind the waistcoat
from head to foot, and cast a look of interrogative con-
tempt towards Mr. Samuel Wilkins. Comic song, ac-
companied on the organ. Miss J’mima Ivins was con-
vulsed with laughter—so was the man with the whis-
kers. Rºvery thing the ladies did, the plaid waistcoat
and whiskers did, by way of expressing unity of senti-
ment and congeniality of soul; and Miss J’mima Ivins,
and Miss J’mima Ivins's friend, grew lively and talka-
tive, as Mr. Samuel Wilkins, and Miss J’mima Ivins's
friend’s young man, grew morose and surly in inverse
proportion.
ow, if the matter had ended here, the little party
might soon have recovered their former equanimity;
230 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
but Mr. Samuel Wilkins and his friend began to throw
looks of defiance upon the waistcoat and whiskers.
And the waistcoat and whiskers, by way of intimating
the slight degree in which they were affected by the
looks aforesaid, bestowed glances of increased admi-
ration upon Miss J’mima Ivins and friend. The con-
cert and vaudeville concluded, they promenaded the
gardens. The waistcoat and whiskers did the same;
and made divers remarks complimentary to the ankles
of Miss J’mima Ivins and friend, in an audible tone.
At length, not satisfied with these numerous atrocities,
they actually came up and asked Miss J’mima Ivins,
and Miss J’mima Ivins's friend to dance, without taking
no more notice of Mr. Samuel Wilkins, and Miss
J’mima Ivins's friend’s young man, than if they was
nobody!
“What do you mean by that, scoundrel?” exclaimed
Mr. Samuel Wilkins, grasping the gilt-knobbed dress-
cane firmly in his right hand. “What’s the matter
with you, you little humbug?” replied the whiskers.
“How dare you insult me and my friend?” inquired
the friend’s young man. “You and your friend be
hanged!” responded the waistcoat. “Take that,” ex-
claimed Mr. Samuel Wilkins. The ferrule of the gilt-
knobbed dress-cane was visible for an instant, and
then the light of the variegated lamps shone brightly
upon it as it whirled into the air, cane and all. “Give
it him,” said the waistcoat. ‘‘ Horficer!” Screamed the
ladies. Miss J’mima, Ivins's beau, and the friend’s
young man, lay gasping on the gravel, and the waist-
coat and whiskers were seen no more.
Miss J’mima Ivins and friend being conscious that
the affray was in no slight degree aitributable to them-
selves, of course went into hysterics forthwith; de-
clared themselves the most injured of women; ex-
claimed, in incoherent ravings, that they had been sus-
pected—wrongfully suspected—oh that they should
ever have lived to see the day—and so forth; suffered a
relapse every time they opened their eye and saw their
unfortunate little admirers; and were carried to their
respective abodes in a hackney-coach, and a state of
insensibility, compounded of shrub, sherry, and gxcite-
Iment.
THE PARLOUR ORATOR 231
CHAPTER V.
THE PARLOUIR, ORATOR.
E had been lounging one evening, down Oxford-
street, Holborn, Cheapside, Coleman-street, Fins-
bury-square, and so on, with the intention of returning
westward, by Pentonville and the New-road, when we
began to feel rather thirsty, and disposed to rest for five
or ten minutes. So, we turned back towards an old,
quiet, decent public-house, which we remembered to
have passed but a moment before (it was not far from
the City-road), for the purpose of solacing ourself with
a glass of ale. The house was none of your stuccoed,
French-polished, illuminated palaces, but a modest
public-house of the old school, with a little old bar, and
a little old landlord, who, with a wife and daughter of
the same pattern, was comfortably seated in the bar
aforesaid—a snug little room with a cheerful fire, pro-
tected by a large screen: from behind which the young
lady emerged on Our representing our inclination for a
glass of ale.
“Won’t you walk into the parlour, sir?” said the
young lady, in Seductive tones.
“You had better walk into the parlour, sir,” said the
little old landlord, throwing his chair back, and look-
ing round one side of the screen, to survey our appear-
8,1] C62.
“You had much better step into the parlour, sir,”
said the little old lady, popping out her head, on the
other side of the screen.
We cast a slight glance around, as if to express our
ignorance of the locality so much recommended. The
little old landlord observed it; bustled out of the small
door of the small bar; and for with ushered us into the
parlour itself.
It was an ancient, dark-looking room, with Oaken
Wainscoting, a Sanded floor, and a high mantelpiece,
232 SKETCHES BY BOZ,
The walls were ornamented with three or four old
coloured prints in black frames, each print represent-
ing a naval engagement, with a couple of men-of-war
banging away at each other most vigorously, while an-
other vessel or two were blowing up in the distance,
and the foreground presented a miscellaneous collection
of broken masts and blue legs sticking up out of the
water. Depending from the ceiling in the centre of the
room, were a gas-light and bell-pull; on each side were
three or four long narrow tables, behind which was a
thickly-planted row of those slippery, Shiny-looking
wooden chairs, peculiar to hostelries of this descrip-
tion. The monotonous appearance of the Sanded boards
was relieved by an occasional Spittoon; and a triangular
pile of those useful articles adorned the two upper cor-
ners of the apartment.
At the furthest table, nearest the fire; with his face
towards the door at the bottom of the room, sat a stout-
ish man of about forty, whose short, stiff, black hair
curled closely round a broad high forehead, and a face
to which something besides water and exercise had
communicated a rather inflamed appearance. He was
smoking a cigar, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and,
had that confident oracular air which marked him as
the leading politician, general authority, and universal
anecdote-relater of the place. He had evidently just
delivered himself of something very weighty; for the
remainder of the company were puffing at their respec-
tive pipes and cigars in a kind of Solemn abstraction,
as if quite overwhelmed with the magnitude of the
subject recently under discussion.
On his right hand sat an elderly gentleman with a
white head, and broad-brimmed brown hat; on his
left, a sharp-nosed light-haired man in a brown sur-
tout reaching nearly to his heels, who took a whiff at
his pipe, and an admiring glance at the red-faced man,
alternately.
“Very extraordinary !” said the light-haired man
after a pause of five minutes. A murmur of assent ran
through the company.
“Not at all extraordinary—not at all,” said the red-
faced man, awakening Suddenly from his reverie, and
turning upon the light-haired man, the moment he had
spoken,
THE PARLOUR ORATOR 233
“Why should it be extraordinary?—why is it extra-
ordinary?—prove it to be extraordinary !”
“Oh, if you come to that—” said the light-haired
man, meekly.
“Come to that!” ejaculated the man with the red
face ‘‘ but we must come to that. We stand, in these
times, upon a calm elevation of intellectual attainment,
and not in the dark recess of mental deprivation.
Proof, is what I require—proof, and not assertions, in
these stirring times. Every gen’lem’n that knows me,
knows what was the nature and effect of my observa-
tions, when it was in the contemplation of the Old-street
Suburban Representative Discovery Society, to recom-
mend a candidate for that place in Cornwall there—I
forget the name of it. ‘Mr. Snobee,” said Mr. Wilson,
‘ is a fit and proper person to represent the borough in
Parliament.’ ‘ Prove it,” says I. ‘He is a friend to
Reform,” says Mr. Wilson. ‘ Prove it,” says I. ‘The
abolitionist of the national debt, the unflinching oppo-
nent of pensions, the uncompromising advocate of the
negro, the reducer of sinecures and the duration of
Parliaments; the extender of nothing but the suffrages
of the people,’ says Mr. Wilson. ‘ Prove it,” says I.
* His acts prove it,” says he. ‘Prove them,” says I.
“And he could not prove them,” said the red-faced
man, looking round triumphantly; “and the borough
didn’t have him; and if you carried this principle to the
full extent, you’d have no debt, no pensions, no sine-
Cures, no negroes, no nothing. And then, standin
upon an elevation of intellectual attainment, an
having reached the summit of popular prosperity, you
might bid defiance to the nations of the earth, and erect
yourselves in the proud confidence of wisdom and
Superiority. This is my argument—this always has
been my argument—and if I was a Member of the
House of Commons to-morrow, I'd make 'em shake in
their shoes with it.” And the red-faced man, having
struck the table very hard with his clenched fist, to
add weight to the declaration, smoked away like a
brewery.
“Well!” said the sharp-nosed man, in a very slow
and soft voice, addressing the company in general, “I
always do say, that of all the gentlemen I have the
pleasure of meeting in this room, there is not one
234 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
whose conversation I like to hear so much as Mr.
Rogers's, or who is such improving company.”
“Improving company!” said Mr. Rogers, for that, it
seemed, was the name of the red-faced man, “You may
say I am improving company, for I’ve improved you
all to some purpose; though as to my conversation
being as my friend Mr. Ellis here describes it, that is
not for me to say anything about. .You, gentlemen, are
the best judges on that point; but this I will say, when
I came into this parish, and first used this room, ten
years ago, I don’t believe there was one man in it who
knew he was a slave—and now you all know it, and
writhe under it. Inscribe that upon my tomb, and I am
satisfied.”
“Why, as to inscribing it on your tomb,” said a little
greengrocer with a chubby face, “ of course you can
have anything chalked up, as you likes to pay for, so
far as it relates to yourself and your affairs; but, when
you come to talk about slaves and that there abuse,
you’d better keep it in the family, 'cos I for one don’t
like to be called them names night after night.”
“You are a slave,” said the red-faced man, “and the
most pitiable of all slaves.”
“Werry hard if I am,” interrupted the greengrocer,
“for I got no good out of the twenty million that was
paid for 'mancipation, any how.”
“A willing slave,” ejaculated the red-faced man,
getting more red with eloquence, and contradiction—
“resigning the dearest birthright of your children—
neglecting the sacred call of Liberty—who, standing
imploringly before you, appeals to the warmest feel-
ings of your heart, and points to your helpless infants
but in vain.”
‘‘ Prove it,” said the greengrocer.
‘‘ Prove it!” sneered the man with the red face.
“What bending beneath the yoke of an insolent and
facetious oligarchy; bowed down by the domination of
cruel laws, groaning beneath tyranny and oppression on
every hand, at every side, ..º in every corner. Prove
it?—” . The red-faced man abruptly broke off, sneered
melo-dramatically, and buried his countenance and his
indignation together, in a quart pot.
“Ah, to be sure, Mr. Rogers,” said a stout broker in
a large waistcoat, who had kept his eyes fixed on this
THE PARLOUR ORATOR. 235
luminary all the time he was speaking. “Ah, to
be. ºre." Said the broker with a sigh, “that's the
point.”
“Of course, of course,” said divers members of the
Company, who understood almost as much about the
matter as the broker himself.
“You had better let him alone, Tommy,” said the
broker, by way of advice to the little greengrocer, “he
can tell what’s o’clock by an eight-day, without looking
at the minute hand, he can. Try it on, on some other
suit; it won’t do with him, Tommy.”
“What is a man?” continued the red-faced specimen
of the species, jerking his hat indignantly from its peg
on the wall. “What is an Englishman? Is he to be
trampled upon by every oppressor? Is he to be knocked
down at everybody’s bidding? What's freedom? Not
a standing army. What's a standing army? Not
freedom. What’s general happiness? Not universal
misery. Liberty ain’t the window-tax, is it? . The
Lords ain’t the Commons, are they?” And the red-
faced man, gradually bursting into a radiating sen-
tence, in which such adjectives as “dastardly,”
“oppressive,” “violent,” and “sanguinary,” formed
the most conspicuous words, knocked his hat in-
dignantly over his eyes, left the room and slammed the
door after him.
“Wonderful man!” said he of the sharp nose.
“Splendid speaker!” added the broker.
“Great power!” said every body but the greengrocer.
And as they said it, the whole party shook their heads
mysteriously, and one by one retired, leaving us alone
in the old parlour. If we had followed the established
precedent in all such instances, we should have fallen
into a fit of musing, without delay. The ancient ap-
pearance of the room—the old panelling of the wall—
the chimney blackened with smoke and age—would
have carried us back a hundred years at least, and we
should have gone dreaming on, until the pewter-pot
on the table, or the little beer-chiller on the fire, had
started into life, and addressed to us a long story of
days gone by. But, by some means or other, we were
not in a romantic humour; and although we tried very
hard to invest the furniture with vitality, it remained
perfectly unmoved, obstimate, and sullen. Being thus
236 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
reduced to the unpleasant necessity of musing about
ordinary matters, our thoughts reverted to the red-
faced man, and his oratorical display.
A numerous race are these red-faced men; there is
not a parlour, or club-room, or benefit society, or hum-
ble party of any kind, without its red-faced man.
Weak-pated dolts they are, and a great deal of mischief
they do to their cause, however good. So, just to hold
a pattern One up, to know the others by, we took his
likeness at once, and put him in here. And that is the
reason why we have written this paper.
CHAPTER VI.
THE HOSPITAL PATIENT.
IN our rambles through the streets of London after
evening has set in, we often pause beneath the
windows of some public hospital, and picture to our-
selves the gloomy and mournful scenes that are passing
within. The sudden moving of a taper as its feeble
ray shoots from window to window, until its light
gradually disappears, as if it were carried farther back
into the room to the bedside of some suffering patient,
is enough to awaken a whole crowd of reflections: the
mere glimmering of the low-burning lamps, which,
when all other habitations are wrapped in darkness
and slumber, denote the chamber where so many forms
are writhing with pain, or wasting with disease, is
sufficient to check the most boisterous merriment.
Who can tell the anguish of those weary hours, when
the only sound the sick man hears, is the disjointed
wanderings of some feverish slumberer near him, the
low moan of pain, or perhaps the muttered, long-for-
gotten prayer of a dying man. Who, but they who
have felt it, can imagine the sense of loneliness and
desolation which must be the portion of those who in
the hour of dangerous illness are left to be tended by
strangers; for what hands, be they ever so gentle, can
wipe the clammy brow, or smooth the restless bed, like
those of mother, wife, or child?
THE HOSPITAL PATIENT 237
Impressed with these thoughts, we have turned away,
through the nearly deserted streets; and the sight of
the few miserable creatures still hovering about them,
has not tended to lessen the pain which such medita-
tions awaken. The hospital is a refuge and resting-
place for hundreds, who but for such institutions must
die in the streets and doorways; but what can be the
feelings of some outcasts when they are stretched on
the bed of sickness with scarcely a hope of recovery?
The wretched woman who lingers about the pavement,
hours after midnight, and the miserable shadow of a
man—the ghastly remnant that want and drunkenness
have left—which crouches beneath a window-ledge, to
sleep where there is some shelter from the rain, have
little to bind them to life, but what have they to look
back upon, in death? What are the unwonted comforts
of a roof and a bed, to them, when the recollections of
a whole life of debasement stalk before them; when
fººtance seems a mockery, and sorrow comes too
ate?
About a twelvemonth ago, as we were strolling
through Covent-garden (we had been thinking about
these things overnight) we were attracted by the very
repossessing appearance of a pickpocket, who having
#. to take the trouble of walking to the Police-
office, on the ground that he hadn’t the slightest wish
to go there at all, was being conveyed thither in a
wheelbarrow, to the huge delight of a crowd.
Somehow, we never can resist joining a crowd, so
we turned back with the mob, and entered the office,
in company with our friend the pickpocket, a couple of
policemen, and as many dirty-faced spectators as could
squeeze their way in.
There was a powerful, ill-looking young fellow at the
bar, who was undergoing an examination on the very
common charge of having, on the previous night, ill-
treated a woman, with whom he lived in some court
hard by. Several witnesses bore testimony to acts of
the grossest brutality; and a certificate was read from
the house-surgeon of a neighbouring hospital, describ-
ing the nature of the injuries the woman had re-
ceived, and intimating that her recovery was extremely
doubtful. *
Some question appeared to have been raised about
238 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
the identity of the prisoner; for when it was agreed
that the two magistrates should visit the hospital at
eight o'clock that evening to take her deposition,
it was settled that the man should be taken there
also. He turned pale at , this, and we saw him
clench the bar very hard when the Order was given.
He was removed directly afterwards, and he spoke not
a word.
We felt an irrepressible curiosity to witness this in-
terview, although it is hard to tell why, at this instant,
for we knew it must be a painful one. It was no very
difficult matter for us to gain permission, and we ob-
tained it.
The prisoner, and the officer who had him in custody,
were already at the hospital when we reached it, and
waiting the arrival of the magistrates in a small room
below stairs. The man was handcuffed, and his hat
was pulled forward over his eyes. It was easy to see,
though, by the whiteness of his countenance, and the
constant twitching of the muscles of his face, that he
dreaded what was to come. After a short interval, the
magistrates and clerk were bowed in by the house-
surgeon and a couple of young men who Smelt very
strong of tobacco-smoke—they were introduced as
“dressers”—and after one magistrate had complained
bitterly of the cold, and the other of the absence of any
news in the evening paper, it was announced that the
patient was prepared; and we were conducted to the
“casualty ward” in which she was lying.
The dim light which burnt in the spacious room, in-
creased rather than diminished the ghastly appearance
of the hapless creatures in the beds, which were ranged
in two long rows on either side. In one bed lay a child
enveloped in bandages, with its body half consumed
by fire; in another, a female rendered hideous by some
dreadful accident, was wildly beating her clenched
fists on the coverlet, in pain; on a third, there lay
stretched a young girl, apparently in the heavy
stupor, often the immediate precursor of death; her
face was stained with blood, and her breast and arms.
were bound up in folds of linen. Two or three of then,
beds were empty, and their recent occupants were sit-
ting beside them, but with faces so wan, and eyes so
bright and glassy, that it was fearful to meet their
THE HOSPITAL PATIENT. 239 .
gaze. On every face was stamped the expression of
anguish and suffering.
The object of the visit was lying at the upper end of
the room. She was a fine young woman, of about two
Or three and twenty. Her long black hair which had
been hastily cut from near the wounds on her head,
streamed over the pillow in jagged and matted locks.
Her face bore deep marks of the ill-usage she had re-
ceived; her hand was pressed upon her side, as if her
Chief pain were there; her breathing was short and
heavy; and it was plain to see that she was dying fast.
She murmured a few words in reply to the magistrate’s
inquiry whether she was in great pain; and, having
been raised on the pillow by the nurse, looked vacantly
upon the strange countenances that surrounded her
bed. The magistrate nodded to the officer to bring the
man forward. He did so, and stationed him at the
bedside. The girl looked on, with a wild and troubled
expression of face; but her sight was dim and she did
not know him.
‘‘Take off his hat,” said the magistrate. The officer
did as he was desired, and the man’s features were dis-
closed.
The girl started up, with an energy quite preternatural;
the fire gleamed in her heavy eyes, and the blood rushed
to her pale and sunken cheeks. It was a convulsive
effort. She fell back upon her pillow, and covering her
scarred and bruised face with her hands, burst into
tears. The man cast an anxious look towards her, but
otherwise appeared wholly unmoved. After a brief
pause the nature of their errand was explained, and the
Oath tendered.
“Oh, no, gentlemen,” said the girl, raising herself
once more, and folding her hands together; “no, gen-
tlemen, for God’s sake! I did it myself—it was nobody’s
fault—it was an accident. He didn’t hurt me; he
wouldn’t for all the world. Jack, dear Jack, you know
you wouldn’t l”
Her sight was fast failing her, and her hand groped
over the bed clothes in search of his. Brute as the man
was, he was not prepared for this, He turned his face
from the bed and sobbed. The girl’s colour changed,
and her breathing grew more difficult. She was evi-
dently dying.
5
24() SIKETCHES BY 130Z.
“We respect the feelings which prompt you to this,”
Said the gentleman who had spoken first, “but let me
warn you, not to persist in what you know to be untrue,
until it is too late. It cannot save him.”
“Jack,” murmured the girl, laying her hand upon his
arm, “they shall not persuade me to swear your life
away. He didn’t do it, gentlemen. He never hurt me.”
She grasped his arm tightly, and added in a broken
Whisper, “I hope God Almighty will forgive me all the
Wrong I have done, and the life I have ſed. God bless
you, Jack. Some kind gentleman take my love to my
Oor old father. Five years ago, he said he wished I
ad died a child. Oh, I wish I had! I wish I had!”
The nurse bent over the girl for a few seconds, and
then drew the sheet over her face. It covered a
Corpse.
CHAPTER VII.
THE MISPLACED ATTACHMENT OF ME. JOHN DOUNCE.
IF we had to make a classification of society, there
are a particular kind of men whom we should
immediately set down under the head of “Old Boys; ”
and a column of most extensive dimensions the old boys
would require. To what precise causes the rapid advance
of old boy population is to be traced, we are unable to
determine. It would be an interesting and curious
speculation, but, as we have not sufficient space to
devote to it here, we simply state the fact that the
numbers of the old boys have been gradually augment-
ing within the last few years, and that they are at this
moment alarmingly on the increase.
Upon a general review of the subject, and without
considering it minutely in detail, we should be disposed
to subdivide the old boys into two distinct classes—the
gay old boys, and the steady old boys. The gay old
boys, are paunchy old men in the disguise of young Ones,
who frequent the Quadrant and Regent-street in the
day-time: the theatres (especially theatres under lady
management) at night; and who assume all the foppish-
ness and levity of boys, without the excuse of youth or
MISPLACED ATTACHMENT. 24.
inexperience. The steady old boys are certain stout
old gentlemen of clean appearance, who are always to
be seen in the same taverns, at the same hours every
evening, Smoking and drinking in the same company.
There was once a fine collection of old boys to be
seen round the circular table at Offley’s every night,
between the hours of half-past eight, and half-past
eleven. . We have lost sight of them for some time.
There were, and may be still, for aught we know, two
splendid specimens in full blossom at the Rainbow
Tavern in Fleet-street, who always used to sit in the
box nearest the fire-place, and smoked long cherry-stick
pipes which went under the table, with the bowls rest-
ing on the floor. Grand old boys they were—fat, red-
faced, white-headed, old fellows—always there—one on
one side the table, and the other opposite—puffing and
drinking away in great state. Everybody knew them,
and it was supposed by some people that they were
both immortal.
Mr. John Dounce was an old boy of the latter class
(we don’t mean immortal, but steady), a retired glove
and braces maker, a widower, resident with three
daughters—all grown up, and all unmarried—in Cursi-
tor street, Chancery-lane. He was a short, round, large
faced, tubbish sort of man, with a broad-brimmed hat,
and a square coat; and had that grave, but confident,
kind of roll, peculiar to old boys in general. Regular
as clockwork—breakfast at nine—dress and tittivate a
little—down to the Sir Somebody’s Head–glass of ale
and the paper—come back again, and take daughters
out for a walk—dinner at three—glass of grog and
pipe—nap—tea—little walk—Sir Somebody’s Head again
—capital house—delightful evenings. There were Mr.
Harris the law-stationer, and Mr. Jennings, the robe-
maker (two jolly young fellows like himself), and Jones,
the barrister’s clerk—rum fellow that Jones—capital
company—full of anecdote!—and there they sat every
night till just ten minutes before twelve, drinking their
brandy-and-water, and Smoking their pipes, and telling
stories, and enjoying themselves with a kind of solemn
joviality particularly edifying.
Sometimes Jones would propose a half-price visit to
Drury Lane or Covent Garden, to see two acts of a five-
act play, and a new farce, perhaps, or a ballet, on which
16
242 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
occasions the whole four of them went together; none
of your hurrying and nonsense, but having their brandy-
and-water first, comfortably, and ordering a steak and
some oysters for their supper against they came back,
and then walking coolly into the pit, when the “rush ’’
had gone in, as all sensible people do, and did when
Mr. Dounce was a young man, except when the cele-
brated Master Betty was at the height of his popularity,
and then, sir, then—Mr. Dounce perfectly well re-
membered getting a holiday from business; and going
to the pit doors at eleven o’clock in the forenoon, and
waiting there, till six in the afternoon, with some sand-
wiches in a pocket-handkerchief and some wine in a
phial; and fainting after all, with the heat and fatigue
before the play began; in which situation he was lifted
out of the pit, into one of the dress boxes, sir, by five
of the finest women of that day, sir, who compassion-
ated his situation and administered restoratives, and
sent a black servant, six foot high, in blue and silver
livery, next morning with their compliments, and to
know how he found himself, sir—by G–! Between the
acts Mr. Dounce and Mr. Harris, and Mr. Jennings,
used to stand up, and look round the house, and Jones
—knowing fellow that Jones—knew everybody, pointed
out the fashionable and celebrated Lady So-and-So in
the boxes at the mention of whose name Mr. Dounce,
after brushing up his hair, and adjusting his necker-
chief, would inspect the aforesaid lady So-and-So
through an immense glass, and remark, either, that she
was a “fine woman—very fine woman, indeed,” or
that “there might be a little more of her, eh, Jones!”
just as the case might happen to be. When the danc-
ing began, John Dounce and the other old boys were
particularly anxious to see what was going forward on
the stage, and Jones—wicked dog that Jones—whis-
pered little critical remarks into the ears of John
Dounce, which John Dounce retailed to Mr. Harris, and
Mr. Harris to Mr. Jennings; and then they all four
laughed, until the tears ran down, out of their eyes.
When the curtain fell, they walked back together,
two and two, to the steaks and Oysters; and when they
came to the second glass of brandy-and-water, Jones—
hoaxing scamp, that Jones—used to recount how he had
observed a lady in white feathers, in one of the pit
MISPLACED ATTACHMENT. 248
boxes, gazing intently on Mr. Dounce all the evening,
and how he had caught Mr. Dounce, whenever he
thought no one was looking at him, bestowing ardent
looks of intense devotion on the lady in return; on
which Mr. Harris and Mr. Jennings used to laugh very
heartily, and John Dounce more heartily than either of
them, acknowledging, however, that the time had been
when he might have done such things; upon which Mr.
•
Jones used to poke him in the ribs, and tell him he had
been a sad dog in his time, which John Dounce, with
chuckles confessed. And after Mr. Harris and Mr.
Jennings had preferred their claims to the character of
having been sad dogs too, they separated harmoniously,
and trotted home.
The decrees of Fate, and the means by which they
are brought about, are mysterious and inscrutable.
John Dounce had led this life for twenty years and up-
wards, without wish for change, or care for variety,
when his whole social system was suddenly upset, and
turned completely topsy-turvy—not by an earthquake,
or some other dreadful convulsion of nature, as the
reader would be inclined to suppose, but by the simple
agency of an Oyster; and thus it happened.
Mr. John Dounce was returning one night from the
Sir Somebody’s Head, to his residence in Cursitor-street
—not tipsy, but rather excited, for it was Mr. Jenning’s
birthday, and they had had a brace of partridges for
Supper, and a brace of extra glasses afterwards, and
Jones had been more than ordinarily amusing—when
his eyes rested on a newly opened oyster-shop, on a
magnificent scale, with natives laid one deep, in circu-
lar marble basins in the windows, together with little
round barrels of oysters directed to Lords and Baro-
nets and Colonels and Captains, in every part of the
habitable globe.
Behind the natives were the barrels, and behind the
barrels was a young lady of about five-and-twenty, all
in blue, and all alone—splendid creature, charming face,
and lovely figure! It is difficult to say whether Mr.
John Dounce's red countenance, illuminated as it was
by the flickering gas-light in the window before which he
paused, excited the lady’s risibility, or whether a natu-
ral exuberance of animal spirits proved too much for
that staidness of demeanour which the forms of society
244 SKETCHES BY BOZ,
rather dictatorially prescribe. But certain it is, that
the lady smiled; then put her finger upon her lip, with
a striking recollection of what was due to herself; and
finally retired, in oyster-like bashfulness, to the very
back of the counter. The sad-dog sort of feeling came
strongly upon John Dounce: he lingered—the lady in
blue made no sign. He coughed—still she came not.
He entered the shop. *
“Can you open me an oyster, my dear?” said Mr.
John Dounce.
“Dare say I can, sir,” replied the lady in blue, with
playfulness. And Mr. John Dounce eat One Oyster, and
then looked at the young lady, and then eat another,
and then squeezed the young lady’s hand as she was
opening the third, and so forth, until he had devoured
a dozen of those at eight pence in less than no time.
“Can you open me half-a-dozen more, my dear?” in-
quired Mr. John Dounce.
“I’ll see what I can do for you, sir,” replied the
young lady in blue, even more bewitchingly than
before; and Mr. John Dounce ate half-a-dozen more of
those at eight-pence.
“You couldn’t manage to get me a glass of brandy-
and-water, my dear, I suppose?” said Mr. John Dounce,
when he had finished the oysters; in a tone which
clearly implied his supposition that she could.
“I’ll see, sir,” said the young lady: and away she ran
out of the shop, and down the street, her long auburn
ringlets shaking in the wind in the most enchanting
manner; and back she came again, tripping over the
coal-cellar lids like a whipping-top, with a tumbler of
brandy-and-water, which Mr. John Dounce insisted on
her taking a share of, as it was regular ladies’ grog—
hot, strong, sweet, and plenty of it.
So, the young lady sat down with Mr...John Dounce,
in a little red box with a green curtain, and took a small
sip of the brandy-and-water, and a small look at Mr.
John Dounce, and then turned her head away, and went
through various other serio-pantomimic fascinations
which forcibly reminded Mr. John Dounce of the first
time he courted his first wife, and which made him feel
more affectionate than ever; in pursuance of which
affection, and actuated by which feeling, Mr. John
Dounce Sounded the young lady on her matrimonial en-
MISPLACED ATTACHMENT. 245
gagements, when the young lady denied having formed
any such engagements at all—she couldn’t abear the
men, they were such deceivers; thereupon Mr. John
Dounce inquired whether this sweeping condemnation
was meant to include other than very young men; On
which the young lady blushed deeply—at least she
turned away her head, and said Mr. John Dounce had
made her blush, so of course she did blush—and Mr.
John Dounce was a long time drinking the brandy-and-
water; and, at last, John Dounce went home to bed,
and dreamed of his first wife, and his second wife, and
the young lady, and partridges, and Oysters, and
brandy-and-water, and disinterested attachments.
The next morning, John Dounce was rather feverish
with the extra brandy-and-water of the previous night;
and partly in the hope of cooling himself with an oyster,
and partly with the view of ascertaining whether he
...P the young lady any thing, or not, went back to
the oyster-shop. If the young lady had appeared beau-
tiful by night, she was perfectly irresistible by day;
and, from this time forward, a change came over the
spirit of John Dounce's dream. He bought shirt-pins;
wore a ring on his third finger; read poetry; bribed a
cheap miniature-painter to perpetrate a faint resem-
blance to a youthful face, with a curtain over his head,
six large books in the background, and an open country
in the distance (this he called his portrait); “went on ”
altogether in such an uproarious manner, that the three
Miss Dounces went off on small pensions, he having
made the tenement in Cursitor-street too warm to con-
tain them, and in short, comported and demeaned him-
self in every respect like an unmitigated old Saracen,
as he was.
As to his ancient friends, the other old boys, at the
Sir Somebody’s Head, he dropped off from them by
gradual degrees: for, even when he did go there, Jones
—Vulgar fellow that Jones—persisted in asking “when
it was to be?” and “whether he was to have any
gloves?” together with other inquiries of an equally
offensive nature; at which not only Harris laughed, but
Jennings also; so, he cut the two, altogether, and
attached himself solely to the blue young lady at the
Smart oyster-shop.
Now comes the moral of the story—for it has a moral
246 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
after all. The last mentioned young lady, having de-
rived sufficient profit and emolument from John
Dounce’s attachment, not only refused, when matters
came to a crisis, to take him for better for worse, but
expressly declared, to use her own forcible words, that
“she wouldn’t have him at no price;” and John
Dounce, having lost his old friends, alienated his rela-
tions, and rendered himself ridiculous to everybody,
made offers successively to a schoolmistress, a landlady,
a feminine tobacconist, and a housekeeper; and, being
directly rejected by each and every of them, was
accepted by his cook, with whom he now lives, a hen-
pecked husband, a melancholy monument of antiquated
misery, and a living warning to all uxorious old boys.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MISTAKEN MILLINER. A. TALE OF AMBITION.
MI; AMELIA MARTIN was pale, tallish, thin, and
- VI- two-and-thirty—what ill-natured people would call
plain, and police reports interesting. She was a
milliner and dressmaker, living on her business and
not above it. If you had been a young lady in service,
and had wanted Miss Martin, as a great many young
ladies in service did, you would just have stepped up,
in the evening, to number forty-seven, Drummond-
street, George-street, Euston-square, and after casting
your eye on a brass door-plate, one foot ten by one and
a half, Ornamented with a great brass knob at each of
the four corners, and bearing the inscription “Miss
Martin; millinery and dressmaking in all its branches; ”
you’d just have knocked two loud knocks at the street-
door; and down would have come Miss Martin herself,
in a marino gown of the newest fashion, black velvet
bracelets on the genteelest principle, and other little
elº of the most approved description.
If Miss Martin knew the young lady who called, or if
the young lady who called had been recommended by
any other young lady whom Miss Martin knew, Miss
Martin would forthwith show her up-stairs into the two
pair front, and chat she would—so kind, and so com-
THE MISTAR EN MILLINER. 34%
fortable—it really wasn’t like a matter of business, she
was so friendly; and, then Miss Martin, after contem-
plating the figure and general appearance of the young
lady in service with great apparent admiration, would
say how well she would look, to be sure, in a low dress
with short sleeves: made very full in the skirts, with
four tucks in the bottom; to which the young lady in
service would reply in terms expressive of her entire
concurrence in the notion, and of the virtuous indigna-
tion with which she reflected on the tyranny of
“Missis,” who wouldn’t allow a young girl to wear a
short sleeve of an arternoon—no, nor nothing Smart,
not even a pair of ear-rings; let alone hiding people's
heads of hair under them frightful caps. At the ter-
mination of this complaint, Miss Amelia Martin would
distantly suggest certain dark suspicions that some
people were jealous on account of their own daughters,
and were obliged to keep their servants’.charms under,
for fear they should get married first, which was no
uncommon circumstance—leastways she had known
two or three young ladies in service, who had married
a great deal better than their mistresses, and they were
not very good-looking either; and then the young lady
would inform Miss Martin, in confidence, that how one
of their young ladies was engaged to a young man and
was a-going to be married, and Missis was so proud
about it there was no bearing of her; but how she
needn’t hold her head quite so high neither, for, after
all, he was only a clerk. And, after expressing due
contempt for clerks in general, and the engaged clerk
in particular, and the highest opinion possible of them-
selves and each other, Miss Martin and the young lady
in service would bid each other good night, in a friendly
but perfectly genteel manner: and the one went back
to her “ place,” and the other, to her room on the
second-floor front.
There is no saying how long Miss Amelia Martin
might have continued this course of life; how extensive
a connection she might have established among young
ladies in service ; or what amount her demands upon
their quarterly receipts might have ultimately attained,
had not an unforeseen train of circumstances directed
her thoughts to a sphere of action very different from
dressmaking or millinery.
248 - SKETCHES BY BOZ.
A friend of Miss Martin’s who had long been keeping
company with an ornamental painter and decorator’s
journeyman, at last consented (on being at last asked
to do so) to name the day which would make the
aforesaid journeyman a happy husband. It was a
Monday that was appointed for the celebration of the
nuptials, and Miss Amelia Martin was invited, among
others, to honour the wedding-dinner with her presence.
It was a charming party; Somers’ town the locality,
and a front parlour the apartment. The Ornamental
painter and decorator's journeyman, had taken a house,
—no lodgings nor vulgarity of that kind, but a house—
four beautiful rooms, and a delightful little washhouse
at the end of the passage—which was the most con-
venient thing in the world, for the bridesmaids could
sit in the front parlour and receive the company, and
then run into the little washhouse and see how the
pudding and boiled pork were getting on in the copper,
and then pop back into the parlour again, as Snug
and comfortable as possible. And such a parlour as it
was Beautiful Kidderminster carpet—six bran-new
cane-bottomed stained chairs—three wine-glasses and
a tumbler on each sideboard—farmer's girl and
farmer's boy on the mantelpiece: girl tumbling over a
stile, and boy spitting himself, on the handle of a pitch-
fork—long white dimity curtains in the window—
and, in short, every. thing on the most genteel scale
imaginable.
Then, the dinner. There was baked leg of mutton
at the top, boiled leg of mutton at the bottom, pair of
fowls and leg of pork in the middle; porter-pots at the
Corners: pepper, mustard, and vinegar in the centre ;
vegetables on the floor; and plum-pudding and apple-
pie and tartlets without number; to say nothing of
cheese, and celery, and water-cresses, and all that
Sort of thing. As to the companyl Miss Amelia Martin
herself declared, on a subsequent occasion, that, much
as she had heard of the ornamental painter's journey-
man’s connection, she never could have supposed it was
half so genteel. There was his father, such a funny
old gentleman—and his mother, such a dear old
lady—and his sister, such a charming girl—and
his brother, such a manly-looking young man—
With such a eye | But even all these were as nothing
THE MISTAKEN MIT_LINER. - 249
when compared with his musical friends Mr. and Mrs.
Jennings Rodolph, from White Conduit, with whom
the ornamental painter's journeyman had been fortu-
nate enough to contract an intimacy while engaged in
decorating the concert-room of that noble institution.
To hear them sing separately, was divine, but when
they went through the tragic duet of “Red Ruffian,
retire ! ” it was, as Miss Martin afterwards re-
Imarked, “thrilling.” And why (as Mr. Jennings
Rodolph observed) why were they not engaged at one
of the patent theatres? If he was to be told that their
voices were not powerful enough to fill the House, his
only reply was, that he would back himself for any
amount to fill Russell-Square—a statement in which the
company, after hearing the duet, expressed their full
belief; so they all said it was shameful treatment; and
both Mr. and Mrs. Jennings Rodolph said it was shame-
ful too; and Mr. Jennings Rodolph looked very serious,
and said he knew who his malignant opponents were,
but they had better take care how far they went, for if
they irritated him too much he had not quite made up
his mind whether he wouldn’t bring the subject before
Parliament; and they all agreed that it “’ud serve 'em
quite right, and it was very proper that such people
should be made an example of.” So Mr. Jennings
Rodolph said he’d think of it.
When the conversation resumed its former tone, Mr.
Jennings Rodolph claimed his right to call upon a lady,
and the right being conceded, trusted Miss Martin
would favour the company——a proposal which met with
unanimous approbation, whereupon Miss Martin, after
sundry hº and coughings, with a preparatory
choke or two, and an introductory declaration that she
was frightened to death to attempt it before such great
judges of the art, commenced a species of treble chir-
ruping containing frequently allusions to some young
gentleman of the name of Hen-e-ry, with an occasional
reference to madness and broken hearts. Mr. Jennings
^ Rodolph frequently interrupted the progress of the SOng
by jºculºſing “Beautiful”—“Charming!” – “Bril-
liantſ”—“Oh! Splendid,” &c.; and at its close the
admiration of himself, and his lady, knew no
bounds. *
“Did you ever hear so sweet a voice, my dear?”
º,
250 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
†ed Mr. Jennings Rodolph of Mrs. Jennings Ro-
OTO]l.
*ever, indeed I never did, love;’
nings Rodolph. *
“Don’t you think Miss Martin, with a little cultiva-
tion, would be very like Signora Marra Boni, my dear?”
asked Mr. Jennings Rodolph.
“Just exactly the very thing that struck me, my
love,” answered Mrs. Jennings Rodolph.
And thus the time passed away; Mr. Jennings Ro-
dolph played tunes on a walking-stick, and then went
j' the parlour-door and gave his celebrated imita-
tions of actors, edge-tools, and animals; Miss Martin
several other songs with increased admiration every
time; and even the funny old gentleman began singing.
His song had properly seven verses, but as he couldn’t
recollect more than the first One he sang that over
seven times, apparently very much to his own per-
sonal satisfaction. And then all the company sang
the national anthem with nationalindependence—each
for himself, without reference to the other—and finally
separated: all declaring that they never had spent so
pleasant an evening: and Miss Martin inwardly resolv-
ing to adopt the advice of Mr. Jennings Rodolph, and
to “come out ’’ without delay.
Now “coming out,” either in acting, or singing, or
society, or facetiousness, or any thing else, is all very
well, and remarkably pleasant to the individual prin-
cipally concerned, if he or she can but manage to come
out with a burst, and being Out, to keep out, and not go in
again; but, it does unfortunately happen that both con-
summations are extremely difficult to accomplish, and
that the difficulties of getting out at all in the first
instance, and if you surmount them, of keeping out in
the Second, are pretty much on a par, and no slight ones
either—and so Miss Amelia Martin shortly discovered.
It is a singular fact (there being ladies in the case) that
Miss Amelia Martin’s principal foible was vanity, and
the leading characteristic of Mrs. Jennings Rodolph an
attachment to dress. Dismal wailings were heard to
issue from the second floor front, of number forty-seven
Drummond-street, George-street, Euston-square; it was
Miss Martin practising. Half-suppressed murmurs dis-
turbed the calm dignity of the White Conduit orches-
Ö.
5
replied Mrs. Jen-
THE MISTAKEN MILLINER. 251
tra at the commencement of the season. It was the
appearance of Mrs. Jennings Rodolph in full dress,
that occasioned them. Miss Martin studied incessantly
—the practising was the consequence. Mrs. Jennings
Rodolph taught gratuitously now and then—the dresses
were the result.
Weeks passed away; the White Conduit season had
begun, had progressed, and was more than half over.
The dress-making business had fallen off, from neglect;
and its profits had dwindled away almost impercep-
tibly. A benefit-night approached; Mr. Jennings Ro-
dolph yielded to the earnest solicitations of Miss Amelia
Martin, and introduced her personally to the “comic
gentleman * whose benefit it was. The comic gentle-
man was all Smiles and blandness—he had composed
a duet, expressly for the occasion, and Miss Martin
should sing it with him. The night arrived; there was
an immense room—ninety-seven sixpenn'orths of gin-
and-water, thirty-two small glasses of brandy-and-
water, five-and-twenty bottled ales, and forty-one
neguses; and the Ornamental painter's journeyman, with
his wife and a select circle of acquaintance, were
seated at one of the side-tables near the orchestra.
The concert began. Song—sentimental—by a light-
haired young gentleman in a blue coat, and bright basket
buttons [applause]. Another song, doubtful, by another
gentleman in another blue coat and more bright basket
buttons—[increased applause]. Duet, Mr. Jennings
Rodolph, and Mrs. Jennings Rodolph, “Red Ruffian,
retire!”——[great applause..] Solo, Miss Julia Montague
(positively on this occasion only)—“I am a Friar”—
ſenthusiasm]. Original duet, comic—Mr. H. Taplin
(the comic gentleman and Miss Martin—“The Time
of Day.” “Brayvo – Brayvo l’’ cried the orna-
mental painter's journeyman’s party, as Miss Mar-
tin was gracefully led in by the comic gentleman.
“Go to work, Harry,” cried the comic gentle-
man’s personal friends. “Tap—tap—tap,” went the
leader’s bow on the music-desk. The symphony began,
and was soon afterwards followed by a faint kind of
ventriloquial chirping, proceeding apparently from the
deepest recesses of the interior of Miss Amelia Martin.
“Sing out”—shouted one gentleman in a white great-
coat. “Don’t be afraid to put the steam on, old gal,”
252 . SKETCHES BY BOZ.
exclaimed another “S-s—s—s—s—s—s”—went the
five-and-twenty bottled ales. “Shame, shame!” remon-
strated the ornamental painter's journeyman’s party—
“S—s—s—s” went the bottled ales again, accompa-
nied by all the gins, and a majority of the brandies.
“Turn them geese out,” cried the ornamental
painter's journeyman’s party, with great indignation.
“Sing out,” whispered Mr. Jennings Rodolph.
“So I do,” responded Miss Amelia Martin.
“Sing louder,” said Mrs. Jennings Rodolph.
“I can’t,” replied Miss Amelia Martin.
“Off, off, off,” cried the rest of the audience.
“Bray-vo!” shouted the painter’s party. It wouldn’t
do—Miss Amelia Martin left the orchestra, with much
less ceremony than she had entered it; and, and, as she
couldn’t sing out, never came out. The general good
humour was not restored until Mr. Jennings Rodolph
had become purple in the face, by imitating divers
Quadrupeds for half an hour, without being able to
render himself audible, and, to this day, neither has
Miss Amelia Martin’s good humour been restored, nor
the dresses made for and presented to Mrs. Jennings
Rodolph, nor the vocal abilities which Mr. Jennings
Rodolph once staked his professional reputation that
Miss Martin possessed.
CHAPTER IX.
TTHE DANCING ACADEMY.
Oº all the dancing academies that ever were estab-
lished, there never was one more popular in its
immediate vicinity than Signor Billsmethi’s, of the
“ King’s Theatre.” It was not in Spring-gardens, or
Newman-street, or Berners-street, or Gower-street, or
Charlotte-street, or Percy-street, or any other of the
numerous streets which have been devoted time out of
mind to professional people, dispensaries, and boarding-
houses; it was not in the West-end at all—it rather ap-
proximated to the eastern portion of London, being
situated in the populous and innproving neighbourhood
of Gray’s-inn-lane. It was not a dear dancing academy
• *** s
23222 ºf ,
------"º. ... Ay
£2.2%
º
º
º
... "... "
2.2.
'}\\Cº)
}}\\-• ſ
}}‘... .
|
|
}
NoF
Mgin's;
C.
*
vº I
r
*
*
|
;
|
TEIE DANCING ACADEMY
Sketches.








THE DANCING ACADEMY. 253
—four-and-sixpence a quarter is decidedly cheap upon
the whole. It was very select, the number of pupils being
strictly limited to seventy-five, and a quarter’s payment
in advance being rigidly exacted. There was public
ituition and private tuition—an assembly-room and a
parlour. Signor Billsmethi’s family were always thrown
in with the parlour, and included in parlour price; that
is to say, a private pupil had Signor Billsmethi’s parlour
to dance in, and Signor Billsmethi’s family to dance
with; and when he had been sufficiently broken in in the
parlour, he began to run in couples in the Assembly-
I’OOTOl.
Such was the dancing academy of Signor Billsmethi,
when Mr. Augustus Cooper, of Fetter-lane, first saw
an unstamped advertisement walking leisurely down
Holborn-hill, announcing to the world that Signor
Billsmethi, of the King’s Theatre, intended opening for
the season with a Grand Ball.
Now, Mr. Augustus Cooper was in the oil and colour
line—just of age, with a little money, a little business,
and a little mother, who having managed her husband
and his business in his lifetime, took to managing her.
son and his business after his decease; and so, somehow
or other, he had been cooped up in the little back parlour
behind the shop on week days, and in a little deal box
without a lid (called by courtesy a. pew) at Bethel
Chapel, on Sundays, and had seen no more of the world
than if he had been an infant all his days; whereas
Young White, at the Gas-Fitter's over the way, three
years younger than him, had been flaring away like
winkin’—going to the theatre—supping at harmonic
meetings—eating oysters by the barrel—drinking Stout
by the gallon—even stopping out all night, and coming
home as cool in the morning as if nothing had happened.
So Mr. Augustus Cooper made up his mind that he
would not stand it any longer, and had that very morn-
ing expressed to his mother a firm determination to be
“blowed,” in the event of his not being instantly pro-
vided with a street-door key. And ſhe was walking down
Holborn-hill, thinking , about all these things, and
wondering how he could manage to get introduced into
genteel Society for the first time, when his eyes rested
on Signor Billsmethi's announcement, which it immedi-
ately struck him was just the very thing he wanted;
254 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
for he should not only be able to select a genteel circle
of acquaintance at once, out of the five-and-seventy
#. at four-and-sixpence a quarter, but should qualify
imself at the same time to go through a hornpipe in
private society, with perfect ease to himself, and great
delight to his friends. So, he stopped the unstamped
advertisement—an animated Sandwich, composed of a
boy between two łºś. procured a very
small card with the Signor's address indented thereon,
walked straight at once to the Signor’s house—and very
fast he walked too, for fear the list should be filled up,
and the five-and-seventy completed, before he got there.
The Signor was at home, and, what was still more
gratifying, he was an Englishman! Such a nice man—
and so polite! The list was not full, but it was a most
extraordinary circumstance that there was only just
One vacancy, and even that one would have been filled
up, that very morning, only Signor Billsmethi was dis-
satisfied with the reference, and, being very much
afraid that the lady wasn’t select, wouldn’t take her.
“And very much delighted I am, Mr. Cooper,” said
Signor Billsmethi, “that I did not take her. I assure
you, Mr. Cooper—I don’t say it to flatter you, for I
know you’re above it—that I consider myself extremely
fortunate in having a gentleman of your manners and
appearance, sir.”
“I am very glad of it, too, sir,” said Augustus
Cooper.
“And I hope we shall be better acquainted, sir,” said
Signor Billsmethi.
“And I’m sure I hope we shall too, sir,” responded
Augustus Cooper. Just then, the door opened, and in
came a young lady, with her hair curled in a crop all
Over her head, and her shoes tied in sandals all over
her ankles. *
“Don’t run away, my dear,” said Signor Billsmethi;
for the young lady didn’t know Mr. Cooper was there
when she ran in, and was going to run out again in her
modesty, all in confusion-like. “Don’t run away, my
dear,” said Signor Billsmethi, “this is Mr. Cooper—
Mr. Cooper of Fetter-lane. Mr. Cooper, my daughter,
sir—Miss Billsmethi, sir, who I hope will have the
pleasure of dancing many a quadrille, minuet, gavotte,
country-dance, fandango, double-hornpipe, and far-

THE DANCING ACADEMY. 255
inagholkajingo, with you, sir. She dances them all,
sir; and so shall you sir before you’re a quarter older,
Sir.”
And Signor Bills methi slapped Mr. Augustus Cooper
on the back, as if he had known him a dozen years,
so friendly;-and Mr. Cooper bowed to the young lady,
and the young lady curtseyed to him, and Signor Bill-
Smethi said they were as handsome a pair as ever he'd
wish to see; upon which the young lady exclaimed,
“Lor, pa!” and blushed as red as Mr. Cooper himself
—you might have thought they were both standing
under a red lamp at a chemist's shop; and before Mr.
Cooper went away it was settled that he should join
the family circle that very night—taking them just as
they were—no ceremony nor nonsense of that kind—
and learn his positions, in order that he might lose no
time and be able to come out at the forthcoming ball.
Well, Mr. Augustus Cooper went away to one of the
cheap shoemaker’s shops in Holborn, where gentle-
men’s dress-pumps are seven-and-sixpence, and men’s
strong walking just nothing at all, and bought a pair of
the regular seven-and-sixpenny long-quartered, town
mades, in which he astonished himself quite as much
as his mother, and sallied forth to Signor Billsmethi’s.
There were four other private pupils in the parlour;
two ladies and two gentlemen. Such nice people! Not
a bit of pride about them. One of the ladies in par-
ticular, who was in training for Columbine, was re-
markably affable; and she and Miss Billsmethi took
such an interest in Mr. Augustus Cooper, and joked
and Smiled, and looked so bewitching, that he got
quite at home, and learnt his steps in no time. After
the practising was over, Signor Billsmethi and Miss
Billsmethi, and Master Billsmethi, and a young lady,
and the two ladies, and the two gentlemen, danced a
quadrille—none of your slipping and sliding about,
but regular warm work, flying into corners, and diving
among chairs, and shooting out at the -door, some-
thing-like dancing! Signor Billsmethi in particular,
notwithstanding his having a little fiddle to play all
the time, was out on the landing every figure, and Mas-
ter Billsmethi, when every body else was breathless,
danced a hornpipe, with a cane in his hand, and a
cheese-plate on his head, to the unqualified admiration
256 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
of the whole company. Then, Signor Billsmethi in-
sisted as they were so happy, that they should all stay
to Supper, and proposed sending Master Billsmethi for
the beer and spirits, whereupon the two gentlemen
swore, “strike 'em wulgar if they’d stand that; ” and
were just going to quarrel who should pay for it, when
Mr. Augustus Cooper said he would, if they’d have the
kindness to allow him—and they had the kindness to
allow him; and Master Billsmethi brought the beer in
a can, and the rum in a quart-pot. They had a regular
night of it; and Miss Billsmethi squeezed Mr. Augustus
Cooper's hand under the table; and Mr. Augustus
Cooper returned the squeeze, and returned home too, at
something to six o'clock in the morning, when he was
put to bed by main force by the ...”. after re-
eatedly expressing an uncontrollable desire to pitch
is revered parent out of the second-floor window
and to throttle the apprentice with his own neck-
handkerchief. º
Weeks had worn on, and the seven-and-sixpenny
town-mades had nearly worn out, when the night arrived
for the grand dress-ball at which the whole of the five-
and-seventy pupils were to meet together, for the first
time that season, and to take out some portion of their
respective four-and-sixpences in lamp-oil and fiddlers.
Mr. Augustus Cooper had ordered a new coat for the
occasion—a two-pound-tenner from Turnstile. It was
his first appearance in public; and, after a grand
Sicilian shawl-dance by fourteen young ladies in char-
acter, he was to open the quadrille department with
Miss Billsmethi herself, with whom he had become
Quite intimate since his first introduction. It was a
night! Every, thing was admirably arranged. The
sandwich-boy took the hats and bonnets at the street-
door; there was a turn-up bedstead in the back parlour
on which Miss Billsmethi made tea, and coffee for such
of the gentlemen as chose to pay for it, and such of the
ladies as the gentlemen treated; red port-wine negus
and lemonade were handed round at eighteen-pence a
head; and in pursuance of a previous engagement with
the public-house at the corner of the street, an extra
pot-boy was laid on for the occasion. In short, noth-
ing could exceed the arrangements, except the com-
pany. Such ladies! Such pink silk stockings! Such
THE DANCING ACADEMY. 257
artificial flowers! Such a number of cabs! No sooner
had one cab set down a couple of ladies, than another
cab drove up and set down another couple of ladies, and
they all knew: not only one another, but the majority
of the gentlemen into the bargain, which made it all as
leasant and lively as could be. Signor Billsmethi, in
É. tights, with a large blue bow in his buttonhole,
introduced the ladies to such of the gentlemen as were
strangers: and the ladies talked away—and laughed
they did—it was delightful to see them.
As to the shawl-dance, it was the most exciting thing
that ever was beheld; there was such a whisking, and
rustling, and fanning, and getting ladies into a tangle
with artificial flowers, and then disentangling them
again! And as to Mr. Augustus Cooper's share in the
uadrille, he got through it admirably. He was missing
#. his partner, now and then, certainly, and dis-
covered on such occasions to be either dancing with
laudable perseverance in another set, or sliding about
in perspective, without any definite object; but gener-
ally speaking, they managed to shove him through the
figure, until he turned up in the right place. Be this as
it may, when he had finished, a great many ladies and
gentlemen came up and complimented him very much,
and said they had never seen a beginner do anything
like it before; and Mr. Augustus Cooper was perfectly
satisfied with himself, and every body else into the
bargain; and “stood’ considerable quantities of spirits-
and-water, negus, and compounds, for the use and
behoof of two or three dozen very particular friends,
ºd from the select circle of five-and-seventy
pup11S.
Now, whether it was the strength of the compounds,
or the beauty of the ladies, or what not, it did so happen
that Mr. Augustus Cooper encouraged, rather than
repelled, the very flattering attentions of a young lady
in brown gauze over white calico who had appeared
particularly struck with him from the first; and when
the encouragements had been prolonged for some time,
Miss Billsmethi betrayed her spite and jealousy thereat
by calling the young lady in brown gauze a “creeter,”
which induced the young lady in brown gauze to retort,
in certain sentences containing a taunt founded on the
payment of four-and-six-pence a quarter, which refer-
1.
258 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
ence Mr. Augustus Cooper, being then and there
in a state of ğidº bewilderment, expressed
his entire concurrence in. Miss Billsmethi, thus re-
nounced, forth with began Screaming in the loudest key
of her voice, at the rate of fourteen screams a minute;
and being unsuccessful, in an onslaught on the eyes and
face, first of the lady in gauze and then of Mr. Augustus
Cooper, called distractedly on the other three-and-seven-
ty pupils to furnish her with oxalic acid for her own
private drinking; and, the call not being honoured,
made another rush at Mr. Cooper, and then had her stay-
lace cut, and was carried off to bed. Mr. Augustus
Cooper, not being remarkable for quickness of appre-
hension, was at a loss to understand what all this
meant, until Signor Billsmethi explained it in a most
satisfactory manner by º; to the pupils that Mr.
Augustus Cooper had made and confirmed divers prom-
ises of marriage to his daughter on divers occasions,
and had now basely deserted her; on which, the indig-
nation of the pupils became universal; and as several
chivalrous gentlemen inquired rather pressingly of Mr.
Augustus Cooper, whether he required anything for
his own use, or, in other words, whether he “wanted
any thing for himself,” he deemed it prudent to make
a precipitate retreat. And the upshot of the matter was,
that a lawyer's letter came next day, and an action
was commenced next week; and that Mr. Augustus
Cooper, after walking twice to the Serpentine for the
purpose of drowning himself, and coming twice back
without doing it, made a confidante of his mother, who
compromised the matter with twenty pounds from the
till: which made twenty pounds four shillings and six-
pence paid to Signor Billsmethi, exclusive of treats and
pumps. And Mr. Augustus Cooper went back and lived
with his mother, and there he lives to this day; and as
he has lost his ambition for society, and never goes
into the world, he will never see this account of him-
self, and will never be any the wiser.
SHABBY-GENTEEL PEOPLE. 259
:
\
$
\
CHAPTER X.

SHABBY-GENTEEL PEOPLE.
rRNHERE are certain descriptions of people who, oddly
enough, appear to appertain exclusively to the
metropolis. You meet them, every day, in the streets of
London, but no one ever encounters them elsewhere;
they seem indigenous to the soil, and to belong as ex-
clusively to London as its own smoke, or the dingy
bricks and mortar. We could illustrate the remark by
a variety of examples, but, in our present sketch, we
will only advert to one class as a specimen—that class
which is so aptly and expressively designated as “shab-
by-genteel.”
Now, shabby people, God knows, may be found any-
where, and genteel people are not articles of greater
scarcity out of London than in it ; but this compound
of the two—this shabby-gentility—is as purely local as
the statue at Charing-cross, or the pump at Aldgate. It
is worthy of remark, too, that only men are shabby-
genteel; a woman is always either dirty and slovenly
in the extreme, or neat and respectable, however pow-
erty-stricken in appearance. A very poor man, “who
has seen better days,” as the phrase goes, is a Strange
compound of dirty slovenliness and wretched attempts
at faded smartness.
We will endeavour to explain our conception of the
term which forms the title of this paper. If you meet
a man, lounging up Drury-lane, or leaning with his back
against a post in Long-acre, with his hands in the
pockets of a pair of drab trousers plentifully besprinkled
with grease-spots: the trousers made very full over the
boots, and ornamented with two cords down the outside
of each leg—wearing, also, what has been a brown coat
with bright buttons, and a hat very much pinched up at
the sides, cocked over his right eye—don’t pity him. He
is not shabby-genteel. The “harmonic meetings” at
260 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
some fourth-rate public-house, or the purlieus of a pri-
vate theatre, are his chosen haunts; he entertains a
rooted antipathy to any kind of work, and is on familiar
terms with several pantomime men at the large houses.
But, if you see hurrying along a bye-street, keeping as
close as he can to the area-railings, a man of about forty
or fifty, clad in an old rusty suit of threadbare black
cloth, which shines with constant wear as if it had
been bees-waxed—the trousers tightly strapped down,
partly for the look of the thing and partly to keep his
old shoes from slipping off at the heels, if you observe,
too, that his yellowish-white neckerchief is carefully
pinned º to conceal the tattered garment underneath,
and that his hands are encased in the remains of an old
pair of beaver gloves, you may set him down as a
shabby-genteel man. A glance at that depressed face,
and timorous air of conscious poverty, will make your
heart ache—always supposing that you are neither a
philosopher nor a political economist. *
We were once haunted by a shabby-genteelman; he was
bodily present to our senses all day, and he was in Our
mind’s eye all night. The man of whom Sir Walter
Scott speaks in his Demonology did not suffer half the
ersecution from his imaginary gentleman-usher in
; velvet that we sustained from our friend in
quondam black cloth. He first attracted our notice by
sitting opposite to us in the reading-room of the British
Museum; and what made the man more remarkable
was, that he always had before him a couple of shabby-
genteel books—two old dog-eared folios, in mouldy,
worm-eaten covers, which had once been Smart. He
was in his chair every morning just as the clock struck
ten; he was always the last to leave the room in the
afternoon; and when he did, he quitted it with the air
of a man who knew not where else to go for warmth
and, quiet. There he used to sit all day as close to the
table as possible, in order to conceal the lack of buttons
on his coat: with his old hat carefully deposited at his
feet, where he evidently flattered himself it escaped
observation. º e
About two o'clock, you would see him munching a
French roll or a penny loaf; not taking it boldly out of
his pocket at once, like a man who knew he was only
making a lunch, but breaking off little bits in his pocket,
SHABBY-GENTEEL PEOPLE. 261
and eating thefn by stealth. He knew too well it was
his dinner.
When We first saw this poor object, we thought it
º impossible that his attire could ever become worse.
e even went so far as to speculate on the possibility
of his shortly appearing in a decent second-hand suit.
We knew nothing about the matter; he grew more and
more shabby-genteel every day. The buttons dropped
off his waistcoat, one by one; then he buttoned his
coat; and when one side of the coat was reduced to the
same condition as the waistcoat, he buttoned it over on
the other side. He looked somewhat better at the be-
ginning of the week than at the conclusion, because
the neckerchief, though yellow, was not quite so dingy;
and, in the midst of all this wretchedness, he never ap-
peared without gloves and straps. He remained in this
state for a week or two. At length, one of the buttons
On the back of the coat fell off, and then the man him-
self disappeared, and we thought he was dead.
We were sitting at the same table about a week after
his disappearance, and as Our eyes rested on his vacant
chair, we insensibly fell into a train of meditation on
the subject of his retirement from public life. We
were wondering whether he had hung himself, or
thrown himself off a bridge—whether he really was dead
or had only been arrested—when our conjectures were
suddenly set at rest by the entry of the man himself.
He had undergone some strange metamorphosis, and
walked up the centre of the room with an air which
showed he was fully conscious of the improvement in
his appearance. It was very odd. His clothes were a
fine, deep, glossy black; and yet they looked like the
same suit; nay, there were the very darns with which
old acquaintance had made us familiar. The hat, too
—nobody could mistake the shape of that hat, with its
high crown gradually increasing in circumference to-
wards the top. Long service had imparted to it a red-
dish-brown tint ; but now it was as black as the coat. .
The truth flashed suddenly upon us—they had been
“revived.” It is a deceitful liquid that black and blue
reviver; we have watched its effects on many a shabby-
genteel man. It betrays its victims into a temporary
assumption of importance; possibly into the purchase
of a new pair of gloves, or a cheap stock, or Some
262 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
other trifling article of dress. It elevates their spirits
for a week, only to depress them, if possible, below
their original level. It was so in this case; the transient
dignity of the unhappy man decreased, in exact propor-
tion as the “reviver” wore off. The knees of the un-
mentionables, and the elbows of the coat, and the
seams generally soon began to get alarmingly white.
The hat was once more deposited under the table, and
its owner crept into his seat as quietly as ever.
There was a week of incessant small rain and mist.
At its expiration the “reviver” had entirely vanished,
and the shabby-genteel man never afterwards attempted
to effect any improvement in his outward appearance.
It would be difficult to name any particular part of
town as the principal resort of Shabby-genteel men.
We have met a great many persons of this description
in the neighbourhood of the inns of court. They may be
met with, in Holborn, between eight and ten any morn-
ing; and whoever has the curiosity to enter the Insol-
vent Debtors’ Court will observe, both among spectators
and practitioners, a great variety of them. € 116 V6I’
went on 'Change, by any chance, without seeing some
shabby-genteel men, and we have often wondered what
earthly business they can have there. They will sit
there, for hours, leaning on great, dropsical, mildewed
umbrellas, or eating Abernethy biscuits. Nobody speaks
to them, nor they to any one. On consideration, we
remember to have occasionally seen two shabby-genteel
men conversing together on 'Change, but our experi-
ence assures us that this is an uncommon circumstance,
occasioned by the offer of a pinch of snuff, or some
such civility.
It would be a task of equal difficulty, either to assign
any particular spot for the residence of these beings, or
to endeavour to enumerate their general occupations.
We were never engaged in business with more than one
shabby-genteel man: and he was a drunken engraver,
and lived in a.damp back parlour in a new row of houses
at Camden-town, half street, half brick-field, somewhere
near the canal. A shabby-genteel man may have no
occupation, or he may be a corn agent; or a coal agent,
or a wine agent, or a collector º debts, or a broker's
assistant, or a broken-down attorney. He may be a
clerk of the lowest description, or a contributor to the
MAKING A NIGHT OF IT. 263
press of the same grade. Whether our readers have
noticed these men, in their walks, as often as we have,
we know not: this we know—that the miserably poor
man (no matter whether he owes his distresses to his
own conduct, or that of others) who feels his poverty
and vainly strives to conceal it, is one of the most
pººl. objects in human nature. Such objects, with
ew exceptions, are shabby-genteel people.
CHAPTER XI.
MAKING A NIGHT OF IT.
Dº and Pythias were undoubtedly very good
fellows in their way: the former for his extreme
readiness to put in special bail for a friend: and the
latter for a certain trump-like punctuality in turning up
just in the very nick of time, scarcely less remarkable.
Many points in their character have, however, grown
obsolete. Damons are rather hard to find, in these days
of imprisonment for debt (except the sham ones, and
they cost half-a-crown); and, as to the Pythiases, the
few that have existed in these degenerate times, have
had an unfortunate knack of making themselves
scarce, at the very moment when their appearance
would have been strictly classical. If the actions
of these heroes, however, can find no parallel in
modern times, their friendship can. We have Damon
and Pythias on the one hand. We have Potter and
Smithers on the other; and, lest the two last-mentioned
names should never have reached the ears of our unen-
lightened readers, we can do no better than make them
acquainted with the owners thereof.
Mr. Thomas Potter, then, was a clerk in the city, and
Mr. Robert Smithers was a ditto in the same; their in-
comes were limited, but their friendship was unbounded.
They lived in the same street, walked into town every
morning at the same hour, dined at the same slap-bang
every day, and revelled in each other’s company every
might. They were knit together by the closest ties of
intimacy and friendship, or, as Mr. Thomas Potter touch-
ingly observed, they were “thick-and-thin pals, and
nothing but it.” There was a spice of romance in Mr.
264. SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Smithers's disposition, a ray of#. a gleam of misery,
a sort of consciousness of #. idn’t exactly know what,
coming across him he didn’t precisely know why—which
stood out in fine relief against the off-hand, dash-
ing, amateur-pickpocket-sort-of-manner, which distin-
guished Mr. Potter in an eminent degree.
The peculiarity of their respective dispositions,
extºde: itself to their individual costume. Mr. Smithers
generally appeared in public in a Surtout and shoes,
with a narrow black neckerchief and a brown hat, very
much turned up at the sides—peculiarities which Mr.
Potter wholly eschewed, for it was his ambition to do
something in the celebrated “kiddy” or stage-coach
way, and he had even gone so far as to invest capital
in the purchase of a rough blue coat with wooden "but-
tons, made upon the fireman’s principle, in which, with
the addition of a low-crowned, flower-pot-saucer-shaped
hat, he had created no inconsiderable sensation at the
Albion in Little Russell-street, and divers other places
of public and fashionable resort.
Mr. Potter, and Mr. Smithers had mutually agreed
that, on receipt of their quarter’s salary, they would
jointly and in company “spend the evening ”—an evi-
dent misnomer—the spending *ſº as everybody
knows, not to the evening itself but to all the money
the individual may chance to be possessed of, on the
occasion to which reference is made; and they had like-
wise agreed that, on the evening aforesaid, they would
“ make a night of it”—an expressive term, implying
the borrowing of several hours from to-morrow morn-
ing, adding them to the night before, and manufactur-
ing a compound night of the whole.
The quarter-day arrived at last—we say at last, be-
cause quarter-days are as eccentric as comets: moving
wonderfully quick when you have a good deal to pay,
and marvellously slow when you have a little to receive.
Mr. Thomas Potter and Mr. Robert Smithers met by
appointment to begin the evening with a dinner; and a
nice, Snug, comfortable dinner they had, consisting of
a little procession of four chops and four kidneys, fol-
lowing each other, supported on either side by a bottle
of real draught stout, and attended by divers cushions
of bread, and wedges of cheese.
When the cloth was removed, Mr. Thomas Potter
MAKING A NIGHT OF IT. 265
ordered the waiter to bring in two goes of his best
Scotch whiskey, with warm water and Sugar, and a
couple of his “very mildest” Havannahs, which the
waiter did. Mr. Thomas Potter mixed his grog, and
lighted his cigar; Mr. Robert Smithers did the same;
and then, Mr. Thomas Potter jocularly proposed as the
first toast, ‘‘the abolition of all offices whatever * (not
sinecures, but counting-houses), which was immediately
drunk by Mr. Robert Smithers with enthusiastic ap-
plause. So they went on, talking politics, puffing cigars
and sipping whiskey-and-water, until the “goes º-
most appropriately so called—were both gone, which
Mr. Robert Smithers perceiving, immediately ordered
in two more goes of the best Scotch whiskey, and two
more of the very mildest Havannahs; and the goes kept
coming in, and the mild Havannahs kept going Out,
until, what with the drinking, and lighting, and puffing,
and the stale ashes on the table, ºš the tallow-grease
on the cigars, Mr. Robert Smithers began to doubt the
mildness of the Havannahs, and to feel very much as
if he had been sitting in a hackney-coach with his back
to the horses.
As to Mr. Thomas Potter, he would keep laughing out
loud, and volunteering in articulate declarations that he
was “all right; ” in proof of which he feebly bespoke
the evening paper after the next gentleman, but finding
it a matter of some difficulty to discover any news in
its columns, or to ascertain distinctly whether it had
any columns at all, walked slowly out to look for the
moon, and, after coming back quite pale with looking
up at the sky So long, and attempting to express mirth
at Mr. Robert Smithers having fallen asleep, by various
galvanic chuckles, laid his head on his arm, and went
to sleep also. When he awoke again, Mr. Robert
Smithers awoke too, and they both very gravely agreed
that it was extremely unwise to eat so many pickled
walnuts with the chops, as it was a notorious fact that
they always made people queer and sleepy; indeed, if
it had not been for the whiskey and cigars, there was no
knowing what harm they mightn’t have done ‘em. So
they took some coffee, and after paying the bill,—twelve
and twopence the dinner, and the odd tempence for the
waiter—thirteen shillings in all—started out on their
expedition to manufacture a night.
266 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
It was just half-past eight, so they thought they
couldn’t do better than to go at half-price to the slips
at the City. Theatre, which they did accordingly. Mr.
Robert Smithers, who had become extremely poetical
after the settlement of the bill, enlivening the walk by
informing, Mr. Thomas Potter, in confidence, that he
felt an inward presentiment of approaching dissolution,
and subsequently embellishing the theatre, by falling
asleep, with his head and both arms gracefully drooping
over the front of the boxes.
Such was the quiet demeanour of the unassuming
Smithers, and such were the happy effects of Scotch
whiskey and Havannahs on that interesting person!
But Mr. Thomas Potter, whose great aim it was to be
considered as a “knowing card,” a “fast-goer,” and so
forth, conducted himself in a very different manner,
and commenced going very fast indeed—rather too fast
at last, for the patience of the audience to keep pace
with him. On his first entry, he contented himself by
calling upon the gentlemen in the gallery to “flare’up,”
accompanying the demand, with another request ex-
pressive of his wish that they would instantaneously
“form a union,” both which requisitions were responded
to, in the manner most in vogue on such occasions.
“Give that dog a bone!” cried one gentleman in his
shirt-sleeves.
“Where have you been a having half a pint of inter-
mediate beer P” cried a second. “Tailor l’ screamed a
third. “Barber’s clerk!” shouted a fourth. “Throw
him o—VER!” roared a fifth; while numerous voices
concurred in desiring Mr. Thomas Potter to “go home
to his mother l’ All these taunts Mr. Thomas Potter
received with supreme contempt, cocking the low-
crowned hat a little more on one side, whenever any
reference was made to his personal appearance, and,
standing up with his arms a-kimbo, expressing defiance
melo-dramatically. *
The overture—to which these various sounds had
been an ad libitum accompaniment—concluded, the
second piece began, and Mr. Thomas Potter, emboldened
by impunity, proceeded to behave in a most unprece-
dented and outrageous manner. First of all, he imitated
the Shake of the principal female singer; then, groaned
at the blue fire; then, affected to be frightened into
MAKING A NIGHT OF IT. 267
convulsions of terror at the appearance of the ghost;
and, lastly, not only made a running commentary, in
an audible voice, upon the dialogue On the stage, but
actually awoke Mr. Robert Smithers, who, hearing his
companion making a noise, and having a very indistinct
notion where he was, or what was required of him, im-
mediately, by way of imitating a good example, set up
the most unearthly, unremitting, and appalling howling
that ever audience heard. It was too much. “Turn
them out !” was the general cry. A noise, as of shuf-
fling of feet, and men being knocked up with violence
against wainscoting, was heard: a hurried dialogue of
“Come Out?”—“I won’t l’”—“You shall!”—“I Shan’t l”
—“Give me your card, sir!”—“You’re a scoundrel, sir!”
and so forth succeeded. A round of applause betokened
the approbation of the audience, and Mr. Robert Smith-
ers and Mr. Thomas Potter found themselves shot with
astonishing swiftness into the road without having had
the trouble of once putting foot to ground during the
whole progress of their rapid descent.
Mr. Robert Smithers, being constitutionally one of
the slow-goers, and having had quite enough of fast-
going, in the course of his recent expulsion, to last until
the quarter-day then next ensuing at the very least,
had no sooner emerged with his companion from the
precincts of Milton-street, than he proceeded to in-
dulge in circuitous references to the beauties of sleep,
mingled with distant allusions to the propriety of re-
turning to Islington, and testing the influence of their
patent Bramahs over the street-door locks to which
they respectively belonged. Mr. Thomas Potter, how-
ever, was valorous and peremptory. They had come
out to make a night of it: and a night must be made.
So Mr. Robert Smithers, who was three parts dull, and
the other dismal, despairingly assented; and they went
into a wine-vault, to get materials for assisting them
in making a night; where they found a good many
young ladies, and various old gentlemen, and a plenti-
ful sprinkling of hackney-coachmen and cab-drivers,
all drinking and talking together; and Mr. Thomas
Potter and Mr. Robert Smithers drank small glasses
of brandy, and large glasses of Soda, until they began
to have a very confused idea, either of things in
general, or of anything in particular; and, when they
268 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
had done treating themselves they began to treat every-
body else; and the rest of the entertainment was a
confused mixture of heads and heels, black eyes and
blue uniforms, mud and gas-lights, thick doors, and
Stone paving.
Then, as standard novelists expressively inform us—
“all was a blank l’ and in the morning the blank was
filled up with the words “STATION-HOUSE,” and the
station-house was filled.up with Mr. Thomas Potter, Mr.
Robert Smithers, and the major part of their wine-vault
companions of the preceding night, with a compara-
tively small portion of clothing of any kind. And it
was disclosed at the Police-office, to the indignation of
the Bench, and the astonishment of the spectators, how
one Robert Smithers, aided and abetted by one Thomas
Potter, had knocked down and beaten, in divers streets,
at different times, five men, four boys, and three women;
how the said Thomas Potter had feloniously obtained
possession of five door-knockers, two bell-handles, and
a bonnet; how Robert Smithers, his friend, had sworn
at least forty pounds’ worth of oaths, at the rate of five
shillings a-piece; terrified whole streets full of Her
Majesty’s subjects with awful shrieks and alarms of
fire; destroyed the uniforms of five policemen; and
committed various other atrocities, too numerous to re-
capitulate. And the magistrate, after an appropriate
reprimand, fined Mr. Thomas Potter and Mr. Robert
Smithers five shillings each, for being, what the law
Vulgarly terms, drunk; and thirty-four pounds for seven-
teen assaults at forty shillings a-head, with liberty to
Speak to the prosecutors.
The prosecutors were spoken to, and Messrs. Potter
. and Smithers lived on credit, for a quarter, as best they
might; and although the prosecutors expressed their
readiness to be assaulted twice a week, on the same
terms, they have never since been detected in “in mak-
ing a night of it,”
THE PRISONERS’ WAN. 269
CHAPTER XII.
THE PRISONERS’ VAN.
WE were passing the corner of Bow-street on our
return from a lounging excursion the other after-
noon, when a crowd assembled round the door of the
Police-office, attracted our attention. We turned up
the street accordingly. There were thirty or forty
people, standing on the pavement and half across the
road; and a few stragglers were patiently stationed on
the opposite side of the way—all evidently waiting in
expectation of some arrival. We waited too, a few
minutes, but nothing occurred; so, we turned round to .
an unshorn Sallow-looking Cobbler, who was standing
next us with his hands under the bib of his apron, and
put the usual question of “What’s the matter?” The
cobbler eyed us from head to foot, with superlative con-
tempt, and laconically replied “Nuffin.”
Now, we were perfectly aware that if two men stop
in the street to look at any given object, or even to
gaze in the air, two hundred men will be assembled in
no time; but, as we knew very well that no crowd of
people could by possibility remain in the street for five
minutes without getting up a little amusement among
themselves, unless they had some absorbing object in
view, the natural inquiry next in order was, “What
are all these people waiting here for?”—“Her Majesty’s
carriage,” replied the cobbler. This was still more ex-
traordinary. We could not imagine what earthly busi-
ness Her Majesty’s carriage could have at the Public
Office, Bow-street. We were beginning to ruminate on
the possible causes of such an uncommon appearance,
when a general exclamation from all the boys in the
crowd of “ Here’s the wan!” caused us to raise our
heads, and look up the street.
The covered vehicle, in which prisoners are conveyed
270 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
from the police-offices to the different prisons, was com-
ing along at full speed. It then occurred to us, for the first
time, that Her Majesty’s carriage was merely another
name for the prisoner’s van, conferred upon it, not only
by reason of the superior gentility of the term, but
because the aforesaid van is maintained at Her Majes-
ty’s expense: having been originally started for the
exclusive accommodation of ladies and gentlemen
under theºnecessity of visiting the various houses of call
§. by the general denomination of “ Her Majesty’s
aols.”
The van drew up at the office door, and the people
thronged round the steps, just leaving a little alley for
the prisoners to pass through. Our friend the cobbler,
and the other stragglers, crossed over, and we followed
their example. The driver, and another man who had
been seated by his side in front of the vehicle, dis-
mounted, and were admitted into the office. The office
door was closed after them, and the crowd were on the
tiptoe of expectation.
After a few minutes’ delay, the door again opened,
and the two first prisoners appeared. They were a couple
of girls, of whom the elder could not be more than six-
teen, and the younger of whom had certarnly not
attained her fourteenth year. That they were sisters,
was evident, from the resemblance which still subsisted
between them, though two additional years of deprav-
ity had fixed their brand upon the elder girl’s features,
as legibly as if a red-hot iron had seared them. They
were both gaudily dressed, the younger one especially;
and, although there was a strong similarity between
them in both respects, which was rendered the more
obvious by their being handcuffed together, it is impos-
sible to conceive a greater contrast than the demeanour
of the two presented. The younger girl was weeping
bitterly—not for display, or in the hope of producing
effect, but for very shame; and her face was buried in
her handkerchief; and her whole manner was but too
expressive of bitter and unavailing sorrow.
“How long are you for, Emily?” screamed a red-
faced woman in the crowd. “Six weeks and labour,”
replied the elder girl with a flaunting laugh; ‘‘ and
that’s better than the stone jug anyhow; the mill’s a
deal better than the Sessions, and here’s Bella a-going
THE PRISONERS’ VAN. 271
too for the first time. Hold up your head, you chicken,”
she continued, boisterously tearing the other girl’s
handkerchief away; “Hold up your head, and show
'em your face, I an’t jealous, but I’m blessed if I an’t
game!”—“That’s right, old gal,” exclaimed a man in
a paper cap, who, in common with the greater part of
the crowd, had been inexpressibly delighted with this
little incident—“Right!” replied the girl | “ah, to be
sure; what's the odds, eh?”—“Come! . In with you,” in-
terrupted the driver.—“Don’t you be in a hurry, coach-
man,” replied the girl, “ and recollect I want to be set
down in Cold Bath Fields—large house with a high
garden-wall in front; you can’t mistake it. Hallo,
Bella, where are you going to—you’ll pull my precious
arm off?” This was addressed to the younger girl,
who, in her anxiety to hide herself in the caravan, had
ascended the steps first, and forgotten the strain upon
the handcuff; “Come down, and let’s show you the
way.” And after jerking the miserable girl down with
a force which made her stagger on the pavement, she
got into the vehicle, and was followed by her wretched
Companion.
These two girls had been thrown upon London streets,
their vices and debauchery, by a sordid and rapacious
mother. What the younger girl was, then, the elder
had been once; and what the elder then was, the
younger must soon become. A melancholy prospect,
but how surely to be realised; a tragic drama, R. how
often acted! Turn to the prisons and police offices of
London—may, look into the very streets themselves.
These things pass before our eyes, day after day, and
hour after hour—they have become such matters of
course, that they are utterly disregarded. The prog-
ress of these girls in crime will be as rapid as the
flight of a pestilence, resembling it too in its baneful
influenée and wide-spreading infection. Step by step,
how many wretched females, within the sphere of
every man’s observation, have become involved in a
career of vice frightful to contemplate; hopeless at its
commencement, loathsome and repulsive in its course;
friendless, forlorn, and unpitied, at its miserable con-
clusion |
There were other prisoners—boys of ten, as hardened
in vice as men of fifty—a houseless vagrant, going
272 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
joyfully to prison as a place of food and shelter, hand-
cuffed to a man whose prospects were ruined, character
lost, and family rendered destitute, by his first offence.
Our curiosity, however, was satisfied. The first group
had left an impression on our mind we would gladly
have avoided and would willingly have effaced.
The crowd dispersed; the vehicle rolled away with
its load of guilt and misfortune; and we saw no more
of the Prišoners’ Van.
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 273
TAL E S.
*==ºmºsºsºsºme
CHAPTER I.
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. CHAPTER I.
RS. TIBBS was, beyond all dispute, the most tidy,
fidgety, thrifty, little personage that ever inhaled
the smoke of London: and the house of Mrs. Tibbs was,
decidedly, the neatest in. all Great Coram-street. The
area and the area steps, and the street-door, and the
street-door steps, and the brass handle, and the door-
plate, and the knocker, and the fan-light, were all as
clean and bright as indefatigable white-washing, and
hearth-stoning, and scrubbing and rubbing could make
them. The wonder was, that the brass door-plate, with
the interesting inscription “MRs. TIBBs,” had never
caught fire from constant friction, so perseveringly was
it polished. There were meat-safe-looking blinds in the
parlour windows, blue and gold curtains in the draw-
ing-room, and spring-roller blinds, as Mrs. Tibbs was
wont in the pride of her heart to boast, ‘‘ all the
way up.” The bell lamp in the passage looked as clear
as a soap-bubble; you could see yourself in all the
tables, and French-polish yourself on any one of the
chairs. The banisters were bees’-waxed; and the
very stair-wires made your eyes wink, they were so
glittering.
Mrs. Tibbs was somewhat short of stature, and Mr.
Tibbs was by no means a large man. He had moreover,
very short legs, but by way of identification, his face
was peculiarly long. He was to his wife what the 0 is
in 90—he was of some importance with her—he was
nothing without her. Mrs. Tibbs was always talking.
18
274 SKETCHES BY BOZ. eº
Mr. Tibbs rarely spoke; but, if it were at any time pos-
sible to put in a word, when he should have said
nothing at all, he had that talent, Mrs. Tibbs detested
long stories, and Mr. Tibbs had one, the conclusion of
which had never been heard by his most intimate
friends. It always began, “I recollect when I was in
the volunteer corps, in eighteen hundred and six,”—
but, as he spoke very slowly and softly, and his better
half very quickly and loudly, he rarely got beyond the
introductory sentence. He was a melancholy specimen
of the story-teller. He was the wandering Jew of Joe
Millerism.
Mr. Tibbs enjoyed a small independence from the
pension list—about 431. 15s. 10d. a year. His father,
mother, and five interesting scions from the same stock
drew a like sum from the revenue of a grateful country
though for what particular service was never known.
But, as this said independence was not quite sufficient
to furnish two people with all the luxuries of this life,
it had occurred to the busy little spouse of Tibbs, that
the best thing she could do with a legacy of 700l., would
be to take and furnish a tolerable house—somewhere in
that partially explored tract of country which lies be-
tween the British Museum, and a remote village called
Somers' town—for the reception of boarders. Great
Coram-street was the spot pitched upon. The house
had been furnished accordingly; two female servants
and a boy, engaged; and an advertisement inserted in
the morning papers, informing the public that “Six
individuals would meet with all the comforts of a
cheerful musical home in a select private family,
residing within ten minutes' walk of,”—everywhere.
Answers out of number were received, with all sorts of
initials; all the letters of the alphabet seemed to be
seized with a sudden wish to go out boarding and lodg-
ing; voluminous was the correspondence between Mrs.
Tibbs and the applicants; and most profound was the
secrecy observed. “E.” didn’t like this. “I.” couldn’t
think of putting up with that; “I. O. U.” didn’t think
the terms would suit him; and “ G. R.” had never slept
in a French bed. The result, however, was, that three
gentlemen became inmates of Mrs. Tibbs’s house, on
terms which were “ agreeable to all parties.” In went
the advertisment again, and a lady with her two
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 275
daughters, proposed to increase—not their families, but
Mrs. Tibbs’s.
“Charming woman, that Mrs. Maplesone!” said Mrs.
Tibbs, as she and her spouse were sitting by the fire
after breakfast; the gentlemen having gone out on
their several avocations. “Charming woman, indeed ”
repeated little Mrs. Tibbs, more by way of soliloquy
than anything else, for she never thought of consulting
her husband. “And the two daughters are delightful.
We must have some fish to-day; they'll join us at dinner
for the first time.”
Mr. Tibbs placed the poker at right angles with the
fire shovel, and essayed to speak, but recollected he had
nothing to say.
“The young ladies,” continued Mrs. T. “ have kindly
volunteered to bring their own piano.”
Tibbs thought of the volunteer story, but did not vent-
ure it. A bright thought struck him
“It’s very likely ” said he.
“Pray don’t lean your head against the paper,” in-
terrupted Mrs. Tibbs; “and don’t put your feet on the
steel fender; that’s worse.”
Tibbs took his head from the paper, and his feet from
the fender, and proceeded. “It’s very likely one of the
young ladies may set her cap at young Mr. Simpson,
and you know a marriage *—
“A what!” shrieked Mrs. Tibbs. Tibbs modestly
repeated his former suggestion.
“I beg you won’t mention such a thing,” said Mrs.
T. “A marriage indeed!—to rob me of my boarders—
no, not for the world.”
Tibbs thought in his own mind that the event was by
no means unlikely; but, as he never argued with his
wife, he put a stop to the dialogue, by observing it was
“ time to go to business.” . He always went out at ten
o'clock in the morning, and returned at five in the after-
noon, with an exceedingly dirty face, and Smelling
mouldy. Nobody knew what he was, or where he went;
but Mrs. Tibbs used to say with an air of great impor-
tance that he was engaged in the City.
The Miss Maplesomes and their accomplished parent
arrived in the course of the afternoon in a hackney-
coach, and accompanied by a most astonishing number
of packages. Trunks, bonnet-boxes, muff-boxes, and
276 SIKETCHES BY BOZ.
parasols, guitar-cases, and parcels of all imaginable
shapes, done up in brown paper, and fastened with pins,
filled the passage. Then, there was such a running up
and down with the luggage, such scampering for warm
water for the ladies to wash in, and such a bustle, and
confusion, and heating of servants and curling-irons,
as had never been known in Great Coram-street before.
Little Mrs. Tibbs was quite in her element, bustlin
about, talking incessantly, and distributing towels an
soap like a head nurse in a hospital. The house was
not restored to its usual state of quiet repose, until the
ladies were safely shut up in their respective bedrooms,
engaged in the important occupation of dressing for
dinner.
“Are these gals 'andsome?” inquired Mr. Simpson
of Mr. Septimus Hicks, another of the boarders, as they
were amusing themselves in the drawing-room before
dinner, by lolling on Sofas and contemplating their
pumpS.
“Don’t know,” replied Mr. Septimus Hicks, who was
a tallish, white-faced young man, with spectacles, and
a black ribbon round his neck instead of a neckerchief
—a most interesting person: a poetical walker of the
hospitals, and a “very talented young man.” He was
fond of “lugging ” into conversation, all sorts of quota-
tions from Don Juan, without fettering himself by the
propriety of their application; in which particular he
was remarkably independent. The other, Mr. Simpson,
was one of those young men, who are in society what
walking gentlemen are on the stage, only infinitely
worse skilled in his vocation, than the most indifferent
artist. He was as empty-headed as the great bell of
St. Paul's; always dressed according to the caricatures
published in the monthly fashions; and spelt Character
with a K.
“I saw a devilish number of parcels in the passage
when I came home,” simpered Mr. Simpson.
“Materials for the toilet, no doubt,” rejoined the Don
Juan reader.
‘‘‘ Much linon, lace, and several pair
Of stockings, slippers, brushes, combs, complete;
With other articles of ladies’ fair,
TO lzeep thom beautiful, or leave them noat.’”
“Is that from Milton?” inquired Mr. Simpson.
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 277
“No-from Byron,” returned Mr. Hicks, with a look
of contempt. He was quite sure of his author, because
he had never read any other. “ Hush! Here come the
gº." and they both commenced talking in a very loud
ey.
“Mrs. Maplesome and the Miss Maplesones, Mr. Hicks.
Mr. Hicks—Mrs. Maplesone and the Miss Maplesones,”
said Mrs. Tibbs, with a very red face, for she had been
Superintending the cooking operations below stairs,
and looked like a wax doll on a sunny day. “Mr.
Simpson, I beg your pardon—Mr. Simpson—Mrs. Ma-
plesone and the Miss Maplesomes *—and vice versä.
The gentlemen immediately began to slide about with
much politeness, and to look as if they wished their
arms had been legs, so little did they know what to do
with them. The ladies smiled, curtsied, and glided
into chairs, and dived for dropped pocket-handkerchiefs;
the gentlemen leant against two of the curtain-pegs;
Mrs. Tibbs went through an admirable bit of serious
pantomime with a servant who had come up to ask
Some question about the fish-sauce; and then the two
young ladies looked at each other; and everybody else
appeared to discover something very attractive in the
pattern of the fender.
“Julia my love,” said Mrs. Maplesone to her youngest
daughter, in a tone loud enough for the remainder of
the company to hear, “Julia.”
“Yes, Ma.”
“Don’t stoop.”—This was said for the purpose of
directing general attention to Miss Julia’s figure, which
was undeniable. Everybody looked at her, accordingly,
and there was another pause.
“We had the most uncivil hackney-coachman to-day,
you can imagine,” said Mrs. Maplesone to Mrs. Tibbs, in
a confidential tone.
“Dear me!” replied the hostess, with an air of great
Commiseration. She couldn’t say more, for the servant
again appeared at the door, and commenced telegraph-
ing more earnestly to her “Missis.”
‘‘I think hackney-coachmen generally are uncivil,”
said Mr. Hicks in his most insinuating tone.
“Positively. I think they are,” replied Mrs. Maple-
Sone, as if the idea had never struck her before.
“And cabmen, too,” said Mr. Simpson. This remark
278 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
was a failure, for no one intimated, by word or sign,
the slightest knowledge of the manners and customs of
cabmen. sº
“Robinson, what do you want?” said Mrs. Tibbs to the
servant, who, by way of making her presence known
to her mistress, had been giving sundry hems and Sniffs
outside the door, during the preceding five minutes.
“Please, ma'am, master wants his clean things,” re-
plied the servant, taken off her guard. The two young
men turned their faces to the window, and “went off?”
like a couple of bottles of ginger beer; the ladies put
their handkerchiefs to their mouths ; and little Mrs.
Tibbs bustled out of the room to give Tibbs his clean
linen, and the servant warning.
Mr. Calton, the remaining boarder, shortly after-
wards made his appearance, and proved a surprising
promoter of the conversation. Mr. Calton was a super-
annuated beau—an old boy. He used to say of himself
that although his features were not regularly hand-
some, they were striking. They certainly were. It
was impossible to look at his face without being re-
minded of a chubby street-door knocker, half-lion half-
monkey; and the comparison might be extended to his
whole character and conversation. He had stood still,
while everything else had been moving. He never
originated a conversation, or started an idea; but if any
commonplace topic were broached, or, to pursue the
comparison, if anybody lifted him up, he would
hammer away with surprising rapidity. He had
the tic-doloreux occasionally, and then he might be
said to be muffled, because he did not make quite as
much noise as at other times, when he would go on
rosing, rat-tat-tat the same thing over and over again.
#. had never been married; but he was still on the
look-out for a wife with money. He had a life interest
worth about 300l. a year—he was exceedingly vain, and
inordinately selfish. He had acquired the reputation
of being the very pink of politeness, and he walked
round the park, ºf up Regent-street, every day.
This respectable personage had made up his mind to
render himself exceedingly agreeable to Mrs. Maple-
sone—indeed, the desire of being as amiable as possible
extended itself to the whole party; Mrs. Tibbs having
considered it an admirable little bit of management to
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 279
represent to the gentlemen that she had some reason to
believe the ladies were fortunes, and to hint to the
ladies, that all the gentlemen were “eligible.” A little
flirtation, she thought, might keep her house full, with-
out leading to any other result.
Mrs. Maplesome was an enterprising widow of about
fifty: shrewd, scheming, and good-looking. She was
amiably anxious on behalf of her daughters; in proof
whereof she used to remark, that she would have no
objection to marry again, if it would benefit her dear
girls—she could have no other motive. The “dear
girls” themselves were not at all insensible to the merits
of “a good establishment.” One of them was twenty-
five; the other, three years younger. They had been
at different watering-places, for four seasons; they had
gambled at libraries, read books in balconies, sold at
fancy fairs, danced at assemblies, talked sentiment—in
short, they had done all that industrious girls could
do—but, as yet, to no purpose.
“What a magnificent dresser Mr. Simpson is!”
whispered Matilda Maplesome to her sister Julia.
“Splendid!” returned the youngest. The magnificent
individual alluded to wore a maroon-coloured dress-
coat, with a velvet collar and cuffs of the same tint
—very like that which usually invests the form of the
distinguished unknown who condescends to play the
“swell’ in the pantomime at “Pichardson’s Show.”
“What whiskers! ” said Miss Julia.
“Charming!” responded her sister; “ and what hair!”
His hair was like a wig, and distinguished by that
insinuating wave which graces the shining locks of
those chefs-d'oeuvre of art surmounting the waxen
images in Bartellot's window, in Regent-street; his
whiskers meeting beneath his chin, seemed Strings
where with to tie it on, ere science had rendered them
unnecessary by her patent invisible springs.
“Dinner's on the table, ma'am, if you please,” said
the boy, who now appeared for the first time, in a
revived black coat of }. master's.
“Oh!” Mr. Calton, will you lead Mrs. Maplesone?—
Thank you.” Mr. Simpson offered his arm to Miss
Julia; Mr. Septimus Hicks escorted the lovely Matilda;
and the procession proceeded to the dining-room. Mr.
Tibbs was introduced, and Mr. Tibbs bobbed up and
2SO SKETCHES BY BOZ.
down to the three ladies like a figure in a Dutch clock,
with a powerful spring in the middle of his body, and
then dived rapidly into his seat at the bottom of the table,
delighted to screen himself behind a soup-tureen, which
he could just see over, and that was all. The boarders
were seated, a lady and gentleman alternately, like the
layers of bread and meat in a plate of sandwiches; and
then Mrs. Tibbs directed James to take off the covers.
Salmon, lobster-sauce, giblet-Soup, and the usual accom-
paniments were discovered: potatoes like petrifac-
tions, and bits of toasted bread, the shape and size of
blank dice.
“Soup for Mrs. Maplesone, my dear,” said the bustling
Mrs. Tibbs. She always called her husband “my dear,”
before company. Tibbs, who had been eating his bread,
and calculating how long it would be before he should
get any fish, helped the Soup in a hurry, made a small
island on the tablecloth, and put his glass upon it, to
hide it from his wife.
“Miss Julia, shall I assist you to some fish?”
“If you please—very little—Oh! plenty, thank you”
(a bit about the size of a walnut put upon the plate).
“Julia is a very little eater,” said Mrs. Maplesone to
Mr. Calton.
The knocker gave a single rap. He was busy eating
the fish with his eyes; so he only ejaculated, “Ah!”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Tibbs to her spouse after every
one else had been helped, “What do you take?” The
inquiry was accompanied with a look intimating that he
mustn't say fish, because there was not much left. Tibbs
thought the frown referred to the island on the table-
cloth; he therefore coolly replied, “Why—I’ll take a
little—fish, I think.”
“Did you say fish, my dear P” (another frown.)
“Yes, dear,” replied the villain, with an expression
of acute hunger depicted in his countenance. The
tears almost started to Mrs. Tibb's eyes as she helped
her “ wretch of a husband,” as she inwardly called him,
to the last eatable bit of salmon on the dish.
“James, take this to your master, and take away
your master’s knife.” This was deliberate revenge, as
Tibbs never could eat fish without one. He was, how-
ever, constrained to chase small particles of salmon
round and round his plate with a piece of bread and a
THE BOARDING-BIOUSE. 281
fork, the number of successful attempts being about
One in seventeen.
“Take away, James,” said Mrs. Tibbs, as Tibbs
Swallowed the fourth mouthful—and away went the
plates like lightning.
“I’ll take a bit of bread, James,” said the poor
“master of the house,” more hungry than ever.
“Never mind your master now, James,” said Mrs.
Tibbs, “see about the meat.” This was conveyed in
the tone in which ladies usually give admonitions to
servants in company, that is to say, a low one; but
which, like a stage whisper, from its peculiar emphasis,
is most distinctly heard by everybody present.
A pause ensued, before the table was replenished—a
sort of parenthesis in which Mr. Simpson, Mr. Calton,
and Mr. Hicks, produced respectfully a bottle of sau-
terne, bucellas, and sherry, and took wine with every-
body—except Tibbs. No one ever thought of him.
Between the fish and an intimated sirloin, there was
a prolonged interval.
Here was an opportunity for Mr. Hicks. He could
not resist the singularly appropriate quotation—
“But beef is rare within these oxless isles;
Goats’ flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton,
And, Whon a holiday upon them. Smiles,
A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.”
“Very ungentlemanly behaviour,” though little Mrs.
Tibbs, “to talk in that way.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Calton, filling his glass. “Tom
Moore is my poet.”
“And mine,” said Mrs. Maplesone.
“And mine,” said Miss Julia.
“And mine,” added Mr. Simpson.
“Look at his compositions,” resumed the knocker.
“To be sure,” said Simpson. with confidence.
“Look at Don Juan,” replied Mr. Septimus Hicks.
“Julia’s letter,” suggested Miss Matilda.
“Can anything be grander than the Fire Worship-
pers?” inquired Miss Julia.
“To be sure,” said Simpson.
“Or Paradise and the Peri,” said the old beau.
“Yes; or Paradise and the Peer,” repeated Simpson,
who thought he was getting through it capitally.
282 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“It's all very well,” replied Mr. Septimus Hicks, who,
as we have before hinted, never had read anything but
Don Juan. “Where will you find anything finer than
the description of the siege, at the commencement of
the seventh canto?”
“Talking of a siege,” said Tibbs, with a mouthful
of bread—“when I was in the volunteer corps, in
eighteen hundred and six, our commanding officer was
Sir Charles Rampart; and one day, when we were ex-
ercising on the ground on which the London University
now stands, he says, says he, Tibbs (calling me from
the ranks) Tibbs—” &
“Tell your master, James,” interrupted Mrs. Tibbs,
in an awfully distinct tone, “tell your master if he won’t
carve those fowls, to send them to me.” The discom-
fited volunteer instantly set to work, and carved the
fowls almost as expeditiously as his wife Operated on
the haunch of mutton. Whether he ever finished the
story is not known; but, if he did, nobody heard
it.
As the ice was now broken, and the new inmates
more at home, every member of the company felt more
at ease. Tibbs himself most certainly did, because he
went to sleep immediately after dinner. Mr. Hicks and
the ladies discoursed most eloquently about poetry, and
the theatres, and Lord Chesterfield’s Letters; and Mr.
Calton followed up what everybody said, with con-
tinuous double knocks. Mrs. Tibbs highly approved of
every observation that fell from Mrs. Maplesone; and
as Mr. Simpson sat with a smile upon his face and said
“Yes,” or “Certainly,” at intervals of about four
minutes each, he received full credit for understanding
what was going forward. The gentlemen rejoined the
ladies in the drawing-room very shortly after they had
left the dining-parlour. Mrs. Maplesone and Mr. Calton
played cribbage, and the “ young people” amused them-
selves with music and conversation. The Miss Maple-
sones sang the most fascinating duets, and accompanied
themselves on guitars, ornamented with bits of ethereal
blue ribbon. Mr. Simpson put on a pink waistcoat, and
said he was in raptures; and Mr. Hicks felt in the
seventh heaven of poetry, or the seventh canto of Don
Juan—it was the same thing to him. Mrs. Tibbs was
quite charmed with the new comers; and Mr. Tibbs
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 283
spent the evening in his usual way—he went to sleep,
and woke up, and went to sleep again, and woke at
Supper-time. *
>k >k >k sk >k >k
We are not about to adopt the licence of novel-writers,
and so let “years roll on; ” but we will take the liberty of
requesting the reader to suppose that six months have
elapsed, since the dinner we have described, and that
Mrs. Tibbs’s boarders have, during that §: Sang,
and danced, and gone to theatres and exhibitions, to-
gether, as ladies and gentlemen, wherever they board,
often do. . And we will beg them, the period we have
mentioned having elapsed, to imagine farther, that Mr.
Septimus Hicks received, in his own bedroom (a front
attic), at an early hour one morning, a note from Mr.
Calton, requesting the favour of seeing him, as soon as
convenient to himself, in his Čijäß. OI).
the second floor back.
“Tell Mr. Calton I’ll come down directly,” said Mr.
Septimus to the boy. “Stop—is Mr. Calton unwell?”
§. this excited walker of hospitals, as he put on a
bed-furniture-looking dressing-gown.
“Not as I knows on, sir,” replied the boy. “Please,
sir, he looked rather rum, as it might be.” -
“Ah, that’s no proof of his being ill,” returned Hicks,
unconsciously. “Very well : I’ll be down directly.”
Down stairs ran the boy with the message, and down
went the excited Hicks himself, almost as soon as the
message was delivered. “Tap, tap.” “Come in.”—
Door opens, and discovers Mr. Calton sitting in an
easy chair. Mutual shakes of the hand exchanged,
and Mr. Septimus Hicks motioned to a seat. A short
pause. Mr. Hicks coughed, and Mr. Calton took a pinch
of snuff. It was one of those interviews where neither
party knows what to say. Mr. Septimus Hicks broke
silence.
“I received a note—” he said, very tremulously, in
a voice like a Punch with a cold.
“Yes,” returned the other, “you did.”
“Exactly.”
6 & Yes.”
Now, although this dialogue must have been satis-
factory, both gentlemen felt there was something more
284 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
important to be said; therefore they did as most men
in such a situation would have done—they looked at
the table with a determined aspect. The conversation
had been opened, however, and Mr. Calton had made
up his mind to continue it, with a regular double knock.
He always spoke very pompously. - -
“Hicks,” said he, “I have sent for you, in conse-
uence of certain arrangements which are pending in
this house, connected with a marriage.”
“With a marriage!” gasped Hicks, compared with
whose expression of countenance, Hamlet’s, when he
sees his father's ghost, is pleasing and composed.
“With a marriage,” returned the knocker. “I have
sent for you to prove the great confidence I can repose
1n you. tº
“And will you betray me?” eagerly inquired Hicks,
who in his alarm had even forgotten to quote.
“I betray you ! Won’t you betray me?”
“Never: no one shall know, to my dying day, that
you had a hand in the business,” responded the agi-
tated Hicks, with an inflamed countenance, and his
hair standing on end as if he were on the stool of an
electrifying machine in full operation. - -
“People must know that, some time or other—with-
in a year, I imagine,” said Mr. Calton, with an air of
great self-complacency. “We may have a family.”
“We ſ—that won’t affect you, surely?” -
“The devil it won't!” -
“No! how can it?” said the bewildered Hicks. Cal-
ton was too much inwrapped in the contemplation of
his happiness to see the equivoque between Hicks and
himself; and threw himself back in his chair. “Oh,
Matilda!” sighed the antique beau, in a lack-a-daisical
voice, and applying his right hand a little to the left
of the fourth button of his waistcoat, counting from the
bottom. “Oh, Matilda!”
“What Matilda?” inquired Hicks, starting up.
“Matilda Maplesone,” responded the other, doing the
S8, Iſle. ... • -
‘‘I marry her to-morrow morning,” said Hicks.
H. “It’s false,” rejoined his companion; “I marry
er | ?”
“You marry her!”
“I marry her!”
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 285
“You marry Matilda Maplesone?”
“Matilda Maplesone.”
“Miss Maplesome marry you?”
“Miss Maplesone! No: Mrs. Maplesone.”
“Good Heaven!” said Hicks, falling into his chair;
“You marry the mother, and I the daughter!”
“Most extraordinary circumstances!” replied Mr.
Calton, “ and rather inconvenient too; for the fact is,
that owing to Matilda’s wishing to keep her intention
secret from her daughters until the ceremony had
taken place, she doesn’t like applying to any of her
friends to give her away. I entertain an objection to
making the affair known to my acquaintance just now;
and the consequence is, that I sent to you, to know
whether you'd oblige me by acting as father.”
“I should have been most happy, I assure you,” said
Hicks, in a tone of condolence; “but, you see, I shall
be acting as bridegroom. One character is frequently
a consequence of the other; but it is not usual to act in
both at the same time. There’s Simpson—I have no
doubt he’ll do it for you.” *
“I don’t like to ask him,” replied Calton; “he’s such
a donkey.”
Mr. Septimus Hicks looked up at the ceiling, and
down at the floor; at last an idea struck him. “Let
the man of the house, Tibbs, be the father,” he sug-
gested; and then he quoted, as peculiarly applicable to
Tibbs and the pair—
“Oh Powers of . Heaven what dark eyes meets she there?
'Tis—’tis her father’s—fixed upon the pair.’’
“The idea has struck me already,” said Mr. Calton:
‘‘ but you see, Matilda, for what reason I know not, is
very anxious that Mrs. Tibbs should know nothing
about it, till it's all over. It’s a natural delicacy, after
all, you know.”
“He’s the best-natured little man in existence, if you
manage him properly,” said Mr. Septimus Hicks. “Tell
him not to mention it to his wife, and assure him she
won’t mind it, and he’ll do it directly. My marriage is
to be a secret one, on account of the mother and my
father; therefore he must be enjoined to secrecy.”
A small double knock, like a presumptuous single
one, was that instant heard at the street-door. It was
286 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Tibbs; it could be no one else; for no one else occupied
five minutes in rubbing his shoes. He had been out to
pay the baker’s bill. . . . .
“Mr. Tibbs,” called Mr. Calton in a very bland tone,
looking over the banisters.
“Sir!” replied he of the dirty face. - - -
“Will you have the kindness to step up stairs for a
moment?” , ,
“Certainly, sir,” said Tibbs, delighted to be taken
notice of. The bedroom-door was carefully closed, and
Tibbs, having put his hat on the floor (as most timid
men do), and been accommodated with a seat, looked
as astounded as if he were suddenly summoned before
the familiars of the Inquisition. -
“A rather unpleasant oocurrence, Mr. Tibbs,” said
Calton, in a very portentous manner, “Obliges me to
consult you, and to beg you will not communicate what
I am about to say, to your wife.” -
Tibbs acquiesced, wondering in his own mind what
the deuce the other could have done, and imagining
that at least he must have broken the best decanters.
Mr. Calton resumed; “I am placed, Mr. Tibbs, in
rather an unpleasant situation.” . ' .
Tibbs looked at Mr. Septimus Hicks, as if he thought
Mr. H.’s being in the immediate vicinity of his fellow-
boarder might constitute the unpleasantness of his
situation; but as he did not exactly know what to say,
he merely ejaculated the monosyllable “Lor!” . . . . .
“Now,” continued the knocker, “let me beg you will
exhibit no manifestations of surprise, which may be
overheard by the domestics, when I tell you—command
your feelings of astonishment—that two inmates of this
house intend to be married to-morrow morning.” And
he drew back his chair, several feet, to perceive the
effect of the unlooked-for announcement. - -
If Tibbs had rushed from the room, staggered down
stairs, and fainted in the passage—if he had instan-
taneously jumped out of the window into the mews be-
hind the house, in an agony of surprise—his behaviour
would have been much less inexplicable to Mr. Calton
than it was, when he put his hands into his inexpres-
sible-pockets, and said with a half-chuckle, “Just so.”
“You are not surprised, Mr, Tibbs?” inquired Mr.
Calton. - - -
\
THE BOARDING-HOUSE 2S7
“Bless you, no, sir,” returned Tibbs; “after all it’s
very natural. When two young people get together,
you know —” -
“Certainly, certainly,” said Calton, with an inde-
scribable air of Self-satisfaction.
“You don’t think it’s at all an out-of-the-way affair
then?” asked Mr. Septimus Hicks, who had watched
the countenance of Tibbs in mute astonishment.
“No, sir,” replied Tibbs; “I was just the same at his
age.” He actually smiled when he said this.
“How devilish well I must carry my years!” thought
the delighted old beau, knowing he was at least ten
years older than Tibbs at that moment. -
“Well, then, to come to the point at once,” he con
tinued, “I have to ask you whether you will object to
act as father of the occasion?”
“Certainly not,” replied Tibbs; still without evincing
an atom of Surprise.
** YOUI Will not Pº’
“Decidedly not,” reiterated Tibbs, still as calm as a
pot of porter with the head off. -
Mr. Calton seized the hand of the petticoat-governed
little man, and vowed eternal friendship from that
hour. Hicks, who was all admiration and surprise, did.
the same. -
“Now confess,” asked Mr. Calton of Tibbs, as he
picked up his hat, “were you not a little surprised?”
“I b'lieve you !” replied that illustrious person, hold-
º up one hand; “I b'lieve you ! When I first heard
Of it.” -
“So sudden,” said Septimus Hicks.
“So strange to ask me, you know,” said Tibbs.
“So odd altogether!” said the superannuated love-
maker; and then all three laughed.
“I say,” said Tibbs, shutting the door which he had
previously opened, and giving full vent to a hitherto
corked up giggle, “what bothers me is, what will his
father say?”
Mr. Septimus Hicks looked at Mr. Calton.
“Yes; but the best of it is,” said the latter, giggling
in his turn, “I haven’t got a father—he hel hel”
“You haven’t got a father. No; but he has,” said
Tibbs. p -
“Who has P’ inquired Septimus Hicks.
288 . . SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“Why him.” -
“Him, who P Do you know my secret? Do you
mean me?”
“You! No; you know who I mean,” returned Tibbs
with a knowing wink.
“ For Heaven’s sake whom do you mean P” inquired
Mr. Calton, who, like Septimus Hicks, was all but Out
of his senses at the strange Confusion.
“Why Mr. Simpson, of course,” replied Tibbs; “who
else could I mean P” ---
“I see it all,” said the Byron-quoter; “Simpson
marries Julia Maplesone to-morrow morning !”
“Undoubtedly,” replied Tibbs, º; satisfied,
“Of course he does.”
It would require the pencil of Hogarth to illustrate—
our feeble pen is inadequate to describe—the expression
which the countenances of Mr. Calton and Mr. Septi-
mus Hicks respectively assumed, at this unexpected
announcement. Equally impossible is it to describe,
although perhaps it is easier for Our lady readers to
imagine, what arts the three ladies could have used, so
completely to entangle their separate partners. What-
ever they were, however, they were successful. The
mother was perfectly aware of the intended marriage
of both daughters; and the young ladies were equally
acquainted with the intention of their estimable parent.
They agreed, however, that it would have a much
better appearance if each feigned ignorance of the
other's engagement; and it was equally desirable that
all the marriages should take place on the same day, to
prevent the discovery of one clandestine alliance,
operating prejudicially on the others. Hence, the
mystification of Mr. Calton and Mr. Septimus Hicks,
and the pre-engagement of the unwary Tibbs.
On the following morning, Mr. Septimus Hicks was
united to Miss Matilda Maplesone. Mr. Simpson also
entered into a “holy alliance” with Miss Julia: Tibbs
acting as father, “his first appearance in that char-
acter.” Mr. Calton, not being quite so eager as the two
young men, was rather struck by the double discovery;
and as he had found some difficulty in getting any one
to give the lady away, it occurred to him that the best
mode of obviating the inconvenience would be not to
take her at all. The lady, however, “appealed,” as
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 289
her counsel said on the trial of the cause, Maplesome V.
Calton, for a breach of promise, “with a broken heart,
to the outraged laws of her country.” She recovered
damages to the amount of £1,000 which the unfortunate
knocker was compelled to pay. Mr. Septimus Hicks
having walked the hospitals, took it into his head to
walk off altogether. His injured wife is at present re-
siding with her mother at Boulogne. Mr. Simpson,
having the misfortune to lose his wife six weeks after
marriage (by her eloping with an Officer during his
temporary sojourn-in the Fleet Prison, in consequence
of his inability to discharge her little mantua-maker’s
bill), and being disinherited by his father, who died
soon afterwards, was fortunate enough to obtain a per-
manent engagement at a fashionable hair-cutter's;
hairdressing being a science to which he had fre-
quently directed his attention. In this situation he
had necessarily many opportunities of making himself
acquainted with the habits and style of thinking, of the
exclusive portion of the nobility of this kingdom. To
this fortunate circumstance are we indebted for the
production of those brilliant efforts of genius, his
fashionable novels, which so long as good taste, un-
sullied by exaggeration, cant, and quackery, continues
to exist, cannot fail to instruct and amuse the thinking
portion of the community. . . -
It only remains to add, that this complication of dis-
orders completely deprived poor Mrs. Tibbs of all her
inmates, except the one whom she could have best
spared—her husband. That wretched little man re-
turned home on the day of the wedding, in a state of
partial intoxication; and, under the influence of wine,
excitement, and despair, actually dared to brave the
anger of his wife. Since that ill-fated hour he has con-
stantly taken his meals in the kitchen, to which apart-
ment, it is understood, his witticisms will be in future
confined: a turn-up bedstead having been conveyed
there by Mrs. Tibbs’s order for his exclusive accommo-
dation. It is possible that he will be enabled to finish,
in that seclusion, his story of the volunteers.
The advertisement has again appeared in the morn-
ing papers. Results must be reserved for another
chapter,
19
290 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
66 ELL!” said little Mrs. Tibbs to herself, as she
sat in the front parlour of the Coram-street
mansion one morning, mending a piece of Stair-carpet
off the first landing;-“Things have not turned out so
badly, either, and if I only get a favourable answer to
the advertisement, we shall be full again.”
Mrs. Tibbs resumed her occupation of making worsted
lattice-work in the carpet, anxiously listening to the
twopenny postman, who was hammering his way down
the Street, at the rate of a penny a knock. The house
was as quiet as possible. There was only one low
sound to be heard—it was the unhappy Tibbs cleaning
the gentlemen’s boots in the back kitchen, and accom-
panying himself with a buzzing noise, in wretched
mockery of humming a tune. *
The postman drew near the house. He paused—so
iºrs. Tibbs. A knock—a bustle—a letter—post-
pald. .
“T. I. presents compt. to I. T. and T.I. begs To say that i see the
advertisement And she will Do Herself the pleasure of calling On you
at 12 o'clock to-morrow morning. /
“T. I. as To apologise to I. T. for the shortness Of the notice. But i
hope it will not unconvenience you.
“I remain yours Truly,
“Wednesday evening.”
Little Mrs. Tibbs perused the document over and over
again; and the more she read it, the more was she con-
fused by the mixture of the first and third person; the
substitution of the “ I” for the “T. I.;” and the transi-
tion from the “I. T.” to the “ you.” The writing looked
like a skein of thread in a tangle, and the note was in-
geniously folded into a perfect square, with the direc-
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 291
tion Squeezed up into the right-hand corner, as if it were
ashamed of itself. The back of the epistle was pleas-
ingly ornamented with a large red wafer, which, with
the addition of divers ink-stains, bore a marvellous re-
semblance to a black beetle trodden upon. One thing,
however, was perfectly clear to the perplexed Mrs.
Tibbs. Somebody was to Čall at twelve. The drawing-
room was forthwith dusted for the third time that morn-
ing; three or four chairs were pulled out of their places
and a corresponding number of books carefully upset,
in order that there might be a due absence of formality.
Down went the piece of stair-carpet before noticed, and
up ran Mrs. Tibbs “to make herself tidy.”
The clock of New Saint Pancras Church struck twelve,
and the Foundling, with laudable politeness, did the
same ten minutes afterwards. Saint something else
struck the quarter, and then there arrived a single lady
with a double knock, in a pelisse the colour of the in-
terior of a damson pie; a bonnet of the same, with a
regular conservatory of artificial flowers; a white veil,
and a green parasol, with a cobweb border.
The visitor (who was very fat and red-faced) was
shown into the drawing-room; Mrs. Tibbs presented
herself, and the negotiation commenced. *
“I called in consequence of an advertisement,” said
the stranger, in a voice as if she had been playing a set
of Pan's pipes for a fortnight without leaving off.
“Yes!” said Mrs. Tibbs, rubbing her hands very
slowly, and looking the applicant full in the face—two
things she always did on such occasions.
‘‘ Money isn’t no object whatever to me,” said the
lady, “ so much as living in a state of retirement and
obtrusion.”
Mrs. Tibbs, as a matter of course, acquiesced in such
an exceedingly natural desire.
“I am constantly attended by a medical man,” re-
sumed the pelisse wearer; “I have been a shocking
unitarian for some time—I, indeed, have had very little
peace since the death of Mr. Bloss.”
Mrs. Tibbs looked at the relict of the departed Bloss,
and thought he must have had very little peace in his
time. Of course she could not say so; so she looked
very sympathising.
“I shall be a good deal of trouble to you,” said Mrs.
292 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Bloss; “but, for that trouble I am willing to pay. I
am going through a course of treatment which renders
attention necessary. I have One mutton chop in bed
at half-past eight, and another at ten, every morn-
ing.”
Mrs. Tibbs, as in duty bound, expressed the pity she
felt for any body placed in such a distressing situation;
and the carnivorous Mrs. Bloss proceeded to arrange
the various preliminaries with wonderful dispatch.
“Now mind,” said that lady, after terms were ar-
ranged; I am to have the second floor front, for my
bed-room?”
“Yes, ma'am.” * *
“And you’ll find room for my little servant Agnes?”
“Oh! certainly.”
“And I can have one of the cellars in the area for
my bottled porter.”
“With the greatest pleasure;—James shall get it
ready for you by Saturday.”
“And I’ll join the company at the breakfast-table on
Sunday morning,” said Mrs. Bloss. “I shall get up on
purpose.”
“Very well,” returned Mrs. Tibbs, in her most ami-
able tone; for satisfactory references had “been given
and required,” and it was quite certain that the new
comer had plenty of money. “It’s rather singular,”
continued Mrs. Tibbs, with what was meant for a most
bewitching. Smile, “that we have a gentleman now
with us, who is in a very delicate state of health—a
Mr. Gobler.—His apartment is the back drawing-
room.”
“The next room?” inquired Mrs. Bloss.
“The next room,” repeated the hostess.
“How very promiscuous!” ejaculated the widow.
“He hardly ever gets up,” said Mrs. Tibbs in a whisper.
“LOr!” cried Mrs. Bloss, in an equally low tone.
“And when he is up,” said Mrs. Tibbs, “we never
can persuade him to go to bed again.”
“Dear me!” said the astonished Mrs. Bloss, drawing
her chair nearer Mrs. Tibbs. “What is his complaint?”
“Why the fact is,” replied Mrs. Tibbs, with a most
communicative air, “he has no stomach whatever.”
“No what?” inquired Mrs. Bloss, with a look of the
most indescribable alarm.
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. - 293
“No stomach,” repeated Mrs. Tibbs, with a shake of
- the head. - - *
“Lord bless us! what an extraordinary case!” gasped
Mrs. Bloss, as if she understood the communication in
its literal sense, and was astonished at a gentleman
without a stomach finding it necessary to board any-
where. \ -
“When I say he has no stomach,” explained the
chatty little Mrs. Tibbs, “I mean that his digeston is
so much impaired, and his interior so deranged, that his
stomach is not of the least use to him;-in fact, it’s an
inconvenience.” º
“Never heard such a case in my life!” exclaimed
Mrs. Bloss. “Why he’s worse than I am.”
“Oh, yes!” replied Mrs. Tibbs;– certainly.” She
said this with great confidence, for the damson pelisse
suggested that Mrs. Bloss, at all events, was not suffer-
ing under Mr. Gobier's complaint. -
“You have quite incited my curiosity,” said Mrs.
Bloss, as she rose to depart. “How I long to see him!”
“He generally comes down, once a week.” replied
Mrs. Tibbs; “I dare say you’ll see him on Sunday.”
With this consolatory promise Mrs. Bloss was obliged
to be contented. She accordingly walked slowly down
the stairs, detailing her complaints all the way: and
Mrs. Tibbs followed her, uttering an exclamation of
compassion at every step. James (who looked very
gritty, for he was cleaning the knives) fell up the
kitchen-Stairs, and opened the street-door; and, after
mutual farewells, Mrs. Bloss slowly departed, down
the shady-side of the street. .
It is almost superfluous to say, that the lady whom
we have just shown out of the street-door (and whom the
two female servants are now inspecting from the second-
floor windows) was exceedingly vulgar, ignorant, and
selfish. Her deceased better-half had been an emi-
nent cork-cutter, in which capacity he had amassed a
decent fortune. He had no relative but his nephew,
and no friend but his cook. The former had the inso-
lence one morning to ask for the loan of fifteen pounds;
and, by way of retaliation he married the latter next
day; he made a will immediately afterwards, contain-
ing a burst of honest indignation against his nephew,
(who supported himself and two sisters on 100l. a.
294 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
year), and a bequest of his whole property to his wife.
He felt ill after breakfast, and died after dinner. There
is a mantelpiece-looking tablet in a civic parish church,
setting forth his virtues, and deploring his loss. He
never dishonoured a bill, or gave away a halfpenny.
The relict and sole executrix of this noble-minded
man was an odd mixture of shrewdness and simplicity,
liberality and meanness. Bred up as she had been, she
knew no mode of living so agreeable as a boarding-
house; and having nothing to do, and nothing to wish
for, she naturally imagined she must be very ill—an
impression which was most assiduously promoted by
her medical attendant, Dr. Wosky, and her handmaid
Agnes: both of whom, doubtless for good reasons, en-
couraged all her extravagant notions.
Since the catastrophe recorded in the last chapter,
Mrs. Tibbs had been very shy of young lady boarders.
Her present inmates were all lords of the creation, and
she availed herself of the opportunity of their assem-
blage at the dinner-table, to announce the expected
arrival of Mrs. Bloss. The gentlemen received the
communication with stoical indifference, and Mrs.
Tibbs devoted all her energies to prepare for the recep-
tion of the valetudinarian. The second-floor front was
scrubbed, and washed, and flannelled, till the wet went
through to the drawing-room ceiling. Clean white
counterpanes, and curtains, and napkins, water-bottles
as clear as crystal, blue jugs, and mahogany furniture,
added to the splendour, and increased the comfort, of
the apartment. The warming-pan was in constant re-
quisition, and a fire lighted in the room every day.
The chattels of Mrs. Bloss were forwarded by instal-
ments. First, there came a large hamper of Guinness’s
stout, and an umbrella; then, a train of trunks; then, a
pair of clogs and a bandbox; then, an easy chair with
an air-cushion; then, a variety of suspicious-looking
packages; and—‘‘ though last not least ’—Mrs. Bloss
and Agnes; the latter in a cherry-coloured merino
dress, open-work stockings, and shoes with sandals:
like a disguised Columbine.
The installation of the Duke of Wellington, as Chan-
cellor of the University of Oxford, was nothing, in
point of bustle and turmoil, to the installation of Mrs.
Bloss in her new quarters. True, there was no bright
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 295
doctor of civil law to deliver a classical address on the
Occasion; but there were several other old women pres-
ent, who spoke quite as much to the purpose, and un-
derstood themselves equally well. The chop-eater was
so fatigued with the process of removal that she declined
leaving her room until the following morning; so a
mutton-chop, pickle, a pill, a pint bottle of Stout, and
other medicines, were carried up-stairs for her con-
Sumption. - * - . * . .
“Why, what do you think, ma’am?” inquired the in-
quisitive Agnes of her mistress, after they had been
in the house some three hours; “what do you think,
ma’am? the lady of the house is married.” .
“Married!” said Mrs. Bloss, taking the pill and a
draught of Guinness—“married! Unpossible!”
“She is indeed, ma'am,” returned the Columbine;
‘‘ and her husband, ma'am, lives—he-he-he—lives in
the kitchen, ma’am.” * -
“In the kitchen. ” . .
“Yes, ma’am: and he——he-he—the housemaid says,
he never goes into the parlour except on Sundays; and
that Mrs. Tibbs makes him clean the gentlemen’s boots;
and that he cleans the windows, too, sometimes: and
that one morning early, when he was in the front bal-
cony cleaning the drawing-room windows, he called out
to a gentleman on the opposite side of the way, who
used to live here—‘Ah! Mr. Calton, sir, how are you?’”
Here the attendant laughed till Mrs. Bloss was in
serious apprehension of her chuckling herself into a fit.
“Well, I never!” said Mrs. Bloss.
“Yes. And please, ma'am, the servants gives him
gin-and-water sometimes; and then he cries, and says
§ hates his wife and the boarders, and wants to tickle
them.” - -
“Tickle the boarders!” exclaimed Mrs. Bloss, seri-
Ously alarmed.
“No, ma'am, not the boarders, the servants.”
“Oh, is that all!” said Mrs. Bloss, quite satisfied.
“He wanted to kiss me as I came up the kitchen-
stairs, just now,” said Agnes, indignantly; “but I gave
it him—a little wretch!” -
This intelligence was but too true. A long course of
Snubbing and neglect; his days spent in the kitchen,
and his nights in the turn-up bed-stead, had completely
296 ... • SKETCHES BY BOZ.
broken the little spirit that the unfortunate volunteer
had ever possessed. He had no one to whom he could
detail his, injuries but the servants, and they were
almost of necessity his chosen confidants. It is no less
strange than true, however, that the little weaknesses
which he had incurred, most probably during his mili-
tary career, seemed to increase as his comforts dimin-
ished. He was actually a sort of journeyman Giovanni
of the basement story. - -
. The next morning, being Sunday, breakfast was laid
in the front parlour at ten o’clock. Nine was the usual
time, but the family always breakfasted an hour later
on Sabbath. Tibbs enrobed himself in his Sunday cos-
tume—a black coat, and exceedingly short, thin trous-
ers; with a very large white waistcoat, white stockings
and cravat, and Blucher boots—and mounted to the
parlour aforesaid. Nobody had come down, and he
amused himself by drinking the contents of the milk-
pot with a teaspoon.
A pair of slippers were heard descending the stairs.
Tibbs flew to a chair; and a stern-looking man, of about
fifty, with very little hair on his head, and a Sunday
paper in his hand, entered the room. - •
“Good morning, Mr. Evenson,” said Tibbs, very
humbly, with something between a nod and bow. -
“How do you, Mr. Tibbs?” replied he of the slippers,
as he sat himself down, and began to read his paper
without saying another word.
“Is Mr. Wisbottle in town to-day, do you know, sir?”
inquired Tibbs, just for the sake of Saying Something.
“I should think he was,” replied the stern gentleman.
“He was whistling ‘The Light Guitar,’ in the next
room to mine, at five o’clock this morning.”
“He’s very fond of whistling,” said Tibbs, with a
slight smirk. - -
“Yes—I ain’t,” was the laconic reply.
Mr. John Evenson was in the receipt of an independ-
ent income, arising chiefly from various houses he
owned in the different suburbs. He was very morose
and discontented. He was a thorough radical, and
used to attend a great variety of public meetings, for
the express purpose of finding fault with everythin
that was proposed. Mr. Wisbottle, on the other han
was a high Tory. He was a clerk in the Woods and
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 29%
|Forests Office, which he considered rather an aristo-
cratic employment; he knew the peerage by heart, and
could tell you, off-hand, where any illustrious person-
age lived. He had a good set of teeth, and a capital
tailor. Mr. Evenson looked on all these qualifications
with profound contempt; and the consequence was that
the two were always, disputing, much to the edification
of the rest of the house. It should be added, that, in
addition to his partiality for whistling, Mr. Wisbottle
had a great idea of his singing powers. There were
two other boarders, besides the gentleman in the back
drawing-room—Mr. Alfred Tomkins and Mr. Frederick
O'Bleary. Mr. Tomkins was a clerk in a wine-house;
he was a connoisseur in paintings, and had a wonderful
eye for the picturesque. Mr. O'Bleary was an Irishman,
recently imported; he was in a perfectly wild state;
and had come over to England to be an apothecary, a
clerk in a government office, an actor, a reporter, or
anything else that turned up—he was not particular.
He was on familiar terms with two small Irish mem-
bers, and got franks for every body in the house. He
felt convinced that his intrinsic merits must procure him
a high destiny. He wore shepherd’s-plaid inexpressibles,
and used to look under all the ladies’ bonnets as he
walked along the streets; His manners and appear-
ance reminded one of Orson.
“Here comes. Mr. Wisbottle,” said Tibbs; and Mr.
Wisbottle forth with appeared in blue slippers and a
shawl dressing-gown, whistling “Di piacer.”
“Good morning, sir,” said Tibbs again. It was almost
the only thing he ever said to anybody. -
“How are you, Tibbs?” condescendingly replied the
amateur; and he walked to the window, and whistled
louder than ever.
“Pretty air, that!” said Evenson, with a snarl, and
without taking his eyes off the paper.
fi glad you like it,” replied Wisbottle, highly grati-
€Ol. -
“Don’t you think it would sound better, if you whis-
tled it a little louder?” inquired the mastiff.
“No; I don’t think it would,” rejoined the unconscious
Wisbottle.
“I’ll tell you what, Wisbottle,” said Evenson, who
had been bottling up his anger for some hours—“the
298 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
next time you feel disposed to whistle ‘The Light
Guitar” at five o’clock in the morning, I’ll trouble you
to whistle it with your head out o' window. If you
don’t I’ll learn the triangle—I will by-" .
The entrance of Mrs. Tibbs (with the keys in a lit-
tle basket) interrupted the threat, and prevented its
conclusion. - s * -
Mrs. Tibbs apologised for being down rather late; the
bell was rung; James brought up the urn, and received
an unlimited order for dry toast and bacon. Tibbs sat
down at the bottom of the table, and began eating water-
cresses like a second Nebuchadnezzar. Mr. O'Bleary
appeared, and Mr. Alfred Tomkins. The compliments of
the morning "were exchanged, and the tea was
made. - .
“God bless me!” exclaime&s Tomkins, who had been
looking out at the window. “Here—Wisbottle—pray
come here—make haste.” . - - .
Mr. Wisbottle started from the table, and every one
looked up. -
“Do you see,” said the connoisseur, placing Wisbottle
in the right position—“ a little more this way: there—
do you see how splendidly the light falls upon the left
side of that broken chimney-pot at No. 48?”
“Dear me! I see,” replied Wisbottle, in a tone of
admiration. - - - ; -
‘‘I never saw an object stand out so beautifully
against the clear sky in my life,” ejaculated Alfred.
Everybody (except John Evenson) echoed the sentiment;
for Mr. Tomkins had a great character for finding out
beauties which no one else could discover—he certainly
deserved it. - -
“I have frequently observed a chimney-pot in College-
green, Dublin, which has a much better effect,” said the
patriotic O'Bleary, who never allowed Ireland to be
Outdone on any point.
The assertion was received with obvious incredulity,
for Mr. Tomkins declared that no other chimney-pot in
the United Kingdom, broken or unbroken, could be so
beautiful as the one at No. 48. - *
The room-door was suddenly thrown open, and Agnes
appeared leading in Mrs. Bloss, who was dressed in a
geranium-coloured muslin gown, and displayed a gold
Watch of huge dimensions; a chain to match; and a
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 299
splendid assortment of rings, with enormous stones.
A general rush was made for a chair, and a regular
introduction took place. . Mr. John Evenson made a
slight inclination of the head; Mr. Frederick O'Bleary,
Mr. Alfred Tomkins, and Mr. Wisbottle, bowed like the
mandarins in a grocer’s shop; Tibbs rubbed hands, and
went round in circles. He was observed to close one
eye, and to assume a clock-work sort of expression with
the other; this has been considered as a wink, and it
has been reported that Agnes was its object. We repel
the calumny, and challenge contradiction.
Mrs. Tibbs inquired after Mrs. Bloss’s health in a low
tone. Mrs. Bloss, with a supreme contempt for the
memory of Lindley Murray, answered the various
questions in a most satisfactory manner; and a pause
ensued, during which the eatables disappeared with
awful rapidity. - *
“You must have been very much pleased with the
appearance of the ladies geing to the drawing-room
the other day, Mr. O'Bleary?” said Mrs. Tibbs, hoping
to start a topic. -
“Yes,” replied Orson, with a mouthful of toast.
“Never saw anything like it before, I suppose?” Sug-
gested Wisbottle.
“No—except the Lord Lieutenant’s levees,” replied
O'Bleary. º
“Are they at all equal to our drawing-rooms?”
“Oh, infinitely superior!”
“Gad! I don’t know,” said the aristocratic Wisbottle,
“ the Dowager Marchioness of Publiccash was most
magnificently dressed, and so was the Baron Slappen-
bachenhausen.” -
“What was he presented on?” inquired Evenson.
“On his arrival in England.”
“I thought so,” growled the radical; “ you never hear
of these fellows being presented on their going away
again. They know better than that.”
“ Unless somebody pervades them with an apint-
ment,” said Mrs. Bloss, joining in the conversation in a
faint voice.
“Well,” said Wisbottle, evading the point, “it’s a
splendid sight.” -
“And did it never occur to you,” inquired the radical,
who never would be quiet; “ did it never occur to you,
300 . . SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Af
that you pay for these precious ornaments of society?”
“It certainly has occurred to me,” said Wisbottle,
who thought this answer was a poser; “it has occurred
to me, and I am willing to pay for them.”
“Well, and it has occurred to me too,” replied John
Evenson, “ and I ain’t willing to pay for 'em. Then
why should I?—I say, why should I?” continued the
politician, laying down the paper, and knocking his
knuckles on the table. “There are two great principles
—demand—”
“A cup of tea if you please, dear,” interrupted
Tibbs. -
“And supply—” *
“May I trouble you to hand this tea to Mr. Tibbs?”
said Mrs. Tibbs, interrupting the argument, and uncon-
sciously illustrating it.
The thread of the orator’s discourse was broken. He
drank his tea and resumed the paper.
“If it’s very fine,” said Mr. Alfred Tomkins, address-
ing the company in general, “I shall ride down to
Richmond to-day, and come back by the steamer.
There are some splendid effects of light and shade on
the Thames; the contrast between the blueness of the
sky and the yellow water is frequently exceedingly
beautiful.” Mr. Wisbottle hummed, “Flow on, thou
shining river.”
“We have some splendid steam-vessels in Ireland,”
said O'Bleary.
“Certainly,” said Mrs. Bloss, delighted to find a sub-
ject broached in which she could take part.
“The accommodations are extraordinary,” said
O'Bleary.
“Extrordinary indeed,” returned Mrs. Bloss. “When
Mr. Bloss was alive, he was promiscuously obligated to
go to Ireland on business. . I went with him, and raly
the manner in which the ladies and gentlemen were
accommodated with berths, is not creditable.”
Tibbs, who had been listening to the dialogue, looked
aghast, and evinced a strong inclination to ask a ques-
tion, but was checked by a look from his wife. Mr.
Wisbottle laughed, and said Tomkins had made a pun;
and Tomkins laughed too, and said he had not.
The remainder of the meal passed off as breakfasts
usually do. Conversation flagged, and people played
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 301
with their tea-spoons. The gentlemen looked out at
the window; walked about the room; and, when they
got near the door, dropped off one by one. Tibbs re-
tired to the back parlour by his wife’s orders, to check
the greengrocer’s weekly account; and ultimately Mrs.
Tibbs and Mrs. Bloss were left alone together.
“Oh dear!” said the latter, “I feel alarmingly faint;
it’s very singular.” (It certainly was, for she had
eaten four pounds of solids that morning.) “By-the-
by,” said Mrs. Bloss, “I have not seen Mr. What’s his
name yet.”
º: Gobler!” suggested Mrs. Tibbs.
& & es.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Tibbs, “he is a most mysterious per-
Son. He has his meals regularly sent up-stairs, and
sometimes don’t leave his room for weeks together.”
“I haven’t seen nor heard nothing of him,” repeated
Mrs. Bloss.
“I dare say you’ll hear him to-night,” replied Mrs.
Tibbs; “he generally groans a good deal on Sunday
evenings.”
‘‘I never felt such an interest in any one in my life,”
ejaculated Mrs. Bloss. A ltttle double-knock inter-
rupted the conversation; Doctor Wosky was announced,
and duly shown in. He was a little man with a red
face,—dressed of course in black, with a stiff white
neckerchief. He had a very good practice, and plenty
of money, which he had amassed by invariably humour-
ing the worst fancies of all the females of all the
families he had ever been introduced into. Mrs. Tibbs
offered to retire, but was entreated to stay.
“Well, my dear ma'am, and how are we?” inquired
Wosky, in a soothing tone. - w
“Very ill, doctor—very ill,” said Mrs. Bloss, in a
whisper.
“Ah! we must take care of ourselves;–we must,
indeed,” said the obsequious Wosky, as he felt the
pulse of his interesting patient.
“How is your appetite?”
Mrs. Bloss shook her head. *
“Our friend requires great care,” said Wosky, appeal-
ing to Mrs. Tibbs, who of course assented. “I hope,
however, with the blessing of Providence, that we shall
be enabled to make her quite stout again,” Mrs. Tibbs
302 SKETCHES BY BOZ,
wondered in her own mind what the patient would be
when she was made quite stout. -
“We must take stimulants,” said the cunning
Wosky—“ plenty of nourishment, and, above all, we
must keep our nerves quiet; we positively must not
give way to our sensibilities. We must take all we can
get,” concluded the doctor, as he pocketed his fee,
“ and we must keep quiet.” 4.
“Dear man!” exclaimed Mrs. Bloss, as the doctor
stepped into his carriage. -
*8. creature indeed—quite a lady’s man!”
said Mrs. Tibbs, and Doctor Wosky rattled away to
make fresh gulls of delicate females, and pocket fresh
fees.
As we had occasion, in a former paper, to describe a
dinner at Mrs. Tibbs’s; and as one meal went off very
like another on all ordinary occasions; we will not
fatigue our readers by entering into any other detailed
account of the domestic economy of the establishment.
We will therefore proceed to events, merely premising
that the mysterious tenant of the back drawing-room
was a lazy, Selfish, hypochondriac; always complain-
ing and never ill. As his character in many respects
closely assimilated to that of Mrs. Bloss, a very warm
friendship Soon sprung up between them. He was tall,
thin, and pale; he always fancied he had a severe
pain somewhere or other, and his face invariably wore
a pinched, screwed-up expression; he looked, indeed,
like a man who had got his feet in a tub of exceedingly
hot water, against his will.
For two or three months after Mrs. Bloss’s first ap-
pearance in Coram-street, John Evenson was observed
to become, every day, more sarcastic, and more ill-
natured; and there was a degree of additional impor-
tance in his manner, which clearly showed that he
fancied he had discovered something, which he only
wanted a proper opportunity of divulging. He found
it at last.
One evening, the different inmates of the house were
assembled in the drawing-room engaged in their ordi-
nary occupations. Mr. Gobler and Mrs. Bloss were
sitting at a Small card-table near the centre window,
playing Cribbage; Mr. Wisbottle was describing semi-
circles On the music-stool, turning over the leaves of a
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 303
book on the piano, and humming most melodiously;
Alfred Tomkins was sitting at the round table, with his
elbows duly squared, making a pencil sketch of a head
considerably larger than his own; O'Bleary was read-
ing Horace, and trying to look as if he understood it;
and John Evenson had drawn his chair close to Mrs.
Tibbs’s work-table, and was talking to her very earnestly
in a low tone.
“I can assure you, Mrs. Tibbs,” said the radical,
laying his forefinger on the muslin she was at work on;
“I can assure you, Mrs. Tibbs, that nothing but the
interest I take in your welfare would induce me to make
this communication. I repeat, I fear Wisbottle is en-
deavouring to gain the affections of that young woman,
Agnes, and that he is in the habit of meeting her in the
Store-room on the first floor, over the leads. From my
bedroom. I distinctly heard voices there, last night. I
opened my door immediately, and crept very softly on
to the landing: there I saw Mr. Tibbs, who, it seems,
had been disturbed also. —Bless me, Mrs. Tibbs, you
change colour!” e -
“No, no—it's nothing,” returned Mrs. T. in a hurried
manner; “it’s only the heat of the room.”
“A flush!” ejaculated Mrs. Bloss from the card-
table; “that's good for four.” -
“If I thought it was Mr. Wisbottle,” said Mrs. Tibbs,
after a pause, “he should leave this house instantly.”
“Go!” said Mrs. Bloss again.
“And if I thought, continued the hostess with a most
#ºning air, “if I thought he was assisted by Mr.
Tibbs’— -
“One for his nobl” said Gobler.
“Oh,” said Evenson, in a most soothing tone—he
liked to make mischief—“I should hope Mr. Tibbs was
not in any way implicated. He always appeared to me
very harmless.”
“I have generally found him so,” sobbed poor little
Mrs. Tibbs, crying like a watering-pot. -
“ Hush! hush! pray—Mrs. Tibbs—consider—we shall
be observed—pray, don't!” said John Evenson, fearing
his whole plan would be interrupted. “We will set the
matter at rest with the utmost care, and I shall be most
happy to assist you in doing so.”
Mrs. Tibbs murmured her thanks.
304 - SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“When you think every one has retired to rest to-
night,” said Evenson very pompously, “if you’ll meet
me without a light, just outside my bedroom-door, by
the staircase-window, I think we can ascertain who the
parties really are, and you will afterwards be enabled
to proceed as you think proper.”
Mrs. Tibbs was easily persuaded; her curiosity was
excited, her jealousy was roused, and the arrangement
was forthwith made. She resumed her work, and John
Evenson walked up and down the room with hishands in
his pockets, looking as if nothing had º: The
game of cribbage was over, and conversation began again.
“Well, Mr. O'Bleary,” said the humming top, turn-
ing round on his pivot, and facing the company, “what
did you think of Vauxhall the other night?”
“Oh, it’s very fair,” replied Orson, who had been en-
thusiastically delighted with the whole exhibition.
º ºNever saw anything like that Captain Ross's set-out
—eh?” • .
“No,” returned the patriot, with his usual reserva-
tion—“except in Dublin,” -
“I saw the Count de Canky and Captain Fitz-
thompson in the Gardens,” said Wisbottle; “they ap-
peared much delighted.”
“Then it must be beautiful,” snarled Evenson.
“I think the white bears is partickerlerly well done,”
suggested Mrs. Bloss. “In their shaggy white coats
they look just like Polar bears—don’t you think they
do, Mr. Evenson?” *
“I think they look a great deal more like omnibus
cads on all fours,” replied the discontented one.
“Upon the whole, I should have liked our evening
very well,” gasped Gobler; ‘‘ only I caught a desperate
cold which increased my pain dreadfully! I was obliged
to have several shower-baths, before I could leave my
room.” -
“Capital things those shower-baths!” ejaculated
Wisbottle. -
“Excellent!” said Tomkins.
“Delightful!” chimed in O'Bleary. (He had once
seen one outside a tinman’s.)
“Disgusting machines!” rejoined Evenson, who ex-
tended his dislike to almost every created object, mas-
culine, feminine, or neuter.
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 305
“Disgusting, Mr. Evenson!”, said Gobler, in a tone of
strong indignation.—“Disgusting! Look at their utility
—consider how many lives they have saved by pro-
moting perspiration.”
“Promoting perspiration, indeed,” growled John
Evenson, stopping short in his walk across the large
squares in the pattern of the carpet—“I was ass enough
to be persuaded some time ago to have one in my bed-
room." 'Gad, I was in it once, and it effectifally cured
me, for the mere sight of it threw me into a profuse
perspiration for six months afterwards.” - g
A titter followed this announcement, and before it
had subsided James brought up “the tray,” containing
the remains of a ſeg of lamb which had made its début
at dinner; bread; cheese; an atom of butter in a forest
of parsley; one pickled walnut and the third of another,
and so forth. The boy disappeared, and returned again
with another tray, containing glasses and jugs of hot
and cold water. The º brought in their spirit
bottles; the housemaid placed divers plated bedroom
candlesticks under the card-table; and the servants re-
tired for the night.
Chairs were drawn round the table, and the conversa-
tion proceeded in the customary manner. John Even-
son, who never ate Supper, lolled on the sofa, and
amused himself by contradicting every body. O’Bleary
eat as much as he could conveniently carry, and Mrs.
Tibbs felt a due degree of indignation thereat; Mr.
Gobler and Mrs. Bloss conversed most affectionately on
the subject of pill-taking and other innocent amuse-
ments: and Tomkins and Wisbottle “got into an argu-
ment;” that is to say, they both tief very loudly and
vehemently, each flattering himself that he had got
some advantage about Something, and neither of them
having more than a very indistinct idea of what they
were talking about. An hour or two passed away; and
the boarders and the brass candlesticks retired in pairs
to their respective bedrooms. , John Evenson pulled off
his boots, locked his door, and determined to sit up until
Mr. Gobler had retired. He always sat in the drawing-
room an hour after everybody else had left it, taking'
medicine, and groaning. .
Great Coram-street was hushed into a state of pro-
found repose: it was nearly two o'clock. A hackney-
4. 20 -
306 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
coach now and then rumbled slowly by; and occa-
sionally some stray lawyer's clerk, on his way home to
Somers’town, struck his iron heel on the top of the
coal-cellar with a noise resembling the click of a smoke-
jack. A low, monotonous, gushing sound was heard,
which added considerably to the romantic dreariness of
the scene. It was the water “ coming in ’’ at number
eleven. ,
“He must be asleep by this time,” said John Evenson
to himself after waiting with exemplary patience for
nearly an hour after Mr. Gobler had left the drawing
room. He listened for a few moments; the house was
perfectly quiet; he extinguished his rushlight, and
opened his bedroom-door. The staircase was so dark
that it was impossible to see anything. -
“S—s—s!” whispered the mischief-maker, making a
noise like the first indication a catherine-wheel gives
of the probability of its going off. .
“Hush;” whispered somebody else.
“Is that you Mrs. Tibbs?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where??”
“Here; ” and the misty outline of Mrs. Tibbs ap-
peared at the staircase window like the ghost of Queen
Anne in the tent scene in Richard.
“This way, Mrs. Tibbs,” whispered the delighted
busy-body: “give me your hand—there! Whoever
these people are, they are in the store-room now, for I
have been looking down from my window, and I could
See that they accidentally upset their candlestick, and
are now in darknes. You have no shoes on, have you?”
“No,” said little Mrs. Tibbs, who could hardly speak
for º ſº
“Well; I have taken my boots off, so we can go
down, close to the store-room door, and listen over the
banisters; ” and down stairs they both crept, accord-
ingly, every board creaking like a patent mangle on a
Saturday afternoon.
“It’s Wisbottle and somebody I’ll swear,” exclaimed
the radical in an emergetic whisper, when they had
listened for a few moments.
“ Hush—pray let's hear what they say!” exclaimed
Mrs. Tibbs, the gratification of whose curiosity was
now paramount to every other consideration.
THE BOARDING-HOUSE 30%
“Ah! if I could but believe you,” said a female voice
flºwishly, ‘‘I’d be bound to settle my missis for
ife.”
“What does she say?” inquired Mr. Evenson, who
was not quite so well situated as his companion.
“She says she’ll settle her missis’s life,” replied Mrs.
Tibbs. “The wretch! they’re plotting murder.”
“I know you want money,” continued the voice,
which belonged to Agnes; “and if you’d secure me the
five hundred pound, I warrant she should take fire
Soon enough.”
“What’s that?” inquired Evenson again. He could
just hear enough to want to hear more.
“I think she says she’ll set the house on fire,” replied
the affrighted Mrs. Tibbs. “But thank God I’m in-
sured in the Phoenix!”
“The moment I have secured your mistress, my
dear,” said a man’s voice in a strong Irish brogue,
“you may depend on having the money.” -
“Bless my soul, it’s Mr. O'Bleary 1” exclaimed Mrs.
Tibbs, in a parenthesis.
“The villain!” said the indignant Mr. Evenson.
“The first thing to be done,” continued the Hibernian,
“is to poison Mr. Gobler's mind.”
“Oh, certainly;” returned Agnes. -
“What’s that?” inquired Evenson again, in an agony
of curiosity and a whisper. -
“He says she's to mind and poison Mr. Gobler,” re-
plied Mrs. Tibbs, aghast at this sacrifice of human life.
“And in regard of Mrs. Tibbs,” continued O’Bleary.
Mrs. Tibbs shuddered. º
“ Hush!” exclaimed Agnes, in a tone of the greatest
alarm just as Mrs. Tibbs was on the extreme verge of a
fainting-fit. “Hush!”
“ Hush!” exclaimed Evenson, at the same moment
to Mrs. Tibbs. -
“There’s somebody coming up stairs,” said Agnes to
O'Bleary. -
“There’s somebody coming down stairs,” whispered
Evenson to Mrs. Tibbs.
“Go into the parlour, sir,” said Agnes to her com-
panion. “You will get there, before whoever it is,
gets to the top of the kitchen stairs.”
“The drawing-room, Mrs. Tibbs!” whispered the
308 SKETCHES BY BOZ,
astonished Evenson to his equally astonished compan-
ion; and for the drawing-room they both made, plainly
hearing the rustling of two persons, one coming down
stairs, and One coming up.
“What can it be?” exclaimed Mrs. Tibbs. “It’s like
a dream. I wouldn’t be found in this situation for
the world!”
“Nor I,” returned Evenson, who could never bear a
joke at his own expense. “ Hush! here they are at the
dOOr.”
“What fun?” whispered one of the newcomers. It
was Wisbottle.
“Glorious!” replied his companion, in an equally low
tone. This was Alfred Tomkins. “Who would have
thought it?” -
“I told you so,” said Wisbottle, in a most knowing
whisper. “Lord bless you, he has paid her most extra-
ordinary attention for the last two months. I saw 'em
when I was sitting at the piano to-night.”
“Well, do you know I didn’t notice it?” interrupted
Tomkins.
“Not notice it!” continued Wisbottle. “Bless you;
I saw him whispering to her, and she crying; and then
I’ll swear I heard him say something about to-night
when we were all in bed.” -
“They’re talking of us!” exclaimed the agonised
Mrs. Tibbs, as the painful suspicion, and a sense of
their situation, flashed upon her mind.
“I know it—I know it,” replied Evenson, with a
melancholy consciousness that there was no mode of
escape.
“What’s to be done? we cannot both stop here!”
ejaculated Mrs. Tibbs, in a state of partial derangement.
“I’ll get up the chimney,” replied Evenson, who
really meant what he said. -
“You can’t,” said Mrs. Tibbs, in despair. “You can’t
—it’s a register stove.”
“ Hush!” repeated John Evenson.
“ Hush—hush!” cried somebody down stairs.
“What a d-d hushing!” said Alfred Tomkins, who
began to get rather bewildered.
“There they are!” exclaimed the sapient Wisbottle,
as a rustling noise was heard in the storeroom.
“Hark!” whispered both the young men.
*-ºs.,
THE BOARDING-HOUSE. 309
“Hark!” repeated Mrs. Tibbs and Evenson.
“Let me alone, sir,” said a female voice in the store-
I’OOIY1. -
“Oh, Hagnes!” cried another voice, which clearly
belonged to Tibbs, for nobody else ever owned one like
it. “Oh, Hagnes—loving creatüre!”
“Be quiet, sir!” (A. bounce.)
& 4 Hag—”
“Be quiet, sir—I am ashamed of you. Think of your
wife, Mr. Tibbs. Be quiet, sir?” -
“My wife!” exclaimed the valorous Tibbs, who was
clearly under the influence of gin-and-water, and a mis-
placed attachment; “I ate her! Oh, Hagnes! when I
was, in the volunteer corps, in eighteen hundred and
“I declare I’ll scream. Be quiet, sir, will you?”
(Another bounce and a scuffle.)
“What’s that?” exclaimed Tibbs, with a start.
“What’s what?” said Agnes, stopping short.
“Why, that!”
“Ah! you have done it nicely now, sir,” sobbed the
frightened Agnes, as a tapping was heard at Mrs.
Tibbs’s bedroom-door, which would have beaten any
dozen woodpeckers hollow.
“Mrs. Tibbs Mrs. Tibbs!” called Out Mrs. Bloss.
“Mrs. Tibbs, pray get up.” (Here the imitation of a
woodpecker was resumed with tenfold violence.)
“Oh, dear—dear!” exclaimed the wretched partner
of the depraved Tibbs. “She’s knocking at my door.
We must be discovered! What will they think?”
“Mrs. Tibbs' Mrs. Tibbs!” screamed the woodpecker
agaln. -
“What’s the matter!” shouted Gobler, bursting out
of the back drawing-room, like the dragon at Astley’s.
“Oh, Mr. Gobler!” cried Mrs. Bloss, with a proper
approximation to hysterics; “I think the house is on
fire, or else there’s thieves in it. I have heard the most
dreadful noises!”
“The devil you have!” shouted Gobler again, bounc-
ing back into his den, in happy imitation of the afore:
said dragon and returning immediately with a lighted
candle. “Why, what’s this? Wisbottle! Tomkins!
O'Bleary! Agnes! What the deuce! all up and
dressed?”
310 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“Astonishing!” said Mrs. Bloss, who had run down
stairs and taken Mr. Gobler's arm. *
“Call Mrs. Tibbs directly, somebody,” said Gobler,
turning into the front drawing-room. “What! Mrs.
Tibbs and Mr. Evenson!!”
“Mrs. Tibbs and Mr. Evenson!” repeated everybody,
as that unhappy pair were discovered : Mrs. Tibbs
seated in an arm-chair by the fire-place, and Mr. Even-
son standing by her side. -
We must leave the scene that ensued to the reader's
imagination. We could tell, how Mrs. Tibbs forthwith
fainted away, and how it required the united strength
of Mr. Wisbottle and Mr. Alfred Tomkins to hold her
in her chair; how Mr. Evenson explained, and how his
explanation was evidently disbelieved; how Agnes re-
pelled the accusations of Mrs. Tibbs, by proving that
she was negotiating with Mr. O'Bleary to influence her
mistress’s affections in his behalf; and how Mr. Gobler
threw a damp counterpane on the hopes of Mr. O'Bleary
by avowing that he (Gobler) had already proposed to,
and been accepted by, Mrs. Bloss; how Agnes was dis-
charged from that lady's service; how Mr. O'Bleary
discharged himself from Mrs. Tibbs’s house, without
going through the form of previously discharging his
bill; and how that disappointed young gentleman rails
against England and the English, and vows there is no
virtue or fine feeling extant, “except in Ireland.” We
repeat that we could tell all this, but we love to exercise
our self-denial, and we therefore prefer leaving it to be
imagined.
The lady whom we have hitherto described as Mrs.
Bloss is no more. Mrs. Gobler exists; Mrs. Bloss has
left us forever. In a secluded retreat in Newington
Butts, far, far, removed from the noisy strife of that
great boarding-house, the world, the enviable Gobler
and his pleasing wife revel in retirement; happy in
their complaints, their table, and their medicine; wafted
through life by the grateful prayers of all the purveyors
of animal food within three miles round.
We would willingly stop here, but we have a painful
duty imposed upon us which we must discharge. Mr.
and Mrs. Tibbs have separated by mutual consent, Mrs. .
Tibbs receiving one moiety of 43l. 15s. 10d., which we
before stated to be the amount of her husband’s annual
MR, MINNS AND HIS COUSIN. 311
income, and Mr. Tibbs the other. He is spending the
evening of his days in retirement; and he is spending,
also, annually, that Small but honourable independence.
He resides among the original settlers at Walworth;
and it has been stated, on unquestionable authority,
that the conclusion of the volunteer story has been
heard in a small tavern in that respectable neigh-
bourhood.
The unfortunate Mrs. Tibbs has determined to dis-
pose of the whole of her furniture by public auction,
and to retire from a residence in which she has suffered
So much. Mr. Robins has been applied to, to conduct
the Sale, and the transcendant abilities of the literary
gentlemen connected with his establishment are now
devoted to the task of drawing up the preliminary ad-
Vertisement. It is to contain, among a variety of bril-
liant matter, seventy-eight words in large capitals, and
Six Original quotations in inverted commas,
CHAPTER II.
MR, MINNS AND HIS COUSIN.
R. AUGUSTUS MINNS was a bachelor, of about
forty, as he said—of about eight-and-forty, as his
friends said. He was always exceedingly clean, pre-
cise, and tidy; perhaps somewhat priggish, and the
most retiring man in the world. He usually wore a
brown frock-coat without a wrinkle, light inexplicables
without a spot, a neat neckerchief with a remarkably
neat tie, and boots without a fault; moreover, he always
carried a brown silk umbrella with an ivory handle.
He was a clerk in Somerset-house, or, as he said him,
Self, he “held a responsible situation under Governs
ment.” He had a good and increasing salary, in addi-
tion to some 10,000l. of his own (invested in the funds),
and he occupied a first floor in Tavistock-street, Covent-
garden, where he had resided for twenty years, having
been in the habit of quarrelling with his landlord the
whole time: regularly giving notice of his intention to
quit on the first day of every quarter, and as regularly
countermanding it on the second. There were two
312 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
classes of created objects which he held in the deepest
and most unmingled horror; these were dogs and chil-
dren. He was not unamiable, but he could, at any time,
have viewed the execution of a dog, or the assassina-
tion of an infant with the liveliest satisfaction. Their
habits were at variance with his love of order; and his
love of order was as powerful as his love of life. Mr.
Augustus Minns had no relations in or near London,
with the exception of his cousin, Mr. Octavius Budden,
to whose son, whom he had never seen (for he disliked
the father) he had consented to become godfather by
F. *Mr. Budden, having realised a moderate fortune
3y exercising the trade or calling of a corn-chandler,
and having a great predilection for the country, had
purchased a cottage in the vicinity of Stamford-hill,
whither he retired with the wife of his bosom, and his
only son, Master Alexander Augustus Budden. One
evening, as Mr. and Mrs. B. were admiring their son,
discussing his various merits, talking over his educa-
tion, and disputing whether the classics should be made
an essential part thereof, the lady pressed so strongly
upon her husband the propriety of Cultivating the
friendship of Mr. Minns in behalf of their son, that Mr.
Budden at last made up his mind that it should not be
his fault if he and his cousin were not in future more
intimate. -
“I’ll break the ice, my love,” said Mr. Budden, stir-
ring up the sugar at the bottom of his glass of bran-
dy-and-water, and casting a sidelong look at his spouse,
to see the effect of the announcement of his determina-
tion, “by asking Minns down to dine with us, on
Sunday.”
“Then, pray Budden write to your cousin at once,”
replied Mrs. Budden. “Who knows, if we could only
get him down here, but he might take a fancy to our
Alexander, and leave him his property?—Alick, my
dear, take your legs off the rail of the chair!”
“Very true,” said Mr. Budden, musing, “very true,
indeed, my love!” -
On the following morning, as Mr. Minns was sitting
at his breakfast-table, alternately biting his dry toast,
and casting a look upon the columns of his morning
paper, which he always read from the title to the prin-
ter’s name, he heard a loud knock at the Street-door;
MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN. 313
which was shortly afterwards followed by the entrance
of his servant, who put into his hand a particularly
Small card, on which was engraven in immense letters
“Mr. Octavius Budden, Amelia Cottage (Mrs. B.’s name
was Amelia,) Poplar-walk, Stamford-hill.”
“Budden: ” ejaculated Minns, “what can bring that
Vulgar man here!--Say I’m asleep—say I’m out, and shall
never be home again—anything to keep him down
stairs.” -
“But please, sir, the gentleman’s coming up,” replied
the servant: and the fact was made evident by an ap-
palling creaking of boots on the staircase accompanied
by a pattering noise; the cause of which, Minns could
not, for the life of him, divine.
“Hem!—show the gentleman in,” said the unfortu-
nate bachelor. Exit servant, and enter Octavius pre-
ceded by a large white dog, dressed in a suit of fleecy
hiery, with pink eyes, large ears, and no perceptible
tail.
The cause of the pattering on the stairs was but too
plain. Mr. Augustus Minns staggered beneath the
shock of the dog's appearance.
“My dear fellow, how are you?” said Budden, as he
entered.
He always spoke at the top of his voice, and always
said the same thing half-a-dozen times.
“How are you, my hearty?” .
“How do you do, Mr. Budden?—pray take a chair!”
politely stammered the discomfited Minns.
“Thank you—thank you—well—how are you, eh?”
“Uncommonly well, thank you,” said Minns, casting
a diabolical look at the dog, who, with his hind legs
on the floor, and his fore paws resting on the table,
was dragging a bit of bread-and-butter out of a plate
preparatory to devouring it, with the buttered side next
the carpet. O
“Ah, you rogue!” said Budden to his dog; “you see,
Minns, he's like me, always at home, eh, my boy?
—Egad, I’m precious hot and hungry! I’ve walked
all the way from Stamford-hill this morning.”
“Have you breakfasted?” inquired Minns.
. . “Oh, no!—came to breakfast with you; so ring the
bell, my dear fellow, will you? and let’s have another
cup and saucer, and the cold ham,_Make myself at
314 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
home you see!” continued Budden, dusting his boots
with a table napkin. “Ha!—ha!—ha!—'pon my life,
I’m hungry.” ~
Minns rang the bell, and tried to smile.
“I decidedly never was so hot in my life,” continued
Octavius, wiping his forehead: “well, but how are you;
Minns? 'Pon my soul, you wear capitally l’”
“D’ye think so?” said Minns; and he tried another
Smile.
“’Pon my life, I do!” -
“Mrs. B. and—what’s his name—quite well?”
“Alick—my son, you mean, never better—never bet-
ter. But at Such a place as we’ve got at Poplar-walk,
you know, he couldn’t be ill if he tried. When I first
saw it, by Jove! it looked so knowing, with the front-
garden, and the green railings, and the brass knocker,
and all that—I really thought it was a cut above
me.”
“Don’t you think you’d like the ham better,” inter-
rupted Minns, “if you cut it the other way?” He saw,
with feelings which it is impossible to describe, that his
visitor was cutting or rather maiming the ham, in utter
violation of all established rules. &
“No, thank ye,” returned Budden, with the most bar-
barous indifference to crime, “I prefer it this way—it
eats short. But I say, Minns, when will you come
down and see us? You will be delighted with the
place; I know you will. Amelia and I were talking
about you the other night, and Amelia said—another
lump of Sugar, please; thank ye—she said, don’t you
think you could contrive, my dear, to say to Mr. Minns,
in a friendly way—corne down, sir—damn the dog! he’s
spoiling your curtains, Minns—ha!—ha!—ha!” Minns
leaped from his seat as though he had received the
discharge from a galvanic battery.
“Come out,"sir 1–go out, hoo !” cried poor Augustus,
keeping nevertheless, at a very respectful distance from
the dog; having read of a case of hydrophobia in the
paper of that morning. By dint of great exertion,
much shouting, and a marvellous deal of poking under
the tables with a stick and umbrella, the dog was at last
dislodged, and placed on the landing outside the door,
where he immediately commenced a most appalling
howling; at the same time vehemently scratching the
MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN. 315
paint off the two nicely-varnished bottom panels, until
they resembled the interior of a back-gammon board.
“A good dog for the country that l” coolly observed
Budden to the distracted Minns, “but he’s not much
used to confinement. But now, Minns, when will you .
come down? T'll take no denial, positively. Let's see,
to-day’s Thursday.—Will you come on Sunday? We
diné at five, don’t say no—do.” - .
After a great deal of pressing, Mr. Augustus Minns,
driven to despair, accepted the invitation and promised
to be at Poplar-walk on the ensuing Sunday, at a quar-
ter before five to the minute. . - -
“Now mind the direction,” said Budden: “the coach
goes from the Flower-pot, in Bishopsgate-street, every
half hour. When the coach stops at the Swan, you’ll
See, immediately opposite you, a white house.”
“Which is your house—I understand,” said Minns;
wishing to cut short the visit, and the story, at the
same time. - .*
‘$ No, no, that’s not mine; that’s Grogus’s, the great
ironmonger's. I was going to say—you turn down by
the side of the white house till you can’t go another step
further—mind that –and then you turn to your right, by
Some stables—well; close to you, you’ll see a wall with
“Beware of the Dog’ written on it in large letters—
(Minns shuddered)—go along by the side of that wall for
about a quarter of a mile—and anybody will show you
which is my place.”
“Very well—thank ye—good bye.”
“Be punctual.” - - -
“Certainly : good morning.”
“I say, Minns, you’ve got a card.”
- “Yes, I have; thank ye.” And Mr. Octavius Budden
departed, leaving his cousin looking forward to his visit
of the following Sunday, with the feelings of a penniless
poet to the weekly visit of his Scotch landlady.
Sunday arrived; the sky was bright and clear; crowds
of people were hurrying along the streets, intent on
their different schemes of pleasure for the day; every-
thing and everybody looked cheerful and happy except
Mr. Augustus Minns.
The day was fine, but the heat was considerable;
when Mr. Minns had fagged up the shady side of Fleet-
street, Cheapside, and Threadneedle-street, he had be-
316 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
come pretty warm, tolerably dusty, and it was getting
late into the bargain. By the most extraordinary good
fortune, however, a coach was waiting at the Flower-
pot, into which Mr. Augustus Minns got, on the solemn
assurance of the cad that the vehicle would start in three
minutes—that being the very utmost extremity of time
it was allowed to wait by Act of Parliament. A quar-
ter of an hour elapsed, and there were no signs of
moving. Minns looked at his watch for the sixth time.
“Coachman, are you going or not?” bawled Mr.
Minns, with his head and half his body out of the
coach-window. -
“Di-rectly, sir,” said the coachman, with his hands
in his pockets, looking as much unlike a man in a hurry
as possible.
“Bill, take take them cloths off.” Five minutes more
elapsed; at the end of which time the coachman
mounted the box, from whence he looked down the
street, and up the street, and hailed all the pedestrians .
for another five minutes. - QS
“Coachman l if you don’t go this moment, I shall get
out,” said Mr. Minns, rendered desperate by the lateness
of the hour, and the impossibility of being in Poplar-
walk at the appointed time.
“Going this minute, sir,” was the reply;-and, accord-
ingly, the machine trundled on for a couple of hundred
yards, and then stopped again. Minns doubled himself
up in a corner of the coach, and abandoned himself to
his fate, as a child, a mother, a bandbox, and a parasol,
became his fellow passengers. -
The child was an affectionate and an amiable infant;
the little dear mistook Minns for his other parent, and
screamed to embrace him. º
“Be quiet, dear,” said the mamma, restraining the
impetuosity of the darling, whose little fat legs were
kicking, and stamping, and twining themselves into
the most complicated forms in an ecstacy of impatience.
“Be quiet, dear, that’s not your papa.”
“Thank Heaven I am not l” thought Minns, as the
first gleam of pleasure he had experienced that morn-
ing shone like a meteor through his wretchedness.
Playfulness was agreeably mingled with affection in
the disposition of the boy. When satisfied that Mr.
Minns was not his parent, he endeavoured to attract his
MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN. 317
notice by scraping his drab trousers with his dirty
shoes, poking his chest with his mamma's parasol, and
other nameless endearments peculiar to infancy, with
which he beguiled the tediousness of the ride, apparently
very much..to his own satisfaction.
When the unfortunate gentleman arrived at the
Swan, he found to his great dismay, that it was a
quarter past five. The white house, the stables, the
“Beware of the Dog,”—every landmark was passed
with a rapidity not unusual to a gentleman of a certain
age when too late for dinner. After the lapse of a few
minutes, Mr. Minns found himself opposite a yellow
brick house with a green door, brass knocker and door-
plate, green window-frames and ditto railings, with “a
garden’’ in front, that is to say, a small loose bit of
gravelled ground, with one round and two scalene tri-
angular beds, containing a fir-tree, twenty or thirty
bulbs, and an unlimited number of marigolds. The
taste of Mr. and Mrs. Budden was further displayed by
the appearance of a Cupid on each side of the door,
perched upon aheap of large chalk flints, variegated with
ink conch-shells. His knock at the door was answered
y a stumpy boy, in drab livery, cotton stockings, and
high-lows, who, after hanging his hat on one of the
dozen brass pegs which ornamented the passage, de-
nominated by courtesy “The Hall,” ushered him into a
front drawing-room, commanding a very extensive
view of the backs of the neighbouring houses. The
usual ceremony of introduction, and so forth, over, Mr.
Minns took his seat: not a little agitated at finding that
he was the last comer, and, somehow or other, the Lion
of about a dozen people, sitting together in a small
drawing-room, getting rid of that most tedious of all
time, the time preceding dinner.
“Well, Brogson,” said Budden, addressing an elderly
gentleman in a black coat, drab knee-breeches, and
long gaiters, who, under pretence of inspecting the
rints in an Annual, had been engaged in Satisfying
imself on the subject of Mr. Minn’s general appear-
ance, by looking at him over the tops of the leaves—
‘‘Well, Brogson, what do Ministers mean to do P Will
they go out, or what ?”
“Oh—why—really, you know, I’m the last person in
the world to ask for news. Your cousin, from his
3.18 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
situation, is the most likely person to answer the
question.” *
Mr. Minns assured the last speaker, that although he
was in Somerset-house, he possessed no official com-
munication relative to the projects of his Majesty’s
Ministers. But his remark was evidently received in:
'credulously; and no further conjectures being hazarded
on the subject, a long pause ensued, during which the
company occupied themselves in coughing and blowing
their noses, until the entrance of Mrs. Budden caused a
general rise.
The ceremony of introduction being over, dinner was
announced, and down stairs the party proceeded
accordingly—Mr. Minns escorting Mrs. Budden as far
as the drawing-room door, but being prevented, by the
narrowness of the staircase, from extending his gal-
lantry any farther. The dinner passed off as such
dinners usually do. Ever and anon, amidst the clatter
of knives and forks and the hum of conversation, Mr.
B.’s voice might be heard, asking a friend to take wine, .
and assuring him he was glad to see him; and a great
deal of by-play took place between Mrs. B. and the
servants, respecting the removal of the dishes, during
which her countenance assumed all the variations of a
weather-glass, from “stormy” to “set fair.”
Upon the dessert and wine being placed on the table,
the servant, in compliance with a significant look from
Mrs. B., brought down “Master Alexander,” habited in
a sky-blue suit with silver buttons; and possessing hair
of nearly the same colour as the metal. After sundry
raises from his mother, and various admonitions as to
is behaviour from his father, he was introduced to his
godfather. - O
“Well, my little fellow—you are a fine boy, ain’t
you?” said Mr. Minns, as happy as a tomtit on bird-
lime. . . -
& 4 YeS.” -
“How old are you?”
“Eight, next We’msday. How old are you?”
“Alexander,” interrupted his mother,” how dare you
ask Mr. Minns how old he is!” *
“He asked me how old I was,” said the precocious
child, to whom Minns had from that moment internally
resolved that he never would bequeath one shilling.
MR, MINNS AND HIS COUSIN 319
As soon as the titter occasioned by the observation, had
subsided, a little Smirking man with red whiskers,
sitting at the bottom of the table, who during the whole
of dinner had been endeavouring to obtain a listener
to some stories about Sheridan, called out, with a very
patronising air—“ Alick, what part of speech is be?”
** A verb.” -
“That’s a good boy,” said Mrs. Budden with all a
mother’s pride. “Now, you know what a verb is?”
“A verb is a word which signifies to be, to do, or to
suffer; as, I am—I rule—I am ruled. Give me an apple,
e Ma.” -
“I’ll give you an apple,” replied the man with the
red whiskers, who was an established friend of the
family, or in other words was always invited by Mrs.
Budden, whether Mr. Budden liked it or not, “if you’ll
tell me what is the meaning of be.”
“Be?” said the prodigy, after a little hesitation—“an
insect that gathers honey.”
“No, dear,” frowned Mrs. Budden; “B double E is
the substantive.”
“I don’t think he knows much yet about common sub-
stantives,” said the Smirking gentleman, who thought
this an admirable opportunity for letting off a joke.
“It’s clear he's not very well acquainted with proper
mannes. He! He! He!” -
‘‘ Gentlemen,” called out Mr. Budden, from the end of
the table, in a stentorian Voice, and with a very impor-
tant air, “will you have the goodness to charge your
glasses? I have a toast to propose.”
“Hear! hear!” cried the gentlemen, passing the
decanters. After they had mai. the round of the table,
Mr. Budden proceeded—“Gentlemen; there is an indi-
vidual present 55
“Hear! hear!” said the little man with red whiskers.
“Pray be quiet, Jones,” remonstrated Budden.
“I say, gentlemen, there is an individual present,”
resumed the host, “in whose Society, I am sure we must
take great delight—and—and—the conversation of that
individual must have afforded to every one present,
the utmost pleasure.” [“Thank Heaven, he does not
mean me!” thought Minns, conscious that his diffidence
and exclusiveness had prevented his saying above a
dozen words since he entered the house.] “Gentlemen,
320 SKETCHES BY BOZ. w
I am but a humble individual myself, and I perhaps
Ought to apologise for allowing any individual feelings
of friendship and affection for the person I allude to,
to induce me to venture to rise, to propose the health
of that person—a person that'I am sure—that is, to
say, a person whose virtues must endear him to those
who know him—and those who have not the pleasure
of knowing him, cannot dislike him.”
“Hear! hear!” said the company, in a tone of en-
couragement and approval.
“Gentlemen,” continued Budden, “my cousin is a
man who—who is a relation of my own.” [Hear! hear!]
Minns groaned audibly. “Who I am most happy to
see here, and who, if he were not here, would certainly
have deprived us of the great pleasure we all feel in
seeing him. [Ioud cries of hear!] Gentlemen, I feel
that I have already trespassed on your attention for
too long a time. With every feeling—of-with every
sentiment of of L’
‘‘ Gratification”—suggested the friend of the family.
“—Of gratification, I beg to propose the health of
Mr. Minns.”
“Standing, gentlemen!” shouted the indefatigable
little man with the whiskers—“ and with the honours.
Take your time from me, if you please. Hip! hip!
hip! Za!—Hip! hip! hip!—Za! º hip!—Za—a—a!”
All eyes were now fixed on the subject of the toast,
who by gulping down port-wine at the imminent
hazard of suffocation, endeavoured to conceal his con-
fusion. After as long a pause as decency would admit,
he rose, but, as the newspapers sometimes say in their
reports, “we regret that we were quite unable to give
even the substance of the honourable gentleman’s obser-
Vations.” The words “present company—honour—
present occasion,” and “great happiness” heard occa-
sionally, and repeated at intervals, with a countenance
expressive of the utmost confusion and misery, con-
vinced the company that he was making an excellent
speech; and, accordingly, on his resuming his seat,
they cried “ Bravo!” and manifested tumultuous
applause. Jones, who had been long watching his
opportunity, then darted º
“Budden,” said he, “will you allow me to propose a
toast?’
MR. MINNS AND HIS COUSIN. 321
“Certainly,” replied Budden, adding in an undertone
to Minns right across the table. “Devilish sharp fel-
low that; you’ll be very much pleased with his Speech.
He talks equally well on any subject.” Minns bowed,
and Mr. Jones proceeded. - -
“It has on several occasions, in various instances,
under many circumstances, and in different companies,
fallen to my lot to propose a toast to those by whom, at
the time, I have had the honour to be surrounded. I have
sometimes, I will ‘cheerfully own—for why should I
deny it?—felt the overwhelming nature of the task
I have undertaken, and my own utter incapability to do
justice to the subject. If such have been my feelings,
however, on former occasions, what must they be now—
now—under the extraordinary circumstances in which
I am placed. (Hear! hear!) . To describe my feelings
accurately, would be impossible; but I cannot give you
a better idea of them, gentlemen, than by referring to a
circumstance which happens, oddly enough, to occur to
my mind at the moment. On one occasion when that
truly great and illustrious man, Sheridan, was—”
Now, there is no knowing what new villainy in the
form of a joke would have been heaped on the grave of
that very ill-used man, Mr. Sheridan, if the boy in drab
had not at that moment entered the room in a breathless
state, to report that, as it was a very wet night, the
nine o’clock stage had come round, to know whether
there was anybody going to town, as, in that case, he
(the nine o’clock) had room for one inside.
Mr. Minns started up; and, despite countless exclama-
tions of surprise, and entreaties to stay, persisted in his
determination to accept the vacant place. But the
brown silk umbrella was nowhere to be found; and as
the coachman couldn’t wait, he drove back to the Swan,
leaving word for Mr. Minns to “run round” and catch
him. However, as it did not occur to Mr. Minns for
some ten minutes or so, that he had left the brown silk
umbrella with the ivory handle in the other coach,
coming down; and, moreover, as he was by no means
remarkable for speed, it is no matter of surprise that
when he accomplished the feat of “running round” to
#. Swan, the coach—the last coach—had gone without
IITOl.
It was somewhere about three o’clock in the morning,
:21 - -
322 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
when Mr. Augustus Minns knocked feebly at the Street-
door of his lodgings in Tavistock street, cold, wet, cross
and miserable. He made his will next Imorning, and his
professional man informs us, in that strict confidence
in which we inform the public, that neither the name
of Mr. Octavius Budden, nor of Mrs. Amelia Budden,
i. of Master Alexander Augustus Budden, appears
therein. -
CHAPTER III
SENTIMENT.
THE Miss Crumptons, or to quote the authority of the
inscription on the garden-gate of Minerva House,
Hammersmith, “The Misses Crumpton,” were two un-
usually tall, particularly thin, and exceedingly skinny
personages; very upright, and very yellow, Miss Amelia
Crumpton owned to thirty-eight, and Miss Maria Crump-
ton admitted she was forty; an admission which was
rendered perfectly unnecessary by the self-evident fact
of her being at least fifty. They dressed in the most in-
teresting manner—like twins; and looked as happy and
comfortable as a couple of marigolds run to seed. They
were very precise, had the strictest possible ideas of
propriety, wore false hair, and always smelt very
strongly of lavender. §
Minerva House, conducted under the auspices of the
two sisters, was a “finishing establishment for young
ladies,” where some twenty girls of the ages of from
thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of
everything, and a knowledge of nothing; instruction in
French and Italian, dancing lessons twice a week; and
other necessaries of life. The house was a white one,
a little removed from the roadside, with close palings
in front. The bed-room windows were always left
partly open to afford a bird’s eye view of numerous
ittle bedsteads with very white dimity furniture, and
thereby impress the passer-by with a due sense of the
luxuries of the establisment; and there was a front
parlour hung round with highly varnished maps which
nobody ever looked at, and filled with books which no
SENTIMENT. 323
One ever read, appropriated exclusively to the recep-
tion of parents, who, whenever they called, could not
i. to be struck with the very deep appearance of the
place. -
“Amelia, my dear,” said Miss Maria Crumpton, enter-
ing the school-room one morning, with her false hair
in papers; as she occasionally did, in order to impress
the young ladies with a conviction of its reality.
“Amelia, my dear, here is a most gratifying note
I have just received. You needn’t mind reading it
aloud.”
Miss Amelia, thus advised, proceeded to read the
following note with an air of great triumph:
“Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M. P., presents his compliments to
Miss Crumpton, and will feel much obliged by Miss Crumpton's calling
on him, if she conveniently can, to-morrow morning at one o'clock, as
Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M. P., is anxious to see Miss Crumpton
on the subject of placing Miss Brook Dingwall under her charge.
“Adelphi.
“Monday morning.”
“A Member of Parliament's daughter!” ejaculated
Amelia in an ecstatic tone.
“A Member of Parliament’s daughter!” repeated Miss
Maria, with a smile of delight, which, of course, elic-
; a concurrent titter of pleasure from all the young
a,Cl162S.
“It’s exceedingly delightful!” said Miss Amelia;
whereupon all the young ladies murmured their ad-
miration again. Courtiers are but school-boys, and
court-ladies school-girls.
So important an announcement, at once Superseded
the business of the day. A holiday was declared, in
commemoration of the great event; the Miss Crump-
tons retired to their private apartment to talk it over;
the smaller girls discussed the probable manners and
customs of the daughter of a Member of Parliament;
and the young ladies verging on eighteen wondered
whether she was engaged, whether she was pretty,
whether she wore much bustle, and many other whethers
Of equal importance.
The two Miss Crumptons proceeded to the Adelphi
at the appointed time next day, dressed, of course, in
their best style, and looking as amiable as they pos-
-->
}
324 SKETCHES BY Boz,
sibly could—which, by the by, is not saying much for
them. Having sent in their cards, through the medium
of a red-hot looking footman in bright livery, they
were ushered into the august presence of the profound
Dingwall.
Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M. P., was very
haughty, solemn, and portentous. He had, naturally,
a somewhat spasmodic expression of countenance,
which was not rendered the less remarkable by his
wearing an extremely stiff cravat. He was wonder-
fully proud of the M. P. attached to his name, and
never lost an opportunity of reminding people of his
dignity. He had a great idea of his own abilities,
which must have been a great comfort to him, as no
one else had; and in diplomacy, on a small scale, in his
own family arrangements, he considered himself un-
rivalled. He was a county magistrate, and discharged
the duties of his station with all due justice and im-
partiality; frequently committing poachers, and Oc-
casionally committing himself. Miss Brook Dingwall
was one of that numerous class of young ladies, who,
like adverbs may be known by their answering to a
commonplace question, and doing nothing else.
On the present occasion, this talented individual was
seated in a small library at a table covered with papers,
doing nothing, but trying to look busy—playing at
shop. Acts of Parliament, and letters directed to
“Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq., M. P.,” were Osten-
tatiously scattered over the table; at a little distance
from which, Mrs. Brook Dingwall was seated at work.
One of those public nuisances, a spoiled child, was
playing about the room, dressed after the most ap-
proved fashion—in a blue tunic with a black belt a
quarter of a yard wide, fastened with an immense
buckle—looking like a robber in a melodrama, Seen
through a diminishing glass.
After a little pleasantry from the sweet child, who
amused himself by running away with Miss Maria
Crumpton’s chair as fast as it was placed for her, the
visitors were seated, and Cornelius Brook Dingwall,
Esq., opened the conversation.
He had sent for Miss Crumpton, he said, in con-
sequence of the high character he had received of her
establishment from his friend Sir Alfred Muggs.
* SENTIMENT. 325
Miss Crumpton murmured her acknowledgments to
him (Muggs), and Cornelius proceeded.
“One of my principal reasons, Miss Crumpton, for
parting with my daughter, “is, that she has lately ac-
quired some sentimental ideas, which it is most desir-
able to eradicate from her young mind.” (Here the
little innocent before noticed, fell out of an arm-chair
with an awful crash.) -
‘‘Naughty boy!” said his mamma, who appeared
more surprised at his taking the liberty of falling down,
than at anything else; “I’ll ring the bell for James to
take him away.”
“Pray don’t check him, my love,” said the diploma-
tist, as soon as he could make himself heard amidst the
unearthly howling consequent upon the threat and the
tumble. “It all arises from his great flow of spirits.”
This last explanation was addressed to Miss Crumpton.
“Certainly, sir,” replied the antique Maria; not
exactly seeing, however, the connexion between a flow
of animal spirits, and a fall from an arm-chair.
Silence was restored, and the M.P. resumed: “Now,
I know nothing so likely to effect this object, Miss
Crumpton, as her mixing constantly in the society of
girls of her own age; and, as I know that in your es-
tablishment she will meet such as are not likely to con-
taminate her young mind, I propose to send her to you.”
The youngest Miss Crumpton expressed the ac-
knowledgments of the establishment generally. Maria
was rendered speechless by bodily pain. The dear
little fellow, having recovered his animal spirits, was
Standing upon her most tender foot, by way of getting
his face (which looked like a capital O in a red lettered
play-bill) on a level with the writing-table.
“Of course, Lavinia will be a parlour boarder,” con-
tinued the enviable father; “and on one point I wish
my directions to be strictly observed. The fact is, that
some ridiculous love affair, with a person much her in-
ferior in life, has been the cause of her present state of
mind. Knowing that of course, under your care, she
can have no opportunity of meeting this person, I do
not object to—indeed, I should rather prefer—her mix-
ing with such society as you see yourself.”
This important statement was again interrupted by
the high-spirited little creature, in the excess of his
326 SKETCHES BY BOZ. ºf
joyousness breaking a pane of glass, and nearly pre-
cipitating himself into an adjacent area. James was
rung for; considerable confusion and screaming suc-
ceeded; two little blue legs were seen to kick violently
in the air as the man left the room, and the child was
gone.
Mr. Brook Dingwall would like Miss Brook Dingwall
to learn everything,” said Mrs. Brook Dingwall, who
hardly ever said anything at all.
“Certainly,” said both the Miss Crumptons together.
“And as I trust the plan I have devised will be
effectual in weaning my daughter from this absurd
idea, Miss Crumpton,” continued the legislator, “I hope
you will have the goodness to comply, in all respects,
with any request I may forward to you.”
The promise was of course made, and after a
lengthened discussion, conducted on behalf of the Ding-
walls with the most becoming diplomatic gravity, and
on that of the Crumptons with profound respect, it was
finally arranged that Miss Lavinia should be forwarded
to Hammersmith on the next day but one, on which
occasion the half-yearly ball given at the establishment
was to take place. It might divert the dear girl’s mind.
This, by the way, was another bit of diplomacy.
Miss Lavinia was introduced to her future governess,
and both the Miss Crumptons pronounced her “a most
Charming girl; an Opinion which, by a singular coin-
cidence, they always entertained of any new pupil.
Courtesies were exchanged, acknowledgments ex-
pressed, condescension exhibited, and the interview
terminated.
Preparations, to make use of theatrical phraseology,
‘‘ on a scale of magnitude never before attempted,” were
incessantly made at Minerva House to give every effect
to the forthcoming ball. The largest room in the house
was pleasingly ornamented with blue calico roses, plaid
tulips, and other equally natural-looking artificial
flowers, the work of the young ladies themselves. The
Carpet was taken up, the folding-doors were taken
down, the furniture was taken out, and rout-seats were
taken in. The linen-drapers of Hammersmith were as-
tounded at the Sudden demand for blue sarsenet ribbon,
and .# White gloves. Dozens of geraniums were pur-
chased for bouquets, and a harp and two violins were
SENTIMENT. 32?
bespoke from town, in addition to the grand piano
already on the premises. The young ladies who were
Selected to show off on the occasion, and do credit to
the establishment, practised incessantly, much to their
Own Satisfaction, and greatly to the annoyance of the
lame old gentleman over the way; and a constant cor-
respondence was kept up, between the Misses Crump-
tion and the Hammersmith pastry cook.
The evening came; and then there was such a lacing
of stays, and tying of sandals, and dressing of hair,
as never can take place with a proper degree of bustle
Out of a boarding-school. The Smaller girls managed
to be in everybody’s way, and were pushed about accord-
ingly; and the elder ones dressed, and tied, and flat-
tered, and envied, one another, as earnestly and sin-
cerely as if they had actually come out.
“How do I look, dear?” inquired Miss Emily Smith-
ers, the belle of the house, of Miss Caroline Wilson,
who was her bosom friend, because she was the ugliest
girl in Hammersmith, or out of it.
“Oh! charming, dear. How do I?” *
“Delightfull you never looked so handsome,” re-
turned the belle, adjusting her own dress, and not
bestowing a glance on her poor companion.
“I hope young Hilton will come early,” said an-
other young lady to Miss somebody else, in a fever of
expectation.
“I’m sure he'd be highly flattered if he knew it,”
returned the other, who was practising l’élé.
“Oh he ’s so handsome,” said the first.
“Such a charming person!” added a second.”
“Such a distvm.gué air;” said a third.
“Oh, what do you think?” said another girl, running
into the room; “Miss, Crumpton says her cousin’s
coming.”
“What! Theodosius Butler?” said everybody in rap-
tures.
“Is he handsome?” inquired a novice.
“No, not particularly handsome,” was the general
reply, “but, oh, so clever!”
Mr. Theodosius Butler was one of those immortal
geniuses who are to be met with, in almost every circle.
They have, usually, very deep monotonous voices,
They always persuade themselves that they are wonder-
2
**
328 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
ful persons, and that they ought to be very miserable,
though they don’t precisely know why. They are very
conceited, and usually possess half an idea; but, with
enthusiastic young ladies, and silly young gentlemen,
they are very wonderful persons. The individual in
question, Mr. Theodosius, had written a pamphlet con-
taining some very weighty considerations on the expe-
diency of doing something or other; and as every sen-
fence contained a good many words of four syllables,
i. famirers took it for granted that he meant a good
€al. -
“Perhaps that’s he,” exclaimed several young ladies,
as the first pull of the evening threatened destruction
to the bell of the gate.
An awful pause ensued. Some boxes arrived and a
young lady—Miss Brook Dingwall, in full ball costume,
with an immense gold chain round her neck, and her
dress looped up with a single rose; an ivory fan in her
hand, and a most interesting expression of despair in
her face.
The Miss Crumptons inquired after the family, with
the most excruciating anxiety, and Miss Brook Ding-
wall was formally introduced to her future companions.
The Miss Crumptons conversed with the young ladies
in the most mellifluous tones, in Order that Miss Brook
Dingwall might be properly impressed with their ami-
able treatment.
Another pull at the bell. Mr. Dadson the writing-
master, and his wife. The wife in green silk, with
shoes and cap trimmings to correspond; the writing-
master in a white waistcoat, black knee-shorts, and
ditto Silk stockings, displaying a leg large enough for
two writing-masters. The young ladies whispered one
another, and the writing-master and his wife flattered
the Miss Crumptons, who were dressed in amber, with
long sashes, like dolls.
Repeated pulls at the bell, and arrivals too numerous
to particularise: papas and mammas, and aunts, and
uncles, the owners and guardians of the different pupils;
the singing-master, Signor Lobskini, in a black wig;
the piano-forte player and the violins; the harp, in a
. state of intoxication; and some twenty young men, who
stood near the door, and talked to one another, occa-
Sionally bursting into a giggle. A general hum of con-
SENTIMENT. 329
versation. Coffee handed round, and plentifully par-
taken of by fat mammas, who looked like the stout
people who come on in pantomimes for the sole purpose
of being knocked down. r
The popular Mr. Hilton was the next arrival; and he
having at the request of the Miss Crumptons, under-
taken the office of Master of the Ceremonies, the qua-
drilles commenced with considerable spirit. The young
men by the door gradually advanced into the middle
of the room, and in time became sufficiently at ease to
consent to be introduced to partners. The writing-
master danced every set, springing about with the
most fearful agility, and his wife played a rubber
in the back-parlour—a little room with five book-shelves,
dignified by the name of the study. Setting her down
to whist was a half-yearly piece of generalship on the
Fº of the Miss Crumptons; it was necessary to hide
er somewhere on account of her being a fright.
The interesting Lavinia Brook Dingwall was the only
girl present, who appeared to take no interest in the
proceedings of the evening. In vain was she solicited
to dance; in vain was the universal homage paid to her
as the daughter of a member of parliament. She was
equally unmoved by the splendid tenor of the inimitable
Lobskini, and the brilliant execution of Miss Laetitia
Parsons, whose performance of the “The Recollections
of Ireland ” was universally declared to be almost
equal to that of Moscheles himself. Not even the an-
nouncement of the arrival of Mr. Theodosius Butler
could induce her to leave the corner of the back draw-
ing-room in which she was seated.
“Now, Theodosius,” said Miss Maria Crumpton, after
that enlightened pamphleteer had nearly run the gaunt-
let of the whole company, “I must introduce you to
our new pupil.” - -
Theodosius looked as if he cared for nothing earthly.
“She’s the daughter of a member of parliament,” said
Maria.-Theodosius started. -
“And her name is —?” he inquired.
“Miss Brook Dingwall.” -
“Great Heaven!” poetically exclaimed Theodosius,
in a low tone. . - -
Miss Crumpton commenced the introduction in due
form. Miss Brook Dingwall languidly raised her head.
330 SKETCHES BY BOz.
“Edward!” she exclaimed, with a half-shriek, on see-
ing the well-known nankeen legs. - -
Fortunately, as Miss Maria Crumpton possessed no
remarkable share of penetration, and as it was one of
the diplomatic arrangements that no attention was to
be paid to Miss Lavinia’s incoherent exclamations, she
was perfectly unconscious of the mutual agitation of
the parties; and therefore, seeing that the offer of his
hand for the next quadrille, was accepted, she left him
by the side of Miss Brook Dingwall. -
“Oh, Edward!” exclaimed that most romantic of all
romantic young ladies, as the light of science seated
himself beside her, “Oh, Edward, is it you?”
Mr. Theodosius assured the dear creature, in the most
impassioned manner, that he was not conscious of being
anybody but himself.
“Then why — why — this disguise? Oh! Edward
M“Neville Walter, what have I not suffered on your
account?” -
“Lavinia, hear me,” replied the hero, in his most
poetic strain. “Do not condemn me, unheard. If any-
thing that emanates from the soul of such a wretch as
I, can occupy a place in your recollection—if any being,
so vile, deserve your notice—you may remember that I
Once published a pamphlet (and paid for its publication)
entitled ‘Considerations on the Policy of Removing the
Duty on Bees’-wax.’” -
‘‘I do—I do!” Sobbed Lavinia.
“That,” continued the lover, “ was a subject to which
your father was devoted heart and soul.”
“He was—he was!” reiterated the sentimentalist.
“I knew it,” continued Theodosius, tragically; “I
knew it—I forwarded him a copy. He wished to know
me. Could I disclose my real name? Never! No, I
assumed that name which you have so often pronounced
in tones of endearment. As M*Neville Walter, I de-
voted myself to the stirring cause; as M*Neville Walter,
I gained your heart; in the same character I was ejected
from your house by your father’s domestics; and in no
character at all have I since been able to see you.
We now meet again, and I proudly own that I am–
Theodosius Butler.
The young lady appeared perfectly sattisfied with
this argumentative address, and bestowed a look of the
, SENTIMENT. - 331
most ardent affection on the immortal advocate of
bees’-wax.
“May I hope,” said he, “that the promise your
father's violent behaviour interrupted, may be re-
Inewed?”
“Let us join this set,” replied Lavinia, coquettishly—
—for girls of nineteen can coquette.
“No,” ejaculated he of the nankeens; “I stir not
from this spot, writhing under this torture of suspense.
May I–may I–hope?” -
“You may.”
“The promise is renewed?”
“It is.” -
‘‘I have your permission?”
“You have.”
“TO the fullest extent?”
“You know it,” returned the blushing Lavinia. The
contortions of the interesting Butler’s visage expressed
his raptures.
We could dilate upon the occurrences that ensued. "
How Mr. Theodosius and Miss Lavinia danced, and
talked, and sighed for the remainder of the evening—
how the Miss Crumptons were delighted thereat. How
the writing-master continued to frisk about with one-
horse power, and how his wife, from some unaccountable
freak, left the whist-table in the little back parlour, and
persisted in displaying her green head-dress in the most
conspicuous part of the drawing-room. How the Sup-
per consisted of small triangular sandwiches in trays,
and a tart here and there by way of variety; and how
the visitors consumed warm water disguised with
lemon, and dotted with nutmeg, under the denomina-
tion of negus. These, and other matters of as much
interest, however, we pass over, for the purpose of de-
scribing a scene of even more importance.
A fortnight after the date of the ball, Cornelius
Brook Dingwall, Esq., M. P., was seated at the same
library table, and in the same room, as we have before
described. He was alone, and his face bore an expres-
sion of deep thought and solemn gravity—he was draw-
ing up “A Bill for the better observance of Easter
Monday.” -
The footman tapped at the door—the legislator
started from his reverie, and “Miss Crumpton” was an-
332 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
nounced. Permission was given for Miss Crumpton to
enter the sanctum, Maria came sliding in, and having
taken her seat with a due portion of affectation, the
footman retired, and the governess was left alone with
the M. P. Oh; how she longed for the presence of a
third party! Even the facetious young gentleman
would have been a relief.' -
Miss Crumpton began the duet. She hoped Mrs.
Brook Dingwall and the handsome little boy were in
good health. -
They were. Mrs. Brook Dingwall and little Fred-
erick were at Brighton. -
“Much obliged to you, Miss Crumpton,” said Cor-
nelius, in his most dignified manner, “for your atten-
tion in calling this morning. I should have driven down
to Hammersmith, to see Lavinia, but your account was
so very satisfactory, and my duties in the House occupy
me so much, that I determined —to postpone it for a
week. How has she gone on?” -
“Very well indeed, sir,” returned Maria, dreading to
inform the father that she had gone off. *
“Ah, I thought the plan on which I proceeded would
be a match for her.”
Here was a favourable opportunity to say that some-
body else had been a match for her. But the unfortu-
nate governess was unequal to the task. -
“You have persevered strictly in the line of conduct
I prescribed, Miss Crumpton?”
“Strictly, sir.” •
“You tell me in your note that her spirits gradually
improved.” sº
“Very much indeed, sir.”
“To be sure. I was convinced they would.”
“But I fear, sir,” said Miss Crumpton, with visible
emotion, ‘‘I fear the plan has not succeeded, quite so
well as we could have wished.”
“No!” exclaimed the prophet. “Bless me! Miss
Crumpton, you look alarmed. What has happened?”
“Miss Brook Dingwall, sir 55
“Yes, ma'am?”
“Has gone, sir”—said Maria, exhibiting a strong in-
clination to faint. -
‘‘ GOne!”.
“Eloped, sir.”
SENTIMENT. 333
“Eloped!—Who with—when—where—how?” almost
shrieked the agitated diplomatist.
The natural yellow of the unfortunate Maria's face
changed to all the hues of the rainbow, as she laid a
Small packet on the member's table.
He hurriedly opened it. A letter from his daughter,
and another from Theodosius. He glanced over their
contents—“Ere this reaches you, far distant—appeal to
feelings—love to distraction—bees’-wax-slavery,” &c.,
&c. He dashed his hand to his forehead, and paced
the room with fearfully long strides, to the great alarm
of the precise Maria.
“Now mind; from this time forward,” said Mr. Brook
Dingwall, suddenly stopping at the table, and beating
time upon it with his hand; ‘‘ from this time forward, I
never will, under any circumstances whatever, permit
a man who writes pamphlets to enter any other room
of this house but the kitchen.—I’ll allow my daughter
and her husband one hundred and fifty pounds a-year,
and never see their faces again; and, damme! ma'am,
I’ll bring in a bill for the abolition of finishing-schools!”
Some time has elapsed since this passionate declara-
tion. Mr. and Mrs. Butler are at present rusticating in
a Small cottage at Ball's-pond, pleasantly situated in
the immediate vicinity of a brick-field. They have no
family. Mr. Theodosius looks very important, and
Writes incessantly; but, in consequence of a gross com-
bination on the part of publishers, none of his pro-
ductions appear in print. His young wife begins to
think that ideal misery is preferable to real unhappi-
ness; and that a marriage, contracted in haste, and
repented at leisure, is the cause of more substantial
Wretchedness than she ever anticipated.
On cool reflection, Cornelius Brook Dingwall, Esq.,
M.P., was reluctantly compelled to admit that the un-
toward result of his admirable arrangements was at-
tributable, not to the Miss Crumptons, but his own
diplomacy. He however consoles himself, like some
9ther Small diplomatists, by satisfactorily proving that
if his plans did not succeed, they ought to have done
S9. Minerya House is in statu quo, and “The Misses
Crumpton ’’ remain in the peaceable and undisturbed
enjoyment of all the advantages resulting from their
Finishing-School.
334 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TUGGS S AT RAMSGATE.
ONº. upon a time, there dwelt, in a narrow street
on the Surrey side of the water, within three
minutes' walk of old London Bridge, Mr. Joseph Tuggs
—a little dark-faced man, with shiny hair, twinkling
eyes, short legs, and a body of very considerable thick-
ness measuring from the centre button of his waistcoat
in front, to the ornamental buttons of his coat behind.
The figure of the amiable Mrs. Tuggs, if not perfectly
symmetrical, was decidedly comfortable; and the form
of her only daughter, the accomplished Miss Charlotte
Tuggs, was fast ripening into that state of luxuriant
plumpness which had enchanted the eyes, and capti-
Pºp the heart of Mr. Joseph Tuggs in his earlier
days. Mr. Simon Tuggs, his only son, and Miss Char-
lotte Tuggs's only brother, was as differently formed in
body, as he was differently constituted in mind, from
the remainder of his family. There was that elongation
in his thoughtful face, and that tendency to weakness
in his interesting º; which tell so forcibly of a great
mind and romantic disposition. The slightest traits of
character in such a being, possess no mean interest to
speculative minds. He usually appeared in public, in
capacious shoes with black cotton stockings; and was
observed to be particularly attached to a black glazed
stock, without tie or ornament of any description.
There is perhaps, no profession, however useful; no
pursuit, however meritorious; which can escape the
petty attacks of vulgar minds. . Mr. Joseph Tuggs was
a grocer. . It might be spposed that a grocer was be-
yond the breath of calumny; but no—the neighbours
stigmatised him as a chandler; and the poisonous
voice of envy distinctly asserted that he dispensed tea.
and coffee by the quartern, retailed sugar by the ounce,
THE TUGGS'S AT RAMSGATE. 335
cheese by the slice, tobacco by the screw, and butter
by the pat. These taunts, however, were lost upon the
Tuggs's. Mr. Tuggs attended to the grocery depart-
ment; Mrs. Tuggs to the cheesemongery; and Miss
Tuggs to her education. Mr. Simon Tuggs kept his
father's books, and his own counsel.
One fine spring afternoon, the latter gentleman was
seated on a tub of weekly Dorset, behind the little red
desk with a wooden rail, which ornamented a corner
of the counter; when a stranger dismounted from a
cab, and hastily entered the shop. He was habited in
black cloth, and bore with him a green umbrella, and
a blue bag.
“Mr. Tuggs?” said the stranger, inquiringly.
“My name is Tuggs,” replied Mr. Simon.
“It’s the other Mr. Tuggs,” said the stranger, looking
towards the glass door which led into the parlour be-
hind the shop, and on the inside of which, the round
face of Mr. Tuggs, senior, was distinctly visible, peep-
ing over the curtain.
Mr. Simon gracefully waved his pen, as if in intima-
tion of his wish that his father would advance. Mr.
Joseph Tuggs, with considerable celerity, removed
his face from the curtain, and placed it before the
Stranger. *
“I come from the Temple,” said the man with the bag.
“From the Temple!” said Mrs. Tuggs, flinging open
the door of the little parlour and disclosing Miss Tuggs
in perspective.
“From the Temple!” said Miss Tuggs and Mr. Simon
Tuggs at the same moment.
“From the Temple!” said Mr. Joseph Tuggs, turning
as pale as a Dutch cheese.
“From the Temple,” repeated the man with the
bag; “from Mr. Cower's, the solicitor's. Mr. Tuggs,
I congratulate you, sir. Ladies, I wish you joy of
your prosperity We have been successful.” And the
man with the bag leisurely divested himself of his
umbrella and glove, as a preliminary to shaking hands
with Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
Now the words “we have been successful,” had no
sooner issued from the mouth of the man with the bag,
than Mr. Simon Tuggs rose from the tub of weekly
Dorset, opened his eyes very wide, gasped for breath,
336 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
made figures of eight in the air with his pen, and
finally fell into the arms of his anxious mother, and
fainted away, without the slightest Ostensible cause or
pretence.
“Water!” screamed Mrs. Tuggs.
“Look up, my son,” exclaimed Mr. Tuggs.
“Simon! dear Simon!” shrieked Miss Tuggs.
“I’m better now,” said Mr. Simon Tuggs. “What!
successful!” And then, as corroborative evidence of
his being better, he fainted away again, and was borne
into the little parlour by the united efforts of the re-
mainder of the family, and the man with the bag.
To a casual spectator, or to any one unacquainted
with the position of the family, this fainting would
have been unaccountable. To those who iº.
the mission of the man with the bag, and were more-
over acquainted with the excitability of the nerves of
Mr. Simon Tuggs, it was quite comprehensible. A lon
ending law-suit respecting the validity of a will, §
F. unexpectedly decided; and Mr. Joseph Tuggs was
the possessor of twenty thousand pounds. .
' A prolonged consultation took place that night in the
little parlour—a consultation that was to settle the
future destinies of the Tuggs's. The shop was shut up
at an unusually early hour; and many were the un-
availing kicks bestowed upon the closed door by ap-
licants for quarterns of sugar, or half-quarterns of
read, or penn'orths of pepper, which were to have
been “left till Saturday,” but which fortune had de-
creed were to be left alone altogether.
T “We must certainly give up business,” said Miss
119 QºS.
g h, decidedly,” said Mrs. Tuggs.
“Simon shall go to the bar,” said Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
“And I shall always sign myself “Cymon’ in future,”
said his son.
“And I shall call myself Charlotta,” said Miss Tuggs.
“And you must always call me ‘Ma,’ and father
‘Pa,’” said Mrs. Tuggs.
“Yes, and Pa must leave off all his vulgar habits,”
interposed Miss Tuggs.”
“I’ll take care of all that,” responded Mr. Joseph
Tuggs complacently. He was, at that very moment,
eating pickled Salmon with a pocket-knife.
THE TUGGS’S AT RAMSGATE. 33%
T “We must leave town immediately,” said Mr. Cymon
119ſ QºS. º
tºybody concurred that this was an indispensable
preliminary to being genteel. The question then arose.
Where should they go?
‘‘ Gravesend?” mildly suggested Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
. idea was unanimously scouted. Gravesend was
OQU). *
“Margate?” insinuated Mrs. Tuggs. Worse and
worse—nobody there, but tradespeople.
“Brighton?” Mr. Cymon Tuggs opposed an insur-
mountable objection. All the coaches had been upset,
in turn, within the last three weeks; each coach had
averaged two passengers killed, and six wounded; and,
in every case, the newspapers had distinctly under-
stood that “no blame whatever was attributable to the
coachman.”
“ Ramsgate?” ejaculated Mr. Cymon, thoughtfully.
To be sure: how stupid they must have been, not to
have thought of that before! Ramsgate was just the
place of all others.
Two months after this conversation, the City of Lon-
don Ramsgate steamer was running gaily down the
river. Her flag was flying, her band was playing, her
passengers were conversing; everything about her
seemed gay and lively. No wonder—the Tuggs's were
on board.
“Charming, ain’t it?” said Mr. Joseph Tuggs, in a
bottle-green great-coat, with a velvet collar of the
same, and a blue travelling-cap with a gold band.
“Soul-inspiring,” replied Mr. Cymon Tuggs—he was
entered at the bar. “Soul-inspiring!”
“Delightful morning, sir!” said a stoutish, military-
looking gentleman in a blue surtout buttoned up to his
chin, j white trousers chained down to the soles of
his boots.
Mr. Cymon Tuggs took upon himself the responsi-
. ºf answering the observation. “Heavenly!” he
replied.
“You are an enthusiastic admirer of the beauties of
Nature, sir?” said the military gentleman.
“I am, sir,” replied Mr. Cymon Tuggs.
“Travelled much, sir” inquired the military gentle-
Iſlall.
22
338 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“Not much,” replied Mr. Cymon Tuggs. $
“You’ve been on the continent, of course?” inquired
the military gentleman.
“Not exactly,” replied Mr. Cymon ºn. a quali-
fied tone, as if he wished it to be implied that he had
gone half-way and come back again.
“You of course intend your son to make the grand
tour, sir?” said the military gentleman, addressing Mr.
Joseph Tuggs.
As Mr. Joseph Tuggs did not precisely understand
what the grand tour was, or how such an article was
manufactured, he replied, “Of course.” Just as he
said the word, there came tripping up, from her seat at
the stern of the vessel, a young lady in a puce-coloured
silk cloak, and boots of the same; with long black
ringlets, large black eyes, brief petticoats, and unex-
ceptionable ankles.
“Walter, my dear,” said the young lady to the military
gentleman.
“Yes, Belinda, my love,” responded the military
gentleman to the black-eyed young lady.
“What have you left me alone so long for?” said the .
young lady. “I have been Stared out of countenance
by those rude young men.” *
“What! stared at?” exclaimed the military gentle-
man, with an emphasis which made Mr. Cymon Tuggs
withdraw his eyes from the young lady’s face with
inconceivable rapidity. “Which young men—where?”
and the military gentleman clenched his fist, and glared
fearfully on the cigar-smokers around.
“Be calm, Walter, I entreat,” said the young lady.
“I won’t,” said the military gentleman.
“ Do, sir,” interposed Mr. Cymon Tuggs. “They
ain’t worth your notice.”
l No-no—they are not, indeed,” urged the young
ady.
“I will be calm,” said the military gentleman. “You
speak truly, sir. I thank you for a timely remonstrance,
which may have spared me the guilt of manslaughter.”
Calming his wrath, the military gentleman wrung Mr.
Cymon Tuggs by the hand.
“My sister, sir!” said Mr. Cymon Tuggs; seeing that
the military gentleman was casting an admiring look
towards Miss Charlotta.
THE TUGGS'S AT RAMSGATE 339
“My wife, ma’am—Mrs. Captain Waters,” said the
Hºry gentleman, presenting the black-eyed young
ady.
“My mother, ma'ma—Mrs. Tuggs,” said Mr. Cymon.
The military gentleman and his wife murmured en-
chanting courtesies; and the Tuggs's looked as unem-
barrassed as they could.
“Walter, my dear,” said the black-eyed young lady,
; they had sat chatting with the Tuggs's some half
OUII".
“Yes, my love,” said the military gentleman.
“Don’t you think this gentleman (with an inclination
of the head towards Mr. Cymon Tuggs) is very much
like the Marquis Carrivini?”
“Lord bless me, very!” said the military gentleman.
‘‘It struck me, the moment I saw him,” said the
young lady, gazing intently, and with a melancholy air,
on the-scarlet countenance of Mr. Cymon Tuggs. Mr.
Cymon Tuggs looked at everybody; and finding that
everybody was looking at him, appeared to feel some
temporary difficulty in disposing of his eyesight.
“So exactly the air of the Marquis,” said the military
gentleman.
“Quite extraordinary !” sighed the military gentle-
man’s lady.
“You don’t know the marquis, sir?” inquired the
military gentleman.
Mr. Cymon Tuggs stammered a negative.
“If you did,” continued Captain Walter Waters,
“you would feel how much reason you have to be proud
of the resemblance—a most elegant man, with a most
prepossessing appearance.”
“He is—he is indeed!” exclaimed Belinda Waters
emergetically. As her eye caught that of Mr. Cymon
Tuggs, she withdrew it from his features in bashful
confusion.
All this was highly gratifying to the feelings of the
Tuggs's, and when, in the course of further conversa-
tion, it was discovered that Miss Charlotta, Tuggs was
the fac simile of a titled relative of Mrs. Belinda
Waters, and that Mrs. Tuggs herself was the very pict-
ure of the Dowager Duchess of Dobbleton, their delight
in the acquisition of so genteel and friendly an acquaint-
ance knew no bounds. Even the dignity of Captain
340 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Walter Waters relaxed, to that degree, that he suffered
himself to be prevailed upon by Mr. Joseph Tuggs to
partake of cold pigeon pie and sherry, on deck; and a
most delightful conversation, aided by these agreeable
stimulants, was prolonged until they ran alongside
Ramsgate Pier. -
“Good-by’e, dear!” said Mrs. Captain Waters to Miss
Charlotta Tuggs, just before the bustle of landing com-
menced ; “we shall see you on the sands in the morn-
ing; and, as we are sure to have found lodgings before
then, I hope we shall be inseparable for many weeks to
come.” -
e º gº I hope so,” said Miss Charlotta Tuggs, emphat-
ICall V.
& 4 Hickets, ladies and gen’lm’n,” said the man on the
paddle-box. * *
“Want a porter, sir?” inquired a dozen men in smock
frocks. es tº
“Now, my dear!” said Captain Waters.
“Good-by'e!” said Mrs. Captain Waters—“good-by'e
Mr. Cymon l’ and with a pressure of the hand which
threw the amiable young man’s nerves into a state of
considerable derangement, Mrs. Captain Waters disap-
Fººd among the crowd. A pair of . puce-coloured
oots were seen ascending the steps, a white handker-
chief fluttered, a black eye gleamed. The Waters’s
were gone, and Mr. Cymon Tuggs was alone in a heart-
less world.
Silently and abstractedly did that too sensitive youth
follow his revered parents, and a train of Smock-frocks
and wheelbarrows along the pier, until the bustle of the
scene around, recalled him to himself. The Sun was
shining brightly; the sea, dancing to its own music,
rolled merrily in: crowds of people promenaded to and
fro; young ladies tittered ; old ladies talked ; nurse-
maids displayed their charms to the greatest possible
advantage, and their little charges ran up and down,
and to and fro, and in and out, under the feet, and be-
tween the legs of the assembled concourse, in the most
playful and exhilarating manner. There were old
gentlemen, trying to make out objects through long
telescopes; and young ones, making objects of them-
Selves in Open shirt-collars; ladies, carrying about port-
able chairs, and portable chairs carrying about invalids;
THE TUGGS's AT RAMSGATE. 341
parties waiting on the pier for parties who had come by
the steamboat; and nothing was to be heard but talk-
ing, laughing, welcoming, and merriment.
“Fly, sir?” exclaimed a chorus of fourteen men and
six boys, the moment Mr. Joseph Tuggs, at the head of
his little party, set foot in the street. s
“Here’s the gen’lm’n at last!” said one, touching his
hat with mock politeness. “Werry glad to see you,
sir—been a-waitin’ for you these six weeks. Jump in,
if you please, sir.” - -
“Nice light fly and a fast trotter, sir,” said another:
“fourteen mile a hour, and surroundin’ objects rendered
inwisible by ex-treme welocity.”
“Large fly for your luggage, sir,” cried a third.
‘‘Werry large fly here, sir—reg’lar bluebottle!”
“Here's your fly, sir!” shouted another aspiring char-
ioteer, mounting the box, and inducing an old grey
horse to indulge in some imperfect reminiscences of a
canter. “Look at him, sir!—temper of a lamb and
haction of a steam-ingein!” - -
Resisting even the temptation of securing the services
of so valuable a quadruped as the last-named, Mr.
Joseph Tuggs beckoned to the proprietor of a dingy
conveyance of a greenish hue, lined with faded striped
calico; and the luggage and the family having been de-
posited therein, the animal in the shafts, after describ-
ing circles in the road for a quarter of an hour, at last
consented to depart in quest of lodgings.
“How many beds have you got?” screamed Mrs.
Tuggs out of the fly, to the woman who opened the
door of the first house which displayed a bill intimating
that apartments were to be let within.
“How many did you want, ma’am?” was, of course,
the reply.
‘‘Three.” -
“Will you step in, ma’am P’’
Down got Mrs. Tuggs. The family were delighted.
Splendid view of the sea from the front windows—
ºing A short pause. Back came Mrs. Tuggs .
again.-One parlour and a mattress.
“Why the devil didn’t they say so at first P’ inquired
Mr. Joseph Tuggs, rather pettishly. *
“Don’t know,” said Mrs. Tuggs:
“Wretches!” exclaimed the nervous Cymon. Another
342 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
bill—another stoppage. Same question—same answer—
similar result. -
“What do they mean by this?” inquired Mr. Joseph
Tuggs, thoroughly out of temper. - . -
“Don’t know,” said the placid Mrs. Tuggs.
... ‘‘ Orvis the vay here, sir,” said the driver, by way of
accounting for the circumstance in a satisfactory man-
ner; and off they went again, to make fresh inquiries,
and encounter fresh disappointments.
It had grown dusk when the “fly”—the rate of .
whose progress greatly belied its name—after climbing
up four or five perpendicular hills, stopped before the
door of a dusty house, with a bay window, from which
you could obtain a beautiful glimpse of the sea—if you
thrust half your body out of it, at the imminent peril of
falling into the area. Mrs. Tuggs alighted. One ground-
floor room, and three cells with beds in them up-stairs.
A double house. Family on the opposite side. Five chil-
dren milk-and-watering in the parlour, and one little
boy, expelled for bad behaviour, screaming on his back
in the passage. -
“What's the terms?” said Mrs. Tuggs. The mistress
of the house was considering the expediency of º
On an extra guinea; so, she coughed slightly, an
affected not to hear the question.
“What's the terms?” said Mrs. Tuggs in a louder key.
“Five guineas a week, ma'am, with attendance,” re-
plied the lodging-house keeper. (Attendance means
the privilege of ringing the bell as often as you like,
for your own amusement.) - -
‘‘ Rather dear,” said Mrs. Tuggs.
“Oh dear, no, ma'am!” replied the mistress of the
house, with a benign smile of pity at the ignorance of
manners and customs which the observation betrayed.
“Very cheap!”
Such an authority was indisputable. Mrs. Tuggs paid
a week’s rent in advance, and took the lodgings for a
month. In an hour's time the family were seated at tea
in their new abode. -
‘‘ Capital Srimps!” said Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
Mr. Cymon eyed his father with a rebellious scowl,
as he emphatically said, “Shrimps.”
“Well then, shrimps,” said Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
“Srimps or shrimps, don’t much matter.”
THE TUGGS'S AT RAMSGATÉ. 343
There was pity, blended with malignity, in Mr. Cy-
mon’s eye as he replied, “Don’t matter, father! What
would Captain Waters say, if he heard such vul-
garity?” -
“Or what would dear Mrs. Captain Waters say,”
added Charlotta, “if she saw mother—ma, I mean—
eating them whole, heads and all!”
“It won’t bear thinking of !” ejaculated Mr. Cymon,
with a shudder. “How different,” he thought, ‘‘ from
the Dowager Duchess of Dobbleton l’” -
“Very pretty woman, Mrs. Captain Waters, is she not,
Cymon?” inquired Miss Charlotta.
A glow of nervous excitement passed over the counte-
nance of Mr. Cymon Tuggs, as he replied, “An angel
of beauty!” - ,
“ Hallo!” said Mr. Joseph Tuggs, “Hallo, Cymon, my
boy, take care. Married lady, you know; ” and he
winked one of his twinkling eyes knowingly.
“Why,” exclaimed Cymon, starting up with an
ebullition of fury, as unexpected as alarming, “why am
I to be reminded of that blight of my happiness, and
ruin of my hopes? Why am I to be taunted with the
miseries which are heaped upon my head? Is it not
enough to—to—to,” and the orator paused; but whether
for want of words, or lack of breath, was never dis-
tinctly ascertained. -
There was an impressive solemnity in the tone of this
address, and in the air with which the romantic Cymon,
at its conclusion, rang the bell, and demanded a flat
candlestick, which effectually forbade a reply. He
stalked dramatically to bed, and the Tuggs's went to
bed too, half an hour afterwards, in a state of consider-
able mystification and perplexity. . - :
If the pier had presented a scene of life and bustle
to the Tuggs's on their first landing at Ramsgate, it was
far surpassed by the appearance of the sands on the
morning after their arrival. It was a fine, bright, clear
day, with a light breeze from the sea. There were the
same ladies and gentlemen, the same children, the same
nursemaids, the same telescopes, the same portable
chairs. The ladies were employed in needlework, or
watchguard making, or knitting, or reading novels; the
gentlemen were reading newspapers and magãzines;
the children were digging holes in the sand with wooden
344 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
spades and collecting water therein; the nursemaids, with
their youngest charges in their arms, were running in
after the waves, and then running back with the waves
after them; and, now and then, a little sailing-boat
either departed with a gay and talkative cargo of pas-
sengers, or returned with a very silent and particularly
uncomfortable-looking one.
“Well, I never !” exclaimed Mrs. Tuggs, as she and
Mr. Joseph Tuggs, and Miss Charlotta Tuggs, and Mr.
Cymon Tuggs, with their eight feet in a corresponding
number of yellow shoes, seated themselves on four rush-
bottomed chairs, which being placed in a soft part of
the sand, forth with sunk down some two feet and a
half.-‘‘Well, I never !”
Mr. Cymon, by an exertion of great personal strength,
lººted the chairs, and removed them further
8,CK. -
“Why, I’m bless'd if there ain’t some ladies a-going
in l’ exclaimed Mr. Joseph Tuggs, with intense aston-
ishment. # .
“Lor, pa l’exclaimed Miss Charlotta. -
“There is, my dear,” said Mr. Joseph Tuggs. And,
sure enough, four young ladies, each furnished with a
towel, tripped up the steps of a bathing-machine. In
went the horse, floundering about in the water; round
turned the machine; down sat the driver; and presently
out burst the young ladies aforesaid, with four dis-
tinct splashes.
“Well, that’s sing’ler too!” ejaculated Mr. Joseph
Tuggs, after an awkward pause. Mr. Cymon coughed
slightly. e
“Why, here's some gentlemen a-going in on this side,”
exclaimed Mrs. Tuggs, in a tone of horror. -
Three machines—three horses—three flounderings—
three turnings round—three Splashes—three gentlemen,
disporting themselves in the water like so many
dolphins. .
“Well, that’s sing’ler l’” said Mr. Joseph Tuggs again.
Miss Charlotta coughed this time, and another pause
ensued. It was agreeably broken. -
“How d'ye do, dear 2 We have been looking for
you, all the morning,” said a voice to Miss Charlotta
Tuggs: Mrs. Captain Waters was the owner of it. .
“How d'ye do?” said Captain Walter Waters, all
THE TUGGS'S AT RAMSGATE. 345
suavity; and a most cordial interchange of greetings
ensued. - - -
“Bélinda, my love,” said Captain Walter Waters,
applying his glass to his eye, and looking in the direc-
tion of the sea. . - º
“Yes, my dear ’’ replied Mrs. Captain Waters.
“There’s Harry Thompson l’” - 's
“Where?” said Belinda, applying her glass to her
eye. - * -
“Bathing.”
“Lor, so it is He don’t see us, does hel” -
“No, I don’t think he does,” replied the captain.
“Bless my soul, how very singular !”
“What?” inquired Belinda.
“There's Mary Golding, too.”
“Lor – where?” (Up went the glass again.)
“There !” said the captain, pointing to one of the
young ladies before noticed, who, in her bathing cos-
tume, looked as if she was enveloped in a patent Mack-
... intosh, of scanty dimensions. -
“So it is, I declare l’exclaimed Mrs. Captain Waters.
‘‘How very curious we should see them both !”
“Very,” said the captain, with perfect coolness.
“It’s the reg’lar thing here, you see,” whispered Mr.
Cymon Tuggs to his father.
, “I see it is,” whispered Mr. Joseph Tuggs in reply.
“Queer though—ain’t it?” Mr. Cymon Tuggs nodded
assent. - - -
“What do you think of doing with yourself this
morning?” inquired the captain. “Shall we lunch at
Pegwell?” - -
“I should like that very much indeed,” interposed
Mrs. Tuggs. She had never heard of Pegwell; but the
word “lunch * had reached her ears, and it sounded
very agreeably. ~, - -
“How shall we go?” inquired the captain “it’s too
warm to walk.” -
“A shay?” suggested Mr. Joseph Tuggs.
“Chaise,” whispered Mr. Cymon.
“I should think one would be enough, said Mr. Joseph
Tuggs aloud, quite unconscious of the meaning of the
correction. “ However, two shays if you like.”
“I should like a donkey so much,” said Belinda,
“Oh, so should I l’” echoed Charlotta Tuggs,
346 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“Well, we can have a fly,” suggested the captain,
‘‘ and you can have a couple of donkeys.”
A fresh difficulty arose. Mrs. Captain Waters de-
clared it would be decidedly improper for two ladies to
ride-alone. The remedy was obvious. Perhaps young
Mr. Tuggs would be gallant enough to accompany them.
Mr. Cymon Tuggs blushed, smiled, looked vacant, and
faintly protested that he was no horseman. The objec-
tion was at once overruled. A fly was speedily found;
and three donkeys—which the proprietor declared on
his solemn asseveration to be “three parts blood, and the
other corn ?–were engaged in the service.
“Kim up!” shouted one of the two boys who followed
behind, to propel the donkeys, when Belinda Waters
and Charlotta, Tuggs had been hoisted, and pushed, and
pulled, into their respective saddles.
“Hi–hi—hil” groaned the other boy behind Mr. Cy-
mon Tuggs. Away went the donkey, with the stirrups
jingling against the heels of Cymon’s boots, and
Cymon’s boots nearly scraping the ground.
“Way—way! Wo–o—o—o—!” cried Mr. Cymon
Tuggs as well as he could, in the midst of the jolting.
“Don’t make it gallop!” screamed Mrs. Captain
Waters, behind.
“My donkey will go into the public-house!” shrieked
Miss Tuggs in the rear.
“Hi–hi—hiſ ’’ groaned both the boys together; and
º went the donkeys as if nothing would ever stop
them.
Everything has an end, however; even the galloping
of donkeys will cease in time. The animal which Mr.
Cymon Tuggs bestrode, feeling sundry uncomfortable
tugs at the bit, the intent of which be could by no
means divine, abruptly sidled against a brick wall,
and expressed his uneasiness by grinding Mr. Cymon
Tuggs's leg on the rough surface. Mrs. Captain
Waters's donkey, apparently under the influence of some
playfulness of spirit, rushed suddenly, head first, into a
hedge, and declined to come out again: and the quad-
ruped on which Miss Tuggs was mounted, expressed
his delight at this humourous proceeding by firmly
planting his fore-feet against the ground, and kicking
up his hind-legs in a very agile, but somewhat alarm-
jºg manner.

}
THE TUGGS's AT RAMSGATE. 34%
This abrupt termination to the rapidity of the ride,
naturally occasioned some confusion. Both the ladies
indulged in vehement screaming for several minutes;
and Mr. Cymon Tuggs, besides sustaining intense bodily
pain, had the additional mental anguish of witnessing
their distressing situation, without having the power
to rescue, them, by reason of his leg being firmly
screwed in between the animal and the wall. The
efforts of the boys, however, assisted by the ingenious
expedient of twisting the tail of the most rebellious
donkey, restored order in a much shorter time than
could have reasonably been expected, and the little
party jogged slowly on together.
“Now let ’em walk,” said Mr. Cymon Tuggs. “It’s
cruel to overdrive ‘em.”
“Werry well, sir,” replied the boy, with a grin at his
companion, as if he understood Mr. Cymon to mean
that the cruelty applied less to the animals than to
their riders.
“What a lovely day, dear!” said Charlotta.
“Charming; enchanting, dear!” responded Mrs. Cap-
#. Waters. “What a beautiful prospect, Mr.
uggs!”
Cymon looked full in Belinda’s face, as he responded
—“Beautiful, indeed!”. The lady cast down her eyes,
and suffered the animal she was riding to fall a little
back. Cymon Tuggs instinctively did the same.
There was a brief silence, broken only by a sigh from
Mr. Cymon Tuggs.
“Mr. Cymon,” said the lady suddenly, in a low tone,
“Mr. Cymon—I am another’s.”
Mr. Cymon expressed his perfect concurrence in a
statement which it was impossible to controvert.
“If I had not been—” resumed Belinda; and there
she stopped.
“What—what?” said Mr. Cymon earnestly. “Do
not torture me. What would you say?”
“If it had been *—continued Mrs. Captain Waters—
“if, in earlier life, it had been my fate to have known,
and been beloved by, a noble youth—a kindred soul—a
congenial spirit—one capable of feeling and apprecia-
ting the sentiments which—”
“Heavens! what do I hear?” exclaimed Mr. Cymon
Tuggs. “Is it possible! can I believe my—come up!”

348 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
(This last unsentimental parenthesis was addressed to
the donkey, who with his head between his fore-legs,
appeared to be examining the state of his shoes with
great anxiety.) -
“Hi–hi—hi,” said the boys behind. “Come up,” ex-
postulated Cymon Tuggs again. “Hi–hi—hil” repeat-
ed the boys. And whether it was that the animal felt
indignant at the tone of Mr. Tuggs's command, or felt
alarmed by the noise of the deputy proprietor's boots
running behind him; or whether he burned with a noble
emulation to outstrip the other donkeys; certain it is
that he no sooner heard the second series of “hi—
hi’s,” than he started away, with a celerity of pace
which jerked Mr. Cymon’s hat off, instantaneously, and
carried him to the Pegwell Bay hotel in no time, where
he deposited his rider without giving him the trouble of
dismounting, by sagaciously pitching him over his head
into the very doorway of the tavern.
Great was the confusion of Mr. Cymon Tuggs, when
he was put, right and uppermost, by two waiters; Con-
siderable was the alarm of Mrs. Tuggs in behalf of her
son; agonising were the apprehensions of Mrs. Captain
Waters on his account. It was speedily discovered,
however, that he had not sustained much more injury
than the donkey—he was grazed, and the animal was
grazing—and then it was a delightful party to be Sure!
Mr. and Mrs. Tuggs, and the captain, had ordered
lunch in the little garden behind:—small saucers of large
shrimps, dabs of butter, crusty loaves, and bottled ale.
The sky was without a cloud; there were flower-pots
and turf before them; the sea, from the foot of the
cliff, stretching away as far as the eye could discern
anything at all; vessels in the distance with sails as
white, and as Small, as nicely-got-up cambric handker-
chiefs. The shrimps were delightful, the ale better,
and the captain even more pleasant than either. Mrs.
Captain Waters was in such spirits after lunch!—chas-
ing first the captain across the turf, and among the
flower-pots; § then Mr. Cymon Tuggs; and then Miss
Tuggs; and laughing, too, quite boisterously. But as
the captain said, it didn’t matter; who knew what they
were, there? For all the people of the house knew,
they might be common people. To which Mr. Joseph
Tuggs responded, “To be sure.” And then they went
THE TUGGS'S AT RAMSGATE. 349
down the steep wooden steps a little further on, which
led to the bottom of the cliff; and looked at the crabs,
and the sea-weed, and the eels, till it was more than
fully time to go back to Ramsgate again. Finally, Mr.
Cymon Tuggs ascended the steps last, and Mrs. Captain
Waters last but one; and Mr. Cymon Tuggs discovered
that the foot and ankle of Mrs. Captain Waters, were even
more unexceptionable than he had at first Supposed.
Taking a donkey towards his ordinary place of resi-
dence, is a very different thing, and a feat much more
easily to be accomplished, than taking him from it. It
requires a great deal of foresight and presence of mind
in the one case, to anticipate the numerous flights of
his discursive imagination; whereas, in the other, all
you have to do is to hold on, and place a blind confi-
dence in the animal. Mr. Cymon Tuggs adopted the
latter expedient on his return; and his nerves were so
little discomposed by the journey, that he distinctly
understood they were all to meet again at the library
in the evening.
The library was crowded. There were the same
ladies, and the same gentlemen, who had been on the
sands in the morning, and on the pier the day before.
There were young ladies, in maroon-coloured gowns
and black velvet bracelets, dispensing fancy articles in
the shop, and presiding over games of chance in the
concert-room. There were marriageable daughters, and
marriage-making mammas, gaming and promenading,
and turning over music, and #: There were some .
Imale beaux doing the sentimental in whispers, and
others doing the ferocious in moustache. There were
Mrs. Tuggs in amber, Miss Tuggs in sky-blue, Mrs.
Captain Waters in pink. There was Captain Waters
in a braided surtout; there was Mr. Cymon Tuggs in
pumps and a gilt waistcoat; there was Mr. Joseph Tuggs
in a blue coat, and a shirt-frill. -
“Numbers three, eight, and eleven!” cried one of the
young ladies in the maroon-coloured gowns. -
“Numbers three, eight, and eleven!” echoed another
young lady in the same uniform. -
“Number three's gone,” said the first young lady.
“Numbers eight and eleven!”
“Numbers eight and eleven l’” echoed the second
young lady. -
350 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“Number eight's gone, Mary Ann,” said the first
young lady. -
“Number eleven!” screamed the second.
“The numbers are all taken now, ladies, if you please,”
said the first. The representatives of numbers three,
eight, and eleven, and the rest of the numbers, crowded
round the table. - -
“Will you throw, ma’am?” said the presiding goddess,
handing the dice-box to the eldest daughter of a stout
lady, with four girls.
There was a profound silence among the lookers on.
“Throw, Jane, my dear,” said the stout lady. An in-
teresting display of bashfulness—a little blushing in a
cambric handkerchief—a whispering to a younger sister.
“Amelia, my dear, throw for your sister,” said the
stout lady; and then she turned to a walking adver-
tisement of Rowland’s Macassar Oil, who stood next
her, and said, “Jane is so very modest and retiring;
but I can’t be angry with her for it. An artless and
unsophisticated girl is so truly amiable, that I often
wish Amelia was more like her sister!” -
The gentleman with the whiskers, whispered his
admiring approval.
“Now, my dear!” said the stout lady. Miss Amelia
threw—eight for her sister, ten for herself.
“ Nice figure, Amelia,” whispered the stout lady, to
a thin youth beside her.
** Beautiful!”
. “And such a spirit! I am like you in that respect.
I can not help admiring that life and vivacity. Ah!
(a sigh) I wish I could make poor Jane a little more like
my dear Amelia!” -
The young gentleman cordially acquiesced in the
sentiment; both he, and the individual first addressed,
were perfectly contented.
“Who’s this?” inquired Mr. Cymon Tuggs of Mrs.
Captain Waters, as a short female, in a blue velvet hat
and feathers, was led into the orchestra, by a fat man
in black tights, and cloudy Berlins.
“Mrs. Tippin, of the London theatres,” replied
Belinda, referring to the programme of the concert.
The talented Tippin having condescendingly ac-
knowledged the clapping of hands, and shouts of
“bravo!” which greeted her appearance, proceeded to
THE TUGGS's AT RAMSGATE. 351
sing the popular cavatina of “Bid me discourse,”
accompanied on the piano by Mr. Tippin; after which, ,
Mr. Tippin sang a comic song, accompanied on the piano
by Mrs. Tippin: the applause consequent upon which,
was only to be exceeded by the enthusiastic approba-
tion bestowed upon an air with variations on the guitar,
# Miss Tippin, accompanied on the chin by Master
1pplin. 1.
Thus passed the evening; thus passed the days and
evenings of the Tuggs's and the Waters's, for six weeks.
Sands in the morning—donkeys at noon—pier in the
afternoon—library at night—and the same people every-
where.
On that very night six weeks, the moon was shining
brightly over the calm sea, which dashed against the
feet of the tall gaunt cliffs, with just enough noise to
lull the old fish to sleep, without disturbing the young
ones, when two figures were discernible—or would have
been, if anybody had looked for them—seated on one
of the wooden benches which are stationed near the
verge of the western cliff. The moon had climbed
higher into the heavens, by two hours' journeying, since
those figures first sat down—and yet they had moved
not. The crowd of loungers had thinned and dispersed;
the noise of itinerant musicians had died away; light
after light had appeared in the windows of the different
houses in the distance; blockade-man after blockade-
man had passed the spot, wending his way towards
his solitary post; and yet those figures had remained
stationary. Some portions of the two forms were in
deep shadow, but the light of the moon fell strongly
On a puce-coloured boot and a glazed stock. Mr. Cymon
Tuggs, and Mrs. Captain Waters, were seated on that
bench. They spoke not, but were silently gazing on
the sea. §
“Walter will return to-morrow,” said Mrs. Captain
Waters, mournfully breaking silence.
Mr. Cymon Tuggs sighed like a gust of wind through
8, fºst of gooseberry bushes, as he replied, “Alas, he
Will.”
“Oh, Cymon!” resumed Belinda, “the chaste delight,
the calm happiness, of this one week of Platonic lov
is too much for me!” e
Cymon was about to suggest that it was too little
352 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
for him, but he stopped himself, and murmured unin-
telligibly,
“And to think that even this glimpse of happiness,
innocent as it is,” exclaimed Belinda, “is now to be
lost for ever!” *
“Oh, do not say for ever, Belinda,” exclaimed the
excitable Cymon, as two strongly-defined tears chased
each other down his pale face—it was so long that
there was plenty of room for a chase—“Do not say
for ever! ”
‘‘I must,” replied Belinda.
“Why?” arged Cymon, “oh why? Such Platonic
acquaintance as Ours, is so harmless, that even your
husband can never object to it.” -
“My husband!” exclaimed Belinda. “You little
know him. Jealous and revengeful; ferocious in his
revenge—a maniac in his jealousy. Would you be
assassinated before my eyes?” Mr. Cymon Tuggs, in
a voice broken by emotion, expressed his disinclination
to undergo the process of assassination before the eyes
of anybody. *
& 4 #. leave me,” said Mrs. Captain Waters. “Leave
me, this night, for ever. It is late; let us return.”
Mr. Cymon Tuggs sadly offered the lady his arm, and
escorted her to her lodgings. He paused at the door—
he felt a Platonic pressure of his hand. “Good night,”
he said hesitating.
“Good night,” sobbed the lady. Mr. Cymon Tuggs
paused again.
“Won’t you walk in, sir?” said the servant. Mr.
Tuggs hesitated. Oh, that hesitation. He did walk
1Il.
“Good night!” said Mr. Cymon Tuggs again, when
he reached the drawing-room.
“Good night!” replied Belinda; “and, if at any
period of my life, T-Hush!” The lady paused and
stared, with a steady gaze of horror, on the ashy coun-
tenance of Mr. Cymon Tuggs. There was a double
knock at the street-door. -
“It is my husband!” said Belinda, as the captain’s
voice was heard below.
“And my family!” added Cymon Tuggs, as the
voices of his relatives floated up the staircase.
“The curtain! The curtain!” gasped Mrs. Captain
THE TUGGS'S AT RAMSGATE. 353
Waters, pointing to the window, before which some
chintz hangings were closely drawn.
C “But I have done nothing wrong,” said the hesitating
IY).OIl.
yº The curtain!” reiterated the frantic lady: “you
will be murdered.” This last appeal to his feelings .
was irresistible. The dismayed Cymon concealed
himself behind the curtain with pantomimic Sud-
denness. - -
Enter the captain, Joseph Tuggs, Mrs. Tuggs, and
Charlotta.
“My dear,” said the captain, “Lieutenant Slaughter.”
Two iron-shod boots and one gruff voice were heard
ty Mr. Cymon to advance, and acknowledge the honour
of the introduction. The sabre of the lieutenant rattled
heavily upon the floor, as he seated himself at the table.
Mr. Cymon’s fears almost overcame his reason.
“The brandy, my dear!” said the captain. Here
was a situation! They were going to make a night of
it! And Mr. Cymon Tuggs was pent up behind the
curtain and afraid to breathel
“Slaughter,” said the captain, “a cigar?”
Now, Mr. Cymon Tuggs never could smoke, without
feeling it indispensably necessary to retire, imme-
diately, and never could smell Smoke without a strong
disposition to cough. The cigars were introduced; the
captain was a professed smoker; so was the lieutenant;
SO was Joseph Tuggs. The apartment was Small, the
door was closed, the smoke powerful: it hung in heavy
wreathes over the room, and at length found its way
behind the curtain. Cymon Tuggs held his nose, his
mouth, his breath. It was all of no use—out came the
Cough.
“Bless my soul!” said the captain, “I beg your
pardon, Miss Tuggs. You dislike smoking?”
“Oh, no; I don’t indeed,” said Charlotta.
“It makes you cough.”
“Oh dear no.”
“You coughed just now.”
“Me, Captain Waters! Lor! how can you say so?”
“Somebody coughed,” said the captain.
‘‘I certainly thought so,” said Slaughter. No; every
body denied it. -
“Fancy,” said the captain.
N.
23
354. SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“Must be,” echoed Slaughter.
Cigars resumed —more Smoke--another cough—
Smothered but violent. º
“Damned odd!” said the captain, staring about him.
“Singler!” ejaculated the unconscious Mr. Joseph
Tuggs.
Lieutenant Slaughter looked first at one person mys-
teriously, then at another; then, laid down his cigar;
then, approached the window on tiptoe, and pointed
with his right thumb over his shoulder, in the direction
of the curtain.
“Slaughter!” ejaculated the captain, rising from
table, “what do you mean?” sº
The lieutenant, in reply, drew back the curtain and
discovered Mr. Cymon Tuggs behind it; pallid with ap-
prehension, and blue with wanting to cough.
“Aha!” exclaimed the captain furiously, “What do
I see? Slaughter, your sabre!”
“Cymon!” screamed the Tuggs's.
“Mercy!” said Belinda.
“Platonic!” gasped Cymon.
“Your sabre!” roared the captain: “Slaughter—
unhand me—the villain’s life!”
“Murder!” screamed the Tuggs's.
“Hold him fast, sir!” faintly articulated Cymon.
“Water!” exclaimed Joseph Tuggs—and Mr. Cy-
mon Tuggs and all the ladies forthwith fainted away,
and formed a tableau. 4.
Most willingly would we conceal the disastrous termi-
Ination of the six weeks’ acquaintance. A troublesome
form, and an arbitrary custom, however, prescribe
that a story should have a conclusion, in addition to a
commencement ; we have therefore no alternative.
Lieutenant Slaughter brought a message—the captain
brought an action. Mr. Joseph Tuggs interposed—the
lieutenant negotiated. When Mr. Cymon Tuggs re-
covered from the nervous disorder into which misplaced
affection, and exciting circumstances had plunged him,
he found that his family had lost their pleasant ac-
quaintance; that his father was minus fifteen hundred
pounds; and the captain plus the precise sum. The
money was paid to hush the matter up, but it got
baroad notwithstanding; and there are not wanting
Some who affirm that three designing impostors never
HORATIO SPARKINS. 355
found more easy dupes, than did Captain Waters, Mrs.
Waters, and Lieutenant Slaughter, in the Tuggs's at
Ramsgate.
CHAPTER V.
HORATIO SPARKINS.
“INº. my love, he paid Teresa very great atten-
tion on the last assembly night,” said Mrs. Mal-
derton, addressing her spouse, who, after the fatigues
of the day in the City, was sitting with a silk handker-
chief over his head, and his feet on the fender, drink-
ing his port;-‘‘ very great attention; and I say again,
every possible encouragement ought to be given him.
He positively must be asked down here to dine.”
“Who must?” inquired Mr. Malderton.
“Why, you know whom I mean, my dear—the young
man with the black whiskers and the white cravat, who
has just come out at our assembly, and whom all the
girls are talking about. Young dear me! what’s
his name?—Marianne what is his name?” continued
Mrs. Malderton, addressing her youngest daughter, who
was engaged in netting a purse and looking senti-
mental.
“Mr. Horatio Sparkins, ma,” replied Miss Marianne,
with a sigh.
“Oh! yes, to be sure–Horatio Sparkins,” said Mrs.
Malderton. “Decidedly the most gentleman-like young
man I ever saw. I am sure, in the beautifully made
coat he wore the other night, he looked like—like—”
“Like Prince Leopold, ma—so noble, so full of senti-
ment!” suggested Marianne, in a tone of enthusiastic
admiration.
“You should recollect, my dear,” resumed Mrs. Mal-
derton, “that Teresa is now eight-and-twenty; and
really is very important that something should be
one.”
Miss Teresa Malderton was a very little girl, rather
fat, with vermilion cheeks, but good-humoured, and
still disengaged, although to do her justice, the mis-
fortune arose from no lack of perseverance on her part.
In vain, had she flirted for ten years; in vain, had Mr.
356 SKIETCHES BY BOZ.
and Mrs. Malderton assiduously kept up an extensive
acquaintancé among the young eligible bachelors of
Camberwell, and even of Wandsworth and Brixton; to
say nothing of those who “dropped in ’’ from town.
Miss Malderton was as well known as the lion on the
top of Northumberland House, and had an equal chance
of “going off.”
“I am quite sure you’d like him,” continued Mrs.
Malderton; “he is so gentlemanly!”
“So clever!” said Miss Marianne. -
“And has such a flow of language!” added Miss
Teresa.
“He has a great respect for you, my dear,” said Mrs.
Malderton to her husband. Mr. Malderton coughed,
and looked at the fire.
“Yes, I’m sure he’s very much attached to pa’s
society,” said Miss Marianne.
“No doubt of it,” echoed Miss Teresa.
“Indeed, he said as much to me in confidence,”
observed Mrs. Malderton. g
“Well, well,” returned Mr. Malderton, somewhat
flattered; “If I see him at the assembly to-morrow,
perhaps I’ll ask him down. I hope he knows we live
at Oak Lodge, Camberwell, my dear?” .
“Of course—and that you keep a one-horse carriage.”
“I’ll see about it,” said Mr. Malderton, composing
himself for a nap; “I’ll see about it.”
Mr. Malderton was a man whose whole scope of ideas
was limited to Lloyd's, the Exchange, the India
House, and the Bank. A few successful speculations
had raised him from a situation of obscurity and com-
#. poverty, to a state of affluence. As frequently
happens in such cases, the ideas of himself and his
family became elevated to an extraordinary pitch as
their means increased; they affected fashion, taste, and
many other fooleries, in imitation of their betters, and
had a very decided and becoming horror of anything
which could, by possibility, be considered low. He
was hospitable from Ostentation, illiberal from ignor-
ance, and prejudiced from conceit., Egotism and the
love of display induced him to keep an excellent
table: convenience, and a love of good things of this
life, ensured him plenty of guests. He liked to have
clever men, or what he considered such, at his table,
HORATIO SPARKINS. 35%
because it was a great thing to talk about; but he never
conla endure what he called “sharp fellows.” Prob-
ably, he cherished this feeling out of compliment to his
two sons, who gave their respected parent no uneasi-
ness in that particular. The family were ambitious of
forming acquaintances and connexions in some sphere
of society superior to that in which they themselves
moved; and one of the necessary consequences of this
desire, added to their utter ignorance of the world be-
yond their own small circle, was, that any one who
could lay claim to an acquaintance with people of rank
and title, had a sure passport to the table at Oak
Lodge, Camberwell.
The appearance of Mr. Horatio Sparkins at the assem-
bly had excited no small degree of surprise and curios-
ity among its regular frequenters. Who could he be?
He was evidently reserved, and apparently melancholy.
Was he a clergyman?—He danced too well. A barrister?
—He said he was not called. He used very fine words,
and talked a great deal. Could he be a distinguished
foreigner, come to England for the purpose of describ-
ing the country, its manners and customs; and frequent-
ing public balls and dinners, with the view of becoming
acquainted with high life, polished etiquette and
English refinement?—No, he had not a foreign accent.
Was he a surgeon, a contributor to the magazines, a
writer of fashionable novels, or an artist? No; to each
and all of these surmises, there existed some valid ob-
jection.—“Then,” said everybody, “he must be some-
body.”—“I should think he must be,” reasoned Mr.
Malderton, with himself, “because he perceives our
Superiority, and pays us so much attention.”
The night succeeding the conversation we have just
recorded, was “assembly night.” The double-fly was
ordered to be at the door of Öak Lodge at nine o’clock
§.; The Miss Maldertons were dressed in sky-
lue satin trimmed with artificial flowers; and Mrs. M.
(who was a little fat woman), in ditto ditto, looked like
her eldest daughter multiplied by two. Mr. Frederick
Malderton, the eldest son, in full-dress costume, was
the very beau idéal of a smart waiter; and Mr. Thomas
Malderton, the youngest, with his white dress-stock, blue
coat, bright, buttons and red watch-ribbon, strongly
resembled the portrait of that interesting, but rash
358 Sk ETCHES BY BOZ.
young gentleman, George Barnwell. Every member
of the party had made up his or her mind to cultivate
the acquaintance of Mr. Horatio Sparkins. Miss
Teresa, of course, was to be as amiable and interesting
as ladies of eight-and-twenty on the look-out for a hus-
band, usually are. Mrs. Malderton would be all smiles
and graces. Miss Marianne would request the favour
of some verses for her album. Mr. Malderton would
patronise the great unknown by asking him to dinner.
Tom intended to ascertain the extent of his information
on the interesting topics of snuff and cigars. Even Mr.
Frederick Malderton himself, the family authority on
all points of taste, dress, and fashionable arrangement;
who had lodgings of his own in town; who had a free
admission to Covent-garden theatre; who always dressed
according to the fashions of the months; who went up
the water twice a-week in the season; and who actually
had an intimate friend who once knew a gentleman
who formerly lived in the Albany, even he had deter-
mined that Mr. Horatio Sparkins must be a devilish
good fellow, and that he would do him the honour of
challenging him to a game at billiards.
The first object that met the anxious eyes of the
expectant family on their entrance into the ball-room,
was the interesting Horatio, with his hair brushed off
his forehead, and his eyes fixed on the ceiling, reclin-
ing in a contemplative attitude on One of the seats.
“There he is, my dear,” whispered Mrs. Malderton
to Mr. Malderton.
“How like Lord Byron!” murmured Miss Teresa.
“Or Montgomery !” whispered Miss Marianne.
“Or the portraits of Captain Cook!” suggested Tom.
“Tom--don’t be an ass!” said his father, who checked
him on all occasions, probably with a view to prevent
his becoming “sharp *—which was very unnecessary.
The elegant Sparkins attitudinised with admirable
effect, until the family had crossed the room. He then
started up, with the most natural appearance of sur-
prise and delight; accosted Mrs. Malderton with the
utmost cordiality; Saluted the young ladies in the most
enchanting manner; bowed to, and shook hands with,
Mr. Malderton, with a degree of respect amounting
almost to veneration; and returned the greetings of
the two young men in a half-gratified, half-patronising
A
HORATIO SPARKINS. 350
manner, which fully convinced them that he must be
an important, and, at the same time, condescending
personage. -
“Miss Malderton,” said Horatio, after the ordinary
salutations, and bowing very low, “may I be permitted
to presume to hope that you will allow me to have the
pleasure—” -
“I don’t think I am engaged,” said Miss Teresa, with
a dreadful affectation of indifference—“but, really—
so many—”
Horatio looked handsomely miserable.
“I shall be most happy,” simpered the interesting
Teresa, at last. Horatio’s countenance brightened up,
like an old hat in a shower of rain.
“A very genteel young man, certainly!” said the
gratified Mr. Malderton, as the obsequious Sparkins
and his partner joined the quadrille which was just
forming. - &
“He has a remarkably good address,” said Mr.
Frederick.
“Yes, he is a prime fellow,” interposed Tom, who
always managed to put his foot in it—“he talks just
like an auctioneer.”
“Tom!” said his father solemnly, “I think I desired
you, before, not to be a fool.” Tom looked as happy as
a cock on a drizzly morning.
“How delightful!” said the interesting Horatio to
his partner, as they promenaded the room at the con-
clusion of the set—“how delightful, how refreshing it
is, to retire from the cloudy storms, the vicissitudes,
and the troubles, of life, even if it be but for a few short
fleeting moments; and to spend those moments, fading
and evanescent though they be, in the delightful, the
blessed, society, of one individual—whose frowns would
be death, whose coldness would be madness, whose
falsehood would be ruin, whose constancy would be
bliss; the possession of whose affection would be the
brightest and best reward that Heaven could bestow
on man!” -
“What feeling! what sentiment!” thought Miss
Teresa, as she leaned more heavily on her companion’s
8,I’ITOl.
“But enough—enough!—” resumed the elegant Spark-
ins, with a theatrical air, “What have I said? what
300 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
have I—I-to do with sentiments like these! Miss Mal-
derton—” here he stopped, short—“may I hope to be
permitted to offer the humble tribute of ’’
“Really, Mr. Sparkins,” returned the enraptured
Teresa, blushing in the Sweetest confusion, I must refer
you to papa. I never can, without his consent venture
to—"
“Surely he cannot object
“Oh, yes. Indeed, indeed, you know him not l”
interrupted Miss Teresa, well knowing there was noth-
ing to fear, but wishing to make the interview resemble
a scene in Some romantic novel.
“He cannot object to my offering you a glass of
negus,” returned the adorable Sparkins, with some
Surprise.
“Is that all?” thought the disappointed Teresa.
“What a fuss about nothing!”
“It will give me the greatest pleasure, sir, to see you
to dinner at Oak Lodge, Camberwell, on Sunday next,
at five o’clock, if you have no better engagement,”
said Mr. Malderton, at the conclusion of the evening,
as he and his sons were standing in.conversation with
Mr. Horatio Sparkins.
Horatio bowed his acknowledgments, and accepted
the flattering invitation.
“I must confess,” continued the father, offering his
Snuff-box, to his new acquaintance, ‘‘that I don’t en-
joy these assemblies half so much as the comfort—I
had almost said the luxury—of Oak Lodge. They have
no great charms for an elderly man.”
“And, after all, sir, what is man?” said the meta-
physical Sparkins. “I say what is man?”
“Ah! very true,” said Mr. Malderton; “very true.”
“We know that we live and breathe,” continued Ho-
ratio; “that we have wants and wishes, desires and
appetites 55
“Certainly,” said Mr. Frederick Malderton, looking
profound. &
“I say, we know that we exist,” repeated Horatio,
raising his voice, ‘‘ but there we stop; there is an end
to our knowledge; there, is the summit of Our attain-
ments; there, is the termination of our ends. What
more do we know?”
“Nothing,” replied Mr. Frederick — than whom no
35
HORATIO SPARKINS. 361
one was more capable of answering for himself in that
articular. Tom was about to hazard something, but,
ortunately for his reputation, he caught his father's
angry eye, and slunk off like a puppy convicted of
petty larceny.
“Upon my word,” said Mr. Malderton the elder, as
they were returning home in the Fly, “that Mr.
Sparkins is a wonderful young man. Such surprising
knowledge ' such extraordinary information l and such
a splendid mode of expressing himself!”
“I think he must be somebody in disguise,” said Miss
Marianne. “How charmingly romantic!”
“He talks very loud and nicely,” timidly observed
Tom, “but I don’t exactly understand what he
means.”
“I almost begin to despair of your understandin
anything, Tom,” said his father, who, of course, ha
been much enlightened by Mr. Horatio Sparkins’
conversation.
“It strikes me, Tom,” said Miss Teresa, “ that you
have made yourself very ridiculous this evening.”
“No doubt of it,” cried everybody—and the unfortu-
nate Tom reduced himself into the least possible space.
That night, Mr. and Mrs. Malderton had a long conver-
sation respecting their daughter’s prospects and future
arrangements. Miss Teresa went to bed, considering
whether, in the event of her marrying a title, she could
conscientiously encourage the visits of her present
associates; and dreamed, all night, of disguised noble-
men, large routes, ostrich plumes, bridal favours, and
Horatio Sparkins.
Various surmises were hazarded on the Sunday morn-
ing, as to the mode of conveyance which the anxiously
expected Horatio would adopt. Did he keep a gig?—
was it possible he could come on horseback?—or would
he patronise the stage? - These, and various other con-
jectures of equal importance, engrossed the attention
of Mrs. Malderton and her daughters during the whole
morning after church.
“Upon my word, my dear, it’s a most annoying thing
that that vulgar brother of yours should have invited
himself to dine here to-day,” said Mr. Malderton to his
wife. “On account of Mr. Sparkins's coming down, I
purposely abstained from asking anyone but Flamwell.
362 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
And then to think of your brother—a tradesman—it's
insufferable ! I declare I wouldn’t have him mention
his shop, before our new guest—no, not for a thousand
pounds! I wouldn’t care if he had the good sense to
conceal the disgrace he is to the family; but he's so
fond of his horrible business, that he will let people
know what he is.”
Mr. Jacob Barton, the individual alluded to, was a
large grocer; so vulgar, and so lost to all sense of feel-
ing, that he actually never scrupled to avow that he
wasn’t above his business: “he'd made his money by
it, and he didn’t care who know’d it.”
“Ah! Flamwell, my dear fellow, how d'ye do?” said
Mr. Malderton, as a little Spoffish man, with green
spectacles, entered the room. ‘‘You got my note?”
“Yes, I did; and here I am in consequence.”
“You don’t happen to know this Mr. Sparkins by
name P You know everybody?”
Mr. Flamwell was one of those gentlemen of remark-
ably extensive information whom one occasionally meets
in society, who pretend to know everybody, but in
reality know nobody. At Malderton’s, where any
stories about great people were received with a greedy
ear, he was an especial favourite; and, knowing the
kind of people he had to deal with, he carried his pas-
sion of claiming acquaintance with everybody, to the
most immoderate length. He had rather a singular
way of telling his greatest lies in a parenthesis, and
with an air of self-denial, as if he feared being thought
egotistical.
“Why, no, I don’t know him by that name,” returned
Flamwell in a low tone, and with an air of immense
importance. “I have no doubt I know him, though.
Is he tall?”
* Middle-sized,” said Miss Teresa.
“With black hair?” inquired Flamwell, hazarding a
bold guess.
“Yes,” returned Miss Teresa, eagerly.
‘‘ Rather a snub nose ?”
“No,” said the disappointed Teresa, “he has a Roman
nose.”
“I said a Roman nose, didn't I?” inquired Flamwell.
“He’s an elegant young man?”
“Oh, certainly.”
HORATIO SPARKINS. 363
“With remarkably prepossessing manners?”
“Oh, yes!” said all the family together. “You must
know him.”
“Yes, I thought you knew him, if he was anybody,”
triumphantly exclaimed Mr. Malderton. “Who d’ye
think he is?”
“Why, from your description,” said Flamwell, rumi-
nating, and sinking his voice, almost to a whisper, “he
bears a strong resemblance to the Honourable Augus-
tus Fitz-Edward Fitz-John Fitz-Osborne. He’s a very
talented young man, and rather eccentric. It’s ex-
tremely probable he may have changed his name for
some temporary §
Teresa’s heart beat high. Could he be the Honourable
Augustus Fitz-Edward Fitz-John Fitz-Osborne! What
a name to be elegantly engraved upon two glazed cards,
tied together with a piece of white satin ribon! “The
Honourable Mrs. Augustus Fitz-Edward Fitz-John Fitz-
Osborne!” The thought was transport.
“It’s five minutes to five,” said Mr. Malderton, look-
ing at his watch: “I hope he’s not going to disap-
point us.”
“There he is!” exclaimed Miss Teresa, as a loud
double-knock was heard at the door. Everybody
endeavoured to look—as people when they particularly
expect a visitor always do—as if they were perfectly
unsuspicious of the approach of anybody.
- The room-door opened—“Mr. Barton!” said the
Servant.
“Confound the man!” murmured Malderton. “ Ah!
my dear sir, how d'ye do! Any news?”
“Why no,” returned the grocer, in his usual bluff
manner. “No, none partickler. None that I am much
aware of. How d'ye do, gals and boys? Mr. Flamwell,
sir—glad to see you.”
“Here’s Mr. Sparkins!” said Tom, who had been
looking out at the window, ‘‘ on such a black horse!”
There was Horatio, sure enough, on a large black horse,
curvetting and prancing along, like an Astley’s super-
numerary. After a great deal of reining in, and pulling
up, with the accompaniments of Snorting, rearing, and
kicking, the animal consented to stop at about a hundred
yards from the gate, where Mr. Sparkins dismounted,
and confided him to the care of Mr. Malderton’s groom.
364 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
The ceremony of introduction was gone through, in all
due form. Mr. Flamwell looked from behind his green
spectacles at Horatio with an air of mysterious impor-
tance; and the gallant Horatio looked unutterable
things at Teresa.
“Is he the Honourable Mr. Augustus what’s his
name?” whispered Mrs. Malderton to Flamwell, as he
was escorting her to the dining-room.
“Why, no—at least not exactly,” returned that great
authority—“not exactly.”
“Who is he then?”
“ Hush!” said Flamwell, nodding his head with a
grave air, importing that he knew very well; but was
prevented, by some grave reasons of state, from dis-
closing the important secret. It might be one of the
ministers making himself acquainted with the views
of the people.
“Mr. Sparkins,” said the delighted Mrs. Malderton,
“ pray divide the ladies. John, put a chair for the
gentleman between Miss Teresa and Miss Marianne.”
This was addressed to a man who, on Ordinary occa-
sions, acted as half-groom, half-gardener; but, who, as
it was important to make an impression on Mr. Sparkins,
had been forced into a white neckerchief and shoes,
and touched up, and brushed, to look like a second
footman.
The dinner was excellent; Horatio was most attentive
to Miss Teresa, and everyone felt in high spirits, except
Mr. Malderton, who, knowing the propensity of his
brother-in-law, Mr. Barton, endured that sort of agony
which the newspapers inform us is experienced by the
surrounding neighbourhood when a pot-boy hangs him-
self in a hay-loft, and which is “much easier to be
imagined than described.”
“Have you seen your friend, Sir Thomas Noland,
lately, Flamwell?” inquired Mr. Malderton, casting a
sidelong look at Horatio, to see what effect the mention
Of So great a man had upon him.
“Why, no—not very ſately. I saw Lord Gubbleton
the day before yesterday.”
“Ah! I hope his lordship is very well?” said Malder-
ton, in a tone of the greatest interest. It is Scarcely
necessary to say that, until that moment, he had been
quite innocent of the existence of Such a person,
|HORATIO SPARKINS. 365
“Why, yes; he was very well—very well, indeed.
He’s a devilish good fellow. I met him in the City, and
had a long chat with him. Indeed, I’m rather intimate
with him. I couldn’t stop to talk to him as long as I
could wish, though, because I was on my way to a
banker's, a very rich man, and a member of Parliament,
with whom I am also rather, indeed I may say very,
intimate.
“I know whom you mean,” returned the host, con-
sequentially—in reality knowing as much about the
matter as Flamwell himself. “He has a capital busi-
ness.”
This was touching on a dangerous topic.
“Talking of business,” interposed Mr. Barton, from
the centre of the table. “A gentleman whom you
knew very well, Malderton, before you made that
i. lucky spec of yours, called at Our shop the day,
a,Il —”
‘‘ Barton, may I trouble you for a potato,” interrupted
the wretched master of the house, hoping to nip the
story in the bud.
“Certainly,” returned the grocer, quite insensible of
his brother-in-law’s object—“ and he said in a very
plain manner—” -
“Flowry, if you please,” interrupted Malderton again;
dreading the termination of the anecdote, and fearing
a repetition of the word “shop.” -
“He said, says he,” continued the culprit, after de-
spatching the potato; “Says he, how goes on your
business? So I said, jokingly—you know my way—
says I, I’m never above my business, and I hope my
business will never be above me. Ha, ha!”
“Mr. Sparkins,” said the host, vainly endeavouring
to conceal his dismay, “a glass of wine?”
“With the utmost pleasure, sir.”
“Happy to see you.”
“Thank you.”
“We were talking the other evening,” resumed the
host, addressing Horatio, partly with the view of dis-
playing the conversational powers of his new ac-
quaintance, and partly in the hope of drowning the
grocer’s stories—“we were talking the other night about
the nature of man. Your argument struck me very
forcibly.”
366 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“And me,” said Mr. Frederick. Horatio made a
graceful inclination of the head.
“Pray, what is your opinion of woman, Mr. Spar.
kins?” inquired Mrs. Malderton. The young ladies
simpered.
“Man,” replied Horatio, “man, whether he ranged
the bright, gay, flowery plains of a second Eden, or the
more sterile, barren, and I may say, common-place
regions, to which we are compelled to accustom our-
selves, in times such as these; man, under any circum-
stances, or in any place—whether he were bending
beneath the withering blasts of the frigid zone, or
scorching under the rays of a vertical Sun—man,
without woman, would be—alone.”
“I am very happy to find you entertain such honour-
able opinions, Mr. Sparkins,” said Mrs. Malderton.
“And I,” added Miss Teresa. Horatio looked his de-
light, and the young lady blushed.
“Now it’s my opinion,” said Mr. Barton
“I know what you’re going to say,” interposed Mal-
derton, determined not to give his relation another op-
portunity, “ and I don’t agree with you.”
“What?” inquired the astonished grocer.
“I am sorry to differ from you, Barton,” said the
host, in as positive a manner as if he really were con-
tradicting a position which the other had laid down,
“but I cannot give my assent to what I consider a very
monstrous proposition.”
“But I meant to say—”
“You never can convince me,” said Malderton, with
an air of obstinate determination. “Never.”
“And I,” said Mr. Frederick, following up his
father's attack, “cannot entirely agree in Mr. Spar-
kins’s argument.”
“What!” said Horatio, who became more meta-
physical, and more argumentative, as he saw the
female part of the family listening in wondering de-
light—“What! Is effect the consequence of cause?
Is cause the precursor of effect?” *
“That’s the point,” said Flamwell.
“To be sure,” said Mr. Malderton.
“Because, if effect is the consequence of cause, and
if cause does precede effect, I apprehend you are
wrong,” added Horatio.
HORATIO SPARKINS. 367
“Decidedly,” said the toad-eating Flamwell.
“At least, I apprehended that to be the just and logical
deduction?” said Sparkins, in a tone of interrogation.
“No doubt of it,” chimed in Flamwell again. “It
settles the point.”
“Well, perhaps it does,” said Mr. Frederick; “I
didn’t set it before.”
“I don’t exactly see it now,” thought the grocer;
“but I suppose it’s all right.”
“How wonderfully clever he is!” whispered Mrs.
Malderton to her daughters, as they retired to the
drawing-room.
‘‘Oh, he’s quite a love!” said both the young ladies
together; ‘‘ he talks like an oracle. He must have seen
a great deal of life!”
The gentlemen being left to themselves, a pause en-
sued, during which everybody looked very grave, as if
they were quite overcome by the profound nature of the
previous discussion. Flamwell, who had made up his
mind to find out who and what Mr. Horatio Sparkins
really was, first broke silence.
“Excuse me, sir,” said that distinguished personage,
“I presume you have studied for the bar? I thought of
entering once, myself—indeed, I’m rather intimate with
some of the highest ornaments of that distinguished
profession.”
“N–no!” said Horatio, with a little hesitation; “not
exactly.”
“But you have been much among the silk gowns, or
I mistake?” inquired Flamwell deferentially.
“ Nearly all my life,” returned Sparkins.
The question was thus pretty well settled in the mind
of Mr. Flamwell. He was a young gentleman “about
to be called.”
“I shouldn’t like to be a barrister,” said Tom, speak-
ing for the first time, and looking round the table to find
somebody who would notice the remark.
No One made any reply.
“I shouldn’t like to wear a wig,” said Tom, hazard-
ing another observation.
“Tom, I beg you will not make yourself ridiculous,”
said his father. “Pray listen, and improve yourself
by the conversation you hear, and don’t be constantly
making these absurd remarks.”
368 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“Very well, father,” replied the unfortunate Tom,
who had not spoken a word since he had asked for
another slice of beef at a quarter-past five o’clock P. M.,
and it was then eight.
“Well, Tom,” observed his good-natured uncle,
“Never mind! I think with you. I shouldn’t like to
wear a wig. I’d rather wear an apron.”
Mr. Malderton coughed violently. Mr. Barton re-
sumed—“For if a man’s above his business 35
The cough returned with ten-fold violence, and did
not cease until the unfortunate cause of it, in his alarm,
had sº forgotten what he intended to say. -
“Mr. Sparkins,” said Flamwell, returning to the
charge, “Do you happen to know Mr. Delafontaine, of
Bedford-square?”
“I have exchanged cards with him; since which, in-
deed, I have had an opportunity of serving him con-
siderably,” replied Horatio, slightly colouring; no
doubt, at having been betrayed into making the ac-
knowledgment.
“You are very lucky, if you have had an opportu-
nity of obliging that great man,” observed Flamwell,
with an air of profound respect.
“I don’t know who he is,” he whispered to Mr. Mal-
derton, confidentially, as they followed Horatio up to
the drawing-room. “It’s quite clear, however, that he
belongs to the law, and that he is somebody of great
importance, and very highly connected.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” returned his companion.
The remainder of the evening passed away most de-
lightfully. Mr. Malderton, relieved from his apprehen-
sions by the circumstance of Mr. Barton’s falling into a
profound sleep, was as affable and gracious as possible.
Miss Teresa played the “Fall of Paris,” as Mr. Sparkins
declared, in a most masterly manner, and both of them,
- assisted by Mr. Frederick, tried over glees and trios
without number; they having made the pleasing dis-
covery that their voices harmonized beautifully. To be
sure, they all sang the first part; and Horatio, in addi-
tion to the slight irº. of having no ear, was per-
fectly innocent of knowing a note of music; still, they
passed the time very agreeably, and it was past twelvé
o'clock before Mr. Sparkins ordered the mourning-
coach-looking steed to be brought out—an order which
HORATIO SPARKINS. 36%)
was only complied with, on the distinct understanding
that he was to repeat his visit on the following
Sunday.
“But, perhaps, Mr. Sparkins will form one of our
party to-morrow evening?” suggested Mrs. M. “Mr.
Malderton intends taking the girls to see the panto-
mime.” Mr. Sparkins bowed, and promised to join the
party in box 48, in the course of the evening. -
“We will not tax you for the morning,” said Miss
Teresa, bewitchingly; “for ma is going to take us to all
sorts of places, shopping. I know that gentlemen have a
great horror of that employment.” Mr. Sparkins bowed
again, and declared that he should be delighted, but
business of importance occupied him in the morning.
Flamwell looked at Malderton significantly—“It’s
term time!” he whispered. ::
At twelve o’clock on the following morning, the
“fly.” was at the door of Oak Lodge, to convey Mrs.
Malderton and her daughters on their expedition for
the day. They were to dine and dress for the play at
a friend’s house. First, driving thither with their band-
boxes, they departed on their first errand to make some
purchases at Messrs. Jones, Spruggins, and Smith's, of
Tottenham-court-road; after which, they were to go to
Redmayne's in Bond-street; thence, to innumerable
laces that no one ever heard of. The young ladies
eguiled the tediousness of the ride by eulogising Mr.
Horatio Sparkins, scolding their mamma for taking
them so far to save a shilling, and wondering whether
they should ever reach their destination. At length,
the vehicle stopped before a dirty-looking ticketed
linen-draper's shop, with goods of all kinds, and labels
of all sorts and sizes, in the window. There were
dropsical figures of seven with a little three-farthings
in the corner; ‘‘perfectly invisible to the naked eye; ”
three hundred and fifty thousand ladies’ boas, from one
shilling and a penny halfpenny; real French kid shoes,
at two and ninepence per pair; green parasols, at an
equally cheap rate; and “every description of goods,”
as the proprietors said—and they must know best—
“fifty per cent. under cost-price.”
‘‘ Lor! ma, what a place you have brought us tol”
said Miss Teresa; “what would Mr. Sparkins say if he
could see us!”
- 24
370 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“Ah! what, indeed!” said Miss Marianne, horrified
at the idea. - - - -
‘‘ Pray be seated, ladies. What is the first article?”
inquired the obsequious master of the ceremonies of the
establishment, who, in his large white neckcloth and
formal tie, looked like a bad ‘‘portrait of a gentleman’
in the Somerset-house exhibition.
‘‘I want to see some silks,” answered Mrs. Malderton.
“Directly, ma'am.—Mr. Smith! Where is Mr. Smith?’”
“Here, sir,” cried a voice at the back of the shop.
“Pray make haste, Mr. Smith,” said the M.C. “You
never are to be found when you’re wanted, sir.” -
Mr. Smith, thus enjoined to use all possible despatch,
leaped over the counter with great agility, and placed
himself before the newly arrived customers. Mrs.
Malderton uttered a faint scream; Miss Teresa, who had
been stooping down to talk to her sister, raised her
head, and beheld—Horatio Sparkins!
“We will draw a veil,” as novel writers say,” over
the scene that ensued. The mysterious, philosophical,
romantic, metaphysical Sparkins—he who, to the in-
teresting Teresa, seemed like the embodied idea of the
young dukes and poetical exquisites in blue silk dress-
ing-gowns, and ditto ditto slippers, of who she had read
and dreamed, but had never expected to behold, was
suddenly converted into Mr. Samuel Smith, the assistant
at a “cheap shop; ” the junior partner in a slippery firm
of some three weeks’ existence. The diº evanish-
ment of the hero of Oak Lodge, on this unexpected
recognition, could only be equalled by that of a furtive
dog with a considerable kettle at his tail. All the hopes
of the Maldertons were destined at once to melt away,
like the lemon ices at a Company’s dinner; Almack's
was still to them as distant as the North Pole; and Miss
Teresa had as much chance of a husband as Captain
Ross had of the north-west passage. -
Years have elapsed since the occurrence of this dread-
ful morning. The daisies have thrice bloomed on
Camberwell-green; the sparrows have thrice repeated
their vernal chirps in Camberwell-grove; but the Miss
Maldertons are still unmated. Miss Teresa’s case is
more desperate than ever; but Flamwell is yet in the
Zenith of his reputation; and the family have the same
predilection for aristocratic personages, with an in-
creased aversion to anything low. ----
THE BLACK VEIL. 371
CHAPTER VI.
T H E B L A C K . W E II.
ON; winter’s evening towards the close of the year
1800, or within a year or two of that time, a young
medical practitioner, recently established in business,
was seated by a cheerful fire, in his little parlour,
listening to the wind which was beating the rain in
pattering drops against the window, and rumbling
dismally in the chimney. The night was wet and
cold; he had been walking through mud and water
the whole day, and was now comfortably reposing
in his dressing-gown and slippers, more than half
asleep and less than half awake, revolving a thou-
sand matters in his wandering imagination. First,
he thought how hard the wind was blowing, and
how the cold, sharp rain would be at that moment
beating in his face, if he were not comfortably
housed at home. Then, his mind reverted to his annual
Christmas visit to his native place and dearest
friends; he thought how glad they would all be to see
him, and how happy it would make Rose if he could
only tell her that he had found a patient at last, and
hoped to have more, and to come down again, in a few
months’ time, and marry her, and take her home to
gladden his lonely fireside, and stimulate him to fresh
exertions. Then, he began to wonder when his first
patient would appear, or whether he was destined, by
a special dispensation of Providence, never to have any
patients at all; and then, he thought about Rose again,
and dropped to sleep and dreamed about her, till the
tones of her sweet merry voice sounded in his ears, and
her softy tiny hand rested on his shoulder.
There was a hand upon his shoulder, but it was neither
soft nor tiny; its owner being a corpulent round-headed
boy, who, in consideration of the sum of one shilling
per week and his food, was let out by the parish to
372 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
carry medicine and messages. As there was no demand
for the medicine, however, and no necessity for the
messages, he usually occupied his unemployed hours—
averaging fourteen a day—in abstracting peppermint
drops, taking animal mourishment, and going to sleep.
“A lady, sir—a lady l’ whispered the boy, rousing
his master with a shake.
“What lady?” cried our friend, starting up, not
quite certain that his dream was an illusion, and half
º that it might be Rose herself.-‘‘What lady?
Where?” -
“There, sir!” replied the boy, pointing to the glass
door leading into the surgery, with an expression of
alarm which the very unusual apparition of a customer
might have tended to excite. ſe
The surgeon looked towards the door, and started
himself for an instant, on beholding the appearance of
his unlooked-for visitor.
It was a singularly tall woman, dressed in deep
mourning, and standing so close to the door that her
face almost touched the glass. The upper part of her
figure was carefully muffled in a black shawl, as if for the
purpose of concealment; and her face was shrouded by
a thick black veil. She stood perfectly erect; her figure
was drawn up to its full height, and though the sur-
geon felt that the eyes beneath the veil were fixed on
him, she stood perfectly motionless, and evinced, by no
gesture whatever, the slightest consciousness of his
having turned towards her.
“Do you wish to consult me?” he inquired, with some
hesitation, holding open the door. It opened inwards,
and ºtherefore the action did not alter the position
of the figure, which still remained motionless on the
same spot. -
She slightly inclined her head in token of acqui-
€SCéI) Ce.
“Pray walk in,” said the surgeon.
The ſigure moved a step forward; and then, turning
in the direction of the boy—to his infinite horror—
appeared to hesitate. O
* Leave the room, Tom,” said the young man, ad-
dressing the boy, whose large round eyes had been ex-
tended to their utmost width during this brief inter-
view. “Draw the curtain and shut the door.”
THE BLACK VEIL. 373
The boy drew a green curtain across the glass part of
the door, retired into the surgery, closed the door after
him, and immediately applied one of his large eyes to
the keyhole on the other side. -*
The surgeon drew a chair to the fire, and motioned
the visitor to a seat. The mysterious figure slowly
moved towards it. As the blaze shone upon the black
dress, the surgeon observed that the bottom of it was
Saturated with mud and rain.
“You are very wet,” he said.
“I am,” said the stranger, in a low, deep voice.
“And you are ill?” added the surgeon, compassion-
ately, for the tone was that of a person in pain.
“I am,” was the reply—‘‘ very ill; not bodily, but
mentally. It is not for myself, or on my own behalf,”
continued the Stranger, “that I come to you. If I
laboured under bodily disease, I should not be out,
alone, at Such an hour, or on such a night as this; and
if I were afflicted with it, twenty-four hours' hence,
God knows how gladly I would lie down and pray to
die. It is for another that I beseech your aid, sir. I
may be mad to ask it for him—I think I am; but, night
after night, through the long, dreary hours of watching
and weeping, the thought has been ever present
to my mind; and though even I see the hopelessness of
human assistance availing him, the bare thought of
laying him in his grave without it, makes my blood run
cold!” And a shudder, such as the surgeon well knew
art could not produce, trembled through the speaker’s
frame.
There was a desperate earnestness in this woman’s
manner, that went to the young man’s heart. He was
young in his profession, and had not yet witnessed
enough of the miseries which are daily presented before
the eyes of its members, to have grown comparatively
callous to human suffering.
“If,” he said, rising hastily, “the person of whom
you speak, be in so hopeless a condition as you describe,
not a moment is to be lost. I will go with you instantly.
Why did you not obtain medical advice before?”
“Because it would have been useless before—because
it is useless even now,” replied the woman, clasping
her hands passionately.
The Surgeon gazed, for a moment, on the black
374 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
veil, as if to ascertain the expression of the features
beneath it; its thickness, however, rendered such a
result impossible. -
“You are ill,” he said, gently, “although you do not
know it. The fever which has enabled you to bear,
without feeling it, the fatigue you have evidently un-
dergone, is burning within you now. Put that toº your
lips,” he continued, pouring out a glass of water—
“compose yourself for a few moments, and then tell
me, as calmly as you can, what the disease of the
patient is, and how long he has been ill. When I know
what it is necessary I should know, to render my visit
serviceable to him, I am ready to accompany you.”
The stranger lifted the glass of water to her mouth,
without raising the veil; put it down again, untasted,
and burst into tears.
“I know,” she said, sobbing aloud, “that what I say
to you now, seems like the ravings of fever. I have
been told so before, less kindly than by you. I am not
a young woman; and they do say, that as life steals on
towards its final close, the last short remnant, worthless
as it may seem to all beside, is dearer to its possessor
than all the years that have gone before, connected
though they be with the recollection of old friends long
since dead, and young ones—children perhaps—who
have fallen off from, and forgotten one as completely
as if they had died too. My natural term of life cannot
be many years longer, and should be dear on that
account; but I would lay it down without a sigh—with
cheerfulness—with joy—if what I tell you now, were
only false, or imaginary. To-morrow morning, he of
whom I speak will be, I know, though I would fain
think otherwise, beyond the reach of human aid; and
yet, to-night, though he is in deadly peril, you must not
see, and could not serve, him.”
‘‘I am unwilling to increase your distress,” said the
surgeon, after a short pause, “by making any comment
on what you have just said, or appearing desirous to in-
vestigate a subject you are so anxious to conceal; but
there is an inconsistency in your statement which I
cannot reconcile with probability. This person is dying
to-night, and I cannot see him when my assistance
might possibly avail; you apprehend it will be useless
to-morrow, and yet you would have me see him then!
THE BLACK VEIL. 3%;
If he be, indeed, as dear to you, as your words and
manner would imply, why not try to save his life
before delay and the progress of his disease render it
impracticable?”
| “God help me!” exclaimed the woman, weeping bit-
terly, “how can I hope strangers will believe what
appears incredible, even to myself? You will not see
him then, sir?” she added, rising suddenly
“I did not say that I declined to see him,” replied the
Surgeon; ‘‘ but I warn you, that if you persist in this ex-
traordinary procrastination, and the individual dies, a
fearful responsibility rests with you.”
“The responsibility will rest heavily somewhere,”
replied the stranger bitterly. “Whatever responsibil-
ity rests with me, I am content to bear, and ready to
answer.”
“As I incur none,” continued the surgeon, “by acced-
ing to your request, I will see him in the morning, if
you leave me the address. At what hour can he be
seen P”
“Nîme,” replied the stranger.
“You must excuse my pressing these inquiries,” said
the surgeon. “But is he in your charge now?”
“He is not,” was her rejoinder,
“Then, if I gave you instructions for his treatment
through the night, you could not assist him?”
º woman wept bitterly, as she replied, “I could
not.”
Finding that there was but little prospect of obtaining
more information by prolonging the interview; and
anxious to spare the woman’s feelings, which, subdued
at first by a violent effort, were now irrepressible and
most painful to witness; the surgeon repeated his
promise of calling in the morning at the appointed
hour. His visitor, after giving him a direction to an
obscure part of Walworth, left the house in the same
mysterious manner in which she had entered it.
It will be readily believed that so extraordinary a
visit produced a considerable impression on the mind.
of the young Surgeon; and that he speculated a great
deal and to very little purpose on the possible circum-
stances of the case. In common with the generality of
people, he had often heard and read of singular in-
stances, in which a presentiment of death, at a partic-
376 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
ular day, or even minute, had been entertained and
realised. At one moment he was inclined to think that
the present might be such a case; but, then, it occurred
to him that all the anecdotes of the kind he had ever
heard, were of persons who had been troubled with a
foreboding of their own death. This woman, however,
spoke of another person—a man; and it was impossible
to suppose that a mere dream or delusion of fancy
would induce her to speak of his approaching dissolu-
tion with such terrible certainty as she had spoken. It
could not be that the man was to be murdered in the
morning, and that the woman, originally a consenting
party, and bound to secrecy by an oath, had relented,
and, though unable to prevent the commission of some
outrage on the victim, had determined to prevent his
death if possible, by the timely interposition of medi-
cal aid? The idea of such things happening within two
miles of the metropolis appeared too wild and prepos-
terous to be entertained beyond the instant. Then his
original impression that the woman’s intellects were
disordered, recurred; and, as it was the only mode of
solving the difficulty with any degree of satisfaction,
he obstimately made up his mind to believe that she
was mad. Certain misgivings upon this point, how-
ever, stole upon his thoughts at the time, and presented
themselves again and again through the long dull
course of a sleepless night: during which, in spite of
all his efforts to the contrary, he was unable to banish
the black veil from his disturbed imagination.
The back part of Walworth, at its greatest distance
from town, is a straggling miserable place enough,
even in these days; but five-and-thirty years ago, the
greater portion of it was little better than a dreary
waste, inhabited by a few scattered people of question-
able character, whose poverty prevented their living in
any better neighbourhood, or whose pursuits and mode
of life rendered its solitude desirable. Very many of
the houses which have since sprung up on all sides, were
not built until some years afterwards: and the great
majority, even of those which were sprinkled about, at
irregular intervals, were of the rudest and most miser-
able description.
The appearance of the place through which he walked
in the morning, was not calculated to raise the spirits
THE BLACK VEIL. 377
of the young surgeon, or to dispel any feeling of anxiety
or depression which the singular kind of visit he was
about to make, had awakened. Striking off from the high
road, his way lay across a marshy common, through
irregular lanes, with here and there a ruinous and
dismantled cottage fast falling to pieces with decay and
neglect. A stunted tree, or pool of stagnant water,
roused into a sluggish action by the heavy rain of the
preceding night, skirted the path occasionally; and,
now and then, a miserable patch of garden-ground,
with a few old boards knocked together for a summer-
house, and old palings imperfectly mended with stakes
pilfered from the neighbouring hedges, bore testimony,
at once, to the poverty of the inhabitants, and the little
scruple they entertained in appropriating the property
of other people to their own use. Occasionally, a filthy-
º; woman would make her appearance from the
door of a dirty house, to empty the contents of some
cooking utensil into the gutter in front, or to scream
after a little slip-shod girl who had contrived to stagger
a few yards from the door under the weight of a sallow
infant almost as big as herself, but, scarcely anything
was stirring around; and so much of the prospect as
could be faintly traced through the cold damp mist
which hung heavily over it, presented a lonely and
dreary appearence perfectly in keeping with the objects
we have described.
After plodding wearily through the mud and mire;
making many inquiries for the place to which he had
been directed; and receiving as many contradictory and
unsatisfactory replies in return; the young man at
length arrived before the house which had been pointed
out to him as the object of his destination. It was a
small low building, one story above the ground, with
even a more desolate and unpromising exterior than
any he had yet passed. An old yellow curtain was
closely drawn across the window up-stairs, and the par-
lour shutters were closed, but not fastened. The house
was detached from any other, and, as it stood at an
angle of a narrow lane, there was no other habitation
in sight. .
When we say that the surgeon hesitated, and walked
a few paces beyond the house, before he could prevail
upon himself to lift the knocker, we say nothing that
378 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
need raise a smile upon the face of the boldest reader.
The police of London were a very different body in that
day; the isolated position of the suburbs, when the rage
for building and the progress of improvement, had not
yet begun to connect them with the main body of the
city and its environs, rendered many of them (and this
in particular) a place of resort for the worst and most
depraved characters. Even the streets in the gayest
parts of London were imperfectly lighted, at that time;
and such places as these, were left entirely to the mercy
of the moon and stars. The chances of detecting des-
perate characters, or of tracing them to their haunts, .
were thus rendered very few, and their offences natu-
rally increased in boldness, as the consciousness of com-
Fº security became the more impressed upon them
y daily experience. Added to these considerations, it
must be remembered that the young man had spent
some time in the public hospitals of the metropolis; and,
although neither Burke nor Bishop had then gained a
horrible notoriety, his own observation might have
suggested to him how easily the atrocities to which the
former has since given his name, might be committed.
Be this as it may, whatever reflection made him hesi-
tate he did hesitate; but, being a young man of strong
mind and great personal courage, it was only for an
instant;-he stepped briskly back, and knocked gently
at the door.
A low whispering was audible, immediately after-
wards, as if some person at the end of the passage were
conversing stealthily, with another on the landing
above. It was succeeded by the noise of a pair of heavy
boots upon the bare floor. The door-chain was softly
unfastened; the door opened; and a tall, ill-favoured
man, with black hair, and a face as the surgeon often
declared afterwards, as pale and haggard, as the
countenance of any dead man he ever saw, presented
himself.
“Walk in, sir,” he said in a low tone.
The surgeon did so, and the man, having secured the
door again, by the chain, led the way to a small back
parlour at the extremity of the passage.
‘‘Am I in time?”
“Too soon!” replied the man. The surgeon turned
hastily round, with a gesture of astonishment not un-
THE BLACK WEIT, 379
mixed with alarm, which he found it impossible to
repress.
“If you’ll step in here, sir,” said the man, who had
evidently noticed the action—“if you’ll step in here,
sir, you won’t be detained five minutes, I assure you.”
The surgeon at once walked into the room. The man
closed the door, and left him alone.
It was a little cold room, with no other furniture than
two deal chairs, and a table of the same material. A
handful of fire, unguarded by any fender, was burning
in the grate, which brought out the damp if it served
no more comfortable purpose, for the unwholesome
moisture was stealing down the walls, in long, slug-
like tracks. The window, which was broken and
patched in many places, looked into a small enclosed
piece of ground, almost covered with water. Not a
sound was to be heard, either within the house, or with-
out. The young surgeon sat down by the fireplace, to
await the result of his first professional visit.
He had not remained in this position, many minutes,
when the noise of some approaching vehicle struck his
ear. It stopped; the street door was opened; a low talk-
ing succeeded, accompanied with a shuffling noise of
footsteps, along the passage and on the stairs, as if two
or three men were engaged in carrying some heavy
body to the room above. The creaking of the Stairs, a
few seconds afterwards, announced that the new comers
having completed their task, whatever it was, were
leaving the house. The door was again closed, and the
former silence was restored.
Another five minutes elapsed, and the surgeon had
resolved to explore the house, in search of some one to
whom he might make his errand known, when the
room-door opened, and his last night’s visitor, dressed
in exactly the same manner, with the veil lowered as
before, motioned him to advance. The singular height
of her form, coupled with the circumstance of her not
Speaking, caused the idea to pass across his brain, for
an instant, that it might be a man disguised in woman’s
attire. The hysteric sobs which issued from beneath
the veil, and the convulsive attitude of grief of the
whole figure, however, at once exposed the absurdity
of the suspicion; and he hastily followed.
The woman led the way up-stairs to the front room,
380 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
and paused at the door, to let him enter first. It was
scantily furnished with an old deal box, a few chairs,
and a tent bedstead, without hangings or cross-rails,
which was covered with a patchwork counterpane.
The dim light admitted through the curtain which he
had noticed from the outside, rendered the objects in
the room so indistinct, and communicated to all of them
so uniform a hue, that he did not, at first, perceive the
object on which his eye at once rested when the woman
rushed frantically past him, and flung herself on her
knees by the bedside. '
Stretched upon the bed, closely enveloped in a linen
wrapper, and covered with blankets, lay a human form,
stiff and motionless. The head and face, which were
those of a man, were uncovered, save by a bandage
which passed over the head and under the chin. The
eyes were closed. The left arm lay heavily across the
bed, and the woman held the passive hand.
The surgeon gently pushed the woman aside, and
took the hand in his. -
“My God!” he exclaimed, letting it fall involun-
tarily—“the man is dead!” -
The woman started to her feet and beat her hands
together. “Oh!” don’t say so, sir,” she exclaimed,
with a burst of passion, amounting almost to frenzy.
“Oh! don’t say so, sir! I can’t bear it! Men have been
brought to life, before, when unskilful people have
given them up for lost; and men have died, who might
have been restored, if proper means had been resorted
to. Don’t let him lie here, sir, without one effort to save
him! This very moment life may be passing away. Do
try, sir, do, for Heaven’s sake!”—And while speaking,
she hurriedly chafed, first the forehead, and then the
breast, of the senseless form before her; and then,
wildly beat the cold hands, which when she ceased to
hold them, fell listlessly and heavily back on the
coverlet.
“It is of no use, my good woman,” said the surgeon
soothingly, as he withdrew his hand from the man’s
breast “Stay—undraw that curtain!”
“Why?” said the woman, starting up.
“Undraw that curtain!” repeated the surgeon, in an
agitated tone,
“I darkened the room on purpose,” said the woman,
THE BLACK WEIT,. 3Si.
throwing herself before him as he rose foundraw it.—
“Oh! sir, have pity on me! If it can be of no use, and
he is really i. do not expose that form to other eyes
than mine!”
“This man died no natural or easy death,” said the
surgeon. “I must see the body!” With a motion so
sudden, that the woman hardly knew that he had
slipped from beside her, he tore open the curtain,
admitted the full light of day, and returned to the
bedside.
“There has been violence here,” he said, pointing
towards the body, and gazing intently on the face,
from which the black veil was now, for the first time,
removed. In the excitement of a minute before, the
female had thrown off the bonnet and veil, and now
stood with her eyes fixed upon him. Her features were
those of a woman of about fifty, who had once been
handsome. Sorrow and weeping had left traces upon
them which not time itself would ever have produced
without their aid; her face was deadly pale; and there
was a nervous contortion of the lip, and an unnatural
fire in her eye, which showed too plainly that her bod-
ily and mental powers had nearly sunk, beneath an
accumulation of misery.
“There has been violence here,” said the surgeon,
preserving his searching glance. -
“There has!” replied the woman.
“This man has been murdered.” +.
“That I call God to witness he has,” said the woman,
passionately; “pitilessly, inhumanly murdered!”
“By whom?” said the surgeon, seizing the woman
by the arm.
“Look at the butchers’ marks, and then ask me * she
replied. -
The surgeon turned his face towards the bed, and
bent over the body which now lay full in the light of
the window. The throat was swollen and a livid mark
ºrded it. The truth flashed suddenly upon
1I]].
“This is one of the men who were hanged this
morning; ” he exclaimed, turning away with a shudder.
“It is,” replied the woman, with a cold, unmeaning
Stare.
“Who was he?” inquired the surgeon.
382 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“My Son,” rejoined the woman; and fell senseless at
his feet.
It was true. A companion, equally guilty with him-
Self, had been acquitted for want of evidence; and this
man had been left for death, and executed. To recount
the circumstances of the case, at this distant period, must
be unnecessary, and might give pain to some persons
still alive. The history was an every-day one. The
mother was a widow without friends or money, and had
denied herself necessaries to bestow them on her orphan
boy. That boy, unmindful of her prayers, and forgetful
of the sufferings she had endured for him—incessant
anxiety of mind, and voluntary starvation of body—had
plunged into a career of dissipation and crime. And
this was the result; his own death by the hangman’s
hands, and his mother's shame, and incurable insanity.
For many years after this occurrence, and when
profitable and arduous avocations would have led many,
men to forget that such a miserable being existed, the
young surgeon was a daily visitor at the side of the
harmless mad woman; not only soothing her by his
presence and kindness, but alleviating the rigour of her
condition by pecuniary donations for her comfort and
Support, bestowed with no sparing hand. In the tran-
sient gleam of recollection and consciousness which
preceded her death, a prayer for his welfare and pro-
tection, as fervent as mortal ever breathed, rose from
the lips of this poor friendless creature. That prayer
flew to Heaven and was heard. The blessings he was
instrumental in conferring, have been repaid to him a
thousand-fold; but, amid all the honours of rank and
station which have since been heaped upon him, and
which he has so well earned, he can have no reminis-
cence more gratifying to his heart than that connected
with The Black Veil.
THE STEAM EXCURSION. 383
CHAPTER VII
THE STEAM EXCURSION.
R. PERCY NOAKES was a law-student, inhabit-
ing a set of chambers on the fourth floor, in one
of those houses in Gray’s-inn-square which command
an extensive view of the gardens, and their usual
adjuncts—flaunting nursery-maids, and town-made
children, with parenthetical legs. Mr. Percy Noakes
was what is generally termed—“a devilish good fellow.”
He had a large circle of acquaintance, and seldom dined
at his own expense. He used to talk politics to papas,
flatter the vanity of mammas, do the amiable to their
daughters, make pleasure engagements with their sons,
and romp with the younger branches. Like those
paragons of perfection, advertising foot-men out of
place, he was always “willing to make himself generally
useful.” If any old lady, whose son was in India, gave
a ball, Mr. Percy Noakes was master of the ceremonies;
if any young lady made a stolen match, Mr. Percy
Noakes gave her away; if a juvenile wife presented her
husband with a blooming cherub, Mr. Percy Noakes
was either godfather, or deputy godfather; and if any
member of a friend’s family died, Mr. Percy Noakes
was invariably to be seen in the second mourning coach,
with a white handkerchief to his eyes, sobbing—to use
his own appropriate and expressive description—
“like winkin l’”
It may readily be imagined that these numerous avo-
cations were rather calculated to interfere with Mr.
Percy Noakes’s professional studies. Mr. Percy Noakes
was perfectly aware of the fact, and had, therefore,
after mature reflection, made up his mind not to study
at all—a laudable determination, to which he adhered
in the most praiseworthy manner. His sitting-room
presented a strange chaos of dress-gloves, boxing-
384 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
gloves, caricatures albums, invitation-cards, foils,
cricket bats, card-board drawings, paste, gum, and fifty
other miscellaneous articles, heaped together in the
strangest confusion. He was always making some-
thing for somebody, or planning some party of pleasure,
which was his great forte. He invariably spoke with
astonishing rapidity; was Smart, Spoffish, and eight-
and-twenty. $
“Splendid idea, 'pon my life!” soliloquised Mr. Percy
Noakes, over his morning’s coffee, as his mind reverted
to a suggestion which had been thrown out on the pre-
vious night, by a lady at whose house he had spent the
evening. “ Glorious idea!—Mrs. Stubbs.”
“Yes, sir,” replied a dirty old woman with an in-
flamed countenance, emerging from the bedroom, with
a barrel of dirt and cinders.-This was the laundress.
“Did you call, sir!” -
“Oh! Mrs. Stubbs, I’m going out. If that tailor
should call again, you’d better say—you’d better say
I’m out of town, and shan’t be back for a fortnight; and
if that boot-maker should come, tell him I’ve lost his
address, or I’d have sent him that little amount. Mind
he writes it down; and if Mr. Hardy should call—you
know Mr. Hardy?” - -
“The funny gentleman, sir?
“Ah! the funny gentleman. If Mr. Hardy should
call, say. I’ve gone to Mrs. Taunton’s about that water-
party.” - - - .
“Yes, sir.” -
“And, if any fellow calls, and says he’s come about
a steamer, tell him to be here at five o’clock this after-
noon, Mrs. Stubbs.”
“Very well, sir.”
Mr. Percy Noakes brushed his hat, whisked the
crumbs off his inexplicables with a silk handkerchief,
gave the ends of his hair a persuasive roll round his
forefinger, and sallied forth for Mrs. Taunton’s domi-
cile in Great Marlborough-street, where she and her
daughters occupied the upper part of a house. She
was a good-looking widow of fifty, with the form of a
giantess and the mind of a child. The pursuit of
pleasure, and some means of killing time, were the
sole end of her existence. She doted on her daughters,
who were as frivolous as herself.
THE STEAM EXCURSION. 385
A general exclamation of satisfaction hailed the
arrival of Mr. Percy Noakes, who went through the
ordinary salutations, and threw himself into an easy
chair near the ladies’ work-table, with the ease of a
regularly established friend of the family. Mrs. Taun-
ton was busily engaged in planting immense bright
bows on every part of a Smart cap on which it was
possible to stick one; Miss Emily Taunton was making
a watch-guard; Miss Sophia was at the piano, practising
a new song—poetry by the young officer, or the police-
officer, or the custom-house officer, or some other inter-
esting amateur. *
“You good creature!” said Mrs. Taunton, addressing
the gallant Percy. “You really are a good soul!
You’ve come about the water-party, I know.”
“I should rather suspect I had,” replied Mr. Noakes,
triumphantly. “Now come here, girls, and I’ll tell you
all about it.” Miss Emily and Miss Sophia advanced to
the table.
“Now,” continued Mr. Percy Noakes, “it seems to
me that the best way will be, to have a committee of
ten, to make all the arrangements, and manage the
whole set-out. Then, I propose that the expenses shall
be paid by these ten fellows jointly.”
“Excellent, indeed!” said Mrs. Taunton, who highly
approved of this part of the arrangements.
“Then, my plan is, that each of these ten fellows
shall have the power of asking five people. There
must be a meeting of the committee, at my chambers,
to make all the arrangements, and these people shall
be then named; every member of the committee shall
have the power of black-balling any one who is pro-
posed; and one black ball shall exclude that person.
This will ensure our having a pleasant party, you
know.”
“What a manager you are!” interrupted Mrs. Taun-
ton again.
“Charming!” said the lovely Emily.
‘‘I never did!” ejaculated Sophia.
“Yes, I think it’ll do,” replied Mr. Percy Noakes, who
was now quite in his element. “I think it’ll do. Then
you know we shall go down to the Nore, and back, and
have a regular capital cold dinner laid out in the cabin
before we start, so that everything may be ready with-
- 25
3
86 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
out any confusion; and we shall have the lunch laid
out, on deck, in those little tea-garden-looking concerns
by the paddle boxes—I don’t know what you call 'em.
Then, we shall hire a steamer expressly for our party,
and a band, and have the deck chalked, and we shall
be able to dance quadrilles all day; and, then, whoever
we know that’s musical, you know, why they’ll make
themselves useful and agreeable; and—and—upon the
whole, I really hope we shall.have a glorious day, you
know !”
The announcement of these arrangements was re-
ceived with the utmost enthusiasm. Mrs. Taunton,
Emily, and Sophia, were loud in their praises.
“Well, but tell me, Percy,” said Mrs. Taunton, “who
are the ten gentlemen to be?”
“Oh I know plenty of fellows who'll be delighted
with the scheme,” replied Mr. Percy Noakes: “ of course
we shall have — ”
“Mr. Hardy!” interrupted the servant, announcing a
visitor. Miss Sophia and Miss Emily hastily assumed
the most interesting attitudes that could be adopted on
so short a notice.
“How are you ?” said a stout gentleman of about
forty, pausing at the door in the attitude of an awkward
harlequin. This was Mr. Hardy, whom we have before
described, on the authority of Mrs. Stubbs, as “the
funny gentleman.” He was an Astley-Cooperish Joe
Miller—a practical joker, immensely popular with mar-
ried ladies, and a general favourite with young men.
He was always engaged in some pleasure excursion or
other, and delighted in getting somebody into a scrape
on such occasions. He could sing comic songs, imitate
hackney-coachmen and fowls, play airs on his chin,
and execute concertos on the Jews'-harp. He always
eat and drank most immoderately, and was the
bosom friend of Mr. Percy Noakes. He had a red
face, a somewhat husky voice, and a tremendous
laugh.
“How are you ?” said this worthy, laughing, as if it
were the finest joke in the world to make a morning .
call, and shaking hands with the ladies with as much
vehemence as if their arms had been so many pump-
handles.
“You’re just the very man I wanted,” said Mr. Percy
THE STEAM EXCURSION 387
Noakes, who proceeded to explain the cause of his being
in requisition.
“Ha! haſ hal” shouted Hardy, after hearing the
statement, and receiving a detailed account of the pro-
posed excursion. “Oh, capital glorious ! What a day
it will be what fun!—But, I say, when are you going
to begin making the arrangements P”
“No time like the present—at once, if you
please.”
“Oh, charming !” cried the ladies. “Pray, do!”
Writing materials were laid before Mr. Percy Noakes,
and the names of the different members of the com-
mittee were agreed on, after as much discussion
between him and Mr. Hardy as if the fate of nations
had depended on their appointment. It was then
agreed that a meeting should ºw. at Mr. Percy
Noakes’s chambers on the ensuing Wednesday evening
at eight o’clock, and the visitors departed.
Wednesday evening arrived; eight o’clock came, and
eight members of the committee were punctual in
their attendance. Mr. Loggins, the solicitor, of BOS-
well-court, sent an excuse, and Mr. Samuel Briggs,
the ditto of Furnival’s Inn, sent his brother: much
to his (the brother’s) satisfaction, and greatly to the
discomfiture of Mr. Percy Noakes. Between the Brig-
geses and the Tauntons there existed a degree of
implacable hatred, quite unprecedented. The ani-
mosity between the Montagues and Capulets, was
nothing to that which prevailed between these two
illustrious houses. Mrs. Briggs was a widow, with
three daughters and two sons; Mr. Samuel, the
oldest, was an attorney, and Mr. Alexander, the
youngest, was under articles to his brother. They
resided in Portland-street, Oxford-street, and moved
in the same orbit as the Tauntons—hence their mutual
dislike. If the Miss Briggses appeared in Smart bon-
nets, the Miss Tauntons eclipsed them with Smarter.
If Mrs. Taunton appeared in a cap of all the hues of
the rainbow, Mrs. Briggs forthwith mounted a toque,
with all the patterns of the kaleidoscope. If Miss
Sophia Taunton learnt a new song, two of the Miss
Briggses came out with a new duet. The Tauntons had
once gained a temporary triumph with the assistance
of a harp, but the Briggses brought three guitars into
388 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
the field, and effectually routed the enemy. There
was no end to the rivalry between them.
Now, as Mr. Samuel Briggs was a mere machine, a sort
of self-acting legal walking-stick; and as the party
was known to have originated, however remotely,
with Mrs. Taunton, the female branches of the Briggs
family had arranged that Mr. Alexander should
attend, instead of his brother; and as the said Mr.
Alexander was deservedly celebrated for possessing
all the pertinacity of a bankruptcy-court attorney,
&mined with the obstimacy of that useful animal
which browses on the thistle, he required but little
tuition. He was especially enjoined to make himself
as disagreeable as possible; and, above all, to black-
ball the Tauntons at every hazard.
The proceedings of the evening were opened by Mr.
Percy Noakes. After successfully urging on the
gentlemen present the propriety of their mixing some
brandy-and-water, he briefly stated the object of the
meeting, and concluded by observing that the first
step must be the selection of a chairman, necessarily
possessing some arbitrary—he trusted not unconsti-
tutional—powers, to whom the personal direction of
the whole of the arrangements (subject to the approval
of the committee) should be confided. A pale young
gentleman, in a green stock and spectacles of the
same, a member of the honourable society of the Inner
Temple, immediately rose for the purpose of proposing
Mr. Percy Noakes. He had known him long, and this
he would say, that a more honourable, a more excel-
lent, or a better-hearted fellow, never existed.—(Hear,
hear !) The young gentleman, who was a member of
a debating Society, took this opportunity of entering
into an examination of the state of the English law,
from the days of William the Conqueror to the present
period; he briefly adverted to the code established by
the ancient Druids; slightly glanced at the principles
laid down by the Athenian law-givers; and concluded
with a most glowing eulogium on pic-nics and consti-
tutional rights.
Mr. Alexander Briggs opposed the motion. He had
the highest esteem for Mr. Percy Noakes as an indi-
vidual, but he did consider that, he ought not to be en-
trusted will the - ....... . . .C. º.º.o., -(Oh, oh!)—He be-
THE STEAM EXCURSION. 389
lieved that in the proposed capacity Mr. Percy Noakes
would not act fairly, impartially, or honourably; but
he begged it to be distinctly understood, that he said
this, without the slightest personal disrespect. Mr.
Hardy defended his honourable friend, in a voice ren-
dered partially unintelligible by emotion and brandy-
and-water. The proposition was put to the vote, and
there appearing to be only one dissentient voice, Mr.
Percy Noakes was declared duly elected, and took the
chair accordingly. e
The business of the meeting now proceeded with
rapidity. The chairman delivered in his estimate of
the probable expense of the excursion, and every One .
present subscribed his proportion thereof. The ques-
tion was put that, “The Endeavour” be hired for the
occasion; Mr. Alexander Briggs moved as an amend-
ment, that the word “Fly ’’ be substituted for the word
“Endeavour; ” but after some debate consented to
withdraw his opposition. The important ceremony of
balloting then commenced. A tea-caddy was placed
on a table in a dark corner of the apartment, and every
one was provided with two backgammon men, one
black and one white.
The chairman with great solemnity then read the fol-
lowing list of the guests whom he proposed to introduce:
—Mrs. Taunton and two daughters, Mr. Wizzle, Mr.
Simson. The names were respectively balloted for, and
Mrs. Taunton and her daughters were declared to be
black-balled! Mr. Percy Noakes and Mr. Hardy ex
changed glances.
“Is your list prepared, Mr. Briggs?” inquired the
chairman.
“It is,” replied Alexander, delivering in the follows
ing:—“Mrs. Briggs and three daughters, Mr. Samuel
Briggs.” The previous ceremony was repeated, and
Mrs. Briggs and three daughters were declared to be
black-balled. Mr. Alexander Briggs looked rather
foolish, and the remainder of the company appeared
Somewhat overawed by the mysterious nature of the
proceedings.
The balloting proceeded; but, one little circumstance
which Mr. Percy Noakes had not originally foreseen,
prevented the system from working quite as well as he
had anticipated. Everybody was black-balled. Mr.
39() SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Alexander Briggs, by way of retaliation, exercised his
power of exclusion in every instance, and the result
was, that after three hours had been consumed in hard
balloting, the names of only three gentlemen were
found to have been agreed to. In this dilemma what
was to be done? either the whole plan must fall to the
ground, or a compromise must be effected. The latter
alternative was preferable; and Mr. Percy Noakes
therefore rºad that the form of balloting should be
dispensed with, and that every gentleman should
merely be required to state whom he intended to bring.
The proposal was acceded to; the Tauntons and the
Briggses were reinstated; and the party was
formed. -
The next Wednesday was fixed for the eventful day,
and it was unanimously resolved that every member of
the committee should wear a piece of blue Sarsanet rib-
bon round his left arm. It appeared from the statement
of Mr. Percy Noakes, that the boat belonged to the Gen-
eral Steam Navigation Company, and was then lying off
the Custom-house; and, as he proposed that the dinner
and wines should be provided by an eminent city pur-
veyer, it was arranged that Mr. Percy Noakes should
be on board by seven o’clock to superintend the ar-
rangements, and that the remaining members of the
committee, together with the company generally,
should be expected to join her by nine o’clock. More
brandy-and-water, was despatched; several speeches
were made by the different law students present;
thanks were voted to the chairman, and the meeting
separated.
he weather had been beautiful up to this period, and
beautiful it continued to be. Sunday passed over, and
Mr. Percy Noakes became unusually fidgetty—rushing,
constantly, to and from the Steam Packet Wharf, to
the astonishment of the clerks, and the great emolu-
ment of the Holborn cabnen. Tuesday arrived, and the
anxiety of Mr. Percy Noakes knew no bounds. . He was
every instant running to the window, to look out for
clouds; and Mr. Hardy astonished the whole square by
practising a new comic song for the occasion, in the
chairman’s chambers.
Uneasy were the slumbers of Mr. Percy Noakes that
night; he tossed and tumbled about, and had confused
THE STEAM EXCURSION. 391
dreams of steamers starting off, and gigantic clocks
with the hands pointing to a quarter past nine, and the
ugly face of Mr. Alexander Briggs looking over the
boat's side, and grinning, as if in derision of his fruit-
less attempts to move. He made a violent effort to get
on board, and awoke. The bright Sun was shining
cheerfully into the bed-room, and Mr. Percy Noakes
started up for his watch, in the dreadful expectation of
finding his worst dreams realised.
It was just five o’clock. He calculated the time—he
should be a good half hour dressing himself; and as it
was a lovely morning, and the tide would then be run-
ning down, he would walk leisurely to Strand-lane, and
have a boat to the Custom-house.
He dressed himself, took a hasty apology for a break-
fast, and sallied forth. The streets looked as lonely
and deserted as if they had been crowded, overnight,
for the last time. Here and there, an early apprentice,
with quenched-looking sleepy eyes, was taking down
the shutters of a shop; and a policeman or milk-woman
might occasionally be seen pacing slowly along; but the
servants had not yet begun to clean the doors, or light
the kitchen fires, and London looked the picture of deso-
lation. At the corner of a bye-street, near Temple-bar,
was stationed a “street-breakfast.” The coffee was
boiling over a charcoal fire; and large slices of bread
and butter were piled one upon the other, like deals in
a timber-yard. The company were seated on a form,
which, with a view both to security and comfort, was
placed against a neighbouring wall. Two young men,
whose uproarious mirth and disordered dress bespoke
the conviviality of the preceding evening, were treating
three “ladies” and an Irish labourer. A little sweep was
Standing at a short distance, casting a longing eye at the
tempting delicacies; and a policeman was watching the
group from the opposite side of the street. The Wan looks,
and gaudy finery of the thinly-clad women contrasted as
strangely with the gay sunlight, as did their forced
merriment with the boisterous filarity of the two young
men, who, now and then, varied their amusements by
“bonneting ” the proprietor of this itinerant coffee-
house.
Mr. Percy Noakes walked briskly by, and when he
turned down Strand-lane, and caught a glimpse of the
392 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
glistening water, he thought he had never felt so im.
portant or so happy in his life.
“Boat, sir!” cried one of the three watermen who
were mopping out their boats, and all whistling. “Boat,
Sir!” §
“No,” replied Mr. Percy Noakes, rather sharply, for
the inquiry was not made in a manner at all suitable to
his digniº. * *
“Would you prefer a wessel, sir?” inquired another,
to the infinite delight of the “Jack-in-the-water.”
Mr. Percy Noakes replied with a look of supreme
contempt. -
“Did you want to be put on board a steamer, sir?”
inquired an old fireman-waterman, very confidentially.
He was dressed in a faded red suit, just the colour of
the cover of a very old Court-guide.
“Yes, make haste—the Endeavour—off the Custom-
house.” *
“Endeavour!” cried the man who had convulsed the
“Jack” before. “Vy, I see the Endeavour go up half
an hour ago.”
“So did I,” said another; ‘‘ and I should think she’d
gone down by this time, for she's a precious sight too
full of ladies and gen’lemen.”
Mr. Percy Noakes affected to disregard these repre-
sentations, and stepped into the boat, which the old
Iman, by dint of Scrambling, and showing, and grating,
had brought up to the causeway. “Shove her off ſ”
cried Mr. Percy Noakes, and away the boat glided
down the river; Mr. Percy Noakes seated on the re-
cently mopped seat, and the waterman at the stairs
offering to bet him any reasonable sum that he’d never
reach the “Custom-us.”
“Here she is, by Jove!” said the delighted Percy, as
they ran alongside the Endeavour.
“Hold hard!” cried the steward over the side, and
Mr. Percy Noakes jumped on board.
“Hope you will find everything as you wished, sir.
She looks uncommon well this morning.”
“She does, indeed,” replied the manager, in a state
of ecstasy which it is impossible to describe. The deck
was scrubbed, and the seats were scrubbed, and there
was a bench for the band, and a place for dancing,
and a pile of camp-stools, and an awning; and then,
THE STEAM EXCURSION 393
Mr. Percy Noakes bustled down below, and there were
the pastrycook’s men, and the Steward’s wife, laying
out the dinner on two tables the whole length of the
cabin; and then, Mr. Percy Noakes took off his coat,
and rushed backwards and forwards, doing nothing,
but quite convinced he was assisting everybody; and
the steward's wife laughed till she cried, and Mr. Percy
Noakes panted with the violence of his exertions.
And then, the bell at London-bridge wharf rang; and
a Margate boat was just starting; and a Gravesend
boat was just starting, and people shouted, and porters
ran down the steps with luggage that would crush any
men but porters; and sloping boards, with bits of wood
nailed on them were placed between the outside boat
and the inside boat; and the passengers ran along
them, and looked like so many fowls coming out of an
area; and then, the bell ceased, and the boards were
taken away, and the boats started, and the whole
Scene was one of the most delightful bustle and con-
fusion.
The time wore on; half-past eight o'clock arrived:
the pastry cook’s men went ashore; the dinner was
completely laid out; and Mr. Percy Noakes locked the
principal cabin and put the key in his pocket, in order
that it might be suddenly disclosed, in all its magnifi-
cence, to the eyes of ſhe astonished company. The
band came on board, and so did the wine.
Ten minutes to nine, and the committee embarked in
a body. There was Mr. Hardy, in a blue jacket and
waistcoat, white trousers, silk stockings, and pumps—
in full aquatic costume, with a straw hat on his head,
and an immense telescope under his arm; and there
was the young gentleman with the green spectacles,
with nankeen inexplicables, with a ditto waistcoat and
bright buttons, like the pictures of Paul—not the saint,
but he of Virginia notoriety. The remainder of the
committee, dressed in white hats, light jackets, waist-
coats, and trousers, looked something between waiters
and West India planters.
Nine o'clock struck, and the company arrived in
Shoals. Mr. Samuel Briggs, Mrs. Briggs, and the
Misses Briggs made their appearance in a smart pri-
vate wherry. The three guitars, in their respective
dark green cases, were carefully stowed away in the
394 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
bottom of the boat, accompanied by two immense
portfolios of music, which it would take at least a
week’s incessant playing to get through. The Taun-
tons arrived at the same moment with more music, and
a lion—a gentleman with a bass voice and an incipient
red moustache. The colours of the Taunton party
were pink; those of the Briggses a light blue. The
Tauntons had artificial flowers in their bonnets; here
the Briggses gained a decided advantage—they wore
feathers. - -
“How d'ye do, dear?” said the Misses Briggs to the
Misses Taunton. (The word “dear ’’ among girls is
frequently synonymous with “wretch.”
“Quite well, thank you, dear,” replied the Misses
Tauntons to the Misses Briggs; and then, there was such
a kissing, and congratulating, and shaking of hands,
as might have induced one to suppose that the two
families were the best friends in the world, instead
of each wishing the other overboard, as they most sin-
cerely did.
Mr. Percy Noakes received the visitors, and bowed to
the strange gentleman, as if he should like to know
who he was. This was just what Mrs. Taunton wanted.
Here was an opportunity to astonish the Briggses.
“Oh! I beg your pardon,” said the general of the
Taunton party, with a careless air—“Captain Helves—
Mr. Percy Noakes—Mrs. Briggs—Captain Helves.”
Mr. Percy Noakes bowed very low; the gallant cap-
tain did the same with all due ferocity, and the Briggses
were clearly overcome. -
“Our friend, Mr. Wizzle, being unfortunately pre-
vented from coming,” resumed Mrs. Taunton, “I did
myself the pleasure of bringing the captain, whose
musical talents I knew would be a great acquisition.”
“In the name of the committee I have to thank you
for doing so, and to offer you welcome, sir,” replied
Percy. (Here the scraping was renewed.) “But pray
be seated—won’t you walk aft? Captain, will you
conduct Miss Taunton? Miss Briggs, will you allow
me?” .
“Where could they have picked up that military
man?” inquired Mrs. Briggs of Miss Kate Briggs, as
they followed the little party.
“I can’t imagine,” replied Miss Kate, bursting with
THE STEAM EXCURSION 395
vexation; for the very fierce air with which the gallant
captain regarded the company, had impressed her with
a high sense of his importance. -
Boat after boat came alongside, and guest after guest
arrived. The invites had been excellently arranged:
Mr. Percy Noakes having considered it as important
that the number of young men should exactly tally
with that of the young ladies, as that the quantity of
knives on board should be in precise proportion to
the forks. 4. -
“Now, is every one on board?” inquired Mr. Percy
Noakes. The committee (who, with their bits of blue
ribbon, looked as if they were all going to be bled)
bustled about to ascertain the fact, and reported that
they might safely start. -
“Go on!” cried the master of the boat from the top
of one of the paddle-boxes. -
“Go on!” echoed the boy, who was stationed over
the hatchway to pass the directions down to the
engineer; and away went the vessel with that agreeable
noise which is peculiar to steamers, and which is com-
posed of a mixture of Creaking, gushing, clanging, and
Snorting.
“ Hoi—oi—oi—oi—oi—io—o—i—i—i !” shouted half-a-
dozen voices from a boat, a quarter of a mile astern.
“Ease her!” cried the captain: “do these people
belong to us, sir?”
“Noakes,” exclaimed Hardy, who had been looking
at every object, far and near, through the large tele-
scope, “it’s the Fleetwoods and the Wakefields—and
two children with them, by Jove!”
“What a shame to bring children!” said everybody;
“how very inconsiderate!”
“I say, it would be a good joke to pretend not to see
'em, wouldn’t it?” suggested Hardy, to the immense
delight of the company generally. A council of war
was hastily held, and it was resolved that the new
comers should be taken on board, on Mr. Hardy’s
solemnly pledging himself to tease the children during
the whole of the day.
“Stop her!” cried the captain. -
“Stop her!” repeated the boy; whizz went the steam,
and all the young ladies, as in duty bound, Screamed in
concert. They were only appeased by the assurance of
395 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
the martial Helves, that the escape of steam consequent
on stopping a vessel was seldom attended with any
great loss of human life. º
Two men ran to the side; and after some shouting,
and swearing, and angling for the wherry with a boat-
hook, Mr. Fleetwood, and Mrs. Fleetwood, and Master
Fleetwood, and Mr. Wakefield, and Mrs. Wakefield,
and Miss Wakefield, were safely deposited on the deck.
The girl was about six years old, the boy about four;
the former was dressed in a white frock with a pink
sash and dog's-eared-looking little Spencer: a straw
bonnet and green veil, six inches by three and a half;
the latter, was attired for the Occasion in a nankeen
frock, between the bottom of which, and the top of his
plaid socks, a considerable portion of two Small mottled
legs was discernible. He had a light blue cap with a
gold band and tassel on his head, and a damp piece of
gingerbread in his hand, with which he had slightly
embossed his countenance.
The boat once more started off; the band played “Off
she goes;” the major part of the company conversed
cheerfully in groups; and the old gentlemen walked up
and down the deck in pairs, as perseveringly and
gravely as if they were doing a match against time for
an immense stake. They ran briskly down the Pool;
the gentlemen pointed out the Docks, the Thames
Police-office, and other elegant public edifices; and the
young ladies exhibited a proper display of horror at the
appearance of the coal-whippers and ballast-heavers.
Mr. Hardy told stories to the married ladies, at which
they laughed very much in their pocket-handkerchiefs,
and hit him on the knuckles with their fans, declaring
him to be “a naughty man—a shocking creature”—and
so forth; and Captain Helves gave slight descriptions
of battles, and duels, with a most bloodthirsty air, which
made him the admiration of the women, and the envy
of the men. Quadrilling commenced; Captain Helves
danced one set with Miss Emily Taunton, and another
set with Miss Sophia Taunton. Mrs. Taunton was in
ecstasies. The victory appeared to be complete, but,
alas! the inconstancy of man! Having performed this
necessary duty, he attached himself solely to Miss Julia
Briggs, with whom he danced no less than three sets
consecutively, and from whose side he evinced no
-
THE STEAM EXCURSiON. 397
intention of stirring for the remainder of the day.
Mr. Hardy, having played one or two very brilliant
fantasias on the Jews'-harp, and having frequently
repeated the exquisitely amusing joke of slily chalking
a large Cross on the back of some member of the com:
mittee, Mr. Percy Noakes expressed his hope that some
of their musical friends would oblige the company by a
display of their abilities.
‘‘Perhaps,” he said in a very insinuating manner,
“Captain Helves will oblige us?” Mrs. Taunton’s coun-
tenance lighted up, for the captain only sang duets,
and couldn’t sing them with anybody but one of her
daughters.
“Really,” said that warlike individual, “I should be
very happy, but 35 a
“Oh! pray do,” cried all the young ladies.
d & 4 Miss Sophia, have you any objection to join in a
lle te 52 -
“Oh! not the slightest; ” returned the young lady, in
a tone which clearly showed she had the greatest pos-
sible objection.
“Shall I accompany you, dear?” inquired one of the
Miss Briggses, with the bland intention of spoiling the
effect.
“Very much obliged to you, Miss Briggs,” sharply
retorted Mrs. Taunton, who saw through the manoeuvre;
“my daughters- always sing without accompani-
ments.”
“And without voices,” tittered Mrs. Briggs in a low
tone.
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Taunton, reddening, for she
guessed the tenor of the observation, though she had
not heard it clearly—‘‘ Perhaps it would be as well for
some people, if their voices were not quite so audible
as they are to other people.” *
“And, perhaps, if gentlemen who are kidnapped to
pay attention to some persons' daughters, had not suf-
ficient discernment to pay attention to other persons’
daughters,” returned Mrs. Briggs, ‘‘some persons would
not be so ready to display that ill-temper which, thank
God, distinguishes them from other persons.” .
“Persons!” ejaculated Mrs. Taunton,
“Persons,” replied Mrs. Briggs,
“Insolence!” -
398 SKETCHES BY BOZ,
‘‘ Creature!”
“Hush! hush!” interrupted Mr. Percy Noakes, who
was one of the very few by whom this dialogue had
been overheard. “Hush —pray, silence for the duet.”
After a great deal of preparatory Crowing and hum-
ming, the captain began the following duet from the
opera of “Paul and Virginia,” in that grunting tone
in which a man gets down, Heaven knows where, with-
out the remotest chance of ever getting up again. This,
in . private circles, is frequently designated “a bass
voice.”
“See (Sung the Captain) from O—ce—an ri—sing
Bright flames the or—b of d-ay.
From yon gro–ove, the varied so—ongs—”
Here the singer was interrupted by varied cries of
the most dreadful description, proceeding from some
grove in the immediate vicinity of the starboard
paddle-box.
“My child !” screamed Mrs. Fleetwood. “My child!
it is his voice—I know it.”
Mr. Fleetwood, accompanied by several gentlemen,
here rushed to the 3. from whence the noise pro-
ceeded, and an exclamation of horror burst from the
company; the general impression being, that the little
innocent had either got his head in the water, or his
legs in the machinery. *
‘‘What is the matter?” shouted the agonised father,
as he returned with the child in his arms.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” screamed the small sufferer again.
“What is the matter, dear?” inquired the father,
once more—hastily stripping off the nankeen frock, for
the purpose of ascertaining whether the child had one
bone which was not smashed to pieces!
“Oh! Oh!—I’m so frightened!”
“What at, dear?”—what at?” said the mother, sooth-
ing the sweet infant.
“Oh! he's been making such dreadful faces at me,”
cried the boy, relapsing into convulsions at the bare
recollection.
“He!—who?” cried everybody, crowding round him.
“Oh!—him!” replied the child, pointing at Hardy,
who affected to be the most concerned of the whole
grOul).
THE STEAM EXCURSION. 399
The real state of the case at once flashed upon the
minds of all present, with the exception of the Fleet-
woods and the Wakefields. The facetious Hardy, in
fulfilment of his promise, had watched the child to a
remote part of the vessel, and, Suddenly appearing be-
fore him with the most awful contortions of visage, had
produced his paroxysm of terror. Of course, he now
observed that it was hardly necessary for him to deny
the accusation; and the unfortunate little victim was
accordingly led below, after receiving sundry, thumps
on the head from both his parents, for having the wick-
edness to tell a story. -
This little interruption having been adjusted, the
captain resumed, and Miss Emily chimed in, in due
course. The duet was loudly applauded, and, certainly,
the perfect independence of the parties deserved great
commendation. Miss Emily sung her part, without the
slightest reference to the captain; and the captain sang
so loud, that he had not the slightest idea what was
being done by his partner. After having gone through
the last few eighteen or nineteen bars by himself, there-
fore, he acknowledged the plaudits of the circle with
that air of self-denial which men usually assume when
they think they have done something to astonish the
COmpany. -
“Now,” said Mr. Percy Noakes, who had just as-
cended from the fore-cabin, where he had been busily
engaged in decanting the wine, “if the Misses Briggs
will oblige us with something before dinner, I am sure
we shall be very much delighted.” +
One of those hums of admiration followed the sug-
gestion, which one frequently hears in Society, when
nobody has the most distant notion what he is express-
ing his approval of. The three Misses Briggs looked
modestly at their mamma, and the mamma looked ap-
provingly at her daughters, and Mrs. Taunton looked
scornfully at all of them. The Misses Briggs asked for
their guitars, and several gentlemen seriously damaged
the cases in their anxiety to present them. Then,
there was a very interesting production of three little
keys for the aforesaid cases, and a melodramatic ex-
pression of horror at finding a string broken; and a vast
deal of screwing and tightening, and winding, and
tuning, during which Mrs. Briggs expatiated to those
400 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
near her on the immense difficulty of playing a guitar,
and hinted at the wondrous proficiency of her daughters
in that mystic art. Mrs. Taunton whispered to a neigh-
bour that it was ‘‘ quite sickening!” and the Misses
Taunton looked as if they knew how to play, but dis-
dained to do it. -
At length, the Misses Briggs began in real earnest. It
was a new Spanish composition, for three voices and
three guitars. The effect was electrical. All eyes were
turned upon the captain, who was reported to have
once passed through Spain with his regiment, and who
must be well acquainted with the national music. He
was in raptures. This was sufficient; the trio was en-
cored; the applause was universal; and never had the
Tauntons suffered such a complete defeat.
“Bravo! bravo!” ejaculated the captain;–“ Bravo!”
“Pretty! isn’t it, sir?” inquired Mr. Samuel Briggs,
with the air of a self-satisfied showman. By-the-by,
these were the first words he had been heard to utter
since he left Boswell-court the evening before.
“De—lightful!” returned the captain, with a flourish,
and a military cough;-‘‘ de—lightful!”
“Sweet instrument?” said an old gentleman with a
bald head, who had been trying all the morning to look
through a telescope, inside the glass of which Mr. Hardy
had fixed a large black wafer. -
“Did you ever hear a Portuguese tambourine?” in-
quired that jocular individual.
“Did you ever hear a tom-tom, sir?” sternly inquired
the captain, who lost no opportunity of showing off his
travels, real or pretended.
“A what?” asked Hardy, rather taken aback.
** A tom-tom.” -
“Never!”
“Nor a gum-gum?”
“Never!”
“What is a gum-gum?” eagerly inquired several
young ladies.
“When I was in the East Indies,” replied the captain.
(Here was a discovery—he had been in the East Indies!)
—“when I was in the East Indies, I was once stopping,
a few thousand miles up the country, on a visit at the
house of a very particular friend of mine, Ram Chowdar
Doss Azuph Al Bowlar—a devilish pleasant fellow.
THE STEAM EXCURSION. 401
As we were enjoying our hookahs, one evening, in the
Cool Verandah in front of his villa, we were rather sur-
prised by the sudden appearance of thirty-four of his
Kit-ma-gars (for he had rather a large establishment
there), accompanied by an equal number of Con-sumars,
approaching the house with a threatening aspect, and
beating a tom-tom. The Ram started up—”
“Who?” inquired the bald gentleman, intensely
interested.
“The Ram—Ram Chowdar—”
“Oh!” said the old gentleman, “I beg your pardon;
pray go on.” -
“ —Started up and drew a pistol. ‘Helves,” said he,
“my boy,”—he always called me, my boy—‘Helves,’ said
he, “do you hear that tom-tom P’ ‘I do,” said I. His
countenance, which before was pale, assumed a most
frightful appearance; his whole visage was distorted,
and his frame shaken by violent emotions. “Do you
See that gutn-gum?’ said he?’ ‘No,” said I, staring
about me. “You don’t?’ said he. ‘No, I’ll be damned
if I do,” said I; ‘ and what’s more, I don’t know what a
gum-gum is,” said T. I really thought the Ram would
have dropped. He drew me aside, and with an expres-
Sion of agony I shall never forget, said in a low
whisper 25
‘‘Dinner's on the table, ladies,” interrupted the stew-
ard’s wife.
“Will you allow me?” said the captain, immediately
suiting the action to the word, and escorting Miss
Julia Briggs to the cabin, with as much ease as if he
had finished the story.
“What an extraordinary circumstance!” ejaculated
the same old gentleman, preserving his listening
attitude.
“What a traveller!” said the young ladies.
“What a singular name!” exclaimed the gentlemen,
rather confused by the coolness of the whole affair.
“I wish he had finished the story,” said an old lady.
‘‘I wonder what a gum-gum really is?”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Hardy, who until now had
been lost in utter amazement, “I don’t know what it
may be in India, but in England I think a gum-gum
has very much the same meaning as a hum-bug.”
“How illiberal; how envious!” cried everybody as
26
402 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
they made for the cabin, fully impressed with a belief
in the captain’s amazing adventures. Helves was the
sole lion for the remainder of the day—impudence
and the marvellous are pretty Sure passports to any
society. -
The party had by this time reached their destination,
and put about on their return home. The wind, which
had been with them the whole day, was now directly
in their teeth; the weather had become gradually more
and more overcast; and the sky, water, and shore, were
all of that dull, heavy, uniform lead-colour, which
house-painters daub in the first instance over a street-
door which is gradually approaching a state of con-
valescence. It had been “spitting ”with rain for the
last half-hour, and now began to pour in good earnest.
The wind was freshening very fast, and the Waterman
at the wheel had unequivocally expressed his Opinion
that there would shortly be a squall. A slight emotion
on the part of the vessel, now and then, seemed to sug-
gest the possibility of its pitching to a very uncomfort-
able extent in the event of its blowing harder; and
every timber began to creak, as if the boat were an
Overladen clothes-basket. Sea-sickness, however, is
like a belief in ghosts—every one entertans some mis-
givings on the subject, but few will acknowledge any.
The majority of the company, therefore, endeavoured
to look peculiarly happy, feeling all the while, espe-
cially miserable. -
“Don’t it rain?” inquired the old gentleman before
noticed, when, by dint of Sqeezing and jamming, they
were all seated at table *
“I think it does—a little,” replied Mr. Percy Noakes,
who could hardly hear himself speak, in consequence
of the patttering on the deck.
“T)on’t it blow P” inquired some one else. .
“No–I don’t think it does,” responded Hardy, sin-
cerely wishing that he could persuade himself that it
did not: for he sat near the door and was almost blown
off his seat. -
“It’ll soon clear up,” said Mr. Percy Noakes, in a
cheerful tone.
“Oh, certainly l’ ejaculated the committee generally.
** No doubt of it!” said the remainder of the com-
pany, whose attention was now pretty well engrossed
THE STEAM EXCURSION. 403
by the serious business of eating, carving, taking
wine, and so forth. - *
The throbbing motion of the engine was but too per-
ceptible. There was a large, substantial, cold boiled
leg of mutton, at the bottom of the table shaking like
blanc-mange; a previously hearty sirloin of beef looked
as if it had been suddenly seized with the palsy; and
some tongues, which were placed on dishes rather too
large for them, went through the most surprising evo-
lutions; darting from side to side, and from end to end,
like a fly in an inverted wine-glass. Then, the sweets
shook and trembled, till it was quite impossible to help
them, and people gave up the attempt in despair; and the
pigeon-pies looked as if the birds, whose legs were stuck
outside, were trying to get them in... The table vibrated
and started like a feverish pulse, and the very legs
were convulsed—everything was shaking and jarring.
The beams in the roof of the cabin seemed as if they
were put there for the Sole purpose of giving people
headaches, and several elderly gentlemen became ill-
tempered in consequence. . As fast as the steward put
the fire-irons up, they would fall down again; and the
more the ladies and gentlemen tried to sit comfortably
on their seats, the more the seats seemed to slide away
from the ladies and gentlemen. Several ominous de-
mands were made for small glasses of brandy; the
countenances of the company gradually underwent
most extraofdinary changes; one gentleman was ob-
served suddenly to rush from table without the
slightest ostensible reason, and dart up the steps with
incredible swiftness: thereby greatly damaging both
himself and the steward, who happened to be coming
down at the same moment.
The cloth was removed; the desert was laid on the
table; and the glasses were filled. The motion of the
boat increased; several members of the party began to
feel rather vague and misty, and looked as if they had
only just got up. The young gentleman with the spec-
tacles, who had been in a fluctuating state for some
time—at one moment bright, and at another dismal,
like a revolving light on the sea-coast—rashly an-
nounced his wish to propose a toast. After several
ineffectual attempts to preserve his perpendicular, the
young gentleman, having managed to hook himself to
* * - SKETCHES BY BOZ.
the centre leg of the table with his left hand, proceeded
as follows:
“Ladies and gentlemen. A gentleman is among us—
I may say a stranger—(here some painful thought
seemed to strike the orator; he paused, and looked ex-
tremely odd) whose talents, whose travels, whose
cheerfulness—”
“I beg your pardon, Edkins,” hastily interrupted Mr.
Percy Noakes.—“Hardy, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” replied the funny gentleman,” who had
just life enough left to utter two consecutive syl-
lables. -
“Will you have some brandy?”
“No!” replied Hardy in a tone of great indignation,
and looking as comfortable as Temple-bar in a Scotch
mist; “what should I want brandy for?”
“Will you go on deck?”
“No, I will mot.” This was said with a most deter-
mined air, and in a voice which might have been taken
for an imitation of anything; it was quite as much like
a guinea-pig as a bassoon.
“I beg your pardon, Edkins,” said the courteous
Percy; “I thought our friend was ill. Pray go on.”
A pause. -
“Pray go on.”
“Mr. Edkins is gone,” cried somebody. -
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the steward, running
up to Mr. Percy Noakes, “I beg your pardon, sir, but
the gentleman as just went on deck—him with the
green spectacles—is uncommon bad, to be sure; and
the young man as played the wiolin says, that unless he
has some brandy he can’t answer for the consequences.
He says he has a wife and two children, whose werry
subsistence depends on his breaking a wessel, and
he expects to do so every moment. The flageolet’s
been wery ill, but he's better, only he’s in a dreadful
prusperation.”
All disguise was now useless; the company staggered
on deck; the gentlemen tried to see nothing but the
clouds; and the ladies, muffled up in such shawls and
cloaks as they had brought with them, lay about on
the seats, and under the seats, in the most wretched
condition. Never was such a blowing and raining, and
pitching and tossing, endured by any pleasure party
THE STEAM EXCURSION. 405
before. Several remonstrances were sent down below,
on the subject of Master Fleetwood, but they were
totally unheeded in consequence of the indisposition
of his natural protectors. That interesting child
screamed at the top of his voice, until he had no voice
left to scream with; and then, Miss Wakefield began,
and screamed for the remainder of the passage.
Mr. Hardy was observed, some hours afterwards, in
an attitude which induced his friends to suppose that
he was busily engaged in contemplating the beauties
of the deep; they only regretted that his taste for the
picturesque should lead him to remain so long in a
position, very injurious at all times, but especially so
to an individual labouring under a tendency of blood
to the head.
The party arrived off the Custom-house at about two
o'clock on the Thursday morning, dispirited and worn
out. The Tauntons were too ill to quarrel with the
Briggses, and the Briggses were too wretched to annoy
the Tauntons. One of the guitar-cases was lost on its
passage to a hackney-coach, and Mrs. Briggs has not
scrupled to state that the Tauntons bribed a porter to
throw it down an area. Mr. Alexander Briggs opposes
vote by ballot—he says from personal experience of its
inefficacy; and Mr. Samuel Briggs, whenever he is
asked to express his sentiments on the point, says he
has no opinion on that or any other subject.
Mr. Edkins—the young gentleman in the green
spectacles—makes a speech on every occasion on which
a speech can possibly be made: the eloquence of which
can only be equalled by its length. In the event of his
not being previously appointed to a judgeship, it is
probable that he will practise as a barrister in the new
Central Criminal Court.
Captain Helves continued his attention to Miss Julia
Briggs, whom he might possibly have espoused, if it
had not unfortunately happened that Mr. Samuel ar-
rested him in the way of business, pursuant to instruc-
tions received from Messrs. Scroggins and Payne,
whose town-debts the gallant captain had condescended
to collect, but whose accounts, with the indiscretion
Sometimes peculiar to military minds, he had omitted
to keep with that dull accuracy which custom has ren-
dered necessary. Mrs. Taunton complains that she has
406 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
been much deceived in him. He introduced himself to
the family on board a Gravesend steam-packet, and
certainly, therefore, ought to have proved respectable.
Mr. Percy Noakes is as light-hearted and careless as
eVeT.
wº---
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL.
B.E. little town of Great Winglebury is exactly
forty-two miles and three quarters from Hyde
Park corner. It has a long, straggling, quiet High-
street, with a great black and white clock at a small
red Town-hall, half-way up—a market-place—a cage—
an assembly-room—a church—a bridge—a chapel—a
theatre— a library—an inn—a pump-and a Post-office.
Tradition tells of a “Little Winglebury,” down some
cross-road about two miles off; and, as a square mass
of dirty paper, supposed to have been originally in-
tended for a letter, with certain tremulous characters
inscribed thereon, in which a lively imagination might
trace a remote resemblance to the word “Little,” was
once stuck up to be owned in the sunny window of the
Great Winglebury Post-office, from which it only dis-
appeared when it fell to pieces with dust and extreme
old age, there would appear to be some foundation for
the leg, id. Common belief is inclined to bestow the
name upon a little hole at the end of a muddy lane
about a couple of miles long, colonised by one wheel-
wright, four paupers, and a beer-shop; but even this
authority, slight as it is, must be regarded with ex-
treme suspicion, inasmuch as the inhabitants of the
hole aforesaid, concur in opining that it never had any
* at all, from the earliest ages down to the present
ay.
The Winglebury Arms, in the centre of the High-
street, opposite the Small building with the big clock,
is the principal inn of Great Winglebury—the com-
mercial inn, posting-house, and excise-office ; the
“Blue * house at every election, and the Judges' house
at every assizes. . It is the head-quarters of the Gentle-
men’s Whist Club of Winglebury Blues (so called in
THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUET. 40%
opposition to the Gentlemen’s Whist Club of Wingle-
bury Buffs, held at the other house, a little further
down); and whenever a juggler, or wax-work man, or
concert-giver, takes Great Winglebury in his circuit,
it is immediately placarded all over the town that Mr.
So-and-so, “trusting to that liberal support which the
inhabitants of Great Winglebury have long been so
liberal in bestowing, has at a great expense engaged
the elegant and commodious assembly-rooms, attached
to the Winglebury Arms.” The house is a large one,
with a red brick and stone front; a pretty spacious hall,
Ornamented with evergreen plants, terminates in a per-
Spective view of the bar, and a glass case, in which are
displayed a choice variety of delicacies ready for dress-
ing, to catch the eye of a new-comer the moment he
enters, and excite his appetite to the highest possible
pitch. Opposite doors lead to the “coffee” and “com-
mercial” rooms; and a great wide, rambling stair-case,
—three stairs and a landing—four stairs and another
landing—One step and another landing—half-a-dozen
stairs and another landing—and so on—conducts to
alleries of bed-rooms and labyrinths of sitting-rooms,
denominated “private,” where you may enjoy your-
self, as privately as you can in any place where some
bewildered being walks into your room every five min-
utes, by mistake, and then walks out again, to open
all the doors along the gallery until he finds his own.
Such is the Winglebury Arms, at this day, and such
was the Winglebury Arms some time since—no matter
when—two or three iminutes before the arrival of the
London stage. Four horses with cloths on—change for
a coach—were standing quietly at the corner of the
yard, surrounded by a listless group of post-boys in
shiny hats and smock-frocks, engaged in discussing
the merits of the cattle; half a dozen ragged boys
were standing a little apart, listening with evident
interest to the conversation of these worthies; and a
few loungers were collected round the horse-trough,
awaiting the arrival of the coach.
The day was hot and sunny, the town in the zenith
of its dulness, and with the exception of these few idlers,
not a living creature was to be seen. . Suddenly, the
loud notes of a key-bugle broke the monotonous stillness
of the Street; in came the coach, rattling over the un-
408 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
even paving with a noise startling enough to stop even
the large-faced clock itself. Down got the outsides, up
went the windows in all directions, out came the wait-
ers, up started the ostlers, and the loungers and the
post-boys, and the ragged boys, as if they were electri-
fied—unstrapping, and unchaining, and unbuckling,
and dragging willing horses out, and forcing reluctant
horses in, and making a most exhilarating bustle.
“Lady inside here!” said the guard. “Please to
alight, ma'am,” said the waiter. “Private sit-
ting-room?” interrogated the lady. “Certainly,
ma'am,” responded the chambermaid. “Nothing but
these 'ere trunks, ma'am?” inquired the guard. “Noth-
ing more,” replied the lady. § got the outsides again,
and the guard, and the coachman; off came the cloths,
with a jerk, “ All right” was the cry; and away they
went. The loungers lingered a minute or two in the
road, watching the coach until it turned the corner, and
then loitered away one by one. The street was clear
again, and the town, by contrast, quieter than ever.
“Lady in number twenty-five,” screamed the land-
lady.—“Thomas!”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Letter just been left for the gentleman in number
nineteen. Boots at the Lion left it. No answer.”
“Letter for you, sir,” said Thomas, depositing the
letter on number nineteen’s table.
“For me?” said number nineteen, turning from the
window, out of which he had been surveying the scene
just described.
“Yes, sir,”—-(waiters always speak in hints, and never
utter complete sentences)—“yes, sir, Boots at the
Lion, sir, –Bar, sir—Missis said number nineteen, Sir——
Alexander Trott, Esq., sir?—Your card at the bar, sir,
I think, sir?”
“My name is Trott,” replied number nineteen, break-
ing the seal. “You may go, waiter.” The waiter
pulled down ºne window-blind, and then pulled it up
again—for a regular waiter must do something before
he leaves the room—adjusted the glasses on the sidc-
board, brushed a place that was not dusty, rubbed his
hands j hard, walked stealthily to the door, and
evaporated. à
There was, evidently, something in the contents of
THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL. 409
the letter of a nature, if not wholly unexpected, cer-
tainly extremely disagreeable. Mr. Alexander Trott
laid it down, and took it up again, and walked about
the room on particular squares of the carpet, and even
attempted, though unsuccessfully, to whistle an air. It
wouldn’t do. He threw himself into a chair, and read
the following epistle aloud:—
“Blue Lion and Stomach-warmer,
Great Winglebury.
Wednesday Morning
“SIR-Immediately on discovering your intentions, I left our count-
ing-house, and followed you. I know the purport of your journey;-
that journey shall never be completed.
“I have no friend here, just now, on whose secrecy I can rely. This
shall be no obstacle to my revenge. Neither shall Emily Brown be ex-
posed to the mercenary solicitations of a scoundrel, odious in her eyes,
and contemptible in every body else's: nor will I tannely submit to the
clandestine attacks of a base umbrella-maker. -
“Sir, –From Great Winglebury Church, a footpath leads through four
meadows to a retired spot known to the towns-people as Stiffun's Acre.
[Mr. Trott shuddered.] I shall be waiting there alone, at twenty min-
utes before six o'clock to-morrow morning. Should I be disappointed in
seeing you there, I will do myself the pleasure of calling with a horse-
whip.
“HORACE HUNTER.
“PS. There is a gunsmith's in the High-street; and they won't sell
gunpowder after dark—you understand me.
“PPS. You had better not order your breakfast in the morning until
you have met me. It may be an unnecessary expense.”
“Desperate-minded villain! I knew how it would be!”
ejaculated the terrified Trott. “I always told father,
that once start me on this expedition, and Hunter
would pursue me like the Wandering Jew. It’s bad
enough as it is, to marry with the old people's com-
mands, and without the girl’s consent; but what will Em-
ily think of me, if I go down there, breathless with run-
ning away from this infernal salamander? What shall
I do? What can I do? If I go back to the city, I’m
disgraced for ever—lose the girl—and, what’s more,
lose the money too. Even if I did go on to the Browns'
by the coach, Hunter would be after me in a post-
chaise; and if I go to this place, this Stiffun's Acre
(another shudder), I’m as good as dead. I’ve seen him
410 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
hit the man at the Pall-mall shooting-gallery, in the
second button-hole of the waistcoat, five times out every
six, and when he didn’t hit him there, he hit him in the
head.” With this consolatory reminiscence, Mr. Alex-
ander Trott again ejaculated, “What shall I do?”
Long and weary were his reflections, as, burying his
face in his hands, he sat ruminating on the best course
to be pursued. His mental direction-post pointed to
London. He thought of “the governor’s” anger, and
the loss of the fortune which the paternal Brown had
promised the paternal Trott his daughter should con-
tribute to the coffers of his son. Then the words “To
Brown’s ” were legibly inscribed on the said direction-
post, but Horace Hunter’s denunciation rung in his
ears;–last of all it bore, in red letters, the words, “To
Stiffun's Acre;’ and then Mr. Alexander Trott decided
on adopting a plan which he presently matured.
First and foremost, he despatched the under-boots to
the Blue Lion and Stomach-warmer, with a gentle-
manly note to Mr. Horace Hunter, intimating that he
thirsted for his destruction, and would do himself the
pleasure of slaughtering him next morning, without
fail. He then wrote another letter, and requested the
attendance of the other boots—for they kept a pair. A
modest knock at the room door was heard. “Come in,”
said Mr. Trott. A man thrust in a red head with one
eye in it, and being again desired to “come in,” brought
in the body and the legs to which the head belonged,
and a fur cap which belonged to the head.
“You are the upper-boots, I think P” inquired Mr.
Trott.
“Yes, I am the upper-boots,” replied a voice from in-
side a velveteen case with mother-of-pearl buttons—
“that is, I’m the boots as b'longs to the house; the other
man’s my man, as goes errands, and does odd jobs.
Top-boots and half-boots, I calls us.”
“You’re from London?” inquired Mr. Trott.
“Driv a cab once,” was the laconic reply.
“Why don’t you drive it now?” asked Mr. Trott.
“Over-driv the cab, and driv over a ’ooman,” replied
the top-boots, with brevity. -
“Do you know the mayor’s house ?” inquired Trott.
“Rather,” replied the boots, significantly, as if he-
had some good reason to remember it,
THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUET, 411
*.
“Do you think you could manage to leave a letter
there ?” interrogated Trott.
“Shouldn’t wonder,” responded boots.
“But this letter,” said Trott, holding a deformed note
with a paralytic direction in one hand, and five shil-
lings in the other—“this letter is anonymous.”
“A—what ?” interrupted the boots.
“Anonymous—he's not to know who it comes from.”
“Oh I See,” responded the reg’lar, with a knowing
wink, but without evincing the slightest disinclination
to undertake the charge—“I see—bit o' Sving, eh?”
and his one eye wandered round the room, as if in quest
of a dark lantern and phosphorus-box. “But, I say!”
he continued, recalling the eye from its search, and
bringing it to bear on Mr. Trott. “I say, he’s a lawyer,
our mayor, and insured in the County. If you’ve a
spite agen him, you’d better not burn his house down—
blessed if I don’t think it would be the greatest favour
you could do him.” And he chuckled inwardly.
If Mr. Alexander Trott had been in any other situa-
tion, his first act would have been to kick the man down
stairs by deputy; or, in other words, to ring the bell,
and desire the landlord to take his boots off. He con-
tented himself, however, with doubling the fee and
explaining that the letter merely related to a breach of
the peace. The top-boots retired, solemnly pledged to
secrecy: and Mr. Alexander Trott sat down to a fried
sole, maintenon cutlet, Madeira, and Sundries, with
greater composure than he had experienced since the
receipt of Horace Hunter’s letter of defiance.
The lady who alighted from the London coach had
no sooner been installed in number twenty-five, and
made some alteration in her travelling-dress than she
indited a note to Joseph Overton, esquire, solicitor, and
mayor of Great Winglebury, requesting his immediate
attendance on private business of paramount impor-
tance—a summons which that worthy functionary lost
Ino time in obeying; for after sundry openings of his
eyes, divers ejaculations of “Bless me!” and other
manifestations of surprise, he took his broad-brimmed
hat from its accustomed peg in his little front office,
and walked briskly down the High-street to the Wingle-
bury Arms; through the hall and up the staircase of
which establishment he was ushered by the landlady,
412 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
and a crowd of officious waiters, to the door of number
twenty-five.
“Show the gentleman in,” said the Stranger lady, in
reply to the foremost waiter's announcement. The
gentleman was shown in accordingly.
The lady rose from the sofa; the mayor advanced a
step from the door; and there they both paused, for a
minute or two, looking at one another as if by mutual
consent. The mayor saw before him a buxom richly-
dressed female of about forty; the lady looked upon a
sleek man, about ten years older, in drab shorts and
continuations, black coat, neckcloth, and gloves.
“Miss Julia Manners!” exclaimed the mayor at
length, “ you astonish me.”
“That’s very unfair of you, Overton,” replied Miss
Julia, “ for I have known you, long enough, not to be
surprised at anything you do, and you might extend
equal courtesy to me.”
“But to run away—actually run away—with a young
man!” remonstrated the mayor.
“You wouldn’t have me actually run away with an
old one, I presume?” was the cool rejoinder.
“And then to ask me—me—of all people in the world
—a man of my age and appearance—mayor of the town
—to promote such a scheme!” pettishly ejaculated
Joseph Overton; throwing himself into an arm chair,
and producing Miss Julia’s letter from his pocket, as if
to corroborate the assertion that he had been asked.
“Now, Overton,” replied the lady, “I want your as-
sistance in this matter, and I must have it. In the life-
º of that poor old dear, Mr. Cornberry, who—
who—”
“Who was to have married you, and didn’t, because
he died first; and who left you his property unen-
cumbered with the addition of himself,” suggested the
rmayor. wº
“Well,” replied Miss Julia, reddening slightly, “ in
the lifetime of the poor old dear, the property had the
incumbrance of your management; and all I will say of
that, is, that I only wonder it didn’t die of consump-
tion instead of its master. You helped yourself then:-
help me now.”
Mr. Joseph Overton was a man of the world, and an
attorney; and as certain indistinct recollections of an
THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL. 413
Odd thousand pounds or two, appropriated by mistake,
passed across his mind, he hemmed deprecatingly,
smiled blandly, remained silent for a few seconds; and
finally inquired, “What do you wish me to do?”
“I’ll tell you,” replied Miss Julia—“I’ll tell you in
three words. Dear Lord Peter—”
“That’s the young man, I suppose—”
“That’s the young Nobleman,” replied the lady, with
a great stress on the last word. “Dear Lord Peter is
considerably afraid of the resentment of his family;
and we have therefore thought it better to make the
match a stolen one. He left town, to avoid suspicion,
on a visit to his friend, the Honourable Augustus Flair,
whose seat, as you know, is about thirty miles from this,
accompanied only by his favourite tiger. We ar-
ranged that I should come here alone in the London
coach; and that he, leaving his tiger and cab behind
him, should come on, and arrive here as soon as possi-
ble this afternoon.” -
“Very well,” observed Joseph Overton, “and then he
can order the chaise, and you can go on to Gretna
Green together, without requiring the presence or inter-
ference of a third party, can’t you?”
‘‘No,” replied Miss Julia. “We have every reason
to believe—dear Lord Peter not being considered very
prudent or sagacious by his friends, and they having
discovered his attachment to me—that, immediately on
his absence being observed, pursuit will be made in this
direction: to elude which, and to prevent our being
traced, I wish it to be understood in this house, that
dear Lord Peter is slightly deranged, though perfectly
harmless; and that I am, unknown to him, awaiting his
arrival to convey him in a post-chaise to a private
asylum—at Berwick, say. If I don’t show myself
much, I dare say I can manage to pass for his mother.”
The thought occurred to the mayor’s mind that the
lady might show herself a good deal without fear of
detection; seeing that she was about double the age of
her intended husband. He said nothing, however, and
the lady proceeded.
“With the whole of this arrangement dear Lord
Peter is acquainted; and all I want you to do, is, to
make the delusion more complete by giving it the sanc-
( tion of your influence in this place, and assigning this as
*-
414 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
a reason to the people of the house for my taking the
young gentleman away. As it would not be consistent
with the story that I should see him until after he has
entered the chaise, I also wish you to communicate
wº him, and inform him that it is all going on
Well.”
“Has he arrived?” inquired Overton.
“I don’t know,” replied the lady.
“Then how am I to know!” inquired the mayor. Of
course he will not give his own name at the bar.”
“I begged him, immediately on his arrival, to write
you a note,” replied Miss Manners; “and to prevent
“the possibility of our project being discovered through
its means, I desired him to write anonymously, and in
mysterious terms to acquaint you with the number of
his room.”
“Bless me!” exclaimed the mayor, rising from his
seat, and Searching his pockets—“most extraordinary
circumstance—he has arrived—mysterious note left at
my house in a most mysterious manner, just before
yours—didn’t know what to make of it before, and
certainly shouldn’t have attended to it.—Oh! here it is.”
And Joseph Overton pulled out of an inner coat-pocket
the identical letter penned by Alexander Trott. “Is
this his lordship’s hand?”
“Oh yes,” replied Julia; “good, punctual creature!
I have not seen it more than once or twice, but I know
he writes very badly and very large. These dear, wild
young noblemen, you know, Overton—”
“Ay, ay, I See,” replied the mayor—“Horses and
dogs, play and Wine—grooms, actresses, and cigars—
the stable, the green-room, the saloon, and the tavern;
and the legislative assembly at last.”
“Here’s what he says,” pursued the mayor; ‘Sir, –A.
young gentlemen in number nineteen at the Winglebury
Arms, is bent on committing a rash act to-morrow
morning at an early hour.” (That’s good—he means
marrying.) “If you have any regard for the peace of
this town, or the preservation of one--it may be two—
* lives’—What the deuce does he mean by
that P’’
“That he's so anxious for the ceremony, he will ex-
pire if it’s put off, and that I may possibly do the same,”
replied the lady with great complacency.
THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL. 415
“Oh! I see—not much fear of that;-well—‘two
human lives, you will cause him to be removed to-
night.” (He wants to start at once,) “Fear not to do
this on your responsibility: for to-morrow the absolute
necessity of the proceeding will be but too apparent.
Remember: number nineteen. The name is Trott. No
delay; for life and death depend upon your prompti-
#: Passionate language, certainly. Shall I see
him?”
“Do,” replied Miss Julia; ‘‘ and entreat him to act his
part well. I am half afraid of him. Tell him to be
cautious.” -
“I will,” said the mayor.
“Settle all the arrangements.”
“I will,” said the mayor again. - -
“And Say I think the chaise had better be ordered
for one o'clock.”
“Very well,” said the mayor once more; and, rumin-
ating on the absurdity of the situation in which fate
and old acquaintance had placed him, he desired a
waiter to herald his approach to the temporary repre-
Sentative of number nineteen.
The announcement, ‘‘ Gentleman to speak with you,
sir,” induced Mr. Trott to pause half way in the glass of
port, the contents of which he was in the act of imbib-
ing at the moment; to rise from his chair; and retreat
a few paces towards the window, as if to secure a
retreat, in the event of the visitor assuming the form
and appearance of Horace Hunter. One glance at
Joseph Overton, however, quieted his apprehensions.
He courteously motioned the stranger to a seat. The
waiter, after a little jingling with the decanter and
glasses, consented to leave the room; and Joseph Over-
ton, placing the broad-brimmed hat on the chair next
him, and bending his body gently forward, opened the
business by saying in a very low and cautious tone,
“My lord—” *
“Eh P’’ said Mr. Alexander Trott, in a loud key,
with the vacant and mystified stare of a chilly
Somnambulist.
“ Hush—hush!” said the cautious attorney; “to be
sure—quite right—no titles here—my name is Overton,
Sir.”
‘‘ Overton P”
416 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“Yes; the mayor of this place—you sent me a letter
with anonymous information, this afternoon.”
“I, sir?” exclaimed Trott with ill-dissembled sur-
prise; for, coward as he was, he would willingly have
ºpºd the authorship of the letter in question.
& & 5 Sir?”
“Yes, you, sir; did you not?” responded Overton,
annoyed with what he supposed to be an extreme de-
gree of unnecessary suspicion. “Either this letter is
yours, or it is not, If it be, we can converse securely
upon the subject at once. If it be not, of course I have
no more to say.” -
“Stay, stay,” said Trott, “it is mine; I did write it.
What could I do, sir? I had no friend here.”
“To be sure, to be sure,” said the mayor, encourag-
ingly, “you could not have managed it better. Well,
sir; it will be necessary for you to leave here to-night
in a post-chaise and four. And the harder the boys
drive, the better. You are not safe from pursuit.”
“Bless me!” exclaimed Trott, in an agony of appre-
hension, ‘‘ can such things happen in a country like
this? Such unrelenting and cold-blooded hostility!”
He wiped off the concentrated essence of cowardice
that was oozing fast down his forehead, and looked
aghast at Joseph Overton. -
‘‘It certainly is a very hard case,” replied the mayor
with a smile, ‘‘that, in a free country, people can’t
marry whom they like, without being hunted down as
if they were criminals. However, in the present in-
stance the lady is willing, you know, and that’s the
main point, after all.”
“Lady willing!” repeated Trott, mechanically. “How
do you know the lady's willing?”
“Come, that’s a good one,” said the mayor, benevo-
lently tapping Mr. Trott on the arm with his broad-
brimmed hat; “I have known her, well, for a long
time; and if anybody could entertain the remotest
doubt on the subject, I assure you I have none, nor
need you have.” . -
“Dear me!” said Mr. Trott, ruminating. “This is
wery extraordinary !”
“Well, Lord Peter,” said the mayor, rising.
“Lord Peter?” repeated Mr. Trott. -
“Oh—ah, I forgot. Mr. Trott, then–Trott—very
THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL. 4.17
good, ha!, ha!—Well, sir, the chaise shall be ready at
half-past twelve.”
“And what is to become of me until then?” inquired
Mr. Trott, anxiously. “Wouldn’t it save appearances,
if I were placed under some restraint?”
“Ah!” replied Overton, “very good thought—capital
idea indeed. I’ll send somebody up directly. And if
you make a little resistance when we put you in the
chaise it wouldn’t be amiss—look as if you didn’t want
to be taken away, you know.”
“To be sure,” said Trott—“ to be sure.”
“Well, my lord,” said Overton, in a low tone, “until
then, I wish your lordship a good evening.”
“Lord —lordship?” ejaculated Trott again, falling
back a step or two, and gazing, in unutterable wonder,
on the countenance of the mayor.
‘‘Ha-ha! I see, my lord—practising the madman?—
very good indeed—very vacant look—capital, my lord,
capital—good evening, Mr. Trott—ha! haſ hal”
“That mayor’s decidedly drunk,” soliloquised Mr.
Trott, throwing himself back in his chair, in an atti-
tude of reflection.
“He is a much cleverer fellow than I thought him,
that young nobleman—he carries it off uncommonly
well,” thought Overton, as he went his way to the bar,
there to complete his arrangements. This was soon
done. Every word of the story was implicitly believed,
and the one-eyed boots was immediately instructed to
repair to number nineteen, to act as custodian of the
person of the supposed lunatic until half-past twelve
o'clock. In pursuance of this direction, that somewhat
eccentric gentleman armed himself with a walking-
stick of gigantic dimensions, and repaired, with his
usual equanimity of manner, to Mr. Trott’s apartment,
which he entered without any ceremony, and mounted
guard in, by quietly depositing himself on a chair near
the door, where he proceeded to beguile the time by
whistling a popular air with great apparent satisfaction.
“What do you want here, you scoundrel?” exclaimed
Mr. Alexander Trott with a proper appearance of indig-
nation at his detention.
The boots beat time with his head, as he looked
gently round at Mr. Trott with a smile of pity, and
whistled an adagio movement.
2?
4.18 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“Do you attend in this room by Mr. Overton’s de-
sire?” inquired Trott, rather astonished at the man’s
demeanour.
“Keep yourself to yourself, young feller,” calmly
responded the boots, ‘‘ and don’t say nothin’ to nobody.”
And he whistled again. -
“Now mind!” ejaculated Mr. Trott, anxious to keep
up the farce of wishing with great earnestness to fight
a duel if they’d let him. “I protest against being kept
here. I deny that I have any intention of fighting with
anybody. But, as it’s useless contending with superior
numbers, I shall sit quietly down.”
“You’d better,” observed the placid boots, shaking
the large stick expressively.
“Under protest, however,” added Alexander Trott,
seating himself, with indignation in his face, but great
content in his heart. “Under protest.”
“Oh, certainly l’ responded the boots; “anything you
please. If you’re happy, I’m transported; only don’t
talk too much—it’ll make you worse.”
“Make me worse?” exclaimed Trott, in unfeigned as-
tonishment; “the man’s drunk!”
“You’d better be quiet, young feller,” remarked the
boots, going through a threatening piece of pantomime
with the stick.
‘‘ Or mad!” said Mr. Trott, rather alarmed. “Leave
the room, sir, and tell them to send somebody else.”
“Won’t do!” replied the boots,
“Leave the room!” shouted Trott, ringing the bell
violently; for he began to be alarmed on a new score.
“Leave that 'ere bell alone, you wretched loo-nattic!”
såid the boots, suddenly forcing the unfortunate Trott
back into his chair, and brandishing the stick aloft.
“Be quiet, you mis’rable object, and don’t let every-
body know there’s a madman in the house.”
“He is a madman! He is a madman!” exclaimed the
terrified Mr. Trott, gazing on the one eye of the red-
headed boots with a look of abject horror.
“Madman!” replied the boots, ‘‘dam’me, I think he is
a madman with a vengeance! Listen to me, you lin-
fort’nate. Ah! would you?” [a slight tap on the head
with the large stick, as Mr. Trott made another
†† toward the bell-handle] “I caught you there!
i ? 35
THE GREAT WINGLETBURY DUEL. 419
“Spare my life!” exclaimed Trott, raising his hands
imploringly. --
“I don’t want your life,” replied the boots, dis-
dainfully, “though I think it ’ud be a charity if some-
body took it.”
“No, no, it wouldn’t,” interrupted poor Mr. Trott,
hurriedly; “no, no, it wouldn't! I–I-’d rather keep
it!” . * -
“O werry well,” said the boots; “that’s a mere matter
of taste—ev’ry one to his liking. Hows’ever, all I’ve got
to say is this here: you sit quietly down in that chair,
and I’ll sit hoppersite you here, and if you keep quiet and
don’t stir, I won’t damage you; but if you move hand or
foot till half-past twelve o’clock, I shall alter the ex-
pression of your countenance so completely, that the
next time you look in the glass you’ll ask vether you’re
gone out of town, and ven you’re likely to come back
again. So sit down.”
“I will—I will,” responded the victim of mistakes;
and down sat Mr. Trott, and down sat the boots too, ex-
actly opposite him, with the stick ready for immediate
action in case of emergency.
Long and dreary were the hours that followed. The
bell of Great Winglebury Church had just struck ten,
and two hours and a half would probably elapse before
succor arrived. For half an hour, the noise occasioned
by shutting up the shops in the street beneath, be-
tokened something like life in the town, and rendered
Mr. Trott’s situation a little less insupportable; but,
when even these ceased, and nothing was heard beyond
the Occasional rattling of a post-chaise as it drove up
the yard to change horses, and then drove away again,
or the clattering of horses’ hoofs in the stables behind,
it became almost unbearable. The boots occasionally
moved an inch or two, to knock superfluous bits of wax
off the candles, which were burning low, but instan-
taneously resumed his former position; and as he remem-
bered to have heard somewhere that the human eye
had an unfailing effect in controlling mad people, he
kep his solitary organ of vision constantly fixed on Mr.
Alexander Trott. That unfortunate individual stared
at his companion in his turn, until his features grew
more and more indistinct—his hair gradually less red—
and the room more misty and obscure. Mr. Alexander
420 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Trott fell into a sound sleep, from which he was
awakened by a rumbling in the street, and and a cry
of “Chaise-and-four for number twenty-five!” A bustle
on the stairs succeeded; the room door was hastily
thrown open; and Mr. Joseph Overton entered, followed
by four stout waiters, and Mrs. Williamson, the stout
landlady of the Winglebury Arms. * .
“Mr. Overton!” exclaimed Mr. Alexander, Trott,
jumping up in a frenzy, “Look at this man, sir; con-
sider the situation in which I have been placed for three
hours past—the person you sent to guard me, sir, was a
madman—a madman—a raging, ravaging, furious
madman.” & - -
“Bravo!” whispered Overton. . . . .
“Poor dear!” said the compassionate Mrs. William-
son, “mad people always thinks other people’s mad.”
“Poor dear!” ejaculated Mr. Alexander Trott, “what
the devil do yon mean by poor dear! Are you the
landlady of this house?”
“Yes, yes,” replied the stout old lady, “don’t you
exert yourself, there’s a dear! Consider your health
now; do.”
“Exert myself!” shouted Mr. Alexander Trott, “it’s
a mercy, ma'am, that I have any breath to exert my-
self with ! I might have been assassinated three hours
ago by that one-eyed monster with the oakum head.
How dare you have a madman, ma'am, how dare you
have a madman, to assault and terrify the visitors to
your house?”
“I’ll never have another,” said Mrs. Williamson,
casting a look of reproach at the mayor. -
“Capital, capital,” whispered Overton again, as he
ºped Mr. Alexander Trott in a thick travelling-
ClO3, K. *
“Capital, sir!” exclaimed Trott, aloud, “it’s horrible.
The very recollection makes me shudder. I’d rather
fight four duels in three hours, if I survived the first
three, than I’d sit for that time face to face with a
madman.”
“Keep it up, my Lord, as you go down stairs,” whis-
pered Overton, “your bill is paid, and your portmanteau
in the chaise.” And then, he added aloud, “Now,
waiters, the gentleman’s ready.” -
At this signal, the Waiters crowded round Mr. Alex-
THE GREAT WINGLEBURY DUEL. 421
ander Trott. One, took one arm; another, the other;
a third, walked before with a candle; the fourth, be-
hind, with another candle: the boots and Mrs. William-
son brought up the rear; and down stairs they went:
Mr. Alexander Trott, expressing alternately at the
very top of his voice either his feigned reluctance to
go, or his unfeigned indignation at being shut up with
a madman.
Mr. Overton was waiting at the chaise-door, the boys
were ready mounted, and a few ostlers and stable
nondescripts were standing round to witness the de-
parture of the ‘‘the mad gentleman.” Mr. Alexander
Trott’s foot was on the step, when he observed (which
the dim light had prevented his doing before), a figure
seated in the chaise, closely muffled up in a cloak like
his own. - -
“Who’s that?” he inquired of Overton, in a whisper.
“ Hush, hush,” replied the mayor; “the other party
of course.” -
“The other party!”, exclaimed Trott, with an effort
to retreat. - - -
“Yes, yes; you’ll soon find that out, before you go
far, I should think—but make a noise, you’ll excite
suspicion if you whisper to me so much.”
“I won’t go in this chaise!” shouted Mr. Alexander
Trott, all his original fears recurring with tenfold
violence. “I shall be assassinated—T shall be-’’
“Bravo, bravo,” whispered Overton. “I’ll push
you in.”
“But I won’t go,” exclaimed Mr. Trott. “Help here,
help! . They're carrying me away against my will.
This is a plot to murder me.”
“Poor dear!” said Mrs. Williamson again.
“Now, boys, put 'em along,” cried the mayor, push-
ing Trott in and slamming the door. “Off with you,
as quick as you can, and stop for nothing till you come
to the next stage—all right!” . . . -
“Horses are paid, Tom,” Screamed Mrs. Williamson;
and away went the chaise, at the rate of fourteen miles
an hour, with Mr. Alexander Trott and Miss Julia Man-
ners carefully shut up in the inside. .
Mr. Alexander Trott remained coiled up in one corner
of the chaise, and his mysterious companion in the
other, for the first two or three miles; Mr. Trott edging
422 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
more and more into his corner, as he felt his companion
gradually edging more and more from hers; and vainly
endeavouring in the darkness to catch a glimpse of the
furious face of the supposed Horace Hunter.
“We may speak now,” said his fellow traveller, at
length; “the post-boys can neither see nor hear us.”
“That’s not Hunter's voice!”—thought Alexander,
astonished. .
“Dear Lord Peter!” said Miss Julia, most winningly:
putting her arm on Mr. Trott’s shoulder. “Dear Lord
Peter. Not a word?”
“Why, it’s a woman!” exclaimed Mr. Trott, in a low
tone of excessive wonder.
“Ah! Whose voice is that?” said Julia; “’tis not
Lord Peter’s.” -
“No, it’s mine,” replied Mr. Trott. -
“Yours!” ejaculated Miss Julia Manners; “a strange
man! Gracious heaven! How came you here?”s
“Whoever you are, you might have known that I
came against my will, ma'am,” replied Alexander, “for
I made noise enough when I got in.”
“Do you come from Lord Peter?” inquired Miss
Manners.
“Confound Lord Peter,” replied Trott pettishly. “I
don’t know any Lord Peter. I never heard of him
before to-night, when I’ve been Lord Peter'd by one and
Lord Peter’d by another, till I verily believe I’m mad,
or dreaming—”
“Whither are we going?” inquired the lady tragically.
“How should I know, ma’am?” replied Trott with
singular coolness; for the events of the evening had
cempletely hardened him.
“Stop! stop!” cried the lady, letting down the front
glasses of the chaise. g
“Stay, my dear ma'am!'” said Mr. Trott, pulling the
glasses up again with One hand, and gently squeezing
Miss Julia’s waist with the other. “ There is some
mistake here; give me till the end of this stage to explain
my share of it. We must go so far; you cannot be set
down here alone, at this hour of the might.”
The lady consented; the mistake was mutually ex-
plained, Mr. Trott was a young man, had highly promis-
ing whiskers, an undeniable tailor and an insinuating
address—he wanted nothing but valour, and who wants
f
MRS. JOSEPH PORTER. 423
that with three thousand a-year? The lady had this,
and more; she wanted a young husband, and the only
course open to Mr Trott to retrieve his disgrace was a
rich wife. So, they came to the conclusion that it would
be a pity to have all this trouble and expense for noth-
ing; and that as they were so far on the road already,
they had better go to Gretna Green, and marry each
other; and they did so. And the very next preceding
entry in the Blacksmith’s book, was an entry of the
marriage of Emily Brown with Horace Hunter. Mr.
Hunter took his wife home, and begged pardon, and
was pardoned; and Mr. Trott took his wife home,
begged pardon too, and was pardoned also. And Lord
Peter, who had been detained beyond his time by drink-
ing champagne and riding a steeple-chase, went back
to the Honourable Augustus Flair's and drank more
champagne, and rode another steeple-chase, and was
thrown and killed. And Horace Hunter took great
credit to himself for practising on the cowardice of
Alexander Trott; and all these circumstances were
discovered in time, and carefully noted down; and if
you ever stop a week at the Winglebury Arms, they
will give you just this account of The Great Wingle-
bury Duel.
CHAPTER IX.
NIRS. JOSEPH PORTER.
Yº,
Mº. extensive were the preparations at Rose Villa,
- VI- Clapham Rise, in the occupation of Mr. Gattleton
(a stockbroker in especially comfortable circumstances),
and great was the anxiety of Mr. Gattleton's interesting
family, as the day fixed for the representation of the
Private Play which had been “many months in prepara-
tion,” approached. The whole family was infected with
the mania for Private Theatricals; the house, usually
so clean and tidy, was, to use Mr. Gattleton’s expressive
description, “regularly turned out o' windows; ”the large
dining-room, dismantled of its furniture and Ornaments,
resented a strange jumble of flats, flies, wings, lamps,
#. clouds, thunder and lightning, festoons and
flowers, daggers and foil, and various other messes in
424 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
theatrical slang included under the comprehensive name
of “properties.” The bed-rooms were crowded with
scenery, the kitchen was occupied by carpenters. Re-
hersals took place every other night in the drawing-
room, and every Sofa in the house was more or less
damaged by the perseverance and spirit with which
Mr. Sempromius Gattleton, and Miss Lucina, rehearsed
the smothering scene in ‘‘ Othello "--it having been
determined that that tragedy should form the first
portion of º entertainments.
“When we’re a leetle more perfect, I think it will go
admirably,” said Mr. Sempronius, addressing his corps.
dramatique, at the conclusion of the hundred and
fiftieth rehearsal. In consideration of his sustaining
the trifling inconvenience of bearing all the expenses of
the play, Mr. Sempronius had been, in the most hand-
Some manner, unanimously elected stage-manager.
“Evans,” continued Mr. Gattleton, the younger, ad-
dressing a tall, thin, pale young gentleman, with
extensive whiskers. “Evans, you play Roderigo
beautifully.” - - -
“Beautifully!” echoed the three Miss Gattletons; for
Mr. Evans was pronounced by all his lady friends to be
‘‘ quite a dear.” He looked so interesting, and had such
lovely whiskers: to say nothing of his talent for writing
verses in albums and playing the flute Roderigo sim-
pered and bowed.
“But I think,” added the manager, “you are hardly
perfect in the-fall—in the fencing-scene, where you
are—you understand?” - - -
“It’s very difficult,” said Mr. Evans, thoughtfully;
“I’ve fallen about, a good deal, in our counting-house
lately for practice, only I find it hurts one so. Being
obliged to fall backwards you see, it bruises one’s head
a good deal.” -
“But you must take care you don’t knock a wing
down,” said Mr. Gattleton, the elder, who had been ap-
pointed prompter, and who took as much interest in the
play as the youngest of the company. “The stage is
very narrow, you know.”
“Oh I don’t be afraid,” said Mr. Evans, with a very
self-satisfied air : “I shall fall with my head ‘off,’ and
then I can’t do any harm.”
“But, egad l’” said the manager, rubbing his hands,
MRS. JOSEPH PORTER. 425
“we shall make a decided hit in ‘Masaniello.’ Harleigh
sings that music admirably.” -
Everybody echoed the sentiment. Mr. Harleigh
Smiled, and looked foolish—not an unusual thing with
him—hummed “Behold how brightly breaks the mor-
ning,” and blushed as red as the fisherman’s nightcap
he was trying on.
“Let’s see,” resumed the manager, telling the number.
on his fingers, “we shall have three dancing female
peasants, besides Fenella, and four fishermen. Then,
there’s our man Tom; he can have a pair of ducks of
Imine, and a check shirt of Bob's, and a red nightcap,
and he’ll do for another—that’s five. In the choruses,
of course, we can sing at the sides; and in the market-
scene, we can walk about in cloaks and things. When
the revolt takes place, Tom must keep rushing in on One
side and out on the other, with a pickaxe, as fast as he
car. The effect will be electrical; it will look exactly
as if there were an immense number of 'em. And in
the eruption scene we must burn the red fire, and upset
the tea-trays, and make all sorts of noises—and it’s
sure to do.” .
“Sure sure l’ cried all the performers und voce—and
away hurried Mr. Sempromius Gattleton to wash the
burnt cork off his face, and superintend the “setting
up ’’ of some of the amateur-painted, and never-suffi-
ciently-to-be-admired, scenery.
Mrs. Gattleton was a kind, good-tempered, Vulgar
Soul, exceedingly fond of her husband and children, and
entertaining only three dislikes. In the first place, she
had a natural antipathy to anybody else’s unmarried
daughters; in the second, she was in bodily fear of any-
thing in the shape of ridicule; lastly—almost a neces-
sary consequence of this feeling—she regarded, with
feelings of the utmost horror, one Mrs. Joseph Porter
over the way. However, the good folks of Clapham
and its vicinity stood very much in awe of scandal and
sarcasm; and thus Mrs. Joseph Porter was courted, and
flattered, and caressed, and invited, for much the same
reason that induces a poor author, without a farthing in
his pocket, to behave with extraordinary civility to a
º postman. -
“Never mind, ma,” said Miss Emma Porter, in col-
loquy with her respected relative, and trying to look
426 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
unconcerned; “if they had invited me, you know that
neither you nor pa would have allowed me to take part
in such an exhibition.”
“Just what I should have thought from your high
sense of propriety,” returned the mother. “I am glad
to see, Emma, you know how to designate the proceed-
ing.” Miss P., by-the-by, had only the week before
made “an exhibition * of herself for four days, behind
a counter at a fancy fair, to all and every of her Majes-
ty’s liege subjects who were disposed to pay a shilling
each for the privilege of seeing some four dozen girls
flirting with strangers, and playing at shop.
“There !” said Mrs. Porter, looking out of window;
“there are two rounds of beef and a ham going in-
clearly for sandwiches; and Thomas, the pastry-cook,
says, there have been twelve dozen tarts ordered, be-
sides blanc-mange and jellies. Upon my word ' think
of the Miss Gattletons in fancy dresses, too!”
“Oh, it’s too ridiculous!” said Miss Porter, hyster-
ically.
“I’ll manage to put them a little out of conceit with
the business, however,” said Mrs. Porter; and out she
went on her charitable errand.
“Well, my dear Mrs. Gattleton,” said Mrs. Joseph
Porter, after they had been closeted for some time, and
when, by dint of indefatigable pumping, she had man-
aged to extract all the news about the play, “well, my
dear, people may say what they please; indeed we
know they will, for some folks are so ill-natured. Ah,
my dear Miss Lucina, how d'ye do? I was just telling
your mamma that I have heard it said, that —”
“What?”
“Mrs. Porter is alluding to the play, my dear,” said
Mrs. Gattleton; “she was, I am sorry to say, just in-
forming me that —”
“Oh, now pray don’t mention it,” interrupted Mrs.
Porter, “it’s most absurd—quite as absurd as young
What's-his-name saying he wondered how Miss Caro-
line with such a foot and ankle, could have the vanity
to play Fenella.”
“Highly impertinent; whoever said it,” said Mrs.
Gattleton, bridling up.
“Certainly, my dear,” chimed in the delighted Mrs.
Porter; “most undoubtedly! Because, as I said, if Miss
MRS. JOSEPH PORTER. 427
Caroline does play Fenella, it doesn’t follow, as a mat-
ter of course, that she should think she has a pretty
foot; and then—such puppies as these young men are—
he had the impudence to say, that —”
How far the amiable Mrs. Porter might have suc-
ceeded in her pleasant purpose, it is impossible to say,
had not the entrance of Mr. Thomas Balderstone, Mrs.
'Gattleton’s brother, familiarly called in the family
“Uncle Tom,” changed the course of conversation, and
suggested to her mind an excellent plan of Operation on
the evening of the play.
|Uncle Tom was very rich, and exceedingly fond of his
nephews and nieces; as a matter of course, therefore,
be was an object of great importance in his own family.
He was one of the best-hearted men in existence;
always in a good temper, and always talking. It was
his boast that he wore top-boots on all occasions, and
had never worn a black silk neckerchief; and it was
his pride that he remembered all the principal plays of
Shakespeare from beginning to- end—and so he did.
The result of this parrot-like accomplishment was, that
he was not only perpetually quoting himself, but that
he could never sit by and hear a misquotation from the
“Swan of Avon * without setting the unfortunate de-
linquent right. He was always something of a wag;
never missed an opportunity of saying what he con-
sidered a good thing, and invariably laughed until he
cried at anything that appeared to him mirth-moving
or ridiculous.
“Well, girls!” said Uncle Tom, after the preparatory
ceremony of kissing and how-d’ye-doing had been gone
through—“how d'ye get on ? Know your parts, eh?—
Lucina, my dear, act ii., Scene 1–place, left—cue—
“ Unknown fate,’ —What’s next, eh?—Go on—“The
heavens—”
“Oh, yes,” said Miss Lucina, “I recollect—
* The hea,VenS forbid
But that Our loves and COmfortS Should increase
Even as our days do grow 1 '''
“Make a pause here and there,” said the old gentle-
man, who was a great critic. ‘‘ ‘But that our loves and
comforts should increase’—emphasis on the last sylla-
ble, ‘crease,”—loud ‘ even,’—one, two, three, four; then
428 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
loud again, “as our days do grow; ’ emphasis on days.
That’s the way, my dear; trust to your uncle for em-
phasis. Ah! Sem, my boy, how are you?” -
“Very well, thankee uncle,” returned Mr. Sempronius,
who had just appeared, looking something like a ring-
dove, with a small circle round each eye: the result of
º constant corking. “Of course we see you on Thurs-
ay.”
“Of course, of course, my dear boy.”
“What a pity it is your nephew didn’t think of mak-
ing you prompter, Mr. Balderstone!” whispered Mrs.
Joseph Porter; “you would have been invaluable.”
“Well, I flatter myself, I should have been tolerably
up to the thing,” responded Uncle Tom.
“I must bespeak sitting next you on the night,” re-
sumed Mrs. Porter; “and, then, if our dear young
friends here, should be at all Wrong, you will be able to
enlighten me. I shall be so interested.” **
“I am sure I shall be most happy to give you any
assistance in my power.”
“Mind, it’s a bargain.”
“Certainly.”
“I don’t know how it is,” said Mrs. Gattleton to her
daughters, as they were sitting round the fire in the
evening, looking over their parts, “but I really very
much wish Mrs. Joseph Porter wasn’t coming on Thurs-
day. I am sure she's scheming something.”
“She can’t make us ridiculous, however,”
Mr. Sempromius Gattleton, haughtily.
The long-looked-for Thursday arrived in due course,
and brought with it, as Mr. Gattleton, senior, philo-
sophically observed, “no disappointments to speak of.”
True, it was yet a matter of doubt whether Cassio would
be enabled to get into the dress which had been sent for
him from the masquerade warehouse. It was equally
uncertain whether the principal female singer would be
sufficiently recovered from the influenza to make her
appearance; Mr. Harleigh, the Masaniello of the night,
was hoarse, and rather unwell, in consequence of the
great quantity of lemon and Sugar-candy he had eaten
to improve his voice; and two flutes and a violoncello had
pleaded severe colds. What of that? the audience were
all coming. Everybody knew his part; the dresses were
covered with tinsel and spangles; the white plumes
observed
MRS. JOSEPH PORTER. 429
looked beautiful; Mr. Evans had practised falling until
he was bruised from head to foot and quite perfect;
Iago was sure that in the stabbing-scene, he should
make “a decided hit.” A self-taught deaf gentle-
man, who had kindly offered to bring his flute, would
be a most valuable addition to the orchestra; Miss
Jenkins’s talent for the piano was too well known
to be doubted for an instant; Mr. Cape had prac-
tised the violin accompaniment with her, fre-
Quently; and Mr. Brown, who had kindly undertaken,
at a few hours’ notice, to bring his violoncello, would, no
doubt, manage extremely well.
Seven o’clock came, and so did the audience; all the
rank and fashion of Clapham and its vicinity were fast
filling the theatre. There were the Smiths, the Gub-,
binses, the Nixons, the Dixons, the Hicksons, people
with all sorts of names, two aldermen, a sheriff in per-
spective, Sir Thomas Glumper (who, had been knighted
in the last reign for carrying up an address on Some-
body’s escaping from nothing); and last, not least, there
were Mrs. Joseph Porter and Uncle Tom, seated in the
centre of the third row from the stage; Mrs. P. amus-
ing Uncle Tom with all sorts of stories, and Uncle
Tom amusing every one else by laughing most im-
moderately. **
Ting, ting, ting! went the prompter’s bell at eight
o'clock precisely, and dash went the orchestra into the
overture to “The Men of Prometheus.” The piano-
forte player hammered away with laudable persever-
ance; and the violoncello, which struck in at intervals,
“sounded very well, considering.” The unfortunate
individual, however, who had undertaken to play the
flute accompaniment “at sight,” found from fatal ex-
perience, the perfect truth of the old adage, ‘‘ out of
sight, out of mind; ” for being very near-sighted, and
being placed at a considerable distance from his music-
book, all he had an opportunity of doing was to play a
bar now and then in the wrong place, and put the other
performers out. It is, however, but justice to Mr.
Brown to say that he did this to admiration. The over-
ture, in fact, was not unlike a race between the differ-
ent instruments; the piano came in first by several
bars, and the violoncello next, quite distancing the poor
flute; for the deaf gentleman too-too'd away, quite un-
430 SKIETCHES BY BOZ.
conscious that he was at all wrong, until apprised by
the applause of the audience, that the Overture was con-
cluded. A considerable bustling and shuffling of feet
was then heard upon the stage, accompanied by whis-
pers of “Here's a pretty go!”—what's to be done?” &c.
The audience applauded again, by way of raising the
spirits of the performers; and then Mr. Sempronius de-
sired the prompter, in a very audible voice, to “clear
the stage and ring up.”
Ting, ting, ting! went the bell again. Everybody sat
down; the curtain shook; rose sufficiently high to dis-
play several pairs of yellow boots paddling about; and
there remained.
Ting, ting, ting! went the bell again. The curtain
was violently convulsed, but rose no higher; the audi-
ence tittered; Mrs. Porter looked at Uncle Tom; Uncle
Tom looked at everybody, rubbing his hands, and
laughing with perfect rapture. After as much ringing
with the little bell as a muffin-boy would make in going
down a tolerably long street, and a vast deal of whis-
pering, hammering and calling for nails and cord, the
curtain at length rose, and discovered Mr. Sempronius
Gattleton, solus, and decked for Othello. After three
distinct rounds of applause, during which Mr. Sempro-
nius applied his right hand to his left breast, and bowed
in the most approved manner, the manager advanced
and said: º •
“Ladies and Gentlemen—I assure you it is with sin-
cere regret, that I regret to be compelled to inform you,
that Iago who was to have played Mr. Wilson—I beg
your pardon, Ladies and Gentlemen, but I am natu-
rally somewhat agitated (applause)—I mean, Mr. Wil-
son, who was to have played Iago, is—that is, has
been—or, in other words, Ladies and Gentlemen, the
fact is, that I have just received a mote, in which I am
informed that Iago is unavoidably detained at the Post-
office this evening. Under these circumstances, I trust
—a—a—amateur performance—a-—another gentleman
undertaken to read the part—requests indulgence for a
short time—courtesy and kindness of a British audi-
ence.” Overwhelming applause. Exit Mr. Sempro-
nius Gattleton, and curtain falls.
The audience were, of course, exceedingly good-
humoured; the whole business was a joke; and accord-
MRS. JOSEPH PORTER. 431
ingly they waited for an hour with the utmost patience,
being enlivened by an interlude of rout-eakes and
lemonade. It appeared by Mr. Sempronius's subsequent
explanation, that the delay would not have been so
great, had it so happened that when the substitute Iago
had finished dressing, and just as the play was on the
point of commencing, the Original Iago unexpectedly
arrived. The former was therefore compelled to un-
dress, and the latter to dress for his part; which as he
found some difficulty in getting into his clothes, occu-
pied no inconsiderable time. At last, the tragedy began
in real earnest. It went off well enough, until the third
scene of the first act, in which Othello addresses the
Senate: the only remarkable circumstance being, that
as Iago could not get on any of the stage boots, in con-
sequence of his feet being violently swelled with the
heat and excitement, he was under the necessity of
playing the part in a pair of Wellingtons, which con-
trasted rather oddly with his richly embroidered pan-
taloons. When Othello started with his address to the
Senate (whose dignity was represented by, the Duke, a
carpenter, two men engaged on the recommendation of
the gardener, and a boy), Mrs. Porter found the oppor-
tunity she so anxiously sought.
Mr. Sempronius proceeded:
*** Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,
My very noble and approved good masters,
That I have ta'en away this old man’s daughter,
- It is most true;—rude am I in my speech—’”
“Is that right?” whispered Mrs. Porter to Uncle Tom.
“ No.” - -
“Tell him so, then.” . -
“I will, Sem!” called out Uncle Tom, “that’s wrong,
55
my. boy. 2 25 - º
“What's wrong, Uncle?” demanded Othello, quite
forgetting the dignity of his situation.
“You’ve left out something. ‘True I have mar-
g 2 55
ried— -
“Oh, ah!” said Mr. Sempronius, endeavouring to hide
his confusion as much and as ineffectually as the
audience attempted to conceal their half-suppressed
tittering, by coughing with extraordinary violence—
——‘‘ ‘true I have married her;— -
The very head and front of my offending
Hath this extent; no mºre.'
( Aside ) Why don't you prompt, father?”
432 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“Because I’ve mislaid my spectacles,” said poor Mr.
Gattleton, almost dead with the heat and bustle.
“There, now it’s ‘rude am I,’” said Uncle Tom.
“Yes, I know it is,” returned the unfortunate
manager, proceeding with his part.
It would be useless and tiresome to quote the number
of instances in which Uncle Tom, now completely in
his element, and instigated by the mischievous Mrs.
Porter, corrected the mistakes of the performers; suffice
it to say, that having mounted his hobby, nothing could
induce him to dismount; so, during the whole remain-
der of the play, he performed a kind of running accom-
animent, by muttering everybody’s part as it was
É. delivered, in an under tone. The audience were
highly amused, Mrs. Porter delighted, the performers
embarrassed; Uncle Tom never was better pleased in all
his life; and Uncle Tom’s nephews and nieces had never,
although the declared heirs to his large property, so
heartily wished him gathered to his fathers as on that
memorable occasion.
Several other minor causes, too, united to damp the
ardour of the dramatis personae. None of the per-
formers could walk in their tights, or move their arms
in their jackets; the pantaloons were too small, the
boots too large, and the Swords of all shapes and sizes.
Mr. Evans, naturally too tall for the scenery, wore a
black velvet hat with immense white plumes, the glory
of which was lost in “the flies; ” and the only other
inconvenience of which was, that when it was off his
head he could not put it on, and when it was on he
could not take it off. Notwithstanding all his practice,
too, he fell with his head and shoulders as neatly
through one of the side scenes, as a harlequin would
jump through a panel in a Christmas pantomime. The
pianoforte player, Overpowered by the extreme heat of
the room, fainted away at the commencement of the
entertainments, leaving the music of “Masaniello” to
the flute and violoncello. The orchestra complained
that Mr. Harleigh put them out, and Mr. Harleigh de-
clared that the Orchestra prevented his singing a note.
The fishermen, who were hired for the occasion, re-
volted to the very life, positively refusing to play with-
out an increased allowance of Spirits; and, their demand
being complied with, getting drunk in the eruption
- - Žiž".
* . . " *T.I.T. -- ... ——
." - w
§
ºN
§
§N§
§
º
:
§
\g
§
W
W
§
§
|
ſ
5-
Lºſ
º
22:* *%
ſe-r-ſtrº ** **-tº-s
- > *-* * *
WATEINS TOTTI.E.
Sketches.










MRS. JOSEPH PORTER, 433
scene as naturally as possible. The red fire, which was
burnt at the conclusion of the second act, not only
nearly Suffocated the audience, but nearly set the house
On fire into the bargain; and, as it was, the remainder
of the piece was acted in a thick fog.
In short, the whole affair was, as Mrs. Joseph Porter
triumphantly told everybody, “a complete failure.”
The audience went home at four o’clock in the morn-
ing, exhausted with laughter, suffering from severe
headaches, and Smelling terribly of brimstone and gun-
powder. The Messrs. Gattleton, senior and junior, re-
tired to rest, with the vague idea of emigrating to Swan
River early in the ensuing week.
Rose Villa has once again resumed its wonted appear-
ance; the dining-room furniture has been replaced; the
tables are as nicely polished as formerly; the horsehair
chairs are ranged against the wall, as regularly as ever;
Venetian blinds have been fitted to every window in the
house to intercept the prying gaze of Mrs. Joseph Porter.
The subject of theatricals is never mentioned in the
Gattleton family, unless, indeed, by Uncle Tom, who
cannot refrain from sometimes expressing his surprise
and regret at finding that his nephews and nieces
appear to have lost the relish they once possessed for
the beauties of Shakspeare, and quotations from the
works of that immortal bard. -
CHAPTER X.
A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF MIR. W. ATKINS TOTTLE.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
M | ATRIMONY is proverbially a serious undertaking.
Like an overweening predilection for brandy-and-
water, it is a misfortune into which a man easily falls,
and from which he finds it remarkably difficult to extri-
cate himself. It is of no use telling a man who is
timorous on these points, that it is but one plunge, and
all is over. They say the same thing at the Old Bailey,
and the unfortunate victims derive as much comfort
from the assurance in the one case as in the other.
28 .
434 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Mr. Watkins Tottle was a rather uncommon Com-
bound of strong uxorious inclinations, and an unparal-
i. degree of anti-connubial timidity. He was about
fifty years of age; stood four feet six inches and three-
quarters in his socks—for he never stood in stocking at
all—plump, clean, and rosy. He looked something like
a vignette to one of Richardson’s novels, and had a
clean-cravatish formality of manner, and kitchen-
pokerness of carriage, which Sir Charles Grandison
himself might have envied. He lived on an annuity,
which was well adapted to the individual who received
it, in one respect—it was rather small. He received it
in periodical payments on every alternate Monday; but
he ran himself out, about a day after the expiration of
the first week, as regularly as an eight-day clock; and
then, to make the comparison complete, his landlady
wound him up, and he went on with a regular tick.
Mr. Watkins Tottle had long lived in a state of single
blessedness, as bachelors say, or single cursedness, as
spinsters think; but the idea of matrimony had never
ceased to haunt him. Wrapt in profound reveries on
this never-failing theme, fancy transformed his small
parlour in Cecil-street, Strand, into a neat house in the
suburbs; the half-hundredweight of coals under the
kitchen-stairs suddenly sprang up into three tons of the
best Walls-end; his small French bedstead was con-
verted into a regular matrimonial four-poster; and in
the empty chair on the opposite side of the fire-place,
imagination seated a beautiful young lady, with a very
little independence or will of her own, and a very large
independence under a will of her father’s.
“Who’s there P’’ inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle, as a
gentle tap at his room-door disturbed these medita-
tions one evening.
“Tottle, my dear fellow, how do you do?” said a short
elderly gentleman with a gruffish voice, bursting into
the room, and replying to the question by asking
another. -:
“Told you I should drop in some evening,” said the
short gentleman, as he delivered his hat into Tottle’s
hand, after a little struggling and dodging.
“Delighted to see you, I’m sure,” said Mr. Watkins
Tottle, wishing internally that his visitor had “dropped
in " to the Thames at the bottom of the street, instead .
MR. WATKINS TOTTLE. 435
of dropping into his parlour. The fortnight was nearly
up, and Watkins was hard up.
“How is Mrs. Gabriel Parsons P’ inquired Tottle.
“Quite well, thank you,” replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons,
for that was the name the short gentleman revelled in.
Here there was a pause; the short gentleman looked at
the left hob of the fireplace; Mr. Watkins Tottle stared
Vacancy Out of countenance.
“Quite well,” repeated the short gentleman, when
five minutes had expired. “I may say remarkably
well.” And he rubbed the palms of his hands as hard
as if he were going to strike a light by friction.
“What will you take?” inquired Tottle, with the
desperate suddenness of a man who knew that unless
the visitor took his leave, he stood very little chance of
taking anything else.
“Oh, I don’t know.—Have you any whiskey?”
“Why,” replied Tottle, very slowly, for all this was
gaining time, “I had some capital, and remarkably
strong whiskey last week; but it’s all gone—and there-
fore its strength — ” gº
‘‘Is much beyond proof; or, in other words, impos-
sible to be proved,” said the short gentleman; and he
laughed very heartily, and seemed quite glad the whis-
key had been drunk. Mr. Tottle smiled—but it was the
Smile of despair. When Mr. Gabriel Parsons had done
laughing, he delicately insinuated that, in the absence
of whiskey, he would not be averse to brandy. And
Mr. Watkins Tottle, lighting a flat candle very osten-
tatiously; and displaying an immense key, which be-
longed to the street-door, but which, for the sake of
appearances, occasionally did duty in an imaginary
wine-cellar; left the room to entreat his landlady to
charge their glasses, and charge them in the bill. The
application was successful; the spirits were speedily
called—not from the vasty deep, but the adjacent wine-
vaults. The two short gentlemen mixed their grog;
and then sat cosily down before the fire—a pair of
shorts, airing themselves. *
“Tottle,” said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, “you know my
way—off-hand, open, say what I mean, mean what I
say, hate reserve, and can’t bear affectation. One, is a
bad domino which only hides what good people have
about ’em, without making the bad look better; and the
436 SKETCHES BY BOZ,
Other is much about the same thing as pinking a white
cotton stocking to make it look like a silk one. Now
listen to what I am going to say.” -
Here, the little gentleman paused, and took a long
pull at his brandy-and-water. Mr. Watkins Tottle took
a sip of his, stirred the fire, and assumed an air of
profound attention.
“It’s of no use humming about the matter,” resumed
the short gentleman—“you want to get married.”
“Why,” replied Mr. Watkins Tottle, evasively; for
he trembled violently, and felt a sudden tingling
throughout his whole frame; “why—I should certainly
—at least, I think I should like — ”
“Won’t do,” said the short gentleman.—“Plain and
free—or there’s an end of the matter. Do you want
money?” -
“You know I do.”
“You admire the Sex P”
& 4 I do.”
“And you’d like to be married?”
“Certainly.”
“Then you shall be. There’s an end of that.” Thus
saying, Mr. Gabriel Parsons took a pinch of snuff, and
mixed another glass.
“Let me entreat you to be more explanatory,” said
Tottle. “Really, as the party pººl, interested, I
connot consent to be disposed of, in this way.”
“I’ll tell you,” replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, warming
with the subject, and the brandy-and-water.—“I know
a lady—she’s stopping, with my wife now—who's just
the thing for you. Well-educated; talks French; plays
the piano; knows a good deal about flowers and shells,
and all that sort of thing; and has five hundred a-year,
with an uncontrollable power of disposing of it, by her
last will and testament.” *
“I’ll pay my addresses to her,” said Mr. Watkins
Tottle. “She isn’t very young—is she?”
“Not very; just the thing for you.-I’ve said that
already.” g *
“What coloured hair has the lady?” inquired Mr.
Watkins Tottle.
“Egad, I hardly recollect,” replied Gabriel with cool-
ness. “Perhaps I Ought to have observed, at first, she
wears a front.” -
MR. WATKINS TOTTLE 437
“A what!” ejaculated Tottle.
“One of those things, with curls, along here,” said
Parsons, drawing a straight line across his forehead,
just over his eyes, in illustration of his meaning. “I
know the front's black: I can’t speak quite positively
about her own hair; because, unless one walks behind .
her, and catches a glimpse of it under her bonnet, one
seldom sees it; but I should say that it was rather
lighter than the front—a shade of a greyish tinge,
perhaps.”
Mr. Watkins Tottle looked as if he had certain mis-
givings of mind. Mr. Gabriel Parsons perceived it, and
thought it would be safe to begin the next attack with-
out delay.
“Now, were you ever in love, Tottle?” he inquired.
Mr. Watkins Tottle blushed up to the eyes, and down
to the chin, and exhibited a most extensive combination
of colours as he confessed the soft impeachment.
“I suppose you popped the question, more than once,
when you were a young—I beg your pardon—a
younger—man,” said Parsons.
“Never in my life!” replied his friend, apparently
indignant at being suspected of such an act. “Never!
The fact is, that I entertain, as you know, peculiar
opinions on these subjects. I am not afraid of ladies,
young or old—far from it; but, I think, that in compli-
ance with the custom of the present day, they allow
too much freedom of speech and manner to marriage-
able men. Now, the fact is, that anything like this
easy freedom I never could acquire; and as I am
always afraid of going too far, I am generally, I dare
say, considered formal and cold.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if you were,” replied Parsons,
gravely, “I shouldn’t wonder. However you’ll be all
right in this case; for the strictness and delicacy of this
lady’s ideas greatly exceed your own. Lord bless you,
why when she came to our house, there was an old
portrait of some man or other, with two large black
staring eyes, hanging up in her bedroom; she positively
refused to go to bed there, till it was taken down, con-
sidering it decidedly wrong.”
“I think so, too,” said Mr. Watkins Tottle; “cer-
tainly.”
‘: And then, the other night—I never laughed so much
438 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
in my life”—resumed Mr. Gabriel Parsons; “I had
driven home in an easterly wind, and caught a devil
of a face-ache. Well; as Fanny—that’s Mrs. Parsons,
you know—and this friend of hers, and I, and Frank
Ross, were playing a rubber, I said, jokingly, that
when I went to bed I should wrap my head in Fanny’s
flannel petticoat. She instantly threw up her cards,
and left the room.”
“Quite right!” said Mr. Watkins Tottle, “she could
not possibly have behaved in a more dignified manner.
What did you do?”
“Do?—Frank took dummy; and I won sixpence?”
“But, didn’t you apologise for hurting her feelings?”
“Devil a bit. Next morning at breakfast, we talked
it over. She contended that any reference to a flannel
petticoat was improper;-men ought not to be supposed
to know that such things were. I pleaded my cover-
ture; being a married man.”
“And what did the lady say to that?” inquired
Tottle, deeply interested.
“Changed her ground, and said that Frank being a
single man, its impropriety was obvious.”
T 6 & Nºbleminded creature!” exclaimed the enraptured
Ottle.
“Oh! both Fanny and I said, at once, that she was
regularly cut out for you.”
A gleam of placid satisfaction shone on the circular
face of Mr. Watkins Tottle, as he heard the prophecy.
“There’s one thing I can’t understand,” said Mr.
Gabriel Parsons, as he rose to depart; “I cannot, for
the life and soul of me imagine, how the deuce you’ll
ever contrive to come together. The lady would cer-
tainly go into convulsions if the subject were men-
tioned.” Mr. Gabriel Parsons sat down again, and
laughed until he was weak. Tottle owed him money,
So he had a perfect right to laugh at Tottle's expense.
Mr. Watkins Tottle feared, in his own mind, that
this was another characteristic which he had in common
with this modern, Lucretia. He, however, accepted
the invitation to dine with the Parsonses on the next
day but one, with great firmness; and looked forward
to the introduction, when again left alone, with tolerable
Composure.
The Sun that rose on the next day but one, had never
MR. Watkins TOTTLE 489
beheld a sprucer personage on the outside of the Nor-
wood stage, than Mr. Watkins Tottle; and when the
coach drew up before a card-board looking house with
disguised chimneys, and a lawn like a large sheet of
green letter-paper, he certainly had never lighted to
his place of destination a gentleman who felt more
uncomfortable.
The coach stopped, and Mr. Watkins Tottle jumped—
we beg his pardon—alighted, with great dignity. “All
right!” ...P. and away went the coach up the hill
with that beautiful equanimity of pace for which
“short ’’ stages are generally remarkable. ,
Mr. Watkins Tottle gave a faltering jerk to the
handle of the garden-gate bell. He essayed a more
energetic tug, and his previous nervousness was not
at aſi diminished by hearing the beli ringing like a
fire alarum.
“Is Mr. Parsons at home?” inquired Tottle of the
man who opened the gate. He could hardly hear him-
self speak, for the bell had not yet done tolling.
‘‘ Here I am,” shouted a voice on the lawn, and there
was Mr. Gabriel Parsons in a flannel jacket, running
backwards and forwards, from a wicket to two hats
piled on each other, and from the two hats to the wicket,
in the most violent manner, while another gentleman
with his coat off was getting down the area of the house,
after a ball. When the gentleman without the coat
had found it—which he did in less than ten minutes—
he ran back to the hats, and Gabriel Parsons pulled up.
Then, the gentleman without the coat called out ‘‘play,”
very loudly, and bowled. Then, Mr. Gabriel Parsons
knocked the ball several yards, and took another run.
Then, the other gentleman aimed at the wicket, and
didn’t hit it; and Mr. Gabriel Parsons, having finished
running on his own account, laid down the bat and ran
after the ball, which went into a neighbouring field.
They called this cricket.
“Tottle, will you ‘go in?’” inquired Mr. Gabriel
Parsons, as he approached him, wiping the perspiration
off his face.
Mr. Watkins Tottle declined the offer, the bare idea of
accepting which made him even warmer than his friend.
“Then we’ll go into the house, as it’s past four, and
I shall have to wash my hands before dinner,” said Mr.
440 SKETCHES BY BOZ. .
Gabriel Parsons. “Here, I hate ceremony, you know!
Timson, that’s Tottle–Tottle, that’s Timson; bred for
the church, which I fear will never be bread for him; ”
and he chuckled at the old joke. . Mr. Timson bowed
carelessly. Mr. Watkins Tottle bowed stiffly. Mr.
Gabriel Parsons led the way to the house. He was a
rich sugar-baker, who mistook rudeness for honesty,
and abrupt bluntness for an open and candid manner;
many besides Gabriel mistake bluntness for sincerity.
Mrs. Gabriel Parsons received the visitors most
: graciously on the steps, and preceded them to the
drawing-room. On the sofa was seated a lady of very
prim appearance, and remarkably inanimate. She was
one of those persons at whose age it is impossible to
make any reasonable guess; her features might have
been remarkably pretty when she was younger, and they
might always have presented the same appearance. Her
complexion—with a slight trace of powder here and
there—was as clear as that of a well-made wax doll,
and her face as expressive. She was handsomely
dressed, and was winding up a gold watch. -
“Miss Lillerton, my dear, this is our friend Mr.
Watkins Tottle; a very old acquaintance I assure you,”
said Mrs. Parsons, presenting the Strephon of Cecil-
street, Strand. The lady rose, and made a deep cour-
tesy; Mr. Watkins Tottle made a bow.
“Splendid, majestic greature!” thought Tottle.
Mr. Timson advančed, and Mr. Watkins Tottle began
to hate him. Men generally discover a rival, instinc-
tively and Mr. Watkins Tottle felt that his hate was
deserved. -
“May I beg,” said the reverend gentleman,—“ May I
beg to call upon you, Miss Lillerton, for some trifling
donation to my soup, coals, and blanket-distribution
society?”
“Put my name down, for two sovereigns, if you
please,” responded Miss Lillerton. - -
“You are truly charitable, madam,” said the Rev-
erend Mr. Timson, ‘‘ and we know that charity will
cover a multitude of sins. Let me beg you to under.
stand that I do not say this from the supposition that
you have many sins which require palliation; believe
me when I say that I never yet met any one who had
fewer to atone for, than Miss Lillerton.”
MR. WATKINS TOTTLE, 441
Something like a bad imitation of animation lighted
up the lady's face, as she acknowledged the compli-
ment. Watkins Tottle incurred the sin of wishing that
the ashes of the Reverend Charles Timson were
quietly deposited in the churchyard of his curacy,
wherever it might be. - *
“I’ll tell you what,” interrupted Parsons, who had
just appeared with clean hands, and a black coat, “it’s
my private opinion, Timson, that your distribution
society’ is rather a humbug.”
“You are so severe,” replied Timson, with a Chris-
tian smile; he disliked Parsons, but liked his dinners.
“So positively unjust!” said Miss Lillerton.
“Certainly,” observed Tottle. The lady looked up;
her eyes met those of Mr. Watkins Tottle. She with-
drew them in a sweet confusion, and Watkins Tottle
did the same—the confusion was mutual. -
“Why,” urged Mr. Parsons, pursuing his objections,
“what on earth is the use of giving a man coals who
has nothing to cook, or , giving him blankets when he
hasn’t a bed, or giving him soup when he requires Sub-
stantial food?—‘like sending them ruffles, when want-
ing a shirt.’ Why not give 'em a trifle of money, as I
do, when I think they deserve it, and let them purchase
what they think best? Why?—because your subscri-
bers wouldn’t see their names flourishing in print on
the church-door—that’s the reason.” -
“Really, Mr. Parsons, I hope you don’t mean to in-
sinuate that I wish to see my name in print, on the
church-door,” interrupted Miss Lillerton.
“I hope not,” said Mr. Watkins Tottle, putting in
another word, and getting another glance.
“Certainly not,” replied Parsons. “I dare say you
wouldn’t mind seeing it in writing, though, in the church
register—eh?” . •
“Register! What register?” inquired the lady,
gravely. -
“Why, the register of marriages, to be sure,” replied
Parsons, chuckling at the Sally, and glancing at Tottle.
Mr. Watkins Tottle thought he should have fainted for
shame, and it is quite impossible to imagine what effect
the joke would have had upon the lady, if dinner had
not been, at that moment, announced. Mr. Watkins
Tottle, with an unprecedented effort of gallantry,
44? SKETCHES BY BOZ.
offered the tip of his little finger; Miss Lillerton ac-
cepted it gracefully, with maiden modesty; and they
proceeded in due state to the dinner-table, where they
were soon deposited side by side. The room was very
snug, the dinner very good, and the little party in spirits.
The conversation became pretty general, and when
Mr. Watkins Tottle had extracted one or two cold ob-
servations from his neighbour, and had taken wine with
her, he began to acquire confidence rapidly. The cloth
was removed; Mrs. Gabriel Parsons drank four glasses
of port on the plea of being a nurse just then; and Miss
Lillerton took about the same number of sips, on the
plea of not wanting any at all. At length, the ladies
retired, to the great gratification of Mr. Gabriel Par-
sons, who had been coughing and frowning at his wife,
for half an hour previously—signals which Mrs. Parsons
never happened to observe, until she had been pressed
to take her ordinary quantum, which, to avoid giving
trouble, she generally did at once.
“What do you think of her?” inquired Mr. Gabriel
Parsons of Mr. Watkins Tottle, in an under tone.
“I dote on her with enthusiasm already!” replied
Mr. Watkins Tottle.
‘‘ Gentlemen, pray let us drink ‘the ladies,’” said the
Reverend Mr. Timson. º
“The ladies!” said Mr. Watkins Tottle, emptying his
glass. In the fulness of his confidence, he felt as if he
could make love to a dozen ladies, off-hand.
“Ah!” said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, “I remember when
I was a young man—fill your glass, Timson.”
“I have this moment emptied it.”
“Then fill again.” -
“I will,” said Timson, suiting the action to the word.
“I remember,” resumed Mr. Gabriel Parsons, ‘‘ when
I was a younger man, with what a strange compound of
feelings I used to drink that toast, and how I used to
think every woman was an angel.”
“Was that before you were married?” mildly in-
quired Mr. Watkins Tottle.
“Oh! certainly,” replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, “I
have never thought so since; and a precious milksop I
must have been, ever to have thought so at all. But,
you know, I married Fanny under the oddest and most
ridiculous circumstances possible,”
MR. WATKINS TOTTI.E. 443
‘‘What were they, if one may inquire?” asked Tim-
son, who had heard the story, on an average, twice a
week for the last six months. Mr. Watkins Tottle
listened attentively, in the hope of picking up some
suggestion that might be useful to him in his new
undertaking.
“I spent my wedding-night in a back-kitchen chim-
ney,” said Parsons, by way of a beginning.
“In a back kitchen chimney!” ejaculated Watkins
Tottle. ‘‘How dreadful! ” •
“Yes, it wasn’t very pleasant,” replied the small
host. “The fact is, Fanny’s father and mother liked
me well enough as an individual, but had a decided
objection to my becoming a husband. You see, I
hadn’t any money in those days, and they had; and so
they wanted Fanny to pick up somebody else. How-
ever, we managed to discover the state of each other's
affections somehow. I used to meet her at some mutual
friends’ parties; at first we danced together, and talked,
and flirted, and all that sort of thing; then, I used to like
nothing so well as sitting by her side—we didn’t talk
So much then, but I remember I used to have a great
notion of looking at her out of the extreme corner of
my left eye—and then I got my miserable and senti-
mental, and began to write verses, and use Macassar
oil. At last I couldn’t bear it any longer, and after I
had walked up and down the sunny side of Oxford-
street in tight boots for a week—and a devilish hot
summer it was too—in the hope of meeting her, I sat
down and wrote a letter, and begged her to manage to
see me clandestinely, for I wanted to hear her decision
from her own mouth. I said I had discovered, to my
perfect satisfaction, that I couldn’t live without her,
and that if she didn’t have me, I had made up my mind
to take prussic acid, or take to drinking, or emigrate, so
as to take myself off in some way or other. Well, I
borrowed a pound, and bribed the housemaid to give
her the note, which she did.” g
“And what was the reply?” inquired Timson, who
had found, before, that to encourage the repetition of
old stories is to get a general invitation.
“Oh, the usual one! Fanny expressed herself very
miserable; hinted at the possibility of an early grave;
said that nothing should induce her to swerve from the
444 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
duty she owed her parents; implored me to forget her,
and find out somebody more deserving, and all that
Sopt of thing. She said she could, on no account, think
of meeting me unknown to her pa and ma; and en-
treated me, as she should be in a particular part of
Kensington Gardens at eleven o’clock next morning,
not to attempt to meet her there.”
‘‘You didn’t go, of course?” said Watkins Tottle.
“Didn't I?—Of coure I did. There she was, with the
identical housemaid in perspective, in order that there
might be no interruption. We walked about for a
couple of hours; made ourselves delightfully miserable;
and were regularly engaged. Then, we began to ‘cor-
respond –that is to say, we used to exchange about
four letters a day; what we used to say in 'em I can’t
imagine. And I used to have an interview in the
kitchen, or the cellar, or some such place, every even-
ing. Well, things went on in this way for some time;
and we got fonder of each other every day. At last,
as our love was raised to such a pitch, and as my salary
had been raised too, shortly before, we determined on
a secret marriage. Fanny arranged to sleep at a
friend’s on the previous night; we were to be married
early in the morning; and then we were to return to
her home and be pathetic. She was to fall at the old
gentleman’s feet, and bathe his boots with her tears;
and I was to hug the old lady and call her “mother,’
and use my pocket-handkerchief as much as possible.
Married we were, the next morning; two girls—friends
of Fanny's—acting as bridesmaids; and a man, who
was hired for five shillings and a pint of porter, offici-
ating as father, Now, the old lady unfortunately put
off her return from Ramsgate, where she had been
paying a visit, until the next morning: and as we
placed great reliance on her, we agreed to postpone
our confession for four-and-twenty hours. My newly-
made wife returned home, and I spent my wedding-day
in Strolling about Hampstead-heath, and execrating
my father-in-law. Of course, I went to comfort my
dear little wife at night, as much as I could, with the
assurance that our troubles would soon be over. I
opened the garden-gate, of which I had a key, and was
shown by the servant to our old place of meeting—a
back-kitchen, with a stone floor and a dresser; upon
MR. WATKINS TOTTLE. 445
which, in the absence of chairs, we used to sit and
make love. 4.
“Make love upon a kitchen-dresser?” interrupted Mr.
Wakins Tottle, whose ideas of decorum were greatly
outraged.
6 & #. On the kitchen-dresser l’’ replied Parsons.
“And let me tell you, old fellow, that, if you were
really over head-and-ears in love, and had no other
place to make love in, you’d be devilish glad to avail
yourself of such an opportunity. However, let me see;
—where was I ?”
“On the dresser ‘’—suggested Timson.
“Oh—ah! Well, here I found poor Fanny, quite dis-
consolate and uncomfortable. The old boy had been
very cross all day, which made her feel still more lonely;
and she was quite out of Spirits. So, I put a good face
on the matter, and laughed it off, and said we should
enjoy the pleasures of a matrimonial life more, by con-
trast; and, at length, poor Fanny brightened up a little.
I stopped there, till about eleven o’clock, and, just as I
was taking my leave for the fourteenth time, the girl
came running down the stairs, without her shoes, in a
great fright, to tell us that the old villain—Heaven for-
give me for calling him so, for he is dead and gone
now!—prompted I suppose by the prince of darkness,
was coming down, to draw his own beer for supper—a
thing he had not done before, for six months, to my
certain knowledge; for the cask stood in that very
back-kitchen. If he discovered me there, explanation
would have been out of the question; for he was so out-
rageously violent, when at all excited, that he never
would have listened to me. There was only one thing
to be done. The chimney was a very wide one; it had
been originally built for an oven; went up perpendicu-
larly for a few feet, and then shot backward and formed
a sort of Small cavern. My hopes and fortune—the
means of Our joint existence almost—were at stake. I
scrambled in, like a squirrel; coiled myself up in this
recess; and, as Fanny and the girl replaced the deal
chimney-board, I could see the light of the candle which
my unconscious father-in-law carried in his hand. I
heard him draw the beer; and I never heard beer run
SO slowly. He was just leaving the kitchen, and I was
preparing to descend, when down came the infernal
446 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
chimney-board with a tremendous crash. He stopped,
and put down the candle and the jug of beer on the
dresser; he was a nervous old fellow, and any unex-
pected noise annoyed him. He coolly observed that the
fireplace was never used, and sending the frightened
servant into the next kitchen for a hammer and nails,
actually nailed up the board, and locked the door on the
outside. So, there was I, on my wedding-night, in the
light kersey mere trousers, fancy waistcoat, and blue
coat, that I had been married in in the morning, in a
back-kitchen chimney, the bottom of which was nailed
up, and the top of which had been formerly raised some
fifteen feet, to prevent the smoke from annoying the
neighbours. And there,” added Mr. Gabriel Parsons,
as he passed the bottle, “there I remained till half-past
seven the next morning, when the housemaid’s sweet-
heart, who was a carpenter, unshelled me. The old
dog had nailed me up so securely, that, to this very
hour, I firmly believe that no one but a carpenter could
ever have got me out.”
“And what did Mrs. Parson’s father say, when he
found you were married?” inquired Watkins Tottle,
who, although he never saw a joke, was not satisfied
until he heard a story to the very end.
“Why, the affair of the chimney so tickled his fancy,
that he pardoned us off-hand, and allowed us some-
thing to live on till he went the way of all flesh. I
spent the next night in his second-floor front, much more
comfortably than I had spent the preceding one; for, as
you will probably guess 25
“Please sis, missis has made tea,” said a middle-aged
female servant, bobbing into the room.
“That's the very housemaid that figures in my story,”
said Mr. Gabriel Parsons. “She went into Fanny’s
service when we were first married, and has been with
us ever since; but I don’t think she has felt one atom
of respect for me since the morning she saw me released,
when she went into violent hysterics, to which she has
been subject ever since. Now, shall we join the
ladies?” e
“If you please,” said Mr. Watkins Tottle.
“By all means,” added the obsequious Mr. Timson;
and the trio made for the drawing-room accordingly.
Tea being concluded, and the toast and cups having
MR, WATKINS TOTTLE 447
been duly handed, and occasionally upset, by Mr. Wat-
kins Tottle, a rubber was proposed. They cut for part-
ners—Mr. and Mrs. Parsons; and Mr. Watkins Tottle
and Miss Lillerton. Mr. Timson having conscientious
scruples on the subject of card-playing, drank brandy-
and-water, and kept up a running spar with Mr. Wat-
kins Tottle. The evening went off well; Mr. Watkins
Tottle was in high spirits, having some reason to be
gratified with his reception by Miss Lillerton; and before
he left, a small party was made up to visit the Beulah
Spa on the following Saturday.
“It’s all right, I think,” said Mr. Gabriel Parsons to
; Watkins Tottle as he opened the garden gate for
IIſl.
“I hope so,” he replied, squeezing his friend’s hand.
“You’ll be down by the first coach on Saturday,”
said Mr. Gabriel Parsons.
“Certainly,” replied Mr. Watkins Tottle. “Un-
doubtedly.”
But fortune had decreed that Mr. Watkins Tottle
should not be down by the first coach on Saturday.
His adventures on that day however, and the Success
of his wooing are subjects for another chapter.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
“YTHE first coach has not come in yet, has it, Tom?”
inquired Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as he very com-
placently paced up and down the fourteen feet of
gravel which bordered the “lawn,” on the Saturday
morning which had been fixed upon for the Beulah
Spa jaunt.
“No, sir; I haven’t seen it,” replied a gardener in a
blue apron, who let himself out to do the ornamental
for half-a-crown a day and his “keep.”
‘‘Time Tottle was down,” said Mr. Gabriel Parsons,
ruminating—“Oh, here he is, no doubt,” added Gabriel,
as a cab drove rapidly up the hill; and he buttoned his
dressing-gown, and opened the gate to receive thé ex-
pected visitor. The cab stopped, and out, jumped a
inan in a coarse Petersham great-coat, whity-brown
48 SKETCHES BY Boz.
neckerchief, faded black suit, gamboge-coloured top-
boots, and one of those large-crowned hats, formerly
seldom met with, but now very generally patronised by
gentlemen and costermongers.
“Mr. Parsons?” said the man, looking at the super-
scription of a note he held in his hand, and addressing
Gabriel with an inquiring air. -
“My name is Parsons,” responded the sugar baker.
“I’ve brought this here note,” replied the individual
in the painted tops, in a hoarse-whisper; “I’ve brought
this here note from a gen’lm’n as come to our house
this mornin’.”
“I expected the gentleman at my house,” said Par-
Sons, as he broke the seal, which bore the impression
of her majesty’s profile as it is seen on a sixpence.
“I’ve no doubt the gen’lm’n would ha’ been here,”
replied the stranger, “if he hadn’t happened to call at
our house first; but we never trusts no gen’lm’n furder
nor we can see him—no mistake about that there *—
added the unknown, with a facetious grin; “beg yer
pardon, sir, no offence meant, only—once in, and I
wish you may—catch the idea, sir?”
Mr. Gabriel Parsons was not remarkable for catching
anything suddenly, but a cold. He therefore only be-
Stowed a glance of profound astonishment on his mys-
terious companion, and proceeded to unfold the note of ,
which he had been the bearer. Once opened and the
idea was caught with very little difficulty. Mr. Wat-
kins Tottle had been suddenly arrested for 33l. 10s. 4d.,
and dated his communication from a lock-up house in
the vicinity of Chancery-lane.
“ Unfortunate affair, this!” said Parsons, refolding
the note. Qº
“Oh! nothin’ ven you’re used to it,” coolly observed
the man in the Petersham. e
“Tom l’ exclaimed Parsons, after a few minutes’
consideration, “just put the horse in, will you? Tell
the gentleman that I shall be there almost as soon as
ou are,” he continued, addressing the sheriff-officer’s
ercury.
“Werry well,” replied that important functionary;
adding, in a confidential manner, “I’d adwise the
gen’lm’n’s friends to settle. You see it’s a mere trifle;
and, unless the gen’lm’n means to go up afore the
MR, WATKINS TOTTLE, 449
court, it’s hardly worth while waiting for detainers,
you know. Our governor’s wide awake, he is. I’ll
never say nothin’ agin him, nor no man; but he knows
what’s o’clock, he does, uncommon.” Having delivered
this eloquent, and, to Parsons, particularly intelligible
harangue, the meaning of which was eked out by :
divers nods and winks, the gentleman in the boots re-
seated himself in the cab, which went rapidly off and
was soon out of sight. Mr. Gabriel Parsons continued
to pace up and down the pathway for some minutes,
apparently absorbed in deep meditation. The result of
his cogitations seemed to be perfectly satisfactory to
himself, for he ran briskly into the house; said that
business had suddenly summoned him to town; that
he had desired the messenger to inform Mr. Watkins
Tottle of the fact; and that they would return together
to dinner. He then hastily equipped himself for a
drive, and mounting lais gig, was soon on his way to
the establishment of Mr. Solomon Jacobs, situate (as
Mr. Watkins Tottle had informed him) in Cursitor-
street, Chancery-lane.
When a man is in a violent hurry to get on, and has
a specſic object in view, the attainment of which de-
pends on the completion of his journey, the difficulties
which interpose themselves in his way appear not only
to be innumerable, but to have been called into exist-
ence especially for the occasion. The remark is by no
means a new one, and Mr. Gabriel Parsons had prac-
tical and painful experience of its justice in the course
of his drive. There are three classes of animated ob-
jects which prevent your driving with any degree of
comfort or celerity through streets which are but little
frequented—they are pigs, children, and old women.
On the occasion we are describing, the pigs were luxu-
riating on cabbage-stalks; and the shuttlecocks flut-
tered from the little deal battledores, and the children
Fº in the road; and women, with a basket in one
and and the street-door key in the other, would cross
just before the horse’s head, until Mr. Gabriel Parsons
was pefectly savage with vexation, and quite hoarse
with hoi ing and imprecating. Then, when he got into
Fleet-street, there was “a stoppage,” in which people
in vehicles have the satisfaction of remaining station-
ary for half an hour, and envying the slowest pedes-
29
450 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
trians; and where policemen rush about, and seize hold
of horses’ bridles, and back them into shop-windows,
by way of clearing the road and preventing confusion.
At length Mr. Gabriel Parsons turned into Chancery-
lane, and having inquired for, and been directed to
Cursitor-street (for it was a locality of which he was
Quite ignorant), he soon found himself opposite the house
of Mr. Solomon Jacobs. Confiding his horse and gig
to the care of one of the fourteen boys who had fol-
lowed him from the other side of Blackfriars-bridge on
the chance of his requiring their services, Mr. Gabriel
Parsons crossed the road and knocked at an inner
door, the upper part of which was of glass, grated like
the windows of . this inviting mansion with iron
bars—painted white to look comfortable.
The knock was answered by a sallow-faced red-
haired sulky boy, who, after surveying M. Gabriel Par-
sons, through the glass, applied a large key to an im-
mense wooden excrescence, which was in reality a lock,
but which, taken in conjunction with the iron nails
with which the panels were studded, gave the door the
appearance of being subject to warts.
“I want to see Mr. Watkins Tottle,” said Parsons.
“It’s the gentleman that come in this morning, Jem,”
screamed a voice from the top of the kitchen stairs,
which belonged to a dirty woman who had just brought
her chin to a level with the passage-floor. “The gentle-
man’s in the coffee-room.”
“Up-stairs, sir,” said the boy just opening the door
wide enough to let Parsons in without squeezing him,
and double-locking it the moment he had made his
|. through the aperture—“First floor—door on the
eft.”
Mr. Gabriel Parsons thus instructed, ascended the
uncarpeted and ill-lighted staircase, and after giving
several subdued taps at the before-mentioned “door
on the left,” which were rendered inaudible by the hum
of voices within the room, and the hissing noise at-
tendant on some frying operations which were carry-
ing on below stairs, turned the handle, and entered
the apartment. Being informed that the unfortunate
object of his visit had just gone up-stairs to write a
letter, he had leisure to sit down and observe the scene
before him.
MR, WATKINS TOTTILE. 451
The room—which was a smail, confined den—was par-
titioned off into boxes, like the common room of Some
inferior eating-house. The dirty floor had evidently
been as long a stranger to the scrubbing-brush as
to carpet or floor-cloth; and the ceiling was com-
pletely blackened by the flare of the oil-lamp by which
the room was lighted at night. The gray ashes on the
edges of the tables, and the cigar ends which were
plentifully scattered about the dusty grate, fully ac-
counted for the intolerable smell of tobacco which per-
vaded the place; and the empty glasses and half-
saturated slices of lemon on the tables, together with
the porter pots beneath them, bore testimony to the
frequent libations in which the individuals who hon-
oured Mr. Solomon Jacobs by a temporary residence in
his house indulged. Over the manthe-shelf was a paltry
looking-glass, extending about half the width of the
chimney-piece; but by way of counterpoise the ashes
were confined by a rusty fender about twice as long
as the hearth. º •
From this cheerful room itself, the attention of Mr.
Gabriel Parsons was naturally directed to its inmates.
In one of the boxes two men were playing at cribbage
with a very dirty pack of cards, some with blue, some
with green, and some with red backs—selections from
decayed packs. The cribbage board had been long
ago formed on the table by some ingenious visitor
with the assistance of a pocket-knife and a two-pronged
fork, with which the necessary number of holes had
been made in the table at proper distances for the re-
ception of the wooden pegs. In another box a stout,
hearty-looking man, of about forty, was eating some
dinner which his wife—an equally comfortable-looking
personage—had brought him in a basket! and in a
third, a genteel-looking young man was talking
earnestly, and in a low tone, to a young female, whose
face was concealed with a thick veil, but whom Mr.
Gabriel Parsons immediately set down in his own mind
as the debtor's wife. A young fellow of vulgar man-
ners, dressed in the very extreme of the prevailing
fashion, was pacing up and down the room, with a
lighted cigar in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets,
ever and anon puffing forth volumes of smoke, and
Occasionally applying, with much apparent relish, to
452 - SKETCHES BY BOZ.
a pint pot, the contents of which were “chilling ” On
the hob. *
“Fourpence more, by gum!” exclaimed one of the
cribbage players, lighting a pipe, and addressing his
adversary at the close of the game; ‘‘ one 'ud think
you’d got luck in a pepper-cruet, and shook it out when
you wanted it.”
“Well, that a'n’t a bad un,” replied the other, who
was a horse-dealer from Islington.
“No; I'm blessed if it is,” interposed the jolly-looking
fellow, who, having finished his dinner, was drinking
out of the same glass as his wife, in truly conjugal
harmony, some hot gin-and-water. The faithful part-
ner of his cares had brought a plentiful supply of the
anti-temperance fluid in a large flat stone bottle, which
looked like a half-gallon jar that had been successfully
tapped for the dropsy. “You’re a rum chap, you are,
Mr. Walker—will you dip your beak into this, sir?”
“Thank’ee, sir,” replied Mr. Walker, leaving his box,
and advancing to the other to accept the proffered
glass. “Here's your health, sir, and your good’ooman’s
here. Gentlemen all—yours, and better luck still.
Well, Mr. Willis,” continued the facetious prisoner,
addressing the young man with the cigar, “you seem
rather down to-day—floored, as one may say. What’s
the matter, sir? Never say die you know.”
“Oh! I’m all right,” replied the smoker. “I shall be
bailed out to-morrow.”
“Shall you, though P” inquired the other. “Damme,
I wish I could say the same. I am as regularly over
head and ears as the Royal George, and stand about as
much chance of being bailed out, Ha! haſ hal”
“Why,” said the young man, stopping short, and
speaking in a very loud key, “ look at me. What d'ye
think I’ve stopped here two days for?”
‘‘’Cause you couldn’t get out, I suppose,” interrupted
Mr. Walker, winking to the company. “Not that
you’re exactly obliged to stop here, only you can’t help
it. No compulsion, you know, only you must—eh?”
‘‘A’n’t he a rum un?” inquired the delighted individ-
ual, who had offered the gin-and-water, of his wife.
“Oh, he just is!” replied the lady, who was quite
Overcome by these flashes of imagination.
“Why, my case,” frowned the victim, throwing the
MR, WATKINS TOTTILE, tº
end of his cigar into the fire, and illustrating his argu-
ment by knocking the bottom of the pot on the table,
at intervals, “my case is a very singular one. My
father is a man of large property, and I am his son.”
“That’s a very strange circumstance!” interrupted
the jocose Mr. Walker, em passant.
“ —I am his son, and have received a liberal educa-
tion. I don’t owe no man nothing—not the value of
a farthing, but I was induced, you see, to put my name
to some bills for a friend—bills to a large amount, I
may say a very large amount, for which I didn’t receive
no consideration. What’s the consequence?”
“Why, I suppose the bills went out, and you came in.
The acceptances weren’t taken up, and you were, eh?”
inquired Mr. Walker. . . g
“To be sure,” replied the liberally educated young
gentleman. “To be sure; and so here I am, locked up
for a matter of twelve hundred pound.”
“Why don’t you ask your old governor to stump up?”
inquired Walker, with a somewhat skeptical air.
“Oh! bless you, he’d never do it,” replied the other in
a tone of expostulation—“Never!”
“Well, it is very odd to be sure,” interposed the
owner of the flat bottle, mixing another glass, “but
I’ve been in difficulties, as one may say, now for thirty
year. I went to pieces when I was in a milk-walk,
thirty year ago; arterwards, when I was a fruiterer,
and kept a spring wan; and arter that again in the
coal and tatur line—but all that time I never see a
youngish chap come into a place of this kind, who
wasn’t going out again directly, and who hadn’t been
arrested on bills he’d given a friend and for which he’d
received nothing whatsomever—not a fraction.” :
“Oh! it’s always the cry,” said Walker. “I can’t
see the use on it; that’s what makes me so wild. Why,
I should have a much better opinion of an individual,
if he’d say at once in an honourable and gentlemanly
manner as he’d done everybody he possibly could.”
“Ay, to be sure,” interposed the horse-dealer, with
whose notions of bargain and sale the axiom perfectly
coincided, “so should I.”
The young gentleman, who had given rise to these
observations, was on the point of offering a rather angry
reply to these sneers, but the rising of the young man
454 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
before noticed, and of the female who had been sitting
by him, to leave the room, interrupted the conversation
She had been weeping bitterly, and the noxious atmos-
phere of the room acting upon her excited feelings
and delicate frame, rendered the support of her com-
panion necessary as they quitted it together.
There was an air of superiority about them both, and
something in their appearance so unusual in Such a
place, that a respectful silence was observed until the
whirr–r—bang of the spring door announced that they
were out of hearing. It was broken by the wife of the
ex-fruiterer.’
“Poor creetur!” said she, quenching a sigh in a
rivulet of gin-and-water. “She’s very young.”
“She’s a nice-looking 'ooman too,” added the horse
dealer. -
“What's he in for, Ikey?” inquired Walker, of an
individual who was spreading a cloth with numerous
blotches of mustard upon it, on one of the tables, and
whom Mr. Gabriel Parsons had no difficulty in recog-
nising as the man who had called upon him in the
morning.
‘‘Vy,” responded the factotum, “it’s one of the rum-
miest rigs you ever heard on. He come in last Vensday
which by the by he’s a going over the water to-night
—hows’ever that’s neither here nor there. You see I’ve
been a going back’ards and for’ards about his business,
and ha’ managed to pick up some of his story from the
Servants and them; and so far as I can make it out,
it seems to be summat to this here effect—”
“Cut it short, old fellow,” interrupted Walker, who
knew from former experience that he of the top-boots
. neither very concise nor intelligible in his narra-
IV eS. -
“Let me alone,” replied Ikey, “ and I’ll ha' vound up,
and made my lucky in five seconds. This here young
gen’lm’n’s father so I’m told, mind ye—and the father
O' the young voman, have always been on very bad,
Out-and-out, rig’lar knock-me-down sort o' terms; but
Some how or another, when he was a wisitin’ at some
entlefolk’s house, as he knowed at college, he come
into contract with the young lady. He seed her several
times, and then he up and said he'd keep company with
her, if so be as she vos agreeable. Well, she vos as
MR, WATKINS TOTTILE. 455
Sweet upon him as he vos upon her, and so I's pose they
they made it all right; for they got married 'bout six
months artewards, unbeknown, mind ye, to the two
fathers—leastways, so I’m told. When they heard
on it—my eyes, there was such a combustion! Starva-
tion vos the least that vos to be done to 'em. The young
gen’lm’n’s father cut him off with a bob, 'cos he’d cut
himself off with a wife; and the young lady’s father he
behaved even worser and more unnatºral, for he not
only blow’d her up dreadful, and swore he'd never see
her again, but he employed a chap as I knows—and as
you knows, Mr. Walker, a precious sight too well—to go
about and buy up the bills and them things on which
the young husband, thinking his governor 'ud come
round agin, had raised the vind just to blow himself
on vith for a time; besides vich, he made all the inter-
est he could to set other people agin him. Consequence
vos, that he paid as long as he could; but things he
never expected to have to meet till he’d had time to
turn himself round, come fast upon him, and he Vos
nabbed. He vos brought here, as I said afore, last Vens-
day, and I think there’s about—ah, half-a-dozen de-
tainers agin him down stairs now. I have been,” added
Ikey, “ in the purfession these fifteen year, and I never
met with such windictiveness afore!” t
“Poor creeturs!” exclaimed the coal-dealer’s wife
once more: again resorting to the same excellent pre-
scription for nipping a sigh in the bud: “Ah! when
they’ve seen as much trouble as I and my old man here
have, they’ll be as comfortable under it as we are.” -
“The young lady’s a pretty creature,” said Walker,
“only she’s a little too delicate for my taste—there ain’t
enough of her. As to the young cove, he may be very
respectable and what not, but he’s too down in the
mouth for me—he ain’t game.”
“Game!” exclaimed Ikey, who had been altering the
position of a green-handled knife and fork at least a
dozen times, in order that he might remain in the room
under the pretext of having something to do, “He’s
game enough ven there’s anything to be fierce about;
but who could be game, as you call it, Mr. Walker, with
a pale young creetur like that hanging about him? It’s
enough to drive any man’s heart into his boots to see
'em together—and no mistake at all about it, I never
456 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
shall forget her first comin’ here; he wrote to her on the
Thursday to come—I know he did, 'cos I took the letter.
|Uncommon fidgety he was all day to be sure, and in
the evening he goes down into the office, and he says to
Jacobs, says he, “Sir, can I have the loan of a private
room for a few minutes this evening, without incurring
any additional expense—just to see my wife in?’ says
he. Jacobs looked as much as to say—‘Strike me
bountiful if you ain’t one of the modest sort' but as the
gen’lm’n who had been in the back parlour had just
gone out, and had paid for it for that day, he says—
werry grave—‘Sir,’ says he, ‘it’s agin our rules to let
private rooms to our lodgers on gratis terms, but,” says
he, “for a gentleman, I don’t mind breaking through
them for once.’ So then he turns round to me and says,
“Ikey, put two mould candles in the back parlour, and
charge 'em to this gen’lm’n’s account,’ vich I did. Well,
by-and-by a hackney-coach comes up to the door, and
there, Sure enough, was the young lady, wrapped up in .
a hopera-cloak, as it might be, and all alone. I opened
the gate that night, so I went up when the coach come,
and he Vos a waitin’ at the parlor door—and wasn’t he
a trembling, neither? The poor creetur see him, and
could hardly walk to meet him. ‘Oh, Harry l’ she says,
‘that it should have come to this; and all for mysake,”
says she, putting her hand upon his shoulder. So he
puts his arm round her pretty little waist, and leading
her gently a little way into the room, so that he might
be able to shut the door, he says so kind and Soft-like—
‘Why, Kate,’ says he—” ...- -
“Here’s the gentleman you want,” said Tkey, abruptly
breaking off in his story, and introducing Mr. Gabriel
Parsons to the crest-fallen Watkins Tottle, who at that
moment entered the room. Watkins advanced with a
wooden expression of passive endurance, and accepted
the hand which Mr. Gabriel Parsons held out.
“I want to speak to you,” said Gabriel, with a look
strongly expressive of his dislike of the company.
“This way,” replied the imprisoned one, leading the
way to the front drawing-room, where rich debtors
º the luxurious at the rate of a couple of guineas
a day. .
“Well, here I am,” said Watkins, as he sat down on
the Sofa; and placing the palms of his hands on
MR. WATKINS TOTTLE. 45:
his knees, anxiously glanced at his friend’s counte-
Ila,IlC62,
“Yes; and here you’re likely to be,” said Gabriel,
coolly, as he rattled the money in his unmentionable
pockets, and looked out of the window.
“What's the amount with the costs?” inquired Par-
sons after an awkward pause. -
‘‘ 37]. 33. 10d.” - º
“Have you any money?”
“Nine and sixpence halfpenny.”
Mr. Gabriel Parsons walked up and down the room
for a few seconds before he could make up his mind to
disclose the plan he had formed; he was accustomed to
drive hard bargains, but was always most anxious to
conceal his avarice. At length he stopped short, and
sº ‘Tottle, you owe me fifty pounds.”
& 4 O.”
“And from all I see, I infer that you are likely to owe
it to me.”
‘‘I fear I am.” -
“Though you have every disposition to pay me if you
Could P’’ “
“Certainly.” º
“Then,” said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, “listen; here’s my
proposition. You know my way of old. Accept it—yes
or no—I will or I won’t. I’ll pay the debt and costs,
and I’ll lend you 10!. more (which added to your annuity
will enable you to carry on the war well), if you’ll give
me your note of hand to pay me one hundred and fifty
pounds within six months after you are married to Miss
Lillerton.”
“My dear—”
“Stop a minute—on one condition; and that is, that
you propose to Miss Lillerton at once.” -
“At once My dear Parsons, consider.”
“It’s for you to consider, not me. She knows you
well from reputation, though she did not know you per-
sonally until lately. Notwithstanding all her maiden
modesty, I think she’d be devilish glad to get married
out of hand, with as little delay as possible. My wife
has sounded her on the subject, and she has confessed.”
“What—what?” eagerly interrupted the enamoured
Watkins.
“Why,” replied Parsons, “to say exactly what she
*.
458 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
has confessed, would be rather difficult, because they
only spoke in hints, and so forth; but my wife, who is
no bad judge in these cases, declared to me that what
she had confessed was as good as to say that she was
not insensible of your merits—in fact, that no other man
should have her.” -
Mr. Watkins Tottle rose hastily from his seat, and
rang the bell. e -
“What’s that for?” inquired Parsons.
“I want to send the man for the bill stamp,” replied
Mr. Watkins Tottle. S
“Then you’ve made up your mind?”
‘‘I have,”—and they shook hands most cordially. The
note of hand was given—the debt and costs were paid—
Ikey was satisfied for his trouble, and the two friends
soon found themselves on that side of Mr. Solomon
Jacobs's establishment, on which most of his visitors
were very happy when they found themselves once
again—to wit, the Outside.
“Now,” said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, as they drove to
Norwood together—“you shall have an opportunity to
make the disclosure to-night, and . you speak
out, Tottle.”.. "
“I will—I will !” replied Watkins, valorously.
“How I should like to see you together,” ejaculated
Mr. Gabriel Parsons.—“What fun l’ and he laughed so
long and so loudly, that he disconcerted Mr. Watkins
Tottle, and frightened the horse.
“There's Fanny and your intended walking about on
the lawn,” said Gabriel, as they approached the house—
“Mind your eye, Tottle.”
“Never fear,” replied Watkins, resolutely, as he made
his way to the spot where the ladies were walking.
“Here’s Mr. Tottle, my dear,” said Mrs. Parsons, ad-
dressing Miss Lillerton. The lady turned quickly round,
and acknowledged his courteous salute with the same
sort of confusion that Watkins had noticed on their first
interview, but with something like a slight expression
of disappointment or carelessness.
“Did you see how glad she was to see you?” whis-
pered Parsons to his friend.
“Why I really thought she looked as if she would
rather have seen somebody else,” replied Tottle.
“Pooh, nonsense !” whispered Parsons again—“it’s
MR, WATKINS TOTTLE. 459
always the way with the women, young or old. They
never show how delighted they are to see those whose
presence makes their hearts beat. It’s the way with the
whole sex, and no man should have lived to your time of
life without knowing it. Fanny confessed it to me,
when we were first married, Over and Over again—see
what it is to have a wife.”
“Certainly,” whispered Tottle, whose courage was
vanishing fast.
“Well, now, you’d better begin to pave the way,” said
Parsons, who, having invested some money in the specu-
lation, assumed the office of director.
“Yes, yes, I will—presently,” replied Tottle, greatly
flurried.
“Say something to her, man,” urged Parsons again.
“Confound it ! pay her a compliment, can’t you?”
“No! not till after dinner,” replied the bashful Tottle,
anxious to postpone the evil moment.
“Well, gentlemen,” said Mrs. Parsons, “ you are
really very polite; you stay away the whole morning,
after promising to take us out, and when you do come
home, you stand whispering together and take no
notice of us.”
“We were talking of the business, my dear, which
detained us this morning,” replied Parsons, looking sig-
nificantly at Tottle.
“Dear me ! how very quickly the morning has gone,”
said Miss Lillerton, referring to the gold watch, which
was wound up on state occasions, whether it required
it or not.
“I think it has passed very slowly,” mildly suggested
TOttle. º
(“That’s right—bravo l’’) whispered Parsons.
“Indeed!” said Miss Lillerton, with an air of majestic
Surprise.
“I can only impute it to my unavoidable absence
from your society, madam,” said Watkins, “ and that of
Mrs. Parsons.” º
During this short dialogue, the ladies had been lead-
ing the way to the house.
“What the deuce did you stick Fanny into that last
compliment for?” inquired Parsons, as they followed
together; “it quite spoilt the effect.”
‘‘ Oh! it really would have been too broad without,”
replied Watkins Tottle, “much too broad.”
460 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“He’s mad!” Parsons whispered his wife, as they
entered the drawing-room, “mad from modesty.”
“Dear me!” ejaculated the lady, “I never heard of
such a thing.”
“You’ll find we have quite a family dinner, Mr.
Tottle,” said Mrs. Parsons, when they sat down to table:
“Miss Lillerton is one of us, and of course, we make no
stranger of you.”
Mr. Watkins Tottle expressed a hope that the Parsons
family never would make a stranger of him; and
wished internally that his bashfulness would allow him
to feel a little less like a stranger himself.
“Take off the covers, Martha,” said Mrs. Parsons,
directing the shifting of the scenery with great anxiety.
The order was obeyed, and a pair of boiled fowls, with
tongue and et ceteras, were displayed at the top, and a
fillet of veal at the bottom. On one side of the table
two green sauce-tureens, with ladles of the same, were
setting to each other in a green dish; and on the other
was a curried rabbit, in a brown suit, turned up with
lemon.
“Miss Lillerton, my dear,” said Mrs. Parsons, “shall
. I assist you?”
“Thank you, no; I think I’ll trouble Mr. Tottle.
Watkins started—trembled—helped the rabbit—and
broke a tumbler. The countenance of the lady of the
house, which had been all smiles previously, underwent
an awful change.
“Extremely sorry,” stammered Watkins, assisting
himself to currie and parsley and butter, in the ex-
tremity of his confusion.
“Not the least consequence,” replied Mrs. Parsons, in
a tone which implied which it was of the greatest conse-
quence possible, directing aside the researches of the
boy, who was groping under the table for the bits of
broken glass.
“I presume,” said Miss Lillerton, “that Mr. Tottle is
aware of the interest which bachelors usually pay in
such cases; a dozen glasses for one is the lowest
penalty.”
Mr. Gabriel Parsons gave his friend an admonitory
tread on the toe. Here was a clear hint that the sooner
he ceased to be a bachelor and emancipated himself
from such penalties, the better, Mr. Watkins Tottle
M.R. WATKINS TOTTILE. 461
viewed the observation in the same light, and chal-
lenged Mrs. Parsons to take wine, with a degree of
presence of mind which, under all the circumstances,
was really extraordinary.
“Miss Lillerton,” said Gabriel, “may I have the
pleasure?”
“I shall be most happy.”
“Tottle, will you assist Miss Lillerton, and pass the
decanter. Thank you.” (The usual pantomimic cere-
mony of nodding and sipping gone through)—
“Tottle, were you ever in Suffolk?” inquired the
master of the house, who was burning to tell one of his
seven stock stories.
“No,” responded Watkins, adding, by way of a sav-
ing clause, “but I’ve been in Devonshire.”
“Ah!” replied Gabriel, it was in Suffolk that a rather
singular circumstance happened to me, many years
ago. Did you ever happen to hear me mention it?”
Mr. Watkins Tottle had happened to hear his friend
mention it some four hundred times. Of course, he ex-
pressed great curiosity, and evinced the utmost im-
patience to hear the story again. Mr. Gabriel Parsons
forthwith attempted to proceed, in spite of the inter-
ruptions to which, as our readers must frequently
have observed, the master of the house is often exposed
in such cases. We will attempt to give them an idea
of our meaning.
“When I was in Suffolk,” said Mr. Gabriel Parsons—
“Take off the fowls first, Martha,” said Mrs. Parsons.
“I beg your pardon, my dear.”
“When I was in Suffolk,” resumed Mr. Parsons with
an impatient glance at his wife, who pretended not to
observe it, “ which is now some years ago, business led
me to the town of Bury St. Edmund’s. I had to stop at
the principal places in my way, and therefore, for the
sake of convenience, I travelled in a gig. I left Sud-
bury one dark night—it was winter time—about nine
o'clock; the rain poured in torrents, the wind howled
among the trees that skirted the road-side, and I was
obliged to proceed at a foot-race, for I could hardly see
my hand before me, it was so dark—”
“John,” interrupted Mrs. Parsons, in a low, hollow
voice, “don’t spill that gravy.”
“Fanny,” said Parsons impatiently, “I wish you’d
462 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
defer these domestic reproofs to some more suitable time.
Really, my dear, these constant interruptions are very
annoying.”
“My dear, I didn’t interrupt you,” said Mrs.
Parsons. e
“But, my dear, you dvd interrupt me,” remonstrated
Mr. Parsons.
“How very absurd you are, my love? I must give
directions to the servants; I am quite sure that if I sat
here and allowed John to spill the gravy over the new
carpet, you’d be the first to find fault when you saw
the stain to-morrow morning.”
“Well,” continued Gabriel, with a resigned air, as if
he knew there was no getting over the point about the
carpet, “I was just saying, it was so dark that I could
hardly see my hand before me. The road was very
lonely, and I assure you, Tottle (this was a device to
arrest the wandering attention of that individual,
which was distracted by a confidential communication
between Mrs. Parsons and Martha, accompanied by the
delivery of a large bunch of keys), I assure you, Tottle,
I became somehow impressed with a sense of the
loneliness of my situation 25
“Pie to your master,” interrupted Mrs. Parsons,
again directing the servant.
“Now, pray, my dear,” remonstrated Parsons once
more, very pettishly. Mrs. P. turned up her hands and
eyebrows, and appealed in dumb show to Miss Liller-
ton. “As I turned a corner of the road,” resumed
Gabriel, “the horse stopped short, and reared tremen-
dously. I pulled up, jumped out, ran to his head, and
found a man lying on his back in the midde of the
road, with his eyes fixed on the sky. I thought he was
dead; but no, he was alive, and there appeared to be
nothing the matter with him. He jumped up, and put-
ting his hand to his chest, and fixing upon me the most
earnest gaze you can imagine, exclaimed—”
“Pudding here,” said Mrs. Parsons.
“Oh! it’s no use,” exclaimed the host, now rendered
desperate. “Here, Tottle; a glass of wine. It’s use-
less to attempt relating anything when Mrs. Parsons is
present.”
This attack was received in the usual way. Mrs.
Parsons talked to Miss Lillerton and at her better half;
MR. WATKINS TOTTLE. 463
expatiated on the impatience of men generally; hinted
that her husband was peculiarly vicious in this respect,
and wound up by insinuating that she must be one of
, the best tempers that ever existed, or she never could
put up with it. Really what she had to endure, some-
times, was more than any one who saw her in every-
day life could by possibility suppose.—The story was
now a painful subject, and therefore Mr. Parsons de-
clined to enter into any details, and contented himself
by stating that the man was a maniac, who had
escaped from a neighbouring mad-house.
The cloth was removed; the ladies soon afterwards
retired, and Miss Lillerton played the piano in the
drawing-room overhead, very loudly, for the edification
of the visitor. Mr. Watkins Tottle and Mr. Gabriel
Parsons sat chatting comfortably enough, until the
conclusion of the second bottle, when the latter, in
roposing an adjournment to the drawing-room, in-
ormed Watkins that he had concerted a plan with his
wife, for leaving him and Miss Lillerton alone, soon
after tea:
“I say,” said Tottle, as they went up stairs, “don’t .
you think it would be better if we put it off till—till—
to-morrow?”
“Don’t you think it would have been much better if
I had left you in that wretched hole I found you in this
morning?” retorted Parsons, bluntly.
“Well—well—I Only made a suggestion,” said poor
Watkins Tottle, with a deep sigh.
Tea was soon concluded, and Miss Lillerton drawing
a small work-table on one side of the fire, and placing
a little wooden frame upon it, something like a minia-
ture clay-mill without the horse, was soon busily en-
gaged in making a watch-guard with brown silk.
“God bless me!” exclaimed Parsons, starting up
with well-feigned surprise, “I’ve forgotten those con-
founded letters, Tottle, I know you’ll excuse me.”
If Tottle had been a free agent, he would have al-
lowed no one to leave the room on any pretence, except
himself. As it was, however, he was obliged to look
cheerful when Parsons quitted the apartment.
He had scarcely left, when Martha put her head into
the room, with—“Please, ma'am, you’re wanted.”
Mrs. Parsons left the room, shut the door carefully
464 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
after her, and Mr. Watkins Tottle was left alone with
Miss Lillerton.
For the first five minutes there was a dead silence.
Mr. Watkins Tottle was thinking how he should begin, .
and Miss Lillerton appeared to be thinking of nothing.
The fire was burning low: Mr. Watkins Tottle stirred
it, and put some coals On.
“Hem!” coughed Miss Lillerton; Mr. Watkins Tottle
thought the fair creature had spoken. “I beg your
pardon,” said he.
( & Eh? 22
“I thought you spoke.”
& & NO.”
& K Oh! 55
“There are some books on the sofa, Mr. Tottle, if
you would like to look at them,” said Miss Lillerton,
after the lapse of another five minutes.
“No, thank you,” returned Watkins; and then he
added, with a courage which was perfectly astonishing,
even to himself, “Madam, that is Miss Lillerton, I wish
to speak to you.” o *
“To me!” said Miss Lillerton, letting the silk drop
from her hands, and sliding her chair back a few
paces. “Speak—to me!”
“To you, madam—and on the subject of the state of
your affections.” The lady hastily rose, and would
have left the room; but Mr. Watkins Tottle gently
detained her by the hand, and holding it as far from
him as the joint length of their arms would permit, he
thus proceeded: “Pray do not misunderstand me, or
suppose that I am led to address you, after so short
an acquaintance, by any feeling of my own merits—
for merits I have none which could give me a claim to
your hand. I hope you will acquit me of any pre-
sumption when I explain that I have been acquainted
through Mrs. Parsons, with the state—that is, that
Mrs. Parsons has told me—at least, not Mrs. Parsons,
but—” here Watkins began to wander, but Miss Lil-
lerton relieved him.
“Am I to understand, Mr. Tottle, that Mrs. Parsons
has acquainted you with my feeling—my affection—
I mean my respect for an individual of the opposite
Sex?”
‘‘ She has.”
k---
MR. WATKINS TOTTI.E. 465
“Then, what?” inquired Miss Lillerton, averting her
face, with a girlish air, “what could induce you to seek
such an interview as this? What can your object be?
How can I promote your happiness, Mr. Tottle?”
Here was the time for a flourish—“By allowing me,”
replied Watkins, falling bump on his knees, and break-
ing two brace buttons and a waistcoat-string, in the
act—“By allowing me to be your slave, your servant—
in short, by unreservedly making me the confidant of
your heart’s feelings—may I say, for the promotion
of your own happiness—may I say, in order that
you may become the wife of a kind and affectionate
husband?”
“Disinterested creature!” exclaimed Miss Lillerton,
hiding her face in a white pocket-handkerchief with an
eyelet-hole border.
Mr. Watkins Tottle thought that if the lady knew all,
she might possibly alter her opinion on this last point.
He raised the tip of her middle finger ceremoniously to
his lips, and got off his knees as gracefully as he could.
“My information was correct?” he tremulously in-
Quired, when he was once more on his feet.
“It was.” Watkins elevated his hands and looked up
to the ornament in the centre of the ceiling, which had
been made for a lamp, by way of expressing his rapture.
“Our situation, Mr. Tottle,” resumed the lady,
glancing at him through one of the eyelet-holes, “is a
most peculiar and delicate one.”
“It is,” said Mr. Tottle.
“Our acquaintance has been of so short duration,”
said Miss Lillerton.
“Only a week,” assented Watkins Tottle.
“Oh! more than that,” exclaimed the lady, in a tone
of surprise.
“Indeed!” Said Tottle.
“More than a month—more than two months!” said
Miss Lillerton.
“Rather odd, this,” thought Watkins.
“Oh!” he said, recollecting Parsons's assurance that
she had known him from report, “I understand. But,
my dear madam, pray consider. The longer this ac-
uaintance has existed, the less reason is there for
elay now. Why not at once fix a period for gratify-
ing the hopes of your devoted admirer?”
30
466 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“It has been represented to me again and again that
this is the course I ought to pursue,” replied Miss Lil-
lerton, “but pardon my feelings of delicacy, Mr.
Tottle—pray excuse this embarrassment—I have pecu-
liar ideas on such subjects, and I am quite sure that
I never could summon up fortitude enough to name the
day to my future husband.”
“Then allow me to name it,” said Tottle eagerly.
“I should like to fix it myself,” replied Miss Liller-
ten, bashfully, “but I cannot do so without at once
resorting to a third party.”
“A third party!” thought Watkins Tottle; “who the
deuce is that to be, I wonder!”
“Mr. Tottle,” continued Miss Lillerton, “you have
made me a most disinterested and kind offer—that
offer I accept. Will you at once be the bearer of a note
from me to—to Mr. Timson?”
“Mr. Timson l’” said Watkins.
“After what has passed between us,” responded
Miss. Lillerton, still averting her head, “ you must
understand whom I mean; Mr. Timson, the the--
clergyman.”
“Mr. Timson, the clergyman!” ejaculated Watkins
Tottle, in a state of inexpressible beatitude, and pos-
itive wonder at his own success. “Angel! Certainly
—this moment!”
“I’ll prepare it immediately,” said Miss Lillerton,
making for the door; “the events of this day have
flurried me so much, Mr. Tottle, that I shall not leave
my room again this evening; I will send you the note
by the servant.”
“Stay—stay,” cried Watkins Tottle, still keeping a
most respectful distance from the lady; “when shall
we meet again?”
“Oh! Mr. Tottle,” replied Miss Lillerton, coquet-
tishly, “when we are married, I can never see you too
often, nor thank you too much; ” and she left the room.
Mr. Watkins Tottle flung himself into an arm-chair,
and indulged in the most delicious reveries of future
bliss, in which the idea of “Five hundred pounds per
annum, with an uncontrolled power of disposing of it
by her last will and testament,” was somehow or other
the foremost. He had gone through the interview so
well, and it had terminated so admirably, that he
MR. W. ATKINS TOTTLE. 467
almost began to wish he had expressly stipulated for
º settlement of the annual five hundred on him-
S6. II.
“May I come in P” said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, peep-
ing in at the door.
“You may,” replied Watkins.
“Well, have you done it P’’ anxiously inquired
Gabriel.
“Have I done it!” said Watkins Tottle, “ Hush—I’m
going to the clergyman.”
“No!” said Parsons. “How well you have managed
it.”
“Where does Timson live?” inquired Watkins.
“At his uncle's,” replied Gabriel, “just round the
lane. He's waiting for a living, and has been eassisting
his uncle here for the last two or three months. But
how well you have done it—I didn’t think you could
have carried it off so!”
Mr. Watkins Tottle was proceeding to demonstrate
that the Richardsonian principle was the best on which
love could possibly be made, when he was interrupted
by the entrance of Martha, with a little pink note
folded like a fancy cocked hat.
“Miss Lillerton’s compliments,” said Martha, as she
delivered it into Tottle’s hands and vanished.
“Do you observe the delicacy?” said Tottle, appeal-
ing to Mr. Gabriel Parsons. “Compliments not love,
by the servant, eh?”
Mr. Gabriel Parsons didn’t exactly know what reply
to make, so he poked the forefinger of his right hand
between the third and fourth ribs of Mr. Watkins
Tottle.
“Come,” said Watkins, when the explosion of mirth
consequent on this practical jest, had subsided, “we’ll
be off at once—let’s lose no time.”
“Capital!” echoed Gabriel Parsons; and in five min-
utes they were at the garden-gate of the villa tenanted
by the uncle of Mr. Timson.
“Is Mr. Charles Timson at home?” inquired Mr.
Watkins Tottle, of Mr. Charles Timson’s uncle's man.
“Mr. Charles is at home,” replied the man stammer-
ing; “but he desired me to say he couldn’t be inter-
rupted, sir, by any of the parishioners.”
“I am not a parishioner,” replied Watkins.
468 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“Is Mr. Charles writing a sermon, Tom?” inquired
Parsons, thrusting himself forward. º
“No, Mr. Parsons, sir; he’s not exactly writing a
sermon, but he is practising the violoncello in his own
bedroom, and gave strict orders not to be disturbed.”
“Say I’m here,” replied Gabriel, leading the way
across the garden; “Mr. Parsons and Mr. Tottle, on
private and particular business.”
They were shown into the parlour, and the servant
departed to deliver his message. The distant groaning
of the violoncello ceased; footsteps were heard on the
stairs; and Mr. Timson presented himself, and shook
hands with Parsons with the utmost cordiality.
“How do you do, sir?” said Watkins Tottle, with
great Solemnity.
‘‘How do you do, sir?” replied Timson, with as much
coldness as if it were a matter of perfect indifference
to him how he did, as it very likely was.
“I beg to deliver this note to you,” said Watkins
Tottle, producing the cocked hat.
“From Miss Lillerton l’” said Timson, suddenly
changing colour. “Pray sit down.”
Mr. Watkins Tottle sat down; and while Timson
perused the note, fixed his eyes on an oyster-sauce-
coloured portrait of the Archbishop of Canterbury,
which hung over the fireplace.
Mr. Timson rose from his seat when he had concluded
the note, and looked dubiously at Parsons—“May I
ask,” he inquired, appealing to Watkins Tottle,
“whether our friend here is acquainted with the object
of your visit P”
“Our friend is in my confidence,” replied Watkins,
with considerable importance.
“Then, sir,” said Timson, seizing both Tottle's hands,
“allow me in his presence to thank you most unfeign-
edly and cordially, for the noble part you have acted in
this affair.”
“He thinks I recommended him,” thought Tottle.
“Confound these fellows! they never think of anything
but their fees.”
“I deeply regret having misunderstood your inten-
tions, my dear sir,” continued Timson. “Disinterested
and manly, indeed . There are very few men who
would have acted as you have done,”
MR. WATKINS TOTTLE, 469
Mr. Watkins Tottle could not help thinking that his
last remark was anything but complimentary. He
therefore inquired, rather hastily, “When is it to be P’’
“On Thursday,” replied Timson, “On Thursday
morning at half-past eight.”
“Uncommonly early,” observed Watkins Tottle, with
an air of triumphant self-denial. “I shall hardly be
able to get down here by that hour.” (This was intended
for a joke.)
“Never mind, my dear fellow,” replied Timson, all
Suavity, shaking hands with Tottle again most heartily,
“So long as we see you to breakfast, you know — ”
“Eh !” said Parsons, with one of the most extraordi-
nary expressions of countenance that ever appeared in
a human face. -
“What l” ejaculated Watkins Tottle, at the same
moment. -
“I say that so long as we see you to breakfast,” re-
peated Timson, “we will excuse your being absent from
the ceremony, though of course your presence at it
would give us the utmost pleasure.”
Mr. Watkins Tottle staggered against the wall, and
fixed his eyes on Timson with appalling perseverance.
‘‘Timson,” said Parsons, hurriedly brushing his hat
with his left arm, “when you say ‘us,” whom do you
mean?”
Mr. Timson looked foolish in his turn, when he re-
º “Why—Mrs. Timson that will be this day week:
iss Lillerton that is — ”
“Now don’t stare at that idiot in the corner,” angrily
exclaimed Parsons, as the extraordinary convulsions of
Watkins Tottle's countenance excited the wandering
gaze of Timson, -“‘ but have the goodness to tell me in
three words the contents of that note.”
“This note,” replied Timson, “is from Miss Lillerton,
to whom I have been for the last five weeks regularly
engaged. Her singular scruples and strange feeling
on some point shave hitherto prevented my bringing
the engagement to that termination which I so
anxiously desire. She informs me here, that she
sounded Mrs. Parsons with the view of making her her
confidant and go-between, that Mrs. Parsons informed
this elderly gentleman, Mr. Tottle, of the circumstance,
and that he, in the most kind and delicate terms,
35
470 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
offered to assist us in any way, and even undertook to
convey this note, which contains the promise I have
long sought in vain—an act of kindness for which I
can never be sufficiently grateful.” -
“Good night, Timson,” said Parsons, hurrying off,
and carrying the bewildered Tottle with him.
“Won’t you stay—and have something!” said Timson.
“No, thank ye,” replied Parsons; “I’ve had quite
enough; ” and away, he went, followed by Watkins
Tottle in a state of stupefaction.
Mr. Gabriel Parsons whistled until they had walked
some quarter of a mile past his own gate, when he
suddenly stopped, and said—
“You are a clever fellow, Tottle, ain’t you?”
“I don’t know,” said the unfortunate Watkins.
“I suppose you’ll say this is Fanny’s fault, won’t
you?” inquired Gabriel. &
“I don’t know anything about it,” replied the bewil-
dered Tottle.
“Well,” said Parsons, turning on his heel to go home,
“ the next time you make an offer, you had better speak
plainly, and don’t throw a chance away. And the next
time you’re locked up in a Spunging-house, just wait
there till I come and take you out, there’s a good fellow.”
How, or at what hour, Mr. Watkins Tottle returned
to Cecil-street is unknown. His boots were seen outside
his bedroom-door next morning; but we have the
authority of his landlady for stating that he neither
emerged therefrom nor accepted sustenance for four-
and-twenty hours. At the expiration of that period,
and when a council of war was being held in the
kitchen on the propriety of summoning the parochial
beadle to break his door open, he rang his bell, and
demanded a cup of milk-and-water. The next morning
he went through the formalities of eating and drinking
as usual, but a week afterwards, he was seized with a
relapse, while perusing the list of marriages in a morn-
ing paper, from which he never perfectly recovered.
A few weeks after the last named occurrence, the
body of a gentleman unknown, was found in the Re-
gent’s canal. In the trousers-pockets were four shillings
and threepence halfpenny; a matrimonial advertise-
ment from a lady, which appeared to have been cut out
of a Sunday paper; a tooth-pick, and a card-case, which
• THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. 471
it is confidently believed would have led to the iden-
tification of the unfortunate gentleman, but for the cir-
cumstance of there being none but blank cards in it.
Mr. Watkins Tottle absented himself from his lodgings
shortly before. A bill, which has not been taken up,
was presented next morning; and a bill, which has not
been taken down, was soon afterwards affixed in his
parlour window -
CHAPTER XI.
THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING.
[The Author may be permitted to observe that this sketch was published some
time before the Farce entitled “The Christening” was first presented.]
R. NICODEMUS DUMPS, or as his acquaintance
called him, “ long Dumps,” was a bachelor, six
feet high, and fifty years old; cross, cadaverous, odd,
and ill-natured. He was never happy but when he was
miserable; and always miserable when he had the best
reason to be happy. The only real comfort of his ex-
istence was to make everybody about him wretched—
then he might be truly said to enjoy life. He was
afflicted with a situation in the Bank worth five hundred
a year, and he rented a “first-floor furnished,” at Pen-
tonville, which he originally took because it commanded
a dismal prospect of an adjacent churchyard. He was
familiar with the face of every tombstone, and the
burial service seemed to excite his strongest sympathy.
His friends said he was surly—he insisted he was ner-
vous; they thought him a lucky dog, but he protested
that he was “the most unfortunate man in the world.”
Cold as he was, and wretched as he declared himself to
be, he was not wholly unsusceptible of attachments.
He revered the memory of Hoyle, as he was himself an
admirable and imperturbable whist-player, and he
chuckled with delight at a fretful and impatient adver-
sary. He adored King Herod for his massacre of the
innocents, and if he hated one thing more than another,
it was a child. However, he could hardly be said to
hate anything in particular, because he disliked every-
thing in general; but perhaps his greatest antipathies
were cabs, old women, doors that would not shut,
musical amateurs, and Omnibus cads. He subscribed
4:2 . SKETCHES BY BOZ. Ç
to the “Society for the Suppression of Vice,” for the
pleasure of putting a stop to any harmless amusements;
and he contributed largely towards the support of two
itinerant Methodist parsons, in the amiable hope that
if circumstances rendered any people happy in this
world, they might perchance be rendered miserable by
fears for the next.
Mr. Dumps had a nephew who had been married
about a year, and who was somewhat of a favourite with
his uncle, because he was an admirable subject to exer-
cise his misery-creating powers upon. Mr. Charles
Kitterbell was a Small, sharp, spare man, with a very
large head, and a broad, good-humoured countenance.
He looked like a faded giant, with the head and face
partially restored; and he had a cast in his eye which
rendered it quite impossible for any one with whom he
conversed to know where he was looking. His eyes
appeared fixed on the wall, and he was staring you
out of countenance; in short, there was no catching his
eye, and perhaps it is a merciful dispensation of Provi-
dence that such eyes are not catching. In addition to
these characteristics, it may be added that Mr. Charles
Kitterbell was one of the most credulous and matter-of-
fact little personages that ever took to himself a wife,
and for himself a house in Great Russell-street, Bed-
ford-square. (Uncle Dumps always dropped the “Bed-
ford-square,” and inserted in lieu thereof the dreadful
words “Tottenham-court-road.”)
“No, but uncle, 'pon my life you must—you must
promise to be godfather,” said Mr. Kitterbell, as he sat
in conversation with his respected relative one morning.
“I cannot, indeed I cannot,” returned Dumps.
“Well, but why not? Jemima will think it very
unkind. It’s very little trouble.”
“As to the trouble,” replied the most unhappy man in
existence, “I don’t mind that; but my nerves are in
that state—I cannot go through the Geremony. You
know I don’t like going out.—For God's sake, Charles,
don’t fidget with that stool so; you’ll drive me mad.”
Mr. Kitterbell, quite regardless of his uncle’s nerves,
had occupied himself for some ten minutes in describ-
ing a circle on the floor with one leg of the office-stool
on which he was seated, keeping the other three up in
the air, and holding fast on by the desk.
“I beg your pardon, uncle,” said Kitterbell, quite
.--
THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. 473
abashed, suddenly releasing his hold of the desk, and
bringing the three wandering legs back to the floor,
with a force sufficient to-drive them through it.
“But come, don't refuse. If it’s a boy, you know, we
must have two godfathers.”
“If it’s a boy!” said Dumps; “why can’t you say at
once whether it is a boy or not?”
“I should be very happy to tell you, but it's impossi-
ble I can undertake to say whether it’s a girl Or a boy,
if the child isn’t born yet,”
“Not born yet!” echoed Dumps, with a gleam of hope
lighting up his lugubrious visage. “Oh, well, it may
be a girl, and then you won’t want me; or if it is a boy,
it may die before it is christened.”
“I hope not,” said the father that expected to be,
looking very grave.
“I hope not,” acquiesced Dumps, evidently pleased
with the subject. He was beginning to get happy. “I
hope not, but distressing cases frequently occur during
the first two or three days of a child’s life; fits, I am
told, are exceedingly common, and alarming convul-
Sions are almost matters of course.”
“Lord, uncle,” ejaculated little Kitterbell, gasping
for breath.
“Yes; my landlady was confined—let me see last
Tuesday; an uncommonly fine boy. On the Thursday
night the nurse was sitting with him upon her knee be-
fore the fire, and he was as well as possible. Suddenly
he became blagk in the face, and alarmingly spasmodic.
The medical man was instantly sent for, and every
35
remedy was tried, but
“How frightful!” interrupted the horror-stricken
Kitterbell.
“The child died, of course. However, your child may
not die; and if it should be a boy, and should live to be
christened, why I suppose I must be one of the spon-
sors.” Dumps was evidently good-natured on the faith
of his anticipations.
“Thank you, uncle,” said his agitated nephew; grasp-
ing his hand as warmly as if he had done him some
essential service. “Perhaps I had better not tell Mrs.
K. what you have mentioned.”
“Why, if she’s low spirited, perhaps you had better
Inot mention the melancholy case to her,” returned
Dumps, who of course had invented the whole story;
474 . SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“ though perhaps it would be but doing your duty as a
husband to prepare her for the worst.”
A day or two afterwards, as Dumps was perusing a
morning paper at the chop-house which he regularly
frequented; the following paragraph met his eye:—
“Births.—On Saturday, the 18th inst. in Great Russell-Street, the lady of Charles
Kitterbell, Esq., of a Son.”
“It is a boy!” he exclaimed, dashing down the paper,
to the astonishment of the waiters. . “It is a boy!”
Bºut he speedily regained his composure as his eye rested
on a paragraph quoting the number of infant deaths
from the bills of mortality.
Six weeks passed away, and as no communication
had been received from the Kitterbells, Dumps was be-
ginning to flatter himself that the child was dead, when
the following note painfully resolved his doubts:–
“Great Russell street,
“Monday morning.
“DEAR UNCLE,-You will be delighted to hear that my dear Jemima
has left her room, and that your future godson is getting on capitally.
He was very thin at first, but he is getting much larger, and nurse says
he is filling out every day. He cries a good deal, and is a very singular
colour, which made Jemima and me rather uncomfortable but as nurse
says it's natural, and as of course we know nothing about these things
yet, we are quite satisfied with what nurse says. We think he will be a
sharp child; and nurse says she's sure he will, because he never goes to
sleep. You will readily believe that we are all very happy, only we're a
little worn out for want of rest, as he keepsus awake all night; but this we
must expect, nurse says, for the first six or eight months. He has been
vaccinated, but in consequence of the operation being rather awkwardly
performed, some small particles of glass were introduced into the arm
with the matter. Perhaps this may in some degree account for his being
rather fractious; at least, so nurse says. We propose to have him chris-
tened at twelve o'clock on Friday, at St. George's church, in Hart-street,
by the name of Frederick Charles William. Pray don't be later than a
quarter before twelve. We shall have a very few friends in the evening,
when of course we shall see you. I am sorry to say that the dear boy
appears rather restless and uneasy to-day: the cause, I fear, is fever.
“Believe me, dear Uncle,
“Yours affectionately,
“CHARLEs KITTERBELL.
“P.S.—I open this note to say that we have just discovered the cause
of little Frederick's restlessness. It is not fever, as I apprehended, but
a small pin, which nurse accidentally stuck in his leg yesterday evening.
We have taken it out, and he appears more composed, though he still
sobs a good deal,” --
THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. 475
It is almost unnecessary to say that the perusal of the
above interesting statement was no great relief to the
mind of the hypochondriacal Dumps. It was impossi-
ble to recede, however, and so he put the best face—
that is to say, an uncommonly miserable one—upon the
matter; and purchased a handsome silver mug for the
infant Kitterbell, upon which he ordered the initials
“F. C. W. K.” with the customary untrained grape-
vine-looking flourishes, and a large full stop, to be en-
graved forthwith. º
Monday was a fine day, Tuesday was delightful,
Wednesday was equal to either, and Thursday was
finer than ever; four successive fine days, in London!
Hackney-coachmen became revolutionary, and cross-
ing-sweepers began to doubt the existence of a First
Cause. The Morming Herald informed its readers that
an old woman in Camden Town had been heard to say
that the fineness of the season was “unprecedented in
the memory of the oldest inhabitant ’’ and Išlington
clerks, with large families and small salaries, left off
their black gaiters, disdained to carry their Once green
cotton umbrellas, and walked to town in the conscious
pride of white stockings and cleanly brushed Bluchers.
Dumps beheld all this with an º of Supreme contempt
—his triumph was at hand. He knew that if it had been
fine for four weeks instead of four days, it would rain
when he went out; he was lugubriously happy in the
conviction that Friday would be a wretched day—and
so it was. “I knew how it would be,” said Dumps, as
he turned round opposite the Mansion-house at half-past
eleven o’clock on the Friday morning. “I knew how
it would be; I am concerned, and that’s enough; ” and
certainly the appearance of the day was sufficient to
depress the spirits of a much more buoyant-hearted in-
dividual than himself. It had rained, without a mo-
ment’s cessation, since eight o’clock; everybody that
passed up Cheapside and down Cheapside, looked wet,
cold, and dirty. All sorts of forgotten and long-con-
cealed umbrellas had been put into requisition. Cabs
whisked about, with the “fare * as carefully boxed up
behind two glazed calico curtains as any mysterious
Fº in any one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s castles; Omnibus
orses smoked like steam-engines; nobody thought of
“standing up ’’ under doorways or arches; they were
476 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
Fº convinced it was a hopeless case; and so every-
Ody went hastily along, jumbling and jostling, and
Swearing and perspiring, and slipping about, like ama-
teur skaters behind wooden chairs on the Serpentine On
a frosty Sunday.
Dumps paused; he could not think of walking, being
rather smart for the christening. If he took a cab he
was sure to be spilt, and a hackney coach was too ex-
pensive for his economical ideas. An Omnibus was
waiting at the opposite corner—it was a desperate case
—he had never heard of an omnibus upsetting or run-
ning away, and if the cad did knock him down he could
“pull him up * in return.
“Now, sir!” cried the young gentleman who officiated
as “cad” to the “Lads of the Village,” which was the
name of the machine just noticed. Dumps crossed.
“This vay, sir!” shouted the driver of the “Hark-
away,” pulling up his vehicle immediately across the
door of the opposition—“This way, sir—he's full.”
Dumps hesitated, whereupon the “Lads of the Village’”
commenced pouring out a torrent of abuse against the
“Hark-away; ” but the conductor of the “Admiral
Napier” settled the contest in a most satisfactory man-
ner for all parties, by seizing Dumps round the waist,and
thrusting him into the middle of his vehicle, which had
just come up and only wanted the sixteenth inside.
“All right,” said the “Admiral,” and off the thing
thundered, like a fire-engine at full gallop, with the
kidnapped customer inside, standing in the position of
a half doubled up bootjack, and falling about with
every jerk of the machine, first on the One side and
then on the other like a “Jack-in-the-green’ On May-
day, setting to the lady with a brass ladle.
“For Heaven’s sake, where am I to sit?” inquired the
miserable man of an old gentleman, into whose
stomach he had just fallen for the fourth time.
“Any where but on my chest, sir,” replied the old
gentleman in a Surly tone.
“Perhaps the boat would suit the gentleman better,”
suggested a very damp lawyer's clerk, in a pink shirt,
and a Smirking countenance.
After a great deal of struggling and falling about,
Dumps at last managed to squeeze himself into a seat,
which in addition to the slight disadvantage of being
'**
THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. 47%.
between a window that would not shut, and a door that
must be open, placed him in close contact with a pas-
senger who had been walking about all the morning
without an umbrella, and who looked as if he had spent
the day in a full water-butt—only wetter.
“Don’t bang the door so,” said Dumps to the con-
ductor, as he shut it, after letting out four of the
passengers; “I am very nervous—it destroys me.”
“Did any gen’lm’m say anythink?” replied the cad,
thrusting in his head, and trying to look as if he didn’t
understand the request.
“I told you not to bang the door so!” repeated Dumps,
with an expression of countenance like the knave of
clubs, in convulsions.
“Oh! vy, it’s rather a sing’ler circumstance about this
here door, sir, that it won’t shut without banging,” re-
plied the conductor; and he opened the door very wide,
and shut it again with a terrific bang, in proof of the
assertion.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said a little prim, wheez-
ing old gentleman, sitting opposite Dumps, “I beg your
pardon; but have you ever observed, when you have been
in an omnibus on a wet day, that four people out of
five always come in with large cotton umbrellas, with-
out a handle at the top, or the brass spike at the
bottom P”
“Why, sir,” returned Dumps, as he heard the clock
Strike twelve, “It never struck me before, but now
ou mention it, I–Hollo! hollo!” shouted the persecuted
individual, as the omnibus dashed past Drury-lane,
wº he had directed to be set down—“Where is the
Cad?”
“I think he’s on the box, sir,” said the young gentle-
man before noticed in the pink shirt, which looked like a
white One ruled with red ink.
“I want to be set down!” said Dumps in a faint voice,
overcome by his previous efforts.
“I think these cads want to be set down,” returned the
attorney’s clerk, chuckling at his Sally.
“Hollo!” cried Dumps again.
“Hollo!” echoed the passengers. The Omnibus passed
St. Giles’s church.
“Hold hard!” said the conductor; “I’m blowed if we
ha’n’t forgot the gen’lm’n as was to be set down at Doory-
478 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
lane. Now, sir, make haste, if you please,” he added,
opening the door, and assisting Dumps out with as
much coolness as if it was ‘‘ all right,” Dumps's indig-
nation was for once getting the better of his cynical
equanimity. “Drury-lane!” he gasped, with the voice
of a boy in a cold bath for the first time.
‘‘ Doory-lane, sir?—yes, sir, third turning on the
right hand side, sir.”
iyumps's passion was paramount; he clutched his um-
brella, and was striding off with the firm determination
of not paying the fare. The cad, by a remarkable co-
incidence, happened to entertain a directly contrary
opinion, and Heaven knows how far the altercation
would have proceeded, if it had not been most
ably and satisfactorily brought to a close by the
driver.
“Hollo!” said that respectable person, standing up
on the box, and leaning with one hand on the roof of
the omnibus. “Hollo, Tom! tell the gentleman if so
be as he feels aggrieved, we will take him up to the
Edge-er (Edgeware) Road for nothing, and set him
down at Doory-land when we comes back. He can't
reject that, anyhow.”
The argument was irresistible: Dumps paid the dis.
puted sixpence, and in a quarter of an hour was on the
staircase of No. 14, Great Russell-street.
Every thing indicated that preparations were making
for the reception of “a few friends” in the evening.
Two dozen extra tumblers, and four ditto wine-glasses
—looking anything but transparent, with little bits of
straw in them—were on the slab in the passage, just
arrived. There was a great smell of nutmeg, port wine,
and almonds, on the staircase; the covers were taken
off the stair-carpet, and the figure of Venus on the first
landing looked as if she were ashamed of the composi-
tion-candle in her right hand, which contrasted beau-
tifully with the lamp-blacked drapery of the goddess of
love. The female servant (who looked very warm and
bustling) ushered Dumps into a front drawing-room,
very prettily furnished, with a plentiful sprinkling of
little baskets, paper table-mats, china watchmen, pink
and gold albums, and rainbow-bound little books on the
different tables.
“Ah, uncle!” said Mr. Kitterbell. “how d'ye do?
©
THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. 479
allow me—Jemima, my dear—my uncle. I think you’ve
seen Jemima before, sir?” e
“Have had the pleasure,” returned big Dumps, his
tone and look making it doubtful whether in his life he
had ever experienced the sensation.
“I’m sure,” said Mrs. Kitterbell, with a languid
smile, and a slight cough. “I’m sure—hem—any
friend—of Charles's—hem—much less a relation is 25
“I knew you’d say so, my love,” said little Kitter-
bell, who, while he appeared to be gazing on the oppo-
site houses, was looking at his wife with a most affec-
tionate air: “Bless you!” The last two words were
accompanied with a simper, and a squeeze of the hand,
which stirred up all Uncle Dumps's bile.
“Jane, tell nurse to bring down baby,” said Mrs.
Ritterbell, addressing the servant. Mrs. Kitterbell was
a tall, thin young lady, with very light hair, and a par-
ticularly white face—one of those young women who
almost invariably, though one hardly knows why, recall
to One’s mind the idea of a cold fillet of veal. Out went
the servant, and in came the nurse, with a remarkably
Small parcel in her arms, packed up in a blue mantle
trimmed with white fur—this was the baby.
“Now, uncle,” said Mr. Kitterbell, lifting up that part
of the mantle which covered the infant’s face, with
#. air of great triumph, “Who do you think he’s
ike?”
“He! hel Yes, who?” said Mrs. K., putting her arm
through her husband’s, and looking up into Dumps's
face with an expression of as much interest as she
was capable of displaying.
“Good God, how small he is!” cried the amiable
uncle, starting back with well-feigned surprise; “ re-
7markably small indeed.”
“Do you think so?” inquired poor little Kitterbell,
rather alarmed. “He’s a monster to what he was—
ain’t he, nurse?”
“He’s a dear,” said the nurse, squeezing the child, and
evading the question—not because she scrupled to dis-
guise the fact, but because she couldn’t afford to throw
away the chance of Dumps's half-crown.
b i Well, but who is he like?” inquired little Kitter-
€ll.
Dumps looked at the little pink heap before him, and
480 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
only thought at the moment of the best mode of mor-s
tifying the youthful parents.
“I really don’t know who he's like,” he answered
very well knowing the reply expected of him,
“Don’t you think he's like me?” inquired his nephew
with a knowing air. *
“Oh, decidedly not!” returned Dumps, with his em-
phasis not to be misunderstood. “Decidedly not like
you.--Oh, certainly not.” -
“Like Jemima” asked Kitterbell, faintly.
“Oh dear, no; not in the least. I’m no judge, of
course, in such cases; but I really think he's more like
One of those little carved representations that one
sometimes sees blowing a trumpet on a tombstone!”
The nurse stooped down over the child, and with great
difficulty prevented an explosion of mirth. Pa and ma
looked almost as miserable as their amiable uncle.
“Well!” said the disappointed little father, “you’ll
be better able to tell what he’s like by-and-by. You
shall see him this evening with his mantle off.”
f i. Thank you,” said Dumps, feeling particularly grate-
Uli.
“Now, my love,” said Kitterbell to his wife, “it’s
time we were off. We’re to meet the other godfather,
and the godmother at the church, uncle—Mr. and Mrs.
Wilson from over the way—uncommonly nice people.
My love, are you well wrapped up?” -
“Yes, dear.”
“Are you sure you won’t have another shawl?” in-
quired the anxious husband. - *
‘‘No, sweet,” returned the charming mother, accept-
ing Dumps's proffered arm; and the little party entered
the hackney coach that was to take them to the church;
Dumps amusing Mrs. Kitterbell by expatiating largely
on the danger of measles, thrush, teeth-cutting, and
other interesting diseases to which children are
Subject. r
The ceremony (which occupied about five minutes)
passed off without anything particular occurring. The
clergyman had to dine some distance from town, and
had two churchings, three christenings, and a funeral
to perform in something less than an hour. The god-
fathers and godmothers, therefore, promised to renounce
the devil and all his works—“ and all that sort of thing”
THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. 481
—as little Kitterbell said—“ in less than no time; ” and
with the exception of Dumps nearly letting the child
fall into the font when he handed it to the clergyman,
the whole affair went off in the usual business-like and
*matter-of-course manner, and Dumps re-entered the
Bank-gates at two o'clock with a heavy heart, and
the painful conviction that he was regularly booked for
an evening party.
Evening came—and so did Dumps's pumps, black
silk stockings, and white cravat which he had ordered
to be forwarded, per boy, from Pentonville. . The de-
pressed godfather dressed himself at a friend’s count-
ing-house, from whence, with his spirits fifty degrees
below proof, he sallied forth—as the weather had cleared
up, and the evening was tolerably fine—to walk to
Great Russell-street. Slowly he paced up Cheapside,
Newgate-street, down Snow-hill, and up Holborn ditto,
looking as grim as the figure head of a man-of-war,
and finding out fresh causes of misery at every step.
As he was crossing the corner of Hatton-garden, a man
apparently intoxicated, rushed against him, and would
have knocked him down, had he not been providen-
tially caught by a very genteel young man, who hap-
ºpened to be close to him at the time. The shock so dis-
arranged Dumps's nerves, as well as his dress, that he
could hardly stand. The gentleman took his arm, and
in the kindest manner walked with him as far as Furni-
val’s Inn. Dumps, for about the first time in his life,
felt grateful and polite; and he and the gentlemanly-
looking young man parted with mutual expressions of
good will.
“There are at least some well-disposed men in the
world,” ruminated the misanthropical Dumps, as he
proceeded towards his destination. -
Rat — tat — ta-ra-ra-ra-ra-rat — knocked a hackney-
coachman at Kitterbell’s door, in imitation of a gentle-
man’s servant, just as Dumps reached it; and out came
an old lady in a large fogue, and an old gentleman
in a blue coat, and three female copies of the lady in pink
dresses, and shoes to match.
“It’s a large party,’” sighed the unhappy godfather,
wiping the perspiration from his forehead, and leaning
against the area-railings. It was some time before the
miserable man could muster up courage to knock at the
31
482 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
door, and when he did, the Smart appearance of a neigh-
bouring greengrocer (who had been hired to wait for
seven and sixpence, and whose calves alone were worth
double the money), the lamp in the passage, and the
Venus on the landing, added to the hum of many”
voices, and the sound of a harp and two violins, pain-
fully convinced him that his surmises were but too
well founded.
“How are you?” said little Kitterbell, in a greater
bustle than ever, bolting out of the little back parlour
with a corkscrew in his hand, and various particles of
sawdust, looking like so many inverted commas, on
his inexpressibles. -
“Good God!” said Dumps, turning into the aforesaid
parlour to put his shoes on which he had brought in his
coat-pocket, and still more appalled by the sight of
seven fresh-drawn corks, and a corresponding num-
ber of decanters. “How many people are there
up-stairs?”
“Oh, not above thirty-five. We’ve had the carpet
taken up in the back drawing-room, and the piano and
the card-tables are in the front. Jemima thought we’d
better have a regular sit-down Supper in the front
parlour, because of the Speechifying, and all that.
But, Lord! uncle, what’s the matter?” continued the ex-
cited little man, as Dumps stood with one shoe on, rum-
maging his pockets with the most frightful distortion
of visage. “What have you lost? Your pocket-
book?”
“No,” returned Dumps, diving first into one pocket
and then into the other, and speaking in a voice like
Desdemona, with the pillow over her mouth. -
“Your card case? Snuff-box? the key of your lodg-
ings?” continued Kitterbell, pouring question on ques-
tion with the rapidity of lightning.
“No! no!” ejaculated Dumps, still diving eagerly
into his empty pocket.
“Not—not—the mug you spoke of this morning?”
“Yes, the mug ſ” replied Dumps, sinking into a
chair.
“How could you have done it?” inquired Kitterbell.
“Are you sure you brought it out?”
“Yes! yes! I see it all” said Dumps, starting up as
the idea flashed across his mind; “miserable dog that
THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. 483
I am—I was born to suffer. I see it all; it was the
gentlemanly-looking young man!”
“Mr. Dumps!” shouted the greengrocer in a sten-
torian voice, as he ushered the somewhat recovered
godfather into the drawing-room half an hour after the
above declaration. “Mr. Dumps!”—everybody looked
at the door, and in came Dumps, feeling about as much
out of place as a Salmon §: be supposed to be on a
gravel-walk. - -
“Happy to see you again,” said Mrs. Kitterbell, quite
unconscious of the unfortunate man’s confusion and
misery; “ you must allow me to introduce you to a few
of our friends:–my mamma, Mr. Dumps—my papa and
sisters.” Dumps seized the hand of the mother as
warmly as if she was his own parent, bowed to the
young ladies, and against a gentleman behind him,
and took no notice whatever of the father, who had
been bowing incessantly for three minutes and
Quarter. . - …- - -
“Uncle,” said little Kitterbell, after Dumps had been
introduced to a select dozen or two, “you must let me
lead you to the other end of the room, to introduce
you to my friend Danton. Such a splendid fellow —
I’m sure you’ll like him—this way,”—Dumps followed
as tractably as a tame bear. -
Mr. Danton was a young man of about five-and-
twenty, with a considerable stock of impudence, and a
very small share of ideas; he was a great favourite,
especially with young ladies of from sixteen to twenty-
six years of age, both inclusive. He could imitate the
French-horn to admiration, sang comic songs most
inimitably, and had the most insinuating way of say-
ing impertinent nothings to his doting female admirers.
He had acquired, somehow or other, the reputation of
being a great wit, and accordingly, whenever he
opened his mouth, everybody who knew him laughed
very heartily.
The introduction took place in due form. Mr. Dan-
ton bowed, and twirled a lady’s handkerchief, which he
held in his hand, in a most comic way. Everybody smiled.
“Very warm,” said Dumps, feeling it necessary to
say something. -
“Yes. It was warmer yesterday,” returned the bril-
liant Mr. Danton.--A general laugh.
484 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
“I have great pleasure in congratulating you on
your first appearance in the character of a father, sir,”
he continued, addressing Dumps — “Godfather, I
mean.”—The young ladies were convulsed, and the
gentlemen in ecstacies.
A general hum of admiration interrupted the conver-
sation, and announced the entrance of nurse with the
baby. An universal rush of the young ladies immedi-
ately took place. (Girls are always so fond of babies
in company.)
“Oh, you dear !” said one.
“How sweet!” cried another, in a low tone of the
most enthusiastic admiration.
“Heavenly! ” added a third. -
“Oh! what dear little arms!” said a fourth, holding
up an arm and fist about the size and shape of the leg
of a fowl cleanly picked.
“Did you ever!”—said a little coquette with a large
bustle, who looked like a French lithograph, appeal-
ing to a gentleman in three waistcoats—“Did you
ever!”
“Never in my life,” returned her admirer, pulling up
his collar.
“Oh! do let me take it, nurse,” cried another young
lady. “The love.” -
“Can it open its eyes, nurse?” inquired another,
affecting the utmost innocence. Suffice it to say, that
the single ladies unanimously voted him an angel, and
that the married ones, mem. Con., agreed that he was
decidedly the finest baby they had ever beheld—except
their own.
The quadrilles were resumed with great spirit. Mr.
Danton was universally admitted to be beyond himself,
several young ladies enchanted the company and gained
admirers by singing ‘‘We met”—“I saw her at the
Fancy Fair”—and other equally sentimental and inter-
esting ballads. “The young men,” as Mrs. Kitterbell
said, “ made themselves very agreeable;” the girls did
not lose their opportunity; and the evening promised to
go off excellently. Dumps didn’t mind it; he had de-
vised a plan for himself—a little bit of fun in his own
way—and he was almost happy! He played a rubber
and lost every point. Mr. Danton said he could not
have lost every point, because he made a point of losing;
THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. 485
everybody laughed tremendously. Dumps retorted
with a better joke, and nobody smiled, with the excep-
tion of the host, who seemed to consider it his duty to
laugh till he was black in the face at everything.
There was only one drawback—the musicians did not
play with quite as much spirit as could have been
wished. The cause, however, was satisfactorily ex-
plained; for it appeared, on the testimony of a gentle-
man who had come up from Gravesend in the afternoon,
that they had been engaged on board a steamer all day,
and had played almost without cessation all the way
to Gravesend, and all the way back again.
The “sit-down supper” was excellent; there were
four barley-sugar temples on the table, which would
have looked beautiful if they had not melted away
when the supper began; and a water-mill, whose only
fault was that instead of going round it ran over the
table-cloth. Then there were fowls, and tongue, and
trifle, and sweets, and lobster salad, and potted beef-
and everything. And little Kitterbell kept calling Out
for clean plates, and the clean plates did not come; and
then the gentlemen who wanted the plates said they
didn’t mind, they’d take a lady’s; and then Mrs. Kitter-
bell applauded their gallantry, and the greengrocer
ran about till he thought his seven and sixpence was
very hardly earned; and the young ladies didn’t eat
much for fear it shouldn’t look romantic, and the mar-
ried ladies eat as much as possible, for fear they shouldn’t
have enough; and a great deal of wine was drunk, and
everybody talked and laughed considerably.
“ Hush hush!” said Mr. Kitterbell, rising and look-
ing very important. “My love [this was addressed to
his wife at the other end of the table], take care of Mrs.
Maxwell, and your mamma and the rest of the married
ladies; the gentlemen will persuade the young ladies to
fill their glasses, I am sure.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said long Dumps, in a very
sepulchral voice and rueful accent; rising from his chair
like the ghost in Don Juan, “will you have the kind-
ness to charge your glasses? I am desirous of proposing
a toast.”
A dead silence ensued, and the glasses were filled—
everybody looked serious.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” slowly continued the Omi-
486 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
nous Dumps, “I” (here Mr. Danton imitated two notes
from the French-horn, in a very loud key, which
electrified the nervous toast-proposer, and convulsed
his audience).
“Order! order!” said little Kitterbell, endeavouring
to suppress his laughter.
“Order!” said the gentlemen.
“Danton, be quiet,” said a particular friend on the
opposite side of the table.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” resumed Dumps, somewhat
recovered, and not much disconcerted, for he was al-
ways a pretty good hand at a speech—“In accordance
with what is, I believe, the established usage on these
occasions, I, as one of the godfathers of Master Fred-
erick Charles William Kitterbell—(here the speaker’s
voice faltered, for he remembered the mug)—Venture
to rise to propose a toast. I need hardly say that it is
the health and prosperity of that young gentleman, the
particular event of whose early life we are here met to
celebrate—(applause). Ladies and gentlemen, it is im-
possible to suppose that our friends here, whose sincere
well-wishers we all are, can pass through life without
some trials, considerable suffering, severe affliction,
and heavy losses!”—Here the arch traitor paused, and
slowly drew forth a long, white pocket-handkerchief—
his example was followed by several ladies. “That
these trials may be long spared them is my most earnest
prayer, my most fervent wish (a distinct sob from the
grandmother). I hope and trust, ladies and gentlemen,
that the infant whose christening we have this evening
met to celebrate, may not be removed from the arms of
his parents by premature decay (several cambrics were
in requisition); that his young and now apparently
healthy form, may not be wasted by lingering disease.
(Here Dumps cast a sardonic glance around, for a great
sensation was manifest among the married ladies.)
You, I am sure, will concur with me in wishing that
he may live to be a comfort and a blessing to his
arents. (* Hear, hear!” and an audible sob from Mr.
itterbell.) But should he not be what we could wish
—should he forget in after times the duty which he
owes to them—should they unhappily experience that
distracting truth, ‘ how sharper than a serpent’s tooth
it is to have a thankless child.’”—Here Mrs. Kitterbell,
sº-
THE BLOOMSBURY CHRISTENING. 487
with her handkerchief to her eyes, and accompanied
by several ladies, rushed from the room, and went into
violent hysterics in the passage, leaving her better half
in almost as bad a condition, and a general impression
in Dumps's favour; for people like sentiment, after all.
It need hardly be added, that this occurrence quite
put a stop to the harmony of the evening. Vinegar,
hartshorn, and cold water, were now as much in request
as negus, rout-cakes, and bom-bons had been a short
time before. Mrs. Kitterbell was immediately con-
veyed to her apartment, the musicians were silenced,
flirting ceased, and the company slowly departed.
Dumps left the house at the commencement of the
bustle, and walked home with a light step, and (for
him) a cheerful heart. His landlady who slept in the
next room, has offered to make oath that she heard
him laugh, in his peculiar manner, after he had locked
his door. The assertion, however, is so improbable,
and bears on the face of it such strong evidence of un-
† that it has never obtained credence to this
Oll]”.
The family of Mr. Kitterbell has considerably in-
creased since the period to which we have referred; he
has now two Sons and a daughter; and as he expects, at
no distant period, to have another addition to his bloom-
ing progeny, he is anxious to secure an eligible god-
father for the occasion. He is determined, however,
to impose upon him two conditions. He must bind him-
Self, by a solemn obligation, not to make any speech
after Supper, and it is indispensable that he should be
in no way connected with ‘‘the most miserable man in
the world.”
CHAPTER XII.
THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH.
E will be bold to say, that there is scarcely a
man in the constant habit of walking, day after
day, through any of the crowded thoroughfares of Lon-
don who cannot recollect among the people whom he
“knows by sight,” to use a familiar phrase, some being
of abject and wretched appearance whom he remembers
488 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
to have seen in a very different condition, whom he
has observed sinking lower and lower, by almost im-
perceptible degrees, and the shabbiness and utter desti-
tution of whose appearance, at last, strike forcibly and
painfully upon him, as he passes by. Is there any
man who has mixed much with society or whose avoca-
tions have caused him to mingle, at One time or other,
with a great number of people, who cannot call to
mind the time when some shabby, miserable wretch,
in rags and filth, who shuffles past him now in all the
squalor of disease and poverty, was a respectable
tradesman, or a clerk, or a man following some thriving
pursuit, with good prospects, and decent means?—or
cannot any of our readers call to mind from among the
list of their quondam acquaintance, some fallen and de-
graded man, who lingers about the pavement in hungry
misery—from whom every one turns coldly away, and
who preserves himself from sheer starvation, nobody
knows how? Alas! such cases are of too frequent oc-
currence to be rare items in any man’s experience; and
but too often arise from one cause—drunkenness—that
fierce rage for the slow, sure poison, that oversteps
every other consideration; that casts aside wife, chil-
dren, friends, happiness, and station; and hurries its
victims madly on to degradation and death.
Some of these men have been impelled, by misfortune
and misery, to the vice that has degraded them. The
ruin of worldly expectations, the death of those they
lowed, the sorrow that slowly consumes, but will not
break the heart, has driven them wild; and they pre-
sent the hideous spectacle of madmen, slowly dying by
their own hands. But by far the greater part have
wilfully, and with Open eyes, plunged into the gulf
from which the man who once enters it never rises
more, but into which he sinks deeper and deeper down,
until recovery is hopeless.
Such a man as this once stood by the bed-side of his
dying wife, while his children knelt around, and mingled
low bursts of grief with their innocent prayers. The
room was scantily and meanly furnished; and it needed
but a glance at the pale form from which the light of life
was fast passing away, to know that grief, and want, and
anxious care, had been busy at the heart for many a
weary year, . An elderly female, with her face bathed
THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH. 489
in tears, was supporting the head of the dying woman—
her daughter—on her arm. But it was not towards her
that the wan face turned; it was not her hand that
the cold and trembling fingers clasped; they pressed
the husband’s arm; the eyes so soon to be closed in
death rested on his face, and the man shook beneath
their gaze. His dress was slovenly and disordered, his
face inflamed, his eyes bloodshot and heavy. He had
been summoned from some wild debauch to the bed of
sorrow and death.
A shaded lamp by the bed-side cast a dim light on the
figures around, and left the remainder of the room in
thick, deep shadow. The silence of night prevailed
without the house, and the stillness of death was in the
chamber. A watch hung over the mantel-shelf; its low
ticking was the only sound that broke the profound
quiet, but it was a solemn one, for well they knew who
heard it, that before it had recorded the passing of
another hour, it would beat the knell of a departed
spirit.
Ph. is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the
approach of death; to know that hope is gone, and
recovery impossible; and to sit and count the dreary
hours through long, long, nights—such nights as Only
watchers by the bed of sickness know. It chills the
blood to hear the dearest secrets of the heart—the pent-
up, hidden secrets of many years—poured forth by
the unconscious, helpless being before you; and to
think how little the reserve and cunning of a whole
life will avail, when fever and delirium tear off the
mask at last. Strange tales have been told in the
wanderings of dying men; tales so full of guilt and
crime, that those who stood by the sick person’s couch
have fled in horror and affright, lest they should be
scared to madness by what they heard and saw; and
many a wretch has died alone, raving of deeds the
very name of which has driven the boldest man
away. •
But no such ravings were to be heard at the bed-side
by which the children knelt. Their half-stified sobs
and moanings alone broke the silence of the lonely
chamber. And when at last the mother's grasp relaxed,
and, turning one look from the children to their father,
she vainly strove to speak, and fell backward on the
• * *
490 º SKETCHES BY BOZ.
pillow, all was so calm and tranquil that she seemed to
sink to sleep. They leant over her; they called upon
her name, softly at first, and then in the loud and
piercing tones of desperation. But there was no reply.
They listened for her breath, but no sound came. They
felt for the palpitation of the heart, but no faint throb
responded to the touch. That heart was broken, and
she was dead!
The husband sunk into a chair by the bed-side, and
clasped his hands upon his burning forehead. He
gazed from child to child, but when a weeping eye met
his, he quailed beneath its look. No word of comfort
was whispered in his ear, no look of kindness lighted
on his face. All shrunk from and avoided him; and
when at last he staggered from the room, no one sought
to follow or console the widower. -
The time had been when many a friend would have
crowded round him in his affliction, and many a
heartfelt condolence would have met him in his grief.
Where were they now? One by one, friends, relations,
the commonest acquaintance even, had fallen off from
and deserted the drunkard. His wife alone had clung
to him in good and evil, in sickness and poverty; and
how had he rewarded her? He had reeled from the
tavern to her bed-side, in time to see her die.
He rushed from the house, and walked swiftly
through the streets. Remorse, fear, shame, all crowded
on his mind. Stupified with drink, and bewildered
with the scene he had just witnessed, he re-entered the
tavern he had quitted shortly before. Glass succeeded
glass. His blood mounted, and his brain whirled round.
T}eath! Every one must die, and why not she. She
was too good for him; her relations had often told him
so. Curses on them | Had they not deserted her, and
left her to whine away the time at home? Well—she
was dead, and happy perhaps. It was better as it was.
Another glass—one more! Hurrah! It was a merry
life while it lasted; and he would make the most of it.
Time went on; the three children who were left to
him, grew up, and were children no longer. The father
remained the same—poorer, shabbier, and more
dissolute-looking, but the same confirmed and irre-
claimable drunkard. The boys had, long ago, run wild
in the Streets, and left him; the girl alone remained,
THE DRUNKARD's DEATH. 491
but she worked hard, and words or blows could always
procure him something for the tavern. So he went on
in the old course, and a merry life he led.
One night, as early as ten o’clock—for the girl had
been sick for many days, and there was, consequently,
little to spend at the public-house—he bent his steps
homewards, bethinking himself that if he would have
her able to earn money, it would be as well to apply to
the parish surgeon, or, at all events, to take the trouble
of inquiring what ailed her, which he had not yet
thought it worth while to do. It was a wet December
night; the wind blew piercing cold, and the rain poured
heavily down. He begged a few halfpence from a
passer-by, and having bought a small loaf (for it was
his interest to keep the girl alive, if he could), he
shuffled onwards as fast as the wind and rain would
let him. -
At the back of Fleet-street, and lying between it and
the water-side, are several mean and narrow courts,
which form a portion of Whitefriars; it was to one of
these that he directed his steps.
The alley into which he turned, might, for filth and
misery, have competed with the darkest corner of this
ancient sanctuary in its dirtiest and most lawless time.
The houses, varying from two stories in height to four,
were stained with every indescribable hue that long ex-
posure to the weather, damp, and rottenness can impart
to tenements composed originally of the roughest and
coarsest materials. The windows were patched with
paper, and stuffed with the foulest rags; the doors were
falling from their hinges; poles with lines on which to
dry clothes, projected from every casement, and sounds
of quarrelling or drunkenness issued from every room.
The solitary oil lamp in the centre of the court had
been blown out, either by the violence of the wind or
the act of some inhabitant who had excellent reasons
for objecting to his residence being rendered too con-
spicuous; and the only light which fell upon the broken
and uneven pavement, was derived from the miserable
candles that here and there twinkled in the rooms of
such of the more fortunate residents as could afford to
indulge in so expensive a luxury. A gutter ran down
the centre of the alley—all the sluggish odours of which
had beeri called forth by the rain; and as the wind
492 SKETCHES BY BOz.
whistled through the old houses, the doors and shutters
creaked upon their hinges, and the windows shook in
their frames, with a violence which every moment
seemed to threaten the destruction of the whole place.
The man whom we have followed into this den,
walked on in the darkness, sometimes stumbling into
the main gutter, and at others into Some branch reposi-
tories of garbage which had been formed by the rain,
until he reached the last house in the court. The door,
or rather what was left of it, stood ajar, for the con-
venience of the numerous lodgers; and he proceeded to
grope his way up the old and broken stair, to the attic
Story.
#. was within a step or two of his room door, when
it opened, and a girl, whose miserable and emaciated
appearance was only to be equalled by that of the
candle which she shaded with her hand, peeped
anxiously Out.
“Is that you, father?” said the girl.
“Who else should it be?” replied the man gruffly.
“What are you trembling at? It’s little enough that
I’ve had to drink to-day, for there's no drink without
money, and no money without work. What the
devil’s the matter with the girl?”
“I am not well, father—not at all well,” said the girl,
bursting into tears. - - -
“Ah !” replied the man, in the tone of a person who
is compelled to admit a very unpleasant fact, to which
he would rather remain blind, if he could. “You must
get better somehow, for we must have money. You
must go to the parish doctor, and make him give you
some medicine. They’re paid for it, damn 'em. What
are you standing before the door for? Let me come in
can’t you?”
“Father,” whispered the girl, shutting the door be-
hind her, and placing herself before it, “William has
come back.”
“Who | * said the man with a start.
li “Hush,” replied the girl, “William ; brother Wil-
iam.”
“And what does he want?” said the man, with an
effort at composure—“money?' meat? drink? He's come
to the wrong shop for that, if he does. Give me the
candle—give me the candle, fool—I ain’t going to hurt
THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH. 493
him.” He snatched the candle from her hand, and
walked into the room.
Sitting on an old box, with his head resting on his hand,
and his eyes fixed on a wretched cinder fire that was
smouldering on the hearth, was a young man of about
two-and-twenty, miserably clad in an old coarse jacket
and trousers. He started up when his father entered.
“Fasten the door, Mary,” said the young man hastily
—“Fasten the door. You look as if you didn’t know
me, father. It’s long enough, since you drove me from
home; you may well forget me.”
“And what do you want here, now?” said the father
seating himself on a stool, on the other side of the fire-
place. “What do you want here, now?” -
“Shelter,” replied the son, “I’m in trouble; that’s
enough. If I’m caught I shall swing; that’s certain.
Caught I shall be, unless I stop here; that's as certain.
And there’s an end of it.”
“You mean to say, you’ve been robbing, or murder-
ing, then?” said the father.
“Yes I do,” replied the son. “Does it surprise you,
father?” He looked steadily in the man’s face, but he
withdrew his eyes, and bent them on the ground.
“Where's your brothers?” he said, after a long pause.
“Where they’ll never trouble you,” replied his son:
“John's gone to America, and Henry’s dead.”
“Dead l’” said the father, with a shudder, which even
he could not repress. -
“Dead,” replied the young man. “He died in my
arms—shot like a dog, by a gamekeeper. He staggered
back, I caught him, and his blood trickled down my
hands. It poured out from his side like water. He was
weak, and it blinded him, but he threw himself down on
his knees, on the grass, and prayed to God, that if his
mother was in heaven, He would hear her prayers for
pardon for her youngest Son. “I was her favourite boy,
Will’ he said, ‘and I am glad to think, now, that when
She was dying, though I was a very young child then,
and my little heart was almost bursting, I knelt down
at the foot of the bed, and thanked God for having made
me SQ fond of her as to have never once done anything
to bring the tears into her eyes... O Will, why was she
taken away, and father left ' ' There’s his dying words,
father,” said the young man; “make the best you can of
494. SKETCHES BY BOZ. ~ *
'em. You struck him across the face, in a drunken fit,
the morning we ran away; and here's the end of it!”
The girl wept aloud; and the father, sinking his
head upon his knees, rocked himself to and fro.
“If I am taken,” said the 3. man, “I shall be
carried back into the country, and hung for that man’s
murder. They cannot trace me here, without your
assistance, father. For aught I know, you may give
me up to justice; but unless you do, here I stop, until I
can venture to escape abroad.”
For two whole days, all three remained in the wretched
room, without stirring out. On the third evening, how-
ever, the girl was worse than she had been yet, and the
few scraps of food they had were gone. It was indis-
pensably necessary that Somebody should go out; and
as the girl was too weak and ill, the father went, just
at nightfall.
He got some medicine for the girl, and a trifle in the
way of pecuniary assistance. On his way back, he
earned sixpence by holding a horse; and he turned
homewards with enough money to supply their most
pressing wants for two or three days to come. He had
to pass the public-house. . He lingered for an instant,
walked past it, turned back again, lingered Once more,
and finally slunk in. Two men whom he had not
observed, were on the watch. They were on the point
Of ...; up their search in despair, when his loitering
attracted their attention; and when he entered the
public-house, they followed him.
“You’ll drink with me, master,” said one of them,
proffering him a glass of liquor.
“And me too,” said the other, replenishing the glass
as soon as it was drained of..its contents.
The man thought of his hungry children, and his
son’s danger. But they were nothing to the drunkard.
He did drink; and his reason left him.
“A wet night, Warden,” whispered one of the men
in his ear, as he at length turned to go away, after
spending in liquor one-half of the money on which, per-
. haps, his daughter’s life depended.
“The right sort of night for our friends in hiding,
Master Warden,” whispered the other. -
“Sit down hero,” said the one who had spoken first,
drawing him into a corner, “We have been looking
THE DRUNKARD'S DEATH. 495
arter the young un. We came to tell him, it’s all right
now, but we couldn't find him, 'cause we hadn’t got the
precise direction. But that ain’t strange, for I don’t
think he know’d it himself, when he come to London,
did he?” -
“No, he didn’t,” replied the father.
The two men exchanged glances.
“There’s a vessel down at the docks, to sail at mid-
night, when it’s high water,” resumed the first speaker, .
“ and we’ll put him-on board. . His passage is taken in
another name, and what’s better than that, it’s paid for.
It’s lucky we met you.” .
‘‘Very,” said the second. • ,
“Capital luck,” said the first, with a wink to his
Companion. tº • ‘º
“Great,” replied the second, with a slight nod of
intelligence. .
“Another glass here; quick”—said the first speaker.
And in five minutes more, the father had unconsciously
yielded up his own son into the hangman’s hands.
Slowly and heavily the time dragged along, as the
brother and sister, in their miserable hiding-place, lis-
tened in anxious suspense to the slightest sound. At
length, a heavy footstep was heard upon the stair; it
approached nearer; it reached the landing: and the
father staggered into the room.
The girl saw that he was intoxicated, and advanced
with the candle in her hand to meet him; she stopped
short, gave a loud scream, and fell senseless on the
ground. She had caught sight of the shadow of a man
reflected on the floor. They both rushed in, and in
another instant the young man was a prisoner, and
handcuffed.
“Very quietly done,” said one of the men to his com-
panion, “thanks to the old man. Lift up the girl,
Tom—come, come, it’s no use crying, young woman.
It's all over now, and can’t be helped.”
The young man stooped for an instant over the girl,
and then turned fiercely round upon his father, who had
reeled against the wall, and was gazing on the group
with drunken stupidity.
“Listen to me, father,” he said, in a tone that made
the drunkard’s flesh creep. “My brother’s blood, and
mine, is on your head: I never had kind look, or word,
496 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
or care, from you, and, alive or dead, I never will for-
give you. Die when you will, or how, I will be with
you. I speak as a dead man now, and I warn you,
father, that as surely as you must one day stand before
your Maker, so surely shall your children be there,
hand in hand, to cry for judgment against you.” He
raised his manacled hands in a threatening attitude,
fixed his eyes on his shrinking parent, and slowly left
the room; and neither father nor sister ever beheld him
more, on this side of the grave.
When the dim and misty light of a winter’s morning
penetrated into the narrow court, and struggled through
the begrimed window of the wretched room, Warden
awoke from his heavy sleep, and found himself alone.
He rose, and looked round him; the old flock mattress
on the floor was undisturbed; everything was just as
he remembered to have seen it last: and there were no
signs of any one, save himself, having occupied the
room during the night. He inquired of the other
lodgers, and of the neighbours; but his daughter had
not been seen or heard of. He rambled through the
streets, and scrutinised each wretched face among the
crowds that thronged them, with anxious eyes. But his
search was fruitless, and he returned to his garret when
night came on, desolate and weary.
For many days he occupied himself in the same
manner, but no trace of his daughter did he meet with,
and no word of her reached his ears. At length he gave
up the pursuit as hopeless. He had long thought of the
probability of her leaving him, and endeavouring to
gain her bread in quiet, elsewhere. She had left him
i. last to starve alone. He ground his teeth, and cursed
ner!
He begged his bread from door to door. Every half-
penny he could wring from the pity or credulity of
those to whom he addressed himself, was spent in the
old way. A year passed over his head; the roof of a
jail was the only one that had sheltered him for many
months. He slept under archways, and in brickfields
—anywhere, where there was some warmth or shelter
from the cold and rain. But in the last stage of poverty,
disease, and houseless want, he was a drunkard still.
At last, one bitter night, he sunk down on a door-step
faint and ill. The premature decay of vice and profli-
THE DRUNKARD's DEATH. 49?
gacy had worn him to the bone. His cheeks were hol-
low and livid; his eyes were sunken, and their sight
was dim. His legs trembled beneath his weight, and a
cold shiver ran through every limb.
And now the long-forgotten Scenes of a mis-spent
life crowded thick and fast upon him. He thought of
the time when he had a home—a º: cheerful home
—and of those who peopled it, and flocked about him
then, until the forms of his elder children seemed to
rise from the grave, and stand about him—SO plain, so
clear and so distinct they were, that he could touch
and feel them. Looks that he had long forgotten were
fixed upon him once more; voices long since hushed in
death sounded in his ears like the music of village bells.
But it was only for an instant. The rain beat heavily
upon him; and cold and hunger were gnawing at his
heart again.
He rose, and dragged his feeble limbs a few paces
further. The street was silent and empty; the few
passengers who passed by, at that late hour, hurried
quickly on, and his tremulous voice was lost in the
violence of the storm. Again that heavy chill struck
through his frame, and his blood seemed to stagnate
beneath it. He coiled himself up in a projecting door-
way, and tried to sleep. -
But sleep had fled from his dull and glazed eyes.
His mind wandered strangely, but he was awake, and
conscious. The well-known shout of drunken mirth
sounded in his ear, the glass was at his lips, the board
was covered with choice rich food—they were before
him; he could see them all, he had but to reach out his
hand, and take them—and, though the illusion was
reality itself, he knew that he was sitting alone in the
deserted street, watching the rain-drops as they pat-
tered on the stones; that death was coming upon him
§ inches—and that there were none to care for or help
IIſl.
Suddenly he started up, in the extremity of terror.
He had heard his own voice shouting in the night air,
he knew not what, or why. Hark! A groan!—an-
other! His senses were leaving him: half-formed and
incoherent words burst from his lips; and his hands
º to tear and lacerate his flesh. He was going
mad, and he shrieked for help till his voice failed him.
32
498 SKETCHES BY BOZ.
He raised his head, and looked up the long dismal
street. He recollected that outcasts like himself, con-
demned to wander day and night in those dreadful
streets, had sometimes gone distracted with their own
loneliness. He remembered to have heard many years
before that a homeless wretch had once been found iu, a
solitary corner, sharpening a rusty knife to plunge into
his own heart, preferring death to that endless, weary,
wandering to fro. . In an instant his resolve was taken,
his limbs received new life; he he ran quickly from
the spot, and paused not for breath until he reached
the river-side.
He crept softly down the steep stone stairs that lead
from the commencement of Waterloo Bridge, down to
the water's level. He crouched into a corner, and held
his breath as the patrol passed. Never did prisoner's
heart throb with the hope of liberty and life half so
eagerly as did that of the wretched man at the
Fº of death. The watch passed close to him,
ut he remained unobserved; and after waiting till the
sound of footsteps had died away in the distance, he
cautiously descended, and stood beneath the gloomy
arch that forms the landing-place from the river.
The tide was in, and the water flowed at his feet. The
rain had ceased, the wind was lulled, and all was, for
the moment, still and quiet—so quiet, that the slightest
sound on the opposite bank, even the rippling of the
water against the barges that were moored there,
was distinctly audible to his ear. The stream stole
languidly and sluggishly on. Strange and fantastic
forms rose to the surface, and beckoned him to ap-
proach; dark gleaming eyes peered from the water, and
seemed to mock his hesitation, while hollow murmurs
from behind, urged him onwards. He retreated a
few paces, took a short run, desperate leap, and plunged
into the river.
Not five seconds had passed when he rose to the wa-
ter’s surface—but what a change had taken place in
that short time, in all his thoughts and feelings? Life
—life—in any form, poverty, misery, starvation—any-
thing but death. He fought and struggled with the
water that closed over his head, and screamed in
agonies of terror. The curse of his own son rang in his
ears. The shore—but one foot of dry ground —he could
THE DRUNKARD’S DEATH. 499 |
almost touch the step. One hand’s breadth nearer, and
he was saved—but the tide bore him onward, under
the dark arches of the bridge, and he sank to the bottom.
Again he rose, and struggled for life. For one instant
—for one brief instant—the buildings on the river's
banks, the lights on the bridge through which the cur-
rent had borne him, the black water, and the fast-flying
clouds, were distinctly visible—once more he sunk, and
Once again he rose. Bright flames of fire shot up from
earth to heaven, and reeled before his eyes, while the
water thundered in his ears, and stunned him with its
furious roar.
A week afterwards the body was washed ashore,
some miles down the river, a swollen and disfigured
mass. Unrecognised and unpitied, it was borne to the
grave; and there it has long since mouldered away!
TTHE ENJD.
ºsºț} {{) 0.\\[L } 0 0 [BJ,
‘ROEIXIVIAĻĢIOHS ĢIHJ,
*** …
* * * …---*
： • • • • • • •
-- «+==~ • • • •——~~~ ~~~*
）***-*=~ -…--~~___-----********= -„r“

A.
TALE OF TWO CITIES.
By CHARLES TICKENS.
WITH |LLUSTRATIONS.
- NEW YORK :
R. WORTHINGTON, PUBLISHER.
1884.
THIS TALE IS INSCRIBED
TO
THE EARL RUSSELL,
IN REMEMBRANCE
OF
MANY Plj BLIC SERVICES
AND
PRIVATE KINDNESSES.
P. R. E. F.A. C. E.
WHEN I was acting, with my children and friends, in
Mr. WILK+, CoLLINs's drama of The Frozen Deep, I first
conceived the main idea of this story. A strong desire
was upon me then, to embody it in my own person; and
I traced out in my fancy, the state of mind of which it
would necessitate the presentation to an observant
spectator, with particular care and interest.
As the idea became familiar to me, it gradually
shaped itself into its present form. Throughout its
execution, it has had complete possession of me; I have
so far verified what is done and suffered in these pages, .
as that I have certainly done and suffered it all myself.
Whenever any reference (however slight) is made
here to the condition of the French people before or
during the Revolution, it is truly made, on the faith of
...trustworthy witnesses. It has been One of my hopes to
add something to the popular and picturesque means of
understanding that terrible time, though no one can
hope to add anything to the philosophy of Mr. CAR-
LYLE's wonderful book.
CONTENTS.
IBOOK THE FIRST RECALLED TO TITFE.
CEIATP.
I.—The Period
II.-The Mail e
III–The Night Shadows .
IV.-The Preparation
W.—The Wine-Shop
WI.-The Shoemaker
THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK.
BOOK THE SECOND. THE GOLDEN THREAT).
CHAP.
I.—Five Years Later
II-A Sight
ITI-A Disappointment
IV.-Congratulatory
* V-The Jackal e iº e tº
VI.-Hundreds of People . e wº
VTI-Monseigneur the Marquis in Town
WITI.—Monseigneur the Marquis in the Country .
IX. —The Gorgon’s Head
X.—Two Promises tº
XI. —A Companion Picture
XII. The Fellow of Delicacy
XIII.-The Fellow of No Delicacy
|XIV.-The Honest Tradesman
XV.-Knitting
49
55
62
75
82
88
101
109
114
125
133
137
144
149
159
viii CONTENTS,
CELAP. PAGE
XVI—Still Knitting . º © © © e . 171
XVII.-One Night º tº e e © © . . 182
XVIII.-Nine Days . C. . . . © o . 187
XIX. —An Opinion . g © tº gº o . . 193
|XX.—A Plea ſº tº e º & e & . 201
XXI.—Echoing Footsteps * { } sº . . 204
|XXII.-The Sea Still Rises . g © s tº . 215
XXIII.-Fire Rises g e g e e e . . 221
XXIV.-Drawn to the Loadstone Rock . g is . 228
THE END OF THE SECOND BOOK.
BOOK THE THIRD. THE TRACK OF A STORM.
CHAP. & gº
I.—In Secret tº tº © * o tº . . . 241
II.—The Grindstone e ſº gº tº t . . 253
TIT.—The Shadow . º ſº ſº tº G g . 259
TV.-Calm in Storm . º º g e te . . 264
W.—The Wood Sawyer * & tº * . ſº . 270
WI-Triumph . º ſº ſe $º º e . . .276
WTI.—A Knock at the Door . tº c ū wº . 283
VIII.--A Hand at Cards g † * tº * . . 288
TX.—The Game Made . & e e ſº * . .301
X.—The Substance of the Shadow . tº e . . 313
XI-Dusk . . . . . . . . . 328
XII.-Darkness . e º ſº & ſº © . . 332
XIII.-Fifty-two ſº G ë wº ſº gº © , 341
XIV.-The Knitting Done . g * : . . .353
XV.-The Footsteps Die out for ever . º º . 365
A TALE OF TWO CTTTES.
IN THEREE BOOKS.
*-*
BOOK THE FIRST. RECALLED TO LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
THE PERIOD.
T was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it
was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolish-
ness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of in-
credulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season
of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter
of despair, we had everything before us, we had noth-
ing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we
were all going direct the other way—in short, the
period was so far like the present period, that some
of its noisest authorities insisted on its being received,
for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of com-
parison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen
with a plain face on the throne of England; there
were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a
fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries
it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State pre-
serves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were
settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hun-
dred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were con-
VOL. I. l
2 , A TALE OF Two CITIES.
*
ceded to England at that favoured period, as at this.
Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-
twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private
in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appear-
ance by announcing that arrangements were made for
the swallowing up of London and Westminister. Even
the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen
of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits
of this very year last past (Supernaturally deficient in
originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the
earthly order of events had lately come to the English
Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects
in America : which, strange to relate, have proved
more important to the human race than any com-
munications yet received through any of the chickens
of the Cock-lane brood.
France, less favoured on the whole as to matters
spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled
with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper
money and spending it. Under the guidance of her
Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides,
with Such humane achievements as sentencing a youth
to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with
pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had
not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty
procession of monks which passed within his view,
at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. . It is
likely enough that, rooted in the woods of, France and
Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer
was put to death, already marked by the Woodman,
Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make.
a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife
in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the
rough Outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands ad-
jacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather
that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire,
Snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which
the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tum-
brils of the Revolution. But, that Woodman and that
Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently,
and no one heard them as they went about with
muffled tread : the rather, forasmuch as to entertain
any º; that they were awake, was to be atheis-
tical and traitorous.
***
THE PERIOD. , 3
In England, there was scarcely an amount of order
and protection to justify much national boasting. Dar-
ing burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies,
took place in the capital itself every night; families
were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without
removing their furniture to upholsterers' Warehouses for
security; the highwayman in the dark was a City
tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and chal-
lenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his
character of “the Captain,” gallantly shot him through
the head aud rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven
robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got
shot dead himself by the other four, “in consequence
of the failure of his ammunition: ” after which the mail
was robbed in peace ; that magnificent potentate, the
Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver
On Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled
the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; pris-
Oners in London gaols fought battles with their turn-
keys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses
in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball ;
thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of
noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went
into St. Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the
mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired
On the mob, and nobody thought any of these OOCur-
rences much out of the common way. In the midst of
them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than use-
less, was in constant requisition; now, Stringing up long
rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a house-
breaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday;
Inow, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the
dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of
Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious
murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who
had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.
All these things, and a thousand like them, came to
pass in and close upon the dear old year One thousand
seven Irundred and seventy-five. Environed by them,
while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded,
those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the
plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and car-
ried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the
year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five con-
4 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
duct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures
—the creatures of this chronicle among the rest—along
the roads that lay before them.
CHAPTER II.
THE MAIL.
Q
Tº was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late
in November, before the first of the persons with
whom this history has business. The Dover road lay,
as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up
Shooter’s Hill. He walked up-hill in the mire by the
side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did ; not
because they had the least relish for walking exercise,
under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the
harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy,
that the horses had three times already come to a stop,
besides once drawing the coach across the road, with
the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath.
Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, in
combination, had read that article of war which forbad
a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument,
that some brute animals are endued with Reason ; and
the team had capitulated and returned to their duty.
With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed
their way through the thick mud, floundering and
stumbling between whiles as if they were falling to
pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested
them and brought them to a stañd, with a wary “Wo-
hol so-ho then l’ the rear leader violently shook his
head and everything upon it—like an unusally emphatic
horse, denying that the coach could be got up the hill.
Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger
started, as a nervous passenger might, and was disturbed
in mind.
There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and
it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an
evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clamm
and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way j
the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread
one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might
THE MAIT, 5
\
do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from
the light of the coachlamps but these its own workings,
and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring
horses Steamed into it, as if they had made it all.
Two other passengers, besides the one, were plod-
ding up the § by the side of the mail. All three
were wrapped to the cheek-bones and over the ears,
and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have
said, from anything he saw, what either of the other
two was like; and each was hidden under almost as
many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from the
eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those
days, travellers were very shy of being confidential on
a short notice, for anybody on the road might be a rob-
ber or in league with robbers. As to the latter, when
every posting-house and ale-house could produce some-
body in “the Captain’s” pay, ranging from the land-
lord to the lowest stable nondescript, it was the like-
liest thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover
mail thought to himself, that Friday night in Novem-
ber one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lum-
bering up Shooter's Hill, as he stood on his own par-
ticular perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and
keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before
him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six
or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum
of cutlass.
The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that
the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers
Suspected one another and the guard, they all sus-
pected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of
nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could with
a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two
Testaments that they were not fit for the journey.
“Wo-hol” said the coachman. “So, then | One
more pull and you’re at the top and be damned to you,
for I have had trouble enough to get you to it!—Joe!”
“Halloal * the guard replied.
“What o'clock do you make it, Joe?”
“Ten minutes, good, past eleven.” N
“My blood!” ejaculated the vexed coachman, “and
not atop of Shooter's yet? Tst! Yah! Get on with you!”
The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most
decided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and
6 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
the three other horses followed suit. Once more, the
Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its
passengers squashing along by its side. They had
stopped when the coach stopped, and they kept close
company with it. If any one of the three had had the
hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little
ahead into the mist and darkness, he would have put
himself in a fair way of getting shot instantly as a
highwayman.
The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the
hill. The horses stopped to breathe again, and the
guard got down to skid the wheel for the descent, and
Open the coach door to let the passengers in.
“Tst! Joe!” cried the coachman in a warning voice,
looking down from his box.
“What do you say, Tom?”
They both listened.
“I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe.”
“I say a horse at a gallop, Tom,” returned the
guard, leaving his hold of the door, and mounting
nimbly to his place. ‘‘ Gentlemen! In the king’s
name, all of you!”
With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunder-
buss, and stood on the offensive. •
The passenger booked by this history, was on the
coach step, getting in; the two other passengers were
close behind him, and about to follow. He remained
on the step, half in the coach and half out of it; they
remained in the road below him. They all looked from
the coachman to the guard, and from the guard to the
coachman, and listened. The coachman looked back,
and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic
leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without
contradicting. -
The stillness consequent on the cessation of the
rumbling and labouring of the coach, added to the
stillness of the night, made it very quiet indeed. The
panting of the horses communicated a tremulous mo-
tion to the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation.
The hearts of the passengers beat loud enough per-
haps to be heard; but at any rate, the quiet pause was
audibly expressive of people out of breath, and holding
the breath, and having the pulses quickened by
expectation.
THE MAIL, ..ºf 7
The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furi-
ously up the hill. w •
“So-ho!” the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar.
“YO there! Stand! I shall fire!”
The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much
Splashing and floundering, a man’s voice called from
the mist, ‘‘Is that the Dover mail?”
“Never you mind what it is?” the guard retorted.
“What are you?”
‘‘Is that the Dover mail?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I want a passenger, if it is.”
“What passenger?”
“Mr. Jarvis Lorry.”
Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it
was his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two
Other passengers, eyed him distrustfully.
“Keep where you are,” the guard called to the voice
in the mist, ‘‘ because if I should make a mistake, it
could never be set right in your lifetime. Gentleman
of the name of Lorry answer straight.”
“What is the matter?” asked the passenger, then,
with mildly quavering speech. “Who wants me? Is
it Jerry?”,
(“I don’t like Jerry’s voice, if it is Jerry,” growled
the guard to himself. “He’s hoarser than Suits me, is
Jerry.”) e
“Yes, Mr. Lorry.”
‘‘ What is the matter?”
C “A despatch sent after you from over yonder, T. and
O.”
“I know this messenger, guard,” said, Mr. Lorry,
getting down into the road—assisted from behind more
swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who
immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door,
and pulled up the window. “He may come close;
there’s nothing wrong.”
“I hope there ain’t, but I can’t make so 'Nation sure
of that,” said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. “Hallo
you!”
“Well! And hallo you!” said Jerry, more hoarsely
than before. º
“Come on at a footpace; d'ye mind me? And if
you’ve got holsters to that saddle o' yourn, don’t let me
8 -A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
see your hand go nigh 'em. For I’m a devil at a quick
mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of
Lead. So now let’s look at you.”
The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through
the eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail,
where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and
casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger
a small folded paper. The rider's horse was blown, and
both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the
hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man.
“Guard!” said the passenger, in a tone of quiet busi-
ness confidence.
The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock
of his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his
eye on the horseman, answered curtly, “Sir.”
, “There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tell-
son’s Bank. You must know Tellson’s Bank in London.
I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I
may read this?”
“If so be as you’re quick, sir.” "
He opened it in tho light of the coach-lamp on that
side, and read—first to himself and then aloud: “‘Wait
at Dover for Mam'selle.” It’s not long, you see, guard.
Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE.”
Jerry started in his saddle. “That’s a Blazing Strange
answer, too,” said he, at his hoarsest.
“Take that message back, and they will know that
I received this, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of
your way. Good night.”
With those words the passenger opened the coach-
door and got in; not at all assisted by his fellow-pas-
sengers, who had expeditiously secreted their watches
and purses in their boots, and were now making a gen-
eral pretence of being asleep. With no more definite
purpose than to escape the hazard of Originating any
Other kind of action. e
The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths
of mist closing round it as it began the descent. The
guard soon replaced his blunderbuss in his arm-chest,
and, having looked to the rest of its contents, and
having looked to the supplementary pistols that he
WOre in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his
Seat, in which there were a few smith's tools, a couple of
torches, and a tinder-box. For he was furnished with

THE MAIL. 9
that completeness, that if the coach-lamps had been
blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen,
he had only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint
and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light
with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five
minutes.
“Tom!” softly over the coach-roof.
“Hallo, Joe.”
“Did you hear the message?”
“I did, Joe.” *
“What did you make of it, Tom?”
“Nothing at all, Joe.”
“That’s a coincidence, too,” the guard mused, “for I
made the same of it myself.”
Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted
meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to
wipe the mud from his face, and to shake the wet
Out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of hold-
ing about half a gallon. After standing with the
bridle over his heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of
the mail were no longer within hearing and the night
was quite still again, he turned to walk down the hill.
“After that there gallop from Temple-bar, old lady,
I won’t trust your fore-legs till I get you on the level,”
Said this hoarse messenger, glancing at his mare.
“Recalled to life.” That’s a Blazing strange message.
Much of that wouldn’t do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry !
You’d be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was
to come into fashion, Jerry!”
CHAPTER III.
THE NIGHT SHADOWS.
A WONDERFUL fact to reflect upon, that every
human creature is constituted to be that profound
Secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consider-
ation, when I enter a great city by night, that every
One of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own
secret; that every room in every one of them encloses
its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds
of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imagin-
j() A TALE OF Two CITIES.
-
ings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the
awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No
more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I
loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more
can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water,
wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have
had glimpses of buried treasure and other things sub-
merged. It was appointed that the book should shut
with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read
but a page. It was appointed that the water should be
i...} in an eternal frost, when the light was playing
on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore.
My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the
darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consoli-
dation and perpetuation of the secret that was always
in that individuality; and which I shall carry in mine
to my life’s end, In any of the burial-places in this city
through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscruta-
ble than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost
personality, to me, or than I am to them?
As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inher-
itance, the messenger on horseback had exactly the
same possessions as the King, the first Minister of
State, or the richest merchant in London. So with the
three passengers shut up in the narrow compass of One
lumbering old mail coach: they were mysteries to one
another, as complete as if each had been in his own
coach and six, or his own coach and sixty, with the
breadth of a county between him and the next.
The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping
pretty often at ale-houses by the way to drink, but
evincing a tendency to keep his own counsel, and to
keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes that
assorted very well with that decoration, being of a
surface black, with no depth in the colour or form, and
much too near together—as if they were afraid of being
found out in something, singly, if they kept too far
apart. They had a sinister expression, under an old
cocked-hat like a three-cornered spittoon, and over a
great muffler for the chin and throat, which descended
nearly to the wearer’s knees. When he stopped for
drink, he moved this muffler with his left hand, Only
while he poured his liquor in with his right; as Soon as
that was done, he muffled again.
THE NIGHT SHADOWS. 11
“No, Jerry, no!” said the messenger, harping on one
theme as he rode. “It wouldn’t do for you, Jerry.
Jerry, you honest tradesman, it wouldn’t suit your line
of business! Recalled—! Bust me if I don’t think
he’d been a drinking!”
His message perplexed his mind to that degree that
he was fain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch
his head. Except on the crown, which was raggedly
bald, he had º black hair, standing jaggedly all over
it, and growing down-hill almost to his broad, blunt nose.
It was so like Smith's work, so much more like the top
of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the
best of players at leap-frog might have declined him,
as the most dangerous man in the world to go over.
While he trotted back with the message he was to de-
liver to the night watchman in his box at the door of
Tellson’s Bank, by Temple-bar, who was to deliver it to
greater authorities .#. the shadows of the night
took Such shapes to him as arose out of the message,
and took such shapes to the mare as arose out of her
private topics of uneasiness. They seemed to be numer-
Ous, for she shied at every shadow on the road.
What time, the mail-coach lumbered, joltled, rattled,
and bumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow
inscrutables inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows
of the night revealed themselves, in the forms their
dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested.
Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the
bank passenger—with an arm drawn through tho,
leathern strap, which did what lay in it to keep him
from pounding against the next passenger, and driving
him into his corner, whenever the coach got a special
jolt—nodded in his place with half-shut eyes, the little
Coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming
through them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passen-
ger, became the bank, and did a great stroke of busi-
ness. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money,
and morè drafts were honoured in five minutes than
even Tellson’s, with all its foreign and home connexion,
ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong-rooms
under-ground, at Tellson’s, with such of their valuable
stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and
it was not a little that he knew about them), opened be-
fore him, and he went in among them with the grea’,
12 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them
safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had
last seen them.
But, though the bank was almost always with him,
and though the coach (in a confused way, like the
presence of pain under an opiate) was always with him,
there was another current of impression that never
ceased to run, all through the night. He was on his
way to dig some one out of a grave.
Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed
themselves before him was the true face of the buried
person, the shadows of the night did not indicate; but
they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty by
years, and they differed principally in the passions they
expressed, and in the ghastliness of their worn and
wasted state. Pride, contempt, defiance, stubbornness,
submission, lamentation, succeeded one another; so did
varieties of sunken cheek, cadaverous colour, emaciated
hands and fingers. But the face was in the main one
face, and every head was prematurely white. A hundred
times the dozing passenger inquired of this spectre:
“Buried how long?” e
The answer was always the same: “ Almost eighteen
years.”
“You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”
“Long ago.”
“You know that you are recalled to life?”
, “They tell me so.”
“I hope you care to live?”
“I can’t say.”
h “Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see
er?” *
The answers to this question were various and contra-
dictory. Sometimes the broken reply was, “Wait! It
would kill me if I saw her too soon.” Sometimes, it
was given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was,
“Take me to her.” Sometimes, it was staring and be-
wildered, and then it was, “I don’t know her. I don’t
understand.”
After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his
fancy would dig, and dig, dig-now, with a spade, now
with a great key, now with his hands—to dig this
Wretched creature out. Got out at last, with earth
hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fall
THE NIGHT SHADOWS. I3
away to dust. The passenger would then start to him-
self, and lower the window, to get the reality of mist
and rain on his cheek.
Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and
rain, on the moving patch of light from the lamps, and
the hedge at the roadside retreating by jerks, the night
shadows outside the coach would fall into the train of
the night shadows within. The real Banking-house by
Temple-bar, the real business of the past day, the real
strong-rooms, the real express sent after him, and the
real message returned, would all be there. Out of the
midst of them, the ghostly face would rise, and he
would accost it again.
“Buried how long?”
“Almost eighteen years.”
“I hope you care to live?”
“I can’t say.”
Dig-dig-dig-until an impatient movement from
one of the two passengers would admonish him to pull
up the window, draw his arm securely through the leath-
ern strap, and speculate upon the two slumbering forms,
until his mind lost its hold of them, and they again
slid away into the bank and the grave.
“Buried how long?”
“Almost eighteen years.”
“You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”
“Long ago.”
The words were still in his hearing as just spoken—dis-
tinctly in his hearing as ever spoken words had been in
his life—when the weary passenger started to the con-
sciousness of daylight, and found that the shadows of
the night were gone.
He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising
sun. There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough
upon it where it had been left last night when the
horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood,
in which many leaves of burning red and golden
yellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth
was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose
bright, Fºl. and beautiful.
“Eighteen years!” said the passenger, looking at the
sun. “Gracious Creator of Day! To be buried alive
for eighteen years!”
, sº
14 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
CHAPTER IV.
T H E P. R. E. P A R A TI O N.
Whº the mail got successfully to Dover, in the
course of the forenoon, the head-drawer at the
Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as his cus-
tom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony,
for a mail journey from London in winter was an
achievement to congratulate an adventurous traveller
TIOOIl.
* that time there was only one adventurous traveller
left to be congratulated; for the two others had been
set down at their respective roadside destinations. The
mildewy inside of the coach, with its damp and dirty
straw, its disagreeable Smell, and its obscurity, was
rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passen-
ger, shaking himself Out of it in chains of straw, a
tangle of Shaggy Wrapper, flapping hat and muddy legs,
was rather like a larger sort of dog.
“There will be a packet to Calais to-morrow, drawer?”
“Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tol-
erable fair. The tide will serve pretty nicely at about
two in the afternoon, sir. Bed, sir?”
“I shall not 5. to bed till night; but I want a bed-
room and a barber.”
“And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir,
if you please. Show Concord! Gentleman’s valise and
hot water to Concord. Pull off gentleman’s boots in
Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.) Fetch
º to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Con-
COrd!”
The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a
assenger by the mail, and passengers by the mail
#. always heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the
room had the odd interest for the establishment of the
Royal George, that although but one kind of man was
THE PREPARATION. 15
seen to go into it, all kind and all varieties of men came
out of it. Consequently, another drawer, and two
porters, and several maids, and the landlady, were
all loitering by accident at various points of the road
between the Concord and the coffee-room, when a gen-
tleman of sixty, formally dressed in a brown suit of
clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with large
Square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along
On his way to his breakfast.
The coffee-room had no other occupant, that fore-
noon, than the gentleman in brown. His breakfast-
table was drawn before the fire, and as he sat, with its
light shining on him, waiting for the meal, he sat so
Still, that he might have been sitting for his portrait.
Very Orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand
On each knee, and a loud watch ticking a sonorous
Sermon under his flapped-waistcoat, as though it pitted
its gravity and longevity against the levity and evan-
escence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was
a little vain of it. for his brown stockings fitted sleek
and close, and were of a fine texture; his shoes and
buckles, too, though plain, were trim. He wore an odd
little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his
head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of
hair, but which looked far more as though it were spun
from filaments of silk or glass. His linen, though not
of a fineness in accordance with his stockings, was as
white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the
neighbouring beach, or the specks of sail that glinted
in the Sunlight far at sea. A face habitually suppressed
and quieted, was still lighted up, under the quaint
wig by a pair of most bright eyes that it must have cost
their owner, in years gone by, some pains to drill to the
Composed and reserved expression of Tellson’s Bank.
He had a healthy colour in his cheeks, and his face,
though lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps
the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson’s Bank were
principally occupied with the cares of other people; and
perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes,
COme easily off and on.
Completing his resemblance to a man who was sit-
ting for his portrait, Mr. Lorry dropped off asleep. The
arrival of his breakfast roused him, and he said to the
drawer, as he moved his chair to it:
16 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady
who may come here at any time to-day. . She may ask
for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, or she may only ask for a gentle-
man from Tellson's Bank. Please to let me know.”
.#. sir. Tellson’s Bank in London, sir?”
< & es.”
“Yes, sir. We have oftentimes the honour to enter-
tain your gentlemen in their travelling, backwards and
forwards betwixt London and Paris, sir. A vast deal
of travelling, sir, in Tellson and Company’s House.”
“Yes. We are quite a French house, as well as an
English one.”
“’Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling
yourself, I think, sir?”
“Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we—since
I—came last from France.”
“Indeed, sir? That was before my time here, sir.
Before our people's time here, sir. The George was in
other hands at that time, sir.”
“I believe so.”
“But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House
like Tellson and Company was flourishing, a matter of
fifty, not to speak of fifteen years ago?”
“You might treble that, and say a hundred and fifty,
yet not be far from the truth.” *.
“Indeed, sir!”
Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped
backward from the table, the waiter shifted his napkin
from his right arm to his left, dropped into a comfort-
able attitude, and stood surveying the guest while he
ate and drank, as from an observatory or watch-tower.
According to the immemorial usage of waiters in all
ageS.
When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went
out for a stroll on the beach. The little narrow, crooked
town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran
its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine Ostrich.
The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones
tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked,
and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the
town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast
down, madly. The air among the houses was of so
strong a piscatory flavour that one might have sup-
posed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people
THE PREPARATION. 1?
went down to be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was
done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by
night, and looking seaward: particularly at those times
when the tide made, and was near flood. Small trades-
men, who did no business whatever, sometimes
unaccountably realised large fortunes, and it was
remarkable that nobody in the neighbourhood could
endure a lamplighter.
As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air,
which had been at intervals clear enough to allow the
French coast to be seen, became again charged with mist
and vapour, Mr. Lorry’s thoughts seemed to cloud too.
When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room
fire, awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his break-
fast, his mind was busily digging, digging, digging, in
the live red coals.
A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the
red coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency
to throw him out of work, Mr. Lorry had been idle a
long time, and had just poured out his last glassful of
wine with as complete an appearance of satisfaction as
is ever to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh
complexion who has got to the end of a bottle, when a
rattling of wheels came up the narrow street, and
rumbled into the inn-yard.
He sat down his glass untouched. “This is Mam'selle!”
said he.
In a very few minutes the waiter came in, to announce
that Miss Manette had arrived from London, and would
be happy to see the gentleman from Tellson’s.
“SO SOOn?”
Miss Mamette had taken some refreshment on the road,
and required none then, and was extremely anxious to
see the gentleman from Tellson's immediately, if it
suited his pleasure and convenience. -
The gentleman from Tellson’s had nothing left for it
but to empty his glass with an air of stolid desperation,
settle his odd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow
the waiter to Miss Manette’s apartment. It was a
large dark room, furnished in a funereal manner with
black horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables.
These had been oiled and oiled, until the two tall candles
on the table in the middle of the room were gloomily
reflected on every leaf; as if they were buried, in deep
VOIL I 2
g-e
18 A TALE OF Two CITIES. *-
graves of black mahogany, and no light to speak of
could be expected from them until they were dug
Out.
Thé obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr.
Lorry, picking his way over the well-worn Turkey
carpet, supposed Miss Manette to be, for the moment,
in some adjacent room, until, having got past the two
tall candles, he saw standing to receive him by the
table between them and the fire, a young lady of not
more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding
her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon in her hand. As
his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a quan-
tity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own
with an enquiring look, and a forehead with a singular
capacity (remembering how young and Smooth it was),
of lifting and knitting itself into an expression that was
not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or
merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included
all the four expressions—as his eyes rested on these
things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a
child whom he had held in his arms on the passage
across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail
drifted heavily and the sea ran high. The likeness
passed away, say, like a breath along the surface of the
gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of which, a
hospital procession of negro Cupids, several headless
and all cripples, were offering black baskets of Dead
Sea fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender—
and he made his formal bow to Miss Manette.
“Pray take a seat, sir.” In a very clear and pleasant
young voice: a little foreign in its accent, but a very
little indeed.
“I kiss your hand, miss,” said Mr. Lorry, with the
manners of an earlier date, as he made his formal bow
again, and took his seat.
‘‘I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday,
informing me that some intelligence—or discovery
d “The word is not material, miss; either word will
O.”
“—respecting the Small property of my poor father
whom I never saw—so long dead 22
Mr. Lorry moved in his chair, and cast a troubled
look towards the hospital procession of negro cupids.
THE PREPARATION. 19
As if they had any help for anybody in their absurd
baskets! º
—“ rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris,
there to communicate with a gentleman of the Bank, so
good as to be despatched to Paris for the purpose.”
“Myself.”
“As I was prepared to hear, sir.” -
- She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in
those days), with a pretty desire to convey to him that
she felt how much older and wiser he was than she.
He made her another bow.
“I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered
necessary, by those who know, and who are so kind as
to advise me, that I should go to France, and that as I am
an Orphan and have no friend who could go with me, I
should esteem it highly if I might be permitted to place
myself during the journey, under that worthy gentle-
man’s protection. The gentleman had left London, but I
think a messenger was sent after him to beg the favour
of his waiting for me here.”
“I was happy,” said Mr. Lorry, “to be entrusted with
the charge. I shall be more happy to execute it.”
“Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very grate-
fully. It was told me by the Bank that the gentle-
man would explain to me the details of the business,
and that I must prepare myself to find them of a sur-
prising nature. I have done my best to prepare myself,
and I naturally have a strong and eager interest, to know
what they are.”
“Naturally,” said Mr. Lorry. “Yes—I––”
After a pause, he added, again settling the crisp
flaxen wig at the ears:
“It is very difficult to begin.”
He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her
glance. The young forehead lifted itself into that
singular expression—but it was pretty and character-
istic, besides being singular—and she raised her hand,
as if with an involuntary action she caught at, or
stayed, Some passing shadow.
“Are you quite a stranger to me, sir?”
“Am I not?” Mr. Lorry opened his hands, and ex-
tended them outward with an argumentative smile.
Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine
nose, the line of which was as delicate and fine as it
20 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
was possible to be, the expression deepened itself as .
she took her seat thoughtfully in the chair by which
she had hitherto remained standing. He watched her
as she mused, and the moment she raised her eyes
again, went On:
“In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do
better than address you as a young English lady,
Miss Manette?”
“If you please, sir.’
“Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a
business charge to acquit myself of. In your recep-
tion of it, don’t heed me any more than if I was a
. Speaking machine—truly, I am not much else. I will,
with your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one
of our customers.”
“Story!”
He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had
repeated, when he added, in a hurry, “’Yes, customers;
in the banking business we usually call our connexion
Our customers. He was a French gentleman ; a
Scientific gentleman; a man of great acquirements—
a Doctor.”
“Not Of Beauvais?”
“Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette,
your father, the gentleman was of Beauvais. Like
Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of
repute in Paris. I had the honour of knowing him
there. Our relations were business relations, but con-
fidential. I was at that time in our French House,
and had been—Oh! twenty years.”
“At that time—I may ask, at what time, sir?”
“I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married—
an English lady—and I was one of the trustees. His
affairs, like the affairs of many other French gentle-
men and French families, were entirely in Tellson’s
hands. In a similar way, I am, or I have been, trustee
of one kind or other for scores of our customers. These
are mere business relations, miss; there is no friend-
ship in them, no particular interest, nothing like senti-
ment. I have passed from one to another, in the
course of my business life, just as I pass from one of
our customers to another in the course of my business
day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere machine.
To go on—”
\ W
THE PREPARATION. 21
“But this is my father's story, sir; and I begin to
think ’—the curiously roughened forehead was very
intent upon him—“that when I was left an orphan
through my mother's surviving my father only two
years, it was you who brought me to England. I am
almost sure it was you.”
Mr. Lorry took the hesitating little hand that confid-
ingly advanced to take his, and he put it with some
ceremony to his lips. He then conducted the young
lady straightway to her chair again, and, holding the
chair-back with his left hand, and using his right by
turns to rub his chin, pull his wig at the ears, or point
what he said, stood looking down into her face while
She sat looking up into, his.
“Miss Manette, it was I. And you will see how
truly I spoke of myself just now, in saying I had no
feelings, and that all the relations I hold with my
fellow-creatures are mere business relations, when you
reflect that I have never seen you since. No; you have
been the ward of Tellson’s House since, and I have
been busy with the other business of Tellson’s House
since. Feelings! I have no time for them, no chance of
them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an im-
mense pecuniary Mangle.”
After this odd description of his daily routine of
employment, Mr. Lorry flattened his flaxen wig upon
his head with both hands (which was most unnecessary,
for nothing could be flatter than its shining surface was
before), and resumed his former attitude.
“So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the
story of your regretted father. Now comes the differ-
ence. If your father had not died when he did—Don’t
be frightened! How you start!”
She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with
both her hands.
“Pray,” said Mr. Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing
his left hand from the back of the chair to lay it on the
supplicatory fingers that clasped him in so violent a
tremble, “pray control your agitation—a matter of
business. As I was saying—”
Her look so discomposed him that he stopped, wan-
dered, and began anew:
“As I was saying; if Monsieur Manette had not died;
if he had suddenly and silently disappeared; if he had
22 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
been spirited away; if it had not been difficult to guess
to what dreadful place, though no art could trace him;
if he had an enemy in some compatriot who could
exercise a privilege that I in my own time have known
the boldest people afraid to speak of in a whisper,
across the water there; for instance, the privilege of
filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one
to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time; if his
wife had implored the king, the queen, the court, the
clergy, for any tidings of him, and all quite in vain;–
then the history of your father would have been tho
history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Doctor of
Beauvais.”
“I entreat you to tell me more, sir.”
“I will. I am going to. You can bear it?”
“I can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave
me at this moment.”
“You speak collectedly, and you—are collected,
That’s good!” (Though his manner was less satisfied
than his words) “A matter of business. Regard it as
a matter of business—business that must be done.
Now, if this Doctor’s wife, though a lady of great
courage and spirit, had suffered so intensely from this
cause before her little child was born——”
“The little child was a daughter, sir.”
“A daughter. A–a—matter of business—don’t be
distressed. Miss, if the poor lady had suffered so in-
tensely before her little ‘child was born, that she came
to the determination of sparing the poor child the in-
heritance of any part of the agony she had known the
pains of, by rearing her in the belief that her father
was dead——No, don’t kneel! In Heaven’s name why
should you kneel to me!”
“For the truth. O dear, good, compassionate sir,
for the truth!”
‘‘ A–a matter of business. You confuse me, and
how can I transact business if I am confused ? Let us
be clear-headed. If you could kindly mention now, for
instance, what nine times ninepence are, or how many
shillings in twenty guineas, it would be so encourag-
ing. I should be so much more at my ease about your
state of mind.”
Without directly answering to this appeal, she sat so
still when he had very gently raised her, and the hands
THE PREPARATION. . 23
that had not ceased to clasp his wrists were so much
more steady than they had been, that she communicated
some reassurance to Mr. Jarvis Lorry.
“That’s right, that’s right. Courage! Business! You
have business before you; useful business. Miss
Manette, your mother took this course with you. And
when she died—I believe broken-hearted—having never
slackened her unavailing search for your father, she
left you, at two years old, to grow to be blooming,
beautiful, and happy, without the dark cloud upon you
of living in uncertainty whether your father soon wore
his heart out in prison, or wasted there through many
lingering years.” *
As he said the words, he looked down, with an admir-
ing pity, on the flowing golden hair; as if he pictured
to himself that it might have been already tinged with
grey.
“You know that your parents had no great posses.
sion, and that what they had was secured to your
mother and to you. There has been no new discovery,
of money, or of any other property; but —”
He felt his wrist held closer, and he stopped. The
expression in the forehead, which had so particularly
attracted his notice, and which was now immovable,
had deepened into one of pain and horror.
“But he has been—been found. He is alive. Greatly
changed, it is too probable; almost a wreck, it is pos-
sible; though we will hope the best. Still, alive. Your
father has been taken to the house of an old servant
in Paris, and we are going there : I, to identify him, if
I can : you, to restore him to life, love, duty, rest.
comfort.”
A shiver ran through her frame, and from it through
his. She said, in a low, distinct, awe-stricken voice, as
if she were saying it in a dream,
‘‘I am going to see his Ghost! It will be his Ghost
—not him l’ *~
Mr. Lorry quietly chafed the hands that held his arm
“There, there, there! See now, see now! The best
and the worst are known to you now. You are well on
your way to the poor wronged gentleman, and, with a
fair sea voyage, and a fair land journey, you will be
soon at his dear side.”
She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, “I
i
24 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
have been free, I have been happy, yet his Ghost has
never haunted me !” p
“Only one thing more,” said Mr. Lorry, laying stress
upon it as a wholesome means of enforcing her atten-
tion : “he has been found under another name; his
Own, long forgotten or long , concealed. It would be
worse than useless now to inquire which; worse than
useless to seek to know whether he has been for years
Overlooked, or always designedly held prisoner. It
would be worse than useless now to make any in-
quiries, because it would be dangerous. Better not to
mention the subject, anywhere or in any way, and to
remove him—for a while at all events—out of France.
Even I, Safe as an Englishman, and even Tellson’s, im-
portant as they are to French credit, avoid all naming
of the matter. I carry about me, not a scrap of writing
openly referring to it. This is a secret service alto-
gether. My credentials, entries, and memoranda, are
all comprehended in the same line, “Recalled to Life;’
which may mean anything. But what is the matter
She doesn’t notice a word Miss Manette l’’
Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in
her chair, she sat under his hand, utterly insensible;
with her eyes open and fixed upon him, and with that
last expression looking as if it were carved or branded
into her forehead. So close was her hold upon his arm,
that he feared to detach himself lest he should hurt
her; therefore he called out loudly for assistance with-
Out moving. *
A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation,
Mr. Lorry observed to be all of a red colour, and to have
red hair, and to be dressed in some extraordinary tight-
fitting fashion, and to have on her head a most wonder-
ful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good
measure too, or a great Stilton cheese, came running
into.the room in advance of the inn servants, and soon
Settled the question of his detachment from the poor
young lady, by laying a brawny hand upon his chest,
and sending him flying back against the nearest wall.
(“I really think this must be a man l’’ was Mr.
Lorry’s breathless reflection, simultaneously with his
Coming against the wall.) *
“Why, look at you all !” bawled this figure, address-
ing the inn servants. “Why don't you go and fetch
THE PREPARATION. 25
things, instead of standing there staring at me 2 I am
not so much to look at, am I? Why don’t you go and
fetch things P I’ll let you know, if you don’t bring
smelling-salts, cold water, and vinegar, quick, I will !”
There was an immediate dispersal for these restora-
tives, and she softly laid the patient on a sofa, and
tended her with great skill and gentleness: calling her
“my precious !” and “my bird ' ' and spreading her
golden hair aside over her shoulders with great pride
and care.
“And you in brown l’” she said, indignantly turning
to Mr. Lorry ; “couldn't you tell her what you had to
tell her, without frightening her to death? Look at
her with her pretty pale face and her cold hands.
Do you call that being a banker?”
Mr. Lorry was so exceedingly disconcerted by a
question so hard to answer, that he could only look on,
at a distance, with much feebler sympathy and humil-
ity, while the strong woman, having banished the inn
servants under the mysterious penalty of “létting them
know * something not mentioned if they stayed there,
staring, recovered her charge by a regular series of
gradations, and coaxed her to lay her drooping head
upon her shoulder. ©
“I hope she will do well now,” said Mr. Lorry. .
“No thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling
pretty l’”
“I hope,” said Mr. Lorry, after another pause of
feeble sympathy and humility, “that you accompany
Miss Manette to France?”
“A likely thing too!” replied the strong woman.
“If it was ever intended that I should go across salt
water, do you suppose Providence would have cast my
lot in an island?”
This being another question hard to answer, Mr.
Jarvis Lorry withdrew to consider it.
&
26 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
CHAPTER V.
T H E W T N E – S H O P.
LARGE cask of wine had been dropped and
* broken, in the street. The accident had happened
in getting it out of a cart ; the cask had tumbled out
with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the
stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shat-
tered like a walnut-shell.
All the people within reach had suspended their busi-
ness, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the
wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, point-
ing every way, and designed, one might have thought,
expressly to lame all living creatures that approached
them, had dammed it into little pools; these were Sur-
rounded, each by its own jostling group or Crowd,
according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made
scoops of their two hands joined, and Sipped or tried
to help women, who bent Over their shoulders, to sip,
before the wine had all run out between their-fingers.
Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with
little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with
handkerchiefs from women’s heads, which were
squeezed dry into infants' mouths ; others made small
mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran ;
others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows,
darted here and there, to cut off little streams of
wine that started a way in new directions; others, de-
voted themselves to the. sodden and lee-dyed pieces of
the cask, licking and even champing the moister wine-
rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no
drainage to carry Gºff the wine, and not only did it all
get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with
it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street,
if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in
such a miraculous presence.
- * THE WINE-SHOP. 2%
A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices—
voices of men, women and children—resounded in the
street while this wine-game lasted. There was little
roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There
was a special companionship in it, an observable incli-
nation on the part of every one to join some other One,
which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-
hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths,
shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and danc-
ing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and
the places where it had been most abundant were raked
into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations
ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man
who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was
cutting, set it in motion again ; the woman who had
left on a door-step the little pot of hot-ashes, at which
she had been trying to soften the pain in hor own
starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, re-
turned to it ; men with bare arms, matted locks, and
cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter
light from cellars, moved away to descend again; and
a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more
natural to it than sunshine.
The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground
of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in
Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many
hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet,
and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who
sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and
the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby,
was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound
about her head again. Those who had been greedy with
the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear
about the mouth ; and one tall joker so besmirched, his
head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than
in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in
muddy wine lees—BLOOD.
The time was to come, when that wine too would be .
Spilled on the Street-stones, and when the stain of it
would be red upon many there. “
And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine,
which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred
countenance, the darkness of it was heavy—cold, dirt,
sickness, ignorance and want, were the lords in wait-
28 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
ing on the saintly presence—noble of great power all of
them; but, most ospecially the last. Samples of a people
that had undergone a terrible grinding and re-grinding
in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which
ground old people young, shivered at every corner,
passed in and out at overy doorway, looked from overy
window, fluttered in overy vestige of a garment that
the wind shook. The mill which had worked them
down, was the mill that grinds young people old ; the
children had ancient faces and gravo voices; and upon
them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into
overy furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the
sign, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger
was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched
clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was
patched into them with straw and rag and wood and
paper ; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the
small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off;
Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and
started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among
its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscrip-
tion on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf
of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop,
in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale.
Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting ches-
nuts in the turned cylinder ; Hunger was shred into
atomies in every farthing porringer of husky chips of
potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.
Its abiding-place was in all things fitted to it. A
narrow winding street, full of offence and stench, with
other narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by
rags and nightcaps, and all Smelling of rags and night-
caps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon
them that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people
there was yet some wild-beast thought of the possibility
of turning at bay. Depressed and slinking though they
were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them ; nor
. compressed lips, white with what they suppressed ; nor
foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope
they mused about enduring, or inflicting. The º:
signs (and they were almost as many as the shops)
were, all, grim illustrations of Want. The butcher and
the porkman painted up, only the leanest scrags of
meat; the baker, the coarsest of meagre loaves. The
THE WINE–SHOP. 29
people rudely pictured as drinking in the wine-shops,
croaked over their scanty measures of thin wine and
beer, and were gloweringly confidential together.
Nothing was represented in a flourishing condition, save
tools and weapons; but the cutler's knives and axes
were sharp and bright, the Smith’s hammers were heavy,
and the gunmaker's stock was murderous. The crip-
pling stones of the pavement, with their many little
reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, but
broke off abruptly at the doors. The kennel, to make
amends, ran down the middle of the street—when it ran
at all ; which was only after heavy rains, and then it
ran, by many eccentric fits, into the houses. Across
the streets, at wide intervals, one clumsy lamp was
slung by a rope and pulley; at night, when the lamp-
lighter had let these down, and lighted, and hoisted
them again, a feeble grove of dim wicks swung in a
sickly manner overhead, as if they were at sea. Indeed
they were at sea, and the ship and crew were in peril
Of tempest.
For, the time was to come, when the gaunt scare-
crows of that region should have watched the lamp-
lighter, in their idleness and hunger, so long, as to con-
ceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling
up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the
darkness of their condition. But, the time was not
come yet; and every wind that blew over France shook
the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine
of song and feather, took no warning.
The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most
others in its appearance and degree, and the master of
the wineshop had stood outside it, in a yellow waist-
coat and green breeches, looking on at the struggle for
the lost wine. “It’s not my affair,” said he, with a
final shrug of the shoulders. “The people from the
market did it. Let them bring another.”
There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker
writing up his joke, he called to him across the way:
“Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?”
The fellow pointed to his joke with immense signifi-
cance, as is often the way with his tribe. It missed its
mark, and completely failed, as is often the way with
his tribe too.
“What now? Are you a subject for the mad-hospital?”
30 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
said the wine-shop keeper, crossing the road, and oblit-
erating the jest with a handful of mud, picked up for
the purpose, and smeared over it. “Why do you write
in the public streets? Is there—tell me thou—is there
no other place to write such words in?”
In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand
(perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) upon the joker's
heart. The joker rapped with his own, took a nimble
Spring upward, and came down in a fantastic dancing
attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his
foot into his hand, and held out. A joker of an ex-
tremely, not to say wolfishly, practical character, he
looked, under those circumstances.
“Put it on, put it on,” said the other. “Call wine,
wine; and finish there.” With that advice he wiped
his soiled hand upon the joker’s dress, such as it was—
quite deliberately, as having dirtied the hand on his
account; and then re-crossed the road and entered the
wine-shop.
This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-
looking man of thirty, and he should have been of a
hot temperament, for, although it was a bitter day, he
Wore no coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder.
His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown
arms were bare to the elbows. Neither did he wear
anything more on his head than his own crisply-curling
short dark hair. He was a dark man altogether, with
good eyes and a good bold breadth between them.
Good-humoured-looking on the whole, but implacable-
looking, too; evidently a man of a strong resolution and
a set purpose; a man not desirable to be met rushing
down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for
nothing would turn the man.
Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind
the counter as he came in. Madame Defarge was a
Stout woman of about his own age, with a watchful eye
that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand
heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and
great composure of manner. There was a character
about Madame Defarge, from which one might have
Fº that she did not often make mistakes against
erself in any of the reckonings over which she pre-
sided. Madame Defarge being sensitive to cold, was
Wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright Shawl
~
THE WINE-SHOP. 31
twined about her head, though not to the concealment
of her large ear-rings. Her knitting was before her,
but she had laid it down to pick her teeth with a tooth-
ick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by
}. left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her
lord came in, but coughed † one grain of cough.
This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly
defined eyebrows over her tooth-pick by the breadth of
a line, suggested to her husband that he would do well
to look round the shop among the customers, for any
new customer who had dropped in while he stepped
over the way. *
The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes
about, until they rested upon an elderly gentleman and
a young lady, who were seated in a corner. Other
company were there: two playing cards, two playing
dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening
-out a short supply of wine. As he passed behind the
counter, he took notice that the elderly gentleman said
in a look to the young lady, “This is our man.”
“What the devil do you do in that galley there!”
said Monsieur Defarge to himself; “I don’t know you.”
But he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and
fell into discourse with the triumvirate of customers
who were drinking at the counter
“How goes it, Jacques?” said one of these three to
Monsieur Defarge. “Is all the spilt wine swallowed?”
** Every drop, Jacques,” answered Monsieur Defarge.
When this interchange of christian name was
effected, Madame Defarge, picking her teeth with her
toothpick, coughed another grain of cough, and raised
... her eyebrows by the breadth of another line
“It is not often, " said the second of the three,
addressing Monsieur Defarge, “that many of these
miserable beasts know the taste of wine, Ör of any-
thing but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques?”
“It is So, Jacques,” Monsieur Defargo roturned.
At this second interchange of the christian name,
Madame Defarge, still using hor toothpick with pro-
follnd composure, coughed another grain of cough, and
raised her eyebrows by tho breadth of another line.
The last of the three now said his say, as he put down
his empty drinking vessel and Smacked his lips.
“Ah! So much the worse! A bittor taste it is that
32 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
.*
such poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard
lives they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques?”
“You are right, Jacques,” was tho response of Mon-
sieur Defarge.
This third interchange of the christian name was
completed at the moment when Madame Defarge put
her toothpick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly
rustled in her seat.
“Hold then! True!” muttered her husband. “Gen-
tlemen—my wife!”
The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame
Defarge, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their
homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick
look. Then she glanced in a causal manner round the
wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent
calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it.
“Gentlemen,” said her husband, who had kept his
bright eye observantly upon her, “good day. The
chamber, furnished bachelor-fashion, that you wished
to see and were inquiring for when I stepped out,
is on the fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives
on the little court-yard close to the left here,” pointing
with his hand, “near to the window of my establish-
ment. But, now that I remember, one of you has
already been there, and can show the way. Gentle-
men, adieu!”
They paid for their wine, and left the place. - The
eyes of Monsieur Defarge were studying his wife at her
knitting, when the elderly gentleman advanced from
his corner, and begged the favour of a word.
“Willingly, sir,” said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly
stepped with him to the door.
Their conference was very short, but very decided.
Almost at the first word, Monsieur Defarge startcq and
became deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute,
when he nodded and went out. The gentleman then
beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out.
Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and
steady eyebrows, and saw nothing.
Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from
the wine-shop thus, joined Monsieur Defarge in the
doorway to which he had directed his other compan
just before. It opened from a stinking little #.
court-yard, and was the general public entrance to a
. . . . . ;--/TV N-T – ~. Tº------
! A Vº * ------- - -- --~~~~i=~~~~
• * * 2 * * ----"
- %
"Sºz % % % -º-
. Zºº
://? 3%%:ſ:
ſºlº
% % f & . . .
º Tvºje
% • ‘gº-ſlº %
º * 3 <> %
%:
% § º
%3
* % %. 2–
ºft
º *
'º * *
*/2. 25–
&
%%;I
% º: #%:#;
%
º
º
3.
*::::-ºº:
i.:
3.
ºf ºx
gº', // i.
|# ; :
*|| ||
- ãº
TT, { ' ' ' : Gº: º º
- ===Hºº::======#::::=
- ºf aes: ~-c. ºr 2–5. *L*- º
/ - [… 2==zz. *
- - I. : -
...” -:) . . . . . .' " . . . .
:

























THE WINE-SHOP. 33
great pile of houses, inhabited by a great number of
people. In the gloomy tile-paved entry to the gloomy
tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge bent down on
one knee to the child of his old master, and put her
hand to his lips. It was a gentle action, but not at all
gently done; a very remarkable transformation had
come over him in a few seconds. He had no good
humour in his face, hor any openness of aspect left, but
had become a secret, angry, dangerous man. -
“It is very high; it is a little difficult. Better to be-
gin slowly.” Thus, Monsieur Defarge, in a stern voice,
to Mr. Lorry, as they began ascending the stairs.
“Is he alone?” the latter whispered.
“Alone! God help him who should be with him!”
said the other, in the same low voice.
“Is he always alone, them?” -
& & Yes.” -
‘‘ Of his Own desire?” -
“Of his own necessity. As he was when I first saw
him after they found me and demanded to know if I
would take him, and, at my peril be discreet—as he
was then, so he is now.” - -
“He is greatly changed?”
“Changed!” -
The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the
wall with his hand, and mutter a tremendous curse.
No direct answer could have been half so forcible.
Mr. Lorry’s Spirits grew heavier and heavier, as he and
his two companions ascended higher and higher.
Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and
more crowded parts of Paris, would be bad enough
now; but, at that time, it was vile indeed, to unac-
customed and unhardened senses. Every little habita-
tion within the great foul nest of one high building—
that is to say, the room or rooms within every door
that opened on the general staircase—left its own heap
of refuse on its own landing, besides flinging other ref-
use from its own windows. The uncontrollable and
hopeless mass of decomposition so engendered, would
have polluted the air, even if poverty and deprivation
had not loaded it with their intangible impurities; the
two bad Sources combined made it almost insupportable.
Through such an atmosphere, by a steep ; shaft of
dirt and poison, the way lay. Yielding to his own dis-
WOL. I. 3
34 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
turbance of mind, and to his young companion’s agita-
tion, which became greater every instant, Mr. Jarvis
Lorry twice º to rest. Each of these stoppages
was made at a doleful grating by which any languish-
ing good airs that were left uncorrupted, seemed to
escape, and all spoilt and sickly vapours seemed to
crawl in. Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather
than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbour-
hood; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than
the summits of the two great towers of Notre-Dame
had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome
aspirations - - *
At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they
stopped for the third time. There was yet an upper
staircase, of a steeper inclination and of contracted di-
mensions, to be ascended, before the garret story was
reached. The keeper of the wine-shop, always going a
little in advance, and always going on the side which
Mr. Lorry took, as though he dreaded to be asked any
question by the young lady, turned himself about here,
and, carefully feeling in the pockets of the coat he
carried over his shoulder, took out a key.
“The door is locked then, my friend?” said Mr.
Lorry, surprised. -
“Ay. Yes,” was the grim reply of Monsieur Defarge.
“You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate
gentleman so retired?” -
“I think it necessary to turn the key.” Monsieur
Defarge whispered it closer in his ear, and frowned
heavily. & -
& & Why?” . -
“Why? Because he has lived so long, locked up,
that he would be frightened—rave—tear himself to
pieces—die—come to I know not what harm—if his
door was left open.” -
“Is it possible!” exclaimed Mr. Lorry.
“Is it possible?” repeated Defarge, bitterly. “Yes.
And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible,
and when many other such things are possible, and
not only possible, but done—done, see you!—under that
sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us
go on.” -
This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper,
that not a word of it had reached the young lady's ears,
THE WINE SHOP 35
But, by this time she trembled under such strong
emotion, and her face expressed such deep anxiety, and,
above all, such dread and terror, that Mr. Lorry felt it
incumbent on him to speak a word or two of reassur-
a,IlC6. - . . .
“Courage, dear miss | Courage 1 Business | The
worst will be over in a moment ; it is but passing the
room door, and the worst is over. Then, all the good
you bring to him, all the relief, all the happiness you
bring to him, begin. Let our good friend here, assist
you on that side. That’s well, friend Defarge. Come,
now. Business, business!” -
They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was
short, and they were soon at the top. There, as it had
an abrupt turn in it, they came all at once in sight of
three men, whose heads were bent down close together
at the side of a door, and who were intently looking
into the room to which the door belonged, through some
chinks or holes in the wall. On hearing footsteps close
at hand, these three turned, and rose, and showed them-
Selves to be the three of one name who had been drink-
ing in the wine-shop. -
‘‘I forgot them in the surprise of your visit,” ex-
plained Monsieur Defarge. “Leave us, good boys; we
have business here.” -
The three glided by, and went silently down.
There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and
the keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one
when they were left alone, Mr. Lorry asked him in a
whisper, with a little anger: -
“Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette?”
f “I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen
eV.”
‘‘IS that Well?”
“I think it is well.” -
“Who are the few P. How do you choose them?”
* “I choose them as real men, of my name—Jacques is
my name—to whom the sight is likely to do good.
Enough; you are English; that is another thing. Stay
there, if you please, a little moment.” -
With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he
Stooped, and looked in through the crevice in the wall.
Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or thrice
upon the door—evidently with no other object than to
36 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
make a noise there. With the same intention, he drew
the key across it, three or four times, before he put it
ºily into the lock, and turned it as heavily as he
COUllCl. - - -
The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and
he looked into the room and said something. A faint
voice answered something. , Little more than a single
syllable could have been spoken on either side. -
He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them
to enter. Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the
daughter's waist, and held her; for he felt that she was
sinking. - -
“A—a—a—business, business!” he urged, with a
moisture that was not of business shining on his cheek.
“Come in, come in l’”
“I am afraid of it,” she answered, shuddering.
“Of it? What?”
“I mean of him. Of my father.” -
Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by
the beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck
the arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little,
and hurried her into the room. He set her down just
within the door, and held her, clinging to him.
Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it
on the inside, took out the key again, and held it in his
hand. All this he did, methodically, and with as loud
and harsh an accompaniment of noise as he could make.
Finally, he walked across the room with a measured
tread to where the window was. He stopped there, and
faced round. ,
The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and
the like, was dim and dark: for, the window of dormer
shape, was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane
over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street: un-
glazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like
any other door of French construction. To exclude the
cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other
was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty por-
tion of light was admitted through these means, that it
was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and
long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one,
the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such ob-
scurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the
garret; for, with his back towards the door, and his
THE SHOEMAKER. 3%
face towards the window where the keeper of the wine-
shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a
º bench, stooping forward and very busy, making
ShOeS. - -
CHAPTER VI.
T H E S H O E M A K E R .
66 OOD DAY!” said Monsieur Defarge, looking
down at the white head that bent low over the
shoemaking.
It was raised for a momént, and a very faint voice
responded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance:
“Good day!” -
“You are still hard at work, I see?” -
After a long silence, the head was lifted for another
moment, and the voice replied, “Yes—I am working.”
This time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the
questioner, before the face had dropped again. -
The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful.
It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though
confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it.
Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness
of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo
of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it
lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it
affected the senses like a once beautiful colour, faded
away into a poor weak stain. So Sunken and suppressed
it was, that it was like a voice underground. So ex-
pressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a
famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in
a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends
in such a tone before lying down to die. - .
Some minutes of silent work had passed, and the
haggard eyes had looked up again: not with any interest
or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception, be-
forehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were
aware of had stood, was not yet empty. •
“I want,” said Defarge, who had not removed his
gaze from the shoemaker, “to let in a little more light °
here. You can bear a little more?” • ,
The shoemaker stopped his work; looked, with a
38 . A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
vacant air of listening, at the floor on One side of
him; then, similarly, at the floor on the other side of
him; then, upward at the speaker. *
“What did you say?”
“You can bear a little more light?”
“I must bear it, if you let it in.” (Laying the palest
shadow of a stress upon the second word.)
The opened half-door was opened a little further, and
secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of
light fell into the garret, and showed the workman,
with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his
labour. His few common tools and various scraps of
leather were at his feet and on his bench. He had a white
beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a hollow face,
and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness and thin- .
ness of his face would have caused them to look large,
under his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white
hair, though they had been really otherwise; but they
were naturally large, and looked unnaturally so. His
yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed
his body to be withered and worn. He, and his old
canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor
tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct
light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity of
parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say
which was which.
He had put up a hand between his eyes and the
light, and the very bones of it seemed transparent. So
he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his
work. He never looked at the figure before him, with-
out first looking down on this side of himself, then on
that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place
with sound; he never spoke, without first wandering in
this manner, and forgetting to speak. -
“Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?”
asked Defarge, motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward.
“What did you say?”
“Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?”
“I can’t say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don’t
know.” -
But, the question reminded him of his work, and he
bent over it again.
Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter
by the door. When he had stood, for a minute or two,
THE SHOEMAKER. 39
by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He
showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the
unsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips
as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of #.
same pale lead-colour), and then the hand dropped to
his work, and he once more bent over the shoe. The
look and the action had occupied but an instant.
“You have a visitor, you see,” said Monsieur Defarge.
“What did you say?” -
“Here is a visitor.”
The shoemaker looked up as before, but without re-
moving a hand from his work.
“Come!” said Defarge. “Here is monsieur, who
knows a well-made shoe when he sees one. Show him
that shoe you are working at. Take it, monsieur,”
Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.
“Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the
maker’s name.” -
There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoe-
maker replied:
‘‘I forget what it was you asked me. What did you
say?”
“I said, couldn’t you describe the kind of shoe; for
monsieur’s information?” -
“It is a lady’s shoe. It is a young lady’s walking-shoe.
It is in the present mode. I never saw the mode. I
have had a pattern in my hand.” He glanced at the
shoe, with some little passing touch of pride.
“And the maker’s name?” said Defarge. +
Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles
of the right hand in the hollow of the left, and then the
knuckles of the left hand in the hollow of the right,
and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so
on in regular changes, without a moment’s intermission.
The task of recalling him from the vacancy into which
he always sank when he had spoken, was like recalling
some very weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring,
in the hope of some disclosure, to stay the spirit of a
fast-dying man. *
“Did you ask me for my name?”
“Assuredly I did.” º
“One Hundred and Five, North Tower.”
‘‘Is that all?”
“One Hundred and Five, North Tower,”
40 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan,
he bent to Work again, until the silence was again
broken.
“You are not a shoemaker by trade?” said Mr.
Lorry, .# steadfastly at him.
His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would
have transferred the question to him; but as no help
came from that quarter, they turned back on the ques-
tioner when they had sought the ground.
‘‘I am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a
shoemaker by trade. I—I learnt it here. I taught
myself. I asked leave to—”
He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those
measured changes on his hands the whole time. His
eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face from which
they had wandered; when they rested on it, he started,
and resumed, in the manner of a sleeper that moment
awake, reverting to a subject of last night.
“I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with
much difficulty after a long while, and I have made
shoes ever since.”
As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been
taken from him, Mr. Lorry said, still looking steadfastly
in his face:
“Monsieur Manette, do you remember nothing of
me?”
The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking
fixedly at the questioner.
“Monsieur Manette; ” Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon
Defarge's arm; ‘‘ do you remember nothing of this
man? Look at him. Look at me. Is there no old
banker, no old business, no old servant, no old time, -
rising in your mind, Monsieur Manette?”
As the captive of many years sat looking fixedly,
by turns at Mr. Lorry and at Defarge, some long ob-
literated marks of an actively intent intelligence in
the middle of the forehead, gradually forced themselves
through the black mist that had fallen on him. They
were overclouded again, they were fainter, they were
gone; but, they had been there. And so exactly was
the expression repeated on the fair young face of her
who had crept along the wall to a point where she
could see him, and where she now stood looking ai.
bim, with hands which at first had been only raised
THE SHOEMAKER. tº 41
in frightened compassion, if not even to keep him off
and shut out the sight of him, but which were now
extending towards him, trembling with eagerness to lay
the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love
it back to life and hope—so exactly was the expression
repeated (though in stronger characters) on her fair
young face, that it looked as though it had passed, like
a moving light, from him to her. -
Darkness had fallen on him in its place. He looked
at the two, less and less attentively, and his eyes in
gloomy abstraction sought the ground and looked about
him in the old way. Finally, with a deep long sigh, he
took the shoe up, and resumed his work.
“Have you recognised him, monsieur?” asked De-
farge, in a whisper.
“Yes; for a moment. At first I thought it quite
hopeless, but I have unquestionably seen, for a single
moment, the face that I once knew well. Hush! Let
us draw further back. Hush!”
She had moved from the wall of the garret, very
near to the bench on which he sat. There was some-
thing awful in his unconsciousness of the figure that
.# have put out its hand and touched him as he
stooped over his labour.
Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She
stood, like a spirit, beside him, and he bent over his work.
It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change
the instrument in his hand, for his shoemaker’s knife.
. It lay on that side of him which was not the side on
which she stood. He had taken it up, and was stoop-
ing to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of
her dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two
spectators started forward but she stayed them with a
motion of her hand. She had no fear of his striking
at her with the knife, though they had.
He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while
his lips began to form some words, though no sound
proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his
quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say:
“What is this!”
With the tears streaming down her face, she put her
two hands to her lips, and kissed them to him; then
clasped them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined
head there.
42 ...A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“You are not the gaoler’s daughter?”
She sighed “No.”
“Who are you?” -
Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down
on the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her
hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when
she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid
the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.
Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had
been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her
neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it
up, and looked at it. . In the midst of the action he
went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work
at his shoemaking.
But, not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her
hand upon his shoulder. After looking doubtfully at
it, two or three times, as if to be sure it was really there,
he laid down his work, put his hand to his neck, and
took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded rag
attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his keee,
and it contained a very little quantity of hair: not
more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had,
in some old day, wound off upon his finger.
He took her hair into his hand again, and looked
closely at it. “It is the same. How can it be! When
was it ! How was it !” *
As the concentrating expression returned to his fore-
head, he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers
i. He turned her full to the light, and looked at .
€I’.
“She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night
when I was summoned out—she had a fear of my going,
though I had none—and when I was brought to the
North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. “You
will leave me them? They can never help me to escape
in the body, though they may in the spirit.” Those were
the words I said. I remember them very well.”
He formed this speech with his lips many times before
he could utter it. But when he did find spoken words
for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly.
“How was this?—Was it you ?”
Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned
upon her with a frightful suddenness. But, she sat per-
foctly still in his gräsp, and only said, in a low Voice,
THE SHOEMAKER. 43
‘‘I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come near us,
do not speak, do not move l’’
“Hark l’’ he exclaimed. “Whose voice was that?”
His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and
went up to his white hair, which they tore in a frenzy.
It died out, as everything but his shoemaking did die
out of him, and he re-folded his littie packet and tried to
Secure it in his breast; but, he still looked at her, and
gloomily shook his head.
‘‘No, no, no ; you are too young, too blooming. * It
can’t be. See what the prisoner is. These are not the
hands she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is
not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She was—and He
was—before the slow years of the North Tower—ages
ago. What is your name, my gentle angel?”
Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter
fell upon her knees before him, with her appealing
hands upon his breast.
“O, sir, at another time you shall know my name,
and who my mother was, and who my father, and how
I never knew their hard, hard history. But I cannot
tell you at this time, and I cannot tell you here. All
that I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you
to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me ! O my
dear, my dear!” -
|His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair,
which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light
of Freedom shining on him.
“If you hear in my voice—I don’t know that it is so,
but I hope it is—if you hear in my voice any resemblance
to a voice that Once was sweet music in your ears, weep
for it, weep for it ! If you touch, in touching my hair,
anything that recals a beloved head that lay in your
breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep
for it ! If, when I hint to you of a Home there is before
us, where I will be true to you with all my duty and with
all my faithful service, I bring back the remembrance
Of a Home long desolate, while your poor heart pined
away, weep for it, weep for it!” -
She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him
On her breast like a child. - -
“If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is
Over, and that I have come here to take you from it, and
that we go to England to be at peace and at rest, I cause
44 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
you to think of your useful life laid waste, and of our
native France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it!
And if, when I shall tell you of my name, and of my
father who is living, and of my mother who is dead,
you learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father,
and implore his pardon for having never for his sake
striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, be-
cause the love of my poor mother hid his torture from
me, weep for it, weep for it ! Weep for her, then, and
forême I Good gentlemen, thank God I feel his sacred
tears upon my face, and his Sobs strike against my
heart. " O, see 1 Thank God for us, thank God l’
He had sunk in her arms, with his face dropped on
her breast : a sight so touching, yet so terrible in the
tremendous wrong and suffering which had gone before
it, that the two beholders covered their faces.
When the quiet of the garret had been long undis-
turbed, and his heaving breast and shaken form had
long yielded to the calm that must follow all storms—
emblem to humanity, of the rest and silence into which
the storm called Life must hush at last—they came
forward to raise the father and daughter from the
ground. He had gradually drooped to the floor, and lay
there in a lethargy, worn out. ... She had nestled down
with him, that his head might lie upon her arm; and her
hair drooping over him curtained him from the light.
“If, without disturbing him,” she said, raising her
hand to Mr. Lorry as he stooped Over them, after re-
peated blowings of his nose, “all could be arranged for
our leaving Paris at once, so that, from the very door,
he could be taken away 25
“But, consider. Is he fit for the journey?” asked Mr.
Lorry.
“More fit for that, I think, than to remain in this
city, so dreadful to him.”
“It is true,” said Defarge, who was kneeling to look
on and hear. “More than that; Monsieur Manette is,
for all reasons, best out of France. Say, shall I hire a
carriage and post-horses?”
“That’s business,” said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the
shortest notice his methodical manners; “and if busi-
ness is to be done, I had better do it.”
“Then be so kind,” urged Miss Manette, “as to leave
us here. You see how composed he has become, and
THE SHOEMAKER. 45
you cannot be afraid to leave him with me now. Why
should you be? If you will lock the door to secure us
from interruption, I do not doubt that you will find him,
when you come back, as quiet as you leave him. In
any case, I will take care of him until you return, and
then we will remove him straight.”
Both Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined
to this course, and in favour of one of them remaining.
But, as there were not only carriage and horses to be
seen to, but travelling papers; and as time pressed, for
the day was drawing to an end, it came at last to their
hastily dividing the business that was necessary to be
done, and hurrying away to do it.
Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her
head down on the hard ground close at the father's side,
and watched him. The darkness deepened and deepened,
and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamed through
the chinks in the wall.
Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready
for the journey, and had brought with them, besides
travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread and meat, wine,
and hot coffee. Monsieur Defarge put this provender,
and the lamp he carried, on the shoemaker’s bench
(there was nothing else in the garret but a pallet bed),
and he and Mr. Lorry roused the captive, and assisted
him to his feet.
No human intelligence could have read the mysteries
of his mind, in the scared blank wonder of his face.
Whether he knew what had happened, whether he recol-
lected what they had said to him, whether he knew that
he was free, were questions which no sagacity could
have solved. They tried speaking to him; but, he was
so confused, and so very slow to answer, that they took
fright at his bewilderment, and agreed for the time to
tamper with him no more. He had a wild, lost manner
of Occasionally clasping his head in his hands, that had
not been seen in him before; yet, he had some pleasure
in the mere sound of his daughter's voice, and invariably
turned to it when she spoke.
In the submissive way of one long accustomed to
obey under coercion, he ate and drank what they gave
him to eat and drink, and put on the cloak and other
wrappings that they gave him to wear. He readily
responded to his daughter’s drawing her arm through
46 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
his, and took—and kept—her hand in both of his own.
They began to descend; Monsieur Defarge going first
with the lamp, Mr. Lorry closing the little procession.
They had not traversed many steps of the long main
staircase when he stopped, and stared at the roof and
round at the walls. -
“You remember the place, my father? You remember
coming up here?”
“What did you say?” º
But, before she could repeat the question, he mur-
mured an answer as if she had repeated it. ,
“Remember? No, I don’t remember. It was so very
long ago.”
That he had no recollection whatever of his having
been brought from his prison to that house, was ap-
parent to them. They heard him mutter, “One Hundred
and Five, North Tower;” and when he looked about
him, it evidently was for the strong fortress-walls which
had long encompassed him. On their reaching the
court-yard, he instinctively altered his tread, as being
in expectation of a drawbridge; and when there was no
drawbridge, and he saw the carriage waiting in the
open street, he dropped his daughter's hand and clasped
his head again.
No crowd was about the door; no people were dis-
cernible at any of the many windows; not even a chance
passer-by was in the street. An unnatural silence and
desertion reigned there. Only one soul was to be seen,
and that was Madame Defarge—who leaned against the
door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.
The prisoner had got into the coach, and his daughter
had followed him; when Mr. Lorry’s feet were arrested
on the step by his asking, miserably, for his shoemak-
ing tools and the unfinished shoes. Madame Defarge
immediately called to her husband that she would get
them, and went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through
the court-yard. She quickly brought them down and
handed them in;–and immediately afterwards leaned
against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.
Defarge got upon the box, and gave the word “To
the Barrier!” The postilion cracked his whip, and they
clattered away under the feeble over-swinging lamps.
Under the over-swinging lamps—swinging ever
brighter in the better streets, and ever dimmer in the
THE SHOEMAKER. 47
worse—and by lighted shops, gay crowds, illuminated
coffee-houses, and theatre doors, to one of the city gates.
Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there. “Your
papers, travellers l’ “See here then, Monsieur
the Officer,” said Defarge, getting down, and taking
him gravely apart, “these are the papers of monsieur
inside, with the white head. They were consigned to
me, with him, at the ” He dropped his voice, there
was a flutter among the military lanterns, and one of
them being handed into the coach by an arm in uniform,
the eyes connected with the arm looked, not an every
day or an every night look, at monsieur with the white
head. “It is well. Forward!” from the uniform.
“Adieu!” from Defarge. And so, under a short grove
of feebler and feebler over-swinging lamps, out under
the great grove of stars.
Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights:
some, so remote from this little earth that the learned
tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have even yet
discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suf-
fered or done: the shadows of the night were broad and
black. All through the cold and restless interval, until
dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr.
Jarvis Lorry—sitting opposite the buried man who had
been dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were
for ever lost to him, and what were capable of restora-
tion—the old inquiry:
“I hope you care to be recalled to life?”
And the old answer:
“I can’t say.”
THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK.
BOOK THE SECOND.
• THE GOLDEN THEREAD.
CHAPTER I.
FIVE YEARS LATER.
ELLSON'S Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fash-
ioned place, even in the year one thousand seven
hundred and eighty. It was very small, very, dark,
very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned
place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners
in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its
darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodi-
ousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in
those particulars, and were fired by an express convic-
tion that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less
respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active
weapon which they flashed at more convenient places
of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-
room, Tellson’s wanted no light, Tellson’s wanted no
embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks
Brothers’ might; but Tellson’s, thank Heaven!——
Any one of these partners would have disinherited
his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson’s. In this
respect the House was much on a par with the Country;
which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting
improvements in laws and customs that had long
been highly objectionable, but were only the more
respectable.
Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson’s was the tri-
umphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting
WOL I 4.
5() A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in
its throat, you fell into Tellson’s down two steps, and
came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two
little counters, where the oldest of men made your
cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they exam-
ined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which
were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet-
street, and which were made dingier by their own iron
bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If
your business necessitated your seeing “ the House,”
you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the
back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the
House came with its hands in its pockets, and you
could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your
money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden
drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and
down your throat when they were opened and shut.
Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were
fast decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed
away among the neighbouring cesspools, and evil com-
munications corrupted its good polish in a day or two.
Your deeds got into extemporised strong-rooms made
of kitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of
their parchments into the banking-house air. . Your
lighter boxes of family papers went up-stairs into a
Barmecide room, that always had a great dining-table
in it and never had a dinner, and where, even in the
year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first
letters' written to you by your old love, or by your little
children, were but newly released from the horror of
being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed
on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity
worthy of Abyssinia or Ashantee.
But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a
recipe much in vogue with all trades and profes-
sions, and not least of all with Tellson’s. Death is
Nature’s remedy for all things, and why not Legisla-
tion’s? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the
utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful
opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of
forty shillings and sixpénce was put to Death; the
holder of a horse at Tellson’s door, who made off with
it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad shilling was
put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes
FIVE YEARS LATER. 51 .
in the whole ſº of Crime, were put to Death.
Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention
—it might almost have been worth remarking that the
fact was exactly the reverse—but, it cleared off (as to
this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left
nothing else connected with it to be looked after. Thus,
Tellson’s in its day, like greater places of business, its
contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the
heads laid low before it had been ranged on Temple.
Bar instead of being privately disposed of, they would
probably have excluded what little light the ground
floor had, in a rather significant manner.
Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches
at Tellson’s, the oldest of men carried on the business
gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson’s
London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old.
They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he
had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him.
Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly
poring over large books, and casting his breeches and
gaiters into the general weight of the establishment.
Outside Tellson’s—never by any means in it, unless
called in—was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter
and messenger, who served as the live sign of the house.
He was never absent during business hours, unless upon
an errand, and then he was represented by his son; a
grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image.
People understood that Tellson’s, in a stately way,
tolerated the odd-job-man. The House had always tole-
rated some person in that capacity, and time and tide
had drifted this person to the post. His surname was
Cruncher, and on the youthful occasion of his renounc-
ing by proxy the works of darkness, in the easterly
parish church of Houndsditch, he had received the
added appellation of Jerry.
The scene, was Mr. Cruncher’s private lodging in
Hanging-sword-alley, Whitefriars; the time, half-past
seven of the clock on a windy March morning, Anno
Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher
himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna
Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the
Christian era dated from the invention of a popular
game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.)
Mr. Cruncher’s apartments were not in a savoury
52 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
neighbourhood, and were but two in number, even if a.
closet with a single pane of glass in it might be counted
as one. But, they were very decently kept. Early as it
was, on the windy March morning, the room in which ,
he lay a-bed was already scrubbed throughout; and
between the cups and saucers arranged for breakfast,
and the lumbering deal table, a very clean white cloth
was spread. . .
Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counter-
pane, like a Harlequin at home. At first, he slept
heavily, but, by degrees, began to roll and surge in bed,
until he rose above the surface, with his spiky hair
looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons. At
which juncture, he exclaimed, in a voice of dire
exasperation: &
“Bust me, if she ain’t at it agin!”
A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose
from her knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and
trepidation to show that she was the person referred
to.
“What!” said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for
a boot. “You’re at it agin, are you?”
After hailing the morn with this second salutation,
he threw a boot at the woman as a third. It was a very
muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance
connected with Mr. Cruncher’s domestic economy, that,
whereas he often came home after banking hours with
clean boots, he often got up next morning to find the
same boots covered with clay. G
“What,” said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe
after missing his mark—“what are you up to, Aggera-
wayter?”
“I was only saying my prayers.”
“Saying your prayers. You’re a nice woman! What
do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying
agin me?”
“I was not praying against you; I was praying for
you.”
“You weren’t. And if you were, I won’t be took the
liberty with. Here! your mother's a nice woman, young
Jerry, going a praying agin your father's prosperity.
You’ve got a dutiful mother, you have, my son.
You’ve got a religious mother, you have, my boy: going
and flopping herself down, and praying that the bread-
ITIVE YEARS LATER. . - 53
and-butter may be snatched out of the mouth of her
only child !” - -
Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very
ill, and, turning to his mother, strongly deprecated any
praying away of his personal board. :
“And what do you suppose, you conceited female,”
said Mr. Cruncher, with unconscious inconsistency,
“that the worth of your prayers may be? Name the
price that you put your prayers at l” -
“They only come from the heart, Jerry. They are
worth no more than that.”
“Worth no more than that,” repeated Mr. Cruncher.
“They ain’t worth much, then. Whether or no, I won’t
be prayed agin, I tell you. I can’t afford it. I’m not
a going to be made unlucky by your Sneaking. If you
must go flopping yourself down, flop in favour of your
husband and child, and not in opposition to 'em. If I
had had any but a unnat'ral wife, and this poor boy
had had any but a unnat'ral mother, I might have made
some money last week, instead of being counterprayed
and countermined and religiously circumvented into the
worst of luck. Bu-u-ust me!” said Mr. Cruncher, who
all this time had been putting on his clothes, “if I ain’t,
what with piety and one blowed thing and another, been
choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor
devil of a honest tradesman met with ! Young Jerry,
dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots
keep a eye upon your mother now and then, and
if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call,
For, I tell you,” here he addressed his wife once more,
“I wont be gone agin, in this manner. I am as rickety
as a hackney-coach, I’m as sleepy as laudanum, my
lines is strained to that degree that I shouldn’t know,
if it wasn’t for the pain in ’em, which was me and
which somebody else, yet I’m none the better for
it in pocket; and it’s my suspicion that you’ve been at
it from morning to night to prevent me from being the
better for it in pocket, and I won’t put up with it,
Aggerawayter, and what do you say now !”
Growling, in addition, such phrases as “Ah! yes!
You’re religious, too. You wouldn’t put yourself in op-
position to the interests of your husband and .#
would you? Not you!” and throwing off other sarcastic
Sparks from the whirling grindstone of his indignation,
54 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Mr. Cruncher betook himself to his boot-cleaning and
his general preparations for business. In the mean time,
his son, whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes,
and whose young eyes stood close by one another, as his
father’s did, kept the required watch upon his mother.
He greatly disturbed that poor woman at intervals, by
darting out of his sleeping closet, where he made his
toilet, with a suppressed cry of “You are going to
flop, mother—Halloa, father!” and, after raising this
fictitious alarm, darting in again with an undutiful grin.
Mr. Cruncher’s temper was not at all improved when
he came to his breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher’s
saying Grace with particular animosity.
“Now Aggerawayter! What are vou up to? At it
agin?”
*#. wife explained that she had merely ‘‘ asked a
blessing.”
“Don’t do it!” said Mr. Cruncher, looking about, as if
he rather expected to see the loaf disappear under the
efficacy of his wife's petitions. “I ain’t a going to be
blest out of house and home. I won’t have my wittles
blest off my table. Keep still!”
Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up
all night at a party which had taken anything but a
convivial turn, Jerry Cruncher worried his breakfast
rather than ate it, growling over it like any four-footed
inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o’clock he
smoothed his ruffled aspect, and, presenting as respecta-
ble and business-like an exterior as he could overlay
his natural self with, issued forth to the occupation of
the day. -
It could scarcely be called a trade, in spite of his
favourite description of himself as “a honest trades-
man.” His stock consisted of a wooden stool, made out
of a broken-backed chair cut down, which stool young
Jerry, walking at his father’s side, carried every morn-
ing to beneath the banking-house window that was
nearest Temple Bar: where, with the addition of the
first handful of straw that could be gleaned from any
passing vehicle to keep the cold and wet from the odd-
job man’s feet, it formed the encampment for the day.
On this post of his, Mr. Cruncher was as well known to
Fleet-street and the Temple, as the Bar itself—and was
almost as ill-looking.
FIVE YEARS LATER. 55
Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to
touch his three-cornered hat to the oldest of men as they
passed in to Tellson’s, Jerry took up his station on this
windy March morning, with young Jerry standing by
him, when not engaged in making forays through the
Bar, to inflict bodily and mental injuries of an acute
description on passing boys who were Small enough for
his amiable purpose. Father and son, extremely like
each other, looking silently on at the morning traffic in
Fleet-street, with their two heads as near to one another
as the two eyes of each were, bore a considerable resem-
blance to a pair of monkeys. The resemblance was
not lessened by the accidental circumstance, that the
mature Jerry bit and spat out straw, while the twinkling
eyes of the youthful Jerry were as restlessly watchful
of him as of everything else in Fleet-street.
The head of one of the regular in-door messengers .
attached to Tellson’s establishment was put through the
door, and the word was given:
** Porter wanted!”
6 & Hºoray, father! Here's an early job to begin
With !”
Having thus given his parent God speed, Young Jerry
seated himself on the stool, entered on his reversionary
interest in the straw his father had been chewing, and
Cogitated.
“Al-ways rusty | His fingers is al-ways rusty!” mut-
tered young Jerry. “Where does my father get all
that iron rust from? He don’t get no iron rust here!”
CHAPTER II.
A SIGHT.
6 & Yoº know the Old Bailey well, no doubt?” said
L one of the oldest of clerks to Jerry the messenger.
“Ye-es, sir,” returned Jerry, in something of a dogged
manner. “I do know the Bailey.”
“Just so. And you know Mr. Lorry?”
“I know Mr. Lorry, sir, much better than I know the
Bailey. Much better,” said Jerry, not unlike a reluc-
56 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
tant witness at the establishment in question, “than I,
as a honest tradesman, wish to know the Bailey.”
“Very well. Find the door where the witnesses go
in, and show the doorkeeper this note for Mr. Lorry.
He will then let you in.”
“Into the court, sir?”
“Into the court.”
Mr. Cruncher’s eyes seemed to get a little closer to
one another, and to interchange the inquiry, “What do
you think of this?”
“Am I to wait in the court, sir?” he asked, as the re-
sult of that conference. -
“I am going to tell you. The doorkeeper will pass
the note to Mr. Lorry, and do you make any gesture
that will attract Mr. Lorry’s attention, and show him
where you stand. Then what you have to do, is, to re-
main there until he wants you.” *
“Is that all, sir?”
“That’s all. He wishes to have a messenger at hand.
This is to tell him you are there.”
As the ancient clerk deliberately folded and super-
scribed the note, Mr. Cruncher, after surveying him in
silence until he came to the blotting-paper stage, re-
marked :
“I suppose they’ll be trying Forgeries this morning?”
“Trea,SOn 1 °
“That’s quartering,” said Jerry. “Barbarous !”
“It is the law,” remarked the ancient clerk, turning
his surprised spectacles upon him. “It is the law.”
“It’s hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It’s hard
enough to kill him, but it’s wery hard to spile him, sir.”
“Not at all,” returned the ancient clerk. “Speak
well of the law. Take care of your chest and voice,
my good friend, and leave the law to take care of it-
self. I give you that advice.” wº
“It’s the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and
voice,” said Jerry. “I leave you to judge what a damp
way of earning a living mine is.” -
“Well, well,” said the old clerk; “we all have our
various ways of gaining a livelihood. Some of us have
damp ways, and some of us have dry ways. Here is
the letter. Go along.”
“Jerry took the letter, and, remarking to himself
with less internal deference than he made an outward
A SIGHT. 57
show of, “You are a lean old one, too,” made his bow.
informed his son, in passing, of his destination, and
went his way.
They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street
outside Newgate had not obtained one infamous noto-
riety that has since attached to it, But, the gaol was a
vile place, in which most kinds of debauchery and vil-
lany were practised, and where dire diseasés were
bred, that came into court with the prisoners, and some-
times rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief
Justice himself, and pulled him off the bench. It had
more than Once happened that the judge in the black
cap pronounced his own doom as certainly as the
prisoner's, and even died before him. For the rest, the
Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard,
from which pale travellers set out contiflually, in carts
and coaches, on a violent passage into the other world:
traversing some two miles and a half of public street
and road, and shaming few good citizens, if any. So
powerful is use, and so desirable to be good use in the
beginning. It was famous, too, for the pillory, a wise
old institution, that inflicted a punishment of which no
One could foresee the extent; also, for the whipping-
post, another dear old institution, very humanising and
softening to behold in action; adso, for extensive trans-
actions in blood-money, another fragment of ancestral
wisdom, systematically leading to the most frightful
nercenary crimes that could be committed under
Heaven. Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was
a choice illustration of the precept, that “Whatever is,
is right; ” an aphorism that would be as final as it is
lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence,
that nothing that ever was, was wrong.
Making his way through the tainted crowd, dis-
persed up and down this hideous scene of action, with
the skill of a man accustomed to make his way quietly,
the messenger found out the door he sought, and handed
in his letter through a trap in it. For, people then paid
to see the play at the Old Bailey, just as they paid to
See the play in Bedlam—only the former entertainment
was much the dearer. Therefore, all the Old Bailey
doors were well guarded—except, indeed, the social
doors by which the criminals got there, and those were
always left wide open,
58 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly
turned on its hinges a very little way, and allowed Mr.
Jerry Cruncher to squueeze himself into court.
“What’s on?” he asked, in a whisper, of the man he
found himself next to. -
“Nothing yet.”
“What's coming on?”
“The Treason case.” -
“The quartering one, eh?” -
“Ah!” returned the man, with a relish; “he’ll be
drawn on a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he’ll be
taken down and sliced before his own face, and then
his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks
on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he’ll be
cut into quarters. That’s the sentence.” -
“If he’s found Guilty, you mean to say?” Jerry
added, by way of proviso.
“Oh! they’ll find him Guilty,” said the other. “Don’t
you be afraid of that.”
Mr. Cruncher's attention was here diverted to the
door-keeper, whom he saw making his way to Mr.
Lorry, with the note in his hand. Mr. Lorry sat at a
table, among the gentlemen in wigs: not far from a
wigged gentleman, the prisoner's counsel, who had a
great bundle of papers before him: and nearly opposite
another wigged gentleman with his hands in his
pockets, whose whole attention, when Mr. Cruncher
looked at him then or afterwards, seemed to be con-
centrated on the ceiling of the court. After some gruff
coughing and rubbing of his chin and signing with his
hand, Jerry attracted the notice of Mr. Lorry, who had
stood up to look for him, and who quietly nodded, and
sat down again.
“What’s he got to do with the case?” asked the man
he had spoken with. -
“Blest if I know,” said Jerry.
“What have you got to do with it, then, if a person
may inquire?” --
“Blest if I know that either,” said Jerry.
The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great
stir and settling-down in the court, stopped the dia-
logue. Presently, the dock became the central point of
interest. Two gaolers, who had been standing there, went
out, and the prisoner was brought in, and put to the bar,
A SIGHT 50
Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman
who looked at the ceiling, stared at him. All the
human breath in the place, rolled at him, like a sea, or
a wind, or a fire. . Eager faces strained round pillars
and corners, to get a sight of him; spectators in back
rows stood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on the
floor of the court, laid their hands on the shoulders of
the people before them, to help themselves, at any-
body's cost, to a view of him—stood a-tiptoe, got upon
ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every inch
of him. Conspicuous among these latter, like an ani-
mated bit of the spiked wall of Newgate, Jerry stood:
aiming at the prisoner the beery breath of a whet he
had taken as he came along, and discharging it to
mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin, and tea,
and coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and
already broke upon the great windows behind him in
an impure mist and rain.
The object of all this staring and blaring, was a
young man of about five-and-twenty, well-grown and
well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek and a dark eye.
His condition was that of a young gentleman. He was
plainly dressed in black, or very dark grey, and his
hair, which was long and dark, was gathered in a
ribbon at the back of his neck; more to be out of his
way than for Ornament. As an emotion of the mind
will express itself through any covering of the body,
so the paleness which his situation engendered came
through the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul to
be stronger than the sun. He was otherwise quite self-
possessed, bowed to the Judge, and stood quiet.
The sort of interest with which this man was stared
and breathed at, was not a sort that elevated humanity.
Had he stood in peril of a less horrible sentence—had
there been a chance of any one of its savage details being
spared—by just so mugh would he have lost in his
fascination. The form that was to be doomed to be so
Shamefully mangled, was the sight; the immortal creat-
ure that was to be so butchered and torn asunder,
yielded the sensation. Whatever gloss the various
Spectators put upon the interest, according to their
Several arts and powers of self-deceit, the interest was,
at the root of it, Ogreish.
Silence in the court Charles Darnay had yesterday
(30 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
pleaded Not Guilty to an indictment denouncing him
(with infinite jingle and jangle) for that he was a false
traitor to our serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth,
prince, our Lord the King, by reason. Of his having, on
divers occasions, and by divers means and ways, as-
sisted Lewis, the French King, in his wars against our
said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth; that
was to say, by coming and going between the domin-
ions of our said serene, illustrious, excellent. and
so forth, and those of the said French Lewis, and
wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise evil-ad-
verbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what
forces our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so
forth, had in preparation to send to Canada and North
America. This much, Jerry, with his head becoming more
and more spiky as the law terms bristled it, made out
with huge satisfaction, and so arrived circuitously at
the understanding that the aforesaid, and over and
over again aforesaid, Charles Darnay, stood there
before him upon his trial; that the jury were swearing
in; and that Mr. Attorney-General was making ready
to speak. *
The accused, who was (and who knew he was) being
mentally hanged, beheaded, and quartered, by every-
body there, neither flinched from the situation, nor
assumed any theatrical air in it. He was quiet and
attentive; watched the opening proceedings with a
grave interest; and stood with his hands resting on the
slab of wood before him, so composedly, that they had
not displaced a leaf of the herbs with which it was
strewn. The court was all bestrewn with herbs and
sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against gaol
air and gaol fever.
Over the prisoner's head, there was a mirror, to
throw the light down upon him. Crowds of the wicked
and the wretched had been reflected in it, and had
passed from its surface and this earth’s together.
Haunted in a most ghastly manner that abominable
place would have been, if the glass could ever have
rendered back its reflexions, as the ocean is one day
to give up its dead. Some passing thought of the
infamy and disgrace for which it had been reserved,
may have struck the prisoner’s mind. Be that as it
may, a change in his position making him conscious
A SIGHT. (31
of a bar of light across his face, he looked up; and
when he saw the glass, his face flushed, and his right
hand pushed the herbs away.
It happened, that the action turned his face to that
side of the court which was on his left. About on a
level with his eyes, there sat, in that corner of the
Judge’s bench, two persons upon whom his look im-
mediately rested; so immediately, and so much to the
changing of his aspect, that all the eyes that were
turned upon him, turned to them.
The spectators saw in the two figures, a young lady
of little more than twenty, and a gentleman who was
evidently her father; a man of a very remarkable ap-
earance in respect of the absolute whiteness of his
}. and a certain indescribable intensity of face :
not of an active kind, but pondering and self-com-
muning. When this expression was upon him, he
looked as if he were old; º when it was stirred and
broken up—as it was now, in a moment, on his
speaking to his daughter—he became a handsome
man, not past the prime of life. -
His daughter had one of her hands drawn through
his arm, as she sat by him, and the other pressed
upon it. She had drawn close to him, in her dread of the
scene, and in her pity for the prisoner. Her fore-
head had been strikingly expressive of an engrossing
terror and compassion that saw nothing but the peril
of the accused. This had been so very noticeable, so
very powerfully and naturally shown, that starers
who had had no pity for him were touched by her;
and the whisper went about, “Who are they P”
Jerry the messenger, who had made his own obser-
vations in his own manner, and who had been
sucking the rust off his fingers in his absorption,
stretched his neck to hear who they were. The crowd
about him had pressed and passed the inquiry on to the
nearest attendant, and from him it had been more
slowly pressed and passed back; at last it got to Jerry :
‘‘ Witnesses.”
“For which side 2°
“Against.” -
“Against what side P”
“The prisoner’s.” & . - y
The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general
62 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
direction, recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and
looked steadily at the man whose life was in his hand,
as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind
the axe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold.
CHAPTER III.
A D IS A P P O I N T M E N T .
P: ATTORNEY-GENERAL had to inform the
jury, that the prisoner before them, though young
in years, was old in the treasonable practices which
claimed the forfeit of his life. That this correspon-
dence with the public enemy was not a corre-
spondence of to-day, or yesterday, or even of last year,
or of the year before. That, it was certain the prisoner
had, for longer than that, been in the habit of passing
and repassing between France and England, On Secret
business of which he could give no honest account.
That, if it were in the nature of traitorous ways to
thrive (which happily it never was), the real wicked-
ness and guilt of his business might have remained
undiscovered. That Providence, however, had put it
into the heart of a person who was beyond fear and be-
..yond reproach, to ferret out the nature of the prisoner's
schemes, and, struck with horror, to disclose them to
his Majesty's Chief Secretary of State and most honour-
able Privy Council. That, this patriot would be pro-
duced before them. That, his position and attitude
were, on the whole, sublime. That, he had been the
prisoner's friend, but, at once in an auspicious and an
evil hour detecting his infamy, had resolved to immo-
late the traitor he could no longer cherish in his bosom,
on the sacred altar of his country. That, if statues
were decreed in Britain, as in ancient Greece and
Rome, to public benefactors, this shining citizen would
assuredly have had one. That, as they were not so
decreed, he probably would not have one. That,
Virtue, as had been observed by the poets (in many
passages which he well knew the jury would have,
word for word, at the tips of their tongues; whereat
the jury's countenances displayed a guilty conscious-
A DISAPPOINTMENT. 63
ness that they knew nothing about the passages), was
in a manner contagious; more especially the bright
virtue known as patriotism, or love of country. That,
the lofty example of this immaculate and unimpeach-
able witness for the Crown, to refer to whom however
unworthily was an honour, had communicated itself to
the prisoner's servant, and had engendered in him a
holy determination to examine his master's table-
drawers and pockets, and secrete his papers. That, he
(Mr. Attorney-General) was prepared to hear some dis-
paragement attempted of this admirable servant; but
that, in a general way, he preferred him to his (Mr.
Attorney-General’s) brothers and sisters, and honoured
him more than his (Mr. Attorney-General’s) father and
mother. That, he called with confidence on the jury
to come and do likewise. That, the evidence of these
two witnesses, coupled with the documents of their
discovering that would be produced, would show the
prisoner to have been furnished with lists of his
Majesty’s forces, and of their disposition and prepara-
tion, both by sea and land, and would leave no doubt
that he had habitually conveyed such information to a
hostile power. That, these lists could not be proved to
be in the prisoner's handwriting; but that it was all
the same; that, indeed, it was rather the better for the
prosecution, as showing the prisoner to be artful in his
precautions. That, the proof would go back five years,
and would show the prisoner already engaged in these
pernicious missions, within a few weeks before the
date of the very first action fought between the British
troops and the Americans. That, for these reasons, the
jury being a loyal jury (as he knew they were), and
being a responsible jury (as they knew they were),
must positively find the prisoner Guilty, and make an
end of him, whether they liked it or not. That, they
never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that
they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying
their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could
endure the notion of their children laying their heads
upon their pillows; in short, that there never more
Could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon
pillows at all, unless the prisoner's head was taken off.
That head Mr. Attorney-General concluded by demand-
ing of them, in the name of everything he could think
64 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
of with a round turn in it, and on the faith of his
solemn asseveration that he already considered the
prisoner as good as dead and gone.
When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in
the court as if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarm-
ing about the prisoner, in anticipation of what he
was soon to become." When it toned down again, the
unimpeachable patriot appeared in the witness-box.
Mr. Solicitor-General then, following his leader's
lead, examined the patriot: John Barsad, gentleman,
by name. The story of his pure soul was exactly what
Mr. Attorney-General had described it to be—perhaps,
if it had a fault, a little too exactly. Having released
his noble bosom of its burden, he would have modestly
withdrawn himself, but that the wigged gentleman
with the papers before him, sitting not far from Mr.
Lorry, begged to ask him a few questions. The
wigged gentleman sitting opposite, still looking at
the ceiling of the court.
Had he ever been a spy himself? No, he scorned the
base insinuation. What did he live upon? His prop-
erty. Where was his property? He didn’t º
remember where it was. What was it? No business
of anybody's. Had he inherited it? Yes, he had.
From whom? Distant relation. Very distant? Rather.
Ever been in prison? Certainly not. Never in a debt-
ors’ prison? Didn’t see what that had to do with it.
Never in a debtors’ prison?—Come once again. Never?
Yes. How many times? Two or three times. Not five
or six? Perhaps. Of what profession? Gentleman.
Ever been kicked? Might have been. Frequently?
No. Ever kicked down stairs? Decidedly not; once re-
ceived a kick on the top of a staircase, and fell down
stairs of his own accord. Kicked on that occasion for
cheating at dice? Something to that effect was said by
the intoxicated liar who committed the assault, but it
was not true. Swear it was not true? Positively. Ever
live by cheating at play? Never. Ever live by play?
Not more than other gentlemen do. Ever borrow
money of the prisoner? Yes. Ever pay him? No.
Was not this intimacy with the prisoner, in reality a
very slight one, forced upon the prisoner in coaches,
inns, and packets? No. Sure he saw the prisoner with
these lists? Certain. Knew no more about the lists?
A DISAPPOINTMENT. 65
No. Had not procured them himself, for instance? No.
Expect to get anything by this evidence? No. Not in
regular government pay and employment, to lay traps?
Oh dear no. Or to do anything? Oh dear no. Swear
that? Over and over again. No motives but motives
of sheer patriotism? None whatever.
The virtuous servant, Roger Cly, swore his way
through the case at a great rate. He had taken service
with the prisoner, in good faith and simplicity, four
years ago. He had asked the prisoner aboard the
Calais packet, if he wanted a handy fellow, and the pris-
oner had engaged him. He had not asked the prisoner
to take the handy fellow as an act of charity—never
thought of such a thing. He began to have suspicions
of the prisoner, and to keep an eye upon him, soon
afterwards. In arranging his clothes, while travelling
he had seen similar lists to these in the prisoner’s
pockets, over and Over again. He had taken these lists
from the drawer of the prisoner's desk. He had not
put them there first. He had seen the prisoner show
these identical lists to French gentlemen at Calais, and
similar lists to French gentlemen both at Calais and
Boulogne. He loved his country, and couldn’t bear it, and
had given information. He had never been suspected
of stealing a silver teapot; he had been maligned re-
specting a mustard-pot, but it turned out to be only
a plated one. He had known the last witness seven or
eight years; that was merely a coincidence. He didn’t
call it a particularly curious coincidence; most coinci-
dences were curious. Neither did he call it a curious
coincidence that true patriotism was his only motive,
too. He was a true Briton, and hoped there were many
like him.
The blue-flies buzzed again, and Mr. Attorney-Gene-
ral called Mr. Jarvis Lorry.
“Mr. Jarvis Lorry, are you a clerk in Tellson’s
bank?”
& 4 I am.” -
“On a certain Friday night in November one thou-
sand seven hundred and seventy-five, did business
occasion you to travel between London and Dover by
the mail?”
“It did.”
“Were there any other passengers in the mail?”
WOL. I, 5 *
GU ' A TALE OF Two CITIES.
& 4 TWO. 52
“Did they alight on the road in the course of the
night?”
* They did.”
“Mr. Lorry, look upon the prisoner. Was he one .
of those two passengers?”
“I cannot undertake to say that he was.”
“Does he resemble either of these two passengers?”
“Both were so wrapped up, and the night was so
dark, and we were all so reserved, that I cannot under-
take to say even that.”
“Mr. Lorry, look again upon the prisoner. Sup-
posing him wrapped up as those two passengers were,
is there anything in his bulk and stature to render it
uniº that he was one of them P”
& & O.”
“You will not swear, Mr. Lorry, that he was not one
Of them?”
& 4 NO.”
“So at least you say he may have been one of
them P’’
“Yes. Except that I remember them both to have
been—like myself—timorous of highwaymen, and the
prisoner has not a timorous air.”
“Did you ever see a counterfeit of timidity, Mr.
Lorry?”
‘‘I certainly have seen that.”
“Mr. Lorry, look once more upon the prisoner. Have
you seen him, to your certain knowledge, before?”
‘‘I have.”
“When?”
“I was returning from France a few days afterwards,
and, at Calais, the prisoner came on board the packet-
ship in which I returned, and made the voyage with
rine.”
‘‘ At what hour did he come on board?”
“At a little after midnight.”
“In the dead of the night. Was he the only passenger
who came on board at that untimely hour?”
“He happened to be the only one.”
“Never mind about ‘happening,” Mr. Lorry. He
was the only passenger who came on board in the dead
of the night?”
‘‘ He was.”
A DISAPPOINTMENT. 6%
“Were you travelling alone, Mr. Lorry, or with any
companion?”
“With two companions. A gentleman and lady.
They are here.” -
“They are here. Had you any conversation with the
prisoner?” & e
“Hardly any. The weather was stormy, and the
passage long and rough, and I lay On a Sofa, almost
from shore to shore.”
“Miss Manette!”
The young lady, to whom all eyes had been turned
before, and were now turned again, stood up where she
had sat. Her father rose with Ther. and kept her hand
drawn through his arm.
“Miss Manette, look upon the prisoner.”
To be confronted with such pity, and such earnest
youth and beauty, was far more trying to the accused
than to be confronted with all the crowd. Standing, as
it were, apart with her on the edge of his grave, not all
the staring curiosity that looked on, could, for the
moment, nerve him to remain quite still. His hurried
right hand parcelled out the herbs before him into im-
aginary beds of flowers in a garden; and his efforts to
control and steady his breathing, shook the lips from
which the colour rushed to his heart. The buzz of the
great flies was loud again.
“Miss Mamette, have you seen the prisoner be-
fore?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
‘‘ On board of the packet-ship just now referred to,
sir, and on the same occasion.”
“You are the young lady just now referred to?”
“O! most unhappily, I am.”
The plaintive tone of her compassion merged into the
Iess musical voice of the Judge, as he said, something
fiercely: “Answer the questions put to you, and make
no remark upon them.”
“Miss Manette, had you any conversation with the
prisoner on that passage across the Channel?”
“Yes, sir.”
** Recall it.”
In the midst of a profound stillness, she faintly began:
“When the gentleman came on board—”
68 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“Do you mean the prisoner?” inquired the Judge
knitting his brows.
“Yes, my Lord.”
“Then say the prisoner.”
“When the prisoner came on board, he noticed that
my father,” turning her eyes lovingly to him as he
stood beside her, “was much fatigued and in a very
weak state of health. My father was so reduced, that
I was afraid to take him out of the air, and I had made
a bed for him on the deck near the cabin steps, and I
sat on the deck at his side to take care of him. There
were no other passengers that night, but we four. The
pººr was so good as to beg permission to advise me
ow I could shelter my father from the wind and
weather, better than I had done. I had not known how
to do it well, not understanding how the wind would
set when we were out of the harbour. He did it for
me. He expressed great gentleness and kindness for
my father's state, and I am sure he felt it. That was
the manner of our beginning to speak together.”
“Let me interrupt you for a moment. Had he come
on board alone?”
& & No. 35
“How many were with him?”
“Two French gentlemen.”
“Had they conferred together?”
“They had conferred together until the last moment,
when it was necessary for the French gentlemen to be
landed in their boat.”
“Had any papers been handed about among them,
similar to these lists?”
“Some papers had been handed about among them,
but I don’t know what papers.”
“Like these in shape and size?”
“Possibly, but indeed I don’t know, although they
stood whispering very near to me: because they stood
at the top of the cabin steps to have the light of the
lamp that was hanging there; it was a dull lamp, and
they spoke very low, and I did not hear what they said,
and saw only that they looked at papers.”
“Now, to the prisoner's conversation, Miss Manette.”
“The prisoner was as open in his confidence with
me—which arose out of my helpless situation—as he
was kind, and good, and useful to my father. I hope,”
A DISAPPOINTMENT. 69
bursting into tears, “I may not repay him by doing
him harm to–day.”
Buzzing from the blue-flies.
“Miss Manette, if the prisoner does not perfectly
understand that you give the evidence which it is your
duty to give—which you must give—and which you
cannot escape from giving—with great unwillingness,
he is the only person present in that condition. Please
to go on.”
“He told me that he was travelling on business of a
delicate and difficult nature, which might get P.
into trouble, and that he was therefore travelling under
an assumed name. He said that this business had,
within a few days, taken him to France, and might, at
intervals, take him backwards and forwards between
France and England for a long time to come.”
“Did he say anything about America, Miss Manette?
Be particular.”
“He tried to explain to me how that quarrel had
arisen, and he said that, so far as he could judge, it was
a wrong and foolish one on England’s part. He added,
in a jesting way, that perhaps George Washington
might gain almost as great a name in history as George
the Third. But there was no harm in his way of saying
this: it was said laughingly, and to beguile the time.”
Any strongly marked expression of face on the part
of a chief actor in a scene of great interest to whom
many eyes are directed, will be unconsciously imitated
by the spectators. Her forehead was painfully anxious
and intent as she gave this evidence, and, in the pauses
when she stopped for the Judge to write it down,
watched its effect upon the Counsel for and against.
Among the lookers-on there was the same expression in
all quarters of the court; insomuch, that a great ma-
jority of the foreheads there, might have been mirrors
reflecting the witness, when the Judge looked up from
his notes to glare at that tremendous heresy about
George Washington.
Mr. Attorney-General now signified to my Lord, that
he deemed it necessary, as a matter of precaution and
form, to call the young lady’s father, Doctor Manette.
Who was called accordingly.
“Doctor Manette, look upon the prisoner. Have you
ever seen him before?”
70 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
.*
‘‘ Once. When he called at my lodgings in London.
Some three years, or three years and a half ago.”
“Can you identify him as your fellow-passenger on
board the packet, or speak to his conversation with
your daughter?”
“Sir, I can do neither.”
“Is there any particular and special reason for your
being unable to do either?”
He answered, in a low voice, “There is.”
“Has it been your misfortune to undergo a long im-
prisonment, without trial, or even accusation, in your
native country, Doctor Manette?”
He answered, in a tone that went to every heart, “A
long imprisonment.”
“Were you newly released on the occasion in ques-
tion?”
“They tell me so.”
“Have you no remembrance of the occasion?”
“None. My mind is a blank, from some time—I
cannot even say what time—when I employed myself,
in my captivity, in making shoes, to the time when I
found myself living in London with my dear daughter
here. She had become familiar to me, when a gracious
God restored my faculties; but, I am quite unable even
to say how she had become familiar. I have no remem-
brance of the process.”
Mr. Attorney-General sat down, and the father and
daughter sat down together. *
A singular circumstance then arose in the case. The
object in hand, being, to show that the prisoner went
down, with some fellow-plotter untracked, in the
Dover mail on that Friday night in November five
years ago, and got out of the mail in the night, as a
blind, at a place where he did not remain, but from
which he travelled back some dozen miles or more, to a
garrison and dockyard, and there collected information;
a witness was called to identify him as having been at
the precise time required, in the coffee-room of an hotel
in that garrison-and-dockyard town, waiting for an-
other person. The prisoner's counsel was cross-examin-
ing this witness with no result, except that he had never
seen the prisoner on any other occasion, when the
wigged gentleman who had all this time been looking
at the ceiling of the court, wrote a word or two on a lit-
"Sº!!! O OAI, JO 908J,
*$SCINCIXII’I GIBIJI,
į SSRS' ' vſ. .i
, ，SNRºw·£
ý№§§§§
N`
-NR.\\ºli .
\\* /\\\^\````ÈRŅ- s- , “№sº
：º （ºſ. NºRNSSONNYNNY'№ ...，\º.
!~）/，ģ)ŅÈŠÈN， Ņ§g-）
º
As º
º
* * *
a *
Ņºſae
^ ºS
aeį.|№（NRS;'»ſ ^ ■
§§§§§
ºf:
º
º o
sº
&
ſº
º
º
£%
z
«»►^2，\\\\ſ av VW:ſ}.š.
§, |ſ|ſſ|№§§§È§}{\
.*（.*?∞}）;\\：S©s*}}Jºzº�
3
Šè
22
ag
*.s
*
*
ššķ��§§§
· , ）（\ſ*（?:%}}
�* * *\\RYNS，
！！!,}}~~ ~~~~–:- !... ~~~~）==
§§•… << ŠŇ.
}$\\N{~~ ~~~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~––––––……
§ ¶ •
， ，
№ -37
Jºš?·¿?！
§§§§§\\&: &NRŅĶĒŅĒ«»
•§§
Ņ
. &§
2.
*~ *
*· §§§§NN§§§
Jº, （… （RWYS§Ņ§
Ş
№ |
• • •*-*~*=~==|-
~）; J'， `````§§§§！<<ş
* *-... • ’ , • N •^' • • • • • • ’ .
* * * * * *' * ~~\
-*“.:\\… *§§§§SR =·●
2% *







































A DISAPE’OINTMENT. 71
tle piece of paper, screwed it up, and tossed it to him.
Opening this piece of paper in the next pause, the
counsel looked with great attention and curiosity at the
prisoner.
“You say again you are quite sure that it was the
prisoner?” *
The witness was quite sure. -
“Did you ever see anybody very like the prisoner?”
Not so like (the witness said), as that he could be
mistaken. -
“Look well upon that gentleman, my learned friend
there,” pointing to him who had tossed the paper over,
“ and then look well upon the prisoner. How say you?
Are they very like each other?”
Allowing for my learned friend’s appearance being
careless and slovenly, if not debauched, they were suf-
ficiently like each other to surprise, not only the witness,
but everybody present, when they were thus brought
into comparison. My Lord being prayed to bid my
learned friend lay aside his wig, and giving no very
gracious consent, the likeness became much more re-
markable. My Lord inquired of Mr. Stryver (the pris-
oner’s counsel), whether they were next to try Mr.
Carton (name of my learned friend) for treason? But,
Mr. Stryver replied to my Lord, no ; but he would ask
the witness to tell him whether what happened once,
might happen twice; whether he would have been so
confident if he had seen this illustration of his rashness
sooner; whether he would be so confident, having seen
it: and more. The upshot of which, was, to smash this
witness like a crockery vessel, and shiver his part of
the case to useless lumber. -
Mr. Cruncher had by this time taken quite a lunch of
rust off his fingers, in his following of the evidence. He
had now to attend while Mr. Stryver fitted the prison-
er's case on the jury, like a compact suit of clothes;
showing them how the patriot, Barsad, was a hired spy
and traitor, an unblushing trafficker in blood, and one
of the greatest scoundrels upon earth since accursed
Judas—which he certainly did look rather like. How
the virtuous servant, Cly, was his friend and partner,
and was worthy to be; how the watchful eyes of those
forgers and false swearers had rested on the prisoner as
a victim, because some family affairs in France, he
72 A TALE OF A TWO CITIES.
being of French extraction, did require his making
those passages across the. Channel—though what those
affairs were, a consideration for others who were near
and dear to him, forbad him, even for his life, to dis-
close. How the evidence that had been warped and
wrested from the young lady, whose anguish in giving
it they had witnessed, came to nothing, involving the
mere little innocent gallantries and politenesses likely
to pass between any young gentleman and young lady
so thrown together:-with the exception of that refer-
ence to George Washington, which was altogether too
extravagant and impossible, to be regarded in any other
light than as a monstrous joke. How it would be a
weakness in the government to break down in this at-
tempt to practise for popularity on the lowest national
antipathies and fears, and therefore Mr. Attorney-
General had made the most of it; how, nevertheless, it
rested upon nothing save that vile and infamous char-
acter of evidence too often disfiguring such cases, and
of which the State Trials of this country were full. But,
there My Lord interposed (with as grave a face as if it
had not been true), saying that he could not sit upon
that Bench and suffer those allusions.
Mr. Stryver then called his few witnesses, and Mr.
Cruncher had next to attend while Mr. Attorney-Gen-
eral turned the whole suit of clothes Mr. Stryver had
fitted on the jury, inside out; showing how Barsad and
Cly were even a hundred times better than he had
thought them, and the prisoner a hundred times worse.
Lastly, came My Lord himself, turning the suit of
clothes, now inside out, now outside in, but on the whole
decidedly trimming and shaping them into grave-clothes
for the prisoner.
And now, the jury turned to consider, and the great
flies swarmed again.
Mr. Carton, who had so long sat looking at the ceiling
of the court, changed neither his place nor his attitude,
even in this excitement. While his learned friend, Mr.
Stryver, massing his papers before him, whispered with
those who sat near, and from time to time glanced
anxiously at the jury; while all the spectators moved
more or less, and grouped themselves anew; while even
My Lord himself arose from his seat, and slowly paced
up and down his platform, not unattended by a sus-
A DISAPPOINTMENT. 73
picion in the minds of the audience that his state was
feverish; this one man sat leaning back, with his torn
gown half off him, his untidy wig put on just as it had
happened to light on his head after its removal, his
hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the ceiling as they
had been all day. Something especially reckless in his
demeanour, not only gave him a disreputable look, but
so diminished the strong resemblance he undoubtedly
bore to the prisoner (which his momentary earnestness,
when they were compared together, had strengthened),
that many of the lookers-on, taking note of him now,
said to one another they would hardly have thought
the two were so alike. Mr. Cruncher made the
observation to his next neighbour, and added, “I’d
hold half a guinea that he don’t get no law-work
i. do. Don’t look like the sort of one to get any, do
e?” -
Yet, this Mr. Carton took in more of the details of the
scene than he appeared to take in; for now, when
Miss Manette's head dropped upon her father's breast,
he was the first to see it, and to say audibly: “Officer!
look to that young lady. Help the gentleman to take
her out. Don’t you see she will fall!”
There was much commiseration for her as she was
removed, and much sympathy with her father. It had
evidently been a great distress to him, to have the days
of his imprisonment recalled. He had shown strong
internal agitation when he was questioned, and that
ondering or brooding look which made him old, had
i. upon him, like a heavy cloud, ever since. As he
passed out, the jury, who had turned back and paused
a moment, spoke, through their foreman.
They were not agreed, and wished to retire. My
Lord (perhaps with George Washington on his mind)
showed some surprise that they were not agreed, but
signified his pleasure that they should retire under
watch and ward, and retired himself. The trial had
lasted all day, and the lamps in the court were now
being lighted. It began to be rumoured that the jury
would be out a long while. The spectators dropped off
to get refreshment, and the prisoner withdrew to the
back of the dock, and sat down.
Mr. Lorry, who had gone out when the young lady
and her father went out, now reappeared, and beckoned
74 - A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
to Jerry: who, in the slackened interest, could easily
get near him. - -
“Jerry, if you wish to take something to eat, you can.
But, keep in the way. You will be sure to hear when
the jury come in. Don’t be a moment behind them, for
I want you to take the verdict back to the bank. You
are the quickest messenger I know, and will get to
Temple Bar long before I can.” -
Jerry had just enough forehead to knuckle, and he
knuckled it in acknowledgment of this communication
and a shilling. Mr. Carton came up at the moment,
and touched Mr. Lorry on the arm.
“How is the young lady?” -
“She is greatly distressed; but her father is comfort-
ing her, and she feels the better for being out of court.”
“I’ll tell the prisoner so. It won’t do for a respectable
bank-gentleman like you, to be seen speaking to him
publicly, you know.” -
Mr. Lorry reddened, as if he were conscious of having
debated the point in his mind, and Mr. Carton made his
way to the outside of the bar. The way out of court
lay in that direction, and Jerry followed him, all eyes,
ears, and Spikes.
“Mr. Darnay!”
The prisoner came forward directly.
“You will naturally be anxious to hear of the witness,
Miss Manette. She will do very well. You have seen
the worst of her agitation.”
“I am deeply sorry to have been the cause of it.
Could you tell her so for me, with my fervent acknowl-
edgments P’’
“Yes, I could. I will, if you ask it.” -
Mr. Carton’s manner was so careless as to be almost
insolent. He stood, half turned from the prisoner, loung-
ing with his elbow against the bar.
“I do ask it. Accept my cordial thanks.”
“What,” said Carton, still only half turned towards
him, ‘‘ do you expect, Mr. Darnay?”
“The WOrSt.”
“It’s the wisest thing to expect, and the likeliest. But
I think their withdrawing is in your favour.”
Loitering on the way out of court not being allowed,
Jerry heard no more; but left them—so like each other
in feature, so unlike each other in manner—standing
A DISAPPOINTMENT. - 75
side by side, both reflected in the glass above them.
An hour and a half limped heavily away in the thief-
and-rascal-crowded passages below, even though as-
sisted off with mutton pies and ale. The hoarse mes-
senger, uncomfortably seated on a form after taking
that refection, had dropped into a doze, when a loud
murmur and a rapid tide of people setting up the stairs
that led to the court, carried him along with them.
“Jerry! Jerry!” Mr. Lorry was already calling at the
door when he got there.
“Here, sir! It’s a fight to get back again. Here I
am, sir!” r -
Mr. Lorry handed him a paper through the throng
“Quick | Have you got it P”
“Yes, sir.” . -
Hastily written on the paper was the word “ACQUIT-
TED.” -
“If you had sent the message, “Recalled to Life,’
again,” muttered Jerry, as he turned, “I should have
known what you meant, this time.” -
He had no opportunity of saying, or so much as think-
ing, anything else, until he was clear of the Old Bailey;
for, the crowd came pouring out with a vehemence that
nearly took him off his legs, and a loud buzz swept into
the street as if the baffled blue-flies were dispersing in
search of other carrion.
–º
CHAPTER IV.
C O N G. R. A. T U L A TO R. Y.
Elºy the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the
last sediment of the human stew that had been
boiling there all day, was straining off, when Doctor
Manette, Lucie Manette his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the
Solicitor for the defence, and its counsel Mr. Stryver,
• Stood gathered around Mr. Charles Darnay—just re-
leased—congratulating him on his escape from death.
. It would have been difficult by a far brighter light,
to recognise in Doctor Manette, intellectual of face and
upright of bearing, the shoemaker of the garret in Paris.
Yet, no one could have looked at him twice, without
76 * A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
looking again: even though the opportunity of observa-
tion had not extended to the mournful cadence of his
low grave voice, and to the abstraction that overclouded
him fitfully, without any apparent reason. While one
external cause, and that a reference to his long lingering
agony, would always—as on the trial—evoke this con-
dition from the depths of his soul, it was also in its
nature to arise of itself, and to draw a gloom over him,
as incomprehensible to those unacquainted with his
story as if they had seen the shadow of the actual Bas-
tile thrown upon him by a summer Sun, when the sub-
stance was three hundred miles away.
Only his daughter had the power of charming this
black brooding from his jº. She was the golden
thread that united him to a Past beyond his misery,
- and to a Present beyond his misery; and the sound of
her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her hand,
had a strong beneficial influence with him almost
always. Not absolutely always, for she could recal some
occasions on which her power had failed; but, they
were few and slight, and she believed them over.
Mr. Darnay had kissed her hand fervently and grate-
fully, and had turned to Mr. Stryver, whom he warmly
thanked. Mr. Stryver, a man of little more than
thirty, but looking twenty years older than he was,
stout, loud, red, bluff and free from any drawback
of delicacy, had a pushing way of shouldering him-
self (morally and physically) into companies and
conversations, that argued well for his shouldering his
way up in life.
He still had his wig and gown on, and he said, squar-
ing himself at his late client to that degree that he
*::: the innocent Mr. Lorry clean out of the º ;
“I am glad to have brought you off with honour, Mr.
Darnay. It was an infamous prosecution, grossly
infamous; but not the less likely to succeed, on that
account.”
“You have laid me under an obligation to you for
life—in two senses,” said his late client, taking his
hand.
“I have done my best for you, Mr. Darnay; and my
best is as good as another man's, I believe.”
It clearly being incumbent on somebody to say,
“Much better,” Mr. Lorry said it; perhaps not quite
CONGRATULATORY. y?
disinterestedly, but with the interested object of squeez-
ing himself back again. -
“You think so?” said Mr. Stryver. “Well! you have
been present all day, and you ought to know. You are
a man of business, too.”
“And as such,” quoth Mr. Lorry, whom the counsel
learned in the law had now shouldered back into the
group, just as he had previously shouldered him out of
it—“ as such, I will appeal to Dr. Manette, to break up
this conference and order us all to our homes. Miss
Lucie looks ill, Mr. Darnay has had a terrible day, we
are worn out.” –Z $
“Speak for yourself, Mr. Lorry,” said Stryver; “I
have a night’s work to do yet. Speak for yourself.”
“I speak for myself,” answered Mr. Lorry, “and for
Mr. Darnay, and for Miss Lucie, and—Miss Lucie, do
you not think I may speak for us all?” He asked her
the question pointedly, and with a glance at her father.
His face had become frozen, as it were, in a very
curious look at Darnay; an intent look, deepening into
a frown of dislike and distrust, not even unmixed with
fear. With this strange expression on him his thoughts
had wandered away.
hi My father,” said Lucie, softly laying her hand on
IS.
He slowly shook the shadow off, and turned to her.
“Shall we go home, my father?”
With a long breath, he answered, “Yes.”
The friends of the acquitted prisoner had dispersed,
under the impression—which he himself had originated
—that he would not be released that night. The lights
were nearly all extinguished in the passages, the iron
ates were being closed with a jar and a rattle, and the
#. place was deserted until to-morrow morning’s
interest of gallows, pillory, whipping-post, and brand-
ing-iron, should repeople it. Walking between her
father and Mr. Darnay, Lucie Manette passed into the
open air. A hackney-coach was called, and the father
and daughter departed in it.
Mr. Stryver had left them in the passages, to shoulder
his way back to the robing room. Another person who
had not joined the group, or interchanged a word with
any one of them, but who had been leaning against the
wall where its shadow was darkest, had silently strolled
78 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
out after the rest, and had looked on until the coach
drove away. He now stepped up to where Mr. Lorry
and Mr. Darnay stood upon the pavement.
“So, Mr. Lorry! Men of business may speak to Mr.
Darnay now?”
Nobody had made any acknowledgment of Mr. Car-
ton’s part in the day’s proceedings; nobody had known
of it. He was unrobed, and was none the better for it
in appearance. -
“If you knew what a conflict goes on in the business
mind, when the business mind is divided between good-
natured impulse and business appearances, you would
be amused, Mr. Darnay.” 's- -
Mr. Lorry reddened, and said warmly, “You have
mentioned that before, sir. We men of business, who
serve a House, are not our own masters. We have to
think of the House more than ourselves.” *
“I know, I know,” rejoined Mr. Carton, carelessly.
“Don’t be nettled, Mr. Lorry. You are as good as an-
other, I have no doubt ; better, I dare say.”
“And indeed, sir,” pursued Mr. Lorry, not minding
him, ‘‘ I really don’t know what you have to do with
the matter. If you’ll excuse me, as very much your
elder, for saying so, I really don’t know that it is your
business.” - -
“Business | Bless you, I have no business,” said
Mr. Carton. , *
“It is a pity you have not, sir.”
‘‘I think so too.”
“If you had,” pursued Mr. Lorry, “perhaps you woul
attend to it.”
“Lord love you, no l—I shouldn’t,” said Mr. Carton.
“Well, sir!” cried Mr. Lorry, thoroughly heated by
his indifference, “business is a very good thing, and a
very respectable thing. And, sir, if business imposes
its restraints and its silences and impediments, Mr.
Darnay as a young gentleman of generosity knows how
to make allowance for that circumstance. Mr. Darnay,
good night, God bless you, sir I hope you have been
this day preserved for a prosperous and happy life.—
Chair there ! ”
Perhaps a little angry with himself, as well as with
the barrister, Mr. Lorry bustled into the chair, and was
carried off to Tellson’s. Carton, who smelt of port wine,
, _2~
CONGRATULATORY. 79
and did not appear to be quite Sober, laughed then, and
tnrned to Darnay: - -
“This is a strange chance that throws you and me to-
gether. This must be a strange night to you, stand-
ing alone here with your counterpart on these street-
Stones P” - -
“I hardly seem yet,” returned Charles Darnay, “ to
belong to this world again.”
“I don’t wonder at it ; it’s not so long since you were
pretty far advanced on your way to another. You speak
faintly.” - - - - . ."
“I begin to think I am faint.” -
“Then why the devil don’t you dine P I dined, my-
self, while those numskulls were deliberating which
world you should belong to—this, or some other. Let
me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at.”
Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down
Ludgate-hill to Fleet-street, and so, up a covered way,
into a tavern. Here, they were shown into a little room,
where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength
with a good plain dinner and good wine : while Carton
sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate
bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolent
manner upon him. .
“Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial
scheme again, Mr. Darnay ?” - :
“I am frightfully confused regarding time and place;
but I am so far mended as to feel that.”
“It must be an immense satisfaction!” .
He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again: which
was a large One. º: + -
“As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget
that I belong to it. It has no good in it for me—except
wine like this—nor I for it. So we are not much alike
in that particular. Indeed, I begin to think we are not
much alike in any particular, you and I.”
Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his
being there with this Double of coarse deportment, to
be like a dream, Charles Darnay was at a loss how to
answer ; finally, answered not at all. - -
“Now your dinner is done,” Carton presently said,
“why don’t you call a health, Mr. Darnay ; why don’t
you give your toast?” -
“What health P What toast,”
80 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“Why, it’s on the tip of your tongue. It Ought to be,
it must be, I’ll swear it’s there.”
“Miss Manette, then!”
“Miss Manette, then!” -
Looking his companion full in his face while he drank
the toast, Carton flung his glass over his shoulder
against the wall, where it shivered to pieces; then, rang
the bell, and ordered in another. -
“That’s a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the
dark, Mr. Darnay !” he said, filling his new goblet.
A slight frown and a laconic “Yes,” were the
a,InSWeI’.
“That’s a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept
for by How does it feel? Is it worth being tried for
one’s life, to be the object of such sympathy and Com-
passion, Mr, Darnay ?”
Again Darnay answered not a word. *
“She was mightily pleased to have your message,
when I gave it her. Not that she showed she was pleased,
but I suppose she was.” .
The .#. served as a timely reminder to Darnay
that this disagreeable companion had, of his own free
will, assisted him in the strait of the day. He turned
the dialogue to that point, and thanked him for it.
‘‘I neither want any thanks, nor merit any,” was the
careless rejoinder. “It was nothing to do, in the first
place ; and I don’t know why I did it, in the second.
Mr. Darnay, let me ask you a question.”
“Willingly, and a small return for your good offices.”
“Do you think I particularly like you?” -
“Really, Mr. Carton,” returned the other, oddly dis-
concerted, “I have not asked myself the question.”
“But ask yourself the question now.” - -
“You have acted as if you do; but I don’t think
you do.” - .
“I don’t think I do,” said Carton. “I begin to have
a very good opinion of your understanding.”
“Nevertheless,” pursued Darnay, rising to ring the
bell, “there is nothing in that, I hope, to prevent my
calling the reckoning, and our parting without ill-blood
on either side.” -
Carton rejoining, “ Nothing in life!” Darnay rang.
“Do you call the whole reckoning?” said Carton. On
his answering in the affirmative, “ Then bring me an-
* CONGRATULATORY. 81
other pint of this same wine, drawer, and come and
wake me at ten.”
The bill being paid, Charles Darnay rose and wished
him good-night. Without returning the wish, Carton
rose too with something of a threat or defiance in his
manner, and said, “A last word, Mr. Darnay; you think
I am drunk?”
“I think you have been drinking, Mr. Carton.”
“Think P You know I have been drinking.”
“Since I must say so, I know it.”
“Then you shall likewise know why. I am a disap-
pointed drudge, sir. ... I care for no man on earth, and no
man on earth cares for me.”
“Much to be regretted. You might have used your
talents better.”
“May be so, Mr. Darnay ; may be not. Don’t let
your sober face elate you, however; you don’t know
what it may come to. Good night!”
When he was left alone, this strange being took up a
candle, went to a glass that hung against the wall, and
surveyed himself minutely in it.
“Do you particularly like the man?” he muttered, at
his own image ; “why should you particularly like a
man who resembles you ? There is nothing in you to
like ; you know that. Ah, confound you ! What a
change you have made in yourself | A good reason for
taking to a man, that he shows you what you have
fallen away" from, and what you might have been!
Change places with him, and would you have been
looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commis-
erated by that agitated face as he was P. Come on, and
have it out in plain words ! You hate the fellow.”
He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank
it all in a few minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with
his hair straggling over the table, and a long winding-
sheet in the candle dripping down upon him. ?
VOI. I. 6
82 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
C H A PTE R. W.
THE JACKAL.
HOSE were drinking days and most men drank
hard. So very great is the improvement Time has
brought about in such habits, that a moderate statement
of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would
swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment
to his reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem,
in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration. The learned
profession of the Law was certainly not behind any
other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities;
neither was Mr. Stryver, already fast shouldering his
way to a large and lucrative practice, behind his com-
peers in this particular, any more than in the drier parts
of the legal race. e
A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions,
Mr. Stryver had begun cautiously to hew away the
lower staves of the ladder on which he mounted. Ses-
sions and Old Bailey had now to summon their favourite,
specially, to their longing arms; and shouldering itself
towards the visage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court
of King's Bench, the florid countenance of Mr. Stryver
might be daily seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs,
like a great sunflower pushing its way at the sun from
among a rank garden-full of ãº. Companions.
It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr.
Stryver was a glib man, and an unscrupulous, and a
ready, and a bold, he had not that faculty of extracting
the essence from a heap of statements, which is among
the most striking and necessary of the advocate’s ac-
complishments. But, a remarkable improvement came
upon him as to this. The more business he got, the
greater his power seemed to grow of getting at its pith
and marrow; and however late at night he sat carousing
with Sydney Carton, he always had his points at his
fingers’ ends in the morning.
THE JACKAL. 83
*-
Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men,
was Stryver's great ally. What the two drank together,
between Hilary Term and Michaelmas, might have
floated a king's ship. Stryver never had a case in hand,
anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his
pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court; they went
the same Circuit, and even there they prolonged their
usual orgies late into the night, and Carton was
rumoured to be seen at broad day, going home stealthily
and unsteadily to his lodgings, like a dissipated Cat.
At last, it began to get about, among such as were inter-
ested in, the matter, that although Sydney Carton would
never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and
that he rendered suit and service to Stryver in that
humble capacity.
“Ten o’clock, sir,” said the man at the tavern, whom
he had charged to wake him—“ten o’clock, sir.”
‘‘ What’s the matter?”
“Ten o'clock, sir.”
“What do you mean? Ten o’clock at night?”
“Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you.”
“Oh! I remember. Very well, very well.”
After a few dull efforts to get to sleep again, which
the man dexterously combated by stirring the fire con-
tinuously for five minutes, he got up, tossed his hat on,
and walked out. He turned into the Temple, and, having
revived himself by twice pacing the pavements of
Ring's Bench-walk and Paper-buildings, turned into
the Stryver chambers. e
The Stryver clerk, who never assisted at these con-
ferences, had gone home, and the Stryver principal
opened the door. He had his slippers. On, and a loose
bedgown, and his throat was bare for his greater ease.
He had that rather wild, strained, seared marking
about the eyes, which may be observed in all free livers
of his class, from the portrait of Jeffries downward, and
which can be traced, under various disguises of Art,
through the portraits of every Drinking Age.
“You are a little late, Memory,” said Stryver.
l “About the usual time; it may be a quarter of an hour
ater.” -
They went into a dingy room lined with books and
littered with papers, where there was a blazing fire. A
kettle steamed upon the hob, and in the midst of the
84 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
wreck of papers a table shone, with plenty of wine
upon it, and brandy, and rum, and sugar, and lemons.
“You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney.” .
“Two to-night, lithink. I have been dining with the
day’s client; or seeing him dine—it’s all one !” .
“That was a rare point, Sydney, that you brought to
bear upon the identification. How did you come by it?
When did it strike you?” -
“I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I
thought I should have been much the same sort of fel-
low, if I had had any luck.” -
Mr. Stryver laughed, till he shook his precocious
paunch. “You and your luck, Sydney! Get to work,
get to work.”
Sullenly enough, the jackal loosened his dress, went
into an adjoining room, and came back with a large jug
of cold water, a basin and a towel or two. Steeping
the towels in the water, and partially wringing them
out, he folded them on his head in a manner hideous to
behold, sat down at the table, and said, “Now I am
ready!”
“Not much boiling down to be done to-night,
Memory,” said Mr. Stryver, gaily, as he looked among
his papers.
“How much?”
“Only two sets of them.”
“Give me the worst first.”
“There they are, Sydney. Fire away!”
The lion then composed himself on a sofa on One side
of the drinking-table, while the jackal sat at his own
paper-bestrewn table proper, on the other side of it,
with the bottles and glasses ready to his hand. Both
resorted to the drinking-table without stint, but each
in a different way; the lion for the most part reclining
with his hands in his waistband, looking at the fire, or
occasionally flirting with some lighter document; the
jackal with knitted brows and intent face, so deep in
his task; that his eyes did not even follow the hand her
stretched out for his glass—which often groped about,
for a minute or more before it found the glass for his
lips. Two or three times, the matter in hand became
so knotty, that the jackal found it imperative on him
to get up, and steep his towels anew. From these
pilgrimages to the jug and basin, he returned with such
, 24.
THE JACKAL. 85
eccentricities of damp head-gear as no words can
describe; which were made the more ludicrous by his
anxious gravity. * . * •
At length the Jackal had got together a compact
repast for the lion, and proceeded to offer it to him.
The lion took it with care and caution, made his selec-
tions from it, and his remarks upon it, and the jackal
assisted both. When the repast was fully discussed,
the lion put his hands in his waistband again, and lay
down to meditate. The jackal then invigorated him-
self with a bumper for his throttle, and a fresh appli-
cation to his head, and applied himself to the collection
of a second meal; this was administered to the lion in
the same manner, and was not disposed of until the
clocks struck three in the morning.
“And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of
punch,” said Mr. Stryver. -
The jackal removed the towels from his head, which
had been steaming again, shook himself, yawned, shiv-
ered, and complied.
“You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of
those crown witnessess to-day. Every question told.”
“I always am sound; am I not?”
“I don’t gainsay it. . What has roughened your
temper? Put some punch to it and smooth it again.”
With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.
“The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School,”
said Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed
him in the present and the past, ‘‘the old seesaw
Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now in
spirits and now in despondency!” -
“Ah!” returned the other, sighing: “yes! The same
Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exer-
cises for other boys, and seldom did my own.”
“And why not?”
“God knows. It was my way, I suppose.”
He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs
stretched out before him, looking at the fire.
“Carton,” said his friend, squaring himself at him
with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the
furnace in which sustained endeavour was forged, and
the one delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney
Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him
into it, “ your way is, and always was, a lame Way.
86 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
You summon no energy and purpose. Look at
me.” ...-
“Oh, botheration!” returned Sydney, with a lighter
and more good-humoured laugh, “don’t you be moral!”
“How have I done what I have done?” said Stryver;
“how do I do what I do?” -
“Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose.
But it’s not worth your while to apostrophise me, or
the air, about it; what you want to do, you do. You were
always in the front rank, and I was always behind.”
“I had to get into the front rank; I was not born
there, was I?”
“I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion
is you were,” said Carton. At this, he laughed again,
and they both laughed. -
“Before Shrewsbury, . and at Shrewsbury, and ever
since Shrewsbury,” pursued Carton, “you have fallen
into your rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even
when we were fellow-students in the Student-Quarter
of Paris, picking up French, and French law, and other
French crumbs that we didn’t get much good of, you
were always somewhere, and I was always—nowhere.”
“And whose fault was that?”
“Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours.
You were always driving and riving and shouldering
and pressing, to that restless degree that I had no chance
for my life But in rust and repose. It’s a gloomy thing,
however, to talk about one’s Own past, with the day
prººking. Turn me in some other direction before
mºs O. 55
*Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness,” said
Stryver, holding up his glass. “Are you turned in a
pleasant direction?”
Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.
“Pretty witness,” he muttered, looking down into his
glass. “I have had enough of witnesses to-day, and
to-night; who's your pretty witness?”
“The picturesque Doctor's daughter, Miss Manette.”
“She pretty!”
“Is She not?”
4 & NO.”
“Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the
whole Court!” *
‘‘ Rot the admiration of the whole Court! Who made
THE JACKAL. A 8%
the Old Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden-
haired doll?” -
“Do you know, Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, looking
at him with sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand
across his florid face: “ do you know, I rather thought,
at the time, that you sympathised with the golden-
hair doll, and were quick to see what happened to the
golden-haired doll?”
“Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no
doll, swoons within a yard or two of a man’s nose, he
can see it without a perspective-glass. I pledge you,
but I deny the beauty. And now I’ll have”no more
drink; I'll get to bed.”
When his host followed him out on the staircase with
a candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was
coldly looking in through its grimy windows. When he
got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull
sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene
like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spin-
ning round and round before the morning blast, as if the
desert-Sand hall risen far away, and the first spray of it
in its advance had begun to overwhelm the city.
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around,
this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace,
and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before
him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and
perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were
airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked
upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripen-
ing, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A mo-
ment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in
a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes
. a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted
€a,I’S.
Sadly, Sadly, the Sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight
than the man of good abilities and good emotions, in-
sº of their directed exercise, incapable of his own
help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on
him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.
88 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
CHAPTER VI.
- HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE.
Th; quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a
Quiet Street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the
afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of
four months had rolled over the trial for treason, and
carried it, as to the public interest and memory, far out
to sea, Mr. Jarvis Lorry walked along the Sunny Streets
from Clerkenwell where he lived, on his way to dine
with the Doctor. After several relapses into business-
absorption, Mr. Lorry had become the Doctor's friend,
and the quiet street-corner was the sunny part of his life.
Gn this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walked to-
wards Soho, early in the afternoon, for three reasons of
habit. Firstly, because, onfine Sundays, he often walked
out, before dinner, with the Doctor and Lucie; Secondly,
because, on unfavourable Sundays, he was accustomed
to be with them as the family friend, talking, reading,
looking out of window, and generally getting through
the day; thirdly, because he happened to have his Own
little shrewd doubts to solve, and knew how the ways of
the Doctor's household pointed to that time as a likely
time for solving them.
A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor
lived, was not to be found in London. There was no
way through it, and the front windows of the Doctor's
lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista of street
that had a congenial air of retirement on it. There
were few buildings then, north of the Oxford-road,
and forest-trees flourished, and wild flowers grew, and
the hawthorn blossomed, in the now vanished fields.
As a consequence, country airs circulated in Soho with
vigorous freedom, instead of languishing into the
parish like stray paupers without a settlement; and
there was many a good south wall, not far off, on
which the peaches ripened in their season.
*~...
HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. S9
The summer light struck into the corner brilliantly
in the earlier part of the day; but, when the streets
grew hot, the corner was in shadow, though not in
shadow so remote but that you could see beyond it
into a glare of brightness. It was a cool spot, staid
but cheerful, a wonderful place for echoes, and a very
harbour from the raging streets.
There ought to have been a tranquil bark in such
an anchorage, and there was. The Doctor occupied
two floors of a large still house, where several call-
ings purported to be pursued by day, but whereof
little was audible any day, and which was shunned
by all of them at night. In a building at the back,
attainable by a court-yard where a plane-tree rustled
its green leaves, church-Organs claimed to be made,
and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to be beaten
by some mysterious giant who had a golden arm start-
ing out of the wall of the front hall—as if he had beaten
himself precious, and menaced a similar conversion of
all visitors. Very little of these trades, or of a lonely
lodger, rumoured to live up-stairs, or of a dim coach-
trimming maker asserted to have a counting-house
below, was ever heard or seen. Occasionally, a stray
workman putting his coat on, traversed the hall, or a
stranger peered about there, or a distant clink was
heard across the court-yard, or a thump from the
golden giant. These; however, were only the excep-
tions required to prove the rule that the sparrows
in the plane-tree behind the house, and the echoes in
the corner before it, had their own way from Sunday
morning unto Saturday night.
Doctor Manette received such patients here as his
old reputation, and its revival in the floating whispers
of his story, brought him. His scientific knowledge,
and his vigilance and skill in conducting ingenious
experiments, brought him otherwise into moderate
request, and he earned as much as he wanted.
These things were within Mr. Jarvis Lorry's knowl-
edge, thoughts, and notice, when he rang the door-bell
of the tranquil house in the corner, on the fine Sunday
afternoon. -
“Doctor Manette at home?
Expected home.
“Miss Lucie at home?”
55
90 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
Expected homo.
“Miss Pross at home?”
Possibly at home, but of a certainty impossible for
handmaid to anticipate intentions of Miss Pross, as to
admission or denial of the fact.
“As I am at home myself,” said Mr. Lorry, “I’ll go
up-stairs.”
Although the Doctor's daughter had known nothing
of the country of her birth, she appeared to have
inately derived from it that ability to make much of
little means, which is one of its most useful and most
agreeable characteristics. Simple as the furniture was,
it was set off by so many liftle adornments, of no value
but for their taste and fancy, that its effect was de-
lightful. The disposition of everything in the rooms,
from the largest object to the least; the arrangement of
colours, the elegant variety and contrast obtained by
thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good
sense; were at Once so pleasant in themselves, and so
expressive of their originator, that, as Mr. Lorry stood
looking about him, the very chairs and tables seemed
to ask him, with something of that peculiar expression
which he knew so well by this time, whether he
approved?
There were three rooms on a floor, and, the doors by
which they communicated being put Open that the air
might pass freely through them all, Mr. Lorry, Smilingly
observant of that fanciful resemblance which he de-
tected all around him, walked from one to another.
The first was the best room, and in it were Lucie's
birds, and flowers, and books, and desk, and work-table,
and box of water-colours; the second was the Doctor’s
consulting-room, used also as, the dining-room; the
third, changingly speckled by the rustle of the plane-
tree in the yard, was the Doctor's bed-room, and there,
in a corner, stood the disused shoemaker’s bench and
tray of tools, much as it had stood on the fifth floor of
the dismal house by the wine-shop, in the suburb of
Saint Antoine in Paris. *
“I wonder,” said Mr. Lorry, pausing in his looking
about, ‘‘that he keeps that reminder of his sufferings
by him!” . e
“And why wonder at that?’” was the abrupt inquiry
that made him start. -
HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. 91
It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman,
strong of hand, whose acquaintance he had first made
at the Royal George Hotel at Dover, and had since
improved.
“I should have thought—” Mr. Lorry began.
“Pooh! You’d have thought!” said Miss Pross; and
Mr. Lorry left off.
“How do you do?” inquired that lady then—sharply,
and yet as if to express that she bore him no malice.
“I am pretty well, I thank you,” answered Mr. Lorry,
with meekness, “how are you?” *
“Nothing to boast of,” said Miss Pross.
“Indeed! ” -
“Ah! indeed!” said Miss Pross. “I am very much
put out about my Ladybird.”
** Indeed?”
“For gracious sake say something else besides ‘in-
deed,” or you’ll fidget me to death,” said Miss. Pross :
whose character (dissociated from stature) was short-
Iſle SS.
“Really then?” said Mr. Lorry as an amendment.
“Really is bad enough,” returned Miss Pross, “but
better. Yes, I am very much put out.”
“May I ask the cause?”
“I don’t want dozens of people who are not at all
worthy of Ladybird, to come here looking after her,”
said Miss Pross.
“Do dozens come for that purpose?”
“Hundreds,” said Miss Pross.
It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other
people before her time and since) that whenever her
original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Lorry, as the safest remark he
could think of.
“I have lived with the darling—or the darling has lived
with me, and paid me for it; which she certainly should
never have done, you may take your affidavit, if I
could have afforded to keep either myself or her for
nothing—since she was ten years old. And it’s really
very hard,” said Miss Pross.
Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr.
Lorry shook his head; using that important part of
himself as a sort of fairy cloak that would fit anything.
“All sorts of people who are not in the least degree
92 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
*
worthy of the pet, are always turning up,” said Miss
Pross. “When you began it—”
“I began it, Miss Pross P”
“Didn’t you ? Who brought her father to life P”
“Oh I If that was beginning it—” said Mr. Lorry.
“It wasn’t ending it, I suppose P I say, when you
began it, it was hard enough ; not that I have any
fault to find with Doctor Manette, except that he is not
worthy of such a daughter, which is no imputation on
him, for it was not to be expected that anybody should
be, under any circumstances. But it really is doubly
and trebly hard to have crowds and multitudes of people
turning up after him (I could have forgiven him), to
take Ladybird’s affections away from me.”
Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he
also knew her by this time to be, beneath the surface of
her eccentricity, one of those unselfish creatures—
found only among women—who will, for pure love and
admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth
when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had,
to accomplishments that they were never fortunate
enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon
their own sombre lives. He knew enough of the world
to know that there is nothing in it better than the faith-
ful service of the heart ; so rendered and so free from
any mercenary taint, he had such an exalted respect
for it, that, in the retributive arrangements made by
his own mind—we all make such arrangements, more
or less—he stationed Miss Pross much nearer to the
lower Angels than many ladies immeasurably better
got up both by Nature and Art, who had balances at
Tellson’s.
“There never was, nor will be, but one man
worthy of Ladybird,” said Miss Pross ; “and that
was my brother Solomon, if he hadn’t made a mis-
take in life.”
Here again: Mr. Lorry's inquiries into Miss Pross's
pººl history, had established the fact that her
rother Solomon was a heartless scoundrel who had
stripped her of everything she possessed, as a stake to
speculate with, and had abandoned her in her poverty
for evermore, with no touch of compunction. Miss
Pross's fidelity of belief in Solomon (deducting a mere
trifle for this slight mistake) was quite a serious matter
HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. 93
with Mr. Lorry, and had its weight in his good opinion
of her. • -º-º: . .”
“As we happen to be alone for the moment, and
are both people of business,” he said when they had
got back to the drawing-room, and had sat down
there in friendly relations, “let me ask you—does the
Doctor, in talking with Lucie, never refer to the shoe-
making time, yet P”
“Never.”
h “And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside
in P’’ -
“Ah !” returned Miss Pross, shaking her head.
“But I don’t say he don’t refer to it within himself.”
“Do you believe that he thinks of it much P”
“I do,” said Miss Pross.
“Do you imagine—” Mr. Lorry had begun, when
Miss Pross took him up short with:
& 4 Nºyer imagine anything. Have no imagination
at all.”
“I stand corrected ; do you suppose—you go so far
as to suppose, sometimes P.”
“Now and then,” said Miss Pross.
“Do you suppose,” Mr. Lorry went on, with a laugh-
ing twinkle in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her,
“ that Doctor Manette has any theory of his own, pre-
served through all those years, relative to the cause of
his being so oppressed ; perhaps, even to the name of
his oppressor P”
“I don’t suppose anything about it but what Lady-
bird tells me.”
“And that is—?” -
“That she thinks he has.” -
“Now don’t be angry at my asking all these ques-
tions; because I am a mere dull man of business, and
you are a woman of business.”
“Dull P” Miss Pross inquired, with placidity.
Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry
replied, “No, no, no. Surely not. To return to busi-
ness:–Is it not remarkable that Doctor Manette,
unquestionably innocent of any crime as we are well
assured he is, should never touch upon that question ?
I will not say with me, though he had business relations
with me many years ago, and we are now intimate ; I
will say with the fair daughter to whom he is so de-
94 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
votedly attached, and who is so devotedly attached to
him 2 Believe me, Miss Pross, I don’t approach the
topic with you, out of curiosity, but out of zealous
interest.”
“Well! To the best of my understanding, and bad’s
the best you’ll tell me,” said Miss Pross, softened by the
tone of the apology, “he is afraid of the whole subject.”
“Afraid?'"
“It’s plain enough, I should think, why he may be.
It’s a dreadful remembrance. Besides that, his loss of
himself grew out of it. Not knowing how he lost him-
Self, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel
Certain of not losing himself again. That alone wouldn’t
make the subject pleasant, I should think.”
It was a profounder remark than Mr. Lorry had looked
for.—“True,” said he, “and fearful to reflect upon. Yet,
a doubt lurks in my mind, Miss Pross, whether it is good
for Doctor Manette to have that suppression always shut
up within him. Indeed, it is this doubt and the uneasi-
ness it sometimes causes me that has led me to our pre-
sent confidence.” |
“Can't be helped,” said Miss Pross, shaking her head.
“Touch that string, and he instantly changes for the
Worse. Better leave it alone. In short, must leave it
alone, like or no like. Sometimes, he gets up in the
dead of the night, and will be heard, by us overhead
there, walking up and down, walking up and down, in
his room. Ladybird has learnt to know then, that his
mind is walking up and down, walking up and down, in
his old prison. She hurries to him, and they go on to-
gether, walking up and down, walking up and down,
until he is composed. But he never says a word of the
true reason of his restlessness, to her, and she find’s it
best not to hint at it to him. In silence they go walking
up and down together, walking up and down together,
till her love and company have brought him to himself.”
Notwithstanding Miss Pross's denial of her own im-
agination, there was a perception of the pain of being
monotonously haunted by one sad idea, in her repetition
of the phrase, walking up and down, which testified to
her possessing such a thing.
The corner has been mentioned as a wonderful corner
for echoes; it had begun to echo so º to the
tread of coming feet, that it seemed as though the very
|
HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. 95
mention of that weary pacing to and fro had set it
gollhg.
“Here they are!” said Miss Pross, rising to break up
the conference; “ and now we shall have hundreds of
people pretty soon!”
It was such a curious corner in its acoustical proper-
ties, such a peculiar Ear of a place, that as Mr. Lorry
stood at the open window, looking for the father and
daughter whose steps he heard, he fancied they
would never approach. Not only would the echoes die
away, as though the steps had gone; but, echoes of other
steps that never came, would be heard in their stead,
and would die away for good when they seemed close
at hand. However, father and daughter did at last
appear, and Miss Pross was ready at the street door to
receive them. e
Miss Pross was a pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red,
and grim, taking off her darling’s bonnet when she came
up-stairs, and touching it up with the ends of her hand-
kerchief, and blowing the dust off it, and folding her
mantle ready for laying by, and smoothing her rich hair
with as much pride as she could .#. taken in
her own hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest
of women. Her darling was a pleasant sight too, em-
bracing her and thanking her, and protesting against
her taking so much trouble for her—which last she only
dared to š. playfully, or Miss Pross, sorely hurt, would
have retired to her own chamber and cried. The Doctor
was a pleasant sight too, looking on at them, and tell-
ing Miss Pross how she spoilt. Lucie, in accents and
with eyes that had as much spoiling in them as Miss
Pross had, and would have had more if it were possible.
Mr. Lorry was a pleasant sight too, beaming at all this
in his little wig, and thanking his bachelor stars for
having lighted him in his declining years to a Home.
But, no Hundreds of people game to see the sights, and
Mr. Lorry looked in vain for the fulfilment of Miss
Pross’s prediction.
Dinner-time, and still no Hundreds of people. In the
arrangements of the little household, Miss Pross took
charge of the lower regions, and always acquitted her-
self marvellously. Her dinners, of a very modest qual-
ity, were so well cooked and so well served, and so neat
in their contrivances, half English and half French,
96 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
that nothing could be better. Miss Pross’s º
being of the thoroughly practical kind, she had ravage
Soho and the adjacent provinces, in search of impover-
ished French, who, tempted by shillings and half-crowns,
would impart culinary mysteries to her. From these
decayed sons and daughters of Gaul, she had acquired
such wonderful arts, that the woman and girl who
formed the staff of domestics regarded her as quite a
Sorceress, or Cinderella’s Godmother: who would send
out for a fowl, a rabbit, a vegetable or two from the
garden, and change them into anything she pleased.
On Sundays, Miss Pross dined at the Doctor's table,
but on other days persisted in taking her meals, at
unknown periods, either in the lower regions, or in her
own room on the second floor—a blue chamber, to
which no one but her Ladybird ever gained admit-
tance. On this occasion Miss Pross, responding to
Ladybird’s pleasant face and pleasant efforts to please
her, unbent exceedingly; so the dinner was very pleas-
ant, too. * -
It was an º day, and, after dinner, Lucie
proposed that the wine should be carried out under the
plane-tree, and they should sit there in the air. As
everything turned upon her and revolved about her,
they went out under the plane-tree, and she carried the
wine down for the special benefit of Mr. Lorry. She
had installed herself, some time before, as Mr. Dorry’s
cup-bearer; and while they sat under the plane-tree,
talking, she kept his glass replenished. Mysterious
backs and ends of houses peeped at them as they
talked, and the plane-tree whispered to them in its own
way above their heads.
Still, the Hundreds of people did not present them-
selves. Mr. Darnay presented himself while they were
sitting under the plane-tree, but he was only One.
Doctor Manette received him kindly, and so did Lucie.
But, Miss Pross suddenly became afflicted with a twitch-
ing in the head and body, and retired into the house.
She was not unfrequently the victim of this disorder,
; she called it, in familiar conversation, “a fit of the
jerks.”
The Doctor was in his best condition, and looked
specially young. The resemblance between him and
Lucie was very strong at such times, and, as they sat
HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. 97.
side by side, she leaning on his shoulder, and he rest-
ing his arm on the back of her chair, it was very
agreeable to trace the likeness. •, -
He had been talking all day, on many Subjects and
with unusual vivacity. “Pray, Doctor Manette,” said
Mr. Darnay, as they sat under the plane-tree—and he
said it in the natural pursuit of the topic in hand, which
happened to be the old buildings of London—“have
you seen much of the Tower?”
“Lucie and I have been there; but only casually. We
have seen enough of it, to know that it teems with
interest; little more.” **
“I have been there, as you remember,” said Darnay,
with a smile, though reddening a little angrily, “ in
another character, and not in a character that gives
facilities for seeing much of it. They told me a curious
thing when I was there.”
“What was that?” Tucie asked.
“In making some alterations, the workmen came upon
an old dungeon, which had been, for many years, built
up and forgotten. Every stone of its inner wall was
covered with inscriptions which had been carved by
prisoners—dates, names, complaints, and prayers. Upon
a corner Stone in an angle of the wall, one prisoner who
seemed to have gone to execution, had cut, as his last
work, three letters. They were done with some ver
poor instrument, and hurriedly, with an unsteady hand.
At first, they were read as D. I. C. ; but, on being more
carefully examined; the last letter was found to be G.
There was no record or legend of any prisoner with
those initials, and many fruitless guesses were made
what the name could have been. At length, it was
suggested that the letters were not initials, but the
complete word, DIG. The floor was examined very .
carefully under the inscription, and, in the earth
beneath a stone, or tile, or some fragment of paving,
were found the ashes of a paper, mingled with the ashes
of a small leathern case or bag. What the unknown
prisoner had written will never be read, but he had
written something, and hidden it away to keep it from
the gaoler.” - O
“My father!” exclaimed Lucie, “you are ill!”
He had suddenly started up, with his hand to his
head. His manner and his look quite terrified them all,
VOL. I, 7
98 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“No, my dear, not ill. There are large drops of rain
falling, and they made me start. We had better
go in.”
He recovered himself almost instantly. Rain was
really falling in large drops, and he showed the back
of his hand with rain-drops on it. But, he said not a single
word in reference to the discovery that had been told
of, and, as they went into the house, the business eye
of Mr. Lorry either detected, or fancied it detected, on
his face, as it turned towards Charles Darnay, the same
singular look that had been upon it when it turned
towards him in the passages of the Court House.
He recovered himself so quickly, however, that, Mr.
Lorry had doubts of his business eye. The arm of the
golden giant in the hall was not more steady than he
was, when he stooped under it to remark to them that
he was not yet proof against slight surprises (if he ever
would be), and that the rain had startled him.
Tea-time, and Miss Pross making tea, with another
fit of the jerks upon her, and yet no Hundreds of people.
Mr. Carton had lounged in, but he made only Two.
The night was so very sultry, that although they sat
with doors and windows open, they were overpowered
by heat. When the ºi. was done with, they all
moved to one of the windows, and looked out into the
heavy twilight. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat
beside her; Carton leaned against a window. The cur-
tains were long and white, and some of the thunder-
gusts that whirled into the corner, caught them up to
the ceiling, and waved them like spectral wings.
“The rain-drops are still falling, large, heavy and
few,” said Doctor Manette. “It comes slowly.”
“It comes surely,” said Carton.
They spoke low, as people watching and waiting
mostly do; as ;. in a dark room, watching and
waiting for Lightning, always do.
There was a great hurry in the streets, of people
speeding away to get shelter before the storm broke;
the wonderful corner for echoes resounded with the
echoes of footsteps coming and going, yet not a footstep
was there. •
“A multitude of people, and yet a solitude!” said
Darnay, when they had listened for a while.
“Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay?” asked Lucie,
HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. 99
“Sometimes, I have sat here of an evening, until I
have fancied—but even the shade of a foolish fancy
makes me shudder to-night, when all is so black and
solemn—”
“Let us shudder too. We may know what it is?”
“It will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only
impressive as we originate them, I think; they are not
to be communicated. I have sometimes sat alone here
of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes
out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming
by-and-by into our lives.” .
“There is a great crowd coming one day inte our
lives, if that be so,” Sydney Carton struck in, in his
moody way.
The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them
became more and more rapid. The corner echoed and
re-echoed with the tread of feet; some, as it seemed,
under the windows; some, as it seemed, in the room;
some coming, some going, Some breaking off, Some
stopping altogether; all in the distant streets, and not
one within sight.
“Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of
us, Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among
UISP’’
“I don’t know, Mr. Darnay; I told you it was a foolish
fancy, but you asked for it. When I have yielded my-
self to it, I have been alone, and then I have imagined
them the footsteps of the people who are to come into
my life, and my father’s.”
“I take them into mine!” said Carton. “I ask no
questions and make no stipulations. There is a great
crowd bearing down upon us, Miss Manette, and I see
them! by the Lightning.” He added the last words,
after there had been a vivid flash which had shown
him lounging in the window.
“And I hear them l’ he added again, after a peal of
thunder. “Here they come, fast, fierce, and furious!”
It was the rush and roar of rain that he typified, and
it stopped him, for no voice could be heard in it.
A memorable storm of thunder and lightning broke
with that sweep of water, and there was not a moment’s
interval in crash, and fire, and rain, until after the
moon rose at midnight.
The great bell of Saint Paul’s was striking One in
f00 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
the cleared air, when Mr. Lorry, escorted by Jerry,
high-booted and bearing a lantern, set forth on his
return-passage to Clerkenwell. There were solitary
patches of road on the way between Soho and Clerken-
Well, and Mr. Lorry, mindful of footpads, always re-
tained Jerry for this service : though it was usually
performed a good two hours earlier.
‘‘What a night it has been Almost a night, Jerry,”
Said Mr. Lorry, “to bring the dead out of their graves.”
‘‘I never see the night myself, master—nor yet I
don’t expect to it—what would do that,” answered
Jerry.
“Good night, Mr. Carton,” said the man of business.
“Good night, Mr. Darnay. Shall we ever see such a
Inight again, together l’”
Perhaps. Perhaps, see the great crowd of people
with its rush and roar, bearing down upon them, too.
CHAPTER VII.
MONSEIGNEUR IN TOWN.
Moś One of the great lords in power at
– V L- the Court, held his fortnightly reception in his
grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner
room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of
Holiests to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of
rooms without. Monseigneur was about to take his
chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many
things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds
supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but,
his morning chocolate could not so much as get into
the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four
Strong men besides the Cook.
Yes. It took four men, all four a-blaze with gor-
geous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist
with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emu-
lative of the noble and chaste fashion set by
Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Mon-
seigneur’s lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot
MONSEIGNEUR IN TOWN. 101
into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed
the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for
that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin;
a fourth (he of the two gold watches) poured the choco-
late out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dis-
ense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and
old his high place under the admiring Heavens.
Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if
his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only
three men; he must have died of two.
Monseigneur had been out at a little Supper last
night, where the Comedy and the Grand Opera were
charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a
little supper most nights, with fascinating company.
So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur, that
the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more
influence with him in the tiresome articles of state
affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France.
A happy circumstance for France, as the like always
is for all countries, similarly favoured —always was
for England (by way of example), in the regretted
days of the merry Stuart who sold it.
Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general
public business, which was, to let everything go on
in its own way; of particular public business, Mon-
seigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must
all go his way—tend to his own power and pocket.
Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseig-
neur had the other truly noble idea, that the world
was made for them. The text of his order (altered
from the original by only a pronoun, which is not
much) ran : “The earth and the fulness thereof are
mine, saith Monseigneur.” -
. Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that Vulgar em-
barrassments crept into his affairs, both private and
public; and he had, as to both classes of affairs,
allied himself per force with a Farmer-General. As to
finances publić, because Monseigneur could not make
anything at all of them, and must consequently let
them out to somebody who could; as to finances private,
because Farmer-Generals were rich, and Monseigneur,
after generations of great luxury and expense, was
growing poor. Hence, Monseigneur had taken his
sister from a convent, while there was yet time to Ward
| ()2 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she could
wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich
Farmer-General, poor in family. º; Farmer-Gen-
eral, carrying an appropriate cane with a golden apple
on the top of it, was now among the company in the
outer rooms, much prostrated before by mankind—
always excepting Superior mankind of the blood of
Monseigneur, who his own wife included, looked down
upon him with the loftiest contempt.
A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty
horses stood in his stables, twenty-four male domestics
sat in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife.
As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder and
forage where he could, the Farmer-General—howsoever
his matrimonial relations conduced to social morality—
was at least the greatest reality among the personages
who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.
For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at,
and adorned with every device of decoration that the
taste and skill of the time could achieve, were, in
truth, not a sound business; considered with any refer-
ence to the Scarecrows in the rags and nightcaps else-
where (and not so far off, either, §. that the watching
towers of Notre-Dame, almost equi-distant from the two
extremes, could see them both), they would have been
an exceedingly uncomfortable business—if that could
have been anybody’s business, at the house of Mon-
seigneur. Military officers destitute of military knowl-
edge; naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers
without a motion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the
worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues,
and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several call-
ings, all lying horribly in pretending to belong to them,
but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur
and therefore foisted on all public employments,
from which anything was to be got; these were to be
told off by the score and the score. People not immedi-
ately connected with Monseigneur or the State, yet
equally unconnected with anything that was real, or
with lives passed in travelling by any straight road to
any true earthly end, were no less abundant. Doctors
who made great fortunes out of dainty remedies for
imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon
their courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Mon-
MONSEIGNEUR IN TOWN. 103
seigneur. Projectors who had discovered every kind
of remedy for the little evils with which the State was
touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest
to root out a single sin, poured their distracting babble
into any ears they j." lay hold of, at the reception of
Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were
remodelling the world with words, and making card-
towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with
Unbelieving Chemists who had an eye on the trans-
mutation of metals, at this wonderfnl gathering accumu-
lated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen of the
finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time—
and has been since—to be known by its fruits of indiffer-
ence to every natural subject of human interest, were
in the most exemplary state of exhaustion, at the hotel
of Monseigneur. Such homes had these various nota-
bilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that
the Spies among the assembled devotees of Mónseig-
neur—forming a goodly half of the polite company—
would have found it hard to discover among the angels
of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners
and appearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed,
except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creat-
ure into this world—which does not go far towards the
realisation of the name of mother—there was no such
thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the
unfashionable babies close, and brought them up; and
charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and Supped as
at twenty.
The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creat-
ure in attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost
room were half a dozen exceptional people who had had,
for a few years, some vague misgiving in them that
things in general were going rather wrong. As a prom-
ising way of setting them right, half of the half-dozen
had become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsion-
ists, and were even then considering within themselves
whether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn catalep-
tic on the spot—thereby setting up a highly intelli j.
finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur’s guidance.
Besides these Dervishes, were other three who had
rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a
jargon about “the Centre of truth:” holding that Man
had got out of the Centre of truth—which did not need -
104 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
much demonstration—but had not got out of the Cir-
cumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out
of the Circumference, and was even to be shoved back
into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of Spirits. Among
these, accordingly, much discoursing with Spirits went
on—and it did a world of good which never became
manifest.
But, the comfort was, that all the company at the
grand hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If
the Day of Judgment had only been ascertained to be
a dress day, everybody there would have been eternally
correct. Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up
of hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved
and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such
delicate honour to the sense of smell, would surely keep
anything going, for ever and ever. The exquisite
gentlemen of the finest breeding wore little pendent
trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved; these
golden fetters rang like precious little bells; and what
with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and bro-
cade and fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that
fanned Saint Antoine and his devouring hunger far
away.
Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used
for keeping all things in their places. Everybody was
dressed for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off.
From the Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur
and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tri-
bunals of Justice, and all society (except the scare-
crows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common Exe-
cutioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, was required
to officiate “frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat,
pumps, and white silk stockings.” At the gallows and
the wheel—the axe was a rarity—Monsieur Paris, as it
was the episcopal mode among his brother Professors
of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest, to call
him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among
the company at Monseigneur's reception in that seven-
teen hundred and eightieth year of Our Lord, could
possibly doubt, that a system rooted in a frizzled hang-
man, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk
stockinged, would see the very stars out! *
Monseigneur having eased his four men of their
burdens and taken his chocolate, caused the doors of
MONSEIGNEUR IN TOWN. 105
the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown open, and issued
forth. Then, what submission, what cringing and
fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As
to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way
was left for Heaven—which may have been one among
other reasons why the worshippers of Monseigneur
never troubled it.
Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there,
a whisper on Ope happy slave and a wave of the hand
on another, Monseigneur affably passed through his
rooms to the remote region of the Circumference of
Truth. There, Monseigneur turned, and came back
again, and so in due course of time got himself shut up
in his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, and was seen
Il O IſlC)I’é. g
The show being over, the flutter in the air became
quite a little storm, and the precious little bells went
ringing down stairs. There was soon but one person
left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his
arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among
the mirrors on his way out.
“I devote you,” said this person, stopping at the last
door on his way, and turning in the direction of the
sanctuary, “to the Devil!”
With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if
he had shaken the dust from his feet, and quietly walked
down stairs.
He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed,
haughty in manner, and with a face like a fine mask.
A face of a transparent palēness; every feature in it
clearly defined; one set expression on it. The nose,
beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched
at the top of each nostril. In those two compressions,
or dints, the only little change that the face ever showed,
resided. They persisted in changing colour sometimes;
and they would be occasionally dilated and contracted
by something like a faint pulsation; then, they gave a
look of treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance.
Examined with attention, its capacity of helping such
a look was to be found in the line of the mouth, and the
lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much too horizon-
tal and thin; still, in the effect the face made, it was a
handsome face, and a remarkable one.
Its owner went down stairs into the court-yard, got
106 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
into his carriage, and drove away. Not many people
had talked with him at the reception; he had stood in
a little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been
warmer in his manner. It appeared, under the cir-
cumstances, räther agreeable to him to see the common
people dispersed before his horses, and often barely
escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he
were charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness
of the man brought no check into the face, or to the
lips, of the master. The complaint had sometimes made
itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age,
that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce
patrician custom of hard driving endangered and
maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But,
few cared enough for that to think of it a second time,
and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches
were left to get out of their difficulties as they could.
With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman
abandonment of consideration not easy to be under-
stood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets
and swept round corners, with women screaming before
it, and men clutching each other and clutching children
out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by
a fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little
jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices,
and the horses reared and plunged.
But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage prob-
ably would not have stopped; carriages were often
known to drive on, and leave their wounded behind,
and why not? But, the frightened valet had got down
in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the horses
bridles.
“What has gone wrong?” said Monsieur, calmly
looking out.
A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from
among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the
basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and
wet, howling over it like a wild animal.
“Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!” said a ragged and
submissive man, “it is a child.”
hº does he make that abominable noise? Is it his
Child?”
“Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis—it is a pity—yes.”
The fountain was a little removed; for the street
% ºf
% A ,
* f. { * *
| : %
º
§§º/2
(\{|| ||
& \ſ ſ - . - º -
| | It iſ | |
------—- i
& e
e
*
: ;
s &
Zºº º Aº # *.
; £4% a" % 2.
% *
iſſińſº:
iſſiſſilſº -
ºn;
tºº
º
g
#

MONSEIGNEUR IN TOWN. 107
opened, where it was, into a space some ten or twelve
yards square. As the tall man suddenly got up from
the ground, and came running at the carriage, Monsieur
the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his
sword-hilt. -
“ Killed!” shrieked the man, in wild desperation, ex-
tending both arms at their length above his head, and
staring at him. “Dead!” …
The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the
Marquis. There was nothing revealed by the many
eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eager-
ness; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither
did the people say anything; after the first cry, they
had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of
the submissive man who had spoken, was flat and tame
in its extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran
his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats
come out of their holes. -
He took out his purse.
“It is extraordinary to me,” said he, “that you people
cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One
or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I
know what injury you have done my horses. See
Give him that.”
He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and
all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might
look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again
with a most unearthly cry, “Dead!” -
He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man,
for whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the
miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and
crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women
were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving
gently about it. They were as silent, however, as the men.
“I know all, I know all,” said the last comer. “Be
a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor
little play thing to die so, than to live. It has died in a
moment without pain. Could it have lived an’hour as
happily?”
“You are a philosopher, you there,” said the
Marquis, smiling. “How do they call you?” -
“They call me Defarge.”
“Of what trade?”
“Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine.”
108 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine,” said
the Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, “and
spend it as you will. The horses there ; are they
right P”
Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second
time, Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat,
and was just being driven away with the air of a
gentleman who had accidentally brº SOIſle COIOTO, OIl
thing, and had paid for it and could afford to pay for
it; when his ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin fly-
ing into his carriage, and ringing on its floor. -
“Hold!” said Monsieur the Marquis. “Hold th
horses! Who threw that?” w
He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of
wine had stood, a moment before; but the wretched
father was grovelling on his face on the pavement in
that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was the
figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.
“You dogs!” said the Marquis, but smoothly, and
with an unchanged front, except as to the spots on his
nose; “I would ride over any of you very willingly,
and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which
rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were
sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the
wheels.”
So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard
their experience of what such a man could do to them,
within the law and beyond it, that not a voice, or a
hand, or even an eye was raised. Among the men,
not one. But the woman who stood knitting looked up
steadily, and looked the Marquis in the face. It was
not for his dignity to notice it; his contemptuous eyes
assed over her, and over all the other rats; and he
eaned back in his seat again, and gave the word
“Go On!”
He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling
by in quick succession; the Minister, the State-Pro-
jector, the Farmer-General, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the
Ecclesiastic, the Grand Opera, the Comedy, the whole
Fancy Ball in a bright continuous flow, came whirling
by. . The rats had crept out of their holes to look on,
and they remained looking on for hours; Soldiers and
police often passing between them and the spectacle,
and making a barrier behind which they slunk, and
MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY. 109
through which they peeped. . The father had long ago
taken up his bundle and hidden himself away with it,
when the women who had tended the bundle while it
lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the
running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy
Ball—when the one woman who had stood conspicuous,
knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate.
The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the
day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into
death according to rule, time and tide waited for no
man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark
holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at Supper,
all things ran their course. - -
CHAPTER VIII.
MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY.
A. BEAUTIFUL landscape, with the corn bright in
it but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where
corn should have been, patches of poor peas and beans,
patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat.
On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who
cultivated it, a prevalent, tendency towards an appear-
ance of vegetating unwillingly—a dejected disposition
to give up, and wither away. -
Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage
(which might have been lighter), conducted by four
post-horses and two postilions, fagged up a steep hill.
A blush on the countenance of Monsieur the Marquis
was no impeachment of his high breeding; it was not
from within; it was occasioned by an external circum-
stance beyond his control—the setting Sun.
The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling
carriage when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant
was steeped in crimson. “It will die out,” said Mon-
sieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, “ directly.”
In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the
moment. When the heavy drag had been adjusted to
the wheel, and the carriage slid down hill, with a cin-
derous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed
quickly; the sun and the Marquis going down to-
110 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
gºher. there was no glow left when the drag was taken
OTI. . - -
But, there remained a broken country, bold and open,
a little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep
and rise beyond it, a church-tower, a windmill, a forest
for the chase, and a crag with a fortress on it used as a
prison. Round upon all these darkening objects as the
night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one
who was coming near home.
The village had its one poor street, with its poor
brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard
for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor
appointments. It had its poor people too. All its people
were poor, and many of them were sitting at their
doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper,
whilo many were at the fountain, washing leaves, and
grasses, and any such small yieldings of the earth that
could be eaten. Expressive signs of what made them
oor, were not wanting ; the tax for the state, the tax
or the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax
general, were to be paid here and to be paid there,
according to solemn inscription in the little village,
until the wonder was, that there was any village left
unswallowed. -
Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to
the men and women, their choice on earth was stated
in the prospect—Life on the lowest terms that could
sustain it, §ºn in the little village under the mill ;
or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the
Crag. -
Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the crack-
ing of his postilions’ whips, which twined snake-like
about their heads in the evening air, as if he came at-
tended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in
his travelling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was
hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their
Operations to look at him. He looked at them and saw
in them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down
of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the
meagreness of Frenchmen and English superstition
which should survive the truth through the best part of
a hundred years. - -
Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the sub-
missive faces that drooped before him, as the like of
MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY. 111
himself had drooped before Monseigneur of the Court
—only the difference was, that these faces drooped.
merely to suffer and not to propitiate—when a grizzled
mender of the roads joined the group. -
“Bring me hither that fellow !” said the Marquis to
the courier. -
The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other
fellows closed round to look and listen, in the manner
of the people at the Paris fountain.
“I passed you on the road?” -
“Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being
passed on the road.” - \
“Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill,
both P”
“Monseigneur, it is true.”
“What did you look at, so fixedly?”
“Monseigneur, I looked at the man.”
He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap
ointed under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to
look under the carriage. -
“What man, pig P And why look there?”
“Pardon, Monseigneur, he swung by the chain of the
shoe—the drag.” -
“Who P” demanded the traveller.
• ‘‘ Monseigneur, the man.” -
“May the Devil carry away these idiots How do
you call the man P” You know all the men of this part
of the country. Who was he P’’
“Your clemency, Monseigneur ! He was not of this
part of the country. Of all the days of my life, I never
saw him.”
“Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?”
“With your gracious permission, that was the wonder
º it, Monseigneur. His head hanging over—like
this!” º
He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and
leaned back, with his face thrown up to the sky, and
his head hanging down; then recovered himself, fum-
bled with his cap and made a bow. -
“What was he like?” - -
“Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All
covered with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectreſ.”
The picture produced an immense sensation in the
little crowd; but all eyes, without comparing notes with
112 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
other eyes, looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps,
to observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience.
“Truly, you did well,” said the Marquis, felicitously
sensible that such vermin were not to ruffle him, “to
See a thief accompanying my carriage, and not open
that great mouth of yours. Bah! Put him aside, Mon-
sieur Gabelle!”
Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other
taxing functionary, united; he had come out with
great obsequiousness to assist at this examination, and
had held the examined by the drapery of his arm in an
official manner.
“Bah! Go a side!” said Monsieur Gabelle.
“Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in
your village to-night, and be sure that his business is
honest, Gabelle.”
“Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to
your orders.” - º
“Did he run away, fellow?—where is that Accursed?”
The accursed was already under the carriage with
some half-dozen particular friends, pointing out the
chain with his blue cap. Some half-dozen other par-
ticular friends promptly hailed him out, and presented
him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis.
“Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for
the drag?”
‘‘ Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-
side, head first, as a person plunges into the river.”
“See to it, Gabelle. Go on 1 °
The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were
still among the wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned
so suddenly that they were lucky to save their skins
and bones; they had very little else to save, or they
might not have been so fortunate. , *
The burst with which the carriage started out of the
village and up the rise beyond, was soon checked by
the steepness of the hill. Gradually it subsided to a
foot pace, Swinging and lumbering upward among the
many sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions,
with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about them.
in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the points to the
lashes of their whips; the valet walked by the horses;
the courier was audible, trotting on ahead into the dim
distance.
MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY. 113

At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-
gº a Cross and a new large figure of Our
Saviour on it; it was a poér figure in wood, done by
Some inexperienced rustic carver, but he had studied
the figure from the life—his own life, maybe-for it was
dreadfully spare and thin. {}
To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had
long been growing worse, and was not at its worst, a
woman was kneeling. She turned her head as the car-
riage came up to her, rose quickly, and presented her-
self at the carriage-door. .
“It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition.”
..With an exclamation of impatience, but with his
unchangeable face, Monseigneur looked out.
“How, then! What is it? Always petitions!”
“Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My
husband, the forester.” - .
“What of your husband, the forester? Always the
same with you people. He cannot pay something?”
“He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.”
“Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?”
“Alas no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a
little heap of poor grass.” -
“Well?” -
“Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor
grass?”
“Again, well?”
She looked an old woman, but was young. Her man-
ner was one of passionate grief; by turns she clasped
her veinous and knotted hands together with wild
energy, and laid one of them on the carriage-door—
tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human breast
and could be expected to feel the appealing touch.
“Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my peti-
tion 1 My husband died of want; so many die of want;
so many more will die of want.” e
“Again, well ? Can I feed them?”
“Monseigneur, the good God knows ; but I don’t ask
it. My petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with s
my husband’s name, may be placed over him to show
where he lies. Otherwise, #. place will be quickly
forgotten, it will never be found when I am iai of the
same malady, I shall be laid under some other heap of
poor grass, Monseigneur, they are so many, they in-
VOIL. I. 8 e #
114 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
crease. So fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur! /
Monseigneur!” -
The valet had put her away from the door, the car-
riage had broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had
quickened the pace, she was left far behind, and Mon-
seigneur, again escorted by the Furies, was rapidly
diminishing the league or two of distance that remained
between him and his château. -
The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around
him, and rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty,
ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far
away ; to whom the mender of roads, with the aid of
the blue cap without which he was nothing, still en-
larged upon his man like a spectre, as long as they
could bear it. By degrees, as they could bear no more,
they dropped off one by one, and lights twinkled in little
casements ; which lights, as the casements darkened,
and more stars came out, seemed to have shot up into
the sky instead of having been extinguished.
The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of
many overhanging trees, was upon Monsieur the Mar-
º by that time ; and the shadow was exchanged for
the light of a flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and
the great door of his château was opened to him.
“Monsieur Charles, whom I expect ; is he arrived
from England?”
“Monseigneur, not yet.”
CHAPTER IX.
THE GORGON's HEAD.
IT was a heavy mass of building, that château of
L Monsieur the Marquis, with a large stone court-yard
before it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in
a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony busi-
lness altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone
urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and
stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon’s
head had surveyed it, when it was finished, two cent-
uries ago. -
. Up the broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the
THE GORGON's HEAD. 115
Marquis, flambeau preceded, went from his carriage,
sufficiently disturbing the darkness to elicit loud remon-
strance from an owl in the roof of the great pile of stable-
building away among the trees. All else was so quiet,
that the flambeau carried up the steps, and the other
flambeau held at the great door, burnt as if they were
in a close room of state, instead of being in the open
night-air. Other sound than the owl's voice there was
none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin;
for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their
breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low
sigh, and hold their breath again.
The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the
Marquis crossed a hall grim with certain old boar-spears,
swords, and knives of the chase; grimmer with certain
heavy riding-rods and riding-whips, of which many a
peasant, gone to his benefactor Death, had felt the
weight when his lord was angry.
Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made
fast for the night, Monsieur the Marquis, with his flam-
beau-bearer going on before, went up the staircase to a
door in a corridor. This thrown open admitted him to
his own private apartment of three rooms; his bed-
chamber and two others. High vaulted rooms with cool
uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon the hearths for the
burning of wood in winter time, and all luxuries be-
fitting the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and
country. The fashion of the last Louis but one, of the
line that was never to break—the fourteenth Louis—
was conspicuous in their rich furniture ; but, it was
diversified by many objects that were illustrations of
old pages in the history of France. . .
A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the
rooms; a round room, in one of the château’s four
extinguisher-topped, towers. A small lofty room,
with its window wide open, and the wooden jalousie-
blinds closed, so that the dark night only showed in
slight horizontal-lines of black, alternating with their
broad lines of stone colour.
“My nephew,” said, the Marquis, glancing at the
supper preparation; “they said he was not arrived.”
Nor was he; but, he had been expected with
Monseigneur.
“Ah! It is not probable he will arrive to-night;
116 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
nevertheless, leave the table as it is. I shall be ready
in a quarter of an hour.” •
In a quarter of an hour, Monseigneur was ready, and
sat down alone to his sumptuous and choice Supper.
His chair was opposite to the window, and he had
taken his soup, and was raising his glass of Bordeaux
to his lips, when he put it down. -
“What is that?” he calmly asked, looking with
attention at the horizontal lines of black and Stone
colour.
“Monseigneur? That?”
“Outside the blinds. Open the blinds.”
It was done.
“Well?”
“Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night
are all that are here.”
The servant who spoke, had thrown the blinds wide,
had looked out into the vacant darkness, and stood,
with that blank behind him, looking round for instruc-
tions.
“Good,” said the imperturbable master. “Close them
again.”
That was done too, and the Marquis went on with his
Supper. He was half way through it, when he again
stopped with his glass in his hand, hearing the sound
of wheels, It came on briskly, and came up to the .
front of the château.
“Ask who is arrived.” - -
It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been
Some few leagues behind Monseigneur, early in the
afternoon. He had diminished the distance rapidly, but
not so rapidly as to come up with Monseigneur On the
road. He had heard of Monseigneur at the posting-
houses, as being before him.
He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper
awaited him then and there, and that he was prayed
to come to it. In a little while, he came. He had been
known in England as Charles Darnay.
Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but
they did not shake hands.
“You left Paris yesterday, sir?” he said to Mon-
Seigneur, as he took his seat at table.
“Yesterday. And you?”
“I conte direct.”
THE GORGON’S HEAD. 11?
“From LOndon?”
“Yes.” - -
“You have been a long time coming,” said the Mar-
quis, with a smile.
“On the contrary; I come direct.”
‘‘ Pardon me ! I mean, not a long time on the
journey; a long time intending the journey.”
“I have been detained by ”—the nephew, stopped a
moment in his answer—“various business.”
“Without doubt,” said the polished uncle.
So long as a servant was present, no other words
passed between them. When coffee had been served
and they were alone together, the nephew, looking at
the uncle and meeting the eyes of the face that was
like a fine mask, opened a conversation.
, “I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing
the object that took me away. It carried me into great
and unexpected peril; but it is a sacred object, and if
it had carried me to death 1 hope it would have sus-
tained me.”
“Not to death,” said the uncle; “it is not recessary
to say, to death.”
“I doubt, sir,” returned the nephew, “whether, if it
had carried me to the utmost brink of death, you would
have cared to stop me there.”
The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening
of the fine straight lines in the cruel face, looked omin-
ous as to that; the uncle made a graceful gesture of
protest, which was so clearly a slight form of good
breeding that it was not reassuring.
“Indeed, sir,” pursued the nephew, “for anything I
know, you may have expressly worked to give a more
Suspicious appearance to the suspicious circumstances
that surrounded me.” -
“No, no, no,” said the uncle, pleasantly.
“But, however that may be,” resumed the nephew,
glancing at him with deep distrust, “I know that your
diplomacy would stop me by any means, and would
know no scruple as to means.”
“My friend, I told you so,” said the uncle, with a fine
pulsation in the two marks. “Do me the favour to
recal that I told you so, long ago.” .
“I recal it.” -
“Thank you,” said the Marquis—very sweetly, indeed,
118 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a
musical instrument.
“In effect, sir,” pursued the nephew, “I believe it to
be at once your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that
has kept me out of a prison in France here.”
“I do not quite understand,” returned the uncle, sip-
ping his coffee. “Dare I ask you to explain?”
“I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the
court, and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for
years past, a letter de cachet would have sent me to
Some fortress indefinitely.”
“It is possible,” said the uncle, with great calm-
ness. “For the honour of the family, I could even
sºlve to incommode you to that extent. Pray excuse
me!” •
“I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of
the day before yesterday was, as usual, a cold One,”
observed the nephew. -
“I would not say happily, my friend,” returned the
uncle, with refined politeness; “I would not be sure of
that. A good opportunity for consideration, surrounded
by the advantages of solitude, might influence your.
destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it
for yourself. But it is useless to discuss the ques-
tion. I am, as you say, at a disadvantage. These
little instruments of correction, these gentle aids to
the power and honour of families, these slight favours
that might so incommode you, are only to be obtained
now by interest and importunity. They are sought by
So many, and they are granted (comparatively) to SO
few It used not to be so, but France in all such things
is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors
held the right of life and death over the surrounding
vulgar. From this room, many such dogs have been
taken out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroorn),
One fellow, to our knowledge, was poinarded on the
Spot for Rºſe; Some insolent delicacy respecting
his daughter—his daughter! We have lost many privi-
leges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and the
assertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not
go so far as to say would, but might) cause us real
inconvenience. All very bad, very bad!”
The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and
Shook his head; as elegantly despondent as he could
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 119
becomingly be, of a country still containing himself,
that great means of regeneration.
“We have so asserted our station, both in the old
time and in the modern time also,” said the nephew,
gloomily, “that I believe our name to be more detested
than any name in France.” *
“Let us hope so,” said the uncle. “Detestation of
the high is the involuntary homage of the low.”
“There is not,” pursued the nephew, in his former
tone, “a face I can look at, in all this country round
about us, which looks at me with any deference on it
but the dark deference of fear and slavery.”
“A compliment,” said the Marquis, “to the grandeur
of the family, merited by the manner in which the
family has sustained its grandeur. Hah!” And he took
another gentle little pinch of Snuff, and lightly crossed
his legs.
But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table,
covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his
hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a
stronger concentration of keenness, closeness, and dis-
like, than was comportable with its wearer's assumption
of indifference.
“Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The
dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend,” ob-
served the Marquis, “will keep the dogs obedient to
the whip, as long as this roof,” looking up to it, “ shuts
out the sky.”
That might not be so long as the Marquis Supposed.
If a picture of the château as it was to be a very few
years hence, and of fifty like it as they too were "to be
a very few years hence, could have been shown to him
that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his
own from the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked
ruins. As for the roof he vaunted, he might have
found that shutting out the sky in a new way—to wit,
for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its
lead was fired, out of the barrels of a hundred thousand
muskets.
“Meanwhile,” said the Marquis, “I will preserve
the honour and repose of the family, if you will not.
But you must be fatigued. Shall we terminate our
conference for the night?”
“A moment more.”
120 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
“An hour, if you please.” -
“Sir,” said the nephew, “we have done wrong, and
are reaping the fruits of wrong.”
“We have done wrong?” repeated the Marquis, with
an inquiring Smile, and delicately pointing, first to his
nephew, then to himself.
“Our family; our honourable family, whose honour
is of so much account to both of us, in such different
ways. Even in my father’s time, we did a world of
wrong, injuring every human creature who came be-
tween us and our pleasure, whatever it was. Why
need I speak of my father's time, when it is equally
yours? Can I separate my father's twin-brother, joint
inheritor, and next successor, from himself P”
“Death has done that!” said the Marquis. -
“And has left me,” answered the nephew, “bound
to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it,
but powerless in it; seeking to execute the last request
of my dear mother’s lips, and obey the last look of my
dear mother’s eyes, which implored me to have mercy
and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and
power in vain.” ... "
“Seeking them from me, my nephew,” said the
Marquis, touching him on the breast with his forefinger .
—they were now standing by the hearth—“you will
for ever seek them in vain, be assured.” .
Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his
face, was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed,
while he stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his
Snuff-Rox in his hand. Once again he touched him on
the breast, as though his finger were the fine point of a
small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran .
him through the body, and said, -
“My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under
which I have lived.”
When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of
Snuff, and put his box in his pocket.
“Better to be a rational creature,” he added then,
after ringing a small bell on the table, ‘‘ and accept
your natural destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur
Charles, I see.”
“This property and France are lost to me,” said the
nephew, sadly; “I renounce them.” & . . .
“Are they both yours to renounce? France may be,
THE GORGON'S HEAD, 121
but is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning;
but, is it yet?”
“I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it
yet. If it passed to me from you, to-morrow—”
“Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable.”
“—or twenty years hence—”
“You do me too much honour,” said the Marquis;
“still I prefer that supposition.”
“—I would abandon it, and live otherwise and else-
where. It is little to relinquish. What is it but a
wilderness of misery and ruin!”
“Hah!” said the Marquis, glancing round the
luxurious room. -
“To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its
integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a
crumbling tower of waste, mismanagemerit, extortion,
debt, mortgage, Oppression, hunger, nakedness, and
suffering.”
“Hah! ” said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied
Iſla, Ill 1621ſ. •
“If it ever becomes miné, it shall be put into some
hands petter qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is
possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that
the miserable people who cannot leave it and who have
been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may,
in another generation, suffer less; but it is not for me.
There is a curse on it, and on all this land.”
“And you?” said the uncle. “Forgive my curiosity;
º under your new philosophy, graciously intend
to live?” - -
“I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen,
even with nobility at their backs, may have to do some
day—work.”
“In England, for example?”
“Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe for me in this
country. The family name can suffer from me in no
other, for I bear it in no other.”
The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bed-
chamber to be lighted. It now shone brightly, through
the door of communication. The Marquis looked that
way, and listened for the retreating step of his valet.
“England is very attractive to you, seeing how indif-
ferently you have prospered there,” he observed then,
turning his calm face to his nephew with a Smile,
122 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“I have already said, that for my prospering there, I
am sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest,
it is my Refuge.”
“They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge
of many. You know a compatriot who has found a
Refuge there? A Doctor?”
& 4 Yes. 55
“With a daughter?”
6 & Yes. 25 -
“Yes,” said the Marquis. “You are fatigued. Good
night!” -
As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there
was a secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an
air of mystery to those words, which struck the eyes
and ears of his nephew forcibly. At the same time,
the thin straight lines of the setting of the eyes, and
the thin straight lips, and the markings in the nose,
curved with a sarcasm that looked handsomely diabolic.
“Yes,” repeated the Marquis. “A Doctor with a
daughter. Yes. So commences the new philosophy!
You are fatigued. Good night!”
It would have been of as much avail to interrogate
any stone face outside the château as to interrogate that
face of his. The nephew looked at him, in vain, in
passing on to the door.
“Good night!” said the uncle. “I look to the pleasure
of seeing you again in the morning. Good repose!
Light Monsieur my nephew to his chamber there!—
And burn Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if you will,”
he added to himself, before he rang his little bell again,
and summoned his valet to his own bedroom.
. The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis
walked to and fro in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare
himself gently for sleep, that hot still night. Rustling
about the room, his softly-slippered feet making no noise
on the floor, he moved like a refined tiger:-looked like
some enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked
sort, in story, whose periodical change into tiger form
was either just going off, or just coming on.
He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom,
looking again at the scraps of the day’s journey that
came unbidden into his mind; the slow toil up the hill
at sunset, the setting sun, the descent, the mill, the
prison on the crag, the little village in the hollow,
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 123
the peasants at the fountain, and the mender of roads
with his blue cap pointing out the chain under the car-
riage. That fountain suggested the Paris fountain, the
little bundle lying on the step, the women bending
º # and the tall man with his arms up, crying,
& 6 €8, ! 55 * 3. -
“I am cool now,” said Monsieur the Marquis, “ and
may go to bed.”
So, leaving only one light burning on the large
hearth, he let his thin gauze curtains fall around him,
and heard the night break its silence with a long Sigh
as he composed himself to sleep. *
The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at
the black night for three heavy hours; for three heavy
hours, the horses in the stables rattled at their racks,
the dogs barked, and the owl made a noise with very
little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally
assigned to the owl by men-poets. But, it is the obsti-
nate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what
is set down for them.
For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the château,
lion and human, stared blindly at the night. Dead
darkness lay on all the landscape, dead darkness added
its own hush to the hushing dust on all the roads. The
burial-place had got to the pass that its little heaps of
poor, grass were undistinguishable from One another;
the figure on the Cross might have come down, for any-
thing that could be seen of it. In the village, taxers
and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of
banquets, as the starved usually do, and of ease and
rest, as the driven slave and the yoked Ox may, its lean
inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed and freed.
The fountain in the village flowed unseen and un-
heard, and the fountain at the château dropped unseen
and unheard—both melting away, like the minutes that
were falling from the spring of Time—through three
dark hours. Then, the grey water of both began to be
ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone faces of
sthe château were opened.
Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the
tops of the still trees, and poured its radiance over the
‘hill. In the glow, the water of the château fountain
seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned.
The carol of the birds was loud and high, and, on the
124 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed-
chamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang
its sweetest song with all its might. At this, the near-
est stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with open
mouth and dropped underjaw, looked awe-stricken.
Now, the Sun was full up, and movement began in
the village. Casement windows opened, crazy doors
were unbarred, and people came forth shivering—
chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the
rarely lightened toil of the day among the village pop-
ulation. Some, to the fountain; some, to the fields; men
and women here, to dig and delve; men and women
there, to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony
cows out, to such pasture as could be found by the
roadside. In the church and at the Cross, a kneeling
figure or two; attendant on the latter prayers, the led
cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at its foot.
The château awoke later, as became its quality, but
awoke gradually and Surely. First, the lonely boar-
spears and knives of the chase had been reddened as
of old; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning
sunshine; now, doors and windows were thrown open,
horses in their stables looked round over their shoulders
at the light and freshness pouring in at doorways,
leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows,
dogs pulled hard at their chains, and reared impatient
to 5. loosed.
All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of
life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the
ringing of the great bell of the château, nor the running
up and down the stairs, nor the hurried figures on the
terrace, nor the booting and º; here and there
and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and
riding away? e - *
What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled
mender of roads, already at work upon the hill-top be-
yond the village, with his day’s dinner (not much to
carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow’s
while to peck at, on a heap of stones? Had the birds,
carrying Some grains of it to a distance, dropped one
over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or no,
the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if'
for his life, down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never
stopped till he got to the fountain.
<ſº
THE GORGON'S HEAD. 125
All the people of the village were at the fountain,
standing about in their depressed manner, and whis-
pering low, but showing no other emotions than grim
curiosity and surprise. The led cows, hastily brought
in and tethered to anything that would hold them, were
looking stupidly on, or lying down chewing the cud of
nothing particularly repaying their trouble, which they.
had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of
the people of the château, and some of those of the
posting-house, and all the taxing authorities, were
armed more or less, and were crowded on the other
side of the little street in a purposeless way, that was
highly fraught with nothing. Already the mender of
roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty
articular friends, and was smiting himself in the
reast with his blue cap. What did all this portend,
and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur
Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the con-
veying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though
the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of #.
German ballad of Leonora?
It portended that there was one stone face too many,
up at the château. *
The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the
night, and had added the one stone face wanting ; the
stone face for which it had waited through about two
hundred years.
It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It
was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry,
and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone
figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was
a frill of paper, on which was scrawled:
“Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from JACQUES.”
CHAPTER x. y
T W O P R O M I S E S .
ORE months, to the number of twelve, had come
and gone, and Mr. Charles Darnay was established
in England as a higher teacher of the French language
who was conversant with French literature. In this
126 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
age, he would have been a Professor; in that age, he
was a Tutor. He read with young men who could find
any leisure and interest for the study of a living tongue
spoken all over the world, and he cultivated a taste for
its stores of knowledge and fancy. He could write of
them, besides, in Sound English, and render them into
sound English. Such masters were not at that time
easily found; Princes that had been, and Kings that
were to be, were not yet of the Teacher class, and no
ruined nobility had dropped out of Tellson’s ledgers, to
turn cooks and carpenters. As a tutor, whose attain-
ments made the student's way unusually pleasant and
profitable, and as an elegant translator who brought
something to his work besides mere dictionary knowl-
edge, sºnº. Darnay soon became known and en-
couraged. e was well acquainted, moreover, with the
circumstances of his country, and those were of ever-
growing interest. So, with great perseverance and un-
tiring industry, he prospered.
In London, he had expected neither to walk on pave-
ments of gold, nor to lie on beds of roses; if he had had
any such exalted expectation, he would not have pros-
pered. He had expected labour, and he found it, and
did it, and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity
consisted. *
A certain portion of his time was passed at Cam-
bridge, where he read with undergraduates as a sort
of tolerated Smuggler who drove a contraband trade in
European languages, instead of conveying Greek and
Latin through the Custom-house. The rest of his time
he passed in London.
Now, from the days when it was always summer in
Eden, to these days. when it is mostly winter in fallen
latitudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one
Way—Charles Darnay's way—the way of the love of a
WOIOla,]].
He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his
danger. He had never heard a sound so sweet and dear
as the Sound of her compassionate voice; he had never
seen a face so tenderly beautiful, as hers when it was
confronted with his own on the edge of the grave that
had been dug for him. But, he had not yet spoken to
her on the subject; the assassination at the deserted
Château far away beyond the heaving water and the
! }

TWO PROMISES. 127
long, long, dusty roads—the solid stone château which
had itself become the mere mist of a dream—had been
done a year, and he had never yet, by so much as a
; spoken word, disclosed to her the state of his
heart. -
That he had his reasons for this, he knew full well.
It was again a summer day when, lately arrived in Lon-
don from his college occupation, he turned into the quiet
corner in Soho, bent on seeking an opportunity of open-
ing his mind to Doctor Manette. It was the close of
the summer day, and he knew Lucie to be out with Miss
Pross. º
He found the Doctor reading in his arm-chair at a
window. The energy which had at once supported him
under his old sufferings and aggravated }. sharp-
ness, had been gradually restored to him. He was now
a very energetic man indeed, with great firmness of
purpose, strength of resolution, and vigour of action.
In his recovered energy he was sometimes a little fitful
and sudden, as he had at first been in the exercise of his
other recovered faculties; but, this had never been fre-
quently observable, and had grown more and more rare.
He studied much, slept little, sustained a great deal of
fatigue with ease, and was equably cheerful. To him,
now entered Charles Darnay, at sight of whom he laid
aside his book and held out his hand.
“Charles Darnay ! I rejoice to see you. We have
been counting on your return these three or four days
past. Mr. Stryver and Sydney Carton were both here
yesterday, and both made you out to be more than due.”
“I am obliged to them for their interest in the mat-
ter,” he answered, a little coldly as to them, though very
warmly as to the Doctor. “Miss Manette—”
“Is well,” said the Doctor, as he stopped short, “and
your return will delight us all. She has gone out on
some household matters, but will soon be home.”
“Doctor Manette, I knew she was from home. I took
the opportunity of her being from home, to beg to speak
to you.”
†e was a blank silence.
“Yes?” said the Doctor, with evident constraint.
“Bring your chair here, and speak on.”
He complied as to the chair, but appeared to find the
speaking on less easy.
*
I28 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
`-->
“I have had the happiness, Doctor Manette, of being
so intimate here,” so he at length began, “for some
year and a half, that I hope the topic on which I am
about to touch may not—”
He was stayed by the Doctor's putting out his hand to
stop him. When he kept it so a little while, he said,
drawing it back :
“Iš Lucie the topic?”
** She is.”
“It is hard for me to speak of her, at any time. It is
very hard for me to hear her spoken of in that tone of
yours, Charles Darnay.”
“It is a tone of fervent admiration, true homage and
deep love, Doctor Manette l’ he said, deferentially.
There was another blank silence before her father
rejoined : wº
“I believe it. I do you justice; I believe it.”
His constraint was so manifest, and it was so mani-
fest, too, that it originated in an unwillingness to
approach the subject, that Charles Darnay hesitated.
“Shall I go on, sir?” -
Another blank.
“Yes, go on.” s
“You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot
know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it,
without knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and
fears and anxieties with which it has long been laden.
T}ear Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly,
dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were
love in the world, I love her. You have loved yourself;
let your old love speak for me !”
The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his
eyes bent on the ground. At the last words, he stretched
out his hand again, hurriedly, and cried :
“Not that, sir! Let that be I adjure you, do not
recal that!” -
His cry was so like a cry of actual pain, that it rang
in Charles Darnay’s ears long after he had ceased. He
motioned with the hand he had extended, and it seemed
to be an appeal to Darnay to pause. The latter so
received it, and remained silent. -
“I ask your pardon,” said the Doctor, in a subdued
tone, after some moments. “I do not doubt your loving
Lucie; you may be satisfied of it,” *
TWO PROMISES. 129
He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look
at him, or raise his eyes. His chin dropped upon his
hand, and his white hair overshadowed his face:
6 & §º you spoken to Lucie?” -
& & O.”
** NOr Writtell ?”
& 4 Never.” - - - -
“It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that
your self-denial is to be referred to your consideration
for her father. Her father thanks you.” -
. He offered his hand; but, his eyes did not go with it.
“I know,” said Darnay, respectfully, “how can I
fail to know, Doctor Manette, I who have seen you
together from day to day, that between you and Miss
Manette there is an affection so unusual, so touching,
so belonging to the circumstances in which it has
been nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in
the tenderness between a father and child. I know,
Doctor Manette—how can I fail to know—that, mingled
with the affection and duty of a daughter who has
become a woman, there is, in her heart towards you, all
the love and reliance of infancy itself. I know that, as
in her childhood she had no parent, so she is now
devoted to you with all the constancy and fervour of her
present years and character, united to the trustfulness
and attachment of the early days in which you were
lost to her. I know perfectly well that if you had been
restored to her from the world beyond this life, you
could hardly be invested, in her sight, with a more
sacred character than that in which you are always
with her. I know that when she is clinging to you,'
the hands of baby, girl, and woman, all in one, are
round your neck. I know that in loving you she sees
and loves her mother at her own age, sees and loves you
at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted, loves you
through your dreadful trial and in your blessed resto-
ration. I have known this night and day, since I have
known you in your home.”
Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. His
breathing was a little quickened; but he repressed all
Other signs of agitation. -
“Dear Doctor Manette, always knowing this, always
seeing her and you with this hallowed light about you,
I have forborne, and forborne, as long as it was in the
VOL. I. !)
130 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
nature of man to do it. I have felt, and do even now
feel, that to bring my love—even mine—between you
is to touch your history with something not quite so
good as itself. But I love her. Heaven is my witness
that I love her!” g
“I believe it,” answered her father, mournfully.
“I have thought so, before now. I believe it.”
“Dut, do not believe,” said Darnay, upon whose ear .
the mournful voice struck with a reproachful sound,
“that if my fortune were so cast as that, being one day
so happy as to make her my wife, I must at any time
put any separation between her and you, I could or would
breathe a word of what I now say. Besides that I
should know it to be hopeless, I should know it to be a
baseness. If I had any such possibility, even at a
remote distance of years, harboured in my thoughts and
hidden in my heart—if it ever had been there—if it ever
tº be there—I could not now touch this honoured
and.”
He laid his own upon it as he spoke.
“No, dear Doctor Manette. Like you, a voluntary
exile from France; like you, driven from it by its distrac-
tions, oppressions, and miseries; like you, striving to live
away from it by my own exertions, and trusting in a
happier future; I look only to sharing your fortunes,
sharing your life and home, and being faithful to you
to the death. Not to divide with Lucie her privilege as
your child, companion and friend; but to come in aid of
it, and bind her closer to you, if such a thing can be.”
His touch still lingered on her father's hand. Answer-
ing the touch for a moment, but not coldly, her father
rested his hands upon the arms of his chair, and looked
up for the first time since the beginning of the confer-
ence. A struggle was evidently in his face; a struggle
with that occasional look which had a tendency, in it
to dark doubt and dread.
“You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles
Darnay, that I thank you with all my heart, and will
open all my heart—or nearly so. Have you any
reason to believe that Lucie loves you?”
“None. As yet, none.”
“Is it the immediate object of this confidence, that
you may at once ascertain that, with my knowledge?”
“Not even so. I might not have the hopefulness
TWO PROMISES. 131
&
to do it for weeks; I might (mistaken or not mistaken)
have that hopefulness to-morrow.”
“Do you seek any guidance from me?” *
“I"ask none, sir. But I have thought it possible that
you might have it in your power, if you should deem
it right, to give me some.” -
“Do you seek any promise from me?”
“I do seek that.”
** What is that P’’
“I well understand that, without you, I could have
no hope. I well understand that, even if Miss Manette
held me at this moment in her innocent heart—do not
think I have the presumption to assume so much—I
could retain no place in it against her love for her
father.”
“If that be so, do you see what, on the other hand,
is involved in it?”
“I understand equally well, that a word from her
father in any suitor’s favour, would outweigh herself
and all the world. For which reason, Doctor Manette,”
said Darnay, modestly but firmly, “I would not ask
that word, to save my life.”
“T am sure of it. Charles Darnay, mysteries arise
out of close love, as well as out of wide division; in the
former case, they are subtle and delicate, and difficult
to penetrate. My daughter Lucie is, in this one re-
spect, such a mystery to me; I can make no guess at
the state of her heart.”
“May I ask, sir, if you think she is—” As he hesi-
tated, her father supplied the rest.
‘‘Is sought by any other suitor?”
“It is what I meant to say.”
Her father considered a little before he answered:
“You have seen Mr. Carton here, yourself. Mr.
Stryver is here too, occasionally. If it be at all, it can
only be by one of these.”
“Or both,” said Darnay.
“I had not thought of both; I should not think either,
likely. You want a promise from me. Tell me what
it is.”
“It is, that if Miss Manette should bring to you at any
time, on her own part, such a confidence as I have
ventured to lay before you, you will bear testimony to
what I have said, and to your belief in it. I hope you
132 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
may be able to think so well of me, as to urge no in-
fluence against me. I say nothing more of my stake
in this; this is what I ask. The condition on which I
ask it, and which you have an undoubted right to
require, I will observe immediately.” •
“I give the promise,” said the Doctor, “without any
condition. I believe your object to be, purely and
truthfully, as you have stated it. I believe your inten-
tion is to perpetuate, and not to weaken, the ties
between me and my other and far dearer self. If she
should ever tell me that you are essential to her perfect
happiness, I will give her to you. If there were-
Charles Darnay, if there were—”
The young man had taken his hand gratefully; their
hands were joined as the Doctor spoke:
“—any fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions,
anything whatsoever, new or old, against the man she
really loved—the direct responsibility thereof not lying
on his head—they should all be obliterated for her sake.
She is everything to me; more to me than suffering,
more to me than wrong, more to me— Well ! This
is idle talk.”
So strange was the way in which he faded into
silence, and so strange his fixed look when he had
ceased to speak, that Darnay felt his own hand turn
cold in the hand that slowly released and dropped it.
“You said something to me,” said Doctor Manette,
breaking into a smile. “What was it you said to
Ime?” -
He was at a loss how to answer, until he remembered
having spoken of a condition. Relieved as his mind
reverted to that, he answered:
‘‘Your confidence in me ought to be returned with
full confidence on my part. My present name, though
but slightly changed from my mother's, is not, as you
will remember, my own. I wish to tell you what that
is, and why I am in England.”
“Stop !” said the Doctor of Beauvais.
... “I wish it, that I may the better deserve your con-
fidence, and have no secret from you ?”
“Stop!”
For an instant, the Doctor even had his two hands at
his ears; for another instant, even has his two hands
laid on Darnay’s lips.
TWO PROMISES. 133
“Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit
should prosper, if Lucie should love you, you shall tell
me on your marriage morning. Do you promise P”
“Willingly.”
“Give me your hand. She will be home directly, and
it is better she should not see us together to-night. Go!
God bless you!”
It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was
an hour later and darker when Lucie came home ; she
hurried into the room alone—for Miss Pross had gone
Straight up-stairs—and was surprised to find his read-
ing-chair empty.
“My father!” she called to him. “Father dear!”
Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low
hammering sound in his bedroom. Passing lightly
across the intermediate room, she looked in at his
door and came running back frightened, crying to
herself, with her blood all chilled. “What shall I do!
What shall I do l’’
Her uncertainty lasted but a moment ; she hurried
back, and tapped at his door, and softly called to him.
The noise ceased at the sound of her voice, and he pres-
ently came out to her, and they walked up and down
together for a long time.
š. came down from her bed, to look at him in his
sleep that night. He slept heavily, and his tray of
shoemaking tools, and his old unfinished work, were
all as usual.
CHAPTER XI.
A COMPANION PICTURE.
“CIVIDNEY,” said Mr. Stryver, on that self-same
night, or morning, to his jackal : “mix another
bowl of punch ; I have something to say to you.”
Sydney had been working double tides that night,
and the night before, and the night before that, and
a good many nights in Succession, making a grand
clearance among Mr. Stryver's papers before the setting
in of the long vacation. The clearance was effected at
134 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
last ; the Stryver arrears were handsomely fetched up;
everything was got rid of until November should come
with its fogs atmospheric and fogs legal, and bring grist
to the mill again. * - -
Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for
so much application. It had taken a deal of extra wet-
towelling to pull him through the night ; a correspond-
ingly extra quantity of wine had preceded the towelling;
and he was in a very damaged condition, as he now
pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in
º he had steeped it at intervals for the last six
OllrS. -
“Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?” said
Stryver the portly, with his hands in his waistband,
gº round from the sofa where he lay on his back.
‘ I am.” -
“Now, look here! I am going to tell you something
that will rather surprise you, and that perhaps will
make you think me not quite as shrewd as you usually
do think me. I intend to marry.”
“Do you?” •
“Yes. And not for money. What do you say
In OW. P.” .
“I don’t feel disposed to say much. Who is she?”
** Guess.”
“T)O I know her?”
“Guess.” *.
“I am not going to guess, at five o’clock in the
morning, with my brains frying and Sputtering in my
head. If you want me to guess, you must ask me to
dinner.” • *
“Well then, , , , tell you,” said Stryver, coming slowly
into a sitting posture. “Sydney, I rather despair of
making myself intelligible to you, because you are such
an insensible dog.” -
“And you,” returned Sydney, busy concocting the
punch, “are such a sensitive and poetical spirit.”
“Come !” rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully,
“ though I don’t prefer any claim to being the soul of
Romance (for I hope I know better), still, I am a tenderer
sort of fellow than you.”
“You are a luckier, if you mean that.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean, I am a man of more—
more—” -
A COMPANION PICTURE. 135
“Say gallantry, while you are about it,” suggested
Carton. -
“Well! I’ll say gallantry. My meaning is that, I am
a man,” said Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as
he made the punch, “who cares more to be agreeable,
who takes more pains to be agreeable, who knows better
how to be agreeable, in a woman’s Society, than you do.”
“Go on,” said Sydney Carton.
“No; but before I go on,” said Stryver, shaking his
head in his bullying way, “I’ll have this out with you.
You have been at Doctor Manette’s house as much as I
have, or more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of
your moroseness there! Your manners have been of
that silent and sullen and hang-dog kind, that, upon my
life and soul, I have been ashamed of you, Sydney!”
“It should be very beneficial to a man in your prac-
tice at the bar, to be ashamed of anything,” returned
Sydney; “you ought to be much obliged to me.”
“You shall not get off in that way,” rejoined Stryver,
shouldering the rejoinder at him; “no, Sydney, it's my
duty to tell you—and I tell you to your face to do you
good—that you are a de-vilish ill-conditioned fellow in
that sort of society. You are a disagreeable fellow.”
Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made,
and laughed.
“Look at me!” said Stryver, squaring himself; “I
have less need to make myself agreeable than you have,
º more independent in circumstances. Why do I
O it?”
‘‘I never saw you do it yet,” muttered Carton.
“I do it because it’s politic; I do it on principle. And
look at me! I get on.” •
“You don’t get on with your account of your matri-
monial intentions,” answered Carton, with a careless
air; “I wish you would keep to that. As to me—will
you never understand that I am incorrigible?” . . .
He asked the question with some appearance of scorn,
“You have no business to be incorrigible,” was his
friend’s answer, delivered in no very soothing tone.
“I have no business to be, at all, that I know of,” said
Sydney Carton. “Who is the lady?” .
“Now, don’t let my announcement of the name make
ou uncomfortable, Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, prepar-
ing him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure
136 A TALE OF Two CITIES
he was about to make, ‘‘ because I know you don’t mean
half you say; and if you meant it all, it would be of no
importance. I make this little preface, because you once
mº the young lady to me in slighting terms.”
& & i tº 25
“Certainly; and in these chambers.”
Sydney Carton looked at his punch and lookod at
his complacent friend; drank his punch and looked at
his complacent friend.
“You made mention of the young lady as a golden-
haired doll. The young lady is Miss Manette. If you
had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or delicacy of
feeling in that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been
a little resentful of your employing such a designation;
but you are not. You want that sense altogether; there-
fore, I am no more annoyed when I think of the expres-
sion, than I should be annoyed by a man’s opinion of a
picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures; or of a
piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music.”
Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank
it by bumpers, looking at his friend.
“Now you know all about it, Syd,” said Mr. Stryver.
“I don’t care about fortune: she is a charming creature,
and I have made up my mind to please myself: On the
whole, I think I can afford to please myself. She will
have in me a man already pretty well off, and a rapidly
rising man, and a man of some distinction: it is a piece
of good fortune for her, but she is worthy of good for-
tune. Are you astonished?”
Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, “Why
should I be astonished?”
“You approve?”
Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined “Why
should I not approve **
“Well!” º his friend Stryver, “ you take it more
easily than I fancied you would, and are less mercen-
ary on my behalf than I thought you would be;
though, to be sure, you know well enough by this time
that your ancient chum is a man of a pretty strong will.
Yes, Sydney, I have had enough of this style of life,
with no other as a change from it; I feel that it is a
pleasant thing for a man to have a home when he feels
inclined to go to it (when he doesn’t, he can stay away),
and I feel that Miss Manette will tell well in any
A COMPANION PICTURE. 13?
station, and will always do me credit. So I have made
up my mind. And now, Sydney, old boy, I want to say
a word to you about you,' prospects. You are in a bad
way, you know; you really are in a bad way. You don’t
know the value of money, you live hard, you’ll knock
up one of these days, and be ill and poor; you really
ought to think about a nurse.”
The prosperous patronage with which he said it,
made him look twice as big as he was, and four times
as offensive.
“Now, let me recommend you,” pursued Stryver, “to
look it in the face. I have looked it in the face, in
my different way; look it in the face, you, in your dif-
ferent way. Marry. Provide somebody to take care
of you. Never mind your having no enjoyment of
women’s society, nor understanding of it, not tact for
it. Find out somebody. Find out some respectable
woman with a little property—somebody in the land-
lady way, or lodging-letting way—and marry her,
against a rainy day. That's the kind of thing for you.
Now think of it, Sydney.”
“I’ll think of it,” said Sydney.
CHAPTER XII.
THE FELLOW OF DELICACY.
R. STRYWER having made up his mind to that
magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the
Doctor’s daughter, resolved to make her happiness
known to her before he left town for the Long Vaca-
tion. After Some mental debating of the point, he
came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get
all the preliminaries done with, and they could then
arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his
hand a week or two before Michaelmas Term, or in the
little Christmas vacation between it and Hilary,
AS to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt
about it, but clearly saw his way to the verdict. Argued
with the jury On Substantial worldly grounds—the only
grounds ever worth taking into account---it was a
138 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
plain case, and had not a weak spot in it. He called
himself for the plaintiff, there was no getting over his
evidence, the counsel for the defendant threw up his
brief, and the jury did not even turn to consider. After
trying it, Stryver C. J. was satisfied that no plainer
case, could be. - *
Accordingly, Mr. Stryver inaugurated the Long Va-
cation with a formal proposal to take Miss Manette to
Vauxhall Gardens; that failing, to Ranelagh; that unac-
countably failing too, it behoved him to present him-
self in Soho, and there declare his noble mind.
Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Stryver shouldered his
way from the Temple, while the bloom of the Long
Vacation’s infancy was still upon it. Anybody who
had seen him projecting himself into Soho while he was
yet on Saint Dunstan’s side of Temple Bar, bursting in
his full-blown way along the pavement, to the jostle-
ment of all weaker people, might have seen how safe
and strong he was.
His way taking him past Tellson’s, and he both
banking at Tellson’s and knowing Mr. Lorry as the in-
timate friend of the Manettes, it entered Mr. Stryver's
mind to enter the bank, and reveal to Mr. Lorry the
brightness of the Soho horizon. So, he pushed open the
door with the weak rattle in its throat, stumbled down
the two steps, got past the two ancient cashiers, and
shouldered himself into the musty back closet where
Mr. Lorry sat at great books ruled for figures, with
perpendicular iron bars to his window as if that were
ruled for figures too, and everything under the clouds
were a Sum.
“Halloa!” said Mr. Stryver. “How do you do?. I
hope you are well!”
It was Stryver's grand peculiarity that he always
seemed too big for any place, or space. He was so much
too big for Tellson's, that old clerks in distant corners
looked up with looks of remonstrance, as though he
Squeezed them against the wall. The House itself,
Imagnificently reading the paper quite in the far-off per-
spective, lowered displeased, as if the Stryver head had
been butted into its responsible waistcoat. . f
The discreet Mr. Lorry said, in a sample tone of the
voice he would recommend under the circumstances,
“How do you do, Mr. Stryver? How do you do, sir?”
THE FELLOW OF TELICACY. 139
and shook hands. There was a peculiarity in his man-
ner of shaking hands, always to be seen in any clerk at
Tellson’s who shook hands with a customer when the
House pervaded the air. He shook in a self-abnegating
way, as one who shook for Tellson and Co. -
“Can I do anything for you, Mr. Stryver?” asked
Mr. Lorry, in his business character.
“Why, no thank you: this is a private visit to your-
self, Mr. Lorry; I have come for a private word.”
“Oh indeed!” said Mr. Lorry, bending down his ear,
while his eye strayed to the House afar off. Q
‘‘I am going,” said Mr. Stryver, leaning his arms
confidentially on the desk: whereupon, although it was
a large double one, there appeared to be not half desk
enough for him: “I am going to make an offer of my-
self in marriage to your agreeable little friend Miss
Manette, Mr. Lorry.” -
“Oh dear me!” cried Mr. Lorry, rubbing his chin,
and looking at his visitor dubiously.
“Oh dear me, sir?” repeated Stryver, drawing back.
“Oh dear you, sir? What may your meaning be, Mr.
Lorry?”. r -
“My meaning?” answered the man of business, “is,
of course, friendly and appreciative, and that it does
you the greatest credit, and—in short, my meaning is
everything you could desire. But—really, you know,
Mr. Stryver—” Mr. Lorry paused, and shook his head
at him in the oddest manner, as if he were compelled
against his will to add, internally, “ you know there
really is so much too much of you!” -
“Well!” said Stryver, slapping the desk with his con-
tentious hand, Opening his eyes wider, and taking a
long breath, “if I understand you, Mr. Lorry, I’ll be
hanged!”
Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a
means towards that end, and bit the feather of a pen.
“D—n it all, sir!” said Stryver, staring at him, “am
I not eligible?” - . -
“Oh dear yes! Yes. Oh yes, you’re eligible!” said
Mr. Lorry. “If you say eligible, you are eligible.”
“Am I not prosperous?” asked Stryver. -
“Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous,”
said Mr. Lorry. - -
“And advancing?”
140 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“If you come to advancing, you know,” said Mr.
Lorry, delighted to be able to make another admission,
“nobody can doubt that.”
“Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry?”
demanded Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen.
L “Well! I—Were you going there now?” asked Mr.
orry.
“Straight!” said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on
the desk.
“Then I think I wouldn’t, if I was you.”
“Why?” said Stryver. “Now, I’ll put you in a
corner,” forensically shaking a forefinger at him. “You
are a man of business and bound to have a reason.
State your reason. Why wouldn’t you go?”
“Because,” said Mr. Lorry, I wouldn’t go on such an
object without having some cause to believe that I
should succeed.”
“D—n ME!” cried Stryver, but this beats every-
thing.” -
“Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced
at the angry Stryver.
“Here’s a man of business—a man of years—a man
of experience—in a Bank,” said Stryver; “and having
summed up three leading reasons for complete success,
he says there’s no reason at all! Says it with his head
onl’ Mr. Stryver remarked upon the peculiarity as if
it would have been infinitely less remarkable if he had
said it with his head off.
“When I speak of success, I speak of success with
the young lady; and when I speak of causes and
reasons to make success probable, I speak of causes and
reasons that will tell as such with the young lady. The
young lady, my good sir,” said Mr. Lorry, mildly tap-
ping the Stryver arm, “the young lady. The young
lady goes before all.”
‘‘Then .." mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry,” said Stryver
Squaring his elbows, ‘‘that it is your deliberate Opinion
#. the young lady at present in question is a mincing
TOOl?” ſº
“Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver,”
said Mr. Lorry, reddening, “that I will hear no dis-
respectful word of that young lady from any lips; and
that if I knew any man—which I hope I do not—whose
taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbear-
THE FELLOW OF DELICACY. 141
ing, that he could not restrain himself from speaking
disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even
º's should prevent my giving him a piece of my
Imind.”
The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had
put Mr. Stryver's blood-vessels into a dangerous state
when it was his turn to be angry; Mr. Lorry’s veins,
methodical as their courses could usually be, were in
no better state, now it was his turn.
“That is what I mean to tell you, sir,” said Mr. Lorry.
“Pray let there be no mistake about it.”
Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little
while, and then stood hitting a tune out of his teeth
with it, which probably gave him the toothache. He
broke the awkward silence by saying:
“This is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You de-
liberately advise me not to go up to Soho and offer my-
self—my-self, Stryver of the King’s Bench bar?”
“Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver?”
“Yes I do.” tº
“Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated
it correctly.”
“And all I can say of it, is,” laughed Striver with a
vexed laugh, “that this—ha, ha!—beats everything past,
present, and to come.” +
“Now understand me,” pursued Mr. Lorry. “As a
man of business, I am not justified in saying anything
about this matter, for, as a man of business, I know
nothing of it. But, as an old fellow, who has carried
Miss Manette in his arms, who is the trusted friend of
Miss Manette and of her father too, and who has a great
affection for them both, I have spoken. The confidence
is not of my seeking, recollect. Now, you think I may
not be right?” -
“Not Il’” said Stryver, whistling. “I can’t under-
take to find third parties in common sense ; I can only .
find it for myself. I suppose sense in certain quarters;
you suppose mincing bread-and-butter nonsense. It’s
new to me, but you are right, I dare say.” .
“What I suppose, Mr. Stryver, I claim to characterise
for myself. And understand me, sir,” said Mr. Lorry,
Quickly flushing again. “I will not—not even at Tell-
son’s—have it characterised for me by any gentleman
breathing.” - -
142 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“There! I beg your pardon!’” said Stryver. *
“Granted. Thank you. Well, Mr. Stryver, I was
about to say: It might be painful to you to find yourself
mistaken, it might be painful to Doctor Manette to have
the task of being explicit with you, it might be very
painful to Miss Manette to have the task of being ex-
plicit with you. You know the terms upon which I have
the honour and happiness to stand with the family. If
you please, committing you in no way, representing you
in no way, I will undertake to correct my advice by the
exercise of a little new observation and judgment ex-
pressly brought to bear upon it. If you should then be
dissatisfied with it, you can but test its soundness for
yourself; if, on the other hand, you should be satisfied
with it, and it should be what it now is, it may spare
all sides what is best spared. What do you say?”
“How long would you keep me in town?”
“Oh! It is only a question of a few hours. I could
go to Soho in the evening, and come to your chambers
afterwards.”
“Then I say yes,” said Stryver: “I won’t go up there
now, I am not so hot upon it as that comes to; I say
yes, and I shall expect you to look in to-night. Good
morning.”
Then Mr. Stryver turned and burst out of the Bank,
causing such a concussion of air on his passage through,
that to stand up against it bowing behind the two
counters, required the utmost remaining strength of
the two ancient clerks. Those venerable and feeble
ersons were always seen by the public in the act of
Owing, and were popularly believed, when they had
bowed a customer out, still to keep on bowing in the
empty office until they bowed another customer
IIl.
The barrister was keen enough to divine that the
banker would not have gone so far in his expression of
{; On any less j ground than moral certainty.
Jnprepared as he was for the large pill he had to swal-
low, he got it down. “And now,” said Mr. Stryver,
shaking his forensic forefinger at the Temple in general,
when it was down, “my way out of this, is, to put you
all in the wrong.”
It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in
which he found great relief. “You shall not put me
THE FELLOW OF DELICACY. 143
in the wrong, young lady,” said Mr. Stryver; “I’ll do
that for you.” - 4.
Accordingly, when Mr. Lorry called that night as late
as ten o’clock, Mr. Stryver, among a quantity of books
and papers littered out for the purpose, seemed to have
nothing less on his mind than the subject of the morn-
ing. He even showed surprise when he saw Mr. Lorry.
and was altogether in an absent and preoccupied State.
“Well!” said that good-natured emissary, after a full
half-hour of bootless attempts to bring him round to the
Question, “I have been to Soho.” **
“To Soho?” repeated Mr. Stryver, coldly. “Oh, to
be sure! What am I thinking of !”
“And I have no doubt,” said Mr. Lorry, “that I was
right in the conversation we had. My Opinion is con-
firmed, and I reiterate my advice.”
“I assure you,” returned Mr. Stryver, in the friend-
liest way, “that I am sorry for it on your account, and
sorry for it on the poor father’s account. I know this
must always be a sore subject with the family; let us
say no more about it.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Mr. Lorry.
“I dare say not,” rejoined Stryver, nodding his head
in a smoothing and final way; “no matter, no matter.”
“But it does matter,” Mr. Lorry urged.
“No it doesn’t; I assure you it doesn’t. Having sup-
posed that there was sense where there is no sense, and
a laudable ambition where there is not a laudable am-
bition, I am well out of my mistake, and no harm is
done. Young women have committed similar follies
often before, and have repented them in poverty and .
obscurity often before. In an unselfish aspect, I am
sorry that the thing is dropped, because it would have
been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view; in
a selfish aspect, I am glad that the thing has dropped,
because it would have been a bad thing for me in a
worldly point of view—it is hardly necessary to say I
could have gained nothing by it. There is no harm at
all done. I have not proposed to the young lady, and
between ourselves, I am by no means certain, on reflec-
tion, that I ever should have committed myself to that
extent. Mr. Lorry, you cannot control the mincing
vanities and giddiness of empty-headed girls; you must
not expect to do it, or you will always be disappointed.
144 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Now, pray say no more about it. I tell you, I regret it
on account of others, but I am satisfied on my own ac-
count. And I am really very much obliged to you for
allowing me to sound you, and for giving me your ad-
vice; you know the young lady better than I do; you
were right, it never would have done.”
Mr. Lorry was so taken aback, that he looked quite
stupidly at Mr. Stryver shouldering him towards the
door, with an appearance of showering generosity, for-
bearance, and good will, on his erring head. “Make
the best of it, my dear sir,” said Stryver; “say no more
about it; thank you again for allowing me to Sound
you; good night!”
Mr. Lorry was out in the night, before he knew where
he was. Mr. Stryver was lying back on his sofa, wink-
ing at his ceiling.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE FELLOW OF NO DELICACY.
I Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly
never shone in the house of Doctor Manette. He
had been there often, during a whole year, and had al-
ways been the same moody and morose lounger there.
When he cared to talk, he talked well ; but, the cloud
of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with
such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the
light within him. assº”
And yet he did care something for the streets that
environed that house, and for the senseless stones that
made their pavements. Many a night he vaguely and
unhappily wandered there, when wine had brought no
transitory gladness to him ; many a dreary daybreak
revealed his solitary figure lingering there, and still
lingering there when the first beams of the Sun brought
into strong relief, removed beauties of architecture in
spires of churches and lofty buildings, as perhaps the
quiet time brought some sense of better things, else for-
gotten and unattainable, into his mind. Of late, the
neglected bed in the Temple court had known him more
scantily than ever; and often when he had thrown him-
THE FELLOW OF NO DELICACY. 145
self upon it no longer than a few minutes, he had got
up again, and haunted that neighbourhood.
On a day in August, when Mr. Stryver (after notify-
ing to his jackal that “he had thought better of that
marrying matter’) had carried his delicacy into Devon-
shire, and when the sight and scent of flowers in the
City streets had some waifs of goodness in them for the
worst, of health for the sickliest, and of youth for the
oldest, Sydney’s feet still trod those stones. From being
irresolute and purposeless, his feet became animated by
an intention, and, in the working Out of that intention,
they took him to the Doctor’s door.
He was shown up-stairs, and found Lucie at her work,
alone. She had never been quite at her ease with him,
and received him with some little embarrassment as he
seated himself near her table. But, looking up at his
face in the interchange of the first few common-places,
she observed a change in it.
‘‘I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton!”
“ No. But the life I lead, Miss Manette, is not con-
ducive to health. What is to be expected of, or by, such
profligates?” .
“Is it not—forgive me; I have begun the question on
my lips—a pity to live no better life?”
“God knows it is a shame!”
“Then why not change it?”
Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and
saddened to see that there were tears in his eyes. There
were tears in his voice too, as he answered :
“It is too late for that. I shall never be better than
I am. I shall sink lower, and be worse.”
He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his
eyes with his hand. The table trembled in the silence
that followed.
She had never seen him softened, and was much dis-
tressed. He knew her to be so, without looking at her,
and said :
“Pray forgive me, Miss Manette. I break down be-
fore the knowledge of what I want to say to you. Will
you hear me?”
“If it will do you any good. Mr. Carton, if it
.." make you happier, it would make me very
g à, !”
“God bless you for your sweet compassion!”
WOL. I. 10
146 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke
steadily.
“Don’t be afraid to hear me. Don’t shrink from any-
thing I say. I am like One who died young. All m
life might have been. ” -
“No, Mr. Carton. I am sure that the best part of it
might still be; I am sure that you might be much, much
worthier of yourself.”
“Say of you, Miss Manette, and although I know
better—although in the mystery of my own wretched
heart I know better—I shall never forget it!”
She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief
with a fixed despair of himself which made the inter.
view unlike any other that could have been holden.
“If it had been º Miss Manette, that you could
have returned the love of the man you see before you—
self-flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of mis-
use as you know him to be—he would have been con-
scious this day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that
he would bring you to misery, bring you to Sorrow and
repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down
with him. I know very well that you can have no
tenderness for me; I ask for none; I am even thankful
that it cannot be.” -
“Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton? Can I
not recal you—forgive me again!—to a better course!
Can I in no way repay your confidence? I know this
is a confidence,” she modestly said, after a little hesita-
tion, and in earnest tears, “I know you would say this
to no one else. Can I turn it to no good account for
yourself, Mr. Carton?”
He shook his head.
“To none. No, Miss Manette, to none. If you will
hear me through a very little more, all you can ever do
for me is done. I wish you to know that you have been
the last dream of my soul. In my degradation, I have
not been so degraded but that the sight of you with
your father, and of this home made such a home by
you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died
out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by
a remorse that I thought would never reproach me
again, and have heard whispers from old voices im-
pelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever.
I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning
THE FELLOW OF NO DELICACY. 147
anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting
out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that
ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay
down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.”
“Will nothing of it remain? O Mr. Carton, think
again! Try again!”
“No, Miss Manette ; all through it, I have known
myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had
the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you
to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me,
heap of ashes that I am, into fire—a fire, however, in-
separable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing,
lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning
away.” •
“Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have made
you more unhappy than you were before you knew
me—”
“Don’t say that, Miss Manette, for you would have
reclaimed me, if anything could. You will not be the
cause of my becoming worse.”
“Since the state of your mind that you describe, is,
at all events, attributable to some influence of mine—
this is what I mean, if I can make it plain—can I use
no influence to serve you? Have I no power for good,
with you, at all?”
“The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss
Manette, I have come here to realise. Det me carry
through the rest of my misdirected life, the remem-
brance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the
wórld; and that there was something left in me at this
time which you could deplore and pity.”
“Which I entreated you to believe, again and again,
most fervently, with all my heart, was capable of better
things, Mr. Carton l’
“Entreat me to believe it no more, Miss Manette.
I have º myself, and I know better. I distress
you; I draw fast to an end. Will you let me believe,
when I recal this day, that the last confidence of my
life was reposed in your pure and innocent breast, and
that it lies there alone, and will be shared by no one?”
“If that will be a consolation to you, yes.”
‘‘Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to
you?”
“Mr. Carton,” she answered, after an agitated pause,
148 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
i. the secret is yours, not mine; and I promise to respect
l .” -
“Thank you. And again, God bless you.”
d He put her hand to his lips, and moved towards the
OOI’. -
“Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my
ever resuming this conversation by so much as a pass-
ing word. I will never refer to it again. If I were
dead, that could not be surer than it is henceforth. In
the hour of my death, I shall hold sacred the one good
remembrance—and shall thank and bless you for it—
that my last avowal of myself was made to you, and’
that my name, and faults, and miseries, were gently
carried in your heart. May it otherwise be light and
hº 25 s
e was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to
be, and it was so sad to think how much he had thrown
away, and how much he every day kept down and
perverted, that Lucie Manette wept mournfully for him
as he stood looking back at her.
“Be comforted! ” he said, “I am not worth such feel-
ing, Miss Manette. An hour or two hence, and the
low companions and low habits that I scorn, but
yield to, will render me less worth such tears as those,
than any wretch who creeps along the street. Be
comforted! But, within myself, I shall always be, to-
wards you, what I am now, though outwardly I shall
be what you have heretofore seen me. The last sup-
plication but one I make to you, is, that you will believe
this of me.” - *
“I will, Mr. Carton.” -
“My last supplication of all, is this; and with it, I.
will relieve you of a visitor with whom I well know
you have nothing in unison, and between whom and
ou there is an impassable space. . It is useless to say
it, I know, but it rises out of my soul. For you, and for
any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career
were of that better kind that there was any opportunity
or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sac-
rifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold
me in your mind, at some quiet times, as die. and
sincere in this one thing. The time will come, the time
will not be long in coming, when new ties will be
formed about you—ties that will bind you yet more
43
THE HONEST TRADESMAN. 149
... tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn—the
dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O
Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's
face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright
beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and
then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep
a life you love beside you!”
He said, “Farewell!” said “A last God bless you !”
and left her. - -
*—
CHAPTER XIV.
THE HONEST TRADESMAN.
To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his
stool in Fleet-street, with his grisly urchin beside
him, a vast number and variety of objects in movement
were every day presented. Who could sit upon any-
thing in Fleet-street during the busy hours of the day,
and not be dazed and deafened by two immense pro-
cessions, one ever, tending westward with the sun,
the other ever tending eastward from the sun, both ever
tending to the plains beyond the range of red and pur-
ple where the sun goes down!
With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat watch-
ing the two streams, like the heathen rustic who has
for several centuries been on duty watching one stream
—saving that Jerry had no expectation of their ever
running dry. Nor would it have been an expectation
of a hopeful kind, since a small part of his income was
derived from the pilotage of timid women (mostly of
a full habit and past the middle term of life) from Tell-
son’s side of the tides to the opposite shore. Brief as
such companionship was in every separate instance,
Mr. Cruncher never failed to become so interested in
the lady as to express a strong desire to have the
honour of drinking her very good health. And it was
from the gifts bestowed upon him towards the execu-
tion of this benevolent purpose, that he recruited his
finances, as just now observed. - -
Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool, in a public
place, and mused in the sight of men, Mr. Cruncher,
150 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
*
sitting on a stool in a public place, but not being a poet.
mused as little as possible, and looked about him.
It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when
crowds were few, and belated women few, and when
his affairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken
a strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs. Cruncher
must have been “flopping” in some pointed manner,
when an unusual concourse pouring down Fleet-street,
westward attracted his attention. Looking that way,
Mr. Cruncher made out that some kind of funeral
was coming along, and that there was popular objection
to this funeral, which engendered uproar.
“Young Jerry,” said Mr. Cruncher, turning to his
offspring, “it’s a buryin’.” . . .
“Hooroar, father!” cried Young Jerry.
The young gentleman uttered this exultant sound
with mysterious significance. . The elder gentleman
took the cry so ill, that he watched his opportunity, and
Smote the young gentleman on the ear. -
“What d'ye mean 2 What are you hooroaring at?
What do you want to convey to your own father, you
young Rip? This boy is getting too many for me!”
said Mr. T Cruncher, surveying him. “Him and his
hooroars! Don’t let me hear no more of you, or you
shall feel some more of me. D'ye hear?”
“I warn’t doing no harm,” Young Jerry protested,
rubbing his cheek.
“Drop it then,” said Mr. Cruncher; “I won’t have
none of your no harms. Get a top of that there seat,
and look at the crowd.”
His son obeyed, and the crowd approached; they were
bawling and hissing round a dingy hearse and dingy
mourning coach, in which mourning coach there was
only one mourner, dressed in the dingy trappings that
were considered essential to the dignity of the position.
The position appeared by no means to please him, how-
ever, with an increasing rabble surrounding the coach,
deriding him, making grimaces at him, and incessantly
roaning and calling out: “Yah! Spies! Tst! Yahal
pies!” with many compliments too numerous and
forcible to repeat. -
Eunerals had at all times a remarkable attraction for
Mr. Cruncher; he always pricked up his senses, and
became excited, when a funeral passed Tellson’s.
THE HONEST TRADESMAN. 151
Naturally, therefore, a funeral with this uncommon at-
tendance excited him greatly, and he asked of the first
man who ran against him. -
“What is it, brother? What's it about?” .
“I don’t know,” said the man. “Spies! Yahal Tst!
Spies!”
He asked another man. “Who is it?” -
“I don’t know,” returned the man: clapping his hands
to his mouth nevertheless, and vociferating in a surpris-
ing heat and with the greatest ardour, “Spies! Yahal
Tst, tst! Spi-ies!” - ... r
At length, a person better informed on the merits of
the case, tumbled against him, and from this person he
ºned that the funeral was the funeral of one Roger
Iy. -
“Was He a spy?” asked Mr. Cruncher. -
“Old Bailey spy,” returned his informant. “Yahal
Tst! Yah! Old Bailey Spi-i-ies!” -
“Why, to be sure!” exclaimed Jerry, recalling the
Trial at which he had assisted. “I’ve seen him.
Dead, is he?” -
“Dead as mutton,” returned the other, “ and can’t be
too dead. Have 'em out, there! Spies! Pull 'em out,
there! Spies!” - -
The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence
of any idea, that the crowd caught it up with eager-
ness, and loudly repeating the suggestion to have 'em
out, and to pull 'em out, mobbed the two vehicles so
closely that they came to a stop. On the crowd’s
opening the coach doors the one mourner scuffled out of
himself and was in their hands for a moment; but he
was so alert, and made such good use of his time, that
in another moment he was Scouring away up a by-Street,
after shedding his cloak, hat, long hatband, white
pocket-handkerchief, and other symbolical tears.
These, the people tore to pieces, and scattered far
and wide with great enjoyment, while the tradesmen
hurriedly shut up their shops; for a crowd in those
times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much
drèaded. They had already got the length of opening
the hearse to take the coffin out, when some brighter
genius proposed instead, its being escorted to its desti-
nation amidst general rejoicing. Practical suggestions
being much needed, this suggestion, too, was received
152 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
with acclamation, and the coach was immediately filled
with eight inside and a dozen out, while as many people
got on the roof of the hearse as could by any exercise
of ingenuity stick upon it. . Among the first of these
volunteers was Jerry Cruncher himself, who modestly
concealed his spiky head from the observation of
Tellson's, in the further corner of the mourning coach.
The officiating undertakers made some protest against
these changes in the ceremonies; but, the river being
alarmingly near, and several voices remarking on the
efficacy of cold immersion in bringing refractory mem-
bers of the profession to reason,the protest was faint and
brief. The remodelled procession started, with a chim-
ney-sweep driving the hearse—advised by the regular
driver, who was perched beside him, under close
inspection, for the purpose—and with a pierman, also
attended by his cabinet minister, driving the mournful
coach. A bear-leader, a popular street character of the
time, was impressed as an additional ornament, before the
cavalcade had gone far down the Strand; and his bear,
who was black and very mangy, gave quite an Under-
taking air to that part of the procession in which he
walked. -
Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring,
and infinite caricaturing of woe, the #. rly pro-
cession went its way, recruiting at every step, and all
the shops shutting up before it. Its destination was
the old church of Saint Pancras, far off in the fields. It
got there in course of time; insisted on pouring into the
burial-ground; finally, accomplished the interment of
the deceased Roger Cly in its own way, and highly to
its own satisfaction.
The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being
under the necessity of providing some other entertain-
ment for itself, another brighter genius (or perhaps the
same) conceived the humour of impeaching casual
passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, j' wreaking ven-
geance on them. Chase was given to some scores of
inoffensive persons who had never been near the Old
Bailey in their lives, in the realisation of this fancy,
and they were roughly hustled and maltreated. The
transition to the sport of window-breaking, and thence
to the plundering of public-houses, was easy and natural.
At last, after several hours, when sundry summer-
THE HONEST TRADESMAN. 153
houses had been pulled down, and some area railings
had been torn up, to arm the more belligerent spirits, a
rumour got about that the Guards were coming. Before
this rumour, the crowd gradually melted away, and
perhaps the Guards came, and perhaps they never came,
and this was the usual progress of a mob.
Mr. Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports, but
had remained behind in the churchyard, to confer and
condole with the undertakers. The place had a sooth-
ing influence on him. He procured a pipe from a neigh-
bouring public-house, and smoked it, looking in at the
railings and maturely considering the spot.
“Jerry,” said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophising himself in
his usual way, “you see that there Cly that day, and you
see with your own eyes that he was a young’un and a
straight made’un.”
Having smoked his pipe Out, and ruminated a little
longer, he turned himself about, that he might appear,
before the hour of closing, on his station at Tellson’s.
Whether his meditations on mortality had touched his
liver, or whether his general health had been pre-
viously at all amiss, or whether he desired to show a
little attention to an eminent man, is not so much to
the purpose, as that he made a short call upon his
ºal adviser—a distinguished Surgeon—on his way
a,C}|{.
Young Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest,
and reported No job in his absence The bank closed,
the ancient clerks came out, the usual watch was set,
and Mr. Cruncher and his son went home to tea.
“Now I tell you where it is!” said Mr. Cruncher to
his wife on entering. “If, as a honest tradesman,
my wenters goes wrong to-night, I shall make sure
that you’ve been praying again me, and I shall work
you for it just the same as if I seen you do it.”
The dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head.
“Why, you’re at it afore my face!” said Mr.
Cruncher, with signs of angry apprehension.
“I am saying nothing.”
“Well, then; don’t meditate nothing. You might
as well flop as meditate. You may as well go again
me one way as another. Drop it altogether.”
“Yes, Jerry.”
“Yes, Jerry,” repeated Mr. Cruncher, sitting down
154 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
to tea. “Ah! It is yes, Jerry. That’s about it. You
may say 'yes, Jerry.”
Mr. Cruncher had no particular meaning in these
sulky corroborations, but made use of them, as people
not unfrequently do, to express general ironical dis-
Satisfaction. -
“You and your yes, Jerry,” said Mr. Cruncher,
taking a bite Out of his bread-and-butter, and seeming
to help it down with a large invisible oyster out of his
saucer. “Ah! I think so. I believe you.”
“You are going out to-night?” asked his decent wife,
when he took another bite.
“Yes, I am.” & -
“May I go with you, father?” asked his son, briskly.
“No, you mayn’t. I’m a going—as your mother
knows—a fishing. That’s where I’m going to. Going
a fishing.”
“Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty ; don’t it,
father?”
“Never you mind.”
“Shall you º; any fish home, father?”
“If I don’t, you’ll have short commons to-morrow,”
returned that gentleman, shaking his head; “that’s
Questions enough for you; I ain’t a going out, till you’ve
been long a-bed.”
He devoted himself during the remainder of the even-
ing to keeping a most vigilant watch on Mrs. Cruncher,
and sullenly holding her in conversation that she might
be prevented from meditating any petitions to his dis-
advantage. With this view, he urged his son to hold
her in conversation also, and led the unfortunate
woman a hard life by dwelling on any causes of com-
plaint he could bring against her, rather than he would
leave her for a moment to her own reflections. The
devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage
to the efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this
distrust of his wife. It was as if a professed unbeliever
in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost story.
“And mind you!” said Mr. Cruncher. “No games
to-morrow ! If I, as a honest tradesman, succeed in
providing a jinte of meat or two, none of your not
touching of it, and Sticking to bread. If I, as a honest
tradesman, am able to provide a little beer, none of
your declaring on water. When you go to Rome, do as
THE HONEST TRADESMAN. 15
5
Rome does. Rome will be a ugly customer to you, if
you don’t. I’m your Rome, you know.”
Then he began grumbling again: - - *
“With your flying into the face of your own wittles
and drink! I don’t know how scarce you mayn’t make
the wittles and drink here, by your flopping tricks and
your unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he is
your’n, ain’t he? He's as thin as a lath. Do you call
yourself a mother, and not know that a mother’s first
duty is to blow her boy out?”
This touched young Jerry on a tender place; who
adjured his mother to perform her first duty, and, what-
ever else she did or neglected, above all things to lay
especial stress on the discharge of that maternal func-
tion so affectingly and delicately indicated by his other
arent. -
p Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher
family, until Young Jerry was ordered to bed, and his
mother, laid under similar injunctions, obeyed them.
Mr. Cruncher beguiled the earlier watches of the night
with solitary pipes, and did not start upon his excur-
sion until nearly one o’clock. Towards that small and
ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out
of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought
forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope and
chain and other fishing-tackle of that nature. Dispos-
ing these articles about him in a skilful manner,
he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Cruncher, ex-
tinguished the light, and went out.
Young Jerry, who had only made a feint of undress-
ing when he went to bed, was not long after his father.
Under cover of the darkness he followed out of the
room, followed down the stairs, followed down the
court, followed out into the streets. He was in no
uneasiness concerning his getting into the house again,
for it Was full of lodgers, and the door stood ajar all night.
Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art
and mystery of his father's honest calling, Young
Jerry, keeping as close to house-fronts, walls, and
doorways, as his eyes were close to one another,
held his honoured parent in view. The honoured parent
steering Northward, had not gone far, when he was
joined by another disciple of Izaak Walton, and the
two trudged on together.
156 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Within half an hour from the first starting, they
were beyond the winking lamps, and the more than
winking watchmen, and were out upon a lonely
road. Another fisherman was picked up here—and
that so silently, that if Young Jerry had been super-
stitious, he might have supposed the second follower
of the gentle craft to have, all of a sudden, split himself
into two.
The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until
the three stopped under a bank overhanging the road.
Upon the top of the bank was a low brick wall sur-
mounted by an iron railing. In the shadow of bank
and wall, the three turned out of the road, and up a
blind lane, of which the wall—there, risen to some
eight or ten feet high—formed one side. Crouching
down in a corner, peeping up the lane, the next object
that Young Jerry saw, was the form of his honoured
parent, pretty well defined against a watery and
clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He was
Soon over, and then the second fisherman got over, and
then the third. They all dropped softly on the ground
within the gate, and lay there a little—listening perhaps.
Then, they moved away on their hands and knees.
It was now Young Jerry’s turn to approach the gate:
which he did, holding his breath. Crouching down
again in a corner there, and looking in, he made out
the three fishermen creeping through some rank grass;
and all the gravestones in the churchyard—it was a
large churchyard that they were in—looking on like
ghosts in white, while the church tower itself looked
on like the ghost of a monstrous giant. They did not
Creep far, before they stopped and stood upright. And
then they began to fish. - fe
They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the
honoured parent appeared to be adjusting some instru-
ment like a great corkscrew. Whatever tools they
worked with, they worked hard, until the awful strik-
ing of the church clock so terrified Young Jerry, that
he made off, with his hair as stiff as his father's.
But, his long-cherished desire to know more about
these matters, not only stopped him in his running
away, but lured him back again. They were still fishing
perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for the
Second time; but, now they seemed to have got a bite.
THE HONEST TRADESMAN. 157
There was a screwing and complaining Sound down
below, and their bent figures were strained, as if by
a weight. By slow degrees the weight broke away the
earth upon it and came to the surface. Young Jerry
very well knew what it would be; but, when he saw it,
and saw his honoured parent about to wrench it open,
he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he
made off again, and never stopped until he had run a
mile or more.
He would not have stopped then, for anything less
necessary than breath, it being a spectral sort of race
that he ran, and one highly desirable to get to the end
of. He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen
was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on
behind him, bolt upright upon its narrow end, always
on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his
side—perhaps taking his arm—it was a pursuer to
shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too,
for, while it was making the whole night behind him
dreadful, he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark
alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a
dropsical boy’s-Kite without tail and wings. It hid in
door-ways too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against
doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it were
laughing. It got into shadows on the road, and lay
cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time, it
was incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him,
so that when the boy got to his own door he had reason
for being half dead. And even then it would not leave
him, but followed him up-stairs with a bump on
every stair, Scrambled into bed with him, and bumped
down, dead and heavy, on his breast when he fell
asleep.
From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his
closet was awakened after daybreak and before sunrise,
by the presence of his father in the family room.
Something had gone wrong with him; at least, so
Young Jerry inferred, from the circumstance of his
holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears, and knocking the
back of her head against the head-board of the bed.
“I told you I would,” said Mr. Cruncher, “and I did.”
“Jerry, Jerry, Jerry! ” his wife implored.
“You oppose yourself to the profit of the business,”
said Jerry, “ and me and my partners suffer. You
158 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
was to honour and obey; why the devil don’t you?”
“I’ll try to be a good wife, Jerry,” the poor woman
protested, with tears.
“Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband’s
business? Is it honouring your husband to dishonour
his business? Is it obeying your husband to disobey
him on the wital subject of his business?” - -
J “You hadn’t taken to the dreadful business then,
erry.” -
“It’s enough for you,” retorted Mr. Cruncher, “to be
the wife of a honest tradesman, and not to occupy your
female mind with calculations when he took to his
trade or when he didn’t. A honouring and obeying
wife would let his trade alone altogether. Call your-
self a religious woman? If you’re a religious woman,
give me a irreligious one! You have no more natºral
sense of duty than the bed of this here Thames river
has of a pile, and similarly it must be knocked into
you.” - -
The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice,
and terminated in the honest tradesman’s kicking off
his clay-Soiled boots, and lying down at his length on
the floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on
his back, with his rusty hands under his head for a
pillow, his son lay down too, and fell asleep again.
There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of
anything else. Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits, and
out of temper, and kept an iron pot-lid by him as a pro-
jectile for the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in case he
should observe any symptoms of her saying Grace.
He was brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set
off with his son to pursue his Ostensible calling.
Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm
at his father’s side along sunny and crowded Fleet-
street, was a very different Young Jerry from him of
the previous night, running home through darkness
and solitude from his grim pursuer. His cunning was
fresh with the day and his qualms were gone with the
night—in which particulars it is not improbable that he
had compeers in Fleet-street and the City of London,
that fine morning. -
“Father,” said Young Jerry, as they walked along:
taking care to keep at arm’s length and to have the
stool well between them: “what’s a Resurrection-Man?”
THE HONEST TRADESMAN. 159
Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before
he answered, “How should I know?”
“I thought you knowed everything, father,” said the
artless boy. -
“Hem! Well,” returned Mr. Cruncher, going on
again, and lifting off his hat to give his spikes free
play, “he’s a tradesman.”
J “What’s his goods, father?” asked the brisk Young
erry.
“His goods,” said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it
over in his mind, “is a branch of Scientific goods.”
b “Person’s bodies, ain’t it, father?” asked the lively
Oy. -
“I believe it is something of that sort,” said Mr.
Cruncher.
- “Oh, father,' I should so like to be a Resurrection-
Man when I’m quite growed up.”
Mr. Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a
dubious and moral way. “It depends upon how you de-
welop your talents. Be careful to dewelop your talents,
and never to say no more than you can help to nobody,
and there’s no telling at the present time what you may
not come to be fit for.” As Young Jerry, thus encour-
aged, went on a few yards in advance, to plant the
stool in the shadow of the Bar, Mr. Cruncher added to
himself : “Jerry, you honest tradesman, there’s hopes
wot that boy will yet be a blessing to you, and a recom-
pense to you for his mother l’’ -
CHAPTER XV.
KNITTING.
Tº: had been earlier drinking than usual in the
wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. As early as six
o'clock in the morning, sallow faces peeping through
its barred windows had descried other faces within,
bending over measures of wine. Monsieur Defarge
sold a very thin wine at the best of times, but it would
seem to have been an unusually thin wine that he sold
at this time. A sour wine, moreover, or a souring, for
its influence on the mood of those who drank it was to
160 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
make them gloomy. No vivacious Bacchanalian
flame leaped out of the pressed grape of Monsieur De-
farge; but, a Smouldering fire that burnt in the dark,
lay hidden in the dregs of it.
This had been the third morning in succession, on
which there had been early drinking at the wine-shop
of Monsieur Defarge. It had begun on Monday, and
here was Wednesday come. There had been more of
early brooding than drinking; for, many men had lis-
tened and whispered and slunk about there from the
time of the opening of the door, who could not have laid
a piece of money on the counter to save their souls.
These were to the full as interested in the place, how-
ever, as if they could have commanded whole barrels of
wine; and they glided from seat to seat, and from cor-
ner to corner, swallowing talk in lieu of drink, with
greedy looks. -
Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the
master of the wine-shop was not visible. He was not
missed; for, nobody who crossed the threshold looked
for him, nobody asked for him, nobody wondered to see
only Madame Defarge in her seat, presiding over the
distribution of wine, with a bowl of battered small coins
before her, as much defaced and beaten out of their
original impress as the Small coinage of humanity from
whose ragged pockets they had come.
A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind,
were perhaps observed by the spies who looked in at the
wine-shop as they looked in at every place, high and
low, from the king’s palace to the criminal’s gaol.
Games at cards languished, players at dominoes mu-
singly built towers with them, drinkers drew figures on
the tables with spilt drops of wine, Madame Defarge
herself picked out the pattern on her sleeve with her
tooth-pick, and saw and heard something inaudible
and invisible a long way off. -
Thus, Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his,
until mid-day. It was high noontide, when two dusty
men passed through his streets and under his swinging
lamps: of whom, one was Monsieur Defarge : the other,
a mender of roads in a blue cap. All adust and athirst,
the two entered the wine-shop. Their arrival had lighted
a kind of fire in the breast of Saint Antoine, fast spread-
ing as they came along, which stirred and flickered in
• ENITTING.' 16.1
flames of faces at most doors and windows. Yet, no
one had followed them, and no man spoke when they
entered the wine-shop, though the eyes of every man
there were turned upon them.
“Good day, gentlemen l’’ said Monsieur Defarge.
It may have been a signal for loosening the general
tongue. It elicited an answering chorus of “Good day !”
“It is bad weather, gentlemen,” said Defarge, shaking
his head.
Upon which, every man looked at his neighbour, and
then all cast down their eyes and sat Silent. Except one
man, who got up and went out.
“My wife,” said Defarge aloud, addressing Madame
Defarge; “I have travelled certain leagues with this
good mender of roads, called Jacques. I met him—by
accident—a day and a half’s journey out of Paris. He
is a good child, this mender of roads, called Jacques.
Give him to drink, my wife l’” -
A second man got up and went out. Madame Defarge
set wine before the mender of roads called Jacques, who
doffed his blue cap to the company, and drank. In the
breast of his blouse, he carried some coarse dark bread;
he ate of this between whiles, and sat munching and
drinking near Madame Defarge's counter. A third man
got up and went out.
Defarge refreshed himself with a draught of wine—
but, he took less than was given to the stranger, as being
himself a man to whom it was no rarity—and stood
waiting until the countryman had made his breakfast.
He looked at no one present, and no one now looked at
him; not even Madame Defarge, who had taken up her
knitting, and was at work,
“Have you finished your repast, friend?” he asked,
in due season.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Come then! You shall see the apartment that I
told you you could occupy. It will suit you to a
marvel.”
Out of the wine-shop into the street, out of the street
into a court-yard, out of the court-yard up a steep stair-
case, out of the staircase into a garret—formerly the
garret where a white-haired man sat on a low bench,
stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.
No white-haired man was there now; but, the thre:
VOL. I, 11
162 . A TALE OF TWO CITIES."
men were there who had gone out of the wine-shop
singly. And between them and the white-haired man
afar off, was the one small link, that they had Once
looked in at him through the chinks in the wall.
Defarge closed the door carefully, and spoke in a Sub-
dued voice:
“Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three! This
is the witness encountered by appointment, by me,
Jacques Four, He will tell you all. Speak, Jacques
Five!”
The mender of roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his
swarthy forehead with it, and said, “Where shall I
commence, Monsieur?”
“Commence,” was Monsieur Defarge’s not unreason-
able reply, “at the commencement.”
“I saw him then, messieurs,” began the mender of
roads, ‘‘ a year ago this running summer, underneath
the carriage of the Marquis, hanging by the chain.
Behold the manner of it. I leaving my work on the
road, the sun going to bed, the carriage of the Mar-
quis slowly ascending the hill, he hanging by the chain
—like this.”
Again, the mender of roads went through the old
performance; in which he ought to have been perfect
by that time, seeing that it had been the infallible re-
source and indispensable entertainment of his village
during a whole year.
Jacques One struck in, and asked if he had ever seen
the man before?
“Never,” answered the mender of roads, recovering
his perpendicular.
Jacques Three demanded how he afterwards recog-
mised him then?
“By his tall figure,” said the mender of roads, softly,
and with his finger at his nose. “When Monsieur the
Marquis demands that evening, “Say, what is he like?’
I make response. ‘Tall as a spectre.’”
“You should have said, short as a dwarf,” returned
Jacques Two.
“But what did I know ! The deed was not then accom-
plished, neither did he confide in me. Observe! Under
those circumstances even, I do not offer my testimony.
Monsieur the Marquis indicates me with his finger,
standing near our little fountain, and says, “To me!
RNITTING. 163
Bring that rascal!’ My faith, messieurs, I offer moth-
ing.”
“He is right there, Jacques,” murmured Defarge, to
him who had interrupted. “Go on!”
“Good!” said the mender of roads, with an air of
mystery. “The tall man is lost, and he is sought—how
many months? Nine, ten, eleven?”
“No matter, the number,” said Defarge. “He is
well hidden, but at last he is unluckily found. Go on!”
“I am again at work upon the hill-side, and the sun
is again about to go to bed. I am collecting my tools
to descend to my cottage down in the village below,
where it is already dark, when I raise my eyes, and see
coming over the hill, six soldiers. In the midst of them
is a tall man with his arms bound—tied to his sides,
like this!”
With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented
a man with his elbows bound fast at his hips, with cords
that were knotted behind him. sº
“I stand aside, messieurs, by my heap of stones,
to see the soldiers and their prisoner pass (for it
is a solitary road, that, where any spectacle is well
worth looking at), and at first, as they approach, I see
no more than that they are six soldiers with a tall man
bound, and that they are almost black to my sight—
except on the side of the sun going to bed, where they
have a red edge, messieurs. Also, I see that their long
shadows are on the hollow ridge on the opposite side of
the road, and are on the hill above it, and are like the
shadows of giants. Also, I see that they are covered
with dust, and that the dust moves with them as they
come, tramp, tramp! But when they advance quite
near to me, I recognise the tall man, and he recognises
me. Ah, but he would be well content to precipitate
himself Over the hill-side once again, as on the even-
ing when he and I first encountered, close to the same
Spot'’ -
P; described it as if he were there, and it was evident
that he saw it vividly; perhaps he had not seen much
in his life.
“I do not show the soldiers that I recognise the tall
man; he does not show the soldiers that he recognises
me; we do it, and we know it, with our eyes. ‘Come
on!’ says the chief of that company, pointing to the
Q .
164 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
village, ‘bring him fast to his tomb!’ and they bring .
him faster. I follow. His arms are swelled because of
being bound so tight, his wooden shoes are large and
clumsy, and he is lame. Because he is lame, and con-
ºnly slow, they drive him with their guns—like
this!”
He imitated the action of a man’s being impelled for-
ward by the butt-ends of muskets. •
“As they descend the hill like madmen running a
race, he falls. They laugh and pick him up again.
|His face is bleeding and covered with dust, but he can-
not touch it; thereupon they laugh again. They bring
him into the village; all the village runs to look; they
take him past the mill, and up to the prison, all the
village sees the prison gate open in the darkness of the
night, and swallow him—like this!” -
He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut
it with a sounding snap of his teeth. Observant of his
unwillingness to mar the effect by opening it again,
Defarge said, “Go on, Jacques.”
“All the village,” pursued the mender of roads, on
tiptoe and in a low voice, “withdraws; all the village
whispers by the fountain; all the village sleeps; all the
village dreams of that unhappy one, within the locks
and bars of the prison on the crag, and never to come
out of it, except to perish. In the morning, with my
tools upon my shoulder, eating my morsel of black
bread as I go, I make a circuit by the prison, On my
way to my work. There, I see him, high up, behind the
bars of a lofty iron cage, bloody and dusty as last night
looking through. He has no hand free to wave to me;
I dare not call to him; he regards me like a dead
man.”
Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another.
The looks of all of them were dark, repressed and re-
vengeful, as they listened to the countryman’s story;
the manner of all of them, while it was secrèt was
authoritative too. They had the air of a rough tri-
bunal; Jacques One and Two sitting on the old pallet-
bed, each with his chin resting on his hand, and his
eyes intent on the road mender; Jacques Three, equally
intent, on one knee behind them, with his agitated hand
always gliding over the network of fine nerves about
his mouth and nose; Defarge standing between them
2 -

KNITTING. 165
and the narrator, whom he had stationed in the light
of the window, by turns looking from him to them and
from them to him.
“Go on, Jacques,” said Defarge.
“He remains up there in his iron cage, some days.
The village looks at him by stealth, for it is afraid.
But it always looks up, from a distance, at the prison
on the crag; and in the evening when the work of the
day is achieved and it assembles to gossip at the foun-
tain, all faces are turned towards the prison. Formerly,
they were turned towards the posting-house; now, they
are turned towards the prison. They whisper at the
fountain, that although condemned to death he will not
be executed; they say that petitions have been pre-
sented in Paris, showing that he was enraged and made
mad by the death of his child; they say that a pe-
tition has been presented to the King himself. What
do I know? It is possible. Perhaps yes, perhaps no.”
“Listen then, Jacques,” Number One of that name
sternly interposed. “R now that a petition was pre-
sented to the King and Queen. All here, yourself ex-
cepted, saw the King take it in his carriage in the
street, sitting beside the Queen. It is Defarge whom
you see here, who, at the hazard of his life, darted out
before the horses, with the petition in his hand.”
“And once again listen, Jacques!” said the kneeling
Number three : his fingers ever wandering over and
over those fine nerves, with a strikingly greedy air,
as if he hungered for something—that was neither food
nor drink; “the guard, horse and foot, surrounded the
petitioner, and struck him blows. You hear?”
“I hear, messieurs.”
“Go on then,” said Defarge.
“Again; on the other hand, they whisper, at the
fountain,” resumed the countryman, “that he is brought
down into our country to be executed on the spot, and
that he will very certainly be executed. They even
whisper that because he has slain Monseigneur, and
because Monseigneur was the father of his tenants—
serfs—what you will—he will be executed as a parri-
cide. One old man says at the fountain, that his right
hand, armed with the knife, will be burnt off before his
face; that, into wounds which will be made in his arms,
his breast, and his legs, there will be poured boiling oil,
#66 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
melted lead, hot resin, wax, and sulphur; finally, that
he will be torn limb from limb by four strong horses.
That old man says, all this was actually done to a pris-
Oner who made an attempt on the life of the last King,
Louis Fifteen. But how do I know if he lies? I am
not a scholar.” *
“ Listen. Once again then, Jacques!” said the man
with the restless hand and the craving air. “The name
of that prisoner was Damiens, and it was all, done in
Open day, in the open streets of this city of Paris; and
nothing was more noticed in the vast concourse that
saw it done, than the crowd of ladies of quality and
fashion, who were full of eager attention to the last—
to the last, Jacques, prolonged until nightfall, when he
had lost two legs and an arm, and still breathed! And
it was done—why, how old are you?”
“Thirty-five,” said the mender of roads, who looked
sixty. -
“It was done when you were more than ten years
old; you might have seen it.” - -
“Enough!” said Defarge, with grim impatience.
“Long live the Devil! Go on.”
“Well! Some whisper this, some whisper that; they
speak of nothing Clse; even the fountain appears to fall
to that tune. At length, on Sunday night when all the
village is asleep, come soldiers, winding down from the
prison, and their guns, ring on the stones of the little
street. Workmen dig, workmen hammer, soldiers
laugh and sing, in the morning, by the fountain, there
is raised a gallows forty feet high, poisoning the
water.” .
The mender of roads looked through rather than at
the low ceiling, and pointed as if he saw the gallows
somewhere in the sky. *
“All work is stopped, all assemble there, nobody
leads the cows out, the cows are there with the rest. At
mid-day, the roll of drums. Soldiers have marched into
the prison in the night, and he is in the midst of many
soldiers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth there
is a gag—tied So, with a tight string, making him look
almost as if he laughed.” He suggested it, by creasing
his face with his two thumbs, from the corners of his
mouth to his ears. “On the top of the gallows is fixed
the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the air. He
RNITTING. 167
is hanged there forty feet high—and is left hanging,
poisoning the water.”
They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap
to wipe his face, on which the perspiration had started
afresh while he recalled the spectacle.
“It is frightful, messieurs. How can the women and
the children draw water! Who can gossip of an even-
ing, under that shadowſ Under it, have Isaid? When
I left the village, Monday evening as the Sun was going
to bed, and looked back from the hill, the shadow struck
across the church, across the mill, across the prison—
seemed to strike across the earth, messieurs, to where
the sky rests upon it!”
The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he
looked at the other three, and his finger quivered with
the craving that was on him.
“That’s all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had
been warned to do), and I walked on, that night and
half next day, until I met {*. I was warned I should)
this comrade. With him, I came on, now riding and
now walking, through the rest of yesterday and through
last night. And here you see me!”
After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, “Good!
You have acted and recounted, faithfully. Will you
wait for us a little, outside the door?”
“Very willingly,” said the mender of roads. Whom
Defarge escorted to the top of the stairs, and, leaving
seated there, returned.
The three had risen, and their heads were together
when he came back to the garret.
“How say you, Jacques?” demanded Number One.
“To be registered?” *
“To be registered as doomed to destruction,” returned
Defarge.
“Magnificent!” croaked the man with the craving.
**The château, and all the race P” inquired the first.
“The château, and all the race?” returned Defarge.
“Extermination.”
The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous Croak,
“Magnificent!” and began gnawing another finger.
“Are you sure,” asked Jacques Two, of Defarge,
“ that no embarrassment can arise from our manner
of keeping the register? Without doubt it is safe, for
no one beyond ourselves can decipher it; but shall we
168 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
tºys be able to decipher it—or, I ought to say, will
She?”
“Jacques,” returned Defarge, drawing himself up,
“if madame my wife undertook to keep the register in
her memory alone, she would not lose a word of it—not
a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches and her
own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the
sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier
for the weakest poltroom that lives, to erase himself
from existence than to erase one letter of his name or
crimes from the knitted register of Madame Defarge.”
There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and
then the man who hungered, asked: “Is this rustic to
be sent back soon I hope so. He is very simple; is
he not a little dangerous P”
“He knows nothing,” said Defarge; “at least nothing
more than would easily elevate himself to a gallows of
the same height. I charge myself with him; let him
remain with me; I will take care of him, and set him
on his road. He wishes to see the fine world—the King,
the Queen, and Court ; let him see them on Sunday.”
“What?” exclaimed the hungry man, staring. “Is
it a good sign, that he wishes to see Royalty and
Nobility?”
“Jacques,” said Defarge; “judiciously show a cat
milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show
a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down
one day.” -
Nothing more was said, and the mender of roads,
being found already dozing on the topmost stair, was
advised to lay himself down on the pallet-bed and take
some rest. He needed no persuasion, and was soon
asleep.
Worse quarters than Defarge's wine-shop, could
easily have been found in Paris for a provincal slave of
that degree. Saving for a mysterious dread of madame
by which he was constantly haunted, his life was very
new and agreeable. But, madame sat all day at her
counter, so expressly unconscious of him, and so par-
ticularly determined not to perceive that his being there
had any connexion with anything below the surface,
that he shook in his wooden shoes whenever his eye
lighted on her. For, he contended with himself that
it was impossible to foresee what that lady might
KNITTING. 169
pretend next; and he felt assured that if she should
take it into her brightly ornamented head to pretend
that she had seen him do a murder and afterwards flay
the victim, she would infallibly go through with it
until the play was played out.
. Therefore, when Sunday came, the mender of roads
was not enchanted (though he said he was) to find that
madame was to accompany monsieur and himself to
Versailles. It was additionally disconcerting to have
madame knitting all the way there, in a public con-
veyance; it was additionally disconcerting yet, to have
madame in the crowd in the afternoon, still with her
knitting in her hands as the crowd waited to see the
carriage of the King and Queen.
“You work hard, madame,” said a man near her.
“Yes,” answered Madame Defarge; “I have a good
deal to do.” * >
“What do you make, madame?”
“Many things.”
“For instance — &
“For instance,” returned Madame Defarge, com-
posedly “shrouds.”
The man moved a little further away, as soon as he
could, and the mender of roads fanned himself with his
blue cap: feeling it mightily close and oppressive. If he
needed a King and Queen to restore him, he was for-
tunate in having his remedy at hand; for, soon the
large-faced King and the fair-faced Queen came in their
golden coach, attended by the shining Bull’s Eye of
their Court, a glittering multitude of laughing ladies
and fine lords; and in jewels and silks and powder and
splendour and elegantly spurning figures and hand-
somely disdainful faces of both sexes, the mender of
roads bathed himself, so much to his temporary intoxi-
cation, that he cried Long live the King, Long live the
Queen, Long live everybody and everything! as if he
had never heard of ubiquitous Jacques in his time.
Then, there were gardens, court-yards, terraces, foun-
tains, green banks, more King and Queen, more Bull's
Eye, more lords and ladies, more Long live they all!
until he absolutely wept with sentiment. T)uring the
whole of this scene, which lasted some three hours, he
had plenty of shouting and weeping and sentimental
company, and throughout Defarge held him by the
55
170 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
collar, as if to restrain him from flying at the objects of
his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces.
“Bravo!” said Defarge, clapping him on the back
when it was over, like a patron; “you are a good boy!”
. The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and
was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late
demonstrations; but no. . .
“You are the fellow we want,” said Defarge, in his
ear; “you make these fools believe that it will last for
ever. Then they are the more insolent, and it is the
nearer ended.” ---
“Hey!” cried the mender of roads, reflectively; “that's
true.” -
“These fools know nothing. While they despise your
breath, and would stop it for ever and ever, in you or in
a hundred like you rather than in one of their own horses
or dogs, they only know what your breath tells them.
Let it deceive them, then, a little longer; it cannot
deceive them too much.”
Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client,
and modded in confirmation.
“As to you,” said she, “you would shout and shed
tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say!
Would you not?” -
“Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment.”
“If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were
set upon them to pluck them to pieces and to despoil
them for your own advantage, you would pick out the
richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?”
“Truly yes, madame.”
“Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable
to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their
º for your own advantage, you would set upon
the birds of the finest feathers; would you not?”
“It is true, madame.” :
“You have seen both dolls and birds to-day,” said
Madame Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the
place where they had last been apparent; “ now, go
home!”
STILL KNITTING. 171
CHA PTER XVI.
STILL KNITTING.
M ADAME DEFARGE and monsieur her husband
returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine,
while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness,
and through the dust, and down the weary miles of
avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that
point of the compass where the château of Monsieur the
Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the whispering
trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for
listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few
village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat
and fragments of dead Stick to burn, strayed within
sight of the great stone court-yard and terrace staircase,
had it borne in upon their starved fancy that the expres-
sion of the faces was altered. A rumour just lived in
the village—had a faint and bare existence there, as its
people had—that when the knife struck home, the faces
changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain;
also, that when that dangling figure was hauled u
forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, an
bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would
henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the
reat window of the bed-chamber where the murder was
lone, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured
nose, which every body recognised, and which nobody
had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two
or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to
take a hurried peep at Monsieur-the Marquis petrified,
a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute,
before they all started away among the moss and leaves,
like the more fortunate hares who could find a living
there. -
Château and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the
red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the
village well—thousands of acres of land—a whole prov-
172 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
ince of France—all France itself—lay under the night
Sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So
does a whole world with all its greatnesses and little-
Inesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human
knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the
manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences
may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours,
every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every
responsible creature on it. - -
The Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering
under the starlight, in their public vehicle, to that gate
Of Paris whereunto their journey naturally tended.
There was the usual stoppage at the barrier guard-
house, and the usual lanterns came glancing forth for
the usual examination and inquiry. Monsièur Defarge
alighted: knowing one or two of the soldiery there, and
One of the police. The latter he was intimate with, and
affectionately embraced.
When Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges
in his dusky wings, and they, having finally alighted
near the Saint's boundaries, were picking their way on
foot through the black mud and offal of his streets,
Madame Defarge spoke to her husband:
“Say then, my friend: what did Jacques of the police
tell thee?” * -
“Very little to-night, but all he knows. There is
another spy commissioned for our quarter. There may
be many more, for all that he can say, but he knows of
One.”
“Eh well!” said Madame Defarge, raising her eye-
brows with a cool business air. “It is necessary to
register him. How do they call that man?”
“He is English.” -
“So much the better. His name?”
“Barsad,” said Defarge, making it French by pro-
nunciation. But, he had been so careful to get it accu-
rately, that he then spelt it with perfect correctness.
“Barsad,” repeated madame. “Good. Christian
name?”
“John.”
“John Barsad,” repeated madame, after murmuring
it once to herself. “Good. His appearance ; is it
known?” -
“Age, about forty years; height, about five feet nine;
. STILL KNITTING. 173
black hair; complexion dark; generally, rather hand-
Some visage; eyes dark, face thin, long, and sallow ;
nose aquiline, but not straight, having a peculiar incli-
nation towards the left cheek; expression, therefore,
sinister.”
“Eh my faith. It is a portrait!” said madame, laugh-
ing. “He shall be registered to-morrow.”
They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed
(for it was midnight), and where Madame Defarge im-
mediately took her post at the desk, counted the small
moneys that had been taken during her absence,
examined the stock, went through the entries in the
book, made other entries of her own, checked the serv-
ing man in every possible way, and finally dismissed
him to bed. Then she turned out the contents of the
bowl of money for the second time, and began knotting
them up in her handkerchief, in a chain of separate
knots, for safe keeping through the night. All this
while, Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up
and down, complacently admiring, but never inter-
fering; in which condition, indeed, as to the business
and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down
through life.
The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and sur-
rounded $y so foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling.
Monsieur Defarge's olfactory sense was by no means
delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger
than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and
brandy and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents
away, as he put down his smoked-out pipe.
“You arefatigued,” said madame, raising her glance
as she knotted the money. “There are only the usual
odours.”
“I am a little tired,” her husband acknowledged.
“You are a little depressed, too,” said madame, whose
quick eyes had never been so intent on the accounts,
but they had had a ray or two for him. “Oh, the men,
the men!” -
“But my dear,” began Defarge.
“But my dear!” repeated madame, nodding firmly:
iº my dear! You are faint of heart to-night, my
ear!” &
“Well, then,” said Defarge, as if a thought were
wrung out of his breast, “it is a long time.”
174 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
$1
“It is a long time,” repeated his wife; “and when is
it not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require
a long time; it is the rule.”
“It does not take a long time to strike a man with
Lightning,” said Defarge.
“How long,” demanded madame, composedly, “does
it take to make and store the lightning? Tell me?”
Defarge raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were
something in that, too.
“It does not take a long time,” said madame, “for an
earthquake to swallow a town. , Eh well! Tell me how
long it takes to prepare the earthquake?”
“A long time, I suppose,” said Defarge.
“But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to
pieces everything before it. In the mean time, it is
always preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That
is your consolation. Keep it.”
She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled
a foe.
“I tell thee,” said madame, extending her right hand,
for emphasis, ‘‘that although it is a long time on the
road, it is on the road and coming. I tell thee it never
retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it is always ad-
vancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the
world that we know, consider the faces of all the world
that we know, consider the rage and discontent to
which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more
of certainty every hour. Can Such things last? Bah!
I mock you.”
“My brave wife,” returned Defarge, standing before
her with his head a little bent, and his .# clasped at
his back, like a docile and attentive pupil before his
catechist, “I do not question all this. But it has lasted
a long time, and it is possible—you know well, my wife,
*, # is possible—that it may not come, during our
ives.” º
“Eh well! How then?” demanded madame, tying
another knot, as if there were another enemy strangled.
“Well!” said Defarge with a half complaining and
half apologetic shrug. “We shall not see the triumph.”
“We shall have helped it,” returned madame, with
her extended hand in strong action. “Nothing that we
do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we
shall see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew
STILL KNITTING. 175
certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and
tyrant, and still I would—”
There madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible
knot indeed. -
“Hold!” cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt
charged with cowardice; “I too, my dear, will stop at
nothing.” -
“Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes
need to see your victim and your opportunity, to sus-
tain you. Sustain yourself without that. When the
time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for
the time with the tiger and the devil chained—not
shown—yet always ready.” &
.Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of ad-
vice by striking her little counter with her chain of
money as if she knocked its brains out, and then gather-
ing the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene
manner, and observing that it was time to go to bed.
Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual
place in the wine-shop, knitting away assiduously. . A
rose lay beside her, and if she now and then glanced at
the flower, it was with no infraction of her usual pre-
occupied air. There were a few customers, drinking
or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about.
The day was very hot, and heaps of flies, who were ex-
tending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions
into aſ the glutinous little glasses near madame, fell
dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression
on the other flies out promenading, who looked at them
in the coolest manner (as if they themselves were ele-
phants, or something as far removed), until they met
the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies
are!—perhaps they thought as much at Court that Sunny
summer day.
A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on
Madame Defarge which she felt to be a new one. She
laid down her knitting, and began to pin her rose in
her head-dress, before she looked at the figure.
It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took
up the rose, the customers ceased talking, and began
gradually to drop out of the wine-shop.
“Good day, madame,” said the new comer.
“Good day, monsieur.”
She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed
176 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
her knitting: “Hah! Good day, age about forty, height
about five feet nine, black hair, generally rather hand-
Some visage, complexion dark, eyes dark, thin long and
sallow face, aquiline nose but not straight, having a
peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which inn-
º a sinister expression l Good day, one and
all! 25
“Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old
cognac, and a mouthful of cool fresh water, madame.”
Madame complied with a polite air. .
“Marvellous cognac this, madame!”
It was the first time it had ever been so complimented,
and Madame Defarge knew enough of its antecedents
to know better. She said, however, that the cognac
was flattered, and took up her knitting. The visitor
watched her fingers for a few moments, and took the
Opportunity of observing the place in general. ..
“You knit with great skill, madame.”
‘‘ I am accustomed to it.”
“A pretty pattern too !” -
“You think so P” said madame, looking at him with
a Smile. * - -
“Decidedly. May one ask what it is for ?”
“Pastime,” said madame, looking at him with a smile,
while her fingers moved nimbly.
** Not for use P” - •’
“That depends. I may find a use for it, one day. If
I do—well,” said madame, drawing a breath and nod-
ding her head with a stern kind of coquetry, “I’ll
use it !” 3.
It was remarkable ; but, the taste of Saint Antoine
seemed to be decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-
dress of Madame Defarge. Two men had entered
separately, and had been about to order drink, when,
Catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, make a
pretence of looking about as if for some friend who was
not there, and went away. Nor, of those who had been
there when this visitor entered, was there one left. '
They had all dropped off. The spy had kept his eyes
Open, but had been able to detect no sign. They had
lounged away in a poverty-stricken, purposeless, acci-
dental manner, quite natural and unimpeachable.
“JOHN,” thought madame, checking of her work as
her fingers knitted, and her eyes looked at the stranger.
STILL KNITTING. 17?
“Stay long enough, and I shall knit ‘BARSAD’ before
you go.”
“You have a husband, madame?”
‘‘I have.”
’ ‘‘ Children?”
“NO Children.”
“Business seems bad?”
“Business is very bad ; the people are so poor.”
“Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people! So oppressed
too—as you say.”
“As you say,” madame retorted, correcting him, and
deftly knitting an extra something into his name that
boded him no good.
“Pardon me; certainly it was I who said so, but you
naturally think so. Of course.” g
“I think?” returned madame, in a high voice. “I
and my husband have enough to do to keep this wine-
shop open, without thinking. All we think, here, is,
how to live. That is the subject we think of, and it
gives us, from morning to night, enough to think about,
without embarrassing our heads concerning others. I
think for others ? No, no.”
The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he
could find or make, did not allow his baffled state to
express itself in his sinister face; but, stood with an air
of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow On Madame
Tefarge's little counter, and Occasionally sipping his
COgna C.
“A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard’s execu-
tion. Ah! the poor Gaspard!” With a sigh of great
compassion. º
“My faith!” returned madame, coolly and lightly,
“if people use knives for such purposes, they have to
pay for it. He knew beforehand what the price of his
luxury was; he has paid the price.”
“I believe,” said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a
tone that invited confidence, and expressing an injured
revolutionary susceptibility in every muscle of his
wicked face: “I believe there is much compassion and
anger in this neighbourhood, touching the poor fellow?
Between ourselves.”
“Is there?” asked madame, vacantly.
“Is there not?”
“—Here is my husband!” said Madame Defarge.
WOL. I. 12
178 A TALE OF TWC) CITIES.
As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door,
the spy saluted him by touching his hat, and saying,
with an engaging smile, “Good day, Jacques!” Defarge
stopped short, and stared at him.
‘‘ Good day, Jacques!” the spy repeated; with not
uite so much confidence, or quite so easy a smile under
the stare.
“You deceive yourself, monsieur,” returned the
keeper of the wine-shop. “You mistake me for an-
other. That is not my name. I am Trnest De-
farge.” *
“It is all the same,” said the spy, airily, but discom-
fited too: “good day!”
“Good day!” answered Defarge, dryly.
“I was saying to madame, with whom I had the
pleasure of chatting when you entered, that they tell me
there is—and no wonder!—much sympathy and anger
in Saint Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of poor
Gaspard.”
“No one has told me so,” said Defarge, shaking his
head; “I know nothing of it.”
Having said it, he passed behind the little counter,
and stood with his hand on the back of his wife’s chair,
looking over that barrier at the person to whom they
were both opposed, and whom either of them would
have shot with the greatest satisfaction.
The spy, well used to his business, did not change his
unconscious attitude, but drained his little glass of
cognac, took a sip of fresh water, and asked for another
glass of cognac. Madame Defarge poured it out for him,
took to her knitting again, and hummed a little Song
Over it. -
“You seem to know this quarter well; that is to say,
better than I do?” observed Defarge.
“Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so
profoundly interested in its miserable inhabitants.”
“Hah!” muttered Defarge.
“The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur De-
farge, recals to me,” pursued the spy, ‘‘that I have the
honour of cherishing some interesting associations with
your name.” -
“Indeed?” said Defarge, with much indifference.
“Yes indeed. When Doctor Manette was released,
you his old domestic had the charge of him, I know. He
STILL KNITTING. 179
was delivered to you. You see I am informed of the
circumstances?” .
“Such is the fact, certainly,” said Defarge. He had
had it conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his
wife’s elbow as she knitted and warbled, that he would
do best to añswer, but always with brevity.
“It was to you,” said the spy, “that his daughter
came; and it was from your care that his daughter took
him, accompanied by a neat brown monsieur; how is he
called?—in a little wig–Lorry—of the bank of Tellson
and Company—over to England.”
“Such is the fact,” repeated Defarge.
“Very interesting remembrances!” said the spy. I.
ºf known Doctor Manette and his daughter, in Eng-
and.”
“Yes,” said Defarge.
“You don’t hear much about them now?” said the
y.
py No,” said Defarge.
“In effect,” madame struck in, looking up from her
work and her little song, ‘‘we never hear about them.
We received the news of their safe arrival, and perhaps
another letter or perhaps two; but since then, they have
gradually taken their road in life—we, ours—and we
have held no correspondence.”
‘‘Perfectly so, madame,” replied the spy. “She is
going to be married. ”
“Going?” echoed madame. “She was pretty enough
to have been married long ago. You English are cold,
it seems to me.” *
“Oh! You know I am English?”
“I perceive your tongue is,” returned madame; “and
what the tongue is, I suppose the man is.”
He did not take the identification as a compliment;
but he made the best of it, and turned it off with a
laugh. After sipping his cognac to the end, he added:
“Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not
to an Englishman; to one who, like herself, is French
by birth. And speaking of Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard! It
was cruel, cruel!), it is a curious thing that she is going
to marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis, for whom
Gaspard was exalted to that height of so many feet; in
other words, the present Marquis. But he lives un-
known in England, he is no Marquis there; he is Mr.
S
180 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
Charles Darnay. D'Aulnais is the name of his mother's
family.” *
Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence
had a palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he
would, behind the little counter, as to the striking of a
light and the lighting of his pipe, he was troubled, and
his hand was not trustworthy. The spy would have been
no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in his
IIll]]Cl,
Having made, at least. this one hit, whatever it
might prove to be worth, and no customers coming in
to help him to any other, Mr. Barsad paid for what he
had drunk, and took his leave: taking occasion to say,
in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he looked
forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur ànd Madame
Defarge again. For some minutes after he had emerged
into the outer presence of Saint Antoine, the husband
and wife remained exactly as he had left them, lest he
should come back.
“Can it be true, said Defarge, in a low voice, looking
down at his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on
the back of her chair: “what he has said of Ma’amselle
Manette?”
“As he has said it,” returned madame, lifting her
eyebrows a little, “it is probably false. But it may be
true.”
“If it is—” Defarge began; and stopped.
“If it is?” repeated his wife.
“—And if it does come, while we live to see it
triumph—I hope, for her sake, Destiny will keep her
husband out of France.” -
“Her husband's destiny,” said Madame Defarge,
with her usual composure, “will take him where he is
to go, and will lead him to the end that is to end him.
That is all I know.”
“But it is very strange—now, at least is it not very
Strange ’—said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife
to induce her to admit it, ‘‘that, after all our sympathy
for Monsieur her father and herself, her husband's
name should be proscribed under your hand at this
moment, by the side of that infernal dog’s who has just
left us?” t
“Stranger things than that, will happen when it does
come,” answered madame. “I have them both here,
STILL KNITTING. 181
of a certainty; and they are both here for their merits;
that is enough.” & -
She rolled up her knitting when she had said those
words, and presently took the rose out of the handker-
chief that was wound about her head. Either Saint
Antoine had an instinctive sense that the objectionable
decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on the
watch for its disappearance; howbeit, the Saint took
courage to lounge in, very shortly afterwards, and the
wine-shop recovered its habitual aspect. - -
In the evening, at which season of all others, Saint
Antoine turned himself inside out, and sat on door-
steps and window-ledges, and came to the corners of .
vile streets and courts, for a breath of air, Madame
Defarge with her work in her hand was accustomed to
pass from place to place and from group to group: a Mis-
sionary—there were many like her—such as 11:e world
will do well never to breed again. All the women
knitted. They knitted worthless things; but, the me-
chanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating
and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws and the
digestive apparatus; if the bony fingers had been still,
the stomachs would have been - more famine-
pinched.
. . But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and the .
thoughts. And as Madame Defarge moved on from
group to group, all three went quicker and fiercer among
every little knot of women that she had spoken with,
and left behind.
Her husband smoked at his door, looking after
her with admiration. “A great woman,” said he,
“a strong woman, a grand woman, a frightfully
grand woman.” -
Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing
of church bells and the distant beating of the mili-
tary drums in the Palace Court-Yard, as the women
Sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them.
Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the
church bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy
steeple over France, should be melted into thundering
cannon ; when the military drums should be beating to
drown a wretched voice, that night all potent as the
voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So
much was closing in about the women who sat knitting,
182 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
knitting, that they their very selves were closing in
around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit
knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads.
CHAPTER XVII.
ONE NIGHT,
Nº. did the sun go down with a brighter glory
on the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable
evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat under
the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with
a milder radiance over great London, than on that
night when it found them still seated under the tree,
and shone upon their faces through its leaves.
Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had re-
served this last evening for her father, and they sat
alone under the plane-tree.
“You are happy, my dear father ?”
“Quite, my child.”
They had said little, though they had been there a
long time. When it was yet light enough to work and
read, she had neither engaged herself in her usual
work, nor had she read to him. She had employotl
herself in both ways, at his side under the tree, many
and many a time; but, this time was not quite like any
other, and nothing could make it so.
“And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am
deeply happy in the love that Heaven has so blessed
my love for Charles, and Charles's love for me. But,
if my life were not to be still consecrated to you, or if
my marriage were so arranged as that it would part
us, even by the length of a few of these streets, I
should be more unhappy and self-reproachful now, than
I can tell you. Even as it is—”
Even as it was, she could not command her voice.
In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck,
and laid her face upon his breast. In the moonlight
which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself
is—as the light called human life is—at its coming and
its going.
ONE NIGHT. i83
“Dearest dear ! Can you tell me this last time,
that you feel quite, quite Sure, no new affections of
mine, and no new duties of mine, will ever interpose
between us 2 I know it well, but do you know it P In
your own heart, do you feel quite certain P”
Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of
conviction he could scarcely have assumed, “Quite sure,
my darling ! . More than that,” he added as he ten-
derly kissed her: “my future is far brighter, Lucie,
seen through your marriage than it could have been—
nay, than it ever was—without it.”
“If I could hope that, my father —”
“Believe it, love | Indeed it is so. Consider how
natural and how plain it is, my dear, that it should be
so. You, devoted and young, cannot fully appreciate
the anxiety I have felt that your life should not be
wasted * 3
‘She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it
in his, and repeated the word.
“—wasted, my child—should not be wasted, struck
aside from the natural order of things—for my sake.
Your unselfishness cannot entirely comprehend how
much my mind has gone on this ; but only ask your-
self, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours
was incomplete P’’
“If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should
have been quite happy with you.”
He smiled at her unconscious admission that she
would have been unhappy without Charles, having
seen him ; and replied: -
“My child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it
had not been Charles, it would have been another. Or,
if it had been no other, I should have been the cause,
and then the dark part of my life would have cast its
shadow beyond myself, and would have fallen on you.”
It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever
hearing him refer to the period of his suffering. It gave
her a strange and new sensation while his words
Were in her ears; and she remembered it long after-
wards.
“See!” said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hands
towards the moon. “I have looked at her from my
prison window, when I could not bear her light. I have
looked at her when it has been such torture to me to
184 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have
beaten my head against my prison walls. I have
looked at her, in a state so dulled and lethargic, that I
have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal
lines I could draw across her at the full, and the number
of perpendicular lines with which I could intersect them.”
He added in his inward and pondering manner, as he
looked at the moon, “It was twenty either way, I
remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze
in.”
The strange thrill with which she heard him go back
to that time, deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there
was nothing to . her in the manner of his refer-
ence. He only seemed to contrast his present cheer-
fulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was
OVer. -
“I have looked at her, speculating thousands of
times upon the unborn child from whom I had beeri
rent. Whether it was alive. Whether it had been
born alive, or the poor mother’s shock had killed it.
Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his
father. (There was a time in my imprisonment, when
my desire for vengeance was unbearable.) Whether
it was a son who would never know his father's
story; who might even live to weigh the possibility of
his father's having disappeared of his own will and act.
Whether it was a daughter, who would grow to be a
WOman.” .
h ; drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his
à,1] Cl.
‘‘I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly
forgetful of me—rather altogether ignorant of me, and
unconscious of me. I have cast up the years of her age,
year after year. I have seen her married to a man
who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether per-
ished from the remembrance of the living, and in the
next generation my place was a blank.”
“My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts
of a daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart
as if I had been that child.” .
“You, Lucie? It is out of the consolation and restora-
tion you have brought to me, that these remembrances
arise, and pass between us and the moon on this last
night. What did I say, just now?”
ONE NIGHT. IS5
“She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for
ou.” t
“Sol But on other moonlight nights, when the sad-
ness and the silence have touched me in a different way
—have affected me with something as like a sorrowful
sense of peace, as any emotion that had pain for its
foundations could—I have imagined her as coming to
me in my cell, and leading me out into the freedom
beyond the fortress. I have seen her image in the
moonlight, often, as I now see you; except that I never
held her in my arms; it stood between the little grated
window and the door. But, you understand that that
was not the child I am speaking of?”
“The figure was not; the the image; the fancy?”
“No. That was another thing. It stood before my
disturbed sense of sight, but it never moved. The phan-
tom that my mind pursued, was another and more real
child. Of her outward appearance I know no more
than that she was like her mother. The other had that
likeness too—as you have—but was not the same. Can
you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think? I doubt you
must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these
perplexed distinctions.” -
His collected and calm manner could not prevent her
blood from running cold, as he thus tried to anatomise
his old condition.
“In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in
the moonlight, coming to me and taking me out to show
me that the home of her married life was full of her
loving remembrance of her lost father. My picture was
in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was
active, cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded
it all.”
“I was that child, my father. I was not half so
good, but in my love that was I.”
“And she showed me her children,” said the Doctor,
of Beauvais, “and they had heard of me, and had been
taught to pity me. When they passed a prison of the
State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked
up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could never
deliver me; I imagined that she always brought me
back after showing me such things. But then, blessed
with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and
blessed her,”
186 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my
dear, will you bless me as fervently to-morrow P”
“Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that
I have to-night for loving you better than words can
tell, and thanking God for my great happiness. My
thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the
happiness that I have known with you, and that we
have before us.”
He embraced her, solemnly commended her to
Heaven, and humbly thanked Heaven for having be-
stowed her on him. By-and-by they went into the
house.
There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr.
Lorry; there was even to be no bridesmaid but the
gaunt Miss Pross. The marriage was to make no
change in their place of residence; they had been able
to extend it, by taking to themselves the upper rooms
formerly belonging to the apocryphal invisible lodger,
and they desired nothing more.
Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper.
They were only three at table, and Miss Pross made
the third. He regretted that Charles was not there;
was more than half disposed to object to the loving
little plot that kept him away; and drank to him
affectionately.
So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good night,
and they separated. But, in the stillness of the third
hour of the morning, Lucie came down stairs again, and
stole into his room : not free from unshaped fears,
beforehand. -
All things, however, were in their places; all was
Quiet; and he lay asleep, his white hair picturesque on
the untroubled pillow, and his hands lying quiet on the
coverlet. She put her needless candle in the shadow at
a distance, crept up to his bed, and put her lips to his;
then, leaned over him and looked at him.
Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity
had worn; but, he covered up their tracks with a deter-
mination so strong, that he held the mastery of them,
even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet,
resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assail-
ant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of
sleep, that night.
She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put
\
NINE DAYS. 18%
up a prayer that she might ever be as true to him as her
love aspired to be, and as his sorrows deserved. Then,
she withdrew her hand, and kissed his lips once more,
and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the
shadows of the leaves of the plane-tree moved upon his
face, as Softly as her lips had moved in praying for him.
CHAPTER XVIII.
NINE DAYS.
TH; marriage day was shining brightly, and they
... I were ready outside the closed door of the Doctor’s
room, where he was speaking with Charles Darnay.
They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride,
Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross—to whom the event, through
a gradual process of reconcilement to the inevitable,
would have been one of absolute bliss, but for the yet
lingering consideration that her brother Solomon
should have been the bridegroom.
“And so,” said Mr. Lorry, who could not sufficiently
admire the bride, and who had been moving round her
to take in every point of her quiet, pretty dress; “and
so it was for this, my sweet Lucie, that I brought you
across the Channel, such a baby! Lord bless me! How
little I thought what I was doing. How lightly I
valued the obligation I was conferring on my friend
Mr. Charles l’”
“You didn’t mean it,” remarked the matter-of-fact
Miss Pross, “ and therefore how could you know it?
Nonsense!” *
L “JReally? Well; but don’t cry,” said the gentle Mr.
orry. -
“I am not crying,” said Miss Pross; “you are.”
“I, my Pross?” (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to
be pleasant with her, on occasion.) *
“You were just now; I saw you do it, and I don’t
wonder at it. Such a present of plate as you have
made 'em, is enough to bring tears into anybody’s eyes.
There's not a fork or a spoon in the collection,” said
Miss Pross, “that I didn’t cry over, last night after the
box came, till I couldn’t see it.”
#
188 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“I am highly gratified,” said Mr. Lorry, ‘‘ though,
upon my honour, I had no intention of rendering those
trifling articles of remembrance invisible to any one.
Dear me! This is an occasion that makes a man specu-
late on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear! To think
that there might have been a Mrs. Lorry, any time
these fifty years almost!”
“Not at all. ’” From Miss ProSS.
“You think there never might have been a Mrs.
Lorry?” asked the gentleman of that name.
“Pooh!” rejoined Miss Pross; “ you were a bachelor
in your cradle.” . a
“Well!” observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting
his little wig, “that seems probable, too.” +.
“And you were cut out for a bachelor,” pursued Miss
Pross, ‘‘ before you were put in your cradle.”
“Then, I think,” said Mr. Lorry, “that I was very
unhandsomely dealt with, and that I Ought to have had
a voice in the selection of my pattern. Enough! Now,
my dear Lucie,” drawing his arm soothingly round her
waist, “I hear them moving in the next room, and
Miss Pross and I, as two formal folks of business, are
anxious not to lose the final opportunity of saying
something to you that you wish to hear. You leave
your good father, my dear, in hands as earnest and as
loving as your own; he shall be taken every conceiv-
able care of; during the next fortnight, while you are
in Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tellson’s shall
go to the wall (comparatively speaking) before him.
And when, at the fortnight’s end, he comes to join you
and your beloved husband, on your other fortnight's
trip in Wales, you shall say that we have sent him to
you in the best health and in the happiest frame.
Now, I hear Somebody’s step coming to the door. Let
me kiss my dear girl with an old-fashioned bachelor
blessing, before Somebody comes to claim his own.”
For a moment, he held the fair face from him to
look at the well-remembered expression on the fore-
head, and then laid the bright golden hair against his
little brown wig, with a genuine tenderness and deli-
cacy, which, if such things be old fashioned, were as
old as Adam. .** -
The door of the Doctor's room opened, and he came
out with Charles Darnay. He was so deadly pale—
NINE DAYS. 189
which had not been the case when they went in to-
gether—that no vestige of colour was to be seen in his
fade. But, in the composure of his manner he was un-
altered, except that to the shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry it
disclosed some shadowy indication that the old air of
avoidance and dread had lately passed over him, like a
, cold wind. *
He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her down
stairs to the chariot which Mr. Lorry had hired in
honour of the day. The rest followed in another car-
riage, and soon, in a neighbouring church where no
Strange eyes looked on, Charles Darnay and Tucie
Manette were happily married.
Besides the glancing tears that shone among the
Smiles of the little group when it was done, some dia-
monds, very bright and sparkling, glanced on the
bride's hand, which were newly released from the dark
obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry’s pockets. They re-
turned home to breakfast, and all went well, and in
due course the golden hair that had mingled with the
poor shoemaker’s white locks in the Paris garret, were
mingled with them again in the morning sunlight, on
the threshold of the door at parting.
It was a hard parting, though it was not for long.
But, her father cheered her, and said at last, gently
disengaging himself from her enfolding arms, “Take
her, Charles! She is yours!” And her agitated hand
waved to them from a chaise window, and she was gone.
The corner being out of the way of the idle and
curious, and the preparations having been very simple
and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross, were
left quite alone. It was when they turned into the wel-
come shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed
a great change to have come over the Doctor; as if the
ſººn arm uplifted there, had struck him a poisoned
OW. *
He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion
might have been expected in him when the occasion for
repression was gone. But, it was the old Scared lost
look that troubled Mr. Lorry; and through his absent
manner of clasping his head and drearily wandering
away into his own room when they got up-stairs, Mr.
Lorry was reminded of Defarge the wine-shop keeper,
and the starlight ride. -
190 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“I think,” he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious
consideration, “I think we had best not speak to him
just now, or at all disturb him. I must look in at Tell-
son’s; so I will go there at Once and come back pres-
ently. Then, we will take him a ride into the country,
and dine there, and all will be well.”
It was easier foºt Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson’s,
than to look out of Tellson’s. He was detained two
hours. When he came back, he ascended the old stair-
case alone, having asked no question of the servant;
going thus into the Doctor’s room, he was stopped by a
low sound of knocking.
“Good God!” he said, with a start. “What’s that?”
Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear. “O
me, O me! All is lost!” cried she, wringing her hands.
“What is to be told to Ladybird? He doesn’t know me,
and is making shoes!”
Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went
himself into the Doctor's room. The bench was turned
towards the light, as it had been when he had seen the
shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent
down, and he was very busy.
“Doctor Manette. My dear friend, Doctor Manette!”
The Doctor looked at him for a moment—half inquir-
ingly, half as if he were angry at being spoken to—and
bent over his work again.
He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt
was open at the throat, as it used to be when he did that
work; and even the old haggard faded surface of face
had come back him. He worked hard—impatiently—
as if in some sense of having been interrupted.
Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and
observed that it was a shoe of the old size and shape.
He took up another that was lying by him, and asked
him what it was? -
“A young lady’s walking shoe,” he muttered, with-
out looking up. ... “It ought to have been finished long
ago. Let it be.”
“But, Doctor Manette. Look at me!”
He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive man-
ner, without pausing in his work.
“You know me, my dear friend? Think again. This
is not your proper occupation. Think, dear friend!”
| |
NINE DAYS. 191
Nothing would induce him to speak more. He looked
up, for an instant at a time, when he was requested to
do so; but, no persuasion could extract a word from him.
He worked, and worked, and worked, in silence, and
words fell on him as they would have fallen on an echo-
less wall, or on the air. The only ray of hope that Mr.
Lorry could discover, was, that he sometimes furtively
looked up without being asked. In that, there seemed a
faint expression of curiosity or perplexity—as though
he were trying to reconcile some doubts in his
mind. g
Two things at once impressed themselves on Mr.
Lorry, as important above all others; the first, that this
must be kept secret from Lucie; the second, that it must
be kept secret from all who knew him. In conjunction
with Miss Pross, he took immediate steps towards the
latter precaution, by giving out that the Doctor was not
well, and required a few days of complete rest. In aid
of the kind deception to be practised on his daughter,
Miss Pross was to write, describing his having been
called away professionally, and referring to an imagi-
nary letter of two or three hurried lines in his own hand,
represented to have been addressed to her by the same
Ost.
p These measures, advisable to be taken in any case,
Mr. Lorry took in the hope of his coming to himself.
If that should happen soon, he kept another course in
reserve; which was, to have a certain opinion that he
hought the best, on the Doctor's case.
In the hope of his recovery, and of resort to this third
course being thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Lorry
resolved to watch him attentively, with as little ap-
pearance as possible of doing so. He therefore made
arrangements to absent himself from Tellson’s for the
first time in his life, and took his post by the window
in the same room.
He was not long in discovering that it was worse
than useless to speak to him, since, on being pressed,
he became worried. He abandoned that attempt on
the first day, and resolved merely to keep himself
always before him, as a silënt protest against the
delusion into which he had fallen, or was falling. He
remained, therefore, in his scat noar the window,
reading, and writing, and expressing in as many
192 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
pleasant and natural ways as he could think of, that it
was a free place.
Doctor Manette took what was given him to eat and
drink, and worked on, that first day, until it was too
dark to see—worked on, half an hour after Mr. Lorry
could not have seen, for his life, to read or write,
When he put his tools aside as useless, until morning,
Mr. Lorry rose and said to him:
“Will you go out?”
He looked down at the floor on either side of him in
the old manner, looked up in the old manner, and
repeated in the old low voice:
G & Out ?” -
“Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?” --
He made no effort to say why not, and said not a
word more. But, Mr. Lorry thought he saw, as he
leaned forward on the bench in the dusk, with his
elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, that
he was in some misty way asking himself, “Why
not?” The sagacity of the man of business perceived
an advantage here, and determined to hold it.
Miss Pross and he divided the night into two watches,
and observed him at intervals from the adjoining room.
He paced up and down for a long time before he lay
down; but, when he did finally lay himself down, he
fell asleep. In the morning, he was up betimes, and
went straight to his bench and to work.
On this second day, Mr. Lorry saluted him cheerfully
by his name, and spoke to him on topics that had
been of late familiar to them. He returned no reply,
but it was evident that he heard what was said, and
that he thought about it, however confusedly. This
encouraged Mr. Lorry to have Miss Pross in with her
work, several times during the day; at those times
they quietly spoke of Lucie, and of her father then
present, precisely in their usual manner, and as if
there were nothing amiss. This was done without
any demonstrative accompaniment, not long enough,
or often enough to harass him; and it lightened Mr.
Lorry’s friendly heart to believe that he looked up
oftener, and that he appeared to be stirred by some
perception of inconsistencies surrounding him.
b Yººn it fell dark again, Mr. Lorry asked him as
€1Ore:
AN OPINION. 193
“Dear Doctor, will you go out?”
As before, he repeated, “Out?”
“Yes; for a walk with me, Why not?”
This time, Mr. Lorry feigned to go out when he could
extract no answer from him, and, after remaining
absent for an hour returned. In the mean while, the
Doctor had removed to the seat in the window, and
had sat there looking down at the plane-tree; but, on
Mr. Lorry’s return, he slipped away to his bench.
The time went very slowly on, and Mr. Lorry’s
hope darkened, and his heart grew heavier again, and
grew yet heavier and heavier every day. The third
day came and went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days,
six days, seven days, eight days, nine days.
. With a hope ever darkening, and with a heart
always growing heavier and heavier, Mr. Lorry passed
through this anxious time. The Secret was well kept,
and Lucie was unconscious and happy; but, he could
not fail to observe that the shoemaker, whose hand
had been a little out at first, was growing dreadfully
skilful, and that he had never been so intent on his
work, and that his hands had never been so nimble
and expert, as in the dusk of the ninth evening.
CHAPTER XIX.
AN OPINION.
W YORN out , by anxious watching, Mr. Lorry fell
'W asleep at his post. On the tenth morning of his
suspense, he was startled by the shining of the Sun into
the room where a heavy slumber had overtaken him
when it was dark night.
He rubbed his eyes and roused himself; but he doubted,
when he had done so, whether he was not still asleep.
For, going to the door of the Doctor's room and looking
in, he perceived that the shoemaker’s bench and tools
were put aside again, and that the Doctor himself sat
reading at the window. He was in his usual morning
dress, and his face (which Mr. Lorry could distinctly
see), though still very pale, was calmly studious and
attentive.
VOL I, 13
194 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Even when he had satisfied himself that he was
awake, Mr. Lorry felt giddily uncertain for some few
moments whether the late shoemaking might not be a
disturbed dream of his own; for, did not his eyes show
him his friend before him in his accustomed clothing
and aspect, and employed as usual; and was there any
sign within their range, that the change of which he
had so strong an impression had actually happened?
It was but the inquiry of the first confusion and as-
tonishment, the answer being obvious. If the impression
were not produced by a real corresponding, and suffi-
cient cause, how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there? How
came he to have fallen asleep, in his clothes, on the Sofa,
in Doctor Manette's consulting-room, and to be debat-
ing these points outside the Doctor’s bedroom door in,
the early morning?
Within a few minutes, Miss Pross stood whispering
at his side. If he had had any particle of doubt left, her
talk would of necessity have resolved it; but he was by
that time clearheaded, and, had none. He advised that
they should let the time go by until the regular break-
fast-hour, and should then meet the Doctor as if nothing
unusual had occurred. If he appeared to be in his cus-
tomary state of mind, Mr. Lorry would then cautiously
proceed to seek direction and guidance from the opinion
he had been, in his anxiety, so anxious to obtain.
Miss Pross, submitting herself to his judgment, the
scheme was worked out with care. Having abundance
of time for his usual methodical toilette, Mr. Lorry pre-
sented himself at the breakfast-hour in his usual white
linen and with his usual neat leg. The Doctor was
summoned in the usual way, and came to breakfast.
So far as it was possible to comprehend him without
Overstepping those delicate and gradual approaches
which Mr. Lorry felt to be the only safe advance, he at
first supposed that his daughter's marriage had taken
place yesterday. An incidental allusion, purposely
thrown out, to the day of the week, and the day of the
month, set him thinking and counting, and evidently
made him uneasy. . In all other respects, however, he
was so composedly himself, that Mr. Lorry determined to
have the aid he sought. And that aid was his
OWI).
Therefore, when the breakfast was done and cleared
AN OPINION, 195
away, and he and the Doctor were left together, Mr.
Lorry said, feelingly :
“My dear Manette, I am anxious to have your opinion,
in confidence, on a very curious case in which I am
deeply interested ; that is to say, it is very curious to
me ; perhaps, to your better information it may be
less so.”
Glancing at his hands, which were discoloured by his
late work, the Doctor looked troubled, and listened at-
tentively. He had already glanced at his halids more
than once.
“Doctor Manette,” said Mr. Lorry, touching him
affectionately on the arm, “the case is the case of a
particularly dear friend of mine. Pray give your mind
to it, and advise me well for his sake—and above
all for his daughter's—his daughter's, my dear
Manette.”
“If I understand,” said the Doctor, in a subdued tone,
“ some mental shock—?”
& 6 Yes! 9 3 -
“Be explicit,” said the Doctor.” Spare no detail.”
Mr. Lorry saw they understood one another, and pro-
ceeded.
“My dear Manette, it is the case of an old and a
prolonged shock, of great acuteness and severity, to
the affections, the feelings, the the-as you express it—
the mind. The mind. It is the case of a shock under
which the sufferer was borne down, one cannot say for
how long, because I believe he cannot calculate the
time himself, and there are no other means of getting
at it. It is the case of a shock from which the sufferer
recovered, by a process that he cannot trace himself—
as I once heard him publicly relate in a striking manner.
It is the case of a shock from which he has recovered so
completely, as to be a highly intelligent man, capable
of close application of mind, and great exertion of body,
and of constantly making fresh additions to his stock
of knowledge, which was already very large. But,
unfortunately, there has been,” he paused and took a
deep breath—“a slight relapse.”
The Doctor, in a low voice, asked, “Of how long
duration?”
“Nine days and nights.”
“How did it show itself? I infer,” glancing at his
196 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
hands again, “in the resumption of some old pursuit
connected with the shock?”
“That is the fact.”
“Now, did you ever see him,” asked the Doctor, dis-
tinctly and collectedly, though in the same low voice,
“engaged in that pursuit originally?”
‘‘ Once.”
“And when the relapse fell on him, was he in most
respects—or in all respects—as he was then?”
‘‘I think, in all respects.”
“You spoke of his daughter Does his daughter
know of the relapse?”
“ No. It has been kept from her, and I hope will
always be kept from her. It is known only to myself,
and to one other who may be trusted.” -
The Doctor grasped his hand, and murmured, “That
was very kind. That was very thoughtful!” Mr.
Lorry grasped his hand in return, and neither of the
two spoke for a little while.
“Now, my dear Manette,” said Mr. Lorry, at length,
in his most considerate and most affectionate way, “I
am a mere man of business, and unfit to cope with such
intricate and difficult matters. I do not possess the
kind of information necessary; I do not possess the kind
of intelligence; I want guiding. There is no man in
this world on whom I could so rely for right guidance,
as on you. Tell me, how does this relapse come about?
Is there danger of another? Could a repetition of it be
prevented? How should a repetition of it be treated?
How does it come about at all? What can I do for my
friend? No man ever can have been more desirous in
his heart to serve a friend, than I am to serve mine, if
I knew how. But I don’t know how to originate, in
Such a case. If your sagacity, knowledge, and expe-
rience, could put me on the right track, I might be able
to do so much; unenlightened and undirected, I can do
so little. Pray discuss it with me; *pray enable me to
See it a little more clearly, and teach me how to be a
little more useful.”
Doctor Manette sat meditating after these earnest
lºs were spoken, and Mr. Lorry did not press
IIY).
‘‘I think it probable,” said the Doctor, breaking
Silence with an effort, “that the relapse you have de-
AN OPINION. 19%
scribed, my dear friend, was not quite unforeseen by its
subject.”
“Was it dreaded by him?” Mr. Lorry ventured
to ask.
“Very much.” He said it with an involuntary
shudder. “You have no idea, how such an appre-
hension weighs on the sufferer’s mind, and how difficult
—how almost impossible—it is, for him to force himself
to utter a word upon the topic that oppresses him.”
“Would he,” asked Mr. Lorry “be sensibly relieved
if he could prevail upon himself to impart that secret
brooding to any one, when it is on him?”
“I think so. But it is, as I have told you, next to
impossible. I even believe it—in some cases—to be
quite impossible.” -
“Now,” said Mr. Lorry, gently laying his hand on
the Doctor’s arm again, after a short silence on both
sides, “to what would you refer this attack?” *
“I believe,” returned Dr. Manette, “that there had
been a strong and extraordinary revival of the train of
thought and remembrance that was the first cause of
the malady. Some intense associations of a most dis-
tressing nature were vividly recalled, I think. It is
probable that there had long been a dread lurking in
his mind, that those associations would be recalled—
say, under certain circumstances—say, on a particular
occasion. He tried to prepare himself, in vain; per-
haps the effort to prepare himself, made him less able
to bear it.”
“Would he remember what took place in the re-
lapse?” asked Mr. Lorry, with natural hesitation.
The Doctor looked desolately round the room, shook
his head, and answered, in a low voice, “Not at all.”
“Now, as to the future,” hinted Mr. Lorry.
“As to the future,” said the Doctor, recovering firm-
ness, “I should have great hope. As it pleased Heaven
in its mercy to restore him so soon, I should have great
hope. He, yielding under the pressure of a complicated
something, long dreaded and long vaguely foreseen and
contended against, and recovering after the cloud had
burst and passed, I should hope, that the worst was
Over.”
“Well, well! That’s good comfort. I am thankful!”
said Mr. Lorry.
198 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
“I am thankful!” repeated the Doctor, bending his
head with reverence. -
“There are two other points,” said Mr. Lorry, “on
which I am anxious to be instructed. I may go on?”
“You cannot do your friend a better service.” The
Doctor gave him his hand: •
“To the first, then. He is of a studious habit, and
unusually emergetic; he applies himself with great
ardour to the acquisition of professional knowledge, to
the conducting of experiments, to many things. Now,
does he do too much?” -
“I think not. It may be the character of his mind,
to be always in singular need of occupation. That
may be, in part, natural to it: in part, the result of
affliction. The less it was occupied with healthy things,
the more it would be in danger of turning in the un-
healthy direction. He may have observed himself,
and made the discovery.”
“You are sure that he is not under too great a strain?”
“I think I am quite sure of it.” &
“My dear Manette, if he were overworked now—”
“My dear Lorry, I doubt if that could easily be.
There has been a violent stress in one direction, and
it needs a counterweight.” -
“Excuse me, as a persistent man of business. As-
suming for a moment, that he was overworked; it
would show itself in some renewal of this disorder?”
“I do not think so. I do not think,” said Doctor
Manette with the firmness of self-conviction, “that any-
thing but the one train of association would renew it.
I think that, henceforth, nothing but some extraordi-
mary jarring of that chord could renew it. After what
has happened, and after his recovery, I find it difficult
to imagine any such violent sounding of that string
again. I trust, and I almost believe, that the circum-
stances likely to renew it are exhausted.”
IHe spoke with the diffidence of a man who knew
how slight a thing would overset the delicate organi-
sation of the mind, and yet with the confidence of a
man who had slowly won his asgurance out of personal
endurance and distress. It was not for his friend to
abate that confidence... He professed himself more
relieved and encouraged than he really was, and Tap-
proached his second and last point. He felt it to be the
AN OPINION. 199
most difficult of all; but, remembering his old Sunday
morning conversation with Miss Pross, and remember- .
ing what he had seen in the last nine days, he knew
that he must face it.
“The occupation resumed under the influence of
this passing affliction so happily recovered from,” said
Mr. Lorry, clearing his throat, “we will call—Black-
smith’s work. Blacksmith’s work. We will say, to
put a case, and for the sake of illustration, that he had
been used in his bad time to work at a little forge. We
will say that he was unexpectedly found at his forge
again. Is it not a pity that he should keep it by him?”
The Doctor shaded his forehead with his hand, and
beat his foot nervously on the ground.
“He has always kept it by him,” said Mr. Lorry, with
an anxious look at his friend. “Now, would it not be
better that he should let it go?”
Still, the Doctor, with shaded forehead, beat his foot
nervously on the ground.
“You do not find it easy to advise me?” said Mr.
Lorry. “I quite understand it to be a nice question.
And yet I think ” And there he shook his head, and
stopped.
“You see,” said Doctor Manette, turning to him after
an uneasy pause, “it is very hard to explain, consis-
tently, the innermost working of this poor man’s mind.
He once yearned so frightfully for that occupation, and
it was so welcome when it came; no doubt it relieved his
pain so much, by Substituting the perplexity of the
fingers for the perplexity of the brain, and by substitu-
ting, as he became more practised, the ingenuity of the
hands for the ingenuity of the mental torture; that he
has never been able to bear the thought of putting it
quite out of his reach. Even now when, I believe, he
is more hopeful of himself than he has ever been, and
even speaks of himself with a kind of confidence, the
idea that he might need that old employment, and not
find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, like that
which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child.”
He looked like his illustration, as he raised his eyes
to Mr. Lorry's face.
“But may not—mind! I ask for information, as a
plodding man of business who only deals with such
material objects as guineas, shillings, and bank-notes—
200 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
may not the retention of the thing, involve the retention
of the idea? If the thing were gone, my dear Manette,
might not the fear go with it? In short, is it not a con-
Cession to the misgiving, to keep the forge?”
There was another silence. *
“You see, too, said the Doctor, tremulously, “it is
Such an old companion.” *
“I would not keep it,” said Mr. Lorry, shaking his
head; for he gained in firmness as he saw the Doctor
disquieted. “I would recommend him to sacrifice it.
I Only want your authority. I am sure it does no good.
Come! Give me your authority, like a dear good man.
For his daughter’s sake, my dear Manette!”
l Very strange to see what a struggle there was within
him! -
“In her name, then, let it be done; I sanction it.
But, I would not take it away while he was present.
Let it be removed when he is not there; let him miss
his old companion after an absence.”
Mr. Lorry readily engaged for that, and the confer-
ence was ended. They passed the day in the country,
and the Doctor was quite restored. On the three fol-
lowing days, he remained perfectly well, and on the
fourteenth day, he went away to join Lucie and her
husband. The precaution that had been taken to
account for his silence, Mr. Lorry had previously ex-
plained to him, and he had written to Lucie in accord-
ance with it, and she had no suspicions.
On the night of the day on which he left the house,
Mr. Lorry went into his room with a chopper, saw,
chisel, and hammer, attended by Miss Pross carrying a
light. There, with closed doors, and in a mysterious
and guilty manner, Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemaker’s
j, to pieces, while Miss Pross held the candle as if
she were assisting at a murder—for which, indeed, in
her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure. The burn-
ing of the body (previously reduced to pieces convenient
for the purpose), was commenced without delay in the
kitchen fire; and the tools, shoes, and leather, were
buried in the garden. So wicked do destruction and
Secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and
Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their
deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and
almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime,
A PLEA. - 201
CHAPTER XX.
A PLEA.
HEN the newly-married pair came home, the first
person who appeared to offer his congratulations,
was Sydney Carton. They had not been at home many
hours, when he presented himself. He was not im-
proved in habits, or in looks, or in manner; but, there
was a certain rugged air of fidelity about him, which
was new to the obseryation of Charles Darnay. -
He watched his opportunity of taking Darnay aside
into a window, and of Speaking to him when no one
overheard.
“Mr. Darnay,” said Carton, “I wish we might be
friends.”
“We are already friends, I hope.”
“You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of
speech; but, I don’t mean any fashion of speech. Indeed,
when I say I wish we might be friends, Iscarcely mean
quite that, either.” -
Charles Darnay—as was natural—asked him, in all
good humour and good-fellowship, what he did mean?
“ Upon my life,” said Carton, Smiling, “I find that
easier to comprehend in my own mind, than to convey
to yours. However, let me try. You remember a cer-
tain famous occasion when I was more drunk than—
than usual?”
“I remember a certain famous occasion when you
forced me to confess that you had been drinking.”
‘‘I remember it too. The curse of those occasions is
heavy upon me, for I always remember them. I hope
it may be taken into account one day, when all days
are at an end for me!—Don’t be alarmed; I am not going
to preach.”
“I am not at all alarmed. Earnestness in you is any-
thing but alarming to me.”
“Ah!” said Carton, with a careless wave of his
hand, as if he waved that away. “On the drunken
...();2 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
occasion in question (one of a large number, as you
know), I was insufferable about liking you, and not
liking you. I wish you would forget it.”
‘‘I forgot it long ago.”
“Fashion of speech again! But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion
is not so easy to me, as you represent it to be to you. I
have by no means forgotten it, and a light answer does
not help me to forget it.”
“If it was a É. answer,” returned Darnay, “I beg
your forgiveness for it. I had no other object than to
turn a slight thing, which, to my surprise, seems to
trouble you too much, aside. I declare to you, on the
faith of a gentleman, that I have long dismissed it
from my mind. Good Heaven, what was there to dis-
miss! Have I had nothing more important to remelm-
ber, in the great service you rendered me that day?”
“As to the great service,” said Carton, “I am bound
to avow to you, when you speak of it in that way, that
it was mere professional clap-trap. I don't know that
I cared what became of you, when I rendered it.—
Mind! I say when I rendered it; I am speaking of the
past.”
“You make light of the obligation,” returned Darnay,
“but I will not quarrel with you, light answer.”
“Genuine truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me! I have gone
aside from my purpose; I was speaking about Our
being friends. Now, you know me; you know I am inca-
pable of all the higher and better flights of men. If
you doubt it, ask Stryver, and he’ll tell you so.”
hiº prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of
is.”
“Well! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog,
who has never done any good, and never will.”
“I don’t know that you ‘never will.’”
“But I do, and you must take my word for it. Well!
If you could endure to have such a worthless fellow,
and a fellow of such indifferent reputation, coming and
going at odd times, I should ask that I might be per-
mitted to come and go as a privileged person here; that
I might be regarded as an useless i. I would add, if
it were not for the resemblance I detected between you
and me, an unornamental) piece of furniture, tolerated
for its old service, and taken no notice of. I doubt if I
should abuse the permission. It is a hundred to one if
A PLEA. 203
I should avail myself of it four times in a year. It
would satisfy me, I dare say, to know that I had it.”
“Will you try?” *
“That is another way of saying that I am placed on
the footing I have indicated. I thank you, Darnay. I
may use that freedom with your name?”
“I think so, Carton, by this time.”
They shook hands upon it, and Sydney turned away.
Within a minute afterwards, he was to all outward
appearance, as unsubstantial as ever.
When he was gone, and in the course of an evening
passed with Miss Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry,
Charles Darnay made some mention of this conversa-
tion in general terms, and spoke of Sydney Carton as a
problem of carelessness and recklessness. He spoke of
him, in short, not bitterly or meaning to bear hard
upon him, but as anybody might who saw him as he
showed himself.
He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts
of his fair young wife; but, when he afterwards joined her
in their own rooms, he found her waiting for him with
the old pretty lifting of the forehead strongly marked.
“We are thoughtful to-night!” said Darnay, drawing
his arm about her. *
“Yes, dearest Charles,” with her hands on his breast,
and the inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon
him; “we are rather thoughtful to-night, for we have
something on our mind to-night.”
“What is it, my Lucie?”
“Will you promise not to press one question on me,
if I beg you not to ask it?”
“Will I promise? What will I not promise to my
LOve?”
What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden
hair from the cheek, and his other hand against the
heart that beat for him!
“I think, Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more
consideration and respect than you expressed for him
to-night.”
“Indeed, my own? Why so?”
“That is what you are not to ask me? But I think—
I know—he does.”
“If you know it, it is enough. What would you have
me do, my Life?”
204 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
‘‘I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with
him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is
not by. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart
he very, very, seldom reveals, and that there are deep
wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding.”
“It is a painful reflection to me,” said Charles Dar-
nay, quite astounded, “that I should have done him
any wrong. I never thought this of him.” -
“My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be re-
claimed; there is scarcely a hope that anything in his
character or fortunes is reparable now. But, I am sure
that he is capable of good things, gentle things, even
magnanimous things.”
She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in
this lost man, that her husband could have looked at
her as she was, for hours.
“And, O my dearest Love!” she urged, clinging
nearer to him, laying her head upon his breast, and rais-
ing her eyes to his, “remember how strong we are in
our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery l’”
The supplication touched him home. “I will always
remember it, dear Heart! I will remember it as long
as I live.”
He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips
to his, and folded her in his arms. If one forlorn wan-
derer then pacing the dark streets, could have heard
her innocent disclosure, and could have seen the drops
of pity kissed away by her husband from the soft blue
eyes so loving of that husband, he might have cried to
the night—and the words would not have parted from
his lips for the first time—
“God bless her for her sweet compassion!”
CHAPTER XXI.
ECHOING FOOTSTEPS.
WONDERFUL corner for echoes, it has been re-
marked, that corner where the Doctor lived. Ever
busily winding the golden thread which bound her hus-
band, and her father, and herself, and her old directress
and companion, in a life of quiet bliss. Lucie Sat in the
ECHOING FOOTSTEPS. 205
still house in the tranquilly resounding corner, listening
to the echoing footsteps of years.
At first, there were times, though she was a perfectly
happy young wife, when her work would slowly fall
from her hands, and her eyes would be dimmed. For
there was something coming in the echoes, something
light, afar off, and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her
heart too much. Fluttering hopes and doubts—hopes,
of a love as yet unknown to her; doubts, of her remain-
ing upon earth, to enjoy that new delight—divided her
breast. Among the echoes then, there would arise the
sound of footsteps at her Own early grave; and thoughts
of the husband who would be left so desolate, and who
would mourn for her so much, swelled to her eyes and
broke like waves.
That time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her
bosom. Then, among the advancing echoes, there was
the tread of her tiny feet and the Sound of her prattling
words. Let greater echoes resound as they would, the
young mother at the cradle side could always hear those
coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny
with a child’s laugh, and the Divine friend of children,
to whom in her trouble she had confided hers, seemed
to take her child in His arms, as He took the child of old,
and made it a sacred joy to her. -
Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound
them all together, weaving the service of her happy in-
fluence through the tissue of all their lives, and making
it predominate nowhere, Lucie heard in the echoes of
years none but friendly and soothing Sounds. Her hus-
band’s step was strong and prosperous among them; her
father’s, firm and equal. Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of
string, awakening the echoes, as , an unruly charger,
whip-corrected, snorting and pawing the earth under
the plane-tree in the garden!
Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the
rest, they were not harsh nor cruel. Even when golden
hair, like her own, lay in a halo, on a pillow round the
worn face of a little boy, and he said, with a radiant
smile, “Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorry to
leave you both, and to leave my pretty sister; but I am
called, and I must go!” those were not tears all of agony
that wetted his young mother’s cheek, as the spirit de-
parted from her embrace that had been entrusted to it.
J)
336 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Suffer them and forbid them not. They see my Father's
face. O Father, blessed words!
Thus, the rustling of an Angel’s wings got blended
with the other echoes, and they were not wholly of
earth, but had in them that breath of Heaven. Sighs
of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were
mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lu-
cie, in a hushed murmur—like the breathing of a sum-
lmer sea asleep upon a sandy shore—as the little Lucie,
comically studious at the task of the morning, or dress-
ing a doll at her mother's footstool, Chattered in the
fºgues of the Two Cities that were blended in her
1I 63. & -
The echoes rarely answered to the actual tread of
Sydney Carton. Some half-dozen times a year, at most,
he claimed his privilege of coming in uninvited, and
would sit among them through the evening as he had
Once done often. He never came there, heated with
wine. And one other thing regarding him was whis-
pered in the echoes, which has been whispered by all
true echoes for ages and ages. *
No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew
her with a blameless though an unchanged mind, when
she was a wife and a mother, but her children had a
strange sympathy with him—an instinctive delicacy of
pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities are touched
in such a case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so
here. Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lu-
cie held out her chubby arms and he kept his place with
her as she grew. The little boy had spoken of him, al-
most at the last. “Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!”
Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the law, like
some great engine forcing itself through turbid water,
and dragged his useful friend in his wake, like a boat
towed astern. As the boat so favoured is usually in a
rough plight and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a
Swamped life of it. But, easy and strong custom, un-
happily so much easier and stronger in him than any
stimulating sense of desert or disgrace, made it the
life he was to lead; and he no more thought of emerg-
ing from his state of lion’s jackal, than any real jackal
may be supposed to think of rising to be a lion.
Stryver was rich; had married a florid widow with prop-
erty and three boys, who had nothing particularly
&
|ECHOING FOOTSTEPS. 207
shining about them but the straight hair of their dump- .
ling heads.
These three young gentlemen, Mr. Stryver, exuding
patronage of the most Offensive quality from every pore,
had walked before him, like three sheep, to the quiet
corner in Soho, and had offered as pupils to Lucie's hus-
band: delicately saying, “Halloal here are three lumps
of bread-and-cheese towards your matrimonial pic-nic,
Darnay!”. The polite rejection of the three lumps of
bread-and-cheese had quite bloated Mr. Stryver within-
dignation, which he afterwards turned to account in the
training of the young gentlemen, by directing them to
beware of the pride of Beggars, like that tutor-fellow.
He was also in the habit of declaiming to Mrs. Stryver,
over his full-bodied wine, on the arts Mrs. Darnay had
once put in practice to “catch ‘’ him, and on the dia-
mond-cut-diamond arts in himself, madam, which had
rendered him “not to be caught.” Some of his King's
Bench familiars, who were occasionally parties to the
full-bodied wine and the lie, excused him for the latter
by saying that he had told it so often, that he believed
it himself—which is Surely such an incorrigible aggra-
vation of an originally bad offence, as to justify any
such offender's being carried off to some suitably retired
spot, and there hanged out of the way.
These were among the echoes to which Lucie, some-
times pensive, sometimes amused and laughing, listened
in the echoing corner, until her little daughter was six
years old. How near to her heart the echoes of her
child’s tread came, and those of her own dear father’s,
always active and self-possessed, and those of her dear
husband’s, need not be told. Nor, how the lightest echo
of their united home, directed by herself with such a
wise and elegant thrift that it was more abundant than
any waste, was music to her. Nor, how there were echoes
all about her, sweet in her ears, of the many times her
father had told her that he found her more devoted to
him married (if that could be) than single, and of the
many times her husband had said to her that no cares
and duties seemed to divide her love for him or her help
to him, and asked her, “What is the magic secret, my
darling, of your being everything to all of us, as if there
were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or
to have too much to do?”
208 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that
rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space
of time. And it was now, about little Lucie's sixth
birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of
a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising.
On a night in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred
and eighty-nine, Mr. Lorry came in late, from Tellson’s,
and sat himself down by Lucie and her husband in the
dark window. It was a hot wild night, and they were
all three reminded of the old Sunday night when they
had looked at the lightning from the same place.
“I began to think,” said Mr. Lorry, pushing his brown
wig back, “that I should have to pass the night at
Tellson’s. We have been so full of business all day,
that we have not known what to do first, or which way
to turn. There is such an uneasiness in Paris, that we
have actually a run of confidence upon us! Our customers
Over there, seem not to be able to confide their property
to us fast enough. There is positively a mania among
some of them for sending it to England.”
“That has a bad look,” said Darnay.
“A bad look, you say, my dear Darnay? Yes, but we
don’t know what reason there is in it. People are so
unreasonable! Some of us at Tellson’s are getting old,
and we really can’t be troubled out of the ordinary
course without due occasion.” -
“Still,” said Darnay, “ you know how gloomy and
threatening the sky is.”
“I know that, to be sure,” assented Mr. Lorry, trying
to persuade himself that his sweet temper was soured,
and that he grumbled, “but I am determined to be
peevish after my long day’s botheration. Where is
Manette?” -
“Here he is!” said the Doctor, entering the dark room,
at the moment.
‘‘I am quite glad you are at home; for these hurries
and forebodings by which I have been surrounded all
day long, have made me nervous without reason. You
are not going out, I hope?”
“ No; I am going to play backgammon with you, if
you like,” said the Doctor.
“I don’t think I do like, if I may speak my mind. I
am not fit to be pitted against you to-night. Is the tea-
board still there, Lucie? I can’t see.” -
ECHOING FOOTSTEPS. 209
“Of course, it has been kept for you.”
b . Thank ye, my dear. The precious child is safe in
€ ?”
“And sleeping soundly.”
“That’s right; all safe and well! I don’t know why
anything should be otherwise than safe and well here,
thank God; but I have been so put out all day, and I
am not as young as I was! My tea, my dear? Thank
ye. Now, come and take your place in the circle, and
let us sit quiet, and hear the echoes about which you
have your theory.”
“Not a theory; it was a fancy.” Af
“A fancy, then, my wise pet,” said Mr. Lorry, patting
her hand. “They are very numerous and very loud,
though, are they not? Only hear them!”
Headlong mad and dangerous footsteps to force their
way into anybody’s life, footsteps not easily made clean
again if once stained red, the footsteps raging in Saint
Antoine afar off, as the little circle sat in the dark Lon-
don window. -
Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky
mass of scarecrows heaving to and fro, with frequent -
gleams of light above the billowy heads, where steel
blades and bayonets shone in the sun. A tremendous
roar arose from the throat of Saint Antoine, and a
forest of naked arms struggled in the air like shrivelled
branches of trees in a winter wind: all the fingers con-
vulsively clutching at every weapon or semblance of a
weapon that was thrown up from the depths below, no
matter how far off.
Who gave them out, whence they last came, where
they began, through what agency they crookedly
quivered and jerked, scores at a time, over the heads
of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in the
throng could have told; but, muskets were being dis-
tributed—so were cartridges, powder and ball, bars of
iron and wood, knives, axes, pikes, every weapon that
distracted ingenuity could discover or devise. People
who could lay hold of nothing else, set themselves with
bleeding hands to force stones and bricks out of their
places in walls. Every pulse and heart in Saint Antoine
was on high-fever strain and at high-fever heat. Every
living creature there, held life as of no account, and
WOL. I. 14
210 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
was demented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice it.
As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point,
so, all this raging circled round Defarge's wine-shop,
and every human drop in the caldron had a tendency to
be sucked towards the vortex where Defarge himself,
already begrimed with gunpowder and sweat, issued
Orders, issued arms, thrust this man back, dragged this
man forward, disarmed one to arm another, laboured
and strove in the thickest of the uproar."
“Keep near to me, Jacques Three,” cried Defarge; “and
do you, Jacques One and Two, separate and put your-
selves at the head of as many of these patriots as you
can. Where is my wife?”
‘‘ Eh, well! Here you see me!” said madame, com-
posed as ever, but not knitting to-day. Madame's reso-
lute right hand was occupied with an axe, in place of
the usual softer implements, and in her girdle were a
pistol and a cruel knife. -
“Where do you go, my wife?”
“I go,” said madame, “with you, at present. You
shall see me at the head of women, by-and-by.”
“Come, then!” cried Defarge, in a resounding voice.
“Patriots and friends, we are ready! The Bastille!”
With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France
had been shaped into the detested word, the living sea
rose, wave on wave, depth on depth, and overflowed
the city to that point. , Alarm-bells ringing, drums
beating, the Sea raging and thundering on its new beach,
the attack begun. **
Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls,
eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke.
Through the fire and through the smoke—in the fire and
in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon,
and on the instant he became a cannonier–Defarge
of the wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, Two
fierce hours.
Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls,
eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke.
One drawbridge down! “Work, comrades all, work!
Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thou-
sand, Jacques Two Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty
Thousand; in the name of all the Angels or the Devils—
which you prefer—work!” Thus Defarge of the wine-
shop, still at his gun, which had long grown hot.
ECHOING FOOTSTEPs. 21 |
“To me, women!” Cried madame his wife. “What!
We can kill as well as the men when the place is taken!”
And to her, with a shrill thirsty cry, trooping women
variously armed, but all armed alike in hunger and
revenge. - -
Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke; but, still the deep
ditch, the single drawbridge, the massive stone walls,
and the eight great towers. , Slight displacements of
the raging sea, made by the falling wounded. Flash-
ing weapons, blazing torches, Smoking waggon-loads
of wet straw, hard work at neighbouring barricades in
all directions, shrieks, volleys, execrations, bravery
without stint, boom smash and rattle, and the furious
sounding of the living sea; but, still the deep ditch, and
the single drawbridge, and the massive stone walls, and
the eight great towers, and still Defarge of the wine-
shop at his gun, grown doubly hot by the service of
Four fierce hours. * ...
A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley—
this dimly perceptible through the raging storm, noth-
ing audible in it—suddenly the sea rose immeasurably
wider and higher, and swept Defarge of the wine-shop
over the lowered drawbridge, past the massive stone
outer walls, in among the eight great towers surren-
dered
So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing him
on, that even to draw his breath or turn his head was
as impracticable as if he had been struggling in the Surf
of the South Sea, until he was landed in the outer court-
yard of the Bastille. There, against an angle of a wall,
he made a struggle to look about him. Jacques Three
was nearly at his side; Madame Defarge still heading
some of her women, was visible in the inner distance,
and her knife was in her hand. Everywhere was tumulf,
exultation, deafening and maniacal bewilderment,
astounding noise, yet furious dumb-show.
“The Prisoners!” *
“The Records!”
“The Secret cells!”
“The instruments Of torture!”
“The Prisoners | ?”
Of all these cries, and ten thousand incoherencies,
“The Prisoners!” was the cry most taken up by the
Sea that rushed in, as if there were an eternity of people,
212 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
as well as of time and space. When the foremost
billows rolled past, bearing the prison officers with them,
and threatening them all with instant death if any
Secret nook remained undisclosed, Defarge laid his
strong hand on the breast of one of these men — a
man with a grey head who had a lighted torch in his
hand—separated him from the rest, and got him be-
tween himself and the wall, *
“Show me the North Tower!” said Defarge. “Quick!”
“I will faithfully,” replied the man, “if you will come
with me. But there is no one there.”
“What is the meaning of One Hundred and Five,
North Tower?” asked Defarge. “Quick!”
“The meaning, monsieur?”
“Does it mean a captive, or a place of captivity? Or
do you mean that I shall strike you dead?”
“Kill him l’’ croaked Jacques Three, who had come
close up.
“Monsieur, it is a cell.”
** Show it, me!”
“Pass this way, then.”
Jacques Three, with his usual craving on him, and
evidently disappointed by the dialogue taking a turn
that did not seem to promise bloodshed, held by De-
farge's arm as he held by the turnkey’s. Their three
heads had been close together during this brief dis-
course, and it had been as much as they could do to hear
one another, even then : so tremendous was the noise
of the living ocean, in its irruption into the Fortress,
and its inundation of the courts and passages and stair-
cases. All around outside, too, it beat the walls with
a deep, hoarse roar, from which, occasionally, some
artial shouts of tumult broke and leaped into the air
ike spray.
Through gloomy vaults where the light of day had
never shone, past hideous doors of dark dens and cages,
down cavernous flights of steps, and again up steep
rugged ascents of stone and brick, more like dry water-
falls than staircases, Defarge, the turnkey, and Jacques
Three, linked hand and arm, went with all the speed
they could make. Here and there, especially at first,
the inundation started on them and swept by; but
when they had done descending, and were winding and
climbing up a tower, they were alone. Hemmed in fiere
\
ECHOING FOOTSTEPs. 213
by the massive thickness of walls and arches, the storm
within the fortress and without was only audible to
them in a dull, subdued way, as if the noise out of which
they had come had almost destroyed their sense of
hearing.
The turnkey stopped at a low door, put a key in a
clashing lock, swung the door slowly open, and said, as .
they all bent i. heads and passed in :
“One hundred and five, North Tower!”
There was a small heavily-grated unglazed window
high in the wall, with a stone screen before it, so that
the sky could be only seen by stooping low and looking
up. There was a small chimney, heavily barred across,
a few feet within. There was a heap of old feathery
wood ashes on the hearth. There were a stool, and
table, and a straw bed. There were the four blackened
walls, and a rusted iron ring in one of them.
“Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may
see them,” said Defarge to the turnkey. -
The man obeyed, and Defarge followed the light
closely with his eyes.
“Stop!—Look here, Jacques!”
“A. M. l’ croaked Jacques Three, as he read greedily.
“Alexander Manette,” said Defarge in his ear, follow-
ing the letters with his swart forefinger, deeply
engrained with gunpowder. “And here he wrote “a
poor physician.’ And it was he, without doubt, who
scratched a calendar on this stone. What is that in your
hand? A crowbar? Give it me!”
He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand.
He made a sudden exchange of the two instruments,
and turning on the worm-eaten stool and table, beat
them to pieces in a few blows.
“Hold the light higher!” he said, wrathfully, to the
turnkey. “Ilook among those fragments with care,
Jacques! And see | Here is my knife,” throwing it to
him; “rip open the bed, and search “the straw. Hold
the light higher, you!”
With a menacing look at the turnkey he crawled upon
the hearth, and, peering up the chimney, struck and
prised at its sides with the crowbar, and worked at the
iron grating across it. In a few minutes, some mortar
and dust came dropping down, which he averted his
face to avoid; and in it, and in the old wood-ashes, and
214 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
in a crevice in the chimney into which his weapon had
slipped or wrought itself, he groped with a cautious
touch. - -
“Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw,
Jacques?” -
“Nothing.”
“Let us collect them together, in the middle of the
'cell. So! Light them you!” Q.
The turnkey fired the little pile, which blazed high and
hot. Stooping again to come out at the low-arched door,
they left it burning, and retraced their way to the court-
yard; seeming to recover their sense of hearing as they
came down, until they were in the raging flood Once
IYAOU’62. --
They found it surging and tossing in quest of Defarge
himself. Saint Antoine was clamorous to have its
wine-shop-keeper foremost in the guard upon the
governor who had defended the Bastille and shot the
people. Otherwise, the Governor would not be marched
to the Hôtel de Ville for judgment. Otherwise, the
governor would escape, and the people's blood (Sud-
denly of some value, after many years of worthless-
Iness) be unavenged.
In the howling universe of passion and contention
that seemed to encompass this grim old officer conspic-
uous in his grey coat and red decoration, there was
but one quite steady figure, and that was a woman's.
“See, there is my husband! ” she cried, pointing him
out. “See Defarge!” She stood immovable close to
the grim old officer, and remained immovable close to
him; remained immovable close to him through the
streets, as Defarge and the rest bore him along ; re-
mained immovable close to him when he was got near
his destination, and began to be struck at from behind;
remained immovable close to him when the long-
gathering rain of stabs and blows fell heavy; was so
close to him when he dropped dead under it, that. Sud-
denly animated, she put her foot upon his neck, and
with her cruel knife—long ready—hewed off his head.
The hour was come, when Saint Antoine was to ex-
ecute his horrible idea of hoisting up men for lamps to
show what he could be and do. Saint Antoine’s
blood was up, and the blood of tyranny and domination
by the iron hand was down—down on the steps of the
ECHOING FOOTSTEPS. 215
Hôtel de Ville where the governor's body lay—down on
the sole of the shoe of Madame Defarge where she had
trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation. “Lower
the lamp yonder P” cried Saint Antoine, after glaring
round for a new means of death ; “here is one of his
soldiers to be left on guard l’” The Swinging sentinel
was posted, and the Sea rushed on.
The sea of black and threatening waters, and of
destructive upheaving of wave against wave, whose
depths were unfathomed and whose forces were yet
unknown. The remorseless sea of turbulently swaying
shapes, voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the
furnaces of suffering until the touch of pity could make
no mark on them. -
But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and
furious expression was on vivid life, there were two
groups of faces—each seven in number —so fixedly con-
trasting with the rest, that never did sea roll which
bore more memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of
prisoners, suddenly released by the storm that had
burst their tomb, were carried high over head: all
scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as if the
Last Day were com 3, and those who rejoiced around
them were lost spirits. Other seven faces there were,
carried higher, seven dead faces, whose drooping eye-
lids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last Day. Impassive
faces, yet with a suspended—not an abolished—expres-
sion on them; faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as
having yet to raise the dropped lids of the eyes, and
bear witness with the bloodless lips, “ THOU DIDST IT l’”
Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes,
the keys of the accursed fortress of the eight strong
towers, some discovered letters and others, memorials
of prisoners of old time, long dead of broken hearts,
such and such-like, the loudly echoing footsteps of Saint
Antoine escort through the Paris streets in mid-July,
one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. Now,
heaven defeat the fancy of Lucie Darnay, and keep
these feet far out of her life For, they are head-
long, mad, and dangerous; and in the years so long
after the breaking of the cask at Defarge's wine-
shop door, they are not easily purified when once
stained red.
216 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
CHAPTER XXII.
T H E S E A S T I LL RISE S.
| [AºP Saint Antoine had had only one ex-
ultant week, in which to soften his modicum of
hard and bitter bread to such extent as he could, with
the relish of fraternal embraces and congratulations,
when Madame Defarge sat at her counter, as usual,
presiding over the customers. Madame Defarge wore
no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood of Spies
had become, even in one short week, extremely chary
of trusting themselves to the saint's mercies. The lamps
*...* his streets had a portentously elastic swing with
them. - - * -
Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the
morning light and heat, contemplating the wine-shop
and the street. In both were several knots of loungers,
squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest sense
of power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest
nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this
crooked significance in it: “I know how hard it has
grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in my-
self; but do you know how easy it has grown for me,
the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?” Every
lean bare arm, that had been without work before,
had this work always ready for it now, that it could
strike. The fingers of the knitting women were vi-
cious, with the experience that they could tear. There
was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine; the
image had been hammering into this for hundreds of
years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily
On the expression.
Madame Defarge sat observing it, with Such sup-
pressed approval as was to be desired in the leader
of the Saint Antoine women. One of her sisterhood
knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a
starved grocer, and the mother of two children withal,
THE SEA STILL RISES. 217
this lieutenant had already earned the complimentary
name of The Vengeance.
“Hark!” said the Vengeance. “Listen, then! Who
comes?” . .
As if a train of powder laid from the outermost
bound of the Saint Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop
door, had been suddenly fired, a fast-spreading murmur
came rushing along.
‘‘It is Defarge,” said madame. “Silence, patriots!”
Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he
wore, and looked around him! “Listen, everywhere!”
said madame again. “ Listen to him!” Defarge stood,
panting, against a background of eager eyes and open
mouths, formed outside the door; all those within the
wine-shop had sprung to their feet.
“Say then, my husband. What is it?”
‘‘News from the Other world!” -
“How, then?” cried madame, contemptuously. “The
Other world?”
“Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the
famished people that they might eat grass, and who .
died, and went to Hell?” -
“Everybody!” from all throats.
“The news is of him. He is among us!”
“Among us?” from the universal throat again. “And
dead?”
“Not dead! He feared us so much—and with reason
—that he caused himself to be represented as dead,
and had a grand mock-funeral. But they have found
him alive, hiding in the country, and have brought him
in. I have seen him but now, on his way to the Hôtel
de Ville, a prisoner. I have said that he had reason to
fear us. Say all! Had he reason?”
Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years
and ten, if he had never known it yet, he would have’
known it in his heart of hearts, if he could have heard
the answering cry. *
A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge
and his wife looked steadfastly at one another. The
Vengeance stooped, and the jar of a drum was heard
as she moved it at her feet behind the counter.
“Patriots!” said Defarge, in a determined voice,
“are we ready?” -
218 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her girdle;
the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drum-
mer had flown together by magic; and The Vengeance,
uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about
her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing
from house to house, rousing the women.
The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger
with which they looked from windows, caught up
what arms they had, and came pouring down into the
streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest.
From such household occupations as their bare poverty
yielded, from their children, from their aged and their
sick Crouching on the bare ground famished and naked,
they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another,
and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and
actions. Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon
taken, my mother! Miscreant Foulon taken, my
daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of
these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and
screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving
people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my
old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread
to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck
grass, when these breasts were dry with want! ()
mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven, our suffering!
Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I
Swear On my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on
Foulon! Husbands, and brothers, and young men, Give
us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon,
Give us the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and soul
of Foulon, Rend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the
ground, that grass may grow from him! With these
cries, numbers of the women, lashed into blind frenzy,
whirled about, striking and tearing at their own friends
until they dropped in a passionate swoon, and were only
saved by the men belonging to them from being trampled
under foot.
Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a moment!
This Foulon was at the Hôtel de Ville, and might be
loosed. Never, if Saint Antoine knew his own suffer-
ings, insults, and wrongs! Armed men and women
flocked out of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these
last dregs after them with such a force of suction, that
within a quarter of an hour there was not a human
THE SEA STILL RISES. 2] {}
©
creature in Saint Antoine’s bosom but a few old crones
and the wailing children.
No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of
examination, where this old man, ugly and wicked,
was, and overflowing into the adjacent open space and
streets. The Defarges, husband and wife, The Ven-
geance, and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and
at no great distance from him in the Hall.
“See!” cried madame, pointing with her knife. “See
the old villain bound with ropes. That was well done
to tie a bunch of grass upon his back. Ha, ha! That
was well done. Let him eat it now!” Madame put her
knife under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play.
The people immediately behind Madame Defarge, ex-
plaining the cause of her satisfaction to those behind
them, and those again explaining to others, and those
to others, the neighbouring streets resounded with the
clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or three
hours of drawl, and the winnowing of many bushels
of words, Madame Defarge's frequent expressions of
impatience were taken up, with marvellous quickness at
a distance: the more readily, because certain men who
had by some wonderful exercise of agility climbed up
the external architecture to look in from the windows,
knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph
between her and the crowd outside the building. -
At length, the Sun rose so high that it struck a kindly
ray, as of hope or protection, directly down upon the
old prisoner’s head. The favour was too much to bear;
in an instant the barrier of dust and chaff that had
stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint
Antoine had got him! -
It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the
crowd. Defarge had but sprung over a railing and a
table, and folded the miserable wretch in a deadly em-
brace—Madame Defarge had but followed and turned
her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied—
The Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet up with
them, and the men at the windows had not yet swooped
into the Hall, like birds of prey from their high perches
—when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city,
“Bring him out! Bring him to the lamp!” -
Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the
building; now, on his knees; now, on his feet; now, on
220 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
©
his back; dragged, and struck at, and stifled by the
bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his
face by hundreds of . hands; torn, bruised, panting,
bleeding, yet always entreating and beseeching for
mercy; now, full of vehement agony of action, with a
Small clear space about him as the people drew One
another back that they might see; now, a log of dead
wood drawn through a forest of legs; he was hauled to
the nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps
swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go—as a
Cat might have done to a mouse—and silently and Com-
posedly looked at him while they made ready, and
while , he besought her: the women passionately
screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly
Calling out to have him killed with grass in his mouth.
Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they
caught him shrieking; twice, he went aloft, and the
rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; then, the
rope was merciful and held him, and his head was soon
upon a pike, with grass enough in the mouth for all
Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of.
Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for Saint
Antoine so shouted and danced his angry blood up, that
it boiled again, on hearing when the day closed in that
the son-in-law of the despatched, another of the people's
enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a
guard five hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint
Antoine wrote his crimes on flaring sheets of paper,
seized him—would have torn him out of the breast of
an army to bear Foulon company—set his head and
heart on pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day,
in Wolf-procession through the streets.
Not before dark did the men and women come back
to the children, wailing and breadless. Then, the
miserable bakers’ shops were beset by long files of
them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread; and while
they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they be-
guiled the time by embracing one another on the tri-
umphs of the day, and achieving them again in gossip.
Gradually, these strings of ragged people shortened and
frayed away; and then poor lights began to shine in
high windows, and slender fires were made in the
Streets, at which neighbours cooked in common, after-
wards supping at their doors.
FIRE RISES. 221
Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent
of meat, as Of most other sauce to wretched bread.
Yet, human fellowship infused some nourishment into
the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of cheerful-
ness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had
their full share in the worst of the day, played gently
with their meagre children; and lovers, with such a
world around them and before them, loved and hoped.
It was almost morning when Defarge's wine-shop
arted with its last knot of customers, and Monsieur
efarge said to madame his wife, in husky tones, while
fastening the door: - -
“At last it is come, my dear!”
“Eh well!” returned madame. “Almost.”
Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept: even The
Vengeance slept with her starved grover, and the drum
was at rest. The drum’s was the only voice in Saint
Antoine, that blood and hurry had not changed. The
Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have
wakened him up and had the same speech out of him
as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon was seized; not
So with the hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint
Antoine's bosom.
*—
CHAPTER XXIII.
FIRE RISES.
HERE was a change on the village where the foun-
tain fell, and where the mender of roads went forth
daily to hammer out of the stones On the highway such
morsels of bread as might serve for patches to hold his
poor ignorant soul and his poor reduced body together.
The prison on the crag was not so dominant as of yore;
there were soldiers to guard it, but not many; there
were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of them
knew what his men would do—beyond this : that it
would probably not be what he was ordered.
Far and wide, lay a ruined country, yielding nothing
but desolation. Every green leaf, every blade of grass
and blade of grain was as shrivelled and poor as the
miserable people. Everything was bowed down, de-
222 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
jected, oppressed, and broken. Habitations, fences,
domesticated animals, men, women, children, and the
soil that bore them—all worn out. -
Monseigneur (often a most worthy individual gentle-
man) was a national blessing, gave a chivalrous tone
to things, was a polite example of luxurious and Shin-
ing life, and a great deal more to equal purpose; never-
theless, Monseigneur as a class had, somehow or other,
brought things to this. Strange that Creation, de-
signed expressly for Monseigneur, should be so Soon
wrung dry and squeezed out! There must be some-
thing short-sighted in the eternal arrangements,
surely! Thus it was, however; and the last drop of
blood having been extracted from the flints, and the
last screw of the rack having been turned so often that
its purchase crumbled, and it now turned and turned
with nothing to bite, Monseigneur began to run
away from a phenomenon so low and unaccount-
able. -
But, this was not the change on the village, and on
many a village like it. For scores of years gone by,
Monseigneur had squeezed it and wrung it, and had
seldom graced it with his presence except for the
pleasures of the chase--now, found in hunting the people;
now, found in hunting the beasts, for whose preserva-
tion Monseigneur made edifying spaces of barbarous
and barren wilderness. No. The change consisted in
the appearance of strange faces of low caste, rather
than in the disappearance of the high-caste, chiselled,
and otherwise beatified and beatifying features of
Monseigneur.
For, in these times, as the mender of roads worked,
solitary, in the dust, not often troubling himself to re-
flect that dust he was and to dust he must return—being
for the most part too much occupied in thinking how
little he had for supper and how much more he would
eat if he had it—in these times, as he raised his eyes
from his lonely labour and viewed the prospect, he
would see some rough figure approaching on foot, the
like of which was once a rarity in those parts, but was
now a frequent presence. As it advanced, the mender
of roads would discern without surprise that it was a
shaggy-haired man, of almost barbarian aspect, tall, in
wooden shoes that were clumsy even to the eyes of a
FIRE RISES. 223
mender of roads, grim, rough, Swart, steeped in the
mud and dust of many high-ways, dank with the marshy
moisture of many low grounds, sprinkled with the
thorns and leaves and moss of many by Ways through
woods. º
Such a man came upon him, like a ghost, at noon in
the July weather, as he sat on his heap of stones under
a bank, taking such shelter as he could get from a
shower of hail.
The man looked at him, looked at the village in the
hallow, at the mill, and at the prison. On the crag. When
he had identified these objects in what benighted
mind he had, he said, in a dialect that was just in-
telligible:
“How goes it, Jacques?”
“All well, Jacques.”
‘‘Touch then ’’
They joined hands, and the man sat down on the heap
of stones.
“NO dinner?”
“ Nothing but supper now,” said the mender of roads,
with a hungry face.
“It is the fashion,” growled the man. “I meet no
dinner anywhere.”
He took out a blackened pipe, filled it, lighted it with
flint and steel, pulled at it until it was in a bright glow:
then, suddenly held it from him and dropped something
into it from between his finger and thumb, that blazed
and went out in a puff of Smoke.
“Touch then.” It was the turn of the mender of
roads to say it this time, after observing these opera-
tions. They again joined hands.
“To-night 2" said the mender of roads.
“To-night,” said the man, putting the pipe in his
mouth.
“Where?”
** Here.”
He and the mender of roads sat on the heap of stones
looking silently at one another, with the hail driving
in between them like a pigmy charge of bayonets, until
the sky began to clear Over the village.
“Show me !” said the traveller then, moving to the
brow of the hill.
“See l’’ returned the mender of roads, with extended
224 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
finger. “You go down here, and straight through the
Street, and past the fountain—”
“To the Devil with all that ” interrupted the other,
rolling his eye over the landscape. “I go through no
. Streets and past no fountains. Well””
“Well! About two leagues beyond the summit of
that hill above the village.”
“Good. When do you cease to work?”
“At Sunset.”
“Will you wake me, before departing. I have walked
two nights without resting. Let me finish my pipe, and
I º ºp like a child. Will you wake me?”
& 4 ll]'é y.” $
The wayfarer smoked his pipe out, put it in his
breast, slipped off his great wooden shoes, and lay
down on his back on the heap of stones. He was fast
asleep directly.
As the road-mender plied his dusty labour, and the
hail-clouds, rolling away, revealed bright bars and
streaks of sky which, were responded to by silver
gleams upon the landscape, the little man (who wore a
red cap now, in place of his blue one) seemed fascinated
by the figure on the heap of stones. His eyes were so
Often turned towards it, that he used his tools mechan-
ically, and, one would have said, to very poor account.
The bronze face, the shaggy black hair and beard, the
coarse woolen red cap, the rough medley dress, of
home-spun stuff and hairy skins of beasts, the power-
ful frame attenuated by spare living, and the sullen
and desperate compression of the lips in sleep, inspired
the mender of roads with awe. The traveller had
travelled far, and his feet were footsore, and his ankles
chafed and bleeding; his great shoes stuffed with
leaves and grass, had been heavy to drag over the
many long leagues, and his clothes were chafed into
holes, as he himself was into sores. Stooping down be-
side him, the road-mender tried to get a peep at Secret
weapons in his breast or where not; but, in vain, for he
slept with his arms crossed upon him, and set as reso-
lutely as his lips. Fortified towns with their stockades,
guard-houses, gates, trenches and drawbridges, seemed,
to the mender of roads, to be so much air as against
this figure. And when he lifted his eyes from it to the
horizon and looked around, he saw in his small fancy
FIRE ERISES. 225
similar figures, stopped by no obstacle, tending to
centres all over France.
. . The man slept on, indifferent to showers of hail and
intervals of brightness, to sunshine On his face and
shadow, to the pattering lumps of dull ice on his body
and the diamonds into which the Sun changed them,
until the sun was low in the west, and the sky was
glowing. Then, the mender of roads having got his
tools together and all things ready to go down into the
village, roused him.
“Good l’” said the sleeper, rising on his elbow. “Two
leagues beyond the summit of the hill?” -
‘‘About.”
“About. GOOd!”
The mender of roads went home, with the dust going
on before him according to the set of the wind, and was
Soon at the fountain, squeezing himself in among the
lean kine brought there to drink, and appearing even
to whisper to them in his whispering to all the village.
When the village had taken its poor supper, it did not
creep to bed, as it usually did, but came out of doors again,
and remained there. A curious contagion of whisper-
ing was upon it, and also, when it gathered together,
at the fountain in the dark, another curious contagion
of looking º at the sky in one direction only.
Monsieur Gabelle, chief functionary of the place, be-
came uneasy; went Out On his house-top alone, and
looked in that direction too; glanced down from behind
his chimneys at the darkening faces by the fountain
below, and sent word to the sacristan who kept the
keys of the church, that there might be need to ring
the tocsin by-and-by.
The night deepened. The trees environing the old
château, keeping its solitary state apart, moved in a
rising wind, as though they threatened the pile of
building massive and dark in the gloom. Up the two
terrace flights of steps the rain ran wildly, and beat at
the great door, like a swift messenger rousing those
within; uneasy rushes of wind went through the hall,
among the old spears and knives, and passed lament-
ing up the stairs, and shook the curtains of the bed
where the last Marquis had slept. East, West, North,
and South, through the woods, four heavy-treading,
unkempt figures crushed the high grass and cracked
VOIL. I. 15
226 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
the branches, striding on cautiously to come together
in the court-yard. Four lights broke out there, and
moved away in different directions, and all was black
a,978,11).
sº not for long. Presently, the château began to
make itself strangely visible by some light of its own,
as though it were growing luminous. Then, a flicker-
ing streak played behind the architecture of the front,
picking out transparent places, and showing where
balustrades, arches, and windows were. Then it soared
higher, and grew broader and brighter. Soon, from a
score of the great windows, flames burst forth, and
the stone faces, awakened, stared out of fire.
A faint murmur arose about the house from the few
people who were left there, and there was saddling of
a horse and riding away. There was spurring and
splashing through the darkness, and bridle was drawn
in the space by the village fountain, and the horse in
a foam stood at Monsieur Gabelle's door. “Help,
Gabelle! Help, every one!”. The tocsin rang impa-
tiently, but other help (if that were any) there was
none. The mender of roads, and two hundred and
fifty particular friends, stood with folded arms at the
fountain, looking at the pillar of fire in the sky. “It
must be forty feet high,” said they, grimly; and never
moved. *.
The rider from the château, and the horse in a foam,
clattered away through the village, and galloped up
the stony steep, to the prison on the crag. At the gate, a
group of officers were looking at the fire; removed from
them, a group of soldiers. “Help, gentlemen-officers!
The château is on fire; valuable objects may be saved
from the flames by timely aid! Help, help!” The
officers looked towards the soldiers who looked at the
fire; gave no orders; and answered with shrugs and
biting of lips, “It must burn.”
As the rider rattled down the hill again and through
the street, the village was illuminating. The mender
of roads, and the two hundred and fifty particular
friends, inspired as one man and woman by the idea of
lighting up, had darted into their houses, and were
putting candles in every dull little pane of glass. The
general scarcity of everything, occasioned candles to
be borrowed in a rather peremptory manner of Monsieur
FIRE RISES. - 22?
Gabelle; and in a moment of reluctance and hesitation
on that functionary’s part, the mender of roads, once
so submissive to authority, had remarked that car-
riages were good to make bonfires with, and that post-
horses would roast. . - *
The château was left to itself to flame and burn. In
the roaring and raging of the conflagration, a red-hot
wind, driving straight from the infernal regions,
seemed to be blowing the edifice away. With the
rising and falling of the blaze, the stone faces showed
as if they were in torment. When great masses of
stone and timber fell, the face with the two dints in
the nose became obscured: anon struggled out of the
smoke again, as if it were the face of the cruel Marquis,
burning at the stake and contending with the fire.
The château burned; the nearest trees, laid hold of by
the fire, scorched and shrivelled; trees at a distance, ,
fired by the four fierce figures, begirt the blazing edi-
fice with a new forest of Smoke. Molten lead and iron
boiled in the marble basin of the fountain; the water
ran dry; the extinguisher tops of the towers vanished
like ice before the heat, and trickled down into four
rugged wells of flame. Great rents and splits branched
out in the solid walls, like crystallisation; stupified
birds wheeled about, and dropped into the furnace;
four fierce figures trudged away, East, West, North, and
South, along the night-enshrouded roads, guided by
the beacon they had lighted, towards their next desti-
nation. The illuminated village had seized hold of the
tocsin, and abolishing the lawful ringer, rang for joy.
Not only that; but, the village, light-headed with
famine, fire, and bell-ringing, and bethinking itself
that Monsieur Gabelle had to do with the collection of
rent and taxes—though it was but a small instalment
of taxes, and no rent at all, that Gabelle had got in in
those latter days—became impatient for an interview
with him, and, surrounding his house, summoned him
to come forth for personal conference. Whereupon,
Monsieur Gabelle did heavily bar his door, and retire
to hold counsel with himself. The result of that
conference was, that Gabelle again withdrew himself
to his house-top behind his stack of chimneys: this
time resolved, if his door were broken in (he was a small
Southern man of retaliative temperament), to pitch
228 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
himself head foremost over the parapet, and crush a
Iman or two below.
Probably, Monsieur Gabelle passed a long night up
there, with the distant château for fire and candle, and
the beating at his door, combined with the joy-ringing,
for music; not to mention his having an ill-omened
lamp slung across the road before his posting-house
gate, which the village showed a lively inclination to
displace in his favour. A trying suspense, to be pass-
ing a whole summer night on the brink of the black
Ocean, ready to take that plunge into it upon which
Monsieur Gabelle had resolved! But, the friendly
dawn appearing at last, and the rush-candles of the
village guttering out, the people happily dispersed, and
Monsieur Gabelle came down, bringing his life with
him for that while.
Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other
fires, there were other functionaries less fortunate, that
night and other nights, whom the rising sun found
hanging across once-peaceful streets, where they had
been born and bred; also, there were other villages and
townspeople less fortunate than the mender of roads
and his fellows, upon whom the functionaries and
Soldiery turned with success, and whom they strung up
in their turn. But, the fierce figures were steadily wend-
ing East, West, North, and South, be that as it would;
and whosoever hung, fire burned. The altitude of the
gallows that would turn to water and quench it, no
functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able
to calculate successfully.
CHAPTER XXIV.
T)RAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK.
TN such risings of fire and risings of sea—the firm
earth shaken by the rushes of an angry ocean which
had now no ebb but was always on the flow higher and
higher, to the terror and wonder of the beholders on the
shore—three years of tempest were consumed. Three
more birthdays of little Lucie had been woven by the
/
DRAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROOK. 229
#. thread into the peaceful tissue of the life of her
OITQ.62.
Many a night and many a day had its inmates listened
to the echoes in the corner, with hearts that failed them
when they heard the thronging feet. For, the footsteps
had become to their minds as the footsteps of a people,
tumultuous under a red flag and with their country
declared in danger, changed into wild beasts by terrible
enchantment long persisted in. -
Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from
the phenomenon of his not being appreciated: of his
being so little wanted in France, as to incur considerable
danger of receiving his dismissal from it, and this life
together. Like the fabled rustic who raised the Devil
with infinite pains, and was so terrified at the sight of
him that he could ask the Enemy no question, but im-
mediately fled; so, Monseigneur, after boldly reading
the Lord’s Prayer backwards for a great number of
years, and performing many other potent spells for
compelling the Evil One, no sooner beheld him in his
terrors than he took to his noble heels.
The shining Bull's Eye of the Court was gone, or it
would have been the mark for a hurricane of national
bullets. It had never been a good eye to see with—had
long had the mote in it of Lucifer’s pride, Sardanapalus's
luxury, and a mole's blindness—but it had dropped out
and was gone. The Court, from that exclusive inner
circle to its Outermost rotten ring of intrigue, corrup-
tion, and dissimulation, was all gone together. Roy-
alty was gone; had been besieged in its Palace and
“suspended,” when the last tidings came over.
The August of the year One thousand seven hundred
and ninety-two was come, and Monseigneur was by this
time scattered far and wide.
As was natural, the head-quarters and great gather-
ing-place of Monseigneur, in London, was Tellson’s
Bank. Spirits are supposed to haunt the places where
their bodies most resorted, and Monseigneur without a
guinea haunted the spot where his guineas used to be.
Moreover, it was the spot to which such French intelli-
gence as was most to be relied "#. came quickest.
Again: Tellson’s was a munificent house, and extended
great liberality to old customers who had fallen from
their high estate. Again: those nobles who had seen
230 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
the coming storm in time, and anticipating plunder or
confiscation, had made provident remittances to Tell-
son’s, were always to be heard from there by their
needy brethren. To which it must be added that every
new comer from France reported himself and his
tidings at Tellson’s, almost as a matter of course. For
such variety of reasons, Tellson's was at that time, as
to French intelligence, a kind of High Exchange; and
this was so well known to the public, and the inquiries
made there were in consequence so numerous, that
Tellson’s sometimes wrote the latest news out in a line
or so and posted in the Bank windows, for all who
ran through Temple Bar to read.
On a steaming, misty afternoon, Mr. Lorry sat at his
desk, and Charles Darnay stood leaning on it, talking
with him in a low voice. The penitential den once set
apart for interviews with the House, was now the news-
Exchange, and was filled to overflowing. It was within
half an hour or so of the time of closing.
“But, although you are the youngest man that ever
lived,” said Charles Darnay, rather hesitating, “I must
still suggest to you—” -
“I understand. That I am too old?” said Mr. Lorry.
“ Unsettled weather, a long journey, uncertain means
of travelling, a disorganised country, a city that may
not even be safe for you.”
“My dear Charles,” said Mr. Lorry, with cheerful
confidence, “ you touch some of the reasons for my
going: not for my staying away. It is safe enough for
me; nobody will care to interfere with an old fellow of
hard upon fourscore when there are so many people
there much better worth interfering with. As to its
being a disorganised city, if it were not a disorganised
city there would be no occasion to send somebody from
our House here to our House there, who knows the city
and the business, of old, and is in Tellson’s confidence.
As to the uncertain travelling, the long journey, and
the winter weather, if I were not prepared to submit
myself to a few inconveniences for the sake of Tell-
son’s, after all these years, who ought to be?”
“I wish I were going myself,” said Charles Darnay,
somewhat restlessly, and like one thinking aloud.
“Indeed! You are a pretty fellow to object and ad-
vise!” exclaimed Mr. Lorry. “You wish you were
DRAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK. 231
going yourself? And you a Frenchman born? You
are a wise counsellor.”
“My dear Mr. Lorry, it is because I am a Frenchman
born, that the thought (which I did not mean to utter
here, however) has passed through my mind often. One
cannot help thinking, having had some sympathy for
the miserable people, and having abandoned something
to them,” he spoke here in his former thoughtful man-
ner, “that one might be listened to, and might have
the power to persuade to some restraint. Only last
night, after you had left us, when I was talking to
Lucie 25
“When you were talking to Lucie,” Mr. Lorry re-
peated. “Yes. I wonder you are not ashamed to men-
tion the name of Lucie! Wishing you were going to
France at this time of day!”
“ However, I am not going,” said Charles Darnay,
with a smile. “It is more to the purpose that you say
you are.” {
“And I am, in plain reality. The truth is, my dear
Charles,” Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and
lowered his voice, “you can have no conception of the
difficulty with which our business is transacted, and of
the peril in which our books and papers over yonder are
involved. The Lord above knows what the compromis-
ing consequences would be to numbers of people, if
some of our documents were seized or destroyed; and
they might be, at any time, you know, for who can say
that Paris is not set a-fire to-day, or sacked to-morrow!
Now, a judicious selection from these with the least
possible delay, and the burying of them, or otherwise
getting of them out of harm’s way, is within the power
(without loss of precious time) of scarcely any one but
myself, if any one. And shall I hang back, when Tell-
Son’s knows this and says this—Tellson's, whose bread
I have eaten these sixty years—because I am a little
stiff about the joints? Why, I am a boy, sir, to half a
dozen old codgers here!”
“How I admire the gallantry of your youthful spirit,
Mr. Lorry.”
“Tut! Nonsense, sir!—And, my dear Charles,” said
Mr. Lorry, glancing at the House again, “you are to re-
member, that getting things out of Paris at this present
time, no matter what things, is next to an impossibility.
232 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Papers and precious matters were this very day brought
to us here (I speak in strict confidence; it is not busi-
ness-like to whisper it, even to you), by the strangest
bearers you can imagine, every One of whom had his
head hanging on by a single hair as he passed the Bar-
riers. At another time, our parcels would come and go,
as easily as in business-like Old England; but now,
everything is stopped.”
“And do you really go to-night?”
“I really go to-night, for the case has become too
pressing to admit of delay.”
“And do you take no one with you?” -
“All sorts of people have been proposed to me, but I
will have nothing to say to any of them. ... I intend to
take Jerry. Jerry has been my body-guard on Sunday
nights for a long time past, and I am used to him.
Nobody will suspect Jerry of being anything but an
English bull-dog, or of having any design in his head but
to fly at anybody who touches his master.” "
“I must say again that I heartily admire your gal-
lantry and youthfulness.”
“I must say again, nonsense, nonsense! When I have
executed this little commission, 1 shall, perhaps, accept
Tellson's proposal to retire and live at my ease. Time
enough, then, to think about growing old.”
This dialogue had taken place at Mr. Lorry's usual
desk, with Monseigneur swarming within a yard or two
of it, boastful of what he would ão to avenge himself
on the rascal-people before long. It was too much the
way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee,
and it was much too much the way of native British
Orthodoxy, to talk of this terrible Revolution as if it
were the one only harvest ever known under the skies
that had not been sown—as if nothing had ever been
done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it—as if
observers of the wretched millions in France, and of
the misused and perverted resources that should have
made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably
coming, years before, and had not in plain words re-
corded what they saw. Such vapouring, combined with
the extravagant plots of Monseigneur for the restora-
tion of a state of things that had utterly exhausted
itself, and worn out Heaven and earth as well as itself,
was hard to be endured without some remonstrance by
DRAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK. 233
any same man who knew the truth. And it was such
vapouring all about his ears, like a troublesome con-
fusion of blood in his own head, added to a latent
uneasiness in his mind, which had already made
Charles Darnay restless, and which still kept him so.
Among the talkers, was Stryver, of the King’s Bench
Bar, far on his way to state promotion, and, therefore,
loud on the theme: broaching to Monseigneur, his
devices for blowing the people up and exterminating
them from the face of the earth, and doing without
them: and for accomplishing many similar objects akin
in their nature to the abolition of eagles by sprinkling
salt on the tails of the race. Him, Darnay heard with
a particular feeling of objection; and Darnay stood
divided between going away that he might hear no
more, and remaining to interpose his word, when the
thing that was to be, went on to shape itself out.
The House approached Mr. Lorry, and laying a soiled
and unopened letter before him, asked if he had yet
discovered any traces of the person to whom it was
addressed? The House laid the letter down so close to
Darnay that he saw the direction—the more quickly,
because it was his own right name. The address,
turned into English, ran: ‘‘Very pressing. To Monsieur
heretofore the Marquis St. Evrémonde, of France, Con-
fided to the care of Messrs. Tellson and Co., Bankers,
London, England.”
On the marriage morning, Doctor Manette had made it
his one urgent and express request to Charles Darnay,
that the secret of his name should be—unless he, the
Doctor, dissolved the obligation—kept inviolate between
them. Nobody else knew it to be his name; his own
wife had no suspicion of the fact; Mr. Lorry could
have none.
“No,” said Mr. Lorry, in reply to the House; “I have
referred it, I think, to everybody now here, and no one
can tell me where this gentleman is to be found.”
The hands of the clock verging upon the hour of
closing the Bank, there was a general set of the cur-
rent of talkers past Mr. Lorry’s desk. He held the
letter out inquiringly; and Monseigneur looked at it,
in the person of this plotting and indignant refugee;
and Monseigneur looked at it in the person of that
plotting and indignant refugee; and This, That, and
234. A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
The Other, all had something disparaging to say, in
French or in English, concerning the Marquis who was
not to be found.
“Nephew, I believe—but in any case degenerate
successor—of the polished Marquis who was murdered,”
said one. “Happy to say, I never knew him.”
** A craven who abandoned his post,” said another—
this Monseigneur had been got out of Paris, legs upper-
most and half suffocated, in a load of hay—‘‘some
years ago.” l
“Infected with the new doctrines,” said a third, eyeing
the direction through his glass in passing; ‘‘ set himself
in opposition to the last Marquis, abandoned the estates
when he inherited them, and left them to the ruffian
herd. They will recompense him now, I hope, as he
deserves.”
“Hey?” cried the blatant Stryver. “Did he though?
Is that the sort of fellow P Let us look at his infamous
name, D–n the fellow !” -
Darnay, unable to restrain himself any longer, touched
Mr. Stryver on the shoulder, and said :
‘‘I know the fellow.”
“Do you, by Jupiter?” said Stryver. “I am sorry
for it.”
& 4 Why? 25 -
“Why, Mr. Darnay? D'ye hear what he did? Don’t
Sask, why, in these times.”
“•But I do ask why.”
“Then I tell you again, Mr. Darnay, I am sorry for
it. I am sorry to hear you putting any such extraor-
dinary questions. Here is a fellow, who, infected by
the most pestilent and blasphemous code of deviltry that
ever was known, abandoned his property to the vilest
Scum of the earth that ever did murder by wholesale,
and you ask me why I am sorry that a man who in-
structs youth knows him? Well, but I’ll answer you. I
am Sorry, because I believe there is contamination in
such a scoundrel. That’s why.”
Mindful of the secret, Darnay with great difficulty
checked himself, and said : “You may not understand
the gentleman.” -
“I understand how to put you in a corner, Mr. Dar-
nay,” said Bully Stryver, “ and I’ll do it. If this fellow
is a gentleman, I don’t understand him. You may tell
f
DRAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK 235
him so, with my compliments. You may also tell him,
from me, that after abandoming his worldly goods and
position to this butcherly mob, I wonder he is not at the
head of them. But, no, gentlemen;” said Stryver,
looking all round, and Snapping his fingers, “I know
something of human nature, and I tell you that you’ll
never find a fellow like this fellow, trusting himself to
the mercies of such precious protégés. No, gentlemen;
he’ll always show 'em a clean pair of heels very early
in the scuffle, and Sneak away.”
With those words, and a final snap of his fingers, Mr.
Stryver shouldered himself into Fleet-street, amidst the
general approbation of his hearers. Mr. Lorry and
Charles Darnay were left alone at the desk, in the general
departure from the Bank.
“Will you take charge of the letter P” said Mr. Lorry.
& C Yºw where to deliver it?”
& 4 I O.”
“Will you undertake to explain that we suppose it to
have been addressed here, on the chance of Our knowing
where to forward it, and that it has been here some
time P’’
“I will do so. Do you start for Paris from here?”
“From here, at eight.” g
“I will come back, to see you off.”
Very ill at ease with himself, and with Stryver and
most other men, Darnay made the best of his way into
the quiet of the Temple, opened the letter, and read it.
These were its contents : - -
“Prison of the Abbaye, Paris. June 21, 1792.
“MonSIEUR IIERETOFORE THE MARQUIs.
“After having long been in danger of my life at the hands of the vil-
lage, I have been seized, with great violence and indignity, and brought
a long journey on foot to Paris. On the road I have suffered a great
deal. Nor is that all; my house has been destroyed—razed to the ground.
“The crime for which I am imprisoned, Monsieur heretofore the Mar-
quis, and for which I shall be summoned before the tribunal, and shall
lose my life (without your so generous help), is, they tell me, treason
against the majesty of the people, in that I have acted against them for
an emigrant. It is in vain I represent that I have acted for them, and
not against, according to your commands. It is in vain I represent that,
before the sequestration of emigrant property, I had remitted the imposts
they had ceased to pay; that I had collected no rent; that I had had re-
236 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
course to no process. The only response is, that I have acted for an
emigrant, and where is that emigrant 2 .. ..
“Ah! most gracious Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, where is that
emigrant! I cry in my sleep where is hel I demand of Heaven, will he
not come to deliver me! No answer. Ah Monsieur heretofore the Mar-
quis, I send my desolate cry across the sea, hoping it may perhaps reach
your ears through the great bank of Tilson known at Paris!
“For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of
your noble name, I supplicate you, Monsieur heretofore Marquis, to succour
and release me. My fault is, that I have been true to you. Oh Monsieur
heretofore the Marquis, I pray you be you true to me!
“From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour tend nearer and
nearer to destruction, I send you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, the
assurance of my dolorous and unhappy Service.
“Your afflicted,
“GABELLE.”
The latent uneasiness in Darnay’s mind was roused
to vigorous life by this letter. . The peril of an old
servant and a good servant, whose only crime was
fidelity to himself and his family, stared him so reproach-
fully in the face, that, as he walked to and fro in the
Temple considering what to do, he almost hid his face
from the passers-by.
He knew very well, that in his horror of the deed
which had culminated the bad deeds and bad reputa-
tion of the old family house, in his resentful suspicions
of his uncle, and in the aversion with which his con-
science regarded the crumbling fabric that he was
supposed to uphold, he had acted imperfectly. He knew
very well, that in his love for Lucie, his renunciation
of his social place, though by no means new to his own
mind, had been hurried and incomplete. He knew that
he ought to have systematically worked it out and
supervised it, and that he had meant to do it, and that it
had never been done. -
The happiness of his own chosen English home, the
necessity of being always actively employed, the swift
changes and troubles of the time which had followed
on one another so fast, that the events of this week
annihilated the immature plans of last week, and the
events of the week following made all new again; he
knew very well, that to the force of these circumstances
he had yielded:—not without disquiet, but still without
continuous and accumulating resistance. That he had
watched the times for a time of action, and that they
DRAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK, 237
had shifted and struggled until the time had gone by,
and the nobility were trooping from France by every
highway and byway, and their property was in course
of confiscation and destruction, and their very names
were blotting out, was as well known to himself as it
could be to any new authority in France that might
impeach him for it.
But, he had oppressed no man, he had imprisoned no
man; he was so far from having harshly exacted pay-
ment of his dues, that he had relinquished them of his
own will, thrown himself on a world with no favour in
it, won his own private place there, and earned his own
bread. Monsieur Gabelle had held the impoverished
and involved estate on written instructions to spare the
people, to give.them what little there was to give—such
fuel as the heavy creditors would let them have in the
winter, and such produce as could be saved from the
same grip in the Summer—and no doubt he had put the
fact in plea and proof, for his own safety, so that it
could not but appear now.
This favoured the desperate resolution Charles Darnay
had begun to make, that he would go to Paris.
Yes. Like the mariner in the old story, the winds
and storms had driven him within the influence of the
Loadstone Rock, and it was drawing him to itself, and
he must go. Everything that arose before his mind
drifted him on, faster and faster, more and more
steadily, to the terrible attraction. His latent uneasi-
ness had been, that bad aims were being worked out in
his own unhappy land by bad instruments, and that he
who could not fail to know that he was better than they,
was not there, trying to do something to stay bloodshed,
and assert the claims of mercy and humanity. With
this uneasiness half stified, and half reproaching him,
he had been brought to the pointed comparison of him-
self with the brave old gentleman in whom duty was
SO strong; upon that comparison (injurious to himself),
had instantly followed the sneers of Monseigneur, which
had stung him bitterly, and those of Stryver, which
above all were coarse and galling, for old reasons.
|Upon those, had followed Gabelle’s letter: the appeal
of an innocent prisoner, in danger of death, to his justice,
honour, and good name. :
His resolution was made. He must go to Paris.
f
238 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Yes. The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he
must sail on, until he struck. He knew of no rock; he
saw hardly any danger. The intention with which he
had done what he had done, even although he had left
it incomplete, presented it before him in an aspect that
would be gratefully acknowledged in France on his
presenting himself to assert it. Then, that glorious
vision of doing good, which is so often the sanguine
mirage of so many good minds, arose before him, and
he even saw himself in the allusion with some influence
to guide this raging Revolution that was running so
fearfully wild.
As he walked to and fro with his resolution made, he
considered that neither Lucie nor her father must know
of it until he was gone. Lucie should be spared the
pain of separation ; and her father, always reluctant
to turn his thoughts towards the dangerous ground of
old, should come to the knowledge of the step, as a step'
taken, and not in the balance of suspense and doubt.
How much of the incompleteness of his situation was
referable to her father, through the painful anxiety to
avoid reviving old associations of France in his mind,
he did not discuss with himself. But, that circum-
stance too, had had its influence in his course.
He walked to and fro, with thoughts very busy, until
it was time to return to Tellson’s and take leave of Mr.
Lorry. As soon as he arrived in Paris he would present
himself to this old friend, but he must say nothing of
his intention now. *
A carriage with post-horses was ready at the Bank.
door, and ferry was booted and equipped. -
“I have delivered that letter,” said Charles Darnay
to Mr. Lorry. “I would not consent to your being
charged with any written answer, but perhaps you will
take a verbal one?”
“That I will, and readily,” said Mr. Lorry, “if it is
not dangerous.”
“Not at all. Though it is to a prisoner in the
Abbaye.”
“What is his name?” said Mr. Lorry, with his open
pocket-book in his hand.
“Gabelle.”
‘‘ Gabelle. And what is the message to the un-
fortunate Gabelle in prison?”
DRAWN TO THE LOADSTONE ROCK. 239
“Simply, ‘ that he has received the letter, and will
come.’”
“Any time mentioned?”
“He will start upon his journey to-morrow night.”
& 4 §º person mentioned?” -
& & O. 35
He helped Mr. Lorry to wrap himself in a number of
coats and cloaks, and went out with him from the warm
atmosphere of the old bank, into the misty air of Fleet-
street. “My love to Lucie, and to little Lucie,” said
Mr. Lorry at parting, ‘‘ and take precious care of them
till I come back.” Charles Darnay shook his head and
doubtfully Smiled, as the carriage rolled away.
That night—it was the fourteenth of August—he sat
up late, and wrote two fervent letters; one was to Lucie,
explaining the strong obligation he was under to go to
Paris, and showing her at length, the reason that he
had, for feeling confident that he could become involved
in no personal danger there; the other was to the
Doctor, confiding Lucie and their dear child to his care,
and dwelling on the same topics with the strongest
assurances. To both, he wrote that he would despatch
letters in proof of his safety, immediately after his
arrival.
It was a hard day, that day of being among them,
with the first reservation of their joint lives on his
mind. It was a hard matter to preserve the innocent
deceit of which they were profoundly unsuspicious.
But, an affectionate glance at his wife so happy and
busy, made him resolute not to tell her what impended
(he had been half moved to do it, so strange it was to
him to act in anything without her quiet aid), and the
day passed quickly. Early in the evening he embraced
her, and her scarcely less dear namesake, pretending
that he would return by-and-by (an imaginary engage-
ment took him out, and he had secreted a valise of
clothes ready), and so he emerged into the heavy mist
of the heavy streets, with a heavier heart.
The unseen force was drawing him fast to itself, now,
and all the tides and winds were setting straight and
strong towards it. He left his two letters with a trusty
porter, to be delivered half an hour before midnight,
and no SOoner; took horse for Dover, and began his
journey, “For the love of Heaven, of justice, of gen-
240 A TALE OF TWO CITIES
erosity, of the honour of your noble name!” was the
poor prisoner's cry with which he strengthened his
sinking heart, as he left all that was dear on earth be-
hind him, and floated away for the Loadstone Rock.
THE END OF THE SECOND BOOK.
IN SECRET. 24l
BOOK THE THIRD.
THE TRACK OF A. STORM.
C H. A. P.T. E. R. I.
IN SECRET.
TH: traveller fared slowly on his way, who fared
towards Paris from England in the autumn of the
year One thousand seven hundred and ninety-two.
More than º of bad roads, bad equipages, and bad
horses, he would have encountered to delay him, though
the fallen and unfortunate King of France had been
upon his throne in all his glory; but, the changed times
were fraught with other obstacles than these. Every
town, gate and village taxing-house had its band of
citizen patriots, with their national muskets in a most
explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and
goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers,
looked for their names in lists of their own, turned
them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid
them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy
deemed best for the º One and Indi-
visible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.
A very few French leagues of his journey were ac-
complished, when Charles Darnay began to perceive
that for him along these country r. there was no
hope of return until he should have been declared a
good citizen at Paris. Whatever might befal now, he
must on to his journey’s end. Not a mean village
closed upon him, not a common barrier dropped across
YOTL. I. 16
242 : A TAi, E OF TWO CITIES.
the road behind him, but he knew it to be another iron
door in the series that was barred between him and
England. The universal watchfulness so encompassed
him, that if he had been taken in a net, or were being
forwarded to his destination in a cage, he could not
have felt his freedom more completely gone. .
This universal watchfulness not only stopped him on
the highway twenty times in a stage, but retarded his
progress twenty times in a day, by riding after him and
taking him back, riding before him and stopping him
by anticipation, riding with him and keeping him in
charge. He had been days upon his journey in France
alone, when he went to bed tired out, in a little town on
the high road, still a long way from Paris. . -
Nothing but the production of the afflicted Gabelle's
letter from his prison of the Abbaye would have got
him on so far. His difficulty at the guard-house in this
Small place had been such, that he felt his journey to
have come to a crisis. And he was, therefore, as little
surprised as a man could be, to find himself awakened
at the small inn to which he had been remitted until
morning, in the middle of the night.
Awakened by a timid local functionary and three
armed patriots in rough red caps and with pipes in their
mouths, who sat down on the bed.
“Emigrant,” said the functionary, “I am going to
send you on to Paris, under an escort.”
“Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get to Paris,
though I could dispense with the escort.”
“Silence!” growled a red-cap, striking at the cover-
let with the butt-end of his musket. “Peace, aristo-
Crat!”
“It is as the good patriot says,” observed the timid
functionary. ‘‘You are an aristocrat, and must have
an escort—and must pay for it.”
“I have no choice,” said Charles Darnay.
“Choice! Listen to him!” Cried the same scowling
red-cap. “As if it were not a favour to be protected
from the lamp-iron!”
“It is always as the good patriot says,” observed the
functionary. “Rise and dress yourself, emigrant.”
Darnay complied, and was taken back to the guard-
house where other patriots in rough red caps were
Smoking, drinking, and sleeping, by a watch-fire. Here
IN SECRET. 243
he paid a heavy price for his escort, and hence he started
with it on the wet, wet roads at three o’clock in the
morning.
The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and
tricoloured cockades, armed with national muskets and
sabres, who rode one on either side of him. The escorted
governed his own horse, but a loose line was attached
to his bridle, the end of which one of the patriots kept
girded round his wrist. In this state they set forth,
with the sharp rain driving in their faces: clattering at
a heavy dragoon trot over the uneven town pavement,
and out upon the mire-deep roads. In this state they
traversed without change, except of horses and pace,
all the mire-deep leagues that lay between them and
the capital.
They travelled in the night, halting an hour or two
after daybreak, and lying by untiſ the twilight fell. The
escort were so wretchedly clothed, that they twisted
straw round their bare legs, and thatched their ragged
shoulders to keep the wet off. Apart from the personal
discomfort of being so attended, and apart from such
considerations of present danger as arose from one of
the patriots being chronically drunk, and carrying his
musket very recklessly, Charles Darnay did not allow the
restraint that was laid upon him to awaken any serious
fears in his breast; for, he reasoned with himself that
it could have no reference to the merits of an individual
case that was not yet stated, and of representations,
confirmable by the prisoner in the Abbaye, that were
not yet made.
But when they came to the town of Beauvais—which
they did at eventide, when the streets were filled with
people—he could not conceal from himself that the
aspect of affairs was very alarming. An ominous crowd
gathered to see him dismount at the posting-yard, and
many voices in it called out loudly, “Down with the
emigrant!” -
He stopped in the act of swinging himself out of his
saddle, and resuming it as his safest place, said:
“Emigrant, my friends! Do you not see me here, in
France, of my own will?”
“You are a cursed emigrant,” cried a farrier; making
at him in a furious manner through the press, hammer
in hand; “you are a cursed aristocrat!”
244 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
The postmaster interposed himself between this man
and the rider's bridle (at which he was evidently
making), and soothingly said, “Let him be; let him
be! He will be judged at Paris?” wº
“Judged!” repeated the farrier, swinging his ham-
mer. “Aye! and condemned as a traitor.” At this, the
crowd roared approval. º
Checking the postmaster, who was for turning his
horse's head to the yard (the drunken patriot sat com-
osedly in his saddle looking on, with the line round
his wrist), Darnay said, as soon as he could make his
voice heard:
“Friends, you deceive yourselves, or you are de-
ceived. I am not a traitor.”
“He lies!” cried the Smith. “He is a traitor since
the decree. His life is forfeit to the people. His cursed
life is not his own!”
At the instant when Darnay saw a rush in the eyes of
the crowd, which another instant would have brought
upon him, the postmaster turned his horse into the
yard, the escort rode in close upon his horse's flanks,
and the postmaster shut and barred the crazy double
gates. The farrier struck a blow upon them with his
hammer, and the crowd groaned; but no more was done.
“What is this decree that the Smith spoke of **
Darnay asked the postmaster, when he had thanked
them, and stood beside him in the yard.
“Truly, a decree for selling the property of emi-
grants.”
“When passed?”
‘‘ On the fourteenth.”
“The day I left England!”
“Everybody says it is but one of several, and that
there will be others—if there are not already—banish-
ing all emigrants, and condemning all to death who
return. That is what he meant when he said your life
was not your own.”
“But there are no such decrees yet?”
“What do I know!” said the postmaster, shrugging
his shoulders; “there may be, or there will be. It is
all the same. What would you have?” -
They rested on some straw in a loft until the middle
of the night, and then rode forward again when all the
town was asleep. Among the many wild changes ob-
IN SECRET. 245
servable on familiar things which make this wild ride
unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity of sleep.
After long and lonely spurring over dreary roads, they
would come to a cluster of poor cottages, not steeped
in darkness, but all glittering with lights, and would
find the people, in a ghostly manner in the dead of the
night, circling hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of
#. or all drawn up together singing a Liberty
song. Happily, however, there was sleep in Beauvais
that night to help them out of it, and they passed on
once more into Solitude and loneliness; jingling through
the untimely cold and wet, among impoverished fields
that had yielded no fruits of the earth that year, diver-
sified by the blackened remains of burnt houses, and by
the sudden emergence from ambuscade, and sharp
reining up across their way, of patriot patrols on the
watch on all the roads.
Daylight at last found them before the wall of Paris.
The barrier was closed and strongly guarded when they
rode up to it.
“Where are the papers of this prisoner?” demanded
a resolute-looking man in authority, who was sum-
moned out by the guard.
Naturally struck by the disagreeable word, Charles
Darnay requested the speaker to take notice that he
was a free traveller and French citizen, in charge of
an escort which the disturbed state of the country had
imposed upon him, and which he had paid for.
“Where,” repeated the same personage, without
taking any heed of him whatever, “are the papers of
this prisoner?”
The drunken patriot had them in his cap, and pro-
duced them. Casting his eyes over Gabelle’s letter,
the same personage in authority showed some dis-
order and surprise, and looked at Darnay with a close
attention.
He left both the escort and escorted without saying
a word, however, and went into the guard-room: mean-
while, they sat upon their horses outside the gate.
Looking about him while in this state of suspense,
Charles Darmay observed that the gate was held by a
mixed guard of soldiers and patriots, the latter far out-
numbering the former; and that while ingress into the
city for peasants’ carts bringing in supplies, and for
246 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
similar traffic and traffickers, was easy enough, egress,
even for the homeliest people, was very difficult. A nu-
merous medley of men and women, not to mention
beasts and vehicles of various sorts, was waiting to
issue forth; but, the previous identification was so strict
that they filtered through the barrier very slowly.
Some of these people knew their turn for examination
to be so far off, that they lay down on the ground to
sleep or smoke, while others talked together, or loitered
about. The red cap and tricolour cockade were uni-
versal, both among men and women.
When he had sat in his saddle some half-hour, taking
note of these things, Darnay found himself confronted
by the same man in authority, who directed the guard
to open the barrier. Then he delivered to the escort,
drunk and sober, a receipt for the escorted, and re-
quested him to dismount. He did so, and the two
patriots, leading his tired horse, turned and rode away
without entering the city.
He accompanied his conductor into a guard-room,
smelling of common wine and tobacco, where certain
soldiers and patriots, asleep and awake, drunk and
sober, and in various neutral states between sleeping
and waking, drunkenness and sobriety, were standing
and lying about. The light in the guard-house, half
derived from the waning oil-lamps of the night, and
half from the overcast day, was in a correspondingly
uncertain condition. Some registers were lying open
on a desk, and an officer of a coarse dark aspect, pre-
sided over these. -
“Citizen Defarge,” said he to Darnay’s conductor, as
he took a slip of paper to write on. “Is this the emi-
grant Evrémonde?”
“This is the man.”
“Your age, Evrémonde?”
“Thirty-seven.” *
“Married, Evrémonde?”
& & Yes. 55
“Where married?”
“In England.”
“Without doubt. Where is your wife, Evrémonde?”
“In England.”
“Without doubt. You are consigned, Evrémonde,
to the prison of La Force.”
IN SECRET. 247
“Just Heaven!” exclaimed Darnay. “Under what
law, and for what offence?”
The officer looked up from his slip of paper for a
moment. - *
“We have new laws, Evrémonde, and new offences,
since you were here,” He said it with a hard smile,
and went on writing
‘‘I entreat you to observe that I have come here
voluntarily, in response to that written appeal of a
fellow-countryman which lies before you. I demand
no more than the opportunity to do so without delay.
Is not that my right?” -
“Emigrants have no rights Evrémonde,” was the
stolid reply. The officer wrote until he had finished,
read over to himself what he had written, sanded it,
and handed it to Defarge, with the words “In
Secret.”
Defarge motioned with the paper to the prisoner that
he must º him. The prisoner obeyed, and a
guard of two armed patriots attended them. "
“It is you,” said Defarge, in a low voice, as they
went down the guard-house steps and turned into Paris,
“who married the daughter of Doctor Manette, once a
prisoner in the Bastille that is no more.”
“Yes,” replied Darnay, looking at him with surprise.
“My name is Defarge, and I keep a wine-shop in
the Quarter Saint Antoine. Possibly you have heard of
me.”
“My wife came to your house to reclaim her father?
Yes! ” -
The word “wife " seemed to serve as a gloomy re-
minder to Defarge, to say with sudden impatience,
“In the name of that sharp female newly born and
called La Guillotine, why did you come to France?’
“You heard me say why, a minute ago. Do you not
believe it is the truth?’” -
“A bad truth for you,” said Defarge, speaking with
knitted brows, and looking straight before him.
“Indeed, I am lost here. All here is so unprecedented,
so changed, so sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely
lost. Will you render me a little help?”
“None.” Defarge spoke, always looking straight be-
fore him. . --
“Will you answer me a single question?”
248 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
‘‘Perhaps. According to its nature. You can say .
what it is.”
“In this prison that I am going to so unjustly, shall
I º some free communication with the world out-
Side?”
“You will See.”
“I am not to be buried there, prejudged, and without
any means of presenting my case?”
“You will see. But, what then? Other people have
been similarly buried in worse prisons, before now.”
“But never by me, Citizen Defarge.”
Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer, and walked
On in a steady and set silence. The deeper he sank into
this silence, the fainter hope there was—or so Darnay
thought—of his softening in any slight degree. IHe
therefore, made haste to say: -
“It is of the utmost importance to me (you know,
Citizen, even better than I, of how much importance),
that I should be able to communicate to Mr. Lorry of
Tellson’s Bank, an English gentleman who is now in
Paris, the simple fact, without comment, that I have
been thrown into the prison of La Force. Will you
cause that to be done for me?” +
“I will do,” Defarge doggedly rejoined, “nothing for
you. My duty is to my country and the People, I am
the sworn servant of both, against you. I wili do noth-
ing for you.”
harles Darnay felt it hopeless to entreat him further,
and his pride was touched besides. As they walked on
in silence, he could not but see how used the people
were to the spectacle of prisoners passing along the
streets. The very children scarcely noticed him. A.
few passers turned their heads, and a few shook their
fingers at him as an aristocrat; otherwise, that a man
in good clothes should be going to prison, was no more
remarkable than that a labourer in working clothes
should be going to work. In one narrow, dark, and
dirty street through which they passed, an excited ora-
tor, mounted on a stool, was addressing an excited
audience on the crimes against the people, of the king
and the royal family. The few words that he caught
from this man’s lips, first made it known to Charles
Darnay that the king was in prison, and that the foreign
ambassadors had one and all left Paris. On the road
IN SECRET. - 249
(except at Beauvais) he had heard absolutely nothing.
The escort and the universal watchfulness had com-
pletely isolated him.
That he had fallen among far greater dangers than
those which had developed themselves when he left
|England, he of course knew now. That perils had
thickened about him fast, and might thicken faster and
faster yet, he of course knew now. He could not but
admit to himself that he might not have made this
journey, if he could have foreseen the events of a few
days. And yet his misgivings were not so dark as, im-
agined by the light of this later time, they would appear.
Troubled as the future was, it was the unknown future,
and in its obscurity there was ignorant hope. The horri-
ble massacre, days and nights long, which, within a few
rounds of the clock, was to set a great mark of blood
upon the blessed garnering time of harvest, was as far
out of his knowledge as if it had been a hundred thou-
sand years away. The “sharp female newly born and
called La Guillotine,” was hardly known to him, or to
the generality of people, by name. The frightful deeds
that were to be soon done, were probably unimagined
at that time in the brains of the doers. How could
they have a place in the shadowy conceptions of a
gentle mind?
Of unjust treatment in detention and hardship, and
in cruel separation from his wife and child, he fore-
shadowed the likelihood, or the certainty; but, beyond
this, he dreaded nothing distinctly. With this on his
mind, which was enough to carry into a dreary prison
court-yard, he arrived at the prison of La Force.
. A man with a bloated face opened the strong wicket,
to whom Defarge presented “The Emigrant Evré-
nonde.”
“What the Devil! How many more of them!” ex-
claimed the man with the bloated face.
Defarge took his receipt without noticing the exclam-
ation, and withdrew, with his two fellow-patriots.
“What the Devil, I say again l’exclaimed the gaoler,
left with his wife. “How many more l’”
The gaoler’s wife, being provided with no answer to
the question, merely replied, “One must have patience,
my dear !” Three turnkeys who entered responsive to
the bell she rang, echoed the sentiment, and one added,
250 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“For the love of Liberty;” which sounded in that place
like an inappropriate conclusion. -
The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, dark
and filthy, and with a horrible smell of foul sleep in it.
Extraordinary how soon the noisome flavour of im-
prisoned sleep, becomes manifest in all such places that
are ill-cared for
“In secret, too,” grumbled the gaoler, looking at the
written paper. “As if I was not already full to
bursting !”
He stuck the paper on a file, in an ill-humour, and
Charles Darnay awaited his further pleasure for half
an hour: Sometimes, pacing to and fro in the strong .
arched room: Sometimes, resting on a stone seat: in
either case detained to be imprinted on the memory
of the chief and his subordinates.
“Come !” said the chief, at length taking up his keys,
“ come with me, emigrant.”
Through the dismal prison twilight, his new charge
accompanied him by corridor and staircase, many doors
clanging and locking behind them, until they came into
a large, low, vaulted chamber, crowded with prisoners
of both sexes. The women were seated at a long table,
reading and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroider-
ing ; the men were for the most part standing behind
their chairs, or lingering up and down the room. -
In the instinctive association of prisoners with shame-
ful crime and disgrace, the new comer recoiled from
this company. But, the crowning unreality of his long
unreal ride, was, their all at once rising to receive him,
with every refinement of manner known to the time,
and with all the engaging graces and courtesies of life.
So strangely clouded were these refinements by the
prison manners and gloom, so spectral did they become
in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which
they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand in
a company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of
beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance,
the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of
Wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting
their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on
him eyes that were changed by the death they had died
in coming there. -
It struck him motionless. The gaoler standing at his
IN SECRET. 251
side, and the other gaolers moving about, who would
have been well enough as to appearance in the ordinary
exercise of their functions, looked so extravagantly
coarse contrasted with Sorrowing mothers and blooming
daughters who were there—with the apparitions of the
coquette, the young beauty, and the mature woman
delicately bred—that the inversion of all experience and
likelihood which the scene of shadows presented, was
heightened to its utmost. Surely, ghosts all. Surely,
the long unreal ride some progress of disease that had
brought him to these gloomy shades!
“In the name of the assembled companions in mis-
fortune,” said a gentleman of courtly appearance and
address, coming forward, “I have the honour of giving
you welcome to La Force, and of condoling with you on
the calamity that has brought you among us. May it
soon terminate happily It would be an impertinence
elsewhere, but it is not so here, to ask your name and
Condition?”
Charles Darnay roused himself, and gave the required
information, in words as suitable as he could find.
“But I hope,” said the gentleman, following the chief
gaoler with his eyes, who moved across the room, “that
you are not in secret?” -
“I do not understand the meaning of the term, but I
have heard them say so.”
“Ah, what a pity! We so much regret it! But take
courage ; several members of our society have been in
secret, at first, and it has lasted but a short time.”
Then he added, raising his voice, “I grieve to inform
the society—in secret.”
There was a murmur of commiseration as Charles
Darnay crossed the room to a grated door where the
gaoler awaited him, and many voices—among which,
the soft and compassionate voices of women were con-
spicuous—gave him good wishes and encouragement.
He turned at the grated door, to render the thanks of
his heart; it closed under the gaoler's hand; and the ap-
paritions vanished from his sight for ever.
The wicket opened on a stone staircase, leading up-
ward. When they had ascended forty steps (the pris-
oner of half an hour already counted them), the gaoler
opened a low black door, and they passed into a Solitary
cell. It struck cold and damp, but was not dark.
252 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
‘‘Yours,” said the gaoler.
“Why am I confined alone?”
‘‘ How do I know !”
‘‘I can buy pen, ink, and paper?”
“Such are not my orders. You will be visited, and
can ask then. At present, you may buy your food, and
nothing more.”
There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw
mattress. As the gaoler made a general inspection of
these objects, and of the four walls, before going out, a
Wandering fancy wandered through the mind of the
prisoner leaning against the wall opposite to him, that
this gaoler was so unwholesomely bloated, both in face
and person, as to look like a man who had been drowned
and filled with water. When the gaoler was gone, he
thought, in the same wandering way, “Now am I left
as if I were dead.” Stopping then to look down at the
mattress, he turned from it with a sick feeling and
thought, “And here in these crawling creatures is the
first condition of the body after death.”
“Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four
and a half, five paces by four and a half.” The prisoner
Walked to and fro in his cell, counting its measure-
ment, and the roar of the city arose like muffled drums
with a wild swell of voices added to them. “He made
shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes.” The prisoner
counted the measurement again, and paced faster, to
draw his mind with him from the latter repetition. “The
ghosts that vanished when the wicket closed. There was
One among them, the appearance of a lady dressed in
black, who was leaning in the embrasure of a window,
and she had a light shining upon her golden hair, and
she looked like * * * * Let us ride on again, for God’s
sake, through the illuminated villages with the people
all awake! ” + “” He made shoes, he made shoes, he
made shoes. * * * * Five paces by four and a half.”
With such scraps, tossing and rolling upward from the
depths of his mind, the prisoner walked faster and
faster, obstinately counting and counting; and the roar
of the city changed to this extent—that it still rolled
in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that
he knew, in the swell that rose above them.
THE GRINDSTONE. 25
3
CHAPTER II.
T H E G R IN D S T O N E .
ELLSON'S Rank, established in the Saint Germain
Quarter of Paris, was in a wing of a large house,
approached by a court-yard and shut off from the
street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house be-
longed to a great nobleman who had lived in it until
he made a flight from the troubles, in his own cook’s
dress, and got across the borders. A mere beast of the
chase flying from hunters, he was still in his me-
tempsychosis no other than the same Monseigneur, the
preparation of whose chocolate for whose lips had
Once Occupied three strong men besides the cook in
question.
Monseigneur gone; and the three strong men absolv-
ing themselves from the sin of having drawn his high
wages, by being more than ready and willing to cut his
throat on the altar of the dawning Republic one and
indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death,
Monseigneur's house had been first sequestrated, and
then confiscated. For, all things moved so fast, and
decree followed decree with that fierce precipitation,
that now upon the third night of the autumn month of
September, patriot emissaries of the law were in pos-
session of Monseigneur’s house, and had marked it
with the tricolour, and were drinking brandy in its state
apartments. &’
A place of business in London like Tellson’s place of
business in Paris, would soon have driven the House
Out of its mind and into the Gazette. For, what would
staid British responsibility and respectability have said
to Orange-trees in boxes in a Bank court-yard, and
even to a Cupid over the counter? Yet such things
were. Tellson's had "whitewashed the Cupid, but he
was still to be seen on the ceiling, in the coolest linen,
254 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
aiming (as he very often does) at money from morn-
ing to night. Bankruptcy must inevitably have come
of this young Pagan, in Lombard-street, London, and
also of a curtained alcove in the rear of the immortal
boy, and also of a looking-glass let into the wall, and
also of clerks not at all old who danced in public on
the slightest provocation. Yet, a French Tellson’s
could get on with these things exceedingly well, and,
as long as the times held together, no man had taken
fright at them, and drawn out his money.
What money would be drawn out of Tellson's hence-
forth, and what would lie there, lost and forgotten;
what plate and jewels would tarnish in Tellson’s hiding-
places, while the depositors rusted in prisons, and when
they should have violently perished; how many ac-
counts with Tellson’s never to be balanced in this world,
must be carried over into the next; no man could have
said, that night, any more than Mr. Jarvis Lorry could,
though he thought heavily of these questions. He sat
by a newly lighted wood fire (the blighted and unfruit-
ful year was prematurely cold), and on his honest and
courageous face there was a deeper shade than the pen-
dent lamp could throw, or any object in the room dis-
tortedly reflect—a shade of horror.
He occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity to the
House of which he had grown to be a part, like strong
root-ivy. It chanced that they derived a kind of se-
curity from the patriotic occupation of the main build-
ing, but the true-hearted old gentleman never calculated
about that. All such circumstances were indifferent to
him, so that he did his duty. On the opposite side of
the court-yard, under a colonnade, was extensive stand-
ing for carriages—where, indeed, some carriages of
Monseigneur yet stood. Against two of the pillars were
fastened two great flaring flambeaux, and, in the light
of these, standing out in the open air, was a large grind-
stone: a roughly mounted thing which appeared to have
hurriedly been brought there from some neighbouring
Smithy, or other workshop. Rising and looking out of
window at these harmless objects, Mr. Lorry shivered,
and retired to his seat by the fire. He had opened, not
only the glass window, but the lattice blind outside it,
and he had closed both again, and he shivered through
his. frame. -
THE GRINDSTONE. 255
Trom the streets beyond the high wall and the strong
gate, there came the usual night hum of the city, with
now and then an indescribable ring in it, weird and un-
earthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible nature
were going up to Heaven.
“Thank God,” said Mr. Lorry, clasping his hands,
“ that no one near and dear to me is in this dreadful
town to-night. May He have mercy on all who are in
danger!” -
Soon afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded,
and he thought, ‘‘ They have come back!” and sat
listening. But there was no loud irruption into the
court-yard, as he had expected, and he heard the gate
clash again, and all was quiet.
The nervousness and dread that were upon him in-
spired the vague uneasiness respecting the Bank, which
a great charge would naturally awaken, with such
feelings roused. . It was well guarded, and he got up to
go among the trusty people who were watching it, when
his door suddenly opened, and two figures rushed in, at
sight of which he fell back in amazement.
Lucie and her father! Lucie with her arms stretched
out to him, and with that old look of earnestness so
concentrated and intensified, that it seemed as though
it had been stamped upon her face expressly to give
force and power to it in this one passage of her life.
“What is this!” cried Mr. Lorry, breathless and con-
fused. “What is the matter? Lucie! Manette! What
has happened? What has brought you here? What is
it?”
With the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and
wildness, she panted out in his arms, imploringly, “O
my dear friend. My husband!”
“Your husband, Lucie?”
“Charles.”
“What of Charles?”
** Here.” -
“Here, in Paris?”
“Has been here, some days—three or four—I don’t
know how many—I can’t collect my thoughts. An
errand of generosity brought him here unknown to us;
he was stopped at the barrier, and sent to prison.”
The old man uttered an irrepressible cry. Almost at
the same moment, the bell of the great gate rang again,
256 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
and a loud noise of feet and voices came pouring into
the court-yard.
“What is that noise ?” said the Doctor, turning
toward the window.
“Don’t look : * cried Mr. Lorry. “Don’t look out!
Manette, for your life, don’t touch the blind!”
The Doctor turned, with his hand upon the fastening
of the window, and said, with a cool i. Smile :
“My dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city.
I have been a Bastille prisoner. There is no patriot in
Paris—in Paris? In France—who, knowing me to have
been a prisoner in the Bastille, would touch me, except
to overwhelm me with embraces, or carry me in
triumph. My old pain has given me a power that has
brought us through the barrier, and gained us news of
Charles there, and brought us here. I knew it would
be so; I knew I could keep Charles out of all danger;
I told Lucie so. —What is that noise?” His hand was
again upon the window.
“Don’t look!” cried Mr. Lorry, absolutely desperate.
“No, Lucie, my dear, nor you!” He got his arm round
her and held her. “Don’t be so terrified, my love. I
solemnly swear to you that I know of no harm having
happened to Charles; that I had no suspicion even, of
his §. in this fatal place. What prison is he in?”
‘‘Ila, FOrce!”
“La Force! Lucie, my child, if ever you were brave
and serviceable in your life—and you were always both
—you will compose yourself now, to do exactly as Ibid
you; for, more depends upon it than you can think, or
I can say. There is no help for you in any action on
your part to-night; you cannot possibly stir out. I
say this, because what I must bid you to do for Charles's
sake, is the hardest thing to do of all. You must in-
stantly be obedient, still, and quiet. You must let me
put you in a room at the back here. You must leave
your father and me alone for two minutes, and as
. are Life and Death in the world you must not
elay.” - -
“I will be submissive to you. I see in your face that
you know I can do nothing else than this. I know you
are true. ” * -
The old man kissed her, and hurried her into his
room, and turned the key; then, came hurrying back
THE GRINIDSTONE. 257
to the Doctor, and opened the window and partly opened
the blind, and put his hand upon the Doctor’s arm, and
looked out with him into the court-yard.
Looked out upon a throng of men and women; not
enough in number, or near enough, to fill the court-
yard: not more than forty or fifty in all. The people
in possession of the house had let them in at the gate,
and they had rushed in to work at the grindstone; it
had evidently been set up there for their purpose, as in
a convenient and retired spot. *
But, such awful workers, and such awful work!
The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at
it madly were two men, whose faces, as their long hair
flapped back when the whirlings of the grindstone
brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel
than the visages of the wildest savages in their most
barbarous disguise. False eyebrows and false mous-
taches were stuck upon them, and their hideous coun-
tenances were all bloody and sweaty, and all awry
with howling, and all staring and glaring with beastly
excitement and want of sleep. As these ruffians
turned and turned, their matted locks now flung for-
ward over their eyes, now flung backward over their
necks, some women held wine to their mouths that
they might drink; and what with dropping blood, and
what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of
sparks struck Out of the stone; all their wicked atmos-
phere seemed gore and fire. The eye could not detect
one creature in the group, free from the smear of
blood. Shouldering one another to get next at the
sharpening-stone, Were men stripped to the waist, with
the stain all over their limbs and bodies; men in all
sorts of rags, with the stain upon those rags; men
devilishly set off with spoils of women’s lace and silk
and ribbon, with the stain dyeing those trifles through
and through. Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all
brought to be sharpened, were all red with it. Some of
the hacked swords were tied to the wrists of those who
carried them, with strips of linen and fragments of
dress: ligatures various in kind, but all deep of the
one colour. And as the frantic wielders of these
weapons Snatched them from the stream of sparks and
tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in
their frenzied eyes;–eyes which any unbrutalised be-
WOI, I, 17
25S A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
holder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify
with a well-directed gun. -
All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a
drowning man, or of any human creature at any very
great pass, could see a world if it were there. They
drew back from the window, and the Doctor looked for
explanation in his friend’s ashy face.
“They are,” Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glanc-
ing fearfully round at the locked room, “ Murdering
the prisoners. If you are sure of what you say; if you
really have the power you think you have—as, I be-
lieve you have—make yourself known to these devils,
and get taken to La Force. It may be too late, I don’t
know, but let it not be a minute later!” w
Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bare-
headed out of the room, and was in the court-yard
when Mr. Lorry regained the blind.
His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and
the impetuous confidence of his manner, as he put the
weapons aside like water, carried him in an instant to
the heart of the concourse at the stone. For a few
moments there was a pause, and a hurry, and a mur-
mur, and the unintelligible sound of his voice; and
then Mr. Lorry saw him, surrounded by all, and in the
midst of a line twenty men long, all linked shoulder to
shoulder, and hand to shoulder, hurried out with cries
of “Live the Bastille prisoner! Help for the Bastille .
risoner's kindred in La Force! Room for the
astille prisoner in front there! Save the prisoner
Evérmonde at La Force!” and a thousand answering
shouts.
He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart,
closed the window and the curtain, hastened to Lucie,
and told her that her father was assisted by the people,
and gone in search of her husband. He found her
child and Miss Pross with her; but, it never occurred
to him to be surprised by their appearance until a long
time afterwards, when he sat watching them in such
quiet as the night knew.
Lucie had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the
floor at his feet, clinging to his hand. Miss Pross had
laid the child down on his own bed, and her head had
gradually fallen on the pillow beside her pretty charge.
O the long, long night, with the moans of the poor wife.
THE GRINDSTONE. 259
And O the long, long night, with no return of her father
and no tidings!
Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate
sounded, and the irruption was repeated, and the grind-
stone whirled and spluttered. “What is it?” cried
Lucie, affrighted. “ Hush! The soldiers’ swords are
sharpened there,” said Mr. Lorry. “The place is
National property now, and used as a kind of armoury,
my love.”
Twice more in all; but, the last spell of work was
feeble and fitful. Soon afterwards the day began to
dawn, and he softly detached himself from the clasp-
ing hand, and cautiously looked out again. A man, so
besmeared that he might have been a sorely wounded
soldier creeping back to consciousness on a field of
slain, was rising from the pavement by the side of the
grindstone, and looking alº him with a vacant air.
Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried in the imper-
fect light one of the carriages of Monseigneur, and,
staggering to that gorgeous vehicle, climbed in at the
door, and shut himself up to take his rest on its dainty
cushions. -
The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr.
Lorry looked out again, and the Sun was red on the
court-yard. But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there
in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the
sun had never given, and would never take away.
C H A P T E R III.
THE SHADOW,
NE of the first considerations which arose in the busi-
ness mind of Mr. Lorry when business hours came
round, was this:—that he had no right to imperil Tell-
son's by sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner
under the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life,
he would have hazarded for Lucie and her child, with-
Out a moment's demur; but, the great trust he held was
not his own, and as to that business charge he was a
strict man of business.
At first, his mind reverted to Defargé, and he thought
200 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
of finding out the wine-shop again and taking counsel
with its master in reference to the safest dwelling-
place in the distracted state of the city. But, the same
consideration that suggested him, repudiated him; he
lived in the most violent Quarter, and doubtless was
influential there, and deep in its dangerous workings.
Noon coming, and the Doctor not returning, and
every minute's delay tending to compromise Tellson’s,
Mr. Lorry advised with Lucie. She said that her father
had spoken of hiring a lodging for a short term, in that
Quarter, near the Banking-house. As there was no
business objection to this, and as he foresaw that even
if it were all well with Charles, and he were to be re-
leased, he could not hope to leave the city, Mr. Lorry
went out in quest of such a lodging, and found a suit-
able one, high up in a removed by-street where the
closed blinds in all the other windows of a high pnelan-
choly square of buildings marked deserted homes.
To this lodging he at once removed Lucie and her
child, and Miss Pross: giving them what comfort he
could, and much more than he had himself. " He left
Jerry with them, as a figure to fill a doorway that
would bear considerable knocking on the head, and re-
turned to his own occupations. A disturbed and doleful
mind he brought to bear upon them, and slowly and
heavily the day lagged on with him. -
It wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the
Bank closed. He was again alone in his room of the
previous night, considering what to do next, when he
heard a foot upon the stair. In a few moments, a man
stood in his presence, who, with a keenly observant
look at him, addressed him by his name.
“Your servant,” said Mr. Lorry. “Do you know
me P’’
He was a strongly made man, with dark curling
hair, from forty-five to fifty years of age. For answer
he repeated, without any change of emphasis, the
words: -
“Do you know me?”
“I have seen you somewhere.”
“Perhaps at my wine-shop?” -
Much interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry said: “You
come from Doctor Manette?”
“Yes, I come from Doctor Manette.”
THE SHADOw. 201
“And what says he? What does he send me?”
Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of
paper. It bore the words in the T)octor’s writing,
“Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave this place yet. I have ob-
tained the favour that the bearer has a short note from Charles to his
wife. Let the bearer see his wife.”
It was dated from La Force, within an hour.
‘‘Will you accompany me,” said Mr. Lorry, joyfully
relieved after reading this note aloud, “to where his
wife resides?”
“Yes,” returned Defarge.
Scarcely noticing, as yet, in what a curiously reserved
and mechanical way Defarge spoke, Mr. Lorry put on
his hat and they went down into the court-yard. There,
they found two women, one, knitting.
“Madame Defarge, surely!” said Mr. Lorry, who had
left her in exactly the same attitude some seventeen
years ago.
“It is she,” observed her husband.
“Does Madame go with us?” inquired Mr. Lorry,
seeing that she moved as they moved.
“Yes. That she may be able to recognise the faces
and know the persons. It is for their safety.”
Beginning to be struck by Defarge's manner, Mr.
Lorry looked dubiously at him, and led the way. Both
the women followed; the second woman being The
Vengeance.
They passed through the intervening streets as quickly
as they might, ascended the staircase of the new domi-
cile, were admitted by Jerry, and found Lucie weeping,
alone. She was thrown into a transport by the tidings
Mr. Lorry gave her of her husband, and clasped the
hand that delivered his note—little thinking what it had.
been doing near him in the night, and might, but for a
chance, have done to him.
“DEAREST, Take courage. I am well, and your father has influence
around me. You cannot answer this. Kiss our child for me.”
That was all the writing. It was so much, however,
to her who received it, that she turned from Defarge to
his wife, and kissed one of the hands that knitted. It
was a passionate, loving, thankful, womanly action,
262 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
but the hand made no response—dropped cold and
heavy, and took to its knitting again.
There was something in its touch that gave Lucie a
check. She stopped in the act of putting the note in her
bosom, and, with her hands yet at her neck, looked ter-
rified at Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge met the
lifted eyebrows and forehead with a cold impassive
Stare.
“My dear,” said Mr. Lorry, striking in to explain;
“there are frequent risings in the streets; and, although
it is not likely they will ever trouble you, Madame De-
farge wishes to see those whom she has the power to
protect at such times, to the end that she may know
them—that she may identify them. I believe,” said
Mr. Lorry, rather halting in his reassuring words, as
the stony manner of all the three impressed itself
upon him more and more, “I state the case, Citizen
Defarge?” -
Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no
other than a gruff sound of acquiescence.
“You had better, Lucie,” said Mr. Lorry, doing all he
could to propitiate, by tone and manner, “ have the dear
child here, and our good Pross. Our good Pross, De-
farge, is an English lady, and knows no French.”
The lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she
was more than a match for any foreigner, was not to
be shaken by distress and danger, appeared with folded
arms, and observed in English to The Vengeance, whom
her eyes first encountered, “Well, I am sure, Boldface!
I hope you are pretty well!” She also bestowed a Brit-
ish cough on Madame Defarge; but, neither of the two
took much heed of her.
“Is that his child?” said Madame Defarge, stopping
in her work for the first time, and pointing her knitting-
needle at little Lucie, as if it were the finger of Fate.
“Yes, madame,” answered Mr. Lorry; “this is our
poor prisoner’s darling daughter, and only child.” -
The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her
party seemed to fall so threatening and dark on the
child, that her mother instinctively kneeled on the
ground beside her, and held her to her breast. The
shadow attendant. On Madame Defarge and her party
seemed then to fall, threatening and dark, on both the
mother and the child. -
THE SHADOW. 263
“It is enough, my husband,” said Madame Defarge.
“I have seen them. We may go.” - -
But, the suppressed manner had enough of menace in
it—not visible and presented, but indistinct and with-
held—to alarm Lucie into saying, as she laid her ap-
pealing hand on Madame Defarge's dress:
“You will be good to my poor husband. You will
do him no harm. You will help me to see him if you
Can?” -
“Your husband is not my business here,” returned
Madame Defarge, looking down at her with perfect
composure. “It is the daughter of your father who is
my business here.”
“For my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For
my child’s sake! She will put her hands together and
pray you to be merciful. We are more afraid of you
than of these others.” -
Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and
looked at her husband. Defarge who had been uneasily
biting his thumb-mail and looking at her, collected his
face into a sterner expression.
“What is it that your husband says in that little let-
ter?” asked Madame Defarge, with a lowering Smile.
“Influence; he says something touching influence?”
“That my father,” said Lucie, hurriedly taking the
paper from her breast, but with her alarmed eyes on
#. questioner and not on it, “has much influence around
him.”
“Surely it will release him!'” said Madame
Defarge. - •
‘‘Let it do so.”
“As a wife and mother,” cried Lucie, most earnestly,
“I implore you to have pity on me and not to exercise
any power that you possess, against my innocent hus-
band, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-woman,
think of me. As a wife and mother!”
Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the sup-
pliant, and said, turning to her friend. The Vengance:
“The wives and mothers we have been used to see,
since we were as little as this child, and much less, have
not been greatly considered? We have known their
husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from
them, often enough? All our lives, we have seen our
sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their chil-
264 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
dren, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, mis-
ery, oppression and neglect of all kinds?”
“We have seen nothing else,” returned The Venge-
all C62.
“We have borne this a long time,” said Madame
Defarge, turning her eyes again upon Lucie. “Judge
you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and
mother would be much to us now?” -
She resumed her knitting and went out. The Venge-
ance followed, Defarge went last, and closed the door.
• ‘‘Courage, my dear Lucie,” said Mr. Lorry, as he
raised her. “Courage, courage! So far all goes well
with us—much, much better than it has of late gone
Nº. many poor Souls. Cheer up, and have a thankful
heart.”
“I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman
seems to throw a shadow on me and on all my hopes.”
“Tut, tut!” said Mr. Lorry; “what is this despond-
ency in the brave little breast? A shadow indeed! No
Substance in it, Lucie.”
But the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was
dark upon himself, for all that, and in his secret mind
it troubled him greatly.
29
CHAPTER IV.
C. A. L. M I N S T O R. M. .
OCTOR MANETTE did not return until the morn-
ing of the fourth day of his absence. So much of
what had happened in that dreadful time as could be
kept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well con-
cealed from her, that not until long afterwards when
France and she were wide apart, did she know that
eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and
all ages had been killed by the populace; that four days
and nights had been darkened by this deed of horror;
and that the air around her had been tainted by the
slain. She only knew that there had been an attack
upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had been
in danger, and that some had been dragged out by the
Crowd and murdered,
CAT.M IN STORM. 265
To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an
injunction of Secrecy on which he had no need to dwell,
that the crowd had taken him through a scene of car-
nage to the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he
had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before
which the prisoners were brought singly, and by which
they were rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massa-
cred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent
back to their cells. That, presented by his conductors
to this Tribunal, ho had announced himself by name
and profession as having been for eighteen years a
secret and an unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that,
one of the body so sitting in judgment had risen and
identified him, and that this man was Defarge.
That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the reg-
isters on the table, that his son-in-law was among the
living prisoners, and had pleaded hard to the Tribunal
—of whom some members were asleep and some awake,
some dirty with murder and some clean, some sober
and some not—for his life and liberty. That, in the first
frantic greetings lavished on himself as a notable
sufferer under the overthrown system, it had been
accorded to him to have Charles Darnay brought before
the lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on
the point of being at once released, ‘when the tide in
his favour met with some unexplained check (not intel-
ligible to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret
conference. That, the man sitting as President had
then informed Doctor Manette that the prisoner must
remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held in-
violate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a sig-
nal, the prisoner was removed to the interior of the
prison again; but, that he, the Doctor, had then so
strongly pleaded for permission to remain and assure
himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or
Imischance, delivered to the concourse whose murder-
ous yells outside the gate had often drowned the pro-
ceedings, that he had obtained the permission, and had
remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger
was over. -
The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food
and sleep by intervals, shall remain untold. The mad
joy over the prisoners who were saved, had astounded
him scarcely less than the mad ferocity against those
266 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he
said, who had been discharged into the street free, but
at whom a mistaken savage had thrust a pike as he
passed out. Being besought to go to him and dress the
wound, the Doctor had passed out at the same gate, and
had found him in the arms of a company of Samaritans,
who were seated on the bodies of their victims. With
an inconsistency as monstrous as anything in this
awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and
tended the wounded man with the gentlest solicitude—
had made a litter for him and escorted him carefully
from the spot—had then caught up their weapons and
plunged anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the
Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, and
swooned away in the midst of it.
As Mr. Lorry received those confidences, and as he
watched the face of his friend now sixty-two years of
age, a misgiving arose within him that such dread
experiences would revive the old danger. But, he had
never seen his friend in his present aspect; he had
never at all known him in his present character. For
the first time the Doctor felt, now, that his suffering
was strength and power. For the first time, he felt
that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron
which could break the prison door of his daughter's
husband, and deliver him. “It all tended to a good
end, my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin. As
my beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself,
I will be helpful now in restoring the dearest part of
herself to her; by the aid of Heaven I will do it!”
Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw
the kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look
and bearing of the man whose life always seemed to
him to have been stopped, like a clock, for so many
years, and then set going again with an energy which
had lain dormant during the cessation of its usefulness,
he believed. -
Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to
contend with, would have yielded before his perse-
vering purpose. While he kept himself in his place,
as a physician whose business was with all degrees of
mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good,
he used his personal influence so wisely, that he was
Soon the inspecting physician of three prisons, and
CALM IN STORM. 267
among them of La Force. He could now assure Lucie
that her husband was no longer confined alone, but
was mixed with the general ioãy of prisoners; he saw
her husband weekly, and brought sweet messages to
lmer, straight from his lips; sometimes her husband
himself sent a letter to her (though never by the
Doctor's hand), but she was not permitted to write to
him; for, among the many wild suspicions of plots in
the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who
were known to have made friends or permanent con-
nexions abroad.
This new life of the Doctor’s was an anxious life, no
doubt; still, the sagacious Mr. Lorry saw that there was
a new sustaining pride in it. Nothing unbecoming
tinged the pride; it was a natural and worthy one; but
he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew, that
up to that time, his imprisonment had been associated
in the minds of his daughter and his friend, with his
personal affliction, deprivation, and weakness. Now
that this was changed, and he knew himself to be
invested through that old trial with forces to which
they both looked for Charles's ultimate safety and deliv-
erance, he became so far exalted by the change, that
he took the lead and direction, and required them as
the weak, to trust to him as the strong. The preceding
relative positions of himself and Lucie were reversed,
yet only as the liveliest gratitude and affection could
reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in
rendering some service to her who had rendered so
much to Thim. “Ali curious to see,” thought Mr. Lorry,
in his amiably shrewd way, “but all natural and right;
so, take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it ; it
couldn’t be in better hands.”
But though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased
trying, to get Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least.
to get him brought to trial, the public current of the
time set too strong and fast for him. The new Era
began; the king was tried, doomed and beheaded; the
Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death,
declared for victory or death against the world in arms;
the black flag waved night and day from the great
towers of Notre-Dame; three hundred thousand men,
summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose
from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon’s
268 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit
equally on hill and plain, on rock in gravel and alluvial
mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the
clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards
and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and
the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the
broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. What
private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge
of the Year One of Liberty—the di. rising from
below, not falling from above, and with the windows
of Heaven shut, not opened!
There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of
relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days
and nights circled as regularly as when time was young,
, and the evening and the morning were the first day,
other count of time there was none. Hold of it was
lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever
of one patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence
of a whole city, the executioner showed the people the
head of the king—and now, it seemed almost in the
Same breath, the head of his fair wife which had had
eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and
misery, to turn it grey.
And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction
which obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while
it flamed by so fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the
capital, and forty or fifty thousand revolutionary com-
mittees all over the land; a law of the Suspected, which
struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered
..over any good and innocent person to any bad and
guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had com-
mitted no offence, and could obtain no hearing; these
things became the established order and nature of ap-
pointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before
they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous
figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the
#. gaze from the foundations of the world—the
igure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.
t was the popular theme for jests; it was the best.
cure for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair
from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar, delicacy to
the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved
close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the
little window and sneezed into the sack. It was the
69% WHOIS NI WTwo
‘sſellout 5uouſe 5uſAout 1.IIdS tº 0.10AA To ‘ologeq
SIGo K Uſooqū319 outos ojºſ Ol Fºllº. Ulooq peopuſ peu
out JI utt[] otout Kuſe ‘Uloºsomb up quâno.Iq Io poloodsms
qou seAA OFI ‘Utour Toulo Iſe uſo.IJ UITU poAouloi o AyºdºC)
9III]segſ out! Jo KIO's ouſ pure ooutº.It odd tº ouſ, ‘III XIS Spuſ Jo
esſo.Ioxe oun uT 1..It?dº tºeur tº StºA out ‘surpºol A pure SUITS
-Sèsse 5uouſe KIIenbo 1.18 spu 5upsn ‘uſospid pite teq[dsouſ
UI eſqtºsured spur “outgunu ‘Utoſis ‘UOIntennis Iaşub.I]s
tº up Ubut out : Kep quuſ qu sprud UIſ ‘ou Ubul UAOUXI
10149q IIbuI ON peou Kpºols tº UlſAA S.I.O.I.IO) out: 3UOUIt?
pox{[BA TO10OCI ouſ, ‘III].S. "UIns K.Iluy A U.10UAnos ou'l JapUIn
so.Itºmbs put soul] uſ lous otoA S.Iöuosi.Id pure ‘qū3ru Kol
pou AOIp KITUIQIOIA ou" Jo Soppoq OUT UlſAA poiſoquinoue
©19A UI) noS OUI) Jo S.I.9AI.I OUT! Tºul ‘Uluouſ JoquooeCI
|buq uſ UIAAOI3 Utopºnſo Aoyſ ouſ pºul poloe.I]sſp putt, poxſopM.
0.IOUI UonuI OS Utopguoo put Ápû01S Smull SºA 1010OCI
où.) TIou A Suſquout oo.IU[] put: Ieo Kotto UIOSI.Id up uſel peul
SoLIeuſ) leuſ] ‘Ātoo.Iogos KeAt outſ] ouſ, poſi.Ito put ‘deep
pure 3UOI’s OS ‘Āq ºde.As ouſ) out". Jo quo.I.Ino ouſ, 10 K.
“Set 1e pubqsnu Soponrſ oAtºs plmoA out leuſ] 5uſkinop
to Aout ‘puo Stu Uſ quoqsſ sod KISnoſ'] neo “IOAAod stu UI
quoppū00 peoû Apºols tº UTIA pox{[BAA 1010OCI OUT ‘UIOU1
O] 3ü13UOIaq poo.Iq out, put "SIO.I.10) osauº 3tiouTV
- - ‘Sølnuţui
Áure UI Se UIſ ‘3Uſu.Tour ouo uſ ‘po speoû eul i.
pºu I ‘peep ouo pub 3up ATI oud-KnuoA). ‘Mateur origné
t|3ru Jo spuror.IJ OAl-KhuôAAJ, poo:3 put; Injūneed Ötſ,
pousſ|Oqt: ‘Inj.IOAAod out) UAOp XIon.T1sºluonboſe ou'll º
1I ºf pollut: A UIoIStooo out, Uleu A uſe3e Jouleåo', ºn(
St. A put ‘[IAOCI 3Uno K tº Iog oſzznd-Kol tº oxyl ‘soooyd
o, uox{81 st A iſ ‘pal uolloi e are A ‘poyntiod soul hy
puno.13 out put ‘‘ſ 18tſ, ‘Kuºuſ os speou po poſitious qI
"poſtIop StºAA SSO.I.O outſ, O.IOUIAA UII poaoiſoq put Ol
UAop powog StºA 11 put ‘pepreosp Sea Sso10 oun uopu A
UIOIJ SqStºo.Iq UO U.IOAA O.I.OA 1 Jo Stopol\ ‘SSO.I.O outſ, popos
-Todns qI doeſ uſeunuſ out go uomºteuo:30.1 oun go u’āys
270 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
CHAPTER v.
THE WOOD-SAWYER.
ON; year and three months. During all that time
Lucie was never sure from hour to hour, but that
the Guillotine would strike off her husband’s head next
day. Every day, through the stony streets, the tum-
brils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned. Love-
ly girls; bright women, brown-haired, black-haired and
grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born , and
peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily
rought into light from the dark cellars of the loath-
some prisons, and carried to her through the streets to
slake her devouring thirst. Liberty, equality, frater-
nity, or death;-the last, much the easiest to bestow, O
Guillotine!
If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling
wheels of the time, had stunned the Doctor’s daughter
into awaiting the result in idle despair, it would but
have been with her as it was with many. But, from
the hour when she had taken the white head to her
fresh young bosom in the garret of Saint Antoine, she
had been true to her duties. She was truest to them
in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good
will always be.
As soon as they were established in their new resi-
dence, and her father had entered on the routine of his
avocations, she arranged the little household as ex-
actly as if her husband had been there. Everything
had its appointed place and its appointed time. Little
Lucie she taught, as regularly, as if they had all been
united in their English home. The slight devices with
which she cheated herself into the show of a belief that
they would soon be reunited—the little preparations for
his speedy return, the setting aside of his chair and his
books—these, and the solemn prayer at night for one
dear prisoner especially, among the many unhappy
THE WOOD-SAWYER. 2", i.
souls in prison and the shadow of death—were almost
the only out-spoken reliefs of her heavy mind.
She difd not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark
dresses, akin to mourning dresses, which she and her
child wore, were as meat and as well attended to as the
brighter clothes of happy days. She lost her colour, and
the old intent expression was constant, not an occasional
thing; otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely.
Sometimes, at night, on kissing her father, she would
burst into the grief she had repressed all day, and would
say that her sole reliance, under Heaven, was on him.
He always resolutely answered: “Nothing can happen
to him without my knowledge, and I know that I can
save him Lucie.” f
They had not made the round of their changed life,
many weeks, when her father said to her, on coming
home one evening :
“My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to
which Charles can sometimes gain access at three
in the afternoon. When he can get to it—which de-
pends on many uncertainties and incidents—he might
see you in the street, he thinks, if you stood in a cer-
tain place that I can show you. But you will not be
able to see him, my poor child, and even if you could,
it would be unsafe for you to make a sign of recog-
Inition.”
“O show me the place, my father, and I will go there
every day.” tº
From that time, in all weathers, she waited there two
hours. As the clock struck two, she was there, and at
four she turned resignedly away. When it was not too
wet or inclement for her child to be with her, they
went together, at other times she was alone; but she
never missed a single day.
It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding
street. The hovel of a cutter of wood into lengths for
burning, was the only house at that end; all else was
wall. On the third day of her being there, he noticed her.
“Good day, citizeness.”
“Good day, citizen.” -
This mode of address was now prescribed by decree.
It had been established voluntarily some time ago,
among the more thorough patriots; but, it was now law
for everybody.
272 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“Walking here again, citizeness?”
“You see me, citizen!”
The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a re-
dundancy of gesture (he had once been a mender of
roads), cast a glance at the prison, pointed at the prison,
and putting his ten fingers before his face to represent
bars, peeped through them jocosely.
“But it's not my business.” said he. And went on
sawing his wood. r
Next day, he was looking out for her, and accosted
her the moment she appeared. *
“What! Walking here again, citizeness?”
“Yes, citizen.”
“Ah! A child too ! Your mother, is it not, my little
citizeness?”
“Do I say yes, mamma?” whispered little Lucie,
drawing close to her. -
“Yes, dearest.”
“Yes, citizen.” -
“Ah! But it’s not my business. My work is my
business. See my saw I call it my Little Guillotine.
La, la, la; La, la, la! And off his head comes!”
The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a
basket.
“I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine.
See here again! Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! And off
her head comes! Now, a child. Tickle, tickle; Pickle,
pickle! And off its head comes. All the family!”
Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his
basket, but it was impossible to be there while the
wood-Sawyer was at work, and not be in his sight.
Thenceforth, to secure his good will, she always spoke
to him first, and often gave him drink-money, which he
readily received.
He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when
she had quite forgotten him in gazing at the prison roof
and grates, and in lifting her heart up to her husband,
she would come to herself to find him looking at her,
with his knee on his bench and his saw stopped in its
work. “But it’s not my business!” he would generally
say at those times, and would briskly fall to his sawing
agaln.
In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in
the bitter winds of spring, in the hot sunshine of sum-
THE WOOD-SAwYER. 2:3
mer, in the rains of autumn, and again in the snow and
frost of winter, Lucie passed two hours of every day
at this place; and every day, on leaving it, she kissed
the prison wall. Her husband saw her (so she learned
from her father) it might be once in five or six times: it
might be twice or thrice running: it might be, not for a
week or a fortnight together. It was enough that he
could and did see her when the chances served, and on
that possibility she would have waited out the day, seven
days a week. -
These occupations brought her round to the December
month, wherein her father walked among the terrors
with a steady head. On a lightly-snowing afternoon
she arrived at the usual corner. It was a day of some
wild rejoicing, and a festival. She had seen the houses,
as she came along, decorated with little pikes, and with
little red caps stuck upon them; also with tricoloured
ribbons; also, with the standard inscription (tricoloured
letters were the favourite), Republic One and Indivisi-
ble. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death!
The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small,
that its whole surface furnished very indifferent space
for this legend. He had got somebody to scrawl it up
for him, however, who had squeezed Death in with
most inappropriate difficulty. On his house-top, he dis-
played pike and cap, as a good citizen must, and in a
window he had stationed his saw, inscribed as his
“Little Sainte Guillotine’—for the great sharp female
was by that time popularly canonised. His shop was
shut and he was not there, which was a relief to Lucie,
and left her quite alone.
But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a
troubled movement and a shouting coming along, which
filled her with fear. A moment afterwards, and a
throng of people came pouring round the corner by the
prison wall, in the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer
hand in hand with The Vengeance. There could not be
fewer than five hundred people, and they were dancing
like five thousand demons. There was no other music
than their own singing. They danced to the popular
Revolution song, keeping a ferocious time that was like
a gnashing of teeth in unison. Men and women danced
together, women danced together, men danced together,
- as hazard had brought them together. At first, they
VOL. I. 18
274 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
were a mere storm of coarse red caps and coarser wool-
len rags; but, as they filled the place, and stopped to
dance about Lucie, Some ghastly apparition of a dance-
figure gone raving mad arose among them. They
advanced, retreated, struck at One another's hands,
clutched at one another’s heads, spun round alone,
caught One another and spun round in pairs, until many
of them dropped. While those were down, the rest
linked hand in hand, and all spun round together; then
the ring broke, and in separate rings of two and four
they turned and turned until they all stopped at once,
began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then
reversed the spin, and all spun round another way.
Suddenly they stopped again, paused, struck out the
time afresh, formed into lines th. width of the public
way, and, with their heads low down and their hands
high up, swooped screaming off. No fight could have
been half so terrible as this dance. It was so emphat-
ically a fallen sport—a something, once innocent, de-
livered over to all deviltry—a healthy pastime changed
into a means of angering the blood, bewildering the
senses, and steeling the heart. Such grace as was visi-
ble in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and
perverted all things good by nature were become. The
maidenly bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child’s
head thus distracted, the delicate foot mincing in this
slough of blood and dirt, were types of the disjointedtime.
This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving
Lucie frightened and bewildered in the doorway of the
wood-sawyer's house, the feathery snow fell as quietly
and lay as white and soft, as if it had never been.
“O my father!” for he stood before her when she
lifted up the eyes she had momentarily darkened with
her hand; “such a cruel, bad sight.”
“I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many
times. Don’t be frightened! Not one of them would
harm you.”
‘‘I am not frightened for myself, my father. But
when I think of my husband, and the mercies of these
people—” &
“We will set him above their mercies, very soon. I
left him climbing to the window, and I came to tell you.
There is no one here to see. You may kiss your hand
towards that highest shelving roof.” gº
THE WOOD-SAWYER. 275
“I do, so, father, and I send him my Soul with
it "
“You cannot see him, my poor dear?”
“No, father,” said Lucie, yearning and weeping as
she kissed her hand, “Ino.”
A footstep in the snow. Madame Defarge. “I sa-
lute you, citizeness,” from the Doctor. “I salute you,
citizen.” This in passing. Nothing more. Madame
Defarge gone, like a shadow over the white road.
“Give me your arm, my love. Pass from here with
an air of cheerfulness and courage, for his sake. That
was well done;” they had left the spot; “it shall not
be in vain. Charles is summoned for to-morrow.”
“For to-morrow !”
“There is no time to lose, I am well prepared, but
there are precautions to be taken, that could not be
taken until he was actually summoned before the Tri-
bunal. He has not received the notice yet, but I know
that he will presently be summoned for to-morrow, and
removed to the Conciergerie; I have timely information.
You are not afraid?” -
She could scarcely answer, “I trust in you.”
“Do so, implicitly. Your suspense is nearly ended,
my darling; he shall be restored to you within a few
hours; I have encompassed him with every protection.
I must see Lorry.” -
He stopped. There was a heavy lumbering of wheels
within hearing. They both knew too well what it
meant. One. Two. Three. Three tumbrils faring
away with their dread loads over the hushing snow.
“I must see Lorry,” the Doctor repeated, turning her
another way.
The staunch old gentleman was still in his trust; had
never left it. He and his books were in frequent requi-
sition as to property confiscated and made national.
What he could save for the owners, he saved. No
better man living to hold fast, by what Tellson’s had in
keeping, and to hold his peace. .*
A murky red-and-yellow sky, and a rising mist from
the Seine, denoted the approach of darkness. It was
almost dark when they arrived at the Bank. The
stately residence of Monseigneur was altogether blight-
ed and deserted. Above a heap of dust and ashes in
the court, ran the letters: National Property. Republic
276 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or
Death. *
Who could that be with Mr. Lorry—the owner of the
riding-coat upon the chair—who must not be seen.”
From whom newly arrived, did he come out, agitated
and surprised, to take his favourite in his arms? To
whom did he appear to repeat her faltering words,
when, raising his voice and turning his head towards
the door of the room from which he had issued, he said:
“Removed to the Conciergerie, and summoned for to-
morrow.”
CHAPTER VI.
TRIUM.P.H.
HE dread Tribunal of five Judges, Public Pros-
ecutor, and determined Jury, sat every day. Their
lists went forth every evening, and were read out by
the gaolers of the various prisons to their prisoners.
The standard gaoler-joke was, “Come out and listen to
the Evening Paper, you inside there!”
“Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay!”
So, at last, began the Evening Paper at La Force.
When a name was called, its owner stepped apart
into a spot reserved for those who were announced as
being thus fatally recorded. Charles Evrémonde, called
Darnay, had reason to know the usage; he had seen
hundreds pass away so.
His bloated gaoler, who wore spectacles to read with,
glanced over them to assure himself that he had taken
his place, and went through the list, making a similar
short pause at each name. There were twenty-three
names, but only twenty were responded to; for, one of
the prisoners so summoned had . in gaol and been
forgotten, and two had been already guillotined and
forgotten. The list was read, in the vaulted chamber
where Darnay had seen the associated prisoners on the
night of his arrival. Every One of those had perished
in the massacre; every human creature he had since
cared for and parted with, had died on the scaffold.
TRIUMPH. 277
There were hurried words of farewell and kindness,
but the parting was soon over. It was the incident of
every day, and the Society of La Force were engaged
in the preparation of some games of forfeits and a little
concert, for that evening. They crowded to the grates
and shed tears there; but, twenty places in the pro-
jected entertainments had to be refilled, and the time
was, at best, short to the lock-up hour, when the
common rooms and corridors would be delivered over
to the great dogs who kept watch there through the
might. The prisoners were far from insensible or
unfeeling ; their ways arose out of the condition
of the time. Similarly, though with a subtle differ-
ence, a species of fervour or intoxication, known,
without doubt, to have led some persons to brave the
guillotine unnecessarily, and to die by it, was not mere
boastfulness, but a wild infection of the wildly shaken
public mind. In seasons of pestilence, some of us will
have a secret attraction to the disease—a terrible pass-
ing inclination to die of it. And all of us have like
wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circum-
stances to evoke them.
The passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark;
the night in its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold.
Next day, fifteen prisoners were put to the bar before
Charles Darnay’s name was called. All the fifteen
were condemned, and the trials of the whole occupied an
hour and a half.
“Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay,” was at length
arraigned.
His Judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats; but
the rough red cap and tricoloured cockade was the head-
dress otherwise prevailing. Looking at the Jury and
the turbulent audience, he might have thought that the
usual order of things was reversed, and that the felons
were trying the honest men. The lowest, cruelest, and
worst populace of a city never without its quantity of
low, cruel and bad, were the directing spirits of the
scene: noisily commenting, applauding, disapproving,
anticipating, and precipitating the result, without a
check. Of the men, the greater part were armed in
various ways; of the women, some wore knives, SOme
daggers, some ate and drank as they looked on, many
knitted. Among these last, was one, with a spare piece
278 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
of knitting under her arm as she worked. She was in
a front row, by the side of a man whom he had never
seen since his arrival at the Barrier, but whom he
directly remembered as Defarge. He noticed that she
once or twice whispered in his ear, and that she seemed
to be his wife; but, what he most noticed in the two
figures was, that although they were posted as close to
himself as they could be, they never looked towards
him. They seemed to be waiting for something with
a dogged determination, and they looked at the Jury
but at nothing else. Under the President sat Doctor
Manette, in his usual quiet dress. As well as the
prisoner could see, he and Mr. Lorry were the Only
men there, unconnected with the Tribunal, who wore
their usual clothes, and had not assumed the coarse garb
of the Carmagnole. &
Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay, was accused by
the public prosecutor as an emigrant, whose life was
forfeit to the Republic, under the decree which banished
all emigrants on pain of Death. It was nothing that the
decree bore date since his return to France. There he
was, and there was the decree; he had been taken in
France, and his head was demanded.
“Take off his head!” cried the audience. “An enemy
to the Republic!” -
The President rang his bell to silence those cries, and
asked the prisoner whether it was not true that he had
lived many years in England?
Undoubtedly it was.
Was he not an emigrant then? What did he call
himself? -
Not an emigrant, he hoped, within the sense and spirit
of the law.
Why not the President desired to know.
Because he had voluntarily relinquished a title that
was distasteful to him, and a station that was distaste-
ful to him, and had left his country—he submitted be-
fore the word emigrant in the present acceptation by
the Tribunal was in use—to live by his own industry in
England, rather than on the industry of the overladen
people of France.
What proof had he of this?
He handed in the names of two witnesses: Theophile
Gabelle, and Alexandre Manette.
TRIUMPH. 279
But he had married in England P the President re-
minded him.
True, but not an English woman.
A citizeness of France 2
Yes. By birth.
Her name and family?
“Lucie Manette, only daughter of Doctor Mamette,
the good physician who sits there.”
'This answer had a happy effect upon the audience.
Cries in exaltation of the well-known good playsician
rent the hall. So Capriciously were the people moved,
that tears immediately rolled down several ferocious
countenances which had been glaring at the prisoner
a moment before, as if with impatience to pluck him
out into the street and kill him.
On these few steps of his dangerous way, Charles
Darnay had set his foot according to Doctor Manette's
reiterated instructions. The same cautious counsel
directed every step that lay before him, and had pre-
pared every inch of his road.
The President asked why had he returned to France
when he did, and not sooner?
He had not returned sooner, he replied, simply be-
cause he had no means of living in France, save those
he had resigned; whereas, in England, he lived by giv-
ing instruction in the French language and literature.
He had returned when he did, on the pressing and
written entreaty of a French citizen, who represented
that his life was endangered by his absence. He had
come back, to save a citizen’s life, and to bear his
testimony, at whatever personal hazard, to the truth.
Was that criminal in the eyes of the Republic?
The populace cried enthusiastically, ‘‘No!” and the
President rang his bell to quiet them. Which it did
not, for they continued to cry “ No!” until they left off,
Of their own, will.
The President required the name of that Citizen?
The accused explained that the citizen was his first wit-
ness. He also referred with confidence to the citizen’s
letter, which had been taken from him at the Barrier,
but which he did not doubt would be found among the
papers then before the President.
The Doctor had taken care that it should be there--
had assured him that it would be there—and at this
t
280 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
stage of the proceedings it was produced and read.
Citizen Gabelle was called to confirm it, and did so.
Citizen Gabelle hinted, with infinite delicacy and polite-
ness, and in the pressure of business imposed on the
Tribunal by the multitude of enemies of the Republic
with which it had to deal, he had been slightly over-
looked in his prison of the Abbaye—in fact, had rathor
passed out of the Tribunal's patriotic remembrance—
until three days ago; when he had been summoned be-
fore it, and had been set at liberty on the Jury’s
declaring themselves satisfied that the accusation
against him was answered, as to himself, by the sur-
render of the citizen Evrémonde, called Darnay.
Doctor Manette was next questioned. His high per-
sonal popularity, and the clearness of his answers,
made a great impression; but, as he proceeded, as he
showed that the Accused was his first friend on his re-
lease from his long imprisonment; that, the accused
had remained in England, always faithful and de-
voted to his daughter and himself in their exile; that,
So far from being in favour with the Aristocrat govern-
ment there, he had actually been tried for his life by
it, as the foe of England and friend of the United
States—as he brought these circumstances into view,
with the greatest discretion and with the straight-
forward force of truth and earnestness, the Jury and
the populace became One. At last, when he appealed
by name to Monsieur Lorry, an English gentleman then
and there present, who, like himself, had been a wit-
ness on that English trial and could corroborate his
account of it, the Jury declared that they had heard
enough, and that they were ready with their votes if
the President were content to receive them.
At every vote (the Jurymen voted aloud and indi-
vidually), the populace set up a shout of applause. All
the voices were in the prisoner's favour, and the
President declared him free. -
Then, began one of those extraordinary scenes with
which the populace sometimes gratified their fickle-
ness, or their better impulses towards generosity and
mercy, or which they regarded as some set-off against
their swollen account of cruel rage. No man can de-
cide now to which of these motives such extraordinary
scenes were referable; it is probable, to a blending of
TRIUMPH. 281
all the three, with the second predominating. No
sooner was the acquittal pronounced, than tears were
shed as freely as blood at another time, and such fra-
ternal embraces were bestowed upon the prisoner by as
many of both sexes as could rush at him, that after
his long and unwholesome confinement he was in
danger of fainting from exhaustion; none the less be-
cause he knew very well, that the very same people,
carried by another current, would have rushed at him
with the very same intensity, to rend him to pieces
and strew him over the streets.
His removal, to make way for other accused persons
who were to be tried, rescued him from these caresses
for the moment. Five were to be tried together, next,
as enemies of the Republic, forasmuch as they had not
assisted it by word or deed. So quick was the Tribunal
to compensate itself and the nation for a chance lost,
that these five came down to him before he left the
place, condemned to die within twenty-four hours. The
first of them told him so, with the customary prison
sign of Death—a raised finger—and they all added in
words, “Long live the Republic!”
The five had had, it is true, no audience to lengthen
their proceedings, for when he and Doctor Manette
emerged from the gate, there was a great crowd about
it, in which there seemed to be every face he had seen
in Court—except two, for which he looked in vain. On
his coming out, the concourse made at him anew, weep-
ing, embracing and shouting, all by turns and all to-
gether, until the very tide of the river on the bank of
which the mad scene was acted, seemed to run mad,
like the people on the shore.
They put him into a great chair they had among
them, and which they had taken either out of the Court
itself, or one of its rooms or passages. Over the chair
they had thrown a red flag, and to the back of it they
had bound a pike with a red cap on its top. In this car
of triumph, not even the Doctor’s entreaties could pre-
vent his being carried to his home on men’s shoulders,
with a confused sea of red caps heaving about him,
and casting up to sight from the stormy deep such
wrecks of faces, that he more than once misdoubted
his mind being in confusion, and that he was in the
tumbril on his way to the Guillotine.
282 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
In wild dreamlike procession, embracing whom they
met and pointing him out, they carried him on. Red-
dening the Snowy Streets with the prevailing Repub-
lican colour, in winding and tramping through them,
as they had reddened them below the Snow with a
deeper dye, they carried him thus into the court-yard
of the building where he lived. Her father had gone
on before, to prepare her, and when her husband stood
upon his feet, she dropped insensible in his arms.
As he held her to his heart and turned her beautiful
head between his face and the brawling crowd, so that
his tears and her lips might come together unseen, a
few of the people fell to dancing. Instantly, all the .
rest fell to dancing, and the court-yard overflowed with
the Carmagnole. Then, they elevated into the vacant
chair a young woman from the crowd to be carried as
the Goddess of Liberty, and then, swelling and overflow-
ing out into the adjacent streets, and along the river's
bank, and over the bridge, the Carmagnole absorbed
them every one and whirled them away. -
After grasping the Doctor’s hand, as he stood victori-
ous and proud before him; after grasping the hand of
Mr. Lorry, who came panting in breathless from his
struggle against the waterspout of the Carmagnole;
after kissing little Lucie, who was lifted up to clasp
her arms round his neck; and after embracing the ever
zealous and faithful Pross who lifted her; he took his
wife in his arms and carried her up to their rooms.
“Lucie! My own! I am safe.”
“O dearest Charles, let me thank God for this on my
knees as I have prayed to Him.”
They all reverently bowed their heads and hearts.
When she was again in his arms, he said to her: -
“And now speak to your father, dearest. No other
man in all this France could have done what he has
done for me.”
She laid her hand upon her father's breast as he had
laid his poor head on her own breast, long, long ago. He
was happy in the return he had made her, he was rec-
ompensed for his suffering, he was proud of his
strength. “You must not be weak, my darling,” he
remonstrated; “don’t tremble so. I have saved him.”
A KNOCI& AT THE DOOH. 2S3
CHAPTER VII.
A KNOCK AT THE DOOR.
“T HAVE saved him.” It was not another of the
dreams in which he had often come back; he was
really here. And yet his wife trembled, and a vague
but heavy fear was upon her.
All the air around was so thick and dark, the people
were so passionately revengeful and fitful, the innocent
were so constantly put to death on vague suspicion and
black malice, it was so impossible to forget that many
as blameless as her husband and as dear to others as he
was to her, every day shared the fate from which he
had been clutched, that her heart could not be as light-
ened of its load as she felt it ought to be. The shadows
of the wintry afternoon were beginning to fall, and
even now the dreadful carts were rolling through the
streets. Her mind pursued them, looking for him among
the Condemned; and then she clung closer to his real
presence and trembled more. x- “...
Her father, cheering her, showed a compassionate
superiority to this woman’s weakness, which was won-
derful to see. No garret, no shoemaking, no One Hun-
dred and Five, North Tower, now! He had accom-
plished the task he had set himself, his promise was
redeemed, he had saved Charles. Let them all lean
upon him. - . -
Their housekeeping was of a very frugal kind; not
only because that was the safest way of life, involving
the least offence to the people, but because they were
not rich, and Charles, throughout his imprisonment, had
had to pay heavily for his bad food, and for his guard,
and towards the living of the poorer prisoners. Partly
on this account, and partly to avoid a domestic spy,
they kept no servant; the citizen and citizeness who
acted as porters at the Court-yard gate, rendered them
284 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
occasional service; and Jerry (almost wholly transferred
to them by Mr. Lorry) had become their daily retainer,
and had his bed there every night.
It was an ordinance of the Republic One and Indivis-
ible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, that on
the door or doorpost of every house, the name of every
inmate must be legibly inscribed in letters of a certain
size, at a certain convenient height from the ground.
Mr. Jerry Cruncher's name, therefore, duly embellished
the door post down below ; and, as the afternoon
shadows deepened, the owner of that name himself ap-
peared, from overlooking a painter whom Doctor Ma-
nette had employed to add to the list the name of
Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay.
In the universal fear and distrust that darkened the
time, all the usual harmless ways of life were changed.
In the Doctor’s little household, as in very many others,
the articles of daily consumption that were wanted,
were purchased every evening, in small quantities, and
at various small shops. To avoid attracting notice, and
to give as little occasion as possible for talk and envy,
was the general desire.
Eor some months past, Miss Pross and Mr. Cruncher
had discharged the office of purveyors; the former car-
rying the money; the latter, the basket. Every after-
moon at about the time when the public lamps were
lighted, they fared forth on this duty, and made and
brought home such purchases as were needful. Al-
though Miss Pross, through her long association with a
French family, might have known as much of their
language as of her own, if she had had a mind, she had
no mind in that direction; consequently she knew no
more of “that nonsense * (as she was pleased to call it),
than Mr. Cruncher did. So her manner of marketing
was to plump a noun-substantive at the head of a shop-
keeper without any introduction in the nature of an ar-
ticle, and, if it happened not to be the name of the
thing she wanted, to look round for that thing, lay hold
of it, and hold on by it until the bargain was concluded.
She always made a bargain for it, by holding up, as a
statement of its just price, one finger less than the mer-
chant held up, whatever his number might be.
“Now, Mr. Cruncher,” said Miss Pross, whose eyes
were red with felicity; “if you are ready, I am.”
A KNOCK AT THE DOOR. 2S5
Jerry hoarsely professed himself at Miss Pross's
service. He had worn all his rust off long ago, but
nothing would file his spiky head down.
“There’s all manner of things wanted,” said Miss
Pross, “ and we shall have a precious time of it. We
want wine among the rest. Nice toasts these Redheads
will be drinking wherever we buy it.”
“It will be much the same to your knowledge, miss,
I should think,” retorted Jerry, “whether they drink
your health or the Old Un’s.”
“Who’s he?” said Miss ProSS.
Mr. Cruncher, with some diffidence, explained himself
as meaning ‘‘ Old Nick’s.”
“Ha!” said Miss Pross, “it doesn’t need an inter-
preter to explain the meaning of these creatures. They
have but one, and it’s Midnight Murder, and Mischief.”
“Hush, dear! Pray, pray be cautious!” cried Lucie.
“Yes, yes, yes, I’ll be cautious,” said Miss Pross;
“but I may say among ourselves, that I do hope there
will be no oniony, and tobaccoey Smotherings in the
form of embracings all round, going on in the streets.
Now, Ladybird, never you stir from that fire till I come
back. Take care of the dear husband you have recov-
ered, and don’t move your pretty head from his shoul-
der as you have it now, till you see me again! May I
ask a question, Doctor Manette, before I go?”
“I think you may take that liberty,’” the Doctor
answered, smiling. r
“For gracious sake, don’t talk about Liberty; we
have quite enough of that,” said Miss Pross.
‘‘Hush, dear! Again?” Lucie remonstrated.
“Well, my sweet,” said Miss Pross, nodding her head
emphatically, “the short and the long of it is, that I
am a subject of His Most Gracious Majesty King George
the Third; ” Miss Pross curtseyed at the name; “and
as such, my maxim is, Confound their politics, Frus-
trate their knavish tricks, On him our hopes we fix,
God save the King!” .
Mr. Cruncher, in an excess of loyalty, growlingly
repeated the words after Miss Pross, like somebody at
church.
“I am glad you have so much of the Englishman in
you, though I wish you had never taken that cold in
your voice,” said Miss Pross, approvingly. “But the
280 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
question, Doctor Manette. Is there’—it was the good
creature's way to affect to make light of anything that
was a great anxiety with them all, and to come at it in
this chance manner—“is there any prospect yet, of our
getting out of this place?” -
“I fear not yet. It would be dangerous for Charles
yet.” -
“Heigh-ho-hum!'” said Miss Pross, cheerfully re-
ressing a sigh as she glanced at her darling’s golden
air in the light of the fire, “then we must have
Fº and wait: that’s all. We must hold up our
heads and fight low, as my brother Solomon used to
j Now, Mr. Cruncher!—Dont’t you move, Lady-
)ird l’” - -
. They went out, leaving Lucie, and her husband, her
father, and the child, by a bright fire. Mr. Lorry was
expected back presently from the Banking House.
|Miss Pross had lighted the lamp, but had put it aside
in a corner, that they might enjoy the firelight undis-
turbed. Little Lucie sat by her grandfather with her
hands clasped through his arm; and he, in a tone not
rising much above a whisper, began to tell her a story
of a great and powerful Fairy who had opened a prison-
wall and let out a captive who had once done the Fairy
a service. All was subdued and quiet, and Lucie was
Imore at ease than she had been.
“What is that!” she cried, all at once. •
“My dear!” said her father, stopping in his story,
and laying his hand on hers, “command yourself.
What a disordered state you are in! The least thing—
nothing—startles you. You, your father’s daughter?”
“I thought, my father,” said Lucie, excusing herself,
with a pale face and in a faltering voice, “that I heard
strange feet upon the stairs.” - - - -
“My love, the staircase is as still as death.”
As he said the word a blow was struck upon the door.
“O father, father. What can this be! Hide Charles.
Save him!”
“My child,” said the Doctor, rising and laying his
hand upon her shoulder, “I have saved him. What
weakness is this, my dear! Let me go to the door.”
He took the lamp in his hand, crossed the two inter-
vening Outer rooms, and opened it. A rude clattering
of feet over the floors, and four rough men in red caps,
2-- - -- ~ *
# - ſº
ºf IA :
22:…
ºlſº
£º
<< ... adº
ºf . ºf " . . . . *
!º
2 ºz. % º Ž
*A. º
ſ: º
|
}
jºſº... .
º 3 * sº
º º, ºr 22
Zarzººm;
! ..
º:


A KNOCK AT THE DOOR. 28?
armed with sabres and pistols, entered the room.
“The Citizen Evrémonde, called Darnay,” said the
first. -
“Who seeks him?” answered Darnay.
“I seek him. We seek him. I know you, Evrémonde;
I saw you before the Tribunal to-day. You are again
the prisoner of the Republic.” -
The four surrounded him, where he stood with his
wife and child clinging to him.
“Tell me how and why am I again a prisoner?”
“It is enough that you return straight to the Con-
ciergerie, and will know to-morrow. You are sum-
moned for to-morrow.” -
Doctor Manette, whom this visitation had so turned
into stone, that he stood with the lamp in his hand, as
if he were a statue made to hold it, moved after these
words were spoken, put the lamp down, and confronting
the speaker, and taking him, not ungently, by the loose
front of his red woollen shirt, said:
‘‘You know him, you have said. Do you know
Ime?” -
“Yes, I know you, Citizen Doctor.” - -
“We all know you, Citizen Doctor,” said the other'
three. - -
. He looked abstractedly from one to another, and said,
in a lower voice, after a pause: -
“Will you answer his question to me then? How
does this happen?” ; :
“Citizen Doctor,” said the first, reluctantly: “he has
been denounced to the Section of Saint Antoine. This
citizen,” pointing out the second who had entered, “is
from Saint Antoine.” - -
The citizen here indicated nodded his head, and
added: - - -
“He is accused by Saint Antoine.”
“Of what?” asked the Doctor.
“Citizen Doctor,” said the first, with his former re-
luctance, “ask no more. If the Republic demands
sacrifices from you, without doubt you as a good patriot
will be happy to make them. The Republic goes be-
fore all. The People is Supreme. Evrémonde, we are
pressed.” * ,
“One word,” the Doctor entreated. “Will you tell
me who denounced him?”
288 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“It is against rule,” answered the first; “but you
can ask Him of Saint Antoine here.” -
The Doctor turned his eyes upon that man. Who
moved uneasily on his feet, rubbed his beard a little,
and at length said:
“Well! Truly it is against rule. But he is denounced
. —and gravely—by the Citizen and Citizeness Defarge.
And by one other.”
“What Other?”
“Do you ask, Citizen Doctor?”
“Yes.” -
“Then,” said he of Saint Antoine, with a strange look,
“you will be answered to-morrow. Now, I am äumbº”
CHAPTER VIII.
A H A N D A T C A R D S.
E APPILY unconscious of the new calamity at home,
Miss Pross, threaded her way along the narrow
streets and crossed the river by the bridge of the Pont-
Neuf, reckoning in her mind the number of indispen-
sable purchases she had to make. Mr. Cruncher, with
the basket, walked at her side. They both looked to
the right and to the left into most of the shops they
passed, had a wary eye. for all gregarious assemblages
of people, and turned out of their road to avoid any very
excited group of talkers. It was a raw evening, and
the misty river, blurred to the eye with blazing lights
and to the ear with harsh noises, showed where the
barges were stationed in which the Smiths worked,
making guns for the Army of the Republic. Woe to
the man who played tricks with that Army, or got un-
deserved promotion in it! Better for him that his beard
º never grown, for the National Razor shaved him
ClOS62.
Having purchased a few small articles of grocery, and
a measure of oil for the lamp, Miss Pross bethought
herself of the wine they wanted. After peeping into
several wine shops, she stopped at the sign of The Good
Republican Brutus of Antiquity, not far from the Na-
tional Palace, once (and twice) the Tuileries, where the
A HAND AT CARDS. 289
-
aspect of things rather took her fancy. It had a quieter
look than any other place of the same description they
had passed, and, though red with patriotic caps, was
not so red as the rest. Sounding Mr. Cruncher and
finding him of her opinion, Miss Pross resorted to the
Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, attended by her
cavalier. -
Slightly observant of the smoky lights; of the people,
pipe in mouth, playing with limp cards and yellow
dominoes; of the One bare-breasted, bare-armed, soot-
begrimed workman reading a journal aloud, and of the
others listening to him; of the weapons worn, or laid
aside to be resumed; of the two or three customers
fallen forward asleep, who in the popular, high-shoul-
dered shaggy black Spencer looked, in that attitude,
like slumbering bears or dogs; the two outlandish cus-
tomers approached the counter, and showed what they
wanted. -
As their wine was measuring out, a man parted from
another man in the corner, and rose to depart. In
...; he had to face Miss Pross. . No sooner did he
#. er, than Miss Pross uttered a scream, and clapped
her hands.
In a moment, the whole company were on their feet.
That somebody was assassinated, by somebody vindi-
cating a difference of º was the likeliest occur-
rence. Everybody looked to see somebody fall, but
only saw a man and a woman Standing staring at each
other; the man with all the outward aspect of a French-
man and a thorough Republican; the woman, evidently
English.
What was said in this dissapointing anti-climax, by
the disciples of the Good Republican Brutus of Anti-
quity, except that it was something very voluble and
loud, would have been as so much Hebrew or Chaldean
to Miss Pross and her protector, though they had
been all ears. But they had no ears for anything in
their surprise. For, it must be recorded, that not only
was Miss Pross lost in amazement and agitation; but,
Mr. Cruncher—though it seemed on his own separate and
individual account—was in a state of the greatest wonder.
“What is the matter?” said the man who had caused
Miss Pross to scream; speaking in a vexed abrupt voice
(though in a low tone) and in English.
WOL. I. 19 e
290 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“Oh, Solomon, dear Solomon!” cried Miss Pross, clap-
ping her hands again. “After not setting eyes upon
you or hearing of you for So long a time, do I find you
here!” -
“Don’t call me Solomon. Do you want to be the
death of me?” asked the man in a furtive frightened
' Wa, W. -
*Brother, brother!” cried Miss Pross, bursting into
tears. “Have I ever been so hard with you that you
ask me such a cruel question!”
“Then hold your meddlesome tongue,” said Solomon,
“ and come out, if you want to speak to me. Pay for
your wine and come out. Who's this man?” .
Miss Pross shaking her loving and dejected head at
her by no means affectionate brother, said, through her
tears, “Mr Cruncher.”
“Let him come out too,” said Solomon. “Does he
think me a ghost?”
Apparently, Mr. Cruncher did, to judge from his looks.
He said not a word, however, and Miss Pross, exploring
the depths of her reticule through her tears with great
difficulty, paid for the wine. As she did so, Solomon
turned to the followers of the Good Republican Bru-
tus of Antiquity, and offered a few words of explana-
tion in the French language, which caused them all to
relapse into their former places and pursuits.
“Now,” said Solomon, stopping at the dark street
corner, “what do you want?”
“How dreadfully unkind in a brother nothing has
ever turned my love away from!” cried Miss Pross “to
give me such a greeting, and show me no affection.”
... “There. Confound it! There,” said Solomon, making
a dab at Miss Pross's lips with his own. “Now are
you content?”
Miss Pross only shook her head and wept in silence.
“If you expect me to be surprised,” said her brother
Solomon, “I am not surprised; I knew you were here;
I know of most people who are here. If you really
don’t want to endanger my existence—which I half
believe you do—go your ways as soon as possible, and
let me go mine. I am busy. I am an official.”
“My English brother Solomon,” mourned Miss Pross,
casting up her tear-fraught eyes, “that had the
makings in him of one of the best and greatest of men
-**
A HAND AT CARDS. 291
in his native Country, an Official among foreigners, and
such foreigners I would almost sooner have seen the
dear boy lying in his 35
“I said so I’’ cried her brother interrupting. “I
knew it. You Want to be the death of me. I shall be
rendered Suspected, by my own sister. Just as I am
getting onl’ y
“The gracious and merciful Heavens forbid ’’ cried
Miss Pross. “Far rather would I never see you again,
dear Solomon, though I have ever loved you truly, and
ever shall. Say but one affectionate word to me, and
tell me there is nothing angry or estranged between
us, and I will detain you no longer.”
Good Miss Pross | As if the estrangement between
them had come of any culpability of hers. As if Mr.
Lorry had not known it for a fact, years ago, in the
quiet corner in Soho, that this precious brother had
spent her money and left her
He was saying the affectionate word, however,
with a far more grudging condescension and patronage
than he could have shown if their relative merits
and positions had been reversed (which is invariably
the case, all the world over), when Mr. Cruncher, touch-
ing him on the shoulder, hoarsely and unexpectedly
interposed with the following singular question:
“I say ! Might I ask the favour P. As to whether
your name is John Solomon, or Solomon John?”
The official turned towards him with sudden dis-
trust. He had not previously uttered a word.
“Come !” said Mr. Cruncher. “Speak out, you
know.” (Which, by the way, was more than he
could do himself.) “John Solomon, or Solomon
John P. She calls you Solomon, and she must know,
being your sister. And I know you’re John, you
know. Which of the two goes first P And regarding
that name of Pross, likewise. That warn’t your name
Over the water.”
“What do you mean P” -
“Well, I don’t know all I mean, for I can’t call to
ming what your name was, over the water.”
6 & O? 52 ;
“No. But I’ll swear it was a name of two syllables.”
‘‘Indeed!” -
“Yes. T’other one’s was one syllable. I know you.
sº
292 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
You was a spy-witness at the Bailey. What in the
name of the Father of Lies, own father to yourself, was
you called at that time P”
“Barsad,” said another voice, striking in.
J ...hars the name for a thousand pound !” cried
OſłIl.
The speaker who struck in, was Sydney Carton.
He had his hands behind him under the skirts of his
riding-coat, and he stood at Mr. Cruncher's elbow as
hºgently as he might have stood at the Old Bailey
1US®II. }
‘‘Don’t be alarmed, my dear Miss Pross. I arrived
at Mr. Lorry’s, to his surprise, yesterday evening ; we
agreed that I would not present myself elsewhere until
all was well, or unless I could be useful ; I present my-
self here, to beg a little talk with your brother. I wish
you had a better employed brother than Mr. Barsad.
I wish for your sake Mr. Barsad was not a Sheep of
the Prisons.”
Sheep was a cant word of the time for a spy, under
the gaolers. The Spy, who was pale, turned paler and
asked him how he dared 92 y
“I’ll tell you,” said Sydney. “I lighted on you, Mr.
Barsad, coming out of the prison of the Conciergerie
while I was contemplating the walls, an hour or more
ago. You have a face to be remembered, and I remem-
ber faces well. , Made curious by seeing you in that
connexion, and having a reason, to which you are no
Stranger, for associating you with the misfortunes of a
friend now very unfortunate, I walked in your direction.
I walked into the wine-shop here, close after you, and
sat near you. I had no difficulty in deducing from
your unreserved conversation, and the rumour openly
going about among your admirers, the nature of your
calling. And gradually, what I had done at random,
seemed to shape itself into a purpose, Mr. Barsad l’
“What purpose ?” the spy asked.
“It would be troublesome, and might be dangerous,
to explain in the street. Could you favour me, in con-
fidence, with some minutes of your company—at the
office of Tellson’s Bank, for instance?”
“ Under a threat?”
“Oh! Did I say that!”
“Then why should I go there?”
A HAND AT CARDS. 293
“Really, Mr. Barsad, I can’t say, if you can't.”
“Do you mean that you won’t say, sir?” the spy ir-
resolutely asked. l
“You apprehend me very clearly, Mr. Barsad. I
won’t.
Carton’s negligent recklessness of manner came power-
fully in aid of his quickness and skill, in such a business
as he had in his secret mind, and with such a man as
he had to do with. His practised eye saw it, and made
the most of it.
“Now, I told you so,” said the spy, casting a reproach-
ful look at his sister; “if any trouble comes of this, it’s
your doing.”
“Come, come, Mr. Barsad!” exclaimed Sydney. “Don’t
be ungrateful. But for my great respect for your sister,
I might not have led up so pleasantly to a little proposal
that I wish to make for our mutual satisfaction. Do
you go with me to the Bank?”
* “I’ll hear what you have got to say. Yes, I’ll go
with you.” - -
‘‘I propose that we first conduct your sister safely to
the corner of her own street. Let me take your arm,
Miss Pross. This is not a good city, at this time, for
you to be out in, unprotected; and as your escort knows
Mr. Barsad, I will invite him to Mr. Lorry’s with us.
Are we ready? Come then!”
Miss Pross recalled soon afterwards, and to the end
of her life remembered, that as she pressed her hands
on Sydney’s arm and looked up in his face, imploring
him to do no hurt to Solomon, there was a braced pur-
pose in the arm and a kind of inspiration in the eyes,
which not only contradicted his light manner, but
changed and raised the man. She was too much occu-
pied then, with fears for the brother who so little de-
served her affection, and with Sydney's friendly reas-
surances, adequately to heed what she observed.
They left her at the corner of the street, and Carton
led the way to Mr. Lorry’s, which was within a few
minutes' walk. John Barsad, or Solomon Pross, Walked
at his side.
Mr. Lorry had just finished his dinner, and was sit-
ting before a cheery little log or two of fire—perhaps
looking into their blaze for the picture of that younger
elderly gentleman from Tellson's, who had looked into
294 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
the red coals at the Royal George at Dover, now a good
many years ago. He turned his head as they entered,
and showed the surprise with which he saw a stran-
€I’. --
9. Miss Pross's brother, sir,” said Sydney. “Mr. Bar-
sad.”
“Barsad?” repeated the old gentleman, “Barsad? I
have an association with the name—and with the face.”
“I told you you had a remarkable face, Mr. Barsad,”
observed Carton, coolly. “Pray sit down.”
As he took a chair himself, he supplied the link that
Mr. Lorry wanted, by saying to him with a frown,
“Witness at that trial.” Mr. Lorry immediately re-
membered, and regarded his new visitor with an un-
disguised look of abhorrence. .
“Mr. Barsad has been recognised by Miss Pross as
the affectionate brother you have heard of,” said Syd-
ney, “and has acknowledged the relationship. I pass
to worse news. Darnay has been arrested again.”
Struck with consternation, the old gentleman ex-
claimed, “What do you tell me! I left him safe and
; within these two hours, and am about to return to
im!” *
“Arrested for all that. When was it done, Mr.
Barsad?”
“Just now, if at all.”
“Mr. Barsad is the best authority possible, sir,” said
Sydney, “and I have it from Mr. Barsad’s communi-
cation to a friend and brother Sheep over a bottle of
wine, that the arrest has taken place. He left the mes-
sengers at the gate, and saw them admitted by the por-
ter. There is no earthly doubt that he is retaken.” -
Mr. Lorry’s business eye read in the speaker’s face
that it was loss of time to dwell upon the point. Con-
fused, but sensible that something might depend on his
presence of mind, he commanded himself, and was
silently attentive.
“Now, I trust,” said Sydney to him, “that the name
and influence of Doctor Manette may stand him in as
good stead to-morrow—you said he would be before the
Tribunal again to-morrow, Mr. Barsad?—”
“Yes; iſ believe so.” s
“–In as good stead to-morrow as to-day. But it may
not be so. I own to you, I am shaken, Mr. Lorry, by
A HAND A T. CARDS. 295
Doctor Manette's not having had the power to prevent
this arrest.” - - -
“He may not have known of it beforehand,” said Mr.
Lorry. . -
“But that very circumstance would be alarming, when
we remember how identified he is with his son-in-law.”
That’s true,” Mr. Lorry acknowledged, with his
troubled hand at his chin, and his troubled eyes on
Carton. . •
“In short,” said Sydney, “this is a desperate time,
when desperate games are played for desperate stakes.
Let the Doctor play the winning game; I will play the
losing one. No man’s life here is worth purchase. Any
one carried home by the people to-day, may be con-
demned to-morrow. Now, the stake I have resolved to
play for, in case of the worst, is a friend in the Con-
ciergerie. And the friend I purpose to myself to win,
is Mr. Barsad.”
“You need have good cards, sir,” said the spy.
“I’ll run them over. I’ll see what I hold.—Mr. Lorry,
you know what a brute I am; I wish you’d give me a
little brandy.”
It was put before him, and he drank off a glassful—
drank off another glassful—pushed the bottle thought-
fully away.
“Mr. Barsad,” he went on, in the tone of one who
really was looking over a hand at cards: “Sheep of the
risons, emissary of Republican committees, now turn-
ey, now prisoner, always spy and secret informer, so
much the more valuable here for being English that an
Englishman is less Open to Suspicion of subormation in
those characters than a Frenchman, represents himself
to his employers under a false name. That’s a very good
card. Mr. Barsad, now in the employ of the republican
French government, was formerly in the employ of the
aristocratic English government, the enemy of France
and freedom. That’s an excellent card. Inference
clear as day in this region of suspicion, that Mr. Barsad,
still in the pay of the aristocratic English government,
is the spy of Pitt, the treacherous foe of the Republic
crouching in its bosom, the English traitor and agent of
all mischief so much spoken of and so difficult to find.
That’s a card not to be beaten. Have you followed my
hand, Mr. Barsad?” - -
296 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“Not to understand your play,” returned the spy,
somewhat uneasily. - » -
“I play my Ace, Denunciation of Mr. Barsad to the
nearest Section Committee. Look over your hand, Mr.
Barsad, and see what you have. Don’t hurry.”
He drew the bottle near, poured out another glassful
of brandy, and drank it off. He saw that the spy was
fearful of his drinking himself into a fit state for the
immediate denunciation of him. Seeing it, he poured
out and drank another glassful.
“Look over your hand carefully, Mr. Barsad. Take
time.”
It was a poorer hand than he suspected. Mr. Barsad
saw losing cards in it that Sydney Carton knew nothing
of. Thrown out of his honourable employment in
England, through too much unsuccessful hard swearing
there—not because he was not wanted there; our Eng-
lish reasons for vaunting Our Superiority to secrecy
and spies are of very modern date—he knew that he
had crossed the Channel, and accepted service in
France : first, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among
his own countrymen there : gradually, as a tempter and
an eavesdropper among the natives. He knew that
under the overthrown government he had been a spy
upon Saint Antoine and Defarge's wine-shop ; had
received from the watchful police such heads of infor-
mation concerning Doctor Manette’s imprisonment,
release, and history, as should serve him for an intro-
duction to familiar conversation with the Defarges; and
tried them on Madame Defarge, and had broken down
with them signally. He always remembered with fear
and trembling, that that terrible woman had knitted
when he talked with her, and had looked Ominously at
him as her fingers moved. He had since seen her, in
the Section of Saint Antoine, over and over again pro-
duce her knitted registers, and denounce people whose
lives the guillotine then surely swallowed up. He
knew, as every one employed as he was, did, that he
was never safe; that flight was impossible; that he was
tied fast under the shadow of the axe; and that in
spite of his utmost tergiversation and treachery in
furtherance of the reigning terror, a word might bring
it down upon him. Once denounced, and on such grave
grounds as had just now been suggested to his mind, he
A HAND AT CARDS. - 29%
foresaw that the dreadful woman of whose unrelenting
character he had seen many proofs, would produce
against him that fatal register, and would quash his
last chance of life. Besides that all secret men are men
soon terrified, here were surely cards enough of one
black suit, to justify the holder in growing rather livid
as he turned them over.
“You scarcely seem to like your hand,” said Sydney,
with the greatest composure. “Do you play?”
“I think, sir,” said the spy, in the meanest manner,
as he turned to Mr. Lorry, “I may appeal to a gentle-
man of your years and benevolence, to put it to this
other gentleman, so much your junior, whether he can
under any circumstances reconcile it to his station to
play that Ace of which he has spoken. I admit that I
am a spy, and that it is considered a discreditable
station—though it must be filled by somebody; but this
gentleman is no spy, and why should he so demean
himself as to make himself one?” -
* I play my Ace, Mr. Barsad,” said Carton, taking
the answer on himself, and looking at his watch, “with-
out any scruple, in a very few minutes.” -
“I should have hoped, gentlemen both,” said the spy,
always striving to hook Mr. Lorry into the discussion,
“ that your respect for my sister —”
“I could not better testify my º for your sister
than by finally relieving her of her brother,” said
Sydney Carton. -
“You think not, sir?”
“I have thoroughly made up my mind about it.”
The smooth manner of the spy, curiously in disso-
nance with his ostentatiously rough dress, and probably
with his usual demeanour, received such a check
from the inscrutability of Carton,--who was a mystery
to wiser and honester men than he—that it faltered
here and failed him. While he was at a loss, Carton
said, resuming his former air of contemplating cards:
“And indeed, now I think again, I have a strong
impression that I have another good card here, not yet
enumerated. That friend and fellow-Sheep, who spoke
of himself as pasturing in the country prisons; who
was he P” -
“French. You don’t know him,” said the spy,
quickly. * .
298 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
“ French, eh?” repeated Carton, musing, and not
appearing to notice him at all, though he echoed his
word. “Well; he may be.” . -
“Is, I assure you,” said the spy; “though it’s not
important.” -
“Though it’s not important,” repeated Carton, in the
same mechanical way—‘‘ though it’s not important —
No, it’s not important. No. Yet I know the face.”
‘‘I think not. I am sure not. It can’t be,” said the
Spy. -
“It—can’t-be,” muttered Sydney Carton, retrospect-
ively, and filling his glass (which fortunately was a
small one) again. “Can't—be. Spoke good French.
Yet like a foreigner, I thought?”
“Provincial,” said the spy.
“No. Foreign l’ cried Carton, striking his open hand
on the table, as a light broke clearly on his mind. “Cly!
Disguised, but the same man. We had that man before
us at the old Bailey.”
“Now, there you are hasty, sir,” said Barsad with a
Smile that gave his aquiline nose an extra inclination to
One side; “there you really give me an advantage over
you. Cly (who I will unreservedly admit, at this distance
of time, was a partner of mine) has been dead several
years. I attended him in his last illness. He was
buried in London, at the church of Saint Pancras-in-the-
Fields. His unpopularity with the blackguard multitude
at the moment, prevented my following his remains,
but I helped to lay him in his coffin.” -
Here, Mr. Lorry became aware, from where he sat, of
a most remarkable goblin shadow on the wall. Tracing
it to its source, he discovered it to be caused by a sudden
extraordinary rising and stiffening of all the risen and
stiff hair on Mr. Cruncher’s head. s
“Let us be reasonable,” said the spy, “and let us be
fair. To show you how mistaken you are, and what an
unfounded assumption yours is, I will lay before you a
certificate of Cly’s burial, which I happen to have car-
ried in my pocket-book,” with a hurried hand he pro-
duced and opened it, “ever since. There it is. Oh,
look at it, look at it! You may take it in your hand ;
it’s no forgery.” *
Here, Mr. Lorry perceived the reflection on the wall
to elongate, and Mr. Cruncher rose and stepped for-
f
A HAND AT CARDS. 299.
ward. . His hair could not have been more violently
on end, if it had been that moment dressed by the
º with the crumpled horn in the house that Jack
uilt. -
Unseen by the spy, Mr. Cruncher stood at his side,
tºuched him on the shoulder like a ghostly
8,1}II. -
“That there Roger Cly, master,” said Mr. Cruncher,
with a taciturn and iron-bound visage. “So you put
him in his coffin?”
“I did.” -
** Who took him. Out Of it?”
Barsad leaned back in his chair, and stammered,
“What do you mean P”
‘‘I mean,” said Mr. Cruncher, “that he warn’t never
in it. No | Not he I’ll have my head took off, if he
was ever in it.”
The ; looked round at the two gentlemen ; they
both looked in unspeakable astonishment at Jerry.
“I tell you,” said Jerry, “that you buried paving-
stones and earth in that there coffin. Don’t go and tell
me that you buried Cly. It was a take in. Me and two
more knows it.”
“How do you know it P”
“What's that to you ? Ecod!” growled Mr.
Cruncher, “it’s you I have got a old grudge again, is
it, with your shameful impositions upon tradesmen!
I’d catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a
guinea.”
Sydney Carton, who with Mr. Lorry, had been lost
in amazement at this turn of the business, here re-
quested Mr. Cruncher to moderate and explain himself.
“At another time, sir,” he returned evasively, “the
present time is ill-convenient for explainin’. What I
stand to, is, that he knows well wot that there Ciy was
never in that there coffin. Let him say he was, in so
much as a word of one syllable, and I’ll either catch
hold of his throat and choke him for half a guinea; ”
Mr. Cruncher dwelt upon this as quite a liberal offer;
‘‘ or I’ll Out and announce him.”
“Humph : I see one thing,” said Carton. “I hold
another card, Mr. Barsad. Impossible, here in raging
Paris, with Suspicion filling the air, for you to outlive
denunciation, when you are in communication with
300 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
another aristocratic spy of the same antecedents as
yourself, who moreover, has the mystery about him of
having feigned death and come to life again! A plot in
the prisons, of the foreigner against the Republic. A
strong card—a certain Guillotine card! Do you play?”
“No !” returned the spy. “I throw up. I confess
that we were so unpopular with the outrageous mob,
that I only got away from England at the risk of being
ducked to death, and that Cly was so ferreted up and
down, that he never would have got away at all but
for that sham. Though how this man knows it was a
sham, is a wonder of wonders to me.”
“Never you trouble your head about this man,” re-
torted the contentious Mr. Cruncher ; “ you’ll have
trouble enough with giving your attention to that
gentleman. And look here ! Once more l’—Mr.
Cruncher could not be restrained from making rather
an Ostentatious parade of his liberality—“I’ll catch
hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea.”
The Sheep of the prisons turned from him to Sydney
Carton, and said, with more decision. “It has come to
a point. I go on duty soon, and can’t Overstay my
time. You told me you had a proposal ; what is it?
Now, it is of no use asking too much of me. Ask me
to do anything in my office, putting my head in great
extra danger, and I had better trust my life to the
chances of a refusal than the chances of consent. In short,
I should make that choice. You talk of desperation.
We are all desperate here. Remember 1 I may de-
nounce you if I think proper, and I can Swear my way
through stone walls, and so can others. Now, what
do you want with me?”
“Not very much. You are a turnkey at the Con-
ciergerie?”
“I tell you once for all, there is no such thing as an
escape possible,” said the spy firmly.
“Why need you tell me what I have not asked P You
are a turnkey at the Conciergerie?”
“I am sometimes.”
“You can be when you choose?”
‘‘I can pass in and out when I choose.”
Sydney Carton filled another glass with brandy,
poured it slowly out upon the hearth, and watched it
as it dropped. It being all spent, he said rising:
THE GAME MADE. 301
“So far, we have spoken before, these two, because
it was as well that the merits of the cards should not
rest solely between you and me. Come into the dark
room here, and let us have One final Word alone.”
*—
CHAPTER IX.
T H E G AM E M A D E. e.
Wºº Sydney Carton and the Sheep of the prisons
were in the adjoining dark room speaking so low
that not a sound was heard, Mr. Lorry looked at Jerry
in considerable doubt and mistrust. That honest
tradesman’s manner of receiving the look, did not in-
spire confidence; he changed the leg on which he
rested, as often as if he had fifty of those limbs, and
were trying them all; he examined his finger-nails with
a very questionable closeness of attention; and when-
ever Mr. Lorry’s eye caught his, he was taken with that
eculiar kind of short cough requiring the hollow of a
i. before it, which is seldom, if ever, known to be an
infirmity attendant on perfect openness of character.
“Jerry, said Mr. Lorry. “Come here.”
Mr, Cruncher came forward side ways, with one of
his shoulders in advance of him.
“What have you been besides a messenger?”
After some cogitation, accompanied with an intent
look at his patron, Mr. Cruncher conceived the luminous
idea of replying, “Agricultooral character.”
“My mind misgives me much,” said Mr. Lorry,
angrily shaking a forefinger at him, ‘ that you have
used the respectable and great house of Tellson's as a
blind, and that you have had an unlawful Occupation
of an infamous description. If you have, don’t expect
me to befriend you when you get back to England. If
you have don’t expect me to keep your secret. Tellson's
shall not be imposed upon.”
“I hope, sir,” pleaded the abashed Mr. Cruncher, “that
a gentleman like yourself wot I’ve had the honour of
odd jobbing till I’m grey at it, would think twice, about
harming of me, even if it wos so—I don’t say it is, but
302 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
even if it wos. And which it is to be took into account
that if it wos, it wouldn’t, even then, be all o' one side.
There’d be two sides to it. There might be medical
doctors at the present hour, a picking up their guineas
where a honest tradesman don’t pick up his fardens—
fardens! no, nor yet his half fardens—half fardens;
no, nor yet his quarter—a banking away like Smoke at
Tellson’s, and a cocking their medical eyes at that
tradesman on the sly, a going in and going out to their
own carriages—ah equally like Smoke, if not more so.
Well, that 'ud be imposing, too, On Tellson's. For you
cannot sarse the goose and not the gander. And here's
Mrs. Cruncher, or leastways wos in the Old England
times, and would be to-morrow, if cause given, a
floppin’ again the business to that degree as is ruinat-
ing—stark ruinating ! Whereas them medical doctors’
wives don’t flop—catch 'em at it ! Or, if they flop, their
floppings goes in favour of more patients, and how can
you rightly have one without the t'other ? Then, wot
with undertakers, and wot with parish clerks, and wot,
with sextons, and wot with private watchmen (all
awaricious and all in it), a man wouldn’t get much by
it, even if it wos so. And wot little a man did get,
would never prosper with him, Mr. Lorry. He’d never
have no good of it ; he want all along to be out of the
line, if he could see his way out, being once in—even if
it wos so.”
“ Ugh !” cried Mr. Lorry, rather relenting, never-
theless. “I am shocked at the sight of you.”
“Now, what I would humbly offer to you, sir,” pur-
sued Mr. Cruncher, “even if it wos so, which I don’t
say it is 22 -.
“Don’t prevaricate,” said Mr. Lorry.
“No, I will mot, sir,” returned Mr. Cruncher, as if
nothing were further from his thoughts or practice—
“ which I don’t say it is—wot I would humbly offer to
you, sir, would be this. Upon that there stool, at that
there Bar, sets that there boy of mine, brought up and
growed up to be a man, wot will errand you, message
you, general-light-job you, till your heels is where your
head is, if such should be your wishes. If it wos so,
which I still don’t say it is (for I will not prewaricate
to you, sir), let that there boy keep his father's
place, and take care of his mother ; don’t blow upon
THE GAME MADE. 303
that boy’s father—do not do it, sir—and let that father
O into the line of the regºlar diggin', and make amends
or what he would have un-dug–if it wos so—by
diggin' of ’em in with a will, and with convictions
respectin’ the futur” keepin’ of 'em safe. That, Mr.
Lorry,” said Mr. Cruncher, wiping his forehead with
his arm, as an announcement that he had arrived at
the peroration of his discourse, “is wot I would respect-
fully offer to you, sir. A man don’t see all this here a
goin’ On dreadful round him, in the way of Subjects
without heads, dear me, plentiful enough fur to brin
the price down to porterage and hardly that, without
havin his serious thoughts of things. And these here
would be mine, if it wos so, entreatin’ of you fur to
bear in mind that wot I said just now, I up and said in
the good cause when I might have kep' it back.”
“That at least is true,” said Mr. Lorry. “Say no
more now. It may be that I shall yet stand your
friend, if you deserve it, and repent in action—not in
words. I want no more words.”
Mr. Cruncher knuckled his forehead, as Sydney
Carton and the spy returned from the dark room.
“Adieu, Mr. Barsad!” said the former. “our arrange-
ment thus made, you have nothing to fear from me.”
He sat down in a chair on the hearth, Over against
Mr. Lorry. When they were alone, Mr. Lorry asked
him what he had done P
“Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I
have ensured access to him, once.”
Mr. Lorry’s countenance fell.
“It is all I could do,” said Carton. “To propose too
much, would be to put this man’s head under the axe,
and, as he himself said, nothing Worse could happen to
him if he were denounced. It was obviously, the
weakness of the position. There is no help for it.”
“But access to him,” said Mr. Lorry, “if it should go
ill before the tribunal, will not save him.”
‘‘I never said it would.”
Mr. Lorry’s eyes gradually sought the fire ; his
sympathy with his darling, and the heavy disappoint-
ment of this second arrest, gradually weakened them;
he was an old man now, overborne with anxiety of late,
and his tears fell. -
“You are a good man and a true friend,” said Carton,
304 :A TALE OF Two CITIES.
in an altered voice. “Forgive me if I notice that you
are affected. I could not see my father weep, and sit
by, careless. And I could not respect your sorrow
more, if you were my father. You are free from that
misfortune, however.”
Though he said the last words, with a slip into his
usual manner, there was a true feeling and respect
both in his tone and in his touch, that Mr. Lorry, who
had never seen the better side of him, was wholly
unprepared for. He gave him his hand, and Carton
gently presséd it. -
“To return to poor Darnay,” said Carton. “Don’t
tell Her of this interview, or this arrangement. It
would not enable Her to go to see him. She might think
it was contrived, in case of the worst, to convey to him
the means of anticipating the sentence.”
Mr. Lorry had not thought of that, and he looked
Quickly at Carton to see if it were in his mind. It
seemed to be; he returned the look, and evidently
understood it.
“She might think a thousand things,” Carton said,
‘‘ and any of them would only add to her trouble.
Don’t speak of me to her. As I said to you when I first
came, I had better not see her. I can put my hand Out,
to do any little helpful work for her that my hand can
find to do, without that. You are going to her, I hope?
She must be very desolate to-night.”
“I am going now, directly.”
“I am glad of that. She has such a strong attach-
ment to you and reliance on you. How does she look?”
Aious and unhappy, but very beautiful.”
* G & | 22
It was a long, grieving sound, like a sigh—almost like
a sob. It attracted Mr. Lorry’s eyes to Carton’s face,
which was turned to the fire. A light, or a shade (the
old gentleman could not have said which), passed from
it as swiftly as a change will sweep over a hill-side On
a wild bright day, and he lifted his foot to put back one
of the little flaming logs, which was tumbling forward.
He wore the white riding-coat and top-boots, then in
vogue, and the light of the fire º light Sur-
faces made him look very pale, with his long brown
hair, all untrimmed, hanging loose about him. His in-
difference to fire was sufficiently remarkable to elicit a
THE GAME MADE. 305
word of remonstrance from Mr. Lorry; his boot was
still upon the hot embers of the flaming log, when it
had broken under the weight of his foot.
“I forgot it,” he said.
Mr. Lorry’s eyes were again attracted to his face.
Taking note of the wasted air which clouded the natur-
ally handsome features, and having the expression of
prisoners’ faces fresh in his mind, he was strongly re-
minded of that expression.
“And your duties here have drawn to an end, sir?”
said Carton, turning to him.
“Yes. As I was telling you last night when Lucie
came in so unexpectedly, I have at length done all that
I can do here. I hoped to have left them in perfect
safety, and then to have quitted Paris. I have my
Leave to Pass. I was ready to go.”
They were both silent.
“Yours is a long life to look back upon, sir?” said
Carton, wistfully.
“I am in my seventy-eighth year.”
“You have been useful all your life; steadily and con-
stantly occupied; trustód, respected, and looked up to?”
“I have been a man of business, ever since I have
been a man. Indeed, I may say that I was a man of
business when a boy.”
“See what a place you fill at seventy-eight. How
many people will miss you when you leave it empty l’
“A solitary old bachelor,” answered Mr. Lorry, shak-
ing his head. “There is nobody to weep for me.”
“How can you say that? Wouldn’t She weep for
you? Wouldn’t her child?”
inYes, yes, thank God. I didn’t quite mean what I
Said.”
“It is a thing to thank God for; is it not?”
“Surely, surely.” -
“If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary
heart, to-night, ‘I have secured to myself the love and
attachment, the gratitude or respect, of no human
creature; I have won myself a tender place in no re-
gard; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be
remembered by l’ your seventy-eight years would
be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they not?”
b “You say truly, Mr. Carton; I think they would
€. 32
WOL. I. 20
306 : A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after
a silence of a few moments, said:
“I should like to ask you:-Does your childhood
seem far off? Do the days when you sat at your
mother's knee, seem days of very long ago?”
Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry an-
swered:
“Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life,
no. For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel
in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It
seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings .
of the way. My heart is touched now, by many re-
membrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty
young mother (and I so old!), and by many associations
of the days when what we call the World was not so
real with me, and my faults were not confirmed in me.”
“I understand the feeling!” exclaimed Carton, with
a bright flush. “And you are the better for it?” -
“I hope so.” -
Carton terminated the conversation here, by rising
to help him on with his outer coat; “but you,” said Mr.
Lorry, reverting to the theme, “you are young.”
“Yes,” said Carton. “I am not old, but my young
way was never the way to age. Enough of me.”
“And of me, I am sure,” said Mr. Lorry. “Are you
going out?”
“I’ll walk with you to her gate. You know my vaga-
bond and restless habits. If I should prowl about the
streets a long time, don’t be uneasy; I shall reappear in
the morning. You go to the Court to-morrow?”
“Yes, unhappily.”
“I shall be there, but only as one of the crowd. My
Spy will find a place for me. Take my arm, sir.”
Mr. Lorry did so, and they went down stairs and out
in the streets. A few minutes brought them to Mr.
Lorry’s destination. Carton left him there; but lingered
at a little distance, and turned back to the gate again
when it was shut, and touched it. He had heard of her
going to the prison every day. “She came out here,”
he said, looking about him, “turned this way, must
have trod on these stones often. Let me follow in her
steps.”
It was ten o’clock at night when he stood before the
prison of La Force, where she had stood hundreds of
THE GAME MADE. & 307
times. A little wood-Sawyer, having closed his shop,
was Smoking his pipe at his shop-door.
“Good night, citizen,” said Sydney Carton, pausing
in going by; for, the man eyed him inquisitively.
“Good night, citizen.”
“How goes the Republic?” -
“You mean the Guillotine. Not ill. Sixty-three to-
day. We shall mount to a hundred soon. Samson and
his men complain sometimes, of being exhausted. Ha,
ha, ha! He is so droll, that Samson. Such a Barber!”
“Do you often go to see him 35
“Shave? Always. Every day. What a barber! You
have seen him at work?” -
“Never.”
“GO and see him when he has a good batch. Figure
this to yourself, citizen; he shaved the sixty-three to-
day, in less than two pipes! Less than two pipes.
Word of honour!”
As the grinning little man held out the pipe he was
Smoking, to explain how he timed the executioner,
Carton was so sensible of a rising desire to strike the
life out of him, that he turned away.
“But you are not English,” said the wood-sawyer,
“ though you wear English dress P”
“Yes,” said Carton, pausing again, and answering
over his shoulder.
“You speak like a Frenchman.”
“I am an old student here.”
“Aha, a perfect Frenchman! Good night, English-
man.”
“Good night, citizen.”
“But go and see that droll dog,” the little man per-
sisted, calling after him. “And take a pipe with you!”
Sydney had not gone far out of sight, when he stopped
in the middle of the street under a glimmering lamp,
and wrote with his pencil on a scrap of paper. Then,
traversing with the decided step of one who remembered
the way well, several dark and dirty streets—much
dirtier than usual, for the best public thoroughfares
remained uncleansed in those times of terror—he stopped
at a chemist's shop, which the owner was closing with
his own hands. A small, dim, crooked shop, kept in a
tortuous, up-hill thoroughfare, by a small, dim, crooked
Iſla, Il.
308 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Giving this citizen, too, good night, as he confronted
him at #. counter, he laid the scrap of paper before
him. “Whew!” the chemist whistled softly, as he read:
it. “Hi! hi! hiſ ’’
Sydney Carton took no heed, and the chemist said:
“For you, citizen?”
‘‘ FOr me.”
“You will be careful to keep them separate, citizen?
You know the consequences of mixing them?”
“Perfectly.”
Certain Small packets were made and given to him.
He put them, one by one, in the breast of his inner coat,
counted out the money for them, and deliberately left
the shop. “There is nothing more to do,” said he,
glancing upward at the moon, “until to-morrow. I
can’t sleep.” .*
It was not a reckless manner, the manner in which
he said those words aloud under the fast sailing clouds,
nor was it more expressive of negligence than defiance.
It was the settled manner of a tired man, who had
wandered and struggled and got lost, but who at length
struck into his road and saw its end.
Long ago, when he had been famous among his
earliest competitors as a youth of great promise, he had
followed his father to the grave. His mother had died,
years before. These solemn words, which had been
read at his father’s grave, arose in his mind as he went
down the dark streets, among the heavy shadows, with
- the moon and the clouds sailing on high above him.
‘‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he
that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall
never die.” -
In a city dominated by the axe, alone at night, with
natural sorrow rising in him for the sixty-three who
had been that day put to death, and for to-morrow’s
victims then awaiting their doom in the prisons, and
still of to-morrow’s and to-morrow’s, the chain of asso-
ciation that brought the words home, like a rusty old
ship's anchor from the deep, might have been easily
found. He did not seek it, but repeated them and went
Il.
With a solemn interest in the lighted windows where
the people were going to rest, forgetful through a few
THE GAME MADE. 309
calm hours of the horrors surrounding them ; in the
towers of the churches, where no prayers were said,
for the §. revulsion had even travelled that length
of self-destruction from years of priestly impostors,
plunderers, and profligates; in the distant burial-places,
reserved, as they wrote upon the gates, for Eternal Sleep;
in the abounding gaols; and in the streets along, which
the sixties rolled to a death which had become so
common and material, that no sorrowful story of a
haunting Spirit ever arose among the people out of all
the working of the Guillotine ; with a solemn interest
in the whole life and death of the city settling down to
its short nightly pause in fury; Sydney Carton crossed
the Seine again for the lighter streets.
Few coaches were abroad, for riders in coaches were
liable to be suspected, and gentility hid its head in red
mightcaps, and put on heavy shoes, and trudged. But,
the theatres were all well filled, and the people poured
cheerfully out as he passed, and went chatting home.
At one of the theatre doors, there was a little girl with
a mother, looking for a way across the street through
the mud. He carried the child over, and before the
timid arm was loosed from his neck asked her for a kiss.
‘‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord:
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall
he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me,
shall never die.” -
Now, that the streets were quiet, and the night wore
on, the words were in the echoes of his feet, and were
in the air. Perfectly calm and steady, he sometimes
repeated them to himself as he walked; but, he heard
them always.
The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge
listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of
the Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of
houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the
moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face
out of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the
stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it
seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death’s
dominion. -
- But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those
words, that burden of the night, straight and warm to
his heart in its long bright rays. And looking along
310 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light #.
peared to span the air between him and the Sun, while
the river sparkled under it.
The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was
like a congenial friend, in the morning stillness. He
walked by the stream, far from the houses, and in the
light and warmth of the sun fell asleep on the bank.
When he awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there
yet a little longer, watching an eddy that turned and
turned purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and
carried it on to the sea.—“Like me.”
A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened colour of a
dead leaf, then glided into his view, floated by him,
and died away. As its silent track in the water dis-
appeared, the prayer that had broken up out of his
heart for a merciful consideration of all his poor blind-
nesses and errors, ended in the words, “I am the resur-
rection and the life.”
Mr. Lorry was already out when he got back, and it
was easy to surmise where the good old man was gone.
Sydney Carton drank nothing but a little coffee, ate
some bread, and, having washed and changed to refresh
himself, went out to the place of trial.
The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black
sheep—whom many fell away from in dread—pressed
him into an obscure corner among the crowd. Mr.
Lorry was there, and Doctor Manette was there. She
was there, sitting beside her father.
When her husband was brought in, she turned a
look upon him, SO Sustaining, so encouraging, so full
of admiring love and pitying tenderness, yet so
courageous for his sake, that it called the healthy
blood into his face, brightened his glance, and ani-
mated his heart. If there had been any eyes to
notice the influence of her look, on Sydney Carton,
it would have been seen to be the same influence
exactly. - -
Before the unjust Tribunal, there was little or no
order of procedure, ensuring to any accused person any
reasonable hearing. There could have been no such
Revolution, if all laws, and forms, and ceremonies, had
not first been so monstrously abused, that the suicidal
vengeance of the Revolution was to scatter them all to
the winds. .
| THE GAME MADE. 311
Every eye was turned to the jury. The same de-
termined patriots and good republicans as yesterday
and the day before, and to-morrow and the day after.
Eager and prominent among them, one man with a
craving face, and his fingers perpetually hovering
about his lips, whose appearance gave great satis-
faction to the spectators. A life-thirsting, cannibal-
looking, bloody-minded juryman, the Jacques Three of
Saint Antoine. The whole jury, as a jury of dogs em-
pannelled to try the deer.
Every eye then turned to the five judges and the
public prosecutor. No favourable leaning in that
quarter to-day. A fell, uncompromising, murderous
business-meaning there. Every eye then sought Some
other eye in the crowd, and gleamed at it approvingly;
and heads nodded at one another, before bending for-
ward with a strained attention.
Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay. Released yes-
terday. Re-accused and re-taken yesterday. Indict-
ment delivered to him last night. Suspected and
Denounced enemy of the Republic, Aristocrat, one of
a family of tyrants, one of a race proscribed, for that
they had used their abolished privileges to the infa-
mous oppression of the people. Charles Evrémonde,
called Darnay, in right of such proscription, absolutely
Dead in Taw. -
To this effect, in as few or fewer words, the Public
Prosecutor.
The President asked, was the Accused openly de-
nounced or secretly? e
“Openly, President.”
“By whom 2°
“Three voices. Ernest Defarge, wine-vendor of
Saint Antoine.”
‘‘ Good.”
“Thérèse Defarge, his wife.”
** GOOd.”
“ Alexandre Manette, physician.”
A great uproar took place in the court, and in the
midst of it, Doctor Manette was seen, pale and trem-
bling, standing where he had been seated.
“President, I indignantly protest to you that this is
a forgery and a fraud. You know the accused to be
the husband of my daughter. My daughter, and those
312 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
dear to her, are far dearer to me than my life. Who and
where is the false conspirator who says that I denounce
the husband of my child?” X- - -
“Citizen Manette, be tranquil. To fail in submission
to the authority of the Tribunal would be to put your-
self out of Law. As to what is dearer to you than life,
nothing can be so dear to a good citizen as the
Republic.”
Loud acclamations hailed this rebuke. The Presi-
dent rang his bell, and with warmth resumed.
“If the Republic should demand of you the sacrifice
of your child herself, you would have no duty but to
sacrifice her. Listen to what is to follow. In the
meanwhile, be silent!”
Frantic acclamations were again raised. Doctor
Manette sat down, with his eyes looking around, and
his lips trembling; his daughter drew closer to him.
The craving man on the jury rubbed his hands to-
gether, and restored the usual hand to his mouth.
Defarge was produced, when the court was quiet
enough to admit of his being heard, and rapidly ex-
pounded the story of the imprisonment, and of his hav-
ing been a mere boy in the Doctor's service, and of the
release, and of the state of the prisoner when released
and delivered to him. This short examination followed,
for the court was quick with its work.
“You did good service at the taking of the Bastille,
citizen?” *
“I believe SO.”
Here, an excited woman screeched from the crowd:
“You were one of the best patriots there. Why not
say so? You were a cannonier that day there, and you
were among the first to enter the accursed fortress
when it fell. Patriots, I speak the truth!”
It was The Vengeance who, amidst the warm com-
mendations of the audience, thus assisted the proceed-
ings. The President rang his bell; but, The Vengeance, .
warming with encouragement, shrieked, “I defy that
bell!” wherein she was likewise much commended.
“Inform the Tribunal of what you did that day within
the Bastille, citizen.” -
“I knew,” said Defarge, looking down at his wife,
who stood at the bottom of the steps on which he was
raised, looking steadily up at him; “I knew that this
...”
THE GAME MADE. 818
prisoner, of whom I speak, had been confined in a cell
known as One Hundred and Five, North Tower. I knew
it from himself. He knew himself by no other name
than One Hundred and Five, North Tower, when he
made shoes under my care. As I serve my gun that
day, I resolve, when the place shall fall, to examine
that cell. It falls. I mount to the cell, with a fellow.
citizen who is one of the Jury, directed by a gaoler. I
examine it, very closely. In a hole in the chimney,
Where a stone has been worked out and replaced, I find
a Written paper. This is that written paper. I have
made it my business to examine some spécimens of the
Writing, of Doctor Manette. . This is the writing of
Doctor Manette. I confide this paper, in the writing
of Doctor Manette, to the hands of #. President.”
‘‘Let it be read.”
In a dead silence and stillness—the prisoner under
trial looking lovingly at his wife, his wife only look-
ing from him to look with solicitude at her father,
Doctor Manette keeping his eyes fixed on the reader,
Madame Defarge never taking hers from the prisoner.
Defarge never taking his from his feasting wife, and ali
the other eyes there intent upon the Doctor, who saw
none of them—the paper was read, as follows.
—-
CHAPTER X.
THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW.
& C T ALEXANDRE MANETTE, unfortunate physi-
2 cian, native of Beauvais and afterwards resident
in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my doleful cell
in the Bastille, during the last month of the year, 1767.
I write it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I
design to secrete it in the wall of the chimney, where
I have slowly and laboriously made a place of conceal-
ment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when
I and my sorrows are dust. * tº ſº
“'These words are formed by the rusty iron point with
which I write with difficulty in scrapings of soot and
charcoal from the chimney, mixed with blood, in the
last month of the tenth year of my captivity. Hope
314 - A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
has quite departed from my breast. I know from terri-
ble warnings I have noted in myself that my reason
will not long remain unimpaired, but I solemnly declare
that I am at this time in the possession of my right
mind—that my memory is exact and circumstantial—
and that I write the truth as I shall answer for these
my last recorded words, whether they be ever read by
men or not, at the Eternal Judgment-seat.
“One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of
December (I think the twenty-second of the month), in
the year 1757, I was walking on a retired part of the
quay by the Seine for the refreshment of the frosty air,
at an hour's distance from my place of residence in the
Street of the School of Medicine, when a carriage came
along behind me, driven very fast. As I stood aside to
let that carriage pass, apprehensive that it might other-
Wise run me down, a head was put out at the window,
and a voice called to the driver to stop.
“The carriage stopped as soon as the driver could
rein in his horses, and the same voice called to me by
my name. I answered. The carriage was then so far in
advance of me that two gentlemen had time to open the
door and alight before I came up with it. I observed
that they were both wrapped in cloaks, and appeared to
conceal themselves. As they stood side by side near
the carriage door, I also observed that they both looked
of about my own age, or rather younger, and that they
were greatly alike, in stature, manner, voice and (as far
as I could see) face too.
‘‘ ‘You are Doctor Manette?” said one.
& C & I am.’
‘‘ ‘Doctor Manette, formerly of Beauvais,” said the
other; ‘the young physician, originally an expert Sur-
geon, who, within the last year or two has made a ris-
ing reputation in Paris?’
‘‘‘ Gentlemen,” I returned, ‘ I am that Doctor Manette
of whom you speak so graciously.”
“‘We have been to your residence,” said the first,
‘ and not being so fortunate as to find you there, and
being informed that you were probably walking in this
direction, we followed, fr. the hope of overtaking you.
Will you please to enter the carriage?’
“The manner of both was imperious, and they both
moved, as these words were spoken, so as to place me
THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. 315
*
between themselves and the carriage door. They were
armed. I was not. -
‘‘‘ Gentlemen,” said I, ‘pardon me; but I usually in-
quire who does me the honour to seek my assistance,
and what is the nature of the case to which I am
summoned.” -
“The reply to this, was made by him who had spoken
second. ‘Doctor, your clients are people of condition.
As to the nature of the case, our confidence in your
skill assures us that you will ascertain it for yourself
better than we can describe it. Enough. Will you
please to enter the carriage?” .
“I could do nothing but comply, and I entered it in
silence. They both entered after me—the last spring-
ing in, after putting up the steps. The carriage turned
about, and drove on at its former speed.
“I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred.
I have no doubt that it is, word for word the same. I
describe everything exactly as it took place, constrain-
ing my mind not to wander from the task. Where I
make the broken marks that follow here, I leave off for
the time, and put my paper in its hiding-place. * * * *
“The carriage left the streets behind, passed the
North Barrier, and emerged upon the country road. At
two-thirds of a league from the Barrier—I did not esti-
mate the distance at that time, but afterwards when I
traversed it—it struck out of the main avenue, and
presently stopped at a solitary house. We all three
alighted, and walked, by a damp soft footpath in a
garden where a neglected fountain had overflowed, to
the door of the house. It was not opened immediately,
in answer to the ringing of the bell, and one of my two
conductors struck the man who opened it, with his
heavy riding-glove, across the face.
“There was nothing in this action to attract my par-
ticular attention, for I had seen common people struck
more commonly than dogs. But, the other of the two,
being angry likewise, struck the man in like manner
with his arm; the look and bearing of the brothers were
then so exactly alike, that I then first perceived them
to be twin brothers.
“From the time of our alighting at the Outer gate
(which we found locked, and which one of the brothers
had opened to admit us, and had re-locked), I had heard
316 - A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
cries proceeding from an upper chamber. I was con-
i.e. to this chamber straight, the , cries growing
louder as we ascended the stairs, and I found a patient
in a high fever of the brain, lying on a bed.
“The patient was a woman of great beauty, and
young; assuredly not much past twenty. Her hair was
torn and ragged, and her arms were bound to her sides
with sashes and handkerchiefs. I noticed that these
bonds were all portions of a gentleman’s dress. On one
of them, which was a fringed scarf for a dress of cere-
mony, I saw the armorial bearing of a Noble, and the
letter E. -
“I saw this, within the first minute of my contem-
Fº of the patient; for, in her restless strivings she
ad turned over on her face on the edge of the bed,
had drawn the end of the scarf into her mouth, and
was in danger of suffocation. My first act was to put
out my hand to relieve her breathing; and in moving
the scarf aside, the embroidery in the corner caught
my sight.
“I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her
breast to calm her and keep her down, and looked into
her face. Her eyes were dilated and wild, and she
constantly uttered piercing shrieks, and repeated the
words, “My husband, my father, and my brother!’ and
then counted up to twelve, and said, ‘Hush!” For an
instant, and no more, she would pause to listen, and
then the piercing shrieks would begin again, and she
would repeat the cry, “My husband, my father, and
my brother!’ and would count up to twelve, and
say ‘Hush!” There was no variation in the order, or
the manner. There was no cessation, but the regular
moment’s pause, in the utterance of these sounds.
“‘How long,” I asked, “has this lasted?’
“To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the
elder and the younger; by the elder, I mean him
who exercised th. most authority. It was the elder
who replied, ‘Since about this hour last night.”
“‘She has a husband, a father, and a brother?”
‘‘ ‘A brother.”
‘‘‘I do not address her brother?”
“He answered with great contempt, ‘No.’
“‘She has some recent association with the number
twelve?” -
THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. 31;
“The younger brother impatiently rejoined, “With
twelve o’clock?’ -
“‘See, gentlemen,” said I, still keeping my hands
upon her breast, ‘how useless I am, as you have brought
me! If I had known what I was coming to see, I could
have come provided. As it is, time must be lost.
º are no medicines to be obtained in this lonely
place.” -
“The elder brother looked to the younger, who said
haughtily, “There is a case of medicines here; ' and
brought it from a closet, and put it on the table. * * *
‘‘I opened some of the bottles, Smelt them, and put
the stoppers to my lips. If I had wanted to use any-
thing save narcotic medicines that were poisons in
themselves, I would not have administered any of those.
“‘Do you doubt them?’ asked the younger brother.
“‘You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,” I
replied, and said no more.
‘‘I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty,
and after many efforts, the dose that I desired to give.
As I intended to repeat it after a while, and as it was
necessary to watch its influence, I then sat down by the
side of the bed. . There was a timid and suppressed
woman in attendance (wife of the man down stairs),
who had retreated into a corner. The house was damp
and decayed, indifferently furnished—evidently, re-
cently occupied and temporarily used. ... Some thick old
hangings had been nailed up before the windows, to
deaden the sound of the shrieks. They continued to
be uttered in their regular succession, with the cry,
‘My husband, my father, and my brother!’ the counting
up to twelve, and ‘Hush!’. The frenzy was so violent,
that I had not unfastened the bandages restraining the
arms; but, I had looked to them, to see that they were
not painful. The only spark of encouragement in the
case, was, that my hand upon the sufferer's breast
had this much soothing influence, that for minutes
at a time it tranquillised the figure. It had no effect
upon the cries; no pendulum could be more regular.
“For the reason that my hand had this effect º a S-
sume), I had sat by the side of the bed for half an
. with the two brothers looking on, before the elder
Sal Cl: -
“‘There is another patient.”
3.18 -> A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“I was startled, and asked, ‘Is it a pressing case?’
“‘You had better see,” he carelessly answered; and
took up a light. * * * * * -
“The other patient lay in a back room across a Sec-
ond staircase, which was a species of loft Over a stable.
There was a low plastered ceiling to a part of it; the
rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled roof, and there
were beams across. Hay and straw were stored in
that portion of the place, fagots for firing, and a heap
of apples in sand. I had to pass through that part, to
get at the other. My memory is circumstantial and
unshaken. I try it with these details, and I see them
all, in this my cell in the Bastille, near the close of the
iº year of my captivity, as I saw them all that
night. -
‘‘ On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown
under his head, lay a handsome peasant boy—a boy of
not more than seventeen at the most. He lay on his
back, with his teeth set, his right hand clenched on
his breast, and his glaring eyes looking straight up-
ward. I could not see where his wound was, as I
kneeled on one knee over him; but, I could see that he
was dying of a wound from a sharp point.
“‘I am a doctor, my poor fellow,” said I. ‘Let me
examine it.”
b “‘I do not want it examined,’ he answered; ‘let it
e.” -
“It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me
move his hand away. The wound was a sword-thrust,
received from twenty to twenty-four hours before, but
no skill could have saved him if it had been looked to
without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned
my eyes to the elder brother, I saw him looking down
at this handsome boy whose life was ebbing out, as if
he were a wounded bird, or hare, or rabbit; not at all
as if he were a fellow-creature. • . -
‘‘‘How has this been done, monsieur?” said I.
“‘A crazed young common dog ' A serf Forced
my brother to draw upon him, and has fallen by my
brother’s sword—like a gentleman.’ -
“There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred
humanity, in this answer. The speaker seemed to
acknowledge that it was inconvenient to have that
different order of creature dying there, and that it
THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. 310
would have been better if he had died in the usual ob-
scure routine of his vermin kind. He was quite inca-
pable of any compassionate feeling about the boy, or
about his fate.
“The boy’s eyes had slowly moved to him as he had
spoken, and they now slowly moved to me.
“Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we
common dogs are proud too, sometimes. They plunder
us, outrage us, beat us, kill us; but we have a little pride
left, sometimes. She have you seen her, Doctor?’
“The shrieks and the cries were audible there,
though subdued by the distance. He referred to them,
as if she were lying in Our presence.
“I said, ‘I have seen her.’
“‘She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their
shameful rights, these Nobles, in the modesty and vir-
tue of our sisters, many years, but we have had good
girls among us. I know it, and have heard my father
say so. She was a good girl. She was betrothed to a
good young man, too: a tenant of his. We were all
tenants of his—that man’s who stands there. The
other is his brother, the worst of a bad race.”
“It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy
gathered bodily force to speak; but, his Spirit spoke
with a dreadful emphasis.
“‘We were so robbed by that man that stands there,
as all we common dogs are by those Superior Beings—
taxed by him without mercy, obliged to work for him
without pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill,
obliged to feed scores of his fame birds on our wretched
crops, and forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame
bird of our own, pillaged and plundered to that degree
that when we chanced to have a bit of meat, we ate
it in fear, with the door barred and the shutters
closed, that his people should not see it and take it
from us—I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and
were made so poor, that our father told us it was a
dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and
that what we should most pray for, was, that Our
women might be barren and our miserable race die
Out !”
“I had never before seen the sense of being Op-
pressed, bursting forth like a fire. I had supposed
that it must be latent in the people somewhere; but, I
320 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
hº never seen it break out, until I saw it in the dying
Oy. -
‘‘‘Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He was
ailing at that time, poor fellow, and she married her
lover, that she might tend and comfort him in our cot-
tage—our dog-hut, as that man would call it. She had
not been married many weeks, when that man’s
brother saw her and admired her, and asked that man
to lend her to him—for what are husbands among us!
He was willing enough, but my sister was good and
virtuous, and hated his brother with a hatred as strong
as mine. What did the two then, to persuade her hus-
band to use his influence with her, to make her
willing?”
“The boy’s eyes, which had been fixed on mine,
slowly turned to the looker-on, and I saw in the two
faces that all he said was true. The two opposing
kinds of pride confronting one another, I can see, even
in this Bastille; the gentleman’s, all negligent indiffer-
ence; the peasant’s, all trodden-down sentiment, and
passionate revenge.
“‘You know, Doctor, that it is among the Rights of
these Nobles to harness us common dogs to carts, and
drive us. They so harnessed him and drove him. You
know that it is among their Rights to keep us in their
grounds all night, quieting the frogs, in order that their
noble sleep may not be disturbed. They kept him out
in the unwholesome mists at night, and Ordered him
back into his harness in the day. But he was not per-
suaded. No! Taken out of harness one day at noon, to
feed—if he could find food—he sobbed twelve times,
once for every stroke of the bell, and died on her
bosom.’
“Nothing human could have held life in the boy but
his determination to tell all his wrong. He forced back
the gathering shadows of death, as he forced his
clenched right hand to remain clenched, and to cover
his wound.
“‘Then, with that man’s permission and even with
his aid, his brother took her away; in spite of what I
know she must have told his brother—and what that is,
will not be long unknown to you, Doctor, if it is now—
his brother took her away—for his pleasure and diver-
sion, for a little while, I saw her pass me on the road,
THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. 321
When I took the tidings home, our father's heart burst;
he never spoke one of the words that filled it. I took
my young sister (for I have another) to a place beyond
the reach of this man, and where, at least, she will
never be his vassal. Then, I tracked the brother here,
and last night climbed in—a common dog, but sword in
hºnºr where is the loft window? It was somewhere
here?’
“The room was darkening to his sight; the world
was narrowing around him. I glanced about me, and
saw that the hay and straw were trampled over the
floor, as if there had been a struggle.
‘‘ ‘She heard me, and ran in. I told her not to come
near us till he was dead. He came in and first tossed
me Some pieces of money; then struck at me with a
whip. But I, though a common dog, so struck at him
as to make him draw. Let him break into as many
pieces as he will, the sword that he stained with my
common blood; he drew to defend himself—thrust at
me with all his skill for his life.’
“My glance had fallen, but a few moments before, on
the fragments of a broken sword, lying among the hay.
That weapon was a gentleman’s. In another place, lay
an old sword that seemed to have been a soldier's.
“‘Now, lift me up, Doctor; lift me up. Where is he?’
“‘He is not here,” I said, supporting the boy, and
thinking that he referred to the brother.
“‘Hel Proud as these nobles are, he is afraid to see
me. Where is the man who was here? Turn my face
to him.” -
“I did so, raising the boy’s head against my knee.
But, invested for the moment with extraordinary power,
he raised himself completely: obliging me to rise too,
or I could not have still supported him. e
“‘Marquis,” said the boy, turned to him with his
eyes opened wide and his right hand raised, in the
days when all these things are to be answered for, I
summon you, and yours to the last of your bad race, to
answer for them. I mark this cross of blood upon you,
as a sign that I do it. In the days when all these things
are to be answered for, I summon your brother, the
worst of the bad race, to answer for , them sepa-
rately. I mark this cross of blood upon him, as a Sign
that I do it.”
WOL. I, 21
322 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast,
and with his forefinger drew a cross in the air. He
stood for an instant with the finger yet raised, and, as
it dropped, he dropped with it, and I laid him down
dead. * * * *
“When I returned to the bedside of the young
woman, I found her raving in precisely the same order
and continuity. I knew that this might last for many
hours, and that it would probably end in the silence of
the grave.
“I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I sat
at the side of the bed until the night was far advanced.
She never abated the piercing quality of her shrieks,
never stumbled in the distinctness or the order of her
words. They were always ‘My husband, my father,
and my brother! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Hush!”
“This lasted twenty-six hours from the time when I
first saw her. I had come and gone twice, and was
again sitting by her, when she began to falter. I did
what little could be done to assist that opportunity, and
ºd-by she sank into a lethargy, and lay like the
€8,Ol.
“It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last,
after a long and fearful storm. I released her arms,
and called the woman to assist me to compose her
figure and the dress she had torn. It was then that I
knew her condition, to be that of one in whom the first
expectations of being a mother have arisen; and it was
then that I lost the little hope I had had of her.
“‘Is she dead?’ asked the Marquis, whom I will still
describe as the elder brother, coming booted into the
room from his horse.
‘‘‘Not dead,” said I; ‘but like to die.”
“‘What strength there is in these common bodies!”
he said, looking down at her with some curiosity.
“‘There is prodigious strength,” I answered him, ‘in
sorrow and despair.’
“He first laughed at my words, and then frowned at
them. He moved a chair with his foot near to mine,
Ordered the woman away, and said, in a subdued voice,
“‘Doctor, finding my brother in this difficulty with
these hinds, I recommended that your aid should be
invited. Your reputation is high, and, as a young man
THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. 323
with your fortune to make, you are probably mindful
of your interest. The things that you see here, are
things to be seen, and not spoken of.”
“I listened to the patient’s breathing, and avoided
answering. ... •
“‘Do you honour me with your attention, Doctor?’
“‘ Monsieur,” said I, ‘in my profession, the commu-
nications of patients are always received in confidence.”
I was guarded in my answer, for I was troubled in my
mind by what I had heard and seen.
“Her breathing was so difficult to trace, that I care-
fully tried the pulse and the heart. There was life, and
no more. Looking round as I resumed my seat, I found
both the brothers intent upon me. * * * * *
“I write with so much difficulty, the cold is so severe,
I am so fearful of being detected and consigned to an
underground cell and total darkness, that I must abridge
this narrative. There is no confusion or failure in my
memory; it can recall, and could detail, every word
that was ever spoken between me and those brothers.
“She lingered for a week. Towards the last, I could
understand some few syllables that she said to me, by
placing my ear close to her lips. She asked me where
she was, and I told her; who I was, and I told her. ... It
was in vain that I asked her for her family name. She
faintly shook her head upon the pillow, and kept her
secret, as the boy had done.
“I had no opportunity of asking her any question,
until I had told the brothers she was sinking fast, and
could not live another day. Until then, though no
one was ever presented to her consciousness save the
woman and myself, one or other of them had always
jealously sat behind the curtain at the head of the bed
when I was there. But when it came to that, they
seemed careless what communication I might hold with
her; as if—the thought passed through my mind—I
were dying too.
“I always observed that their pride bitterly resented
the younger brother's (as I call him) having. crossed
swords with a peasant, and that º a boy. The
only consideration that appeared really to affect the
mind of either of them, was the consideration that this
was highly degrading to the family, and was ridicu-
lous. As often as I caught the younger brother's eyes,
324 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
their expression reminded me that he disliked me deep-
ly, for knowing what I knew from the boy. He was
smoother and more polite to me than the elder: but I
saw this. I also saw that I was an encumbrance in the
mind of the elder too.
“My patient died, two hours before midnight—at a
time, by my watch, answering almost to the minute
when I had first seen her. I was alone with her, when
her forlorn young head drooped gently on One side, and
all her earthly wrongs and sorrows ended.
“The brothers were waiting in a room down stairs,
impatient to ride away. I had heard them, alone at
the bedside, striking their boots with their riding-whips,
and loitering up and down.
“‘At last she is dead?’ said the elder when I went in.
“‘ She is dead,” said I.
“‘I congratulate you, my brother,’ were his words as
he turned round.
“He had before offered me money, which I had post-
poned taking. He now gave me a rouleau of gold. I
took it from his hand, but laid it on the table. I had
considered the question, and had resolved to accept
nothing.
“‘Pray excuse me,’ said I. “Under the circumstances,
no.” -
“They exchanged looks, but bent their heads to me
as I bent mine to them, and we parted without another
word On either Side. * * * *
“I am weary, weary, weary—worn down by misery.
; ºnot read what I have written with this gaunt
la, Il Ol.
“Early in the morning, the rouleau of gold was left
at my door in a little box, with my name on the outside.
From the first, I had anxiously considered what I ought
to do. I decided, that day, to write privately to the
Minister, stating the nature of the two cases to which
– I had been summoned, and the place to which I had
gone: in effect, stating all the circumstances. I knew
what Court influence was, and what the immunities of
the Nobles were, and I expected that the matter would
never be heard of; but, I wished to relieve my own
mind. I had kept the matter a profound secret, even
from my wife; and this, too, I resolved to state in my
letter. I had no apprehension whatever of my real
THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. 325
danger; but, I was conscious that there might be danger
for-others, if others were compromised by possessing
the knowledge that I possessed.
“I was much engaged that day, and could not com-
plete my letter that night. I rose long before my usual
time next morning to finish it. It was the last day of
the year. The letter was lying before me just com-
pleted, when I was told that a lady waited, who wished
to See me. * * *
“I am growing more and more unequal to the task I
have set myself. It is so cold, so dark, my senses are
so benumbed, and the gloom upon me is so dreadful.
“The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, but
not marked for long life. She was in great agitation.
She presented herself to me as the wife of the Marquis
St. Evrémonde. I connected the title by which the boy
had addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter
embroidered on the scarf, and had no difficulty in
arriving at the conclusion that I had seen that noble-
man very lately.
“My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the
words of our conversation. I suspect that I am watched
more closely than I was, and I know not at what times
I may be watched. She had in part suspected, and in
part discovered, the main facts of the cruel story, of
her husband’s share in it, and my being resorted to.
She did not know that the girl was dead. Her hope
had been, she said in great distress, to show her, in
secret, a woman’s sympathy. Her hope had been to
avert the wrath of Heaven from a House that had long
been hateful to the suffering many.
“She had reasons for believing that there was a
young sister living, and her greatest desire was, to help
that sister. I could tell her nothing but that there
was such a sister; beyond that, I knew nothing. Her
inducement to come to me, relying On my confidence,
had been the hope that I could tell her the name and
place of abode. Whereas, to this wretched hour, I am
ignorant of both. * * * *
“These scraps of paper fail me. One was taken from
i. with a warning, yesterday. I must finish my record
to-day. *
“She was a good, compassionate lady, and not happy
in her marriage. How could she be! The brother dis-
326 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
trusted and disliked her, and his influence was all
opposed to her; she stood in dread of him, and in
dread of her husband too. When I handed her down
to the door, there was a child, a pretty boy from two
to three years old, in her carriage.
“‘For his sake, Doctor,” she said, pointing to him in
tears, ‘I would do all I can to make what poor amends
I can. He will never prosper in his inheritance other-
wise. I have a presentiment that if no other innocent
atonement is made for this, it will one day be required
of him. What I have left to call my own—it is little
beyond the worth of a few jewels—I will make it the
first charge of his life to bestow, with the compassion
and lamenting of his dead mother, on this injured
family, if the sister can be discovered.’
“She kissed the boy, and said caressing him, ‘It is
for thine own dear sake. Thou wilt be faithful,
little Charles?’ The child answered her bravely, ‘Yes!”
I kissed her hand, and she took him in her arms, and
went away caressing him. I never saw her more.
“As she had mentioned her husband's name in the
faith that I knew it, I added no mention of it to my
letter. I sealed my letter, and, not trusting it out of
my own hands, delivered it myself that day.
“That night, the last night of the year, towards nine
o'clock, a man in a black dress rang at my gate, de-
manded to see me, and softly followed my servant,
Ernest Defarge, a youth, up-stairs. When my servant
came into the room where I sat with my wife—O my
wife, beloved of my heart! My fair young English
wife!—we saw the man, who was supposed to be at the
gate, standing silent behind him.
“An urgent case in the Rue. St. Honoré, he said. It
would not detain me, he had a coach in waiting.
“It brought me here, it brought me to my grave.
When I was clear of the house, a black muffler was
drawn tightly over my mouth from behind, and my
arms were pinioned. The two brothers crossed the
road from a dark corner, and identified me with a
single gesture. The Marquis took from his pocket the
lettter I had written, showed it me, burnt it in the
light of a lantern that was held, and extinguished the
ashes with his foot. Not a word was spoken. I was
brought here, I was brought to my living grave,
THE SUBSTANCE OF THE SHADOW. 32?
“If it had pleased GOD to put it in the hard heart
of either of the brothers, in all these frightful years,
to grant me any tidings of my dearest wife—so much
as to let me know by a word whether alive or dead—
I might have thought that He had not quite aban-
doned them. But, now I believe that the mark of the
red cross is fatal to them, and that they have no part
in His mercies. And them and their descendants, to
the last of their race, I, Alexandre Manette, unhappy
prisoner, do this last night of the year, 1767, in my un-
bearable agony, denounce to the times when all these
things shall be answered for. I denounce them to
Heaven and to earth.”
A terrible sound arose when the reading of this docu-
ment was done. A Sound of craving and eagerness that
had nothing articulate in it but blood. The narrative
called up the most revengeful passions of the time, and
there was not a head in the nation but must have
dropped before it.
Little need, in presence of that tribunal and that
auditory, to show how the Defarges had not made
the paper public, with the other captured Bastille me-
morials borne in procession, and had kept it, bidin
their time. Little need to show that this deteste
family name had long been amathematised by Saint
Antoine, and was wrought into the fatal register. The
man never trod ground, whose virtues and services
would have sustained him in that place that day,
against such denunciation.
And all the worse for the doomed man that the de-
nouncer was a well-known citizen, his own at-
tached friend, the father of his wife. One of the
frenzied aspirations of the populace was, for imitations
of the questionable public virtues of antiquity, and
for sacrifices and self-immolations on the people's altar.
Therefore, when the President said (else had his own
head quivered on his shoulders), that the good phy-
sician of the Republic would deserve better still of the
Republic by rooting out an obnoxious family of Aris-
tocrats, and would doubtless feel a sacred glow and joy
in making his daughter a widow and her child an
orphan, there was wild excitement, patriotic fervor,
not a touch of human sympathy,
328 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
“Much influence around him, has that Doctor P”
murmured Madame Defarge, smiling to The Vengeance.
“Save him now, my Doctor, save him!” w
At every juryman’s vote, there was a roar. Another
and another. Roar and roar.
Unanimously voted. At heart and by descent an
Aristocrat, an enemy of the Republic, a notorious
oppressor of the People. Back to the Conciergerie, and
Death within four-and-twenty hours -
CHAPTER XI.
DUSK.
HE wretched wife of the innocent man thus doomed
to die, fell under the sentence, as if she had been
mortally stricken. But, she uttered no sound; and so
strong was the voice within her, representing that it
was she of all the world who must uphold him in his
misery and not augment it, that it quickly raised her,
even from that shock.
The judges having to take part in a public demon-
stration out of doors, the tribunal adjourned. The quick
noise and movement of the court’s emptying itself by
many, passages had not ceased, when Lucie stood
stretching out her arms towards her husband, with
nothing in her face but love and consolation. -
“If I might touch him ' If I might embrace him
once 1 O, good citizens, if you would have so much.
compassion for us !”
There was but a gaoler left, along with two of the
four men who had taken him last night, and Barsad.
The people had all poured out to the show in the streets.
Barsad proposed to the rest, “Let her embrace him,
then; it is but a moment.” It was silently acquiesced
in, and they passed her over the seats in the hall to a
raised place, where he, by leaning Over the dock, could
fold her in his arms.
“Farewell, dear darling of my soul. . My parting
blessing on my love. We shall meet again, where the
weary are at rest l’’ *
DUSK. 320
They were her husband’s words, as he held her to his
bosom. -
“I can bear it, dear Charles. I am supported from
§ don’t suffer for me. A parting blessing for our
Child.” -
“I send it to her by you. I kiss her by you. I say
farewell to her by you.”
“My husband. No! A moment!” He was tearing
himself apart from her. “We shall not be separated
long. I feel that this will break my heart by-and-by;
but I will do my duty while I can, and when I leave
her, God will raise up friends for her, as He did for me.”
Her father had followed her, and would have fallen
on his knees to both of them, but that Darnay put out a
hand and seized him, crying:
“No, no! What have you done, what have you done,
that you should kneel to us ! We know now, what a
struggle you made of old. We know now, what you
underwent when you suspected my descent, and when
you knew it. We know now, the natural antipathy
you strove against, and conquered, for her dear sake.
We thank you with all our hearts, and all our love and
duty. Heaven be with you!”
Her father’s only answer was to draw his hands
through his white hair, and wring them with a shriek
of anguish. -
“It could not be otherwise,” said the prisoner. “All
things have worked together as they have fallen out.
It was the always-vain endeavour to discharge my poor
mother’s trust, that first brought my fatal presence
near you. Good could never come of such evil, a hap-
pier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning.
Be comforted, and forgive me. Heaven bless you!”
As he was drawn away, his wife released him, and
stood looking after him with her hands touching one
another in the attitude of prayer, and with a radiant
look upon her face, in which there was even a comfort-
ing smile. As he went out at the prisoners' door, she
turned, laid her head lovingly on her father’s breast,
tried to speak to him, and fell at his feet.
Then, issuing from the obscure corner from which
he had never moved, Sydney Carton came and took
her up. Only her father and Mr. Lorry . were with
her. His arm trembled as it raised her, and Sup-
330 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
ported her head. Yet, there was an air about him
that was not all of pity—that had a flush of pride in it.
“Shall I take her to a coach? I shall never feel her
weight?”
He carried her lightly to the door, and laid her ten-
derly down in a coach. Her father and their old friend
got into it, and he took his seat beside the driver.
When they arrived at the gateway where he had
Fº in the dark not many hours before, to picture to
imself on which of the rough stones of the street her
feet had trodden, he lifted her again, and carried her
up the staircase to their rooms. There, he laid her
down on a couch, where her child and Miss Pross wept
Over her.
“Don’t recal her to herself,” he said, softly, to the
latter, “she is better so; don’t revive her to conscious-
ness, while she only faints.” w
“Oh, Carton, Carton, dear Carton!” cried little
Lucie, springing up and throwing her arms passionately
round him, in a burst of grief. “Now that you have
come, I think you will do something to help mamma,
Something to save papal O, look at her, dear Carton!
Can you, of all the people who love her, bear to see
her so?”
He bent over the child, and laid her blooming cheek
against his face. He put her gently from him, and
looked at her unconscious mother.
h “Before I go,” he said, and paused.—‘‘I may kiss
her?”
It was remembered afterwards that when he bent
down and touched her face with his lips, he murmured
some words. The child, who was nearest to him, told
them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she
was a handsome old lady, that she heard him say, “A
life you love.” - w
When he had gone out into the next room, he turned
Suddenly on Mr. Lorry and her father, who were fol-
lowing, and said to the latter:
“You had great influence but yesterday, Doctor
Manette; let it, at least, be tried. These judges, and
all the men in power, are very friendly to you, and very
recognisant of your services; are they not?”
“Nothing connected with Charles was concealed
from me. I had the strongest assurances that I should
Tale of Two Cities.
º
sº
* &
→¿№*
Ņ}}
$
}}\\}\\
\}
$}*A.№ º`
（;;）
ſae
« **
*ae
AFTER, THE SENTENCE.
2
º
47& Cº
º
%2:
º
º
aſº.
º

T) USK. 331
save him; and I did.” He returned the answer in
great trouble, and very slowly.
“Try them again. The hours between this and to-
morrow afternoon are few and short, but try.”
“I intend to try. I will not rest a moment.”
“That’s well. ... I have known such energy as yours
do great things before now—though never,” he added,
with a Smile and a sigh together, “such great things as
this. But try! Of little worth as life is when we misuse
it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay
down if it were not.”
‘‘I will go,” said Doctor Manette, “to the Prosecutor
and the President straight, and I will go to others
whom it is better not to name. I will write too, and —
|But stay! There is a celebration in the Streets, and no
One will be accessible until dark.”
“That’s true. Well? It is a forlorn hope at the best,
and not much the forlorner for being delayed till dark.
I should like to know how you speed; though, mind! I
expect nothing! When are you likely to have seen
these dread powers, Doctor Manette?”
“Immediately after dark, I should hope. Within an
hour Or two from this.” -
“It will be dark soon after four. Let us stretch the
hour or two. If I go to Mr. Lorry’s at nine, shall I hear.
what you have done, either from our friend or from
yourself?”
& 4 YeS.”
“May you prosper!”
Mr. Lorry followed Sydney to the outer door, and,
topiching him on the shoulder as he was going away,
caused him to turn. -
“I have no hope,” said Mr. Lorry, in a low and Sor-
rowful whisper. -
“NOr have I.” -
“If any one of these men, or all of these men, were
disposed to spare him—which is a large supposition; for
what is his life, or any man’s to them!—I doubt if they
durst spare him after the demonstration in the Court.”
“And so do I. I heard the fall of the axe in that
sound.”
Mr. Lorry leaned his arm upon the door-post, and
bowed his face upon it. &
“Don’t despond,” said Carton, very gently; “don’t
332 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
grieve. I encouraged Doctor Manette in this idea, be.
cause I felt that it might One day be consolatory to her.
Otherwise, she might think ‘ his life was wantonly
thrown away or wasted,’ and that might trouble her.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” returned Mr. Lorry, drying his eyes,
“you are right. But he will perish; there is no real
hope.”
*es. He will perish; there is no real hope,” echoed
Carton. And walked with a settled step, down stairs.
CHAPTER, XII.
DARKNESS.
Sº, CARTON. paused in the street, not quite de-
cided where to go. “At Tellson’s banking-house at
nine,” he said, with a musing face. “Shall I do well,
in the mean time, to show myself? I think so. It is
best that these people should know there is such a man
as I here; it is a Sound precaution, and may be a neces-
sary preparation. But care, care, care! Let me think
it Out!” -
Checking his steps which had begun to tend towards
an object, he took a turn or two in the already darken-
ing street, and traced the thought in his mind to its
possible consequences, . His first impression was con-
firmed. “It is best,” he said, finally resolved, “that
these people should know there is such a man as I
here.” And he turned his face towards Saint Antoine.
Defarge had described himself, that day, as the keeper
of a wine-shop in the Saint Antoine suburb. It was
not difficult for one who knew the city well, to find his
house without asking any questions. Having ascer-
tained its situation, Carton came out of those closer
streets again, and dined at a place of refreshment and
fell sound asleep after dinner. For the first time in
many years, he had no strong drink. Since last night
he had taken nothing but a little light thin wine, and Jast
night he had dropped the brandy slowly down on Mr.
Lorry’s hearth like a man who had done with it.
It was as late as seven o’clock when he awoke re-
T) ARKNESS. 333
freshed, and went out into the streets again. As he
passed along towards Saint Antoine, he stopped at a
shop-window where there was a mirror, and slightly
altered the disordered arrangement of his loose cravat,
and his coat-collar, and his wild hair. This done, he
went on direct to Defarge’s, and went in.
There happened to be no customer in the shop but
Jacques Three, of the restless fingers and the croaking
voice. This man whom he had seen upon the Jury,
stood drinking at the little counter, in conversation
with the Defarges, man and wife. The Vengeance
assisted in the conversation, like a regular member of
the establishment.
As Carton walked in, took his seat, and asked (in
very indifferent French) for a small measure of wine,
Madame Defarge cast a careless glance at him, and
then a keener, and then a keener, and then advanced
to him herself, and asked him what it was he had
ordered. - -
He repeated what he had already said.
“English?” asked Madame Defarge, inquisitively
raising her dark eyebrows.
After looking at her, as if the sound of even a single
French word were slow to express itself to him, he
answered in his former foreign accent. “Yes, madame,
yes. I am English!” -
Madame Defarge returned to her counter to get the
wine, and, as he took up a Jacobim journal and feigned to
pore over it, puzzling out its meaning, he heard her say,
“I swear to you, like Evrémonde!”
Defarge brought him the wine, and gave him Good
Evening. " -
é & HOW P 55
“Good evening.” -
“Oh! Good evening, citizen,” filling his glass. “Ah!
and good wine. I drink to the Republic.” . .
Defarge went back to the counter, and said, “Certain-
ly, a little like.” Madame sternly retorted, “I tell you
a good deal like.” Jacques Three pacifically remarked,
“He is so much in your mind, see you, madame.” The
amiable Vengeance added, with a laugh, “Yes, ...}.
faith! And you are looking forward with so muc
pleasure to seeing him once more to-morrow!”.
Carton followed the lines and words of his paper,
334 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
with a slow forefinger, and with a studious and absorbed
face. They were all leaning their arms on the counter
close together, speaking low. After a silence of a few
moments, during which they all looked towards him
without disturbing his outward attention from the
Jacobin editor, they resumed their conversation.
“It is true what madame says,” observed Jacques
Three. “Why, stop? There is great force in that.
Why stop?”
“Well, well,” reasoned Defarge, “but one must stop
somewhere. After all, the question is still where?”
“At extermination,” said madame.
“Magnificent!” croaked Jacques Three. The Venge-
ance, also, highly approved.
“Extermination is good doctrine, my wife,” said
Defarge, rather troubled; “ in general I say nothing
against it. But this Doctor has suffered much; you
have seen him to-day; you have observed his face when
he paper was read.”
“I have observed his face!” repeated madame, con-
temptuously and angrily. “Yes, I have observed his
face. I have observed his face to be not the face of a
flººriend of the Republic. Let him take care of his
ace!”
“And you have observed, my wife,” said Defarge,
in a deprecatory manner, “the anguish of his daugh-
ter, which must be a dreadful anguish to him!”
“I have observed his daughter,” repeated madame;
“yes, I have observed his daughter more times than
one. I have observed her to-day, and I have observed
her other days. I have observed her in the court, and
I have observed her in the street by the prison. Let
me but lift my finger !” She seemed to raise it (the
listener's eyes were always on his paper), and to let it
fall with a rattle on the ledge before her, as if the axe
had dropped.
“The citizeness is superb!” croaked the Juryman.
“She is an Angel!” said The Vengeance, and em-
braced her. -
“As to thee,” pursued madame, implacably, address-
ing her husband, “if it depended on thee—which, hap-
pily, it does not—thou wouldst rescue this man even
Inow.”
“No!” protested Defarge, “Not if to lift this glass
DARKNESS. 335
would do it! But I would leave the matter there. I say,
stop there.”
“See you then, Jacques,” said Madame Defarge,
wrathfully; “ and see you, too, my little Vengeance;
see you both' Listen! For other crimes as tyrants
and oppressors, I have this race a long time on my
register, doomed to destruction and extermination.
Ask my husband is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge, without being asked.
“In the beginning of the great days, when the Bas-
tille falls, he finds this paper of to-day, and he brings
it home, and in the middle of the night when this place
is clear and shut, we read it, here on this spot, by the
light of this lamp. Ask him, is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge. -
“That night, I tell him, when the paper is rea
through, and the lamp is burnt out, and the day is
gleaming in above these shutters and between those
iron bars, that I have now a Secret to communicate.
Ask him, is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge again.
“I communicate to him that secret. J. Smite this
bosom with these two hands as I Smite it now, and I tell
him, ‘Defarge, I was brought up among the fisher-
men of the seashore, and that peasant-family so injured
by the two Evrémonde brothers, as that Bastille paper
describes, is my family. Defarge, that sister of the
mortally wounded boy upon the ground was my sister,
that husband was my sister’s husband, that unborn
child was their child, that brother was my brother,
that father was my father, those dead are my dead,
and that summons to answer for those things descends
to me!’ Ask him is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge once more.
“Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop,” returned
madame; ‘‘ but don’t tell me.” * *
Both her hearers derived a horrible enjoyment from
the deadly nature of her wrath—the listener could feel
how white she was, without seeing her—and both
highly commended it. Defarge, a weak minority, in-
terposed a few words for the memory of the compas-
sionate wife of the Marquis; but, only elicited from
his own wife a repetition of her last reply. “Tell the
Wind and the Fire where to stop; not me!” -
336 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Customers entered, and the group was broken up.
The English customer paid for what he had had, per-
plexedly counted his change, and asked, as a stranger,
to be directed towards the National Palace. Madame
Defarge took him to the door, and put her arm on his,
in pointing out the road. The English customer was
not without his reflections then, that it might be a good
deed to seize that arm, lift it, and strike under it sharp
and deep.
But, he went his way, and was soon swallowed up in
the shadow of the prison wall. At the appointed hour,
he emerged from it to present himself in Mr. Lorry’s
room again, where he found the old gentleman walking
to and fro in restless anxiety. He said he had been
with Lucie until just now, and had only left her for a few
minutes, to come and keep his appointment. Her
father had not been seen, since he quitted the banking-
house towards four o’clock. She had some faint hopes
that his mediation might save Charles, but they were
very slight. He had been more than five hours gone :
where could he be?
Mr. Lorry waited until ten; but, Doctor Manette not
returning, and he being unwilling to leave Lucie any
longer, it was arranged that he should go back to her,
and come to the banking-house again at midnight. In
the mean while, Carton would wait alone by the fire
for the Doctor. - - •
He waited and waited, and the clock struck twelve;
but, Doctor Manette did not come back. Mr. Lorry
returned, and found no tidings of him, and brought
none. Where could he be? -
They were discussing this question, and were almost
building up some weak structure of hope on his pro-
longed absence, when they heard him on the stairs.
The instant he entered the room, it was plain that all
was lost. - -
Whether he had really been to any one, or whether
he had been all that time traversing the streets, was
never known. As he stood staring at them, they
º him no question, for his face told them every-
thing.
ºf annot find it,” said he, “and I must have it.
Where is it?”
His head and throat were bare, and, as he spoke with
DARKNESS. 33%
a helpless look straying all around, he took his coat off,
and let it drop on the floor. - .
“Where is my bench? I have been looking every-
where for my bench and I can’t find it.' What have
they done with my work? Time presses: I must finish
those shoes.” -
They looked at one another, and their hearts died
within them. .
“Come, come!” said he in a whimpering miserable
way; “let me get to work. Give me my work.”
Receiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his
feet upon the ground, like a distracted child.
“Don’t torture a poor fºrlorn wretch,” he implored
them, with a dreadful cry; ‘‘ but give me my work!
What is to become of us, if those shoes are not done
to-night?” . -
Lost, utterly lost! -
It was so clearly beyond hope, to reason with him, or
try to restore him, that—as if by agreement—they each
put a hand upon his shoulder, and soothed him to sit
down before the fire, with a promise that he should
have his work presently. He sank into the chair, and
brooded over the embers, and shed tears. As if all that
had happened since the garret time were a momentary
fancy, or a dream, Mr. Lorry saw him shrink into the
exact figure that Defarge had had in keeping.
Affected, and impressed with terror as they both
were, by this spectacle of ruin, it was not a time to
yield to such emotions, His lonely daughter, bereft of
her final hope and reliance, appealed to them both, too
strongly. Again, as if by agreement, they looked at
one another with one meaning in their faces. Carton
was the first to speak. -
“The last chance is gone: it was not much. Yes; he
had better be taken to her. But, before you go, will
you, for a moment, steadily attend to me? Don’t ask
me why I make the stipulations I am going to make,
and exact the promise I am going to exact; I have a
reason—a good one.” -
“I do not doubt it,” answered Mr. Lorry. “Say
On.”
The figure in the chair between them, was all the
time monotonously rocking itself to and fro, and moan-
ing. They spoke in such a tone as they would have
WOL. I. 22
338 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
used if they had been watching by a 'sick-bed in
the night.
Carton stooped to pick up the coat, which lay almost
entangling his feet. As he did so, a small case in
which the Doctor was accustomed to carry the list of
his day’s duties, fell lightly on the floor. Carton took
it up, and there was a folded paper in it. “We should
look at this?” he said. Mr. Lorry nodded his consent.
He opened it, and exclaimed, “Thank GoD!”
“What is it?” asked Mr. Lorry, eagerly.
“A moment! Let me speak of it in its place. First,”
he put his hand in his coat, and took another paper
from it, ‘‘that is the certificate which enables me to
pass out of this city. Look"at it. Sydney Carton, an
Englishman?”
You see—Mr. Lorry held it open in his hand, gazing
in his earnest face.
“Keep it for me until to-morrow. I shall see him to-
morrow, you remember, and I had better not take it
into the prison.”
“Why not?” g
“I don’t know: I prefer not to do so. Now, take this
paper that Doctor Manette has carried about him. It
is a similar certificate, enabling him and his daughter
and her child, at any time, to pass the Barrier and the
frontier? You See?”
& 4 Yes! 55
“Perhaps he obtained it as his last and utmost pre-
caution against evil yesterday. When is it dated? But
no matter; don’t stay to look; put it carefully with mine
and your own. Now, observe! I never doubted until
within this hour or two, that he had, or could have, such
a paper. It is good, until recalled. But it may be soon
recalled, and, I have reason to think, will be.”
“They are not in danger?”
“They are in great danger. They are in danger of
denunciation by Madame Defarge. I know it from her
own lips. I have overheard words of that woman’s, to-
night, which have presented their danger to me in strong
Colours. I have lost no time, and since then, I have
seen the spy. He confirms me. He knows that a wood-
Sawyer, living by the prison wall, is under the control
Of the Defarges, and has been rehearsed by Madame
Defarge as to his having seen Her,”—he never men-
DARKNESS. 339
tioned Lucie's name—“making signs and signals to
risoners. It is easy to foresee that the pretence will
e the common one, a prison plot, and that it will in-
volve her life—and perhaps her child’s—and perhaps
her father's—for both have been seen with her at that
place. Don’t look so horrified. You will save them all.”
“Heaven grant I may, Carton! But how?”
“I am going to tell you how. It will depend on you,
and it could depend on no better man. This new de-
nunciation will certainly not take place until after to-
morrow; probably not until two or three days after-
wards; more probably a week afterwards. You know
it is a capital crime, to mourn for, or sympathise with,
a victim of the Guillotine. She and her father would
unquestionably be guilty of this crime, and this woman
(the inveteracy of whose pursuit cannot be described)
would wait to add that strength to her case, and make
herself doubly sure. You follow me?”
“So attentively, and with so much confidence in what
you say, that for the moment Ilose sight,” touching the
back of the Doctor’s chair, “even of this distress.”
“You have money, and can buy the means of travel-
ling to the sea-coast as quickly as the journey can be
made. Your preparations have been completed for
some days, to return to England. Early to-morrow,
have your horses ready, so that they may be in start-
ing trim at two o'clock in the afternoon.,’
“It shall be done!”
His manner was so fervent and inspiring that Mr.
Lorry caught the flame, and was quick as youth.
“You are a noble heart. Did I say we could depend
upon no better man? Tell her, to-night, what you know of
her danger as involving her child and her father. Dwell
upon that, for she would lay her own fair head, beside
her husband’s, cheerfully.” He faltered for an instant
then went on as before. “For the sake of her child and
her father, press upon her the necessity of leaving Paris,
with them and you, at that hour. Tell her that it was
her husband’s last arrangement. Tell her that more de-
pends upon it than she dare believe, or hope. You think
that her father, even in this sad state, will Submit him-
self to her; do you not?”
“I am sure of it.” -
“I thought so. Quietly and steadily, have all these
340 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
arrangements made in the court-yard here, even to the
taking of your own seat in the carriage. The moment
I come to you, take me in, and drive away.” -
“I understand that I wait for you, under all circum-
stances?”
“You have my certificate in your hand with the rest,
you know, and will reserve my place. Wait for nothing
but to have my place occupied, and then for England!”
“Why, then,” said Mr. Lorry, grasping his eager but
so firm and steady hand, “it does not all depend on one
old man, but I shall have a young and ardent man at
my side.”
“By the help of Heaven you shall! Promise me
solemnly, that nothing will influence you to alter the
course on which we now stand pledged to one another.”
“Nothing, Carton.”
“Remember these words to-morrow: change the
course, or delay in it—for any reason—and no life can
possibly be saved, and many lives must inevitably be
sacrificed.” -
i I will remember them. I hope to do my part faith-
fully.”
ºna I hope to do mine. Now, good-bye!”
Though he said it with a grave smile of earnestness,
and though he even put the old man’s hand to his lips,
he did not part from him then. He helped him so far
to arouse the rocking figure before the dying embers,
as to get a cloak and hat put upon it, and to tempt it
forth to find where the bench and work were hidden
that it still moaningly besought to have. He walked
on the other side of it and protected it to the court-yard
of the house where the afflicted heart—so happy in the
memorable time when he had revealed his own desolate
heart to it—outwatched the awful night. He entered
the court-yard and remained there for a few moments
alone, looking up at the light in the window of her
room. Before he went away, he breathed a blessing
towards it, and a Farewell,
|FIFTY TWO. 341
CHAPTER XIII.
FIFTY-TV.O.
TN the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed
of the day awaited their fate. They were in number
as the weeks of the year. Fifty-two were to roll that
afternoon. On the life-tide of the city to the boundless
everlasting sea. Before their cells were quit of them,
new occupants were appointed; before their blood ran
into the blood spilled yesterday, the blood that was to
mingle with theirs to-morrow was already set apart.
Two score and twelve were told off. From the farmer-
general of seventy, whose riches could not buy his life,
to the seamstress of twenty, whose poverty and ob-
scurity could not save her. Physical diseases, engen-
dered in the vices and neglect of men, will seize on
victims of all degrees; and the frightful moral disorder
born of unspeakable suffering, intolerable oppression,
and heartless indifference, Smote equally without
distinction.
Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had sustained him-
self with no flattering delusion since he came to it from
the Tribunal. In every line of the narrative he had
heard, he had heard his condemnation. He had fully
comprehended that no personal influence could possibly
save him, that he was virtually sentenced by the mil-
lions, and that units could avail him nothing.
Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his
beloved wife fresh before him, to compose his mind to
what it must bear. His hold on life was strong, and it
was very, very hard to loosen; by gradual efforts and
degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter
there; and when he brought his strength to bear on
that hand and it yielded, this was closed again. There
was a hurry, too, in all his thoughts, a turbulent and
heated working of his heart, that contended against
resignation. If, for a moment, he did feel resigned,
342 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES. *
then his wife and child who had to live after him,
seemed to protest and to make it a selfish thing.
But, all this was at first. Before long, the consider-
ation that there was no disgrace in the fate he must
meet, and that numbers went the same road wrong-
fully, and trod it firmly, every day, Sprang up to stim-
ulate him. Next followed the thought that much of
the future peace of mind enjoyable by the dear Ones,
depended on his quiet fortitude. So, by degress he
calmed into the better state, when he could raise his
thoughts much higher, and draw comfort down.
Before it had set in dark on the night of his condem-
nation, he had travelled thus far on his last way.
Being allowed to purchase the means of writing, and a
light, he sat down to write until such time as the
prison lamps should be extinguished.
He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he
had known nothing of her father's imprisonment until
he had heard of it from herself, and that he had been
as ignorant as she of his father's and uncle’s responsi-
bility for that misery, until the paper had been read.
He had already explained to her that his concealment
from herself of the name he had relinquished, was the
one condition—fully intelligible now—that her father
had attached to their betrothal, and was the one prom-
ise he had still exacted on the morning of their mar-
riage. He entreated her, for her father’s sake, never to
seek to know whether her father had become oblivious
of the existence of the paper, or had had it recalled to
him (for the moment, or for good), by the story of the
Tower, on that old Sunday under the dear plane-tree in
the garden. If he had preserved any definite remem-
brance of it, there could be no doubt that he had sup-
posed it destroyed with the Bastille, when he had found
no mention of it among the relics of prisoners which
the populace had discovered there, and which had been
described to all the world. He besought her—though
he added that he knew it was needless—to console her
father, by impressing him through every tender means
she could think of, with the truth that he had done
nothing for which he could justly reproach himself, but
had uniformly forgotten himself for their joint sakes.
Next to her preservation of his own last grateful love
and blessing, and her overcoming of her sorrow, to de-
IDARKNESS. - 343
g
vote herself to their dear child, he adjured her, as they
would meet in Heaven, to comfort her father.
To her father himself, he wrote in the same strain;
but, he told her father that he expressly confided his
wife and child to his care. And he told him this, very
strongly, with the hope of rousing him from any de-
spondency or dangerous retrospect towards which he
foresaw he might be .
To Mr. Lorry, he commended them all, and explained
his worldly affairs. That done, with many added sen-
tences of grateful friendship and warm attachment,
all was done. He never thought of Carton. His mind
was so full of the others, that he never once thought
of him. - -
He had time to finish these letters before the lights
were put out. When he lay down on his straw bed, he
thought he had done with this world.
But, it beckoned him back in his sleep, and showed
itself in shining forms. Free and happy, back in the
old house in Soho (though it had nothing in it like the
real house), unaccountably released and light of heart,
he was with Lucie again, and she told him it was all a
dream, and he had never gone away. A pause of for-
getfulness, and then he had even suffered, and had
come back to her, dead and at peace, and yet there was
no difference in him. Another pause of oblivion, and
he awoke in the sombre morning, unconscious where
he was or what had happened, until it flashed upon his
mind, “this is the day of my death!”
Thus, had he come through the hours, to the day
when the fifty-two heads were to fall. And now, while
he was composed, and hoped that he could meet the
end with quiet heroism, a new action began in his wak-
ing thoughts, which was very difficult to master. -
He had never seen the instrument that was to ter-
minate his life. How high it was from the ground, how
many steps it had, where he would be stood, how he
would be touched, whether the touching hands would
be dyed red, which way his face would be turned,
whether he would be the first, or might be the last: these
and many similar questions, in no wise directed by his
will, obtruded themselves over and Over again, count-
less times. Neither were they connected with fear: he
was conscious of no fear. Rather, they originated in a
84 A. TAT,E OF TWO CITIES.
strange besetting desire to know what to do when the
time came; a desire gigantically disproportionate to the
few swift moments to which it referred; a wondering
that was more like the wondering of some other spirit
within his, than his own. • * -
The hours went on as he walked to and fro, and the
clocks struck the numbers he would never hear again.
Nine gone for ever, ten gone for ever, eleven gone for
ever, twelve coming on to pass away. After a hard
contest with that eccentric action of thought which had
last perplexed him, he had got the better of it. He
walked up and down, softly repeating their names to
himself. The worst of the strife was over. He could
walk up and down, free from distracting fancies, pray-
ing for himself and for them.
Twelve gone for ever. - -
He had been apprised that the final hour was Three,
and he knew he would be summoned some time earlier,
inasmuch as the tumbrils jolted heavily and slowly
through the streets. Therefore, he resolved to keep
Two before his mind, as the hour, and so to strengthen
himself in the interval that he might be able, after that
time, to strengthen others. - -
Walking regularly to and fro with his arms folded on
his breast, a very different man from the prisoner who
had walked to and fro at La Force, he heard One struck
away from him, without surprise. The hour had meas-
ured like most other hours. Devoutly thankful to
Heaven for his recovered self-possession, he thought,
“There is but another now,” and turned to walk again.
Footsteps in the stone passage, Outside the door. He
stopped. - * * . .
The key was put in the lock, and turned. Before
the door was opened, or as it opened, a man said in a
low voice, in English: “He has never seen me here; I
have kept out of his way. Go you in alone; I wait
near. Lose no time!” - -
The door was quickly opened and closed, and there
stood before him, face to face, quiet, intent upon him,
with the light of a smile on his features and a caution-
ary finger on his lip, Sydney Carton.
There was something so bright and remarkable in his
look, that, for the first moment, the prisoner misdoubted
him to be an apparition of his own imagining. But, he
DARKNESS. 845
spoke, and it was his voice; he took the prisoner's hand,
and it was his real grasp. -
“Of all the people upon earth, you least expected to
See me?” he said. • .
“I could not believe it to be you. I can scarcely
believe it now. You are not ”—the apprehension came
Suddenly into his mind—“a prisoner?” "
“ No. I am accidentally possessed of a power over
One of the keepers here, and in virtue of it I stand be-
fore you. I come from her—your wife, dear Darnay.”
The prisoner wrung his hand.
“I bring you a request from her.”
“What is it?” - 4. -
“A most earnest, pressing, and emphatic entreaty,
addressed to you in the most pathetic tones of the voice
So dear to you, that you well remember.”
The prisoner turned his face partly aside.
“You have no time to ask me why I bring it, or what
it means; I have no time to tell you. You must comply
with it—take off those boots you wear, and draw on
these of mine. -
There was a chair against the wall of the cell, behind
the prisoner. Carton, pressing forward, had already,
with the speed of lightning, got him down into it, and
stood over him barefoot. - -
“Draw on these boots of mine. Put your hands to
them; put your will to them. Quick!”
“Carton, there is no escaping from this place; it never
can be done. You will only die with me. It is madness.”
“It would be madness if I asked you to escape; but
do I? When I ask you to pass out at that door, tell me
it is madness and remain here. Change that cravat for
this of mine, that coat for this of mine. While you do
it, let me take this ribbon from your hair, and shake out
your hair like this of mine!”
With wonderful quickness, and with a strength both
of will and action, that appeared quite Supernatural, he
forced all these changes upon him. The prisoner was
like a young child in his hands.
“Carton | Dear Carton! It is madness. It cannot
be accomplished, it never can be done, it has been
attempted, and has always failed. I implore you not
to add your death to the bitterness of mine.”
“Do I ask you, my dear Darnay, to pass the door?
346 A TALE OF Two CITIES.
When I ask that, refuse. There are pen and ink and
paper on this table. Is your hand steady enough to
Write P” - -
“It was, when you came in.”
“Steady it again, and write what I shall dictate.
Quick, friend, quick!” •
Pressing his hand to his bewildered head, Darnay sat
down at the table. Carton, with his right hand in his
breast, stood close beside him. - .
“Write exactly as I speak.”
** To whom do I address it?”
“To no one.” Carton still had his hand in his breast.
** Do I date it?”
6 & NO.” -
The prisoner looked up, at each question. Carton,
jºins over him with his hand in his breast, looked
OWI). -
“‘If you remember,’” said Carton, dictating. “‘the
words that passed between us, long ago, you will
readily comprehend this when you see it. You do re-
member them, I know. It is not in your nature to for-
get them.’”
He was drawing his hand from his breast ; the
Fº chancing to look up in his hurried wonder as
e wrote, the hand stopped, closing upon something.
“Have you written ‘forget them?’” Carton asked.
“I have. Is that a weapon in your hand?”
“No; I am not armed.” r
“What is it in your hand?”
“You shall know directly. Write on; there are but
a few words more.” He dictated again. ‘‘‘ I am thank-
ful that the time has come, when I can prove them. .
That I do so, is no subject for regret or grief.” As he
said these words with his eyes fixed on the writer, his
º slowly and softly moved down close to the writer’s
a,Cé.
The pen dropped from Darnay's fingers on the table,
and he looked about him vacantly.
“What vapour is that?” he asked.
“Vapour?”
“Something that crossed me?”
“I am conscious of nothing; there can be nothing
here. Take up the pen and finish. Hurry, hurry!”
As if his memory were impaired, of his faculties
DARKNESS. 34:
disordered, the prisoner made an effort to rally his at-
tention. As he looked at Carton with clouded eyes and
with an altered manner of breathing, Carton—his hand
again in his breast—looked steadily at him.
“Hurry, hurry!”
The prisoner bent over the paper, once more.
“‘If it had been otherwise; ’” Carton’s hand was again
watchfully and softly stealing down ; ‘‘ ‘I never should
have used the longer opportunity. If it had been other-
wise; ’” the hand was at the prisoner's face; ‘‘‘I should
but have had so much the more to answer for. If it
had been otherwise ’” Carton looked at the pen,
and saw that it was trailing off into unintelligible signs.
Carton’s hand moved back to his breast no more.
The prisoner sprang up, with a reproachful look, but
Carton’s hand was close and firm at his nostrils, and
Carton’s left arm caught him round the waist. For a
few seconds he faintly struggled with the man who had
come to lay down his life for him; but, within a minute
or so, he was stretched insensible on the ground.
Quickly, but with hands as true to the purpose as his
heart was, Carton dressed himself in the clothes the
prisoner had laid aside, combed back his hair, and tied
it with the ribbon the prisoner had worn. Then, he
softly called “Enter there! Come in!” and the spy
presented himself.
“You see?” said Carton, looking up, as he kneeled
on one knee beside the insensible figure, putting the
paper in the breast : “is your hazard very great?”
“Mr. Carton,” the spy answered, with a timid snap
of his fingers, “my hazard is not that, in the thick of
business here, if you are true to the whole of your
bargain.”
“Don’t fear me. I will be true to the death.”
“You must be, Mr. Carton, if the tale of fifty-two is
to be right. Being made right by you in that dress, I
shall have no fear.” - -
“Have no fear! I shall soon be out of the way of
harming you, and the rest will soon be far from here,
please God | Now, get assistance and take me to the
coach.” -
“You ?” said the spy, nervously.
“Him, man, with whom I have exchanged. You go
out at the gate by which you brought me in P”
348 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES,
“Of course.” ſº
“I was weak and faint when you brought me in, and
I am fainter now you take me out. The parting inter-
view has overpowered me. Such a thing has happened
here, often, and too often. Your life is in your Own
hands. Quick l Call assistance l’
“You swear not to betray me P” said the trembling
spy, as he paused for a last moment.
“Man, man l’’ returned Carton, stamping his foot;
“ have I sworn by no solemn vow already, to go
through with this, that you waste the precious
moments now? Take him yourself to the court-yard
you know of, place him yourself in the carriage, show
him yourself to Mr. Lorry, tell him yourself to give him
no restorative but air, and to remember my words of
last hight, and his promise of last night, and drive
away !”
The spy withdrew, and Carton seated himself at the
table, resting his forehead on his hands. The spy
returned immediately, with two men.
“How, then P” said one of them, contemplating the
fallen figure. “So afflicted to find that his friend has
drawn a prize in the lottery of Sainte Guillotine P”
“A good patriot,” said the other, “could hardly have
been more afflicted if the Aristocrat had drawn a
blank.”
They raised the unconscious figure, placed it on a
litter they had brought to the door, and bent to carry it
away.
“The time is short, Evrémonde,” said the spy, in a
warning voice.
‘‘I know it well,” answered Carton. “Be careful of
my friend, I entreat you, and leave me.”
“Come, then, my children,” said Barsad. “Lift him,
and come away!”
The door closed, and Carton was left alone. Strain-
ing his powers of listening to the utmost, he listened
for any sound that might denote suspicion or alarm.
There was none. Keys turned, doors clashed, foot-
steps passed along distant passages: no cry was raised,
or hurry made, that seemed unusual. Breathing more
freely in a little while, he sat down at the table, and
listened again until the clocks struck Two.
Sounds that he was not afraid of, for he divined
T) ARKNESS. - 34)
their meaning, then began to be audible. Several
doors were opened in succession, and finally his own.
A gaoler, with a list in his hand, looking in, merely
saying, “ Follow me, Evrémonde l’ and he followed
into a large dark room, at a distance. It was a dark
winter day, and what with the shadows within, and
what with the shadows without, he could but dimly
discern the others who were brought there to have
their arms bound. Some were standing; some seated.
Some were lamenting, and in restless motion; but,
these were few. The great majority were silent and
still, looking fixedly at the ground. ,”
As he stood by the wall in a dim corner, while some
of the fifty-two were brought in after him, one man
stopped in passing, to embrace him, as having a knowl-
edge of him. It thrilled him with a great dread of dis-
covery; but the man went on. A very few moments
after that, a young woman, with a slight girlish form,
a sweet spare face in which there was no vestige of
colour, and large widely opened patient eyes, rose
from the seat where he had observed her sitting, and
came to speak to him. •
“Citizen Evrémonde,” she said, touching him with
her cold hand. “I am a poor little seamstress, who
was with you in La Force.”
He murmured for answer: “True. I forget what you
were accused of ?” -
“Plots. Though the just Heaven knows I am inno- .
cent of any. Is it likely? Who would think of plotting
with a poor little weak creature like me **
The forlorn Smile with which she said it, so touched
him that tears started from his eyes.
“I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evrémonde, but I
have done nothing. I am not unwilling to die, if the
Republic which is to do so much good to us poor, will
profit by my death; but I do not know how that
can be, Citizen Evrémonde. Such a poor weak little
Creature!” -
As the last thing on earth that his heart was to warm
and soften to, it warmed and softened to this pitiable
irl. . .
“I heard you were released, Citizen Evrémonde. I
hoped it was true?”
“It was. But, I was again taken and condemned.”
350 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“If I may ride with you, Citizen Evrémonde, will
you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am
little and weak, and it will give me more courage.”
As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a
sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment. He
pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young fingers, and
touched his lips. - -
“Are you dying for him?” she whispered.
“And his wife and child. Hush! Yes.”
“O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?”
“Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.” -
The same shadows that are falling on the prison, are
falling, in the same hour of that early afternoon, on the
Barrier with the crowd about it, when a coach going
out of Paris drives up to be examined.
“Who goes here? Whom have we within? Papers!”
The papers are handed out and read. -
i Alexandre Manette. Physician. French. Which
is he?” º
This is he; this helpless, inarticulately murmuring,
wandering old man pointed out. * *
“ Apparently the Citizen-Doctor is not in his right
mind? The Revolution-fever will have been too much
for him 2 ” -
Greatly too much for him.
“Hah! Many suffer with it. Lucie. His daughter.
French. Which is she?”
This is she. .
“ Apparently it must be. Lucie, the wife of
Evrémonde; is it not?” -
It is.
“Hah! Evrémonde has an assignation elsewhere.
Lucie, her child. English. This is she?”
She and no other.
“ Kiss me, child of Evrémonde. Now, thou hast
kissed a good Republican; something new in thy family;
remember it! Sydney Carton. Advocate. English.
Which is he?” -
He lies here, in this corner of the carriage. He, too,
is pointed out.
“ Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon?”
It is hoped he will recover in the fresher air. It is
represented that he is not in strong health, and has
DARKNESS. 351
separated sadly from a friend who is under the dis-
pleasure of the Republic. -
“Is that all? It is not a great deal, that! Many are
under the displeasure of the Republic, and must look
out at the little window. Jarvis Lorry. Banker. Eng-
lish. Which is he?” (A
“I am he. Necessarily, being the last.”
It is Jarvis Lorry who has replied to all the previous
Questions. It is Jarvis Lorry who has alighted and
stands with his hand on the coach door, replying to a
group of officials. They leisurely walk round the car-
riage and leisurely mount the box, to look at what little
luggage it carries on the roof; the country-people hang-
ing about, press nearer to the coach doors and greedily
stare in; a little child, carried by its mother, has its
short arm held out for it, that it may touch the wife of
an aristocrat who has gone to the Guillotine.
“Behold your papers, Jarvis Lorry, countersigned.”
“One can depart, citizen?”
“One can depart. Forward, my postilions! A good
journey!”
“I salute you, citizens.—And the first danger
passed!”
These are again the words of Jarvis Lorry, as he
clasps his hands, and looks upward. There is terror in
the carriage, there is weeping, there is the heavy
breathing of the insensible traveller.
“Are you not going too slowly Can they not be
induced to go faster P” asks Lucie, clinging to the old
Iſla, Il.
“It would seem like flight, my darling. . I must not
urge them too much ; it would rouse suspicion.”
“Look back, look back, and see if you are pur-
sued ſ” -
“The road is clear, my dearest. So far, we are not
pursued.”
Houses in twos and threes pass by us, Solitary farms,
ruinous buildings, dye-works, tanneries and the like
open country, avenues of leafless trees. The hard
uneven pavement is under us, the soft deep mud is on
either side. Sometimes we strike into the skirting mud
to avoid the stones that clatter us and shake us; SOme-
times we stick in ruts and sloughs there. The agony
of our impatience is then so great, that in our Wild . .
352 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
alarm and hurry we are for getting out and running—
hiding—doing anything but stopping. -
Out of the open country, in again among ruinous
buildings, solitary farms, dye-works, tanneries and the
like, cottages in twos and threes, avenues of leafless
trees. Haye these men deceived us, and taken us back
by another road 2 Is not 'this the same place twice
over ? Thank Heaven no. A village. Look back,
look back, and see if we are pursued Hush! the post-
ing-house. - - - -
Leisurely, our four horses are taken out ; leisurely,
the coach stands in the little street, bereft of horses, and
with no likelihood upon it of ever moving again ;
leisurely the new horses come into visible existence,
one by one; leisurely, the new Fº follow, sucking
and plaiting the lashes of their whips ; leisurely, the
old postilions count their money, make wrong additions,
and arrive at dissatisfied results. All the time our
overfraught hearts are beating at a rate that would far
tºp the fastest gallop .# the fastest horses ever
O8,162C1.
At length the new postilions are in their saddles, and
the old are left behind. We are through the village,
up the hill, and down the hill, and on the low watery
grounds. Suddenly, the postilions exchange speech
with animated gesticulation, and the horses are pulled
up, almost on their haunches. We are pursued!
“Ho ! Within the carriage there. Speak then!”
“What is it P’’ asks Mr. Lorry, looking out at
window. -
“How many did they say?”
“I do not understand you.” - -
“—At the last post. How many to the Guillotine
to-day ?”
“Fifty-two.” - -
“I said so I A brave number 1 My fellow-citizen
here, would have it forty-two ; ten more heads are
worth having. The Guillotine goes handsomely. I love
it. Hi forward. Whoop!” - .
The night comes on dark. He moves more ; he is
beginning to revive, and to speak intelligibly; he thinks
they are still together ; he asks him by his name, what
he has in his hand. O pity us, kind Heaven, and help
us! Look out, look out, and see if we are pursued,
THE KNITTING DONE. 353
The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are
flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and
the Whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far, we
are pursued by nothing else. -
CHAPTER, XIV.
THE KNITTING DONE.
N that same juncture of time when the Fifty-Two
awaited their fate, Madame Defarge held darkly
ominous council with The Vengeance and Jacques
Three of the Revolutionary Jury. Not in the wine-
shop did Madame Defarge confer with these ministers,
but in the shed of the wood-sawyer, erst a mender
of roads. The sawyer himself did not participate in
the conference, but abided at a little distance, like an
outer satellite who was not to speak until required, or
to offer an opinion until invited.
“But our Defarge,” said Jacques Three, “is un-
doubtedly a good Republican P Eh P’’
“There is no better,” the voluble Vengeance protested
in her shrill notes, “in France.”
“Peace, little Vengeance,” said Madame Defarge,
laying her hand with a slight frown on her lieutenant’s
lips, “hear me speak. My husband, fellow-citizen, is
a good Republican and a bold man; he has deserved
well of the Republic, and possesses its confidence.
But my husband has his weaknesses, and he is so
weak as to relent towards this Doctor.”
“It is a great pity,” croaked Jacques Three, dubi-
ously shaking his head, with his cruel fingers at his
hungry mouth; “It is not quite like a good citizen; it
is a thing to regret.”
“See you,” said madame, “I care nothing for this
Doctor, I. He may wear his head or lose it, for any
interest I have in him: it is all one to me. But, the
Evrémonde people are to be exterminated, and the wife
and child must follow the husband and father.”
“She has a fine head for it,” croaked Jacques Three.
“I have seen blue eyes and golden hair there, and
VOI. I. 23
354 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
they looked charming when Samson held them up.”
Ogre that he was, he spoke like an epicure. .*
Madame Defarge cast down her eyes, and reflected a
little.
“The child also,” observed Jacques. Three, with a
meditative enjoyment of his words, “has golden hair
and blue eyes. And we seldom have a child there.
It is a pretty sight!”
“In a word,” said Madame Defarge, coming out of
her short abstraction, “I cannot trust my husband in
this matter. Not only do I feel, since last night, that
I dare not confide to him the details of my projects;
but also I feel that if I delay, there is danger of his
giving warning, and then they might escape.”
“That must never be,” croaked Jacques Three; “no
one must escape. We have not half enough as it is.
We ought to have six score a day.”
“In a word,” Madame Defarge went on, “my hus-
band has not my reason for pursuing this family to
annihilation, and I have not his reason for regarding
this Doctor with any sensibility. I must act for myself,
therefore. Come hither, little citizen.”
The wood-sawyer, who held her in the respect, and
himself in the submission, of mortal fear, advanced
with his hand to his red cap.
“Touching those signals, little citizen,” said Madame
Defarge, sternly, “that she made to the prisoners; you
are ready to bear witness to them this very day?”
“Ay, ay, why not!” cried the sawyer. “Every day,
in all weathers, from two to four, always signalling,
sometimes with the little one, sometimes without. I
know what I know. I have seen with my eyes.” -
He made all manner of gestures while he spoke, as
if in incidental imitation of some few of the great di-
versity of signals that he had never seen.
ºry plots,” said Jacques Three. “Transpar-
ently!”
“There is no doubt of the Jury?” inquired Madame
ºrge, letting her eyes turn to him with a gloomy
SIOllie.
“Rely upon the patriotic Jury, dear citizeness. I
answer for my fellow-Jurymen.”
“Now, let me see,” said Madame Defarge, pondering
again. “Yet once more! Can I spare this Doctor to
THE KNITTING DONE. 355
my husband? I have no feeling either way. Can I
spare him?”
“He would count as one head,” observed Jacques
Three, in a low voice. “We really have not heads
enough; it would be a pity, I think.”
“He was signalling with her when I saw her,” argued
Madame Defarge; “I cannot speak of one without the
other; and I must not be silent, and trust the case
wholly to him, this little citizen here. For, I am not a
bad witness.”
The Vengeance and Jacques Three vied with each
other in their fervent protestations that she was the
most admirable and marvellous of witnesses. The
little citizen, not to be outdone, declared her to be a
celestial witness.
“He must take his chance,” said Madame Defarge.
“No, I cannot spare him! You are engaged at three
o'clock; you are going to see the batch of to-day exe-
cuted.—You?” -
The question was addressed to the wood-sawyer, who
hurriedly replied in the affirmative: seizing the occa-
sion to add that he was the most ardent of Republicans,
and that he would be in effect the most desolate of Re-
publicans, if anything prevented him from enjoying
the pleasure of smoking his afternoon pipe in the con-
templation of the droll national barber. He was so
very demonstrative herein, that he might have been
suspected (perhaps was, by the dark eyes that looked
contemptuously at him out of Madame Defarge's head)
of having his small individual fears for his own per-
sonal safety, every hour in the day.
‘‘I,’” said madame, “am equally engaged at the same
place. After it is over—say at eight to-night—come
you to me, in Saint Antoine, and we will give informa-
tion against these people at my Section.”
The wood-sawyer said he would be proud and flattered
to attend the citizeness. The citizeness looking at him,
he became embarrassed, evaded her glance as a Small
dog would have done, retreated among his wood, and
hid his confusion over the handle of his saw.
Madame Defarge beckoned the Juryman and The
Vengeance a little nearer to the door, and there ex-
pounded her further views to them thus: *
“Shé will now be at home, awaiting the moment of
356 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
his death. She will be mourning and grieving. She
will be in a state of mind to impeach the justice of the
Republic. She will be full of sympathy with its ene-
mies. I will go to her.”
“What an admirable woman; what an adorable
woman!” exclaimed Jacques Three, rapturously. “Ah,
i. cherished!” cried The Vengeance; and embraced
€I’.
“Take you my knitting,” said Madame Defarge,
placing it in her lieutenant’s hands, “ and have it ready
for me in my usual seat. Keep me my usual chair. Go
you there, straight, for there will probably be a greater
Concourse than usual to-day.”
“I willingly obey the orders of my Chief,” said The
Vengeance, with alacrity, and kissing her cheek. “You
will not be late?”
“I shall be there before the corhmencement.”
“And before the tumbrils arrive. Be sure you are
there, my soul,” said The Vengeance, calling after her,
for she had already turned into the street, ‘‘ before the
tumbrils arrive!”
Madame Defarge slightly waved her hand, to imply
that she heard, and might be relied upon to arrive in
good time, and so went through the mud, and round
the corner of the prison wall. . The Vengeance and the
Juryman, looking after her as she walked away, were
highly appreciative of her fine figure, and her superb
moral endowments. - *
There were many women at that time, upon whom
the time laid a dreadfully disfiguring hand; but, there
was not one among them more to be dreaded than this
ruthless woman, now taking her way along the streets.
Of a strong and fearless character, of shrewd sense
and readiness, of great determination, of that kind of
beauty which not only seems to impart to its possessor
firmness and animosity, but to strike into others an in-
stinctive recognition of those qualities; the troubled
time would have heaved her up, under any circum-
stances. But, imbued from her childhood with a brood-
ing Sense of wrong, and an inveterate hatred of a class,
º had developed her into a tigress. She was
absolutely without pity. If she had ever had the virtue
in her, it had quite gone out of her.
It was nothing to her, that an innocent man was to
THE KNITTING DONE. ~35%.
die for the sins of his forefathers; she saw, not him,
but them. It was nothing to her, that his wife was to
be made a widow and his daughter an orphan; that
was insufficient punishment, because they were her
natural enemies and her prey, and as such had no
right to live. To appeal to her, was made hopeless by
her having no sense of pity, even for .# If she
had been laid low in the streets, in any of the many en-
Counters in which she had been engaged, she would not
have pitied herself; nor, if she had been ordered to the
axe to-morrow, would she have gone to it with any
Softer feeling than a fierce desire to change places with
the man who sent her there.
Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her
rough robe. Carelessly worn, it was a becoming robe
enough, in a certain weird way, and her dark hair
looked rich under her coarse red cap. Lying hidden in
her bosom, was a loaded pistol. Lying hidden at her
waist, was a sharpened dagger. Thus accoutred, and
walking with the confident tread of such a character,
and with the supple freedom of a woman who had
habitually jui. in her girlhood, bare-foot and bare-
legged, on the brown sea-sand, Madame Defarge took
her way along the streets.
Now, when the journey of the travelling coach, at
that very moment waiting for the completion of its load,
had been planned out last night, the difficulty of taking
Miss Pross in it had much engaged Mr. Dorry’s atten-
sion. It was not merely desirable to avoid overloading
the coach, but it was of the highest importance that
the time occupied in examining it and its passengers,
should be reduced to the utmost; since their escape
might depend on the saving of Only a few seconds here
...; there. Finally, he had proposed, after anxious
consideration, that Miss Pross and Jerry, who were at
liberty to leave the city, should leave it at three o’clock
in the lightest-wheeled conveyance known to that
period. Unencumbered with luggage, they would
soon overtake the coach, and, passing it and preceding
it on the road, would order its horses in advance, and
greatly facilitate its progress during the precious hours
of the night, when delay was the most to be dreaded.
Seeing in this arrangement the hope of rendering real
service in that pressing emergency, Miss Pross hailed
858 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
it with joy. She and Jerry had beheld the coach start,
had known who it was that Solomon brought, had
passed some ten minutes in tortures of suspense, and
were now concluding their arrangements to follow the
coach, even as Madame Defarge, taking her way through
the streets, now drew nearer and nearer to the else-
deserted lodging in which they held their consultation.
“Now what do you think, Mr. Cruncher,” said Miss
|Pross, whose agitation was so great that she could
hardly speak, or stand or move, or live: “what do you
think of our not starting from this court-yard? Another
carriage having already gone from here to-day, it might
awaken suspicion.
“My opinion, miss,” returned Mr. Cruncher, is as
you’re right, Likewise wot I’ll stand by you, right
or wrong.”
“I am so distracted with fear and hope for our precious
creatures,” said Miss Pross, wildly crying, “that I am
incapable of forming any plan. Are you capable of
forming any plan, my dear good Mr. Cruncher?”
.* Respectin’ a future spear o' life, miss,” returned
Mr. Cruncher, “I hope so. Respectin’ any present use
o' this here blessed old head o' mine, I think not. Would
ou do me the favour, miss, to take notice O’ two prom-
ises and wows wot it is my wishes fur to record in this
here crisis?”
“Oh, for gracious sake!” cried Miss Pross, still wildly
crying, “ record them at once, and get them out of the
way, like an excellent man.”
“First,” said Mr. Cruncher, who was all in a tremble,
and who spoke with an ashy and Solemn visage, ‘‘them
poor things well out o' this, never no more will I do it,
never no more!”
“I am quite sure, Mr. Cruncher,” returned Miss Pross,
“ that you never will do it again, whatever it is, and
I beg you not to think it necessary to mention more
particularly what it is.”
“No, miss,” returned Jerry, “it shall not be named
to you. Second: them poor things well out o' this, and
never no more will I interfere with Mrs. Cruncher's
flopping, never no more!”
“Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may
be,” said Miss Pross, striving to dry her eyes and com-
pose herself, “I have no doubt it is best that Mrs.
THE KNITTING DONE. 35%)
Cruncher should have it entirely under her own super-
intendence—O my poor darlings!”
“I go so far as to Say, miss, morehover,” proceeded
Mr. Cruncher, with a most alarming tendency to hold
forth as from a pulpit—“ and let my words be took
down and took to Mrs. Cruncher through yourself—that
Wot my opinions respectin’ flopping has undergone a
change, and that wot I Only hope with all my heart as
*. Cruncher may be a flopping at the present
ime.”
“There, there, there! I hope she is, my dear man,”
cried the distracted Miss Pross, “ and I hope she finds
it answering her expectations.”
“Forbid it,” proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with additional
Solemnity, additional slowness, and additional tendency
to hold forth and hold out, “as anything wot I have
ever said or done should be wisited on my earnest
wishes for them poor creeturs now! Forbid it as we
shouldn’t all flop (if it was anyways convenient) to get
'em out o' this here dismal risk! Forbid, it miss! Wot
I say, for—BID it. ” This was Mr. Cruncher's con-
clusion after a protracted but vain endeavour to find a
better one.
And still Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along
the streets, came nearer and nearer.
“If we ever get back to our native land,” said Miss
Pross, “ you may rely upon my telling Mrs. Cruncher
as much as I may be able to remember and understand
of what you have so impressively said; and at all events
you may be sure that I shall bear witness to your being
thoroughly in earnest at this dreadful time. Now, pray
let us think I My esteemed Mr. Cruncher, let us think I’’
Still, Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the
streets, came nearer and nearer.
“If you were to go. before,” said, Miss Pross, “and
stop the vehicle and horses from coming here, and were
to wait somewhere for me; wouldn’t that be best?”
Mr. Cruncher thought it might be best.
“Where could you wait for me?” asked Miss Pross.
Mr. Cruncher was so bewildered that he could think
of no locality but Temple Bar. Alas, Temple Bar was
hundreds of miles away, and Madame Defarge Was
drawing very near indeed, º tº
“By the cathedral door,” said Miss Pross. “Would it
360 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
be much out of the way, to take me in, near the great
cathedral door between the two towers ?”
“No, miss,” answered Mr. Cruncher.
“Then, like the best of men,” said Miss Pross, “go to
the posting-house straight, and make that change.”
“I am doubtful,” said Mr. Cruncher, hesitating and
shaking his head, “about leaving of you, you see. We
don’t know what may happen.”
“Heaven knows we don’t,” returned Miss Pross, “but
have no fear for me. Take me in at the cathedral, at
Three o’Clock or as near it as you can, and I am sure it
will be better than our going from here. I feel certain
..of it. There ! Bless you, Mr. Cruncher . Think—not
of me, but of the lives that may depend on both of us !”
This exordium, and Miss Pross's two hands in quite
agonised entreaty clasping his, decided Mr. Cruncher.
With an encouraging nod or two, he immediately went
out to alter the arrangements, and left her by herself
to follow as she had proposed.
The having originated a precaution which was already
in course of execution, was a great relief to Miss Press.
The necessity of composing her appearance so that it
should attract no special notice in the streets, was
another relief. She looked at her watch, and it was
twenty minutes past two. She had no time to lose, but
must get ready at once.
Afraid, in her extreme perturbation, of the loneliness
of the deserted rooms, and of half-imagined faces peep-
ing from behind every open door in them, Miss Pross got
a basin of cold water and began laving her eyes, which
were swollen and red. Haunted by her feverish appre-
hensions, she could not bear to have her sight obscured
for a minute at a time by the dripping water, but con-
stantly paused and looked round to see that there was
no one watching her. In one of those pauses she
recoiled and cried out, for she saw a figure standing in
the room.
The basin fell to the ground broken, and the water
flowed to the feet of Madame Defarge. By strangestern
ways, and through much staining blood, those feet had
come to meet that water.
Madame Defarge looked coldly at her and said, “The
wife of Evrémonde; where is she?”
It flashed upon Miss Pross’s mind that the doors were
~ *~ -
THE KNITTING DONE. 361
all standing open, and would suggest the flight. Her
first act was to shut them. There were four in the room,
and she shut them all. She then placed herself before
the door of the chamber which Lucie had occupied.
Madame Defarge's dark eyes followed her through
this rapid movement, and rested on her when it was
finished. Miss Pross had nothing beautiful about her;
years had not tamed the wildness, or softened the grim-
ness, of her appearance; but she too was a determined
woman in her different way, and she measured Madame
Defarge with her eyes, every inch.
“You might, from your appearance be the wife of
Lucifer,” said Miss Pross, in her breathing. “Never:
theless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an
Englishwoman.”
Madame Defarge looked at her scornfully, but still
with something of Miss Pross's own perception that
they two were at bay. She saw a tight, hard, wiry
woman before her, as Mr. Lorry had seen in the same
figure a woman with a strong hand, in the years gone
by. She knew full well that Miss Pross was the
family’s devoted friend ; Miss Pross knew full well that
Madame Defarge was the family’s malevolent enemy.
“On my way yonder,” said Madame Defarge, with a
slight movement of her hand towards the fatal spot,
“where they reserve my chair and my knitting for me,
I am come to make my compliments to her in passing.
I wish to see her.”
“I know that your intentions are evil,” said Miss
Pross, “and you may depend upon it, I’ll hold my own
against them.”
Each spoke in her own language; neither understood
the other's words; both were very watchful, and intent
to deduce from look and manner, what the unintel-
ligible words meant.
“It will do her no good to keep herself concealed
from me at this moment,” said Madame Defarge.
“Good patriots will know what that means. Let me
i. her. Go tell her that I wish to see her. Do you
ear?” -
“If those eyes of yours were bed-winches,” returned
Miss Pross, “ and I was an English four-poster, they
shouldn’t loose a splinter of me. No, you wicked
foreign woman; I am your match.”
362 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Madame Defarge was not likely to follow these
idiomatic remarks in detail; but, she so far understood
them as to perceive that she was set at naught. e
“Woman imbecile and pig-like l’” said Madame
Defarge, frowning. “I take no answer from you... I
demand to see her. Either tell her that I demand to
see her, or stand out of the way of the door and let me
go to her!” This, with an angry explanatory wave of
her right arm. -
“I little thought,” said Miss Pross, “that I should
ever want to understand your nonsensical language;
but . I would give all I have, except the clothes I
wear, to know whether you suspect the truth, or any
part of it.”
Neither of them for a single moment released the
other's eyes. Madame Defarge had not moved from
the spot where she stood when Miss Pross first became
aware of her; but, she now advanced one step.
“I am a Briton,” said Miss Pross, “I am desperate.
I don’t care an English Twopence for myself. I know
that the longer I keep you here, the greater hope there
is for my Ladybird. I’ll not leave a handful of that
dark hair upon your head, if you lay a finger on me!”
Thus Miss Pross, with a shake of her head and a
flash of her eyes between every rapid sentence, and
every rapid sentence a whole breath. Thus Miss Pross,
who had never struck a blow in her life.
But, her courage was of that emotional nature that
it brought the irrepressible tears into her eyes. This
was a courage that Madame Defarge so little compre-
hended as to mistake for weakness. “Ha, ha!” she
laughed, “you poor wretch! What are you worth! I
address myself to that Doctor.” Then she raised
her voice and called out, “Citizen Doctor! Wife of
Evrémonde! Child of Evrémonde! Any person but
this miserable fool, answer the Citizeness Defarge!”
Perhaps the following silence, perhaps some latent
disclosure in the expression of * Pross’s face, per-
haps a sudden misgiving apart from either suggestion,
whispered to Madame Defarge that they were gone.
Three of the doors she opened swiftly, and looked in.
“Those rooms are all in disorder, there has been hur-
ried packing, there are odds and ends upon the ground.
There is no one in that room behind you! Let me look.”
THE KNITTING DONE. 363
“Never!” said Miss Pross, who understood the re-
quest as perfectly as Madame Defarge understood the
allSW €I’.
... “If they are not in that room, they are gone, and can
be pursued and brought back,” said Madame Defarge
to herself. t -
“As long as you don’t know whether they are in that
room Or not, you are uncertain what to do,” said Miss
Pross to herself; “and you shall not know that, if I can
prevent your knowing it; and know that, or not know
that, you shall not leave here while I can hold you.”
“I have been in the streets from the first, nothin
has stopped me, I will tear you to pieces but I will have
you from that door,” said Madame Defarge.
“We are alone at the top of a high house in a solitary
court-yard, we are not likely to be heard, and I pray
for bodily strength to keep you here, while every
minute you are here is worth a hundred thousand
guineas to my darling,” said Miss Pross.
Madame Defarge made at the door. Miss Pross, on
the instinct of the moment, seized her round the waist
in both her arms, and held her tight. It was in vain
for Madame Defarge to struggle and to strike; Miss
Pross, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so
much stronger than hate, clasped her tight, and even
lifted her from the floor in the struggle that they had.
The two hands of Madame Defarge buffeted and tore
her face; but Miss Pross, with her head down, held her
round the waist, and clung to her with more than the
hold of a drowning woman.
Soon, Madame Defarge's hands ceased to strike, and
felt at her encircled waist. “It is under my arm,” said
Miss Pross, in smothered tones, “ you shall not draw it.
I am stronger than you, I bless Heaven for it. I’ll hold
you till one or other of us faints or dies!”
Madame Defarge’s hands were at her bosom. Miss
Pross looked up, saw what it was, struck at it, struck
Out a flash and a crash, and stood alone—blinded with
Smoke. *.
All this was in a second. As the smoke cleared, leav-
ing an awful stillness, it passed out on the air, like the
Soul of the furious woman whose body lay lifeless on
the ground. . gº
In the first fright and horror of her situation, Miss
|
364 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
*
Pross passed the body as far from it as she could, and
ran down the stairs to call for fruitless help. , Happily,
she bethought herself of the consequences of what she
did, in time to check herself and go back. It was dread-
ful to go in at the door again; but, she did go in; and
even went near it, to get the bonnet and other things
that she must wear. These she put on, out on the stair-
case, first shutting and locking the door arid taking
away the key. She then sat down on the stairs a few
moments, to breathe and to Cry, and then got up and
hurried away.
By good fortune she had a veil on her bonnet, or she
could hardly have gone along the streets without being
Stopped. By good fortune, too, she was naturally so
peculiar in appearance as not to show disfigurement
like any other woman. She needed both advantages,
for the marks of griping fingers were deep in her face,
and her hair was torn, and her dress (hastily composed
with unsteady hands) was clutched and dragged a hun-
dred ways. -
In crossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in
the river. Arriving at the cathedral some few minutes
before her escort, and waiting there, she thought, what
if the key were already taken in a net, what if it were
identified, what if the door were opened and the re-
mains discovered, what if she were stopped at the gate,
sent to prison, and charged with murder! In the midst
of these fluttering thoughts, the escort appeared, took
her in, and took her away.
“Is there any noise in the streets?” she asked him.
“The usual noises,” Mr. Cruncher replied; and looked
surprised by the question and by her aspect.
“I don't hear you,” said Miss Pross. “What do you
say ?” *
It was in vain for Mr. Cruncher to repeat what he
said ; Miss Pross could not hear him. “So I’ll nod my
head,” thought Mr. Cruncher, amazed, “at all events
she’ll see that.” And she did. -
“Is there any noise in the streets now P” asked Miss
Pross again, presently. -
Again Mr. Cruncher nodded his head.
“I don’t hear it.”
“Gone deaf in a hour P” said Mr. Cruncher, ruminat-
ing, with his mind much disturbed; “wot's come to her?”
\
THE FOOTSTEPS I)IE OUT FOR EVER. 365
‘‘I feel,” said Miss Pross, “as if there had been a
flash and a crash, and that crash was the last thing I
should ever hear in this life.”
“Blest if she ain’t in a queer condition l’” said Mr.
Cruncher, more and more disturbed. “Wot can she
have been a takin', to keep her courage up? Hark!
There’s the roll of them dreadful carts! You can hear
that, miss?”
“I can hear,” said Miss Pross, seeing that he spoke
to her, “nothing. O, my good man, there was first a
great crash, and then a great stillness, and that still-
ness seems to be fixed and unchangeable, never to be
broken any more as long as my life lasts.”
“If she don’t hear the roll of those dreadful carts,
now very nigh their journey’s end,” said Mr. Cruncher,
lamcing over his shoulder, “it’s my opinion that in-
i. she never will hear anything else in this world.”
And indeed she never did.
f
CHAPTER XV.
THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOR EVER.
LONG ‘the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble,
e e ’º
hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day’s
wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate
Monsters imagined since imagination could record it-
self, are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And
yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil
and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a Sprig, a pepper-
corn, which will grow to maturity under conditions
more certain than those that have produced this hor-
ror. Crush humanity out of shape Once more, undCr
similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same
tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious licence
and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the
same fruit according to its kind.
Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these
back again to what they were, thou powerful enchanter,
Time, and they shall be seen to be the carriages of
absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles,
366 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
the toilettes of flaring Jezabels, the churches that are
not my father’s house but dens of thieves, the huts of
millions of starving peasants No; the great magician
who majestically works out the appointed order of the
Creator, never reverses his transformations. “If thou
be changed into this shape by the will of God,” say the
seers to the enchanted, in the wise Arabian stories,
“then remain so! But, if thou wear this form through
mere passing conjuration, then resume thy former
º !” Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll
along.
As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they
seem to plough up a long crooked furrow among the
populace in the streets. Ridges of faces are thrown to
this side and to that, and the ploughs go steadily
onward. So used are the regular inhabitants of the
houses to the spectacle, that in many windows there
are no people, and in some the occupations of the hands
is not so much as suspended, while the eyes survey the
faces in the tumbrils. Here and there, the inmate has
visitors to see the sight; then he points his finger, with
Something of the complacency of a curator or authorised
exponent, to this cart and to this, and seems to tell
who sat here yesterday, and who there the day
before. -
Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these
• things, and all things on their last roadside, with an
impassive stare; others, with a lingering interest in
the ways of life and men. Some seated with droop-
ing heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are
some so heedful of their looks that they cast upon
the multitude such glances as they have seen in
theatres, and in pictures. Several close their eyes,
and think, or try to get their straying thoughts to-
gether. Only one, and he a miserable creature of a
crazed aspect, is so shattered and made drunk by hor-
ror that he sings, and tries to dance. Not one of the
whole number appeals, by look or gesture, to the pity
of the people. O
There is a guard of Sundry horsemen riding abreast
of the tumbrils, and faces are often turned up to some
of them and they are asked some question. It would
seem to be always the same question, for, it is always
followed by a press of people towards the third cart.
THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOR EVER. 36%
The horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out
one man in it with their swords. The leading curiosity
is, to know which is he; he stands at the back of the
tumbril with his head bent down, to converse with a
mere girl who sits on the side of the cart, and holds his
hand. He has no curiosity or care for the scene about
him, and always speaks to the girl. Here and there in
a long Street of St. Honoré, cries are raised against
him. If they move him at all, it is only to a quiet
Smile, as he shakes his hair a little more loosely about
his face. He cannot easily touch his face, his arms
being bound. -
On the steps of the church, awaiting the coming-up
of the tumbrils, stands the spy and prison-sheep. He
looks into the first of them: not there. He looks into
the second: not there. He already asks himself, “Has
he sacrificed me?” when his face clears, as he looks
into the third. º - :
‘‘ Which is Evrémonde?” said a man behind him.
“That. At the back there.”
“With his hand in the girl’s?”
4 & Yes. 25
The man cries, “Down Evrémonde! To the Guil-
lotine all aristocrats! Down, Evrémonde!”
“ Hush, hush!” the spy entreats him, timidly.
“And why not, citizen?”
“He is going to pay the forfeit; it will be paid in five
minutes more. Let him be at peace.”
But, the man continuing to exclaim, “Down, Evré-
monde!” the face of Evrémonde is for a moment turned
towards him. Evrémonde then sees the spy, and looks
attentively at him, and goes his way. .
The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow
ploughed among the populace is turning round, to come
on into the place of execution, and end. The ridges
thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and
close behind the last plough as it passes On, for all are
following to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in
chairs as in a garden of public diversion, are a number
of women, busily knitting. On one of the foremost
chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about for her
friend.
Thérèse!” she cries, in her shrill tones. “Who has
seen her? Thérèse Defarge!”
368 A TALE OF TWO CITIES.
“She never missed before,” says a knitting-woman
of the sisterhood. - -
“No; nor will she miss now,” cries The Vengeance,
petulantly. ... “Thérèse.” -
“Louder,” the woman recommends.
Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she
will scarcely hear thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with
a little oath or so added, and yet it will hardly bring
her. Send other women up and down to seek her,
lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers
have done dread deeds, it is questionable whether of
their own wills they will go far enough to find her!
“Bad Fortune!” cries The Vengeance, stamping her
foot in the chair, “ and here are the tumbrils! And
Evrémonde will be despatched in a wink, and she not
here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty
chair ready for her. I cry with vexation and disap-
pointment!” º
As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do
it, the tumbrils begin to discharge their loads. The
ministers of Sainte Guillotine are robed and ready.
Crash!—A head is held up, and the knitting-women
who scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment
ago when it could think and speak, count One.
The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third
come up. Crash!—and the knitting-women never falter-
ing or pausing in their work, count Two.
The supposed Evrémonde descends, and the seamstress
is lifted out next after him. He has not relinquished
her patient hand in getting out, but still holds it as he
promised. He gently places her with her back to the
crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls,
and she looks into his face and thanks him. -
“But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so com-
Osed, for I am naturally a poor little thing, faint of
heart; nor should I have been able to raise my thoughts
to Him who was put to death, that we might have hope
and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me
by Heaven.” -
“Or you to me,” said Sydney Carton. “Reep your
eyes upon me, dear child, and mind no other object.”
‘‘I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall
mind nothing when I let it go, if they are rapid.”
“They will be rapid. Fear not!”
THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOR EVER. 369
The two stand in the fast-thinning crowd of victims,
but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye,
voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two
children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart
and differing, have come together on the dark highway,
to repair home together ...i to rest in her bosom.
“Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you
One last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles
me—just a little.” -
“Tell me what it is.”
‘‘I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan,
like myself, whom I love very dearly. She is five
years younger than I, and she lives in a farmer's house
in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she
knows nothing of my fate—for I cannot write—and if
I could, how should I tell her! It is better as it is.”
“Yes, yes; better as it is.” •
“What I have been thinking as wé came along, and
what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind
strong face, which gives me so much support, is this: If
the Republic really does good to the poor, and they
come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less,
º may live a long time; she may even live to be
O .”
“What then, my gentle sister.”
“Do you think; ” the uncomplaining eyes in which
there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips
part a little more and tremble: “ that it will seem long
to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I
trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?”
“It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and
no trouble there.”
“You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am
I to #: you now? Is the moment come?”
“Yes.”
She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly
bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble
as he releases it; nothing worse than a Sweet, bright
constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before
him—is gone; the knitting-women_count Twenty-Two.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life, Saith the Lord:
he that believeth in me, though he were déad, yet shall
he live: and whosover liveth and believeth in me shall
never die.” :
VOL. I. 24
370 A. TALE OF TWO CITIES.
The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of
many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the
outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a
mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away.
Twenty-Three,
They said of him, about the city that night, that
it was the peacefullest man’s face ever beheld there.
Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.
One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same
axe—a woman—had asked at the foot of the same Scaf-
fold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the
thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any
utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would
have been these: . -
“I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the
Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors
who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing
by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out
of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a bril-
liant people rising from this abyss, and, in their strug-
gles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats,
through long long years to come, I see the evil of this
time and of the previous time, of which this is the
natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and
Wearing out.
“I see the livés for which I lay down my life, peace-
ful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England
which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon
her bosom who bears my name. I see her father aged
and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all
men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good
old man so long their friend, in ten years’ time enrich-
ing them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his
reward. -
“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in
the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see
her, an old woman weeping for me on the anniversary
of this day. I see her and her husband, their course
done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I
know that each was not more honoured and held sacred
in the other's Soul, than I was in the souls of both.
THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOR EVER. 371
“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who
bore my name, a man, winning his way up in that path
of life which once was mine. I see him winning it. So
well, that my name is made illustrious there by the
light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded
away. I see him, foremost of just judges and
honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a
forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place—
then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s
disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story
with a tender and a faltering voice. •g
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have
ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than
I have ever known.”
THE ENDs
º. aerº）.
. &.******，
|||
3 9015 08583 9853
2
<
Ø
I
C
>
LL
O
Ō
0 C
L]]
>
2
ID
}
· §§§§ * * *
, （*
+
¿sº
· · * ?.
-‘_è*
, ’, ‘; „ſº .
„… • w **), §§; ;
:::： : „º“ （ſk.

tº a
a 3
· · · · * * * *
| ?" ：;cºlº （; ;
§§:tº
· · ·：·º·：·º·srael
***…;. & 3 & ſae
ſaeae
■ ■ ■ ***
ſae
∞