AT THE TIN-TAX OFFICE, No. 120.
The Tin-Tax Office, as I have before had occasion to remark, is
situated in a wing of Rutland House; that noble building so well known
to most Englishmen, whence are issued those concise documents relating
to unpaid arrears of public imposts, and where the mulcting of the
nation is carried on. The Tin-Tax is by no means a bad office, as
times go; though it is rather looked down upon by the men in the Check
and Counter-Check Department, and the Navigation Board, who have
offices in the same building. It used to be a great point of humour
with the wits of twenty years since to say that the appointments in
the Tin-Tax Office were given to sons of the faithful butlers of
patriotic peers, and to those eager constituents for whose placing-out
in life the Members for Irish boroughs are always petitioning with
energy and perseverance worthy of the horse-leech's daughters. And,
indeed, the manners and customs of some of the middle-aged clerks bear
testimony to the truth of this report. They were good enough fellows
in their day--blundered on at their offices from ten till four; dined
cheaply at Short's, or Berthollini's, or the Cock; went half-price to
the Adelphi; occasionally supped at the Coal-Hole or the Cider
Cellars; and went home to their garrets in Islington with the perfect
idea that they were roystering dogs, and that the world did not
contain many men who had drained pleasure's goblet more thoroughly to
the dregs than themselves. Most of them married betimes--occasionally
the landlady of their lodgings; more frequently the pallid daughter of
some fellow-clerk, after a flirtation begun over a round game or "a
little music;" most frequently some buxom lass met at seaside
boarding-house, or in the old paternal home, where they spent their
leave of absence. But we have changed all that; and junior clerks of
the present day are thoroughly and entirely different from their
predecessors: the establishment of the Civil-Service Commission, and
the ordination of promotion by merit, have sent quite a different
class of men into the public service, and the subordinate appointments
of the Tin-Tax Office are held by men who have taken their degrees at
Oxford; who can turn "Vilikins and his Dinah" into Greek iambics; who
can tell you where Montenegro is, and what it wants; who have
thoroughly mastered the Schleswig-Holstein question; who are well up
in the theory of thermo-dynamics; and who dip into Jean Paul Richter
for a little light reading;--all excellent accomplishments, and
thoroughly useful in the Tin-Tax Office.
It is half-past twelve on a fine Saturday morning in the beginning of
October, and the six occupants of room No. 120 are all assembled, and
all at work; that is to say, four of them are writing, one is looking
vacantly out of the window, and one is reading the _Times_. No. 120 is
at the top of the building; a pleasant room when you reach it, looking
on to the river, but up four flights of steep stone stairs. No. 120
has always its regular number of occupants; for when the chief clerk
learns that a young gentleman has an undue number of friends calling
upon him during official hours, he causes the popular man to be
removed to No. 120, and after two trials of the stairs the visitors
prefer meeting their friend in the evening at some less Alpine
retreat. So also, when a young gentleman is in the habit of being
perpetually waited upon by duns, he makes interest to get moved into
No. 120, and finds that his creditors simultaneously urge their
demands not in person, but through the medium of the Post-Office. The
head of the room is Mr. Kinchenton, that tall man with the rounded
shoulders, and grizzled head ever bent over his desk. Hard work has
bowed Mr. Kinchenton's back and silvered his hair; for he has been in
the Tin-Tax Office since he was sixteen years old, and though promoted
under the old system of seniority and length of service, no one could
ever say that he had not fairly won every step he got. Before he was
sixteen, he was the hope and pride--the prize scholar--of the
Heckmondike Grammar-School, his father being head-keeper to Lord
Heckmondike, who placed the boy on the foundation of the school, and,
finding him apt and studious, obtained for him his appointment from
the Government of the day. No Adelphi at half-price, no Cider Cellars
or Coal-Hole, for young Kinchenton, who had a little bedroom in a
little terrace close by Kennington Common, where he was to be
found every night, book in hand, and happy as a prince. A poor
little bedroom enough!--a wretched little bedroom, with a
white-dimity-covered tester-bed, two rush-bottomed chairs, a painted
chest of drawers, a rickety washhand-stand, and a maddening square of
looking-glass hanging against the wall. But to that garret came Sancho
Panza and the gaunt Don his master; came Gil Blas, and the beggar with
his arquebuse, and the Archbishop of Grenada; came cringing Tartuffe,
and preposterous Sganarelle; came wandering Rasselas and sage Imlac;
came Ferdinand Count Fathom, swearing Tom Pipes, and decorous Mr.
Blifil. There the hard-working clerk laughed over Falstaff's lovemaking
and Malvolio's disgrace, or wept over Sterne's dead ass and Le Fevre's
regained sword; while his comrades Mace and Flukes were ruining each
other at billiards, and Potter and Piper were hiccuping noisy applause
to indecent songs.
When Mr. Kinchenton was forty years old, his income had reached the
bewildering amount of four hundred a year, and he thought he might
indulge in the luxury of a wife; so he took to himself a pretty little
soft-eyed girl, the daughter of an old gentleman who was a traveller,
in the straw-bonnet line, and who, when he was not driving about in a
very high four-wheeled trap which did its best to look like a
mail-phaeton and signally failed in the attempt, lived in the little
terrace next door to Kinchenton's lodgings. After his daughter's
marriage, the old gentleman, who was a widower, gave up travelling,
retired upon his savings, and went to live with his son-in-law in a
little house which Kinchenton had taken in Camden Town, where the
birth of a son crowned Kinchenton's happiness. His adoration of this
child was his weakest point: he was always narrating its wonderful
deeds to every body; and the men in the office, with whom the little
fellow was really a favourite, knew they could always get late
attendance overlooked or half-holiday granted if they asked after
little Percy, and sent him some trifling present.
It is well for the junior clerks of No. 120 that Mr. Kinchenton is the
head of the room; for the next in seniority, Mr. Dibb, is by no means
a pleasant person. Harsh, stiff, sectarian bigotry lurks in his
coarse, close-cropped black hair, and in the plaited folds of his huge
white neckcloth; he invariably wears a black dress coat, waistcoat,
and trousers, creaking boots, and damp cloth gloves. He is always
ailing, and invariably changing his medical system: now vaunting the
virtues of blue-pill, now swearing by homoeopathy; he has been rubbed
and cracked and shampooed and galvanised; and once he tried
hydropathy, but came back in a week from Malvern no better, and
apparently no cleaner, than before his visit to Dr. Gully. He was one
of the first-fruits of the noble system of promotion by merit, having
been transferred to Rutland House from some provincial stronghold of
the Tin-Tax Office, and report said that he had originally been a
schoolmaster in Bilston. He was hated by nearly all his juniors, but
respected by the heads for his conscientiousness and power of work;
and he was located in No. 120 to neutralise, to some extent, Mr.
Kinchenton's excess of good nature. The rank and file of No. 120
consisted of Mr. Prescott and Mr. Pringle, junior clerks; Mr. Boppy,
an old gentleman with a bald head and a double eyeglass, who had
arrived, through dint of long service, at a good income, who was
utterly useless, and who had no characteristic save his intense dread
of his wife; and Mr. Crump, who had been for twenty years an extra
clerk, and who, owing to an invincible stutter, had never been able to
interest any one sufficiently to procure him an appointment.
"Devilish hot!" said Mr. Pringle, a short, good-humoured-looking young
man, laying down his _Times_ and opening his waistcoat; "devilish hot!
Crump, there's a good fellow, open the door."
Mr. Crump looked up from his work, and said appealingly, "I've got a
st--a st--a st--" he would have said "stiff neck;" but long before he
could reach the word, Pringle interrupted him--
"Strong hand; you've got a strong hand, I know, and the door sticks;
that's why I asked you. Boppy, my boy, I've not yet had time to ask
you how you are."
"Well, Pm well in health, thank you, Mr. Pringle," said Mr. Boppy,
depositing his pen on the desk, and rubbing his bald forehead; "but
I'm rather worried in my mind."
"What troubles my Boppy? Has the Bank reduced its rate of discount, so
that my Boppy's ingots are not worth quite so much per cent as they
were yesterday; or is it love that is sending him to grief? Has my
Boppy been sporting with Amaryllis in the shady side of Brompton Row,
and has Mrs. B. found it out? Oh, Bop!"
"Nonsense, Mr. Pringle! I--"
"I must say that such remarks as those," interrupted Mr. Dibb, "appear
to me to be very bad jokes."
"Very likely, Mr. Dibb," retorted Pringle; "but that's because you're
the quintessence of humour yourself. We can't all hope to make
ourselves as thoroughly genial and pleasant as you--can we, Crump?"
"I d--decline to s--to s--to say--"
"To say ditto to Dibb! Of course: you're my friend, and I knew you'd
never desert me. Now, Boppy, you were about to say something when you
were interrupted in that gentlemanly manner by our friend J. Miller;
what was it?"
"Oh, I was merely thinking that I'd try and take that dog home this
afternoon, and I'm rather doubtful as to how my wife will receive it,
You see, I bought him a week ago, and Simmons, the hall-porter here,
has kept him for me in the coal-cellar since then. He's a white
Pomeranian dog, and the coal-cellar don't suit him somehow; but I
daren't take him to Putney until I'd somewhat prepared Mrs. B.'s mind.
So last night I read her several anecdotes of dogs, where they were
all faithful and friendly and clean, you know; and this afternoon I
shall take Spitz home, and--and say you gave him to me, I think, Mr.
Pringle, if you've no objection."
"Certainly, if you like it, I don't mind; any thing you please, Boppy,
my boy. Dogs as many as you like, and things of that sort; only, if
Mrs. B. ever finds white-kid gloves, or locks of hair, or
patchouli-scented pink notes, don't say they come from me--you
understand? By the way, that reminds me. Prescott! p'st! Prescott!"
A tall, good-looking man of two or three-and-twenty, who was leaning
his head on one hand and staring out of the window, turned round and
said dreamily, "What?"
"What an amusing companion you are!" said Mr. Pringle; "what a
charming remark that was when you last spoke, an hour and twenty
minutes ago! What was it?"
"Don't be an idiot, Pringle!"
"No, it wasn't that; to be told to avoid an impossibility would have
struck me as novel. Never mind; I was going to ask who that was I saw
you speaking to at the King's Cross Terminus yesterday."
"At King's Cross?" said Prescott, colouring; "oh, that was a friend of
mine, a clergyman."
"Ah!" said Pringle, quietly, "I thought so. He had on a blue bonnet
and a black-lace shawl. Neat foot he's got; those parsons are always
so particular about their stockings!"
"Don't be an ass, George!" growled Prescott, in an undertone.
"All right, old boy!" said Pringle, in the same key. "Forgot we
weren't alone. Nobody heard, I think; but I'll soon change the
subject;" and he commenced whistling _Il Bacio_, loud and shrill.
"Mr. Pringle! Mr. Pringle!" screamed Mr. Dibb.
Mr. Pringle held up his hand as if deprecating interruption until he
had come to the end of the bar, when he said, with mock politeness,
"Sir to you!"
"How often have I begged you, sir, not to whistle during official
hours? It is impossible for me to write my minutes while you're
whistling."
"Write your minutes!" said Mr. Pringle. "Sir, we have the authority of
A. Tennyson, Esquire, the Poet of the Age, if my honourable friend in
the Isle of Wight will so permit me to call him, for saying that
'Lightlier move the minutes fledged with music.'
Though that even my whistling could make your minutes move lightly,
with due respect to Alfred, I doubt."
"Mr. Kinchenton," cried Mr. Dibb, now a dirty white with rage, "I must
request you, as head of this room, to call upon Mr. Pringle not to
forget himself."
"My dear sir," said Pringle, "there's no one I think of so much."
"George," said Mr. Kinchenton quietly, "pray be quiet!"
"Certainly, Padre; I'm dumb! Thank Heaven and the Early Closing
Association, to-day's a half holiday, and we cut it at two."
"Ah, to be sure!" said Kinchenton, anxious to atone for even the
slight show of authority which his previous words might have
suggested; "there are grand doings this afternoon at the Eyres', at
Hampstead. I'm going to take my Percy there. Athletic sports, running,
leaping, and all the rest of it."
"Ha! ha!" said Pringle; "at the Eyres', eh?
'The merry brown Eyres come leaping,'
as Kingsley has it. What a pity they haven't asked me!"
"You're going, Prescott, I suppose?" asked Kinchenton. "The Eyres are
friends of yours--you're going to their fête?"
"I! no, Padre," was the reply; "I'm not going."
"Oh, he's very bad!" said Pringle, in a whisper, "He's got it awfully,
but he'll get better."
'Now he has turned himself wholly to love and follows a damsel,
Caring no more for honour, or glory, or Pallas Athené.'
Kingsley again--hem!"
"I wonder, Mr. Pringle," said Mr. Dibb, "that you do not attempt to
form some more permanent style of reading than the mere poetry, scraps
of which you are always quoting. For my own part, I consider poetry
the flimsiest kind of writing extant."
"I'm surprised at that, now," said Pringle placidly. "I should have
thought that you would have been a great appreciator of the gloomy and
Byronic verse. To understand that properly, you must have lost all
digestive power; and you know, Mr. Dibb, that your liver is horribly
out of order."
A general laugh followed this remark, in which even Mr. Kinchenton
joined, and at which Mr. Dibb looked more savage than ever. In the
midst of it the clock struck two, and at the last sound Mr. Crump
closed his blotting-book, put on his hat, and vanished, saying
"G-good" as he passed through the door; two minutes afterwards,
fragments of the word "d-day" were heard reverberating in the passage.
Simultaneously Mr. Boppy struck work and went to look after his dog,
Mr. Dibb started off without a word, and Mr. Prescott took off his
coat to wash his hands previous to departure. When he emerged from the
washing cupboard, he found Pringle waiting for him: both the young men
shook hands with their chief, sent their loves to Mrs. Kinchenton and
the boy, and turned out into the Strand.
They had not gone far when Pringle asked his companion whither he was
bound. Prescott was too absorbed to hear the question, but, on its
repetition, muttered something about an "engagement out Kensington
way."
"Ah!" said Pringle, with the nearest approach to a sigh, "ride a cock
horse, eh? the old game! Look here, Jim, old fellow. I'm not clever,
you know, but I know how many blue beans make five; and I'm not
strait-laced or pious or any thing of that sort, but I'm very fond of
you, and I tell you this won't do!"
"What won't do?" asked Prescott, with a flaming face.
"Why, this Kate Mellon business, Jim. It's on hot and strong, I know.
You've been down in the mouth all the time she was away; you met her
at the station yesterday, and probably you're going up to her place
to-day. Now you know, Jim, I've seen more of life than you, and I tell
you this is all wrong."
"Why, you don't imagine that there's any thing--?"
"I don't imagine any thing at all. I haven't got any imagination, I
think. I'm the most matter-of-fact beggar that ever walked; but I know
you're confoundedly spooney and hard hit, and in a wrong quarter. Now,
Jim, pull yourself together, old man, and cut it."
"I can't, George," groaned Prescott, raising his hat and tossing the
hair back from his forehead; "I can't. You don't know how I love that
woman, old fellow. I'd die for her; I'd go out and be shot at once, if
it would save her a pang. I hate any one to come near her, and I'm
always thinking of her, and longing to be with her."
"I felt just like that once for a female tobacconist in Briggate, at
Leeds," said Mr. Pringle after a pause. "Deuced nice girl she was too,
and what thundering bad cigars she sold! I'm very glad I didn't die
for her, though. I got my appointment just in time, and came up to
town without asking her to fly with me to distant climes. She wouldn't
have known what 'climes' meant, I think. Now, look here, Jim; you'd
better do something of the same sort. Apply for sick-leave (Glauber
will give you a certificate), and go home and have some shooting, and
stay with your people, and you'll come back cured. Only cut it at
once. Don't go there to-day; come with me. I've got a little business
to do that won't take half an hour, and then I'm going to spar with
Bob Travers, and you shall see me polish him off with a new 'Mendoza
tip' that I learnt last night. Now, you'll come, won't you, Jim?"
"Not to-day, George. I know you're right in every word you say; and
yet I can't give it up yet--at all events to-day. I must see her,
I've got something special to say to her, and the time's getting on.
Good-by, old fellow; I know you mean well; and I'll come out all right
yet. God bless you, old boy! Hi! Hansom!" and Mr. Prescott jumped into
a cab, murmured an inaudible address to the driver, and was whirled
away.
Mr. Pringle remained on the kerb-stone, shaking his head and looking
after the departing Hansom. "James Prescott is in for it," said he to
himself; "is decidedly in for it. So, by the way, is George Pringle.
If I don't pay Wilkins that twenty pounds to-night, I shall be
County-Courted, as safe as houses. I never have put my hand to any
bill before; but needs must, I suppose. So I'll just step up and see
old Scadgers." And Mr. Pringle struck across the Strand, in a
northerly direction.