OF THE DIRTY SLUT OF A GIRL THAT CAME IN TO MIND MY BABY, AND THE
EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTER WE HAD TO CLEAN EDWARD’S BOOTS AND SHOES.
“Let us speak of a man as we find him,
And censure alone what we see;
And should any one blame, let’s remind him,
That from faults we are none of us free.”
“LET US SPEAK OF A MAN AS WE FIND HIM.”
“She wander’d forlorn, without guardian or guide,
To the brink of the flood o’er the precipice side.”
“AH! DID YOU NOT HEAR OF A POOR SILLY MAID.”
After Susan left me, I had one or two maids; but I really can’t say what
on earth had come to all the creatures, for none of them would suit me.
However, as there was nothing particular about their goings on, and the
annoyances they caused me were not of sufficient consequence to interest
my readers, I shall merely say that, as I wasn’t going to have any more
pretty maids in my house so long as those dreadful barracks remained in
the neighbourhood, I took good care to choose the very ugliest that I
could pitch upon. I declare to goodness if the woman wasn’t the very
image of an ourang-outang in petticoats! Goodness gracious! I never saw
such a head on a woman’s shoulders before in all my life. Lord-a’-mercy
upon the woman, if she hadn’t nose enough for six! and it was of that
peculiar shape which mother calls a bottle, and hairs all growing on the
end of it, just like a large ripe red gooseberry. But I’m sorry to say
that I had overshot my mark this time; for, upon my word, the woman was
so shamefully ill-favoured, and so frightfully bad-looking, that after
she came into the house, instead of growing accustomed to her face, as I
expected I should, it only seemed to me to grow more and more ugly every
day; and Edward vowed that he couldn’t bear to look upon her, and
wouldn’t have such a buck-horse, as he called her, in his service; and,
more than that, I declare my little ducks-o’-diamonds of a Kate used to
scream itself nearly into fits directly the woman came near her. So I
was obliged to get rid of her, though I must do the woman the justice
to say that she answered my purpose very well, and did capitally for
what I had engaged her--viz., to scare all the life-guardsmen away from
my larder, which she did so effectually, that from the day after she
entered my service, till the time she left, I never saw but one near the
place, and he was a red-headed Irishman, and, I suppose, thought that,
as the woman was so ugly, she must have a good bit of money in the
savings bank; but even _he_ only came once.
The next maid I had was too grand by half to please me, and ought to
have been a duchess instead of a servant; as she told me, plump and
plain, “that she couldn’t a’bear the taste of ’ashes, and warn’t a-going
to have none of the scraps warmed up twice, and shoved off upon her.”
So, of course, I soon let the stuck-up thing know that she wouldn’t suit
me, and that I only hoped that the day might come when she would be glad
to jump out of her skin to get a dishful of sweet and wholesome mutton,
instead of standing there turning up her nose at it, as if she were a
lady of fashion.
The servant that I had after my fine lady was really a good one; but she
objected to clean boots and knives, declaring that she had lived as
maid-of-all-work in the first of families--(I never knew such first of
families--I had her character from a tobacconist),--where every morning
a man used to come in and do them. Indeed, she positively refused to
touch either; so, as I wasn’t going to give into her--even if she had
been the treasure that my mother promised to find me when I first got
married--I determined to let her see who was mistress, and paying her a
month in advance, I told her to go back and show her airs in her first
of families, for she shouldn’t in mine.
Really, what with all this worry and bother, and what with my nursing at
the time, I declare it was pulling me down so low, that my poor bones
were all starting through my poor skin, and positively I hadn’t a bit of
fat left upon my cheeks. If I drank one pint of porter throughout the
day, I must have drunk near upon a dozen; and although the beer in the
neighbourhood certainly was very good, still it seemed to be all thrown
away upon me; and dear Edward very truly observed, that such a great big
child as my Kitty was too much for me, and that either I must make up my
mind to wean the poor little dear, (which I couldn’t bear the thoughts
of,) or I must take more substantial food, and keep always having
something strengthening, and a glass of port wine every two hours
throughout the day; for he said, he didn’t wish me to go drinking so
much porter; and that, as it was, there was nothing but one series of
cries now at our door of “pots” and “beer,” from the first thing in the
morning to the last thing at night. Really, he felt quite ashamed to
look at our area rails when he got up, for there wasn’t a spike that
hadn’t got a pewter-pot hanging to it, so that any one to see the sight
would imagine that porter after all was the real blessing to mothers,
and that Barclay and Perkins ought to be looked upon as the gigantic
wet-nurses to the infants of the metropolis, while Truman and Hanbury
might, at the same time, be regarded in the light of the extensive
purveyors of milk to the blessed babes of London.
I told him, for goodness’ sake, to hold his tongue, and talk about
something that he understood, and that I was sure I didn’t take half as
much stout as many ladies that I knew, for that ever since the little
pet had been born, I had accustomed it to the bottle.
“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he replied; “teaching a
little innocent creature like that to fly for consolation to the bottle
already. For my part,” he continued, “I shouldn’t at all wonder if she
could, even now, at her tender age, manage her six bottles without being
under the cradle.”
“Well, I’m sure!” I exclaimed. “I think you might find something better
to joke upon, Mr. Sk--n--st--n, and not go turning your own flesh and
blood into ridicule.”
“You know, my dear,” he continued, sipping his wine in the coolest way
possible, “I’ve told you at least a hundred times that it’s one of the
prettiest and most innocent little lambs I ever saw: so, come, my love,
let’s drink the darling’s health; and I’ll give you a toast--‘May we
ne’er want a baby, nor a bottle to give it!’”
I let him go on, for I saw that he was in a nasty, tantalizing humour,
and that nothing would please him better than to get my blood up; but I
wasn’t going to let him. Accordingly, I rang the bell for tea, and asked
him, as I was nursing the child, and he seemed to want something to do,
just to make it.
I declare I never knew such poor, helpless, ignorant things as the men
are!--for, positively and truly, Edward was obliged to ask me to tell
him how many spoonfuls he was to put in. And he calls himself a lord of
the creation, too! Pretty lord of the creation, indeed, not even to know
how to make so much as a simple cup of tea! So I had my laugh at him,
and asked him, in my sly, quiet way, how he would ever be able to manage
without us. Then I told him, of course, that he was to put in one
spoonful for each of us, and one for the pot.
“One for the pot!” he exclaimed; “what do you mean by that? How can the
pot want a spoonful? I shan’t do anything of the kind.”
I really thought I should have died of laughter at seeing any one so
stupid, and said--“Lord! how foolish you are, Edward! Why, of course
it’s only an extra spoonful, to make it better for ourselves; only it’s
always customary, when you’re making tea, to say that it is for the
pot.”
“Ah!” he returned--“I see! It’s the old story over again: doing
something for ourselves, and making it out as if for another. And I’m
very much afraid that, in these days of excessive philanthropy, more
than one-half of what is termed charity is, after all, nothing more than
‘one for the pot.’”
I knew, if I answered him, he would go on all night, so I held my
tongue; and I declare if he didn’t go putting almost every virtue down
as “one for the pot,” and had the impudence to say that the shilling I
put into the plate after the charity sermon, the Sunday before last, was
not done for the sake of the orphans, but out of fear of not doing as
other people did, and consequently was really and truly “one for the
pot;” and that the beer which I drank, and which I said I took solely on
dear little Kitty’s account, might also be put down as “one for the
pot.”
After a world of bother, I at length obtained a servant. To be sure she
was as stupid as she could well be; but when I came to think of it, what
on earth could that matter to me? For, as I said to myself, we don’t
want geniuses to wash up our dishes, or women of mind, indeed, to boil
our potatoes. So I didn’t care about the poor thing’s deficiency of
intellect, especially as it was muscles, and not brains, that I wanted,
and she had a very good character from her last place; though really
and truly the poor thing seemed to be half-witted, and I had to take
great care about what I said to her, or she would be sure to go and take
it literally. However, I had had so many knaves in the house before,
that really I thought a fool would be agreeable, if it was only for the
change. But whilst she was with me, the blunders she kept continually
making were such that, whenever she came into my presence, I couldn’t
help saying to myself, I never knew a woman approaching so near an
idiot, in all my life.
However, my lady had got sense enough left to object to cleaning the
knives and the boots and shoes, and to stipulate, when I engaged her,
that I should get somebody else to do them; so I told her, if I found
she suited me, I should not make that an objection, as, indeed, I should
not have done with the other one, had she asked for it with the proper
respect that was due to me as her mistress. So there I was again as deep
in the mire as ever, and obliged to go trotting about among the
tradesmen, asking them if they could recommend me any honest,
well-disposed person, that had got his mornings disengaged, and would
like to turn an honest penny or two by polishing our knives and boots.
Moreover, as I found that my little girl was getting far too heavy for
me, in my weak state, to carry, I, at the same time, told the
tradespeople that I should feel obliged if they would send me round any
respectable little girl that they might hear of, who was competent to
take care of a child.
Next day, the oilman sent a girl round to me. She was a little round fat
body, with what I thought at the time was dark brown hair, (though I
since found out that it was a bright red, only greased for the occasion
into a chestnut;) and she looked so clean and neat, that I was delighted
with her. As the oilman said that he knew her father--who was a highly
respectable journeyman-painter--and that the girl was a well-behaved
child, I made no bones about taking her, but told her she might come,
and I should give her two shillings a-week, and food, which would be a
great help to her parents, who, I dare say, were anxious that a girl of
her age should begin to turn her hand to something for a living.
She went on very well at first, as they all do, indeed, and came with
her hair nicely brushed, and her face and hands and apron beautifully
clean, for two or three mornings; and then, all of a sudden, a change
came o’er the spirit of my dream, as the poet says, and anybody that had
seen her look so tidy before, would never have known her again in the
grubby state she appeared; for she used to come with her hair just the
same as when she got up in the morning, and all frayed out like so much
red worsted, and looking as coarse and fuzzy as cocoa-nut fibre--and
with the hooks and eyes nearly all off her gown behind--and her nasty
rusty black petticoat hanging down below her frock, all caked over with
old mud--and her boots burst out, and laced up three holes at a time,
just to save herself trouble, with the ends of the laces dangling about
her heels, and allowed to drag in the wet, till they really looked for
all the world like a bit of string--whilst her apron, I declare, was as
dirty as a coal-heaver’s stockings at the end of the week.
At last I found out who and what my lady was. For one day, after I had
spoken to her about the disgraceful state of her clothing, and had told
her that she really must get her boots mended if she wished to stop in
my service, lo, and behold! my little monkey appeared the next day in a
pair of old, dirty, worn-out, white satin shoes. And when I asked her
what on earth could possess her to think of ever coming into my house in
such disgraceful things as she had got on her feet, I declare, if she
didn’t tell me that they were the shoes that she wore when she used to
dance, as “_La Petite Saqui_,” on the tight-rope at the Queen’s Theatre,
in Tottenham-court-road, until she grew too stout for the business.
I uttered a faint scream at the idea of my sweet cherub being intrusted
to the care of such a creature, and asked her what in the world could
have induced her to take to such an extraordinary means of getting a
living? But she merely said that her father had a large family, and he
had apprenticed her at a very early age to her uncle, who, together with
her cousin, and a young gentleman of the name of Biler, were the
original Bedouin Brothers, and who, she told me, were declared by the
public press and her father to be the first posture-masters of the day.
I could scarcely restrain my feelings on hearing this, for, of course,
after what I had heard, I imagined that I should go up suddenly into the
nursery some fine morning, and catch “_La Petite Saqui_” doing with my
little daughter the same as I had seen Mr. Risley do with his little
boy--viz., lying down on her back, tossing up the little pet with the
soles of her feet, and catching it again on the palms of her hand.
However, I restrained my feelings, and determined to go round that very
afternoon to the oilman, and give it him well for sending such a
creature to me, with the character he did, and try if I could hear of
any other girl in the neighbourhood.
Accordingly, as soon as my little angel of a Kate was fast asleep, I put
on my bonnet, and stepped out. To make sure that neither of the girls
could be up to any of their tricks in my absence, I took the key of the
street-door, and locked them both in.
I couldn’t have been gone above half an hour, and when I got home again,
I opened the door with as little noise as I could, in the hopes of
seeing what the minxes had been doing in my absence. I had scarcely got
half way down the passage, before--goodness gracious me!--if I didn’t
see “_La Petite Saqui_,” as the young monkey called itself, out in the
garden, with my longest clothes-pole in her hand, figuring on a
tight-rope, which she had made by tying my clothes line from the
railings to the garden-seat.
Yes, there she was, now springing up in the air, and now coming down,
and sitting on the rope for a minute, and then bounding up again, just
like an Indian-rubber ball, and then coming down again, and balancing
herself on one leg, whilst she held the other out for a few seconds; and
then running along the line towards the house as quick as she could put
one foot over the other, and stopping suddenly, with a graceful curtsy,
in the first position, just as I made my appearance at the back door.
And when I went out into the garden, bless us and save us! if the place
wasn’t just like a fair, with all the servants round about stretching
their necks out of the windows or poking their noses over the garden
walls, and that fool of a maid-of-all-work of an Emma of mine, standing
by looking on, with a ball of whiting in her hand, and her mouth wide
open with wonder.
They no sooner saw me, than down jumped that fat lump of goods, “_La
Petite Saqui_,” and off she scampered, and I after her, all round the
garden, with my parasol, trying to give it her well, amidst roars of
laughter from all the servants looking on.
As for my tight-rope dancer, I wasn’t long in getting her out of the
house, for directly I caught her, I took her by the scruff of the neck,
and, bundling her into the street, threw her bonnet out after her.
Then I went down-stairs, and told that stupid thing of an Emma, that if
ever I caught her idling her time away, instead of minding her
work--which, I was sure, was quite enough for her to do, and if it
wasn’t, I could easily find her some more--I’d serve her just in the
same way, and not give her a character into the bargain. For I felt that
if a stop were not put to such goings-on, at their very commencement,
that really there would be no saying to what lengths such a simpleton as
Emma might not go.
All the stupid thing kept saying was, that I had promised her she was
not to clean the boots and shoes, and knives and forks, and that she had
had to do them ever since she had been with me--as if that had got
anything to do with it. But my experience has taught me, that servants,
directly one begins to find fault with anything they’ve been doing, have
a clever knack of bringing up against one any little indulgence that one
may have foolishly promised them, and very naturally forgotten to carry
out.
I told Miss Emma that she needn’t be frightened about soiling her
delicate hands with the blacking brushes, as she wouldn’t have to do it
much longer, for I had engaged a man who was to come in on the day after
to-morrow, and would take the boots off her hands.
The publican sent me a very nice, sharp, active man, of the name of
Richard Farden, though, he told me, he was better known as Dick Farden.
He said, in the low London dialect, “He should be werry glad on the
place, as it was just the thing he had been a looken out for for these
three weeks gone, as his perfession didn’t require looking arter till it
were gone three, or so.”
“Indeed!” I said, in the hopes that he would go on, for really the idea
of a professional gentleman coming in to clean my boots and shoes did
strike me as being somewhat singular. “And where may your place of
business be?”
“Why, marm,” he replied, twiddling his bushy whiskers, “you see, my
place o’ business is wery like this ere climate of ourn--wariable. Ven
the brometer points to wery vet, then, on course, I knows that it’s
a-going to be fine, and then I hangs out in Regent Street; and ven it
stands at wery dry, then, as I knows it’s goin’ to rain, I hemigrates to
that there public humbrella, the Lowther Harcade.”
As I could make neither head nor tail of what he said, my curiosity was
excited all the more; so I told Edward, when he came home, of what a
strange creature I had picked up to do the boots and shoes, and he
appeared to be as much in the dark as I was; but, as he said, Mr. Dick
Farden’s business, whatever it was, could be no business of his, he
wasn’t going to bother his brains about it, so long as the man did his
duty to his Wellingtons.
However, one evening, Edward informed me that he had found out who Mr.
Dick Farden was; for as he was stopping to look into a print-shop in
Regent Street, on his way home that afternoon, somebody tapped him on
the shoulder, and said in his ear, “Do you want any prime cigars, noble
captain?” and on turning round, who should it be but our out-door valet.
When he recognised Edward, he only laughed and said, “I hope no offence,
master? I merely wanted to do a bit of business in the smuggling line.”
“Oh, dear me!” I cried. “You don’t mean to say that we’ve got a horrid
wretch of a smuggler for a servant, now?”
“Lord bless you!” replied Edward, “don’t go frightening yourself about
that. You may depend upon it the fellow’s too knowing for that.”
However, after what he had said, I wasn’t going to be put off in that
way, and told Edward that I would have the man up the very next morning,
before him; and that if he couldn’t give a good account of himself, why
he should turn him out of the house then and there.
Next morning at breakfast, I declare I couldn’t rest easy until we had
Mr. Dick Farden up in the room, and when Edward reminded him of what had
taken place the day before; the impudent fellow only stood there
grinning and polishing the top of his oil-skin cap with his elbow, and
saying that, of course, a gentleman so well acquainted with London as my
husband, was very well aware of what he was after. That he had got no
contraband articles to dispose of, and wasn’t such a stupid as to go
infringing the laws, and running the chance of paying a hundred pounds
odd for supplying the public with foreign articles, when many of them
couldn’t tell the difference between them and the real, genuine English
goods.
And then the fellow went on and told us a whole pack of things,--how
what he called his prime smuggled Havannahs were no more nor less than
those that were imported from the extensive cabbage plantations of
Fulham, into the snuff and tobacco manufacturies in the Minories, and
his very best pale or brown French cognac, and which he always warranted
to his customers to be the very best that France could produce, was none
other than the real spirit of the potato, commonly known by the name of
British brandy; and the whole cargo of it that he had in his possession
had been run in a splendid lugger of a chay-cart all the way from
Smithfield; although, of course, to give it a genuine foreign flavour,
he told the gentlemen a long cock-and-a-bull-story, as to how, at the
perils of their lives, and at the outlay of upwards of a hundred pounds
spent in bribing the revenue officers, he and his pals had succeeded in
running it safe ashore at Deal, after a three hours’ chase by one of the
finest cutters in the revenue service.
After this, it was no very difficult matter to see that the man was no
more a smuggler than I was, so I asked him how it was that the gentlemen
were stupid enough to buy his things? But he very frankly told me the
whole secret, saying, that as the parties whom he went up to were mostly
young men from the counting-houses, he generally commenced by calling
them, “noble captains,” because they liked to be thought to be in the
army, and having tickled with this, he said the other part of the
business was mere child’s play--for the delicious flavour of a thing
being foreign, together with the fine perfume of the idea that it was
smuggled, was quite sufficient to make the youths of London buy and
swallow anything.
As I saw he was inclined to go on, I wasn’t going to spoil the fun by
interrupting him; so he continued saying that the whole world had a
taste for smuggling, and the ladies in particular; and for his part, if
ever he had any idea of going into the real genuine smuggling
profession, he told me that, from the observations he had made while
following the imitation business, he should decidedly man all his
cutters with women,--that was to say, provided they were “thin ’uns,” as
he elegantly expressed it,--for, of course, if the ladies were stout,
the extension of their figures with any foreign produce would not only
raise the suspicions of the officers, but likewise prevent their getting
easily through the custom-house, while, if the angels were slightly
made, nothing was simpler than to fatten the poor spare things with
lace, or to pad them into perfect Venuses with white kid gloves. Indeed,
he said, the corset-makers, knowing the natural propensity of the female
sex for contraband goods, seemed to have designed one article of
feminine attire simply with a view of defrauding the custom-house; for
he had heard of one old lady who had brought home in her bustle alone
(and which, asking my pardon, he said was the article of feminine
attire that he alluded to) twelve yards of the best French
velvet--upwards of forty-two of Valenciennes lace--a dozen of cambric
pocket-handkerchiefs--and three dozen of white kid gloves--nine pair of
silk stockings--a pair of stays--and a wig. But, to be sure, he added,
she was a “werry thin ’un, Mam,”--insomuch so, indeed, that had Captain
Johnson, or any other eminent smuggler, known of her natural propensity
for infringing the laws, he would have given her any sum she might name
to have entered his service; for positively and truly, she would have
taken any amount of foreign produce, and would have borne cramming as
well as a turkey.
I declare the man was such a chatter-box, that I verily believe he would
have gone on talking for a twelvemonth, if we had only let him. But as I
saw that he was determined to say all he could against my sex, of course
I wasn’t going to sit quietly there and listen to it, while Mr. Edward
kept chuckling at all he said against the women, like a ninny; so I told
Mr. Dick Farden that he had better go down-stairs, and look after the
knives, though really it would, in the end, have been much better for me
if I had turned him out of the house on the spot; for---- But as Mr.
Savill, my bothering printer, tells me that he can’t possibly squeeze
any more of my domestic distresses into this number, why, my gentle
readers must wait till the next month before they learn how Mr. Dick
Farden served me, after all.