There never was a greater-souled or doughtier tailor than little Neal
Malone. Though but four feet four in height, he paced the earth with the
courage and confidence of a giant; nay, one would have imagined that he
walked as if he feared the world itself was about to give way under him.
Let no one dare to say in future that a tailor is but the ninth part of
a man. That reproach has been gloriously taken away from the character
of the cross-legged corporation by Neal Malone. He has wiped it off like
a stain from the collar of a secondhand coat; he has pressed this
wrinkle out of the lying front of antiquity; he has drawn together this
rent in the respectability of his profession. No. By him who was
breeches-maker to the gods,--that is, except, like Highlanders, they
eschewed inexpressibles,--by him who cut Jupiter’s frieze jocks for
winter, and eke by the bottom of his thimble, we swear that Neal Malone
was _more_ than the ninth part of a man.
Setting aside the Patagonians, we maintain that two thirds of mortal
humanity were comprised in Neal; and perhaps we might venture to assert
that two thirds of Neal’s humanity were equal to six thirds of another
man’s. It is right well known that Alexander the Great was a little man,
and we doubt whether, had Alexander the Great been bred to the tailoring
business, he would have exhibited so much of the hero as Neal Malone.
Neal was descended from a fighting family, who had signalised themselves
in as many battles as ever any single hero of antiquity fought. His
father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather were all fighting
men, and his ancestors in general, up, probably, to Con of the Hundred
Battles himself. No wonder, therefore, that Neal’s blood should cry out
against the cowardice of his calling; no wonder that he should be an
epitome of all that was valorous and heroic in a peaceable man, for we
neglected to inform the reader that Neal, though “bearing no base mind,”
never fought any man in his own person. That, however, deducted nothing
from his courage. If he did not fight it was simply because he found
cowardice universal. No man would engage him; his spirit blazed in vain;
his thirst for battle was doomed to remain unquenched, except by whisky,
and this only increased it. In short, he could find no foe. He has often
been known to challenge the first cudgel-players and pugilists of the
parish, to provoke men of fourteenstone weight, and to bid mortal
defiance to faction heroes of all grades-but in vain. There was that in
him which told them that an encounter with Neal would strip them of
their laurels. Neal saw all this with a lofty indignation; he deplored
the degeneracy of the times, and thought it hard that the descendant of
such a fighting family should be doomed to pass through life peaceably,
whilst so many excellent rows and riots took place around him. It was a
calamity to see every man’s head broken but his own; a dismal thing to
observe his neighbours go about with their bones in bandages, yet his
untouched, and his friends beat black and blue, whilst his own cuticle
remained unscoloured.
“Blur an’ agers!” exclaimed Neal one day, when half tipsy in the fair,
“am I never to get a bit o’ figtin’? Is there no cowardly spalpeen to
stand afore Neal Malone? Be this an’ be that, I’m blue-mowlded for want
of a batin’! I’m disgracin’ my relations by the life I’m ladin’! Will
none o’ ye fight me aither for love, money, or whisky, frind or inimy,
an’ bad luck to ye? I don’t care a traneen which, only out o’ pure
frindship, let us have a morsel o’ the rale kick-up, ’t any rate. Frind
or inimy, I say agin, if you regard me; sore _that_ makes no differ,
only let us have the fight.”
This excellent heroism was all wasted; Neal could not find a single
adversary. Except he divided himself like Hotspur, and went to buffets
one hand against the other, there was no chance of a fight; no person to
be found sufficiently magnanimous to encounter the tailor. On the
contrary, every one of his friends--or, in other words, every man in the
parish--was ready to support him. He was clapped on the back until his
bones were nearly dislocated in his body, and his hand shaken until his
arm lost its cunning at the needle for half a week afterward. This, to
be sure, was a bitter business, a state of being past endurance. Every
man was his friend--no man was his enemy. A desperate position for any
person to find himself in, but doubly calamitous to a martial tailor.
Many a dolourous complaint did Neal make upon the misfortune of having
none to wish him ill; and what rendered this hardship doubly oppressive
was the unlucky fact that no exertions of his, however offensive, could
procure him a single foe. In vain did he insult, abuse, and malign all
his acquaintances. In vain did he father upon them all the rascality and
villainy he could think of; he lied against them with a force and
originality that would have made many a modern novelist blush for want
of invention--but all to no purpose. The world for once became
astonishingly Christian; it paid back all his efforts to excite its
resentment with the purest of charity; when Neal struck it on the one
cheek, it meekly turned unto him the other. It could scarcely be
expected that Neal would bear this. To have the whole world in
friendship with a man is beyond doubt an affliction. Not to have the
face of a single enemy to look upon would decidedly be considered a
deprivation of many agreeable sensations by most people as well as by
Neal Malone. Let who might sustain a loss or experience a calamity, it
was a matter of indifference to Neal. They were only his friends, and he
troubled neither his head nor his heart about them.
Heaven help us! There is no man without his trials; and Neal, the reader
perceives, was not exempt from his. What did it avail him that he
carried a cudgel ready for all hostile contingencies, or knit his brows
and shook his kippeen at the fiercest of his fighting friends? The
moment he appeared they softened into downright cordiality. His presence
was the signal of peace; for, notwithstanding his unconquerable
propensity to warfare, he went abroad as the genius of unanimity, though
carrying in his bosom the redoubtable disposition of a warrior; just as
the sun, though the source of light himself, is said to be dark enough
at bottom.
It could not be expected that Neal, with whatever fortitude he might
bear his other afflictions, could bear such tranquillity like a hero. To
say that he bore it as one would be basely to surrender his character;
for what hero ever bore a state of tranquillity with courage? It
affected his cutting out! It produced what Burton calls “a windie
melancholie,” which was nothing else than an accumulation of courage
that had no means of escaping, if courage can, without indignity, be
ever said to escape. He sat uneasy on his lap-board. Instead of cutting
out soberly, he flourished his scissors as if he were heading a faction;
he wasted much chalk by scoring his cloth in wrong places, and even
caught his hot goose without a holder. These symptoms alarmed his
friends, who persuaded him to go to a doctor. Neal went to satisfy them;
but he knew that no prescription could drive the courage out of him,
that he was too far gone in heroism to be made a coward of by apothecary
stuff. Nothing in the pharmacopoeia could physic him into a pacific
state. His disease was simply the want of an enemy, and an unaccountable
superabundance of friendship on the part of his acquaintances. How could
a doctor remedy this by a prescription? Impossible. The doctor, indeed,
recommended blood-letting; but to lose blood in a peaceable manner was
not only cowardly, but a bad cure for courage. Neal declined it: he
would lose no blood for any man until he could not help it; which was
giving the character of a hero at a single touch. _His_ blood was not to
be thrown away in this manner; the only lancet ever applied to his
relations was the cudgel, and Neal scorned to abandon the principles of
his family.
His friends, finding that he reserved his blood for more heroic purposes
than dastardly phlebotomy, knew not what to do with him. His perpetual
exclamation was, as we have already stated, “I’m blue-mowlded for want
of a batin’!” They did everything in their power to cheer him with the
hope of a drubbing; told him he lived in an excellent country for a man
afflicted with his malady; and promised, if it were at all possible, to
create him a private enemy or two, who, they hoped in heaven, might
trounce him to some purpose.
This sustained him for a while; but as day after day passed and no
appearance of action presented itself, he could not choose but increase
in courage. His soul, like a sword-blade too long in the scabbard, was
beginning to get fuliginous by inactivity. He looked upon the point of
his own needle and the bright edge of his scissors with a bitter pang
when he thought of the spirit rusting within him; he meditated fresh
insults, studied new plans, and hunted out cunning devices for provoking
his acquaintances to battle, until by degrees he began to confound his
own brain and to commit more grievous oversights in his business than
ever. Sometimes he sent home to one person a coat with the legs of a
pair of trousers attached to it for sleeves, and despatched to another
the arms of the aforesaid coat tacked together as a pair of trousers.
Sometimes the coat was made to button behind instead of before; and he
frequently placed the pockets in the lower part of the skirts, as if he
had been in league with cutpurses.
This was a melancholy situation, and his friends pitied him accordingly.
“Don’t be cast down, Neal,” said they; “your friends feel for you, poor
fellow.”
“Divil carry my frinds,” replied Neal; “sure, there’s not one o’ yez
frindly enough to be my inimy. Tare an’ ouns! what’ll I do? I’m
blue-mowlded for want of a batin’!”
Seeing that their consolation was thrown away upon him, they resolved to
leave him to his fate; which they had no sooner done then Neal had
thoughts of taking to the Skiomachia as a last remedy. In this mood he
looked with considerable antipathy at his own shadow for several nights;
and it is not to be questioned but that some hard battles would have
taken place between them had it not been for the cunning of the shadow,
which declined to fight him in any other position than with its back to
the wall. This occasioned him to pause, for the wall was a fearful
antagonist, inasmuch as it knew not when it was beaten; but there was
still an alternative left. He went to the garden one clear day about
noon, and hoped to have a bout with the shade free from interruption.
Both approached, apparently eager for the combat and resolved to conquer
or die, when a villainous cloud, happening to intercept the light, gave
the shadow an opportunity of disappearing, and Neal found himself once
more without an opponent.
“It’s aisy known,” said Neal, “you haven’t the _blood_ in you, or you’d
come to the scratch like a man.”
He now saw that fate was against him, and that any further hostility
toward the shadow was only a tempting of Providence. He lost his health,
spirits, and everything but his courage. His countenance became pale and
peaceful-looking; the bluster departed from him; his body shrank up like
a withered parsnip. Thrice was he compelled to take in his clothes, and
thrice did he ascertain that much of his time would be necessarily spent
in pursuing his retreating person through the solitude of his almost
deserted garments.
God knows it is difficult to form a correct opinion upon a situation so
parodoxical as Neal’s was. To be reduced to skin and bone by the
downright friendship of the world was, as the sagacious reader will
admit, next to a miracle. We appeal to the conscience of any man who
finds himself without an enemy whether he be not a greater skeleton than
the tailor; we will give him fifty guineas provided he can show a calf
to his leg. We know he could not; for the tailor had none, and that was
because he had not an enemy. No man in friendship with the world ever
has calves to his legs. To sum up all in a parodox of our own invention,
for which we claim the full credit of originality, we now assert that
more men have risen in the world by the injury of their enemies than
have risen by the kindness of their friends. You may take this, reader,
in any sense; apply it to hanging if you like; it is still immutably and
immovably true.
One day Neal sat cross-legged, as tailors usually sit, in the act of
pressing a pair of breeches; his hands were placed, backs up, upon the
handle of his goose, and his chin rested upon the backs of his hands. To
judge from his sorrowful complexion, one would suppose that he sat
rather to be sketched as a picture of misery or of heroism in distress
than for the industrious purpose of pressing the seams of a garment.
There was a great deal of New Burlington Street pathos in his
countenance; his face, like the times, was rather out of joint; “the sun
was just setting, and his golden beams fell, with a saddened splendor,
athwart the tailor’s--” The reader may fill up the picture.
In this position sat Neal when Mr. O’Connor, the schoolmaster, whose
inexpressibles he was turning for the third time, entered the workshop.
Mr. O’Connor himself was as finished a picture of misery as the tailor.
There was a patient, subdued kind of expression in his face which
indicated a very fair portion of calamity; his eye seemed charged with
affliction of the first water; on each side of his nose might be traced
two dry channels, which, no doubt, were full enough while the tropical
rains of his countenance lasted. Altogether, to conclude from
appearances, it was a dead match in affliction between him and the
tailor; both seemed sad, fleshless, and unthriving.
“Misther O’Connor,” said the tailor, when the schoolmaster entered,
“won’t you be pleased to sit down?”
Mr. O’Connor sat; and, after wiping his forehead, laid his hat upon the
lap-board, put his half-handkerchief in his pocket, and looked upon the
tailor. The tailor, in return, looked upon Mr. O’Connor; but neither of
them spoke for some minutes. Neal, in fact, appeared to be wrapped up in
his own misery, and Mr. O’Connor in his; or, as we often have much
gratuitous sympathy for the distresses of our friends, we question but
the tailor was wrapped up in Mr. O’Connor’s misery, and Mr. O’Connor in
the tailor’s.
Mr. O’Connor at length said: “Neal, are my inexpressibles finished?”
“I am now pressin’ your inexpressibles,” replied Neal; “but, be my sowl,
Mr. O’Connor, it’s not your inexpressibles I’m thinkin’ of. I’m not the
ninth part o’ what I was. I’d hardly make paddin’ for a collar now.”
“Are you able to carry a staff still, Neal?”
“I’ve a light hazel one that’s handy,” said the tailor, “but where’s the
use o’ carryin’ it whin I can get no one to fight wid? Sure, I’m
disgracin’ my relations by the life I’m ladin’. I’ll go to my grave
widout ever batin’ a man or bein’ bate myself; that’s the vexation.
Divil the row ever I was able to kick up in my life; so that I’m fairly
blue-mowlded for want of a batin’. But if you have patience--”
“Patience!” said Mr. O’Connor, with a shake of the head that was
perfectly disastrous even to look at,--“patience, did you say, Neal?”
“Ay,” said Neal, “an’ be my sowl, if you deny that I said patience I’ll
break your head!”
“Ah, Neal,” returned the other, “I don’t deny it; for, though I’m
teaching philosophy, knowledge, and mathematics every day in my life,
yet I’m learning patience myself both night and day. No, Neal; I have
forgotten to deny anything. I have not been guilty of a contradiction,
out of my own school, for the last fourteen years. I once expressed the
shadow of a doubt about twelve years ago, but ever since I have
abandoned even doubting. That doubt was the last expiring effort at
maintaining my domestic authority--but I suffered for it.”
“Well,” said Neal, “if you have patience, I’ll tell you what afflicts me
from beginnin’ to endin’.”
“I _will_ have patience,” said Mr. O’Connor; and he accordingly heard a
dismal and indignant tale from the tailor.
“You have told me that fifty times over,” said Mr. O’Connor, after
hearing the story. “Your spirit is too martial for a pacific life. If
you follow my advice, I will teach you how to ripple the calm current of
your existence to some purpose. _Marry a wife_. For twenty-five years I
have given instruction in three branches, namely, philosophy, knowledge,
and mathematics. I am also well versed in matrimony, and I declare that,
upon my misery and by the contents of all my afflictions, it is my
solemn and melancholy opinion that, if you marry a wife, you will,
before three months pass over your concatenated state, not have a single
complaint to make touching a superabundance of peace or tranquillity or
a love of fighting.”
“Do you mane to say that any woman would make me afeard?” said the
tailor, deliberately rising up and getting his cudgel. “I’ll thank you
merely to go over the words agin, till I thrasy you widin an inch of
your life. That’s all”
“Neal,” said the schoolmaster, meekly, “I won’t fight; I have been too
often subdued ever to presume on the hope of a single victory. My spirit
is long since evaporated; I am like one of your own shreds, a mere
selvage. Do you not know how much my habiliments have shrunk in even
within the last five years? Hear me, Neal, and venerate my words as if
they proceeded from the lips of a prophet. If you wish to taste the
luxury of being subdued--if you are, as you say, blue-moulded for want
of a beating, and sick at heart of a peaceful existence--why, marry a
wife. Neal, send my breeches home with all haste, for they are wanted,
you understand. Farewell.”
Mr. O’Connor, having thus expressed himself, departed; and Neal stood,
with the cudgel in his hand, looking at the door out of which he passed,
with an expression of fierceness, contempt, and reflection strongly
blended on the ruins of his once heroic visage.
Many a man has happiness within his reach if he but knew it. The tailor
had been hitherto miserable because he pursued a wrong object. The
schoolmaster, however, suggested a train of thought upon which Neal now
fastened with all the ardour of a chivalrous temperament. Nay, be
wondered that the family spirit should have so completely seized upon
the fighting side of his heart as to preclude all thoughts of matrimony;
for he could not but remember that his relations were as ready for
marriage as for fighting. To doubt this would have been to throw a blot
upon his own escutcheon. He therefore very prudently asked himself to
whom, if he did not marry, should he transmit his courage. He was a
single man, and, dying as such, he would be the sole depository of his
own valor, which, like Junius’s secret, must perish with him. If he
could have left it as a legacy to such of his friends as were most
remarkable for cowardice, why, the case would be altered: but this was
impossible, and he had now no other means of preserving it to posterity
than by creating a posterity to inherit it. He saw, too, that the world
was likely to become convulsed. Wars, as everybody knew, were certain to
break out; and would it not be an excellent opportunity for being father
to a colonel, or perhaps a general, that might astonish the world?
The change visible in Neal after the schoolmaster’s last visit
absolutely thunderstruck all who knew him. The clothes which he had
rashly taken in to fit his shrivelled limbs were once more let out. The
tailor expanded with a new spirit; his joints ceased to be supple, as in
the days of his valor; his eye became less fiery but more brilliant.
From being martial, he got desperately gallant; but, somehow, he could
not afford to act the hero and lover both at the same time. This,
perhaps, would be too much to expect from a tailor. His policy was
better. He resolved to bring all his available energy to bear upon the
charms of whatever fair nymph he should select for the honour of
matrimony; to waste his spirit in fighting would, therefore, be a
deduction from the single purpose in view.
The transition from war to love is by no means so remarkable as we might
at first imagine. We quote Jack Falstaff in proof of this; or, if the
reader be disposed to reject our authority, then we quote Ancient Pistol
himself--both of whom we consider as the most finished specimens of
heroism that ever carried a safe skin. Acres would have been a hero had
he worn gloves to prevent the courage from oozing out at his palms, or
not felt such an unlucky antipathy to the “snug lying in the Abbey”; and
as for Captain Bobadil, he never had an opportunity of putting his plan
for vanquishing an army into practice. We fear, indeed, that neither his
character nor Ben Jonson’s knowledge of human nature is properly
understood; for it certainly could not be expected that a man whose
spirit glowed to encounter a whole host could, without tarnishing his
dignity, if closely pressed, condescend to fight an individual. But as
these remarks on courage may be felt by the reader as an invidious
introduction of a subject disagreeable to him, we beg to hush it for the
present and return to the tailor.
No sooner had Neal begun to feel an inclination to matrimony than his
friends knew that his principles had veered by the change now visible in
his person and deportment. They saw he had ratted from courage and
joined love. Heretofore his life had been all winter, darkened by storm
and hurricane. The fiercer virtues had played the devil with him; every
word was thunder, every look lightning; but now all that had passed
away. Before he was the _fortiter in re_; at present he was the
_suaviter in modo_. His existence was perfect spring, beautifully
vernal. All the amiable and softer qualities began to bud about his
heart; a genial warmth was diffused over him; his soul got green within
him; every day was serene, and if a cloud happened to become visible,
there was a roguish rainbow astride of it, on which sat a beautiful Iris
that laughed down at him and seemed to say, “Why the dickens, Neal,
don’t you marry a wife?”
Neal could not resist the afflatus which decended on him; an ethereal
light dwelled, he thought, upon the face of nature; the colour of the
cloth which he cut out from day to day was, to his enraptured eye, like
the colour of Cupid’s wings--all purple; his visions were worth their
weight in gold; his dreams a credit to the bed he slept on; and his
feelings, like blind puppies, young and alive to the milk of love and
kindness which they drew from his heart. Most of this delight escaped
the observation of the world, for Neal, like your true lover, became shy
and mysterious. It is difficult to say what he resembled; no dark
lantern ever had more light shut up within itself than Neal had in his
soul, although his friends were not aware of it. They knew, indeed, that
he had turned his back upon valor; but beyond this their knowledge did
not extend.
Neal was shrewd enough to know that what he felt must be love; nothing
else could distend him with happiness until his soul felt light and
bladderlike but love. As an oyster opens when expecting the tide, so did
his soul expand at the contemplation of matrimony. Labour ceased to be a
trouble to him; he sang and sewed from morning till night; his hot goose
no longer burned him, for his heart was as hot as his goose; the
vibrations of his head, at each successive stitch, were no longer sad
and melancholy. There was a buoyant shake of exultation in them which
showed that his soul was placid and happy within him.
Endless honour be to Neal Malone for the originality with which he
managed the tender sentiment! He did not, like your commonplace lovers,
first discover a pretty girl and afterward become enamoured of her. No
such thing; he had the passion prepared beforehand--cut out and made up,
as it were, ready for any girl whom it might fit. This was falling in
love in the abstract, and let no man condemn it without a trial, for
many a long-winded argument could be urged in its defence. It is always
wrong to commence business without capital, and Neal had a good stock to
begin with. All we beg is that the reader will not confound it with
Platonism, which never marries; but he is at full liberty to call it
Socratism, which takes unto itself a wife and suffers accordingly.
Let no one suppose that Neal forgot the schoolmaster’s kindness, or
failed to be duly grateful for it. Mr. O’Connor was the first person
whom he consulted touching his passion. With a cheerful soul he waited
on that melancholy and gentleman-like man, and in the very luxury of his
heart told him that he was in love.
“In love, Neal!” said the schoolmaster. “May I inquire with whom?”
“Wid nobody in particular yet,” replied Neal; “but o’ late I’m got
divilish fond o’ the girls in general.”
“And do you call that being in love, Neal?” said Mr. O’Connor.
“Why, what else would I call it?” returned the tailor. “Am n’t I fond o’
them?”
“Then it must be what is termed the ‘universal passion,’ Neal,” observed
Mr. O’Connor, “although it is the first time I have seen such an
illustration of it as you present in your own person.”
“I wish you would advise me how to act,” said Neal; “I’m as happy as a
prince since I began to get fond o’ them an’ to think o’ marriage.”
The schoolmaster shook his head again, and looked rather miserable. Neal
rubbed his hands with glee, and looked perfectly happy. The schoolmaster
shook his head again, and looked more miserable than before. Neal’s
happiness also increased on the second rubbing.
Now, to tell the secret at once, Mr. O’Connor would not have appeared so
miserable were it not for Neal’s happiness; nor Neal so happy were it
not for Mr. O’Connor’s misery. It was all the result of contrast; but
this you will not understand unless you be deeply read in modern novels.
Mr. O’Connor, however, was a man of sense, who knew, upon this
principle, that the longer he continued to shake his head the more
miserable he must become, and the more also would he increase Neal’s
happiness; but he had no intention of increasing Neal’s happiness at his
own expense--for, upon the same hypothesis, it would have been for
Neal’s interest had he remained shaking his head there and getting
miserable until the day of judgment. He consequently declined giving the
third shake, for he thought that plain conversation was, after all, more
significant and forcible than the most eloquent nod, however ably
translated.
“Neal,” said he, “could you, by stretching your imagination, contrive to
rest contented with nursing your passion in solitude, and love the sex
at a distance?”
“How could I nurse and mind my business?” replied the tailor. “I’ll
never nurse so long as I’ll have the wife; and as for ’magination, it
depends upon the grain o’it whether I can stretch it or not. I don’t
know that I ever made a coat o’it in my life.”
“You don’t understand me, Neal,” said the schoolmaster. “In recommending
marriage, I was only driving one evil out of you by introducing another.
Do you think that, if you abandoned all thoughts of a wife, you would
get heroic again--that is, would you take once more to the love of
fighting?”
“There is no doubt but I would,” said the tailor; “if I miss the wife,
I’ll kick up such a dust as never was seen in the parish, an’ you’re the
first man that I’ll lick. But now that I’m in love,” he continued,
“sure, I ought to look out for the wife.”
“Ah, Neal,” said the schoolmaster, “you are tempting destiny; your
temerity be, with all its melancholy consequences, upon your own head.”
“Come,” said the tailor; “it wasn’t to hear you groaning to the tune o’
‘Dhrimmindhoo,’ or ‘The old woman rockin’ her cradle,’ that I came; but
to know if you could help me in makin’ out the wife. That’s the
discoorse.”
“Look at me, Neal,” said the schoolmaster, solemnly. “I am at this
moment, and have been any time for the last fifteen years, a living
_caveto_ against matrimony. I do not think that earth possesses such a
luxury as a single solitary life. Neal, the monks of old were happy men;
they were all fat and had double chins; and, Neal, I tell you that all
fat men are in general happy. Care cannot come at them so readily as at
a thin man; before it gets through the strong outworks of flesh and
blood with which they are surrounded, it becomes treacherous to its
original purpose, joins the cheerful spirits it meets in the system, and
dances about the heart in all the madness of mirth; just like a sincere
ecclesiastic who comes to lecture a good fellow against drinking, but
who forgets his lecture over his cups, and is laid under the table with
such success that he either never comes to finish his lecture, or comes
often to be laid under the table. Look at me, Neal, how wasted,
fleshless, and miserable I am. You know how my garments have shrunk in,
and what a solid man I was before marriage. Neal, pause, I beseech you;
otherwise you stand a strong chance of becoming a nonentity like
myself.”
“I don’t care what I become,” said the tailor; “I can’t think that you’d
be so unreasonable as to expect that any o’ the Malones should pass out
o’ the world widout either bein’ bate or marrid. Have reason, Mr.
O’Connor, an’ if you can help me to the wife I promise to take in your
coat the next time for nothin’.”
“Well, then,” said Mr. O’Connor, “what would you think of the butcher’s
daughter, Biddy Neil? You have always had a thirst for blood, and here
you may have it gratified in an innocent manner, should you ever become
sanguinary again. ’T is true, Neal, she is twice your size and possesses
three times your strength; but for that very reason, Neal, marry her if
you can. Large animals are placid; and Heaven preserve those bachelors
whom I wish well from a small wife; ’t is such who always wield the
sceptre of domestic life and rule their husbands with a rod of iron.”
“Say no more, Mr. O’Connor,” replied the tailor; “she’s the very girl
I’m in love wid, an’ never fear but I’ll overcome her heart if it can be
done by man. Now, step over the way to my house, an’ we’ll have a sup on
the head o’ it. Who’s that calling?”
“Ah, Neal, I know the tones--there’s a shrillness in them not to be
mistaken. Farewell! I must depart; you have heard the proverb, ‘Those
who are bound must obey.’ Young Jack, I presume, is squalling, and I
must either nurse him, rock the cradle, or sing comic tunes for him,
though Heaven knows with what a disastrous heart I often sing, ‘Begone,
dull care,’ the ‘Rakes of Newcastle,’ or, ‘Peas upon a Trencher.’ Neal,
I say again, pause before you take this leap in the dark. Pause, Neal, I
entreat you. Farewell!”
Neal, however, was gifted with the heart of an Irishman, and scorned
caution as the characteristic of a coward; he had, as it appeared,
abandoned all design of fighting, but the courage still adhered to him
even in making love. He consequently conducted the siege of Biddy Neil’s
heart with a degree of skill and valor which would not have come amiss
to Marshal Gerald at the siege of Antwerp. Locke or Dugald Stewart,
indeed, had they been cognisant of the tailor’s triumph, might have
illustrated the principle on which he succeeded; as to ourselves, we can
only conjecture it. Our own opinion is that they were both animated with
a congenial spirit. Biddy was the very pink of pugnacity, and could
throw in a body-blow or plant a facer with singular energy and science.
Her prowess hitherto had, we confess, been displayed only within the
limited range of domestic life; but should she ever find it necessary to
exercise it upon a larger scale, there was no doubt whatsoever, in the
opinion of her mother, brothers, and sisters, every one of whom she had
successively subdued, that she must undoubtedly distinguish herself.
There was certainly one difficulty which the tailor had _not_ to
encounter in the progress of fats courtship: the field was his own, he
had not a rival to dispute his claim. Neither was there any opposition
given by her friends; they were, on the contrary, all anxious for the
match; and when the arrangements were concluded, Neal felt his hand
squeezed by them in succession, with an expression more resembling
condolence than joy. Neal, however, had been bred to tailoring, and not
to metaphysics; he could cut out a coat very well, but we do not say
that he could trace a principle--as what tailor, except Jeremy Taylor,
could?
There was nothing particular in the wedding. Mr. O’Connor was asked by
Neal to be present at it; but he shook his head, and told him that he
had not courage to attend it or inclination to witness any man’s sorrows
but his own. He met the wedding-party by accident, and was heard to
exclaim with a sigh as they flaunted past him in gay exuberance of
spirits: “Ah, poor Neal! he is going like one of her father’s cattle to
the shambles! Woe is me for having suggested matrimony to the taylor! He
will not long be under the necessity of saying that he is ‘blue-moulded
for want of a beating.’ The butcheress will fell him like a Kerry ox,
and I may have his blood to answer for and his discomfiture to feel for
in addition to my own miseries.”
On the evening of the wedding-day, about the hour of ten o’clock, Neal,
whose spirits were uncommonly exalted, for his heart luxuriated within
him, danced with his bridesmaid; after the dance he sat beside her, and
got eloquent in praise of her beauty; and it is said, too, that he
whispered to her and chucked her chin with considerable gallantry. The
_tête-à-tête_ continued for some time without exciting particular
attention, with one exception; but _that_ exception was worth a whole
chapter of general rules. Mrs. Malone rose up, then sat down again and
took off a glass of the native; she got up a second time; all the wife
rushed upon her heart. She approached them, and, in a fit of the most
exquisite sensibility, knocked the bridesmaid down, and gave the tailor
a kick of affecting pathos upon the inexpressibles. The whole scene was
a touching one on both sides. The tailor was sent on all-fours to the
floor, but Mrs. Malone took him quietly up, put him under her arm as one
would a lap-dog, and with stately step marched away to the connubial
apartment, in which everything remained very quiet for the rest of the
night.
The next morning Mr. O’Connor presented himself to congratulate the
tailor on his happiness. Neal, as his friend, shook hands with him, gave
the schoolmaster’s fingers a slight squeeze, such as a man gives who
would gently entreat your sympathy. The schoolmaster looked at him, and
thought he shook his head. Of this, however, he could not be certain;
for, as he shook his own during the moment of observation, he concluded
that it might be a mere mistake of the eye, or, perhaps, the result of a
mind predisposed to be credulous on the subject of shaking heads.
We wish it were in our power to draw a veil, or curtain, or blind of
some description, over the remnant of the tailor’s narrative that is to
follow; but as it is the duty of every faithful historian to give the
secret causes of appearances which the world in general does not
understand, so we think it but honest to go on, impartially and
faithfully, without shrinking from the responsibility that is frequently
annexed to truth.
For the first three days after matrimony Neal felt like a man who had
been translated to a new and more lively state of existence. He had
expected, and flattered himself, that the moment this event should take
place he would once more resume his heroism, and experience the pleasure
of a drubbing. This determination he kept a profound secret; nor was it
known until a future period, when he disclosed it to Mr. O’Connor. He
intended, therefore, that marriage should be nothing more than a mere
parenthesis in his life--a kind of asterisk, pointing, in a note at the
bottom, to this single exception in his general conduct--a nota bene to
the spirit of a martial man, intimating that he had been peaceful only
for a while. In truth, he was, during the influence of love over him and
up to the very day of his marriage, secretly as blue-moulded as ever for
want of a beating. The heroic penchant lay snugly latent in his heart,
unchecked and unmodified. He flattered himself that he was achieving a
capital imposition upon the world at large, that he was actually hoaxing
mankind in general, and that such an excellent piece of knavish
tranquillity had never been perpetrated before his time.
On the first week after his marriage there chanced to be a fair in the
next market-town. Neal, after breakfast, brought forward a bunch of
shillalahs, in order to select the best; the wife inquired the purpose
of the selection, and Neal declared that he was resolved to have a fight
that day if it were to be had, he said, for “love or money.” “The truth
is,” he exclaimed, strutting with fortitude about the house, “the truth
is, that I’ve _done_ the whole of yez--I’m as blue-mowlded as ever for
want of a batin’.”
“Don’t go,” said the wife.
“I _will_ go,” said Neal, with vehemence; “I’ll go if the whole parish
was to go to prevint me.”
In about another half-hour Neal sat down quietly to his business instead
of going to the fair!
Much ingenious speculation might be indulged in upon this abrupt
termination to the tailor’s most formidable resolution; but, for our own
part, we will prefer going on with the narrative, leaving the reader at
liberty to solve the mystery as he pleases. In the meantime we say this
much; let those who cannot make it out carry it to their tailor; it is a
tailor’s mystery, and no one has so good a right to understand
it--except, perhaps, a tailor’s wife.
At the period of his matrimony Neal had become as plump and as stout as
he ever was known to be in his plumpest and stoutest days. He and the
schoolmaster had been very intimate about this time; but we know not how
it happened that soon afterward he felt a modest, bride-like reluctance
in meeting with that afflicted gentleman. As the eve of his union
approached, he was in the habit, during the schoolmaster’s visits to his
workshop, of alluding, in rather a sarcastic tone, considering the
unthriving appearance of his friend, to the increasing lustiness of his
person. Nay, he has often leaped up from his lap-board, and, in the
strong spirit of exultation, thrust out his leg in attestation of his
assertion, slapping it, moreover, with a loud laugh of triumph that
sounded like a knell to the happiness of his emaciated acquaintance. The
schoolmaster’s philosophy, however, unlike his flesh, never departed
from him; his usual observation was, “Neal, we are both receding from
the same point; you increase in flesh, whilst I, Heaven help me, am fast
diminishing.”
The tailor received these remarks with very boisterous mirth, whilst Mr.
O’Connor simply shook his head and looked sadly upon his limbs, now
shrouded in a superfluity of garments, somewhat resembling a slender
thread of water in a shallow summer stream nearly wasted away and
surrounded by an unproportionate extent of channel.
The fourth month after the marriage arrived, Neal, one day near its
close, began to dress himself in his best apparel. Even then, when
buttoning his waistcoat, he shook his head after the manner of Mr.
O’Connor, and made observations upon the great extent to which it
over-folded him.
“Well,” thought he with a sigh, “this waistcoat certainly _did_ fit me
to a T; but it’s wonderful to think how--cloth stretches!”
“Neal,” said the wife, on perceiving him dressed, “where are you bound
for?”
“Faith, _for life_” replied Neal, with a mitigated swagger; “and I’d as
soon, if it had been the will of Provid--”
He paused.
“Where are you going?” asked the wife a second time.
“Why,” he answered, “only to dance at Jemmy Connolly’s; I’ll be back
early.”
“Don’t go,” said the wife.
“I’ll go,” said Neal, “if the whole counthry was to prevint me. Thunder
an’ lightnin’, woman, who am I?” he exclaimed, in a loud, but rather
infirm voice. “Am n’t I Neal Malone, that never met a _man_ who’d fight
him? Neal Malone, that was never beat by _man_! Why, tare an’ ouns,
woman! Whoo! I’ll get enraged some time, an’ play the divil! Who’s
afeard, I say?”
“_Don’t go_,” added the wife a third time, giving Neal a significant
look in the face.
In about another half-hour Neal sat down quietly to his business instead
of going to the dance!
Neal now turned himself, like many a sage in similar circumstances, to
philosophy; that is to say, he began to shake his head upon principle,
after the manner of the schoolmaster. He would, indeed, have preferred
the bottle upon principle; but there was no getting at the bottle except
through the wife, and it so happened that by the time it reached him
there was little consolation left in it. Neal bore all in silence; for
silence, his friend had often told him, was a proof of wisdom.
Soon after this, Neal one evening met Mr. O’Connor by chance upon a
plank which crossed a river. This plank was only a foot in breadth, so
that no two individuals could pass each other upon it. We cannot find
words in which to express the dismay of both on finding that they
absolutely glided past each other without collision.
Both paused and surveyed each other solemnly; but the astonishment was
all on the side of Mr. O’Connor.
“Neal,” said the schoolmaster, “by all the household gods, I conjure you
to speak, that I may be assured you live!”
The ghost of a blush crossed the churchyard visage of the tailor.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, “why the divil did you tempt me to marry a wife?”
“Neal,” said his friend, “answer me in the most solemn manner possible;
throw into your countenance all the gravity you can assume; speak as if
you were under the hands of the hangman, with the rope about your neck,
for the question is indeed a trying one which I am about to put. Are you
still ‘blue-moulded for want of a beating’?”
The tailor collected himself to make a reply; he put one leg out--the
very leg which he used to show in triumph to his friend, but, alas, how
dwindled! He opened his waistcoat and lapped it round him until he
looked like a weasel on its hind legs. He then raised himself up on his
tiptoes, and, in an awful whisper, replied, “No!!! the divil a bit I’m
blue-mowlded for want of a batin’!”
The schoolmaster shook his head in his own miserable manner; but, alas!
he soon perceived that the tailor was as great an adept at shaking the
head as himself. Nay, he saw that there was a calamitous refinement, a
delicacy of shake in the tailor’s vibrations, which gave to his own nod
a very commonplace character.
The next day the tailor took in his clothes; and from time to time
continued to adjust them to the dimensions of his shrinking person. The
schoolmaster and he, whenever they could steal a moment, met and
sympathised together. Mr. O’Connor, however, bore up somewhat better
than Neal. The latter was subdued in heart and in spirit, thoroughly,
completely, and intensely vanquished. His features became sharpened by
misery, for a termagant wife is the whetstone on which all the
calamities of a henpecked husband are painted by the devil. He no longer
strutted as he was wont to do, he no longer carried a cudgel as if he
wished to wage a universal battle with mankind. He was now a married
man. Sneakingly, and with a cowardly crawl, did he creep along, as if
every step brought him nearer to the gallows. The schoolmaster’s march
of misery was far slower than Neal’s, the latter distanced him. Before
three years passed he had shrunk up so much that he could not walk
abroad of a windy day without carrying weights in his pockets to keep
him firm on the earth which he once trod with the step of a giant. He
again sought the schoolmaster, with whom, indeed, he associated as much
as possible. Here he felt certain of receiving sympathy; nor was he
disappointed. That worthy but miserable man and Neal often retired
beyond the hearing of their respective wives, and supported each other
by every argument in their power. Often have they been heard in the dusk
of evening singing behind a remote hedge that melancholy ditty, “Let us
_both_ be unhappy together,” which rose upon the twilight breeze with a
cautious quaver of sorrow truly heartrending and lugubrious.
“Neal,” said Mr. O’Connor on one of those occasions, “here is a book
which I recommend to your perusal; it is called ‘The Afflicted Man’s
Companion’; try if you cannot glean some consolation out of it.”
“Faith,” said Neal, “I’m forever oblaged to you, but I don’t want it.
I’ve had ‘The Afflicted Man’s Companion’ too long, and not an atom o’
consolation I can get out of it. I have _one_ o’ them, I tell you; but,
be my sowl, I’ll not undertake _a pair_ o’ them. The very name’s enough
for me.” They then separated.
The tailor’s vis vitae must have been powerful or he would have died. In
two years more his friends could not distinguish him from his own
shadow, a circumstance which was of great inconvenience to him. Several
grasped at the hand of the shadow instead of his; and one man was near
paying it five and sixpence for making a pair of small-clothes. Neal, it
is true, undeceived him with some trouble, but candidly admitted that he
was not able to carry home the money. It was difficult, indeed, for the
poor tailor to bear what he felt; it is true he bore it as long as he
could; but at length he became suicidal, and often had thoughts of
“making his own quietus with his bare bodkin.” After many deliberations
and afflictions, he ultimately made the attempt; but, alas! he found
that the blood of the Malones refused to flow upon so ignominious an
occasion. So _he_ solved the phenomenon; although the truth was that his
blood was not “i’ the vein” for it; none was to be had. What then was to
be done? He resolved to get rid of life by some process, and the next
that occurred to him was hanging. In a solemn spirit he prepared a
selvage, and suspended himself from the rafter of his workshop. But here
another disappointment awaited him, he would not hang. Such was his want
of gravity that his own weight proved insufficient to occasion his death
by mere suspension. His third attempt was at drowning; but he was too
light to sink; all the elements, all his own energies, joined
themselves, he thought, in a wicked conspiracy to save his life. Having
thus tried every avenue to destruction, and failed in all, he felt like
a man doomed to live forever. Henceforward he shrank and shrivelled by
slow degrees, until in the course of time he became so attenuated that
the grossness of human vision could no longer reach him.
This, however, could not last always. Though still alive, he was to all
intents and purposes imperceptible. He could only now be heard; he was
reduced to a mere essence; the very echo of human existence, vox
etpraeterea nihil. It is true the schoolmaster asserted that he
occasionally caught passing glimpses of him; but that was because he had
been himself nearly spiritualised by affliction, and his visual ray
purged in the furnace of domestic tribulation. By-and-by Neal’s voice
lessened, got fainter and more indistinct, until at length nothing but a
doubtful murmur could be heard, which ultimately could scarcely be
distinguished from a ringing in the ears.
Such was the awful and mysterious fate of the tailor, who, as a hero,
could not, of course, die; he merely dissolved like an icicle, wasted
into immateriality, and finally melted away beyond the perception of
mortal sense. Mr. O’Connor is still living, and once more in the fulness
of perfect health and strength. His wife, however, we may as well hint,
has been dead more than two years.