MRS. MERRYWINKLE’S maiden name was Chopper. She was the only child of
Mr. and Mrs. Chopper. Her father died when she was, as the play-books
express it, ‘yet an infant;’ and so old Mrs. Chopper, when her daughter
married, made the house of her son-in-law her home from that time
henceforth, and set up her staff of rest with Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle.
Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle are a couple who coddle themselves; and the
venerable Mrs. Chopper is an aider and abettor in the same.
Mr. Merrywinkle is a rather lean and long-necked gentleman, middle-aged
and middle-sized, and usually troubled with a cold in the head. Mrs.
Merrywinkle is a delicate-looking lady, with very light hair, and is
exceedingly subject to the same unpleasant disorder. The venerable Mrs.
Chopper—who is strictly entitled to the appellation, her daughter not
being very young, otherwise than by courtesy, at the time of her
marriage, which was some years ago—is a mysterious old lady who lurks
behind a pair of spectacles, and is afflicted with a chronic disease,
respecting which she has taken a vast deal of medical advice, and
referred to a vast number of medical books, without meeting any
definition of symptoms that at all suits her, or enables her to say,
‘That’s my complaint.’ Indeed, the absence of authentic information upon
the subject of this complaint would seem to be Mrs. Chopper’s greatest
ill, as in all other respects she is an uncommonly hale and hearty
gentlewoman.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Chopper wear an extraordinary quantity of flannel, and
have a habit of putting their feet in hot water to an unnatural extent.
They likewise indulge in chamomile tea and such-like compounds, and rub
themselves on the slightest provocation with camphorated spirits and
other lotions applicable to mumps, sore-throat, rheumatism, or lumbago.
Mr. Merrywinkle’s leaving home to go to business on a damp or wet morning
is a very elaborate affair. He puts on wash-leather socks over his
stockings, and India-rubber shoes above his boots, and wears under his
waistcoat a cuirass of hare-skin. Besides these precautions, he winds a
thick shawl round his throat, and blocks up his mouth with a large silk
handkerchief. Thus accoutred, and furnished besides with a great-coat
and umbrella, he braves the dangers of the streets; travelling in severe
weather at a gentle trot, the better to preserve the circulation, and
bringing his mouth to the surface to take breath, but very seldom, and
with the utmost caution. His office-door opened, he shoots past his
clerk at the same pace, and diving into his own private room, closes the
door, examines the window-fastenings, and gradually unrobes himself:
hanging his pocket-handkerchief on the fender to air, and determining to
write to the newspapers about the fog, which, he says, ‘has really got to
that pitch that it is quite unbearable.’
In this last opinion Mrs. Merrywinkle and her respected mother fully
concur; for though not present, their thoughts and tongues are occupied
with the same subject, which is their constant theme all day. If anybody
happens to call, Mrs. Merrywinkle opines that they must assuredly be mad,
and her first salutation is, ‘Why, what in the name of goodness can bring
you out in such weather? You know you _must_ catch your death.’ This
assurance is corroborated by Mrs. Chopper, who adds, in further
confirmation, a dismal legend concerning an individual of her
acquaintance who, making a call under precisely parallel circumstances,
and being then in the best health and spirits, expired in forty-eight
hours afterwards, of a complication of inflammatory disorders. The
visitor, rendered not altogether comfortable perhaps by this and other
precedents, inquires very affectionately after Mr. Merrywinkle, but by so
doing brings about no change of the subject; for Mr. Merrywinkle’s name
is inseparably connected with his complaints, and his complaints are
inseparably connected with Mrs. Merrywinkle’s; and when these are done
with, Mrs. Chopper, who has been biding her time, cuts in with the
chronic disorder—a subject upon which the amiable old lady never leaves
off speaking until she is left alone, and very often not then.
[Picture: The Couple who Coddle Themselves]
But Mr. Merrywinkle comes home to dinner. He is received by Mrs.
Merrywinkle and Mrs. Chopper, who, on his remarking that he thinks his
feet are damp, turn pale as ashes and drag him up-stairs, imploring him
to have them rubbed directly with a dry coarse towel. Rubbed they are,
one by Mrs. Merrywinkle and one by Mrs. Chopper, until the friction
causes Mr. Merrywinkle to make horrible faces, and look as if he had been
smelling very powerful onions; when they desist, and the patient,
provided for his better security with thick worsted stockings and list
slippers, is borne down-stairs to dinner. Now, the dinner is always a
good one, the appetites of the diners being delicate, and requiring a
little of what Mrs. Merrywinkle calls ‘tittivation;’ the secret of which
is understood to lie in good cookery and tasteful spices, and which
process is so successfully performed in the present instance, that both
Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle eat a remarkably good dinner, and even the
afflicted Mrs. Chopper wields her knife and fork with much of the spirit
and elasticity of youth. But Mr. Merrywinkle, in his desire to gratify
his appetite, is not unmindful of his health, for he has a bottle of
carbonate of soda with which to qualify his porter, and a little pair of
scales in which to weigh it out. Neither in his anxiety to take care of
his body is he unmindful of the welfare of his immortal part, as he
always prays that for what he is going to receive he may be made truly
thankful; and in order that he may be as thankful as possible, eats and
drinks to the utmost.
Either from eating and drinking so much, or from being the victim of this
constitutional infirmity, among others, Mr. Merrywinkle, after two or
three glasses of wine, falls fast asleep; and he has scarcely closed his
eyes, when Mrs. Merrywinkle and Mrs. Chopper fall asleep likewise. It is
on awakening at tea-time that their most alarming symptoms prevail; for
then Mr. Merrywinkle feels as if his temples were tightly bound round
with the chain of the street-door, and Mrs. Merrywinkle as if she had
made a hearty dinner of half-hundredweights, and Mrs. Chopper as if cold
water were running down her back, and oyster-knives with sharp points
were plunging of their own accord into her ribs. Symptoms like these are
enough to make people peevish, and no wonder that they remain so until
supper-time, doing little more than doze and complain, unless Mr.
Merrywinkle calls out very loudly to a servant ‘to keep that draught
out,’ or rushes into the passage to flourish his fist in the countenance
of the twopenny-postman, for daring to give such a knock as he had just
performed at the door of a private gentleman with nerves.
Supper, coming after dinner, should consist of some gentle provocative;
and therefore the tittivating art is again in requisition, and again—done
honour to by Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle, still comforted and abetted by
Mrs. Chopper. After supper, it is ten to one but the last-named old lady
becomes worse, and is led off to bed with the chronic complaint in full
vigour. Mr. and Mrs. Merrywinkle, having administered to her a warm
cordial, which is something of the strongest, then repair to their own
room, where Mr. Merrywinkle, with his legs and feet in hot water,
superintends the mulling of some wine which he is to drink at the very
moment he plunges into bed, while Mrs. Merrywinkle, in garments whose
nature is unknown to and unimagined by all but married men, takes four
small pills with a spasmodic look between each, and finally comes to
something hot and fragrant out of another little saucepan, which serves
as her composing-draught for the night.
There is another kind of couple who coddle themselves, and who do so at a
cheaper rate and on more spare diet, because they are niggardly and
parsimonious; for which reason they are kind enough to coddle their
visitors too. It is unnecessary to describe them, for our readers may
rest assured of the accuracy of these general principles:—that all
couples who coddle themselves are selfish and slothful,—that they charge
upon every wind that blows, every rain that falls, and every vapour that
hangs in the air, the evils which arise from their own imprudence or the
gloom which is engendered in their own tempers,—and that all men and
women, in couples or otherwise, who fall into exclusive habits of
self-indulgence, and forget their natural sympathy and close connexion
with everybody and everything in the world around them, not only neglect
the first duty of life, but, by a happy retributive justice, deprive
themselves of its truest and best enjoyment.