When the Princess Angelica was born, her parents not only did not ask
the Fairy Blackstick to the christening party, but gave orders to their
porter absolutely to refuse her if she called. This porter's name
was Gruffanuff, and he had been selected for the post by their Royal
Highnesses because he was a very tall fierce man, who could say "Not
at home" to a tradesman or an unwelcome visitor with a rudeness which
frightened most such persons away. He was the husband of that Countess
whose picture we have just seen, and as long as they were together they
quarrelled from morning till night. Now this fellow tried his rudeness
once too often, as you shall hear. For the Fairy Blackstick coming to
call upon the Prince and Princess, who were actually sitting at the open
drawing-room window, Gruffanuff not only denied them, but made the most
ODIOUS VULGAR SIGN as he was going to slam the door in the Fairy's face!
"Git away, hold Blackstick!" said he. "I tell you, Master and Missis
ain't at home to you;" and he was, as we have said, GOING to slam the
door.
But the Fairy, with her wand, prevented the door being shut; and
Gruffanuff came out again in a fury, swearing in the most abominable
way, and asking the Fairy "whether she thought he was a-going to stay at
that there door hall day?"
"You ARE going to stay at that door all day and all night, and for many
a long year," the Fairy said, very majestically; and Gruffanuff, coming
out of the door, straddling before it with his great calves, burst out
laughing, and cried, "Ha, ha, ha! this IS a good un! Ha--ah--what's
this? Let me down--oh--o--h'm!" and then he was dumb!
For, as the Fairy waved her wand over him, he felt himself rising off
the ground, and fluttering up against the door, and then, as if a screw
ran into his stomach, he felt a dreadful pain there, and was pinned to
the door; and then his arms flew up over his head; and his legs, after
writhing about wildly, twisted under his body; and he felt cold,
cold, growing over him, as if he was turning into metal; and he said,
"Oh--o--h'm!" and could say no more, because he was dumb.
He WAS turned into metal! He was, from being BRAZEN, BRASS! He was
neither more nor less than a knocker! And there he was, nailed to the
door in the blazing summer day, till he burned almost red-hot; and there
he was, nailed to the door all the bitter winter nights, till his brass
nose was dropping with icicles. And the postman came and rapped at him,
and the vulgarest boy with a letter came and hit him up against the
door. And the King and Queen (Princess and Prince they were then) coming
home from a walk that evening, the King said, "Hullo, my dear! you have
had a new knocker put on the door. Why, it's rather like our porter in
the face! What has become of that boozy vagabond?" And the housemaid
came and scrubbed his nose with sand-paper; and once, when the Princess
Angelica's little sister was born, he was tied up in an old kid-glove;
and, another night, some LARKING young men tried to wrench him off, and
put him to the most excruciating agony with a turn screw. And then
the Queen had a fancy to have the color of the door altered; and the
painters dabbed him over the mouth and eyes, and nearly choked him, as
they painted him pea-green. I warrant he had leisure to repent of having
been rude to the Fairy Blackstick!
As for his wife, she did not miss him; and as he was always guzzling
beer at the public-house, and notoriously quarrelling with his wife, and
in debt to the tradesmen, it was supposed he had run away from all these
evils, and emigrated to Australia or America. And when the Prince and
Princess chose to become King and Queen, they left their old house, and
nobody thought of the porter any more.