habits--or was I a widower of independent means seeking a home in a
cheerful family?--so suddenly that I beheld all things as in a dream.
Thinking, perchance, that the first stone of that monumental edifice,
the bill, could not be laid too quickly, she immediately provided me
with tea. There was a little cottage-loaf, so hard, round, shiny, and
compact, that I experienced a well-nigh uncontrollable desire to fling
it up to the ceiling to ascertain whether it would chip off any portion
of a preposterous rosette in stucco in the centre, representing a
sunflower surrounded by cabbage-leaves. This terrible ornament was, by
the way, one of the chief sources of my misery at Wretchedville: I was
continually apprehensive that it would tumble down bodily on the table.
In addition to the cottage-loaf there was a pretentious tea-pot, which,
had it been of sterling silver, would have been worth fifty guineas, but
which in its ghastly gleaming, said plainly, "Sheffield" and
"imposture." There was a piece of butter in a "shape" like a diminutive
haystack, and with a cow sprawling on the top in unctuous plasticity. It
was a pallid kind of butter, from which with difficulty you shaved off
adipocerous scales, which would not be persuaded to adhere to the bread,
but flew off at tangents and went rolling about an intolerably large
tea-tray on whose papier-mache surface was depicted the death of Captain
Hedley Vicars. The Crimean sky was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and the
gallant captain's face was highly enriched with blue and crimson
foil-paper.
As for the tea, I don't think I ever tasted such a peculiar mixture. Did
you ever sip warm catsup sweetened with borax? _That_ might have been
something like it. And what was that sediment, strongly resembling the
sand at Great Yarmouth, at the bottom of the cup? I sat down to my meal,
however, and made as much play with the cottage-loaf as I could. Had the
loaf been varnished? It smelt and looked as though it had undergone that
process. Everything in the house smelt of varnish. I was uncomfortably
conscious, too, during my repast--one side of the room being all
window--that I was performing the part of a "Portrait of the Gentleman
on the first floor," and that, as such, I was "sitting" to Mrs. Lucknow
at Number Twelve opposite--I knew her name was Lucknow, for a brass
plate on the door said so--whose own half-length effigy was visible in
her own breakfast-parlour window glowering at me reproachfully because I
had not taken her first floor, in the window of which was, not a group
of wax fruit, but a sham alabaster vase full of artificial flowers.
Every window in Wretchedville exhibited one or other of these ornaments,
and it was from their contemplation that I began to understand how it
was that the "fancy goods" trade in the Minories and Houndsditch throve
so well. They made things there to be purchased by the housekeepers of
Wretchedville.
The shades of evening fell, and Mrs. Primpris brought me in a monstrous
paraffin-lamp, the flame of which wouldn't do anything but lick the
chimney-glass till it smoked it to the proper hue to observe eclipses
by, and then splutter into extinction and charnel-like odour. After that
we tried a couple of composites (six to the pound) in green glass
candlesticks. I asked Mrs. Primpris if she could send me up a book to
read, and she favoured me, _per_ Alfred and Selina, with her whole
library, consisting of the Asylum Press Almanack for 1860; two odd
volumes of the Calcutta Directory; the Brewer and Distiller's Assistant;
Julia de Crespigny, or a Winter in London; Dunoyer's French Idioms; and
the Reverend Mr. Huntingdon's Bank of Faith.
I took out my cigar-case after this and began to smoke; and then I heard
Mrs. Primpris coughing and a number of doors being thrown wide open.
Upon this I concluded that I would go to bed. My sleeping apartment--the
first-floor back--was a perfect cube. One side was a window overlooking
a strip of clay-soil hemmed in between brick walls. There were no
tombstones yet, but if it wasn't a cemetery, why, when I opened the
window to get rid of the odour of the varnish, did it smell like one?
The opposite side of the cube was composed of a chest of drawers. I am
not impertinently curious by nature, but as I was the first-floor
lodger, bethought myself entitled to open the top long drawer with a
view to the bestowal of the contents of my black bag. The drawer was not
empty; but that which it held made me feel very nervous. I suppose the
weird figure I saw stretched out there with pink arms and legs sprouting
from a shroud of silver paper, a quantity of ghastly auburn curls, and
two blue glass eyes unnaturally gleaming in the midst of a mask of
salmon-coloured wax, was Selina's best doll; the present perhaps of her
uncle, who was, haply, a Calcutta director, or an Asylum Press Almanack
maker, or a brewer and distiller, or a cashier in the Bank of Faith. I
shut the drawer again hurriedly, and that doll in its silver paper
cerecloth haunted me all night.
The third side of my bedroom consisted of chimney--the coldest, hardest,
brightest-looking fire-place I ever saw out of Hampton Court Palace
guardroom. The fourth side was door. I forget into which corner was
hitched a wash-hand stand. The ceiling was mainly stucco rosette, of the
pattern of the one in my sitting-room. Among the crazes which came over
me at this time, was one to the effect that this bedroom was a cabin on
board ship, and that if the ship should happen to lurch or roll in the
trough of the sea, I must infallibly tumble out of the door or the
window, or into the drawer where the doll was--unless the drawer and the
doll came out to me--or up the chimney. I think that I murmured
"Steady!" as I clomb into bed.
My couch--an "Arabian" one, Mrs. Primpris said proudly--seemingly
consisted of the Logan, or celebrated rocking-stone of Cornwall, loosely
covered with bleached canvas, under which was certain loose foreign
matter, but whether composed of flocculi of wool or of the halves of
kidney potatoes I am not in a position to state. At all events I awoke
in the morning veined all over like a scagliola column. I never knew,
too, before, that any blankets were manufactured in Yorkshire, or
elsewhere, so remarkably small and thin as the two seeming flannel
pocket-handkerchiefs with blue-and-crimson edging, which formed part of
Mrs. Primpris's Arabian bed-furniture. Nor had I hitherto been aware, as
I was when I lay with that window at my feet, that the moon was so very
large. The orb of night seemed to tumble on me flat, until I felt as
though I were lying in a cold frying-pan. It was a "watery moon," I have
reason to think; for when I awoke the next morning, much battered with
visionary conflicts with the doll, I found that it was raining cats and
dogs.
"The rain," the poet tells us, "it raineth every day." It rained most
prosaically all that day at Wretchedville, and the next, and from Monday
morning till Saturday night, and then until the middle of the next week!
Dear me! dear me! how wretched I was! I hasten to declare that I have no
kind of complaint to make against Mrs. Primpris. Not a flea was felt in
her house. The cleanliness of the villa was so scrupulous as to be
distressing. It smelt of soap and scrubbing-brush like a Refuge. Mrs.
Primpris was strictly honest, even to the extent of inquiring what I
would like to have done with the fat of cold mutton-chops, and sending
me up antediluvian crusts, the remnants of last week's cottage-loaves,
with which I would play moodily at knock-'em-downs, using the
pepper-caster as a pin. I have nothing to say against Alfred's fondness
for art. India-rubber to be sure, is apter to smear than to obliterate
drawings in chalk; but a three-penny piece is not much; and you cannot
too early encourage the imitative faculties. And again, if Selina did
require correction, I am not prepared to deny that a shoe may be the
best implement and the blade bones the most fitting portion of the human
anatomy for such an exercitation.
I merely say that I was wretched at Wretchedville, and that Mrs.
Primpris's apartments very much aggravated my misery. The usual
objections taken to a lodging-house are to the effect that the furniture
is dingy, the cooking execrable, the servant a slattern, and the
landlady either a crocodile or a tigress. Now my indictment against my
Wretchedville apartments simply amounts to this: that everything was too
new. Never were there such staring paper-hangings, such gaudily printed
druggets for carpets, such blazing hearthrugs--one representing the dog
of Montargis seizing the murderer of the Forest of Bondy--such gleaming
fire-irons, and such remarkably shiny looking-glasses with gilt halters
for frames. The crockery was new, and the glue on the chairs and tables
was scarcely dry. The new veneer peeled off the new chiffonier. The
roller-blinds to the windows were so new that they wouldn't work. The
new stair-carpeting used to dazzle my eyes so, that I was always
tripping myself up; the new oil-cloth in the hall smelt like the Trinity
House repository for new buoys; and Mrs. Primpris was always full
dressed by nine o'clock in the morning. She confessed once or twice
during my stay that her house was not quite "seasoned." It was not even
seasoned to sound. Every time the kitchen-fire was poked you heard the
sound in the sitting-room. As to perfumes, whenever the lid of the
copper in the wash-house was raised, the first-floor lodger was aware of
the fact. I knew by the simple evidence of my olfactory organs what Mrs.
Primpris had for dinner every day. Pork, accompanied by some green
esculent, boiled, predominated.
When my fortnight's tenancy had expired--I never went outside the house
until I left it for good--and my epic poem, or whatever it was, had more
or less been completed, I returned to London, and had a rare bilious
attack. The doctor said it was painter's colic; I said at the time it
was disappointed ambition, for the booksellers had looked very coldly on
my poetical proposals, and the managers to a man had refused to read my
play; but at this present writing I believe the sole cause of my malady
to have been Wretchedville. I hope they will pull down the villas and
build the jail there soon, and that the rascal convicts will be as
wretched as I was.
(_From_ "UNDER THE SUN," _by permission of_ MESSRS. VIZETELLY & CO.)
THE SORROWS OF WERTHER.
W. M. THACKERAY.
Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her
She was cutting bread and butter.
Charlotte was a married lady,
And a moral man was Werther,
And for all the wealth of Indies
Would do nothing for to hurt her.
So he sighed, and pined, and ogled,
And his passion boiled, and bubbled,
Till he blew his silly brains out,
And no more was by it troubled.
Charlotte having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person,
Went on cutting bread and butter.
MORAL MUSIC.
(BY AN EXPERIMENTER.)
I am in a humble sphere of life--a hairdresser's assistant, in fact; but
I have a thirst for improving my mind, and regularly attend the evening
classes at our institute. It was there I read in a magazine about morals
and music. The writer discussed the question whether music by itself,
unpolluted by words, had any "mental significance or moral power." I
left off reading, rather puzzled, but I am of a practical turn of mind.
I joined our bricklaying class at the institute last term, and, although
I nip my fingers a good deal, still it has made me inclined to put all
new truths to the test of experiment. So I determined to experiment on
myself, and see what mental significance and moral power music
possessed, if any. I regulated my life very carefully during the trial,
so that no outside influence should spoil the result. I weighed and
measured out my food and drink, abstained from pickles and sensation
literature, denied myself the exciting pleasure of Jemima's company on
Thursday and Sunday, and, to counterbalance the language of some of our
ruder customers, and to give morals an even chance, I slept with a tract
under my pillow. I started with a quite unprejudiced mind, for the
attention I had paid to music before was mostly measured by the loudness
of it. I took a seat at St. James's Hall in good time, and opened my
mind and morals for impressions. First of all, a man came on the
platform and began, as far as I could see, to tune the piano. I thought
he ought to have done this before the advertised time of opening, but
when he got off the stool, the people all began to applaud him, and on
inquiring, I found that the man I had taken for the tuner was really the
giver of the concert, and that he had been playing one of his own
compositions. So I lost this experiment altogether. However, soon after
the player returned with a violinist, and they started a duet. I set my
teeth. If there was any significance or moral in a violin and piano
mixed, I determined to have it. I had first fleeting visions before my
mind of all the creatures I had ever seen in pain. There was the squeak
of a rat caught in a trap; there was the same sort of shriek Jemima gave
when I took her to have a tooth out; and there was the loud wail which
accompanies the conversion of pig into pork. But this was only the first
chapter. The players stopped, and began again; and the next chapter
plunged me among the industrial arts. Under the influence of the magic
instruments I saw the foundation of England's greatness. There was an
athletic carpenter industriously sawing wood. There was a grindstone
putting an edge on an axe. There were a number of whirrs, which brought
back vividly a loom I had seen at work at an exhibition, and there was a
rather asthmatic smith striking his anvil and coughing between every
blow.
But this was not all. They began a third chapter, and I was immediately
among lolly-pops. All the nicest things I had ever tasted stood before
me in a row. There was a pot full of apricot jam; there was some roast
beef gravy, than which, taken on the knife, I know nothing more
toothsome; there was a sixpenny strawberry ice, and a nice cut of lamb
and mint sauce to finish up with. I was sorry when they left off, but
glad to find I was on the trace of a moral. The piece was evidently a
musical embodiment of a clean shave: the first part was the misery of
laying your head back and having your nose tweaked; the second was the
being scraped; and the last was the happy moment when you stretch your
limbs, pass your satisfied hand over your smooth chin, and nod to
yourself complacently in the glass. The moral was obvious; that it is a
duty to get shaved, and not to shave yourself, but to go to the
professional man. My next experiment was to hear a young lady sing. She
came on the platform, looking lovely, and she had on a sash and a dress
improver that I never saw equalled for elegance. My hopes rose at the
sight of her. I felt sure that so much beauty could not be otherwise
than moral. "Oh, do be moral! do be moral!" I kept saying to myself, as
the accompanist opened fire on her song. A dreadful thought then arose:
the words of her song would taint the experiment, which was to be on
music alone. But, to my delight, I could not catch a word of what she
sang. It was all pure music. Her sweet song suggested to me as follows:
I first saw her running up stairs and down again as fast as ever she
could, and then she sat down on the mat to rest, while the piano panted.
Then she drew out from somewhere one long, straight note, thick in the
middle and tapering off at each end, so seductive that I fancied myself
a storm-tossed mariner listening to a mermaid. I could almost feel the
waves of the Margate boat gurgle around me. Then she drew a jug of hot
water out of the boiler--at least, that was its intellectual
significance to me, because the note went steadily rising upwards, with
little splashes in between, just like the sound of the water when I draw
a jug to shave a customer. Then she ran upstairs again like lightning,
and disappeared through the tiles, while the pianist banged the front
door to. I am sure there was a splendid moral to all this, for she
looked so beautiful and smiled so sweetly; but I am undecided whether
the moral was that I was to sign the pledge, or that I was not to go to
concerts without Jemima as a safeguard.
I next gave myself up bodily to what they called a "concerto." When I
saw several gentlemen come on to the platform, with a variety of
instruments, I thought it would be a more serious experiment than the
others, and so it proved. I kept my eyes on them when they first began,
but they looked so comical--one with his cheeks blown out, another with
his hair as if it had just been machined, another trying to get his arm
round his fiddle's waist, and another jerking his eyes out of his
head--that I felt it was not giving the music a fair chance, so I shut
my own eyes tight. As soon as I had done so there was no end of
intellectual significance. I was in a pleasure van just starting for
Hampton Court, with Jemima. There was the jog trot of the horses, and
every now and then the skid put on; there was laughter and the puffing
of pipes, and occasionally a loud roar, as we crossed a big
thoroughfare. We soon got into the country and heard the birds chirping,
and there was a sweet gurgling sound, which intimated to me that the men
on the box had broached the four-gallon cask. I was just getting ready
for a glass, when all at once the whole scene vanished. The music had
stopped, and when it began again things were much altered for the worse.
With the first note I felt a shudder go down my vitals. Something was
coming, I did not know what. I felt just like being woke up in bed by a
strange noise, and no matches handy, and my razors open to everybody on
the table. Then I heard the bass fiddle say distinctly, "Prepare to meet
your doom" several times over, while the violins tried to sneer at me,
and the piano rattled chains in the corner. This was very trying, but
worse was to follow. There were faint cries and sobs from the next room,
as though murder was going on; there were long silences which were worse
to bear than any sound; then someone began to work softly at the door
with a centre bit, and there were rumblings as though someone else was
letting himself down the chimney. I fancied I could almost see his leg.
Then there was another hush, and thank heaven, I could tell by the
hand-clapping that that part was over. It was about time, for the mental
significance had got quite over-powering. There was then a total change.
The music took me back in a second to the last ball I had been to--the
eighteen-penny one, refreshments extra. I was dancing all the dances at
once, and all the girls were making up to me, and it only made Jemima
smile. That was a really delightful mental significance, and I could
have done with more of it. But I doubt whether the concerto on the whole
was moral. I am sure that ice down the back cannot be good for anyone,
nor can I see, in cool moments, that raising the animal spirits so many
degrees above proof is proper. I have not yet concluded my experiments.
I have still to try the effects of a cornet solo; and the flute, as well
as the concertina, the bones, and the banjo. But I have no doubt that if
more people would try my plan, and honestly state the results, we should
in time get at the truth of this matter of moral music.
(_From the_ "EVENING STANDARD.")
BILLY DUMPS, THE TAILOR.
CHARLES CLARK.
Billy Dumps was very fond of spending his evenings with his two cronies,
Natty Dyer, a shoemaker, and Neddy Tueson, an umbrella mender, at the
"Cunning Cat," just round the corner. This worthy trio seldom left their
favourite haunt before closing time, much to the disgust of their
respective helpmates, Mrs. Dumps in particular.
Billy Dumps was a tailor, working as _he_ termed it on his own hook. As
his prices were moderate, and his work durable, he earned a pretty good
living, making and mending for his neighbours, chiefly of the dock
labouring class; but his nightly orgies at the "Cunning Cat" made sad
inroads into his hard earnings, which tended much to sour Betsy's
otherwise naturally good temper.
The climax was reached one eventful evening, on the occasion of a
Free-and-Easy being held at the old quarters, after which, Billy, for
prudential reasons, was escorted home at midnight by his two associates,
all fully bent on informing the sleeping neighbourhood at the top of
their voices that they were "jolly good fellows," supplemented by a
further assertion of, "and so say all of us!" Finishing up by depositing
the confiding tailor at full length in his own front passage, through
the door being inadvertently left ajar, where he laid and snored in
blissful ignorance of the trials and troubles of this life until rather
rudely awakened, and then somewhat briskly assisted upstairs, by Betsy
and a broom handle.
"Now, Mister Billy Dumps, I am tired of sitting up for you night after
night, and mean to do so no longer. So if you are not in when our clock
strikes ten, I locks the door and you finds other lodgings," exclaimed
Betsy his wife, on the morning after the Free-and-Easy.
Tailor Dumps felt small after the previous night's dissipation, and
determined to get home earlier and sober that evening. But under the
influence of the soothing pipe, the nut-brown ale, and the merry laugh
and jest of his boon companions, he was induced to forget his late
resolution, and to prolong his stay at the "Cunning Cat" until aroused
to the fact that it was ten o'clock and closing-time. On reaching home,
all was still and dark. Strange! he went round to the back door and
thumped loudly. The bed-room casement flew open with a bang, from which
instantly protruded the night-capped head of the wife of his bosom.
Billy at once tried the high hand, shouting, "Now then, sleepy, what's
yer game? Be spry and open sharp!"
No. She wasn't going to be spry, neither was she sleepy; and as to her
little game--she had locked him out according to promise, so didn't
intend unlocking again that night. Not if she knew it. Oh no!
"Now, Betsy, don't be a fool, you'll repent it," he urged.
_She_ wasn't a fool, she answered. In her opinion, he was the biggest
fool to be hammering and shivering outside at that time of night, when
he might have been comfortably lying in a warm bed hours ago. As for
repentance--she thought that would be more on his side of the door, for
she felt comfortable--very.
Billy fumed and stormed, and fully felt the ridiculousness of his
position, especially as he heard sounds of the neighbouring casements
stealthily unclose, and suppressed indications of merriment issuing
therefrom. But Billy stormed to no purpose. Betsy coolly recommended him
to go back where he had spent such a pleasant evening. She was sure Mrs.
Mudge, the landlady, would be only too pleased to accommodate him with a
lodging. If she wasn't, she ought to be, considering the time and money
he spent in her house.
But Billy had his own ideas of that arrangement, so still lingered,
determined to try another tack. He promised amendment, but Betsy was
sceptical. He appealed to her feelings. "Let me in, Betsy, for I am
cold!" That she could not help; as he had made his bed so he must lie.
He then became affectionate. "Oh Betsy, you are unkind: remember old
times, remember our wedding-day!" he pleaded, thinking to touch her that
way. But Betsy was not going to be had by soft sawder, for she promptly
rejoined, "Remember our wedding-day, you drunken sot? _I do_ to my
sorrow, no fear of my forgetting that great mistake. But, as I told you
before, into this house this blessed night you do not step. No, not if
you were to go on your knees and beg for it!"
"Ah, Betsy. You'll be sorry for this when too late. I'm determined to
end my misery. I'll jump down the well and drown myself. And you'll be
the cause of it!" whined Billy.
The night was dark. Betsy felt a little relenting as she heard her
husband groping about in the wood shed. Then she could dimly discern him
making for the well; plainly hear the creaking of the hinges and the lid
thrown back with a thud. Then came the cry of "Good bye, Betsy, I'm
gone!" The dull sound of a heavy body plunging into the water--a gasping
moan, and all was still.
Betsy's old affection for her erring husband at once returned with
tenfold force, for she raced downstairs, rushing into the darkness,
shrieking for help.
The neighbours were aroused. Men and women tumbled out of their back
doors in such scanty dishabille that would have charmed a sculptor.
Betsy, still screeching like a bagpipe, had to be forcibly restrained
from jumping to the rescue by the bystanders.
Dick Ward, the blacksmith, thrust the bucket-pole into the well, singing
out, "Lay hold, Billy, if ye ain't too fur gone!"
"I can feel un," shouted Dick, as the pole struck some hard substance
with a sounding smack.
"My eye, Dick! he'll feel you too, if that's Billy's head you tapped,"
said Nat; "it 'ud be one for his nob and no mistake."
They caught a glimpse, by the uncertain light of a flaming candle, of a
something floating low on the surface of the water.
"His head feels as hard as a koker nut," said Dick, as the pole rattled
on the dark object.
"Why it seems off his shoulders, for it goes bobbing up and down like a
dumplin in a soup-kettle!"
Just then, to the astonishment of all, the well known voice of Billy
Dumps was heard from the identical bed-room window that his wife had so
lately vacated, shouting, "Hullo, you people. What the deuce are ye
making such a rumpas for?"
"A ghost! A ghost!" was the cry.
"No fear," laughed the tailor. "But, Dick, as you have the pole in hand,
I should feel obliged if you'd fish up my chopping-block which I dropped
in there awhile ago!"