I have been a good deal distressed lately by the reverses of my friend
John Bull, who is one of the leading tradesmen in this town. Everybody
knows his establishment. It does a very large business indeed: you can
get practically everything there--coals, Lee-Metford rifles, chocolate,
biscuits, steam-engines, Australian mutton, home and colonial produce of
every kind, in short. My old friend is tremendously proud of his shop,
which, as he says, he has made what it is by strict honesty (and really
for an enterprising tradesman he is fairly honest) and attention to
business principles. He has put a deal of capital into it, and spares no
expense in advertising; in fact, he keeps a regular department for
poetry, which is written on the premises and circulated among customers
and others, and explains in the most beautiful language that the house in
Britannia Road is the place to go to for everything. John, who prides
himself on his literary taste, considers this to be the finest poetry
ever written; and Mrs. Bull reads it out to him in the evening before he
has his regular snooze after supper.
Everything was going on swimmingly until this unfortunate Hooligan
trouble began. I must explain to you that Mr. Bull owns a great deal
more property than the actual premises where he transacts business.
Somehow or other, in course of time he has become the proprietor of bits
and scraps all over the town and suburbs--tenements, waste lands,
eligible building sites, warehouses, and what not--the whole making up
what, if it was put together, would be a very considerable estate. How
it all came into John Bull's hands nobody knows properly; indeed, I don't
think he does himself. Some of it was bought, and bought pretty dear
too. Some of it was left to him. A good deal of it he--one doesn't like
using the word, but still--well, in fact, took; but, mind you, he always
took everything for its good, and for the ultimate benefit of society,
not for any selfish reasons; so that to call Mr. Bull a pirate, as Dubois
does who keeps the toy-shop over the way, is manifestly absurd. Anyhow,
it is a very fine property, and would be bigger still if Jonathan C., a
cousin of the family, hadn't taken off a good slice which used to belong
to John.
As I was saying, this property is a very large straggling affair, most of
it a long way off from the shop. Its owner finds it very hard to look
after every part; all the more so, because this town has no regular
police, and is therefore continually troubled by gangs of roughs, who go
about breaking windows and even heads, and doing damage generally. They
are always giving a great deal of trouble to the Bull people; and what
makes it worse is that very often they are actually tenants on the
property, who ought to know better. One of these Hooligan crowds lately
made a dead set against poor John; it was all the harder because to my
personal knowledge he had shown himself most kind and forgiving to
various members of this particular gang; and once before, when they came
and broke his windows, he refused to prosecute, and simply gave them five
shillings to drink Mrs. Bull's health and not do it again. That is the
kind of man he is, sometimes. In spite of this indulgent and charitable
treatment, they came the other day and made a raid into an outlying
corner of his property and did all sorts of damage; and not content with
this, they actually squatted there on land which was no more theirs than
it is mine (I am thankful to say), where they insulted and even assaulted
innocent passers-by, and levied blackmail on John Bull's adjacent
tenants, and, in short, became the terror of the neighbourhood and a
disgrace to civilization. And when Mr. Bull's watchman (I told you there
is no regular police force, and everybody has to look after himself),
when Thomas Atkins, I say, came with orders to turn them out, they told
him to go--I hardly like to say where--and absolutely refused to stir;
quite the contrary; they hid themselves behind rubbish-heaps and
hoardings and such like, and threw things at Thomas; and when he tried to
catch them, they ran away and hid behind more hoardings, so that when you
thought they were in one place they were always somewhere else, and the
poor watchman got so knocked about with stones and brickbats that the
next morning, when he came round to the shop to report progress, he had a
black eye, and a cut head, and a torn coat, and a nasty bruise on one of
his legs. Mrs. Bull had to patch up his coat and give him some arnica
and vaseline.
Poor Mr. Atkins! He is a most respectable man, and an excellent
watchman, as was his father before him. It is a tradition of the Atkins
family that they are as brave as lions, and do not know what fear is; but
unfortunately they are not always very clever, and Thomas is a little
slow at learning, and does not pick up new tricks readily. His father
had a tremendous hammer-and-tongs battle with the Dubois' watchman once,
right in the middle of the public street--thirty-six rounds or so they
had of it--and licked him, as John Bull says, in true British style; and
that is always Thomas's way, and the only thing that he understands
properly; none of your underhand dodges like hiding behind places and
throwing brickbats when one isn't looking. So that the Hooligan ways of
fighting were quite too much for him at first. And although Mr. Bull
spent a lot of money in buying him a new watchman's rattle and a very
expensive second-hand truncheon, nearly as good as the best kind, still
it was all no good, and Thomas couldn't turn the invaders out.
All this time you must not suppose that Mr. Bull's neighbours had nothing
to say about the matter. On the contrary, they were very much interested
and, I am sorry to say, pleased. Dubois the Frenchman, and Muller, the
man who keeps the World's Cheap Emporium, and Alexis Ivanovitch, the big
cornfactor in the next street who is always maltreating his workmen, were
never tired of saying nasty things about Mr. Bull and crowing over the
mishaps of Mr. Atkins. Everybody knows what a terrible quarrel there was
some years ago between Muller and Dubois, and how Muller went into the
toyshop and thrashed the Frenchman then and there, so that poor Dubois
had to go to bed for a week, and for a long time afterwards used to go
about vowing vengeance. But this didn't in the least prevent the two
from fraternizing on the common ground of enmity to John Bull. They
would meet--by accident, of course--just under his windows, and then
Muller would say, very loud, to Dubois, "Is it not ridiculous, my friend,
that this once apparently so mighty Herr Bull and his watchman should
again by the Hooliganish crowd have been defeated?" Or perhaps, "This is
what comes of your big businesses and your straggling premises with no
one to protect them. How much better to have a small compact business
(though it's not so small either, mind you) like my Emporium, by a large
number of properly trained watchmen defended!" And Dubois would say,--so
that it annoyed the Bull household very much indeed,--"Behold the fruits
of being a pirate and a robber. Conspuez M. Atkins! Justice for ever!
A bas les Juifs!" (he always says that now when he is angry--goodness
only knows why). Indeed Dubois got so excited that he actually thought
of breaking John's windows, though on reflection he decided that he
wouldn't do it just yet. And John was very cross with Atkins and the
shopboy, and even with Mrs. Bull and his son J. Wellington Bull, and
caused it to be generally known that he would knock Dubois's head off for
sixpence if he got the chance. Then Paddy Gilhooly, who is a tenant of
the Bulls', in Hibernia Road--and a shocking bad tenant, too, who never
pays any rent when he can help it, and keeps his premises in a
disgraceful condition, with a lot of pigs and poultry running about in
the front parlour--this Paddy must needs put his finger in the pie and
turn against his own landlord, so that whenever Mr. Atkins came along
Hibernia Road Paddy would put his head out of window and shout,
"Hooligans for iver! More power to th' inimy! Crunchy aboo!" and other
similar observations, of which no one took the least notice, because it
was the way with the Gilhooly family. Still, it was very ungrateful of
Paddy, after all John's kindness to him; besides being painful to Mr.
Atkins, who is a near cousin of the Gilhoolys and would not wish to be
disgraced by the conduct of his relations. I don't know why it is, but
somehow or other Mr. Bull has not the gift of making himself generally
popular. Time after time he has lent Paddy money; and as for Muller and
Dubois, if they want good advice on the proper conduct of their business,
they know where to come for it: but they don't seem to appreciate the
privilege. In short, if it wasn't for that little bankrupt wine merchant
Themistocles Papageorgios, whom John saved some time ago from the
consequences of litigation with a Turkish firm, I doubt if my poor friend
has one sincere wellwisher among all the townsmen.
However, I am glad to say that most of them have begun to change their
tune lately, thanks to Mr. Bull's luck being on the mend. Thomas Atkins
did not make a very good start, certainly; but as time went on he learnt
a number of new tricks, and the violent exercise which he had to take put
him into excellent training. Moreover, some cousins of the Bulls showed
a very proper family spirit, and sent the eldest son, Larry, to help Mr.
Atkins. So, what with Thomas being, so to speak, a new man, and Larry
being very strong and active, and the shopboy coming out to lend a hand
when required, the three between them began to turn the tables. They
caught two or three of the marauders at last, and had them locked up; and
I sincerely hope and trust that they will do the same with all the rest
very soon. This seems to have produced a great change in the sentiments
of Mr. Bull's fellow-citizens. Muller is not nearly so contemptuous as
he used to be about Atkins; and Dubois, I suppose, has remembered that he
is going to have a big summer sale this year, and that it would be very
embarrassing, under the circumstances, to be embroiled with an
influential person like this brave M. Bull, as he calls him now. Only
Ivanovitch is still very sulky and goes on using violent expressions. I
am afraid there will be trouble yet between my poor friend and the
cornfactor--though goodness knows the town ought to be big enough to hold
both of them. But the fact is they have both got mortgages on a china
shop in the suburbs which is in a bad way financially, and it makes them
as jealous of each other as possible.
Evidently this Hooligan affair is not going to last for ever; and, on the
whole, if things don't get worse, Bull may congratulate himself on having
done pretty well so far. But it has hit him rather hard. What with
buying things for Mr. Atkins and paying him for working overtime, and
having had to put up new fire-proof shutters, and sending out the shopboy
away from his duties to help Atkins and Larry, he has lost a deal of
money, one way and another; and besides, as he is very much afraid of
this kind of thing happening again, it looks as if the whole business of
the shop were going to be put on a different footing. For here is J.
Wellington Bull, who was to have helped behind the counter, going out now
to do watchman's duty with the others; and as likely as not the old man
himself will have to take to patrolling his property instead of looking
after his customers; so that, in all probability, there will be no one
but Mrs. B. to see after the shop. And, as John said to me the other
day, these are no times for leaving a business to be managed by old
women.
He says he has seen enough of that kind of thing.