"the office" to shut up his limpid stream of talk.
The orator did his business first rate. From what I recollect of that
speech, I wonder that he deserted his title of barrister-at-law, turned
aside from the ambition of wearing M.P. after his own name at some
future date, and settled down, as he did, into the secretary of some
association having its location eastward of the Royal Exchange.
Our hired barrister-at-law addressed the Shufflebotham circle as honest,
noble fellows, whose adherence to principle was one of the most
refreshing examples of political determination he had ever met in his
life. He praised Shufflebotham as a man who had won an influence over
his fellow-men, which a tyrant might envy, but could never command,
through a stern and inflexible course of honest industry spread over an
ample term of existence. Shufflebotham here turned a little red in the
face; some people thought him modest, and took that crimson to be a
blush. No doubt it was a blush, but whether of honesty or of shame I
need not stay to point out.
After the orator had been speaking for some time, my man returned, and I
received an intimation of that fact. The orator also got a nod and a
very slight wink from me, when he stated that he had been requested to
make an explanation to them, but he felt somewhat exhausted by what he
had already done, and he therefore asked their permission to leave that
explanation to be made by his friend Mr. Yellowly, who sat by his side;
and then, after a peroration, in which he talked a good deal about the
moon, and the stars, and the four winds of heaven, and the British Lion,
and the flag that braved a thousand years, and honest industry, he sat
down amid such applause as I have only heard at the Pig and Whistle and
in very large assemblies.
Mr. Yellowly, the attorney, rose, and said that he regretted he had not
the eloquence of his learned friend; also that, as he was a plain man of
business, he would address himself to the explanation he had to offer in
very few words. The fact he was intrusted to announce, he hoped he might
do in confidence; it was, that although our candidate could not go so
far as universal suffrage, that most honourable and enlightened
gentleman would go a long way in that direction, much longer than he
even thought it prudent to express upon the hustings his intentions to
go, lest he should excite the prejudices of the middle classes, and
secure, by an indiscreet frankness, the return of their Tory antagonist.
In reply to an inquiry, Mr. Yellowly said he could not exactly tell how
far the candidate would go in the extension of the franchise, but no
doubt he would go as far as they desired--say to the admission within
the pale of the British constitution of the 2_l._ 10_s._ householders.
As for the ballot--that most important political principle--the Liberal
candidate would vote for such a shield being drawn over the poor but
honest elector.
Shufflebotham played his part well--the rascal! He affected to be a
little doubtful unless the explanation was made in public. Mr. Yellowly
strongly appealed to the common sense of his auditors not to peril the
election just at this moment (when the Tories were four ahead of the
Liberals) by so indiscreet a demand. One simple-hearted man thought
Shufflebotham was a little too particular and suspicious. He thought the
gentleman, Mr. Yellowly, was right. Shufflebotham said he did not want
to be a dictator. He was satisfied, if the others were. I, at that
moment, suggested that they had better not be long making up their
minds, for it was now a quarter past three o'clock, and the poll closed
at four. It was then speedily settled that Shufflebotham and his men
should, as a body, go up and vote for the Liberal candidate.
Our chief agent here craved five minutes--saying he thought they ought
to have a band of music. He secretly determined to grace the final
_coup_ by a demonstration in which three bands were to play their part.
He also privately determined to bring Jem Smash, and all his fighting
men, and all the other hired ruffians, to guard our new contingent, in
case the enemy, suspecting a trick, should set their forces in battle
array against our unprotected citizens. We should lose the election if
even a short delay arose from an attack upon us. Shufflebotham thought
they might as well have a little music.
I was not at all sorry it was so arranged. I wanted to have a few words
with Shufflebotham by himself, and to let him have a taste of my quality
and smartness, or perhaps I should rather say, whet his appetite for
that taste.
The barber led me outside to the yard of the Pig and Whistle, and
addressing me, inquired, "I suppose you have got the money all right?"
"Oh, yes," I replied.
"Will you give it us, then?"
"No," I said; "I cannot do that until you and your men have voted, you
know."
"How am I to know that you will give it me then? No d--tricks, or by
G--your gentleman" (meaning the candidate) "shall suffer for it, as true
as my name's John Shufflebotham."
Things had worked more felicitously than I had anticipated, or than my
plans were estimated to work. I now saw that the patriotic barber was
already outwitted, if I chose to break faith with him at this point. He
was bound to vote as his men did, or if he slunk away he had secured
them for us. It was now impossible to invent another excuse to those
truly honest fellows for reversing their collective decision. Still I
thought it would be as well to keep in with the barber to the last. I
wanted to let him and some people see how neatly I could work out the
stratagem.
"Well, I think you have as much right to trust me as I have to trust
you," I said; "but I don't mind meeting you half-way. I don't care
whether you do or not, though. I know those honest fellows will go up
and vote for our man. You cannot prevent that now, can you, Mr.
Shufflebotham? If you try to spoil our game (which I don't think you can
spoil), our bargain is off, and I sha'n't feel bound to give you any
thing, whether you succeed in upsetting it or not."
Shufflebotham saw that he was practically done, in the matter of
security at least, and that he must entirely trust in me; so he agreed
to meet me half-way.
"What do you mean to do, then?" said Shufflebotham, and as he spoke the
sound of wind-instruments floated on the summer breeze.
It was evident that the musicians were coming in the direction of the
Pig and Whistle.
I was afraid of the finishing touches of my artifice being a little
marred, so I hastily said,
"Well, look here: here's a hundred-pound note. I divide it in halves. I
give you one half now" (the musicians stopped, and I had to make this
speech a little longer, so as to spin out the moments, and I proceeded
to say slowly): "To-morrow morning, as early as you like, you come up to
the central committee-room and ask for me, and I will give you the other
half. I might say this evening. It would be quite as well, perhaps; but
some people with sharp eyes may be about. Now mind, Shufflebotham, don't
tell any one of this. I would not have it known for the whole world. It
would do you harm, you know. Keep it dark, like the blackest secret of
our lives. Don't get drunk to-night, or you will let it out."
The musicians had arrived within a few feet of the door of the Pig and
Whistle. The barber had been waiting in terrible anxiety for me to hand
him over his half security, and I now wanted to do it without delay. The
note, which was for 100_l._, had been divided in halves, and was ready
for my device. I handed him over his half, which he rapidly thrust into
his trousers-pocket, and left me as he might leave a tormentor,
shouting out, "Come along, lads, and hear the music."
The procession moved forward amid deafening huzzas, and a volume of what
I must, I suppose, as a matter of courtesy, call music, and the
bewilderment of many spectators. Shufflebotham shouted, in well-feigned
glee,
"All right, my lads; he's a right 'un. We are all going to vote for
him;" and sundry other more extravagant exclamations.
Twenty-three votes were recorded by ten minutes to four by John
Shufflebotham and his friends, without let or hindrance from Tory
prizefighters, roughs, or any other men. Shufflebotham did get drunk
that night, and I neither saw nor heard any more of him until next
morning.
Next day, about ten o'clock in the morning, John Shufflebotham called
upon me at the committee-room as arranged. I preferred to have the
attorney and the agent with me at this interview.
"Well, John Shufflebotham," I was the first to say, "I suppose you have
come for the other half of your note?"
The patriotic barber, who had sold his vote and influence, looked a
little sheepish and timid.
I said, "It is all right. These gentlemen are the lawyers; they know all
about every thing connected with the election, and they are of course in
our secret."
"They know what I want, then?"
"Yes, here it is," I observed, handing over to him the other half of the
note which he sought; but as I did so, I said, "It is of no use to you.
It is a Bank-of-Elegance note, which another man of your trade in B----
gives away in the street."
Whether Shufflebotham had examined the first half of his note, I cannot
say; but I had caused the print to be divided in such a way (to guard
against accidents) that he would see the words "Bank of E," and no more
of the title of the establishment from which it purported to have been
issued, and he was too illiterate or inexperienced in bank-notes to
discover that the paper itself was not of the kind made for the Old Lady
of Threadneedle Street.
The patriotic barber was thunderstruck. He was speechless for a moment
or two with disappointment and mortification. When he had partly
recovered himself, he stamped once, and swore in about two sentences
that we were plunderers, and that he would have us prosecuted for
circulating bad money. Our attorney thought this a good joke. It was one
of a sort that he could appreciate; so drawing upon his imagination for
his law, by way of retort Mr. Yellowly informed Mr. Shufflebotham that
he had been treated as he deserved, that he had "better keep a quiet
tongue in his head," that, at all events, he must behave himself in that
room, or he would be kicked out by one of our roughs in close
attendance, and that he might also get transported for bribery.
The barber gnashed his teeth, and went away not rejoicing. I believe he
has voted twice for the Tories since that day, without fee or
reward--unless vengeance upon his Liberal betrayers was his motive and
his compensation.
A ROMANCE OF SOCIAL LIFE.
About four years ago there lived, in the neighbourhood of Kentish Town,
a wedded couple of the name of Green.
Mr. Green was a merchant, carrying on business in the City in
co-partnership with a German gentleman; and in the enjoyment of a good
income from "a house" at the head of which it was his pride to stand.
The couple had not been long united in the holy bonds of matrimony. When
he married, he considered himself fortunate in obtaining for his partner
a pretty little brunette of a woman, somewhere about thirty years of
age, and of no mean accomplishments. With this lady for his wife, Mr.
Green lived for a period of three years in an easy and comfortable, not
to say happy or blissful, state. The couple had no children; but with
that exception they had all the ingredients which should contribute to
the material and social happiness of human beings.
The disparity in age between Mr. and Mrs. Green was perhaps a
circumstance that contributed to limit the sources of affection; but, as
every body said, they jogged along very cheerily, and the serenity and
calmness of their lives made them the objects of a good deal of envy.
Mrs. Green had been the daughter of a confidential clerk to her
husband. She had lost her mother early in life, and her father died when
she was but eighteen years of age. His salary in the house of Messrs.
Green and Schnackwether had been, for a long period prior to his death,
very liberal, and he might, with reasonable economy, have saved a few
hundreds of pounds out of it if he had been so inclined. He ought,
certainly, to have left some provision behind him in the shape of a life
assurance, but he did not. He lived entirely up to, or somewhat beyond,
his means. Miss Thomson, his daughter, was consequently obliged to earn
her subsequent livelihood, which she did as a daily governess. Her
experience in this vocation was not, I dare say, much unlike the
experience of other young women in that position, of which the reader
will have a tolerably accurate notion, and therefore I will abstain from
describing it. It may be enough to say, that it was a cheerless, hard,
and mortifying experience. She confessed that rebuffs and petty insults
shut up, and the wearing influence of consecutive labour dried up, the
wells of female emotion, gave a certain piquancy or sharpness to her
thoughts, rendered her, indeed, distrustful of the world, and cynical,
if not calculating and selfish.
During her girlhood, while her father lived, and after his death, but
before her marriage, Mrs. Green had received many kindnesses from her
late parent's master. He was attached to his clerk Thomson by that sort
of attachment, and to that extent, which long and faithful service
begets in the mind of an employer.
To do the father of Mrs. Green simple justice, it must be stated that he
had never robbed; peculated, or been in the slightest degree unfaithful
to the house he served, or its members.
Just before he died, the clerk received a promise from his master, Mr.
Green, that little Helen should want for nothing as long as she lived,
which promise was kept during her subsequent spinstership by inquiries,
every quarter, with methodical exactness, how she was getting on, and
what she wanted; answers to which questions were frankly given by her on
all occasions, and betrayed to the merchant some requirement on her part
every three months. It would now be a dress or a bonnet; it would on
another occasion be the means of paying a quarter's rent of her
apartments; it would again be something else. The article itself, or a
cheque for its purchase or satisfaction, was uniformly forthcoming.
In this way a communication had been always maintained from the day of
Thomson's death to the day of Miss Thomson's marriage between the young
woman and her subsequent husband.
The courtship of the merchant was very prosaic. How long he had made up
his mind that little Helen should be his wife, or at least have the
chance of becoming his wife, is more than I can tell; but certain it is,
that on one quarter-day--I mean her quarter-day--she received a note, in
which she was invited to the house of the merchant. He said in this
letter of invitation that he was very anxious to know how she was
getting on, and what her prospects were; in fact, he said he was
anxious to redeem the promise he had given to her dying father by the
inquiries he had to make, and the intention he had formed of providing,
if he could, for her welfare as long as she lived,
The last sentence was the only clue offered to the design of her
benefactor. That clue was enough. It showed to her acute and reflecting
mind what she might expect from the merchant, and she was thereby
enabled to survey at her leisure, before the appointed interview, the
prospect laid open to her. She balanced in her own mind all the apparent
advantages and all the disadvantages of becoming Mrs. Green.
She had no very high respect for Mr. Green's character,--yet she had no
aversion to him. He was, indeed, one of those easy-going, even-natured
men, who neither arouse affection nor excite the opposite of love. He
was by no means the ideal which she had formed of a husband. Yet how
could she, who had been a poor daily governess all her life, release her
ambition in this respect? She had indulged the hope, as I dare say most
young women have hoped, to marry a man handsome, educated, and of
gentlemanly training--with a fortune. She would have been satisfied with
a man of good standing or prospects in either one of the liberal
professions--the army, navy, the law, or even the church. But a
dispassionate consideration of Mr. Green's letter drove away all the
phantasms of such ambition. She came, by a process of the severest
reasoning, to the conclusion, in the first place, that, if she rejected
the merchant's intended proposal, she might offend him. That was not,
after all, so very serious a matter, as she was not very largely
dependent upon his bounty; yet she could hardly afford to lose a friend.
This conclusion led her to survey the bright side of Mr. Green's
intended proposal. She would certainly, as Mrs. Green, be mistress of a
liberal establishment. His years denied the reasonable prospect of her
ever having a child. Yet this young woman, hardened by experience, saw a
compensation for that denial of a true woman's hope in the freedom from
a mother's cares and troubles. It was something to get rid of the
drudgery of toil, and escape the snubbing and rebuffs of her present
vocation. "Yes," at length she said to herself, in forming her
resolution, "I might do worse than become Mrs. Green."
There was only one small difficulty--there was a prior attachment.
"Well," she said to herself, "I shall have to get rid of Edward. That is
not so very difficult either. I do not think he would break his heart
about it. I know I should not break mine if he were to throw me off. I
do not believe in broken hearts. He cannot bring an action against me
for breach of promise of marriage. That is a pleasant thing to know. I
heard Mr. Jones, who is a lawyer, telling his wife at the tea-table only
the other evening, that a gentleman never got any good by that, and I
think he said a farthing was about the price a gentleman's damages would
always be assessed at. Well, I could pay that sum without much injury to
my own purse; and if any proceedings should be brought against my
husband after I have married him. I suppose he would be responsible for
them, among my other obligations, but I would pay that sum out of my
pin-money."
Miss Thomson agreed within herself to become Mrs. Green, and had so far
realised this speculation in the lottery of life, that she began to
sketch her future home, make arrangements for her bridal trousseau, &c.,
within ten minutes after forming her resolution.
Miss Thomson's anticipations were correct. Her benefactor told her he
had noticed she had been a very hard-working girl. The way she had
striven to keep herself as a lady out of her own earnings, with such
little assistance as he had felt bound to render her, reflected the
highest possible credit upon her. He had noticed her conduct--he might
say with admiration. He had never beheld such a combination of all the
virtues which make up a good woman as he had seen in her. Now, he hoped
he should not frighten or startle her by a communication that he was
going to make. He had been living a lonely life, she was aware. He was
not married. She knew he had no sister who could manage his household,
and secure him those attentions and comforts in which he thought he
might reasonably indulge after having been, he might say, a very
successful man in trade.
During his speech Mr. Green stammered a little, and betrayed an unusual
hesitation. At this point he had greater difficulty in articulation.
However, he proceeded to say that his admiration for her, and his belief
in her virtues, and the other circumstances he had mentioned, had led
him to offer her his hand and his heart.
The lady behaved as all ladies can, and I believe do, in such
circumstances.
She delivered a very nice speech, which had been many times rehearsed in
her bedchamber, and on the pavement as she trudged to and from the house
of Mr. Jones, which, as a daily governess, she was in the habit of
traversing, and at other times and places. Gratitude was a word that
thickly interlarded her periods. She said that she did not know how to
accept the proposal he made her, and, after a skilful pause or two,
having come to the conclusion that there was no danger in a little delay
(and, aside with the reader let me add, become convinced that there was
no prospect of his withdrawing the offer), she craved time to consider
his most noble proposal--not on her own account, because, if she was a
selfish thing, he would see that she must at once say yes--but because
she scarcely felt equal to the position, and because the prospect of
such an elevation dazzled and bewildered her little brain.
This was the sum and substance of Miss Thomson's speech.
The reader has already been informed that Mr. Green and Miss Thomson
were married, and his imagination will supply the links in the narrative
between the last interview and the realisation of that event.
During the almost monotonous life Mr. and Mrs. Green lived, there would
of course occasionally arise small vexations. Not that they quarrelled.
Nothing of that sort marred their happiness.
The vexations I speak of were of the most simple and ordinary kind. A
friend promised to come and dine with them, and did not keep that
promise. The tradesmen were not punctual in the delivery of their goods.
The wine-merchant occasionally deceived Mr. Green, which caused him
annoyance. The dressmaker or the milliner was not so exact as he or she
ought perhaps to have been in executing Mrs. Green's orders. And those
sort of things annoyed the one or the other of them.
Another annoyance in this house arose from--what Mr. Henry Mayhew has
entitled the greatest plague in life--a bad servant. They had one or two
bad servants, and on several occasions Mrs. Green made the observation,
not, I think, quite unique--a sort of remark, on the other hand, which
had been made by other ladies, and I believe will be again--that it was
impossible to get a good servant.
However, one good servant was at last obtained. She was a young woman
about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. She was, to say the least
about her merits, somewhat pretty. I have heard her described as
beautiful. When I last saw her, I thought her exceedingly beautiful. She
was, moreover, by no means an illiterate girl. She had received a fair
amount of education--a much better education than girls in her station
usually receive.
In consequence of the superior manners of this girl she was admitted to
a considerable share of the confidence and respect of both her master
and her mistress, and was allowed an amount of discretion in the
arrangements of the household which is not usually given or permitted in
such cases. Mrs. Green contemplated, with her husband's approval, the
extension of their establishment by the engagement of a third servant,
and elevating this young woman to the position of a recognised companion
to the lady.
Some time after this notion had been formed, there was discovered a new
series of annoyances in the house of Mr. Green. A number of portable
articles of value were missed. How they went appeared one of the
greatest of all possible human mysteries. Discovery seemed impossible,
and the irritation of the husband was excessive. His wife, moreover,
inveighed in the bitterest terms against the undetected thief.
It was agreed between Mr. and Mrs. Green to lay all sorts of traps. They
did so, but did not succeed in fixing any body with the crime.
The reader will imagine how such an affair operated. Not only did
suspicion begin with the lowest and end with the highest of the three
servants in the household, but it embraced every one of the few friends
who came to see Mr. or Mrs. Green; and in the failure to discover the
delinquent, or get the foundation for a rational and decided suspicion,
even supernatural agencies were beginning to be hinted at by the wife.
She, however, always prefaced her hints of this kind to her husband as
women do their ideas of that sort, by a declaration that she was not
superstitious, but if she was, &c. &c.