_Nutts._ Now, Mr Slowgoe, when you’ve gone through the alphabet of that
paper, I’m ready.
_Slowgoe._ Just one minute.
_Nutts._ Minutes, Mr Slowgoe, are the small-change of life. Can’t wait
for nobody. I’ll take you then, Mr Limpy. (_=Limpy= takes the chair_.)
It makes my flesh crawl to see some folks with a newspaper. They go
through it for all the world like a caterpillar through a cabbage leaf.
_Slowgoe._ Well, for my part, I like to chew my news. I think a
newspaper’s like a dinner; doesn’t do you half the good if it’s bolted.
Haven’t come to it yet; but tell me--Is it true that the Duke of
Wellington’s going to repeal flogging?
_Tickle._ Why, yes; they do say so; but the Duke does nothin’ in a
hurry. Always likes to take his time. You know at Waterloo he would
wait for the Prussians; and only because if he’d licked the French
afore, he didn’t know how else to spend the evening.
_Slowgoe._ I never heard that; but it’s very like the Duke. And there’s
to be no flogging.
_Tickle._ No; it’s to be repealed by degrees, like the corn-laws. In
nine years’ time there won’t be a single cat in the British army.
_Nosebag._ Why should they wait nine years?
_Nutts._ Nothin’ but reg’lar. You see the cat-o’-nine-tails is one of
the institutions of the country, and therefore must be handled very
delicate.
When cat’s away
Sojers play.
That’s been the old notion. And folks--that is, the folks with
gold-lace that’s never flogged--think to ’bolish the cat at once would
bring a blight upon laurels. They think sojers like eels--none the
worse for fire for being well skinned.
_Tickle._ There you are; biting the ’thorities of your country agin.
But since you’ve taken the story out of my mouth, go on, though every
word you speak’s a bitter almond.
_Nutts._ Well, it isn’t a thing to talk sugar-plums about, is it? I’m
not a young lady, am I?
_Mrs Nutts._ (_From back parlour._) I wish you’d remember you’ve a wife
and children, Mr Nutts, and never mind young ladies. You can’t shave
and talk of young ladies too, I’m sure.
_Nutts._ (_In a low voice._) It’s very odd; she’s one of the
strongest-minded women, and yet she can never hear me speak of one of
the sex without fizzing like a squib.
_Nosebag._ (_Solemnly._) Same with ’em all. I suppose it’s love.
_Nutts._ Why, it is; that is, it’s jealousy, which is only love with
its claws out.
_Tickle._ Well, claws brings you to the cat again; so go on.
_Nutts._ To be sure. Well, as I was saying----(_To Limpy._) What’s the
matter? I’m sure this razor would shave a new-born baby; but for a poor
man I don’t know where you got such a delicate skin. I will say this,
Mr Limpy, for one of the swinish multitude, you are the tenderest pork
I ever shaved.
_Slowgoe._ But the Duke of Wellington----
_Nutts._ Don’t hurry me; I’m going to his Grace. Well, they do say that
he’s going to get rid of the cat by little and little. He knows the
worth of knotted cords to the British soldier, and, like a dowager with
false curls, can’t give ’em all up at once. So there’s to be a law that
the cat is still to be used upon the British Lion in regimentals, only
that the cat is to lose a tail every year.[1]
_Slowgoe._ Is it true?
_Nutts._ Certain. So you see, with the loss of one tail per annum, in
only nine years’ time, or in _anno Domino_ 1855, every tail will be
’bolished; that is, the cat with its nine tails will have lost its nine
lives, and be defunct and dead.
_Slowgoe._ I don’t like to give an opinion, but that seems a very slow
reform.
_Nutts._ Why, yes: when folks have a tooth that pains ’em, they don’t
get cured in that fashion. But then, again, it’s wonderful with what
patience we can bear the toothache of other people.
_Nosebag._ What horrid things there’s been all the week in the papers.
Officers of all sorts writing what they’ve seen done with the cat.
Well, if I was a sojer, my red coat would burn like red-hot iron in
me; I should think all the world looked at me, as if they was asking
themselves, “I wonder how often _you’ve_ been flayed.”
_Slowgoe._ Bless your heart! and here’s a dreadful matter. James Sayer,
a marine on board the _Queen_, sentenced to be hanged for assaulting
two sergeants--to be hanged by the neck. And the President says, “James
Sayer, I am sorry indeed that I cannot offer you hope that the sentence
of this court will not be fully carried out, and I recommend you to
prepare yourself to meet your doom.”
_Bleak._ What a difference is made by salt water! Frederick White,
private soldier, is sentenced to be flogged for giving a blow to his
sergeant. James Sayer, marine, is to be hanged for the same offence. So
a blow afloat and a blow ashore isn’t the same thing.
_Nutts._ But there’ll be no hanging in the case; they say as much in
Parliament, don’t they?
_Slowgoe._ But it says here the President was “much affected.” Why pass
sentence, why give no hope?
_Nutts._ Why now, I suppose that’s what they’d call a fiction of the
law; and when we think what a dry matter all law is, can we wonder that
the ’torneys and such folks spice it up with a few lies? Bless you,
if all law was all true, nobody would go on swallowing it. It’s the
precious fibs that’s in it that gives it a flavour, and makes men live,
and grow fat upon it.
_Slowgoe._ It can’t be.
_Nutts._ Tell you ’tis. Was you never on a jury? La! bless you, when
one of the gen’lemen of the long robe, as they call ’em--one of the
conjurors in horse-hair--get hold of a fib, or a flaw, or a something
to bring a blush into the face of Common-sense, and so put her out of
court at once--doesn’t he enjoy it? Doesn’t he relish the fiction, as
it’s called, as if it was his first “Goody Two Shoes”? He relishes it;
all the bar--’xcept, perhaps, the conjuror against him--relishes it,
and the judge himself. Oh! haven’t I seen him with the wrinkles about
his eyes like the map of England; haven’t I seen him relish it too,
for all the world like an old sporting dog that had given up hunting
himself, but still did so love the smell of the game!
_Tickle._ I tell you what it is, Nutts, I feel my blood a-gettin’
vinegar all the while I hear you. I feel a-changing from a man to a
cruet; and I won’t have it. You are so sour, you’d pickle salmon to
look at it. Nosebag, tell us something pleasant. What have they done at
the playhouse this week?
_Nosebag._ Why, there’s been Miss Faucit at the Hayma’ket, but only
for one night. Your very great players now, they’re like the new
aloe at the Colossyum; they only blossom once in a hundred years, or
somethin’ of that sort. London’s gettin’ low for ’em, I s’pose. I have
heard--though I know nothin’ about what you call the currency--I have
heard that there isn’t, for any long time, ready gold enough in the
country to pay ’em.
_Tickle._ Couldn’t they take ’Chequer bills?
_Nosebag._ Why, I believe they was offered to a singer last week; but
he wouldn’t have ’em, ’cause he’d no faith in the Government.
_Tickle._ Well, and how did the young lady go off?
_Nosebag._ Never go to a benefit, for fear I should be taken for a
private friend of the actors. But I’m told the--the--what is it?--the
_fibula_ was another tremendous hit.
_Limpy._ (_Rising._) That will do, Mr Nutts. What’s the _fibular_?
_Nosebag._ Why, a emerald buckle that the Irish House of Commons give
to Miss Faucit last year for playing in _Antigony_. It was very well to
put it in the playbill, ’cause of course it drew so many folks who’d
never seen a buckle. Nevertheless, if Mr Webster--and I don’t mean to
say anything against Mr Webster, not by no means--nevertheless, if he’d
known his own interest he would have had five hundred posters with a
bold woodcut of that _fibula_. And I should have stuck ’em.
_Limpy._ And you didn’t go to see it?
_Nosebag._ No; but I shall go next week, if I never go agin. For they
do say that Mrs Humby--dear cretur!--is goin’ to appear in a thimble
presented to her by the ladies’-maids of London. And if anybody ever
deserved a bit of plate, Mrs Humby deserves that thimble.
_Nutts._ Now, Mr Slowgoe. (_=Slowgoe= takes the chair_.) There’s quite
enough discourse of the playhouses, let’s talk of serious matters. Have
you heard? They’ve been proposin’ in Parliament to make nineteen more
bishops, and one of ’em a Bishop of Melton Mowbray.
_Tickle._ Ha! a sportin’ bishop; for the morals of the neighbourhood.
And I shouldn’t wonder if we’ve a Bishop of Epsom, and a Bishop of
Newmarket, and a Bishop of Ascot, and a Bishop of Doncaster. And very
proper. Black aprons may reform blacklegs. Seein’ the bishops do so
much good, in course they’re most wanted in the worst places. They’re
to be sent in holes and corners of wickedness; jist as my wife hangs
bags of camphor about the necks of the little ones when she hears of
fevers. Now a bishop--the Bishop of Exeter, for instance (by the way,
he’s been havin’ another row in the House of Lords--he’s always at
it)--the Bishop of Exeter, what is he, I should like to know, but a big
lump of camphor in a bag of black silk hung about the whole neck of the
West of England? Why, the good he does nobody knows.
_Bleak._ (_With newspaper._) ’Pon my word, when I read these things I
do feel ashamed that I’m a man.
_Nutts._ Daresay; but ’tisn’t your fault. What is it?
_Bleak._ That a good quiet gen’lewoman can’t go by herself in a railway
carriage without having to scream out for the police! Insulted by a
coward with a good coat on him. Thinks himself, I daresay, one of the
lords of the creation. Lords!--I call ’em apes.
_Nutts._ My wife--and I’d advise every lady to do the like--my wife
never travels by rail without a pair of scissors. But then she’s a
woman of sich strong mind!
_Slowgoe._ So, I see they’ve been givin’ a dinner at Lynn to Lord
George Bentinck. He’s a great man, Lord George; and they’ve had him all
the way from London to tell him. Made a beautiful speech, I see. Here’s
a touch after my own heart. He’s a-talkin’ about the corn-laws, and he
says, “When some foreign ship, some Swede or Norwegian or Dane, with
an outlandish name for herself and her captain, which neither you nor
I could pronounce (_cheers and laughter_), comes into port (_cheers_),
I ask you how much this foreigner pays out of his wages to support the
trade of your town?” Well, I say, that’s what I call talking like a
true Briton.
_Nutts._ To be sure it is; no argument like that. The argument is--the
argument that the Norfolk farmers cheer at is, that the Swede and the
Norwegian and the Dane have outlandish names; that in fact they aren’t
called, like the boys in the spelling-book, Jones, Brown, and Robinson.
That’s the way t’ appeal to British bosoms, and Lord George knows it.
Bless you! shouldn’t wonder, when the farmers went home, if they didn’t
kill their wives’ and daughters’ canary-birds ’cause they were all
outlandish, and not true-born British linnets. Nothin’ like calling
names; every fool can understand mud.
_Slowgoe._ Still Lord George is a wonderful man. Here he says, in this
very speech, “he was eighteen years silent in the House of Commons.”
_Nosebag._ That reminds me of a pantomine I once saw, where there was
a wild man that said nothin’ all through the piece, and then at last
somebody came for’ard, and held up a scroll in gold letters, that said,
“_Orson is endowed with reason!_”
_Nutts._ The worst of them members of Parliament is that, like children
when they’re backward in their speech, they more than make up for it
when they do begin. Like the Thames froze up, when once they’ve a quick
thaw, they threaten to wash the speaker off his legs, and overflow the
whole House of Parliament. Great pity some of these members aren’t like
the Paddington Canal--with locks.
_Tickle._ There you are agin, ’busin’ of the ’thorities. I’ve read the
whole of it, and it was a very pretty bit of speechifying at Lynn.
Didn’t the Duke of Richmond, too, talk of the battle of Waterloo? I’ve
no doubt----
_Nutts._ In course he did. He talks of it when he’s asleep. The battle
of Waterloo to the Duke of Richmond is like a wax doll to a little
gal. He always will be showing it to company--opening and shutting
its eyes, pointing out its red morocco shoes, and white frock, and
cherry-coloured sash. I wish the Duke of Wellington would take the
battle of Waterloo from him, and lock it up, and only let him bring it
in at Apsley House once a year with the dessert.
_Slowgoe._ Ha! Nutts, you haven’t a good word for nobody. I’m sure
it’s quite cutting to read what Lord Bentinck and Mr Disraeli say of
themselves: each of ’em trying to be smaller than the other one.
_Nosebag._ Jist like boys at leap-frog. Each in his turn “tucks in his
twopenny,” that the other may go clean over his head. But then, you
see, Mr Slowgoe, like leap-frog, it’s only make-game after all.
_Slowgoe._ I won’t have it. The member for S’rewsbury’s a great man.
What a tongue he has!
_Nutts._ Very great; measure tongue and all, and he’s very great, to be
sure. He reminds me of a--a--dear me!--that thing that lives on wind,
that I once saw at Mr Tyler’s Zologicul Gardens--a--a----
_Tickle._ Lives on wind! It can’t be nothing but a bagpipe or a
chameleon.
_Nutts._ That’s it: a chameleon. Well, that has a tongue as long as
his body; but for all that, he can only catch flies with it. And that’s
the case, I take it, with the member for S’rewsbury. I know it’s said
he talked for loaves and fishes. And acause Sir Robert wouldn’t give
him so much as a penny roll, not so much as the smallest sprat that
swims in the Treasury, why then----
_Slowgoe._ Sir Robert! Hear what he does to Sir Robert, accordin’ to
Sir John Tyrrel, who was at Lynn. He says the member for S’rewsbury
“tears off Sir Robert Peel’s flesh, then polishes his bones, and sends
’em to the British Museum.”
_Nutts._ Well, that’s a nice compliment for a gen’l’man--bone-polisher
to Sir Robert Peel! But certainly Sir John Tyrrel is a good one at a
compliment. Didn’t he once say that the Duke of Wellington was the
greatest man since our blessed Saviour? He did, as I’m a sinner. And if
Sir John is very red in the face, which he ought to be, it is because
he hasn’t done blushing ever since.
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