_Nutts._ Now, Mr Bleak, I b’lieve the shave’s with you. (_=Bleak= takes
the chair_.) Mustn’t complain; but dreadful weather this for business.
Not a soul in town. Had nothing to do but improve my mind all the week.
Now, folks who pay rent and taxes can’t afford that. Everybody still at
the seaside.
_Slowgoe._ Humph! For my part I can’t think where the ’noxial gales are
gone to: they _ought_ to blow people back to London by this time. But
nothing is as it was.
_Tickle._ Rum thing this at Margate. And quite a warning to young women.
_Mrs Nutts._ What’s that, Mr Tickle?
_Tickle._ Young lady of most respectable family--father in the
Excise--turned to a mermaid.
_Mrs Nutts._ Nonsense! it can’t be. What for?
_Tickle._ Because she would dance the polka close inshore, and make so
many people write to the _Times_. Now she’s punished; now she’s enough
o’ bathing. Now she does nothing but sing songs, comb her hair, and
stare at herself in a looking-glass.
_Nutts._ Well, for a young woman that can be no punishment.
_Mrs Nutts._ Mr Nutts, you’re a fool. (_Retires._)
_Nutts._ As you’re all family men, gentlemen, you understand that.
And yet I never could make it out why the tenderest of wives have the
greatest knack of calling their husbands fools.
_Tickle._ Bless you! it’s only too much love speaking out. Just as a
saucepan, when too hot, boils over.
_Slowgoe._ (_With paper._) Great season for the vineyards. It seems
there never was such a promise for champagne. Glorious news this for
the poor. In course nobody here understands it; but according to
perlitical economy, when champagne’s plentiful it must bring down
ginger-beer.
_Nutts._ Well, all I know is, pineapples haven’t cheapened potatoes.
_Slowgoe._ Don’t talk of potatoes in that heathen way, Mr Nutts; if
you’d any decency, any religion, you wouldn’t talk of a potato with a
smile. I suppose you haven’t seen what Lord George Bentinck--that’s
a pious soul, that is--says upon potatoes? I thought not. Here it
is. His Lordship as _will_ be Prime Minister--it’s at Mr Newdegate’s
dinner--his Lordship says (_reads_): “They would recollect that at
the close of the last year there was _a sham cry got up_, respecting
the failure in the potato crop, _to serve the purpose of an
administration_; he was now sorry to say that that feint had become a
reality; that the potato failure had spread from one end of the kingdom
to the other--from the Land’s End to John o’ Groats, throughout the
whole of Ireland, and throughout the whole of the countries bordering
upon the Atlantic. (Hear.) He was fain to confess, and _he did so
with sorrow, that this time there was no sham_, but he _greatly
feared_ that this sad reality _was the just vengeance of Providence
for the_ great ingratitude we had displayed in needlessly complaining
of His bounty.” And all the people cried “Hear, hear,” and with the
wind in their faces, no doubt, looked very believing, very solemn.
So you see, ’cording to Lord George, it’s Peel, and nobody but Peel,
as has brought the potato rot upon us. Peel cried “Wolf” to pass the
corn-laws; and now for his wickedness, and his alone, the wild beast is
really come--has been sent, as dear Lord George says, by Providence,
to tear the bowels of hundreds o’ thousands of innocent people; and,
moreover----
_Nutts._ Don’t--don’t go on in that way, or I must lay down the razor.
Well, I hope I’m a religious man--I haven’t cut you, Mr Bleak, I
trust?--and I love a bit o’ politics, nobody better; but if I shouldn’t
blush redder than that blacking-bill, to think for a minute of making
Providence Whig or Tory, and counting the angels on my side of the
question; whether it was for all the world as they count a majority
in the House of Commons. If there is a presumption that shows what
an impudent worm upon two legs a man is--and I don’t care a button
whether the worm is a worm with stars and ribands, or a worm with no
more nobility of flesh in him than a worm in a pauper burial-ground--if
there is a presumption in this world, it is, I say, when a man will
take religion into partnership with him, and whatever he may do, make
himself and his little dirty doings the special pets of Providence. And
yet, I daresay, Lord George thinks this the Christianity for gentlemen!
Well, there’s no knowing what use a man may make of his religion.
Hearing what I have heard, I won’t swear that a member of the Jockey
Club mayn’t bind his betting-book up with his Bible.
_Slowgoe._ I’ve often threatened it, Mr Nutts; but if you go on in this
infidel manner, I must take my chin to another shop.
_Nutts._ Why, look here: truth isn’t like a penny-piece with two
different sides to it; and a flum is not less a flum for coming after
dinner. Either Lord George meant what he said, or he didn’t. Now, if he
meant it, he meant to make Sir Robert Peel answerable for what he calls
“the vengeance of Providence;” he meant to lay at Sir Robert’s door the
misery and starvation--and it makes one’s heart sick and one’s blood
cold to think of it--of thousands and thousands of suffering creaturs;
he meant----
_Slowgoe._ Nonsense! you’re such a violent man: he meant nothing of the
sort. When a man bids for Minister, everything’s fair: public men----
_Tickle._ Oh yes; men blacken one another as they like, they means
nothing. They do it, I s’pose, just as last Tuesday we blackened Bill
Simpson’s face when he was asleep--for a joke, and nothing more.
_Nutts._ Ha! and his Lordship having dined, I s’pose you’ll have it,
there was a greater allowance for burnt cork? Don’t tell me. They take
up poor fortin-tellers--hocus-pocus fellows that cast nativities and
suchlike, and tell servant-gals what every star means when it winks
upon ’em. But when a lord--and a lord, too, that would be a prime
minister--would trade upon Providence, and, thinking he knows all its
doings, would lay the misery of millions upon the head of one man,
they never send for the constable, oh no; but fine gentlemen, full of
piousness and port wine, stamp their feet and whobble out “Hear! hear!”
Such religion’s like olives to ’em, and gives quite a relish to their
drink.
_Slowgoe._ I say again, you’re a violent man, Mr Nutts. There is no
doubt that the potato disease is brought about by something; and until
that something is discovered, we--I mean us of true Conservative
principles--may as well lay it upon the treason of Sir Robert Peel as
upon anything else. When the true cause is found out, why, then, as
gentlemen, we can shift it.
_Nightflit._ Here’s a bit from the _Dublin Record_ that says it’s
Popery as has brought about the blight. It’s nothing but giving money
to Maynooth that’s ruined the ’taters.
_Tickle._ No doubt on it. In the same way that when sheep die of the
rot, it’s only because there’s the Pope’s eye in every leg of mutton.
Now as for Lord George----
_Nutts._ Don’t talk about him. Poor fellow! Now I’m a little cool,
although he’s a lord and I’m only a penny barber, I do from the very
bottom of my heart pity him! Anything pleasant in the paper?
_Nosebag._ Lord Wrothesley’s going to make second-class carriages
pop’lar on King Hudson’s lines, and won’t pay his Majesty’s first
fares. A good move this. For if lords would only ride with the sheep
and bullocks, there’s lots of people who’d directly think sheep and
bullocks the best of company. Howsomever, in this matter his Lordship’s
right. But King Hudson has made a long speech at the York and Newcastle
meeting, and, like all kings, cracking his own generosity to the skies;
and then he began abusing the _Times_, but somehow his heart failed
him; and the Iron King talked as if his tongue was suddenly turned to
butter, and every bit of metal was drawn out of him.
_Tickle._ (_With paper._) Have you heard this? (_Reads._) “Mr Wakby,
M.P., has received several letters from ladies, many of them of rank
and title, offering to co-operate in purchasing the discharge of Cork,
Mathewson, and any other witnesses examined at the inquest.” And this
is taken from the _Morning Post_.
_Nutts._ Oh, it’s all right; the women will see the true beauty of
soldiering at last. Poor things! At present they think man never so
pretty as when in uniform; never so complete a thing to love as when he
smells of gunpowder. And beauty smiles on soldiering, and soldiering
toasts beauty; and that’s how for hundreds of years they’ve diddled
one another. But it says something when ladies club their pounds to
take the finery off men’s backs, and the swords from their hands, and
turn them from parade heroes into peaceful nobodies. Once Mrs Nutts
used to dote upon a drum; and now--though she hates the law, like a
woman, ever since I was served with a writ--now she thinks a drum the
wickedest of parchment.
_Slowgoe._ Glorious news! The Duke’s going up at last. He’ll be on
Rutland Gate in a day or two, the--the “envy of surrounding nations,
and the--the”--I forget the rest, but there he’ll be.
_Tickle._ It must be a great relief to him to have it over. Let a man
be as great as he may, and as iron as he may, he must feel in a bit of
a pucker to have his bronze lightness so talked and writ about. They do
say that for the last month the Duke’s suffered nothing but nightmare:
every night thinking in his sleep that Mr Cubitt was hoisting up, now
one of his legs to the arch, now one of his arms, and now his head. It
must be a great comfort to him when he’s up altogether.
_Nutts._ The thing will look ugly enough, no doubt--a disgrace to the
metropolis, as the newspapers say, and all that; but for my part, and
after a proper consideration of my power of holding out, even if the
statue when up never comes down again--I--I speak timidly, to be sure,
as a penny barber ought--but I don’t think I shall sink under it.
_Nightflit._ A pleasant marriage this for the French Duke as is going
to have the Infant of Spain.
_Nutts._ Humph! it reminds me of the old story of the eagle and the
child, only instead of the eagle it’s that old Gallic cock Louis
Philippe. How he’ll pounce upon the little wench, and carry her off
to his nest in Paris, there to make the most of her! Quite a case of
child-stealing, only, you see, there’s no police-van--no Newgate for
kings.
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