_Nutts._ (_Laying down newspaper and taking up razor._) It’s a great
blessing it’s all over, and no signs yet of a revolution. Wonderful,
isn’t it? Come, Mr Limpy, here’s a razor that ’ud take off the beard of
a thistle. (_=Limpy= sits_.) Wonderful, isn’t it, what a deal o’ bad
taste, as it’s called, Englishmen will stand, and quietly sleep upon,
after all? Didn’t folks prophesy a riot at only the notion of putting
the Wellington Idol--as I’m bold to call it--upon the top of the arch,
and what’s the end of it? There’s Mrs Nutts, my wife, had made her mind
up to a revolution, made her mind up to it as if it was a new gown, and
no woman was ever more disappointed.
_Mrs Nutts._ Well, I’m nothin’ to Mrs Biggleswade opposite. She
expected nothin’ but the people a-fightin’ with the soldiers; and so
moved her chest o’ drawers agin the door, and her feather bed behind
the shop windows, to stop the bullets and cannon-balls. Now, whatever
my feelings was, bating filling my bottle with hartshorn, I took no
other trouble.
_Nutts._ And there’s one comfort; wherever there’s a woman, hartshorn’s
sure not to be wasted.
_Slowgoe._ (_With paper._) A magnificent ceremony! What I call a
holiday for a whole people.
_Tickle._ Quite a holiday for all the statues anyhow. Not one of ’em,
I’m told, but felt it so. They say Queen Anne at St Paul’s, shook her
petticoats and stood an inch higher. George the Third in Corkspur
Street, raised himself in his stirrups. George the Fourth in Trafalgar
Square, stroked up the bustus of his wig. And the Duke of York, perched
on that very high pillar, out of the way of the sheriff, for once left
off thinking of his debts as quite beneath him, and looked like a
gentleman in easy circumstances.
_Slowgoe._ I don’t believe a word of it. Statues do this? ’Tisn’t
likely. What for?
_Tickle._ What for? Jest as married people--ask your pardon, Mrs
Nutts--grin the most at a wedding, ’cause other folks have got into a
scrape as well as themselves.
_Nutts._ Have you heard how the waxwork at Madame Tussaud’s took it?
_Tickle._ Better than was expected. In course the Iron Duke will be a
great opposition, a great pull agin ’em for two or three weeks; but as
November comes in, and the shine’s taken out of his Grace, the waxwork
has hope that folks will come back to somethin’ like nature agin.
_Nutts._ You saw all the show, I b’lieve, Mr Tickle?
_Tickle._ Pretty well, only----
_Enter =Cannikin=, a drayman._
Well, isn’t this droll? Here’s the very man as is one of Mr Goding’s,
the brewer’s, gen’lemen, as assisted at the ceremony.
_Cannikin._ Jest did, then. Great day for the brewery. Not a ’oss that
drawed the Duke as isn’t twenty pound the better for it. Fetch it at
the ’ammer.
_Tickle._ No doubt. More than that if advertised: “Warranted to
carry twenty stone; quiet in harness; and never shied at the Duke of
Wellington.”
_Cannikin._ And didn’t the ’osses--the whole team on ’em--look a credit
to their grains? All on ’em--with laurel in their heads?
_Nutts._ Considering where they come from, wouldn’t hops have been
properer? Well, and when the people saw the statue, how did they take
it?
_Cannikin._ They opened their mouths, and hooraed as if they would ha’
swallowed it. If instead o’ bright brass it had been made o’ gilt
gingerbread, and the mob had been schoolboys, they couldn’t ha’ shouted
and smacked their lips more.
_Tickle._ Well, I don’t wonder--it did somehow look good to eat. It
hadn’t so much a goolden as a custard look about it; seemed to my eye
as if it had been smeared with yolk o’ eggs. But go on; tell Nutts, Mr
Cannikin.
_Cannikin._ When we’d got the Dook well on the dray, off we went--the
’osses mindin’ it no more than if they’d drawn dooks, instead of beer,
all their life. Off we went--and very grand it was. Yet, somehow, when
I looked at the cocked-hat--for I’d never seen a cocked-hat in brass
afore--I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t help thinking o’ the Fifth
of November. And then the brass cock’s feathers in the hat--didn’t they
rattle a bit?
_Nutts._ Rattle! What, was they loose?
_Nosebag._ What they’d call in the playhouse, property feathers--made
o’ hammered metal. For my part, I should ha’ thought they’d been cast
solid.
_Tickle._ Bless you! Mr Wyatt knows what he’s about. He made ’em to
rattle in the wind a-purpose to frighten the birds, and preserve the
Duke’s face, otherwise it was feared the swallows might build their
nests under his Grace’s eyebrows.
_Slowgoe._ Impossible! they wouldn’t dare to do it.
_Tickle._ Why not? Must be plenty o’ room; for they do say fourteen
gentlemen took a sociable glass in the Duke’s inside.
_Slowgoe._ Pooh! What for?
_Nosebag._ I s’pose to show, as I once heard _Othello_ say, that the
Duke “had stomach for ’em all.”
_Slowgoe._ Never was--never will be--so great a man. Proceed. The
dray-horses--noble animals!--went on----
_Cannikin._ And when they turned Park Lane--and how they _did_ turn! as
if they know’d the whole business quite as well as we Christians--and
got into Pickydilly, and the statue--as I thought to myself--begun to
smile, tho’ p’r’aps it was only the sun as broke out upon it--as the
Dook seemed to know he was gettin’ near home--then didn’t the people
shout agin, and didn’t the band blow their brass trumpets, and didn’t
the Dook’s brass feathers rattle agin? Oh, didn’t they!
_Slowgoe._ Quite affecting to hear of it. And I’m told the Duke’s
balcony was full o’ nobility.
_Tickle._ Bless you! full as the Red Book. There was the Queen-Dowager,
and a good many o’ the rest o’ the Royal Family.
_Nutts._ (_In a low voice, aside._) Worshipping the graven image.
_Tickle._ But, bless your heart! you should ha’ seen Sir Frederick
Trench and the Duke o’ Rutland upon Mr Wyatt’s stand. Didn’t they
laugh at the statue--and rub their hands--and wink at one another--and
put their tongues in their cheeks, as much as to say to the mountain o’
brass afore ’em, “Well, it’s all right; we’ve got you so far, and we’ll
have you up: and when you’re well up, there you’ll stand; for we know a
’lightened people won’t trouble their heads a pin about the matter to
pull you down agin.” And that’s the way they sarve the British Public!
_Slowgoe._ Sarve it right. What does the public know--what does the
press, as it’s called, know in comparison with a committee of noblemen?
Talk about taste. Nobility comes into the world with it; it’s only
the sham sort that comes to the other people. The voice of the press,
indeed! what is it, at best, but bow-wow?
_Tickle._ That’s what the Statue Committee think it. And they do say,
just to show what they care for it, that afore the Duke’s head was
soldered on, they put copies of the _Times_ and the _Chronicle_--as
writ agin it--in the Duke’s inside.
_Nosebag._ With a spicy cut of Leech’s from _Punch_, jest to keep the
cold from the Duke’s stomach. Well, it will be a bad thing for some
time for the playhouses. Mr Webster--I always sticks his bills for him,
like a gen’leman as he is--has got a new farce at the ’Aymarket. I
don’t care how droll it is--but it must feel the ’fect of the Duke’s
cocked-hat. Painful to think of, isn’t it, to one who sticks the
legitimate drayma--painful to think of, how, whether dead or alive, the
nobility is agin the English stage!
_Slowgoe._ This talk about the drama, and such rubbish, Mr Nutts, it’s
enough to drive every respectable person from the shop.
_Nutts._ Well, it is bad. But we must allow for early edication.
Mr Nosebag was, we may say, brought up on paste, and so talks like
a billsticker. And the Duke’s up, after all! Nevertheless, it’s my
’pinion, it had never been if a soul had been in town. Folks at the
watering-places, and folks abroad--in France, and in Germany, and in
Swisserland----
_Slowgoe._ I pity ’em, poor wretches! out o’ London on such a day!
Every absent Englishman as thinks on it, ought to go into a shirt o’
cinders-and-water. But go on, sir (_to Cannikin_), tell us the rest o’
the ceremony.
_Cannikin._ Oh, it was all hoorain’--nothing but hoorain’.
_Nutts._ Well, altogether, I’m disappointed. As the people was for
the time in such high spirits, and took the thing so kindly, I don’t
think they went far enough. Seein’ what a idol they’ve made o’ the
thing--sticking it up agin common sense--and, by the way, the
sufferings of common sense under them as is got the upper hand, there’s
nobody can tell--seein’ what a idol they’ve made of it, the Committee
might ha’ gone further, and made the show, as I may say, complete.
_Slowgoe._ What do you mean, Mr Nutts? To my poor thinking, the
ceremony seems to have been magnificent--perfect!
_Nutts._ Not half. See what they do in Indy. Don’t the folks, when they
bring _their_ dray, the dray of Juggernought--don’t they go and throw
themselves right down, as if upon a feather bed, right down under its
wheels?
_Slowgoe._ Mr Nutts! You don’t dare to insinuate that free-born
Britons, men that never stoop to nothin’, should have cast
themselves----
_Nutts._ What?--right down under the wheels of the Wellington Idol?
Why, no; not quite. That would ha’ been a little too serious. But
when we hear some folks talk as they do about the statue, and about
the Duke, as if he was the first man born, and would certainly be the
last--when these folks are for settin’ up brass and bronze to the glory
of gunpowder, and never heeding the glory of the goose-quill, or----
_Nosebag._ Ha! there’s Shakespeare, and----
_Slowgoe._ Now, none of your low company, Mr Nosebag: I won’t have it.
Go on, Mr Nutts; you was speaking of the admirers of the Duke.
_Nutts._ No, I warn’t. I was speaking of the ’dolators. I like
admiration; but I hate ’dolatry of any man. I can hear the word
Waterloo, and not go down upon my knees to it. Well, I shouldn’t ha’
liked these folks to ha’ gone under the wheels, theirselves; but since
last Tuesday was Michaelmas-day, a good many on ’em might ha’ found
very proper proxies.
_Nosebag._ They might have drew a flock of the birds under, to be sure.
_Nutts._ In course. And it would have been so in keeping, wouldn’t it?
Crushing the goose-quills under the iron wheels of war! Now I think of
it, that’s not a bad notion. Eh?
_Slowgoe._ (_Jumping up._) Good-morning, Mr Nutts. Never again do I
enter your shop. A man who can speak thus of a statue of all we love,
a man who can talk in such an infidel way of Waterloo, and--but,
good-morning!--I think I’ve had a lucky escape, seeing how often I’ve
been shaved by an atheist. (_Exit._)
_Nosebag._ See what it is, Nutts, to have principles. A customer gone
for life!
_Nutts._ Not a bit on it. He only wanted to go off, like a squib,
with a bang--and he thinks he’s done it. Didn’t like the touch of the
geese; thought it a little too hard upon himself, perhaps. Now, what
do you say to my notion, Mr Peabody? You ought to know--you’ve been a
schoolmaster.
_Peabody._ Before I entered the police, I had that melancholy honour.
Certainly there is something in your notion of the geese that might be
improved. Michaelmas-day might be made still more memorable by a yearly
sacrifice, after the old Pagan manner, at the Hyde Park arch, under
the statue. Recollecting classical instances--and on my beat at night,
it is now and then a comfort to me to rub up my rusty Latin; indeed, I
sometimes catch myself crying, “_I præ sequor_,” instead of “Move on,
I’ll be after you”--well, as I say, recollecting classical instances,
there might every Michaelmas be performed at Hyde Park, in honour and
memory of the Statue Committee, the Great Goose Sacrifice.
_Nutts._ It sounds promising: go on. How--in your classical
manner--would you manage it?
_Peabody._ Why, I propose to have an equal number--that is, a goose for
every committee-man, whose name, for the nonce, the goose should bear.
And the goose should have fillets of sage about its head, and a rope of
onions circled about its neck and body; and its throat should be cut
to the tune of the “British Grenadiers,” played on the brassiest band
to be had; and it should be drawn, and stuffed and roasted, and its
savoury, smoking body be divided amongst the populace.
_Nutts._ And so with every committee-man--that is, so with every goose?
_Peabody._ So with every goose. And so should the glory of the
Committee endure to all time, and the names of a Rutland and a Trench
be odorous in the land!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]