_=Slowgoe=, =Tickle=, =Peabody=, and others waiting. =Mrs Nutts= comes
from back room._
_Tickle._ Why, Mrs Nutts, where’s the master? Not gone to Brighton and
left you to shave?
_Mrs Nutts._ Ha, Mr Tickle! I only wish I could shave. I’ve often said
it ’ud be a nice light business for us poor women. I only wish I could
shave! Anything to get money one’s self; anything rather than be going
to a man’s pocket for every farden. Why--I’ve often asked it--_why_
shouldn’t women shave?
_Slowgoe._ Nonsense! Taking men by the nose! Men--the rulers of the
world! Pooh! what revolution, I should like to know, next?
_Mrs Nutts._ Rulers of the world! Ha, the world never will run right,
Mr Slowgoe, till women put their hands a little more to it. And as for
taking you rulers by the noses, I don’t think any of you need turn ’em
up for that. I’m sure you men monopolise everything. Very little you
leave us to do; and what we could do, you won’t let us; and for this
reason, in course, to keep us your slaves. I only wish I was the Queen
of England! Wouldn’t I set the example of shaving, that’s all?
_Tickle._ Why, how, Mrs Nutts? how?
_Mrs Nutts._ How? Why, as I say, I’d bring in fashion. I’d make a Maid
of Honour, or something of that sort, shave my own lawful husband; and
I’d see it done, too, every morning; shave him just to set the thing
a-going. That would give employment to lots of poor things that has
nothing now but the needle.
_=Nutts= comes in._
_Nosebag._ Why, Nutts, you’ve just come in time. In another minute, and
your wife would ha’ taken the business out of your hands.
_Nutts._ Yes, I know; jest the persumption of women; think they can do
anything their husbands do. If I was a Horse Guardsman, she’d think
she’d look quite as well as me in boots, helmet, and regimentals. It’s
like all wives; but it’s our own fault--I’ve often said it. We’re too
free with ’em: it’s the famil’arity breeds contempt. Women shave,
indeed!
_Mrs Nutts._ And why not? A very light, genteel livelihood. Better than
making shirts, I’m sure; for a woman with a razor in her hand wouldn’t
be the unpertected thing she is now.
_Nutts._ Now, Mrs Nutts, suppose you go and look to the apple-sarce,
and, for a little while, be quiet with your own. Burns the baker has
promised to do the pig like a pictur; that’s why I took it myself;
brown and crisp, and----
_Mrs Nutts._ Well, Nutts, I wouldn’t worship a roast pig as you do, for
its weight in gold; I should think something would happen to me. You,
with a wife and family, to be the slave you are to crackling!
_Nutts._ If a great man hadn’t one weakness, he wouldn’t be fit
society for the miserable sinners in this world about him. I have one
weakness--jest one--and that is now in the oven. Now, Mr Nosebag, shall
I make you fit for company? (_Nosebag takes the chair._)
_Mrs Nutts._ Well, I have one comfort, Nutts; if anything should happen
to you, I’ve seen you shave so often, that I’m sure I could keep the
children, and do it quite as well myself, if the customers would trust
me.
_Tickle._ You shall have my custom, Mrs Nutts. I wouldn’t desert the
widder of my friend.
_Nosebag._ Nor I.
_Nutts._ Gentlemen, allow me for a moment to think myself dead and
buried, and to thank you warmly from the churchyard. Your friendship
for my widder and fatherless babes is quite affectin’.
_Slowgoe._ (_With paper._) There really is no enjoying a bit of news.
Such nonsense! Women shaving men, indeed! They might be allowed to
lather us, and that, I think, is going quite far enough. But _do_ let
us talk of something serious. This, now, is rather an awful matter.
This time--and no mistake--Mother Church really is in danger.
_Tickle._ Well, she’s used to it; by this time, I should think, must
rather like it. What’s the matter?
_Slowgoe._ Oh, the old enemy--the Scarlet Woman of Rome. Here’s the
Surrey Protestant Alliance as meets at the Horns, in Kensington. It’s
all out. Colonel Sir Digby Mackworth says, all the reporters of the
newspapers are all of ’em Papishes.
_Mrs Nutts._ La! Never! Well, if that’s true, not a newspaper comes
into this house! If he was to come to life again, I’d jest as soon let
the back attic to Guy Fawkes.
_Slowgoe._ All Papishes, and all of ’em--with poisoned pens in their
hands--sworn upon a sheet of foolscap not faithfully to report the
speeches of Captain Gordon and the Rev. Hugh Stowell, and such great
men as speak for the Protestant cause.
_Tickle._ I don’t believe it. My true ’pinion is, that if the reporters
really wanted to hurt the Protestant cause, they’d put down every
syllable--just as it’s said--that such talkers talk about it. It’s my
belief they couldn’t do it worse service.
_Peabody._ Having read a good many of their speeches, I should
certainly say that any alteration would better ’em.
_Slowgoe._ To be sure: I’d forgot I was talking to some folks no better
than infidels. People who won’t believe any wickedness of the Pope!
For my part, I don’t know where the religion’s gone to. When I think
of these reporters let loose about London--reporters, every one on
’em, as Mr Stowell would say, hatched from a cockatrice’s egg, set
upon in Trinity College for the purpose--every one full of quills as a
porkipine, going to Exeter Hall and the Horns Tavern, and, for what I
know, the Bull and Mouth, and the Belle Savage----
_Peabody._ Beg your pardon--_Belle Sauvage_.
_Slowgoe._ I know that; but who’d stop for pronunciation when the
Church is in danger? When, I say, I see ’em all with their drawn
quills at such meetings, they do seem to me no better than ’sassins
with daggers ready to stick at nothing but Protestant ’Scendancy.
_Mrs Nutts._ My stars! and----
_Nutts._ Mrs Nutts, stars will do.
_Mrs Nutts._ Well, I can’t speak without being taken up! I was only
going to ask what was to be done against such creturs--going with drawn
daggers among peaceable people?
_Nosebag._ Why, nothing. (_Feeling his chin and rising._) A very
clean shave, indeed; got a chin like white satin. Why, nothing can be
done--nothing.
_Slowgoe._ No; because we want a minister with wigour. But I’d stop it,
I would. Yes; for I wouldn’t let a single reporter into any meeting
’somever that didn’t--as members of Parliament used to do when England
was worth living in--that didn’t renounce the Pope and all his works;
and Captain James Gordon, with two drawn swords at the door, should
’minister the oath.
_Nosebag._ Well, I don’t know. I’m not a Papish myself--never shall
be--but----
_Mrs Nutts._ Just as I said to Mrs Biggleswade over the way--“My dear,”
says I, “they might tear me to bits with wild Arabian horses, and they
wouldn’t get my religion out of me.”
_Slowgoe._ Very proper, ma’am; I’m delighted to hear you. I will say
this, you’re worthy of Smithfield in its best days.
_Nosebag._ But I was going to say, this new Pope seems a fine old chap.
Doing all sorts of good. I’ve heard that he’s set up a _Penny Roman
Magazine_--and has, with his own hands, turned I don’t know how many
sods for railways--and let perlitical people out of prison, and----
_Slowgoe._ Yes, yes; we know Rome before this. All a blind. People
who know anything, know that very well. Why, there isn’t an Italian
boy that sells images--and I suppose you’ve heard that Dr Pusey and
Dr Newman are coming out in Roman cement, at sixpence a-head, for
mantelpieces?--there isn’t, I say, an Italian image-boy as doesn’t
expect to hear the Pope say High Mass in Westminster Abbey.
_Mrs Nutts._ Not possible!
_Slowgoe._ Mrs Nutts, though I honour you for what you’ve said about
the Arab horses, nevertheless you don’t know Rome. Why, the Pope will
come to England, just as Ibraham Parker did, to see--that’ll be the
excuse--our works and manufactures. He’ll be asked to take a snack
at Oxford, in course. And then when he’s seen all the sights--and
p’r’aps given Madame Tussaud a sittin’ for her waxwork--he’ll just go
off softly in a cab to Westminster Abbey, pay his money at the door,
as if nothing was the matter, and then quietly walk in. Now I’m not
an alarmist--I should be sorry if I was--but with the Pope once well
inside Westminster Abbey, who do you think is to get him out agin?
_Mrs Nutts._ To be sure. And for what I know, he’d turn us all into
nuns; but I know what I’d do--I’d die first!
_Nutts._ No doubt on it, Mrs Nutts. But what a comfort, my love, that
they’d allow you the preference. Shouldn’t wonder, Slowgoe, if they
didn’t make you a cardinal.
_Peabody._ Yes; Cardinale Lentopasso. Rome has certainly seen her
Slowgoes in her day. The Lentopasso----
_Mrs Nutts._ Now, Mr Peabody, none of your Greek, if you have been a
schoolmaster.
_Peabody._ The Lentopasso is a very old name in the Church. The family
crest is a snail proper chewing opium.
_Mrs Nutts._ The nasty creturs! But just like ’em.
_Tickle._ (_With paper._) So they’re going to make the Duchess of
Marlborough pay a fine for shooting her husband’s pheasants. Rather
hard, isn’t it; a wife not allowed to kill her husband’s game?
_Mrs Nutts._ But it’s all done to lower marriage--all done to make
little of the weddin’-ring. I’m sure I wonder they don’t alter the
marriage service. Talking about flesh of flesh, and bones of bones,
and a lawful married woman is to take out a stamp to shoot at what
belongs to her! What do you say to that, Mr Slowgoe?
_Slowgoe._ Why, really, Mrs Nutts, I’ve a great respect for any
duchess--nevertheless, the game-laws is, I must say it, a solemn
matter; mustn’t be tampered with because of the vulgar. If duchesses
will insist upon using powder--I mean, in course, gunpowder--they must
be properly authenticated so to do.
_Nutts._ But if ladies will shoot--if the taste’s coming up that
way--why don’t they shirk the licence, and sport with poultry? Aren’t
there hens, and ducks, and geese to be killed for the kitchen? I don’t
see why the fashion shouldn’t go up from chickens to bullocks.
_Tickle._ Talking about shooting, I see Prince Albert shot a whole
swarm of rabbits at Virginny Water on Monday--rabbits that was sent
(_reads paper_) “to Mr Humphries of Egham, the contractor for the
purchase of all rabbits killed in the home and great parks.” Isn’t that
droll?--for the Queen’s husband to sell rabbits?
_Slowgoe._ There you go with your sneering disloyalty agin. Not at all
droll, for there isn’t one of them rabbits that won’t be turned into a
beef-steak or a mutton-chop.
_Mrs Nutts._ La! how do you mean?
_Slowgoe._ Why, in this way. The money that Mr Humphries gives for ’em
will, of course, be laid out upon butcher’s-meat, and at Christmas be
distributed to the Windsor poor!
_Nutts._ Shouldn’t have any objection to all the game in the world, if
it could be so transmogrified. A pheasant shan’t be disgraced with ribs
of beef for a proxy.
_Tickle._ So the Court, I see, is gone to Osborne House, in the Isle of
Wight.
_Slowgoe._ As a loyal subject, that Isle of Wight makes me very uneasy.
To be sure, it’s rather near to Portsmouth; nevertheless, when the war
breaks out----
_Nosebag._ And I’m told it’s whizzing up in France like a
gingerbeer-cork with the string cut.
_Slowgoe._ When it goes off, ’twouldn’t at all surprise me if that
Joynveal was to ’tack the Isle of Wight, and Osborne House in ’special.
I must say it, I should sleep easier with the thoughts of a handful of
forty-pounders there. A battery or two would help to set my mind at
rest.
_Tickle._ The Queen and the Prince, they do say, have gone down to see
about the planting, and not the guarding, of the place--planting it
with trees.
_Peabody._ What a very pretty picture! Her Gracious Majesty dropping
acorns in the earth. Britannia sowing her own oaks.
_Tickle._ Dear soul! And let us hope she’ll live to see a flourishing
crop of three-deckers.
_Nutts._ There goes one o’clock. Pig’s ready. Can’t shave another hair.
(_Runs out._)
_Mrs Nutts._ There! I told you all so. A man with a wife and family,
and yet sich a headstrong cretur of crackling!
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