_From Montague Tigg_, _Esq._, _to Mr. David Crimp_.
The following letter needs no explanation for any who have studied the
fortunes and admired the style of that celebrated and sanguine financier,
Mr. Montague Tigg, in “Martin Chuzzlewit.” His chance meeting with the
romantic Comte de Monte Cristo naturally suggested to him the plans and
hopes which he unfolds to an unsympathetic capitalist.
1542 Park Lane, May 27, 1848.
MY PREMIUM POMEGRANATE,—Oracles are not in it, David, with you, my
pippin, as auspicious counsellors of ingenious indigence. The remark
which you uttered lately, when refusing to make the trumpery advance of
half-a-crown on a garment which had been near to the illustrious person
of my friend Chevy Slime, that remark was inspired. “Go to Holborn!” you
said, and the longest-bearded of early prophets never uttered aught more
pregnant with Destiny. I went to Holborn, to the humble establishment of
the tuneful tonsor, Sweedle-pipe. All things come, the poet says, to him
who knows how to wait—especially, I may add, to him who knows how to wait
behind thin partitions with a chink in them. Ensconced in such an
ambush—in fact, in the back shop—I bided my time, intending to solicit
pecuniary accommodation from the barber, and studying human nature as
developed in his customers.
There are odd customers in Kingsgate Street, Holborn—foreign gents and
refugees. Such a cove my eagle eye detected in a man who entered the
shop wearing a long black beard streaked with the snows of age, and who
requested Poll to shave him clean. He was a sailor-man to look at; but
his profile, David, might have been carved by a Grecian chisel out of an
iceberg, and that steel grey eye of his might have struck a chill, even
through a chink, into any heart less stout than beats behind the vest of
Montague Tigg. The task of rasping so hirsute a customer seemed to sit
heavy on the soul of Poll, and threatened to exhaust the resources of his
limited establishment. The barber went forth to command, as I presume, a
fresher strop, or more keenly tempered steel, and glittering cans of
water heated to a fiercer heat. No sooner was the coast clear than the
street-door opened, and my stranger was joined by a mantled form, that
glided into Poll’s emporium. The new-comer doffed a swart sombrero, and
disclosed historic features that were not unknown to the concealed
observer—meaning me. Yes, David, that aquiline beak, that long and waxed
moustache, that impassible mask of a face, I had seen them, Sir,
conspicuous (though their owner be of alien and even hostile birth) among
England’s special chivalry. The foremost he had charged on the Ides of
April (I mean against the ungentlemanly Chartist throng) and in the
storied lists of Eglinton. The new-comer, in short, was the nephew of
him who ate his heart out in an English gaol (like our illustrious
Chiv)—in fact, he was Prince Louis N— B—.
Gliding to the seat where, half-lathered, the more or less ancient
Mariner awaited Poll’s return, the Prince muttered (in the French lingo,
familiar to me from long exile in Boulogne):
“Hist, goes all well?”
“Magnificently, Sire!” says the other chap.
“Our passages taken?”
“Ay, and private cabins paid for to boot, in case of the storm’s
inclemency.”
The Prince nodded and seemed pleased; then he asked anxiously,
“The Bird? You have been to Jamrach’s?”
“Pardon me, Sire,” says the man who was waiting to be shaved, “I can slip
from your jesses no mercenary eagle. These limbs have yet the pith to
climb and this heart the daring to venture to the airiest crag of Monte
d’Oro, and I have ravished from his eyrie a true Corsican eagle to be the
omen of our expedition. Wherever this eagle is your uncle’s legions will
gather together.”
“’Tis well; and the gold?”
“_Trust Monte Cristo_!” says the bearded man; and then, David, begad! I
knew I had them!
“We meet?”
“At Folkestone pier, 7.45, tidal train.”
“I shall be there without fail,” says the Prince, and sneaks out of the
street-door just as Poll comes in with the extra soap and strop.
Well, David, to make it as short as I can, the man of the icy glance was
clean-shaved at last, and the mother who bore him would not have known
him as he looked in the glass when it was done. He chucked Poll a
diamond worth about a million piastres, and, remarking that he would not
trouble him for the change, he walked out. By this characteristic
swagger, of course, he more than confirmed my belief that he was, indeed,
the celebrated foreigner the Count of Monte Cristo; whose name and
history even _you_ must be acquainted with, though you may not be what I
have heard my friend Chevy Slime call himself, “the most literary man
alive.” A desperate follower of the star of Austerlitz from his youth, a
martyr to the cause in the Château d’If, Monte Cristo has not deserted it
now that he has come into his own—or anybody else’s.
Of course I was after him like a shot. He walked down Kingsgate Street
and took a four-wheeler that was loitering at the corner. I followed on
foot, escaping the notice of the police from the fact, made only too
natural by Fortune’s cursed spite, that under the toga-like simplicity of
Montague Tigg’s costume these minions merely guessed at a cab-tout.
Well, David, he led me a long chase. He got out of the four-wheeler (it
was dark now) at the Travellers’, throwing the cabman a purse—of sequins,
no doubt. At the door of the Travellers’ he entered a brougham; and,
driving to the French Embassy in Albert Gate, he alighted, _in different
togs_, quite the swell, and _let himself in with his own latch-key_.
In fact, Sir, this conspirator of barbers’ shops, this prisoner of the
Château d’If, this climber of Corsican eyries, is to-day the French
Minister accredited to the Court of St. James’s!
And now perhaps, David, you begin to see how the land lies, the Promised
Land, the land where there is corn and milk and honey-dew. I hold those
eminent and highly romantic parties in the hollow of my hand. A letter
from me to M. Lecoq, of the Rue Jerusalem, and their little game is up,
their eagle moults, the history of Europe is altered. But what good
would all that do Montague Tigg? Will it so much as put that delightful
coin, a golden sovereign, in the pocket of his nether garments? No, Tigg
is no informer; a man who has charged at the head of his regiment on the
coast of Africa is no vulgar spy. There is more to be got by making the
Count pay through the nose, as we say; _chanter_, as the French say;
“sing a song of sixpence”—to a golden tune.
But, as Fortune now uses me, I cannot personally approach his Excellency.
Powdered menials would urge me from his portals. An advance, a small
advance—say 30_l._—is needed for preliminary expenses: for the charges of
the clothier, the bootmaker, the hosier, the barber. Give me 30_l._ for
the restoration of Tigg to the semblance of the Montagues, and with that
sum I conquer millions. The diamonds of Monte Cristo, the ingots, the
rubies, the golden crowns with the image and superscription of Pope
Alexander VI.—all are mine: I mean are ours.
More, David; more, my premium tulip: we shall make the Count a richer man
than ever he has been. We shall promote new companies, we shall put him
on the board of directors. I see the prospectuses from afar.