MR. BENJAMIN BUCKRAM
Having dressed and sufficiently described our hero to enable our readers to
form a general idea of the man, we have now to request them to return to
the day of our introduction. Mr. Sponge had gone along Oxford Street at a
somewhat improved pace to his usual wont--had paused for a shorter period
in the ''bus' perplexed 'Circus,' and pulled up seldomer than usual between
the Circus and the limits of his stroll. Behold him now at the Edgeware
Road end, eyeing the 'buses with a wanting-a-ride like air, instead of the
contemptuous sneer he generally adopts towards those uncouth productions.
Red, greenn, blue, drab, cinnamon-colour, passed and crossed, and jostled,
and stopped, and blocked, and the cads telegraphed, and winked, and nodded,
and smiled, and slanged, but Mr. Sponge regarded them not. He had a sort of
''bus' panorama in his head, knew the run of them all, whence they started,
where they stopped, where they watered, where they changed, and, wonderful
to relate, had never been entrapped into a sixpenny fare when he meant to
take a threepenny one. In cab and ''bus' geography there is not a more
learned man in London.
Mark him as he stands at the corner. He sees what he wants, it's the
chequered one with the red and blue wheels that the Bayswater ones have got
between them, and that the St. John's Wood and two Western Railway ones are
trying to get into trouble by crossing. What a row! how the ruffians whip,
and stamp, and storm, and all but pick each other's horses' teeth with
their poles, how the cads gesticulate, and the passengers imprecate! now
the bonnets are out of the windows, and the row increases. Six coachmen
cutting and storming, six cads sawing the air, sixteen ladies in flowers
screaming, six-and-twenty sturdy passengers swearing they will 'fine them
all,' and Mr. Sponge is the only cool person in the scene. He doesn't rush
into the throng and 'jump in,' for fear the 'bus should extricate itself
and drive on without him; he doesn't make confusion worse confounded by
intimating his behest; he doesn't soil his bright boots by stepping off the
kerb-stone; but, quietly waiting the evaporation of the steam, and the
disentanglement of the vehicles, by the smallest possible sign in the
world, given at the opportune moment, and a steady adhesion to the flags,
the 'bus is obliged either to 'come to,' or lose the fare, and he steps
quietly in, and squeezes along to the far end, as though intent on going
the whole hog of the journey.
Away they rumble up the Edgeware Road; the gradual emergence from the brick
and mortar of London being marked as well by the telling out of passengers
as by the increasing distances between the houses. First, it is all close
huddle with both. Austere iron railings guard the subterranean kitchen
areas, and austere looks indicate a desire on the part of the passengers to
guard their own pockets; gradually little gardens usurp the places of the
cramped areas, and, with their humanizing appearance, softer looks assume
the place of frowning _anti_ swell-mob ones.
Presently a glimpse of green country or of distant hills may be caught
between the wider spaces of the houses, and frequent settings down increase
the space between the passengers; gradually conservatories appear and
conversation strikes up; then come the exclusiveness of villas, some
detached and others running out at last into real pure green fields studded
with trees and picturesque pot-houses, before one of which latter a sudden
wheel round and a jerk announces the journey done. The last passenger (if
there is one) is then unceremoniously turned loose upon the country.
Our readers will have the kindness to suppose our hero, Mr. Sponge, shot
out of an omnibus at the sign of the Cat and Compasses, in the full
rurality of grass country, sprinkled with fallows and turnip-fields. We
should state that this unwonted journey was a desire to pay a visit to Mr.
Benjamin Buckram, the horse-dealer's farm at Scampley, distant some mile
and a half from where he was set down, a space that he now purposed
travelling on foot.
Mr. Benjamin Buckram was a small horse-dealer--small, at least, when he was
buying, though great when he was selling. It would do a youngster good to
see Ben filling the two capacities. He dealt in second hand, that is to
say, past mark of mouth horses; but on the present occasion, Mr. Sponge
sought his services in the capacity of a letter rather than a seller of
horses. Mr. Sponge wanted to job a couple of plausible-looking horses, with
the option of buying them, provided he (Mr. Sponge) could sell them for
more than he would have to give Mr. Buckram, exclusive of the hire. Mr.
Buckram's job price, we should say, was as near twelve pounds a month,
containing twenty-eight days, as he could screw, the hirer, of course,
keeping the animals.
Scampley is one of those pretty little suburban farms, peculiar to the
north and north-west side of London--farms varying from fifty to a hundred
acres of well-manured, gravelly soil; each farm with its picturesque little
buildings, consisting of small, honey-suckled, rose-entwined brick houses,
with small, flat, pan-tiled roofs, and lattice-windows; and, hard by, a
large hay-stack, three times the size of the house, or a desolate barn,
half as big as all the rest of the buildings. From the smallness of the
holdings, the farmhouses are dotted about as thickly, and at such varying
distances from the roads, as to look like inferior 'villas,' falling out of
rank; most of them have a half-smart, half-seedy sort of look.
The rustics who cultivate them, or rather look after them, are neither
exactly town nor country. They have the clownish dress and boorish gait of
the regular 'chaws,' with a good deal of the quick, suspicious, sour
sauciness of the low London resident. If you can get an answer from them at
all, it is generally delivered in such a way as to show that the answerer
thinks you are what they call 'chaffing them,' asking them what you know.
These farms serve the double purpose of purveyors to the London stables,
and hospitals for sick, overworked, or unsaleable horses. All the great
job-masters and horse-dealers have these retreats in the country, and the
smaller ones pretend to have, from whence, in due course, they can draw any
sort of an animal a customer may want, just as little cellarless
wine-merchants can get you any sort of wine from real establishments--if
you only give them time.
There was a good deal of mystery about Scampley. It was sometimes in the
hands of Mr. Benjamin Buckram, sometimes in the hands of his assignees,
sometimes in those of his cousin, Abraham Brown, and sometimes John Doe and
Richard Roe were the occupants of it.
Mr. Benjamin Buckram, though very far from being one, had the advantage of
looking like a respectable man. There was a certain plump, well-fed
rosiness about him, which, aided by a bright-coloured dress, joined to a
continual fumble in the pockets of his drab trousers, gave him the air of a
'well-to-do-in-the-world' sort of man. Moreover, he sported a velvet collar
to his blue coat, a more imposing ornament than it appears at first sight.
To be sure, there are two sorts of velvet collars--the legitimate velvet
collar, commencing with the coat, and the adopted velvet collar, put on
when the cloth one gets shabby.
Buckram's was always the legitimate velvet collar, new from the first, and,
we really believe, a permanent velvet collar, adhered to in storm and in
sunshine, has a very money-making impression on the world. It shows a
spirit superior to feelings of paltry economy, and we think a person would
be much more excusable for being victimized by a man with a good velvet
collar to his coat, than by one exhibiting that spurious sign of
gentility--a horse and gig.
The reader will now have the kindness to consider Mr. Sponge arriving at
Scampley.
'Ah, Mr. Sponge!' exclaimed Mr. Buckram, who, having seen our friend
advancing up the little twisting approach from the road to his house
through a little square window almost blinded with Irish ivy, out of which
he was in the habit of contemplating the arrival of his occasional lodgers,
Doe and Roe. 'Ah, Mr. Sponge!' exclaimed he, with well-assumed gaiety; 'you
should have been here yesterday; sent away two sich osses--perfect
'unters--the werry best I do think I ever saw in my life; either would have
bin the werry oss for your money. But come in, Mr. Sponge, sir, come in,'
continued he, backing himself through a little sentry-box of a green
portico, to a narrow passage which branched off into little rooms on either
side.
As Buckram made this retrograde movement, he gave a gentle pull to the
wooden handle of an old-fashioned wire bell-pull in the midst of buggy,
four-in-hand, and other whips, hanging in the entrance, a touch that was
acknowledged by a single tinkle of the bell in the stable-yard.
They then entered the little room on the right, whose walls were decorated
with various sporting prints chiefly illustrative of steeple-chases, with
here and there a stunted fox-brush, tossing about as a duster. The
ill-ventilated room reeked with the effluvia of stale smoke, and the faded
green baize of a little round table in the centre was covered with
filbert-shells and empty ale-glasses. The whole furniture of the room
wasn't worth five pounds.
Mr. Sponge, being now on the dealing tack, commenced in the
poverty-stricken strain adapted to the occasion. Having deposited his hat
on the floor, taken his left leg up to nurse, and given his hair a backward
rub with his right hand, he thus commenced:
'Now, Buckram,' said he, 'I'll tell you how it is. I'm deuced
hard-up--regularly in Short's Gardens. I lost eighteen 'undred on the
Derby, and seven on the Leger, the best part of my year's income, indeed;
and I just want to hire two or three horses for the season, with the option
of buying, if I like; and if you supply me well, I may be the means of
bringing grist to your mill; you twig, eh?'
'Well, Mr. Sponge,' replied Buckram, sliding several consecutive
half-crowns down the incline plane of his pocket. 'Well, Mr. Sponge, I
shall be happy to do my best for you. I wish you'd come yesterday, though,
as I said before, I jest had two of the neatest nags--a bay and a grey--not
that colour makes any matter to a judge like you; there's no sounder sayin'
than that a good oss is not never of a bad colour; only to a young gemman,
you know, it's well to have 'em smart, and the ticket, in short;
howsomever, I must do the best I can for you, and if there's nothin' in
that tickles your fancy, why, you must give me a few days to see if I can
arrange an exchange with some other gent; but the present is like to be a
werry haggiwatin' season; had more happlications for osses nor ever I
remembers, and I've been a dealer now, man and boy, turned of
eight-and-thirty years; but young gents is whimsical, and it was a young
'un wot got these, and there's no sayin' but he mayn't like them--indeed,
one's rayther difficult to ride--that's to say, the grey, the neatest of
the two, and he _may_ come back, and if so, you shall have him; and a
safer, sweeter oss was never seen, or one more like to do credit to a gent:
but you knows what an oss is, Mr. Sponge, and can do justice to me, and I
should like to put summut good into your hands--_that_ I should.'
With conversation, or rather with balderdash, such as this, Mr. Buckram
beguiled the few minutes necessary for removing the bandages, hiding the
bottles, and stirring up the cripples about to be examined, and the heavy
flap of the coach-house door announcing that all was ready, he forthwith
led the way through a door in a brick wall into a little three-sides of a
square yard, formed of stables and loose boxes, with a dilapidated
dove-cote above a pump in the centre; Mr. Buckram, not growing corn, could
afford to keep pigeons.