PART II.--THE RESULT.

During the next month we saw a good deal of Mr. Julius Mackenzie, and

made ourselves quite at home in Mrs. Grimes’s bed-room. We went in and

out of the Spotted Dog as if we had known that establishment all our

lives, and spent many a quarter of an hour with the hostess in her

little parlour, discussing the prospects of Mr. Mackenzie and his

family. He had procured to himself decent, if not exactly new, garments

out of the money so liberally provided by my learned friend the Doctor,

and spent much of his time in the library of the British Museum. He

certainly worked very hard, for he did not altogether abandon his old

engagement. Before the end of the first month the index of the first

volume, nearly completed, had been sent down for the inspection of the

Doctor, and had been returned with ample eulogium and some little

criticism. The criticisms Mackenzie answered by letter, with true

scholarly spirit, and the Doctor was delighted. Nothing could be more

pleasant to him than a correspondence, prolonged almost indefinitely, as

to the respective merits of a τὀ or a τον, or on the demand for a

spondee or an iamb. When he found that the work was really in

industrious hands, he ceased to be clamorous for early publication, and

gave us to understand privately that Mr. Mackenzie was not to be limited

to the sum named. The matter of remuneration was, indeed, left very much

to ourselves, and Mackenzie had certainly found a most efficient friend

in the author whose works had been confided to his hands.

All this was very pleasant, and Mackenzie throughout that month worked

very hard. According to the statements made to me by Mrs. Grimes he took

no more gin than what was necessary for a hard-working man. As to the

exact quantity of that cordial which she imagined to be beneficial and

needful, we made no close enquiry. He certainly kept himself in a

condition for work, and so far all went on happily. Nevertheless, there

was a terrible skeleton in the cupboard,--or rather out of the

cupboard, for the skeleton could not be got to hide itself. A certain

portion of his prosperity reached the hands of his wife, and she was

behaving herself worse than ever. The four children had been covered

with decent garments under Mrs. Grimes’s care, and then Mrs. Mackenzie

had appeared at the Spotted Dog, loudly demanding a new outfit for

herself. She came not only once, but often, and Mr. Grimes was beginning

to protest that he saw too much of the family. We had become very

intimate with Mrs. Grimes, and she did not hesitate to confide to us her

fears lest “John should cut up rough,” before the thing was completed.

“You see,” she said, “it is against the house, no doubt, that woman

coming nigh it.” But still she was firm, and Mackenzie was not disturbed

in the possession of the bed-room. At last Mrs. Mackenzie was provided

with some articles of female attire;--and then, on the very next day,

she and the four children were again stripped almost naked. The wretched

creature must have steeped herself in gin to the shoulders, for in one

day she made a sweep of everything. She then came in a state of furious

intoxication to the Spotted Dog, and was removed by the police under the

express order of the landlord.

We can hardly say which was the most surprising to us, the loyalty of

Mrs. Grimes or the patience of John. During that night, as we were told

two days afterwards by his wife, he stormed with passion. The papers she

had locked up in order that he should not get at them and destroy them.

He swore that everything should be cleared out on the following morning.

But when the morning came he did not even say a word to Mackenzie, as

the wretched, downcast, broken-hearted creature passed up stairs to his

work. “You see I knows him, and how to deal with him,” said Mrs. Grimes,

speaking of her husband. “There aint another like himself

nowheres;--he’s that good. A softer-hearteder man there aint in the

public line. He can speak dreadful when his dander is up, and can

look----; oh, laws, he just can look at you! But he could no more put

his hands upon a woman, in the way of hurting,--no more than be an

archbishop.” Where could be the man, thought we to ourselves as this was

said to us, who could have put a hand,--in the way of hurting,--upon

Mrs. Grimes?

On that occasion, to the best of our belief, the policeman contented

himself with depositing Mrs. Mackenzie at her own lodgings. On the next

day she was picked up drunk in the street, and carried away to the

lock-up house. At the very moment in which the story was being told to

us by Mrs. Grimes, Mackenzie had gone to the police office to pay the

fine, and to bring his wife home. We asked with dismay and surprise why

he should interfere to rescue her--why he did not leave her in custody

as long as the police would keep her? “Who’d there be to look after the

children?” asked Mrs. Grimes, as though she were offended at our

suggestion. Then she went on to explain that in such a household as that

of poor Mackenzie the wife is absolutely a necessity, even though she be

an habitual drunkard. Intolerable as she was, her services were

necessary to him. “A husband as drinks is bad,” said Mrs. Grimes,--with

something, we thought, of an apologetic tone for the vice upon which her

own prosperity was partly built,--“but when a woman takes to it, it’s

the ---- devil.” We thought that she was right, as we pictured to

ourselves that man of letters satisfying the magistrate’s demand for his

wife’s misconduct, and taking the degraded, half-naked creature once

more home to his children.

We saw him about twelve o’clock on that day, and he had then, too

evidently, been endeavouring to support his misery by the free use of

alcohol. We did not speak of it down in the parlour; but even Mrs.

Grimes, we think, would have admitted that he had taken more than was

good for him. He was sitting up in the bed-room with his head hanging

upon his hand, with a swarm of our learned friend’s papers spread on the

table before him. Mrs. Grimes, when he entered the house, had gone up

stairs to give them out to him; but he had made no attempt to settle

himself to his work. “This kind of thing must come to an end,” he said

to us with a thick, husky voice. We muttered something to him as to the

need there was that he should exert a manly courage in his troubles.

“Manly!” he said. “Well, yes; manly. A man should be a man, of course.

There are some things which a man can’t bear. I’ve borne more than

enough, and I’ll have an end of it.”

We shall never forget that scene. After awhile he got up, and became

almost violent. Talk of bearing! Who had borne half as much as he? There

were things a man should not bear. As for manliness, he believed that

the truly manly thing would be to put an end to the lives of his wife,

his children, and himself at one swoop. Of course the judgment of a

mealy-mouthed world would be against him, but what would that matter to

him when he and they had vanished out of this miserable place into the

infinite realms of nothingness? Was he fit to live, or were they? Was

there any chance for his children but that of becoming thieves and

prostitutes? And for that poor wretch of a woman, from out of whose

bosom even her human instincts had been washed by gin,--would not death

to her be, indeed, a charity? There was but one drawback to all this.

When he should have destroyed them, how would it be with him if he

should afterwards fail to make sure work with his own life? In such case

it was not hanging that he would fear, but the self-reproach that would

come upon him in that he had succeeded in sending others out of their

misery, but had flinched when his own turn had come. Though he was drunk

when he said these horrid things, or so nearly drunk that he could not

perfect the articulation of his words, still there was a marvellous

eloquence with him. When we attempted to answer, and told him of that

canon which had been set against self-slaughter, he laughed us to scorn.

There was something terrible to us in the audacity of the arguments

which he used, when he asserted for himself the right to shuffle off

from his shoulders a burden which they had not been made broad enough

to bear. There was an intensity and a thorough hopelessness of suffering

in his case, an openness of acknowledged degradation, which robbed us

for the time of all that power which the respectable ones of the earth

have over the disreputable. When we came upon him with our wise saws,

our wisdom was shattered instantly, and flung back upon us in fragments.

What promise could we dare to hold out to him that further patience

would produce any result that could be beneficial? What further harm

could any such doing on his part bring upon him? Did we think that were

he brought out to stand at the gallows’ foot with the knowledge that ten

minutes would usher him into what folks called eternity, his sense of

suffering would be as great as it had been when he conducted that woman

out of court and along the streets to his home, amidst the jeering

congratulations of his neighbours? “When you have fallen so low,” said

he, “that you can fall no lower, the ordinary trammels of the world

cease to bind you.” Though his words were knocked against each other

with the dulled utterances of intoxication, his intellect was terribly

clear, and his scorn for himself, and for the world that had so treated

him, was irrepressible.

We must have been over an hour with him up there in the bed-room, and

even then we did not leave him. As it was manifest that he could do no

work on that day, we collected the papers together, and proposed that he

should take a walk with us. He was patient as we shovelled together the

Doctor’s pages, and did not object to our suggestion. We found it

necessary to call up Mrs. Grimes to assist us in putting away the “Opus

magnum,” and were astonished to find how much she had come to know about

the work. Added to the Doctor’s manuscript there were now the pages of

Mackenzie’s indexes,--and there were other pages of reference, for use

in making future indexes,--as to all of which Mrs. Grimes seemed to be

quite at home. We have no doubt that she was familiar with the names of

Greek tragedians, and could have pointed out to us in print the

performances of the chorus. “A little fresh air’ll do you a deal of

good, Mr. Mackenzie,” she said to the unfortunate man,--“only take a

biscuit in your pocket.” We got him out to the street, but he angrily

refused to take the biscuit which she endeavoured to force into his

hands.

That was a memorable walk. Turning from the end of Liquorpond Street up

Gray’s Inn Lane towards Holborn, we at once came upon the entrance into

a miserable court. “There,” said he; “it is down there that I live. She

is sleeping it off now, and the children are hanging about her,

wondering whether mother has got money to have another go at it when she

rises. I’d take you down to see it all, only it’d sicken you.” We did

not offer to go down the court, abstaining rather for his sake than for

our own. The look of the place was as of a spot squalid, fever-stricken,

and utterly degraded. And this man who was our companion had been born

and bred a gentleman,--had been nourished with that soft and gentle care

which comes of wealth and love combined,--had received the education

which the country gives to her most favoured sons, and had taken such

advantage of that education as is seldom taken by any of those favoured

ones;--and Cucumber Court, with a drunken wife and four half-clothed,

half-starved children, was the condition to which he had brought

himself! The world knows nothing higher nor brighter than had been his

outset in life,--nothing lower nor more debased than the result. And yet

he was one whose time and intellect had been employed upon the pursuit

of knowledge,--who even up to this day had high ideas of what should be

a man’s career,--who worked very hard and had always worked,--who as far

as we knew had struck upon no rocks in the pursuit of mere pleasure. It

had all come to him from that idea of his youth that it would be good

for him “to take refuge from the conventional thraldom of so-called

gentlemen amidst the liberty of the lower orders.” His life, as he had

himself owned, had indeed been a mistake.

We passed on from the court, and crossing the road went through the

squares of Gray’s Inn, down Chancery Lane, through the little iron gate

into Lincoln’s Inn, round through the old square,--than which we know no

place in London more conducive to suicide; and the new square,--which

has a gloom of its own, not so potent, and savouring only of madness,

till at last we found ourselves in the Temple Gardens. I do not know why

we had thus clung to the purlieus of the Law, except it was that he was

telling us how in his early days, when he had been sent away from

Cambridge,--as on this occasion he acknowledged to us, for an attempt to

pull the tutor’s nose, in revenge for a supposed insult,--he had

intended to push his fortunes as a barrister. He pointed up to a certain

window in a dark corner of that suicidal old court, and told us that for

one year he had there sat at the feet of a great Gamaliel in Chancery,

and had worked with all his energies. Of course we asked him why he had

left a prospect so alluring. Though his answers to us were not quite

explicit, we think that he did not attempt to conceal the truth. He

learned to drink, and that Gamaliel took upon himself to rebuke the

failing, and by the end of that year he had quarrelled irreconcilably

with his family. There had been great wrath at home when he was sent

from Cambridge, greater wrath when he expressed his opinion upon certain

questions of religious faith, and wrath to the final severance of all

family relations when he told the chosen Gamaliel that he should get

drunk as often as he pleased. After that he had “taken refuge among the

lower orders,” and his life, such as it was, had come of it.

In Fleet Street, as we came out of the Temple, we turned into an

eating-house and had some food. By this time the exercise and the air

had carried off the fumes of the liquor which he had taken, and I knew

that it would be well that he should eat. We had a mutton chop and a hot

potato and a pint of beer each, and sat down to table for the first and

last time as mutual friends. It was odd to see how in his converse with

us on that day he seemed to possess a double identity. Though the

hopeless misery of his condition was always present to him, was

constantly on his tongue, yet he could talk about his own career and

his own character as though they belonged to a third person. He could

even laugh at the wretched mistake he had made in life, and speculate as

to its consequences. For himself he was well aware that death was the

only release that he could expect. We did not dare to tell him that if

his wife should die, then things might be better with him. We could only

suggest to him that work itself, if he would do honest work, would

console him for many sufferings. “You don’t know the filth of it,” he

said to us. Ah, dear! how well we remember the terrible word, and the

gesture with which he pronounced it, and the gleam of his eyes as he

said it! His manner to us on this occasion was completely changed, and

we had a gratification in feeling that a sense had come back upon him of

his old associations. “I remember this room so well,” he said,--“when I

used to have friends and money.” And, indeed, the room was one which has

been made memorable by Genius. “I did not think ever to have found

myself here again.” We observed, however, that he could not eat the food

that was placed before him. A morsel or two of the meat he swallowed,

and struggled to eat the crust of his bread, but he could not make a

clean plate of it, as we did,--regretting that the nature of chops did

not allow of ampler dimensions. His beer was quickly finished, and we

suggested to him a second tankard. With a queer, half-abashed twinkle of

the eye, he accepted our offer, and then the second pint disappeared

also. We had our doubts on the subject, but at last decided against any

further offer. Had he chosen to call for it he must have had a third;

but he did not call for it. We left him at the door of the tavern, and

he then promised that in spite of all that he had suffered and all that

he had said he would make another effort to complete the Doctor’s work.

“Whether I go or stay,” he said, “I’d like to earn the money that I’ve

spent.” There was something terrible in that idea of his going! Whither

was he to go?

The Doctor heard nothing of the misfortune of these three or four

inauspicious days; and the work was again going on prosperously when he

came up again to London at the end of the second month. He told us

something of his banker, and something of his lawyer, and murmured a

word or two as to a new curate whom he needed; but we knew that he had

come up to London because he could not bear a longer absence from the

great object of his affections. He could not endure to be thus parted

from his manuscript, and was again childishly anxious that a portion of

it should be in the printer’s hands. “At sixty-five, Sir,” he said to

us, “a man has no time to dally with his work.” He had been dallying

with his work all his life, and we sincerely believed that it would be

well with him if he could be contented to dally with it to the end. If

all that Mackenzie said of it was true, the Doctor’s erudition was not

equalled by his originality, or by his judgment. Of that question,

however, we could take no cognizance. He was bent upon publishing, and

as he was willing and able to pay for his whim and was his own master,

nothing that we could do would keep him out of the printer’s hands.

He was desirous of seeing Mackenzie, and was anxious even to see him

once at his work. Of course he could meet his assistant in our editorial

room, and all the papers could easily be brought backwards and forwards

in the old despatch-box. But in the interest of all parties we hesitated

as to taking our revered and reverend friend to the Spotted Dog. Though

we had told him that his work was being done at a public-house, we

thought that his mind had conceived the idea of some modest inn, and

that he would be shocked at being introduced to a place which he would

regard simply as a gin-shop. Mrs. Grimes, or if not Mrs. Grimes, then

Mr. Grimes, might object to another visitor to their bed-room; and

Mackenzie himself would be thrown out of gear by the appearance of those

clerical gaiters upon the humble scene of his labours. We, therefore,

gave him such reasons as were available for submitting, at any rate for

the present, to having the papers brought up to him at our room. And we

ourselves went down to the Spotted Dog to make an appointment with

Mackenzie for the following day. We had last seen him about a week

before, and then the task was progressing well. He had told us that

another fortnight would finish it. We had enquired also of Mrs. Grimes

about the man’s wife. All she could tell us was that the woman had not

again troubled them at the Spotted Dog. She expressed her belief,

however, that the drunkard had been more than once in the hands of the

police since the day on which Mackenzie had walked with us through the

squares of the Inns of Court.

It was late when we reached the public-house on the occasion to which we

now allude, and the evening was dark and rainy. It was then the end of

January, and it might have been about six o’clock. We knew that we

should not find Mackenzie at the public-house; but it was probable that

Mrs. Grimes could send for him, or, at least, could make the

appointment for us. We went into the little parlour, where she was

seated with her husband, and we could immediately see, from the

countenance of both of them, that something was amiss. We began by

telling Mrs. Grimes that the Doctor had come to town. “Mackenzie aint

here, Sir,” said Mrs. Grimes, and we almost thought that the very tone

of her voice was altered. We explained that we had not expected to find

him at that hour, and asked if she could send for him. She only shook

her head. Grimes was standing with his back to the fire and his hands in

his trousers pockets. Up to this moment he had not spoken a word. We

asked if the man was drunk. She again shook her head. Could she bid him

to come to us to-morrow, and bring the box and the papers with him?

Again she shook her head.

“I’ve told her that I won’t have no more of it,” said Grimes; “nor yet I

won’t. He was drunk this morning,--as drunk as an owl.”

“He was sober, John, as you are, when he came for the papers this

afternoon at two o’clock.” So the box and the papers had all been taken

away!

“And she was here yesterday rampaging about the place, without as much

clothes on as would cover her nakedness,” said Mr. Grimes. “I won’t

have no more of it. I’ve done for that man what his own flesh and blood

wouldn’t do. I know that; and I won’t have no more of it. Mary Anne,

you’ll have that table cleared out after breakfast to-morrow.” When a

man, to whom his wife is usually Polly, addresses her as Mary Anne, then

it may be surmised that that man is in earnest. We knew that he was in

earnest, and she knew it also.

“He wasn’t drunk, John,--no, nor yet in liquor, when he come and took

away that box this afternoon.” We understood this reiterated assertion.

It was in some sort excusing to us her own breach of trust in having

allowed the manuscript to be withdrawn from her own charge, or was

assuring us that, at the worst, she had not been guilty of the

impropriety of allowing the man to take it away when he was unfit to

have it in his charge. As for blaming her, who could have thought of it?

Had Mackenzie at any time chosen to pass down stairs with the box in his

hands, it was not to be expected that she should stop him violently. And

now that he had done so we could not blame her; but we felt that a great

weight had fallen upon our own hearts. If evil should come to the

manuscript would not the Doctor’s wrath fall upon us with a crushing

weight? Something must be done at once. And we suggested that it would

be well that somebody should go round to Cucumber Court. “I’d go as soon

as look,” said Mrs. Grimes, “but he won’t let me.”

“You don’t stir a foot out of this to-night;--not that way,” said Mr.

Grimes.

“Who wants to stir?” said Mrs. Grimes.

We felt that there was something more to be told than we had yet heard,

and a great fear fell upon us. The woman’s manner to us was altered, and

we were sure that this had come not from altered feelings on her part,

but from circumstances which had frightened her. It was not her husband

that she feared, but the truth of something that her husband had said to

her. “If there is anything more to tell, for God’s sake tell it,” we

said, addressing ourselves rather to the man than to the woman. Then

Grimes did tell us his story. On the previous evening Mackenzie had

received three or four sovereigns from Mrs. Grimes, being, of course, a

portion of the Doctor’s payments; and early on that morning all

Liquorpond Street had been in a state of excitement with the drunken

fury of Mackenzie’s wife. She had found her way into the Spotted Dog,

and was being actually extruded by the strength of Grimes himself,--of

Grimes, who had been brought down, half dressed, from his bed-room by

the row,--when Mackenzie himself, equally drunk, appeared upon the

scene. “No, John;--not equally drunk,” said Mrs. Grimes. “Bother!”

exclaimed her husband, going on with his story. The man had struggled to

take the woman by the arm, and the two had fallen and rolled in the

street together. “I was looking out of the window, and it was awful to

see,” said Mrs. Grimes. We felt that it was “awful to hear.” A man,--and

such a man, rolling in the gutter with a drunken woman,--himself

drunk,--and that woman his wife! “There aint to be no more of it at the

Spotted Dog; that’s all,” said John Grimes, as he finished his part of

the story.

Then, at last, Mrs. Grimes became voluble. All this had occurred before

nine in the morning. “The woman must have been at it all night,” she

said. “So must the man,” said John. “Anyways he came back about dinner,

and he was sober then. I asked him not to go up, and offered to make him

a cup of tea. It was just as you’d gone out after dinner, John.”

“He won’t have no more tea here,” said John.

“And he didn’t have any then. He wouldn’t, he said, have any tea, but

went up stairs. What was I to do? I couldn’t tell him as he shouldn’t.

Well;--during the row in the morning John had said something as to

Mackenzie not coming about the premises any more.”

“Of course I did,” said Grimes.

“He was a little cut, then, no doubt,” continued the lady; “and I didn’t

think as he would have noticed what John had said.”

“I mean it to be noticed now.”

“He had noticed it then, Sir, though he wasn’t just as he should be at

that hour of the morning. Well;--what does he do? He goes up stairs and

packs up all the papers at once. Leastways, that’s as I suppose. They

aint there now. You can go and look if you please, Sir. Well; when he

came down, whether I was in the kitchen,--though it isn’t often as my

eyes is off the bar, or in the tap-room, or busy drawing, which I do do

sometimes, Sir, when there are a many calling for liquor, I can’t

say;--but if I aint never to stand upright again, I didn’t see him pass

out with the box. But Miss Wilcox did. You can ask her.” Miss Wilcox was

the young lady in the bar, whom we did not think ourselves called upon

to examine, feeling no doubt whatever as to the fact of the box having

been taken away by Mackenzie. In all this Mrs. Grimes seemed to defend

herself, as though some serious charge was to be brought against her;

whereas all that she had done had been done out of pure charity; and in

exercising her charity towards Mackenzie she had shown an almost

exaggerated kindness towards ourselves.

“If there’s anything wrong, it isn’t your fault,” we said.

“Nor yet mine,” said John Grimes.

“No, indeed,” we replied.

“It aint none of our faults,” continued he; “only this;--you can’t wash

a blackamoor white, nor it aint no use trying. He don’t come here any

more, that’s all. A man in drink we don’t mind. We has to put up with

it. And they aint that tarnation desperate as is a woman. As long as a

man can keep his legs he’ll try to steady hisself; but there is women

who, when they’ve liquor, gets a fury for rampaging. There aint a many

as can beat this one, Sir. She’s that strong, it took four of us to hold

her; though she can’t hardly do a stroke of work, she’s that weak when

she’s sober.”

We had now heard the whole story, and, while hearing it, had determined

that it was our duty to go round into Cucumber Court and seek the

manuscript and the box. We were unwilling to pry into the wretchedness

of the man’s home; but something was due to the Doctor; and we had to

make that appointment for the morrow, if it were still possible that

such an appointment should be kept. We asked for the number of the

house, remembering well the entrance into the court. Then there was a

whisper between John and his wife, and the husband offered to accompany

us. “It’s a roughish place,” he said, “but they know me.” “He’d better

go along with you,” said Mrs. Grimes. We, of course, were glad of such

companionship, and glad also to find that the landlord, upon whom we had

inflicted so much trouble, was still sufficiently our friend to take

this trouble on our behalf.

“It’s a dreary place enough,” said Grimes, as he led us up the narrow

archway. Indeed it was a dreary place. The court spread itself a little

in breadth, but very little, when the passage was passed, and there were

houses on each side of it. There was neither gutter nor, as far as we

saw, drain, but the broken flags were slippery with moist mud, and here

and there, strewed about between the houses, there were the remains of

cabbages and turnip-tops. The place swarmed with children, over whom one

ghastly gas-lamp at the end of the court threw a flickering and

uncertain light. There was a clamour of scolding voices, to which it

seemed that no heed was paid; and there was a smell of damp rotting

nastiness, amidst which it seemed to us to be almost impossible that

life should be continued. Grimes led the way without further speech, to

the middle house on the left hand of the court, and asked a man who was

sitting on the low threshold of the door whether Mackenzie was within.

“So that be you, Muster Grimes; be it?” said the man, without stirring.

“Yes; he’s there I guess, but they’ve been and took her.” Then we passed

on into the house. “No matter about that,” said the man, as we

apologised for kicking him in our passage. He had not moved, and it had

been impossible to enter without kicking him.

It seemed that Mackenzie held the two rooms on the ground floor, and we

entered them at once. There was no light, but we could see the glimmer

of a fire in the grate; and presently we became aware of the presence of

children. Grimes asked after Mackenzie, and a girl’s voice told us that

he was in the inner room. The publican then demanded a light, and the

girl with some hesitation, lit the end of a farthing candle, which was

fixed in a small bottle. We endeavoured to look round the room by the

glimmer which this afforded, but could see nothing but the presence of

four children, three of whom seemed to be seated in apathy on the

floor. Grimes, taking the candle in his hand, passed at once into the

other room, and we followed him. Holding the bottle something over his

head, he contrived to throw a gleam of light upon one of the two beds

with which the room was fitted, and there we saw the body of Julius

Mackenzie stretched in the torpor of dead intoxication. His head lay

against the wall, his body was across the bed, and his feet dangled on

to the floor. He still wore his dirty boots, and his clothes as he had

worn them in the morning. No sight so piteous, so wretched, and at the

same time so eloquent had we ever seen before. His eyes were closed, and

the light of his face was therefore quenched. His mouth was open, and

the slaver had fallen upon his beard. His dark, clotted hair had been

pulled over his face by the unconscious movement of his hands. There

came from him a stertorous sound of breathing, as though he were being

choked by the attitude in which he lay; and even in his drunkenness

there was an uneasy twitching as of pain about his face. And there sat,

and had been sitting for hours past, the four children in the other

room, knowing the condition of the parent whom they most respected, but

not even endeavouring to do anything for his comfort. What could they

do? They knew, by long training and thorough experience, that a fit of

drunkenness had to be got out of by sleep. To them there was nothing

shocking in it. It was but a periodical misfortune. “She’ll have to own

he’s been and done it now,” said Grimes, looking down upon the man, and

alluding to his wife’s good-natured obstinacy. He handed the candle to

us, and, with a mixture of tenderness and roughness, of which the

roughness was only in the manner and the tenderness was real, he raised

Mackenzie’s head and placed it on the bolster, and lifted the man’s legs

on to the bed. Then he took off the man’s boots, and the old silk

handkerchief from the neck, and pulled the trousers straight, and

arranged the folds of the coat. It was almost as though he were laying

out one that was dead. The eldest girl was now standing by us, and

Grimes asked her how long her father had been in that condition. “Jack

Hoggart brought him in just afore it was dark,” said the girl. Then it

was explained to us that Jack Hoggart was the man whom we had seen

sitting on the door-step.

“And your mother?” asked Grimes.

“The perlice took her afore dinner.”

“And you children;--what have you had to eat?” In answer to this the

girl only shook her head. Grimes took no immediate notice of this, but

called the drunken man by his name, and shook his shoulder, and looked

round to a broken ewer which stood on the little table, for water to

dash upon him;--but there was no water in the jug. He called again and

repeated the shaking, and at last Mackenzie opened his eyes, and in a

dull, half-conscious manner looked up at us. “Come, my man,” said

Grimes, “shake this off and have done with it.”

“Hadn’t you better try to get up?” we asked.

There was a faint attempt at rising, then a smile,--a smile which was

terrible to witness, so sad was all which it said; then a look of utter,

abject misery, coming, as we thought, from a momentary remembrance of

his degradation; and after that he sank back in the dull, brutal,

painless, death-like apathy of absolute unconsciousness.

“It’ll be morning afore he’ll move,” said the girl.

“She’s about right,” said Grimes. “He’s got it too heavy for us to do

anything but just leave him. We’ll take a look for the box and the

papers.”

And the man upon whom we were looking down had been born a gentleman,

and was a finished scholar,--one so well educated, so ripe in literary

acquirement, that we knew few whom we could call his equal. Judging of

the matter by the light of our reason, we cannot say that the horror of

the scene should have been enhanced to us by these recollections. Had

the man been a shoemaker or a coalheaver there would have been enough of

tragedy in it to make an angel weep,--that sight of the child standing

by the bedside of her drunken father, while the other parent was away in

custody,--and in no degree shocked at what she saw, because the thing

was so common to her! But the thought of what the man had been, of what

he was, of what he might have been, and the steps by which he had

brought himself to the foul degradation which we witnessed, filled us

with a dismay which we should hardly have felt had the gifts which he

had polluted and the intellect which he had wasted been less capable of

noble uses.

Our purpose in coming to the court was to rescue the Doctor’s papers

from danger, and we turned to accompany Grimes into the other room. As

we did so the publican asked the girl if she knew anything of a black

box which her father had taken away from the Spotted Dog. “The box is

here,” said the girl.

“And the papers?” asked Grimes. Thereupon the girl shook her head, and

we both hurried into the outer room. I hardly know who first discovered

the sight which we encountered, or whether it was shown to us by the

child. The whole fire-place was strewn with half-burnt sheets of

manuscript. There were scraps of pages of which almost the whole had

been destroyed, others which were hardly more than scorched, and heaps

of paper-ashes all lying tumbled together about the fender. We went down

on our knees to examine them, thinking at the moment that the poor

creature might in his despair have burned his own work and have spared

that of the Doctor. But it was not so. We found scores of charred pages

of the Doctor’s elaborate handwriting. By this time Grimes had found the

open box, and we perceived that the sheets remaining in it were tumbled

and huddled together in absolute confusion. There were pages of the

various volumes mixed with those which Mackenzie himself had written,

and they were all crushed, and rolled, and twisted as though they had

been thrust thither as waste-paper,--out of the way. “‘Twas mother as

done it,” said the girl, “and we put ’em back again when the perlice

took her.”

There was nothing more to learn,--nothing more by the hearing which any

useful clue could be obtained. What had been the exact course of the

scenes which had been enacted there that morning it little booted us to

enquire. It was enough and more than enough that we knew that the

mischief had been done. We went down on our knees before the fire, and

rescued from the ashes with our hands every fragment of manuscript that

we could find. Then we put the mass altogether in the box, and gazed

upon the wretched remnants almost in tears. “You had better go and get a

bit of some’at to eat,” said Grimes, handing a coin to the elder girl.

“It’s hard on them to starve ’cause their father’s drunk, Sir.” Then he

took the closed box in his hand and we followed him out into the street.

“I’ll send or step up to look after him to-morrow,” said Grimes, as he

put us and the box into a cab. We little thought when we made to the

drunkard that foolish request to arise, that we should never speak to

him again.

As we returned to our office in the cab that we might deposit the box

there ready for the following day, our mind was chiefly occupied in

thinking over the undeserved grievances which had fallen upon ourselves.

We had been moved by the charitable desire to do services to two

different persons,--to the learned Doctor and to the red-nosed drunkard,

and this had come of it! There had been nothing for us to gain by

assisting either the one or the other. We had taken infinite trouble,

attempting to bring together two men who wanted each other’s

services,--working hard in sheer benevolence;--and what had been the

result? We had spent half an hour on our knees in the undignified and

almost disreputable work of raking among Mrs. Mackenzie’s cinders, and

now we had to face the anger, the dismay, the reproach, and,--worse than

all,--the agony of the Doctor. As to Mackenzie,--we asserted to

ourselves again and again that nothing further could be done for him. He

had made his bed, and he must lie upon it; but, oh! why,--why had we

attempted to meddle with a being so degraded? We got out of the cab at

our office door, thinking of the Doctor’s countenance as we should see

it on the morrow. Our heart sank within us, and we asked ourselves, if

it was so bad with us now, how it would be with us when we returned to

the place on the following morning.

But on the following morning we did return. No doubt each individual

reader to whom we address ourselves has at some period felt that

indescribable load of personal, short-lived care, which causes the heart

to sink down into the boots. It is not great grief that does it;--nor is

it excessive fear; but the unpleasant operation comes from the mixture

of the two. It is the anticipation of some imperfectly-understood evil

that does it,--some evil out of which there might perhaps be an escape

if we could only see the way. In this case we saw no way out of it. The

Doctor was to be with us at one o’clock, and he would come with smiles,

expecting to meet his learned colleague. How should we break it to the

Doctor? We might indeed send to him, putting off the meeting, but the

advantage coming from that would be slight, if any. We must see the

injured Grecian sooner or later; and we had resolved, much as we feared,

that the evil hour should not be postponed. We spent an hour that

morning in arranging the fragments. Of the first volume about a third

had been destroyed. Of the second nearly every page had been either

burned or mutilated. Of the third but little had been injured.

Mackenzie’s own work had fared better than the Doctor’s; but there was

no comfort in that. After what had passed I thought it quite improbable

that the Doctor would make any use of Mackenzie’s work. So much of the

manuscript as could still be placed in continuous pages we laid out upon

the table, volume by volume,--that in the middle sinking down from its

original goodly bulk almost to the dimensions of a poor sermon;--and the

half-burned bits we left in the box. Then we sat ourselves down at our

accustomed table, and pretended to try to work. Our ears were very

sharp, and we heard the Doctor’s step upon our stairs within a minute or

two of the appointed time. Our heart went to the very toes of our

boots. We shuffled in our chair, rose from it, and sat down again,--and

were conscious that we were not equal to the occasion. Hitherto we had,

after some mild literary form, patronised the Doctor,--as a man of

letters in town will patronise his literary friend from the

country;--but we now feared him as a truant school-boy fears his master.

And yet it was so necessary that we should wear some air of

self-assurance!

In a moment he was with us, wearing that bland smile which we knew so

well, and which at the present moment almost overpowered us. We had been

sure that he would wear that smile, and had especially feared it. “Ah,”

said he, grasping us by the hand, “I thought I should have been late. I

see that our friend is not here yet.”

“Doctor,” we replied, “a great misfortune has happened.”

“A great misfortune! Mr. Mackenzie is not dead?”

“No;--he is not dead. Perhaps it would have been better that he had died

long since. He has destroyed your manuscript.” The Doctor’s face fell,

and his hands at the same time, and he stood looking at us. “I need not

tell you, Doctor, what my feelings are, and how great my remorse.”

“Destroyed it!” Then we took him by the hand and led him to the table.

He turned first upon the appetising and comparatively uninjured third

volume, and seemed to think that we had hoaxed him. “This is not

destroyed,” he said, with a smile. But before I could explain anything,

his hands were among the fragments in the box. “As I am a living man,

they have burned it!” he exclaimed. “I--I--I----” Then he turned from

us, and walked twice the length of the room, backwards and forwards,

while we stood still, patiently waiting the explosion of his wrath. “My

friend,” he said, when his walk was over, “a great man underwent the

same sorrow. Newton’s manuscript was burned. I will take it home with

me, and we will say no more about it.” I never thought very much of the

Doctor as a divine, but I hold him to have been as good a Christian as I

ever met.

But that plan of his of saying no more about it could not quite be

carried out. I was endeavouring to explain to him, as I thought it

necessary to do, the circumstances of the case, and he was protesting

his indifference to any such details, when there came a knock at the

door, and the boy who waited on us below ushered Mrs. Grimes into the

room. As the reader is aware, we had, during the last two months, become

very intimate with the landlady of the Spotted Dog, but we had never

hitherto had the pleasure of seeing her outside her own house. “Oh, Mr.

----” she began, and then she paused, seeing the Doctor.

We thought it expedient that there should be some introduction. “Mrs.

Grimes,” we said, “this is the gentleman whose invaluable manuscript has

been destroyed by that unfortunate drunkard.”

“Oh, then you’re the Doctor, Sir?” The Doctor bowed and smiled. His

heart must have been very heavy, but he bowed politely and smiled

sweetly. “Oh, dear,” she said, “I don’t know how to tell you!”

“To tell us what?” asked the Doctor.

“What has happened since?” we demanded. The woman stood shaking before

us, and then sank into a chair. Then arose to us at the moment some idea

that the drunken woman, in her mad rage, had done some great damage to

the Spotted Dog,--had set fire to the house, or injured Mr. Grimes

personally, or perhaps run a muck amidst the jugs and pitchers, window

glass, and gas lights. Something had been done which would give the

Grimeses a pecuniary claim on me or on the Doctor, and the woman had

been sent hither to make the first protest. Oh,--when should I see the

last of the results of my imprudence in having attempted to befriend

such a one as Julius Mackenzie! “If you have anything to tell, you had

better tell it,” we said, gravely.

“He’s been, and----”

“Not destroyed himself?” asked the Doctor.

“Oh yes, Sir. He have indeed,--from ear to ear,--and is now a lying at

the Spotted Dog!”

* * * * *

And so, after all, that was the end of Julius Mackenzie! We need hardly

say that our feelings, which up to that moment had been very hostile to

the man, underwent a sudden revulsion. Poor, overburdened, struggling,

ill-used, abandoned creature! The world had been hard upon him, with a

severity which almost induced one to make complaint against Omnipotence.

The poor wretch had been willing to work, had been industrious in his

calling, had had capacity for work; and he had also struggled gallantly

against his evil fate, had recognised and endeavoured to perform his

duty to his children and to the miserable woman who had brought him to

his ruin!

And that sin of drunkenness had seemed to us to be in him rather the

reflex of her vice than the result of his own vicious tendencies. Still

it might be doubtful whether she had not learned the vice from him. They

had both in truth been drunkards as long as they had been known in the

neighbourhood of the Spotted Dog; but it was stated by all who had known

them there that he was never seen to be drunk unless when she had

disgraced him by the public exposure of her own abomination. Such as he

was he had now come to his end! This was the upshot of his loud claims

for liberty from his youth upwards;--liberty as against his father and

family; liberty as against his college tutor; liberty as against all

pastors, masters, and instructors; liberty as against the conventional

thraldom of the world. He was now lying a wretched corpse at the Spotted

Dog, with his throat cut from ear to ear, till the coroner’s jury should

have decided whether or not they would call him a suicide!

Mrs. Grimes had come to tell us that the coroner was to be at the

Spotted Dog at four o’clock, and to say that her husband hoped that we

would be present. We had seen Mackenzie so lately, and had so much to do

with the employment of the last days of his life, that we could not

refuse this request, though it came accompanied by no legal summons.

Then Mrs. Grimes again became voluble and poured out to us her

biography of Mackenzie as far as she knew it. He had been married to the

woman ten years, and certainly had been a drunkard before he married

her. “As for her, she’d been well-nigh suckled on gin,” said Mrs.

Grimes, “though he didn’t know it, poor fellow.” Whether this was true

or not, she had certainly taken to drink soon after her marriage, and

then his life had been passed in alternate fits of despondency and of

desperate efforts to improve his own condition and that of his children.

Mrs. Grimes declared to us that when the fit came on them,--when the

woman had begun and the man had followed,--they would expend upon drink

in two days what would have kept the family for a fortnight. “They say

as how it was nothing for them to swallow forty shillings’ worth of gin

in forty-eight hours.” The Doctor held up his hands in horror. “And it

didn’t, none of it, come our way,” said Mrs. Grimes. “Indeed, John

wouldn’t let us serve it for ’em.”

She sat there for half an hour, and during the whole time she was

telling us of the man’s life; but the reader will already have heard

more than enough of it. By what immediate demon the woman had been

instigated to burn the husband’s work almost immediately on its

production within her own home, we never heard. Doubtless there had

been some terrible scene in which the man’s sufferings must have been

carried almost beyond endurance. “And he had feelings, Sir, he had,”

said Mrs. Grimes; “he knew as a woman should be decent, and a man’s wife

especial; I’m sure we pitied him so, John and I, that we could have

cried over him. John would say a hard word to him at times, but he’d

have walked round London to do him a good turn. John aint to say

edicated hisself, but he do respect learning.”

When she had told us all, Mrs. Grimes went, and we were left alone with

the Doctor. He at once consented to accompany us to the Spotted Dog, and

we spent the hour that still remained to us in discussing the fate of

the unfortunate man. We doubt whether an allusion was made during the

time to the burned manuscript. If so, it was certainly not made by the

Doctor himself. The tragedy which had occurred in connection with it had

made him feel it to be unfitting even to mention his own loss. That such

a one should have gone to his account in such a manner, without hope,

without belief, and without fear,--as Burley said to Bothwell, and

Bothwell boasted to Burley,--that was the theme of the Doctor’s

discourse. “The mercy of God is infinite,” he said, bowing his head,

with closed eyes and folded hands. To threaten while the life is in the

man is human. To believe in the execution of those threats when the life

has passed away is almost beyond the power of humanity.

At the hour fixed we were at the Spotted Dog, and found there a crowd

assembled. The coroner was already seated in Mrs. Grimes’s little

parlour, and the body as we were told had been laid out in the tap-room.

The inquest was soon over. The fact that he had destroyed himself in the

low state of physical suffering and mental despondency which followed

his intoxication was not doubted. At the very time that he was doing it,

his wife was being taken from the lock-up house to the police office in

the police van. He was not penniless, for he had sent the children out

with money for their breakfasts, giving special caution as to the

youngest, a little toddling thing of three years old;--and then he had

done it. The eldest girl, returning to the house, had found him lying

dead upon the floor. We were called upon for our evidence, and went into

the tap-room accompanied by the Doctor. Alas! the very table which had

been dragged up stairs into the landlady’s bed-room with the charitable

object of assisting Mackenzie in his work,--the table at which we had

sat with him conning the Doctor’s pages--had now been dragged down again

and was used for another purpose. We had little to say as to the matter,

except that we had known the man to be industrious and capable, and that

we had, alas! seen him utterly prostrated by drink on the evening before

his death.

The saddest sight of all on this occasion was the appearance of

Mackenzie’s wife,--whom we had never before seen. She had been brought

there by a policeman, but whether she was still in custody we did not

know. She had been dressed, either by the decency of the police or by

the care of her neighbours, in an old black gown, which was a world too

large and too long for her. And on her head there was a black bonnet

which nearly enveloped her. She was a small woman, and, as far as we

could judge from the glance we got of her face, pale, and worn, and wan.

She had not such outward marks of a drunkard’s career as those which

poor Mackenzie always carried with him. She was taken up to the coroner,

and what answers she gave to him were spoken in so low a voice that they

did not reach us. The policeman, with whom we spoke, told us that she

did not feel it much,--that she was callous now and beyond the power of

mental suffering. “She’s frightened just this minute, Sir; but it isn’t

more than that,” said the policeman. We gave one glance along the table

at the burden which it bore, but we saw nothing beyond the outward lines

of that which had so lately been the figure of a man. We should have

liked to see the countenance once more. The morbid curiosity to see such

horrid sights is strong with most of us. But we did not wish to be

thought to wish to see it,--especially by our friend the Doctor,--and we

abstained from pushing our way to the head of the table. The Doctor

himself remained quiescent in the corner of the room the farthest from

the spectacle. When the matter was submitted to them, the jury lost not

a moment in declaring their verdict. They said that the man had

destroyed himself while suffering under temporary insanity produced by

intoxication. And that was the end of Julius Mackenzie, the scholar.

On the following day the Doctor returned to the country, taking with him

our black box, to the continued use of which, as a sarcophagus, he had

been made very welcome. For our share in bringing upon him the great

catastrophe of his life, he never uttered to us, either by spoken or

written word, a single reproach. That idea of suffering as the great

philosopher had suffered seemed to comfort him. “If Newton bore it,

surely I can,” he said to us with his bland smile, when we renewed the

expression of our regret. Something passed between us, coming more from

us than from him, as to the expediency of finding out some youthful

scholar who could go down to the rectory, and reconstruct from its ruins

the edifice of our friend’s learning. The Doctor had given us some

encouragement, and we had begun to make enquiry, when we received the

following letter:--

“---- Rectory, ---- ----, 18--.

“DEAR MR. ----, --You were so kind as to say that you would

endeavour to find for me an assistant in arranging and

reconstructing the fragments of my work on The Metres of the Greek

Dramatists. Your promise has been an additional kindness.” Dear,

courteous, kind old gentleman! For we knew well that no slightest

sting of sarcasm was intended to be conveyed in these words. “Your

promise has been an additional kindness; but looking upon the

matter carefully, and giving to it the best consideration in my

power, I have determined to relinquish the design. That which has

been destroyed cannot be replaced; and it may well be that it was

not worth replacing. I am old now, and never could do again that

which perhaps I was never fitted to do with any fair prospect of

success. I will never turn again to the ashes of my unborn child;

but will console myself with the memory of my grievance, knowing

well, as I do so, that consolation from the severity of harsh but

just criticism might have been more difficult to find. When I think

of the end of my efforts as a scholar, my mind reverts to the

terrible and fatal catastrophe of one whose scholarship was

infinitely more finished and more ripe than mine.

“Whenever it may suit you to come into this part of the country,

pray remember that it will give very great pleasure to myself and

to my daughter to welcome you at our parsonage.

“Believe me to be,

“My dear Mr. ----,

“Yours very sincerely,

“---- ----.”

We never have found the time to accept the Doctor’s invitation, and our

eyes have never again rested on the black box containing the ashes of

the unborn child to which the Doctor will never turn again. We can

picture him to ourselves standing, full of thought, with his hand upon

the lid, but never venturing to turn the lock. Indeed, we do not doubt

but that the key of the box is put away among other secret treasures, a

lock of his wife’s hair, perhaps, and the little shoe of the boy who did

not live long enough to stand at his father’s knee. For a tender,

soft-hearted man was the Doctor, and one who fed much on the memories of

the past.

We often called upon Mr. and Mrs. Grimes at the Spotted Dog, and would

sit there talking of Mackenzie and his family. Mackenzie’s widow soon

vanished out of the neighbourhood, and no one there knew what was the

fate of her or of her children. And then also Mr. Grimes went and took

his wife with him. But they could not be said to vanish. Scratching his

head one day, he told me with a dolorous voice that he had--made his

fortune. “We’ve got as snug a little place as ever you see, just two

mile out of Colchester,” said Mrs. Grimes triumphantly,--“with thirty

acres of land just to amuse John. And as for the Spotted Dog, I’m that

sick of it, another year’d wear me to a dry bone.” We looked at her, and

saw no tendency that way. And we looked at John, and thought that he was

not triumphant.

Who followed Mr. and Mrs. Grimes at the Spotted Dog we have never

visited Liquorpond Street to see.

MRS. BRUMBY.

[Illustration]

MRS. BRUMBY.

We think that we are justified in asserting that of all the persons with

whom we have been brought in contact in the course of our editorial

experiences, men or women, boys or girls, Mrs. Brumby was the most

hateful and the most hated. We are sure of this,--that for some months

she was the most feared, during which period she made life a burden to

us, and more than once induced us to calculate whether it would not be

well that we should abandon our public duties and retire to some private

corner into which it would be impossible that Mrs. Brumby should follow

us. Years have rolled on since then, and we believe that Mrs. Brumby has

gone before the great Judge and been called upon to account for the

injuries she did us. We know that she went from these shores to a

distant land when her nefarious projects failed at home. She was then by

no means a young woman. We never could find that she left relative or

friend behind her, and we know of none now, except those close and

dearest friends of our own who supported us in our misery, who remember

even that she existed. Whether she be alive or whether she be dead, her

story shall be told,--not in a spirit of revenge, but with strict

justice.

What there was in her of good shall be set down with honesty; and indeed

there was much in her that was good. She was energetic, full of

resources, very brave, constant, devoted to the interests of the poor

creature whose name she bore, and by no means a fool. She was utterly

unscrupulous, dishonest, a liar, cruel, hard as a nether mill-stone to

all the world except Lieutenant Brumby,--harder to him than to all the

world besides when he made any faintest attempt at rebellion,--and as

far as we could judge, absolutely without conscience. Had she been a man

and had circumstances favoured her, she might have been a prime

minister, or an archbishop, or a chief justice. We intend no silly

satire on present or past holders of the great offices indicated; but we

think that they have generally been achieved by such a combination of

intellect, perseverance, audacity, and readiness as that which Mrs.

Brumby certainly possessed. And that freedom from the weakness of

scruple,--which in men who have risen in public life we may perhaps call

adaptability to compromise,--was in her so strong, that had she been a

man, she would have trimmed her bark to any wind that blew, and

certainly have sailed into some port. But she was a woman,--and the

ports were not open to her.

Those ports were not open to her which had she been a man would have

been within her reach; but,--fortunately for us and for the world at

large as to the general question, though so very unfortunately as

regarded this special case,--the port of literature is open to women. It

seems to be the only really desirable harbour to which a female captain

can steer her vessel with much hope of success. There are the Fine Arts,

no doubt. There seems to be no reason why a woman should not paint as

well as Titian. But they don’t. With the pen they hold their own, and

certainly run a better race against men on that course than on any

other. Mrs. Brumby, who was very desirous of running a race and winning

a place, and who had seen all this, put on her cap, and jacket, and

boots, chose her colours, and entered her name. Why, oh why, did she

select the course upon which we, wretched we, were bound by our duties

to regulate the running?

We may as well say at once that though Mrs. Brumby might have made a

very good prime minister, she could not write a paper for a magazine, or

produce literary work of any description that was worth paper and ink.

We feel sure that we may declare without hesitation that no perseverance

on her part, no labour however unswerving, no training however long,

would have enabled her to do in a fitting manner even a review for the

“Literary Curricle.” There was very much in her, but that was not in

her. We find it difficult to describe the special deficiency under which

she laboured;--but it existed and was past remedy. As a man suffering

from a chronic stiff joint cannot run, and cannot hope to run, so was it

with her. She could not combine words so as to make sentences, or

sentences so as to make paragraphs. She did not know what style meant.

We believe that had she ever read, Johnson, Gibbon, Archdeacon Coxe, Mr.

Grote, and Macaulay would have been all the same to her. And yet this

woman chose literature as her profession, and clung to it for awhile

with a persistence which brought her nearer to the rewards of success

than many come who are at all points worthy to receive them.

We have said that she was not a young woman when we knew her. We cannot

fancy her to have been ever young. We cannot bring our imagination to

picture to ourselves the person of Mrs. Brumby surrounded by the

advantages of youth. When we knew her she may probably have been forty

or forty-five, and she then possessed a rigidity of demeanour and a

sternness of presence which we think must have become her better than

any softer guise or more tender phase of manner could ever have done in

her earlier years. There was no attempt about her to disguise or modify

her sex, such as women have made since those days. She talked much about

her husband, the lieutenant, and she wore a double roll of very stiff

dark brown curls on each side of her face,--or rather over her

brows,--which would not have been worn by a woman meaning to throw off

as far as possible her femininity. Whether those curls were or were not

artificial we never knew. Our male acquaintances who saw her used to

swear that they were false, but a lady who once saw her, assured us that

they were real. She told us that there is a kind of hair growing on the

heads of some women, thick, short, crisp, and shiny, which will

maintain its curl unbroken and unruffled for days. She told us, also,

that women blessed with such hair are always pachy-dermatous and

strong-minded. Such certainly was the character of Mrs. Brumby. She was

a tall, thin woman, not very tall or very thin. For aught that we can

remember, her figure may have been good;--but we do remember well that

she never seemed to us to have any charm of womanhood. There was a

certain fire in her dark eyes,--eyes which were, we think, quite

black,--but it was the fire of contention and not of love. Her features

were well formed, her nose somewhat long, and her lips thin, and her

face too narrow, perhaps, for beauty. Her chin was long, and the space

from her nose to her upper lip was long. She always carried a

well-wearing brown complexion;--a complexion with which no man had a

right to find fault, but which, to a pondering, speculative man,

produced unconsciously a consideration whether, in a matter of kissing,

an ordinary mahogany table did not offer a preferable surface. When we

saw her she wore, we think always, a dark stuff dress,--a fur tippet in

winter and a most ill-arranged shawl in summer,--and a large commanding

bonnet, which grew in our eyes till it assumed all the attributes of a

helmet,--inspiring that reverence and creating that fear which

Minerva’s headgear is intended to produce. When we add our conviction

that Mrs. Brumby trusted nothing to female charms, that she neither

suffered nor enjoyed anything from female vanity, and that the

lieutenant was perfectly safe, let her roam the world alone, as she

might, in search of editors, we shall have said enough to introduce the

lady to our readers.

Of her early life, or their early lives, we know nothing; but the

unfortunate circumstances which brought us into contact with Mrs.

Brumby, made us also acquainted with the lieutenant. The lieutenant, we

think, was younger than his wife;--a good deal younger we used to

imagine, though his looks may have been deceptive. He was a confirmed

invalid, and there are phases of ill-health which give an appearance of

youthfulness rather than of age. What was his special ailing we never

heard,--though, as we shall mention further on, we had our own idea on

that subject; but he was always spoken of in our hearing as one who

always had been ill, who always was ill, who always would be ill, and

who never ought to think of getting well. He had been in some regiment

called the Duke of Sussex’s Own, and his wife used to imagine that her

claims upon the public as a woman of literature were enhanced by the

royalty of her husband’s corps. We never knew her attempt to make any

other use whatever of his services. He was not confined to his bed, and

could walk at any rate about the house; but she never asked him, or

allowed him to do anything. Whether he ever succeeded in getting his

face outside the door we do not know. He wore, when we saw him, an old

dressing-gown and slippers. He was a pale, slight, light-haired man, and

we fancy that he took a delight in novels.

Their settled income consisted of his half-pay and some very small

property which belonged to her. Together they might perhaps have

possessed £150 per annum. When we knew them they had lodgings in Harpur

Street, near Theobald’s Road, and she had resolved to push her way in

London as a woman of literature. She had been told that she would have

to deal with hard people, and that she must herself be hard;--that

advantage would be taken of her weakness, and that she must therefore

struggle vehemently to equal the strength of those with whom she would

be brought in contact;--that editors, publishers, and brother authors

would suck her brains and give her nothing for them, and that,

therefore, she must get what she could out of them, giving them as

little as possible in return. It was an evil lesson that she had

learned; but she omitted nothing in the performance of the duties which

that lesson imposed upon her.

She first came to us with a pressing introduction from an acquaintance

of ours who was connected with a weekly publication called the “Literary

Curricle.” The “Literary Curricle” was not in our estimation a strong

paper, and we will own that we despised it. We did not think very much

of the acquaintance by whom the strong introductory letter was written.

But Mrs. Brumby forced herself into our presence with the letter in her

hand, and before she left us extracted from us a promise that we would

read a manuscript which she pulled out of a bag which she carried with

her. Of that first interview a short account shall be given, but it must

first be explained that the editor of the “Literary Curricle” had

received Mrs. Brumby with another letter from another editor, whom she

had first taken by storm without any introduction whatever. This first

gentleman, whom we had not the pleasure of knowing, had, under what

pressure we who knew the lady can imagine, printed three or four short

paragraphs from Mrs. Brumby’s pen. Whether they reached publication we

never could learn, but we saw the printed slips. He, however, passed

her on to the “Literary Curricle,”--which dealt almost exclusively in

the reviewing of books,--and our friend at the office of that

influential “organ” sent her to us with an intimation that her very

peculiar and well-developed talents were adapted rather for the creation

of tales, or the composition of original treatises, than for reviewing.

The letter was very strong, and we learned afterwards that Mrs. Brumby

had consented to abandon her connection with the “Literary Curricle”

only on the receipt of a letter in her praise that should be very strong

indeed. She rejected the two first offered to her, and herself dictated

the epithets with which the third was loaded. On no other terms would

she leave the office of the “Literary Curricle.”

We cannot say that the letter, strong as it was, had much effect upon

us; but this effect it had perhaps,--that after reading it we could not

speak to the lady with that acerbity which we might have used had she

come to us without it. As it was we were not very civil, and began our

intercourse by assuring her that we could not avail ourselves of her

services. Having said so, and observing that she still kept her seat, we

rose from our chair, being well aware how potent a spell that movement

is wont to exercise upon visitors who are unwilling to go. She kept her

seat and argued the matter out with us. A magazine such as that which we

then conducted must, she surmised, require depth of erudition, keenness

of intellect, grasp of hand, force of expression, and lightness of

touch. That she possessed all these gifts she had, she alleged, brought

to us convincing evidence. There was the letter from the editor of the

“Literary Curricle,” with which she had been long connected, declaring

the fact! Did we mean to cast doubt upon the word of our own intimate

friend? For the gentleman at the office of the “Literary Curricle” had

written to us as “Dear ----,” though as far as we could remember we had

never spoken half-a-dozen words to him in our life. Then she repeated

the explanation, given by her godfather, of the abrupt termination of

the close connection which had long existed between her and the

“Curricle.” She could not bring herself to waste her energies in the

reviewing of books. At that moment we certainly did believe that she had

been long engaged on the “Curricle,” though there was certainly not a

word in our correspondent’s letter absolutely stating that to be the

fact. He declared to us her capabilities and excellences, but did not

say that he had ever used them himself. Indeed, he told us that great

as they were, they were hardly suited for his work. She, before she had

left us on that occasion, had committed herself to positive falsehoods.

She boasted of the income she had earned from two periodicals, whereas

up to that moment she had never received a shilling for what she had

written.

We find it difficult, even after so many years,--when the shame of the

thing has worn off together with the hairs of our head,--to explain how

it was that we allowed her to get, in the first instance, any hold upon

us. We did not care a brass farthing for the man who had written from

the “Literary Curricle.” His letter to us was an impertinence, and we

should have stated as much to Mrs. Brumby had we cared to go into such

matter with her. And our first feelings with regard to the lady herself

were feelings of dislike,--and almost of contempt even, though we did

believe that she had been a writer for the press. We disliked her nose,

and her lips, and her bonnet, and the colour of her face. We didn’t want

her. Though we were very much younger then than we are now, we had

already learned to set our backs up against strong-minded female

intruders. As we said before, we rose from our chair with the idea of

banishing her, not absolutely uncivilly, but altogether unceremoniously.

It never occurred to us during that meeting that she could be of any

possible service to us, or that we should ever be of any slightest

service to her. Nevertheless she had extracted from us a great many

words, and had made a great many observations herself before she left

us.

When a man speaks a great many words it is impossible that he should

remember what they all were. That we told Mrs. Brumby on that occasion

that we did not doubt but that we would use the manuscript which she

left in our hands, we are quite sure was not true. We never went so near

making a promise in our lives,--even when pressed by youth and

beauty,--and are quite sure that what we did say to Mrs. Brumby was by

no means near akin to this. That we undertook to read the manuscript we

think probable, and therein lay our first fault,--the unfortunate slip

from which our future troubles sprang, and grew to such terrible

dimensions. We cannot now remember how the hated parcel, the abominable

roll, came into our hands. We do remember the face and form and figure

of the woman as she brought it out of the large reticule which she

carried, and we remember also how we put our hands behind us to avoid

it, as she presented it to us. We told her flatly that we did not want

it, and would not have it;--and yet it came into our hands! We think

that it must have been placed close to our elbow, and that, being used

to such playthings, we took it up. We know that it was in our hands, and

that we did not know how to rid ourselves of it when she began to tell

us the story of the lieutenant. We were hard-hearted enough to inform

her,--as we have, under perhaps lesser compulsion, informed others

since,--that the distress of the man or of the woman should never be

accepted as a reason for publishing the works of the writer. She

answered us gallantly enough that she had never been weak enough or

foolish enough so to think “I base my claim to attention,” she said, “on

quite another ground. Do not suppose, Sir, that I am appealing to your

pity. I scorn to do so. But I wish you should know my position as a

married woman, and that you should understand that my husband, though

unfortunately an invalid, has been long attached to a regiment which is

peculiarly the Duke of Sussex’s own. You cannot but be aware of the

connection which His Royal Highness has long maintained with

literature.”

Mrs. Brumby could not write, but she could speak. The words she had just

uttered were absolutely devoid of sense. The absurdity of them was

ludicrous and gross. But they were not without a certain efficacy. They

did not fill us with any respect for her literary capacity because of

her connection with the Duke of Sussex, but they did make us feel that

she was able to speak up for herself. We are told sometimes that the

world accords to a man that treatment which he himself boldly demands;

and though the statement seems to be monstrous, there is much truth in

it. When Mrs. Brumby spoke of her husband’s regiment being “peculiarly

the Duke of Sussex’s own,” she used a tone which compelled from us more

courtesy than we had hitherto shown her. We knew that the duke was

neither a man of letters nor a warrior, though he had a library, and, as

we were now told, a regiment. Had he been both, his being so would have

formed no legitimate claim for Mrs. Brumby upon us. But, nevertheless,

the royal duke helped her to win her way. It was not his royalty, but

her audacity that was prevailing. She sat with us for more than an hour;

and when she left us the manuscript was with us, and we had no doubt

undertaken to read it. We are perfectly certain that at that time we had

not gone beyond this in the way of promising assistance to Mrs. Brumby.

The would-be author, who cannot make his way either by intellect or

favour, can hardly do better, perhaps, than establish a grievance. Let

there be anything of a case of ill-usage against editor or publisher,

and the aspirant, if he be energetic and unscrupulous, will greatly

increase his chance of working his way into print. Mrs. Brumby was both

energetic and unscrupulous, and she did establish her grievance. As soon

as she brought her first visit to a close, the roll, which was still in

our hands, was chucked across our table to a corner commodiously

supported by the wall, so that occasionally there was accumulated in it

a heap of such unwelcome manuscripts. In the doing of this, in the

moment of our so chucking the parcel, it was always our conscientious

intention to make a clearance of the whole heap, at the very furthest,

by the end of the week. We knew that strong hopes were bound up in those

various little packets, that eager thoughts were imprisoned there the

owners of which believed that they were endowed with wings fit for

aërial soaring, that young hearts,--ay, and old hearts, too,--sore with

deferred hope, were waiting to know whether their aspirations might now

be realised, whether those azure wings might at last be released from

bondage and allowed to try their strength in the broad sunlight of

public favour. We think, too, that we had a conscience; and, perhaps,

the heap was cleared as frequently as are the heaps of other editors.

But there it would grow, in the commodious corner of our big table, too

often for our own peace of mind. The aspect of each individual little

parcel would be known to us, and we would allow ourselves to fancy that

by certain external signs we could tell the nature of the interior. Some

of them would promise well,--so well as to create even almost an

appetite for their perusal. But there would be others from which we

would turn with aversion, which we seemed to abhor, which, when we

handled the heap, our fingers would refuse to touch, and which, thus

lying there neglected and ill-used, would have the dust of many days

added to those other marks which inspired disgust. We confess that as

soon as Mrs. Brumby’s back was turned her roll was sent in upon this

heap with that determined force which a strong feeling of dislike can

lend even to a man’s little finger. And there it lay for,--perhaps a

fortnight. When during that period we extracted first one packet and

then another for judgment, we would still leave Mrs. Brumby’s roll

behind in the corner. On such occasions a pang of conscience will touch

the heart; some idea of neglected duty will be present to the mind; a

silent promise will perhaps be made that it shall be the next; some

momentary sudden resolve will be half formed that for the future a rigid

order of succession shall be maintained, which no favour shall be

allowed to infringe. But, alas! when the hand is again at work

selecting, the odious ugly thing is left behind, till at last it becomes

infested with strange terrors, with an absolute power of its own, and

the guilty conscience will become afraid. All this happened in regard to

Mrs. Brumby’s manuscript. “Dear, dear, yes;--Mrs. Brumby!” we would

catch ourselves exclaiming with that silent inward voice which

occasionally makes itself audible to most of us. And then, quite

silently, without even whispered violence, we would devote Mrs. Brumby

to the infernal gods. And so the packet remained amidst the

heap,--perhaps for a fortnight.

“There’s a lady waiting in your room, Sir!” This was said to us one

morning on our reaching our office by the lad whom we used to call our

clerk. He is now managing a red-hot Tory newspaper down in Barsetshire,

has a long beard, a flaring eye, a round belly, and is upon the whole

the most arrogant personage we know. In the days of Mrs. Brumby he was a

little wizened fellow about eighteen years old, but looking three years

younger, modest, often almost dumb, and in regard to ourselves not only

reverential but timid. We turned upon him in great anger. What business

had any woman to be in our room in our absence? Were not our orders on

this subject exact and very urgent? Was he not kept at an expense of

14_s._ a week,--we did not actually throw the amount in his teeth, but

such was intended to be the effect of our rebuke,--at 14_s._ a week,

paid out of our own pocket,--nominally, indeed, as a clerk, but chiefly

for the very purpose of keeping female visitors out of our room? And

now, in our absence and in his, there was actually a woman among the

manuscripts! We felt from the first moment that it was Mrs. Brumby.

With bated breath and downcast eyes the lad explained to us his

inability to exclude her. “She walked straight in, right over me,” he

said; “and as for being alone,--she hasn’t been alone. I haven’t left

her, not a minute.”

We walked at once into our own room, feeling how fruitless it was to

discuss the matter further with the boy in the passage, and there we

found Mrs. Brumby seated in the chair opposite to our own. We had

gathered ourselves up, if we may so describe an action which was purely

mental, with a view to severity. We thought that her intrusion was

altogether unwarrantable, and that it behoved us to let her know that

such was the case. We entered the room with a clouded brow, and intended

that she should read our displeasure in our eyes. But Mrs. Brumby

could,--“gather herself up,” quite as well as we could do, and she did

so. She also could call clouds to her forehead and could flash anger

from her eyes. “Madam,” we exclaimed, as we paused for a moment, and

looked at her.

But she cared nothing for our “Madam,” and condescended to no apology.

Rising from her chair, she asked us why we had not kept the promise we

had made her to use her article in our next number. We don’t know how

far our readers will understand all that was included in this

accusation. Use her contribution in our next number! It had never

occurred to us as probable, or hardly as possible, that we should use it

in any number. Our eye glanced at the heap to see whether her fingers

had been at work, but we perceived that the heap had not been touched.

We have always flattered ourselves that no one can touch our heap

without our knowing it. She saw the motion of our eye, and at once

understood it. Mrs. Brumby, no doubt, possessed great intelligence, and,

moreover, a certain majesty of demeanour. There was always something of

the helmet of Minerva in the bonnet which she wore. Her shawl was an old

shawl, but she was never ashamed of it; and she could always put herself

forward, as though there were nothing behind her to be concealed, the

concealing of which was a burden to her. “I cannot suppose,” she said,

“that my paper has been altogether neglected!”

We picked out the roll with all the audacity we could assume, and

proceeded to explain how very much in error she was in supposing that we

had ever even hinted at its publication. We had certainly said that we

would read it, mentioning no time. We never did mention any time in

making any such promise. “You named a week, Sir,” said Mrs. Brumby, “and

now a month has passed by. You assured me that it would be accepted

unless returned within seven days. Of course it will be accepted now.”

We contradicted her flatly. We explained, we protested, we threatened.

We endeavoured to put the manuscript into her hand, and made a faint

attempt to stick it into her bag. She was indignant, dignified, and

very strong. She said nothing on that occasion about legal proceedings,

but stuck manfully to her assertion that we had bound ourselves to

decide upon her manuscript within a week. “Do you think, Sir,” said she,

“that I would entrust the very essence of my brain to the keeping of a

stranger, without some such assurance as that?” We acknowledged that we

had undertaken to read the paper, but again disowned the week. “And how

long would you be justified in taking?” demanded Mrs. Brumby. “If a

month, why not a year? Does it not occur to you, Sir, that when the very

best of my intellect, my inmost thoughts, lie there at your disposal,”

and she pointed to the heap, “it may be possible that a property has

been confided to you too valuable to justify neglect? Had I given you a

ring to keep you would have locked it up, but the best jewels of my mind

are left to the tender mercies of your charwoman.” What she said was

absolutely nonsense,--abominable, villanous trash; but she said it so

well that we found ourselves apologising for our own misconduct. There

had perhaps been a little undue delay. In our peculiar business such

would occasionally occur. When we had got to this, any expression of our

wrath at her intrusion was impossible. As we entered the room we had

intended almost to fling her manuscript at her head. We now found

ourselves handling it almost affectionately while we expressed regret

for our want of punctuality. Mrs. Brumby was gracious, and pardoned us,

but her forgiveness was not of the kind which denotes the intention of

the injured one to forget as well as forgive the trespass. She had

suffered from us a great injustice; but she would say no more on that

score now, on the condition that we would at once attend to her essay.

She thrice repeated the words, “at once,” and she did so without rebuke

from us. And then she made us a proposition, the like of which never

reached us before or since. Would we fix an hour within the next day or

two at which we would call upon her in Harpur Street and arrange as to

terms? The lieutenant, she said, would be delighted to make our

acquaintance. Call upon her!--upon Mrs. Brumby! Travel to Harpur Street,

Theobald’s Road, on the business of a chance bit of scribbling, which

was wholly indifferent to us except in so far as it was a trouble to us!

And then we were invited to make arrangements as to terms! Terms!! Had

the owner of the most illustrious lips in the land offered to make us

known in those days to the partner of her greatness, she could not have

done so with more assurance that she was conferring on us an honour,

than was assumed by Mrs. Brumby when she proposed to introduce us to the

lieutenant.

When many wrongs are concentrated in one short speech, and great

injuries inflicted by a few cleverly-combined words, it is generally

difficult to reply so that some of the wrongs shall not pass unnoticed.

We cannot always be so happy as was Mr. John Robinson, when in saying

that he hadn’t been “dead at all,” he did really say everything that the

occasion required. We were so dismayed by the proposition that we should

go to Harpur Street, so hurt in our own personal dignity, that we lost

ourselves in endeavouring to make it understood that such a journey on

our part was quite out of the question. “Were we to do that, Mrs.

Brumby, we should live in cabs and spend our entire days in making

visits.” She smiled at us as we endeavoured to express our indignation,

and said something as to circumstances being different in different

cases;--something also, if we remember right, she hinted as to the

intelligence needed for discovering the differences. She left our office

quicker than we had expected, saying that as we could not afford to

spend our time in cabs she would call again on the day but one

following. Her departure was almost abrupt, but she went apparently in

good-humour. It never occurred to us at the moment to suspect that she

hurried away before we should have had time to repudiate certain

suggestions which she had made.

When we found ourselves alone with the roll of paper in our hands, we

were very angry with Mrs. Brumby, but almost more angry with ourselves.

We were in no way bound to the woman, and yet she had in some degree

substantiated a claim upon us. We piqued ourselves specially on never

making any promise beyond the vaguest assurance that this or that

proposed contribution should receive consideration at some altogether

undefined time; but now we were positively pledged to read Mrs. Brumby’s

effusion and have our verdict ready by the day after to-morrow. We were

wont, too, to keep ourselves much secluded from strangers; and here was

Mrs. Brumby, who had already been with us twice, positively entitled to

a third audience. We had been scolded, and then forgiven, and then

ridiculed by a woman who was old, and ugly, and false! And there was

present to us a conviction that though she was old, and ugly, and false,

Mrs. Brumby was no ordinary woman. Perhaps it might be that she was

really qualified to give us valuable assistance in regard to the

magazine, as to which we must own we were sometimes driven to use

matter that was not quite so brilliant as, for our readers’ sakes, we

would have wished it to be. We feel ourselves compelled to admit that

old and ugly women, taken on the average, do better literary work than

they who are young and pretty. I did not like Mrs. Brumby, but it might

be that in her the age would find another De Staël. So thinking, we cut

the little string, and had the manuscript open in our own hands. We

cannot remember whether she had already indicated to us the subject of

the essay, but it was headed, “Costume in 18--.” There were perhaps

thirty closely-filled pages, of which we read perhaps a third. The

handwriting was unexceptionable, orderly, clean, and legible; but the

matter was undeniable twaddle. It proffered advice to women that they

should be simple, and to men that they should be cleanly in their

attire. Anything of less worth for the purpose of amusement or of

instruction could not be imagined. There was, in fact, nothing in it. It

has been our fate to look at a great many such essays, and to cause them

at once either to be destroyed or returned. There could be no doubt at

all as to Mrs. Brumby’s essay.

She came punctual as the clock. As she seated herself in our chair and

made some remark as to her hope that we were satisfied, we felt

something like fear steal across our bosom. We were about to give

offence, and dreaded the arguments that would follow. It was, however,

quite clear that we could not publish Mrs. Brumby’s essay on Costume,

and therefore, though she looked more like Minerva now than ever, we

must go through our task. We told her in half-a-dozen words that we had

read the paper, and that it would not suit our columns.

“Not suit your columns!” she said, looking at us by no means in sorrow,

but in great anger. “You do not mean to trifle with me like that after

all you have made me suffer?” We protested that we were responsible for

none of her sufferings. “Sir,” she said, “when I was last here you owned

the wrong you had done me.” We felt that we must protest against this,

and we rose in our wrath. There were two of us angry now.

“Madam,” we said, “you have kindly offered us your essay, and we have

courteously declined it. You will allow us to say that this must end the

matter.” There were allusions here to kindness and courtesy, but the

reader will understand that the sense of the words was altogether

changed by the tone of the voice.

“Indeed, Sir, the matter will not be ended so. If you think that your

position will enable you to trample upon those who make literature

really a profession, you are very much mistaken.”

“Mrs. Brumby,” we said, “we can give you no other answer, and as our

time is valuable----”

“Time valuable!” she exclaimed,--and as she stood up an artist might

have taken her for a model of Minerva had she only held a spear in her

hand. “And is no time valuable, do you think, but yours? I had, Sir,

your distinct promise that the paper should be published if it was left

in your hands above a week.”

“That is untrue, Madam.”

“Untrue, Sir?”

“Absolutely untrue.” Mrs. Brumby was undoubtedly a woman, and might be

very like a goddess, but we were not going to allow her to palm off upon

us without flat contradiction so absolute a falsehood as that. “We never

dreamed of publishing your paper.”

“Then why, Sir, have you troubled yourself to read it,--from the

beginning to the end?” We had certainly intimated that we had made

ourselves acquainted with the entire essay, but we had in fact skimmed

and skipped through about a third of it.

“How dare you say, Sir, you have never dreamed of publishing it, when

you know that you studied it with that view?”

“We didn’t read it all,” we said, “but we read quite enough.”

“And yet but this moment ago you told me that you had perused it

carefully.” The word peruse we certainly never used in our life. We

object to “perusing,” as we do to “commencing” and “performing.” We

“read,” and we “begin,” and we “do.” As to that assurance which the word

“carefully” would intend to convey, we believe that we were to that

extent guilty. “I think, Sir,” she continued, “that you had better see

the lieutenant.”

“With a view to fighting the gentleman?” we asked.

“No, Sir. An officer in the Duke of Sussex’s Own draws his sword against

no enemy so unworthy of his steel.” She had told me at a former

interview that the lieutenant was so confirmed an invalid as to be

barely able, on his best days, to drag himself out of bed. “One fights

with one’s equal, but the law gives redress from injury, whether it be

inflicted by equal, by superior, or by,--INFERIOR.” And Mrs. Brumby, as

she uttered the last word, wagged her helmet at us in a manner which

left no doubt as to the position which she assigned to us.

It became clearly necessary that an end should be put to an intercourse

which had become so very unpleasant. We told our Minerva very plainly

that we must beg her to leave us. There is, however, nothing more

difficult to achieve than the expulsion of a woman who is unwilling to

quit the place she occupies. We remember to have seen a lady take

possession of a seat in a mail coach to which she was not entitled, and

which had been booked and paid for by another person. The agent for the

coaching business desired her with many threats to descend, but she

simply replied that the journey to her was a matter of such moment that

she felt herself called upon to keep her place. The agent sent the

coachman to pull her out. The coachman threatened,--with his hands as

well as with his words,--and then set the guard at her. The guard

attacked her with inflamed visage and fearful words about Her Majesty’s

mails, and then set the ostlers at her. We thought the ostlers were

going to handle her roughly, but it ended by their scratching their

heads, and by a declaration on the part of one of them that she was “the

rummest go he’d ever seen.” She was a woman, and they couldn’t touch

her. A policeman was called upon for assistance, who offered to lock her

up, but he could only do so if allowed to lock up the whole coach as

well. It was ended by the production of another coach, by an exchange of

the luggage and passengers, by a delay of two hours, and an embarrassing

possession of the original vehicle by the lady in the midst of a crowd

of jeering boys and girls. We could tell Mrs. Brumby to go, and we could

direct our boy to open the door, and we could make motions indicatory of

departure with our left hand, but we could not forcibly turn her out of

the room. She asked us for the name of our lawyer, and we did write down

for her on a slip of paper the address of a most respectable firm, whom

we were pleased to regard as our attorneys, but who had never yet earned

six and eightpence from the magazine. Young Sharp, of the firm of Sharp

and Butterwell, was our friend, and would no doubt see to the matter for

us should it be necessary;--but we could not believe that the woman

would be so foolish. She made various assertions to us as to her

position in the world of literature, and it was on this occasion that

she brought out those printed slips which we have before mentioned. She

offered to refer the matter in dispute between us to the arbitration of

the editor of the “Curricle;” and when we indignantly declined such

interference, protesting that there was no matter in dispute, she again

informed us that if we thought to trample upon her we were very much

mistaken. Then there occurred a little episode which moved us to

laughter in the midst of our wrath. Our boy, in obedience to our

pressing commands that he should usher Mrs. Brumby out of our presence,

did lightly touch her arm. Feeling the degradation of the assault,

Minerva swung round upon the unfortunate lad and gave him a box on the

ear which we’ll be bound the editor of the “West Barsetshire Gazette”

remembers to this day. “Madam,” we said, as soon as we had swallowed

down the first involuntary attack of laughter, “if you conduct yourself

in this manner we must send for the police.”

“Do, Sir, if you dare,” replied Minerva, “and every man of letters in

the metropolis shall hear of your conduct.” There was nothing in her

threat to move us, but we confess that we were uncomfortable. “Before I

leave you, Sir,” she said, “I will give you one more chance. Will you

perform your contract with me and accept my contribution?”

“Certainly not,” we replied. She afterwards quoted this answer as

admitting a contract.

We are often told that everything must come to an end,--and there was an

end at last to Mrs. Brumby’s visit. She went from us with an assurance

that she should at once return home, pick up the lieutenant,--hinting

that the exertion, caused altogether by our wickedness, might be the

death of that gallant officer,--and go with him direct to her attorney.

The world of literature should hear of the terrible injustice which had

been done to her, and the courts of law should hear of it too.

We confess that we were grievously annoyed. By the time that Mrs. Brumby

had left the premises, our clerk had gone also. He had rushed off to the

nearest police-court to swear an information against her on account of

the box on the ear which she had given him, and we were unable to leave

our desk till he had returned. We found that for the present the doing

of any work in our line of business was quite out of the question. A

calm mind is required for the critical reading of manuscripts, and whose

mind could be calm after such insults as those we had received? We sat

in our chair, idle, reflective, indignant, making resolutions that we

would never again open our lips to a woman coming to us with a letter of

introduction and a contribution, till our lad returned to us. We were

forced to give him a sovereign before we could induce him to withdraw

his information. We object strongly to all bribery, but in this case we

could see the amount of ridicule which would be heaped upon our whole

establishment if some low-conditioned lawyer were allowed to

cross-examine us as to our intercourse with Mrs. Brumby. It was with

difficulty that the clerk arranged the matter the next day at the police

office, and his object was not effected without the farther payment by

us of £1 2s. 6d. for costs.

It was then understood between us and the clerk that on no excuse

whatever should Mrs. Brumby be again admitted to my room, and I thought

that the matter was over. “She shall have to fight her way through if

she does get in,” said the lad. “She aint going to knock me about any

more,--woman or no woman.” “O, dea, certe,” we exclaimed. “It shall be a

dear job to her if she touches me again,” said the clerk, catching up

the sound.

We really thought we had done with Mrs. Brumby, but at the end of four

or five days there came to us a letter, which we have still in our

possession, and which we will now venture to make public. It was as

follows. It was addressed not to ourselves but to Messrs. X., Y., and

Z., the very respectable proprietors of the periodical which we were

managing on their behalf.

“Pluck Court, Gray’s Inn, 31st March, 18--.

“GENTLEMEN,

“We are instructed by our client, Lieutenant Brumby, late of the

Duke of Sussex’s Own regiment, to call upon you for payment of the

sum of twenty-five guineas due to him for a manuscript essay on

Costume, supplied by his wife to the ---- Magazine, which is, we

believe, your property, by special contract with Mr. ----, the

Editor. We are also directed to require from you and from Mr. ----

a full apology in writing for the assault committed on Mrs. Brumby

in your Editor’s room on the 27th instant; and an assurance also

that the columns of your periodical shall not be closed against

that lady because of this transaction. We request that £1 13s. 8d.,

our costs, may be forwarded to us, together with the above-named

sum of twenty-five guineas.

“We are, gentlemen,

“Your obedient servants,

“BADGER AND BLISTER.

“Messrs. X., Y., Z., Paternoster Row.”

We were in the habit of looking in at the shop in Paternoster Row on the

first of every month, and on that inauspicious first of April the above

letter was handed to us by our friend Mr. X. “I hope you haven’t been

and put your foot in it,” said Mr. X. We protested that we had not put

our foot in it at all, and we told him the whole story. “Don’t let us

have a lawsuit, whatever you do,” said Mr. X. “The magazine isn’t worth

it.” We ridiculed the idea of a lawsuit, but we took away with us

Messrs. Badger and Blister’s letter and showed it to our legal adviser,

Mr. Sharp. Mr. Sharp was of opinion that Badger and Blister meant

fighting. When we pointed out to him the absolute absurdity of the whole

thing, he merely informed us that we did not know Badger and Blister.

“They’ll take up any case,” said he, “however hopeless, and work it with

superhuman energy, on the mere chance of getting something out of the

defendant. Whatever is got out of him becomes theirs. They never

disgorge.” We were quite confident that nothing could be got out of the

magazine on behalf of Mrs. Brumby, and we left the case in Mr. Sharp’s

hands, thinking that our trouble in the matter was over.

A fortnight elapsed, and then we were called upon to meet Mr. Sharp in

Paternoster Row. We found our friend Mr. X. with a somewhat unpleasant

visage. Mr. X. was a thriving man, usually just, and sometimes generous

but he didn’t like being “put upon.” Mr. Sharp had actually recommended

that some trifle should be paid to Mrs. Brumby, and Mr. X. seemed to

think that this expense would, in case that advice were followed, have

been incurred through fault on our part. “A ten-pound note will set it

all right,” said Mr. Sharp.

“Yes;--a ten-pound note,--just flung into the gutter. I wonder that you

allowed yourself to have anything to do with such a woman.” We protested

against this injustice, giving Mr. X. to know that he didn’t understand

and couldn’t understand our business. “I’m not so sure of that,” said

Mr. X. There was almost a quarrel, and we began to doubt whether Mrs.

Brumby would not be the means of taking the very bread from out of our

mouths. Mr. Sharp at last suggested that in spite of what he had seen

from Mrs. Brumby, the lieutenant would probably be a gentleman. “Not a

doubt about it,” said Mr. X., who was always fond of officers and of the

army, and at the moment seemed to think more of a paltry lieutenant than

of his own Editor.

Mr. Sharp actually pressed upon us and upon Mr. X. that we should call

upon the lieutenant and explain matters to him. Mrs. Brumby had always

been with us at twelve o’clock. “Go at noon,” said Mr. Sharp, “and

you’ll certainly find her out.” He instructed us to tell the lieutenant

“just the plain truth,” as he called it, and to explain that in no way

could the proprietors of a magazine be made liable to payment for an

article because the Editor in discharge of his duty had consented to

read it. “Perhaps the lieutenant doesn’t know that his name has been

used at all,” said Mr. Sharp. “At any rate, it will be well to learn

what sort of a man he is.”

“A high minded gentleman, no doubt,” said Mr. X. the name of whose

second boy was already down at the Horse Guards for a commission.

Though it was sorely against the grain, and in direct opposition to our

own opinion, we were constrained to go to Harpur Street, Theobald’s

Road, and to call upon Lieutenant Brumby. We had not explained to Mr. X.

or to Mr. Sharp what had passed between Mrs. Brumby and ourselves when

she suggested such a visit, but the memory of the words which we and she

had then spoken was on us as we endeavoured to dissuade our lawyer and

our publisher. Nevertheless, at their instigation, we made the visit.

The house in Harpur Street was small, and dingy, and old. The door was

opened for us by the normal lodging-house maid-of-all-work, who when we

asked for the lieutenant, left us in the passage, that she might go and

see. We sent up our name, and in a few minutes were ushered into a

sitting-room up two flights of stairs. The room was not untidy, but it

was as comfortless as any chamber we ever saw. The lieutenant was lying

on an old horsehair sofa, but we had been so far lucky as to find him

alone. Mr. Sharp had been correct in his prediction as to the customary

absence of the lady at that hour in the morning. In one corner of the

room we saw an old ram-shackle desk, at which, we did not doubt, were

written those essays on costume and other subjects, in the disposing of

which the lady displayed so much energy. The lieutenant himself was a

small gray man, dressed, or rather enveloped, in what I supposed to be

an old wrapper of his wife’s. He held in his hands a well-worn volume of

a novel, and when he rose to greet us he almost trembled with dismay and

bashfulness. His feet were thrust into slippers which were too old to

stick on them, and round his throat he wore a dirty, once white, woollen

comforter. We never learned what was the individual character of the

corps which specially belonged to H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex; but if it

was conspicuous for dash and gallantry, Lieutenant Brumby could hardly

have held his own among his brother officers. We knew, however, from his

wife that he had been invalided, and as an invalid we respected him. We

proceeded to inform him that we had been called upon to pay him a sum of

twenty-five guineas, and to explain how entirely void of justice any

such claim must be. We suggested to him that he might be made to pay

some serious sum by the lawyers he employed, and that the matter to us

was an annoyance and a trouble,--chiefly because we had no wish to be

brought into conflict with any one so respectable as Lieutenant Brumby.

He looked at us with imploring eyes, as though begging us not to be too

hard upon him in the absence of his wife, trembled from head to foot,

and muttered a few words which were nearly inaudible. We will not state

as a fact that the lieutenant had taken to drinking spirits early in

life, but that certainly was our impression during the only interview we

ever had with him. When we pressed upon him as a question which he must

answer whether he did not think that he had better withdraw his claim,

he fell back upon his sofa, and began to sob. While he was thus weeping

Mrs. Brumby entered the room. She had in her hand the card which we had

given to the maid-of-all-work, and was therefore prepared for the

interview. “Sir,” she said, “I hope you have come to settle my husband’s

just demands.”

Amidst the husband’s wailings there had been one little sentence which

reached our ears. “She does it all,” he had said, throwing his eyes up

piteously towards our face. At that moment the door had been opened, and

Mrs. Brumby had entered the room. When she spoke of her husband’s “just

demands,” we turned to the poor prostrate lieutenant, and were deterred

from any severity towards him by the look of supplication in his eye,.

“The lieutenant is not well this morning,” said Mrs. Brumby, “and you

will therefore be pleased to address yourself to me.” We explained that

the absurd demand for payment had been made on the proprietors of the

magazine in the name of Lieutenant Brumby, and that we had therefore

been obliged, in the performance of a most unpleasant duty, to call upon

that gentleman; but she laughed our argument to scorn. “You have driven

me to take legal steps,” she said, “and as I am only a woman I must take

them in the name of my husband. But I am the person aggrieved, and if

you have any excuse to make you can make it to me. Your safer course,

Sir, will be to pay me the money that you owe me.”

I had come there on a fool’s errand, and before I could get away was

very angry both with Mr. Sharp and Mr. X. I could hardly get a word in

amidst the storm of indignant reproaches which was bursting over my head

during the whole of the visit. One would have thought from hearing her

that she had half filled the pages of the magazine for the last six

months, and that we, individually, had pocketed the proceeds of her

labour. She laughed in our face when we suggested that she could not

really intend to prosecute the suit, and told us to mind our own

business when we hinted that the law was an expensive amusement. “We,

Sir,” she said, “will have the amusement, and you will have to pay the

bill.” When we left her she was indignant, defiant, and self-confident.

And what will the reader suppose was the end of all this? The whole

truth has been told as accurately as we can tell it. As far as we know

our own business we were not wrong in any single step we took. Our

treatment of Mrs. Brumby was courteous, customary, and conciliatory. We

had treated her with more consideration than we had perhaps ever before

shown to an unknown, would-be contributor. She had been admitted thrice

to our presence. We had read at any rate enough of her trash to be sure

of its nature. On the other hand, we had been insulted, and our clerk

had had his ears boxed. What should have been the result? We will tell

the reader what was the result. Mr. X. paid £10 to Messrs. Badger and

Blister on behalf of the lieutenant; and we, under Mr. Sharp’s advice,

wrote a letter to Mrs. Brumby in which we expressed deep sorrow for our

clerk’s misconduct, and our own regret that we should have

delayed,--“the perusal of her manuscript.” We could not bring ourselves

to write the words ourselves with our own fingers, but signed the

document which Mr. Sharp put before us. Mr. Sharp had declared to

Messrs. X., Y., and Z., that unless some such arrangement were made, he

thought that we should be cast for a much greater sum before a jury. For

one whole morning in Paternoster Row we resisted this infamous tax, not

only on our patience, but,--as we then felt it,--on our honour. We

thought that our very old friend Mr. X. should have stood to us more

firmly, and not have demanded from us a task that was so peculiarly

repugnant to our feelings. “And it is peculiarly repugnant to my

feelings to pay £10 for nothing,” said Mr. X., who was not, we think,

without some little feeling of revenge against us; “but I prefer that to

a lawsuit.” And then he argued that the simple act on our part of

signing such a letter as that presented to us could cost us no trouble,

and ought to occasion us no sorrow. “What can come of it? Who’ll know

it?” said Mr. X. “We’ve got to pay £10, and that we shall feel.” It came

to that at last, that we were constrained to sign the letter,--and did

sign it. It did us no harm, and can have done Mrs. Brumby no good but

the moment in which we signed it was perhaps the bitterest we ever knew.

That in such a transaction Mrs. Brumby should have been so thoroughly

successful, and that we should have been so shamefully degraded, has

always appeared to us to be an injury too deep to remain unredressed for

ever. Can such wrongs be, and the heavens not fall! Our greatest comfort

has been in the reflection that neither the lieutenant nor his wife ever

saw a shilling of the £10. That, doubtless, never went beyond Badger and

Blister.

THE END.

PRINTED BY W. H. SMITH AND SON, 186, STRAND, LONDON.