sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever
heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the
church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to
remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men
see.”
Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more
when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.
His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came
Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother
and sister to his stool before the fire; and while Bob, turning up
his cuffs--as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more
shabby--compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and
stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer, Master
Peter, and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose,
with which they soon returned in high procession.
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of
all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter
of course--and in truth it was something very like it in that house.
Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan)
hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor;
Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce; Martha dusted the hot
plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table;
the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting
themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into
their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came
to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It
was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly
all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but
when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth,
one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim,
excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle
of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was
such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness,
were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by the apple sauce
and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family;
indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small
atom of a bone upon the dish) they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet every
one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits, in particular, were
steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being
changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous
to bear witnesses--to take the pudding up and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in
turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the
back-yard, and stolen it while they were merry with the goose--a
supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of
horrors were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper.
A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an
eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a
laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute
Mrs. Cratchit entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding
like a speckled cannon-ball so hard and firm blazing in half of
half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly
stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he
regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since
their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her
mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of
flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or
thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would
have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint
at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth
swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and
considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a
shovelful of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew
round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a
one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two
tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden
goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks,
while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob
proposed:
“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!”
Which all the family re-echoed.
“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
THE DOLL’S DRESSMAKER
XIII
THE DOLL’S DRESSMAKER
THE fact that Dickens when he was only twelve years old was put to
work and had to make his own living made him feel old when he was
really very young. He had to look after himself as if he had been a
man. In _Our Mutual Friend_ he gives us a picture of an old young
person, Jenny Wren, the Doll’s Dressmaker, who talked as if she were
forty, when she was only twelve and small for her age. Her father was a
drunkard and she had been compelled to act as head of the house.
She was a queer little person with bright, snapping eyes and a sharp
tongue. She sat in a little old-fashioned armchair which had a little
working-bench before it. She had set up in business as a doll’s
dressmaker and manufacturer of pincushions and pen-wipers.
If you were in London you would have to go a long way to find the
Doll’s Dressmaker. First you crossed Westminster Bridge, and then you
came to a certain little street called Church Street, and then to an
out-of-the-way square called Smith Square, in the centre of which was a
very ugly church. Then you came to a blacksmith-shop and a lumber-yard,
and a dealer in old iron. There was a rusty portion of an old boiler
that you had to walk around. Beyond that there were several little
quiet houses in a row. In one of these houses was the little Doll’s
Dressmaker. That was the way Bradley Headstone and Charley Hexam found
the house where Jenny Wren lived.
[Illustration:
_Copyright by Charles Scribner’s Sons_
JENNY WREN, THE LITTLE DOLLS’ DRESSMAKER]
They knocked at the door and saw a queer little figure sitting in an
armchair.
“I can’t get up,” said the child, “because my back’s bad and my legs
are queer. But I’m the person of the house. What do you want, young
man?”
“I wanted to see my sister.”
“Many young men have sisters. Give me your name, young man.”
“Hexam is my name.”
“Ah, indeed?” said the person of the house. “I thought it might be.
Your sister will be in, in about a quarter of an hour. I am very fond
of your sister. She’s my particular friend. Take a seat. And this
gentleman’s name?”
“Mr. Headstone, my schoolmaster.”
“Take a seat. And would you please to shut the street door first? I
can’t very well do it myself, because my back’s so bad, and my legs are
so queer.”
They complied in silence, and the little figure went on with its work
of gumming and gluing together with a camel’s-hair brush certain pieces
of cardboard and thin wood, previously cut into various shapes. The
scissors and knives upon the bench showed that the child herself had
cut them; and the bright scraps of velvet and silk and ribbon also
strewn upon the bench showed that when duly stuffed (and stuffing
too was there) she was to cover them smartly. The dexterity of her
nimble fingers was remarkable, and, as she brought two thin edges
accurately together by giving them a little bite, she would glance
at the visitors out of the corners of her gray eyes with a look that
outsharpened all her other sharpness.
“You can’t tell me the name of my trade, I’ll be bound,” she said,
after taking several of these observations.
“You make pincushions,” said Charley.
“What else do I make?”
“Pen-wipers,” said Bradley Headstone.
“Ha! ha! What else do I make? You’re a schoolmaster, but you can’t tell
me.”
“You do something,” he returned, pointing to a corner of the little
bench, “with straw; but I don’t know what.”
“Well done you!” cried the person of the house. “I only make
pincushions and pen-wipers to use up my waste. But my straw really does
belong to my business. Try again. What do I make with my straw?”
“Dinner-mats.”
“A schoolmaster, and says dinner-mats! I’ll give you a clue to my
trade, in a game of forfeits. I love my love with a B because she’s
Beautiful; I hate my love with a B because she is Brazen; I took her to
the sign of the Blue Boar, and I treated her with Bonnets; her name’s
Bouncer, and she lives in Bedlam.--Now, what do I make with my straw?”
“Ladies’ bonnets?”
“Fine ladies’,” said the person of the house, nodding assent. “Dolls’.
I’m a Doll’s Dressmaker.”
“I hope it’s a good business?”
The person of the house shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.
“No. Poorly paid. And I’m often so pressed for time! I had a doll
married, last week, and was obliged to work all night. And it’s not
good for me, on account of my back being so bad and my legs so queer.”
They looked at the little creature with a wonder that did not diminish,
and the schoolmaster said: “I am sorry your fine ladies are so
inconsiderate.”
“It’s the way with them,” said the person of the house, shrugging her
shoulders again. “And they take no care of their clothes, and they
never keep to the same fashions a month. I work for a doll with three
daughters. Bless you, she’s enough to ruin her husband!”
The person of the house gave a weird little laugh here, and gave them
another look out of the corners of her eyes. She had an elfin chin that
was capable of great expression; and whenever she gave this look, she
hitched this chin up. As if her eyes and her chin worked together on
the same wires.
“Are you always as busy as you are now?”
“Busier. I’m slack just now. I finished a large mourning order the day
before yesterday. Doll I work for lost a canary-bird.” The person of
the house gave another little laugh, and then nodded her head several
times, as who should moralize, “Oh this world, this world!”
“Are you alone all day?” asked Bradley Headstone. “Don’t any of the
neighboring children----?”
“Ah, lud!” cried the person of the house, with a little scream, as
if the word had pricked her. “Don’t talk of children. I can’t bear
children. _I_ know their tricks and their manners.” She said this
with an angry little shake of her right fist close before her eyes.
Perhaps it scarcely required the teacher-habit to perceive that the
doll’s dressmaker was inclined to be bitter on the difference between
herself and other children. But both master and pupil understood it so.
“Always running about and screeching, always playing and fighting,
always skip-skip-skipping on the pavement and chalking it for their
games! Oh! _I_ know their tricks and their manners!” Shaking the
little fist as before. “And that’s not all. Ever so often calling
names in through a person’s keyhole, and imitating a person’s back and
legs. Oh! _I_ know their tricks and their manners. And I’ll tell
you what I’d do to punish ’em. There’s doors under the church in the
Square--black doors, leading into black vaults. Well! I’d open one of
those doors, and I’d cram ’em all in, and then I’d lock the door and
through the keyhole I’d blow in pepper.”
“What would be the good of blowing in pepper?” asked Charley Hexam.
“To set ’em sneezing,” said the person of the house, “and make their
eyes water. And when they were all sneezing and inflamed, I’d mock ’em
through the keyhole. Just as they, with their tricks and their manners,
mock a person through a person’s keyhole!”
An uncommonly emphatic shake of her little fist close before her eyes
seemed to ease the mind of the person of the house; for she added
with recovered composure, “No, no, no. No children for me. Give me
grown-ups.”
LITTLE NELL
XIV
LITTLE NELL
ONE of the strange things about London is the number of little shops in
out-of-the-way places, where they sell things that one would suppose
nobody would be looking for. The shops seem hidden away, and the game
is for the customers to find them. And very often the customers don’t
find them.
In one of these little streets was an old curiosity shop, kept by
a little old man with long gray hair. The shop was full of old and
curious things which the old man had collected and heaped upon the
floor. There were suits of armor, and bits of old china and figures
carved out of wood. The room was dark, and it was hard to walk around
without stepping upon some of the curiosities.
The one bright spot in the old man’s life was his love for his
granddaughter, little Nell Trent. For her he had been saving everything
he could, but of late he had been losing more than he had gained. It
would have been a rather dull life for little Nell if it had not been
for Kit Nubbles.
Kit was a shock-headed, awkward boy who lived with his mother not far
away, and he came every day to help Nell’s grandfather in the shop. He
had an uncommonly big mouth, very red cheeks, and an old hat without
any brim. Kit liked to “show off,” especially when Nell was around. He
had a remarkable way of standing sideways as he spoke and thrusting his
head over his shoulders. When he found that it would make Nell laugh,
he did it again and again.
[Illustration:
_Copyright by Charles Scribner’s Sons_
LITTLE NELL AND HER GRANDFATHER AT MRS. JARLEY’S]
And there was a dwarf named Quilp who was as ugly as he looked, and
delighted in nothing so much as in making everybody afraid of him. He
lived down by the river. He had a business of his own. He bought old
copper and rusty anchors from ships that had been broken up. But his
real occupation was in making everybody who came under him miserable.
At last Nell and her grandfather, in order to escape from Quilp, made
up their minds to leave London, and go off into the country where they
might find peace. They didn’t care where they went so that Quilp could
not follow them. This would have been a very good plan if they had had
money for their journeys, but as they hadn’t they had to depend on the
kindness of the people on the road.
In their wanderings Nell and her grandfather fell in with some queer
people. While they were resting near a village church, they came upon
two men who were travelling over the country giving Punch and Judy
shows. One of them, a merry-faced man with twinkling eyes and a red
nose, was named Short. His companion, Codlin, was a more courteous and
gloomy person. Mr. Codlin took the figure of Judy out of the box and
said:
“Look here, here’s all this Judy’s clothes falling to pieces again. You
haven’t got a needle and thread, I suppose?”
Nell had a needle and thread and soon was at work on Judy’s dress,
and soon they were friends, and Codlin and Short took them to the
wayside inn where they met other travellers who were going to fairs.
The chapter which tells of the talk at the Jolly Sandboys is one which
the lover of Dickens likes to read more than once.
THE JOLLY SANDBOYS
THE Jolly Sandboys was a small roadside inn with a sign representing
three Sandboys increasing their jollity with as many jugs of ale and
bags of gold, creaking and swinging on its post on the opposite side
of the road. As the travellers had observed that day, there were many
indications of their drawing nearer and nearer to the race town, such
as gypsy camps, carts laden with gambling booths, itinerant showmen of
all kinds, and beggars and trampers of every degree.
Mr. Codlin entered the inn, where a mighty fire was blazing on the
hearth and roaring up the wide chimney with a cheerful sound. There
was a large iron kettle bubbling and simmering in the heat. And when
the landlord lifted the lid, there was a savory smell. The glow of the
fire was upon the landlord’s bald head and upon his twinkling eyes. Mr.
Codlin drew his sleeve across his lips and said in a murmuring voice,
“What is it?”
“It’s a stew of tripe,” said the landlord, “and cowheel, and bacon,”
smacking his lips, “and steak, and peas, cauliflowers, new potatoes,
and sparrow-grass, all working together in one delicious gravy.”
Very soon all the hungry wayfarers were sitting down to supper while
the rain fell in torrents on the roof.
* * * * *
Supper was not yet over, when there arrived at the Jolly Sandboys
two more travellers bound for the same haven as the rest, who had
been walking in the rain for some hours, and came in shining and
heavy with water. One of these was the proprieter of a giant, and a
little lady without legs or arms, who had jogged forward in a van;
the other, a silent gentleman who earned his living by showing tricks
upon the cards, and who had rather deranged the natural expression of
his countenance by putting small leaden lozenges into his eyes and
bringing them out at his mouth, which was one of his professional
accomplishments. The name of the first of these newcomers was Vuffin;
the other, probably as a pleasant satire upon his ugliness, was called
Sweet William. To render them as comfortable as he could, the landlord
bestirred himself nimbly, and in a very short time both gentlemen were
perfectly at their ease.
“How’s the Giant?” said Short, when they all sat smoking round the fire.
“Rather weak upon his legs,” returned Mr. Vuffin. “I begin to be afraid
he’s going at the knees.”
“That’s a bad lookout,” said Short.
“Ay! Bad indeed,” replied Mr. Vuffin, contemplating the fire with a
sigh. “Once get a giant shaky on his legs, and the public care no more
about him than they do for a dead cabbage-stalk.”
“What becomes of the old giants?” said Short, turning to him again
after a little reflection.
“They’re usually kept in caravans to wait upon the dwarfs,” said Mr.
Vuffin.
“The maintaining of ’em must come expensive, when they can’t be shown,
eh?” remarked Short, eyeing him doubtfully.
“It’s better that, than letting ’em go upon the parish or about the
streets,” said Mr. Vuffin. “Once make a giant common and giants will
never draw again. Look at wooden legs. If there was only one man with a
wooden leg what a property _he’d_ be!”
“So he would!” observed the landlord and Short both together. “That’s
very true.”
“Instead of which,” pursued Mr. Vuffin, “if you was to advertise
Shakspeare played entirely by wooden legs, it’s my belief you wouldn’t
draw a sixpence.”
“I don’t suppose you would,” said Short. And the landlord said so too.
“This shows, you see,” said Mr. Vuffin, waving his pipe with an
argumentative air, “this shows the policy of keeping the used-up giants
still in the carawans, where they get food and lodging for nothing,
all their lives, and in general very glad they are to stop there.
There was one giant--a black ’un--as left his carawan some years ago
and took to carrying coach-bills about London, making himself as cheap
as crossing-sweepers. He died. I make no insinuation against anybody
in particular,” said Mr. Vuffin, looking solemnly round, “but he was
ruining the trade;--and he died.”
The landlord drew his breath hard, and looked at the owner of the dogs,
who nodded and said gruffly that _he_ remembered.
“I know you do, Jerry,” said Mr. Vuffin with profound meaning. “I
know you remember it, Jerry, and the universal opinion was, that it
served him right. Why, I remember the time when old Maunders as had
three-and-twenty wans--I remember the time when old Maunders had in
his cottage in Spa fields in the winter time when the season was over,
eight male and female dwarfs setting down to dinner every day, who was
waited on by eight old giants in green coats, red smalls, blue cotton
stockings, and high-lows: and there was one dwarf as had grown elderly
and wicious who whenever his giant wasn’t quick enough to please him,
used to stick pins in his legs, not being able to reach up any higher.
I know that’s a fact, for Maunders told it me himself.”
“What about the dwarfs, when _they_ get old?” inquired the
landlord.
“The older a dwarf is, the better worth he is,” returned Mr. Vuffin; “a
gray-headed dwarf, well wrinkled, is beyond all suspicion. But a giant
weak in the legs and not standing upright--keep him in the carawan, but
never show him, never show him, for any persuasion that can be offered.”
While Mr. Vuffin and his two friends smoked their pipes and beguiled
the time with such conversation as this, the silent gentleman sat in
a warm corner, swallowing, or seeming to swallow, a sixpennyworth
of halfpence for practice, balancing a feather upon his nose, and
rehearsing other feats of dexterity of that kind, without paying any
regard whatever to the company, who in their turn left him utterly
unnoticed. At length the weary child prevailed upon her grandfather to
retire, and they withdrew, leaving the company yet seated round the
fire, and the dogs fast asleep at a humble distance.
MRS. JARLEY AND HER WAX-WORKS
OF all the adventures of little Nell, the meeting with Mrs. Jarley was
the most delightful. It happened just at the right time. Nell and her
grandfather were trudging along the road. It was late in the afternoon
and they didn’t know where they were to find a resting-place. They came
to a common and saw what in England is called a caravan. It is not such
a caravan as one would find in Bagdad, made up of camels. It was a
little house on wheels. It had white curtains on the windows, and the
window-shutters were of green, with bright red trimmings. There was a
door with brass knockers and there were two fat horses to draw it. They
all belonged to a stout, good-natured lady named Mrs. Jarley, who was
at the moment arranging her tea things for a comfortable afternoon tea.
Mrs. Jarley looked up and saw little Nell. “Are you hungry, child?”
“Not very, but we are tired, and it’s a long way.”
“Well, hungry or not,” said Mrs. Jarley, “you had better have some tea,
and I suppose the old gentleman is agreeable to that.”
So they sat down on the grass and had tea and bread and butter and
generous slices of ham.
Then Mrs. Jarley invited Nell and her grandfather to be her guests
in the little house on wheels. There wasn’t very much room, but Mrs.
Jarley was so hospitable that they at once accepted her invitation
and made themselves at home. Half of the little house had berths for
sleeping, very much as if it were a ship. The other half was a kitchen,
with a little stove in it. It also had several boxes and kettles and
saucepans.
When they got started after breakfast in the morning, little Nell’s
spirits rose and she forgot her troubles.
“Well,” said Mrs. Jarley, “how do you like this way of travelling?”
Nell said she liked it very much.
“That’s the happiness of you young people,” said Mrs. Jarley. “You
don’t know what it is to be low in your feelings. You always have your
appetites too--and what a comfort it is.”
Then Mrs. Jarley brought out a large roll of canvas about a yard wide,
and spread it on the floor.
“There, child,” she said, “read that.”
Nell walked down it, and read aloud, in enormous black letters, the
inscription, “JARLEY’S WAX-WORK.”
“Read it again,” said the lady, complacently.
“Jarley’s Wax-Work,” repeated Nell.
“That’s me,” said the lady. “I am Mrs. Jarley.”
Giving the child an encouraging look, intended to reassure her and
let her know that, although she stood in the presence of the original
Jarley, she must not allow herself to be utterly overwhelmed and borne
down, the lady of the caravan unfolded another scroll, whereon was the
inscription, “One hundred figures the full size of life,” and then
another scroll, on which was written, “The only stupendous collection
of real wax-work in the world,” and then several smaller scrolls with
such inscriptions as, “Now exhibiting within”--“The genuine and only
Jarley”--“Jarley’s unrivalled collection”--“Jarley is the delight of
the Nobility and Gentry”--“The Royal Family are the patrons of Jarley.”
When she had exhibited these leviathans of public announcement to the
astonished child, she brought forth specimens of the lesser fry in the
shape of handbills, some of which were couched in the form of parodies
on popular melodies; as, “Believe me if all Jarley’s wax-work so
rare”--“I saw thy show in youthful prime”--“Over the water to Jarley”;
while, to consult all tastes, others were composed with a view to the
lighter and more facetious spirits, as a parody on the favorite air of
“If I had a donkey,” beginning: