Chapter II.
Nutts.Now, Mr Slowgoe, when you’ve gone through the alphabet of that paper, I’m ready.
Slowgoe.Just one minute.
Nutts.Minutes, Mr Slowgoe, are the small-change of life. Can’t wait for nobody. I’ll take you then, Mr Limpy. (Limpytakes the chair.) It makes my flesh crawl to see some folks with a newspaper. They go through it for all the world like a caterpillar through a cabbage leaf.
Slowgoe.Well, for my part, I like to chew my news. I think a newspaper’s like a dinner; doesn’t do you half the good if it’s bolted. Haven’t come to it yet; but tell me—Is it true that the Duke of Wellington’s going to repeal flogging?
Tickle.Why, yes; they do say so; but the Duke does nothin’ in a hurry. Always likes to take his time. You know at Waterloo he would wait for the Prussians; and only because if he’dlicked the French afore, he didn’t know how else to spend the evening.
Slowgoe.I never heard that; but it’s very like the Duke. And there’s to be no flogging.
Tickle.No; it’s to be repealed by degrees, like the corn-laws. In nine years’ time there won’t be a single cat in the British army.
Nosebag.Why should they wait nine years?
Nutts.Nothin’ but reg’lar. You see the cat-o’-nine-tails is one of the institutions of the country, and therefore must be handled very delicate.
When cat’s awaySojers play.
When cat’s awaySojers play.
When cat’s awaySojers play.
When cat’s away
Sojers play.
That’s been the old notion. And folks—that is, the folks with gold-lace that’s never flogged—think to ’bolish the cat at once would bring a blight upon laurels. They think sojers like eels—none the worse for fire for being well skinned.
Tickle.There you are; biting the ’thorities of your country agin. But since you’ve taken the story out of my mouth, go on, though every word you speak’s a bitter almond.
Nutts.Well, it isn’t a thing to talk sugar-plums about, is it? I’m not a young lady, am I?
Mrs Nutts.(From back parlour.) I wish you’d remember you’ve a wife and children, Mr Nutts, and never mind young ladies. You can’t shave and talk of young ladies too, I’m sure.
Nutts.(In a low voice.) It’s very odd; she’s one of the strongest-minded women, and yet she can never hear me speak of one of the sex without fizzing like a squib.
Nosebag.(Solemnly.) Same with ’em all. I suppose it’s love.
Nutts.Why, it is; that is, it’s jealousy, which is only love with its claws out.
Tickle.Well, claws brings you to the cat again; so go on.
Nutts.To be sure. Well, as I was saying——(To Limpy.) What’s the matter? I’m sure this razor would shave a new-born baby; but for a poor man I don’t know where you got such a delicate skin. I will say this, Mr Limpy, for one of the swinish multitude, you are the tenderest pork I ever shaved.
Slowgoe.But the Duke of Wellington——
Nutts.Don’t hurry me; I’m going to his Grace. Well, they do say that he’s going to get rid of the cat by little and little. He knows the worth of knotted cords to the British soldier, and, like a dowager with false curls, can’t give ’em all up at once. So there’s to be a law that the cat is still to be used upon the British Lion in regimentals, only that the cat is to lose a tail every year.1
Slowgoe.Is it true?
Nutts.Certain. So you see, with the loss of one tail per annum, in only nine years’ time, or inanno Domino1855, every tail will be ’bolished; that is, the cat with its nine tails will have lost its nine lives, and be defunct and dead.
Slowgoe.I don’t like to give an opinion, but that seems a very slow reform.
Nutts.Why, yes: when folks have a tooth that pains ’em, they don’t get cured in that fashion. But then, again, it’s wonderful with what patience we can bear the toothache of other people.
Nosebag.What horrid things there’s been all the week in the papers. Officers of all sorts writing what they’ve seen done with the cat. Well, if I was a sojer, my red coat would burn like red-hot iron in me; I should think all the world looked at me, as if they was asking themselves, “I wonder how oftenyou’vebeen flayed.”
Slowgoe.Bless your heart! and here’s a dreadful matter. James Sayer, a marine on board theQueen, sentenced to be hanged for assaulting two sergeants—to be hanged by the neck. And the President says, “James Sayer, I am sorry indeed that I cannot offer you hope that the sentence of this court will not be fully carried out, and I recommend you to prepare yourself to meet your doom.”
Bleak.What a difference is made by salt water!Frederick White, private soldier, is sentenced to be flogged for giving a blow to his sergeant. James Sayer, marine, is to be hanged for the same offence. So a blow afloat and a blow ashore isn’t the same thing.
Nutts.But there’ll be no hanging in the case; they say as much in Parliament, don’t they?
Slowgoe.But it says here the President was “much affected.” Why pass sentence, why give no hope?
Nutts.Why now, I suppose that’s what they’d call a fiction of the law; and when we think what a dry matter all law is, can we wonder that the ’torneys and such folks spice it up with a few lies? Bless you, if all law was all true, nobody would go on swallowing it. It’s the precious fibs that’s in it that gives it a flavour, and makes men live, and grow fat upon it.
Slowgoe.It can’t be.
Nutts.Tell you ’tis. Was you never on a jury? La! bless you, when one of the gen’lemen of the long robe, as they call ’em—one of the conjurors in horse-hair—get hold of a fib, or a flaw, or a something to bring a blush into the face of Common-sense, and so put her out of court at once—doesn’t he enjoy it? Doesn’t he relish the fiction, as it’s called, as if it was his first “Goody Two Shoes”? He relishes it; all the bar—’xcept, perhaps,the conjuror against him—relishes it, and the judge himself. Oh! haven’t I seen him with the wrinkles about his eyes like the map of England; haven’t I seen him relish it too, for all the world like an old sporting dog that had given up hunting himself, but still did so love the smell of the game!
Tickle.I tell you what it is, Nutts, I feel my blood a-gettin’ vinegar all the while I hear you. I feel a-changing from a man to a cruet; and I won’t have it. You are so sour, you’d pickle salmon to look at it. Nosebag, tell us something pleasant. What have they done at the playhouse this week?
Nosebag.Why, there’s been Miss Faucit at the Hayma’ket, but only for one night. Your very great players now, they’re like the new aloe at the Colossyum; they only blossom once in a hundred years, or somethin’ of that sort. London’s gettin’ low for ’em, I s’pose. I have heard—though I know nothin’ about what you call the currency—I have heard that there isn’t, for any long time, ready gold enough in the country to pay ’em.
Tickle.Couldn’t they take ’Chequer bills?
Nosebag.Why, I believe they was offered to a singer last week; but he wouldn’t have ’em, ’cause he’d no faith in the Government.
Tickle.Well, and how did the young lady go off?
Nosebag.Never go to a benefit, for fear I shouldbe taken for a private friend of the actors. But I’m told the—the—what is it?—thefibulawas another tremendous hit.
Limpy.(Rising.) That will do, Mr Nutts. What’s thefibular?
Nosebag.Why, a emerald buckle that the Irish House of Commons give to Miss Faucit last year for playing inAntigony. It was very well to put it in the playbill, ’cause of course it drew so many folks who’d never seen a buckle. Nevertheless, if Mr Webster—and I don’t mean to say anything against Mr Webster, not by no means—nevertheless, if he’d known his own interest he would have had five hundred posters with a bold woodcut of thatfibula. And I should have stuck ’em.
Limpy.And you didn’t go to see it?
Nosebag.No; but I shall go next week, if I never go agin. For they do say that Mrs Humby—dear cretur!—is goin’ to appear in a thimble presented to her by the ladies’-maids of London. And if anybody ever deserved a bit of plate, Mrs Humby deserves that thimble.
Nutts.Now, Mr Slowgoe. (Slowgoetakes the chair.) There’s quite enough discourse of the playhouses, let’s talk of serious matters. Have you heard? They’ve been proposin’ in Parliament to make nineteen more bishops, and one of ’em a Bishop of Melton Mowbray.
Tickle.Ha! a sportin’ bishop; for the morals of the neighbourhood. And I shouldn’t wonder if we’ve a Bishop of Epsom, and a Bishop of Newmarket, and a Bishop of Ascot, and a Bishop of Doncaster. And very proper. Black aprons may reform blacklegs. Seein’ the bishops do so much good, in course they’re most wanted in the worst places. They’re to be sent in holes and corners of wickedness; jist as my wife hangs bags of camphor about the necks of the little ones when she hears of fevers. Now a bishop—the Bishop of Exeter, for instance (by the way, he’s been havin’ another row in the House of Lords—he’s always at it)—the Bishop of Exeter, what is he, I should like to know, but a big lump of camphor in a bag of black silk hung about the whole neck of the West of England? Why, the good he does nobody knows.
Bleak.(With newspaper.) ’Pon my word, when I read these things I do feel ashamed that I’m a man.
Nutts.Daresay; but ’tisn’t your fault. What is it?
Bleak.That a good quiet gen’lewoman can’t go by herself in a railway carriage without having to scream out for the police! Insulted by a coward with a good coat on him. Thinks himself, I daresay, one of the lords of the creation. Lords!—I call ’em apes.
Nutts.My wife—and I’d advise every lady to do the like—my wife never travels by rail without a pair of scissors. But then she’s a woman of sich strong mind!
Slowgoe.So, I see they’ve been givin’ a dinner at Lynn to Lord George Bentinck. He’s a great man, Lord George; and they’ve had him all the way from London to tell him. Made a beautiful speech, I see. Here’s a touch after my own heart. He’s a-talkin’ about the corn-laws, and he says, “When some foreign ship, some Swede or Norwegian or Dane, with an outlandish name for herself and her captain, which neither you nor I could pronounce (cheers and laughter), comes into port (cheers), I ask you how much this foreigner pays out of his wages to support the trade of your town?” Well, I say, that’s what I call talking like a true Briton.
Nutts.To be sure it is; no argument like that. The argument is—the argument that the Norfolk farmers cheer at is, that the Swede and the Norwegian and the Dane have outlandish names; that in fact they aren’t called, like the boys in the spelling-book, Jones, Brown, and Robinson. That’s the way t’ appeal to British bosoms, and Lord George knows it. Bless you! shouldn’t wonder, when the farmers went home, if they didn’t kill their wives’ and daughters’ canary-birds’cause they were all outlandish, and not true-born British linnets. Nothin’ like calling names; every fool can understand mud.
Slowgoe.Still Lord George is a wonderful man. Here he says, in this very speech, “he was eighteen years silent in the House of Commons.”
Nosebag.That reminds me of a pantomine I once saw, where there was a wild man that said nothin’ all through the piece, and then at last somebody came for’ard, and held up a scroll in gold letters, that said, “Orson is endowed with reason!”
Nutts.The worst of them members of Parliament is that, like children when they’re backward in their speech, they more than make up for it when they do begin. Like the Thames froze up, when once they’ve a quick thaw, they threaten to wash the speaker off his legs, and overflow the whole House of Parliament. Great pity some of these members aren’t like the Paddington Canal—with locks.
Tickle.There you are agin, ’busin’ of the ’thorities. I’ve read the whole of it, and it was a very pretty bit of speechifying at Lynn. Didn’t the Duke of Richmond, too, talk of the battle of Waterloo? I’ve no doubt——
Nutts.In course he did. He talks of it when he’s asleep. The battle of Waterloo to the Dukeof Richmond is like a wax doll to a little gal. He always will be showing it to company—opening and shutting its eyes, pointing out its red morocco shoes, and white frock, and cherry-coloured sash. I wish the Duke of Wellington would take the battle of Waterloo from him, and lock it up, and only let him bring it in at Apsley House once a year with the dessert.
Slowgoe.Ha! Nutts, you haven’t a good word for nobody. I’m sure it’s quite cutting to read what Lord Bentinck and Mr Disraeli say of themselves: each of ’em trying to be smaller than the other one.
Nosebag.Jist like boys at leap-frog. Each in his turn “tucks in his twopenny,” that the other may go clean over his head. But then, you see, Mr Slowgoe, like leap-frog, it’s only make-game after all.
Slowgoe.I won’t have it. The member for S’rewsbury’s a great man. What a tongue he has!
Nutts.Very great; measure tongue and all, and he’s very great, to be sure. He reminds me of a—a—dear me!—that thing that lives on wind, that I once saw at Mr Tyler’s Zologicul Gardens—a—a——
Tickle.Lives on wind! It can’t be nothing but a bagpipe or a chameleon.
Nutts.That’s it: a chameleon. Well, that hasa tongue as long as his body; but for all that, he can only catch flies with it. And that’s the case, I take it, with the member for S’rewsbury. I know it’s said he talked for loaves and fishes. And acause Sir Robert wouldn’t give him so much as a penny roll, not so much as the smallest sprat that swims in the Treasury, why then——
Slowgoe.Sir Robert! Hear what he does to Sir Robert, accordin’ to Sir John Tyrrel, who was at Lynn. He says the member for S’rewsbury “tears off Sir Robert Peel’s flesh, then polishes his bones, and sends ’em to the British Museum.”
Nutts.Well, that’s a nice compliment for a gen’l’man—bone-polisher to Sir Robert Peel! But certainly Sir John Tyrrel is a good one at a compliment. Didn’t he once say that the Duke of Wellington was the greatest man since our blessed Saviour? He did, as I’m a sinner. And if Sir John is very red in the face, which he ought to be, it is because he hasn’t done blushing ever since.