Chapter III.
Nuttslathering a customer; others waiting. EnterLittle Girl.
Nutts.Now, my little dear, what’s for you?
Girl.Please, Mr Nutts, my mother says you’ve sent the wrong front. This is a red un, and mother’s is a light brown.
Nutts.Oh! if she says it’s red, I know it isn’t hers. Now the lady as that belongs to calls it auburn. Not that I should like to walk with her into a powder-magazine with her wearing it.
Girl.And please, my mother says she hopes the curls are a little tighter than——
Nutts.Tighter! You tell that blessed widow, your mother, that they’re just what she wants—tight enough to hold a second husband. I know the man; and though I’ve no grudge agin him, I curled ’em a-purpose.
Limpy.Why, isn’t that Mrs Trodsam’s littlegirl? And the woman going to be married agin?
Nutts.In course. When her husband died she vowed she’d go into weeds and her own grey hairs for life. That’s barely a twelvemonth ago; and now the weeds are gone, and she wears marigolds in her cap, to catch the milkman. I don’t know who’d have a widder! Seven times have I curled that front in three weeks.
Slowgoe.(With newspaper.) Well, this is a pretty bus’ness, this Religious ’Pinions Bill. Going to make friends with the Pope! Going to let him send his bulls into the country, as many as he likes. Well, I don’t know; but I should think the British Lion—if he’s got a war life in him—won’t stand that.
Tickle.That’s nothin’. They say we’re goin’ to send a ’bassador to Rome, and Sir Randrews Agnew’s to be ’pinted to the post. Oh, isn’t the Pope a—a-gammin’ us! He’s a-goin’ to buy down railroads right and left. Now what do you think the rails are for?
Slowgoe.Why, for steam-ingines.
Tickle.Not a bit on it. I know somebody as knows Colonel Sibthorpe’s footman as knows all about it. The Pope intends to get up a fancy fair in Rome for the conversion of the Jews. Well, this will fill Rome with English dowagers, takingall their pincushions ready-made with them. And when they get there, the rails (they’re made o’ purpose) will be taken up and turned into gridirons; and won’t the Papishes roast us agin, as they did in Smithfield?
Slowgoe.No doubt on it. This comes of giving up good old names. I always thought what would come of it when we left off calling the Pope the Scarlet——
Nutts.Mr Slowgoe, allow me to say that my wife—Mrs Nutts—is only in the next room.
Slowgoe.When we left off calling the Pope an improper person in a scarlet garment. It’s the growin’ evil of the times, Mr Tickle, that we don’t respect old names.
Tickle.We don’t. And yet Colonel Sibthorpe says the Pope—that is, his Scarletness—is as scarlet as ever he was.
Slowgoe.It’s a great comfort to see that the Colonel spoke against the bill; but it passed the second reading for all that.
Tickle.That’s the worst of it, and just reminds me of what I saw last Sunday. There was a nice old animal eating his thistle upon a common—as nice a cretur as ever drew a cart. Well, the Kingston train came smoking, whizzing, rumbling along; when, suddenly, the animal left his thistle, and, stretching his legs to take firmerhold of the ground, brayed and brayed at the train, as if he would bring the sky right down upon it; but, as you say of the bill, it passed for all that.
Tickle.You’ve heard of the Pertection Peers o’ course? Heard what they’ve come to a resolution to do?
Slowgoe.No—what?
Tickle.Why, they’ve all met in the first-pair front of theMorning Post; and feelin’ that the country is ruined, they’ve resolved like patryots, as they are, to do nothin’.
Nosebag.Shouldn’t wonder if they succeed. It’s a dreadful thing, though, for peers and lords, when they know a country’s done up for ever, to be obliged to live in the ruins. I wonder they don’t move.
Nutts.Bless you! they can’t. The more rickety the country gets, the more they like it. Just as a woman loves her bandiest baby all the best. In their hearts they never was so fond of the British Lion as now, though Mr Tyler of the Zologicul Gardens wouldn’t give no price for him unless the Unicorn was thrown in with the bargain. Providence is very good to dukes and lords, for they do say this season grouse is perdigious plentiful.
Slowgoe.I’m glad on it. For it’s my ’pinion that grouse and pheasants, and in fact allsorts of game, was only sent into the world for superior people.
Nutts.Shouldn’t wonder; only it’s a pity they warn’t somehow ticketed. ’Twould have hindered much squabblin’. Agin; when Adam give their names to all the birds and beasts, he might have ’lotted ’em out into partic’lar folks that was to eat ’em—ven’son for lords, mutton for commons.
Tickle.Might ha’ gone further than that, and have marked the very joints—sirlines for them as is respectable, and stickings for the poor.
Slowgoe.I tell you what, Mr Nutts, if you talk of Adam in that way, you don’t shave me. I’ll not trust my throat to an infidel.
Mrs Nutts.And that’s the way, Mr Nutts, you’ll drive everybody from the shop. At this time of day, what’s Adam to you? Look after your own family—Adam did, I’ve no doubt.
Slowgoe.Talkin’ o’ the Pertectionists—I see they’ve had another dinner.
Nutts.Yes. The country’s done for; but it’s a comfort to think that, though their hearts are broke, they can dine still. If an earthquake were to gulp England to-morrow, they’d manage to meet and dine somehow among the rubbish, just to celebrate the event.
Slowgoe.Dinner to the Marquis of Granby.
Nosebag.Ha! seen him at a good many public-houses in my time.
Slowgoe.Dinner at Walsham. Chairman something like a chairman; drank the Queen; and this is what I call real speaking (reads): “They must have observedwhat benignant smileswere upon her countenance and how she appreciated their loyalty. Her Consort, too, was in the fields of sport, and he rode withcourageandbrilliancywith the hounds till night closed the chase.”
Nutts.I’m not intimate with his Royal Highness, but the paper always says he goes home to the castle to luncheon. And then to praise a gen’lewoman for smilin’! I s’pose they think that a compliment, as if it warn’t at all easy for a queen to look pleasant. Again, if it’s sich a recommendation to state affairs to be in the “fields of sport,” I wonder they don’t make a foxhound a prime minister!
Slowgoe.The Duke of Richmond says (reads), “I never had a fancy to ride upon the whirlwind and direct the storm.”
Nutts.So far a very sensible old gentleman. A whirlwind isn’t made for every man’s hobby.
Slowgoe.And doesn’t Mr Disreally give it to Manchester a little? Makes it a nothin’. Puts, as I may say, his crush hat over all the tall chimneys, and kivers ’em quite. He says, “MagnaCharta was not procured by Manchester; Manchester was not known then!”
Nutts.And is that really Benjamin? Well! And if only two years ago, at a Manchester sworry, if he didn’t stand up in the ’Theneum, and butter the youths of Manchester as if they was so many muffins! And he talked to ’em too—I recollect it well—as familiarly about Jacob’s ladder as if it had been placed in the Minories, and he’d been used to run right up it and slide down it from a boy.
Nightflit.Well, this is good news, isn’t it? Here’s Mr Jones has brought up a report to the Common Council of London; and we are to have a house, as he says—“the heart of St Giles’”—built for poor people.
Nutts.The heart of St Giles’! Well, it’s the way to put a heart into it, anyhow.
Slowgoe.What, goin’ to do away with all the cellars? Well, all I hope is this, I hope they’re not goin’ too fast.
Nightflit.How can they go too fast? when the report says (reads), “They propose to build a house, giving clean and wholesome lodging to one hundred single labourers, at a rent not greater than they are now forced to pay for accommodation in houses filled with dirt, vermin, unwholesome air, bad society, and many other evil circumstances.”Can’t get rid of dirt and varmint too soon, can we?
Slowgoe.I won’t be sure of that; when people have been born and reared among ’em, dirt and varmin are as second nature.
Nutts.And aren’t comfort and cleanliness?
Slowgoe.It’s all very well, but I’m the friend of order, I am. I only hope the Government won’t find it out. Make poor people clean and spruce, and you don’t know what they’ll want next. All too fast, too fast.
Nutts.Well, I wonder you ever use your legs. I wonder you don’t go upon all fours by choice, acause it’s slower.
Slowgoe.Look here; keep people in dirt accordin’ to their station, and you’ll keep ’em quiet. A man as lives in a cellar, or in a house, for the matter of that, with ten or twelve in a room, without any talk of water, and air, and gas, and such stuff as was never talked of in St Giles’ afore—why, he never thinks o’ nothin’ but his drop o’ wholesome gin. All he wants is, like a wild beast, some place to hide his head in for the night, that he may go to the public-house the next mornin’. Well, he goes; and he gets his glass, and his glass; and every glass seems to put new clothes on his back, and drop new shillings into his pocket, and all about him looks gold and purple—a sort of glory.And though his wife is bone and skin, and kivered with rags; when he’s comfortable drunk, she looks like any queen in a silver petticoat. And if his children with their thin chalk faces do make a hullabaloo for bread, why, when he’s as drunk as he ought to be, they seem to him nothin’ more than crying cherrybims.
Nutts.Well, but where’s the man’s heart all the while?
Slowgoe.Heart! Nonsense: doesn’t feel no heart. If he takes gin enough, it’s all gone; burnt up like a bit o’ sponge in the burning spirits o’ wine. Water, and gas, and air, and wholesome lodging! Why, isn’t gin cheapest, when it makes a man do without ’em?
Nosebag.Not a bit on it. Gin never made a man respectable; now, water, air, and all that does.
Slowgoe.I’ve said I’m a friend to order——
Nutts.Order! Well, if ever they make a Order of the Pigsty—and there is, I believe, a Order of the Sheep-pen, or Fleece, or something of the sort—you ought to have it.
Slowgoe.Nonsense. ’Thusyism is puttin’ the poor out o’ their proper places. I’ll just take the other tack. A poor man gets out of dirt and foul air, and all that. Gets raised in the scale, as the story of it goes. Why, there must be always somebody at the bottom of the steps, mustn’t there?
Nutts.Why, yes. But then the steps themselves needn’t be in muck, need they? Why shouldn’t the lowest of us have plenty of sweet water, and God’s sweet air, and all be raised together?
Slowgoe.’Thusyism, as I say, is very well; but you know nothin’ of political economy. Look here. A man gets used to all the Common Council talks about; to wholesome lodging, and all that. Well, he doesn’t go to the gin-shop. Then, how, I ask you, is the revenoo to be kept up? Where’s taxes to come from? I was only readin’ it yesterday. It seems that the publican alone pays money enough to build all the ships, pay all the sailors, fit out all the sojers with their cannons and bayonets, and what not. Well, the man who’s a good stiff drinker ought to feel pride in this. Every sojer he sees, every musket that’s made, every ball-cartridge that goes into the warm bowels of an enemy, he helps with every blessed drop of gin he swallows, to pay for. Isn’t it, or oughtn’t it to be, a comfort to a man, if he hasn’t a bit of liver left, to know that it’s gone to help to load bullets, and sharpen swords, and pipeclay cross-belts? I say it: a man with no liver, his tongue like shoe-leather, his nose no better than a stale strawberry, and every limb on him shaking like leaves upon the aspling-tree, sich a man, thinkin’ what thepublican pays through him, may still go into the Parks, and seeing the sojers on parade, take a pride in ’em.
Nutts.Well, and suppose the man is taken out of the muck that’s helped to make him drink? What then?
Slowgoe.What then? Why, then comes the danger to Government. The man doesn’t go to the public-house. No: he gets used to a clean place and a clean shirt; and has light about him, and doesn’t live like a two-legged bat, and has water enough to swim in. Well, he begins to read and to think, and to trouble his head about his vote, and all such stuff, that with the gin-glass at his mouth, he never dreamt on. Well, the end on it is, such will be the presumption of the poorer sort, when you take ’em from dirt and darkness, which, in my ’pinion, is their nat’ral elyment—such is their conceit, that I’m blest if they soon won’t talk of having a stake in the country!
Nosebag.Well, and every man as has muscles and bones, and is willing to work with ’em, has a stake, hasn’t he?
Slowgoe.Where is it? You can’t see it!
Nutts.Why, suppose his muscles and his bones helps to build a house for a man?
Slowgoe.Well, it’s the man’s stake it’s built for, and not his’n that builds it. And that’s perliticaleconomy. But I was goin’ to say when you put me out, that the Government doesn’t know what it’s after encouragin’ cleanliness, and temperance, and such new-fangled stuff. It’s all revolution in disguise. We’ve had gunpowder revolution, and moral revolutions; but they’re nothing to what’s coming, for they’ll be the revolutions of water and soap. No government upon the ’versal earth can stand with everybody clean and sober. Do away with the swinish multitude, and I ask you, what becomes of the guinea-pigs o’ society? Tell me that.
Nosebag.Why, we shall all be guinea-pigs together.
Slowgoe.Impossible! The likes o’ you a guinea-pig! ’Tisn’t in nature. All I ask is, where will you get your taxes? Last week at the great meetin’ o’ the waters, as I call it, at Common Garden Theatre—last week, I stood in Bow Street, and watched mobs o’ people goin’ in, all on ’em conspiring against the revenoo of the country. There wasn’t one there, man or ’oman—and very pretty women some on ’em was, bloomin’ like fresh flowers in fresh water—that wasn’t a conspirator aginst the taxes that pays the sojers and the sailors, and the salaries in Woolwich Dockyard, and the Government never sent the p’lice to take ’em, but let ’em all sport away like the fountain inTemple Gardens. Temperance and cleanliness! I’ve lived to see somethin’! I’ve heard of the age of iron, the age of gold, and the age of silver, and I should like to know what age we are to call this?
Nutts.Why, by your own account, the best of all on ’em—the Age of Soap and Water.
Slowgoe.(With newspaper.) This must have been a beautiful sight, gen’lemen, a beautiful sight, at Portsmouth. Quite makes a man’s heart beat to read about it.
Nightflit.What’s the perdicament?
Slowgoe.Quite a solemn thing. Field-Marshal Prince Albert has given a spick-and-span new set of flags to the 13th Foot, or what is called his own Light Infantry. The old ones had been so singed by fire, and torn to bits by bullets in Afghanistan, wheresomever that may be.
Nutts.Doesn’t say who ’broidered the colours, does it?
Slowgoe.Not as I see.
Nutts.That’s a pity. But I s’pose it was some o’ the women. Fine ladies, as wouldn’t so much as take up a stitch in a silk stocking acause they’d think it low and beneath ’em—fine ladies work at flags, and, I really do believe, like the work better than if it was their own baby-linen.
Limpy.How d’ ye account for that, Mr Nutts?
Nutts.Why, you see, it’s a part of the finery of sojering; and that always takes the women. And so they’ll stitch and stitch away at colours, and, for what I know, work their own precious locks of hair in ’em, acause they’re to be carried by smart young gen’lemen covered with red and daubed with gold, and the drums and the fifes and the trumpets will play about ’em; and they think that’s glory, poor souls! Silly creturs! if they only thought of the blood, and groans, and mashed limbs, and burning houses, and trodden-down babies, and screeching women, suffering worse than death—if they only thought that their needlework was to be waved and fluttered above such horrors as these, it’s my ’pinion they’d as soon do sewing and stitching for Beelzebub.
Slowgoe.Don’t be profane, Mr Nutts.
Nutts.Never was, Mr Slowgoe. But I will say it, I do think there’s a devil sleeping in every trumpet; and he wakes up and bellows out every time the brass is blown.
Nightflit.And the account goes on to say (reads), “The colours were consecrated by the Chaplain of the Forces.”
Nutts.Never heard of one of the apostles with such a post—did you? Consecrated! I s’pose dipped in blood, and then fumigated with gunpowder.
Limpy.Is that the way, Mr Nutts?
Nutts.Can’t tell for certain, as I never read the recipe in the New Testament.
Tickle.I once heard how it was done. The beadle o’ St Giles’ told me all about it. The colours are taken into the church, and the parson or the bishop, as it may be, who’s to bless ’em, stays in the church, fasting all night with ’em, praying that every bullet as is fired off under ’em shall be directed by an angel; that every sword drawn beneath ’em, and cutting through the skull of a man, shall have the edge of it sharpened by Christian love; and that every bayonet thrust into the bowels of a man shall be pushed home with a blessing. And he prays that wherever them colours may wave, all the gunpowder may be kept dry under the wings of angels; and the firelocks be continually oiled by the tears of Christian spirits. After all, it must be a great comfort to a man—shot down, mangled, and mashed like a crushed frog—to turn his dying eyes to them colours and remember there’s a parson’s blessing on ’em. It must give him some pleasure to think of it when he’s screeching for water, it may be, all night, and the moon with her cold, white, unpitying face looking down upon him. Consecrated colours! Well, if the flags are consecrated, in course they fire with sacred gunpowder and holybullets. And then the bombshells! They can’t be s’posed to carry death and destruction when they drop; but, being blessed, must fall like manna in the streets and on the roofs of houses.
Slowgoe.None o’ your sedition, Mr Tickle, none o’ your sedition. Noble regiment the 13th Foot, and nobly rewarded! Why, it seems as long ago as 1776, when they were commanded by the Duke of Cumberland——
Nutts.What! Billy the Butcher, as they called him?
Slowgoe.As long ago as 1776 (reads), “as a mark of distinction for their gallant conduct, the sashes of the officers and sergeants were ordered to be tied on therightside insteadof the left.”
Nutts.The officers and sergeants only! Then the privates did nothing in the way of fighting? And what a mark of distinction, to be sure! Why didn’t they at the same time order ’em to change the gaiters of the regiment, wearing the right on the left leg, and the left on the right; or to turn their hats the hind part afore, or their shirts inside out?
Slowgoe.And now the brave 13th, for fighting in India like any dragons, come in for more luck. For “her Majesty has been pleased to order the facings of the regiment fromyellowtoblue, and the regiment to be called Prince Albert’s Regiment”!
Nutts.What a comfort—what a consolation for a man in a hailstorm of bullets—what a pleasure after marching and counter-marching, and living through the pains of fifty deaths,—to think that the yellow serge of his cuffs and collars shall be turned to blue! What a blessing to leave his children! Well, there’s glory in colours, isn’t there? Shouldn’t wonder that when some regiment some day does some wonderful thing never heard of afore, if her Majesty isn’t pleased to order that the same be dressed all over with harlequin patches. From yellow to blue! Well, that’s a great change in life, isn’t it?
Nightflit.Talking of soldiers, I see they haven’t got Field-Marshal Duke of Wellington on the top of his arch yet.
Bleak.Why, no. They say in Parliament—I’ve jest been readin’ on it—that they’re goin’ to wait till the people return to town, till they come back from raffling at the watering-places, and suchlike; and then when the statu’s up they’re to give their ’pinions.
Slowgoe.Ha! So I see. But won’t it be a little difficult to get to the feelin’ o’ the public?
Tickle.Not at all. Yon Colonel Trench, who says the arch was made for the statue, and the statue for the arch, just as they say of two people afore they marry——
Nutts.Go on. Say what you like about marriage. My wife’s out.
Tickle.Just as they say of folks afore they marry; who, when married, turn the worst match as can be. Colonel Trench is going to manage the whole matter. When all London comes back to town, and is gathered together under the arch, the Colonel will go round and toss for the Duke—the best two out of three—with every man, woman, and child upon the ground. The Colonel’s taken odds that he’ll win, and the Duke keep the arch.
Slowgoe.But I see they’re going to try the effect with a sort of dummy, a Wooden Duke for the Iron one.
Nutts.Very disrespectful. Now I’ve a notion they might try it much better and cheaper. Why not hire one of the folks and a horse from Ashley’s Amphitheatre? They might hoist the animal a-top of the arch, and there he might be mounted by the player as is used to him.
Nightflit.But the horse and the rider would only be the size of life. How could folks judge then?
Tickle.Why, very well. Let all the House of Commons go into the Park with telescopes magnifying four-horse power, and spying through them; why, in course they would see the ’fect, and no mistake.
Slowgoe.I see Lord John Russell’s withdrawn the Irish Arms Bill.
Nutts.I said he would. That’s the first Whig blunderbuss as is missed fire.
Tickle.Or rayther, the blunderbuss was so high charged, Lord John didn’t like to pull the trigger. ’Fraid it would kick a little too strong, and crack the Cabinet like chaney.
Nutts.Talking about model dukes and dummy horses, isn’t it a pity there isn’t a sort o’ model Parliament afore which the Whigs might try their bills? They find so many split when they come to prove ’em afore the real house. One night Lord John holds fast to his Arms Bill, like a child to a new drum; and the next he gives it up as if it was of no use, somebody having knocked a hole in it.
Tickle.Tell you it’s the old Whig cowardice. They’re so often afraid o’ their own blunderbuss. Howsumever, this is a fault of the right sort, only hope they’ll do no worse.
Nightflit.Any news about Young Ireland? What’s he done with the “sword” that he took from ’Ciliation Hall?
Tickle.Why, they do say he’s swallowed it, like the Injun juggler; only—not like him—they do say he’ll never be allowed to bring it up agin. Old Daniel offers to take O’Brien back to hisbusum if he’ll promise never more to smell of gunpowder.
Nosebag.I’ve heard that O’Connell’s going to write up in ’Ciliation Hall somethin’ like what they print in the playbills.
Slowgoe.What’s that?
Nosebag.Why, “Young Ireland in arms not admitted.”
Nutts.And hemightadd, “No money returned.”
Bleak.So I see Mr Hume’s lost his motion for opening skittle-grounds on Sundays.
Slowgoe.Skittle-grounds—I thought ’twas to open the British Museum, the National Gallery, and suchlike.
Bleak.Well, it seems to be all the same, for Lord John Russell won’t have it nohow. He says (reading), “As to the admission on Sundays to the British Museum and National Gallery, he thought it was better not to lay down anypositive rule, or for that House to interfere by a resolution. There were some places where a single porter at the door would be sufficient as a protection. Such places he thought it was quite right to have open on the Sundays; but if they went further, he did not see why they might not ask to have the theatres open on a Sunday. Listening to a play of Shakespeare, it might be said, would divertpeople from habits of drunkenness. Then as to opening such places as the Museum and National Gallery on Sundays, it would tend to deprive a great many persons of their only day of rest; and they could not well supply their places with others who were not in the daily habit of taking care of rooms.” Well, for my part, it does seem to me that what holds good with “many persons” ought to hold good with a “single porter.”
Nutts.Agin. Why don’t they ’bolish steamboats on the river; Sunday rail-travelling; Sunday coach and cab stands; Sunday tea-gardens? These things and places—all of ’em—deprive a great many persons of their only day of rest! So do Sunday public-houses. And then, as if taking care of the pictures at the National Gallery, that folks don’t run their walking-sticks through ’em—and keeping a sharp eye upon the mummies at the Museum, for fear they should be run away with—was such delicate work that people must serve a ’prenticeship to learn it.
Tickle.And ’specially, too, when Mr Wakby said there was so many Jews who’d be delighted to take the post o’ Sundays, and be ’specially delighted to take the money for it.