Chapter VI.
Nutts.Now, Mr Bleak, I b’lieve the shave’s with you. (Bleaktakes the chair.) Mustn’t complain; but dreadful weather this for business. Not a soul in town. Had nothing to do but improve my mind all the week. Now, folks who pay rent and taxes can’t afford that. Everybody still at the seaside.
Slowgoe.Humph! For my part I can’t think where the ’noxial gales are gone to: theyoughtto blow people back to London by this time. But nothing is as it was.
Tickle.Rum thing this at Margate. And quite a warning to young women.
Mrs Nutts.What’s that, Mr Tickle?
Tickle.Young lady of most respectable family—father in the Excise—turned to a mermaid.
Mrs Nutts.Nonsense! it can’t be. What for?
Tickle.Because she would dance the polka closeinshore, and make so many people write to theTimes. Now she’s punished; now she’s enough o’ bathing. Now she does nothing but sing songs, comb her hair, and stare at herself in a looking-glass.
Nutts.Well, for a young woman that can be no punishment.
Mrs Nutts.Mr Nutts, you’re a fool. (Retires.)
Nutts.As you’re all family men, gentlemen, you understand that. And yet I never could make it out why the tenderest of wives have the greatest knack of calling their husbands fools.
Tickle.Bless you! it’s only too much love speaking out. Just as a saucepan, when too hot, boils over.
Slowgoe.(With paper.) Great season for the vineyards. It seems there never was such a promise for champagne. Glorious news this for the poor. In course nobody here understands it; but according to perlitical economy, when champagne’s plentiful it must bring down ginger-beer.
Nutts.Well, all I know is, pineapples haven’t cheapened potatoes.
Slowgoe.Don’t talk of potatoes in that heathen way, Mr Nutts; if you’d any decency, any religion, you wouldn’t talk of a potato with a smile. I suppose you haven’t seen what Lord George Bentinck—that’sa pious soul, that is—says upon potatoes? I thought not. Here it is. His Lordship aswillbe Prime Minister—it’s at Mr Newdegate’s dinner—his Lordship says (reads): “They would recollect that at the close of the last year there wasa sham cry got up, respecting the failure in the potato crop,to serve the purpose of an administration; he was now sorry to say that that feint had become a reality; that the potato failure had spread from one end of the kingdom to the other—from the Land’s End to John o’ Groats, throughout the whole of Ireland, and throughout the whole of the countries bordering upon the Atlantic. (Hear.) He was fain to confess, andhe did so with sorrow, that this time there was no sham, but hegreatly fearedthat this sad realitywas the just vengeance of Providence for thegreat ingratitude we had displayed in needlessly complaining of His bounty.” And all the people cried “Hear, hear,” and with the wind in their faces, no doubt, looked very believing, very solemn. So you see, ’cording to Lord George, it’s Peel, and nobody but Peel, as has brought the potato rot upon us. Peel cried “Wolf” to pass the corn-laws; and now for his wickedness, and his alone, the wild beast is really come—has been sent, as dear Lord George says, by Providence, to tear the bowels of hundreds o’ thousands of innocent people; and, moreover——
Nutts.Don’t—don’t go on in that way, or I must lay down the razor. Well, I hope I’m a religious man—I haven’t cut you, Mr Bleak, I trust?—and I love a bit o’ politics, nobody better; but if I shouldn’t blush redder than that blacking-bill, to think for a minute of making Providence Whig or Tory, and counting the angels on my side of the question; whether it was for all the world as they count a majority in the House of Commons. If there is a presumption that shows what an impudent worm upon two legs a man is—and I don’t care a button whether the worm is a worm with stars and ribands, or a worm with no more nobility of flesh in him than a worm in a pauper burial-ground—if there is a presumption in this world, it is, I say, when a man will take religion into partnership with him, and whatever he may do, make himself and his little dirty doings the special pets of Providence. And yet, I daresay, Lord George thinks this the Christianity for gentlemen! Well, there’s no knowing what use a man may make of his religion. Hearing what I have heard, I won’t swear that a member of the Jockey Club mayn’t bind his betting-book up with his Bible.
Slowgoe.I’ve often threatened it, Mr Nutts; but if you go on in this infidel manner, I must take my chin to another shop.
Nutts.Why, look here: truth isn’t like a penny-piece with two different sides to it; and a flum is not less a flum for coming after dinner. Either Lord George meant what he said, or he didn’t. Now, if he meant it, he meant to make Sir Robert Peel answerable for what he calls “the vengeance of Providence;” he meant to lay at Sir Robert’s door the misery and starvation—and it makes one’s heart sick and one’s blood cold to think of it—of thousands and thousands of suffering creaturs; he meant——
Slowgoe.Nonsense! you’re such a violent man: he meant nothing of the sort. When a man bids for Minister, everything’s fair: public men——
Tickle.Oh yes; men blacken one another as they like, they means nothing. They do it, I s’pose, just as last Tuesday we blackened Bill Simpson’s face when he was asleep—for a joke, and nothing more.
Nutts.Ha! and his Lordship having dined, I s’pose you’ll have it, there was a greater allowance for burnt cork? Don’t tell me. They take up poor fortin-tellers—hocus-pocus fellows that cast nativities and suchlike, and tell servant-gals what every star means when it winks upon ’em. But when a lord—and a lord, too, that would be a prime minister—would trade upon Providence, and, thinking he knows all its doings, would lay themisery of millions upon the head of one man, they never send for the constable, oh no; but fine gentlemen, full of piousness and port wine, stamp their feet and whobble out “Hear! hear!” Such religion’s like olives to ’em, and gives quite a relish to their drink.
Slowgoe.I say again, you’re a violent man, Mr Nutts. There is no doubt that the potato disease is brought about by something; and until that something is discovered, we—I mean us of true Conservative principles—may as well lay it upon the treason of Sir Robert Peel as upon anything else. When the true cause is found out, why, then, as gentlemen, we can shift it.
Nightflit.Here’s a bit from theDublin Recordthat says it’s Popery as has brought about the blight. It’s nothing but giving money to Maynooth that’s ruined the ’taters.
Tickle.No doubt on it. In the same way that when sheep die of the rot, it’s only because there’s the Pope’s eye in every leg of mutton. Now as for Lord George——
Nutts.Don’t talk about him. Poor fellow! Now I’m a little cool, although he’s a lord and I’m only a penny barber, I do from the very bottom of my heart pity him! Anything pleasant in the paper?
Nosebag.Lord Wrothesley’s going to makesecond-class carriages pop’lar on King Hudson’s lines, and won’t pay his Majesty’s first fares. A good move this. For if lords would only ride with the sheep and bullocks, there’s lots of people who’d directly think sheep and bullocks the best of company. Howsomever, in this matter his Lordship’s right. But King Hudson has made a long speech at the York and Newcastle meeting, and, like all kings, cracking his own generosity to the skies; and then he began abusing theTimes, but somehow his heart failed him; and the Iron King talked as if his tongue was suddenly turned to butter, and every bit of metal was drawn out of him.
Tickle.(With paper.) Have you heard this? (Reads.) “Mr Wakby, M.P., has received several letters from ladies, many of them of rank and title, offering to co-operate in purchasing the discharge of Cork, Mathewson, and any other witnesses examined at the inquest.” And this is taken from theMorning Post.
Nutts.Oh, it’s all right; the women will see the true beauty of soldiering at last. Poor things! At present they think man never so pretty as when in uniform; never so complete a thing to love as when he smells of gunpowder. And beauty smiles on soldiering, and soldiering toasts beauty; and that’s how for hundreds of yearsthey’ve diddled one another. But it says something when ladies club their pounds to take the finery off men’s backs, and the swords from their hands, and turn them from parade heroes into peaceful nobodies. Once Mrs Nutts used to dote upon a drum; and now—though she hates the law, like a woman, ever since I was served with a writ—now she thinks a drum the wickedest of parchment.
Slowgoe.Glorious news! The Duke’s going up at last. He’ll be on Rutland Gate in a day or two, the—the “envy of surrounding nations, and the—the”—I forget the rest, but there he’ll be.
Tickle.It must be a great relief to him to have it over. Let a man be as great as he may, and as iron as he may, he must feel in a bit of a pucker to have his bronze lightness so talked and writ about. They do say that for the last month the Duke’s suffered nothing but nightmare: every night thinking in his sleep that Mr Cubitt was hoisting up, now one of his legs to the arch, now one of his arms, and now his head. It must be a great comfort to him when he’s up altogether.
Nutts.The thing will look ugly enough, no doubt—a disgrace to the metropolis, as the newspapers say, and all that; but for my part, and after a proper consideration of my power of holding out, even if the statue when up never comesdown again—I—I speak timidly, to be sure, as a penny barber ought—but I don’t think I shall sink under it.
Nightflit.A pleasant marriage this for the French Duke as is going to have the Infant of Spain.
Nutts.Humph! it reminds me of the old story of the eagle and the child, only instead of the eagle it’s that old Gallic cock Louis Philippe. How he’ll pounce upon the little wench, and carry her off to his nest in Paris, there to make the most of her! Quite a case of child-stealing, only, you see, there’s no police-van—no Newgate for kings.