Chapter XIV.
Slowgoe,Tickle,Peabody, and others waiting.Mrs Nuttscomes from back room.
Tickle.Why, Mrs Nutts, where’s the master? Not gone to Brighton and left you to shave?
Mrs Nutts.Ha, Mr Tickle! I only wish I could shave. I’ve often said it ’ud be a nice light business for us poor women. I only wish I could shave! Anything to get money one’s self; anything rather than be going to a man’s pocket for every farden. Why—I’ve often asked it—whyshouldn’t women shave?
Slowgoe.Nonsense! Taking men by the nose! Men—the rulers of the world! Pooh! what revolution, I should like to know, next?
Mrs Nutts.Rulers of the world! Ha, the world never will run right, Mr Slowgoe, till women puttheir hands a little more to it. And as for taking you rulers by the noses, I don’t think any of you need turn ’em up for that. I’m sure you men monopolise everything. Very little you leave us to do; and what we could do, you won’t let us; and for this reason, in course, to keep us your slaves. I only wish I was the Queen of England! Wouldn’t I set the example of shaving, that’s all?
Tickle.Why, how, Mrs Nutts? how?
Mrs Nutts.How? Why, as I say, I’d bring in fashion. I’d make a Maid of Honour, or something of that sort, shave my own lawful husband; and I’d see it done, too, every morning; shave him just to set the thing a-going. That would give employment to lots of poor things that has nothing now but the needle.
Nuttscomes in.
Nosebag.Why, Nutts, you’ve just come in time. In another minute, and your wife would ha’ taken the business out of your hands.
Nutts.Yes, I know; jest the persumption of women; think they can do anything their husbands do. If I was a Horse Guardsman, she’d think she’d look quite as well as me in boots, helmet, and regimentals. It’s like all wives; but it’s our own fault—I’ve often said it. We’re toofree with ’em: it’s the famil’arity breeds contempt. Women shave, indeed!
Mrs Nutts.And why not? A very light, genteel livelihood. Better than making shirts, I’m sure; for a woman with a razor in her hand wouldn’t be the unpertected thing she is now.
Nutts.Now, Mrs Nutts, suppose you go and look to the apple-sarce, and, for a little while, be quiet with your own. Burns the baker has promised to do the pig like a pictur; that’s why I took it myself; brown and crisp, and——
Mrs Nutts.Well, Nutts, I wouldn’t worship a roast pig as you do, for its weight in gold; I should think something would happen to me. You, with a wife and family, to be the slave you are to crackling!
Nutts.If a great man hadn’t one weakness, he wouldn’t be fit society for the miserable sinners in this world about him. I have one weakness—jest one—and that is now in the oven. Now, Mr Nosebag, shall I make you fit for company? (Nosebag takes the chair.)
Mrs Nutts.Well, I have one comfort, Nutts; if anything should happen to you, I’ve seen you shave so often, that I’m sure I could keep the children, and do it quite as well myself, if the customers would trust me.
Tickle.You shall have my custom, MrsNutts. I wouldn’t desert the widder of my friend.
Nosebag.Nor I.
Nutts.Gentlemen, allow me for a moment to think myself dead and buried, and to thank you warmly from the churchyard. Your friendship for my widder and fatherless babes is quite affectin’.
Slowgoe.(With paper.) There really is no enjoying a bit of news. Such nonsense! Women shaving men, indeed! They might be allowed to lather us, and that, I think, is going quite far enough. Butdolet us talk of something serious. This, now, is rather an awful matter. This time—and no mistake—Mother Church really is in danger.
Tickle.Well, she’s used to it; by this time, I should think, must rather like it. What’s the matter?
Slowgoe.Oh, the old enemy—the Scarlet Woman of Rome. Here’s the Surrey Protestant Alliance as meets at the Horns, in Kensington. It’s all out. Colonel Sir Digby Mackworth says, all the reporters of the newspapers are all of ’em Papishes.
Mrs Nutts.La! Never! Well, if that’s true, not a newspaper comes into this house! If he was to come to life again, I’d jest as soon let the back attic to Guy Fawkes.
Slowgoe.All Papishes, and all of ’em—with poisoned pens in their hands—sworn upon a sheet of foolscap not faithfully to report the speeches of Captain Gordon and the Rev. Hugh Stowell, and such great men as speak for the Protestant cause.
Tickle.I don’t believe it. My true ’pinion is, that if the reporters really wanted to hurt the Protestant cause, they’d put down every syllable—just as it’s said—that such talkers talk about it. It’s my belief they couldn’t do it worse service.
Peabody.Having read a good many of their speeches, I should certainly say that any alteration would better ’em.
Slowgoe.To be sure: I’d forgot I was talking to some folks no better than infidels. People who won’t believe any wickedness of the Pope! For my part, I don’t know where the religion’s gone to. When I think of these reporters let loose about London—reporters, every one on ’em, as Mr Stowell would say, hatched from a cockatrice’s egg, set upon in Trinity College for the purpose—every one full of quills as a porkipine, going to Exeter Hall and the Horns Tavern, and, for what I know, the Bull and Mouth, and the Belle Savage——
Peabody.Beg your pardon—Belle Sauvage.
Slowgoe.I know that; but who’d stop for pronunciation when the Church is in danger? When,I say, I see ’em all with their drawn quills at such meetings, they do seem to me no better than ’sassins with daggers ready to stick at nothing but Protestant ’Scendancy.
Mrs Nutts.My stars! and——
Nutts.Mrs Nutts, stars will do.
Mrs Nutts.Well, I can’t speak without being taken up! I was only going to ask what was to be done against such creturs—going with drawn daggers among peaceable people?
Nosebag.Why, nothing. (Feeling his chin and rising.) A very clean shave, indeed; got a chin like white satin. Why, nothing can be done—nothing.
Slowgoe.No; because we want a minister with wigour. But I’d stop it, I would. Yes; for I wouldn’t let a single reporter into any meeting ’somever that didn’t—as members of Parliament used to do when England was worth living in—that didn’t renounce the Pope and all his works; and Captain James Gordon, with two drawn swords at the door, should ’minister the oath.
Nosebag.Well, I don’t know. I’m not a Papish myself—never shall be—but——
Mrs Nutts.Just as I said to Mrs Biggleswade over the way—“My dear,†says I, “they might tear me to bits with wild Arabian horses, and they wouldn’t get my religion out of me.â€
Slowgoe.Very proper, ma’am; I’m delighted tohear you. I will say this, you’re worthy of Smithfield in its best days.
Nosebag.But I was going to say, this new Pope seems a fine old chap. Doing all sorts of good. I’ve heard that he’s set up aPenny Roman Magazine—and has, with his own hands, turned I don’t know how many sods for railways—and let perlitical people out of prison, and——
Slowgoe.Yes, yes; we know Rome before this. All a blind. People who know anything, know that very well. Why, there isn’t an Italian boy that sells images—and I suppose you’ve heard that Dr Pusey and Dr Newman are coming out in Roman cement, at sixpence a-head, for mantelpieces?—there isn’t, I say, an Italian image-boy as doesn’t expect to hear the Pope say High Mass in Westminster Abbey.
Mrs Nutts.Not possible!
Slowgoe.Mrs Nutts, though I honour you for what you’ve said about the Arab horses, nevertheless you don’t know Rome. Why, the Pope will come to England, just as Ibraham Parker did, to see—that’ll be the excuse—our works and manufactures. He’ll be asked to take a snack at Oxford, in course. And then when he’s seen all the sights—and p’r’aps given Madame Tussaud a sittin’ for her waxwork—he’ll just go off softly in a cab to Westminster Abbey, pay his money atthe door, as if nothing was the matter, and then quietly walk in. Now I’m not an alarmist—I should be sorry if I was—but with the Pope once well inside Westminster Abbey, who do you think is to get him out agin?
Mrs Nutts.To be sure. And for what I know, he’d turn us all into nuns; but I know what I’d do—I’d die first!
Nutts.No doubt on it, Mrs Nutts. But what a comfort, my love, that they’d allow you the preference. Shouldn’t wonder, Slowgoe, if they didn’t make you a cardinal.
Peabody.Yes; Cardinale Lentopasso. Rome has certainly seen her Slowgoes in her day. The Lentopasso——
Mrs Nutts.Now, Mr Peabody, none of your Greek, if you have been a schoolmaster.
Peabody.The Lentopasso is a very old name in the Church. The family crest is a snail proper chewing opium.
Mrs Nutts.The nasty creturs! But just like ’em.
Tickle.(With paper.) So they’re going to make the Duchess of Marlborough pay a fine for shooting her husband’s pheasants. Rather hard, isn’t it; a wife not allowed to kill her husband’s game?
Mrs Nutts.But it’s all done to lower marriage—all done to make little of the weddin’-ring. I’m sure I wonder they don’t alter the marriage service.Talking about flesh of flesh, and bones of bones, and a lawful married woman is to take out a stamp to shoot at what belongs to her! What do you say to that, Mr Slowgoe?
Slowgoe.Why, really, Mrs Nutts, I’ve a great respect for any duchess—nevertheless, the game-laws is, I must say it, a solemn matter; mustn’t be tampered with because of the vulgar. If duchesses will insist upon using powder—I mean, in course, gunpowder—they must be properly authenticated so to do.
Nutts.But if ladies will shoot—if the taste’s coming up that way—why don’t they shirk the licence, and sport with poultry? Aren’t there hens, and ducks, and geese to be killed for the kitchen? I don’t see why the fashion shouldn’t go up from chickens to bullocks.
Tickle.Talking about shooting, I see Prince Albert shot a whole swarm of rabbits at Virginny Water on Monday—rabbits that was sent (reads paper) “to Mr Humphries of Egham, the contractor for the purchase of all rabbits killed in the home and great parks.†Isn’t that droll?—for the Queen’s husband to sell rabbits?
Slowgoe.There you go with your sneering disloyalty agin. Not at all droll, for there isn’t one of them rabbits that won’t be turned into a beef-steak or a mutton-chop.
Mrs Nutts.La! how do you mean?
Slowgoe.Why, in this way. The money that Mr Humphries gives for ’em will, of course, be laid out upon butcher’s-meat, and at Christmas be distributed to the Windsor poor!
Nutts.Shouldn’t have any objection to all the game in the world, if it could be so transmogrified. A pheasant shan’t be disgraced with ribs of beef for a proxy.
Tickle.So the Court, I see, is gone to Osborne House, in the Isle of Wight.
Slowgoe.As a loyal subject, that Isle of Wight makes me very uneasy. To be sure, it’s rather near to Portsmouth; nevertheless, when the war breaks out——
Nosebag.And I’m told it’s whizzing up in France like a gingerbeer-cork with the string cut.
Slowgoe.When it goes off, ’twouldn’t at all surprise me if that Joynveal was to ’tack the Isle of Wight, and Osborne House in ’special. I must say it, I should sleep easier with the thoughts of a handful of forty-pounders there. A battery or two would help to set my mind at rest.
Tickle.The Queen and the Prince, they do say, have gone down to see about the planting, and not the guarding, of the place—planting it with trees.
Peabody.What a very pretty picture! HerGracious Majesty dropping acorns in the earth. Britannia sowing her own oaks.
Tickle.Dear soul! And let us hope she’ll live to see a flourishing crop of three-deckers.
Nutts.There goes one o’clock. Pig’s ready. Can’t shave another hair. (Runs out.)
Mrs Nutts.There! I told you all so. A man with a wife and family, and yet sich a headstrong cretur of crackling!