Part 14

As for the tea, I don't think I ever tasted such a peculiar mixture. Did you ever sip warm catsup sweetened with borax? _That_ might have been something like it. And what was that sediment, strongly resembling the sand at Great Yarmouth, at the bottom of the cup? I sat down to my meal, however, and made as much play with the cottage-loaf as I could. Had the loaf been varnished? It smelt and looked as though it had undergone that process. Everything in the house smelt of varnish. I was uncomfortably conscious, too, during my repast--one side of the room being all window--that I was performing the part of a "Portrait of the Gentleman on the first floor," and that, as such, I was "sitting" to Mrs. Lucknow at Number Twelve opposite--I knew her name was Lucknow, for a brass plate on the door said so--whose own half-length effigy was visible in her own breakfast-parlour window glowering at me reproachfully because I had not taken her first floor, in the window of which was, not a group of wax fruit, but a sham alabaster vase full of artificial flowers. Every window in Wretchedville exhibited one or other of these ornaments, and it was from their contemplation that I began to understand how it was that the "fancy goods" trade in the Minories and Houndsditch throve so well. They made things there to be purchased by the housekeepers of Wretchedville.

The shades of evening fell, and Mrs. Primpris brought me in a monstrous paraffin-lamp, the flame of which wouldn't do anything but lick the chimney-glass till it smoked it to the proper hue to observe eclipses by, and then splutter into extinction and charnel-like odour. After that we tried a couple of composites (six to the pound) in green glass candlesticks. I asked Mrs. Primpris if she could send me up a book to read, and she favoured me, _per_ Alfred and Selina, with her whole library, consisting of the Asylum Press Almanack for 1860; two odd volumes of the Calcutta Directory; the Brewer and Distiller's Assistant; Julia de Crespigny, or a Winter in London; Dunoyer's French Idioms; and the Reverend Mr. Huntingdon's Bank of Faith.

I took out my cigar-case after this and began to smoke; and then I heard Mrs. Primpris coughing and a number of doors being thrown wide open. Upon this I concluded that I would go to bed. My sleeping apartment--the first-floor back--was a perfect cube. One side was a window overlooking a strip of clay-soil hemmed in between brick walls. There were no tombstones yet, but if it wasn't a cemetery, why, when I opened the window to get rid of the odour of the varnish, did it smell like one? The opposite side of the cube was composed of a chest of drawers. I am not impertinently curious by nature, but as I was the first-floor lodger, bethought myself entitled to open the top long drawer with a view to the bestowal of the contents of my black bag. The drawer was not empty; but that which it held made me feel very nervous. I suppose the weird figure I saw stretched out there with pink arms and legs sprouting from a shroud of silver paper, a quantity of ghastly auburn curls, and two blue glass eyes unnaturally gleaming in the midst of a mask of salmon-coloured wax, was Selina's best doll; the present perhaps of her uncle, who was, haply, a Calcutta director, or an Asylum Press Almanack maker, or a brewer and distiller, or a cashier in the Bank of Faith. I shut the drawer again hurriedly, and that doll in its silver paper cerecloth haunted me all night.

The third side of my bedroom consisted of chimney--the coldest, hardest, brightest-looking fire-place I ever saw out of Hampton Court Palace guardroom. The fourth side was door. I forget into which corner was hitched a wash-hand stand. The ceiling was mainly stucco rosette, of the pattern of the one in my sitting-room. Among the crazes which came over me at this time, was one to the effect that this bedroom was a cabin on board ship, and that if the ship should happen to lurch or roll in the trough of the sea, I must infallibly tumble out of the door or the window, or into the drawer where the doll was--unless the drawer and the doll came out to me--or up the chimney. I think that I murmured "Steady!" as I clomb into bed.

My couch--an "Arabian" one, Mrs. Primpris said proudly--seemingly consisted of the Logan, or celebrated rocking-stone of Cornwall, loosely covered with bleached canvas, under which was certain loose foreign matter, but whether composed of flocculi of wool or of the halves of kidney potatoes I am not in a position to state. At all events I awoke in the morning veined all over like a scagliola column. I never knew, too, before, that any blankets were manufactured in Yorkshire, or elsewhere, so remarkably small and thin as the two seeming flannel pocket-handkerchiefs with blue-and-crimson edging, which formed part of Mrs. Primpris's Arabian bed-furniture. Nor had I hitherto been aware, as I was when I lay with that window at my feet, that the moon was so very large. The orb of night seemed to tumble on me flat, until I felt as though I were lying in a cold frying-pan. It was a "watery moon," I have reason to think; for when I awoke the next morning, much battered with visionary conflicts with the doll, I found that it was raining cats and dogs.

"The rain," the poet tells us, "it raineth every day." It rained most prosaically all that day at Wretchedville, and the next, and from Monday morning till Saturday night, and then until the middle of the next week! Dear me! dear me! how wretched I was! I hasten to declare that I have no kind of complaint to make against Mrs. Primpris. Not a flea was felt in her house. The cleanliness of the villa was so scrupulous as to be distressing. It smelt of soap and scrubbing-brush like a Refuge. Mrs. Primpris was strictly honest, even to the extent of inquiring what I would like to have done with the fat of cold mutton-chops, and sending me up antediluvian crusts, the remnants of last week's cottage-loaves, with which I would play moodily at knock-'em-downs, using the pepper-caster as a pin. I have nothing to say against Alfred's fondness for art. India-rubber to be sure, is apter to smear than to obliterate drawings in chalk; but a three-penny piece is not much; and you cannot too early encourage the imitative faculties. And again, if Selina did require correction, I am not prepared to deny that a shoe may be the best implement and the blade bones the most fitting portion of the human anatomy for such an exercitation.

I merely say that I was wretched at Wretchedville, and that Mrs. Primpris's apartments very much aggravated my misery. The usual objections taken to a lodging-house are to the effect that the furniture is dingy, the cooking execrable, the servant a slattern, and the landlady either a crocodile or a tigress. Now my indictment against my Wretchedville apartments simply amounts to this: that everything was too new. Never were there such staring paper-hangings, such gaudily printed druggets for carpets, such blazing hearthrugs--one representing the dog of Montargis seizing the murderer of the Forest of Bondy--such gleaming fire-irons, and such remarkably shiny looking-glasses with gilt halters for frames. The crockery was new, and the glue on the chairs and tables was scarcely dry. The new veneer peeled off the new chiffonier. The roller-blinds to the windows were so new that they wouldn't work. The new stair-carpeting used to dazzle my eyes so, that I was always tripping myself up; the new oil-cloth in the hall smelt like the Trinity House repository for new buoys; and Mrs. Primpris was always full dressed by nine o'clock in the morning. She confessed once or twice during my stay that her house was not quite "seasoned." It was not even seasoned to sound. Every time the kitchen-fire was poked you heard the sound in the sitting-room. As to perfumes, whenever the lid of the copper in the wash-house was raised, the first-floor lodger was aware of the fact. I knew by the simple evidence of my olfactory organs what Mrs. Primpris had for dinner every day. Pork, accompanied by some green esculent, boiled, predominated.

When my fortnight's tenancy had expired--I never went outside the house until I left it for good--and my epic poem, or whatever it was, had more or less been completed, I returned to London, and had a rare bilious attack. The doctor said it was painter's colic; I said at the time it was disappointed ambition, for the booksellers had looked very coldly on my poetical proposals, and the managers to a man had refused to read my play; but at this present writing I believe the sole cause of my malady to have been Wretchedville. I hope they will pull down the villas and build the jail there soon, and that the rascal convicts will be as wretched as I was.

(_From_ "UNDER THE SUN," _by permission of_ MESSRS. VIZETELLY & CO.)

THE SORROWS OF WERTHER.

W. M. THACKERAY.

Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her She was cutting bread and butter.

Charlotte was a married lady, And a moral man was Werther, And for all the wealth of Indies Would do nothing for to hurt her.

So he sighed, and pined, and ogled, And his passion boiled, and bubbled, Till he blew his silly brains out, And no more was by it troubled.

Charlotte having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter.

MORAL MUSIC.

(BY AN EXPERIMENTER.)

I am in a humble sphere of life--a hairdresser's assistant, in fact; but I have a thirst for improving my mind, and regularly attend the evening classes at our institute. It was there I read in a magazine about morals and music. The writer discussed the question whether music by itself, unpolluted by words, had any "mental significance or moral power." I left off reading, rather puzzled, but I am of a practical turn of mind. I joined our bricklaying class at the institute last term, and, although I nip my fingers a good deal, still it has made me inclined to put all new truths to the test of experiment. So I determined to experiment on myself, and see what mental significance and moral power music possessed, if any. I regulated my life very carefully during the trial, so that no outside influence should spoil the result. I weighed and measured out my food and drink, abstained from pickles and sensation literature, denied myself the exciting pleasure of Jemima's company on Thursday and Sunday, and, to counterbalance the language of some of our ruder customers, and to give morals an even chance, I slept with a tract under my pillow. I started with a quite unprejudiced mind, for the attention I had paid to music before was mostly measured by the loudness of it. I took a seat at St. James's Hall in good time, and opened my mind and morals for impressions. First of all, a man came on the platform and began, as far as I could see, to tune the piano. I thought he ought to have done this before the advertised time of opening, but when he got off the stool, the people all began to applaud him, and on inquiring, I found that the man I had taken for the tuner was really the giver of the concert, and that he had been playing one of his own compositions. So I lost this experiment altogether. However, soon after the player returned with a violinist, and they started a duet. I set my teeth. If there was any significance or moral in a violin and piano mixed, I determined to have it. I had first fleeting visions before my mind of all the creatures I had ever seen in pain. There was the squeak of a rat caught in a trap; there was the same sort of shriek Jemima gave when I took her to have a tooth out; and there was the loud wail which accompanies the conversion of pig into pork. But this was only the first chapter. The players stopped, and began again; and the next chapter plunged me among the industrial arts. Under the influence of the magic instruments I saw the foundation of England's greatness. There was an athletic carpenter industriously sawing wood. There was a grindstone putting an edge on an axe. There were a number of whirrs, which brought back vividly a loom I had seen at work at an exhibition, and there was a rather asthmatic smith striking his anvil and coughing between every blow.

But this was not all. They began a third chapter, and I was immediately among lolly-pops. All the nicest things I had ever tasted stood before me in a row. There was a pot full of apricot jam; there was some roast beef gravy, than which, taken on the knife, I know nothing more toothsome; there was a sixpenny strawberry ice, and a nice cut of lamb and mint sauce to finish up with. I was sorry when they left off, but glad to find I was on the trace of a moral. The piece was evidently a musical embodiment of a clean shave: the first part was the misery of laying your head back and having your nose tweaked; the second was the being scraped; and the last was the happy moment when you stretch your limbs, pass your satisfied hand over your smooth chin, and nod to yourself complacently in the glass. The moral was obvious; that it is a duty to get shaved, and not to shave yourself, but to go to the professional man. My next experiment was to hear a young lady sing. She came on the platform, looking lovely, and she had on a sash and a dress improver that I never saw equalled for elegance. My hopes rose at the sight of her. I felt sure that so much beauty could not be otherwise than moral. "Oh, do be moral! do be moral!" I kept saying to myself, as the accompanist opened fire on her song. A dreadful thought then arose: the words of her song would taint the experiment, which was to be on music alone. But, to my delight, I could not catch a word of what she sang. It was all pure music. Her sweet song suggested to me as follows: I first saw her running up stairs and down again as fast as ever she could, and then she sat down on the mat to rest, while the piano panted. Then she drew out from somewhere one long, straight note, thick in the middle and tapering off at each end, so seductive that I fancied myself a storm-tossed mariner listening to a mermaid. I could almost feel the waves of the Margate boat gurgle around me. Then she drew a jug of hot water out of the boiler--at least, that was its intellectual significance to me, because the note went steadily rising upwards, with little splashes in between, just like the sound of the water when I draw a jug to shave a customer. Then she ran upstairs again like lightning, and disappeared through the tiles, while the pianist banged the front door to. I am sure there was a splendid moral to all this, for she looked so beautiful and smiled so sweetly; but I am undecided whether the moral was that I was to sign the pledge, or that I was not to go to concerts without Jemima as a safeguard.

I next gave myself up bodily to what they called a "concerto." When I saw several gentlemen come on to the platform, with a variety of instruments, I thought it would be a more serious experiment than the others, and so it proved. I kept my eyes on them when they first began, but they looked so comical--one with his cheeks blown out, another with his hair as if it had just been machined, another trying to get his arm round his fiddle's waist, and another jerking his eyes out of his head--that I felt it was not giving the music a fair chance, so I shut my own eyes tight. As soon as I had done so there was no end of intellectual significance. I was in a pleasure van just starting for Hampton Court, with Jemima. There was the jog trot of the horses, and every now and then the skid put on; there was laughter and the puffing of pipes, and occasionally a loud roar, as we crossed a big thoroughfare. We soon got into the country and heard the birds chirping, and there was a sweet gurgling sound, which intimated to me that the men on the box had broached the four-gallon cask. I was just getting ready for a glass, when all at once the whole scene vanished. The music had stopped, and when it began again things were much altered for the worse. With the first note I felt a shudder go down my vitals. Something was coming, I did not know what. I felt just like being woke up in bed by a strange noise, and no matches handy, and my razors open to everybody on the table. Then I heard the bass fiddle say distinctly, "Prepare to meet your doom" several times over, while the violins tried to sneer at me, and the piano rattled chains in the corner. This was very trying, but worse was to follow. There were faint cries and sobs from the next room, as though murder was going on; there were long silences which were worse to bear than any sound; then someone began to work softly at the door with a centre bit, and there were rumblings as though someone else was letting himself down the chimney. I fancied I could almost see his leg. Then there was another hush, and thank heaven, I could tell by the hand-clapping that that part was over. It was about time, for the mental significance had got quite over-powering. There was then a total change. The music took me back in a second to the last ball I had been to--the eighteen-penny one, refreshments extra. I was dancing all the dances at once, and all the girls were making up to me, and it only made Jemima smile. That was a really delightful mental significance, and I could have done with more of it. But I doubt whether the concerto on the whole was moral. I am sure that ice down the back cannot be good for anyone, nor can I see, in cool moments, that raising the animal spirits so many degrees above proof is proper. I have not yet concluded my experiments. I have still to try the effects of a cornet solo; and the flute, as well as the concertina, the bones, and the banjo. But I have no doubt that if more people would try my plan, and honestly state the results, we should in time get at the truth of this matter of moral music.

(_From the_ "EVENING STANDARD.")

BILLY DUMPS, THE TAILOR.

CHARLES CLARK.

Billy Dumps was very fond of spending his evenings with his two cronies, Natty Dyer, a shoemaker, and Neddy Tueson, an umbrella mender, at the "Cunning Cat," just round the corner. This worthy trio seldom left their favourite haunt before closing time, much to the disgust of their respective helpmates, Mrs. Dumps in particular.

Billy Dumps was a tailor, working as _he_ termed it on his own hook. As his prices were moderate, and his work durable, he earned a pretty good living, making and mending for his neighbours, chiefly of the dock labouring class; but his nightly orgies at the "Cunning Cat" made sad inroads into his hard earnings, which tended much to sour Betsy's otherwise naturally good temper.

The climax was reached one eventful evening, on the occasion of a Free-and-Easy being held at the old quarters, after which, Billy, for prudential reasons, was escorted home at midnight by his two associates, all fully bent on informing the sleeping neighbourhood at the top of their voices that they were "jolly good fellows," supplemented by a further assertion of, "and so say all of us!" Finishing up by depositing the confiding tailor at full length in his own front passage, through the door being inadvertently left ajar, where he laid and snored in blissful ignorance of the trials and troubles of this life until rather rudely awakened, and then somewhat briskly assisted upstairs, by Betsy and a broom handle.

"Now, Mister Billy Dumps, I am tired of sitting up for you night after night, and mean to do so no longer. So if you are not in when our clock strikes ten, I locks the door and you finds other lodgings," exclaimed Betsy his wife, on the morning after the Free-and-Easy.

Tailor Dumps felt small after the previous night's dissipation, and determined to get home earlier and sober that evening. But under the influence of the soothing pipe, the nut-brown ale, and the merry laugh and jest of his boon companions, he was induced to forget his late resolution, and to prolong his stay at the "Cunning Cat" until aroused to the fact that it was ten o'clock and closing-time. On reaching home, all was still and dark. Strange! he went round to the back door and thumped loudly. The bed-room casement flew open with a bang, from which instantly protruded the night-capped head of the wife of his bosom. Billy at once tried the high hand, shouting, "Now then, sleepy, what's yer game? Be spry and open sharp!"

No. She wasn't going to be spry, neither was she sleepy; and as to her little game--she had locked him out according to promise, so didn't intend unlocking again that night. Not if she knew it. Oh no!

"Now, Betsy, don't be a fool, you'll repent it," he urged.

_She_ wasn't a fool, she answered. In her opinion, he was the biggest fool to be hammering and shivering outside at that time of night, when he might have been comfortably lying in a warm bed hours ago. As for repentance--she thought that would be more on his side of the door, for she felt comfortable--very.

Billy fumed and stormed, and fully felt the ridiculousness of his position, especially as he heard sounds of the neighbouring casements stealthily unclose, and suppressed indications of merriment issuing therefrom. But Billy stormed to no purpose. Betsy coolly recommended him to go back where he had spent such a pleasant evening. She was sure Mrs. Mudge, the landlady, would be only too pleased to accommodate him with a lodging. If she wasn't, she ought to be, considering the time and money he spent in her house.

But Billy had his own ideas of that arrangement, so still lingered, determined to try another tack. He promised amendment, but Betsy was sceptical. He appealed to her feelings. "Let me in, Betsy, for I am cold!" That she could not help; as he had made his bed so he must lie. He then became affectionate. "Oh Betsy, you are unkind: remember old times, remember our wedding-day!" he pleaded, thinking to touch her that way. But Betsy was not going to be had by soft sawder, for she promptly rejoined, "Remember our wedding-day, you drunken sot? _I do_ to my sorrow, no fear of my forgetting that great mistake. But, as I told you before, into this house this blessed night you do not step. No, not if you were to go on your knees and beg for it!"

"Ah, Betsy. You'll be sorry for this when too late. I'm determined to end my misery. I'll jump down the well and drown myself. And you'll be the cause of it!" whined Billy.

The night was dark. Betsy felt a little relenting as she heard her husband groping about in the wood shed. Then she could dimly discern him making for the well; plainly hear the creaking of the hinges and the lid thrown back with a thud. Then came the cry of "Good bye, Betsy, I'm gone!" The dull sound of a heavy body plunging into the water--a gasping moan, and all was still.

Betsy's old affection for her erring husband at once returned with tenfold force, for she raced downstairs, rushing into the darkness, shrieking for help.

The neighbours were aroused. Men and women tumbled out of their back doors in such scanty dishabille that would have charmed a sculptor. Betsy, still screeching like a bagpipe, had to be forcibly restrained from jumping to the rescue by the bystanders.

Dick Ward, the blacksmith, thrust the bucket-pole into the well, singing out, "Lay hold, Billy, if ye ain't too fur gone!"

"I can feel un," shouted Dick, as the pole struck some hard substance with a sounding smack.

"My eye, Dick! he'll feel you too, if that's Billy's head you tapped," said Nat; "it 'ud be one for his nob and no mistake."

They caught a glimpse, by the uncertain light of a flaming candle, of a something floating low on the surface of the water.

"His head feels as hard as a koker nut," said Dick, as the pole rattled on the dark object.

"Why it seems off his shoulders, for it goes bobbing up and down like a dumplin in a soup-kettle!"