CHAPTER X.

OF THE DIRTY SLUT OF A GIRL THAT CAME IN TO MIND MY BABY, AND THE EXTRAORDINARY CHARACTER WE HAD TO CLEAN EDWARD’S BOOTS AND SHOES.

“Let us speak of a man as we find him, And censure alone what we see; And should any one blame, let’s remind him, That from faults we are none of us free.” “LET US SPEAK OF A MAN AS WE FIND HIM.”

“She wander’d forlorn, without guardian or guide, To the brink of the flood o’er the precipice side.” “AH! DID YOU NOT HEAR OF A POOR SILLY MAID.”

After Susan left me, I had one or two maids; but I really can’t say what on earth had come to all the creatures, for none of them would suit me. However, as there was nothing particular about their goings on, and the annoyances they caused me were not of sufficient consequence to interest my readers, I shall merely say that, as I wasn’t going to have any more pretty maids in my house so long as those dreadful barracks remained in the neighbourhood, I took good care to choose the very ugliest that I could pitch upon. I declare to goodness if the woman wasn’t the very image of an ourang-outang in petticoats! Goodness gracious! I never saw such a head on a woman’s shoulders before in all my life. Lord-a’-mercy upon the woman, if she hadn’t nose enough for six! and it was of that peculiar shape which mother calls a bottle, and hairs all growing on the end of it, just like a large ripe red gooseberry. But I’m sorry to say that I had overshot my mark this time; for, upon my word, the woman was so shamefully ill-favoured, and so frightfully bad-looking, that after she came into the house, instead of growing accustomed to her face, as I expected I should, it only seemed to me to grow more and more ugly every day; and Edward vowed that he couldn’t bear to look upon her, and wouldn’t have such a buck-horse, as he called her, in his service; and, more than that, I declare my little ducks-o’-diamonds of a Kate used to scream itself nearly into fits directly the woman came near her. So I was obliged to get rid of her, though I must do the woman the justice to say that she answered my purpose very well, and did capitally for what I had engaged her--viz., to scare all the life-guardsmen away from my larder, which she did so effectually, that from the day after she entered my service, till the time she left, I never saw but one near the place, and he was a red-headed Irishman, and, I suppose, thought that, as the woman was so ugly, she must have a good bit of money in the savings bank; but even _he_ only came once.

The next maid I had was too grand by half to please me, and ought to have been a duchess instead of a servant; as she told me, plump and plain, “that she couldn’t a’bear the taste of ’ashes, and warn’t a-going to have none of the scraps warmed up twice, and shoved off upon her.” So, of course, I soon let the stuck-up thing know that she wouldn’t suit me, and that I only hoped that the day might come when she would be glad to jump out of her skin to get a dishful of sweet and wholesome mutton, instead of standing there turning up her nose at it, as if she were a lady of fashion.

The servant that I had after my fine lady was really a good one; but she objected to clean boots and knives, declaring that she had lived as maid-of-all-work in the first of families--(I never knew such first of families--I had her character from a tobacconist),--where every morning a man used to come in and do them. Indeed, she positively refused to touch either; so, as I wasn’t going to give into her--even if she had been the treasure that my mother promised to find me when I first got married--I determined to let her see who was mistress, and paying her a month in advance, I told her to go back and show her airs in her first of families, for she shouldn’t in mine.

Really, what with all this worry and bother, and what with my nursing at the time, I declare it was pulling me down so low, that my poor bones were all starting through my poor skin, and positively I hadn’t a bit of fat left upon my cheeks. If I drank one pint of porter throughout the day, I must have drunk near upon a dozen; and although the beer in the neighbourhood certainly was very good, still it seemed to be all thrown away upon me; and dear Edward very truly observed, that such a great big child as my Kitty was too much for me, and that either I must make up my mind to wean the poor little dear, (which I couldn’t bear the thoughts of,) or I must take more substantial food, and keep always having something strengthening, and a glass of port wine every two hours throughout the day; for he said, he didn’t wish me to go drinking so much porter; and that, as it was, there was nothing but one series of cries now at our door of “pots” and “beer,” from the first thing in the morning to the last thing at night. Really, he felt quite ashamed to look at our area rails when he got up, for there wasn’t a spike that hadn’t got a pewter-pot hanging to it, so that any one to see the sight would imagine that porter after all was the real blessing to mothers, and that Barclay and Perkins ought to be looked upon as the gigantic wet-nurses to the infants of the metropolis, while Truman and Hanbury might, at the same time, be regarded in the light of the extensive purveyors of milk to the blessed babes of London.

I told him, for goodness’ sake, to hold his tongue, and talk about something that he understood, and that I was sure I didn’t take half as much stout as many ladies that I knew, for that ever since the little pet had been born, I had accustomed it to the bottle.

“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he replied; “teaching a little innocent creature like that to fly for consolation to the bottle already. For my part,” he continued, “I shouldn’t at all wonder if she could, even now, at her tender age, manage her six bottles without being under the cradle.”

“Well, I’m sure!” I exclaimed. “I think you might find something better to joke upon, Mr. Sk--n--st--n, and not go turning your own flesh and blood into ridicule.”

“You know, my dear,” he continued, sipping his wine in the coolest way possible, “I’ve told you at least a hundred times that it’s one of the prettiest and most innocent little lambs I ever saw: so, come, my love, let’s drink the darling’s health; and I’ll give you a toast--‘May we ne’er want a baby, nor a bottle to give it!’”

I let him go on, for I saw that he was in a nasty, tantalizing humour, and that nothing would please him better than to get my blood up; but I wasn’t going to let him. Accordingly, I rang the bell for tea, and asked him, as I was nursing the child, and he seemed to want something to do, just to make it.

I declare I never knew such poor, helpless, ignorant things as the men are!--for, positively and truly, Edward was obliged to ask me to tell him how many spoonfuls he was to put in. And he calls himself a lord of the creation, too! Pretty lord of the creation, indeed, not even to know how to make so much as a simple cup of tea! So I had my laugh at him, and asked him, in my sly, quiet way, how he would ever be able to manage without us. Then I told him, of course, that he was to put in one spoonful for each of us, and one for the pot.

“One for the pot!” he exclaimed; “what do you mean by that? How can the pot want a spoonful? I shan’t do anything of the kind.”

I really thought I should have died of laughter at seeing any one so stupid, and said--“Lord! how foolish you are, Edward! Why, of course it’s only an extra spoonful, to make it better for ourselves; only it’s always customary, when you’re making tea, to say that it is for the pot.”

“Ah!” he returned--“I see! It’s the old story over again: doing something for ourselves, and making it out as if for another. And I’m very much afraid that, in these days of excessive philanthropy, more than one-half of what is termed charity is, after all, nothing more than ‘one for the pot.’”

I knew, if I answered him, he would go on all night, so I held my tongue; and I declare if he didn’t go putting almost every virtue down as “one for the pot,” and had the impudence to say that the shilling I put into the plate after the charity sermon, the Sunday before last, was not done for the sake of the orphans, but out of fear of not doing as other people did, and consequently was really and truly “one for the pot;” and that the beer which I drank, and which I said I took solely on dear little Kitty’s account, might also be put down as “one for the pot.”

After a world of bother, I at length obtained a servant. To be sure she was as stupid as she could well be; but when I came to think of it, what on earth could that matter to me? For, as I said to myself, we don’t want geniuses to wash up our dishes, or women of mind, indeed, to boil our potatoes. So I didn’t care about the poor thing’s deficiency of intellect, especially as it was muscles, and not brains, that I wanted, and she had a very good character from her last place; though really and truly the poor thing seemed to be half-witted, and I had to take great care about what I said to her, or she would be sure to go and take it literally. However, I had had so many knaves in the house before, that really I thought a fool would be agreeable, if it was only for the change. But whilst she was with me, the blunders she kept continually making were such that, whenever she came into my presence, I couldn’t help saying to myself, I never knew a woman approaching so near an idiot, in all my life.

However, my lady had got sense enough left to object to cleaning the knives and the boots and shoes, and to stipulate, when I engaged her, that I should get somebody else to do them; so I told her, if I found she suited me, I should not make that an objection, as, indeed, I should not have done with the other one, had she asked for it with the proper respect that was due to me as her mistress. So there I was again as deep in the mire as ever, and obliged to go trotting about among the tradesmen, asking them if they could recommend me any honest, well-disposed person, that had got his mornings disengaged, and would like to turn an honest penny or two by polishing our knives and boots.

Moreover, as I found that my little girl was getting far too heavy for me, in my weak state, to carry, I, at the same time, told the tradespeople that I should feel obliged if they would send me round any respectable little girl that they might hear of, who was competent to take care of a child.

Next day, the oilman sent a girl round to me. She was a little round fat body, with what I thought at the time was dark brown hair, (though I since found out that it was a bright red, only greased for the occasion into a chestnut;) and she looked so clean and neat, that I was delighted with her. As the oilman said that he knew her father--who was a highly respectable journeyman-painter--and that the girl was a well-behaved child, I made no bones about taking her, but told her she might come, and I should give her two shillings a-week, and food, which would be a great help to her parents, who, I dare say, were anxious that a girl of her age should begin to turn her hand to something for a living.

She went on very well at first, as they all do, indeed, and came with her hair nicely brushed, and her face and hands and apron beautifully clean, for two or three mornings; and then, all of a sudden, a change came o’er the spirit of my dream, as the poet says, and anybody that had seen her look so tidy before, would never have known her again in the grubby state she appeared; for she used to come with her hair just the same as when she got up in the morning, and all frayed out like so much red worsted, and looking as coarse and fuzzy as cocoa-nut fibre--and with the hooks and eyes nearly all off her gown behind--and her nasty rusty black petticoat hanging down below her frock, all caked over with old mud--and her boots burst out, and laced up three holes at a time, just to save herself trouble, with the ends of the laces dangling about her heels, and allowed to drag in the wet, till they really looked for all the world like a bit of string--whilst her apron, I declare, was as dirty as a coal-heaver’s stockings at the end of the week.

At last I found out who and what my lady was. For one day, after I had spoken to her about the disgraceful state of her clothing, and had told her that she really must get her boots mended if she wished to stop in my service, lo, and behold! my little monkey appeared the next day in a pair of old, dirty, worn-out, white satin shoes. And when I asked her what on earth could possess her to think of ever coming into my house in such disgraceful things as she had got on her feet, I declare, if she didn’t tell me that they were the shoes that she wore when she used to dance, as “_La Petite Saqui_,” on the tight-rope at the Queen’s Theatre, in Tottenham-court-road, until she grew too stout for the business.

I uttered a faint scream at the idea of my sweet cherub being intrusted to the care of such a creature, and asked her what in the world could have induced her to take to such an extraordinary means of getting a living? But she merely said that her father had a large family, and he had apprenticed her at a very early age to her uncle, who, together with her cousin, and a young gentleman of the name of Biler, were the original Bedouin Brothers, and who, she told me, were declared by the public press and her father to be the first posture-masters of the day.

I could scarcely restrain my feelings on hearing this, for, of course, after what I had heard, I imagined that I should go up suddenly into the nursery some fine morning, and catch “_La Petite Saqui_” doing with my little daughter the same as I had seen Mr. Risley do with his little boy--viz., lying down on her back, tossing up the little pet with the soles of her feet, and catching it again on the palms of her hand. However, I restrained my feelings, and determined to go round that very afternoon to the oilman, and give it him well for sending such a creature to me, with the character he did, and try if I could hear of any other girl in the neighbourhood.

Accordingly, as soon as my little angel of a Kate was fast asleep, I put on my bonnet, and stepped out. To make sure that neither of the girls could be up to any of their tricks in my absence, I took the key of the street-door, and locked them both in.

I couldn’t have been gone above half an hour, and when I got home again, I opened the door with as little noise as I could, in the hopes of seeing what the minxes had been doing in my absence. I had scarcely got half way down the passage, before--goodness gracious me!--if I didn’t see “_La Petite Saqui_,” as the young monkey called itself, out in the garden, with my longest clothes-pole in her hand, figuring on a tight-rope, which she had made by tying my clothes line from the railings to the garden-seat.

Yes, there she was, now springing up in the air, and now coming down, and sitting on the rope for a minute, and then bounding up again, just like an Indian-rubber ball, and then coming down again, and balancing herself on one leg, whilst she held the other out for a few seconds; and then running along the line towards the house as quick as she could put one foot over the other, and stopping suddenly, with a graceful curtsy, in the first position, just as I made my appearance at the back door. And when I went out into the garden, bless us and save us! if the place wasn’t just like a fair, with all the servants round about stretching their necks out of the windows or poking their noses over the garden walls, and that fool of a maid-of-all-work of an Emma of mine, standing by looking on, with a ball of whiting in her hand, and her mouth wide open with wonder.

They no sooner saw me, than down jumped that fat lump of goods, “_La Petite Saqui_,” and off she scampered, and I after her, all round the garden, with my parasol, trying to give it her well, amidst roars of laughter from all the servants looking on.

As for my tight-rope dancer, I wasn’t long in getting her out of the house, for directly I caught her, I took her by the scruff of the neck, and, bundling her into the street, threw her bonnet out after her.

Then I went down-stairs, and told that stupid thing of an Emma, that if ever I caught her idling her time away, instead of minding her work--which, I was sure, was quite enough for her to do, and if it wasn’t, I could easily find her some more--I’d serve her just in the same way, and not give her a character into the bargain. For I felt that if a stop were not put to such goings-on, at their very commencement, that really there would be no saying to what lengths such a simpleton as Emma might not go.

All the stupid thing kept saying was, that I had promised her she was not to clean the boots and shoes, and knives and forks, and that she had had to do them ever since she had been with me--as if that had got anything to do with it. But my experience has taught me, that servants, directly one begins to find fault with anything they’ve been doing, have a clever knack of bringing up against one any little indulgence that one may have foolishly promised them, and very naturally forgotten to carry out.

I told Miss Emma that she needn’t be frightened about soiling her delicate hands with the blacking brushes, as she wouldn’t have to do it much longer, for I had engaged a man who was to come in on the day after to-morrow, and would take the boots off her hands.

The publican sent me a very nice, sharp, active man, of the name of Richard Farden, though, he told me, he was better known as Dick Farden. He said, in the low London dialect, “He should be werry glad on the place, as it was just the thing he had been a looken out for for these three weeks gone, as his perfession didn’t require looking arter till it were gone three, or so.”

“Indeed!” I said, in the hopes that he would go on, for really the idea of a professional gentleman coming in to clean my boots and shoes did strike me as being somewhat singular. “And where may your place of business be?”

“Why, marm,” he replied, twiddling his bushy whiskers, “you see, my place o’ business is wery like this ere climate of ourn--wariable. Ven the brometer points to wery vet, then, on course, I knows that it’s a-going to be fine, and then I hangs out in Regent Street; and ven it stands at wery dry, then, as I knows it’s goin’ to rain, I hemigrates to that there public humbrella, the Lowther Harcade.”

As I could make neither head nor tail of what he said, my curiosity was excited all the more; so I told Edward, when he came home, of what a strange creature I had picked up to do the boots and shoes, and he appeared to be as much in the dark as I was; but, as he said, Mr. Dick Farden’s business, whatever it was, could be no business of his, he wasn’t going to bother his brains about it, so long as the man did his duty to his Wellingtons.

However, one evening, Edward informed me that he had found out who Mr. Dick Farden was; for as he was stopping to look into a print-shop in Regent Street, on his way home that afternoon, somebody tapped him on the shoulder, and said in his ear, “Do you want any prime cigars, noble captain?” and on turning round, who should it be but our out-door valet. When he recognised Edward, he only laughed and said, “I hope no offence, master? I merely wanted to do a bit of business in the smuggling line.”

“Oh, dear me!” I cried. “You don’t mean to say that we’ve got a horrid wretch of a smuggler for a servant, now?”

“Lord bless you!” replied Edward, “don’t go frightening yourself about that. You may depend upon it the fellow’s too knowing for that.”

However, after what he had said, I wasn’t going to be put off in that way, and told Edward that I would have the man up the very next morning, before him; and that if he couldn’t give a good account of himself, why he should turn him out of the house then and there.

Next morning at breakfast, I declare I couldn’t rest easy until we had Mr. Dick Farden up in the room, and when Edward reminded him of what had taken place the day before; the impudent fellow only stood there grinning and polishing the top of his oil-skin cap with his elbow, and saying that, of course, a gentleman so well acquainted with London as my husband, was very well aware of what he was after. That he had got no contraband articles to dispose of, and wasn’t such a stupid as to go infringing the laws, and running the chance of paying a hundred pounds odd for supplying the public with foreign articles, when many of them couldn’t tell the difference between them and the real, genuine English goods.

And then the fellow went on and told us a whole pack of things,--how what he called his prime smuggled Havannahs were no more nor less than those that were imported from the extensive cabbage plantations of Fulham, into the snuff and tobacco manufacturies in the Minories, and his very best pale or brown French cognac, and which he always warranted to his customers to be the very best that France could produce, was none other than the real spirit of the potato, commonly known by the name of British brandy; and the whole cargo of it that he had in his possession had been run in a splendid lugger of a chay-cart all the way from Smithfield; although, of course, to give it a genuine foreign flavour, he told the gentlemen a long cock-and-a-bull-story, as to how, at the perils of their lives, and at the outlay of upwards of a hundred pounds spent in bribing the revenue officers, he and his pals had succeeded in running it safe ashore at Deal, after a three hours’ chase by one of the finest cutters in the revenue service.

After this, it was no very difficult matter to see that the man was no more a smuggler than I was, so I asked him how it was that the gentlemen were stupid enough to buy his things? But he very frankly told me the whole secret, saying, that as the parties whom he went up to were mostly young men from the counting-houses, he generally commenced by calling them, “noble captains,” because they liked to be thought to be in the army, and having tickled with this, he said the other part of the business was mere child’s play--for the delicious flavour of a thing being foreign, together with the fine perfume of the idea that it was smuggled, was quite sufficient to make the youths of London buy and swallow anything.

As I saw he was inclined to go on, I wasn’t going to spoil the fun by interrupting him; so he continued saying that the whole world had a taste for smuggling, and the ladies in particular; and for his part, if ever he had any idea of going into the real genuine smuggling profession, he told me that, from the observations he had made while following the imitation business, he should decidedly man all his cutters with women,--that was to say, provided they were “thin ’uns,” as he elegantly expressed it,--for, of course, if the ladies were stout, the extension of their figures with any foreign produce would not only raise the suspicions of the officers, but likewise prevent their getting easily through the custom-house, while, if the angels were slightly made, nothing was simpler than to fatten the poor spare things with lace, or to pad them into perfect Venuses with white kid gloves. Indeed, he said, the corset-makers, knowing the natural propensity of the female sex for contraband goods, seemed to have designed one article of feminine attire simply with a view of defrauding the custom-house; for he had heard of one old lady who had brought home in her bustle alone (and which, asking my pardon, he said was the article of feminine attire that he alluded to) twelve yards of the best French velvet--upwards of forty-two of Valenciennes lace--a dozen of cambric pocket-handkerchiefs--and three dozen of white kid gloves--nine pair of silk stockings--a pair of stays--and a wig. But, to be sure, he added, she was a “werry thin ’un, Mam,”--insomuch so, indeed, that had Captain Johnson, or any other eminent smuggler, known of her natural propensity for infringing the laws, he would have given her any sum she might name to have entered his service; for positively and truly, she would have taken any amount of foreign produce, and would have borne cramming as well as a turkey.

I declare the man was such a chatter-box, that I verily believe he would have gone on talking for a twelvemonth, if we had only let him. But as I saw that he was determined to say all he could against my sex, of course I wasn’t going to sit quietly there and listen to it, while Mr. Edward kept chuckling at all he said against the women, like a ninny; so I told Mr. Dick Farden that he had better go down-stairs, and look after the knives, though really it would, in the end, have been much better for me if I had turned him out of the house on the spot; for---- But as Mr. Savill, my bothering printer, tells me that he can’t possibly squeeze any more of my domestic distresses into this number, why, my gentle readers must wait till the next month before they learn how Mr. Dick Farden served me, after all.