Martin Chuzzlewit
from him, of his free will, locked it in a place of safety.
Martin also wrote, by John’s advice, a letter to the trustees of the
famous Grammar School, boldly claiming the successful design as his,
and charging Mr Pecksniff with the fraud he had committed. In this
proceeding also, John was hotly interested; observing, with his usual
irreverance, that Mr Pecksniff had been a successful rascal all his
life through, and that it would be a lasting source of happiness to him
(John) if he could help to do him justice in the smallest particular.
A busy day! But Martin had no lodgings yet; so when these matters were
disposed of, he excused himself from dining with John Westlock and was
fain to wander out alone, and look for some. He succeeded, after great
trouble, in engaging two garrets for himself and Mark, situated in a
court in the Strand, not far from Temple Bar. Their luggage, which was
waiting for them at a coach-office, he conveyed to this new place of
refuge; and it was with a glow of satisfaction, which as a selfish man
he never could have known and never had, that, thinking how much pains
and trouble he had saved Mark, and how pleased and astonished Mark would
be, he afterwards walked up and down, in the Temple, eating a meat-pie
for his dinner.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
IN WHICH MRS HARRIS ASSISTED BY A TEAPOT, IS THE CAUSE OF A DIVISION
BETWEEN FRIENDS
Mrs Gamp’s apartment in Kingsgate Street, High Holborn, wore,
metaphorically speaking, a robe of state. It was swept and garnished for
the reception of a visitor. That visitor was Betsey Prig; Mrs Prig, of
Bartlemy’s; or as some said Barklemy’s, or as some said Bardlemy’s; for
by all these endearing and familiar appellations, had the hospital of
Saint Bartholomew become a household word among the sisterhood which
Betsey Prig adorned.
Mrs Gamp’s apartment was not a spacious one, but, to a contented mind,
a closet is a palace; and the first-floor front at Mr Sweedlepipe’s may
have been, in the imagination of Mrs Gamp, a stately pile. If it were
not exactly that, to restless intellects, it at least comprised as much
accommodation as any person, not sanguine to insanity, could have looked
for in a room of its dimensions. For only keep the bedstead always in
your mind; and you were safe. That was the grand secret. Remembering the
bedstead, you might even stoop to look under the little round table
for anything you had dropped, without hurting yourself much against the
chest of drawers, or qualifying as a patient of Saint Bartholomew, by
falling into the fire.
Visitors were much assisted in their cautious efforts to preserve an
unflagging recollection of this piece of furniture, by its size; which
was great. It was not a turn-up bedstead, nor yet a French bedstead,
nor yet a four-post bedstead, but what is poetically called a tent; the
sacking whereof was low and bulgy, insomuch that Mrs Gamp’s box would
not go under it, but stopped half-way, in a manner which, while it did
violence to the reason, likewise endangered the legs of a stranger. The
frame too, which would have supported the canopy and hangings if there
had been any, was ornamented with divers pippins carved in timber,
which on the slightest provocation, and frequently on none at all, came
tumbling down; harassing the peaceful guest with inexplicable terrors.
The bed itself was decorated with a patchwork quilt of great antiquity;
and at the upper end, upon the side nearest to the door, hung a scanty
curtain of blue check, which prevented the Zephyrs that were abroad in
Kingsgate Street, from visiting Mrs Gamp’s head too roughly. Some rusty
gowns and other articles of that lady’s wardrobe depended from the
posts; and these had so adapted themselves by long usage to her figure,
that more than one impatient husband coming in precipitately, at about
the time of twilight, had been for an instant stricken dumb by the
supposed discovery that Mrs Gamp had hanged herself. One gentleman,
coming on the usual hasty errand, had said indeed, that they looked like
guardian angels ‘watching of her in her sleep.’ But that, as Mrs Gamp
said, ‘was his first;’ and he never repeated the sentiment, though he
often repeated his visit.
The chairs in Mrs Gamp’s apartment were extremely large and
broad-backed, which was more than a sufficient reason for there being
but two in number. They were both elbow-chairs, of ancient mahogany; and
were chiefly valuable for the slippery nature of their seats, which had
been originally horsehair, but were now covered with a shiny substance
of a bluish tint, from which the visitor began to slide away with a
dismayed countenance, immediately after sitting down. What Mrs Gamp
wanted in chairs she made up in bandboxes; of which she had a great
collection, devoted to the reception of various miscellaneous valuables,
which were not, however, as well protected as the good woman, by a
pleasant fiction, seemed to think; for, though every bandbox had a
carefully closed lid, not one among them had a bottom; owing to which
cause the property within was merely, as it were, extinguished. The
chest of drawers having been originally made to stand upon the top of
another chest, had a dwarfish, elfin look, alone; but in regard of its
security it had a great advantage over the bandboxes, for as all the
handles had been long ago pulled off, it was very difficult to get at
its contents. This indeed was only to be done by one or two devices;
either by tilting the whole structure forward until all the drawers fell
out together, or by opening them singly with knives, like oysters.
Mrs Gamp stored all her household matters in a little cupboard by the
fire-place; beginning below the surface (as in nature) with the coals,
and mounting gradually upwards to the spirits, which, from motives of
delicacy, she kept in a teapot. The chimney-piece was ornamented with
a small almanack, marked here and there in Mrs Gamp’s own hand with a
memorandum of the date at which some lady was expected to fall due. It
was also embellished with three profiles: one, in colours, of Mrs Gamp
herself in early life; one, in bronze, of a lady in feathers, supposed
to be Mrs Harris, as she appeared when dressed for a ball; and one, in
black, of Mr Gamp, deceased. The last was a full length, in order
that the likeness might be rendered more obvious and forcible by the
introduction of the wooden leg.
A pair of bellows, a pair of pattens, a toasting-fork, a kettle, a
pap-boat, a spoon for the administration of medicine to the refractory,
and lastly, Mrs Gamp’s umbrella, which as something of great price
and rarity, was displayed with particular ostentation, completed the
decorations of the chimney-piece and adjacent wall. Towards these
objects Mrs Gamp raised her eyes in satisfaction when she had arranged
the tea-board, and had concluded her arrangements for the reception
of Betsey Prig, even unto the setting forth of two pounds of Newcastle
salmon, intensely pickled.
‘There! Now drat you, Betsey, don’t be long!’ said Mrs Gamp,
apostrophizing her absent friend. ‘For I can’t abear to wait, I do
assure you. To wotever place I goes, I sticks to this one mortar, “I’m
easy pleased; it is but little as I wants; but I must have that little
of the best, and to the minute when the clock strikes, else we do not
part as I could wish, but bearin’ malice in our arts.”’
Her own preparations were of the best, for they comprehended a delicate
new loaf, a plate of fresh butter, a basin of fine white sugar, and
other arrangements on the same scale. Even the snuff with which she
now refreshed herself, was so choice in quality that she took a second
pinch.
‘There’s the little bell a-ringing now,’ said Mrs Gamp, hurrying to
the stair-head and looking over. ‘Betsey Prig, my--why it’s that there
disapintin’ Sweedlepipes, I do believe.’
‘Yes, it’s me,’ said the barber in a faint voice; ‘I’ve just come in.’
‘You’re always a-comin’ in, I think,’ muttered Mrs Gamp to herself,
‘except wen you’re a-goin’ out. I ha’n’t no patience with that man!’
‘Mrs Gamp,’ said the barber. ‘I say! Mrs Gamp!’
‘Well,’ cried Mrs Gamp, impatiently, as she descended the stairs. ‘What
is it? Is the Thames a-fire, and cooking its own fish, Mr Sweedlepipes?
Why wot’s the man gone and been a-doin’ of to himself? He’s as white as
chalk!’
She added the latter clause of inquiry, when she got downstairs, and
found him seated in the shaving-chair, pale and disconsolate.
‘You recollect,’ said Poll. ‘You recollect young--’
‘Not young Wilkins!’ cried Mrs Gamp. ‘Don’t say young Wilkins, wotever
you do. If young Wilkins’s wife is took--’
‘It isn’t anybody’s wife,’ exclaimed the little barber. ‘Bailey, young
Bailey!’
‘Why, wot do you mean to say that chit’s been a-doin’ of?’ retorted Mrs
Gamp, sharply. ‘Stuff and nonsense, Mrs Sweedlepipes!’
‘He hasn’t been a-doing anything!’ exclaimed poor Poll, quite desperate.
‘What do you catch me up so short for, when you see me put out to that
extent that I can hardly speak? He’ll never do anything again. He’s done
for. He’s killed. The first time I ever see that boy,’ said Poll, ‘I
charged him too much for a red-poll. I asked him three-halfpence for a
penny one, because I was afraid he’d beat me down. But he didn’t.
And now he’s dead; and if you was to crowd all the steam-engines and
electric fluids that ever was, into this shop, and set ‘em every one to
work their hardest, they couldn’t square the account, though it’s only a
ha’penny!’
Mr Sweedlepipe turned aside to the towel, and wiped his eyes with it.
‘And what a clever boy he was!’ he said. ‘What a surprising young chap
he was! How he talked! and what a deal he know’d! Shaved in this very
chair he was; only for fun; it was all his fun; he was full of it. Ah!
to think that he’ll never be shaved in earnest! The birds might every
one have died, and welcome,’ cried the little barber, looking round him
at the cages, and again applying to the towel, ‘sooner than I’d have
heard this news!’
‘How did you ever come to hear it?’ said Mrs Gamp, ‘who told you?’
‘I went out,’ returned the little barber, ‘into the City, to meet a
sporting gent upon the Stock Exchange, that wanted a few slow pigeons to
practice at; and when I’d done with him, I went to get a little drop
of beer, and there I heard everybody a-talking about it. It’s in the
papers.’
‘You are in a nice state of confugion, Mr Sweedlepipes, you are!’ said
Mrs Gamp, shaking her head; ‘and my opinion is, as half-a-dudgeon fresh
young lively leeches on your temples, wouldn’t be too much to clear your
mind, which so I tell you. Wot were they a-talkin’ on, and wot was in
the papers?’
‘All about it!’ cried the barber. ‘What else do you suppose? Him and his
master were upset on a journey, and he was carried to Salisbury, and
was breathing his last when the account came away. He never spoke
afterwards. Not a single word. That’s the worst of it to me; but that
ain’t all. His master can’t be found. The other manager of their office
in the city, Crimple, David Crimple, has gone off with the money, and is
advertised for, with a reward, upon the walls. Mr Montague, poor young
Bailey’s master (what a boy he was!) is advertised for, too. Some say
he’s slipped off, to join his friend abroad; some say he mayn’t have got
away yet; and they’re looking for him high and low. Their office is a
smash; a swindle altogether. But what’s a Life Assurance office to a
Life! And what a Life Young Bailey’s was!’
‘He was born into a wale,’ said Mrs Gamp, with philosophical coolness.
‘and he lived in a wale; and he must take the consequences of sech a
sitiwation. But don’t you hear nothink of Mr Chuzzlewit in all this?’
‘No,’ said Poll, ‘nothing to speak of. His name wasn’t printed as one of