Martin Chuzzlewit
I left London (I’m a Kentish man by birth, though), and took that
situation here, I quite made up my mind that it was the dullest little
out-of-the-way corner in England, and that there would be some credit in
being jolly under such circumstances. But, Lord, there’s no dullness at
the Dragon! Skittles, cricket, quoits, nine-pins, comic songs, choruses,
company round the chimney corner every winter’s evening. Any man could
be jolly at the Dragon. There’s no credit in THAT.’
‘But if common report be true for once, Mark, as I think it is, being
able to confirm it by what I know myself,’ said Mr Pinch, ‘you are the
cause of half this merriment, and set it going.’
‘There may be something in that, too, sir,’ answered Mark. ‘But that’s
no consolation.’
‘Well!’ said Mr Pinch, after a short silence, his usually subdued tone
being even now more subdued than ever. ‘I can hardly think enough of
what you tell me. Why, what will become of Mrs Lupin, Mark?’
Mark looked more fixedly before him, and further off still, as he
answered that he didn’t suppose it would be much of an object to her.
There were plenty of smart young fellows as would be glad of the place.
He knew a dozen himself.
‘That’s probable enough,’ said Mr Pinch, ‘but I am not at all sure that
Mrs Lupin would be glad of them. Why, I always supposed that Mrs Lupin
and you would make a match of it, Mark; and so did every one, as far as
I know.’
‘I never,’ Mark replied, in some confusion, ‘said nothing as was in a
direct way courting-like to her, nor she to me, but I don’t know what I
mightn’t do one of these odd times, and what she mightn’t say in answer.
Well, sir, THAT wouldn’t suit.’
‘Not to be landlord of the Dragon, Mark?’ cried Mr Pinch.
‘No, sir, certainly not,’ returned the other, withdrawing his gaze from
the horizon, and looking at his fellow-traveller. ‘Why that would be the
ruin of a man like me. I go and sit down comfortably for life, and no
man never finds me out. What would be the credit of the landlord of the
Dragon’s being jolly? Why, he couldn’t help it, if he tried.’
‘Does Mrs Lupin know you are going to leave her?’ Mr Pinch inquired.
‘I haven’t broke it to her yet, sir, but I must. I’m looking out this
morning for something new and suitable,’ he said, nodding towards the
city.
‘What kind of thing now?’ Mr Pinch demanded.
‘I was thinking,’ Mark replied, ‘of something in the grave-digging
way.’
‘Good gracious, Mark?’ cried Mr Pinch.
‘It’s a good damp, wormy sort of business, sir,’ said Mark, shaking his
head argumentatively, ‘and there might be some credit in being jolly,
with one’s mind in that pursuit, unless grave-diggers is usually given
that way; which would be a drawback. You don’t happen to know how that
is in general, do you, sir?’
‘No,’ said Mr Pinch, ‘I don’t indeed. I never thought upon the subject.’
‘In case of that not turning out as well as one could wish, you know,’
said Mark, musing again, ‘there’s other businesses. Undertaking now.
That’s gloomy. There might be credit to be gained there. A broker’s man
in a poor neighbourhood wouldn’t be bad perhaps. A jailor sees a deal of
misery. A doctor’s man is in the very midst of murder. A bailiff’s an’t
a lively office nat’rally. Even a tax-gatherer must find his feelings
rather worked upon, at times. There’s lots of trades in which I should
have an opportunity, I think.’
Mr Pinch was so perfectly overwhelmed by these remarks that he could
do nothing but occasionally exchange a word or two on some indifferent
subject, and cast sidelong glances at the bright face of his odd friend
(who seemed quite unconscious of his observation), until they reached a
certain corner of the road, close upon the outskirts of the city, when
Mark said he would jump down there, if he pleased.
‘But bless my soul, Mark,’ said Mr Pinch, who in the progress of
his observation just then made the discovery that the bosom of his
companion’s shirt was as much exposed as if it was Midsummer, and was
ruffled by every breath of air, ‘why don’t you wear a waistcoat?’
‘What’s the good of one, sir?’ asked Mark.
‘Good of one?’ said Mr Pinch. ‘Why, to keep your chest warm.’
‘Lord love you, sir!’ cried Mark, ‘you don’t know me. My chest don’t
want no warming. Even if it did, what would no waistcoat bring it to?
Inflammation of the lungs, perhaps? Well, there’d be some credit in
being jolly, with a inflammation of the lungs.’
As Mr Pinch returned no other answer than such as was conveyed in his
breathing very hard, and opening his eyes very wide, and nodding his
head very much, Mark thanked him for his ride, and without troubling
him to stop, jumped lightly down. And away he fluttered, with his red
neckerchief, and his open coat, down a cross-lane; turning back from
time to time to nod to Mr Pinch, and looking one of the most careless,
good-humoured comical fellows in life. His late companion, with a
thoughtful face pursued his way to Salisbury.
Mr Pinch had a shrewd notion that Salisbury was a very desperate sort of
place; an exceeding wild and dissipated city; and when he had put up the
horse, and given the hostler to understand that he would look in again
in the course of an hour or two to see him take his corn, he set forth
on a stroll about the streets with a vague and not unpleasant idea that
they teemed with all kinds of mystery and bedevilment. To one of
his quiet habits this little delusion was greatly assisted by the
circumstance of its being market-day, and the thoroughfares about the
market-place being filled with carts, horses, donkeys, baskets, waggons,
garden-stuff, meat, tripe, pies, poultry and huckster’s wares of every
opposite description and possible variety of character. Then there were
young farmers and old farmers with smock-frocks, brown great-coats, drab
great-coats, red worsted comforters, leather-leggings, wonderful shaped
hats, hunting-whips, and rough sticks, standing about in groups, or
talking noisily together on the tavern steps, or paying and receiving
huge amounts of greasy wealth, with the assistance of such bulky
pocket-books that when they were in their pockets it was apoplexy to
get them out, and when they were out it was spasms to get them in again.
Also there were farmers’ wives in beaver bonnets and red cloaks, riding
shaggy horses purged of all earthly passions, who went soberly into all
manner of places without desiring to know why, and who, if required,
would have stood stock still in a china shop, with a complete
dinner-service at each hoof. Also a great many dogs, who were strongly
interested in the state of the market and the bargains of their masters;
and a great confusion of tongues, both brute and human.
Mr Pinch regarded everything exposed for sale with great delight, and
was particularly struck by the itinerant cutlery, which he considered
of the very keenest kind, insomuch that he purchased a pocket knife with
seven blades in it, and not a cut (as he afterwards found out) among
them. When he had exhausted the market-place, and watched the farmers
safe into the market dinner, he went back to look after the horse.
Having seen him eat unto his heart’s content he issued forth again,
to wander round the town and regale himself with the shop windows;
previously taking a long stare at the bank, and wondering in what
direction underground the caverns might be where they kept the money;
and turning to look back at one or two young men who passed him, whom
he knew to be articled to solicitors in the town; and who had a sort of
fearful interest in his eyes, as jolly dogs who knew a thing or two, and
kept it up tremendously.
But the shops. First of all there were the jewellers’ shops, with all
the treasures of the earth displayed therein, and such large silver
watches hanging up in every pane of glass, that if they were anything
but first-rate goers it certainly was not because the works could
decently complain of want of room. In good sooth they were big enough,
and perhaps, as the saying is, ugly enough, to be the most correct of
all mechanical performers; in Mr Pinch’s eyes, however they were smaller
than Geneva ware; and when he saw one very bloated watch announced as a
repeater, gifted with the uncommon power of striking every quarter of an
hour inside the pocket of its happy owner, he almost wished that he were
rich enough to buy it.
But what were even gold and silver, precious stones and clockwork, to
the bookshops, whence a pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed came
issuing forth, awakening instant recollections of some new grammar had
at school, long time ago, with ‘Master Pinch, Grove House Academy,’
inscribed in faultless writing on the fly-leaf! That whiff of russia
leather, too, and all those rows on rows of volumes neatly ranged
within--what happiness did they suggest! And in the window were
the spick-and-span new works from London, with the title-pages, and
sometimes even the first page of the first chapter, laid wide open;
tempting unwary men to begin to read the book, and then, in the
impossibility of turning over, to rush blindly in, and buy it! Here too
were the dainty frontispiece and trim vignette, pointing like handposts
on the outskirts of great cities, to the rich stock of incident beyond;
and store of books, with many a grave portrait and time-honoured name,
whose matter he knew well, and would have given mines to have, in any
form, upon the narrow shell beside his bed at Mr Pecksniff’s. What a
heart-breaking shop it was!
There was another; not quite so bad at first, but still a trying shop;
where children’s books were sold, and where poor Robinson Crusoe
stood alone in his might, with dog and hatchet, goat-skin cap and
fowling-pieces; calmly surveying Philip Quarn and the host of imitators
round him, and calling Mr Pinch to witness that he, of all the crowd,
impressed one solitary footprint on the shore of boyish memory, whereof
the tread of generations should not stir the lightest grain of sand.
And there too were the Persian tales, with flying chests and students of
enchanted books shut up for years in caverns; and there too was Abudah,
the merchant, with the terrible little old woman hobbling out of the box
in his bedroom; and there the mighty talisman, the rare Arabian Nights,
with Cassim Baba, divided by four, like the ghost of a dreadful sum,
hanging up, all gory, in the robbers’ cave. Which matchless wonders,
coming fast on Mr Pinch’s mind, did so rub up and chafe that wonderful
lamp within him, that when he turned his face towards the busy street,
a crowd of phantoms waited on his pleasure, and he lived again, with new
delight, the happy days before the Pecksniff era.
He had less interest now in the chemists’ shops, with their great
glowing bottles (with smaller repositories of brightness in their very
stoppers); and in their agreeable compromises between medicine and
perfumery, in the shape of toothsome lozenges and virgin honey. Neither
had he the least regard (but he never had much) for the tailors’, where
the newest metropolitan waistcoat patterns were hanging up, which by
some strange transformation always looked amazing there, and never
appeared at all like the same thing anywhere else. But he stopped to
read the playbill at the theatre and surveyed the doorway with a kind
of awe, which was not diminished when a sallow gentleman with long dark
hair came out, and told a boy to run home to his lodgings and bring down
his broadsword. Mr Pinch stood rooted to the spot on hearing this, and
might have stood there until dark, but that the old cathedral bell began
to ring for vesper service, on which he tore himself away.
Now, the organist’s assistant was a friend of Mr Pinch’s, which was a
good thing, for he too was a very quiet gentle soul, and had been, like