Martin Chuzzlewit
with more intolerable dulness, chew more tobacco, smoke more tobacco,
drink more rum-toddy, mint-julep, gin-sling, and cocktail, than any
private gentleman of his acquaintance. This made him an orator and a
man of the people. In a word, the major was a rising character, and a
popular character, and was in a fair way to be sent by the popular party
to the State House of New York, if not in the end to Washington itself.
But as a man’s private prosperity does not always keep pace with his
patriotic devotion to public affairs; and as fraudulent transactions
have their downs as well as ups, the major was occasionally under a
cloud. Hence, just now Mrs Pawkins kept a boarding-house, and Major
Pawkins rather ‘loafed’ his time away than otherwise.
‘You have come to visit our country, sir, at a season of great
commercial depression,’ said the major.
‘At an alarming crisis,’ said the colonel.
‘At a period of unprecedented stagnation,’ said Mr Jefferson Brick.
‘I am sorry to hear that,’ returned Martin. ‘It’s not likely to last, I
hope?’
Martin knew nothing about America, or he would have known perfectly well
that if its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always
IS depressed, and always IS stagnated, and always IS at an alarming
crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body they are ready to make
oath upon the Evangelists at any hour of the day or night, that it
is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable
globe.
‘It’s not likely to last, I hope?’ said Martin.
‘Well!’ returned the major, ‘I expect we shall get along somehow, and
come right in the end.’
‘We are an elastic country,’ said the Rowdy Journal.
‘We are a young lion,’ said Mr Jefferson Brick.
‘We have revivifying and vigorous principles within ourselves,’ observed
the major. ‘Shall we drink a bitter afore dinner, colonel?’
The colonel assenting to this proposal with great alacrity, Major
Pawkins proposed an adjournment to a neighbouring bar-room, which, as he
observed, was ‘only in the next block.’ He then referred Martin to
Mrs Pawkins for all particulars connected with the rate of board and
lodging, and informed him that he would have the pleasure of seeing that
lady at dinner, which would soon be ready, as the dinner hour was two
o’clock, and it only wanted a quarter now. This reminded him that if the
bitter were to be taken at all, there was no time to lose; so he walked
off without more ado, and left them to follow if they thought proper.
When the major rose from his rocking-chair before the stove, and so
disturbed the hot air and balmy whiff of soup which fanned their brows,
the odour of stale tobacco became so decidedly prevalent as to leave no
doubt of its proceeding mainly from that gentleman’s attire. Indeed,
as Martin walked behind him to the bar-room, he could not help thinking
that the great square major, in his listlessness and langour, looked
very much like a stale weed himself; such as might be hoed out of
the public garden, with great advantage to the decent growth of that
preserve, and tossed on some congenial dunghill.
They encountered more weeds in the bar-room, some of whom (being thirsty
souls as well as dirty) were pretty stale in one sense, and pretty fresh
in another. Among them was a gentleman who, as Martin gathered from the
conversation that took place over the bitter, started that afternoon for
the Far West on a six months’ business tour, and who, as his outfit and
equipment for this journey, had just such another shiny hat and just
such another little pale valise as had composed the luggage of the
gentleman who came from England in the Screw.
They were walking back very leisurely; Martin arm-in-arm with Mr
Jefferson Brick, and the major and the colonel side-by-side before them;
when, as they came within a house or two of the major’s residence, they
heard a bell ringing violently. The instant this sound struck upon their
ears, the colonel and the major darted off, dashed up the steps and in
at the street-door (which stood ajar) like lunatics; while Mr Jefferson
Brick, detaching his arm from Martin’s, made a precipitate dive in the
same direction, and vanished also.
‘Good Heaven!’ thought Martin. ‘The premises are on fire! It was an
alarm bell!’
But there was no smoke to be seen, nor any flame, nor was there any
smell of fire. As Martin faltered on the pavement, three more gentlemen,
with horror and agitation depicted in their faces, came plunging wildly
round the street corner; jostled each other on the steps; struggled for
an instant; and rushed into the house, a confused heap of arms and
legs. Unable to bear it any longer, Martin followed. Even in his
rapid progress he was run down, thrust aside, and passed, by two more
gentlemen, stark mad, as it appeared, with fierce excitement.
‘Where is it?’ cried Martin, breathlessly, to a negro whom he
encountered in the passage.
‘In a eatin room, sa. Kernell, sa, him kep a seat ‘side himself, sa.’
‘A seat!’ cried Martin.
‘For a dinnar, sa.’
Martin started at him for a moment, and burst into a hearty laugh; to
which the negro, out of his natural good humour and desire to please, so
heartily responded, that his teeth shone like a gleam of light. ‘You’re
the pleasantest fellow I have seen yet,’ said Martin clapping him on the
back, ‘and give me a better appetite than bitters.’
With this sentiment he walked into the dining-room and slipped into
a chair next the colonel, which that gentleman (by this time nearly
through his dinner) had turned down in reserve for him, with its back
against the table.
It was a numerous company--eighteen or twenty perhaps. Of these some
five or six were ladies, who sat wedged together in a little phalanx by
themselves. All the knives and forks were working away at a rate that
was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to
eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a famine were expected to set in
before breakfast time to-morrow morning, and it had become high time
to assert the first law of nature. The poultry, which may perhaps be
considered to have formed the staple of the entertainment--for there was
a turkey at the top, a pair of ducks at the bottom, and two fowls in the
middle--disappeared as rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its
wings, and had flown in desperation down a human throat. The oysters,
stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by
scores into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished,
whole cucumbers at once, like sugar-plums, and no man winked his eye.
Great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before the sun.
It was a solemn and an awful thing to see. Dyspeptic individuals bolted
their food in wedges; feeding, not themselves, but broods of nightmares,
who were continually standing at livery within them. Spare men, with
lank and rigid cheeks, came out unsatisfied from the destruction of
heavy dishes, and glared with watchful eyes upon the pastry. What Mrs
Pawkins felt each day at dinner-time is hidden from all human knowledge.
But she had one comfort. It was very soon over.
When the colonel had finished his dinner, which event took place while
Martin, who had sent his plate for some turkey, was waiting to begin,
he asked him what he thought of the boarders, who were from all parts of
the Union, and whether he would like to know any particulars concerning
them.
‘Pray,’ said Martin, ‘who is that sickly little girl opposite, with the
tight round eyes? I don’t see anybody here, who looks like her mother,
or who seems to have charge of her.’
‘Do you mean the matron in blue, sir?’ asked the colonel, with emphasis.
‘That is Mrs Jefferson Brick, sir.’
‘No, no,’ said Martin, ‘I mean the little girl, like a doll; directly
opposite.’
‘Well, sir!’ cried the colonel. ‘THAT is Mrs Jefferson Brick.’
Martin glanced at the colonel’s face, but he was quite serious.
‘Bless my soul! I suppose there will be a young Brick then, one of these
days?’ said Martin.
‘There are two young Bricks already, sir,’ returned the colonel.
The matron looked so uncommonly like a child herself, that Martin could
not help saying as much. ‘Yes, sir,’ returned the colonel, ‘but some
institutions develop human natur; others re--tard it.’
‘Jefferson Brick,’ he observed after a short silence, in commendation
of his correspondent, ‘is one of the most remarkable men in our country,
sir!’
This had passed almost in a whisper, for the distinguished gentleman
alluded to sat on Martin’s other hand.
‘Pray, Mr Brick,’ said Martin, turning to him, and asking a question
more for conversation’s sake than from any feeling of interest in its
subject, ‘who is that;’ he was going to say ‘young’ but thought it
prudent to eschew the word--‘that very short gentleman yonder, with the
red nose?’
‘That is Pro--fessor Mullit, sir,’ replied Jefferson.
‘May I ask what he is professor of?’ asked Martin.
‘Of education, sir,’ said Jefferson Brick.
‘A sort of schoolmaster, possibly?’ Martin ventured to observe.
‘He is a man of fine moral elements, sir, and not commonly endowed,’
said the war correspondent. ‘He felt it necessary, at the last election
for President, to repudiate and denounce his father, who voted on the
wrong interest. He has since written some powerful pamphlets, under
the signature of “Suturb,” or Brutus reversed. He is one of the most
remarkable men in our country, sir.’
‘There seem to be plenty of ‘em,’ thought Martin, ‘at any rate.’
Pursuing his inquiries Martin found that there were no fewer than four
majors present, two colonels, one general, and a captain, so that he
could not help thinking how strongly officered the American militia must
be; and wondering very much whether the officers commanded each other;
or if they did not, where on earth the privates came from. There seemed
to be no man there without a title; for those who had not attained to
military honours were either doctors, professors, or reverends. Three
very hard and disagreeable gentlemen were on missions from neighbouring
States; one on monetary affairs, one on political, one on sectarian.
Among the ladies, there were Mrs Pawkins, who was very straight, bony,
and silent; and a wiry-faced old damsel, who held strong sentiments
touching the rights of women, and had diffused the same in lectures;
but the rest were strangely devoid of individual traits of character,
insomuch that any one of them might have changed minds with the other,
and nobody would have found it out. These, by the way, were the only
members of the party who did not appear to be among the most remarkable
people in the country.
Several of the gentlemen got up, one by one, and walked off as they
swallowed their last morsel; pausing generally by the stove for a minute
or so to refresh themselves at the brass spittoons. A few sedentary
characters, however, remained at table full a quarter of an hour, and
did not rise until the ladies rose, when all stood up.
‘Where are they going?’ asked Martin, in the ear of Mr Jefferson Brick.
‘To their bedrooms, sir.’
‘Is there no dessert, or other interval of conversation?’ asked Martin,
who was disposed to enjoy himself after his long voyage.
‘We are a busy people here, sir, and have no time for that,’ was the
reply.
So the ladies passed out in single file; Mr Jefferson Brick and such
other married gentlemen as were left, acknowledging the departure
of their other halves by a nod; and there was an end of THEM. Martin
thought this an uncomfortable custom, but he kept his opinion to himself
for the present, being anxious to hear, and inform himself by, the
conversation of the busy gentlemen, who now lounged about the stove as