Martin Chuzzlewit
‘Mark! oh certainly! with anything.’
‘You don’t understand me--I think he had better go with us. He is an
honest fellow, and speaks his mind so very plainly.’
‘Why, the fact is,’ said Martin, smiling, ‘that being unaccustomed to a
free republic, he is used to do so.’
‘I think he had better go with us,’ returned the other. ‘He may get into
some trouble otherwise. This is not a slave State; but I am ashamed
to say that a spirit of Tolerance is not so common anywhere in
these latitudes as the form. We are not remarkable for behaving very
temperately to each other when we differ; but to strangers! no, I really
think he had better go with us.’
Martin called to him immediately to be of their party; so Cicero and the
truck went one way, and they three went another.
They walked about the city for two or three hours; seeing it from the
best points of view, and pausing in the principal streets, and before
such public buildings as Mr Bevan pointed out. Night then coming
on apace, Martin proposed that they should adjourn to Mrs Pawkins’s
establishment for coffee; but in this he was overruled by his new
acquaintance, who seemed to have set his heart on carrying him, though
it were only for an hour, to the house of a friend of his who lived hard
by. Feeling (however disinclined he was, being weary) that it would be
in bad taste, and not very gracious, to object that he was unintroduced,
when this open-hearted gentleman was so ready to be his sponsor,
Martin--for once in his life, at all events--sacrificed his own will and
pleasure to the wishes of another, and consented with a fair grace. So
travelling had done him that much good, already.
Mr Bevan knocked at the door of a very neat house of moderate size, from
the parlour windows of which, lights were shining brightly into the now
dark street. It was quickly opened by a man with such a thoroughly Irish
face, that it seemed as if he ought, as a matter of right and principle,
to be in rags, and could have no sort of business to be looking
cheerfully at anybody out of a whole suit of clothes.
Commending Mark to the care of this phenomenon--for such he may be said
to have been in Martin’s eyes--Mr Bevan led the way into the room
which had shed its cheerfulness upon the street, to whose occupants he
introduced Mr Chuzzlewit as a gentleman from England, whose acquaintance
he had recently had the pleasure to make. They gave him welcome in all
courtesy and politeness; and in less than five minutes’ time he found
himself sitting very much at his ease by the fireside, and becoming
vastly well acquainted with the whole family.
There were two young ladies--one eighteen; the other twenty--both very
slender, but very pretty; their mother, who looked, as Martin thought
much older and more faded than she ought to have looked; and their
grandmother, a little sharp-eyed, quick old woman, who seemed to have
got past that stage, and to have come all right again. Besides these,
there were the young ladies’ father, and the young ladies’ brother; the
first engaged in mercantile affairs; the second, a student at college;
both, in a certain cordiality of manner, like his own friend, and not
unlike him in face. Which was no great wonder, for it soon appeared that
he was their near relation. Martin could not help tracing the family
pedigree from the two young ladies, because they were foremost in his
thoughts; not only from being, as aforesaid, very pretty, but by reason
of their wearing miraculously small shoes, and the thinnest possible
silk stockings; the which their rocking-chairs developed to a
distracting extent.
There is no doubt that it was a monstrous comfortable circumstance to be
sitting in a snug, well-furnished room, warmed by a cheerful fire, and
full of various pleasant decorations, including four small shoes, and
the like amount of silk stockings, and--yes, why not?--the feet and
legs therein enshrined. And there is no doubt that Martin was monstrous
well-disposed to regard his position in that light, after his recent
experience of the Screw, and of Mrs Pawkins’s boarding-house. The
consequence was that he made himself very agreeable indeed; and by
the time the tea and coffee arrived (with sweet preserves, and cunning
tea-cakes in its train), was in a highly genial state, and much esteemed
by the whole family.
Another delightful circumstance turned up before the first cup of tea
was drunk. The whole family had been in England. There was a pleasant
thing! But Martin was not quite so glad of this, when he found that
they knew all the great dukes, lords, viscounts, marquesses, duchesses,
knights, and baronets, quite affectionately, and were beyond everything
interested in the least particular concerning them. However, when they
asked, after the wearer of this or that coronet, and said, ‘Was he quite
well?’ Martin answered, ‘Yes, oh yes. Never better;’ and when they said,
‘his lordship’s mother, the duchess, was she much changed?’ Martin said,
‘Oh dear no, they would know her anywhere, if they saw her to-morrow;’
and so got on pretty well. In like manner when the young ladies
questioned him touching the Gold Fish in that Grecian fountain in such
and such a nobleman’s conservatory, and whether there were as many as
there used to be, he gravely reported, after mature consideration, that
there must be at least twice as many; and as to the exotics, ‘Oh! well!
it was of no use talking about THEM; they must be seen to be believed;’
which improved state of circumstances reminded the family of the
splendour of that brilliant festival (comprehending the whole British
Peerage and Court Calendar) to which they were specially invited, and
which indeed had been partly given in their honour; and recollections
of what Mr Norris the father had said to the marquess, and of what Mrs
Norris the mother had said to the marchioness, and of what the marquess
and marchioness had both said, when they said that upon their words and
honours they wished Mr Norris the father and Mrs Norris the mother, and
the Misses Norris the daughters, and Mr Norris Junior, the son, would
only take up their permanent residence in England, and give them the
pleasure of their everlasting friendship, occupied a very considerable
time.
Martin thought it rather stange, and in some sort inconsistent, that
during the whole of these narrations, and in the very meridian of their
enjoyment thereof, both Mr Norris the father, and Mr Norris Junior,
the son (who corresponded, every post, with four members of the English
Peerage), enlarged upon the inestimable advantage of having no such
arbitrary distinctions in that enlightened land, where there were no
noblemen but nature’s noblemen, and where all society was based on one
broad level of brotherly love and natural equality. Indeed, Mr Norris
the father gradually expanding into an oration on this swelling theme,
was becoming tedious, when Mr Bevan diverted his thoughts by happening
to make some causal inquiry relative to the occupier of the next house;
in reply to which, this same Mr Norris the father observed, that ‘that
person entertained religious opinions of which he couldn’t approve; and
therefore he hadn’t the honour of knowing the gentleman.’ Mrs Norris the
mother added another reason of her own, the same in effect, but varying
in words; to wit, that she believed the people were well enough in their
way, but they were not genteel.
Another little trait came out, which impressed itself on Martin
forcibly. Mr Bevan told them about Mark and the negro, and then it
appeared that all the Norrises were abolitionists. It was a great relief
to hear this, and Martin was so much encouraged on finding himself in
such company, that he expressed his sympathy with the oppressed and
wretched blacks. Now, one of the young ladies--the prettiest and most
delicate--was mightily amused at the earnestness with which he spoke;
and on his craving leave to ask her why, was quite unable for a time to
speak for laughing. As soon however as she could, she told him that
the negroes were such a funny people, so excessively ludicrous in their
manners and appearance, that it was wholly impossible for those who knew
them well, to associate any serious ideas with such a very absurd part
of the creation. Mr Norris the father, and Mrs Norris the mother, and
Miss Norris the sister, and Mr Norris Junior the brother, and even Mrs
Norris Senior the grandmother, were all of this opinion, and laid
it down as an absolute matter of fact--as if there were nothing in
suffering and slavery, grim enough to cast a solemn air on any human
animal; though it were as ridiculous, physically, as the most
grotesque of apes, or morally, as the mildest Nimrod among tuft-hunting
republicans!
‘In short,’ said Mr Norris the father, settling the question
comfortably, ‘there is a natural antipathy between the races.’
‘Extending,’ said Martin’s friend, in a low voice, ‘to the cruellest of
tortures, and the bargain and sale of unborn generations.’
Mr Norris the son said nothing, but he made a wry face, and dusted his
fingers as Hamlet might after getting rid of Yorick’s skull; just as
though he had that moment touched a negro, and some of the black had
come off upon his hands.
In order that their talk might fall again into its former pleasant
channel, Martin dropped the subject, with a shrewd suspicion that it
would be a dangerous theme to revive under the best of circumstances;
and again addressed himself to the young ladies, who were very
gorgeously attired in very beautiful colours, and had every article of
dress on the same extensive scale as the little shoes and the thin silk
stockings. This suggested to him that they were great proficients in the
French fashions, which soon turned out to be the case, for though their
information appeared to be none of the newest, it was very extensive;
and the eldest sister in particular, who was distinguished by a talent
for metaphysics, the laws of hydraulic pressure, and the rights of human
kind, had a novel way of combining these acquirements and bringing them
to bear on any subject from Millinery to the Millennium, both inclusive,
which was at once improving and remarkable; so much so, in short, that
it was usually observed to reduce foreigners to a state of temporary
insanity in five minutes.
Martin felt his reason going; and as a means of saving himself, besought
the other sister (seeing a piano in the room) to sing. With this request
she willingly complied; and a bravura concert, solely sustained by the
Misses Noriss, presently began. They sang in all languages--except their
own. German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss; but nothing
native; nothing so low as native. For, in this respect, languages are
like many other travellers--ordinary and commonplace enough at home, but
‘specially genteel abroad.
There is little doubt that in course of time the Misses Norris would
have come to Hebrew, if they had not been interrupted by an announcement
from the Irishman, who, flinging open the door, cried in a loud voice--
‘Jiniral Fladdock!’
‘My!’ cried the sisters, desisting suddenly. ‘The general come back!’
As they made the exclamation, the general, attired in full uniform for a
ball, came darting in with such precipitancy that, hitching his boot
in the carpet, and getting his sword between his legs, he came down
headlong, and presented a curious little bald place on the crown of his
head to the eyes of the astonished company. Nor was this the worst of
it; for being rather corpulent and very tight, the general being down,
could not get up again, but lay there writhing and doing such things with
his boots, as there is no other instance of in military history.
Of course there was an immediate rush to his assistance; and the general