Martin Chuzzlewit
repute, to assist another professional lady with her advice; and thus it
happened that, all points of interest in the case being over, Mrs Gamp
had come home again to the bird-fancier’s and gone to bed. So when Mr
Pecksniff drove up in the hackney cab, Mrs Gamp’s curtains were drawn
close, and Mrs Gamp was fast asleep behind them.
If the bird-fancier had been at home, as he ought to have been, there
would have been no great harm in this; but he was out, and his shop was
closed. The shutters were down certainly; and in every pane of glass
there was at least one tiny bird in a tiny bird-cage, twittering and
hopping his little ballet of despair, and knocking his head against the
roof; while one unhappy goldfinch who lived outside a red villa with
his name on the door, drew the water for his own drinking, and mutely
appealed to some good man to drop a farthing’s-worth of poison in it.
Still, the door was shut. Mr Pecksniff tried the latch, and shook it,
causing a cracked bell inside to ring most mournfully; but no one came.
The bird-fancier was an easy shaver also, and a fashionable hair-dresser
also, and perhaps he had been sent for, express, from the court end of
the town, to trim a lord, or cut and curl a lady; but however that
might be, there, upon his own ground, he was not; nor was there any more
distinct trace of him to assist the imagination of an inquirer, than
a professional print or emblem of his calling (much favoured in the
trade), representing a hair-dresser of easy manners curling a lady
of distinguished fashion, in the presence of a patent upright grand
pianoforte.
Noting these circumstances, Mr Pecksniff, in the innocence of his heart,
applied himself to the knocker; but at the first double knock every
window in the street became alive with female heads; and before he could
repeat the performance whole troops of married ladies (some about to
trouble Mrs Gamp themselves very shortly) came flocking round the steps,
all crying out with one accord, and with uncommon interest, ‘Knock at
the winder, sir, knock at the winder. Lord bless you, don’t lose no more
time than you can help--knock at the winder!’
Acting upon this suggestion, and borrowing the driver’s whip for the
purpose, Mr Pecksniff soon made a commotion among the first floor
flower-pots, and roused Mrs Gamp, whose voice--to the great satisfaction
of the matrons--was heard to say, ‘I’m coming.’
‘He’s as pale as a muffin,’ said one lady, in allusion to Mr Pecksniff.
‘So he ought to be, if he’s the feelings of a man,’ observed another.
A third lady (with her arms folded) said she wished he had chosen any
other time for fetching Mrs Gamp, but it always happened so with HER.
It gave Mr Pecksniff much uneasiness to find, from these remarks, that
he was supposed to have come to Mrs Gamp upon an errand touching--not
the close of life, but the other end. Mrs Gamp herself was under the
same impression, for, throwing open the window, she cried behind the
curtains, as she hastily attired herself--
‘Is it Mrs Perkins?’
‘No!’ returned Mr Pecksniff, sharply. ‘Nothing of the sort.’
‘What, Mr Whilks!’ cried Mrs Gamp. ‘Don’t say it’s you, Mr Whilks, and
that poor creetur Mrs Whilks with not even a pincushion ready. Don’t say
it’s you, Mr Whilks!’
‘It isn’t Mr Whilks,’ said Pecksniff. ‘I don’t know the man. Nothing
of the kind. A gentleman is dead; and some person being wanted in the
house, you have been recommended by Mr Mould the undertaker.’
As she was by this time in a condition to appear, Mrs Gamp, who had
a face for all occasions, looked out of the window with her mourning
countenance, and said she would be down directly. But the matrons took
it very ill that Mr Pecksniff’s mission was of so unimportant a kind;
and the lady with her arms folded rated him in good round terms,
signifying that she would be glad to know what he meant by terrifying
delicate females ‘with his corpses;’ and giving it as her opinion that
he was quite ugly enough to know better. The other ladies were not at
all behind-hand in expressing similar sentiments; and the children, of
whom some scores had now collected, hooted and defied Mr Pecksniff quite
savagely. So when Mrs Gamp appeared, the unoffending gentleman was glad
to hustle her with very little ceremony into the cabriolet, and drive
off, overwhelmed with popular execration.
Mrs Gamp had a large bundle with her, a pair of pattens, and a species
of gig umbrella; the latter article in colour like a faded leaf, except
where a circular patch of a lively blue had been dexterously let in at
the top. She was much flurried by the haste she had made, and laboured
under the most erroneous views of cabriolets, which she appeared
to confound with mail-coaches or stage-wagons, inasmuch as she was
constantly endeavouring for the first half mile to force her luggage
through the little front window, and clamouring to the driver to ‘put
it in the boot.’ When she was disabused of this idea, her whole being
resolved itself into an absorbing anxiety about her pattens, with which
she played innumerable games at quoits on Mr Pecksniff’s legs. It was
not until they were close upon the house of mourning that she had enough
composure to observe--
‘And so the gentleman’s dead, sir! Ah! The more’s the pity.’ She didn’t
even know his name. ‘But it’s what we must all come to. It’s as certain
as being born, except that we can’t make our calculations as exact. Ah!
Poor dear!’
She was a fat old woman, this Mrs Gamp, with a husky voice and a moist
eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up, and only showing
the white of it. Having very little neck, it cost her some trouble to
look over herself, if one may say so, at those to whom she talked. She
wore a very rusty black gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a shawl
and bonnet to correspond. In these dilapidated articles of dress she
had, on principle, arrayed herself, time out of mind, on such occasions
as the present; for this at once expressed a decent amount of veneration
for the deceased, and invited the next of kin to present her with a
fresher suit of weeds; an appeal so frequently successful, that the very
fetch and ghost of Mrs Gamp, bonnet and all, might be seen hanging up,
any hour in the day, in at least a dozen of the second-hand clothes
shops about Holborn. The face of Mrs Gamp--the nose in particular--was
somewhat red and swollen, and it was difficult to enjoy her society
without becoming conscious of a smell of spirits. Like most persons who
have attained to great eminence in their profession, she took to hers
very kindly; insomuch that, setting aside her natural predilections as
a woman, she went to a lying-in or a laying-out with equal zest and
relish.
‘Ah!’ repeated Mrs Gamp; for it was always a safe sentiment in cases of
mourning. ‘Ah dear! When Gamp was summoned to his long home, and I see
him a-lying in Guy’s Hospital with a penny-piece on each eye, and his
wooden leg under his left arm, I thought I should have fainted away. But
I bore up.’
If certain whispers current in the Kingsgate Street circles had any
truth in them, she had indeed borne up surprisingly; and had exerted
such uncommon fortitude as to dispose of Mr Gamp’s remains for the
benefit of science. But it should be added, in fairness, that this had
happened twenty years before; and that Mr and Mrs Gamp had long been
separated on the ground of incompatibility of temper in their drink.
‘You have become indifferent since then, I suppose?’ said Mr Pecksniff.
‘Use is second nature, Mrs Gamp.’
‘You may well say second nater, sir,’ returned that lady. ‘One’s first
ways is to find sich things a trial to the feelings, and so is one’s
lasting custom. If it wasn’t for the nerve a little sip of liquor gives
me (I never was able to do more than taste it), I never could go through
with what I sometimes has to do. “Mrs Harris,” I says, at the very last
case as ever I acted in, which it was but a young person, “Mrs Harris,”
I says, “leave the bottle on the chimley-piece, and don’t ask me to take
none, but let me put my lips to it when I am so dispoged, and then I
will do what I’m engaged to do, according to the best of my ability.”
“Mrs Gamp,” she says, in answer, “if ever there was a sober creetur to
be got at eighteen pence a day for working people, and three and six for
gentlefolks--night watching,”’ said Mrs Gamp with emphasis, ‘“being a
extra charge--you are that inwallable person.” “Mrs Harris,” I says to
her, “don’t name the charge, for if I could afford to lay all my feller
creeturs out for nothink, I would gladly do it, sich is the love I bears
‘em. But what I always says to them as has the management of matters,
Mrs Harris”’--here she kept her eye on Mr Pecksniff--‘“be they gents or
be they ladies, is, don’t ask me whether I won’t take none, or whether I
will, but leave the bottle on the chimley-piece, and let me put my lips
to it when I am so dispoged.”’
The conclusion of this affecting narrative brought them to the house. In
the passage they encountered Mr Mould the undertaker; a little elderly
gentleman, bald, and in a suit of black; with a notebook in his hand,
a massive gold watch-chain dangling from his fob, and a face in which a
queer attempt at melancholy was at odds with a smirk of satisfaction; so
that he looked as a man might, who, in the very act of smacking his lips
over choice old wine, tried to make believe it was physic.
‘Well, Mrs Gamp, and how are YOU, Mrs Gamp?’ said this gentleman, in a
voice as soft as his step.
‘Pretty well, I thank you, sir,’ dropping a curtsey.
‘You’ll be very particular here, Mrs Gamp. This is not a common case,
Mrs Gamp. Let everything be very nice and comfortable, Mrs Gamp, if you
please,’ said the undertaker, shaking his head with a solemn air.
‘It shall be, sir,’ she replied, curtseying again. ‘You knows me of old,
sir, I hope.’
‘I hope so, too, Mrs Gamp,’ said the undertaker, ‘and I think so also.’
Mrs Gamp curtseyed again. ‘This is one of the most impressive cases,
sir,’ he continued, addressing Mr Pecksniff, ‘that I have seen in the
whole course of my professional experience.’
‘Indeed, Mr Mould!’ cried that gentleman.
‘Such affectionate regret, sir, I never saw. There is no limitation,
there is positively NO limitation’--opening his eyes wide, and standing
on tiptoe--‘in point of expense! I have orders, sir, to put on my whole
establishment of mutes; and mutes come very dear, Mr Pecksniff; not to
mention their drink. To provide silver-plated handles of the very best
description, ornamented with angels’ heads from the most expensive
dies. To be perfectly profuse in feathers. In short, sir, to turn out
something absolutely gorgeous.’
‘My friend Mr Jonas is an excellent man,’ said Mr Pecksniff.
‘I have seen a good deal of what is filial in my time, sir,’ retorted
Mould, ‘and what is unfilial too. It is our lot. We come into the
knowledge of those secrets. But anything so filial as this; anything so
honourable to human nature; so calculated to reconcile all of us to the
world we live in; never yet came under my observation. It only
proves, sir, what was so forcibly observed by the lamented theatrical
poet--buried at Stratford--that there is good in everything.’
‘It is very pleasant to hear you say so, Mr Mould,’ observed Pecksniff.
‘You are very kind, sir. And what a man Mr Chuzzlewit was, sir! Ah! what
a man he was. You may talk of your lord mayors,’ said Mould, waving his
hand at the public in general, ‘your sheriffs, your common councilmen,
your trumpery; but show me a man in this city who is worthy to walk
in the shoes of the departed Mr Chuzzlewit. No, no,’ cried Mould, with
bitter sarcasm. ‘Hang ‘em up, hang ‘em up; sole ‘em and heel ‘em, and