Nicholas Nickleby
‘but he is useful enough, poor creature--useful enough.’
The kind-hearted gentleman omitted to add that Newman Noggs, being
utterly destitute, served him for rather less than the usual wages of a
boy of thirteen; and likewise failed to mention in his hasty chronicle,
that his eccentric taciturnity rendered him an especially valuable
person in a place where much business was done, of which it was
desirable no mention should be made out of doors. The other gentleman
was plainly impatient to be gone, however, and as they hurried into the
hackney cabriolet immediately afterwards, perhaps Mr. Nickleby forgot to
mention circumstances so unimportant.
There was a great bustle in Bishopsgate Street Within, as they drew up,
and (it being a windy day) half-a-dozen men were tacking across the road
under a press of paper, bearing gigantic announcements that a Public
Meeting would be holden at one o’clock precisely, to take into
consideration the propriety of petitioning Parliament in favour of the
United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual
Delivery Company, capital five millions, in five hundred thousand shares
of ten pounds each; which sums were duly set forth in fat black figures
of considerable size. Mr. Bonney elbowed his way briskly upstairs,
receiving in his progress many low bows from the waiters who stood on
the landings to show the way; and, followed by Mr. Nickleby, dived into a
suite of apartments behind the great public room: in the second of which
was a business-looking table, and several business-looking people.
‘Hear!’ cried a gentleman with a double chin, as Mr. Bonney presented
himself. ‘Chair, gentlemen, chair!’
The new-comers were received with universal approbation, and Mr. Bonney
bustled up to the top of the table, took off his hat, ran his fingers
through his hair, and knocked a hackney-coachman’s knock on the table
with a little hammer: whereat several gentlemen cried ‘Hear!’ and nodded
slightly to each other, as much as to say what spirited conduct that
was. Just at this moment, a waiter, feverish with agitation, tore into
the room, and throwing the door open with a crash, shouted ‘Sir Matthew
Pupker!’
The committee stood up and clapped their hands for joy, and while they
were clapping them, in came Sir Matthew Pupker, attended by two live
members of Parliament, one Irish and one Scotch, all smiling and bowing,
and looking so pleasant that it seemed a perfect marvel how any
man could have the heart to vote against them. Sir Matthew Pupker
especially, who had a little round head with a flaxen wig on the top
of it, fell into such a paroxysm of bows, that the wig threatened to
be jerked off, every instant. When these symptoms had in some degree
subsided, the gentlemen who were on speaking terms with Sir Matthew
Pupker, or the two other members, crowded round them in three little
groups, near one or other of which the gentlemen who were NOT on
speaking terms with Sir Matthew Pupker or the two other members, stood
lingering, and smiling, and rubbing their hands, in the desperate hope
of something turning up which might bring them into notice. All this
time, Sir Matthew Pupker and the two other members were relating to
their separate circles what the intentions of government were, about
taking up the bill; with a full account of what the government had said
in a whisper the last time they dined with it, and how the government
had been observed to wink when it said so; from which premises they were
at no loss to draw the conclusion, that if the government had one
object more at heart than another, that one object was the welfare and
advantage of the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet
Baking and Punctual Delivery Company.
Meanwhile, and pending the arrangement of the proceedings, and a fair
division of the speechifying, the public in the large room were eyeing,
by turns, the empty platform, and the ladies in the Music Gallery. In
these amusements the greater portion of them had been occupied for a
couple of hours before, and as the most agreeable diversions pall upon
the taste on a too protracted enjoyment of them, the sterner spirits now
began to hammer the floor with their boot-heels, and to express their
dissatisfaction by various hoots and cries. These vocal exertions,
emanating from the people who had been there longest, naturally
proceeded from those who were nearest to the platform and furthest from
the policemen in attendance, who having no great mind to fight their way
through the crowd, but entertaining nevertheless a praiseworthy desire
to do something to quell the disturbance, immediately began to drag
forth, by the coat tails and collars, all the quiet people near the
door; at the same time dealing out various smart and tingling blows with
their truncheons, after the manner of that ingenious actor, Mr. Punch:
whose brilliant example, both in the fashion of his weapons and their
use, this branch of the executive occasionally follows.
Several very exciting skirmishes were in progress, when a loud shout
attracted the attention even of the belligerents, and then there poured
on to the platform, from a door at the side, a long line of gentlemen
with their hats off, all looking behind them, and uttering vociferous
cheers; the cause whereof was sufficiently explained when Sir Matthew
Pupker and the two other real members of Parliament came to the front,
amidst deafening shouts, and testified to each other in dumb motions
that they had never seen such a glorious sight as that, in the whole
course of their public career.
At length, and at last, the assembly left off shouting, but Sir Matthew
Pupker being voted into the chair, they underwent a relapse which lasted
five minutes. This over, Sir Matthew Pupker went on to say what must be
his feelings on that great occasion, and what must be that occasion
in the eyes of the world, and what must be the intelligence of
his fellow-countrymen before him, and what must be the wealth and
respectability of his honourable friends behind him, and lastly, what
must be the importance to the wealth, the happiness, the comfort, the
liberty, the very existence of a free and great people, of such an
Institution as the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet
Baking and Punctual Delivery Company!
Mr. Bonney then presented himself to move the first resolution; and
having run his right hand through his hair, and planted his left, in
an easy manner, in his ribs, he consigned his hat to the care of the
gentleman with the double chin (who acted as a species of bottle-holder
to the orators generally), and said he would read to them the first
resolution--‘That this meeting views with alarm and apprehension,
the existing state of the Muffin Trade in this Metropolis and its
neighbourhood; that it considers the Muffin Boys, as at present
constituted, wholly underserving the confidence of the public; and that
it deems the whole Muffin system alike prejudicial to the health and
morals of the people, and subversive of the best interests of a great
commercial and mercantile community.’ The honourable gentleman made a
speech which drew tears from the eyes of the ladies, and awakened the
liveliest emotions in every individual present. He had visited the
houses of the poor in the various districts of London, and had found
them destitute of the slightest vestige of a muffin, which there
appeared too much reason to believe some of these indigent persons
did not taste from year’s end to year’s end. He had found that among
muffin-sellers there existed drunkenness, debauchery, and profligacy,
which he attributed to the debasing nature of their employment as at
present exercised; he had found the same vices among the poorer class of
people who ought to be muffin consumers; and this he attributed to
the despair engendered by their being placed beyond the reach of that
nutritious article, which drove them to seek a false stimulant in
intoxicating liquors. He would undertake to prove before a committee of
the House of Commons, that there existed a combination to keep up the
price of muffins, and to give the bellmen a monopoly; he would prove it
by bellmen at the bar of that House; and he would also prove, that these
men corresponded with each other by secret words and signs as ‘Snooks,’
‘Walker,’ ‘Ferguson,’ ‘Is Murphy right?’ and many others. It was
this melancholy state of things that the Company proposed to correct;
firstly, by prohibiting, under heavy penalties, all private muffin
trading of every description; secondly, by themselves supplying the
public generally, and the poor at their own homes, with muffins of first
quality at reduced prices. It was with this object that a bill had
been introduced into Parliament by their patriotic chairman Sir Matthew
Pupker; it was this bill that they had met to support; it was the
supporters of this bill who would confer undying brightness and
splendour upon England, under the name of the United Metropolitan
Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company;
he would add, with a capital of Five Millions, in five hundred thousand
shares of ten pounds each.
Mr. Ralph Nickleby seconded the resolution, and another gentleman having
moved that it be amended by the insertion of the words ‘and crumpet’
after the word ‘muffin,’ whenever it occurred, it was carried
triumphantly. Only one man in the crowd cried ‘No!’ and he was promptly
taken into custody, and straightway borne off.
The second resolution, which recognised the expediency of immediately
abolishing ‘all muffin (or crumpet) sellers, all traders in muffins (or
crumpets) of whatsoever description, whether male or female, boys or
men, ringing hand-bells or otherwise,’ was moved by a grievous gentleman
of semi-clerical appearance, who went at once into such deep pathetics,
that he knocked the first speaker clean out of the course in no time.
You might have heard a pin fall--a pin! a feather--as he described
the cruelties inflicted on muffin boys by their masters, which he
very wisely urged were in themselves a sufficient reason for the
establishment of that inestimable company. It seemed that the unhappy
youths were nightly turned out into the wet streets at the most
inclement periods of the year, to wander about, in darkness and rain--or
it might be hail or snow--for hours together, without shelter, food,
or warmth; and let the public never forget upon the latter point, that
while the muffins were provided with warm clothing and blankets,
the boys were wholly unprovided for, and left to their own miserable
resources. (Shame!) The honourable gentleman related one case of a
muffin boy, who having been exposed to this inhuman and barbarous system
for no less than five years, at length fell a victim to a cold in the
head, beneath which he gradually sunk until he fell into a perspiration
and recovered; this he could vouch for, on his own authority, but he
had heard (and he had no reason to doubt the fact) of a still more
heart-rending and appalling circumstance. He had heard of the case of an
orphan muffin boy, who, having been run over by a hackney carriage, had
been removed to the hospital, had undergone the amputation of his
leg below the knee, and was now actually pursuing his occupation on
crutches. Fountain of justice, were these things to last!
This was the department of the subject that took the meeting, and this
was the style of speaking to enlist their sympathies. The men shouted;
the ladies wept into their pocket-handkerchiefs till they were moist,
and waved them till they were dry; the excitement was tremendous; and
Mr. Nickleby whispered his friend that the shares were thenceforth at a
premium of five-and-twenty per cent.