Our Mutual Friend
Lower Classes Say “Orse!”’
‘Pardon,’ said the foreign gentleman; ‘I am alwiz wrong!’
‘Our Language,’ said Mr Podsnap, with a gracious consciousness of being
always right, ‘is Difficult. Ours is a Copious Language, and Trying to
Strangers. I will not Pursue my Question.’
But the lumpy gentleman, unwilling to give it up, again madly said,
‘ESKER,’ and again spake no more.
‘It merely referred,’ Mr Podsnap explained, with a sense of meritorious
proprietorship, ‘to Our Constitution, Sir. We Englishmen are Very Proud
of our Constitution, Sir. It Was Bestowed Upon Us By Providence. No
Other Country is so Favoured as This Country.’
‘And ozer countries?—’ the foreign gentleman was beginning, when Mr
Podsnap put him right again.
‘We do not say Ozer; we say Other: the letters are “T” and “H;” You say
Tay and Aish, You Know; (still with clemency). The sound is “th”—“th!”’
‘And OTHER countries,’ said the foreign gentleman. ‘They do how?’
‘They do, Sir,’ returned Mr Podsnap, gravely shaking his head; ‘they
do—I am sorry to be obliged to say it—AS they do.’
‘It was a little particular of Providence,’ said the foreign gentleman,
laughing; ‘for the frontier is not large.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ assented Mr Podsnap; ‘But So it is. It was the Charter
of the Land. This Island was Blest, Sir, to the Direct Exclusion of
such Other Countries as—as there may happen to be. And if we were all
Englishmen present, I would say,’ added Mr Podsnap, looking round upon
his compatriots, and sounding solemnly with his theme, ‘that there is in
the Englishman a combination of qualities, a modesty, an independence,
a responsibility, a repose, combined with an absence of everything
calculated to call a blush into the cheek of a young person, which one
would seek in vain among the Nations of the Earth.’
Having delivered this little summary, Mr Podsnap’s face flushed, as he
thought of the remote possibility of its being at all qualified by
any prejudiced citizen of any other country; and, with his favourite
right-arm flourish, he put the rest of Europe and the whole of Asia,
Africa, and America nowhere.
The audience were much edified by this passage of words; and Mr Podsnap,
feeling that he was in rather remarkable force to-day, became smiling
and conversational.
‘Has anything more been heard, Veneering,’ he inquired, ‘of the lucky
legatee?’
‘Nothing more,’ returned Veneering, ‘than that he has come into
possession of the property. I am told people now call him The Golden
Dustman. I mentioned to you some time ago, I think, that the young lady
whose intended husband was murdered is daughter to a clerk of mine?’
‘Yes, you told me that,’ said Podsnap; ‘and by-the-bye, I wish you would
tell it again here, for it’s a curious coincidence—curious that the
first news of the discovery should have been brought straight to your
table (when I was there), and curious that one of your people should
have been so nearly interested in it. Just relate that, will you?’
Veneering was more than ready to do it, for he had prospered exceedingly
upon the Harmon Murder, and had turned the social distinction it
conferred upon him to the account of making several dozen of bran-new
bosom-friends. Indeed, such another lucky hit would almost have set him
up in that way to his satisfaction. So, addressing himself to the most
desirable of his neighbours, while Mrs Veneering secured the next most
desirable, he plunged into the case, and emerged from it twenty minutes
afterwards with a Bank Director in his arms. In the mean time, Mrs
Veneering had dived into the same waters for a wealthy Ship-Broker, and
had brought him up, safe and sound, by the hair. Then Mrs Veneering had
to relate, to a larger circle, how she had been to see the girl, and how
she was really pretty, and (considering her station) presentable.
And this she did with such a successful display of her eight aquiline
fingers and their encircling jewels, that she happily laid hold of a
drifting General Officer, his wife and daughter, and not only restored
their animation which had become suspended, but made them lively friends
within an hour.
Although Mr Podsnap would in a general way have highly disapproved of
Bodies in rivers as ineligible topics with reference to the cheek of the
young person, he had, as one may say, a share in this affair which made
him a part proprietor. As its returns were immediate, too, in the way
of restraining the company from speechless contemplation of the
wine-coolers, it paid, and he was satisfied.
And now the haunch of mutton vapour-bath having received a gamey
infusion, and a few last touches of sweets and coffee, was quite ready,
and the bathers came; but not before the discreet automaton had got
behind the bars of the piano music-desk, and there presented the
appearance of a captive languishing in a rose-wood jail. And who now
so pleasant or so well assorted as Mr and Mrs Alfred Lammle, he all
sparkle, she all gracious contentment, both at occasional intervals
exchanging looks like partners at cards who played a game against All
England.
There was not much youth among the bathers, but there was no youth
(the young person always excepted) in the articles of Podsnappery. Bald
bathers folded their arms and talked to Mr Podsnap on the hearthrug;
sleek-whiskered bathers, with hats in their hands, lunged at Mrs Podsnap
and retreated; prowling bathers, went about looking into ornamental
boxes and bowls as if they had suspicions of larceny on the part of the
Podsnaps, and expected to find something they had lost at the bottom;
bathers of the gentler sex sat silently comparing ivory shoulders. All
this time and always, poor little Miss Podsnap, whose tiny efforts (if
she had made any) were swallowed up in the magnificence of her mother’s
rocking, kept herself as much out of sight and mind as she could,
and appeared to be counting on many dismal returns of the day. It was
somehow understood, as a secret article in the state proprieties of
Podsnappery that nothing must be said about the day. Consequently this
young damsel’s nativity was hushed up and looked over, as if it were
agreed on all hands that it would have been better that she had never
been born.
The Lammles were so fond of the dear Veneerings that they could not for
some time detach themselves from those excellent friends; but at length,
either a very open smile on Mr Lammle’s part, or a very secret elevation
of one of his gingerous eyebrows—certainly the one or the other—seemed
to say to Mrs Lammle, ‘Why don’t you play?’ And so, looking about her,
she saw Miss Podsnap, and seeming to say responsively, ‘That card?’ and
to be answered, ‘Yes,’ went and sat beside Miss Podsnap.
Mrs Lammle was overjoyed to escape into a corner for a little quiet
talk.
It promised to be a very quiet talk, for Miss Podsnap replied in a
flutter, ‘Oh! Indeed, it’s very kind of you, but I am afraid I DON’T
talk.’
‘Let us make a beginning,’ said the insinuating Mrs Lammle, with her
best smile.
‘Oh! I am afraid you’ll find me very dull. But Ma talks!’
That was plainly to be seen, for Ma was talking then at her usual
canter, with arched head and mane, opened eyes and nostrils.
‘Fond of reading perhaps?’
‘Yes. At least I—don’t mind that so much,’ returned Miss Podsnap.
‘M-m-m-m-music.’ So insinuating was Mrs Lammle that she got half a dozen
ms into the word before she got it out.
‘I haven’t nerve to play even if I could. Ma plays.’
(At exactly the same canter, and with a certain flourishing appearance
of doing something, Ma did, in fact, occasionally take a rock upon the
instrument.)
‘Of course you like dancing?’
‘Oh no, I don’t,’ said Miss Podsnap.
‘No? With your youth and attractions? Truly, my dear, you surprise me!’
‘I can’t say,’ observed Miss Podsnap, after hesitating considerably, and
stealing several timid looks at Mrs Lammle’s carefully arranged face,
‘how I might have liked it if I had been a—you won’t mention it, WILL
you?’
‘My dear! Never!’
‘No, I am sure you won’t. I can’t say then how I should have liked it,
if I had been a chimney-sweep on May-day.’
‘Gracious!’ was the exclamation which amazement elicited from Mrs
Lammle.
‘There! I knew you’d wonder. But you won’t mention it, will you?’
‘Upon my word, my love,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘you make me ten times more
desirous, now I talk to you, to know you well than I was when I sat over
yonder looking at you. How I wish we could be real friends! Try me as a
real friend. Come! Don’t fancy me a frumpy old married woman, my dear;
I was married but the other day, you know; I am dressed as a bride now,
you see. About the chimney-sweeps?’
‘Hush! Ma’ll hear.’
‘She can’t hear from where she sits.’
‘Don’t you be too sure of that,’ said Miss Podsnap, in a lower voice.
‘Well, what I mean is, that they seem to enjoy it.’
‘And that perhaps you would have enjoyed it, if you had been one of
them?’
Miss Podsnap nodded significantly.
‘Then you don’t enjoy it now?’
‘How is it possible?’ said Miss Podsnap. ‘Oh it is such a dreadful
thing! If I was wicked enough—and strong enough—to kill anybody, it
should be my partner.’
This was such an entirely new view of the Terpsichorean art as
socially practised, that Mrs Lammle looked at her young friend in some
astonishment. Her young friend sat nervously twiddling her fingers in
a pinioned attitude, as if she were trying to hide her elbows. But this
latter Utopian object (in short sleeves) always appeared to be the great
inoffensive aim of her existence.
‘It sounds horrid, don’t it?’ said Miss Podsnap, with a penitential
face.
Mrs Lammle, not very well knowing what to answer, resolved herself into
a look of smiling encouragement.
‘But it is, and it always has been,’ pursued Miss Podsnap, ‘such a trial
to me! I so dread being awful. And it is so awful! No one knows what
I suffered at Madame Sauteuse’s, where I learnt to dance and make
presentation-curtseys, and other dreadful things—or at least where they
tried to teach me. Ma can do it.’
‘At any rate, my love,’ said Mrs Lammle, soothingly, ‘that’s over.’
‘Yes, it’s over,’ returned Miss Podsnap, ‘but there’s nothing gained by
that. It’s worse here, than at Madame Sauteuse’s. Ma was there, and Ma’s
here; but Pa wasn’t there, and company wasn’t there, and there were not
real partners there. Oh there’s Ma speaking to the man at the piano! Oh
there’s Ma going up to somebody! Oh I know she’s going to bring him
to me! Oh please don’t, please don’t, please don’t! Oh keep away, keep
away, keep away!’ These pious ejaculations Miss Podsnap uttered with her
eyes closed, and her head leaning back against the wall.
But the Ogre advanced under the pilotage of Ma, and Ma said, ‘Georgiana,
Mr Grompus,’ and the Ogre clutched his victim and bore her off to his
castle in the top couple. Then the discreet automaton who had surveyed
his ground, played a blossomless tuneless ‘set,’ and sixteen disciples
of Podsnappery went through the figures of - 1, Getting up at eight and
shaving close at a quarter past - 2, Breakfasting at nine - 3, Going to
the City at ten - 4, Coming home at half-past five - 5, Dining at seven,
and the grand chain.
While these solemnities were in progress, Mr Alfred Lammle (most loving
of husbands) approached the chair of Mrs Alfred Lammle (most loving of
wives), and bending over the back of it, trifled for some few seconds
with Mrs Lammle’s bracelet. Slightly in contrast with this brief airy
toying, one might have noticed a certain dark attention in Mrs Lammle’s
face as she said some words with her eyes on Mr Lammle’s waistcoat, and
seemed in return to receive some lesson. But it was all done as a breath
passes from a mirror.
And now, the grand chain riveted to the last link, the discreet