Our Mutual Friend
How the fascinating Tippins gets on when arraying herself for the
bewilderment of the senses of men, is known only to the Graces and her
maid; but perhaps even that engaging creature, though not reduced to
the self-dependence of Twemlow could dispense with a good deal of the
trouble attendant on the daily restoration of her charms, seeing that
as to her face and neck this adorable divinity is, as it were, a diurnal
species of lobster—throwing off a shell every forenoon, and needing to
keep in a retired spot until the new crust hardens.
Howbeit, Twemlow doth at length invest himself with collar and cravat
and wristbands to his knuckles, and goeth forth to breakfast. And to
breakfast with whom but his near neighbours, the Lammles of Sackville
Street, who have imparted to him that he will meet his distant kinsman,
Mr Fledgely. The awful Snigsworth might taboo and prohibit Fledgely, but
the peaceable Twemlow reasons, If he IS my kinsman I didn’t make him so,
and to meet a man is not to know him.’
It is the first anniversary of the happy marriage of Mr and Mrs Lammle,
and the celebration is a breakfast, because a dinner on the desired
scale of sumptuosity cannot be achieved within less limits than those
of the non-existent palatial residence of which so many people are
madly envious. So, Twemlow trips with not a little stiffness across
Piccadilly, sensible of having once been more upright in figure and less
in danger of being knocked down by swift vehicles. To be sure that was
in the days when he hoped for leave from the dread Snigsworth to do
something, or be something, in life, and before that magnificent Tartar
issued the ukase, ‘As he will never distinguish himself, he must be a
poor gentleman-pensioner of mine, and let him hereby consider himself
pensioned.’
Ah! my Twemlow! Say, little feeble grey personage, what thoughts are in
thy breast to-day, of the Fancy—so still to call her who bruised thy
heart when it was green and thy head brown—and whether it be better or
worse, more painful or less, to believe in the Fancy to this hour, than
to know her for a greedy armour-plated crocodile, with no more capacity
of imagining the delicate and sensitive and tender spot behind thy
waistcoat, than of going straight at it with a knitting-needle. Say
likewise, my Twemlow, whether it be the happier lot to be a poor
relation of the great, or to stand in the wintry slush giving the hack
horses to drink out of the shallow tub at the coach-stand, into which
thou has so nearly set thy uncertain foot. Twemlow says nothing, and
goes on.
As he approaches the Lammles’ door, drives up a little one-horse
carriage, containing Tippins the divine. Tippins, letting down the
window, playfully extols the vigilance of her cavalier in being in
waiting there to hand her out. Twemlow hands her out with as much polite
gravity as if she were anything real, and they proceed upstairs. Tippins
all abroad about the legs, and seeking to express that those unsteady
articles are only skipping in their native buoyancy.
And dear Mrs Lammle and dear Mr Lammle, how do you do, and when are
you going down to what’s-its-name place—Guy, Earl of Warwick, you
know—what is it?—Dun Cow—to claim the flitch of bacon? And Mortimer,
whose name is for ever blotted out from my list of lovers, by reason
first of fickleness and then of base desertion, how do YOU do, wretch?
And Mr Wrayburn, YOU here! What can YOU come for, because we are all
very sure before-hand that you are not going to talk! And Veneering,
M.P., how are things going on down at the house, and when will you turn
out those terrible people for us? And Mrs Veneering, my dear, can it
positively be true that you go down to that stifling place night after
night, to hear those men prose? Talking of which, Veneering, why don’t
you prose, for you haven’t opened your lips there yet, and we are dying
to hear what you have got to say to us! Miss Podsnap, charmed to see
you. Pa, here? No! Ma, neither? Oh! Mr Boots! Delighted. Mr Brewer!
This IS a gathering of the clans. Thus Tippins, and surveys Fledgeby and
outsiders through golden glass, murmuring as she turns about and about,
in her innocent giddy way, Anybody else I know? No, I think not. Nobody
there. Nobody THERE. Nobody anywhere!
Mr Lammle, all a-glitter, produces his friend Fledgeby, as dying for the
honour of presentation to Lady Tippins. Fledgeby presented, has the air
of going to say something, has the air of going to say nothing, has an
air successively of meditation, of resignation, and of desolation,
backs on Brewer, makes the tour of Boots, and fades into the extreme
background, feeling for his whisker, as if it might have turned up since
he was there five minutes ago.
But Lammle has him out again before he has so much as completely
ascertained the bareness of the land. He would seem to be in a bad way,
Fledgeby; for Lammle represents him as dying again. He is dying now, of
want of presentation to Twemlow.
Twemlow offers his hand. Glad to see him. ‘Your mother, sir, was a
connexion of mine.’
‘I believe so,’ says Fledgeby, ‘but my mother and her family were two.’
‘Are you staying in town?’ asks Twemlow.
‘I always am,’ says Fledgeby.
‘You like town,’ says Twemlow. But is felled flat by Fledgeby’s taking
it quite ill, and replying, No, he don’t like town. Lammle tries to
break the force of the fall, by remarking that some people do not like
town. Fledgeby retorting that he never heard of any such case but his
own, Twemlow goes down again heavily.
‘There is nothing new this morning, I suppose?’ says Twemlow, returning
to the mark with great spirit.
Fledgeby has not heard of anything.
‘No, there’s not a word of news,’ says Lammle.
‘Not a particle,’ adds Boots.
‘Not an atom,’ chimes in Brewer.
Somehow the execution of this little concerted piece appears to raise
the general spirits as with a sense of duty done, and sets the company a
going. Everybody seems more equal than before, to the calamity of being
in the society of everybody else. Even Eugene standing in a window,
moodily swinging the tassel of a blind, gives it a smarter jerk now, as
if he found himself in better case.
Breakfast announced. Everything on table showy and gaudy, but with
a self-assertingly temporary and nomadic air on the decorations, as
boasting that they will be much more showy and gaudy in the palatial
residence. Mr Lammle’s own particular servant behind his chair; the
Analytical behind Veneering’s chair; instances in point that
such servants fall into two classes: one mistrusting the master’s
acquaintances, and the other mistrusting the master. Mr Lammle’s
servant, of the second class. Appearing to be lost in wonder and low
spirits because the police are so long in coming to take his master up
on some charge of the first magnitude.
Veneering, M.P., on the right of Mrs Lammle; Twemlow on her left; Mrs
Veneering, W.M.P. (wife of Member of Parliament), and Lady Tippins on Mr
Lammle’s right and left. But be sure that well within the fascination of
Mr Lammle’s eye and smile sits little Georgiana. And be sure that
close to little Georgiana, also under inspection by the same gingerous
gentleman, sits Fledgeby.
Oftener than twice or thrice while breakfast is in progress, Mr Twemlow
gives a little sudden turn towards Mrs Lammle, and then says to her, ‘I
beg your pardon!’ This not being Twemlow’s usual way, why is it his
way to-day? Why, the truth is, Twemlow repeatedly labours under the
impression that Mrs Lammle is going to speak to him, and turning finds
that it is not so, and mostly that she has her eyes upon Veneering.
Strange that this impression so abides by Twemlow after being corrected,
yet so it is.
Lady Tippins partaking plentifully of the fruits of the earth (including
grape-juice in the category) becomes livelier, and applies herself to
elicit sparks from Mortimer Lightwood. It is always understood among the
initiated, that that faithless lover must be planted at table opposite
to Lady Tippins, who will then strike conversational fire out of him.
In a pause of mastication and deglutition, Lady Tippins, contemplating
Mortimer, recalls that it was at our dear Veneerings, and in the
presence of a party who are surely all here, that he told them his
story of the man from somewhere, which afterwards became so horribly
interesting and vulgarly popular.
‘Yes, Lady Tippins,’ assents Mortimer; ‘as they say on the stage, “Even
so!”’
‘Then we expect you,’ retorts the charmer, ‘to sustain your reputation,
and tell us something else.’
‘Lady Tippins, I exhausted myself for life that day, and there is
nothing more to be got out of me.’
Mortimer parries thus, with a sense upon him that elsewhere it is Eugene
and not he who is the jester, and that in these circles where Eugene
persists in being speechless, he, Mortimer, is but the double of the
friend on whom he has founded himself.
‘But,’ quoth the fascinating Tippins, ‘I am resolved on getting
something more out of you. Traitor! what is this I hear about another
disappearance?’
‘As it is you who have heard it,’ returns Lightwood, ‘perhaps you’ll
tell us.’
‘Monster, away!’ retorts Lady Tippins. ‘Your own Golden Dustman referred
me to you.’
Mr Lammle, striking in here, proclaims aloud that there is a sequel
to the story of the man from somewhere. Silence ensues upon the
proclamation.
‘I assure you,’ says Lightwood, glancing round the table, ‘I have
nothing to tell.’ But Eugene adding in a low voice, ‘There, tell
it, tell it!’ he corrects himself with the addition, ‘Nothing worth
mentioning.’
Boots and Brewer immediately perceive that it is immensely worth
mentioning, and become politely clamorous. Veneering is also visited by
a perception to the same effect. But it is understood that his attention
is now rather used up, and difficult to hold, that being the tone of the
House of Commons.
‘Pray don’t be at the trouble of composing yourselves to listen,’ says
Mortimer Lightwood, ‘because I shall have finished long before you have
fallen into comfortable attitudes. It’s like—’
‘It’s like,’ impatiently interrupts Eugene, ‘the children’s narrative:
“I’ll tell you a story
Of Jack a Manory,
And now my story’s begun;
I’ll tell you another
Of Jack and his brother,
And now my story is done.”
—Get on, and get it over!’
Eugene says this with a sound of vexation in his voice, leaning back in
his chair and looking balefully at Lady Tippins, who nods to him as
her dear Bear, and playfully insinuates that she (a self-evident
proposition) is Beauty, and he Beast.
‘The reference,’ proceeds Mortimer, ‘which I suppose to be made by my
honourable and fair enslaver opposite, is to the following circumstance.
Very lately, the young woman, Lizzie Hexam, daughter of the late Jesse
Hexam, otherwise Gaffer, who will be remembered to have found the body
of the man from somewhere, mysteriously received, she knew not from
whom, an explicit retraction of the charges made against her father, by
another water-side character of the name of Riderhood. Nobody believed
them, because little Rogue Riderhood—I am tempted into the paraphrase
by remembering the charming wolf who would have rendered society a great
service if he had devoured Mr Riderhood’s father and mother in their
infancy—had previously played fast and loose with the said charges,
and, in fact, abandoned them. However, the retraction I have mentioned
found its way into Lizzie Hexam’s hands, with a general flavour on it
of having been favoured by some anonymous messenger in a dark cloak and
slouched hat, and was by her forwarded, in her father’s vindication, to
Mr Boffin, my client. You will excuse the phraseology of the shop, but