The Pickwick Papers
somebody went down, just to see that he didn’t dip his beak into the jug
by accident, or make some confounded mistake in losing the money as he
came upstairs, it would be as well. Here, you sir, just run downstairs,
and look after that gentleman, will you?’
This request was addressed to a little timid-looking, nervous man, whose
appearance bespoke great poverty, and who had been crouching on his
bedstead all this while, apparently stupefied by the novelty of his
situation.
‘You know where the coffee-room is,’ said Smangle; ‘just run down, and
tell that gentleman you’ve come to help him up with the jug. Or--stop--
I’ll tell you what--I’ll tell you how we’ll do him,’ said Smangle, with
a cunning look.
‘How?’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Send down word that he’s to spend the change in cigars. Capital
thought. Run and tell him that; d’ye hear? They shan’t be wasted,’
continued Smangle, turning to Mr. Pickwick. ‘_I’ll_ smoke ‘em.’
This manoeuvring was so exceedingly ingenious and, withal, performed
with such immovable composure and coolness, that Mr. Pickwick would have
had no wish to disturb it, even if he had had the power. In a short time
Mr. Mivins returned, bearing the sherry, which Mr. Smangle dispensed in
two little cracked mugs; considerately remarking, with reference to
himself, that a gentleman must not be particular under such
circumstances, and that, for his part, he was not too proud to drink out
of the jug. In which, to show his sincerity, he forthwith pledged the
company in a draught which half emptied it.
An excellent understanding having been by these means promoted, Mr.
Smangle proceeded to entertain his hearers with a relation of divers
romantic adventures in which he had been from time to time engaged,
involving various interesting anecdotes of a thoroughbred horse, and a
magnificent Jewess, both of surpassing beauty, and much coveted by the
nobility and gentry of these kingdoms.
Long before these elegant extracts from the biography of a gentleman
were concluded, Mr. Mivins had betaken himself to bed, and had set in
snoring for the night, leaving the timid stranger and Mr. Pickwick to
the full benefit of Mr. Smangle’s experiences.
Nor were the two last-named gentlemen as much edified as they might have
been by the moving passages narrated. Mr. Pickwick had been in a state
of slumber for some time, when he had a faint perception of the drunken
man bursting out afresh with the comic song, and receiving from Mr.
Smangle a gentle intimation, through the medium of the water-jug, that
his audience was not musically disposed. Mr. Pickwick then once again
dropped off to sleep, with a confused consciousness that Mr. Smangle was
still engaged in relating a long story, the chief point of which
appeared to be that, on some occasion particularly stated and set forth,
he had ‘done’ a bill and a gentleman at the same time.
CHAPTER XLII. ILLUSTRATIVE, LIKE THE PRECEDING ONE, OF THE OLD PROVERB,
THAT ADVERSITY BRINGS A MAN ACQUAINTED WITH STRANGE BEDFELLOWS--
LIKEWISE CONTAINING MR. PICKWICK’S EXTRAORDINARY AND STARTLING
ANNOUNCEMENT TO MR. SAMUEL WELLER
When Mr. Pickwick opened his eyes next morning, the first object upon
which they rested was Samuel Weller, seated upon a small black
portmanteau, intently regarding, apparently in a condition of profound
abstraction, the stately figure of the dashing Mr. Smangle; while Mr.
Smangle himself, who was already partially dressed, was seated on his
bedstead, occupied in the desperately hopeless attempt of staring Mr.
Weller out of countenance. We say desperately hopeless, because Sam,
with a comprehensive gaze which took in Mr. Smangle’s cap, feet, head,
face, legs, and whiskers, all at the same time, continued to look
steadily on, with every demonstration of lively satisfaction, but with
no more regard to Mr. Smangle’s personal sentiments on the subject than
he would have displayed had he been inspecting a wooden statue, or a
straw-embowelled Guy Fawkes.
‘Well; will you know me again?’ said Mr. Smangle, with a frown.
‘I’d svear to you anyveres, Sir,’ replied Sam cheerfully.
‘Don’t be impertinent to a gentleman, Sir,’ said Mr. Smangle.
‘Not on no account,’ replied Sam. ‘If you’ll tell me wen he wakes, I’ll
be upon the wery best extra-super behaviour!’ This observation, having a
remote tendency to imply that Mr. Smangle was no gentleman, kindled his
ire.
‘Mivins!’ said Mr. Smangle, with a passionate air.
‘What’s the office?’ replied that gentleman from his couch.
‘Who the devil is this fellow?’
‘’Gad,’ said Mr. Mivins, looking lazily out from under the bed-clothes,
‘I ought to ask _you _that. Hasn’t he any business here?’
‘No,’ replied Mr. Smangle.
‘Then knock him downstairs, and tell him not to presume to get up till I
come and kick him,’ rejoined Mr. Mivins; with this prompt advice that
excellent gentleman again betook himself to slumber.
The conversation exhibiting these unequivocal symptoms of verging on the
personal, Mr. Pickwick deemed it a fit point at which to interpose.
‘Sam,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Sir,’ rejoined that gentleman.
‘Has anything new occurred since last night?’
‘Nothin’ partickler, sir,’ replied Sam, glancing at Mr. Smangle’s
whiskers; ‘the late prewailance of a close and confined atmosphere has
been rayther favourable to the growth of veeds, of an alarmin’ and
sangvinary natur; but vith that ‘ere exception things is quiet enough.’
‘I shall get up,’ said Mr. Pickwick; ‘give me some clean things.’
Whatever hostile intentions Mr. Smangle might have entertained, his
thoughts were speedily diverted by the unpacking of the portmanteau; the
contents of which appeared to impress him at once with a most favourable
opinion, not only of Mr. Pickwick, but of Sam also, who, he took an
early opportunity of declaring in a tone of voice loud enough for that
eccentric personage to overhear, was a regular thoroughbred original,
and consequently the very man after his own heart. As to Mr. Pickwick,
the affection he conceived for him knew no limits.
‘Now is there anything I can do for you, my dear Sir?’ said Smangle.
‘Nothing that I am aware of, I am obliged to you,’ replied Mr. Pickwick.
‘No linen that you want sent to the washerwoman’s? I know a delightful
washerwoman outside, that comes for my things twice a week; and, by
Jove!--how devilish lucky!--this is the day she calls. Shall I put any
of those little things up with mine? Don’t say anything about the
trouble. Confound and curse it! if one gentleman under a cloud is not to
put himself a little out of the way to assist another gentleman in the
same condition, what’s human nature?’
Thus spake Mr. Smangle, edging himself meanwhile as near as possible to
the portmanteau, and beaming forth looks of the most fervent and
disinterested friendship.
‘There’s nothing you want to give out for the man to brush, my dear
creature, is there?’ resumed Smangle.
‘Nothin’ whatever, my fine feller,’ rejoined Sam, taking the reply into
his own mouth. ‘P’raps if vun of us wos to brush, without troubling the
man, it ‘ud be more agreeable for all parties, as the schoolmaster said
when the young gentleman objected to being flogged by the butler.’
‘And there’s nothing I can send in my little box to the washer-woman’s,
is there?’ said Smangle, turning from Sam to Mr. Pickwick, with an air
of some discomfiture.
‘Nothin’ whatever, Sir,’ retorted Sam; ‘I’m afeered the little box must
be chock full o’ your own as it is.’
This speech was accompanied with such a very expressive look at that
particular portion of Mr. Smangle’s attire, by the appearance of which
the skill of laundresses in getting up gentlemen’s linen is generally
tested, that he was fain to turn upon his heel, and, for the present at
any rate, to give up all design on Mr. Pickwick’s purse and wardrobe. He
accordingly retired in dudgeon to the racket-ground, where he made a
light and whole-some breakfast on a couple of the cigars which had been
purchased on the previous night.
Mr. Mivins, who was no smoker, and whose account for small articles of
chandlery had also reached down to the bottom of the slate, and been
‘carried over’ to the other side, remained in bed, and, in his own
words, ‘took it out in sleep.’
After breakfasting in a small closet attached to the coffee-room, which
bore the imposing title of the Snuggery, the temporary inmate of which,
in consideration of a small additional charge, had the unspeakable
advantage of overhearing all the conversation in the coffee-room
aforesaid; and, after despatching Mr. Weller on some necessary errands,
Mr. Pickwick repaired to the lodge, to consult Mr. Roker concerning his
future accommodation.
‘Accommodation, eh?’ said that gentleman, consulting a large book.
‘Plenty of that, Mr. Pickwick. Your chummage ticket will be on twenty-
seven, in the third.’
‘Oh,’ said Mr. Pickwick. ‘My what, did you say?’
‘Your chummage ticket,’ replied Mr. Roker; ‘you’re up to that?’
‘Not quite,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, with a smile.
‘Why,’ said Mr. Roker, ‘it’s as plain as Salisbury. You’ll have a
chummage ticket upon twenty-seven in the third, and them as is in the
room will be your chums.’
‘Are there many of them?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick dubiously.
‘Three,’ replied Mr. Roker.
Mr. Pickwick coughed.
‘One of ‘em’s a parson,’ said Mr. Roker, filling up a little piece of
paper as he spoke; ‘another’s a butcher.’
‘Eh?’ exclaimed Mr. Pickwick.
‘A butcher,’ repeated Mr. Roker, giving the nib of his pen a tap on the
desk to cure it of a disinclination to mark. ‘What a thorough-paced goer
he used to be sure-ly! You remember Tom Martin, Neddy?’ said Roker,
appealing to another man in the lodge, who was paring the mud off his
shoes with a five-and-twenty-bladed pocket-knife.
‘I should think so,’ replied the party addressed, with a strong emphasis
on the personal pronoun.
‘Bless my dear eyes!’ said Mr. Roker, shaking his head slowly from side
to side, and gazing abstractedly out of the grated windows before him,
as if he were fondly recalling some peaceful scene of his early youth;
‘it seems but yesterday that he whopped the coal-heaver down Fox-under-
the-Hill by the wharf there. I think I can see him now, a-coming up the
Strand between the two street-keepers, a little sobered by the bruising,
with a patch o’ winegar and brown paper over his right eyelid, and that
‘ere lovely bulldog, as pinned the little boy arterwards, a-following at
his heels. What a rum thing time is, ain’t it, Neddy?’
The gentleman to whom these observations were addressed, who appeared of
a taciturn and thoughtful cast, merely echoed the inquiry; Mr. Roker,
shaking off the poetical and gloomy train of thought into which he had
been betrayed, descended to the common business of life, and resumed his
pen.
‘Do you know what the third gentlemen is?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick, not
very much gratified by this description of his future associates.
‘What is that Simpson, Neddy?’ said Mr. Roker, turning to his companion.
‘What Simpson?’ said Neddy.
‘Why, him in twenty-seven in the third, that this gentleman’s going to
be chummed on.’
‘Oh, him!’ replied Neddy; ‘he’s nothing exactly. He _was _a horse
chaunter: he’s a leg now.’
‘Ah, so I thought,’ rejoined Mr. Roker, closing the book, and placing
the small piece of paper in Mr. Pickwick’s hands. ‘That’s the ticket,
sir.’
Very much perplexed by this summary disposition of this person, Mr.
Pickwick walked back into the prison, revolving in his mind what he had
better do. Convinced, however, that before he took any other steps it
would be advisable to see, and hold personal converse with, the three
gentlemen with whom it was proposed to quarter him, he made the best of
his way to the third flight.