The Pickwick Papers
it?’ said Bob Sawyer, still prompted by the demon aforesaid.
‘It would be particularly comfortable, I think,’ replied Mr. Pickwick.
‘Mr. Pott, what do you say?’
Mr. Pott yielded a ready assent; and all four travellers, each with his
glass in his hand, at once betook themselves to the kitchen, with Sam
Weller heading the procession to show them the way.
The stranger was still reading; he looked up and started. Mr. Pott
started.
‘What’s the matter?’ whispered Mr. Pickwick.
‘That reptile!’ replied Pott.
‘What reptile?’ said Mr. Pickwick, looking about him for fear he should
tread on some overgrown black beetle, or dropsical spider.
‘That reptile,’ whispered Pott, catching Mr. Pickwick by the arm, and
pointing towards the stranger. ‘That reptile Slurk, of the
_Independent_!’
‘Perhaps we had better retire,’ whispered Mr. Pickwick.
‘Never, Sir,’ rejoined Pott, pot-valiant in a double sense--‘never.’
With these words, Mr. Pott took up his position on an opposite settle,
and selecting one from a little bundle of newspapers, began to read
against his enemy.
Mr. Pott, of course read the _Independent_, and Mr. Slurk, of course,
read the _Gazette_; and each gentleman audibly expressed his contempt at
the other’s compositions by bitter laughs and sarcastic sniffs; whence
they proceeded to more open expressions of opinion, such as ‘absurd,’
‘wretched,’ ‘atrocity,’ ‘humbug,’ ‘knavery’, ‘dirt,’ ‘filth,’ ‘slime,’
‘ditch-water,’ and other critical remarks of the like nature.
Both Mr. Bob Sawyer and Mr. Ben Allen had beheld these symptoms of
rivalry and hatred, with a degree of delight which imparted great
additional relish to the cigars at which they were puffing most
vigorously. The moment they began to flag, the mischievous Mr. Bob
Sawyer, addressing Slurk with great politeness, said--
‘Will you allow me to look at your paper, Sir, when you have quite done
with it?’
‘You will find very little to repay you for your trouble in this
contemptible _thing_, sir,’ replied Slurk, bestowing a Satanic frown on
Pott.
‘You shall have this presently,’ said Pott, looking up, pale with rage,
and quivering in his speech, from the same cause. ‘Ha! ha! you will be
amused with this _fellow’s_ audacity.’
Terrible emphasis was laid upon ‘thing’ and ‘fellow’; and the faces of
both editors began to glow with defiance.
‘The ribaldry of this miserable man is despicably disgusting,’ said
Pott, pretending to address Bob Sawyer, and scowling upon Slurk.
Here, Mr. Slurk laughed very heartily, and folding up the paper so as to
get at a fresh column conveniently, said, that the blockhead really
amused him.
‘What an impudent blunderer this fellow is,’ said Pott, turning from
pink to crimson.
‘Did you ever read any of this man’s foolery, Sir?’ inquired Slurk of
Bob Sawyer.
‘Never,’ replied Bob; ‘is it very bad?’
‘Oh, shocking! shocking!’ rejoined Slurk.
‘Really! Dear me, this is too atrocious!’ exclaimed Pott, at this
juncture; still feigning to be absorbed in his reading.
‘If you can wade through a few sentences of malice, meanness, falsehood,
perjury, treachery, and cant,’ said Slurk, handing the paper to Bob,
‘you will, perhaps, be somewhat repaid by a laugh at the style of this
ungrammatical twaddler.’
‘What’s that you said, Sir?’ inquired Mr. Pott, looking up, trembling
all over with passion.
‘What’s that to you, sir?’ replied Slurk.
‘Ungrammatical twaddler, was it, sir?’ said Pott.
‘Yes, sir, it was,’ replied Slurk; ‘and _blue bore_, Sir, if you like
that better; ha! ha!’
Mr. Pott retorted not a word at this jocose insult, but deliberately
folded up his copy of the _Independent_, flattened it carefully down,
crushed it beneath his boot, spat upon it with great ceremony, and flung
it into the fire.
‘There, sir,’ said Pott, retreating from the stove, ‘and that’s the way
I would serve the viper who produces it, if I were not, fortunately for
him, restrained by the laws of my country.’
‘Serve him so, sir!’ cried Slurk, starting up. ‘Those laws shall never
be appealed to by him, sir, in such a case. Serve him so, sir!’
‘Hear! hear!’ said Bob Sawyer.
‘Nothing can be fairer,’ observed Mr. Ben Allen.
‘Serve him so, sir!’ reiterated Slurk, in a loud voice.
Mr. Pott darted a look of contempt, which might have withered an anchor.
‘Serve him so, sir!’ reiterated Slurk, in a louder voice than before.
‘I will not, sir,’ rejoined Pott.
‘Oh, you won’t, won’t you, sir?’ said Mr. Slurk, in a taunting manner;
‘you hear this, gentlemen! He won’t; not that he’s afraid--, oh, no! he
_won’t_. Ha! ha!’
‘I consider you, sir,’ said Mr. Pott, moved by this sarcasm, ‘I consider
you a viper. I look upon you, sir, as a man who has placed himself
beyond the pale of society, by his most audacious, disgraceful, and
abominable public conduct. I view you, sir, personally and politically,
in no other light than as a most unparalleled and unmitigated viper.’
The indignant Independent did not wait to hear the end of this personal
denunciation; for, catching up his carpet-bag, which was well stuffed
with movables, he swung it in the air as Pott turned away, and, letting
it fall with a circular sweep on his head, just at that particular angle
of the bag where a good thick hairbrush happened to be packed, caused a
sharp crash to be heard throughout the kitchen, and brought him at once
to the ground.
‘Gentlemen,’ cried Mr. Pickwick, as Pott started up and seized the fire-
shovel--‘gentlemen! Consider, for Heaven’s sake--help--Sam--here--pray,
gentlemen--interfere, somebody.’
Uttering these incoherent exclamations, Mr. Pickwick rushed between the
infuriated combatants just in time to receive the carpet-bag on one side
of his body, and the fire-shovel on the other. Whether the
representatives of the public feeling of Eatanswill were blinded by
animosity, or (being both acute reasoners) saw the advantage of having a
third party between them to bear all the blows, certain it is that they
paid not the slightest attention to Mr. Pickwick, but defying each other
with great spirit, plied the carpet-bag and the fire-shovel most
fearlessly. Mr. Pickwick would unquestionably have suffered severely for
his humane interference, if Mr. Weller, attracted by his master’s cries,
had not rushed in at the moment, and, snatching up a meal-sack,
effectually stopped the conflict by drawing it over the head and
shoulders of the mighty Pott, and clasping him tight round the
shoulders.
‘Take away that ‘ere bag from the t’other madman,’ said Sam to Ben Allen
and Bob Sawyer, who had done nothing but dodge round the group, each
with a tortoise-shell lancet in his hand, ready to bleed the first man
stunned. ‘Give it up, you wretched little creetur, or I’ll smother you
in it.’
Awed by these threats, and quite out of breath, the _Independent_
suffered himself to be disarmed; and Mr. Weller, removing the
extinguisher from Pott, set him free with a caution.
‘You take yourselves off to bed quietly,’ said Sam, ‘or I’ll put you
both in it, and let you fight it out vith the mouth tied, as I vould a
dozen sich, if they played these games. And you have the goodness to
come this here way, sir, if you please.’
Thus addressing his master, Sam took him by the arm, and led him off,
while the rival editors were severally removed to their beds by the
landlord, under the inspection of Mr. Bob Sawyer and Mr. Benjamin Allen;
breathing, as they went away, many sanguinary threats, and making vague
appointments for mortal combat next day. When they came to think it
over, however, it occurred to them that they could do it much better in
print, so they recommenced deadly hostilities without delay; and all
Eatanswill rung with their boldness--on paper.
They had taken themselves off in separate coaches, early next morning,
before the other travellers were stirring; and the weather having now
cleared up, the chaise companions once more turned their faces to
London.
CHAPTER LII. INVOLVING A SERIOUS CHANGE IN THE WELLER FAMILY, AND THE
UNTIMELY DOWNFALL OF MR. STIGGINS
Considering it a matter of delicacy to abstain from introducing either
Bob Sawyer or Ben Allen to the young couple, until they were fully
prepared to expect them, and wishing to spare Arabella’s feelings as
much as possible, Mr. Pickwick proposed that he and Sam should alight in
the neighbourhood of the George and Vulture, and that the two young men
should for the present take up their quarters elsewhere. To this they
very readily agreed, and the proposition was accordingly acted upon; Mr.
Ben Allen and Mr. Bob Sawyer betaking themselves to a sequestered pot-
shop on the remotest confines of the Borough, behind the bar door of
which their names had in other days very often appeared at the head of
long and complex calculations worked in white chalk.
‘Dear me, Mr. Weller,’ said the pretty housemaid, meeting Sam at the
door.
‘Dear _me_ I vish it vos, my dear,’ replied Sam, dropping behind, to let
his master get out of hearing. ‘Wot a sweet-lookin’ creetur you are,
Mary!’
‘Lor’, Mr. Weller, what nonsense you do talk!’ said Mary. ‘Oh! don’t,
Mr. Weller.’
‘Don’t what, my dear?’ said Sam.
‘Why, that,’ replied the pretty housemaid. ‘Lor, do get along with you.’
Thus admonishing him, the pretty housemaid pushed Sam against the wall,
declaring that he had tumbled her cap, and put her hair quite out of
curl.
‘And prevented what I was going to say, besides,’ added Mary. ‘There’s a
letter been waiting here for you four days; you hadn’t gone away, half
an hour, when it came; and more than that, it’s got “immediate,” on the
outside.’
‘Vere is it, my love?’ inquired Sam.
‘I took care of it, for you, or I dare say it would have been lost long
before this,’ replied Mary. ‘There, take it; it’s more than you
deserve.’
With these words, after many pretty little coquettish doubts and fears,
and wishes that she might not have lost it, Mary produced the letter
from behind the nicest little muslin tucker possible, and handed it to
Sam, who thereupon kissed it with much gallantry and devotion.
‘My goodness me!’ said Mary, adjusting the tucker, and feigning
unconsciousness, ‘you seem to have grown very fond of it all at once.’
To this Mr. Weller only replied by a wink, the intense meaning of which
no description could convey the faintest idea of; and, sitting himself
down beside Mary on a window-seat, opened the letter and glanced at the
contents.
‘Hollo!’ exclaimed Sam, ‘wot’s all this?’
‘Nothing the matter, I hope?’ said Mary, peeping over his shoulder.
‘Bless them eyes o’ yourn!’ said Sam, looking up.
‘Never mind my eyes; you had much better read your letter,’ said the
pretty housemaid; and as she said so, she made the eyes twinkle with
such slyness and beauty that they were perfectly irresistible.
Sam refreshed himself with a kiss, and read as follows:--
‘MARKIS GRAN ‘By DORKEN ‘Wensdy.
‘My DEAR SAMMLE,
‘I am wery sorry to have the pleasure of being a Bear of ill news your
Mother in law cort cold consekens of imprudently settin too long on the
damp grass in the rain a hearin of a shepherd who warnt able to leave
off till late at night owen to his having vound his-self up vith brandy
and vater and not being able to stop his-self till he got a little sober
which took a many hours to do the doctor says that if she’d svallo’d
varm brandy and vater artervards insted of afore she mightn’t have been
no vus her veels wos immedetly greased and everythink done to set her
agoin as could be inwented your father had hopes as she vould have
vorked round as usual but just as she wos a turnen the corner my boy she
took the wrong road and vent down hill vith a welocity you never see and