Douglas William Jerrold

“ La, grandmother! when I read of these things, I feel a mixture of pain and pity for men that, instead of having their hearts and spirits tuned by the harmony that God is always playing to them (and they won’t hear it, the leathern-eared sinners!) think of nothing but swearing that one thing’s a disc, and the other a nebula—when they only look through small glasses, wanting the great telescope to show ’em the real truth!—And so no more from your affectionate grandson,
Juniper Hedgehog. ”

“ Mrs Nutts. Well, Nutts, I wouldn’t worship a roast pig as you do, for its weight in gold; I should think something would happen to me. You, with a wife and family, to be the slave you are to crackling!
Nutts. If a great man hadn’t one weakness, he wouldn’t be fit society for the miserable sinners in this world about him. I have one weakness—jest one—and that is now in the oven. Now, Mr Nosebag, shall I make you fit for company? (Nosebag takes the chair.) ”

“ By the way, grandmother, I don’t know how it is with the player-folks in New York; but here with us, if a man or woman want a bit of plate they’ve only to take a theatre. A playhouse is a short cut to a silversmith’s. There isn’t a London manager who isn’t plated after this fashion, which shows there is no place for true gratitude like the green-room; but I ask your pardon for talking of such matters, knowing what a low place you think the theatre. Parliament, like a goose that has been set upon too many eggs, has risen with half of ’em come to nothing. But this, grandmother, is the old trick. ”

“ Slowgoe. Mr Nutts, I have once, remember—once left your shop.
Nutts. Well, I never care to balk a customer, not I; so you may take it even numbers if you like.
Mrs Nutts. Don’t mind him, Mr Slowgoe; he’s a man as hates all authority. Talks, too, about the perlitical principles! All very well and very fine for bachelors, but I should very much like to know what men with wives and families have to do with principles at all—eh, Mr Peabody? You who’ve been a schoolmaster can answer that, I should think.
Peabody. Very true, Mrs Nutts; for the great Lord Bacon—you have heard of him—eh, Mrs Nutts? ”

“ It’s odd enough that people will think a great noise is a great respect; and that the heartiest welcome can only be given by gunpowder. It seems that the folks were putting up a statue to a musician named Beethoven, and the Queen of England and the Prince were just in time to pay their respects to the bronze. Mr Beethoven while alive was nobody; but it’s odd how a man’s worth is raked up from his coffin! And so it’s a great comfort to great men who, when in this world, are thought very small indeed, to think how big they’ll be upon earth after they’ve gone to heaven ”

“ Nutts. Whatever brought the blight, I hope they’ll never trust to ’tatoes again. For my part, I shall never again think of fields of ’em in Ireland, without thinking every root a human slave: fields of misery, and want, and death. I’ve read somewhere of a certain root, that when men eat it they are turned to brutes: well, the potato’s very like it; for, living upon nothing else, it takes the best part of a man clean out of him: it takes away his respect from himself; and when that’s the case, a man’s lost, and may as well go upon all fours at once. ”

“ He’s brought in something like a Settlement Bill; a bill which is to take the poor—to cut their nerves and heart-strings from their parishes—and settle them, when they need, what he in his droll manner calls relief, into unions, melting three-and-twenty parishes into one union! Old feelings—old affections for old places are to be nothing—ties of kindred nothing, nothing. Sir James will sever all these, and will then triumphantly show the world how well the human rabbit can exist with them cut through and through. ”

“ And then I thought I saw a policeman in a coat of blue fire—no reflections on you, Mr Peabody—jump upon the steps, and heard him bang to the door, and cry out with a jolly loud voice, “All right, Newgate!”
Slowgoe. Well, I’m not a cruel person; but if order’s to be at all respected, I’d hang any man for dreaming a dream like that.
Tickle. And then I thought the three crowned heads—and how often has Fortin crowned where she ought to have bonneted!—the three crowned heads was put upon a cast-iron treadmill; and as they went up and up, it grew warmer and warmer, till at last it was red-hot. ”

“ Yes, Peter, that I’ve any more heart than an oyster left me, is a special favour of Providence; for what a varmint I was! If it hadn’t been for the playhouse, I should have been ruined. Yes, Peter, but for the Coburg Theatre, I have no doubt that at this time I should have been a sharp attorney, not able to smell as much as a lucifer-match without the horrors. ’Tis a great place for morals, the playhouse, Peter. As I say, it quite drew me back into the paths of virtue. [Pg 213] Old Simcox, my master, to keep me active, used to give me a shilling for every writ I served. ”

“ It’s all revolution in disguise. We’ve had gunpowder revolution, and moral revolutions; but they’re nothing to what’s coming, for they’ll be the revolutions of water and soap. No government upon the ’versal earth can stand with everybody clean and sober. Do away with the swinish multitude, and I ask you, what becomes of the guinea-pigs o’ society? Tell me that.
Nosebag. Why, we shall all be guinea-pigs together.
Slowgoe. Impossible! The likes o’ you a guinea-pig! ’Tisn’t in nature. ”

“ Nutts. In course. And it would have been so in keeping, wouldn’t it? Crushing the goose-quills under the iron wheels of war! Now I think of it, that’s not a bad notion. Eh?
Slowgoe. (Jumping up.) Good-morning, Mr Nutts. Never again do I enter your shop. A man who can speak thus of a statue of all we love, a man who can talk in such an infidel way of Waterloo, and—but, good-morning!—I think I’ve had a lucky escape, seeing how often I’ve been shaved by an atheist. (Exit.)
Nosebag. See what it is, Nutts, to have principles. A customer gone for life! ”

“ Dear Grandmother,—September’s so near we can almost put our hand upon it, and yet I’m in London. It’s a dreadful confession of poverty, but I can’t help it. If I’m not ashamed to be seen on my stand, I’m not a licensed cabman. The only comfort there is, everybody that stays in town must be as poor as myself, and that, according to some folk’s notions, is a blessing to think of. ”

“ Slowgoe. (Very solemnly.) Nobody!
Nutts. Artful work, isn’t it, when a little petticoat like that stirs up a war, sets armies in motion and ships a-sailing, and fortifies batteries, and cuts down, and blows up, and brings, as I may say, Beelzebub himself upon the world, like an old showman, to play the pipes and beat the drum whilst the fun’s a-doing? I wonder, in the course o’ time, how many thousand will be cut and blown to bits, and all along of the Infanta’s marriage. Well, they may talk as they like, but the real gun-cotton’s in petticoats. ”

“ No: the truth is, you’re a regular Conservative, and so—like other darkened folks—you must make an idol out of something. Rather than have none at all, you’d set up the Duke of Wellington’s bootjack. Still, among the True Blues, you overshot the mark, and must be by this time perfectly ashamed of yourself. Nevertheless, your wickedness ought not to go unpunished: and because, in a port-wine moment, you compared the Iron Duke to the Lamb of the world, I’d make you undergo a month’s penance. You should be covered all over with pipeclay, and eat parched peas off a drum-head. ”

“ Slowgoe. Sarve it right. What does the public know—what does the press, as it’s called, know in comparison with a committee of noblemen? Talk about taste. Nobility comes into the world with it; it’s only the sham sort that comes to the other people. The voice of the press, indeed! what is it, at best, but bow-wow?
Tickle. That’s what the Statue Committee think it. And they do say, just to show what they care for it, that afore the Duke’s head was soldered on, they put copies of the Times and the Chronicle—as writ agin it—in the Duke’s inside.
Nosebag. ”

“ Nutts. Why, look here: truth isn’t like a penny-piece with two different sides to it; and a flum is not less a flum for coming after dinner. Either Lord George meant what he said, or he didn’t. Now, if he meant it, he meant to make Sir Robert Peel answerable for what he calls “the vengeance of Providence;” he meant to lay at Sir Robert’s door the misery and starvation—and it makes one’s heart sick and one’s blood cold to think of it—of thousands and thousands of suffering creaturs; he meant——
Slowgoe. Nonsense! you’re such a violent man: he meant nothing of the sort. ”

“ It is they who have fought the fight; it is they who have raised the price of parchment by darkening the House of Commons with clouds of petitions. It is they who have risen to a man, and have patted the British Lion, and twisted his tail, and goaded him—as you’d set a bulldog on a cat—to tear Popery to pieces. ”

“ Nutts. Well, I haven’t said anything about the matter as yet; but after all, what a deal we men, as rational criturs of the universe—lords of the earth—angels in our worldly apprenticeship, as we think ourselves, have to brag about, when it’s made a matter of consequence to millions of rational souls who a little gal of sixteen marries—whether one man or another!
Slowgoe. None of your atheism, Mr Nutts; or, as I’ve told you a hundred times, you shan’t shave me. Politics is a mysterious thing. ”

“ No, Michael; no, no, no! The great man, in the eyes of our English world, would have been lost in the smallness of his income.
Pull down Apsley House, deprive the Duke of Wellington of his fortune, let him for three months be seen as a general living at a club upon nothing but his half-pay, and it’s my belief that in three months after that some folks would more than doubt whether he ever won Waterloo. I once read of a Roman who was called from his turnips to save his country. What a small fellow he’d have seemed among us! We never could have understood a hero upon turnips alone. ”

“ Slowgoe. Why, really, Mrs Nutts, I’ve a great respect for any duchess—nevertheless, the game-laws is, I must say it, a solemn matter; mustn’t be tampered with because of the vulgar. If duchesses will insist upon using powder—I mean, in course, gunpowder—they must be properly authenticated so to do.
Nutts. But if ladies will shoot—if the taste’s coming up that way—why don’t they shirk the licence, and sport with poultry? Aren’t there hens, and ducks, and geese to be killed for the kitchen? I don’t see why the fashion shouldn’t go up from chickens to bullocks. ”

“ One night Lord John holds fast to his Arms Bill, like a child to a new drum; and the next he gives it up as if it was of no use, somebody having knocked a hole in it.
Tickle. Tell you it’s the old Whig cowardice. They’re so often afraid o’ their own blunderbuss. ”

“ Peabody. Now, I take it, the little attention is in a very fair proportion. If a candidate for the House of Commons kisses, surely a vestryman may “chuck.”
Mrs Nutts. There, Mr Peabody; you’ve been a schoolmaster, I know, and it’s like you scholars; feelings are nothing in your hands. You take ’em and twist ’em and turn ’em into as many ways and shapes as the man that goes about with a sheet o’ writing-paper, and folds it into everything, from a coal-scuttle to a chest o’ drawers. Just like scholars, as they’re called: and how I do pity their wives!
Slowgoe. ”

“ Nutts. Minutes, Mr Slowgoe, are the small-change of life. Can’t wait for nobody. I’ll take you then, Mr Limpy. (Limpy takes the chair.) It makes my flesh crawl to see some folks with a newspaper. They go through it for all the world like a caterpillar through a cabbage leaf.
Slowgoe. Well, for my part, I like to chew my news. I think a newspaper’s like a dinner; doesn’t do you half the good if it’s bolted. Haven’t come to it yet; but tell me—Is it true that the Duke of Wellington’s going to repeal flogging? ”

“ When I think of the sort of letters—full of delicate and tender matters—that has come to me, I own it does make me burn and fluster to think that I may not have a single secret to myself: no, Sir James—the Post-Office burglar—has broken into my affairs, and at this moment he knows all my poverty, all my little strugglings with little debts—in fact, all my inner man. I seem to myself to walk about the world turned inside out! ”

“ What a lot of mangled bodies, and misery, and housebreaking, and wickedness of all sorts, carried on and made quite lawful by a uniform, may we see—if we choose to see at all—about the statue of what is called a conqueror! What a firing of houses, what shame—that, because you’re a woman, I won’t more particularly write about—we might look upon under the statue, that is only so high, because it has so much wickedness to stand upon! ”

“ If there is a presumption that shows what an impudent worm upon two legs a man is—and I don’t care a button whether the worm is a worm with stars and ribands, or a worm with no more nobility of flesh in him than a worm in a pauper burial-ground—if there is a presumption in this world, it is, I say, when a man will take religion into partnership with him, and whatever he may do, make himself and his little dirty doings the special pets of Providence. ”

“ What are you talking about the women, Mr Nutts? Better go on with your shaving, like a husband and a father of a family, and leave the women to themselves.
Nutts. Yes, my dear. (Confidentially.) You know my wife? Strong-minded cretur.
Pucker. For my part, to say nothin’ against Mrs Nutts, I hate women of strong minds. To me they always seem as if they wanted to be men, and [Pg 8] couldn’t. I love women as women love babies, all the better for their weakness.
Nosebag. Go on about the sojer.
Nutts. (In a low voice.) As for women, isn’t it dreadful to think how they do run after the pipeclay? ”