An unexpected meeting, and a promising prospect
THE LAWS OF SYMPATHY BETWEEN BEARDS and birds, and the secret source of that
attraction which frequently impels a shaver of the one to be a dealer in the
other, are questions for the subtle reasoning of scientific bodies: not the less
so, because their investigation would seem calculated to lead to no particular
result. It is enough to know that the artist who had the honour of entertaining
Mrs. Gamp as his first-floor lodger, united the two pursuits of barbering and
bird-fancying; and that it was not an original idea of his, but one in which he
had, dispersed about the by-streets and suburbs of the town, a host of rivals.
The name of the householder was Paul Sweedlepipe. But he was commonly called
Poll Sweedlepipe: and was not uncommonly believed to have been so christened,
among his friends and neighbours.
With the exception of the staircase, and his lodger's private apartment, Poll
Sweedlepipe's house was one great bird's nest. Gamecocks resided in the kitchen;
pheasants wasted the brightness of their golden plumage on the garret; bantams
roosted in the cellar; owls had possession of the bedroom; and specimens of all
the smaller fry of birds chirrupped and twittered in the shop. The staircase was
sacred to rabbits. There in hutches of all shapes and kinds, made from old
packing-cases, boxes, drawers, and tea-chests, they increased in a prodigious
degree, and contributed their share towards that complicated whiff which, quite
impartially, and without distinction of persons, saluted every nose that was put
into Sweedlepipe's easy shaving-shop.
Many noses found their way there, for all that, especially on Sunday morning,
before church-time. Even archbishops shave, or must be shaved, on a Sunday, and
beards will grow after twelve o'clock on Saturday night, though it be upon the
chins of base mechanics: who, not being able to engage their valets by the
quarter, hire them by the job, and pay them--oh, the wickedness of copper
coin!--in dirty pence. Poll Sweedlepipe, the sinner, shaved all comers at a
penny each, and cut the hair of any customer for twopence; and being a lone
unmarried man, and having some connexion in the bird line, Poll got on tolerably
well.
He was a little elderly man, with a clammy cold right hand, from which even
rabbits and birds could not remove the smell of shaving-soap. Poll had something
of the bird in his nature. not of the hawk or eagle, but of the sparrow, that
builds in chimney-stacks and inclines to human company. He was not quarrelsome,
though, like the sparrow; but peaceful, like the dove. In his walk he strutted;
and, in this respect, he bore a faint resemblance to the pigeon, as well as in a
certain prosiness of speech, which might, in its monotony, be likened to the
cooing of that bird. He was very inquisitive; and when he stood at his shop-door
in the evening-tide, watching the neighbours, with his head on one side, and his
eye cocked knowingly, there was a dash of the raven in him. Yet there was no
more wickedness in Poll than in a robin. Happily, too, when any of his
ornithological properties were on the verge of going too far, they were
quenched, dissolved, melted down, and neutralised in the barber just as his bald
head--otherwise, as the head of a shaved magpie--lost itself in a wig of curly
black ringlets, parted on one side, and cut away almost to the crown, to
indicate immense capacity of intellect.
Poll had a very small, shrill treble voice, which might have led the wags of
Kingsgate Street to insist the more upon his feminine designation. He had a
tender heart, too; for, when he had a good commission to provide three or four
score sparrows for a shooting-match, he would observe, in a compassionate tone,
how singular it was that sparrows should have been made expressly for such
purposes. The question, whether men were made to shoot them, never entered into
Poll's philosophy.
Poll wore in his sporting character, a velveteen coat, a great deal of blue
stocking, ankle boots, a neckerchief of some bright colour, and a very tall hat.
Pursuing his more quiet occupation of barber, he generally subsided into an
apron not over-clean, a flannel jacket, and corduroy knee-shorts. It was in this
latter costume, but with his apron girded round his waist, as a token of his
having shut up shop for the night, that he closed the door one evening, some
weeks after the occurrences detailed in the last chapter, and stood upon the
steps in Kingsgate Street, listening until the little cracked bell within should
leave off ringing. For until it did--this was Mr. Sweedlepipe's reflection--the
place never seemed quiet enough to be left to itself.
`It's the greediest little bell to ring,' said Poll, `that ever was. But it's
quiet at last.'
He rolled his apron up a little tighter as he said these words, and hastened
down the street. Just as he was turning into Holborn, he ran against a young
gentleman in a livery. This youth was bold, though small, and with several
lively expressions of displeasure, turned upon him instantly.
`Now, Stoo-pid!' cried the young gentleman. `Can't you look where you're
a-going to--eh? Can't you mind where you're a-coming to--eh? What do you think
your eyes was made for--eh? Ah! Yes. oh! Now then!'
The young gentleman pronounced the two last words in a very loud tone and
with frightful emphasis, as though they contamed within themselves the essence
of the direst aggravation. But he had scarcely done so, when his anger yielded
to surprise, and he cried, in a milder tone:
`What! Polly!'
`Why, it ain't you, sure!' cried Poll. `It can't be you!'
`No. It ain't me,' returned the youth. `It's my son, my oldest one. He's a
credit to his father, ain't he, Polly?' With this delicate little piece of
banter, he halted on the pavement, and went round and round in circles, for the
better exhibition of his figure: rather to the inconvenience of the passengers
generally, who were not in an equal state of spirits with himself.
`I wouldn't have believed it,' said Poll. `What! You've left your old place,
then? Have you?'
`Have I!' returned his young friend, who had by this time stuck his hands
into the pockets of his white cord breeches, and was swaggering along at the
barber's side. `D'ye know a pair of top-boots when you see 'em, Polly? Look
here!'
`Beau-ti-ful' cried Mr. Sweedlepipe.
`D'ye know a slap-up sort of button, when you see it?' said the youth. `Don't
look at mine, if you ain't a judge, because these lions" heads was made for men
of taste: not snobs.'
`Beau-ti-ful!' cried the barber again. `A grass-green frock-coat, too, bound
with gold! And a cockade in your hat!'
`I should hope so,' replied the youth. `Blow the cockade, though; for, except
that it don't turn round, it's like the wentilator that used to be in the
kitchen winder at Todgers's. You ain't seen the old lady's name in the Gazette,
have you?'
`No,' returned the barber. `Is she a bankrupt?'
`If she ain't, she will be,' retorted Bailey. `That bis'ness never can be
carried on without me. Well! How are you?'
`Oh! I'm pretty well,' said Poll. `Are you living at this end of the town, or
were you coming to see me? Was that the bis'ness that brought you to Holborn?'
`I haven't got no bis'ness in Holborn,' returned Bailey, with some
displeasure. `All my bis'ness lays at the West-end. I've got the right sort of
governor now. You can't see his face for his whiskers, and can't see his
whiskers for the dye upon 'em. That's a gentleman ain't it? You wouldn't like a
ride in a cab, would you? Why, it wouldn't be safe to offer it. You'd faint
away, only to see me a-comin' at a mild trot round the corner.'
To convey a slight idea of the effect of this approach, Mr. Bailey
counterfeited in his own person the action of a high-trotting horse and threw up
his head so high, in backing against a pump, that he shook his hat off.
`Why, he's own uncle to Capricorn,' said Bailey, `and brother to Cauliflower.
He's been through the winders of two chaney shops since we've had him, and wos
sold for killin' his missis. That's a horse, I hope?'
`Ah! you'll never want to buy any more red-polls, now,' observed Poll,
looking on his young friend with an air of melancholy. `You'll never want to buy
any more red-polls now, to hang up over the sink, will you?'
`I should think not,' replied Bailey. `Reether so. I wouldn't have nothin' to
say to any bird below a Peacock. and he'd be wulgar. Well, how are you?'
`Oh! I'm pretty well,' said Poll. He answered the question again because Mr.
Bailey asked it again; Mr. Bailey asked it again, because--accompanied with a
straddling action of the white cords, a bend of the knees, and a striking forth
of the top-boots--it was an easy horse-fleshy, turfy sort of thing to do.
`Wot are you up to, old feller?' added Mr. Bailey, with the same graceful
rakishness. He was quite the man-about-town of the conversation, while the
easy-shaver was the child.
`Why, I am going to fetch my lodger home,' said Paul.
`A woman!' cried Mr. Bailey, `for a twenty-pun' note!'
The little barber hastened to explain that she was neither a young woman, nor
a handsome woman, but a nurse, who had been acting as a kind of house-keeper to
a gentleman for some weeks past, and left her place that night, in consequence
of being superseded by another and a more legitimate house-keeper: to wit, the
gentleman's bride.
`He's newly married, and he brings his young wife home to-night,' said the
barber. `So I'm going to fetch my lodger away--Mr. Chuzzlewit's, close behind
the Post Office--and carry her box for her.'
`Jonas Chuzzlewit's?' said Bailey.
`Ah!' returned Paul: `that's the name sure enough. Do you know him?'
`Oh, no!' cried Mr. Bailey; `not at all. And I don't know her! Not neither!
Why, they first kept company through me, a'most.'
`Ah?' said Paul.
`Ah!' said Mr. Bailey, with a wink; `and she ain't bad-looking mind you. But
her sister was the best. She was the merry one. I often used to have a bit of
fun with her, in the hold times!'
Mr. Bailey spoke as if he already had a leg and three-quarters in the grave
and this had happened twenty or thirty years ago. Paul Sweedlepipe, the meek,
was so perfectly confounded by his precocious self-possession, and his
patronising manner, as well as by his boots, cockade, and livery, that a mist
swam before his eyes, and he saw--not the Bailey of acknowledged juvenility,
from Todgers's Commercial Boarding House, who had made his acquaintance within a
twelvemonth, by purchasing, at sundry times, small birds at twopence each--but a
highly-condensed embodiment of all the sporting grooms in London; an abstract of
all the stable-knowledge of the time; a something at a high-pressure that must
have had existence many years, and was fraught with terrible experiences. And
truly, though in the cloudy atmosphere of Todgers's, Mr. Bailey's genius had
ever shone out brightly in this particular respect, it now eclipsed both time
and space, cheated beholders of their senses, and worked on their belief in
defiance of all natural laws. He walked along the tangible and real stones of
Holborn Hill, an under-sized boy; and yet he winked the winks, and thought the
thoughts, and did the deeds, and said the sayings of an ancient man. There was
an old principle within him, and a young surface without. He became an
inexplicable creature a breeched and booted Sphinx. There was no course open to
the barber, but to go distracted himself, or to take Bailey for granted and he
wisely chose the latter.
Mr. Bailey was good enough to continue to bear him company, and to entertain
him, as they went, with easy conversation on various sporting topics. especially
on the comparative merits, as a general principle, of horses with white
stockings, and horses without. In regard to the style of tail to be preferred,
Mr. Bailey had opinions of his own, which he explained, but begged they might by
no means influence his friend's, as here he knew he had the misfortune to differ
from some excellent authorities. He treated Mr. Sweedlepipe to a dram,
compounded agreeably to his own directions, which he informed him had been
invented by a member of the Jockey Club; and, as they were by this time near the
barber's destination, he observed that, as he had an hour to spare, and knew the
parties, he would, if quite agreeable, be introduced to Mrs. Gamp.
Paul knocked at Jonas Chuzzlewit's: and, on the door being opened by that
lady, made the two distinguished persons known to one another. It was a happy
feature in Mrs. Gamp's twofold profession, that it gave her an interest in
everything that was young as well as in everything that was old. She received
Mr. Bailey with much kindness.
`It's very good, I'm sure, of you to come, she said to her an or `as well as
bring so nice a friend. But I'm afraid that I must trouble you so far as to step
in, for the young couple has not yet made appearance.'
`They're late, ain't they?' inquired her landlord, when she had conducted
them down-stairs into the kitchen.
`Well, sir, considern' the Wings of Love, they are,' said Mrs. Gamp.
Mr. Bailey inquired whether the Wings of Love had ever won a plate, or could
be backed to do anything remarkable; and being informed that it was not a horse,
but merely a poetical or figurative expression, evinced considerable disgust.
Mrs. Gamp was so very much astonished by his affable manners and great ease,
that she was about to propound to her landlord in a whisper the staggering
inquiry, whether he was a man or a boy, when Mr. Sweedlepipe, anticipating her
design, made a timely diversion.
`He knows Mrs. Chuzzlewit,' said Paul aloud.
`There's nothin' he don't know; that's my opinion,' observed Mrs. Gamp. `All
the wickedness of the world is Print to him.'
Mr. Bailey received this as a compliment, and said, adjusting his cravat,
`reether so.'
`As you knows Mrs. Chuzzlewit, you knows, p'raps, what her chris'n name is?'
Mrs. Gamp observed.
`Charity,' said Bailey.
`That it ain't!' cried Mrs. Gamp.
`Cherry, then,' said Bailey. `Cherry's short for it. It's all the same.'
`It don't begin with a C at all,' retorted Mrs. Gamp, shaking her head. `It
begins with a M.'
`Whew!' cried Mr. Bailey, slapping a little cloud of pipe-clay out of his
left leg, `then he's been and married the merry one!'
As these words were mysterious, Mrs. Gamp called upon him to explain, which
Mr. Bailey proceeded to do: that lady listening greedily to everything he said.
He was yet in the fulness of his narrative when the sound of wheels, and a
double knock at the street door, announced the arrival of the newly-married
couple. Begging him to reserve what more he had to say, for her hearing on the
way home, Mrs. Gamp took up the candle, and hurried away to receive and welcome
the young mistress of the house.
`Wishing you appiness and joy with all my art,' said Mrs. Gamp, dropping a
curtsey as they entered the hall; `and you, too, sir. Your lady looks a little
tired with the journey, Mr. Chuzzlewit, a pretty dear!'
`She has bothered enough about it,' grumbled Mr. Jonas. `Now, show a light,
will you?'
`This way, ma'am, if you please,' said Mrs. Gamp, going upstairs before them.
`Things has been made as comfortable as they could be, but there's many things
you'll have to alter your own self when you gets time to look about you! Ah!
sweet thing! But you don't,' added Mrs. Gamp, internally, `you don't look much
like a merry one, I must say!'
It was true: she did not. The death that had gone before the bridal seemed to
have left its shade upon the house. The air was heavy and oppressive; the rooms
were dark; a deep gloom filled up every chink and corner. Upon the hearthstone,
like a creature of ill omen, sat the aged clerk, with his eyes fixed on some
withered branches in the stove. He rose and looked at her.
`So there you are, Mr. Chuff,' said Jonas carelessly, as he dusted his boots:
`still in the land of the living, eh?'
`Still in the land of the living, sir,' retorted Mrs. Gamp. `And Mr. Chuffey
may thank you for it, as many and many a time I've told him.'
Mr. Jonas was not in the best of humours, for he merely said, as he looked
round, `We don't want you any more, you know, Mrs. Gamp.'
`I'm a-going immediate, sir,' returned the nurse; `unless there's nothink I
can do for you, ma'am. Ain't there,' said Mrs. Gamp, with a look of great
sweetness, and rummaging all the time in her pocket; `ain't there nothink I can
do for you, my little bird?'
`No,' said Merry, almost crying. `You had better go away, please!'
With a leer of mingled sweetness and slyness; with one eye on the future, one
on the bride, and an arch expression in her face, partly spiritual, partly
spirituous, and wholly professional and peculiar to her art; Mrs. Gamp rummaged
in her pocket again, and took from it a printed card, whereon was an inscription
copied from her sign-board.
`Would you be so good, my darling dovey of a dear young married lady,' Mrs.
Gamp observed, in a low voice, `as put that some-whereas where you can keep it
in your mind? I'm well beknown to many ladies, and it's my card. Gamp is my
name, and Gamp my nater. Livin' quite handy, I will make so bold as call in now
and then, and make inquiry how your health and spirits is, my precious chick!'
And with innumerable leers, winks, coughs, nods, smiles, and curtseys, all
leading to the establishment of a mysterious and confidential understanding
between herself and the bride, Mrs. Gamp, invoking a blessing upon the house,
leered, winked, coughed, nodded, smiled, and curtseyed herself out of the room.
`But I will say, and I would if I was led a Martha to the Stakes for it,'
Mrs. Gamp remarked below stairs, in a whisper, `that she don't look much like a
merry one at this present moment of time.'
`Ah! wait till you hear her laugh!' said Bailey.
`Hem!' cried Mrs. Gamp, in a kind of groan. `I will, child.'
They said no more in the house, for Mrs. Gamp put on her bonnet, Mr.
Sweedlepipe took up her box; and Mr. Bailey accompanied them towards Kingsgate
Street; recounting to Mrs. Gamp as they went along, the origin and progress of
his acquaintance with Mrs. Chuzzlewit and her sister. It was a pleasant instance
of this youth's precocity, that he fancied Mrs. Gamp had conceived a tenderness
for him, and was much tickled by her misplaced attachment.
As the door closed heavily behind them, Mrs. Jonas sat down in a chair, and
felt a strange chill creep upon her, whilst she looked about the room. It was
pretty much as she had known it, but appeared more dreary. She had thought to
see it brightened to receive her.
`It ain't good enough for you, I suppose?' said Jonas, watching her looks.
`Why, it is dull,' said Merry, trying to be more herself.
`It'll be duller before you're done with it,' retorted Jonas, `if you give me
any of your airs. You're a nice article, to turn sulky on first coming home!
Ecod, you used to have life enough, when you could plague me with it. The gal's
down-stairs. Ring the bell for supper, while I take my boots off!'
She roused herself from looking after him as he left the room, to do what he
had desired: when the old man Chuffey laid his hand softly on her arm.
`You are not married?' he said eagerly. `Not married?'
`Yes. A month ago. Good Heaven, what is the matter?'
He answered nothing was the matter; and turned from her. But in her fear and
wonder, turning also, she saw him raise his trembling hands above his head, and
heard him say:
`Oh! woe, woe, woe, upon this wicked house!'
It was her welcome,--HOME.
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