MR WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF
Silas Wegg, being on his road to the Roman Empire, approaches it by way of
Clerkenwell. The time is early in the evening; the weather moist and raw. Mr
Wegg finds leisure to make a little circuit, by reason that he folds his screen
early, now that he combines another source of income with it, and also that he
feels it due to himself to be anxiously expected at the Bower. 'Boffin will get
all the eagerer for waiting a bit,' says Silas, screwing up, as he stumps along,
first his right eye, and then his left. Which is something superfluous in him,
for Nature has already screwed both pretty tight.
'If I get on with him as I expect to get on,' Silas pursues, stumping and
meditating, 'it wouldn't become me to leave it here. It wouldn't he
respectable.' Animated by this reflection, he stumps faster, and looks a long
way before him, as a man with an ambitious project in abeyance often will do.
Aware of a working-jeweller population taking sanctuary about the church in
Clerkenwell, Mr Wegg is conscious of an interest in, and a respect for, the
neighbourhood. But, his sensations in this regard halt as to their strict
morality, as he halts in his gait; for, they suggest the delights of a coat of
invisibility in which to walk off safely with the precious stones and
watch-cases, but stop short of any compunction for the people who would lose the
same.
Not, however, towards the 'shops' where cunning artificers work in pearls and
diamonds and gold and silver, making their hands so rich, that the enriched
water in which they wash them is bought for the refiners;--not towards these
does Mr Wegg stump, but towards the poorer shops of small retail traders in
commodities to eat and drink and keep folks warm, and of Italian frame-makers,
and of barbers, and of brokers, and of dealers in dogs and singing-birds. From
these, in a narrow and a dirty street devoted to such callings, Mr Wegg selects
one dark shop-window with a tallow candle dimly burning in it, surrounded by a
muddle of objects vaguely resembling pieces of leather and dry stick, but among
which nothing is resolvable into anything distinct, save the candle itself in
its old tin candlestick, and two preserved frogs fighting a small- sword duel.
Stumping with fresh vigour, he goes in at the dark greasy entry, pushes a little
greasy dark reluctant side-door, and follows the door into the little dark
greasy shop. It is so dark that nothing can be made out in it, over a little
counter, but another tallow candle in another old tin candlestick, close to the
face of a man stooping low in a chair.
Mr Wegg nods to the face, 'Good evening.'
The face looking up is a sallow face with weak eyes, surmounted by a tangle
of reddish-dusty hair. The owner of the face has no cravat on, and has opened
his tumbled shirt-collar to work with the more ease. For the same reason he has
no coat on: only a loose waistcoat over his yellow linen. His eyes are like the
over-tried eyes of an engraver, but he is not that; his expression and stoop are
like those of a shoemaker, but he is not that.
'Good evening, Mr Venus. Don't you remember?'
With slowly dawning remembrance, Mr Venus rises, and holds his candle over
the little counter, and holds it down towards the legs, natural and artificial,
of Mr Wegg.
'To be SURE!' he says, then. 'How do you do?'
'Wegg, you know,' that gentleman explains.
'Yes, yes,' says the other. 'Hospital amputation?'
'Just so,' says Mr Wegg.
'Yes, yes,' quoth Venus. 'How do you do? Sit down by the fire, and warm
your--your other one.'
'The little counter being so short a counter that it leaves the fireplace,
which would have been behind it if it had been longer, accessible, Mr Wegg sits
down on a box in front of the fire, and inhales a warm and comfortable smell
which is not the smell of the shop. 'For that,' Mr Wegg inwardly decides, as he
takes a corrective sniff or two, 'is musty, leathery, feathery, cellary, gluey,
gummy, and,' with another sniff, 'as it might be, strong of old pairs of
bellows.'
'My tea is drawing, and my muffin is on the hob, Mr Wegg; will you partake?'
It being one of Mr Wegg's guiding rules in life always to partake, he says he
will. But, the little shop is so excessively dark, is stuck so full of black
shelves and brackets and nooks and corners, that he sees Mr Venus's cup and
saucer only because it is close under the candle, and does not see from what
mysterious recess Mr Venus produces another for himself until it is under his
nose. Concurrently, Wegg perceives a pretty little dead bird lying on the
counter, with its head drooping on one side against the rim of Mr Venus's
saucer, and a long stiff wire piercing its breast. As if it were Cock Robin, the
hero of the ballad, and Mr Venus were the sparrow with his bow and arrow, and Mr
Wegg were the fly with his little eye.
Mr Venus dives, and produces another muffin, yet untoasted; taking the arrow
out of the breast of Cock Robin, he proceeds to toast it on the end of that
cruel instrument. When it is brown, he dives again and produces butter, with
which he completes his work.
Mr Wegg, as an artful man who is sure of his supper by-and-bye, presses
muffin on his host to soothe him into a compliant state of mind, or, as one
might say, to grease his works. As the muffins disappear, little by little, the
black shelves and nooks and corners begin to appear, and Mr Wegg gradually
acquires an imperfect notion that over against him on the chimney-piece is a
Hindoo baby in a bottle, curved up with his big head tucked under him, as he
would instantly throw a summersault if the bottle were large enough.
When he deems Mr Venus's wheels sufficiently lubricated, Mr Wegg approaches
his object by asking, as he lightly taps his hands together, to express an
undesigning frame of mind:
'And how have I been going on, this long time, Mr Venus?'
'Very bad,' says Mr Venus, uncompromisingly.
'What? Am I still at home?' asks Wegg, with an air of surprise.
'Always at home.'
This would seem to be secretly agreeable to Wegg, but he veils his feelings,
and observes, 'Strange. To what do you attribute it?'
'I don't know,' replies Venus, who is a haggard melancholy man, speaking in a
weak voice of querulous complaint, 'to what to attribute it, Mr Wegg. I can't
work you into a miscellaneous one, no how. Do what I will, you can't be got to
fit. Anybody with a passable knowledge would pick you out at a look, and
say,--"No go! Don't match!"'
'Well, but hang it, Mr Venus,' Wegg expostulates with some little irritation,
'that can't be personal and peculiar in ME. It must often happen with
miscellaneous ones.'
'With ribs (I grant you) always. But not else. When I prepare a miscellaneous
one, I know beforehand that I can't keep to nature, and be miscellaneous with
ribs, because every man has his own ribs, and no other man's will go with them;
but elseways I can be miscellaneous. I have just sent home a Beauty--a perfect
Beauty-- to a school of art. One leg Belgian, one leg English, and the pickings
of eight other people in it. Talk of not being qualified to be miscellaneous! By
rights you OUGHT to be, Mr Wegg.'
Silas looks as hard at his one leg as he can in the dim light, and after a
pause sulkily opines 'that it must be the fault of the other people. Or how do
you mean to say it comes about?' he demands impatiently.
'I don't know how it comes about. Stand up a minute. Hold the light.' Mr
Venus takes from a corner by his chair, the bones of a leg and foot, beautifully
pure, and put together with exquisite neatness. These he compares with Mr Wegg's
leg; that gentleman looking on, as if he were being measured for a riding-boot.
'No, I don't know how it is, but so it is. You have got a twist in that bone, to
the best of my belief. I never saw the likes of you.'
Mr Wegg having looked distrustfully at his own limb, and suspiciously at the
pattern with which it has been compared, makes the point:
'I'll bet a pound that ain't an English one!'
'An easy wager, when we run so much into foreign! No, it belongs to that
French gentleman.'
As he nods towards a point of darkness behind Mr Wegg, the latter, with a
slight start, looks round for 'that French gentleman,' whom he at length
descries to be represented (in a very workmanlike manner) by his ribs only,
standing on a shelf in another corner, like a piece of armour or a pair of
stays.
'Oh!' says Mr Wegg, with a sort of sense of being introduced; 'I dare say you
were all right enough in your own country, but I hope no objections will be
taken to my saying that the Frenchman was never yet born as I should wish to
match.'
At this moment the greasy door is violently pushed inward, and a boy follows
it, who says, after having let it slam:
'Come for the stuffed canary.'
'It's three and ninepence,' returns Venus; 'have you got the money?'
The boy produces four shillings. Mr Venus, always in exceedingly low spirits
and making whimpering sounds, peers about for the stuffed canary. On his taking
the candle to assist his search, Mr Wegg observes that he has a convenient
little shelf near his knees, exclusively appropriated to skeleton hands, which
have very much the appearance of wanting to lay hold of him. From these Mr Venus
rescues the canary in a glass case, and shows it to the boy.
'There!' he whimpers. 'There's animation! On a twig, making up his mind to
hop! Take care of him; he's a lovely specimen.--And three is four.'
The boy gathers up his change and has pulled the door open by a leather strap
nailed to it for the purpose, when Venus cries out:
'Stop him! Come back, you young villain! You've got a tooth among them
halfpence.'
'How was I to know I'd got it? You giv it me. I don't want none of your
teeth; I've got enough of my own.' So the boy pipes, as he selects it from his
change, and throws it on the counter.
'Don't sauce ME, in the wicious pride of your youth,' Mr Venus retorts
pathetically.' Don't hit ME because you see I'm down. I'm low enough without
that. It dropped into the till, I suppose. They drop into everything. There was
two in the coffee-pot at breakfast time. Molars.'
'Very well, then,' argues the boy, 'what do you call names for?'
To which Mr Venus only replies, shaking his shock of dusty hair, and winking
his weak eyes, 'Don't sauce ME, in the wicious pride of your youth; don't hit
ME, because you see I'm down. You've no idea how small you'd come out, if I had
the articulating of you.'
This consideration seems to have its effect on the boy, for he goes out
grumbling.
'Oh dear me, dear me!' sighs Mr Venus, heavily, snuffing the candle, 'the
world that appeared so flowery has ceased to blow! You're casting your eye round
the shop, Mr Wegg. Let me show you a light. My working bench. My young man's
bench. A Wice. Tools. Bones, warious. Skulls, warious. Preserved Indian baby.
African ditto. Bottled preparations, warious. Everything within reach of your
hand, in good preservation. The mouldy ones a-top. What's in those hampers over
them again, I don't quite remember. Say, human warious. Cats. Articulated
English baby. Dogs. Ducks. Glass eyes, warious. Mummied bird. Dried cuticle,
warious. Oh, dear me! That's the general panoramic view.'
Having so held and waved the candle as that all these heterogeneous objects
seemed to come forward obediently when they were named, and then retire again,
Mr Venus despondently repeats, 'Oh dear me, dear me!' resumes his seat, and with
drooping despondency upon him, falls to pouring himself out more tea.
'Where am I?' asks Mr Wegg.
'You're somewhere in the back shop across the yard, sir; and speaking quite
candidly, I wish I'd never bought you of the Hospital Porter.'
'Now, look here, what did you give for me?'
'Well,' replies Venus, blowing his tea: his head and face peering out of the
darkness, over the smoke of it, as if he were modernizing the old original rise
in his family: 'you were one of a warious lot, and I don't know.'
Silas puts his point in the improved form of 'What will you take for me?'
'Well,' replies Venus, still blowing his tea, 'I'm not prepared, at a
moment's notice, to tell you, Mr Wegg.'
'Come! According to your own account I'm not worth much,' Wegg reasons
persuasively.
'Not for miscellaneous working in, I grant you, Mr Wegg; but you might turn
out valuable yet, as a--' here Mr Venus takes a gulp of tea, so hot that it
makes him choke, and sets his weak eyes watering; 'as a Monstrosity, if you'll
excuse me.'
Repressing an indignant look, indicative of anything but a disposition to
excuse him, Silas pursues his point.
'I think you know me, Mr Venus, and I think you know I never bargain.'
Mr Venus takes gulps of hot tea, shutting his eyes at every gulp, and opening
them again in a spasmodic manner; but does not commit himself to assent.
'I have a prospect of getting on in life and elevating myself by my own
independent exertions,' says Wegg, feelingly, 'and I shouldn't like--I tell you
openly I should NOT like--under such circumstances, to be what I may call
dispersed, a part of me here, and a part of me there, but should wish to collect
myself like a genteel person.'
'It's a prospect at present, is it, Mr Wegg? Then you haven't got the money
for a deal about you? Then I'll tell you what I'll do with you; I'll hold you
over. I am a man of my word, and you needn't be afraid of my disposing of you.
I'll hold you over. That's a promise. Oh dear me, dear me!'
Fain to accept his promise, and wishing to propitiate him, Mr Wegg looks on
as he sighs and pours himself out more tea, and then says, trying to get a
sympathetic tone into his voice:
'You seem very low, Mr Venus. Is business bad?'
'Never was so good.'
'Is your hand out at all?'
'Never was so well in. Mr Wegg, I'm not only first in the trade, but I'm THE
trade. You may go and buy a skeleton at the West End if you like, and pay the
West End price, but it'll be my putting together. I've as much to do as I can
possibly do, with the assistance of my young man, and I take a pride and a
pleasure in it.'
Mr Venus thus delivers hmself, his right hand extended, his smoking saucer in
his left hand, protesting as though he were going to burst into a flood of
tears.
'That ain't a state of things to make you low, Mr Venus.'
'Mr Wegg, I know it ain't. Mr Wegg, not to name myself as a workman without
an equal, I've gone on improving myself in my knowledge of Anatomy, till both by
sight and by name I'm perfect. Mr Wegg, if you was brought here loose in a bag
to be articulated, I'd name your smallest bones blindfold equally with your
largest, as fast as I could pick 'em out, and I'd sort 'em all, and sort your
wertebrae, in a manner that would equally surprise and charm you.'
'Well,' remarks Silas (though not quite so readily as last time), 'THAT ain't
a state of things to be low about.--Not for YOU to be low about, leastways.'
'Mr Wegg, I know it ain't; Mr Wegg, I know it ain't. But it's the heart that
lowers me, it is the heart! Be so good as take and read that card out loud.'
Silas receives one from his hand, which Venus takes from a wonderful litter
in a drawer, and putting on his spectacles, reads:
'"Mr Venus,'
'Yes. Go on.'
'"Preserver of Animals and Birds,"'
'Yes. Go on.'
'"Articulator of human bones."'
'That's it,' with a groan. 'That's it! Mr Wegg, I'm thirty-two, and a
bachelor. Mr Wegg, I love her. Mr Wegg, she is worthy of being loved by a
Potentate!' Here Silas is rather alarmed by Mr Venus's springing to his feet in
the hurry of his spirits, and haggardly confronting him with his hand on his
coat collar; but Mr Venus, begging pardon, sits down again, saying, with the
calmness of despair, 'She objects to the business.'
'Does she know the profits of it?'
'She knows the profits of it, but she don't appreciate the art of it, and she
objects to it. "I do not wish," she writes in her own handwriting, "to regard
myself, nor yet to be regarded, in that boney light".'
Mr Venus pours himself out more tea, with a look and in an attitude of the
deepest desolation.
'And so a man climbs to the top of the tree, Mr Wegg, only to see that
there's no look-out when he's up there! I sit here of a night surrounded by the
lovely trophies of my art, and what have they done for me? Ruined me. Brought me
to the pass of being informed that "she does not wish to regard herself, nor yet
to be regarded, in that boney light"!' Having repeated the fatal expressions, Mr
Venus drinks more tea by gulps, and offers an explanation of his doing so.
'It lowers me. When I'm equally lowered all over, lethargy sets in. By
sticking to it till one or two in the morning, I get oblivion. Don't let me
detain you, Mr Wegg. I'm not company for any one.'
'It is not on that account,' says Silas, rising, 'but because I've got an
appointment. It's time I was at Harmon's.'
'Eh?' said Mr Venus. 'Harmon's, up Battle Bridge way?'
Mr Wegg admits that he is bound for that port.
'You ought to be in a good thing, if you've worked yourself in there. There's
lots of money going, there.'
'To think,' says Silas, 'that you should catch it up so quick, and know about
it. Wonderful!'
'Not at all, Mr Wegg. The old gentleman wanted to know the nature and worth
of everything that was found in the dust; and many's the bone, and feather, and
what not, that he's brought to me.'
'Really, now!'
'Yes. (Oh dear me, dear me!) And he's buried quite in this neighbourhood, you
know. Over yonder.'
Mr Wegg does not know, but he makes as if he did, by responsively nodding his
head. He also follows with his eyes, the toss of Venus's head: as if to seek a
direction to over yonder.
'I took an interest in that discovery in the river,' says Venus. (She hadn't
written her cutting refusal at that time.) I've got up there-- never mind,
though.'
He had raised the candle at arm's length towards one of the dark shelves, and
Mr Wegg had turned to look, when he broke off.
'The old gentleman was well known all round here. There used to be stories
about his having hidden all kinds of property in those dust mounds. I suppose
there was nothing in 'em. Probably you know, Mr Wegg?'
'Nothing in 'em,' says Wegg, who has never heard a word of this before.
'Don't let me detain you. Good night!'
The unfortunate Mr Venus gives him a shake of the hand with a shake of his
own head, and drooping down in his chair, proceeds to pour himself out more tea.
Mr Wegg, looking back over his shoulder as he pulls the door open by the strap,
notices that the movement so shakes the crazy shop, and so shakes a momentary
flare out of the candle, as that the babies--Hindoo, African, and British--the
'human warious', the French gentleman, the green glass-eyed cats, the dogs, the
ducks, and all the rest of the collection, show for an instant as if
paralytically animated; while even poor little Cock Robin at Mr Venus's elbow
turns over on his innocent side. Next moment, Mr Wegg is stumping under the
gaslights and through the mud.
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