Original Penny Readings Part 21

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

A PIECE OF a.s.sURANCE.

Being only a quiet, country-b.u.mpkin sort of personage, it seems but reasonable that I should ask what can there be in me that people should take such intense interest in my life being insured. If such eagerness were shown by, say one's wife, or any very near relative, one might turn suspicious, and fancy they had leanings towards the tea-spoons, sugar-tongs, and silver watch, and any other personal property that, like Captain Cuttle, one might feel disposed to make over "jintly" in some other direction. Consequently, one would be afterwards on the look-out for modern Borgiaism, and take h.o.m.oeopathic doses of Veratria, Brucine, etc, etc, by way of antidote for any unpleasant symptoms likely to manifest themselves in the system. But then it is not from near relatives that such earnestness proceeds, but from utter strangers. It is hard to say how many attempts I have had made upon my life insurance--I will not use the word a.s.surance, though it exists to a dreadful extent in the myrmidons of the pushing offices--at home, abroad, in the retirement of one's study, in the lecture-hall of a town, always the same.

Fancy being inveigled into attending a lecture, and sitting for an hour and a half while a huge, big-whiskered man verbally attacks you, seizes you with his eye, metaphorically hooks you with his finger, and then holds you up to the scorn of the a.s.sembled hundreds, while he reproaches you for your neglect of the dear ones at home; calls up horrors to make you nervous; relates anecdotes full of widows in shabby mourning; ragged children and hard-hearted landlords; cold relations, bitter sufferings, and misery unspeakable; all of which troubles, calamities, and cares, will be sure to fall upon those you leave behind, if you do not immediately insure in the Certain Dissolution and Inevitable Collapse a.s.surance Company, world-famed for its prompt and liberal settlement, and the grand bonuses it gives to its supporters.

I have nerves, and consequently did not want to know exactly how many people leave this world per cent, per annum. I dislike statistics of every kind, and never felt disposed to serve tables since I was kept in at school to learn them. I did not want to be sent home to dream of a dreadful dance of death funereally performed by undertakers' men in scarfs, with bra.s.s-tipped staves and bunches of black ostrich-plumes in their hands. We do certainly read of people who prepare their own mausoleums, and who, doubtless, take great comfort and delight in the contemplation of their future earthly abode; but to a man without any such proclivities this style of lecture--this metaphorical holding of one's head by force over the big black pit, was jarring and dreadfully discordant in its effect upon the resonant strings of the human instrument.

I have very strange ways and ideas of my own, and have no hesitation in saying that I like to do as I please, and as seems me best. If what seems to me best is wrong, of course I do not own to it. Who does? and if I prefer insuring my furniture and house to my life, and this system is wrong, I'm not going to be convinced of its wrongness by a tall, gentlemanly-looking man who wishes to see me on particular business, and whom I have shown into the room I call my study, but which should be termed workshop.

Now, just at the time of the said tall, gentlemanly man's arrival, I am in the agony of composition; I have written nearly half of a paper for a magazine, one which the editor will be as sure to reject as I in my then state of inflation think he will hug it to his breast as a gem. I am laboriously climbing the climax, and find the ascent so slippery, and the glides back so frequent, that the question arises in one's breast whether, like the Irish schoolboy, it would not be better to try backwards. I have just come to where the awe-stricken Count exclaims--

"Please sir, you're wanted," says Mary, opening the door upon her repeated knocks gaining no attention; and then, after an angry parley, I am caught--regularly limed, trapped, netted by the words "particular business."

A tall gentlemanly man wanting to see me on particular business. What can it be? Perhaps it is to edit _The Times_; perhaps to send Dr Russell home, after taking his pencil and note-book out of his war-correspondent hands; or maybe to put out the GAS of the _Daily Telegraph_. Is it to elevate the _Standard_, distribute the _Daily News_, act as astronomer-royal to the _Morning_ and _Evening Stars_, to roll the _Globe_, or be its _Atlas_, take the spots from the face of the _Sun_, blow the great trumpet of the _Morning Herald_, literary field-marshal in some review, rebuild some damaged or exploded magazine?

What can the business be? Not stage business, certainly, for that is not my branch. Law? perhaps so. A legacy--large, of course, or one of the princ.i.p.als would not have come down instead of writing. It must be so: I am next of kin to somebody, and I shall buy _that_ estate after all.

Enter tall gentlemanly man upon his particular business of a private nature; and then, being a quiet, retiring person, to whom it is painful to speak rudely or without that glaze which is commonly called politeness, I suffer a severe cross-examination as to age, wife's ditto, number of children, and so on. I am told of the uncertainty of life-- the liability of the thread to snap, without the aid of the scissors of Atropos--how strengthening the knowledge of having made provision for my ewe and lambs would be if I were ill; how small the amount would be; how large a bonus would be added if I a.s.sured at once; how mine would be sure to be a first-cla.s.s life--he had not seen the phials and pill-boxes in the bedroom cupboard--how nothing should be put off until to-morrow which could be done to-day, which I already knew; how a friend of his had written twelve reasons why people should a.s.sure, which reasons he kindly showed to me; and told me an abundance of things which he said I ought to know. He had answer pat for every possible or impossible objection that I could make, having thoroughly crammed himself for his task; and he knocked me down, bowled me over, got me up in corners, over the ropes, in Chancery, fell upon me heavily; in fact, as the professors of the "n.o.ble art" would say--the n.o.ble art of self-defence and offence to the world--had it all his own way.

I had no idea what a poor debater I was, or that I could be so severely handled. My ignorance was surprising; and I should have been melancholy afterwards instead of angry, if I had not consoled myself with the idea that I was not in training for a life a.s.surance fight.

I recalled the answer made by a friend to a strong appeal from a cla.s.s office, and that was, that he was neither a medical nor a general, and therefore not eligible; at the same time holding the door open for his visitor's exit. But then I did not feel myself equal to such a task, and however importunate and troublesome a visitor might be, I somehow felt constrained to treat him in a gentlemanly manner. I tried all the gentle hints I could, and then used more forcible ones; but the gentlemanly man seemed cased in armour of proof, from which my feeble shafts glanced and went anywhere; while, whenever he saw that I was about to make a fresh attack, he was at me like Mr Branestrong, QC, and beat down my guard in a moment. It took a long time to eradicate the bland, but it went at last, and a faint flush seemed to make its way into my face, while to proceed to extremities, there was a peculiar nervous twitching in one toe, originating in its debility caused by a table once falling upon it, but now the twitches seemed of a growing or expanding nature, and as if they were struggling hard to become kicks.

It was pain unutterable, especially when the moral law a.s.serted its rights, and an aspect of suavity was ruled by reason to be the order of the day--if allied with firmness.

"If allied with firmness." Ah! but there was the rub, for firmness had turned craven and vanished at the first appearance of my visitor.

"No; I would rather not a.s.sure then; I would think it over; I would make up my mind shortly; I felt undecided as to the office I should choose,"

were my replies, _et hoc genus omne_; but all was of no avail, and at last I acknowledged to myself that I could not hold my own, and must speak very strongly to get rid of my unwelcome friend, who solved my problem himself by asking whether I admired poetry.

Presuming that this was to change the conversation, preparatory to taking his leave, I replied, "Yes."

"Then he would read me a short poem on the subject in question," and drawing from his pocket a piece of paper, he began in a most forced declamatory style to read some doggerel concerning a gentleman who was taken to heaven, but who left a wife and seven--rhyme to heaven--and whose affairs would have been most unsatisfactory if he had not a.s.sured his life.

But my friend did not finish, being apparently startled by some look or movement upon my part, which caused him to hurriedly say "Good morning,"

and to promise to call again, as I seemed busy.

Perhaps he may call again; but he will have to call again, and again, and again, and very loudly too, before he gets in to talk upon particular business.

Now, it may seem strange that after this I should express great admiration for the system of a.s.surance; but I do admire it, and consider it the duty of every poor man to try and make some provision for the future of those he may leave behind. But one cannot help feeling suspicious of offices that are in the habit of forcing themselves so unpleasantly upon your notice, and sinking their professional respectability in the dodges and advertising and canva.s.sing tricks of the cheap "to be continued in monthly parts" book-hawker, or the broken down tradesman, who leaves goods for your inspection. One has learned to look upon the quiet, flowing stream as the deepest and safest to bear the bark; for the rough, bubbling water speaks of shoals, rocks, and quicksands, with perchance "snags and sawyers," ready to pierce the frail bottom.

Once more alone, I referred to the circular left upon my table, where beneath my age and the sum per cent, that I should have to pay, was a broad pencil-mark, emanating from the eminently gentlemanly gold pencil-case of my visitor. But in spite of unheard-of advantages, liberal treatment, large bonus distribution every five years, with a great deal more duly set forth in the paper, I shall not a.s.sure in that office, for I made my mind up then in the half-hour of anger, when I could not get the Count to exclaim anything, although I tried so hard.

He was awe-stricken, certainly; but as I had painted him, he would keep changing into a gentlemanly man, charged with life a.s.surance principles.

So I read what I had written, saw the error of my ways, and knowing too well that a certain conductor would reject it after the first page, I sighed, tore off a portion, and used it to illumine a cigar; and then took for my hero the morning's visitor--writing this paper, which I trust may have a better fate.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

THE DECLINE OF THE DRAMA.

'Tain't no use, sir; times is altered and the people too. What with yer railways, and telegraphs, and steam, and penny noosepapers, people knows too much by half, and it's about all d.i.c.key with our profession. People won't stop and look: they thinks it's beneath 'em; and 'tain't no good to get a good pitch, for the coppers won't come in nohow. Why what's innocenter or moraller than a Punch and Judy? "Nothing," says you, and of course there ain't. Isn't it the showing up of how wice is punished and wirtue triumphant in a pleasant and instructive manner. Ov course it is. But no, it won't do now. Punches is wore out; and so's Fantysheenys and tumbling; for people's always wanting a something noo, just as if anything ought to be noo 'cept togs and tommy. Ain't old things the best all the world over? You won't have noo paintings, nor noo wine, and you allus thinks most o' old books and old fiddles; so what do you want with a noo sort o' Punch?

Here I am a-sitting up in the old spot; there's the theayter in the back-yard, with the green baize and the front up here on account o' the rain. There you are you see, turn him round. There's a given up to the calls o' the time. "Temple of Arts" you see on the top, in a ribbon, with Punch holdin' on wun side and comical Joey holding on t'other.

There's the strap and box, if you'll open it, and there's the pipes on the chimbly-piece. There's everything complete but the drum, and that we was obliged to lend to the 'Lastic Brothers, for theirs is lent, uncle you know, and Jem Brown, one on 'em, says he lost the ticket, though it looks werry suspicious.

But, now, just open that box, and lay 'em out one at a time on the table, and you'll just see as it ain't our fault as we don't get on.

An' take that ere fust. 'Tain't no business there, but it's got atop somehow. That's the gallus that is, and I allus would have as galluses ought to be twiste as big, but Bill Bowke, my pardner, he says as it's right enough, and so I wouldn't alter. Now there you are! Look at that, now! There's a Punch! Why, it's enough to bring tears in yer eyes to see how public taste's fell off. There was four coats o' paint put on him, besides the touchins up and finishins, and at a time, too, when browns were that scarce it was dreadful. There, pull 'em out, sir; I ain't ashamed o' the set, and hard-up as I am at this werry moment, I wouldn't take two pound for 'em. There, now. Pull 'em out. That's Joe, and he's got his legs somehow in the beadle's pocket. Quite nat'ral, ain't it? just as if he was a rum 'un 'stead of only being a doll, you know. That's the kid as you've dropped. That ain't much account, that ain't; for you see babies never does have any 'spression on their faces, and anything does to be chucked outer window; and the crowd often treads on it, bless you. There's a Judy, too; only wants a new frill a-tacking on her head for a cap, and she's about the best on the boards, I'll bet. You see I cared 'em myself, and give the whole of my mind to it, so as the faces might look nat'ral and taking. Mind his wig, sir. Ah! that wants a bit o' glue, that does, and a touch o' black paint. You see that's the furrin gentleman as says nothin' but "Shallabala," and a good deal o' the back of his head's knocked off.

There you are, you see, bright colours, good wigs, and nicely dressed.

That's the ghost. Looks thin? well, in course, sperrets ain't 'sposed to be fat. Head shrunk? Well, 'nuff to make it. That's Jack Ketch; and that's the coffin; and that's the devil. We don't allus bring him out, and keeps the ghost in the box sometimes, according to the company as we gets in. Out in the streets the people likes to see it all; not as they often do, for we generally gets about half through, and then drops it, pretending we can't get coppers enough to play it out, when the real thing is as the people's sucked dry, and won't tip any more, or we'd keep it up; but in the squares and gentlemen's gardings it ain't considered right for the children, so we gives the play in a mutilated form, don't you see.

Now that's the lot, don't you see, sir, and if you wouldn't mind putting the box on this chair by the bedside, and shoving the table up close, I'll put 'em all back careful myself, for lying sick here one don't get much amus.e.m.e.nt. Ain't got even Toby here, which being a dawg warn't much company, yet he was some, though his name warn't Toby but Spice.

Nice dawg he was, though any training warn't no good; he was a free child o' natur, and when his time came for the play he would bite the wrong noses and at the wrong times. The wust of it was too, that he would bolt, I don't mean swaller, but go a-running off arter other dawgs, and getting his frill torn as bad as his ears, and I never did see a raggeder pair o' ears than he had nowheres--torn amost to ribbons they was. We lost him at last, though I never knowed how, but a 'spicion crossed my mind one day when Bill my pardner was eating a small German, and it was close by the factory as we missed him; and though Bill said I was a duffer and spoilt his dinner, I allus stuck to it, and allus will, as there was the smell of Spice in that ere sa.s.sage.

There you are, yer see sir, all packed clost and neat, and as I said afore I wouldn't take two pounds for 'em, bad as I am inside and out.

Trade's bad, profession's bad, and I'm bad; but bless yer heart we shall have a revival yet, and when the drum comes back, and I get wind enough again to do the business, we shall go ahead like all that.

There if I ain't boxed all the figgers up, and left the coffin out.

Good job my old woman ain't here, or she'd say it was a sign or something o' that sort, and try to make one uncomfortable; but there you are, you see, sir, all snug now, and it does seem rather a low spiriting thing to have in a house, sir, and putting aside Punch and Judy stuff, the smaller they are the less you like it.

Going, sir? well, you'll come again, I hope, and if I _do_ get better, why, I'll go through the lot in front of your house, if you let me have your card.

Beg pardon, sir, thought you were going; not as I wants you to, for company's werry pleasant when you're stretched on your back and can't help yourself. Since I've been a-lying here I've been reckoning things up, and I've come to the conclusion as the world's got too full. People lives too fast, and do what you will, puff and blow and race after 'em, ten to one you gets beat. Everything wants to be noo and superior, says the people, and nothing old goes down. Look at them happy times, when one could take the missus in the barrer with a sackful o' c.o.kynuts and pincushions, and them apples and lemons as the more you opened the more come out; then there'd be the sticks, and a tin kettle, and just a few odds and ends, and all drawn by the donkey; when off we'd go down to some country fair or the races; dig the holes or have bags of earth, stick up the things--c.o.kynuts or cushions; the wife sees to the fire and kittle, and you shouts out--leastways, I don't mean you, I mean me, you know--shouts out, "Three throws a penny," when the chuckle-headed b.u.mpkins would go on throwing away like winkin' till they knocked something down, and then go off all on the smile to think how clever they'd been. But now they must have their Aunt Sallys and stuff, and country fairs has all gone to the bow-wows.

If I gets better I'm a-goin' to turn Punch from a mellowdramy into a opera--make 'em sing everything, you know. I'd have tried it on afore only my mate gets so orrid short-winded with the pipes, and often when you're a-expectin' the high notes of a toone he drops it off altogether, and fills in with larrups of the drum, and that wouldn't do you know in the sollum parts.

Them music-halls has done us as much harm as any-think, and pretty places they is; why if it warn't for the pretty toons as they fits on the songs, n.o.body wouldn't stop to hear the rubbidge as is let off.

Punch _is_ stoopid sometimes, we know, but then look at the moral. And there ain't no moral at all in music-hall songs.

Sometimes I think as I shall have to knock off the national drammy in consequence of want of funds, for you know times may turn so hard that I shall have to sell all off, and the drum mayn't come back, though I was thinking one time of me and pardner taking a hinstrument each and practisin' up some good dooets--me taking the drum and him the pipes, allus allowing, of course, as the drum do come back. But then you see as his short-windedness would be agen us, and it wouldn't do to be allus drowning the high parts with so much leathering.

Heigho, sir. It makes me sigh to lie here so long waiting to get well, till in the dusky evening time, when the gas lamps are shining up and the stars are peeping down, one gets thinking that it's time to think of that little thing as I left out of the box; and then lying all alone one seems to have all the long years fall away from one, and get back into the old, old times, and often I have been fishing, and wandering, and bird's-nesting again all over and over as it used to be. I see it all so plainly, and then get calling up all the old mates I had, and reckoning 'em up, and one's out in Indy, and another was killed in the Crimee, and another's in Australy for poaching, and among the whole lot I only knows one now, and that's me--what there is left. I don't talk like this before the old woman, but I think so much of our old churchyard, and the green graves, and yew trees; and somehow as I remember the old sunny corners and green spots, I fancy as I should like to go to sleep there far away from these courts and alleys. It seems like dying here, and being hurried away afterwards, with every one glad to get rid of you; but down in the old quiet parts it seems to me like watching the sun go down behind the hill, when the still, quiet evening comes on so soft and pleasant, and then you grow tired and worn-out and lie down to rest, taking a long, long sleep under the bright green turf.

But there, I ain't in the country, I'm here in the thick of London, where I came up to seek my fortun, and never looked in the right place.

We poor folks are like the children playing at "Hot boiled beans and werry good b.u.t.ter," and though while you're hunting for what's hid, you may get werry near sometimes, getting warmer and hotter till you're burning, yet somehow it isn't often that one finds. Some does, but there's werry few of 'em, and in the great scramble when one gets hold of anything it's a chansh if it ain't s.n.a.t.c.hed out of your hand.

But there, I shan't give up, for there's nothing like a bit o' pluck to carry you through your troubles, and I'm a-going to scheme a noo sorter public Shakespearian dramatic entertainment, one as will be patronised by all the n.o.bility and gentry, when in consequence of the unparalleled success, we shall stop all the press orders and free list, and come out arterwards with a new drum, and get presented with a set o'

silver-mounted pipes by a grateful nation. Leastwise I mean it to be a success if I can, but if it don't turn out all right, through me and my pardner being so touched in the wind, Bill's a-going to get up a subscription to buy a barrel-orgin and a four-wheel thing as 'll take us both--me and the orgin; when I shall sit there with a tin plate to take the coppers, and Bill will grind away like that Italian chap as drew round the gentleman wot had been operated on. I don't want to come down to that, though, for one can't help 'sociating barrel-orgins with monkeys, and pitying the poor little chattering beggars as is chained up to an eight-toon box, played slow, as if it was wrong in its inside.

And that makes me rather shrink a bit from it, for thinking as I might get tired of the organ-grinder.

Steps, steps, steps. Here's the missus coming, and there'll be the physic to take, and then, after a bit of a nap, I mean to sit up and put my theaytrical company to rights.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

IN THE HOOGHLY.

You people here in England don't know what a river is; the Thames and Severn are only ditches, while the Humber is precious little better than a creek of the sea. Just think of such rivers as the Amazon, and the Plate, and the Mississippi, where you can sail up miles, and miles, and miles, and on the two first can't make out the sh.o.r.e on either side; while after a flood down comes little islands covered with trees washed out of the banks, some with pretty little snakes on 'em twenty feet long, p'raps, while on every flat bit of sh.o.r.e you see the alligators a-lying by wholesale. Then there's them big African rivers with the alligator's first cousins--crockydiles, you know, same as there is up in that big river in Indy--the Ganges, as I've sailed up right through the Sunderbunds, covered in some places with jungle, where the great striped tigers lie, and as one o' my poor mates used to say, it's dangerous to be safe.