A House to Let, et al, Charles Dickens [web based ebook reader .txt] 📗

of words, and they was generally the last thing he said to me at night afore he went to bed.

He had what I consider a fine mind—a poetic mind. His ideas respectin his property never come upon him so strong as when he sat upon a barrel-organ and had the handle turned. Arter the wibration had run through him a little time, he would screech out, “Toby, I feel my property coming—grind away! I’m counting my guineas by thousands, Toby—grind away! Toby, I shall be a man of fortun! I feel the Mint a jingling in me, Toby, and I’m swelling out into the Bank of England!” Such is the influence of music on a poetic mind. Not that he was partial to any other music but a barrel-organ; on the contrary, hated it.

He had a kind of a everlasting grudge agin the Public: which is a thing you may notice in many phenomenons that get their living out of it. What riled him most in the nater of his occupation was, that it kep him out of Society. He was continiwally saying, “Toby, my ambition is, to go into Society. The curse of my position towards the Public is, that it keeps me hout of Society. This don’t signify to a low beast of a Indian; he an’t formed for Society. This don’t signify to a Spotted Baby; HE an’t formed for Society.—I am.”

Nobody never could make out what Chops done with his money. He had a good salary, down on the drum every Saturday as the day came round, besides having the run of his teeth—and he was a Woodpecker to eat—but all Dwarfs are. The sarser was a little income, bringing him in so many halfpence that he’d carry ‘em for a week together, tied up in a pocket-handkercher. And yet he never had money. And it couldn’t be the Fat Lady from Norfolk, as was once supposed; because it stands to reason that when you have a animosity towards a Indian, which makes you grind your teeth at him to his face, and which can hardly hold you from Goosing him audible when he’s going through his WarDance—it stands to reason you wouldn’t under them circumstances deprive yourself, to support that Indian in the lap of luxury.

Most unexpected, the mystery come out one day at Egham Races. The Public was shy of bein pulled in, and Chops was ringin his little bell out of his drawing-room winder, and was snarlin to me over his shoulder as he kneeled down with his legs out at the back-door—for he couldn’t be shoved into his house without kneeling down, and the premises wouldn’t accommodate his legs—was snarlin, “Here’s a precious Public for you; why the Devil don’t they tumble up?” when a man in the crowd holds up a carrier-pigeon, and cries out, “If there’s any person here as has got a ticket, the Lottery’s just drawed, and the number as has come up for the great prize is three, seven, forty-two! Three, seven, forty-two!” I was givin the man to the Furies myself, for calling off the Public’s attention—for the Public will turn away, at any time, to look at anything in preference to the thing showed ‘em; and if you doubt it, get ‘em together for any indiwidual purpose on the face of the earth, and send only two people in late, and see if the whole company an’t far more interested in takin particular notice of them two than of you— I say, I wasn’t best pleased with the man for callin out, and wasn’t blessin him in my own mind, when I see Chops’s little bell fly out of winder at a old lady, and he gets up and kicks his box over, exposin the whole secret, and he catches hold of the calves of my legs and he says to me, “Carry me into the wan, Toby, and throw a pail of water over me or I’m a dead man, for I’ve come into my property!”

Twelve thousand odd hundred pound, was Chops’s winnins. He had bought a half-ticket for the twenty-five thousand prize, and it had come up. The first use he made of his property, was, to offer to fight the Wild Indian for five hundred pound a side, him with a poisoned darnin-needle and the Indian with a club; but the Indian being in want of backers to that amount, it went no further.

Arter he had been mad for a week—in a state of mind, in short, in which, if I had let him sit on the organ for only two minutes, I believe he would have bust—but we kep the organ from him—Mr. Chops come round, and behaved liberal and beautiful to all. He then sent for a young man he knowed, as had a wery genteel appearance and was a Bonnet at a gaming-booth (most respectable brought up, father havin been imminent in the livery stable line but unfort’nate in a commercial crisis, through paintin a old gray, ginger-bay, and sellin him with a Pedigree), and Mr. Chops said to this Bonnet, who said his name was Normandy, which it wasn’t:

“Normandy, I’m a goin into Society. Will you go with me?”

Says Normandy: “Do I understand you, Mr. Chops, to hintimate that the ‘ole of the expenses of that move will be borne by yourself?”

“Correct,” says Mr. Chops. “And you shall have a Princely allowance too.”

The Bonnet lifted Mr. Chops upon a chair, to shake hands with him, and replied in poetry, with his eyes seemingly full of tears:

 

“My boat is on the shore, And my bark is on the sea, And I do not ask for more, But I’ll Go:- along with thee.”

 

They went into Society, in a chay and four grays with silk jackets. They took lodgings in Pall Mall, London, and they blazed away.

In consequence of a note that was brought to Bartlemy Fair in the autumn of next year by a servant, most wonderful got up in milk-white cords and tops, I cleaned myself and went to Pall Mall, one evening appinted. The gentlemen was at their wine arter dinner, and Mr. Chops’s eyes was more fixed in that Ed of his than I thought good for him. There was three of ‘em (in company, I mean), and I knowed the third well. When last met, he had on a white Roman shirt, and a bishop’s mitre covered with leopard-skin, and played the clarionet all wrong, in a band at a Wild Beast Show.

This gent took on not to know me, and Mr. Chops said: “Gentlemen, this is a old friend of former days:” and Normandy looked at me through a eye-glass, and said, “Magsman, glad to see you!”—which I’ll take my oath he wasn’t. Mr. Chops, to git him convenient to the table, had his chair on a throne (much of the form of George the Fourth’s in the canvass), but he hardly appeared to me to be King there in any other pint of view, for his two gentlemen ordered about like Emperors. They was all dressed like May-Day—gorgeous!—And as to Wine, they swam in all sorts.

I made the round of the bottles, first separate (to say I had done it), and then mixed ‘em all together (to say I had done it), and then tried two of ‘em as half-and-half, and then t’other two. Altogether, I passed a pleasin evenin, but with a tendency to feel muddled, until I considered it good manners to get up and say, “Mr. Chops, the best of friends must part, I thank you for the wariety of foreign drains you have stood so ‘ansome, I looks towards you in red wine, and I takes my leave.” Mr. Chops replied, “If you’ll just hitch me out of this over your right arm, Magsman, and carry me downstairs, I’ll see you out.” I said I couldn’t think of such a thing, but he would have it, so I lifted him off his throne. He smelt strong of Maideary, and I couldn’t help thinking as I carried him down that it was like carrying a large bottle full of wine, with a rayther ugly stopper, a good deal out of proportion.

When I set him on the door-mat in the hall, he kep me close to him by holding on to my coat-collar, and he whispers:

“I ain’t ‘appy, Magsman.”

“What’s on your mind, Mr. Chops?”

“They don’t use me well. They an’t grateful to me. They puts me on the mantel-piece when I won’t have in more Champagne-wine, and they locks me in the sideboard when I won’t give up my property.”

“Get rid of ‘em, Mr. Chops.”

“I can’t. We’re in Society together, and what would Society say?”

“Come out of Society!” says I.

“I can’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about. When you have once gone into Society, you mustn’t come out of it.”

“Then if you’ll excuse the freedom, Mr. Chops,” were my remark, shaking my head grave, “I think it’s a pity you ever went in.”

Mr. Chops shook that deep Ed of his, to a surprisin extent, and slapped it half a dozen times with his hand, and with more Wice than I thought were in him. Then, he says, “You’re a good fellow, but you don’t understand. Good-night, go along. Magsman, the little man will now walk three times round the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain.” The last I see of him on that occasion was his tryin, on the extremest werge of insensibility, to climb up the stairs, one by one, with his hands and knees. They’d have been much too steep for him, if he had been sober; but he wouldn’t be helped.

It warn’t long after that, that I read in the newspaper of Mr. Chops’s being presented at court. It was printed, “It will be recollected”—and I’ve noticed in my life, that it is sure to be printed that it WILL be recollected, whenever it won’t—“that Mr. Chops is the individual of small stature, whose brilliant success in the last State Lottery attracted so much attention.” Well, I says to myself, Such is Life! He has been and done it in earnest at last. He has astonished George the Fourth!

(On account of which, I had that canvass new-painted, him with a bag of money in his hand, a presentin it to George the Fourth, and a lady in Ostrich Feathers fallin in love with him in a bag-wig, sword, and buckles correct.)

I took the House as is the subject of present inquiries—though not the honour of bein acquainted—and I run Magsman’s Amusements in it thirteen months—sometimes one thing, sometimes another, sometimes nothin particular, but always all the canvasses outside. One night, when we had played the last company out, which was a shy company, through its raining Heavens hard, I was takin a pipe in the one pair back along with the young man with the toes, which I had taken on for a month (though he never drawed—except on paper), and I heard a kickin at the street door. “Halloa!” I says to the young man, “what’s up!” He rubs his eyebrows with his toes, and he says, “I can’t imagine, Mr. Magsman”—which he never could imagine nothin, and was monotonous company.

The noise not leavin off, I laid down my pipe, and I took up a candle, and I went down and opened the door. I looked out into the street; but nothin could I see, and nothin was I aware of, until I turned round quick, because some creetur run between my legs into the passage. There was Mr. Chops!

“Magsman,” he says, “take me, on the old terms, and you’ve got me; if it’s done, say done!”

I was all of a maze, but I said, “Done, sir.”

“Done to your done, and double done!”