Sketches by Boz Read online

  “Charming woman, that Mrs. Maplesone!” said Mrs. Tibbs, as she and her spouse were sitting by the fire after breakfast; the gentlemen having gone out on their several avocations. “Charming woman, indeed!” repeated little Mrs. Tibbs, more by way of soliloquy than anything else, for she never thought of consulting her husband. “And the two daughters are delightful. We must have some fish today; they'll join us at dinner for the first time.”

  Mr. Tibbs placed the poker at right angles with the fire shovel, and essayed to speak, but recollected he had nothing to say.

  “The young ladies,” continued Mrs. T., “have kindly volunteered to bring their own piano.”

  Tibbs thought of the volunteer story, but did not venture it.

  A bright thought struck him—

  “It's very likely—” said he.

  “Pray don't lean your head against the paper,” interrupted Mrs. Tibbs; “and don't put your feet on the steel fender; that's worse.”

  Tibbs took his head from the paper, and his feet from the fender, and proceeded. “It's very likely one of the young ladies may set her cap at young Mr. Simpson, and you know a marriage—”

  “A what!” shrieked Mrs. Tibbs. Tibbs modestly repeated his former suggestion.

  “I beg you won't mention such a thing,” said Mrs. T. “A marriage, indeed to rob me of my boarders—no, not for the world.”

  Tibbs thought in his own mind that the event was by no means unlikely, but, as he never argued with his wife, he put a stop to the dialogue, by observing it was “time to go to business.” He always went out at ten o'clock in the morning, and returned at five in the afternoon, with an exceedingly dirty face, and smelling mouldy. Nobody knew what he was, or where he went; but Mrs. Tibbs used to say with an air of great importance, that he was engaged in the City.

  The Miss Maplesones and their accomplished parent arrived in the course of the afternoon in a hackney-coach, and accompanied by a most astonishing number of packages. Trunks, bonnet-boxes, muffboxes and parasols, guitar-cases, and parcels of all imaginable shapes, done up in brown paper, and fastened with pins, filled the passage. Then, there was such a running up and down with the luggage, such scampering for warm water for the ladies to wash in, and such a bustle, and confusion, and heating of servants, and curling-irons, as had never been known in Great Coram-street before. Little Mrs. Tibbs was quite in her element, bustling about, talking incessantly, and distributing towels and soap, like a head nurse in a hospital. The house was not restored to its usual state of quiet repose, until the ladies were safely shut up in their respective bedrooms, engaged in the important occupation of dressing for dinner.

  “Are these gals “andsome?” inquired Mr. Simpson of Mr. Septimus Hicks, another of the boarders, as they were amusing themselves in the drawing-room, before dinner, by lolling on sofas, and contemplating their pumps.

  “Don't know,” replied Mr. Septimus Hicks, who was a tallish, whitefaced young man, with spectacles, and a black ribbon round his neck instead of a neckerchief—a most interesting person; a poetical walker of the hospitals, and a “very talented young man.” He was fond of “lugging” into conversation all sorts of quotations from Don Juan, without fettering himself by the propriety of their application; in which particular he was remarkably independent. The other, Mr. Simpson, was one of those young men, who are in society what walking gentlemen are on the stage, only infinitely worse skilled in his vocation than the most indifferent artist. He was as empty-headed as the great bell of St. Paul 's; always dressed according to the caricatures published in the monthly fashion; and spelt Character with a K.

  “I saw a devilish number of parcels in the passage when I came home,” simpered Mr. Simpson.

  “Materials for the toilet, no doubt,” rejoined the Don Juan reader.

  —“Much linen, lace, and several pair Of stockings, slippers, brushes, combs, complete; With other articles of ladies fair, To keep them beautiful, or leave them neat.”

  “Is that from Milton ?” inquired Mr. Simpson.

  “No—from Byron,” returned Mr. Hicks, with a look of contempt. He was quite sure of his author, because he had never read any other. “Hush! Here come the gals,” and they both commenced talking in a very loud key.

  “Mrs. Maplesone and the Miss Maplesones, Mr. Hicks. Mr. Hicks—Mrs. Maplesone and the Miss Maplesones,” said Mrs. Tibbs, with a very red face, for she had been superintending the cooking operations below stairs, and looked like a wax doll on a sunny day. “Mr. Simpson, I beg your pardon—Mr. Simpson—Mrs. Maplesone and the Miss Maplesones”—and VICE VERSA. The gentlemen immediately began to slide about with much politeness, and to look as if they wished their arms had been legs, so little did they know what to do with them. The ladies smiled, curtseyed, and glided into chairs, and dived for dropped pocket-handkerchiefs: the gentlemen leant against two of the curtain-pegs; Mrs. Tibbs went through an admirable bit of serious pantomime with a servant who had come up to ask some question about the fish-sauce; and then the two young ladies looked at each other; and everybody else appeared to discover something very attractive in the pattern of the fender.

  “Julia, my love,” said Mrs. Maplesone to her youngest daughter, in a tone loud enough for the remainder of the company to hear—“Julia.”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  “Don't stoop. “—This was said for the purpose of directing general attention to Miss Julia's figure, which was undeniable. Everybody looked at her, accordingly, and there was another pause.

  “We had the most uncivil hackney-coachman to-day, you can imagine,” said Mrs. Maplesone to Mrs. Tibbs, in a confidential tone.

  “Dear me!” replied the hostess, with an air of great commiseration. She couldn't say more, for the servant again appeared at the door, and commenced telegraphing most earnestly to her “Missis.”

  “I think hackney-coachmen generally ARE uncivil,” said Mr. Hicks in his most insinuating tone.

  “Positively I think they are,” replied Mrs. Maplesone, as if the idea had never struck her before.

  “And cabmen, too,” said Mr. Simpson. This remark was a failure, for no one intimated, by word or sign, the slightest knowledge of the manners and customs of cabmen.

  “Robinson, what DO you want?” said Mrs. Tibbs to the servant, who, by way of making her presence known to her mistress, had been giving sundry hems and sniffs outside the door during the preceding five minutes.

  “Please, ma'am, master wants his clean things,” replied the servant, taken off her guard. The two young men turned their faces to the window, and “went off” like a couple of bottles of gingerbeer; the ladies put their handkerchiefs to their mouths; and little Mrs. Tibbs bustled out of the room to give Tibbs his clean linen,—and the servant warning.

  Mr. Calton, the remaining boarder, shortly afterwards made his appearance, and proved a surprising promoter of the conversation. Mr. Calton was a superannuated beau—an old boy. He used to say of himself that although his features were not regularly handsome, they were striking. They certainly were. It was impossible to look at his face without being reminded of a chubby street-door knocker, half-lion half-monkey; and the comparison might be extended to his whole character and conversation. He had stood still, while everything else had been moving. He never originated a conversation, or started an idea; but if any commonplace topic were broached, or, to pursue the comparison, if anybody LIFTED HIM UP, he would hammer away with surprising rapidity. He had the ticdouloureux occasionally, and then he might be said to be muffled, because he did not make quite as much noise as at other times, when he would go on prosing, rat-tat-tat the same thing over and over again. He had never been married; but he was still on the look-out for a wife with money. He had a life interest worth about 300L. a year—he was exceedingly vain, and inordinately selfish. He had acquired the reputation of being the very pink of politeness, and he walked round the park, and up Regent-street, every day.

  This respectable personage had made up his mind to render himself exceedingly
agreeable to Mrs. Maplesone—indeed, the desire of being as amiable as possible extended itself to the whole party; Mrs. Tibbs having considered it an admirable little bit of management to represent to the gentlemen that she had SOME reason to believe the ladies were fortunes, and to hint to the ladies, that all the gentlemen were “eligible.” A little flirtation, she thought, might keep her house full, without leading to any other result.

  Mrs. Maplesone was an enterprising widow of about fifty: shrewd, scheming, and good-looking. She was amiably anxious on behalf of her daughters; in proof whereof she used to remark, that she would have no objection to marry again, if it would benefit her dear girls—she could have no other motive. The “dear girls” themselves were not at all insensible to the merits of “a good establishment.” One of them was twenty-five; the other, three years younger. They had been at different watering-places, for four seasons; they had gambled at libraries, read books in balconies, sold at fancy fairs, danced at assemblies, talked sentiment—in short, they had done all that industrious girls could do—but, as yet, to no purpose.

  “What a magnificent dresser Mr. Simpson is!” whispered Matilda Maplesone to her sister Julia.

  “Splendid!” returned the youngest. The magnificent individual alluded to wore a maroon-coloured dress-coat, with a velvet collar and cuffs of the same tint—very like that which usually invests the form of the distinguished unknown who condescends to play the “swell” in the pantomime at “Richardson's Show.”

  “What whiskers!” said Miss Julia.

  “Charming!” responded her sister; “and what hair!” His hair was like a wig, and distinguished by that insinuating wave which graces the shining locks of those CHEF-D'OEUVRES of art surmounting the waxen images in Bartellot's window in Regent-street; his whiskers meeting beneath his chin, seemed strings wherewith to tie it on, ere science had rendered them unnecessary by her patent invisible springs.

  “Dinner's on the table, ma'am, if you please,” said the boy, who now appeared for the first time, in a revived black coat of his master's.

  “Oh! Mr. Calton, will you lead Mrs. Maplesone?—Thank you.” Mr. Simpson offered his arm to Miss Julia; Mr. Septimus Hicks escorted the lovely Matilda; and the procession proceeded to the diningroom. Mr. Tibbs was introduced, and Mr. Tibbs bobbed up and down to the three ladies like a figure in a Dutch clock, with a powerful spring in the middle of his body, and then dived rapidly into his seat at the bottom of the table, delighted to screen himself behind a soup-tureen, which he could just see over, and that was all. The boarders were seated, a lady and gentleman alternately, like the layers of bread and meat in a plate of sandwiches; and then Mrs. Tibbs directed James to take off the covers. Salmon, lobstersauce, giblet-soup, and the usual accompaniments were discovered: potatoes like petrifactions, and bits of toasted bread, the shape and size of blank dice.

  “Soup for Mrs. Maplesone, my dear,” said the bustling Mrs. Tibbs. She always called her husband “my dear” before company. Tibbs, who had been eating his bread, and calculating how long it would be before he should get any fish, helped the soup in a hurry, made a small island on the table-cloth, and put his glass upon it, to hide it from his wife.

  “Miss Julia, shall I assist you to some fish?”

  “If you please—very little—oh! plenty, thank you” (a bit about the size of a walnut put upon the plate).

  “Julia is a VERY little eater,” said Mrs. Maplesone to Mr. Calton.

  The knocker gave a single rap. He was busy eating the fish with his eyes: so he only ejaculated, “Ah!”

  “My dear,” said Mrs. Tibbs to her spouse after every one else had been helped, “what do YOU take?” The inquiry was accompanied with a look intimating that he mustn't say fish, because there was not much left. Tibbs thought the frown referred to the island on the table-cloth; he therefore coolly replied, “Why—I'll take a little—fish, I think.”

  “Did you say fish, my dear?” (another frown).

  “Yes, dear,” replied the villain, with an expression of acute hunger depicted in his countenance. The tears almost started to Mrs. Tibbs's eyes, as she helped her “wretch of a husband,” as she inwardly called him, to the last eatable bit of salmon on the dish.

  “James, take this to your master, and take away your master's knife.” This was deliberate revenge, as Tibbs never could eat fish without one. He was, however, constrained to chase small particles of salmon round and round his plate with a piece of bread and a fork, the number of successful attempts being about one in seventeen.

  “Take away, James,” said Mrs. Tibbs, as Tibbs swallowed the fourth mouthful—and away went the plates like lightning.

  “I'll take a bit of bread, James,” said the poor “master of the house,” more hungry than ever.

  “Never mind your master now, James,” said Mrs. Tibbs, “see about the meat.” This was conveyed in the tone in which ladies usually give admonitions to servants in company, that is to say, a low one; but which, like a stage whisper, from its peculiar emphasis, is most distinctly heard by everybody present.

  A pause ensued, before the table was replenished—a sort of parenthesis in which Mr. Simpson, Mr. Calton, and Mr. Hicks, produced respectively a bottle of sauterne, bucellas, and sherry, and took wine with everybody—except Tibbs. No one ever thought of him.

  Between the fish and an intimated sirloin, there was a prolonged interval.

  Here was an opportunity for Mr. Hicks. He could not resist the singularly appropriate quotation—

  “But beef is rare within these oxless isles; Goats” flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton, And when a holiday upon them smiles, A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.”

  “Very ungentlemanly behaviour,” thought little Mrs. Tibbs, “to talk in that way.”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Calton, filling his glass. “Tom Moore is my poet.”

  “And mine,” said Mrs. Maplesone.

  “And mine,” said Miss Julia.

  “And mine,” added Mr. Simpson.

  “Look at his compositions,” resumed the knocker.

  “To be sure,” said Simpson, with confidence.

  “Look at Don Juan,” replied Mr. Septimus Hicks.

  “Julia's letter,” suggested Miss Matilda.

  “Can anything be grander than the Fire Worshippers?” inquired Miss Julia.

  “To be sure,” said Simpson.

  “Or Paradise and the Peri,” said the old beau.

  “Yes; or Paradise and the Peer,” repeated Simpson, who thought he was getting through it capitally.

  “It's all very well,” replied Mr. Septimus Hicks, who, as we have before hinted, never had read anything but Don Juan. “Where will you find anything finer than the description of the siege, at the commencement of the seventh canto?”

  “Talking of a siege,” said Tibbs, with a mouthful of bread—“when I was in the volunteer corps, in eighteen hundred and six, our commanding officer was Sir Charles Rampart; and one day, when we were exercising on the ground on which the London University now stands, he says, says he, Tibbs (calling me from the ranks), Tibbs—”

  “Tell your master, James,” interrupted Mrs. Tibbs, in an awfully distinct tone, “tell your master if he WON'T carve those fowls, to send them to me.” The discomfited volunteer instantly set to work, and carved the fowls almost as expeditiously as his wife operated on the haunch of mutton. Whether he ever finished the story is not known but, if he did, nobody heard it.

  As the ice was now broken, and the new inmates more at home, every member of the company felt more at ease. Tibbs himself most certainly did, because he went to sleep immediately after dinner. Mr. Hicks and the ladies discoursed most eloquently about poetry, and the theatres, and Lord Chesterfield's Letters; and Mr. Calton followed up what everybody said, with continuous double knocks. Mrs. Tibbs highly approved of every observation that fell from Mrs. Maplesone; and as Mr. Simpson sat with a smile upon his face and said “Yes,” or “Certainly,” at intervals of about four minutes e
ach, he received full credit for understanding what was going forward. The gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room very shortly after they had left the dining-parlour. Mrs. Maplesone and Mr. Calton played cribbage, and the “young people” amused themselves with music and conversation. The Miss Maplesones sang the most fascinating duets, and accompanied themselves on guitars, ornamented with bits of ethereal blue ribbon. Mr. Simpson put on a pink waistcoat, and said he was in raptures; and Mr. Hicks felt in the seventh heaven of poetry or the seventh canto of Don Juan—it was the same thing to him. Mrs. Tibbs was quite charmed with the newcomers; and Mr. Tibbs spent the evening in his usual way—he went to sleep, and woke up, and went to sleep again, and woke at supper-time.

  *

  We are not about to adopt the licence of novel-writers, and to let “years roll on;” but we will take the liberty of requesting the reader to suppose that six months have elapsed, since the dinner we have described, and that Mrs. Tibbs's boarders have, during that period, sang, and danced, and gone to theatres and exhibitions, together, as ladies and gentlemen, wherever they board, often do. And we will beg them, the period we have mentioned having elapsed, to imagine farther, that Mr. Septimus Hicks received, in his own bedroom (a front attic), at an early hour one morning, a note from Mr. Calton, requesting the favour of seeing him, as soon as convenient to himself, in his (Calton's) dressing-room on the second-floor back.