ACT I.
SCENE I.—An Apartment at Flint's house.
FLINT. WILLIAM.
FLINT Carry those umbrellas, cottons, and wearing-apparel, up stairs. You may send that chest of tools to Robins's.
WILLIAM That which you lent six pounds upon to the journeyman carpenter that had the sick wife?
FLINT
The same.
WILLIAM
The man says, if you can give him till Thursday—
FLINT Not a minute longer. His time was out yesterday. These improvident fools!
WILLIAM The finical gentleman has been here about the seal that was his grandfather's.
FLINT He cannot have it. Truly, our trade would be brought to a fine pass, if we were bound to humour the fancies of our customers. This man would be taking a liking to a snuff-box that he had inherited; and that gentlewoman might conceit a favourite chemise that had descended to her.
WILLIAM The lady in the carriage has been here crying about those jewels. She says, if you cannot let her have them at the advance she offers, her husband will come to know that she has pledged them.
FLINT I have uses for those jewels. Send Marian to me. (Exit William.) I know no other trade that is expected to depart from its fair advantages but ours. I do not see the baker, the butcher, the shoemaker, or, to go higher, the lawyer, the physician, the divine, give up any of their legitimate gains, even when the pretences of their art had failed; yet we are to be branded with an odious name, stigmatized, discountenanced even by the administrators of those laws which acknowledge us; scowled at by the lower sort of people, whose needs we serve!
Enter Marian.
Come hither, Marian. Come, kiss your father. The report runs that he is full of spotted crime. What is your belief, child?
MARIAN That never good report went with our calling, father. I have heard you say, the poor look only to the advantages which we derive from them, and overlook the accommodations which they receive from us. But the poor are the poor, father, and have little leisure to make distinctions. I wish we could give up this business.
FLINT
You have not seen that idle fellow, Davenport?
MARIAN
No, indeed, father, since your injunction.
FLINT
I take but my lawful profit. The law is not over favourable to us.
MARIAN
Marian is no judge of these things.
FLINT
They call me oppressive, grinding.—I know not what—
MARIAN
Alas!
FLINT
Usurer, extortioner. Am I these things?
MARIAN You are Marian's kind and careful father. That is enough for a child to know.
FLINT Here, girl, is a little box of jewels, which the necessities of a foolish woman of quality have transferred into our true and lawful possession. Go, place them with the trinkets that were your mother's. They are all yours, Marian, if you do not cross me in your marriage. No gentry shall match into this house, to flout their wife hereafter with her parentage. I will hold this business with convulsive grasp to my dying day. I will plague these poor, whom you speak so tenderly of.
MARIAN
You frighten me, father. Do not frighten Marian.
FLINT
I have heard them say, There goes Flint—Flint, the cruel pawnbroker!
MARIAN
Stay at home with Marian. You shall hear no ugly words to vex you.
FLINT
You shall ride in a gilded chariot upon the necks of these poor,
Marian. Their tears shall drop pearls for my girl. Their sighs shall be
good wind for us. They shall blow good for my girl. Put up the jewels,
Marian. [Exit.]
Enter Lucy.
LUCY
Miss, miss, your father has taken his hat, and is slept out, and Mr.
Davenport is on the stairs; and I came to tell you—
MARIAN
Alas! who let him in?
Enter Davenport.
DAVENPORT
My dearest girl—
MARIAN
My father will kill me, if he finds you have been here!
DAVENPORT There is no time for explanations. I have positive information that your father means, in less than a week, to dispose of you to that ugly Saunders. The wretch has bragged of it to his acquaintance, and already calls you his.
MARIAN
O heavens!
DAVENPORT Your resolution must be summary, as the time which calls for it. Mine or his you must be, without delay. There is no safety for you under this roof.
MARIAN
My father—
DAVENPORT
Is no father, if he would sacrifice you.
MARIAN
But he is unhappy. Do not speak hard words of my father.
DAVENPORT
Marian must exert her good sense.
LUCY (As if watching at the window.) O, miss, your father has suddenly returned. I see him with Mr. Saunders, coming down the street. Mr. Saunders, ma'am!
MARIAN
Begone, begone, if you love me, Davenport.
DAVENPORT
You must go with me then, else here I am fixed.
LUCY Aye, miss, you must go, as Mr. Davenport says. Here is your cloak, miss, and your hat, and your gloves. Your father, ma'am—
MARIAN
O, where, where? Whither do you hurry me, Davenport?
DAVENPORT
Quickly, quickly, Marian. At the back door.—
[Exit Marian with Davenport, reluctantly; in her flight still holding the jewels.]
LUCY Away—away. What a lucky thought of mine to say her father was coming! he would never have got her off, else. Lord, Lord, I do love to help lovers.
[Exit, following them.]
SCENE II.—A Butcher's Shop.
CUTLET. BEN.
CUTLET
Reach me down that book off the shelf, where the shoulder of veal hangs.
BEN
Is this it?
CUTLET
No—this is "Flowers of Sentiment"—the other—aye, this is a good book.
"An Argument against the Use of Animal Food. By J.R." That means
Joseph Ritson. I will open it anywhere, and read just as it happens. One
cannot dip amiss in such books as these. The motto, I see, is from Pope.
I dare say, very much to the purpose. (Reads.)
"The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he sport and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops his flowery food,
And licks the hand"—
Bless us, is that saddle of mutton gone home to Mrs. Simpson's? It should have gone an hour ago.
BEN
I was just going with it.
CUTLET
Well go. Where was I? Oh!
"And licks the hand just raised to shed its blood."
What an affecting picture! (turns over the leaves, and reads).
"It is probable that the long lives which are recorded of the people before the flood, were owing to their being confined to a vegetable diet."
BEN The young gentleman in Pullen's Row, Islington, that has got the consumption, has sent to know if you can let him have a sweetbread.
CUTLET Take two,—take all that are in the shop. What a disagreeable interruption! (reads again). "Those fierce and angry passions, which impel man to wage destructive war with man, may be traced to the ferment in the blood produced by an animal diet."
BEN The two pound of rump-steaks must go home to Mr. Molyneux's. He is in training to fight Cribb.
CUTLET Well, take them; go along, and do not trouble me with your disgusting details.
[Exit Ben.]
CUTLET (Throwing down the book.) Why was I bred to this detestable business? Was it not plain, that this trembling sensibility, which has marked my character from earliest infancy, must for ever disqualify me for a profession which—what do ye want? what do ye buy? O, it is only somebody going past. I thought it had been a customer.—Why was not I bred a glover, like my cousin Langston? to see him poke his two little sticks into a delicate pair of real Woodstock—"A very little stretching ma'am, and they will fit exactly"—Or a haberdasher, like my next-door neighbour—"not a better bit of lace in all town, my lady—Mrs. Breakstock took the last of it last Friday, all but this bit, which I can afford to let your ladyship have a bargain—reach down that drawer on your left hand, Miss Fisher."
(Enter in haste, Davenport, Marian, and Lucy.)
LUCY This is the house I saw a bill up at, ma'am; and a droll creature the landlord is.
DAVENPORT
We have no time for nicety.
CUTLET
What do ye want? what do ye buy? O, it is only you, Mrs. Lucy.
Lucy whispers Cutlet.
CUTLET I have a set of apartments at the end of my garden. They are quite detached from the shop. A single lady at present occupies the ground floor.
MARIAN
Aye, aye, any where.
DAVENPORT
In, in.—
CUTLET
Pretty lamb,—she seems agitated. Davenport and Marian go in with
Cutlet.
LUCY I am mistaken if my young lady does not find an agreeable companion in these apartments. Almost a namesake. Only the difference of Flyn, and Flint. I have some errands to do, or I would stop and have some fun with this droll butcher. Cutlet returns.
CUTLET Why, how odd this is! Your young lady knows my young lady. They are as thick as flies.
LUCY You may thank me for your new lodger, Mr. Cutlet.—But bless me, you do not look well?
CUTLET
To tell you the truth, I am rather heavy about the eyes. Want of sleep,
I believe.
LUCY
Late hours, perhaps. Raking last night.
CUTLET No, that is not it, Mrs. Lucy. My repose was disturbed by a very different cause from what you may imagine. It proceeded from too much thinking.
LUCY The deuce it did! and what, if I may be so bold, might be the subject of your Night Thoughts?
CUTLET The distresses of my fellow creatures. I never lay my head down on my pillow, but I fall a thinking, how many at this very instant are perishing. Some with cold—
LUCY
What, in the midst of summer?
CUTLET
Aye. Not here, but in countries abroad, where the climate is different
from ours. Our summers are their winters, and vice versâ, you know.
Some with cold—
LUCY What a canting rogue it is! I should like to trump up some fine story to plague him. [Aside.]
CUTLET
Others with hunger—some a prey to the rage of wild beasts—
LUCY
He has got this by rote, out of some book.
CUTLET Some drowning, crossing crazy bridges in the dark—some by the violence of the devouring flame—
LUCY I have it.—For that matter, you need not send your humanity a travelling, Mr. Cutlet. For instance, last night—
CUTLET
Some by fevers, some by gun-shot wounds—
LUCY
Only two streets off—
CUTLET
Some in drunken quarrels—
LUCY (Aloud.) The butcher's shop at the corner.
CUTLET
What were you saying about poor Cleaver?
LUCY He has found his ears at last. (Aside.) That he has had his house burnt down.
CUTLET
Bless me!
LUCY
I saw four small children taken in at the green grocer's.
CUTLET
Do you know if he is insured?
LUCY
Some say he is, but not to the full amount.
CUTLET Not to the full amount—how shocking! He killed more meat than any of the trade between here and Carnaby market—and the poor babes—four of them you say—what a melting sight!—he served some good customers about Marybone—I always think more of the children in these cases than of the fathers and mothers—Lady Lovebrown liked his veal better than any man's in the market—I wonder whether her ladyship is engaged—I must go and comfort poor Cleaver, however.—[Exit.]
LUCY Now is this pretender to humanity gone to avail himself of a neighbour's supposed ruin to inveigle his customers from him. Fine feelings!—pshaw! [Exit.]
(Re-enter Cutlet.)
CUTLET What a deceitful young hussey! there is not a word of truth in her. There has been no fire. How can people play with one's feelings so!—(sings)—"For tenderness formed"—No, I'll try the air I made upon myself. The words may compose me—(sings).
A weeping Londoner I am,
A washer-woman was my dam;
She bred me up in a cock-loft,
And fed my mind with sorrows soft:
For when she wrung with elbows stout
From linen wet the water out,—
The drops so like to tears did drip,
They gave my infant nerves the hyp.
Scarce three clean muckingers a week
Would dry the brine that dew'd my cheek:
So, while I gave my sorrows scope,
I almost ruin'd her in soap.
My parish learning I did win
In ward of Farringdon-Within;
Where, after school, I did pursue
My sports, as little boys will do.
Cockchafers—none like me was found
To set them spinning round and round.
O, how my tender heart would melt,
To think what those poor varmin felt!
I never tied tin-kettle, clog,
Or salt-box to the tail of dog,
Without a pang more keen at heart,
Than he felt at his outward part.
And when the poor thing clattered off,
To all the unfeeling mob a scoff,
Thought I, "What that dumb creature feels,
With half the parish at his heels!"
Arrived, you see, to man's estate,
The butcher's calling is my fate;
Yet still I keep my feeling ways.
And leave the town on slaughtering days.
At Kentish Town, or Highgate Hill,
I sit, retired, beside some rill;
And tears bedew my glistening eye,
To think my playful lambs must die!
But when they're dead I sell their meat,
On shambles kept both clean and neat;
Sweet-breads also I guard full well,
And keep them from the blue-bottle.
Envy, with breath sharp as my steel,
Has ne'er yet blown upon my veal;
And mouths of dames, and daintiest fops,
Do water at my nice lamb-chops.
[Exit, half laughing, half crying.]