LECTURE XXIX - MRS. CAUDLE THINKS “THE TIME HAS COME TO HAVE A COTTAGE OUT OF TOWN”
“Oh, Caudle, you ought to have had something nice to-night; for you’re not well, love - I know you’re not. Ha! that’s like you men - so headstrong! You will have it that nothing ails you; but I can tell, Caudle. The eye of a wife - and such a wife as I’ve been to you - can at once see whether a husband’s well or not. You’ve been turning like tallow all the week; and what’s more, you eat nothing now. It makes me melancholy to see you at a joint. I don’t say anything at dinner before the children; but I don’t feel the less. No, no; you’re not very well; and you’re not as strong as a horse. Don’t deceive yourself - nothing of the sort. No, and you don’t eat as much as ever: and if you do, you don’t eat with a relish, I’m sure of that. You can’t deceive me there.
“But I know what’s killing you. It’s the confinement; it’s the bad air you breathe; it’s the smoke of London. Oh yes, I know your old excuse: you never found the air bad before. Perhaps not. But as people grow older, and get on in trade - and, after all, we’ve nothing to complain of, Caudle - London air always disagrees with ’em. Delicate health comes with money: I’m sure of it. What a colour you had once, when you’d hardly a sixpence; and now, look at you!
“’Twould add thirty years to your life - and think what a blessing that would be to me; not that I shall live a tenth part of the time - thirty years, if you’d take a nice little house somewhere at Brixton.
“You hate Brixton?
“I must say it, Caudle, that’s so like you: any place that’s really genteel you can’t abide. Now Brixton and Baalam Hill I think delightful. So select! There, nobody visits nobody, unless they’re somebody. To say nothing of the delightful pews that make the churches so respectable!
“However, do as you like. If you won’t go to Brixton, what do you say to Clapham Common? Oh, that’s a very fine story! Never tell me! No; you wouldn’t be left alone, a Robinson Crusoe with wife and children, because you’re in the retail way. What?
“The retired wholesales never visit the retired retails at Clapham?
“Ha! that’s only your old sneering at the world, Mr. Caudle; but I don’t believe it. And after all, people should keep to their station, or what was this life made for? Suppose a tallow-merchant does keep himself above a tallow-chandler, - I call it only a proper pride. What?
“You call it the aristocracy of fat?
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘aristocracy’; but I suppose it’s only another of your dictionary words, that’s hardly worth the finding out.
“What do you say to Hornsey or Muswell Hill? Eh?
“Too high?
“What a man you are! Well, then - Battersea?
“Too low?
“You’re an aggravating creature, Caudle, you must own that! Hampstead, then?
“Too cold?
“Nonsense; it would brace you up like a drum, - Caudle; and that’s what you want. But you don’t deserve anybody to think of your health or your comforts either. There’s some pretty spots, I’m told, about Fulham. Now, Caudle, I won’t have you say a word against Fulham. That must be a sweet place: dry and healthy, and every comfort of life about it - else is it likely that a bishop would live there? Now, Caudle, none of your heathen principles - I won’t hear ’em. I think what satisfies a bishop ought to content you; but the politics you learn at that club are dreadful. To hear you talk of bishops - well, I only hope nothing will happen to you, for the sake of the dear children!
“A nice little house and a garden! I know it - I was born for a garden! There’s something about it makes one feel so innocent. My heart somehow always opens and shuts at roses. And then what nice currant wine we could make! And again, get ’em as fresh as you will, there’s no radishes like your own radishes! They’re ten times as sweet! What?
“And twenty times as dear?
“Yes; there you go! Anything that I fancy, you always bring up the expense.
“No, Mr. Caudle, I should not be tired of it in a month. I tell you I was made for the country. But here you’ve kept me - and much you’ve cared about my health - here you’ve kept me in this filthy London, that I hardly know what grass is made of. Much you care for your wife and family to keep ’em here to be all smoked like bacon. I can see it - it’s stopping the children’s growth; they’ll be dwarfs, and have their father to thank for it. If you’d the heart of a parent, you couldn’t bear to look at their white faces. Dear little Dick! he makes no breakfast. What!
“He ate six slices this morning?
“A pretty father you must be to count ’em. But that’s nothing to what the dear child could do, if, like other children, he’d a fair chance.
“Ha! and when we could be so comfortable! But it’s always the case, you never will be comfortable with me. How nice and fresh you’d come up to business every morning; and what pleasure it would be for me to put a tulip or a pink in your button-hole, just, as I may say, to ticket you from the country.
“But then, Caudle, you never were like any other man! But I know why you won’t leave London. Yes, I know. Then, you think, you couldn’t go to your filthy club - that’s it. Then you’d be obliged to be at home, like any other decent man. Whereas you might, if you liked, enjoy yourself under your own apple-tree, and I’m sure I should never say anything about your tobacco out of doors. My only wish is to make you happy, Caudle, and you won’t let me do it.
“You don’t speak, love? Shall I look about a house to-morrow? It will be a broken day with me, for I’m going out to have little pet’s ears bored - What?
“You won’t have her ears bored?
“And why not, I should like to know?
“It’s a barbarous, savage custom?
“Oh, Mr. Caudle! the sooner you go away from the world, and live in a cave, the better. You’re getting not fit for Christian society. What next? My ears were bored and - What?
“So are yours?
“I know what you mean - but that’s nothing to do with it. My ears, I say, were bored, and so were dear mother’s, and grandmother’s before her; and I suppose there were no more savages in our family than in yours, Mr. Caudle? Besides, - why should little pet’s ears go naked any more than any of her sisters’? They wear earrings; you never objected before. What?
“You’ve learned better now?
“Yes, that’s all with your filthy politics again. You’d shake all the world up in a dice-box, if you’d your way: not that you care a pin about the world, only you’d like to get a better throw for yourself, - that’s all. But little pet shall be bored, and don’t think to prevent it.
“I suppose she’s to be married some day, as well as her sisters? And who’ll look at a girl without earrings, I should like to know? If you knew anything of the world, you’d know what a nice diamond earring will sometimes do - when one can get it - before this. But I know why you can’t abide earrings now: Miss Prettyman doesn’t wear ’em; she would - I’ve no doubt - if she could only get ’em. Yes, it’s Miss Prettyman who -
“There, Caudle, now be quiet, and I’ll say no more about pet’s ears at present. We’ll talk when you’re reasonable. I don’t want to put you out of temper, goodness knows! And so, love, about the cottage? What?
“’Twill be so far from business?
“But it needn’t be far, dearest. Quite a nice distance; so that on your late nights you may always be at home, have your supper, get to bed, and all by eleven. Eh, - sweet one?”
“I don’t know what I answered,” says Caudle, “but I know this: in less than a fortnight I found myself in a sort of a green bird-cage of a house, which my wife - gentle satirist - insisted upon calling ‘The Turtle Dovery.’”
LECTURE XXX - MRS. CAUDLE COMPLAINS OF THE “TURTLE DOVERY.” DISCOVERS BLACK-BEETLES. THINKS IT “NOTHING BUT RIGHT” THAT CAUDLE SHOULD SET UP A CHAISE
“Tush! You’d never have got me into this wilderness of a place, Mr. Caudle, if I’d only have thought what it was. Yes, that’s right: throw it in my teeth that it was my choice - that’s manly, isn’t it? When I saw the place the sun was out, and it looked beautiful - now, it’s quite another thing. No, Mr. Caudle; I don’t expect you to command the sun, - and if you talk about Joshua in that infidel way, I’ll leave the bed. No, sir; I don’t expect the sun to be in your power; but that’s nothing to do with it. I talk about one thing, and you always start another. But that’s your art.
“I’m sure a woman might as well be buried alive as live here. In fact, I am buried alive; I feel it. I stood at the window three hours this blessed day, and saw nothing but the postman. No: it isn’t a pity that I hadn’t something better to do; I had plenty: but that’s my business, Mr. Caudle. I suppose I’m to be mistress of my own house? If not, I’d better leave it.
“And the very first night we were here, you know it, the black-beetles came into the kitchen. If the place didn’t seem spread all over with a black cloth, I’m a story-teller. What are you coughing at, Mr. Caudle? I see nothing to cough at. But that’s just your way of sneering. Millions of black-beetles! And as the clock strikes eight, out they march. What?
“They’re very punctual?
“I know that. I only wish other people were half as punctual: ’twould save other people’s money and other people’s peace of mind. You know I hate a black-beetle! No: I don’t hate so many things. But I do hate black-beetles, as I hate ill-treatment, Mr. Caudle. And now I have enough of both, goodness knows!
“Last night they came into the parlour. Of course, in a night or two, they’ll walk up into the bedroom. They’ll be here - regiments of ’em - on the quilt. But what do you care? Nothing of the sort ever touches you: but you know how they come to me; and that’s why you’re so quiet. A pleasant thing to have black-beetles in one’s bed!
“Why don’t I poison ’em?
“A pretty matter, indeed, to have poison in the house! Much you must think of the dear children. A nice place, too, to be called the Turtle Dovery!
“Didn’t I christen it myself?
“I know that, - but then, I knew nothing of the black-beetles. Besides, names of houses are for the world outside; not that anybody passes to see ours. Didn’t Mrs. Digby insist on calling their new house ‘Love-in-Idleness,’ though everybody knew that that wretch Digby was always beating her? Still, when folks read ‘Rose Cottage’ on the wall, they seldom think of the lots of thorns that are inside. In this world, Mr. Caudle, names are sometimes quite as good as things.
“That cough again! You’ve got a cold, and you’ll always be getting one - for you’ll always be missing the omnibus as you did on Tuesday, - and always be getting wet. No constitution can stand it, Caudle. You don’t know what I felt when I heard it rain on Tuesday, and thought you might be in it. What?
“I’m very good?
“Yes, I trust so: I try to be so, Caudle. And so, dear, I’ve been thinking that we’d better keep a chaise.
“You can’t afford it, and you won’t?
“Don’t tell me: I know you’d save money by it. I’ve been reckoning what you lay out in omnibuses; and if you’d a chaise of your own - besides the gentility of the thing - you’d be money in pocket. And then, again, how often I could go with you to town, - and how, again, I could call for you when you liked to be a little late at the club, dear! Now you’re obliged to be hurried away, I know it, when, if you’d only a carriage of your own, you could stay and enjoy yourself. And after your work you want enjoyment. Of course, I can’t expect you always to run home directly to me: and I don’t, Caudle; and you know it.
“A nice, neat, elegant little chaise. What?
“You’ll think of it?
“There’s a love! You are a good creature, Caudle; and ’twill make me so happy to think you don’t depend upon an omnibus. A sweet little carriage, with our own arms beautifully painted on the panels. What?
“Arms are rubbish; and you don’t know that you have any?
“Nonsense: to be sure you have - and if not, of course they’re to be had for money. I wonder where Chalkpit’s, the milkman’s arms, came from? I suppose you can buy ’em at the same place. He used to drive a green cart; and now he’s got a close yellow carriage, with two large tortoise-shell cats, with their whiskers as if dipped in cream, standing on their hind legs upon each door, with a heap of Latin underneath. You may buy the carriage if you please, Mr. Caudle; but unless your arms are there, you won’t get me to enter it. Never! I’m not going to look less than Mrs. Chalkpit.
“Besides, if you haven’t arms, I’m sure my family have, and a wife’s arms are quite as good as a husband’s. I’ll write to-morrow to dear mother, to know what we took for our family arms. What do you say? What?
“A mangle in a stone kitchen proper?
“Mr. Caudle, you’re always insulting my family - always: but you shall not put me out of temper to-night. Still, if you don’t like our arms, find your own. I daresay you could have found ’em fast enough, if you’d married Miss Prettyman. Well, I will be quiet; and I won’t mention that lady’s name. A nice lady she is! I wonder how much she spends in paint! Now, don’t I tell you I won’t say a word more, and yet you will kick about!
“Well, we’ll have the carriage and the family arms? No, I don’t want the family legs too. Don’t be vulgar, Mr. Caudle. You might, perhaps, talk in that way before you’d money in the Bank; but it doesn’t at all become you now. The carriage and the family arms! We’ve a country house as well as the Chalkpits! and though they praise their place for a little paradise, I dare say they’ve quite as many blackbeetles as we have, and more too. The place quite looks it!
“Our carriage and our arms! And you know, love, it won’t cost much - next to nothing - to put a gold band about Sam’s hat on a Sunday. No: I don’t want a full-blown livery. At least, not just yet. I’m told that Chalkpits dress their boy on a Sunday like a dragon-fly; and I don’t see why we shouldn’t do what we like with our own Sam. Nevertheless, I’ll be content with a gold band, and a bit of pepper-and-salt. No: I shall not cry out for plush next; certainly not. But I will have a gold band, and -
“You won’t; and I know it?
“Oh yes! that’s another of your crotchets, Mr Caudle; like nobody else - you don’t love liveries. I suppose when people buy their sheets, or their tablecloths, or any other linen, they’ve a right to mark what they like upon it, haven’t they? Well, then? You buy a servant, and you mark what you like upon him, and where’s the difference? None, that I can see.”
“Finally,” says Caudle, “I compromised for a gig; but Sam did not wear pepper-and-salt and a gold band.”