At length, the day arrived for my lady’s coming, and Edward would have me get a nice little dinner ready for her. So I warmed up some of the pea-soup we had left the day before, and which was as nice as any I had ever tasted; and then I thought a sweet, tender, juicy steak, well stewed, with a good thick gravy, would be as delicious a thing as she could well sit down to—indeed, I’m very partial to it myself—and with three or four pork chops, well browned, with the kidney in them, just to put at the end of the table, and a sweet little plum-pudding, with brandy sauce, to face me, and a few custards opposite Edward, and after that, just a mouthful of macaroni, with a little cheese grated over it, and a stick or two of celery to follow—I fancied it would be a very nice dinner for her, and one that I felt I could enjoy myself.
Bother take it! Edward would make me go dancing all the way down to the Regent’s Circus, just to meet Mrs. Yapp when she came by the coach, though, as I said at the time, it would seem as if we were too glad to see her. However, as my husband, I regret to say, never will listen to reason, I had to put on my bonnet, and go to the expense of a cab, just to please his foolish whim; and after that, to stand in the coach-office like a ninny, waiting for the stage to come in. When it did, I went up to a middle-aged lady, who looked as bilious as a bar of yellow soap, and asked her, with a pleasing smile, “whether her name happened to be Yapp?” But she looked at me very suspiciously, and said, “It was no such thing.” And then I tried everybody else, but no Mrs. Yapp could I find; so, after all, drat it, I had to jump into the cab again, and get home as fast as I could: and there was three and sixpence for cab hire literally and truly thrown away in the dirt, (which wasn’t coming out of the housekeeping, I could tell Mr. Sk—n—st—n,) besides a dinner good enough for an emperor positively wasted; for Mr. Edward must needs be so clever, that he would have I had made some mistake, and insisted upon the dinner being thrown back for an hour and a half at least; though I declare I was so hungry after my ride, and the very smell of it was so tantalizing, that I was ready to eat the ends of my fingers off. When it did come up, of course it was all as dry as a chip, without so much as a drop of gravy: and if there is one thing, to me, worse than another, it is a rump-steak stewed till it is quite dry. There was the macaroni, too, which I had set my heart upon, all spoilt, so that it was, for all the world, like eating bits of wax taper. And I told Edward, pretty plainly, that I wouldn’t give a thank you for my dinner at that time of night, but would sooner have a mouthful of something with my tea; for I do think that when a body is worn out with the fatigues of the day, and one has gone past one’s regular hour for one’s meals,—I do think, I say, that a nice strong cup of warm tea, with a pinch or two of green in it, is better than all the dinners in the world put together in a heap; for it does revive one so, if one can only get it good, (which I find a great difficulty now-a-days, though I pay six shillings a pound for every spoonful that I use;) besides, I declare I’d sooner go without my dinner than my tea, any day; and I am sure all my fair readers must be of the same way of thinking as myself.
But let me see,—where was I? Oh, I remember: I had left off at our dinner. Well! as I was saying, our miserable, dried-up repast, could scarcely have gone down stairs, and Susan was just sweeping the crumbs off the tablecloth, when I heard a hackney coach draw up at our door, and, lo and behold! who should it contain but that bothering Mrs. Yapp, who had come with three hair trunks, a portmanteau, two bonnet-boxes, one band ditto, and a bundle, as if she was going to stop a whole twelvemonth with us.
When she came in, I declare upon my word and honour, if she was’nt the very woman, with a complexion like fullers-earth, that I had asked at the coach-office, whether her name was Yapp. And on reminding her of it, she said, she was very sorry for the mistake, but really and truly she had heard so much about the tricks of London people, that she could’nt be expected to go telling her name to the first stranger she met with. So she had thought that the safest plan, to prevent being imposed upon, was to jump with her boxes into a hackney coach, and tell the man to drive her to our house. The fellow, however, had been three hours at least galloping about with her, and had taken her over to Stockwell Park, and Highbury Park, and every other park he could think of, in search of Park Village. For of course the man saw that she was fresh from the country, and had determined to make the most of her; so she had to pay upwards of half a sovereign for her nasty suspicions of me, (your bilious people are always so suspicious,) and which I was heartily glad of.
Of course she was so happy to see her dear boy, “whose house she was going to make her home;” and declared she was delighted to make my acquaintance. Edward very imprudently would go inquiring after her health, when immediately off my lady went, and kept us for full half an hour, giving us a whole catalogue of all her illnesses and cures, and telling us how she had discovered a new pill which had really worked miracles with her. As I kept saying, “Indeed,” and “Bless me,” and “You don’t say so,” and appearing very interested—though all the time I could have wished her further—she had the impudence to tell me that, as a treat, she would let me have a couple to try on the morrow, for she could plainly see my liver was out of order—though, as I said to myself at the time, I should like to know what my liver was to her indeed. However, I slipped out of the room to look after Susan and the tray, and made her warm up one of the pork chops, and bring it up with the tea. But no sooner did my lady see it, than she said it would be death to her if she touched it, and before she let me make the tea, she would go and undo one of her boxes in the hall, just to get out a loaf of digestive bread, and a bottle of filthy soda; and if she didn’t force me to put half a teaspoonful at least into the pot, telling me that it would correct all the acidity, and make the tea go twice as far—which I can easily understand, as I’m sure neither Edward nor myself could touch it; for I declare it was more like soap-suds than full-flavoured wiry Pekoe. The worst of it was, too, I was obliged to say it “was very nice, I was sure;” and I could see that Edward, laughing away in his sleeve at every sip I took. Then she would sit all the evening with her shawl over her shoulders, declaring that the draughts came in at our door enough to cut her in two; and, bother take it, she made me go down stairs and see that the sheets for her bed were well aired—and give orders for a fire to be lighted in her room—and the feather-bed put down before it—and a pan of hot water to be taken up for her at ten precisely—and for a few spoonfuls of brown sugar to be put into the warming-pan with the coals, before warming her bed; adding that, with a good large basin of gruel, and a James’s powder in it, she thought she should do for that night. And really I should have thought so too. But what pleased me most was, that she said she was putting me to a great deal of trouble. And I should think she was too—though of course I was forced to assure her that she wasn’t, and that nothing gave me more pleasure than to be able to assist one with such a bad constitution as she appeared to have of her own. Whereupon she flew at me very spitefully, and told me I was never more mistaken in all my life, for every one that knew her allowed, that if it hadn’t been for her very fine constitution, and a score of Morison’s Number Two’s daily, she should have been in Abraham’s bosom long ago; and that I should be a lucky woman if my constitution was half as fine as hers. So as I saw it was useless arguing the point with her, I let her have her own way, and was’nt at all sorry when ten o’clock came, and I had seen her fairly up stairs to her bed-room, where she kept Susan a good three-quarters of an hour at least fiddle-faddleing and tying her flannel petticoat round her head, and tucking her up, and pinning her shawl before the window, and what not.
Next morning, when she came down to breakfast, she told us that she had got the rheumatism in both her legs so bad, that she had been forced to wrap them up in brown paper, which she said she found to be the best of all remedies, and an infallible cure; and sure enough there she was going about the house with her legs done up for all the world like a pair of new tongs in an ironmonger’s shop. All breakfast time, she would tell us how she had made it a duty to try every new cure as fast as it came up, and how she supposed she must have written in her time at least thirty testimonials of wonderful cures effected upon her by different medicines, which, she said, she had since found out had never done her any good at all. At one time, she swore by brandy and salt, and she took so much of it, that, instead of curing her illness, she verily believed she was only curing herself like so much bacon. At another period, she had pinned her faith entirely to cold water, and she was sure she must have swallowed a small river in her time; she had had it pumped upon her too, and sat in it, and bathed in it, and slept in it, she might say, for she went to bed in nothing but damp sheets for a year and more—until really she had washed every bit of colour out of her cheeks; and she felt that if she was to wring her hands, water would run from them like a wet flannel. After that, she had gone raving mad about homœopathy, and had nearly starved herself to death with its finikin infinitessimal doses; for whole weeks she used to take nothing for breakfast but the billionth part of a spoonful of tea in a quart of boiling water, and the ten thousandth part of an ounce of butter to eight sixty-sixths of a quartern loaf; while her dinner had frequently consisted of three ounces and two drachms of the lean of a neck of mutton made into broth with a gallon of water, flavoured with three pennyweights of carrot, and a scruple of greens, and seasoned with two grains and a half of pepper, and the sixteenth of a pinch of salt. Since, however, she had discovered her wonderful pill, she had left all her other specifics, and never felt so well, and consequently so happy, before: and then she pulled out a box, and would make me take a couple of the filthy little things with my tea, saying that they would make me so comfortable and good-tempered, that I should hardly know myself again.
Immediately after the breakfast things had been taken away, I slipt on my things, and stepped round to dear mother’s, just to tell her what a dreadful creature we had got in the house, and that I really began to have fears for my life again. When the dear, affectionate old lady had heard of Mrs. Yapp’s fearful goings-on, she said that it really would not be safe to trust me alone with such a woman during my confinement; and that, as my mother, she insisted upon being allowed to come and sleep in the house, too. Though I told her I didn’t know how we were to manage it, unless she consented to take half of Mrs. Yapp’s bed—which, I regretted to say, was only a small tent, and it was impossible to say how it would ever be able to hold the pair of them. But the dear, good old soul declared, she didn’t mind what hardship she underwent, so long as she was by, to watch over me, and prevent my being poisoned to death by pills, and herbs, and draughts, and such like. I told her, it was very kind indeed of her, and I had no doubt that Mr. Sk—n—st—n would be as grateful to her as I was; and we arranged together that she should sleep in the house that very night.
When I informed Edward of what my mother had so kindly consented to do for me, he began grinning again, and said, that he was delighted to hear it, for that he was sure such a state of things could not last long, and that he should have the pair of them getting together by the ears, and going at it hammer and tongs, and both his dear mothers-in-law leaving the premises in less than a week—thank Heaven! Though when I told him that I didn’t know where on earth I could put him to, unless, indeed, I made him up a nice comfortable bed on the sofa in the back drawing-room, with coats and cloaks, and odd things, to cover him—for Mrs. Yapp, I regretted to say, had got all the spare blankets we had—of course he must go flying into a passion again, and said that matters had come to a pretty pass, when a man’s mothers-in-law walked into his house, and didn’t leave him even a bed to lie upon. And after he had railed against Mrs. B—ff—n and Mrs. Yapp till he was quite out of breath, he got a little better tempered, and said, that as it would be impossible for his two blessed mothers-in-law to sleep in the same bed without falling out, why he didn’t mind what amicable arrangement he came to, so long as he could make them enemies for life.
Next day, nurse came; and really she was such a nice, goodnatured, fat, motherly old soul, that it was quite pleasant to have a little quiet chat with her. Her name was Mrs. Toosypegs, and she was the widow—poor thing—of a highly respectable eating-house keeper, who, she assured me, used to do such a deal in the eating line, that he would sometimes have as many as five hundred dinners a day. Unfortunately, however, one evening, “the spirit of progress”—as they call it—got into his head, and he would go having an ordinary for the Million, every day, at every half-hour, at only fifteen-pence a head. But the Million—drat ’em!—had every one of them the appetites of a hundred; and the consequence was, that there was no satisfying them, although he gave them oceans of soup, and as much fish as they could eat, by way of what he called a damper to their raging appetites; though really it seemed quite thrown away upon them: for, Lord bless you, when the joint was brought up, they seemed to be as fresh and ravenous as ever, and would fall-to at the meat, as if the Million were a parcel of boa-constrictors, and only in the habit of being fed twice a year. And she declared that, often and often, the waiters had to shake many of the Million to wake them up and get them to pay; and that when they swept up the room of a night, she had, over and over again, collected several gross of waistcoat buttons, which the greedy young ogres had actually burst off with her husband’s food. So that at last the blessed Million positively eat Mr. Toosypegs through the Insolvent Court, and left him little or nothing to satisfy his poor creditors with; and this so preyed upon her dear man’s mind, that in an insane moment of despair, he raised his own boiled-beef knife against himself, and fell, like another Cook, a victim to the Cannibals who prowled about To-heat-he. After which, Mrs. Toosypegs informed me she had been put to it so hard, that she had been obliged to go out nursing; and, thank goodness! she had done as well as could be expected; for though she had no dear little Toosypegs of her own, still she had brought such numbers of children into the world, that she could not help looking upon herself in the light of a mother of a very large family—indeed, she was always speaking of the little pets she had nursed as if they were her own flesh and blood; for at one time she would talk to me of a very fine boy she had had in Torrington Square, and at another, of her beautiful twins at Ball’s Pond; and then, of a sweet little flaxen-haired beauty of a little girl of hers with eleven toes, that she had had at Captain Jones’s, at Puddle Dock. And really, last year, she said she had had as many as eight confinements in the course of the twelvemonth, and which had been almost more than she had strength to go through with. Her last lying-in had been in the suburbs, near Stockwell Park; and what made her month very agreeable was, that the family lived in a long terrace, and she knew all the neighbours’ little secrets; for all kinds of strange reports used to travel from house to house, over the garden walls, or else from door to door, when the maids were cleaning the steps of a morning. And she advised me, if ever I took a house in a terrace a little way out of town, to be very careful that it was the centre one—at least, if I had any regard for my reputation. For I must be well aware that a story never lost by telling; and consequently, if I lived in the middle of a row of houses, it was very clear that the tales which might be circulated against me would only have half the distance to travel on either side of me, and therefore could only be half as bad, by the time they got down to the bottom of the terrace, as the tales that might be circulated against the wretched individuals who had the misfortune to live at the two ends of it; so that I should be certain to have twice as good a character in the neighbourhood as they had. For instance, she informed me of a lamentable case that actually occurred while she was there. The servant at No. 1 told the servant at No. 2 that her master expected his old friends the Baileys to pay him a visit shortly; and No. 2 told No. 3 that No. 1 expected to have the Baileys in the house every day; and No. 3 told No. 4 that it was all up with No. 1, for they couldn’t keep the bailiffs out; whereupon 4 told 5 that the officers were after No. 1, and that it was as much as he could do to prevent himself being taken in execution, and that it was nearly killing his poor, dear wife; and so it went on, increasing and increasing, until it got to No. 32, who confidently assured the last house, No. 33, that the Bow-street officers had taken up the gentleman who lived at No. 1, for killing his poor dear wife with arsenic, and that it was confidently hoped and expected that he would be executed at Horsemonger-lane jail, as the facts of the case were very clear against him. All which, Mrs. Toosypegs said, proved, very clearly, that servants were a “bad lot,” and that there was no trusting ’em with anything, but what they must go wasting their time gossiping and putting it about all over the neighbourhood. Though, for her own part, she always made it a rule to shut her ears against all scandal.
Edward was quite right; for Mrs. Yapp, when she found that dear mother only turned her nose up at her filthy medicines, tried to see how disagreeable she could make herself to my respected parent. And I declare, on the very first night, they both went quarrelling up stairs to bed, where dear mother—who, being a stout woman, has always accustomed herself to sleep cool—would insist upon having two of the blankets, and all the cloaks, taken off the bed, for she protested that, what with the fire, and the shawl pinned before the window, there wasn’t a breath of air stirring in the room, saying, that, for her part, she should like to have the window open. This, that disagreeable old Mrs. Yapp declared would be certain death to her, and she shouldn’t allow anything of the kind; and scarcely had poor dear mother taken the blankets off the bed, than Mrs. Yapp rushed up, and began putting them on again; so there they both stood for a good hour at least, one taking them off as fast as the other put them on, until they got tired, and agreed that if Mrs. Yapp would forego making up the fire for the night, and consent to waive the warming-pan, why, my dear, good, obliging mother would, in her turn, allow the coddling old thing to have as many blankets, and gowns, and cloaks on her side as she liked. But no sooner had they got into the small bed than they both began growling away, and each declaring that the other had got more than her proper share of it, so that mother told me that neither of them got a wink of sleep all night. And really, when they came down to breakfast the next morning, they wouldn’t open their mouths to each other—much to that wicked Edward’s delight, who kept rubbing his hands, and pressing mother to try a couple of tea-spoonfuls of Epsom salts, as Mrs. Yapp did in her tea, and asking the old she-quack whether she did not think Mrs. B—ff—n’s liver was out of order, and what she would recommend for her under the circumstances.