Certainly the man had a great deal to answer for. His whole life seemed to have been one round of juggling, and imposition, and deceit. Not that I would visit all the blame upon him, for, from what I could learn, his good-for-nothing father really seemed to have been no better than he should have been. Indeed, Mr. Dick Farden told me one day, while he was rubbing down our dining-room table, that “his old governor” (as he called his paternal parent) had originally been in the hair-dressing, shaving, and perfuming line, and had at one time the heads of at least a hundred families in his care, and the chins of half an entire parish under his hands. Consequently, Mr. Farden, sen. did a very extensive business in “Macassars,” “Circassian creams,” “Balm of Columbias,” “Botanic Waters,” and other only safe and speedy means by which baldness is effectually removed, and the hair renovated, beautified, and preserved; for whilst he was cutting and curling his customers, he used invariably to persuade them that their locks were thinning and falling off dreadfully, and that the hair, being nothing more nor less than a vegetable, and the head merely the field in which it sprouted, of course, whenever the crops were cut, it stood to reason that the soil required manuring with a good top-dressing of bear’s grease, while the roots of the plants naturally needed being occasionally irrigated with “botanic water;” adding, that the days were shortly coming when the barber would be ranked with the farmer, and looked upon as the tiller of the head, or hairgriculturist.
Accordingly, Mr. Dick Farden, sen., finding that his eloquence as to the virtues of the artificial manures for the hair was adding considerably to the incomes of Messrs. Rowland, Ross, Gosnell, and others, it struck him that it was merely a duty he owed to his family to devise some guano for the head which should make his own fortune. So he plunged head over ears into bear’s grease, and kept a manufactory and two roaring Russians in a cage in his front kitchen, so that the passers-by might see through the area gratings the brace of hairy monsters walking backwards and forwards, just where the dresser used to be, and thus have ocular demonstration that he dealt only in the genuine article; while, at the end of his garden, he fitted up a very commodious stye for the fattening of pigs; for, as he said very truly, if bald people were partial to the fat of the bear merely on account of the strength of the hair that grew on the back of that animal, surely good, wholesome pig’s fat would be twice as serviceable to them, seeing that that domestic creature bore nothing weaker than bristles. Consequently, Mr. Farden, sen., now turned his thoughts chiefly to the growth of lard and sale of genuine bear’s grease; and whenever he killed a fat pig, he used to paste up outside his door a large placard, with “Another fine young bear just slaughtered” printed upon it; whilst in his shop window he suspended the body of the defunct porker, dexterously served up in a beautiful bear’s skin that he always kept by him on purpose, and with a card hung with blue ribbon round his neck, on which was written, “Real genuine bear’s grease cut from the carcass, at only 1s. 6d. PER POUND.” As Dick Farden said, “his governor’s” business was very profitable, but very unpleasant, for the exhibition of the two savage monsters in the kitchen, and the domestic animal in the window, raised such a demand for real bear’s grease in the neighbourhood, that the family had nothing but pork, pork, pork, for dinner all the year round.
To his father’s business our Dick Farden in course of time succeeded, but being of a wild and roving turn of mind, he paid little or no attention to the pigs, and as he said, “he went it so fast that he wasn’t long in going through ‘Farden’s magic grease,’” so that in a very little time, the sheriff walked into the shop, and seized the two bears in the kitchen, together with all the wigs, scalps, and moustachios he had on the premises. But this, he said, he thought he might have got over, had he not unfortunately distrained upon several ladies’ fronts which he had been intrusted with to bake, and which he regretted to say, being taken for the benefit of the creditors, obliged him to fly the neighbourhood, and seek a living elsewhere. After this sad affair, things went very crooked with him, and he said that often and often he had been so put to it, that he would have given anything for a mouthful of the crackling of the fine young bears that he used once to turn his nose up at; and he said he must have tried, what he called “no end of dodges,” to earn an honest living, but all to no good, until one day he fell in with a gentleman over his pipe at the “White Hart,” who persuaded him to join him in the British smuggling line; for as the gentleman, who seemed to be a perfect man of the world and to have a wonderfully fine knowledge of the female portion of human nature, expressed it: “You had only to make the ladies believe that you had got several extraordinary bargains, in the shape of cambrics, gloves, or lace, which you could let them have at fifty per cent. under prime cost, and they would buy cart-loads, whether they wanted them or not, and never trouble their dear heads as to whether they were honestly come by.” In fact, he knew scores and scores of enterprising linendrapers, who had made large fortunes by ruining themselves regularly once a twelvemonth, and selling off the whole of their stock, by order of the assignees, for the benefit of the creditors in general, and ladies in particular. For he said it was well known among the gentlemen in the haberdashery line, that the ladies would never enter a linendraper’s shop so long as he asked only a fair profit on his wares, whereas, if he would only make them believe that he was going to the dogs, and that he was selling off his goods for full half less than they were ever made for, down they would come in swarms, as fast as their legs, cabs, and carriages would carry them, and pay whatever prices the spirited proprietor might please to ask. For the idea of “ANOTHER EXTENSIVE FAILURE” seemed to have such a charm to the women, that the only way by which a linendraper could keep himself solvent, was by declaring himself bankrupt, especially as the darling creatures evidently looked upon it as a religious duty to attend every “AWFUL SACRIFICE,” for nothing seemed to them to be so noble as the notion of a man’s immolating himself at the shrine of Basinghall-street for the love of the fair sex. Indeed, the angels of women appeared to be the very reverse of those ungrateful brutes of rats, and instead of leaving a house just as it’s about to tumble to pieces, they seemed to be more like owls, and love to haunt “ruins,” or rather, he might say, they were the very image of Cornwall wreckers, and would, in answer to the very first placard that was hung out as a signal of distress by the stranded linendraper, rush down in hundreds to see what remnants they could pick up, or get out of the wreck, before the whole concern went to pieces.
Mr. Dick Farden then informed me, that upon this advice he had devoted his labours entirely to the fair sex, and immediately embarked in the “bargain line.” Knowing that the ladies had a natural aversion to parting with their money, and preferred exchanging their dear husbands’ left-off wearing apparel, he made a feeble endeavour to convert old clothes into the current coin of the realm, by carrying about on his arm a beautiful little love of a tame squirrel, which he offered to the passers-by, at the low price of a worn out surtout, and a wonderful piping bullfinch for the exceedingly small charge of a castoff pair of trousers and a waistcoat. In the winter, however, he carried with him a basket of Derbyshire Spa chimney ornaments, with a few glasses and jugs and basins hanging round it. With these, he said, he managed very well, for he could furnish a sweet pretty mantelpiece very elegantly for a lady, with a great coat in the middle and an umbrella on one side, and a mackintosh on the other, while he believed that through his humble means, several husbands had often washed their faces in their old hats, and sipped their gin and water out of their worn-out boots.
By these means he raised money enough to purchase a cargo of contraband goods in the Minories, and succeeded in running them safe into a public-house in the neighbourhood of Regent-street, the sale of which goods occupied his afternoon; while, he added, with a stupid grin on his face, he was proud to say his mornings were devoted to the polishing of our boots and shoes, and knives; for, thank goodness, he continued, there was no pride in him, and he was always willing to pick up a sixpence any day, any how, so that now he could look any of his creditors in the face, and had no need to be, as he so repeatedly was after his father’s death, non est inwentus, though, for the matter of that, Mr. Carstairs, who was one of the most beautiful writers of the day, very truly said—“A nonest man’s the noblest work of Natur.”
I am very much afraid I’ve been wasting a great deal of my own valuable time and space, and of my courteous reader’s equally valuable patience, in giving all I could learn of the history of this worthless man; only my dear Edward (who is as obstinate as a mule) would have it that Dick Farden was quite a character, although I must say that if he was a character, he was a very bad one; and I declare the way in which he served me and my sweet piano, is quite heart-rending to think of, but I will tell the reader all about this in its proper place. Though I can’t help adding, that it was quite as much the work of my dear Edward (who, it pains me to state, always will have his own way, and of course always must be in the right) as it was the work of Mr. Dick Farden, (who certainly was one of the clumsiest and stupidest men that I ever came nigh,) for if Mr. Sk—n—st—n would only have allowed me to have packed the man out of the house when I wanted, of course it never would have happened, and I should have had my sweet Broadwood in my possession at this very minute, but the gentle reader knows as well as I do, that what can’t be, &c., must be, &c.; so I shall say no more about the piano, until I touch upon it in the due course of things; for I’ve quite made up my mind to the loss of the thing a long time ago, and the least said is the soonest mended; still I can’t help adding, that I only wish to goodness gracious that I had never set eyes upon that awkward lout of a Mr. Dick Farden, or that that perverse, headstrong (though good at times) husband of mine would not go interfering about the servants, but just allow me to deal with them as I please, and manage my own affairs myself, for I should be glad to know how he would like me to go meddling with his clerks, indeed. In conclusion, I can only say that the circumstance affected me so much at the time that I only prayed for one thing, and that was that the laws would have allowed me to have had the vagabond transported, as they ought to have done, or at the very least have compelled the man to have given me a new piano, value seventy-five guineas, which I was assured was the cost of ours when it was new, though for myself I can’t speak positively to the fact, for, to tell the truth, we bought it second-hand.
But, methinks I hear the gentle reader saying, what about the piano? You are again forgetting yourself, Mrs. Sk—n—st—n, and allowing your naturally fine, warm feelings to make you wander from your subject. C’est vrai—vous avez raison, courteous reader.
Well, then, the fact is, I never was fond of needle-work at the best of times, and really and truly, I never could see the fun of passing the heyday of one’s youth darning stockings, and cobbling up a pack of old clothes as full of holes as a cinder shovel. So I longed to have an instrument just to amuse myself with for an hour or two in the day, or play over an air or two to Edward of an evening. And it wasn’t as if I hadn’t got any music-books; besides, I really and truly was sick and tired of doing kettle-holders and working a pack of filthy copper kettles in Berlin wool with a stupid “Mind it boils” underneath them, or else working a lot of braces and slippers for Edward, which, in his nasty vulgar way, he said were too fine by half for use, or else sitting for hours with your toe cocked up in the air netting purses and spending a mint of money in steel beads for a pack of people that you didn’t care twopence about, and who never gave you so much as a trumpery ring or brooch in return (I hate such meanness). So I wouldn’t let Edward have any peace until he promised to get me a piano; for, as I very truly observed, I had been out of practice so long, that I should be very much surprised if on sitting down to a piano, I didn’t find the cries of the wounded in the “Battle of Prague” too much for me, and I was sure that I should break down in the runs in the “Bird Waltz,” even supposing I was able to manage the shakes. And as for the matter of my voice, I told him I had serious alarms about losing my G, and if I did I should never forgive myself, after the money that had been spent on my musical education at Boulogne-sur-mer alone, and I was sure that if I had to begin anew with my singing exercises, and was to be put in the scales again, that I should be found wanting. Besides, I concluded the business by giving him to understand, that it wasn’t so much for myself that I wanted the piano, after all, but of course my darling little toodle-loodle-loo of a Kate, in two or three years at least must have an instrument to begin practising upon, and if he didn’t get one before that, I was sure I shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between A flat and a bull’s foot, and he would have to go to I know not what expense in masters for her, and then he would be ready to cut his ears off for not having got me a piano when I begged of him.
I am happy to say that Edward for once was not deaf to reason, but seeing that I wanted the piano more out of love for little Kate than from any selfish motive on my part, he very properly consented to look out for one for me, although my gentleman couldn’t let well alone, but must go cutting his stupid jokes, saying that he was very much afraid that the piano was only “one for the pot” over again; but I very quickly silenced my lord by merely exclaiming, in my most sarcastic way, “Fiddle.”
However, of course, as usual Mr. Sk—n—st—n, if ever he does consent to do a good action must go spoiling it by doing the thing by halves; for instead of going and ordering me one of Broadwood’s very best new grand uprights, he must needs go poking his nose into all the filthy dirty salerooms in London, until he fell in with a trumpery second-hand cottage, and which I had to have French polished all outside, and thoroughly repaired and done up in, before I could do anything with it, for I declare when I came to go over it, half of the keys of the cottage were of no use. Still, thank goodness, it was a Broadwood, although no one would have thought it, if they had seen it in the state in which it came home to me; for a Broadwood, I think it had the most disgraceful legs I ever saw in all my life, and it wasn’t until I had had the whole thing thoroughly cleaned and put in order, that it was fit to be seen in any respectable person’s dining-room.