“‘Proud, eh?’ exclaimed Mr. Sowerberry with a sneer. ‘Come, that’s too much.’
“‘Oh, its sickening,’ replied the beadle; ‘antimonial, Mr. Sowerberry!’
“‘So it is,’ acquiesced the undertaker.
“‘We only heard of the family the night before last,’ said the beadle; ‘and we shouldn’t have known anything about them then, only a woman who lodges in the same house made an application to the parochial committee for them to send the parochial surgeon to see a woman as was very bad. He had gone out to dinner, but his ’prentice (which is a very clever lad) sent ’em some medicine in a blacking bottle off hand.’
“‘Ah, there’s promptness,’ said the undertaker.
“‘Promptness indeed!’ replied the beadle. ‘But what’s the consequence; what’s the ungrateful behaviour of these rebels, sir? Why, the husband sends back word that the medicine won’t suit his wife’s complaint, and so she shan’t take it—says she shan’t take it, sir! Good, strong, wholesome medicine, as was given with great success to two Irish labourers and a coal-heaver only a week before. Sent ’em for nothing, with a blacking bottle in, and he sends back word that she shan’t take it, sir!’”
THACKERAY.
The great satirist, in Pendennis, gives us a brief sketch of the apothecary of the Georgian era in the early life of John Pendennis, who in the city of Bath practised as an apothecary and surgeon, “attending gentlemen in their sickrooms, and ladies at the most interesting periods of their lives, and condescending to sell a brown-paper plaister to a farmer’s wife across the counter, or to vend tooth-brushes, hair-powder, and London perfumery”. How he eventually merged into John Pendennis, Esq., of Fairoaks, Clavering, with a “family pride,” is it not described with the pen of inimitable genius in the pages of the story?