Chapter Two.
Corns.
“Diet, sir; Diet, decidedly. Now you’ll take this to John Bell’s, in Oxford Street, and they’ll make up the prescription; then you’ll go on to Gilbey’s—crooked-looking place, you know; just as if they’d built the house somewhere else, and then when they wanted to put it in its place found it too big, and had to squeeze it in. Well, there you’ll order a few dozens of their light dinner claret. No more ’20 port or fiery sherry. Taboo, sir, taboo. Light wine in moderation. Diet, sir, diet. Good morning.”
I looked at the bristly-headed physician, who handed me a sheet of note paper with a big capital B, two long blurs, a rough blotch, a few spidery ink splays, and an ugly MD at the end of a few inky hooks-and-eyes, which I received in return for the twenty-one shillings I left upon the table; and then muttering the one word “diet,” I stood in the hall upon a horrible stony-looking piece of floorcloth that quite struck cold up my legs. Here I was confronted by the footman who ushered me into his master’s presence—a blue-coated, crestless-buttoned wretch with two round grey eyes that said “shillings” as plainly as any mute thing could; but I was angry, and determined to come no more: so giving the fellow only a sixpence, I hobbled away and stood in Saville Row.
Diet, indeed; why no man could be more moderate. And what’s half a bottle of port for one’s dinner? Why, my grandfather, sir, took his two bottles regularly, and, beyond an occasional fit of the gout, was as hale a man as ever lived. Why, he’d have lived till fourscore safe if bad management and country doctors had not drawn the regal complaint into his stomach, where it would stop. This was coming to a physician for advice. And then what did he do when I told him of the agonies I suffered?—smiled pleasantly, and said it was my liver; while when I hinted at my corns, what did he do then but metaphorically tread upon them, for he laughed.
Now, putting dyspepsia on one side, I appeal to my fellow-sufferers, and ask them, Is there any torture to be compared with the infliction of corns? Headache?—take a little medicine and lie down. Toothache?—have it out. Earache?—try hot onion. Opodeldoc for rheumatism; chlorodyne for tic; colchicum for gout. There’s a remedy for nearly every pain and ache; but what will you do for your corns? Ordinary sufferings come only now and then, but corns shoot, stab, twitch, and agonise continually. What is the remedy? Plasters are puffs; bandages empty promises; the knife threatens tetanus; caustic only makes them black and smarting; while chiropodists—. Mention them not in my hearing, lest my vengeance fall upon your devoted head. Where can you put your feet to be safe—at home or abroad? Why, your very boots are sworn enemies, and the battle at putting on or pulling off makes the thought of the operation produce beads of cold perspiration upon one’s ample brow. Who can be surprised at one’s lying long in bed of a morning when tortures await, and you know that just outside the door, by the side of the large white jug whose water grows less and less steamy, there stand two hollow leather cylinders loaded with fearful pains to be discharged at your devoted feet.
There isn’t a sensible shoemaker on the face of the earth. I’ve tried them one after the other until I’m tired of them. One recommends calf, another kid, another dog-skin, and another “pannus corium,” and my feet are worse than ever. I won’t believe in them any more, though they do show me lasts made to my feet, and insult me with hideous nubbly, bunkly abortions carved in wood, which they say represent my feet—my feet, those suffering locomotives. I’ll take to sandals, or else follow the advice of the Countess de Noailles, and go barefoot like the old hen in the nursery rhyme.
I could suffer the bodily pain if it were not for the mental accompaniment, and the total want of pity and compassion shown by people. Only the other day, going down one of those quiet cab-stand streets, one of the idle wretches that I intended to engage shouted out to his companions,—
“I say, old ’uns, here’s Peter Pindar a-coming.”