So Mr. Nathan Nathan was ordered to find bail, and a pair of Holywell-street vendors of seedy[31] apparel became his sureties.
WOLF versus WELLDONE.
Mrs. Winifred Welldone, widow, of Monmouth-street, Seven Dials, was charged with having assaulted Mrs. Mary Wolf of the same place, spinster.
Mrs. Wolf, as her name would seem to signify, is bony and gaunt, and grim—a lady of most voracious aspect, and much more like an assaulter than an assaultee. But the proverb saith—"judge not by outward appearances—they too often prove deceitful;" and they did so in this case; for Mrs. Welldone was so overdone with fat—so round, so soft, so puffy, and so short withal, that nobody would have supposed her capable of bruising even a pound of butter; and yet she contrived to give Mrs. Wolf a black eye! How she had reached so high as the eye of Mrs. Wolf, was matter of wonder to everybody; for she was by no means well made for jumping, and Mrs. Wolf was nearly double her height.
It appeared by the evidence adduced on both sides, that Mrs. Welldone occupies a house in Monmouth-street—that far-famed street which is sometimes, though maliciously, yclep'd "Rag-fair." Here she carries on a thriving trade in the "translating line,"—that is to say, she employs sundry ingenious craftsmen in translating old shoes into new ones—an art that will be dignified to all posterity, as being that art by which the patriot Preston procured bub and grub[32] for his family. These shoes, thus translated, or "revivified," Mrs. Welldone sells at a small profit to those persons, and they are not a few, whose destinies forbid them to purchase their shoes of the shoe-maker. Beneath the shop, or parlour, in which she carries on this trade, she has two cellars—under-ground apartments she calls them, and perhaps it is the genteeler term; and it was these two cellars, or under-ground apartments, that brought her in contact with Mrs. Wolf. Mrs. Wolf is of a profession nearly allied to translating, only she operates upon gowns, and petticoats, and "chemises," instead of shoes.—As Robert Burns would say,
"——She—wi' her needle and her shears,
Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new."
Now it so happened that Mrs. Wolf was in want of a place in which to vend the garments she thus redeems from the jaws of the paper mill; and wandering along Monmouth-street, in search of some such place, she saw the under-ground apartments of Mrs. Welldone. They were to let, she liked them vastly, and she became Mrs. Welldone's tenant—with an express stipulation between them that Mrs. Welldone should stick to her shoes, and Mrs. Wolf to her shifts, &c.; so that neither of them might at all interfere with the trade of the other. Mrs. Wolf took possession of the under-ground apartments that same evening; but it would appear that she had more of the fox in her composition than the wolf, for she was no sooner safely housed, or cellar'd, than she broke the agreement, by making a grand display of translated shoes all around the sill of her cellar window. "Is this well done, Mrs. Wolf?" cried the astonished Mrs. Welldone—"if you don't take them away this moment, I'll kick them all down upon your false head!" Mrs. Wolf looked up from her subterranean abode, and grinned defiance—like the wolf that General Putnam pulled out of the cavern by his tail whilst the people pulled the General out by his hind leg. Mrs. Welldone repeated her threat of kicking down the shoes, and Mrs. Wolf grinned again, and told her she would ramshackle[33] her if she did. Then Mrs. Welldone, not having the fear of ramshackleing before her eyes, swept the shoes into the cellar-hole upon the false head of Mrs. Wolf, and Mrs. Wolf emerged from her cavern amidst the cloud of flying shoes, "her soul in arms and eager for the 'fray." Mrs. Welldone gave back when she saw her, and it was well she did; for Mrs. Wolf came on like a tigress, as all the witnesses averred, and they thought it a miracle (à-la-Hohenlohe) that she was not torn to bits at the first rush. Mrs. Welldone, however, was not the woman to back out of anything—she concentrated her powers—her eyes flashed like diamonds in dough, Mrs. Wolf closed upon her, they wrestled together like Death and the Dumpling, and when they were dragged apart by the bystanders, Mrs. Wolf's right eye was in mourning.
This was all the witnesses could say about the matter, and the magistrate told Mrs. Welldone, she had done ill in committing the first assault.
"I admit it, your worship," said Mrs. Welldone, "but it was enough to make any woman mad to have the bread taken out of one's mouth by stratygim in that manner. Howsever, I don't know that I should have minded that so much if she had not undersold me."