by A. A. Milne
* * *
How can I be like a dustman that rings for a Christmas-box at your hall-door? I never was there in my life. I never left at your door a copy of verses provocative of an annual gratuity, as your noble honor styles it. Who are you? If you are the man I take you to be, it must have been you who asked the publisher for my book, and not I who sent it in, and begged a gratuity of your worship. You abused me out of the Times' window; but if ever your noble honor sent me a gratuity out of your own door, may I never drive another dust-cart. "Provocative of a gratuity!" O splendid swell! How much was it your worship sent out to me by the footman? Every farthing you have paid I will restore to your lordship, and I swear I shall not be a halfpenny the poorer.
* * *
As before, and on similar seasons and occasions, I have compared myself to a person following a not dissimilar calling: let me suppose now, for a minute, that I am a writer of a Christmas farce, who sits in the pit, and sees the performance of his own piece. There comes applause, hissing, yawning, laughter, as may be: but the loudest critic of all is our friend the cheap buck, who sits yonder and makes his remarks, so that all the audience may hear. "THIS a farce!" says Beau Tibbs: "demmy! it's the work of a poor devil who writes for money,—confound his vulgarity! This a farce! Why isn't it a tragedy, or a comedy, or an epic poem, stap my vitals? This a farce indeed! It's a feller as sends round his 'at, and appeals to charity. Let's 'ave our money back again, I say." And he swaggers off;—and you find the fellow came with an author's order.
* * *
But if, in spite of Tibbs, our "kyind friends," &c. &c. &c.—if the little farce, which was meant to amuse Christmas (or what my classical friend calls Exodus), is asked for, even up to Twelfth Night,—shall the publisher stop because Tibbs is dissatisfied? Whenever that capitalist calls to get his money back, he may see the letter from the respected publisher, informing the author that all the copies are sold, and that there are demands for a new edition. Up with the curtain, then! Vivat Regina! and no money returned, except the Times "gratuity!"
* * *
M. A. TITMARSH.
* * *
January 5, 1851.
The Kickleburys on the Rhine
The cabman, when he brought us to the wharf, and made his usual charge of six times his legal fare, before the settlement of which he pretended to refuse the privilege of an exeat regno to our luggage, glared like a disappointed fiend when Lankin, calling up the faithful Hutchison, his clerk, who was in attendance, said to him, "Hutchison, you will pay this man. My name is Serjeant Lankin, my chambers are in Pump Court. My clerk will settle with you, sir." The cabman trembled; we stepped on board; our lightsome luggage was speedily whisked away by the crew; our berths had been secured by the previous agency of Hutchison; and a couple of tickets, on which were written, "Mr. Serjeant Lankin," "Mr. Titmarsh," (Lankin's, by the way, incomparably the best and comfortablest sleeping place,) were pinned on to two of the curtains of the beds in a side cabin when we descended.
* * *
Who was on board? There were Jews, with Sunday papers and fruit; there were couriers and servants straggling about; there were those bearded foreign visitors of England, who always seem to decline to shave or wash themselves on the day of a voyage, and, on the eve of quitting our country, appear inclined to carry away as much as possible of its soil on their hands and linen: there were parties already cozily established on deck under the awning; and steady-going travellers for'ard, smoking already the pleasant morning cigar, and watching the phenomena of departure.
* * *
The bell rings: they leave off bawling, "Anybody else for the shore?" The last grape and Bell's Life merchant has scuffled over the plank: the Johns of the departing nobility and gentry line the brink of the quay, and touch their hats: Hutchison touches his hat to me—to ME, heaven bless him! I turn round inexpressibly affected and delighted, and whom do I see but Captain Hicks!
* * *
"Hallo! YOU here?" says Hicks, in a tone which seems to mean, "Confound you, you are everywhere."
* * *
Hicks is one of those young men who seem to be everywhere a great deal too often.
* * *
How are they always getting leave from their regiments? If they are not wanted in this country, (as wanted they cannot be, for you see them sprawling over the railing in Rotten Row all day, and shaking their heels at every ball in town,)—if they are not wanted in this country, I say, why the deuce are they not sent off to India, or to Demerara, or to Sierra Leone, by Jove?—the farther the better; and I should wish a good unwholesome climate to try 'em, and make 'em hardy. Here is this Hicks, then—Captain Launcelot Hicks, if you please—whose life is nothing but breakfast, smoking, riding-school, billiards, mess, polking, billiards, and smoking again, and da capo—pulling down his moustaches, and going to take a tour after the immense labors of the season.
* * *
"How do you do, Captain Hicks?" I say. "Where are you going?"
* * *
"Oh, I am going to the Whine," says Hicks; "evewybody goes to the Whine." The WHINE indeed! I dare say he can no more spell properly than he can speak.
* * *
"Who is on board—anybody?" I ask, with the air of a man of fashion. "To whom does that immense pile of luggage belong—under charge of the lady's-maid, the courier, and the British footman? A large white K is painted on all the boxes."
* * *
"How the deuce should I know?" says Hicks, looking, as I fancy, both red and angry, and strutting off with his great cavalry lurch and swagger: whilst my friend the Serjeant looks at him lost in admiration, and surveys his shining little boots, his chains and breloques, his whiskers and ambrosial moustaches, his gloves and other dandifications, with a pleased wonder; as the ladies of the Sultan's harem surveyed the great Lady from Park Lane who paid them a visit; or the simple subjects of Montezuma looked at one of Cortes's heavy dragoons.
* * *
"That must be a marquis at least," whispers Lankin, who consults me on points of society, and is pleased to have a great opinion of my experience.
* * *
I burst out in a scornful laugh. "THAT!" I say; "he is a captain of dragoons, and his father an attorney in Bedford Row. The whiskers of a roturier, my good Lankin, grow as long as the beard of a Plantagenet. It don't require much noble blood to learn the polka. If you were younger, Lankin, we might go for a shilling a night, and dance every evening at M. Laurent's Casino, and skip about in a little time as well as that fellow. Only we despise the kind of thing you know,—only we're too grave, and too steady."
* * *
"And too fat," whispers Lankin, with a laugh.
* * *
"Speak for yourself, you maypole," says I. "If you can't dance yourself, people can dance round you—put a wreath of flowers upon your old poll, stick you up in a village green, and so make use of you."
* * *
"I should gladly be turned into anything so pleasant," Lankin answers; "and so, at least, get a chance of seeing a pretty girl now and then. They don't show in Pump Court, or at the University Club, where I dine. You are a lucky fellow, Titmarsh, and go about in the world. As for me, I never—"
* * *
"And the judges' wives, you rogue?" I say. "Well, no man is satisfied; and the only reason I have to be angry with the captain yonder is, that, the other night, at Mrs. Perkins's, being in conversation with a charming young creature—who knows all my favorite passages in Tennyson, and takes a most delightful little line of opposition in the Church controversy—just as we were in the very closest, dearest, pleasantest part of the talk, comes up young Hotspur yonder, and whisks her away in a polka. What have you and I to do with polkas, Lankin? He took her down to supper—what have you and I to do with suppers?"
* * *
"Our duty is to leave them alone," said the philosophical Serjeant. "And now about breakfast—shall we have some?" And as he spoke, a savory little procession of stewards and steward
s' boys, with drab tin dish-covers, passed from the caboose, and descended the stairs to the cabin. The vessel had passed Greenwich by this time, and had worked its way out of the mast-forest which guards the approaches of our city.
* * *
The owners of those innumerable boxes, bags, oil-skins, guitar-cases, whereon the letter K was engraven, appeared to be three ladies, with a slim gentleman of two or three and thirty, who was probably the husband of one of them. He had numberless shawls under his arm and guardianship. He had a strap full of Murray's Handbooks and Continental Guides in his keeping; and a little collection of parasols and umbrellas, bound together, and to be carried in state before the chief of the party, like the lictor's fasces before the consul.
* * *
The chief of the party was evidently the stout lady. One parasol being left free, she waved it about, and commanded the luggage and the menials to and fro. "Horace, we will sit there," she exclaimed, pointing to a comfortable place on the deck. Horace went and placed the shawls and the Guidebooks. "Hirsch, avy vou conty les bagages? tront sett morso ong too?" The German courier said, "Oui, miladi," and bowed a rather sulky assent. "Bowman, you will see that Finch is comfortable, and send her to me." The gigantic Bowman, a gentleman in an undress uniform, with very large and splendid armorial buttons, and with traces of the powder of the season still lingering in his hair, bows, and speeds upon my lady's errand.
* * *
I recognize Hirsch, a well-known face upon the European high-road, where he has travelled with many acquaintances. With whom is he making the tour now?—Mr. Hirsch is acting as courier to Mr. and Mrs. Horace Milliken. They have not been married many months, and they are travelling, Hirsch says, with a contraction of his bushy eyebrows, with miladi, Mrs. Milliken's mamma. "And who is her ladyship?" Hirsch's brow contracts into deeper furrows. "It is Miladi Gigglebury," he says, "Mr. Didmarsh. Berhabs you know her." He scowls round at her, as she calls out loudly, "Hirsch, Hirsch!" and obeys that summons.
* * *
It is the great Lady Kicklebury of Pocklington Square, about whom I remember Mrs. Perkins made so much ado at her last ball; and whom old Perkins conducted to supper. When Sir Thomas Kicklebury died (he was one of the first tenants of the Square), who does not remember the scutcheon with the coronet with two balls, that flamed over No. 36? Her son was at Eton then, and has subsequently taken an honorary degree at Oxford, and been an ornament of Platt's and the "Oswestry Club." He fled into St. James's from the great house in Pocklington Square, and from St. James's to Italy and the Mediterranean, where he has been for some time in a wholesome exile. Her eldest daughter's marriage with Lord Roughhead was talked about last year; but Lord Roughhead, it is known, married Miss Brent; and Horace Milliken, very much to his surprise, found himself the affianced husband of Miss Lavinia Kicklebury, after an agitating evening at Lady Polkimore's, when Miss Lavinia, feeling herself faint, went out on to the leads (the terrace, Lady Polkimore WILL call it), on the arm of Mr. Milliken. They were married in January: it's not a bad match for Miss K. Lady Kicklebury goes and stops for six months of the year at Pigeoncot with her daughter and son-in-law; and now that they are come abroad, she comes too. She must be with Lavinia, under the present circumstances.
* * *
When I am arm-in-arm, I tell this story glibly off to Lankin, who is astonished at my knowledge of the world, and says, "Why, Titmarsh, you know everything."
* * *
"I DO know a few things, Lankin my boy," is my answer. "A man don't live in society, and PRETTY GOOD society, let me tell you, for nothing."
* * *
The fact is, that all the above details are known to almost any man in our neighborhood. Lady Kicklebury does not meet with US much, and has greater folks than we can pretend to be at her parties. But we know about THEM. She'll condescend to come to Perkins's, WITH WHOSE FIRM SHE BANKS; and she MAY overdraw HER ACCOUNT: but of that, of course, I know nothing.
* * *
When Lankin and I go down stairs to breakfast, we find, if not the best, at least the most conspicuous places in occupation of Lady Kicklebury's party, and the hulking London footman making a darkness in the cabin, as he stoops through it bearing cups and plates to his employers.
* * *
[Why do they always put mud into coffee on board steamers? Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots? Why is the milk scarce and thin? And why do they have those bleeding legs of boiled mutton for dinner? I ask why? In the steamers of other nations you are well fed. Is it impossible that Britannia, who confessedly rules the waves, should attend to the victuals a little, and that meat should be well cooked under a Union Jack? I just put in this question, this most interesting question, in a momentous parenthesis, and resume the tale.]
* * *
When Lankin and I descend to the cabin, then, the tables are full of gobbling people; and, though there DO seem to be a couple of places near Lady Kicklebury, immediately she sees our eyes directed to the inviting gap, she slides out, and with her ample robe covers even more than that large space to which by art and nature she is entitled, and calling out, "Horace, Horace!" and nodding, and winking, and pointing, she causes her son-in-law to extend the wing on his side. We are cut of THAT chance of a breakfast. We shall have the tea at its third water, and those two damp black mutton-chops, which nobody else will take, will fall to our cold share.
* * *
At this minute a voice, clear and sweet, from a tall lady in a black veil, says, "Mr. Titmarsh," and I start and murmur an ejaculation of respectful surprise, as I recognize no less a person than the Right Honorable the Countess of Knightsbridge, taking her tea, breaking up little bits of toast with her slim fingers, and sitting between a Belgian horse-dealer and a German violoncello-player who has a conge after the opera—like any other mortal.
* * *
I whisper her ladyship's name to Lankin. The Serjeant looks towards her with curiosity and awe. Even he, in his Pump Court solitudes, has heard of that star of fashion—that admired amongst men, and even women—that Diana severe yet simple, the accomplished Aurelia of Knightsbridge. Her husband has but a small share of HER qualities. How should he? The turf and the fox-chase are his delights—the smoking-room at the "Travellers'"—nay, shall we say it?—the illuminated arcades of "Vauxhall," and the gambols of the dishevelled Terpsichore. Knightsbridge has his faults—ah! even the peerage of England is not exempt from them. With Diana for his wife, he flies the halls where she sits severe and serene, and is to be found (shrouded in smoke, 'tis true,) in those caves where the contrite chimney-sweep sings his terrible death chant, or the Bacchanalian judge administers a satiric law. Lord Knightsbridge has his faults, then; but he has the gout at Rougetnoirbourg, near the Rhine, and thither his wife is hastening to minister to him.
* * *
"I have done," says Lady Knightsbridge, with a gentle bow, as she rises; "you may have this place, Mr. Titmarsh; and I am sorry my breakfast is over: I should have prolonged it had I thought that YOU were coming to sit by me. Thank you—my glove." (Such an absurd little glove, by the way). "We shall meet on the deck when you have done."
* * *
And she moves away with an august curtsy. I can't tell how it is, or what it is, in that lady; but she says, "How do you do?" as nobody else knows how to say it. In all her actions, motions, thoughts, I would wager there is the same calm grace and harmony. She is not very handsome, being very thin, and rather sad-looking. She is not very witty, being only up to the conversation, whatever it may be; and yet, if she were in black serge, I think one could not help seeing that she was a Princess, and Serene Highness; and if she were a hundred years old, she could not be but beautiful. I saw her performing her devotions in Antwerp Cathedral, and forgot to look at anything else there;—so calm and pure, such a sainted figure hers seemed.
* * *
When this great lady did the present writer the honor to shake his hand (I had the honor to teach writing and the rudiments of Latin to the yo
ung and intelligent Lord Viscount Pimlico), there seemed to be a commotion in the Kicklebury party—heads were nodded together, and turned towards Lady Knightsbridge: in whose honor, when Lady Kicklebury had sufficiently reconnoitred her with her eye-glass, the baronet's lady rose and swept a reverential curtsy, backing until she fell up against the cushions at the stern of the boat. Lady Knightsbridge did not see this salute, for she did not acknowledge it, but walked away slimly (she seems to glide in and out of the room), and disappeared up the stair to the deck.