Complete Works of R S Surtees

by R S Surtees

  “Mr. James Green is the fortunate winner of this magnificent prize!” exclaimed the youth, holding up the box in mid-air, and thereupon all the ladies crowded round Green, some to congratulate him, others to compliment him on his looks, while one or two of the least knowing tried to coax him out of his box. Jemmy, however, was too old a stager, and pocketed the box and other compliments at the same time.

  Another grind of the organ, and another song followed from the same young lady, during which operation Green sent for the manager, and, after a little beating about the bush, proposed singing a song or two, if he would give him lottery-tickets gratis. He asked three shilling-tickets for each song, and finally closed for five tickets for two songs, on the understanding that he was to be announced as a distinguished amateur, who had come forward by most particular desire.

  Accordingly the manager — a roundabout, red-faced, consequential little cockney — mounted the rostrum, and begged to announce to the company that that “celebrated wocalist, Mr. James Green, so well known as a distinguished amateur and conwivialist, both at Bagnigge Wells, and Vite Conduit House, LONDON, had werry kindly consented, in order to promote the hilarity of the evening, to favour the company with a song immediately after the drawing of the next lottery,” and after a few high-flown compliments, which elicited a laugh from those who were up to Jemmy’s mode of doing business, he concluded by offering a papier-maché tea-caddy for public competition, in shilling lots as before.

  As soon as the drawing was over, they gave the organ a grind, and Jemmy popped up with a hop, step, and a jump, with his woolly white hat under his arm, and presented himself with a scrape and a bow to the company. After a few preparatory “hems and haws,” he pulled up his gills and spoke as follows: “Ladies and gentlemen! hem” — another pull at his gills— “ladies and gentlemen — my walued friend, Mr. Kitey Graves, has announced that I will entertain the company with a song; though nothing, I assure you — hem — could be farther from my idea — hem — when my excellent friend asked me,”— “Hookey Walker!” exclaimed someone who had heard Jemmy declare the same thing half a dozen times— “and, indeed, ladies and gentlemen — hem — nothing but the werry great regard I have for Mr. Kitey Graves, who I have known and loved ever since he was the height of sixpennorth of coppers” a loud laugh followed this allusion, seeing that eighteenpenny-worth would almost measure out the speaker. On giving another “hem,” and again pulling up his gills, an old Kentish farmer, in a brown coat and mahogany-coloured tops, holloaed out, “I say, sir! I’m afear’d you’ll be catching cold!” “I ‘opes not,” replied Jemmy in a fluster, “is it raining? I’ve no umbrella, and my werry best coat on!” “No! raining, no!” replied the farmer, “only you’ve pulled at your shirt so long that I think you must be bare behind! Haw! haw! haw!” at which all the males roared with laughter, and the females hid their faces in their handkerchiefs, and tittered and giggled, and tried to be shocked. “ORDER! ORDER!” cried Mr. Jorrocks, in a loud and sonorous voice, which had the effect of quelling the riot and drawing all eyes upon himself. “Ladies and gentlemen,” said he, taking off his cap with great gravity, and extending his right arm,

  Immodest words admit of no defence,

  For want of decency is want of sense;

  a couplet so apropos, and so well delivered, as to have the immediate effect of restoring order and making the farmer look foolish. Encouraged by the voice of his great patron, Green once more essayed to finish his speech, which he did by a fresh assurance of the surprise by which he had been taken by the request of his friend, Kitey Graves, and an exhortation for the company to make allowance for any deficiency of “woice,” inasmuch as how as labouring under “a wiolent ‘orseness,” for which he had long been taking pectoral lozenges. He then gave his gills another pull, felt if they were even, and struck up:

  “Bid me discourse,”

  in notes, compared to which the screaming of a peacock would be perfect melody. Mr. Jorrocks having taken a conspicuous position, applauded long, loudly, and warmly, at every pause — approbation the more deserved and disinterested, inasmuch as the worthy gentleman suffers considerably from music, and only knows two tunes, one of which, he says, “is God save the King, and the other isn’t.”

  Having seen his protégé fairly under way, Mr. Jorrocks gave him a hint that he would return to the “White Hart,” and have supper ready by the time he was done; accordingly the Yorkshireman and he withdrew along an avenue politely formed by the separation of the company, who applauded as they passed.

  An imperial quart and a half of Mr. Creed’s stoutest draft port, with the orthodox proportion of lemon, cloves, sugar, and cinnamon, had almost boiled itself to perfection under the skilful superintendence of Mr. Jorrocks, on the coffee-room fire, and a table had been handsomely decorated with shrimps, lobsters, broiled bones, fried ham, poached eggs, when just as the clock had finished striking eleven, the coffee-room door opened with a rush, and in tripped Jemmy Green with his hands crammed full of packages, and his trousers’ pockets sticking out like a Dutch burgomaster’s. “Vell, I’ve done ’em brown to-night, I think,” said he, depositing his hat and half a dozen packages on the sideboard, and running his fingers through his curls to make them stand up. “I’ve won nine lotteries, and left one undrawn when I came away, because it did not seem likely to fill. Let me see,” said he, emptying his pockets,— “there is the beautiful rosewood box that I won, ven you was there; the next was a set of crimping-irons, vich I von also; the third was a jockey-vip, which I did not want and only stood one ticket for and lost; the fourth was this elegant box, with a view of Margate on the lid; then came these six sherry labels with silver rims; a snuff-box with an inwisible mouse; a coral rattle with silver bells; a silk yard measure in a walnut-shell; a couple of West India beetles; a humming-bird in a glass case, which I lost; and then these dozen bodkins with silver eyes — so that altogether I have made a pretty good night’s work of it. Kitey Graves wasn’t in great force, so after I had sung Bid me Discourse, and I’d be a Butterfly, I cut my stick and went to the hopposition shop, where they used me much more genteelly; giving me three tickets for a song, and introducing me in more flattering terms to the company — don’t like being considered one of the nasty ‘reglars,’ and they should make a point of explaining that one isn’t. Besides, what business had Kitey to say anything about Bagnigge Vells? a hass! — Now, perhaps, you’ll favour me with some supper.”

  “Certainly,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, patting Jemmy approvingly on the head— “you deserve some. It’s only no song, no supper, and you’ve been singing like a nightingale;” thereupon they set to with vigorous determination.

  A bright Sunday dawned, and the beach at an early hour was crowded with men in dressing-gowns of every shape, hue, and material, with buff slippers — the “regulation Margate shoeing,” both for men and women. As the hour of eleven approached, and the church bells began to ring, the town seemed to awaken suddenly from a trance, and bonnets the most superb, and dresses the most extravagant, poured forth from lodgings the most miserable. Having shaved and dressed himself with more than ordinary care and attention, Mr. Jorrocks walked his friends off to church, assuring them that no one need hope to prosper throughout the week who did not attend it on the Sunday, and he marked his own devotion throughout the service by drowning the clerk’s voice with his responses. After this spiritual ablution Mr. Jorrocks bethought himself of having a bodily one in the sea; and the day being excessively hot, and the tide about the proper mark, he pocketed a couple of towels out of his bedroom and went away to bathe, leaving Green and the Yorkshireman to amuse themselves at the “White Hart.”

  This house, as we have already stated, faces the harbour, and is a corner one, running a considerable way up the next street, with a side door communicating, as well as the front one, with the coffee-room. This room differs from the generality of coffee-rooms, inasmuch as the windows range the whole length of the room, and being very low they afford every
facility for the children and passers-by to inspect the interior. Whether this is done to show the Turkey carpet, the pea-green cornices, the bright mahogany slips of tables, the gay trellised geranium-papered room, or the aristocratic visitors who frequent it, is immaterial — the description is as accurate as if George Robins had drawn it himself. In this room then, as the Yorkshireman and Green were lying dozing on three chairs apiece, each having fallen asleep to avoid the trouble of talking to the other, they were suddenly roused by loud yells and hootings at the side door, and the bursting into the coffee-room of what at first brush they thought must be a bull. The Yorkshireman jumped up, rubbed his eyes, and lo! before him stood Mr. Jorrocks, puffing like a stranded grampus, with a bunch of sea-weed under his arm and the dress in which he had started, with the exception of the dark blue stocking-net pantaloons, the place of which were supplied by a flowing white linen kilt, commonly called a shirt, in the four corners of which were knotted a few small pebbles — producing, with the Hessian boots and one thing and another, the most laughable figure imaginable. The blood of the Jorrockses was up, however, and throwing his hands in the air, he thus delivered himself. “Oh gentlemen! gentlemen! — here’s a lamentable occurrence — a terrible disaster — oh dear! oh dear! — I never thought I should come to this. You know, James Green,” appealing to Jemmy, “that I never was the man to raise a blush on the cheek of modesty; I have always said that ‘want of decency is want of sense,’ and see how I am rewarded! Oh dear! oh dear! that I should ever have trusted my pantaloons out of my sight.” While all this, which was the work of a moment, was going forward, the mob, which had been shut out at the side door on Jorrocks’s entry, had got round to the coffee-room window, and were all wedging their faces in to have a sight of him. It was principally composed of children, who kept up the most discordant yells, mingled with shouts of “there’s old cutty shirt!”— “who’s got your breeches, old cock?”— “make a scramble!”— “turn him out for another hunt!”— “turn him again!” — until, fearing for the respectability of his house, the landlord persuaded Mr. Jorrocks to retire into the bar to state his grievances.

  It then appeared that having travelled along the coast, as far as the first preventive stationhouse on the Ramsgate side of Margate, the grocer had thought it a convenient place for performing his intended ablutions, and, accordingly, proceeded to do what all people of either sex agree upon in such cases — namely to divest himself of his garments; but before he completed the ceremony, observing some females on the cliffs above, and not being (as he said) a man “to raise a blush on the cheek of modesty,” he advanced to the water’s edge in his aforesaid unmentionables, and forgetting that it was not yet high tide, he left them there, when they were speedily covered, and the pockets being full of silver and copper, of course they were “swamped.” After dabbling about in the water and amusing himself with picking up sea-weed for about ten minutes, Mr. Jorrocks was horrified, on returning to the spot where he thought he had left his stocking-net pantaloons, to find that they had disappeared; and after a long fruitless search, the unfortunate gentleman was compelled to abandon the pursuit, and render himself an object of chase to all the little boys and girls who chose to follow him into Margate on his return without them.

  Jorrocks, as might be expected, was very bad about his loss, and could not get over it — it stuck in his gizzard, he said — and there it seemed likely to remain. In vain Mr. Creed offered him a pair of trousers — he never had worn a pair. In vain he asked for the loan of a pair of white cords and top-boots, or even drab shorts and continuations. Mr. Creed was no sportsman, and did not keep any. The bellman could not cry the lost unmentionables because it was Sunday, and even if they should be found on the ebbing of the tide, they would take no end of time to dry. Mr. Jorrocks declared his pleasure at an end, and forthwith began making inquiries as to the best mode of getting home. The coaches were all gone, steamboats there were none, save for every place but London, and posting, he said, was “cruelly expensive.” In the midst of his dilemma, “Boots,” who is always the most intelligent man about an inn, popped in his curly head, and informed Mr. Jorrocks that the Unity hoy, a most commodious vessel, neat, trim, and water-tight, manned by his own maternal uncle, was going to cut away to London at three o’clock, and would land him before he could say “Jack Robinson.” Mr. Jorrocks jumped at the offer, and forthwith attiring himself in a pair of Mr. Creed’s loose inexpressibles, over which he drew his Hessian boots, he tucked the hamper containing the knuckle of veal and other etceteras under one arm, and the bunch of sea-weed he had been busy collecting, instead of watching his clothes, under the other, and, followed by his friends, made direct for the vessel.

  Everybody knows, or ought to know, what a hoy is — it is a large sailing-boat, sometimes with one deck, sometimes with none; and the Unity, trading in bulky goods, was of the latter description, though there was a sort of dog-hole at the stern, which the master dignified by the name of a “state cabin,” into which he purposed putting Mr. Jorrocks, if the weather should turn cold before they arrived. The wind, however, he said, was so favourable, and his cargo— “timber and fruit,” as he described it, that is to say, broomsticks and potatoes — so light, that he warranted landing him at Blackwall at least by ten o’clock, where he could either sleep, or get a short stage or an omnibus on to Leadenhall Street. The vessel looked anything but tempting, neither was the captain’s appearance prepossessing, still Mr. Jorrocks, all things considered, thought he would chance it; and depositing his hamper and sea-weed, and giving special instructions about having his pantaloons cried in the morning — recounting that besides the silver, and eighteen-pence in copper, there was a steel pencil-case with “J.J.” on the seal at the top, an anonymous letter, and two keys — he took an affectionate leave of his friends, and stepped on board, the vessel was shoved off and stood out to sea.