The Adventures of Philip
Page 64
I have shown how the men had long been inwardly envenomed one against another.
"Because Firmin is as poor as a rat, that's no reason why he should adopt that
hawhaw manner, and them high and mighty airs towards a man who gives him the
bread he eats," Mugford argued not unjustly. "What do I care for his being a
university man? I am as good as he is. I am better than his old scamp of a
father, who was a college man too, and lived in fine company. I made my own way
in the world, independent, and supported myself since I was fourteen years of
age, and helped my mother and brothers too, and that's more than my sub-editor
can say, who can't support himself yet. I could get fifty sub-editors as good as
he is, by calling out of the window into the street, I could. I say, hang
Firmin! I'm a-losing all patience with him." On the other hand, Mr. Philip was
in the habit of speaking his mind with equal candour. "What right has that
person to call me Firmin?" he asked. "I am Firmin to my equals and friends. I am
this man's labourer at four guineas a week. I give him his money's worth, and on
every Saturday evening we are quits. Call me Philip indeed, and strike me in the
side! I choke, sir, as I think of the confounded familiarity!" "Confound his
impudence!" was the cry, and the not unjust cry of the labourer and his
employer. The men should have been kept apart: and it was a most mistaken
Christian charity and female conspiracy which brought them together. "Another
invitation from Mugford. It was agreed that I was never to go again, and I won't
go," says Philip to his meek wife. "Write and say we are engaged, Charlotte."
"It is for the 18th of next month, and this is the 23rd," said poor Charlotte.
"We can't well say that we are engaged so far off."
"It is for one of his grand ceremony parties," urged the Little Sister. "You
can't come to no quarrelling there. He has a good heart. So have you. There's no
good quarrelling with him. Oh, Philip, do forgive, and be friends!" Philip
yielded to the remonstrances of the women, as we all do; and a letter was sent
to Hampstead, announcing that Mr. and Mrs. P. F. would have the honour,
In his quality of newspaper proprietor, musical professors and opera singers
paid much court to Mr. Mugford; and he liked to entertain them at his hospitable
table; to brag about his wines, cookery, plate, garden, prosperity, and private
virtue, during dinner, whilst the artists sate respectfully listening to him;
and to go to sleep and snore, or wake up and join cheerfully in a chorus, when
the professional people performed in the drawing-room. Now, there was a lady who
was once known on the theatre by the name of Mrs. Ravenswing, and who had been
forced on to the stage by the misconduct of her husband, a certain Walker, one
of the greatest scamps who ever entered a gaol. On Walker's death, this lady
married a Mr. Woolsey, a wealthy tailor, who retired from his business, as he
caused his wife to withdraw from hers.
Now, more worthy and honourable people do not live than Woolsey and his wife, as
those know who were acquainted with their history. Mrs. Woolsey is loud. Her h's
are by no means where they should be; her knife at dinner is often where it
should not be. She calls men aloud by their names, and without any prefix of
courtesy. She is very fond of porter, and has no scruple in asking for it. She
sits down to play the piano, and to sing with perfect good nature, and if you
look at her hands as they wander over the keys��well, I don't wish to say
anything unkind,��but I am forced to own that those hands are not so white as
the ivory which they thump. Woolsey sits in perfect rapture listening to his
wife. Mugford presses her to take a glass of "somethink" afterwards; and the
good-natured soul says she will take something 'ot. She sits and listens with
infinite patience and good-humour whilst the little Mugfords go through their
horrible little musical exercises; and these over, she is ready to go back to
the piano again, and sing more songs, and drink more 'ot.
I do not say that this was an elegant woman, or a fitting companion for Mrs.
Philip; but I know that Mrs. Woolsey was a good, clever, and kindly woman, and
that Philip behaved rudely to her. He never meant to be rude to her, he said;
but the truth is, he treated her, her husband, Mugford, and Mrs. Mugford, with a
haughty ill-humour which utterly exasperated and perplexed them.
About this poor lady, who was modest and innocent as Susannah, Philip had heard
some wicked elders at wicked clubs tell wicked stories in old times. There was
that old Trail, for instance, what woman escaped from his sneers and slander?
There were others who could be named, and whose testimony was equally
untruthful. On an ordinary occasion Philip would never have cared or squabbled
about a question of precedence, and would have taken any place assigned to him
at any table. But when Mrs. Woolsey, in crumpled satins and blowsy lace made her
appearance, and was eagerly and respectfully saluted by the host and hostess,
Philip remembered those early stories about the poor lady: his eyes flashed
wrath, and his breast beat with an indignation which almost choked him. Ask that
woman to meet my wife? he thought to himself, and looked so ferocious and
desperate that the timid little wife gazed with alarm at her Philip, and crept
up to him and whispered, "What is it, dear?"
Meanwhile, Mrs. Mugford and Mrs. Woolsey were in full colloquy about the
weather, the nursery, and so forth��and Woolsey and Mugford giving each other
the hearty grasp of friendship. Philip, then, scowling at the newly arrived
guests, turning his great hulking back upon the company and talking to his wife,
presented a not agreeable figure to his entertainer.
"Hang the fellow's pride!" thought Mugford. "He chooses to turn his back upon my
company, because Woolsey was a tradesman. An honest tailor is better than a
bankrupt, swindling doctor, I should think. Woolsey need not be ashamed to show
his face, I suppose. Why did you make me ask that fellar again, Mrs. M.? Don't
you see our society ain't good enough for him?"
Philip's conduct, then, so irritated Mugford, that when dinner was announced, he
stepped forward and offered his arm to Mrs. Woolsey; having intended in the
first instance to confer that honour upon Charlotte. "I'll show him," thought
Mugford, "that an honest tradesman's lady who pays his way, and is not afraid of
anybody, is better than my sub-editor's wife, the daughter of a bankrupt swell."
Though the dinner was illuminated by Mugford's grandest plate, and accompanied
by his very best wine, it was a gloomy and weary repast to several people
present, and Philip and Charlotte, and I daresay Mugford, thought it never would
be done. Mrs. Woolsey, to be sure, placidly ate her dinner, and drank her wine;
whilst, remembering these wicked legends against her, Philip sate before the
poor unconscious lady, silent, with glaring eyes, insolent and odious; so much
so, that Mrs. Woolsey imparted to Mrs. Mugford her surmise that the tall
gentleman must have got out of bed the wrong leg foremost.
moment; and immediately Philip started up and beckoned his wife away. But Mrs.
Woolsey's carriage and lamps of course had the precedence; and this lady Mr.
Mugford accompanied to her carriage step.
He did not pay the same attention to Mrs. Firmin. Most likely he forgot.
Possibly he did not think etiquette required he should show that sort of
politeness to a sub-editor's wife: at any rate, he was not so rude as Philip
himself had been during the evening, but he stood in the hall looking at his
guests departing in their cab, when, in a sudden gust of passion, Philip stepped
out of the carriage, and stalked up to his host, who stood there in his own hall
confronting him, Philip declared, with a most impudent smile on his face.
"Come back to light a pipe I suppose? Nice thing for your wife, ain't it?" said
Mugford, relishing his own joke.
"I am come back, sir," said Philip, glaring at Mugford, "to ask how you dared
invite Mrs. Philip Firmin to meet that woman?"
Here, on his side, Mr. Mugford lost his temper, and from this moment his wrong
begins. When he was in a passion, the language used by Mr. Mugford was not, it
appears, choice. We have heard that when angry, he was in the habit of swearing
freely at his subordinates. He broke out on this occasion also with many oaths.
He told Philip that he would stand his impudence no longer; that he was as good
as a swindling doctor's son; that though he hadn't been to college he could buy
and pay them as had; and that if Philip liked to come into the back yard for ten
minutes, he'd give him one��two, and show him whether he was a man or not. Poor
Charlotte, who, indeed, fancied that her husband had gone back to light his
cigar, sat awhile unconscious in her cab, and supposed that the two gentlemen
were engaged on newspaper business. When Mugford began to pull his coat off, she
sat wondering, but not in the least understanding the meaning of the action.
Philip had described his employer as walking about his office without a coat and
using energetic language.
But when, attracted by the loudness of the talk, Mrs. Mugford came forth from
her neighbouring drawing-room, accompanied by such of her children as had not
yet gone to roost��when seeing Mugford pulling off his dress-coat, she began to
scream��when, lifting his voice over hers, Mugford poured forth oaths, and
frantically shook his fists at Philip, asking how that blackguard dared insult
him in his own house, and proposing to knock his head off at that moment��then
poor Char, in a wild alarm, sprang out of the cab, ran to her husband, whose
whole frame was throbbing, whose nostrils were snorting with passion. Then Mrs.
Mugford springing forward, placed her ample form before her husband's, and
calling Philip a great cowardly beast, asked him if he was going to attack that
little old man? Then Mugford dashing his coat down to the ground, called with
fresh oaths to Philip to come on. And, in fine, there was a most unpleasant row,
occasioned by Mr. Philip Firmin's hot temper.
CHAPTER VI. RES ANGUSTA DOMI.
To reconcile these two men was impossible, after such a quarrel as that
described in the last chapter. The only chance of peace was to keep the two men
apart. If they met, they would fly at each other. Mugford always persisted that
he could have got the better of his great hulking sub-editor, who did not know
the use of his fists. In Mugford's youthful time, bruising was a fashionable
art; and the old gentleman still believed in his own skill and prowess. "Don't
tell me," he would say; "though the fellar is as big as a life-guardsman, I
would have doubled him up in two minutes." I am very glad, for poor Charlotte's
sake and his own, that Philip did not undergo the doubling-up process. He
himself felt such a wrath and surprise at his employer as, I suppose, a lion
does when a little dog attacks him. I should not like to be that little dog; nor
does my modest and peaceful nature at all prompt and impel me to combat with
lions.
It was mighty well Mr. Philip Firmin had shown his spirit, and quarrelled with
his bread-and-butter; but when Saturday came, what philanthropist would hand
four sovereigns and four shillings over to Mr. F., as Mr. Burjoyce, the
publisher of the Pall Mall Gazette, had been accustomed to do? I will say for my
friend that a still keener remorse than that which he felt about money thrown
away attended him when he found that Mrs. Woolsey, towards whom he had cast a
sidelong stone of persecution, was a most respectable and honourable lady. "I
should like to go, sir, and grovel before her," Philip said, in his energetic
way. "If I see that tailor, I will request him to put his foot on my head, and
trample on me with his highlows. Oh, for shame! for shame! Shall I never learn
charity towards my neighbours, and always go on believing in the lies which
people tell me? When I meet that scoundrel Trail at the club, I must chastise
him. How dared he take away the reputation of an honest woman?" Philip's friends
besought him, for the sake of society and peace, not to carry this quarrel
farther. "If," we said, "every woman whom Trail has maligned had a champion who
should box Trail's ears at the club, what a vulgar, quarrelsome place that club
would become! My dear Philip, did you ever know Mr. Trail say a good word of man
or woman?" and by these or similar entreaties and arguments, we succeeded in
keeping the Queen's peace.
Yes: but how find another Pall Mall Gazette? Had Philip possessed seven thousand
pounds in the three per cents., his income would have been no greater than that
which he drew from Mugford's faithful bank. Ah! how wonderful ways and means
are! When I think how this very line, this very word, which I am writing
represents money, I am lost in a respectful astonishment. A man takes his own
case, as he says his own prayers, on behalf of himself and his family. I am
paid, we will say, for the sake of illustration, at the rate of sixpence per
line. With the words "Ah, how wonderful," to the words "per line," I can buy a
loaf, a piece of butter, a jug of milk, a modicum of tea,��actually enough to
make breakfast for the family; and the servants of the house; and the charwoman,
their servant, can shake up the tea-leaves with a fresh supply of water, sop the
crusts, and get a meal, tant bien que mal. Wife, children, guests, servants,
charwoman, we are all actually making a meal off Philip Firmin's bones as it
were. And my next-door neighbour, whom I see marching away to chambers, umbrella
in hand? And next door but one, the city man? And next door but two the
doctor!��I know the baker has left loaves at every one of their doors this
morning, that all their chimnies are smoking, and they will all have breakfast.
Ah, thank God for it! I hope, friend, you and I are not too proud to ask for our
daily bread, and to be grateful for getting it? Mr. Philip had to work for his,
in care and trouble, like other children of men:��to work for it, and I hope to
pray for it, too. It is a t
hought to me awful and beautiful, that of the daily
prayer, and of the myriads of fellow-men uttering it, in care and in sickness,
in doubt and in poverty, in health and in wealth. Panem nostrum da nobis hodie.
Philip whispers it by the bedside where wife and child lie sleeping, and goes to
his early labour with a stouter heart: as he creeps to his rest when the day's
labour is over, and the quotidian bread is earned, and breathes his hushed
thanks to the bountiful Giver of the meal. All over this world what an endless
chorus is singing of love, and thanks, and prayer. Day tells to day the wondrous
story, and night recounts it unto night.��How do I come to think of a sunrise
which I saw near twenty years ago on the Nile, when the river and sky flushed
and glowed with the dawning light, and as the luminary appeared, the boatmen
knelt on the rosy deck, and adored Allah? So, as thy sun rises, friend, over the
humble housetops round about your home, shall you wake many and many a day to
duty and labour. May the task have been honestly done when the night comes; and
the steward deal kindly with the labourer.
So two of Philip's cables cracked and gave way after a very brief strain, and
the poor fellow held by nothing now but that wonderful European Review
established by the mysterious Tregarvan. Actors, a people of superstitions and
traditions, opine that heaven, in some mysterious way, makes managers for their
benefit. In like manner, Review proprietors are sent to provide the pabulum for
us men of letters. With what complacency did my wife listen to the somewhat
long-winded and pompous oratory of Tregarvan! He pompous and commonplace?
Tregarvan spoke with excellent good sense. That wily woman never showed she was
tired of his conversation. She praised him to Philip behind his back, and would
not allow a word in his disparagement. As a doctor will punch your chest, your
liver, your heart, listen at your lungs, squeeze your pulse, and what not, so
this practitioner studied, shampooed, auscultated Tregarvan. Of course, he
allowed himself to be operated upon. Of course, he had no idea that the lady was
flattering, wheedling, humbugging him; but thought that he was a very
well-informed, eloquent man, who had seen and read a great deal, and had an
agreeable method of imparting his knowledge, and that the lady in question was a
sensible woman, naturally eager for more information. Go, Dalilah! I understand
your tricks! I know many another Omphale in London, who will coax Hercules away
from his club, to come and listen to her wheedling talk.
One great difficulty we had was to make Philip read Tregarvan's own articles in
the Review. He at first said he could not, or that he could not remember them;
so that there was no use in reading them. And Philip's new master used to make
artful allusions to his own writings in the course of conversation, so that our
unwary friend would find himself under examination in any casual interview with
Tregarvan, whose opinions on free-trade, malt-tax, income-tax, designs of
Russia, or what not,might be accepted or denied, but ought at least to be known.
We actually made Philip get up his owner's articles. We put questions to him,
privily, regarding them��"coached" him, according to the university phrase. My
wife humbugged that wretched Member of Parliament in a way which makes me
shudder, when I think of what hypocrisy the sex is capable. Those arts and
dissimulations with which she wheedles others, suppose she exercise them on me?
Horrible thought! No, angel! To others thou mayst be a coaxing hypocrite; to me
thou art all candour! Other men may have been humbugged by other women; but I am
not to be taken in by that sort of thing; and thou art all candour!
We had then so much per annum as editor. We were paid, besides, for our