|
||||||||
resident at Tooting, and cannot fail to have been developed under the most favourable circumstances, has fits which the parish cant account for. Guster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a round ten years older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback of fits; and is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron Saint, that except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink, or the copper, or the dinner, or anything else that happens to be near her at the time of her seizure, she is always at work. She is a satisfaction to the parents and guardians of the Prentices, who feel that there is little danger of her inspiring tender emotions in the breast of youth; she is a satisfaction to Mrs Snagsby, who can always find fault with her; she is a satisfaction to Mr Snagsby, who thinks it a charity to keep her. The Law- stationers establishment is, in Gusters eyes, a Temple of plenty and splendour. She believes the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant apartment in Christendom. The view it commands of Cooks Court at one end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor Street), and of Coavinses the sheriffs officers backyard at the other, she regards as a prospect of unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in oil and plenty of it too of Mr Snagsby looking at Mrs Snagsby, and of Mrs Snagsby looking at Mr Snagsby, are in her eyes as achievements of Raphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many privations. Mr Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the business, to Mrs Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches the Tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays, licenses Mr Snagsbys entertainments, and acknowledges no responsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner; insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among the neighbouring wives, a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, and even out in Holborn, who, in any domestic passages of arms, habitually call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the wives) position and Mrs Snagsbys, and their (the husbands) behaviour and Mr Snagsbys. Rumour, always flying, bat- like, about Cooks Court and skimming in and out at everybodys windows, does say that Mrs Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive; and that Mr Snagsby is sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had the spirit of a mouse he wouldnt stand it. It is even observed, that the wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining example, in reality look down upon him; and that nobody does so with greater superciliousness than one particular lady, whose lord is more than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of correction. But these vague whisperings may arise from Mr Snagsbys being, in his way, rather a meditative and poetical man; loving to walk in Staple Inn in the summer time, and to observe how countrified the sparrows and the leaves are; also to lounge about the Rolls Yard of a Sunday afternoon, and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were old times once, and that youd find a stone coffin or two, now, under that chapel, hell be bound, if you was to dig for it. He solaces his imagination, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors and Vices, and Masters of the Rolls, who are deceased; and he gets such a flavour of the country out of telling the two Prentices how he has heard say that a brook as clear as crystial once ran right down the middle of Holborn, when Turnstile really was a turnstile leading slap away into the meadows gets such a flavour of the country out of this, that he never wants to go there. The day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully effective, for it is not quite dark. Mr Snagsby standing at his shop-door looking up at the clouds, sees a crow, who is out late, skim westward over the slice of sky belonging to Cooks Court. The crow flies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincolns Inn Garden, into Lincolns Inn Fields. Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now; and in those shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in nuts. But its roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers, still remain; and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars, flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache as would seem to be Allegorys object always, more or less. Here, among his many boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives Mr Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where the great ones of the earth are bored to death. Here he is today, quiet at his table. An oyster of the old school whom nobody can open. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
Copyright: All texts on Bibliomania are © Bibliomania.com Ltd, and may not be reproduced in any form without our written permission. See our FAQ for more details. | ||||||||