Roundabout Papers

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No. If your plate and glass are beautifully bright, your bell quickly
answered, and Thomas ready, neat, and good-humored, you are not to
expect absolute truth from him. The very obsequiousness and perfection
of his service prevents truth. He may be ever so unwell in mind or body,
and he must go through his service--hand the shining plate, replenish
the spotless glass, lay the glittering fork--never laugh when you
yourself or your guests joke--be profoundly attentive, and yet look
utterly impassive--exchange a few hurried curses at the door with that
unseen slavey who ministers without, and with you be perfectly calm and
polite. If you are ill, he will come twenty times in an hour to your
bell; or leave the girl of his heart--his mother, who is going to
America--his dearest friend, who has come to say farewell--his lunch,
and his glass of beer just freshly poured out--any or all of these, if
the door-bell rings, or the master calls out "THOMAS" from the hall. Do
you suppose you can expect absolute candor from a man whom you may order
to powder his hair? As between the Rev. Henry Holyshade and his pupil,
the idea of entire unreserve is utter bosh; so the truth as between
you and Jeames or Thomas, or Mary the housemaid, or Betty the cook,
is relative, and not to be demanded on one side or the other. Why,
respectful civility is itself a lie, which poor Jeames often has to
utter or perform to many a swaggering vulgarian, who should black
Jeames's boots, did Jeames wear them and not shoes. There is your little
Tom, just ten, ordering the great, large, quiet, orderly young man
about--shrieking calls for hot water--bullying Jeames because the boots
are not varnished enough, or ordering him to go to the stables, and ask
Jenkins why the deuce Tomkins hasn't brought his pony round--or what you
will. There is mamma rapping the knuckles of Pincot the lady's-maid,
and little Miss scolding Martha, who waits up five pair of stairs in the
nursery. Little Miss, Tommy, papa, mamma, you all expect from Martha,
from Pincot, from Jenkins, from Jeames, obsequious civility and willing
service. My dear, good people, you can't have truth too. Suppose you ask
for your newspaper, and Jeames says, "I'm reading it, and jest beg not
to be disturbed;" or suppose you ask for a can of water, and he remarks,
"You great, big, 'ulking fellar, ain't you big enough to bring it
hup yoursulf?" what would your feelings be? Now, if you made similar
proposals or requests to Mr. Jones next door, this is the kind of answer
Jones would give you. You get truth habitually from equals only; so my
good Mr. Holyshade, don't talk to me about the habitual candor of the
young Etonian of high birth, or I have my own opinion of YOUR candor or
discernment when you do. No. Tom Bowling is the soul of honor and has
been true to Black-eyed Syousan since the last time they parted at
Wapping Old Stairs; but do you suppose Tom is perfectly frank, familiar,
and aboveboard in his conversation with Admiral Nelson, K.C.B.? There
are secrets, prevarications, fibs, if you will, between Tom and the
Admiral--between your crew and THEIR captain. I know I hire a worthy,
clean, agreeable, and conscientious male or female hypocrite, at so many
guineas a year, to do so and so for me. Were he other than hypocrite
I would send him about his business. Don't let my displeasure be too
fierce with him for a fib or two on his own account.

Some dozen years ago, my family being absent in a distant part of the
country, and my business detaining me in London, I remained in my own
house with three servants on board wages. I used only to breakfast at
home; and future ages will be interested to know that this meal used
to consist, at that period, of tea, a penny roll, a pat of butter,
and, perhaps, an egg. My weekly bill used invariably to be about
fifty shillings; so that, as I never dined in the house, you see, my
breakfast, consisting of the delicacies before mentioned, cost about
seven shillings and threepence per diem. I must, therefore, have
consumed daily--

s. d.
A quarter of a pound of tea (say) 1 3
A penny roll (say) 1 0
One pound of butter (say) 1 3
One pound of lump sugar 1 0
A new-laid egg 2 9

Which is the only possible way I have for making out the sum.

Well, I fell ill while under this regimen, and had an illness which, but
for a certain doctor, who was brought to me by a certain kind friend I
had in those days, would, I think, have prevented the possibility of
my telling this interesting anecdote now a dozen years after. Don't be
frightened, my dear madam; it is not a horrid, sentimental account of
a malady you are coming to--only a question of grocery. This illness,
I say, lasted some seventeen days, during which the servants were
admirably attentive and kind; and poor John, especially, was up at
all hours, watching night after night--amiable, cheerful, untiring,
respectful, the very best of Johns and nurses.

Twice or thrice in the seventeen days I may have had a glass of eau
sucree--say a dozen glasses of eau sucree--certainly not more. Well,
this admirable, watchful, cheerful, tender, affectionate John brought
me in a little bill for seventeen pounds of sugar consumed during the
illness--"Often 'ad sugar and water; always was a callin' for it," says
John, wagging his head quite gravely. You are dead, years and years ago,
poor John--so patient, so friendly, so kind, so cheerful to the invalid
in the fever. But confess, now, wherever you are, that seventeen pounds
of sugar to make six glasses of eau sucree was a LITTLE too strong,
wasn't it, John? Ah, how frankly, how trustily, how bravely he lied,
poor John! One evening, being at Brighton, in the convalescence, I
remember John's step was unsteady, his voice thick, his laugh queer--and
having some quinine to give me, John brought the glass to me--not to my
mouth, but struck me with it pretty smartly in the eye, which was not
the way in which Dr. Elliotson had intended his prescription should be
taken. Turning that eye upon him, I ventured to hint that my attendant
had been drinking. Drinking! I never was more humiliated at the thought
of my own injustice than at John's reply. "Drinking! Sulp me! I have had
only one pint of beer with my dinner at one o'clock!"--and he retreats,
holding on by a chair. These are fibs, you see, appertaining to the
situation. John is drunk. "SULP him, he has only had an 'alf-pint of
beer with his dinner six hours ago;" and none of his fellow-servants
will say other wise. Polly is smuggled on board ship. Who tells the
lieutenant when he comes his rounds? Boys are playing cards in the
bedroom. The outlying fag announces master coming--out go candles--cards
popped into bed--boys sound asleep. Who had that light in the dormitory?
Law bless you! the poor dear innocents are every one snoring. Every one
snoring, and every snore is a lie told through the nose! Suppose one of
your boys or mine is engaged in that awful crime, are we going to break
our hearts about it? Come, come. We pull a long face, waggle a grave
head, and chuckle within our waistcoats.

Between me and those fellow-creatures of mine who are sitting in the
room below, how strange and wonderful is the partition! We meet at
every hour of the daylight, and are indebted to each other for a hundred
offices of duty and comfort of life; and we live together for years, and
don't know each other. John's voice to me is quite different from John's
voice when it addresses his mates below. If I met Hannah in the street
with a bonnet on, I doubt whether I should know her. And all these good
people with whom I may live for years and years, have cares, interests,
dear friends and relatives, mayhap schemes, passions, longing hopes,
tragedies of their own, from which a carpet and a few planks and beams
utterly separate me. When we were at the seaside, and poor Ellen used to
look so pale, and run after the postman's bell, and seize a letter in
a great scrawling hand, and read it, and cry in a corner, how should we
know that the poor little thing's heart was breaking? She fetched the
water, and she smoothed the ribbons, and she laid out the dresses, and
brought the early cup of tea in the morning, just as if she had had
no cares to keep her awake. Henry (who lived out of the house) was the
servant of a friend of mine who lived in chambers. There was a dinner
one day, and Harry waited all through the dinner. The champagne was
properly iced, the dinner was excellently served; every guest was
attended to; the dinner disappeared; the dessert was set; the claret
was in perfect order, carefully decanted, and more ready. And then Henry
said, "If you please, sir, may I go home?" He had received word that his
house was on fire; and, having seen through his dinner, he wished to go
and look after his children, and little sticks of furniture. Why, such
a man's livery is a uniform of honor. The crest on his button is a badge
of bravery.

Do you see--I imagine I do myself--in these little instances, a tinge of
humor? Ellen's heart is breaking for handsome Jeames of Buckley Square,
whose great legs are kneeling, and who has given a lock of his precious
powdered head, to some other than Ellen. Henry is preparing the sauce
for his master's wild-ducks while the engines are squirting over his
own little nest and brood. Lift these figures up but a story from the
basement to the ground-floor, and the fun is gone. We may be en pleine
tragedie. Ellen may breathe her last sigh in blank verse, calling down
blessings upon James the profligate who deserts her. Henry is a hero,
and epaulettes are on his shoulders. Atqui sciebat, &c., whatever
tortures are in store for him, he will be at his post of duty.

You concede, however, that there is a touch of humor in the two
tragedies here mentioned. Why? Is it that the idea of persons at service
is somehow ludicrous? Perhaps it is made more so in this country by the
splendid appearance of the liveried domestics of great people. When you
think that we dress in black ourselves, and put our fellow-creatures in
green, pink, or canary-colored breeches; that we order them to plaster
their hair with flour, having brushed that nonsense out of our own heads
fifty years ago; that some of the most genteel and stately among us
cause the men who drive their carriages to put on little Albino wigs,
and sit behind great nosegays--I say I suppose it is this heaping of
gold lace, gaudy colors, blooming plushes, on honest John Trot, which
makes the man absurd in our eyes, who need be nothing but a simple
reputable citizen and in-door laborer. Suppose, my dear sir, that you
yourself were suddenly desired to put on a full dress, or even undress,
domestic uniform with our friend Jones's crest repeated in varied
combinations of button on your front and back? Suppose, madam, your
son were told, that he could not get out except in lower garments of
carnation or amber-colored plush--would you let him? . . . But as you
justly say, this is not the question, and besides it is a question
fraught with danger, sir; and radicalism, sir; and subversion of the
very foundations of the social fabric, sir. . . . Well, John, we
won't enter on your great domestic question. Don't let us disport with
Jeames's dangerous strength, and the edge-tools about his knife-board:
but with Betty and Susan who wield the playful mop, and set on the
simmering kettle. Surely you have heard Mrs. Toddles talking to Mrs.
Doddles about their mutual maids. Miss Susan must have a silk gown, and
Miss Betty must wear flowers under her bonnet when she goes to church
if you please, and did you ever hear such impudence? The servant in many
small establishments is a constant and endless theme of talk. What small
wage, sleep, meal, what endless scouring, scolding, tramping on messages
fall to that poor Susan's lot; what indignation at the little kindly
passing word with the grocer's young man, the pot-boy, the chubby
butcher! Where such things will end, my dear Mrs. Toddles, I don't know.
What wages they will want next, my dear Mrs. Doddles, &c.

Here, dear ladies, is an advertisement which I cut out of The Times a
few days since, expressly for you:


"A lady is desirous of obtaining a SITUATION for a very respectable
young woman as HEAD KITCHEN-MAID under a man-cook. She has lived four
years under a very good cook and housekeeper. Can make ice, and is an
excellent baker. She will only take a place in a very good family, where
she can have the opportunity of improving herself, and, if possible,
staying for two years. Apply by letter to," &c. &c.


There, Mrs. Toddles, what do you think of that, and did you ever? Well,
no, Mrs. Doddles. Upon my word now, Mrs. T., I don't think I ever did.
A respectable young woman--as head kitchen-maid--under a man-cook, will
only take a place in a very good family, where she can improve, and
stay two years. Just note up the conditions, Mrs. Toddles, mum, if you
please, mum, and THEN let us see:--


1. This young woman is to be HEAD kitchen-maid, that is to say there is
to be a chorus of kitchen-maids, of which Y. W. is to be chief.

2. She will only be situated under a man-cook. (A) Ought he to be
a French cook; and (B), if so, would the lady desire him to be a
Protestant?

3. She will only take a place in a VERY GOOD FAMILY. How old ought the
family to be, and what do you call good? that is the question. How
long after the Conquest will do? Would a banker's family do, or is
a baronet's good enough? Best say what rank in the peerage would be
sufficiently high. But the lady does not say whether she would like a
High Church or a Low Church family. Ought there to be unmarried sons,
and may they follow a profession? and please say how many daughters; and
would the lady like them to be musical? And how many company dinners a
week? Not too many, for fear of fatiguing the upper kitchen-maid; but
sufficient, so as to keep the upper kitchen-maid's hand in. [N.B.--I
think I can see a rather bewildered expression on the countenances of
Mesdames Doddles and Toddles as I am prattling on in this easy bantering
way.]

4. The head kitchen-maid wishes to stay for two years, and improve
herself under the man-cook, and having of course sucked the brains (as
the phrase is) from under the chefs nightcap, then the head kitchen-maid
wishes to go.


And upon my word, Mrs. Toddles, mum, I will go and fetch the cab for
her. The cab? Why not her ladyship's own carriage and pair, and the head
coachman to drive away the head kitchen-maid? You see she stipulates for
everything--the time to come; the time to stay; the family she will
be with; and as soon as she has improved herself enough, of course the
upper kitchen-maid will step into the carriage and drive off.

Well, upon my word and conscience, if things are coming to THIS pass,
Mrs. Toddles and Mrs. Doddles, mum, I think I will go up stairs and get
a basin and a sponge, and then down stairs and get some hot water; and
then I will go and scrub that chalk-mark off my own door with my own
hands.

It is wiped off, I declare! After ever so many weeks! Who has done it?
It was just a little round-about mark, you know, and it was there
for days and weeks, before I ever thought it would be the text of a
Roundabout Paper.




ON BEING FOUND OUT.


At the close (let us say) of Queen Anne's reign, when I was a boy at
a private and preparatory school for young gentlemen, I remember the
wiseacre of a master ordering us all, one night, to march into a little
garden at the back of the house, and thence to proceed one by one into a
tool or hen house, (I was but a tender little thing just put into short
clothes, and can't exactly say whether the house was for tools or hens,)
and in that house to put our hands into a sack which stood on a bench, a
candle burning beside it. I put my hand into the sack. My hand came out
quite black. I went and joined the other boys in the schoolroom; and all
their hands were black too.

By reason of my tender age (and there are some critics who, I hope, will
be satisfied by my acknowledging that I am a hundred and fifty-six next
birthday) I could not understand what was the meaning of this night
excursion--this candle, this tool-house, this bag of soot. I think we
little boys were taken out of our sleep to be brought to the ordeal. We
came, then, and showed our little hands to the master; washed them or
not--most probably, I should say, not--and so went bewildered back to
bed.

Something had been stolen in the school that day; and Mr. Wiseacre
having read in a book of an ingenious method of finding out a thief by
making him put his hand into a sack (which, if guilty, the rogue would
shirk from doing), all we boys were subjected to the trial. Goodness
knows what the lost object was, or who stole it. We all had black hands
to show the master. And the thief, whoever he was, was not Found Out
that time.

I wonder if the rascal is alive--an elderly scoundrel he must be by this
time; and a hoary old hypocrite, to whom an old schoolfellow presents
his kindest regards--parenthetically remarking what a dreadful place
that private school was; cold, chilblains, bad dinners, not enough
victuals, and caning awful!--Are you alive still, I say, you nameless
villain, who escaped discovery on that day of crime? I hope you have
escaped often since, old sinner. Ah, what a lucky thing it is, for you
and me, my man, that we are NOT found out in all our peccadilloes; and
that our backs can slip away from the master and the cane!

Just consider what life would be, if every rogue was found out, and
flogged coram populo! What a butchery, what an indecency, what an
endless swishing of the rod! Don't cry out about my misanthropy. My good
friend Mealymouth, I will trouble you to tell me, do you go to church?
When there, do you say, or do you not, that you are a miserable sinner?
and saying so do you believe or disbelieve it? If you are a M. S., don't
you deserve correction, and aren't you grateful if you are to be let
off? I say again, what a blessed thing it is that we are not all found
out!

Just picture to yourself everybody who does wrong being found out,
and punished accordingly. Fancy all the boys in all the school being
whipped; and then the assistants, and then the head master (Dr. Badford
let us call him). Fancy the provost-marshal being tied up, having
previously superintended the correction of the whole army. After the
young gentlemen have had their turn for the faulty exercises, fancy Dr.
Lincolnsinn being taken up for certain faults in HIS Essay and Review.
After the clergyman has cried his peccavi, suppose we hoist up a
bishop, and give him a couple of dozen! (I see my Lord Bishop of
Double-Gloucester sitting in a very uneasy posture on his right reverend
bench.) After we have cast off the bishop, what are we to say to the
Minister who appointed him? My Lord Cinqwarden, it is painful to have
to use personal correction to a boy of your age; but really . . .
Siste tandem, carnifex! The butchery is too horrible. The hand drops
powerless, appalled at the quantity of birch which it must cut and
brandish. I am glad we are not all found out, I say again; and protest,
my dear brethren, against our having our deserts.

To fancy all men found out and punished is bad enough; but imagine all
women found out in the distinguished social circle in which you and
I have the honor to move. Is it not a mercy that a many of these fair
criminals remain unpunished and undiscovered! There is Mrs. Longbow, who
is for ever practising, and who shoots poisoned arrows, too; when you
meet her you don't call her liar, and charge her with the wickedness
she has done and is doing. There is Mrs. Painter, who passes for a most
respectable woman, and a model in society. There is no use in saying
what you really know regarding her and her goings on. There is Diana
Hunter--what a little haughty prude it is; and yet WE know stories about
her which are not altogether edifying. I say it is best, for the sake of
the good, that the bad should not all be found out. You don't want your
children to know the history of that lady in the next box, who is so
handsome, and whom they admire so. Ah me, what would life be if we were
all found out, and punished for all our faults? Jack Ketch would be in
permanence; and then who would hang Jack Ketch?

They talk of murderers being pretty certainly found out. Psha! I have
heard an authority awfully competent vow and declare that scores
and hundreds of murders are committed, and nobody is the wiser. That
terrible man mentioned one or two ways of committing murder, which he
maintained were quite common, and were scarcely ever found out. A man,
for instance, comes home to his wife, and . . . but I pause--I know that
this Magazine has a very large circulation. Hundreds and hundreds
of thousands--why not say a million of people at once?--well, say
a million, read it. And amongst these countless readers, I might be
teaching some monster how to make away with his wife without being found
out, some fiend of a woman how to destroy her dear husband. I will NOT
then tell this easy and simple way of murder, as communicated to me by a
most respectable party in the confidence of private intercourse. Suppose
some gentle reader were to try this most simple and easy receipt--it
seems to me almost infallible--and come to grief in consequence, and be
found out and hanged? Should I ever pardon myself for having been the
means of doing injury to a single one of our esteemed subscribers?
The prescription whereof I speak--that is to say, whereof I DON'T
speak--shall be buried in this bosom. No, I am a humane man. I am not
one of your Bluebeards to go and say to my wife, "My dear! I am going
away for a few days to Brighton. Here are all the keys of the house.
You may open every door and closet, except the one at the end of the
oak-room opposite the fireplace, with the little bronze Shakespeare on
the mantel-piece (or what not)." I don't say this to a woman--unless, to
be sure, I want to get rid of her--because, after such a caution, I know
she'll peep into the closet. I say nothing about the closet at all. I
keep the key in my pocket, and a being whom I love, but who, as I know,
has many weaknesses, out of harm's way. You toss up your head, dear
angel, drub on the ground with your lovely little feet, on the table
with your sweet rosy fingers, and cry, "Oh, sneerer! You don't know
the depth of woman's feeling, the lofty scorn of all deceit, the entire
absence of mean curiosity in the sex, or never, never would you libel
us so!" Ah, Delia! dear, dear Delia! It is because I fancy I do know
something about you (not all, mind--no, no; no man knows that)--Ah, my
bride, my ringdove, my rose, my poppet--choose, in fact, whatever name
you like--bulbul of my grove, fountain of my desert, sunshine of my
darkling life, and joy of my dungeoned existence, it is because I DO
know a little about you that I conclude to say nothing of that private
closet, and keep my key in my pocket. You take away that closet-key
then, and the house-key. You lock Delia in. You keep her out of harm's
way and gadding, and so she never CAN be found out.

And yet by little strange accidents and coincidents how we are being
found out every day. You remember that old story of the Abbe Kakatoes,
who told the company at supper one night how the first confession he
ever received was--from a murderer let us say. Presently enters to
supper the Marquis de Croquemitaine. "Palsambleu, abbe!" says the
brilliant marquis, taking a pinch of snuff, "are you here? Gentlemen and
ladies! I was the abbe's first penitent, and I made him a confession,
which I promise you astonished him."

To be sure how queerly things are found out! Here is an instance. Only
the other day I was writing in these Roundabout Papers about a certain
man, whom I facetiously called Baggs, and who had abused me to my
friends, who of course told me. Shortly after that paper was published
another friend--Sacks let us call him--scowls fiercely at me as I
am sitting in perfect good-humor at the club, and passes on without
speaking. A cut. A quarrel. Sacks thinks it is about him that I was
writing: whereas, upon my honor and conscience, I never had him once in
my mind, and was pointing my moral from quite another man. But don't
you see, by this wrath of the guilty-conscienced Sacks, that he had been
abusing me too? He has owned himself guilty, never having been accused.
He has winced when nobody thought of hitting him. I did but put the cap
out, and madly butting and chafing, behold my friend rushes out to put
his head into it! Never mind, Sacks, you are found out; but I bear you
no malice, my man.

And yet to be found out, I know from my own experience, must be painful
and odious, and cruelly mortifying to the inward vanity. Suppose I am a
poltroon, let us say. With fierce moustache, loud talk, plentiful oaths,
and an immense stick, I keep up nevertheless a character for courage. I
swear fearfully at cabmen and women; brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps
knock down a little man or two with it: brag of the images which I break
at the shooting-gallery, and pass amongst my friends for a whiskery
fire-eater, afraid of neither man nor dragon. Ah me! Suppose some brisk
little chap steps up and gives me a caning in St. James's Street, with
all the heads of my friends looking out of all the club windows.
My reputation is gone. I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by
whipper-snappers, who jump up on a chair to reach it. I am found out.
And in the days of my triumphs, when people were yet afraid of me, and
were taken in by my swagger, I always knew that I was a lily-liver, and
expected that I should be found out some day.