XIV
The
Honest Tradesman
To
the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his stool in Fleet-street with
his grisly urchin beside him, a vast number and variety of objects in movement
were every day presented. Who could sit upon anything in Fleet-street during
the busy hours of the day, and not be dazed and deafened by two immense
processions, one ever tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending
eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains beyond the range of red
and purple where the sun goes down!
With
his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat watching the two streams, like the
heathen rustic who has for several centuries been on duty watching one
stream--saving that Jerry had no expectation of their ever running dry. Nor
would it have been an expectation of a hopeful kind, since a small part of his
income was derived from the pilotage of timid women (mostly of a full habit and
past the middle term of life) from Tellson's side of the tides to the opposite
shore. Brief as such companionship was in every separate instance, Mr. Cruncher
never failed to become so interested in the lady as to express a strong desire
to have the honour of drinking her very good health. And it was from the gifts
bestowed upon him towards the execution of this benevolent purpose, that he
recruited his finances, as just now observed.
Time
was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, and mused in the sight of
men. Mr. Cruncher, sitting on a stool in a public place, but not being a poet,
mused as little as possible, and looked about him.
It
fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when crowds were few, and belated
women few, and when his affairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken a strong
suspicion in his breast that Mrs. Cruncher must have been "flopping"
in some pointed manner, when an unusual concourse pouring down Fleet-street
westward, attracted his attention. Looking that way, Mr. Cruncher made out that
some kind of funeral was coming along, and that there was popular objection to
this funeral, which engendered uproar.
"Young
Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, turning to his offspring, "it's a
buryin'."
"Hooroar,
father!" cried Young Jerry.
The
young gentleman uttered this exultant sound with mysterious significance. The
elder gentleman took the cry so ill, that he watched his opportunity, and smote
the young gentleman on the ear.
"What
d'ye mean? What are you hooroaring at? What do you want to conwey to your own
father, you young Rip? This boy is a getting too many for ME!" said Mr.
Cruncher, surveying him. "Him and his hooroars! Don't let me hear no more
of you, or you shall feel some more of me. D'ye hear?"
"I
warn't doing no harm," Young Jerry protested, rubbing his cheek.
"Drop
it then," said Mr. Cruncher; "I won't have none of YOUR no harms. Get
a top of that there seat, and look at the crowd."
His
son obeyed, and the crowd approached; they were bawling and hissing round a
dingy hearse and dingy mourning coach, in which mourning coach there was only
one mourner, dressed in the dingy trappings that were considered essential to
the dignity of the position. The position appeared by no means to please him,
however, with an increasing rabble surrounding the coach, deriding him, making
grimaces at him, and incessantly groaning and calling out: "Yah! Spies!
Tst! Yaha! Spies!" with many compliments too numerous and forcible to
repeat.
Funerals
had at all times a remarkable attraction for Mr. Cruncher; he always pricked up
his senses, and became excited, when a funeral passed Tellson's. Naturally,
therefore, a funeral with this uncommon attendance excited him greatly, and he
asked of the first man who ran against him:
"What
is it, brother? What's it about?"
"_I_
don't know," said the man. "Spies! Yaha! Tst! Spies!"
He
asked another man. "Who is it?"
"_I_
don't know," returned the man, clapping his hands to his mouth
nevertheless, and vociferating in a surprising heat and with the greatest
ardour, "Spies! Yaha! Tst, tst! Spi--ies!"
At
length, a person better informed on the merits of the case, tumbled against
him, and from this person he learned that the funeral was the funeral of one
Roger Cly.
"Was
He a spy?" asked Mr. Cruncher.
"Old
Bailey spy," returned his informant. "Yaha! Tst! Yah! Old Bailey
Spi--i--ies!"
"Why,
to be sure!" exclaimed Jerry, recalling the Trial at which he had
assisted. "I've seen him. Dead, is he?"
"Dead
as mutton," returned the other, "and can't be too dead. Have 'em out,
there! Spies! Pull 'em out, there! Spies!"
The
idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of any idea, that the crowd
caught it up with eagerness, and loudly repeating the suggestion to have 'em
out, and to pull 'em out, mobbed the two vehicles so closely that they came to
a stop. On the crowd's opening the coach doors, the one mourner scuffled out of
himself and was in their hands for a moment; but he was so alert, and made such
good use of his time, that in another moment he was scouring away up a
bye-street, after shedding his cloak, hat, long hatband, white
pocket-handkerchief, and other symbolical tears.
These,
the people tore to pieces and scattered far and wide with great enjoyment,
while the tradesmen hurriedly shut up their shops; for a crowd in those times
stopped at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded. They had already got the
length of opening the hearse to take the coffin out, when some brighter genius
proposed instead, its being escorted to its destination amidst general
rejoicing. Practical suggestions being much needed, this suggestion, too, was
received with acclamation, and the coach was immediately filled with eight
inside and a dozen out, while as many people got on the roof of the hearse as
could by any exercise of ingenuity stick upon it. Among the first of these
volunteers was Jerry Cruncher himself, who modestly concealed his spiky head
from the observation of Tellson's, in the further corner of the mourning coach.
The
officiating undertakers made some protest against these changes in the
ceremonies; but, the river being alarmingly near, and several voices remarking
on the efficacy of cold immersion in bringing refractory members of the
profession to reason, the protest was faint and brief. The remodelled
procession started, with a chimney-sweep driving the hearse--advised by the
regular driver, who was perched beside him, under close inspection, for the
purpose--and with a pieman, also attended by his cabinet minister, driving the
mourning coach. A bear-leader, a popular street character of the time, was impressed
as an additional ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far down the
Thus,
with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and infinite caricaturing of
woe, the disorderly procession went its way, recruiting at every step, and all
the shops shutting up before it. Its destination was the old
The
dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under the necessity of providing some
other entertainment for itself, another brighter genius (or perhaps the same)
conceived the humour of impeaching casual passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, and
wreaking vengeance on them. Chase was given to some scores of inoffensive
persons who had never been near the Old Bailey in their lives, in the
realisation of this fancy, and they were roughly hustled and maltreated. The
transition to the sport of window-breaking, and thence to the plundering of
public-houses, was easy and natural. At last, after several hours, when sundry
summer-houses had been pulled down, and some area-railings had been torn up, to
arm the more belligerent spirits, a rumour got about that the Guards were
coming. Before this rumour, the crowd gradually melted away, and perhaps the
Guards came, and perhaps they never came, and this was the usual progress of a
mob.
Mr.
Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports, but had remained behind in the
churchyard, to confer and condole with the undertakers. The place had a
soothing influence on him. He procured a pipe from a neighbouring public-house,
and smoked it, looking in at the railings and maturely considering the spot.
"Jerry,"
said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophising himself in his usual way, "you see that
there Cly that day, and you see with your own eyes that he was a young 'un and
a straight made 'un."
Having
smoked his pipe out, and ruminated a little longer, he turned himself about,
that he might appear, before the hour of closing, on his station at Tellson's.
Whether his meditations on mortality had touched his liver, or whether his
general health had been previously at all amiss, or whether he desired to show
a little attention to an eminent man, is not so much to the purpose, as that he
made a short call upon his medical adviser--a distinguished surgeon--on his way
back.
Young
Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest, and reported No job in his
absence. The bank closed, the ancient clerks came out, the usual watch was set,
and Mr. Cruncher and his son went home to tea.
"Now,
I tell you where it is!" said Mr. Cruncher to his wife, on entering.
"If, as a honest tradesman, my wenturs goes wrong to-night, I shall make
sure that you've been praying again me, and I shall work you for it just the
same as if I seen you do it."
The
dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head.
"Why,
you're at it afore my face!" said Mr. Cruncher, with signs of angry
apprehension.
"I
am saying nothing."
"Well,
then; don't meditate nothing. You might as well flop as meditate. You may as well
go again me one way as another. Drop it altogether."
"Yes,
Jerry."
"Yes,
Jerry," repeated Mr. Cruncher sitting down to tea. "Ah! It IS yes,
Jerry. That's about it. You may say yes, Jerry."
Mr.
Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky corroborations, but made use
of them, as people not unfrequently do, to express general ironical
dissatisfaction.
"You
and your yes, Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, taking a bite out of his
bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it down with a large invisible oyster out
of his saucer. "Ah! I think so. I believe you."
"You
are going out to-night?" asked his decent wife, when he took another bite.
"Yes,
I am."
"May
I go with you, father?" asked his son, briskly.
"No,
you mayn't. I'm a going--as your mother knows--a fishing. That's where I'm
going to. Going a fishing."
"Your
fishing-rod gets rayther rusty; don't it, father?"
"Never
you mind."
"Shall
you bring any fish home, father?"
"If
I don't, you'll have short commons, to-morrow," returned that gentleman,
shaking his head; "that's questions enough for you; I ain't a going out,
till you've been long abed."
He
devoted himself during the remainder of the evening to keeping a most vigilant watch
on Mrs. Cruncher, and sullenly holding her in conversation that she might be
prevented from meditating any petitions to his disadvantage. With this view, he
urged his son to hold her in conversation also, and led the unfortunate woman a
hard life by dwelling on any causes of complaint he could bring against her,
rather than he would leave her for a moment to her own reflections. The
devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an
honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. It was as if a
professed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost story.
"And
mind you!" said Mr. Cruncher. "No games to-morrow! If I, as a honest
tradesman, succeed in providing a jinte of meat or two, none of your not
touching of it, and sticking to bread. If I, as a honest tradesman, am able to
provide a little beer, none of your declaring on water. When you go to
Then
he began grumbling again:
"With
your flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I don't know how
scarce you mayn't make the wittles and drink here, by your flopping tricks and
your unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he IS your'n, ain't he? He's as thin
as a lath. Do you call yourself a mother, and not know that a mother's first
duty is to blow her boy out?"
This
touched Young Jerry on a tender place; who adjured his mother to perform her
first duty, and, whatever else she did or neglected, above all things to lay
especial stress on the discharge of that maternal function so affectingly and
delicately indicated by his other parent.
Thus
the evening wore away with the Cruncher family, until Young Jerry was ordered
to bed, and his mother, laid under similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr.
Cruncher beguiled the earlier watches of the night with solitary pipes, and did
not start upon his excursion until nearly one o'clock. Towards that small and
ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a
locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope
and chain, and other fishing tackle of that nature. Disposing these articles
about him in skilful manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Cruncher,
extinguished the light, and went out.
Young
Jerry, who had only made a feint of undressing when he went to bed, was not
long after his father. Under cover of the darkness he followed out of the room,
followed down the stairs, followed down the court, followed out into the
streets. He was in no uneasiness concerning his getting into the house again,
for it was full of lodgers, and the door stood ajar all night.
Impelled
by a laudable ambition to study the art and mystery of his father's honest
calling, Young Jerry, keeping as close to house fronts, walls, and doorways, as
his eyes were close to one another, held his honoured parent in view. The
honoured parent steering Northward, had not gone far, when he was joined by
another disciple of Izaak Walton, and the two trudged on together.
Within
half an hour from the first starting, they were beyond the winking lamps, and
the more than winking watchmen, and were out upon a lonely road. Another
fisherman was picked up here--and that so silently, that if Young Jerry had
been superstitious, he might have supposed the second follower of the gentle
craft to have, all of a sudden, split himself into two.
The
three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the three stopped under a bank
overhanging the road. Upon the top of the bank was a low brick wall, surmounted
by an iron railing. In the shadow of bank and wall the three turned out of the
road, and up a blind lane, of which the wall--there, risen to some eight or ten
feet high--formed one side. Crouching down in a corner, peeping up the lane,
the next object that Young Jerry saw, was the form of his honoured parent,
pretty well defined against a watery and clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron
gate. He was soon over, and then the second fisherman got over, and then the
third. They all dropped softly on the ground within the gate, and lay there a
little--listening perhaps. Then, they moved away on their hands and knees.
It
was now Young Jerry's turn to approach the gate: which he did, holding his
breath. Crouching down again in a corner there, and looking in, he made out the
three fishermen creeping through some rank grass! and all the gravestones in
the churchyard--it was a large churchyard that they were in--looking on like
ghosts in white, while the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a
monstrous giant. They did not creep far, before they stopped and stood upright.
And then they began to fish.
They
fished with a spade, at first. Presently the honoured parent appeared to be
adjusting some instrument like a great corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked
with, they worked hard, until the awful striking of the church clock so
terrified Young Jerry, that he made off, with his hair as stiff as his
father's.
But,
his long-cherished desire to know more about these matters, not only stopped
him in his running away, but lured him back again. They were still fishing
perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for the second time; but, now they
seemed to have got a bite. There was a screwing and complaining sound down
below, and their bent figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow degrees
the weight broke away the earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Jerry
very well knew what it would be; but, when he saw it, and saw his honoured
parent about to wrench it open, he was so frightened, being new to the sight,
that he made off again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.
He
would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary than breath, it being
a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one highly desirable to get to the end
of. He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him;
and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end,
always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side--perhaps taking
his arm-- it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend
too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted
out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of
them like a dropsical boy's-Kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways
too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up to its
ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road, and lay
cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was incessantly hopping
on behind and gaining on him, so that when the boy got to his own door he had
reason for being half dead. And even then it would not leave him, but followed
him upstairs with a bump on every stair, scrambled into bed with him, and
bumped down, dead and heavy, on his breast when he fell asleep.
From
his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet was awakened after daybreak
and before sunrise, by the presence of his father in the family room. Something
had gone wrong with him; at least, so Young Jerry inferred, from the
circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears, and knocking the back of
her head against the head-board of the bed.
"I
told you I would," said Mr. Cruncher, "and I did."
"Jerry,
Jerry, Jerry!" his wife implored.
"You
oppose yourself to the profit of the business," said Jerry, "and me
and my partners suffer. You was to honour and obey; why the devil don't
you?"
"I
try to be a good wife, Jerry," the poor woman protested, with tears.
"Is
it being a good wife to oppose your husband's business? Is it honouring your
husband to dishonour his business? Is it obeying your husband to disobey him on
the wital subject of his business?"
"You
hadn't taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry."
"It's
enough for you," retorted Mr. Cruncher, "to be the wife of a honest
tradesman, and not to occupy your female mind with calculations when he took to
his trade or when he didn't. A honouring and obeying wife would let his trade
alone altogether. Call yourself a religious woman? If you're a religious woman,
give me a irreligious one! You have no more nat'ral sense of duty than the bed
of this here
The
altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, and terminated in the honest
tradesman's kicking off his clay-soiled boots, and lying down at his length on
the floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on his back, with his rusty
hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay down too, and fell asleep again.
There
was no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else. Mr. Cruncher was out
of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron pot-lid by him as a projectile
for the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in case he should observe any symptoms of
her saying Grace. He was brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off with
his son to pursue his ostensible calling.
Young
Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at his father's side along sunny
and crowded Fleet-street, was a very different Young Jerry from him of the
previous night, running home through darkness and solitude from his grim
pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day, and his qualms were gone with the
night--in which particulars it is not improbable that he had compeers in
Fleet-street and the City of
"Father,"
said Young Jerry, as they walked along: taking care to keep at arm's length and
to have the stool well between them: "what's a Resurrection-Man?"
Mr.
Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before he answered, "How should I
know?"
"I
thought you knowed everything, father," said the artless boy.
"Hem!
Well," returned Mr. Cruncher, going on again, and lifting off his hat to
give his spikes free play, "he's a tradesman."
"What's
his goods, father?" asked the brisk Young Jerry.
"His
goods," said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in his mind, "is a
branch of Scientific goods."
"Persons'
bodies, ain't it, father?" asked the lively boy.
"I
believe it is something of that sort," said Mr. Cruncher.
"Oh,
father, I should so like to be a Resurrection-Man when I'm quite growed
up!"
Mr.
Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a dubious and moral way. "It
depends upon how you dewelop your talents. Be careful to dewelop your talents,
and never to say no more than you can help to nobody, and there's no telling at
the present time what you may not come to be fit for." As Young Jerry,
thus encouraged, went on a few yards in advance, to plant the stool in the
shadow of the Bar, Mr. Cruncher added to himself: "Jerry, you honest
tradesman, there's hopes wot that boy will yet be a blessing to you, and a
recompense to you for his mother!"