Mrs. Lirriper’s
Legacy
by
Charles Dickens
CHAPTER I
MRS. LIRRIPER RELATES HOW SHE
WENT ON,
AND WENT OVER
A
H! I T’S PLEASANT to drop into my own easy-chair
my dear though a little palpitating what with trot
ting up-stairs and what with trotting down, and
why kitchen stairs should all be corner stairs is for the
builders to justify though I do not think they fully under-
stand their trade and never did, else why the sameness
and why not more conveniences and fewer draughts and
likewise making a practice of laying the plaster on too
thick I am well convinced which holds the damp, and as
to chimney-pots putting them on by guess-work like hats
at a party and no more knowing what their effect will be
upon the smoke bless you than I do if so much, except
that it will mostly be either to send it down your throat
in a straight form or give it a twist before it goes there.
And what I says speaking as I find of those new metal
chimneys all manner of shapes (there’s a row of ‘em at
Miss Wozenham’s lodging-house lower down on the other
side of the way) is that they only work your smoke into
artificial patterns for you before you swallow it and that
I’d quite as soon swallow mine plain, the flavour being
the same, not to mention the conceit of putting up signs
on the top of your house to show the forms in which you
take your smoke into your inside.
Being here before your eyes my dear in my own easy-
chair in my own quiet room in my own Lodging-House
Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand London situated
midway between the City and St. James’s—if anything is
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where it used to be with these hotels calling themselves
Limited but called unlimited by Major Jackman rising up
everywhere and rising up into flagstaffs where they can’t
go any higher, but my mind of those monsters is give me
a landlord’s or landlady’s wholesome face when I come off
a journey and not a brass plate with an electrified number
clicking out of it which it’s not in nature can be glad to
see me and to which I don’t want to be hoisted like mo-
lasses at the Docks and left there telegraphing for help
with the most ingenious instruments but quite in vain—
being here my dear I have no call to mention that I am
still in the Lodgings as a business hoping to die in the
same and if agreeable to the clergy partly read over at
Saint Clement’s Danes and concluded in Hatfield church-
yard when lying once again by my poor Lirriper ashes to
ashes and dust to dust.
Neither should I tell you any news my dear in telling
you that the Major is still a fixture in the Parlours quite as
much so as the roof of the house, and that Jemmy is of
boys the best and brightest and has ever had kept from
him the cruel story of his poor pretty young mother Mrs.
Edson being deserted in the second floor and dying in my
arms, fully believing that I am his born Gran and him an
orphan, though what with engineering since he took a
taste for it and him and the Major making Locomotives
out of parasols broken iron pots and cotton-reels and
them absolutely a getting off the line and falling over the
table and injuring the passengers almost equal to the origi-
nals it really is quite wonderful. And when I says to the
Major, “Major can’t you by any means give us a communi-
cation with the guard?” the Major says quite huffy, “No
madam it’s not to be done,” and when I says “Why not?”
the Major says, “That is between us who are in the Railway
Interest madam and our friend the Right Honourable Vice-
President of the Board of Trade” and if you’ll believe me
my dear the Major wrote to Jemmy at school to consult
him on the answer I should have before I could get even
that amount of unsatisfactoriness out of the man, the
reason being that when we first began with the little model
and the working signals beautiful and perfect (being in
general as wrong as the real) and when I says laughing
“What appointment am I to hold in this undertaking gentle-
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men?” Jemmy hugs me round the neck and tells me danc-
ing, “You shall be the Public Gran” and consequently they
put upon me just as much as ever they like and I sit a
growling in my easy-chair.
My dear whether it is that a grown man as clever as the
Major cannot give half his heart and mind to anything—
even a plaything—but must get into right down earnest
with it, whether it is so or whether it is not so I do not
undertake to say, but Jemmy is far out-done by the seri-
ous and believing ways of the Major in the management of
the United Grand Junction Lirriper and Jackman Great
Norfolk Parlour Line, “For” says my Jemmy with the spar-
kling eyes when it was christened, “we must have a whole
mouthful of name Gran or our dear old Public” and there
the young rogue kissed me, “won’t stump up.” So the
Public took the shares—ten at ninepence, and immedi-
ately when that was spent twelve Preference at one and
sixpence—and they were all signed by Jemmy and coun-
tersigned by the Major, and between ourselves much bet-
ter worth the money than some shares I have paid for in
my time. In the same holidays the line was made and
worked and opened and ran excursions and had collisions
and burst its boilers and all sorts of accidents and of-
fences all most regular correct and pretty. The sense of
responsibility entertained by the Major as a military style
of station-master my dear starting the down train behind
time and ringing one of those little bells that you buy
with the little coal-scuttles off the tray round the man’s
neck in the street did him honour, but noticing the Major
of a night when he is writing out his monthly report to
Jemmy at school of the state of the Rolling Stock and the
Permanent Way and all the rest of it (the whole kept upon
the Major’s sideboard and dusted with his own hands ev-
ery morning before varnishing his boots) I notice him as
full of thought and care as full can be and frowning in a
fearful manner, but indeed the Major does nothing by halves
as witness his great delight in going out surveying with
Jemmy when he has Jemmy to go with, carrying a chain
and a measuring-tape and driving I don’t know what im-
provements right through Westminster Abbey and fully
believed in the streets to be knocking everything upside
down by Act of Parliament. As please Heaven will come to
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pass when Jemmy takes to that as a profession!
Mentioning my poor Lirriper brings into my head his
own youngest brother the Doctor though Doctor of what
I am sure it would be hard to say unless Liquor, for nei-
ther Physic nor Music nor yet Law does Joshua Lirriper
know a morsel of except continually being summoned to
the County Court and having orders made upon him which
he runs away from, and once was taken in the passage of
this very house with an umbrella up and the Major’s hat
on, giving his name with the door-mat round him as Sir
Johnson Jones, K.C.B. in spectacles residing at the Horse
Guards. On which occasion he had got into the house not
a minute before, through the girl letting him on the mat
when he sent in a piece of paper twisted more like one of
those spills for lighting candles than a note, offering me
the choice between thirty shillings in hand and his brains
on the premises marked immediate and waiting for an
answer. My dear it gave me such a dreadful turn to think
of the brains of my poor dear Lirriper’s own flesh and
blood flying about the new oilcloth however unworthy to
be so assisted, that I went out of my room here to ask
him what he would take once for all not to do it for life
when I found him in the custody of two gentlemen that I
should have judged to be in the feather-bed trade if they
had not announced the law, so fluffy were their personal
appearance. “Bring your chains, sir,” says Joshua to the
littlest of the two in the biggest hat, “rivet on my fet-
ters!” Imagine my feelings when I pictered him clanking
up Norfolk Street in irons and Miss Wozenham looking out
of window! “Gentlemen,” I says all of a tremble and ready
to drop “please to bring him into Major Jackman’s apart-
ments.” So they brought him into the Parlours, and when
the Major spies his own curly-brimmed hat on him which
Joshua Lirriper had whipped off its peg in the passage for
a military disguise he goes into such a tearing passion
that he tips it off his head with his hand and kicks it up to
the ceiling with his foot where it grazed long afterwards.
“Major” I says “be cool and advise me what to do with
Joshua my dead and gone Lirriper’s own youngest brother.”
“Madam” says the Major “my advice is that you board and
lodge him in a Powder Mill, with a handsome gratuity to
the proprietor when exploded.” “Major” I says “as a Chris-
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tian you cannot mean your words.” “Madam” says the
Major “by the Lord I do!” and indeed the Major besides
being with all his merits a very passionate man for his size
had a bad opinion of Joshua on account of former troubles
even unattended by liberties taken with his apparel. When
Joshua Lirriper hears this conversation betwixt us he turns
upon the littlest one with the biggest hat and says “Come
sir! Remove me to my vile dungeon. Where is my mouldy
straw?” My dear at the picter of him rising in my mind
dressed almost entirely in padlocks like Baron Trenck in
Jemmy’s book I was so overcome that I burst into tears
and I says to the Major, “Major take my keys and settle
with these gentlemen or I shall never know a happy minute
more,” which was done several times both before and since,
but still I must remember that Joshua Lirriper has his
good feelings and shows them in being always so troubled
in his mind when he cannot wear mourning for his brother.
Many a long year have I left off my widow’s mourning not
being wishful to intrude, but the tender point in Joshua
that I cannot help a little yielding to is when he writes
“One single sovereign would enable me to wear a decent
suit of mourning for my much-loved brother. I vowed at
the time of his lamented death that I would ever wear
sables in memory of him but Alas how short-sighted is
man, How keep that vow when penniless!” It says a good
deal for the strength of his feelings that he couldn’t have
been seven year old when my poor Lirriper died and to
have kept to it ever since is highly creditable. But we
know there’s good in all of us,—if we only knew where it
was in some of us,—and though it was far from delicate
in Joshua to work upon the dear child’s feelings when first
sent to school and write down into Lincolnshire for his
pocket-money by return of post and got it, still he is my
poor Lirriper’s own youngest brother and mightn’t have
meant not paying his bill at the Salisbury Arms when his
affection took him down to stay a fortnight at Hatfield
churchyard and might have meant to keep sober but for
bad company. Consequently if the Major had played on
him with the garden-engine which he got privately into
his room without my knowing of it, I think that much as
I should have regretted it there would have been words
betwixt the Major and me. Therefore my dear though he
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played on Mr. Buffle by mistake being hot in his head, and
though it might have been misrepresented down at
Wozenham’s into not being ready for Mr. Buffle in other
respects he being the Assessed Taxes, still I do not so
much regret it as perhaps I ought. And whether Joshua
Lirriper will yet do well in life I cannot say, but I did hear
of his coming, out at a Private Theatre in the character of
a Bandit without receiving any offers afterwards from the
regular managers.
Mentioning Mr. Baffle gives an instance of there being
good in persons where good is not expected, for it cannot
be denied that Mr. Buffle’s manners when engaged in his
business were not agreeable. To collect is one thing, and
to look about as if suspicious of the goods being gradu-
ally removing in the dead of the night by a back door is
another, over taxing you have no control but suspecting
is voluntary. Allowances too must ever be made for a
gentleman of the Major’s warmth not relishing being spoke
to with a pen in the mouth, and while I do not know that
it is more irritable to my own feelings to have a low-
crowned hat with a broad brim kept on in doors than any
other hat still I can appreciate the Major’s, besides which
without bearing malice or vengeance the Major is a man
that scores up arrears as his habit always was with Joshua
Lirriper. So at last my dear the Major lay in wait for Mr.
Buffle, and it worrited me a good deal. Mr. Buffle gives
his rap of two sharp knocks one day and the Major bounces
to the door. “Collector has called for two quarters’ As-
sessed Taxes” says Mr. Buffle. “They are ready for him”
says the Major and brings him in here. But on the way Mr.
Buffle looks about him in his usual suspicious manner and
the Major fires and asks him “Do you see a Ghost sir?” “No
sir” says Mr. Buffle. “Because I have before noticed you”
says the Major “apparently looking for a spectre very hard
beneath the roof of my respected friend. When you find
that supernatural agent, be so good as point him out sir.”
Mr. Buffle stares at the Major and then nods at me. “Mrs.
Lirriper sir” says the Major going off into a perfect steam
and introducing me with his hand. “Pleasure of knowing
her” says Mr. Buffle. “A—hum!—Jemmy Jackman sir!”
says the Major introducing himself. “Honour of knowing
you by sight” says Mr. Buffle. “Jemmy Jackman sir” says
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the Major wagging his head sideways in a sort of obsti-
nate fury “presents to you his esteemed friend that lady
Mrs. Emma Lirriper of Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand
London in the County of Middlesex in the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland. Upon which occasion sir,”
says the Major, “Jemmy Jackman takes your hat off.” Mr.
Buffle looks at his hat where the Major drops it on the
floor, and he picks it up and puts it on again. “Sir” says
the Major very red and looking him full in the face “there
are two quarters of the Gallantry Taxes due and the Col-
lector has called.” Upon which if you can believe my words
my dear the Major drops Mr. Buffle’s hat off again. “This—
” Mr. Buffle begins very angry with his pen in his mouth,
when the Major steaming more and more says “Take your
bit out sir! Or by the whole infernal system of Taxation of
this country and every individual figure in the National
Debt, I’ll get upon your back and ride you like a horse!”
which it’s my belief he would have done and even actually
jerking his neat little legs ready for a spring as it was.
“This,” says Mr. Buffle without his pen “is an assault and
I’ll have the law of you.” “Sir” replies the Major “if you are
a man of honour, your Collector of whatever may be due
on the Honourable Assessment by applying to Major
Jackman at the Parlours Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings, may ob-
tain what he wants in full at any moment.”
When the Major glared at Mr. Buffle with those meaning
words my dear I literally gasped for a teaspoonful of
salvolatile in a wine-glass of water, and I says “Pray let it
go no farther gentlemen I beg and beseech of you!” But
the Major could be got to do nothing else but snort long
after Mr. Buffle was gone, and the effect it had upon my
whole mass of blood when on the next day of Mr. Buffle’s
rounds the Major spruced himself up and went humming a
tune up and down the street with one eye almost obliter-
ated by his hat there are not expressions in Johnson’s
Dictionary to state. But I safely put the street door on
the jar and got behind the Major’s blinds with my shawl
on and my mind made up the moment I saw danger to
rush out screeching till my voice failed me and catch the
Major round the neck till my strength went and have all
parties bound. I had not been behind the blinds a quarter
of an hour when I saw Mr. Buffle approaching with his
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Collecting-books in his hand. The Major likewise saw him
approaching and hummed louder and himself approached.
They met before the Airy railings. The Major takes off his
hat at arm’s length and says “Mr. Buffle I believe?” Mr.
Buffle takes off HIS hat at arm’s length and says “That is
my name sir.” Says the Major “Have you any commands
for me, Mr. Buffle?” Says Mr. Buffle “Not any sir.” Then
my dear both of ‘em bowed very low and haughty and
parted, and whenever Mr. Buffle made his rounds in future
him and the Major always met and bowed before the Airy
railings, putting me much in mind of Hamlet and the
other gentleman in mourning before killing one another,
though I could have wished the other gentleman had done
it fairer and even if less polite no poison.
Mr. Buffle’s family were not liked in this neighbourhood,
for when you are a householder my dear you’ll find it does
not come by nature to like the Assessed, and it was con-
sidered besides that a one-horse pheayton ought not to
have elevated Mrs. Buffle to that height especially when
purloined from the Taxes which I myself did consider un-
charitable. But they were NOT liked and there was that
domestic unhappiness in the family in consequence of
their both being very hard with Miss Buffle and one an-
other on account of Miss Buffle’s favouring Mr. Buffle’s
articled young gentleman, that it WAS whispered that Miss
Buffle would go either into a consumption or a convent
she being so very thin and off her appetite and two close-
shaved gentlemen with white bands round their necks
peeping round the corner whenever she went out in waist-
coats resembling black pinafores. So things stood towards
Mr. Buffle when one night I was woke by a frightful noise
and a smell of burning, and going to my bedroom window
saw the whole street in a glow. Fortunately we had two
sets empty just then and before I could hurry on some
clothes I heard the Major hammering at the attics’ doors
and calling out “Dress yourselves!—Fire! Don’t be fright-
ened!—Fire! Collect your presence of mind!—Fire! All
right—Fire!” most tremenjously. As I opened my bed-
room door the Major came tumbling in over himself and
me, and caught me in his arms. “Major” I says breathless
“where is it?” “I don’t know dearest madam” says the
Major—”Fire! Jemmy Jackman will defend you to the last
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drop of his blood—Fire! If the dear boy was at home what
a treat this would be for him—Fire!” and altogether very
collected and bold except that he couldn’t say a single
sentence without shaking me to the very centre with roaring
Fire. We ran down to the drawing-room and put our heads
out of window, and the Major calls to an unfeeling young
monkey, scampering by be joyful and ready to split “Where
is it?—Fire!” The monkey answers without stopping “O
here’s a lark! Old Buffle’s been setting his house alight to
prevent its being found out that he boned the Taxes. Hur-
rah! Fire!” And then the sparks came flying up and the
smoke came pouring down and the crackling of flames
and spatting of water and banging of engines and hacking
of axes and breaking of glass and knocking at doors and
the shouting and crying and hurrying and the heat and
altogether gave me a dreadful palpitation. “Don’t be fright-
ened dearest madam,” says the Major, “—Fire! There’s
nothing to be alarmed at—Fire! Don’t open the street
door till I come back—Fire! I’ll go and see if I can be of
any service—Fire! You’re quite composed and comfort-
able ain’t you?—Fire, Fire, Fire!” It was in vain for me to
hold the man and tell him he’d be galloped to death by
the engines—pumped to death by his over-exertions—
wet-feeted to death by the slop and mess—flattened to
death when the roofs fell in—his spirit was up and he
went scampering off after the young monkey with all the
breath he had and none to spare, and me and the girls
huddled together at the parlour windows looking at the
dreadful flames above the houses over the way, Mr. Buffle’s
being round the corner. Presently what should we see but
some people running down the street straight to our door,
and then the Major directing operations in the busiest
way, and then some more people and then—carried in a
chair similar to Guy Fawkes—Mr. Buffle in a blanket!
My dear the Major has Mr. Buffle brought up our steps
and whisked into the parlour and carted out on the sofy,
and then he and all the rest of them without so much as
a word burst away again full speed leaving the impression
of a vision except for Mr. Buffle awful in his blanket with
his eyes a rolling. In a twinkling they all burst back again
with Mrs. Buffle in another blanket, which whisked in and
carted out on the sofy they all burst off again and all
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burst back again with Miss Buffle in another blanket, which
again whisked in and carted out they all burst off again
and all burst back again with Mr. Buffle’s articled young
gentleman in another blanket—him a holding round the
necks of two men carrying him by the legs, similar to the
picter of the disgraceful creetur who has lost the fight
(but where the chair I do not know) and his hair having
the appearance of newly played upon. When all four of a
row, the Major rubs his hands and whispers me with what
little hoarseness he can get together, “If our dear remark-
able boy was only at home what a delightful treat this
would be for him!”
My dear we made them some hot tea and toast and
some hot brandy-and-water with a little comfortable nut-
meg in it, and at first they were scared and low in their
spirits but being fully insured got sociable. And the first
use Mr. Buffle made of his tongue was to call the Major
his Preserver and his best of friends and to say “My for
ever dearest sir let me make you known to Mrs. Buffle”
which also addressed him as her Preserver and her best of
friends and was fully as cordial as the blanket would ad-
mit of. Also Miss Buffle. The articled young gentleman’s
head was a little light and he sat a moaning “Robina is
reduced to cinders, Robina is reduced to cinders!” Which
went more to the heart on account of his having got
wrapped in his blanket as if he was looking out of a
violinceller case, until Mr. Buffle says “Robina speak to
him!” Miss Buffle says “Dear George!” and but for the
Major’s pouring down brandy-and-water on the instant
which caused a catching in his throat owing to the nut-
meg and a violent fit of coughing it might have proved
too much for his strength. When the articled young gentle-
man got the better of it Mr. Buffle leaned up against Mrs.
Buffle being two bundles, a little while in confidence, and
then says with tears in his eyes which the Major noticing
wiped, “We have not been an united family, let us after
this danger become so, take her George.” The young gentle-
man could not put his arm out far to do it, but his spoken
expressions were very beautiful though of a wandering
class. And I do not know that I ever had a much pleasanter
meal than the breakfast we took together after we had all
dozed, when Miss Buffle made tea very sweetly in quite
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the Roman style as depicted formerly at Covent Garden
Theatre and when the whole family was most agreeable, as
they have ever proved since that night when the Major
stood at the foot of the Fire-Escape and claimed them as
they came down—the young gentleman head-foremost,
which accounts. And though I do not say that we should
be less liable to think ill of one another if strictly limited
to blankets, still I do say that we might most of us come
to a better understanding if we kept one another less at a
distance.
Why there’s Wozenham’s lower down on the other side
of the street. I had a feeling of much soreness several
years respecting what I must still ever call Miss Wozenham’s
systematic underbidding and the likeness of the house in
Bradshaw having far too many windows and a most um-
brageous and outrageous Oak which never yet was seen in
Norfolk Street nor yet a carriage and four at Wozenham’s
door, which it would have been far more to Bradshaw’s
credit to have drawn a cab. This frame of mind continued
bitter down to the very afternoon in January last when
one of my girls, Sally Rairyganoo which I still suspect of
Irish extraction though family represented Cambridge, else
why abscond with a bricklayer of the Limerick persuasion
and be married in pattens not waiting till his black eye
was decently got round with all the company fourteen in
number and one horse fighting outside on the roof of the
vehicle,—I repeat my dear my ill-regulated state of mind
towards Miss Wozenham continued down to the very af-
ternoon of January last past when Sally Rairyganoo came
banging (I can use no milder expression) into my room
with a jump which may be Cambridge and may not, and
said “Hurroo Missis! Miss Wozenham’s sold up!” My dear
when I had it thrown in my face and conscience that the
girl Sally had reason to think I could be glad of the ruin of
a fellow-creeter, I burst into tears and dropped back in
my chair and I says “I am ashamed of myself!”
Well! I tried to settle to my tea but I could not do it
what with thinking of Miss Wozenham and her distresses.
It was a wretched night and I went up to a front window
and looked over at Wozenham’s and as well as I could
make it out down the street in the fog it was the dismallest
of the dismal and not a light to be seen. So at last I save
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to myself “This will not do,” and I puts on my oldest
bonnet and shawl not wishing Miss Wozenham to be re-
minded of my best at such a time, and lo and behold you
I goes over to Wozenham’s and knocks. “Miss Wozenham
at home?” I says turning my head when I heard the door
go. And then I saw it was Miss Wozenham herself who had
opened it and sadly worn she was poor thing and her eyes
all swelled and swelled with crying. “Miss Wozenham” I
says “it is several years since there was a little unpleas-
antness betwixt us on the subject of my grandson’s cap
being down your Airy. I have overlooked it and I hope you
have done the same.” “Yes Mrs. Lirriper” she says in a
surprise, I have.” “Then my dear” I says “I should be glad
to come in and speak a word to you.” Upon my calling her
my dear Miss Wozenham breaks out a crying most pitiful,
and a not unfeeling elderly person that might have been
better shaved in a nightcap with a hat over it offering a
polite apology for the mumps having worked themselves
into his constitution, and also for sending home to his
wife on the bellows which was in his hand as a writing-
desk, looks out of the back parlour and says “The lady
wants a word of comfort” and goes in again. So I was able
to say quite natural “Wants a word of comfort does she
sir? Then please the pigs she shall have it!” And Miss
Wozenham and me we go into the front room with a
wretched light that seemed to have been crying too and
was sputtering out, and I says “Now my dear, tell me all,”
and she wrings her hands and says “O Mrs. Lirriper that
man is in possession here, and I have not a friend in the
world who is able to help me with a shilling.”
It doesn’t signify a bit what a talkative old body like me
said to Miss Wozenham when she said that, and so I’ll tell
you instead my dear that I’d have given thirty shillings to
have taken her over to tea, only I durstn’t on account of
the Major. Not you see but what I knew I could draw the
Major out like thread and wind him round my finger on
most subjects and perhaps even on that if I was to set
myself to it, but him and me had so often belied Miss
Wozenham to one another that I was shamefaced, and I
knew she had offended his pride and never mine, and like-
wise I felt timid that that Rairyganoo girl might make
things awkward. So I says “My dear if you could give me a
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cup of tea to clear my muddle of a head I should better
understand your affairs.” And we had the tea and the
affairs too and after all it was but forty pound, and—
There! she’s as industrious and straight a creeter as ever
lived and has paid back half of it already, and where’s the
use of saying more, particularly when it ain’t the point?
For the point is that when she was a kissing my hands and
holding them in hers and kissing them again and blessing
blessing blessing, I cheered up at last and I says “Why
what a waddling old goose I have been my dear to take
you for something so very different!” “Ah but I too” says
she “how have I mistaken you!” “Come for goodness’ sake
tell me” I says “what you thought of me?” “O” says she
“I thought you had no feeling for such a hard hand-to-
mouth life as mine, and were rolling in affluence.” I says
shaking my sides (and very glad to do it for I had been a
choking quite long enough) “Only look at my figure my
dear and give me your opinion whether if I was in afflu-
ence I should be likely to roll in it? “That did it? We got
as merry as grigs (whatever THEY are, if you happen to
know my dear—I don’t) and I went home to my blessed
home as happy and as thankful as could be. But before I
make an end of it, think even of my having misunderstood
the Major! Yes! For next forenoon the Major came into my
little room with his brushed hat in his hand and he begins
“My dearest madam—” and then put his face in his hat as
if he had just come into church. As I sat all in a maze he
came out of his hat and began again. “My esteemed and
beloved friend—” and then went into his hat again. “Ma-
jor,” I cries out frightened “has anything happened to our
darling boy?” “No, no, no” says the Major “but Miss
Wozenham has been here this morning to make her ex-
cuses to me, and by the Lord I can’t get over what she
told me.” “Hoity toity, Major,” I says “you don’t know yet
that I was afraid of you last night and didn’t think half as
well of you as I ought! So come out of church Major and
forgive me like a dear old friend and I’ll never do so any
more.” And I leave you to judge my dear whether I ever
did or will. And how affecting to think of Miss Wozenham
out of her small income and her losses doing so much for
her poor old father, and keeping a brother that had had
the misfortune to soften his brain against the hard math-
16
Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy
ematics as neat as a new pin in the three back represented
to lodgers as a lumber-room and consuming a whole shoul-
der of mutton whenever provided!
And now my dear I really am a going to tell you about
my Legacy if you’re inclined to favour me with your atten-
tion, and I did fully intend to have come straight to it
only one thing does so bring up another. It was the month
of June and the day before Midsummer Day when my girl
Winifred Madgers—she was what is termed a Plymouth
Sister, and the Plymouth Brother that made away with her
was quite right, for a tidier young woman for a wife never
came into a house and afterwards called with the
beautifullest Plymouth Twins—it was the day before Mid-
summer Day when Winifred Madgers comes and says to me
“A gentleman from the Consul’s wishes particular to speak
to Mrs. Lirriper.” If you’ll believe me my dear the Consols
at the bank where I have a little matter for Jemmy got
into my head, and I says “Good gracious I hope he ain’t
had any dreadful fall!” Says Winifred “He don’t look as if
he had ma’am.” And I says “Show him in.”
The gentleman came in dark and with his hair cropped
what I should consider too close, and he says very polite
“Madame Lirrwiper!” I says, “Yes sir. Take a chair.” “I
come,” says he “frrwom the Frrwench Consul’s.” So I saw
at once that it wasn’t the Bank of England. “We have
rrweceived,” says the gentleman turning his r’s very curi-
ous and skilful, “frrwom the Mairrwie at Sens, a communi-
cation which I will have the honour to rrwead. Madame
Lirrwiper understands Frrwench?” “O dear no sir!” says I.
“Madame Lirriper don’t understand anything of the sort.”
“It matters not,” says the gentleman, “I will trrwanslate.”
With that my dear the gentleman after reading some-
thing about a Department and a Marie (which Lord forgive
me I supposed till the Major came home was Mary, and
never was I more puzzled than to think how that young
woman came to have so much to do with it) translated a
lot with the most obliging pains, and it came to this:-
That in the town of Sons in France an unknown English-
man lay a dying. That he was speechless and without
motion. That in his lodging there was a gold watch and a
purse containing such and such money and a trunk con-
taining such and such clothes, but no passport and no
17
Charles Dickens
papers, except that on his table was a pack of cards and
that he had written in pencil on the back of the ace of
hearts: “To the authorities. When I am dead, pray send
what is left, as a last Legacy, to Mrs. Lirriper Eighty-one
Norfolk Street Strand London.” When the gentleman had
explained all this, which seemed to be drawn up much more
methodical than I should have given the French credit for,
not at that time knowing the nation, he put the document
into my hand. And much the wiser I was for that you may
be sure, except that it had the look of being made out
upon grocery paper and was stamped all over with eagles.
“Does Madame Lirrwiper” says the gentleman “believe
she rrwecognises her unfortunate compatrrwiot?”
You may imagine the flurry it put me into my dear to he
talked to about my compatriots.
I says “Excuse me. Would you have the kindness sir to
make your language as simple as you can?”
“This Englishman unhappy, at the point of death. This
compatrrwiot afflicted,” says the gentleman.
“Thank you sir” I says “I understand you now. No sir I
have not the least idea who this can be.”
“Has Madame Lirrwiper no son, no nephew, no godson,
no frrwiend, no acquaintance of any kind in Frrwance?”
“To my certain knowledge” says I “no relation or friend,
and to the best of my belief no acquaintance.”
“Pardon me. You take Locataires?” says the gentleman.
My dear fully believing he was offering me something
with his obliging foreign manners,— snuff for anything I
knew,—I gave a little bend of my head and I says if you’ll
credit it, “No I thank you. I have not contracted the habit.”
The gentleman looks perplexed and says “Lodgers!”
“Oh!” says I laughing. “Bless the man! Why yes to be
sure!”
“May it not be a former lodger?” says the gentleman.
“Some lodger that you pardoned some rrwent? You have
pardoned lodgers some rrwent?”
“Hem! It has happened sir” says I, “but I assure you I
can call to mind no gentleman of that description that
this is at all likely to be.”
In short my dear, we could make nothing of it, and the
gentleman noted down what I said and went away. But he
left me the paper of which he had two with him, and
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Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy
when the Major came in I says to the Major as I put it in
his hand “Major here’s Old Moore’s Almanac with the hi-
eroglyphic complete, for your opinion.”
It took the Major a little longer to read than I should
have thought, judging from the copious flow with which
he seemed to be gifted when attacking the organ-men,
but at last he got through it, and stood a gazing at me in
amazement.
“Major” I says “you’re paralysed.”
“Madam” says the Major, “Jemmy Jackman is doubled
up.”
Now it did so happen that the Major had been out to
get a little information about railroads and steamboats,
as our boy was coming home for his Midsummer holidays
next day and we were going to take him somewhere for a
treat and a change. So while the Major stood a gazing it
came into my head to say to him “Major I wish you’d go
and look at some of your books and maps, and see where-
abouts this same town of Sens is in France.”
The Major he roused himself and he went into the Parlours
and he poked about a little, and he came back to me and
he says, “Sens my dearest madam is seventy-odd miles
south of Paris.”
With what I may truly call a desperate effort “Major,” I
says “we’ll go there with our blessed boy.”
If ever the Major was beside himself it was at the
thoughts of that journey. All day long he was like the wild
man of the woods after meeting with an advertisement in
the papers telling him something to his advantage, and
early next morning hours before Jemmy could possibly
come home he was outside in the street ready to call out
to him that we was all a going to France. Young Rosycheeks
you may believe was as wild as the Major, and they did
carry on to that degree that I says “If you two children
ain’t more orderly I’ll pack you both off to bed.” And then
they fell to cleaning up the Major’s telescope to see France
with, and went out and bought a leather bag with a snap
to hang round Jemmy, and him to carry the money like a
little Fortunatus with his purse.
If I hadn’t passed my word and raised their hopes, I
doubt if I could have gone through with the undertaking
but it was too late to go back now. So on the second day
19
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after Midsummer Day we went off by the morning mail.
And when we came to the sea which I had never seen but
once in my life and that when my poor Lirriper was court-
ing me, the freshness of it and the deepness and the airi-
ness and to think that it had been rolling ever since and
that it was always a rolling and so few of us minding,
made me feel quite serious. But I felt happy too and so
did Jemmy and the Major and not much motion on the
whole, though me with a swimming in the head and a
sinking but able to take notice that the foreign insides
appear to be constructed hollower than the English, lead-
ing to much more tremenjous noises when bad sailors.
But my dear the blueness and the lightness and the
coloured look of everything and the very sentry-boxes
striped and the shining rattling drums and the little sol-
diers with their waists and tidy gaiters, when we got across
to the Continent—it made me feel as if I don’t know
what—as if the atmosphere had been lifted off me. And
as to lunch why bless you if I kept a man-cook and two
kitchen-maids I couldn’t got it done for twice the money,
and no injured young woman a glaring at you and grudg-
ing you and acknowledging your patronage by wishing
that your food might choke you, but so civil and so hot
and attentive and every way comfortable except Jemmy
pouring wine down his throat by tumblers-full and me
expecting to see him drop under the table.
And the way in which Jemmy spoke his French was a
real charm. It was often wanted of him, for whenever
anybody spoke a syllable to me I says “Non-comprenny,
you’re very kind, but it’s no use—Now Jemmy!” and then
Jemmy he fires away at ‘em lovely, the only thing wanting
in Jemmy’s French being as it appeared to me that he
hardly ever understood a word of what they said to him
which made it scarcely of the use it might have been
though in other respects a perfect Native, and regarding
the Major’s fluency I should have been of the opinion
judging French by English that there might have been a
greater choice of words in the language though still I
must admit that if I hadn’t known him when he asked a
military gentleman in a gray cloak what o’clock it was I
should have took him for a Frenchman born.
Before going on to look after my Legacy we were to
20
Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy
make one regular day in Paris, and I leave you to judge my
dear what a day that was with Jemmy and the Major and
the telescope and me and the prowling young man at the
inn door (but very civil too) that went along with us to
show the sights. All along the railway to Paris Jemmy and
the Major had been frightening me to death by stooping
down on the platforms at stations to inspect the engines
underneath their mechanical stomachs, and by creeping
in and out I don’t know where all, to find improvements
for the United Grand Junction Parlour, but when we got
out into the brilliant streets on a bright morning they
gave up all their London improvements as a bad job and
gave their minds to Paris. Says the prowling young man to
me “Will I speak Inglis No?” So I says “If you can young
man I shall take it as a favour,” but after half-an-hour of
it when I fully believed the man had gone mad and me
too I says “Be so good as fall back on your French sir,”
knowing that then I shouldn’t have the agonies of trying
to understand him, which was a happy release. Not that I
lost much more than the rest either, for I generally no-
ticed that when he had described something very long
indeed and I says to Jemmy “What does he say Jemmy?”
Jemmy says looking with vengeance in his eye “He is so
jolly indistinct!” and that when he had described it longer
all over again and I says to Jemmy “Well Jemmy what’s it
all about?” Jemmy says “He says the building was re-
paired in seventeen hundred and four, Gran.”
Wherever that prowling young man formed his prowling
habits I cannot be expected to know, but the way in
which he went round the corner while we had our break-
fasts and was there again when we swallowed the last
crumb was most marvellous, and just the same at dinner
and at night, prowling equally at the theatre and the inn
gateway and the shop doors when we bought a trifle or
two and everywhere else but troubled with a tendency to
spit. And of Paris I can tell you no more my dear than
that it’s town and country both in one, and carved stone
and long streets of high houses and gardens and fountains
and statues and trees and gold, and immensely big sol-
diers and immensely little soldiers and the pleasantest
nurses with the whitest caps a playing at skipping-rope
with the bunchiest babies in the flattest caps, and clean
21
Charles Dickens
table-cloths spread everywhere for dinner and people sit-
ting out of doors smoking and sipping all day long and
little plays being acted in the open air for little people
and every shop a complete and elegant room, and every-
body seeming to play at everything in this world. And as
to the sparkling lights my dear after dark, glittering high
up and low down and on before and on behind and all
round, and the crowd of theatres and the crowd of people
and the crowd of all sorts, it’s pure enchantment. And
pretty well the only thing that grated on me was that
whether you pay your fare at the railway or whether you
change your money at a money-dealer’s or whether you
take your ticket at the theatre, the lady or gentleman is
caged up (I suppose by government) behind the stron-
gest iron bars having more of a Zoological appearance
than a free country.
Well to be sure when I did after all get my precious
bones to bed that night, and my Young Rogue came in to
kiss me and asks “What do you think of this lovely lovely
Paris, Gran?” I says “Jemmy I feel as if it was beautiful
fireworks being let off in my head.” And very cool and
refreshing the pleasant country was next day when we
went on to look after my Legacy, and rested me much and
did me a deal of good.
So at length and at last my dear we come to Sens, a
pretty little town with a great two-towered cathedral and
the rooks flying in and out of the loopholes and another
tower atop of one of the towers like a sort of a stone
pulpit. In which pulpit with the birds skimming below
him if you’ll believe me, I saw a speck while I was resting
at the inn before dinner which they made signs to me was
Jemmy and which really was. I had been a fancying as I
sat in the balcony of the hotel that an Angel might light
there and call down to the people to be good, but I little
thought what Jemmy all unknown to himself was a calling
down from that high place to some one in the town.
The pleasantest-situated inn my dear! Right under the
two towers, with their shadows a changing upon it all day
like a kind of a sundial, and country people driving in and
out of the courtyard in carts and hooded cabriolets and
such like, and a market outside in front of the cathedral,
and all so quaint and like a picter. The Major and me
22
Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy
agreed that whatever came of my Legacy this was the
place to stay in for our holiday, and we also agreed that
our dear boy had best not be checked in his joy that night
by the sight of the Englishman if he was still alive, but
that we would go together and alone. For you are to
understand that the Major not feeling himself quite equal
in his wind to the height to which Jemmy had climbed,
had come back to me and left him with the Guide.
So after dinner when Jemmy had set off to see the river,
the Major went down to the Mairie, and presently came
back with a military character in a sword and spurs and a
cocked hat and a yellow shoulder-belt and long tags about
him that he must have found inconvenient. And the Major
says “The Englishman still lies in the same state dearest
madam. This gentleman will conduct us to his lodging.”
Upon which the military character pulled off his cocked
hat to me, and I took notice that he had shaved his fore-
head in imitation of Napoleon Bonaparte but not like.
We wont out at the courtyard gate and past the great
doors of the cathedral and down a narrow High Street
where the people were sitting chatting at their shop doors
and the children were at play. The military character went
in front and he stopped at a pork-shop with a little statue
of a pig sitting up, in the window, and a private door that
a donkey was looking out of.
When the donkey saw the military character he came
slipping out on the pavement to turn round and then
clattered along the passage into a back yard. So the coast
being clear, the Major and me were conducted up the
common stair and into the front room on the second, a
bare room with a red tiled floor and the outside lattice
blinds pulled close to darken it. As the military character
opened the blinds I saw the tower where I had seen Jemmy,
darkening as the sun got low, and I turned to the bed by
the wall and saw the Englishman.
It was some kind of brain fever he had had, and his hair
was all gone, and some wetted folded linen lay upon his
head. I looked at him very attentive as he lay there all
wasted away with his eyes closed, and I says to the Major
“I never saw this face before.”
The Major looked at him very attentive too, and he says
“I never saw this face before.”
23
Charles Dickens
When the Major explained our words to the military char-
acter, that gentleman shrugged his shoulders and showed
the Major the card on which it was written about the
Legacy for me. It had been written with a weak and trem-
bling hand in bed, and I knew no more of the writing than
of the face. Neither did the Major.
Though lying there alone, the poor creetur was as well
taken care of as could be hoped, and would have been
quite unconscious of any one’s sitting by him then. I got
the Major to say that we were not going away at present
and that I would come back to-morrow and watch a bit
by the bedside. But I got him to add—and I shook my
head hard to make it stronger—”We agree that we never
saw this face before.”
Our boy was greatly surprised when we told him sitting
out in the balcony in the starlight, and he ran over some of
those stories of former Lodgers, of the Major’s putting down,
and asked wasn’t it possible that it might be this lodger or
that lodger. It was not possible, and we went to bed.
In the morning just at breakfast-time the military char-
acter came jingling round, and said that the doctor thought
from the signs he saw there might be some rally before
the end. So I says to the Major and Jemmy, “You two boys
go and enjoy yourselves, and I’ll take my Prayer Book and
go sit by the bed.” So I went, and I sat there some hours,
reading a prayer for him poor soul now and then, and it
was quite on in the day when he moved his hand.
He had been so still, that the moment he moved I knew
of it, and I pulled off my spectacles and laid down my
book and rose and looked at him. From moving one hand
he began to move both, and then his action was the ac-
tion of a person groping in the dark. Long after his eyes
had opened, there was a film over them and he still felt
for his way out into light. But by slow degrees his sight
cleared and his hands stopped. He saw the ceiling, he saw
the wall, he saw me. As his sight cleared, mine cleared
too, and when at last we looked in one another’s faces, I
started back, and I cries passionately:
“O you wicked wicked man! Your sin has found you out!”
For I knew him, the moment life looked out of his eyes,
to be Mr. Edson, Jemmy’s father who had so cruelly de-
serted Jemmy’s young unmarried mother who had died in
24
Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy
my arms, poor tender creetur, and left Jemmy to me.
“You cruel wicked man! You bad black traitor!”
With the little strength he had, he made an attempt to
turn over on his wretched face to hide it. His arm dropped
out of the bed and his head with it, and there he lay
before me crushed in body and in mind. Surely the
miserablest sight under the summer sun!
“O blessed Heaven,” I says a crying, “teach me what to
say to this broken mortal! I am a poor sinful creetur, and
the Judgment is not mine.”
As I lifted my eyes up to the clear bright sky, I saw the
high tower where Jemmy had stood above the birds, see-
ing that very window; and the last look of that poor pretty
young mother when her soul brightened and got free,
seemed to shine down from it.
“O man, man, man!” I says, and I went on my knees
beside the bed; “if your heart is rent asunder and you are
truly penitent for what you did, Our Saviour will have
mercy on you yet!”
As I leaned my face against the bed, his feeble hand
could just move itself enough to touch me. I hope the
touch was penitent. It tried to hold my dress and keep
hold, but the fingers were too weak to close.
I lifted him back upon the pillows and I says to him:
“Can you hear me?”
He looked yes.
“Do you know me?”
He looked yes, even yet more plainly.
“I am not here alone. The Major is with me. You recol-
lect the Major?”
Yes. That is to say he made out yes, in the same way as
before.
“And even the Major and I are not alone. My grand-
son—his godson—is with us. Do you hear? My grand-
son.”
The fingers made another trial to catch my sleeve, but
could only creep near it and fall.
“Do you know who my grandson is?”
Yes.
“I pitied and loved his lonely mother. When his mother
lay a dying I said to her, ‘My dear, this baby is sent to a
childless old woman.’ He has been my pride and joy ever
25
Charles Dickens
since. I love him as dearly as if he had drunk from my
breast. Do you ask to see my grandson before you die?”
Yes.
“Show me, when I leave off speaking, if you correctly
understand what I say. He has been kept unacquainted
with the story of his birth. He has no knowledge of it. No
suspicion of it. If I bring him here to the side of this bed,
he will suppose you to be a perfect stranger. It is more
than I can do to keep from him the knowledge that there
is such wrong and misery in the world; but that it was
ever so near him in his innocent cradle I have kept from
him, and I do keep from him, and I ever will keep from
him, for his mother’s sake, and for his own.”
He showed me that he distinctly understood, and the
tears fell from his eyes.
“Now rest, and you shall see him.”
So I got him a little wine and some brandy, and I put
things straight about his bed. But I began to be troubled
in my mind lest Jemmy and the Major might be too long
of coming back. What with this occupation for my thoughts
and hands, I didn’t hear a foot upon the stairs, and was
startled when I saw the Major stopped short in the middle
of the room by the eyes of the man upon the bed, and
knowing him then, as I had known him a little while ago.
There was anger in the Major’s face, and there was hor-
ror and repugnance and I don’t know what. So I went up
to him and I led him to the bedside, and when I clasped
my hands and lifted of them up, the Major did the like.
“O Lord” I says “Thou knowest what we two saw to-
gether of the sufferings and sorrows of that young creetur
now with Thee. If this dying man is truly penitent, we two
together humbly pray Thee to have mercy on him!”
The Major says “Amen!” and then after a little stop I
whispers him, “Dear old friend fetch our beloved boy.” And
the Major, so clever as to have got to understand it all
without being told a word, went away and brought him.
Never never never shall I forget the fair bright face of
our boy when he stood at the foot of the bed, looking at
his unknown father. And O so like his dear young mother
then!
“Jemmy” I says, “I have found out all about this poor
gentleman who is so ill, and he did lodge in the old house
26
Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy
once. And as he wants to see all belonging to it, now that
he is passing away, I sent for you.”
“Ah poor man!” says Jemmy stepping forward and touch-
ing one of his hands with great gentleness. “My heart
melts for him. Poor, poor man!”
The eyes that were so soon to close for ever turned to
me, and I was not that strong in the pride of my strength
that I could resist them.
“My darling boy, there is a reason in the secret history
of this fellow-creetur lying as the best and worst of us
must all lie one day, which I think would ease his spirit in
his last hour if you would lay your cheek against his fore-
head and say, ‘May God forgive you!’”
“O Gran,” says Jemmy with a full heart, “I am not wor-
thy!” But he leaned down and did it. Then the faltering
fingers made out to catch hold of my sleeve at last, and I
believe he was a-trying to kiss me when he died.
THERE MY DEAR! There you have the story of my Legacy in
full, and it’s worth ten times the trouble I have spent
upon it if you are pleased to like it.
You might suppose that it set us against the little French
town of Sens, but no we didn’t find that. I found myself
that I never looked up at the high tower atop of the other
tower, but the days came back again when that fair young
creetur with her pretty bright hair trusted in me like a
mother, and the recollection made the place so peaceful
to me as I can’t express. And every soul about the hotel
down to the pigeons in the courtyard made friends with
Jemmy and the Major, and went lumbering away with them
on all sorts of expeditions in all sorts of vehicles drawn by
rampagious cart-horses,—with heads and without,—mud
for paint and ropes for harness,—and every new friend
dressed in blue like a butcher, and every new horse stand-
ing on his hind legs wanting to devour and consume every
other horse, and every man that had a whip to crack crack-
crack-crack-crack-cracking it as if it was a schoolboy with
his first. As to the Major my dear that man lived the
greater part of his time with a little tumbler in one hand
27
Charles Dickens
and a bottle of small wine in the other, and whenever he
saw anybody else with a little tumbler, no matter who it
was,—the military character with the tags, or the inn-
servants at their supper in the courtyard, or townspeople
a chatting on a bench, or country people a starting home
after market,—down rushes the Major to clink his glass
against their glasses and cry,—Hola! Vive Somebody! or
Vive Something! as if he was beside himself. And though I
could not quite approve of the Major’s doing it, still the
ways of the world are the ways of the world varying ac-
cording to the different parts of it, and dancing at all in
the open Square with a lady that kept a barber’s shop my
opinion is that the Major was right to dance his best and
to lead off with a power that I did not think was in him,
though I was a little uneasy at the Barricading sound of
the cries that were set up by the other dancers and the
rest of the company, until when I says “What are they
ever calling out Jemmy?” Jemmy says, “They’re calling
out Gran, Bravo the Military English! Bravo the Military
English!” which was very gratifying to my feelings as a
Briton and became the name the Major was known by.
But every evening at a regular time we all three sat out in
the balcony of the hotel at the end of the courtyard, look-
ing up at the golden and rosy light as it changed on the
great towers, and looking at the shadows of the towers as
they changed on all about us ourselves included, and what
do you think we did there? My dear, if Jemmy hadn’t brought
some other of those stories of the Major’s taking down
from the telling of former lodgers at Eighty-one Norfolk
Street, and if he didn’t bring ‘em out with this speech:
“Here you are Gran! Here you are godfather! More of
‘em! I’ll read. And though you wrote ‘em for me, godfa-
ther, I know you won’t disapprove of my making ‘em over
to Gran; will you?”
“No, my dear boy,” says the Major. “Everything we have
is hers, and we are hers.”
“Hers ever affectionately and devotedly J. Jackman, and
J. Jackman Lirriper,” cries the Young Rogue giving me a
close hug. “Very well then godfather. Look here. As Gran
is in the Legacy way just now, I shall make these stories a
part of Gran’s Legacy. I’ll leave ‘em to her. What do you
say godfather?”
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Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy
“Hip hip Hurrah!” says the Major.
“Very well then,” cries Jemmy all in a bustle. “Vive the
Military English! Vive the Lady Lirriper! Vive the Jemmy
Jackman Ditto! Vive the Legacy! Now, you look out, Gran.
And you look out, godfather. I’ll read! And I’ll tell you
what I’ll do besides. On the last night of our holiday here
when we are all packed and going away, I’ll top up with
something of my own.”
“Mind you do sir” says I.
CHAPTER II
MRS. LIRRIPER RELATES HOW JEMMY
TOPPED UP
W
ELL MY DEAR and so the evening readings of those
jottings of the Major’s brought us round at last
to the evening when we were all packed and
going away next day, and I do assure you that by that
time though it was deliciously comfortable to look for-
ward to the dear old house in Norfolk Street again, I had
formed quite a high opinion of the French nation and had
noticed them to be much more homely and domestic in
their families and far more simple and amiable in their
lives than I had ever been led to expect, and it did strike
me between ourselves that in one particular they might
be imitated to advantage by another nation which I will
not mention, and that is in the courage with which they
take their little enjoyments on little means and with little
things and don’t let solemn big-wigs stare them out of
countenance or speechify them dull, of which said solemn
big-wigs I have ever had the one opinion that I wish they
were all made comfortable separately in coppers with the
lids on and never let out any more.
“Now young man,” I says to Jemmy when we brought
our chairs into the balcony that last evening, “you please
to remember who was to ‘top up.’”
“All right Gran” says Jemmy. “I am the illustrious per-
sonage.”
But he looked so serious after he had made me that
light answer, that the Major raised his eyebrows at me and
I raised mine at the Major.
“Gran and godfather,” says Jemmy, “you can hardly think
29
Charles Dickens
how much my mind has run on Mr. Edson’s death.”
It gave me a little check. “Ah! it was a sad scene my
love” I says, “and sad remembrances come back stronger
than merry. But this” I says after a little silence, to rouse
myself and the Major and Jemmy all together, “is not
topping up. Tell us your story my dear.”
“I will” says Jemmy.
“What is the date sir?” says I. “Once upon a time when
pigs drank wine?”
“No Gran,” says Jemmy, still serious; “once upon a time
when the French drank wine.”
Again I glanced at the Major, and the Major glanced at
me.
“In short, Gran and godfather,” says Jemmy, looking
up, “the date is this time, and I’m going to tell you Mr.
Edson’s story.”
The flutter that it threw me into. The change of colour
on the part of the Major!
“That is to say, you understand,” our bright-eyed boy
says, “I am going to give you my version of it. I shall not
ask whether it’s right or not, firstly because you said you
knew very little about it, Gran, and secondly because what
little you did know was a secret.”
I folded my hands in my lap and I never took my eyes
off Jemmy as he went running on.
“The unfortunate gentleman” Jemmy commences, “who
is the subject of our present narrative was the son of
Somebody, and was born Somewhere, and chose a profes-
sion Somehow. It is not with those parts of his career that
we have to deal; but with his early attachment to a young
and beautiful lady.”
I thought I should have dropped. I durstn’t look at the
Major; but I know what his state was, without looking at
him.
“The father of our ill-starred hero” says Jemmy, copying
as it seemed to me the style of some of his story-books,
“was a worldly man who entertained ambitious views for
his only son and who firmly set his face against the con-
templated alliance with a virtuous but penniless orphan.
Indeed he went so far as roundly to assure our hero that
unless he weaned his thoughts from the object of his
devoted affection, he would disinherit him. At the same
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Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy
time, he proposed as a suitable match the daughter of a
neighbouring gentleman of a good estate, who was nei-
ther ill-favoured nor unamiable, and whose eligibility in a
pecuniary point of view could not be disputed. But young
Mr. Edson, true to the first and only love that had in-
flamed his breast, rejected all considerations of self-ad-
vancement, and, deprecating his father’s anger in a re-
spectful letter, ran away with her.”
My dear I had begun to take a turn for the better, but
when it come to running away I began to take another
turn for the worse.
“The lovers” says Jemmy “fled to London and were united
at the altar of Saint Clement’s Danes. And it is at this
period of their simple but touching story that we find
them inmates of the dwelling of a highly-respected and
beloved lady of the name of Gran, residing within a hun-
dred miles of Norfolk Street.”
I felt that we were almost safe now, I felt that the dear
boy had no suspicion of the bitter truth, and I looked at
the Major for the first time and drew a long breath. The
Major gave me a nod.
“Our hero’s father” Jemmy goes on “proving implacable
and carrying his threat into unrelenting execution, the
struggles of the young couple in London were severe, and
would have been far more so, but for their good angel’s
having conducted them to the abode of Mrs. Gran; who,
divining their poverty (in spite of their endeavours to
conceal it from her), by a thousand delicate arts smoothed
their rough way, and alleviated the sharpness of their first
distress.”
Here Jemmy took one of my hands in one of his, and
began a marking the turns of his story by making me give
a beat from time to time upon his other hand.
“After a while, they left the house of Mrs. Gran, and
pursued their fortunes through a variety of successes and
failures elsewhere. But in all reverses, whether for good or
evil, the words of Mr. Edson to the fair young partner of
his life were, ‘Unchanging Love and Truth will carry us
through all!’”
My hand trembled in the dear boy’s, those words were
so wofully unlike the fact.
“Unchanging Love and Truth” says Jemmy over again,
31
Charles Dickens
as if he had a proud kind of a noble pleasure in it, “will
carry us through all! Those were his words. And so they
fought their way, poor but gallant and happy, until Mrs.
Edson gave birth to a child.”
“A daughter,” I says.
“No,” says Jemmy, “a son. And the father was so proud
of it that he could hardly bear it out of his sight. But a
dark cloud overspread the scene. Mrs. Edson sickened,
drooped, and died.”
“Ah! Sickened, drooped, and died!” I says.
“And so Mr. Edson’s only comfort, only hope on earth,
and only stimulus to action, was his darling boy. As the
child grew older, he grew so like his mother that he was
her living picture. It used to make him wonder why his
father cried when he kissed him. But unhappily he was
like his mother in constitution as well as in face, and lo,
died too before he had grown out of childhood. Then Mr.
Edson, who had good abilities, in his forlornness and de-
spair, threw them all to the winds. He became apathetic,
reckless, lost. Little by little he sank down, down, down,
down, until at last he almost lived (I think) by gaming.
And so sickness overtook him in the town of Sens in France,
and he lay down to die. But now that he laid him down
when all was done, and looked back upon the green Past
beyond the time when he had covered it with ashes, he
thought gratefully of the good Mrs. Gran long lost sight
of, who had been so kind to him and his young wife in the
early days of their marriage, and he left the little that he
had as a last Legacy to her. And she, being brought to see
him, at first no more knew him than she would know from
seeing the ruin of a Greek or Roman Temple, what it used
to be before it fell; but at length she remembered him.
And then he told her, with tears, of his regret for the
misspent part of his life, and besought her to think as
mildly of it as she could, because it was the poor fallen
Angel of his unchanging Love and Constancy after all. And
because she had her grandson with her, and he fancied
that his own boy, if he had lived, might have grown to be
something like him, he asked her to let him touch his
forehead with his cheek and say certain parting words.”
Jemmy’s voice sank low when it got to that, and tears
filled my eyes, and filled the Major’s.
32
Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy
“You little Conjurer” I says, “how did you ever make it
all out? Go in and write it every word down, for it’s a
wonder.”
Which Jemmy did, and I have repeated it to you my
dear from his writing.
Then the Major took my hand and kissed it, and said,
“Dearest madam all has prospered with us.”
“Ah Major” I says drying my eyes, “we needn’t have
been afraid. We might have known it. Treachery don’t come
natural to beaming youth; but trust and pity, love and
constancy,—they do, thank God!”