Calais - and sat upon a door-step until I recovered. The
procession had then disappeared. I have since looked anxiously for
the King in several other cars, but I have not yet had the
happiness of seeing His Majesty.
'BIRTHS. MRS. MEEK, OF A SON
MY name is Meek. I am, in fact, Mr. Meek. That son is mine and
Mrs. Meek's. When I saw the announcement in the Times, I dropped
the paper. I had put it in, myself, and paid for it, but it looked
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so noble that it overpowered me.
As soon as I could compose my feelings, I took the paper up to Mrs.
Meek's bedside. 'Maria Jane,' said I (I allude to Mrs. Meek), 'you
are now a public character.' We read the review of our child,
several times, with feelings of the strongest emotion; and I sent
the boy who cleans the boots and shoes, to the office for fifteen
copies. No reduction was made on taking that quantity.
It is scarcely necessary for me to say, that our child had been
expected. In fact, it had been expected, with comparative
confidence, for some months. Mrs. Meek's mother, who resides with
us - of the name of Bigby - had made every preparation for its
admission to our circle.
I hope and believe I am a quiet man. I will go farther. I KNOW I
am a quiet man. My constitution is tremulous, my voice was never
loud, and, in point of stature, I have been from infancy, small. I
have the greatest respect for Maria Jane's Mama. She is a most
remarkable woman. I honour Maria Jane's Mama. In my opinion she
would storm a town, single-handed, with a hearth-broom, and carry
it. I have never known her to yield any point whatever, to mortal
man. She is calculated to terrify the stoutest heart.
Still - but I will not anticipate.
The first intimation I had, of any preparations being in progress,
on the part of Maria Jane's Mama, was one afternoon, several months
ago. I came home earlier than usual from the office, and,
proceeding into the dining-room, found an obstruction behind the
door, which prevented it from opening freely. It was an
obstruction of a soft nature. On looking in, I found it to be a
female.
The female in question stood in the corner behind the door,
consuming Sherry Wine. From the nutty smell of that beverage
pervading the apartment, I have no doubt she was consuming a second
glassful. She wore a black bonnet of large dimensions, and was
copious in figure. The expression of her countenance was severe
and discontented. The words to which she gave utterance on seeing
me, were these, 'Oh, git along with you, Sir, if YOU please; me and
Mrs. Bigby don't want no male parties here!'
That female was Mrs. Prodgit.
I immediately withdrew, of course. I was rather hurt, but I made
no remark. Whether it was that I showed a lowness of spirits after
dinner, in consequence of feeling that I seemed to intrude, I
cannot say. But, Maria Jane's Mama said to me on her retiring for
the night: in a low distinct voice, and with a look of reproach
that completely subdued me: 'George Meek, Mrs. Prodgit is your
wife's nurse!'
I bear no ill-will towards Mrs. Prodgit. Is it likely that I,
writing this with tears in my eyes, should be capable of deliberate
animosity towards a female, so essential to the welfare of Maria
Jane? I am willing to admit that Fate may have been to blame, and
not Mrs. Prodgit; but, it is undeniably true, that the latter
female brought desolation and devastation into my lowly dwelling.
We were happy after her first appearance; we were sometimes
exceedingly so. But, whenever the parlour door was opened, and
'Mrs. Prodgit!' announced (and she was very often announced),
misery ensued. I could not bear Mrs. Prodgit's look. I felt that
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I was far from wanted, and had no business to exist in Mrs.
Prodgit's presence. Between Maria Jane's Mama, and Mrs. Prodgit,
there was a dreadful, secret, understanding - a dark mystery and
conspiracy, pointing me out as a being to be shunned. I appeared
to have done something that was evil. Whenever Mrs. Prodgit
called, after dinner, I retired to my dressing-room - where the
temperature is very low indeed, in the wintry time of the year -
and sat looking at my frosty breath as it rose before me, and at my
rack of boots; a serviceable article of furniture, but never, in my
opinion, an exhilarating object. The length of the councils that
were held with Mrs. Prodgit, under these circumstances, I will not
attempt to describe. I will merely remark, that Mrs. Prodgit
always consumed Sherry Wine while the deliberations were in
progress; that they always ended in Maria Jane's being in wretched
spirits on the sofa; and that Maria Jane's Mama always received me,
when I was recalled, with a look of desolate triumph that too
plainly said, 'NOW, George Meek! You see my child, Maria Jane, a
ruin, and I hope you are satisfied!'
I pass, generally, over the period that intervened between the day
when Mrs. Prodgit entered her protest against male parties, and the
ever-memorable midnight when I brought her to my unobtrusive home
in a cab, with an extremely large box on the roof, and a bundle, a
bandbox, and a basket, between the driver's legs. I have no
objection to Mrs. Prodgit (aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby, who I
never can forget is the parent of Maria Jane) taking entire
possession of my unassuming establishment. In the recesses of my
own breast, the thought may linger that a man in possession cannot
be so dreadful as a woman, and that woman Mrs. Prodgit; but, I
ought to bear a good deal, and I hope I can, and do. Huffing and
snubbing, prey upon my feelings; but, I can bear them without
complaint. They may tell in the long run; I may be hustled about,
from post to pillar, beyond my strength; nevertheless, I wish to
avoid giving rise to words in the family.
The voice of Nature, however, cries aloud in behalf of Augustus
George, my infant son. It is for him that I wish to utter a few
plaintive household words. I am not at all angry; I am mild - but
miserable.
I wish to know why, when my child, Augustus George, was expected in
our circle, a provision of pins was made, as if the little stranger
were a criminal who was to be put to the torture immediately, on
his arrival, instead of a holy babe? I wish to know why haste was
made to stick those pins all over his innocent form, in every
direction? I wish to be informed why light and air are excluded
from Augustus George, like poisons? Why, I ask, is my unoffending
infant so hedged into a basket-bedstead, with dimity and calico,
with miniature sheets and blankets, that I can only hear him
snuffle (and no wonder!) deep down under the pink hood of a little
bathing-machine, and can never peruse even so much of his
lineaments as his nose?
Was I expected to be the father of a French Roll, that th
e brushes
of All Nations were laid in, to rasp Augustus George? Am I to be
told that his sensitive skin was ever intended by Nature to have
rashes brought out upon it, by the premature and incessant use of
those formidable little instruments?
Is my son a Nutmeg, that he is to be grated on the stiff edges of
sharp frills? Am I the parent of a Muslin boy, that his yielding
surface is to be crimped and small plaited? Or is my child
composed of Paper or of Linen, that impressions of the finer
getting-up art, practised by the laundress, are to be printed off,
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all over his soft arms and legs, as I constantly observe them? The
starch enters his soul; who can wonder that he cries?
Was Augustus George intended to have limbs, or to be born a Torso?
I presume that limbs were the intention, as they are the usual
practice. Then, why are my poor child's limbs fettered and tied
up? Am I to be told that there is any analogy between Augustus
George Meek and Jack Sheppard?
Analyse Castor Oil at any Institution of Chemistry that may be
agreed upon, and inform me what resemblance, in taste, it bears to
that natural provision which it is at once the pride and duty of
Maria Jane to administer to Augustus George! Yet, I charge Mrs.
Prodgit (aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby) with systematically
forcing Castor Oil on my innocent son, from the first hour of his
birth. When that medicine, in its efficient action, causes
internal disturbance to Augustus George, I charge Mrs. Prodgit
(aided and abetted by Mrs. Bigby) with insanely and inconsistently
administering opium to allay the storm she has raised! What is the
meaning of this?
If the days of Egyptian Mummies are past, how dare Mrs. Prodgit
require, for the use of my son, an amount of flannel and linen that
would carpet my humble roof? Do I wonder that she requires it?
No! This morning, within an hour, I beheld this agonising sight.
I beheld my son - Augustus George - in Mrs. Prodgit's hands, and on
Mrs. Prodgit's knee, being dressed. He was at the moment,
comparatively speaking, in a state of nature; having nothing on,
but an extremely short shirt, remarkably disproportionate to the
length of his usual outer garments. Trailing from Mrs. Prodgit's
lap, on the floor, was a long narrow roller or bandage - I should
say of several yards in extent. In this, I SAW Mrs. Prodgit
tightly roll the body of my unoffending infant, turning him over
and over, now presenting his unconscious face upwards, now the back
of his bald head, until the unnatural feat was accomplished, and
the bandage secured by a pin, which I have every reason to believe
entered the body of my only child. In this tourniquet, he passes
the present phase of his existence. Can I know it, and smile!
I fear I have been betrayed into expressing myself warmly, but I
feel deeply. Not for myself; for Augustus George. I dare not
interfere. Will any one? Will any publication? Any doctor? Any
parent? Any body? I do not complain that Mrs. Prodgit (aided and
abetted by Mrs. Bigby) entirely alienates Maria Jane's affections
from me, and interposes an impassable barrier between us. I do not
complain of being made of no account. I do not want to be of any
account. But, Augustus George is a production of Nature (I cannot
think otherwise), and I claim that he should be treated with some
remote reference to Nature. In my opinion, Mrs. Prodgit is, from
first to last, a convention and a superstition. Are all the
faculty afraid of Mrs. Prodgit? If not, why don't they take her in
hand and improve her?
P.S. Maria Jane's Mama boasts of her own knowledge of the subject,
and says she brought up seven children besides Maria Jane. But how
do I know that she might not have brought them up much better?
Maria Jane herself is far from strong, and is subject to headaches,
and nervous indigestion. Besides which, I learn from the
statistical tables that one child in five dies within the first
year of its life; and one child in three, within the fifth. That
don't look as if we could never improve in these particulars, I
think!
P.P.S. Augustus George is in convulsions.
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LYING AWAKE
'MY uncle lay with his eyes half closed, and his nightcap drawn
almost down to his nose. His fancy was already wandering, and
began to mingle up the present scene with the crater of Vesuvius,
the French Opera, the Coliseum at Rome, Dolly's Chop-house in
London, and all the farrago of noted places with which the brain of
a traveller is crammed; in a word, he was just falling asleep.'
Thus, that delightful writer, WASHINGTON IRVING, in his Tales of a
Traveller. But, it happened to me the other night to be lying: not
with my eyes half closed, but with my eyes wide open; not with my
nightcap drawn almost down to my nose, for on sanitary principles I
never wear a nightcap: but with my hair pitchforked and touzled all
over the pillow; not just falling asleep by any means, but
glaringly, persistently, and obstinately, broad awake. Perhaps,
with no scientific intention or invention, I was illustrating the
being wakeful, sat up to watch the other part which was sleepy. Be
that as it may, something in me was as desirous to go to sleep as
it possibly could be, but something else in me WOULD NOT go to
sleep, and was as obstinate as George the Third.
Thinking of George the Third - for I devote this paper to my train
of thoughts as I lay awake: most people lying awake sometimes, and
having some interest in the subject - put me in mind of BENJAMIN
FRANKLIN, and so Benjamin Franklin's paper on the art of procuring
pleasant dreams, which would seem necessarily to include the art of
going to sleep, came into my head. Now, as I often used to read
that paper when I was a very small boy, and as I recollect
everything I read then as perfectly as I forget everything I read
now, I quoted 'Get out of bed, beat up and turn your pillow, shake
the bed-clothes well with at least twenty shakes, then throw the
bed open and leave it to cool; in the meanwhile, continuing
undrest, walk about your chamber. When you begin to feel the cold
air unpleasant, then return to your bed, and you will soon fall
asleep, and your sleep will be sweet and pleasant.' Not a bit of
it! I performed the whole ceremony, and if it were possible for me
to be more saucer-eyed than I was before, that was the only result
that came of it.
Except Niagara. The two quotations from Washington Irving and
Benjamin Franklin may have put it in my head by an American
association of ideas; but there I was, and the Horse-shoe Fall was
thundering and tumbling in my eyes and ears, and the very rainbows
that I left upon the spray when I really did last look upon it,
were beautiful to see. The night-light b
eing quite as plain,
however, and sleep seeming to be many thousand miles further off
than Niagara, I made up my mind to think a little about Sleep;
which I no sooner did than I whirled off in spite of myself to
Drury Lane Theatre, and there saw a great actor and dear friend of
mine (whom I had been thinking of in the day) playing Macbeth, and
heard him apostrophising 'the death of each day's life,' as I have
heard him many a time, in the days that are gone.
But, Sleep. I WILL think about Sleep. I am determined to think
(this is the way I went on) about Sleep. I must hold the word
Sleep, tight and fast, or I shall be off at a tangent in half a
second. I feel myself unaccountably straying, already, into Clare
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Market. Sleep. It would be curious, as illustrating the equality
of sleep, to inquire how many of its phenomena are common to all
classes, to all degrees of wealth and poverty, to every grade of
education and ignorance. Here, for example, is her Majesty Queen
Victoria in her palace, this present blessed night, and here is
Winking Charley, a sturdy vagrant, in one of her Majesty's jails.
Her Majesty has fallen, many thousands of times, from that same
Tower, which I claim a right to tumble off now and then. So has
Winking Charley. Her Majesty in her sleep has opened or prorogued
Parliament, or has held a Drawing Room, attired in some very scanty
dress, the deficiencies and improprieties of which have caused her
great uneasiness. I, in my degree, have suffered unspeakable
agitation of mind from taking the chair at a public dinner at the
London Tavern in my night-clothes, which not all the courtesy of my
kind friend and host MR. BATHE could persuade me were quite adapted
to the occasion. Winking Charley has been repeatedly tried in a
worse condition. Her Majesty is no stranger to a vault or
firmament, of a sort of floorcloth, with an indistinct pattern
distantly resembling eyes, which occasionally obtrudes itself on
her repose. Neither am I. Neither is Winking Charley. It is
quite common to all three of us to skim along with airy strides a
little above the ground; also to hold, with the deepest interest,
dialogues with various people, all represented by ourselves; and to
be at our wit's end to know what they are going to tell us; and to