Short Fiction · The Spotted Dog (2/3) (2/4)

“It don’t matter,” said he. “I need not trouble you more than I have said already. You haven’t got anything for me to do, I suppose?” Then I explained to him that I had something he might do, if I could venture to entrust him with the work. With some trouble I got him to sit down again, and to listen while I explained to him the circumstances. I had been grievously afflicted when he alluded to his former habit of drinking⁠—a former habit as he himself now stated⁠—but I entertained no hesitation in raising questions as to his erudition. I felt almost assured that his answers would be satisfactory, and that no discomfiture would arise from such questioning. We were quickly able to perceive that we at any rate could not examine him in classical literature. As soon as we mentioned the name and nature of the work he went off at score, and satisfied us amply that he was familiar at least with the title pages of editions. We began, indeed, to fear whether he might not be too caustic a critic on our own friend’s performance. “Dr. ⸻ is only an amateur himself,” said we, deprecating in advance any such exercise of the red-nosed man’s too severe erudition. “We never get much beyond dilettanteism here,” said he, “as far as Greek and Latin are concerned.” What a terrible man he would have been could he have got upon the staff of the Saturday Review, instead of going to the Spotted Dog!

We endeavoured to bring the interview to an end by telling him that we would consult the learned doctor from whom the manuscript had emanated; and we hinted that a reference would be of course acceptable. His impudence⁠—or perhaps we should rather call it his straightforward sincere audacity⁠—was unbounded. “Mr. Grimes of the Spotted Dog knows me better than anyone else,” said he. We blew the breath out of our mouth with astonishment. “I’m not asking you to go to him to find out whether I know Latin and Greek,” said Mr. Mackenzie. “You must find that out for yourself.” We assured him that we thought we had found that out. “But he can tell you that I won’t pawn your manuscript.” The man was so grim and brave that he almost frightened us. We hinted, however, that literary reference should be given. The gentleman who paid him forty-five shillings a week⁠—the manager, in short, of the “Penny Dreadful,”⁠—might tell us something of him. Then he wrote for us a name on a scrap of paper, and added to it an address in the close vicinity of Fleet Street, at which we remembered to have seen the title of a periodical which we now knew to be a “Penny Dreadful.”

Before he took his leave he made us a speech, again standing up over us, though we also were on our legs. It was that bend in his neck, combined with his natural height, which gave him such an air of superiority in conversation. He seemed to overshadow us, and to have his own way with us, because he was enabled to look down upon us. There was a footstool on our hearthrug, and we remember to have attempted to stand upon that, in order that we might escape this supervision; but we stumbled and had to kick it from us, and something was added to our sense of inferiority by this little failure. “I don’t expect much from this,” he said. “I never do expect much. And I have misfortunes independent of my poverty which make it impossible that I should be other than a miserable wretch.”

“Bad health?” we asked.

“No;⁠—nothing absolutely personal;⁠—but never mind. I must not trouble you with more of my history. But if you can do this thing for me, it may be the means of redeeming me from utter degradation.” We then assured him that we would do our best, and he left us with a promise that he would call again on that day week.

The first step which we took on his behalf was one the very idea of which had at first almost moved us to ridicule. We made enquiry respecting Mr. Julius Mackenzie, of Mr. Grimes, the landlord of the Spotted Dog. Though Mr. Grimes did keep the Spotted Dog, he might be a man of sense and, possibly, of conscience. At any rate he would tell us something, or confirm our doubts by refusing to tell us anything. We found Mr. Grimes seated in a very neat little back parlour, and were peculiarly taken by the appearance of a lady in a little cap and black silk gown, whom we soon found to be Mrs. Grimes. Had we ventured to employ our intellect in personifying for ourselves an imaginary Mrs. Grimes as the landlady of a Spotted Dog public-house in Liquorpond Street, the figure we should have built up for ourselves would have been the very opposite of that which this lady presented to us. She was slim, and young, and pretty, and had pleasant little tricks of words, in spite of occasional slips in her grammar, which made us almost think that it might be our duty to come very often to the Spotted Dog to enquire about Mr. Julius Mackenzie. Mr. Grimes was a man about forty⁠—fully ten years the senior of his wife⁠—with a clear gray eye, and a mouth and chin from which we surmised that he would be competent to clear the Spotted Dog of unruly visitors after twelve o’clock, whenever it might be his wish to do so. We soon made known our request. Mr. Mackenzie had come to us for literary employment. Could they tell us anything about Mr. Mackenzie?

“He’s as clever an author, in the way of writing and that kind of thing, as there is in all London,” said Mrs. Grimes with energy. Perhaps her opinion ought not to have been taken for much, but it had its weight. We explained, however, that at the present moment we were specially anxious to know something of the gentleman’s character and mode of life. Mr. Grimes, whose manner to us was quite courteous, sat silent, thinking how to answer us. His more impulsive and friendly wife was again ready with her assurance. “There aint an honester gentleman breathing;⁠—and I say he is a gentleman, though he’s that poor he hasn’t sometimes a shirt to his back.”

“I don’t think he’s ever very well off for shirts,” said Mr. Grimes.

“I wouldn’t be slow to give him one of yours, John, only I know he wouldn’t take it,” said Mrs. Grimes. “Well now, look here, Sir;⁠—we’ve that feeling for him that our young woman there would draw anything for him he’d ask⁠—money or no money. She’d never venture to name money to him if he wanted a glass of anything⁠—hot or cold, beer or spirits. Isn’t that so, John?”

“She’s fool enough for anything as far as I know,” said Mr. Grimes.

“She aint no fool at all; and I’d do the same if I was there, and so’d you, John. There is nothing Mackenzie’d ask as he wouldn’t give him,” said Mrs. Grimes, pointing with her thumb over her shoulder to her husband, who was standing on the hearthrug;⁠—“that is, in the way of drawing liquor, and refreshments, and suchlike. But he never raised a glass to his lips in this house as he didn’t pay for, nor yet took a biscuit out of that basket. He’s a gentleman all over, is Mackenzie.”

It was strong testimony; but still we had not quite got at the bottom of the matter. “Doesn’t he raise a great many glasses to his lips?” we asked.

“No he don’t,” said Mrs. Grimes⁠—“only in reason.”

“He’s had misfortunes,” said Mr. Grimes.

“Indeed he has,” said the lady⁠—“what I call the very troublesomest of troubles. If you was troubled like him, John, where’d you be?”

“I know where you’d be,” said John.

“He’s got a bad wife, Sir; the worst as ever was,” continued Mrs. Grimes. “Talk of drink;⁠—there is nothing that woman wouldn’t do for it. She’d pawn the very clothes off her children’s back in midwinter to get it. She’d rob the food out of her husband’s mouth for a drop of gin. As for herself⁠—she aint no woman’s notions left of keeping herself anyway. She’d as soon be picked out of the gutter as not;⁠—and as for words out of her mouth or clothes on her back, she hasn’t got, Sir, not an item of a female’s feelings left about her.”

Mrs. Grimes had been very eloquent, and had painted the “troublesomest of all troubles” with glowing words. This was what the wretched man had come to by marrying a woman who was not a lady in order that he might escape the “conventional thraldom” of gentility! But still the drunken wife was not all. There was the evidence of his own nose against himself, and the additional fact that he had acknowledged himself to have been formerly a drunkard. “I suppose he has drunk, himself?” we said.

“He has drunk, in course,” said Mrs. Grimes.

“The world has been pretty rough with him, Sir,” said Mr. Grimes.

“But he don’t drink now,” continued the lady. “At least if he do, we don’t see it. As for her, she wouldn’t show herself inside our door.”

“It aint often that man and wife draws their milk from the same cow,” said Mr. Grimes.

“But Mackenzie is here every day of his life,” said Mrs. Grimes. “When he’s got a sixpence to pay for it, he’ll come in here and have a glass of beer and a bit of something to eat. We does make him a little extra welcome, and that’s the truth of it. We knows what he is, and we knows what he was. As for book learning, Sir;⁠—it don’t matter what language it is, it’s all as one to him. He knows ’em all round just as I know my catechism.”

“Can’t you say fairer than that for him, Polly?” asked Mr. Grimes.

“Don’t you talk of catechisms, John, nor yet of nothing else as a man ought to set his mind to;⁠—unless it is keeping the Spotted Dog. But as for Mackenzie;⁠—he knows off by heart whole books full of learning. There was some furreners here as come from⁠—I don’t know where it was they come from, only it wasn’t France, nor yet Germany, and he talked to them just as though he hadn’t been born in England at all. I don’t think there ever was such a man for knowing things. He’ll go on with poetry out of his own head till you think it comes from him like web from a spider.” We could not help thinking of the wonderful companionship which there must have been in that parlour while the reduced man was spinning his web and Mrs. Grimes, with her needlework lying idle in her lap, was sitting by, listening with rapt admiration. In passing by the Spotted Dog one would not imagine such a scene to have its existence within. But then so many things do have existence of which we imagine nothing!

Mr. Grimes ended the interview. “The fact is, Sir, if you can give him employment better than what he has now, you’ll be helping a man who has seen better days, and who only wants help to see ’em again. He’s got it all there,” and Mr. Grimes put his finger up to his head.

“He’s got it all here too,” said Mrs. Grimes, laying her hand upon her heart. Hereupon we took our leave, suggesting to these excellent friends that if it should come to pass that we had further dealings with Mr. Mackenzie we might perhaps trouble them again. They assured us that we should always be welcome, and Mr. Grimes himself saw us to the door, having made profuse offers of such good cheer as the house afforded. We were upon the whole much taken with the Spotted Dog.

From thence we went to the office of the “Penny Dreadful,” in the vicinity of Fleet Street. As we walked thither we could not but think of Mrs. Grimes’s words. The troublesomest of troubles! We acknowledged to ourselves that they were true words. Can there be any trouble more troublesome than that of suffering from the shame inflicted by a degraded wife? We had just parted from Mr. Grimes⁠—not, indeed, having seen very much of him in the course of our interview;⁠—but little as we had seen, we were sure that he was assisted in his position by a buoyant pride in that he called himself the master, and owner, and husband of Mrs. Grimes. In the very step with which he passed in and out of his own door you could see that there was nothing that he was ashamed of about his household. When abroad he could talk of his “missus” with a conviction that the picture which the word would convey to all who heard him would redound to his honour. But what must have been the reflections of Julius Mackenzie when his mind dwelt upon his wife? We remembered the words of his letter. “I have a wife and four children, which burden forbids me to free myself from all care with a bare bodkin.” As we thought of them, and of the story which had been told to us at the Spotted Dog, they lost that tone of rhodomontade with which they had invested themselves when we first read them. A wife who is indifferent to being picked out of the gutter, and who will pawn her children’s clothes for gin, must be a trouble than which none can be more troublesome.

We did not find that we ingratiated ourselves with the people at the office of the periodical for which Mr. Mackenzie worked; and yet we endeavoured to do so, assuming in our manner and tone something of the familiarity of a common pursuit. After much delay we came upon a gentleman sitting in a dark cupboard, who twisted round his stool to face us while he spoke to us. We believe that he was the editor of more than one “Penny Dreadful,” and that as many as a dozen serial novels were being issued to the world at the same time under his supervision. “Oh!” said he, “so you’re at that game, are you?” We assured him that we were at no game at all, but were simply influenced by a desire to assist a distressed scholar. “That be blowed,” said our brother. “Mackenzie’s doing as well here as he’ll do anywhere. He’s a drunken blackguard, when all’s said and done. So you’re going to buy him up, are you? You won’t keep him long⁠—and then he’ll have to starve.” We assured the gentleman that we had no desire to buy up Mr. Mackenzie; we explained our ideas as to the freedom of the literary profession, in accordance with which Mr. Mackenzie could not be wrong in applying to us for work; and we especially deprecated any severity on our brother’s part towards the man, more especially begging that nothing might be decided, as we were far from thinking it certain that we could provide Mr. Mackenzie with any literary employment. “That’s all right,” said our brother, twisting back his stool. “He can’t work for both of us;⁠—that’s all. He has his bread here regular, week after week; and I don’t suppose you’ll do as much as that for him.” Then we went away, shaking the dust off our feet, and wondering much at the great development of literature which latter years have produced. We had not even known of the existence of these papers;⁠—and yet there they were, going forth into the hands of hundreds of thousands of readers, all of whom were being, more or less, instructed in their modes of life and manner of thinking by the stories which were thus brought before them.