Chapter 28

The Old Curiosity Shop

by Charles Dickens

Sleep hung upon the eyelids of the child so long, that, when she
awoke, Mrs Jarley was already decorated with her large bonnet, and
actively engaged in preparing breakfast. She received Nell's apology
for being so late with perfect good humour, and said that she should
not have roused her if she had slept on until noon.

'Because it does you good,' said the lady of the caravan, 'when
you're tired, to sleep as long as ever you can, and get the fatigue
quite off; and that's another blessing of your time of life--you can
sleep so very sound.'

'Have you had a bad night, ma'am?' asked Nell.

'I seldom have anything else, child,' replied Mrs Jarley, with
the air of a martyr. 'I sometimes wonder how I bear it.'

Remembering the snores which had proceeded from that cleft in
the caravan in which the proprietress of the wax-work passed the
night, Nell rather thought she must have been dreaming of lying
awake. However, she expressed herself very sorry to hear such a
dismal account of her state of health, and shortly afterwards sat
down with her grandfather and Mrs Jarley to breakfast. The meal
finished, Nell assisted to wash the cups and saucers, and put them in
their proper places, and these household duties performed, Mrs Jarley
arrayed herself in an exceedingly bright shawl for the purpose of
making a progress through the streets of the town.

'The wan will come on to bring the boxes,' said Mrs Jarley, and
you had better come in it, child. I am obliged to walk, very much
against my will; but the people expect it of me, and public
characters can't be their own masters and mistresses in such matters
as these. How do I look, child?'

Nell returned a satisfactory reply, and Mrs Jarley, after
sticking a great many pins into various parts of her figure, and
making several abortive attempts to obtain a full view of her own
back, was at last satisfied with her appearance, and went forth
majestically.

The caravan followed at no great distance. As it went jolting
through the streets, Nell peeped from the window, curious to see in
what kind of place they were, and yet fearful of encountering at
every turn the dreaded face of Quilp. It was a pretty large town,
with an open square which they were crawling slowly across, and in
the middle of which was the Town-Hall, with a clock-tower and a
weather-cock. There were houses of stone, houses of red brick,
houses of yellow brick, houses of lath and plaster; and houses of
wood, many of them very old, with withered faces carved upon the
beams, and staring down into the street. These had very little
winking windows, and low-arched doors, and, in some of the narrower
ways, quite overhung the pavement. The streets were very clean, very
sunny, very empty, and very dull. A few idle men lounged about the
two inns, and the empty market-place, and the tradesmen's doors, and
some old people were dozing in chairs outside an alms-house wall; but
scarcely any passengers who seemed bent on going anywhere, or to have
any object in view, went by; and if perchance some straggler did, his
footsteps echoed on the hot bright pavement for minutes afterwards.
Nothing seemed to be going on but the clocks, and they had such
drowzy faces, such heavy lazy hands, and such cracked voices that
they surely must have been too slow. The very dogs were all asleep,
and the flies, drunk with moist sugar in the grocer's shop, forgot
their wings and briskness, and baked to death in dusty corners of the
window.

Rumbling along with most unwonted noise, the caravan stopped at
last at the place of exhibition, where Nell dismounted amidst an
admiring group of children, who evidently supposed her to be an
important item of the curiosities, and were fully impressed with the
belief that her grandfather was a cunning device in wax. The chests
were taken out with all convenient despatch, and taken in to be
unlocked by Mrs Jarley, who, attended by George and another man in
velveteen shorts and a drab hat ornamented with turnpike tickets,
were waiting to dispose their contents (consisting of red festoons
and other ornamental devices in upholstery work) to the best
advantage in the decoration of the room.

They all got to work without loss of time, and very busy they
were. As the stupendous collection were yet concealed by cloths, lest
the envious dust should injure their complexions, Nell bestirred
herself to assist in the embellishment of the room, in which her
grandfather also was of great service. The two men being well used
to it, did a great deal in a short time; and Mrs Jarley served out
the tin tacks from a linen pocket like a toll-collector's which she
wore for the purpose, and encouraged her assistants to renewed
exertion.

While they were thus employed, a tallish gentleman with a hook
nose and black hair, dressed in a military surtout very short and
tight in the sleeves, and which had once been frogged and braided all
over, but was now sadly shorn of its garniture and quite threadbare--
dressed too in ancient grey pantaloons fitting tight to the leg, and
a pair of pumps in the winter of their existence--looked in at the
door and smiled affably. Mrs Jarley's back being then towards him,
the military gentleman shook his forefinger as a sign that her
myrmidons were not to apprise her of his presence, and stealing up
close behind her, tapped her on the neck, and cried playfully
'Boh!'

'What, Mr Slum!' cried the lady of the wax-work. 'Lot! who'd
have thought of seeing you here!'

''Pon my soul and honour,' said Mr Slum, 'that's a good remark.
'Pon my soul and honour that's a wise remark. Who would have thought
it! George, my faithful feller, how are you?'

George received this advance with a surly indifference,
observing that he was well enough for the matter of that, and
hammering lustily all the time.

'I came here,' said the military gentleman turning to Mrs
Jarley-- ''pon my soul and honour I hardly know what I came here for.
It would puzzle me to tell you, it would by Gad. I wanted a little
inspiration, a little freshening up, a little change of ideas, and--
'Pon my soul and honour,' said the military gentleman, checking
himself and looking round the room, 'what a devilish classical thing
this is! by Gad, it's quite Minervian.'

'It'll look well enough when it comes to be finished,' observed
Mrs Jarley.

'Well enough!' said Mr Slum. 'Will you believe me when I say
it's the delight of my life to have dabbled in poetry, when I think
I've exercised my pen upon this charming theme? By the way--any
orders? Is there any little thing I can do for you?'

'It comes so very expensive, sir,' replied Mrs Jarley, 'and I
really don't think it does much good.'

'Hush! No, no!' returned Mr Slum, elevating his hand. 'No
fibs. I'll not hear it. Don't say it don't do good. Don't say it.
I know better!'

'I don't think it does,' said Mrs Jarley.

'Ha, ha!' cried Mr Slum, 'you're giving way, you're coming down.
Ask the perfumers, ask the blacking-makers, ask the hatters, ask the
old lottery-office-keepers--ask any man among 'em what my poetry has
done for him, and mark my words, he blesses the name of Slum. If
he's an honest man, he raises his eyes to heaven, and blesses the
name of Slum--mark that! You are acquainted with Westminster Abbey,
Mrs Jarley?'

'Yes, surely.'

'Then upon my soul and honour, ma'am, you'll find in a certain
angle of that dreary pile, called Poets' Corner, a few smaller names
than Slum,' retorted that gentleman, tapping himself expressively on
the forehead to imply that there was some slight quantity of brain
behind it. 'I've got a little trifle here, now,' said Mr Slum,
taking off his hat which was full of scraps of paper, 'a little
trifle here, thrown off in the heat of the moment, which I should say
was exactly the thing you wanted to set this place on fire with.
It's an acrostic--the name at this moment is Warren, and the idea's a
convertible one, and a positive inspiration for Jarley. Have the
acrostic.'

'I suppose it's very dear,' said Mrs Jarley.

'Five shillings,' returned Mr Slum, using his pencil as a
toothpick. 'Cheaper than any prose.'

'I couldn't give more than three,' said Mrs Jarley.

'--And six,' retorted Slum. 'Come. Three-and-six.'

Mrs Jarley was not proof against the poet's insinuating manner,
and Mr Slum entered the order in a small note-book as a
three-and-sixpenny one. Mr Slum then withdrew to alter the acrostic,
after taking a most affectionate leave of his patroness, and
promising to return, as soon as he possibly could, with a fair copy
for the printer.

As his presence had not interfered with or interrupted the
preparations, they were now far advanced, and were completed shortly
after his departure. When the festoons were all put up as tastily as
they might be, the stupendous collection was uncovered, and there
were displayed, on a raised platform some two feet from the floor,
running round the room and parted from the rude public by a crimson
rope breast high, divers sprightly effigies of celebrated characters,
singly and in groups, clad in glittering dresses of various climes
and times, and standing more or less unsteadily upon their legs, with
their eyes very wide open, and their nostrils very much inflated, and
the muscles of their legs and arms very strongly developed, and all
their countenances expressing great surprise. All the gentlemen were
very pigeon-breasted and very blue about the beards; and all the
ladies were miraculous figures; and all the ladies and all the
gentlemen were looking intensely nowhere, and staring with
extraordinary earnestness at nothing.

When Nell had exhausted her first raptures at this glorious
sight, Mrs Jarley ordered the room to be cleared of all but herself
and the child, and, sitting herself down in an arm-chair in the
centre, formally invested Nell with a willow wand, long used by
herself for pointing out the characters, and was at great pains to
instruct her in her duty.

'That,' said Mrs Jarley in her exhibition tone, as Nell touched
a figure at the beginning of the platform, 'is an unfortunate Maid of
Honour in the Time of Queen Elizabeth, who died from pricking her
finger in consequence of working upon a Sunday. Observe the blood
which is trickling from her finger; also the gold-eyed needle of the
period, with which she is at work.'

All this, Nell repeated twice or thrice: pointing to the finger
and the needle at the right times: and then passed on to the next.

'That, ladies and gentlemen,' said Mrs Jarley, 'is jasper
Packlemerton of atrocious memory, who courted and married fourteen
wives, and destroyed them all, by tickling the soles of their feet
when they were sleeping in the consciousness of innocence and virtue.
On being brought to the scaffold and asked if he was sorry for what
he had done, he replied yes, he was sorry for having let 'em off so
easy, and hoped all Christian husbands would pardon him the offence.
Let this be a warning to all young ladies to be particular in the
character of the gentlemen of their choice. Observe that his fingers
are curled as if in the act of tickling, and that his face is
represented with a wink, as he appeared when committing his barbarous
murders.'

When Nell knew all about Mr Packlemerton, and could say it
without faltering, Mrs Jarley passed on to the fat man, and then to
the thin man, the tall man, the short man, the old lady who died of
dancing at a hundred and thirty-two, the wild boy of the woods, the
woman who poisoned fourteen families with pickled walnuts, and other
historical characters and interesting but misguided individuals. And
so well did Nell profit by her instructions, and so apt was she to
remember them, that by the time they had been shut up together for a
couple of hours, she was in full possession of the history of the
whole establishment, and perfectly competent to the enlightenment of
visitors.

Mrs Jarley was not slow to express her admiration at this happy
result, and carried her young friend and pupil to inspect the
remaining arrangements within doors, by virtue of which the passage
had been already converted into a grove of green-baize hung with the
inscription she had already seen (Mr Slum's productions), and a
highly ornamented table placed at the upper end for Mrs Jarley
herself, at which she was to preside and take the money, in company
with his Majesty King George the Third, Mr Grimaldi as clown, Mary
Queen of Scots, an anonymous gentleman of the Quaker persuasion, and
Mr Pitt holding in his hand a correct model of the bill for the
imposition of the window duty. The preparations without doors had
not been neglected either; a nun of great personal attractions was
telling her beads on the little portico over the door; and a brigand
with the blackest possible head of hair, and the clearest possible
complexion, was at that moment going round the town in a cart,
consulting the miniature of a lady.

It now only remained that Mr Slum's compositions should be
judiciously distributed; that the pathetic effusions should find
their way to all private houses and tradespeople; and that the parody
commencing 'If I know'd a donkey,' should be confined to the taverns,
and circulated only among the lawyers' clerks and choice spirits of
the place. When this had been done, and Mrs Jarley had waited upon
the boarding-schools in person, with a handbill composed expressly
for them, in which it was distinctly proved that wax-work refined the
mind, cultivated the taste, and enlarged the sphere of the human
understanding, that indefatigable lady sat down to dinner, and drank
out of the suspicious bottle to a flourishing campaign.