MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS(利里普夫人的住处)

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MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS

MRS. LIRRIPER'S

LODGINGS

By Charles Dickens

MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS

CHAPTER I--HOW MRS.

LIRRIPER CARRIED ON THE

BUSINESS

Whoever would begin to be worried with letting Lodgings that wasn't

a lone woman with a living to get is a thing inconceivable to me, my dear;

excuse the familiarity, but it comes natural to me in my own little room,

when wishing to open my mind to those that I can trust, and I should be

truly thankful if they were all mankind, but such is not so, for have but a

Furnished bill in the window and your watch on the mantelpiece, and

farewell to it if you turn your back for but a second, however gentlemanly

the manners; nor is being of your own sex any safeguard, as I have reason,

in the form of sugar-tongs to know, for that lady (and a fine woman she

was) got me to run for a glass of water, on the plea of going to be confined,

which certainly turned out true, but it was in the Station-house.

Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street, Strand--situated midway between

the City and St. James's, and within five minutes' walk of the principal

places of public amusement--is my address. I have rented this house

many years, as the parish rate-books will testify; and I could wish my

landlord was as alive to the fact as I am myself; but no, bless you, not a

half a pound of paint to save his life, nor so much, my dear, as a tile upon

the roof, though on your bended knees.

My dear, you never have found Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street

Strand advertised in Bradshaw's Railway Guide, and with the blessing of

Heaven you never will or shall so find it. Some there are who do not

think it lowering themselves to make their names that cheap, and even

going the lengths of a portrait of the house not like it with a blot in every

window and a coach and four at the door, but what will suit Wozenham's

lower down on the other side of the way will not suit me, Miss Wozenham

having her opinions and me having mine, though when it comes to

MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS

systematic underbidding capable of being proved on oath in a court of

justice and taking the form of "If Mrs. Lirriper names eighteen shillings a

week, I name fifteen and six," it then comes to a settlement between

yourself and your conscience, supposing for the sake of argument your

name to be Wozenham, which I am well aware it is not or my opinion of

you would be greatly lowered, and as to airy bedrooms and a night-porter

in constant attendance the less said the better, the bedrooms being stuffy

and the porter stuff.

It is forty years ago since me and my poor Lirriper got married at St.

Clement's Danes, where I now have a sitting in a very pleasant pew with

genteel company and my own hassock, and being partial to evening

service not too crowded. My poor Lirriper was a handsome figure of a

man, with a beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a musical instrument

made of honey and steel, but he had ever been a free liver being in the

commercial travelling line and travelling what he called a limekiln road--

"a dry road, Emma my dear," my poor Lirriper says to me, "where I have

to lay the dust with one drink or another all day long and half the night,

and it wears me Emma"--and this led to his running through a good deal

and might have run through the turnpike too when that dreadful horse that

never would stand still for a single instant set off, but for its being night

and the gate shut and consequently took his wheel, my poor Lirriper and

the gig smashed to atoms and never spoke afterwards. He was a

handsome figure of a man, and a man with a jovial heart and a sweet

temper; but if they had come up then they never could have given you the

mellowness of his voice, and indeed I consider photographs wanting in

mellowness as a general rule and making you look like a new-ploughed

field.

My poor Lirriper being behindhand with the world and being buried at

Hatfield church in Hertfordshire, not that it was his native place but that he

had a liking for the Salisbury Arms where we went upon our wedding-day

and passed as happy a fortnight as ever happy was, I went round to the

creditors and I says "Gentlemen I am acquainted with the fact that I am

not answerable for my late husband's debts but I wish to pay them for I am

MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS

his lawful wife and his good name is dear to me. I am going into the

Lodgings gentlemen as a business and if I prosper every farthing that my

late husband owed shall be paid for the sake of the love I bore him, by this

right hand." It took a long time to do but it was done, and the silver

cream-jug which is between ourselves and the bed and the mattress in my

room up-stairs (or it would have found legs so sure as ever the Furnished

bill was up) being presented by the gentlemen engraved "To Mrs. Lirriper

a mark of grateful respect for her honourable conduct" gave me a turn

which was too much for my feelings, till Mr. Betley which at that time had

the parlours and loved his joke says "Cheer up Mrs. Lirriper, you should

feel as if it was only your christening and they were your godfathers and

godmothers which did promise for you." And it brought me round, and I

don't mind confessing to you my dear that I then put a sandwich and a

drop of sherry in a little basket and went down to Hatfield church-yard

outside the coach and kissed my hand and laid it with a kind of proud and

swelling love on my husband's grave, though bless you it had taken me so

long to clear his name that my wedding-ring was worn quite fine and

smooth when I laid it on the green green waving grass.

I am an old woman now and my good looks are gone but that's me my

dear over the plate-warmer and considered like in the times when you used

to pay two guineas on ivory and took your chance pretty much how you

came out, which made you very careful how you left it about afterwards

because people were turned so red and uncomfortable by mostly guessing

it was somebody else quite different, and there was once a certain person

that had put his money in a hop business that came in one morning to pay

his rent and his respects being the second floor that would have taken it

down from its hook and put it in his breast-pocket--you understand my

dear--for the L, he says of the original--only there was no mellowness in

HIS voice and I wouldn't let him, but his opinion of it you may gather

from his saying to it "Speak to me Emma!" which was far from a rational

observation no doubt but still a tribute to its being a likeness, and I think

myself it WAS like me when I was young and wore that sort of stays.

But it was about the Lodgings that I was intending to hold forth and

MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS

certainly I ought to know something of the business having been in it so

long, for it was early in the second year of my married life that I lost my

poor Lirriper and I set up at Islington directly afterwards and afterwards

came here, being two houses and eight-and- thirty years and some losses

and a deal of experience.

Girls are your first trial after fixtures and they try you even worse than

what I call the Wandering Christians, though why THEY should roam the

earth looking for bills and then coming in and viewing the apartments and

stickling about terms and never at all wanting them or dreaming of taking

them being already provided, is, a mystery I should be thankful to have

explained if by any miracle it could be. It's wonderful they live so long

and thrive so on it but I suppose the exercise makes it healthy, knocking so

much and going from house to house and up and down-stairs all day, and

then their pretending to be so particular and punctual is a most astonishing

thing, looking at their watches and saying "Could you give me the refusal

of the rooms till twenty minutes past eleven the day after to-morrow in the

forenoon, and supposing it to be considered essential by my friend from

the country could there be a small iron bedstead put in the little room upon

the stairs?" Why when I was new to it my dear I used to consider before

I promised and to make my mind anxious with calculations and to get

quite wearied out with disappointments, but now I says "Certainly by all

means" well knowing it's a Wandering Christian and I shall hear no more

about it, indeed by this time I know most of the Wandering Christians by

sight as well as they know me, it being the habit of each individual

revolving round London in that capacity to come back about twice a year,

and it's very remarkable that it runs in families and the children grow up to

it, but even were it otherwise I should no sooner hear of the friend from

the country which is a certain sign than I should nod and say to myself

You're a Wandering Christian, though whether they are (as I HAVE heard)

persons of small property with a taste for regular employment and

frequent change of scene I cannot undertake to tell you.

Girls as I was beginning to remark are one of your first and your

lasting troubles, being like your teeth which begin with convulsions and

MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS

never cease tormenting you from the time you cut them till they cut you,

and then you don't want to part with them which seems hard but we must

all succumb or buy artificial, and even where you get a will nine times out

of ten you'll get a dirty face with it and naturally lodgers do not like good

society to be shown in with a smear of black across the nose or a smudgy

eyebrow. Where they pick the black up is a mystery I cannot solve, as in

the case of the willingest girl that ever came into a house half-starved poor

thing, a girl so willing that I called her Willing Sophy down upon her

knees scrubbing early and late and ever cheerful but always smiling with a

black face. And I says to Sophy, "Now Sophy my good girl have a

regular day for your stoves and keep the width of the Airy between

yourself and the blacking and do not brush your hair with the bottoms of

the saucepans and do not meddle with the snuffs of the candles and it

stands to reason that it can no longer be" yet there it was and always on

her nose, which turning up and being broad at the end seemed to boast of

it and caused warning from a steady gentleman and excellent lodger with

breakfast by the week but a little irritable and use of a sitting-room when

required, his words being "Mrs. Lirriper I have arrived at the point of

admitting that the Black is a man and a brother, but only in a natural form

and when it can't be got off." Well consequently I put poor Sophy on to

other work and forbid her answering the door or answering a bell on any

account but she was so unfortunately willing that nothing would stop her

flying up the kitchen-stairs whenever a bell was heard to tingle. I put it

to her "O Sophy Sophy for goodness' goodness' sake where does it come

from?" To which that poor unlucky willing mortal--bursting out crying

to see me so vexed replied "I took a deal of black into me ma'am when I

was a small child being much neglected and I think it must be, that it

works out," so it continuing to work out of that poor thing and not having

another fault to find with her I says "Sophy what do you seriously think of

my helping you away to New South Wales where it might not be noticed?"

Nor did I ever repent the money which was well spent, for she married the

ship's cook on the voyage (himself a Mulotter) and did well and lived

happy, and so far as ever I heard it was NOT noticed in a new state of

MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS

society to her dying day.

In what way Miss Wozenham lower down on the other side of the way

reconciled it to her feelings as a lady (which she is not) to entice Mary

Anne Perkinsop from my service is best known to herself, I do not know

and I do not wish to know how opinions are formed at Wozenham's on any

point. But Mary Anne Perkinsop although I behaved handsomely to her

and she behaved unhandsomely to me was worth her weight in gold as

overawing lodgers without driving them away, for lodgers would be far

more sparing of their bells with Mary Anne than I ever knew them to be

with Maid or Mistress, which is a great triumph especially when

accompanied with a cast in the eye and a bag of bones, but it was the

steadiness of her way with them through her father's having failed in Pork.

It was Mary Anne's looking so respectable in her person and being so strict

in her spirits that conquered the tea-and-sugarest gentleman (for he

weighed them both in a pair of scales every morning) that I have ever had

to deal with and no lamb grew meeker, still it afterwards came round to

me that Miss Wozenham happening to pass and seeing Mary Anne take in

the milk of a milkman that made free in a rosy-faced way (I think no

worse of him) with every girl in the street but was quite frozen up like the

statue at Charing-cross by her, saw Mary Anne's value in the lodging

business and went as high as one pound per quarter more, consequently

Mary Anne with not a word betwixt us says "If you will provide yourself

Mrs. Lirriper in a month from this day I have already done the same,"

which hurt me and I said so, and she then hurt me more by insinuating that

her father having failed in Pork had laid her open to it.

My dear I do assure you it's a harassing thing to know what kind of

girls to give the preference to, for if they are lively they get bell'd off their

legs and if they are sluggish you suffer from it yourself in complaints and

if they are sparkling-eyed they get made love to, and if they are smart in

their persons they try on your Lodgers' bonnets and if they are musical I

defy you to keep them away from bands and organs, and allowing for any

difference you like in their heads their heads will be always out of window

just the same. And then what the gentlemen like in girls the ladies don't,

MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS

which is fruitful hot water for all parties, and then there's temper though

such a temper as Caroline Maxey's I hope not often. A good- looking

black-eyed girl was Caroline and a comely-made girl to your cost when

she did break out and laid about her, as took place first and last through a

new-married couple come to see London in the first floor and the lady

very high and it WAS supposed not liking the good looks of Caroline

having none of her own to spare, but anyhow she did try Caroline though

that was no excuse. So one afternoon Caroline comes down into the

kitchen flushed and flashing, and she says to me "Mrs. Lirriper that

woman in the first has aggravated me past bearing," I says "Caroline keep

your temper," Caroline says with a curdling laugh "Keep my temper?

You're right Mrs. Lirriper, so I will. Capital D her!" bursts out Caroline

(you might have struck me into the centre of the earth with a feather when

she said it) "I'll give her a touch of the temper that I keep!" Caroline

downs with her hair my dear, screeches and rushes up- stairs, I following

as fast as my trembling legs could bear me, but before I got into the room

the dinner-cloth and pink-and-white service all dragged off upon the floor

with a crash and the new- married couple on their backs in the firegrate,

him with the shovel and tongs and a dish of cucumber across him and a

mercy it was summer-time. "Caroline" I says "be calm," but she catches

off my cap and tears it in her teeth as she passes me, then pounces on the

new-married lady makes her a bundle of ribbons takes her by the two ears

and knocks the back of her head upon the carpet Murder screaming all the

time Policemen running down the street and Wozenham's windows (judge

of my feelings when I came to know it) thrown up and Miss Wozenham

calling out from the balcony with crocodile's tears "It's Mrs. Lirriper been

overcharging somebody to madness--she'll be murdered--I always thought

so--Pleeseman save her!" My dear four of them and Caroline behind the

chiffoniere attacking with the poker and when disarmed prize-fighting

with her double fists, and down and up and up and down and dreadful!

But I couldn't bear to see the poor young creature roughly handled and her

hair torn when they got the better of her, and I says "Gentlemen Policemen

pray remember that her sex is the sex of your mothers and sisters and your

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MRS.LIRRIPER'SLODGINGS1MRS.LIRRIPER'SLODGINGSByCharlesDickensMRS.LIRRIPER'SLODGINGS2CHAPTERI--HOWMRS.LIRRIPERCARRIEDONTHEBUSINESSWhoeverwouldbegintobeworriedwithlettingLodgingsthatwasn'talonewomanwithalivingtogetisathinginconceivabletome,mydear;excusethefamiliarity,butitcomesnaturaltomeinmyownlittle...

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