DOCTOR MARIGOLD(马里歌德医生)

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DOCTOR MARIGOLD

By Charles Dickens

DOCTOR MARIGOLD

I am a Cheap Jack, and my own father's name was Willum Marigold.

It was in his lifetime supposed by some that his name was William, but my

own father always consistently said, No, it was Willum. On which point

I content myself with looking at the argument this way: If a man is not

allowed to know his own name in a free country, how much is he allowed

to know in a land of slavery? As to looking at the argument through the

medium of the Register, Willum Marigold come into the world before

Registers come up much,--and went out of it too. They wouldn't have

been greatly in his line neither, if they had chanced to come up before him.

I was born on the Queen's highway, but it was the King's at that time.

A doctor was fetched to my own mother by my own father, when it took

place on a common; and in consequence of his being a very kind

gentleman, and accepting no fee but a tea-tray, I was named Doctor, out of

gratitude and compliment to him. There you have me. Doctor Marigold.

I am at present a middle-aged man of a broadish build, in cords,

leggings, and a sleeved waistcoat the strings of which is always gone

behind. Repair them how you will, they go like fiddle-strings. You have

been to the theatre, and you have seen one of the wiolin- players screw up

his wiolin, after listening to it as if it had been whispering the secret to him

that it feared it was out of order, and then you have heard it snap. That's

as exactly similar to my waistcoat as a waistcoat and a wiolin can be like

one another.

I am partial to a white hat, and I like a shawl round my neck wore

loose and easy. Sitting down is my favourite posture. If I have a taste

in point of personal jewelry, it is mother-of-pearl buttons. There you have

me again, as large as life.

The doctor having accepted a tea-tray, you'll guess that my father was

a Cheap Jack before me. You are right. He was. It was a pretty tray.

It represented a large lady going along a serpentining up-hill gravel-walk,

to attend a little church. Two swans had likewise come astray with the

same intentions. When I call her a large lady, I don't mean in point of

breadth, for there she fell below my views, but she more than made it up

in heighth; her heighth and slimness was--in short THE heighth of both.

DOCTOR MARIGOLD

I often saw that tray, after I was the innocently smiling cause (or more

likely screeching one) of the doctor's standing it up on a table against the

wall in his consulting-room. Whenever my own father and mother were

in that part of the country, I used to put my head (I have heard my own

mother say it was flaxen curls at that time, though you wouldn't know an

old hearth-broom from it now till you come to the handle, and found it

wasn't me) in at the doctor's door, and the doctor was always glad to see

me, and said, "Aha, my brother practitioner! Come in, little M.D. How

are your inclinations as to sixpence?"

You can't go on for ever, you'll find, nor yet could my father nor yet

my mother. If you don't go off as a whole when you are about due,

you're liable to go off in part, and two to one your head's the part.

Gradually my father went off his, and my mother went off hers. It was in

a harmless way, but it put out the family where I boarded them. The old

couple, though retired, got to be wholly and solely devoted to the Cheap

Jack business, and were always selling the family off. Whenever the

cloth was laid for dinner, my father began rattling the plates and dishes, as

we do in our line when we put up crockery for a bid, only he had lost the

trick of it, and mostly let 'em drop and broke 'em. As the old lady had

been used to sit in the cart, and hand the articles out one by one to the old

gentleman on the footboard to sell, just in the same way she handed him

every item of the family's property, and they disposed of it in their own

imaginations from morning to night. At last the old gentleman, lying

bedridden in the same room with the old lady, cries out in the old patter,

fluent, after having been silent for two days and nights: "Now here, my

jolly companions every one,--which the Nightingale club in a village was

held, At the sign of the Cabbage and Shears, Where the singers no doubt

would have greatly excelled, But for want of taste, voices and ears,--now,

here, my jolly companions, every one, is a working model of a used-up old

Cheap Jack, without a tooth in his head, and with a pain in every bone: so

like life that it would be just as good if it wasn't better, just as bad if it

wasn't worse, and just as new if it wasn't worn out. Bid for the working

model of the old Cheap Jack, who has drunk more gunpowder-tea with the

ladies in his time than would blow the lid off a washerwoman's copper,

DOCTOR MARIGOLD

and carry it as many thousands of miles higher than the moon as naught

nix naught, divided by the national debt, carry nothing to the poor-rates,

three under, and two over. Now, my hearts of oak and men of straw, what

do you say for the lot? Two shillings, a shilling, tenpence, eightpence,

sixpence, fourpence. Twopence? Who said twopence? The

gentleman in the scarecrow's hat? I am ashamed of the gentleman in the

scarecrow's hat. I really am ashamed of him for his want of public spirit.

Now I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Come! I'll throw you in a

working model of a old woman that was married to the old Cheap Jack so

long ago that upon my word and honour it took place in Noah's Ark,

before the Unicorn could get in to forbid the banns by blowing a tune upon

his horn. There now! Come! What do you say for both? I'll tell you

what I'll do with you. I don't bear you malice for being so backward.

Here! If you make me a bid that'll only reflect a little credit on your

town, I'll throw you in a warming-pan for nothing, and lend you a

toasting-fork for life. Now come; what do you say after that splendid

offer? Say two pound, say thirty shillings, say a pound, say ten shillings,

say five, say two and six. You don't say even two and six? You say two

and three? No. You shan't have the lot for two and three. I'd sooner

give it to you, if you was good-looking enough. Here! Missis! Chuck

the old man and woman into the cart, put the horse to, and drive 'em away

and bury 'em!" Such were the last words of Willum Marigold, my own

father, and they were carried out, by him and by his wife, my own mother,

on one and the same day, as I ought to know, having followed as mourner.

My father had been a lovely one in his time at the Cheap Jack work, as

his dying observations went to prove. But I top him. I don't say it

because it's myself, but because it has been universally acknowledged by

all that has had the means of comparison. I have worked at it. I have

measured myself against other public speakers,--Members of Parliament,

Platforms, Pulpits, Counsel learned in the law,--and where I have found

'em good, I have took a bit of imagination from 'em, and where I have

found 'em bad, I have let 'em alone. Now I'll tell you what. I mean to

go down into my grave declaring that of all the callings ill used in Great

Britain, the Cheap Jack calling is the worst used. Why ain't we a

DOCTOR MARIGOLD

profession? Why ain't we endowed with privileges? Why are we

forced to take out a hawker's license, when no such thing is expected of

the political hawkers? Where's the difference betwixt us? Except that

we are Cheap Jacks and they are Dear Jacks, I don't see any difference but

what's in our favour.

For look here! Say it's election time. I am on the footboard of my

cart in the market-place, on a Saturday night. I put up a general

miscellaneous lot. I say: "Now here, my free and independent woters,

I'm a going to give you such a chance as you never had in all your born

days, nor yet the days preceding. Now I'll show you what I am a going

to do with you. Here's a pair of razors that'll shave you closer than the

Board of Guardians; here's a flat-iron worth its weight in gold; here's a

frying-pan artificially flavoured with essence of beefsteaks to that degree

that you've only got for the rest of your lives to fry bread and dripping in it

and there you are replete with animal food; here's a genuine chronometer

watch in such a solid silver case that you may knock at the door with it

when you come home late from a social meeting, and rouse your wife and

family, and save up your knocker for the postman; and here's half-a- dozen

dinner plates that you may play the cymbals with to charm baby when it's

fractious. Stop! I'll throw in another article, and I'll give you that, and

it's a rolling-pin; and if the baby can only get it well into its mouth when

its teeth is coming and rub the gums once with it, they'll come through

double, in a fit of laughter equal to being tickled. Stop again! I'll throw

you in another article, because I don't like the looks of you, for you haven't

the appearance of buyers unless I lose by you, and because I'd rather lose

than not take money to-night, and that's a looking-glass in which you may

see how ugly you look when you don't bid. What do you say now?

Come! Do you say a pound? Not you, for you haven't got it. Do you

say ten shillings? Not you, for you owe more to the tallyman. Well

then, I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I'll heap 'em all on the footboard

of the cart,--there they are! razors, flat watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin,

and away for four shillings, and I'll give you sixpence for your trouble!"

This is me, the Cheap Jack. But on the Monday morning, in the same

market-place, comes the Dear Jack on the hustings--HIS cart--and, what

DOCTOR MARIGOLD

does HE say? "Now my free and independent woters, I am a going to give

you such a chance" (he begins just like me) "as you never had in all your

born days, and that's the chance of sending Myself to Parliament. Now

I'll tell you what I am a going to do for you. Here's the interests of this

magnificent town promoted above all the rest of the civilised and

uncivilised earth. Here's your railways carried, and your neighbours'

railways jockeyed. Here's all your sons in the Post-office. Here's

Britannia smiling on you. Here's the eyes of Europe on you. Here's

uniwersal prosperity for you, repletion of animal food, golden cornfields,

gladsome homesteads, and rounds of applause from your own hearts, all in

one lot, and that's myself. Will you take me as I stand? You won't?

Well, then, I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Come now! I'll throw you

in anything you ask for. There! Church-rates, abolition of more malt

tax, no malt tax, universal education to the highest mark, or uniwersal

ignorance to the lowest, total abolition of flogging in the army or a dozen

for every private once a month all round, Wrongs of Men or Rights of

Women--only say which it shall be, take 'em or leave 'em, and I'm of your

opinion altogether, and the lot's your own on your own terms. There!

You won't take it yet! Well, then, I'll tell you what I'll do with you.

Come! You ARE such free and independent woters, and I am so proud of

you,--you ARE such a noble and enlightened constituency, and I AM so

ambitious of the honour and dignity of being your member, which is by far

the highest level to which the wings of the human mind can soar,--that I'll

tell you what I'll do with you. I'll throw you in all the public-houses in

your magnificent town for nothing. Will that content you? It won't?

You won't take the lot yet? Well, then, before I put the horse in and drive

away, and make the offer to the next most magnificent town that can be

discovered, I'll tell you what I'll do. Take the lot, and I'll drop two

thousand pound in the streets of your magnificent town for them to pick

up that can. Not enough? Now look here. This is the very furthest that

I'm a going to. I'll make it two thousand five hundred. And still you

won't? Here, missis! Put the horse--no, stop half a moment, I shouldn't

like to turn my back upon you neither for a trifle, I'll make it two thousand

seven hundred and fifty pound. There! Take the lot on your own terms,

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摘要：

DOCTORMARIGOLD1DOCTORMARIGOLDByCharlesDickensDOCTORMARIGOLD2IamaCheapJack,andmyownfather'snamewasWillumMarigold.ItwasinhislifetimesupposedbysomethathisnamewasWilliam,butmyownfatheralwaysconsistentlysaid,No,itwasWillum.OnwhichpointIcontentmyselfwithlookingattheargumentthisway:Ifamanisnotallowedtoknow...

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