A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF MR. WATKINS TOTTLE
CHAPTER THE FIRST
Matrimony is proverbially a serious undertaking. Like an overweening predilection for brandy-and-water, it is a misfortune into which a man easily falls, and from which he finds it remarkably difficult to extricate himself. It is of no use telling a man who is timorous on these points, that it is but one plunge, and all is over. They say the same thing at the Old Bailey, and the unfortunate victims derive as much comfort from the assurance in the one case as in the other.
Mr. Watkins Tottle was a rather uncommon compound of strong uxorious inclinations, and an unparalleled degree of anti-connubial timidity. He was about fifty years of age; stood four feet six inches and three-quarters in his socks—for he never stood in stockings at all—plump, clean, and rosy. He looked something like a vignette to one of Richardson 's novels, and had a cleancravatish formality of manner, and kitchen-pokerness of carriage, which Sir Charles Grandison himself might have envied. He lived on an annuity, which was well adapted to the individual who received it, in one respect—it was rather small. He received it in periodical payments on every alternate Monday; but he ran himself out, about a day after the expiration of the first week, as regularly as an eight-day clock; and then, to make the comparison complete, his landlady wound him up, and he went on with a regular tick.
Mr. Watkins Tottle had long lived in a state of single blessedness, as bachelors say, or single cursedness, as spinsters think; but the idea of matrimony had never ceased to haunt him. Wrapt in profound reveries on this never-failing theme, fancy transformed his small parlour in Cecil-street, Strand, into a neat house in the suburbs; the half-hundredweight of coals under the kitchen-stairs suddenly sprang up into three tons of the best Walls-end; his small French bedstead was converted into a regular matrimonial four-poster; and in the empty chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, imagination seated a beautiful young lady, with a very little independence or will of her own, and a very large independence under a will of her father's.
“Who's there?” inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle, as a gentle tap at his room-door disturbed these meditations one evening.
“Tottle, my dear fellow, how DO you do?” said a short elderly gentleman with a gruffish voice, bursting into the room, and replying to the question by asking another.
“Told you I should drop in some evening,” said the short gentleman, as he delivered his hat into Tottle's hand, after a little struggling and dodging.
“Delighted to see you, I'm sure,” said Mr. Watkins Tottle, wishing internally that his visitor had “dropped in” to the Thames at the bottom of the street, instead of dropping into his parlour. The fortnight was nearly up, and Watkins was hard up.
“How is Mrs. Gabriel Parsons?” inquired Tottle.
“Quite well, thank you,” replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, for that was the name the short gentleman revelled in. Here there was a pause; the short gentleman looked at the left hob of the fireplace; Mr. Watkins Tottle stared vacancy out of countenance.
“Quite well,” repeated the short gentleman, when five minutes had expired. “I may say remarkably well.” And he rubbed the palms of his hands as hard as if he were going to strike a light by friction.
“What will you take?” inquired Tottle, with the desperate suddenness of a man who knew that unless the visitor took his leave, he stood very little chance of taking anything else.
“Oh, I don't know—have you any whiskey?”
“Why,” replied Tottle, very slowly, for all this was gaining time, “I HAD some capital, and remarkably strong whiskey last week; but it's all gone—and therefore its strength—”
“Is much beyond proof; or, in other words, impossible to be proved,” said the short gentleman; and he laughed very heartily, and seemed quite glad the whiskey had been drunk. Mr. Tottle smiled—but it was the smile of despair. When Mr. Gabriel Parsons had done laughing, he delicately insinuated that, in the absence of whiskey, he would not be averse to brandy. And Mr. Watkins Tottle, lighting a flat candle very ostentatiously; and displaying an immense key, which belonged to the street-door, but which, for the sake of appearances, occasionally did duty in an imaginary winecellar; left the room to entreat his landlady to charge their glasses, and charge them in the bill. The application was successful; the spirits were speedily called—not from the vasty deep, but the adjacent wine-vaults. The two short gentlemen mixed their grog; and then sat cosily down before the fire—a pair of shorts, airing themselves.
“Tottle,” said Mr. Gabriel Parsons, “you know my way—off-hand, open, say what I mean, mean what I say, hate reserve, and can't bear affectation. One, is a bad domino which only hides what good people have about “em, without making the bad look better; and the other is much about the same thing as pinking a white cotton stocking to make it look like a silk one. Now listen to what I'm going to say.”
Here, the little gentleman paused, and took a long pull at his brandy-and-water. Mr. Watkins Tottle took a sip of his, stirred the fire, and assumed an air of profound attention.
“It's of no use humming and ha'ing about the matter,” resumed the short gentleman.—“You want to get married.”
“Why,” replied Mr. Watkins Tottle evasively; for he trembled violently, and felt a sudden tingling throughout his whole frame; “why—I should certainly—at least, I THINK I should like—”
“Won't do,” said the short gentleman.—“Plain and free—or there's an end of the matter. Do you want money?”
“You know I do.”
“You admire the sex?”
“I do.”
“And you'd like to be married?”
“Certainly.”
“Then you shall be. There's an end of that.” Thus saying, Mr. Gabriel Parsons took a pinch of snuff, and mixed another glass.
“Let me entreat you to be more explanatory,” said Tottle. “Really, as the party principally interested, I cannot consent to be disposed of, in this way.”
“I'll tell you,” replied Mr. Gabriel Parsons, warming with the subject, and the brandy-and-water—“I know a lady—she's stopping with my wife now—who is just the thing for you. Well educated; talks French; plays the piano; knows a good deal about flowers, and shells, and all that sort of thing; and has five hundred a year, with an uncontrolled power of disposing of it, by her last will and testament.”
“I'll pay my addresses to her,” said Mr. Watkins Tottle. “She isn't VERY young—is she?”
“Not very; just the thing for you. I've said that already.”
“What coloured hair has the lady?” inquired Mr. Watkins Tottle.
“Egad, I hardly recollect,” replied Gabriel, with coolness. “Perhaps I ought to have observed, at first, she wears a front.”
“A what?” ejaculated Tottle.
“One of those things with curls, along here,” said Parsons, drawing a straight line across his forehead, just over his eyes, in illustration of his meaning. “I know the front's black; I can't speak quite positively about her own hair; because, unless one walks behind her, and catches a glimpse of it under her bonnet, one seldom sees it; but I should say that it was RATHER lighter than the front—a shade of a greyish tinge, perhaps.”
Mr. Watkins Tottle looked as if he had certain misgivings of mind. Mr. Gabriel Parsons perceived it, and thought it would be safe to begin the next attack without delay.
“Now, were you ever in love, Tottle?” he inquired.
Mr. Watkins Tottle blushed up to the eyes, and down to the chin, and exhibited a most extensive combination of colours as he confessed the soft impeachment.
“I suppose you popped the question, more than once, when you were a young—I beg your pardon—a younger—man,” said Parsons.
“Never in my life!” replied his friend, apparently indignant at being suspected of such an act. “Never! The
