'I will give this guinea,' cried I, quite enraged, 'to the first who knocks that ungrateful down.'
Hardly had I spoken, when he was laid prostrate. He fell against the stall, upset it, and instantly the street was strewn with apples, nuts, and cakes. He rose. The battle raged. Some sided with him, some against him. The furious stall-woman pelted both parties with her own apples; while the only discreet person there, was a ragged little girl, who stood laughing at a distance, and eating one of the cakes.
In the midst of the fray, Jerry returned with a coach. I sprang into it, and he after me.
'The guinea, the guinea!' cried twenty voices at once. At once twenty apples came rattling against the glasses.
'Pay me for my apples!' cried the woman.
'Pay me for my windows!' cried the coachman.
'Drive like a devil,' cried Jerry, 'and I will pay you like an emperor!'
'Much the same sort of persons, now-a-days,' said the coachman, and away we flew. The guinea, the guinea! died along the sky. I thought I should have dropt with laughter.
My dear friend, do you not sympathize with my sorrows? Desolate, destitute, and dependent on strangers, what is to become of me? I declare I am extremely unhappy.
I write from Jerry's house, where I have taken refuge for the present; and as soon as I am settled elsewhere, you shall hear from me again.
LETTER IX
Jerry Sullivan is a petty woollendraper in St. Giles's, and occupies the ground-floor of a small house. At first his wife and daughter eyed me with some suspicion; but when he told them how I had saved him from ruin, and that I was somehow or other a great lady in disguise, they became very civil, and gave me a tolerable breakfast. Then fatigued and sleepy, I threw myself on a bed, and slept till two.
I woke with pains in all my limbs; but anxious to forward the adventures of my life, I rose, and called mother and daughter to a consultation on my dress. They furnished me with their best habiliments, for which I agreed to give them two guineas; and I then began equipping myself.
While thus employed, I heard the voices of husband and wife in the next room, rising gradually to the matrimonial key. At last the wife exclaims,
'A Heroine? I will take my corporal oath, there is no such title in all England; and if she has the four guineas, she never came honestly by them; so the sooner she parts with them the better; and not a step shall she stir in our cloathes till she launches forth three of them. So that's that, and mine's my own, and how do you like my manners, Ignoramus?'
'How dare you call me Ignoramus?' cried Jerry. 'Blackguard if you like, but no ignoramus, I believe. I know what I could call you, though.'
'Well,' cried she, 'saving a drunkard and a scold, what else can you call me?'
'I won't speak another word to you,' said Jerry; 'I would not speak to you, if you were lying dead in the kennel.'
'Then you're an ugly unnatural beast, so you are,' cried she, 'and your Miss is no better than a bad one; and I warrant you understand one another well.'
This last insinuation was sufficient for me. What! remain in a house where suspicion attached to my character? What! act so diametrically, so outrageously contrary to the principle of aspersed heroines, who are sure on such occasions to pin up a bundle, and set off? I spurned the mean idea, and resolved to decamp instantly. So having hastened my toilette, I threw three guineas on the table, and then looked for a pen and ink, to write a sonnet on gratitude. I could find nothing, however, but a small bit of chalk, and with this substitute, I scratched the following lines on the wall.
As some deputed angel, from the spheres
Of empyrean day, with nectar dewed,
Through firmamental wildernesses steers,
To starless tracts of black infinitude —
Here the chalk failed me, and just at the critical moment for my simile had also failed me, nor could I have ever gotten beyond infinitude. I got to the street door, however, and without fear of being overheard; to such an altitude of tone had words arisen between husband and wife, who were now contesting a most delicate point – which of them had beaten the other last.
'I know,' cried Jerry, 'that I gave the last blow.'
'Then take the first now,' cried his wife, as I shut the door.
Anticipating the probability that I should have occasion for Jerry's services again, I marked the number of the house, and then hastened along the street. It was swarming and humming like a hive of bees, and I felt as if I could never escape alive out of it. Here a carriage almost ran over me; there a waggoner's whip almost blinded me. Now a sweep brushed against me. 'Beauty!' cried a man like a monkey, and chucked my chin, while a fellow with a trunk shoved me aside.
I now turned into a street called Bond Street, where a long procession of carriages was passing. I remarked that the coachmen (they could not be gentlemen, I am sure) appeared to stand in great estimation; for the ladies of one carriage used to nod most familiarly to the driver of another. Indeed, I had often heard it said, that ladies and coachmen are sometimes particularly intimate; but till now I could never believe it.
The shops next attracted my attention, and I stopped to look at some of them. You cannot conceive any thing more charming: Turkish turbans, Indian shawls, pearls, diamonds, fans, feathers, laces; all shewn for nothing at the windows. I had but one guinea remaining!
At length feeling tired and hungry, and my feet being quite foundered, I determined to lose no farther time in taking lodgings. Perceiving 'Apartments to let,' written on a door, I rapped, and a servant girl opened it.
'Pray,' said I to her, 'are your northern apartments uninhabited?'
She replied that there were two rooms on the second floor disengaged, and comfortably furnished.
'I do not want them comfortable,' said I; 'but are they furnished with tapestry and old pictures? That is the point.'
'There is only master's face over the chimney,' said she.
'Do the doors creek on their hinges?' asked I.
'That they don't,' said she, 'for I oiled 'em all only yesterday.'
'Then you shewed a depraved taste,' cried I. 'At least, are the apartments haunted?'
'Lauk, no!' said she, half shutting the door.
'Well then, my good girl, tell me candidly whether your mistress is like the landladies one reads of. Is she a fat, bustling little woman, who would treat me to tea, cakes, and plenty of gossip, and at the end of a week, say to me, "out, hussy, tramp this moment;" or is she a pale, placid matron, worn to a thread-paper, and whose story is interwoven with mine?'
'Deuce take your impudence!' cried she, slapping the door in my face.
I tried other houses with no better success; and even when I merely asked for common lodgings, without stipulating for spectres or tapestry, the people would not accommodate me, unless I could procure some recommendation besides my own.
As I had no friend to give me a character, it became necessary to make a friend; so I began to look about for a fit subject. Passing a shop where eggs and butter were sold, and lodgings to be let, I perceived a pretty woman sitting behind the counter, and a fine infant playing upon it. I thought that all this bore an auspicious appearance; so I tottered into the shop, and placing myself opposite to the woman, I gazed at her with an engaging and gentle intelligence. She demanded my business.
'Interesting creature!' whispered I, pressing her hand as it rested on the counter. 'O may that little rosy fatling – '
Unfortunately there was an egg in the hand that I took, which I crushed by the compression, and the yolk came oozing between her fingers.
'Reptile!' cried she, as she threw the fragments in my