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MEN’S WIVES
volunteered to sing a song, which he said he had heard at some
very gay supper-party at Cambridge, and which begins:
“A pye sat on a pear-tree,
A pye sat on a pear-tree,
A pye sat on a pear-tree,
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, heigh-ho!”
Fancy Mrs. Berry’s face as she looked in, in the midst of
that Bacchanalian ditty, when she saw no less a person than
the Reverend Lemuel Whey carolling it!
“Is it you, my dear?” cries Berry, as brave now as any Petruchio. “Come in, and sit down, and hear Whey’s song.”
“Lady Pash is asleep, Frank,” said she.
“Well, darling! that’s the very reason. Give Mrs. Berry
a glass, Jack, will you?”
“Would you wake your aunt, sir?” hissed out madame.
“NEVER MIND ME, LOVE! I’M AWAKE, AND LIKE IT!”
cried the venerable Lady Pash from the salon. “Sing away,
gentlemen!”
At which we all set up an audacious cheer; and Mrs. Berry
fl ounced back to the drawing-room, but did not leave the door
open, that her aunt might hear our melodies.
Berry had by this time arrived at that confi dential state to
which a third bottle always brings the well-regulated mind;
and he made a clean confession to Cutler and myself of his
numerous matrimonial annoyances. He was not allowed to
dine out, he said, and but seldom to ask his friends to meet
him at home. He never dared smoke a cigar for the life of him,
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WILLIAM THACKERAY
not even in the stables. He spent the mornings dawdling in
eternal shops, the evenings at endless tea-parties, or in reading
poems or missionary tracts to his wife. He was compelled to
take physic whenever she thought he looked a little pale, to
change his shoes and stockings whenever he came in from
a walk. “Look here,” said he, opening his chest, and shaking
his fi st at Dobus; “look what Angelica and that infernal Dobus
have brought me to.”
I thought it might be a fl annel waistcoat into which madame had forced him; but it was worse: I give you my word of
honour it was a PITCH-PLASTER!
We all roared at this, and the doctor as loud as anyone;
but he vowed that he had no hand in the pitch-plaster. It was
a favourite family remedy of the late apothecary Sir George
Catacomb, and had been put on by Mrs. Berry’s own fair hands.
When Anatole came in with coffee, Berry was in such high
courage, that he told him to go to the deuce with it; and we
never caught sight of Lady Pash more, except when, muffl ed up
to the nose, she passed through the salle-a-manger to go to her
carriage, in which Dobus and the parson were likewise to be
transported to Paris. “Be a man, Frank,” says she, “and hold
your own” – for the good old lady had taken her nephew’s
part in the matrimonial business – “and you, Mr. Fitz-Boodle,
come and see him often. You’re a good fellow, take old oneeyed Callipash’s word for it. Shall I take you to Paris?”
Dear kind Angelica, she had told her aunt all I said!
“Don’t go, George,” says Berry, squeezing me by the hand.
So I said I was going to sleep at Versailles that night; but if
she would give a convoy to Jack Butts, it would be confer-
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MEN’S WIVES
ring a great obligation on him; with which favour the old
lady accordingly complied, saying to him, with great coolness,
“Get up and sit with John in the rumble, Mr. What-d’ye-call’im.” The fact is, the good old soul despises an artist as much as
she does a tailor.
Jack tripped to his place very meekly; and “Remember
Saturday,” cried the Doctor; and “Don’t forget Thursday!”
exclaimed the divine, – “a bachelor’s party, you know.” And
so the cavalcade drove thundering down the gloomy old Avenue de Paris.
The Frenchman, I forgot to say, had gone away exceedingly ill long before; and the reminiscences of “Thursday” and
“Saturday” evoked by Dobus and Whey, were, to tell the truth,
parts of our conspiracy; for in the heat of Berry’s courage, we
had made him promise to dine with us all round en garcon;
with all except Captain Goff, who “racklacted” that he was engaged every day for the next three weeks: as indeed he is, to
a thirty-sous ordinary which the gallant offi cer frequents,
when not invited elsewhere.
Cutler and I then were the last on the fi eld; and though
we were for moving away, Berry, whose vigour had, if possible, been excited by the bustle and colloquy in the night air,
insisted upon dragging us back again, and actually proposed
a grill for supper!
We found in the salle-a-manger a strong smell of an extinguished lamp, and Mrs. Berry was snuffi ng out the candles on
the sideboard.
“Hullo, my dear!” shouts Berry: “easy, if you please; we’ve
not done yet!”
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WILLIAM THACKERAY
“Not done yet, Mr. Berry!” groans the lady, in a hollow sepulchral tone.
“No, Mrs. B., not done yet. We are going to have some supper, ain’t we, George?”
“I think it’s quite time to go home,” said Mr. Fitz-Boodle
(who, to say the truth, began to tremble himself).
“I think it is, sir; you are quite right, sir; you will pardon me,
gentlemen, I have a bad headache, and will retire.”
“Good-night, my dear!” said that audacious Berry. “Anatole,
tell the cook to broil a fowl and bring some wine.”
If the loving couple had been alone, or if Cutler had not
been an attache to the embassy, before whom she was afraid of
making herself ridiculous, I am confi dent that Mrs. Berry
would have fainted away on the spot; and that all Berry’s courage would have tumbled down lifeless by the side of her. So
she only gave a martyrised look, and left the room; and while
we partook of the very unnecessary repast, was good enough to
sing some hymn-tunes to an exceedingly slow movement in
the next room, intimating that she was awake, and that, though
suffering, she found her consolations in religion.
These melodies did not in the least add to our friend’s
courage. The devilled fowl had, somehow, no devil in it.
The champagne in the glasses looked exceedingly fl at and
blue. The fact is, that Cutler and I were now both in a state of
dire consternation, and soon made a move for our hats, and
lighting each a cigar in the hall, made across the little green
where the Cupids and nymphs were listening to the dribbling fountain in the dark.
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MEN’S WIVES
“I’m hanged if I don’t have a cigar too!” says Berry, rushing after us; and accordingly putting in his pocket a key about
the size of a shovel, which hung by the little handle of the outer grille, forth he sallied, and joined us in our fumigation.
He stayed with us a couple of hours, and returned homewards in perfect good spirits, having given me his word of honour he would dine with us the next day. He put his immense
key into the grille, and unlocked it; but the gate would not
open: IT WAS BOLTED WITHIN.
He began to make a furious jangling and ringing at the bell;
and in oaths, both French and English, called upon the recalcitrant Anatole.
After much tolling of the bell, a light came cutting across
the crevices of the inner door; it was thrown open, and a fi gure appeared with a lamp, – a tall slim fi gure of a woman,
clothed in white from head to foot.
It was Mrs. Berry, and when Cutler and I saw her, we both
ran away as fast as our legs could carry us.
Berry, at this, shrieked with a wild laughter. “Remember
to-morrow, old boys,” shouted he, – “six o’clock;” and we were
a quarter of a mile off when the gate closed, and the little mansion of the Avenue de Paris was once more quiet and dark.
The next afternoon, as we were playing at billiards, Cutler
saw Mrs. Berry drive by in her carriage; and as soon as rather
a long rubber was over, I thought I would go and look for our
poor friend, and so went down to the Pavilion. Every door was
open, as the wont is in France, and I walked in unannounced,
and saw this:
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WILLIAM THACKERAY
He was playing a duet with her on the fl ute. She had been
out but for half-an-hour, after not speaking all the morning;
and having seen Cutler at the billiard-room window, and suspecting we might take advantage of her absence, she had suddenly returned home again, and had fl ung herself, weeping,
into her Frank’s arms, and said she could not bear to leave
him in anger. And so, after sitting for a little while sobbing on
his knee, she had forgotten and forgiven every thing!
The dear angel! I met poor Frank in Bond Street only yesterday; but he crossed over to the other side of the way. He had on
goloshes, and is grown very fat and pale. He has shaved off
his moustaches, and, instead, wears a respirator. He has taken his name off all his clubs, and lives very grimly in Baker
Street. Well, ladies, no doubt you say he is right: and what are
the odds, so long as YOU are happy?
DENNIS
HAGGARTY’S WIFE
There was an odious Irishwoman who with her daughter used to frequent the “Royal Hotel” at Leami ngton some
years ago, and who went by the name of Mrs. Major Gam.
Gam had been a distinguished officer in His Majesty’s service, whom nothing but death and his own amiable wife
could overcome. The widow mourned her husband in
the most becoming bombazeen she could muster, and
had at least half an inch of lampblack round the immense
visiting tickets which she left at the houses of the nobility
and gentry her friends.
Some of us, I am sorry to say, used to call her Mrs. Major Gammon; for if the worthy widow had a propensity, it
was to talk largely of herself and family (of her own family, for she held her husband’s very cheap), and of the wonders of her paternal mansion, Molloyville, county of Mayo.
She was of the Molloys of that county; and though I never
heard of the family before, I have little doubt, from what Mrs.
Major Gam stated, that they were the most ancient and illustrious family of that part of Ireland. I remember there came
down to see his aunt a young fellow with huge red whiskers
and tight nankeens, a green coat, and an awful breastpin,
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WILLIAM THACKERAY
who, after two days’ stay at the Spa, proposed marriage to
Miss S — , or, in default, a duel with her father; and who
drove a fl ash curricle with a bay and a grey, and who was
presented with much pride by Mrs. Gam as Castlereagh Molloy of Molloyville. We all agreed that he was the most insufferable snob of the whole season, and were delighted when
a bailiff came down in search of him.
Well, this is all I know personally of the Molloyville
family; but at the house if you met the widow Gam, and
talked on any subject in life, you were sure to hear of it.
If you asked her to have peas at dinner, she would say, “Oh,
sir, after the peas at Molloyville, I really don’t care for any
others, – do I, dearest Jemima? We always had a dish in
the month of June, when my father gave his head gardener
a guinea (we had three at Molloyville), and sent him with
his compliments and a quart of peas to our neighbour, dear
Lord Marrowfat. What a sweet place Marrowfat Park is!
isn’t it, Jemima?” If a carriage passed by the window, Mrs.
Major Gammon would be sure to tell you that there were
three carriages at Molloyville, “the barouche, the chawiot,
and the covered cyar.” In the same manner she would favour you with the number and names of the footmen of
the establishment; and on a visit to Warwick Castle (for
this bustling woman made one in every party of pleasure
that was formed from the hotel), she gave us to understand
that the great walk by the river was altogether inferior to
the principal avenue of Molloyville Park. I should not have
been able to tell so much about Mrs. Gam and her daughter,
but that, between ourselves, I was particularly sweet upon
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