SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE
CHAPTER I--HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR
The writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having come of
a family of Waiters, and owning at the present time five brothers
who are all Waiters, and likewise an only sister who is a Waitress,
would wish to offer a few words respecting his calling; first having
the pleasure of hereby in a friendly manner offering the Dedication
of the same unto JOSEPH, much respected Head Waiter at the Slamjam
Coffee-house, London, E.C., than which a individual more eminently
deserving of the name of man, or a more amenable honour to his own
head and heart, whether considered in the light of a Waiter or
regarded as a human being, do not exist.
In case confusion should arise in the public mind (which it is open
to confusion on many subjects) respecting what is meant or implied
by the term Waiter, the present humble lines would wish to offer an
explanation. It may not be generally known that the person as goes
out to wait is NOT a Waiter. It may not be generally known that the
hand as is called in extra, at the Freemasons' Tavern, or the
London, or the Albion, or otherwise, is NOT a Waiter. Such hands
may be took on for Public Dinners by the bushel (and you may know
them by their breathing with difficulty when in attendance, and
taking away the bottle ere yet it is half out); but such are NOT
Waiters. For you cannot lay down the tailoring, or the shoemaking,
or the brokering, or the green-grocering, or the pictorial-
periodicalling, or the second-hand wardrobe, or the small fancy
businesses,--you cannot lay down those lines of life at your will
and pleasure by the half-day or evening, and take up Waitering. You
may suppose you can, but you cannot; or you may go so far as to say
you do, but you do not. Nor yet can you lay down the gentleman's-
service when stimulated by prolonged incompatibility on the part of
Cooks (and here it may be remarked that Cooking and Incompatibility
will be mostly found united), and take up Waitering. It has been
ascertained that what a gentleman will sit meek under, at home, he
will not bear out of doors, at the Slamjam or any similar
establishment. Then, what is the inference to be drawn respecting
true Waitering? You must be bred to it. You must be born to it.
Would you know how born to it, Fair Reader,--if of the adorable
female sex? Then learn from the biographical experience of one that
is a Waiter in the sixty-first year of his age.
You were conveyed,--ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise
developed than to harbour vacancy in your inside,--you were
conveyed, by surreptitious means, into a pantry adjoining the
Admiral Nelson, Civic and General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by
stealth that healthful sustenance which is the pride and boast of
the British female constitution. Your mother was married to your
father (himself a distant Waiter) in the profoundest secrecy; for a
Waitress known to be married would ruin the best of businesses,--it
is the same as on the stage. Hence your being smuggled into the
pantry, and that--to add to the infliction--by an unwilling
grandmother. Under the combined influence of the smells of roast
and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you partook of your
earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting prepared to
catch you when your mother was called and dropped you; your
grandmother's shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings;
your innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates,
dish-covers, and cold gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for
veals and porks, instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes. Under
these untoward circumstances you were early weaned. Your unwilling
grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated
less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your system
curdled, and your food would not assimilate at all. At length she
was no longer spared, and could have been thankfully spared much
sooner. When your brothers began to appear in succession, your
mother retired, left off her smart dressing (she had previously been
a smart dresser), and her dark ringlets (which had previously been
flowing), and haunted your father late of nights, lying in wait for
him, through all weathers, up the shabby court which led to the back
door of the Royal Old Dust-Bin (said to have been so named by George
the Fourth), where your father was Head. But the Dust-Bin was going
down then, and your father took but little,--excepting from a liquid
point of view. Your mother's object in those visits was of a house-
keeping character, and you was set on to whistle your father out.
Sometimes he came out, but generally not. Come or not come,
however, all that part of his existence which was unconnected with
open Waitering was kept a close secret, and was acknowledged by your
mother to be a close secret, and you and your mother flitted about
the court, close secrets both of you, and would scarcely have
confessed under torture that you know your father, or that your
father had any name than Dick (which wasn't his name, though he was
never known by any other), or that he had kith or kin or chick or
child. Perhaps the attraction of this mystery, combined with your
father's having a damp compartment, to himself, behind a leaky
cistern, at the Dust-Bin,--a sort of a cellar compartment, with a
sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack, and a bottle-rack, and
three windows that didn't match each other or anything else, and no
daylight,--caused your young mind to feel convinced that you must
grow up to be a Waiter too; but you did feel convinced of it, and so
did all your brothers, down to your sister. Every one of you felt
convinced that you was born to the Waitering. At this stage of your
career, what was your feelings one day when your father came home to
your mother in open broad daylight,--of itself an act of Madness on
the part of a Waiter,--and took to his bed (leastwise, your mother
and family's bed), with the statement that his eyes were devilled
kidneys. Physicians being in vain, your father expired, after
repeating at intervals for a day and a night, when gleams of reason
and old business fitfully illuminated his being, "Two and two is
five. And three is sixpence." Interred in the parochial department
of the neighbouring churchyard, and accompanied to the grave by as
many Waiters of long standing as could spare the morning time from
their soiled glasses (namely, one), your bereaved form was attired
in a white neckankecher, and you was took on from motives of
benevolence at The George and Gridiron, theatrical and supper.
Here, supporting nature on what you found in the plates (which was
as it happened, and but too often thoughtlessly, immersed in
mustard), and on what you found in the glasses (which rarely went
beyond driblets and lemon), by night you dropped asleep standing,
till you was cuffed awake, and by day was set to polishing every
individual article in the coffee-room. Your couch being sawdust;
your counterpane being ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a
heavy heart under the smart tie of your white neckankecher (or
correctly speaking lower down and more to the left), you picked up
the rudiments of knowledge from an extra, by the name of Bishops,
and by calling plate-washer, and gradually elevating your mind with
chalk on the back of the corner-box partition, until such time as
you used the inkstand when it was out of hand, attained to manhood,
and to be the Waiter that you find yourself.
I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the
calling so long the calling of myself and family, and the public
interest in which is but too often very limited. We are not
generally understood. No, we are not. Allowance enough is not made
for us. For, say that we ever show a little drooping listlessness
of spirits, or what might be termed indifference or apathy. Put it
to yourself what would your own state of mind be, if you was one of
an enormous family every member of which except you was always
greedy, and in a hurry. Put it to yourself that you was regularly
replete with animal food at the slack hours of one in the day and
again at nine p.m., and that the repleter you was, the more
voracious all your fellow-creatures came in. Put it to yourself
that it was your business, when your digestion was well on, to take
a personal interest and sympathy in a hundred gentlemen fresh and
fresh (say, for the sake of argument, only a hundred), whose
imaginations was given up to grease and fat and gravy and melted
butter, and abandoned to questioning you about cuts of this, and
dishes of that,--each of 'em going on as if him and you and the bill
of fare was alone in the world. Then look what you are expected to
know. You are never out, but they seem to think you regularly
attend everywhere. "What's this, Christopher, that I hear about the
smashed Excursion Train? How are they doing at the Italian Opera,
Christopher?" "Christopher, what are the real particulars of this
business at the Yorkshire Bank?" Similarly a ministry gives me more
trouble than it gives the Queen. As to Lord Palmerston, the
constant and wearing connection into which I have been brought with
his lordship during the last few years is deserving of a pension.
Then look at the Hypocrites we are made, and the lies (white, I
hope) that are forced upon us! Why must a sedentary-pursuited
Waiter be considered to be a judge of horseflesh, and to have a most
tremendous interest in horse-training and racing? Yet it would be
half our little incomes out of our pockets if we didn't take on to
have those sporting tastes. It is the same (inconceivable why!)
with Farming. Shooting, equally so. I am sure that so regular as
the months of August, September, and October come round, I am
ashamed of myself in my own private bosom for the way in which I
make believe to care whether or not the grouse is strong on the wing
(much their wings, or drumsticks either, signifies to me,
uncooked!), and whether the partridges is plentiful among the
turnips, and whether the pheasants is shy or bold, or anything else
you please to mention. Yet you may see me, or any other Waiter of
my standing, holding on by the back of the box, and leaning over a
gentleman with his purse out and his bill before him, discussing
these points in a confidential tone of voice, as if my happiness in
life entirely depended on 'em.
I have mentioned our little incomes. Look at the most unreasonable
point of all, and the point on which the greatest injustice is done
us! Whether it is owing to our always carrying so much change in
our right-hand trousers-pocket, and so many halfpence in our coat-
tails, or whether it is human nature (which I were loth to believe),
what is meant by the everlasting fable that Head Waiters is rich?
How did that fable get into circulation? Who first put it about,
and what are the facts to establish the unblushing statement? Come
forth, thou slanderer, and refer the public to the Waiter's will in
Doctors' Commons supporting thy malignant hiss! Yet this is so
commonly dwelt upon--especially by the screws who give Waiters the
least--that denial is vain; and we are obliged, for our credit's
sake, to carry our heads as if we were going into a business, when
of the two we are much more likely to go into a union. There was
formerly a screw as frequented the Slamjam ere yet the present
writer had quitted that establishment on a question of tea-ing his
assistant staff out of his own pocket, which screw carried the taunt
to its bitterest height. Never soaring above threepence, and as
often as not grovelling on the earth a penny lower, he yet
represented the present writer as a large holder of Consols, a
lender of money on mortgage, a Capitalist. He has been overheard to
dilate to other customers on the allegation that the present writer
put out thousands of pounds at interest in Distilleries and
Breweries. "Well, Christopher," he would say (having grovelled his
lowest on the earth, half a moment before), "looking out for a House
to open, eh? Can't find a business to be disposed of on a scale as
is up to your resources, humph?" To such a dizzy precipice of
falsehood has this misrepresentation taken wing, that the well-known
and highly-respected OLD CHARLES, long eminent at the West Country
Hotel, and by some considered the Father of the Waitering, found
himself under the obligation to fall into it through so many years
that his own wife (for he had an unbeknown old lady in that capacity
towards himself) believed it! And what was the consequence? When
he was borne to his grave on the shoulders of six picked Waiters,
with six more for change, six more acting as pall-bearers, all
keeping step in a pouring shower without a dry eye visible, and a
concourse only inferior to Royalty, his pantry and lodgings was
equally ransacked high and low for property, and none was found!
How could it be found, when, beyond his last monthly collection of
walking-sticks, umbrellas, and pocket-handkerchiefs (which happened
to have been not yet disposed of, though he had ever been through
life punctual in clearing off his collections by the month), there
was no property existing? Such, however, is the force of this
universal libel, that the widow of Old Charles, at the present hour
an inmate of the Almshouses of the Cork-Cutters' Company, in Blue
Anchor Road (identified sitting at the door of one of 'em, in a
clean cap and a Windsor arm-chair, only last Monday), expects John's
hoarded wealth to be found hourly! Nay, ere yet he had succumbed to
the grisly dart, and when his portrait was painted in oils life-
size, by subscription of the frequenters of the West Country, to
hang over the coffee-room chimney-piece, there were not wanting
those who contended that what is termed the accessories of such a
portrait ought to be the Bank of England out of window, and a
strong-box on the table. And but for better-regulated minds
contending for a bottle and screw and the attitude of drawing,--and
carrying their point,--it would have been so handed down to
posterity.
I am now brought to the title of the present remarks. Having, I
hope without offence to any quarter, offered such observations as I
felt it my duty to offer, in a free country which has ever dominated
the seas, on the general subject, I will now proceed to wait on the
particular question.
At a momentous period of my life, when I was off, so far as
concerned notice given, with a House that shall be nameless,--for
the question on which I took my departing stand was a fixed charge
for waiters, and no House as commits itself to that eminently Un-
English act of more than foolishness and baseness shall be
advertised by me,--I repeat, at a momentous crisis, when I was off
with a House too mean for mention, and not yet on with that to which
I have ever since had the honour of being attached in the capacity
of Head, {1} I was casting about what to do next. Then it were that
proposals were made to me on behalf of my present establishment.
Stipulations were necessary on my part, emendations were necessary
on my part: in the end, ratifications ensued on both sides, and I
entered on a new career.
We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business. We are not a
general dining business, nor do we wish it. In consequence, when
diners drop in, we know what to give 'em as will keep 'em away
another time. We are a Private Room or Family business also; but
Coffee-room principal. Me and the Directory and the Writing
Materials and cetrer occupy a place to ourselves--a place fended of
up a step or two at the end of the Coffee-room, in what I call the
good old-fashioned style. The good old-fashioned style is, that
whatever you want, down to a wafer, you must be olely and solely
dependent on the Head Waiter for. You must put yourself a new-born
Child into his hands. There is no other way in which a business
untinged with Continental Vice can be conducted. (It were bootless
to add, that if languages is required to be jabbered and English is
not good enough, both families and gentlemen had better go somewhere
else.)
When I began to settle down in this right-principled and well-
conducted House, I noticed, under the bed in No. 24 B (which it is
up a angle off the staircase, and usually put off upon the lowly-
minded), a heap of things in a corner. I asked our Head Chambermaid
in the course of the day,
"What are them things in 24 B?"
To which she answered with a careless air, "Somebody's Luggage."
Regarding her with a eye not free from severity, I says, "Whose
Luggage?"
Evading my eye, she replied,
"Lor! How should I know!"
- Being, it may be right to mention, a female of some pertness,
though acquainted with her business.
A Head Waiter must be either Head or Tail. He must be at one
extremity or the other of the social scale. He cannot be at the
waist of it, or anywhere else but the extremities. It is for him to
decide which of the extremities.
On the eventful occasion under consideration, I give Mrs. Pratchett
so distinctly to understand my decision, that I broke her spirit as
towards myself, then and there, and for good. Let not inconsistency
be suspected on account of my mentioning Mrs. Pratchett as "Mrs.,"
and having formerly remarked that a waitress must not be married.
Readers are respectfully requested to notice that Mrs. Pratchett was
not a waitress, but a chambermaid. Now a chambermaid MAY be
married; if Head, generally is married,--or says so. It comes to
the same thing as expressing what is customary. (N.B. Mr. Pratchett
is in Australia, and his address there is "the Bush.")
Having took Mrs. Pratchett down as many pegs as was essential to the
future happiness of all parties, I requested her to explain herself.
"For instance," I says, to give her a little encouragement, "who is
Somebody?"
"I give you my sacred honour, Mr. Christopher," answers Pratchett,
"that I haven't the faintest notion."
But for the manner in which she settled her cap-strings, I should
have doubted this; but in respect of positiveness it was hardly to
be discriminated from an affidavit.
"Then you never saw him?" I followed her up with.
"Nor yet," said Mrs. Pratchett, shutting her eyes and making as if
she had just took a pill of unusual circumference,--which gave a
remarkable force to her denial,--"nor yet any servant in this house.
All have been changed, Mr. Christopher, within five year, and
Somebody left his Luggage here before then."
Inquiry of Miss Martin yielded (in the language of the Bard of A.1.)
"confirmation strong." So it had really and truly happened. Miss
Martin is the young lady at the bar as makes out our bills; and
though higher than I could wish considering her station, is
perfectly well-behaved.
Farther investigations led to the disclosure that there was a bill
against this Luggage to the amount of two sixteen six. The Luggage
had been lying under the bedstead of 24 B over six year. The
bedstead is a four-poster, with a deal of old hanging and valance,
and is, as I once said, probably connected with more than 24 Bs,--
which I remember my hearers was pleased to laugh at, at the time.
I don't know why,--when DO we know why?--but this Luggage laid heavy
on my mind. I fell a wondering about Somebody, and what he had got
and been up to. I couldn't satisfy my thoughts why he should leave
so much Luggage against so small a bill. For I had the Luggage out
within a day or two and turned it over, and the following were the
items:- A black portmanteau, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a
brown-paper parcel, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a
walking-stick. It was all very dusty and fluey. I had our porter
up to get under the bed and fetch it out; and though he habitually
wallows in dust,--swims in it from morning to night, and wears a
close-fitting waistcoat with black calimanco sleeves for the
purpose,--it made him sneeze again, and his throat was that hot with
it that it was obliged to be cooled with a drink of Allsopp's draft.
The Luggage so got the better of me, that instead of having it put
back when it was well dusted and washed with a wet cloth,--previous
to which it was so covered with feathers that you might have thought
it was turning into poultry, and would by-and-by begin to Lay,--I
say, instead of having it put back, I had it carried into one of my
places down-stairs. There from time to time I stared at it and
stared at it, till it seemed to grow big and grow little, and come
forward at me and retreat again, and go through all manner of
performances resembling intoxication. When this had lasted weeks,--
I may say months, and not be far out,--I one day thought of asking
Miss Martin for the particulars of the Two sixteen six total. She
was so obliging as to extract it from the books,--it dating before
her time,--and here follows a true copy:
Coffee-Room.
1856. No. 4. Pounds s. d.
Feb. 2d, Pen and Paper 0 0 6
Port Negus 0 2 0
Ditto 0 2 0
Pen and paper 0 0 6
Tumbler broken 0 2 6
Brandy 0 2 0
Pen and paper 0 0 6
Anchovy toast 0 2 6
Pen and paper 0 0 6
Bed 0 3 0
Feb. 3d, Pen and paper 0 0 6
Breakfast 0 2 6
Broiled ham 0 2 0
Eggs 0 1 0
Watercresses 0 1 0
Shrimps 0 1 0
Pen and paper 0 0 6
Blotting-paper 0 0 6
Messenger to Paternoster
Row and back 0 1 6
Again, when No Answer 0 1 6
Brandy 2s., Devilled
Pork chop 2s. 0 4 0
Pens and paper 0 1 0
Messenger to Albemarle
Street and back 0 1 0
Again (detained), when
No Answer 0 1 6
Salt-cellar broken 0 3 6
Large Liquour-glass
Orange Brandy 0 1 6
Dinner, Soup, Fish,
Joint, and bird 0 7 6
Bottle old East India
Brown 0 8 0
Pen and paper 0 0 6
2 16 6
Mem.: January 1st, 1857. He went out after dinner, directing
luggage to be ready when he called for it. Never called.
So far from throwing a light upon the subject, this bill appeared to
me, if I may so express my doubts, to involve it in a yet more lurid
halo. Speculating it over with the Mistress, she informed me that
the luggage had been advertised in the Master's time as being to be
sold after such and such a day to pay expenses, but no farther steps
had been taken. (I may here remark, that the Mistress is a widow in
her fourth year. The Master was possessed of one of those
unfortunate constitutions in which Spirits turns to Water, and rises
in the ill-starred Victim.)
My speculating it over, not then only, but repeatedly, sometimes
with the Mistress, sometimes with one, sometimes with another, led
up to the Mistress's saying to me,--whether at first in joke or in
earnest, or half joke and half earnest, it matters not:
"Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer."
(If this should meet her eye,--a lovely blue,--may she not take it
ill my mentioning that if I had been eight or ten year younger, I
would have done as much by her! That is, I would have made her a
offer. It is for others than me to denominate it a handsome one.)
"Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer."
"Put a name to it, ma'am."
"Look here, Christopher. Run over the articles of Somebody's
Luggage. You've got it all by heart, I know."
"A black portmanteau, ma'am, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a
brown-paper parcel, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a
walking-stick."
"All just as they were left. Nothing opened, nothing tampered
with."
"You are right, ma'am. All locked but the brown-paper parcel, and
that sealed."
The Mistress was leaning on Miss Martin's desk at the bar-window,
and she taps the open book that lays upon the desk,--she has a
pretty-made hand to be sure,--and bobs her head over it and laughs.
"Come," says she, "Christopher. Pay me Somebody's bill, and you
shall have Somebody's Luggage."
I rather took to the idea from the first moment; but,
"It mayn't be worth the money," I objected, seeming to hold back.
"That's a Lottery," says the Mistress, folding her arms upon the
book,--it ain't her hands alone that's pretty made, the observation
extends right up her arms. "Won't you venture two pound sixteen
shillings and sixpence in the Lottery? Why, there's no blanks!"
says the Mistress; laughing and bobbing her head again, "you MUST
win. If you lose, you must win! All prizes in this Lottery! Draw
a blank, and remember, Gentlemen-Sportsmen, you'll still be entitled
to a black portmanteau, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a
sheet of brown paper, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a
walking-stick!"
To make short of it, Miss Martin come round me, and Mrs. Pratchett
come round me, and the Mistress she was completely round me already,
and all the women in the house come round me, and if it had been
Sixteen two instead of Two sixteen, I should have thought myself
well out of it. For what can you do when they do come round you?
So I paid the money--down--and such a laughing as there was among
'em! But I turned the tables on 'em regularly, when I said:
"My family-name is Blue-Beard. I'm going to open Somebody's Luggage
all alone in the Secret Chamber, and not a female eye catches sight
of the contents!"
Whether I thought proper to have the firmness to keep to this, don't
signify, or whether any female eye, and if any, how many, was really
present when the opening of the Luggage came off. Somebody's
Luggage is the question at present: Nobody's eyes, nor yet noses.
What I still look at most, in connection with that Luggage, is the
extraordinary quantity of writing-paper, and all written on! And
not our paper neither,--not the paper charged in the bill, for we
know our paper,--so he must have been always at it. And he had
crumpled up this writing of his, everywhere, in every part and
parcel of his luggage. There was writing in his dressing-case,
writing in his boots, writing among his shaving-tackle, writing in
his hat-box, writing folded away down among the very whalebones of
his umbrella.
His clothes wasn't bad, what there was of 'em. His dressing-case
was poor,--not a particle of silver stopper,--bottle apertures with
nothing in 'em, like empty little dog-kennels,--and a most searching
description of tooth-powder diffusing itself around, as under a
deluded mistake that all the chinks in the fittings was divisions in
teeth. His clothes I parted with, well enough, to a second-hand
dealer not far from St. Clement's Danes, in the Strand,--him as the
officers in the Army mostly dispose of their uniforms to, when hard
pressed with debts of honour, if I may judge from their coats and
epaulets diversifying the window with their backs towards the
public. The same party bought in one lot the portmanteau, the bag,
the desk, the dressing-case, the hat-box, the umbrella, strap, and
walking-stick. On my remarking that I should have thought those
articles not quite in his line, he said: "No more ith a man'th
grandmother, Mithter Chrithtopher; but if any man will bring hith
grandmother here, and offer her at a fair trifle below what the'll
feth with good luck when the'th thcoured and turned--I'll buy her!"
These transactions brought me home, and, indeed, more than home, for
they left a goodish profit on the original investment. And now
there remained the writings; and the writings I particular wish to
bring under the candid attention of the reader.
I wish to do so without postponement, for this reason. That is to
say, namely, viz. i.e., as follows, thus:- Before I proceed to
recount the mental sufferings of which I became the prey in
consequence of the writings, and before following up that harrowing
tale with a statement of the wonderful and impressive catastrophe,
as thrilling in its nature as unlooked for in any other capacity,
which crowned the ole and filled the cup of unexpectedness to
overflowing, the writings themselves ought to stand forth to view.
Therefore it is that they now come next. One word to introduce
them, and I lay down my pen (I hope, my unassuming pen) until I take
it up to trace the gloomy sequel of a mind with something on it.
He was a smeary writer, and wrote a dreadful bad hand. Utterly
regardless of ink, he lavished it on every undeserving object--on
his clothes, his desk, his hat, the handle of his tooth-brush, his
umbrella. Ink was found freely on the coffee-room carpet by No. 4
table, and two blots was on his restless couch. A reference to the
document I have given entire will show that on the morning of the
third of February, eighteen fifty-six, he procured his no less than
fifth pen and paper. To whatever deplorable act of ungovernable
composition he immolated those materials obtained from the bar,
there is no doubt that the fatal deed was committed in bed, and that
it left its evidences but too plainly, long afterwards, upon the
pillow-case.
He had put no Heading to any of his writings. Alas! Was he likely
to have a Heading without a Head, and where was HIS Head when he
took such things into it? In some cases, such as his Boots, he
would appear to have hid the writings; thereby involving his style
in greater obscurity. But his Boots was at least pairs,--and no two
of his writings can put in any claim to be so regarded. Here
follows (not to give more specimens) what was found in
