




Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas Stories" edition by
David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS


CHAPTER I--HOW MRS. LIRRIPER CARRIED ON THE BUSINESS


Whoever would begin to be worried with letting Lodgings that wasn't a
lone woman with a living to get is a thing inconceivable to me, my dear;
excuse the familiarity, but it comes natural to me in my own little room,
when wishing to open my mind to those that I can trust, and I should be
truly thankful if they were all mankind, but such is not so, for have but
a Furnished bill in the window and your watch on the mantelpiece, and
farewell to it if you turn your back for but a second, however
gentlemanly the manners; nor is being of your own sex any safeguard, as I
have reason, in the form of sugar-tongs to know, for that lady (and a
fine woman she was) got me to run for a glass of water, on the plea of
going to be confined, which certainly turned out true, but it was in the
Station-house.

Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street, Strand--situated midway between the
City and St. James's, and within five minutes' walk of the principal
places of public amusement--is my address.  I have rented this house many
years, as the parish rate-books will testify; and I could wish my
landlord was as alive to the fact as I am myself; but no, bless you, not
a half a pound of paint to save his life, nor so much, my dear, as a tile
upon the roof, though on your bended knees.

My dear, you never have found Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand
advertised in Bradshaw's _Railway Guide_, and with the blessing of Heaven
you never will or shall so find it.  Some there are who do not think it
lowering themselves to make their names that cheap, and even going the
lengths of a portrait of the house not like it with a blot in every
window and a coach and four at the door, but what will suit Wozenham's
lower down on the other side of the way will not suit me, Miss Wozenham
having her opinions and me having mine, though when it comes to
systematic underbidding capable of being proved on oath in a court of
justice and taking the form of "If Mrs. Lirriper names eighteen shillings
a week, I name fifteen and six," it then comes to a settlement between
yourself and your conscience, supposing for the sake of argument your
name to be Wozenham, which I am well aware it is not or my opinion of you
would be greatly lowered, and as to airy bedrooms and a night-porter in
constant attendance the less said the better, the bedrooms being stuffy
and the porter stuff.

It is forty years ago since me and my poor Lirriper got married at St.
Clement's Danes, where I now have a sitting in a very pleasant pew with
genteel company and my own hassock, and being partial to evening service
not too crowded.  My poor Lirriper was a handsome figure of a man, with a
beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a musical instrument made of honey
and steel, but he had ever been a free liver being in the commercial
travelling line and travelling what he called a limekiln road--"a dry
road, Emma my dear," my poor Lirriper says to me, "where I have to lay
the dust with one drink or another all day long and half the night, and
it wears me Emma"--and this led to his running through a good deal and
might have run through the turnpike too when that dreadful horse that
never would stand still for a single instant set off, but for its being
night and the gate shut and consequently took his wheel, my poor Lirriper
and the gig smashed to atoms and never spoke afterwards.  He was a
handsome figure of a man, and a man with a jovial heart and a sweet
temper; but if they had come up then they never could have given you the
mellowness of his voice, and indeed I consider photographs wanting in
mellowness as a general rule and making you look like a new-ploughed
field.

My poor Lirriper being behindhand with the world and being buried at
Hatfield church in Hertfordshire, not that it was his native place but
that he had a liking for the Salisbury Arms where we went upon our
wedding-day and passed as happy a fortnight as ever happy was, I went
round to the creditors and I says "Gentlemen I am acquainted with the
fact that I am not answerable for my late husband's debts but I wish to
pay them for I am his lawful wife and his good name is dear to me.  I am
going into the Lodgings gentlemen as a business and if I prosper every
farthing that my late husband owed shall be paid for the sake of the love
I bore him, by this right hand."  It took a long time to do but it was
done, and the silver cream-jug which is between ourselves and the bed and
the mattress in my room up-stairs (or it would have found legs so sure as
ever the Furnished bill was up) being presented by the gentlemen engraved
"To Mrs. Lirriper a mark of grateful respect for her honourable conduct"
gave me a turn which was too much for my feelings, till Mr. Betley which
at that time had the parlours and loved his joke says "Cheer up Mrs.
Lirriper, you should feel as if it was only your christening and they
were your godfathers and godmothers which did promise for you."  And it
brought me round, and I don't mind confessing to you my dear that I then
put a sandwich and a drop of sherry in a little basket and went down to
Hatfield church-yard outside the coach and kissed my hand and laid it
with a kind of proud and swelling love on my husband's grave, though
bless you it had taken me so long to clear his name that my wedding-ring
was worn quite fine and smooth when I laid it on the green green waving
grass.

I am an old woman now and my good looks are gone but that's me my dear
over the plate-warmer and considered like in the times when you used to
pay two guineas on ivory and took your chance pretty much how you came
out, which made you very careful how you left it about afterwards because
people were turned so red and uncomfortable by mostly guessing it was
somebody else quite different, and there was once a certain person that
had put his money in a hop business that came in one morning to pay his
rent and his respects being the second floor that would have taken it
down from its hook and put it in his breast-pocket--you understand my
dear--for the L