




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





MRS. LIRRIPER'S LEGACY


CHAPTER I--MRS. LIRRIPER RELATES HOW SHE WENT ON, AND WENT OVER


Ah!  It's pleasant to drop into my own easy-chair my dear though a little
palpitating what with trotting up-stairs and what with trotting down, and
why kitchen stairs should all be corner stairs is for the builders to
justify though I do not think they fully understand their trade and never
did, else why the sameness and why not more conveniences and fewer
draughts and likewise making a practice of laying the plaster on too
thick I am well convinced which holds the damp, and as to chimney-pots
putting them on by guess-work like hats at a party and no more knowing
what their effect will be upon the smoke bless you than I do if so much,
except that it will mostly be either to send it down your throat in a
straight form or give it a twist before it goes there.  And what I says
speaking as I find of those new metal chimneys all manner of shapes
(there's a row of 'em at Miss Wozenham's lodging-house lower down on the
other side of the way) is that they only work your smoke into artificial
patterns for you before you swallow it and that I'd quite as soon swallow
mine plain, the flavour being the same, not to mention the conceit of
putting up signs on the top of your house to show the forms in which you
take your smoke into your inside.

Being here before your eyes my dear in my own easy-chair in my own quiet
room in my own Lodging-House Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand
London situated midway between the City and St. James's--if anything is
where it used to be with these hotels calling themselves Limited but
called unlimited by Major Jackman rising up everywhere and rising up into
flagstaffs where they can't go any higher, but my mind of those monsters
is give me a landlord's or landlady's wholesome face when I come off a
journey and not a brass plate with an electrified number clicking out of
it which it's not in nature can be glad to see me and to which I don't
want to be hoisted like molasses at the Docks and left there telegraphing
for help with the most ingenious instruments but quite in vain--being
here my dear I have no call to mention that I am still in the Lodgings as
a business hoping to die in the same and if agreeable to the clergy
partly read over at Saint Clement's Danes and concluded in Hatfield
churchyard when lying once again by my poor Lirriper ashes to ashes and
dust to dust.

Neither should I tell you any news my dear in telling you that the Major
is still a fixture in the Parlours quite as much so as the roof of the
house, and that Jemmy is of boys the best and brightest and has ever had
kept from him the cruel story of his poor pretty young mother Mrs. Edson
being deserted in the second floor and dying in my arms, fully believing
that I am his born Gran and him an orphan, though what with engineering
since he took a taste for it and him and the Major making Locomotives out
of parasols broken iron pots and cotton-reels and them absolutely a
getting off the line and falling over the table and injuring the
passengers almost equal to the originals it really is quite wonderful.
And when I says to the Major, "Major can't you by _any_ means give us a
communication with the guard?" the Major says quite huffy, "No madam it's
not to be done," and when I says "Why not?" the Major says, "That is
between us who are in the Railway Interest madam and our friend the Right
Honourable Vice-President of the Board of Trade" and if you'll believe me
my dear the Major wrote to Jemmy at school to consult him on the answer I
should have before I could get even that amount of unsatisfactoriness out
of the man, the reason being that when we first began with the little
model and the working signals beautiful and perfect (being in general as
wrong as the real) and when I says laughing "What appointment am I to
hold in this undertaking gentlemen?" Jemmy hugs me round the neck and
tells me dancing, "You shall be the Public Gran" and consequently they
put upon me just as much as ever they like and I sit a growling in my
easy-chair.

My dear whether it is that a grown man as clever as the Major cannot give
half his heart and mind to anything--even a plaything--but must get into
right down earnest with it, whether it is so or whether it is not so I do
not undertake to say, but Jemmy is far out-done by the serious and
believing ways of the Major in the management of the United Grand
Junction Lirriper and Jackman Great Norfolk Parlour Line, "For" says my
Jemmy with the sparkling eyes when it was christened, "we must have a
whole mouthful of name Gran or our dear old Public" and there the young
rogue kissed me, "won't stump up."  So the Public took the shares--ten at
ninepence, and immediately when that was spent twelve Preference at one
and sixpence--and they were all signed by Jemmy and countersigned by the
Major, and between ourselves much better worth the money than some shares
I have paid for in my time.  In the same holidays the line was made and
worked and opened and ran excursions and had collisions and burst its
boilers and all sorts of accidents and offences all most regular correct
and pretty.  The sense of responsibility entertained by the Major as a
military style of station-master my dear starting the down train behind
time and ringing one of those little bells that you buy with the little
coal-scuttles off the tray round the man's neck in the street did him
honour, but noticing the Major of a night when he is writing out his
monthly report to Jemmy at school of the state of the Rolling Stock and
the Permanent Way and all the rest of it (the whole kept upon the Major's
sideboard and dusted with his own hands every morning before varnishing
his boots) I notice him as full of thought and care as full can be and
frowning in a fearful manner, but indeed the Major does nothing by halves
as witness his great delight in going out surveying with Jemmy when he
has Jemmy to go with, carrying a chain and a measuring-tape and driving I
don't know what improvements right through Westminster Abbey and fully
believed in the streets to be knocking everything upside down by Act of
Parliament.  As please Heaven will come to pass when Jemmy takes to that
as a profession!

Mentioning my poor Lirriper brings into my head his own youngest brother
the Doctor though Doctor of what I am sure it would be hard to say unless
Liquor, for neither Physic nor Music nor yet Law does Joshua Lirriper
know a morsel of except continually being summoned to the County Court
and having orders made upon him which he runs away from, and once was
taken in the passage of this very house with an umbrella up and the
Major's hat on, giving his name with the door-mat round him as Sir
Johnson Jones, K.C.B. in spectacles residing at the Horse Guards.  On
which occasion he had got into the house not a minute before, through the
girl letting him on the mat when he sent in a piece of paper twisted more
like one of those spills for lighting candles than a note, offering me
the choice between thirty shillings in hand and his brains on the
premises marked immediate and waiting for an answer.  My dear it gave me
such a dreadful turn to think of the brains of my poor dear Lirriper's
own flesh and blood flying about the new oilcloth however unworthy to be
so assisted, that I went out of my room here to ask him what he would
take once for all not to do it for life when I found him in the custody
of two gentlemen that I should have judged to be in the feather-bed trade
if they had not announced the law, so fluffy were their personal
appearance.  "Bring your chains, sir," says Joshua to the littlest of the
two in the biggest hat, "rivet on my fetters!"  Imagine my feelings when
I pictered him clanking up Norfolk Street in irons and Miss Wozenham
looking out of window!  "Gentlemen," I says all of a tremble and ready to
drop "please to bring him into Major Jackman's apartments."  So they
brought him into the Parlours, and when the Major spies his own curly-
brimmed hat on him which Joshua Lirriper had whipped off its peg in the
passage for a military disguise he goes into such a tearing passion that
he tips it off his head with his hand and kicks it up to the ceiling with
his foot where it grazed long afterwards.  "Major" I says "be cool and
advise me what to do with Joshua my dead and gone Lirriper's own youngest
brother."  "Madam" says the Major "my advice is that you board and lodge
him in a Powder Mill, with a handsome gratuity to the proprietor when
exploded."  "Major" I says "as a Christian you cannot mean your words."
"Madam" says the Major "by the Lord I do!" and indeed the Major besides
being with all his merits a very passionate man for his size had a bad
opinion of Joshua on account of former troubles even unattended by
liberties taken with his apparel.  When Joshua Lirriper hears this
conversation betwixt us he turns upon the littlest one with the biggest
hat and says "Come sir!  Remove me to my vile dungeon.  Where is my
mouldy straw?"  My dear at the picter of him rising in my mind dressed
almost entirely in padlocks like Baron Trenck in Jemmy's book I was so
overcome that I burst into tears and I says to the Major, "Major take my
keys and settle with these gentlemen or I shall never know a happy minute
more," which was done several times both before and since, but still I
must remember that Joshua Lirriper has his good feelings and shows them
in being always so troubled in his mind when he cannot wear mourning for
his brother.  Many a long year have I left off my widow's mourning not
being wishful to intrude, but the tender point in Joshua that I cannot
help a little yielding to is when he writes "One single sovereign would
enable me to wear a decent suit of mourning for my much-loved brother.  I
vowed at the time of his lamented death that I would ever wear sables in
memory of him but Alas how short-sighted is man, How keep that vow when
penniless!"  It says a good deal for the strength of his feelings that he
couldn't have been seven year old when my poor Lirriper died and to have
kept to it ever since is highly creditable.  But we know there's good in
all of us,--if we only knew where it was in some of us,--and though it
was far from delicate in Joshua to work upon the dear child's feelings
when first sent to school and write down into Lincolnshire for his pocket-
money by return of post and got it, still he is my poor Lirriper's own
youngest brother and mightn't have meant not paying his bill at the
Salisbury Arms when his affection took him down to stay a fortnight at
Hatfield churchyard and might have meant to keep sober but for bad
company.  Consequently if the Major _had_ played on him with the garden-
engine which he got privately into his room without my knowing of it, I
think that much as I should have regretted it there would have been words
betwixt the Major and me.  Therefore my dear though he played on Mr.
Buffle by mistake being hot in his head, and though it might have been
misrepresented down at Wozenham's into not being ready for Mr. Buffle in
other respects he being the Assessed Taxes, still I do not so much regret
it as perhaps I ought.  And whether Joshua Lirriper will yet do well in
life I cannot say, but I did hear of his coming, out at a Private Theatre
in the character of a Bandit without receiving any offers afterwards from
the regular managers.

Mentioning Mr. Baffle gives an instance of there being good in persons
where good is not expected, for it cannot be denied that Mr. Buffle's
manners when engaged in his business were not agreeable.  To collect is
one thing, and to look about as if suspicious of the goods being
gradually removing in the dead of the night by a back door is another,
over taxing you have no control but suspecting is voluntary.  Allowances
too must ever be made for a gentleman of the Major's warmth not relishing
being spoke to with a pen in the mouth, and while I do not know that it
is more irritable to my own feelings to have a low-crowned hat with a
broad brim kept on in doors than any other hat still I can appreciate the
Major's, besides which without bearing malice or vengeance the Major is a
man that scores up arrears as his habit always was with Joshua Lirriper.
So at last my dear the Major lay in wait for Mr. Buffle, and it worrited
me a good deal.  Mr. Buffle gives his rap of two sharp knocks one day and
the Major bounces to the door.  "Collector has called for two quarters'
Assessed Taxes" says Mr. Buffle.  "They are ready for him" says the Major
and brings him in here.  But on the way Mr. Buffle looks about him in his
usual suspicious manner and the Major fires and asks him "Do you see a
Ghost sir?"  "No sir" says Mr. Buffle.  "Because I have before noticed
you" says the Major "apparently looking for a spectre very hard beneath
the roof of my respected friend.  When you find that supernatural agent,
be so good as point him out sir."  Mr. Buffle stares at the Major and
then nods at me.  "Mrs. Lirriper sir" says the Major going off into a
perfect steam and introducing me with his hand.  "Pleasure of knowing
her" says Mr. Buffle.  "A--hum!--Jemmy Jackman sir!" says the Major
introducing himself.  "Honour of knowing you by sight" says Mr. Buffle.
"Jemmy Jackman sir" says the Major wagging his head sideways in a sort of
obstinate fury "presents to you his esteemed friend that lady Mrs. Emma
Lirriper of Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand London in the County of
Middlesex in the United Kingdom