Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1614 page)

The Bedroom door closed on us. We took off our coats, tore open our waistcoats, rushed in a body on the new bachelor’s cigar-box, and summoned the evil genius of the footman’s tray.

At the first round of the tumblers, the false Mr. Smart began to disappear, and the true Mr. Smart approached, as it were, from a visionary distance, and took his place among us. He chuckled — Grandison chuckled — within the hearing of every man in the room! We were surprised at that; but what were our sensations when, in less than ten minutes afterward, the highly-bred English and the gentle drawl mysteriously disappeared, and there came bursting out upon us, from the ambush of Mr. Smart’s previous elocution, the jolliest, broadest, and richest Irish brogue we had ever heard in our lives! The mystery was explained now. Mr. Smart had a coat of the smoothest English varnish laid over him, for highly-bred county society, which nothing mortal could peel off but bachelor company and whisky-and-water. He slipped out of his close-fitting English envelope, in the loose atmosphere of the Bachelor Bedroom, as glibly as a tightly-laced young lady slips out of her stays when the admiring eyes of the world are off her waist for the night. Never was man so changed as Mr. Smart was now. His moral sentiments melted like the sugar in his grog; his grammar disappeared with his white cravat. Wild and lavish generosity suddenly became the leading characteristic of this once reticent man. We tried all sorts of subjects, and were obliged to drop every one of them, because Mr. Smart would promise to make us a present of whatever we talked about. The family mansion in Ireland contained everything that this world can supply; and Mr. Smart was resolved to dissipate that priceless store in gifts distributed to the much-esteemed company. He promised me a schooner-yacht, and made a memorandum of the exact tonnage in his pocketbook. He promised my neighbour, on one side, a horse, and, on the other, a unique autograph letter of Shakespeare’s. We had all three been talking respectively of sailing, hunting, and the British drama; and we now held our tongues for fear of getting new presents if we tried new subjects. Other members of the festive assembly took up the ball of conversation, and were prostrated forthwith by showers of presents for their pains. When we all parted in the dewy morning, we left Mr. Smart with disheveled hair, checking off his voluminous memoranda of gifts with an unsteady pencil, and piteously entreating us, in the richest Irish-English, to correct him instantly if we detected the slightest omission anywhere.

The next morning, at breakfast, we rather wondered which nation our friend would turn out to belong to. He set all doubts at rest the moment he opened the door, by entering the room with the old majestic stalk; saluting the ladies with, the serene Grandison smile; trusting we had all rested well during the night, in a succession of elegantly turned sentences; and enunciating the highly-bred English with the imperturbably gentle drawl which we all imagined, the night before, that we had lost forever. He stayed more than a fortnight at Coolcup House; and, in all that time, nobody ever knew the true Mr. Smart except the guests in the Bachelor Bedroom.

The fourth Bachelor on the list deserves especial consideration and attention. In the first place, because he presents himself to the reader in the character of a distinguished foreigner. In the second place, because he contrived, in the most amiable manner imaginable, to upset all the established arrangements of Coolcup House — inside the Bachelor Bedroom, as well as outside it — from the moment when he entered its doors, to the moment when he left them behind him on his auspicious return to his native country. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a rare, probably a unique, species of bachelor; and Mr. Bigg, Mr. Jeremy, and Mr. Smart have no claim whatever to stand in the faintest light of comparison with him.

When I mention that the distinguished guest now introduced to notice is Herr von Muffe, it will be unnecessary for me to add that I refer to the distinguished German poet, whose far-famed Songs Without Sense have aided so immeasurably in thickening the lyric obscurities of his country’s harp. On his arrival in London, Herr von Muffe forwarded his letter of introduction to Sir John by post, and immediately received, in return, the usual hospitable invitation to Coolcup House.

The eminent poet arrived barely in time to dress for dinner; and made his first appearance in our circle while we were waiting in the drawing-room, for the welcome signal of the bell. He waddled in among us softly and suddenly, in the form of a very short, puffy, florid, roundabout old gentleman, with flowing gray hair and a pair of huge circular spectacles. The extreme shabbiness and dinginess of his costume was so singularly set off by the quantity of foreign orders of merit which he wore all over the upper part of it, that a sarcastic literary gentleman among the guests defined him to me, in a whisper, as a compound of “decorations and dirt.” Sir John advanced to greet his distinguished guest, with friendly right hand extended as usual. Herr von Muffe, without saying a word, took the hand carefully in both his own, and expressed affectionate recognition of English hospitality, by transferring it forthwith to that vacant space between his shirt and his waistcoat which extended over the region of the heart. Sir John turned scarlet, and tried vainly to extricate his hand from the poet’s too affectionate bosom. The dinner-bell rang, but Herr von Muffe still held fast. The principal lady in the company half rose, and looked perplexedly at her host — Sir John made another and a desperate effort to escape — failed again — and was marched into the dining-room, in full view of his servants and his guests, with his hand sentimentally imprisoned in his foreign visitor’s waistcoat.

After this romantic beginning, Herr von Muffe rather surprised us by showing that he was decidedly the reverse of a sentimentalist in the matter of eating and drinking.

Neither dish nor bottle passed the poet, without paying heavy tribute, all through the repast. He mixed his liquors, especially, with the most sovereign contempt for all sanitary considerations; drinking Champagne and beer, the sweetest Constantia and the tawniest port, all together, with every appearance of the extremest relish. Conversation with Herr von Muffe, both at dinner, and all through the evening, was found to be next to impossible, in consequence of his knowing all languages (his own included) equally incorrectly. His German was pronounced to be a dialect never heard before; his French was inscrutable; his English was a philological riddle which all of us guessed at and none of us found out. He talked, in spite of these difficulties, incessantly; and, seeing that he shed tears several times in the course of the evening, the ladies assumed that his topics were mostly of a pathetic nature, while the coarser men compared notes with each other, and all agreed that the distinguished guest was drunk. When the time came for retiring, we had to invite ourselves into the Bachelor Bedroom; Herr von Muffe having no suspicion of our customary midnight orgies, and apparently feeling no desire to entertain us, until we informed him of the institution of the foot-man’s tray — when he became hospitable on a sudden, and unreasonably fond of his gay young English friends.

While we were settling ourselves in our places round the bed, a member of the company kicked over one of the poet’s capacious Wellington boots. To the astonishment of every one, there instantly ensued a tinkling of coin, and some sovereigns and shillings rolled surprisingly out on the floor from the innermost recesses of the boot. On receiving his money back, Herr von Muffe informed us, without the slightest appearance of embarrassment, that he had not had time before dinner, to take more than his watch, rings, and decorations out of his boots. Seeing us all stare at this incomprehensible explanation, our distinguished friend kindly endeavored to enlighten us further by a long personal statement in his own polyglot language. From what we could understand of this narrative (which was not much), we gathered that Herr von Muffe had started at noon that day, as a total stranger in our metropolis, to reach the London Bridge station in a cab; and that the driver had taken him as usual across Waterloo Bridge. On going through the Borough, the narrow streets, miserable houses, and squalid population had struck the lively imagination of Herr von Muffe, and had started in his mind a horrible suspicion that the cabman was driving him into a low neighbourhood, with the object of murdering a helpless foreign fare in perfect security, for the sake of the valuables he carried on his person. Chilled to the very marrow of his bones by this idea, the poet raised the ends of his trousers stealthily in the cab, slipped his watch, rings, orders, and money into the legs of his Wellington boots, arrived at the station quaking with mortal terror, and screamed “Help!” at the top of his voice, when the railway policeman opened the cab door. The immediate starting of the train had left him no time to alter the singular traveling arrangements he had made in the Borough; and he arrived at Coolcup House, the only individual who had ever yet entered that mansion with his property in his boots.

Amusing as it was in itself, this anecdote failed a little in its effect on us at the time, in consequence of the stifling atmosphere in which we were condemned to hear it.

Although it was then the sultry middle of summer, and we were all smoking, Herr von Muffe insisted on keeping the windows of the Bachelor Bedroom fast closed, because it was one of his peculiarities to distrust the cooling effect of the night air. We were more than half inclined to go, under these circumstances; and we were altogether determined to remove, when the tray came in, and when we found our German friend madly mixing his liquors again by pouring gin and sherry together into the same tumbler. We warned him, with a shuddering prevision of consequences, that he was mistaking gin for water; and he blandly assured us in return that he was doing nothing of the kind. “It is good for My — ” said Herr von Muffe, supplying his ignorance of the word stomach by laying his chubby forefinger on the organ in question, with a sentimental smile. “It is bad for Our — ” retorted the wag of the party, imitating the poet’s action, and turning quickly to the door. We all followed him — and, for the first time in the annals of Coolcup House, the Bachelor Bedroom was emptied of company before midnight.

Early the next morning, one of Sir John’s younger sons burst into my room in a state of violent excitement.

“I say, what’s to be done with Muffe?” inquired the young gentleman, with wildly staring eyes.

“Open his windows, and fetch the doctor,” I answered, inspired by the recollections of the past night.”

“Doctor!” cried the boy; “the doctor won’t do — it’s the barber.”

“Barber?” I repeated.

“He’s been asking me
to shave him!”
roared my young friend, with vehement comic indignation. “He rang his bell, and asked for ‘the Son of the House’ — and they made me go; and there he was, grinning in the big armchair, with his mangy little shaving-brush in his hand, and a towel over his shoulder. ‘Good-morning, my dear. Can you shave My — ’ says he, and taps his quivering old double chin with his infernal shaving-brush. Curse his impudence! What’s to be done with him?”

I arranged to explain to Herr von Muffe, at the first convenient opportunity, that it was not the custom in England, whatever it might be in Germany, for “the Son of the House” to shave his father’s guests; and undertook, at the same time, to direct the poet to the residence of the village barber. When the German guest joined us at breakfast, his unshaven chin, and the external results of his mixed potations and his seclusion from fresh air, by no means tended to improve his personal appearance. In plain words, he looked the picture of dyspeptic wretchedness.

“I am afraid, sir, you are hardly so well this morning as we could all wish!” said Sir John, kindly.

Herr von Muffe looked at his host affectionately, surveyed the company all round the table, smiled faintly, laid the chubby forefinger once more on the organ whose name he did not know, and answered with the most enchanting innocence and simplicity:

“I am
so
sick!”

There was no harm — upon my word, there was no harm in Herr von Muffe. On the contrary, there was a great deal of good nature and genuine simplicity in his composition. But he was a man naturally destitute of all power of adapting himself to new persons and new circumstances; and he became amiably insupportable, in consequence, to everybody in the house throughout the whole term of his visit. He could not join one of us in any country diversions. He hung about the house and garden in a weak, pottering, aimless manner, always turning up at the wrong moment, and always attaching himself to the wrong person. He was dexterous in a perfectly childish way at cutting out little figures of shepherds and shepherdesses in paper; and he was perpetually presenting these frail tributes of admiration to the ladies, who always tore them up and threw them away in secret the moment his back was turned. When he was not occupied with his paper figures, he was out in the garden, gathering countless little nosegays, and sentimentally presenting them to everybody; not to the ladies only, but to lusty agricultural gentlemen as well, who accepted them with blank amazement; and to schoolboys, home for the holidays, who took them, bursting with internal laughter at the “mollycoddle” gentleman from foreign parts. As for poor Sir John, he suffered more than any of us; for Herr von Muffe was always trying to kiss him. In short, with the best intentions in the world, this unhappy foreign bachelor wearied out the patience of everybody in the house; and, to our shame be it said, we celebrated his departure, when he left us at last, by a festival meeting in the Bachelor Bedroom, in honour of the welcome absence of Herr von Muffe.