Description of Sairy Gamp, nurse and midwife
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The reader is brought into communication with some professional
persons, and sheds a tear over the filail piety of good Mr. Jonas.
MR. PECKSNIFF was in a hackney cabriolet, for Jonas Chuzzlewit
had said `Spare no expense.' Mankind is evil in its thoughts and
in its base constructions, and Jonas was resolved it should not
have an inch to stretch into an ell against him. It never should
be charged upon his father's son that he had grudged the money
for his father's funeral. Hence, until the obsequies should be
concluded, Jonas had taken for his motto `Spend, and spare not!'
Mr. Pecksniff had been to the undertaker, and was now upon his
way to another officer in the train of mourning: a female functionary,
a nurse, and watcher, and performer of nameless offices about
the persons of the dead: whom he had recommended. Her name, as
Mr. Pecksniff gathered from a scrap of writing in his hand, was
Gamp; her residence in Kingsgate Street, High Holborn. So Mr.
Pecksniff, in a hackney cab, was rattling over Holborn stones,
in quest of Mrs. Gamp.
This lady lodged at a bird-fancier's, next door but one to the
celebrated mutton-pie shop, and directly opposite to the original
cat's meat warehouse; the renown of which establishments was duly
heralded on their respective fronts. It was a little house, and
this was the more convenient; for Mrs. Gamp being, in her highest
walk of art, a monthly nurse, or, as her sign-board boldly had
it, `Midwife,' and lodging in the first-floor front, was easily
assailable at night by pebbles, walking-sticks, and fragments
of tobacco-pipe: all much more efficacious than the street-door
knocker, which was so constructed as to wake the street with ease,
and even spread alarms of fire in Holborn, without making the
smallest impression on the premises to which it was addressed.
It chanced on this particular occasion, that Mrs. Gamp had been
up all the previous night, in attendance upon a ceremony to which
the usage of gossips has given that name which expresses, in two
syllables, the curse pronounced on Adam. It chanced that Mrs.
Gamp had not been regularly engaged, but had been called in at
a crisis, in consequence of her great repute, to assist another
professional lady with her advice; and thus it happened that,
all points of interest in the case being over, Mrs. Gamp had come
home again to the bird-fancier's and gone to bed. So when Mr.
Pecksniff drove up in the hackney cab, Mrs. Gamp's curtains were
drawn close, and Mrs. Gamp was fast asleep behind them.
If the bird-fancier had been at home, as he ought to have been,
there would have been no great harm in this; but he was out, and
his shop was closed. The shutters were down certainly; and in
every pane of glass there was at least one tiny bird in a tiny
bird-cage, twittering and hopping his little ballet of despair,
and knocking his head against the roof: while one unhappy goldfinch
who lived outside a red villa with his name on the door, drew
the water for his own drinking, and mutely appealed to some good
man to drop a farthing's-worth of poison in it. Still, the door
was shut. Mr. Pecksniff tried the latch, and shook it, causing
a cracked bell inside to ring most mournfully; but no one came.
The bird-fancier was an easy shaver also, and a fashionable hair-dresser
also, and perhaps he had been sent for, express, from the court
end of the town, to trim a lord, or cut and curl a lady; but however
that might be, there, upon his own ground, he was not; nor was
there any more distinct trace of him to assist the imagination
of an inquirer, than a professional print or emblem of his calling
(much favoured in the trade), representing a hair-dresser of easy
manners curling a lady of distinguished fashion, in the presence
of a patent upright grand pianoforte.
Noting these circumstances, Mr. Pecksniff, in the innocence of
his heart, applied himself to the knocker; but at the first double
knock every window in the street became alive with female heads;
and before he could repeat the performance whole troops of married
ladies (some about to trouble Mrs. Gamp themselves very shortly)
came flocking round the steps, all crying out with one accord,
and with uncommon interest, `Knock at the winder, sir, knock at
the winder. Lord bless you, don't lose no more time than you can
help; knock at the winder!'
Acting upon this suggestion, and borrowing the driver's whip for
the purpose, Mr. Pecksniff soon made a commotion among the first
floor flower-pots, and roused Mrs. Gamp, whose voice -- to the
great satisfaction of the matrons -- was heard to say, `I'm coming.'
`He's as pale as a muffin,' said one lady, in allusion to Mr.
Pecksniff.
`So he ought to be, if he's the feelings of a man,' observed another.
A third lady (with her arms folded) said she wished he had chosen
any other time for fetching Mrs. Gamp, but it always happened
so with her.
It gave Mr. Pecksniff much uneasiness to find, from these remarks,
that he was supposed to have come to Mrs. Gamp upon an errand
touching -- not the close of life, but the other end. Mrs. Gamp
herself was under the same impression, for, throwing open the
window, she cried behind the curtains, as she hastily attired
herself:
`Is it Mrs. Perkins?'
`No!' returned Mr. Pecksniff, sharply. `Nothing of the sort.'
`What, Mr. Whilks!' cried Mrs. Gamp. `Don't say it's you, Mr.
Whilks, and that poor creetur Mrs. Whilks with not even a pincushion
ready. Don't say it's you, Mr. Whilks!'
`It isn't Mr. Whilks,' said Pecksniff. `I don't know the man.
Nothing of the kind. A gentleman is dead; and some person being
wanted in the house, you have been recommended by Mr. Mould the
undertaker.'
As she was by this time in a condition to appear, Mrs. Gamp, who
had a face for all occasions, looked out of the window with her
mourning countenance, and said she would be down directly. But
the matrons took it very ill that Mr. Pecksniff's mission was
of so unimportant a kind; and the lady with her arms folded rated
him in good round terms, signifying that she would be glad to
know what he meant by terrifying delicate females `with his corpses;'
and giving it as her opinion that he was quite ugly enough to
know her. The other ladies were not at all behind-hand in expressing
similar sentiments and the children, of whom some scores had now
collected, hooted and defied Mr. Pecksniff quite savagely. So
when Mrs. Gamp appeared, the unoffending gentleman was glad to
hustle her with very little ceremony into the cabriolet, and drive
off, over-whelmed with popular execration.
Mrs. Gamp had a large bundle with her, a pair of pattens, and
a species of gig umbrella; the latter article in colour like a
faded leaf, except where a circular patch of a lively blue had
been dexterously let in at the top. She was much flurried by the
haste she had made, and laboured under the most erroneous views
of cabriolets, which she appeared to confound with mail-coaches
or stage-waggons, inasmuch as she was constantly endeavouring
for the first half mile to force her luggage through the little
front window, and clamouring to the driver to `put it in the boot.'
When she was disabused of this idea, her whole being resolved
itself into an absorbing anxiety about her pattens, with which
she played innumerable games at quoits on Mr. Pecksniff's legs.
It was not until they were close upon the house of mourning that
she had enough composure to observe:
`And so the gentleman's dead, sir! Ah! The more's the pity.' She
didn't even know his name. `But it's what we must all come to.
It's as certain as being born, except that we can't make our calculations
as exact. Ah! Poor dear!'
She was a fat old woman, this Mrs. Gamp, with a husky voice and
a moist eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up, and
only showing the white of it. Having very little neck, it cost
her some trouble to look over herself, if one may say so, at those
to whom she talked. She wore a very rusty black gown, rather the
worse for snuff, and a shawl and bonnet to correspond. In these
dilapidated articles of dress she had, on principle, arrayed herself,
time out of mind, on such occasions as the present; for this at
once expressed a decent amount of veneration for the deceased,
and invited the next of kin to present her with a fresher suit
of weeds: an appeal so frequently successful, that the very fetch
and ghost of Mrs. Gamp, bonnet and all, might be seen hanging
up, any hour in the day, in at least a dozen of the second-hand
clothes shops about Holborn. The face of Mrs. Gamp -- the nose
in particular -- was somewhat red and swollen, and it was difficult
to enjoy her society without becoming conscious of a smell of
spirits. Like most persons who have attained to great eminence
in their profession, she took to hers very kindly; insomuch that,
setting aside her natural predilections as a woman, she went to
a lying-in or a laying-out with equal zest and relish.
`Ah!' repeated Mrs. Gamp; for it was always a safe sentiment in
cases of mourning. `Ah dear! When Gamp was summoned to his long
home, and I see him a-lying in Guy's Hospital with a penny-piece
on each eye, and his wooden leg under his left arm, I thought
I should have fainted away. But I bore up.'
If certain whispers current in the Kingsgate Street circles had
any truth in them, she had indeed borne up surprisingly; and had
exerted such uncommon fortitude as to dispose of Mr. Gamp's remains
for the benefit of science. But it should be added, in fairness,
that this had happened twenty years before; and that Mr. and Mrs.
Gamp had long been separated on the ground of incompatibility
of temper in their drink.
`You have become indifferent since then, I suppose?' said Mr.
Pecksniff. `Use is second nature, Mrs. Gamp.'
`You may well say second natur, sir,' returned that lady. `One's
first ways is to find sich things a trial to the feelings, and
so is one's lasting custom. If it wasn't for the nerve a little
sip of liquor gives me (I never was able to do more than taste
it), I never could go through with what I sometimes has to do.
"Mrs. Harris," I says, at the very last case as ever
I acted in, which it was but a young person, "Mrs. Harris,"
I says, "leave the bottle on the chimley-piece, and don't
ask me to take none, but let me put my lips to it when I am so
dispoged, and then I will do what I'm engaged to do, according
to the best of my ability." "Mrs. Gamp," she says,
in answer, "if ever there was a sober creetur to be got at
eighteen pence a day for working people, and three and six for
gentlefolks -- night watching,"' said Mrs. Gamp with emphasis,
`"being a extra charge -- you are that inwallable person."
"Mrs. Harris," I says to her, "don't name the charge,
for if I could afford to lay all my feller creeturs out for nothink,
I would gladly do it, sich is the love I bears 'em. But what I
always says to them as has the management of matters, Mrs. Harris:"'
here she kept her eye on Mr. Pecksniff: `"be they gents or
be they ladies, is, don't ask me whether I won't take none, or
whether I will, but leave the bottle on the chimley-piece, and
let me put my lips to it when I am so dispoged."'
The conclusion of this affecting narrative brought them to the
house. In the passage they encountered Mr. Mould the undertaker:
a little elderly gentleman, bald, and in a suit of black; with
a notebook in his hand, a massive gold watch-chain dangling from
his fob, and a face in which a queer attempt at melancholy was
at odds with a smirk of satisfaction; so that he looked as a man
might, who, in the very act of smacking his lips over choice old
wine, tried to make believe it was physic.
`Well, Mrs. Gamp, and how are you, Mrs. Gamp?' said this gentleman,
in a voice as soft as his step.
`Pretty well, I thank you, sir,' dropping a curtsey.
`You'll be very particular here, Mrs. Gamp. This is not a common
case, Mrs. Gamp. Let everything be very nice and comfortable,
Mrs. Gamp, if you please,' said the undertaker, shaking his head
with a solemn air.
`It shall be, sir,' she replied, curtseying again. `You knows
me of old, sir, I hope....'