George Fenn - A Little World

“Some people are such fools!” said Richard Pellet; and, if public judgment was right, he knew what a fool was as well as any man in the great city of London. He was a big man was Richard Pellet, Esq., C.C., shipper, of Austin Friars, and known among city men as “the six-hundred-pounder;” and he knew a fool when he saw one. But whether at his office in the city, or down at his place at Norwood, – “his little place at Norwood,” where he had “a morsel of garden” and “a bit of glass,” and grew pine and melon, peach and grape, and had a fat butler in black, and a staff of servants in drab, trimmed with yellow coach-lace, – no matter where Richard Pellet might be, he could always see in his mind’s eye the greatest fool that ever breathed – the man whom he was always mentally abusing – to wit, his brother Jared.

But Jared Pellet always was a fool – so his brother said; and he was continually filling the foolish cup of his iniquitous folly fuller and more full. He was a fool to be tyrannised over by his brother when a boy, and to take all the punishment that should have fallen to Richard’s share; he was a fool to marry Lizzie Willis, who had not a penny, when Richard would have given his ears to stand in his shoes; he was a fool for being happy – loved and loving; he was a fool to have such a large family; he was a fool for being a poor struggling man, while his brother was so rich; in short, taking Richard Pellet’s opinion – which must have been correct, seeing how wealthy, and stout, and clean shaven, and respected he was – there was not a bigger fool upon the face of the earth!

Just as if it was likely that a man could get a living in Clerkenwell by mending musical instruments in so unmusical a place; doctoring consumptive harmoniums; strengthening short-winded concertinas; re-buffing a set of hammers, or tuning pianos and putting in new strings at one shilling each.

However, living or no living, Jared Pellet rented a house in Duplex Street, Clerkenwell; and there was a brass plate on the door, one which Patty Pellet brightened to such an extent that when the sun did shine in Duplex Street – which was not often – it would kiss the bright metal and then shoot off at various angles to dart into darksome spots where, directly, he seldom or never shone.

It was a bright plate that, and a couple more years of such service would have oiled and rotten-stoned and rubbed and polished out the legend, “J. Pellet, Pianoforte Tuner;” for at this time there was but little of the original black composition left in the letters, and as for the corner flourishes, they were quite gone. But there was a board up over the front parlour window, bearing, in gold letters, much decayed, the self-same legend, with the addition of “Musical Instruments Carefully Repaired;” while, so that there might be no mistake about the indweller’s occupation, a couple of doleful-looking, cracked, and wax-ended clarionets sloped from the centre hasp to either side of the said front parlour window; and where by rights there should have been one of those folding-door green Venetian barred blinds so popular in the district, there graced the bottom panes – “The Whole Art of Singing,” “Beaustickski’s Violin Tutor,” and “Instructions for the Concertina” – fly-stained and dust-tarnished books, that had been put in on Monday mornings and taken out again on Saturday nights, in company with the cracked clarionets, ever since Jared Pellet had hired the place, and determined upon keeping it private on Sundays.

There was nothing else very particular about the house save that it had once entered into the heart of its owner to have the front stuccoed, ever since which time it had suffered severely from a kind of leprosy which made it shell and peel off abundantly; and that the top pane of the parlour window had once been cracked by a tip-cat, forming a star whose rays extended to the putty all round, starting now from a round dab of the same material. Jared did not have that pane mended, saying that it would soon give way, and then they would have a fresh one put in; but that starred and puttied pane bore a charmed life, having outlived every one of its eleven brethren, who had all gone to the limbo of broken glass, while it still remained. It may perhaps be mentioned, though, that there were some rusty iron railings laid horizontally beneath the window, forming the kitchen into a cage, and just sufficiently far apart to allow of playthings of every description being dropped into the area; when would come the ringing of the door-bell to ask for restitution of the treasure. At intervals, too, there would be the trouble of some child or other getting its foot firmly fixed between the bars, to remain the centre of a commiserating crowd until the arrival of its incensed parent, and the extrication of the imprisoned member, minus shoe or boot, which of course followed the example of Newton’s apple, illustrating the force of gravity for the benefit of Jared’s children.

There was a watchmaker’s next door to Jared’s on the right, and a watchmaker’s next door on the left, and watchmakers in front, all along the street. In fact, it was altogether a very mechanical place, although Richard Pellet said that no one but a fool would ever have thought of living there.

But Jared’s house had an inside as well as an out: the rooms were neither light, airy, nor large, and it was probably from sanitary ideas that Jared refrained from filling his apartments with furniture, and from covering his floors with hot, thick carpets. But, well or ill-furnished, the place was scrupulously clean, and possessed an ornament that a prince might have coveted in the shape of Patty Pellet, the eldest daughter of the household. Talk of classic types, noble features, chiselled nostrils, or heads set upon swan-like necks, until you are tired, and then you will not produce a word-painting worthy to vie with blushing, down-bloomed, soft-cheeked Patty, with her brown wavy hair half hiding her little pinky ears, which seemed to be continually playing in and out from behind two of the brightest curls ever seen. As for her forehead – well, it was a white forehead, and looked nice and pure and candid, while beneath it her eyes were laughing and bright; and her lips – well, it was a fact that many a quiet old-fashioned man wanted to kiss them, innocently and pleasantly too, without feeling a blush of shame for the wish, for Patty’s lips seemed as if they had been made on purpose to kiss, and more than one thought that it would be a sin to neglect the opportunity.

What further description need be given more than to say that she was like the best parts of her father and mother combined, that she was just eighteen, and washed all the children every morning before breakfast.

Jared Pellet sat in the front parlour — pro tem , his workshop – while, to keep the sun from troubling him, Patty had been pinning up the broad sheet of a newspaper over the window, and now descended by means of a chair. For jared was busy working a curious-looking pair of bellows with his foot, and making a little tongue of metal to vibrate with a most ear-piercing but doleful note in the process of being tuned, before being returned to the German concertina, where its duty was to occupy the part of leading note in the major scale of C.

“Hum-um,” sang Jared, checking the current of air, and striking a tuning-fork upon his little bench. “Hum-um; a bit flat, eh, Patty?”

“Just a little,” said Patty, looking up from her work.

“But there, only think!” cried Jared, dropping his tuning-fork, leaving his task, and crossing over to an old harmonium, over whose keys he ran his bony fingers; “only think if I could – only think if I could get it! Fifty pounds a year for two practices a week, and duty three times on Sundays. Black, of course, for your mother; but what coloured silk shall it be for you, eh, Patty?”