THE STORY OF LONDON: Charles Dickens' Perspective in 11 Novels & 80+ Short Stories (Illustrated Edition). Charles Dickens
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of what, in times bygone, had been the front parlour. Thinking this an eligible place wherein to make his inquiries, Mr. Winkle stepped into the little shop where the gilt-labelled drawers and bottles were; and finding nobody there, knocked with a halfcrown on the counter, to attract the attention of anybody who might happen to be in the back parlour, which he judged to be the innermost and peculiar sanctum of the establishment, from the repetition of the word surgery on the door — painted in white letters this time, by way of taking off the monotony.
At the first knock, a sound, as of persons fencing with fire-irons, which had until now been very audible, suddenly ceased; at the second, a studious-looking young gentleman in green spectacles, with a very large book in his hand, glided quietly into the shop, and stepping behind the counter, requested to know the visitor’s pleasure.
‘I am sorry to trouble you, Sir,’ said Mr. Winkle, ‘but will you have the goodness to direct me to —‘
‘Ha! ha! ha!’ roared the studious young gentleman, throwing the large book up into the air, and catching it with great dexterity at the very moment when it threatened to smash to atoms all the bottles on the counter. ‘Here’s a start!’
There was, without doubt; for Mr. Winkle was so very much astonished at the extraordinary behaviour of the medical gentleman, that he involuntarily retreated towards the door, and looked very much disturbed at his strange reception.
‘What, don’t you know me?’ said the medical gentleman. Mr. Winkle murmured, in reply, that he had not that pleasure.
‘Why, then,’ said the medical gentleman, ‘there are hopes for me yet; I may attend half the old women in Bristol, if I’ve decent luck. Get out, you mouldy old villain, get out!’ With this adjuration, which was addressed to the large book, the medical gentleman kicked the volume with remarkable agility to the farther end of the shop, and, pulling off his green spectacles, grinned the identical grin of Robert Sawyer, Esquire, formerly of Guy’s Hospital in the Borough, with a private residence in Lant Street.
‘You don’t mean to say you weren’t down upon me?’ said Mr. Bob Sawyer, shaking Mr. Winkle’s hand with friendly warmth.
‘Upon my word I was not,’ replied Mr. Winkle, returning his pressure.
‘I wonder you didn’t see the name,’ said Bob Sawyer, calling his friend’s attention to the outer door, on which, in the same white paint, were traced the words ‘Sawyer, late Nockemorf.’
‘It never caught my eye,’ returned Mr. Winkle.
‘Lord, if I had known who you were, I should have rushed out, and caught you in my arms,’ said Bob Sawyer; ‘but upon my life, I thought you were the King’s-taxes.’
‘No!’ said Mr. Winkle.
‘I did, indeed,’ responded Bob Sawyer, ‘and I was just going to say that I wasn’t at home, but if you’d leave a message I’d be sure to give it to myself; for he don’t know me; no more does the Lighting and Paving. I think the Church-rates guesses who I am, and I know the Waterworks does, because I drew a tooth of his when I first came down here. But come in, come in!’ Chattering in this way, Mr. Bob Sawyer pushed Mr. Winkle into the back room, where, amusing himself by boring little circular caverns in the chimneypiece with a red-hot poker, sat no less a person than Mr. Benjamin Allen.
‘Well!’ said Mr. Winkle. ‘This is indeed a pleasure I did not expect. What a very nice place you have here!’
‘Pretty well, pretty well,’ replied Bob Sawyer. ‘I PASSED, soon after that precious party, and my friends came down with the needful for this business; so I put on a black suit of clothes, and a pair of spectacles, and came here to look as solemn as I could.’
‘And a very snug little business you have, no doubt?’ said Mr. Winkle knowingly.
‘Very,’ replied Bob Sawyer. ‘So snug, that at the end of a few years you might put all the profits in a wineglass, and cover ‘em over with a gooseberry leaf.’ ‘You cannot surely mean that?’ said Mr. Winkle. ‘The stock itself — ‘ ‘Dummies, my dear boy,’ said Bob Sawyer; ‘half the drawers have nothing in ‘em, and the other half don’t open.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Mr. Winkle.
‘Fact — honour!’ returned Bob Sawyer, stepping out into the shop, and demonstrating the veracity of the assertion by divers hard pulls at the little gilt knobs on the counterfeit drawers. ‘Hardly anything real in the shop but the leeches, and THEY are secondhand.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought it!’ exclaimed Mr. Winkle, much surprised.
‘I hope not,’ replied Bob Sawyer, ‘else where’s the use of appearances, eh? But what will you take? Do as we do? That’s right. Ben, my fine fellow, put your hand into the cupboard, and bring out the patent digester.’
Mr. Benjamin Allen smiled his readiness, and produced from the closet at his elbow a black bottle half full of brandy.
‘You don’t take water, of course?’ said Bob Sawyer.
‘Thank you,’ replied Mr. Winkle. ‘It’s rather early. I should like to qualify it, if you have no objection.’
‘None in the least, if you can reconcile it to your conscience,’ replied Bob Sawyer, tossing off, as he spoke, a glass of the liquor with great relish. ‘Ben, the pipkin!’
Mr. Benjamin Allen drew forth, from the same hiding-place, a small brass pipkin, which Bob Sawyer observed he prided himself upon, particularly because it looked so businesslike. The water in the professional pipkin having been made to boil, in course of time, by various little shovelfuls of coal, which Mr. Bob Sawyer took out of a practicable window-seat, labelled ‘Soda Water,’ Mr. Winkle adulterated his brandy; and the conversation was becoming general, when it was interrupted by the entrance into the shop of a boy, in a sober gray livery and a gold-laced hat, with a small covered basket under his arm, whom Mr. Bob Sawyer immediately hailed with, ‘Tom, you vagabond, come here.’
The boy presented himself accordingly.
‘You’ve been stopping to “over” all the posts in Bristol, you idle young scamp!’ said Mr. Bob Sawyer.
‘No, sir, I haven’t,’ replied the boy.
‘You had better not!’ said Mr. Bob Sawyer, with a threatening aspect. ‘Who do you suppose will ever employ a professional man, when they see his boy playing at marbles in the gutter, or flying the garter in the horse-road? Have you no feeling for your profession, you groveller? Did you leave all the medicine?’ ‘Yes, Sir.’
‘The powders for the child, at the large house with the new family, and the pills to be taken four times a day at the ill-tempered old gentleman’s with the gouty leg?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then shut the door, and mind the shop.’
‘Come,’ said Mr. Winkle, as the boy retired, ‘things are not quite so bad as you would have me believe, either. There is SOME medicine to be sent out.’
Mr. Bob Sawyer peeped into the shop to see that no stranger was within hearing, and leaning forward to Mr. Winkle, said, in a low tone —
‘He leaves it all at the wrong houses.’
Mr. Winkle looked perplexed, and Bob Sawyer and his friend laughed.
‘Don’t you see?’ said Bob. ‘He goes up to a house, rings the area bell, pokes a packet of medicine without a direction into the servant’s hand, and walks off. Servant takes it into the dining-parlour; master opens it, and reads the label: “Draught to be taken at bedtime — pills as before — lotion as usual — the powder. From Sawyer’s, late Nockemorf’s. Physicians’ prescriptions carefully prepared,” and all the rest of it. Shows it to his wife — she reads the label; it goes down to the servants — THEY read the label. Next day, boy calls: “Very sorry — his mistake — immense business — great many parcels to deliver — Mr. Sawyer’s compliments