Somebodys Luggage | Page 6

into it through so
many years that his own wife (for he had an unbeknown old lady in that
capacity towards himself) believed it! And what was the consequence?
When he was borne to his grave on the shoulders of six picked Waiters,
with six more for change, six more acting as pall-bearers, all keeping
step in a pouring shower without a dry eye visible, and a concourse
only inferior to Royalty, his pantry and lodgings was equally ransacked
high and low for property, and none was found! How could it be found,
when, beyond his last monthly collection of walking-sticks, umbrellas,
and pocket-handkerchiefs (which happened to have been not yet
disposed of, though he had ever been through life punctual in clearing
off his collections by the month), there was no property existing? Such,
however, is the force of this universal libel, that the widow of Old
Charles, at the present hour an inmate of the Almshouses of the
Cork-Cutters' Company, in Blue Anchor Road (identified sitting at the
door of one of 'em, in a clean cap and a Windsor arm-chair, only last
Monday), expects John's hoarded wealth to be found hourly! Nay, ere
yet he had succumbed to the grisly dart, and when his portrait was
painted in oils life- size, by subscription of the frequenters of the West
Country, to hang over the coffee-room chimney-piece, there were not
wanting those who contended that what is termed the accessories of
such a portrait ought to be the Bank of England out of window, and a
strong-box on the table. And but for better-regulated minds contending
for a bottle and screw and the attitude of drawing,--and carrying their
point,--it would have been so handed down to posterity.
I am now brought to the title of the present remarks. Having, I hope
without offence to any quarter, offered such observations as I felt it my
duty to offer, in a free country which has ever dominated the seas, on
the general subject, I will now proceed to wait on the particular
question.
At a momentous period of my life, when I was off, so far as concerned
notice given, with a House that shall be nameless,--for the question on
which I took my departing stand was a fixed charge for waiters, and no
House as commits itself to that eminently Un- English act of more than

foolishness and baseness shall be advertised by me,--I repeat, at a
momentous crisis, when I was off with a House too mean for mention,
and not yet on with that to which I have ever since had the honour of
being attached in the capacity of Head, {1} I was casting about what to
do next. Then it were that proposals were made to me on behalf of my
present establishment. Stipulations were necessary on my part,
emendations were necessary on my part: in the end, ratifications ensued
on both sides, and I entered on a new career.
We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business. We are not a
general dining business, nor do we wish it. In consequence, when
diners drop in, we know what to give 'em as will keep 'em away
another time. We are a Private Room or Family business also; but
Coffee-room principal. Me and the Directory and the Writing Materials
and cetrer occupy a place to ourselves--a place fended of up a step or
two at the end of the Coffee-room, in what I call the good
old-fashioned style. The good old-fashioned style is, that whatever you
want, down to a wafer, you must be olely and solely dependent on the
Head Waiter for. You must put yourself a new-born Child into his
hands. There is no other way in which a business untinged with
Continental Vice can be conducted. (It were bootless to add, that if
languages is required to be jabbered and English is not good enough,
both families and gentlemen had better go somewhere else.)
When I began to settle down in this right-principled and well-
conducted House, I noticed, under the bed in No. 24 B (which it is up a
angle off the staircase, and usually put off upon the lowly- minded), a
heap of things in a corner. I asked our Head Chambermaid in the course
of the day,
"What are them things in 24 B?"
To which she answered with a careless air, "Somebody's Luggage."
Regarding her with a eye not free from severity, I says, "Whose
Luggage?"
Evading my eye, she replied,
"Lor! How should I know!"
- Being, it may be right to mention, a female of some pertness, though
acquainted with her business.
A Head Waiter must be either Head or Tail. He must be at one
extremity or the other of the social scale. He