the world of Lilliput—all, all cry aloud lodgings, lodgings, and yet that same highly respectable vulture stands there telling you her house was newly furnished throughout last year, and that her dear deceased husband was the respected minister of Allsobs Tabernacle in Nasal Street, Bath, for many a long year, and that until his death she had never occasion to demean herself by taking in lodgers. Oh! there is something peculiarly pungent in that phrase “take in;” it conveys its own moral, and adorns its own tale. After undergoing this introductory process, you ask to see the bed-room, and you smell it! Then those yellow-brown tick coverings, made cleanly at the line of vision by pieces of linen sewn on the sides; that feather-bed, as if the osseous remains of the birds had been left therein; those drabby, dirty, dimity curtains; that three-cornered washing-stand, and its crockery of the early Britons; that general odour suggestive of mild typhus, or scarlatina—faugh!—I cannot stand it, and as I am not rich enough to take lodgings opposite the sea, and give a hundred guineas a week for decent rooms, and a grander mode of extortion, I fain go off to the Excrescent Hotel, so called from its abutting from a crescent, and hug myself with the notion that that gentle boa-constrictor, though she lubricated, did not swallow me.
I have had considerable experience in watching the habits, customs, and manners of that class of beings called lodginghouse-keepers, and they, one and all, possess certain unmistakeable traits, which, though differing in degree, prove they all belong to the same family. From their power of “selection”—a polite name for the faculty of appropriativeness—I think Dr. Darwin would be highly interested in their study. Of the two sorts more deserving notice are those which may be denominated the vultures and the crocodiles. The first is generally at the top of the kitchen staircase, ready to pounce upon the new comer, while the latter usually ensconces herself behind the flower-pots in the parlour window gazing with hungry looks at the passers-by like an alligator in the sedges. The vulture preys upon you openly and at once. She feeds her “helps” out of your larder, and she makes the tradesmen give her a per-centage for her recommendation. She attempts to make you pay your butcher’s bills twice, and when you “cut up rough” thereat, she assumes the air of injured innocence, and shadows forth an action for defamation at the next assizes. But although this is all bad enough in its way, for myself I prefer the vulturine propensities to the crocodile. The latter dresses in the height of gentility; she goes regularly to prayers at a meeting-house near, and preys at home still more devoutly. She has seen better days, she tells you, and her eyes are suffused with tears whenever the subject of money is discussed between you. She professes a profound personal interest in you, and when she hears that your little cousin in London has the measles she weeps outright, and calls her a little hangel. She hopes you will never suspect her of taking advantage, and, till the weekly bill is presented, you really believe you have found a true female Samaritan to pour oil into your wounds. This upon experience you find she certainly could do, only she would irritate your wounds and overcharge you for the oil. You perceive that item after item involves an overcharge of some sort, and yet her manner of making it has been so ingeniously contrived that it is very difficult to lay your finger upon the precise piece of roguery. She weeps if you dispute the bill, and she weeps when you pay it, and hopes you do not think her mercenary. She weeps when you hint at the possibility of leaving her, and speaks of her forlorn condition, as if your only duty in life were to live in her lodgings as a perpetual annuity to her. What with maudlin airs, pretended sympathies, and the evidence of a little spiritual comfort now and then, she is far more disagreeable to me than her less hypocritical neighbour who cheats you openly, and threatens you with law if you mention the subject.
Then there is another member of the same family that is as necessary to know and to shun as those I have just named. In this case the lady who lets you her lodgings most likely keeps a bonnet shop, or sells fancy goods of some sort, which bring her in contact with gentility, and she acts accordingly. Oh, how neatly she is dressed! Bien chaussée et bien gantée, with a waist like an hour-glass; demure, smiling, insidious, and eager-eyed always. The drawing-room she proposes to let you is nicely furnished—at least, you think so at first—but when you come to experience the uses thereof, you soon find out your mistake. In the first place the tables, occasional and otherwise, the easy-chairs and the sofa, are all carefully swaddled in those wretched nets called anti-macassars, so that you perpetually find yourself caught in a net, like a herring or sole in the meshes. All the china ornaments so lavishly strewn about are of that description which made its début immediately after the composition peaches and apples, and chalky parrots went out of fashion, while numberless trumpery ornaments of all kinds are arranged everywhere, decorated with little matters of worthless but ingenious millinery. The vilely-painted pictures are hung by ribbons with a large bow, trimmed with lace where the nail goes in the wall, and nothing that you find in the room is free from what may be termed genteel frippery. “Mamma,” who keeps the accounts and the books, is a lady of the old school, befrilled, and brooched and tucked up as neatly as a new-made bed. Like the apartments, her looks at first sight are greatly in her favour, but when you come to know her features better, you remark a disagreeable expression in their thin attenuated outline (she is the counterpart of her daughter) which is at once suggestive of that great art of removing the epidermis from silicious compounds. You have not been long in the house when she informs you that one or two of the young lady apprentices (there are about a dozen demoiselles working together in a room upstairs) are the daughters of clergymen and barristers, and perhaps the statement is only too true; but conceive the innate vulgarity, treachery, and heartlessness of imparting the fact to every new lodger that arrives! Of course, in this establishment you are imposed upon as much as elsewhere, but it is genteelly done; so in a perfect gentlemanly spirit