The Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. YellowplushThackeray, William Makepeace
General
The Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Didactic fiction; England -- Fiction; Household employees -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Master and servant -- Fiction
My new master had some business in the city, for he went in every
morning at ten, got out of his tilbry at the Citty Road, and had it
waiting for him at six; when, if it was summer, he spanked round into
the Park, and drove one of the neatest turnouts there. Wery proud I was
in a gold-laced hat, a drab coat and a red weskit, to sit by his side,
when he drove. I already began to ogle the gals in the carridges, and to
feel that longing for fashionabl life which I've had ever since. When
he was at the oppera, or the play, down I went to skittles, or to White
Condick Gardens; and Mr. Frederic Altamont's young man was somebody, I
warrant: to be sure there is very few man-servants at Pentonwille, the
poppylation being mostly gals of all work; and so, though only fourteen,
I was as much a man down there, as if I had been as old as Jerusalem.
But the most singular thing was, that my master, who was such a gay
chap, should live in such a hole. He had only a ground-floor in John
Street--a parlor and a bedroom. I slep over the way, and only came in
with his boots and brexfast of a morning.
The house he lodged in belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Shum. They were a poor
but proliffic couple, who had rented the place for many years; and they
and their family were squeezed in it pretty tight, I can tell you.
Shum said he had been a hofficer, and so he had. He had been a
sub-deputy assistant vice-commissary, or some such think; and, as
I heerd afterwards, had been obliged to leave on account of his
NERVOUSNESS. He was such a coward, the fact is, that he was considered
dangerous to the harmy, and sent home.
He had married a widow Buckmaster, who had been a Miss Slamcoe. She was
a Bristol gal; and her father being a bankrup in the tallow-chandlering
way, left, in course, a pretty little sum of money. A thousand pound
was settled on her; and she was as high and mighty as if it had been a
millium.
Buckmaster died, leaving nothink; nothink except four ugly daughters by
Miss Slamcoe: and her forty pound a year was rayther a narrow income for
one of her appytite and pretensions. In an unlucky hour for Shum she
met him. He was a widower with a little daughter of three years old,
a little house at Pentonwille, and a little income about as big as her
own. I believe she bullyd the poor creature into marridge; and it was
agreed that he should let his ground-floor at John Street, and so add
somethink to their means.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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