Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall “Christmas Stories”edition , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Whoever would begin to be worried with letting Lodgings that wasn’ta lone woman with a living to get is a thing inconceivable to me, mydear; excuse the familiarity, but it comes natural to me in my own littleroom, when wishing to open my mind to those that I can trust, and Ishould be truly thankful if they were all mankind, but such is not so,for have but a Furnished bill in the window and your watch on the mantelpiece,and farewell to it if you turn your back for but a second, however gentlemanlythe manners; nor is being of your own sex any safeguard, as I have reason,in the form of sugar-tongs to know, for that lady (and a fine womanshe was) got me to run for a glass of water, on the plea of going tobe confined, which certainly turned out true, but it was in the Station-house.
Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street, Strand—situated midway betweenthe City and St. James’s, and within five minutes’ walkof the principal places of public amusement—is my address. I have rented this house many years, as the parish rate-books will testify;and I could wish my landlord was as alive to the fact as I am myself;but no, bless you, not a half a pound of paint to save his life, norso much, my dear, as a tile upon the roof, though on your bended knees.
My dear, you never have found Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strandadvertised in Bradshaw’s Railway Guide, and with the blessingof Heaven you never will or shall so find it. Some there are whodo not think it lowering themselves to make their names that cheap,and even going the lengths of a portrait of the house not like it witha blot in every window and a coach and four at the door, but what willsuit Wozenham’s lower down on the other side of the way will notsuit me, Miss Wozenham having her opinions and me having mine, thoughwhen it comes to systematic underbidding capable of being proved onoath in a court of justice and taking the form of “If Mrs. Lirripernames eighteen shillings a week, I name fifteen and six,” it thencomes to a settlement between yourself and your conscience, supposingfor the sake of argument your name to be Wozenham, which I am well awareit is not or my opinion of you would be greatly lowered, and as to airybedrooms and a night-porter in constant attendance the less said thebetter, the bedrooms being stuffy and the porter stuff.
It is forty years ago since me and my poor Lirriper got married atSt. Clement’s Danes, where I now have a sitting in a very pleasantpew with genteel company and my own hassock, and being partial to eveningservice not too crowded. My poor Lirriper was a handsome figureof a man, with a beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a musical instrumentmade of honey and steel, but he had ever been a free liver being inthe commercial travelling line and travelling what he called a limekilnroad—“a dry road, Emma my dear,” my poor Lirripersays to me, “where I have to lay the dust with one drink or anotherall day long and half the night, and it wears me Emma”—andthis led to his running through a good deal and might have run throughthe turnpike too when that dreadful horse that never would stand stillfor a single instant set off, but for its being night and the gate shutand consequently took his wheel, my poor Lirriper and the gig smashedto atoms and never spoke afterwards. He was a handsome figureof a man, and a man with a jovial heart and a sweet temper; but if theyhad come up then they never could have given you the mellowness of hisvoice, and indeed I consider photographs wanting in mellowness as ageneral rule and making you look like a new-ploughed field.
My poor Lirriper bein