University of Virginia Library

THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES.

—Winter's Tale.

F—, the portrait-painter, was a considerable ally
of mine at one time. His success in his art brought
him into contact with many people, and he made
friends as a fastidious lady buys shoes—trying on a
great many that were destined to be thrown aside. It
was the prompting, no doubt, of a generous quality—
that of believing all people perfect till he discovered
their faults—but as he cut loose without ceremony
from those whose faults were not to his mind, and as
ill-fitting people are not as patient of rejection as ill-fitting
shoes, the quality did not pass for its full value,
and his abusers were “thick as leaves in Vallambrosa.”
The friends who “wore his bleeding roses,”
however (and of these he had his share), fought his
battles quite at their own charge. What with plenty
of pride, and as plentiful a lack of approbativeness,
F— took abuse as a duck's back takes rain—buoyant
in the shower as in the sunshine.

“Well, F—!” I said, as I occupied his big chair
one morning while he was at work, “there was great
skirmishing about you last night at the tea-party!”

“No!—really? Who was the enemy?”

“Two ladies, who said they travelled with you
through Italy, and knew all about you—the Blidgimses.”

“Oh, the dear old Blidgimses—Crinny and Ninny—the
ungrateful monsters! Did I ever tell you
of my nursing those two old girls through the cholera?”

“No. But before you go off with a long story,
tell me how you can stand such abominable backbiting?
It isn't once in a way, merely!—you are
their whole stock in trade, and they vilify you in every
house they set foot in. The mildest part of it is
criminal slander, my good fellow! Why not do the
world a service, and show that slander is actionable,
though it is committed in good society?”

“Pshaw! What does it amount to?

and in this particular instance, the jury would probably
give the damages the other way—for if they
hammer at me till doomsday, I have had my fun out
of them—my quid pro quo!”

“Well, preface your story by telling me where
you met them. I never knew by what perverse thread
you were drawn together.”

“A thread that might have drawn me into much
more desperate extremity—a letter from the most lovable
of women, charging me to become the trusty
squire of these errant damsels wherever I should encounter
them. I was then studying in Italy. They
came to Florence, where I chanced to be, and were
handed over to me without dog, cat, or waiting-maid,
by a man who seemed ominously glad to be rid of
them. As it was the ruralizing season, and all the
world was flocking to the baths of Lucca, close by,
they went there till I could get ready to undertake
them—which I did, with the devotion of a courier in
a new place, one fig-desiring evening of June.”

“Was there a delivery of the great seal?” I asked,
rather amused at F—'s circumstantial mention of
his introitus to office.

“Something very like it, indeed. I had not fairly
got the blood out of my face, after making my salaam,
when Miss Crinny Blidgims fished up from
some deep place she had about her, a memorandum-book,
with a well-thumbed brown paper cover, and
gliding across the room, placed it in my hands as people
on the stage present pocket-books—with a sort
of dust-flapping parabola. Now if I have any particular
antipathy, it is to the smell of old flannel, and as
this equivocal-looking object descended before my
nose—faith! But I took it. It was the account-book
of the eatables and drinkables furnished to the
ladies in their travels, the prices of eggs, bread, figs,
et cetera, and I was to begin my duties by having up
the head waiter of the lodging-house, and holding inquisition
on his charges. The Blidgimses spoke no
Italian, and no servant in the house spoke English,
and they were bursting for a translator to tell him that
the eggs were over-charged, and that he must deduct
threepence a day for wine, for they never touched it!”

“`What do the ladies wish?' inquired the dumbfounded
waiter, in civil Tuscan.

“`What does he say? what does he say?' cried
Miss Corinna, in resounding nasal.

“`Tell the impudent fellow what eggs are in Dutchess
county!' peppered out Miss Katrina, very sharply.

“Of course I translated with a discretion. There
was rather an incongruity between the looks of the
damsels and what they were to be represented as saying—Katrina
Blidgims living altogether in a blue opera-hat
with a white feather.”

I interrupted F— to say that the blue hat was
immortal, for it was worn at the tea-party of the night
before.

“I had enough of the blue hat and its bandbox before
we parted. It was the one lifetime extravagance
of the old maid, perpetrated in Paris, and as it covered
the back seam of a wig (a subsequent discovery
of mine), she was never without it, except when bonneted
to go out. She came to breakfast in it, mended
her stockings in it, went to parties in it. I fancy it
took some trouble to adjust it to the wig, and she devoted
to it the usual dressing-hours of morning and
dinner; for in private she wore a handkerchief over
it, pinned under her chin, which had only to be whipped
off when company was announced, and this, perhaps,
is one of the secrets of its immaculate, yet
threadbare preservation. She called it her abbo!”

“Her what?”

“You have heard of the famous Herbault, the
man-milliner, of Paris? The bonnet was his production,
and called after him with great propriety.
In Italy, where people dress according to their condition
in life, this perpetual abbo was something à la
princesse, and hence my embarrassment in explaining
to Jacomo, the waiter, that Signorina Katrina's high
summons concerned only an overcharge of a penny
in the eggs!”

“And what said Jacomo?”

“Jacomo was incapable of an incivility, and begged
pardon before stating that the usual practice of the
house was to charge half a dollar a day for board and
lodging, including a private parlor and bedroom, three
meals and a bottle of wine. The ladies, however,
had applied through an English gentleman (who
chanced to call on them, and who spoke Italian), to
have reductions made on their dispensing with two
dishes of meat out of three, drinking no wine, and
wanting no nuts and raisins. Their main extravagance
was in eggs, which they ate several times a
day between meals, and wished to have cooked and
served up at the price per dozen in the market. On
this they had held conclave below stairs, and the result
had not been communicated, because there was
no common language; but Jacomo wished, through
me, respectfully to represent, that the reductions from
the half dollar a day should be made as requested,
but that the eggs could not be bought, cooked, and
served up (with salt and bread, and a clean napkin),
for just their price in the market. And on this point
the ladies were obstinate. And to settle this difficulty
between the high contracting parties, cost an argument
of a couple of hours, my first performance as
translator in the service of the Blidgimses. Thenceforward,
I was as necessary to Crinny and Ninny—
(these were their familiar diminutives for Corinna and
Katrina)—as necessary to Crinny as the gift of speech,
and to Ninny as the wig and abbo put together. Obedient
to the mandate of the fair hand which had consigned
me to them, I gave myself up to their service,
even keeping in my pocket their frowsy grocerybook—though
not without some private outlay in
burnt vinegar. What penance a man will undergo
for a pretty woman who cares nothing about him!”

“But what could have started such a helpless pair
of old quizzes upon their travels?”

“I wondered myself till I knew them better.
Crinny Blidgims had a tongue of the liveliness of an
eel's tail. It would have wagged after she was skinned
and roasted. She had, beside, a kind of pinchbeck
smartness, and these two gifts, and perhaps the name
of Corinna, had inspired her with the idea that she
was an improvisatrice. So, how could she die without
going to Italy?”

“And Ninny went for company?”

“Oh, Miss Ninny Blidgims had a passion too!
She had come out to see Paris. She had heard that,
in Paris, people could renew their youth, and she
thought she had done it, with her abbo. She thought,
too, that she must have manners to correspond. So,
while travelling in her old bonnet, she blurted out her
bad grammer as she had done for fifty years, but in
her blue hat she simpered and frisked to the best of
her recollection. Silly as that old girl was, however
she had the most pellucid set of ideas on the prices
of things to eat. There was no humbugging her on
that subject, even in a foreign language. She filled
her pockets with apples, usually, in our walks; and
the translating between her and a street-huckster, she
in her abbo and the apple-woman in Italian rags, was
vexatious to endure, but very funny to remember. I
have thought of painting it, but, to understand the
picture, the spectator must make the acquaintance of
Miss Fanny Blidgims—rather a pill for a connoisseur!
But by this time you are ready to approfond, as the
French aptly say, the depths of my subsequent distresses.

THE STORY.

“I had been about a month at Lucca, when it was
suddenly proposed by Crinny that we should take a

vetturino together, and go to Venice. Ninny and she
had come down to dinner with a sudden disgust for
the baths—owing, perhaps, to the distinction they had
received as the only strangers in the place who were
not invited to the ball of a certain prince, our next-door
neighbor. The Blidgimses and their economies, in
fact, had become the joke of the season, and, as the
interpreter in the egg-trades, I was mixed up in the
omelette, and as glad to escape from my notoriety as
they. So I set about looking up the conveyance with
some alacrity.

“By the mass, it was evidently a great saving of
distance to cross the mountains to Modena, and of
course a great saving of expense, as vetturinos are
paid by the mile; but the guide-books stated that the
road was rough, and the inns abominable, and recommended
to all who cared for comfort to make a circumbendibus
by the way of Florence and Bologna.
Ninny declared she could live on bread and apples,
however, and Crinny delighted in mountain air—in
short, economy carried it, and after three days' chaffering
with the owner of a rattletrap vettura, we set off
up the banks of the Lima without the blessing of
Jacomo, the head waiter.

“We soon left the bright little river, and struck
into the mountains, and as the carriage crept on very
slowly, I relieved the horses of my weight and walked
on. The ladies did the same thing whenever they
came in sight of an orchard, and for the first day
Ninny munched the unripe apples and seemed getting
along very comfortably. The first night's lodging
was execrable, but as the driver assured us it was the
best on the route, we saved our tempers for the worst,
and the next day began to penetrate a country that
looked deserted of man, and curst with uninhabitable
sterility. Its effect upon my spirits, as I walked on
alone, was as depressing as the news of some trying
misfortune, and I was giving it credit for one redeeming
quality—that of an opiate to a tongue like Crinny
Blidgims's—when both the ladies began to show symptoms
of illness. It was not long after noon, and we
were in the midst of a waste upland, the road bending
over the horizon before and behind us, and neither
shed nor shelter, bush, wall, or tree, within reach of
the eye. The only habitation we had seen since morning
was a wretched hovel where the horses were fed
at noon, and the albergo, where we should pass the
night, was distant several hours—a long up-hill
stretch, on which the pace of the horses could not
possibly be mended. The ladies were bent double in
the carriage, and said they could not possibly go on.
Going back was out of the question. The readiest
service I could proffer was to leave them and hurry
on to the inn, to prepare for their reception.

“Fortunately our team was unicorn-rigged—one
horse in advance of a pair. I took off the leader, and
galloped away.

“Well, the cholera was still lingering in Italy, and
stomachs must be cholera-proof to stand a perpetual
diet of green apples, even with no epidemic in the air.
So I had a very clear idea of the remedies that would
be required on their arrival.

“At a hand-gallop I reached the albergo in a couple
of hours. It was a large stone barrack, intended, no
doubt, as was the road we had travelled, for military
uses. A thick stone wall surrounded it, and it stood
in the midst, in a pool of mud. From the last eminence
before arriving, not another object could be
descried within a horizon of twenty miles diameter,
and a whitish soil of baked clay, browned here and
there by a bit of scanty herbage, was foreground and
middle and background to the pleasant picture. The
site of the barrack had probably been determined by
the only spring within many miles, and by the dryness
without and the mud within the walls, it was contrived
for a monopoly by the besieged.

“I cantered in at the unhinged gate, and roared
out `casa!' `cameriere!' `botega!' till I was frightened
at my own voice.

“No answer. I threw my bridle over a projection
of the stone steps, and mounted, from an empty
stable which occupied the ground floor (Italian
fashion), to the second story, which seemed equally
uninhabited. Here were tables, however, and wooden
settees, and dirty platters—the first signs of life. On
the hearth was an iron pot and a pair of tongs, and
with these two musical instruments I played a tune
which I was sure would find ears, if ears there were
on the premises. And presently a heavy foot was
heard on the stair above, and with a sonorous yawn
descended mine host—dirty and stolid—a goodly pattern
of the `fat weed on Lethe's wharf,' as you would
meet in a century. He had been taking his siesta,
and his wife had had a colpo di sole, and was confined
helplessly to her bed. The man John was out tending
sheep, and he, the host, was vicariously, cook,
waiter, and chambermaid. What might be the pleasure
of il signore?

“My pleasure was, first, to see the fire kindled and
the pot put over, and then to fall into a brown
study.

“Two fine ladies with the cholera—two days' journey
from a physician—a fat old Italian landlord for
nurse and sole counsellor—nobody who could understand
a word they uttered, except myself, and not a
drug nor a ministering petticoat within available
limits! Then the doors of the chambers were without
latches or hinges, and the little bed in each great
room was the one article of furniture, and the house
was so still in the midst of that great waste, that all
sounds and movements whatever, must be of common
cognisance! Should I be discharging my duty to
ladies under my care to leave them to this dirty old
man? Should I offer my own attendance as constant
nurse, and would the service be accepted? How, in
the name of Robinson Crusoe, were these delicate
damsels to be `done for'?

“As a matter of economy in dominos, as well as to
have something Italian to bring home, I had bought at
Naples the costume of a sister of charity, and in it I
had done all my masquerading for three carnivals. It
was among my baggage, and it occurred to me
whether I had not better take the landlord into my
confidence, and bribe him to wait upon the ladies, disguised
in coif and petticoat. No—for he had a mustache,
and spoke nothing but Italian. Should I do it
myself?

“I paced up and down the stone floor in an agony
of dilemma.

“In the course of half an hour I had made up my
mind. I called to Boniface, who was watching the
boiling pot, and made a clean breast to him of my
impending distresses, aiding his comprehension by
such eye-water as landlords require. He readily undertook
the necessary lies, brought out his store of
brandy, added a second bed to one of the apartments,
and promised faithfully to bear my sex in mind, and
treat me with the reverence due my cross and rosary.
I then tore out a leaf of the grocery book, and wrote
with my pencil a note to this effect, to be delivered to
the ladies on their arrival:—