Charles
Dickens, Our Mutual Friend [From OCLC: First edition: 20 numbers (in 19) issued
monthly, from May, 1864, to November, 1865, in illustrated green paper covers;
t.p., contents and list of plates for v. 1 at end of no. 10, for v. 2 at end of
no. 19-20; plates at beginning of each number.
Preliminary advertising
section in each issue titled: Our mutual friend advertiser.
‘So I should have thought of you!’
said Mr Boffin, admiringly. ‘No, sir. I never did ‘aggle and I never will
‘aggle. Consequently I meet you at once, free and fair, with—Done, for double
the money!’
Mr Boffin seemed a little unprepared
for this conclusion, but assented, with the remark, ‘You know better what it
ought to be than I do, Wegg,’ and again shook hands with him upon it.
‘Could you begin to night, Wegg?’ he
then demanded.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Mr Wegg, careful to
leave all the eagerness to him. ‘I see no difficulty if you wish it. You are
provided with the needful implement—a book, sir?’
‘Bought him at a sale,’ said Mr
Boffin. ‘Eight wollumes. Red and gold. Purple ribbon in every wollume, to keep
the place where you leave off. Do you know him?’
‘The book’s name, sir?’ inquired
Silas.
‘I thought you might have know’d him
without it,’ said Mr Boffin slightly disappointed. ‘His name is
Decline-And-Fall-Off-The-Rooshan-Empire.’ (Mr Boffin went over these stones
slowly and with much caution.)
‘Ay indeed!’ said Mr Wegg, nodding
his head with an air of friendly recognition.
‘You know him, Wegg?’
‘I haven’t
been not to say right slap through him, very lately,’ Mr Wegg made answer,
‘having been otherways employed, Mr Boffin. But know him? Old familiar
declining and falling off the Rooshan? Rather, sir! Ever since I was not so
high as your stick. Ever since my eldest brother left our cottage to enlist
into the army. On which occasion, as the ballad that was made about it
describes:
‘Beside that cottage door, Mr Boffin,
A girl was on her knees;
She held aloft a snowy scarf, Sir,
Which (my eldest brother noticed)
fluttered in the breeze.
She breathed a prayer for him, Mr Boffin;
A prayer he coold not hear.
And my eldest brother lean’d upon his
sword, Mr Boffin,
And wiped away a tear.’
Much impressed by this family
circumstance, and also by the friendly disposition of Mr Wegg, as exemplified
in his so soon dropping into poetry, Mr Boffin again shook hands with that
ligneous sharper, and besought him to name his hour. Mr Wegg named eight.
‘Where I
live,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘is called The Bower. Boffin’s Bower is the name Mrs
Boffin christened it when we come into it as a property. If you should meet
with anybody that don’t know it by that name (which hardly anybody does), when
you’ve got nigh upon about a odd mile, or say and a quarter if you like, up
Maiden Lane, Battle Bridge, ask for Harmony Jail, and you’ll be put right. I
shall expect you, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin, clapping him on the shoulder with the
greatest enthusiasm, ‘most joyfully. I shall have no peace or patience till you
come. Print is now opening ahead of me. This night, a literary man—with a
wooden leg—’ he bestowed an admiring look upon that decoration, as if it
greatly enhanced the relish of Mr Wegg’s attainments—‘will begin to lead me a
new life! My fist again, Wegg. Morning, morning, morning!’
Left alone at his stall as the other
ambled off, Mr Wegg subsided into his screen, produced a small
pocket-handkerchief of a penitentially-scrubbing character, and took himself by
the nose with a thoughtful aspect. Also, while he still grasped that feature,
he directed several thoughtful looks down the street, after the retiring figure
of Mr Boffin. But, profound gravity sat enthroned on Wegg’s countenance. For,
while he considered within himself that this was an old fellow of rare
simplicity, that this was an opportunity to be improved, and that here might be
money to be got beyond present calculation, still he compromised himself by no
admission that his new engagement was at all out of his way, or involved the
least element of the ridiculous. Mr Wegg would even have picked a handsome
quarrel with any one who should have challenged his deep acquaintance with
those aforesaid eight volumes of Decline and Fall.