Transcribed from the 1894 Chapman and Hall “Christmas Stories”edition , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
I am a Cheap Jack, and my own father’s name was Willum Marigold. It was in his lifetime supposed by some that his name was William, butmy own father always consistently said, No, it was Willum. Onwhich point I content myself with looking at the argument this way:If a man is not allowed to know his own name in a free country, howmuch is he allowed to know in a land of slavery? As to lookingat the argument through the medium of the Register, Willum Marigoldcome into the world before Registers come up much,—and went outof it too. They wouldn’t have been greatly in his line neither,if they had chanced to come up before him.
I was born on the Queen’s highway, but it was the King’sat that time. A doctor was fetched to my own mother by my ownfather, when it took place on a common; and in consequence of his beinga very kind gentleman, and accepting no fee but a tea-tray, I was namedDoctor, out of gratitude and compliment to him. There you haveme. Doctor Marigold.
I am at present a middle-aged man of a broadish build, in cords,leggings, and a sleeved waistcoat the strings of which is always gonebehind. Repair them how you will, they go like fiddle-strings. You have been to the theatre, and you have seen one of the wiolin-playersscrew up his wiolin, after listening to it as if it had been whisperingthe secret to him that it feared it was out of order, and then you haveheard it snap. That’s as exactly similar to my waistcoatas a waistcoat and a wiolin can be like one another.
I am partial to a white hat, and I like a shawl round my neck woreloose and easy. Sitting down is my favourite posture. IfI have a taste in point of personal jewelry, it is mother-of-pearl buttons. There you have me again, as large as life.
The doctor having accepted a tea-tray, you’ll guess that myfather was a Cheap Jack before me. You are right. He was. It was a pretty tray. It represented a large lady going alonga serpentining up-hill gravel-walk, to attend a little church. Two swans had likewise come astray with the same intentions. WhenI call her a large lady, I don’t mean in point of breadth, forthere she fell below my views, but she more than made it up in heighth;her heighth and slimness was—in short THE heighth of both.
I often saw that tray, after I was the innocently smiling cause (ormore likely screeching one) of the doctor’s standing it up ona table against the wall in his consulting-room. Whenever my ownfather and mother were in that part of the country, I used to put myhead (I have heard my own mother say it was flaxen curls at that time,though you wouldn’t know an old hearth-broom from it now tillyou come to the handle, and found it wasn’t me) in at the doctor’sdoor, and the doctor was always glad to see me, and said, “Aha,my brother practitioner! Come in, little M.D. How are yourinclinations as to sixpence?”
You can’t go on for ever, you’ll find, nor yet couldmy father nor yet my mother. If you don’t go off as a wholewhen you are about due, you’re liable to go off in part, and twoto one your head’s the part. Gradually my father went offhis, and my mother went off hers. It was in a harmless way, butit put out the family where I boarded them. The old couple, thoughretired, got to be wholly and solely devoted to the Cheap Jack business,and were always selling the family off. Whenever the cloth waslaid for dinner, my father began rattling the plates and dishes, aswe do in our line when we put up crockery for a bid, only he had lostthe trick of it, and mostly let ’em drop and broke ’em. As the old lady had been used to sit in the cart, and hand the articlesout one by one to the old gentleman on the foo