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Chapter XXXVII
The single gentleman among his other peculiarities - and he had a
very plentiful stock, of which he every day furnished some new
specimen - took a most extraordinary and remarkable interest in the
exhibition of Punch. If the sound of a Punch's voice, at ever so remote
a distance, reached Bevis Marks, the single gentleman, though in bed
and asleep, would start up, and, hurrying on his clothes, make for the
spot with all speed, and presently return at the head of a long
procession of idlers, having in the midst the theatre and its
proprietors. Straightway, the stage would be set up in front of Mr
Brass's house; the single gentleman would establish himself at the
first floor window; and the entertainment would proceed, with all its
exciting accompaniments of fife and drum and shout, to the excessive
consternation of all sober votaries of business in that silent
thoroughfare. It might have been expected that when the play was
done, both players and audience would have dispersed; but the
epilogue was as bad as the play, for no sooner was the Devil dead,
than the manager of the puppets and his partner were summoned by
the single gentleman to his chamber, where they were regaled with
strong waters from his private store, and where they held with him
long conversations, the purport of which no human being could
fathom. But the secret of these discussions was of little importance. It
was sufficient to know that while they were proceeding, the concourse
without still lingered round the house; that boys beat upon the drum
with their fists, and imitated Punch with their tender voices; that the
office-window was rendered opaque by flattened noses, and the key-
hole of the street-door luminous with eyes; that every time the single
gentleman or either of his guests was seen at the upper window, or so
much as the end of one of their noses was visible, there was a great
shout of execration from the excluded mob, who remained howling
and yelling, and refusing consolation, until the exhibitors were
delivered up to them to be attended elsewhere. It was sufficient, in
short, to know that Bevis Marks was revolutionised by these popular
movements, and that peace and quietness fled from its precincts.
Nobody was rendered more indignant by these proceedings than Mr
Sampson Brass, who, as he could by no means afford to lose so
profitable an inmate, deemed it prudent to pocket his lodger's affront
along with his cash, and to annoy the audiences who clustered round
his door by such imperfect means of retaliation as were open to him,
and which were confined to the trickling down of foul water on their
heads from unseen watering pots, pelting them with fragments of tile
and mortar from the roof of the house, and bribing the drivers of
hackney cabriolets to come suddenly round the corner and dash in
among them precipitately. It may, at first sight, be matter of surprise
to the thoughtless few that Mr Brass, being a professional gentleman,
should not have legally indicted some party or parties, active in the
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