William de Morgan’s novel A Likely Tale has jocular passages and passages of medievalising romance.
His principal character, Reginald Aiken, has to fend for himself after his wife leaves him and he lives in artistic squalor. Aiken takes on a housekeeper, Mrs Gapp, who spends too much time at The William IV, and upon whose return a glance convinced Aiken that “her register of sobriety would stand at zero on any maker’s sobrimeter.” This facetious humour was characteristic of de Morgan.
She said that a vaguely defined community, called The Boys, had been tampering with the lock. Mr. Aiken, from long experience of her class at this stage, was able to infer this from what sounded like “Boysh been ’tlocksh—keylocksh—inchfearunsh.” This pronounced exactly phonetically will be clear to the student of Alcoholism; be so good as to read it absolutely literally.
“Lock’s all right enough!” said Mr. Aiken, after turning it freely both ways. “Nobody’s been interfering with it. You’re drunk, Mrs. Gapp.”
Mrs. Gapp stood steady, visibly. Now, you can’t stand steady, visibly, without a suspicion of a lurch to show how splendidly you are maintaining your balance. Without it your immobility might be mere passionless inertia. Mrs. Gapp’s eyes seemed as little under her control as her voice, and each had a strange, inherent power of convincing the observer that the other was looking the wrong way.
“Me ?” said Mrs. Gapp.
“Yes—you!” said Mr. Aiken.
Mrs. Gapp collected herself, which—if we include in it her burden, consisting of some bundles of firewood and one pound four ounces of beefsteak wrapped in a serial—seemed in some danger of redistributing itself when collected. She then spoke, with a mien as indignant as if she were Boadicea seeking counsel of her country’s gods, and said, “Me r-r-runk ! Shober!”
MARSHALL COLMAN 