IX. Miss Honeyman’s…

IX. Miss Honeyman’s

In Steyne Gardens, Brighton, the lodging-houses are among the most frequented in that city of lodging-houses. These mansions have bow-windows in front, bulging out with gentle prominences, and ornamented with neat verandahs, from which you can behold the tide of humankind as it flows up and down the Steyne, and that blue ocean over which Britannia is said to rule, stretching brightly away eastward and westward. The chain-pier, as every body knows, runs intrepidly into the sea, which sometimes, in fine weather, bathes its feet with laughing wavelets, and anon, on stormy days, dashes over its sides with roaring foam. Here, for the sum of twopence, you can go out to sea and pace this vast deck without need of a steward with a basin. You can watch the sun setting in splendour over Worthing, or illuminating with its rising glories the ups and downs of Rottingdean. You see the citizen with his family inveigled into the shallops of the mercenary native mariner, and fancy that the motion cannot be pleasant; and how the hirer of the boat, otium et oppidi laudat rura sui, haply sighs for ease, and prefers Richmond or Hampstead. You behold a hundred bathing-machines put to sea; and your naughty fancy depicts the beauties splashing under their white awnings. Along the rippled sands (stay, are they rippled sands or shingly beach?) the prawn-boy seeks the delicious material of your breakfast. Breakfast-meal in London almost unknown, greedily devoured in Brighton! In yon vessels now nearing the shore the sleepless mariner has ventured forth to seize the delicate whiting, the greedy and foolish mackerel, and the homely sole. Hark to the twanging horn! it is the early coach going out to London. Your eye follows it, and rests on the pinnacles built by the beloved GEORGE. See the worn-out London roué pacing the pier, inhaling the sea air, and casting furtive glances under the bonnets of the pretty girls who trot here before lessons! Mark the bilious lawyer, escaped for a day from Pump Court, and sniffing the fresh breezes before he goes back to breakfast and a bag full of briefs at the Albion! See that pretty string of prattling schoolgirls, from the chubby-cheeked, flaxen-headed little maiden just toddling by the side of the second teacher, to the arch damsel of fifteen, giggling and conscious of her beauty, whom Miss Griffin, the stern head-governess, awfully reproves! See Tomkins with a telescope and marine jacket; young Nathan and young Abrams, already bedizened in jewellery, and rivalling the sun in oriental splendour; yonder poor invalid crawling along in her chair; yonder jolly fat lady examining the Brighton pebbles (I actually once saw a lady buy one), and her children wondering at the sticking-plaister portraits with gold hair, and gold stocks, and prodigious high-heeled boots, miracles of art, and cheap at seven-and-sixpence! It is the fashion to run down George IV., but what myriads of Londoners ought to thank him for inventing Brighton! One of the best of physicians our city has ever known, is kind, cheerful, merry Doctor Brighton. Hail, thou purveyor of shrimps and honest prescriber of Southdown mutton! There is no mutton so good as Brighton mutton; no flys so pleasant as Brighton flys; nor any cliff so pleasant to ride on; no shops so beautiful to look at as the Brighton gimcrack shops, and the fruit shops, and the market. I fancy myself in Mrs. Honeyman’s lodgings in Steyne Gardens, and in enjoyment of all these things.

If the gracious reader has had losses in life, losses not so bad as to cause absolute want, or inflict upon him or her the bodily injury of starvation, let him confess that the evils of this poverty are by no means so great as his timorous fancy depicted. Say your money has been invested in West Diddlesex bonds, or other luckless speculations—the news of the smash comes; you pay your outlying bills with the balance at the banker’s; you assemble your family and make them a fine speech; the wife of your bosom goes round and embraces the sons and daughters seriatim; nestling in your own waistcoat finally, in possession of which, she says (with tender tears and fond quotations from Holy Writ, God bless her!), and of the darlings round about, lies all her worldly treasure: the weeping servants are dismissed, their wages paid in full, and with a present of prayer- and hymn-books from their mistress; your elegant house in Harley Street is to let, and you subside into lodgings in Pentonville, or Kensington, or Brompton. How unlike the mansion where you paid taxes and distributed elegant hospitality for so many years!

You subside into lodgings, I say, and you find yourself very tolerably comfortable. I am not sure that in her heart your wife is not happier than in what she calls her happy days. She will be somebody hereafter: she was nobody in Harley Street: that is, everybody else in her visiting-book, take the names all round, was as good as she. They had the very same entrees, plated ware, men to wait, etc., at all the houses where you visited in the street. Your candlesticks might be handsomer (and indeed they had a very fine effect upon the dinner-table), but then Mr. Jones’s silver (or electro-plated) dishes were much finer. You had more carriages at your door on the evening of your delightful soirées than Mrs. Brown (there is no phrase more elegant, and to my taste, than that in which people are described as “seeing a great deal of carriage company”); but yet Mrs. Brown, from the circumstance of her being a baronet’s niece, took precedence of your dear wife at most tables. Hence the latter charming woman’s scorn at the British baronetcy, and her many jokes at the order. In a word, and in the height of your social prosperity, there was always a lurking dissatisfaction, and a something bitter, in the midst of the fountain of delights at which you were permitted to drink.

There is no good (unless your taste is that way) in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. Many people give themselves extreme pains to frequent company where all around them are their superiors, and where, do what you will, you must be subject to continual mortification—(as, for instance, when Marchioness X. forgets you, and you can’t help thinking that she cuts you on purpose; when Duchess Z. passes by in her diamonds, etc.). The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors. Be the cock of your village; the queen of your coterie; and, besides very great persons, the people whom Fate has specially endowed with this kindly consolation are those who have seen what are called better days—those who have had losses. I am like Cæsar, and of a noble mind: if I cannot be first in Piccadilly, let me try Hatton Garden, and see whether I cannot lead the ton there. If I cannot take the lead at White’s or the Travellers’, let me be president of the Jolly Bandboys at the Bag of Nails, and blackball everybody who does not pay me honour. If my darling Bessy cannot go out of a drawing-room until a baronet’s niece (ha! ha! a baronet’s niece, forsooth!) has walked before her, let us frequent company where we shall be the first; and how can we be the first unless we select our inferiors for our associates? This kind of pleasure is to be had by almost everybody, and at scarce any cost. With a shilling’s-worth of tea and muffins you can get as much adulation and respect as many people cannot purchase with a thousand pounds’ worth of plate and profusion, hired footmen, turning their houses topsy-turvy, and suppers from Gunter’s. Adulation!—why, the people who come to you give as good parties as you do. Respect!—the very menials, who wait behind your supper-table, waited at a duke’s yesterday, and actually patronise you! O you silly spendthrift! you can buy flattery for twopence, and you spend ever so much money in entertaining your equals and betters, and nobody admires you!

Now Aunt Honeyman was a woman of a thousand virtues; cheerful, frugal, honest, laborious, charitable, good-humoured, truth-telling, devoted to her family, capable of any sacrifice for those she loved; and when she came to have losses of money, Fortune straightway compensated her by many kindnesses which no income can supply. The good old lady admired the word gentlewoman of all others in the English vocabulary, and made all around her feel that such was her rank. Her mother’s father was a naval captain; her father had taken pupils, got a living, sent his son to college, dined with the squire, published his volume of sermons, was liked in his parish, where Miss Honeyman kept house for him, was respected for his kindness and famous for his port wine; and so died, leaving about two hundred pounds a year to his two children, nothing to Clive Newcome’s mother who had displeased him by her first marriage (an elopement with Ensign Casey) and subsequent light courses. Charles Honeyman spent his money elegantly in wine-parties at Oxford, and afterwards in foreign travel;—spent his money and as much of Miss Honeyman’s as that worthy soul would give him. She was a woman of spirit and resolution. She brought her furniture to Brighton (believing that the whole place still fondly remembered her grandfather, Captain Nokes, who had resided there and his gallantry in Lord Rodney’s action with the Count de Grasse), took a house, and let the upper floors to lodgers.

The little brisk old lady brought a maid-servant out of the country with her, who was daughter to her father’s clerk, and had learned her letters and worked her first sampler under Miss Honeyman’s own eye, whom she adored all through her life. No Indian begum rolling in wealth, no countess mistress of castles and townhouses, ever had such a faithful toady as Hannah Hicks was to her mistress. Under Hannah was a young lady from the workhouse, who called Hannah “Mrs. Hicks, mum,” and who bowed in awe as much before that domestic as Hannah did before Miss Honeyman. At five o’clock in summer, at seven in winter (for Miss Honeyman, a good economist, was chary of candlelight), Hannah woke up little Sally, and these three women rose. I leave you to imagine what a row there was in the establishment if Sally appeared with flowers under her bonnet, gave signs of levity or insubordination, prolonged her absence when sent forth for the beer, or was discovered in flirtation with the baker’s boy or the grocer’s young man. Sally was frequently renewed. Miss Honeyman called all her young persons Sally; and a great number of Sallies were consumed in her house. The qualities of the Sally for the time-being formed a constant and delightful subject of conversation between Hannah and her mistress. The few friends who visited Miss Honeyman in her back-parlour had their Sallies, in discussing whose peculiarities of disposition these good ladies passed the hours agreeably over their tea.

Many persons who let lodgings in Brighton have been servants themselves—are retired housekeepers, tradesfolk, and the like. With these surrounding individuals Hannah treated on a footing of equality, bringing to her mistress accounts of their various goings on; “how No. 6 was let; how No. 9 had not paid his rent again; how the first floor at 27 had game almost every day, and made-dishes from Mutton’s; how the family who had taken Mrs. Bugsby’s had left as usual after the very first night, the poor little infant blistered all over with bites on its little dear face; how the Miss Learys was going on shameful with the two young men, actially in their setting-room, mum, where one of them offered Miss Laura Leary a cigar; how Mrs. Cribb still went cuttin’ pounds and pounds of meat off the lodgers’ jints, emptying their tea-caddies, actially reading their letters. Sally had been told so by Polly the Cribb’s maid, who was kep, how that poor child was kep, hearing language perfectly hawful!” These tales and anecdotes, not altogether redounding to their neighbours’ credit, Hannah copiously collected and brought to her mistress’s tea-table, or served at her frugal little supper when Miss Honeyman, the labours of the day over, partook of that cheerful meal. I need not say that such horrors as occurred at Mrs. Bugsby’s never befell in Mrs. Honeyman’s establishment. Every room was fiercely swept and sprinkled, and watched by cunning eyes which nothing could escape; curtains were taken down, mattresses explored, every bone in bed dislocated and washed as soon as a lodger took his departure. And as for cribbing meat or sugar, Sally might occasionally abstract a lump or two, or pop a veal-cutlet into her mouth while bringing the dishes downstairs:—Sallies would—giddy creatures bred in workhouses; but Hannah might be entrusted with untold gold and uncorked brandy; and Miss Honeyman would as soon think of cutting a slice off Hannah’s nose and devouring it, as of poaching on her lodgers’ mutton. The best mutton-broth, the best veal-cutlets, the best necks of mutton and French beans, the best fried fish and plumpest partridges, in all Brighton, were to be had at Miss Honeyman’s—and for her favourites the best Indian curry and rice, coming from a distinguished relative, at present an officer in Bengal. But very few were admitted to this mark of Miss Honeyman’s confidence. If a family did not go to church they were not in favour: if they went to a Dissenting meeting she had no opinion of them at all. Once there came to her house a quiet Staffordshire family who ate no meat on Fridays, and whom Miss Honeyman pitied as belonging to the Romish superstition; but when they were visited by two corpulent gentlemen in black, one of whom wore a purple underwaistcoat, before whom the Staffordshire lady absolutely sank down on her knees as he went into the drawing-room,—Miss Honeyman sternly gave warning to these idolaters. She would have no Jesuits in her premises. She showed Hannah the picture in Howell’s Medulla of the martyrs burning at Smithfield: who said, “Lord bless you, mum,” and hoped it was a long time ago. She called on the curate: and many and many a time, for years after, pointed out to her friends, and sometimes to her lodgers, the spot on the carpet where the poor benighted creature had knelt down. So she went on, respected by all her friends, by all her tradesmen, by herself not a little, talking of her previous “misfortunes” with amusing equanimity; as if her father’s parsonage-house had been a palace of splendour, and the one-horse chaise (with the lamps for evenings) from which she had descended, a noble equipage. “But I know it is for the best, Clive,” she would say to her nephew in describing those grandeurs, “and, thank heaven, can be resigned in that station in life to which it has pleased God to call me.”

The good lady was called the Duchess by her fellow-tradesfolk in the square in which she lived. (I don’t know what would have come to her had she been told she was a tradeswoman!) Her butchers, bakers, and market-people paid her as much respect as though she had been a grandee’s housekeeper out of Kemp Town. Knowing her station, she yet was kind to those inferior beings. She held affable conversations with them, she patronised Mr. Rogers, who was said to be worth a hundred thousand—two-hundred-thousand pounds (or lbs. was it?), and who said, “Law bless the old Duchess, she do make as much of a pound of veal cutlet as some would of a score of bullocks, but you see she’s a lady born and a lady bred: she’d die before she’d owe a farden, and she’s seen better days, you know.” She went to see the grocer’s wife on an interesting occasion, and won the heart of the family by tasting their candle. Her fishmonger (it was fine to hear her talk of “my fishmonger”) would sell her a whiting as respectfully as if she had called for a dozen turbots and lobsters. It was believed by those good folks that her father had been a Bishop at the very least; and the better days which she had known were supposed to signify some almost unearthly prosperity. “I have always found, Hannah,” the simple soul would say, “that people know their place, or can be very very easily made to find it if they lose it; and if a gentlewoman does not forget herself, her inferiors will not forget that she is a gentlewoman.” “No indeed, mum, and I’m sure they would do no such thing, mum,” says Hannah, who carries away the teapot for her own breakfast (to be transmitted to Sally for her subsequent refection), whilst her mistress washes her cup and saucer, as her mother had washed her own china many scores of years ago.

If some of the surrounding lodging-house keepers, as I have no doubt they did, disliked the little Duchess for the airs which she gave herself, as they averred; they must have envied her too her superior prosperity, for there was scarcely ever a card in her window, whilst those ensigns in her neighbours’ houses would remain exposed to the flies and the weather, and disregarded by passers-by for months together. She had many regular customers, or what should be rather called constant friends. Deaf old Mr. Cricklade came every winter for fourteen years, and stopped until the hunting was over; an invaluable man, giving little trouble, passing all day on horseback, and all night over his rubber at the club. The Misses Barkham, Barkhambury, Tunbridge Wells, whose father had been at college with Mr. Honeyman, came regularly in June for sea air, letting Barkhambury for the summer season. Then, for many years, she had her nephew, as we have seen; and kind recommendations from the clergymen of Brighton, and a constant friend in the celebrated Dr. Goodenough of London, who had been her father’s private pupil, and of his college afterwards, who sent his patients from time to time down to her, and his fellow-physician, Dr. H——, who on his part would never take any fee from Miss Honeyman, except a packet of India curry-powder, a ham cured as she only knew how to cure them, and once a year, or so, a dish of her tea.

“Was there ever such luck as that confounded old Duchess’s?” says Mr. Gawler, coal-merchant and lodging-house keeper, next door but two, whose apartments were more odious in some respects than Mrs. Bugsby’s own. “Was there ever such devil’s own luck, Mrs. G.? It’s only a fortnight ago as I read in the Sussex Advertiser the death of Miss Barkham, of Barkhambury, Tunbridge Wells, and thinks I, there’s a spoke in your wheel, you stuck-up little old Duchess, with your cussed airs and impudence. And she ain’t put her card up three days; and look yere, yere’s two carriages, two maids, three children, one of them wrapped up in a Hinjar shawl—man hout a livery,—looks like a foring cove I think—lady in satin pelisse, and of course they go to the Duchess, be hanged to her! Of course it’s our luck, nothing ever was like our luck. I’m blowed if I don’t put a pistol to my ’ead, and end it, Mrs. G. There they go in—three, four, six, seven on ’em, and the man. That’s the precious child’s physic I suppose he’s a-carryin’ in the basket. Just look at the luggage. I say! There’s a bloody hand on the first carriage. It’s a baronet, is it? I ’ope your ladyship’s very well; and I ’ope Sir John will soon be down yere to join his family.” Mr. Gawler makes sarcastic bows over the card in his bow-window whilst making this speech. The little Gawlers rush on to the drawing-room verandah themselves to examine the new arrivals.

“This is Mrs. Honeyman’s?” asks the gentleman designated by Mr. Gawler as “the foring cove,” and hands in a card on which the words, “Miss Honeyman, 110, Steyne Gardens. J. Goodenough,” are written in that celebrated physician’s handwriting. “We want five bet-rooms, six bets, two or dree sitting-rooms. Have you got dese?”

“Will you speak to my mistress?” says Hannah. And if it is a fact that Miss Honeyman does happen to be in the front parlour looking at the carriages, what harm is there in the circumstance, pray? Is not Gawler looking, and the people next door? Are not half a dozen little boys already gathered in the street (as if they started up out of the trap-doors for the coals), and the nursery maids in the stunted little garden, are not they looking through the bars of the square? “Please to speak to mistress,” says Hannah, opening the parlour-door, and with a curtsey, “A gentleman about the apartments, mum.”

“Five bet-rooms,” says the man, entering. “Six bets, two or dree sitting-rooms? We gome from Dr. Goodenough.”

“Are the apartments for you, sir?” says the little Duchess, looking up at the large gentleman.

“For my lady,” answers the man.

“Had you not better take off your hat?” asks the Duchess, pointing out of one of her little mittens to “the foring cove’s” beaver, which he has neglected to remove.

The man grins, and takes off the hat. “I beck your bardon, ma’am,” says he. “Have you fife bet-rooms?” etc. The doctor has cured the German of an illness, as well as his employers, and especially recommended Miss Honeyman to Mr. Kuhn.

“I have such a number of apartments. My servant will show them to you.” And she walks back with great state to her chair by the window, and resumes her station and work there.

Mr. Kuhn reports to his mistress, who descends to inspect the apartments, accompanied through them by Hannah. The rooms are pronounced to be exceedingly neat and pleasant, and exactly what are wanted for the family. The baggage is forthwith ordered to be brought from the carriages. The little invalid wrapped in his shawl is brought upstairs by the affectionate Mr. Kuhn, who carries him as gently as if he had been bred all his life to nurse babies. The smiling Sally (the Sally for the time-being happens to be a very fresh pink-cheeked pretty little Sally) emerges from the kitchen and introduces the young ladies, the governess, the maids, to their apartments. The eldest, a slim black-haired young lass of thirteen, frisks about the rooms, looks at all the pictures, runs in and out of the verandah, tries the piano, and bursts out laughing at its wheezy jingle (it had been poor Emma’s piano, bought for her on her seventeenth birthday, three weeks before she ran away with the ensign; her music is still in the stand by it: the Rev. Charles Honeyman has warbled sacred melodies over it, and Miss Honeyman considers it a delightful instrument), kisses her languid little brother laid on the sofa, and performs a hundred gay and agile motions suited to her age.

“Oh, what a piano! Why, it is as cracked as Miss Quigley’s voice!”

“My dear!” says mamma. The little languid boy bursts out into a jolly laugh.

“What funny pictures, mamma! Action with Count de Grasse; the death of General Wolfe; a portrait of an officer, an old officer in blue, like grandpapa; Brazen Nose College, Oxford: what a funny name!”

At the idea of Brazen Nose College, another laugh comes from the invalid. “I suppose they’ve all got brass noses there,” he says; and explodes at this joke. The poor little laugh ends in a cough, and mamma’s travelling-basket, which contains everything, produces a bottle of syrup, labelled “Master A. Newcome. A teaspoonful to be taken when the cough is troublesome.”

“‘Oh, the delightful sea! the blue, the fresh, the ever free,’” sings the young lady, with a shake. (I suppose the maritime song from which she quoted was just written at this time.) “How much better this is than going home and seeing those horrid factories and chimneys! I love Doctor Goodenough for sending us here. What a sweet house it is! Everybody is happy in it, even Miss Quigley is happy, mamma. What nice rooms! What pretty chintz! What a—oh, what a—comfortable sofa!” and she falls down on the sofa, which, truth to say, was the Rev. Charles Honeyman’s luxurious sofa from Oxford, presented to him by young Cibber Wright of Christchurch, when that gentleman-commoner was eliminated from the University.

“The person of the house,” mamma says, “hardly comes up to Dr. Goodenough’s description of her. He says he remembers her a pretty little woman when her father was his private tutor.”

“She has grown very much since,” says the girl. And an explosion takes place from the sofa, where the little man is always ready to laugh at any joke, or anything like a joke, uttered by himself or by any of his family or friends. As for Doctor Goodenough, he says laughing has saved that boy’s life.

“She looks quite like a maid,” continues the lady. “She has hard hands, and she called me mum always. I was quite disappointed in her.” And she subsides into a novel, with many of which kind of works, and with other volumes, and with workboxes, and with wonderful inkstands, portfolios, portable days of the month, scent-bottles, scissor-cases, gilt miniature easels displaying portraits, and countless gimcracks of travel, the rapid Kuhn has covered the tables in the twinkling of an eye.

The person supposed to be the landlady enters the room at this juncture, and the lady rises to receive her. The little wag on the sofa puts his arm round his sister’s neck, and whispers, “I say, Eth, isn’t she a pretty girl? I shall write to Doctor Goodenough and tell him how much she’s grown.” Convulsions follow this sally, to the surprise of Hannah, who says, “Pooty little dear!—what time will he have his dinner, mum?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Honeyman, at two o’clock,” says the lady with a bow of her head. “There is a clergyman of your name in London; is he a relation?” The lady in her turn is astonished, for the tall person breaks out into a grin, and says, “Law, mum, you’re speakin’ of Master Charles. He’s in London.”

“Indeed!—of Master Charles?”

“And you take me for missis, mum. I beg your pardon, mum,” cries Hannah. The invalid hits his sister in the side with a weak little fist. If laughter can cure, Salva est res. Doctor Goodenough’s patient is safe. “Master Charles is missis’s brother, mum. I’ve got no brother, mum—never had no brother. Only one son, who’s in the police, mum, thank you. And law bless me, I was going to forget! If you please, mum, missis says, if you are quite rested, she will pay her duty to you, mum.”

“Oh, indeed,” says the lady, rather stiffly; and, taking this for an acceptance of her mistress’s visit, Hannah retires.

“This Miss Honeyman seems to be a great personage,” says the lady. “If people let lodgings, why do they give themselves such airs?”

“We never saw Monsieur de Boigne at Boulogne, mamma,” interposes the girl.

“Monsieur de Boigne, my dear Ethel! Monsieur de Boigne is very well. But—” here the door opens, and in a large cap bristling with ribbons, with her best chestnut front, and her best black silk gown, on which her gold watch shines very splendidly, little Miss Honeyman makes her appearance, and a dignified curtsey to her lodger.

That lady vouchsafes a very slight inclination of the head indeed, which she repeats when Miss Honeyman says, “I am glad to hear your ladyship is pleased with the apartments.”

“Yes, they will do very well, thank you,” answers the latter person, gravely.

“And they have such a beautiful view of the sea!” cries Ethel.

“As if all the houses hadn’t a view of the sea, Ethel! The price has been arranged, I think? My servants will require a comfortable room to dine in—by themselves, ma’am, if you please. My governess and the younger children will dine together. My daughter dines with me—and my little boy’s dinner will be ready at two o’clock precisely, if you please. It is now near one.”

“Am I to understand——” interposed Miss Honeyman.

“Oh! I have no doubt we shall understand each other, ma’am,” cried Lady Anne Newcome (whose noble presence the acute reader has no doubt ere this divined and saluted). “Doctor Goodenough has given me a most satisfactory account of you—more satisfactory perhaps than—than you are aware of.” Perhaps Lady Anne’s sentence was not going to end in a very satisfactory way for Miss Honeyman; but, awed by a peculiar look of resolution in the little lady, her lodger of an hour paused in whatever offensive remark she might have been about to make. “It is as well that I at last have the pleasure of seeing you, that I may state what I want, and that we may, as you say, understand each other. Breakfast and tea, if you please, will be served in the same manner as dinner. And you will have the kindness to order fresh milk every morning for my little boy—ass’s milk—Doctor Goodenough has ordered ass’s milk. Anything further I want I will communicate through the person who spoke to you—Kuhn, Mr. Kuhn; and that will do.”

A heavy shower of rain was descending at this moment, and little Mrs. Honeyman looking at her lodger, who had sate down and taken up her book, said, “Have your ladyship’s servants unpacked your trunks?”

“What on earth, madam, have you—has that to do with the question?”

“They will be put to the trouble of packing again, I fear. I cannot provide—three times five are fifteen—fifteen separate meals for seven persons—besides those of my own family. If your servants cannot eat with mine, or in my kitchen, they and their mistress must go elsewhere. And the sooner the better, madam, the sooner the better!” says Mrs. Honeyman, trembling with indignation, and sitting down in a chair spreading her silks.

“Do you know who I am?” asks Lady Anne, rising.

“Perfectly well, madam,” says the other. “And had I known, you should never have come into my house, that’s more.”

“Madam!” cries the lady, on which the poor little invalid, scared and nervous, and hungry for his dinner, began to cry from his sofa.

“It will be a pity that the dear little boy should be disturbed. Dear little child, I have often heard of him, and of you, miss,” says the little householder, rising. “I will get you some dinner, my dear, for Clive’s sake. And meanwhile your ladyship will have the kindness to seek for some other apartments—for not a bit shall my fire cook for any one else of your company.” And with this the indignant little landlady sailed out of the room.

“Gracious goodness! Who is the woman?” cries Lady Anne. “I never was so insulted in my life.”

“Oh, mamma, it was you began!” says downright Ethel. “That is—Hush, Alfred dear!—Hush, my darling!”

“Oh, it was mamma began! I’m so hungry! I’m so hungry!” howled the little man on the sofa—or off it rather—for he was now down on the ground, kicking away the shawls which enveloped him.

“What is it, my boy? What is it, my blessed darling? You shall have your dinner! Give her all, Ethel. There are the keys of my desk—there’s my watch—there are my rings. Let her take my all. The monster! the child must live! It can’t go away in such a storm as this. Give me a cloak, a parasol, anything—I’ll go forth and get a lodging. I’ll beg my bread from house to house—if this fiend refuses me. Eat the biscuits, dear! A little of the syrup, Alfred darling; it’s very nice, love! and come to your old mother—your poor old mother.”

Alfred roared out, “No—it’s not n-ice: it’s n-a-a-asty! I won’t have syrup. I will have dinner.” The mother, whose embraces the child repelled with infantine kicks, plunged madly at the bells, rang them all four vehemently, and ran downstairs towards the parlour, whence Miss Honeyman was issuing.

The good lady had not at first known the names of her lodgers, but had taken them in willingly enough on Dr. Goodenough’s recommendation. And it was not until one of the nurses entrusted with the care of Master Alfred’s dinner informed Miss Honeyman of the name of her guest, that she knew she was entertaining Lady Anne Newcome; and that the pretty girl was the fair Miss Ethel; the little sick boy, the little Alfred of whom his cousin spoke, and of whom Clive had made a hundred little drawings in his rude way, as he drew everybody. Then bidding Sally run off to St. James’s Street for a chicken—she saw it put on the spit, and prepared a bread sauce, and composed a batter-pudding as she only knew how to make batter-puddings. Then she went to array herself in her best clothes, as we have seen,—as we have heard rather (Goodness forbid that we should see Miss Honeyman arraying herself, or penetrate that chaste mystery, her toilette!)—then she came to wait upon Lady Anne, not a little flurried as to the result of that queer interview; then she whisked out of the drawing-room as before has been shown; and, finding the chicken roasted to a turn, the napkin and tray ready spread by Hannah the neat-handed, she was bearing them up to the little patient when the frantic parent met her on the stair.

“Is it—is it for my child?” cried Lady Anne, reeling against the bannister.

“Yes, it’s for the child,” says Miss Honeyman, tossing up her head. “But nobody else has anything in the house.”

“God bless you—God bless you! A mother’s bl-l-essings go with you,” gurgled the lady, who was not, it must be confessed, a woman of strong moral character.

It was good to see the little man eating the fowl. Ethel, who had never cut anything in her young existence, except her fingers now and then with her brother’s and her governess’s penknives, bethought her of asking Miss Honeyman to carve the chicken. Lady Anne, with clasped hands and streaming eyes, sate looking on at the ravishing scene.

“Why did you not let us know you were Clive’s aunt?” Ethel asked, putting out her hand. The old lady took hers very kindly, and said, “Because you didn’t give me time. And do you love Clive, my dear?”

The reconciliation between Miss Honeyman and her lodger was perfect. Lady Anne wrote a quire of notepaper off to Sir Brian for that day’s post—only she was too late, as she always was. Mr. Kuhn perfectly delighted Miss Honeyman that evening by his droll sayings, jokes, and pronunciation, and by his praises of Master Glife, as he called him. He lived out of the house, did everything for everybody, was never out of the way when wanted, and never in the way when not wanted. Ere long Miss Honeyman got out a bottle of the famous Madeira which her Colonel sent her, and treated him to a glass in her own room. Kuhn smacked his lips and held out the glass again. The honest rogue knew good wine.

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X. Ethel and her Relations

For four-and-twenty successive hours Lady Anne Newcome was perfectly in raptures with her new lodgings, and every person and thing which they contained. The drawing-rooms were fitted with the greatest taste; the dinner was exquisite. Were there ever such delicious veal-cutlets, such verdant French beans? “Why do we have those odious French cooks, my dear, with their shocking principles—the principles of all Frenchmen are shocking—and the dreadful bills they bring us in; and their consequential airs and graces? I am determined to part with Brignol. I have written to your father this evening to give Brignol warning. When did he ever give us veal-cutlets? What can be nicer?”

“Indeed they were very good,” said Miss Ethel, who had mutton five times a week at one o’clock. “I am so glad you like the house, and Clive, and Mrs. Honeyman.”

“Like her! the dear little old woman. I feel as if she had been my friend all my life! I feel quite drawn towards her. What a wonderful coincidence that Dr. Goodenough should direct us to this very house! I have written to your father about it. And to think that I should have written to Clive at this very house, and quite forgotten Mrs. Honeyman’s name—and such an odd name too. I forget everything, everything! You know I forgot your Aunt Louisa’s husband’s name; and when I was godmother to her baby, and the clergyman said, ‘What is the infant’s name?’ I said, ‘Really I forget.’ And so I did. He was a London clergyman, but I forget at what church. Suppose it should be this very Mr. Honeyman! It may have been, you know, and then the coincidence would be still more droll. That tall, old, nice-looking, respectable person, with a mark on her nose, the housekeeper—what is her name?—seems a most invaluable person. I think I shall ask her to come to us. I am sure she would save me I don’t know how much money every week; and I am certain Mrs. Trotter is making a fortune by us. I shall write to your papa, and ask him permission to ask this person.” Ethel’s mother was constantly falling in love with her new acquaintances; their man-servants and their maid-servants, their horses and ponies, and the visitor within their gates. She would ask strangers to Newcome, hug and embrace them on Sunday; not speak to them on Monday; and on Tuesday behave so rudely to them, that they were gone before Wednesday. Her daughter had had so many governesses—all darlings during the first week, and monsters afterwards—that the poor child possessed none of the accomplishments of her age. She could not play on the piano; she could not speak French well; she could not tell you when gunpowder was invented: she had not the faintest idea of the date of the Norman Conquest, or whether the earth went round the sun, or vice versa. She did not know the number of counties in England, Scotland, and Wales, let alone Ireland; she did not know the difference between latitude and longitude. She had had so many governesses: their accounts differed: poor Ethel was bewildered by a multiplicity of teachers, and thought herself a monster of ignorance. They gave her a book at a Sunday School, and little girls of eight years old answered questions of which she knew nothing. The place swam before her. She could not see the sun shining on their fair flaxen heads and pretty faces. The rosy little children holding up their eager hands, and crying the answer to this question and that, seemed mocking her. She seemed to read in the book, “O Ethel, you dunce, dunce, dunce!” She went home silent in the carriage, and burst into bitter tears on her bed. Naturally a haughty girl of the highest spirit, resolute and imperious, this little visit to the parish school taught Ethel lessons more valuable than ever so much arithmetic and geography. Clive has told me a story of her in her youth, which, perhaps, may apply to some others of the youthful female aristocracy. She used to walk, with other select young ladies and gentlemen, their nurses and governesses, in a certain reserved plot of ground railed off from Hyde Park, whereof some of the lucky dwellers in the neighbourhood of Apsley House have a key. In this garden, at the age of nine or thereabout, she had contracted an intimate friendship with the Lord Hercules O’Ryan.—as every one of my gentle readers knows, one of the sons of the Marquis of Ballyshannon. The Lord Hercules was a year younger than Miss Ethel Newcome, which may account for the passion which grew up between these young persons; it being a provision in nature that a boy always falls in love with a girl older than himself, or rather, perhaps, that a girl bestows her affections on a little boy, who submits to receive them.

One day Sir Brian Newcome announced his intention to go to Newcome that very morning, taking his family, and of course Ethel, with him. She was inconsolable. “What will Lord Hercules do when he finds I am gone?” she asked of her nurse.

The nurse endeavouring to soothe her, said, “Perhaps his lordship would know nothing about the circumstance.” “He will,” said Miss Ethel—“he’ll read it in the newspaper.” My Lord Hercules, it is to be hoped, strangled this infant passion in the cradle; having long since married Isabella, only daughter of ——— Grains, Esq., of Drayton Windsor, a partner in the great brewery of Foker and Co.

When Ethel was thirteen years old, she had grown to be such a tall girl, that she overtopped her companions by a head or more, and morally perhaps, also, felt herself too tall for their society. “Fancy myself,” she thought, “dressing a doll like Lily Putland or wearing a pinafore like Lucy Tucker!” She did not care for their sports. She could not walk with them: it seemed as if every one stared; nor dance with them at the academy, nor attend the Cours de Littérature Universelle et de Science Compréhensive of the professor then the mode—the smallest girls took her up in the class. She was bewildered by the multitude of things they bade her learn. At the youthful little assemblies of her sex, when, under the guide of their respected governesses, the girls came to tea at six o’clock, dancing, charades, and so forth, Ethel herded not with the children of her own age, nor yet with the teachers who sit apart at these assemblies, imparting to each other their little wrongs; but Ethel romped with the little children—the rosy little trots—and took them on her knees, and told them a thousand stories. By these she was adored, and loved like a mother almost, for as such the hearty kindly girl showed herself to them; but at home she was alone, farouche and intractable, and did battle with the governesses, and overcame them one after another. I break the promise of a former page, and am obliged to describe the youthful days of more than one person who is to take a share in this story. Not always doth the writer know whither the divine Muse leadeth him. But of this be sure—she is as inexorable as Truth. We must tell our tale as she imparts it to us, and go on or turn aside at her bidding.

Here she ordains that we should speak of other members of the family, whose history we chronicle, and it behoves us to say a word regarding the Earl of Kew, the head of the noble house into which Sir Brian Newcome had married.

When we read in the fairy stories that the King and Queen, who lived once upon a time, build a castle of steel, defended by moats and sentinels innumerable, in which they place their darling only child, the Prince or Princess, whose birth has blessed them after so many years of marriage, and whose christening feast has been interrupted by the cantankerous humour of that notorious old fairy who always persists in coming, although she has not received any invitation to the baptismal ceremony: when Prince Prettyman is locked up in the steel tower, provided only with the most wholesome food, the most edifying educational works, and the most venerable old tutor to instruct and to bore him, we know, as a matter of course, that the steel bolts and brazen bars one day will be of no avail, the old tutor will go off in a doze, and the moats and drawbridges will either be passed by His Royal Highness’s implacable enemies, or crossed by the young scapegrace himself, who is determined to outwit his guardians, and see the wicked world. The old King and Queen always come in and find the chambers empty, the saucy heir-apparent flown, the porter and sentinels drunk, the ancient tutor asleep; they tear their venerable wigs in anguish, they kick the major-domo downstairs, they turn the duenna out of doors—the toothless old dragon! There is no resisting fate. The Princess will slip out of window by the rope-ladder; the Prince will be off to pursue his pleasures, and sow his wild oats at the appointed season. How many of our English princes have been coddled at home by their fond papas and mammas, walled up in inaccessible castles, with a tutor and a library, guarded by cordons of sentinels, sermoners, old aunts, old women from the world without, and have nevertheless escaped from all these guardians, and astonished the world by their extravagance and their frolics? What a wild rogue was that Prince Harry, son of the austere sovereign who robbed Richard the Second of his crown,—the youth who took purses on Gadshill, frequented Eastcheap taverns with Colonel Falstaff and worse company, and boxed Chief Justice Gascoigne’s ears! What must have been the venerable Queen Charlotte’s state of mind when she heard of the courses of her beautiful young Prince; of his punting at gambling-tables; of his dealings with horse-jockeys; of his awful doings with Perdita? Besides instances taken from our Royal Family, could we not draw examples from our respected nobility? There was that young Lord Warwick, Mr. Addison’s stepson. We know that his mother was severe, and his stepfather a most eloquent moralist, yet the young gentleman’s career was shocking, positively shocking. He boxed the watch; he fuddled himself at taverns; he was no better than a Mohock. The chronicles of that day contain accounts of many a mad prank which he played, as we have legends of a still earlier date of the lawless freaks of the wild Prince and Poins. Our people has never looked very unkindly on these frolics. A young nobleman, full of life and spirits, generous of his money, jovial in his humour, ready with his sword, frank, handsome, prodigal, courageous, always finds favour. Young Scapegrace rides a steeplechase or beats a bargeman, and the crowd applauds him. Sages and seniors shake their heads, and look at him not unkindly; even stern old female moralists are disarmed at the sight of youth and gallantry, and beauty. I know very well that Charles Surface is a sad dog, and Tom Jones no better than he should be; but, in spite of such critics as Dr. Johnson and Colonel Newcome, most of us have a sneaking regard for honest Tom, and hope Sophia will be happy, and Tom will end well at last.

Five-and-twenty years ago the young Earl of Kew came upon the town, which speedily rang with the feats of his lordship. He began life time enough to enjoy certain pleasures from which our young aristocracy of the present day seem, alas! to be cut off. So much more peaceable and polished do we grow, so much does the spirit of the age appear to equalise all ranks; so strongly has the good sense of society, to which in the end gentlemen of the very highest fashion must bow, put its veto upon practices and amusements with which our fathers were familiar. At that time the Sunday newspapers contained many and many exciting reports of boxing-matches. Bruising was considered a fine manly old English custom. Boys at public schools fondly perused histories of the noble science, from the redoubtable days of Broughton and Slack, to the heroic times of Dutch Sam and the Game Chicken. Young gentlemen went eagerly to Moulsey to see the Slasher punch the Pet’s head, or the Negro beat the Jew’s nose to a jelly. The island rang as yet with the tooting horns and rattling teams of mail-coaches; a gay sight was the road in merry England in those days, before steam-engines arose and flung its hostelry and chivalry over. To travel in coaches, to drive coaches, to know coachmen and guards, to be familiar with inns along the road, to laugh with the jolly hostess in the bar, to chuck the pretty chambermaid under the chin, were the delight of men who were young not very long ago. Who ever thought of writing to the Times then? “Biffin,” I warrant, did not grudge his money, and “A Thirsty Soul” paid cheerfully for his drink. The road was an institution, the ring was an institution. Men rallied round them; and, not without a kind conservatism, expatiated upon the benefits with which they endowed the country, and the evils which would occur when they should be no more:—decay of English spirit, decay of manly pluck, ruin of the breed of horses, and so forth, and so forth. To give and take a black eye was not unusual nor derogatory in a gentleman; to drive a stage-coach the enjoyment, the emulation of generous youth. Is there any young fellow of the present time who aspires to take the place of a stoker? You see occasionally in Hyde Park one dismal old drag with a lonely driver. Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O rattling Quicksilver, O swift Defiance? You are passed by racers stronger and swifter than you. Your lamps are out, and the music of your horns has died away.

Just at the ending of that old time, Lord Kew’s life began. That kindly middle-aged gentleman whom his county knows that good landlord, and friend of all his tenantry round about; that builder of churches, and indefatigable visitor of schools; that writer of letters to the farmers of his shire, so full of sense and benevolence; who wins prizes at agricultural shows, and even lectures at county town institutes in his modest, pleasant way, was the wild young Lord Kew of a quarter of a century back; who kept racehorses, patronised boxers, fought a duel, thrashed a Life Guardsman, gambled furiously at Crockford’s, and did who knows what besides?

His mother, a devout lady, nursed her son and his property carefully during the young gentleman’s minority: keeping him and his younger brother away from all mischief, under the eyes of the most careful pastors and masters. She learnt Latin with the boys, she taught them to play on the piano: she enraged old Lady Kew, the children’s grandmother, who prophesied that her daughter-in-law would make milksops of her sons, to whom the old lady was never reconciled until after my lord’s entry at Christchurch, where he began to distinguish himself very soon after his first term. He drove tandems, kept hunters, gave dinners, scandalised the Dean, screwed up the tutor’s door, and agonised his mother at home by his lawless proceedings. He quitted the University after a very brief sojourn at that seat of learning. It may be the Oxford authorities requested his lordship to retire; let bygones be bygones. His youthful son, the present Lord Walham, is now at Christchurch, reading with the greatest assiduity. Let us not be too particular in narrating his father’s unedifying frolics of a quarter of a century ago.

Old Lady Kew, who, in conjunction with Mrs. Newcome, had made the marriage between Mr. Brian Newcome and her daughter, always despised her son-in-law; and being a frank, open person, uttering her mind always, took little pains to conceal her opinion regarding him or any other individual. “Sir Brian Newcome,” she would say, “is one of the most stupid and respectable of men; Anne is clever, but has not a grain of common sense. They make a very well assorted couple. Her flightiness would have driven any man crazy who had an opinion of his own. She would have ruined any poor man of her own rank; as it is, I have given her a husband exactly suited for her. He pays the bills, does not see how absurd she is, keeps order in the establishment, and checks her follies. She wanted to marry her cousin, Tom Poyntz, when they were both very young, and proposed to die of a broken heart when I arranged her match with Mr. Newcome. A broken fiddlestick! she would have ruined Tom Poyntz in a year; and has no more idea of the cost of a leg of mutton, than I have of algebra.”

The Countess of Kew loved Brighton, and preferred living there even at the season when Londoners find such especial charms in their own city. “London after Easter,” the old lady said, “was intolerable. Pleasure becomes a business, then so oppressive, that all good company is destroyed by it. Half the men are sick with the feasts which they eat day after day. The women are thinking of the half-dozen parties they have to go to in the course of the night. The young girls are thinking of their partners and their toilettes. Intimacy becomes impossible, and quiet enjoyment of life. On the other hand, the crowd of bourgeois has not invaded Brighton. The drive is not blocked up by flys full of stockbrokers’ wives and children; and you can take the air in your chair upon the chain-pier, without being stifled by the cigars of the odious shop-boys from London.” So Lady Kew’s name was usually amongst the earliest which the Brighton newspapers recorded amongst the arrivals.

Her only unmarried daughter, Lady Julia, lived with her ladyship. Poor Lady Julia had suffered early from a spine disease, which had kept her for many years to her couch. Being always at home, and under her mother’s eyes, she was the old lady’s victim, her pincushion, into which Lady Kew plunged a hundred little points of sarcasm daily. As children are sometimes brought before magistrates, and their poor little backs and shoulders laid bare, covered with bruises and lashes which brutal parents have inflicted, so, I dare say, if there had been any tribunal or judge, before whom this poor patient lady’s heart could have been exposed, it would have been found scarred all over with numberless ancient wounds, and bleeding from yesterday’s castigation. Old Lady Kew’s tongue was a dreadful thong which made numbers of people wince. She was not altogether cruel, but she knew the dexterity with which she wielded her lash, and liked to exercise it. Poor Lady Julia was always at hand, when her mother was minded to try her powers.

Lady Kew had just made herself comfortable at Brighton, when her little grandson’s illness brought Lady Anne Newcome and her family down to the sea. Lady Kew was almost scared back to London again, or blown over the water to Dieppe. She had never had the measles. “Why did not Anne carry the child to some other place? Julia, you will on no account go and see that little pestiferous swarm of Newcomes, unless you want to send me out of the world—which I dare say you do, for I am a dreadful plague to you, I know, and my death would be a release to you.”

“You see Doctor H., who visits the child every day,” cries poor Pincushion; “you are not afraid when he comes.”

“Doctor H.? Doctor H. comes to cure me, or to tell me the news, or to flatter me, or to feel my pulse and to pretend to prescribe, or to take his guinea; of course Dr. H. must go to see all sorts of people in all sorts of diseases. You would not have me be such a brute as to order him not to attend my own grandson? I forbid you to go to Anne’s house. You will send one of the men every day to inquire. Let the groom go—yes, Charles—he will not go into the house. He will ring the bell and wait outside. He had better ring the bell at the area—I suppose there is an area—and speak to the servants through the bars, and bring us word how Alfred is.” Poor Pincushion felt fresh compunctions; she had met the children, and kissed the baby, and held kind Ethel’s hand in hers, that day, as she was out in her chair. There was no use, however, to make this confession. Is she the only good woman or man of whom domestic tyranny has made a hypocrite?

Charles, the groom, brings back perfectly favourable reports of Master Alfred’s health that day, which Doctor H., in the course of his visit, confirms. The child is getting well rapidly; eating like a little ogre. His cousin Lord Kew has been to see him. He is the kindest of men, Lord Kew; he brought the little man Tom and Jerry with the pictures. The boy is delighted with the pictures.

“Why has not Kew come to see me? When did he come? Write him a note, and send for him instantly, Julia. Did you know he was here?”

Julia says, that she had but that moment read in the Brighton papers the arrival of the Earl of Kew and the Honourable J. Belsize at the Albion.

“I am sure they are here for some mischief,” cries the old lady, delighted. “Whenever George and John Belsize are together, I know there is some wickedness planning. What do you know, Doctor? I see by your face you know something. Do tell it me, that I may write it to his odious psalm-singing mother.”

Doctor H.’s face does indeed wear a knowing look. He simpers and says, “I did see Lord Kew driving this morning, first with the Honourable Mr. Belsize, and afterwards”—here he glances towards Lady Julia, as if to say, “Before an unmarried lady, I do not like to tell your ladyship with whom I saw Lord Kew driving, after he had left the Honourable Mr. Belsize, who went to play a match with Captain Huxtable at tennis.”

“Are you afraid to speak before Julia?” cries the elder lady. “Why, bless my soul, she is forty years old, and has heard everything that can be heard. Tell me about Kew this instant, Doctor H.”

The Doctor blandly acknowledges that Lord Kew had been driving Madame Pozzoprofondo, the famous contralto of the Italian Opera, in his phaeton, for two hours, in the face of all Brighton.

“Yes, Doctor,” interposes Lady Julia, blushing; “but Signor Pozzoprofondo was in the carriage too—a-a-sitting behind with the groom. He was indeed, mamma.”

“Julia, vous n’êtes qu’une bête,” says Lady Kew, shrugging her shoulders, and looking at her daughter from under her bushy black eyebrows. Her ladyship, a sister of the late lamented Marquis of Steyne, possessed no small share of the wit and intelligence, and a considerable resemblance to the features, of that distinguished nobleman.

Lady Kew bids her daughter take a pen and write:—

“Monsieur le Mauvais Sujet,—Gentlemen who wish to take the sea air in private, or to avoid their relations, had best go to other places than Brighton, where their names are printed in the newspapers. If you are not drowned in a pozzo—”

“Mamma!” interposes the secretary.

“—in a pozzo-profondo, you will please come to dine with two old women, at half-past seven. You may bring Mr. Belsize, and must tell us a hundred stories.—Yours, etc., L. Kew.”

Julia wrote all the letter as her mother dictated it, save only one sentence, and the note was sealed and despatched to my Lord Kew, who came to dinner with Jack Belsize. Jack Belsize liked to dine with Lady Kew. He said, “she was an old dear, and the wickedest old woman in all England;” and he liked to dine with Lady Julia, who was “a poor suffering dear, and the best woman in all England.” Jack Belsize liked every one, and every one liked him.

Two evenings afterwards the young men repeated their visit to Lady Kew, and this time Lord Kew was loud in praises of his cousins of the house of Newcome.

“Not of the eldest, Barnes, surely, my dear?” cries Lady Kew.

“No, confound him! not Barnes.”

“No, d—— it, not Barnes. I beg your pardon, Lady Julia,” broke in Jack Belsize. “I can get on with most men; but that little Barney is too odious a little snob.”

“A little what—Mr. Belsize?”

“A little snob, ma’am. I have no other word, though he is your grandson. I never heard him say a good word of any mortal soul, or do a kind action.”

“Thank you, Mr. Belsize,” says the lady.

“But the others are capital. There is that little chap who has just had the measles—he’s a clear little brick. And as for Miss Ethel——”

“Ethel is a trump, ma’am,” says Lord Kew, slapping his hand on his knee.

“Ethel is a brick, and Alfred is a trump, I think you say,” remarks Lady Kew, nodding approval; “and Barnes is a snob. This is very satisfactory to know.”

“We met the children out to-day,” cries the enthusiastic Kew, “as I was driving Jack in the drag, and I got out and talked to ’em.”

“Governess an uncommonly nice woman—oldish, but—I beg your pardon, Lady Julia,” cries the inopportune Jack Belsize—“I’m always putting my foot in it.”

“Putting your foot into what? Go on, Kew.”

“Well, we met the whole posse of children; and the little fellow wanted a drive, and I said I would drive him and Ethel too, if she would come. Upon my word she is as pretty a girl as you can see on a summer’s day. And the governess said ‘No,’ of course. Governesses always do. But I said I was her uncle, and Jack paid her such a fine compliment, that the young woman was mollified, and the children took their seats beside me, and Jack went behind.”

“Where Monsieur Pozzoprofondo sits, bon.”

“We drove on to the Downs, and we were nearly coming to grief. My horses are young, and when they get on the grass they are as if they were mad. It was very wrong; I know it was.”

“D——d rash,” interposes Jack. “He had nearly broken all our necks.”

“And my brother Frank would have been Lord Kew,” continued the young Earl, with a quiet smile. “What an escape for him! The horses ran away—ever so far—and I thought the carriage must upset. The poor little boy, who has lost his pluck in the fever, began to cry; but that young girl, though she was as white as a sheet, never gave up for a moment, and sate in her place like a man. We met nothing, luckily; and I pulled the horses in after a mile or two, and I drove ’em into Brighton as quiet as if I had been driving a hearse. And that little trump of an Ethel, what do you think she said? She said, ‘I was not frightened, but you must not tell mamma.’ My aunt, it appears, was in a dreadful commotion—I ought to have thought of that.”

“Lady Anne is a ridiculous old dear. I beg your pardon, Lady Kew,” here breaks in Jack the apologiser.

“There is a brother of Sir Brian Newcome’s staying with them,” Lord Kew proceeds; “an East India Colonel—a very fine-looking old boy.”

“Smokes awfully, row about it in the hotel. Go on, Kew; beg your——”

“This gentleman was on the look-out for us, it appears, for when we came in sight he despatched a boy who was with him, running like a lamplighter back to my aunt, to say all was well. And he took little Alfred out of the carriage, and then helped out Ethel, and said, ‘My dear, you are too pretty to scold; but you have given us all a belle peur.’ And then he made me and Jack a low bow, and stalked into the lodgings.”

“I think you do deserve to be whipped, both of you,” cries Lady Kew.

“We went up and made our peace with my aunt, and were presented in form to the Colonel and his youthful cub.”

“As fine a fellow as ever I saw: and as fine a boy as ever I saw,” cries Jack Belsize. “The young chap is a great hand at drawing—upon my life the best drawings I ever saw. And he was making a picture for little What-d’you-call-’em. And Miss Newcome was looking over them. And Lady Anne pointed out the group to me, and said how pretty it was. She is uncommonly sentimental, you know, Lady Anne.”

“My daughter Anne is the greatest fool in the three kingdoms,” cried Lady Kew, looking fiercely over her spectacles. And Julia was instructed to write that night to her sister, and desire that Ethel should be sent to see her grandmother:—Ethel, who rebelled against her grandmother, and always fought on her Aunt Julia’s side, when the weaker was oppressed by the older and stronger lady.

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XI. At Mrs. Ridley’s

Saint Peter of Alcantara, as I have read in a life of St. Theresa, informed that devout lady that he had passed forty years of his life sleeping only an hour and a half each day; his cell was but four feet and a half long, so that he never lay down: his pillow was a wooden log in the stone wall: he ate but once in three days: he was for three years in a convent of his order without knowing any one of his brethren except by the sound of their voices, for he never during this period took his eyes off the ground: he always walked barefoot, and was but skin and bone when he died. The eating only once in three days, so he told his sister Saint, was by no means impossible, if you began the regimen in your youth. To conquer sleep was the hardest of all austerities which he practised:—I fancy the pious individual so employed, day after day, night after night, on his knees, or standing up in devout meditation in the cupboard—his dwelling-place; bareheaded and barefooted, walking over rocks, briars, mud, sharp stones (picking out the very worst places, let us trust, with his downcast eyes), under the bitter snow, or the drifting rain, or the scorching sunshine—I fancy Saint Peter of Alcantara, and contrast him with such a personage as the Incumbent of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel, Mayfair.

His hermitage is situated in Walpole Street, let us say, on the second floor of a quiet mansion, let out to hermits by a nobleman’s butler, whose wife takes care of the lodgings. His cells consist of a refectory, a dormitory, and an adjacent oratory where he keeps his shower-bath and boots—the pretty boots trimly stretched on boot-trees and blacked to a nicety (not varnished) by the boy who waits on him. The barefooted business may suit superstitious ages and gentlemen of Alcantara, but does not become Mayfair and the nineteenth century. If St. Pedro walked the earth now with his eyes to the ground he would know fashionable divines by the way in which they were shod. Charles Honeyman’s is a sweet foot. I have no doubt as delicate and plump and rosy as the white hand with its two rings, which he passes in impassioned moments through his slender flaxen hair.

A sweet odour pervades his sleeping apartment—not that peculiar and delicious fragrance with which the Saints of the Roman Church are said to gratify the neighbourhood where they repose—but oils, redolent of the richest perfumes of Macassar, essences (from Truefitt’s or Delcroix’s) into which a thousand flowers have expressed their sweetest breath, await his meek head on rising; and infuse the pocket-handkerchief with which he dries and draws so many tears. For he cries a good deal in his sermons, to which the ladies about him contribute showers of sympathy.

By his bedside are slippers lined with blue silk and worked of an ecclesiastical pattern, by some of the faithful who sit at his feet. They come to him in anonymous parcels: they come to him in silver paper: boys in buttons (pages who minister to female grace!) leave them at the door for the Rev. C. Honeyman, and slip away without a word. Purses are sent to him—penwipers—a portfolio with the Honeyman arms; yea, braces have been known to reach him by the post (in his days of popularity); and flowers, and grapes, and jelly when he was ill, and throat comforters, and lozenges for his dear bronchitis. In one of his drawers is the rich silk cassock presented to him by his congregation at Leatherhead (when the young curate quitted that parish for London duty), and on his breakfast-table the silver teapot, once filled with sovereigns and presented by the same devotees. The devo-teapot he has, but the sovereigns, where are they?

What a different life this is from our honest friend of Alcantara, who eats once in three days! At one time if Honeyman could have drunk tea three times in an evening, he might have had it. The glass on his chimneypiece is crowded with invitations, not merely cards of ceremony (of which there are plenty), but dear little confidential notes from sweet friends of his congregation. “Ob, dear Mr. Honeyman,” writes Blanche, “what a sermon that was! I cannot go to bed to-night without thanking you for it.” “Do, do, dear Mr. Honeyman,” writes Beatrice, “lend me that delightful sermon. And can you come and drink tea with me and Selina, and my aunt? Papa and mamma dine out, but you know I am always your faithful Chesterfield Street.” And so on. He has all the domestic accomplishments; he plays on the violoncello: he sings a delicious second, not only in sacred but in secular music. He has a thousand anecdotes, laughable riddles, droll stories (of the utmost correctness, you understand) with which he entertains females of all ages; suiting his conversation to stately matrons, deaf old dowagers (who can hear his clear voice better than the loudest roar of their stupid sons-in-law), mature spinsters, young beauties dancing through the season, even rosy little slips out of the nursery, who cluster round his beloved feet. Societies fight for him to preach their charity sermon. You read in the papers, “The Wapping Hospital for Wooden-legged Seamen.—On Sunday the 23rd, Sermons will be preached in behalf of this charity, by the Lord Bishop of Tobago in the morning, in the afternoon by the Rev. C. Honeyman, A.M., Incumbent of,” etc. “Clergymen’s Grandmothers’ Fund.—Sermons in aid of this admirable institution will be preached on Sunday, 4th May, by the Very Rev. the Dean of Pimlico, and the Rev. C. Honeyman, A.M.” When the Dean of Pimlico has his illness, many people think Honeyman will have the Deanery; that he ought to have it, a hundred female voices vow and declare: though it is said that a right reverend head at headquarters shakes dubiously when his name is mentioned for preferment. His name is spread wide, and not only women but men come to hear him. Members of Parliament, even Cabinet Ministers, sit under him. Lord Dozeley of course is seen in a front pew: where was a public meeting without Lord Dozeley? The men come away from his sermons and say, “It’s very pleasant, but I don’t know what the deuce makes all you women crowd so to hear the man.” “Oh, Charles! if you would but go oftener!” sighs Lady Anna Maria. “Can’t you speak to the Home Secretary? Can’t you do something for him?” “We can ask him to dinner next Wednesday if you like,” Says Charles. “They say he’s a pleasant fellow out of the wood. Besides there is no use in doing anything for him,” Charles goes on. “He can’t make less than a thousand a year out of his chapel, and that is better than anything any one can give him. A thousand a year, besides the rent of the wine-vaults below the chapel.”

“Don’t, Charles!” says his wife, with a solemn look. “Don’t ridicule things in that way.

“Confound it! there are wine-vaults under the chapel!” answers downright Charles. “I saw the name, Sherrick and Co.; offices, a green door, and a brass plate. It’s better to sit over vaults with wine in them than coffins. I wonder whether it’s the Sherrick with whom Kew and Jack Belsize had that ugly row?”

“What ugly row?—don’t say ugly row. It is not a nice word to hear the children use. Go on, my darlings. What was the dispute of Lord Kew and Mr. Belsize, and this Mr. Sherrick?”

“It was all about pictures, and about horses, and about money, and about one other subject which enters into every row that I ever heard of.”

“And what is that, dear?” asks the innocent lady, hanging on her husband’s arm, and quite pleased to have led him to church and brought him thence. “And what is it, that enters into every row, as you call it, Charles?”

“A woman, my love,” answers the gentleman, behind whom we have been in imagination walking out from Charles Honeyman’s church on a Sunday in June: as the whole pavement blooms with artificial flowers and fresh bonnets; as there is a buzz and cackle all around regarding the sermon; as carriages drive off; as lady-dowagers walk home; as prayer-books and footmen’s sticks gleam in the sun; as little boys with baked mutton and potatoes pass from the courts; as children issue from the public-houses with pots of beer; as the Reverend Charles Honeyman, who has been drawing tears in the sermon, and has seen, not without complacent throbs, a Secretary of State in the pew beneath him, divests himself of his rich silk cassock in the vestry, before he walks away to his neighbouring hermitage—where have we placed it?—in Walpole Street. I wish St. Pedro of Alcantara could have some of that shoulder of mutton with the baked potatoes, and a drink of that frothing beer. See, yonder trots little Lord Dozeley, who has been asleep for an hour with his head against the wood, like St. Pedro of Alcantara.

An East Indian gentleman and his son wait until the whole chapel is clear, and survey Lady Whittlesea’s monument at their leisure, and other hideous slabs erected in memory of defunct frequenters of the chapel. Whose was that face which Colonel Newcome thought he recognised—that of a stout man who came down from the organ-gallery? Could it be Broff the bass singer, who delivered the “Red Cross Knight” with such applause at the Cave of Melody, and who has been singing in this place? There are some chapels in London, where, the function over, one almost expects to see the sextons put brown hollands over the pews and galleries, as they do at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.

The writer of these veracious pages was once walking through a splendid English palace, standing amidst parks and gardens, than which none more magnificent has been seen since the days of Aladdin, in company with a melancholy friend, who viewed all things darkly through his gloomy eyes. The housekeeper, pattering on before us from chamber to chamber, was expatiating upon the magnificence of this picture; the beauty of that statue; the marvellous richness of these hangings and carpets; the admirable likeness of the late Marquis by Sir Thomas; of his father, the fifth Earl, by Sir Joshua, and so on; when, in the very richest room of the whole castle, Hicks—such was my melancholy companion’s name—stopped the cicerone in her prattle, saying in a hollow voice, “And now, madam, will you show us the closet where the skeleton is?” The seared functionary paused in the midst of her harangue; that article was not inserted in the catalogue which she daily utters to visitors for their half-crown. Hicks’s question brought a darkness down upon the hall where we were standing. We did not see the room: and yet I have no doubt there is such an one; and ever after, when I have thought of the splendid castle towering in the midst of shady trees, under which the dappled deer are browsing; of the terraces gleaming with statues, and bright with a hundred thousand flowers; of the bridges and shining fountains and rivers wherein the castle windows reflect their festive gleams, when the halls are filled with happy feasters, and over the darkling woods comes the sound of music;—always, I say, when I think of Castle Bluebeard:—it is to think of that dark little closet, which I know is there, and which the lordly owner opens shuddering—after midnight—when he is sleepless and must go unlock it, when the palace is hushed, when beauties are sleeping around him unconscious, and revellers are at rest. O Mrs. Housekeeper: all the other keys hast thou: but that key thou hast not!

Have we not all such closets, my jolly friend, as well as the noble Marquis of Carabas? At night, when all the house is asleep but you, don’t you get up and peep into yours? When you in your turn are slumbering, up gets Mrs. Brown from your side, steals downstairs like Amina to her ghoul, clicks open the secret door, and looks into her dark depository. Did she tell you of that little affair with Smith long before she knew you? Psha! who knows any one save himself alone? Who, in showing his house to the closest and dearest, doesn’t keep back the key of a closet or two? I think of a lovely reader laying down the page and looking over at her unconscious husband, asleep, perhaps, after dinner. Yes, madam, a closet he hath: and you, who pry into everything, shall never have the key of it. I think of some honest Othello pausing over this very sentence in a railroad carriage, and stealthily gazing at Desdemona opposite to him, innocently administering sandwiches to their little boy—I am trying to turn off the sentence with a joke, you see—I feel it is growing too dreadful, too serious.

And to what, pray, do these serious, these disagreeable, these almost personal observations tend? To this simply, that Charles Honeyman, the beloved and popular preacher, the elegant divine to whom Miss Blanche writes sonnets, and whom Miss Beatrice invites to tea; who comes with smiles on his lip, gentle sympathy in his tones, innocent gaiety in his accent; who melts, rouses, terrifies in the pulpit; who charms over the tea-urn and the bland bread-and-butter: Charles Honeyman has one or two skeleton closets in his lodgings, Walpole Street, Mayfair; and many a wakeful night, whilst Mrs. Ridley, his landlady, and her tired husband, the nobleman’s major-domo, whilst the lodger on the first floor, whilst the cook and housemaid and weary little bootboy are at rest (mind you, they have all got their closets, which they open with their skeleton-keys); he wakes up, and looks at the ghastly occupant of that receptacle. One of the Reverend Charles Honeyman’s grisly night-haunters is—but stop; let us give a little account of the lodgings, and of some of the people frequenting the same.

First floor, Mr. Bagshot, Member for a Norfolk borough. Stout jolly gentleman;—dines at the Carlton Club; greatly addicted to Greenwich and Richmond, in the season: bets in a moderate way: does not go into society, except now and again to the chiefs of his party, when they give great entertainments; and once or twice to the houses of great country dons who dwell near him in the country. Is not of very good family; was, in fact, an apothecary: married a woman with money, much older than himself, who does not like London, and stops at home at Hummingham, not much to the displeasure of Bagshot; gives every now and then nice little quiet dinners, which Mrs. Ridley cooks admirably, to exceedingly stupid jolly old Parliamentary fogies, who absorb, with much silence and cheerfulness, a vast quantity of wine. They have just begun to drink ’24 claret now, that of ’15 being scarce, and almost drunk up. Writes daily, and hears every morning from Mrs. Bagshot; does not read her letters always: does not rise till long past eleven o’clock of a Sunday, and has John Bull and Bell’s Life, in bed: frequents the Blue Posts sometimes; rides a stout cob out of his county, and pays like the Bank of England.

The house is a Norfolk house. Mrs. Ridley was housekeeper to the great Squire Bayham, who had the estate before the Conqueror, and who came to such a dreadful crash in the year 1825, the year of the panic. Bayhams still belongs to the family, but in what a state, as those can say who recollect it in its palmy days! Fifteen hundred acres of the best land in England were sold off: all the timber cut down as level as a billiard-board. Mr. Bayham now lives up in one corner of the house, which used to be filled with the finest company in Europe. Law bless you! the Bayhams have seen almost all the nobility of England come in and go out, and were gentlefolks when many a fine lord’s father of the present day was sweeping a counting-house.

The house will hold genteelly no more than these two inmates; but in the season it manages to accommodate Miss Cann, who too was from Bayhams, having been a governess there to the young lady who is dead, and who now makes such a livelihood as she can best raise, by going out as a daily teacher. Miss Cann dines with Mrs. Ridley in the adjoining little back-parlour. Ridley but seldom can be spared to partake of the family dinner, his duties in the house and about the person of my Lord Todmorden keeping him constantly near that nobleman. How little Miss Cann can go on and keep alive on the crumb she eats for breakfast, and the scrap she picks at dinner, du astonish Mrs. Ridley, that it du! She declares that the two canary-birds encaged in her window (whence is a cheerful prospect of the back of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel) eat more than Miss Cann. The two birds set up a tremendous singing and chorussing when Miss Cann, spying the occasion of the first-floor lodger’s absence, begins practising her music-pieces. Such trills, roulades, and flourishes go on from the birds and the lodger! it is a wonder how any fingers can move over the jingling ivory so quickly as Miss Cann’s. Excellent a woman as she is, admirably virtuous, frugal, brisk, honest, and cheerful, I would not like to live in lodgings where there was a lady so addicted to playing variations. No more does Honeyman. On a Saturday, when he is composing his valuable sermons (the rogue, you may be sure, leaves his work to the last day, and there are, I am given to understand, among the clergy many better men than Honeyman, who are as dilatory as he), he begs, he entreats with tears in his eyes, that Miss Cann’s music may cease. I would back little Cann to write a sermon against him, for all his reputation as a popular preacher.

Old and weazened as that piano is, feeble and cracked her voice, it is wonderful what a pleasant concert she can give in that parlour of a Saturday evening, to Mrs. Ridley, who generally dozes a good deal, and to a lad, who listens with all his soul, with tears sometimes in his great eyes, with crowding fancies filling his brain and throbbing at his heart, as the artist plies her humble instrument. She plays old music of Handel and Haydn, and the little chamber anon swells into a cathedral, and he who listens beholds altars lighted, priests ministering, fair children swinging censers, great oriel windows gleaming in sunset, and seen through arched columns and avenues of twilight marble. The young fellow who hears her has been often and often to the opera and the theatres. As she plays Don Juan, Zerlina comes tripping over the meadows, and Masetto after her, with a crowd of peasants and maidens: and they sing the sweetest of all music, and the heart beats with happiness, and kindness, and pleasure. Piano, pianissimo! the city is hushed. The towers of the great cathedral rise in the distance, its spires lighted by the broad moon. The statues in the moonlit place cast long shadows athwart the pavement: but the fountain in the midst is dressed out like Cinderella for the night, and sings and wears a crest of diamonds. That great sombre street all in shade, can it be the famous Toledo?—or is it the Corso?—or is it the great street in Madrid, the one which leads to the Escurial where the Rubens and Velasquez are? It is Fancy Street—Poetry Street—Imagination Street—the street where lovely ladies look from balconies, where cavaliers strike mandolins and draw swords and engage, where long processions pass, and venerable hermits, with long beards, bless the kneeling people: where the rude soldiery, swaggering through the place with flags and halberts, and fife and dance, seize the slim waists of the daughters of the people, and bid the pifferari play to their dancing. Blow, bagpipes, a storm of harmony! become trumpets, trombones, ophicleides, fiddles, and bassoons! Fire, guns sound, tocsins! Shout, people! Louder, shriller and sweeter than all, sing thou, ravishing heroine! And see, on his cream-coloured charger Massaniello prances in, and Fra Diavolo leaps down the balcony, carabine in hand; and Sir Huon of Bordeaux sails up to the quay with the Sultan’s daughter of Babylon. All these delights and sights, and joys and glories, these thrills of sympathy, movements of unknown longing, and visions of beauty, a young sickly lad of eighteen enjoys in a little dark room where there is a bed disguised in the shape of a wardrobe, and a little old woman is playing under a gas-lamp on the jingling keys of an old piano.

For a long time Mr. Samuel Ridley, butler and confidential valet to the Right Honourable John James Baron Todmorden, was in a state of the greatest despair and gloom about his only son, the little John James,—a sickly and almost deformed child “of whom there was no making nothink,” as Mr. Ridley said. His figure precluded him from following his father’s profession, and waiting upon the British nobility, who naturally require large and handsome men to skip up behind their rolling carriages, and hand their plates at dinner. When John James was six years old his father remarked, with tears in his eyes, he wasn’t higher than a plate-basket. The boys jeered at him in the streets—some whopped him, spite of his diminutive size. At school he made but little progress. He was always sickly and dirty, and timid and crying, whimpering in the kitchen away from his mother; who, though she loved him, took Mr. Ridley’s view of his character, and thought him little better than an idiot until such time as little Miss Cann took him in hand, when at length there was some hope of him.

“Half-witted, you great stupid big man,” says Miss Cann, who had a fine spirit of her own. “That boy half-witted! He has got more wit in his little finger than you have in all your great person! You are a very good man, Ridley, very good-natured I’m sure, and bear with the teasing of a waspish old woman: but you are not the wisest of mankind. Tut, tut, don’t tell me. You know you spell out the words when you read the newspaper still, and what would your bills look like if I did not write them in my nice little hand? I tell you that boy is a genius. I tell you that one day the world will hear of him. His heart is made of pure gold. You think that all the wit belongs to the big people. Look at me, you great tall man! Am I not a hundred times cleverer than you are? Yes, and John James is worth a thousand such insignificant little chits as I am; and he is as tall as me too, sir. Do you hear that! One day I am determined he shall dine at Lord Todmorden’s table, and he shall get the prize at the Royal Academy, and be famous, sir—famous!”

“Well, Miss C., I wish he may get it; that’s all I say,” answers Mr. Ridley. “The poor fellow does no harm, that I acknowledge; but I never see the good he was up to yet. I wish he’d begin it; I du wish he would now.” And the honest gentleman relapses into the study of his paper.

All those beautiful sounds and thoughts which Miss Cann conveys to him out of her charmed piano, the young artist straightway translates into forms; and knights in armour, with plume, and shield, and battle-axe; and splendid young noblemen with flowing ringlets, and bounteous plumes of feathers, and rapiers, and russet boots; and fierce banditti with crimson tights, doublets profusely illustrated with large brass buttons, and the dumpy basket-hilted claymores known to be the favourite weapon with which these whiskered ruffians do battle; wasp-waisted peasant girls, and young countesses with oh, such large eyes and the lips!—all these splendid forms of war and beauty crowd to the young draughtsman’s pencil, and cover letter-backs, copybooks, without end. If his hand strikes off some face peculiarly lovely, and to his taste, some fair vision that has shone on his imagination, some houri of a dancer, some bright young lady of fashion in an opera-box, whom he has seen, or fancied he has seen (for the youth is short-sighted, though he hardly as yet knows his misfortune)—if he has made some effort extraordinarily successful, our young Pygmalion hides away the masterpiece, and he paints the beauty with all his skill; the lips a bright carmine, the eyes a deep, deep cobalt, the cheeks a dazzling vermilion, the ringlets of a golden hue; and he worships this sweet creature of his in secret, fancies a history for her; a castle to storm, a tyrant usurper who keeps her imprisoned, and a prince in black ringlets and a spangled cloak, who scales the tower, who slays the tyrant, and then kneels gracefully at the princess’s feet, and says, “Lady, wilt thou be mine?”

There is a kind lady in the neighbourhood, who takes in dressmaking for the neighbouring maid-servants, and has a small establishment of lollipops, theatrical characters, and ginger-beer for the boys in Little Craggs Buildings, hard by the Running Footman public-house, where father and other gentlemen’s gentlemen have their club: this good soul also sells Sunday newspapers to the footmen of the neighbouring gentry; and besides, has a stock of novels for the ladies of the upper servants’ table. Next to Miss Cann, Miss Flinders is John James’s greatest friend and benefactor. She has remarked him when he was quite a little man, and used to bring his father’s beer of a Sunday. Out of her novels he has taught himself to read, dull boy at the day-school though he was, and always the last in his class, there. Hours, happy hours, has he spent cowering behind her counter, or hugging her books under his pinafore when he had leave to carry them home. The whole library has passed through his hands, his long, lean, tremulous hands, and under his eager eyes. He has made illustrations to every one of those books, and been frightened at his own pictures of Manfroni or the One-handed Monk, Abellino the Terrific Bravo of Venice, and Rinaldo Rinaldini Captain of Robbers. How he has blistered Thaddeus of Warsaw with his tears, and drawn him in his Polish cap, and tights, and Hessians! William Wallace, the Hero of Scotland, how nobly he has depicted him! With what whiskers and bushy ostrich plumes!—in a tight kilt, and with what magnificent calves to his legs, laying about him with his battle-axe, and bestriding the bodies of King Edward’s prostrate cavaliers! At this time Mr. Honeyman comes to lodge in Walpole Street, and brings a set of Scott’s novels, for which he subscribed when at Oxford; and young John James, who at first waits upon him and does little odd jobs for the reverend gentleman, lights upon the volumes, and reads them with such a delight and passion of pleasure as all the delights of future days will scarce equal. A fool, is he?—an idle feller, out of whom no good will ever come, as his father says. There was a time when, in despair of any better chance for him, his parents thought of apprenticing him to a tailor, and John James was waked up from a dream of Rebecca and informed of the cruelty meditated against him. I forbear to describe the tears and terror, and frantic desperation in which the poor boy was plunged. Little Miss Cann rescued him from that awful board, and Honeyman likewise interceded for him, and Mr. Bagshot promised that, as soon as his party came in, he would ask the Minister for a tide-waitership for him; for everybody liked the solemn, soft-hearted, willing little lad, and no one knew him less than his pompous and stupid and respectable father.

Miss Cann painted flowers and card-screens elegantly, and “finished” pencil-drawings most elaborately for her pupils. She could copy prints, so that at a little distance you would scarcely know that the copy in stumped chalk was not a bad mezzotinto engraving. She even had a little old paint-box, and showed you one or two ivory miniatures out of the drawer. She gave John James what little knowledge of drawing she had, and handed him over her invaluable recipes for mixing water-colours—“for trees in foregrounds, burnt sienna and indigo”—“for very dark foliage, ivory black and gamboge”—“for flesh-colour,” etc. etc. John James went through her poor little course, but not so brilliantly as she expected. She was forced to own that several of her pupils’ “pieces” were executed much more dexterously than Johnny Ridley’s. Honeyman looked at the boy’s drawings from time to time, and said, “Hm, ha!—very clever—a great deal of fancy, really.” But Honeyman knew no more of the subject than a deaf and dumb man knows of music. He could talk the art cant very glibly, and had a set of Morghens and Madonnas as became a clergyman and a man of taste; but he saw not with eyes such as those wherewith Heaven had endowed the humble little butler’s boy, to whom splendours of Nature were revealed to vulgar sights invisible, and beauties manifest in forms, colours, shadows of common objects, where most of the world saw only what was dull, and gross, and familiar. One reads in the magic story-books of a charm or a flower which the wizard gives, and which enables the bearer to see the fairies. O enchanting boon of Nature, which reveals to the possessor the hidden spirits of beauty round about him! spirits which the strongest and most gifted masters compel into painting or song. To others it is granted but to have fleeting glimpses of that fair Art-world; and tempted by ambition, or barred by faint-heartedness, or driven by necessity, to turn away thence to the vulgar life-track, and the light of common day.

The reader who has passed through Walpole Street scores of times, knows the discomfortable architecture of all, save the great houses built in Queen Anne’s and George the First’s time; and while some of the neighbouring streets, to wit, Great Craggs Street, Bolingbroke Street, and others, contain mansions fairly coped with stone, with little obelisks before the doors, and great extinguishers wherein the torches of the nobility’s running footmen were put out a hundred and thirty or forty years ago:—houses which still remain abodes of the quality, and where you shall see a hundred carriages gather of a public night; Walpole Street has quite faded away into lodgings, private hotels, doctors’ houses, and the like; nor is No. 23 (Ridley’s) by any means the best house in the street. The parlour, furnished and tenanted by Miss Cann as has been described; the first floor, Bagshot, Esq., M.P.; the second floor, Honeyman; what remains but the garrets, and the ample staircase and the kitchens? and the family being all put to bed, how can you imagine there is room for any more inhabitants?

And yet there is one lodger more, and one who, like almost all the other personages mentioned up to the present time (and some of whom you have no idea yet), will play a definite part in the ensuing history. At night, when Honeyman comes in, he finds on the hall-table three wax bedroom candles—his own, Bagshot’s, and another. As for Miss Cann, she is locked into the parlour in bed long ago, her stout little walking-shoes being on the mat at the door. At 12 o’clock at noon, sometimes at 1, nay at 2 and 3—long after Bagshot is gone to his committees, and little Cann to her pupils—a voice issues from the very topmost floor, from a room where there is no bell; a voice of thunder calling out “Slavey! Julia! Julia, my love! Mrs. Ridley!” And this summons not being obeyed, it will not unfrequently happen that a pair of trousers enclosing a pair of boots with iron heels, and known by the name of the celebrated Prussian General who came up to help the other christener of boots at Waterloo, will be flung down from the topmost story, even to the marble floor of the resounding hall. Then the boy Thomas, otherwise called Slavey, may say, “There he goes again;” or Mrs. Ridley’s own back-parlour bell rings vehemently, and Julia the cook will exclaim, “Lor, it’s Mr. Frederick.”

If the breeches and boots are not understood, the owner himself appears in great wrath dancing on the upper story; dancing down to the lower floor; and loosely enveloped in a ragged and flowing robe de chambre. In this costume and condition he will dance into Honeyman’s apartment, where that meek divine may be sitting with a headache or over a novel or a newspaper; dance up to the fire flapping his robe-tails, poke it, and warm himself there; dance up to the cupboard where his reverence keeps his sherry, and help himself to a glass.

“Salve, spes fidei, lumen ecclesiæ,” he will say; “here’s towards you, my buck. I knows the tap. Sherrick’s Marsala bottled three months after date, at two hundred and forty-six shillings the dozen.”

“Indeed, indeed it’s not” (and now we are coming to an idea of the skeleton in poor Honeyman’s closet—not that this huge handsome jolly Fred Bayham is the skeleton, far from it. Mr. Frederick weighs fourteen stone). “Indeed, indeed it isn’t, Fred, I’m sure,” sighs the other. “You exaggerate, indeed you do. The wine is not dear, not by any means so expensive as you say.”

“How much a glass, think you?” says Fred, filling another bumper. “A half-crown, think ye?—a half-crown, Honeyman? By cock and pye, it is not worth a bender.” He says this in the manner of the most celebrated tragedian of the day. He can imitate any actor, tragic or comic; any known Parliamentary orator or clergyman; any saw, cock, cloop of a cork wrenched from a bottle and guggling of wine into the decanter afterwards, bee buzzing, little boy up a chimney, etc. He imitates people being ill on board a steam-packet so well that he makes you die of laughing: his uncle the Bishop could not resist this comic exhibition, and gave Fred a cheque for a comfortable sum of money; and Fred, getting cash for the cheque at the Cave of Harmony, imitated his uncle the Bishop and his Chaplain, winding up with his Lordship and Chaplain being unwell at sea—the Chaplain and Bishop quite natural and distinct.

“How much does a glass of this sack cost thee, Charley?” resumes Fred, after this parenthesis. “You say it is not dear. Charles Honeyman, you had, even from your youth up, a villainous habit. And I perfectly well remember, sir, in boyhood’s breezy hour, when I was the delight of his school, that you used to tell lies to your venerable father. You did, Charles. Excuse the frankness of an early friend, it’s my belief you’d rather lie than not. Hm”—he looks at the cards in the chimney-glass “Invitations to dinner, proffers of muffins. Do lend me your sermon. Oh, you old impostor! you hoary old Ananias! I say, Charley, why haven’t you picked out some nice girl for yours truly? One with lauds and beeves, with rents and consols, mark you? I have no money, ’tis true, but then I don’t owe as much as you. I am a handsomer man than you are. Look at this chest” (he slaps it), “these limbs; they are manly, sir, manly.”

“For Heaven’s sake, Bayham,” cries Mr. Honeyman, white with terror; “if anybody were to come——”

“What did I say anon, sir? that I was manly, ay, manly. Let any ruffian, save a bailiff, come and meet the doughty arm of Frederick Bayham.”

“Oh, Lord, Lord, here’s somebody coming into the room!” cries Charles, sinking back on the sofa, as the door opens.

“Ha! dost thou come with murderous intent?” and he now advances in an approved offensive attitude. “Caitiff, come on, come on!” and he walks off with a tragic laugh, crying, “Ha, ha, ha, ’tis but the slavey!”

The slavey has Mr. Frederick’s hot water, and a bottle of sodawater on the same tray. He has been instructed to bring soda whenever he hears the word slavey pronounced from above. The bottle explodes, and Frederick drinks, and hisses after his drink as though he had been all hot within.

“What’s o’clock now, slavey—half-past three? Let me see, I breakfasted exactly ten hours ago, in the rosy morning, off a modest cup of coffee in Covent Garden Market. Coffee, a penny; bread, a simple halfpenny. What has Mrs. Ridley for dinner?”

“Please, sir, roast pork.”

“Get me some. Bring it into my room, unless, Honeyman, you insist upon my having it here, kind fellow!”

At the moment a smart knock comes to the door, and Fred says, “Well, Charles, it may be a friend or a lady come to confess, and I’m off; I knew you’d be sorry I was going. Tom, bring up my things; brush ’em gently, you scoundrel, and don’t take the nap off. Bring up the roast pork, and plenty of apple-sauce, tell Mrs. Ridley, with my love; and one of Mr. Honeyman’s shirts, and one of his razors. Adieu, Charles! Amend! Remember me.” And he vanishes into the upper chambers.

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XII. In which everybody is asked to Dinner

John James had opened the door hastening to welcome a friend and patron, the sight of whom always gladdened the youth’s eyes; no other than Clive Newcome—in young Ridley’s opinion, the most splendid, fortunate, beautiful, high-born, and gifted youth this island contained. What generous boy in his time has not worshipped somebody? Before the female enslaver makes her appearance, every lad has a friend of friends, a crony of cronies, to whom he writes immense letters in vacation, whom he cherishes in his heart of hearts; whose sister he proposes to marry in after life; whose purse he shares; for whom he will take a thrashing if need be: who is his hero. Clive was John James’s youthful divinity: when he wanted to draw Thaddeus of Warsaw, a Prince, Ivanhoe, or some one splendid and egregious, it was Clive he took for a model. His heart leapt when he saw the young fellow. He would walk cheerfully to Grey Friars, with a letter or message for Clive, on the chance of seeing him, and getting a kind word from him, or a shake of the hand. An ex-butler of Lord Todmorden was a pensioner in the Grey Friars Hospital (it has been said that at that ancient establishment is a college for old men as well as for boys), and this old man would come sometimes to his successor’s Sunday dinner, and grumble from the hour of that meal until nine o’clock, when he was forced to depart, so as to be within Grey Friars’ gates before ten; grumble about his dinner—grumble about his beer—grumble about the number of chapels he had to attend, about the gown he wore, about the master’s treatment of him, about the want of plums in the pudding, as old men and schoolboys grumble. It was wonderful what a liking John James took to this odious, querulous, graceless, stupid, and snuffy old man, and how he would find pretexts for visiting him at his lodging in the old hospital. He actually took that journey that he might have a chance of seeing Clive. He sent Clive notes and packets of drawings; thanked him for books lent, asked advice about future reading—anything, so that he might have a sight of his pride, his patron, his paragon.

I am afraid Clive Newcome employed him to smuggle rum-shrub and cigars into the premises; giving him appointments in the school precincts, where young Clive would come and stealthily receive the forbidden goods. The poor lad was known by the boys, and called Newcome’s Punch. He was all but hunchbacked; long and lean in the arm; sallow, with a great forehead, and waving black hair, and large melancholy eyes.

“What, is it you, J. J.?” cries Clive gaily, when his humble friend appears at the door. “Father, this is my friend Ridley. This is the fellow what can draw.”

“I know whom I will back against any young man of his size at that,” says the Colonel, looking at Clive fondly. He considered there was not such a genius in the world; and had already thought of having some of Clive’s drawings published by M’Lean of the Haymarket.

“This is my father just come from India—and Mr. Pendennis, an old Grey Friars’ man. Is my uncle at home?” Both these gentlemen bestow rather patronising nods of the head on the lad introduced to them as J. J. His exterior is but mean-looking. Colonel Newcome, one of the humblest-minded men alive, has yet his old-fashioned military notions; and speaks to a butler’s son as to a private soldier, kindly, but not familiarly.

“Mr. Honeyman is at home, gentlemen,” the young lad says, humbly. “Shall I show you up to his room?” And we walk up the stairs after our guide. We find Mr. Honeyman deep in study on his sofa, with Pearson on the Creed before him. The novel has been whipped under the pillow. Clive found it there some short time afterwards, during his uncle’s temporary absence in his dressing-room. He has agreed to suspend his theological studies, and go out with his brother-in-law to dine.

As Clive and his friends were at Honeyman’s door, and just as we were entering to see the divine seated in state before his folio, Clive whispers, “J. J., come along, old fellow, and show us some drawings. What are you doing?”

“I was doing some Arabian Nights,” says J. J., “up in my room; and hearing a knock which I thought was yours, I came down.”

“Show us the pictures. Let’s go up into your room,” cries Clive. “What—will you?” says the other. “It is but a very small place.”

“Never mind, come along,” says Clive; and the two lads disappear together, leaving the three grown gentlemen to discourse together, or rather two of us to listen to Honeyman, who expatiates upon the beauty of the weather, the difficulties of the clerical calling, the honour Colonel Newcome does him by a visit, etc., with his usual eloquence.

After a while Clive comes down without J. J., from the upper regions. He is greatly excited. “Oh, sir,” he says to his father, “you talk about my drawings—you should see J. J.’s! By Jove, that fellow is a genius. They are beautiful, sir. You seem actually to read the Arabian Nights, you know, only in pictures. There is Scheherazade telling the stories, and—what do you call her?—Dinarzade and the Sultan sitting in bed and listening. Such a grim old cove! You see he has cut off ever so many of his wives’ heads. I can’t think where that chap gets his ideas from. I can beat him in drawing horses, I know, and dogs; but I can only draw what I see. Somehow he seems to see things we don’t, don’t you know? Oh, father, I’m determined I’d rather be a painter than anything.” And he falls to drawing horses and dogs at his uncle’s table, round which the elders are seated.

“I’ve settled it upstairs with J. J.,” says Clive, working away with his pen. “We shall take a studio together; perhaps we will go abroad together. Won’t that be fun, father?”

“My dear Clive,” remarks Mr. Honeyman, with bland dignity, “there are degrees in society which we must respect. You surely cannot think of being a professional artist. Such a profession is very well for your young protégé; but for you——”

“What for me?” cries Clive. “We are no such great folks that I know of; and if we were, I say a painter is as good as a lawyer, or a doctor, or even a soldier. In Dr. Johnston’s Life—which my father is always reading—I like to read about Sir Joshua Reynolds best: I think he is the best gentleman of all in the book. My! wouldn’t I like to paint a picture like Lord Heathfield in the National Gallery! Wouldn’t I just! I think I would sooner have done that, than have fought at Gibraltar. And those Three Graces—oh, aren’t they graceful! And that Cardinal Beaufort at Dulwich!—it frightens me so, I daren’t look at it. Wasn’t Reynolds a clipper, that’s all! and wasn’t Rubens a brick! He was an ambassador, and Knight of the Bath; so was Vandyck. And Titian, and Raphael, and Velasquez?—I’ll just trouble you to show me better gentlemen than them, Uncle Charles.”

“Far be it from me to say that the pictorial calling is not honourable,” says Uncle Charles; “but as the world goes there are other professions in greater repute; and I should have thought Colonel Newcome’s son——”

“He shall follow his own bent,” said the Colonel; “as long as his calling is honest it becomes a gentleman; and if he were to take a fancy to play on the fiddle—actually on the fiddle—I shouldn’t object.”

“Such a rum chap there was upstairs!” Clive resumes, looking up from his scribbling. “He was walking up and down on the landing in a dressing-gown, with scarcely any other clothes on, holding a plate in one hand, and a pork-chop he was munching with the other. Like this” (and Clive draws a figure). “What do you think, sir? He was in the Cave of Harmony, he says, that night you flared up about Captain Costigan. He knew me at once; and he says, ‘Sir, your father acted like a gentleman, a Christian, and a man of honour. Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Give him my compliments. I don’t know his highly respectable name.’ His highly respectable name,” says Clive, cracking with laughter—“those were his very words. ‘And inform him that I am an orphan myself—in needy circumstances’—he said he was in needy circumstances; ‘and I heartily wish he’d adopt me.’”

The lad puffed out his face, made his voice as loud and as deep as he could; and from his imitation and the picture he had drawn, I knew at once that Fred Bayham was the man he mimicked.

“And does the Red Rover live here,” cried Mr. Pendennis, “and have we earthed him at last?”

“He sometimes comes here,” Mr. Honeyman said with a careless manner. “My landlord and landlady were butler and housekeeper to his father, Bayham of Bayham, one of the oldest families in Europe. And Mr. Frederick Bayham, the exceedingly eccentric person of whom you speak, was a private pupil of my own dear father in our happy days at Borehambury.”

He had scarcely spoken when a knock was heard at the door, and before the occupant of the lodgings could say “Come in!” Mr. Frederick Bayham made his appearance, arrayed in that peculiar costume which he affected. In those days we wore very tall stocks, only a very few poetic and eccentric persons venturing on the Byron collar; but Fred Bayham confined his neck by a simple ribbon, which allowed his great red whiskers to curl freely round his capacious jowl. He wore a black frock and a large broad-brimmed hat, and looked somewhat like a Dissenting preacher. At other periods you would see him in a green coat and a blue neckcloth, as if the turf or the driving of coaches was his occupation.

“I have heard from the young man of the house who you were, Colonel Newcome,” he said with the greatest gravity, “and happened to be present, sir, the other night; for I was aweary, having been toiling all the day in literary labour, and needed some refreshment. I happened to be present, sir, at a scene which did you the greatest honour, and of which I spoke, not knowing you, with something like levity to your son. He is an ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris—Pendennis, how are you? And I thought, sir, I would come down and tender an apology if I had said any words that might savour of offence to a gentleman who was in the right, as I told the room when you quitted it, as Mr. Pendennis, I am sure, will remember.”

Mr. Pendennis looked surprise and perhaps negation.

“You forget, Pendennis? Those who quit that room, sir, often forget on the morrow what occurred during the revelry of the night. You did right in refusing to return to that scene. We public men are obliged often to seek our refreshment at hours when luckier individuals are lapt in slumber.”

“And what may be your occupation, Mr. Bayham?” asks the Colonel, rather gloomily, for he had an idea that Bayham was adopting a strain of persiflage which the Indian gentleman by no means relished. Never saying aught but a kind word to any one, he was on fire at the notion that any should take a liberty with him.

“A barrister, sir, but without business—a literary man, who can but seldom find an opportunity to sell the works of his brains—a gentleman, sir, who has met with neglect, perhaps merited, perhaps undeserved, from his family. I get my bread as best I may. On that evening I had been lecturing on the genius of some of our comic writers, at the Parthenopæon, Hackney. My audience was scanty, perhaps equal to my deserts. I came home on foot to an egg and a glass of beer after midnight, and witnessed the scene which did you so much honour. What is this? I fancy a ludicrous picture of myself”—he had taken up the sketch which Clive had been drawing—“I like fun, even at my own expense; and can afford to laugh at a joke which is meant in good-humour.” This speech quite reconciled the honest Colonel. “I am sure the author of that, Mr. Bayham, means you or any man no harm. Why! the rascal, sir, has drawn me, his own father; and I have sent the drawing to Major Hobbs, who is in command of my regiment. Chinnery himself, sir, couldn’t hit off a likeness better; he has drawn me on horseback, and he has drawn me on foot, and he has drawn my friend, Mr. Binnie, who lives with me. We have scores of his drawings at my lodgings; and if you will favour us by dining with us to-day, and these gentlemen, you shall see that you are not the only person caricatured by Clive here.”

“I just took some little dinner upstairs, sir. I am a moderate man, and can live, if need be, like a Spartan; but to join such good company I will gladly use the knife and fork again. You will excuse the traveller’s dress? I keep a room here, which I use only occasionally, and am at present lodging—in the country.”

When Honeyman was ready, the Colonel, who had the greatest respect for the Church, would not hear of going out of the room before the clergyman, and took his arm to walk. Bayham then fell to Mr. Pendennis’s lot, and they went together. Through Hill Street and Berkeley Square their course was straight enough; but at Hay Hill, Mr. Bayham made an abrupt tack larboard, engaging in a labyrinth of stables, and walking a long way round from Clifford Street, whither we were bound. He hinted at a cab, but Pendennis refused to ride, being, in truth, anxious to see which way his eccentric companion would steer. “There are reasons,” growled Bayham, “which need not be explained to one of your experience, why Bond Street must be avoided by some men peculiarly situated. The smell of Truefitt’s pomatum makes me ill. Tell me, Pendennis, is this Indian warrior a rajah of large wealth? Could he, do you think, recommend me to a situation in the East India Company? I would gladly take any honest post in which fidelity might be useful, genius might be appreciated, and courage rewarded. Here we are. The hotel seems comfortable. I never was in it before.”

When we entered the Colonel’s sitting-room at Nerot’s, we found the waiter engaged in extending the table. “We are a larger party than I expected,” our host said. “I met my brother Brian on horseback leaving cards at that great house in ——— Street.”

“The Russian Embassy,” says Mr. Honeyman, who knew the town quite well.

“And he said he was disengaged, and would dine with us,” continues the Colonel.

“Am I to understand, Colonel Newcome,” says Mr. Frederick Bayham, “that you are related to the eminent banker, Sir Brian Newcome, who gives such uncommonly swell parties in Park Lane?”

“What is a swell party?” asks the Colonel, laughing. “I dined with my brother last Wednesday; and it was a very grand dinner certainly. The Governor-General himself could not give a more splendid entertainment. But, do you know, I scarcely had enough to eat? I don’t eat side dishes; and as for the roast beef of Old England, why, the meat was put on the table and whisked away like Sancho’s inauguration feast at Barataria. We did not dine till nine o’clock. I like a few glasses of claret and a cosy talk after dinner; but—well, well”—(no doubt the worthy gentleman was accusing himself of telling tales out of school and had come to a timely repentance). “Our dinner, I hope, will be different. Jack Binnie will take care of that. That fellow is full of anecdote and fun. You will meet one or two more of our service; Sir Thomas de Boots, who is not a bad chap over a glass of wine; Mr. Pendennis’s chum, Mr. Warrington, and my nephew, Barnes Newcome—a dry fellow at first, but I dare say he has good about him when you know him; almost every man has,” said the good-natured philosopher. “Clive, you rogue, mind and be moderate with the champagne, sir!”

“Champagne’s for women,” says Clive. “I stick to claret.”

“I say, Pendennis,” here Bayham remarked, “it is my deliberate opinion that F. B. has got into a good thing.”

Mr. Pendennis seeing there was a great party was for going home to his chambers to dress. “Hm!” says Mr. Bayham, “don’t see the necessity. What right-minded man looks at the exterior of his neighbour? He looks here, sir, and examines there,” and Bayham tapped his forehead, which was expansive, and then his heart, which he considered to be in the right place.

“What is this I hear about dressing?” asks our host. “Dine in your frock, my good friend, and welcome, if your dress-coat is in the country.”

“It is at present at an uncle’s,” Mr. Bayham said, with great gravity, “and I take your hospitality as you offer it, Colonel Newcome, cordially and frankly.”

Honest Mr. Binnie made his appearance a short time before the appointed hour for receiving the guests, arrayed in a tight little pair of trousers, and white silk stockings and pumps, his bald head shining like a billiard-ball, his jolly gills rosy with good-humour. He was bent on pleasure. “Hey, lads!” says he; “but we’ll make a night of it. We haven’t had a night since the farewell dinner off Plymouth.”

“And a jolly night it was, James,” ejaculates the Colonel.

“Egad, what a song that Tom Norris sings!”

“And your ‘Jock o’ Hazeldean’ is as good as a play, Jack.”

“And I think you beat iny one I iver hard in ‘Tom Bowling,’ yourself, Tom!” cries the Colonel’s delighted chum. Mr. Pendennis opened the eyes of astonishment at the idea of the possibility of renewing these festivities, but he kept the lips of prudence closed. And now the carriages began to drive up, and the guests of Colonel Newcome to arrive.

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XIII. In which Thomas Newcome sings his Last Song

The earliest comers were the first mate and the medical officer of the ship in which the two gentlemen had come to England. The mate was a Scotchman: the doctor was a Scotchman; of the gentlemen from the Oriental Club, three were Scotchmen.

The Southrons, with one exception, were the last to arrive, and for a while we stood looking out of the windows awaiting their coming. The first mate pulled out a penknife and arranged his nails. The doctor and Mr. Binnie talked of the progress of medicine. Binnie had walked the hospitals of Edinburgh before getting his civil appointment to India. The three gentlemen from Hanover Square and the Colonel had plenty to say about Tom Smith of the Cavalry, and Harry Hall of the Engineers: how Topham was going to marry poor little Bob Wallis’s widow; how many lakhs Barber had brought home, and the like. The tall grey-headed Englishman, who had been in the East too, in the King’s service, joined for a while in this conversation, but presently left it, and came and talked with Clive; “I knew your father in India,” said the gentleman to the lad; “there is not a more gallant or respected officer in that service. I have a boy too, a stepson, who has just gone into the army; he is older than you, he was born at the end of the Waterloo year, and so was a great friend of his and mine, who was at your school, Sir Rawdon Crawley.”

“He was in Gown Boys, I know,” says the boy; “succeeded his uncle Pitt, fourth Baronet. I don’t know how his mother—her who wrote the hymns, you know, and goes to Mr. Honeyman’s chapel—comes to be Rebecca, Lady Crawley. His father, Colonel Rawdon Crawley, died at Coventry Island, in August, 182-, and his uncle, Sir Pitt, not till September here. I remember, we used to talk about it at Grey Friars, when I was quite a little chap; and there were bets whether Crawley, I mean the young one, was a Baronet or not.”

“When I sailed to Rigy, Cornel,” the first mate was speaking—nor can any spelling nor combination of letters of which I am master, reproduce this gentleman’s accent when he was talking his best—“I racklackt they used always to sairve us a drem before denner. And as your frinds are kipping the denner, and as I’ve no watch to-night, I’ll jist do as we used to do at Rigy. James, my fine fellow, jist look alive and breng me a small glass of brandy, will ye? Did ye iver try a brandy cocktail, Cornel? Whin I sailed on the New York line, we used jest to make bits before denner and—thank ye, James:” and he tossed off a glass of brandy.

Here a waiter announces, in a loud voice, “Sir Thomas de Boots,” and the General enters, scowling round the room according to his fashion, very red in the face, very tight in the girth, splendidly attired with a choking white neckcloth, a voluminous waistcoat, and his orders on.

“Stars and garters, by jingo!” cries Mr. Frederick Bayham; “I say, Pendennis, have you any idea, is the Duke coming? I wouldn’t have come in these Bluchers if I had known it. Confound it, no—Hoby himself, my own bootmaker, wouldn’t have allowed poor F. B. to appear in Bluchers, if he had known that I was going to meet the Duke. My linen’s all right, anyhow.”

F. B. breathed a thankful prayer for that. Indeed, who but the very curious could tell that not F. B.’s, but C. H.’s—Charles Honeyman’s—was the mark upon that decorous linen?

Colonel Newcome introduced Sir Thomas to every one in the room, as he had introduced us all to each other previously, and as Sir Thomas looked at one after another, his face was kind enough to assume an expression which seemed to ask, “And who the devil are you, sir?” as clearly as though the General himself had given utterance to the words. With the gentleman in the window talking to Clive he seemed to have some acquaintance, and said not unkindly, “How d’you do, Dobbin?”

The carriage of Sir Brian Newcome now drove up, from which the Baronet descended in state, leaning upon the arm of the Apollo in plush and powder, who closed the shutters of the great coach, and mounted by the side of the coachman, laced and periwigged. The Bench of Bishops has given up its wigs; cannot the box, too, be made to resign that insane decoration? Is it necessary for our comfort, that the men who do our work in stable or household should be dressed like Merry-Andrews? Enter Sir Brian Newcome, smiling blandly: he greets his brother affectionately, Sir Thomas gaily; he nods and smiles to Clive, and graciously permits Mr. Pendennis to take hold of two fingers of his extended right hand. That gentleman is charmed, of course, with the condescension. What man could be otherwise than happy to be allowed a momentary embrace of two such precious fingers? When a gentleman so favours me, I always ask, mentally, why he has taken the trouble at all, and regret that I have not had the presence of mind to poke one finger against his two. If I were worth ten thousand a year, I cannot help inwardly reflecting, and kept a large account in Threadneedle Street, I cannot help thinking he would have favoured me with the whole palm.

The arrival of these two grandees has somehow cast a solemnity over the company. The weather is talked about: brilliant in itself, it does not occasion very brilliant remarks among Colonel Newcome’s guests. Sir Brian really thinks it must be as hot as it is in India. Sir Thomas de Boots, swelling in his white waistcoat, in the armholes of which his thumbs are engaged, smiles scornfully, and wishes Sir Brian had ever felt a good sweltering day in the hot winds in India. Sir Brian withdraws the untenable proposition that London is as hot as Calcutta. Mr. Binnie looks at his watch, and at the Colonel. “We have only your nephew, Tom, to wait for,” he says; “I think we may make so bold as to order the dinner,”—a proposal heartily seconded by Mr. Frederick Bayham.

The dinner appears steaming, borne by steaming waiters. The grandees take their places, one on each side of the Colonel. He begs Mr. Honeyman to say grace, and stands reverentially during that brief ceremony, while de Boots looks queerly at him from over his napkin. All the young men take their places at the farther end of the table, round about Mr. Binnie; and at the end of the second course Mr. Barnes Newcome makes his appearance.

Mr. Barnes does not show the slightest degree of disturbance, although he disturbs all the company. Soup and fish are brought for him, and meat, which he leisurely eats, while twelve other gentlemen are kept waiting. We mark Mr. Binnie’s twinkling eyes, as they watch the young man. “Eh,” he seems to say, “but that’s just about as free-and-easy a young chap as ever I set eyes on.” And so Mr. Barnes was a cool young chap. That dish is so good, he must really have some more. He discusses the second supply leisurely; and turning round simpering to his neighbour, says, “I really hope I’m not keeping everybody waiting.”

“Hem!” grunts the neighbour, Mr. Bayham; “it doesn’t much matter, for we had all pretty well done dinner.” Barnes takes a note of Mr. Bayham’s dress—his long frock-coat, the ribbon round his neck; and surveys him with an admirable impudence. “Who are these people,” thinks he, “my uncle has got together?” He bows graciously to the honest Colonel, who asks him to take wine. He is so insufferably affable, that every man near him would like to give him a beating.

All the time of the dinner the host was challenging everybody to drink wine, in his honest old-fashioned way, and Mr. Binnie seconding the chief entertainer. Such was the way in England and Scotland when they were young men. And when Binnie, asking Sir Brian, receives for reply from the Baronet—“Thank you, no, my dear sir. I have exceeded already, positively exceeded,” the poor discomfited gentleman hardly knows whither to apply: but, luckily, Tom Norris, the first mate, comes to his rescue, and cries out, “Mr. Binnie, I’ve not had enough, and I’ll drink a glass of anything ye like with ye.” The fact is, that Mr. Norris has had enough. He has drunk bumpers to the health of every member of the company; his glass has been filled scores of times by watchful waiters. So has Mr. Bayham absorbed great quantities of drink; but without any visible effect on that veteran toper. So has young Clive taken more than is good for him. His cheeks are flushed and burning; he is chattering and laughing loudly at his end of the table. Mr. Warrington eyes the lad with some curiosity; and then regards Mr. Barnes with a look of scorn, which does not scorch that affable young person.

I am obliged to confess that the mate of the Indiaman, at an early period of the dessert, and when nobody had asked him for any such public expression of his opinion, insisted on rising and proposing the health of Colonel Newcome, whose virtues he lauded outrageously, and whom he pronounced to be one of the best of mortal men. Sir Brian looked very much alarmed at the commencement of this speech, which the mate delivered with immense shrieks and gesticulation: but the Baronet recovered during the course of the rambling oration, and at its conclusion gracefully tapped the table with one of those patronising fingers; and lifting up a glass containing at least a thimbleful of claret, said, “My dear brother, I drink your health with all my heart, I’m su-ah.” The youthful Barnes had uttered many “Hear, hears!” during the discourse, with an irony which, with every fresh glass of wine he drank, he cared less to conceal. And though Barnes had come late he had drunk largely, making up for lost time.

Those ironical cheers, and all his cousin’s behaviour during dinner, had struck young Clive, who was growing very angry. He growled out remarks uncomplimentary to Barnes. His eyes, as he looked towards his kinsman, flashed out challenges, of which we who were watching him could see the warlike purport. Warrington looked at Bayham and Pendennis with glances of apprehension. We saw that danger was brooding, unless the one young man could be restrained from his impertinence, and the other from his wine.

Colonel Newcome said a very few words in reply to his honest friend the chief mate, and there the matter might have ended: but I am sorry to say Mr. Binnie now thought it necessary to rise and deliver himself of some remarks regarding the King’s service, coupled with the name of Major-General Sir Thomas de Boots, K.C.B., etc.—the receipt of which that gallant officer was obliged to acknowledge in a confusion amounting almost to apoplexy. The glasses went whack whack upon the hospitable board; the evening set in for public speaking. Encouraged by his last effort, Mr. Binnie now proposed Sir Brian Newcome’s health; and that Baronet rose and uttered an exceedingly lengthy speech, delivered with his wine-glass on his bosom.

Then that sad rogue Bayham must get up, and call earnestly and respectfully for silence and the chairman’s hearty sympathy, for the few observations which he had to propose. “Our armies had been drunk with proper enthusiasm—such men as he beheld around him deserved the applause of all honest hearts, and merited the cheers with which their names had been received. (‘Hear, hear!’ from Barnes Newcome sarcastically. ‘Hear, hear, HEAR!’ fiercely from Clive.) But whilst we applauded our army, should we forget a profession still more exalted? Yes, still more exalted, I say in the face of the gallant General opposite; and that profession, I need not say, is the Church. (Applause.) Gentlemen, we have among us one who, while partaking largely of the dainties on this festive board, drinking freely of the sparkling wine-cup which our gallant hospitality administers to us, sanctifies by his presence the feast of which he partakes, inaugurates with appropriate benedictions, and graces it, I may say, both before and after meat. Gentlemen, Charles Honeyman was the friend of my childhood, his father the instructor of my early days. If Frederick Bayham’s latter life has been chequered by misfortune, it may be that I have forgotten the precepts which the venerable parent of Charles Honeyman poured into an inattentive ear. He too, as a child, was not exempt from faults; as a young man, I am told, not quite free from youthful indiscretions. But in this present Anno Domini, we hail Charles Honeyman as a precept and an example, as a decus fidei and a lumen ecclesiæ (as I told him in the confidence of the private circle this morning, and ere I ever thought to publish my opinion in this distinguished company). Colonel Newcome and Mr. Binnie! I drink to the health of the Reverend Charles Honeyman, A.M. May we listen to many more of his sermons, as well as to that admirable discourse with which I am sure he is about to electrify us now. May we profit by his eloquence; and cherish in our memories the truths which come mended from his tongue!” He ceased; poor Honeyman had to rise on his legs, and gasp out a few incoherent remarks in reply. Without a book before him, the Incumbent of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel was no prophet, and the truth is he made poor work of his oration.

At the end of it, he, Sir Brian, Colonel Dobbin, and one of the Indian gentlemen quitted the room, in spite of the loud outcries of our generous host, who insisted that the party should not break up. “Close up, gentlemen,” called out honest Newcome, “we are not going to part just yet. Let me fill your glass, General. You used to have no objection to a glass of wine.” And he poured out a bumper for his friend, which the old campaigner sucked in with fitting gusto. “Who will give us a song? Binnie, give us the ‘Laird of Cockpen.’ It’s capital, my dear General. Capital,” the Colonel whispered to his neighbour.

Mr. Binnie struck up the “Laird of Cockpen,” without, I am bound to say, the least reluctance. He bobbed to one man, and he winked to another, and he tossed his glass, and gave all the points of his song in a manner which did credit to his simplicity and his humour. You haughty Southerners little know how a jolly Scotch gentleman can desipere in loco, and how he chirrups over his honest cups. I do not say whether it was with the song or with Mr. Binnie that we were most amused. It was a good commonty, as Christopher Sly says; nor were we sorry when it was done.

Him the first mate succeeded; after which came a song from the redoubted F. Bayham, which he sang with a bass voice which Lablache might envy, and of which the chorus was frantically sung by the whole company. The cry was then for the Colonel; on which Barnes Newcome, who had been drinking much, started up with something like an oath, crying, “Oh, I can’t stand this.”

“Then leave it, confound you!” said young Clive, with fury in his face. “If our company is not good for you, why do you come into it?”

“What’s that?” asks Barnes, who was evidently affected by wine. Bayham roared “Silence!” and Barnes Newcome, looking round with a tipsy toss of the head, finally sate down.

The Colonel sang, as we have said, with a very high voice, using freely the falsetto, after the manner of the tenor singers of his day. He chose one of his maritime songs, and got through the first verse very well, Barnes wagging his head at the chorus, with a “Bravo!” so offensive that Fred Bayham, his neighbour, gripped the young man’s arm, and told him to hold his confounded tongue.

The Colonel began his second verse: and here, as will often happen to amateur singers, his falsetto broke down. He was not in the least annoyed, for I saw him smile very good-naturedly; and he was going to try the verse again, when that unlucky Barnes first gave a sort of crowing imitation of the song, and then burst into a yell of laughter. Clive dashed a glass of wine in his face at the next minute, glass and all; and no one who had watched the young man’s behaviour was sorry for the insult.

I never saw a kind face express more terror than Colonel Newcome’s. He started back as if he had himself received the blow from his son. “Gracious God!” he cried out. “My boy insult a gentleman at my table!”

“I’d like to do it again,” says Clive, whose whole body was trembling with anger.

“Are you drunk, sir?” shouted his father.

“The boy served the young fellow right, sir,” growled Fred Bayham in his deepest voice. “Come along, young man. Stand up straight, and keep a civil tongue in your head next time, mind you, when you dine with gentlemen. It’s easy to see,” says Fred, looking round with a knowing air, “that this young man hasn’t got the usages of society—he’s not been accustomed to it:” and he led the dandy out.

Others had meanwhile explained the state of the case to the Colonel—including Sir Thomas de Boots, who was highly energetic and delighted with Clive’s spirit; and some were for having the song to continue; but the Colonel, puffing his cigar, said, “No. My pipe is out. I will never sing again.” So this history will record no more of Thomas Newcome’s musical performances.

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XIV. Park Lane

Clive woke up the next morning to be aware of a racking headache, and, by the dim light of his throbbing eyes, to behold his father with solemn face at his bed-foot—a reproving conscience to greet his waking.

“You drank too much wine last night, and disgraced yourself, sir,” the old soldier said. “You must get up and eat humble pie this morning, my boy.”

“Humble what, father?” asked the lad, hardly aware of his words, or the scene before him. “Oh, I’ve got such a headache!”

“Serve you right, sir. Many a young fellow has had to go on parade in the morning, with a headache earned overnight. Drink this water. Now, jump up. Now, dash the water well over your head. There you come! Make your toilette quickly; and let us be off, and find cousin Barnes before he has left home.”

Clive obeyed the paternal orders; dressed himself quickly; and descending, found his father smoking his morning cigar in the apartment where they had dined the night before, and where the tables still were covered with the relics of yesterday’s feast—the emptied bottles, the blank lamps, the scattered ashes and fruits, the wretched heel-taps that have been lying exposed all night to the air. Who does not know the aspect of an expired feast?

“The field of action strewed with the dead, my boy,” says Clive’s father. “See, here’s the glass on the floor yet, and a great stain of claret on the carpet.”

“Oh, father!” says Clive, hanging his head down, “I know I shouldn’t have done it. But Barnes Newcome would provoke the patience of Job; and I couldn’t bear to have my father insulted.”

“I am big enough to fight my own battles, my boy,” the Colonel said good-naturedly, putting his hand on the lad’s damp head. “How your head throbs! If Barnes laughed at my singing, depend upon it, sir, there was something ridiculous in it, and he laughed because he could not help it. If he behaved ill, we should not; and to a man who is eating our salt too, and is of our blood.”

“He is ashamed of our blood, father,” cries Clive, still indignant.

“We ought to be ashamed of doing wrong. We must go and ask his pardon. Once when I was a young man in India,” the father continued very gravely, “some hot words passed at mess—not such an insult as that of last night; I don’t think I could have quite borne that—and people found fault with me for forgiving the youngster who had uttered the offensive expressions over his wine. Some of my acquaintance sneered at my courage, and that is a hard imputation for a young fellow of spirit to bear. But providentially, you see, it was war-time, and very soon after I had the good luck to show that I was not a poule mouillée, as the French call it; and the man who insulted me, and whom I forgave, became my fastest friend, and died by my side—it was poor Jack Cutler—at Argaum. We must go and ask Barnes Newcome’s pardon, sir, and forgive other people’s trespasses, my boy, if we hope forgiveness of our own.” His voice sank down as he spoke, and he bowed his honest head reverently. I have heard his son tell the simple story years afterwards, with tears in his eyes.

Piccadilly was hardly yet awake the next morning, and the sparkling dews and the poor homeless vagabonds still had possession of the grass of Hyde Park, as the pair walked up to Sir Brian Newcome’s house, where the shutters were just opening to let in the day. The housemaid, who was scrubbing the steps of the house, and washing its trim feet in a manner which became such a polite mansion’s morning toilet, knew Master Clive, and smiled at him from under her blousy curl-papers, admitting the two gentlemen into Sir Brian’s dining-room, where they proposed to wait until Mr. Barnes should appear. There they sate for an hour looking at Lawrence’s picture of Lady Anne, leaning over a harp, attired in white muslin; at Harlowe’s portrait of Mrs. Newcome, with her two sons simpering at her knees, painted at a time when the Newcome Brothers were not the bald-headed, red-whiskered British merchants with whom the reader has made acquaintance, but chubby children with hair flowing down their backs, and quaint little swallow-tailed jackets and nankeen trousers. A splendid portrait of the late Earl of Kew in his peer’s robes hangs opposite his daughter and her harp. We are writing of George the Fourth’s reign; I dare say there hung in the room a fine framed print of that great sovereign. The chandelier is in a canvas bag; the vast sideboard, whereon are erected open frames for the support of Sir Brian Newcome’s grand silver trays, which on dinner days gleam on that festive board, now groans under the weight of Sir Brian’s bluebooks. An immense receptacle for wine, shaped like a Roman sarcophagus, lurks under the sideboard. Two people sitting at that large dining-table must talk very loud so as to make themselves heard across those great slabs of mahogany covered with damask. The butler and servants who attend at the table take a long time walking round it. I picture to myself two persons of ordinary size sitting in that great room at that great table, far apart, in neat evening costume, sipping a little sherry, silent, genteel, and glum; and think the great and wealthy are not always to be envied, and that there may be more comfort and happiness in a snug parlour, where you are served by a brisk little maid, than in a great dark, dreary dining-hall, where a funereal major-domo and a couple of stealthy footmen minister to you your mutton-chops. They come and lay the cloth presently, wide as the main-sheet of some tall ammiral. A pile of newspapers and letters for the master of the house; the Newcome Sentinel, old county paper, moderate conservative, in which our worthy townsman and member is praised, his benefactions are recorded, and his speeches given at full length; the Newcome Independent, in which our precious member is weekly described as a ninny, and informed almost every Thursday morning that he is a bloated aristocrat, as he munches his dry toast. Heaps of letters, county papers, Times and Morning Herald for Sir Brian Newcome; little heaps of letters (dinner and soirée cards most of these) and Morning Post for Mr. Barnes. Punctually as eight o’clock strikes, that young gentleman comes to breakfast; his father will lie yet for another hour; the Baronet’s prodigious labours in the House of Commons keeping him frequently out of bed till sunrise.

As his cousin entered the room, Clive turned very red, and perhaps a faint blush might appear on Barnes’s pallid countenance. He came in, a handkerchief in one hand, a pamphlet in the other, and both hands being thus engaged, he could offer neither to his kinsmen.

“You are come to breakfast, I hope,” he said—calling it “weakfast,” and pronouncing the words with a most languid drawl—“or, perhaps, you want to see my father? He is never out of his room till half-past nine. Harper, did Sir Brian come in last night before or after me?” Harper, the butler, thinks Sir Brian came in after Mr. Barnes.

When that functionary had quitted the room, Barnes turned round to his uncle in a candid, smiling way, and said, “The fact is, sir, I don’t know when I came home myself very distinctly, and can’t, of course, tell about my father. Generally, you know, there are two candles left in the hall, you know; and if there are two, you know, I know of course that my father is still at the House. But last night, after that capital song you sang, hang me if I know what happened to me. I beg your pardon, sir, I’m shocked at having been so overtaken. Such a confounded thing doesn’t happen to me once in ten years. I do trust I didn’t do anything rude to anybody, for I thought some of your friends the pleasantest fellows I ever met in my life; and as for the claret, ’gad, as if I hadn’t had enough after dinner, I brought a quantity of it away with me on my shirt-front and waistcoat!”

“I beg your pardon, Barnes,” Clive said, blushing deeply, “and I’m very sorry indeed for what passed; I threw it.”

The Colonel, who had been listening with a queer expression of wonder and doubt on his face, here interrupted Mr. Barnes. “It was Clive that—that spilled the wine over you last night,” Thomas Newcome said; “the young rascal had drunk a great deal too much wine, and had neither the use of his head nor his hands, and this morning I have given him a lecture, and he has come to ask your pardon for his clumsiness; and if you have forgotten your share in the night’s transaction, I hope you have forgotten his, and will accept his hand and his apology.”

“Apology: There’s no apology,” cries Barnes, holding out a couple of fingers of his hand, but looking towards the Colonel. “I don’t know what happened any more than the dead. Did we have a row? Were there any glasses broken? The best way in such cases is to sweep ’em up. We can’t mend them.”

The Colonel said gravely—“that he was thankful to find that the disturbance of the night before had no worse result.” He pulled the tail of Clive’s coat, when that unlucky young blunderer was about to trouble his cousin with indiscreet questions or explanations, and checked his talk. “The other night you saw an old man in drink, my boy,” he said, “and to what shame and degradation the old wretch had brought himself. Wine has given you a warning too, which I hope you will remember all your life; no one has seen me the worse for drink these forty years, and I hope both you young gentlemen will take counsel by an old soldier, who fully preaches what he practises, and beseeches you to beware of the bottle.”

After quitting their kinsman, the kind Colonel further improved the occasion with his son; and told him out of his own experience many stories of quarrels, and duels, and wine;—how the wine had occasioned the brawls, and the foolish speech overnight the bloody meeting at morning; how he had known widows and orphans made by hot words uttered in idle orgies: how the truest honour was the manly confession of wrong; and the best courage the courage to avoid temptation. The humble-minded speaker, whose advice contained the best of all wisdom, that which comes from a gentle and reverent spirit, and a pure and generous heart, never for once thought of the effect which he might be producing, but uttered his simple say according to the truth within him. Indeed, he spoke out his mind pretty resolutely on all subjects which moved or interested him; and Clive, his son, and his honest chum, Mr. Binnie, who had a great deal more reading and much keener intelligence than the Colonel, were amused often at his naive opinion about men, or books, or morals. Mr. Clive had a very fine natural sense of humour, which played perpetually round his father’s simple philosophy with kind and smiling comments. Between this pair of friends the superiority of wit lay, almost from the very first, on the younger man’s side; but, on the other hand, Clive felt a tender admiration for his father’s goodness, a loving delight in contemplating his elder’s character, which he has never lost, and which in the trials of their future life inexpressibly cheered and consoled both of them! Beati illi! O man of the world, whose wearied eyes may glance over this page, may those who come after you so regard you! O generous boy, who read in it, may you have such a friend to trust and cherish in youth, and in future days fondly and proudly to remember!

Some four or five weeks after the quasi-reconciliation between Clive and his kinsman, the chief part of Sir Brian Newcome’s family were assembled at the breakfast-table together, where the meal was taken in common, and at the early hour of eight (unless the senator was kept too late in the House of Commons overnight); and Lady Anne and her nursery were now returned to London again, little Alfred being perfectly set up by a month of Brighton air. It was a Thursday morning; on which day of the week, it has been said, the Newcome Independent and the Newcome Sentinel both made their appearance upon the Baronet’s table. The household from above and from below; the maids and footmen from the basement; the nurses, children, and governesses from the attics; all poured into the room at the sound of a certain bell.

I do not sneer at the purpose for which, at that chiming eight-o’clock bell, the household is called together. The urns are hissing, the plate is shining; the father of the house, standing up, reads from a gilt book for three or four minutes in a measured cadence. The members of the family are around the table in an attitude of decent reverence; the younger children whisper responses at their mother’s knees; the governess worships a little apart; the maids and the large footmen are in a cluster before their chairs, the upper servants performing their devotion on the other side of the sideboard; the nurse whisks about the unconscious last-born, and tosses it up and down during the ceremony. I do not sneer at that—at the act at which all these people are assembled—it is at the rest of the day I marvel; at the rest of the day, and what it brings. At the very instant when the voice has ceased speaking and the gilded book is shut, the world begins again, and for the next twenty-three hours and fifty-seven minutes all that household is given up to it. The servile squad rises up and marches away to its basement, whence, should it happen to be a gala-day, those tall gentlemen at present attired in Oxford mixture will issue forth with flour plastered on their heads, yellow coats, pink breeches, sky-blue waistcoats, silver lace, buckles in their shoes, black silk bags on their backs, and I don’t know what insane emblems of servility and absurd bedizenments of folly. Their very manner of speaking to what we call their masters and mistresses will be a like monstrous masquerade. You know no more of that race which inhabits the basement floor, than of the men and brethren of Timbuctoo, to whom some among us send missionaries. If you met some of your servants in the streets (I respectfully suppose for a moment that the reader is a person of high fashion and a great establishment), you would not know their faces. You might sleep under the same roof for half a century and know nothing about them. If they were ill, you would not visit them, though you would send them an apothecary and of course order that they lacked for nothing. You are not unkind, you are not worse than your neighbours. Nay, perhaps, if you did go into the kitchen, or to take the tea in the servants’-hall, you would do little good, and only bore the folks assembled there. But so it is. With those fellow-Christians who have been just saying Amen to your prayers, you have scarcely the community of Charity. They come, you don’t know whence; they think and talk, you don’t know what; they die, and you don’t care, or vice versâ. They answer the bell for prayers as they answer the bell for coals: for exactly three minutes in the day you all kneel together on one carpet—and, the desires and petitions of the servants and masters over, the rite called family worship is ended.

Exeunt servants, save those two who warm the newspaper, administer the muffins, and serve out the tea. Sir Brian reads his letters, and chumps his dry toast. Ethel whispers to her mother, she thinks Eliza is looking very ill. Lady Anne asks, which is Eliza? Is it the woman that was ill before they left town? If she is ill, Mrs. Trotter had better send her away. Mrs. Trotter is only a great deal too good-natured. She is always keeping people who are ill. Then her ladyship begins to read the Morning Post, and glances over the names of the persons who were present at Baroness Bosco’s ball, and Mrs. Toddle Tompkyns’s soirée dansante in Belgrave Square.

“Everybody was there,” says Barnes, looking over from his paper.

“But who is Mrs. Toddle Tompkyns?” asks mamma. “Who ever heard of a Mrs. Toddle Tompkyns? What do people mean by going to such a person?”

“Lady Popinjoy asked the people,” Barnes says gravely. “The thing was really doosed well done. The woman looked frightened; but she’s pretty, and I am told the daughter will have a great lot of money.”

“Is she pretty, and did you dance with her?” asks Ethel.

“Me dance!” says Mr. Barnes. We are speaking of a time before casinos were, and when the British youth were by no means so active in dancing practice as at this present period. Barnes resumed the reading of his county paper, but presently laid it down, with an execration so brisk and loud, that his mother gave a little outcry, and even his father looked up from his letters to ask the meaning of an oath so unexpected and ungenteel.

“My uncle, the Colonel of sepoys, and his amiable son have been paying a visit to Newcome—that’s the news which I have the pleasure to announce to you,” says Mr. Barnes.

“You are always sneering about our uncle,” breaks in Ethel, with impetuous voice, “and saying unkind things about Clive. Our uncle is a dear, good, kind man, and I love him. He came to Brighton to see us, and went out every day for hours and hours with Alfred; and Clive, too, drew pictures for him. And he is good, and kind, and generous, and honest as his father. And Barnes is always speaking ill of him behind his back.”

“And his aunt lets very nice lodgings, and is altogether a most desirable acquaintance,” says Mr. Barnes. “What a shame it is that we have not cultivated that branch of the family!”

“My dear fellow,” cries Sir Brian, “I have no doubt Miss Honeyman is a most respectable person. Nothing is so ungenerous as to rebuke a gentleman or a lady on account of their poverty, and I coincide with Ethel in thinking that you speak of your uncle and his son in terms which, to say the least, are disrespectful.”

“Miss Honeyman is a dear little old woman,” breaks in Ethel. “Was not she kind to Alfred, mamma, and did not she make him nice jelly? And a Doctor of Divinity—you know Clive’s grandfather was a Doctor of Divinity, mamma, there’s a picture of him in a wig—is just as good as a banker, you know he is.”

“Did you bring some of Miss Honeyman’s lodging-house cards with you, Ethel?” says her brother, “and had we not better hang up one or two in Lombard Street; hers and our other relation’s, Mrs. Mason?”

“My darling love, who is Mrs. Mason?” asks Lady Anne.

“Another member of the family, ma’am. She was cousin——”

“She was no such thing, sir,” roars Sir Brian.

“She was relative and housemaid of my grandfather during his first marriage. She acted, I believe, as dry nurse to the distinguished Colonel of sepoys, my uncle. She has retired into private life in her native town of Newcome, and occupies her latter days by the management of a mangle. The Colonel and young pothouse have gone down to spend a few days with their elderly relative. It’s all here in the paper, by Jove!” Mr. Barnes clenched his fist, and stamped upon the newspaper with much energy.

“And so they should go down and see her, and so the Colonel should love his nurse, and not forget his relations if they are old and poor,” cries Ethel, with a flush on her face, and tears starting into her eyes.

“Hear what the Newcome papers say about it,” shrieks out Mr. Barnes, his voice quivering, his little eyes flashing out scorn. “It’s in both the papers, I dare say. It will be in the Times to-morrow. By —— it’s delightful. Our paper only mentions the gratifying circumstance; here is the paragraph. ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome, C.B., a distinguished Indian officer, and younger brother of our respected townsman and representative Sir Brian Newcome, Bart., has been staying for the last week at the King’s Arms, in our city. He has been visited by the principal inhabitants and leading gentlemen of Newcome, and has come among us, as we understand, in order to pass a few days with an elderly relative, who has been living for many years past in great retirement in this place.’”

“Well, I see no great harm in that paragraph,” says Sir Brian. “I wish my brother had gone to the Roebuck, and not to the King’s Arms, as the Roebuck is our house: but he could not be expected to know much about the Newcome inns, as he is a new-comer himself. And I think it was very right of the people to call on him.”

“Now hear what the Independent says, and see if you like that, sir,” cries Barnes, grinning fiercely; and he began to read as follows:—

“‘Mr. Independent—I was born and bred a Screwcomite, and am naturally proud of everybody and everything which bears the revered name of Screwcome. I am a Briton and a man, though I have not the honour of a vote for my native borough; if I had, you may be sure I would give it to our admired and talented representative, Don Pomposo Lickspittle Grindpauper, Poor House Agincourt, Screwcome, whose ancestors fought with Julius Cæsar against William the Conqueror, and whose father certainly wielded a cloth yard shaft in London not fifty years ago.

“‘Don Pomposo, as you know, seldom favours the town o Screwcome with a visit.—Our gentry are not of ancient birth enough to be welcome to a Lady Screwcome. Our manufacturers make their money by trade. Oh, fie I how can it be supposed that such vulgarians should be received among the aristocratic society of Screwcome House? Two balls in the season, and ten dozen o gooseberry, are enough for them.’”

“It’s that scoundrel Parrot,” burst out Sir Brian; “because I wouldn’t have any more wine of him—No, it’s Vidler, the apothecary. By heavens! Lady Anne, I told you it would be so. Why didn’t you ask the Miss Vidlers to your ball?”

“They were on the list,” cries Lady Anne, “three of them; I did everything I could; I consulted Mr. Vidler for poor Alfred, and he actually stopped and saw the dear child take the physic. Why were they not asked to the ball?” cries her ladyship bewildered; “I declare to gracious goodness I don’t know.”

“Barnes scratched their names,” cries Ethel, “out of the list, mamma. You know you did, Barnes; you said you had gallipots enough.”

“I don’t think it is like Vidler’s writing,” said Mr. Barnes, perhaps willing to turn the conversation. “I think it must be that villain Duff the baker, who made the song about us at the last election;—but hear the rest of the paragraph,” and he continued to read:—

“‘The Screwcomites are at this moment favoured with a visit from a gentleman of the Screwcome family, who, having passed all his life abroad, is somewhat different from his relatives, whom we all so love and honour! This distinguished gentleman, this gallant soldier, has come among us, not merely to see our manufactures—in which Screwcome can vie with any city in the North—but an old servant and relation of his family, whom he is not above recognising; who nursed him in his early days; who has been living in her native place for many years, supported by the generous bounty of Colonel N———. The gallant officer, accompanied by his son, a fine youth, has taken repeated drives round our beautiful environs in one of friend Taplow’s (of the King’s Arms) open drags, and accompanied by Mrs. ———, now an aged lady, who speaks, with tears in her eyes, of the goodness and gratitude of her gallant soldier!

“‘One day last week they drove to Screwcome House. Will it be believed that, though the house is only four miles distant from our city—though Don Pomposo’s family have inhabited it these twelve years for four or five months every year—Mrs. M——— saw her cousin’s house for the first time; has never set eyes upon those grandees, except in public places, since the day when they honoured the county by purchasing the estate which they own?

“‘I have, as I repeat, no vote for the borough; but if I had, oh, wouldn’t I show my respectful gratitude at the next election, and plump for Pomposo! I shall keep my eye upon him, and am, Mr. Independent,—Your Constant Reader, Peeping Tom.’”

“The spirit of radicalism abroad in this country,” said Sir Brian Newcome, crushing his egg-shell desperately, “is dreadful, really dreadful. We are on the edge of a positive volcano.” Down went the egg-spoon into its crater. “The worst sentiments are everywhere publicly advocated; the licentiousness of the press has reached a pinnacle which menaces us with ruin; there is no law which these shameless newspapers respect; no rank which is safe from their attacks; no ancient landmark which the lava-flood of democracy does not threaten to overwhelm and destroy.”

“When I was at Spielburg,” Barnes Newcome remarked kindly, “I saw three long-bearded, putty-faced blaguards pacin up and down a little courtyard, and Count Keppenheimer told me they were three damned editors of Milanese newspapers, who had had seven years of imprisonment already; and last year when Keppenheimer came to shoot at Newcome, I showed him that old thief, old Batters, the proprietor of the Independent, and Potts, his infernal ally, driving in a dogcart; and I said to him, Keppenheimer, I wish we had a place where we could lock up some of our infernal radicals of the press, or that you could take off those two villains to Spielburg; and as we were passin, that infernal Potts burst out laughin in my face, and cut one of my pointers over the head with his whip. We must do something with that Independent, sir.”

“We must,” says the father, solemnly, “we must put it down, Barnes, we must put it down.”

“I think,” says Barnes, “we had best give the railway advertisements to Batters.”

“But that makes the man of the Sentinel so angry,” says the elder persecutor of the press.

“Then let us give Tom Potts some shootin at any rate; the ruffian is always poachin about our covers as it is. Speers should be written to, sir, to keep a look-out upon Batters and that villain his accomplice, and to be civil to them, and that sort of thing; and, damn it, to be down upon them whenever he sees the opportunity.”

During the above conspiracy for bribing or crushing the independence of a great organ of British opinion, Miss Ethel Newcome held her tongue; but when her papa closed the conversation by announcing solemnly that he would communicate with Speers, Ethel turning to her mother said, “Mamma, is it true that grandpapa has a relation living at Newcome who is old and poor?”

“My darling child, how on earth should I know?” says Lady Anne. “I daresay Mr. Newcome had plenty of poor relations.”

“I am sure some on your side, Anne, have been good enough to visit me at the bank,” said Sir Brian, who thought his wife’s ejaculation was a reflection upon his family, whereas it was the statement of a simple fact in natural history. “This person was no relation of my father’s at all. She was remotely connected with his first wife, I believe. She acted as servant to him, and has been most handsomely pensioned by the Colonel.”

“Who went to her, like a kind, dear, good, brave uncle as he is,” cried Ethel; “the very day I go to Newcome I’ll go to see her.” She caught a look of negation in her father’s eye—“I will go—that is, if papa will give me leave,” says Miss Ethel.

“By Gad, sir,” says Barnes, “I think it is the very best thing she could do; and the best way of doing it, Ethel can go with one of the boys and take Mrs. What-do-you-call’em a gown, or a tract, or that sort of thing, and stop that infernal Independent’s mouth.”

“If we had gone sooner,” said Miss Ethel, simply, “there would not have been all this abuse of us in the paper.” To which statement her worldly father and brother perforce agreeing, we may congratulate good old Mrs. Mason upon the new and polite acquaintances she is about to make.

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XV. The Old Ladies

The above letter and conversation will show what our active Colonel’s movements and history had been since the last chapter in which they were recorded. He and Clive took the Liverpool mail, and travelled from Liverpool to Newcome with a post-chaise and a pair of horses, which landed them at the King’s Arms. The Colonel delighted in post-chaising—the rapid transit through the country amused him and cheered his spirits. Besides, had he not Dr. Johnson’s word for it, that a swift journey in a post-chaise was one of the greatest enjoyments in life, and a sojourn in a comfortable inn one of its chief pleasures? In travelling he was as happy and noisy as a boy. He talked to the waiters, and made friends with the landlord; got all the information which he could gather regarding the towns into which he came; and drove about from one sight or curiosity to another with indefatigable good-humour and interest. It was good for Clive to see men and cities; to visit mills, manufactories, country seats, cathedrals. He asked a hundred questions regarding all things round about him; and any one caring to know who Thomas Newcome was, and what his rank and business, found no difficulty in having his questions answered by the simple and kindly traveller.

Mine host of the King’s Arms, Mr. Taplow aforesaid, knew in five minutes who his guest was, and the errand on which he came. Was not Colonel Newcome’s name painted on all his trunks and boxes? Was not his servant ready to answer all questions regarding the Colonel and his son? Newcome pretty generally introduced Clive to my landlord, when the latter brought his guest his bottle of wine. With old-fashioned cordiality, the Colonel would bid the landlord drink a glass of his own liquor, and seldom failed to say to him, “This is my son, sir. We are travelling together to see the country. Every English gentleman should see his own country first, before he goes abroad, as we intend to do afterwards—to make the Grand Tour. And I will thank you to tell me what there is remarkable in your town, and what we ought to see—antiquities, manufactures, and seats in the neighbourhood. We wish to see everything, sir—everything. Elaborate diaries of these home tours are still extant, in Clive’s boyish manuscript and the Colonel’s dashing handwriting—quaint records of places visited, and alarming accounts of inn bills paid.”

So Mr. Taplow knew in five minutes that his guest was a brother of Sir Brian, their member; and saw the note despatched by an ostler to “Mrs. Sarah Mason, Jubilee Row,” announcing that the Colonel had arrived, and would be with her after his dinner. Mr. Taplow did not think fit to tell his guest that the house Sir Brian used—the Blue house—was the Roebuck, not the King’s Arms. Might not the gentlemen be of different politics? Mr. Taplow’s wine knew none.

Some of the jolliest fellows in all Newcome use the Boscawen Room at the King’s Arms as their club, and pass numberless merry evenings and crack countless jokes there.

Duff, the baker; old Mr. Vidler, when he can get away from his medical labours (and his hand shakes, it must be owned, very much now, and his nose is very red); Parrot, the auctioneer; and that amusing dog, Tom Potts, the talented reporter of the Independent—were pretty constant attendants at the King’s Arms; and Colonel Newcome’s dinner was not over before some of these gentlemen knew what dishes he had had; how he had called for a bottle of sherry and a bottle of claret, like a gentleman; how he had paid the postboys, and travelled with a servant like a top-sawyer; that he was come to shake hands with an old nurse and relative of his family. Every one of those jolly Britons thought well of the Colonel for his affectionateness and liberality, and contrasted it with the behaviour of the Tory Baronet—their representative.

His arrival made a sensation in the place. The Blue Club at the Roebuck discussed it, as well as the uncompromising Liberals at the King’s Arms. Mr. Speers, Sir Brian’s agent, did not know how to act, and advised Sir Brian by the next night’s mail, The Reverend Dr. Bulders, the rector, left his card.

Meanwhile it was not gain or business, but only love and gratitude, which brought Thomas Newcome to his father’s native town. Their dinner over, away went the Colonel and Clive, guided by the ostler, their previous messenger, to the humble little tenement which Thomas Newcome’s earliest friend inhabited. The good old woman put her spectacles into her Bible, and flung herself into her boy’s arms—her boy who was more than fifty years old. She embraced Clive still more eagerly and frequently than she kissed his father. She did not know her Colonel with them whiskers. Clive was the very picture of the dear boy as he had left her almost twoscore years ago. And as fondly as she hung on the boy, her memory had ever clung round that early time when they were together. The good soul told endless tales of her darling’s childhood, his frolics and beauty. To-day was uncertain to her, but the past was still bright and clear. As they sat prattling together over the bright tea-table, attended by the trim little maid, whose services the Colonel’s bounty secured for his old nurse, the kind old creature insisted on having Clive by her side. Again and again she would think he was actually her own boy, forgetting, in that sweet and pious hallucination, that the bronzed face, and thinned hair, and melancholy eyes of the veteran before her, were those of her nursling of old days. So for near half the space of man’s allotted life he had been absent from her, and day and night wherever he was, in sickness or health, in sorrow or danger, her innocent love and prayers had attended the absent darling. Not in vain, not in vain, does he live whose course is so befriended. Let us be thankful for our race, as we think of the love that blesses some of us. Surely it has something of Heaven in it, and angels celestial may rejoice in it, and admire it.

Having nothing whatever to do, our Colonel’s movements are of course exceedingly rapid, and he has the very shortest time to spend in any single place. That evening, Saturday, and the next day, Sunday, when he will faithfully accompany his dear old nurse to church. And what a festival is that day for her, when she has her Colonel and that beautiful brilliant boy of his by her side, and Mr. Hicks, the curate, looking at him, and the venerable Dr. Bulders himself eyeing him from the pulpit, and all the neighbours fluttering and whispering, to be sure, who can be that fine military gentleman, and that splendid young man sitting by old Mrs. Mason, and leading her so affectionately out of church? That Saturday and Sunday the Colonel will pass with good old Mason, but on Monday he must be off; on Tuesday he must be in London, he has important business in London,—in fact, Tom Hamilton, of his regiment, comes up for election at the Oriental on that day, and on such an occasion could Thomas Newcome be absent? He drives away from the King’s Arms through a row of smirking chambermaids, smiling waiters, and thankful ostlers, accompanied to the post-chaise, of which the obsequious Taplow shuts the door; and the Boscawen Room pronounces him that night to be a trump; and the whole of the busy town, ere the next day is over, has heard of his coming and departure, praised his kindliness and generosity, and no doubt contrasted it with the different behaviour of the Baronet, his brother, who has gone for some time by the ignominious sobriquet of Screwcome, in the neighbourhood of his ancestral hall.

Dear old nurse Mason will have a score of visits to make and to receive, at all of which you may be sure that triumphal advent of the Colonel’s will be discussed and admired. Mrs. Mason will show her beautiful new India shawl, and her splendid Bible with the large print, and the affectionate inscription, from Thomas Newcome to his dearest old friend; her little maid will exhibit her new gown; the curate will see the Bible, and Mrs. Bulders will admire the shawl; and the old friends and humble companions of the good old lady, as they take their Sunday walks by the pompous lodge-gates of Newcome Park, which stand with the Baronet’s new-fangled arms over them, gilded, and filagreed, and barred, will tell their stories, too, about the kind Colonel and his hard brother. When did Sir Brian ever visit a poor old woman’s cottage, or his bailiff exempt from the rent? What good action, except a few thin blankets and beggarly coal and soup tickets, did Newcome Park ever do for the poor? And as for the Colonel’s wealth, Lord bless you, he’s been in India these five-and-thirty years; the Baronet’s money is a drop in the sea to his. The Colonel is the kindest, the best, the richest of men. These facts and opinions, doubtless, inspired the eloquent pen of “Peeping Tom,” when he indited the sarcastic epistle to the Newcome Independent, which we perused over Sir Brian Newcome’s shoulder in the last chapter.

And you may be sure Thomas Newcome had not been many weeks in England before good little Miss Honeyman, at Brighton, was favoured with a visit from her dear Colonel. The envious Gawler scowling out of his bow-window, where the fly-blown card still proclaimed that his lodgings were unoccupied, had the mortification to behold a yellow post-chaise drive up to Miss Honeyman’s door, and having discharged two gentlemen from within, trot away with servant and baggage to some house of entertainment other than Gawler’s. Whilst this wretch was cursing his own ill fate, and execrating yet more deeply Miss Honeyman’s better fortune, the worthy little lady was treating her Colonel to a sisterly embrace and a solemn reception. Hannah, the faithful housekeeper, was presented, and had a shake of the hand. The Colonel knew all about Hannah: ere he had been in England a week, a basket containing pots of jam of her confection, and a tongue of Hannah’s curing, had arrived for the Colonel. That very night when his servant had lodged Colonel Newcome’s effects at the neighbouring hotel, Hannah was in possession of one of the Colonel’s shirts, she and her mistress having previously conspired to make a dozen of those garments for the family benefactor.

All the presents which Newcome had ever transmitted to his sister-in-law from India had been taken out of the cotton and lavender in which the faithful creature kept them. It was a fine hot day in June, but I promise you Miss Honeyman wore her blazing scarlet Cashmere shawl; her great brooch, representing the Taj of Agra, was in her collar; and her bracelets (she used to say, I am given to understand they are called bangles, my dear, by the natives) decorated the sleeves round her lean old hands, which trembled with pleasure as they received the kind grasp of the Colonel of colonels. How busy those hands had been that morning! What custards they had whipped!—what a triumph of pie-crusts they had achieved! Before Colonel Newcome had been ten minutes in the house, the celebrated veal-cutlets made their appearance. Was not the whole house adorned in expectation of his coming? Had not Mr. Kuhn, the affable foreign gentleman of the first-floor lodgers, prepared a French dish? Was not Betty on the look-out, and instructed to put the cutlets on the fire at the very moment when the Colonel’s carriage drove up to her mistress’s door? The good woman’s eyes twinkled, the kind old hand and voice shook, as, holding up a bright glass of Madeira, Miss Honeyman drank the Colonel’s health. “I promise you, my dear Colonel,” says she, nodding her head, adorned with a bristling superstructure of lace and ribbons, “I promise you, that I can drink your health in good wine!” The wine was of his own sending, and so were the China fire-screens, and the sandalwood workbox, and the ivory cardcase, and those magnificent pink and white chessmen, carved like little sepoys and mandarins, with the castles on elephants’ backs, George the Third and his queen in pink ivory, against the Emperor of China and lady in white—the delight of Clive’s childhood, the chief ornament of the old spinster’s sitting-room.

Miss Honeyman’s little feast was pronounced to be the perfection of cookery; and when the meal was over, came a noise of little feet at the parlour door, which being opened, there appeared, first, a tall nurse with a dancing baby; second and third, two little girls with little frocks, little trousers, long ringlets, blue eyes, and blue ribbons to match; fourth, Master Alfred, now quite recovered from his illness, and holding by the hand, fifth, Miss Ethel Newcome, blushing like a rose.

Hannah, grinning, acted as mistress of the ceremonies, calling out the names of “Miss Newcomes, Master Newcomes, to see the Colonel, if you please, ma’am,” bobbing a curtsey, and giving a knowing nod to Master Clive, as she smoothed her new silk apron. Hannah, too, was in new attire, all crisp and rustling, in the Colonel’s honour. Miss Ethel did not cease blushing as she advanced towards her uncle; and the honest campaigner started up, blushing too. Mr. Clive rose also, as little Alfred, of whom he was a great friend, ran towards him. Clive rose, laughed, nodded at Ethel, and ate gingerbread nuts all at the same time. As for Colonel Thomas Newcome and his niece, they fell in love with each other instantaneously, like Prince Camaralzaman and the Princess of China.

I have turned away one artist: the poor creature was utterly incompetent to depict the sublime, graceful, and pathetic personages and events with which this history will most assuredly abound, and I doubt whether even the designer engaged in his place can make such a portrait of Miss Ethel Newcome as shall satisfy her friends and her own sense of justice. That blush which we have indicated, he cannot render. How are you to copy it with a steel point and a ball of printer’s ink? That kindness which lights up the Colonel’s eyes; gives an expression to the very wrinkles round about them; shines as a halo round his face;—what artist can paint it? The painters of old, when they portrayed sainted personages, were fain to have recourse to compasses and gold leaf—as if celestial splendour could be represented by Dutch metal! As our artist cannot come up to this task, the reader will be pleased to let his fancy paint for itself the look of courtesy for a woman, admiration for a young beauty, protection for an innocent child, all of which are expressed upon the Colonel’s kind face, as his eyes are set upon Ethel Newcome.

“Mamma has sent us to bid you welcome to England, uncle,” says Miss Ethel, advancing, and never thinking for a moment of laying aside that fine blush which she brought into the room, and which is her pretty symbol of youth, and modesty, and beauty.

He took a little slim white hand and laid it down on his brown palm, where it looked all the whiter: he cleared the grizzled mustachio from his mouth, and stooping down he kissed the little white hand with a great deal of grace and dignity. There was no point of resemblance, and yet a something in the girl’s look, voice, and movements, which caused his heart to thrill, and an image out of the past to rise up and salute him. The eyes which had brightened his youth (and which he saw in his dreams and thoughts for faithful years afterwards, as though they looked at him out of heaven) seemed to shine upon him after five-and-thirty years. He remembered such a fair bending neck and clustering hair, such a light foot and airy figure, such a slim hand lying in his own—and now parted from it with a gap of ten thousand long days between. It is an old saying, that we forget nothing; as people in fever begin suddenly to talk the language of their infancy we are stricken by memory sometimes, and old affections rush back on us as vivid as in the time when they were our daily talk, when their presence gladdened our eyes, when their accents thrilled in our ears, when with passionate tears and grief we flung ourselves upon their hopeless corpses. Parting is death, at least as far as life is concerned. A passion comes to an end; it is carried off in a coffin, or weeping in a post-chaise; it drops out of life one way or other, and the earthclods close over it, and we see it no more. But it has been part of our souls, and it is eternal. Does a mother not love her dead infant? a man his lost mistress? with the fond wife nestling at his side,—yes, with twenty children smiling round her knee. No doubt, as the old soldier held the girl’s hand in his, the little talisman led him back to Hades, and he saw Leonora.——

“How do you do, uncle?” say girls Nos. 2 and 3 in a pretty little infantile chorus. He drops the talisman, he is back in common life again—the dancing baby in the arms of the bobbing nurse babbles a welcome. Alfred looks up for a while at his uncle in the white trousers, and then instantly proposes that Clive should make him some drawings; and is on his knees at the next moment. He is always climbing on somebody or something, or winding over chairs, curling through banisters, standing on somebody’s head, or his own head,—as his convalescence advances, his breakages are fearful. Miss Honeyman and Hannah will talk about his dilapidations for years after the little chap has left them. When he is a jolly young officer in the Guards, and comes to see them at Brighton, they will show him the blue-dragon Chayny jar, on which he would sit, and which he cried so fearfully upon breaking.

When this little party has gone out smiling to take its walk on the sea-shore, the Colonel sits down and resumes the interrupted dessert. Miss Honeyman talks of the children and their mother, and the merits of Mr. Kuhn, and the beauty of Miss Ethel, glancing significantly towards Clive, who has had enough of gingerbread nuts and dessert and wine, and whose youthful nose is by this time at the window. What kind-hearted woman, young or old, does not love match-making?

The Colonel, without lifting his eyes from the table, says “she reminds him of—of somebody he knew once.”

“Indeed?” cries Miss Honeyman, and thinks Emma must have altered very much after going to India, for she had fair hair, and white eyelashes, and not a pretty foot certainly—but, my dear good lady, the Colonel is not thinking of the late Mrs. Casey.

He has taken a fitting quantity of the Madeira, the artless greeting of the people here, young and old, has warmed his heart, and he goes upstairs to pay a visit to his sister-in-law, to whom he makes his most courteous bow as becomes a lady of her rank. Ethel takes her place quite naturally beside him during his visit. Where did he learn those fine manners which all of us who knew him admired in him? He had a natural simplicity, an habitual practice of kind and generous thoughts; a pure mind, and therefore above hypocrisy and affectation—perhaps those French people with whom he had been intimate in early life had imparted to him some of the traditional graces of their vieille tour—certainly his half-brothers had inherited none such. “What is this that Barnes has written about his uncle, that the Colonel is ridiculous?” Lady Anne said to her daughter that night. “Your uncle is adorable. I have never seen a more perfect grand Seigneur. He puts me in mind of my grandfather, though grandpapa’s grand manner was more artificial, and his voice spoiled by snuff. See the Colonel. He smokes round the garden, but with what perfect grace! This is the man Uncle Hobson, and your poor dear papa, have represented to us as a species of bear! Mr. Newcome, who has himself the ton of a waiter! The Colonel is perfect. What can Barnes mean by ridiculing him? I wish Barnes had such a distinguished air; but he is like his poor dear papa. Que voulez-vous, my love? The Newcomes are honourable: the Newcomes are wealthy: but distinguished—no. I never deluded myself with that notion when I married your poor dear papa. At once I pronounce Colonel Newcome a person to be in every way distinguished by us. On our return to London I shall present him to all our family: poor good man! let him see that his family have some presentable relations besides those whom he will meet at Mrs. Newcome’s, in Bryanstone Square. You must go to Bryanstone Square immediately we return to London. You must ask your cousins and their governess, and we will give them a little party. Mrs. Newcome is insupportable, but we must never forsake our relatives, Ethel. When you come out you will have to dine there, and to go to her ball. Every young lady in your position in the world has sacrifices to make, and duties to her family to perform. Look at me. Why did I marry your poor dear papa? From duty. Has your Aunt Fanny, who ran away with Captain Canonbury, been happy? They have eleven children, and are starving at Boulogne. Think of three of Fanny’s boys in yellow stockings at the Bluecoat School. Your papa got them appointed. I am sure my papa would have gone mad if he had seen that day! She came with one of the poor wretches to Park Lane: but I could not see them. My feelings would not allow me. When my maid,—I had a French maid then, Louise, you remember; her conduct was abominable: so was Préville’s—when she came and said that my Lady Fanny was below with a young gentleman, qui portait des bas jaunes, I could not see the child. I begged her to come up in my room: and, absolutely that I might not offend her, I went to bed. That wretch Louise met her at Boulogne and told her afterwards. Good night, we must not stand chattering here any more. Heaven bless you, my darling! Those are the Colonel’s windows! Look, he is smoking on his balcony—that must be Clive’s room. Clive is a good kind boy. It was very kind of him to draw so many pictures for Alfred. Put the drawings away, Ethel. Mr. Smee saw some in Park Lane, and said they showed remarkable genius. What a genius your Aunt Emily had for drawing; but it was flowers! I had no genius in particular, so mamma used to say—and Doctor Belper said, ‘My dear Lady Walham’ (it was before my grandpapa’s death), ‘has Miss Anne a genius for sewing buttons and making puddens?’—puddens he pronounced it. Goodnight, my own love. Blessings, blessings, on my Ethel!”

The Colonel from his balcony saw the slim figure of the retreating girl, and looked fondly after her: and as the smoke of his cigar floated in the air, he formed a fine castle in it, whereof Clive was lord, and that pretty Ethel, lady. “What a frank, generous, bright young creature is yonder!” thought he. “How cheery and gay she is; how good to Miss Honeyman, to whom she behaved with just the respect that was the old lady’s due—how affectionate with her brothers and sisters! What a sweet voice she has! What a pretty little white hand it is! When she gave it me, it looked like a little white bird lying in mine. I must wear gloves, by Jove I must, and my coat is old-fashioned, as Binnie says; what a fine match might be made between that child and Clive! She reminds me of a pair of eyes I haven’t seen these forty years. I would like to have Clive married to her; to see him out of the scrapes and dangers that young fellows encounter, and safe with such a sweet girl as that. If God had so willed it, I might have been happy myself, and could have made a woman happy. But the Fates were against me. I should like to see Clive happy, and then say Nunc dimittis. I shan’t want anything more to-night, Kean, and you can go to bed.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” says Kean, who enters, having prepared his master’s bedchamber, and is retiring when the Colonel calls after him:

“I say, Kean, is that blue coat of mine very old?”

“Uncommon white about the seams, Colonel,” says the man.

“Is it older than other people’s coats?”—Kean is obliged gravely to confess that the Colonel’s coat is very queer.

“Get me another coat, then—see that I don’t do anything or wear anything unusual. I have been so long out of Europe, that I don’t know the customs here, and am not above learning.”

Kean retires, vowing that his master is an old trump; which opinion he had already expressed to Mr. Kuhn, Lady Hanne’s man, over a long potation which those two gentlemen had taken together. And, as all of us, in one way or another, are subject to this domestic criticism, from which not the most exalted can escape, I say, lucky is the man whose servants speak well of him.

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XVI. In which Mr. Sherrick lets his House in Fitzroy Square

In spite of the sneers of the Newcome Independent, and the Colonel’s unlucky visit to his nurse’s native place, he still remained in high favour in Park Lane; where the worthy gentleman paid almost daily visits, and was received with welcome and almost affection, at least by the ladies and the children of the house. Who was it that took the children to Astley’s but Uncle Newcome? I saw him there in the midst of a cluster of these little people, all children together. He laughed delighted at Mr. Merryman’s jokes in the ring. He beheld the Battle of Waterloo with breathless interest, and was amazed—amazed, by Jove, sir—at the prodigious likeness of the principal actor to the Emperor Napoleon; whose tomb he had visited on his return from India, as it pleased him to tell his little audience who sat clustering round him: the little girls, Sir Brian’s daughters, holding each by a finger of his honest hands; young Masters Alfred and Edward clapping and hurrahing by his side; while Mr. Clive and Miss Ethel sat in the back of the box enjoying the scene, but with that decorum which belonged to their superior age and gravity. As for Clive, he was in these matters much older than the grizzled old warrior his father. It did one good to hear the Colonel’s honest laughs at clown’s jokes, and to see the tenderness and simplicity with which he watched over this happy brood of young ones. How lavishly did he supply them with sweetmeats between the acts! There he sat in the midst of them, and ate an orange himself with perfect satisfaction. I wonder what sum of money Mr. Barnes Newcome would have taken to sit for five hours with his young brothers and sisters in a public box at the theatre and eat an orange in the face of the audience? When little Alfred went to Harrow, you may be sure Colonel Newcome and Clive galloped over to see the little man, and tipped him royally. What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy’s tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes. Remember how happy such benefactions made you in your own early time, and go off on the very first fine day and tip your nephew at school!

The Colonel’s organ of benevolence was so large, that he would have liked to administer bounties to the young folks his nephews and nieces in Bryanstone Square, as well as to their cousins in Park Lane; but Mrs. Newcome was a great deal too virtuous to admit of such spoiling of children. She took the poor gentleman to task for an attempt upon her boys when those lads came home for their holidays, and caused them ruefully to give back the shining gold sovereign with which their uncle had thought to give them a treat.

“I do not quarrel with other families,” says she; “I do not allude to other families;” meaning, of course, that she did not allude to Park Lane. “There may be children who are allowed to receive money from their father’s grown-up friends. There may be children who hold out their hands for presents, and thus become mercenary in early life. I make no reflections with regard to other households. I only look, and think, and pray for the welfare of my own beloved ones. They want for nothing. Heaven has bounteously furnished us with every comfort, with every elegance, with every luxury. Why need we be bounden to others, who have been ourselves so amply provided? I should consider it ingratitude, Colonel Newcome, want of proper spirit, to allow my boys to accept money. Mind, I make no allusions. When they go to school they receive a sovereign a-piece from their father, and a shilling a week, which is ample pocket-money. When they are at home, I desire that they may have rational amusements: I send them to the Polytechnic with Professor Hickson, who kindly explains to them some of the marvels of science and the wonders of machinery. I send them to the picture-galleries and the British Museum. I go with them myself to the delightful lectures at the institution in Albemarle Street. I do not desire that they should attend theatrical exhibitions. I do not quarrel with those who go to plays; far from it! Who am I that I should venture to judge the conduct of others? When you wrote from India, expressing a wish that your boy should be made acquainted with the works of Shakspeare, I gave up my own opinion at once. Should I interpose between a child and his father? I encouraged the boy to go to the play, and sent him to the pit with one of our footmen.”

“And you tipped him very handsomely, my dear Maria, too,” said the good-natured Colonel, breaking in upon her sermon; but Virtue was not to be put off in that way.

“And why, Colonel Newcome,” Virtue exclaimed, laying a pudgy little hand on its heart; “why did I treat Clive so? Because I stood towards him in loco parentis; because he was as a child to me, and I to him as a mother. I indulged him more than my own. I loved him with a true maternal tenderness. Then he was happy to come to our house: then perhaps Park Lane was not so often open to him as Bryanstone Square: but I make n_o allusions. Then_ he did not go six times to another house for once that he came to mine. He was a simple, confiding, generous boy, was not dazzled by worldly rank or titles of splendour. He could not find these in Bryanstone Square. A merchant’s wife, a country lawyer’s daughter—I could not be expected to have my humble board surrounded by titled aristocracy; I would not if I could. I love my own family too well; I am too honest, too simple,—let me own it at once, Colonel Newcome, too proud! And now, now his father has come to England, and I have resigned him, and he meets with no titled aristocrats at my house, and he does not come here any more.”

Tears rolled out of her little eyes as she spoke, and she covered her round face with her pocket-handkerchief.

Had Colonel Newcome read the paper that morning, he might have seen amongst what are called the fashionable announcements, the cause, perhaps, why his sister-in-law had exhibited so much anger and virtue. The Morning Post stated, that yesterday Sir Brian and Lady Newcome entertained at dinner His Excellency the Persian Ambassador and Bucksheesh Bey; the Right Honourable Cannon Rowe, President of the Board of Control, and Lady Louisa Rowe; the Earl of H———, the Countess of Kew, the Earl of Kew, Sir Currey Baughton, Major-General and Mrs. Hooker, Colonel Newcome, and Mr. Horace Fogey. Afterwards her ladyship had an assembly, which was attended by, etc. etc.

This catalogue of illustrious names had been read by Mr. Newcome to her spouse at breakfast, with such comments as she was in the habit of making.

“The President of the Board of Control, the Chairman of the Court of Directors, and Ex-Governor-General of India, and a whole regiment of Kews. By Jove, Maria, the Colonel is in good company,” cries Mr. Newcome, with a laugh. “That’s the sort of dinner you should have given him. Some people to talk about India. When he dined with us he was put between old Lady Wormely and Professor Roots. I don’t wonder at his going to sleep after dinner. I was off myself once or twice during that confounded long argument between Professor Roots and Dr. Windus. That Windus is the deuce to talk.”

“Dr. Windus is a man of science, and his name is of European celebrity!” says Maria solemnly. “Any intellectual person would prefer such company to the titled nobodies into whose family your brother has married.”

“There you go, Polly; you are always having a shy at Lady Anne and her relations,” says Mr. Newcome, good-naturedly.

“A shy! How can you use such vulgar words, Mr. Newcome? What have I to do with Sir Brian’s titled relations? I do not value nobility. I prefer people of science—people of intellect—to all the rank in the world.”

“So you do,” says Hobson her spouse. “You have your party—Lady Anne has her party. You take your line—Lady Anne takes her line. You are a superior woman, my dear Polly; every one knows that. I’m a plain country farmer, I am. As long as you are happy, I am happy too. The people you get to dine here may talk Greek or algebra for what I care. By Jove, my dear, I think you can hold your own with the best of them.”

“I have endeavoured by assiduity to make up for time lost, and an early imperfect education,” says Mrs. Newcome. “You married a poor country lawyer’s daughter. You did not seek a partner in the Peerage, Mr. Newcome.”

“No, no. Not such a confounded flat as that,” cries Mr. Newcome, surveying his plump partner behind her silver teapot, with eyes of admiration.

“I had an imperfect education, but I knew its blessings, and have, I trust, endeavoured to cultivate the humble talents which Heaven has given me, Mr. Newcome.”

“Humble, by Jove!” exclaims the husband. “No gammon of that sort, Polly. You know well enough that you are a superior woman. I ain’t a superior man. I know that: one is enough in a family. I leave the reading to you, my dear. Here comes my horses. I say, I wish you’d call on Lady Anne to-day. Do go and see her, now that’s a good girl. I know she is flighty, and that; and Brian’s back is up a little. But he ain’t a bad fellow; and I wish I could see you and his wife better friends.”

On his way to the City, Mr. Newcome rode to look at the new house, No. 120 Fitzroy Square, which his brother, the Colonel, had taken in conjunction with that Indian friend of his, Mr. Binnie. Shrewd old cock, Mr. Binnie. Has brought home a good bit of money from India. Is looking out for safe investments. Has been introduced to Newcome Brothers. Mr. Newcome thinks very well of the Colonel’s friend.

The house is vast, but, it must be owned, melancholy. Not long since it was a ladies’ school, in an unprosperous condition. The scar left by Madame Latour’s brass plate may still be seen on the tall black door, cheerfully ornamented in the style of the end of the last century, with a funereal urn in the centre of the entry, and garlands, and the skulls of rams at each corner. Madame Latour, who at one time actually kept a large yellow coach, and drove her parlour young ladies in the Regent’s Park, was an exile from her native country (Islington was her birthplace, and Grigson her paternal name), and an outlaw at the suit of Samuel Sherrick: that Mr. Sherrick whose wine-vaults undermine Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel where the eloquent Honeyman preaches.

The house is Mr. Sherrick’s house. Some say his name is Shadrach, and pretend to have known him as an orange-boy, afterwards as a chorus-singer in the theatres, afterwards as secretary to a great tragedian. I know nothing of these stories. He may or he may not be a partner of Mr. Campion, of Shepherd’s Inn: he has a handsome villa, Abbey Road, St. John’s Wood, entertains good company, rather loud, of the sporting sort, rides and drives very showy horses, has boxes at the Opera whenever he likes, and free access behind the scenes: is handsome, dark, bright-eyed, with a quantity of jewellery, and a tuft to his chin; sings sweetly sentimental songs after dinner. Who cares a fig what was the religion of Mr. Sherrick’s ancestry, or what the occupation of his youth? Mr. Honeyman, a most respectable man surely, introduced Sherrick to the Colonel and Binnie.

Mr. Sherrick stocked their cellar with some of the wine over which Honeyman preached such lovely sermons. It was not dear; it was not bad when you dealt with Mr. Sherrick for wine alone. Going into his market with ready money in your hand, as our simple friends did, you were pretty fairly treated by Mr. Sherrick.

The house being taken, we may be certain there was fine amusement for Clive, Mr. Binnie, and the Colonel, in frequenting the sales, in the inspection of upholsterers’ shops, and the purchase of furniture for the new mansion. It was like nobody else’s house. There were three masters with four or five servants over them. Kean for the Colonel and his son; a smart boy with boots for Mr. Binnie; Mrs. Kean to cook and keep house, with a couple of maids under her. The Colonel, himself, was great at making hash mutton, hot-pot, curry, and pillau. What cosy pipes did we not smoke in the dining-room, in the drawing-room, or where we would! What pleasant evenings did we not have with Mr. Binnie’s books and Schiedam! Then there were the solemn state dinners, at most of which the writer of this biography had a corner.

Clive had a tutor—Grindley of Corpus—whom we recommended to him, and with whom the young gentleman did not fatigue his brains very much; but his great forte decidedly lay in drawing. He sketched the horses, he sketched the dogs; all the servants from the blear-eyed boot-boy to the rosy-cheeked lass, Mrs. Kean’s niece, whom that virtuous housekeeper was always calling to come downstairs. He drew his father in all postures—asleep, on foot, on horseback; and jolly little Mr. Binnie, with his plump legs on a chair, or jumping briskly on the back of the cob which he rode. He should have drawn the pictures for this book, but that he no longer condescends to make sketches. Young Ridley was his daily friend now; and Grindley, his classics and mathematics over in the morning, and the ride with father over, this pair of young men would constantly attend Gandish’s Drawing Academy, where, to be sure, Ridley passed many hours at work on his art, before his young friend and patron could be spared from his books to his pencil.

“Oh,” says Clive, if you talk to him now about those early days, “it was a jolly time! I do not believe there was any young fellow in London so happy.” And there hangs up in his painting-room now, a head, painted at one sitting, of a man rather bald, with hair touched with grey, with a large moustache, and a sweet mouth half smiling beneath it, and melancholy eyes; and Clive shows that portrait of their grandfather to his children, and tells them that the whole world never saw a nobler gentleman.

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XVII. A School of Art

British art either finds her peculiar nourishment in melancholy, and loves to fix her abode in desert places; or it may be her purse is but slenderly furnished, and she is forced to put up with accommodations rejected by more prosperous callings. Some of the most dismal quarters of the town are colonised by her disciples and professors. In walking through streets which may have been gay and polite when ladies’ chairmen jostled each other on the pavement, and linkboys with their torches lighted the beaux over the mud, who has not remarked the artist’s invasion of those regions once devoted to fashion and gaiety? Centre windows of drawing-rooms are enlarged so as to reach up into bedrooms—bedrooms where Lady Betty has had her hair powdered, and where the painter’s north-light now takes possession of the place which her toilet-table occupied a hundred years ago. There are degrees in decadence: after the Fashion chooses to emigrate, and retreats from Soho or Bloomsbury, let us say, to Cavendish Square, physicians come and occupy the vacant houses, which still have a respectable look, the windows being cleaned, and the knockers and plates kept bright, and the doctor’s carriage rolling round the square, almost as fine as the countess’s, which has whisked away her ladyship to other regions. A boarding-house mayhap succeeds the physician, who has followed after his sick folks into the new country; and then Dick Tinto comes with his dingy brass plate, and breaks in his north window, and sets up his sitters’ throne. I love his honest moustache, and jaunty velvet jacket; his queer figure, his queer vanities, and his kind heart. Why should he not suffer his ruddy ringlets to fall over his shirt-collar? Why should he deny himself his velvet? it is but a kind of fustian which costs him eighteenpence a yard. He is naturally what he is, and breaks out into costume as spontaneously as a bird sings, or a bulb bears a tulip. And as Dick, under yonder terrific appearance of waving cloak, bristling beard, and shadowy sombrero, is a good kindly simple creature, got up at a very cheap rate, his life is so consistent with his dress; he gives his genius a darkling swagger, and a romantic envelope, which, being removed, you find, not a bravo, but a kind chirping soul; not a moody poet avoiding mankind for the better company of his own great thoughts, but a jolly little chap who has an aptitude for painting brocade gowns, a bit of armour (with figures inside them), or trees and cattle, or gondolas and buildings, or what not; an instinct for the picturesque, which exhibits itself in his works, and outwardly on his person; beyond this, a gentle creature loving his friends, his cups, feasts, merrymakings, and all good things. The kindest folks alive I have found among those scowling whiskeradoes. They open oysters with their yataghans, toast muffins on their rapiers, and fill their Venice glasses with half-and-half. If they have money in their lean purses, be sure they have a friend to share it. What innocent gaiety, what jovial suppers on threadbare cloths, and wonderful songs after; what pathos, merriment, humour does not a man enjoy who frequents their company! Mr. Clive Newcome, who has long since shaved his beard, who has become a family man, and has seen the world in a thousand different phases, avers that his life as an art-student at home and abroad was the pleasantest part of his whole existence. It may not be more amusing in the telling than the chronicle of a feast, or the accurate report of two lovers’ conversation; but the biographer, having brought his hero to the period of his life, is bound to relate it, before passing to other occurrences which are to be narrated in their turn.

We may be sure the boy had many conversations with his affectionate guardian as to the profession which he should follow. As regarded mathematical and classical learning, the elder Newcome was forced to admit, that out of every hundred boys, there were fifty as clever as his own, and at least fifty more industrious; the army in time of peace Colonel Newcome thought a bad trade for a young fellow so fond of ease and pleasure as his son: his delight in the pencil was manifest to all. Were not his school-books full of caricatures of the masters? Whilst his tutor, Grindley, was lecturing him, did he not draw Grindley instinctively under his very nose? A painter Clive was determined to be, and nothing else; and Clive, being then some sixteen years of age, began to study the art, en règle, under the eminent Mr. Gandish, of Soho.

It was that well-known portrait-painter, Alfred Smee, Esq., R.A., who recommended Gandish to Colonel Newcome, one day when the two gentlemen met at dinner at Lady Anne Newcome’s table. Mr. Smee happened to examine some of Clive’s drawings, which the young fellow had executed for his cousins. Clive found no better amusement than in making pictures for them, and would cheerfully pass evening after evening in that diversion. He had made a thousand sketches of Ethel before a year was over; a year, every day of which seemed to increase the attractions of the fair young creature, develop her nymph-like form, and give her figure fresh graces. He also of course drew Alfred and the nursery in general, Aunt Anne and the Blenheim spaniels, and Mr. Kuhn and his earrings, the majestic John bringing in the coal-scuttle, and all persons or objects in that establishment with which he was familiar. “What a genius the lad has,” the complimentary Mr. Smee averred; “what a force and individuality there is in all his drawings! Look at his horses! capital, by Jove, capital! and Alfred on his pony, and Miss Ethel in her Spanish hat, with her hair flowing in the wind! I must take this sketch, I positively must now, and show it to Landseer.” And the courtly artist daintily enveloped the drawing in a sheet of paper, put it away in his hat, and vowed subsequently that the great painter had been delighted with the young man’s performance. Smee was not only charmed with Clive’s skill as an artist, but thought his head would be an admirable one to paint. Such a rich complexion, such fine turns in his hair! such eyes! to see real blue eyes was so rare nowadays! And the Colonel too, if the Colonel would but give him a few sittings, the grey uniform of the Bengal Cavalry, the silver lace, the little bit of red ribbon just to warm up the picture! it was seldom, Mr. Smee declared, that an artist could get such an opportunity for colour. With our hideous vermilion uniforms there was no chance of doing anything; Rubens himself could scarcely manage scarlet. Look at the horseman in Cuyp’s famous picture at the Louvre: the red was a positive blot upon the whole picture. There was nothing like French grey and silver! All which did not prevent Mr. Smee from painting Sir Brian in a flaring deputy-lieutenant’s uniform, and entreating all military men whom he met to sit to him in scarlet. Clive Newcome the Academician succeeded in painting, of course for mere friendship’s sake, and because he liked the subject, though he could not refuse the cheque which Colonel Newcome sent him for the frame and picture; but no cajoleries could induce the old campaigner to sit to any artist save one. He said he should be ashamed to pay fifty guineas for the likeness of his homely face; he jocularly proposed to James Binnie to have his head put on the canvas, and Mr. Smee enthusiastically caught at the idea; but honest James winked his droll eyes, saying his was a beauty that did not want any paint; and when Mr. Smee took his leave after dinner in Fitzroy Square, where this conversation was held, James Binnie hinted that the Academician was no better than an old humbug, in which surmise he was probably not altogether incorrect. Certain young men who frequented the kind Colonel’s house were also somewhat of this opinion; and made endless jokes at the painter’s expense. Smee plastered his sitters with adulation as methodically as he covered his canvas. He waylaid gentlemen at dinner; he inveigled unsuspecting folks into his studio, and had their heads off their shoulders before they were aware. One day, on our way from the Temple, through Howland Street, to the Colonel’s house, we beheld Major-General Sir Thomas de Boots, in full uniform, rushing from Smee’s door to his brougham. The coachman was absent refreshing himself at a neighbouring tap: the little street-boys cheered and hurrayed Sir Thomas, as, arrayed in gold and scarlet, he sate in his chariot. He blushed purple when he beheld us. No artist would have dared to imitate those purple tones: he was one of the numerous victims of Mr. Smee.

One day, then, day to be noted with a white stone, Colonel Newcome, with his son and Mr. Smee, R.A., walked from the Colonel’s house to Gandish’s, which was not far removed thence; and young Clive, who was a perfect mimic, described to his friends, and illustrated, as was his wont, by diagrams, the interview which he had with that professor. “By Jove, you must see Gandish, pa!” cries Clive: “Gandish is worth the whole world. Come and be an art-student. You’ll find such jolly fellows there! Gandish calls it hart-student, and says, ‘Hars est celare Hartem’—by Jove he does! He treated us to a little Latin, as he brought out a cake and a bottle of wine, you know.”

“The governor was splendid, sir. He wore gloves: you know he only puts them on on parade days; and turned out for the occasion spick and span. He ought to be a general officer. He looks like a field-marshal—don’t he? You should have seen him bowing to Mrs. Gandish and the Miss Gandishes, dressed all in their best, round the cake-tray! He takes his glass of wine, and sweeps them all round with a bow. ‘I hope, young ladies,’ says he, ‘you don’t often go to the students’ room. I’m afraid the young gentlemen would leave off looking at the statues if you came in.’ And so they would: for you never saw such guys; but the dear old boy fancies every woman is a beauty.

“‘Mr. Smee, you are looking at my picture of “Boadishia?”’ says Gandish. Wouldn’t he have caught it for his quantities at Grey Friars, that’s all.

“‘Yes—ah—yes,’ says Mr. Smee, putting his hand over his eyes, and standing before it, looking steady, you know, as if he was going to see whereabouts he should hit Boadishia.

“‘It was painted when you were a young man, four years before you were an associate, Smee. Had some success in its time, and there’s good pints about that picture,’ Gandish goes on. ‘But I never could get my price for it; and here it hangs in my own room. Igh art won’t do in this country, Colonel—it’s a melancholy fact.’

“‘High art! I should think it is high art!’ whispers old Smee; ‘fourteen feet high, at least!’ And then out loud he says ‘The picture has very fine points in it, Gandish, as you say. Foreshortening of that arm, capital! That red drapery carried off into the right of the picture very skilfully managed!’

“‘It’s not like portrait-painting, Smee—Igh art,’ says Gandish. ‘The models of the hancient Britons in that pictur alone cost me thirty pound—when I was a struggling man, and had just married my Betsey here. You reckonise Boadishia, Colonel, with the Roman elmet, cuirass, and javeling of the period—all studied from the hantique, sir, the glorious hantique.’

“‘All but Boadicea,’ says father. ‘She remains always young.’ And he began to speak the lines out of Cowper, he did—waving his stick like an old trump—and famous they are,” cries the lad:

“When the British warrior queen, Bleeding from the Roman rods”—

“Jolly verses! Haven’t I translated them into alcaics?” says Clive, with a merry laugh, and resumes his history.

“‘Oh, I must have those verses in my album,’ cries one of the young ladies. ‘Did you compose them, Colonel Newcome?’ But Gandish, you see, is never thinking about any works but his own, and goes on, ‘Study of my eldest daughter, exhibited 1816.’

“‘No, pa, not ’16,’ cries Miss Gandish. She don’t look like a chicken, I can tell you.

“‘Admired,’ Gandish goes on, never heeding her,—‘I can show you what the papers said of it at the time—Morning Chronicle and Examiner—spoke most ighly of it. My son as an infant ’Ercules, stranglin the serpent over the piano. Fust conception of my picture of “Non Hangli said Hangeli.”’

“‘For which I can guess who were the angels that sat,’ says father. Upon my word, that old governor! He is a little too strong. But Mr. Gandish listened no more to him than to Mr. Smee, and went on, buttering himself all over, as I have read the Hottentots do. ‘Myself at thirty-three years of age!’ says he, pointing to a portrait of a gentleman in leather breeches and mahogany boots; ‘I could have been a portrait-painter, Mr. Smee.’

“‘Indeed it was lucky for some of us you devoted yourself to high art, Gandish,’ Mr. Smee says, and sips the wine and puts it down again, making a face. It was not first-rate tipple, you see.

“‘Two girls,’ continues that indomitable Mr. Gandish. ‘Hidea for “Babes in the Wood.” “View of Pæstum,” taken on the spot by myself, when travelling with the late lamented Earl of Kew. ‘Beauty, Valour, Commerce, and Liberty, condoling with Britannia on the death of Admiral Viscount Nelson,’—allegorical piece drawn at a very early age after Trafalgar. Mr. Fuseli saw that piece, sir, when I was a student of the Academy, and said to me, ‘Young man, stick to the antique. There’s nothing like it.’ Those were ’is very words. If you do me the favour to walk into the Hatrium, you’ll remark my great pictures also from English ’istry. An English historical painter, sir, should be employed chiefly in English ’istry. That’s what I would have done. Why ain’t there temples for us, where the people might read their history at a glance, and without knowing how to read? Why is my ‘Alfred’ ’anging up in this ’all? Because there is no patronage for a man who devotes himself to Igh art. You know the anecdote, Colonel? King Alfred flying from the Danes, took refuge in a neaterd’s ’ut. The rustic’s wife told him to bake a cake, and the fugitive sovering set down to his ignoble task, and forgetting it in the cares of state, let the cake burn, on which the woman struck him. The moment chose is when she is lifting her ’and to deliver the blow. The king receives it with majesty mingled with meekness. In the background the door of the ’ut is open, letting in the royal officers to announce the Danes are defeated. The daylight breaks in at the aperture, signifying the dawning of ’Ope. That story, sir, which I found in my researches in ’istry, has since become so popular, sir, that hundreds of artists have painted it, hundreds! I who discovered the legend, have my picture—here!’

“‘Now, Colonel,’ says the showman, ‘let me—let me lead you through the statue gallery. ‘Apollo,’ you see. The ‘Venus Hanadyomene,’ the glorious Venus of the Louvre, which I saw in 1814, Colonel, in its glory—the ‘Laocoon’—my friend Gibson’s ‘Nymth,’ you see, is the only figure I admit among the antiques. Now up this stair to the students’ room, where I trust my young friend, Mr. Newcome, will labour assiduously. Ars longa est, Mr. Newcome. Vita——’”

“I trembled,” Clive said, “lest my father should introduce a certain favourite quotation, beginning ‘ingenuas didicisse’—but he refrained, and we went into the room, where a score of students were assembled, who all looked away from their drawing-boards as we entered.

“‘Here will be your place, Mr. Newcome,’ says the Professor, ‘and here that of your young friend—what did you say was his name?’ I told him Rigby, for my dear old governor has promised to pay for J. J. too, you know. ‘Mr. Chivers is the senior pupil and custos of the room in the absence of my son. Mr. Chivers, Mr. Newcome; gentlemen, Mr. Newcome, a new pupil. My son, Charles Gandish, Mr. Newcome. Assiduity, gentlemen, assiduity. Ars longa. Vita brevis, et linea recta brevissima est. This way, Colonel, down these steps, across the courtyard, to my own studio. There, gentlemen,’—and pulling aside a curtain, Gandish says ‘There!’”

“And what was the masterpiece behind it?” we ask of Clive, after we have done laughing at his imitation.

“Hand round the hat, J. J.!” cries Clive. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, pay your money. Now walk in, for the performance is ‘just a-going to begin.’” Nor would the rogue ever tell us what Gandish’s curtained picture was.

Not a successful painter, Mr. Gandish was an excellent master, and regarding all artists save one perhaps a good critic. Clive and his friend J. J. came soon after and commenced their studies under him. The one took his humble seat at the drawing-board, a poor mean-looking lad, with worn clothes, downcast features, and a figure almost deformed; the other adorned by good health, good looks, and the best of tailors; ushered into the studio with his father and Mr. Smee as his aides-de-camp on his entry; and previously announced there with all the eloquence of honest Gandish. “I bet he’s ’ad cake and wine,” says one youthful student, of an epicurean and satirical turn. “I bet he might have it every day if he liked.” In fact Gandish was always handing him sweetmeats of compliments and cordials of approbation. He had coat-sleeves with silk linings—he had studs in his shirt. How different was the texture and colour of that garment, to the sleeves Bob Grimes displayed when he took his coat off to put on his working jacket! Horses used actually to come for him to Gandish’s door (which was situated in a certain lofty street in Soho). The Miss G.’s would smile at him from the parlour window as he mounted and rode splendidly off; and those opposition beauties, the Miss Levisons, daughters of the professor of dancing over the way, seldom failed to greet the young gentleman with an admiring ogle from their great black eyes. Master Clive was pronounced an ‘out-and-outer,’ a ‘swell and no mistake,’ and complimented with scarce one dissentient voice by the simple academy at Gandish’s. Besides, he drew very well. There could be no doubt about that. Caricatures of the students of course were passing constantly among them, and in revenge for one which a huge red-haired Scotch student, Mr. Sandy M’Collop, had made of John James, Clive perpetrated a picture of Sandy which set the whole room in a roar; and when the Caledonian giant uttered satirical remarks against the assembled company, averring that they were a parcel of sneaks, a set of lick-spittles, and using epithets still more vulgar, Clive slipped off his fine silk-sleeved coat in an instant, invited Mr. M’Collop into the back-yard, instructed him in a science which the lad himself had acquired at Grey Friars, and administered two black eyes to Sandy, which prevented the young artist from seeing for some days after the head of the ‘Laocoon’ which he was copying. The Scotchman’s superior weight and age might have given the combat a different conclusion, had it endured long after Clive’s brilliant opening attack with his right and left; but Professor Gandish came out of his painting-room at the sound of battle, and could scarcely credit his own eyes when he saw those of poor M’Collop so darkened. To do the Scotchman justice, he bore Clive no rancour. They became friends there, and afterwards at Rome, whither they subsequently went to pursue their studies. The fame of Mr. M’Collop as an artist has long since been established. His pictures of ‘Lord Lovat in Prison,’ and ‘Hogarth painting him,’ of the ‘Blowing up of the Kirk of Field’ (painted for M’Collop of M’Collop), of the ‘Torture of the Covenanters,’ the ‘Murder of the Regent,’ the ‘Murder of Rizzio,’ and other historical pieces, all of course from Scotch history, have established his reputation in South as well as in North Britain. No one would suppose from the gloomy character of his works that Sandy M’Collop is one of the most jovial souls alive. Within six months after their little difference, Clive and he were the greatest of friends, and it was by the former’s suggestion that Mr. James Binnie gave Sandy his first commission, who selected the cheerful subject of ‘The Young Duke of Rothsay starving in Prison.’

During this period, Mr. Clive assumed the toga virilis, and beheld with inexpressible satisfaction the first growth of those mustachios which have since given him such a marked appearance. Being at Gandish’s, and so near the dancing academy, what must he do but take lessons in the terpsichorean art too?—making himself as popular with the dancing folks as with the drawing folks, and the jolly king of his company everywhere. He gave entertainments to his fellow-students in the upper chambers in Fitzroy Square, which were devoted to his use, inviting his father and Mr. Binnie to those parties now and then. And songs were sung, and pipes were smoked, and many a pleasant supper eaten. There was no stint: but no excess. No young man was ever seen to quit those apartments the worse, as it is called, for liquor. Fred Bayham’s uncle the Bishop could not be more decorous than F. B. as he left the Colonel’s house, for the Colonel made that one of the conditions of his son’s hospitality, that nothing like intoxication should ensue from it. The good gentleman did not frequent the parties of the juniors. He saw that his presence rather silenced the young men; and left them to themselves, confiding in Clive’s parole, and went away to play his honest rubber of whist at the Club. And many a time he heard the young fellows’ steps tramping by his bedchamber door, as he lay wakeful within, happy to think his son was happy.

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