XLII. Injured Innocence…

XLII. Injured Innocence

From Clive Newcome, Esq., to Lieut.-Col. Newcome, C.B.

“Brighton, June 12, 18—.

“My Dearest Father,—As the weather was growing very hot at Naples, and you wished I should come to England to see Mr. Binnie, I came accordingly, and have been here three weeks, and write to you from Aunt Honeyman’s parlour at Brighton, where you ate your last dinner before embarking for India. I found your splendid remittance calling in Fog Court, and have invested a part of the sum in a good horse to ride, upon which I take my diversion with other young dandies in the Park. Florac is in England, but he has no need of your kindness. Only think! he is Prince de Moncontour now, the second title of the Duc d’Ivry’s family; and M. le Comte de Florac is Duc d’Ivry in consequence of the demise of t’other old gentleman. I believe the late duke’s wife shortened his life. Oh, what a woman! She caused a duel between Lord Kew and a Frenchman, which has in its turn occasioned all sorts of evil and division in families, as you shall hear.

“In the first place, in consequence of the duel and of incompatibility of temper, the match between Kew and E. N. has been broken off. I met Lord Kew at Naples with his mother and brother, nice quiet people as you would like them. Kew’s wound and subsequent illness have altered him a good deal. He has become much more serious than he used to be; not ludicrously so at all, but he says he thinks his past life has been useless and even criminal, and he wishes to change it. He has sold his horses, and sown his wild oats. He has turned quite a sober quiet gentleman.

“At our meeting he told me of what had happened between him and Ethel, of whom he spoke most kindly and generously, but avowing his opinion that they never could have been happy in married life. And now I think my dear old father will see that there may be another reason besides my desire to see Mr. Binnie, which has brought me tumbling back to England again. If need be to speak, I never shall have, I hope, any secrets from you. I have not said much about one which has given me the deuce’s disquiet for ten months past, because there was no good in talking about it, or vexing you needlessly with reports of my griefs and woes.

“Well, when we were at Baden in September last, and E. and I wrote those letters in common to you, I dare say you can fancy what my feelings might have been towards such a beautiful young creature, who has a hundred faults, for which I love her just as much as for the good that is in her. I became dreadfully smitten indeed, and knowing that she was engaged to Lord Kew, I did as you told me you did once when the enemy was too strong for you—I ran away. I had a bad time of it for two or three months. At Rome, however, I began to take matters more easily, my naturally fine appetite returned, and at the end of the season I found myself uncommonly happy in the society of the Miss Baliols and the Miss Freemans; but when Kew told me at Naples of what had happened, there was straightway a fresh eruption in my heart, and I was fool enough to come almost without sleep to London in order to catch a glimpse of the bright eyes of E. N.

“She is now in this very house upstairs with one aunt, whilst the other lets lodgings to her. I have seen her but very seldom indeed since I came to London, where Sir Brian and Lady Anne do not pass the season, and Ethel goes about to a dozen parties every week with old Lady Kew, who neither loves you nor me. Hearing E. say she was coming down to her parents at Brighton, I made so bold as to waylay her at the train (though I didn’t tell her that I passed three hours in the waiting-room); and we made the journey together, and she was very kind and beautiful; and though I suppose I might just as well ask the Royal Princess to have me, I can’t help hoping and longing and hankering after her. And Aunt Honeyman must have found out that I am fond of her, for the old lady has received me with a scolding. Uncle Charles seems to be in very good condition again. I saw him in full clerical feather—at Madame de Moncontour’s, a good-natured body who drops her h’s, though Florac is not aware of their absence. Pendennis and Warrington, I know, would send you their regards. Pen is conceited, but much kinder in reality than he has the air of being. Fred Bayham is doing well, and prospering in his mysterious way.

“Mr. Binnie is not looking at all well: and Mrs. Mack—well, as I know you never attack a lady behind her lovely back, I won’t say a word of Mrs. Mack—but she has taken possession of Uncle James, and seems to me to weigh upon him somehow. Rosey is as pretty and good-natured as ever, and has learned two new songs; but you see, with my sentiments in another quarter, I feel as it were guilty and awkward in company of Rosey and her mamma. They have become the very greatest friends with Bryanstone Square, and Mrs. Mack is always citing Aunt Hobson as the most superior of women, in which opinion, I daresay, Aunt Hobson concurs.

“Good-bye, my dearest father; my sheet is full; I wish I could put my arm in yours and pace up and down the pier with you, and tell you more and more. But you know enough now, and that I am your affectionate son always, C. N.”

In fact, when Mr. Clive appeared at Steyne Gardens stepping out of the fly, and handing Miss Ethel thence, Miss Honeyman of course was very glad to see her nephew, and saluted him with a little embrace to show her sense of pleasure at his visit. But the next day, being Sunday, when Clive, with a most engaging smile on his countenance, walked over to breakfast from his hotel, Miss Honeyman would scarcely speak to him during the meal, looked out at him very haughtily from under her Sunday cap, and received his stories about Italy with “Oh! ah! indeed!” in a very unkind manner. And when breakfast was over, and she had done washing her china, she fluttered up to Clive with such an agitation of plumage, redness of craw, and anger of manner, as a maternal hen shows if she has reason to think you menace her chickens. She fluttered up to Clive, I say, and cried out, “Not in this house, Clive,—not in this house, I beg you to understand that!”

Clive, looking amazed, said, “Certainly not, ma’am; I never did do it in the house, as I know you don’t like it. I was going into the Square.” The young man meaning that he was about to smoke, and conjecturing that his aunt’s anger applied to that practice.

“You know very well what I mean, sir! Don’t try to turn me off in that highty-tighty way. My dinner to-day is at half-past one. You can dine or not as you like,” and the old lady flounced out of the room.

Poor Clive stood rolling his cigar in sad perplexity of spirit, until Mrs. Honeyman’s servant Hannah entered, who, for her part, grinned and looked particularly sly. “In the name of goodness, Hannah, what is the row about?” cries Mr. Clive. “What is my aunt scolding at? What are you grinning at, you old Cheshire cat?”

“Git long, Master Clive,” says Hannah, patting the cloth.

“Get along! why get along, and where am I to get along to?”

“Did ’ee do ut really now, Master Clive?” cries Mrs. Honeyman’s attendant, grinning with the utmost good-humour. “Well, she be as pretty a young lady as ever I saw; and as I told my missis, ‘Miss Martha,’ says I, ‘there’s a pair on ’em.’ Though missis was mortal angry to be sure. She never could bear it.”

“Bear what? you old goose!” cries Clive, who by these playful names had been wont to designate Hannah these twenty years past.

“A young gentleman and a young lady a kissing of each other in the railway coach,” says Hannah, jerking up with her finger to the ceiling, as much as to say, “There she is! Lar, she be a pretty young creature, that she be! and so I told Miss Martha.” Thus differently had the news which had come to them on the previous night affected the old lady and her maid.

The news was, that Miss Newcome’s maid (a giddy thing from the county, who had not even learned as yet to hold her tongue) had announced with giggling delight to Lady Anne’s maid, who was taking tea with Mrs. Hicks, that Mr. Clive had given Miss Ethel a kiss in the tunnel, and she supposed it was a match. This intelligence Hannah Hicks took to her mistress, of whose angry behaviour to Clive the next morning you may now understand the cause.

Clive did not know whether to laugh or to be in a rage. He swore that he was as innocent of all intention of kissing Miss Ethel as of embracing Queen Elizabeth. He was shocked to think of his cousin, walking above, fancy-free in maiden meditation, whilst this conversation regarding her was carried on below. How could he face her, or her mother, or even her maid, now he had cognisance of this naughty calumny? “Of course Hannah had contradicted it?” “Of course I have a done no such indeed,” replied Master Clive’s old friend; “of course I have set ’em down a bit; for when little Trimmer said it, and she supposed it was all settled between you, seeing how it had been a going on in foreign parts last year, Mrs. Pincott says, ‘Hold your silly tongue, Trimmer,’ she says; ‘Miss Ethel marry a painter, indeed, Trimmer!’ says she, ‘while she has refused to be a Countess,’ she says; ‘and can be a Marchioness any day, and will be a Marchioness. Marry a painter, indeed!’ Mrs. Pincott says; ‘Trimmer, I’m surprised at your impidence.’ So, my dear, I got angry at that,” Clive’s champion continued, “and says I, if my young master ain’t good enough for any young lady in this world, says I, I’d like you to show her to me: and if his dear father, the Colonel, says I, ain’t as good as your old gentleman upstairs, says I, who has gruel and dines upon doctor’s stuff, the Mrs. Pincott, says I, my name isn’t what it is, says I. Those were my very words, Master Clive, my dear; and then Mrs. Pincott says, Mrs. Hicks, she says, you don’t understand society, she says; you don’t understand society, he! he!” and the country lady, with considerable humour, gave an imitation of the town lady’s manner.

At this juncture Miss Honeyman re-entered the parlour, arrayed in her Sunday bonnet, her stiff and spotless collar, her Cashmere shawl, and Agra brooch, and carrying her Bible and Prayer-Book each stitched in its neat cover of brown silk. “Don’t stay chattering here, you idle woman,” she cried to her attendant with extreme asperity. “And you, sir, if you wish to smoke your cigar, you had best walk down to the cliff where the Cockneys are!” she added, glowering at Clive.

“Now I understand it all,” Clive said, trying to deprecate her anger. “My dear good aunt, it’s a most absurd mistake; upon my honour, Miss Ethel is as innocent as you are.”

“Innocent or not, this house is not intended for assignations, Clive! As long as Sir Brian Newcome lodges here, you will be pleased to keep away from it, sir; and though I don’t approve of Sunday travelling, I think the very best thing you can do is to put yourself in the train and go back to London.”

And now, young people, who read my moral pages, you will see how highly imprudent it is to sit with your cousins in railway carriages; and how, though you may not mean the slightest harm in the world, a great deal may be attributed to you; and how, when you think you are managing your little absurd love-affairs ever so quietly, Jeames and Betsy in the servants’-hall are very likely talking about them, and you are putting yourself in the power of those menials. If the perusal of these lines has rendered one single young couple uncomfortable, surely my amiable end is answered, and I have written not altogether in vain.

Clive was going away, innocent though he was, yet quivering under his aunt’s reproof, and so put out of countenance that he had not even thought of lighting the great cigar which he stuck into his foolish mouth; when a shout of “Clive! Clive!” from half a dozen little voices roused him, and presently as many little Newcomes came toddling down the stairs, and this one clung round his knees, and that at the skirts of his coat, and another took his hand and said, he must come and walk with them on the beach.

So away went Clive to walk with his cousins, and then to see his old friend Miss Cann, with whom and the elder children he walked to church, and issuing thence greeted Lady Anne and Ethel (who had also attended the service) in the most natural way in the world.

While engaged in talking with these, Miss Honeyman came out of the sacred edifice, crisp and stately in the famous Agra brooch and Cashmere shawls. The good-natured Lady Anne had a smile and a kind word for her as for everybody. Clive went up to his maternal aunt to offer his arm. “You must give him up to us for dinner, Miss Honeyman, if you please to be so very kind. He was so good-natured in escorting Ethel down,” Lady Anne said.

“Hm! my lady,” says Miss Honeyman, perking her head up in her collar. Clive did not know whether to laugh or not, but a fine blush illuminated his countenance. As for Ethel, she was and looked perfectly unconscious. So, rustling in her stiff black silk, Martha Honeyman walked with her nephew silent by the shore of the much-sounding sea. The idea of courtship, of osculatory processes, of marrying and giving in marriage, made this elderly virgin chafe and fume, she never having, at any period of her life, indulged in any such ideas or practices, and being angry against them, as childless wives will sometimes be angry and testy against matrons with their prattle about their nurseries. Now, Miss Cann was a different sort of spinster, and loved a bit of sentiment with all her heart, from which I am led to conclude—but, pray, is this the history of Miss Cann or of the Newcomes?

All these Newcomes then entered into Miss Honeyman’s house, where a number of little knives and forks were laid for them. Ethel was cold and thoughtful; Lady Anne was perfectly good-natured as her wont was. Sir Brian came in on the arm of his valet presently, wearing that look of extra neatness which invalids have, who have just been shaved and combed, and made ready by their attendants to receive company. He was voluble: though there was a perceptible change in his voice: he talked chiefly of matters which had occurred forty years ago, and especially of Clive’s own father, when he was a boy, in a manner which interested the young man and Ethel. “He threw me down in a chaise—sad chap—always reading Orme’s History of India—wanted marry Frenchwoman. He wondered Mrs. Newcome didn’t leave Tom anything—’pon my word, quite s’prise.” The events of to-day, the House of Commons, the City, had little interest for him. All the children went up and shook him by the hand, with awe in their looks, and he patted their yellow heads vacantly and kindly. He asked Clive (several times) where he had been? and said he himself had had a slight ’tack—vay slight—was getting well ev’y day—strong as a horse—go back to Parliament d’rectly. And then he became a little peevish with Parker, his man, about his broth. The man retired, and came back presently, with profound bows and gravity, to tell Sir Brian dinner was ready, and he went away quite briskly at this news, giving a couple of fingers to Clive before he disappeared into the upper apartments. Good-natured Lady Anne was as easy about this as about the other events of this world. In later days, with what a strange feeling we remember that last sight we have of the old friend; that nod of farewell, and shake of the hand, that last look of the face and figure as the door closes on him, or the coach drives away! So the roast mutton was ready, and all the children dined very heartily.

The infantile meal had not been long concluded, when servants announced “the Marquis of Farintosh;” and that nobleman made his appearance to pay his respects to Miss Newcome and Lady Anne. He brought the very last news of the very last party in London, where “Really, upon my honour, now, it was quite a stupid party, because Miss Newcome wasn’t there. It was now, really.”

Miss Newcome remarked, “If he said so upon his honour, of course she was satisfied.”

“As you weren’t there,” the young nobleman continued, “the Miss Rackstraws came out quite strong; really they did now, upon my honour. It was quite a quiet thing. Lady Merriborough hadn’t even got a new gown on. Lady Anne, you shirk London society this year, and we miss you: we expected you to give us two or three things this season; we did now, really. I said to Tufthunt, only yesterday, Why has not Lady Anne Newcome given anything? You know Tufthunt? They say he’s a clever fellow, and that—but he’s a low little beast, and I hate him.”

Lady Anne said, “Sir Brian’s bad state of health prevented her from going out this season, or receiving at home.”

“It don’t prevent your mother from going out, though,” continued my lord. “Upon my honour, I think unless she got two or three things every night, I think she’d die. Lady Kew’s like one of those horses, you know, that unless they go they drop.”

“Thank you for my mother,” said Lady Anne.

“She is, upon my honour. Last night I know she was at ever so many places. She dined at the Bloxams’, for I was there. Then she said she was going to sit with old Mrs. Crackthorpe, who has broke her collar-bone (that Crackthorpe in the Life Guards, her grandson, is a brute, and I hope she won’t leave him a shillin’); and then she came on to Lady Hawkstone’s, where I heard her say she had been at the—at the Flowerdales’, too. People begin to go to those Flowerdales’. Hanged—if I know where they won’t go next. Cotton-spinner, wasn’t he?”

“So were we, my lord,” says Miss Newcome.

“Oh, yes, I forgot! But you’re of an old family—very old family.”

“We can’t help it,” said Miss Ethel, archly. Indeed, she thought she was.

“Do you believe in the barber-surgeon?” asked Clive. And my lord looked at him with a noble curiosity, as much as to say, “Who the deuce was the barber-surgeon? and who the devil are you?”

“Why should we disown our family?” Miss Ethel said, simply. “In those early days I suppose people did—did all sorts of things, and it was not considered at all out of the way to be surgeon to William the Conqueror.”

“Edward the Confessor,” interposed Clive. “And it must be true, because I have seen a picture of the barber-surgeon, a friend of mine, M’Collop, did the picture, and I dare say it is for sale still”

Lady Anne said “she should be delighted to see it.” Lord Farintosh remembered that the M’Collop had the moor next to his in Argyleshire, but did not choose to commit himself with the stranger, and preferred looking at his own handsome face and admiring it in the glass until the last speaker had concluded his remarks.

As Clive did not offer any further conversation, but went back to a table, where he began to draw the barber-surgeon, Lord Farintosh resumed the delightful talk. “What infernal bad glasses these are in these Brighton lodging-houses! They make a man look quite green, really they do—and there’s nothing green in me, is there, Lady Anne?”

“But you look very unwell, Lord Farintosh; indeed you do,” Miss Newcome said, gravely. “I think late hours, and smoking, and going to that horrid Platt’s, where I dare say you go——”

“Go? Don’t I? But don’t call it horrid; really, now, don’t call it horrid!” cried the noble Marquis.

“Well—something has made you look far from well. You know how very well Lord Farintosh used to look, mamma—and to see him now, in only his second season—oh, it is melancholy!”

“God bless my soul, Miss Newcome! what do you mean? I think I look pretty well,” and the noble youth passed his hand through his hair. “It is a hard life, I know; that tearin’ about night after night, and sittin’ up till ever so much o’clock; and then all these races, you know, comin’ one after another—it’s enough to knock up any fellow. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Miss Newcome. I’ll go down to Codlington, to my mother; I will, upon my honour, and lie quiet all July, and then I’ll go to Scotland—and you shall see whether I don’t look better next season.”

“Do, Lord Farintosh!” said Ethel, greatly amused, as much, perhaps, at the young Marquis as at her cousin Clive, who sat whilst the other was speaking, fuming with rage, at his table.

“What are you doing, Clive?” she asks.

“I was trying to draw; Lord knows who—Lord Newcome, who was killed at the battle of Bosworth,” said the artist, and the girl ran to look at the picture.

“Why, you have made him like Punch!” cries the young lady.

“It’s a shame caricaturing one’s own flesh and blood, isn’t it?” asked Clive, gravely.

“What a droll, funny picture!” exclaims Lady Anne. “Isn’t it capital, Lord Farintosh?”

“I dare say—I confess I don’t understand that sort of thing,” says his lordship. “Don’t, upon my honour. There’s Odo Carton, always making those caricatures—I don’t understand ’em. You’ll come up to town to-morrow, won’t you? And you’re goin’ to Lady Hm’s, and to Hm and Hm’s, ain’t you?” (The names of these aristocratic places of resort were quite inaudible.) “You mustn’t let Miss Blackcap have it all her own way, you know, that you mustn’t.”

“She won’t have it all her own way,” says Miss Ethel. “Lord Farintosh, will you do me a favour? Lady Innishowan is your aunt?”

“Of course she is my aunt.”

“Will you be so very good as to get a card for her party on Tuesday, for my cousin, Mr. Clive Newcome? Clive, please be introduced to the Marquis of Farintosh.”

The young Marquis perfectly well recollected those mustachios and their wearer on a former night, though he had not thought fit to make any sign of recognition. “Anything you wish, Miss Newcome,” he said; “delighted, I’m sure;” and turning to Clive—In the army, I suppose?”

“I am an artist,” says Clive, turning very red.

“Oh, really, I didn’t know!” cries the nobleman; and my lord bursting out laughing presently as he was engaged in conversation with Miss Ethel on the balcony, Clive thought, very likely with justice, “He is making fun of my mustachios. Confound him! I should like to pitch him over into the street.” But this was only a kind wish on Mr. Newcome’s part; not followed out by any immediate fulfilment.

As the Marquis of Farintosh seemed inclined to prolong his visit, and his company was exceedingly disagreeable to Clive, the latter took his departure for an afternoon walk, consoled to think that he should have Ethel to himself at the evening’s dinner, when Lady Anne would be occupied about Sir Brian, and would be sure to be putting the children to bed, and, in a word, would give him a quarter of an hour of delightful tête-à-tête with the beautiful Ethel.

Clive’s disgust was considerable when he came to dinner at length, and found Lord Farintosh, likewise invited, and sprawling in the drawing-room. His hopes of a tête-à-tête were over. Ethel and Lady Anne and my lord talked, as all people will, about their mutual acquaintance: what parties were coming off, who was going to marry whom, and so forth. And as the persons about whom they conversed were in their own station of life, and belonged to the fashionable world, of which Clive had but a slight knowledge, he chose to fancy that his cousin was giving herself airs, and to feel sulky and uneasy during their dialogue.

Miss Newcome had faults of her own, and was worldly enough as perhaps the reader has begun to perceive; but in this instance no harm, sure, was to be attributed to her. If two gossips in Aunt Honeyman’s parlour had talked over the affairs of Mr. Jones and Mr. Brown, Clive would not have been angry; but a young man of spirit not unfrequently mistakes his vanity for independence: and it is certain that nothing is more offensive to us of the middle class than to hear the names of great folks constantly introduced into conversation.

So Clive was silent and ate no dinner, to the alarm of Martha, who had put him to bed many a time, and always had a maternal eye over him. When he actually refused currant and raspberry tart, and custard, the chef d’œuvre of Miss Honeyman, for which she had seen him absolutely cry in his childhood, the good Martha was alarmed.

“Law, Master Clive!” she said, “do ’ee eat some. Missis made it, you know she did;” and she insisted on bringing back the tart to him.

Lady Anne and Ethel laughed at this eagerness on the worthy old woman’s part. “Do ’ee eat some, Clive,” says Ethel, imitating honest Mrs. Hicks, who had left the room.

“It’s doosid good,” remarked Lord Farintosh.

“Then do ’ee eat some more,” said Miss Newcome: on which the young nobleman, holding out his plate, observed with much affability, that the cook of the lodgings was really a stunner for tarts.

“The cook! dear me, it’s not the cook!” cries Miss Ethel. “Don’t you remember the princess in the Arabian Nights, who was such a stunner for tarts, Lord Farintosh?”

Lord Farintosh couldn’t say that he did.

“Well, I thought not; but there was a princess in Arabia or China, or somewhere, who made such delicious tarts and custards that nobody’s could compare with them; and there is an old lady in Brighton who has the same wonderful talent. She is the mistress of this house.”

“And she is my aunt, at your lordship’s service,” said Mr. Clive, with great dignity.

“Upon my honour! did you make ’em, Lady Anne?” asked my lord.

“The Queen of Hearts made tarts!” cried out Miss Newcome, rather eagerly, and blushing somewhat.

“My good old aunt, Miss Honeyman, made this one,” Clive would go on to say.

“Mr. Honeyman’s sister, the preacher, you know, where we go on Sunday,” Miss Ethel interposed.

“The Honeyman pedigree is not a matter of very great importance,” Lady Anne remarked gently. “Kuhn, will you have the goodness to take away these things? When did you hear of Colonel Newcome, Clive?”

An air of deep bewilderment and perplexity had spread over Lord Farintosh’s fine countenance whilst this talk about pastry had been going on. The Arabian Princess, the Queen of Hearts making tarts, Miss Honeyman? Who the deuce were all these? Such may have been his lordship’s doubts and queries. Whatever his cogitations were he did not give utterance to them, but remained in silence for some time, as did the rest of the little party. Clive tried to think he had asserted his independence by showing that he was not ashamed of his old aunt; but the doubt may be whether there was any necessity for presenting her in this company, and whether Mr. Clive had not much better have left the tart question alone.

Ethel evidently thought so: for she talked and rattled in the most lively manner with Lord Farintosh for the rest of the evening, and scarcely chose to say a word to her cousin. Lady Anne was absent with Sir Brian and her children for the most part of the time: and thus Clive had the pleasure of listening to Miss Newcome uttering all sorts of odd little paradoxes, firing the while sly shots at Mr. Clive, and, indeed, making fun of his friends, exhibiting herself in not the most agreeable light. Her talk only served the more to bewilder Lord Farintosh, who did not understand a tithe of her allusions: for Heaven, which had endowed the young Marquis with personal charms, a large estate, an ancient title and the pride belonging to it, had not supplied his lordship with a great quantity of brains, or a very feeling heart.

Lady Anne came back from the upper regions presently, with rather a grave face, and saying that Sir Brian was not so well this evening, upon which the young men rose to depart. My lord said he had “a most delightful dinner and a most delightful tart, ’pon his honour,” and was the only one of the little company who laughed at his own remark. Miss Ethel’s eyes flashed scorn at Mr. Clive when that unfortunate subject was introduced again.

My lord was going back to London to-morrow. Was Miss Newcome going back? Wouldn’t he like to go back in the train with her!—another unlucky observation. Lady Anne said, “it would depend on the state of Sir Brian’s health the next morning whether Ethel would return; and both of you gentlemen are too young to be her escort,” added the kind lady. Then she shook hands with Clive, as thinking she had said something too severe for him.

Farintosh in the meantime was taking leave of Miss Newcome. “Pray, pray,” said his lordship, “don’t throw me over at Lady Innishowan’s. You know I hate balls and never go to ’em, except when you go. I hate dancing, I do, ’pon my honour.”

“Thank you,” said Miss Newcome, with a curtsey.

“Except with one person—only one person, upon my honour. I’ll remember and get the invitation for your friend. And if you would but try that mare, I give you my honour I bred her at Codlington. She’s a beauty to look at, and as quiet as a lamb.”

“I don’t want a horse like a lamb,” replied the young lady.

“Well—she’ll go like blazes now: and over timber she’s splendid now. She is, upon my honour.”

“When I come to London perhaps you may trot her out,” said Miss Ethel, giving him her hand and a fine smile.

Clive came up biting his lips. “I suppose you don’t condescend to ride Bhurtpore any more now?” he said.

“Poor old Bhurtpore! The children ride him now,” said Miss Ethel—giving Clive at the same time a dangerous look of her eyes, as though to see if her shot had hit. Then she added, “No—he has not been brought up to town this year: he is at Newcome, and I like him very much.” Perhaps she thought the shot had struck too deep.

But if Clive was hurt he did not show his wound. “You have had him these four years—yes, it’s four years since my father broke him for you. And you still continue to like him? What a miracle of constancy! You use him sometimes in the country—when you have no better horse—what a compliment to Bhurtpore!”

“Nonsense!” Miss Ethel here made Clive a sign in her most imperious manner to stay a moment when Lord Farintosh had departed.

But he did not choose to obey this order. “Good night,” he said. “Before I go I must shake hands with my aunt downstairs.” And he was gone, following close upon Lord Farintosh, who I dare say thought, “Why the deuce can’t he shake hands with his aunt up here?” and when Clive entered Miss Honeyman’s back-parlour, making a bow to the young nobleman, my lord went away more perplexed than ever: and the next day told friends at White’s what uncommonly queer people those Newcomes were. “I give you my honour there was a fellow at Lady Anne’s whom they call Clive, who is a painter by trade—his uncle is a preacher—his father is a horse-dealer, and his aunt lets lodgings and cooks the dinner.”

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XLIII. Returns to some Old Friends

The haggard youth burst into my chambers, in the Temple, on the very next morning, and confided to me the story which has been just here narrated. When he had concluded it, with many ejaculations regarding the heroine of the tale, “I saw her, sir,” he added, “walking with the children and Miss Cann as I drove round in the fly to the station—and didn’t even bow to her.”

“Why did you go round by the cliff?” asked Clive’s friend.

“That is not the way from the Steyne Arms to the railroad.”

“Hang it,” says Clive, turning very red, “I wanted to pass just under her windows, and if I saw her, not to see her: and that’s what I did.”

“Why did she walk on the cliff?” mused Clive’s friend, “at that early hour? Not to meet Lord Farintosh, I should think, he never gets up before twelve. It must have been to see you. Didn’t you tell her you were going away in the morning?”

“I tell you what she does with me,” continues Mr. Clive. “Sometimes she seems to like me, and then she leaves me. Sometimes she is quite kind—kind she always is—I mean, you know, Pen—you know what I mean; and then up comes the old Countess, or a young Marquis, or some fellow with a handle to his name, and she whistles me off till the next convenient opportunity.”

“Women are like that, my ingenuous youth,” says Clive’s counsellor.

“I won’t stand it. I won’t be made a fool of!” he continues. “She seems to expect everybody to bow to her, and moves through the world with her imperious airs. Oh, how confoundedly handsome she is with them! I tell you what. I feel inclined to tumble down and feel one of her pretty little feet on my neck and say, There! Trample my life out. Make a slave of me. Let me get a silver collar and mark ‘Ethel’ on it, and go through the world with my badge.”

“And a blue ribbon for a footman to hold you by; and a muzzle to wear in the dog-days. Bow! wow!” says Mr. Pendennis.

(At this noise Mr. Warrington puts his head in from the neighbouring bedchamber, and shows a beard just lathered for shaving. “We are talking sentiment! Go back till you are wanted!” says Mr. Pendennis. Exit he of the soap-suds.)

“Don’t make fun of a fellow,” Clive continues, laughing ruefully. “You see I must talk about it to somebody. I shall die if I don’t. Sometimes, sir, I rise up in my might and I defy her lightning. The sarcastic dodge is the best: I have borrowed that from you Pen, old boy. That puzzles her: that would beat her if I could but go on with it. But there comes a tone of her sweet voice, a look out of those killing grey eyes, and all my frame is in a thrill and a tremble. When she was engaged to Lord Kew I did battle with the confounded passion—and I ran away from it like an honest man, and the gods rewarded me with ease of mind after a while. But now the thing rages worse than ever. Last night, I give you my honour, I heard every one of the confounded hours toll, except the last, when I was dreaming of my father, and the chambermaid woke me with a hot water jug.”

“Did she scald you? What a cruel chambermaid! I see you have shaven the mustachios off.”

“Farintosh asked me whether I was going in the army,” said Clive, “and she laughed. I thought I had best dock them. Oh, I would like to cut my head off as well as my hair!”

“Have you ever asked her to marry you?” asked Clive’s friend.

“I have seen her but five times since my return from abroad,” the lad went on; “there has been always somebody by. Who am I? a painter with five hundred a year for an allowance. Isn’t she used to walk up on velvet and dine upon silver; and hasn’t she got marquises and barons, and all sorts of swells, in her train? I daren’t ask her——”

Here his friend hummed Montrose’s lines—“He either fears his fate too much, or his desert is small, who dares not put it to the touch, and win or lose it all.”

“I own I dare not ask her. If she were to refuse me, I know I should never ask again. This isn’t the moment, when all Swelldom is at her feet, for me to come forward and say, ‘Maiden, I have watched thee daily, and I think thou lovest me well.’ I read that ballad to her at Baden, sir. I drew a picture of the Lord of Burleigh wooing the maiden, and asked what she would have done?”

“Oh, you did? I thought, when we were at Baden, we were so modest that we did not even whisper our condition?”

“A fellow can’t help letting it be seen and hinting it,” says Clive, with another blush. “They can read it in our looks fast enough; and what is going on in our minds, hang them! I recollect she said, in her grave, cool way, that after all the Lord and Lady of Burleigh did not seem to have made a very good marriage, and that the lady would have been much happier in marrying one of her own degree.”

“That was a very prudent saying for a young lady of eighteen,” remarks Clive’s friend.

“Yes; but it was not an unkind one. Say Ethel thought—thought what was the case; and being engaged herself, and knowing how friends of mine had provided a very pretty little partner for me—she is a dear, good little girl, little Rosey; and twice as good, Pen, when her mother is away—knowing this and that, I say, suppose Ethel wanted to give me a hint to keep quiet, was she not right in the counsel she gave me? She is not fit to be a poor man’s wife. Fancy Ethel Newcome going into the kitchen and making pies like Aunt Honeyman!”

“The Circassian beauties don’t sell under so many thousand purses,” remarked Mr. Pendennis. “If there’s a beauty in a well-regulated Georgian family, they fatten her; they feed her with the best Racahout des Arabes. They give her silk robes, and perfumed baths; have her taught to play on the dulcimer and dance and sing; and when she is quite perfect, send her down to Constantinople for the Sultan’s inspection. The rest of the family think never of grumbling, but eat coarse meat, bathe in the river, wear old clothes, and praise Allah for their sister’s elevation. Bah! Do you suppose the Turkish system doesn’t obtain all over the world? My poor Clive, this article in the Mayfair Market is beyond your worship’s price. Some things in this world are made for our betters, young man. Let Dives say grace for his dinner, and the dogs and Lazarus be thankful for the crumbs. Here comes Warrington, shaven and smart as if he was going out a-courting.”

Thus it will be seen, that in his communication with certain friends who approached nearer to his own time of life, Clive was much more eloquent and rhapsodical than in the letter which he wrote to his father, regarding his passion for Miss Ethel. He celebrated her with pencil and pen. He was for ever drawing the outline of her head, the solemn eyebrow, the nose (that wondrous little nose), descending from the straight forehead, the short upper lip, and chin sweeping in a full curve to the neck, etc. etc. A frequenter of his studio might see a whole gallery of Ethels there represented: when Mrs. Mackenzie visited that place, and remarked one face and figure repeated on a hundred canvases and papers, grey, white, and brown, I believe she was told that the original was a famous Roman model, from whom Clive had studied a great deal during his residence in Italy; on which Mrs. Mack gave it as her opinion that Clive was a sad wicked young fellow. The widow thought rather the better of him for being a sad wicked young fellow; and as for Miss Rosey, she, was of course of mamma’s way of thinking. Rosey went through the world constantly smiling at whatever occurred. She was good-humoured through the dreariest long evenings at the most stupid parties; sate good-humouredly for hours at Shoolbred’s whilst mamma was making purchases; heard good-humouredly those old old stories of her mother’s day after day; bore an hour’s joking or an hour’s scolding with equal good-humour; and whatever had been the occurrences of her simple day, whether there was sunshine or cloudy weather, or flashes of lightning and bursts of rain, I fancy Miss Mackenzie slept after them quite undisturbedly, and was sure to greet the morrow’s dawn with a smile.

Had Clive become more knowing in his travels, had Love or Experience opened his eyes, that they looked so differently now upon objects which before used well enough to please them? It is a fact that, until he went abroad, he thought widow Mackenzie a dashing, lively, agreeable woman: he used to receive her stories about Cheltenham, the colonies, the balls at Government House, the observations which the bishop made, and the peculiar attention of the Chief Justice to Mrs. Major M’Shane, with the Major’s uneasy behaviour—all these to hear at one time did Clive not ungraciously incline. “Our friend, Mrs. Mack,” the good old Colonel used to say, “is a clever woman of the world, and has seen a great deal of company.” That story of Sir Thomas Sadman dropping a pocket-handkerchief in his court at Colombo, which the Queen’s Advocate O’Goggarty picked up, and on which Laura MacS. was embroidered, whilst the Major was absolutely in the witness-box giving evidence against a native servant who had stolen one of his cocked-hats—that story always made good Thomas Newcome laugh, and Clive used to enjoy it too, and the widow’s mischievous fun in narrating it; and now, behold, one day when Mrs. Mackenzie recounted the anecdote in her best manner to Messrs. Pendennis and Warrington, and Frederick Bayham, who had been invited to meet Mr. Clive in Fitzroy Square—when Mr. Binnie chuckled, when Rosey, as in duty bound, looked discomposed and said, “Law, mamma!”—not one sign of good-humour, not one ghost of a smile, made its apparition on Clive’s dreary face. He painted imaginary portraits with a strawberry stalk; he looked into his water-glass as though he would plunge and drown there; and Bayham had to remind him that the claret jug was anxious to have another embrace from its constant friend, F. B. When Mrs. Mack went away distributing smiles, Clive groaned out, “Good heavens! how that story does bore me!” and lapsed into his former moodiness, not giving so much as a glance to Rosey, whose sweet face looked at him kindly for a moment, as she followed in the wake of her mamma.

“The mother’s the woman for my money,” I heard F. B. whisper to Warrington. “Splendid figure-head, sir—magnificent build, sir, from bows to stern—I like ’em of that sort. Thank you, Mr. Binnie, I will take a back-hander, as Clive don’t seem to drink. The youth, sir, has grown melancholy with his travels; I’m inclined to think some noble Roman has stolen the young man’s heart. Why did you not send us over a picture of the charmer, Clive? Young Ridley, Mr. Binnie, you will be happy to hear, is bidding fair to take a distinguished place in the world of arts. His picture has been greatly admired; and my good friend Mrs. Ridley tells me that Lord Todmorden has sent him over an order to paint him a couple of pictures at a hundred guineas apiece.”

“I should think so. J. J.’s pictures will be worth five times a hundred guineas ere five years are over,” says Clive.

“In that case it wouldn’t be a bad speculation for our friend Sherrick,” remarked F. B., “to purchase a few of the young man’s works. I would, only I haven’t the capital to spare. Mine has been vested in an Odessa venture, sir, in a large amount of wild oats, which up to the present moment make me no return. But it will always be a consolation to me to think that I have been the means—the humble means—of furthering that deserving young man’s prospects in life.”

“You, F. B.! and how?” we asked.

“By certain humble contributions of mine to the press,” answered Bayham, majestically. “Mr. Warrington, the claret happens to stand with you; and exercise does it good, sir. Yes, the articles, trifling as they may appear, have attracted notice,” continued F. B., sipping his wine with great gusto. “They are noticed, Pendennis, give me leave to say, by parties who don’t value so much the literary or even the political part of the Pall Mall Gazette, though both, I am told by those who read them, are conducted with considerable—consummate ability. John Ridley sent a hundred pounds over to his father, the other day, who funded it in his son’s name. And Ridley told the story to Lord Todmorden, when the venerable nobleman congratulated him on having such a child. I wish F. B. had one of the same sort, sir.” In which sweet prayer we all of us joined with a laugh.

One of us had told Mrs. Mackenzie (let the criminal blush to own that quizzing his fellow-creatures used at one time to form part of his youthful amusement) that F. B. was the son of a gentleman of most ancient family and vast landed possessions, and as Bayham was particularly attentive to the widow, and grandiloquent in his remarks, she was greatly pleased by his politeness, and pronounced him a most distingué man—reminding her, indeed, of General Hopkirk, who commanded in Canada. And she bade Rosey sing for Mr. Bayham, who was in a rapture at the young lady’s performances, and said no wonder such an accomplished daughter came from such a mother, though how such a mother could have a daughter of such an age he, F. B., was at a loss to understand. Oh, sir! Mrs. Mackenzie was charmed and overcome at this novel compliment. Meanwhile the little artless Rosey warbled on her pretty ditties.

“It is a wonder,” growled out Mr. Warrington, “that that sweet girl can belong to such a woman. I don’t understand much about women, but that one appears to me to be—hum!”

“What, George?” asked Warrington’s friend.

“Well, an ogling, leering, scheming, artful old campaigner,” grumbled the misogynist. “As for the little girl, I should like to have her to sing to me all night long. Depend upon it she would make a much better wife for Clive than that fashionable cousin of his he is hankering after. I heard him bellowing about her the other day in chambers, as I was dressing. What the deuce does the boy want with a wife at all?” And Rosey’s song being by this time finished, Warrington went up with a blushing face and absolutely paid a compliment to Miss Mackenzie—an almost unheard-of effort on George’s part.

“I wonder whether it is every young fellow’s lot,” quoth George, as we trudged home together, “to pawn his heart away to some girl that’s not worth the winning? Psha! it’s all mad rubbish this sentiment. The women ought not to be allowed to interfere with us: married if a man must be, a suitable wife should be portioned out to him, and there an end of it. Why doesn’t the young man marry this girl, and get back to his business and paint his pictures? Because his father wishes it—and the old Nabob yonder, who seems a kindly-disposed, easy-going, old heathen philosopher. Here’s a pretty little girl: money I suppose in sufficiency—everything satisfactory, except, I grant you, the campaigner. The lad might daub his canvases, christen a child a year, and be as happy as any young donkey that browses on this common of ours—but he must go and heehaw after a zebra forsooth! a lusus naturæ is she! I never spoke to a woman of fashion, thank my stars—I don’t know the nature of the beast; and since I went to our race-balls, as a boy, scarcely ever saw one; as I don’t frequent operas and parties in London like you young flunkeys of the aristocracy. I heard you talking about this one; I couldn’t help it, as my door was open and the young one was shouting like a madman. What! does he choose to hang on on sufferance and hope to be taken, provided Miss can get no better? Do you mean to say that is the genteel custom, and that women in your confounded society do such things every day? Rather than have such a creature I would take a savage woman, who should nurse my dusky brood; and rather than have a daughter brought up to the trade I would bring her down from the woods and sell her in Virginia.” With which burst of indignation our friend’s anger ended for that night.

Though Mr. Clive had the felicity to meet his cousin Ethel at a party or two in the ensuing weeks of the season, every time he perused the features of Lady Kew’s brass knocker in Queen Street, no result came of the visit. At one of their meetings in the world Ethel fairly told him that her grandmother would not receive him. “You know, Clive, I can’t help myself: nor would it be proper to make you signs out of the window. But you must call for all that: grandmamma may become more good-humoured: or if you don’t come she may suspect I told you not to come: and to battle with her day after day is no pleasure, sir, I assure you. Here is Lord Farintosh coming to take me to dance. You must not speak to me all the evening, mind that, sir,” and away goes the young lady in a waltz with the Marquis.

On the same evening—as he was biting his nails, or cursing his fate, or wishing to invite Lord Farintosh into the neighbouring garden of Berkeley Square, whence the policeman might carry to the station-house the corpse of the survivor,—Lady Kew would bow to him with perfect graciousness; on other nights her ladyship would pass and no more recognise him than the servant who opened the door.

If she was not to see him at her grandmother’s house, and was not particularly unhappy at his exclusion, why did Miss Newcome encourage Mr. Clive so that he should try and see her? If Clive could not get into the little house in Queen Street, why was Lord Farintosh’s enormous cab-horse looking daily into the first-floor windows of that street? Why were little quiet dinners made for him, before the opera, before going to the play, upon a half-dozen occasions, when some of the old old Kew port was brought out of the cellar, where cobwebs had gathered round it ere Farintosh was born? The dining-room was so tiny that not more than five people could sit at the little round table: that is, not more than Lady Kew and her granddaughter, Miss Crochet, the late vicar’s daughter, at Kewbury, one of the Miss Toadins, and Captain Walleye, or Tommy Henchman, Farintosh’s kinsman, and admirer, who were of no consequence, or old Fred Tiddler, whose wife was an invalid, and who was always ready at a moment’s notice? Crackthorpe once went to one of these dinners, but that young soldier being a frank and high-spirited youth, abused the entertainment and declined more of them. “I tell you what I was wanted for,” the Captain told his mess and Clive at the Regent’s Park barracks afterwards, “I was expected to go as Farintosh’s Groom of the Stole, don’t you know, to stand, or if I could sit, in the back seat of the box, whilst his Royal Highness made talk with the Beauty; to go out and fetch the carriage, and walk downstairs with that d—— crooked old dowager, that looks as if she usually rode on a broomstick, by Jove, or else with that bony old painted sheep-faced companion, who’s raddled like an old bell-wether. I think, Newcome, you seem rather hit by the Belle Cousine—so was I last season; so were ever so many of the fellows. By Jove, sir! there’s nothing I know more comfortable or inspiritin’ than a younger son’s position, when a marquis cuts in with fifteen thousand a year! We fancy we’ve been making running, and suddenly we find ourselves nowhere. Miss Mary, or Miss Lucy, or Miss Ethel, saving your presence, will no more look at us, than my dog will look at a bit of bread, when I offer her this cutlet. Will you—old woman! no, you old slut, that you won’t!” (to Mag, an Isle of Skye terrier, who, in fact, prefers the cutlet, having snuffed disdainfully at the bread)—“that you won’t, no more than any of your sex. Why, do you suppose, if Jack’s eldest brother had been dead—Barebones Belsize they used to call him (I don’t believe he was a bad fellow, though he was fond of psalm-singing)—do you suppose that Lady Clara would have looked at that cock-tail Barney Newcome? Beg your pardon, if he’s your cousin—but a more odious little snob I never saw.”

“I give you up Barnes,” said Clive, laughing; “anybody may shy at him and I shan’t interfere.”

“I understand, but at nobody else of the family. Well, what I mean is, that that old woman is enough to spoil any young girl she takes in hand. She dries ’em up, and poisons ’em, sir; and I was never more glad than when I heard that Kew had got out of her old clutches. Frank is a fellow that will always be led by some woman or another; and I’m only glad it should be a good one. They say his mother’s serious, and that; but why shouldn’t she bet?” continues honest Crackthorpe, puffing his cigar with great energy. “They say the old dowager doesn’t believe in God nor devil: but that she’s in such a funk to be left in the dark that she howls, and raises the doose’s own delight if her candle goes out. Toppleton slept next room to her at Groningham, and heard her; didn’t you, Top?”

“Heard her howling like an old cat on the tiles,” says Toppleton,—“thought she was at first. My man told me that she used to fling all sorts of things—boot-jacks and things, give you my honour—at her maid, and that the woman was all over black and blue.”

“Capital head that is Newcome has done of Jack Belsize!” says Crackthorpe, from out of his cigar.

“And Kew’s too—famous likeness! I say, Newcome, if you have ’em printed the whole brigade’ll subscribe. Make your fortune, see if you won’t,” cries Toppleton.

“He’s such a heavy swell, he don’t want to make his fortune,” ejaculates Butts.

“Butts, old boy, he’ll paint you for nothing, and send you to the Exhibition, where some widow will fall in love with you, and you shall be put as frontispiece for the ‘Book of Beauty,’ by Jove,” cries another military satirist—to whom Butts:

“You hold your tongue, you old Saracen’s Head; they’re going to have you done on the bear’s-grease pots. I say, I suppose Jack’s all right now. When did he write to you last, Cracky?”

“He wrote from Palermo—a most jolly letter from him and Kew. He hasn’t touched a card for nine months; is going to give up play. So is Frank, too, grown quite a good boy. So will you, too, Butts, you old miscreant, repent of your sins, pay your debts, and do something handsome for that poor deluded milliner in Albany Street. Jack says Kew’s mother has written over to Lord Highgate a beautiful letter—and the old boy’s relenting, and they’ll come together again—Jack’s eldest son now, you know. Bore for Lady Susan only having girls.”

“Not a bore for Jack, though,” cries another. And what a good fellow Jack was; and what a trump Kew is; how famously he stuck by him: went to see him in prison and paid him out! and what good fellows we all are, in general, became the subject of the conversation, the latter part of which took place in the smoking-room of the Regent’s Park Barracks, then occupied by that regiment of Life Guards of which Lord Kew and Mr. Belsize had been members. Both were still fondly remembered by their companions; and it was because Belsize had spoken very warmly of Clive’s friendliness to him that Jack’s friend the gallant Crackthorpe had been interested in our hero, and found an opportunity of making his acquaintance.

With these frank and pleasant young men Clive soon formed a considerable intimacy: and if any of his older and peaceful friends chanced to take their afternoon airing in the Park, and survey the horsemen there, we might have the pleasure of beholding Mr. Newcome in Rotten Row, riding side by side with other dandies who had mustachios blonde or jet, who wore flowers in their buttons (themselves being flowers of spring), who rode magnificent thoroughbred horses, scarcely touching their stirrups with the tips of their varnished boots, and who kissed the most beautiful primrose-coloured kid gloves to lovely ladies passing them in the Ride. Clive drew portraits of half the officers of the Life Guards Green; and was appointed painter in ordinary to that distinguished corps. His likeness of the Colonel would make you die with laughing: his picture of the Surgeon was voted a masterpiece. He drew the men in the saddle, in the stable, in their flannel dresses, sweeping their flashing swords about, receiving lancers, repelling infantry,—nay, cutting—a sheep in two, as some of the warriors are known to be able to do at one stroke. Detachments of Life Guardsmen made their appearance in Charlotte Street, which was not very distant from their barracks; the most splendid cabs were seen prancing before his door; and curly-whiskered youths, of aristocratic appearance, smoking cigars out of his painting-room window. How many times did Clive’s next-door neighbour, little Mr. Finch, the miniature-painter, run to peep through his parlour blinds, hoping that a sitter was coming, and “a carriage-party” driving up! What wrath Mr. Scowler, A.R.A., was in, because a young hop-o’-my-thumb dandy, who wore gold chains and his collars turned down, should spoil the trade and draw portraits for nothing! Why did none of the young men come to Scowler? Scowler was obliged to own that Mr. Newcome had considerable talent, and a good knack at catching a likeness. He could not paint a bit, to be sure, but his heads in black-and-white were really tolerable; his sketches of horses very vigorous and lifelike. Mr. Gandish said if Clive would come for three or four years into his academy he could make something of him. Mr. Smee shook his head, and said he was afraid, that kind of loose, desultory study, that keeping of aristocratic company, was anything but favourable to a young artist—Smee, who would walk five miles to attend an evening party of ever so little a great man!

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XLIV. In which Mr. Charles Honeyman appears in an Amiable Light

Mr. Frederick Bayham waited at Fitzroy Square while Clive was yet talking with his friends there, and favoured that gentleman with his company home to the usual smoky refreshment. Clive always rejoiced in F. B.’s society, whether he was in a sportive mood, or, as now, in a solemn and didactic vein. F. B. had been more than ordinarily majestic all the evening. “I dare say you find me a good deal altered, Clive,” he remarked; “I am a good deal altered. Since that good Samaritan, your kind father, had compassion on a poor fellow fallen among thieves (though I don’t say, mind you, he was much better than his company), F. B. has mended some of his ways. I am trying a course of industry, sir. Powers, perhaps naturally great, have been neglected over the wine-cup and the die. I am beginning to feel my way; and my chiefs yonder, who have just walked home with their cigars in their mouths, and without as much as saying, F. B., my boy, shall we go to the Haunt and have a cool lobster and a glass of table-beer,—which they certainly do not consider themselves to be,—I say, sir, the Politician and the Literary Critic” (there was a most sarcastic emphasis laid on these phrases, characterising Messrs. Warrington and Pendennis) “may find that there is a humble contributor to the Pall Mall Gazette, whose name, may be, the amateur shall one day reckon even higher than their own. Mr. Warrington I do not say so much—he is an able man, sir, an able man;—but there is that about your exceedin self-satisfied friend, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, which—well, well—let time show. You did not—get the—hem—paper at Rome and Naples, I suppose?”

“Forbidden by the Inquisition,” says Clive, delighted; “and at Naples the king furious against it.”

“I don’t wonder they don’t like it at Rome, sir. There’s serious matter in it which may set the prelates of a certain Church rather in a tremor. You haven’t read—the—ahem—the Pulpit Pencillings in the P. M. G.? Slight sketches, mental and corporeal, of our chief divines now in London—and signed Latimer?”

“I don’t do much in that way,” said Clive.

“So much the worse for you, my young friend. Not that I mean to judge any other fellow harshly—I mean any other fellow sinner harshly—or that I mean that those Pulpit Pencillings would be likely to do you any great good. But, such as they are, they have been productive of benefit.—Thank you, Mary, and my dear, the tap is uncommonly good, and I drink to your future husband’s good health.—A glass of good sound beer refreshes after all that claret. Well, sir, to return to the Pencillings, pardon my vanity in saying, that though Mr. Pendennis laughs at them, they have been of essential service to the paper. They give it a character, they rally round it the respectable classes. They create correspondence. I have received many interesting letters, chiefly from females, about the Pencillings. Some complain that their favourite preachers are slighted; others applaud because the clergymen they sit under are supported by F. B. I am Laud Latimer, sir,—though I have heard the letters attributed to the Rev. Mr. Bunker, and to a Member of Parliament eminent in the religious world.”

“So you are the famous Laud Latimer?” cries Clive, who had, in fact, seen letters signed by those right reverend names in our paper.

“Famous is hardly the word. One who scoffs at everything—I need not say I allude to Mr. Arthur Pendennis—would have had the letters signed—the Beadle, of the Parish. He calls me the Venerable Beadle sometimes—it being, I grieve to say, his way to deride grave subjects. You wouldn’t suppose now, my young Clive, that the same hand which pens the Art criticisms, occasionally, when His Highness Pendennis is lazy, takes a minor theatre, or turns the sportive epigram, or the ephemeral paragraph, should adopt a grave theme on a Sunday, and chronicle the sermons of British divines? For eighteen consecutive Sunday evenings, Clive, in Mrs. Ridley’s front parlour, which I now occupy, vice Miss Cann promoted, I have written the Pencillings—scarcely allowing a drop of refreshment, except under extreme exhaustion, to pass my lips. Pendennis laughs at the Pencillings. He wants to stop them; and says they bore the public.—I don’t want to think a man is jealous, who was himself the cause of my engagement at the P. M. G.,—perhaps my powers were not developed then.”

“Pen thinks he writes better now than when he began,” remarked Clive; “I have heard him say so.”

“His opinion of his own writings is high, whatever their date. Mine, sir, are only just coming into notice. They begin to know F. B., sir, in the sacred edifices of his metropolitan city. I saw the Bishop of London looking at me last Sunday week, and am sure his chaplain whispered him, ‘It’s Mr. Bayham, my lord, nephew of your lordship’s right reverend brother, the Lord Bishop of Bullocksmithy.’ And last Sunday being at church—at Saint Mungo the Martyr’s, Rev. Sawders—by Wednesday I got in a female hand—Mrs. Sawders’s, no doubt—the biography of the Incumbent of St. Mungo; an account of his early virtues; a copy of his poems; and a hint that he was the gentleman destined for the vacant Deanery.

“Ridley is not the only man I have helped in this world,” F. B. continued. “Perhaps I should blush to own it—I do blush: but I feel the ties of early acquaintance, and I own that I have puffed your uncle, Charles Honeyman, most tremendously. It was partly for the sake of the Ridleys and the tick he owes ’em: partly for old times’ sake. Sir, are you aware that things are greatly changed with Charles Honeyman, and that the poor F. B. has very likely made his fortune?”

“I am delighted to hear it,” cried Clive; “and how, F. B., have you wrought this miracle?”

“By common sense and enterprise, lad—by a knowledge of the world and a benevolent disposition. You’ll see Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel bears a very different aspect now. That miscreant Sherrick owns that he owes me a turn, and has sent me a few dozen of wine—without any stamped paper on my part in return—as an acknowledgment of my service. It chanced, sir, soon after your departure for Italy, that going to his private residence respecting a little bill to which a heedless friend had put his hand, Sherrick invited me to partake of tea in the bosom of his family. I was thirsty—having walked in from Jack Straw’s Castle at Hampstead, where poor Kitely and I had been taking a chop—and accepted the proffered entertainment. The ladies of the family gave us music after the domestic muffin—and then, sir, a great idea occurred to me. You know how magnificently Miss Sherrick and the mother sing? Thy sang Mozart, sir. Why, I asked of Sherrick, should those ladies who sing Mozart to a piano, not sing Handel to an organ?

“‘Dash it, you don’t mean a hurdy-gurdy?’”

“‘Sherrick,’ says I, ‘you are no better than a heathen ignoramus. I mean why shouldn’t they sing Handel’s Church Music, and Church Music in general in Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel? Behind the screen up in the organ-loft what’s to prevent ’em? By Jingo! Your singing-boys have gone to the Cave of Harmony; you and your choir have split—why should not these ladies lead it?’ He caught at the idea. You never heard the chants more finely given—and they would be better still if the congregation would but hold their confounded tongues. It was an excellent though a harmless dodge, sir: and drew immensely, to speak profanely. They dress the part, sir, to admiration—a sort of nunlike costume they come in: Mrs. Sherrick has the soul of an artist still—by Jove, sir, when they have once smelt the lamps, the love of the trade never leaves ’em. The ladies actually practised by moonlight in the Chapel, and came over to Honeyman’s to an oyster afterwards. The thing took, sir. People began to take box-seats, I mean, again:—and Charles Honeyman, easy in his mind through your noble father’s generosity, perhaps inspirited by returning good fortune, has been preaching more eloquently than ever. He took some lessons of Husler, of the Haymarket, sir. His sermons are old, I believe; but so to speak, he has got them up with new scenery, dresses, and effects, sir. They have flowers, sir, about the buildin’—pious ladies are supposed to provide ’em, but, entre nous, Sherrick contracts for them with Nathan, or some one in Covent Garden. And—don’t tell this now, upon your honour!”

“Tell what, F. B.?” asks Clive.

“I got up a persecution against your uncle for Popish practices: summoned a meetin’ at the Running Footman, in Bolingbroke Street. Billings the butterman; Sharwood, the turner and blacking-maker; and the Honourable Phelin O’Curragh, Lord Scullabogue’s son, made speeches. Two or three respectable families (your aunt, Mrs. What-d’-you-call-’em Newcome, amongst the number) quitted the Chapel in disgust—I wrote an article of controversial biography in the P. M. G.; set the business going in the daily press; and the thing was done, sir. That property is a paying one to the Incumbent, and to Sherrick over him. Charles’s affairs are getting all right, sir. He never had the pluck to owe much, and if it be a sin to have wiped his slate clean, satisfied his creditors, and made Charles easy—upon my conscience, I must confess that F. B. has done it. I hope I may never do anything worse in this life, Clive. It ain’t bad to see him doing the martyr, sir: Sebastian riddled with paper pellets; Bartholomew on a cold gridiron. Here comes the lobster. Upon my word, Mary, a finer fish I’ve seldom seen.”

Now surely this account of his uncle’s affairs and prosperity was enough to send Clive to Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel, and it was not because Miss Ethel had said that she and Lady Kew went there that Clive was induced to go there too? He attended punctually on the next Sunday, and in the incumbent’s pew, whither the pew-woman conducted him, sate Mr. Sherrick in great gravity, with large gold pins, who handed him, at the anthem, a large, new, gilt hymn-book.

An odour of millefleurs rustled by them as Charles Honeyman accompanied by his ecclesiastical valet, passed the pew from the vestry, and took his place at the desk. Formerly he used to wear a flaunting scarf over his surplice, which was very wide and full; and Clive remembered when as a boy he entered the sacred robing-room, how his uncle used to pat and puff out the scarf and the sleeves of his vestment, and to arrange the natty curl on his forehead and take his place, a fine example of florid church decoration. Now the scarf was trimmed down to be as narrow as your neckcloth, and hung loose and straight over the back; the ephod was cut straight and as close and short as might be,—I believe there was a little trimming of lace to the narrow sleeves, and a slight arabesque of tape, or other substance, round the edge of the surplice. As for the curl on the forehead, it was no more visible than the Maypole in the Strand, or the Cross at Charing. Honeyman’s hair was parted down the middle, short in front, and curling delicately round his ears and the back of his head. He read the service in a swift manner, and with a gentle twang. When the music began, he stood with head on one side, and two slim fingers on the book, as composed as a statue in a mediæval niche. It was fine to hear Sherrick, who had an uncommonly good voice, join in the musical parts of the service. The produce of the market-gardener decorated the church here and there; and the impresario of the establishment, having picked up a Flemish painted window from old Moss in Wardour Street, had placed it in his chapel. Labels of faint green and gold, with long Gothic letters painted thereon, meandered over the organ-loft and galleries, and strove to give as mediæval a look to Lady Whittlesea’s as the place was capable of assuming.

In the sermon Charles dropped the twang with the surplice, and the priest gave way to the preacher. He preached short stirring discourses on the subjects of the day. It happened that a noble young prince, the hope of a nation, and heir of a royal house, had just then died by a sudden accident. Absalom, the son of David, furnished Honeyman with a parallel. He drew a picture of the two deaths, of the grief of kings, of the fate that is superior to them. It was, indeed, a stirring discourse, and caused thrills through the crowd to whom Charles imparted it. “Famous, ain’t it?” says Sherrick, giving Clive a hand when the rite was over. “How he’s come out, hasn’t he? Didn’t think he had it in him.” Sherrick seemed to have become of late impressed with the splendour of Charles’s talents, and spoke of him—was it not disrespectful?—as a manager would of a successful tragedian. Let us pardon Sherrick: he had been in the theatrical way. “That Irishman was no go at all,” he whispered to Mr. Newcome, “got rid of him,—let’s see, at Michaelmas.”

On account of Clive’s tender years, and natural levity, a little inattention may be allowed to the youth, who certainly looked about him very eagerly during the service. The house was filled by the ornamental classes, the bonnets of the newest Parisian fashion. Away in a darkling corner, under the organ, sate a squad of footmen. Surely that powdered one in livery wore Lady Kew’s colours? So Clive looked under all the bonnets, and presently spied old Lady Kew’s face, as grim and yellow as her brass knocker, and by it Ethel’s beauteous countenance. He dashed out of church when the congregation rose to depart. “Stop and see Honeyman, won’t you?” asked Sherrick, surprised.

“Yes, yes; come back again,” said Clive, and was gone.

He kept his word, and returned presently. The young Marquis and an elderly lady were in Lady Kew’s company. Clive had passed close under Lady Kew’s venerable Roman nose without causing that organ to bow in ever so slight a degree towards the ground. Ethel had recognised him with a smile and a nod. My lord was whispering one of his noble pleasantries in her ear. She laughed at the speech or the speaker. The steps of a fine belozenged carriage were let down with a bang. The Yellow One had jumped up behind it, by the side of his brother Giant Canary. Lady Kew’s equipage had disappeared, and Mrs. Canterton’s was stopping the way.

Clive returned to the chapel by the little door near to the Vestiarium. All the congregation had poured out by this time. Only two ladies were standing near the pulpit; and Sherrick, with his hands rattling his money in his pockets, was pacing up and down the aisle.

“Capital house, Mr. Newcome, wasn’t it? I counted no less than fourteen nobs. The Princess of Moncontour and her husband, I suppose, that chap with the beard, who yawns so during the sermon. I’m blessed, if I didn’t think he’d have yawned his head off. Countess of Kew, and her daughter; Countess of Canterton, and the Honourable Miss Fetlock—no, Lady Fetlock. A Countess’s daughter is a lady, I’m dashed if she ain’t. Lady Glenlivat and her sons; the most noble the Marquis of Farintosh, and Lord Enry Roy; that makes seven—no, nine—with the Prince and Princess.—Julia, my dear, you came out like a good un to-day. Never heard you in finer voice. Remember Mr. Clive Newcome?”

Mr. Clive made bows to the ladies, who acknowledged him by graceful curtsies. Miss Sherrick was always looking to the vestry-door.

“How’s the old Colonel? The best feller—excuse my calling him a feller—but he is, and a good one too. I went to see Mr. Binnie, my other tenant. He looks a little yellow about the gills, Mr. Binnie. Very proud woman that is who lives with him—uncommon haughty. When will you come down and take your mutton in the Regent’s Park, Mr. Clive? There’s some tolerable good wine down there. Our reverend gent drops in and takes a glass, don’t he, missis?”

“We shall be most ’appy to see Mr. Newcome, I’m sure,” says the handsome and good-natured Mrs. Sherrick. “Won’t we, Julia?”

“Oh, certainly,” says Julia, who seems rather absent. And behold, at this moment the reverend gent enters from the vestry. Both the ladies run towards him, holding forth their hands.

“Oh, Mr. Honeyman! What a sermon! Me and Julia cried so up in the organ-loft; we thought you would have heard us. Didn’t we, Julia?”

“Oh, yes,” says Julia, whose hand the pastor is now pressing.

“When you described the young man, I thought of my poor boy, didn’t I, Julia?” cries the mother, with tears streaming down her face.

“We had a loss more than ten years ago,” whispers Sherrick to Clive gravely. “And she’s always thinking of it. Women are so.”

Clive was touched and pleased by this exhibition of kind feeling.

“You know his mother was an Absalom,” the good wife continues, pointing to her husband. “Most respectable diamond merchants in——”

“Hold your tongue, Betsy, and leave my poor old mother alone; do now,” says Mr. Sherrick darkly. Clive is in his uncle’s fond embrace by this time, who rebukes him for not having called in Walpole Street.

“Now, when will you two gents come up to my shop to ’ave a family dinner?” asks Sherrick.

“Ah, Mr. Newcome, do come,” says Julia in her deep rich voice, looking up to him with her great black eyes. And if Clive had been a vain fellow like some folks, who knows but he might have thought he had made an impression on the handsome Julia?

“Thursday, now make it Thursday, if Mr. H. is disengaged. Come along, girls, for the flies bites the ponies when they’re a-standing still and makes ’em mad this weather. Anything you like for dinner? Cut of salmon and cucumber? No, pickled salmon’s best this weather.”

“Whatever you give me, you know I’m thankful!” says Honeyman, in a sweet sad voice, to the two ladies, who were standing looking at him, the mother’s hand clasped in the daughter’s.

“Should you like that Mendelssohn for the Sunday after next? Julia sings it splendid!”

“No, I don’t, ma.”

“You do, dear! She’s a good, good dear, Mr. H., that’s what she is.”

“You must not call—a—him, in that way. Don’t say Mr. H., ma,” says Julia.

“Call me what you please!” says Charles, with the most heart-rending simplicity; and Mrs. Sherrick straightway kisses her daughter. Sherrick meanwhile has been pointing out the improvement of the chapel to Clive (which now has indeed a look of the Gothic Hall at Rosherville), and has confided to him the sum for which he screwed the painted window out of old Moss. “When he come to see it up in this place, sir, the old man was mad, I give you my word! His son ain’t no good: says he knows you. He’s such a screw, that chap, that he’ll overreach himself, mark my words. At least, he’ll never die rich. Did you ever hear of me screwing? No, I spend my money like a man. How those girls are a-goin’ on about their music with Honeyman! I don’t let ’em sing in the evening, or him do duty more than once a day; and you can calc’late how the music draws, because in the evenin’ there ain’t half the number of people here. Rev. Mr. Journyman does the duty now—quiet Hogford man—ill, I suppose, this morning. H. sits in his pew, where we was; and coughs; that’s to say, I told him to cough. The women like a consumptive parson, sir. Come, gals!”

Clive went to his uncle’s lodgings, and was received by Mr. and Mrs. Ridley with great glee and kindness. Both of those good people had made it a point to pay their duty to Mr. Clive immediately on his return to England, and thank him over and over again for his kindness to John James. Never, never would they forget his goodness, and the Colonel’s, they were sure. A cake, a heap of biscuits, a pyramid of jams, six frizzling mutton-chops, and four kinds of hot wine, came bustling up to Mr. Honeyman’s room twenty minutes after Clive had entered it,—as a token of the Ridleys’ affection for him.

Clive remarked, with a smile, the Pall Mall Gazette upon a side-table, and in the chimney-glass almost as many cards as in the time of Honeyman’s early prosperity. That he and his uncle should be very intimate together, was impossible, from the nature of the two men; Clive being frank, clear-sighted, and imperious; Charles, timid, vain, and double-faced, conscious that he was a humbug, and that most people found him out, so that he would quiver and turn away, and be more afraid of young Clive and his direct straightforward way, than of many older men. Then there was the sense of the money transactions between him and the Colonel, which made Charles Honeyman doubly uneasy. In fine, they did not like each other; but, as he is a connection of the most respectable Newcome family, surely he is entitled to a page or two in these their memoirs.

Thursday came, and with it Mr. Sherrick’s entertainment, to which also Mr. Binnie and his party had been invited to meet Colonel Newcome’s son. Uncle James and Rosey brought Clive in their carriage; Mrs. Mackenzie sent a headache as an apology. She chose to treat Uncle James’s landlord with a great deal of hauteur, and to be angry with her brother for visiting such a person. “In fact, you see how fond I must be of dear little Rosey, Clive, that I put up with all mamma’s tantrums for her sake,” remarks Mr. Binnie.

“Oh, uncle!” says little Rosey, and the old gentleman stopped her remonstrances with a kiss.

“Yes,” says he, “your mother does have tantrums, miss; and though you never complain, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t. You will not tell on me” (it was “Oh, uncle!” again); “and Clive won’t, I am sure.—This little thing, sir,” James went on, holding Rosey’s pretty little hand and looking fondly in her pretty little face, “is her old uncle’s only comfort in life. I wish I had had her out to India to me, and never come back to this great dreary town of yours. But I was tempted home by Tom Newcome; and I’m too old to go back, sir. Where the stick falls let it lie. Rosey would have been whisked out of my house, in India, in a month after I had her there. Some young fellow would have taken her away from me; and now she has promised never to leave her old Uncle James, hasn’t she?”

“No, never, uncle,” said Rosey.

“We don’t want to fall in love, do we, child? We don’t want to be breaking our hearts like some young folks, and dancing attendance at balls night after night, and capering about in the Park to see if we can get a glimpse of the beloved object, eh, Rosey?”

Rosey blushed. It was evident that she and Uncle James both knew of Clive’s love affair. In fact, the front seat and back seat of the carriage both blushed. And as for the secret, why Mrs. Mackenzie and Mrs. Hobson had talked it a hundred times over.

“This little Rosey, sir, has promised to take care of me on this side of Styx,” continued Uncle James; “and if she could but be left alone and to do it without mamma—there, I won’t say a word more against her—we should get on none the worse.”

“Uncle James, I must make a picture of you, for Rosey,” said Clive, good-humouredly. And Rosey said, “Oh, thank you, Clive,” and held out that pretty little hand, and looked so sweet and kind and happy, that Clive could not but be charmed at the sight of so much innocence and candour.

“Quasty peecoly Rosiny,” says James, in a fine Scotch Italian, “e la piu bella, la piu cara, ragazza ma la mawdry e il diav——”

“Don’t, uncle!” cried Rosey, again; and Clive laughed at Uncle James’s wonderful outbreak in a foreign tongue.

“Eh! I thought ye didn’t know a word of the sweet language, Rosey! It’s just the Lenguy Toscawny in Bocky Romawny that I thought to try in compliment to this young monkey who has seen the world.” And by this time Saint John’s Wood was reached, and Mr. Sherrick’s handsome villa, at the door of which the three beheld the Rev. Charles Honeyman stepping out of a neat brougham.

The drawing-room contained several pictures of Mrs. Sherrick when she was in the theatrical line; Smee’s portrait of her, which was never half handsome enough—for my Betsy, Sherrick said indignantly; the print of her in Artaxerxes, with her signature as Elizabeth Folthorpe (not in truth a fine specimen of calligraphy) the testimonial presented to her on the conclusion of the triumphal season of 18—, at Drury Lane, by her ever grateful friend Adolphus Smacker, Lessee, who, of course, went to law with her next year; and other Thespian emblems. But Clive remarked, with not a little amusement, that the drawing-room tables were now covered with a number of those books which he had seen at Madame de Moncontour’s, and many French and German ecclesiastical gimcracks, such as are familiar to numberless readers of mine. These were the Lives of St. Botibol of Islington and St. Willibald of Bareacres, with pictures of those confessors. Then there was the Legend of Margery Dawe, Virgin and Martyr, with a sweet double frontispiece, representing (1) the sainted woman selling her feather-bed for the benefit of the poor; and (2) reclining upon straw, the leanest of invalids. There was Old Daddy Longlegs, and how he was brought to say his Prayers; a Tale for Children, by a Lady, with a preface dated St. Chad’s Eve, and signed “C. H.” The Rev. Charles Honeyman’s Sermons, delivered at Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel. Poems of Early Days, by Charles Honeyman, A.M. The Life of good Dame Whittlesea, by do, do. Yes, Charles had come out in the literary line; and there in a basket was a strip of Berlin work, of the very same Gothic pattern which Madame de Moncontour was weaving; and which you afterwards saw round the pulpit of Charles’s chapel. Rosey was welcomed most kindly by the kind ladies; and as the gentlemen sat over their wine after dinner in the summer evening, Clive beheld Rosey and Julia pacing up and down the lawn, Miss Julia’s arm around her little friend’s waist: he thought they would make a pretty little picture.

“My girl ain’t a bad one to look at, is she?” said the pleased father. “A fellow might look far enough, and see not prettier than them two.”

Charles sighed out that there was a German print, the “Two Leonoras,” which put him in mind of their various styles of beauty.

“I wish I could paint them,” said Clive.

“And why not, sir?” asks his host. “Let me give you your first commission now, Mr. Clive; I wouldn’t mind paying a good bit for a picture of my Julia. I forget how much old Smee got for Betsy’s, the old humbug!”

Clive said it was not the will, but the power that was deficient. He succeeded with men, but the ladies were too much for him as yet.

“Those you’ve done up at Albany Street Barracks are famous: I’ve seen ’em,” said Mr. Sherrick; and remarking that his guest looked rather surprised at the idea of his being in such company, Sherrick said, “What, you think they are too great swells for me? Law bless you, I often go there. I’ve business with several of ’em; had with Captain Belsize, with the Earl of Kew, who’s every inch the gentleman—one of nature’s aristocracy, and paid up like a man. The Earl and me has had many dealings together:”

Honeyman smiled faintly, and nobody complying with Mr. Sherrick’s boisterous entreaties to drink more, the gentlemen quitted the dinner-table, which had been served in a style of prodigious splendour, and went to the drawing-room for a little music.

This was all of the gravest and best kind; so grave indeed, that James Binnie might be heard in a corner giving an accompaniment of little snores to the singers and the piano. But Rosey was delighted with the performance, and Sherrick remarked to Clive, “That’s a good gal, that is; I like that gal; she ain’t jealous of Julia cutting her out in the music, but listens as pleased as any one. She’s a sweet little pipe of her own, too. Miss Mackenzie, if ever you like to go to the opera, send a word either to my West End or my City office. I’ve boxes every week, and you’re welcome to anything I can give you.”

So all agreed that the evening had been a very pleasant one; and they of Fitzroy Square returned home talking in a most comfortable friendly way—that is, two of them, for Uncle James fell asleep again, taking possession of the back seat; and Clive and Rosey prattled together. He had offered to try and take all the young ladies’ likenesses. “You know what a failure the last was, Rosey?”—he had very nearly said “dear Rosey.”

“Yes, but Miss Sherrick is so handsome, that you will succeed better with her than with my round face, Mr. Newcome.”

“Mr. What?” cries Clive.

“Well, Clive, then,” says Rosey, in a little voice.

He sought for a little hand which was not very far away. “You know we are like brother and sister, dear Rosey?” he said this time.

“Yes,” said she, and gave a little pressure of the hand. And then Uncle James woke up; and it seemed as if the whole drive didn’t occupy a minute, and they shook hands very very kindly at the door of Fitzroy Square.

Clive made a famous likeness of Miss Sherrick, with which Mr. Sherrick was delighted, and so was Mr. Honeyman, who happened to call upon his nephew once or twice when the ladies happened to be sitting. Then Clive proposed to the Rev. Charles Honeyman to take his head off; and made an excellent likeness in chalk of his uncle—that one, in fact, from which the print was taken which you may see any day at Hogarth’s, in the Haymarket, along with a whole regiment of British divines. Charles became so friendly, that he was constantly coming to Charlotte Street, once or twice a week.

Mr. and Mrs. Sherrick came to look at the drawing, were charmed with it; and when Rosey was sitting, they came to see her portrait, which again was not quite so successful. One Monday, the Sherricks and Honeyman too happened to call to see the picture of Rosey, who trotted over with her uncle to Clive’s studio, and they all had a great laugh at a paragraph in the Pall Mall Gazette, evidently from F. B.’s hand, to the following effect:—

“Conversion In High Life.—A foreign nobleman of princely rank, who has married an English lady, and has resided among us for some time, is likely, we hear and trust, to join the English Church. The Prince de M-nc-nt-r has been a constant attendant at Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel, of which the Rev. C. Honeyman is the eloquent incumbent; and it is said this sound and talented divine has been the means of awakening the prince to a sense of the erroneous doctrines in which he has been bred. His ancestors were Protestant, and fought by the side of Henry IV. at Ivry. In Louis XIV.’s time, they adopted the religion of that persecuting monarch. We sincerely trust that the present heir of the house of Ivry will see fit to return to the creed which his forefathers so unfortunately abjured.”

The ladies received this news with perfect gravity; and Charles uttered a meek wish that it might prove true. As they went away, they offered more hospitalities to Clive and Mr. Binnie and his niece. They liked the music: would they not come and hear it again?

When they had departed with Mr. Honeyman, Clive could not help saying to Uncle James, “Why are those people always coming here; praising me; and asking me to dinner? Do you know, I can’t help thinking that they rather want me as a pretender for Miss Sherrick?”

Binnie burst into a loud guffaw, and cried out, “O vanitas vanitawtum!” Rosa laughed too.

“I don’t think it any joke at all,” said Clive.

“Why, you stupid lad, don’t you see it is Charles Honeyman the girl’s in love with?” cried Uncle James. “Rosey saw it in the very first instant we entered their drawing-room three weeks ago.”

“Indeed, and how?” asked Clive.

“By—by the way she looked at him,” said little Rosey.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XLV. A Stag of Ten

The London season was very nearly come to an end, and Lord Farintosh had danced I don’t know how many times with Miss Newcome, had drunk several bottles of the old Kew port, had been seen at numerous breakfasts, operas, races, and public places by the young lady’s side, and had not as yet made any such proposal as Lady Kew expected for her granddaughter. Clive going to see his military friends in the Regent’s Park once, and finish Captain Butts’s portrait in barracks, heard two or three young men talking, and one say to another, “I bet you three to two Farintosh don’t marry her, and I bet you even that he don’t ask her.” Then as he entered Mr. Butts’s room, where these gentlemen were conversing, there was a silence and an awkwardness. The young fellows were making an “event” out of Ethel’s marriage, and sporting their money freely on it.

To have an old countess hunting a young marquis so resolutely that all the world should be able to look on and speculate whether her game would be run down by that staunch toothless old pursuer—that is an amusing sport, isn’t it? and affords plenty of fun and satisfaction to those who follow the hunt. But for a heroine of a story, be she ever so clever, handsome, and sarcastic, I don’t think for my part, at this present stage of the tale, Miss Ethel Newcome occupies a very dignified position. To break her heart in silence for Tomkins who is in love with another; to suffer no end of poverty, starvation, capture by ruffians, ill-treatment by a bullying husband, loss of beauty by the small-pox, death even at the end of the volume; all these mishaps a young heroine must endure (and has endured in romances over and over again), without losing the least dignity, or suffering any diminution of the sentimental reader’s esteem. But a girl of great beauty, high temper, and strong natural intellect, who submits to be dragged hither and thither in an old grandmother’s leash, and in pursuit of a husband who will run away from the couple, such a person, I say, is in a very awkward position as a heroine; and I declare if I had another ready to my hand (and unless there were extenuating circumstances) Ethel should be deposed at this very sentence.

But a novelist must go on with his heroine, as a man with his wife, for better or worse, and to the end. For how many years have the Spaniards borne with their gracious queen, not because she was faultless, but because she was there? So Chambers and grandees cried, God save her. Alabarderos turned out: drums beat, cannons fired, and people saluted Isabella Segunda, who was no better than the humblest washerwoman of her subjects. Are we much better than our neighbours? Do we never yield to our peculiar temptation, our pride, or our avarice or our vanity, or what not? Ethel is very wrong certainly. But recollect, she is very young. She is in other people’s hands. She has been bred up and governed by a very worldly family, and taught their traditions. We would hardly, for instance, the staunchest Protestant in England would hardly be angry with poor Isabella Segunda for being a Catholic. So if Ethel worships at a certain image which a great number of good folks in England bow to, let us not be too angry with her idolatry, and bear with our queen a little before we make our pronunciamiento.

No, Miss Newcome, yours is not a dignified position in life, however you may argue that hundreds of people in the world are doing like you. O me! what a confession it is, in the very outset of life and blushing brightness of youth’s morning, to own that the aim with which a young girl sets out, and the object of her existence, is to marry a rich man; that she was endowed with beauty so that she might buy wealth, and a title with it; that as sure as she has a soul to be saved, her business here on earth is to try and get a rich husband. That is the career for which many a woman is bred and trained. A young man begins the world with some aspirations at least; he will try to be good and follow the truth; he will strive to win honours for himself, and never do a base action; he will pass nights over his books, and forgo ease and pleasure so that he may achieve a name. Many a poor wretch who is worn-out now and old, and bankrupt of fame and money too, has commenced life at any rate with noble views and generous schemes, from which weakness, idleness, passion, or overpowering hostile fortune have turned him away. But a girl of the world, bon Dieu! the doctrine with which she begins is that she is to have a wealthy husband: the article of faith in her catechism is, “I believe in elder sons, and a house in town, and a house in the country!” They are mercenary as they step fresh and blooming into the world out of the nursery. They have been schooled there to keep their bright eyes to look only on the prince and the duke, Croesus and Dives. By long cramping and careful process, their little natural hearts have been squeezed up, like the feet of their fashionable little sisters in China. As you see a pauper’s child, with an awful premature knowledge of the pawnshop, able to haggle at market with her wretched halfpence, and battle bargains at hucksters’ stalls, you shall find a young beauty, who was a child in the schoolroom a year since, as wise and knowing as the old practitioners on that exchange; as economical of her smiles, as dexterous in keeping back or producing her beautiful wares; as skilful in setting one bidder against another; as keen as the smartest merchant in Vanity Fair.

If the young gentlemen of the Life Guards Green who were talking about Miss Newcome and her suitors, were silent when Clive appeared amongst them, it was because they were aware not only of his relationship to the young lady, but his unhappy condition regarding her. Certain men there are who never tell their love, but let concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on their damask cheeks; others again must be not always thinking, but talking, about the darling object. So it was not very long before Captain Crackthorpe was taken into Clive’s confidence, and through Crackthorpe very likely the whole mess became acquainted with his passion. These young fellows, who had been early introduced into the world, gave Clive small hopes of success, putting to him, in their downright phraseology, the point of which he was already aware, that Miss Newcome was intended for his superiors, and that he had best not make his mind uneasy by sighing for those beautiful grapes which were beyond his reach.

But the good-natured Crackthorpe, who had a pity for the young painter’s condition, helped him so far (and gained Clive’s warmest thanks for his good offices), by asking admission for Clive to entertain evening parties of the beau-monde, where he had the gratification of meeting his charmer. Ethel was surprised and pleased, and Lady Kew surprised and angry, at meeting Clive Newcome at these fashionable houses; the girl herself was touched very likely at his pertinacity in following her. As there was no actual feud between them, she could not refuse now and again to dance with her cousin; and thus he picked up such small crumbs of consolation as a youth in his state can get; lived upon six words vouchsafed to him in a quadrille, or brought home a glance of the eyes which she had presented to him in a waltz, or the remembrance of a squeeze of the hand on parting or meeting. How eager he was to get a card to this party or that! how attentive to the givers of such entertainments! Some friends of his accused him of being a tuft-hunter and flatterer of the aristocracy, on account of his politeness to certain people; the truth was, he wanted to go wherever Miss Ethel was; and the ball was blank to him which she did not attend.

This business occupied not only one season, but two. By the time of the second season, Mr. Newcome had made so many acquaintances that he needed few more introductions into society. He was very well known as a good-natured handsome young man, and a very good waltzer, the only son of an Indian officer of large wealth, who chose to devote himself to painting, and who was supposed to entertain an unhappy fondness for his cousin the beautiful Miss Newcome. Kind folks who heard of this little tendre, and were sufficiently interested in Mr. Clive, asked him to their houses in consequence. I dare say those people who were good to him may have been themselves at one time unlucky in their own love-affairs.

When the first season ended without a declaration from my lord, Lady Kew carried off her young lady to Scotland, where it also so happened that Lord Farintosh was going to shoot, and people made what surmises they chose upon this coincidence. Surmises, why not? You who know the world, know very well that if you see Mrs. So-and-so’s name in the list of people at an entertainment, on looking down the list you will presently be sure to come on Mr. What-d’-you-call-’em’s. If Lord and Lady of Suchandsuch Castle, received a distinguished circle (including Lady Dash), for Christmas or Easter, without reading farther the names of the guests, you may venture on any wager that Captain Asterisk is one of the company. These coincidences happen every day; and some people are so anxious to meet other people, and so irresistible is the magnetic sympathy, I suppose, that they will travel hundreds of miles in the worst of weather to see their friends, and break your door open almost, provided the friend is inside it.

I am obliged to own the fact, that for many months Lady Kew hunted after Lord Farintosh. This rheumatic old woman went to Scotland, where, as he was pursuing the deer, she stalked his lordship: from Scotland she went to Paris, where he was taking lessons in dancing at the Chaumière; from Paris to an English country-house, for Christmas, where he was expected, but didn’t come—not being, his professor said, quite complete in the polka, and so on. If Ethel were privy to these manœuvres, or anything more than an unwittingly consenting party, I say we would depose her from her place of heroine at once. But she was acting under her grandmother’s orders, a most imperious, irresistible, managing old woman, who exacted everybody’s obedience, and managed everybody’s business in her family. Lady Anne Newcome being in attendance on her sick husband, Ethel was consigned to the Countess of Kew, her grandmother, who hinted that she should leave Ethel her property when dead, and whilst alive expected the girl should go about with her. She had and wrote as many letters as a Secretary of State almost. She was accustomed to set off without taking anybody’s advice, or announcing her departure until within an hour or two of the event. In her train moved Ethel, against her own will, which would have led her to stay at home with her father, but at the special wish and order of her parents. Was such a sum as that of which Lady Kew had the disposal (Hobson Brothers knew the amount of it quite well) to be left out of the family? Forbid it, all ye powers! Barnes—who would have liked the money himself, and said truly that he would live with his grandmother anywhere she liked if he could get it,—Barnes joined most energetically with Sir Brian and Lady Anne in ordering Ethel’s obedience to Lady Kew. You know how difficult it is for one young woman not to acquiesce when the family council strongly orders. In fine, I hope there was a good excuse for the queen of this history, and that it was her wicked domineering old prime minister who led her wrong. Otherwise I say, we would have another dynasty. Oh, to think of a generous nature, and the world, and nothing but the world, to occupy it!—of a brave intellect, and the milliner’s bandboxes, and the scandal of the coteries, and the fiddle-faddle etiquette of the Court for its sole exercise! of the rush and hurry from entertainment to entertainment; of the constant smiles and cares of representation; of the prayerless rest at night, and the awaking to a godless morrow! This was the course of life to which Fate, and not her own fault altogether, had for awhile handed over Ethel Newcome. Let those pity her who can feel their own weakness and misgoing; let those punish her who are without fault themselves.

Clive did not offer to follow her to Scotland, he knew quite well that the encouragement he had had was only of the smallest; that as a relation she received him frankly and kindly enough; but checked him when he would have adopted another character. But it chanced that they met in Paris, whither he went in the Easter of the ensuing year, having worked to some good purpose through the winter, and despatched as on a former occasion his three or four pictures, to take their chance at the Exhibition.

Of these it is our pleasing duty to be able to corroborate to some extent, Mr. F. Bayham’s favourable report. Fancy sketches and historical pieces our young man had eschewed; having convinced himself either that he had not an epic genius, or that to draw portraits of his friends, was a much easier task than that which he had set himself formerly. Whilst all the world was crowding round a pair of J. J,.’s little pictures, a couple of chalk heads were admitted into the Exhibition (his great picture of Captain Crackthorpe on horseback, in full uniform, I must admit was ignominiously rejected), and the friends of the parties had the pleasure of recognising in the miniature room, No. 1246, “Picture of an Officer,”—viz., Augustus Butts, Esq., of the Life Guards Green; and “Portrait of the Rev. Charles Honeyman,” No. 1272. Miss Sherrick the hangers refused; Mr. Binnie, Clive had spoiled, as usual, in the painting; the heads, however, before-named, were voted to be faithful likenesses, and executed in a very agreeable and spirited manner. F. Bayham’s criticism on these performances, it need not be said, was tremendous. “Since the days of Michael Angelo you would have thought there never had been such drawings.” In fact, F. B., as some other critics do, clapped his friends so boisterously on the back, and trumpeted their merits with such prodigious energy, as to make his friends themselves sometimes uneasy.

Mr. Clive, whose good father was writing home more and more wonderful accounts of the Bundelcund Bank, in which he had engaged, and who was always pressing his son to draw for more money, treated himself to comfortable rooms at Paris, in the very same hotel where the young Marquis of Farintosh occupied lodgings much more splendid, and where he lived, no doubt, so as to be near the professor, who was still teaching his lordship the polka. Indeed, it must be said that Lord Farintosh made great progress under this artist, and that he danced very much better in his third season than in the first and second years after he had come upon the town. From the same instructor the Marquis learned the latest novelties in French conversation, the choicest oaths and phrases (for which he was famous), so that although his French grammar was naturally defective, he was enabled to order a dinner at Philippe’s, and to bully a waiter, or curse a hackney-coachman with extreme volubility. A young nobleman of his rank was received with the distinction which was his due, by the French sovereign of that period; and at the Tuileries, and the houses of the French nobility, which he visited, Monsieur le Marquis de Farintosh excited considerable remark, by the use of some of the phrases which his young professor had taught to him. People even went so far as to say that the Marquis was an awkward and dull young man, of the very worst manners.

Whereas the young Clive Newcome—and it comforted the poor fellow’s heart somewhat, and be sure pleased Ethel, who was looking on at his triumphs—was voted the most charming young Englishman who had been seen for a long time in our salons. Madame de Florac, who loved him as a son of her own, actually went once or twice into the world in order to see his début. Madame de Moncontour inhabited a part of the Hotel de Florac, and received society there. The French people did not understand what bad English she talked, though they comprehended Lord Farintosh’s French blunders. “Monsieur Newcome is an artist! What a noble career!” cries a great French lady, the wife of a Marshal to the astonished Miss Newcome. “This young man is the cousin, of the charming mees? You must be proud to possess such a nephew, madame!” says another French lady to the Countess of Kew (who, you may be sure, is delighted to have such a relative). And the French lady invites Clive to her receptions expressly in order to make herself agreeable to the old Comtesse. Before the cousins have been three minutes together in Madame de Florac’s salon, she sees that Clive is in love with Ethel Newcome. She takes the boy’s hand and says, “J’ai votre secret, mon ami;” and her eyes regard him for a moment as fondly, as tenderly, as ever they looked at his father. Oh, what tears have they shed, gentle eyes! Oh, what faith has it kept, tender heart! If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and, if we die, deplores us for ever, and loves still equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful bosom—whence it passes with the pure soul, beyond death; surely it shall be immortal? Though we who remain are separated from it, is it not ours in Heaven? If we love still those we lose, can we altogether lose those we love? Forty years have passed away. Youth and dearest memories revisit her, and Hope almost wakes up again out of its grave, as the constant lady holds the young man’s hand, and looks at the son of Thomas Newcome.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XLVI. The Hotel de Florac

Since the death of the Duc d’Ivry, the husband of Mary Queen of Scots, the Comte de Florac, who is now the legitimate owner of the ducal title, does not choose to bear it, but continues to be known in the world by his old name. The old Count’s world is very small. His doctor, and his director, who comes daily to play his game of piquet; his daughter’s children, who amuse him by their laughter, and play round his chair in the garden of his hotel; his faithful wife, and one or two friends as old as himself, form his society. His son the Abbé is with them but seldom. The austerity of his manners frightens his old father, who can little comprehend the religionism of the new school. After going to hear his son preach through Lent at Notre-Dame, where the Abbé de Florac gathered a great congregation, the old Count came away quite puzzled at his son’s declamations. “I do not understand your new priests,” he says; “I knew my son had become a Cordélier; I went to hear him, and found he was a Jacobin. Let me make my salut in quiet, my good Léonore. My director answers for me, and plays a game at trictrac into the bargain with me.” Our history has but little to do with this venerable nobleman. He has his chamber looking out into the garden of his hotel; his faithful old domestic to wait upon him; his House of Peers to attend when he is well enough, his few acquaintances to help him to pass the evening. The rest of the hotel he gives up to his son, the Vicomte de Florac, and Madame la Princesse de Moncontour, his daughter-in-law.

When Florac has told his friends of the Club why it is he has assumed a new title—as a means of reconciliation (a reconciliation all philosophical, my friends) with his wife nee Higg of Manchester, who adores titles like all Anglaises, and has recently made a great succession, everybody allows that the measure was dictated by prudence, and there is no more laughter at his change of name. The Princess takes the first floor of the hotel at the price paid for it by the American General, who has returned to his original pigs at Cincinnati. Had not Cincinnatus himself pigs on his farm, and was he not a general and member of Congress too? The honest Princess has a bedchamber, which, to her terror, she is obliged to open of reception-evenings, when gentlemen and ladies play cards there. It is fitted up in the style of Louis XVI. In her bed is an immense looking-glass, surmounted by stucco cupids: it is an alcove which some powdered Venus, before the Revolution, might have reposed in. Opposite that looking-glass, between the tall windows, at some forty feet distance, is another huge mirror, so that when the poor Princess is in bed, in her prim old curl-papers, she sees a vista of elderly princesses twinkling away into the dark perspective; and is so frightened that she and Betsy, her Lancashire maid, pin up the jonquil silk curtains over the bed-mirror after the first night; though the Princess never can get it out of her head that her image is still there, behind the jonquil hangings, turning as she turns, waking as she wakes, etc. The chamber is so vast and lonely that she has a bed made for Betsy in the room. It is, of course, whisked away into a closet on reception-evenings. A boudoir, rose-tendre, with more cupids and nymphs by Boucher, sporting over door-panels—nymphs who may well shock old Betsy and her old mistress—is the Pricess’s morning-room. “Ah, mum, what would Mr. Humper at Manchester, Mr. Jowls of Newcome” (the minister whom, in early days, Miss Higg used to sit under) “say if they was browt into this room?” But there is no question of Jowls and Mr. Humper, excellent dissenting divines, who preached to Miss Higg, being brought into the Princesse de Moncontour’s boudoir.

That paragraph, respecting a conversion in high life, which F. B. in his enthusiasm inserted in the Pall Mall Gazette, caused no small excitement in the Florac family. The Florac family read the Pall Mall Gazette, knowing that Clive’s friends were engaged in that periodical. When Madame de Florac, who did not often read newspapers, happened to cast her eye upon that poetic paragraph of F. B.’s, you may fancy, with what a panic it filled the good and pious lady. Her son become a Protestant! After all the grief and trouble his wildness had occasioned to her, Paul forsake his religion! But that her husband was so ill and aged as not to be able to bear her absence, she would have hastened to London to rescue her son out of that perdition. She sent for her younger son, who undertook the embassy; and the Prince and Princesse de Moncontour, in their hotel at London, were one day surprised by the visit of the Abbé de Florac.

As Paul was quite innocent of any intention of abandoning his religion, the mother’s kind heart was very speedily set at rest by her envoy. Far from Paul’s conversion to Protestantism, the Abbé wrote home the most encouraging accounts of his sister-in-law’s precious dispositions. He had communications with Madame de Moncontour’s Anglican director, a man of not powerful mind, wrote M. l’Abbé, though of considerable repute for eloquence in his Sect. The good dispositions of his sister-in-law were improved by the French clergyman, who could be most captivating and agreeable when a work of conversion was in hand. The visit reconciled the family to their English relative, in whom good-nature and many other good qualities were to be seen now that there were hopes of reclaiming her. It was agreed that Madame de Moncontour should come and inhabit the Hôtel de Florac at Paris: perhaps the Abbé tempted the worthy lady by pictures of the many pleasures and advantages she would enjoy in that capital. She was presented at her own court by the French ambassadress of that day: and was received at the Tuileries with a cordiality which flattered and pleased her.

Having been presented herself, Madame la Princesse in turn presented to her august sovereign Mrs. T. Higg and Miss Higg, of Manchester, Mrs. Samuel Higg, of Newcome; the husbands of those ladies (the Princess’s brothers) also sporting a court-dress for the first time. Sam Higg’s neighbour, the member for Newcome; Sir Brian Newcome, Bart., was too ill to act as Higg’s sponsor before majesty; but Barnes Newcome was uncommonly civil to the two Lancashire gentlemen; though their politics were different to his, and Sam had voted against Sir Brian at his last election. Barnes took them to dine at a club—recommended his tailor—and sent Lady Clara Pulleyn to call on Mrs. Higg—who pronounced her to be a pretty young woman and most haffable. The Countess of Dorking would have been delighted to present these ladies had the Princess not luckily been in London to do that office. The Hobson Newcomes were very civil to the Lancashire party, and entertained them splendidly at dinner. I believe Mrs. and Mr. Hobson themselves went to court this year, the latter in a deputy-lieutenant’s uniform.

If Barnes Newcome was so very civil to the Higg family we may suppose he had good reason. The Higgs were very strong in Newcome, and it was advisable to conciliate them. They were very rich, and their account would not be disagreeable at the bank. Madame de Moncontour’s—a large easy private account—would be more pleasant still. And, Hobson Brothers having entered largely into the Anglo-Continental Railway, whereof mention has been made, it was a bright thought of Barnes to place the Prince of Moncontour, etc. etc., on the French Direction of the Railway; and to take the princely prodigal down to Newcome with his new title, and reconcile him to his wife and the Higg family. Barnes we may say invented the principality: rescued the Vicomte de Florac out of his dirty lodgings in Leicester Square, and sent the Prince of Moncontour back to his worthy middle-aged wife again. The disagreeable dissenting days were over. A brilliant young curate of Doctor Bulders, who also wore long hair, straight waistcoats, and no shirt-collars, had already reconciled the Vicomtesse de Florac to the persuasion, whereof the ministers are clad in that queer uniform. The landlord of their hotel at St. James’s got his wine from Sherrick, and sent his families to Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel. The Rev. Charles Honeyman’s eloquence and amiability were appreciated by his new disciple—thus the historian has traced here step by step how all these people became acquainted.

Sam Higg, whose name was very good on ’Change in Manchester and London, joined the direction of the Anglo-Continental. A brother had died lately, leaving his money amongst them, and his wealth had added considerably to Madame de Florac’s means; his sister invested a portion of her capital in the railway in her husband’s name. The shares were at a premium, and gave a good dividend. The Prince de Moncontour took his place with great gravity at the Paris board, whither Barnes made frequent flying visits. The sense of capitalism sobered and dignified Paul de Florac: at the age of five-and-forty he was actually giving up being a young man, and was not ill pleased at having to enlarge his waistcoats, and to show a little grey in his moustache. His errors were forgotten: he was bien vu by the Government. He might have had the Embassy Extraordinary to Queen Pomaré; but the health of Madame la Princesse was delicate. He paid his wife visits every morning: appeared at her parties and her opera box, and was seen constantly with her in public. He gave quiet little dinners still, at which Clive was present sometimes: and had a private door and key to his apartments, which were separated by all the dreary length of the reception-rooms from the mirrored chamber and jonquil couch where the Princess and Betsy reposed. When some of his London friends visited Paris he showed us these rooms and introduced us duly to Madame la Princesse. He was as simple and as much at home in the midst of these splendours, as in the dirty little lodgings in Leicester Square, where he painted his own boots, and cooked his herring over the tongs. As for Clive, he was the infant of the house: Madame la Princesse could not resist his kind face; and Paul was as fond of him in his way as Paul’s mother in hers. Would he live at the Hôtel de Florac? There was an excellent atélier in the pavilion, with a chamber for his servant. “No! you will be most at ease in apartments of your own. You will have here but the society of women. I do not rise till late: and my affairs, my board, call me away for the greater part of the day. Thou wilt but be annuyé to play trictrac with my old father. My mother waits on him. My sister au second is given up entirely to her children, who always have the pituite. Madame la Princesse is not amusing for a young man. Come and go when thou wilt, Clive, my garçon, my son: thy cover is laid. Wilt thou take the portraits of all the family? Hast thou want of money? I had at thy age and almost ever since, mon ami; but now we swim in gold, and when there is a louis in my purse, there are ten francs for thee.” To show his mother that he did not think of the Reformed Religion, Paul did not miss going to mass with her on Sunday. Sometimes Madame Paul went too, between whom and her mother-in-law there could not be any liking, but there was now great civility. They saw each other once a day: Madame Paul always paid her visit to the Comte de Florac: and Betsy, her maid, made the old gentleman laugh by her briskness and talk. She brought back to her mistress the most wonderful stories which the old man told her about his doings during the emigration—before he married Madame la Comtesse—when he gave lessons in dancing, parbleu! There was his fiddle still, a trophy of those old times. He chirped, and coughed, and sang, in his cracked old voice, as he talked about them. “Lor! bless you, mum,” says Betsy, “he must have been a terrible old man!” He remembered the times well enough, but the stories he sometimes told over twice or thrice in an hour. I am afraid he had not repented sufficiently of those wicked old times: else why did he laugh and giggle so when he recalled them? He would laugh and giggle till he was choked with his old cough: and old S. Jean, his man, came and beat M. le Comte on the back, and made M. le Comte take a spoonful of his syrup.

Between two such women as Madame de Florac and Lady Kew, of course there could be little liking or sympathy. Religion, love, duty, the family, were the French lady’s constant occupation,—duty and the family, perhaps, Lady Kew’s aim too,—only the notions of duty were different in either person. Lady Kew’s idea of duty to her relatives being to push them on in the world: Madame de Florac’s to soothe, to pray, to attend them with constant watchfulness, to strive to mend them with pious counsel. I don’t know that one lady was happier than the other. Madame de Florac’s eldest son was a kindly prodigal: her second had given his whole heart to the Church: her daughter had centred hers on her own children, and was jealous if their grandmother laid a finger on them. So Léonore de Florac was quite alone. It seemed as if Heaven had turned away all her children’s hearts from her. Her daily business in life was to nurse a selfish old man, into whose service she had been forced in early youth, by a paternal decree which she never questioned; giving him obedience, striving to give him respect,—everything but her heart, which had gone out of her keeping. Many a good woman’s life is no more cheerful; a spring of beauty, a little warmth and sunshine of love, a bitter disappointment, followed by pangs and frantic tears, then a long monotonous story of submission. “Not here, my daughter, is to be your happiness,” says the priest; “whom Heaven loves it afflicts.” And he points out to her the agonies of suffering saints of her sex; assures her of their present beatitudes and glories; exhorts her to bear her pains with a faith like theirs; and is empowered to promise her a like reward.

The other matron is not less alone. Her husband and son are dead, without a tear for either,—to weep was not in Lady Kew’s nature. Her grandson, whom she had loved perhaps more than any human being, is rebellious and estranged from her; her children, separated from her, save one whose sickness and bodily infirmity the mother resents as disgraces to herself. Her darling schemes fail somehow. She moves from town to town, and ball to ball, and hall to castle, for ever uneasy and always alone. She sees people scared at her coming; is received by sufferance and fear rather than by welcome; likes perhaps the terror which she inspires, and to enter over the breach rather than through the hospitable gate. She will try and command wherever she goes; and trample over dependants and society, with a grim consciousness that it dislikes her, a rage at its cowardice, and an unbending will to domineer. To be old, proud, lonely, and not have a friend in the world—that is her lot in it. As the French lady may be said to resemble the bird which the fables say feeds her young with her blood; this one, if she has a little natural liking for her brood, goes hunting hither and thither and robs meat for them; And so, I suppose, to make the simile good, we must compare the Marquis of Farintosh to a lamb for the nonce, and Miss Ethel Newcome to a young eaglet. Is it not a rare provision of nature (or fiction of poets, who have their own natural history) that the strong-winged bird can soar to the sun and gaze at it, and then come down from heaven and pounce on a piece of carrion?

After she became acquainted with certain circumstances, Madame de Florac was very interested about Ethel Newcome, and strove in her modest way to become intimate with her. Miss Newcome and Lady Kew attended Madame de Moncontour’s Wednesday evenings. “It is as well, my dear, for the interests of the family that we should be particularly civil to these people,” Lady Kew said; and accordingly she came to the Hôtel de Florac, and was perfectly insolent to Madame la Princesse every Thursday evening. Towards Madame de Florac, even Lady Kew could not be rude. She was so gentle as to give no excuse for assault: Lady Kew vouchsafed to pronounce that Madame de Florac was “très grande dame;”—“of the sort which is almost impossible to find nowadays,” Lady Kew said, who thought she possessed this dignity in her own person. When Madame de Florac, blushing, asked Ethel to come and see her, Ethel’s grandmother consented with the utmost willingness. “She is very dévote, I have heard, and will try and convert you. Of course you will hold your own about that sort of thing; and have the good sense to keep off theology. There is no Roman Catholic parti in England or Scotland that is to be thought for a moment. You will see they will marry young Lord Derwenwater to an Italian princess; but he is only seventeen, and his directors never lose sight of him. Sir Bartholomew Bawkes will have a fine property when Lord Campion dies, unless Lord Campion leaves the money to the convent where his daughter is—and, of the other families, who is there? I made every inquiry purposely—that is, of course, one is anxious to know about the Catholics as about one’s own people: and little Mr. Rood, who was one of my poor brother Steyne’s lawyers, told me there is not one young man of that party at this moment who can be called a desirable person. Be very civil to Madame de Florac; she sees some of the old legitimists, and you know I am brouillée with that party of late years.”

“There is the Marquis de Montluc, who has a large fortune for France,” said Ethel, gravely; “he has a humpback, but he is very spiritual. Monsieur de Cadillan paid me some compliments the other night, and even asked George Barnes what my dot was, He is a widower, and has a wig and two daughters. Which do you think would be the greatest encumbrance, grandmamma,—a humpback, or a wig and two daughters? I like Madame de Florac; for the sake of the borough, I must try and like poor Madame de Moncontour, and I will go and see them whenever you please.”

So Ethel went to see Madame de Florac. She was very kind to Madame de Préville’s children, Madame de Florac’s grandchildren; she was gay and gracious with Madame de Moncontour. She went again and again to the Hotel de Florac, not caring for Lady Kew’s own circle of statesmen and diplomatists, Russian, and Spanish, and French, whose talk about the courts of Europe,—who was in favour at St. Petersburg, and who was in disgrace at Schoenbrunn,—naturally did not amuse the lively young person. The goodness of Madame de Florac’s life, the tranquil grace and melancholy kindness with which the French lady received her, soothed and pleased Miss Ethel. She came and reposed in Madame de Florac’s quiet chamber, or sate in the shade in the sober old garden of her hotel; away from all the trouble and chatter of the salons, the gossip of the embassies, the fluttering ceremonial of the Parisian ladies’ visits in their fine toilettes, the fadaises of the dancing dandies, and the pompous mysteries of the old statesmen who frequented her grandmother’s apartment. The world began for her at night; when she went in the train of the old Countess from hotel to hotel, and danced waltz after waltz with Prussian and Neapolitan secretaries, with princes’ officers of ordonnance,—with personages even more lofty very likely,—for the court of the Citizen King was then in its splendour; and there must surely have been a number of nimble young royal highnesses who would like to dance with such a beauty as Miss Newcome. The Marquis of Farintosh had a share in these polite amusements. His English conversation was not brilliant as yet, although his French was eccentric; but at the court balls, whether he appeared in his uniform of the Scotch Archers, or in his native Glenlivat tartar there certainly was not in his own or the public estimation a handsomer young nobleman in Paris that season. It has been said that he was greatly improved in dancing; and, for a young man of his age, his whiskers were really extraordinarily large and curly.

Miss Newcome, out of consideration for her grandmother’s strange antipathy to him, did not inform Lady Kew that a young gentleman by the name of Clive occasionally came to visit the Hôtel de Florac. At first, with her French education, Madame de Florac never would have thought of allowing the cousins to meet in her house; but with the English it was different. Paul assured her that in the English châteaux, les Meess walked for entire hours with the young men, made parties of the fish, mounted to horse with them, the whole with the permission of the mothers. “When I was at Newcome, Miss Ethel rode with me several times,” Paul said; “à preuve that we went to visit an old relation of the family, who adores Clive and his father.” When Madame de Florac questioned her son about the young Marquis to whom it was said Ethel was engaged, Florac flouted the idea. “Engaged! This young Marquis is engaged to the Théâtre des Variétés, my mother. He laughs at the notion of an engagement.” When one charged him with it of late at the club; and asked how Mademoiselle Louqsor—she is so tall, that they call her the Louqsor—she is an Odalisque Obélisque, ma mère; when one asked how the Louqsor would pardon his pursuit of Miss Newcome, my Ecossois permitted himself to say in full club, that it was Miss Newcome pursued him,—that nymph, that Diane, that charming and peerless young creature! On which, as the others laughed, and his friend Monsieur Walleye applauded, I dared to say in my turn, “Monsieur le Marquis, as a young man, not familiar with our language, you have said what is not true, milor, and therefore luckily not mischievous. I have the honour to count of my friends the parents of the young lady of whom you have spoken. You never could have intended to say that a young miss who lives under the guardianship of her parents, and is obedient to them, whom you meet in society all the nights, and at whose door your carriage is to be seen every day, is capable of that with which you charge her so gaily. These things say themselves, monsieur, in the coulisses of the theatre, of women from whom you learn our language; not of young persons pure and chaste, Monsieur de Farintosh! Learn to respect your compatriots; to honour youth and innocence everywhere, monsieur! and when you forget yourself, permit one who might be your father to point where you are wrong.”

“And what did he answer?” asked the Countess.

“I attended myself to a soufflet,” replied Florac; “but his reply was much more agreeable. The young insulary, with many blushes and a gros juron, as his polite way is, said he had not wished to say a word against that person. ‘Of whom the name,’ cried I, ‘ought never to be spoken in these places.’ Herewith our little dispute ended.”

So, occasionally, Mr. Clive had the good luck to meet with his cousin at the Hôtel de Florac, where, I dare say, all the inhabitants wished he should have his desire regarding this young lady. The Colonel had talked early to Madame de Florac about this wish of his life, impossible then to gratify, because Ethel was engaged to Lord Kew. Clive, in the fulness of his heart, imparted his passion to Florac, and in answer to Paul’s offer to himself, had shown the Frenchman that kind letter in which his father bade him carry aid to “Léonore de Florac’s son,” in case he should need it. The case was all clear to the lively Paul. “Between my mother and your good Colonel there must have been an affair of the heart in the early days during the emigration.” Clive owned his father had told him as much, at least that he himself had been attached to Mademoiselle de Blois. “It is for that that her heart yearns towards thee, that I have felt myself entrained toward thee since I saw thee”—Clive momentarily expected to be kissed again. “Tell thy father that I feel—am touched by his goodness with an eternal gratitude, and love every one that loves my mother.” As far as wishes went, these two were eager promoters of Clive’s little love-affair; and Madame la Princesse became equally not less willing. Clive’s good looks and good-nature had had their effects upon that good-natured woman, and he was as great a favourite with her as with her husband. And thus it happened that when Miss Ethel came to pay her visit, and sate with Madame de Florac and her grandchildren in the garden, Mr. Newcome would sometimes walk up the avenue there, and salute the ladies.

If Ethel had not wanted to see him, would she have come? Yes; she used to say she was going to Madame de Préville’s, not Madame de Florac’s, and would insist, I have no doubt, that it was Madame de Préville whom she went to see (whose husband was a member of the Chamber of Deputies, a Conseiller d’etat; or other French bigwig), and that she had no idea of going to meet Clive, or that he was more than a casual acquaintance at the Hôtel de Florac. There was no part of her conduct in all her life, which this lady, when it was impugned, would defend more strongly than this intimacy at the Hôtel de Florac. It is not with this I quarrel especially. My fair young readers, who have seen a half-dozen of seasons, can you call to mind the time when you had such a friendship for Emma Tomkins, that you were always at the Tomkins’s, and notes were constantly passing between your house and hers? When her brother, Paget Tomkins, returned to India, did not your intimacy with Emma fall off? If your younger sister is not in the room, I know you will own as much to me. I think you are always deceiving yourselves and other people. I think the motive you put forward is very often not the real one; though you will confess, neither to yourself, nor to any human being, what the real motive is. I think that what you desire you pursue, and are as selfish in your way as your bearded fellow-creatures are. And as for the truth being in you, of all the women in a great acquaintance, I protest there are but—never mind. A perfectly honest woman, a woman who never flatters, who never manages, who never cajoles, who never conceals, who never uses her eyes, who never speculates on the effect which she produces, who never is conscious of unspoken admiration, what a monster, I say, would such a female be! Miss Hopkins, you have been a coquette since you were a year old; you worked on your papa’s friends in the nurse’s arms by the fascination of your lace frock and pretty new sash and shoes; when you could just toddle, you practised your arts upon other children in the square, poor little lambkins sporting among the daisies; and nunc in ovilia, mox in reluctantes dracones, proceeding from the lambs to reluctant dragoons, you tried your arts upon Captain Paget Tomkins, who behaved so ill, and went to India without—without making those proposals which of course you never expected. Your intimacy was with Emma. It has cooled. Your sets are different. The Tomkins’s are not quite etc. etc. You believe Captain Tomkins married a Miss O’Grady, etc. etc. Ah, my pretty, my sprightly Miss Hopkins, be gentle in your judgment of your neighbours!

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XLVII. Contains two or three Acts of a Little Comedy

All this story is told by one, who, if he was not actually present at the circumstances here narrated, yet had information concerning them, and could supply such a narrative of facts and conversations as is, indeed, not less authentic than the details we have of other histories. How can I tell the feelings in a young lady’s mind; the thoughts in a young gentleman’s bosom?—As Professor Owen or Professor Agassiz takes a fragment of a bone, and builds an enormous forgotten monster out of it, wallowing in primeval quagmires, tearing down leaves and branches of plants that flourished thousands of years ago, and perhaps may be coal by this time—so the novelist puts this and that together: from the footprint finds the foot; from the foot, the brute who trod on it; from the brute, the plant he browsed on, the marsh in which he swam—and thus in his humble way a physiologist too, depicts the habits, size, appearance of the beings whereof he has to treat;—traces this slimy reptile through the mud, and describes his habits filthy and rapacious; prods down this butterfly with a pin, and depicts his beautiful coat and embroidered waistcoat; points out the singular structure of yonder more important animal, the megatherium of his history.

Suppose then, in the quaint old garden of the Hôtel de Florac, two young people are walking up and down in an avenue of lime-trees, which are still permitted to grow in that ancient place. In the centre of that avenue is a fountain, surmounted by a Triton so grey and moss-eaten, that though he holds his conch to his swelling lips, curling his tail in the arid basin, his instrument has had a sinecure for at least fifty years; and did not think fit even to play when the Bourbons, in whose time he was erected, came back from their exile. At the end of the lime-tree avenue is a broken-nosed damp Faun, with a marble panpipe, who pipes to the spirit ditties which I believe never had any tune. The perron of the hotel is at the other end of the avenue; a couple of Cæsars on either side of the door-window, from which the inhabitants of the hotel issue into the garden—Caracalla frowning over his mouldy shoulder at Nerva, on to whose clipped hair the roofs of the grey château have been dribbling for ever so many long years. There are more statues gracing this noble place. There is Cupid, who has been at the point of kissing Psyche this half-century at least, though the delicious event has never come off, through all those blazing summers and dreary winters: there is Venus and her Boy under the damp little dome of a cracked old temple. Through the alley of this old garden, in which their ancestors have disported in hoops and powder, Monsieur de Florac’s chair is wheeled by St. Jean, his attendant; Madame de Préville’s children trot about, and skip, and play at cache-cache. The R. P. de Florac (when at home) paces up and down and meditates his sermons; Madame de Florac sadly walks sometimes to look at her roses; and Clive and Ethel Newcome are marching up and down; the children, and their bonne of course being there, jumping to and fro; and Madame de Florac, having just been called away to Monsieur le Comte, whose physician has come to see him.

Ethel says, “How charming and odd this solitude is: and how pleasant to hear the voices of the children playing in the neighbouring Convent garden,” of which they can see the new chapel rising over the trees.

Clive remarks that “the neighbouring hotel has curiously changed its destination. One of the members of the Directory had it; and, no doubt, in the groves of its garden, Madame Tallien, and Madame Recamier, and Madame Beauharnais have danced under the lamps. Then a Marshal of the Empire inhabited it. Then it was restored to its legitimate owner, Monsieur le Marquis de Bricquabracque, whose descendants, having a lawsuit about the Bricquabracque succession, sold the hotel to the Convent.”

After some talk about nuns, Ethel says, “There were convents in England. She often thinks she would like to retire to one;” and she sighs as if her heart were in that scheme.

Clive, with a laugh, says, “Yes. If you could retire after the season, when you were very weary of the balls, a convent would be very nice. At Rome he had seen San Pietro in Montorio and Sant Onofrio, that delightful old place where Tasso died: people go and make a retreat there. In the ladies’ convents, the ladies do the same thing—and he doubts whether they are much more or less wicked after their retreat, than gentlemen and ladies in England or France.”

Ethel. Why do you sneer at all faith? Why should not a retreat do people good? Do you suppose the world is so satisfactory, that those who are in it never wish for a while to leave it’d (She heaves a sigh and looks down towards a beautiful new dress of many flounces, which Madame de Flouncival, the great milliner, has sent her home that very day.)

Clive. I do not know what the world is, except from afar off. I am like the Peri who looks into Paradise and sees angels within it. I live in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square: which is not within the gates of Paradise. I take the gate to be somewhere in Davies Street, leading out of Oxford Street into Grosvenor Square. There’s another gate in Hay Hill: and another in Bruton Street, Bond——

Ethel. Don’t be a goose.

Clive. Why not? It is as good to be a goose, as to be a lady—no, a gentleman of fashion. Suppose I were a Viscount, an Earl, a Marquis, a Duke, would you say Goose? No, you would say Swan.

Ethel. Unkind and unjust!—ungenerous to make taunts which common people make: and to repeat to me those silly sarcasms which your low Radical literary friends are always putting in their books! Have I ever made any difference to you? Would I not sooner see you than the fine people? Would I talk with you, or with the young dandies most willingly? Are we not of the same blood, Clive; and of all the grandees I see about, can there be a grander gentleman than your dear old father? You need not squeeze my hand so.—Those little imps are look—that has nothing to do with the question. Viens, Léonore! Tu connois bien, monsieur, n’est-ce pas? qui te fait de si jolis dessins?

Léonore. Ah, oui! Vous m’en ferez toujours, n’est-ce pas Monsieur Clive? des chevaux, et puis des petites filles avec leurs gouvernantes, et puis des maisons—et puis—et puis des maisons encore—où est bonne maman?

[Exit little LÉONORE down an alley.

Ethel. Do you remember when we were children, and you used to make drawings for us? I have some now that you did—in my geography book, which I used to read and read with Miss Quigley.

Clive. I remember all about our youth, Ethel.

Ethel. Tell me what you remember?

Clive. I remember one of the days, when I first saw you, I had been reading the Arabian Nights at school—and you came in in a bright dress of shot silk, amber, and blue—and I thought you were like that fairy-princess who came out of the crystal box—because——

Ethel. Because why?

Clive. Because I always thought that fairy somehow must be the most beautiful creature in all the world—that is “why and because.” Do not make me Mayfair curtsies. You know whether you are good-looking or not: and how long I have thought you so. I remember when I thought I would like to be Ethel’s knight, and that if there was anything she would have me do, I would try and achieve it in order to please her. I remember when I was so ignorant I did not know there was any difference in rank between us.

Ethel. Ah, Clive!

Clive. Now it is altered. Now I know the difference between a poor painter and a young lady of the world. Why haven’t I a title and a great fortune? Why did I ever see you, Ethel; or, knowing the distance which it seems fate has placed between us, why have I seen you again?

Ethel (innocently). Have I ever made any difference between us? Whenever I may see you, am I not too glad? Don’t I see you sometimes when I should not—no—I do not say when I should not; but when others, whom I am bound to obey, forbid me? What harm is there in my remembering old days? Why should I be ashamed of our relationship?—no, not ashamed—shy should I forget it? Don’t do that, sir; we have shaken hands twice already. Léonore! Xavier!

Clive. At one moment you like me: and at the next you seem to repent it. One day you seem happy when I come; and another day you are ashamed of me. Last Tuesday, when you came with those fine ladies to the Louvre, you seemed to blush when you saw me copying at my picture; and that stupid young lord looked quite alarmed because you spoke to me. My lot in life is not very brilliant; but I would not change it against that young man’s—no, not with all his chances.

Ethel. What do you mean with all his chances?

Clive. You know very well. I mean I would not be as selfish or as dull, or as ill educated—I won’t say worse of him—not to be as handsome, or as wealthy, or as noble as he is. I swear I would not now change my place against his, or give up being Clive Newcome to be my Lord Marquis of Farintosh, with all his acres and titles of nobility.

Ethel. Why are you for ever harping about Lord Farintosh and his titles? I thought it was only women who were jealous—you gentlemen say so.—(Hurriedly.) I am going to-night with grandmamma to the Minister of the Interior, and then to the Russian ball; and to-morrow to the Tuileries. We dine at the Embassy first; and on Sunday, I suppose, we shall go to the Rue d’Aguesseau. I can hardly come here before Mon—. Madam de Florac! Little Léonore is very like you—resembles you very much. My cousin says he longs to make a drawing of her.

Madame de Florac. My husband always likes that I should be present at his dinner. Pardon me, young people, that I have been away from you for a moment.

[Exeunt CLIVE, ETHEL, and Madame DE F. into the house.

CONVERSATION II.—Scene I.

Miss Newcome arrives in Lady Kew’s carriage, which enters the court of the Hôtel de Florac.

Saint Jean. Mademoiselle—Madame la Comtesse is gone out but madame has charged me to say, that she will be at home to the dinner of M. le Comte, as to the ordinary.

Miss Newcome. Madame de Préville is at home?

Saint Jean. Pardon me, madame is gone out with M. le Baron, and M. Xavier, and Mademoiselle de Préville. They are gone, miss, I believe, to visit the parents of Monsieur le Baron; of whom it is probably to-day the fête: for Mademoiselle Léonore carried a bouquet—no doubt for her grandpapa. Will it please mademoiselle to enter? I think Monsieur the Count sounds me. (Bell rings.)

Miss Newcome. Madame la Prince—Madame la Vicomtesse is at home, Monsieur St. Jean?

Saint Jean. I go to call the people of Madame la Vicomtesse.

[Exit Old SAINT JEAN to the carriage: a Lackey comes presently in a gorgeous livery, with buttons like little cheese plates.

The Lackey. The Princess is at home, miss, and will be most appy to see you, miss. (Miss trips up the great stair: a gentleman out of livery has come forth to the landing, and introduces her to the apartments of Madame la Princesse.)

The Lackey to the Servants on the box. Good morning, Thomas. How dy’ do, old Backystopper?

Backystopper. How de do, Jim? I say, you couldn’t give a feller a drink of beer, could yer, Muncontour? It was precious wet last night, I can tell you. ’Ad to stop for three hours at the Napolitum Embassy, when we was a dancing. Me and some chaps went into Bob Parsom’s and had a drain. Old Cat came out and couldn’t find her carriage, not by no means, could she, Tommy? Blest if I didn’t nearly drive her into a wegetable-cart. I was so uncommon scruey! Who’s this a-hentering at your pot-coshare? Billy, my fine feller!

Clive Newcome (by the most singular coincidence). Madame la Princesse?

Lackey. We, Munseer. (He rings a bell: the gentleman in black appears as before on the landing-place up the stair.)

[Exit CLIVE.

Backystopper. I say, Bill: is that young chap often a-coming about here? They’d run pretty in a curricle, wouldn’t they? Miss N. and Master N. Quiet, old woman! Jest look to that mare’s ead, will you, Billy? He’s a fine young feller, that is. He gave me a covering the other night. Whenever I sor him in the Park, he was always riding an ansum hanimal. What is he? They said in our ’all he was a hartis. I can ’ardly think that. Why, there used to be a hartis come to our club, and painted two or three of my ’osses, and my old woman too.

Lackey. There’s hartises and hartises, Backystopper. Why, there’s some on ’em comes here with more stars on their coats than Dukes has got. Have you never ’eard of Mossyer Verny, or Mossyer Gudang?

Backystopper. They say this young gent is sweet on Miss N.; which, I guess, I wish he may git it.

Tommy. He! he! he!

Backystopper. Brayvo, Tommy. Tom ain’t much of a man for conversation, but he’s a precious one to drink. Do you think the young gent is sweet on her, Tommy? I sor him often prowling about our ’ouse in Queen Street, when we was in London.

Tommy. I guess he wasn’t let in in Queen Street. I guess hour little Buttons was very near turned away for saying we was at home to him—I guess a footman’s place is to keep his mouth hopen—no, his heyes hopen—and his mouth shut. (He lapses into silence.)

Lackey. I think Thomis is in love, Thomis is. Who was that young woman I saw you a-dancing of at the Showmier, Thomis? How the young Marquis was a-cuttin’ of it about there! The pleace was obliged to come up and stop him dancing. His man told old Buzfuz upstairs, that the Marquis’s goings on is hawful. Up till four or five every morning; blind hookey, shampaign, the dooce’s own delight. That party have had I don’t know how much in diamonds—and they quarrel and swear at each other, and fling plates: it’s tremendous.

Tommy. Why doesn’t the Marquis man mind his own affairs? He’s a supersellious beast: and will no more speak to a man, except he’s out-a-livery, than he would to a chimbly-swip. He! Cuss him, I’d fight ’im for ’alf-a-crown.

Lackey. And we’d back you, Tommy. Buzfuz upstairs ain’t supersellious; nor is the Prince’s walet nether. That old Sangjang’s a rum old guvnor. He was in England with the Count, fifty years ago—in the hemigration—in Queen Hann’s time, you know. He used to support the old Count. He says he remembers a young Musseer Newcome then, that used to take lessons from the Shevallier, the Countess’ father—there’s my bell.

[Exit Lackey.

Backystopper. Not a bad chap that. Sports his money very free—sings an uncommon good song.

Thomas. Pretty voice, but no cultiwation.

Lackey (who re-enters). Be here at two o’clock for Miss N. Take anything? Come round the corner.—There’s a capital shop round the corner.

[Exeunt Servants.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Scene II

Ethel. I can’t think where Madame de Moncontour has gone. How very odd it was that you should come here—that we should both come here to-day! How surprised I was to see you at the Minister’s! Grandmamma was so angry! “That boy pursues us wherever we go,” she said. I am sure I don’t know why we shouldn’t meet, Clive. It seems to be wrong even my seeing you by chance here. Do you know, sir, what a scolding I had about—about going to Brighton with you? My grandmother did not hear of it till we were in Scotland, when that foolish maid of mine talked of it to her maid; and, there was oh, such a tempest! If there were a Bastile here, she would like to lock you into it. She says that you are always upon our way—I don’t know how, I am sure. She says, but for you I should have been—you know what I should have been: but I am thankful that I wasn’t, and Kew has got a much nicer wife in Henrietta Pulleyn, than I could ever have been to him. She will be happier than Clara, Clive. Kew is one of the kindest creatures in the world—not very wise; not very strong: but he is just such a kind, easy, generous little man, as will make a girl like Henrietta quite happy.

Clive. But not you, Ethel?

Ethel. No, nor I him. My temper is difficult, Clive, and I fear few men would bear with me. I feel, somehow, always very lonely. How old am I? Twenty—I feel sometimes as if I was a hundred; and in the midst of all these admirations and fêtes and flatteries, so tired, oh, so tired! And yet if I don’t have them, I miss them. How I wish I was religious like Madame de Florac: there is no day that she does not go to church. She is for ever busy with charities, clergymen, conversions; I think the Princess will be brought over ere long—that dear old Madame de Florac! and yet she is no happier than the rest of us. Hortense is an empty little thing, who thinks of her prosy fat Camille with spectacles, and of her two children, and of nothing else in the world besides. Who is happy? Clive!

Clive. You say Barnes’s wife is not.

Ethel. We are like brother and sister, so I may talk to you. Barnes is very cruel to her. At Newcome, last winter, poor Clara used to come into my room with tears in her eyes morning after morning. He calls her a fool; and seems to take a pride in humiliating her before company. My poor father has luckily taken a great liking to her: and before him, for he has grown very very hot-tempered since his illness, Barnes leaves poor Clara alone. We were in hopes that the baby might make matters better, but as it is a little girl, Barnes chooses to be very much disappointed. He wants papa to give up his seat in Parliament, but he clings to that more than anything. Oh, dear me! who is happy in the world? What a pity Lord Highgate’s father had not died sooner! He and Barnes have been reconciled. I wonder my brother’s spirit did not revolt against it. The old lord used to keep a great sum of money at the bank, I believe: and the present one does so still: he has paid all his debts off: and Barnes is actually friends with him. He is always abusing the Dorkings, who want to borrow money from the bank, he says. This eagerness for money is horrible. If I had been Barnes I would never have been reconciled with Mr. Belsize, never, never! And yet they say he was quite right: and grandmamma is even pleased that Lord Highgate should be asked to dine in Park Lane. Poor papa is there: come to attend his parliamentary duties as he thinks. He went to a division the other night; and was actually lifted out of his carriage and wheeled into the lobby in a chair. The ministers thanked him for coming. I believe he thinks he will have his peerage yet. Oh, what a life of vanity ours is!

Enter Madame de Moncontour. What are you young folks a-talkin’ about—balls and operas? When first I was took to the opera I did not like it—and fell asleep. But now, oh, it’s ’eavenly to hear Grisi sing!

The Clock. Ting, ting!

Ethel. Two o’clock already! I must run back to grandmamma. Good-bye, Madame de Moncontour; I am so sorry I have not been able to see dear Madame de Florac. I will try and come to her on Thursday—please tell her. Shall we meet you at the American minister’s to-night, or at Madame de Brie’s to-morrow? Friday is your own night—I hope grandmamma will bring me. How charming your last music was! Good-bye, mon cousin! You shall not come downstairs with me, I insist upon it, sir: and had much best remain here, and finish your drawing of Madame de Moncontour.

Princess. I’ve put on the velvet, you see, Clive—though it’s very ’ot in May. Good-bye, my dear.

[Exit ETHEL.

As far as we can judge from the above conversation, which we need not prolong—as the talk between Madame de Moncontour and Monsieur Clive, after a few complimentary remarks about Ethel, had nothing to do with the history of the Newcomes—as far as we can judge, the above little colloquy took place on Monday: and about Wednesday, Madame la Comtesse de Florac received a little note from Clive, in which he said, that one day when she came to the Louvre, where he was copying, she had admired a picture of a Virgin and Child, by Sasso Ferrato, since when he had been occupied in making a water-colour drawing after the picture, and hoped she would be pleased to accept the copy from her affectionate and grateful servant, Clive Newcome. The drawing would be done the next day, when he would call with it in his hand. Of course Madame de Florac received this announcement very kindly; and sent back by Clive’s servant a note of thanks to that young gentleman.

Now on Thursday morning, about one o’clock, by one of those singular coincidences which, etc. etc., who should come to the Hotel de Florac but Miss Ethel Newcome? Madame la Comtesse was at home, waiting to receive Clive and his picture: but Miss Ethel’s appearance frightened the good lady, so much so that she felt quite guilty at seeing the girl, whose parents might think—I don’t know what they might not think—that Madame de Florac was trying to make a match between the young people. Hence arose the words uttered by the Countess, after a while, in—

CONVERSATION III.

Madame de Florac (at work). And so you like to quit the world and to come to our triste old hotel. After to-day you will find it still more melancholy, my poor child.

Ethel. And why?

Madame de F. Some one who has been here to égayer our little meetings will come no more.

Ethel. Is the Abbé de Florac going to quit Paris, madam?

Madame de F. It is not of him that I speak, thou knowest it very well, my daughter. Thou hast seen my poor Clive twice here. He will come once again, and then no more. My conscience reproaches me that I have admitted him at all. But he is like a son to me, and was so confided to me by his father. Five years ago, when we met, after an absence—of how many years!—Colonel Newcome told me what hopes he had cherished for his boy. You know well, my daughter, with whom those hopes were connected. Then he wrote me that family arrangements rendered his plans impossible—that the hand of Miss Newcome was promised elsewhere. When I heard from my son Paul how these negotiations were broken, my heart rejoiced, Ethel, for my friend’s sake. I am an old woman now, who have seen the world, and all sorts of men. Men more brilliant no doubt I have known, but such a heart as his, such a faith as his, such a generosity and simplicity as Thomas Newcome’s—never!

Ethel (smiling). Indeed, dear lady, I think with you.

Madame de F. I understand thy smile, my daughter. I can say to thee, that when we were children almost, I knew thy good uncle. My poor father took the pride of his family into exile with him. Our poverty only made his pride the greater. Even before the emigration a contract had been passed between our family and the Count de Florac. I could not be wanting to the word given by my father. For how many long years have I kept it? But when I see a young girl who may be made the victim—the subject of a marriage of convenience, as I was—my heart pities her. And if I love her, as I love you, I tell her my thoughts. Better poverty, Ethel: better a cell in a convent: than a union without love. Is it written eternally that men are to make slaves of us? Here in France, above all, our fathers sell us every day. And what a society ours is! Thou wilt know this when thou art married. There are some laws so cruel that nature revolts against theme, and breaks them—or we die in keeping them. You smile. I have been nearly fifty years dying—n’est-ce pas?—and am here an old woman, complaining to a young girl. It is because our recollections of youth are always young: and because I have suffered so, that I would spare those I love a like grief. Do you know that the children of those who do not love in marriage seem to bear an hereditary coldness, and do not love their parents as other children do? They witness our differences and our indifferences, hear our recriminations, take one side or the other in our disputes, and are partisans for father or mother. We force ourselves to be hypocrites, and hide our wrongs from them; we speak of a bad father with false praises; we wear feint smiles over our tears, and deceive our children—deceive them, do we? Even from the exercise of that pious deceit there is no woman but suffers in the estimation of her sons. They may shield her as champions against their father’s selfishness or cruelty. In this case, what a war! What a home, where the son sees a tyrant in the father, and in the mother but a trembling victim! I speak not for myself—whatever may have been the course of our long wedded life, I have not to complain of these ignoble storms. But when the family chief neglects his wife, or prefers another to her, the children too, courtiers as we are, will desert her. You look incredulous about domestic love. Tenez, my child, if I may so surmise, I think you cannot have seen it.

Ethel (blushing, and thinking, perhaps, how she esteems her father, how her mother, and how much they esteem each other). My father and mother have been most kind to all their children, madame; and no one can say that their marriage has been otherwise than happy. My mother is the kindest and most affectionate mother, and—(Here a vision of Sir Brian alone in his room, and nobody really caring for him so much as his valet, who loves him to the extent of fifty pounds a year and perquisites; or, perhaps, Miss Cann, who reads to him, and plays a good deal of evenings, much to Sir Brian’s liking—here this vision, we say, comes, and stops Miss Ethel’s sentence.)

Madame de F. Your father, in his infirmity—and yet he is five years younger than Colonel Newcome—is happy to have such a wife and such children. They comfort his age; they cheer his sickness; they confide their griefs and pleasures to him—is it not so? His closing days are soothed by their affection.

Ethel. Oh, no, no! And yet it is not his fault or ours that he is a stranger to us. He used to be all day at the bank, or at night in the House of Commons, or he and mamma went to parties, and we young ones remained with the governess. Mamma is very kind. I have never, almost, known her angry; never with us; about us, sometimes, with the servants. As children, we used to see papa and mamma at breakfast; and then when she was dressing to go out. Since he has been ill, she has given up all parties. I wanted to do so too. I feel ashamed in the world, sometimes, when I think of my poor father at home, alone. I wanted to stay, but my mother and my grandmother forbade me. Grandmamma has a fortune, which she says I am to have: since then they have insisted on my being with her. She is very clever you know: she is kind too in her way; but she cannot live out of society. And I, who pretend to revolt, I like it too; and I, who rail and scorn flatterers—oh, I like admiration! I am pleased when the women hate me, and the young men leave them for me. Though I despise many of these, yet I can’t help drawing them towards me. One or two of them I have seen unhappy about me, and I like it; and if they are indifferent I am angry, and never tire till they come back. I love beautiful dresses; I love jewels; I love a great name and a fine house—oh, I despise myself, when I think of these things! When I lie in bed and say I have been heartless and a coquette, I cry with humiliation; and then rebel and say, Why not?—and to-night—yes, to-night—after leaving you, I shall be wicked, I know I shall.

Madame de F. (sadly). One will pray for thee, my child.

Ethel (sadly). I thought I might be good once. I used to say my own prayers then. Now I speak them but by rote, and feel ashamed—yes, ashamed to speak them. Is it not horrid to say them, and next morning to be no better than you were last night? Often I revolt at these as at other things, and am dumb. The Vicar comes to see us at Newcome, and eats so much dinner, and pays us such court, and “Sir Brians” papa, and “Your Ladyship’s” mamma. With grandmamma I go to hear a fashionable preacher—Clive’s uncle, whose sister lets lodgings at Brighton; such a queer, bustling, pompous, honest old lady. Do you know that Clive’s aunt lets lodgings at Brighton?

Madame de F. My father was an usher in a school. Monsieur de Florac gave lessons in the emigration. Do you know in what?

Ethel. Oh, the old nobility! that is different, you know. That Mr. Honeyman is so affected that I have no patience with him!

Madame de F. (with a sigh). I wish you could attend the services of a better church. And when was it you thought you might be good, Ethel?

Ethel. When I was a girl. Before I came out. When I used to take long rides with my dear Uncle Newcome; and he used to talk to me in his sweet simple way; and he said I reminded him of some one he once knew.

Madame de F. Who—who was that, Ethel?

Ethel (looking up at Gerard’s picture of the Countess de Florac). What odd dresses you wore in the time of the Empire, Madame de Florac! How could you ever have such high waists, and such wonderful fraises! (MADAME DE FLORAC kisses ETHEL. Tableau.)

Enter SAINT JEAN, preceding a gentleman with a drawing-board under his arm.

Saint Jean. Monsieur Claive! [Exit SAINT JEAN.

Clive. How do you do, Madame la Comtesse? Mademoiselle, j’ai l’honneur de vous souhaiter le bon jour.

Madame de F. Do you come from the Louvre? Have you finished that beautiful copy, mon ami?

Clive. I have brought it for you. It is not very good. There are always so many petites demoiselles copying that Sasso Ferrato; and they chatter about it so, and hop from one easel to another; and the young artists are always coming to give them advice—so that there is no getting a good look at the picture. But I have brought you the sketch; and am so pleased that you asked for it.

Madame de F. (surveying the sketch). It is charming—charming! What shall we give to our painter for his chef-d’œuvre?

Clive (kisses her hand). There is my pay! And you will be glad to hear that two of my portraits have been received at the Exhibition. My uncle, the clergyman, and Mr. Butts, of the Life Guards.

Ethel. Mr. Butts—quel nom! Je ne connois aucun M. Butts!

Clive. He has a famous head to draw. They refused Crackthorpe and—and one or two other heads I sent in.

Ethel (tossing up hers). Miss Mackenzie’s, I suppose!

Clive. Yes, Miss Mackenzie’s. It is a sweet little face; too delicate for my hand, though.

Ethel. So is a wax-doll’s a pretty face. Pink cheeks; china-blue eyes; and hair the colour of old Madame Hempenfeld’s—not her last hair—her last but one. (She goes to a window that looks into the court.)

Clive (to the Countess). Miss Mackenzie speaks more respectfully of other people’s eyes and hair. She thinks there is nobody in the world to compare to Miss Newcome.

Madame de F. (aside). And you, mon ami? This is the last time, entendez-vous? You must never come here again. If M. le Comte knew it he never would pardon me. Encore? (He kisses her ladyship’s hand again.)

Clive. A good action gains to be repeated. Miss Newcome, does the view of the courtyard please you? The old trees and the garden are better. That dear old Faun without a nose! I must have a sketch of him: the creepers round the base are beautiful.

Miss N. I was looking to see if the carriage had come for me. It is time that I return home.

Clive. That is my brougham. May I carry you anywhere? I hire him by the hour: and I will carry you to the end of the world.

Miss N. Where are you going, Madame de Florac?—to show that sketch to M. le Comte? Dear me! I don’t fancy that M. de Florac can care for such things! I am sure I have seen many as pretty on the quays for twenty-five sous. I wonder the carriage is not come for me.

Clive. You can take mine without my company, as that seems not to please you.

Miss N. Your company is sometimes very pleasant—when you please. Sometimes, as last night, for instance, when you particularly lively.

Clive. Last night, after moving heaven and earth to get an invitation to Madame de Brie—I say, heaven and earth, that is a French phrase—I arrive there; I find Miss Newcome engaged for almost every dance, waltzing with M. de Klingenspohr, galloping with Count de Capri, galloping and waltzing with the most noble the Marquis of Farintosh. She will scarce speak to me during the evening; and when I wait till midnight, her grandmamma whisks her home, and I am left alone for my pains. Lady Kew is in one of her high moods, and the only words she condescends to say to me are, “Oh, I thought you had returned to London,” with which she turns her venerable back upon me.

Miss N. A fortnight ago you said you were going to London. You said the copies you were about here would not take you another week, and that was three weeks since.

Clive. It were best I had gone.

Miss N. If you think so, I cannot but think so.

Clive. Why do I stay and hover about you, and follow you know—I follow you? Can I live on a smile vouchsafed twice a week, and no brighter than you give to all the world? What I do I get, but to hear your beauty praised, and to see you, night after night, happy and smiling and triumphant, the partner of other men? Does it add zest to your triumph, to think that I behold it? I believe you would like a crowd of us to pursue you.

Miss N. To pursue me; and if they find me alone, by chance to compliment me with such speeches as you make? That would be pleasure indeed! Answer me here in return, Clive. Have I ever disguised from any of my friends the regard I have for you? Why should I? Have not I taken your part when you were maligned? In former days, when—when Lord Kew asked me, as he had a right to do then—I said it was as a brother I held you; and always would. If I have been wrong, it has been for two or three times in seeing you at all—or seeing you thus; in letting you speak to me as you do—injure me as you do. Do you think I have not hard enough words said to me about you, but that you must attack me too in turn? Last night only, because you were at the ball,—it was very, very wrong of me to tell you I was going there,—as we went home, Lady Kew—Go, sir. I never thought you would have seen in me this humiliation.

Clive. Is it possible that I should have made Ethel Newcome shed tears? Oh, dry them, dry them. Forgive me, Ethel, forgive me! I have no right to jealousy, or to reproach you—I know that. If others admire you, surely I ought to know that they—they do but as I do: I should be proud, not angry, that they admire my Ethel—my sister, if you can be no more.

Ethel. I will be that always, whatever harsh things you think or say of me. There, sir, I am not going to be so foolish as to cry again. Have you been studying very hard? Are your pictures good at the Exhibition? I like you with your mustachios best, and order you not to cut them off again. The young men here wear them. I hardly knew Charles Beardmore when he arrived from Berlin the other day, like a sapper and miner. His little sisters cried out, and were quite frightened by his apparition. Why are you not in diplomacy? That day, at Brighton, when Lord Farintosh asked whether you were in the army, I thought to myself, why is he not?

Clive. A man in the army may pretend to anything, n’est-ce pas? He wears a lovely uniform. He may be a General, a K.C.B., a Viscount, an Earl. He may be valiant in arms, and wanting a leg, like the lover in the song. It is peace-time, you say? so much the worse career for a soldier. My father would not have me, he said, for ever dangling in barracks, or smoking in country billiard-rooms. I have no taste for law: and as for diplomacy, I have no relations in the Cabinet, and no uncles in the House of Peers. Could my uncle, who is in Parliament, help me much, do you think? or would he, if he could?—or Barnes, his noble son and heir, after him?

Ethel (musing). Barnes would not, perhaps, but papa might even still, and you have friends who are fond of you.

Clive. No—no one can help me: and my art, Ethel, is not only my choice and my love, but my honour too. I shall never distinguish myself in it: I may take smart likenesses, but that is all. I am not fit to grind my friend Ridley’s colours for him. Nor would my father, who loves his own profession so, make a good general probably. He always says so. I thought better of myself when I began as a boy; and was a conceited youngster, expecting to carry it all before me. But as I walked the Vatican, and looked at Raphael, and at the great Michael—I knew I was but a poor little creature; and in contemplating his genius, shrunk up till I felt myself as small as a man looks under the dome of St. Peter’s. Why should I wish to have a great genius?—Yes, there is one reason why I should like to have it.

Ethel. And that is?

Clive. To give it you, if it pleased you, Ethel. But I might wish for the roc’s egg: there is no way of robbing the bird. I must take a humble place, and you want a brilliant one. A brilliant one! Oh, Ethel, what a standard we folks measure fame by! To have your name in the Morning Post, and to go to three balls every night. To have your dress described at the Drawing-Room; and your arrival, from a round of visits in the country, at your town-house; and the entertainment of the Marchioness of Farin——

Ethel. Sir, if you please, no calling names.

Clive. I wonder at it. For you are in the world, and you love the world, whatever you may say. And I wonder that one of your strength of mind should so care for it. I think my simple old father is much finer than all your grandees: his single-mindedness more lofty than all their bowing, and haughtiness, and scheming. What are you thinking of, as you stand in that pretty attitude—like Mnemosyne—with your finger on your chin?

Ethel. Mnemosyne! who was she? I think I like you best when you are quiet and gentle, and not when you are flaming out and sarcastic, sir. And so you think you will never be a famous painter? They are quite in society here. I was so pleased, because two of them dined at the Tuileries when grandmamma was there; and she mistook one, who was covered all over with crosses, for an ambassador, I believe, till the Queen call him Monsieur Delaroche. She says there is no knowing people in this country. And do you think you will never be able to paint as well as M. Delaroche?

Clive. No—never.

Ethel. And—and—you will never give up painting?

Clive. No—never. That would be like leaving your friend who was poor; or deserting your mistress because you were disappointed about her money. They do those things in the great world, Ethel.

Ethel (with a sigh). Yes.

Clive. If it is so false, and base, and hollow, this great world—if its aims are so mean, its successes so paltry, the sacrifices it asks of you so degrading, the pleasures it gives you so wearisome, shameful even, why does Ethel Newcome cling to it? Will you be fairer, dear, with any other name than your own? Will you be happier, after a month, at bearing a great title, with a man whom you can’t esteem, tied for ever to you, to be the father of Ethel’s children, and the lord and master of her life and actions? The proudest woman in the world consents to bend herself to this ignominy, and own that a coronet is a bribe sufficient for her honour! What is the end of a Christian life, Ethel; a girl’s pure nurture?—it can’t be this! Last week, as we walked in the garden here, and heard the nuns singing in their chapel, you said how hard it was that poor women should be imprisoned so, and were thankful that in England we had abolished that slavery. Then you cast your eyes to the ground, and mused as you paced the walk; and thought, I know, that perhaps their lot was better than some others.

Ethel. Yes, I did. I was thinking that almost all women are made slaves one way or other, and that these poor nuns perhaps were better off than we are.

Clive. I never will quarrel with nun or matron for following her vocation. But for our women, who are free, why should they rebel against Nature, shut their hearts up, sell their lives for rank and money, and forgo the most precious right of their liberty? Look, Ethel, dear. I love you so, that if I thought another had your heart, an honest man, a loyal gentleman, like—like him of last year even, I think I could go back with a God bless you, and take to my pictures again, and work on in my own humble way. You seem like a queen to me, somehow; and I am but a poor, humble fellow, who might be happy, I think, if you were. In those balls, where I have seen you surrounded by those brilliant young men, noble and wealthy, admirers like me, I have often thought, “How could I aspire to such a creature, and ask her to forgo a palace to share the crust of a poor painter?”

Ethel. You spoke quite scornfully of palaces just now, Clive. I won’t say a word about the—the regard which you express for me. I think you have it. Indeed, I do. But it were best not said, Clive; best for me, perhaps, not to own that I know it. In your speeches, my poor boy—and you will please not to make any more, or I never can see you or speak to you again, never—you forgot one part of a girl’s duty: obedience to her parents. They would never agree to my marrying any one below—any one whose union would not be advantageous in a worldly point of view. I never would give such pain to the poor father, or to the kind soul who never said a harsh word to me since I was born. My grandmamma is kind, too, in her way. I came to her of my own free will. When she said she would leave me her fortune, do you think it was for myself alone that I was glad? My father’s passion was to make an estate, and all my brothers and sisters will be but slenderly portioned. Lady Kew said she would help them if I came to her—and—it is the welfare of those little people that depends upon me, Clive. Now, do you see, brother, why you must speak to me so no more? There is the carriage. God bless you, dear Clive.

(Clive sees the carriage drive away after Miss Newcome has entered it without once looking up to the window where he stands. When it is gone he goes to the opposite windows of the salon, which are open, towards the garden. The chapel music begins to play from the Convent, next door. As he hears it he sinks down, his head in his hands.)

Enter Madame de Florac (She goes to him with anxious looks.) What hast thou, my child? Hast thou spoken?

Clive (very steadily). Yes.

Madame de F. And she loves thee? I know she loves thee.

Clive. You hear the organ of the convent?

Madame de F. Qu’as tu?

Clive. I might as well hope to marry one of the sisters of yonder convent, dear lady. (He sinks down again, and she kisses him.)

Clive. I never had a mother; but you seem like one.

Madame de F. Mon fils! Oh, mon fils!

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XLVIII. In which Benedick is a Married Man

We have all heard of the dying French Duchess, who viewed her coming dissolution and subsequent fate so easily, because she said she was sure that Heaven must deal politely with a person of her quality;—I suppose Lady Kew had some such notions regarding people of rank: her long-suffering towards them was extreme; in fact, there were vices which the old lady thought pardonable, and even natural, in a young nobleman of high station, which she never would have excused in persons of vulgar condition.

Her ladyship’s little knot of associates and scandal-bearers—elderly roues and ladies of the world, whose business it was to know all sorts of noble intrigues and exalted tittle-tattle; what was happening among the devotees of the exiled court at Frobsdorf; what among the citizen princes of the Tuileries; who was the reigning favourite of the Queen Mother at Aranjuez; who was smitten with whom at Vienna or Naples; and the last particulars of the chroniques scandaleuses of Paris and London;—Lady Kew, I say, must have been perfectly aware of my Lord Farintosh’s amusements, associates, and manner of life, and yet she never, for one moment, exhibited any anger or dislike towards that nobleman. Her amiable heart was so full of kindness and forgiveness towards the young prodigal that, even without any repentance on his part, she was ready to take him to her old arms, and give him her venerable benediction. Pathetic sweetness of nature! Charming tenderness of disposition! With all his faults and wickednesses, his follies and his selfishness, there was no moment when Lady Kew would not have received the young lord, and endowed him with the hand of her darling Ethel.

But the hopes which this fond forgiving creature had nurtured for one season, and carried on so resolutely to the next, were destined to be disappointed yet a second time, by a most provoking event, which occurred in the Newcome family. Ethel was called away suddenly from Paris by her father’s third and last paralytic seizure. When she reached her home, Sir Brian could not recognise her. A few hours after her arrival, all the vanities of the world were over for him: and Sir Barnes Newcome, Baronet, reigned in his stead. The day after Sir Brian was laid in his vault at Newcome—a letter appeared in the local papers addressed to the Independent Electors of that Borough, in which his orphan son, feelingly alluding to the virtue, the services, and the political principles of the deceased, offered himself as a candidate for the seat in Parliament now vacant. Sir Barnes announced that he should speedily pay his respects in person to the friends and supporters of his lamented father. That he was a staunch friend of our admirable constitution need not be said. That he was a firm, but conscientious upholder of our Protestant religion, all who knew Barnes Newcome must be aware. That he would do his utmost to advance the interests of this great agricultural, this great manufacturing county and borough, we may be sure he avowed; as that he would be (if returned to represent Newcome in Parliament) the advocate of every rational reform, the unhesitating opponent of every reckless innovation. In fine, Barnes Newcome’s manifesto to the Electors of Newcome was as authentic a document and gave him credit for as many public virtues, as that slab over poor Sir Brian’s bones in the chancel of Newcome church, which commemorated the good qualities of the defunct, and the grief of his heir.

In spite of the virtues, personal and inherited, of Barnes, his seat for Newcome was not got without a contest. The dissenting interest and the respectable Liberals of the borough wished to set up Samuel Higg, Esq.; against Sir Barnes Newcome: and now it was that Barnes’s civilities of the previous year, aided by Madame de Moncontour’s influence over her brother, bore their fruit. Mr. Higg declined to stand against Sir Barnes Newcome, although Higg’s political principles were by no means those of the honourable Baronet; and the candidate from London, whom the Newcome extreme Radicals set up against Barnes, was nowhere on the poll when the day of election came. So Barnes had the desire of his heart; and, within two months after his father’s demise, he sate in Parliament as Member for Newcome.

The bulk of the late Baronet’s property descended, of course, to his eldest son: who grumbled, nevertheless, at the provision made for his brothers and sisters, and that the town-house should have been left to Lady Anne, who was too poor to inhabit it. But Park Lane is the best situation in London, and Lady Anne’s means were greatly improved by the annual produce of the house in Park Lane, which, as we all know, was occupied by a foreign minister for several subsequent seasons. Strange mutations of fortune: old places; new faces; what Londoner does not see and speculate upon them every day? Cœlia’s boudoir, who is dead with the daisies over her at Kensal Green, is now the chamber where Delia is consulting Dr. Locock, or Julia’s children are romping: Florio’s dining-tables have now Pollio’s wine upon them: Calista, being a widow, and (to the surprise of everybody who knew Trimalchio, and enjoyed his famous dinners) left but very poorly off, lets the house, and the rich, chaste, and appropriate planned furniture, by Dowbiggin, and the proceeds go to keep her little boys at Eton. The next year, as Mr. Clive Newcome rode by the once familiar mansion (whence the hatchment had been removed, announcing that there was in Cœlo Quies for the late Sir Brian Newcome, Bart.), alien faces looked from over the flowers in the balconies. He got a card for an entertainment from the occupant of the mansion, H.E. the Bulgarian minister; and there was the same crowd in the reception-room and on the stairs, the same grave men from Gunter’s distributing the refreshments in the dining-room, the same old Smee, R. A. (always in the room where the edibles were), cringing and flattering to the new occupants; and the same effigy of poor Sir Brian, in his deputy-lieutenant’s uniform, looking blankly down from over the sideboard, at the feast which his successors were giving. A dreamy old ghost of a picture. Have you ever looked at those round George IV.’s banqueting-hall at Windsor? Their frames still hold them, but they smile ghostly smiles, and swagger in robes and velvets which are quite faint and faded: their crimson coats have a twilight tinge: the lustre of their stars has twinkled out: they look as if they were about to flicker off the wall and retire to join their originals in limbo.

Nearly three years had elapsed since the good Colonel’s departure for India, and during this time certain changes had occurred in the lives of the principal actors and the writer of this history. As regards the latter, it must be stated that the dear old firm of Lamb Court had been dissolved, the junior member having contracted another partnership. The chronicler of these memoirs was a bachelor no longer. My wife and I had spent the winter at Rome (favourite resort of young married couples); and had heard from the artists there Clive’s name affectionately repeated; and many accounts of his sayings and doings, his merry supper-parties, and the talents of young Ridley, his friend. When we came to London in the spring, almost our first visit was to Clive’s apartments in Charlotte Street, whither my wife delightedly went to give her hand to the young painter.

But Clive no longer inhabited that quiet region. On driving to the house we found a bright brass plate, with the name of Mr. J. J. Ridley on the door, and it was J. J.’s hand which I shook (his other being engaged with a great palette, and a sheaf of painting-brushes) when we entered the well-known quarters. Clive’s picture hung over the mantelpiece, where his father’s head used to hang in our time—a careful and beautifully executed portrait of the lad in a velvet coat and a Roman hat, with that golden beard which was sacrificed to the exigencies of London fashion. I showed Laura the likeness until she could become acquainted with the original. On her expressing her delight at the picture, the painter was pleased to say, in his modest blushing way, that he would be glad to execute my wife’s portrait too, nor, as I think, could any artist find a subject more pleasing.

After admiring others of Mr. Ridley’s works, our talk naturally reverted to his predecessor. Clive had migrated to much more splendid quarters. Had we not heard? he had become a rich man, a man of fashion. “I fear he is very lazy about the arts,” said J. J., with regret on his countenance; “though I begged and prayed him to be faithful to his profession. He would have done very well in it, in portrait-painting especially. Look here, and here, and here!” said Ridley, producing fine vigorous sketches of Clive’s. “He had the art of seizing the likeness, and of making all his people look like gentlemen, too. He was improving every day, when this abominable bank came in the way, and stopped him.”

What bank? I did not know the new Indian bank of which the Colonel was a director. Then, of course, I was aware that the mercantile affair in question was the Bundelcund Bank, about which the Colonel had written to me from India more than a year since, announcing that fortunes were to be made by it, and that he had reserved shares for me in the company. Laura admired all Clive’s sketches, which his affectionate brother-artist showed to her with the exception of one representing the reader’s humble servant; which, Mrs. Pendennis considered, by no means did justice to the original.

Bidding adieu to the kind J. J., and leaving him to pursue his art, in that silent serious way in which he daily laboured at it, we drove to Fitzroy Square hard by, where I was not displeased to show the good old hospitable James Binnie the young lady who bore my name. But here, too, we were disappointed. Placards wafered in the windows announced that the old house was to let. The woman who kept it brought a card in Mrs. Mackenzie’s frank handwriting, announcing Mr. James Binnie’s address was “Poste-restante, Pau, in the Pyrenees,” and that his London agents were Messrs. So-and-so. The woman said she believed the gentleman had been unwell. The house, too, looked very pale, dismal, and disordered. We drove away from the door, grieving to think that ill-health, or any other misfortunes, had befallen good old James.

Mrs. Pendennis drove back to our lodgings, Brixham’s, in Jermyn Street, while I sped to the City, having business in that quarter. It has been said that I kept a small account with Hobson Brothers, to whose bank I went, and entered the parlour with that trepidation which most poor men feel on presenting themselves before City magnates and capitalists. Mr. Hobson Newcome shook hands most jovially and good-naturedly, congratulated me on my marriage, and so forth, and presently Sir Barnes Newcome made his appearance, still wearing his mourning for his deceased father.

Nothing could be more kind, pleasant, and cordial than Sir Barnes’s manner. He seemed to know well about my affairs; complimented me on every kind of good fortune; had heard that I had canvassed the borough in which I lived; hoped sincerely to see me in Parliament and on the right side; was most anxious to become acquainted with Mrs. Pendennis, of whom Lady Rockminster said all sorts of kind things; and asked for our address, in order that Lady Clara Newcome might have the pleasure of calling on my wife. This ceremony was performed soon afterwards; and an invitation to dinner from Sir Barnes and Lady Clara Newcome speedily followed it.

Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., M.P., I need not say, no longer inhabited the small house which he had occupied immediately after his marriage: but dwelt in a much more spacious mansion in Belgravia, where he entertained his friends. Now that he had come into his kingdom, I must say that Barnes was by no means so insufferable as in the days of his bachelorhood. He had sown his wild oats, and spoke with regret and reserve of that season of his moral culture. He was grave, sarcastic, statesmanlike; did not try to conceal his baldness (as he used before his father’s death, by bringing lean wisps of hair over his forehead from the back of his head); talked a great deal about the House; was assiduous in his attendance there and in the City; and conciliating with all the world. It seemed as if we were all his constituents, and though his efforts to make himself agreeable were rather apparent, the effect succeeded pretty well. We met Mr. and Mrs. Hobson Newcome, and Clive, and Miss Ethel looking beautiful in her black robes. It was a family party, Sir Barnes said, giving us to understand, with a decorous solemnity in face and voice, that no large parties as yet could be received in that house of mourning.

To this party was added, rather to my surprise, my Lord Highgate, who under the sobriquet of Jack Belsize has been presented to the reader of this history. Lord Highgate gave Lady Clara his arm to dinner, but went and took a place next Miss Newcome, on the other side of her; that immediately by Lady Clara being reserved for a guest who had not as yet made his appearance.

Lord Highgate’s attentions to his neighbour, his laughing and talking, were incessant; so much so that Clive, from his end of the table, scowled in wrath at Jack Belsize’s assiduities: it was evident that the youth, though hopeless, was still jealous and in love with his charming cousin.

Barnes Newcome was most kind to all his guests: from Aunt Hobson to your humble servant, there was not one but the of master the house had an agreeable word for him. Even for his cousin Samuel Newcome, a gawky youth with an eruptive countenance, Barnes had appropriate words of conversation, and talked about King’s College, of which the lad was an ornament, with the utmost affability. He complimented that institution and young Samuel, and by that shot knocked not only over Sam but his mamma too. He talked to Uncle Hobson about his crops; to Clive about his pictures; to me about the great effect which a certain article in the Pall Mall Gazette had produced in the House, where the Chancellor of the Exchequer was perfectly livid with fury, and Lord John bursting out laughing at the attack: in fact, nothing could be more amiable than our host on this day. Lady Clara was very pretty—grown a little stouter since her marriage; the change only became her. She was a little silent, but then she had Uncle Hobson on her left-hand side, between whom and her ladyship there could not be much in common, and the place at the right hand was still vacant. The person with whom she talked most freely was Clive, who had made a beautiful drawing of her and her little girl, for which the mother and the father too, as it appeared, were very grateful.

What had caused this change in Barnes’s behaviour? Our particular merits or his own private reform? In the two years over which this narrative has had to run in the course of as many chapters, the writer had inherited a property so small that it could not occasion a banker’s civility; and I put down Sir Barnes Newcome’s politeness to a sheer desire to be well with me. But with Lord Highgate and Clive the case was different, as you must now hear.

Lord Highgate, having succeeded to his father’s title and fortune, had paid every shilling of his debts, and had sowed his wild oats to the very last corn. His lordship’s account at Hobson Brothers was very large. Painful events of three years’ date, let us hope, were forgotten—gentlemen cannot go on being in love and despairing, and quarrelling for ever. When he came into his funds, Highgate behaved with uncommon kindness to Rooster, who was always straitened for money: and when the late Lord Dorking died and Rooster succeeded to him, there was a meeting at Chanticlere between Highgate and Barnes Newcome and his wife, which went off very comfortably. At Chanticlere the Dowager Lady Kew and Miss Newcome were also staying, when Lord Highgate announced his prodigious admiration for the young lady; and, it was said, corrected Farintosh, as a low-minded, foul-tongued young cub, for daring to speak disrespectfully of her. Nevertheless, vous concevez, when a man of the Marquis’s rank was supposed to look with the eyes of admiration upon a young lady, Lord Highgate would not think of spoiling sport, and he left Chanticlere declaring that he was always destined to be unlucky in love. When old Lady Kew was obliged to go to Vichy for her lumbago, Highgate said to Barnes, “Do ask your charming sister to come to you in London; she will bore herself to death with the old woman at Vichy, or with her mother at Rugby” (whither Lady Anne had gone to get her boys educated), and accordingly Miss Newcome came on a visit to her brother and sister, at whose house we have just had the honour of seeing her.

When Rooster took his seat in the House of Lords, he was introduced by Highgate and Kew, as Highgate had been introduced by Kew previously. Thus these three gentlemen all rode in gold coaches; had all got coronets on their heads; as you will, my respected young friend, if you are the eldest son of a peer who dies before you. And now they were rich, they were all going to be very good boys, let us hope. Kew, we know, married one of the Dorking family, that second Lady Henrietta Pulleyn, whom we described as frisking about at Baden, and not in the least afraid of him. How little the reader knew, to whom we introduced the girl in that chatty offhand way, that one day the young creature would be a countess! But we knew it all the while—and, when she was walking about with the governess, or romping with her sisters; and when she had dinner at one o’clock; and when she wore a pinafore very likely—we secretly respected her as the future Countess of Kew, and mother of the Viscount Walham.

Lord Kew was very happy with his bride, and very good to her. He took Lady Kew to Paris, for a marriage trip; but they lived almost altogether at Kewbury afterwards, where his lordship sowed tame oats now after his wild ones, and became one of the most active farmers of his county. He and the Newcomes were not very intimate friends; for Lord Kew was heard to say that he disliked Barnes more after his marriage than before. And the two sisters, Lady Clara and Lady Kew, had a quarrel on one occasion, when the latter visited London just before the dinner at which we have just assisted—nay, at which we are just assisting, took place,—a quarrel about Highgate’s attentions to Ethel, very likely. Kew was dragged into it, and hot words passed between him and Jack Belsize; and Jack did not go down to Kewbury afterwards, though Kew’s little boy was christened after him. All these interesting details about people of the very highest rank, we are supposed to whisper in the reader’s ear as we are sitting at a Belgravian dinner-table. My dear Barmecide friend, isn’t it pleasant to be in such fine company?

And now we must tell how it is that Clive Newcome, Esq., whose eyes are flashing fire across the flowers of the table at Lord Highgate, who is making himself so agreeable to Miss Ethel—now we must tell how it is that Clive and his cousin Barnes have grown to be friends again.

The Bundelcund Bank, which had been established for four years, had now grown to be one of the most flourishing commercial institutions in Bengal. Founded, as the prospectus announced, at a time when all private credit was shaken by the failure of the great Agency Houses, of which the downfall had carried dismay and ruin throughout the Presidency, the B. B. had been established on the only sound principle of commercial prosperity—that is association. The native capitalists, headed by the great firm of Rummun Loll and Co., of Calcutta, had largely embarked in the B. B., and the officers of the two services and the European mercantile body of Calcutta had been invited to take shares in an institution which, to merchants, native and English, civilian and military men, was alike advantageous and indispensable. How many young men of the latter services had been crippled for life by the ruinous cost of agencies, of which the profits to the agents themselves were so enormous! The shareholders of the B. B. were their own agents; and the greatest capitalist in India as well as the youngest ensign in the service might invest at the largest and safest premium, and borrow at the smallest interest, by becoming according to his means, a shareholder in the B. B. Their correspondents were established in each presidency and in every chief city of India, as well as at Sydney, Singapore, Canton, and, of course. London. With China they did, an immense opium-trade, of which the profits were so great, that it was only in private sittings of the B. B. managing committee that the details and accounts of these operations could be brought forward. Otherwise the books of the bank were open to every shareholder; and the ensign or the young civil servant was at liberty at any time to inspect his own private account as well as the common ledger. With New South Wales they carried on a vast trade in wool, supplying that great colony with goods, which their London agents enabled them to purchase in such a way as to give them the command of the market. As if to add to their prosperity, coppermines were discovered on lands in the occupation of the B. Banking Company, which gave the most astonishing returns. And throughout the vast territories of British India, through the great native firm of Rummun Loll and Co., the Bundelcund Banking Company had possession of the native markets. The order from Birmingham for idols alone (made with their copper and paid in their wool) was enough to make the Low Church party in England cry out; and a debate upon this subject actually took place in the House of Commons, of which the effect was to send up the shares of the Bundelcund Banking Company very considerably upon the London Exchange.

The fifth half-yearly dividend was announced at twelve and a quarter per cent of the paid-up capital: the accounts from the copper-mine sent the dividend up to a still greater height, and carried the shares to an extraordinary premium. In the third year of the concern, the house of Hobson Brothers, of London, became the agents of the Bundelcund Banking Company of India and amongst our friends, James Binnie, who had prudently held out for some time and Clive Newcome, Esq., became shareholders, Clive’s good father having paid the first instalments of the lad’s shares up in Calcutta, and invested every rupee he could himself command in this enterprise. When Hobson Brothers joined it, no wonder James Binnie was convinced; Clive’s friend, the Frenchman, and through that connexion the house of Higg, of Newcome and Manchester, entered into the affair; and amongst the minor contributors in England we may mention Miss Cann, who took a little fifty-pound-note share and dear old Miss Honeyman; and J. J., and his father, Ridley, who brought a small bag of saving—all knowing that their Colonel, who was eager that his friends should participate in his good fortune, would never lead them wrong. To Clive’s surprise Mrs. Mackenzie, between whom and himself there was a considerable coolness, came to his chambers, and with a solemn injunction that the matter between them should be quite private, requested him to purchase 1500 pounds worth of Bundelcund shares for her and her darling girls, which he did, astonished to find the thrifty widow in possession of so much money. Had Mr. Pendennis’s mind not been bent at this moment on quite other subjects, he might have increased his own fortune by the Bundelcund Bank speculation; but in these two years I was engaged in matrimonial affairs (having Clive Newcome, Esq., as my groomsman on a certain interesting occasion). When we returned from our tour abroad the India Bank shares were so very high that I did not care to purchase, though I found an affectionate letter from our good Colonel (enjoining me to make my fortune) awaiting me at the agent’s, and my wife received a pair of beautiful Cashmere shawls from the same kind friend.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XLIX. Contains at least six more Courses and two Desserts

The banker’s dinner-party over, we returned to our apartments, having dropped Major Pendennis at his lodgings, and there, as the custom is amongst most friendly married couples, talked over the company and the dinner. I thought my wife would naturally have liked Sir Barnes Newcome, who was very attentive to her, took her to dinner as the bride, and talked ceaselessly to her during the whole entertainment.

Laura said No—she did not know why—could there be any better reason? There was a tone about Sir Barnes Newcome she did not like—especially in his manner to women.

I remarked that he spoke sharply and in a sneering manner to his wife, and treated one or two remarks which she made as if she was an idiot.

Mrs. Pendennis flung up her head as much as to say, “and so she is.”

Mr. Pendennis. What, the wife too, my dear Laura! I should have thought such a pretty, simple, innocent young woman, with just enough good looks to make her pass muster, who is very well bred and not brilliant at all,—I should have thought such a one might have secured a sister’s approbation.

Mrs. Pendennis. You fancy we are all jealous of one another. No protests of ours can take that notion out of your heads. My dear Pen, I do not intend to try. We are not jealous of mediocrity: we are not patient of it. I dare say we are angry because we see men admire it so. You gentlemen, who pretend to be our betters, give yourselves such airs of protection, and profess such a lofty superiority over us, prove it by quitting the cleverest woman in the room for the first pair of bright eyes and dimpled cheeks that enter. It was those charms which attracted you in Lady Clara, sir.

Pendennis. I think she is very pretty, and very innocent, and artless.

Mrs. P. Not very pretty, and perhaps not so very artless.

Pendennis. How can you tell, you wicked woman? Are you such a profound deceiver yourself, that you can instantly detect artifice in others? O Laura!

Mrs. P. We can detect all sorts of things. The inferior animals have instincts, you know. (I must say my wife is always very satirical upon this point of the relative rank of the sexes.) One thing I am sure of is, that she is not happy; and oh, Pen! that she does not care much for her little girl.

Pendennis. How do you know that, my dear?

Mrs. P. We went upstairs to see the child after dinner. It was at my wish. The mother did not offer to go. The child was awake and crying. Lady Clara did not offer to take it. Ethel—Miss Newcome took it, rather to my surprise, for she seems very haughty; and the nurse, who I suppose was at supper, came running up at the noise, and then the poor little thing was quiet.

Pendennis. I remember we heard the music as the dining-room door was open; and Newcome said, “That is what you will have to expect, Pendennis.”

Mrs. P. Hush, sir! If my baby cries, I think you must expect me to run out of the room. I liked Miss Newcome after seeing her with the poor little thing. She looked so handsome as she walked with it! I longed to have it myself.

Pendennis. Tout vient à fin, à qui sait——

Mrs. P. Don’t be silly. What a dreadful dreadful place this great world of yours is, Arthur; where husbands do not seem to care for their wives; where mothers do not love their children; where children love their nurses best; where men talk what they call gallantry!

Pendennis. What?

Mrs. P. Yes, such as that dreary, languid, pale, bald, cadaverous, leering man whispered to me. Oh, how I dislike him! I am sure he is unkind to his wife. I am sure he has a bad temper; and if there is any excuse for——

Pendennis. For what?

Mrs. P. For nothing. But you heard yourself that he had a bad temper, and spoke sneeringly to his wife. What could make her marry him?

Pendennis. Money, and the desire of papa and mamma. For the same reason Clive’s flame, poor Miss Newcome, was brought out to-day; that vacant seat at her side was for Lord Farintosh, who did not come. And the Marquis not being present, the Baron took his innings. Did you not see how tender he was to her, and how fierce poor Clive looked?

Mrs. P. Lord Highgate was very attentive to Miss Newcome, was he?

Pendennis. And some years ago, Lord Highgate was breaking his heart about whom do you think? about Lady Clara Pulleyn, our hostess of last night. He was Jack Belsize then, a younger son, plunged over head and ears in debt; and of course there could be no marriage. Clive was present at Baden when a terrible scene took place, and carried off poor Jack to Switzerland and Italy, where he remained till his father died, and he came into the title in which he rejoices. And now he is off with the old love, Laura, and on with the new. Why do you look at me so? Are you thinking that other people have been in love two or three times too?

Mrs. P. I am thinking that I should not like to live in London, Arthur.

And this was all that Mrs. Laura could be brought to say. When this young woman chooses to be silent, there is no power that can extract a word from her. It is true that she is generally in the right; but that is only the more aggravating. Indeed, what can be more provoking, after a dispute with your wife, than to find it is you, and not she, who has been in the wrong?

Sir Barnes Newcome politely caused us to understand that the entertainment of which we had just partaken was given in honour of the bride. Clive must needs not be outdone in hospitality; and invited us and others to a fine feast at the Star and Garter at Richmond, where Mrs. Pendennis was placed at his right hand. I smile as I think how much dining has been already commemorated in these veracious pages; but the story is an everyday record; and does not dining form a certain part of the pleasure and business of every day? It is at that pleasant hour that our set has the privilege of meeting the other. The morning man and woman alike devote to business; or pass mainly in the company of their own kind. John has his office; Jane her household, her nursery, her milliner, her daughters and their masters. In the country he has his hunting, his fishing, his farming, his letters; she her schools, her poor, her garden, or what not. Parted through the shining hours, and improving them, let us trust, we come together towards sunset only, we make merry and amuse ourselves. We chat with our pretty neighbour, or survey the young ones sporting; we make love and are jealous; we dance, or obsequiously turn over the leaves of Cecilia’s music-book; we play whist, or go to sleep in the arm-chair, according to our ages and conditions. Snooze gently in thy arm-chair, thou easy bald-head! play your whist, or read your novel, or talk scandal over your work, ye worthy dowagers and fogies! Meanwhile the young ones frisk about, or dance, or sing, or laugh; or whisper behind curtains in moonlit windows; or shirk away into the garden, and come back smelling of cigars; nature having made them so to do.

Nature at this time irresistibly impelled Clive Newcome towards love-making. It was pairing-season with him. Mr. Clive was now some three-and-twenty years old: enough has been said about his good looks, which were in truth sufficient to make him a match for the young lady on whom he had set his heart, and from whom, during this entertainment which he gave to my wife, he could never keep his eyes away for three minutes. Laura’s did not need to be so keen as they were in order to see what poor Clive’s condition was. She did not in the least grudge the young fellow’s inattention to herself; or feel hurt that he did not seem to listen when she spoke; she conversed with J. J., her neighbour, who was very modest and agreeable; while her husband, not so well pleased, had Mrs. Hobson Newcome for his partner during the chief part of the entertainment. Mrs. Hobson and Lady Clara were the matrons who gave the sanction of their presence to this bachelor-party. Neither of their husbands could come to Clive’s little fête; had they not the City and the House of Commons to attend? My uncle, Major Pendennis, was another of the guests; who for his part found the party was what you young fellows call very slow. Dreading Mrs. Hobson and her powers of conversation, the old gentleman nimbly skipped out of her neighbourhood, and fell by the side of Lord Highgate, to whom the Major was inclined to make himself very pleasant. But Lord Highgate’s broad back was turned upon his neighbour, who was forced to tell stories to Captain Crackthorpe, which had amused dukes and marquises in former days, and were surely quite good enough for any baron in this realm. “Lord Highgate sweet upon la belle Newcome, is he?” said the testy Major afterwards. “He seemed to me to talk to Lady Clara the whole time. When I awoke in the garden after dinner, as Mrs. Hobson was telling one of her confounded long stories, I found her audience was diminished to one. Crackthorpe, Lord Highgate, and Lady Clara, we had all been sitting there when the bankeress cut in (in the mid of a very good story I was telling them, which entertained them very much), and never ceased talking till I fell off into a doze. When I roused myself, begad, she was still going on. Crackthorpe was off, smoking a cigar on the terrace: my Lord and Lady Clara were nowhere; and you four, with the little painter, were chatting cosily in another arbour. Behaved himself very well, the little painter. Doosid good dinner Ellis gave us. But as for Highgate being aux soins with la belle Banquière, trust me, my boy, he is—upon my word, my dear, it seemed to me his thoughts went quite another way. To be sure, Lady Clara is a belle Banquière too now. He, he, he! How could he say he had no carriage to go home in? He came down in Crackthorpe’s cab, who passed us just now, driving back young What-dye-call the painter.”

Thus did the Major discourse, as we returned towards the City. I could see in the open carriage which followed us (Lady Clara Newcome’s) Lord Highgate’s white hat, by Clive’s on the back seat.

Laura looked at her husband. The same thought may have crossed their minds, though neither uttered it; but although Sir Barnes and Lady Clara Newcome offered us other civilities during our stay in London, no inducements could induce Laura to accept the proffered friendship of that lady. When Lady Clara called, my wife was not at home; when she invited us, Laura pleaded engagements. At first she bestowed on Miss Newcome, too, a share of this haughty dislike, and rejected the advances which that young lady, who professed to like my wife very much, made towards an intimacy. When I appealed to her (for Newcome’s house was after all a very pleasant one, and you met the best people there), my wife looked at me with an expression of something like scorn, and said: “Why don’t I like Miss Newcome? Of course because I am jealous of her—all women, you know, Arthur, are jealous of such beauties.” I could get for a long while no better explanation than these sneers, for my wife’s antipathy towards this branch of the Newcome family; but an event presently came which silenced my remonstrances, and showed to me, that Laura had judged Barnes and his wife only too well.

Poor Mrs. Hobson Newcome had reason to be sulky at the neglect which all the Richmond party showed her, for nobody, not even Major Pendennis, as we have seen, would listen to her intellectual conversation; nobody, not even Lord Highgate, would drive back to town in her carriage, though the vehicle was large and empty, and Lady Clara’s barouche, in which his lordship chose to take a place, had already three occupants within it:—but in spite of these rebuffs and disappointments the virtuous lady of Bryanstone Square was bent upon being good-natured and hospitable; and I have to record, in the present chapter, yet one more feast of which Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis partook at the expense of the most respectable Newcome family.

Although Mrs. Laura here also appeared, and had the place of honour in her character of bride, I am bound to own my opinion that Mrs. Hobson only made us the pretext of her party, and that in reality it was given to persons of a much more exalted rank. We were the first to arrive, our good old Major, the most punctual of men, bearing us company. Our hostess was arrayed in unusual state and splendour; her fat neck was ornamented with jewels, rich bracelets decorated her arms, and this Bryanstone Square Cornelia had likewise her family jewels distributed round her, priceless male and female Newcome gems, from the King’s College youth, with whom we have made a brief acquaintance, and his elder sister, now entering into the world, down to the last little ornament of the nursery, in a prodigious new sash, with ringlets hot and crisp from the tongs of a Marylebone hairdresser, We had seen the cherub faces of some of these darlings pressed against the drawing-room windows as our carriage drove up to the door; when, after a few minutes’ conversation, another vehicle arrived, away they dashed to the windows again, the innocent little dears crying out, “Here’s the Marquis;” and in sadder tones, “No, it isn’t the Marquis,” by which artless expressions they showed how eager they were to behold an expected guest of a rank only inferior to Dukes in this great empire.

Putting two and two together, as the saying is, it was not difficult for me to guess who the expected Marquis was—and, indeed, the King’s College youth set that question at once to rest, by wagging his head at me, and winking his eye, and saying, “We expect Farintosh.”

“Why, my dearest children,” Matronly Virtue exclaimed, “this anxiety to behold the young Marquis of Farintosh, whom we expect at our modest table, Mrs. Pendennis, to-day? Twice you have been at the window in your eagerness to look for him. Louisa, you silly child, do you imagine that his lordship will appear in his robes and coronet? Rodolf, you absurd boy, do you think that a Marquis is other than a man? I have never admired aught but intellect, Mrs. Pendennis; that, let us be thankful, is the only true title to distinction in our country nowadays.”

“Begad, sir,” whispers the old Major to me, “intellect may be a doosid fine thing, but in my opinion, a Marquisate and eighteen or twenty thousand a year—I should say the Farintosh property, with the Glenlivat estate and the Roy property in England, must be worth nineteen thousand a year at the very lowest figure and I remember when this young man’s father was only Tom Roy, of the 42nd, with no hope of succeeding to the title, and doosidly out at elbows too—I say what does the bankeress mean by chattering about intellect? Hang me, a Marquis is a Marquis; and Mrs. Newcome knows it as well as I do.” My good Major was growing old, and was not unnaturally a little testy at the manner in which his hostess received him. Truth to tell, she hardly took any notice of him and cut down a couple of the old gentleman’s stories before he had been five minutes in the room.

To our party presently comes the host in a flurried countenance, with a white waistcoat, holding in his hand an open letter, towards which his wife looks with some alarm. “How dy’ doo, Lady Clara, how dy’ doo, Ethel?” he says, saluting those ladies, whom the second carriage had brought to us. “Sir Barnes is not coming, that’s one place vacant; that, Lady Clara, you won’t mind, you see him at home: but here’s a disappointment for you, Miss Newcome, Lord Farintosh can’t come.”

At this, two of the children cry out “Oh! oh!” with such a melancholy accent that Miss Newcome and Lady Clara burst out laughing.

“Got a dreadful toothache,” said Mr. Hobson; “here’s his letter.”

“Hang it, what a bore!” cries artless young King’s College.

“Why a bore, Samuel? A bore, as you call it, for Lord Farintosh, I grant; but do you suppose that the high in station are exempt from the ills of mortality? I know nothing more painful than a toothache,” exclaims a virtuous matron, using the words of philosophy, but showing the countenance of anger.

“Hang it, why didn’t he have it out?” says Samuel.

Miss Ethel laughed. “Lord Farintosh would not have that tooth out for the world, Samuel,” she cried, gaily. “He keeps it in on purpose, and it always aches when he does not want to go out to dinner.”

“I know one humble family who will never ask him again,” Mrs. Hobson exclaims, rustling in all her silks, and tapping her fan and her foot. The eclipse, however, passes off her countenance and light is restored; when at this moment, a cab having driven up during the period of darkness, the door is flung open, and Lord Highgate is announced by a loud-voiced butler.

My wife, being still the bride on this occasion, had the honour of being led to the dinner-table by our banker and host. Lord Highgate was reserved for Mrs. Hobson, who, in an engaging manner, requested poor Clive to conduct his cousin Maria to dinner, handing over Miss Ethel to another guest. Our Major gave his arm to Lady Clara, and I perceived that my wife looked very grave as he passed the place where she sat, and seated Lady Clara in the next chair to that which Lord Highgate chanced to occupy. Feeling himself en vein, and the company being otherwise rather mum and silent, my uncle told a number of delightful anecdotes about the beau-monde of his time, about the Peninsular war, the Regent, Brummell, Lord Steyne, Pea Green Payne, and so forth. He said the evening was very pleasant, though some others of the party, as it appeared to me, scarcely seemed to think so. Clive had not a word for his cousin Maria, but looked across the table at Ethel all dinner-time. What could Ethel have to say to her partner, old Colonel Sir Donald M’Craw, who gobbled and drank, as his wont is, and if he had a remark to make, imparted it to Mrs. Hobson, at whose right hand he was sitting, and to whom, during the whole course, or courses, of the dinner, my Lord Highgate scarcely uttered one single word?

His lordship was whispering all the while into the ringlets of Lady Clara; they were talking a jargon which their hostess scarcely understood, of people only known to her by her study of the Peerage. When we joined the ladies after dinner, Lord Highgate again made way towards Lady Clara, and at an order from her, as I thought, left her ladyship, and strove hard to engage in a conversation with Mrs. Newcome. I hope he succeeded in smoothing the frowns in that round little face. Mrs. Laura, I own, was as grave as a judge all the evening; very grave even and reserved with my uncle, when the hour for parting came, and we took him home.

“He, he!” said the old man, coughing, and nodding his old head and laughing in his senile manner, when I saw him on the next day; “that was a pleasant evening we had yesterday; doosid pleasant, and I think my two neighbours seemed to be uncommonly pleased with each other; not an amusing fellow, that young painter of yours, though he is good-looking enough, but there’s no conversation in him. Do you think of giving a little dinner, Arthur, in return for these hospitalities? Greenwich, hey, or something of that sort? I’ll go you halves, sir, and we’ll ask the young banker and bankeress—not yesterday’s Amphitryon nor his wife; no, no, hang it! but Barnes Newcome is a devilish clever, rising man, and moves in about as good society as any in London. We’ll ask him and Lady Clara and Highgate, and one or two more, and have a pleasant party.”

But to this proposal, when the old man communicated it to her, in a very quiet, simple, artful way, Laura, with a flushing face said No quite abruptly, and quitted the room, rustling in her silks, and showing at once dignity and indignation.

Not many more feasts was Arthur Pendennis, senior, to have in this world. Not many more great men was he to flatter, nor schemes to wink at, nor earthly pleasures to enjoy. His long days were well-nigh ended: on his last couch, which Laura tended so affectionately, with his last breath almost, he faltered out to me. “I had other views for you, my boy, and once hoped to see you in a higher position in life; but I begin to think now, Arthur, that I was wrong; and as for that girl, sir, I am sure she is an angel.”

May I not inscribe the words with a grateful heart? Blessed he—blessed though maybe undeserving—who has the love of a good woman.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us