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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:29:50 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:29:50 -0700 |
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diff --git a/7467-h/7467-h.htm b/7467-h/7467-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5683790 --- /dev/null +++ b/7467-h/7467-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,40264 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title>The Newcomes | Project Gutenberg</title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> +<style> + + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.footnote {font-size: 90%; + text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 7467 ***</div> + + + + +<h1>THE NEWCOMES</h1> + +<h3>MEMOIRS OF A MOST RESPECTABLE FAMILY</h3> + +<h3>Edited by Arthur Pendennis, Esq.</h3> + +<h2 class="no-break">By William Makepeace Thackeray</h2> + +<hr> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0001"><b>THE NEWCOMES</b></a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0001">CHAPTER I.</a> The Overture—After which the Curtain rises upon a Drinking Chorus</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0002">CHAPTER II.</a> Colonel Newcome’s Wild Oats</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0003">CHAPTER III.</a> Colonel Newcome’s Letter-box</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0004">CHAPTER IV.</a> In which the Author and the Hero resume their Acquaintance</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0005">CHAPTER V.</a> Clive’s Uncles</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0006">CHAPTER VI.</a> Newcome Brothers</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0007">CHAPTER VII.</a> In which Mr. Clive’s School-days are over</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0008">CHAPTER VIII.</a> Mrs. Newcome at Home (a Small Early Party)</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0009">CHAPTER IX.</a> Miss Honeyman’s</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0010">CHAPTER X.</a> Ethel and her Relations</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0011">CHAPTER XI.</a> At Mrs. Ridley’s</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0012">CHAPTER XII.</a> In which everybody is asked to Dinner</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0013">CHAPTER XIII.</a> In which Thomas Newcome sings his Last Song</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0014">CHAPTER XIV.</a> Park Lane</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0015">CHAPTER XV.</a> The Old Ladies</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0016">CHAPTER XVI.</a> In which Mr. Sherrick lets his House in Fitzroy Square</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0017">CHAPTER XVII.</a> A School of Art</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0018">CHAPTER XVIII.</a> New Companions</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0019">CHAPTER XIX.</a> The Colonel at Home</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0020">CHAPTER XX.</a> Contains more Particulars of the Colonel and his Brethren</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0021">CHAPTER XXI.</a> Is Sentimental, but Short</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0022">CHAPTER XXII.</a> Describes a Visit to Paris; with Accidents and Incidents in London</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0023">CHAPTER XXIII.</a> In which we hear a Soprano and a Contralto</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0024">CHAPTER XXIV.</a> In which the Newcome Brothers once more meet together in Unity</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0025">CHAPTER XXV.</a> Is passed in a Public-house</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0026">CHAPTER XXVI.</a> In which Colonel Newcome’s Horses are sold</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0027">CHAPTER XXVII.</a> Youth and Sunshine</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0028">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a> In which Clive begins to see the World</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0029">CHAPTER XXIX.</a> In which Barnes comes a-wooing</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0030">CHAPTER XXX.</a> A Retreat</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0031">CHAPTER XXXI.</a> Madame la Duchesse</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0032">CHAPTER XXXII.</a> Barnes’s Courtship</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0033">CHAPTER XXXIII.</a> Lady Kew at the Congress</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0034">CHAPTER XXXIV.</a> The End of the Congress of Baden</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0035">CHAPTER XXXV.</a> Across the Alps</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0036">CHAPTER XXXVI.</a> In which M. de Florac is promoted</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0037">CHAPTER XXXVII.</a> Returns to Lord Kew</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0038">CHAPTER XXXVIII.</a> In which Lady Kew leaves his Lordship quite convalescent</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0039">CHAPTER XXXIX.</a> Amongst the Painters</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0040">CHAPTER XL.</a> Returns from Rome to Pall Mall</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0041">CHAPTER XLI.</a> An Old Story</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0042">CHAPTER XLII.</a> Injured Innocence</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0043">CHAPTER XLIII.</a> Returns to some Old Friends</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0044">CHAPTER XLIV.</a> In which Mr. Charles Honeyman appears in an Amiable Light</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0045">CHAPTER XLV.</a> A Stag of Ten</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0046">CHAPTER XLVI.</a> The Hotel de Florac</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0047">CHAPTER XLVII.</a> Contains two or three Acts of a Little Comedy</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0048">CHAPTER XLVIII.</a> In which Benedick is a Married Man</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0049">CHAPTER XLIX.</a> Contains at least six more Courses and two Desserts</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0050">CHAPTER L.</a> Clive in New Quarters</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0051">CHAPTER LI.</a> An Old Friend</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0052">CHAPTER LII.</a> Family Secrets</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0053">CHAPTER LIII.</a> In which Kinsmen fall out</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0054">CHAPTER LIV.</a> Has a Tragical Ending</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0055">CHAPTER LV.</a> Barnes’s Skeleton Closet</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0056">CHAPTER LVI.</a> Rosa quo locorum sera moratur</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0057">CHAPTER LVII.</a> Rosebury and Newcome</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0058">CHAPTER LVIII.</a> “One more Unfortunate”</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0059">CHAPTER LIX.</a> In which Achilles loses Briseis</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0060">CHAPTER LX.</a> In which we write to the Colonel</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0061">CHAPTER LXI.</a> In which we are introduced to a New Newcome</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0062">CHAPTER LXII.</a> Mr. and Mrs. Clive Newcome</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0063">CHAPTER LXIII.</a> Mrs. Clive at Home</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0064">CHAPTER LXIV.</a> Absit Omen</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0065">CHAPTER LXV.</a> In which Mrs. Clive comes into her Fortune</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0066">CHAPTER LXVI.</a> In which the Colonel and the Newcome Athenæum are both lectured</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0067">CHAPTER LXVII.</a> Newcome and Liberty</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0068">CHAPTER LXVIII.</a> A Letter and a Reconciliation</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0069">CHAPTER LXIX.</a> The Election</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0070">CHAPTER LXX.</a> Chiltern Hundreds</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0071">CHAPTER LXXI.</a> In which Mrs. Clive Newcome’s Carriage is ordered</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0072">CHAPTER LXXII.</a> Belisarius</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0073">CHAPTER LXXIII.</a> In which Belisarius returns from Exile</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0074">CHAPTER LXXIV.</a> In which Clive begins the World</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0075">CHAPTER LXXV.</a> Founder’s Day at the Grey Friars</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0076">CHAPTER LXXVI.</a> Christmas at Rosebury</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0077">CHAPTER LXXVII.</a> The Shortest and Happiest in the Whole History</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0078">CHAPTER LXXVIII.</a> In which the Author goes on a Pleasant Errand</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0079">CHAPTER LXXIX.</a> In which Old Friends come together</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#link2HCH0080">CHAPTER LXXX.</a> In which the Colonel says “Adsum” when his Name is called</td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<hr> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2H_4_0001"></a> +THE NEWCOMES</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0001"></a> +CHAPTER I.<br> +The Overture—After which the Curtain rises upon a Drinking Chorus</h2> + +<p> +A crow, who had flown away with a cheese from a dairy-window, sate perched on a +tree looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath him. The +frog’s hideous large eyes were goggling out of his head in a manner which +appeared quite ridiculous to the old blackamoor, who watched the splay-footed +slimy wretch with that peculiar grim humour belonging to crows. Not far from +the frog a fat ox was browsing; whilst a few lambs frisked about the meadow, or +nibbled the grass and buttercups there. +</p> + +<p> +Who should come in to the farther end of the field but a wolf? He was so +cunningly dressed up in sheep’s clothing, that the very lambs did not +know Master Wolf; nay, one of them, whose dam the wolf had just eaten, after +which he had thrown her skin over his shoulders, ran up innocently towards the +devouring monster, mistaking him for her mamma. +</p> + +<p> +“He, he!” says a fox, sneaking round the hedge-paling, over which +the tree grew, whereupon the crow was perched looking down on the frog, who was +staring with his goggle eyes fit to burst with envy, and croaking abuse at the +ox. “How absurd those lambs are! Yonder silly little knock-kneed +baah-ling does not know the old wolf dressed in the sheep’s fleece. He is +the same old rogue who gobbled up little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother +for lunch, and swallowed little Red Riding Hood for supper. <i>Tirez la +bobinette et la chevillette cherra</i>. He, he!” +</p> + +<p> +An owl that was hidden in the hollow of the tree woke up. “Oho, Master +Fox,” says she, “I cannot see you, but I smell you! If some folks +like lambs, other folks like geese,” says the owl. +</p> + +<p> +“And your ladyship is fond of mice,” says the fox. +</p> + +<p> +“The Chinese eat them,” says the owl, “and I have read that +they are very fond of dogs,” continued the old lady. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish they would exterminate every cur of them off the face of the +earth,” said the fox. +</p> + +<p> +“And I have also read, in works of travel, that the French eat +frogs,” continued the owl. “Aha, my friend Crapaud! are you there? +That was a very pretty concert we sang together last night!” +</p> + +<p> +“If the French devour my brethren, the English eat beef,” croaked +out the frog,—“great, big, brutal, bellowing oxen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ho, whoo!” says the owl, “I have heard that the English are +toad-eaters too!” +</p> + +<p> +“But who ever heard of them eating an owl or a fox, madam?” says +Reynard, “or their sitting down and taking a crow to pick?” adds +the polite rogue, with a bow to the old crow who was perched above them with +the cheese in his mouth. “We are privileged animals, all of us; at least, +we never furnish dishes for the odious orgies of man.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am the bird of wisdom,” says the owl; “I was the companion +of Pallas Minerva: I am frequently represented in the Egyptian +monuments.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have seen you over the British barn-doors,” said the fox, with a +grin. “You have a deal of scholarship, Mrs. Owl. I know a thing or two +myself; but am, I confess it, no scholar—a mere man of the world—a +fellow that lives by his wits—a mere country gentleman.” +</p> + +<p> +“You sneer at scholarship,” continues the owl, with a sneer on her +venerable face. “I read a good deal of a night.” +</p> + +<p> +“When I am engaged deciphering the cocks and hens at roost,” says +the fox. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a pity for all that you can’t read; that board nailed +over my head would give you some information.” +</p> + +<p> +“What does it say?” says the fox. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t spell in the daylight,” answered the owl; and, +giving a yawn, went back to sleep till evening in the hollow of her tree. +</p> + +<p> +“A fig for her hieroglyphics!” said the fox, looking up at the crow +in the tree. “What airs our slow neighbour gives herself! She pretends to +all the wisdom; whereas, your reverences, the crows, are endowed with gifts far +superior to these benighted old big-wigs of owls, who blink in the darkness, +and call their hooting singing. How noble it is to hear a chorus of crows! +There are twenty-four brethren of the Order of St. Corvinus, who have builded +themselves a convent near a wood which I frequent; what a droning and a +chanting they keep up! I protest their reverences’ singing is nothing to +yours! You sing so deliciously in parts, do for the love of harmony favour me +with a solo!” +</p> + +<p> +While this conversation was going on, the ox was thumping the grass; the frog +was eyeing him in such a rage at his superior proportions, that he would have +spurted venom at him if he could, and that he would have burst, only that is +impossible, from sheer envy; the little lambkin was lying unsuspiciously at the +side of the wolf in fleecy hosiery, who did not as yet molest her, being +replenished with the mutton her mamma. But now the wolf’s eyes began to +glare, and his sharp white teeth to show, and he rose up with a growl, and +began to think he should like lamb for supper. +</p> + +<p> +“What large eyes you have got!” bleated out the lamb, with rather a +timid look. +</p> + +<p> +“The better to see you with, my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“What large teeth you have got!” +</p> + +<p> +“The better to——” +</p> + +<p> +At this moment such a terrific yell filled the field, that all its inhabitants +started with terror. It was from a donkey, who had somehow got a lion’s +skin, and now came in at the hedge, pursued by some men and boys with sticks +and guns. +</p> + +<p> +When the wolf in sheep’s clothing heard the bellow of the ass in the +lion’s skin, fancying that the monarch of the forest was near, he ran +away as fast as his disguise would let him. When the ox heard the noise he +dashed round the meadow-ditch, and with one trample of his hoof squashed the +frog who had been abusing him. When the crow saw the people with guns coming, +he instantly dropped the cheese out of his mouth, and took to wing. When the +fox saw the cheese drop, he immediately made a jump at it (for he knew the +donkey’s voice, and that his asinine bray was not a bit like his royal +master’s roar), and making for the cheese, fell into a steel trap, which +snapped off his tail; without which he was obliged to go into the world, +pretending, forsooth, that it was the fashion not to wear tails any more; and +that the fox-party were better without ’em. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, a boy with a stick came up, and belaboured Master Donkey until he +roared louder than ever. The wolf, with the sheep’s clothing draggling +about his legs, could not run fast, and was detected and shot by one of the +men. The blind old owl, whirring out of the hollow tree, quite amazed at the +disturbance, flounced into the face of a ploughboy, who knocked her down with a +pitchfork. The butcher came and quietly led off the ox and the lamb; and the +farmer, finding the fox’s brush in the trap, hung it up over his +mantelpiece, and always bragged that he had been in at his death. +</p> + +<p> +“What a farrago of old fables is this! What a dressing up in old +clothes!” says the critic. (I think I see such a one—a Solomon that +sits in judgment over us authors and chops up our children.) “As sure as +I am just and wise, modest, learned, and religious, so surely I have read +something very like this stuff and nonsense about jackasses and foxes before. +That wolf in sheep’s clothing?—do I not know him? That fox +discoursing with the crow?—have I not previously heard of him? Yes, in +Lafontaine’s fables: let us get the Dictionary and the Fable and the +Biographie Universelle, article Lafontaine, and confound the impostor.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then in what a contemptuous way,” may Solomon go on to remark, +“does this author speak of human nature! There is scarce one of these +characters he represents but is a villain. The fox is a flatterer; the frog is +an emblem of impotence and envy; the wolf in sheep’s clothing a +bloodthirsty hypocrite, wearing the garb of innocence; the ass in the +lion’s skin a quack trying to terrify, by assuming the appearance of a +forest monarch (does the writer, writhing under merited castigation, mean to +sneer at critics in this character? We laugh at the impertinent comparison); +the ox, a stupid commonplace; the only innocent being in the writer’s +(stolen) apologue is a fool—the idiotic lamb, who does not know his own +mother!” And then the critic, if in a virtuous mood, may indulge in some +fine writing regarding the holy beauteousness of maternal affection. +</p> + +<p> +Why not? If authors sneer, it is the critic’s business to sneer at them +for sneering. He must pretend to be their superior, or who would care about his +opinion? And his livelihood is to find fault. Besides, he is right sometimes; +and the stories he reads, and the characters drawn in them, are old, sure +enough. What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all +fables: tremblers and boasters; victims and bullies; dupes and knaves; +long-eared Neddies, giving themselves leonine airs; Tartuffes wearing virtuous +clothing; lovers and their trials, their blindness, their folly and constancy. +With the very first page of the human story do not love and lies too begin? So +the tales were told ages before Aesop; and asses under lions’ manes +roared in Hebrew; and sly foxes flattered in Etruscan; and wolves in +sheep’s clothing gnashed their teeth in Sanskrit, no doubt. The sun +shines to-day as he did when he first began shining; and the birds in the tree +overhead, while I am writing, sing very much the same note they have sung ever +since there were finches. Nay, since last he besought good-natured friends to +listen once a month to his talking, a friend of the writer has seen the New +World, and found the (featherless) birds there exceedingly like their brethren +of Europe. There may be nothing new under and including the sun; but it looks +fresh every morning, and we rise with it to toil, hope, scheme, laugh, +struggle, love, suffer, until the night comes and quiet. And then will wake +Morrow and the eyes that look on it; and so <i>da capo</i>. +</p> + +<p> +This, then, is to be a story, may it please you, in which jackdaws will wear +peacocks’ feathers, and awaken the just ridicule of the peacocks; in +which, while every justice is done to the peacocks themselves, the splendour of +their plumage, the gorgeousness of their dazzling necks, and the magnificence +of their tails, exception will yet be taken to the absurdity of their rickety +strut, and the foolish discord of their pert squeaking; in which lions in love +will have their claws pared by sly virgins; in which rogues will sometimes +triumph, and honest folks, let us hope, come by their own; in which there will +be black crape and white favours; in which there will be tears under +orange-flower wreaths, and jokes in mourning-coaches; in which there will be +dinners of herbs with contentment and without, and banquets of stalled oxen +where there is care and hatred—ay, and kindness and friendship too, along +with the feast. It does not follow that all men are honest because they are +poor; and I have known some who were friendly and generous, although they had +plenty of money. There are some great landlords who do not grind down their +tenants; there are actually bishops who are not hypocrites; there are liberal +men even among the Whigs, and the Radicals themselves are not all aristocrats +at heart. But who ever heard of giving the Moral before the Fable? Children are +only led to accept the one after their delectation over the other: let us take +care lest our readers skip both; and so let us bring them on quickly—our +wolves and lambs, our foxes and lions, our roaring donkeys, our billing +ringdoves, our motherly partlets, and crowing chanticleers. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +There was once a time when the sun used to shine brighter than it appears to do +in this latter half of the nineteenth century; when the zest of life was +certainly keener; when tavern wines seemed to be delicious, and tavern dinners +the perfection of cookery; when the perusal of novels was productive of immense +delight, and the monthly advent of magazine-day was hailed as an exciting +holiday; when to know Thompson, who had written a magazine-article, was an +honour and a privilege; and to see Brown, the author of the last romance, in +the flesh, and actually walking in the Park with his umbrella and Mrs. Brown, +was an event remarkable, and to the end of life to be perfectly well +remembered; when the women of this world were a thousand times more beautiful +than those of the present time; and the houris of the theatres especially so +ravishing and angelic, that to see them was to set the heart in motion, and to +see them again was to struggle for half an hour previously at the door of the +pit; when tailors called at a man’s lodgings to dazzle him with cards of +fancy waistcoats; when it seemed necessary to purchase a grand silver +dressing-case, so as to be ready for the beard which was not yet born (as +yearling brides provide lace caps, and work rich clothes, for the expected +darling); when to ride in the Park on a ten-shilling hack seemed to be the +height of fashionable enjoyment, and to splash your college tutor as you were +driving down Regent Street in a hired cab the triumph of satire; when the acme +of pleasure seemed to be to meet Jones of Trinity at the Bedford, and to make +an arrangement with him, and with King of Corpus (who was staying at the +Colonnade), and Martin of Trinity Hall (who was with his family in Bloomsbury +Square), to dine at the Piazza, go to the play and see Braham in Fra Diavolo, +and end the frolic evening by partaking of supper and a song at the “Cave +of Harmony.”—It was in the days of my own youth, then, that I met +one or two of the characters who are to figure in this history, and whom I must +ask leave to accompany for a short while, and until, familiarised with the +public, they can make their own way. As I recall them the roses bloom again, +and the nightingales sing by the calm Bendemeer. +</p> + +<p> +Going to the play, then, and to the pit, as was the fashion in those honest +days, with some young fellows of my own age, having listened delighted to the +most cheerful and brilliant of operas, and laughed enthusiastically at the +farce, we became naturally hungry at twelve o’clock at night, and a +desire for welsh-rabbits and good old glee-singing led us to the “Cave of +Harmony,” then kept by the celebrated Hoskins, among whose friends we +were proud to count. +</p> + +<p> +We enjoyed such intimacy with Mr. Hoskins that he never failed to greet us with +a kind nod; and John the waiter made room for us near the President of the +convivial meeting. We knew the three admirable glee-singers, and many a time +they partook of brandy-and-water at our expense. One of us gave his call dinner +at Hoskins’s, and a merry time we had of it. Where are you, O Hoskins, +bird of the night? Do you warble your songs by Acheron, or troll your choruses +by the banks of black Avernus? +</p> + +<p> +The goes of stout, the “Chough and Crow,” the welsh-rabbit, the +“Red-Cross Knight,” the hot brandy-and-water (the brown, the +strong!), the “Bloom is on the Rye” (the bloom isn’t on the +rye any more!)—the song and the cup, in a word, passed round merrily; +and, I daresay, the songs and bumpers were encored. It happened that there was +a very small attendance at the “Cave” that night, and we were all +more sociable and friendly because the company was select. The songs were +chiefly of the sentimental class; such ditties were much in vogue at the time +of which I speak. +</p> + +<p> +There came into the “Cave” a gentleman with a lean brown face and +long black mustachios, dressed in very loose clothes, and evidently a stranger +to the place. At least he had not visited it for a long time. He was pointing +out changes to a lad who was in his company; and, calling for sherry-and-water, +he listened to the music, and twirled his mustachios with great enthusiasm. +</p> + +<p> +At the very first glimpse of me the boy jumped up from the table, bounded +across the room, ran to me with his hands out, and, blushing, said, +“Don’t you know me?” +</p> + +<p> +It was little Newcome, my school-fellow, whom I had not seen for six years, +grown a fine tall young stripling now, with the same bright blue eyes which I +remembered when he was quite a little boy. +</p> + +<p> +“What the deuce brings you here?” said I. +</p> + +<p> +He laughed and looked roguish. “My father—that’s my +father—would come. He’s just come back from India. He says all the +wits used to come here,—Mr. Sheridan, Captain Morris, Colonel Hanger, +Professor Porson. I told him your name, and that you used to be very kind to me +when I first went to Smithfield. I’ve left now; I’m to have a +private tutor. I say, I’ve got such a jolly pony. It’s better fun +than old Smile.” +</p> + +<p> +Here the whiskered gentleman, Newcome’s father, pointing to a waiter to +follow him with his glass of sherry-and-water, strode across the room twirling +his mustachios, and came up to the table where we sate, making a salutation +with his hat in a very stately and polite manner, so that Hoskins himself was, +as it were, obliged to bow; the glee-singers murmured among themselves (their +eyes rolling over their glasses towards one another as they sucked brandy-and +water), and that mischievous little wag, little Nadab the Improvisatore (who +had just come in), began to mimic him, feeling his imaginary whiskers, after +the manner of the stranger, and flapping about his pocket-handkerchief in the +most ludicrous manner. Hoskins checked this ribaldry by sternly looking towards +Nadab, and at the same time called upon the gents to give their orders, the +waiter being in the room, and Mr. Bellew about to sing a song. +</p> + +<p> +Newcome’s father came up and held out his hand to me. I dare say I +blushed, for I had been comparing him to the admirable Harley in the Critic, +and had christened him Don Ferolo Whiskerandos. +</p> + +<p> +He spoke in a voice exceedingly soft and pleasant, and with a cordiality so +simple and sincere, that my laughter shrank away ashamed, and gave place to a +feeling much more respectful and friendly. In youth, you see, one is touched by +kindness. A man of the world may, of course, be grateful or not as he chooses. +</p> + +<p> +“I have heard of your kindness, sir,” says he, “to my boy. +And whoever is kind to him is kind to me. Will you allow me to sit down by you? +and may I beg you to try my cheroots?” We were friends in a +minute—young Newcome snuggling by my side, his father opposite, to whom, +after a minute or two of conversation, I presented my three college friends. +</p> + +<p> +“You have come here, gentlemen, to see the wits,” says the Colonel. +“Are there any celebrated persons in the room? I have been +five-and-thirty years from home, and want to see all that is to be seen.” +</p> + +<p> +King of Corpus (who was an incorrigible wag) was on the point of pulling some +dreadful long-bow, and pointing out a halfdozen of people in the room, as R. +and H. and L., etc., the most celebrated wits of that day; but I cut +King’s shins under the table, and got the fellow to hold his tongue. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Maxima debetur pueris</i>,” says Jones (a fellow of very kind +feeling, who has gone into the Church since), and, writing on his card to +Hoskins, hinted to him that a boy was in the room, and a gentleman, who was +quite a greenhorn: hence that the songs had better be carefully selected. +</p> + +<p> +And so they were. A ladies’ school might have come in, and, but for the +smell of the cigars and brandy-and-water, have taken no harm by what happened. +Why should it not always be so? If there are any “Caves of Harmony” +now, I warrant Messieurs the landlords, their interests would be better +consulted by keeping their singers within bounds. The very greatest scamps like +pretty songs, and are melted by them; so are honest people. It was worth a +guinea to see the simple Colonel, and his delight at the music. He forgot all +about the distinguished wits whom he had expected to see in his ravishment over +the glees. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, Clive, this is delightful. This is better than your aunt’s +concert with all the Squallinis, hey? I shall come here often. Landlord, may I +venture to ask those gentlemen if they will take any refreshment? What are +their names?” (to one of his neighbours). “I was scarcely allowed +to hear any singing before I went out, except an oratorio, where I fell asleep; +but this, by George, is as fine as Incledon!” He became quite excited +over his sherry-and-water-(“I’m sorry to see you, gentlemen, +drinking brandy-pawnee,” says he; “it plays the deuce with our +young men in India.”) He joined in all the choruses with an exceedingly +sweet voice. He laughed at “The Derby Ram” so that it did you good +to hear him; and when Hoskins sang (as he did admirably) “The Old English +Gentleman,” and described, in measured cadence, the death of that +venerable aristocrat, tears trickled down the honest warrior’s cheek, +while he held out his hand to Hoskins and said, “Thank you, sir, for that +song; it is an honour to human nature.” On which Hoskins began to cry +too. +</p> + +<p> +And now young Nadab, having been cautioned, commenced one of those surprising +feats of improvisation with which he used to charm audiences. He took us all +off, and had rhymes pat about all the principal persons in the room: +King’s pins (which he wore very splendid), Martin’s red waistcoat, +etc. The Colonel was charmed with each feat, and joined delighted with the +chorus—“Ritolderol ritolderol ritolderolderay” (<i>bis</i>). +And when, coming to the Colonel himself, he burst out— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“A military gent I see—And while his face I scan,<br> +I think you’ll all agree with me—He came from Hindostan.<br> +And by his side sits laughing free—A youth with curly head,<br> +I think you’ll all agree with me—That he was best in bed.<br> +Ritolderol,” etc. +</p> + +<p> +—the Colonel laughed immensely at this sally, and clapped his son, young +Clive, on the shoulder. “Hear what he says of you, sir? Clive, best be +off to bed, my boy—ho, ho! No, no. We know a trick worth two of that. +‘We won’t go home till morning, till daylight does appear.’ +Why should we? Why shouldn’t my boy have innocent pleasure? I was allowed +none when I was a young chap, and the severity was nearly the ruin of me. I +must go and speak with that young man—the most astonishing thing I ever +heard in my life. What’s his name? Mr. Nadab? Mr. Nadab, sir, you have +delighted me. May I make so free as to ask you to come and dine with me +to-morrow at six? Colonel Newcome, if you please, Nerot’s Hotel, Clifford +Street. I am always proud to make the acquaintance of men of genius, and you +are one, or my name is not Newcome!” +</p> + +<p> +“Sir, you do me hhonour,” says Mr. Nadab, pulling up his +shirt-collar, “and perhaps the day will come when the world will do me +justice,—may I put down your hhonoured name for my book of poems?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, my dear sir,” says the enthusiastic Colonel; +“I’ll send them all over India. Put me down for six copies, and do +me the favour to bring them to-morrow when you come to dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +And now Mr. Hoskins asking if any gentleman would volunteer a song, what was +our amazement when the simple Colonel offered to sing himself, at which the +room applauded vociferously; whilst methought poor Clive Newcome hung down his +head, and blushed as red as a peony. I felt for the young lad, and thought what +my own sensations would have been if, in that place, my own uncle, Major +Pendennis, had suddenly proposed to exert his lyrical powers. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel selected the ditty of “Wapping Old Stairs” (a ballad so +sweet and touching that surely any English poet might be proud to be the father +of it), and he sang this quaint and charming old song in an exceedingly +pleasant voice, with flourishes and roulades in the old Incledon manner, which +has pretty nearly passed away. The singer gave his heart and soul to the simple +ballad, and delivered Molly’s gentle appeal so pathetically that even the +professional gentlemen hummed and buzzed—a sincere applause; and some +wags who were inclined to jeer at the beginning of the performance, clinked +their glasses and rapped their sticks with quite a respectful enthusiasm. When +the song was over, Clive held up his head too; after the shock of the first +verse, looked round with surprise and pleasure in his eyes; and we, I need not +say, backed our friend, delighted to see him come out of his queer scrape so +triumphantly. The Colonel bowed and smiled with very pleasant good-nature at +our plaudits. It was like Dr. Primrose preaching his sermon in the prison. +There was something touching in the naivete and kindness of the placid and +simple gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +Great Hoskins, placed on high, amidst the tuneful choir, was pleased to signify +his approbation, and gave his guest’s health in his usual dignified +manner. “I am much obliged to you, sir,” says Mr. Hoskins; +“the room ought to be much obliged to you: I drink your ’ealth and +song, sir;” and he bowed to the Colonel politely over his glass of +brandy-and-water, of which he absorbed a little in his customer’s honour. +“I have not heard that song,” he was kind enough to say, +“better performed since Mr. Incledon sung it. He was a great singer, sir, +and I may say, in the words of our immortal Shakspeare, that, take him for all +in all, we shall not look upon his like again.” +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel blushed in his turn, and turning round to his boy with an arch +smile, said, “I learnt it from Incledon. I used to slip out from Grey +Friars to hear him, Heaven bless me, forty years ago; and I used to be flogged +afterwards, and serve me right too. Lord! Lord! how the time passes!” He +drank off his sherry-and-water, and fell back in his chair; we could see he was +thinking about his youth—the golden time—the happy, the bright, the +unforgotten. I was myself nearly two-and-twenty years of age at that period, +and felt as old as, ay, older than the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +Whilst he was singing his ballad, there had walked, or rather reeled, into the +room, a gentleman in a military frock-coat and duck trousers of dubious hue, +with whose name and person some of my readers are perhaps already acquainted. +In fact it was my friend Captain Costigan, in his usual condition at this hour +of the night. +</p> + +<p> +Holding on by various tables, the Captain had sidled up, without accident to +himself or any of the jugs and glasses round about him, to the table where we +sat, and had taken his place near the writer, his old acquaintance. He warbled +the refrain of the Colonel’s song, not inharmoniously; and saluted its +pathetic conclusion with a subdued hiccup and a plentiful effusion of tears. +“Bedad, it is a beautiful song,” says he, “and many a time I +heard poor Harry Incledon sing it.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a great character,” whispered that unlucky King of +Corpus to his neighbour the Colonel; “was a Captain in the army. We call +him the General. Captain Costigan, will you take something to drink?” +</p> + +<p> +“Bedad, I will,” says the Captain, “and I’ll sing ye a +song tu.” +</p> + +<p> +And, having procured a glass of whisky-and-water from the passing waiter, the +poor old man, settling his face into a horrid grin, and leering, as he was wont +when he gave what he called one of his prime songs, began his music. +</p> + +<p> +The unlucky wretch, who scarcely knew what he was doing or saying, selected one +of the most outrageous performances of his <i>répertoire</i>, fired off a tipsy +howl by way of overture, and away he went. At the end of the second verse the +Colonel started up, clapping on his hat, seizing his stick, and looking as +ferocious as though he had been going to do battle with a Pindaree. +</p> + +<p> +“Silence!” he roared out. +</p> + +<p> +“Hear, hear!” cried certain wags at a farther table. “Go on, +Costigan!” said others. +</p> + +<p> +“Go on!” cries the Colonel, in his high voice trembling with anger. +“Does any gentleman say ‘Go On?’ Does any man who has a wife +and sisters, or children at home, say ‘Go on’ to such disgusting +ribaldry as this? Do you dare, sir, to call yourself a gentleman, and to say +that you hold the King’s commission, and to sit down amongst Christians +and men of honour, and defile the ears of young boys with this wicked +balderdash?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you bring young boys here, old boy?” cries a voice of the +malcontents. +</p> + +<p> +“Why? Because I thought I was coming to a society of gentlemen,” +cried out the indignant Colonel. “Because I never could have believed +that Englishmen could meet together and allow a man, and an old man, so to +disgrace himself. For shame, you old wretch! Go home to your bed, you hoary old +sinner! And for my part, I’m not sorry that my son should see, for once +in his life, to what shame and degradation and dishonour, drunkenness and +whisky may bring a man. Never mind the change, sir!—Curse the +change!” says the Colonel, facing the amazed waiter. “Keep it till +you see me in this place again; which will be never—by George, +never!” And shouldering his stick, and scowling round at the company of +scared bacchanalians, the indignant gentleman stalked away, his boy after him. +</p> + +<p> +Clive seemed rather shamefaced; but I fear the rest of the company looked still +more foolish. +</p> + +<p> +“Aussi que diable venait—il faire dans cette galere?” says +King of Corpus to Jones of Trinity; and Jones gave a shrug of his shoulders, +which were smarting, perhaps; for that uplifted cane of the Colonel’s had +somehow fallen on the back of every man in the room. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0002"></a> +CHAPTER II.<br> +Colonel Newcome’s Wild Oats</h2> + +<p> +As the young gentleman who has just gone to bed is to be the hero of the +following pages, we had best begin our account of him with his family history, +which luckily is not very long. +</p> + +<p> +When pigtails still grew on the backs of the British gentry, and their wives +wore cushions on their heads, over which they tied their own hair, and +disguised it with powder and pomatum: when Ministers went in their stars and +orders to the House of Commons, and the orators of the Opposition attacked +nightly the noble lord in the blue ribbon: when Mr. Washington was heading the +American rebels with a courage, it must be confessed, worthy of a better cause: +there came up to London, out of a northern county, Mr. Thomas Newcome, +afterwards Thomas Newcome, Esq., and sheriff of London, afterwards Mr. Alderman +Newcome, the founder of the family whose name has given the title to this +history. It was but in the reign of George III. that Mr. Newcome first made his +appearance in Cheapside; having made his entry into London on a waggon, which +landed him and some bales of cloth, all his fortune, in Bishopsgate Street; +though if it could be proved that the Normans wore pigtails under William the +Conqueror, and Mr. Washington fought against the English under King Richard in +Palestine, I am sure some of the present Newcomes would pay the Heralds’ +Office handsomely, living, as they do, amongst the noblest of the land, and +giving entertainments to none but the very highest nobility and <i>élite</i> of +the fashionable and diplomatic world, as you may read any day in the +newspapers. For though these Newcomes have got a pedigree from the College, +which is printed in Budge’s Landed Aristocracy of Great Britain, and +which proves that the Newcome of Cromwell’s army, the Newcome who was +among the last six who were hanged by Queen Mary for Protestantism, were +ancestors of this house; of which a member distinguished himself at Bosworth +Field; and the founder, slain by King Harold’s side at Hastings, had been +surgeon-barber to King Edward the Confessor; yet, between ourselves, I think +that Sir Brian Newcome, of Newcome, does not believe a word of the story, any +more than the rest of the world does, although a number of his children bear +names out of the Saxon Calendar. +</p> + +<p> +Was Thomas Newcome a foundling—a workhouse child out of that village +which has now become a great manufacturing town, and which bears his name? Such +was the report set about at the last election, when Sir Brian, in the +Conservative interest contested the borough; and Mr. Yapp, the out-and-out +Liberal candidate, had a picture of the old workhouse placarded over the town +as the birthplace of the Newcomes; with placards ironically exciting freemen to +vote for Newcome and <i>union</i>—Newcome and the <i>parish</i> +interests, etc. Who cares for these local scandals? It matters very little to +those who have the good fortune to be invited to Lady Ann Newcome’s +parties whether her beautiful daughters can trace their pedigrees no higher +than to the alderman their grandfather; or whether, through the mythic +ancestral barber-surgeon, they hang on to the chin of Edward, Confessor and +King. +</p> + +<p> +Thomas Newcome, who had been a weaver in his native village, brought the very +best character for honesty, thrift, and ingenuity with him to London, where he +was taken into the house of Hobson Brothers, cloth-factors; afterwards Hobson +and Newcome. This fact may suffice to indicate Thomas Newcome’s story. +Like Whittington and many other London apprentices, he began poor and ended by +marrying his master’s daughter, and becoming sheriff and alderman of the +City of London. +</p> + +<p> +But it was only <i>en secondes noces</i> that he espoused the wealthy, and +religious, and eminent (such was the word applied to certain professing +Christians in those days) Sophia Alethea Hobson—a woman who, considerably +older than Mr. Newcome, had the advantage of surviving him many years. Her +mansion at Clapham was long the resort of the most favoured amongst the +religious world. The most eloquent expounders; the most gifted missionaries, +the most interesting converts from foreign islands, were to be found at her +sumptuous table, spread with the produce of her magnificent gardens. Heaven +indeed blessed those gardens with plenty, as many reverend gentlemen remarked; +there were no finer grapes, peaches, or pineapples in all England. Mr. +Whitfield himself christened her; and it was said generally in the City, and by +her friends, that Miss Hobson’s two Christian names, Sophia and Alethea, +were two Greek words, which, being interpreted, meant wisdom and truth. She, +her villa and gardens, are now no more; but Sophia Terrace, Upper and Lower +Alethea Road, and Hobson’s Buildings, Square, etc., show every +quarter-day that the ground sacred to her (and freehold) still bears plenteous +fruit for the descendants of this eminent woman. +</p> + +<p> +We are, however, advancing matters. When Thomas Newcome had been some time in +London, he quitted the house of Hobson, finding an opening, though in a much +smaller way, for himself. And no sooner did his business prosper, than he went +down into the north, like a man, to a pretty girl whom he had left there, and +whom he had promised to marry. What seemed an imprudent match (for his wife had +nothing but a pale face, that had grown older and paler with long waiting) +turned out a very lucky one for Newcome. The whole countryside was pleased to +think of the prosperous London tradesman returning to keep his promise to the +penniless girl whom he had loved in the days of his own poverty; the great +country clothiers, who knew his prudence and honesty, gave him much of their +business when he went back to London. Susan Newcome would have lived to be a +rich woman had not fate ended her career within a year after her marriage, when +she died giving birth to a son. +</p> + +<p> +Newcome had a nurse for the child, and a cottage at Clapham, hard by Mr. +Hobson’s house, where he had often walked in the garden of a Sunday, and +been invited to sit down to take a glass of wine. Since he had left their +service, the house had added a banking business, which was greatly helped by +the Quakers and their religious connection; and Newcome, keeping his account +there, and gradually increasing his business, was held in very good esteem by +his former employers, and invited sometimes to tea at the Hermitage; for which +entertainments he did not, in truth, much care at first, being a City man, a +good deal tired with his business during the day, and apt to go to sleep over +the sermons, expoundings, and hymns, with which the gifted preachers, +missionaries, etc., who were always at the Hermitage, used to wind up the +evening, before supper. Nor was he a supping man (in which case he would have +found the parties pleasanter, for in Egypt itself there were not more savoury +fleshpots than at Clapham); he was very moderate in his meals, of a bilious +temperament, and, besides, obliged to be in town early in the morning, always +setting off to walk an hour before the first coach. +</p> + +<p> +But when his poor Susan died, Miss Hobson, by her father’s demise, having +now become a partner in the house, as well as heiress to the pious and +childless Zachariah Hobson, her uncle: Mr. Newcome, with his little boy in his +hand, met Miss Hobson as she was coming out of meeting one Sunday; and the +child looked so pretty (Mr. N. was a very personable, fresh-coloured man +himself; he wore powder to the end, and top-boots and brass buttons, in his +later days, after he had been sheriff indeed, one of the finest specimens of +the old London merchant); Miss Hobson, I say, invited him and little Tommy into +the grounds of the Hermitage; did not quarrel with the innocent child for +frisking about in the hay on the lawn, which lay basking in the Sabbath +sunshine, and at the end of the visit gave him a large piece of pound-cake, a +quantity of the finest hothouse grapes, and a tract in one syllable. Tommy was +ill the next day; but on the next Sunday his father was at meeting. +</p> + +<p> +He became very soon after this an awakened man; and the tittling and tattling, +and the sneering and gossiping, all over Clapham, and the talk on +’Change, and the pokes in the waistcoat administered by the wags to +Newcome,—“Newcome, give you joy, my boy;” “Newcome, new +partner in Hobson’s;” “Newcome, just take in this paper to +Hobson’s, they’ll do it, I warrant,” etc. etc.; and the +groans of the Rev. Gideon Bawls, of the Rev. Athanasius O’Grady, that +eminent convert from Popery, who, quarrelling with each other, yea, striving +one against another, had yet two sentiments in common, their love for Miss +Hobson, their dread, their hatred of the worldly Newcome; all these squabbles +and jokes, and pribbles and prabbles, look you, may be omitted. As gallantly as +he had married a woman without a penny, as gallantly as he had conquered his +poverty and achieved his own independence, so bravely he went in and won the +great City prize with a fortune of a quarter of a million. And every one of his +old friends, and every honest-hearted fellow who likes to see shrewdness, and +honesty, and courage succeed, was glad of his good fortune, and said, +“Newcome, my boy” (or “Newcome, my buck,” if they were +old City cronies, and very familiar), “I give you joy.” +</p> + +<p> +Of course Mr. Newcome might have gone into Parliament: of course before the +close of his life he might have been made a baronet: but he eschewed honours +senatorial or blood-red hands. “It wouldn’t do,” with his +good sense he said; “the Quaker connection wouldn’t like it.” +His wife never cared about being called Lady Newcome. To manage the great house +of Hobson Brothers and Newcome; to attend to the interests of the enslaved +negro; to awaken the benighted Hottentot to a sense of the truth; to convert +Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Papists; to arouse the indifferent and often +blasphemous mariner; to guide the washerwoman in the right way; to head all the +public charities of her sect, and do a thousand secret kindnesses that none +knew of; to answer myriads of letters, pension endless ministers, and supply +their teeming wives with continuous baby-linen; to hear preachers daily bawling +for hours, and listen untired on her knees after a long day’s labour, +while florid rhapsodists belaboured cushions above her with wearisome +benedictions; all these things had this woman to do, and for near fourscore +years she fought her fight womanfully: imperious but deserving to rule, hard +but doing her duty, severe but charitable, and untiring in generosity as in +labour; unforgiving in one instance—in that of her husband’s eldest +son, Thomas Newcome; the little boy who had played on the hay, and whom at +first she had loved very sternly and fondly. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Thomas Newcome, the father of his wife’s twin boys, the junior +partner of the house of Hobson Brothers and Co., lived several years after +winning the great prize about which all his friends so congratulated him. But +he was, after all, only the junior partner of the house. His wife was manager +in Threadneedle Street and at home—when the clerical gentlemen prayed +they importuned Heaven for that sainted woman a long time before they thought +of asking any favour for her husband. The gardeners touched their hats, the +clerks at the bank brought him the books, but they took their orders from her, +not from him. I think he grew weary of the prayer-meetings, he yawned over the +sufferings of the negroes, and wished the converted Jews at Jericho. About the +time the French Emperor was meeting with his Russian reverses Mr. Newcome died: +his mausoleum is in Clapham Churchyard, near the modest grave where his first +wife reposes. +</p> + +<p> +When his father married, Mr. Thomas Newcome, jun., and Sarah his nurse were +transported from the cottage where they had lived in great comfort to the +palace hard by, surrounded by lawns and gardens, pineries, graperies, aviaries, +luxuries of all kinds. This paradise, five miles from the Standard at Cornhill, +was separated from the outer world by a thick hedge of tall trees, and an +ivy-covered porter’s-gate, through which they who travelled to London on +the top of the Clapham coach could only get a glimpse of the bliss within. It +was a serious paradise. As you entered at the gate, gravity fell on you; and +decorum wrapped you in a garment of starch. The butcher-boy who galloped his +horse and cart madly about the adjoining lanes and common, whistled wild +melodies (caught up in abominable playhouse galleries), and joked with a +hundred cook-maids, on passing that lodge fell into an undertaker’s pace, +and delivered his joints and sweetbreads silently at the servants’ +entrance. The rooks in the elms cawed sermons at morning and evening; the +peacocks walked demurely on the terraces; the guinea-fowls looked more +Quaker-like than those savoury birds usually do. The lodge-keeper was serious, +and a clerk at a neighbouring chapel. The pastors who entered at the gate, and +greeted his comely wife and children, fed the little lambkins with tracts. The +head-gardener was a Scotch Calvinist, after the strictest order, only occupying +himself with the melons and pines provisionally, and until the end of the +world, which event, he could prove by infallible calculations, was to come off +in two or three years at farthest. Wherefore, he asked, should the butler brew +strong ale to be drunken three years hence; or the housekeeper (a follower of +Joanna Southcote) make provisions of fine linen and lay up stores of jams? On a +Sunday (which good old Saxon word was scarcely known at the Hermitage) the +household marched away in separate couples or groups to at least half a dozen +of religious edifices, each to sit under his or her favourite minister, the +only man who went to church being Thomas Newcome, accompanied by Tommy his +little son, and Sarah his nurse, who was, I believe, also his aunt, or at least +his mother’s first cousin. Tommy was taught hymns, very soon after he +could speak, appropriate to his tender age, pointing out to him the inevitable +fate of wicked children, and giving him the earliest possible warning and +description of the punishment of little sinners. He repeated these poems to his +stepmother after dinner, before a great shining mahogany table, covered with +grapes, pineapples, plum-cake, port wine, and Madeira, and surrounded by stout +men in black, with baggy white neckcloths, who took the little man between +their knees, and questioned him as to his right understanding of the place +whither naughty boys were bound. They patted his head with their fat hands if +he said well, or rebuked him if he was bold, as he often was. +</p> + +<p> +Nurse Sarah or Aunt Sarah would have died had she remained many years in that +stifling garden of Eden. She could not bear to part from the child whom her +mistress and kinswoman had confided to her (the women had worked in the same +room at Newcome’s, and loved each other always, when Susan became a +merchant’s lady, and Sarah her servant). She was nobody in the pompous +new household but Master Tommy’s nurse. The honest soul never mentioned +her relationship to the boy’s mother, nor indeed did Mr. Newcome acquaint +his new family with that circumstance. The housekeeper called her an Erastian: +Mrs. Newcome’s own serious maid informed against her for telling Tommy +stories of Lancashire witches, and believing in the same. The black footman +(madam’s maid and the butler were of course privately united) persecuted +her with his addresses, and was even encouraged by his mistress, who thought of +sending him as a missionary to the Niger. No little love, and fidelity, and +constancy did honest Sarah show and use during the years she passed at the +Hermitage, and until Tommy went to school. Her master, with many private +prayers and entreaties, in which he passionately recalled his former +wife’s memory and affection, implored his friend to stay with him; and +Tommy’s fondness for her and artless caresses, and the scrapes he got +into, and the howls he uttered over the hymns and catechisms which he was +bidden to learn (by Rev. T. Clack,, of Highbury College, his daily tutor, who +was commissioned to spare not the rod, neither to spoil the child), all these +causes induced Sarah to remain with her young master until such time as he was +sent to school. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile an event of prodigious importance, a wonderment, a blessing and a +delight, had happened at the Hermitage. About two years after Mrs. +Newcome’s marriage, the lady being then forty-three years of age, no less +than two little cherubs appeared in the Clapham Paradise—the twins, +Hobson Newcome and Brian Newcome, called after their uncle and late +grandfather, whose name and rank they were destined to perpetuate. And now +there was no reason why young Newcome should not go to school. Old Mr. Hobson +and his brother had been educated at that school of Grey Friars, of which +mention has been made in former works and to Grey Friars Thomas Newcome was +accordingly sent, exchanging—O ye Gods! with what delight!—the +splendour of Clapham for the rough, plentiful fare of the place, blacking his +master’s shoes with perfect readiness, till he rose in the school, and +the time came when he should have a fag of his own: tibbing out and receiving +the penalty therefore: bartering a black eye, per bearer, against a bloody nose +drawn at sight, with a schoolfellow, and shaking hands the next day; playing at +cricket, hockey, prisoners’ base, and football, according to the season; +and gorging himself and friends with tarts when he had money (and of this he +had plenty) to spend. I have seen his name carved upon the Gown Boys’ +arch: but he was at school long before my time; his son showed me the name when +we were boys together, in some year when George the Fourth was king. +</p> + +<p> +The pleasures of this school-life were such to Tommy Newcome, that he did not +care to go home for a holiday: and indeed, by insubordination and +boisterousness; by playing tricks and breaking windows; by marauding upon the +gardener’s peaches and the housekeeper’s jam; by upsetting his two +little brothers in a go-cart (of which wanton and careless injury the present +Baronet’s nose bears marks to this very day); by going to sleep during +the sermons, and treating reverend gentlemen with levity, he drew down on +himself the merited wrath of his stepmother; and many punishments in this +present life, besides those of a future and much more durable kind, which the +good lady did not fail to point out that he must undoubtedly inherit. His +father, at Mrs. Newcome’s instigation, certainly whipped Tommy for +upsetting his little brothers in the go-cart; but upon being pressed to repeat +the whipping for some other peccadillo performed soon after, Mr. Newcome +refused at once, using a wicked, worldly expression, which well might shock any +serious lady; saying, in fact, that he would be deed if he beat the boy any +more, and that he got flogging enough at school, in which opinion Master Tommy +fully coincided. +</p> + +<p> +The undaunted woman, his stepmother, was not to be made to forgo her plans for +the boy’s reform by any such vulgar ribaldries; and Mr. Newcome being +absent in the City on his business, and Tommy refractory as usual, she summoned +the serious butler and the black footman (for the lashings of whose brethren +she felt an unaffected pity) to operate together in the chastisement of this +young criminal. But he dashed so furiously against the butler’s shins as +to draw blood from his comely limbs, and to cause that serious and overfed +menial to limp and suffer for many days after; and, seizing the decanter, he +swore he would demolish blacky’s ugly face with it: nay, he threatened to +discharge it at Mrs. Newcome’s own head before he would submit to the +coercion which she desired her agents to administer. +</p> + +<p> +High words took place between Mr. and Mrs. Newcome that night on the +gentleman’s return home from the City, and on his learning the events of +the morning. It is to be feared he made use of further oaths, which hasty +ejaculations need not be set down in this place; at any rate, he behaved with +spirit and manliness as master of the house, vowed that if any servant laid a +hand on the child, he would thrash him first and then discharge him; and I dare +say expressed himself with bitterness and regret that he had married a wife who +would not be obedient to her husband, and had entered a house of which he was +not suffered to be the master. Friends were called in—the interference, +the supplications, of the Clapham clergy, some of whom dined constantly at the +Hermitage, prevailed to allay this domestic quarrel; and no doubt the good +sense of Mrs. Newcome—who, though imperious, was yet not unkind; and who, +excellent as she was, yet could be brought to own that she was sometimes in +fault—induced her to make at least a temporary submission to the man whom +she had placed at the head of her house, and whom it must be confessed she had +vowed to love and honour. When Tommy fell ill of the scarlet fever, which +afflicting event occurred presently after the above dispute, his own nurse, +Sarah, could not have been more tender, watchful, and affectionate than his +stepmother showed herself to be. She nursed him through his illness; allowed +his food and medicine to be administered by no other hand; sat up with the boy +through a night of his fever, and uttered not one single reproach to her +husband (who watched with her) when the twins took the disease (from which we +need not say they happily recovered); and though young Tommy, in his temporary +delirium, mistaking her for Nurse Sarah, addressed her as his dear Fat +Sally—whereas no whipping-post to which she ever would have tied him +could have been leaner than Mrs. Newcome—and, under this feverish +delusion, actually abused her to her face; calling her an old cat, an old +Methodist, and, jumping up in his little bed, forgetful of his previous fancy, +vowing that he would put on his clothes and run away to Sally. Sally was at her +northern home by this time, with a liberal pension which Mr. Newcome gave her, +and which his son and his son’s son after him, through all their +difficulties and distresses, always found means to pay. +</p> + +<p> +What the boy threatened in his delirium he had thought of, no doubt, more than +once in his solitary and unhappy holidays. A year after he actually ran away, +not from school, but from home; and appeared one morning, gaunt and hungry, at +Sarah’s cottage two hundred miles away from Clapham, who housed the poor +prodigal, and killed her calf for him—washed him, with many tears and +kisses, and put him to bed and to sleep; from which slumber he was aroused by +the appearance of his father, whose sure instinct, backed by Mrs. +Newcome’s own quick intelligence, had made him at once aware whither the +young runaway had fled. The poor father came horsewhip in hand—he knew of +no other law or means to maintain his authority; many and many a time had his +own father, the old weaver, whose memory he loved and honoured, strapped and +beaten him. Seeing this instrument in the parent’s hand, as Mr. Newcome +thrust out the weeping trembling Sarah and closed the door upon her, Tommy, +scared out of a sweet sleep and a delightful dream of cricket, knew his fate; +and, getting up out of bed, received his punishment without a word. Very likely +the father suffered more than the child; for when the punishment was over, the +little man, yet trembling and quivering with the pain, held out his little +bleeding hand and said, “I can—I can take it from you, sir;” +saying which his face flushed, and his eyes filled, for the first time; +whereupon the father burst into a passion of tears, and embraced the boy and +kissed him, besought and prayed him to be rebellious no more—flung the +whip away from him and swore, come what would, he would never strike him again. +The quarrel was the means of a great and happy reconciliation. The three dined +together in Sarah’s cottage. Perhaps the father would have liked to walk +that evening in the lanes and fields where he had wandered as a young fellow: +where he had first courted and first kissed the young girl he loved—poor +child—who had waited for him so faithfully and fondly, who had passed so +many a day of patient want and meek expectance, to be repaid by such a scant +holiday and brief fruition. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Newcome never made the slightest allusion to Tom’s absence after his +return, but was quite gentle and affectionate with him, and that night read the +parable of the Prodigal in a very low and quiet voice. +</p> + +<p> +This, however, was only a temporary truce. War very soon broke out again +between the impetuous lad and his rigid domineering mother-in-law. It was not +that he was very bad, or she perhaps more stern than other ladies, but the two +could not agree. The boy sulked and was miserable at home. He fell to drinking +with the grooms in the stables. I think he went to Epsom races, and was +discovered after that act of rebellion. Driving from a most interesting +breakfast at Roehampton (where a delightful Hebrew convert had spoken, oh! so +graciously!), Mrs. Newcome—in her state-carriage, with her bay +horses—met Tom, her son-in-law, in a tax-cart, excited by drink, and +accompanied by all sorts of friends, male and female. John the black man was +bidden to descend from the carriage and bring him to Mrs. Newcome. He came; his +voice was thick with drink. He laughed wildly: he described a fight at which he +had been present. It was not possible that such a castaway as this should +continue in a house where her two little cherubs were growing up in innocence +and grace. +</p> + +<p> +The boy had a great fancy for India; and Orme’s History, containing the +exploits of Clive and Lawrence, was his favourite book of all in his +father’s library. Being offered a writership, he scouted the idea of a +civil appointment, and would be contented with nothing but a uniform. A cavalry +cadetship was procured for Thomas Newcome; and the young man’s future +career being thus determined, and his stepmother’s unwilling consent +procured, Mr. Newcome thought fit to send his son to a tutor for military +instruction, and removed him from the London school, where in truth he had made +but very little progress in the humaner letters. The lad was placed with a +professor who prepared young men for the army, and received rather a better +professional education than fell to the lot of most young soldiers of his day. +He cultivated the mathematics and fortification with more assiduity than he had +ever bestowed on Greek and Latin, and especially made such a progress in the +French tongue as was very uncommon among the British youth his contemporaries. +</p> + +<p> +In the study of this agreeable language, over which young Newcome spent a great +deal of his time, he unluckily had some instructors who were destined to bring +the poor lad into yet further trouble at home. His tutor, an easy gentleman, +lived at Blackheath, and, not far from thence, on the road to Woolwich, dwelt +the little Chevalier de Blois, at whose house the young man much preferred to +take his French lessons rather than to receive them under his tutor’s own +roof. +</p> + +<p> +For the fact was that the little Chevalier de Blois had two pretty young +daughters, with whom he had fled from his country along with thousands of +French gentlemen at the period of revolution and emigration. He was a cadet of +a very ancient family, and his brother, the Marquis de Blois, was a fugitive +like himself, but with the army of the princes on the Rhine, or with his exiled +sovereign at Mittau. The Chevalier had seen the wars of the great Frederick: +what man could be found better to teach young Newcome the French language and +the art military? It was surprising with what assiduity he pursued his studies. +Mademoiselle Léonore, the Chevalier’s daughter, would carry on her little +industry very undisturbedly in the same parlour with her father and his pupil. +She painted card-racks: laboured at embroidery; was ready to employ her quick +little brain or fingers in any way by which she could find means to add a few +shillings to the scanty store on which this exiled family supported themselves +in their day of misfortune. I suppose the Chevalier was not in the least +unquiet about her, because she was promised in marriage to the Comte de Florac, +also of the emigration—a distinguished officer like the Chevalier, than +whom he was a year older—and, at the time of which we speak, engaged in +London in giving private lessons on the fiddle. Sometimes on a Sunday he would +walk to Blackheath with that instrument in his hand, and pay his court to his +young <i>fiancée</i>, and talk over happier days with his old +companion-in-arms. Tom Newcome took no French lessons on a Sunday. He passed +that day at Clapham generally, where, strange to say, he never said a word +about Mademoiselle de Blois. +</p> + +<p> +What happens when two young folks of eighteen, handsome and ardent, generous +and impetuous, alone in the world, or without strong affections to bind them +elsewhere,—what happens when they meet daily over French dictionaries, +embroidery frames, or indeed upon any business whatever? No doubt Mademoiselle +Léonore was a young lady perfectly <i>bien élevée</i>, and ready, as every +well-elevated young Frenchwoman should be, to accept a husband of her +parents’ choosing; but while the elderly M. de Florac was fiddling in +London, there was that handsome young Tom Newcome ever present at Blackheath. +To make a long matter short, Tom declared his passion, and was for marrying +Léonore off hand, if she would but come with him to the little Catholic chapel +at Woolwich. Why should they not go out to India together and be happy ever +after? +</p> + +<p> +The innocent little amour may have been several months in transaction, and was +discovered by Mrs. Newcome, whose keen spectacles nothing could escape. It +chanced that she drove to Blackheath to Tom’s tutor’s. Tom was +absent taking his French and drawing lesson of M. de Blois. Thither Tom’s +stepmother followed him, and found the young man sure enough with his +instructor over his books and plans of fortification. Mademoiselle and her +card-screens were in the room, but behind those screens she could not hide her +blushes and confusion from Mrs. Newcome’s sharp glances. In one moment +the banker’s wife saw the whole affair—the whole mystery which had +been passing for months under poor M. de Blois’ nose, without his having +the least notion of the truth. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Newcome said she wanted her son to return home with her upon private +affairs; and before they had reached the Hermitage a fine battle had ensued +between them. His mother had charged him with being a wretch and a monster, and +he had replied fiercely, denying the accusation with scorn, and announcing his +wish instantly to marry the most virtuous, the most beautiful of her sex. To +marry a Papist! This was all that was wanted to make poor Tom’s cup of +bitterness run over. Mr. Newcome was called in, and the two elders passed a +great part of the night in an assault upon the lad. He was grown too tall for +the cane; but Mrs. Newcome thonged him with the lash of her indignation for +many an hour that evening. +</p> + +<p> +He was forbidden to enter, M. de Blois’ house, a prohibition at which the +spirited young fellow snapped his fingers, and laughed in scorn. Nothing, he +swore, but death should part him from the young lady. On the next day his +father came to him alone and plied him with entreaties, but he was as obdurate +as before. He would have her; nothing should prevent him. He cocked his hat and +walked out of the lodge-gate, as his father, quite beaten by the young +man’s obstinacy, with haggard face and tearful eyes, went his own way +into town. He was not very angry himself: in the course of their talk overnight +the boy had spoken bravely and honestly, and Newcome could remember how, in his +own early life, he too had courted and loved a young lass. It was Mrs. Newcome +the father was afraid of. Who shall depict her wrath at the idea that a child +of her house was about to marry a Popish girl? +</p> + +<p> +So young Newcome went his way to Blackheath, bent upon falling straightway down +upon his knees before Léonore, and having the Chevalier’s blessing. That +old fiddler in London scarcely seemed to him to be an obstacle: it seemed +monstrous that a young creature should be given away to a man older than her +own father. He did not know the law of honour, as it obtained amongst French +gentlemen of those days, or how religiously their daughters were bound by it. +</p> + +<p> +But Mrs. Newcome had been beforehand with him, and had visited the Chevalier de +Blois almost at cockcrow. She charged him insolently with being privy to the +attachment between the young people; pursued him with vulgar rebukes about +beggary, Popery, and French adventurers. Her husband had to make a very +contrite apology afterwards for the language which his wife had thought fit to +employ. “You forbid me,” said the Chevalier, “you forbid +Mademoiselle de Blois to marry your son, Mr. Thomas! No, madam, she comes of a +race which is not accustomed to ally itself with persons of your class; and is +promised to a gentleman whose ancestors were dukes and peers when Mr. +Newcome’s were blacking shoes!” Instead of finding his pretty +blushing girl on arriving at Woolwich, poor Tom only found his French master, +livid with rage and quivering under his <i>ailes de pigeon</i>. We pass over +the scenes that followed; the young man’s passionate entreaties, and fury +and despair. In his own defence, and to prove his honour to the world, M. de +Blois determined that his daughter should instantly marry the Count. The poor +girl yielded without a word, as became her; and it was with this marriage +effected almost before his eyes, and frantic with wrath and despair, that young +Newcome embarked for India, and quitted the parents whom he was never more to +see. +</p> + +<p> +Tom’s name was no more mentioned at Clapham. His letters to his father +were written to the City; very pleasant they were, and comforting to the +father’s heart. He sent Tom liberal private remittances to India, until +the boy wrote to say that he wanted no more. Mr. Newcome would have liked to +leave Tom all his private fortune, for the twins were only too well cared for; +but he dared not on account of his terror of Sophia Alethea, his wife; and he +died, and poor Tom was only secretly forgiven. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0003"></a> +CHAPTER III.<br> +Colonel Newcome’s Letter-box</h2> + +<h3>I.</h3> + +<p> +“With the most heartfelt joy, my dear Major, I take up my pen to announce +to you the happy arrival of the Ramchunder, and the <i>dearest and +handsomest</i> little boy who, I am sure, ever came from India. Little Clive is +in <i>perfect health</i>. He speaks English <i>wonderfully</i> well. He cried +when he parted from Mr. Sneid, the supercargo, who most kindly brought him from +Southampton in a postchaise, but these tears in childhood are <i>of very brief +duration!</i> The voyage, Mr. Sneid states, was most favourable, occupying only +four months and eleven days. How different from that more lengthened and +dangerous passage of eight months, and almost perpetual sea-sickness, in which +my poor dear sister Emma went to Bengal, to become the wife of the best of +husbands and the mother of the dearest of little boys, and to enjoy these +inestimable blessings for so brief an interval! She has quitted this wicked and +wretched world for one where all is peace. The misery and ill-treatment which +she endured from Captain Case her first odious husband, were, I am sure, amply +repaid, my dear Colonel, by your subsequent affection. If the most sumptuous +dresses which London, even Paris, could supply, jewellery the most costly, and +elegant lace, and <i>everything lovely and fashionable</i>, could content a +woman, these, I am sure, during the last four years of her life, the poor girl +had. Of what avail are they when this scene of vanity is closed? +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Sneid announces that the passage was most favourable. They stayed a +week at the Cape, and three days at St. Helena, where they visited +Bonaparte’s tomb (another instance of the vanity of all things!), and +their voyage was enlivened off Ascension by the taking of some delicious +turtle! +</p> + +<p> +“You may be sure that <i>the most liberal sum</i> which you have placed +to my credit with the Messrs. Hobson and Co. shall be faithfully expended on my +dear little charge. Mrs. Newcome can scarcely be called his grandmamma, I +suppose; and I daresay her Methodistical ladyship will not care to see the +daughter and grandson of a clergyman of the Church of England! My brother +Charles took leave to wait upon her when he presented your last <i>most +generous</i> bill at the bank. She received him <i>most rudely</i>, and said a +fool and his money are soon parted; and when Charles said, ‘Madam, I am +the brother of the late Mrs. Major Newcome,’ ‘Sir,’ says she, +‘I judge nobody; but from all accounts, you are the brother of a very +vain, idle, thoughtless, extravagant woman; and Thomas Newcome was as foolish +about his wife as about his money.’ Of course, unless Mrs. N. writes to +invite dear Clive, I shall not think of sending him to Clapham. +</p> + +<p> +“It is such hot weather that I cannot wear the <i>beautiful shawl</i> you +have sent me, and shall keep it <i>in lavender</i> till next winter! My +brother, who thanks you for your continuous bounty, will write next month, and +report progress as to his dear pupil. Clive will add a postscript of his own, +and I am, my dear Major, with a thousand thanks for your kindness to +me,—Your grateful and affectionate Martha Honeyman.” +</p> + +<p> +In a round hand and on lines ruled with pencil:— +</p> + +<p> +“Dearest Papa i am very well i hope you are Very Well. M Sneed brought me +in a postchaise i like Mr. Sneed very much. i like Aunt Martha i like Hannah. +There are no ships here i am your affectionate son Clive Newcome.” +</p> + +<h3>II.</h3> + +<p> +Rue St. Dominique, St. Germain, Paris, +</p> + +<p> +Nov. 15, 1820, +</p> + +<p> +“Long separated from the country which was the home of my youth, I +carried from her tender recollections, and bear her always a lively gratitude. +The Heaven has placed me in a position very different from that in which I knew +you. I have been the mother of many children. My husband has recovered a +portion of the property which the Revolution tore from us; and France, in +returning to its legitimate sovereign, received once more the nobility which +accompanied his august house into exile. We, however, preceded His Majesty, +more happy than many of our companions. Believing further resistance to be +useless; dazzled, perhaps, by the brilliancy of that genius which restored +order, submitted Europe, and governed France; M. de Florac, in the first days, +was reconciled to the Conqueror of Marengo and Austerlitz, and held a position +in his Imperial Court. This submission, at first attributed to infidelity, has +subsequently been pardoned to my husband. His sufferings during the Hundred +Days made to pardon his adhesion to him who was Emperor. My husband is now an +old man. He was of the disastrous campaign of Moscow, as one of the +chamberlains of Napoleon. Withdrawn from the world, he gives his time to his +feeble health—to his family—to Heaven. +</p> + +<p> +“I have not forgotten a time before those days, when, according to +promises given by my father, I became the wife of M. de Florac. Sometimes I +have heard of your career. One of my parents, M. de F., who took service in the +English India, has entertained me of you; he informed me how yet a young man +you won laurels at Argom and Bhartpour; how you escaped to death at Laswari. I +have followed them, sir, on the map. I have taken part in your victories and +your glory. Ah! I am not so cold, but my heart has trembled for your dangers; +not so aged, but I remember the young man who learned from the pupil of +Frederick the first rudiments of war. Your great heart, your love of truth, +your courage were your own. None had to teach you those qualities, of which a +good God had endowed you, My good father is dead since many years. He, too, was +permitted to see France before to die. +</p> + +<p> +“I have read in the English journals not only that you are married, but +that you have a son. Permit me to send to your wife, to your child, these +accompanying tokens of an old friendship. I have seen that Mistress Newcome was +widow, and am not sorry of it. My friend, I hope there was not that difference +of age between your wife and you that I have known in other unions. I pray the +good God to bless yours. I hold you always in my memory. As I write, the past +comes back to me. I see a noble young man, who has a soft voice, and brown +eyes. I see the Thames, and the smiling plains of Blackheath. I listen and pray +at my chamber-door as my father talks to you in our little cabinet of studies. +I look from my window, and see you depart. +</p> + +<p> +“My son’s are men: one follows the profession of arms, one has +embraced the ecclesiastical state; my daughter is herself a mother. I remember +this was your birthday; I have made myself a little <i>fête</i> in celebrating +it, after how many years of absence, of silence! Comtesse De Florac. (<i>Née L. +de Blois.</i>)” +</p> + +<h3>III.</h3> + +<p> +“My Dear Thomas,—Mr. Sneid, supercargo of the Ramchunder, East +Indiaman, handed over to us yesterday your letter, and, to-day, I have +purchased three thousand three hundred and twenty-three pounds 6 and 8d. three +per cent Consols, in our joint names (H. and B. Newcome), held for your little +boy. Mr. S. gives a very favourable account of the little man, and left him in +perfect health two days since, at the house of his aunt, Miss Honeyman. We have +placed 200 pounds to that lady’s credit, at your desire. +</p> + +<p> +“Lady Anne is charmed with the present which she received yesterday, and +says the white shawl is a great deal too handsome. My mother is also greatly +pleased with hers, and has forwarded, by the coach to Brighton, to-day, a +packet of books, tracts, etc., suited for his tender age, for your little boy. +She heard of you lately from the Rev. T. Sweatenham on his return from India. +He spoke of your kindness,—and of the hospitable manner in which you had +received him at your house, and alluded to you in a very handsome way in the +course of the thanksgiving that evening. I dare say my mother will ask your +little boy to the Hermitage; and when we have a house of our own, I am sure +Anne and I will be very happy to see him. Yours affectionately, B. Newcome. +<i>Major Newcome</i>.” +</p> + +<h3>IV.</h3> + +<p> +“My Dear Colonel,—Did I not know the generosity of your heart, and +the bountiful means which Heaven has put at your disposal in order to gratify +that noble disposition; were I not certain that the small sum I required will +permanently place me beyond the reach of the difficulties of life, and will +infallibly be repaid before six months are over, believe me I never would have +ventured upon that bold step which our friendship (carried on epistolarily as +it has been), our relationship, and your admirable disposition, have induced me +to venture to take. +</p> + +<p> +“That elegant and commodious chapel, known as Lady Whittlesea’s, +Denmark Street, Mayfair, being for sale, I have determined on venturing my all +in its acquisition, and in laying, as I hope, the foundation of a competence +for myself and excellent sister. What is a lodging-house at Brighton but an +uncertain maintenance? The mariner on the sea before those cliffs is no more +sure of wind and wave, or of fish to his laborious net, than the Brighton +house-owner (bred in affluence she may have been, and used to unremitting +plenty) to the support of the casual travellers who visit the city. On one day +they come in shoals, it is true, but where are they on the next? For many +months my poor sister’s first floor was a desert, until occupied by your +noble little boy, my nephew and pupil. Clive is everything that a +father’s, an uncle’s (who loves him as a father), a pastor’s, +a teacher’s affections could desire. He is not one of those premature +geniuses whose much-vaunted infantine talents disappear along with adolescence; +he is not, I frankly own, more advanced in his classical and mathematical +studies than some children even younger than himself; but he has acquired the +rudiments of health; he has laid in a store of honesty and good-humour, which +are not less likely to advance him in life than mere science and language, than +the <i>as in præsenti</i>, or the <i>pons asinorum</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“But I forget, in thinking of my dear little friend and pupil, the +subject of this letter—namely, the acquisition of the proprietary chapel +to which I have alluded, and the hopes, nay, certainty of a fortune, if aught +below is certain, which that acquisition holds out. What is a curacy, but a +synonym for starvation? If we accuse the Eremites of old of wasting their lives +in unprofitable wildernesses, what shall we say to many a hermit of Protestant, +and so-called civilised times, who hides his head in a solitude in Yorkshire, +and buries his probably fine talents in a Lincolnshire fen? Have I genius? Am I +blessed with gifts of eloquence to thrill and soothe, to arouse the sluggish, +to terrify the sinful, to cheer and convince the timid, to lead the blind +groping in darkness, and to trample the audacious sceptic in the dust? My own +conscience, besides a hundred testimonials from places of popular, most popular +worship, from reverend prelates, from distinguished clergy, tells me I have +these gifts. A voice within me cries, ‘Go forth, Charles Honeyman, fight +the good fight; wipe the tears of the repentant sinner; sing of hope to the +agonised criminal; whisper courage, brother, courage, at the ghastly deathbed, +and strike down the infidel with the lance of evidence and the shield of +reason!’ In a pecuniary point of view I am confident, nay, the +calculations may be established as irresistibly as an algebraic equation, that +I can realise, as incumbent of Lady Whittlesea’s chapel, the sum of +<i>not less</i> than one thousand pounds per annum. Such a sum, with economy +(and without it what sum were sufficient?), will enable me to provide amply for +my wants, to discharge my obligations to you, to my sister, and some other +creditors, very, very unlike you, and to place Miss Honeyman in a home more +worthy of her than that which she now occupies, only to vacate it at the beck +of every passing stranger! +</p> + +<p> +“My sister does not disapprove of my plan, into which enter some +modifications which I have not, as yet, submitted to her, being anxious at +first that they should be sanctioned by you. From the income of the Whittlesea +chapel I propose to allow Miss Honeyman the sum of two hundred pounds per +annum, <i>paid quarterly</i>. This, with her private property, which she has +kept more thriftily than her unfortunate and confiding brother guarded his (for +whenever I had a guinea a tale of distress would melt it into half a +sovereign), will enable Miss Honeyman to live in a way becoming my +father’s daughter. +</p> + +<p> +“Comforted with this provision as my sister will be, I would suggest that +our dearest young Clive should be transferred from her petticoat government, +and given up to the care of his affectionate uncle and tutor. His present +allowance will most liberally suffice for his expenses, board, lodging, and +education while under my roof, and I shall be able to exert a paternal, a +pastoral influence over his studies, his conduct, and his <i>highest +welfare</i>, which I cannot so conveniently exercise at Brighton, where I am +but Miss Honeyman’s stipendiary, and where I often have to submit in +cases where I know, for dearest Clive’s own welfare, it is I, and not my +sister, should be paramount. +</p> + +<p> +“I have given then to a friend, the Rev. Marcus Flather a draft for two +hundred and fifty pounds sterling, drawn upon you at your agent’s in +Calcutta, which sum will go in liquidation of dear Clive’s first +year’s board with me, or, upon my word of honour as a gentleman and +clergyman, shall be paid back at three months after sight, if you will draw +upon me. As I never—no, were it my last penny in the world—would +dishonour your draft, I implore you, my dear Colonel, not to refuse mine. My +credit in this city, where credit is <i>everything</i>, and the awful future so +little thought of, my engagements to Mr. Flather, my own prospects in life, and +the comfort of my dear sister’s declining years, all—all depend +upon this bold, this <i>eventful</i> measure. My ruin or my earthly happiness +lies entirely in your hands. Can I doubt which way your kind heart will lead +you, and that you will come to the aid of your affectionate brother-in-law? +Charles Honeyman.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>P.S.</i>—Our little Clive has been to London on a visit to his +uncles and to the Hermitage, Clapham, to pay his duty to his step-grandmother, +the wealthy Mrs. Newcome. I pass over words disparaging of myself which the +child in his artless prattles subsequently narrated. She was very gracious to +<i>him</i>, and presented him with a five-pound note, a copy of Kirk +White’s Poems, and a work called ‘Little Henry and his +Bearer,’ relating to India, and the excellent Catechism of our Church. +Clive is full of humour, and I enclose you a rude scrap representing the +bishopess of Clapham, as she is called,—the other figure is a rude though +entertaining sketch of some other droll personage. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome, &c.</i>” +</p> + +<h3>V.</h3> + +<p> +“My Dear Colonel;—The Rev. Marcus Flather has just written me a +letter at which I am greatly shocked and perplexed, informing me that my +brother Charles has given him a draft upon you for two hundred and fifty +pounds, when goodness knows it is not you but we who are many, many hundred +pounds debtors to you. Charles has explained that he drew the bill at your +desire, that you wrote to say you would be glad to serve him in any way, and +that the money is wanted to make his fortune. Yet I don’t know—poor +Charles is always going to make his fortune and has never done it. That school +which he bought, and for which you and me between us paid the purchase-money, +turned out no good, and the only pupils left at the end of the first half-year +were two woolly-headed poor little mulattos, whose father was in gaol at St. +Kitt’s, and whom I kept actually in my own second-floor back room whilst +the lawyers were settling things, and Charles was away in France, and until my +dearest little Clive came to live with me. +</p> + +<p> +“Then, as he was too small for a great school, I thought Clive could not +do better than stay with his old aunt and have his Uncle Charles for a tutor, +who is one of the finest scholars in the world. I wish you could hear him in +the pulpit. His delivery is grander and more impressive than any divine now in +England. His sermons you have subscribed for, and likewise his book of elegant +poems, which are pronounced to be <i>very fine</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“When he returned from Calais, and those horrid lawyers had left off +worriting him, I thought as his frame was much shattered and he was too weak to +take a curacy, that he could not do better than become Clive’s tutor, and +agreed to pay him out of your handsome donation of £250 for Clive, a sum of one +hundred pounds per year, so that, when the board of the two and Clive’s +clothing are taken into consideration, I think you will see that no great +profit is left to Miss Martha Honeyman. +</p> + +<p> +“Charles talks to me of his new church in London, and of making me some +grand allowance. The poor boy is very affectionate, and always building castles +in the air, and of having Clive to live with him in London. <i>Now this +mustn’t be, and I won’t hear of it.</i> Charles is too kind to be a +schoolmaster, and Master Clive laughs at him. It was only the other day, after +his return from his grandmamma’s, regarding which I wrote you, per +Burrampooter, the 23rd ult., that I found a picture of Mrs. Newcome and Charles +too, and of both their spectacles, quite like. I put it away, but some rogue, I +suppose, has stolen it. He has done me and Hannah too. Mr. Speck, the artist, +laughed and took it home, and says he is a wonder at drawing. +</p> + +<p> +“Instead, then, of allowing Clive to go with Charles to London next +month, where my brother is bent on going, I shall send Clivey to Dr. +Timpany’s school, Marine Parade, of which I hear the best account, but I +hope you will think of soon sending him to a great school. My father always +said it was the best place for boys, and I have a brother to whom my poor +mother spared the rod, and who, I fear, has turned out but a spoilt child. +</p> + +<p> +“I am, dear Colonel, your most faithful servant, Martha Honeyman.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome, C. B.</i>” +</p> + +<h3>VI.</h3> + +<p> +“My Dear Brother,—I hasten to inform you of a calamity which, +though it might be looked for in the course of nature, has occasioned deep +grief not only in our family but in this city. This morning, at half-past four +o’clock, our beloved and respected mother, Sophia Alethea Newcome, +expired, at the advanced age of eighty-three years. On the night of +Tuesday-Wednesday, the 12-13th, having been engaged reading and writing in her +library until a late hour, and having dismissed the servants, whom she never +would allow to sit up for her, as well as my brother and his wife, who always +are in the habit of retiring early, Mrs. Newcome extinguished the lamps, took a +bedchamber candle to return to her room, and must have fallen on the landing, +where she was discovered by the maids, sitting with her head reclining against +the balustrades, and endeavouring to staunch a wound in her forehead, which was +bleeding profusely, having struck in a fall against the stone step of the +stair. +</p> + +<p> +“When Mrs. Newcome was found she was speechless, but still sensible, and +medical aid being sent for, she was carried to bed. Mr. Newcome and Lady Anne +both hurried to her apartment, and she knew them, and took the hands of each, +but paralysis had probably ensued in consequence of the shock of the fall; nor +was her voice ever heard, except in inarticulate moanings, since the hour on +the previous evening when she gave them her blessing and bade them good-night. +Thus perished this good and excellent woman, the truest Christian, the most +charitable friend to the poor and needful, the head of this great house of +business, the best and most affectionate of mothers. +</p> + +<p> +“The contents of her will have long been known to us, and that document +was dated one month after our lamented father’s death. Mr. Thomas +Newcome’s property being divided equally amongst his three sons, the +property of his second wife naturally devolves upon her own issue, my brother +Brian and myself. There are very heavy legacies to servants and to charitable +and religious institutions, of which, in life, she was the munificent +patroness; and I regret, my dear brother, that no memorial to you should have +been left by my mother, because she often spoke of you latterly in terms of +affection, and on the very day on which she died, commenced a letter to your +little boy, which was left unfinished on the library table. My brother said +that on that same day, at breakfast, she pointed to a volume of Orme’s +Hindostan, the book, she said, which set poor dear Tom wild to go to India, I +know you will be pleased to hear of these proofs of returning goodwill and +affection in one who often spoke latterly of her early regard for you. I have +no more time, under the weight of business which this present affliction +entails, than to say that I am yours, dear brother, very sincerely, H. +Newcome.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome, etc.</i>” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0004"></a> +CHAPTER IV.<br> +In which the Author and the Hero resume their Acquaintance</h2> + +<p> +If we are to narrate the youthful history not only of the hero of this tale, +but of the hero’s father, we shall never have done with nursery +biography. A gentleman’s grandmother may delight in fond recapitulation +of her darling’s boyish frolics and early genius; but shall we weary our +kind readers by this infantile prattle, and set down the revered British public +for an old woman? Only to two or three persons in all the world are the +reminiscences of a man’s early youth interesting: to the parent who +nursed him; to the fond wife or child mayhap afterwards who loves him; to +himself always and supremely—whatever may be his actual prosperity or +ill-fortune, his present age, illness, difficulties, renown, or +disappointments, the dawn of his life still shines brightly for him, the early +griefs and delights and attachments remain with him ever faithful and dear. I +shall ask leave to say, regarding the juvenile biography of Mr. Clive Newcome, +of whose history I am the chronicler, only so much as is sufficient to account +for some peculiarities of his character, and for his subsequent career in the +world. +</p> + +<p> +Although we were schoolfellows, my acquaintance with young Newcome at the seat +of learning where we first met was very brief and casual. He had the advantage +of being six years the junior of his present biographer, and such a difference +of age between lads at a public school puts intimacy out of the +question—a junior ensign being no more familiar with the +Commander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards, or a barrister on his first circuit +with my Lord Chief Justice on the bench, than the newly breeched infant in the +Petties with a senior boy in a tailed coat. As we “knew each other at +home,” as our school phrase was, and our families being somewhat +acquainted, Newcome’s maternal uncle, the Rev. Charles Honeyman (the +highly gifted preacher, and incumbent of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel, +Denmark Street, Mayfair), when he brought the child, after the Christmas +vacation of 182-, to the Grey Friars’ school, recommended him in a neat +complimentary speech to my superintendence and protection. My uncle, Major +Pendennis, had for a while a seat in the chapel of this sweet and popular +preacher, and professed, as a great number of persons of fashion did, a great +admiration for him—an admiration which I shared in my early youth, but +which has been modified by maturer judgment. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Honeyman told me, with an air of deep respect, that his young +nephew’s father, Colonel Thomas Newcome, C.B., was a most gallant and +distinguished officer in the Bengal establishment of the Honourable East India +Company;—and that his uncles, the Colonel’s half-brothers, were the +eminent bankers, heads of the firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome, Hobson +Newcome, Esquire, Bryanstone Square, and Marblehead, Sussex, and Sir Brian +Newcome, of Newcome and Park Lane, “whom to name,” says Mr. +Honeyman, with the fluent eloquence with which he decorated the commonest +circumstances of life, “is to designate two of the merchant princes of +the wealthiest city the world has ever known; and one, if not two, of the +leaders of that aristocracy which rallies round the throne of the most elegant +and refined of European sovereigns.” I promised Mr. Honeyman to do what I +could for the boy; and he proceeded to take leave of his little nephew in my +presence in terms equally eloquent, pulling out a long and very slender green +purse, from which he extracted the sum of two-and-sixpence, which he presented +to the child, who received the money with rather a queer twinkle in his blue +eyes. +</p> + +<p> +After that day’s school, I met my little <i>protégé</i> in the +neighbourhood of the pastrycook’s, regaling himself with raspberry-tarts. +“You must not spend all that money, sir, which your uncle gave +you,” said I (having perhaps even at that early age a slightly satirical +turn), “in tarts and ginger-beer.” +</p> + +<p> +The urchin rubbed the raspberry-jam off his mouth, and said, “It +don’t matter, sir, for I’ve got lots more.” +</p> + +<p> +“How much?” says the Grand Inquisitor: for the formula of +interrogation used to be, when a new boy came to the school, +“What’s your name? Who’s your father? and how much money have +you got?” +</p> + +<p> +The little fellow pulled such a handful of sovereigns out of his pocket as +might have made the tallest scholar feel a pang of envy. “Uncle +Hobson,” says he, “gave me two; Aunt Hobson gave me one—no, +Aunt Hobson gave me thirty shillings; Uncle Newcome gave me three pound; and +Aunt Anne gave me one pound five; and Aunt Honeyman sent me ten shillings in a +letter. And Ethel wanted to give me a pound, only I wouldn’t have it, you +know; because Ethel’s younger than me, and I have plenty.” +</p> + +<p> +“And who is Ethel?” asks the senior boy, smiling at the artless +youth’s confessions. +</p> + +<p> +“Ethel is my cousin,” replies little Newcome; “Aunt +Anne’s daughter. There’s Ethel and Alice, and Aunt Anne wanted the +baby to be called Boadicea, only uncle wouldn’t; and there’s Barnes +and Egbert and little Alfred; only he don’t count, he’s quite a +baby you know. Egbert and me was at school at Timpany’s; he’s going +to Eton next half. He’s older than me, but I can lick him.” +</p> + +<p> +“And how old is Egbert?” asks the smiling senior. +</p> + +<p> +“Egbert’s ten, and I’m nine, and Ethel’s seven,” +replies the little chubby-faced hero, digging his hands deep into his +trousers’ pockets, and jingling all the sovereigns there. I advised him +to let me be his banker; and, keeping one out of his many gold pieces, he +handed over the others, on which he drew with great liberality till his whole +stock was expended. The school hours of the upper and under boys were different +at that time; the little fellows coming out of their hall half an hour before +the Fifth and Sixth Forms; and many a time I used to find my little blue jacket +in waiting, with his honest square face, and white hair, and bright blue eyes, +and I knew that he was come to draw on his bank. Ere long one of the pretty +blue eyes was shut up, and a fine black one substituted in its place. He had +been engaged, it appeared, in a pugilistic encounter with a giant of his own +Form, whom he had worsted in the combat. “Didn’t I pitch into him, +that’s all?” says he in the elation of victory; and when I asked +whence the quarrel arose, he stoutly informed me that “Wolf minor, his +opponent, had been bullying a little boy, and that he (the gigantic Newcome) +wouldn’t stand it.” +</p> + +<p> +So, being called away from the school, I said farewell and God bless you to the +brave little man, who remained a while at the Grey Friars, where his career and +troubles had only just begun. +</p> + +<p> +Nor did we meet again until I was myself a young man occupying chambers in the +Temple, when our rencontre took place in the manner already described. +</p> + +<p> +Poor Costigan’s outrageous behaviour had caused my meeting with my +schoolfellow of early days to terminate so abruptly and unpleasantly, that I +scarce expected to see Clive again, or at any rate to renew my acquaintance +with the indignant East Indian warrior who had quitted our company in such a +huff. Breakfast, however, was scarcely over in my chambers the next morning, +when there came a knock at the outer door, and my clerk introduced +“Colonel Newcome and Mr. Newcome.” +</p> + +<p> +Perhaps the (joint) occupant of the chambers in Lamb Court, Temple, felt a +little pang of shame at hearing the name of the visitors; for, if the truth +must be told, I was engaged pretty much as I had been occupied on the night +previous, and was smoking a cigar over the <i>Times</i> newspaper. How many +young men in the Temple smoke a cigar after breakfast as they read the +<i>Times?</i> My friend and companion of those days, and all days, Mr. George +Warrington, was employed with his short pipe, and was not in the least +disconcerted at the appearance of the visitors, as he would not have been had +the Archbishop of Canterbury stepped in. +</p> + +<p> +Little Clive looked curiously about our queer premises, while the Colonel shook +me cordially by the hand. No traces of yesterday’s wrath were visible on +his face, but a friendly smile lighted his bronzed countenance, as he too +looked round the old room with its dingy curtains and prints and bookcases, its +litter of proof-sheets, blotted manuscripts, and books for review, empty +soda-water bottles, cigar-boxes, and what not. +</p> + +<p> +“I went off in a flame of fire last night,” says the Colonel, +“and being cooled this morning, thought it but my duty to call on Mr. +Pendennis and apologise for my abrupt behaviour. The conduct of that tipsy old +Captain—what is his name?—was so abominable, that I could not bear +that Clive should be any longer in the same room with him, and I went off +without saying a word of thanks or good-night to my son’s old friend. I +owe you a shake of the hand for last night, Mr. Pendennis.” And, so +saying, he was kind enough to give me his hand a second time. +</p> + +<p> +“And this is the abode of the Muses, is it, sir?” our guest went +on. “I know your writings very well. Clive here used to send me the +<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> every month.” +</p> + +<p> +“We took it at Smiffle, regular,” says Clive. “Always +patronise Grey Friars men.” “Smiffle,” it must be explained, +is a fond abbreviation for Smithfield, near to which great mart of mutton and +oxen our school is situated, and old Cistercians often playfully designate +their place of education by the name of the neighbouring market. +</p> + +<p> +“Clive sent me the <i>Gazette</i> every month; and I read your romance of +‘Walter Lorraine’ in my boat as I was coming down the river to +Calcutta.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have Pen’s immortal productions made their appearance on board +Bengalee budgerows; and are their leaves floating on the yellow banks of +Jumna?” asks Warrington, that sceptic, who respects no work of modern +genius. +</p> + +<p> +“I gave your book to Mrs. Timmins, at Calcutta,” says the Colonel +simply. “I daresay you have heard of <i>her</i>. She is one of the most +dashing women in all India. She was delighted with your work; and I can tell +you it is not with every man’s writing that Mrs. Timmins is +pleased,” he added, with a knowing air. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s capital,” broke in Clive. “I say, that part, you +know, where Walter runs away with Neæra, and the General can’t pursue +them, though he has got the postchaise at the door, because Tim O’Toole +has hidden his wooden leg! By Jove, it’s capital!—All the funny +part—I don’t like the sentimental stuff, and suicide, and that; and +as for poetry, I hate poetry.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pen’s is not first chop,” says Warrington. “I am +obliged to take the young man down from time to time, Colonel Newcome. +Otherwise he would grow so conceited there would be no bearing him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I say,” says Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“What were you about to remark?” asks Mr. Warrington, with an air +of great interest. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, Pendennis,” continued the artless youth, “I thought +you were a great swell. When we used to read about the grand parties in the +<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, the fellows used to say you were at every one of +them, and you see, I thought you must have chambers in the Albany, and lots of +horses to ride, and a valet and a groom, and a cab at the very least.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sir,” says the Colonel, “I hope it is not your practice to +measure and estimate gentlemen by such paltry standards as those. A man of +letters follows the noblest calling which any man can pursue. I would rather be +the author of a work of genius, than be Governor-General of India. I admire +genius. I salute it wherever I meet it. I like my own profession better than +any in the world, but then it is because I am suited to it. I couldn’t +write four lines in verse, no, not to save me from being shot. A man cannot +have all the advantages of life. Who would not be poor if he could be sure of +possessing genius, and winning fame and immortality, sir? Think of Dr. Johnson, +what a genius he had, and where did he live? In apartments that, I daresay, +were no better than these, which, I am sure, gentlemen, are most cheerful and +pleasant,” says the Colonel, thinking he had offended us. “One of +the great pleasures and delights which I had proposed to myself on coming home +was to be allowed to have the honour of meeting with men of learning and +genius, with wits, poets, and historians, if I may be so fortunate; and of +benefiting by their conversation. I left England too young to have that +privilege. In my father’s house money was thought of, I fear, rather than +intellect; neither he nor I had the opportunities which I wish you to have; and +I am surprised you should think of reflecting upon Mr. Pendennis’s +poverty, or of feeling any sentiment but respect and admiration when you enter +the apartments of the poet and the literary man. I have never been in the rooms +of a literary man before,” the Colonel said, turning away from his son to +us: “excuse me, is that—that paper really a proof-sheet?” We +handed over to him that curiosity, smiling at the enthusiasm of the honest +gentleman who could admire what to us was as unpalatable as a tart to a +pastrycook. +</p> + +<p> +Being with men of letters, he thought proper to make his conversation entirely +literary; and in the course of my subsequent more intimate acquaintance with +him, though I knew he had distinguished himself in twenty actions, he never +could be brought to talk of his military feats or experience, but passed them +by, as if they were subjects utterly unworthy of notice. +</p> + +<p> +I found he believed Dr. Johnson to be the greatest of men: the Doctor’s +words were constantly in his mouth; and he never travelled without +Boswell’s Life. Besides these, he read Cæsar and Tacitus, “with +translations, sir, with translations—I’m thankful that I kept some +of my Latin from Grey Friars;” and he quoted sentences from the Latin +Grammar, <i>à propos</i> of a hundred events of common life, and with perfect +simplicity and satisfaction to himself. Besides the above-named books, the +Spectator, Don Quixote, and Sir Charles Grandison formed a part of his +travelling library. “I read these, sir,” he used to say, +“because I like to be in the company of gentlemen; and Sir Roger de +Coverley, and Sir Charles Grandison, and Don Quixote are the finest gentlemen +in the world.” And when we asked him his opinion of Fielding,— +</p> + +<p> +“Tom Jones, sir; Joseph Andrews, sir!” he cried, twirling his +mustachios. “I read them when I was a boy, when I kept other bad company, +and did other low and disgraceful things, of which I’m ashamed now. Sir, +in my father’s library I happened to fall in with those books; and I read +them in secret, just as I used to go in private and drink beer, and fight +cocks, and smoke pipes with Jack and Tom, the grooms in the stables. Mrs. +Newcome found me, I recollect, with one of those books; and thinking it might +be by Mrs. Hannah More, or some of that sort, for it was a grave-looking +volume: and though I wouldn’t lie about that or anything else—never +did, sir; never, before heaven, have I told more than three lies in my +life—I kept my own counsel; I say, she took it herself to read one +evening; and read on gravely—for she had no more idea of a joke than I +have of Hebrew—until she came to the part about Lady B—— and +Joseph Andrews; and then she shut the book, sir; and you should have seen the +look she gave me! I own I burst out a-laughing, for I was a wild young rebel, +sir. But she was in the right, sir, and I was in the wrong. A book, sir, that +tells the story of a parcel of servants, of a pack of footmen and +ladies’-maids fuddling in alehouses! Do you suppose I want to know what +my kitmutgars and cousomahs are doing? I am as little proud as any man in the +world: but there must be distinction, sir; and as it is my lot and +Clive’s lot to be a gentleman, I won’t sit in the kitchen and boose +in the servants’-hall. As for that Tom Jones—that fellow that sells +himself, sir—by heavens, my blood boils when I think of him! I +wouldn’t sit down in the same room with such a fellow, sir. If he came in +at that door, I would say, ‘How dare you, you hireling ruffian, to sully +with your presence an apartment where my young friend and I are conversing +together? where two gentlemen, I say, are taking their wine after dinner? How +dare you, you degraded villain?’ I don’t mean you, sir. +I—I—I beg your pardon.” +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel was striding about the room in his loose garments, puffing his +cigar fiercely anon, and then waving his yellow bandana; and it was by the +arrival of Larkins, my clerk, that his apostrophe to Tom Jones was interrupted; +he, Larkins, taking care not to show his amazement, having been schooled not to +show or feel surprise at anything he might see or hear in our chambers. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, Larkins?” said I. Larkins’ other master had +taken his leave some time before, having business which called him away, and +leaving me with the honest Colonel, quite happy with his talk and cigar. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s Brett’s man,” says Larkins. +</p> + +<p> +I confounded Brett’s man, and told the boy to bid him call again. Young +Larkins came grinning back in a moment, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“Please, sir, he says his orders is not to go away without the +money.” +</p> + +<p> +“Confound him again,” I cried. “Tell him I have no money in +the house. He must come to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +As I spoke, Clive was looking in wonder, and the Colonel’s countenance +assumed an appearance of the most dolorous sympathy. Nevertheless, as with a +great effort, he fell to talking about Tom Jones again, and continued: +</p> + +<p> +“No, sir, I have no words to express my indignation against such a fellow +as Tom Jones. But I forgot that I need not speak. The great and good Dr. +Johnson has settled that question. You remember what he said to Mr. Boswell +about Fielding?” +</p> + +<p> +“And yet Gibbon praises him, Colonel,” said the Colonel’s +interlocutor, “and that is no small praise. He says that Mr. Fielding was +of the family that drew its origin from the Counts of Hapsburg; +but——” +</p> + +<p> +“Gibbon! Gibbon was an infidel, and I would not give the end of this +cigar for such a man’s opinion. If Mr. Fielding was a gentleman by birth, +he ought to have known better; and so much the worse for him that he did not. +But what am I talking of, wasting your valuable time? No more smoke, thank you. +I must away into the City, but would not pass the Temple without calling on +you, and thanking my boy’s old protector. You will have the kindness to +come and dine with us—to-morrow, the next day, your own day? Your friend +is going out of town? I hope, on his return, to have the pleasure of making his +further acquaintance. Come, Clive.” +</p> + +<p> +Clive, who had been deep in a volume of Hogarth’s engravings during the +above discussion, or rather oration of his father’s, started up and took +leave, beseeching me, at the same time, to come soon and see his pony; and so, +with renewed greetings, we parted. +</p> + +<p> +I was scarcely returned to my newspaper again, when the knocker of our door was +again agitated, and the Colonel ran back, looking very much agitated and +confused. +</p> + +<p> +“I beg pardon,” says he; “I think I left +my—my——” Larkins had quitted the room by this time, and +then he began more unreservedly. “My dear young friend,” says he, +“a thousand pardons for what I am going to say, but, as Clive’s +friend, I know I may take that liberty. I have left the boy in the court. I +know the fate of men of letters and genius: when we were here just now, there +came a single knock—a demand—that, that you did not seem to be +momentarily able to meet. Now do, do pardon the liberty, and let me be your +banker. You said you were engaged in a new work: it will be a masterpiece, I am +sure, if it’s like the last. Put me down for twenty copies, and allow me +to settle with you in advance. I may be off, you know. I’m a bird of +passage—a restless old soldier.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Colonel,” said I, quite touched and pleased by this +extreme kindness, “my dun was but the washerwoman’s boy, and Mrs. +Brett is in my debt, if I am not mistaken. Besides, I already have a banker in +your family.” +</p> + +<p> +“In my family, my dear Sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“Messrs. Newcome, in Threadneedle Street, are good enough to keep my +money for me when I have any, and I am happy to say they have some of mine in +hand now. I am almost sorry that I am not in want, in order that I might have +the pleasure of receiving a kindness from you.” And we shook hands for +the fourth time that morning, and the kind gentleman left me to rejoin his son. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0005"></a> +CHAPTER V.<br> +Clive’s Uncles</h2> + +<p> +The dinner so hospitably offered by the Colonel was gladly accepted, and +followed by many more entertainments at the cost of that good-natured friend. +He and an Indian chum of his lived at this time at Nerot’s Hotel, in +Clifford Street, where Mr. Clive, too, found the good cheer a great deal more +to his taste than the homely, though plentiful, fare at Grey Friars, at which, +of course, when boys, we all turned up our noses, though many a poor fellow, in +the struggles of after-life, has looked back with regret very likely to that +well-spread youthful table. Thus my intimacy with the father and the son grew +to be considerable, and a great deal more to my liking than my relations with +Clive’s City uncles, which have been mentioned in the last chapter, and +which were, in truth, exceedingly distant and awful. +</p> + +<p> +If all the private accounts kept by those worthy bankers were like mine, where +would have been Newcome Hall and Park Lane, Marblehead and Bryanstone Square? I +used, by strong efforts of self-denial, to maintain a balance of two or three +guineas untouched at the bank, so that my account might still remain open; and +fancied the clerks and cashiers grinned when I went to draw for money. Rather +than face that awful counter, I would send Larkins, the clerk, or Mrs. +Flanagan, the laundress. As for entering the private parlour at the back, +wherein behind the glazed partition I could see the bald heads of Newcome +Brothers engaged with other capitalists or peering over the newspaper, I would +as soon have thought of walking into the Doctor’s own library at Grey +Friars, or of volunteering to take an armchair in a dentist’s studio, and +have a tooth out, as of entering into that awful precinct. My good uncle, on +the other hand, the late Major Pendennis, who kept naturally but a very small +account with Hobsons’, would walk into the parlour and salute the two +magnates who governed there with the ease and gravity of a Rothschild. +“My good fellow,” the kind old gentleman would say to his nephew +and pupil, “<i>il faut se faire valoir</i>. I tell you, sir, your bankers +like to keep every gentleman’s account. And it’s a mistake to +suppose they are only civil to their great moneyed clients. Look at me. I go in +to them and talk to them whenever I am in the City. I hear the news of +’Change, and carry it to our end of the town. It looks well, sir, to be +well with your banker; and at our end of London, perhaps, I can do a good turn +for the Newcomes.” +</p> + +<p> +It is certain that in his own kingdom of Mayfair and St. James’s my +revered uncle was at least the bankers’ equal. On my coming to London, he +was kind enough to procure me invitations to some of Lady Anne Newcome’s +evening parties in Park Lane, as likewise to Mrs. Newcome’s +entertainments in Bryanstone Square; though, I confess, of these latter, after +a while, I was a lax and negligent attendant. “Between ourselves, my good +fellow,” the shrewd old Mentor of those days would say, “Mrs. +Newcome’s parties are not altogether select; nor is she a lady of the +very highest breeding; but it gives a man a good air to be seen at his +banker’s house. I recommend you to go for a few minutes whenever you are +asked.” And go I accordingly did sometimes, though I always fancied, +rightly or wrongly, from Mrs. Newcome’s manner to me, that she knew I had +but thirty shillings left at the bank. Once and again, in two or three years, +Mr. Hobson Newcome would meet me, and ask me to fill a vacant place that day or +the next evening at his table; which invitation I might accept or otherwise. +But one does not eat a man’s salt, as it were, at these dinners. There is +nothing sacred in this kind of London hospitality. Your white waistcoat fills a +gap in a man’s table, and retires filled for its service of the evening. +“Gad,” the dear old Major used to say, “if we were not to +talk freely of those we dine with, how mum London would be! Some of the +pleasantest evenings I have ever spent have been when we have sate after a +great dinner, <i>en petit comité</i>, and abused the people who are gone. You +have your turn, <i>mon cher;</i> but why not? Do you suppose I fancy my friends +haven’t found out <i>my</i> little faults and peculiarities? And as I +can’t help it, I let myself be executed, and offer up my oddities <i>de +bonne grâce. Entre nous</i>, Brother Hobson Newcome is a good fellow, but a +vulgar fellow; and his wife—his wife exactly suits him.” +</p> + +<p> +Once a year Lady Anne Newcome (about whom my Mentor was much more circumspect; +for I somehow used to remark that as the rank of persons grew higher, Major +Pendennis spoke of them with more caution and respect)—once or twice in a +year Lady Anne Newcome opened her saloons for a concert and a ball, at both of +which the whole street was crowded with carriages, and all the great world, and +some of the small, were present. Mrs. Newcome had her ball too, and her concert +of English music, in opposition to the Italian singers of her sister-in-law. +The music of her country, Mrs. N. said, was good enough for <i>her</i>. +</p> + +<p> +The truth must be told, that there was no love lost between the two ladies. +Bryanstone Square could not forget the superiority of Park Lane’s rank; +and the catalogue of grandees at dear Anne’s parties filled dear +Maria’s heart with envy. There are people upon whom rank and worldly +goods make such an impression, that they naturally fall down on their knees and +worship the owners; there are others to whom the sight of Prosperity is +offensive, and who never see Dives’ chariot but to growl and hoot at it. +Mrs. Newcome, as far as my humble experience would lead me to suppose, is not +only envious, but proud of her envy. She mistakes it for honesty and public +spirit. <i>She</i> will not bow down to kiss the hand of a haughty aristocracy. +She is a merchant’s wife and an attorney’s daughter. There is no +pride about her. Her brother-in-law, poor dear Brian—considering +everybody knows everything in London, was there ever such a delusion as +his?—was welcome, after banking-hours, to forsake his own friends for his +wife’s fine relations, and to dangle after lords and ladies in Mayfair. +She had no such absurd vanity—not she. She imparted these opinions pretty +liberally to all her acquaintances in almost all her conversations. It was +clear that the two ladies were best apart. There are some folks who will see +insolence in persons of rank, as there are others who will insist; that all +clergymen are hypocrites, all reformers villains, all placemen plunderers, and +so forth; and Mrs. Newcome never, I am sure, imagined that she had a prejudice, +or that she was other than an honest, independent, high-spirited woman. Both of +the ladies had command over their husbands, who were of soft natures easily led +by woman, as, in truth, are all the males of this family. Accordingly, when Sir +Brian Newcome voted for the Tory candidate in the City, Mr. Hobson Newcome +plumped for the Reformer. While Brian, in the House of Commons, sat among the +mild Conservatives, Hobson unmasked traitors and thundered at aristocratic +corruption, so as to make the Marylebone Vestry thrill with enthusiasm. When +Lady Anne, her husband, and her flock of children fasted in Lent, and declared +for the High Church doctrines, Mrs. Hobson had paroxysms of alarm regarding the +progress of Popery, and shuddered out of the chapel where she had a pew, +because the clergyman there, for a very brief season, appeared to preach in a +surplice. +</p> + +<p> +Poor bewildered Honeyman! it was a sad day for you, when you appeared in your +neat pulpit with your fragrant pocket-handkerchief (and your sermon likewise +all millefleurs), in a trim, prim, freshly mangled surplice, which you thought +became you! How did you look aghast, and pass your jewelled hand through your +curls, as you saw Mrs. Newcome, who had been as good as five-and-twenty pounds +a year to you, look up from her pew, seize hold of Mr. Newcome, fling open the +pew-door, drive out with her parasol her little flock of children, bewildered +but not ill-pleased to get away from the sermon, and summon John from the back +seats to bring away the bag of prayer-books! Many a good dinner did Charles +Honeyman lose by assuming that unlucky ephod. Why did the high-priest of his +diocese order him to put it on? It was delightful to view him afterwards, and +the airs of martyrdom which he assumed. Had they been going to tear him to +pieces with wild beasts next day, he could scarcely have looked more meek, or +resigned himself more pathetically to the persecutors. But I am advancing +matters. At this early time of which I write, a period not twenty years since, +surplices were not even thought of in conjunction with sermons: clerical +gentlemen have appeared in them, and under the heavy hand of persecution have +sunk down in their pulpits again, as Jack pops back into his box. Charles +Honeyman’s elegant discourses were at this time preached in a rich silk +Master of Arts’ gown, presented to him, along with a teapot full of +sovereigns, by his affectionate congregation at Leatherhead. +</p> + +<p> +But that I may not be accused of prejudice in describing Mrs. Newcome and her +family, and lest the reader should suppose that some slight offered to the +writer by this wealthy and virtuous banker’s lady was the secret reason +for this unfavourable sketch of her character, let me be allowed to report, as +accurately as I can remember them, the words of a kinsman of her own, +—— Giles, Esquire, whom I had the honour of meeting at her table, +and who, as we walked away from Bryanstone Square, was kind enough to discourse +very freely about the relatives whom he had just left. +</p> + +<p> +“That was a good dinner, sir,” said Mr. Giles, puffing the cigar +which I offered to him, and disposed to be very social and communicative. +“Hobson Newcome’s table is about as good a one as any I ever put my +legs under. You didn’t have twice of turtle, sir, I remarked that—I +always do, at that house especially, for I know where Newcome gets it. We +belong to the same livery in the City, Hobson and I, the Oystermongers’ +Company, sir, and we like our turtle good, I can tell you—good, and a +great deal of it, you say. Hay, hay, not so bad! +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose you’re a young barrister, sucking lawyer, or that sort +of thing. Because you was put at the end of the table and nobody took notice of +you. That’s my place too; I’m a relative and Newcome asks me if he +has got a place to spare. He met me in the City to-day, and says, +‘Tom,’ says he, ‘there’s some dinner in the Square at +half-past seven: I wish you would go and fetch Louisa, whom we haven’t +seen this ever so long.’ Louisa is my wife, sir—Maria’s +sister—Newcome married that gal from my house. ‘No, no,’ says +I, ‘Hobson; Louisa’s engaged nursing number +eight’—that’s our number, sir. The truth is, between you and +me, sir, my missis won’t come any more at no price. She can’t stand +it; Mrs. Newcome’s dam patronising airs is enough to choke off anybody. +‘Well, Hobson, my boy,’ says I, ‘a good dinner’s a good +dinner; and I’ll come though Louisa won’t, that is, +can’t.’” +</p> + +<p> +While Mr. Giles, who was considerably enlivened by claret, was discoursing thus +candidly, his companion was thinking how he, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, had been met +that very afternoon on the steps of the Megatherium Club by Mr. Newcome, and +had accepted that dinner which Mrs. Giles, with more spirit, had declined. +Giles continued talking—“I’m an old stager, I am. I +don’t mind the rows between the women. I believe Mrs. Newcome and Lady +Newcome’s just as bad too; I know Maria is always driving at her one way +or the other, and calling her proud and aristocratic, and that; and yet my wife +says Maria, who pretends to be such a Radical, never asks us to meet the +Baronet and his lady. ‘And why should she, Loo, my dear?’ says I. +‘I don’t want to meet Lady Newcome, nor Lord Kew, nor any of +’em.’ Lord Kew, ain’t it an odd name? Tearing young swell, +that Lord Kew: tremendous wild fellow.” +</p> + +<p> +“I was a clerk in that house, sir, as a young man; I was there in the old +woman’s time, and Mr. Newcome’s—the father of these young +men—as good a man as ever stood on ’Change.” And then Mr. +Giles, warming with his subject, enters at large into the history of the house. +“You see, sir,” says he, “the banking-house of Hobson +Brothers, or Newcome Brothers, as the partners of the firm really are, is not +one of the leading banking firms of the City of London, but a most respectable +house of many years’ standing, and doing a most respectable business, +especially in the Dissenting connection.” After the business came into +the hands of the Newcome Brothers, Hobson Newcome, Esq., and Sir Brian Newcome, +Bart., M.P., Mr. Giles shows how a considerable West End connection was +likewise established, chiefly through the aristocratic friends and connections +of the above-named Bart. +</p> + +<p> +But the best man of business, according to Mr. Giles, whom the firm of Hobson +Brothers ever knew, better than her father and uncle, better than her husband +Sir T. Newcome, better than her sons and successors above mentioned, was the +famous Sophia Alethea Hobson, afterwards Newcome—of whom might be said +what Frederick the Great said of his sister, that she was <i>sexu fœmina, vir +ingenio</i>—in sex a woman, and in mind a man. Nor was she, my informant +told me, without even manly personal characteristics: she had a very deep and +gruff voice, and in her old age a beard which many a young man might envy; and +as she came into the bank out of her carriage from Clapham, in her dark green +pelisse with fur trimmings, in her grey beaver hat, beaver gloves, and great +gold spectacles, not a clerk in that house did not tremble before her, and it +was said she only wanted a pipe in her mouth considerably to resemble the late +Field-Marshal Prince Blucher. +</p> + +<p> +Her funeral was one of the most imposing sights ever witnessed in Clapham. +There was such a crowd you might have thought it was a Derby-day. The carriages +of some of the greatest City firms, and the wealthiest Dissenting houses; +several coaches full of ministers of all denominations, including the +Established Church; the carriage of the Right Honourable the Earl of Kew, and +that of his daughter, Lady Anne Newcome, attended that revered lady’s +remains to their final resting-place. No less than nine sermons were preached +at various places of public worship regarding her end. She fell upstairs at a +very advanced age, going from the library to the bedroom, after all the +household was gone to rest, and was found by the maids in the morning, +inarticulate, but still alive, her head being cut frightfully with the bedroom +candle with which she was retiring to her apartment. “And,” said +Mr. Giles with great energy, “besides the empty carriages at that +funeral, and the parson in black, and the mutes and feathers and that, there +were hundreds and hundreds of people who wore no black, and who weren’t +present; and who wept for their benefactress, I can tell you. She had her +faults, and many of ’em; but the amount of that woman’s charities +are unheard of, sir—unheard of,—and they are put to the credit side +of her account up yonder. +</p> + +<p> +“The old lady had a will of her own,” my companion continued. +“She would try and know about everybody’s business out of business +hours: got to know from the young clerks what chapels they went to, and from +the clergymen whether they attended regular; kept her sons, years after they +were grown men, as if they were boys at school—and what was the +consequence? They had a quarrel with Sir Thomas Newcome’s own son, a +harum-scarum lad, who ran away, and then was sent to India; and, between +ourselves, Mr. Hobson and Mr. Brian both, the present Baronet, though at home +they were as mum as Quakers at a meeting, used to go out on the sly, sir, and +be off to the play, sir, and sowed their wild oats like any other young men, +sir, like any other young men. Law bless me, once, as I was going away from the +Haymarket, if I didn’t see Mr. Hobson coming out of the Opera, in tights +and an opera-hat, sir, like ‘Froggy would wooing go,’ of a +Saturday-night, too, when his ma thought him safe in bed in the City! I warrant +he hadn’t <i>his opera-hat</i> on when he went to chapel with her +ladyship the next morning—that very morning, as sure as my name’s +John Giles. +</p> + +<p> +“When the old lady was gone, Mr. Hobson had no need of any more +humbugging, but took his pleasure freely. Fighting, tandems, four-in-hand, +anything. He and his brother—his elder brother by a quarter of an +hour—were always very good friends; but after Mr. Brian married, and +there was only court-cards at his table, Mr. Hobson couldn’t stand it. +They weren’t of his suit, he said; and for some time he said he +wasn’t a marrying man—quite the contrary; but we all come to our +fate, you know, and his time came as mine did. You know we married sisters? It +was thought a fine match for Polly Smith, when she married the great Mr. +Newcome; but I doubt whether my old woman at home hasn’t had the best of +it, after all; and if ever you come Bernard Street way on a Sunday, about six +o’clock, and would like a slice of beef and a glass of port, I hope +you’ll come and see us.” +</p> + +<p> +Do not let us be too angry with Colonel Newcome’s two most respectable +brothers, if for some years they neglected their Indian relative, or held him +in slight esteem. Their mother never pardoned him, or at least by any actual +words admitted his restoration to favour. For many years, as far as they knew, +poor Tom was an unrepentant prodigal, wallowing in bad company, and cut off +from all respectable sympathy. Their father had never had the courage to +acquaint them with his more true, and kind, and charitable version of +Tom’s story. So he passed at home for no better than a black sheep; his +marriage with a penniless young lady did not tend to raise him in the esteem of +his relatives at Clapham; it was not until he was a widower, until he had been +mentioned several times in the <i>Gazette</i> for distinguished military +service, until they began to speak very well of him in Leadenhall Street, where +the representatives of Hobson Brothers were of course East India proprietors, +and until he remitted considerable sums of money to England, that the bankers +his brethren began to be reconciled to him. +</p> + +<p> +I say, do not let us be hard upon them. No people are so ready to give a man a +bad name as his own kinsfolk; and having made him that present, they are ever +most unwilling to take it back again. If they give him nothing else in the days +of his difficulty, he may be sure of their pity, and that he is held up as an +example to his young cousins to avoid. If he loses his money they call him poor +fellow, and point morals out of him. If he falls among thieves, the respectable +Pharisees of his race turn their heads aside and leave him penniless and +bleeding. They clap him on the back kindly enough when he returns, after +shipwreck, with money in his pocket. How naturally Joseph’s brothers made +salaams to him, and admired him, and did him honour, when they found the poor +outcast a prime minister, and worth ever so much money! Surely human nature is +not much altered since the days of those primeval Jews. We would not thrust +brother Joseph down a well and sell him bodily, but—but if he has +scrambled out of a well of his own digging, and got out of his early bondage +into renown and credit, at least we applaud him and respect him, and are proud +of Joseph as a member of the family. +</p> + +<p> +Little Clive was the innocent and lucky object upon whom the increasing +affection of the Newcomes for their Indian brother was exhibited. When he was +first brought home a sickly child, consigned to his maternal aunt, the kind old +maiden lady at Brighton, Hobson Brothers scarce took any notice of the little +man, but left him to the entire superintendence of his own family. Then there +came a large remittance from his father, and the child was asked by Uncle +Newcome at Christmas. Then his father’s name was mentioned in general +orders, and Uncle Hobson asked little Clive at Midsummer. Then Lord H., a late +Governor-General, coming home, and meeting the brothers at a grand dinner at +the Albion, given by the Court of Directors to his late Excellency, spoke to +the bankers about that most distinguished officer their relative; and Mrs. +Hobson drove over to see his aunt, where the boy was; gave him a sovereign out +of her purse, and advised strongly that he should be sent to Timpany’s +along wit her own boy. Then Clive went from one uncle’s house to another; +and was liked at both; and much preferred ponies to ride, going out after +rabbits with the keeper, money in his pocket (charge to the debit of +Lieut.-Col. T. Newcome), and clothes from the London tailor, to the homely +quarters and conversation of poor kind old Aunt Honeyman at Brighton. +Clive’s uncles were not unkind; they liked each other; their wives, who +hated each other, united in liking Clive when they knew him, and petting the +wayward handsome boy: they were only pursuing the way of the world, which +huzzas all prosperity, and turns away from misfortune as from some contagious +disease. Indeed, how can we see a man’s brilliant qualities if he is what +we call in the shade? +</p> + +<p> +The gentlemen, Clive’s uncles, who had their affairs to mind during the +day, society and the family to occupy them of evenings and holidays, treated +their young kinsman, the Indian Colonel’s son, as other wealthy British +uncles treat other young kinsmen. They received him in his vacations kindly +enough. They tipped him when he went to school; when he had the hooping-cough, +a confidential young clerk went round by way of Grey Friars Square to ask after +him; the sea being recommended to him, Mrs. Newcome gave him change of air in +Sussex, and transferred him to his maternal aunt at Brighton. Then it was +<i>bon jour</i>. As the lodge-gates closed upon him, Mrs. Newcome’s heart +shut up too and confined itself within the firs, laurels, and palings which +bound the home precincts. Had not she her own children and affairs? her brood +of fowls, her Sunday-school, her melon-beds, her rose-garden, her quarrel with +the parson, etc., to attend to? Mr. Newcome, arriving on a Saturday night; +hears he is gone, says “Oh!” and begins to ask about the new +gravel-walk along the cliff, and whether it is completed, and if the China pig +fattens kindly upon the new feed. +</p> + +<p> +Clive, in the avuncular gig, is driven over the downs to Brighton to his +maternal aunt there; and there he is a king. He has the best bedroom, Uncle +Honeyman turning out for him sweetbreads for dinner; no end of jam for +breakfast; excuses from church on the plea of delicate health; his aunt’s +maid to see him to bed; his aunt to come smiling in when he rings his bell of a +morning. He is made much of, and coaxed, and dandled and fondled, as if he were +a young duke. So he is to Miss Honeyman. He is the son of Colonel Newcome, +C.B., who sends her shawls, ivory chessmen, scented sandalwood workboxes and +kincob scarfs; who, as she tells Martha the maid, has fifty servants in India; +at which Martha constantly exclaims, “Lor’, mum, what can he do +with ’em, mum?” who, when in consequence of her misfortunes she +resolved on taking a house at Brighton, and letting part of the same furnished, +sent her an order for a hundred pounds towards the expenses thereof; who gave +Mr. Honeyman, her brother, a much larger sum of money at the period of his +calamity. Is it gratitude for past favours? is it desire for more? is it vanity +of relationship? is it love for the dead sister—or tender regard for her +offspring which makes Mrs. Martha Honeyman so fond of her nephew? I never could +count how many causes went to produce any given effect or action in a +person’s life, and have been for my own part many a time quite misled in +my own case, fancying some grand, some magnanimous, some virtuous reason, for +an act of which I was proud, when lo! some pert little satirical monitor +springs up inwardly, upsetting the fond humbug which I was cherishing—the +peacock’s tail wherein my absurd vanity had clad itself—and says, +“Away with this boasting! <i>I</i> am the cause of your virtue, my lad. +You are pleased that yesterday at dinner you refrained from the dry champagne? +My name is Worldly Prudence, not Self-denial, and <i>I</i> caused you to +refrain. You are pleased because you gave a guinea to Diddler? I am Laziness, +not Generosity, which inspired you. You hug yourself because you resisted other +temptation? Coward! it was because you dared not run the risk of the wrong. Out +with your peacock’s plumage! walk off in the feathers which Nature gave +you, and thank Heaven they are not altogether black.” In a word, Aunt +Honeyman was a kind soul, and such was the splendour of Clive’s father, +of his gifts, his generosity, his military services, and companionship of the +battles, that the lad did really appear a young duke to her. And Mrs. Newcome +was not unkind: and if Clive had been really a young duke, I am sure he would +have had the best bedroom at Marble Hill, and not one of the far-off little +rooms in the boys’ wing; I am sure he would have had jellies and +Charlottes Russes, instead of mere broth, chicken, and batter-pudding, as fell +to his lot; and when he was gone (in the carriage, mind you, not in the gig +driven by a groom), I am sure Mrs. Newcome would have written a letter that +night to Her Grace the Duchess Dowager his mamma, full of praise of the dear +child, his graciousness, his beauty, and his wit, and declaring that she must +love him henceforth and for ever after as <i>a son of her own</i>. You toss +down the page with scorn, and say, “It is not true. Human nature is not +so bad as this cynic would have it to be. You would make no difference between +the rich and the poor.” Be it so. You would not. But own that your +next-door neighbour would. Nor is this, dear madam, addressed to you; no, no, +we are not so rude as to talk about you to your face; but if we may not speak +of the lady who has just left the room, what is to become of conversation and +society? +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +We forbear to describe the meeting between the Colonel and his son—the +pretty boy from whom he had parted more than seven years before with such pangs +of heart; and of whom he had thought ever since with such a constant longing +affection. Half an hour after the father left the boy, and in his grief and +loneliness was rowing back to shore, Clive was at play with a dozen of other +children on the sunny deck of the ship. When two bells rang for their dinner, +they were all hurrying to the cuddy table, and busy over their meal. What a sad +repast their parents had that day! How their hearts followed the careless young +ones home across the great ocean! Mothers’ prayers go with them. Strong +men, alone on their knees, with streaming eyes and broken accents, implore +Heaven for those little ones, who were prattling at their sides but a few hours +since. Long after they are gone, careless and happy, recollections of the sweet +past rise up and smite those who remain: the flowers they had planted in their +little gardens, the toys they played with, the little vacant cribs they slept +in as fathers’ eyes looked blessings down on them. Most of us who have +passed a couple of score of years in the world, have had such sights as these +to move us. And those who have will think none the worse of my worthy Colonel +for his tender and faithful heart. +</p> + +<p> +With that fidelity which was an instinct of his nature, this brave man thought +ever of his absent child, and longed after him. He never forsook the native +servants and nurses who had had charge of the child, but endowed them with +money sufficient (and indeed little was wanted by people of that frugal race) +to make all their future lives comfortable. No friends went to Europe, nor ship +departed, but Newcome sent presents and remembrances to the boy, and costly +tokens of his love and thanks to all who were kind to his son. What a strange +pathos seems to me to accompany all our Indian story! Besides that official +history which fills <i>Gazettes</i>, and embroiders banners with names of +victory; which gives moralists and enemies cause to cry out at English rapine; +and enables patriots to boast of invincible British valour—besides the +splendour and conquest, the wealth and glory, the crowned ambition, the +conquered danger, the vast prize, and the blood freely shed in winning +it—should not one remember the tears, too? Besides the lives of myriads +of British men, conquering on a hundred fields, from Plassey to Meanee, and +bathing them cruore nostro: think of the women, and the tribute which they +perforce must pay to those victorious achievements. Scarce a soldier goes to +yonder shores but leaves a home and grief in it behind him. The lords of the +subject province find wives there; but their children cannot live on the soil. +The parents bring their children to the shore, and part from them. The family +must be broken up—keep the flowers of your home beyond a certain time, +and the sickening buds wither and die. In America it is from the breast of a +poor slave that a child is taken. In India it is from the wife, and from under +the palace, of a splendid proconsul. +</p> + +<p> +The experience of this grief made Newcome’s naturally kind heart only the +more tender, and hence he had a weakness for children which made him the +laughing-stock of old maids, old bachelors, and sensible persons; but the +darling of all nurseries, to whose little inhabitants he was uniformly kind: +were they the collectors’ progeny in their palanquins, or the +sergeants’ children tumbling about the cantonment, or the dusky little +heathens in the huts of his servants round his gate. +</p> + +<p> +It is known that there is no part of the world where ladies are more +fascinating than in British India. Perhaps the warmth of the sun kindles flames +in the hearts of both sexes, which would probably beat quite coolly in their +native air: else why should Miss Brown be engaged ten days after her landing at +Calcutta? or why should Miss Smith have half a dozen proposals before she has +been a week at the station? And it is not only bachelors on whom the young +ladies confer their affections; they will take widowers without any difficulty; +and a man so generally liked as Major Newcome, with such a good character, with +a private fortune of his own, so chivalrous, generous, good-looking, eligible +in a word, you may be sure would have found a wife easily enough, had he any +mind for replacing the late Mrs. Casey. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel, as has been stated, had an Indian chum or companion, with whom he +shared his lodgings; and from many jocular remarks of this latter gentleman +(who loved good jokes, and uttered not a few) I could gather that the honest +widower Colonel Newcome had been often tempted to alter his condition, and that +the Indian ladies had tried numberless attacks upon his bereaved heart, and +devised endless schemes of carrying it by assault, treason, or other mode of +capture. Mrs. Casey (his defunct wife) had overcome it by sheer pity and +helplessness. He had found her so friendless, that he took her into the vacant +place, and installed her there as he would have received a traveller into his +bungalow. He divided his meal with her, and made her welcome to his best. +“I believe Tom Newcome married her,” sly Mr. Binnie used to say, +“in order that he might have permission to pay her milliner’s +bills;” and in this way he was amply gratified until the day of her +death. A feeble miniature of the lady, with yellow ringlets and a guitar, hung +over the mantelpiece of the Colonel’s bedchamber, where I have often seen +that work of art; and subsequently, when he and Mr. Binnie took a house, there +was hung up in the spare bedroom a companion portrait to the +miniature—that of the Colonel’s predecessor, Jack Casey, who in +life used to fling plates at his Emma’s head, and who perished from a +fatal attachment to the bottle. I am inclined to think that Colonel Newcome was +not much cast down by the loss of his wife, and that they lived but +indifferently together. Clive used to say in his artless way that his father +scarcely ever mentioned his mother’s name; and no doubt the union was not +happy, although Newcome continued piously to acknowledge it, long after death +had brought it to a termination, by constant benefactions and remembrances to +the departed lady’s kindred. +</p> + +<p> +Those widows or virgins who endeavoured to fill Emma’s place found the +door of Newcombe’s heart fast and barred, and assailed it in vain. Miss +Billing sat down before it with her piano, and, as the Colonel was a +practitioner on the flute, hoped to make all life one harmonious duet with him; +but she played her most brilliant sonatas and variations in vain; and, as +everybody knows, subsequently carried her grand piano to Lieutenant and +Adjutant Hodgkin’s house, whose name she now bears. The lovely widow +Wilkins, with two darling little children, stopped at Newcome’s +hospitable house, on her way to Calcutta; and it was thought she might never +leave it; but her kind host, as was his wont, crammed her children with +presents and good things, consoled and entertained the fair widow, and one +morning, after she had remained three months at the station, the +Colonel’s palanquins and bearers made their appearance, and Elvira +Wilkins went away weeping as a widow should. Why did she abuse Newcome ever +after at Calcutta, Bath, Cheltenham, and wherever she went, calling him +selfish, pompous, Quixotic, and a Bahawder? I could mention half a dozen other +names of ladies of most respectable families connected with Leadenhall Street, +who, according to Colonel Newcome’s chum—that wicked Mr. +Binnie—had all conspired more or less to give Clive Newcome a stepmother. +</p> + +<p> +But he had had an unlucky experience in his own case; and thought within +himself, “No, I won’t give Clive a stepmother. As Heaven has taken +his own mother from him, why, I must try to be father and mother too to the +lad.” He kept the child as long as ever the climate would allow of his +remaining, and then sent him home. Then his aim was to save money for the +youngster. He was of a nature so uncontrollably generous, that to be sure he +spent five rupees where another would save them, and make a fine show besides; +but it is not a man’s gifts or hospitalities that generally injure his +fortune. It is on themselves that prodigals spend most. And as Newcome had no +personal extravagances, and the smallest selfish wants; could live almost as +frugally as a Hindoo; kept his horses not to race but to ride; wore his old +clothes and uniforms until they were the laughter of his regiment; did not care +for show, and had no longer an extravagant wife; he managed to lay by +considerably out of his liberal allowances, and to find himself and Clive +growing richer every year. +</p> + +<p> +“When Clive has had five or six years at school”—that was his +scheme—“he will be a fine scholar, and have at least as much +classical learning as a gentleman in the world need possess. Then I will go to +England, and we will pass three or four years together, in which he will learn +to be intimate with me, and, I hope, to like me. I shall be his pupil for Latin +and Greek, and try and make up for lost time. I know there is nothing like a +knowledge of the classics to give a man good breeding—<i>Ingenuas +didicisse fideliter artes emollunt mores, nec sinuisse feros</i>. I shall be +able to help him with my knowledge of the world, and to keep him out of the way +of sharpers and a pack of rogues who commonly infest young men. I will make +myself his companion, and pretend to no superiority; for, indeed, isn’t +he my superior? Of course he is, with his advantages. <i>He</i> hasn’t +been an idle young scamp as I was. And we will travel together, first through +England, Scotland, and Ireland, for every man should know his own country, and +then we will make the grand tour. Then, by the time he is eighteen, he will be +able to choose his profession. He can go into the army, and emulate the +glorious man after whom I named him; or if he prefers the church, or the law, +they are open to him; and when he goes to the university, by which time I shall +be in all probability a major-general, I can come back to India for a few +years, and return by the time he has a wife and a home for his old father; or +if I die I shall have done the best for him, and my boy will be left with the +best education, a tolerable small fortune, and the blessing of his old +father.” +</p> + +<p> +Such were the plans of our kind schemer. How fondly he dwelt on them, how +affectionately he wrote of them to his boy! How he read books of travels and +looked over the maps of Europe! and said, “Rome, sir, glorious Rome; it +won’t be very long, Major, before my boy and I see the Colosseum, and +kiss the Pope’s toe. We shall go up the Rhine to Switzerland, and over +the Simplon, the work of the great Napoleon. By Jove, sir, think of the Turks +before Vienna, and Sobieski clearing eighty thousand of ’em off the face +of the earth! How my boy will rejoice in the picture-galleries there, and in +Prince Eugene’s prints! You know, I suppose, that Prince Eugene, one of +the greatest generals in the world, was also one of the greatest lovers of the +fine arts. <i>Ingenuas didicisse</i>, hey, Doctor! you know the +rest,—<i>emollunt mores nec</i>——” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Emollunt mores!</i> Colonel,” says Doctor McTaggart, who +perhaps was too canny to correct the commanding officer’s Latin. +“Don’t ye noo that Prence Eugene was about as savage a Turrk as +iver was? Have ye niver rad the mimores of the Prants de Leen?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, he was a great cavalry officer,” answers the Colonel, +“and he left a great collection of prints—<i>that</i> you know. How +Clive will delight in them! The boy’s talent for drawing is wonderful, +sir, wonderful. He sent me a picture of our old school—the very actual +thing, sir; the cloisters, the school, the head gown-boy going in with the +rods, and the Doctor himself. It would make you die of laughing!” +</p> + +<p> +He regaled the ladies of the regiment with Clive’s letters, and those of +Miss Honeyman, which contained an account of the boy. He even bored some of his +bearers with this prattle; and sporting young men would give or take odds that +the Colonel would mention Clive’s name, once before five minutes, three +times in ten minutes, twenty-five times in the course of dinner, and so on. But +they who laughed at the Colonel laughed very kindly; and everybody who knew +him, loved him; everybody, that is, who loved modesty, and generosity, and +honour. +</p> + +<p> +At last the happy time came for which the kind father had been longing more +passionately than any prisoner for liberty, or schoolboy for holiday. Colonel +Newcome has taken leave of his regiment, leaving Major Tomkinson, nothing loth, +in command. He has travelled to Calcutta; and the Commander-in-Chief, in +general orders, has announced that in giving to Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas +Newcome, C.B., of the Bengal Cavalry, leave for the first time, after no less +than thirty-four years’ absence from home, “he (Sir George Hustler) +cannot refrain from expressing his sense of the great and meritorious services +of this most distinguished officer, who has left his regiment in a state of the +highest discipline and efficiency.” And now the ship has sailed, the +voyage is over, and once more, after so many long years, the honest +soldier’s foot is on his native shore. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0006"></a> +CHAPTER VI.<br> +Newcome Brothers</h2> + +<p> +Besides his own boy, whom he worshipped, this kind Colonel had a score, at +least, of adopted children, to whom he chose to stand in the light of a father. +He was for ever whirling away in postchaises to this school and that, to see +Jack Brown’s boys, of the Cavalry; or Mrs. Smith’s girls, of the +Civil Service; or poor Tom Hicks’s orphan, who had nobody to look after +him now that the cholera had carried off Tom, and his wife too. On board the +ship in which he returned from Calcutta were a dozen of little children, of +both sexes, some of whom he actually escorted to their friends before he +visited his own; and though his heart was longing for his boy at Grey Friars. +The children at the schools seen, and largely rewarded out of his bounty (his +loose white trousers had great pockets, always heavy with gold and silver, +which he jingled when he was not pulling his mustachios—to see the way in +which he tipped children made one almost long to be a boy again); and when he +had visited Miss Pinkerton’s establishment, or Doctor Ramshorn’s +adjoining academy at Chiswick, and seen little Tom Davis or little Fanny Holmes +the honest fellow would come home and write off straightway a long letter to +Tom’s or Fanny’s parents, far away in the Indian country, whose +hearts he made happy by his accounts of their children, as he had delighted the +children themselves by his affection and bounty. All the apple- and +orange-women (especially such as had babies as well as lollipops at their +stalls), all the street-sweepers on the road between Nerot’s and the +Oriental, knew him, and were his pensioners. His brothers in Threadneedle +Street cast up their eyes at the cheques which he drew. +</p> + +<p> +One of the little people of whom the kind Newcome had taken charge luckily +dwelt near Portsmouth; and when the faithful Colonel consigned Miss Fipps to +her grandmother, Mrs. Admiral Fipps, at Southampton, Miss Fipps clung to her +guardian, and with tears and howls was torn away from him. Not until her maiden +aunts had consoled her with strawberries, which she never before had tasted, +was the little Indian comforted for the departure of her dear Colonel. Master +Cox, Tom Cox’s boy, of the Native Infantry, had to be carried asleep from +the “George” to the mail that night. Master Cox woke up at the dawn +wondering, as the coach passed through the pleasant green roads of Bromley. The +good gentleman consigned the little chap to his uncle, Dr. Cox, Bloomsbury +Square, before he went to his own quarters, and then on the errand on which his +fond heart was bent. +</p> + +<p> +He had written to his brothers from Portsmouth, announcing his arrival, and +three words to Clive, conveying the same intelligence. The letter was served to +the boy along with one bowl of tea and one buttered roll, of eighty such which +were distributed to fourscore other boys, boarders of the same house with our +young friend. How the lad’s face must have flushed, and his eyes +brightened, when he read the news! When the master of the house, the Rev. Mr. +Popkinson, came into the long-room, with a good-natured face, and said, +“Newcome, you’re wanted,” he knows who is come. He does not +heed that notorious bruiser, Old Hodge, who roars out, “Confound you, +Newcome: I’ll give it you for upsetting your tea over my new +trousers.” He runs to the room where the stranger is waiting for him. We +will shut the door, if you please, upon that scene. +</p> + +<p> +If Clive had not been as fine and handsome a young lad as any in that school or +country, no doubt his fond father would have been just as well pleased, and +endowed him with a hundred fanciful graces; but in truth, in looks and manners +he was every thing which his parent could desire; and I hope the artist who +illustrates this work will take care to do justice to his portrait. Mr. Clive +himself, let that painter be assured, will not be too well pleased if his +countenance and figure do not receive proper attention. He is not yet endowed +with those splendid mustachios and whiskers which he has himself subsequently +depicted, but he is the picture of health, strength, activity, and good-humour. +He has a good forehead, shaded with a quantity of waving light hair; a +complexion which ladies might envy; a mouth which seems accustomed to laughing; +and a pair of blue eyes that sparkle with intelligence and frank kindness. No +wonder the pleased father cannot refrain from looking at him. He is, in a word, +just such a youth as has a right to be the hero of a novel. +</p> + +<p> +The bell rings for second school, and Mr. Popkinson, arrayed in cap and gown, +comes in to shake Colonel Newcome by the hand, and to say he supposes +it’s to be a holiday for Newcome that day. He does not say a word about +Clive’s scrape of the day before, and that awful row in the bedrooms, +where the lad and three others were discovered making a supper off a pork-pie +and two bottles of prime old port from the Red Cow public-house in Grey Friars +Lane. When the bell has done ringing, and all these busy little bees have +swarmed into their hive, there is a solitude in the place. The Colonel and his +son walked the playground together, that gravelly flat, as destitute of herbage +as the Arabian desert, but, nevertheless, in the language of the place called +the green. They walk the green, and they pace the cloisters, and Clive shows +his father his own name of Thomas Newcome carved upon one of the arches forty +years ago. As they talk, the boy gives sidelong glances at his new friend, and +wonders at the Colonel’s loose trousers, long mustachios, and yellow +face. He looks very odd, Clive thinks, very odd and very kind, and he looks +like a gentleman, every inch of him:—not like Martin’s father, who +came to see his son lately in high-lows, and a shocking bad hat, and actually +flung coppers amongst the boys for a scramble. He bursts out a-laughing at the +exquisitely ludicrous idea of a gentleman of his fashion scrambling for +coppers. +</p> + +<p> +And now, enjoining the boy to be ready against his return (and you may be sure +Mr. Clive was on the look-out long before his sire appeared), the Colonel +whirled away in his cab to the City to shake hands with his brothers, whom he +had not seen since they were demure little men in blue jackets, under charge of +a serious tutor. +</p> + +<p> +He rushed through the clerks and the banking-house, he broke into the parlour +where the lords of the establishment were seated. He astonished those trim +quiet gentlemen by the warmth of his greeting, by the vigour of his hand-shake, +and the loud high tones of his voice, which penetrated the glass walls of the +parlour, and might actually be heard by the busy clerks in the hall without. He +knew Brian from Hobson at once—that unlucky little accident in the +go-cart having left its mark for ever on the nose of Sir Brian Newcome, the +elder of the twins. Sir Brian had a bald head and light hair, a short whisker +cut to his cheek, a buff waistcoat, very neat boots and hands. He looked like +the “Portrait of a Gentleman” at the Exhibition, as the worthy is +represented: dignified in attitude, bland, smiling, and statesmanlike, sitting +at a table unsealing letters, with a despatch-box and a silver inkstand before +him, a column and a scarlet curtain behind, and a park in the distance, with a +great thunderstorm lowering in the sky. Such a portrait, in fact, hangs over +the great sideboard at Newcome to this day, and above the three great silver +waiters, which the gratitude of as many Companies has presented to their +respected director and chairman. +</p> + +<p> +In face, Hobson Newcome, Esq., was like his elder brother, but was more portly +in person. He allowed his red whiskers to grow wherever nature had planted +them, on his cheeks and under his chin. He wore thick shoes with nails in them, +or natty round-toed boots, with tight trousers and a single strap. He affected +the country gentleman in his appearance. His hat had a broad brim, and the +ample pockets of his cut-away coat were never destitute of agricultural +produce, samples of beans or corn, which he used to bite and chew even on +’Change, or a whip-lash, or balls for horses: in fine, he was a good old +country gentleman. If it was fine in Threadneedle Street, he would say it was +good weather for the hay; if it rained, the country wanted rain; if it was +frosty, “No hunting to-day, Tomkins, my boy,” and so forth. As he +rode from Bryanstone Square to the City you would take him—and he was +pleased to be so taken—for a jolly country squire. He was a better man of +business than his more solemn and stately brother, at whom he laughed in his +jocular way; and he said rightly, that a gentleman must get up very early in +the morning who wanted to take him in. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel breaks into the sanctum of these worthy gentlemen; and each +receives him in a manner consonant with his peculiar nature. Sir Brian +regretted that Lady Anne was away from London, being at Brighton with the +children, who were all ill of the measles. Hobson said, “Maria +can’t treat you to such good company as my lady could give you, but when +will you take a day and come and dine with us? Let’s see, to-day’s +Wednesday; to-morrow we’ve a party. No, we’re engaged.” He +meant that his table was full, and that he did not care to crowd it; but there +was no use in imparting this circumstance to the Colonel. “Friday, we +dine at Judge Budge’s—queer name, Judge Budge, ain’t it? +Saturday, I’m going down to Marblehead, to look after the hay. Come on +Monday, Tom, and I’ll introduce you to the missus and the young +’uns.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will bring Clive,” says Colonel Newcome, rather disturbed at +this reception. “After his illness my sister-in-law was very kind to +him.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, hang it, don’t bring boys; there’s no good in boys; they +stop the talk downstairs, and the ladies don’t want ’em in the +drawing-room. Send him to dine with the children on Sunday, if you like, and +come along down with me to Marblehead, and I’ll show you such a crop of +hay as will make your eyes open. Are you fond of farming?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have not seen my boy for years,” says the Colonel; “I had +rather pass Saturday and Sunday with him, if you please, and some day we will +go to Marblehead together.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, an offer’s an offer. I don’t know any pleasanter thing +than getting out of this confounded City and smelling the hedges, and looking +at the crops coming up, and passing the Sunday in quiet.” And his own +tastes being thus agricultural, the honest gentleman thought that everybody +else must delight in the same recreation. +</p> + +<p> +“In the winter, I hope we shall see you at Newcome,” says the elder +brother, blandly smiling. “I can’t give you any tiger-shooting, but +I’ll promise you that you shall find plenty of pheasants in our +jungle,” and he laughed very gently at this mild sally. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel gave him a queer look. “I shall be at Newcome before the +winter. I shall be there, please God, before many days are over.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed!” says the Baronet, with an air of great surprise. +“You are going down to look at the cradle of our race. I believe the +Newcomes were there before the Conqueror. It was but a village in our +grandfather’s time, and it is an immense flourishing town now, for which +I hope to get—I expect to get—a charter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you?” says the Colonel. “I am going down there to see a +relation.” +</p> + +<p> +“A relation! What relatives have we there?” cries the Baronet. +“My children, with the exception of Barnes. Barnes, this is your uncle +Colonel Thomas Newcome. I have great pleasure, brother, in introducing you to +my eldest son.” +</p> + +<p> +A fair-haired young gentleman, languid and pale, and arrayed in the very height +of fashion, made his appearance at this juncture in the parlour, and returned +Colonel Newcome’s greeting with a smiling acknowledgment of his own. +“Very happy to see you, I’m sure,” said the young man. +“You find London very much changed since you were here? Very good time to +come—the very full of the season.” +</p> + +<p> +Poor Thomas Newcome was quite abashed by this strange reception. Here was a +man, hungry for affection, and one relation asked him to dinner next Monday, +and another invited him to shoot pheasants at Christmas. Here was a beardless +young sprig, who patronised him, and vouchsafed to ask him whether he found +London was changed. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know whether it’s changed,” says the Colonel, +biting his nails; “I know it’s not what I expected to find +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“To-day it’s really as hot as I should thing it must be in +India,” says young Mr. Barnes Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +“Hot!” says the Colonel, with a grin. “It seems to me you are +all cool enough here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Just what Sir Thomas de Boots said, sir,” says Barnes, turning +round to his father. “Don’t you remember when he came home from +Bombay? I recollect his saying, at Lady Featherstone’s, one dooced hot +night, as it seemed to us; I recklect his saying that he felt quite cold. Did +you know him in India, Colonel Newcome? He’s liked at the Horse Guards, +but he’s hated in his regiment.” +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Newcome here growled a wish regarding the ultimate fate of Sir Thomas +de Boots, which we trust may never be realised by that distinguished cavalry +officer. +</p> + +<p> +“My brother says he’s going to Newcome, Barnes, next week,” +said the Baronet, wishing to make the conversation more interesting to the +newly arrived Colonel. “He was saying so just when you came in, and I was +asking him what took him there?” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you ever hear of Sarah Mason?” says the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“Really, I never did,” the Baronet answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Sarah Mason? No, upon my word, I don’t think I ever did, said the +young man. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, that’s a pity too,” the Colonel said, with a sneer. +“Mrs. Mason is a relation of yours—at least by marriage. She is my +aunt or cousin—I used to call her aunt, and she and my father and mother +all worked in the same mill at Newcome together.” +</p> + +<p> +“I remember—God bless my soul—I remember now!” cried +the Baronet. “We pay her forty pound a year on your +account—don’t you know, brother? Look to Colonel Newcome’s +account—I recollect the name quite well. But I thought she had been your +nurse, and—and an old servant of my father’s.” +</p> + +<p> +“So she was my nurse, and an old servant of my father’s,” +answered the Colonel. “But she was my mother’s cousin too and very +lucky was my mother to have such a servant, or to have a servant at all. There +is not in the whole world a more faithful creature or a better woman.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Hobson rather enjoyed his brother’s perplexity, and to see when the +Baronet rode the high horse, how he came down sometimes, “I am sure it +does you very great credit,” gasped the courtly head of the firm, +“to remember a—a humble friend and connexion of our father’s +so well.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think, brother, you might have recollected her too,” the Colonel +growled out. His face was blushing; he was quite angry and hurt at what seemed +to him Sir Brian’s hardness of heart. +</p> + +<p> +“Pardon me if I don’t see the necessity,” said Sir Brian. +“<i>I</i> have no relationship with Mrs. Mason, and do not remember ever +having seen her. Can I do anything for you, brother? Can I be useful to you in +any way? Pray command me and Barnes here, who after City hours will be +delighted if he can be serviceable to you—<i>I</i> am nailed to this +counter all the morning, and to the House of Commons all night;—I will be +with you in one moment, Mr. Quilter. Good-bye, my dear Colonel. How well India +has agreed with you! how young you look! the hot winds are nothing to what we +endure in Parliament.—Hobson,” in a low voice, “you saw about +that h’m, that power of attorney—and h’m and h’m will +call here at twelve about that h’m.—I am sorry I must say +good-bye—it seems so hard after not meeting for so many years.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very,” says the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“Mind and send for me whenever you want me, now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, of course,” said the elder brother, and thought when will that +ever be! +</p> + +<p> +“Lady Anne will be too delighted at hearing of your arrival. Give my love +to Clive—a remarkable fine boy, Clive—good morning:” and the +Baronet was gone, and his bald head might presently be seen alongside of Mr. +Quilter’s confidential grey poll, both of their faces turned into an +immense ledger. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Hobson accompanied the Colonel to the door, and shook him cordially by the +hand as he got into his cab. The man asked whither he should drive? and poor +Newcome hardly knew where he was or whither he should go. “Drive! +a—oh—ah—damme, drive me anywhere away from this place!” +was all he could say; and very likely the cabman thought he was a disappointed +debtor who had asked in vain to renew a bill. In fact, Thomas Newcome had +overdrawn his little account. There was no such balance of affection in that +bank of his brothers, as the simple creature had expected to find there. +</p> + +<p> +When he was gone, Sir Brian went back to his parlour, where sate young Barnes +perusing the paper. “My revered uncle seems to have brought back a +quantity of cayenne pepper from India, sir,” he said to his father. +</p> + +<p> +“He seems a very kind-hearted simple man,” the Baronet said +“eccentric, but he has been more than thirty years away from home. Of +course you will call upon him to-morrow morning. Do everything you can to make +him comfortable. Whom would he like to meet at dinner? I will ask some of the +Direction. Ask him, Barnes, for next Wednesday or Saturday—no; Saturday I +dine with the Speaker. But see that every attention is paid him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Does he intend to have our relation up to town, sir? I should like to +meet Mrs. Mason of all things. A venerable washerwoman, I daresay, or perhaps +keeps a public-house,” simpered out young Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +“Silence, Barnes; you jest at everything, you young men do—you do. +Colonel Newcome’s affection for his old nurse does him the greatest +honour,” said the Baronet, who really meant what he said. +</p> + +<p> +“And I hope my mother will have her to stay a good deal at Newcome. +I’m sure she must have been a washerwoman, and mangled my uncle in early +life. His costume struck me with respectful astonishment. He disdains the use +of straps to his trousers, and is seemingly unacquainted with gloves. If he had +died in India, would my late aunt have had to perish on a funeral pile?” +Here Mr. Quilter, entering with a heap of bills, put an end to these sarcastic +remarks, and young Newcome, applying himself to his business (of which he was a +perfect master), forgot about his uncle till after City hours, when he +entertained some young gentlemen of Bays’s Club with an account of his +newly arrived relative. +</p> + +<p> +Towards the City, whither he wended his way whatever had been the ball or the +dissipation of the night before, young Barnes Newcome might be seen walking +every morning, resolutely and swiftly, with his neat umbrella. As he passed +Charing Cross on his way westwards, his little boots trailed slowly over the +pavement, his head hung languid (bending lower still, and smiling with faded +sweetness as he doffed his hat and saluted a passing carriage), his umbrella +trailed after him. Not a dandy on all the Pall Mall pavement seemed to have +less to do than he. +</p> + +<p> +Heavyside, a large young officer of the household troops—old Sir Thomas +de Boots—and Horace Fogey, whom every one knows—are in the window +of Bays’s, yawning as widely as that window itself. Horses under the +charge of men in red jackets are pacing up and down St. James’s Street. +Cabmen on the stand are regaling with beer. Gentlemen with grooms behind them +pass towards the Park. Great dowager barouches roll along emblazoned with +coronets, and driven by coachmen in silvery wigs. Wistful provincials gaze in +at the clubs. Foreigners chatter and show their teeth, and look at the ladies +in the carriages, and smoke and spit refreshingly round about. Policeman X +slouches along the pavement. It is five o’clock, the noon in Pall Mall. +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s little Newcome coming,” says Mr. Horace Fogey. +“He and the muffin-man generally make their appearance in public +together.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dashed little prig,” says Sir Thomas de Boots, “why the dash +did they ever let him in here? If I hadn’t been in India, by +dash—he should have been blackballed twenty times over, by dash.” +Only Sir Thomas used words far more terrific than dash, for this distinguished +cavalry officer swore very freely. +</p> + +<p> +“He amuses me; he’s such a mischievous little devil,” says +good-natured Charley Heavyside. +</p> + +<p> +“It takes very little to amuse you,” remarks Fogey. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> don’t, Fogey,” answers Charley. “I know +every one of your demd old stories, that are as old as my grandmother. +How-dy-do, Barney?” (Enter Barnes Newcome.) “How are the Three per +Cents, you little beggar? I wish you’d do me a bit of stiff; and just +tell your father, if I may overdraw my account I’ll vote with +him—hanged if I don’t.” +</p> + +<p> +Barnes orders absinthe-and-water, and drinks: Heavyside resuming his elegant +raillery. “I say, Barney, your name’s Barney, and you’re a +banker. You must be a little Jew, hey? Vell, how mosh vill you to my little +pill for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do hee-haw in the House of Commons, Heavyside,” says the young man +with a languid air. “That’s your place: you’re returned for +it.” (Captain the Honourable Charles Heavyside is a member of the +legislature, and eminent in the House for asinine imitations which delight his +own, and confuse the other party.) “Don’t bray here. I hate the +shop out of shop hours.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dash the little puppy,” growls Sir de Boots, swelling in his +waistband. +</p> + +<p> +“What do they say about the Russians in the City?” says Horace +Fogey, who has been in the diplomatic service. “Has the fleet left +Cronstadt, or has it not?” +</p> + +<p> +“How should I know?” asks Barney. “Ain’t it all in the +evening paper?” +</p> + +<p> +“That is very uncomfortable news from India, General,” resumes +Fogey—“there’s Lady Doddington’s carriage, how well she +looks—that movement of Runjeet-Singh on Peshawur: that fleet on the +Irrawaddy. It looks doocid queer, let me tell you, and Penguin is not the man +to be Governor-General of India in a time of difficulty.” +</p> + +<p> +“And Hustler’s not the man to be Commander-in-Chief: dashder old +fool never lived: a dashed old psalm-singing, blundering old woman,” says +Sir Thomas, who wanted the command himself. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> ain’t in the psalm-singing line, Sir Thomas,” +says Mr. Barnes; “quite the contrary.” In fact, Sir de Boots in his +youth used to sing with the Duke of York, and even against Captain Costigan, +but was beaten by that superior bacchanalian artist. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Thomas looks as if to ask what the dash is that to you? but wanting still +to go to India again, and knowing how strong the Newcomes are in Leadenhall +Street, he thinks it necessary to be civil to the young cub, and swallows his +wrath once more into his waistband. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got an uncle come home from India—upon my word I +have,” says Barnes Newcome. “That is why I am so exhausted. I am +going to buy him a pair of gloves, number fourteen—and I want a tailor +for him—not a young man’s tailor. Fogey’s tailor rather. +I’d take my father’s; but he has all his things made in the +country—all—in the borough, you know—he’s a public +man.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is Colonel Newcome, of the Bengal Cavalry, your uncle?” asks Sir +Thomas de Boots. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; will you come and meet him at dinner next Wednesday week, Sir +Thomas? and, Fogey, you come; you know you like a good dinner. You don’t +know anything against my uncle, do you, Sir Thomas? Have I any Brahminical +cousins? Need we be ashamed of him?” +</p> + +<p> +“I tell you what, young man, if you were more like him it wouldn’t +hurt you. He’s an odd man; they call him Don Quixote in India; I suppose +you’ve read Don Quixote?” +</p> + +<p> +“Never heard of it, upon my word; and why do you wish I should be more +like him? I don’t wish to be like him at all, thank you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, because he is one of the bravest officers that ever lived,” +roared out the old soldier. “Because he’s one of the kindest +fellows; because he gives himself no dashed airs, although he has reason to be +proud if he chose. That’s why, Mr. Newcome.” +</p> + +<p> +“A topper for you, Barney, my boy,” remarks Charles Heavyside, as +the indignant General walks away gobbling and red. Barney calmly drinks the +remains of his absinthe. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know what that old muff means,” he says innocently, +when he has finished his bitter draught. “He’s always flying out at +me, the old turkey-cock. He quarrels with my play at whist, the old idiot, and +can no more play than an old baby. He pretends to teach me billiards, and +I’ll give him fifteen in twenty and beat his old head off. Why do they +let such fellows into clubs? Let’s have a game at piquet till dinner, +Heavyside. Hallo! That’s my uncle, that tall man with the mustachios and +the short trousers, walking with that boy of his. I dare say they are going to +dine in Covent Garden, and going to the play. How-dy-do, +Nunky?”—and so the worthy pair went up to the card-room, where they +sate at piquet until the hour of sunset and dinner arrived. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0007"></a> +CHAPTER VII.<br> +In which Mr. Clive’s School-days are over</h2> + +<p> +Our good Colonel had luckily to look forward to a more pleasant meeting with +his son, than that unfortunate interview with his other near relatives. He +dismissed his cab at Ludgate Hill, and walked thence by the dismal precincts of +Newgate, and across the muddy pavement of Smithfield, on his way back to the +old school where his son was, a way which he had trodden many a time in his own +early days. There was Cistercian Street, and the Red Cow of his youth: there +was the quaint old Grey Friars Square, with its blackened trees and garden, +surrounded by ancient houses of the build of the last century, now slumbering +like pensioners in the sunshine. +</p> + +<p> +Under the great archway of the hospital he could look at the old Gothic +building: and a black-gowned pensioner or two crawling over the quiet square, +or passing from one dark arch to another. The boarding-houses of the school +were situated in the square, hard by the more ancient buildings of the +hospital. A great noise of shouting, crying, clapping forms and cupboards, +treble voices, bass voices, poured out of the schoolboys’ windows: their +life, bustle, and gaiety contrasted strangely with the quiet of those old men +creeping along in their black gowns under the ancient arches yonder, whose +struggle of life was over, whose hope and noise and bustle had sunk into that +grey calm. There was Thomas Newcome arrived at the middle of life, standing +between the shouting boys and the tottering seniors, and in a situation to +moralise upon both, had not his son Clive, who has espied him from within Mr. +Hopkinson’s, or let us say at once Hopkey’s house, come jumping +down the steps to greet his sire. Clive was dressed in his very best; not one +of those four hundred young gentlemen had a better figure, a better tailor, or +a neater boot. Schoolfellows, grinning through the bars, envied him as he +walked away; senior boys made remarks on Colonel Newcome’s loose clothes +and long mustachios, his brown hands and unbrushed hat. The Colonel was smoking +a cheroot as he walked; and the gigantic Smith, the cock of the school, who +happened to be looking majestically out of window, was pleased to say that he +thought Newcome’s governor was a fine manly-looking fellow. +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me about your uncles, Clive,” said the Colonel, as they +walked on arm in arm. +</p> + +<p> +“What about them, sir?” asks the boy. “I don’t think I +know much.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have been to stay with them. You wrote about them. Were they kind to +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes, I suppose they are very kind. They always tipped me: only you +know when I go there I scarcely ever see them. Mr. Newcome asks me the +oftenest—two or three times a quarter when he’s in town, and gives +me a sovereign regular.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, he must see you to give you the sovereign,” says +Clive’s father, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +The boy blushed rather. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. When it’s time to go back to Smithfield on a Sunday night, I +go into the dining-room to shake hands, and he gives it me; but he don’t +speak to me much, you know, and I don’t care about going to Bryanstone +Square, except for the tip, of course that’s important, because I am made +to dine with the children, and they are quite little ones; and a great cross +French governess, who is always crying and shrieking after them, and finding +fault with them. My uncle generally has his dinner-parties on Saturday, or goes +out; and aunt gives me ten shillings and sends me to the play; that’s +better fun than a dinner-party.” Here the lad blushed again. “I +used,” says he, “when I was younger, to stand on the stairs and +prig things out of the dishes when they came out from dinner, but I’m +past that now. Maria (that’s my cousin) used to take the sweet things and +give ’em to the governess. Fancy! she used to put lumps of sugar into her +pocket and eat them in the schoolroom! Uncle Hobson don’t live in such +good society as Uncle Newcome. You see, Aunt Hobson, she’s very kind, you +know, and all that, but I don’t think she’s what you call <i>comme +il faut</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, how are you to judge?” asks the father, amused at the +lad’s candid prattle, “and where does the difference lie?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t tell you what it is, or how it is,” the boy +answered, “only one can’t help seeing the difference. It +isn’t rank and that; only somehow there are some men gentlemen and some +not, and some women ladies and some not. There’s Jones now, the fifth +form master, every man sees <i>he’s</i> a gentleman, though he wears ever +so old clothes; and there’s Mr. Brown, who oils his hair, and wears +rings, and white chokers—my eyes! such white chokers!—and yet we +call him the handsome snob! And so about Aunt Maria, she’s very handsome +and she’s very finely dressed, only somehow she’s +not—she’s not the ticket, you see.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, she’s not the ticket,” says the Colonel, much amused. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, what I mean is—but never mind,” says the boy. “I +can’t tell you what I mean. I don’t like to make fun of her, you +know, for after all, she is very kind to me; but Aunt Anne is different, and it +seems as if what she says is more natural; and though she has funny ways of her +own too, yet somehow she looks grander,”—and here the lad laughed +again. “And do you know, I often think that as good a lady as Aunt Anne +herself, is old Aunt Honeyman at Brighton—that is, in all essentials, you +know. For she is not proud, and she is not vain, and she never says an unkind +word behind anybody’s back, and she does a deal of kindness to the poor +without appearing to crow over them, you know; and she is not a bit ashamed of +letting lodgings, or being poor herself, as sometimes I think some of our +family——” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought we were going to speak no ill of them?” says the +Colonel, smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it only slipped out unawares,” says Clive, laughing; +“but at Newcome when they go on about the Newcomes, and that great ass, +Barnes Newcome, gives himself his airs, it makes me die of laughing. That time +I went down to Newcome, I went to see old Aunt Sarah, and she told me +everything, and showed me the room where my grandfather—you know; and do +you know I was a little hurt at first, for I thought we were swells till then. +And when I came back to school, where perhaps I had been giving myself airs, +and bragging about Newcome, why, you know, I thought it was right to tell the +fellows.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s a man,” said the Colonel, with delight; though had he +said, “That’s a boy,” he had spoken more correctly. Indeed, +how many men do we know in the world without caring to know who their fathers +were? and how many more who wisely do not care to tell us? “That’s +a man,” cries the Colonel; “never be ashamed of your father, +Clive.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ashamed of my father!” says Clive, looking up to him, and walking +on as proud as a peacock. “I say,” the lad resumed, after a +pause— +</p> + +<p> +“Say what you say,” said the father. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that all true what’s in the Peerage—in the Baronetage, +about Uncle Newcome and Newcome; about the Newcome who was burned at +Smithfield; about the one that was at the battle of Bosworth; and the old old +Newcome who was bar—that is, who was surgeon to Edward the Confessor, and +was killed at Hastings? I am afraid it isn’t; and yet I should like it to +be true.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think every man would like to come of an ancient and honourable +race,” said the Colonel, in his honest way. “As you like your +father to be an honourable man, why not your grandfather, and his ancestors +before him? But if we can’t inherit a good name, at least we can do our +best to leave one, my boy; and that is an ambition which, please God, you and I +will both hold by.” +</p> + +<p> +With this simple talk the old and young gentleman beguiled their way, until +they came into the western quarter of the town, where the junior member of the +firm of Newcome Brothers had his house—a handsome and roomy mansion in +Bryanstone Square. Colonel Newcome was bent on paying a visit to his +sister-in-law, and as he knocked at the door, where the pair were kept waiting +some little time, he could remark through the opened windows of the +dining-room, that a great table was laid and every preparation made for a +feast. +</p> + +<p> +“My brother said he was engaged to dinner to-day,” said the +Colonel. “Does Mrs. Newcome give parties when he is away?” +</p> + +<p> +“She invites all the company,” answered Clive. “My uncle +never asks any one without aunt’s leave.” +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel’s countenance fell. He has a great dinner, and does not ask +his own brother! Newcome thought. Why, if he had come to me in India with all +his family, he might have stayed for a year, and I should have been offended if +he had gone elsewhere. +</p> + +<p> +A hot menial, in a red waistcoat, came and opened the door; and without waiting +for preparatory queries, said, “Not at home.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s my father, John,” said Clive; “my aunt will see +Colonel Newcome.” +</p> + +<p> +“Missis not at home,” said the man. “Missis is gone in +carriage—Not at this door!-Take them things down the area steps, young +man!” bawls out the domestic. This latter speech was addressed to a +pastrycook’s boy, with a large sugar temple and many conical papers +containing delicacies for dessert. “Mind the hice is here in time; or +there’ll be a blow-up with your governor,”—and John struggled +back, closing the door on the astonished Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“Upon my life, they actually shut the door in our faces,” said the +poor gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +“The man is very busy, sir. There’s a great dinner. I’m sure +my aunt would not refuse you,” Clive interposed. “She is very kind. +I suppose it’s different here to what it is in India, here are the +children in the square,—those are the girls in blue,—that’s +the French governess, the one with the mustachios and the yellow parasol. How +d’ye do, Mary? How d’ye do, Fanny? This is my father,—this is +your uncle.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mesdemoiselles! Je vous défends de parler à qui que ce soit hors du +Squar!” screams out the lady of the mustachios; and she strode forward to +call back her young charges. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel addressed her in very good French. “I hope you will permit me +to make acquaintance with my nieces,” he said, “and with their +instructress, of whom my son has given me such a favourable account.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hem!” said Mademoiselle Lebrun, remembering the last fight she and +Clive had had together, and a portrait of herself (with enormous whiskers) +which the young scapegrace had drawn. “Monsieur is very good. But one +cannot too early inculcate <i>retenue</i> and decorum to young ladies in a +country where demoiselles seem for ever to forget that they are young ladies of +condition. I am forced to keep the eyes of lynx upon these young persons, +otherwise heaven knows what would come to them. Only yesterday, my back is +turned for a moment, I cast my eyes on a book, having but little time for +literature, monsieur—for literature, which I adore—when a cry makes +itself to hear. I turn myself, and what do I see? Mesdemoiselles, your nieces, +playing at criquette, with the Messieurs Smees—sons of Doctor +Smees—young galopins, monsieur!” All this was shrieked with immense +volubility and many actions of the hand and parasol across the square-railings +to the amused Colonel, at whom the little girls peered through the bars. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my dears, I should like to have a game at cricket with you, +too,” says the kind gentleman, reaching them each a brown hand. +</p> + +<p> +“You, monsieur, c’est different—a man of your age! Salute +monsieur, your uncle, mesdemoiselles. You conceive, monsieur, that I also must +be cautious when I speak to a man so distinguished in a public squar.” +And she cast down her great eyes and hid those radiant orbs from the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile, Colonel Newcome, indifferent to the direction which Miss +Lebrun’s eyes took, whether towards his hat or his boots, was surveying +his little nieces with that kind expression which his face always wore when it +was turned towards children. “Have you heard of your uncle in +India?” he asked them. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” says Maria. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” says Fanny. “You know mademoiselle said” +(mademoiselle at this moment was twittering her fingers, and, as it were, +kissing them in the direction of a grand barouche that was advancing along the +Square)—“you know mademoiselle said that if we were +<i>méchantes</i> we should be sent to our uncle in India. I think I should like +to go with you.” +</p> + +<p> +“O you silly child!” cries Maria. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes I should, if Clive went too,” says little Fanny. +</p> + +<p> +“Behold madam, who arrives from her promenade!” Miss Lebrun +exclaimed; and, turning round, Colonel Newcome had the satisfaction of +beholding, for the first time, his sister-in-law. +</p> + +<p> +A stout lady, with fair hair and a fine bonnet and pelisse (who knows what were +the fine bonnets and pelisses of the year 183-?), was reclining in the +barouche, the scarlet-plush integuments of her domestics blazing before and +behind her. A pretty little foot was on the cushion opposite to her; feathers +waved in her bonnet; a book was in her lap; an oval portrait of a gentleman +reposed on her voluminous bosom. She wore another picture of two darling heads, +with pink cheeks and golden hair, on one of her wrists, with many more chains, +bracelets, bangles, and knick-knacks. A pair of dirty gloves marred the +splendour of this appearance; a heap of books from the library strewed the back +seat of the carriage, and showed that her habits were literary. Springing down +from his station behind his mistress, the youth clad in the nether garments of +red sammit discharged thunderclaps on the door of Mrs. Newcome’s house, +announcing to the whole Square that his mistress had returned to her abode. +Since the fort saluted the Governor-General at ———, Colonel +Newcome had never heard such a cannonading. +</p> + +<p> +Clive, with a queer twinkle of his eyes, ran towards his aunt. +</p> + +<p> +She bent over the carriage languidly towards him. She liked him. “What, +you, Clive?” she said. “How come you away from school of a +Thursday, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is a holiday,” says he. “My father is come; and he is +come to see you.” +</p> + +<p> +She bowed her head with an expression of affable surprise and majestic +satisfaction. “Indeed, Clive!” she was good enough to exclaim and +with an air which seemed to say, “Let him come up and be presented to +me.” The honest gentleman stepped forward and took off his hat and bowed, +and stood bareheaded. She surveyed him blandly, and with infinite grace put +forward one of the pudgy little hands in one of the dirty gloves. Can you fancy +a twopenny-halfpenny baroness of King Francis’s time patronising Bayard? +Can you imagine Queen Guinever’s lady’s-maid’s lady’s +maid being affable to Sir Lancelot? I protest there is nothing like the virtue +of English women. +</p> + +<p> +“You have only arrived to-day, and you came to see me? That was very +kind. N’est-ce pas que c’était bong de Mouseer le Collonel, +mademoiselle? Madamaselle Lebrun, le Collonel Newcome, mong frère.” (In a +whisper, “My children’s governess and my friend, a most superior +woman.”) “Was it not kind of Colonel Newcome to come to see me? +Have you had a pleasant voyage? Did you come by St. Helena? Oh, how I envy you +seeing the tomb of that great man! Nous parlong de Napolleong, mademoiselle, +dong voter père a été le Général favvory.” +</p> + +<p> +“O Dieu! que n’ai je pu le voir,” interjaculates +mademoiselle. “Lui dont parle l’univers, dont mon père m’a si +souvent parlé!” but this remark passes quite unnoticed by +mademoiselle’s friend, who continues: +</p> + +<p> +“Clive, donnez-moi voter bras. These are two of my girls. My boys are at +school. I shall be so glad to introduce them to their uncle. <i>This</i> +naughty boy might never have seen you, but that we took him home to Marblehead, +after the scarlet fever, and made him well, didn’t we, Clive? And we are +all very fond of him, and you must not be jealous of his love for his aunt. We +feel that we quite know you through him, and we know that you know us, and we +hope you will <i>like</i> us. Do you think your pa will like us, Clive? Or +perhaps you will like Lady Anne best? Yes; you have been to her first, of +course? Not been? Oh! because she is not in town.” Leaning fondly on the +arm of Clive, mademoiselle standing grouped with the children hard by while +John, with his hat off, stood at the opened door, Mrs Newcome slowly uttered the +above remarkable remarks to the Colonel, on the threshold of her house, which +she never asked him to pass. +</p> + +<p> +“If you will come in to us at about ten this evening,” she then +said, “you will find some men, not undistinguished, who honour me of an +evening. Perhaps they will be interesting to you, Colonel Newcome, as you are +newly arrived in Europe. Not men of worldly rank, necessarily, although some of +them are amongst the noblest of Europe. But my maxim is, that genius is an +illustration, and merit is better than any pedigree. You have heard of +Professor Bodgers? Count Poski? Doctor McGuffog, who is called in his native +country the Ezekiel of Clackmannan? Mr. Shaloony, the great Irish patriot? our +papers have told you of <i>him</i>. These and some more I have been good enough +to promise me a visit to-night. A stranger coming to London could scarcely have +a better opportunity of seeing some of our great illustrations of science and +literature. And you will meet our own family—not Sir Brian’s, +who—who have other society and amusements—but mine. I hope Mr. +Newcome and myself will never forget <i>them</i>. We have a few friends at +dinner, and now I must go in and consult with Mrs. Hubbard, my housekeeper. +Good-bye for the present. Mind, not later than ten, as Mr. Newcome must be up +betimes in the morning, and our parties break up early. When Clive is a little +older, I dare say we shall see him, too. <i>Good</i>-bye!” And again the +Colonel was favoured with a shake of the glove, and the lady and her suite +sailed up the stair, and passed in at the door. +</p> + +<p> +She had not the faintest idea but that the hospitality which she was offering +to her kinsman was of the most cordial and pleasant kind. She fancied +everything she did was perfectly right and graceful. She invited her +husband’s clerks to come through the rain at ten o’clock from +Kentish Town; she asked artists to bring their sketch-books from Kensington, or +luckless pianists to trudge with their music from Brompton. She rewarded them +with a smile and a cup of tea, and thought they were made happy by her +condescension. If, after two or three of these delightful evenings, they ceased +to attend her receptions, she shook her little flaxen head, and sadly intimated +that Mr. A. was getting into bad courses, or feared that Mr. B. found merely +<i>intellectual</i> parties too quiet for him. Else, what young man in his +senses could refuse such entertainment and instruction? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0008"></a> +CHAPTER VIII.<br> +Mrs. Newcome at Home (a Small Early Party)</h2> + +<p> +To push on in the crowd, every male or female struggler must use his shoulders. +If a better place than yours presents itself just beyond your neighbour, elbow +him and take it. Look how a steadily purposed man or woman at court, at a ball, +or exhibition, wherever there is a competition and a squeeze, gets the best +place; the nearest the sovereign, if bent on kissing the royal hand; the +closest to the grand stand, if minded to go to Ascot; the best view and hearing +of the Rev. Mr. Thumpington, when all the town is rushing to hear that exciting +divine; the largest quantity of ice, champagne, and seltzer, cold pâté, or +other his or her favourite flesh-pot, if gluttonously minded, at a supper +whence hundreds of people come empty away. A woman of the world will marry her +daughter and have done with her; get her carriage and be at home and asleep in +bed; whilst a timid mamma has still her girl in the nursery, or is beseeching +the servants in the cloakroom to look for her shawls, with which some one else +has whisked away an hour ago. What a man has to do in society is to assert +himself. Is there a good place at table? Take it. At the Treasury or the Home +Office? Ask for it. Do you want to go to a party to which you are not invited? +Ask to be asked. Ask A., ask B., ask Mrs. C., ask everybody you know: you will +be thought a bore; but you will have your way. What matters if you are +considered obtrusive, provided that you obtrude? By pushing steadily, nine +hundred and ninety-nine people in a thousand will yield to you. Only command +persons, and you may be pretty sure that a good number will obey. How well your +money will have been laid out, O gentle reader, who purchase this; and, taking +the maxim to heart, follow it through life! You may be sure of success. If your +neighbour’s foot obstructs you, stamp on it; and do you suppose he +won’t take it away? +</p> + +<p> +The proofs of the correctness of the above remarks I show in various members of +the Newcome family. Here was a vulgar little woman, not clever nor pretty, +especially; meeting Mr. Newcome casually, she ordered him to marry her, and he +obeyed; as he obeyed her in everything else which she chose to order through +life. Meeting Colonel Newcome on the steps of her house, she orders him to come +to her evening party; and though he has not been to an evening party for +five-and-thirty years—though he has not been to bed the night +before—though he has no mufti-coat except one sent him out by Messrs. +Stultz to India in the year 1821—he never once thinks of disobeying Mrs. +Newcome’s order, but is actually at her door at five minutes past ten, +having arrayed himself to the wonderment of Clive, and left the boy to talk +with his friend and fellow-passenger, Mr. Binnie, who has just arrived from +Portsmouth, who has dined with him, and who, by previous arrangement, has taken +up his quarters at the same hotel. +</p> + +<p> +This Stultz coat, a blue swallow-tail, with yellow buttons, now wearing a tinge +of their native copper, a very high velvet collar on a level with the tips of +the Captain’s ears, with a high waist, indicated by two lapelles, and a +pair of buttons high up in the wearer’s back, a white waistcoat and +scarlet under-waistcoat, and a pair of the never-failing duck trousers, +complete Thomas Newcome’s costume, along with the white hat in which we +have seen him in the morning, and which was one of two dozen purchased by him +some years since at public outcry, Burrumtollah. We have called him Captain +purposely, while speaking of his coat, for he held that rank when the garment +came out to him; and having been in the habit of considering it a splendid coat +for twelve years past, he has not the least idea of changing his opinion. +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor McGuffog, Professor Bodgers, Count Poski, and all the lions present +at Mrs. Newcome’s <i>réunion</i> that evening, were completely eclipsed +by Colonel Newcome. The worthy soul, who cared not the least about adorning +himself, had a handsome diamond brooch of the year 1801—given him by poor +Jack Cutler, who was knocked over by his side at Argaum—and wore this +ornament in his desk for a thousand days and nights at a time; in his +shirt-frill, on such parade evenings as he considered Mrs. Newcome’s to +be. The splendour of this jewel, and of his flashing buttons, caused all eyes +to turn to him. There were many pairs of mustachios present, those of Professor +Schnurr, a very corpulent martyr, just escaped from Spandau, and of Maximilien +Tranchard, French exile and apostle of liberty, were the only whiskers in the +room capable of vying in interest with Colonel Newcome’s. Polish +chieftains were at this time so common in London, that nobody (except one noble +Member for Marylebone, once a year, the Lord Mayor) took any interest in them. +The general opinion was, that the stranger was the Wallachian Boyar, whose +arrival at Mivart’s the <i>Morning Post</i> had just announced. Mrs. +Miles, whose delicious every other Wednesdays in Montague Square are supposed +by some to be rival entertainments to Mrs. Newcome’s alternate Thursdays +in Bryanstone Square, pinched her daughter Mira, engaged in a polyglot +conversation with Herr Schnurr, nor Signor Carabossi, the guitarist, and Monsieur +Pivier, the celebrated French chess-player, to point out the Boyar. Mira Miles +wished she knew a little Moldavian, not so much that she might speak it, but +that she might be heard to speak it. Mrs. Miles, who had not had the +educational advantages of her daughter, simpered up with “Madame Newcome +pas ici—votre excellence nouvellement arrivé—avez vous fait ung +bong voyage? Je reçois chez moi Mercredi prochaing; lonnure de vous +voir—Madamasel Miles ma fille;” and, Mira, now reinforcing her +mamma, poured in a glib little oration in French, somewhat to the astonishment +of the Colonel, who began to think, however, that perhaps French was the +language of the polite world, into which he was now making his very first +<i>entrée</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Newcome had left her place at the door of her drawing-room, to walk +through her rooms with Rummun Loll, the celebrated Indian merchant, otherwise +His Excellency Rummun Loll, otherwise his Highness Rummun Loll, the chief +proprietor of the diamond-mines in Golconda, with a claim of three millions and +a-half upon the East India Company—who smoked his hookah after dinner +when the ladies were gone, and in whose honour (for his servants always brought +a couple or more of hookahs with them) many English gentlemen made themselves +sick, while trying to emulate the same practice. Mr. Newcome had been obliged +to go to bed himself in consequence of the uncontrollable nausea produced by +the chillum; and Doctor McGuffog, in hopes of converting His Highness, had +puffed his till he was as black in the face as the interesting Indian—and +now, having hung on his arm—always in the dirty gloves—flirting a +fan whilst His Excellency consumed betel out of a silver box; and having +promenaded him and his turban, and his shawls, and his kincab pelisse, and his +lacquered moustache, and keen brown face; and opal eyeballs, through her rooms, +the hostess came back to her station at the drawing-room door. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as His Excellency saw the Colonel, whom he perfectly well knew, His +Highness’s princely air was exchanged for one of the deepest humility. He +bowed his head and put his two hands before his eyes, and came creeping towards +him submissively, to the wonderment of Mrs. Miles; who was yet more astonished +when the Moldavian magnate exclaimed in perfectly good English, “What, +Rummun, you here?” +</p> + +<p> +The Rummun, still bending and holding his hands before him, uttered a number of +rapid sentences in the Hindustani language, which Colonel Newcome received +twirling his mustachios with much hauteur. He turned on his heel rather +abruptly and began to speak to Mrs. Newcome, who smiled and thanked him for +coming on his first night after his return. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel said, “To whose house should he first come but to his +brother’s?” How Mrs. Newcome wished she could have had room for him +at dinner! And there was room after all, for Mr. Shaloony was detained at the +House. The most interesting conversation. The Indian Prince was so intelligent! +</p> + +<p> +“The Indian what?” asks Colonel Newcome. The heathen gentleman had +gone off, and was seated by one of the handsomest young women in the room, +whose fair face was turned towards him, whose blond ringlets touched his +shoulder, and who was listening to him as eagerly as Desdemona listened to +Othello. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel’s rage was excited as he saw the Indian’s behaviour. He +curled his mustachios up to his eyes in his wrath. “You don’t mean +that that man calls himself a Prince? That a fellow who wouldn’t sit down +in an officer’s presence is——” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, Mr. Honeyman?—Eh, bong soir, Monsieur—You are +very late, Mr. Pressly.—What, Barnes! is it possible that you do me the +honour to come all the way from Mayfair to Marylebone? I thought you young men +of fashion never crossed Oxford Street. Colonel Newcome, this is your +nephew.” +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, sir?” says Barnes, surveying the Colonel’s +costume with inward wonder, but without the least outward manifestation of +surprise. “I suppose you dined here to meet the black Prince. I came to +ask him and my uncle to meet you at dinner on Wednesday. Where’s my +uncle, ma’am?” +</p> + +<p> +“Your uncle is gone to bed ill. He smoked one of those hookahs which the +Prince brings, and it has made him very unwell indeed, Barnes. How is Lady +Anne? Is Lord Kew in London? Is your sister better for Brighton air? I see your +cousin is appointed Secretary of Legation. Have you good accounts of your aunt +Lady Fanny?” +</p> + +<p> +“Lady Fanny is as well as can be expected, and the baby is going on +perfectly well, thank you,” Barnes said drily; and his aunt, obstinately +gracious with him, turned away to some other new comet. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s interesting, isn’t it, sir,” says Barnes, turning +to the Colonel, “to see such union in families? Whenever I come here, my +aunt trots out all my relations; and I send a man round in the mornin to ask +how they all are. So Uncle Hobson is gone to bed sick with a hookah? I know +there was a deuce of a row made when I smoked at Marblehead. You are promised +to us for Wednesday, please. Is there anybody you would like to meet? Not our +friend the Rummun? How the girls crowd round him! By Gad, a fellow who’s +rich in London may have the pick of any gal—not here—not in this +sort of thing; I mean in society, you know,” says Barnes confidentially, +“I’ve seen the old dowagers crowdin round that fellow, and the +girls snugglin up to his india-rubber face. He’s known to have two wives +already in India; but, by Gad, for a settlement, I believe some of ’em +here would marry—I mean of the girls in society.” +</p> + +<p> +“But isn’t this society?” asked the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, of course. It’s very good society and that sort of +thing—but it’s not, you know—you understand. I give you my +honour there are not three people in the room one meets anywhere, except the +Rummun. What is he at home, sir? I know he ain’t a Prince, you know, any +more than I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe he is a rich man now,” said the Colonel. “He began +from very low beginnings, and odd stories are told about the origin of his +fortune.” +</p> + +<p> +“That may be,” says the young man; “of course, as +businessmen, that’s not our affair. But has he got the fortune? He keeps +a large account with us; and, I think, wants to have larger dealings with us +still. As one of the family we may ask you to stand by us, and tell us anything +you know. My father has asked him down to Newcome, and we’ve taken him +up; wisely or not I can’t say. I think otherwise; but I’m quite +young in the house, and of course the elders have the chief +superintendence.” The young man of business had dropped his drawl or his +languor, and was speaking quite unaffectedly; good-naturedly, and selfishly. +Had you talked to him for a week, you could not have made him understand the +scorn and loathing with which the Colonel regarded him. Here was a young fellow +as keen as the oldest curmudgeon; a lad with scarce a beard to his chin, that +would pursue his bond as rigidly as Shylock. “If he is like this at +twenty, what will he be at fifty?” groaned the Colonel. “I’d +rather Clive were dead than have him such a heartless woriding as this.” +And yet the young man was not ungenerous, not untruth-telling, not +unserviceable. He thought his life was good enough. It was as good as that of +other folks he lived with. You don’t suppose he had any misgivings, +provided he was in the City early enough in the morning; or slept badly, unless +he indulged too freely over-night; or twinges of conscience that his life was +misspent? He thought his life a most lucky and reputable one. He had a share in +a good business, and felt that he could increase it. Some day he would marry a +good match, with a good fortune; meanwhile he could take his pleasure +decorously, and sow his wild oats as some of the young Londoners sow them, not +broadcast after the fashion of careless scatter-brained youth, but trimly and +neatly, in quiet places, where the crop can come up unobserved, and be taken in +without bustle or scandal. Barnes Newcome never missed going to church, or +dressing for dinner. He never kept a tradesman waiting for his money. He never +drank too much, except when other fellows did, and in good company. He never +was late for business, or huddled over his toilet, however brief had been his +sleep, or severe his headache. In a word, he was as scrupulously whited as any +sepulchre in the whole bills of mortality. +</p> + +<p> +Whilst young Barnes and his uncle were thus holding parley, a slim gentleman of +bland aspect, with a roomy forehead, or what his female admirers called +“a noble brow,” and a neat white neckcloth tied with clerical +skill, was surveying Colonel Newcome through his shining spectacles, and +waiting for an opportunity to address him. The Colonel remarked the eagerness +with which the gentleman in black regarded him, and asked Mr. Barnes who was +the padre? Mr. Barnes turned his eyeglass towards the spectacles, and said +“he didn’t know any more than the dead; he didn’t know two +people in the room.” The spectacles nevertheless made the eyeglass a bow, +of which the latter took no sort of cognisance. The spectacles advanced; Mr. +Newcome fell back with a peevish exclamation of “Confound the fellow, +what is he coming to speak to me for?” He did not choose to be addressed +by all sorts of persons in all houses. +</p> + +<p> +But he of the spectacles, with an expression of delight in his pale blue eyes, +and smiles dimpling his countenance, pressed onwards with outstretched hands, +and it was towards the Colonel he turned these smiles and friendly salutations. +“Did I hear aright, sir, from Mrs. Miles,” he said, “and have +I the honour of speaking to Colonel Newcome?” +</p> + +<p> +“The same, sir,” says the Colonel; at which the other, tearing off +a glove of lavender-coloured kid, uttered the words, “Charles +Honeyman,” and seized the hand of his brother-in-law. “My poor +sister’s husband,” he continued; “my own benefactor; +Clive’s father. How strange are these meetings in the mighty world! How I +rejoice to see you, and know you!” +</p> + +<p> +“You are Charles, are you?” cries the other. “I am very glad, +indeed, to shake you by the hand, Honeyman. Clive and I should have beat up +your quarters to-day, but we were busy until dinnertime. You put me in mind of +poor Emma, Charles,” he added, sadly. Emma had not been a good wife to +him; a flighty silly little woman, who had caused him when alive many a night +of pain and day of anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +“Poor, poor Emma!” exclaimed the ecclesiastic, casting his eyes +towards the chandelier, and passing a white cambric pocket-handkerchief +gracefully before them. No man in London understood the ring business or the +pocket-handkerchief business better, or smothered his emotion more beautifully. +“In the gayest moments, in the giddiest throng of fashion, the thoughts +of the past will rise; the departed will be among us still. But this is not the +strain wherewith to greet the friend newly arrived on our shores. How it +rejoices me to behold you in old England! How you must have joyed to see +Clive!” +</p> + +<p> +“D—— the humbug,” muttered Barnes, who knew him +perfectly well. “The fellow is always in the pulpit.” +</p> + +<p> +The incumbent of Lady Whittlesea’s chapel smiled and bowed to him. +“You do not recognise me, sir; I have had the honour of seeing you in +your public capacity in the City, when I have called at the bank, the bearer of +my brother-in-law’s generous——” +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind that, Honeyman!” cried the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“But I <i>do</i> mind, my dear Colonel,” answers Mr. Honeyman. +“I should be a very bad man, and a very ungrateful brother, if I +<i>ever</i> forgot your kindness.” +</p> + +<p> +“For God’s sake leave my kindness alone.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’ll never leave it alone as long as he can use it,” +muttered Mr. Barnes in his teeth; and turning to his uncle, “May I take +you home, sir? my cab is at the door, and I shall be glad to drive you.” +But the Colonel said he must talk to his brother-in-law for a while, and Mr. +Barnes, bowing very respectfully to him, slipped under a dowager’s arm in +the doorway, and retreated silently downstairs. +</p> + +<p> +Newcome was now thrown entirely upon the clergyman, and the latter described +the personages present to the stranger, who was curious to know how the party +was composed. Mrs. Newcome herself would have been pleased had she heard +Honeyman’s discourse regarding her guests and herself. Charles Honeyman +so spoke of most persons that you might fancy they were listening over his +shoulder. Such an assemblage of learning, genius, and virtue, might well +delight and astonish a stranger. “That lady in the red turban, with the +handsome daughters, is Lady Budge, wife of the eminent judge of that +name—everybody was astonished that he was not made Chief Justice, and +elevated to the Peerage—the only objection (as I have heard +confidentially) was on the part of a late sovereign, who said he never could +consent to have a peer of the name of Budge. Her ladyship was of humble, I have +heard even menial, station originally, but becomes her present rank, dispenses +the most elegant hospitality at her mansion in Connaught Terrace, and is a +pattern as a wife and a mother. The young man talking to her daughter is a +young barrister, already becoming celebrated as a contributor to some of our +principal reviews.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who is that cavalry officer in a white waistcoat talking to the Jew with +the beard?” asks the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“He, he! That cavalry officer is another literary man of celebrity, and +by profession an attorney. But he has quitted the law for the Muses, and it +would appear that the Nine are never wooed except by gentlemen with +mustachios.” +</p> + +<p> +“Never wrote a verse in my life,” says the Colonel, laughing, and +stroking his own. +</p> + +<p> +“For I remark so many literary gentlemen with that decoration. The Jew +with the beard, as you call him, is Herr von Lungen, the eminent +hautboy-player. The three next gentlemen are Mr. Smee, of the Royal Academy +(who is shaved as you perceive), and Mr. Moyes and Mr. Cropper, who are both +very hairy about the chin. At the piano, singing, accompanied by Mademoiselle +Lebrun, is Signor Mezzocaldo, the great barytone from Rome. Professor Quartz +and Baron Hammerstein, celebrated geologists from Germany, are talking with +their illustrious <i>confrère</i>, Sir Robert Craxton, in the door. Do you see +yonder that stout gentleman with stuff on his shirt? the eloquent Dr. McGuffog, +of Edinburgh, talking to Dr. Ettore, who lately escaped from the Inquisition at +Rome in the disguise of a washerwoman, after undergoing the question several +times, the rack and the thumbscrew. They say that he was to have been burned in +the Grand Square the next morning; but between ourselves, my dear Colonel, I +mistrust these stories of converts and martyrs. Did you ever see a more +jolly-looking man than Professor Schnurr, who was locked up in Spielberg, and +got out up a chimney, and through a window? Had he waited a few months there +are very few windows he could have passed through. That splendid man in the red +fez is Kurbash Pasha—another renegade, I deeply lament to say—a +hairdresser from Marseilles, by name Monsieur Ferehaud, who passed into Egypt, +and laid aside the <i>tongs</i> for a turban. He is talking with Mr. Palmer, +one of our most delightful young poets, and with Desmond O’Tara, son of +the late revered Bishop of Ballinafad, who has lately quitted ours for the +errors of the Church of Rome. Let me whisper to you that your kinswoman is +rather a searcher after what we call here <i>notabilities</i>. I heard talk of +one I knew in better days—of one who was the comrade of my youth, and the +delight of Oxford—poor Pidge of Brasenose, who got the Newdigate in my +third year, and who, under his present name of Father Bartolo, was to have been +here in his capuchin dress, with a beard and bare feet; but I presume he could +not get permission from his Superior. That is Mr. Huff, the political +economist, talking with Mr. Macduff, the Member for Glenlivat. That is the +coroner for Middlesex conversing with the great surgeon Sir Cutler Sharp, and +that pretty laughing girl talking with them is no other than the celebrated +Miss Pinnnifer, whose novel of Ralph the Resurrectionist created such a +sensation after it was abused in the <i>Trimestrial Review</i>. It was a little +bold certainly—I just looked at it at my club—after hours devoted +to parish duty a clergyman is sometimes allowed, you know, <i>desipere in +loco</i>—there are descriptions in it certainly startling—ideas +about marriage not exactly orthodox; but the poor child wrote the book actually +in the nursery, and all England was ringing with it before Dr. Pinnifer, her +father, knew who was the author. That is the Doctor asleep in the corner by +Miss Rudge, the American authoress, who I dare say is explaining to him the +difference between the two Governments. My dear Mrs. Newcome, I am giving my +brother-in-law a little sketch of some of the celebrities who are crowding your +salon to-night. What a delightful evening you have given us!” +</p> + +<p> +“I try to do my best, Colonel Newcome,” said the lady of the house. +“I hope many a night we may see you here; and, as I said this morning, +Clive, when he is of an age to appreciate this kind of entertainment. Fashion I +do not worship. You may meet that amongst other branches of our family; but +genius and talent I do reverence. And if I can be the means—the +<i>humble</i> means—to bring men of genius together—mind to +associate with mind—men of all nations to mingle in <i>friendly +unison</i>—I shall not have lived <i>altogether</i> in vain. They call us +women of the world frivolous, Colonel Newcome. So some may be; I do not say +there are not in our own family persons who worship mere worldly rank, and +think but of fashion and gaiety; but such, I trust, will never be the objects +in life of me and my children. We are but merchants; we seek to be <i>no +more</i>. If I can look around me and see as I do”—(she waves her +fan round, and points to the illustrations scintillating round the +room)—“and see as I do now—a Poski, whose name is ever +connected with Polish history—an Ettore, who has exchanged a tonsure and +a rack for our own free country—a Hammerstein, and a Quartz, a Miss +Rudge, our Transatlantic sister (who I trust will not mention <i>this</i> +modest salon in her forthcoming work on Europe), and Miss Pinnifer, whose +genius I acknowledge, though I deplore her opinions; if I can gather together +travellers, poets, and painters, princes and distinguished soldiers from the +East, and clergymen remarkable for their eloquence, my humble aim is attained, +and Maria Newcome is not altogether useless in her generation. Will you take a +little refreshment? Allow <i>your sister</i> to go down to the dining-room +supported by your <i>gallant</i> arm.” She looked round to the admiring +congregation, whereof Honeyman, as it were acted as clerk, and flirting her +fan, and flinging up her little head. Consummate Virtue walked down on the arm +of the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +The refreshment was rather meagre. The foreign artists generally dashed +downstairs, and absorbed all the ices, creams, etc. To those coming late there +were chicken-bones, table-cloths puddled with melted ice, glasses hazy with +sherry, and broken bits of bread. The Colonel said he never supped; and he and +Honeyman walked away together, the former to bed, the latter, I am sorry to +say, to his club; for he was a dainty feeder, and loved lobster, and talk late +at night, and a comfortable little glass of something wherewith to conclude the +day. +</p> + +<p> +He agreed to come to breakfast with the Colonel, who named eight or nine for +the meal. Nine Mr. Honeyman agreed to with a sigh. The incumbent of Lady +Whittlesea’s chapel seldom rose before eleven. For, to tell the truth, no +French abbot of Louis XV. was more lazy and luxurious, and effeminate, than our +polite bachelor preacher. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +One of Colonel Newcome’s fellow-passengers from India was Mr. James +Binnie of the Civil Service, a jolly young bachelor of two- or three-and-forty, +who, having spent half of his past life in Bengal, was bent upon enjoying the +remainder in Britain or in Europe, if a residence at home should prove +agreeable to him. The Nabob of books and tradition is a personage no longer to +be found among us. He is neither as wealthy nor as wicked as the jaundiced +monster of romances and comedies, who purchases the estates of broken-down +English gentlemen, with rupees tortured out of bleeding rajahs, who smokes a +hookah in public, and in private carries about a guilty conscience, diamonds of +untold value, and a diseased liver; who has a vulgar wife, with a retinue of +black servants whom she maltreats, and a gentle son and daughter with good +impulses and an imperfect education, desirous to amend their own and their +parents’ lives, and thoroughly ashamed of the follies of the old people. +If you go to the house of an Indian gentleman now, he does not say, +“Bring more curricles,” like the famous Nabob of Stanstead Park. He +goes to Leadenhall Street in an omnibus, and walks back from the City for +exercise. I have known some who have had maid-servants to wait on them at +dinner. I have met scores who look as florid and rosy as any British squire who +has never left his paternal beef and acres. They do not wear nankeen jackets in +summer. Their livers are not out of order any more; and as for hookahs, I dare +swear there are not two now kept alight within the bills of mortality; and that +retired Indians would as soon think of smoking them, as their wives would of +burning themselves on their husbands’ bodies at the cemetery, Kensal +Green, near to the Tyburnian quarter of the city which the Indian world at +present inhabits. It used to be Baker Street and Harley Street; it used to be +Portland Place, and in more early days Bedford Square, where the Indian +magnates flourished; districts which have fallen from their pristine state of +splendour now, even as Agra, and Benares, and Lucknow, and Tippoo +Sultan’s city are fallen. +</p> + +<p> +After two-and-twenty years’ absence from London, Mr. Binnie returned to +it on the top of the Gosport coach with a hatbox and a little portmanteau, a +pink fresh-shaven face, a perfect appetite, a suit of clothes like everybody +else’s, and not the shadow of a black servant. He called a cab at the +White Horse Cellar, and drove to Nerot’s Hotel, Clifford Street; and he +gave the cabman eightpence, making the fellow, who grumbled, understand that +Clifford Street was not two hundred yards from Bond Street, and that he was +paid at the rate of five shillings and fourpence per mile—calculating the +mile at only sixteen hundred yards. He asked the waiter at what time Colonel +Newcome had ordered dinner, and finding there was an hour on his hands before +the meal, walked out to examine the neighbourhood for a lodging where he could +live more quietly than in a hotel. He called it a hotel. Mr. Binnie was a North +Briton, his father having been a Writer to the Signet, in Edinburgh, who had +procured his son a writership in return for electioneering services done to an +East Indian Director. Binnie had his retiring pension, and, besides, had saved +half his allowances ever since he had been in India. He was a man of great +reading, no small ability, considerable accomplishment, excellent good sense +and good humour. The ostentatious said he was a screw; but he gave away more +money than far more extravagant people: he was a disciple of David Hume (whom +he admired more than any other mortal), and the serious denounced him as a man +of dangerous principles, though there were, among the serious, men much more +dangerous than James Binnie. +</p> + +<p> +On returning to his hotel, Colonel Newcome found this worthy gentleman +installed in his room in the best arm-chair sleeping cosily; the evening paper +laid decently over his plump waistcoat, and his little legs placed on an +opposite chair. Mr. Binnie woke up briskly when the Colonel entered. “It +is you, you gad-about, is it?” cried the civilian. “How has the +beau monde of London treated the Indian Adonis? Have you made a sensation, +Newcome? Gad, Tom, I remember you a buck of bucks when that coat first came out +to Calcutta—just a Barrackpore Brummell—in Lord Minto’s +reign, was it, or when Lord Hastings was satrap over us?” +</p> + +<p> +“A man must have one good coat,” says the Colonel; “I +don’t profess to be a dandy; but get a coat from a good tailor, and then +have done with it.” He still thought his garment was as handsome as need +be. +</p> + +<p> +“Done with it—ye’re never done with it!” cries the +civilian. +</p> + +<p> +“An old coat is an old friend, old Binnie. I don’t want to be rid +of one or the other. How long did you and my boy sit up +together—isn’t he a fine lad, Binnie? I expect you are going to put +him down for something handsome in your will.” +</p> + +<p> +“See what it is to have a real friend now, Colonel! I sate up for ye, or +let us say more correctly, I waited for you—because I knew you would want +to talk about that scapegrace of yours. And if I had gone to bed, I should have +had you walking up to No. 28, and waking me out of my first rosy slumber. Well, +now confess; avoid not. Haven’t ye fallen in love with some young beauty +on the very first night of your arrival in your sister’s salong, and +selected a mother-in-law for young Scapegrace?” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t he a fine fellow, James?” says the Colonel, lighting a +cheroot as he sits on the table. Was it joy, or the bedroom candle with which +he lighted his cigar, which illuminated his honest features so, and made them +so to shine? +</p> + +<p> +“I have been occupied, sir, in taking the lad’s moral measurement: +and have pumped him as successfully as ever I cross-examined a rogue in my +court. I place his qualities thus:—Love of approbation sixteen. +Benevolence fourteen. Combativeness fourteen. Adhesiveness two. Amativeness is +not yet of course fully developed, but I expect will be prodeegiously strong. +The imaginative and reflective organs are very large—those, of +calculation weak. He may make a poet or a painter, or you may make a sojer of +him, though worse men than him’s good enough for that—but a bad +merchant, a lazy lawyer, and a miserable mathematician. He has wit and +conscientiousness, so ye mustn’t think of making a clergyman of +him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Binnie!” says the Colonel gravely, “you are always sneering +at the cloth.” +</p> + +<p> +“When I think that, but for my appointment to India, I should have been a +luminary of the faith and a pillar of the church! grappling with the ghostly +enemy in the pulpit, and giving out the psawm. Eh, sir, what a loss Scottish +Divinity has had in James Binnie!” cries the little civilian with his +most comical face. “But that is not the question. My opinion, Colonel, +is, that young Scapegrace will give you a deal of trouble; or would, only you +are so absurdly proud of him that you think everything he does is perfaction. +He’ll spend your money for you: he’ll do as little work as need be. +He’ll get into scrapes with the sax. He’s almost as simple as his +father, and that is to say that any rogue will cheat him; and he seems to me to +have got your obstinate habit of telling the truth, Colonel, which may prevet +his getting on in the world, but on the other hand will keep him from going +very wrong. So that, though there is every fear for him, there’s some +hope and some consolation.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think of his Latin and Greek?” asks the Colonel. +Before going out to his party, Newcome had laid a deep scheme with Binnie, and +it had been agreed that the latter should examine the young fellow in his +humanities. +</p> + +<p> +“Wall,” cries the Scot, “I find that the lad knows as much +about Greek and Latin as I knew myself when I was eighteen years of age.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Binnie, is it possible? You, the best scholar in all +India!” +</p> + +<p> +“And which amounted to exactly nothing. He has acquired in five years, +and by the admirable seestem purshood at your public schools, just about as +much knowledge of the ancient languages as he could get by three months’ +application at home. Mind ye, I don’t say he would apply; it is most +probable he would do no such thing. But at the cost of—how much? two +hundred pounds annually—for five years—he has acquired about +five-and-twenty guineas’ worth of classical leeterature—enough, I +dare say, to enable him to quote Horace respectably through life, and what more +do ye want from a young man of his expectations? I think I should send him into +the army, that’s the best place for him—there’s the least to +do, and the handsomest clothes to wear. <i>Acce segnum!</i>” says the +little wag, daintily taking up the tail of his friend’s coat. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s never any knowing whether you are in jest or in earnest, +Binnie,” the puzzled Colonel said. +</p> + +<p> +“How should you know, when I don’t know myself?” answered the +Scotchman. “In earnest now, Tom Newcome, I think your boy is as fine a +lad as I ever set eyes on. He seems to have intelligence and good temper. He +carries his letter of recommendation in his countenance; and with the +honesty—and the rupees, mind ye—which he inherits from his father, +the deuce is in it if he can’t make his way. What time’s the +breakfast? Eh, but it was a comfort this morning not to hear the holystoning on +the deck. We ought to go into lodgings, and not fling our money out of the +window of this hotel. We must make the young chap take us about and show us the +town in the morning, Tom. I had but three days of it five-and-twenty years ago, +and I propose to reshoome my observations to-morrow after breakfast. +We’ll just go on deck and see how’s her head before we turn in, eh, +Colonel?” and with this the jolly gentleman nodded over his candle to his +friend, and trotted off to bed. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel and his friend were light sleepers and early risers, like most men +that come from the country where they had both been so long sojourning, and +were awake and dressed long before the London waiters had thought of quitting +their beds. The housemaid was the only being stirring in the morning when +little Mr. Binnie blundered over her pail as she was washing the deck. Early as +he was, his fellow-traveller had preceded him. Binnie found the Colonel in his +sitting-room arrayed in what are called in Scotland his stocking-feet, already +puffing the cigar, which in truth was seldom out of his mouth at any hour of +the day. +</p> + +<p> +He had a couple of bedrooms adjacent to this sitting-room, and when Binnie, as +brisk and rosy about the gills as chanticleer, broke out in a morning +salutation, “Hush,” says the Colonel, putting a long finger up to +his mouth, and advancing towards him as noiselessly as a ghost. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s in the wind now?” asks the little Scot; “and +what for have ye not got your shoes on?” +</p> + +<p> +“Clive’s asleep,” says the Colonel, with a countenance full +of extreme anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +“The darling boy slumbers, does he?” said the wag; +“mayn’t I just step in and look at his beautiful countenance whilst +he’s asleep, Colonel?” +</p> + +<p> +“You may if you take off those confounded creaking shoes,” the +other answered, quite gravely; and Binnie turned away to hide his jolly round +face, which was screwed up with laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“Have ye been breathing a prayer over your rosy infant’s slumbers, +Tom?” asks Mr. Binnie. +</p> + +<p> +“And if I have, James Binnie,” the Colonel said gravely, and his +sallow face blushing somewhat, “if I have, I hope I’ve done no +harm. The last time I saw him asleep was nine years ago, a sickly little +pale-faced boy in his little cot, and now, sir, that I see him again, strong +and handsome, and all that a fond father can wish to see a boy, I should be an +ungrateful villain, James, if I didn’t—if I didn’t do what +you said just now, and thank God Almighty for restoring him to me.” +</p> + +<p> +Binnie did not laugh any more. “By George, Tom Newcome,” said he, +“you’re just one of the saints of the earth. If all men were like +you there’d be an end of both our trades; there would be no fighting and +no soldiering, no rogues and no magistrates to catch them.” The Colonel +wondered at his friend’s enthusiasm, who was not used to be +complimentary; indeed what so usual with him as that simple act of gratitude +and devotion about which his comrade spoke to him? To ask a blessing for his +boy was as natural to him as to wake with the sunrise, or to go to rest when +the day was over. His first and his last thought was always the child. +</p> + +<p> +The two gentlemen were home in time enough to find Clive dressed, and his uncle +arrived for breakfast. The Colonel said a grace over that meal: the life was +begun which he had longed and prayed for, and the son smiling before his eyes +who had been in his thoughts for so many fond years. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0009"></a> +CHAPTER IX.<br> +Miss Honeyman’s</h2> + +<p> +In Steyne Gardens, Brighton, the lodging-houses are among the most frequented +in that city of lodging-houses. These mansions have bow-windows in front, +bulging out with gentle prominences, and ornamented with neat verandahs, from +which you can behold the tide of humankind as it flows up and down the Steyne, +and that blue ocean over which Britannia is said to rule, stretching brightly +away eastward and westward. The chain-pier, as every body knows, runs +intrepidly into the sea, which sometimes, in fine weather, bathes its feet with +laughing wavelets, and anon, on stormy days, dashes over its sides with roaring +foam. Here, for the sum of twopence, you can go out to sea and pace this vast +deck without need of a steward with a basin. You can watch the sun setting in +splendour over Worthing, or illuminating with its rising glories the ups and +downs of Rottingdean. You see the citizen with his family inveigled into the +shallops of the mercenary native mariner, and fancy that the motion cannot be +pleasant; and how the hirer of the boat, <i>otium et oppidi laudat rura +sui</i>, haply sighs for ease, and prefers Richmond or Hampstead. You behold a +hundred bathing-machines put to sea; and your naughty fancy depicts the +beauties splashing under their white awnings. Along the rippled sands (stay, +are they rippled sands or shingly beach?) the prawn-boy seeks the delicious +material of your breakfast. Breakfast-meal in London almost unknown, greedily +devoured in Brighton! In yon vessels now nearing the shore the sleepless +mariner has ventured forth to seize the delicate whiting, the greedy and +foolish mackerel, and the homely sole. Hark to the twanging horn! it is the +early coach going out to London. Your eye follows it, and rests on the +pinnacles built by the beloved G<small>EORGE</small>. See the worn-out London +roué pacing the pier, inhaling the sea air, and casting furtive glances under +the bonnets of the pretty girls who trot here before lessons! Mark the bilious +lawyer, escaped for a day from Pump Court, and sniffing the fresh breezes +before he goes back to breakfast and a bag full of briefs at the Albion! See +that pretty string of prattling schoolgirls, from the chubby-cheeked, +flaxen-headed little maiden just toddling by the side of the second teacher, to +the arch damsel of fifteen, giggling and conscious of her beauty, whom Miss +Griffin, the stern head-governess, awfully reproves! See Tomkins with a +telescope and marine jacket; young Nathan and young Abrams, already bedizened +in jewellery, and rivalling the sun in oriental splendour; yonder poor invalid +crawling along in her chair; yonder jolly fat lady examining the Brighton +pebbles (I actually once saw a lady buy one), and her children wondering at the +sticking-plaister portraits with gold hair, and gold stocks, and prodigious +high-heeled boots, miracles of art, and cheap at seven-and-sixpence! It is the +fashion to run down George IV., but what myriads of Londoners ought to thank +him for inventing Brighton! One of the best of physicians our city has ever +known, is kind, cheerful, merry Doctor Brighton. Hail, thou purveyor of shrimps +and honest prescriber of Southdown mutton! There is no mutton so good as +Brighton mutton; no flys so pleasant as Brighton flys; nor any cliff so +pleasant to ride on; no shops so beautiful to look at as the Brighton gimcrack +shops, and the fruit shops, and the market. I fancy myself in Mrs. +Honeyman’s lodgings in Steyne Gardens, and in enjoyment of all these +things. +</p> + +<p> +If the gracious reader has had losses in life, losses not so bad as to cause +absolute want, or inflict upon him or her the bodily injury of starvation, let +him confess that the evils of this poverty are by no means so great as his +timorous fancy depicted. Say your money has been invested in West Diddlesex +bonds, or other luckless speculations—the news of the smash comes; you +pay your outlying bills with the balance at the banker’s; you assemble +your family and make them a fine speech; the wife of your bosom goes round and +embraces the sons and daughters <i>seriatim;</i> nestling in your own waistcoat +finally, in possession of which, she says (with tender tears and fond +quotations from Holy Writ, God bless her!), and of the darlings round about, +lies all <i>her</i> worldly treasure: the weeping servants are dismissed, their +wages paid in full, and with a present of prayer- and hymn-books from their +mistress; your elegant house in Harley Street is to let, and you subside into +lodgings in Pentonville, or Kensington, or Brompton. How unlike the mansion +where you paid taxes and distributed elegant hospitality for so many years! +</p> + +<p> +You subside into lodgings, I say, and you find yourself very tolerably +comfortable. I am not sure that in her heart your wife is not happier than in +what she calls her happy days. She will be somebody hereafter: she was nobody +in Harley Street: that is, everybody else in her visiting-book, take the names +all round, was as good as she. They had the very same entrees, plated ware, men +to wait, etc., at all the houses where you visited in the street. Your +candlesticks might be handsomer (and indeed they had a very fine effect upon +the dinner-table), but then Mr. Jones’s silver (or electro-plated) dishes +were much finer. You had more carriages at your door on the evening of your +delightful soirées than Mrs. Brown (there is no phrase more elegant, and to my +taste, than that in which people are described as “seeing a great deal of +carriage company”); but yet Mrs. Brown, from the circumstance of her +being a baronet’s niece, took precedence of your dear wife at most +tables. Hence the latter charming woman’s scorn at the British baronetcy, +and her many jokes at the order. In a word, and in the height of your social +prosperity, there was always a lurking dissatisfaction, and a something bitter, +in the midst of the fountain of delights at which you were permitted to drink. +</p> + +<p> +There is no good (unless your taste is that way) in living in a society where +you are merely the equal of everybody else. Many people give themselves extreme +pains to frequent company where all around them are their superiors, and where, +do what you will, you must be subject to continual mortification—(as, for +instance, when Marchioness X. forgets you, and you can’t help thinking +that she cuts you on purpose; when Duchess Z. passes by in her diamonds, etc.). +The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors. Be the cock of your +village; the queen of your coterie; and, besides very great persons, the people +whom Fate has specially endowed with this kindly consolation are those who have +seen what are called better days—those who have had losses. I am like +Cæsar, and of a noble mind: if I cannot be first in Piccadilly, let me try +Hatton Garden, and see whether I cannot lead the ton there. If I cannot take +the lead at White’s or the Travellers’, let me be president of the +Jolly Bandboys at the Bag of Nails, and blackball everybody who does not pay me +honour. If my darling Bessy cannot go out of a drawing-room until a +baronet’s niece (ha! ha! a baronet’s niece, forsooth!) has walked +before her, let us frequent company where we shall be the first; and how can we +be the first unless we select our inferiors for our associates? This kind of +pleasure is to be had by almost everybody, and at scarce any cost. With a +shilling’s-worth of tea and muffins you can get as much adulation and +respect as many people cannot purchase with a thousand pounds’ worth of +plate and profusion, hired footmen, turning their houses topsy-turvy, and +suppers from Gunter’s. Adulation!—why, the people who come to you +give as good parties as you do. Respect!—the very menials, who wait +behind your supper-table, waited at a duke’s yesterday, and actually +patronise you! O you silly spendthrift! you can buy flattery for twopence, and +you spend ever so much money in entertaining your equals and betters, and +nobody admires you! +</p> + +<p> +Now Aunt Honeyman was a woman of a thousand virtues; cheerful, frugal, honest, +laborious, charitable, good-humoured, truth-telling, devoted to her family, +capable of any sacrifice for those she loved; and when she came to have losses +of money, Fortune straightway compensated her by many kindnesses which no +income can supply. The good old lady admired the word gentlewoman of all others +in the English vocabulary, and made all around her feel that such was her rank. +Her mother’s father was a naval captain; her father had taken pupils, got +a living, sent his son to college, dined with the squire, published his volume +of sermons, was liked in his parish, where Miss Honeyman kept house for him, +was respected for his kindness and famous for his port wine; and so died, +leaving about two hundred pounds a year to his two children, nothing to Clive +Newcome’s mother who had displeased him by her first marriage (an +elopement with Ensign Casey) and subsequent light courses. Charles Honeyman +spent his money elegantly in wine-parties at Oxford, and afterwards in foreign +travel;—spent his money and as much of Miss Honeyman’s as that +worthy soul would give him. She was a woman of spirit and resolution. She +brought her furniture to Brighton (believing that the whole place still fondly +remembered her grandfather, Captain Nokes, who had resided there and his +gallantry in Lord Rodney’s action with the Count de Grasse), took a +house, and let the upper floors to lodgers. +</p> + +<p> +The little brisk old lady brought a maid-servant out of the country with her, +who was daughter to her father’s clerk, and had learned her letters and +worked her first sampler under Miss Honeyman’s own eye, whom she adored +all through her life. No Indian begum rolling in wealth, no countess mistress +of castles and townhouses, ever had such a faithful toady as Hannah Hicks was +to her mistress. Under Hannah was a young lady from the workhouse, who called +Hannah “Mrs. Hicks, mum,” and who bowed in awe as much before that +domestic as Hannah did before Miss Honeyman. At five o’clock in summer, +at seven in winter (for Miss Honeyman, a good economist, was chary of +candlelight), Hannah woke up little Sally, and these three women rose. I leave +you to imagine what a row there was in the establishment if Sally appeared with +flowers under her bonnet, gave signs of levity or insubordination, prolonged +her absence when sent forth for the beer, or was discovered in flirtation with +the baker’s boy or the grocer’s young man. Sally was frequently +renewed. Miss Honeyman called all her young persons Sally; and a great number +of Sallies were consumed in her house. The qualities of the Sally for the +time-being formed a constant and delightful subject of conversation between +Hannah and her mistress. The few friends who visited Miss Honeyman in her +back-parlour had <i>their</i> Sallies, in discussing whose peculiarities of +disposition these good ladies passed the hours agreeably over their tea. +</p> + +<p> +Many persons who let lodgings in Brighton have been servants +themselves—are retired housekeepers, tradesfolk, and the like. With these +surrounding individuals Hannah treated on a footing of equality, bringing to +her mistress accounts of their various goings on; “how No. 6 was let; how +No. 9 had not paid his rent again; how the first floor at 27 had game almost +every day, and made-dishes from Mutton’s; how the family who had taken +Mrs. Bugsby’s had left as usual after the very first night, the poor +little infant blistered all over with bites on its little dear face; how the +Miss Learys was going on shameful with the two young men, actially in their +setting-room, mum, where one of them offered Miss Laura Leary a cigar; how Mrs. +Cribb <i>still</i> went cuttin’ pounds and pounds of meat off the +lodgers’ jints, emptying their tea-caddies, actially reading their +letters. Sally had been told so by Polly the Cribb’s maid, who was kep, +how that poor child was kep, hearing language perfectly hawful!” These +tales and anecdotes, not altogether redounding to their neighbours’ +credit, Hannah copiously collected and brought to her mistress’s +tea-table, or served at her frugal little supper when Miss Honeyman, the +labours of the day over, partook of that cheerful meal. I need not say that +such horrors as occurred at Mrs. Bugsby’s never befell in Mrs. +Honeyman’s establishment. Every room was fiercely swept and sprinkled, +and watched by cunning eyes which nothing could escape; curtains were taken +down, mattresses explored, every bone in bed dislocated and washed as soon as a +lodger took his departure. And as for cribbing meat or sugar, Sally might +occasionally abstract a lump or two, or pop a veal-cutlet into her mouth while +bringing the dishes downstairs:—Sallies would—giddy creatures bred +in workhouses; but Hannah might be entrusted with untold gold and uncorked +brandy; and Miss Honeyman would as soon think of cutting a slice off +Hannah’s nose and devouring it, as of poaching on her lodgers’ +mutton. The best mutton-broth, the best veal-cutlets, the best necks of mutton +and French beans, the best fried fish and plumpest partridges, in all Brighton, +were to be had at Miss Honeyman’s—and for her favourites the best +Indian curry and rice, coming from a distinguished relative, at present an +officer in Bengal. But very few were admitted to this mark of Miss +Honeyman’s confidence. If a family did not go to church they were not in +favour: if they went to a Dissenting meeting she had no opinion of them at all. +Once there came to her house a quiet Staffordshire family who ate no meat on +Fridays, and whom Miss Honeyman pitied as belonging to the Romish superstition; +but when they were visited by two corpulent gentlemen in black, one of whom +wore a purple underwaistcoat, before whom the Staffordshire lady absolutely +sank down on her knees as he went into the drawing-room,—Miss Honeyman +sternly gave warning to these idolaters. She would have no Jesuits in her +premises. She showed Hannah the picture in Howell’s Medulla of the +martyrs burning at Smithfield: who said, “Lord bless you, mum,” and +hoped it was a long time ago. She called on the curate: and many and many a +time, for years after, pointed out to her friends, and sometimes to her +lodgers, the spot on the carpet where the poor benighted creature had knelt +down. So she went on, respected by all her friends, by all her tradesmen, by +herself not a little, talking of her previous “misfortunes” with +amusing equanimity; as if her father’s parsonage-house had been a palace +of splendour, and the one-horse chaise (with the lamps for evenings) from which +she had descended, a noble equipage. “But I know it is for the best, +Clive,” she would say to her nephew in describing those grandeurs, +“and, thank heaven, can be resigned in that station in life to which it +has pleased God to call me.” +</p> + +<p> +The good lady was called the Duchess by her fellow-tradesfolk in the square in +which she lived. (I don’t know what would have come to her had she been +told she was a tradeswoman!) Her butchers, bakers, and market-people paid her +as much respect as though she had been a grandee’s housekeeper out of +Kemp Town. Knowing her station, she yet was kind to those inferior beings. She +held affable conversations with them, she patronised Mr. Rogers, who was said +to be worth a hundred thousand—two-hundred-thousand pounds (or lbs. was +it?), and who said, “Law bless the old Duchess, she do make as much of a +pound of veal cutlet as some would of a score of bullocks, but you see +she’s a lady born and a lady bred: she’d die before she’d owe +a farden, and she’s seen better days, you know.” She went to see +the grocer’s wife on an interesting occasion, and won the heart of the +family by tasting their candle. Her fishmonger (it was fine to hear her talk of +“my fishmonger”) would sell her a whiting as respectfully as if she +had called for a dozen turbots and lobsters. It was believed by those good +folks that her father had been a Bishop at the very least; and the better days +which she had known were supposed to signify some almost unearthly prosperity. +“I have always found, Hannah,” the simple soul would say, +“that people know their place, or can be very very easily made to find it +if they lose it; and if a gentlewoman does not forget herself, her inferiors +will not forget that she is a gentlewoman.” “No indeed, mum, and +I’m sure they would do no such thing, mum,” says Hannah, who +carries away the teapot for her own breakfast (to be transmitted to Sally for +her subsequent refection), whilst her mistress washes her cup and saucer, as +her mother had washed her own china many scores of years ago. +</p> + +<p> +If some of the surrounding lodging-house keepers, as I have no doubt they did, +disliked the little Duchess for the airs which she gave herself, as they +averred; they must have envied her too her superior prosperity, for there was +scarcely ever a card in her window, whilst those ensigns in her +neighbours’ houses would remain exposed to the flies and the weather, and +disregarded by passers-by for months together. She had many regular customers, +or what should be rather called constant friends. Deaf old Mr. Cricklade came +every winter for fourteen years, and stopped until the hunting was over; an +invaluable man, giving little trouble, passing all day on horseback, and all +night over his rubber at the club. The Misses Barkham, Barkhambury, Tunbridge +Wells, whose father had been at college with Mr. Honeyman, came regularly in +June for sea air, letting Barkhambury for the summer season. Then, for many +years, she had her nephew, as we have seen; and kind recommendations from the +clergymen of Brighton, and a constant friend in the celebrated Dr. Goodenough +of London, who had been her father’s private pupil, and of his college +afterwards, who sent his patients from time to time down to her, and his +fellow-physician, Dr. H——, who on his part would never take any fee +from Miss Honeyman, except a packet of India curry-powder, a ham cured as she +only knew how to cure them, and once a year, or so, a dish of her tea. +</p> + +<p> +“Was there ever such luck as that confounded old Duchess’s?” +says Mr. Gawler, coal-merchant and lodging-house keeper, next door but two, +whose apartments were more odious in some respects than Mrs. Bugsby’s +own. “Was there ever such devil’s own luck, Mrs. G.? It’s +only a fortnight ago as I read in the <i>Sussex Advertiser</i> the death of +Miss Barkham, of Barkhambury, Tunbridge Wells, and thinks I, there’s a +spoke in your wheel, you stuck-up little old Duchess, with your cussed airs and +impudence. And she ain’t put her card up three days; and look yere, +yere’s two carriages, two maids, three children, one of them wrapped up +in a Hinjar shawl—man hout a livery,—looks like a foring cove I +think—lady in satin pelisse, and of course they go to the Duchess, be +hanged to her! Of course it’s our luck, nothing ever was like our luck. +I’m blowed if I don’t put a pistol to my ’ead, and end it, +Mrs. G. There they go in—three, four, six, seven on ’em, and the +man. That’s the precious child’s physic I suppose he’s +a-carryin’ in the basket. Just look at the luggage. I say! There’s +a bloody hand on the first carriage. It’s a baronet, is it? I ’ope +your ladyship’s very well; and I ’ope Sir John will soon be down +yere to join his family.” Mr. Gawler makes sarcastic bows over the card +in his bow-window whilst making this speech. The little Gawlers rush on to the +drawing-room verandah themselves to examine the new arrivals. +</p> + +<p> +“This is Mrs. Honeyman’s?” asks the gentleman designated by +Mr. Gawler as “the foring cove,” and hands in a card on which the +words, “Miss Honeyman, 110, Steyne Gardens. J. Goodenough,” are +written in that celebrated physician’s handwriting. “We want five +bet-rooms, six bets, two or dree sitting-rooms. Have you got dese?” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you speak to my mistress?” says Hannah. And if it is a fact +that Miss Honeyman does happen to be in the front parlour looking at the +carriages, what harm is there in the circumstance, pray? Is not Gawler looking, +and the people next door? Are not half a dozen little boys already gathered in +the street (as if they started up out of the trap-doors for the coals), and the +nursery maids in the stunted little garden, are not they looking through the +bars of the square? “Please to speak to mistress,” says Hannah, +opening the parlour-door, and with a curtsey, “A gentleman about the +apartments, mum.” +</p> + +<p> +“Five bet-rooms,” says the man, entering. “Six bets, two or +dree sitting-rooms? We gome from Dr. Goodenough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are the apartments for you, sir?” says the little Duchess, looking +up at the large gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +“For my lady,” answers the man. +</p> + +<p> +“Had you not better take off your hat?” asks the Duchess, pointing +out of one of her little mittens to “the foring cove’s” +beaver, which he has neglected to remove. +</p> + +<p> +The man grins, and takes off the hat. “I beck your bardon, +ma’am,” says he. “Have you fife bet-rooms?” etc. The +doctor has cured the German of an illness, as well as his employers, and +especially recommended Miss Honeyman to Mr. Kuhn. +</p> + +<p> +“I have such a number of apartments. My servant will show them to +you.” And she walks back with great state to her chair by the window, and +resumes her station and work there. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Kuhn reports to his mistress, who descends to inspect the apartments, +accompanied through them by Hannah. The rooms are pronounced to be exceedingly +neat and pleasant, and exactly what are wanted for the family. The baggage is +forthwith ordered to be brought from the carriages. The little invalid wrapped +in his shawl is brought upstairs by the affectionate Mr. Kuhn, who carries him +as gently as if he had been bred all his life to nurse babies. The smiling +Sally (the Sally for the time-being happens to be a very fresh pink-cheeked +pretty little Sally) emerges from the kitchen and introduces the young ladies, +the governess, the maids, to their apartments. The eldest, a slim black-haired +young lass of thirteen, frisks about the rooms, looks at all the pictures, runs +in and out of the verandah, tries the piano, and bursts out laughing at its +wheezy jingle (it had been poor Emma’s piano, bought for her on her +seventeenth birthday, three weeks before she ran away with the ensign; her +music is still in the stand by it: the Rev. Charles Honeyman has warbled sacred +melodies over it, and Miss Honeyman considers it a delightful instrument), +kisses her languid little brother laid on the sofa, and performs a hundred gay +and agile motions suited to her age. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, what a piano! Why, it is as cracked as Miss Quigley’s +voice!” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear!” says mamma. The little languid boy bursts out into a +jolly laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“What funny pictures, mamma! Action with Count de Grasse; the death of +General Wolfe; a portrait of an officer, an old officer in blue, like +grandpapa; Brazen Nose College, Oxford: what a funny name!” +</p> + +<p> +At the idea of Brazen Nose College, another laugh comes from the invalid. +“I suppose they’ve all got <i>brass noses</i> there,” he +says; and explodes at this joke. The poor little laugh ends in a cough, and +mamma’s travelling-basket, which contains everything, produces a bottle +of syrup, labelled “Master A. Newcome. A teaspoonful to be taken when the +cough is troublesome.” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Oh, the delightful sea! the blue, the fresh, the ever +free,’” sings the young lady, with a shake. (I suppose the maritime +song from which she quoted was just written at this time.) “How much +better this is than going home and seeing those horrid factories and chimneys! +I love Doctor Goodenough for sending us here. What a sweet house it is! +Everybody is happy in it, even Miss Quigley is happy, mamma. What nice rooms! +What pretty chintz! What a—oh, what a—comfortable sofa!” and +she falls down on the sofa, which, truth to say, was the Rev. Charles +Honeyman’s luxurious sofa from Oxford, presented to him by young Cibber +Wright of Christchurch, when that gentleman-commoner was eliminated from the +University. +</p> + +<p> +“The person of the house,” mamma says, “hardly comes up to +Dr. Goodenough’s description of her. He says he remembers her a pretty +little woman when her father was his private tutor.” +</p> + +<p> +“She has grown very much since,” says the girl. And an explosion +takes place from the sofa, where the little man is always ready to laugh at any +joke, or anything like a joke, uttered by himself or by any of his family or +friends. As for Doctor Goodenough, he says laughing has saved that boy’s +life. +</p> + +<p> +“She looks quite like a maid,” continues the lady. “She has +hard hands, and she called me mum always. I was quite disappointed in +her.” And she subsides into a novel, with many of which kind of works, +and with other volumes, and with workboxes, and with wonderful inkstands, +portfolios, portable days of the month, scent-bottles, scissor-cases, gilt +miniature easels displaying portraits, and countless gimcracks of travel, the +rapid Kuhn has covered the tables in the twinkling of an eye. +</p> + +<p> +The person supposed to be the landlady enters the room at this juncture, and +the lady rises to receive her. The little wag on the sofa puts his arm round +his sister’s neck, and whispers, “I say, Eth, isn’t she a +pretty girl? I shall write to Doctor Goodenough and tell him how much +she’s grown.” Convulsions follow this sally, to the surprise of +Hannah, who says, “Pooty little dear!—what time will he have his +dinner, mum?” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you, Mrs. Honeyman, at two o’clock,” says the lady +with a bow of her head. “There is a clergyman of your name in London; is +he a relation?” The lady in her turn is astonished, for the tall person +breaks out into a grin, and says, “Law, mum, you’re speakin’ +of Master Charles. He’s in London.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed!—of Master Charles?” +</p> + +<p> +“And you take me for missis, mum. I beg your pardon, mum,” cries +Hannah. The invalid hits his sister in the side with a weak little fist. If +laughter can cure, <i>Salva est res</i>. Doctor Goodenough’s patient is +safe. “Master Charles is missis’s brother, mum. I’ve got no +brother, mum—never had no brother. Only one son, who’s in the +police, mum, thank you. And law bless me, I was going to forget! If you please, +mum, missis says, if you are quite rested, she will pay her duty to you, +mum.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, indeed,” says the lady, rather stiffly; and, taking this for +an acceptance of her mistress’s visit, Hannah retires. +</p> + +<p> +“This Miss Honeyman seems to be a great personage,” says the lady. +“If people let lodgings, why do they give themselves such airs?” +</p> + +<p> +“We never saw Monsieur de Boigne at Boulogne, mamma,” interposes +the girl. +</p> + +<p> +“Monsieur de Boigne, my dear Ethel! Monsieur de Boigne is very well. +But—” here the door opens, and in a large cap bristling with +ribbons, with her best chestnut front, and her best black silk gown, on which +her gold watch shines very splendidly, little Miss Honeyman makes her +appearance, and a dignified curtsey to her lodger. +</p> + +<p> +That lady vouchsafes a very slight inclination of the head indeed, which she +repeats when Miss Honeyman says, “I am glad to hear your ladyship is +pleased with the apartments.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, they will do very well, thank you,” answers the latter +person, gravely. +</p> + +<p> +“And they have such a beautiful view of the sea!” cries Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +“As if all the houses hadn’t a view of the sea, Ethel! The price +has been arranged, I think? My servants will require a comfortable room to dine +in—by themselves, ma’am, if you please. My governess and the +younger children will dine together. My daughter dines with me—and my +little boy’s dinner will be ready at two o’clock precisely, if you +please. It is now near one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Am I to understand——” interposed Miss Honeyman. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! I have no doubt we shall understand each other, ma’am,” +cried Lady Anne Newcome (whose noble presence the acute reader has no doubt ere +this divined and saluted). “Doctor Goodenough has given me a most +satisfactory account of you—more satisfactory perhaps than—than you +are aware of.” Perhaps Lady Anne’s sentence was not going to end in +a very satisfactory way for Miss Honeyman; but, awed by a peculiar look of +resolution in the little lady, her lodger of an hour paused in whatever +offensive remark she might have been about to make. “It is as well that I +at last have the pleasure of seeing you, that I may state what I want, and that +we may, as you say, understand each other. Breakfast and tea, if you please, +will be served in the same manner as dinner. And you will have the kindness to +order fresh milk every morning for my little boy—ass’s +milk—Doctor Goodenough has ordered ass’s milk. Anything further I +want I will communicate through the person who spoke to you—Kuhn, Mr. +Kuhn; and that will do.” +</p> + +<p> +A heavy shower of rain was descending at this moment, and little Mrs. Honeyman +looking at her lodger, who had sate down and taken up her book, said, +“Have your ladyship’s servants unpacked your trunks?” +</p> + +<p> +“What on earth, madam, have you—has that to do with the +question?” +</p> + +<p> +“They will be put to the trouble of packing again, I fear. I cannot +provide—three times five are fifteen—fifteen separate meals for +seven persons—besides those of my own family. If your servants cannot eat +with mine, or in my kitchen, they and their mistress must go elsewhere. And the +sooner the better, madam, the sooner the better!” says Mrs. Honeyman, +trembling with indignation, and sitting down in a chair spreading her silks. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know who I am?” asks Lady Anne, rising. +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly well, madam,” says the other. “And had I known, +you should never have come into my house, that’s more.” +</p> + +<p> +“Madam!” cries the lady, on which the poor little invalid, scared +and nervous, and hungry for his dinner, began to cry from his sofa. +</p> + +<p> +“It will be a pity that the dear little boy should be disturbed. Dear +little child, I have often heard of him, and of you, miss,” says the +little householder, rising. “I will get you some dinner, my dear, for +Clive’s sake. And meanwhile your ladyship will have the kindness to seek +for some other apartments—for not a bit shall my fire cook for any one +else of your company.” And with this the indignant little landlady sailed +out of the room. +</p> + +<p> +“Gracious goodness! Who is the woman?” cries Lady Anne. “I +never was so insulted in my life.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, mamma, it was you began!” says downright Ethel. “That +is—Hush, Alfred dear!—Hush, my darling!” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it was mamma began! I’m so hungry! I’m so hungry!” +howled the little man on the sofa—or off it rather—for he was now +down on the ground, kicking away the shawls which enveloped him. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, my boy? What is it, my blessed darling? You <i>shall</i> +have your dinner! Give her all, Ethel. There are the keys of my +desk—there’s my watch—there are my rings. Let her take my +all. The monster! the child must live! It can’t go away in such a storm +as this. Give me a cloak, a parasol, anything—I’ll go forth and get +a lodging. I’ll beg my bread from house to house—if this fiend +refuses me. Eat the biscuits, dear! A little of the syrup, Alfred darling; +it’s very nice, love! and come to your old mother—your poor old +mother.” +</p> + +<p> +Alfred roared out, “No—it’s not n-ice: it’s n-a-a-asty! +I won’t have syrup. I <i>will</i> have dinner.” The mother, whose +embraces the child repelled with infantine kicks, plunged madly at the bells, +rang them all four vehemently, and ran downstairs towards the parlour, whence +Miss Honeyman was issuing. +</p> + +<p> +The good lady had not at first known the names of her lodgers, but had taken +them in willingly enough on Dr. Goodenough’s recommendation. And it was +not until one of the nurses entrusted with the care of Master Alfred’s +dinner informed Miss Honeyman of the name of her guest, that she knew she was +entertaining Lady Anne Newcome; and that the pretty girl was the fair Miss +Ethel; the little sick boy, the little Alfred of whom his cousin spoke, and of +whom Clive had made a hundred little drawings in his rude way, as he drew +everybody. Then bidding Sally run off to St. James’s Street for a +chicken—she saw it put on the spit, and prepared a bread sauce, and +composed a batter-pudding as she only knew how to make batter-puddings. Then +she went to array herself in her best clothes, as we have seen,—as we +have heard rather (Goodness forbid that we should see Miss Honeyman arraying +herself, or penetrate that chaste mystery, her toilette!)—then she came +to wait upon Lady Anne, not a little flurried as to the result of that queer +interview; then she whisked out of the drawing-room as before has been shown; +and, finding the chicken roasted to a turn, the napkin and tray ready spread by +Hannah the neat-handed, she was bearing them up to the little patient when the +frantic parent met her on the stair. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it—is it for my child?” cried Lady Anne, reeling against +the bannister. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it’s for the child,” says Miss Honeyman, tossing up her +head. “But nobody else has anything in the house.” +</p> + +<p> +“God bless you—God bless you! A mother’s bl-l-essings go with +you,” gurgled the lady, who was not, it must be confessed, a woman of +strong moral character. +</p> + +<p> +It was good to see the little man eating the fowl. Ethel, who had never cut +anything in her young existence, except her fingers now and then with her +brother’s and her governess’s penknives, bethought her of asking +Miss Honeyman to carve the chicken. Lady Anne, with clasped hands and streaming +eyes, sate looking on at the ravishing scene. +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you not let us know you were Clive’s aunt?” Ethel +asked, putting out her hand. The old lady took hers very kindly, and said, +“Because you didn’t give me time. And do you love Clive, my +dear?” +</p> + +<p> +The reconciliation between Miss Honeyman and her lodger was perfect. Lady Anne +wrote a quire of notepaper off to Sir Brian for that day’s +post—only she was too late, as she always was. Mr. Kuhn perfectly +delighted Miss Honeyman that evening by his droll sayings, jokes, and +pronunciation, and by his praises of Master Glife, as he called him. He lived +out of the house, did everything for everybody, was never out of the way when +wanted, and never in the way when not wanted. Ere long Miss Honeyman got out a +bottle of the famous Madeira which her Colonel sent her, and treated him to a +glass in her own room. Kuhn smacked his lips and held out the glass again. The +honest rogue knew good wine. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0010"></a> +CHAPTER X.<br> +Ethel and her Relations</h2> + +<p> +For four-and-twenty successive hours Lady Anne Newcome was perfectly in +raptures with her new lodgings, and every person and thing which they +contained. The drawing-rooms were fitted with the greatest taste; the dinner +was exquisite. Were there ever such delicious veal-cutlets, such verdant French +beans? “Why do we have those odious French cooks, my dear, with their +shocking principles—the principles of all Frenchmen are +shocking—and the dreadful bills they bring us in; and their consequential +airs and graces? I am determined to part with Brignol. I have written to your +father this evening to give Brignol warning. When did he ever give us +veal-cutlets? What can be nicer?” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed they were very good,” said Miss Ethel, who had mutton five +times a week at one o’clock. “I am so glad you like the house, and +Clive, and Mrs. Honeyman.” +</p> + +<p> +“Like her! the dear little old woman. I feel as if she had been my friend +all my life! I feel quite drawn towards her. What a wonderful coincidence that +Dr. Goodenough should direct us to this very house! I have written to your +father about it. And to think that I should have written to Clive at this very +house, and quite forgotten Mrs. Honeyman’s name—and such an odd +name too. I forget everything, everything! You know I forgot your Aunt +Louisa’s husband’s name; and when I was godmother to her baby, and +the clergyman said, ‘What is the infant’s name?’ I said, +‘Really I forget.’ And so I did. He was a London clergyman, but I +forget at what church. Suppose it should be this very Mr. Honeyman! It may have +been, you know, and then the coincidence would be still more droll. That tall, +old, nice-looking, respectable person, with a mark on her nose, the +housekeeper—what is her name?—seems a most invaluable person. I +think I shall ask her to come to us. I am sure she would save me I don’t +know how much money every week; and I am certain Mrs. Trotter is making a +fortune by us. I shall write to your papa, and ask him permission to ask this +person.” Ethel’s mother was constantly falling in love with her new +acquaintances; their man-servants and their maid-servants, their horses and +ponies, and the visitor within their gates. She would ask strangers to Newcome, +hug and embrace them on Sunday; not speak to them on Monday; and on Tuesday +behave so rudely to them, that they were gone before Wednesday. Her daughter +had had so many governesses—all darlings during the first week, and +monsters afterwards—that the poor child possessed none of the +accomplishments of her age. She could not play on the piano; she could not +speak French well; she could not tell you when gunpowder was invented: she had +not the faintest idea of the date of the Norman Conquest, or whether the earth +went round the sun, or vice versa. She did not know the number of counties in +England, Scotland, and Wales, let alone Ireland; she did not know the +difference between latitude and longitude. She had had so many governesses: +their accounts differed: poor Ethel was bewildered by a multiplicity of +teachers, and thought herself a monster of ignorance. They gave her a book at a +Sunday School, and little girls of eight years old answered questions of which +she knew nothing. The place swam before her. She could not see the sun shining +on their fair flaxen heads and pretty faces. The rosy little children holding +up their eager hands, and crying the answer to this question and that, seemed +mocking her. She seemed to read in the book, “O Ethel, you dunce, dunce, +dunce!” She went home silent in the carriage, and burst into bitter tears +on her bed. Naturally a haughty girl of the highest spirit, resolute and +imperious, this little visit to the parish school taught Ethel lessons more +valuable than ever so much arithmetic and geography. Clive has told me a story +of her in her youth, which, perhaps, may apply to some others of the youthful +female aristocracy. She used to walk, with other select young ladies and +gentlemen, their nurses and governesses, in a certain reserved plot of ground +railed off from Hyde Park, whereof some of the lucky dwellers in the +neighbourhood of Apsley House have a key. In this garden, at the age of nine or +thereabout, she had contracted an intimate friendship with the Lord Hercules +O’Ryan.—as every one of my gentle readers knows, one of the sons of +the Marquis of Ballyshannon. The Lord Hercules was a year younger than Miss +Ethel Newcome, which may account for the passion which grew up between these +young persons; it being a provision in nature that a boy always falls in love +with a girl older than himself, or rather, perhaps, that a girl bestows her +affections on a little boy, who submits to receive them. +</p> + +<p> +One day Sir Brian Newcome announced his intention to go to Newcome that very +morning, taking his family, and of course Ethel, with him. She was +inconsolable. “What will Lord Hercules do when he finds I am gone?” +she asked of her nurse. +</p> + +<p> +The nurse endeavouring to soothe her, said, “Perhaps his lordship would +know nothing about the circumstance.” “He will,” said Miss +Ethel—“<i>he’ll read it in the newspaper</i>.” My Lord +Hercules, it is to be hoped, strangled this infant passion in the cradle; +having long since married Isabella, only daughter of ——— +Grains, Esq., of Drayton Windsor, a partner in the great brewery of Foker and +Co. +</p> + +<p> +When Ethel was thirteen years old, she had grown to be such a tall girl, that +she overtopped her companions by a head or more, and morally perhaps, also, +felt herself too tall for their society. “Fancy myself,” she +thought, “dressing a doll like Lily Putland or wearing a pinafore like +Lucy Tucker!” She did not care for their sports. She could not walk with +them: it seemed as if every one stared; nor dance with them at the academy, nor +attend the Cours de Littérature Universelle et de Science Compréhensive of the +professor then the mode—the smallest girls took her up in the class. She +was bewildered by the multitude of things they bade her learn. At the youthful +little assemblies of her sex, when, under the guide of their respected +governesses, the girls came to tea at six o’clock, dancing, charades, and +so forth, Ethel herded not with the children of her own age, nor yet with the +teachers who sit apart at these assemblies, imparting to each other their +little wrongs; but Ethel romped with the little children—the rosy little +trots—and took them on her knees, and told them a thousand stories. By +these she was adored, and loved like a mother almost, for as such the hearty +kindly girl showed herself to them; but at home she was alone, <i>farouche</i> +and intractable, and did battle with the governesses, and overcame them one +after another. I break the promise of a former page, and am obliged to describe +the youthful days of more than one person who is to take a share in this story. +Not always doth the writer know whither the divine Muse leadeth him. But of +this be sure—she is as inexorable as Truth. We must tell our tale as she +imparts it to us, and go on or turn aside at her bidding. +</p> + +<p> +Here she ordains that we should speak of other members of the family, whose +history we chronicle, and it behoves us to say a word regarding the Earl of +Kew, the head of the noble house into which Sir Brian Newcome had married. +</p> + +<p> +When we read in the fairy stories that the King and Queen, who lived once upon +a time, build a castle of steel, defended by moats and sentinels innumerable, +in which they place their darling only child, the Prince or Princess, whose +birth has blessed them after so many years of marriage, and whose christening +feast has been interrupted by the cantankerous humour of that notorious old +fairy who always persists in coming, although she has not received any +invitation to the baptismal ceremony: when Prince Prettyman is locked up in the +steel tower, provided only with the most wholesome food, the most edifying +educational works, and the most venerable old tutor to instruct and to bore +him, we know, as a matter of course, that the steel bolts and brazen bars one +day will be of no avail, the old tutor will go off in a doze, and the moats and +drawbridges will either be passed by His Royal Highness’s implacable +enemies, or crossed by the young scapegrace himself, who is determined to +outwit his guardians, and see the wicked world. The old King and Queen always +come in and find the chambers empty, the saucy heir-apparent flown, the porter +and sentinels drunk, the ancient tutor asleep; they tear their venerable wigs +in anguish, they kick the major-domo downstairs, they turn the duenna out of +doors—the toothless old dragon! There is no resisting fate. The Princess +will slip out of window by the rope-ladder; the Prince will be off to pursue +his pleasures, and sow his wild oats at the appointed season. How many of our +English princes have been coddled at home by their fond papas and mammas, +walled up in inaccessible castles, with a tutor and a library, guarded by +cordons of sentinels, sermoners, old aunts, old women from the world without, +and have nevertheless escaped from all these guardians, and astonished the +world by their extravagance and their frolics? What a wild rogue was that +Prince Harry, son of the austere sovereign who robbed Richard the Second of his +crown,—the youth who took purses on Gadshill, frequented Eastcheap +taverns with Colonel Falstaff and worse company, and boxed Chief Justice +Gascoigne’s ears! What must have been the venerable Queen +Charlotte’s state of mind when she heard of the courses of <i>her</i> +beautiful young Prince; of his punting at gambling-tables; of his dealings with +horse-jockeys; of his awful doings with Perdita? Besides instances taken from +our Royal Family, could we not draw examples from our respected nobility? There +was that young Lord Warwick, Mr. Addison’s stepson. We know that his +mother was severe, and his stepfather a most eloquent moralist, yet the young +gentleman’s career was shocking, positively shocking. He boxed the watch; +he fuddled himself at taverns; he was no better than a Mohock. The chronicles +of that day contain accounts of many a mad prank which he played, as we have +legends of a still earlier date of the lawless freaks of the wild Prince and +Poins. Our people has never looked very unkindly on these frolics. A young +nobleman, full of life and spirits, generous of his money, jovial in his +humour, ready with his sword, frank, handsome, prodigal, courageous, always +finds favour. Young Scapegrace rides a steeplechase or beats a bargeman, and +the crowd applauds him. Sages and seniors shake their heads, and look at him +not unkindly; even stern old female moralists are disarmed at the sight of +youth and gallantry, and beauty. I know very well that Charles Surface is a sad +dog, and Tom Jones no better than he should be; but, in spite of such critics +as Dr. Johnson and Colonel Newcome, most of us have a sneaking regard for +honest Tom, and hope Sophia will be happy, and Tom will end well at last. +</p> + +<p> +Five-and-twenty years ago the young Earl of Kew came upon the town, which +speedily rang with the feats of his lordship. He began life time enough to +enjoy certain pleasures from which our young aristocracy of the present day +seem, alas! to be cut off. So much more peaceable and polished do we grow, so +much does the spirit of the age appear to equalise all ranks; so strongly has +the good sense of society, to which in the end gentlemen of the very highest +fashion must bow, put its veto upon practices and amusements with which our +fathers were familiar. At that time the Sunday newspapers contained many and +many exciting reports of boxing-matches. Bruising was considered a fine manly +old English custom. Boys at public schools fondly perused histories of the +noble science, from the redoubtable days of Broughton and Slack, to the heroic +times of Dutch Sam and the Game Chicken. Young gentlemen went eagerly to +Moulsey to see the Slasher punch the Pet’s head, or the Negro beat the +Jew’s nose to a jelly. The island rang as yet with the tooting horns and +rattling teams of mail-coaches; a gay sight was the road in merry England in +those days, before steam-engines arose and flung its hostelry and chivalry +over. To travel in coaches, to drive coaches, to know coachmen and guards, to +be familiar with inns along the road, to laugh with the jolly hostess in the +bar, to chuck the pretty chambermaid under the chin, were the delight of men +who were young not very long ago. Who ever thought of writing to the Times +then? “Biffin,” I warrant, did not grudge his money, and “A +Thirsty Soul” paid cheerfully for his drink. The road was an institution, +the ring was an institution. Men rallied round them; and, not without a kind +conservatism, expatiated upon the benefits with which they endowed the country, +and the evils which would occur when they should be no more:—decay of +English spirit, decay of manly pluck, ruin of the breed of horses, and so +forth, and so forth. To give and take a black eye was not unusual nor +derogatory in a gentleman; to drive a stage-coach the enjoyment, the emulation +of generous youth. Is there any young fellow of the present time who aspires to +take the place of a stoker? You see occasionally in Hyde Park one dismal old +drag with a lonely driver. Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O +rattling Quicksilver, O swift Defiance? You are passed by racers stronger and +swifter than you. Your lamps are out, and the music of your horns has died +away. +</p> + +<p> +Just at the ending of that old time, Lord Kew’s life began. That kindly +middle-aged gentleman whom his county knows that good landlord, and friend of +all his tenantry round about; that builder of churches, and indefatigable +visitor of schools; that writer of letters to the farmers of his shire, so full +of sense and benevolence; who wins prizes at agricultural shows, and even +lectures at county town institutes in his modest, pleasant way, was the wild +young Lord Kew of a quarter of a century back; who kept racehorses, patronised +boxers, fought a duel, thrashed a Life Guardsman, gambled furiously at +Crockford’s, and did who knows what besides? +</p> + +<p> +His mother, a devout lady, nursed her son and his property carefully during the +young gentleman’s minority: keeping him and his younger brother away from +all mischief, under the eyes of the most careful pastors and masters. She +learnt Latin with the boys, she taught them to play on the piano: she enraged +old Lady Kew, the children’s grandmother, who prophesied that her +daughter-in-law would make milksops of her sons, to whom the old lady was never +reconciled until after my lord’s entry at Christchurch, where he began to +distinguish himself very soon after his first term. He drove tandems, kept +hunters, gave dinners, scandalised the Dean, screwed up the tutor’s door, +and agonised his mother at home by his lawless proceedings. He quitted the +University after a very brief sojourn at that seat of learning. It may be the +Oxford authorities requested his lordship to retire; let bygones be bygones. +His youthful son, the present Lord Walham, is now at Christchurch, reading with +the greatest assiduity. Let us not be too particular in narrating his +father’s unedifying frolics of a quarter of a century ago. +</p> + +<p> +Old Lady Kew, who, in conjunction with Mrs. Newcome, had made the marriage +between Mr. Brian Newcome and her daughter, always despised her son-in-law; and +being a frank, open person, uttering her mind always, took little pains to +conceal her opinion regarding him or any other individual. “Sir Brian +Newcome,” she would say, “is one of the most stupid and respectable +of men; Anne is clever, but has not a grain of common sense. They make a very +well assorted couple. Her flightiness would have driven any man crazy who had +an opinion of his own. She would have ruined any poor man of her own rank; as +it is, I have given her a husband exactly suited for her. He pays the bills, +does not see how absurd she is, keeps order in the establishment, and checks +her follies. She wanted to marry her cousin, Tom Poyntz, when they were both +very young, and proposed to die of a broken heart when I arranged her match +with Mr. Newcome. A broken fiddlestick! she would have ruined Tom Poyntz in a +year; and has no more idea of the cost of a leg of mutton, than I have of +algebra.” +</p> + +<p> +The Countess of Kew loved Brighton, and preferred living there even at the +season when Londoners find such especial charms in their own city. +“London after Easter,” the old lady said, “was intolerable. +Pleasure becomes a business, then so oppressive, that all good company is +destroyed by it. Half the men are sick with the feasts which they eat day after +day. The women are thinking of the half-dozen parties they have to go to in the +course of the night. The young girls are thinking of their partners and their +toilettes. Intimacy becomes impossible, and quiet enjoyment of life. On the +other hand, the crowd of <i>bourgeois</i> has not invaded Brighton. The drive +is not blocked up by flys full of stockbrokers’ wives and children; and +you can take the air in your chair upon the chain-pier, without being stifled +by the cigars of the odious shop-boys from London.” So Lady Kew’s +name was usually amongst the earliest which the Brighton newspapers recorded +amongst the arrivals. +</p> + +<p> +Her only unmarried daughter, Lady Julia, lived with her ladyship. Poor Lady +Julia had suffered early from a spine disease, which had kept her for many +years to her couch. Being always at home, and under her mother’s eyes, +she was the old lady’s victim, her pincushion, into which Lady Kew +plunged a hundred little points of sarcasm daily. As children are sometimes +brought before magistrates, and their poor little backs and shoulders laid +bare, covered with bruises and lashes which brutal parents have inflicted, so, +I dare say, if there had been any tribunal or judge, before whom this poor +patient lady’s heart could have been exposed, it would have been found +scarred all over with numberless ancient wounds, and bleeding from +yesterday’s castigation. Old Lady Kew’s tongue was a dreadful thong +which made numbers of people wince. She was not altogether cruel, but she knew +the dexterity with which she wielded her lash, and liked to exercise it. Poor +Lady Julia was always at hand, when her mother was minded to try her powers. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Kew had just made herself comfortable at Brighton, when her little +grandson’s illness brought Lady Anne Newcome and her family down to the +sea. Lady Kew was almost scared back to London again, or blown over the water +to Dieppe. She had never had the measles. “Why did not Anne carry the +child to some other place? Julia, you will on no account go and see that little +pestiferous swarm of Newcomes, unless you want to send me out of the +world—which I dare say you do, for I am a dreadful plague to you, I know, +and my death would be a release to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“You see Doctor H., who visits the child every day,” cries poor +Pincushion; “you are not afraid when he comes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Doctor H.? Doctor H. comes to cure me, or to tell me the news, or to +flatter me, or to feel my pulse and to pretend to prescribe, or to take his +guinea; of course Dr. H. must go to see all sorts of people in all sorts of +diseases. You would not have me be such a brute as to order him not to attend +my own grandson? I forbid you to go to Anne’s house. You will send one of +the men every day to inquire. Let the groom go—yes, Charles—he will +not go into the house. He will ring the bell and wait outside. He had better +ring the bell at the area—I suppose there is an area—and speak to +the servants through the bars, and bring us word how Alfred is.” Poor +Pincushion felt fresh compunctions; she had met the children, and kissed the +baby, and held kind Ethel’s hand in hers, that day, as she was out in her +chair. There was no use, however, to make this confession. Is she the only good +woman or man of whom domestic tyranny has made a hypocrite? +</p> + +<p> +Charles, the groom, brings back perfectly favourable reports of Master +Alfred’s health that day, which Doctor H., in the course of his visit, +confirms. The child is getting well rapidly; eating like a little ogre. His +cousin Lord Kew has been to see him. He is the kindest of men, Lord Kew; he +brought the little man Tom and Jerry with the pictures. The boy is delighted +with the pictures. +</p> + +<p> +“Why has not Kew come to see me? When did he come? Write him a note, and +send for him instantly, Julia. Did you know he was here?” +</p> + +<p> +Julia says, that she had but that moment read in the Brighton papers the +arrival of the Earl of Kew and the Honourable J. Belsize at the Albion. +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure they are here for some mischief,” cries the old lady, +delighted. “Whenever George and John Belsize are together, I know there +is some wickedness planning. What do you know, Doctor? I see by your face you +know something. Do tell it me, that I may write it to his odious psalm-singing +mother.” +</p> + +<p> +Doctor H.’s face does indeed wear a knowing look. He simpers and says, +“I did see Lord Kew driving this morning, first with the Honourable Mr. +Belsize, and afterwards”—here he glances towards Lady Julia, as if +to say, “Before an unmarried lady, I do not like to tell your ladyship +with whom I saw Lord Kew driving, after he had left the Honourable Mr. Belsize, +who went to play a match with Captain Huxtable at tennis.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you afraid to speak before Julia?” cries the elder lady. +“Why, bless my soul, she is forty years old, and has heard everything +that can be heard. Tell me about Kew this instant, Doctor H.” +</p> + +<p> +The Doctor blandly acknowledges that Lord Kew had been driving Madame +Pozzoprofondo, the famous contralto of the Italian Opera, in his phaeton, for +two hours, in the face of all Brighton. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Doctor,” interposes Lady Julia, blushing; “but Signor +Pozzoprofondo was in the carriage too—a-a-sitting behind with the groom. +He was indeed, mamma.” +</p> + +<p> +“Julia, <i>vous n’êtes qu’une bête</i>,” says Lady Kew, +shrugging her shoulders, and looking at her daughter from under her bushy black +eyebrows. Her ladyship, a sister of the late lamented Marquis of Steyne, +possessed no small share of the wit and intelligence, and a considerable +resemblance to the features, of that distinguished nobleman. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Kew bids her daughter take a pen and write:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“<i>Monsieur le Mauvais Sujet</i>,—Gentlemen who wish to take the +sea air in private, or to avoid their relations, had best go to other places +than Brighton, where their names are printed in the newspapers. If you are not +drowned in a pozzo—” +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma!” interposes the secretary. +</p> + +<p> +“—in a pozzo-profondo, you will please come to dine with two old +women, at half-past seven. You may bring Mr. Belsize, and must tell us a +hundred stories.—Yours, etc., L. Kew.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Julia wrote all the letter as her mother dictated it, save only one sentence, +and the note was sealed and despatched to my Lord Kew, who came to dinner with +Jack Belsize. Jack Belsize liked to dine with Lady Kew. He said, “she was +an old dear, and the wickedest old woman in all England;” and he liked to +dine with Lady Julia, who was “a poor suffering dear, and the best woman +in all England.” Jack Belsize liked every one, and every one liked him. +</p> + +<p> +Two evenings afterwards the young men repeated their visit to Lady Kew, and +this time Lord Kew was loud in praises of his cousins of the house of Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +“Not of the eldest, Barnes, surely, my dear?” cries Lady Kew. +</p> + +<p> +“No, confound him! not Barnes.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, d—— it, not Barnes. I beg your pardon, Lady +Julia,” broke in Jack Belsize. “I can get on with most men; but +that little Barney is too odious a little snob.” +</p> + +<p> +“A little what—Mr. Belsize?” +</p> + +<p> +“A little snob, ma’am. I have no other word, though he is your +grandson. I never heard him say a good word of any mortal soul, or do a kind +action.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you, Mr. Belsize,” says the lady. +</p> + +<p> +“But the others are capital. There is that little chap who has just had +the measles—he’s a clear little brick. And as for Miss +Ethel——” +</p> + +<p> +“Ethel is a trump, ma’am,” says Lord Kew, slapping his hand +on his knee. +</p> + +<p> +“Ethel is a brick, and Alfred is a trump, I think you say,” remarks +Lady Kew, nodding approval; “and Barnes is a snob. This is very +satisfactory to know.” +</p> + +<p> +“We met the children out to-day,” cries the enthusiastic Kew, +“as I was driving Jack in the drag, and I got out and talked to +’em.” +</p> + +<p> +“Governess an uncommonly nice woman—oldish, but—I beg your +pardon, Lady Julia,” cries the inopportune Jack +Belsize—“I’m always putting my foot in it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Putting your foot into what? Go on, Kew.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, we met the whole posse of children; and the little fellow wanted a +drive, and I said I would drive him and Ethel too, if she would come. Upon my +word she is as pretty a girl as you can see on a summer’s day. And the +governess said ‘No,’ of course. Governesses always do. But I said I +was her uncle, and Jack paid her such a fine compliment, that the young woman +was mollified, and the children took their seats beside me, and Jack went +behind.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where Monsieur Pozzoprofondo sits, <i>bon</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“We drove on to the Downs, and we were nearly coming to grief. My horses +are young, and when they get on the grass they are as if they were mad. It was +very wrong; I know it was.” +</p> + +<p> +“D——d rash,” interposes Jack. “He had nearly +broken all our necks.” +</p> + +<p> +“And my brother Frank would have been Lord Kew,” continued the +young Earl, with a quiet smile. “What an escape for him! The horses ran +away—ever so far—and I thought the carriage must upset. The poor +little boy, who has lost his pluck in the fever, began to cry; but that young +girl, though she was as white as a sheet, never gave up for a moment, and sate +in her place like a man. We met nothing, luckily; and I pulled the horses in +after a mile or two, and I drove ’em into Brighton as quiet as if I had +been driving a hearse. And that little trump of an Ethel, what do you think she +said? She said, ‘I was not frightened, but you must not tell +mamma.’ My aunt, it appears, was in a dreadful commotion—I ought to +have thought of that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Lady Anne is a ridiculous old dear. I beg your pardon, Lady Kew,” +here breaks in Jack the apologiser. +</p> + +<p> +“There is a brother of Sir Brian Newcome’s staying with +them,” Lord Kew proceeds; “an East India Colonel—a very +fine-looking old boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Smokes awfully, row about it in the hotel. Go on, Kew; beg +your——” +</p> + +<p> +“This gentleman was on the look-out for us, it appears, for when we came +in sight he despatched a boy who was with him, running like a lamplighter back +to my aunt, to say all was well. And he took little Alfred out of the carriage, +and then helped out Ethel, and said, ‘My dear, you are too pretty to +scold; but you have given us all a <i>belle peur</i>.’ And then he made +me and Jack a low bow, and stalked into the lodgings.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think you do deserve to be whipped, both of you,” cries Lady +Kew. +</p> + +<p> +“We went up and made our peace with my aunt, and were presented in form +to the Colonel and his youthful cub.” +</p> + +<p> +“As fine a fellow as ever I saw: and as fine a boy as ever I saw,” +cries Jack Belsize. “The young chap is a great hand at drawing—upon +my life the best drawings I ever saw. And he was making a picture for little +What-d’you-call-’em. And Miss Newcome was looking over them. And +Lady Anne pointed out the group to me, and said how pretty it was. She is +uncommonly sentimental, you know, Lady Anne.” +</p> + +<p> +“My daughter Anne is the greatest fool in the three kingdoms,” +cried Lady Kew, looking fiercely over her spectacles. And Julia was instructed +to write that night to her sister, and desire that Ethel should be sent to see +her grandmother:—Ethel, who rebelled against her grandmother, and always +fought on her Aunt Julia’s side, when the weaker was oppressed by the +older and stronger lady. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0011"></a> +CHAPTER XI.<br> +At Mrs. Ridley’s</h2> + +<p> +Saint Peter of Alcantara, as I have read in a life of St. Theresa, informed +that devout lady that he had passed forty years of his life sleeping only an +hour and a half each day; his cell was but four feet and a half long, so that +he never lay down: his pillow was a wooden log in the stone wall: he ate but +once in three days: he was for three years in a convent of his order without +knowing any one of his brethren except by the sound of their voices, for he +never during this period took his eyes off the ground: he always walked +barefoot, and was but skin and bone when he died. The eating only once in three +days, so he told his sister Saint, was by no means impossible, if you began the +regimen in your youth. To conquer sleep was the hardest of all austerities +which he practised:—I fancy the pious individual so employed, day after +day, night after night, on his knees, or standing up in devout meditation in +the cupboard—his dwelling-place; bareheaded and barefooted, walking over +rocks, briars, mud, sharp stones (picking out the very worst places, let us +trust, with his downcast eyes), under the bitter snow, or the drifting rain, or +the scorching sunshine—I fancy Saint Peter of Alcantara, and contrast him +with such a personage as the Incumbent of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel, +Mayfair. +</p> + +<p> +His hermitage is situated in Walpole Street, let us say, on the second floor of +a quiet mansion, let out to hermits by a nobleman’s butler, whose wife +takes care of the lodgings. His cells consist of a refectory, a dormitory, and +an adjacent oratory where he keeps his shower-bath and boots—the pretty +boots trimly stretched on boot-trees and blacked to a nicety (not varnished) by +the boy who waits on him. The barefooted business may suit superstitious ages +and gentlemen of Alcantara, but does not become Mayfair and the nineteenth +century. If St. Pedro walked the earth now with his eyes to the ground he would +know fashionable divines by the way in which they were shod. Charles +Honeyman’s is a sweet foot. I have no doubt as delicate and plump and +rosy as the white hand with its two rings, which he passes in impassioned +moments through his slender flaxen hair. +</p> + +<p> +A sweet odour pervades his sleeping apartment—not that peculiar and +delicious fragrance with which the Saints of the Roman Church are said to +gratify the neighbourhood where they repose—but oils, redolent of the +richest perfumes of Macassar, essences (from Truefitt’s or +Delcroix’s) into which a thousand flowers have expressed their sweetest +breath, await his meek head on rising; and infuse the pocket-handkerchief with +which he dries and draws so many tears. For he cries a good deal in his +sermons, to which the ladies about him contribute showers of sympathy. +</p> + +<p> +By his bedside are slippers lined with blue silk and worked of an +ecclesiastical pattern, by some of the faithful who sit at his feet. They come +to him in anonymous parcels: they come to him in silver paper: boys in buttons +(pages who minister to female grace!) leave them at the door for the Rev. C. +Honeyman, and slip away without a word. Purses are sent to +him—penwipers—a portfolio with the Honeyman arms; yea, braces have +been known to reach him by the post (in his days of popularity); and flowers, +and grapes, and jelly when he was ill, and throat comforters, and lozenges for +his dear bronchitis. In one of his drawers is the rich silk cassock presented +to him by his congregation at Leatherhead (when the young curate quitted that +parish for London duty), and on his breakfast-table the silver teapot, once +filled with sovereigns and presented by the same devotees. The devo-teapot he +has, but the sovereigns, where are they? +</p> + +<p> +What a different life this is from our honest friend of Alcantara, who eats +once in three days! At one time if Honeyman could have drunk tea three times in +an evening, he might have had it. The glass on his chimneypiece is crowded with +invitations, not merely cards of ceremony (of which there are plenty), but dear +little confidential notes from sweet friends of his congregation. “Ob, +dear Mr. Honeyman,” writes Blanche, “what a sermon that was! I +cannot go to bed to-night without thanking you for it.” “Do, +<i>do</i>, dear Mr. Honeyman,” writes Beatrice, “lend me that +delightful sermon. And can you come and drink tea with me and Selina, and my +aunt? Papa and mamma dine out, but you know I am always your faithful +Chesterfield Street.” And so on. He has all the domestic accomplishments; +he plays on the violoncello: he sings a delicious second, not only in sacred +but in secular music. He has a thousand anecdotes, laughable riddles, droll +stories (of the utmost correctness, you understand) with which he entertains +females of all ages; suiting his conversation to stately matrons, deaf old +dowagers (who can hear his clear voice better than the loudest roar of their +stupid sons-in-law), mature spinsters, young beauties dancing through the +season, even rosy little slips out of the nursery, who cluster round his +beloved feet. Societies fight for him to preach their charity sermon. You read +in the papers, “The Wapping Hospital for Wooden-legged Seamen.—On +Sunday the 23rd, Sermons will be preached in behalf of this charity, by the +Lord Bishop of Tobago in the morning, in the afternoon by the Rev. C. Honeyman, +A.M., Incumbent of,” etc. “Clergymen’s Grandmothers’ +Fund.—Sermons in aid of this admirable institution will be preached on +Sunday, 4th May, by the Very Rev. the Dean of Pimlico, and the Rev. C. +Honeyman, A.M.” When the Dean of Pimlico has his illness, many people +think Honeyman will have the Deanery; that he ought to have it, a hundred +female voices vow and declare: though it is said that a right reverend head at +headquarters shakes dubiously when his name is mentioned for preferment. His +name is spread wide, and not only women but men come to hear him. Members of +Parliament, even Cabinet Ministers, sit under him. Lord Dozeley of course is +seen in a front pew: where was a public meeting without Lord Dozeley? The men +come away from his sermons and say, “It’s very pleasant, but I +don’t know what the deuce makes all you women crowd so to hear the +man.” “Oh, Charles! if you would but go oftener!” sighs Lady +Anna Maria. “Can’t you speak to the Home Secretary? Can’t you +do something for him?” “We can ask him to dinner next Wednesday if +you like,” Says Charles. “They say he’s a pleasant fellow out +of the wood. Besides there is no use in doing anything for him,” Charles +goes on. “He can’t make less than a thousand a year out of his +chapel, and that is better than anything any one can give him. A thousand a +year, besides the rent of the wine-vaults below the chapel.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t, Charles!” says his wife, with a solemn look. +“Don’t ridicule things in that way. +</p> + +<p> +“Confound it! there are wine-vaults under the chapel!” answers +downright Charles. “I saw the name, Sherrick and Co.; offices, a green +door, and a brass plate. It’s better to sit over vaults with wine in them +than coffins. I wonder whether it’s the Sherrick with whom Kew and Jack +Belsize had that ugly row?” +</p> + +<p> +“What ugly row?—don’t say ugly row. It is not a nice word to +hear the children use. Go on, my darlings. What was the dispute of Lord Kew and +Mr. Belsize, and this Mr. Sherrick?” +</p> + +<p> +“It was all about pictures, and about horses, and about money, and about +one other subject which enters into every row that I ever heard of.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what is that, dear?” asks the innocent lady, hanging on her +husband’s arm, and quite pleased to have led him to church and brought +him thence. “And what is it, that enters into every row, as you call it, +Charles?” +</p> + +<p> +“A woman, my love,” answers the gentleman, behind whom we have been +in imagination walking out from Charles Honeyman’s church on a Sunday in +June: as the whole pavement blooms with artificial flowers and fresh bonnets; +as there is a buzz and cackle all around regarding the sermon; as carriages +drive off; as lady-dowagers walk home; as prayer-books and footmen’s +sticks gleam in the sun; as little boys with baked mutton and potatoes pass +from the courts; as children issue from the public-houses with pots of beer; as +the Reverend Charles Honeyman, who has been drawing tears in the sermon, and +has seen, not without complacent throbs, a Secretary of State in the pew +beneath him, divests himself of his rich silk cassock in the vestry, before he +walks away to his neighbouring hermitage—where have we placed +it?—in Walpole Street. I wish St. Pedro of Alcantara could have some of +that shoulder of mutton with the baked potatoes, and a drink of that frothing +beer. See, yonder trots little Lord Dozeley, who has been asleep for an hour +with his head against the wood, like St. Pedro of Alcantara. +</p> + +<p> +An East Indian gentleman and his son wait until the whole chapel is clear, and +survey Lady Whittlesea’s monument at their leisure, and other hideous +slabs erected in memory of defunct frequenters of the chapel. Whose was that +face which Colonel Newcome thought he recognised—that of a stout man who +came down from the organ-gallery? Could it be Broff the bass singer, who +delivered the “Red Cross Knight” with such applause at the Cave of +Melody, and who has been singing in this place? There are some chapels in +London, where, the function over, one almost expects to see the sextons put +brown hollands over the pews and galleries, as they do at the Theatre Royal, +Covent Garden. +</p> + +<p> +The writer of these veracious pages was once walking through a splendid English +palace, standing amidst parks and gardens, than which none more magnificent has +been seen since the days of Aladdin, in company with a melancholy friend, who +viewed all things darkly through his gloomy eyes. The housekeeper, pattering on +before us from chamber to chamber, was expatiating upon the magnificence of +this picture; the beauty of that statue; the marvellous richness of these +hangings and carpets; the admirable likeness of the late Marquis by Sir Thomas; +of his father, the fifth Earl, by Sir Joshua, and so on; when, in the very +richest room of the whole castle, Hicks—such was my melancholy +companion’s name—stopped the cicerone in her prattle, saying in a +hollow voice, “And now, madam, will you show us the closet <i>where the +skeleton is?</i>” The seared functionary paused in the midst of her +harangue; that article was not inserted in the catalogue which she daily utters +to visitors for their half-crown. Hicks’s question brought a darkness +down upon the hall where we were standing. We did not see the room: and yet I +have no doubt there is such an one; and ever after, when I have thought of the +splendid castle towering in the midst of shady trees, under which the dappled +deer are browsing; of the terraces gleaming with statues, and bright with a +hundred thousand flowers; of the bridges and shining fountains and rivers +wherein the castle windows reflect their festive gleams, when the halls are +filled with happy feasters, and over the darkling woods comes the sound of +music;—always, I say, when I think of Castle Bluebeard:—it is to +think of that dark little closet, which I know is there, and which the lordly +owner opens shuddering—after midnight—when he is sleepless and +<i>must</i> go unlock it, when the palace is hushed, when beauties are sleeping +around him unconscious, and revellers are at rest. O Mrs. Housekeeper: all the +other keys hast thou: but that key thou hast not! +</p> + +<p> +Have we not all such closets, my jolly friend, as well as the noble Marquis of +Carabas? At night, when all the house is asleep but you, don’t you get up +and peep into yours? When you in your turn are slumbering, up gets Mrs. Brown +from your side, steals downstairs like Amina to her ghoul, clicks open the +secret door, and looks into her dark depository. Did she tell you of that +little affair with Smith long before she knew you? Psha! who knows any one save +himself alone? Who, in showing his house to the closest and dearest, +doesn’t keep back the key of a closet or two? I think of a lovely reader +laying down the page and looking over at her unconscious husband, asleep, +perhaps, after dinner. Yes, madam, a closet he hath: and you, who pry into +everything, shall never have the key of it. I think of some honest Othello +pausing over this very sentence in a railroad carriage, and stealthily gazing +at Desdemona opposite to him, innocently administering sandwiches to their +little boy—I am trying to turn off the sentence with a joke, you +see—I feel it is growing too dreadful, too serious. +</p> + +<p> +And to what, pray, do these serious, these disagreeable, these almost personal +observations tend? To this simply, that Charles Honeyman, the beloved and +popular preacher, the elegant divine to whom Miss Blanche writes sonnets, and +whom Miss Beatrice invites to tea; who comes with smiles on his lip, gentle +sympathy in his tones, innocent gaiety in his accent; who melts, rouses, +terrifies in the pulpit; who charms over the tea-urn and the bland +bread-and-butter: Charles Honeyman has one or two skeleton closets in his +lodgings, Walpole Street, Mayfair; and many a wakeful night, whilst Mrs. +Ridley, his landlady, and her tired husband, the nobleman’s major-domo, +whilst the lodger on the first floor, whilst the cook and housemaid and weary +little bootboy are at rest (mind you, they have all got <i>their</i> closets, +which they open with their skeleton-keys); he wakes up, and looks at the +ghastly occupant of that receptacle. One of the Reverend Charles +Honeyman’s grisly night-haunters is—but stop; let us give a little +account of the lodgings, and of some of the people frequenting the same. +</p> + +<p> +First floor, Mr. Bagshot, Member for a Norfolk borough. Stout jolly +gentleman;—dines at the Carlton Club; greatly addicted to Greenwich and +Richmond, in the season: bets in a moderate way: does not go into society, +except now and again to the chiefs of his party, when they give great +entertainments; and once or twice to the houses of great country dons who dwell +near him in the country. Is not of very good family; was, in fact, an +apothecary: married a woman with money, much older than himself, who does not +like London, and stops at home at Hummingham, not much to the displeasure of +Bagshot; gives every now and then nice little quiet dinners, which Mrs. Ridley +cooks admirably, to exceedingly stupid jolly old Parliamentary fogies, who +absorb, with much silence and cheerfulness, a vast quantity of wine. They have +just begun to drink ’24 claret now, that of ’15 being scarce, and +almost drunk up. Writes daily, and hears every morning from Mrs. Bagshot; does +not read her letters always: does not rise till long past eleven o’clock +of a Sunday, and has <i>John Bull</i> and <i>Bell’s Life</i>, in bed: +frequents the Blue Posts sometimes; rides a stout cob out of his county, and +pays like the Bank of England. +</p> + +<p> +The house is a Norfolk house. Mrs. Ridley was housekeeper to the great Squire +Bayham, who had the estate before the Conqueror, and who came to such a +dreadful crash in the year 1825, the year of the panic. Bayhams still belongs +to the family, but in what a state, as those can say who recollect it in its +palmy days! Fifteen hundred acres of the best land in England were sold off: +all the timber cut down as level as a billiard-board. Mr. Bayham now lives up +in one corner of the house, which used to be filled with the finest company in +Europe. Law bless you! the Bayhams have seen almost all the nobility of England +come in and go out, and were gentlefolks when many a fine lord’s father +of the present day was sweeping a counting-house. +</p> + +<p> +The house will hold genteelly no more than these two inmates; but in the season +it manages to accommodate Miss Cann, who too was from Bayhams, having been a +governess there to the young lady who is dead, and who now makes such a +livelihood as she can best raise, by going out as a daily teacher. Miss Cann +dines with Mrs. Ridley in the adjoining little back-parlour. Ridley but seldom +can be spared to partake of the family dinner, his duties in the house and +about the person of my Lord Todmorden keeping him constantly near that +nobleman. How little Miss Cann can go on and keep alive on the crumb she eats +for breakfast, and the scrap she picks at dinner, du astonish Mrs. Ridley, that +it <i>du!</i> She declares that the two canary-birds encaged in her window +(whence is a cheerful prospect of the back of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel) +eat more than Miss Cann. The two birds set up a tremendous singing and +chorussing when Miss Cann, spying the occasion of the first-floor +lodger’s absence, begins practising her music-pieces. Such trills, +roulades, and flourishes go on from the birds and the lodger! it is a wonder +how any fingers can move over the jingling ivory so quickly as Miss +Cann’s. Excellent a woman as she is, admirably virtuous, frugal, brisk, +honest, and cheerful, I would not like to live in lodgings where there was a +lady so addicted to playing variations. No more does Honeyman. On a Saturday, +when he is composing his valuable sermons (the rogue, you may be sure, leaves +his work to the last day, and there are, I am given to understand, among the +clergy many better men than Honeyman, who are as dilatory as he), he begs, he +entreats with tears in his eyes, that Miss Cann’s music may cease. I +would back little Cann to write a sermon against him, for all his reputation as +a popular preacher. +</p> + +<p> +Old and weazened as that piano is, feeble and cracked her voice, it is +wonderful what a pleasant concert she can give in that parlour of a Saturday +evening, to Mrs. Ridley, who generally dozes a good deal, and to a lad, who +listens with all his soul, with tears sometimes in his great eyes, with +crowding fancies filling his brain and throbbing at his heart, as the artist +plies her humble instrument. She plays old music of Handel and Haydn, and the +little chamber anon swells into a cathedral, and he who listens beholds altars +lighted, priests ministering, fair children swinging censers, great oriel +windows gleaming in sunset, and seen through arched columns and avenues of +twilight marble. The young fellow who hears her has been often and often to the +opera and the theatres. As she plays Don Juan, Zerlina comes tripping over the +meadows, and Masetto after her, with a crowd of peasants and maidens: and they +sing the sweetest of all music, and the heart beats with happiness, and +kindness, and pleasure. Piano, pianissimo! the city is hushed. The towers of +the great cathedral rise in the distance, its spires lighted by the broad moon. +The statues in the moonlit place cast long shadows athwart the pavement: but +the fountain in the midst is dressed out like Cinderella for the night, and +sings and wears a crest of diamonds. That great sombre street all in shade, can +it be the famous Toledo?—or is it the Corso?—or is it the great +street in Madrid, the one which leads to the Escurial where the Rubens and +Velasquez are? It is Fancy Street—Poetry Street—Imagination +Street—the street where lovely ladies look from balconies, where +cavaliers strike mandolins and draw swords and engage, where long processions +pass, and venerable hermits, with long beards, bless the kneeling people: where +the rude soldiery, swaggering through the place with flags and halberts, and +fife and dance, seize the slim waists of the daughters of the people, and bid +the pifferari play to their dancing. Blow, bagpipes, a storm of harmony! become +trumpets, trombones, ophicleides, fiddles, and bassoons! Fire, guns sound, +tocsins! Shout, people! Louder, shriller and sweeter than all, sing thou, +ravishing heroine! And see, on his cream-coloured charger Massaniello prances +in, and Fra Diavolo leaps down the balcony, carabine in hand; and Sir Huon of +Bordeaux sails up to the quay with the Sultan’s daughter of Babylon. All +these delights and sights, and joys and glories, these thrills of sympathy, +movements of unknown longing, and visions of beauty, a young sickly lad of +eighteen enjoys in a little dark room where there is a bed disguised in the +shape of a wardrobe, and a little old woman is playing under a gas-lamp on the +jingling keys of an old piano. +</p> + +<p> +For a long time Mr. Samuel Ridley, butler and confidential valet to the Right +Honourable John James Baron Todmorden, was in a state of the greatest despair +and gloom about his only son, the little John James,—a sickly and almost +deformed child “of whom there was no making nothink,” as Mr. Ridley +said. His figure precluded him from following his father’s profession, +and waiting upon the British nobility, who naturally require large and handsome +men to skip up behind their rolling carriages, and hand their plates at dinner. +When John James was six years old his father remarked, with tears in his eyes, +he wasn’t higher than a plate-basket. The boys jeered at him in the +streets—some whopped him, spite of his diminutive size. At school he made +but little progress. He was always sickly and dirty, and timid and crying, +whimpering in the kitchen away from his mother; who, though she loved him, took +Mr. Ridley’s view of his character, and thought him little better than an +idiot until such time as little Miss Cann took him in hand, when at length +there was some hope of him. +</p> + +<p> +“Half-witted, you great stupid big man,” says Miss Cann, who had a +fine spirit of her own. “That boy half-witted! He has got more wit in his +little finger than you have in all your great person! You are a very good man, +Ridley, very good-natured I’m sure, and bear with the teasing of a +waspish old woman: but you are not the wisest of mankind. Tut, tut, don’t +tell me. You know you spell out the words when you read the newspaper still, +and what would your bills look like if I did not write them in my nice little +hand? I tell you that boy is a genius. I tell you that one day the world will +hear of him. His heart is made of pure gold. You think that all the wit belongs +to the big people. Look at me, you great tall man! Am I not a hundred times +cleverer than you are? Yes, and John James is worth a thousand such +insignificant little chits as I am; and he is as tall as me too, sir. Do you +hear that! One day I am determined he shall dine at Lord Todmorden’s +table, and he shall get the prize at the Royal Academy, and be famous, +sir—famous!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Miss C., I wish he may get it; that’s all I say,” +answers Mr. Ridley. “The poor fellow does no harm, that I acknowledge; +but <i>I</i> never see the good he was up to yet. I wish he’d begin it; I +<i>du</i> wish he would now.” And the honest gentleman relapses into the +study of his paper. +</p> + +<p> +All those beautiful sounds and thoughts which Miss Cann conveys to him out of +her charmed piano, the young artist straightway translates into forms; and +knights in armour, with plume, and shield, and battle-axe; and splendid young +noblemen with flowing ringlets, and bounteous plumes of feathers, and rapiers, +and russet boots; and fierce banditti with crimson tights, doublets profusely +illustrated with large brass buttons, and the dumpy basket-hilted claymores +known to be the favourite weapon with which these whiskered ruffians do battle; +wasp-waisted peasant girls, and young countesses with oh, such large eyes and +the lips!—all these splendid forms of war and beauty crowd to the young +draughtsman’s pencil, and cover letter-backs, copybooks, without end. If +his hand strikes off some face peculiarly lovely, and to his taste, some fair +vision that has shone on his imagination, some houri of a dancer, some bright +young lady of fashion in an opera-box, whom he has seen, or fancied he has seen +(for the youth is short-sighted, though he hardly as yet knows his +misfortune)—if he has made some effort extraordinarily successful, our +young Pygmalion hides away the masterpiece, and he paints the beauty with all +his skill; the lips a bright carmine, the eyes a deep, deep cobalt, the cheeks +a dazzling vermilion, the ringlets of a golden hue; and he worships this sweet +creature of his in secret, fancies a history for her; a castle to storm, a +tyrant usurper who keeps her imprisoned, and a prince in black ringlets and a +spangled cloak, who scales the tower, who slays the tyrant, and then kneels +gracefully at the princess’s feet, and says, “Lady, wilt thou be +mine?” +</p> + +<p> +There is a kind lady in the neighbourhood, who takes in dressmaking for the +neighbouring maid-servants, and has a small establishment of lollipops, +theatrical characters, and ginger-beer for the boys in Little Craggs Buildings, +hard by the Running Footman public-house, where father and other +gentlemen’s gentlemen have their club: this good soul also sells Sunday +newspapers to the footmen of the neighbouring gentry; and besides, has a stock +of novels for the ladies of the upper servants’ table. Next to Miss Cann, +Miss Flinders is John James’s greatest friend and benefactor. She has +remarked him when he was quite a little man, and used to bring his +father’s beer of a Sunday. Out of her novels he has taught himself to +read, dull boy at the day-school though he was, and always the last in his +class, there. Hours, happy hours, has he spent cowering behind her counter, or +hugging her books under his pinafore when he had leave to carry them home. The +whole library has passed through his hands, his long, lean, tremulous hands, +and under his eager eyes. He has made illustrations to every one of those +books, and been frightened at his own pictures of Manfroni or the One-handed +Monk, Abellino the Terrific Bravo of Venice, and Rinaldo Rinaldini Captain of +Robbers. How he has blistered Thaddeus of Warsaw with his tears, and drawn him +in his Polish cap, and tights, and Hessians! William Wallace, the Hero of +Scotland, how nobly he has depicted him! With what whiskers and bushy ostrich +plumes!—in a tight kilt, and with what magnificent calves to his legs, +laying about him with his battle-axe, and bestriding the bodies of King +Edward’s prostrate cavaliers! At this time Mr. Honeyman comes to lodge in +Walpole Street, and brings a set of Scott’s novels, for which he +subscribed when at Oxford; and young John James, who at first waits upon him +and does little odd jobs for the reverend gentleman, lights upon the volumes, +and reads them with such a delight and passion of pleasure as all the delights +of future days will scarce equal. A fool, is he?—an idle feller, out of +whom no good will ever come, as his father says. There was a time when, in +despair of any better chance for him, his parents thought of apprenticing him +to a tailor, and John James was waked up from a dream of Rebecca and informed +of the cruelty meditated against him. I forbear to describe the tears and +terror, and frantic desperation in which the poor boy was plunged. Little Miss +Cann rescued him from that awful board, and Honeyman likewise interceded for +him, and Mr. Bagshot promised that, as soon as his party came in, he would ask +the Minister for a tide-waitership for him; for everybody liked the solemn, +soft-hearted, willing little lad, and no one knew him less than his pompous and +stupid and respectable father. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Cann painted flowers and card-screens elegantly, and +“finished” pencil-drawings most elaborately for her pupils. She +could copy prints, so that at a little distance you would scarcely know that +the copy in stumped chalk was not a bad mezzotinto engraving. She even had a +little old paint-box, and showed you one or two ivory miniatures out of the +drawer. She gave John James what little knowledge of drawing she had, and +handed him over her invaluable recipes for mixing +water-colours—“for trees in foregrounds, burnt sienna and +indigo”—“for very dark foliage, ivory black and +gamboge”—“for flesh-colour,” etc. etc. John James went +through her poor little course, but not so brilliantly as she expected. She was +forced to own that several of her pupils’ “pieces” were +executed much more dexterously than Johnny Ridley’s. Honeyman looked at +the boy’s drawings from time to time, and said, “Hm, ha!—very +clever—a great deal of fancy, really.” But Honeyman knew no more of +the subject than a deaf and dumb man knows of music. He could talk the art cant +very glibly, and had a set of Morghens and Madonnas as became a clergyman and a +man of taste; but he saw not with eyes such as those wherewith Heaven had +endowed the humble little butler’s boy, to whom splendours of Nature were +revealed to vulgar sights invisible, and beauties manifest in forms, colours, +shadows of common objects, where most of the world saw only what was dull, and +gross, and familiar. One reads in the magic story-books of a charm or a flower +which the wizard gives, and which enables the bearer to see the fairies. O +enchanting boon of Nature, which reveals to the possessor the hidden spirits of +beauty round about him! spirits which the strongest and most gifted masters +compel into painting or song. To others it is granted but to have fleeting +glimpses of that fair Art-world; and tempted by ambition, or barred by +faint-heartedness, or driven by necessity, to turn away thence to the vulgar +life-track, and the light of common day. +</p> + +<p> +The reader who has passed through Walpole Street scores of times, knows the +discomfortable architecture of all, save the great houses built in Queen +Anne’s and George the First’s time; and while some of the +neighbouring streets, to wit, Great Craggs Street, Bolingbroke Street, and +others, contain mansions fairly coped with stone, with little obelisks before +the doors, and great extinguishers wherein the torches of the nobility’s +running footmen were put out a hundred and thirty or forty years +ago:—houses which still remain abodes of the quality, and where you shall +see a hundred carriages gather of a public night; Walpole Street has quite +faded away into lodgings, private hotels, doctors’ houses, and the like; +nor is No. 23 (Ridley’s) by any means the best house in the street. The +parlour, furnished and tenanted by Miss Cann as has been described; the first +floor, Bagshot, Esq., M.P.; the second floor, Honeyman; what remains but the +garrets, and the ample staircase and the kitchens? and the family being all put +to bed, how can you imagine there is room for any more inhabitants? +</p> + +<p> +And yet there is one lodger more, and one who, like almost all the other +personages mentioned up to the present time (and some of whom you have no idea +yet), will play a definite part in the ensuing history. At night, when Honeyman +comes in, he finds on the hall-table three wax bedroom candles—his own, +Bagshot’s, and another. As for Miss Cann, she is locked into the parlour +in bed long ago, her stout little walking-shoes being on the mat at the door. +At 12 o’clock at noon, sometimes at 1, nay at 2 and 3—long after +Bagshot is gone to his committees, and little Cann to her pupils—a voice +issues from the very topmost floor, from a room where there is no bell; a voice +of thunder calling out “Slavey! Julia! Julia, my love! Mrs. +Ridley!” And this summons not being obeyed, it will not unfrequently +happen that a pair of trousers enclosing a pair of boots with iron heels, and +known by the name of the celebrated Prussian General who came up to help the +other christener of boots at Waterloo, will be flung down from the topmost +story, even to the marble floor of the resounding hall. Then the boy Thomas, +otherwise called Slavey, may say, “There he goes again;” or Mrs. +Ridley’s own back-parlour bell rings vehemently, and Julia the cook will +exclaim, “Lor, it’s Mr. Frederick.” +</p> + +<p> +If the breeches and boots are not understood, the owner himself appears in +great wrath dancing on the upper story; dancing down to the lower floor; and +loosely enveloped in a ragged and flowing <i>robe de chambre</i>. In this +costume and condition he will dance into Honeyman’s apartment, where that +meek divine may be sitting with a headache or over a novel or a newspaper; +dance up to the fire flapping his robe-tails, poke it, and warm himself there; +dance up to the cupboard where his reverence keeps his sherry, and help himself +to a glass. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Salve, spes fidei, lumen ecclesiæ</i>,” he will say; +“here’s towards you, my buck. I knows the tap. Sherrick’s +Marsala bottled three months after date, at two hundred and forty-six shillings +the dozen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed, indeed it’s not” (and now we are coming to an idea +of the skeleton in poor Honeyman’s closet—not that this huge +handsome jolly Fred Bayham is the skeleton, far from it. Mr. Frederick weighs +fourteen stone). “Indeed, indeed it isn’t, Fred, I’m +sure,” sighs the other. “You exaggerate, indeed you do. The wine is +not dear, not by any means so expensive as you say.” +</p> + +<p> +“How much a glass, think you?” says Fred, filling another bumper. +“A half-crown, think ye?—a half-crown, Honeyman? By cock and pye, +it is not worth a bender.” He says this in the manner of the most +celebrated tragedian of the day. He can imitate any actor, tragic or comic; any +known Parliamentary orator or clergyman; any saw, cock, cloop of a cork +wrenched from a bottle and guggling of wine into the decanter afterwards, bee +buzzing, little boy up a chimney, etc. He imitates people being ill on board a +steam-packet so well that he makes you die of laughing: his uncle the Bishop +could not resist this comic exhibition, and gave Fred a cheque for a +comfortable sum of money; and Fred, getting cash for the cheque at the Cave of +Harmony, imitated his uncle the Bishop and his Chaplain, winding up with his +Lordship and Chaplain being unwell at sea—the Chaplain and Bishop quite +natural and distinct. +</p> + +<p> +“How much does a glass of this sack cost thee, Charley?” resumes +Fred, after this parenthesis. “You say it is not dear. Charles Honeyman, +you had, even from your youth up, a villainous habit. And I perfectly well +remember, sir, in boyhood’s breezy hour, when I was the delight of his +school, that you used to tell lies to your venerable father. You did, Charles. +Excuse the frankness of an early friend, it’s my belief you’d +rather lie than not. Hm”—he looks at the cards in the chimney-glass +“Invitations to dinner, proffers of muffins. Do lend me your sermon. Oh, +you old impostor! you hoary old Ananias! I say, Charley, why haven’t you +picked out some nice girl for yours truly? One with lauds and beeves, with +rents and consols, mark you? I have no money, ’tis true, but then I +don’t owe as much as you. I am a handsomer man than you are. Look at this +chest” (he slaps it), “these limbs; they are manly, sir, +manly.” +</p> + +<p> +“For Heaven’s sake, Bayham,” cries Mr. Honeyman, white with +terror; “if anybody were to come——” +</p> + +<p> +“What did I say anon, sir? that I was manly, ay, manly. Let any ruffian, +save a bailiff, come and meet the doughty arm of Frederick Bayham.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Lord, Lord, here’s somebody coming into the room!” cries +Charles, sinking back on the sofa, as the door opens. +</p> + +<p> +“Ha! dost thou come with murderous intent?” and he now advances in +an approved offensive attitude. “Caitiff, come on, come on!” and he +walks off with a tragic laugh, crying, “Ha, ha, ha, ’tis but the +slavey!” +</p> + +<p> +The slavey has Mr. Frederick’s hot water, and a bottle of sodawater on +the same tray. He has been instructed to bring soda whenever he hears the word +slavey pronounced from above. The bottle explodes, and Frederick drinks, and +hisses after his drink as though he had been all hot within. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s o’clock now, slavey—half-past three? Let me +see, I breakfasted exactly ten hours ago, in the rosy morning, off a modest cup +of coffee in Covent Garden Market. Coffee, a penny; bread, a simple halfpenny. +What has Mrs. Ridley for dinner?” +</p> + +<p> +“Please, sir, roast pork.” +</p> + +<p> +“Get me some. Bring it into my room, unless, Honeyman, you insist upon my +having it here, kind fellow!” +</p> + +<p> +At the moment a smart knock comes to the door, and Fred says, “Well, +Charles, it may be a friend or a lady come to confess, and I’m off; I +knew you’d be sorry I was going. Tom, bring up my things; brush ’em +gently, you scoundrel, and don’t take the nap off. Bring up the roast +pork, and plenty of apple-sauce, tell Mrs. Ridley, with my love; and one of Mr. +Honeyman’s shirts, and one of his razors. Adieu, Charles! Amend! Remember +me.” And he vanishes into the upper chambers. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0012"></a> +CHAPTER XII.<br> +In which everybody is asked to Dinner</h2> + +<p> +John James had opened the door hastening to welcome a friend and patron, the +sight of whom always gladdened the youth’s eyes; no other than Clive +Newcome—in young Ridley’s opinion, the most splendid, fortunate, +beautiful, high-born, and gifted youth this island contained. What generous boy +in his time has not worshipped somebody? Before the female enslaver makes her +appearance, every lad has a friend of friends, a crony of cronies, to whom he +writes immense letters in vacation, whom he cherishes in his heart of hearts; +whose sister he proposes to marry in after life; whose purse he shares; for +whom he will take a thrashing if need be: who is his hero. Clive was John +James’s youthful divinity: when he wanted to draw Thaddeus of Warsaw, a +Prince, Ivanhoe, or some one splendid and egregious, it was Clive he took for a +model. His heart leapt when he saw the young fellow. He would walk cheerfully +to Grey Friars, with a letter or message for Clive, on the chance of seeing +him, and getting a kind word from him, or a shake of the hand. An ex-butler of +Lord Todmorden was a pensioner in the Grey Friars Hospital (it has been said +that at that ancient establishment is a college for old men as well as for +boys), and this old man would come sometimes to his successor’s Sunday +dinner, and grumble from the hour of that meal until nine o’clock, when +he was forced to depart, so as to be within Grey Friars’ gates before +ten; grumble about his dinner—grumble about his beer—grumble about +the number of chapels he had to attend, about the gown he wore, about the +master’s treatment of him, about the want of plums in the pudding, as old +men and schoolboys grumble. It was wonderful what a liking John James took to +this odious, querulous, graceless, stupid, and snuffy old man, and how he would +find pretexts for visiting him at his lodging in the old hospital. He actually +took that journey that he might have a chance of seeing Clive. He sent Clive +notes and packets of drawings; thanked him for books lent, asked advice about +future reading—anything, so that he might have a sight of his pride, his +patron, his paragon. +</p> + +<p> +I am afraid Clive Newcome employed him to smuggle rum-shrub and cigars into the +premises; giving him appointments in the school precincts, where young Clive +would come and stealthily receive the forbidden goods. The poor lad was known +by the boys, and called Newcome’s Punch. He was all but hunchbacked; long +and lean in the arm; sallow, with a great forehead, and waving black hair, and +large melancholy eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“What, is it you, J. J.?” cries Clive gaily, when his humble friend +appears at the door. “Father, this is my friend Ridley. This is the +fellow what can draw.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know whom I will back against any young man of his size at +<i>that</i>,” says the Colonel, looking at Clive fondly. He considered +there was not such a genius in the world; and had already thought of having +some of Clive’s drawings published by M’Lean of the Haymarket. +</p> + +<p> +“This is my father just come from India—and Mr. Pendennis, an old +Grey Friars’ man. Is my uncle at home?” Both these gentlemen bestow +rather patronising nods of the head on the lad introduced to them as J. J. His +exterior is but mean-looking. Colonel Newcome, one of the humblest-minded men +alive, has yet his old-fashioned military notions; and speaks to a +butler’s son as to a private soldier, kindly, but not familiarly. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr Honeyman is at home, gentlemen,” the young lad says, humbly. +“Shall I show you up to his room?” And we walk up the stairs after +our guide. We find Mr. Honeyman deep in study on his sofa, with Pearson on the +Creed before him. The novel has been whipped under the pillow. Clive found it +there some short time afterwards, during his uncle’s temporary absence in +his dressing-room. He has agreed to suspend his theological studies, and go out +with his brother-in-law to dine. +</p> + +<p> +As Clive and his friends were at Honeyman’s door, and just as we were +entering to see the divine seated in state before his folio, Clive whispers, +“J. J., come along, old fellow, and show us some drawings. What are you +doing?” +</p> + +<p> +“I was doing some Arabian Nights,” says J. J., “up in my +room; and hearing a knock which I thought was yours, I came down.” +</p> + +<p> +“Show us the pictures. Let’s go up into your room,” cries +Clive. “What—will you?” says the other. “It is but a +very small place.” +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind, come along,” says Clive; and the two lads disappear +together, leaving the three grown gentlemen to discourse together, or rather +two of us to listen to Honeyman, who expatiates upon the beauty of the weather, +the difficulties of the clerical calling, the honour Colonel Newcome does him +by a visit, etc., with his usual eloquence. +</p> + +<p> +After a while Clive comes down without J. J., from the upper regions. He is +greatly excited. “Oh, sir,” he says to his father, “you talk +about my drawings—you should see J. J.’s! By Jove, that fellow is a +genius. They are beautiful, sir. You seem actually to read the Arabian Nights, +you know, only in pictures. There is Scheherazade telling the stories, +and—what do you call her?—Dinarzade and the Sultan sitting in bed +and listening. Such a grim old cove! You see he has cut off ever so many of his +wives’ heads. I can’t think where that chap gets his ideas from. I +can beat him in drawing horses, I know, and dogs; but I can only draw what I +see. Somehow he seems to see things we don’t, don’t you know? Oh, +father, I’m determined I’d rather be a painter than +anything.” And he falls to drawing horses and dogs at his uncle’s +table, round which the elders are seated. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve settled it upstairs with J. J.,” says Clive, working +away with his pen. “We shall take a studio together; perhaps we will go +abroad together. Won’t that be fun, father?” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Clive,” remarks Mr. Honeyman, with bland dignity, +“there are degrees in society which we must respect. You surely cannot +think of being a professional artist. Such a profession is very well for your +young <i>protégé;</i> but for you——” +</p> + +<p> +“What for me?” cries Clive. “We are no such great folks that +I know of; and if we were, I say a painter is as good as a lawyer, or a doctor, +or even a soldier. In Dr. Johnston’s Life—which my father is always +reading—I like to read about Sir Joshua Reynolds best: I think he is the +best gentleman of all in the book. My! wouldn’t I like to paint a picture +like Lord Heathfield in the National Gallery! <i>Wouldn’t</i> I just! I +think I would sooner have done that, than have fought at Gibraltar. And those +Three Graces—oh, aren’t they graceful! And that Cardinal Beaufort +at Dulwich!—it frightens me so, I daren’t look at it. Wasn’t +Reynolds a clipper, that’s all! and wasn’t Rubens a brick! He was +an ambassador, and Knight of the Bath; so was Vandyck. And Titian, and Raphael, +and Velasquez?—I’ll just trouble you to show me better gentlemen +than them, Uncle Charles.” +</p> + +<p> +“Far be it from me to say that the pictorial calling is not +honourable,” says Uncle Charles; “but as the world goes there are +other professions in greater repute; and I should have thought Colonel +Newcome’s son——” +</p> + +<p> +“He shall follow his own bent,” said the Colonel; “as long as +his calling is honest it becomes a gentleman; and if he were to take a fancy to +play on the fiddle—actually on the fiddle—I shouldn’t +object.” +</p> + +<p> +“Such a rum chap there was upstairs!” Clive resumes, looking up +from his scribbling. “He was walking up and down on the landing in a +dressing-gown, with scarcely any other clothes on, holding a plate in one hand, +and a pork-chop he was munching with the other. Like this” (and Clive +draws a figure). “What do you think, sir? He was in the Cave of Harmony, +he says, that night you flared up about Captain Costigan. He knew me at once; +and he says, ‘Sir, your father acted like a gentleman, a Christian, and a +man of honour. <i>Maxima debetur puero reverentia</i>. Give him my compliments. +I don’t know his highly respectable name.’ His highly respectable +name,” says Clive, cracking with laughter—“those were his +very words. ‘And inform him that I am an orphan myself—in needy +circumstances’—he said he was in needy circumstances; ‘and I +heartily wish he’d adopt me.’” +</p> + +<p> +The lad puffed out his face, made his voice as loud and as deep as he could; +and from his imitation and the picture he had drawn, I knew at once that Fred +Bayham was the man he mimicked. +</p> + +<p> +“And does the Red Rover live here,” cried Mr. Pendennis, “and +have we earthed him at last?” +</p> + +<p> +“He sometimes comes here,” Mr. Honeyman said with a careless +manner. “My landlord and landlady were butler and housekeeper to his +father, Bayham of Bayham, one of the oldest families in Europe. And Mr. +Frederick Bayham, the exceedingly eccentric person of whom you speak, was a +private pupil of my own dear father in our happy days at Borehambury.” +</p> + +<p> +He had scarcely spoken when a knock was heard at the door, and before the +occupant of the lodgings could say “Come in!” Mr. Frederick Bayham +made his appearance, arrayed in that peculiar costume which he affected. In +those days we wore very tall stocks, only a very few poetic and eccentric +persons venturing on the Byron collar; but Fred Bayham confined his neck by a +simple ribbon, which allowed his great red whiskers to curl freely round his +capacious jowl. He wore a black frock and a large broad-brimmed hat, and looked +somewhat like a Dissenting preacher. At other periods you would see him in a +green coat and a blue neckcloth, as if the turf or the driving of coaches was +his occupation. +</p> + +<p> +“I have heard from the young man of the house who you were, Colonel +Newcome,” he said with the greatest gravity, “and happened to be +present, sir, the other night; for I was aweary, having been toiling all the +day in literary labour, and needed some refreshment. I happened to be present, +sir, at a scene which did you the greatest honour, and of which I spoke, not +knowing you, with something like levity to your son. He is an <i>ingenui vultus +puer ingenuique pudoris</i>—Pendennis, how are you? And I thought, sir, I +would come down and tender an apology if I had said any words that might savour +of offence to a gentleman who was in the right, as I told the room when you +quitted it, as Mr. Pendennis, I am sure, will remember.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Pendennis looked surprise and perhaps negation. +</p> + +<p> +“You forget, Pendennis? Those who quit that room, sir, often forget on +the morrow what occurred during the revelry of the night. You did right in +refusing to return to that scene. We public men are obliged often to seek our +refreshment at hours when luckier individuals are lapt in slumber.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what may be your occupation, Mr. Bayham?” asks the Colonel, +rather gloomily, for he had an idea that Bayham was adopting a strain of +<i>persiflage</i> which the Indian gentleman by no means relished. Never saying +aught but a kind word to any one, he was on fire at the notion that any should +take a liberty with him. +</p> + +<p> +“A barrister, sir, but without business—a literary man, who can but +seldom find an opportunity to sell the works of his brains—a gentleman, +sir, who has met with neglect, perhaps merited, perhaps undeserved, from his +family. I get my bread as best I may. On that evening I had been lecturing on +the genius of some of our comic writers, at the Parthenopæon, Hackney. My +audience was scanty, perhaps equal to my deserts. I came home on foot to an egg +and a glass of beer after midnight, and witnessed the scene which did you so +much honour. What is this? I fancy a ludicrous picture of +myself”—he had taken up the sketch which Clive had been +drawing—“I like fun, even at my own expense; and can afford to +laugh at a joke which is meant in good-humour.” This speech quite +reconciled the honest Colonel. “I am sure the author of that, Mr. Bayham, +means you or any man no harm. Why! the rascal, sir, has drawn me, his own +father; and I have sent the drawing to Major Hobbs, who is in command of my +regiment. Chinnery himself, sir, couldn’t hit off a likeness better; he +has drawn me on horseback, and he has drawn me on foot, and he has drawn my +friend, Mr. Binnie, who lives with me. We have scores of his drawings at my +lodgings; and if you will favour us by dining with us to-day, and these +gentlemen, you shall see that you are not the only person caricatured by Clive +here.” +</p> + +<p> +“I just took some little dinner upstairs, sir. I am a moderate man, and +can live, if need be, like a Spartan; but to join such good company I will +gladly use the knife and fork again. You will excuse the traveller’s +dress? I keep a room here, which I use only occasionally, and am at present +lodging—in the country.” +</p> + +<p> +When Honeyman was ready, the Colonel, who had the greatest respect for the +Church, would not hear of going out of the room before the clergyman, and took +his arm to walk. Bayham then fell to Mr. Pendennis’s lot, and they went +together. Through Hill Street and Berkeley Square their course was straight +enough; but at Hay Hill, Mr. Bayham made an abrupt tack larboard, engaging in a +labyrinth of stables, and walking a long way round from Clifford Street, +whither we were bound. He hinted at a cab, but Pendennis refused to ride, +being, in truth, anxious to see which way his eccentric companion would steer. +“There are reasons,” growled Bayham, “which need not be +explained to one of your experience, why Bond Street must be avoided by some +men peculiarly situated. The smell of Truefitt’s pomatum makes me ill. +Tell me, Pendennis, is this Indian warrior a rajah of large wealth? Could he, +do you think, recommend me to a situation in the East India Company? I would +gladly take any honest post in which fidelity might be useful, genius might be +appreciated, and courage rewarded. Here we are. The hotel seems comfortable. I +never was in it before.” +</p> + +<p> +When we entered the Colonel’s sitting-room at Nerot’s, we found the +waiter engaged in extending the table. “We are a larger party than I +expected,” our host said. “I met my brother Brian on horseback +leaving cards at that great house in ——— Street.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Russian Embassy,” says Mr. Honeyman, who knew the town quite +well. +</p> + +<p> +“And he said he was disengaged, and would dine with us,” continues +the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“Am I to understand, Colonel Newcome,” says Mr. Frederick Bayham, +“that you are related to the eminent banker, Sir Brian Newcome, who gives +such uncommonly swell parties in Park Lane?” +</p> + +<p> +“What is a swell party?” asks the Colonel, laughing. “I dined +with my brother last Wednesday; and it was a very grand dinner certainly. The +Governor-General himself could not give a more splendid entertainment. But, do +you know, I scarcely had enough to eat? I don’t eat side dishes; and as +for the roast beef of Old England, why, the meat was put on the table and +whisked away like Sancho’s inauguration feast at Barataria. We did not +dine till nine o’clock. I like a few glasses of claret and a cosy talk +after dinner; but—well, well”—(no doubt the worthy gentleman +was accusing himself of telling tales out of school and had come to a timely +repentance). “Our dinner, I hope, will be different. Jack Binnie will +take care of that. That fellow is full of anecdote and fun. You will meet one +or two more of our service; Sir Thomas de Boots, who is not a bad chap over a +glass of wine; Mr. Pendennis’s chum, Mr. Warrington, and my nephew, +Barnes Newcome—a dry fellow at first, but I dare say he has good about +him when you know him; almost every man has,” said the good-natured +philosopher. “Clive, you rogue, mind and be moderate with the champagne, +sir!” +</p> + +<p> +“Champagne’s for women,” says Clive. “I stick to +claret.” +</p> + +<p> +“I say, Pendennis,” here Bayham remarked, “it is my +deliberate opinion that F. B. has got into a good thing.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Pendennis seeing there was a great party was for going home to his chambers +to dress. “Hm!” says Mr. Bayham, “don’t see the +necessity. What right-minded man looks at the exterior of his neighbour? He +looks <i>here</i>, sir, and examines <i>there</i>,” and Bayham tapped his +forehead, which was expansive, and then his heart, which he considered to be in +the right place. +</p> + +<p> +“What is this I hear about dressing?” asks our host. “Dine in +your frock, my good friend, and welcome, if your dress-coat is in the +country.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is at present at an uncle’s,” Mr. Bayham said, with great +gravity, “and I take your hospitality as you offer it, Colonel Newcome, +cordially and frankly.” +</p> + +<p> +Honest Mr. Binnie made his appearance a short time before the appointed hour +for receiving the guests, arrayed in a tight little pair of trousers, and white +silk stockings and pumps, his bald head shining like a billiard-ball, his jolly +gills rosy with good-humour. He was bent on pleasure. “Hey, lads!” +says he; “but we’ll make a night of it. We haven’t had a +night since the farewell dinner off Plymouth.” +</p> + +<p> +“And a jolly night it was, James,” ejaculates the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“Egad, what a song that Tom Norris sings!” +</p> + +<p> +“And your ‘Jock o’ Hazeldean’ is as good as a play, +Jack.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I think you beat iny one I iver hard in ‘Tom Bowling,’ +yourself, Tom!” cries the Colonel’s delighted chum. Mr. Pendennis +opened the eyes of astonishment at the idea of the possibility of renewing +these festivities, but he kept the lips of prudence closed. And now the +carriages began to drive up, and the guests of Colonel Newcome to arrive. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0013"></a> +CHAPTER XIII.<br> +In which Thomas Newcome sings his Last Song</h2> + +<p> +The earliest comers were the first mate and the medical officer of the ship in +which the two gentlemen had come to England. The mate was a Scotchman: the +doctor was a Scotchman; of the gentlemen from the Oriental Club, three were +Scotchmen. +</p> + +<p> +The Southrons, with one exception, were the last to arrive, and for a while we +stood looking out of the windows awaiting their coming. The first mate pulled +out a penknife and arranged his nails. The doctor and Mr. Binnie talked of the +progress of medicine. Binnie had walked the hospitals of Edinburgh before +getting his civil appointment to India. The three gentlemen from Hanover Square +and the Colonel had plenty to say about Tom Smith of the Cavalry, and Harry +Hall of the Engineers: how Topham was going to marry poor little Bob +Wallis’s widow; how many lakhs Barber had brought home, and the like. The +tall grey-headed Englishman, who had been in the East too, in the King’s +service, joined for a while in this conversation, but presently left it, and +came and talked with Clive; “I knew your father in India,” said the +gentleman to the lad; “there is not a more gallant or respected officer +in that service. I have a boy too, a stepson, who has just gone into the army; +he is older than you, he was born at the end of the Waterloo year, and so was a +great friend of his and mine, who was at your school, Sir Rawdon +Crawley.” +</p> + +<p> +“He was in Gown Boys, I know,” says the boy; “succeeded his +uncle Pitt, fourth Baronet. I don’t know how his mother—her who +wrote the hymns, you know, and goes to Mr. Honeyman’s chapel—comes +to be Rebecca, Lady Crawley. His father, Colonel Rawdon Crawley, died at +Coventry Island, in August, 182-, and his uncle, Sir Pitt, not till September +here. I remember, we used to talk about it at Grey Friars, when I was quite a +little chap; and there were bets whether Crawley, I mean the young one, was a +Baronet or not.” +</p> + +<p> +“When I sailed to Rigy, Cornel,” the first mate was +speaking—nor can any spelling nor combination of letters of which I am +master, reproduce this gentleman’s accent when he was talking his +best—“I racklackt they used always to sairve us a drem before +denner. And as your frinds are kipping the denner, and as I’ve no watch +to-night, I’ll jist do as we used to do at Rigy. James, my fine fellow, +jist look alive and breng me a small glass of brandy, will ye? Did ye iver try +a brandy cocktail, Cornel? Whin I sailed on the New York line, we used jest to +make bits before denner and—thank ye, James:” and he tossed off a +glass of brandy. +</p> + +<p> +Here a waiter announces, in a loud voice, “Sir Thomas de Boots,” +and the General enters, scowling round the room according to his fashion, very +red in the face, very tight in the girth, splendidly attired with a choking +white neckcloth, a voluminous waistcoat, and his orders on. +</p> + +<p> +“Stars and garters, by jingo!” cries Mr. Frederick Bayham; “I +say, Pendennis, have you any idea, is the Duke coming? I wouldn’t have +come in these Bluchers if I had known it. Confound it, no—Hoby himself, +my own bootmaker, wouldn’t have allowed poor F. B. to appear in Bluchers, +if he had known that I was going to meet the Duke. My linen’s all right, +anyhow.” +</p> + +<p> +F. B. breathed a thankful prayer for that. Indeed, who but the very curious +could tell that not F. B.’s, but C. H.’s—Charles +Honeyman’s—was the mark upon that decorous linen? +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Newcome introduced Sir Thomas to every one in the room, as he had +introduced us all to each other previously, and as Sir Thomas looked at one +after another, his face was kind enough to assume an expression which seemed to +ask, “And who the devil are you, sir?” as clearly as though the +General himself had given utterance to the words. With the gentleman in the +window talking to Clive he seemed to have some acquaintance, and said not +unkindly, “How d’you do, Dobbin?” +</p> + +<p> +The carriage of Sir Brian Newcome now drove up, from which the Baronet +descended in state, leaning upon the arm of the Apollo in plush and powder, who +closed the shutters of the great coach, and mounted by the side of the +coachman, laced and periwigged. The Bench of Bishops has given up its wigs; +cannot the box, too, be made to resign that insane decoration? Is it necessary +for our comfort, that the men who do our work in stable or household should be +dressed like Merry-Andrews? Enter Sir Brian Newcome, smiling blandly: he greets +his brother affectionately, Sir Thomas gaily; he nods and smiles to Clive, and +graciously permits Mr. Pendennis to take hold of two fingers of his extended +right hand. That gentleman is charmed, of course, with the condescension. What +man could be otherwise than happy to be allowed a momentary embrace of two such +precious fingers? When a gentleman so favours me, I always ask, mentally, why +he has taken the trouble at all, and regret that I have not had the presence of +mind to poke one finger against his two. If I were worth ten thousand a year, I +cannot help inwardly reflecting, and kept a large account in Threadneedle +Street, I cannot help thinking he would have favoured me with the whole palm. +</p> + +<p> +The arrival of these two grandees has somehow cast a solemnity over the +company. The weather is talked about: brilliant in itself, it does not occasion +very brilliant remarks among Colonel Newcome’s guests. Sir Brian really +thinks it must be as hot as it is in India. Sir Thomas de Boots, swelling in +his white waistcoat, in the armholes of which his thumbs are engaged, smiles +scornfully, and wishes Sir Brian had ever felt a good sweltering day in the hot +winds in India. Sir Brian withdraws the untenable proposition that London is as +hot as Calcutta. Mr. Binnie looks at his watch, and at the Colonel. “We +have only your nephew, Tom, to wait for,” he says; “I think we may +make so bold as to order the dinner,”—a proposal heartily seconded +by Mr. Frederick Bayham. +</p> + +<p> +The dinner appears steaming, borne by steaming waiters. The grandees take their +places, one on each side of the Colonel. He begs Mr. Honeyman to say grace, and +stands reverentially during that brief ceremony, while de Boots looks queerly +at him from over his napkin. All the young men take their places at the farther +end of the table, round about Mr. Binnie; and at the end of the second course +Mr. Barnes Newcome makes his appearance. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Barnes does not show the slightest degree of disturbance, although he +disturbs all the company. Soup and fish are brought for him, and meat, which he +leisurely eats, while twelve other gentlemen are kept waiting. We mark Mr. +Binnie’s twinkling eyes, as they watch the young man. “Eh,” +he seems to say, “but that’s just about as free-and-easy a young +chap as ever I set eyes on.” And so Mr. Barnes was a cool young chap. +That dish is so good, he must really have some more. He discusses the second +supply leisurely; and turning round simpering to his neighbour, says, “I +really hope I’m not keeping everybody waiting.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hem!” grunts the neighbour, Mr. Bayham; “it doesn’t +much matter, for we had all pretty well done dinner.” Barnes takes a note +of Mr. Bayham’s dress—his long frock-coat, the ribbon round his +neck; and surveys him with an admirable impudence. “Who are these +people,” thinks he, “my uncle has got together?” He bows +graciously to the honest Colonel, who asks him to take wine. He is so +insufferably affable, that every man near him would like to give him a beating. +</p> + +<p> +All the time of the dinner the host was challenging everybody to drink wine, in +his honest old-fashioned way, and Mr. Binnie seconding the chief entertainer. +Such was the way in England and Scotland when they were young men. And when +Binnie, asking Sir Brian, receives for reply from the +Baronet—“Thank you, no, my dear sir. I have exceeded already, +positively exceeded,” the poor discomfited gentleman hardly knows whither +to apply: but, luckily, Tom Norris, the first mate, comes to his rescue, and +cries out, “Mr. Binnie, <i>I’ve</i> not had enough, and I’ll +drink a glass of anything ye like with ye.” The fact is, that Mr. Norris +has had enough. He has drunk bumpers to the health of every member of the +company; his glass has been filled scores of times by watchful waiters. So has +Mr. Bayham absorbed great quantities of drink; but without any visible effect +on that veteran toper. So has young Clive taken more than is good for him. His +cheeks are flushed and burning; he is chattering and laughing loudly at his end +of the table. Mr. Warrington eyes the lad with some curiosity; and then regards +Mr. Barnes with a look of scorn, which does not scorch that affable young +person. +</p> + +<p> +I am obliged to confess that the mate of the Indiaman, at an early period of +the dessert, and when nobody had asked him for any such public expression of +his opinion, insisted on rising and proposing the health of Colonel Newcome, +whose virtues he lauded outrageously, and whom he pronounced to be one of the +best of mortal men. Sir Brian looked very much alarmed at the commencement of +this speech, which the mate delivered with immense shrieks and gesticulation: +but the Baronet recovered during the course of the rambling oration, and at its +conclusion gracefully tapped the table with one of those patronising fingers; +and lifting up a glass containing at least a thimbleful of claret, said, +“My dear brother, I drink your health with all my heart, I’m +su-ah.” The youthful Barnes had uttered many “Hear, hears!” +during the discourse, with an irony which, with every fresh glass of wine he +drank, he cared less to conceal. And though Barnes had come late he had drunk +largely, making up for lost time. +</p> + +<p> +Those ironical cheers, and all his cousin’s behaviour during dinner, had +struck young Clive, who was growing very angry. He growled out remarks +uncomplimentary to Barnes. His eyes, as he looked towards his kinsman, flashed +out challenges, of which we who were watching him could see the warlike +purport. Warrington looked at Bayham and Pendennis with glances of +apprehension. We saw that danger was brooding, unless the one young man could +be restrained from his impertinence, and the other from his wine. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Newcome said a very few words in reply to his honest friend the chief +mate, and there the matter might have ended: but I am sorry to say Mr. Binnie +now thought it necessary to rise and deliver himself of some remarks regarding +the King’s service, coupled with the name of Major-General Sir Thomas de +Boots, K.C.B., etc.—the receipt of which that gallant officer was obliged +to acknowledge in a confusion amounting almost to apoplexy. The glasses went +whack whack upon the hospitable board; the evening set in for public speaking. +Encouraged by his last effort, Mr. Binnie now proposed Sir Brian +Newcome’s health; and that Baronet rose and uttered an exceedingly +lengthy speech, delivered with his wine-glass on his bosom. +</p> + +<p> +Then that sad rogue Bayham must get up, and call earnestly and respectfully for +silence and the chairman’s hearty sympathy, for the few observations +which he had to propose. “Our armies had been drunk with proper +enthusiasm—such men as he beheld around him deserved the applause of all +honest hearts, and merited the cheers with which their names had been received. +(‘Hear, hear!’ from Barnes Newcome sarcastically. ‘Hear, +hear, H<small>EAR</small>!’ fiercely from Clive.) But whilst we applauded +our army, should we forget a profession still more exalted? Yes, still more +exalted, I say in the face of the gallant General opposite; and that +profession, I need not say, is the Church. (Applause.) Gentlemen, we have among +us one who, while partaking largely of the dainties on this festive board, +drinking freely of the sparkling wine-cup which our gallant hospitality +administers to us, sanctifies by his presence the feast of which he partakes, +inaugurates with appropriate benedictions, and graces it, I may say, both +before and after meat. Gentlemen, Charles Honeyman was the friend of my +childhood, his father the instructor of my early days. If Frederick +Bayham’s latter life has been chequered by misfortune, it may be that I +have forgotten the precepts which the venerable parent of Charles Honeyman +poured into an inattentive ear. He too, as a child, was not exempt from faults; +as a young man, I am told, not quite free from youthful indiscretions. But in +this present Anno Domini, we hail Charles Honeyman as a precept and an example, +as a <i>decus fidei</i> and a <i>lumen ecclesiæ</i> (as I told him in the +confidence of the private circle this morning, and ere I ever thought to +publish my opinion in this distinguished company). Colonel Newcome and Mr. +Binnie! I drink to the health of the Reverend Charles Honeyman, A.M. May we +listen to many more of his sermons, as well as to that admirable discourse with +which I am sure he is about to electrify us now. May we profit by his +eloquence; and cherish in our memories the truths which come mended from his +tongue!” He ceased; poor Honeyman had to rise on his legs, and gasp out a +few incoherent remarks in reply. Without a book before him, the Incumbent of +Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel was no prophet, and the truth is he made poor +work of his oration. +</p> + +<p> +At the end of it, he, Sir Brian, Colonel Dobbin, and one of the Indian +gentlemen quitted the room, in spite of the loud outcries of our generous host, +who insisted that the party should not break up. “Close up, +gentlemen,” called out honest Newcome, “we are not going to part +just yet. Let me fill your glass, General. You used to have no objection to a +glass of wine.” And he poured out a bumper for his friend, which the old +campaigner sucked in with fitting gusto. “Who will give us a song? +Binnie, give us the ‘Laird of Cockpen.’ It’s capital, my dear +General. Capital,” the Colonel whispered to his neighbour. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Binnie struck up the “Laird of Cockpen,” without, I am bound to +say, the least reluctance. He bobbed to one man, and he winked to another, and +he tossed his glass, and gave all the points of his song in a manner which did +credit to his simplicity and his humour. You haughty Southerners little know +how a jolly Scotch gentleman can <i>desipere in loco</i>, and how he chirrups +over his honest cups. I do not say whether it was with the song or with Mr. +Binnie that we were most amused. It was a good commonty, as Christopher Sly +says; nor were we sorry when it was done. +</p> + +<p> +Him the first mate succeeded; after which came a song from the redoubted F. +Bayham, which he sang with a bass voice which Lablache might envy, and of which +the chorus was frantically sung by the whole company. The cry was then for the +Colonel; on which Barnes Newcome, who had been drinking much, started up with +something like an oath, crying, “Oh, I can’t stand this.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then leave it, confound you!” said young Clive, with fury in his +face. “If our company is not good for you, why do you come into +it?” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that?” asks Barnes, who was evidently affected by +wine. Bayham roared “Silence!” and Barnes Newcome, looking round +with a tipsy toss of the head, finally sate down. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel sang, as we have said, with a very high voice, using freely the +falsetto, after the manner of the tenor singers of his day. He chose one of his +maritime songs, and got through the first verse very well, Barnes wagging his +head at the chorus, with a “Bravo!” so offensive that Fred Bayham, +his neighbour, gripped the young man’s arm, and told him to hold his +confounded tongue. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel began his second verse: and here, as will often happen to amateur +singers, his falsetto broke down. He was not in the least annoyed, for I saw +him smile very good-naturedly; and he was going to try the verse again, when +that unlucky Barnes first gave a sort of crowing imitation of the song, and +then burst into a yell of laughter. Clive dashed a glass of wine in his face at +the next minute, glass and all; and no one who had watched the young +man’s behaviour was sorry for the insult. +</p> + +<p> +I never saw a kind face express more terror than Colonel Newcome’s. He +started back as if he had himself received the blow from his son. +“Gracious God!” he cried out. “My boy insult a gentleman at +my table!” +</p> + +<p> +“I’d like to do it again,” says Clive, whose whole body was +trembling with anger. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you drunk, sir?” shouted his father. +</p> + +<p> +“The boy served the young fellow right, sir,” growled Fred Bayham +in his deepest voice. “Come along, young man. Stand up straight, and keep +a civil tongue in your head next time, mind you, when you dine with gentlemen. +It’s easy to see,” says Fred, looking round with a knowing air, +“that this young man hasn’t got the usages of +society—he’s not been accustomed to it:” and he led the dandy +out. +</p> + +<p> +Others had meanwhile explained the state of the case to the +Colonel—including Sir Thomas de Boots, who was highly energetic and +delighted with Clive’s spirit; and some were for having the song to +continue; but the Colonel, puffing his cigar, said, “No. My pipe is out. +I will never sing again.” So this history will record no more of Thomas +Newcome’s musical performances. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0014"></a> +CHAPTER XIV.<br> +Park Lane</h2> + +<p> +Clive woke up the next morning to be aware of a racking headache, and, by the +dim light of his throbbing eyes, to behold his father with solemn face at his +bed-foot—a reproving conscience to greet his waking. +</p> + +<p> +“You drank too much wine last night, and disgraced yourself, sir,” +the old soldier said. “You must get up and eat humble pie this morning, +my boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Humble what, father?” asked the lad, hardly aware of his words, or +the scene before him. “Oh, I’ve got such a headache!” +</p> + +<p> +“Serve you right, sir. Many a young fellow has had to go on parade in the +morning, with a headache earned overnight. Drink this water. Now, jump up. Now, +dash the water well over your head. There you come! Make your toilette quickly; +and let us be off, and find cousin Barnes before he has left home.” +</p> + +<p> +Clive obeyed the paternal orders; dressed himself quickly; and descending, +found his father smoking his morning cigar in the apartment where they had +dined the night before, and where the tables still were covered with the relics +of yesterday’s feast—the emptied bottles, the blank lamps, the +scattered ashes and fruits, the wretched heel-taps that have been lying exposed +all night to the air. Who does not know the aspect of an expired feast? +</p> + +<p> +“The field of action strewed with the dead, my boy,” says +Clive’s father. “See, here’s the glass on the floor yet, and +a great stain of claret on the carpet.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, father!” says Clive, hanging his head down, “I know I +shouldn’t have done it. But Barnes Newcome would provoke the patience of +Job; and I couldn’t bear to have my father insulted.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am big enough to fight my own battles, my boy,” the Colonel said +good-naturedly, putting his hand on the lad’s damp head. “How your +head throbs! If Barnes laughed at my singing, depend upon it, sir, there was +something ridiculous in it, and he laughed because he could not help it. If he +behaved ill, we should not; and to a man who is eating our salt too, and is of +our blood.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is ashamed of our blood, father,” cries Clive, still indignant. +</p> + +<p> +“We ought to be ashamed of doing wrong. We must go and ask his pardon. +Once when I was a young man in India,” the father continued very gravely, +“some hot words passed at mess—not such an insult as that of last +night; I don’t think I could have quite borne that—and people found +fault with me for forgiving the youngster who had uttered the offensive +expressions over his wine. Some of my acquaintance sneered at my courage, and +that is a hard imputation for a young fellow of spirit to bear. But +providentially, you see, it was war-time, and very soon after I had the good +luck to show that I was not a <i>poule mouillée</i>, as the French call it; and +the man who insulted me, and whom I forgave, became my fastest friend, and died +by my side—it was poor Jack Cutler—at Argaum. We must go and ask +Barnes Newcome’s pardon, sir, and forgive other people’s +trespasses, my boy, if we hope forgiveness of our own.” His voice sank +down as he spoke, and he bowed his honest head reverently. I have heard his son +tell the simple story years afterwards, with tears in his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Piccadilly was hardly yet awake the next morning, and the sparkling dews and +the poor homeless vagabonds still had possession of the grass of Hyde Park, as +the pair walked up to Sir Brian Newcome’s house, where the shutters were +just opening to let in the day. The housemaid, who was scrubbing the steps of +the house, and washing its trim feet in a manner which became such a polite +mansion’s morning toilet, knew Master Clive, and smiled at him from under +her blousy curl-papers, admitting the two gentlemen into Sir Brian’s +dining-room, where they proposed to wait until Mr. Barnes should appear. There +they sate for an hour looking at Lawrence’s picture of Lady Anne, leaning +over a harp, attired in white muslin; at Harlowe’s portrait of Mrs. +Newcome, with her two sons simpering at her knees, painted at a time when the +Newcome Brothers were not the bald-headed, red-whiskered British merchants with +whom the reader has made acquaintance, but chubby children with hair flowing +down their backs, and quaint little swallow-tailed jackets and nankeen +trousers. A splendid portrait of the late Earl of Kew in his peer’s robes +hangs opposite his daughter and her harp. We are writing of George the +Fourth’s reign; I dare say there hung in the room a fine framed print of +that great sovereign. The chandelier is in a canvas bag; the vast sideboard, +whereon are erected open frames for the support of Sir Brian Newcome’s +grand silver trays, which on dinner days gleam on that festive board, now +groans under the weight of Sir Brian’s bluebooks. An immense receptacle +for wine, shaped like a Roman sarcophagus, lurks under the sideboard. Two +people sitting at that large dining-table must talk very loud so as to make +themselves heard across those great slabs of mahogany covered with damask. The +butler and servants who attend at the table take a long time walking round it. +I picture to myself two persons of ordinary size sitting in that great room at +that great table, far apart, in neat evening costume, sipping a little sherry, +silent, genteel, and glum; and think the great and wealthy are not always to be +envied, and that there may be more comfort and happiness in a snug parlour, +where you are served by a brisk little maid, than in a great dark, dreary +dining-hall, where a funereal major-domo and a couple of stealthy footmen +minister to you your mutton-chops. They come and lay the cloth presently, wide +as the main-sheet of some tall ammiral. A pile of newspapers and letters for +the master of the house; the <i>Newcome Sentinel</i>, old county paper, +moderate conservative, in which our worthy townsman and member is praised, his +benefactions are recorded, and his speeches given at full length; the +<i>Newcome Independent</i>, in which our precious member is weekly described as +a ninny, and informed almost every Thursday morning that he is a bloated +aristocrat, as he munches his dry toast. Heaps of letters, county papers, +<i>Times</i> and <i>Morning Herald</i> for Sir Brian Newcome; little heaps of +letters (dinner and soirée cards most of these) and <i>Morning Post</i> for Mr. +Barnes. Punctually as eight o’clock strikes, that young gentleman comes +to breakfast; his father will lie yet for another hour; the Baronet’s +prodigious labours in the House of Commons keeping him frequently out of bed +till sunrise. +</p> + +<p> +As his cousin entered the room, Clive turned very red, and perhaps a faint +blush might appear on Barnes’s pallid countenance. He came in, a +handkerchief in one hand, a pamphlet in the other, and both hands being thus +engaged, he could offer neither to his kinsmen. +</p> + +<p> +“You are come to breakfast, I hope,” he said—calling it +“weakfast,” and pronouncing the words with a most languid +drawl—“or, perhaps, you want to see my father? He is never out of +his room till half-past nine. Harper, did Sir Brian come in last night before +or after me?” Harper, the butler, thinks Sir Brian came in after Mr. +Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +When that functionary had quitted the room, Barnes turned round to his uncle in +a candid, smiling way, and said, “The fact is, sir, I don’t know +when I came home myself very distinctly, and can’t, of course, tell about +my father. Generally, you know, there are two candles left in the hall, you +know; and if there are two, you know, I know of course that my father is still +at the House. But last night, after that capital song you sang, hang me if I +know what happened to me. I beg your pardon, sir, I’m shocked at having +been so overtaken. Such a confounded thing doesn’t happen to me once in +ten years. I do trust I didn’t do anything rude to anybody, for I thought +some of your friends the pleasantest fellows I ever met in my life; and as for +the claret, ’gad, as if I hadn’t had enough after dinner, I brought +a quantity of it away with me on my shirt-front and waistcoat!” +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon, Barnes,” Clive said, blushing deeply, +“and I’m very sorry indeed for what passed; I threw it.” +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel, who had been listening with a queer expression of wonder and doubt +on his face, here interrupted Mr. Barnes. “It was Clive that—that +spilled the wine over you last night,” Thomas Newcome said; “the +young rascal had drunk a great deal too much wine, and had neither the use of +his head nor his hands, and this morning I have given him a lecture, and he has +come to ask your pardon for his clumsiness; and if you have forgotten your +share in the night’s transaction, I hope you have forgotten his, and will +accept his hand and his apology.” +</p> + +<p> +“Apology: There’s no apology,” cries Barnes, holding out a +couple of fingers of his hand, but looking towards the Colonel. “I +don’t know what happened any more than the dead. Did we have a row? Were +there any glasses broken? The best way in such cases is to sweep ’em up. +We can’t mend them.” +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel said gravely—“that he was thankful to find that the +disturbance of the night before had no worse result.” He pulled the tail +of Clive’s coat, when that unlucky young blunderer was about to trouble +his cousin with indiscreet questions or explanations, and checked his talk. +“The other night you saw an old man in drink, my boy,” he said, +“and to what shame and degradation the old wretch had brought himself. +Wine has given you a warning too, which I hope you will remember all your life; +no one has seen me the worse for drink these forty years, and I hope both you +young gentlemen will take counsel by an old soldier, who fully preaches what he +practises, and beseeches you to beware of the bottle.” +</p> + +<p> +After quitting their kinsman, the kind Colonel further improved the occasion +with his son; and told him out of his own experience many stories of quarrels, +and duels, and wine;—how the wine had occasioned the brawls, and the +foolish speech overnight the bloody meeting at morning; how he had known widows +and orphans made by hot words uttered in idle orgies: how the truest honour was +the manly confession of wrong; and the best courage the courage to avoid +temptation. The humble-minded speaker, whose advice contained the best of all +wisdom, that which comes from a gentle and reverent spirit, and a pure and +generous heart, never for once thought of the effect which he might be +producing, but uttered his simple say according to the truth within him. +Indeed, he spoke out his mind pretty resolutely on all subjects which moved or +interested him; and Clive, his son, and his honest chum, Mr. Binnie, who had a +great deal more reading and much keener intelligence than the Colonel, were +amused often at his naive opinion about men, or books, or morals. Mr. Clive had +a very fine natural sense of humour, which played perpetually round his +father’s simple philosophy with kind and smiling comments. Between this +pair of friends the superiority of wit lay, almost from the very first, on the +younger man’s side; but, on the other hand, Clive felt a tender +admiration for his father’s goodness, a loving delight in contemplating +his elder’s character, which he has never lost, and which in the trials +of their future life inexpressibly cheered and consoled both of them! <i>Beati +illi!</i> O man of the world, whose wearied eyes may glance over this page, may +those who come after you so regard you! O generous boy, who read in it, may you +have such a friend to trust and cherish in youth, and in future days fondly and +proudly to remember! +</p> + +<p> +Some four or five weeks after the quasi-reconciliation between Clive and his +kinsman, the chief part of Sir Brian Newcome’s family were assembled at +the breakfast-table together, where the meal was taken in common, and at the +early hour of eight (unless the senator was kept too late in the House of +Commons overnight); and Lady Anne and her nursery were now returned to London +again, little Alfred being perfectly set up by a month of Brighton air. It was +a Thursday morning; on which day of the week, it has been said, the <i>Newcome +Independent</i> and the <i>Newcome Sentinel</i> both made their appearance upon +the Baronet’s table. The household from above and from below; the maids +and footmen from the basement; the nurses, children, and governesses from the +attics; all poured into the room at the sound of a certain bell. +</p> + +<p> +I do not sneer at the purpose for which, at that chiming eight-o’clock +bell, the household is called together. The urns are hissing, the plate is +shining; the father of the house, standing up, reads from a gilt book for three +or four minutes in a measured cadence. The members of the family are around the +table in an attitude of decent reverence; the younger children whisper +responses at their mother’s knees; the governess worships a little apart; +the maids and the large footmen are in a cluster before their chairs, the upper +servants performing their devotion on the other side of the sideboard; the +nurse whisks about the unconscious last-born, and tosses it up and down during +the ceremony. I do not sneer at that—at the act at which all these people +are assembled—it is at the rest of the day I marvel; at the rest of the +day, and what it brings. At the very instant when the voice has ceased speaking +and the gilded book is shut, the world begins again, and for the next +twenty-three hours and fifty-seven minutes all that household is given up to +it. The servile squad rises up and marches away to its basement, whence, should +it happen to be a gala-day, those tall gentlemen at present attired in Oxford +mixture will issue forth with flour plastered on their heads, yellow coats, +pink breeches, sky-blue waistcoats, silver lace, buckles in their shoes, black +silk bags on their backs, and I don’t know what insane emblems of +servility and absurd bedizenments of folly. Their very manner of speaking to +what we call their masters and mistresses will be a like monstrous masquerade. +You know no more of that race which inhabits the basement floor, than of the +men and brethren of Timbuctoo, to whom some among us send missionaries. If you +met some of your servants in the streets (I respectfully suppose for a moment +that the reader is a person of high fashion and a great establishment), you +would not know their faces. You might sleep under the same roof for half a +century and know nothing about them. If they were ill, you would not visit +them, though you would send them an apothecary and of course order that they +lacked for nothing. You are not unkind, you are not worse than your neighbours. +Nay, perhaps, if you did go into the kitchen, or to take the tea in the +servants’-hall, you would do little good, and only bore the folks +assembled there. But so it is. With those fellow-Christians who have been just +saying Amen to your prayers, you have scarcely the community of Charity. They +come, you don’t know whence; they think and talk, you don’t know +what; they die, and you don’t care, or <i>vice versâ</i>. They answer the +bell for prayers as they answer the bell for coals: for exactly three minutes +in the day you all kneel together on one carpet—and, the desires and +petitions of the servants and masters over, the rite called family worship is +ended. +</p> + +<p> +Exeunt servants, save those two who warm the newspaper, administer the muffins, +and serve out the tea. Sir Brian reads his letters, and chumps his dry toast. +Ethel whispers to her mother, she thinks Eliza is looking very ill. Lady Anne +asks, which is Eliza? Is it the woman that was ill before they left town? If +she is ill, Mrs. Trotter had better send her away. Mrs. Trotter is only a great +deal too good-natured. She is always keeping people who are ill. Then her +ladyship begins to read the <i>Morning Post</i>, and glances over the names of +the persons who were present at Baroness Bosco’s ball, and Mrs. Toddle +Tompkyns’s <i>soirée dansante</i> in Belgrave Square. +</p> + +<p> +“Everybody was there,” says Barnes, looking over from his paper. +</p> + +<p> +“But who is Mrs. Toddle Tompkyns?” asks mamma. “Who ever +heard of a Mrs. Toddle Tompkyns? What do people mean by going to such a +person?” +</p> + +<p> +“Lady Popinjoy asked the people,” Barnes says gravely. “The +thing was really doosed well done. The woman looked frightened; but she’s +pretty, and I am told the daughter will have a great lot of money.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is she pretty, and did you dance with her?” asks Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +“Me dance!” says Mr. Barnes. We are speaking of a time before +casinos were, and when the British youth were by no means so active in dancing +practice as at this present period. Barnes resumed the reading of his county +paper, but presently laid it down, with an execration so brisk and loud, that +his mother gave a little outcry, and even his father looked up from his letters +to ask the meaning of an oath so unexpected and ungenteel. +</p> + +<p> +“My uncle, the Colonel of sepoys, and his amiable son have been paying a +visit to Newcome—that’s the news which I have the pleasure to +announce to you,” says Mr. Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +“You are always sneering about our uncle,” breaks in Ethel, with +impetuous voice, “and saying unkind things about Clive. Our uncle is a +dear, good, kind man, and I love him. He came to Brighton to see us, and went +out every day for hours and hours with Alfred; and Clive, too, drew pictures +for him. And he is good, and kind, and generous, and honest as his father. And +Barnes is always speaking ill of him behind his back.” +</p> + +<p> +“And his aunt lets very nice lodgings, and is altogether a most desirable +acquaintance,” says Mr. Barnes. “What a shame it is that we have +not cultivated that branch of the family!” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear fellow,” cries Sir Brian, “I have no doubt Miss +Honeyman is a most respectable person. Nothing is so ungenerous as to rebuke a +gentleman or a lady on account of their poverty, and I coincide with Ethel in +thinking that you speak of your uncle and his son in terms which, to say the +least, are disrespectful.” +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Honeyman is a dear little old woman,” breaks in Ethel. +“Was not she kind to Alfred, mamma, and did not she make him nice jelly? +And a Doctor of Divinity—you know Clive’s grandfather was a Doctor +of Divinity, mamma, there’s a picture of him in a wig—is just as +good as a banker, you know he is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you bring some of Miss Honeyman’s lodging-house cards with +you, Ethel?” says her brother, “and had we not better hang up one +or two in Lombard Street; hers and our other relation’s, Mrs. +Mason?” +</p> + +<p> +“My darling love, who is Mrs. Mason?” asks Lady Anne. +</p> + +<p> +“Another member of the family, ma’am. She was +cousin——” +</p> + +<p> +“She was no such thing, sir,” roars Sir Brian. +</p> + +<p> +“She was relative and housemaid of my grandfather during his first +marriage. She acted, I believe, as dry nurse to the distinguished Colonel of +sepoys, my uncle. She has retired into private life in her native town of +Newcome, and occupies her latter days by the management of a mangle. The +Colonel and young pothouse have gone down to spend a few days with their +elderly relative. It’s all here in the paper, by Jove!” Mr. Barnes +clenched his fist, and stamped upon the newspaper with much energy. +</p> + +<p> +“And so they should go down and see her, and so the Colonel should love +his nurse, and not forget his relations if they are old and poor,” cries +Ethel, with a flush on her face, and tears starting into her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Hear what the Newcome papers say about it,” shrieks out Mr. +Barnes, his voice quivering, his little eyes flashing out scorn. +“It’s in both the papers, I dare say. It will be in the +<i>Times</i> to-morrow. By —— it’s delightful. Our paper only +mentions the gratifying circumstance; here is the paragraph. +‘Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome, C.B., a distinguished Indian officer, and +younger brother of our respected townsman and representative Sir Brian Newcome, +Bart., has been staying for the last week at the King’s Arms, in our +city. He has been visited by the principal inhabitants and leading gentlemen of +Newcome, and has come among us, as we understand, in order to pass a few days +with an elderly relative, who has been living for many years past in great +retirement in this place.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I see no great harm in that paragraph,” says Sir Brian. +“I wish my brother had gone to the Roebuck, and not to the King’s +Arms, as the Roebuck is our house: but he could not be expected to know much +about the Newcome inns, as he is a <i>new-comer</i> himself. And I think it was +very right of the people to call on him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now hear what the <i>Independent</i> says, and see if you like that, +sir,” cries Barnes, grinning fiercely; and he began to read as +follows:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“‘Mr. <i>Independent</i>—I was born and bred a Screwcomite, +and am naturally proud of <i>everybody</i> and <i>everything</i> which bears +the revered name of Screwcome. I am a Briton and a man, though I have not the +honour of a vote for my native borough; if I had, you may be sure I would give +it to our <i>admired</i> and <i>talented</i> representative, Don Pomposo +Lickspittle Grindpauper, Poor House Agincourt, Screwcome, whose ancestors +fought with Julius Cæsar against William the Conqueror, and whose father +certainly wielded a <i>cloth yard shaft</i> in London not fifty years ago. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Don Pomposo, as you know, seldom favours the town o Screwcome +with a visit.—Our gentry are not of <i>ancient birth</i> enough to be +welcome to a Lady Screwcome. Our manufacturers make their money by trade. Oh, +fie I how can it be supposed that such <i>vulgarians</i> should be received +among the <i>aristocratic society</i> of Screwcome House? Two balls in the +season, and ten dozen o gooseberry, are enough for <i>them</i>.’” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s that scoundrel Parrot,” burst out Sir Brian; +“because I wouldn’t have any more wine of him—No, it’s +Vidler, the apothecary. By heavens! Lady Anne, I told you it would be so. Why +didn’t you ask the Miss Vidlers to your ball?” +</p> + +<p> +“They were on the list,” cries Lady Anne, “three of them; I +did everything I could; I consulted Mr. Vidler for poor Alfred, and he actually +stopped and saw the dear child take the physic. Why were they not asked to the +ball?” cries her ladyship bewildered; “I declare to gracious +goodness I don’t know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Barnes scratched their names,” cries Ethel, “out of the +list, mamma. You know you did, Barnes; you said you had gallipots +enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think it is like Vidler’s writing,” said Mr. +Barnes, perhaps willing to turn the conversation. “I think it must be +that villain Duff the baker, who made the song about us at the last +election;—but hear the rest of the paragraph,” and he continued to +read:— +</p> + +<p> +“‘The Screwcomites are at this moment favoured with a visit from a +gentleman of the Screwcome family, who, having passed all his life abroad, is +somewhat different from his relatives, whom we all so <i>love and honour!</i> +This distinguished gentleman, this gallant soldier, has come among us, not +merely to see our manufactures—in which Screwcome can vie with any city +in the North—but an old servant and relation of his family, whom he is +not above recognising; who nursed him in his early days; who has been living in +her native place for many years, supported by the generous bounty of Colonel +N———. The gallant officer, accompanied by his son, a fine +youth, has taken repeated drives round our beautiful environs in one of friend +Taplow’s (of the King’s Arms) open drags, and accompanied by Mrs. +———, now an aged lady, who speaks, with tears in her eyes, of +the goodness and gratitude of her gallant soldier! +</p> + +<p> +“‘One day last week they drove to Screwcome House. Will it be +believed that, though the house is only four miles distant from our +city—though Don Pomposo’s family have inhabited it these twelve +years for four or five months every year—Mrs. M——— saw +her cousin’s house for the first time; has never set eyes upon those +grandees, except in public places, since the day when they <i>honoured</i> the +county by purchasing the estate which they own? +</p> + +<p> +“‘I have, as I repeat, no vote for the borough; but if I had, oh, +wouldn’t I show my respectful gratitude at the next election, and plump +for Pomposo! I shall keep my eye upon him, and am, Mr. +<i>Independent</i>,—Your Constant Reader, Peeping Tom.’” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“The spirit of radicalism abroad in this country,” said Sir Brian +Newcome, crushing his egg-shell desperately, “is dreadful, really +dreadful. We are on the edge of a positive volcano.” Down went the +egg-spoon into its crater. “The worst sentiments are everywhere publicly +advocated; the licentiousness of the press has reached a pinnacle which menaces +us with ruin; there is no law which these shameless newspapers respect; no rank +which is safe from their attacks; no ancient landmark which the lava-flood of +democracy does not threaten to overwhelm and destroy.” +</p> + +<p> +“When I was at Spielburg,” Barnes Newcome remarked kindly, “I +saw three long-bearded, putty-faced blaguards pacin up and down a little +courtyard, and Count Keppenheimer told me they were three damned editors of +Milanese newspapers, who had had seven years of imprisonment already; and last +year when Keppenheimer came to shoot at Newcome, I showed him that old thief, +old Batters, the proprietor of the <i>Independent</i>, and Potts, his infernal +ally, driving in a dogcart; and I said to him, Keppenheimer, I wish we had a +place where we could lock up some of our infernal radicals of the press, or +that you could take off those two villains to Spielburg; and as we were passin, +that infernal Potts burst out laughin in my face, and cut one of my pointers +over the head with his whip. We must do something with that <i>Independent</i>, +sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“We must,” says the father, solemnly, “we must put it down, +Barnes, we must put it down.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” says Barnes, “we had best give the railway +advertisements to Batters.” +</p> + +<p> +“But that makes the man of the <i>Sentinel</i> so angry,” says the +elder persecutor of the press. +</p> + +<p> +“Then let us give Tom Potts some shootin at any rate; the ruffian is +always poachin about our covers as it is. Speers should be written to, sir, to +keep a look-out upon Batters and that villain his accomplice, and to be civil +to them, and that sort of thing; and, damn it, to be down upon them whenever he +sees the opportunity.” +</p> + +<p> +During the above conspiracy for bribing or crushing the independence of a great +organ of British opinion, Miss Ethel Newcome held her tongue; but when her papa +closed the conversation by announcing solemnly that he would communicate with +Speers, Ethel turning to her mother said, “Mamma, is it true that +grandpapa has a relation living at Newcome who is old and poor?” +</p> + +<p> +“My darling child, how on earth should I know?” says Lady Anne. +“I daresay Mr. Newcome had plenty of poor relations.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure some on your side, Anne, have been good enough to visit me at +the bank,” said Sir Brian, who thought his wife’s ejaculation was a +reflection upon his family, whereas it was the statement of a simple fact in +natural history. “This person was no relation of my father’s at +all. She was remotely connected with his first wife, I believe. She acted as +servant to him, and has been most handsomely pensioned by the Colonel.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who went to her, like a kind, dear, good, brave uncle as he is,” +cried Ethel; “the very day I go to Newcome I’ll go to see +her.” She caught a look of negation in her father’s +eye—“I will go—that is, if papa will give me leave,” +says Miss Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +“By Gad, sir,” says Barnes, “I think it is the very best +thing she could do; and the best way of doing it, Ethel can go with one of the +boys and take Mrs. What-do-you-call’em a gown, or a tract, or that sort +of thing, and stop that infernal <i>Independent’s</i> mouth.” +</p> + +<p> +“If we had gone sooner,” said Miss Ethel, simply, “there +would not have been all this abuse of us in the paper.” To which +statement her worldly father and brother perforce agreeing, we may congratulate +good old Mrs. Mason upon the new and polite acquaintances she is about to make. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0015"></a> +CHAPTER XV.<br> +The Old Ladies</h2> + +<p> +The above letter and conversation will show what our active Colonel’s +movements and history had been since the last chapter in which they were +recorded. He and Clive took the Liverpool mail, and travelled from Liverpool to +Newcome with a post-chaise and a pair of horses, which landed them at the +King’s Arms. The Colonel delighted in post-chaising—the rapid +transit through the country amused him and cheered his spirits. Besides, had he +not Dr. Johnson’s word for it, that a swift journey in a post-chaise was +one of the greatest enjoyments in life, and a sojourn in a comfortable inn one +of its chief pleasures? In travelling he was as happy and noisy as a boy. He +talked to the waiters, and made friends with the landlord; got all the +information which he could gather regarding the towns into which he came; and +drove about from one sight or curiosity to another with indefatigable +good-humour and interest. It was good for Clive to see men and cities; to visit +mills, manufactories, country seats, cathedrals. He asked a hundred questions +regarding all things round about him; and any one caring to know who Thomas +Newcome was, and what his rank and business, found no difficulty in having his +questions answered by the simple and kindly traveller. +</p> + +<p> +Mine host of the King’s Arms, Mr. Taplow aforesaid, knew in five minutes +who his guest was, and the errand on which he came. Was not Colonel +Newcome’s name painted on all his trunks and boxes? Was not his servant +ready to answer all questions regarding the Colonel and his son? Newcome pretty +generally introduced Clive to my landlord, when the latter brought his guest +his bottle of wine. With old-fashioned cordiality, the Colonel would bid the +landlord drink a glass of his own liquor, and seldom failed to say to him, +“This is my son, sir. We are travelling together to see the country. +Every English gentleman should see his own country first, before he goes +abroad, as we intend to do afterwards—to make the Grand Tour. And I will +thank you to tell me what there is remarkable in your town, and what we ought +to see—antiquities, manufactures, and seats in the neighbourhood. We wish +to see everything, sir—everything. Elaborate diaries of these home tours +are still extant, in Clive’s boyish manuscript and the Colonel’s +dashing handwriting—quaint records of places visited, and alarming +accounts of inn bills paid.” +</p> + +<p> +So Mr. Taplow knew in five minutes that his guest was a brother of Sir Brian, +their member; and saw the note despatched by an ostler to “Mrs. Sarah +Mason, Jubilee Row,” announcing that the Colonel had arrived, and would +be with her after his dinner. Mr. Taplow did not think fit to tell his guest +that the house Sir Brian used—the Blue house—was the Roebuck, not +the King’s Arms. Might not the gentlemen be of different politics? Mr. +Taplow’s wine knew none. +</p> + +<p> +Some of the jolliest fellows in all Newcome use the Boscawen Room at the +King’s Arms as their club, and pass numberless merry evenings and crack +countless jokes there. +</p> + +<p> +Duff, the baker; old Mr. Vidler, when he can get away from his medical labours +(and his hand shakes, it must be owned, very much now, and his nose is very +red); Parrot, the auctioneer; and that amusing dog, Tom Potts, the talented +reporter of the <i>Independent</i>—were pretty constant attendants at the +King’s Arms; and Colonel Newcome’s dinner was not over before some +of these gentlemen knew what dishes he had had; how he had called for a bottle +of sherry and a bottle of claret, like a gentleman; how he had paid the +postboys, and travelled with a servant like a top-sawyer; that he was come to +shake hands with an old nurse and relative of his family. Every one of those +jolly Britons thought well of the Colonel for his affectionateness and +liberality, and contrasted it with the behaviour of the Tory +Baronet—their representative. +</p> + +<p> +His arrival made a sensation in the place. The Blue Club at the Roebuck +discussed it, as well as the uncompromising Liberals at the King’s Arms. +Mr. Speers, Sir Brian’s agent, did not know how to act, and advised Sir +Brian by the next night’s mail, The Reverend Dr. Bulders, the rector, +left his card. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile it was not gain or business, but only love and gratitude, which +brought Thomas Newcome to his father’s native town. Their dinner over, +away went the Colonel and Clive, guided by the ostler, their previous +messenger, to the humble little tenement which Thomas Newcome’s earliest +friend inhabited. The good old woman put her spectacles into her Bible, and +flung herself into her boy’s arms—her boy who was more than fifty +years old. She embraced Clive still more eagerly and frequently than she kissed +his father. She did not know her Colonel with them whiskers. Clive was the very +picture of the dear boy as he had left her almost twoscore years ago. And as +fondly as she hung on the boy, her memory had ever clung round that early time +when they were together. The good soul told endless tales of her +darling’s childhood, his frolics and beauty. To-day was uncertain to her, +but the past was still bright and clear. As they sat prattling together over +the bright tea-table, attended by the trim little maid, whose services the +Colonel’s bounty secured for his old nurse, the kind old creature +insisted on having Clive by her side. Again and again she would think he was +actually her own boy, forgetting, in that sweet and pious hallucination, that +the bronzed face, and thinned hair, and melancholy eyes of the veteran before +her, were those of her nursling of old days. So for near half the space of +man’s allotted life he had been absent from her, and day and night +wherever he was, in sickness or health, in sorrow or danger, her innocent love +and prayers had attended the absent darling. Not in vain, not in vain, does he +live whose course is so befriended. Let us be thankful for our race, as we +think of the love that blesses some of us. Surely it has something of Heaven in +it, and angels celestial may rejoice in it, and admire it. +</p> + +<p> +Having nothing whatever to do, our Colonel’s movements are of course +exceedingly rapid, and he has the very shortest time to spend in any single +place. That evening, Saturday, and the next day, Sunday, when he will +faithfully accompany his dear old nurse to church. And what a festival is that +day for her, when she has her Colonel and that beautiful brilliant boy of his +by her side, and Mr. Hicks, the curate, looking at him, and the venerable Dr. +Bulders himself eyeing him from the pulpit, and all the neighbours fluttering +and whispering, to be sure, who can be that fine military gentleman, and that +splendid young man sitting by old Mrs. Mason, and leading her so affectionately +out of church? That Saturday and Sunday the Colonel will pass with good old +Mason, but on Monday he must be off; on Tuesday he must be in London, he has +important business in London,—in fact, Tom Hamilton, of his regiment, +comes up for election at the Oriental on that day, and on such an occasion +could Thomas Newcome be absent? He drives away from the King’s Arms +through a row of smirking chambermaids, smiling waiters, and thankful ostlers, +accompanied to the post-chaise, of which the obsequious Taplow shuts the door; +and the Boscawen Room pronounces him that night to be a trump; and the whole of +the busy town, ere the next day is over, has heard of his coming and departure, +praised his kindliness and generosity, and no doubt contrasted it with the +different behaviour of the Baronet, his brother, who has gone for some time by +the ignominious sobriquet of Screwcome, in the neighbourhood of his ancestral +hall. +</p> + +<p> +Dear old nurse Mason will have a score of visits to make and to receive, at all +of which you may be sure that triumphal advent of the Colonel’s will be +discussed and admired. Mrs. Mason will show her beautiful new India shawl, and +her splendid Bible with the large print, and the affectionate inscription, from +Thomas Newcome to his dearest old friend; her little maid will exhibit her new +gown; the curate will see the Bible, and Mrs. Bulders will admire the shawl; +and the old friends and humble companions of the good old lady, as they take +their Sunday walks by the pompous lodge-gates of Newcome Park, which stand with +the Baronet’s new-fangled arms over them, gilded, and filagreed, and +barred, will tell their stories, too, about the kind Colonel and his hard +brother. When did Sir Brian ever visit a poor old woman’s cottage, or his +bailiff exempt from the rent? What good action, except a few thin blankets and +beggarly coal and soup tickets, did Newcome Park ever do for the poor? And as +for the Colonel’s wealth, Lord bless you, he’s been in India these +five-and-thirty years; the Baronet’s money is a drop in the sea to his. +The Colonel is the kindest, the best, the richest of men. These facts and +opinions, doubtless, inspired the eloquent pen of “Peeping Tom,” +when he indited the sarcastic epistle to the <i>Newcome Independent</i>, which +we perused over Sir Brian Newcome’s shoulder in the last chapter. +</p> + +<p> +And you may be sure Thomas Newcome had not been many weeks in England before +good little Miss Honeyman, at Brighton, was favoured with a visit from her dear +Colonel. The envious Gawler scowling out of his bow-window, where the fly-blown +card still proclaimed that his lodgings were unoccupied, had the mortification +to behold a yellow post-chaise drive up to Miss Honeyman’s door, and +having discharged two gentlemen from within, trot away with servant and baggage +to some house of entertainment other than Gawler’s. Whilst this wretch +was cursing his own ill fate, and execrating yet more deeply Miss +Honeyman’s better fortune, the worthy little lady was treating her +Colonel to a sisterly embrace and a solemn reception. Hannah, the faithful +housekeeper, was presented, and had a shake of the hand. The Colonel knew all +about Hannah: ere he had been in England a week, a basket containing pots of +jam of her confection, and a tongue of Hannah’s curing, had arrived for +the Colonel. That very night when his servant had lodged Colonel +Newcome’s effects at the neighbouring hotel, Hannah was in possession of +one of the Colonel’s shirts, she and her mistress having previously +conspired to make a dozen of those garments for the family benefactor. +</p> + +<p> +All the presents which Newcome had ever transmitted to his sister-in-law from +India had been taken out of the cotton and lavender in which the faithful +creature kept them. It was a fine hot day in June, but I promise you Miss +Honeyman wore her blazing scarlet Cashmere shawl; her great brooch, +representing the Taj of Agra, was in her collar; and her bracelets (she used to +say, I am given to understand they are called bangles, my dear, by the natives) +decorated the sleeves round her lean old hands, which trembled with pleasure as +they received the kind grasp of the Colonel of colonels. How busy those hands +had been that morning! What custards they had whipped!—what a triumph of +pie-crusts they had achieved! Before Colonel Newcome had been ten minutes in +the house, the celebrated veal-cutlets made their appearance. Was not the whole +house adorned in expectation of his coming? Had not Mr. Kuhn, the affable +foreign gentleman of the first-floor lodgers, prepared a French dish? Was not +Betty on the look-out, and instructed to put the cutlets on the fire at the +very moment when the Colonel’s carriage drove up to her mistress’s +door? The good woman’s eyes twinkled, the kind old hand and voice shook, +as, holding up a bright glass of Madeira, Miss Honeyman drank the +Colonel’s health. “I promise you, my dear Colonel,” says she, +nodding her head, adorned with a bristling superstructure of lace and ribbons, +“I promise you, that I can drink your health in good <i>wine!</i>” +The wine was of his own sending, and so were the China fire-screens, and the +sandalwood workbox, and the ivory cardcase, and those magnificent pink and +white chessmen, carved like little sepoys and mandarins, with the castles on +elephants’ backs, George the Third and his queen in pink ivory, against +the Emperor of China and lady in white—the delight of Clive’s +childhood, the chief ornament of the old spinster’s sitting-room. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Honeyman’s little feast was pronounced to be the perfection of +cookery; and when the meal was over, came a noise of little feet at the parlour +door, which being opened, there appeared, first, a tall nurse with a dancing +baby; second and third, two little girls with little frocks, little trousers, +long ringlets, blue eyes, and blue ribbons to match; fourth, Master Alfred, now +quite recovered from his illness, and holding by the hand, fifth, Miss Ethel +Newcome, blushing like a rose. +</p> + +<p> +Hannah, grinning, acted as mistress of the ceremonies, calling out the names of +“Miss Newcomes, Master Newcomes, to see the Colonel, if you please, +ma’am,” bobbing a curtsey, and giving a knowing nod to Master +Clive, as she smoothed her new silk apron. Hannah, too, was in new attire, all +crisp and rustling, in the Colonel’s honour. Miss Ethel did not cease +blushing as she advanced towards her uncle; and the honest campaigner started +up, blushing too. Mr. Clive rose also, as little Alfred, of whom he was a great +friend, ran towards him. Clive rose, laughed, nodded at Ethel, and ate +gingerbread nuts all at the same time. As for Colonel Thomas Newcome and his +niece, they fell in love with each other instantaneously, like Prince +Camaralzaman and the Princess of China. +</p> + +<p> +I have turned away one artist: the poor creature was utterly incompetent to +depict the sublime, graceful, and pathetic personages and events with which +this history will most assuredly abound, and I doubt whether even the designer +engaged in his place can make such a portrait of Miss Ethel Newcome as shall +satisfy her friends and her own sense of justice. That blush which we have +indicated, he cannot render. How are you to copy it with a steel point and a +ball of printer’s ink? That kindness which lights up the Colonel’s +eyes; gives an expression to the very wrinkles round about them; shines as a +halo round his face;—what artist can paint it? The painters of old, when +they portrayed sainted personages, were fain to have recourse to compasses and +gold leaf—as if celestial splendour could be represented by Dutch metal! +As our artist cannot come up to this task, the reader will be pleased to let +his fancy paint for itself the look of courtesy for a woman, admiration for a +young beauty, protection for an innocent child, all of which are expressed upon +the Colonel’s kind face, as his eyes are set upon Ethel Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma has sent us to bid you welcome to England, uncle,” says Miss +Ethel, advancing, and never thinking for a moment of laying aside that fine +blush which she brought into the room, and which is <i>her</i> pretty symbol of +youth, and modesty, and beauty. +</p> + +<p> +He took a little slim white hand and laid it down on his brown palm, where it +looked all the whiter: he cleared the grizzled mustachio from his mouth, and +stooping down he kissed the little white hand with a great deal of grace and +dignity. There was no point of resemblance, and yet a something in the +girl’s look, voice, and movements, which caused his heart to thrill, and +an image out of the past to rise up and salute him. The eyes which had +brightened his youth (and which he saw in his dreams and thoughts for faithful +years afterwards, as though they looked at him out of heaven) seemed to shine +upon him after five-and-thirty years. He remembered such a fair bending neck +and clustering hair, such a light foot and airy figure, such a slim hand lying +in his own—and now parted from it with a gap of ten thousand long days +between. It is an old saying, that we forget nothing; as people in fever begin +suddenly to talk the language of their infancy we are stricken by memory +sometimes, and old affections rush back on us as vivid as in the time when they +were our daily talk, when their presence gladdened our eyes, when their accents +thrilled in our ears, when with passionate tears and grief we flung ourselves +upon their hopeless corpses. Parting is death, at least as far as life is +concerned. A passion comes to an end; it is carried off in a coffin, or weeping +in a post-chaise; it drops out of life one way or other, and the earthclods +close over it, and we see it no more. But it has been part of our souls, and it +is eternal. Does a mother not love her dead infant? a man his lost mistress? +with the fond wife nestling at his side,—yes, with twenty children +smiling round her knee. No doubt, as the old soldier held the girl’s hand +in his, the little talisman led him back to Hades, and he saw +Leonora.—— +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, uncle?” say girls Nos. 2 and 3 in a pretty little +infantile chorus. He drops the talisman, he is back in common life +again—the dancing baby in the arms of the bobbing nurse babbles a +welcome. Alfred looks up for a while at his uncle in the white trousers, and +then instantly proposes that Clive should make him some drawings; and is on his +knees at the next moment. He is always climbing on somebody or something, or +winding over chairs, curling through banisters, standing on somebody’s +head, or his own head,—as his convalescence advances, his breakages are +fearful. Miss Honeyman and Hannah will talk about his dilapidations for years +after the little chap has left them. When he is a jolly young officer in the +Guards, and comes to see them at Brighton, they will show him the blue-dragon +Chayny jar, on which he would sit, and which he cried so fearfully upon +breaking. +</p> + +<p> +When this little party has gone out smiling to take its walk on the sea-shore, +the Colonel sits down and resumes the interrupted dessert. Miss Honeyman talks +of the children and their mother, and the merits of Mr. Kuhn, and the beauty of +Miss Ethel, glancing significantly towards Clive, who has had enough of +gingerbread nuts and dessert and wine, and whose youthful nose is by this time +at the window. What kind-hearted woman, young or old, does not love +match-making? +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel, without lifting his eyes from the table, says “she reminds +him of—of somebody he knew once.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed?” cries Miss Honeyman, and thinks Emma must have altered +very much after going to India, for she had fair hair, and white eyelashes, and +not a pretty foot certainly—but, my dear good lady, the Colonel is not +thinking of the late Mrs. Casey. +</p> + +<p> +He has taken a fitting quantity of the Madeira, the artless greeting of the +people here, young and old, has warmed his heart, and he goes upstairs to pay a +visit to his sister-in-law, to whom he makes his most courteous bow as becomes +a lady of her rank. Ethel takes her place quite naturally beside him during his +visit. Where did he learn those fine manners which all of us who knew him +admired in him? He had a natural simplicity, an habitual practice of kind and +generous thoughts; a pure mind, and therefore above hypocrisy and +affectation—perhaps those French people with whom he had been intimate in +early life had imparted to him some of the traditional graces of their +<i>vieille tour</i>—certainly his half-brothers had inherited none such. +“What is this that Barnes has written about his uncle, that the Colonel +is ridiculous?” Lady Anne said to her daughter that night. “Your +uncle is adorable. I have never seen a more perfect grand Seigneur. He puts me +in mind of my grandfather, though grandpapa’s grand manner was more +artificial, and his voice spoiled by snuff. See the Colonel. He smokes round +the garden, but with what perfect grace! This is the man Uncle Hobson, and your +poor dear papa, have represented to us as a species of bear! Mr. Newcome, who +has himself the ton of a waiter! The Colonel is perfect. What can Barnes mean +by ridiculing him? I wish Barnes had such a distinguished air; but he is like +his poor dear papa. <i>Que voulez-vous</i>, my love? The Newcomes are +honourable: the Newcomes are wealthy: but distinguished—no. I never +deluded myself with that notion when I married your poor dear papa. At once I +pronounce Colonel Newcome a person to be in every way distinguished by us. On +our return to London I shall present him to all our family: poor good man! let +him see that his family have some presentable relations besides those whom he +will meet at Mrs. Newcome’s, in Bryanstone Square. You must go to +Bryanstone Square immediately we return to London. You must ask your cousins +and their governess, and we will give them a little party. Mrs. Newcome is +insupportable, but we must never forsake our relatives, Ethel. When you come +out you will have to dine there, and to go to her ball. Every young lady in +your position in the world has sacrifices to make, and duties to her family to +perform. Look at me. Why did I marry your poor dear papa? From duty. Has your +Aunt Fanny, who ran away with Captain Canonbury, been happy? They have eleven +children, and are starving at Boulogne. Think of three of Fanny’s boys in +yellow stockings at the Bluecoat School. Your papa got them appointed. I am +sure my papa would have gone mad if he had seen that day! She came with one of +the poor wretches to Park Lane: but I could not see them. My feelings would not +allow me. When my maid,—I had a French maid then, Louise, you remember; +her conduct was <i>abominable:</i> so was Préville’s—when she came +and said that my Lady Fanny was below with a young gentleman, <i>qui portait +des bas jaunes</i>, I could not see the child. I begged her to come up in my +room: and, absolutely that I might not offend her, I went to bed. That wretch +Louise met her at Boulogne and told her afterwards. Good night, we must not +stand chattering here any more. Heaven bless you, my darling! Those are the +Colonel’s windows! Look, he is smoking on his balcony—that must be +Clive’s room. Clive is a good kind boy. It was very kind of him to draw +so many pictures for Alfred. Put the drawings away, Ethel. Mr. Smee saw some in +Park Lane, and said they showed remarkable genius. What a genius your Aunt +Emily had for drawing; but it was flowers! I had no genius in particular, so +mamma used to say—and Doctor Belper said, ‘My dear Lady +Walham’ (it was before my grandpapa’s death), ‘has Miss Anne +a genius for sewing buttons and making puddens?’—puddens he +pronounced it. Goodnight, my own love. Blessings, blessings, on my +Ethel!” +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel from his balcony saw the slim figure of the retreating girl, and +looked fondly after her: and as the smoke of his cigar floated in the air, he +formed a fine castle in it, whereof Clive was lord, and that pretty Ethel, +lady. “What a frank, generous, bright young creature is yonder!” +thought he. “How cheery and gay she is; how good to Miss Honeyman, to +whom she behaved with just the respect that was the old lady’s +due—how affectionate with her brothers and sisters! What a sweet voice +she has! What a pretty little white hand it is! When she gave it me, it looked +like a little white bird lying in mine. I must wear gloves, by Jove I must, and +my coat is old-fashioned, as Binnie says; what a fine match might be made +between that child and Clive! She reminds me of a pair of eyes I haven’t +seen these forty years. I would like to have Clive married to her; to see him +out of the scrapes and dangers that young fellows encounter, and safe with such +a sweet girl as that. If God had so willed it, I might have been happy myself, +and could have made a woman happy. But the Fates were against me. I should like +to see Clive happy, and then say <i>Nunc dimittis</i>. I shan’t want +anything more to-night, Kean, and you can go to bed.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you, Colonel,” says Kean, who enters, having prepared his +master’s bedchamber, and is retiring when the Colonel calls after him: +</p> + +<p> +“I say, Kean, is that blue coat of mine very old?” +</p> + +<p> +“Uncommon white about the seams, Colonel,” says the man. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it older than other people’s coats?”—Kean is +obliged gravely to confess that the Colonel’s coat is very queer. +</p> + +<p> +“Get me another coat, then—see that I don’t do anything or +wear anything unusual. I have been so long out of Europe, that I don’t +know the customs here, and am not above learning.” +</p> + +<p> +Kean retires, vowing that his master is an old trump; which opinion he had +already expressed to Mr. Kuhn, Lady Hanne’s man, over a long potation +which those two gentlemen had taken together. And, as all of us, in one way or +another, are subject to this domestic criticism, from which not the most +exalted can escape, I say, lucky is the man whose servants speak well of him. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0016"></a> +CHAPTER XVI.<br> +In which Mr. Sherrick lets his House in Fitzroy Square</h2> + +<p> +In spite of the sneers of the <i>Newcome Independent</i>, and the +Colonel’s unlucky visit to his nurse’s native place, he still +remained in high favour in Park Lane; where the worthy gentleman paid almost +daily visits, and was received with welcome and almost affection, at least by +the ladies and the children of the house. Who was it that took the children to +Astley’s but Uncle Newcome? I saw him there in the midst of a cluster of +these little people, all children together. He laughed delighted at Mr. +Merryman’s jokes in the ring. He beheld the Battle of Waterloo with +breathless interest, and was amazed—amazed, by Jove, sir—at the +prodigious likeness of the principal actor to the Emperor Napoleon; whose tomb +he had visited on his return from India, as it pleased him to tell his little +audience who sat clustering round him: the little girls, Sir Brian’s +daughters, holding each by a finger of his honest hands; young Masters Alfred +and Edward clapping and hurrahing by his side; while Mr. Clive and Miss Ethel +sat in the back of the box enjoying the scene, but with that decorum which +belonged to their superior age and gravity. As for Clive, he was in these +matters much older than the grizzled old warrior his father. It did one good to +hear the Colonel’s honest laughs at clown’s jokes, and to see the +tenderness and simplicity with which he watched over this happy brood of young +ones. How lavishly did he supply them with sweetmeats between the acts! There +he sat in the midst of them, and ate an orange himself with perfect +satisfaction. I wonder what sum of money Mr. Barnes Newcome would have taken to +sit for five hours with his young brothers and sisters in a public box at the +theatre and eat an orange in the face of the audience? When little Alfred went +to Harrow, you may be sure Colonel Newcome and Clive galloped over to see the +little man, and tipped him royally. What money is better bestowed than that of +a schoolboy’s tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after +days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes. Remember how happy such +benefactions made you in your own early time, and go off on the very first fine +day and tip your nephew at school! +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel’s organ of benevolence was so large, that he would have liked +to administer bounties to the young folks his nephews and nieces in Bryanstone +Square, as well as to their cousins in Park Lane; but Mrs. Newcome was a great +deal too virtuous to admit of such spoiling of children. She took the poor +gentleman to task for an attempt upon her boys when those lads came home for +their holidays, and caused them ruefully to give back the shining gold +sovereign with which their uncle had thought to give them a treat. +</p> + +<p> +“I do not quarrel with <i>other</i> families,” says she; “I +do not <i>allude</i> to other families;” meaning, of course, that she did +not allude to Park Lane. “There may be children who are allowed to +receive money from their father’s grown-up friends. There may be children +who hold out their hands for presents, and thus become mercenary in early life. +I make no reflections with regard to <i>other</i> households. <i>I</i> only +look, and think, and pray for the welfare of my own beloved ones. They want for +nothing. Heaven has bounteously furnished us with every comfort, with every +elegance, with every luxury. Why need we be bounden to others, who have been +ourselves so amply provided? I should consider it ingratitude, Colonel Newcome, +want of proper spirit, to allow my boys to accept money. Mind, I make <i>no +allusions</i>. When they go to school they receive a sovereign a-piece from +their father, and a shilling a week, which is ample pocket-money. When they are +at home, I desire that they may have rational amusements: I send them to the +Polytechnic with Professor Hickson, who kindly explains to them some of the +marvels of science and the wonders of machinery. I send them to the +picture-galleries and the British Museum. I go with them myself to the +delightful lectures at the institution in Albemarle Street. I do not desire +that they should attend theatrical exhibitions. I do not quarrel with those who +go to plays; far from it! Who am I that I should venture to judge the conduct +of others? When you wrote from India, expressing a wish that your boy should be +made acquainted with the works of Shakspeare, I gave up my own opinion at once. +Should I interpose between a child and his father? I encouraged the boy to go +to the play, and sent him to the pit with one of our footmen.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you tipped him very handsomely, my dear Maria, too,” said the +good-natured Colonel, breaking in upon her sermon; but Virtue was not to be put +off in that way. +</p> + +<p> +“And why, Colonel Newcome,” Virtue exclaimed, laying a pudgy little +hand on its heart; “why did I treat Clive so? Because I stood towards him +<i>in loco parentis;</i> because he was as a child to me, and I to him as a +mother. I indulged him more than my own. I loved him with a true maternal +tenderness. <i>Then</i> he was happy to come to our house: <i>then</i> perhaps +Park Lane was not so often open to him as Bryanstone Square: but I make n<i>o +allusions. Then</i> he did not go six times to another house for once that he +came to mine. He was a simple, confiding, generous boy, was not dazzled by +worldly rank or titles of splendour. He could not find <i>these</i> in +Bryanstone Square. A merchant’s wife, a country lawyer’s +daughter—I could not be expected to have my humble board surrounded by +titled aristocracy; I would not if I could. I love my own family too well; I am +too honest, too simple,—let me own it at once, Colonel Newcome, too +<i>proud!</i> And now, now his father has come to England, and I have resigned +him, and he meets with no titled aristocrats at my house, and he does not come +here any more.” +</p> + +<p> +Tears rolled out of her little eyes as she spoke, and she covered her round +face with her pocket-handkerchief. +</p> + +<p> +Had Colonel Newcome read the paper that morning, he might have seen amongst +what are called the fashionable announcements, the cause, perhaps, why his +sister-in-law had exhibited so much anger and virtue. The <i>Morning Post</i> +stated, that yesterday Sir Brian and Lady Newcome entertained at dinner His +Excellency the Persian Ambassador and Bucksheesh Bey; the Right Honourable +Cannon Rowe, President of the Board of Control, and Lady Louisa Rowe; the Earl +of H———, the Countess of Kew, the Earl of Kew, Sir Currey +Baughton, Major-General and Mrs. Hooker, Colonel Newcome, and Mr. Horace Fogey. +Afterwards her ladyship had an assembly, which was attended by, etc. etc. +</p> + +<p> +This catalogue of illustrious names had been read by Mr. Newcome to her spouse +at breakfast, with such comments as she was in the habit of making. +</p> + +<p> +“The President of the Board of Control, the Chairman of the Court of +Directors, and Ex-Governor-General of India, and a whole regiment of Kews. By +Jove, Maria, the Colonel is in good company,” cries Mr. Newcome, with a +laugh. “That’s the sort of dinner you should have given him. Some +people to talk about India. When he dined with us he was put between old Lady +Wormely and Professor Roots. I don’t wonder at his going to sleep after +dinner. I was off myself once or twice during that confounded long argument +between Professor Roots and Dr. Windus. That Windus is the deuce to +talk.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dr. Windus is a man of science, and his name is of European +celebrity!” says Maria solemnly. “Any intellectual person would +prefer such company to the titled nobodies into whose family your brother has +married.” +</p> + +<p> +“There you go, Polly; you are always having a shy at Lady Anne and her +relations,” says Mr. Newcome, good-naturedly. +</p> + +<p> +“A shy! How can you use such vulgar words, Mr. Newcome? What have I to do +with Sir Brian’s titled relations? I do not value nobility. I prefer +people of science—people of intellect—to all the rank in the +world.” +</p> + +<p> +“So you do,” says Hobson her spouse. “You have your +party—Lady Anne has her party. You take your line—Lady Anne takes +her line. You are a superior woman, my dear Polly; every one knows that. +I’m a plain country farmer, I am. As long as you are happy, I am happy +too. The people you get to dine here may talk Greek or algebra for what I care. +By Jove, my dear, I think you can hold your own with the best of them.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have endeavoured by assiduity to make up for time lost, and an early +imperfect education,” says Mrs. Newcome. “You married a poor +country lawyer’s daughter. You did not seek a partner in the Peerage, Mr. +Newcome.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no. Not such a confounded flat as that,” cries Mr. Newcome, +surveying his plump partner behind her silver teapot, with eyes of admiration. +</p> + +<p> +“I had an imperfect education, but I knew its blessings, and have, I +trust, endeavoured to cultivate the humble talents which Heaven has given me, +Mr. Newcome.” +</p> + +<p> +“Humble, by Jove!” exclaims the husband. “No gammon of that +sort, Polly. You know well enough that you are a superior woman. I ain’t +a superior man. I know that: one is enough in a family. I leave the reading to +you, my dear. Here comes my horses. I say, I wish you’d call on Lady Anne +to-day. Do go and see her, now that’s a good girl. I know she is flighty, +and that; and Brian’s back is up a little. But he ain’t a bad +fellow; and I wish I could see you and his wife better friends.” +</p> + +<p> +On his way to the City, Mr. Newcome rode to look at the new house, No. 120 +Fitzroy Square, which his brother, the Colonel, had taken in conjunction with +that Indian friend of his, Mr. Binnie. Shrewd old cock, Mr. Binnie. Has brought +home a good bit of money from India. Is looking out for safe investments. Has +been introduced to Newcome Brothers. Mr. Newcome thinks very well of the +Colonel’s friend. +</p> + +<p> +The house is vast, but, it must be owned, melancholy. Not long since it was a +ladies’ school, in an unprosperous condition. The scar left by Madame +Latour’s brass plate may still be seen on the tall black door, cheerfully +ornamented in the style of the end of the last century, with a funereal urn in +the centre of the entry, and garlands, and the skulls of rams at each corner. +Madame Latour, who at one time actually kept a large yellow coach, and drove +her parlour young ladies in the Regent’s Park, was an exile from her +native country (Islington was her birthplace, and Grigson her paternal name), +and an outlaw at the suit of Samuel Sherrick: that Mr. Sherrick whose +wine-vaults undermine Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel where the eloquent +Honeyman preaches. +</p> + +<p> +The house is Mr. Sherrick’s house. Some say his name is Shadrach, and +pretend to have known him as an orange-boy, afterwards as a chorus-singer in +the theatres, afterwards as secretary to a great tragedian. I know nothing of +these stories. He may or he may not be a partner of Mr. Campion, of +Shepherd’s Inn: he has a handsome villa, Abbey Road, St. John’s +Wood, entertains good company, rather loud, of the sporting sort, rides and +drives very showy horses, has boxes at the Opera whenever he likes, and free +access behind the scenes: is handsome, dark, bright-eyed, with a quantity of +jewellery, and a tuft to his chin; sings sweetly sentimental songs after +dinner. Who cares a fig what was the religion of Mr. Sherrick’s ancestry, +or what the occupation of his youth? Mr. Honeyman, a most respectable man +surely, introduced Sherrick to the Colonel and Binnie. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Sherrick stocked their cellar with some of the wine over which Honeyman +preached such lovely sermons. It was not dear; it was not bad when you dealt +with Mr. Sherrick for wine alone. Going into his market with ready money in +your hand, as our simple friends did, you were pretty fairly treated by Mr. +Sherrick. +</p> + +<p> +The house being taken, we may be certain there was fine amusement for Clive, +Mr. Binnie, and the Colonel, in frequenting the sales, in the inspection of +upholsterers’ shops, and the purchase of furniture for the new mansion. +It was like nobody else’s house. There were three masters with four or +five servants over them. Kean for the Colonel and his son; a smart boy with +boots for Mr. Binnie; Mrs. Kean to cook and keep house, with a couple of maids +under her. The Colonel, himself, was great at making hash mutton, hot-pot, +curry, and pillau. What cosy pipes did we not smoke in the dining-room, in the +drawing-room, or where we would! What pleasant evenings did we not have with Mr +Binnie’s books and Schiedam! Then there were the solemn state dinners, at +most of which the writer of this biography had a corner. +</p> + +<p> +Clive had a tutor—Grindley of Corpus—whom we recommended to him, +and with whom the young gentleman did not fatigue his brains very much; but his +great forte decidedly lay in drawing. He sketched the horses, he sketched the +dogs; all the servants from the blear-eyed boot-boy to the rosy-cheeked lass, +Mrs. Kean’s niece, whom that virtuous housekeeper was always calling to +come downstairs. He drew his father in all postures—asleep, on foot, on +horseback; and jolly little Mr. Binnie, with his plump legs on a chair, or +jumping briskly on the back of the cob which he rode. He should have drawn the +pictures for this book, but that he no longer condescends to make sketches. +Young Ridley was his daily friend now; and Grindley, his classics and +mathematics over in the morning, and the ride with father over, this pair of +young men would constantly attend Gandish’s Drawing Academy, where, to be +sure, Ridley passed many hours at work on his art, before his young friend and +patron could be spared from his books to his pencil. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” says Clive, if you talk to him now about those early +days, “it was a jolly time! I do not believe there was any young fellow in +London so happy.” And there hangs up in his painting-room now, a head, +painted at one sitting, of a man rather bald, with hair touched with grey, with +a large moustache, and a sweet mouth half smiling beneath it, and melancholy +eyes; and Clive shows that portrait of their grandfather to his children, and +tells them that the whole world never saw a nobler gentleman. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0017"></a> +CHAPTER XVII.<br> +A School of Art</h2> + +<p> +British art either finds her peculiar nourishment in melancholy, and loves to +fix her abode in desert places; or it may be her purse is but slenderly +furnished, and she is forced to put up with accommodations rejected by more +prosperous callings. Some of the most dismal quarters of the town are colonised +by her disciples and professors. In walking through streets which may have been +gay and polite when ladies’ chairmen jostled each other on the pavement, +and linkboys with their torches lighted the beaux over the mud, who has not +remarked the artist’s invasion of those regions once devoted to fashion +and gaiety? Centre windows of drawing-rooms are enlarged so as to reach up into +bedrooms—bedrooms where Lady Betty has had her hair powdered, and where +the painter’s north-light now takes possession of the place which her +toilet-table occupied a hundred years ago. There are degrees in decadence: +after the Fashion chooses to emigrate, and retreats from Soho or Bloomsbury, +let us say, to Cavendish Square, physicians come and occupy the vacant houses, +which still have a respectable look, the windows being cleaned, and the +knockers and plates kept bright, and the doctor’s carriage rolling round +the square, almost as fine as the countess’s, which has whisked away her +ladyship to other regions. A boarding-house mayhap succeeds the physician, who +has followed after his sick folks into the new country; and then Dick Tinto +comes with his dingy brass plate, and breaks in his north window, and sets up +his sitters’ throne. I love his honest moustache, and jaunty velvet +jacket; his queer figure, his queer vanities, and his kind heart. Why should he +not suffer his ruddy ringlets to fall over his shirt-collar? Why should he deny +himself his velvet? it is but a kind of fustian which costs him eighteenpence a +yard. He is naturally what he is, and breaks out into costume as spontaneously +as a bird sings, or a bulb bears a tulip. And as Dick, under yonder terrific +appearance of waving cloak, bristling beard, and shadowy sombrero, is a good +kindly simple creature, got up at a very cheap rate, his life is so consistent +with his dress; he gives his genius a darkling swagger, and a romantic +envelope, which, being removed, you find, not a bravo, but a kind chirping +soul; not a moody poet avoiding mankind for the better company of his own great +thoughts, but a jolly little chap who has an aptitude for painting brocade +gowns, a bit of armour (with figures inside them), or trees and cattle, or +gondolas and buildings, or what not; an instinct for the picturesque, which +exhibits itself in his works, and outwardly on his person; beyond this, a +gentle creature loving his friends, his cups, feasts, merrymakings, and all +good things. The kindest folks alive I have found among those scowling +whiskeradoes. They open oysters with their yataghans, toast muffins on their +rapiers, and fill their Venice glasses with half-and-half. If they have money +in their lean purses, be sure they have a friend to share it. What innocent +gaiety, what jovial suppers on threadbare cloths, and wonderful songs after; +what pathos, merriment, humour does not a man enjoy who frequents their +company! Mr. Clive Newcome, who has long since shaved his beard, who has become +a family man, and has seen the world in a thousand different phases, avers that +his life as an art-student at home and abroad was the pleasantest part of his +whole existence. It may not be more amusing in the telling than the chronicle +of a feast, or the accurate report of two lovers’ conversation; but the +biographer, having brought his hero to the period of his life, is bound to +relate it, before passing to other occurrences which are to be narrated in +their turn. +</p> + +<p> +We may be sure the boy had many conversations with his affectionate guardian as +to the profession which he should follow. As regarded mathematical and +classical learning, the elder Newcome was forced to admit, that out of every +hundred boys, there were fifty as clever as his own, and at least fifty more +industrious; the army in time of peace Colonel Newcome thought a bad trade for +a young fellow so fond of ease and pleasure as his son: his delight in the +pencil was manifest to all. Were not his school-books full of caricatures of +the masters? Whilst his tutor, Grindley, was lecturing him, did he not draw +Grindley instinctively under his very nose? A painter Clive was determined to +be, and nothing else; and Clive, being then some sixteen years of age, began to +study the art, <i>en règle</i>, under the eminent Mr. Gandish, of Soho. +</p> + +<p> +It was that well-known portrait-painter, Alfred Smee, Esq., R.A., who +recommended Gandish to Colonel Newcome, one day when the two gentlemen met at +dinner at Lady Anne Newcome’s table. Mr. Smee happened to examine some of +Clive’s drawings, which the young fellow had executed for his cousins. +Clive found no better amusement than in making pictures for them, and would +cheerfully pass evening after evening in that diversion. He had made a thousand +sketches of Ethel before a year was over; a year, every day of which seemed to +increase the attractions of the fair young creature, develop her nymph-like +form, and give her figure fresh graces. He also of course drew Alfred and the +nursery in general, Aunt Anne and the Blenheim spaniels, and Mr. Kuhn and his +earrings, the majestic John bringing in the coal-scuttle, and all persons or +objects in that establishment with which he was familiar. “What a genius +the lad has,” the complimentary Mr. Smee averred; “what a force and +individuality there is in all his drawings! Look at his horses! capital, by +Jove, capital! and Alfred on his pony, and Miss Ethel in her Spanish hat, with +her hair flowing in the wind! I must take this sketch, I positively must now, +and show it to Landseer.” And the courtly artist daintily enveloped the +drawing in a sheet of paper, put it away in his hat, and vowed subsequently +that the great painter had been delighted with the young man’s +performance. Smee was not only charmed with Clive’s skill as an artist, +but thought his head would be an admirable one to paint. Such a rich +complexion, such fine turns in his hair! such eyes! to see real blue eyes was +so rare nowadays! And the Colonel too, if the Colonel would but give him a few +sittings, the grey uniform of the Bengal Cavalry, the silver lace, the little +bit of red ribbon just to warm up the picture! it was seldom, Mr. Smee +declared, that an artist could get such an opportunity for colour. With our +hideous vermilion uniforms there was no chance of doing anything; Rubens +himself could scarcely manage scarlet. Look at the horseman in Cuyp’s +famous picture at the Louvre: the red was a positive blot upon the whole +picture. There was nothing like French grey and silver! All which did not +prevent Mr. Smee from painting Sir Brian in a flaring deputy-lieutenant’s +uniform, and entreating all military men whom he met to sit to him in scarlet. +Clive Newcome the Academician succeeded in painting, of course for mere +friendship’s sake, and because he liked the subject, though he could not +refuse the cheque which Colonel Newcome sent him for the frame and picture; but +no cajoleries could induce the old campaigner to sit to any artist save one. He +said he should be ashamed to pay fifty guineas for the likeness of his homely +face; he jocularly proposed to James Binnie to have his head put on the canvas, +and Mr. Smee enthusiastically caught at the idea; but honest James winked his +droll eyes, saying his was a beauty that did not want any paint; and when Mr. +Smee took his leave after dinner in Fitzroy Square, where this conversation was +held, James Binnie hinted that the Academician was no better than an old +humbug, in which surmise he was probably not altogether incorrect. Certain +young men who frequented the kind Colonel’s house were also somewhat of +this opinion; and made endless jokes at the painter’s expense. Smee +plastered his sitters with adulation as methodically as he covered his canvas. +He waylaid gentlemen at dinner; he inveigled unsuspecting folks into his +studio, and had their heads off their shoulders before they were aware. One +day, on our way from the Temple, through Howland Street, to the Colonel’s +house, we beheld Major-General Sir Thomas de Boots, in full uniform, rushing +from Smee’s door to his brougham. The coachman was absent refreshing +himself at a neighbouring tap: the little street-boys cheered and hurrayed Sir +Thomas, as, arrayed in gold and scarlet, he sate in his chariot. He blushed +purple when he beheld us. No artist would have dared to imitate those purple +tones: he was one of the numerous victims of Mr. Smee. +</p> + +<p> +One day, then, day to be noted with a white stone, Colonel Newcome, with his +son and Mr. Smee, R.A., walked from the Colonel’s house to +Gandish’s, which was not far removed thence; and young Clive, who was a +perfect mimic, described to his friends, and illustrated, as was his wont, by +diagrams, the interview which he had with that professor. “By Jove, you +must see Gandish, pa!” cries Clive: “Gandish is worth the whole +world. Come and be an art-student. You’ll find such jolly fellows there! +Gandish calls it hart-student, and says, ‘Hars est celare +Hartem’—by Jove he does! He treated us to a little Latin, as he +brought out a cake and a bottle of wine, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“The governor was splendid, sir. He wore gloves: you know he only puts +them on on parade days; and turned out for the occasion spick and span. He +ought to be a general officer. He looks like a field-marshal—don’t +he? You should have seen him bowing to Mrs. Gandish and the Miss Gandishes, +dressed all in their best, round the cake-tray! He takes his glass of wine, and +sweeps them all round with a bow. ‘I hope, young ladies,’ says he, +‘you don’t often go to the students’ room. I’m afraid +the young gentlemen would leave off looking at the statues if you came +in.’ And so they would: for you never saw such guys; but the dear old boy +fancies every woman is a beauty. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Mr. Smee, you are looking at my picture of +“Boadishia?”’ says Gandish. Wouldn’t he have caught it +for his quantities at Grey Friars, that’s all. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Yes—ah—yes,’ says Mr. Smee, putting his hand +over his eyes, and standing before it, looking steady, you know, as if he was +going to see whereabouts he should <i>hit</i> Boadishia. +</p> + +<p> +“‘It was painted when you were a young man, four years before you +were an associate, Smee. Had some success in its time, and there’s good +pints about that picture,’ Gandish goes on. ‘But I never could get +my price for it; and here it hangs in my own room. Igh art won’t do in +this country, Colonel—it’s a melancholy fact.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘High art! I should think it <i>is</i> high art!’ whispers +old Smee; ‘fourteen feet high, at least!’ And then out loud he says +‘The picture has very fine points in it, Gandish, as you say. +Foreshortening of that arm, capital! That red drapery carried off into the +right of the picture very skilfully managed!’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘It’s not like portrait-painting, Smee—Igh art,’ +says Gandish. ‘The models of the hancient Britons in that pictur alone +cost me thirty pound—when I was a struggling man, and had just married my +Betsey here. You reckonise Boadishia, Colonel, with the Roman elmet, cuirass, +and javeling of the period—all studied from the hantique, sir, the +glorious hantique.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘All but Boadicea,’ says father. ‘She remains always +young.’ And he began to speak the lines out of Cowper, he +did—waving his stick like an old trump—and famous they are,” +cries the lad: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“When the British warrior queen,<br> +Bleeding from the Roman rods”— +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +“Jolly verses! Haven’t I translated them into alcaics?” says +Clive, with a merry laugh, and resumes his history. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Oh, I must have those verses in my album,’ cries one of the +young ladies. ‘Did you compose them, Colonel Newcome?’ But Gandish, +you see, is never thinking about any works but his own, and goes on, +‘Study of my eldest daughter, exhibited 1816.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘No, pa, not ’16,’ cries Miss Gandish. She don’t +look like a chicken, I can tell you. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Admired,’ Gandish goes on, never heeding +her,—‘I can show you what the papers said of it at the +time—<i>Morning Chronicle</i> and <i>Examiner</i>—spoke most ighly +of it. My son as an infant ’Ercules, stranglin the serpent over the +piano. Fust conception of my picture of “Non Hangli said +Hangeli.”’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘For which I can guess who were the angels that sat,’ says +father. Upon my word, that old governor! He is a little too strong. But Mr. +Gandish listened no more to him than to Mr. Smee, and went on, buttering +himself all over, as I have read the Hottentots do. ‘Myself at +thirty-three years of age!’ says he, pointing to a portrait of a +gentleman in leather breeches and mahogany boots; ‘I could have been a +portrait-painter, Mr. Smee.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Indeed it was lucky for some of us you devoted yourself to high +art, Gandish,’ Mr. Smee says, and sips the wine and puts it down again, +making a face. It was not first-rate tipple, you see. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Two girls,’ continues that indomitable Mr. Gandish. +‘Hidea for “Babes in the Wood.” “View of Pæstum,” +taken on the spot by myself, when travelling with the late lamented Earl of +Kew. ‘Beauty, Valour, Commerce, and Liberty, condoling with Britannia on +the death of Admiral Viscount Nelson,’—allegorical piece drawn at a +very early age after Trafalgar. Mr. Fuseli saw that piece, sir, when I was a +student of the Academy, and said to me, ‘Young man, stick to the antique. +There’s nothing like it.’ Those were ’is very words. If you +do me the favour to walk into the Hatrium, you’ll remark my great +pictures also from English ’istry. An English historical painter, sir, +should be employed chiefly in English ’istry. That’s what I would +have done. Why ain’t there temples for us, where the people might read +their history at a glance, and without knowing how to read? Why is my +‘Alfred’ ’anging up in this ’all? Because there is no +patronage for a man who devotes himself to Igh art. You know the anecdote, +Colonel? King Alfred flying from the Danes, took refuge in a neaterd’s +’ut. The rustic’s wife told him to bake a cake, and the fugitive +sovering set down to his ignoble task, and forgetting it in the cares of state, +let the cake burn, on which the woman struck him. The moment chose is when she +is lifting her ’and to deliver the blow. The king receives it with +majesty mingled with meekness. In the background the door of the ’ut is +open, letting in the royal officers to announce the Danes are defeated. The +daylight breaks in at the aperture, signifying the dawning of ’Ope. That +story, sir, which I found in my researches in ’istry, has since become so +popular, sir, that hundreds of artists have painted it, hundreds! I who +discovered the legend, have my picture—here!’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Now, Colonel,’ says the showman, ‘let me—let me +lead you through the statue gallery. ‘Apollo,’ you see. The +‘Venus Hanadyomene,’ the glorious Venus of the Louvre, which I saw +in 1814, Colonel, in its glory—the ‘Laocoon’—my friend +Gibson’s ‘Nymth,’ you see, is the only figure I admit among +the antiques. Now up this stair to the students’ room, where I trust my +young friend, Mr. Newcome, will labour assiduously. <i>Ars longa est</i>, Mr. +Newcome. <i>Vita</i>——’” +</p> + +<p> +“I trembled,” Clive said, “lest my father should introduce a +certain favourite quotation, beginning ‘<i>ingenuas +didicisse</i>’—but he refrained, and we went into the room, where a +score of students were assembled, who all looked away from their drawing-boards +as we entered. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Here will be your place, Mr. Newcome,’ says the Professor, +‘and here that of your young friend—what did you say was his +name?’ I told him Rigby, for my dear old governor has promised to pay for +J. J. too, you know. ‘Mr. Chivers is the senior pupil and custos of the +room in the absence of my son. Mr. Chivers, Mr. Newcome; gentlemen, Mr. +Newcome, a new pupil. My son, Charles Gandish, Mr. Newcome. Assiduity, +gentlemen, assiduity. <i>Ars longa. Vita brevis, et linea recta brevissima +est</i>. This way, Colonel, down these steps, across the courtyard, to my own +studio. There, gentlemen,’—and pulling aside a curtain, Gandish +says ‘There!’” +</p> + +<p> +“And what was the masterpiece behind it?” we ask of Clive, after we +have done laughing at his imitation. +</p> + +<p> +“Hand round the hat, J. J.!” cries Clive. “Now, ladies and +gentlemen, pay your money. Now walk in, for the performance is ‘just +a-going to begin.’” Nor would the rogue ever tell us what +Gandish’s curtained picture was. +</p> + +<p> +Not a successful painter, Mr. Gandish was an excellent master, and regarding +all artists save one perhaps a good critic. Clive and his friend J. J. came +soon after and commenced their studies under him. The one took his humble seat +at the drawing-board, a poor mean-looking lad, with worn clothes, downcast +features, and a figure almost deformed; the other adorned by good health, good +looks, and the best of tailors; ushered into the studio with his father and Mr. +Smee as his aides-de-camp on his entry; and previously announced there with all +the eloquence of honest Gandish. “I bet he’s ’ad cake and +wine,” says one youthful student, of an epicurean and satirical turn. +“I bet he might have it every day if he liked.” In fact Gandish was +always handing him sweetmeats of compliments and cordials of approbation. He +had coat-sleeves with silk linings—he had studs in his shirt. How +different was the texture and colour of that garment, to the sleeves Bob Grimes +displayed when he took his coat off to put on his working jacket! Horses used +actually to come for him to Gandish’s door (which was situated in a +certain lofty street in Soho). The Miss G.’s would smile at him from the +parlour window as he mounted and rode splendidly off; and those opposition +beauties, the Miss Levisons, daughters of the professor of dancing over the +way, seldom failed to greet the young gentleman with an admiring ogle from +their great black eyes. Master Clive was pronounced an +‘out-and-outer,’ a ‘swell and no mistake,’ and +complimented with scarce one dissentient voice by the simple academy at +Gandish’s. Besides, he drew very well. There could be no doubt about +that. Caricatures of the students of course were passing constantly among them, +and in revenge for one which a huge red-haired Scotch student, Mr. Sandy +M’Collop, had made of John James, Clive perpetrated a picture of Sandy +which set the whole room in a roar; and when the Caledonian giant uttered +satirical remarks against the assembled company, averring that they were a +parcel of sneaks, a set of lick-spittles, and using epithets still more vulgar, +Clive slipped off his fine silk-sleeved coat in an instant, invited Mr. +M’Collop into the back-yard, instructed him in a science which the lad +himself had acquired at Grey Friars, and administered two black eyes to Sandy, +which prevented the young artist from seeing for some days after the head of +the ‘Laocoon’ which he was copying. The Scotchman’s superior +weight and age might have given the combat a different conclusion, had it +endured long after Clive’s brilliant opening attack with his right and +left; but Professor Gandish came out of his painting-room at the sound of +battle, and could scarcely credit his own eyes when he saw those of poor +M’Collop so darkened. To do the Scotchman justice, he bore Clive no +rancour. They became friends there, and afterwards at Rome, whither they +subsequently went to pursue their studies. The fame of Mr. M’Collop as an +artist has long since been established. His pictures of ‘Lord Lovat in +Prison,’ and ‘Hogarth painting him,’ of the ‘Blowing up +of the Kirk of Field’ (painted for M’Collop of M’Collop), of +the ‘Torture of the Covenanters,’ the ‘Murder of the +Regent,’ the ‘Murder of Rizzio,’ and other historical pieces, +all of course from Scotch history, have established his reputation in South as +well as in North Britain. No one would suppose from the gloomy character of his +works that Sandy M’Collop is one of the most jovial souls alive. Within +six months after their little difference, Clive and he were the greatest of +friends, and it was by the former’s suggestion that Mr. James Binnie gave +Sandy his first commission, who selected the cheerful subject of ‘The +Young Duke of Rothsay starving in Prison.’ +</p> + +<p> +During this period, Mr. Clive assumed the <i>toga virilis</i>, and beheld with +inexpressible satisfaction the first growth of those mustachios which have +since given him such a marked appearance. Being at Gandish’s, and so near +the dancing academy, what must he do but take lessons in the terpsichorean art +too?—making himself as popular with the dancing folks as with the drawing +folks, and the jolly king of his company everywhere. He gave entertainments to +his fellow-students in the upper chambers in Fitzroy Square, which were devoted +to his use, inviting his father and Mr. Binnie to those parties now and then. +And songs were sung, and pipes were smoked, and many a pleasant supper eaten. +There was no stint: but no excess. No young man was ever seen to quit those +apartments the worse, as it is called, for liquor. Fred Bayham’s uncle +the Bishop could not be more decorous than F. B. as he left the Colonel’s +house, for the Colonel made that one of the conditions of his son’s +hospitality, that nothing like intoxication should ensue from it. The good +gentleman did not frequent the parties of the juniors. He saw that his presence +rather silenced the young men; and left them to themselves, confiding in +Clive’s parole, and went away to play his honest rubber of whist at the +Club. And many a time he heard the young fellows’ steps tramping by his +bedchamber door, as he lay wakeful within, happy to think his son was happy. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0018"></a> +CHAPTER XVIII.<br> +New Companions</h2> + +<p> +Clive used to give droll accounts of the young disciples at Gandish’s, +who were of various ages and conditions, and in whose company the young fellow +took his place with that good temper and gaiety which have seldom deserted him +in life, and have put him at ease wherever his fate has led him. He is, in +truth, as much at home in a fine drawing-room as in a public-house parlour; and +can talk as pleasantly to the polite mistress of the mansion, as to the jolly +landlady dispensing her drinks from her bar. Not one of the Gandishites but was +after a while well inclined to the young fellow; from Mr. Chivers, the senior +pupil, down to the little imp Harry Hooker, who knew as much mischief at twelve +years old, and could draw as cleverly as many a student of five-and-twenty; and +Bob Trotter, the diminutive fag of the studio, who ran on all the young +men’s errands, and fetched them in apples, oranges, and walnuts. Clive +opened his eyes with wonder when he first beheld these simple feasts, and the +pleasure with which some of the young men partook of them. They were addicted +to polonies; they did not disguise their love for Banbury cakes; they made bets +in ginger-beer, and gave and took the odds in that frothing liquor. There was a +young Hebrew amongst the pupils, upon whom his brother-students used playfully +to press ham sandwiches, pork sausages, and the like. This young man (who has +risen to great wealth subsequently, and was bankrupt only three months since) +actually bought cocoa-nuts, and sold them at a profit amongst the lads. His +pockets were never without pencil-cases, French chalk, garnet brooches, for +which he was willing to bargain. He behaved very rudely to Gandish, who seemed +to be afraid before him. It was whispered that the Professor was not altogether +easy in his circumstances, and that the elder Moss had some mysterious hold +over him. Honeyman and Bayham, who once came to see Clive at the studio, seemed +each disturbed at beholding young Moss seated there (making a copy of the +Marsyas). “Pa knows both those gents,” he informed Clive +afterwards, with a wicked twinkle of his Oriental eyes. “Step in, Mr. +Newcome, any day you are passing down Wardour Street, and see if you +don’t want anything in our way.” (He pronounced the words in his +own way, saying: “Step id, <i>Bister</i> Doocob, ady day idto Vordor +Street,” etc.) This young gentleman could get tickets for almost all the +theatres, which he gave or sold, and gave splendid accounts at +Cavendish’s of the brilliant masquerades. Clive was greatly diverted at +beholding Mr. Moss at one of these entertainments, dressed in a scarlet coat +and top-boots, and calling out, “Yoicks! Hark forward!” fitfully to +another Orientalist, his younger brother, attired like a midshipman. Once Clive +bought a half-dozen of theatre tickets from Mr. Moss, which he distributed to +the young fellows of the studio. But, when this nice young man tried further to +tempt him on the next day, “Mr. Moss,” Clive said to him with much +dignity, “I am very much obliged to you for your offer, but when I go to +the play, I prefer paying at the doors.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Chivers used to sit in one corner of the room, occupied over a lithographic +stone. He was an uncouth and peevish young man; for ever finding fault with the +younger pupils, whose butt he was. Next in rank and age was M’Collop, +before named: and these two were at first more than usually harsh and captious +with Clive, whose prosperity offended them, and whose dandified manners, +free-and-easy ways, and evident influence over the younger scholars, gave +umbrage to these elderly apprentices. Clive at first returned Mr. Chivers war +for war, controlment for controlment; but when he found Chivers was the son of +a helpless widow; that he maintained her by his lithographic vignettes for the +music-sellers, and by the scanty remuneration of some lessons which he gave at +a school at Highgate;—when Clive saw, or fancied he saw, the lonely +senior eyeing with hungry eyes the luncheons of cheese and bread, and +sweetstuff, which the young lads of the studio enjoyed, I promise you Mr. +Clive’s wrath against Chivers was speedily turned into compassion and +kindness, and he sought, and no doubt found, means of feeding Chivers without +offending his testy independence. +</p> + +<p> +Nigh to Gandish’s was, and perhaps is, another establishment for teaching +the art of design—Barker’s, which had the additional dignity of a +life academy and costume; frequented by a class of students more advanced than +those of Gandish’s. Between these and the Barkerites there was a constant +rivalry and emulation, in and out of doors. Gandish sent more pupils to the +Royal Academy; Gandish had brought up three medallists; and the last R.A. +student sent to Rome was a Gandishite. Barker, on the contrary, scorned and +loathed Trafalgar Square, and laughed at its art. Barker exhibited in Pall Mall +and Suffolk Street: he laughed at old Gandish and his pictures, made mincemeat +of his “Angli and Angeli,” and tore “King Alfred” and +his muffins to pieces. The young men of the respective schools used to meet at +Lundy’s coffee-house and billiard-room, and smoke there, and do battle. +Before Clive and his friend J. J. came to Gandish’s, the Barkerites were +having the best of that constant match which the two academies were playing. +Fred Bayham, who knew every coffee-house in town, and whose initials were +scored on a thousand tavern doors, was for a while a constant visitor at +Lundy’s, played pool with the young men, and did not disdain to dip his +beard into their porter-pots, when invited to partake of their drink; treated +them handsomely when he was in cash himself; and was an honorary member of +Barker’s academy. Nay, when the guardsman was not forthcoming, who was +standing for one of Barker’s heroic pictures, Bayham bared his immense +arms and brawny shoulders, and stood as Prince Edward, with Philippa sucking +the poisoned wound. He would take his friends up to the picture in the +Exhibition, and proudly point to it. “Look at that biceps, sir, and now +look at this—that’s Barker’s masterpiece, sir, and +that’s the muscle of F. B., sir.” In no company was F. B. greater +than in the society of the artists, in whose smoky haunts and airy parlours he +might often be found. It was from F. B. that Clive heard of Mr. Chivers’ +struggles and honest industry. A great deal of shrewd advice could F. B. give +on occasion, and many a kind action and gentle office of charity was this jolly +outlaw known to do and cause to be done. His advice to Clive was most edifying +at this time of our young gentleman’s life, and he owns that he was kept +from much mischief by this queer counsellor. +</p> + +<p> +A few months after Clive and J. J. had entered at Gandish’s, that academy +began to hold its own against its rival. The silent young disciple was +pronounced to be a genius. His copies were beautiful in delicacy and finish. +His designs were for exquisite grace and richness of fancy. Mr. Gandish took to +himself the credit for J. J.’s genius; Clive ever and fondly acknowledged +the benefit he got from his friend’s taste and bright enthusiasm and sure +skill. As for Clive, if he was successful in the academy he was doubly +victorious out of it. His person was handsome, his courage high, his gaiety and +frankness delightful and winning. His money was plenty and he spent it like a +young king. He could speedily beat all the club at Lundy’s at billiards, +and give points to the redoubted F. B. himself. He sang a famous song at their +jolly supper-parties: and J. J. had no greater delight than to listen to his +fresh voice, and watch the young conqueror at the billiard-table, where the +balls seemed to obey him. +</p> + +<p> +Clive was not the most docile of Mr. Gandish’s pupils. If he had not come +to the studio on horseback, several of the young students averred, Gandish +would not always have been praising him and quoting him as that professor +certainly did. It must be confessed that the young ladies read the history of +Clive’s uncle in the Book of Baronets, and that Gandish jun., probably +with an eye to business, made a design of a picture, in which, according to +that veracious volume, one of the Newcomes was represented as going cheerfully +to the stake at Smithfield, surrounded by some very ill-favoured Dominicans, +whose arguments did not appear to make the least impression upon the martyr of +the Newcome family. Sandy M’Collop devised a counter picture, wherein the +barber-surgeon of King Edward the Confessor was drawn, operating upon the beard +of that monarch. To which piece of satire Clive gallantly replied by a design, +representing Sawney Bean M’Collop, chief of the clan of that name, +descending from his mountains into Edinburgh, and his astonishment at beholding +a pair of breeches for the first time. These playful jokes passed constantly +amongst the young men of Gandish’s studio. There was no one there who was +not caricatured in one way or another. He whose eyes looked not very straight +was depicted with a most awful squint. The youth whom nature had endowed with +somewhat lengthy nose was drawn by the caricaturists with a prodigious +proboscis. Little Bobby Moss, the young Hebrew artist from Wardour Street, was +delineated with three hats and an old-clothes bag. Nor were poor J. J.’s +round shoulders spared, until Clive indignantly remonstrated at the hideous +hunchback pictures which the boys made of his friend, and vowed it was a shame +to make jokes at such a deformity. +</p> + +<p> +Our friend, if the truth must be told regarding him, though one of the most +frank, generous, and kind-hearted persons, is of a nature somewhat haughty and +imperious, and very likely the course of life which he now led and the society +which he was compelled to keep, served to increase some original defects in his +character, and to fortify a certain disposition to think well of himself, with +which his enemies not unjustly reproach him. He has been known very +pathetically to lament that he was withdrawn from school too early, where a +couple of years’ further course of thrashings from his tyrant, old Hodge, +he avers, would have done him good. He laments that he was not sent to college, +where if a young man receives no other discipline, at least he acquires that of +meeting with his equals in society and of assuredly finding his betters: +whereas in poor Mr. Gandish’s studio of art, our young gentleman scarcely +found a comrade that was not in one way or other his flatterer, his inferior, +his honest or dishonest admirer. The influence of his family’s rank and +wealth acted more or less on all those simple folks, who would run on his +errands and vied with each other in winning the young nabob’s favour. His +very goodness of heart rendered him a more easy prey to their flattery, and his +kind and jovial disposition led him into company from which he had been much +better away. I am afraid that artful young Moss, whose parents dealt in +pictures, furniture, gimcracks, and jewellery, victimised Clive sadly with +rings and chains, shirt-studs and flaming shirt-pins, and such vanities, which +the poor young rogue locked up in his desk generally, only venturing to wear +them when he was out of his father’s sight or of Mr. Binnie’s, +whose shrewd eyes watched him very keenly. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Clive used to leave home every day shortly after noon, when he was supposed +to betake himself to Gandish’s studio. But was the young gentleman always +at the drawing-board copying from the antique when his father supposed him to +be so devotedly engaged? I fear his place was sometimes vacant. His friend J. +J. worked every day and all day. Many a time the steady little student remarked +his patron’s absence, and no doubt gently remonstrated with him, but when +Clive did come to his work he executed it with remarkable skill and rapidity; +and Ridley was too fond of him to say a word at home regarding the shortcomings +of the youthful scapegrace. Candid readers may sometimes have heard their +friend Jones’s mother lament that her darling was working too hard at +college: or Harry’s sisters express their anxiety lest his too rigorous +attendance in chambers (after which he will persist in sitting up all night +reading those dreary law books which cost such an immense sum of money) should +undermine dear Henry’s health; and to such acute persons a word is +sufficient to indicate young Mr. Clive Newcome’s proceedings. Meanwhile +his father, who knew no more of the world than Harry’s simple sisters or +Jones’s fond mother, never doubted that all Clive’s doings were +right, and that his boy was the best of boys. +</p> + +<p> +“If that young man goes on as charmingly as he has begun,” +Clive’s cousin, Barnes Newcome, said of his kinsman, “he will be a +paragon. I saw him last night at Vauxhall in company with young Moss, whose +father does bills and keeps the bric-a-brac shop in Wardour Street. Two or +three other gentlemen, probably young old-clothes-men, who had concluded for +the day the labours of the bag, joined Mr. Newcome and his friend, and they +partook of rack-punch in an arbour. He is a delightful youth, cousin Clive, and +I feel sure he is about to be an honour to our family.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0019"></a> +CHAPTER XIX.<br> +The Colonel at Home</h2> + +<p> +Our good Colonel’s house had received a coat of paint, which, like Madame +Latour’s rouge in her latter days, only served to make her careworn face +look more ghastly. The kitchens were gloomy. The stables were gloomy. Great +black passages; cracked conservatory; dilapidated bathroom, with melancholy +waters moaning and fizzing from the cistern; the great large blank stone +staircase—were all so many melancholy features in the general countenance +of the house; but the Colonel thought it perfectly, cheerful and pleasant, and +furnished it in his rough-and-ready way. One day a cartload of chairs; the next +a waggonful of fenders, fire-irons, and glass and crockery—a quantity of +supplies, in a word, he poured into the place. There were a yellow curtain in +the back drawing-room, and green curtains in the front. The carpet was an +immense bargain, bought dirt cheap, sir, at a sale in Euston Square. He was +against the purchase of a carpet for the stairs. What was the good of it? What +did men want with stair-carpets? His own apartment contained a wonderful +assortment of lumber. Shelves which he nailed himself, old Indian garments, +camphor trunks. What did he want with gewgaws? anything was good enough for an +old soldier. But the spare bedroom was endowed with all sorts of splendour: a +bed as big as a general’s tent, a cheval glass—whereas the Colonel +shaved in a little cracked mirror, which cost him no more than King +Stephen’s breeches—and a handsome new carpet; while the boards of +the Colonel’s bedchamber were as bare—as bare as old Miss +Scragg’s shoulders, which would be so much more comfortable were they +covered up. Mr. Binnie’s bedchamber was neat, snug, and appropriate. And +Clive had a study and bedroom at the top of the house, which he was allowed to +furnish entirely according to his own taste. How he and Ridley revelled in +Wardour Street! What delightful coloured prints of hunting, racing, and +beautiful ladies, did they not purchase, mount with their own hands, cut out +for screens, frame and glaze, and hang up on the walls. When the rooms were +ready they gave a party, inviting the Colonel and Mr. Binnie by note of hand, +two gentlemen from Lamb Court, Temple, Mr. Honeyman, and Fred Bayham. We must +have Fred Bayham. Fred Bayham frankly asked, “Is Mr. Sherrick, with whom +you have become rather intimate lately—and mind you I say nothing, but I +recommend strangers in London to be cautious about their friends—is Mr. +Sherrick coming to you, young ’un? because if he is, F. B. must +respectfully decline.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Sherrick was not invited, and accordingly F. B. came. But Sherrick was +invited on other days, and a very queer society did our honest Colonel gather +together in that queer house, so dreary, so dingy, so comfortless, so pleasant. +He, who was one of the most hospitable men alive, loved to have his friends +around him; and it must be confessed that the evening parties now occasionally +given in Fitzroy Square were of the oddest assemblage of people. The correct +East India gentlemen from Hanover Square: the artists, Clive’s friends, +gentlemen of all ages with all sorts of beards, in every variety of costume. +Now and again a stray schoolfellow from Grey Friars, who stared, as well he +might, at the company in which he found himself. Sometimes a few ladies were +brought to these entertainments. The immense politeness of the good host +compensated some of them for the strangeness of his company. They had never +seen such odd-looking hairy men as those young artists, nor such wonderful +women as Colonel Newcome assembled together. He was good to all old maids and +poor widows. Retired captains with large families of daughters found in him +their best friend. He sent carriages to fetch them and bring them back from the +suburbs where they dwelt. Gandish, Mrs. Gandish, and the four Miss Gandishes in +scarlet robes, were constant attendants at the Colonel’s soirées. +</p> + +<p> +“I delight, sir, in the ’ospitality of my distinguished military +friend,” Mr. Gandish would say. “The harmy has always been my +passion.—I served in the Soho Volunteers three years myself, till the +conclusion of the war, sir, till the conclusion of the war.” +</p> + +<p> +It was a great sight to see Mr. Frederick Bayham engaged in the waltz or the +quadrille with some of the elderly houris at the Colonel’s parties. F. +B., like a good-natured F. B. as he was, always chose the plainest women as +partners, and entertained them with profound compliments and sumptuous +conversation. The Colonel likewise danced quadrilles with the utmost gravity. +Waltzing had been invented long since his time: but he practised quadrilles +when they first came in, about 1817, in Calcutta. To see him leading up a +little old maid, and bowing to her when the dance was ended, and performing +cavalier seul with stately simplicity, was a sight indeed to remember. If Clive +Newcome had not such a fine sense of humour, he would have blushed for his +father’s simplicity.—As it was, the elder’s guileless +goodness and childlike trustfulness endeared him immensely to his son. +“Look at the old boy, Pendennis,” he would say, “look at him +leading up that old Miss Tidswell to the piano. Doesn’t he do it like an +old duke? I lay a wager she thinks she is going to be my mother-in-law; all the +women are in love with him, young and old. ‘Should he upbraid?’ +There she goes. ‘I’ll own that he’ll prevail, and sing as +sweetly as a nigh-tin-gale!’ Oh, you old warbler! Look at father’s +old head bobbing up and down! Wouldn’t he do for Sir Roger de Coverley? +How do you do, Uncle Charles?—I say, M’Collop, how gets on the Duke +of What-d’ye-call-’em starving in the castle?—Gandish says +it’s very good.” The lad retires to a group of artists. Mr. +Honeyman comes up with a faint smile playing on his features, like moonlight on +the facade of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel. +</p> + +<p> +“These parties are the most singular I have ever seen,” whispers +Honeyman. “In entering one of these assemblies, one is struck with the +immensity of London: and with the sense of one’s own insignificance. +Without, I trust, departing from my clerical character, nay, from my very +avocation as incumbent of a London chapel,—I have seen a good deal of the +world, and here is an assemblage no doubt of most respectable persons, on +scarce one of whom I ever set eyes till this evening. Where does my good +brother find such characters?” +</p> + +<p> +“That,” says Mr. Honeyman’s interlocutor, “is the +celebrated, though neglected artist, Professor Gandish, whom nothing but +jealousy has kept out of the Royal Academy. Surely you have heard of the great +Gandish?” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed I am ashamed to confess my ignorance, but a clergyman busy with +his duties knows little, perhaps too little, of the fine arts.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gandish, sir, is one of the greatest geniuses on whom our ungrateful +country ever trampled; he exhibited his first celebrated picture of +‘Alfred in the Neatherd’s Hut’ (he says he is the first who +ever touched that subject) in 180-; but Lord Nelson’s death, and victory +of Trafalgar, occupied the public attention at that time, and Gandish’s +work went unnoticed. In the year 1816, he painted his great work of +‘Boadicea.’ You see her before you. That lady in yellow, with a +light front and a turban. Boadicea became Mrs. Gandish in that year. So late as +’27, he brought before the world his ‘Non Angli sed Angeli.’ +Two of the angels are yonder in sea-green dresses—the Misses Gandish. The +youth in Berlin gloves was the little male angelus of that piece.” +</p> + +<p> +“How came you to know all this, you strange man?” says Mr. +Honeyman. +</p> + +<p> +“Simply because Gandish has told me twenty times. He tells the story to +everybody, every time he sees them. He told it to-day at dinner. Boadicea and +the angels came afterwards.” +</p> + +<p> +“Satire! satire! Mr. Pendennis,” says the divine, holding up a +reproving finger of lavender kid, “beware of a wicked wit!—But when +a man has that tendency, I know how difficult it is to restrain. My dear +Colonel, good evening! You have a great reception to-night. That +gentleman’s bass voice is very fine; Mr. Pendennis and I were admiring +it. ‘The Wolf’ is a song admirably adapted to show its +capabilities.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Gandish’s autobiography had occupied the whole time of the retirement +of the ladies from Colonel Newcome’s dinner-table. Mr. Hobson Newcome had +been asleep during the performance; Sir Curry Baughton and one or two of the +Colonel’s professional and military guests, silent and puzzled. Honest +Mr. Binnie, with his shrewd good-humoured face, sipping his claret as usual, +and delivering a sly joke now and again to the gentlemen at his end of the +table. Mrs. Newcome had sat by him in sulky dignity; was it that Lady +Baughton’s diamonds offended her?—her ladyship and her daughters +being attired in great splendour for a Court ball, which they were to attend +that evening. Was she hurt because <small>SHE</small> was not invited to that +Royal Entertainment? As the festivities were to take place at an early hour, +the ladies bidden were obliged to quit the Colonel’s house before the +evening part commenced, from which Lady Anne declared she was quite vexed to be +obliged to run away. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Anne Newcome had been as gracious on this occasion as her sister-in-law +had been out of humour. Everything pleased her in the house. She had no idea +that there were such fine houses in that quarter of the town. She thought the +dinner so very nice,—that Mr Binnie such a good-humoured-looking +gentleman. That stout gentleman with his collars turned down like Lord Byron, +so exceedingly clever and full of information. A celebrated artist was he? +(courtly Mr. Smee had his own opinion upon that point, but did not utter it). +All those artists are so eccentric and amusing and clever. Before dinner she +insisted upon seeing Clive’s den with its pictures and casts and pipes. +“You horrid young wicked creature, have you begun to smoke +already?” she asks, as she admires his room. She admired everything. +Nothing could exceed her satisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +The sisters-in-law kissed on meeting, with that cordiality so delightful to +witness in sisters who dwell together in unity. It was, “My dear Maria, +what an age since I have seen you!” “My dear Anne, our occupations +are so engrossing, our circles are so different,” in a languid response +from the other. “Sir Brian is not coming, I suppose? Now, Colonel,” +she turns in a frisky manner towards him, and taps her fan, “did I not +tell you Sir Brian would not come?” +</p> + +<p> +“He is kept at the House of Commons, my dear. Those dreadful committees. +He was quite vexed at not being able to come.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know, I know, dear Anne, there are always excuses to gentlemen in +Parliament; I have received many such. Mr. Shaloo and Mr. M’Sheny, the +leaders of our party, often and often disappoint me. I <i>knew</i> Brian would +not come. <i>My</i> husband came down from Marble Head on purpose this morning. +Nothing would have induced us to give up our brother’s party.” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe you. I did come down from Marble Head this morning, and I was +four hours in the hay-field before I came away, and in the City till five, and +I’ve been to look at a horse afterwards at Tattersall’s, and +I’m as hungry as a hunter, and as tired as a hodman,” says Mr. +Newcome, with his hands in his pockets. “How do you do, Mr. Pendennis? +Maria, you remember Mr. Pendennis—don’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perfectly,” replies the languid Maria. Mrs. Gandish, Colonel +Topham, Major M’Cracken, are announced, and then, in diamonds, feathers, +and splendour, Lady Baughton and Miss Baughton, who are going to the +Queen’s ball, and Sir Curry Baughton, not quite in his +deputy-lieutenant’s uniform as yet, looking very shy in a pair of blue +trousers, with a glittering stripe of silver down the seams. Clive looks with +wonder and delight at these ravishing ladies, rustling in fresh brocades, with +feathers, diamonds, and every magnificence. Aunt Anne has not her Court dress +on as yet; and Aunt Maria blushes as she beholds the new comers, having thought +fit to attire herself in a high dress, with a Quaker-like simplicity, and a +pair of gloves more than ordinarily dingy. The pretty little foot she has, it +is true, and sticks it out from habit; but what is Mrs. Newcome’s foot +compared with that sweet little chaussure which Miss Baughton exhibits and +withdraws? The shiny white satin slipper, the pink stocking which ever and anon +peeps from the rustling folds of her robe, and timidly retires into its +covert—that foot, light as it is, crushes Mrs. Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +No wonder she winces, and is angry; there are some mischievous persons who +rather like to witness that discomfiture. All Mr. Smee’s flatteries that +day failed to soothe her. She was in the state in which his canvasses sometimes +are, when he cannot paint on them. +</p> + +<p> +What happened to her alone in the drawing-room, when the ladies invited to the +dinner had departed, and those convoked to the soirée began to +arrive,—what happened to her or to them I do not like to think. The +Gandishes arrived first. Boadicea and the angels. We judged from the fact that +young Mr. Gandish came blushing in to the dessert. Name after name was +announced of persons of whom Mrs. Newcome knew nothing. The young and the old, +the pretty and homely, they were all in their best dresses, and no doubt stared +at Mrs. Newcome, so obstinately plain in her attire. When we came upstairs from +dinner, we found her seated entirely by herself, tapping her fan at the +fireplace. Timid groups of persons were round about, waiting for the irruption +of the gentlemen, until the pleasure should begin. Mr. Newcome, who came +upstairs yawning, was heard to say to his wife, “Oh, dam, let’s +cut!” And they went downstairs, and waited until their carriage had +arrived, when they quitted Fitzroy Square. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Barnes Newcome presently arrived, looking particularly smart and lively, +with a large flower in his button-hole, and leaning on the arm of a friend. +“How do you do, Pendennis?” he says, with a peculiarly dandified +air. “Did you dine here? You look as if you dined here” (and +Barnes, certainly, as if he had dined elsewhere). “I was only asked to +the cold soirée. Who did you have for dinner? You had my mamma and the +Baughtons, and my uncle and aunt, I know, for they are down below in the +library, waiting for the carriage: he is asleep, and she is as sulky as a +bear.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why did Mrs. Newcome say I should find nobody I knew up here?” +asks Barnes’s companion. “On the contrary, there are lots of +fellows I know. There’s Fred Bayham, dancing like a harlequin. +There’s old Gandish, who used to be my drawing-master; and my Brighton +friends, your uncle and cousin, Barnes. What relations are they to me? must be +some relations. Fine fellow your cousin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hm,” growls Barnes. “Very fine boy,—not spirited at +all,—not fond of flattery,—not surrounded by toadies,—not +fond of drink,—delightful boy! See yonder, the young fellow is in +conversation with his most intimate friend, a little crooked fellow, with long +hair. Do you know who he is? he is the son of old Todmoreton’s butler. +Upon my life it’s true.” +</p> + +<p> +“And suppose it is; what the deuce do I care!” cries Lord Kew. +“Who can be more respectable than a butler? A man must be +somebody’s son. When I am a middle-aged man, I hope humbly I shall look +like a butler myself. Suppose you were to put ten of Gunter’s men into +the House of Lords, do you mean to say that they would not look as well as any +average ten peers in the house? Look at Lord Westcot; he is exactly like a +butler that’s why the country has such confidence in him. I never dine +with him but I fancy he ought to be at the sideboard. Here comes that +insufferable little old Smee. How do you do, Mr. Smee?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Smee smiles his sweetest smile. With his rings, diamond shirt-studs, and +red velvet waistcoat, there are few more elaborate middle-aged bucks than +Alfred Smee. “How do you do, my dear lord?” cries the bland one. +“Who would ever have thought of seeing your lordship here?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why the deuce not, Mr. Smee?” asks Lord Kew, abruptly. “Is +it wrong to come here? I have been in the house only five minutes, and three +people have said the same thing to me—Mrs. Newcome, who is sitting +downstairs in a rage waiting for her carriage, the condescending Barnes, and +yourself. Why do you come here, Since? How are you, Mr. Gandish? How do the +fine arts go?” +</p> + +<p> +“Your lordship’s kindness in asking for them will cheer them if +anything will,” says Mr. Gandish. “Your noble family has always +patronised them. I am proud to be reckonised by your lordship in this house, +where the distinguished father of one of my pupils entertains us this evening. +A most promising young man is young Mr. Clive—talents for a hamateur +really most remarkable.” +</p> + +<p> +“Excellent, upon my word—excellent,” cries Mr. Smee. +“I’m not an animal painter myself, and perhaps don’t think +much of that branch of the profession; but it seems to me the young fellow +draws horses with the most wonderful spirit. I hope Lady Walham is very well, +and that she was satisfied with her son’s portrait. Stockholm, I think, +your brother is appointed to? I wish I might be allowed to paint the elder as +well as the younger brother, my lord.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am an historical painter; but whenever Lord Kew is painted I hope his +lordship will think of the old servant of his lordship’s family, Charles +Gandish,” cries the Professor. +</p> + +<p> +“I am like Susannah between the two Elders,” says Lord Kew. +“Let my innocence alone, Smee. Mr. Gandish, don’t persecute my +modesty with your addresses. I won’t be painted. I am not a fit subject +for a historical painter, Mr. Gandish.” +</p> + +<p> +“Halcibiades sat to Praxiteles, and Pericles to Phridjas,” remarks +Gandish. +</p> + +<p> +“The cases are not quite similar,” says Lord Kew, languidly. +“You are no doubt fully equal to Praxiteles; but I don’t see my +resemblance to the other party. I should not look well as a hero, and Smee +could not paint me handsome enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“I would try, my dear lord,” cries Mr. Smee. +</p> + +<p> +“I know you would, my dear fellow,” Lord Kew answered, looking at +the painter with a lazy scorn in his eyes. “Where is Colonel Newcome, Mr. +Gandish?” Mr. Gandish replied that our gallant host was dancing a +quadrille in the next room; and the young gentleman walked on towards that +apartment to pay his respects to the giver of the evening’s +entertainment. +</p> + +<p> +Newcome’s behaviour to the young peer was ceremonious, but not in the +least servile. He saluted the other’s superior rank, not his person, as +he turned the guard out for a general officer. He never could be brought to be +otherwise than cold and grave in his behaviour to John James; nor was it +without difficulty, when young Ridley and his son became pupils at +Gandish’s, he could be induced to invite the former to his parties. +“An artist is any man’s equal,” he said. “I have no +prejudice of that sort; and think that Sir Joshua Reynolds and Doctor Johnson +were fit company for any person, of whatever rank. But a young man whose father +may have had to wait behind me at dinner, should not be brought into my +company.” Clive compromises the dispute with a laugh. +“First,” says he, “I will wait till I am asked; and then I +promise I will not go to dine with Lord Todmoreton.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0020"></a> +CHAPTER XX.<br> +Contains more Particulars of the Colonel and his Brethren</h2> + +<p> +Clive’s amusements, studies, or occupations, such as they were, filled +his day pretty completely, and caused the young gentleman’s time to pass +rapidly and pleasantly, his father, it must be owned, had no such resources, +and the good Colonel’s idleness hung heavily upon him. He submitted very +kindly to this infliction, however, as he would have done to any other for +Clive’s sake; and though he may have wished himself back with his +regiment again, and engaged in the pursuits in which his life had been spent, +he chose to consider these desires as very selfish and blameable on his part, +and sacrificed them resolutely for his son’s welfare. The young fellow, I +dare say, gave his parent no more credit for his long self-denial, than many +other children award to theirs. We take such life-offerings as our due +commonly. The old French satirist avers that, in a love affair, there is +usually one person who loves, and the other, <i>qui se laisse aimer;</i> it is +only in later days, perhaps, when the treasures of love are spent, and the kind +hand cold which ministered them, that we remember how tender it was; how soft +to soothe; how eager to shield; how ready to support and caress. The ears may +no longer hear, which would have received our words of thanks so delightedly. +Let us hope those fruits of love, though tardy, are yet not all too late; and +though we bring our tribute of reverence and gratitude, it may be to a +gravestone, there is an acceptance even there for the stricken heart’s +oblation of fond remorse, contrite memories, and pious tears. I am thinking of +the love of Clive Newcome’s father for him (and, perhaps, young reader, +that of yours and mine for ourselves); how the old man lay awake, and devised +kindnesses, and gave his all for the love of his son; and the young man took, +and spent, and slept, and made merry. Did we not say at our tale’s +commencement that all stories were old? Careless prodigals and anxious elders +have been from the beginning:—and so may love, and repentance, and +forgiveness endure even till the end. +</p> + +<p> +The stifling fogs, the slippery mud, the dun dreary November mornings, when the +Regent’s Park, where the Colonel took his early walk, was wrapped in +yellow mist, must have been a melancholy exchange for the splendour of Eastern +sunrise, and the invigorating gallop at dawn, to which, for so many years of +his life, Thomas Newcome had accustomed himself. His obstinate habit of early +waking accompanied him to England, and occasioned the despair of his London +domestics, who, if master wasn’t so awful early, would have found no +fault with him; for a gentleman as gives less trouble to his servants; as +scarcely ever rings the bell for his self; as will brush his own clothes; as +will even boil his own shaving-water in the little hetna which he keeps up in +his dressing-room; as pays so regular, and never looks twice at the accounts; +such a man deserved to be loved by his household, and I dare say comparisons +were made between him and his son, who do ring the bells, and scold if his +boots ain’t nice, and horder about like a young lord. But Clive, though +imperious, was very liberal and good-humoured, and not the worse served because +he insisted upon exerting his youthful authority. As for friend Binnie, he had +a hundred pursuits of his own, which made his time pass very comfortably. He +had all the Lectures at the British Institution; he had the Geographical +Society, the Asiatic Society, and the Political Economy Club; and though he +talked year after year of going to visit his relations in Scotland, the months +and seasons passed away, and his feet still beat the London pavement. +</p> + +<p> +In spite of the cold reception his brothers gave him, duty was duty, and +Colonel Newcome still proposed, or hoped to be well with the female members of +the Newcome family; and having, as we have said, plenty of time on his hands, +and living at no very great distance from either of his brothers’ town +houses, when their wives were in London, the elder Newcome was for paying them +pretty constant visits. But after the good gentleman had called twice or thrice +upon his sister-in-law in Bryanstone Square—bringing, as was his wont, a +present for this little niece, or a book for that—Mrs. Newcome, with her +usual virtue, gave him to understand that the occupation of an English matron, +who, besides her multifarious family duties, had her own intellectual culture +to mind, would not allow her to pass the mornings in idle gossips: and of +course took great credit to herself for having so rebuked him. “I am not +above instruction of any age,” says she, thanking Heaven (or +complimenting it, rather, for having created a being so virtuous and +humble-minded). “When Professor Schroff comes, I sit with my children, +and take lessons in German,—and I say my verbs with Maria and Tommy in +the same class!” Yes, with curtsies and fine speeches she actually bowed +her brother out of doors; and the honest gentleman meekly left her, though with +bewilderment, as he thought of the different hospitality to which he had been +accustomed in the East, where no friend’s house was ever closed to him, +where no neighbour was so busy but he had time to make Thomas Newcome welcome. +</p> + +<p> +When Hobson Newcome’s boys came home for the holidays, their kind uncle +was for treating them to the sights of the town, but here Virtue again +interposed and laid its interdict upon pleasure. “Thank you, very much, +my dear Colonel,” says Virtue, “there never was surely such a kind, +affectionate, unselfish creature as you are, and so indulgent for children, but +my boys and yours are brought up on a <i>very different</i> plan. Excuse me for +saying that I do not think it is advisable that they should even see too much +of each other. Clive’s company is not good for them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Great heavens, Maria!” cries the Colonel, starting up, “do +you mean that my boy’s society is not good enough for any boy +alive?” +</p> + +<p> +Maria turned very red: she had said not more than she meant, but more than she +meant to say. “My dear Colonel, how hot we are! how angry you Indian +gentlemen become with us poor women! Your boy is much older than mine. He lives +with artists, with all sorts of eccentric people. Our children are bred on +<i>quite a different plan</i>. Hobson will succeed his father in the bank, and +dear Samuel I trust will go into the Church. I told you, before, the views I +had regarding the boys: but it was most kind of you to think of them—most +generous and kind.” +</p> + +<p> +“That nabob of ours is a queer fish,” Hobson Newcome remarked to +his nephew Barnes. “He is as proud as Lucifer, he is always taking huff +about one thing or the other. He went off in a fume the other night because +your aunt objected to his taking the boys to the play. She don’t like +their going to the play. My mother didn’t either. Your aunt is a woman +who is uncommon wideawake, I can tell you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I always knew, sir, that my aunt was perfectly aware of the time of the +day,” says Barnes, with a bow. +</p> + +<p> +“And then the Colonel flies out about his boy, and says that my wife +insulted him! I used to like that boy. Before his father came he was a good lad +enough—a jolly brave little fellow.” +</p> + +<p> +“I confess I did not know Mr. Clive at that interesting period of his +existence,” remarks Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +“But since he has taken this madcap freak of turning painter,” the +uncle continues, “there is no understanding the chap. Did you ever see +such a set of fellows as the Colonel had got together at his party the other +night? Dirty chaps in velvet coats and beards? They looked like a set of +mountebanks. And this young Clive is going to turn painter!” +</p> + +<p> +“Very advantageous thing for the family. He’ll do our pictures for +nothing. I always said he was a darling boy,” simpered Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +“Darling jackass!” growled out the senior. “Confound it, why +doesn’t my brother set him up in some respectable business? I ain’t +proud. I have not married an earl’s daughter. No offence to you, +Barnes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all, sir. I can’t help it if my grandfather is a +gentleman,” says Barnes, with a fascinating smile. +</p> + +<p> +The uncle laughs. “I mean I don’t care what a fellow is if he is a +good fellow. But a painter! hang it—a painter’s no trade at +all—I don’t fancy seeing one of our family sticking up pictures for +sale. I don’t like it, Barnes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hush! here comes his distinguished friend, Mr. Pendennis,” +whispers Barnes; and the uncle growling out, “Damn all literary +fellows—all artists—the whole lot of them!” turns away. +Barnes waves three languid fingers of recognition towards Pendennis: and when +the uncle and nephew have moved out of the club newspaper room, little Tom +Eaves comes up and tells the present reporter every word of their conversation. +</p> + +<p> +Very soon Mrs. Newcome announced that their Indian brother found the society of +Bryanstone Square very little to his taste, as indeed how should he? being a +man of a good harmless disposition certainly, but of small intellectual +culture. It could not be helped. She had done her utmost to make him welcome, +and grieved that their pursuits were not more congenial. She heard that he was +much more intimate in Park Lane. Possibly the superior rank of Lady +Anne’s family might present charms to Colonel Newcome, who fell asleep at +her assemblies. His boy, she was afraid, was leading the most <i>irregular +life</i>. He was growing a pair of mustachios, and going about with all sorts +of wild associates. She found no fault; who was she, to find fault with any +one? But she had been compelled to hint that her children must not be too +intimate with him. And so, between one brother who meant no unkindness, and +another who was all affection and goodwill, this undoubting woman created +difference, distrust, dislike, which might one day possibly lead to open +rupture. The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and +they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very +virtuous do? +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +To her sister-in-law, Lady Anne, the Colonel’s society was more welcome. +The affectionate gentleman never tired of doing kindnesses to his +brother’s many children; and as Mr. Clive’s pursuits now separated +him a good deal from his father, the Colonel, not perhaps without a sigh that +fate should so separate him from the society which he loved best in the world, +consoled himself as best he might with his nephews and nieces, especially with +Ethel, for whom his <i>belle passion</i> conceived at first sight never +diminished. If Uncle Newcome had a hundred children, Ethel said, who was rather +jealous of disposition, he would spoil them all. He found a fine occupation in +breaking a pretty little horse for her, of which he made her a present, and +there was no horse in the Park that was so handsome, and surely no girl who +looked more beautiful than Ethel Newcome with her broad hat and red ribbon, +with her thick black locks waving round her bright face, galloping along the +ride on Bhurtpore. Occasionally Clive was at their riding-parties, when the +Colonel would fall back and fondly survey the young people cantering side by +side over the grass: but by a tacit convention it was arranged that the cousins +should be but seldom together; the Colonel might be his niece’s companion +and no one could receive him with a more joyous welcome, but when Mr. Clive +made his appearance with his father at the Park Lane door, a certain +<i>gêne</i> was visible in Miss Ethel, who would never mount except with +Colonel Newcome’s assistance, and who, especially after Mr. Clive’s +famous mustachios made their appearance, rallied him, and remonstrated with him +regarding those ornaments, and treated him with much distance and dignity. She +asked him if he was going into the army? she could not understand how any but +military men could wear mustachios; and then she looked fondly and archly at +her uncle, and said she liked none that were not grey. +</p> + +<p> +Clive set her down as a very haughty, spoiled, aristocratic young creature. If +he had been in love with her, no doubt he would have sacrificed even those +beloved new-born whiskers for the charmer. Had he not already bought on credit +the necessary implements in a fine dressing-case, from young Moss? But he was +not in love with her; otherwise he would have found a thousand opportunities of +riding with her, walking with her, meeting her, in spite of all prohibitions +tacit or expressed, all governesses, guardians, mamma’s punctilios, and +kind hints from friends. For a while, Mr. Clive thought himself in love with +his cousin; than whom no more beautiful young girl could be seen in any park, +ball, or drawing-room; and he drew a hundred pictures of her, and discoursed +about her beauties to J. J., who fell in love with her on hearsay. But at this +time Mademoiselle Saltarelli was dancing at Drury Lane Theatre, and it +certainly may be said that Clive’s first love was bestowed upon that +beauty: whose picture of course he drew in most of her favourite characters; +and for whom his passion lasted until the end of the season, when her night was +announced, tickets to be had at the theatre, or of Mademoiselle Saltarelli, +Buckingham Street, Strand. Then it was that with a throbbing heart and a +five-pound note, to engage places for the houri’s benefit, Clive beheld +Madame Rogomme, Mademoiselle Saltarelli’s mother, who entertained him in +the French language in a dark parlour smelling of onions. And oh! issuing from +the adjoining dining-room (where was a dingy vision of a feast and pewter pots +upon a darkling tablecloth), could that lean, scraggy, old, beetle-browed +yellow face, who cried, “Ou es tu donc, maman?” with such a shrill +nasal voice—could that elderly vixen be that blooming and divine +Saltarelli? Clive drew her picture as she was, and a likeness of Madame +Rogomme, her mamma; a Mosaic youth, profusely jewelled, and scented at once +with tobacco and eau-de-cologne, occupied Clive’s stall on Mademoiselle +Saltarelli’s night. It was young Mr. Moss, of Gandish’s to whom +Newcome ceded his place, and who laughed (as he always did at Clive’s +jokes) when the latter told the story of his interview with the dancer. +“Paid five pound to see that woman! I could have took you behind the +scenes” (or “beide the seeds,” Mr. Moss said) “and +showed her to you for nothing.” Did he take Clive behind the scenes? Over +this part of the young gentleman’s life, without implying the least harm +to him—for have not others been behind the scenes; and can there be any +more dreary object than those whitened and raddled old women who shudder at the +slips?—over this stage of Clive Newcome’s life we may surely drop +the curtain. +</p> + +<p> +It is pleasanter to contemplate that kind old face of Clive’s father, +that sweet young blushing lady by his side, as the two ride homewards at +sunset. The grooms behind in quiet conversation about horses, as men never tire +of talking about horses. Ethel wants to know about battles; about lovers’ +lamps, which she has read of in Lalla Rookh. “Have you ever seen them, +uncle, floating down the Ganges of a night?” About Indian widows. +“Did you actually see one burning, and hear her scream as you rode +up?” She wonders whether he will tell her anything about Clive’s +mother: how she must have loved Uncle Newcome! Ethel can’t bear, somehow, +to think that her name was Mrs. Casey, perhaps he was very fond of her; though +he scarcely ever mentions her name. She was nothing like that good old funny +Miss Honeyman at Brighton. Who could the person be?—a person that her +uncle knew ever so long ago—a French lady, whom her uncle says Ethel +often resembles? That is why he speaks French so well. He can recite whole +pages out of Racine. Perhaps it was the French lady who taught him. And he was +not very happy at the Hermitage (though grandpapa was a very kind good man), +and he upset papa in a little carriage, and was wild, and got into disgrace, +and was sent to India? He could not have been very bad, Ethel thinks, looking +at him with her honest eyes. Last week he went to the Drawing-room, and papa +presented him. His uniform of grey and silver was quite old, yet he looked much +grander than Sir Brian in his new deputy-lieutenant’s dress. “Next +year, when I am presented, you must come too, sir,” says Ethel. “I +insist upon it, you must come too!” +</p> + +<p> +“I will order a new uniform, Ethel,” says her uncle. +</p> + +<p> +The girl laughs. “When little Egbert took hold of your sword, uncle, and +asked you how many people you had killed, do you know I had the same question +in my mind; and I thought when you went to the Drawing-room, perhaps the King +will knight him. But instead he knighted mamma’s apothecary, Sir Danby +Jilks: that horrid little man, and I won’t have you knighted any +more.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope Egbert won’t ask Sir Danby Jilks how many people HE has +killed,” says the Colonel, laughing; but thinking the joke too severe +upon Sir Danby and the profession, he forthwith apologises by narrating many +anecdotes he knows to the credit of surgeons. How, when the fever broke out on +board the ship going to India, their surgeon devoted himself to the safety of +the crew, and died himself, leaving directions for the treatment of the +patients when he was gone! What heroism the doctors showed during the cholera +in India; and what courage he had seen some of them exhibit in action: +attending the wounded men under the hottest fire, and exposing themselves as +readily as the bravest troops. Ethel declares that her uncle always will talk +of other people’s courage, and never say a word about his own; “and +the only reason,” she says, “which made me like that odious Sir +Thomas de Boots, who laughs so, and looks so red, and pays such horrid +compliments to all ladies, was, that he praised you, uncle, at Newcome, last +year, when Barnes and he came to us at Christmas. Why did you not come? Mamma +and I went to see your old nurse; and we found her such a nice old lady.” +So the pair talk kindly on, riding homewards through the pleasant summer +twilight. Mamma had gone out to dinner; and there were cards for three parties +afterwards. “Oh, how I wish it was next year!” says Miss Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +Many a splendid assembly, and many a brilliant next year, will the ardent and +hopeful young creature enjoy; but in the midst of her splendour and triumphs, +buzzing flatterers, conquered rivals, prostrate admirers, no doubt she will +think sometimes of that quiet season before the world began for her, and that +dear old friend, on whose arm she leaned while she was yet a young girl. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel comes to Park Street early in the forenoon, when the mistress of +the house, surrounded by her little ones, is administering dinner to them. He +behaves with splendid courtesy to Miss Quigley, the governess, and makes a +point of taking wine with her, and of making a most profound bow during that +ceremony. Miss Quigley cannot help thinking Colonel Newcome’s bow very +fine. She has an idea that his late Majesty must have bowed in that way: she +flutteringly imparts this opinion to Lady Anne’s maid; who tells her +mistress, who tells Miss Ethel, who watches the Colonel the next time he takes +wine with Miss Quigley, and they laugh, and then Ethel tells him; so that the +gentleman and the governess have to blush ever after when they drink wine +together. When she is walking with her little charges in the Park, or in that +before-mentioned paradise nigh to Apsley House, faint signals of welcome appear +on her wan cheeks. She knows the dear Colonel amongst a thousand horsemen. If +Ethel makes for her uncle purses, guard-chains, antimacassars, and the like +beautiful and useful articles, I believe it is in reality Miss Quigley who does +four-fifths of the work, as she sits alone in the schoolroom, high, high up in +that lone house, when the little ones are long since asleep, before her dismal +little tea-tray, and her little desk containing her mother’s letters and +her mementos of home. +</p> + +<p> +There are, of course, numberless fine parties in Park Lane, where the Colonel +knows he would be very welcome. But if there be grand assemblies, he does not +care to come. “I like to go to the club best,” he says to Lady +Anne. “We talk there as you do here about persons, and about Jack +marrying, and Tom dying, and so forth. But we have known Jack and Tom all our +lives, and so are interested in talking about them. Just as you are in speaking +of your own friends and habitual society. They are people whose names I have +sometimes read in the newspaper, but whom I never thought of meeting until I +came to your house. What has an old fellow like me to say to your young dandies +or old dowagers?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma is very odd and sometimes very captious, my dear Colonel,” +said Lady Anne, with a blush; “she suffers so frightfully from tic that +we are all bound to pardon her.” +</p> + +<p> +Truth to tell, old Lady Kew had been particularly rude to Colonel Newcome and +Clive. Ethel’s birthday befell in the spring, on which occasion she was +wont to have a juvenile assembly, chiefly of girls of her own age and +condition; who came, accompanied by a few governesses, and they played and sang +their little duets and choruses together, and enjoyed a gentle refection of +sponge-cakes, jellies, tea, and the like.—The Colonel, who was invited to +this little party, sent a fine present to his favourite Ethel; and Clive and +his friend J. J. made a funny series of drawings, representing the life of a +young lady as they imagined it, and drawing her progress from her cradle +upwards: now engaged with her doll, then with her dancing-master; now marching +in her back-board; now crying over her German lessons: and dressed for her +first ball finally, and bestowing her hand upon a dandy, of preternatural +ugliness, who was kneeling at her feet as the happy man. This picture was the +delight of the laughing happy girls; except, perhaps, the little cousins from +Bryanstone Square, who were invited to Ethel’s party, but were so +overpowered by the prodigious new dresses in which their mamma had attired +them, that they could admire nothing but their rustling pink frocks, their +enormous sashes, their lovely new silk stockings. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Kew coming to London attended on the party, and presented her +granddaughter with a sixpenny pincushion. The Colonel had sent Ethel a +beautiful little gold watch and chain. Her aunt had complimented her with that +refreshing work, Alison’s History of Europe, richly bound.—Lady +Kew’s pincushion made rather a poor figure among the gifts, whence +probably arose her ladyship’s ill-humour. +</p> + +<p> +Ethel’s grandmother became exceedingly testy when, the Colonel arriving, +Ethel ran up to him and thanked him for the beautiful watch, in return for +which she gave him a kiss, which, I dare say, amply repaid Colonel Newcome; and +shortly after him Mr. Clive arrived, looking uncommonly handsome, with that +smart little beard and mustachio with which nature had recently gifted him. As +he entered, all the girls, who had been admiring his pictures, began to clap +their hands. Mr. Clive Newcome blushed, and looked none the worse for that +indication of modesty. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Kew had met Colonel Newcome a half-dozen times at her daughter’s +house: but on this occasion she had quite forgotten him, for when the Colonel +made her a bow, her ladyship regarded him steadily, and beckoning her daughter +to her, asked who the gentleman was who has just kissed Ethel? Trembling as she +always did before her mother, Lady Anne explained. Lady Kew said +“Oh!” and left Colonel Newcome blushing and rather <i>embarrassé de +sa personne</i>—before her. +</p> + +<p> +With the clapping of hands that greeted Clive’s arrival, the Countess was +by no means more good-humoured. Not aware of her wrath, the young fellow, who +had also previously been presented to her, came forward presently to make her +his compliments. “Pray, who are you?” she said, looking at him very +earnestly in the face. He told her his name. +</p> + +<p> +“Hm,” said Lady Kew, “I have heard of you, and I have heard +very little good of you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will your ladyship please to give me your informant?” cried out +Colonel Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +Barnes Newcome, who had condescended to attend his sister’s little fête, +and had been languidly watching the frolics of the young people, looked very +much alarmed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0021"></a> +CHAPTER XXI.<br> +Is Sentimental, but Short</h2> + +<p> +Without wishing to disparage the youth of other nations, I think a well-bred +English lad has this advantage over them, that his bearing is commonly more +modest than theirs. He does not assume the tail-coat and the manners of manhood +too early: he holds his tongue, and listens to his elders: his mind blushes as +well as his cheeks: he does not know how to make bows and pay compliments like +the young Frenchman: nor to contradict his seniors as I am informed American +striplings do. Boys, who learn nothing else at our public schools, learn at +least good manners, or what we consider to be such; and with regard to the +person at present under consideration, it is certain that all his +acquaintances, excepting perhaps his dear cousin Barnes Newcome, agreed in +considering him as a very frank, manly, modest, and agreeable young +fellow.—My friend Warrington found a grim pleasure in his company; and +his bright face, droll humour, and kindly laughter were always welcome in our +chambers. Honest Fred Bayham was charmed to be in his society; and used +pathetically to aver that he himself might have been such a youth, had he been +blest with a kind father to watch, and good friends to guide, his early career. +In fact, Fred was by far the most didactic of Clive’s bachelor +acquaintances, pursued the young man with endless advice and sermons, and held +himself up as a warning to Clive, and a touching example of the evil +consequences of early idleness and dissipation. Gentlemen of much higher rank +in the world took a fancy to the lad. Captain Jack Belsize introduced him to +his own mess, as also to the Guard dinner at St. James’s; and my Lord Kew +invited him to Kewbury, his lordship’s house in Oxfordshire, where Clive +enjoyed hunting, shooting, and plenty of good company. Mrs. Newcome groaned in +spirit when she heard of these proceedings; and feared, feared very much that +that unfortunate young man was going to ruin; and Barnes Newcome amiably +disseminated reports amongst his family that the lad was plunged in all sorts +of debaucheries: that he was tipsy every night: that he was engaged, in his +sober moments, with dice, the turf, or worse amusements: and that his head was +so turned by living with Kew and Belsize, that the little rascal’s pride +and arrogance were perfectly insufferable. Ethel would indignantly deny these +charges; then perhaps credit a few of them; and she looked at Clive with +melancholy eyes when he came to visit his aunt; and I hope prayed that Heaven +might mend his wicked ways. The truth is, the young fellow enjoyed life, as one +of his age and spirit might be expected to do; but he did very little harm, and +meant less; and was quite unconscious of the reputation which his kind friends +were making for him. +</p> + +<p> +There had been a long-standing promise that Clive and his father were to go to +Newcome at Christmas: and I dare say Ethel proposed to reform the young +prodigal, if prodigal he was, for she busied herself delightedly in preparing +the apartments which they were to inhabit during their stay—speculated +upon it in a hundred pleasant ways, putting off her visit to this pleasant +neighbour, or that pretty scene in the vicinage, until her uncle should come +and they should be enabled to enjoy the excursion together. And before the +arrival of her relatives, Ethel, with one of her young brothers, went to see +Mrs. Mason; and introduced herself as Colonel Newcome’s niece; and came +back charmed with the old lady, and eager once more in defence of Clive (when +that young gentleman’s character happened to be called in question by her +brother Barnes), for had she not seen the kindest letter, which Clive had +written to old Mrs. Mason, and the beautiful drawing of his father on horseback +and in regimentals, waving his sword in front of the gallant --th Bengal +Cavalry, which the lad had sent down to the good old woman? He could not be +very bad, Ethel thought, who was so kind and thoughtful for the poor. His +father’s son could not be altogether a reprobate. When Mrs. Mason, seeing +how good and beautiful Ethel was, and thinking in her heart nothing could be +too good or beautiful for Clive, nodded her kind old head at Miss Ethel, and +said she should like to find a husband for her, Miss Ethel blushed, and looked +handsomer than ever; and at home, when she was describing the interview, never +mentioned this part of her talk with Mrs. Mason. +</p> + +<p> +But the <i>enfant terrible</i>, young Alfred, did: announcing to all the +company at dessert, that Ethel was in love with Clive—that Clive was +coming to marry her—that Mrs. Mason, the old woman at Newcome, had told +him so. +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say she has told the tale all over Newcome!” shrieked out +Mr. Barnes. “I dare say it will be in the Independent next week. By Jove, +it’s a pretty connexion—and nice acquaintances this uncle of ours +brings us!” A fine battle ensued upon the receipt and discussion of this +intelligence: Barnes was more than usually bitter and sarcastic: Ethel +haughtily recriminated, losing her temper, and then her firmness, until, fairly +bursting into tears, she taxed Barnes with meanness and malignity in for ever +uttering stories to his cousin’s disadvantage, and pursuing with constant +slander and cruelty one of the very best of men. She rose and left the table in +great tribulation—she went to her room and wrote a letter to her uncle, +blistered with tears, in which she besought him not to come to +Newcome.—Perhaps she went and looked at the apartments which she had +adorned and prepared for his reception. It was for him and for his company that +she was eager. She had met no one so generous and gentle, so honest and +unselfish, until she had seen him. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Anne knew the ways of women very well; and when Ethel that night, still in +great indignation and scorn against Barnes, announced that she had written a +letter to her uncle, begging the Colonel not to come at Christmas, +Ethel’s mother soothed the wounded girl, and treated her with peculiar +gentleness and affection; and she wisely gave Mr. Barnes to understand, that if +he wished to bring about that very attachment, the idea of which made him so +angry, he could use no better means than those which he chose to employ at +present, of constantly abusing and insulting poor Clive, and awakening +Ethel’s sympathies by mere opposition. And Ethel’s sad little +letter was extracted from the post-bag: and her mother brought it to her, +sealed, in her own room, where the young lady burned it: being easily brought +by Lady Anne’s quiet remonstrances to perceive that it was best no +allusion should take place to the silly dispute which had occurred that +evening; and that Clive and his father should come for the Christmas holidays, +if they were so minded. But when they came, there was no Ethel at Newcome. She +was gone on a visit to her sick aunt, Lady Julia. Colonel Newcome passed the +holidays sadly without his young favourite, and Clive consoled himself by +knocking down pheasants with Sir Brian’s keepers: and increased his +cousin’s attachment for him by breaking the knees of Barnes’s +favourite mare out hunting. It was a dreary entertainment; father and son were +glad enough to get away from it, and to return to their own humbler quarters in +London. +</p> + +<p> +Thomas Newcome had now been for three years in the possession of that felicity +which his soul longed after; and had any friend of his asked him if he was +happy, he would have answered in the affirmative no doubt, and protested that +he was in the enjoyment of everything a reasonable man could desire. And yet, +in spite of his happiness, his honest face grew more melancholy: his loose +clothes hung only the looser on his lean limbs: he ate his meals without +appetite: his nights were restless: and he would sit for hours silent in the +midst of his family, so that Mr. Binnie first began jocularly to surmise that +Tom was crossed in love; then seriously to think that his health was suffering +and that a doctor should be called to see him; and at last to agree that +idleness was not good for the Colonel, and that he missed the military +occupation to which he had been for so many years accustomed. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel insisted that he was perfectly happy and contented. What could he +want more than he had—the society of his son, for the present; and a +prospect of quiet for his declining days? Binnie vowed that his friend’s +days had no business to decline as yet; that a sober man of fifty ought to be +at his best; and that Newcome had grown older in three years in Europe, than in +a quarter of a century in the East—all which statements were true, though +the Colonel persisted in denying them. +</p> + +<p> +He was very restless. He was always finding business in distant quarters of +England. He must go visit Tom Barker who was settled in Devonshire, or Harry +Johnson who had retired and was living in Wales. He surprised Mrs. Honeyman by +the frequency of his visits to Brighton, and always came away much improved in +health by the sea air, and by constant riding with the harriers there. He +appeared at Bath and at Cheltenham, where, as we know, there are many old +Indians. Mr. Binnie was not indisposed to accompany him on some of these +jaunts—“provided,” the civilian said, “you don’t +take young Hopeful, who is much better without us; and let us two old fogies +enjoy ourselves together.” +</p> + +<p> +Clive was not sorry to be left alone. The father knew that only too well. The +young man had occupations, ideas, associates, in whom the elder could take no +interest. Sitting below in his blank, cheerless bedroom, Newcome could hear the +lad and his friends talking, singing, and making merry overhead. Something +would be said in Clive’s well-known tones, and a roar of laughter would +proceed from the youthful company. They had all sorts of tricks, bywords, +waggeries, of which the father could not understand the jest nor the secret. He +longed to share in it, but the party would be hushed if he went in to join +it—and he would come away sad at heart, to think that his presence should +be a signal for silence among them; and that his son could not be merry in his +company. +</p> + +<p> +We must not quarrel with Clive and Clive’s friends, because they could +not joke and be free in the presence of the worthy gentleman. If they hushed +when he came in, Thomas Newcome’s sad face would seem to look +round—appealing to one after another of them, and asking, “Why +don’t you go on laughing?” A company of old comrades shall be merry +and laughing together, and the entrance of a single youngster will stop the +conversation—and if men of middle age feel this restraint with our +juniors, the young ones surely have a right to be silent before their elders. +The boys are always mum under the eyes of the usher. There is scarce any +parent, however friendly or tender with his children, but must feel sometimes +that they have thoughts which are not his or hers; and wishes and secrets quite +beyond the parental control: and, as people are vain, long after they are +fathers, ay; or grandfathers, and not seldom fancy that mere personal desire of +domination is overweening anxiety and love for their family, no doubt that +common outcry against thankless children might often be shown to prove, not +that the son is disobedient, but the father too exacting. When a mother (as +fond mothers often will) vows that she knows every thought in her +daughter’s heart, I think she pretends to know a great deal too much; nor +can there be a wholesomer task for the elders, as our young subjects grow up, +naturally demanding liberty and citizen’s rights, than for us gracefully +to abdicate our sovereign pretensions and claims of absolute control. +There’s many a family chief who governs wisely and gently, who is loth to +give the power up when he should. Ah, be sure, it is not youth alone that has +need to learn humility! By their very virtues, and the purity of their lives, +many good parents create flatterers for themselves, and so live in the midst of +a filial court of parasites—and seldom without a pang of unwillingness, +and often not at all, will they consent to forgo their autocracy, and exchange +the tribute they have been wont to exact of love and obedience for the willing +offering of love and freedom. +</p> + +<p> +Our good Colonel was not of the tyrannous, but of the loving order of fathers: +and having fixed his whole heart upon this darling youth, his son, was +punished, as I suppose such worldly and selfish love ought to be punished (so +Mr. Honeyman says, at least, in his pulpit), by a hundred little +mortifications, disappointments, and secret wounds, which stung not the less +severely though never mentioned by their victim. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes he would have a company of such gentlemen as Messrs. Warrington, +Honeyman, and Pendennis, when haply a literary conversation would ensue after +dinner; and the merits of our present poets and writers would be discussed with +the claret. Honeyman was well enough read in profane literature, especially of +the lighter sort; and, I dare say, could have passed a satisfactory examination +in Balzac, Dumas, and Paul de Kock himself, of all whose works our good host +was entirely ignorant,—as indeed he was of graver books, and of earlier +books, and of books in general—except those few which we have said formed +his travelling library. He heard opinions that amazed and bewildered him. He +heard that Byron was no great poet, though a very clever man. He heard that +there had been a wicked persecution against Mr. Pope’s memory and fame, +and that it was time to reinstate him; that his favourite, Dr. Johnson, talked +admirably, but did not write English: that young Keats was a genius to be +estimated in future days with young Raphael: and that a young gentleman of +Cambridge who had lately published two volumes of verses, might take rank with +the greatest poets of all. Doctor Johnson not write English! Lord Byron not one +of the greatest poets of the world! Sir Walter a poet of the second order! Mr. +Pope attacked for inferiority and want of imagination; Mr. Keats and this young +Mr. Tennyson of Cambridge, the chief of modern poetic literature! What were +these new dicta, which Mr. Warrington delivered with a puff of tobacco-smoke: +to which Mr. Honeyman blandly assented and Clive listened with pleasure? Such +opinions were not of the Colonel’s time. He tried in vain to construe +Oenone, and to make sense of Lamia. Ulysses he could understand; but what were +these prodigious laudations bestowed on it? And that reverence for Mr. +Wordsworth, what did it mean? Had he not written Peter Bell, and been turned +into deserved ridicule by all the reviews? Was that dreary Excursion to be +compared to Goldsmith’s Traveller, or Doctor Johnson’s Imitation of +the Tenth Satire of Juvenal? If the young men told the truth, where had been +the truth in his own young days, and in what ignorance had our forefathers been +brought up?—Mr. Addison was only an elegant essayist, and shallow +trifler! All these opinions were openly uttered over the Colonel’s +claret, as he and Mr. Binnie sate wondering at the speakers, who were knocking +the gods of their youth about their ears. To Binnie the shock was not so great; +the hard-headed Scotchman had read Hume in his college days, and sneered at +some of the gods even at that early time. But with Newcome the admiration for +the literature of the last century was an article of belief: and the +incredulity of the young men seemed rank blasphemy. “You will be sneering +at Shakspeare next,” he said: and was silenced, though not better +pleased, when his youthful guests told him, that Doctor Goldsmith sneered at +him too; that Dr. Johnson did not understand him, and that Congreve, in his own +day and afterwards, was considered to be, in some points, Shakspeare’s +superior. “What do you think a man’s criticism is worth, +sir,” cries Mr. Warrington, “who says those lines of Mr. Congreve, +about a church— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +‘How reverend is the face of yon tall pile,<br> +Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,<br> +To bear aloft its vast and ponderous roof,<br> +By its own weight made steadfast and immovable;<br> +Looking tranquillity. It strikes an awe<br> +And terror on my aching sight’—et cætera +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +what do you think of a critic who says those lines are finer than anything +Shakspeare ever wrote?” A dim consciousness of danger for Clive, a terror +that his son had got into the society of heretics and unbelievers, came over +the Colonel,—and then presently, as was the wont with his modest soul, a +gentle sense of humility. He was in the wrong, perhaps, and these younger men +were right. Who was he, to set up his judgment against men of letters, educated +at college? It was better that Clive should follow them than him, who had had +but a brief schooling, and that neglected, and who had not the original genius +of his son’s brilliant companions. We particularise these talks, and the +little incidental mortifications which one of the best of men endured, not +because the conversations are worth the remembering or recording, but because +they presently very materially influenced his own and his son’s future +history. +</p> + +<p> +In the midst of the artists and their talk the poor Colonel was equally in the +dark. They assaulted this Academician and that; laughed at Mr. Haydon, or +sneered at Mr. Eastlake, or the contrary; deified Mr. Turner on one side of the +table, and on the other scorned him as a madman—nor could Newcome +comprehend a word of their jargon. Some sense there must be in their +conversation: Clive joined eagerly in it and took one side or another. But what +was all this rapture about a snuffy brown picture called Titian, this delight +in three flabby nymphs by Rubens, and so forth? As for the vaunted Antique, and +the Elgin Marbles—it might be that that battered torso was a miracle, and +that broken-nosed bust a perfect beauty. He tried and tried to see that they +were. He went away privily and worked at the National Gallery with a catalogue: +and passed hours in the Museum before the ancient statues, desperately praying +to comprehend them, and puzzled before them as he remembered he was puzzled +before the Greek rudiments as a child when he cried over ὁ, +και ἡ ἀληθής, +και τὸ ἀληθὲς. +Whereas when Clive came to look at these same things his eyes would lighten up +with pleasure, and his cheeks flush with enthusiasm. He seemed to drink in +colour as he would a feast of wine. Before the statues he would wave his +finger, following the line of grace, and burst into ejaculations of delight and +admiration. “Why can’t I love the things which he loves?” +thought Newcome; “why am I blind to the beauties which he admires so +much—and am I unable to comprehend what he evidently understands at his +young age?” +</p> + +<p> +So, as he thought what vain egotistical hopes he used to form about the boy +when he was away in India—how in his plans for the happy future, Clive +was to be always at his side; how they were to read, work, play, think, be +merry together—a sickening and humiliating sense of the reality came over +him: and he sadly contrasted it with the former fond anticipations. Together +they were, yet he was alone still. His thoughts were not the boy’s: and +his affections rewarded but with a part of the young man’s heart. Very +likely other lovers have suffered equally. Many a man and woman has been +incensed and worshipped, and has shown no more feeling than is to be expected +from idols. There is yonder statue in St. Peter’s, of which the toe is +worn away with kisses, and which sits, and will sit eternally, prim and cold. +As the young man grew, it seemed to the father as if each day separated them +more and more. He himself became more melancholy and silent. His friend the +civilian marked the ennui, and commented on it in his laughing way. Sometimes +he announced to the club that Tom Newcome was in love: then he thought it was +not Tom’s heart but his liver that was affected, and recommended blue +pill. O thou fond fool! who art thou, to know any man’s heart save thine +alone? Wherefore were wings made, and do feathers grow, but that birds should +fly? The instinct that bids you love your nest, leads the young ones to seek a +tree and a mate of their own. As if Thomas Newcome by poring over poems or +pictures ever so much could read them with Clive’s eyes!—as if by +sitting mum over his wine, but watching till the lad came home with his +latchkey (when the Colonel crept back to his own room in his stockings), by +prodigal bounties, by stealthy affection, by any schemes or prayers, he could +hope to remain first in his son’s heart! +</p> + +<p> +One day going into Clive’s study, where the lad was so deeply engaged +that he did not hear the father’s steps advancing, Thomas Newcome found +his son, pencil in hand, poring over a paper, which, blushing, he thrust +hastily into his breast-pocket, as soon as he saw his visitor. The father was +deeply smitten and mortified. “I—I am sorry you have any secrets +from me, Clive,” he gasped out at length. +</p> + +<p> +The boy’s face lighted up with humour. “Here it is, father, if you +would like to see:”—and he pulled out a paper which contained +neither more nor less than a copy of very flowery verses, about a certain young +lady, who had succeeded (after I know not how many predecessors) to the place +of <i>prima donna assoluta</i> in Clive’s heart. And be pleased, madam, +not to be too eager with your censure, and fancy that Mr. Clive or his +chronicler would insinuate anything wrong. I dare say you felt a flame or two +before you were married yourself: and that the Captain or the Curate, and the +interesting young foreigner with whom you danced, caused your heart to beat, +before you bestowed that treasure on Mr. Candour. Clive was doing no more than +your own son will do when he is eighteen or nineteen years old himself—if +he is a lad of any spirit and a worthy son of so charming a lady as yourself. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0022"></a> +CHAPTER XXII.<br> +Describes a Visit to Paris; with Accidents and Incidents in London</h2> + +<p> +Mr. Clive, as we have said, had now begun to make acquaintances of his own; and +the chimney-glass in his study was decorated with such a number of cards of +invitation, as made his ex-fellow-student of Gandish’s, young Moss, when +admitted into that sanctum, stare with respectful astonishment. “Lady +Bary Rowe at obe,” the young Hebrew read out; “Lady Baughton at +obe, dadsig! By eyes! what a tip-top swell you’re a gettid to be, +Newcome! I guess this is a different sort of business to the hops at old +Levison’s, where you first learned the polka; and where we had to pay a +shilling a glass for negus!” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>We</i> had to pay! <i>You</i> never paid anything, Moss,” cries +Clive, laughing; and indeed the negus imbibed by Mr. Moss did not cost that +prudent young fellow a penny. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, well; I suppose at these swell parties you ’ave as bush +champade as ever you like,” continues Moss. “Lady Kicklebury at +obe—small early party. Why, I declare you know the whole peerage! I say, +if any of these swells want a little tip-top lace, a real bargain, or diamonds, +you know, you might put in a word for us, and do us a good turn.” +</p> + +<p> +“Give me some of your cards,” says Clive; “I can distribute +them about at the balls I go to. But you must treat my friends better than you +serve me. Those cigars which you sent me were abominable, Moss; the groom in +the stable won’t smoke them.” +</p> + +<p> +“What a regular swell that Newcome has become!” says Mr. Moss to an +old companion, another of Clive’s fellow-students: “I saw him +riding in the Park with the Earl of Kew, and Captain Belsize, and a whole lot +of ’em—<i>I</i> know ’em all—and he’d hardly nod +to me. I’ll have a horse next Sunday, and <i>then</i> I’ll see +whether he’ll cut me or not. Confound his airs! For all he’s such a +count, I know he’s got an aunt who lets lodgings at Brighton, and an +uncle who’ll be preaching in the Bench if he don’t keep a precious +good look-out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Newcome is not a bit of a count,” answers Moss’s companion, +indignantly. “He don’t care a straw whether a fellow’s poor +or rich; and he comes up to my room just as willingly as he would go to a +duke’s. He is always trying to do a friend a good turn. He draws the +figure capitally: he <i>looks</i> proud, but he isn’t, and is the +best-natured fellow I ever saw.” +</p> + +<p> +“He ain’t been in our place this eighteen months,” says Mr. +Moss: “I know that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Because when he came you were always screwing him with some bargain or +other,” cried the intrepid Hicks, Mr. Moss’s companion for the +moment. “He said he couldn’t afford to know you: you never let him +out of your house without a pin, or a box of eau-de-cologne, or a bundle of +cigars. And when you cut the arts for the shop, how were you and Newcome to go +on together, I should like to know?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know a relative of his who comes to our ’ouse every three +months, to renew a little bill,” says Mr. Moss, with a grin: “and I +know this, if I go to the Earl of Kew in the Albany, or the Honourable Captain +Belsize, Knightsbridge Barracks, <i>they</i> let me in soon enough. I’m +told his father ain’t got much money.” +</p> + +<p> +“How the deuce should I know? or what do I care?” cries the young +artist, stamping the heel of his blucher on the pavement. “When I was +sick in that confounded Clipstone Street, I know the Colonel came to see me, +and Newcome too, day after day, and night after night. And when I was getting +well, they sent me wine and jelly, and all sorts of jolly things. I should like +to know how often you came to see me, Moss, and what you did for a +fellow?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I kep away because I thought you wouldn’t like to be +reminded of that two pound three you owe me, Hicks: that’s why I kep +away,” says Mr. Moss, who, I dare say, was good-natured too. And when +young Moss appeared at the billiard-room that night, it was evident that Hicks +had told the story; for the Wardour Street youth was saluted with a roar of +queries, “How about that two pound three that Hicks owes you?” +</p> + +<p> +The artless conversation of the two youths will enable us to understand how our +hero’s life was speeding. Connected in one way or another with persons in +all ranks, it never entered his head to be ashamed of the profession which he +had chosen. People in the great world did not in the least trouble themselves +regarding him, or care to know whether Mr. Clive Newcome followed painting or +any other pursuit: and though Clive saw many of his schoolfellows in the world, +these entering into the army, others talking with delight of college, and its +pleasures or studies; yet, having made up his mind that art was his calling, he +refused to quit her for any other mistress, and plied his easel very stoutly. +He passed through the course of study prescribed by Mr. Gandish, and drew every +cast and statue in that gentleman’s studio. Grindley, his tutor, getting +a curacy, Clive did not replace him; but he took a course of modern languages, +which he learned with considerable aptitude and rapidity. And now, being strong +enough to paint without a master, it was found that there was no good light in +the house in Fitzroy Square; and Mr. Clive must needs have an atelier hard by, +where he could pursue his own devices independently. +</p> + +<p> +If his kind father felt any pang even at this temporary parting, he was greatly +soothed and pleased by a little mark of attention on the young man’s +part, of which his present biographer happened to be a witness; for having +walked over with Colonel Newcome to see the new studio, with its tall centre +window, and its curtains, and carved wardrobes, china jars, pieces of armour, +and other artistical properties, the lad, with a very sweet smile of kindness +and affection lighting up his honest face, took one of two Bramah’s +house-keys with which he was provided, and gave it to his father: +“That’s your key, sir,” he said to the Colonel; “and +you must be my first sitter, please, father; for though I’m a historical +painter, I shall condescend to do a few portraits, you know.” The Colonel +took his son’s hand, and grasped it; as Clive fondly put the other hand +on his father’s shoulder. Then Colonel Newcome walked away into the next +room for a minute or two, and came back wiping his moustache with his +handkerchief, and still holding the key in the other hand. He spoke about some +trivial subject when he returned; but his voice quite trembled; and I thought +his face seemed to glow with love and pleasure. Clive has never painted +anything better than that head, which he executed in a couple of sittings; and +wisely left without subjecting it to the chances of further labour. +</p> + +<p> +It is certain the young man worked much better after he had been inducted into +this apartment of his own. And the meals at home were gayer; and the rides with +his father more frequent and agreeable. The Colonel used his key once or twice, +and found Clive and his friend Ridley engaged in depicting a +life-guardsman,—or a muscular negro,—or a Malay from a neighbouring +crossing, who would appear as Othello, conversing with a Clipstone Street +nymph, who was ready to represent Desdemona, Diana, Queen Ellinor (sucking +poison from the arm of the Plantagenet of the Blues), or any other model of +virgin or maiden excellence. +</p> + +<p> +Of course our young man commenced as a historical painter, deeming that the +highest branch of art; and declining (except for preparatory studies) to +operate on any but the largest canvasses. He painted a prodigious battle-piece +of Assaye, with General Wellesley at the head of the 19th Dragoons charging the +Mahratta Artillery, and sabring them at their guns. A piece of ordnance was +dragged into the back-yard, and the Colonel’s stud put into requisition +to supply studies for this enormous picture. Fred Bayham (a stunning likeness) +appeared as the principal figure in the foreground, terrifically wounded, but +still of undaunted courage, slashing about amidst a group of writhing Malays, +and bestriding the body of a dead cab-horse, which Clive painted, until the +landlady and rest of the lodgers cried out, and for sanitary reasons the +knackers removed the slaughtered charger. So large was this picture that it +could only be got out of the great window by means of artifice and coaxing; and +its transport caused a shout of triumph among the little boys in Charlotte +Street. Will it be believed that the Royal Academicians rejected the +“Battle of Assaye”? The masterpiece was so big that Fitzroy Square +could not hold it; and the Colonel had thoughts of presenting it to the +Oriental Club; but Clive (who had taken a trip to Paris with his father, as a +<i>délassement</i> after the fatigues incident on this great work), when he saw +it, after a month’s interval, declared the thing was rubbish, and +massacred Britons, Malays, Dragoons, Artillery and all. +</p> + +<p> +“Hôtel de la Terrasse, Rue de Rivoli, +</p> + +<p> +“April 27—May 1, 183-. +</p> + +<p> +“My Dear Pendennis—You said I might write you a line from Paris; +and if you find in my correspondence any valuable hints for the <i>Pall Mall +Gazette</i>, you are welcome to use them gratis. Now I am here, I wonder I have +never been here before, and that I have seen the Dieppe packet a thousand times +at Brighton pier without thinking of going on board her. We had a rough little +passage to Boulogne. We went into action as we cleared Dover pier—when +the <i>first gun</i> was fired, and a stout old lady was carried off by a +steward to the cabin; half a dozen more dropped immediately, and the crew +bustled about, bringing basins for the wounded. The Colonel smiled as he saw +them fall. ‘I’m an old sailor,’ says he to a gentleman on +board. ‘I was coming home, sir, and we had plenty of rough weather on the +voyage, I never thought of being unwell. My boy here, who made the voyage +twelve years ago last May, may have lost his sea-legs; but for me, +sir—’ Here a great wave dashed over the three of us; and would you +believe it? in five minutes after, the dear old governor was as ill as all the +rest of the passengers. When we arrived, we went through a line of ropes to the +custom-house, with a crowd of snobs jeering at us on each side; and then were +carried off by a bawling commissioner to an hotel, where the Colonel, who +speaks French beautifully, you know, told the waiter to get us a <i>petit +déjeuner soigné;</i> on which the fellow, grinning, said, a ‘nice fried +sole, sir,—nice mutton-chop, sir,’ in regular Temple Bar English; +and brought us Harvey sauce with the chops, and the last <i>Bell’s +Life</i> to amuse us after our luncheon. I wondered if all the Frenchmen read +<i>Bell’s Life</i>, and if all the inns smell so of brandy-and-water! +</p> + +<p> +“We walked out to see the town, which I dare say you know, and therefore +shan’t describe. We saw some good studies of fishwomen with bare legs, +and remarked that the soldiers were very dumpy and small. We were glad when the +time came to set off by the diligence; and having the coupe to ourselves, made +a very comfortable journey to Paris. It was jolly to hear the postillions +crying to their horses, and the bells of the team, and to feel ourselves really +in France. We took in provender at Abbeville and Amiens, and were comfortably +landed here after about six-and-twenty hours of coaching. Didn’t I get up +the next morning and have a good walk in the Tuileries! The chestnuts were out, +and the statues all shining, and all the windows of the palace in a blaze. It +looks big enough for the king of the giants to live in. How grand it is! I like +the barbarous splendour of the architecture, and the ornaments profuse and +enormous with which it is overladen. Think of Louis XVI. with a thousand +gentlemen at his back, and a mob of yelling ruffians in front of him, giving up +his crown without a fight for it; leaving his friends to be butchered, and +himself sneaking into prison! No end of little children were skipping and +playing in the sunshiny walks, with dresses as bright and cheeks as red as the +flowers and roses in the parterres. I couldn’t help thinking of Barbaroux +and his bloody pikemen swarming in the gardens, and fancied the Swiss in the +windows yonder; where they were to be slaughtered when the King had turned his +back. What a great man that Carlyle is! I have read the battle in his History +so often, that I knew it before I had seen it. Our windows look out on the +obelisk where the guillotine stood. The Colonel doesn’t admire Carlyle. +He says Mrs. Graham’s Letters from Paris are excellent, and we bought +Scott’s Visit to Paris, and Paris Re-visited, and read them in the +diligence. They are famous good reading; but the Palais Royal is very much +altered since Scott’s time: no end of handsome shops; I went there +directly,—the same night we arrived, when the Colonel went to bed. But +there is none of the fun going on which Scott describes. The +<i>laquais-de-place</i> says Charles X. put an end to it all. +</p> + +<p> +“Next morning the governor had letters to deliver after breakfast, and +left me at the Louvre door. I shall come and live here, I think. I feel as if I +never want to go away. I had not been ten minutes in the place before I fell in +love with the most beautiful creature the world has ever seen. She was standing +silent and majestic in the centre of one of the rooms of the statue-gallery; +and the very first glimpse of her struck one breathless with the sense of her +beauty. I could not see the colour of her eyes and hair exactly, but the latter +is light, and the eyes I should think are grey. Her complexion is of a +beautiful warm marble tinge. She is not a clever woman, evidently; I do not +think she laughs or talks much—she seems too lazy to do more than smile. +She is only beautiful. This divine creature has lost an arm, which has been cut +off at the shoulder, but she looks none the less lovely for the accident. She +maybe some two-and-thirty years old; and she was born about two thousand years +ago. Her name is the Venus of Milo. O Victrix! O lucky Paris! (I don’t +mean this present Lutetia, but Priam’s son.) How could he give the apple +to any else but this enslaver—this joy of gods and men? at whose benign +presence the flowers spring up, and the smiling ocean sparkles, and the soft +skies beam with serene light! I wish we might sacrifice. I would bring a +spotless kid, snowy-coated, and a pair of doves and a jar of honey—yea, +honey from Morel’s in Piccadilly, thyme-flavoured, narbonian, and we +would acknowledge the Sovereign Loveliness, and adjure the Divine Aphrodite. +Did you ever see my pretty young cousin, Miss Newcome, Sir Brian’s +daughter? She has a great look of the huntress Diana. It is sometimes too proud +and too cold for me. The blare of those horns is too shrill and the rapid +pursuit through bush and bramble too daring. O thou generous Venus! O thou +beautiful bountiful calm! At thy soft feet let me kneel—on cushions of +Tyrian purple. Don’t show this to Warrington, please: I never thought +when I began that Pegasus was going to run away with me. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I had read Greek a little more at school: it’s too late at +my age; I shall be nineteen soon, and have got my own business; but when we +return I think I shall try and read it with Cribs. What have I been doing, +spending six months over a picture of sepoys and dragoons cutting each +other’s throats? Art ought not to be a fever. It ought to be a calm; not +a screaming bull-fight or a battle of gladiators, but a temple for placid +contemplation, rapt worship, stately rhythmic ceremony, and music solemn and +tender. I shall take down my Snyders and Rubens when I get home; and turn +quietist. To think I have spent weeks in depicting bony life-guardsmen +delivering cut one, or Saint George, and painting black beggars off a crossing! +</p> + +<p> +“What a grand thing it is to think of half a mile of pictures at the +Louvre! Not but that there are a score under the old pepper-boxes in Trafalgar +Square as fine as the best here. I don’t care for any Raphael here, as +much as our own St. Catharine. There is nothing more grand. Could the Pyramids +of Egypt or the Colossus of Rhodes be greater than our Sebastian? and for our +Bacchus and Ariadne, you cannot beat the best you know. But if we have fine +jewels, here there are whole sets of them: there are kings and all their +splendid courts round about them. J. J. and I must come and live here. Oh, such +portraits of Titian! Oh, such swells by Vandyke! I’m sure he must have +been as fine a gentleman as any he painted! It’s a shame they +haven’t got a Sir Joshua or two. At a feast of painters he has a right to +a place, and at the high table too. Do you remember Tom Rogers, of +Gandish’s? He used to come to my rooms—my other rooms in the +Square. Tom is here with a fine carrotty beard, and a velvet jacket, cut open +at the sleeves, to show that Tom has a shirt. I dare say it was clean last +Sunday. He has not learned French yet, but pretends to have forgotten English; +and promises to introduce me to a set of the French artists his +<i>camarades</i>. There seems to be a scarcity of soap among these young +fellows; and I think I shall cut off my mustachios; only Warrington will have +nothing to laugh at when I come home. +</p> + +<p> +“The Colonel and I went to dine at the Café de Paris, and afterwards to +the opera. Ask for <i>huitres de Marenne</i> when you dine here. We dined with +a tremendous French swell, the Vicomte de Florac, <i>officier +d’ordonnance</i> to one of the princes, and son of some old friends of my +father’s. They are of very high birth, but very poor. He will be a duke +when his cousin, the Duc d’Ivry, dies. His father is quite old. The +vicomte was born in England. He pointed out to us no end of famous people at +the opera—a few of the Fauxbourg St. Germain, and ever so many of the +present people:—M. Thiers, and Count Molé, and Georges Sand, and Victor +Hugo, and Jules Janin—I forget half their names. And yesterday we went to +see his mother, Madame de Florac. I suppose she was an old flame of the +Colonel’s, for their meeting was uncommonly ceremonious and tender. It +was like an elderly Sir Charles Grandison saluting a middle-aged Miss Byron. +And only fancy! the Colonel has been here once before since his return to +England! It must have been last year, when he was away for ten days, whilst I +was painting that rubbishing picture of the Black Prince waiting on King John. +Madame de F. is a very grand lady, and must have been a great beauty in her +time. There are two pictures by Gerard in her salon—of her and M. de +Florac. M. de Florac, old swell, powder, thick eyebrows, hooked nose; no end of +stars, ribbons, and embroidery. Madame also in the dress of the +Empire—pensive, beautiful, black velvet, and a look something like my +cousin’s. She wore a little old-fashioned brooch yesterday, and said, +‘<i>Voilà, la reconnoissez-vous?</i> Last year when you were here, it was +in the country;’ and she smiled at him: and the dear old boy gave a sort +of groan and dropped his head in his hand. I know what it is. I’ve gone +through it myself. I kept for six months an absurd ribbon of that infernal +little flirt Fanny Freeman. Don’t you remember how angry I was when you +abused her? +</p> + +<p> +“‘Your father and I knew each other when we were children, my +friend,’ the Countess said to me (in the sweetest French accent). He was +looking into the garden of the house where they live, in the Rue Saint +Dominique. ‘You must come and see me often, always. You remind me of +him,’ and she added, with a very sweet kind smile, ‘Do you like +best to think that he was better-looking than you, or that you excel +him?’ I said I should like to be like him. But who is? There are cleverer +fellows, I dare say; but where is there such a good one? I wonder whether he +was very fond of Madame de Florac? The old Count does not show. He is quite +old, and wears a pigtail. We saw it bobbing over his garden chair. He lets the +upper part of his house; Major-General the Honourable Zeno F. Pokey, of +Cincinnati, U.S., lives in it. We saw Mrs. Pokey’s carriage in the court, +and her footmen smoking cigars there; a tottering old man with feeble legs, as +old as old Count de Florac, seemed to be the only domestic who waited on the +family below. +</p> + +<p> +“Madame de Florac and my father talked about my profession. The Countess +said it was a <i>belle carrière</i>. The Colonel said it was better than the +army. ‘<i>Ah oui, monsieur</i>,’ says she very sadly. And then he +said, ‘that presently I should very likely come to study at Paris, when +he knew there would be a kind friend to watch over <i>son garçon</i>.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘But you will be here to watch over him yourself, <i>mon +ami?</i>’ says the French lady. +</p> + +<p> +“Father shook his head. ‘I shall very probably have to go back to +India,’ he said. ‘My furlough is expired. I am now taking my extra +leave. If I can get my promotion, I need not return. Without that I cannot +afford to live in Europe. But my absence in all probability will be but very +short,’ he said. ‘And Clive is old enough now to go on without +me.’ +</p> + +<p> +“Is this the reason why father has been so gloomy for some months past? I +thought it might have been some of my follies which made him uncomfortable; and +you know I have been trying my best to amend—I have not half such a +tailor’s bill this year as last. I owe scarcely anything. I have paid off +Moss every halfpenny for his confounded rings and gimcracks. I asked father +about this melancholy news as we walked away from Madame de Florac. +</p> + +<p> +“He is not near so rich as we thought. Since he has been at home he says +he has spent greatly more than his income, and is quite angry at his own +extravagance. At first he thought he might have retired from the army +altogether; but after three years at home, he finds he cannot live upon his +income. When he gets his promotion as full Colonel, he will be entitled to a +thousand a year; that, and what he has invested in India, and a little in this +country, will be plenty for both of us. He never seems to think of my making +money by my profession. Why, suppose I sell the ‘Battle of Assaye’ +for 500 pounds? that will be enough to carry me on ever so long, without +dipping into the purse of the dear old father. +</p> + +<p> +“The Viscount de Florac called to dine with us. The Colonel said he did +not care about going out: and so the Viscount and I went together. <i>Trois +Frères Provençaux</i>—he ordered the dinner and of course I paid. Then we +went to a little theatre, and he took me behind the scenes—such a queer +place! We went to the <i>loge</i> of Mademoiselle Fine who acted the part of +‘Le petit Tambour,’ in which she sings a famous song with a drum. +He asked her and several literary fellows to supper at the Café Anglais. And I +came home ever so late, and lost twenty napoleons at a game called bouillotte. +It was all the change out of a twenty-pound note which dear old Binnie gave me +before we set out, with a quotation out of Horace, you know, about <i>Neque tu +choreas sperne puer</i>. O me! how guilty I felt as I walked home at ever so +much o’clock to the Hotel de la Terrasse, and sneaked into our apartment! +But the Colonel was sound asleep. His dear old boots stood sentries at his +bedroom door, and I slunk into mine as silently as I could. +</p> + +<p> +“P.S.—Wednesday.—There’s just one scrap of paper left. +I have got J. J.’s letter. He has been to the private view of the Academy +(so that his own picture is in), and the ‘Battle of Assaye’ is +refused. Smee told him it was too big. I dare say it’s very bad. +I’m glad I’m away, and the fellows are not condoling with me. +</p> + +<p> +“Please go and see Mr. Binnie. He has come to grief. He rode the +Colonel’s horse; came down on the pavement and wrenched his leg, and +I’m afraid the grey’s. Please look at his legs; we can’t +understand John’s report of them. He, I mean Mr. B., was going to +Scotland to see his relations when the accident happened. You know he has +always been going to Scotland to see his relations. He makes light of the +business, and says the Colonel is not to think of coming to him: and <i>I</i> +don’t want to go back just yet, to see all the fellows from +Gandish’s and the Life Academy, and have them grinning at my misfortune. +</p> + +<p> +“The governor would send his regards, I dare say, but he is out, and I am +always yours affectionately, Clive Newcome.” +</p> + +<p> +“P.S.—He tipped me himself this morning; isn’t he a kind, +dear old fellow?” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Arthur Pendennis, Esq., to Clive Newcome, Esq. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Pall Mall Gazette,’ Journal of Politics, Literature and +Fashion, 225 Catherine Street, Strand, +</p> + +<p> +“Dear Clive—I regret very much for Fred Bayham’s sake (who +has lately taken the responsible office of Fine Arts Critic for the <i>P. +G.</i>) that your extensive picture of the ‘Battle of Assaye’ has +not found a place in the Royal Academy Exhibition. F. B. is at least fifteen +shillings out of pocket by its rejection, as he had prepared a flaming eulogium +of your work, which of course is so much waste paper in consequence of this +calamity. Never mind. Courage, my son. The Duke of Wellington you know was best +back at Seringapatam before he succeeded at Assaye. I hope you will fight other +battles, and that fortune in future years will be more favourable to you. The +town does not talk very much of your discomfiture. You see the parliamentary +debates are very interesting just now, and somehow the ‘Battle of +Assaye’ did not seem to excite the public mind. +</p> + +<p> +“I have been to Fitzroy Square; both to the stables and the house. The +Houyhnhnm’s legs are very well; the horse slipped on his side and not on +his knees, and has received no sort of injury. Not so Mr. Binnie; his ankle is +much wrenched and inflamed. He must keep his sofa for many days, perhaps weeks. +But you know he is a very cheerful philosopher, and endures the evils of life +with much equanimity. His sister has come to him. I don’t know whether +that may be considered as a consolation of his evil or an aggravation of it. +You know he uses the sarcastic method in his talk, and it was difficult to +understand from him whether he was pleased or bored by the embraces of his +relative. She was an infant when he last beheld her, on his departure to India. +She is now (to speak with respect) a very brisk, plump, pretty little widow; +having, seemingly, recovered from her grief at the death of her husband, +Captain Mackenzie in the West Indies. Mr. Binnie was just on the point of +visiting his relatives, who reside at Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, when he met +with the fatal accident which prevented his visit to his native shores. His +account of his misfortune and his lonely condition was so pathetic that Mrs. +Mackenzie and her daughter put themselves into the Edinburgh steamer, and +rushed to console his sofa. They occupy your bedroom and sitting-room, which +latter Mrs. Mackenzie says no longer smells of tobacco smoke, as it did when +she took possession of your den. If you have left any papers about, any bills, +any billets-doux, I make no doubt the ladies have read every single one of +them, according to the amiable habits of their sex. The daughter is a bright +little blue-eyed fair-haired lass, with a very sweet voice, in which she sings +(unaided by instrumental music, and seated on a chair in the middle of the +room) the artless ballads of her native country. I had the pleasure of hearing +the ‘Bonnets of Bonny Dundee’ and ‘Jack of Hazeldean’ +from her ruby lips two evenings since; not indeed for the first time in my +life, but never from such a pretty little singer. Though both ladies speak our +language with something of the tone usually employed by the inhabitants of the +northern part of Britain, their accent is exceedingly pleasant, and indeed by +no means so strong as Mr. Binnie’s own; for Captain Mackenzie was an +Englishman, for whose sake his lady modified her native Musselburgh +pronunciation. She tells many interesting anecdotes of him, of the West Indies, +and of the distinguished regiment of infantry to which the captain belonged. +Miss Rosa is a great favourite with her uncle, and I have had the good fortune +to make their stay in the metropolis more pleasant, by sending them orders, +from the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, for the theatres, panoramas, and the +principal sights in town. For pictures they do not seem to care much; they +thought the National Gallery a dreary exhibition, and in the Royal Academy +could be got to admire nothing but the picture of M’Collop of +M’Collop, by our friend of the like name; but they think Madame +Tussaud’s interesting exhibition of waxwork the most delightful in +London; and there I had the happiness of introducing them to our friend Mr. +Frederick Bayham; who, subsequently, on coming to this office with his valuable +contributions on the Fine Arts, made particular inquiries as to their pecuniary +means, and expressed himself instantly ready to bestow his hand upon the mother +or daughter, provided old Mr. Binnie would make a satisfactory settlement. I +got the ladies a box at the opera, whither they were attended by Captain Goby +of their regiment, godfather to Miss, and where I had the honour of paying them +a visit. I saw your fair young cousin Miss Newcome in the lobby with her +grandmamma Lady Kew. Mr. Bayham with great eloquence pointed out to the Scotch +ladies the various distinguished characters in the house. The opera delighted +them, but they were astounded at the ballet, from which mother and daughter +retreated in the midst of a fire of pleasantries of Captain Goby. I can fancy +that officer at mess, and how brilliant his anecdotes must be when the company +of ladies does not restrain his genial flow of humour. +</p> + +<p> +“Here comes Mr. Baker with the proofs. In case you don’t see the +<i>P. G.</i> at Galignani’s, I send you an extract from Bayham’s +article on the Royal Academy, where you will have the benefit of his opinion on +the works of some of your friends:— +</p> + +<p> +“‘617. “Moses Bringing Home the Gross of Green +Spectacles,” Smith, R.A.—Perhaps poor Goldsmith’s exquisite +little work has never been so great a favourite as in the present age. We have +here, in a work by one of our most eminent artists, an homage to the genius of +him “who touched nothing which he did not adorn:” and the charming +subject is handled in the most delicious manner by Mr. Smith. The chiaroscuro +is admirable: the impasto is perfect. Perhaps a very captious critic might +object to the foreshortening of Moses’s left leg; but where there is so +much to praise justly, the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> does not care to condemn. +</p> + +<p> +“‘420. Our (and the public’s) favourite, Brown, R.A., treats +us to a subject from the best of all stories, the tale “which laughed +Spain’s chivalry away,” the ever new Don Quixote. The incident +which Brown has selected is the “Don’s Attack on the Flock of +Sheep;” the sheep are in his best manner, painted with all his well-known +facility and <i>brio</i>. Mr. Brown’s friendly rival, Hopkins, has +selected “Gil Blas” for an illustration this year; and the +“Robber’s Cavern” is one of the most masterly of +Hopkins’ productions. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Great Rooms. 33. “Portrait of Cardinal Cospetto,” +O’Gogstay, A.R.A.; and “Neighbourhood of +Corpodibacco—Evening—a Contadina and a Trasteverino dancing at the +door of a Locanda to the music of a Pifferaro.”—Since his visit to +Italy Mr. O’Gogstay seems to have given up the scenes of Irish humour +with which he used to delight us; and the romance, the poetry, the religion of +“Italia la bella” form the subjects of his pencil. The scene near +Corpodibacco (we know the spot well, and have spent many a happy month in its +romantic mountains) is most characteristic. Cardinal Cospetto, we must say, is +a most truculent prelate, and not certainly an ornament to his church. +</p> + +<p> +“‘49, 210, 311. Smee, R.A.—Portraits which a Reynolds might +be proud of,—a Vandyke or Claude might not disown. “Sir Brian +Newcome, in the costume of a Deputy-Lieutenant,” “Major-General Sir +Thomas de Boots, K.C.B.,” painted for the 50th Dragoons, are triumphs, +indeed, of this noble painter. Why have we no picture of the Sovereign and her +august consort from Smee’s brush? When Charles II. picked up +Titian’s mahl-stick, he observed to a courtier, “A king you can +always have; a genius comes but rarely.” While we have a Smee among us, +and a monarch whom we admire,—may the one be employed to transmit to +posterity the beloved features of the other! We know our lucubrations are read +in <i>high places</i>, and respectfully insinuate <i>verbum sapienti</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“‘1906. “The M’Collop of +M’Collop,”—A. M’Collop,—is a noble work of a +young artist, who, in depicting the gallant chief of a hardy Scottish clan, has +also represented a romantic Highland landscape, in the midst of which, +“his foot upon his native heath,” stands a man of splendid +symmetrical figure and great facial advantages. We shall keep our eye on Mr. +M’Collop. +</p> + +<p> +“‘1367. “Oberon and Titania.” Ridley.—This sweet +and fanciful little picture draws crowds round about it, and is one of the most +charming and delightful works of the present exhibition. We echo the universal +opinion in declaring that it shows not only the greatest promise, but the most +delicate and beautiful performance. The Earl of Kew, we understand, bought the +picture at the private view; and we congratulate the young painter heartily +upon his successful <i>début</i>. He is, we understand, a pupil of Mr. Gandish. +Where is that admirable painter? We miss his bold canvasses and grand historic +outline.’ +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“I shall alter a few inaccuracies in the composition of our friend F. B., +who has, as he says, ‘drawn it uncommonly mild in the above +criticism.’ In fact, two days since, he brought in an article of quite a +different tendency, of which he retains only the two last paragraphs; but he +has, with great magnanimity, recalled his previous observations; and, indeed, +he knows as much about pictures as some critics I could name. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye, my dear Clive! I send my kindest regards to your father; and +think you had best see as little as possible of your bouillotte-playing French +friend and his friends. This advice I know you will follow, as young men always +follow the advice of their seniors and well-wishers. I dine in Fitzroy Square +to-day with the pretty widow and her daughter, and am yours always, dear Clive, +A. P.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0023"></a> +CHAPTER XXIII.<br> +In which we hear a Soprano and a Contralto</h2> + +<p> +The most hospitable and polite of Colonels would not hear of Mrs. Mackenzie and +her daughter quitting his house when he returned to it, after six weeks’ +pleasant sojourn in Paris; nor, indeed, did his fair guest show the least +anxiety or intention to go away. Mrs. Mackenzie had a fine merry humour of her +own. She was an old soldier’s wife, she said and knew when her quarters +were good; and I suppose, since her honeymoon, when the captain took her to +Harrogate and Cheltenham, stopping at the first hotels, and travelling in a +chaise-and-pair the whole way, she had never been so well off as in that roomy +mansion near Tottenham Court Road. Of her mother’s house at Musselburgh +she gave a ludicrous but dismal account. “Eh, James,” she said, +“I think if you had come to mamma, as you threatened, you would not have +staid very long. It’s a wearisome place. Dr. M’Craw boards with +her; and it’s sermon and psalm-singing from morning till night. My little +Josey takes kindly to the life there, and I left her behind, poor little +darling! It was not fair to bring three of us to take possession of your house, +dear James; but my poor little Rosey was just withering away there. It’s +good for the dear child to see the world a little, and a kind uncle, who is not +afraid of us now he sees us, is he?” Kind Uncle James was not at all +afraid of little Rosey; whose pretty face and modest manners, and sweet songs, +and blue eyes, cheered and soothed the old bachelor. Nor was Rosey’s +mother less agreeable and pleasant. She had married the captain (it was a +love-match, against the will of her parents, who had destined her to be the +third wife of old Dr. M’Mull) when very young. Many sorrows she had had, +including poverty, the captain’s imprisonment for debt, and his demise; +but she was of a gay and lightsome spirit. She was but three-and-thirty years +old, and looked five-and-twenty. She was active, brisk, jovial, and alert; and +so good-looking, that it was a wonder she had not taken a successor to Captain +Mackenzie. James Binnie cautioned his friend the Colonel against the +attractions of the buxom siren; and laughingly would ask Clive how he would +like Mrs. Mackenzie for a mamaw? +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Newcome felt himself very much at ease regarding his future prospects. +He was very glad that his friend James was reconciled to his family, and hinted +to Clive that the late Captain Mackenzie’s extravagance had been the +cause of the rupture between him and his brother-in-law, who had helped that +prodigal captain repeatedly during his life; and, in spite of family quarrels, +had never ceased to act generously to his widowed sister and her family. +“But I think, Mr. Clive,” said he, “that as Miss Rosa is very +pretty, and you have a spare room at your studio, you had best take up your +quarters in Charlotte Street as long as the ladies are living with us.” +Clive was nothing loth to be independent; but he showed himself to be a very +good home-loving youth. He walked home to breakfast every morning, dined often, +and spent the evenings with the family. Indeed, the house was a great deal more +cheerful for the presence of the two pleasant ladies. Nothing could be prettier +than to see the two ladies tripping downstairs together, mamma’s pretty +arm round Rosey’s pretty waist. Mamma’s talk was perpetually of +Rosey. That child was always gay, always good, always happy! That darling girl +woke with a smile on her face, it was sweet to see her! Uncle James, in his dry +way, said, he dared to say it was very pretty. “Go away, you droll, dear +old kind Uncle James!” Rosey’s mamma would cry out. “You old +bachelors are wicked old things!” Uncle James used to kiss Rosey very +kindly and pleasantly. She was as modest, as gentle, as eager to please Colonel +Newcome as any little girl could be. It was pretty to see her tripping across +the room with his coffee-cup, or peeling walnuts for him after dinner with her +white plump little fingers. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Irons, the housekeeper, naturally detested Mrs. Mackenzie, and was jealous +of her: though the latter did everything to soothe and coax the governess of +the two gentlemen’s establishment. She praised her dinners, delighted in +her puddings, must beg Mrs. Irons to allow her to see one of those delicious +puddings made, and to write the receipt for her, that Mrs. Mackenzie might use +it when she was away. It was Mrs. Irons’ belief that Mrs. Mackenzie never +intended to go away. She had no ideer of ladies, as were ladies, coming into +her kitchen. The maids vowed that they heard Miss Rosa crying, and mamma +scolding in her bedroom for all she was so soft-spoken. How was that jug broke, +and that chair smashed in the bedroom, that day there was such a awful row up +there? +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Mackenzie played admirably, in the old-fashioned way, dances, reels, and +Scotch and Irish tunes, the former, of which filled James Binnie’s soul +with delectation. The good mother naturally desired that her darling should +have a few good lessons of the piano while she was in London. Rosey was +eternally strumming upon an instrument which had been taken upstairs for her +special practice; and the Colonel, who was always seeking to do harmless jobs +of kindness for his friends, bethought him of little Miss Cann, the governess +at Ridley’s, whom he recommended as an instructress. “Anybody whom +you recommend I’m sure, dear Colonel, we shall like,” said Mrs. +Mackenzie, who looked as black as thunder, and had probably intended to have +Monsieur Quatremains or Signor Twankeydillo; and the little governess came to +her pupil. Mrs. Mackenzie treated her very gruffly and haughtily at first; but +as soon as she heard Miss Cann play, the widow was pacified—nay, charmed. +Monsieur Quatremains charged a guinea for three-quarters of an hour; while Miss +Cann thankfully took five shillings for an hour and a half; and the difference +of twenty lessons, for which dear Uncle James paid, went into Mrs. +Mackenzie’s pocket, and thence probably on to her pretty shoulders and +head in the shape of a fine silk dress and a beautiful French bonnet, in which +Captain Goby said, upon his life, she didn’t look twenty. +</p> + +<p> +The little governess trotting home after her lesson would often look in to +Clive’s studio in Charlotte Street, where her two boys, as she called +Clive and J. J., were at work each at his easel. Clive used to laugh, and tell +us, who joked him about the widow and her daughter, what Miss Cann said about +them. Mrs. Mack was not all honey, it appeared. If Rosey played incorrectly, +mamma flew at her with prodigious vehemence of language, and sometimes with a +slap on poor Rosey’s back. She must make Rosey wear tight boots, and +stamp on her little feet if they refused to enter into the slipper. I blush for +the indiscretion of Miss Cann; but she actually told J. J., that mamma insisted +upon lacing her so tight, as nearly to choke the poor little lass. Rosey did +not fight: Rosey always yielded; and the scolding over and the tears dried, +would come simpering downstairs with mamma’s arm round her waist, and her +pretty artless happy smile for the gentlemen below. Besides the Scottish songs +without music, she sang ballads at the piano very sweetly. Mamma used to cry at +these ditties. “That child’s voice brings tears into my eyes, Mr. +Newcome,” she would say. “She has never known a moment’s +sorrow yet! Heaven grant, heaven grant, she may be happy! But what shall I be +when I lose her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, my dear, when ye lose Rosey, ye’ll console yourself with +Josey,” says droll Mr. Binnie from the sofa, who perhaps saw the manœuvre +of the widow. +</p> + +<p> +The widow laughs heartily and really. She places a handkerchief over her mouth. +She glances at her brother with a pair of eyes full of knowing mischief. +“Ah, dear James,” she says, “you don’t know what it is +to have a mother’s feelings.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can partly understand them,” says James. “Rosey, sing me +that pretty little French song.” Mrs. Mackenzie’s attention to +Clive was really quite affecting. If any of his friends came to the house, she +took them aside and praised Clive to them. The Colonel she adored. She had +never met with such a man or seen such a manner. The manners of the Bishop of +Tobago were beautiful, and he certainly had one of the softest and finest hands +in the world; but not finer than Colonel Newcome’s. “Look at his +foot!” (and she put out her own, which was uncommonly pretty, and +suddenly withdrew it, with an arch glance meant to represent a +blush)—“my shoe would fit it! When we were at Coventry Island, Sir +Peregrine Blandy, who succeeded poor dear Sir Rawdon Crawley—I saw his +dear boy was gazetted to a lieutenant-colonelcy in the Guards last +week—Sir Peregrine, who was one of the Prince of Wales’s most +intimate friends, was always said to have the finest manner and presence of any +man of his day; and very grand and noble he was, but I don’t think he was +equal to Colonel Newcome—I don’t really think so. Do you think so, +Mr. Honeyman? What a charming discourse that was last Sunday! I know there were +two pair of eyes not dry in the church. I could not see the other people just +for crying myself. Oh, but I wish we could have you at Musselburgh! I was bred +a Presbyterian, of course; but in much travelling through the world with my +dear husband, I came to love his church. At home we sit under Dr M’Craw, +of course; but he is so awfully long! Four hours every Sunday at least, morning +and afternoon! It nearly kills poor Rosey. Did you hear her voice at your +church? The dear girl is delighted with the chants. Rosey, were you not +delighted with the chants?” +</p> + +<p> +If she is delighted with the chants, Honeyman is delighted with the chantress +and her mamma. He dashes the fair hair from his brow: he sits down to the +piano, and plays one or two of them, warbling a faint vocal accompaniment, and +looking as if he would be lifted off the screw music-stool, and flutter up to +the ceiling. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, it’s just seraphic!” says the widow. “It’s +just the breath of incense and the pealing of the organ at the Cathedral at +Montreal. Rosey doesn’t remember Montreal. She was a wee wee child. She +was born on the voyage out, and christened at sea. You remember, Goby.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gad, I promised and vowed to teach her her catechism; ’gad, but I +haven’t,” says Captain Goby. “We were between Montreal and +Quebec for three years with the Hundredth, and the Hundred Twentieth +Highlanders, and the Thirty-third Dragoon Guards a part of the time; Fipley +commanded them, and a very jolly time we had. Much better than the West Indies, +where a fellow’s liver goes to the deuce with hot pickles and sangaree. +Mackenzie was a dev’lish wild fellow,” whispers Captain Goby to his +neighbour (the present biographer, indeed), “and Mrs. Mack was as pretty +a little woman as ever you set eyes on.” (Captain Goby winks, and looks +peculiarly sly as he makes this statement.) “Our regiment wasn’t on +your side of India, Colonel.” +</p> + +<p> +And in the interchange of such delightful remarks, and with music and song, the +evening passes away. “Since the house had been adorned by the fair +presence of Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter,” Honeyman said, always +gallant in behaviour and flowery in expression, “it seemed as if spring +had visited it. Its hospitality was invested with a new grace; its ever welcome +little <i>réunions</i> were doubly charming. But why did these ladies come, if +they were to go away again? How—how would Mr. Binnie console himself (not +to mention others) if they left him in solitude?” +</p> + +<p> +“We have no wish to leave my brother James in solitude,” cries Mrs. +Mackenzie, frankly laughing. “We like London a great deal better than +Musselburgh.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, that we do!” ejaculates the blushing Rosey. +</p> + +<p> +“And we will stay as long as ever my brother will keep us,” +continues the widow. +</p> + +<p> +“Uncle James is so kind and dear,” says Rosey. “I hope he +won’t send me and mamma away.” +</p> + +<p> +“He were a brute—a savage, if he did!” cries Binnie, with +glances of rapture towards the two pretty faces. Everybody liked them. Binnie +received their caresses very good-humouredly. The Colonel liked every woman +under the sun. Clive laughed and joked and waltzed alternately with Rosey and +her mamma. The latter was the briskest partner of the two. The unsuspicious +widow, poor dear innocent, would leave her girl at the painting-room, and go +shopping herself; but little J. J. also worked there, being occupied with his +second picture: and he was almost the only one of Clive’s friends whom +the widow did not like. She pronounced the quiet little painter a pert, little, +obtrusive, underbred creature. +</p> + +<p> +In a word, Mrs. Mackenzie was, as the phrase is, “setting her cap” +so openly at Clive, that none of us could avoid seeing her play: and Clive +laughed at her simple manœuvres as merrily as the rest. She was a merry little +woman. We gave her and her pretty daughter a luncheon in Lamb Court, Temple; in +Sibwright’s chambers—luncheon from Dick’s Coffee +House—ices and dessert from Partington’s in the Strand. Miss Rosey, +Mr. Sibwright, our neighbour in Lamb Court, and the Reverend Charles Honeyman +sang very delightfully after lunch; there was quite a crowd of porters, +laundresses, and boys to listen in the court; Mr. Paley was disgusted with the +noise we made—in fact, the party was perfectly successful. We all liked +the widow, and if she did set her pretty ribbons at Clive, why should not she? +We all liked the pretty, fresh, modest Rosey. Why, even the grave old benchers +in the Temple church, when the ladies visited it on Sunday, winked their +reverend eyes with pleasure, as they looked at those two uncommonly smart, +pretty, well-dressed, fashionable women. Ladies, go to the Temple church. You +will see more young men, and receive more respectful attention there than in +any place, except perhaps at Oxford or Cambridge. Go to the Temple +church—not, of course, for the admiration which you will excite and which +you cannot help; but because the sermon is excellent, the choral services +beautifully performed, and the church so interesting as a monument of the +thirteenth century, and as it contains the tombs of those dear Knights +Templars! +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Mackenzie could be grave or gay, according to her company: nor could any +woman be of more edifying behaviour when an occasional Scottish friend bringing +a letter from darling Josey, or a recommendatory letter from Josey’s +grandmother, paid a visit in Fitzroy Square. Little Miss Cann used to laugh and +wink knowingly, saying, “You will never get back your bedroom, Mr. Clive. +You may be sure that Miss Josey will come in a few months; and perhaps old Mrs. +Binnie, only no doubt she and her daughter do not agree. But the widow has +taken possession of Uncle James; and she will carry off somebody else if I am +not mistaken. Should you like a stepmother, Mr. Clive, or should you prefer a +wife?” +</p> + +<p> +Whether the fair lady tried her wiles upon Colonel Newcome the present writer +has no certain means of ascertaining: but I think another image occupied his +heart: and this Circe tempted him no more than a score of other enchantresses +who had tried their spells upon him. If she tried she failed. She was a very +shrewd woman, quite frank in her talk when such frankness suited her. She said +to me, “Colonel Newcome has had some great passion, once upon a time, I +am sure of that, and has no more heart to give away. The woman who had his must +have been a very lucky woman: though I daresay she did not value what she had; +or did not live to enjoy it—or—or something or other. You see +tragedies in some people’s faces. I recollect when we were in Coventry +Island—there was a chaplain there—a very good man—a Mr. Bell, +and married to a pretty little woman who died. The first day I saw him I said, +‘I know that man has had a great grief in life. I am sure that he left +his heart in England.’ You gentlemen who write books, Mr. Pendennis, and +stop at the third volume, know very well that the real story often begins +afterwards. My third volume ended when I was sixteen, and was married to my +poor husband. Do you think all our adventures ended then, and that we lived +happy ever after? I live for my darling girls now. All I want is to see them +comfortable in life. Nothing can be more generous than my dear brother James +has been. I am only his half-sister, you know, and was an infant in arms when +he went away. He had differences with Captain Mackenzie, who was headstrong and +imprudent, and I own my poor dear husband was in the wrong. James could not +live with my poor mother. Neither could by possibility suit the other. I have +often, I own, longed to come and keep house for him. His home, the society he +sees, of men of talents like Mr. Warrington and—and I won’t mention +names, or pay compliments to a man who knows human nature so well as the author +of Walter Lorraine: this house is pleasanter a thousand times than +Musselburgh—pleasanter for me and my dearest Rosey, whose delicate nature +shrunk and withered up in poor mamma’s society. She was never happy +except in my room, the dear child! She’s all gentleness and affection. +She doesn’t seem to show it: but she has the most wonderful appreciation +of wit, of genius, and talent of all kinds. She always hides her feelings, +except from her fond old mother. I went up into our room yesterday, and found +her in tears. I can’t bear to see her eyes red or to think of her +suffering. I asked her what ailed her, and kissed her. She is a tender plant, +Mr. Pendennis! Heaven knows with what care I have nurtured her! She looked up +smiling on my shoulder. She looked so pretty! ‘Oh, mamma,’ the +darling child said, ‘I couldn’t help it. I have been crying over +Walter Lorraine.’ (Enter Rosey.) Rosey, darling! I have been telling Mr. +Pendennis what a naughty, naughty child you were yesterday, and how you read a +book which I told you you shouldn’t read; for it is a very wicked book; +and though it contains some sad sad truths, it is a great deal too misanthropic +(is that the right word? I’m a poor soldier’s wife, and no scholar, +you know), and a great deal too <i>bitter;</i> and though the reviews praise +it, and the clever people—we are poor simple country people—we +won’t praise it. Sing, dearest, that little song” (profuse kisses +to Rosey), “that pretty thing that Mr. Pendennis likes.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure that I will sing anything that Mr. Pendennis likes,” +says Rosey, with her candid bright eyes—and she goes to the piano and +warbles “Batti, Batti,” with her sweet fresh artless voice. +</p> + +<p> +More caresses follow. Mamma is in a rapture. How pretty they look—the +mother and daughter—two lilies twining together! The necessity of an +entertainment at the Temple-lunch from Dick’s (as before mentioned), +dessert from Partington’s, Sibwright’s spoons, his boy to aid ours, +nay, Sib himself, and his rooms, which are so much more elegant than ours, and +where there is a piano and guitar: all these thoughts pass in rapid and +brilliant combination in the pleasant Mr. Pendennis’s mind. How delighted +the ladies are with the proposal! Mrs. Mackenzie claps her pretty hands, and +kisses Rosey again. If osculation is a mark of love, surely Mrs. Mack is the +best of mothers. I may say, without false modesty, that our little +entertainment was most successful. The champagne was iced to a nicety. The +ladies did not perceive that our laundress, Mrs. Flanagan, was intoxicated very +early in the afternoon. Percy Sibwright sang admirably, and with the greatest +spirit, ditties in many languages. I am sure Miss Rosey thought him (as indeed +he is) one of the most fascinating young fellows about town. To her +mother’s excellent accompaniment Rosey sang her favourite songs (by the +way, her stock was very small—five, I think, was the number). Then the +table was moved into a corner, where the quivering moulds of jelly seemed to +keep time to the music; and whilst Percy played, two couple of waltzers +actually whirled round the little room. No wonder that the court below was +thronged with admirers, that Paley the reading man was in a rage, and Mrs. +Flanagan in a state of excitement. Ah! pleasant days, happy gold dingy chambers +illuminated by youthful sunshine! merry songs and kind faces—it is +pleasant to recall you. Some of those bright eyes shine no more: some of those +smiling lips do not speak. Some are not less kind, but sadder than in those +days: of which the memories revisit us for a moment, and sink back into the +grey past. The dear old Colonel beat time with great delight to the songs; the +widow lit his cigar with her own fair fingers. That was the only smoke +permitted during the entertainment—George Warrington himself not being +allowed to use his cutty-pipe—though the gay little widow said that she +had been used to smoking in the West Indies and I dare say spoke the truth. Our +entertainment lasted actually until after dark: and a particularly neat cab +being called from St. Clement’s by Mr. Binnie’s boy, you may be +sure we all conducted the ladies to their vehicle: and many a fellow returning +from his lonely club that evening into chambers must have envied us the +pleasure of having received two such beauties. +</p> + +<p> +The clerical bachelor was not to be outdone by the gentlemen of the bar; and +the entertainment at the Temple was followed by one at Honeyman’s +lodgings, which, I must own, greatly exceeded ours in splendour, for Honeyman +had his luncheon from Gunter’s; and if he had been Miss Rosey’s +mother, giving a breakfast to the dear girl on her marriage, the affair could +not have been more elegant and handsome. We had but two bouquets at our +entertainment; at Honeyman’s there were four upon the breakfast-table, +besides a great pineapple, which must have cost the rogue three or four +guineas, and which Percy Sibwright delicately cut up. Rosey thought the +pineapple delicious. “The dear thing does not remember the pineapples in +the West Indies!” cries Mrs. Mackenzie; and she gave us many exciting +narratives of entertainments at which she had been present at various colonial +governors’ tables. After luncheon, our host hoped we should have a little +music. Dancing, of course, could not be allowed. “That,” said +Honeyman with his soft-bleating sigh, “were scarcely clerical. You know, +besides, you are in a <i>hermitage;</i> and” (with a glance round the +table) “must put up with Cenobite’s fare.” The fare was, as I +have said, excellent. The wine was bad, as George, and I, and Sib agreed; and +in so far we flattered ourselves that <i>our</i> feast altogether excelled the +parson’s. The champagne especially was such stuff, that Warrington +remarked on it to his neighbour, a dark gentleman, with a tuft to his chin, and +splendid rings and chains. +</p> + +<p> +The dark gentleman’s wife and daughter were the other two ladies invited +by our host. The elder was splendidly dressed. Poor Mrs. Mackenzie’s +simple gimcracks, though she displayed them to the most advantage, and could +make an ormolu bracelet go as far as another woman’s emerald clasps, were +as nothing compared to the other lady’s gorgeous jewellery. Her fingers +glittered with rings innumerable. The head of her smelling-bottle was as big as +her husband’s gold snuff box, and of the same splendid material. Our +ladies, it must be confessed, came in a modest cab from Fitzroy Square; these +arrived in a splendid little open carriage with white ponies, and harness all +over brass, which the lady of the rings drove with a whip that was a parasol. +Mrs. Mackenzie, standing at Honeyman’s window, with her arm round +Rosey’s waist, viewed this arrival perhaps with envy. “My dear Mr. +Honeyman, whose are those beautiful horses?” cries Rosey, with +enthusiasm. +</p> + +<p> +The divine says with a faint blush—“It is—ah—it is Mrs. +Sherrick and Miss Sherrick who have done me the favour to come to +luncheon.” +</p> + +<p> +“Wine-merchant. Oh!” thinks Mrs. Mackenzie, who has seen +Sherrick’s brass plate on the cellar door of Lady Whittlesea’s +Chapel; and hence, perhaps, she was a trifle more magniloquent than usual, and +entertained us with stories of colonial governors and their ladies, mentioning +no persons but those who “had handles to their names,” as the +phrase is. +</p> + +<p> +Although Sherrick had actually supplied the champagne which Warrington abused +to him in confidence, the wine-merchant was not wounded; on the contrary, he +roared with laughter at the remark, and some of us smiled who understood the +humour of the joke. As for George Warrington, he scarce knew more about the +town than the ladies opposite to him; who, yet more innocent than George, +thought the champagne very good. Mrs. Sherrick was silent during the meal, +looking constantly up at her husband, as if alarmed and always in the habit of +appealing to that gentleman, who gave her, as I thought, knowing glances and +savage winks, which made me augur that he bullied her at home. Miss Sherrick +was exceedingly handsome: she kept the fringed curtains of her eyes constantly +down; but when she lifted them up towards Clive, who was very attentive to her +(the rogue never sees a handsome woman but to this day he continues the same +practice)—when she looked up and smiled, she was indeed a beautiful young +creature to behold—with her pale forehead, her thick arched eyebrows, her +rounded cheeks, and her full lips slightly shaded,—how shall I mention +the word?—slightly pencilled, after the manner of the lips of the French +governess, Mademoiselle Lenoir. +</p> + +<p> +Percy Sibwright engaged Miss Mackenzie with his usual grace and affability. +Mrs. Mackenzie did her very utmost to be gracious, but it was evident the party +was not altogether to her liking. Poor Percy, about whose means and +expectations she had in the most natural way in the world asked information +from me, was not perhaps a very eligible admirer for darling Rosey. She knew +not that Percy can no more help gallantry than the sun can help shining. As +soon as Rosey had done eating up her pineapple, artlessly confessing (to Percy +Sibwright’s inquiries) that she preferred it to the rasps and hinnyblobs +in her grandmamma’s garden, “Now, dearest Rosey,” cries Mrs. +Mack, “now, a little song. You promised Mr. Pendennis a little +song.” Honeyman whisks open the piano in a moment. The widow takes off +her cleaned gloves (Mrs. Sherrick’s were new, and of the best Paris +make), and little Rosey sings No. 1, followed by No. 2, with very great +applause. Mother and daughter entwine as they quit the piano. “Brava! +brava!” says Percy Sibwright. Does Mr. Clive Newcome say nothing? His +back is turned to the piano, and he is looking with all his might into the eyes +of Miss Sherrick. +</p> + +<p> +Percy sings a Spanish seguidilla, or a German lied, or a French romance, or a +Neapolitan canzonet, which, I am bound to say, excites very little attention. +Mrs. Ridley is sending in coffee at this juncture, of which Mrs. Sherrick +partakes, with lots of sugar, as she has partaken of numberless things before. +Chicken, plovers’ eggs, prawns, aspics, jellies, creams, grapes, and +what-not. Mr. Honeyman advances, and with deep respect asks if Mrs. Sherrick +and Miss Sherrick will not be persuaded to sing? She rises and bows, and again +takes off the French gloves, and shows the large white hands glittering with +rings, and, summoning Emily her daughter, they go to the piano. +</p> + +<p> +“Can she sing,” whispers Mrs. Mackenzie, “can she sing after +eating so much?” Can she sing, indeed! Oh, you poor ignorant Mrs. +Mackenzie! Why, when you were in the West Indies, if you ever read the English +newspapers, you must have read of the fame of Miss Folthorpe. Mrs. Sherrick is +no other than the famous artist, who, after three years of brilliant triumphs +at the Scala, the Pergola, the San Carlo, the opera in England, forsook her +profession, rejected a hundred suitors, and married Sherrick, who was Mr. +Cox’s lawyer, who failed, as everybody knows, as manager of Drury Lane. +Sherrick, like a man of spirit, would not allow his wife to sing in public +after his marriage; but in private society, of course, she is welcome to +perform: and now with her daughter, who possesses a noble contralto voice, she +takes her place royally at the piano, and the two sing so magnificently that +everybody in the room, with one single exception, is charmed and delighted; and +that little Miss Cann herself creeps up the stairs, and stands with Mrs. Ridley +at the door to listen to the music. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Sherrick looks doubly handsome as she sings. Clive Newcome is in a +rapture; so is good-natured Miss Rosey, whose little heart beats with pleasure, +and who says quite unaffectedly to Miss Sherrick, with delight and gratitude +beaming from her blue eyes, “Why did you ask me to sing, when you sing so +wonderfully, so beautifully, yourself? Do not leave the piano, please—do +sing again!” And she puts out a kind little hand towards the superior +artist, and, blushing, leads her back to the instrument. “I’m sure +me and Emily will sing for you as much as you like, dear,” says Mrs. +Sherrick, nodding to Rosey good-naturedly. Mrs. Mackenzie, who has been biting +her lips and drumming the time on a side-table, forgets at last the pain of +being vanquished in admiration of the conquerors. “It was cruel of you +not to tell us, Mr. Honeyman,” she says, “of the—of the treat +you had in store for us. I had no idea we were going to meet professional +people; Mrs. Sherrick’s singing is indeed beautiful.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you come up to our place in the Regent’s Park, Mr. +Newcome,” Mr. Sherrick says, “Mrs. S. and Emily will give you as +many songs as you like. How do you like the house in Fitzroy Square? Anything +wanting doing there? I’m a good landlord to a good tenant. Don’t +care what I spend on my houses. Lose by ’em sometimes. Name a day when +you’ll come to us; and I’ll ask some good fellows to meet you. Your +father and Mr. Binnie came once. That was when you were a young chap. They +didn’t have a bad evening, I believe. You just come and try us—I +can give you as good a glass of wine as most, I think,” and he smiles, +perhaps thinking of the champagne which Mr. Warrington had slighted. +“I’ve ad the close carriage for my wife this evening,” he +continues, looking out of window at a very handsome brougham which has just +drawn up there. “That little pair of horses steps prettily together, +don’t they? Fond of horses? I know you are. See you in the Park; and +going by our house sometimes. The Colonel sits a horse uncommonly well: so do +you, Mr. Newcome. I’ve often said, ‘Why don’t they get off +their horses and say, Sherrick, we’re come for a bit of lunch and a glass +of Sherry?’ Name a day, sir. Mr. P., will you be in it?” +</p> + +<p> +Clive Newcome named a day, and told his father of the circumstance in the +evening. The Colonel looked grave. “There was something which I did not +quite like about Mr. Sherrick,” said that acute observer of human nature. +“It was easy to see that the man is not quite a gentleman. I don’t +care what a man’s trade is, Clive. Indeed, who are we, to give ourselves +airs upon that subject? But when I am gone, my boy, and there is nobody near +you who knows the world as I do, you may fall into designing hands, and rogues +may lead you into mischief: keep a sharp look-out, Clive. Mr. Pendennis, here, +knows that there are designing fellows abroad” (and the dear old +gentleman gives a very knowing nod as he speaks). “When I am gone, keep +the lad from harm’s way, Pendennis. Meanwhile Mr. Sherrick has been a +very good and obliging landlord; and a man who sells wine may certainly give a +friend a bottle. I am glad you had a pleasant evening, boys. Ladies, I hope you +have had a pleasant afternoon. Miss Rosey, you are come back to make tea for +the old gentlemen? James begins to get about briskly now. He walked to Hanover +Square, Mrs. Mackenzie, without hurting his ankle in the least.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am almost sorry that he is getting well,” says Mrs. Mackenzie +sincerely. “He won’t want us when he is quite cured.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed, my dear creature!” cries the Colonel, taking her pretty +hand and kissing it; “he will want you, and he shall want you. James no +more knows the world than Miss Rosey here; and if I had not been with him, +would have been perfectly unable to take care of himself. When I am gone to +India, somebody must stay with him; and—and my boy must have a home to go +to,” says the kind soldier, his voice dropping. “I had been in +hopes that his own relatives would have received him more, but never mind about +that,” he cried more cheerfully. “Why, I may not be absent a year! +I perhaps need not go at all—I am second for promotion. A couple of our +old generals may drop any day; and when I get my regiment I come back to stay, +to live at home. Meantime, whilst I am gone, my dear lady, you will take care +of James; and you will be kind to my boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“That I will!” said the widow, radiant with pleasure, and she took +one of Clive’s hands and pressed it for an instant; and from +Clive’s father’s kind face there beamed out that benediction which +always made his countenance appear to me among the most beautiful of human +faces. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0024"></a> +CHAPTER XXIV.<br> +In which the Newcome Brothers once more meet together in Unity</h2> + +<p> +His narrative, as the judicious reader no doubt is aware, is written maturely +and at ease, long after the voyage is over, whereof it recounts the adventures +and perils; the winds adverse and favourable; the storms, shoals, shipwrecks, +islands, and so forth, which Clive Newcome met in his early journey in life. In +such a history events follow each other without necessarily having a connection +with one another. One ship crosses another ship, and after a visit from one +captain to his comrade, they sail away each on his course. The Clive Newcome +meets a vessel which makes signals that she is short of bread and water; and +after supplying her, our captain leaves her to see her no more. One or two of +the vessels with which we commenced the voyage together, part company in a +gale, and founder miserably; others, after being wofully battered in the +tempest, make port, or are cast upon surprising islands where all sorts of +unlooked-for prosperity awaits the lucky crew. Also, no doubt, the writer of +the book, into whose hands Clive Newcome’s logs have been put, and who is +charged with the duty of making two octavo volumes out of his friend’s +story, dresses up the narrative in his own way; utters his own remarks in place +of Newcome’s; makes fanciful descriptions of individuals and incidents +with which he never could have been personally acquainted; and commits +blunders, which the critics will discover. A great number of the descriptions +in Cook’s Voyages, for instance, were notoriously invented by Dr. +Hawkesworth, who “did” the book: so in the present volumes, where +dialogues are written down, which the reporter could by no possibility have +heard, and where motives are detected which the persons actuated by them +certainly never confided to the writer, the public must once for all be warned +that the author’s individual fancy very likely supplies much of the +narrative; and that he forms it as best he may, out of stray papers, +conversations reported to him, and his knowledge, right or wrong, of the +characters of the persons engaged. And, as is the case with the most orthodox +histories, the writer’s own guesses or conjectures are printed in exactly +the same type as the most ascertained patent facts. I fancy, for my part, that +the speeches attributed to Clive, the Colonel, and the rest, are as authentic +as the orations in Sallust or Livy, and only implore the truth-loving public to +believe that incidents here told, and which passed very probably without +witnesses, were either confided to me subsequently as compiler of this +biography, or are of such a nature that they must have happened from what we +know happened after. For example, when you read such words as QVE ROMANVS on a +battered Roman stone, your profound antiquarian knowledge enables you to assert +that SENATVS POPVLVS was also inscribed there at some time or other. You take a +mutilated statue of Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, or Virorum, and you pop him on a +wanting hand, an absent foot, or a nose which time or barbarians have defaced. +You tell your tales as you can, and state the facts as you think they must have +been. In this manner, Mr. James (historiographer to Her Majesty), Titus Livius, +Professor Alison, Robinson Crusoe, and all historians proceeded. Blunders there +must be in the best of these narratives, and more asserted than they can +possibly know or vouch for. +</p> + +<p> +To recur to our own affairs, and the subject at present in hand, I am obliged +here to supply from conjecture a few points of the history, which I could not +know from actual experience or hearsay. Clive, let us say, is Romanus, and we +must add Senatus Populusque to his inscription. After Mrs. Mackenzie and her +pretty daughter had been for a few months in London, which they did not think +of quitting, although Mr. Binnie’s wounded little leg was now as well and +as brisk as ever it had been, a redintegration of love began to take place +between the Colonel and his relatives in Park Lane. How should we know that +there had ever been a quarrel, or at any rate a coolness? Thomas Newcome was +not a man to talk at length of any such matter; though a word or two +occasionally dropped in conversation by the simple gentleman might lead persons +who chose to interest themselves about his family affairs to form their own +opinions concerning them. After that visit of the Colonel and his son to +Newcome, Ethel was constantly away with her grandmother. The Colonel went to +see his pretty little favourite at Brighton, and once, twice, thrice, Lady +Kew’s door was denied to him. The knocker of that door could not be more +fierce than the old lady’s countenance, when Newcome met her in her +chariot driving on the cliff. Once, forming the loveliest of a charming +Amazonian squadron, led by Mr. Whiskin, the riding-master, when the Colonel +encountered his pretty Ethel, she greeted him affectionately, it is true; there +was still the sweet look of candour and love in her eyes; but when he rode up +to her she looked so constrained, when he talked about Clive, so reserved, when +he left her, so sad, that he could not but feel pain and commiseration. Back he +went to London, having in a week only caught this single glance of his darling. +</p> + +<p> +This event occurred while Clive was painting his picture of the “Battle +of Assaye” before mentioned, during the struggles incident on which +composition he was not thinking much about Miss Ethel, or his papa, or any +other subject but his great work. Whilst Assaye was still in progress, Thomas +Newcome must have had an explanation with his sister-in-law, Lady Anne, to whom +he frankly owned the hopes which he had entertained for Clive, and who must as +frankly have told the Colonel that Ethel’s family had very different +views for that young lady to those which the simple Colonel had formed. A +generous early attachment, the Colonel thought, is the safeguard of a young +man. To love a noble girl; to wait a while and struggle, and haply do some +little achievement in order to win her; the best task to which his boy could +set himself. If two young people so loving each other were to marry on rather +narrow means, what then? A happy home was better than the finest house in +Mayfair; a generous young fellow, such as, please God, his son was—loyal, +upright, and a gentleman—might pretend surely to his kinswoman’s +hand without derogation; and the affection he bore Ethel himself was so great, +and the sweet regard with which she returned it, that the simple father thought +his kindly project was favoured by Heaven, and prayed for its fulfilment, and +pleased himself to think, when his campaigns were over, and his sword hung on +the wall, what a beloved daughter he might have to soothe and cheer his old +age. With such a wife for his son, and child for himself, he thought the +happiness of his last years might repay him for friendless boyhood, lonely +manhood, and cheerless exile; and he imparted his simple scheme to +Ethel’s mother, who no doubt was touched as he told his story; for she +always professed regard and respect for him, and in the differences which +afterwards occurred in the family, and the quarrels which divided the brothers, +still remained faithful to the good Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +But Barnes Newcome, Esquire, was the head of the house, and the governor of his +father and all Sir Brian’s affairs; and Barnes Newcome, Esquire, hated +his cousin Clive, and spoke of him as a beggarly painter, an impudent snob, an +infernal young puppy, and so forth; and Barnes with his usual freedom of +language imparted his opinions to his Uncle Hobson at the bank, and Uncle +Hobson carried them home to Mrs. Newcome in Bryanstone Square; and Mrs. Newcome +took an early opportunity of telling the Colonel her opinion on the subject, +and of bewailing that love for aristocracy which she saw actuated some folks; +and the Colonel was brought to see that Barnes was his boy’s enemy, and +words very likely passed between them, for Thomas Newcome took a new banker at +this time, and, as Clive informed me, was in very great dudgeon because Hobson +Brothers wrote to him to say that he had overdrawn his account. “I am +sure there is some screw loose,” the sagacious youth remarked to me; +“and the Colonel and the people in Park Lane are at variance, because he +goes there very little now; and he promised to go to Court when Ethel was +presented, and he didn’t go.” +</p> + +<p> +Some months after the arrival of Mr. Binnie’s niece and sister in Fitzroy +Square, the fraternal quarrel between the Newcomes must have come to an +end—for that time at least—and was followed by a rather +ostentatious reconciliation. And pretty little Rosey Mackenzie was the innocent +and unconscious cause of this amiable change in the minds of the three +brethren, as I gathered from a little conversation with Mrs. Newcome, who did +me the honour to invite me to her table. As she had not vouchsafed this +hospitality to me for a couple of years previously, and perfectly stifled me +with affability when we met,—as her invitation came quite at the end of +the season, when almost everybody was out of town, and a dinner to a man is no +compliment,—I was at first for declining this invitation, and spoke of it +with great scorn when Mr. Newcome orally delivered it to me at Bays’s +Club. +</p> + +<p> +“What,” said I, turning round to an old man of the world, who +happened to be in the room at the time, “what do these people mean by +asking a fellow to dinner in August, and taking me up after dropping me for two +years?” +</p> + +<p> +“My good fellow,” says my friend—it was my kind old Uncle +Major Pendennis, indeed—“I have lived long enough about town never +to ask myself questions of that sort. In the world people drop you and take you +up every day. You know Lady Cheddar by sight? I have known her husband for +forty years: I have stayed with them in the country, for weeks at a time. She +knows me as well as she knows King Charles at Charing Cross, and a doosid deal +better, and yet for a whole season she will drop me—pass me by, as if +there was no such person in the world. Well, sir, what do I do? I never see +her. I give you my word I am never conscious of her existence; and if I meet +her at dinner, I’m no more aware of her than the fellows in the play are +of Banquo. What’s the end of it? She comes round—only last Toosday +she came round—and said Lord Cheddar wanted me to go down to Wiltshire. I +asked after the family (you know Henry Churningham is engaged to Miss +Rennet?—a doosid good match for the Cheddars). We shook hands and are as +good friends as ever. I don’t suppose she’ll cry when I die, you +know,” said the worthy old gentleman with a grin. “Nor shall I go +into very deep mourning if anything happens to her. You were quite right to say +to Newcome that you did not know whether you were free or not, and would look +at your engagements when you got home, and give him an answer. A fellow of that +rank <i>has</i> no right to give himself airs. But they will, sir. Some of +those bankers are as high and mighty as the oldest families. They marry +noblemen’s daughters, by Jove, and think nothing is too good for +’em. But I should go, if I were you, Arthur. I dined there a couple of +months ago; and the bankeress said something about you: that you and her nephew +were much together, that you were sad wild dogs, I think—something of +that sort. ‘Gad, ma’am,’ says I, ‘boys will be +boys.’ ‘And they grow to be men!’ says she, nodding her head. +Queer little woman, devilish pompous. Dinner confoundedly long, stoopid, +scientific.” +</p> + +<p> +The old gentleman was on this day inclined to be talkative and confidential, +and I set down some more remarks which he made concerning my friends. +“Your Indian Colonel,” says he, “seems a worthy man.” +The Major quite forgot having been in India himself, unless he was in company +with some very great personage. “He don’t seem to know much of the +world, and we are not very intimate. Fitzroy Square is a dev’lish long +way off for a fellow to go for a dinner, and <i>entre nous</i>, the dinner is +rather queer and the company still more so. It’s right for you who are a +literary man to see all sorts of people; but I’m different, you know, so +Newcome and I are not very thick together. They say he wanted to marry your +friend to Lady Anne’s daughter, an exceedingly fine girl; one of the +prettiest girls come out this season. I hear the young men say so. And that +shows how monstrous ignorant of the world Colonel Newcome is. His son could no +more get that girl than he could marry one of the royal princesses. Mark my +words, they intend Miss Newcome for Lord Kew. Those banker fellows are wild +after grand marriages. Kew will sow his wild oats, and they’ll marry her +to him; or if not to him, to some man of high rank. His father Walham was a +weak young man; but his grandmother, old Lady Kew, is a monstrous clever old +woman, too severe with her children, one of whom ran away and married a poor +devil without a shilling. Nothing could show a more deplorable ignorance of the +world than poor Newcome supposing his son could make such a match as that with +his cousin. Is it true that he is going to make his son an artist? I +don’t know what the dooce the world is coming to. An artist! By gad, in +my time a fellow would as soon have thought of making his son a hairdresser, or +a pastrycook, by gad.” And the worthy Major gives his nephew two fingers, +and trots off to the next club in St. James’s Street, of which he is a +member. +</p> + +<p> +The virtuous hostess of Bryanstone Square was quite civil and good-humoured +when Mr. Pendennis appeared at her house; and my surprise was not +inconsiderable when I found the whole party from Saint Pancras there +assembled—Mr. Binnie; the Colonel and his son; Mrs. Mackenzie, looking +uncommonly handsome and perfectly well-dressed; and Miss Rosey, in pink crape, +with pearly shoulders and blushing cheeks, and beautiful fair ringlets—as +fresh and comely a sight as it was possible to witness. Scarcely had we made +our bows, and shaken our hands, and imparted our observations about the +fineness of the weather, when, behold! as we look from the drawing-room windows +into the cheerful square of Bryanstone, a great family coach arrives, driven by +a family coachman in a family wig, and we recognise Lady Anne Newcome’s +carriage, and see her ladyship, her mother, her daughter, and her husband, Sir +Brian, descend from the vehicle. “It is quite a family party,” +whispers the happy Mrs. Newcome to the happy writer conversing with her in the +niche of the window. “Knowing your intimacy with our brother, Colonel +Newcome, we thought it would please him to meet you here. Will you be so kind +as to take Miss Newcome to dinner?” +</p> + +<p> +Everybody was bent upon being happy and gracious. It was “My dear +brother, how do you do?” from Sir Brian. “My dear Colonel, how glad +we are to see you! how well you look!” from Lady Anne. Miss Newcome ran +up to him with both hands out, and put her beautiful face so close to his that +I thought, upon my conscience, she was going to kiss him. And Lady Kew, +advancing in the frankest manner, with a smile, I must own, rather awful, +playing round her many wrinkles, round her ladyship’s hooked nose, and +displaying her ladyship’s teeth (a new and exceedingly handsome set), +held out her hand to Colonel Newcome, and said briskly, “Colonel, it is +an age since we met.” She turns to Clive with equal graciousness and +good-humour, and says, “Mr. Clive, let me shake hands with you; I have +heard all sorts of good of you, that you have been painting the most beautiful +things, that you are going to be quite famous.” Nothing can exceed the +grace and kindness of Lady Anne Newcome towards Mrs. Mackenzie: the pretty +widow blushes with pleasure at this greeting; and now Lady Anne must be +introduced to Mrs. Mackenzie’s charming daughter, and whispers in the +delighted mother’s ear, “She is lovely!” Rosey comes up +looking rosy indeed, and executes a pretty curtsey with a great deal of +blushing grace. +</p> + +<p> +Ethel has been so happy to see her dear uncle, that as yet she has had no eyes +for any one else, until Clive advancing, those bright eyes become brighter +still with surprise and pleasure as she beholds him. For being absent with his +family in Italy now, and not likely to see this biography for many many months, +I may say that he is a much handsomer fellow than our designer has represented; +and if that wayward artist should take this very scene for the purpose of +illustration, he is requested to bear in mind that the hero of this story will +wish to have justice done to his person. There exists in Mr. Newcome’s +possession a charming little pencil-drawing of Clive at this age, and which +Colonel Newcome took with him when he went—whither he is about to go in a +very few pages—and brought back with him to this country. A florid +apparel becomes some men, as simple raiment suits others, and Clive in his +youth was of the ornamental class of mankind—a customer to tailors, a +wearer of handsome rings, shirt-studs, mustachios, long hair, and the like; nor +could he help, in his costume or his nature, being picturesque and generous and +splendid. He was always greatly delighted with that Scotch man-at-arms in +Quentin Durward, who twists off an inch or two of his gold chain to treat a +friend and pay for a bottle. He would give a comrade a ring or a fine jewelled +pin, if he had no money. Silver dressing-cases and brocade morning-gowns were +in him a sort of propriety at this season of his youth. It was a pleasure to +persons of colder temperament to sun themselves in the warmth of his bright +looks and generous humour. His laughter cheered one like wine. I do not know +that he was very witty; but he was pleasant. He was prone to blush: the history +of a generous trait moistened his eyes instantly. He was instinctively fond of +children, and of the other sex from one year old to eighty. Coming from the +Derby once—a merry party—and stopped on the road from Epsom in a +lock of carriages, during which the people in the carriage ahead saluted us +with many vituperative epithets, and seized the heads of our +leaders,—Clive in a twinkling jumped off the box, and the next minute we +saw him engaged with a half-dozen of the enemy: his hat gone, his fair hair +flying off his face, his blue eyes flashing with fire, his lips and nostrils +quivering wrath, his right and left hand hitting out, <i>que c’étoit un +plaisir à voir</i>. His father sat back in the carriage, looking with delight +and wonder—indeed it was a great sight. Policeman X separated the +warriors. Clive ascended the box again with a dreadful wound in the coat, which +was gashed from the waist to the shoulder. I hardly ever saw the elder Newcome +in such a state of triumph. The postboys quite stared at the gratuity he gave +them, and wished they might drive his lordship to the Oaks. +</p> + +<p> +All the time we have been making this sketch Ethel is standing, looking at +Clive; and the blushing youth casts down his eyes before hers. Her face assumes +a look of arch humour. She passes a slim hand over the prettiest lips and a +chin with the most lovely of dimples, thereby indicating her admiration of Mr. +Clive’s mustachios and imperial. They are of a warm yellowish chestnut +colour, and have not yet known the razor. He wears a low cravat; a shirt-front +of the finest lawn, with ruby buttons. His hair, of a lighter colour, waves +almost to his “manly shoulders broad.” “Upon my word; my dear +Colonel,” says Lady Kew, after looking at him, and nodding her head +shrewdly, “I think we were right.” +</p> + +<p> +“No doubt right in everything your ladyship does, but in what +particularly?” asks the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“Right to keep him out of the way. Ethel has been disposed of these ten +years. Did not Anne tell you? How foolish of her! But all mothers like to have +young men dying for their daughters. Your son is really the handsomest boy in +London. Who is that conceited-looking young man in the window? Mr. +Pen—what? has your son really been very wicked? I was told he was a sad +scapegrace.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never knew him do, and I don’t believe he ever thought, anything +that was untrue, or unkind, or ungenerous,” says the Colonel. “If +any one has belied my boy to you, and I think I know who his enemy has +been——” +</p> + +<p> +“The young lady is very pretty,” remarks Lady Kew, stopping the +Colonel’s further outbreak. “How very young her mother looks! +Ethel, my dear! Colonel Newcome must present us to Mrs. Mackenzie and Miss +Mackenzie;” and Ethel, giving a nod to Clive, with whom she has talked +for a minute or two, again puts her hand in her uncle’s, and walks +towards Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter. +</p> + +<p> +And now let the artist, if he has succeeded in drawing Clive to his liking, cut +a fresh pencil, and give us a likeness of Ethel. She is seventeen years old; +rather taller than the majority of women; of a countenance somewhat grave and +haughty, but on occasion brightening with humour or beaming with kindliness and +affection. Too quick to detect affectation or insincerity in others, too +impatient of dulness or pomposity, she is more sarcastic now than she became +when after years of suffering had softened her nature. Truth looks out of her +bright eyes, and rises up armed, and flashes scorn or denial, perhaps too +readily, when she encounters flattery, or meanness, or imposture. After her +first appearance in the world, if the truth must be told, this young lady was +popular neither with many men, nor with most women. The innocent dancing youth +who pressed round her, attracted by her beauty, were rather afraid, after a +while, of engaging her. This one felt dimly that she despised him; another, +that his simpering commonplaces (delights of how many well-bred maidens!) only +occasioned Miss Newcome’s laughter. Young Lord Croesus, whom all maidens +and matrons were eager to secure, was astounded to find that he was utterly +indifferent to her, and that she would refuse him twice or thrice in an +evening, and dance as many times with poor Tom Spring, who was his +father’s ninth son, and only at home till he could get a ship and go to +sea again. The young women were frightened at her sarcasm. She seemed to know +what <i>fadaises</i> they whispered to their partners as they paused in the +waltzes; and Fanny, who was luring Lord Croesus towards her with her blue eyes, +dropped them guiltily to the floor when Ethel’s turned towards her; and +Cecilia sang more out of time than usual; and Clara, who was holding Freddy, +and Charley, and Tommy round her enchanted by her bright conversation and witty +mischief, became dumb and disturbed when Ethel passed her with her cold face; +and old Lady Hookham, who was playing off her little Minnie now at young Jack +Gorget of the Guards, now at the eager and simple Bob Bateson of the +Coldstreams, would slink off when Ethel made her appearance on the ground, +whose presence seemed to frighten away the fish and the angler. No wonder that +the other Mayfair nymphs were afraid of this severe Diana, whose looks were so +cold and whose arrows were so keen. +</p> + +<p> +But those who had no cause to heed Diana’s shot or coldness might admire +her beauty; nor could the famous Parisian marble, which Clive said she +resembled, be more perfect in form than this young lady. Her hair and eyebrows +were jet black (these latter may have been too thick according to some +physiognomists, giving rather a stern expression to the eyes, and hence causing +those guilty ones to tremble who came under her lash), but her complexion was +as dazzlingly fair and her cheeks as red as Miss Rosey’s own, who had a +right to those beauties, being a blonde by nature. In Miss Ethel’s black +hair there was a slight natural ripple, as when a fresh breeze blows over the +<i>melan hudor</i>—a ripple such as Roman ladies nineteen hundred years +ago, and our own beauties a short time since, endeavoured to imitate by art, +paper, and I believe crumpling-irons. Her eyes were grey; her mouth rather +large; her teeth as regular and bright as Lady Kew’s own; her voice low +and sweet; and her smile, when it lighted up her face and eyes, as beautiful as +spring sunshine; also they could lighten and flash often, and sometimes, though +rarely, rain. As for her figure—but as this tall slender form is +concealed in a simple white muslin robe (of the sort which I believe is called +<i>demie toilette</i>), in which her fair arms are enveloped, and which is +confined at her slim waist by an azure ribbon, and descends to her +feet—let us make a respectful bow to that fair image of Youth, Health, +and Modesty, and fancy it as pretty as we will. Miss Ethel made a very stately +curtsey to Mrs. Mackenzie, surveying that widow calmly, so that the elder lady +looked up and fluttered; but towards Rosey she held out her hand, and smiled +with the utmost kindness, and the smile was returned by the other; and the +blushes with which Miss Mackenzie was always ready at this time, became her +very much. As for Mrs. Mackenzie—the very largest curve that shall not be +a caricature, and actually disfigure the widow’s countenance—a +smile so wide and steady, so exceedingly rident, indeed, as almost to be +ridiculous, may be drawn upon her buxom face, if the artist chooses to attempt +it as it appeared during the whole of this summer evening, before dinner came +(when people ordinarily look very grave), when she was introduced to the +company: when she was made known to our friends Julia and Maria,—the +darling child, lovely little dears! how like their papa and mamma!—when +Sir Brian Newcome gave her his arm downstairs to the dining-room; when anybody +spoke to her; when John offered her meat, or the gentleman in the white +waistcoat, wine; when she accepted or when she refused these refreshments; when +Mr. Newcome told her a dreadfully stupid story; when the Colonel called +cheerily from his end of the table, “My dear Mrs. Mackenzie, you +don’t take any wine to-day; may I not have the honour of drinking a glass +of champagne with you?” when the new boy from the country upset some +sauce upon her shoulder: when Mrs. Newcome made the sign for departure; and I +have no doubt in the drawing-room, when the ladies retired thither. “Mrs. +Mack is perfectly awful,” Clive told me afterwards, “since that +dinner in Bryanstone Square. Lady Kew and Lady Anne are never out of her mouth; +she has had white muslin dresses made just like Ethel’s for herself and +her daughter. She has bought a Peerage, and knows the pedigree of the whole Kew +family. She won’t go out in a cab now without the boy on the box; and in +the plate for the cards which she has established in the drawing-room, you +know, Lady Kew’s pasteboard always <i>will</i> come up to the top, though +I poke it down whenever I go into the room. As for poor Lady Trotter, the +governess of St. Kitt’s, you know, and the Bishop of Tobago, they are +quite bowled out: Mrs. Mack has not mentioned them for a week.” +</p> + +<p> +During the dinner it seemed to me that the lovely young lady by whom I sate +cast many glances towards Mrs. Mackenzie, which did not betoken particular +pleasure. Miss Ethel asked me several questions regarding Clive, and also +respecting Miss Mackenzie: perhaps her questions were rather downright and +imperious, and she patronised me in a manner that would not have given all +gentlemen pleasure. I was Clive’s friend, his schoolfellow? had I seen +him a great deal? know him very well—very well indeed? Was it true that +he had been very thoughtless? very wild? Who told her so? That was not her +question (with a blush). It was not true, and I ought to know? He was not +spoiled? He was very good-natured, generous, told the truth? He loved his +profession very much, and had great talent? Indeed she was very glad. Why do +they sneer at his profession? It seemed to her quite as good as her +father’s and brother’s. Were artists not very dissipated? Not more +so, nor often so much as other young men? Was Mr. Binnie rich, and was he going +to leave all his money to his niece? How long have you known them? Is Miss +Mackenzie as good-natured as she looks? Not very clever, I suppose. Mrs. +Mackenzie looks very—No, thank you, no more. Grandmamma (she is very +deaf, and cannot hear) scolded me for reading the book you wrote, and took the +book away. I afterwards got it, and read it all. I don’t think there was +any harm in it. Why do you give such bad characters of women? Don’t you +know any good ones? Yes, two as good as any in the world. They are unselfish: +they are pious; they are always doing good; they live in the country? Why +don’t you put them into a book? Why don’t you put my uncle into a +book? He is so good, that nobody could make him good enough. Before I came out, +I heard a young lady—(Lady Clavering’s daughter, Miss Amory) sing a +song of yours. I have never spoken to an author before. I saw Mr. Lyon at Lady +Popinjoy’s, and heard him speak. He said it was very hot, and he looked +so, I am sure. Who is the greatest author now alive? You will tell me when you +come upstairs after dinner;—and the young lady sails away, following the +matrons, who rise and ascend to the drawing-room. Miss Newcome has been +watching the behaviour of the author by whom she sate; curious to know what +such a person’s habits are; whether he speaks and acts like other people; +and in what respect authors are different from persons “in +society.” +</p> + +<p> +When we had sufficiently enjoyed claret and politics below-stairs, the +gentlemen went to the drawing-room to partake of coffee and the ladies’ +delightful conversation. We had heard previously the tinkling of the piano +above, and the well-known sound of a couple of Miss Rosey’s five songs. +The two young ladies were engaged over an album at a side-table, when the males +of the party arrived. The book contained a number of Clive’s drawings +made in the time of his very early youth for the amusement of his little +cousins. Miss Ethel seemed to be very much pleased with these performances, +which Miss Mackenzie likewise examined with great good-nature and satisfaction. +So she did the views of Rome, Naples, Marble Hill in the county of Sussex, +etc., in the same collection: so she did the Berlin cockatoo and spaniel which +Mrs. Newcome was working in idle moments: so she did the “Books of +Beauty,” “Flowers of Loveliness,” and so forth. She thought +the prints very sweet and pretty: she thought the poetry very pretty and sweet. +Which did she like best, Mr. Niminy’s “Lines to a bunch of +violets,” or Miss Piminy’s “Stanzas to a wreath of +roses”? Miss Mackenzie was quite puzzled to say which of these +masterpieces she preferred; she found them alike so pretty. She appealed, as in +most cases, to mamma. “How, my darling love, can I pretend to +know?” mamma says. “I have been a soldier’s wife, battling +about the world. I have not had your advantages. I had no drawing-masters, nor +music-masters as you have. You, dearest child, must instruct me in these +things.” This poses Rosey: who prefers to have her opinions dealt out to +her like her frocks, bonnets, handkerchiefs, her shoes and gloves, and the +order thereof; the lumps of sugar for her tea, the proper quantity of raspberry +jam for breakfast; who trusts for all supplies corporeal and spiritual to her +mother. For her own part, Rosey is pleased with everything in nature. Does she +love music? Oh, yes. Bellini and Donizetti? Oh, yes. Dancing? They had no +dancing at grandmamma’s, but she adores dancing, and Mr. Clive dances +very well indeed. (A smile from Miss Ethel at this admission.) Does she like +the country? Oh, she is so happy in the country! London? London is delightful, +and so is the seaside. She does not really know which she likes best, London or +the country, for mamma is not near her to decide, being engaged listening to +Sir Brian, who is laying down the law to her, and smiling, smiling with all her +might. In fact, Mr. Newcome says to Mr. Pendennis in his droll, humorous way, +“That woman grins like a Cheshire cat.” Who was the naturalist who +first discovered that peculiarity of the cats in Cheshire? +</p> + +<p> +In regard to Miss Mackenzie’s opinions, then, it is not easy to discover +that they are decided, or profound, or original; but it seems pretty clear that +she has a good temper, and a happy contented disposition. And the smile which +her pretty countenance wears shows off to great advantage the two dimples on +her pink cheeks. Her teeth are even and white, her hair of a beautiful colour, +and no snow can be whiter than her fair round neck and polished shoulders. She +talks very kindly and good-naturedly with Julia and Maria (Mrs. Hobson’s +precious ones) until she is bewildered by the statements which those young +ladies make regarding astronomy, botany, and chemistry, all of which they are +studying. “My dears, I don’t know a single word about any of these +abstruse subjects: I wish I did,” she says. And Ethel Newcome laughs. She +too is ignorant upon all these subjects. “I am glad there is some one +else,” says Rosey, with naivete, “who is as ignorant as I +am.” And the younger children, with a solemn air, say they will ask mamma +leave to teach her. So everybody, somehow, great or small, seems to protect +her; and the humble, simple, gentle little thing wins a certain degree of +goodwill from the world, which is touched by her humility and her pretty sweet +looks. The servants in Fitzroy Square waited upon her much more kindly than +upon her smiling bustling mother. Uncle James is especially fond of his little +Rosey. Her presence in his study never discomposes him; whereas his sister +fatigues him with the exceeding activity of her gratitude, and her energy in +pleasing. As I was going away, I thought I heard Sir Brian Newcome say, +“It” (but what “it” was, of course I cannot +conjecture)—“it will do very well. The mother seems a superior +woman.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0025"></a> +CHAPTER XXV.<br> +Is passed in a Public-house</h2> + +<p> +I had no more conversation with Miss Newcome that night, who had forgotten her +curiosity about the habits of authors. When she had ended her talk with Miss +Mackenzie, she devoted the rest of the evening to her uncle, Colonel Newcome; +and concluded by saying, “And now you will come and ride with me +to-morrow, uncle, won’t you?” which the Colonel faithfully promised +to do. And she shook hands with Clive very kindly: and with Rosey very frankly, +but as I thought with rather a patronising air: and she made a very stately bow +to Mrs. Mackenzie, and so departed with her father and mother. Lady Kew had +gone away earlier. Mrs. Mackenzie informed us afterwards that the Countess had +gone to sleep after her dinner. If it was at Mrs. Mack’s story about the +Governor’s ball at Tobago, and the quarrel for precedence between the +Lord Bishop’s lady, Mrs. Rotchet, and the Chief Justice’s wife, +Lady Barwise, I should not be at all surprised. +</p> + +<p> +A handsome fly carried off the ladies to Fitzroy Square, and the two worthy +Indian gentlemen in their company; Clive and I walking, with the usual Havannah +to light us home. And Clive remarked that he supposed there had been some +difference between his father and the bankers: for they had not met for ever so +many months before, and the Colonel always had looked very gloomy when his +brothers were mentioned. “And I can’t help thinking,” says +the astute youth, “that they fancied I was in love with Ethel (I know the +Colonel would have liked me to make up to her), and that may have occasioned +the row. Now, I suppose, they think I am engaged to Rosey. What the deuce are +they in such a hurry to marry me for?” +</p> + +<p> +Clive’s companion remarked, “that marriage was a laudable +institution: and an honest attachment an excellent conservator of youthful +morals.” On which Clive replied, “Why don’t you marry +yourself?” +</p> + +<p> +This it was justly suggested was no argument, but a merely personal allusion +foreign to the question, which was, that marriage was laudable, etc. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Clive laughed. “Rosey is as good a little creature as can be,” +he said. “She is never out of temper, though I fancy Mrs. Mackenzie tries +her. I don’t think she is very wise: but she is uncommonly pretty, and +her beauty grows on you. As for Ethel, anything so high and mighty I have never +seen since I saw the French giantess. Going to Court, and about to parties +every night where a parcel of young fools flatter her, has perfectly spoiled +her. By Jove, how handsome she is! How she turns with her long neck, and looks +at you from under those black eyebrows! If I painted her hair, I think I should +paint it almost blue, and then glaze over with lake. It <i>is</i> blue. And how +finely her head is joined on to her shoulders!”—And he waves in the +air an imaginary line with his cigar. “She would do for Judith, +wouldn’t she? Or how grand she would look as Herodias’s daughter +sweeping down a stair—in a great dress of cloth-of-gold like Paul +Veronese—holding a charger before her with white arms, you +know—with the muscles accented like that glorious Diana at Paris—a +savage smile on her face and a ghastly solemn gory head on the dish. I see the +picture, sir, I see the picture!” and he fell to curling his mustachios +just like his brave old father. +</p> + +<p> +I could not help laughing at the resemblance, and mentioning it to my friend. +He broke, as was his wont, into a fond eulogium of his sire, wished he could be +like him—worked himself up into another state of excitement, in which he +averred “that if his father wanted him to marry, he would marry that +instant. And why not Rosey? She is a dear little thing. Or why not that +splendid Miss Sherrick? What ahead!—a regular Titian! I was looking at +the difference of their colour at Uncle Honeyman’s that day of the +<i>déjeuner</i>. The shadows in Rosey’s face, sir, are all pearly-tinted. +You ought to paint her in milk, sir!” cries the enthusiast. “Have +you ever remarked the grey round her eyes, and the sort of purple bloom of her +cheek? Rubens could have done the colour: but I don’t somehow like to +think of a young lady and that sensuous old Peter Paul in company. I look at +her like a little wild-flower in a field—like a little child at play, +sir. Pretty little tender nursling! If I see her passing in the street, I feel +as if I would like some fellow to be rude to her, that I might have the +pleasure of knocking him down. She is like a little songbird, sir,—a +tremulous, fluttering little linnet that you would take into your hand, +<i>pavidam quaerentem matrem</i>, and smooth its little plumes, and let it +perch on your finger and sing. The Sherrick creates quite a different +sentiment—the Sherrick is splendid, stately, sleepy——” +</p> + +<p> +“Stupid,” hints Clive’s companion. +</p> + +<p> +“Stupid! Why not? Some women ought to be stupid. What you call dulness I +call repose. Give me a calm woman, a slow woman,—a lazy, majestic woman. +Show me a gracious virgin bearing a lily: not a leering giggler frisking a +rattle. A lively woman would be the death of me. Look at Mrs. Mack, perpetually +nodding, winking, grinning, throwing out signals which you are to be at the +trouble to answer! I thought her delightful for three days; I declare I was in +love with her—that is, as much as I can be after—but never mind +that, I feel I shall never be really in love again. Why shouldn’t the +Sherrick be stupid, I say? About great beauty there should always reign a +silence. As you look at the great stars, the great ocean, any great scene of +nature: you hush, sir. You laugh at a pantomime, but you are still in a temple. +When I saw the great Venus of the Louvre, I thought—Wert thou alive, O +goddess, thou shouldst never open those lovely lips but to speak lowly, slowly: +thou shouldst never descend from that pedestal but to walk stately to some near +couch, and assume another attitude of beautiful calm. To be beautiful is +enough. If a woman can do that well: who shall demand more from her? You +don’t want a rose to sing. And I think wit is out of place where +there’s great beauty; as I wouldn’t have a Queen to cut jokes on +her throne. I say, Pendennis,”—here broke off the enthusiastic +youth,—“have you got another cigar? Shall we go into Finch’s, +and have a game at billiards? Just one—it’s quite early yet. Or +shall we go in the Haunt? It’s Wednesday night, you know, when all the +boys go.” We tap at a door in an old, old street in Soho: an old maid +with a kind, comical face opens the door, and nods friendly, and says, +“How do, sir? ain’t seen you this ever so long. How do, Mr. +Noocom?” “Who’s here?” “Most everybody’s +here.” We pass by a little snug bar, in which a trim elderly lady is +seated by a great fire, on which boils an enormous kettle; while two gentlemen +are attacking a cold saddle of mutton and West India pickles: hard by Mrs. +Nokes the landlady’s elbow—with mutual bows—we recognise +Hickson, the sculptor, and Morgan, the intrepid Irish chieftain, chief of the +reporters of the <i>Morning Press</i> newspaper. We pass through a passage into +a back room, and are received with a roar of welcome from a crowd of men, +almost invisible in the smoke. +</p> + +<p> +“I am right glad to see thee, boy!” cries a cheery voice (that will +never troll a chorus more). “We spake anon of thy misfortune, gentle +youth! and that thy warriors of Assaye have charged the Academy in vain. Mayhap +thou frightenedst the courtly school with barbarous visages of grisly +war.—Pendennis, thou dost wear a thirsty look! Resplendent swell! untwine +thy choker white, and I will either stand a glass of grog, or thou shalt pay +the like for me, my lad, and tell us of the fashionable world.” Thus +spake the brave old Tom Sarjent,—also one of the Press, one of the old +boys: a good old scholar with a good old library of books, who had taken his +seat any time these forty years by the chimney-fire in this old Haunt: where +painters, sculptors, men of letters, actors, used to congregate, passing +pleasant hours in rough kindly communion, and many a day seeing the sunrise +lighting the rosy street ere they parted, and Betsy put the useless lamp out +and closed the hospitable gates of the Haunt. +</p> + +<p> +The time is not very long since, though to-day is so changed. As we think of +it, the kind familiar faces rise up, and we hear the pleasant voices and +singing. There are they met, the honest hearty companions. In the days when the +Haunt was a haunt, stage-coaches were not yet quite over. Casinos were not +invented: clubs were rather rare luxuries: there were sanded floors, triangular +sawdust-boxes, pipes, and tavern parlours. Young Smith and Brown, from the +Temple, did not go from chambers to dine at the Polyanthus, or the Megatherium, +off potage à la Bisque, turbot au gratin, cotelettes a la +What-do-you-call-’em, and a pint of St. Emilion; but ordered their +beefsteak and pint of port from the “plump head-waiter at the +Cock;” did not disdain the pit of the theatre; and for a supper a homely +refection at the tavern. How delightful are the suppers in Charles Lamb to read +of even now!—the cards—the punch—the candles to be +snuffed—the social oysters—the modest cheer! Whoever snuffs a +candle now? What man has a domestic supper whose dinner-hour is eight +o’clock? Those little meetings, in the memory of many of us yet, are gone +quite away into the past. Five-and-twenty years ago is a hundred years +off—so much has our social life changed in those five lustres. James +Boswell himself, were he to revisit London, would scarce venture to enter a +tavern. He would find scarce a respectable companion to enter its doors with +him. It is an institution as extinct as a hackney-coach. Many a grown man who +peruses this historic page has never seen such a vehicle, and only heard of +rum-punch as a drink which his ancestors used to tipple. +</p> + +<p> +Cheery old Tom Sarjent is surrounded at the Haunt by a dozen of kind boon +companions. They toil all day at their avocations of art, or letters, or law, +and here meet for a harmless night’s recreation and converse. They talk +of literature, or politics, or pictures, or plays; socially banter one another +over their cheap cups: sing brave old songs sometimes when they are especially +jolly kindly ballads in praise of love and wine; famous maritime ditties in +honour of Old England. I fancy I hear Jack Brent’s noble voice rolling +out the sad, generous <i>refrain</i> of “The Deserter,” “Then +for that reason and for a season we will be merry before we go,” or +Michael Percy’s clear tenor carolling the Irish chorus of +“What’s that to any one, whether or no!” or Mark Wilder +shouting his bottle-song of “Garryowen na gloria.” These songs were +regarded with affection by the brave old frequenters of the Haunt. A +gentleman’s property in a song was considered sacred. It was respectfully +asked for: it was heard with the more pleasure for being old. Honest Tom +Sarjent! how the times have changed since we saw thee! I believe the present +chief of the reporters of the newspaper (which responsible office Tom filled) +goes to Parliament in his brougham, and dines with the Ministers of the Crown. +</p> + +<p> +Around Tom are seated grave Royal Academicians, rising gay Associates; writers +of other journals besides the <i>Pall Mall Gazette;</i> a barrister maybe, +whose name will be famous some day: a hewer of marble perhaps: a surgeon whose +patients have not come yet; and one or two men about town who like this queer +assembly better than haunts much more splendid. Captain Shandon has been here, +and his jokes are preserved in the tradition of the place. Owlet, the +philosopher, came once and tried, as his wont is, to lecture; but his +metaphysics were beaten down by a storm of banter. Slatter, who gave himself +such airs because he wrote in the —— <i>Review</i>, tried to air +himself at the Haunt, but was choked by the smoke, and silenced by the +unanimous pooh-poohing of the assembly. Dick Walker, who rebelled secretly at +Sarjent’s authority, once thought to give himself consequence by bringing +a young lord from the Blue Posts, but he was so unmercifully +“chaffed” by Tom, that even the young lord laughed at him. His +lordship has been heard to say he had been taken to a monsus queeah place, +queeah set of folks, in a tap somewhere, though he went away quite delighted +with Tom’s affability, but he never came again. He could not find the +place, probably. You might pass the Haunt in the daytime, and not know it in +the least. “I believe,” said Charley Ormond (A.R.A. he was +then)—“I believe in the day there’s no such place at all: and +when Betsy turns the gas off at the door-lamp as we go away, the whole thing +vanishes: the door, the house, the bar, the Haunt, Betsy, the beer-boy, Mrs. +Nokes and all.” It has vanished: it is to be found no more: neither by +night nor by day—unless the ghosts of good fellows still haunt it. +</p> + +<p> +As the genial talk and glass go round, and after Clive and his friend have +modestly answered the various queries put to them by good old Tom Sarjent, the +acknowledged Praeses of the assembly and Sachem of this venerable wigwam, the +door opens and another well-known figure is recognised with shouts as it +emerges through the smoke. “Bayham, all hail!” says Tom. +“Frederick, I am right glad to see thee!” +</p> + +<p> +Bayham says he is disturbed in spirit, and calls for a pint of beer to console +him. +</p> + +<p> +“Hast thou flown far, thou restless bird of night?” asks Father +Tom, who loves speaking in blank verses. +</p> + +<p> +“I have come from Cursitor Street,” says Bayham, in a low groan. +“I have just been to see a poor devil in quod there. Is that you, +Pendennis? You know the man—Charles Honeyman.” +</p> + +<p> +“What!” cries Clive, starting up. +</p> + +<p> +“O my prophetic soul, my uncle!” growls Bayham. “I did not +see the young one; but ’tis true.” +</p> + +<p> +The reader is aware that more than the three years have elapsed, of which time +the preceding pages contain the harmless chronicle; and while Thomas +Newcome’s leave has been running out and Clive’s mustachios +growing, the fate of other persons connected with our story has also had its +development, and their fortune has experienced its natural progress, its +increase or decay. Our tale, such as it has hitherto been arranged, has passed +leisurely in scenes wherein the present tense is perforce adopted; the writer +acting as chorus to the drama, and occasionally explaining, by hints or more +open statements, what has occurred during the intervals of the acts; and how it +happens that the performers are in such or such a posture. In the modern +theatre, as the play-going critic knows, the explanatory personage is usually +of quite a third-rate order. He is the two walking-gentlemen friends of Sir +Harry Courtly, who welcome the young baronet to London, and discourse about the +niggardliness of Harry’s old uncle, the Nabob; and the depth of +Courtly’s passion for Lady Annabel the <i>première amoureuse</i>. He is +the confidant in white linen to the heroine in white satin. He is “Tom, +you rascal,” the valet or tiger, more or less impudent and +acute—that well-known menial in top-boots and a livery frock with red +cuffs and collar, whom Sir Harry always retains in his service, addresses with +scurrilous familiarity, and pays so irregularly: or he is Lucetta, Lady +Annabel’s waiting-maid, who carries the <i>billets-doux</i> and peeps +into them; knows all about the family affairs; pops the lover under the sofa; +and sings a comic song between the scenes. Our business now is to enter into +Charles Honeyman’s privacy, to peer into the secrets of that reverend +gentleman, and to tell what has happened to him during the past months, in +which he has made fitful though graceful appearances on our scene. +</p> + +<p> +While his nephew’s whiskers have been budding, and his brother-in-law has +been spending his money and leave, Mr. Honeyman’s hopes have been +withering, his sermons growing stale, his once blooming popularity drooping and +running to seed. Many causes have contributed to bring him to his present +melancholy strait. When you go to Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel now, it is by +no means crowded. Gaps are in the pews: there is not the least difficulty in +getting a snug place near the pulpit, whence the preacher can look over his +pocket-handkerchief and see Lord Dozeley no more: his lordship has long gone to +sleep elsewhere and a host of the fashionable faithful have migrated too. The +incumbent can no more cast his fine eyes upon the French bonnets of the female +aristocracy and see some of the loveliest faces in Mayfair regarding his with +expressions of admiration. Actual dowdy tradesmen of the neighbourhood are +seated with their families in the aisles: Ridley and his wife and son have one +of the very best seats. To be sure Ridley looks like a nobleman, with his large +waistcoat, bald head, and gilt book: J. J. has a fine head; but Mrs. Ridley! +cook and housekeeper is written on her round face. The music is by no means of +its former good quality. That rebellious and ill-conditioned basso Bellew has +seceded, and seduced the four best singing boys, who now perform glees at the +Cave of Harmony. Honeyman has a right to speak of persecution, and to compare +himself to a hermit in so far that he preaches in a desert. Once, like another +hermit, St. Hierome, he used to be visited by lions. None such come to him now. +Such lions as frequent the clergy are gone off to lick the feet of other +ecclesiastics. They are weary of poor Honeyman’s old sermons. +</p> + +<p> +Rivals have sprung up in the course of these three years—have sprung up +round about Honeyman and carried his flock into their folds. We know how such +simple animals will leap one after another, and that it is the sheepish way. +Perhaps a new pastor has come to the church of St. Jacob’s hard +by—bold, resolute, bright, clear, a scholar and no pedant: his manly +voice is thrilling in their ears, he speaks of life and conduct, of practice as +well as faith; and crowds of the most polite and most intelligent, and best +informed, and best dressed, and most selfish people in the world come and hear +him twice at least. There are so many well-informed and well-dressed etc. etc. +people in the world that the succession of them keeps St. Jacob’s full +for a year or more. Then, it may be, a bawling quack, who has neither +knowledge, nor scholarship, nor charity, but who frightens the public with +denunciations and rouses them with the energy of his wrath, succeeds in +bringing them together for a while till they tire of his din and curses. +Meanwhile the good quiet old churches round about ring their accustomed bell: +open their Sabbath gates: receive their tranquil congregations and sober +priest, who has been busy all the week, at schools and sick-beds, with watchful +teaching, gentle counsel, and silent alms. +</p> + +<p> +Though we saw Honeyman but seldom, for his company was not altogether amusing, +and his affectation, when one became acquainted with it, very tiresome to +witness, Fred Bayham, from his garret at Mrs. Ridley’s, kept constant +watch over the curate, and told us of his proceedings from time to time. When +we heard the melancholy news first announced, of course the intelligence damped +the gaiety of Clive and his companion; and F. B., who conducted all the affairs of +life with great gravity, telling Tom Sarjent that he had news of importance for +our private ear, Tom with still more gravity than F. B.’s, said, +“Go, my children, you had best discuss this topic in a separate room, +apart from the din and fun of a convivial assembly;” and ringing the bell +he bade Betsy bring him another glass of rum-and-water, and one for Mr. +Desborough, to be charged to him. +</p> + +<p> +We adjourned to another parlour then, where gas was lighted up: and F. B. over +a pint of beer narrated poor Honeyman’s mishap. “Saving your +presence, Clive,” said Bayham, “and with every regard for the +youthful bloom of your young heart’s affections, your uncle Charles +Honeyman, sir, is a bad lot. I have known him these twenty years, when I was at +his father’s as a private tutor. Old Miss Honeyman is one of those cards +which we call trumps—so was old Honeyman a trump; but Charles and his +sister——” +</p> + +<p> +I stamped on F. B.’s foot under the table. He seemed to have forgotten +that he was about to speak of Clive’s mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Hem! of your poor mother, I—hem—I may say <i>vidi +tantum</i>. I scarcely knew her. She married very young: as I was when she left +Borhambury. But Charles exhibited his character at a very early age—and +it was not a charming one—no, by no means a model of virtue. He always +had a genius for running into debt. He borrowed from every one of the +pupils—I don’t know how he spent it except in hardbake and +alycompaine—and even from old Nosey’s groom,—pardon me, we +used to call your grandfather by that playful epithet (boys will be boys, you +know),—even from the doctor’s groom he took money, and I recollect +thrashing Charles Honeyman for that disgraceful action. +</p> + +<p> +“At college, without any particular show, he was always in debt and +difficulties. Take warning by him, dear youth! By him and by me, if you like. +See me—me, F. Bayham, descended from the ancient kings that long the +Tuscan sceptre swayed, dodge down a street to get out of sight of a boot-shop, +and my colossal frame tremble if a chap puts his hand on my shoulder, as you +did, Pendennis, the other day in the Strand, when I thought a straw might have +knocked me down! I have had my errors, Clive. I know ’em. I’ll take +another pint of beer, if you please. Betsy, has Mrs. Nokes any cold meat in the +bar? and an accustomed pickle? Ha! Give her my compliments, and say F. B. is +hungry. I resume my tale. Faults F. B. has, and knows it. Humbug he may have +been sometimes; but I’m not such a complete humbug as Honeyman.” +</p> + +<p> +Clive did not know how to look at this character of his relative, but +Clive’s companion burst into a fit of laughter, at which F. B. nodded +gravely, and resumed his narrative. “I don’t know how much money he +has had from your governor, but this I can say, the half of it would make F. B. +a happy man. I don’t know out of how much the reverend party has nobbled +his poor old sister at Brighton. He has mortgaged his chapel to Sherrick, I +suppose you know, who is master of it, and could turn him out any day. I +don’t think Sherrick is a bad fellow. I think he’s a good fellow; I +have known him do many a good turn to a chap in misfortune. He wants to get +into society: what more natural? That was why you were asked to meet him the +other day, and why he asked you to dinner. I hope you had a good one. I wish +he’d ask me. +</p> + +<p> +“Then Moss has got his bills, and Moss’s brother-in-law in Cursitor +Street has taken possession of his revered person. He’s very welcome. One +Jew has the chapel, another Hebrew has the clergyman. It’s singular, +ain’t it? Sherrick might turn Lady Whittlesea into a synagogue and have +the Chief Rabbi into the pulpit, where my uncle the Bishop has given out the +text. +</p> + +<p> +“The shares of that concern ain’t at a premium. I have had immense +fun with Sherrick about it. I like the Hebrew, sir. He maddens with rage when +F. B. goes and asks him whether any more pews are let overhead. Honeyman begged +and borrowed in order to buy out the last man. I remember when the speculation +was famous, when all the boxes (I mean the pews) were taken for the season, and +you couldn’t get a place, come ever so early. Then Honeyman was spoilt, +and gave his sermons over and over again. People got sick of seeing the old +humbug cry, the old crocodile! Then we tried the musical dodge. F. B. came +forward, sir, there. That <i>was</i> a coup: I did it, sir. Bellew +wouldn’t have sung for any man but me—and for two-and-twenty months +I kept him as sober as Father Mathew. Then Honeyman didn’t pay him: there +was a row in the sacred building, and Bellew retired. Then Sherrick must meddle +in it. And having heard a chap out Hampstead way who Sherrick thought would do, +Honeyman was forced to engage him, regardless of expense. You recollect the +fellow, sir? The Reverend Simeon Rawkins, the lowest of the Low Church, +sir—a red-haired dumpy man, who gasped at his <i>h’s</i> and spoke +with a Lancashire twang—he’d no more do for Mayfair than Grimaldi +for Macbeth. He and Honeyman used to fight like cat and dog in the vestry: and +he drove away a third part of the congregation. He was an honest man and an +able man too, though not a sound Churchman” (F. B. said this with a very +edifying gravity): “I told Sherrick this the very day I heard him. And if +he had spoken to me on the subject I might have saved him a pretty +penny—a precious deal more than the paltry sum which he and I had a +quarrel about at that time—a matter of business, sir—a pecuniary +difference about a small three months’ thing which caused a temporary +estrangement between us. As for Honeyman, he used to cry about it. Your uncle +is great in the lachrymatory line, Clive Newcome. He used to go with tears in +his eyes to Sherrick, and implore him not to have Rawkins, but he would. And I +must say for poor Charles that the failure of Lady Whittlesea’s has not +been altogether Charles’s fault; and that Sherrick has kicked down that +property. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then, sir, poor Charles thought to make it all right by marrying +Mrs. Brumby;—and she was very fond of him and the thing was all but done, +in spite of her sons, who were in a rage as you may fancy. But Charley, sir, +has such a propensity for humbug that he will tell lies when there is no +earthly good in lying. He represented his chapel at twelve hundred a year, his +private means as so-and-so; and when he came to book up with Briggs the lawyer, +Mrs. Brumby’s brother, it was found that he lied and prevaricated so, +that the widow in actual disgust would have nothing more to do with him. She +was a good woman of business, and managed the hat-shop for nine years, whilst +poor Brumby was at Dr. Tokelys. A first-rate shop it was, too. I introduced +Charles to it. My uncle the Bishop had his shovels there: and they used for a +considerable period to cover <i>this</i> humble roof with tiles,” said F. +B., tapping his capacious forehead; “I am sure he might have had +Brumby,” he added, in his melancholy tones, “but for those unlucky +lies. She didn’t want money. She had plenty. She longed to get into +society, and was bent on marrying a gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +“But what I can’t pardon in Honeyman is the way in which he has +done poor old Ridley and his wife. I took him there, you know, thinking they +would send their bills in once a month: that he was doing a good business: in +fact, that I had put ’em into a good thing. And the fellow has told me a +score of times that he and the Ridleys were all right. But he has not only not +paid his lodgings, but he has had money of them: he has given dinners: he has +made Ridley pay for wine. He has kept paying lodgers out of the house, and he +tells me all this with a burst of tears, when he sent for me to Lazarus’s +to-night, and I went to him, sir, because he was in distress—went into +the lion’s den, sir!” says F. B., looking round nobly. “I +don’t know how much he owes them: because of course you know the sum he +mentions ain’t the right one. He never does tell the truth—does +Charles. But think of the pluck of those good Ridleys never saying a single +word to F. B. about the debt! ‘We are poor, but we have saved some money +and can lie out of it. And we think Mr. Honeyman will pay us,’ says Mrs. +Ridley to me this very evening. And she thrilled my heart-strings, sir; and I +took her in my arms, and kissed the old woman,” says Bayham; “and I +rather astonished little Miss Cann, and young J. J., who came in with a picture +under his arm. But she said she had kissed Master Frederick long before J. J. +was born—and so she had: that good and faithful servant—and my +emotion in embracing her was manly, sir, manly.” +</p> + +<p> +Here old Betsy came in to say that the supper was a-waitin’ for Mr. +Bayham and it was a-getting’ very late; and we left F. B. to his meal; +and bidding adieu to Mrs. Nokes, Clive and I went each to our habitation. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0026"></a> +CHAPTER XXVI.<br> +In which Colonel Newcome’s Horses are sold</h2> + +<p> +At an hour early the next morning I was not surprised to see Colonel Newcome at +my chambers, to whom Clive had communicated Bayham’s important news of +the night before. The Colonel’s object, as any one who knew him need +scarcely be told, was to rescue his brother-in-law; and being ignorant of +lawyers, sheriffs’-officers, and their proceedings, he bethought him that +he would apply to Lamb Court for information, and in so far showed some +prudence, for at least I knew more of the world and its ways than my simple +client, and was enabled to make better terms for the unfortunate prisoner, or +rather for Colonel Newcome, who was the real sufferer, than Honeyman’s +creditors might otherwise have been disposed to give. +</p> + +<p> +I thought it would be more prudent that our good Samaritan should not see the +victim of rogues whom he was about to succour; and left him to entertain +himself with Mr. Warrington in Lamb Court, while I sped to the lock-up house, +where the Mayfair pet was confined. A sickly smile played over his countenance +as he beheld me when I was ushered to his private room. The reverent gentleman +was not shaved; he had partaken of breakfast. I saw a glass which had once +contained brandy on the dirty tray whereon his meal was placed: a greasy novel +from a Chancery Lane library lay on the table: but he was at present occupied +in writing one or more of those great long letters, those laborious, ornate, +eloquent statements, those documents so profusely underlined, in which the +<i>machinations of villains</i> are laid bare with italic fervour; the +coldness, to use no <i>harsher</i> phrase, of friends on whom reliance <i>might +have been placed;</i> the outrageous conduct of Solomons; the astonishing +failure of Smith to pay a sum of money on which he had counted as <i>on the +Bank of England;</i> finally, the <i>infallible certainty</i> of repaying (with +what heartfelt thanks need not be said) the loan of so many pounds <i>next +Saturday week at farthest</i>. All this, which some readers in the course of +their experience have read no doubt in many handwritings, was duly set forth by +poor Honeyman. There was a wafer in a wine-glass on the table, and the bearer +no doubt below to carry the missive. They always sent these letters by a +messenger, who is introduced in the postscript; he is always sitting in the +hall when you get the letter, and is “a young man waiting for an answer, +please.” +</p> + +<p> +No one can suppose that Honeyman laid a complete statement of his affairs +before the negotiator who was charged to look into them. No debtor does confess +all his debts, but breaks them gradually to his man of business, factor or +benefactor, leading him on from surprise to surprise; and when he is in +possession of the tailor’s little account, introducing him to the +bootmaker. Honeyman’s schedule I felt perfectly certain was not correct. +The detainees against him were trifling. “Moss of Wardour Street, one +hundred and twenty—I believe I have paid him thousands in this very +transaction,” ejaculates Honeyman. “A heartless West End tradesman +hearing of my misfortune—all these people a linked together, my dear +Pendennis, and rush like vultures upon their prey!—Waddilove, the tailor, +has another writ out for ninety-eight pounds; a man whom I have made by my +recommendations! Tobbins, the bootmaker, his neighbour in Jermyn Street, +forty-one pounds more, and that is all—I give you my word, all. In a few +months, when my pew-rents will be coming in, I should have settled with those +cormorants; otherwise, my total and irretrievable ruin, and the disgrace and +humiliation of a prison attends me. I know it; I can bear it; I have been +wretchedly weak, Pendennis: I can say mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, and I +can—bear—my—penalty.” In his finest moments he was +never more pathetic. He turned his head away, and concealed it in a +handkerchief not so white as those which veiled his emotions at Lady +Whittlesea’s. +</p> + +<p> +How by degrees this slippery penitent was induced to make other confessions; +how we got an idea of Mrs. Ridley’s account from him, of his dealings +with Mr. Sherrick, need not be mentioned here. The conclusion to which Colonel +Newcome’s ambassador came was, that to help such a man would be quite +useless; and that the Fleet Prison would be a most wholesome retreat for this +most reckless divine. Ere the day was out, Messrs. Waddilove and Tobbins had +conferred with their neighbour in St. James’s, Mr. Brace; and there came +a detainer from that haberdasher for gloves, cravats, and pocket-handkerchiefs, +that might have done credit to the most dandified young Guardsman. Mr. +Warrington was on Mr. Pendennis’s side, and urged that the law should +take its course. “Why help a man,” said he, “who will not +help himself? Let the law sponge out the fellow’s debts; set him going +again with twenty pounds when he quits the prison, and get him a chaplaincy in +the Isle of Man.” +</p> + +<p> +I saw by the Colonel’s grave kind face that these hard opinions did not +suit him. “At all events, sir, promise us,” we said, “that +you will pay nothing yourself—that you won’t see Honeyman’s +creditors, and let people, who know the world better, deal with him.” +“Know the world, young man!” cries Newcome; “I should think +if I don’t know the world at my age, I never shall.” And if he had +lived to be as old as Jahaleel, a boy could still have cheated him. +</p> + +<p> +“I do not scruple to tell you,” he said, after a pause during which +a plenty of smoke was delivered from the council of three, “that I +have—a fund—which I had set aside for mere purposes of pleasure, I +give you my word, and a part of which I shall think it my duty to devote to +poor Honeyman’s distresses. The fund is not large. The money was +intended, in fact:—however, there it is. If Pendennis will go round to +these tradesmen, and make some composition with them, as their prices have been +no doubt enormously exaggerated, I see no harm. Besides the tradesfolk, there +is good Mrs. Ridley and Mr. Sherrick—we must see them; and, if we can, +set this luckless Charles again on his legs. We have read of other prodigals +who were kindly treated; and we may have debts of our own to forgive, +boys.” +</p> + +<p> +Into Mr. Sherrick’s account we had no need to enter. That gentleman had +acted with perfect fairness by Honeyman. He laughingly said to us, “You +don’t imagine I would lend that chap a shilling without security? I will +give him fifty or a hundred. Here’s one of his notes, with +What-do-you-call-’ems—that rum fellow Bayham’s name as +drawer. A nice pair, ain’t they? Pooh! <i>I</i> shall never touch +’em. I lent some money on the shop overhead,” says Sherrick, +pointing to the ceiling (we were in his counting-house in the cellar of Lady +Whittlesea’s Chapel), “because I thought it was a good speculation. +And so it was at first. The people liked Honeyman. All the nobs came to hear +him. Now the speculation ain’t so good. He’s used up. A chap +can’t be expected to last for ever. When I first engaged Mademoiselle +Bravura at my theatre, you couldn’t get a place for three weeks together. +The next year she didn’t draw twenty pounds a week. So it was with Pottle +and the regular drama humbug. At first it was all very well. Good business, +good houses, our immortal bard, and that sort of game. They engaged the tigers +and the French riding people over the way; and there was Pottle bellowing away +in my place to the orchestra and the orders. It’s all a speculation. +I’ve speculated in about pretty much everything that’s going: in +theatres, in joint-stock jobs, in building-ground, in bills, in gas and +insurance companies, and in this chapel. Poor old Honeyman! I won’t hurt +him. About that other chap I put in to do the first business—that +red-haired chap, Rawkins—I think I was wrong. I think he injured the +property. But I don’t know everything, you know. I wasn’t bred to +know about parsons—quite the reverse. I thought, when I heard Rawkins at +Hampstead, he was just the thing. I used to go about, sir, just as I did to the +provinces, when I had the theatre—Camberwell, Islington, Kennington, +Clapton, all about, and hear the young chaps. Have a glass of sherry; and +here’s better luck to Honeyman. As for that Colonel, he’s a trump, +sir! I never see such a man. I have to deal with such a precious lot of rogues, +in the City and out of it, among the swells and all, you know, that to see such +a fellow refreshes me; and I’d do anything for him. You’ve made a +good thing of that <i>Pall Mall Gazette!</i> I tried papers too; but mine +didn’t do. I don’t know why. I tried a Tory one, moderate Liberal, +and out-and-out uncompromising Radical. I say, what d’ye think of a +religious paper, the <i>Catechism</i>, or some such name? Would Honeyman do as +editor? I’m afraid it’s all up with the poor cove at the +chapel.” And I parted with Mr. Sherrick, not a little edified by his +talk, and greatly relieved as to Honeyman’s fate. The tradesmen of +Honeyman’s body were appeased; and as for Mr. Moss, when he found that +the curate had no effects, and must go before the Insolvent Court, unless Moss +chose to take the composition which we were empowered to offer him, he too was +brought to hear reason, and parted with the stamped paper on which was poor +Honeyman’s signature. Our negotiation had like to have come to an end by +Clive’s untimely indignation, who offered at one stage of the proceedings +to pitch young Moss out of window; but nothing came of this most +ungentlemanlike behaviour on Noocob’s part, further than remonstrance and +delay in the proceedings; and Honeyman preached a lovely sermon at Lady +Whittlesea’s the very next Sunday. He had made himself much liked in the +sponging-house, and Mr. Lazarus said, “if he hadn’t a got out time +enough, I’d a let him out for Sunday, and sent one of my men with him to +show him the way ome, you know; for when a gentleman behaves as a gentleman to +me, I behave as a gentleman to him.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Ridley’s account, and it was a long one, was paid without a single +question, or the deduction of a farthing; but the Colonel rather sickened of +Honeyman’s expressions of rapturous gratitude, and received his +professions of mingled contrition and delight very coolly. “My +boy,” says the father to Clive, “you see to what straits debt +brings a man, to tamper with truth to have to cheat the poor. Think of flying +before a washerwoman, or humbling yourself to a tailor, or eating a poor +man’s children’s bread!” Clive blushed, I thought, and looked +rather confused. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, father,” says he, “I—I’m afraid I owe some +money too—not much; but about forty pound, five-and-twenty for cigars, +and fifteen I borrowed of Pendennis, and—and I’ve been devilish +annoyed about it all this time.” +</p> + +<p> +“You stupid boy,” says the father “I knew about the cigars +bill, and paid it last week. Anything I have is yours, you know. As long as +there is a guinea, there is half for you. See that every shilling we owe is +paid before—before a week is over. And go down and ask Binnie if I can +see him in his study. I want to have some conversation with him.” When +Clive was gone away, he said to me in a very sweet voice, “In God’s +name, keep my boy out of debt when I am gone, Arthur. I shall return to India +very soon.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very soon, sir! You have another year’s leave,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but no allowances, you know; and this affair of Honeyman’s +has pretty nearly emptied the little purse I had set aside for European +expenses. They have been very much heavier than I expected. As it is, I +overdrew my account at my brother’s, and have been obliged to draw money +from my agents in Calcutta. A year sooner or later (unless two of our senior +officers had died, when I should have got my promotion and full colonel’s +pay with it, and proposed to remain in this country)—a year sooner or +later, what does it matter? Clive will go away and work at his art, and see the +great schools of painting while I am absent. I thought at one time how pleasant +it would be to accompany him. But <i>l’homme propose</i>, Pendennis. I +fancy now a lad is not the better for being always tied to his parent’s +apron-string. You young fellows are too clever for me. I haven’t learned +your ideas or read your books. I feel myself very often an old damper in your +company. I will go back, sir, where I have some friends, where I am somebody +still. I know an honest face or two, white and brown, that will lighten up in +the old regiment when they see Tom Newcome again. God bless you, Arthur. You +young fellows in this country have such cold ways that we old ones hardly know +how to like you at first. James Binnie and I, when we first came home, used to +talk you over, and think you laughed at us. But you didn’t, I know. God +Almighty bless you, and send you a good wife, and make a good man of you. I +have bought a watch, which I would like you to wear in remembrance of me and my +boy, to whom you were so kind when you were boys together in the old Grey +Friars.” I took his hand, and uttered some incoherent words of affection +and respect. Did not Thomas Newcome merit both from all who knew him? +</p> + +<p> +His resolution being taken, our good Colonel began to make silent but effectual +preparations for his coming departure. He was pleased during these last days of +his stay to give me even more of his confidence than I had previously enjoyed, +and was kind enough to say that he regarded me almost as a son of his own, and +hoped I would act as elder brother and guardian to Clive. Ah! who is to guard +the guardian? The younger brother had many nobler qualities than belonged to +the elder. The world had not hardened Clive, nor even succeeded in spoiling +him. I perceive I am diverging from his history into that of another person, +and will return to the subject proper of the book. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Newcome expressed himself as being particularly touched and pleased +with his friend Binnie’s conduct, now that the Colonel’s departure +was determined. “James is one of the most generous of men, Pendennis, and +I am proud to be put under an obligation to him, and to tell it too. I hired +this house, as you are aware, of our speculative friend Mr. Sherrick, and am +answerable for the payment of the rent till the expiry of the lease. James has +taken the matter off my hands entirely. The place is greatly too large for him, +but he says that he likes it, and intends to stay, and that his sister and +niece shall be his housekeepers. Clive” (here, perhaps, the +speaker’s voice drops a little)—“Clive will be the son of the +house still, honest James says, and God bless him. James is richer than I +thought by near a lakh of rupees—and here is a hint for you, Master +Arthur. Mr. Binnie has declared to me in confidence that if his niece, Miss +Rosey, shall marry a person of whom he approves, he will leave her a +considerable part of his fortune.” +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel’s confidant here said that his own arrangements were made in +another quarter, to which statement the Colonel replied knowingly, “I +thought so. A little bird has whispered to me the name of a certain Miss A. I +knew her grandfather, an accommodating old gentleman, and I borrowed some money +from him when I was a subaltern at Calcutta. I tell you in strict confidence, +my dear young friend, that I hope and trust a certain young gentleman of your +acquaintance may be induced to think how good and pretty and sweet-tempered a +girl Miss Mackenzie is, and that she may be brought to like him. If you young +men would marry in good time good and virtuous women—as I am +sure—ahem!—Miss Amory is—half the temptations of your youth +would be avoided. You would neither be dissolute, has many of you seem to me, +or cold and selfish, which are worse vices still. And my prayer is, that my +Clive may cast anchor early out of the reach of temptation, and mate with some +such kind girl as Binnie’s niece. When I first came home I formed other +plans for him which could not be brought to a successful issue; and knowing his +ardent disposition, and having kept an eye on the young rogue’s conduct, +I tremble lest some mischance with a woman should befall him, and long to have +him out of danger.” +</p> + +<p> +So the kind scheme of the two elders was, that their young ones should marry +and be happy ever after, like the Prince and Princess of the Fairy Tale: and +dear Mrs. Mackenzie (have I said that at the commencement of her visit to her +brother she made almost open love to the Colonel?), dear Mrs. Mack was content +to forgo her own chances so that her darling Rosey might be happy. We used to +laugh and say, that as soon as Clive’s father was gone, Josey would be +sent for to join Rosey. But little Josey being under her grandmother’s +sole influence took a most gratifying and serious turn; wrote letters, in which +she questioned the morality of operas, Towers of London, and waxworks; and, +before a year was out, married Elder Bogie, of Mr. M’Craw’s church. +</p> + +<p> +Presently was to be read in the <i>Morning Post</i> an advertisement of the +sale of three horses (the description and pedigree following), “the +property of an officer returning to India. Apply to the groom, at the stables, +150 Fitzroy Square.” +</p> + +<p> +The Court of Directors invited Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome to an entertainment +given to Major-General Sir Ralph Spurrier, K.C.B., appointed Commander-in-Chief +at Madras. Clive was asked to this dinner too, “and the governor’s +health was drunk, sir,” Clive said, “after dinner, and the dear old +fellow made such a good speech, in returning thanks!” +</p> + +<p> +He, Clive, and I made a pilgrimage to Grey Friars, and had the Green to +ourselves, it being the Bartlemytide vacation, and the boys all away. One of +the good old Poor Brothers whom we both recollected accompanied us round the +place; and we sate for a while in Captain Scarsdale’s little room (he had +been a Peninsular officer, who had sold out, and was fain in his old age to +retire into this calm retreat). And we talked, as old schoolmates and lovers +talk, about subjects interesting to schoolmates and lovers only. +</p> + +<p> +One by one the Colonel took leave of his friends, young and old; ran down to +Newcome, and gave Mrs. Mason a parting benediction; slept a night at Tom +Smith’s, and passed a day with Jack Brown; went to all the boys’ +and girls’ schools where his little <i>protégés</i> were, so as to be +able to take the very last and most authentic account of the young folks to +their parents in India; spent a week at Marble Hill, and shot partridges there, +but for which entertainment, Clive said, the place would have been intolerable; +and thence proceeded to Brighton to pass a little time with good Miss Honeyman. +As for Sir Brian’s family, when Parliament broke up, of course, they did +not stay in town. Barnes, of course, had part of a moor in Scotland, whither +his uncle and cousin did not follow him. The rest went abroad. Sir Brian wanted +the waters of Aix-la-Chapelle. The brothers parted very good friends; Lady +Anne, and all the young people, heartily wished him farewell. I believe Sir +Brian even accompanied the Colonel downstairs from the drawing-room, in Park +Lane, and actually came out and saw his brother into his cab (just as he would +accompany old Lady Bagges when she came to look at her account at the bank, +from the parlour to her carriage). But as for Ethel, she was not going to be +put off with this sort of parting and the next morning a cab dashed up to +Fitzroy Square, and a veiled lady came out thence, and was closeted with +Colonel Newcome for five minutes, and when he led her back to the carriage +there were tears in his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Mackenzie joked about the transaction (having watched it from the +dining-room windows), and asked the Colonel who his sweetheart was? Newcome +replied very sternly, that he hoped no one would ever speak lightly of that +young lady, whom he loved as his own daughter; and I thought Rosey looked vexed +at the praises thus bestowed. This was the day before we all went down to +Brighton. Miss Honeyman’s lodgings were taken for Mr. Binnie and his +ladies. Clive and her dearest Colonel had apartments next door. Charles +Honeyman came down and preached one of his very best sermons. Fred Bayham was +there, and looked particularly grand and noble on the pier and the cliff. I am +inclined to think he had had some explanation with Thomas Newcome, which had +placed F. B. in a state of at least temporary prosperity. Whom did he not +benefit whom he knew, and what eye that saw him did not bless him? F. B. was +greatly affected at Charles’s sermon, of which our party of course could +see the allusions. Tears actually rolled down his brown cheeks; for Fred was a +man very easily moved, and, as it were, a softened sinner. Little Rosey and her +mother sobbed audibly, greatly to the surprise of stout old Miss Honeyman, who +had no idea of such watery exhibitions, and to the discomfiture of poor +Newcome, who was annoyed to have his praises even hinted in that sacred +edifice. Good Mr. James Binnie came for once to church; and, however variously +their feelings might be exhibited or, repressed, I think there was not one of +the little circle there assembled who did not bring to the place a humble +prayer and a gentle heart. It was the last Sabbath-bell our dear friend was to +hear for many a day on his native shore. The great sea washed the beach as we +came out, blue with the reflection of the skies, and its innumerable waves +crested with sunshine. I see the good man and his boy yet clinging to him, as +they pace together by the shore. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel was very much pleased by a visit from Mr. Ridley and the +communication which he made (my Lord Todmorden has a mansion and park in +Sussex, whence Mr. Ridley came to pay his duty to Colonel Newcome). He said he +“never could forget the kindness with which the Colonel have a treated +him. His lordship have taken a young man, which Mr. Ridley had brought him up +under his own eye, and can answer for him, Mr. R. says, with impunity; and +which he is to be his lordship’s own man for the future. And his lordship +have appointed me his steward, and having, as he always hev been, been most +liberal in point of sellary. And me and Mrs. Ridley was thinking, sir, most +respectfully, with regard to our son, Mr. John James Ridley—as good and +honest a young man, which I am proud to say it, that if Mr. Clive goes abroad +we should be most proud and happy if John James went with him. And the money +which you have paid us so handsome, Colonel, he shall have it; which it was the +excellent ideer of Miss Cann; and my lord have ordered a pictur of John James +in the most libral manner, and have asked my son to dinner, sir, at his +lordship’s own table, which I have faithfully served him five-and-thirty +years.” Ridley’s voice fairly broke down at this part of his +speech, which evidently was a studied composition, and he uttered no more of +it, for the Colonel cordially shook him by the hand, and Clive jumped up +clapping his, and saying that it was the greatest wish of his heart that J. J. +and he should be companions in France and Italy. “But I did not like to +ask my dear old father,” he said, “who has had so many calls on his +purse, and besides, I knew that J. J. was too independent to come as my +follower.” +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel’s berth has been duly secured ere now. This time he makes the +overland journey; and his passage is to Alexandria, taken in one of the noble +ships of the Peninsular and Oriental Company. His kit is as simple as a +subaltern’s; I believe, but for Clive’s friendly compulsion, he +would have carried back no other than the old uniform which has served him for +so many years. Clive and his father travelled to Southampton together by +themselves. F. B. and I took the Southampton coach: we had asked leave to see +the last of him, and say a “God bless you” to our dear old friend. +So the day came when the vessel was to sail. We saw his cabin, and witnessed +all the bustle and stir on board the good ship on a day of departure. Our +thoughts, however, were fixed but on one person—the case, no doubt, with +hundreds more on such a day. There was many a group of friends closing +wistfully together on the sunny deck, and saying the last words of blessing and +farewell. The bustle of the ship passes dimly round about them; the hurrying +noise of crew and officers running on their duty; the tramp and song of the men +at the capstan-bars; the bells ringing, as the hour for departure comes nearer +and nearer, as mother and son, father and daughter, husband and wife, hold +hands yet for a little while. We saw Clive and his father talking together by +the wheel. Then they went below; and a passenger, her husband, asked me to give +my arm to an almost fainting lady, and to lead her off the ship. Bayham +followed us, carrying their two children in his arms, as the husband turned +away and walked aft. The last bell was ringing, and they were crying, +“Now for the shore.” The whole ship had begun to throb ere this, +and its great wheels to beat the water, and the chimneys had flung out their +black signals for sailing. We were as yet close on the dock, and we saw Clive +coming up from below, looking very pale; the plank was drawn after him as he +stepped on land. +</p> + +<p> +Then, with three great cheers from the dock, and from the crew in the bows, and +from the passengers on the quarter-deck, the noble ship strikes the first +stroke of her destined race, and swims away towards the ocean. “There he +is, there he is,” shouts Fred Bayham, waving his hat. “God bless +him, God bless him!” I scarce perceived at the ship’s side, +beckoning an adieu, our dear old friend, when the lady, whose husband had +bidden me to lead her away from the ship, fainted in my arms. Poor soul! Her, +too, has fate stricken. Ah, pangs of hearts torn asunder, passionate regrets, +cruel, cruel partings! Shall you not end one day, ere many years; when the +tears shall be wiped from all eyes, and there shall be neither sorrow nor pain? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0027"></a> +CHAPTER XXVII.<br> +Youth and Sunshine</h2> + +<p> +Although Thomas Newcome was gone back to India in search of more money, finding +that he could not live upon his income at home, he was nevertheless rather a +wealthy man; and at the moment of his departure from Europe had two lakhs of +rupees invested in various Indian securities. “A thousand a year,” +he thought, “more, added to the interest accruing from my two lakhs, will +enable us to live very comfortably at home. I can give Clive ten thousand +pounds when he marries, and five hundred a year out of my allowances. If he +gets a wife with some money, they may have every enjoyment of life; and as for +his pictures, he can paint just as few or as many of those as he +pleases.” Newcome did not seem seriously to believe that his son would +live by painting pictures, but considered Clive as a young prince who chose to +amuse himself with painting. The Muse of Painting is a lady whose social +station is not altogether recognised with us as yet. The polite world permits a +gentleman to amuse himself with her; but to take her for better or for worse! +forsake all other chances and cleave unto her! to assume her name! Many a +respectable person would be as much shocked at the notion, as if his son had +married an opera-dancer. +</p> + +<p> +Newcome left a hundred a year in England, of which the principal sum was to be +transferred to his boy as soon as he came of age. He endowed Clive further with +a considerable annual sum, which his London bankers would pay: “And if +these are not enough,” says he kindly, “you must draw upon my +agents, Messrs. Frank and Merryweather at Calcutta, who will receive your +signature just as if it was mine.” Before going away, he introduced Clive +to F. and M.’s corresponding London house, Jolly and Baines, Fog +Court—leading out of Leadenhall—Mr. Jolly, a myth as regarded the +firm, now married to Lady Julia Jolly—a Park in Kent—evangelical +interest—great at Exeter Hall meetings—knew Clive’s +grandmother—that is, Mrs. Newcome, a most admirable woman. Baines +represents a house in the Regent’s Park, with an emigrative tendency +towards Belgravia—musical daughters—Herr Moscheles, Benedick, +Ella,—Osborne, constantly at dinner-sonatas in P flat (op. 936), composed +and dedicated to Miss Euphemia Baines, by her most obliged, most obedient +servant, Ferdinando Blitz. Baines hopes that his young friend will come +constantly to York Terrace, where the most girls will be happy to see him; and +mentions at home a singular whim of Colonel Newcome’s, who can give his +son twelve or fifteen hundred a year, and makes an artist of him. Euphemia and +Flora adore artists; they feel quite interested about this young man. “He +was scribbling caricatures all the time I was talking with his father in my +parlour,” says Mr. Baines, and produces a sketch of an orange-woman near +the Bank, who had struck Clive’s eyes, and been transferred to the +blotting-paper in Fog Court. “<i>He</i> needn’t do anything,” +said good-natured Mr. Baines. “I guess all the pictures he’ll paint +won’t sell for much.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is he fond of music, papa?” asks Miss. “What a pity he had +not come to our last evening; and now the season is over!” +</p> + +<p> +“And Mr. Newcome is going out of town. He came to me, to-day for circular +notes—says he’s going through Switzerland and into +Italy—lives in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. Queer place, ain’t +it? Put his name down in your book, and ask him to dinner next season.” +</p> + +<p> +Before Clive went away, he had an apparatus of easels, sketching-stools, +umbrellas, and painting-boxes, the most elaborate and beautiful that Messrs. +Soap and Isaac could supply. It made J. J.’s eyes glisten to see those +lovely gimcracks of art; those smooth mill-boards, those slab-tinted +sketching-blocks, and glistening rows of colour-tubes lying in their boxes, +which seemed to cry, “Come, squeeze me.” If painting-boxes made +painters, if sketching-stools would but enable one to sketch, surely I would +hasten this very instant to Messrs. Soap and Isaac! but, alas! these pretty +toys no more make artists than cowls make monks. +</p> + +<p> +As a proof that Clive did intend to practise his profession, and to live by it +too, at this time he took four sporting sketches to a printseller in the +Haymarket, and disposed of them at the rate of seven shillings and sixpence per +sketch. His exultation at receiving a sovereign and half a sovereign from Mr. +Jones was boundless. “I can do half a dozen of these things easily in a +morning,” he says. “Two guineas a day is twelve guineas—say +ten guineas a week, for I won’t work on Sundays, and may take a holiday +in the week besides. Ten guineas a week is five hundred a year. That is pretty +nearly as much money as I shall want, and I need not draw the dear old +governor’s allowance at all.” He wrote an ardent letter, full of +happiness and affection, to the kind father, which he shall find a month after +he has arrived in India, and read to his friends in Calcutta and Barrackpore. +Clive invited many of his artist friends to a grand feast in honour of the +thirty shillings. The King’s Arms, Kensington, was the hotel selected +(tavern beloved of artists for many score years!). Gandish was there, and the +Gandishites, and some chosen spirits from the Life Academy, Clipstone Street, +and J. J. was vice-president, with Fred Bayham by his side, to make the +speeches and carve the mutton; and I promise you many a merry song was sung, +and many a health drunk in flowing bumpers; and as jolly a party was assembled +as any London contained that day. The <i>beau monde</i> had quitted it; the +Park was empty as we crossed it; and the leaves of Kensington Gardens had begun +to fall, dying after the fatigues of a London season. We sang all the way home +through Knightsbridge and by the Park railings, and the Covent Garden carters +halting at the Half-way House were astonished at our choruses. There is no +half-way house now; no merry chorus at midnight. +</p> + +<p> +Then Clive and J. J. took the steamboat to Antwerp; and those who love pictures +may imagine how the two young men rejoiced in one of the most picturesque +cities of the world; where they went back straightway into the sixteenth +century; where the inn at which they stayed (delightful old Grand Laboureur, +thine ancient walls are levelled! thy comfortable hospitalities exist no more!) +seemed such a hostelry as that where Quentin Durward first saw his sweetheart; +where knights of Velasquez or burgomasters of Rubens seemed to look from the +windows of the tall-gabled houses and the quaint porches; where the Bourse +still stood, the Bourse of three hundred years ago, and you had but to supply +figures with beards and ruffs, and rapiers and trunk-hose, to make the picture +complete; where to be awakened by the carillon of the bells was to waken to the +most delightful sense of life and happiness; where nuns, actual nuns, walked +the streets, and every figure in the Place de Meir, and every devotee at +church, kneeling and draped in black, or entering the confessional (actually +the confessional!), was a delightful subject for the new sketchbook. Had Clive +drawn as much everywhere as at Antwerp, Messrs. Soap and Isaac might have made +a little income by supplying him with materials. +</p> + +<p> +After Antwerp, Clive’s correspondent gets a letter dated from the Hotel +de Suede at Brussels, which contains an elaborate eulogy of the cookery and +comfort of that hotel, where the wines, according to the writer’s +opinion, are unmatched almost in Europe. And this is followed by a description +of Waterloo, and a sketch of Hougoumont, in which J. J. is represented running +away in the character of a French grenadier, Clive pursuing him in the +lifeguard’s habit, and mounted on a thundering charger. +</p> + +<p> +Next follows a letter from Bonn. Verses about Drachenfels of a not very +superior style of versification; an account of Crichton, an old Grey Friars +man, who has become a student at the university; of a commerz, a drunken bout, +and a students’ duel at Bonn. “And whom should I find here,” +says Mr. Clive, “but Aunt Anne, Ethel, Miss Quigley, and the little ones, +the whole detachment under the command of Kuhn? Uncle Brian is staying at Aix. +He is recovered from his attack. And, upon my conscience, I think my pretty +cousin looks prettier every day. +</p> + +<p> +“When they are not in London,” Clive goes on to write, “or I +sometimes think when Barnes or old Lady Kew are not looking over them, they are +quite different. You know how cold they have latterly seemed to us, and how +their conduct annoyed my dear old father. Nothing can be kinder than their +behaviour since we have met. It was on the little hill at Godesberg: J. J. and +I were mounting to the ruin, followed by the beggars who waylay you, and have +taken the place of the other robbers who used to live there, when there came a +procession of donkeys down the steep, and I heard a little voice cry, +‘Hullo! it’s Clive! hooray, Clive!’ and an ass came pattering +down the declivity, with a little pair of white trousers at an immensely wide +angle over the donkey’s back, and behold there was little Alfred grinning +with all his might. +</p> + +<p> +“He turned his beast and was for galloping up the hill again, I suppose +to inform his relations; but the donkey refused with many kicks, one of which +sent Alfred plunging amongst the stones, and we were rubbing him down just as +the rest of the party came upon us. Miss Quigley looked very grim on an old +white pony; my aunt was on a black horse that might have turned grey, he is so +old. Then come two donkeysful of children, with Kuhn as supercargo; then Ethel +on donkey-back, too, with a bunch of wildflowers in her hand, a great straw hat +with a crimson ribbon, a white muslin jacket, you know, bound at the waist with +a ribbon of the first, and a dark skirt, with a shawl round her feet which Kuhn +had arranged. As she stopped, the donkey fell to cropping greens in the hedge; +the trees there chequered her white dress and face with shadow. Her eyes, hair, +and forehead were in shadow too—but the light was all upon her right +cheek: upon her shoulder down to her arm, which was of a warmer white, and on +the bunch of flowers which she held, blue, yellow, and red poppies, and so +forth. +</p> + +<p> +“J. J. says, ‘I think the birds began to sing louder when she +came.’ We have both agreed that she is the handsomest woman in England. +It’s not her form merely, which is certainly as yet too thin and a little +angular—it is her colour. I do not care for woman or picture without +colour. O, ye carnations! O, ye <i>lilia mista rosis!</i> O such black hair and +solemn eyebrows! It seems to me the roses and carnations have bloomed again +since we saw them last in London, when they were drooping from the exposure to +night air, candle-light, and heated ballrooms. +</p> + +<p> +“Here I was in the midst of a regiment of donkeys, bearing a crowd of +relations; J. J. standing modestly in the background—beggars completing +the group, and Kuhn ruling over them with voice and gesture, oaths and whip. +Throw in the Rhine in the distance flashing by the Seven Mountains—but +mind and make Ethel the principal figure: if you make her like, she certainly +<i>will</i> be—and other lights will be only minor fires. You may paint +her form, but you can’t paint her colour; that is what beats us in +nature. A line must come right; you can force that into its place, but you +can’t compel the circumambient air. There is no yellow I know of will +make sunshine, and no blue that is a bit like sky. And so with pictures: I +think you only get signs of colour, and formulas to stand for it. That +brick-dust which we agree to receive as representing a blush, look at +it—can you say it is in the least like the blush which flickers and +varies as it sweeps over the down of the cheek—as you see sunshine +playing over a meadow? Look into it and see what a variety of delicate blooms +there are! a multitude of flowerets twining into one tint! We may break our +colour-pots and strive after the line alone: that is palpable and we can grasp +it—the other is impossible and beyond us.” Which sentiment I here +set down, not on account of its worth (and I think it is contradicted—as +well as asserted—in more than one of the letters I subsequently had from +Mr. Clive, but it may serve to show the ardent and impulsive disposition of +this youth), by whom all beauties of art and nature, animate or inanimate (the +former especially), were welcomed with a gusto and delight whereof colder +temperaments are incapable. The view of a fine landscape, a fine picture, a +handsome woman, would make this harmless young sensualist tipsy with pleasure. +He seemed to derive an actual hilarity and intoxication as his eye drank in +these sights; and, though it was his maxim that all dinners were good, and he +could eat bread and cheese and drink small beer with perfect good-humour, I +believe that he found a certain pleasure in a bottle of claret, which most +men’s systems were incapable of feeling. +</p> + +<p> +This springtime of youth is the season of letter-writing. A lad in high health +and spirits, the blood running briskly in his young veins, and the world, and +life, and nature bright and welcome to him, looks out, perforce, for some +companion to whom he may impart his sense of the pleasure which he enjoys, and +which were not complete unless a friend were by to share it. I was the person +most convenient for the young fellow’s purpose; he was pleased to confer +upon me the title of friend <i>en titre</i>, and confidant in particular; to +endow the confidant in question with a number of virtues and excellences which +existed very likely only in the lad’s imagination; to lament that the +confidant had no sister whom he, Clive, might marry out of hand; and to make me +a thousand simple protests of affection and admiration, which are noted here as +signs of the young man’s character, by no means as proofs of the goodness +of mine. The books given to the present biographer by “his affectionate +friend, Clive Newcome,” still bear on the titlepages the marks of that +boyish hand and youthful fervour. He had a copy of Walter Lorraine bound and +gilt with such splendour as made the author blush for his performance, which +has since been seen at the bookstalls at a price suited to the very humblest +purses. He fired up and fought a newspaper critic (whom Clive met at the Haunt +one night) who had dared to write an article in which that work was slighted; +and if, in the course of nature, his friendship has outlived that rapturous +period, the kindness of the two old friends, I hope, is not the less because it +is no longer romantic, and the days of white vellum and gilt edges have passed +away. From the abundance of the letters which the affectionate young fellow now +wrote, the ensuing portion of his youthful history is compiled. It may serve to +recall passages of their early days to such of his seniors as occasionally turn +over the leaves of a novel; and in the story of his faults, indiscretions, +passions, and actions, young readers may be reminded of their own. +</p> + +<p> +Now that the old Countess, and perhaps Barnes, were away, the barrier between +Clive and this family seemed to be withdrawn. The young folks who loved him +were free to see him as often as he would come. They were going to Baden: would +he come too? Baden was on the road to Switzerland, he might journey to +Strasbourg, Basle, and so on. Clive was glad enough to go with his cousins, and +travel in the orbit of such a lovely girl as Ethel Newcome. J. J. performed the +second part always when Clive was present: and so they all travelled to +Coblentz, Mayence, and Frankfort together, making the journey which everybody +knows, and sketching the mountains and castles we all of us have sketched. +Ethel’s beauty made all the passengers on all the steamers look round and +admire. Clive was proud of being in the suite of such a lovely person. The +family travelled with a pair of those carriages which used to thunder along the +Continental roads a dozen years since, and from interior, box, and rumble +discharge a dozen English people at hotel gates. +</p> + +<p> +The journey is all sunshine and pleasure and novelty: the circular notes with +which Mr. Baines of Fog Court has supplied Clive Newcome, Esquire, enabled that +young gentleman to travel with great ease and comfort. He has not yet ventured +upon engaging a <i>valet de chambre</i>, it being agreed between him and J. J. +that two travelling artists have no right to such an aristocratic appendage; +but he has bought a snug little britzska at Frankfort (the youth has very +polite tastes, is already a connoisseur in wine, and has no scruple in ordering +the best at the hotels), and the britzska travels in company with Lady +Anne’s caravan, either in its wake so as to be out of reach of the dust, +or more frequently ahead of that enormous vehicle and its tender, in which come +the children and the governess of Lady Anne Newcome, guarded by a huge and +melancholy London footman, who beholds Rhine and Neckar, valley and mountain, +village and ruin, with a like dismal composure. Little Alfred and little Egbert +are by no means sorry to escape from Miss Quigley and the tender, and for a +stage ride or two in Clive’s britzska. The little girls cry sometimes to +be admitted to that privilege. I dare say Ethel would like very well to quit +her place in the caravan, where she sits, circumvented by mamma’s dogs, +and books, bags, dressing-boxes, and gimcrack cases, without which apparatus +some English ladies of condition cannot travel; but Miss Ethel is grown up, she +is out, and has been presented at Court, and is a person of too great dignity +now to sit anywhere but in the place of state in the chariot corner. I like to +think, for my part, of the gallant young fellow taking his pleasure and +enjoying his holiday, and few sights are more pleasant than to watch a happy, +manly English youth, free-handed and generous-hearted, content and good-humour +shining in his honest face, pleased and pleasing, eager, active, and thankful +for services, and exercising bravely his noble youthful privilege to be happy +and to enjoy. Sing, cheery spirit, whilst the spring lasts; bloom whilst the +sun shines, kindly flowers of youth! You shall be none the worse to-morrow for +having been happy to-day, if the day brings no action to shame it. As for J. +J., he too had his share of enjoyment; the charming scenes around him did not +escape his bright eye, he absorbed pleasure in his silent way, he was up with +the sunrise always, and at work with his eyes and his heart if not with his +hands. A beautiful object too is such a one to contemplate, a pure virgin soul, +a creature gentle, pious, and full of love, endowed with sweet gifts, humble +and timid; but for truth’s and justice’s sake inflexible, thankful +to God and man, fond, patient, and faithful. Clive was still his hero as ever, +his patron, his splendid young prince and chieftain. Who was so brave, who was +so handsome, generous, witty as Clive? To hear Clive sing, as the lad would +whilst they were seated at their work, or driving along on this happy journey, +through fair landscapes in the sunshine, gave J. J. the keenest pleasure; his +wit was a little slow, but he would laugh with his eyes at Clive’s +sallies, or ponder over them and explode with laughter presently, giving a new +source of amusement to these merry travellers, and little Alfred would laugh at +J. J.’s laughing; and so, with a hundred harmless jokes to enliven, and +the ever-changing, ever-charming smiles of nature to cheer and accompany it, +the happy day’s journey would come to an end. +</p> + +<p> +So they travelled by the accustomed route to the prettiest town of all places +where Pleasure has set up her tents; and where the gay, the melancholy, the +idle or occupied, grave or haughty, come for amusement, or business, or +relaxation; where London beauties, having danced and flirted all the season, +may dance and flirt a little more; where well-dressed rogues from all quarters +of the world assemble; where I have seen severe London lawyers, forgetting +their wigs and the Temple, trying their luck against fortune and M. Bénazet; +where wistful schemers conspire and prick cards down, and deeply meditate the +infallible coup; and try it, and lose it, and borrow a hundred francs to go +home; where even virtuous British ladies venture their little stakes, and draw +up their winnings with trembling rakes, by the side of ladies who are not +virtuous at all, no, not even by name; where young prodigals break the bank +sometimes, and carry plunder out of a place which Hercules himself could +scarcely compel; where you meet wonderful countesses and princesses, whose +husbands are almost always absent on their vast estates—in Italy, Spain, +Piedmont—who knows where their lordships’ possessions +are?—while trains of suitors surround those wandering Penelopes their +noble wives; Russian Boyars, Spanish Grandees of the Order of the Fleece, +Counts of France, and Princes Polish and Italian innumerable, who perfume the +gilded halls with their tobacco-smoke, and swear in all languages against the +black and the red. The famous English monosyllable by which things, persons, +luck, even eyes, are devoted to the infernal gods, we may be sure is not +wanting in that Babel. Where does one not hear it? “D—— the +luck,” says Lord Kew, as the croupier sweeps off his lordship’s +rouleaux. “D—— the luck,” says Brown the bagman, who +has been backing his lordship with five-franc pieces. “Ah, body of +Bacchus!” says Count Felice, whom we all remember a courier. “Ah, +sacré coup,” cries M. le Vicomte de Florac, as his last louis parts +company from him—each cursing in his native tongue. Oh, sweet chorus! +</p> + +<p> +That Lord Kew should be at Baden is no wonder. If you heard of him at the +Finish, or at Buckingham Palace ball, or in a watch-house, or at the Third +Cataract, or at a Newmarket meeting, you would not be surprised. He goes +everywhere; does everything with all his might; knows everybody. Last week he +won who knows how many thousand louis from the bank (it appears Brown has +chosen one of the unlucky days to back his lordship). He will eat his supper as +gaily after a great victory as after a signal defeat; and we know that to win +with magnanimity requires much more constancy than to lose. His sleep will not +be disturbed by one event or the other. He will play skittles all the morning +with perfect contentment, romp with children in the forenoon (he is the friend +of half the children in the place), or he will cheerfully leave the green table +and all the risk and excitement there, to take a hand at sixpenny whist with +General Fogey, or to give the six Miss Fogeys a turn each in the ballroom. From +H.R.H. the Prince Royal of ——, who is the greatest guest at Baden, +down to Brown the bagman, who does not consider himself the smallest, Lord Kew +is hail fellow with everybody, and has a kind word from and for all. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0028"></a> +CHAPTER XXVIII.<br> +In which Clive begins to see the World</h2> + +<p> +In the company assembled at Baden, Clive found one or two old acquaintances; +among them his friend of Paris, M. de Florac, not in quite so brilliant a +condition as when Newcome had last met him on the Boulevard. Florac owned that +Fortune had been very unkind to him at Baden; and, indeed, she had not only +emptied his purse, but his portmanteaus, jewel-box, and linen-closet—the +contents of all of which had ranged themselves on the red and black against +Monsieur Bénazet’s crown-pieces: whatever side they took was, however, +the unlucky one. “This campaign has been my Moscow, <i>mon +cher</i>,” Florac owned to Clive. “I am conquered by Bénazet; I +have lost in almost every combat. I have lost my treasure, my baggage, my +ammunition of war, everything but my honour, which, <i>au reste</i>, Mons. +Bénazet will not accept as a stake; if he would, there are plenty here, believe +me, who would set it on the trente-et-quarante. Sometimes I have had a mind to +go home; my mother, who is an angel all forgiveness, would receive her +prodigal, and kill the fatted veal for me. But what will you? He annoys +me—the domestic veal. Besides, my brother the Abbé, though the best of +Christians, is a Jew upon certain matters; a Bénazet who will not +<i>troquer</i> absolution except against repentance; and I have not for a sou +of repentance in my pocket! I have been sorry, yes—but it was because odd +came up in place of even, or the reverse. The accursed <i>après</i> has chased +me like a remorse, and when black has come up I have wished myself converted to +red. Otherwise I have no repentance—I am <i>joueur</i>—nature has +made me so, as she made my brother <i>dévot</i>. The Archbishop of Strasbourg +is of our parents; I saw his grandeur when I went lately to Strasbourg, on my +last pilgrimage to the Mont de Piété. I owned to him that I would pawn his +cross and ring to go play: the good prelate laughed, and said his chaplain +should keep an eye on them. Will you dine with me? The landlord of my hotel was +the intendant of our cousin, the Duc d’Ivry, and will give me credit to +the day of judgment. I do not abuse his noble confidence. My dear! there are +covers of silver put upon my table every day with which I could retrieve my +fortune, did I listen to the suggestions of Satanas; but I say to him, <i>Vade +retro</i>. Come and dine with me—Duluc’s kitchen is very +good.” +</p> + +<p> +These easy confessions were uttered by a gentleman who was nearly forty years +of age, and who had indeed played the part of a young man in Paris and the +great European world so long, that he knew or chose to perform no other. He did +not want for abilities; had the best temper in the world; was well bred and +gentlemanlike always; and was gay even after Moscow. His courage was known, and +his character for bravery and another kind of gallantry probably exaggerated by +his bad reputation. Had his mother not been alive, perhaps he would have +believed in the virtue of no woman. But this one he worshipped, and spoke with +tenderness and enthusiasm of her constant love and patience and goodness. +“See her miniature!” he said, “I never separate myself from +it—oh, never! It saved my life in an affair about—about a woman who +was not worth the powder which poor Jules and I burned for her. His ball struck +me here, upon the waistcoat, bruising my rib and sending me to my bed, which I +never should have left alive but for this picture. Oh, she is an angel, my +mother! I am sure that Heaven has nothing to deny that saint, and that her +tears wash out my sins.” +</p> + +<p> +Clive smiled. “I think Madame de Florac must weep a good deal,” he +said. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Enormément</i>, my friend! My faith! I do not deny it! I give her +cause, night and evening. I am possessed by demons! This little Affenthaler +wine of this country has a little smack which is most agreeable. The passions +tear me, my young friend! Play is fatal, but play is not so fatal as woman. +Pass me the écrévisses, they are most succulent. Take warning by me, and avoid +both. I saw you <i>rôder</i> round the green tables, and marked your eyes as +they glistened over the heaps of gold, and looked at some of our beauties of +Baden. Beware of such sirens, young man! and take me for your Mentor; avoiding +what I have done—that understands itself. You have not played as yet? Do +not do so; above all avoid a martingale, if you do. Play ought not to be an +affair of calculation, but of inspiration. I have calculated infallibly, and +what has been the effect? Gousset empty, tiroirs empty, nécessaire parted for +Strasbourg! Where is my fur pelisse, Frédéric?” +</p> + +<p> +“Parbleu, vous le savez bien, Monsieur le Vicomte,” says Frédéric, +the domestic, who was waiting on Clive and his friend. +</p> + +<p> +“A pelisse lined with true sable, and, worth three thousand francs, that +I won of a little Russian at billiards. That pelisse at Strasbourg (where the +infamous worms of the Mount of Piety are actually gnawing her). Two hundred +francs and this <i>reconnaissance</i>, which Frédéric receive, are all that now +represent the pelisse. How many chemises have I, Frédéric?” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, parbleu, Monsieur le Vicomte sait bien que nous avons toujours +vingt-quatre chemises,” says Frédéric, grumbling. +</p> + +<p> +Monsieur le Vicomte springs up shrieking from the dinner-table. +“Twenty-four shirts,” says he, “and I have been a week +without a louis in my pocket! <i>Bélître! Nigaud!</i>” He flings open one +drawer after another, but there are no signs of that—superfluity of linen +of which the domestic spoke, whose countenance now changes from a grim frown to +a grim smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, my faithful Frédéric, I pardon thee! Mr. Newcome will understand my +harmless <i>supercherie</i>. Frédéric was in my company of the Guard, and +remains with me since. He is Caleb Balderstone and I am Ravenswood. Yes, I am +Edgard. Let us have coffee and a cigar, Balderstone.” +</p> + +<p> +“Plait-il, Monsieur le Vicomte?” says the French Caleb. +</p> + +<p> +“Thou comprehendest not English. Thou readest not Valtare Scott, +thou!” cries the master. “I was recounting to Monsieur Newcome thy +history and my misfortunes. Go seek coffee for us, <i>Nigaud</i>.” And as +the two gentlemen partake of that exhilarating liquor, the elder confides gaily +to his guest the reason why he prefers taking coffee at the hotel to the coffee +at the great Café of the Redoute, with a <i>duris urgéns in rebus égestāss!</i> +pronounced in the true French manner. +</p> + +<p> +Clive was greatly amused by the gaiety of the Viscount after his misfortunes +and his Moscow; and thought that one of Mr. Baines’s circular notes might +not be ill laid out in succouring this hero. It may have been to this end that +Florac’s confessions tended; though, to do him justice, the incorrigible +young fellow would confide his adventures to any one who would listen; and the +exact state of his wardrobe, and the story of his pawned pelisse, +dressing-case, rings and watches, were known to all Baden. +</p> + +<p> +“You tell me to marry and range myself,” said Clive (to whom the +Viscount was expatiating upon the charms of the <i>superbe</i> young +<i>Anglaise</i> with whom he had seen Clive walking on the promenade). +“Why do you not marry and range yourself too?” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh, my dear! I am married already. You do not know it? I am married +since the Revolution of July. Yes. We were poor in those days, as poor we +remain. My cousins the Duc d’Ivry’s sons and his grandson were +still alive. Seeing no other resource and pursued by the Arabs, I espoused the +Vicomtesse de Florac. I gave her my name, you comprehend, in exchange for her +own odious one. She was Miss Higg. Do you know the family Higg of Manchesterre +in the comte of Lancastre? She was then a person of a ripe age. The Vicomtesse +is now—ah! it is fifteen years since, and she dies not. Our union was not +happy, my friend—Madame Paul de Florac is of the reformed +religion—not of the Anglican Church, you understand—but a dissident +I know not of what sort. We inhabited the Hôtel de Florac for a while after our +union, which was all of convenience, you understand. She filled her salon with +ministers to make you die. She assaulted my poor father in his garden-chair, +whence he could not escape her. She told my sainted mother that she was an +idolatress—she who only idolatrises her children! She called us other +poor Catholics who follow the rites of our fathers, <i>des Romishes;</i> and +Rome, Babylon; and the Holy Father—a scarlet—eh! a scarlet +abomination. She outraged my mother, that angel; essayed to convert the +antechamber and the office; put little books in the Abbé’s bedroom. Eh, +my friend! what a good king was Charles IX., and his mother what a wise +sovereign! I lament that Madame de Florac should have escaped the St. +Barthelemi, when no doubt she was spared on account of her tender age. We have +been separated for many years; her income was greatly exaggerated. Beyond the +payment of my debts I owe her nothing. I wish I could say as much of all the +rest of the world. Shall we take a turn of promenade? <i>Mauvais sujet!</i> I +see you are longing to be at the green table.” +</p> + +<p> +Clive was not longing to be at the green table: but his companion was never +easy at it or away from it. Next to winning, losing, M. de Florac said, was the +best sport—next to losing, looking on. So he and Clive went down to the +Redoute, where Lord Kew was playing with a crowd of awestruck amateurs and +breathless punters admiring his valour and fortune; and Clive, saying that he +knew nothing about the game, took out five Napoleons from his purse, and +besought Florac to invest them in the most profitable manner at roulette. The +other made some faint attempts at a scruple: but the money was speedily laid on +the table, where it increased and multiplied amazingly too; so that in a +quarter of an hour Florac brought quite a handful of gold pieces to his +principal. Then Clive, I dare say blushing as he made the proposal, offered +half the handful of Napoleons to M. de Florac, to be repaid when he thought +fit. And fortune must have been very favourable to the husband of Miss Higg +that night; for in the course of an hour he insisted on paying back +Clive’s loan; and two days afterwards appeared with his shirt-studs (of +course with his shirts also), released from captivity, his watch, rings, and +chains, on the parade; and was observed to wear his celebrated fur pelisse as +he drove back in a britzska from Strasbourg. “As for myself,” wrote +Clive, “I put back into my purse the five Napoleons with which I had +begun; and laid down the whole mass of winnings on the table, where it was +doubled and then quadrupled, and then swept up by the croupiers, greatly to my +ease of mind. And then Lord Kew asked me to supper and we had a merry +night.” +</p> + +<p> +This was Mr. Clive’s first and last appearance as a gambler. J. J. looked +very grave when he heard of these transactions. Clive’s French friend did +not please his English companion at all, nor the friends of Clive’s +French friend, the Russians, the Spaniards, the Italians, of sounding titles +and glittering decorations, and the ladies who belonged to their society. He +saw by chance Ethel, escorted by her cousin Lord Kew, passing through a crowd +of this company one day. There was not one woman there who was not the heroine +of some discreditable story. It was the Comtesse Calypso who had been jilted by +the Duc Ulysse. It was the Marquise Ariane to whom the Prince Thésée had +behaved so shamefully, and who had taken to Bacchus as a consolation. It was +Madame Médée, who had absolutely killed her old father by her conduct regarding +Jason: she had done everything for Jason: she had got him the <i>toison +d’or</i> from the Queen Mother, and now had to meet him every day with +his little blonde bride on his arm! J. J. compared Ethel, moving in the midst +of these folks, to the Lady amidst the rout of Comus. There they were the Fauns +and Satyrs: there they were, the merry Pagans: drinking and dancing, dicing and +sporting; laughing out jests that never should be spoken; whispering rendezvous +to be written in midnight calendars; jeering at honest people who passed under +their palace windows—jolly rebels and repealers of the law. Ah, if Mrs. +Brown, whose children are gone to bed at the hotel, knew but the history of +that calm dignified-looking gentleman who sits under her, and over whose +patient back she frantically advances and withdraws her two-franc piece, whilst +his own columns of louis d’or are offering battle to fortune—how +she would shrink away from the shoulder which she pushes! That man so calm and +well bred, with a string of orders on his breast, so well dressed, with such +white hands, has stabbed trusting hearts; severed family ties; written lying +vows; signed false oaths; torn up pitilessly tender appeals for redress, and +tossed away into the fire supplications blistered with tears; packed cards and +cogged dice; or used pistol or sword as calmly and dexterously as he now ranges +his battalions of gold pieces. +</p> + +<p> +Ridley shrank away from such lawless people with the delicacy belonging to his +timid and retiring nature, but it must be owned that Mr. Clive was by no means +so squeamish. He did not know, in the first place, the mystery of their +iniquities; and his sunny kindly spirit, undimmed by any of the cares which +clouded it subsequently, was disposed to shine upon all people alike. The world +was welcome to him: the day a pleasure: all nature a gay feast: scarce any +dispositions discordant with his own (for pretension only made him laugh, and +hypocrisy he will never be able to understand if he lives to be a hundred years +old): the night brought him a long sleep, and the morning a glad waking. To +those privileges of youth what enjoyments of age are comparable? what +achievements of ambition? what rewards of money and fame? Clive’s happy +friendly nature shone out of his face; and almost all who beheld it felt kindly +towards him. As those guileless virgins of romance and ballad, who walk smiling +through dark forests charming off dragons and confronting lions, the young man +as yet went through the world harmless; no giant waylaid him as yet; no robbing +ogre fed on him: and (greatest danger of all for one of his ardent nature) no +winning enchantress or artful siren coaxed him to her cave, or lured him into +her waters—haunts into which we know so many young simpletons are drawn, +where their silly bones are picked and their tender flesh devoured. +</p> + +<p> +The time was short which Clive spent at Baden, for it has been said the winter +was approaching, and the destination of our young artists was Rome; but he may +have passed some score of days here, to which he and another person in that +pretty watering-place possibly looked back afterwards, as not the unhappiest +period of their lives. Among Colonel Newcome’s papers to which the family +biographer has had subsequent access, there are a couple of letters from Clive, +dated Baden, at this time, and full of happiness, gaiety, and affection. Letter +No. 1 says, “Ethel is the prettiest girl here. At the assemblies all the +princes, counts, dukes, Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, are dying to dance with +her. She sends her dearest love to her uncle.” By the side of the words +“prettiest girl,” was written in a frank female hand the +monosyllable “<i>Stuff;</i>” and as a note to the expression +“dearest love,” with a star to mark the text and the note, are +squeezed, in the same feminine characters, at the bottom of Clive’s page, +the words, “<i>That I do. E. N.</i>” +</p> + +<p> +In letter No. 2, the first two pages are closely written in Clive’s +handwriting, describing his pursuits and studies, and giving amusing details of +the life at Baden, and the company whom he met there—narrating his +<i>rencontre</i> with their Paris friend, M. de Florac, and the arrival of the +Duchesse d’Ivry, Florac’s cousin, whose titles the Vicomte will +probably inherit. Not a word about Florac’s gambling propensities are +mentioned in the letter; but Clive honestly confesses that he has staked five +Napoleons, doubled them, quadrupled them, won ever so much, lost it all back +again, and come away from the table with his original five pounds in his +pocket—proposing never to play any more. “Ethel,” he +concluded, “is looking over my shoulder. She thinks me such a delightful +creature that she is never easy without me. She bids me to say that I am the +best of sons and cousins, and am, in a word, a darling du—” The +rest of this important word is not given, but <i>goose</i> is added in the +female hand. In the faded ink, on the yellow paper that may have crossed and +recrossed oceans, that has lain locked in chests for years, and buried under +piles of family archives, while your friends have been dying and your head has +grown white—who has not disinterred mementos like these—from which +the past smiles at you so sadly, shimmering out of Hades an instant but to sink +back again into the cold shades, perhaps with a faint, faint sound as of a +remembered tone—a ghostly echo of a once familiar laughter? I was looking +of late at a wall in the Naples Museum, whereon a boy of Herculaneum eighteen +hundred years ago had scratched with a nail the figure of a soldier. I could +fancy the child turning round and smiling on me after having done his etching. +Which of us that is thirty years old has not had his Pompeii? Deep under ashes +lies the Life of Youth,—the careless Sport, the Pleasure and Passion, the +darling Joy. You open an old letter-box and look at your own childish scrawls, +or your mother’s letters to you when you were at school; and excavate +your heart. Oh me, for the day when the whole city shall be bare and the +chambers unroofed—and every cranny visible to the Light above, from the +Forum to the Lupanar! +</p> + +<p> +Ethel takes up the pen. “My dear uncle,” she says, “while +Clive is sketching out of window, let me write you a line or two on his paper, +though <i>I know you like to hear no one speak</i> but him. I wish I could draw +him for you as he stands yonder, looking the picture of good health, good +spirits, and good humour. Everybody likes him. He is quite unaffected; always +gay; always pleased. He draws more and more beautifully every day; and his +affection for young Mr. Ridley, who is really a most excellent and astonishing +young man, and actually a better artist than Clive himself, is most romantic, +and does your son the greatest credit. You will order Clive not to sell his +pictures, won’t you? I know it is not wrong, but your son might look +higher than to be an artist. It is a rise for Mr. Ridley, but a fall for him. +An artist, an organist, a pianist, all these are very good people, but you know +not <i>de notre monde</i>, and Clive ought to belong to it. +</p> + +<p> +“We met him at Bonn on our way to a great family gathering here; where, I +must tell you, we are assembled for what I call the Congress of Baden! The +chief of the house of Kew is here, and what time he does not devote to +skittles, to smoking cigars, to the <i>jeu</i> in the evenings, to Madame +d’Ivry, to Madame de Cruchecassée, and the foreign people (of whom there +are a host here of the worst kind, as usual), he graciously bestows on me. Lord +and Lady Dorking are here, with their meek little daughter, Clara Pulleyn; and +Barnes is coming. Uncle Hobson has returned to Lombard Street to relieve guard. +I think you will hear before very long of Lady Clara Newcome. Grandmamma, who +was to have presided at the Congress of Baden, and still, you know, reigns over +the house of Kew, has been stopped at Kissingen with an attack of rheumatism; I +pity poor Aunt Julia, who can never leave her. Here are all our news. I declare +I have filled the whole page; men write closer than we do. I wear the dear +brooch you gave me, often and often; I think of you always, dear, kind uncle, +as your affectionate Ethel.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Besides roulette and trente-et-quarante, a number of amusing games are played +at Baden, which are not performed, so to speak, <i>sur table</i>. These little +diversions and <i>jeux de société</i> can go on anywhere; in an alley in the +park; in a picnic to this old schloss, or that pretty hunting-lodge; at a +tea-table in a lodging-house or hotel; in a ball at the Redoute; in the +play-rooms behind the backs of the gamblers, whose eyes are only cast upon +rakes and rouleaux, and red and black; or on the broad walk in front of the +conversation rooms, where thousands of people are drinking and chattering, +lounging and smoking, whilst the Austrian brass band, in the little music +pavilion, plays the most delightful mazurkas and waltzes. Here the widow plays +her black suit and sets her bright eyes against the rich bachelor, elderly or +young as may be. Here the artful practitioner, who has dealt in a thousand such +games, engages the young simpleton with more money than wit; and knowing his +weakness and her skill, we may safely take the odds, and back rouge et couleur +to win. Here mamma, not having money, perhaps, but metal more attractive, +stakes her virgin daughter against Count Fettacker’s forests and meadows; +or Lord Lackland plays his coronet, of which the jewels have long since been in +pawn, against Miss Bags’ three-per-cents. And so two or three funny +little games were going on at Baden amongst our immediate acquaintance; besides +that vulgar sport round the green table, at which the mob, with whom we have +little to do, was elbowing each other. A hint of these domestic prolusions has +been given to the reader in the foregoing extract from Miss Ethel +Newcome’s letter: likewise some passions have been in play, of which a +modest young English maiden could not be aware. Do not, however, let us be too +prematurely proud of our virtue. That tariff of British virtue is wonderfully +organised. Heaven help the society which made its laws! Gnats are shut out of +its ports, or not admitted without scrutiny and repugnance, whilst herds of +camels are let in. The law professes to exclude some goods (or bads shall we +call them?)—well, some articles of baggage, which are yet smuggled openly +under the eyes of winking officers, and worn every day without shame. Shame! +What is shame? Virtue is very often shameful according to the English social +constitution, and shame honourable. Truth, if yours happens to differ from your +neighbour’s, provokes your friend’s coldness, your mother’s +tears, the world’s persecution. Love is not to be dealt in, save under +restrictions which kill its sweet, healthy, free commerce. Sin in man is so +light, that scarce the fine of a penny is imposed; while for woman it is so +heavy that no repentance can wash it out. Ah! yes; all stories are old. You +proud matrons in your Mayfair markets, have you never seen a virgin sold, or +sold one? Have you never heard of a poor wayfarer fallen among robbers, and not +a Pharisee to help him? of a poor woman fallen more sadly yet, abject in +repentance and tears, and a crowd to stone her? I pace this broad Baden walk as +the sunset is gilding the hills round about, as the orchestra blows its merry +tunes, as the happy children laugh and sport in the alleys, as the lamps of the +gambling-palace are lighted up, as the throngs of pleasure-hunters stroll, and +smoke, and flirt, and hum: and wonder sometimes, is it the sinners who are the +most sinful? Is it poor Prodigal yonder amongst the bad company, calling black +and red and tossing the champagne; or brother Straitlace that grudges his +repentance? Is it downcast Hagar that slinks away with poor little Ishmael in +her hand; or bitter old virtuous Sarah, who scowls at her from my demure Lord +Abraham’s arm? +</p> + +<p> +One day of the previous May, when of course everybody went to visit the +Water-colour Exhibitions, Ethel Newcome was taken to see the pictures by her +grandmother, that rigorous old Lady Kew, who still proposed to reign over all +her family. The girl had high spirit, and very likely hot words had passed +between the elder and the younger lady; such as I am given to understand will +be uttered in the most polite families. They came to a piece by Mr. Hunt, +representing one of those figures which he knows how to paint with such +consummate truth and pathos—a friendless young girl cowering in a +doorway, evidently without home or shelter. The exquisite fidelity of the +details, and the plaintive beauty of the expression of the child, attracted old +Lady Kew’s admiration, who was an excellent judge of works of art; and +she stood for some time looking at the drawing, with Ethel by her side. +Nothing, in truth, could be more simple or pathetic; Ethel laughed, and her +grandmother looking up from her stick on which she hobbled about, saw a very +sarcastic expression in the girl’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“You have no taste for pictures, only for painters, I suppose,” +said Lady Kew. +</p> + +<p> +“I was not looking at the picture,” said Ethel, still with a smile, +“but at the little green ticket in the corner.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sold,” said Lady Kew. “Of course it is sold; all Mr. +Hunt’s pictures are sold. There is not one of them here on which you +won’t see the green ticket. He is a most admirable artist. I don’t +know whether his comedy or tragedy are the most excellent.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think, grandmamma,” Ethel said, “we young ladies in the +world, when we are exhibiting, ought to have little green tickets pinned on our +backs, with ‘Sold’ written on them; it would prevent trouble and +any future haggling, you know. Then at the end of the season the owner would +come to carry us home.” +</p> + +<p> +Grandmamma only said, “Ethel, you are a fool,” and hobbled on to +Mr. Cattermole’s picture hard by. “What splendid colour; what a +romantic gloom; what a flowing pencil and dexterous hand!” Lady Kew could +delight in pictures, applaud good poetry, and squeeze out a tear over a good +novel too. That afternoon, young Dawkins, the rising water-colour artist, who +used to come daily to the gallery and stand delighted before his own piece, was +aghast to perceive that there was no green ticket in the corner of his frame, +and he pointed out the deficiency to the keeper of the pictures. His landscape, +however, was sold and paid for, so no great mischief occurred. On that same +evening, when the Newcome family assembled at dinner in Park Lane, Ethel +appeared with a bright green ticket pinned in the front of her white muslin +frock, and when asked what this queer fancy meant, she made Lady Kew a curtsey, +looking her full in the face, and turning round to her father, said, “I +am a <i>tableau-vivant</i>, papa. I am Number 46 in the Exhibition of the +Gallery of Painters in Water-colours.” +</p> + +<p> +“My love, what do you mean?” says mamma; and Lady Kew, jumping up +on her crooked stick with immense agility, tore the card out of Ethel’s +bosom, and very likely would have boxed her ears, but that her parents were +present and Lord Kew announced. +</p> + +<p> +Ethel talked about pictures the whole evening, and would talk of nothing else. +Grandmamma went away furious. “She told Barnes, and when everybody was +gone there was a pretty row in the building,” said Madam Ethel, with an +arch look, when she narrated the story. “Barnes was ready to kill me and +eat me; but I never was afraid of Barnes.” And the biographer gathers +from this little anecdote, narrated to him, never mind by whom, at a long +subsequent period, that there had been great disputes in Sir Brian +Newcome’s establishment, fierce drawing-room battles, whereof certain +pictures of a certain painter might have furnished the cause, and in which Miss +Newcome had the whole of the family forces against her. That such battles take +place in other domestic establishments, who shall say or shall not say? Who, +when he goes out to dinner, and is received by a bland host with a gay shake of +the hand, and a pretty hostess with a gracious smile of welcome, dares to think +that Mr. Johnson upstairs, half an hour before, was swearing out of his +dressing-room at Mrs. Johnson, for having ordered a turbot instead of a salmon, +or that Mrs. Johnson now talking to Lady Jones so nicely about their mutual +darling children, was crying her eyes out as her maid was fastening her gown, +as the carriages were actually driving up? The servants know these things, but +not we in the dining-room. Hark with what a respectful tone Johnson begs the +clergyman present to say grace! +</p> + +<p> +Whatever these family quarrels may have been, let bygones be bygones, and let +us be perfectly sure, that to whatever purpose Miss Ethel Newcome, for good or +for evil, might make her mind up, she had quite spirit enough to hold her own. +She chose to be Countess of Kew because she chose to be Countess of Kew; had +she set her heart on marrying Mr. Kuhn, she would have had her way, and made +the family adopt it, and called him dear Fritz, as by his godfathers and +godmothers, in his baptism, Mr. Kuhn was called. Clive was but a fancy, if he +had even been so much as that, not a passion, and she fancied a pretty +four-pronged coronet still more. +</p> + +<p> +So that the diatribe wherein we lately indulged, about the selling of virgins, +by no means applies to Lady Anne Newcome, who signed the address to Mrs Stowe, +the other day, along with thousands more virtuous British matrons; but should +the reader haply say, “Is thy fable, O Poet, narrated concerning Tancred +Pulleyn, Earl of Dorking, and Sigismunda, his wife?” the reluctant +moralist is obliged to own that the cap <i>does</i> fit those noble personages, +of whose lofty society you will, however, see but little. +</p> + +<p> +For though I would like to go into an Indian Brahmin’s house, and see the +punkahs, and the purdahs and tattys, and the pretty brown maidens with great +eyes, and great nose-rings, and painted foreheads, and slim waists cased in +Cashmir shawls, Kincob scarfs, curly slippers, gilt trousers, precious anklets +and bangles; and have the mystery of Eastern existence revealed to me (as who +would not who has read the Arabian Nights in his youth?), yet I would not +choose the moment when the Brahmin of the house was dead, his women howling, +his priests doctoring his child of a widow, now frightening her with sermons, +now drugging her with bang, so as to push her on his funeral pile at last, and +into the arms of that carcase, stupefied, but obedient and decorous. And though +I like to walk, even in fancy, in an earl’s house, splendid, well +ordered, where there are feasts and fine pictures and fair ladies and endless +books and good company; yet there are times when the visit is not pleasant; and +when the parents in that fine house are getting ready their daughter for sale, +and frightening away her tears with threats, and stupefying her grief with +narcotics, praying her and imploring her, and dramming her and coaxing her, and +blessing her, and cursing her perhaps, till they have brought her into such a +state as shall fit the poor young thing for that deadly couch upon which they +are about to thrust her. When my lord and lady are so engaged I prefer not to +call at their mansion, Number 1000 in Grosvenor Square, but to partake of a +dinner of herbs rather than of that stalled ox which their cook is roasting +whole. There are some people who are not so squeamish. The family comes, of +course; the Most Reverend the Lord Arch-Brahmin of Benares will attend the +ceremony; there will be flowers and lights and white favours; and quite a +string of carriages up to the pagoda; and such a breakfast afterwards; and +music in the street and little parish boys hurrahing; and no end of speeches +within and tears shed (no doubt), and His Grace the Arch-Brahmin will make a +highly appropriate speech, just with a faint scent of incense about it as such +a speech ought to have; and the young person will slip away unperceived, and +take off her veils, wreaths, orange-flowers, bangles and finery, and will put +on a plain dress more suited for the occasion, and the house-door will +open—and there comes the SUTTEE in company of the body: yonder the pile +is waiting on four wheels with four horses, the crowd hurrahs and the deed is +done. +</p> + +<p> +This ceremony amongst us is so stale and common that to be sure there is no +need to describe its rites, and as women sell themselves for what you call an +establishment every day; to the applause of themselves, their parents, and the +world, why on earth should a man ape at originality and pretend to pity them? +Never mind about the lies at the altar, the blasphemy against the godlike name +of love, the sordid surrender, the smiling dishonour. What the deuce does a +<i>mariage de convenance</i> mean but all this, and are not such sober Hymeneal +torches more satisfactory often than the most brilliant love matches that ever +flamed and burnt out? Of course. Let us not weep when everybody else is +laughing: let us pity the agonised duchess when her daughter, Lady Atalanta, +runs away with the doctor—of course, that’s respectable; let us +pity Lady Iphigenia’s father when that venerable chief is obliged to +offer up his darling child; but it is over <i>her</i> part of the business that +a decorous painter would throw the veil now. Her ladyship’s sacrifice is +performed, and the less said about it the better. +</p> + +<p> +Such was the case regarding an affair which appeared in due subsequence in the +newspapers not long afterwards under the fascinating title of “Marriage +in High Life,” and which was in truth the occasion of the little family +Congress of Baden which we are now chronicling. We all know—everybody at +least who has the slightest acquaintance with the army list—that, at the +commencement of their life, my Lord Kew, my Lord Viscount Rooster, the Earl of +Dorking’s eldest son, and the Honourable Charles Belsize, familiarly +called Jack Belsize, were subaltern officers in one of His Majesty’s +regiments of cuirassier guards. They heard the chimes at midnight like other +young men, they enjoyed their fun and frolics as gentlemen of spirit will do; +sowing their wild oats plentifully, and scattering them with boyish profusion. +Lord Kew’s luck had blessed him with more sacks of oats than fell to the +lot of his noble young companions. Lord Dorking’s house is known to have +been long impoverished; an excellent informant, Major Pendennis, has +entertained me with many edifying accounts of the exploits of Lord +Rooster’s grandfather “with the wild Prince and Poins,” of +his feats in the hunting-field, over the bottle, over the dice-box. He played +two nights and two days at a sitting with Charles Fox, when they both lost sums +awful to reckon. He played often with Lord Steyne, and came away, as all men +did, dreadful sufferers from those midnight encounters. His descendants +incurred the penalties of the progenitor’s imprudence, and Chanticlere, +though one of the finest castles in England, is splendid but for a month in the +year. The estate is mortgaged up to the very castle windows. “Dorking +cannot cut a stick or kill a buck in his own park,” the good old Major +used to tell with tragic accents, “he lives by his cabbages, grapes, and +pineapples, and the fees which people give for seeing the place and gardens, +which are still the show of the county, and among the most splendid in the +island. When Dorking is at Chanticlere, Ballard, who married his sister, lends +him the plate and sends three men with it. Four cooks inside, and four maids +and six footmen on the roof, with a butler driving, come down from London in a +trap, and wait the month. And as the last carriage of the company drives away, +the servants’ coach is packed, and they all bowl back to town again. +It’s pitiable, sir, pitiable.” +</p> + +<p> +In Lord Kew’s youth, the names of himself and his two noble friends +appeared on innumerable slips of stamped paper, conveying pecuniary assurances +of a promissory nature; all of which promises, my Lord Kew singly and most +honourably discharged. Neither of his two companions-in-arms had the means of +meeting these engagements. Ballard, Rooster’s uncle, was said to make his +lordship some allowance. As for Jack Belsize: how he lived; how he laughed; how +he dressed himself so well, and looked so fat and handsome; how he got a +shilling to pay for a cab or a cigar; what ravens fed him; was a wonder to all. +The young men claimed kinsmanship with one another, which those who are learned +in the peerage may unravel. +</p> + +<p> +When Lord Dorking’s eldest daughter married the Honourable and Venerable +Dennis Gallowglass, Archdeacon of Bullintubber (and at present Viscount +Gallowglass and Killbrogue, and Lord Bishop of Ballyshannon), great festivities +took place at Chanticlere, whither the relatives of the high contracting +parties were invited. Among them came poor Jack Belsize, and hence the tears +which are dropping at Baden at this present period of our history. Clara +Pulleyn was then a pretty little maiden of sixteen, and Jack a handsome +guardsman of six or seven and twenty. As she had been especially warned against +Jack as a wicked young rogue, whose <i>antécédents</i> were wofully against +him; as she was never allowed to sit near him at dinner, or to walk with him, +or to play at billiards with him, or to waltz with him; as she was scolded if +he spoke a word to her, or if he picked up her glove, or touched her hand in a +round game, or caught him when they were playing at blindman’s-buff; as +they neither of them had a penny in the world, and were both very good-looking, +of course Clara was always catching Jack at blindman’s-buff; constantly +lighting upon him in the shrubberies or corridors, etc. etc. etc. She fell in +love (she was not the first) with Jack’s broad chest and thin waist; she +thought his whiskers as indeed they were, the handsomest pair in all His +Majesty’s Brigade of Cuirassiers. +</p> + +<p> +We know not what tears were shed in the vast and silent halls of Chanticlere, +when the company were gone, and the four cooks, and four maids, six footmen, +and temporary butler had driven back in their private trap to the metropolis, +which is not forty miles distant from that splendid castle. How can we tell? +The guests departed, the lodge-gates shut; all is mystery:—darkness with +one pair of wax candles blinking dismally in a solitary chamber; all the rest +dreary vistas of brown hollands, rolled Turkey carpets, gaunt ancestors on the +walls scowling out of the twilight blank. The imagination is at liberty to +depict his lordship, with one candle, over his dreadful endless tapes and +papers; her ladyship with the other, and an old, old novel, wherein perhaps, +Mrs. Radcliffe describes a castle as dreary as her own; and poor little Clara +sighing and crying in the midst of these funereal splendours, as lonely and +heart-sick as Oriana in her moated grange:—poor little Clara! +</p> + +<p> +Lord Kew’s drag took the young men to London; his lordship driving, and +the servants sitting inside. Jack sat behind with the two grooms, and tooted on +a cornet-a-piston in the most melancholy manner. He partook of no refreshment +on the road. His silence at his clubs was remarked: smoking, billiards, +military duties, and this and that, roused him a little, and presently Jack was +alive again. But then came the season, Lady Clara Pulleyn’s first season +in London, and Jack was more alive than ever. There was no ball he did not go +to; no opera (that is to say, no opera of <i>certain</i> operas) which he did +not frequent. It was easy to see by his face, two minutes after entering a +room, whether the person he sought was there or absent; not difficult for those +who were in the secret to watch in another pair of eyes the bright kindling +signals which answered Jack’s fiery glances. Ah! how beautiful he looked +on his charger on the birthday, all in a blaze of scarlet, and bullion, and +steel. O Jack! tear her out of yon carriage, from the side of yonder livid, +feathered, painted, bony dowager! place her behind you on the black charger; +cut down the policeman, and away with you! The carriage rolls in through St. +James’s Park; Jack sits alone with his sword dropped to the ground, or +only <i>atra cura</i> on the crupper behind him; and Snip, the tailor, in the +crowd, thinks it is for fear of him Jack’s head droops. Lady Clara +Pulleyn is presented by her mother, the Countess of Dorking; and Jack is +arrested that night as he is going out of White’s to meet her at the +Opera. +</p> + +<p> +Jack’s little exploits are known in the Insolvent Court, where he made +his appearances as Charles Belsize, commonly called the Honourable Charles +Belsize, whose dealings were smartly chronicled by the indignant moralists of +the press of those days. The <i>Scourge</i> flogged him heartily. The +<i>Whip</i> (of which the accomplished editor was himself in Whitecross Street +prison) was especially virtuous regarding him; and the <i>Penny Voice of +Freedom</i> gave him an awful dressing. I am not here to scourge sinners; I am +true to my party; it is the other side this humble pen attacks; let us keep to +the virtuous and respectable, for as for poor sinners they get the +whipping-post every day. One person was faithful to poor Jack through all his +blunders and follies and extravagance and misfortunes, and that was the pretty +young girl of Chanticlere, round whose young affections his luxuriant whiskers +had curled. And the world may cry out at Lord Kew for sending his brougham to +the Queen’s Bench prison, and giving a great feast at Grignon’s to +Jack on the day of his liberation, but I for one will not quarrel with his +lordship. He and many other sinners had a jolly night. They said Kew made a +fine speech, in hearing and acknowledging which Jack Belsize wept copiously. +Barnes Newcome was in a rage at Jack’s manumission, and sincerely hoped +Mr. Commissioner would give him a couple of years longer; and cursed and swore +with a great liberality on hearing of his liberty. +</p> + +<p> +That this poor prodigal should marry Clara Pulleyn, and by way of a dowry lay +his schedule at her feet, was out of the question. His noble father, Lord +Highgate, was furious against him; his eldest brother would not see him; he had +given up all hopes of winning his darling prize long ago, and one day there +came to him a great packet bearing the seal of Chanticlere, containing a +wretched little letter signed C. P., and a dozen sheets of Jack’s own +clumsy writing, delivered who knows how, in what crush-rooms, quadrilles, +bouquets, balls, and in which were scrawled Jack’s love and passion and +ardour. How many a time had he looked into the dictionary at White’s, to +see whether eternal was spelt with an e, and adore with one a or two! There +they were, the incoherent utterances of his brave longing heart; and those two +wretched, wretched lines signed C., begging that C.’s little letters +might too be returned or destroyed. To do him justice, he burnt them loyally +every one along with his own waste paper. He kept not one single little token +which she had given him or let him take. The rose, the glove, the little +handkerchief which she had dropped to him, how he cried over them! The ringlet +of golden hair—he burnt them all, all in his own fire in the prison, save +a little, little bit of the hair, which might be any one’s, which was the +colour of his sister’s. Kew saw the deed done; perhaps he hurried away +when Jack came to the very last part of the sacrifice, and flung the hair into +the fire, where he would have liked to fling his heart and his life too. +</p> + +<p> +So Clara was free, and the year when Jack came out of prison and went abroad, +she passed the season in London dancing about night after night, and everybody +said she was well out of that silly affair with Jack Belsize. It was then that +Barnes Newcome, Esq., a partner of the wealthy banking firm of Hobson Brothers +and Newcome, son and heir of Sir Brian Newcome, of Newcome, Bart., and M. P., +descended in right line from Bryan de Newcomyn, slain at Hastings, and +barber-surgeon to Edward the Confessor, etc. etc., cast the eyes of regard on +the Lady Clara Pulleyn, who was a little pale and languid certainly, but had +blue eyes, a delicate skin, and a pretty person, and knowing her previous +history as well as you who have just perused it, deigned to entertain +matrimonial intentions towards her ladyship. +</p> + +<p> +Not one of the members of these most respectable families, excepting poor +little Clara perhaps, poor little fish (as if she had any call but to do her +duty, or to ask <i>à quelle sauce elle serait mangée</i>), protested against +this little affair of traffic; Lady Dorking had a brood of little chickens to +succeed Clara. There was little Hennie, who was sixteen, and Biddy, who was +fourteen, and Adelaide, and who knows how many more? How could she refuse a +young man, not very agreeable it is true, nor particularly amiable, nor of good +birth, at least on his father’s side, but otherwise eligible, and heir to +so many thousands a year? The Newcomes, on their side, think it a desirable +match. Barnes, it must be confessed, is growing rather selfish, and has some +bachelor ways which a wife will reform. Lady Kew is strongly for the match. +With her own family interest, Lord Steyne and Lord Kew, her nephews, and +Barnes’s own father-in-law, Lord Dorking, in the Peers, why shall not the +Newcomes sit there too, and resume the old seat which all the world knows they +had in the time of Richard III.? Barnes and his father had got up quite a +belief about a Newcome killed at Bosworth, along with King Richard, and hated +Henry VII. as an enemy of their noble race. So all the parties were pretty well +agreed. Lady Anne wrote rather a pretty little poem about welcoming the white +Fawn to the Newcome bowers, and “Clara” was made to rhyme with +“fairer,” and “timid does and antlered deer to dot the glades +of Chanticlere,” quite in a picturesque way. Lady Kew pronounced that the +poem was very pretty indeed. +</p> + +<p> +The year after Jack Belsize made his foreign tour he returned to London for the +season. Lady Clara did not happen to be there; her health was a little +delicate, and her kind parents took her abroad; so all things went on very +smoothly and comfortably indeed. +</p> + +<p> +Yes, but when things were so quiet and comfortable, when the ladies of the two +families had met at the Congress of Baden, and liked each other so much, when +Barnes and his papa the Baronet, recovered from his illness, were actually on +their journey from Aix-la-Chapelle, and Lady Kew in motion from Kissingen to +the Congress of Baden, why on earth should Jack Belsize, haggard, wild, having +been winning great sums, it was said, at Hombourg, forsake his luck there, and +run over frantically to Baden? He wore a great thick beard, a great slouched +hat—he looked like nothing more or less than a painter or an Italian +brigand. Unsuspecting Clive, remembering the jolly dinner which Jack had +procured for him at the Guards’ mess in St. James’s, whither Jack +himself came from the Horse Guards—simple Clive, seeing Jack enter the +town, hailed him cordially, and invited him to dinner, and Jack accepted, and +Clive told him all the news he had of the place; how Kew was there, and Lady +Anne Newcome, and Ethel; and Barnes was coming. “I am not very fond of +him either,” says Clive, smiling, when Belsize mentioned his name. So +Barnes was coming to marry that pretty little Lady Clara Pulleyn. The knowing +youth! I dare say he was rather pleased with his knowledge of the fashionable +world, and the idea that Jack Belsize would think he, too, was somebody. +</p> + +<p> +Jack drank an immense quantity of champagne, and the dinner over, as they could +hear the band playing from Clive’s open windows in the snug clean little +Hôtel de France, Jack proposed they should go on the promenade. M. de Florac +was of the party; he had been exceedingly jocular when Lord Kew’s name +was mentioned, and said, “Ce petit Kiou! M. le Duc d’Ivry, mon +oncle, l’honore d’une amitié toute particulière.” These three +gentlemen walked out; the promenade was crowded, the was band playing +“Home, sweet Home” very sweetly, and the very first persons they +met on the walk were the Lords of Kew and Dorking, on the arm of which latter +venerable peer his daughter Lady Clara was hanging. +</p> + +<p> +Jack Belsize, in a velvet coat, with a sombrero slouched over his face, with a +beard reaching to his waist, was, no doubt, not recognised at first by the +noble lord of Dorking, for he was greeting the other two gentlemen with his +usual politeness and affability; when, of a sudden, Lady Clara looking up, gave +a little shriek and fell down lifeless on the gravel walk. Then the old earl +recognised Mr. Belsize, and Clive heard him say, “You villain, how dare +you come here?” +</p> + +<p> +Belsize had flung himself down to lift up Clara, calling her frantically by her +name, when old Dorking sprang to seize him. +</p> + +<p> +“Hands off, my lord,” said the other, shaking the old man from his +back. “Confound you, Jack, hold your tongue,” roars out Kew. Clive +runs for a chair, and a dozen were forthcoming. Florac skips back with a glass +of water. Belsize runs towards the awakening girl: and the father, for an +instant losing all patience and self-command, trembling in every limb, lifts +his stick, and says again, “Leave her, you ruffian.” “Lady +Clara has fainted again, sir,” says Captain Belsize. “I am staying +at the Hôtel de France. If you touch me, old man” (this in a very low +voice), “by Heaven I shall kill you. I wish you good morning;” and +taking a last long look at the lifeless girl, he lifts his hat and walks away. +Lord Dorking mechanically takes his hat off, and stands stupidly gazing after +him. He beckoned Clive to follow him, and a crowd of the frequenters of the +place are by this time closed round the fainting young lady. +</p> + +<p> +Here was a pretty incident in the Congress of Baden! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0029"></a> +CHAPTER XXIX.<br> +In which Barnes comes a-wooing</h2> + +<p> +Ethel had all along known that her holiday was to be a short one, and that, her +papa and Barnes arrived, there was to be no more laughing and fun and sketching +and walking with Clive; so she took the sunshine while it lasted, determined to +bear with a stout heart the bad weather. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Brian Newcome and his eldest born arrived at Baden on the very night of +Jack Belsize’s performance upon the promenade; of course it was necessary +to inform the young bridegroom of the facts. His acquaintances of the public, +who by this time know his temper, and are acquainted with his language, can +imagine the explosions of the one and the vehemence of the other; it was a +perfect <i>feu d’artifice</i> of oaths which he sent up. Mr. Newcome only +fired off these volleys of curses when he was in a passion, but then he was in +a passion very frequently. +</p> + +<p> +As for Lady Clara’s little accident, he was disposed to treat that very +lightly. “Poor dear Clara, of course, of course,” he said, +“she’s been accustomed to fainting fits; no wonder she was agitated +on the sight of that villain, after his infernal treatment of her. If I had +been there” (a volley of oaths comes here along the whole line) “I +should have strangled the scoundrel; I should have murdered him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mercy, Barnes!” cries Lady Anne. +</p> + +<p> +“It was a mercy Barnes was not there,” says Ethel, gravely; +“a fight between him and Captain Belsize would have been awful +indeed.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am afraid of no man, Ethel,” says Barnes fiercely, with another +oath. +</p> + +<p> +“Hit one of your own size, Barnes,” says Miss Ethel (who had a +number of school-phrases from her little brothers, and used them on occasions +skilfully). “Hit Captain Belsize, he has no friends.” +</p> + +<p> +As Jack Belsize from his height and strength was fitted to be not only an +officer but actually a private in his former gallant regiment, and brother +Barnes was but a puny young gentleman, the idea of a personal conflict between +them was rather ridiculous. Some notion of this sort may have passed through +Sir Brian’s mind, for the Baronet said with his usual solemnity, +“It is the cause, Ethel, it is the cause, my dear, which gives strength; +in such a cause as Barnes’s, with a beautiful young creature to protect +from a villain, any man would be strong, any man would be strong.” +“Since his last attack,” Barnes used to say, “my poor old +governor is exceedingly shaky, very groggy about the head;” which was the +fact. Barnes was already master at Newcome and the bank, and awaiting with +perfect composure the event which was to place the blood-red hand of the +Newcome baronetcy on his own brougham. +</p> + +<p> +Casting his eyes about the room, a heap of drawings, the work of a well-known +hand which he hated, met his eye. There were a half-dozen sketches of Baden; +Ethel on horseback again; the children and the dogs just in the old way. +“D—— him, is he here?” screams out Barnes. “Is +that young pothouse villain here? and hasn’t Kew knocked his head off? Is +Clive Newcome here, sir,” he cries out to his father. “The +Colonel’s son. I have no doubt they met by——” +</p> + +<p> +“By what, Barnes?” says Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +“Clive is here, is he?” says the Baronet; “making +caricatures, hey? You did not mention him in your letters, Lady Anne.” +</p> + +<p> +Sir Brian was evidently very much touched by his last attack. +</p> + +<p> +Ethel blushed; it was a curious fact, but there had been no mention of Clive in +the ladies’ letters to Sir Brian. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear, we met him by the merest chance, at Bonn, travelling with a +friend of his; and he speaks a little German, and was very useful to us, and +took one of the boys in his britzska the whole way.” +</p> + +<p> +“Boys always crowd in a carriage,” says Sir Brian. “Kick your +shins; always in the way. I remember, when we used to come in the carriage from +Clapham, when we were boys, I used to kick my brother Tom’s shins. Poor +Tom, he was a devilish wild fellow in those days. You don’t recollect +Tom, my Lady Anne?” +</p> + +<p> +Further anecdotes from Sir Brian are interrupted by Lord Kew’s arrival. +“How dydo, Kew!” cries Barnes. “How’s Clara?” and +Lord Kew walking up with great respect to shake hands with Sir Brian, says, +“I am glad to see you looking so well, sir,” and scarcely takes any +notice of Barnes. That Mr. Barnes Newcome was an individual not universally +beloved, is a point of history of which there can be no doubt. +</p> + +<p> +“You have not told me how Clara is, my good fellow,” continues +Barnes. “I have heard all about her meeting with that villain, Jack +Belsize.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t call names, my good fellow,” says Lord Kew. “It +strikes me you don’t know Belsize well enough to call him by nicknames or +by other names. Lady Clara Pulleyn, I believe, is very unwell indeed.” +</p> + +<p> +“Confound the fellow! How dared he to come here?” cries Barnes, +backing from this little rebuff. +</p> + +<p> +“Dare is another ugly word. I would advise you not to use it to the +fellow himself.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean?” says Barnes, looking very serious in an +instant. +</p> + +<p> +“Easy, my good friend. Not so very loud. It appears, Ethel, that poor +Jack—<i>I</i> know him pretty well, you see, Barnes, and may call him by +what names I like—had been dining to-day with cousin Clive; he and M. de +Florac; and that they went with Jack to the promenade, not in the least aware +of Mr. Jack Belsize’s private affairs, or of the shindy that was going to +happen.” +</p> + +<p> +“By Jove, he shall answer for it,” cries out Barnes in a loud +voice. +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say he will, if you ask him,” says the other drily; +“but not before ladies. He’d be afraid of frightening them. Poor +Jack was always as gentle as a lamb before women. I had some talk with the +Frenchman just now,” continued Lord Kew gaily, as if wishing to pass over +this side of the subject. “Mi Lord Kiou,” says he, “we have +made your friend Jac to hear reason. He is a little <i>fou</i>, your friend +Jack. He drank champagne at dinner like an ogre. How is the <i>charmante</i> +Miss Clara? Florac, you see, calls her Miss Clara, Barnes; the world calls her +Lady Clara. You call her Clara. You happy dog, you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see why that infernal young cub of a Clive is always +meddling in our affairs,” cries out Barnes, whose rage was perpetually +being whipped into new outcries. “Why has he been about this house? Why +is he here?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is very well for you that he was, Barnes,” Lord Kew said. +“The young fellow showed great temper and spirit. There has been a famous +row, but don’t be alarmed, it is all over. It is all over, everybody may +go to bed and sleep comfortably. Barnes need not get up in the morning to punch +Jack Belsize’s head. I’m sorry for your disappointment, you +Fenchurch Street fire-eater. Come away. It will be but proper, you know, for a +bridegroom elect to go and ask news of <i>la charmante</i> Miss Clara.” +</p> + +<p> +“As we went out of the house,” Lord Kew told Clive, “I said +to Barnes that every word I had uttered upstairs with regard to the +reconciliation was a lie. That Jack Belsize was determined to have his blood, +and was walking under the lime-trees by which we had to pass with a thundering +big stick. You should have seen the state the fellow was in, sir. The sweet +youth started back, and turned as yellow as a cream cheese. Then he made a +pretext to go into his room, and said it was for his pocket-handkerchief, but I +know it was for a pistol; for he dropped his hand from my arm into his pocket, +every time I said ‘Here’s Jack,’ as we walked down the avenue +to Lord Dorking’s apartment.” +</p> + +<p> +A great deal of animated business had been transacted during the two hours +subsequent to poor Lady Clara’s mishap. Clive and Belsize had returned to +the former’s quarters, while gentle J. J. was utilising the last rays of +the sun to tint a sketch which he had made during the morning. He fled to his +own apartment on the arrival of the fierce-looking stranger, whose glaring +eyes, pallid looks, shaggy beard, clutched hands, and incessant gasps and +mutterings as he strode up and down, might well scare a peaceable person. Very +terrible must Jack have looked as he trampled those boards in the growing +twilight, anon stopping to drink another tumbler of champagne, then groaning +expressions of inarticulate wrath, and again sinking down on Clive’s bed +with a dropping head and breaking voice, crying, “Poor little thing, poor +little devil.” +</p> + +<p> +“If the old man sends me a message, you will stand by me, won’t +you, Newcome? He was a fierce old fellow in his time, and I have seen him shoot +straight enough at Chanticlere. I suppose you know what the affair is +about?” +</p> + +<p> +“I never heard of it before, but I think I understand,” says Clive, +gravely. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t ask Kew, he is one of the family; he is going to marry +Miss Newcome. It is no use asking him.” +</p> + +<p> +All Clive’s blood tingled at the idea that any man was going to marry +Miss Newcome. He knew it before—a fortnight since, and it was nothing to +him to hear it. He was glad that the growing darkness prevented his face from +being seen. “I am of the family, too,” said Clive, “and +Barnes Newcome and I had the same grandfather.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes, old boy—old banker, the weaver, what was he? I +forgot,” says poor Jack, kicking on Clive’s bed, “in that +family the Newcomes don’t count. I beg your pardon,” groans poor +Jack. +</p> + +<p> +They lapse into silence, during which Jack’s cigar glimmers from the +twilight corner where Clive’s bed is; whilst Clive wafts his fragrance +out of the window where he sits, and whence he has a view of Lady Anne +Newcome’s windows to the right, over the bridge across the little rushing +river, at the Hotel de Hollande hard by. The lights twinkle in the booths under +the pretty lime avenues. The hum of distant voices is heard; the +gambling-palace is all in a blaze; it is an assembly night, and from the doors +of the conversation rooms, as they open and close, escape gusts of harmony. +Behind on the little hill the darkling woods lie calm, the edges of the +fir-trees cut sharp against the sky, which is clear with a crescent moon and +the lambent lights of the starry hosts of heaven. Clive does not see pine-robed +hills and shining stars, nor think of pleasure in its palace yonder, nor of +pain writhing on his own bed within a few feet of him, where poor Belsize was +groaning. His eyes are fixed upon a window whence comes the red light of a +lamp, across which shadows float now and again. So every light in every booth +yonder has a scheme of its own: every star above shines by itself; and each +individual heart of ours goes on brightening with its own hopes, burning with +its own desires, and quivering with its own pain. +</p> + +<p> +The reverie is interrupted by the waiter, who announces M. le Vicomte de +Florac, and a third cigar is added to the other two smoky lights. Belsize is +glad to see Florac, whom he has known in a thousand haunts. “He will do +my business for me. He has been out half a dozen times,” thinks Jack. It +would relieve the poor fellow’s boiling blood that some one would let a +little out. He lays his affair before Florac; he expects a message from Lord +Dorking. +</p> + +<p> +“Comment donc?” cries Florac; “il y avait donc quelque chose! +Cette pauvre petite Miss! Vous voulez tuer le père, après avoir délaissé la +fille? Cherchez d’autres témoins, Monsieur. Le Vicomte de Florac ne se +fait pas complice de telles lâchetés.” +</p> + +<p> +“By Heaven,” says Jack, sitting up on the bed, with his eyes +glaring, “I have a great mind, Florac, to wring your infernal little +neck, and to fling you out of the window. Is all the world going to turn +against me? I am half mad as it is. If any man dares to think anything wrong +regarding that little angel, or to fancy that she is not as pure, and as good, +and as gentle, and as innocent, by Heaven, as any angel there,—if any man +thinks I’d be the villain to hurt her, I should just like to see +him,” says Jack. “By the Lord, sir, just bring him to me. Just tell +the waiter to send him upstairs. Hurt her! I hurt her! Oh! I’m a fool! a +fool! a d——d fool! Who’s that?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s Kew,” says a voice out of the darkness from behind +cigar No. 4, and Clive now, having a party assembled, scrapes a match and +lights his candles. +</p> + +<p> +“I heard your last words, Jack,” Lord Kew says bluntly, “and +you never spoke more truth in your life. Why did you come here? What right had +you to stab that poor little heart over again, and frighten Lady Clara with +your confounded hairy face? You promised me you would never see her. You gave +your word of honour you wouldn’t, when I gave you the money to go abroad. +Hang the money, I don’t mind that; it was on your promise that you would +prowl about her no more. The Dorkings left London before you came there; they +gave you your innings. They have behaved kindly and fairly enough to that poor +girl. How was she to marry such a bankrupt beggar as you are? What you have +done is a shame, Charley Belsize. I tell you it is unmanly and cowardly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pst,” says Florac, “numero deux, voilà le mot lâche.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t bite your thumb at me,” Kew went on. “I know you +could thrash me, if that’s what you mean by shaking your fists; so could +most men. I tell you again—you have done a bad deed; you have broken your +word of honour, and you knocked down Clara Pulleyn to-day as cruelly as if you +had done it with your hand.” +</p> + +<p> +With this rush upon him, and fiery assault of Kew, Belsize was quite +bewildered. The huge man flung up his great arms, and let them drop at his side +as a gladiator that surrenders, and asks for pity. He sank down once more on +the iron bed. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know,” says he, rolling and rolling round, in one of +his great hands, one of the brass knobs of the bed by which he was seated. +“I don’t know, Frank,” says he, “what the world is +coming to, or me either; here is twice in one night I have been called a coward +by you, and by that little what-d’-you-call-’m. I beg your pardon, +Florac. I don’t know whether it is very brave in you to hit a chap when +he is down: hit again, I have no friends. I have acted like a blackguard, I own +that; I did break my promise; you had that safe enough, Frank, my boy; but I +did not think it would hurt her to see me,” says he, with a dreadful sob +in his voice. “By—I would have given ten years of my life to look +at her. I was going mad without her. I tried every place, everything; went to +Ems, to Wiesbaden, to Hombourg, and played like hell. It used to excite me +once, and now I don’t care for it. I won no end of money,—no end +for a poor beggar like me, that is; but I couldn’t keep away. I +couldn’t, and if she had been at the North Pole, by Heavens I would have +followed her.” +</p> + +<p> +“And so just to look at her, just to give your confounded stupid eyes two +minutes’ pleasure, you must bring about all this pain, you great +baby,” cries Kew, who was very soft-hearted, and in truth quite torn +himself by the sight of poor Jack’s agony. +</p> + +<p> +“Get me to see her for five minutes, Kew,” cries the other, griping +his comrade’s hand in his; “but for five minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +“For shame,” cries Lord Kew, shaking away his hand, “be a +man, Jack, and have no more of this puling. It’s not a baby, that must +have its toy, and cries because it can’t get it. Spare the poor girl this +pain, for her own sake, and balk yourself of the pleasure of bullying and +making her unhappy.” +</p> + +<p> +Belsize started up with looks that were by no means pleasant. +“There’s enough of this chaff I have been called names, and +blackguarded quite sufficiently for one sitting. I shall act as I please. I +choose to take my own way, and if any gentleman stops me he has full +warning.” And he fell to tugging his mustachios, which were of a dark +tawny hue, and looked as warlike as he had ever done on any field-day. +</p> + +<p> +“I take the warning!” said Lord Kew. “And if I know the way +you are going, as I think I do, I will do my best to stop you, madman as you +are! You can hardly propose to follow her to her own doorway and pose yourself +before your mistress as the murderer of her father, like Rodrigue in the French +play. If Rooster were here it would be his business to defend his sister; In +his absence I will take the duty on myself, and I say to you, Charles Belsize, +in the presence of these gentlemen, that any man who iusults this young lady, +who persecutes her with his presence, knowing it can but pain her, who persists +in following her when he has given his word of honour to avoid her, that such a +man is——” +</p> + +<p> +“What, my Lord Kew?” cries Belsize, whose chest began to heave. +</p> + +<p> +“You know what,” answers the other. “You know what a man is +who insults a poor woman, and breaks his word of honour. Consider the word +said, and act upon it as you think fit.” +</p> + +<p> +“I owe you four thousand pounds, Kew,” says Belsize, “and I +have got four thousand on the bills, besides four hundred when I came out of +that place.” +</p> + +<p> +“You insult me the more,” cries Kew, flashing out, “by +alluding to the money. If you will leave this place to-morrow, well and good; +if not, you will please to give me a meeting. Mr. Newcome will you be so kind +as to act as my friend? We are connexions, you know, and this gentleman chooses +to insult a lady who is about to become one of our family.” +</p> + +<p> +“C’est bien, milord. Ma foi! c’est d’agir en vrai +gentilhomme,” says Florac, delighted. “Touchez-là, mon petit Kiou. +Tu as du cœur. Godam! you are a brave! A brave fellow!” and the Viscount +reached out his hand cordially to Lord Kew. +</p> + +<p> +His purpose was evidently pacific. From Kew he turned to the great guardsman, +and taking him by the coat began to apostrophise him. “And you, mon +gros,” says he, “is there no way of calming this hot blood without +a saignée? Have you a penny to the world? Can you hope to carry off your +Chiméne, O Rodrigue, and live by robbing afterwards on the great way? Suppose +you kill ze Fazér, you kill Kiou, you kill Roostere, your Chiméne will have a +pretty moon of honey.” +</p> + +<p> +“What the devil do you mean about your Chiméne and your Rodrigue? Do you +mean, Viscount——?” says Belsize, “Jack Belsize once +more, and he dashed his hand across his eyes. Kew has riled me, and he drove me +half wild. I ain’t much of a Frenchman, but I know enough of what you +said, to say it’s true, by Jove, and that Frank Kew’s a trump. +That’s what you mean. Give us your hand, Frank. God bless you, old boy; +don’t be too hard upon me, you know I’m d——d miserable, +that I am. Hullo! What’s this?” Jack’s pathetic speech was +interrupted at this instant, for the Vicomte de Florac in his enthusiasm rushed +into his arms, and jumped up towards his face and proceeded to kiss Jack. A +roar of immense laughter, as he shook the little Viscount off, cleared the air +and ended this quarrel. +</p> + +<p> +Everybody joined in this chorus, the Frenchman with the rest, who said, +“he loved to laugh meme when he did not know why.” And now came the +moment of the evening, when Clive, according to Lord Kew’s saying, +behaved so well and prevented Barnes from incurring a great danger. In truth, +what Mr. Clive did or said amounted exactly to nothing. What moments can we not +all remember in our lives when it would have been so much wittier and wiser to +say and do nothing? +</p> + +<p> +Florac, a very sober drinker like most of his nation, was blessed with a very +fine appetite, which, as he said, renewed itself thrice a day at least. He now +proposed supper, and poor Jack was for supper too, and especially more drink, +champagne and seltzer-water; “bring champagne and seltzer-water, there is +nothing like it.” Clive could not object to this entertainment, which was +ordered forthwith, and the four young men sat down to share it. +</p> + +<p> +Whilst Florac was partaking of his favourite écrévisses, giving not only his +palate but his hands, his beard, his mustachios and cheeks a full enjoyment of +the sauce which he found so delicious, he chose to revert now and again to the +occurrences which had just passed, and which had better perhaps have been +forgotten, and gaily rallied Belsize upon his warlike humour. “If ze +petit pretendu was here, what would you have done wiz him, Jac? You would +croquer im, like zis ecrevisse, hein? You would mache his bones, hein?” +</p> + +<p> +Jack, who had forgotten to put the seltzer-water into his champagne, writhed at +the idea of having Barnes Newcome before him, and swore, could he but see +Barnes, he would take the little villain’s life. +</p> + +<p> +And but for Clive, Jack might actually have beheld his enemy. Young Clive after +the meal went to the window with his eternal cigar, and of course began to look +at That Other window. Here, as he looked, a carriage had at the moment driven +up. He saw two servants descend, then two gentlemen, and then he heard a +well-known voice swearing at the couriers. To his credit be it said, he checked +the exclamation which was on his lips, and when he came back to the table did +not announce to Kew or his right-hand neighbour Belsize, that his uncle and +Barnes had arrived. Belsize, by this time, had had quite too much wine: when +the viscount went away, poor Jack’s head was nodding; he had been awake +all the night before; sleepless for how many nights previous. He scarce took +any notice of the Frenchman’s departure. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Kew remained. He was for taking Jack to walk, and for reasoning with him +further, and for entering more at large than perhaps he chose to do before the +two others upon this family dispute. Clive took a moment to whisper to Lord +Kew, “My uncle and Barnes are arrived, don’t let Belsize go out; +for goodness’ sake let us get him to bed.” +</p> + +<p> +And lest the poor fellow should take a fancy to visit his mistress by +moonlight, when he was safe in his room Lord Kew softly turned the key in Mr. +Jack’s door. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0030"></a> +CHAPTER XXX.<br> +A Retreat</h2> + +<p> +As Clive lay awake revolving the strange incidents of the day, and speculating +upon the tragedy in which he had been suddenly called to take a certain part, a +sure presentiment told him that his own happy holiday was come to an end, and +that the clouds and storm which he had always somehow foreboded, were about to +break and obscure this brief pleasant period of sunshine. He rose at a very +early hour, flung his windows open, looked out no doubt towards those other +windows in the neighbouring hotel, where he may have fancied he saw a curtain +stirring, drawn by a hand that every hour now he longed more to press. He +turned back into his chamber with a sort of groan, and surveyed some of the +relics of the last night’s little feast, which still remained on the +table. There were the champagne-flasks which poor Jack Belsize had emptied, the +tall seltzer-water bottle, from which the gases had issued and mingled with the +hot air of the previous night’s talk; glasses with dregs of liquor, ashes +of cigars, or their black stumps, strewing the cloth; the dead men, the burst +guns of yesterday’s battle. Early as it was, his neighbour J. J had been +up before him. Clive could hear him singing as was his wont when the pencil +went well, and the colours arranged themselves to his satisfaction over his +peaceful and happy work. +</p> + +<p> +He pulled his own drawing-table to the window, set out his board and +colour-box, filled a great glass from the seltzer-water bottle, drank some of +the vapid liquor, and plunged his brushes in the rest, with which he began to +paint. The work all went wrong. There was no song for him over his labour; he +dashed brush and board aside after a while, opened his drawers, pulled out his +portmanteaus from under the bed, and fell to packing mechanically. J. J. heard +the noise from the next room, and came in smiling, with a great painting-brush +in his mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“Have the bills in, J. J.,” says Clive. “Leave your cards on +your friends, old boy; say good-bye to that pretty little strawberry-girl whose +picture you have been doing; polish it off to-day, and dry the little +thing’s tears. I read P.P.C. in the stars last night, and my familiar +spirit came to me in a vision, and said, ‘Clive, son of Thomas, put thy +travelling-boots on.’” +</p> + +<p> +Lest any premature moralist should prepare to cry fie against the good, +pure-minded little J. J., I hereby state that his strawberry-girl was a little +village maiden of seven years old, whose sweet little picture a bishop +purchased at the next year’s Exhibition. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you going already?” cries J. J., removing the bit out of his +mouth. “I thought you had arranged parties for a week to come, and that +the princesses and the duchesses had positively forbidden the departure of your +lordship!” +</p> + +<p> +“We have dallied at Capua long enough,” says Clive; “and the +legions have the route for Rome. So wills Hannibal, the son of +Hasdrubal.” +</p> + +<p> +“The son of Hasdrubal is quite right,” his companion answered; +“the sooner we march the better. I have always said it; I will get all +the accounts in. Hannibal has been living like a voluptuous Carthaginian +prince. One, two, three champagne-bottles! There will be a deuce of a bill to +pay.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! there <i>will</i> be a deuce of a bill to pay,” says Clive, +with a groan whereof J. J. knew the portent; for the young men had the +confidence of youth one in another. Clive was accustomed to pour out his full +heart to any crony who was near him; and indeed had he spoken never a word, his +growing attachment to his cousin was not hard to see. A hundred times, and with +the glowing language and feelings of youth, with the fire of his twenty years, +with the ardour of a painter, he had spoken of her and described her. Her +magnanimous simplicity, her courage and lofty scorn, her kindness towards her +little family, her form, her glorious colour of rich carnation and dazzling +white, her queenly grace when quiescent and in motion, had constantly formed +the subjects of this young gentleman’s ardent eulogies. As he looked at a +great picture or statue, as the Venus of Milo, calm and deep, unfathomably +beautiful as the sea from which she sprung; as he looked at the rushing Aurora +of the Rospigliosi, or the Assumption of Titian, more bright and glorious than +sunshine, or that divine Madonna and divine Infant, of Dresden, whose sweet +faces must have shone upon Raphael out of heaven; his heart sang hymns, as it +were, before these gracious altars; and, somewhat as he worshipped these +masterpieces of his art, he admired the beauty of Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +J. J. felt these things exquisitely after his manner, and enjoyed honest +Clive’s mode of celebration and rapturous fioriture of song; but +Ridley’s natural note was much gentler, and he sang his hymns in +plaintive minors. Ethel was all that was bright and beautiful but—but she +was engaged to Lord Kew. The shrewd kind confidant used gently to hint the sad +fact to the impetuous hero of this piece. The impetuous hero knew this quite +well. As he was sitting over his painting-board he would break forth +frequently, after his manner, in which laughter and sentiment were mingled, and +roar out with all the force of his healthy young lungs— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“But her heart it is another’s, she +never—can—be—mine;” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +and then hero and confidant would laugh each at his drawing-table. Miss Ethel +went between the two gentlemen by the name of Alice Grey. +</p> + +<p> +Very likely, Night, the Grey Mentor, had given Clive Newcome the benefit of his +sad counsel. Poor Belsize’s agony, and the wretchedness of the young lady +who shared in the desperate passion, may have set our young man a-thinking; and +Lord Kew’s frankness and courage, and honour, whereof Clive had been a +witness during the night, touched his heart with a generous admiration, and +manned him for a trial which he felt was indeed severe. He thought of the dear +old father ploughing the seas on the way to his duty, and was determined, by +Heaven’s help, to do his own. Only three weeks since, when strolling +careless about Bonn he had lighted upon Ethel and the laughing group of little +cousins, he was a boy as they were, thinking but of the enjoyment of the day +and the sunshine, as careless as those children. And now the thoughts and +passions which had sprung up in a week or two, had given him an experience such +as years do not always furnish; and our friend was to show, not only that he +could feel love in his heart, but that he could give proof of courage, and +self-denial, and honour. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you remember, J. J.,” says he, as boots and breeches went +plunging into the portmanteau, and with immense energy, he pummels down one +upon the other, “do you remember” (a dig into the snowy bosom of a +dress cambric shirt) “my dear old father’s only campaign story of +his running away” (a frightful blow into the ribs of a waistcoat), +“running away at Asseer-Ghur?” +</p> + +<p> +“Asseer-What?” says J. J. wondering. +</p> + +<p> +“The siege of Asseer-Ghur!” says Clive, “fought in the +eventful year 1803: Lieutenant Newcome, who has very neat legs, let me tell +you, which also he has imparted to his descendants, had put on a new pair of +leather breeches, for he likes to go handsomely dressed into action. His horse +was shot, the enemy were upon him, and the governor had to choose between death +and retreat. I have heard his brother-officers say that my dear old father was +the bravest man they ever knew, the coolest hand, sir. What do you think it was +Lieutenant Newcome’s duty to do under these circumstances? To remain +alone as he was, his troop having turned about, and to be cut down by the +Mahratta horsemen—to perish or to run, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“I know which I should have done,” says Ridley. +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly. Lieutenant Newcome adopted that course. His bran-new leather +breeches were exceedingly tight, and greatly incommoded the rapidity of his +retreating movement, but he ran away, sir, and afterwards begot your obedient +servant. That is the history of the battle of Asseer-Ghur.” +</p> + +<p> +“And now for the moral,” says J. J., not a little amused. +</p> + +<p> +“J. J., old boy, this is my battle of Asseer-Ghur. I am off. Dip into the +money-bag: pay the people: be generous, J. J., but not too prodigal. The +chambermaid is ugly, yet let her not want for a crown to console her at our +departure. The waiters have been brisk and servile; reward the slaves for their +labours. Forget not the humble boots, so shall he bless us when we depart. For +artists are gentlemen, though Ethel does not think so. De—No—God +bless her, God bless her,” groans out Clive, cramming his two fists into +his eyes. If Ridley admired him before, he thought none the worse of him now. +And if any generous young fellow in life reads the Fable, which may possibly +concern him, let him take a senior’s counsel and remember that there are +perils in our battle, God help us, from which the bravest had best run away. +</p> + +<p> +Early as the morning yet was, Clive had a visitor, and the door opened to let +in Lord Kew’s honest face. Ridley retreated before it into his own den; +the appearance of earls scared the modest painter, though he was proud and +pleased that his Clive should have their company. Lord Kew indeed lived in more +splendid apartments on the first floor of the hotel, Clive and his friend +occupying a couple of spacious chambers on the second story. “You are an +early bird,” says Kew. “I got up myself in a panic before daylight +almost; Jack was making a deuce of a row in his room, and fit to blow the door +out. I have been coaxing him for this hour; I wish we had thought of giving him +a dose of laudanum last night; if it finished him, poor old boy, it would do +him no harm.” And then, laughing, he gave Clive an account of his +interview with Barnes on the previous night. “You seem to be packing up +to go, too,” says Lord Kew, with a momentary glance of humour darting +from his keen eyes. “The weather is breaking up here, and if you are +going to cross the St. Gothard, as the Newcomes told me, the sooner the better. +It’s bitter cold over the mountains in October.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very cold,” says Clive, biting his nails. +</p> + +<p> +“Post or Vett.?” asks my lord. +</p> + +<p> +“I bought a carriage at Frankfort,” says Clive, in an offhand +manner. +</p> + +<p> +“Hulloh!” cries the other, who was perfectly kind, and entirely +frank and pleasant, and showed no difference in his conversation with men of +any degree, except perhaps that to his inferiors in station he was a little +more polite than to his equals; but who would as soon have thought of a young +artist leaving Baden in a carriage of his own as of his riding away on a +dragon. +</p> + +<p> +“I only gave twenty pounds for the carriage; it’s a little light +thing, we are two, a couple of horses carry us and our traps, you know, and we +can stop where we like. I don’t depend upon my profession,” Clive +added, with a blush. “I made three guineas once, and that is the only +money I ever gained in my life.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, my dear fellow, have not I been to your father’s house? +At that pretty ball, and seen no end of fine people there? We are young swells. +I know that very well. We only paint for pleasure.” +</p> + +<p> +“We are artists, and we intend to paint for money, my lord,” says +Clive. “Will your lordship give me an order?” +</p> + +<p> +“My lordship serves me right,” the other said. “I think, +Newcome, as you are going, I think you might do some folks here a good turn, +though the service is rather a disagreeable one. Jack Belsize is not fit to be +left alone. I can’t go away from here just now for reasons of state. Do +be a good fellow and take him with you. Put the Alps between him and this +confounded business, and if I can serve you in any way I shall be delighted, if +you will furnish me with the occasion. Jack does not know yet that our amiable +Barnes is here. I know how fond you are of him. I have heard the +story—glass of claret and all. We all love Barnes. How that poor Lady +Clara can have accepted him the Lord knows. We are fearfully and wonderfully +made, especially women.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good heavens,” Clive broke out, “can it be possible that a +young creature can have been brought to like such a selfish, insolent coxcomb +as that, such a cocktail as Barnes Newcome? You know very well, Lord Kew, what +his life is. There was a poor girl whom he brought out of a Newcome factory +when he was a boy himself, and might have had a heart one would have thought, +whom he ill-treated, whom he deserted, and flung out of doors without a penny, +upon some pretence of her infidelity towards him; who came and actually sat +down on the steps of Park Lane with a child on each side of her, and not their +cries and their hunger, but the fear of his own shame and a dread of a +police-court, forced him to give her a maintenance. I never see the fellow but +I loathe him, and long to kick him out of window and this man is to marry a +noble young lady because forsooth he is a partner in a bank, and heir to seven +or eight thousand a year. Oh, it is a shame, it is a shame! It makes me sick +when I think of the lot which the poor thing is to endure.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is not a nice story,” said Lord Kew, rolling a cigarette; +“Barnes is not a nice man. I give you that in. You have not heard it +talked about in the family, have you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Good heavens! you don’t suppose that I would speak to Ethel, to +Miss Newcome, about such a foul subject as that?” cries Clive. “I +never mentioned it to my own father. He would have turned Barnes out of his +doors if he had known it.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was the talk about town, I know,” Kew said dryly. +“Everything is told in those confounded clubs. I told you I give up +Barnes. I like him no more than you do. He may have treated the woman ill, I +suspect he has not an angelical temper: but in this matter he has not been so +bad, so very bad as it would seem. The first step is wrong, of +course—those factory towns—that sort of thing, you know—well, +well, the commencement of the business is a sad one. But he is not the only +sinner in London. He has declared on his honour to me when the matter was +talked about, and he was coming on for election at Bays’s, and was as +nearly as any man I ever knew in my life,—he declared on his word that he +only parted from poor Mrs. Delacy, (Mrs. Delacy, the devil used to call +herself) because he found that she had served him—as such women will +serve men. He offered to send his children to school in Yorkshire—rather +a cheap school—but she would not part with them. She made a scandal in +order to get good terms, and she succeeded. He was anxious to break the +connexion: he owned it had hung like a millstone round his neck and caused him +a great deal of remorse—annoyance you may call it. He was immensely cut +up about it. I remember, when that fellow was hanged for murdering a woman, +Barnes said he did not wonder at his having done it. Young men make those +connexions in their early lives and rue them all their days after. He was +heartily sorry, that we may take for granted. He wished to lead a proper life. +My grandmother managed this business with the Dorkings. Lady Kew still pulls +stroke oar in our boat, you know, and the old woman will not give up her place. +They know everything, the elders do. He is a clever fellow. He is witty in his +way. When he likes he can make himself quite agreeable to some people. There +has been no sort of force. You don’t suppose young ladies are confined in +dungeons and subject to tortures, do you? But there is a brood of Pulleyns at +Chanticlere, and old Dorking has nothing to give them. His daughter accepted +Barnes of her own free will, he knowing perfectly well of that previous affair +with Jack. The poor devil bursts into the place yesterday and the girl drops +down in a faint. She will see Belsize this very day if he likes. I took a note +from Lady Dorking to him at five o’clock this morning. If he fancies that +there is any constraint put upon Lady Clara’s actions she will tell him +with her own lips that she has acted of her own free will. She will marry the +husband she has chosen and do her duty by him. You are quite a young un who +boil and froth up with indignation at the idea that a girl hardly off with an +old love should take on with a new——” +</p> + +<p> +“I am not indignant with her,” says Clive, “for breaking with +Belsize, but for marrying Barnes.” +</p> + +<p> +“You hate him, and you know he is your enemy; and, indeed, young fellow, +he does not compliment you in talking about you. A pretty young scapegrace he +has made you out to be, and very likely thinks you to be. It depends on the +colours in which a fellow is painted. Our friends and our enemies draw +us,—and I often think both pictures are like,” continued the easy +world-philosopher. “You hate Barnes, and cannot see any good in him. He +sees none in you. There have been tremendous shindies in Park Lane <i>à +propos</i> of your worship, and of a subject which I don’t care to +mention,” said Lord Kew, with some dignity; “and what is the upshot +of all this malevolence? I like you; I like your father, I think he is a noble +old boy; there are those who represented him as a sordid schemer. Give Mr. +Barnes the benefit of common charity at any rate; and let others like him, if +you do not. +</p> + +<p> +“And as for this romance of love,” the young nobleman went on, +kindling as he spoke, and forgetting the slang and colloquialisms with which we +garnish all our conversation—“this fine picture of Jenny and +Jessamy falling in love at first sight, billing and cooing in an arbour, and +retiring to a cottage afterwards to go on cooing and billing—Psha! what +folly is this! It is good for romances, and for misses to sigh about; but any +man who walks through the world with his eyes open, knows how senseless is all +this rubbish. I don’t say that a young man and woman are not to meet, and +to fall in love that instant, and to marry that day year, and love each other +till they are a hundred; that is the supreme lot—but that is the lot +which the gods only grant to Baucis and Philemon, and a very, very few besides. +As for the rest, they must compromise; make themselves as comfortable as they +can, and take the good and the bad together. And as for Jenny and Jessamy, by +Jove! look round among your friends, count up the love matches, and see what +has been the end of most of them! Love in a cottage! Who is to pay the landlord +for the cottage? Who is to pay for Jenny’s tea and cream, and +Jessamy’s mutton-chops? If he has cold mutton, he will quarrel with her. +If there is nothing in the cupboard, a pretty meal they make. No, you cry out +against people in our world making money marriages. Why, kings and queens marry +on the same understanding. My butcher has saved a stockingful of money, and +marries his daughter to a young salesman; Mr. and Mrs. Salesman prosper in +life, and get an alderman’s daughter for their son. My attorney looks out +amongst his clients for an eligible husband for Miss Deeds; sends his son to +the bar, into Parliament, where he cuts a figure and becomes attorney-general, +makes a fortune, has a house in Belgrave Square, and marries Miss Deeds of the +second generation to a peer. Do not accuse us of being more sordid than our +neighbours. We do but as the world does; and a girl in our society accepts the +best <i>parti</i> which offers itself, just as Miss Chummey, when entreated by +two young gentlemen of the order of costermongers, inclines to the one who +rides from market on a moke, rather than to the gentleman who sells his greens +from a handbasket.” +</p> + +<p> +This tirade, which his lordship delivered with considerable spirit, was +intended no doubt to carry a moral for Clive’s private hearing; and +which, to do him justice, the youth was not slow to comprehend. The point was, +“Young man, if certain persons of rank choose to receive you very kindly, +who have but a comely face, good manners, and three or four hundred pounds a +year, do not presume upon their good-nature, or indulge in certain ambitious +hopes which your vanity may induce you to form. Sail down the stream with the +brass-pots, Master Earthen-pot, but beware of coming too near! You are a nice +young man, but there are prizes which are some too good for you, and are meant +for your betters. And you might as well ask the prime minister for the next +vacant garter as expect to wear on your breast such a star as Ethel +Newcome.” +</p> + +<p> +Before Clive made his accustomed visit to his friends at the hotel opposite, +the last great potentiary had arrived who was to take part in the family +Congress of Baden. In place of Ethel’s flushing cheeks and bright eyes, +Clive found, on entering Lady Anne Newcome’s sitting-room, the +parchment-covered features and the well-known hooked beak of the old Countess +of Kew. To support the glances from beneath the bushy black eyebrows on each +side of that promontory was no pleasant matter. The whole family cowered under +Lady Kew’s eyes and nose, and she ruled by force of them. It was only +Ethel whom these awful features did not utterly subdue and dismay. +</p> + +<p> +Besides Lady Kew, Clive had the pleasure of finding his lordship, her grandson, +Lady Anne and children of various sizes, and Mr. Barnes; not one of whom was +the person whom Clive desired to behold. +</p> + +<p> +The queer glance in Kew’s eye directed towards Clive, who was himself not +by any means deficient in perception, informed him that there had just been a +conversation in which his own name had figured. Having been abusing Clive +extravagantly as he did whenever he mentioned his cousin’s name, Barnes +must needs hang his head when the young fellow came in. His hand was yet on the +chamber-door, and Barnes was calling his miscreant and scoundrel within; so no +wonder Barnes had a hangdog look. But as for Lady Kew, that veteran diplomatist +allowed no signs of discomfiture, or any other emotion, to display themselves +on her ancient countenance. Her bushy eyebrows were groves of mystery, her +unfathomable eyes were wells of gloom. +</p> + +<p> +She gratified Clive by a momentary loan of two knuckly old fingers, which he +was at liberty to hold or to drop; and then he went on to enjoy the felicity of +shaking hands with Mr. Barnes, who, observing and enjoying his confusion over +Lady Kew’s reception, determined to try Clive in the same way, and he +gave Clive at the same time a supercilious “How de dah,” which the +other would have liked to drive down his throat. A constant desire to throttle +Mr. Barnes—to beat him on the nose—to send him flying out of +window, was a sentiment with which this singular young man inspired many +persons whom he accosted. A biographer ought to be impartial, yet I own, in a +modified degree, to have partaken of this sentiment. He looked very much +younger than his actual time of life, and was not of commanding stature; but +patronised his equals, nay, let us say, his betters, so insufferably, that a +common wish for his suppression existed amongst many persons in society. +</p> + +<p> +Clive told me of this little circumstance, and I am sorry to say of his own +subsequent ill behaviour. “We were standing apart from the ladies,” +so Clive narrated, “when Barnes and I had our little passage-of-arms. He +had tried the finger business upon me before, and I had before told him, either +to shake hands or to leave it alone. You know the way in which the impudent +little beggar stands astride, and sticks his little feet out. I brought my heel +well down on his confounded little varnished toe, and gave it a scrunch which +made Mr. Barnes shriek out one of his loudest oaths.” +</p> + +<p> +“D—— clumsy ——!” screamed out Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +Clive said, in a low voice, “I thought you only swore at women, +Barnes.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is you that say things before women, Clive,” cries his cousin, +looking very furious. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Clive lost all patience. “In what company, Barnes, would you like me +to say, that I think you are a snob? Will you have it on the Parade? Come out +and I will speak to you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Barnes can’t go out on the Parade,” cries Lord Kew, bursting +out laughing: “there’s another gentleman there wanting him.” +And two of the three young men enjoyed this joke exceedingly. I doubt whether +Barnes Newcome Newcome, Esq., of Newcome, was one of the persons amused. +</p> + +<p> +“What wickedness are you three boys laughing at?” cries Lady Anne, +perfectly innocent and good-natured; “no good, I will be bound. Come +here, Clive.” Our young friend, it must be premised, had no sooner +received the thrust of Lady Kew’s two fingers on entering, than it had +been intimated to him that his interview with that gracious lady was at an end. +For she had instantly called her daughter to her, with whom her ladyship fell +a-whispering; and then it was that Clive retreated from Lady Kew’s hand, +to fall into Barnes’s. +</p> + +<p> +“Clive trod on Barnes’s toe,” cries out cheery Lord Kew, +“and has hurt Barnes’s favourite corn, so that he cannot go out, +and is actually obliged to keep the room. That’s what we were laughing +at.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hem!” growled Lady Kew. She knew to what her grandson alluded. +Lord Kew had represented Jack Belsize, and his thundering big stick, in the +most terrific colours to the family council. The joke was too good a one not to +serve twice. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Anne, in her whispered conversation with the old Countess, had possibly +deprecated her mother’s anger towards poor Clive, for when he came up to +the two ladies, the younger took his hand with great kindness, and said, +“My dear Clive, we are very sorry you are going. You were of the greatest +use to us on the journey. I am sure you have been uncommonly good-natured and +obliging, and we shall all miss you very much.” Her gentleness smote the +generous young fellow, and an emotion of gratitude towards her for being so +compassionate to him in his misery, caused his cheeks to blush and his eyes +perhaps to moisten. “Thank you, dear aunt,” says he, “you +have been very good and kind to me. It is I that shall feel lonely; +but—but it is quite time that I should go to my work.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite time!” said the severe possessor of the eagle beak. +“Baden is a bad place for young men. They make acquaintances here of +which very little good can come. They frequent the gambling-tables, and live +with the most disreputable French Viscounts. We have heard of your goings-on, +sir. It is a great pity that Colonel Newcome did not take you with him to +India.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear mamma,” cries Lady Anne, “I am sure Clive has been a +very good boy indeed.” The old lady’s morality put a stop to +Clive’s pathetic mood, and he replied with a great deal of spirit, +“Dear Lady Anne, you have been always very good, and kindness is nothing +surprising from you; but Lady Kew’s advice, which I should not have +ventured to ask, is an unexpected favour; my father knows the extent of the +gambling transactions to which your ladyship was pleased to allude, and +introduced me to the gentleman whose acquaintance you don’t seem to think +eligible.” +</p> + +<p> +“My good young man, I think it is time you were off,” Lady Kew +said, this time with great good-humour; she liked Clive’s spirit, and as +long as he interfered with none of her plans, was quite disposed to be friendly +with him. “Go to Rome, go to Florence, go wherever you like, and study +very hard, and make very good pictures, and come back again, and we shall all +be very glad to see you. You have very great talents—these sketches are +really capital.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is not he very clever, mamma?” said kind Lady Anne, eagerly. Clive +felt the pathetic mood coming on again, and an immense desire to hug Lady Anne +in his arms, and to kiss her. How grateful are we—how touched a frank and +generous heart is for a kind word extended to us in our pain! The pressure of a +tender hand nerves a man for an operation, and cheers him for the dreadful +interview with the surgeon. +</p> + +<p> +That cool old operator, who had taken Mr. Clive’s case in hand, now +produced her shining knife, and executed the first cut with perfect neatness +and precision. “We are come here, as I suppose you know, Mr. Newcome, +upon family matters, and I frankly tell you that I think, for your own sake, +you would be much better away. I wrote my daughter a great scolding when I +heard that you were in this place.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it was by the merest chance, mamma, indeed it was,” cries Lady +Anne. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, by the merest chance, and by the merest chance I heard of it +too. A little bird came and told me at Kissingen. You have no more sense, Anne, +than a goose. I have told you so a hundred times. Lady Anne requested you to +stay, and I, my good young friend, request you to go away.” +</p> + +<p> +“I needed no request,” said Clive. “My going, Lady Kew, is my +own act. I was going without requiring any guide to show me to the door.” +</p> + +<p> +“No doubt you were, and my arrival is the signal for Mr. Newcome’s +<i>bon jour</i>. I am Bogey, and I frighten everybody away. By the scene which +you witnessed yesterday, my good young friend, and all that painful +<i>esclandre</i> on the promenade, you must see how absurd, and dangerous, and +wicked—yes, wicked it is for parents to allow intimacies to spring up +between young people, which can only lead to disgrace and unhappiness. Lady +Dorking was another good-natured goose. I had not arrived yesterday ten +minutes, when my maid came running in to tell me of what had occurred on the +promenade; and, tired as I was, I went that instant to Jane Dorking and passed +the evening with her, and that poor little creature to whom Captain Belsize +behaved so cruelly. She does not care a fig for him—not one fig. Her +childish inclination is passed away these two years, whilst Mr. Jack was +performing his feats in prison; and if the wretch flatters himself that it was +on his account she was agitated yesterday, he is perfectly mistaken, and you +may tell him Lady Kew said so. She is subject to fainting fits. Dr. Finck has +been attending her ever since she has been here. She fainted only last Tuesday +at the sight of a rat walking about their lodgings (they have dreadful +lodgings, the Dorkings), and no wonder she was frightened at the sight of that +great coarse tipsy wretch! She is engaged, as you know, to your connexion, my +grandson, Barnes:—in all respects a most eligible union. The rank of life +of the parties suits them to one another. She is a good young woman, and Barnes +has experienced from persons of another sort such horrors, that he will know +the blessing of domestic virtue. It was high time he should. I say all this in +perfect frankness to you. +</p> + +<p> +“Go back again and play in the garden, little brats” (this to the +innocents who came frisking in from the lawn in front of the windows). +“You have been? And Barnes sent you in here? Go up to Miss Quigley. No, +stop. Go and tell Ethel to come down; bring her down with you. Do you +understand?” +</p> + +<p> +The unconscious infants toddle upstairs to their sister; and Lady Kew blandly +says, “Ethel’s engagement to my grandson, Lord Kew, has long been +settled in our family, though these things are best not talked about until they +are quite determined, you know, my dear Mr. Newcome. When we saw you and your +father in London, we heard that you too-that you too were engaged to a young +lady in your own rank of life, a Miss—what was her name?—Miss +MacPherson, Miss Mackenzie. Your aunt, Mrs. Hobson Newcome, who I must say is a +most blundering silly person, had set about this story. It appears there is no +truth in it. Do not look surprised that I know about your affairs. I am an old +witch, and know numbers of things.” +</p> + +<p> +And, indeed, how Lady Kew came to know this fact, whether her maid corresponded +with Lady Anne’s maid, what her ladyship’s means of information +were, avowed or occult, this biographer has never been able to ascertain. Very +likely Ethel, who in these last three weeks had been made aware of that +interesting circumstance, had announced it to Lady Kew in the course of a +cross-examination, and there may have been a battle between the granddaughter +and the grandmother, of which the family chronicler of the Newcomes has had no +precise knowledge. That there were many such I know—skirmishes, sieges, +and general engagements. When we hear the guns, and see the wounded, we know +there has been a fight. Who knows had there been a battle-royal, and was Miss +Newcome having her wounds dressed upstairs? +</p> + +<p> +“You will like to say good-bye to your cousin, I know,” Lady Kew +continued, with imperturbable placidity. “Ethel, my dear, here is Mr. +Clive Newcome, who has come to bid us all good-bye.” The little girls +came trotting down at this moment, each holding a skirt of their elder sister. +She looked rather pale, but her expression was haughty—almost fierce. +</p> + +<p> +Clive rose up as she entered, from the sofa by the old Countess’s side, +which place she had pointed him to take during the amputation. He rose up and +put his hair back off his face, and said very calmly, “Yes, I’m +come to say good-bye. My holidays are over, and Ridley and I are off for Rome; +good-bye, and God bless you, Ethel.” +</p> + +<p> +She gave him her hand and said, “Good-bye, Clive,” but her hand did +not return his pressure, and dropped to her side, when he let it go. +</p> + +<p> +Hearing the words good-bye, little Alice burst into a howl, and little Maude, +who was an impetuous little thing, stamped her little red shoes and said, +“It san’t be good-bye. Tlive san’t go.” Alice, roaring, +clung hold of Clive’s trousers. He took them up gaily, each on an arm, as +he had done a hundred times, and tossed the children on to his shoulders, where +they used to like to pull his yellow mustachios. He kissed the little hands and +faces, and a moment after was gone. +</p> + +<p> +“Qu’as-tu?” says M. de Florac, meeting him going over the +bridge to his own hotel. “Qu’as-tu, mon petit Claive? Est-ce +qu’on vient de t’arracher une dent?” +</p> + +<p> +“C’est ça,” says Clive, and walked into the Hôtel de France. +“Hulloh! J. J.! Ridley!” he sang out. “Order the trap out and +let’s be off.” “I thought we were not to march till +to-morrow,” says J. J., divining perhaps that some catastrophe had +occurred. Indeed, Mr. Clive was going a day sooner than he had intended. He +woke at Fribourg the next morning. It was the grand old cathedral he looked at, +not Baden of the pine-clad hills, of the pretty walks and the lime-tree +avenues. Not Baden, the prettiest booth of all Vanity Fair. The crowds and the +music, the gambling-tables and the cadaverous croupiers and chinking gold, were +far out of sight and hearing. There was one window in the Hôtel de Hollande +that he thought of, how a fair arm used to open it in the early morning, how +the muslin curtain in the morning air swayed to and fro. He would have given +how much to see it once more! Walking about at Fribourg in the night, away from +his companions, he had thought of ordering horses, galloping back to Baden, and +once again under that window, calling Ethel, Ethel. But he came back to his +room and the quiet J. J., and to poor Jack Belsize, who had had his tooth taken +out too. +</p> + +<p> +We had almost forgotten Jack, who took a back seat in Clive’s carriage, +as befits a secondary personage in this history, and Clive in truth had almost +forgotten him too. But Jack having his own cares and business, and having +rammed his own carpet-bag, brought it down without a word, and Clive found him +environed in smoke when he came down to take his place in the little britzska. +I wonder whether the window at the Hôtel de Hollande saw him go? There are some +curtains behind which no historian, however prying, is allowed to peep. +</p> + +<p> +“Tiens, le petit part,” says Florac of the cigar, who was always +sauntering. “Yes, we go,” says Clive. “There is a fourth +place, Viscount; will you come too?” +</p> + +<p> +“I would love it well,” replies Florac, “but I am here in +faction. My cousin and seigneur M. le Duc d’Ivry is coming all the way +from Bagneres de Bigorre. He says he counts on me:—affaires mon cher, +affaires d’etat.” +</p> + +<p> +“How pleased the duchess will be! Easy with that bag!” shouts +Clive. “How pleased the princess will be!” In truth he hardly knew +what he was saying. +</p> + +<p> +“Vous croyez; vous croyez,” says M. de Florac. “As you have a +fourth place, I know who had best take it.” +</p> + +<p> +“And who is that?” asked the young traveller. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Kew and Barnes, Esq., of Newcome, came out of the Hotel de Hollande at +this moment. Barnes slunk back, seeing Jack Belsize’s hairy face. Kew ran +over the bridge. “Good-bye, Clive. Good-bye, Jack.” +“Good-bye, Kew.” It was a great handshake. Away goes the postillion +blowing his horn, and young Hannibal has left Capua behind him. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0031"></a> +CHAPTER XXXI.<br> +Madame la Duchesse</h2> + +<p> +In one of Clive Newcome’s letters from Baden, the young man described to +me, with considerable humour and numerous illustrations as his wont was, a +great lady to whom he was presented at that watering-place by his friend Lord +Kew. Lord Kew had travelled in the East with Monsieur le Duc and Madame la +Duchesse d’Ivry—the prince being an old friend of his +lordship’s family. He is the “Q” of Madame +d’Ivry’s book of travels, Footprints of the Gazelles, by a daughter +of the Crusaders, in which she prays so fervently for Lord Kew’s +conversion. He is the “Q” who rescued the princess from the Arabs, +and performed many a feat which lives in her glowing pages. He persists in +saying that he never rescued Madame la Princesse from any Arabs at all, except +from one beggar who was bawling out for bucksheesh, and whom Kew drove away +with a stick. They made pilgrimages to all the holy places, and a piteous sight +it was, said Lord Kew, to see the old prince in the Jerusalem processions at +Easter pacing with bare feet and a candle. Here Lord Kew separated from the +prince’s party. His name does not occur in the last part of the +Footprints; which, in truth, are filled full of strange rhapsodies, adventures +which nobody was but the princess, and mystic disquisitions. She hesitates at +nothing, like other poets of her nation: not profoundly learned, she invents +where she has not acquired: mingles together religion and the opera; and +performs Parisian <i>pas-de-ballet</i> before the gates of monasteries and the +cells of anchorites. She describes, as if she had herself witnessed the +catastrophe, the passage of the Red Sea: and, as if there were no doubt of the +transaction, an unhappy love-affair between Pharaoh’s eldest son and +Moses’s daughter. At Cairo, <i>à propos</i> of Joseph’s granaries, +she enters into a furious tirade against Putiphar, whom she paints as an old +savage, suspicious and a tyrant. They generally have a copy of the Footprints +of the Gazelles at the Circulating Library at Baden, as Madame d’Ivry +constantly visits that watering-place. M. le Duc was not pleased with the book, +which was published entirely without his concurrence, and which he described as +one of the ten thousand follies of Madame la Duchesse. +</p> + +<p> +This nobleman was five-and-forty years older than his duchess. France is the +country where that sweet Christian institution of <i>mariages de convenance</i> +(which so many folks of the family about which this story treats are engaged in +arranging) is most in vogue. There the newspapers daily announce that M. de Foy +has a bureau de confiance, where families may arrange marriages for their sons +and daughters in perfect comfort and security. It is but a question of money on +one side and the other. Mademoiselle has so many francs of dot; Monsieur has +such and such <i>rentes</i> or lands in possession or reversion, an <i>étude +d’avoué</i>, a shop with a certain <i>clientèle</i> bringing him such and +such an income, which may be doubled by the judicious addition of so much +capital, and the pretty little matrimonial arrangement is concluded (the agent +touching his percentage), or broken off, and nobody unhappy, and the world none +the wiser. The consequences of the system I do not pretend personally to know; +but if the light literature of a country is a reflex of its manners, and French +novels are a picture of French life, a pretty society must that be into the +midst of which the London reader may walk in twelve hours from this time of +perusal, and from which only twenty miles of sea separate us. +</p> + +<p> +When the old Duke d’Ivry, of the ancient ancient nobility of France, an +emigrant with Artois, a warrior with Conde, an exile during the reign of the +Corsican usurper, a grand prince, a great nobleman afterwards, though shorn of +nineteen-twentieths of his wealth by the Revolution,—when the Duke +d’Ivry lost his two sons, and his son’s son likewise died, as if +fate had determined to end the direct line of that noble house, which had +furnished queens to Europe, and renowned chiefs to the Crusaders—being of +an intrepid spirit, the Duke was ill disposed to yield to his redoubtable +enemy, in spite of the cruel blows which the latter had inflicted upon him, +and when he was more than sixty years of age, three months before the July +Revolution broke out, a young lady of a sufficient nobility, a virgin of +sixteen, was brought out of the convent of the Sacré Cœur at Paris, and married +with immense splendour and ceremony to this princely widower. The most august +names signed the book of the civil marriage. Madame la Dauphine and Madame la +Duchesse de Berri complimented the young bride with royal favours. Her portrait +by Dubufe was in the Exhibition next year, a charming young duchess indeed, +with black eyes, and black ringlets, pearls on her neck, and diamonds in her +hair, as beautiful as a princess of a fairy tale. M. d’Ivry, whose early +life may have been rather oragious, was yet a gentleman perfectly well +conserved. Resolute against fate his enemy (one would fancy fate was of an +aristocratic turn, and took especial delight in combats with princely houses; +the Atridae, the Borbonidae, the Ivrys,—the Browns and Joneses being of +no account), the prince seemed to be determined not only to secure a progeny, +but to defy age. At sixty he was still young, or seemed to be so. His hair was +as black as the princess’s own, his teeth as white. If you saw him on the +Boulevard de Gand, sunning among the youthful exquisites there, or riding <i>au +Bois</i>, with a grace worthy of old Franconi himself, you would take him for +one of the young men, of whom indeed up to his marriage he retained a number of +the graceful follies and amusements, though his manners had a dignity acquired +in old days of Versailles and the Trianon, which the moderns cannot hope to +imitate. He was as assiduous behind the scenes of the opera as any journalist, +or any young dandy of twenty years. He “ranged himself,” as the +French phrase is, shortly before his marriage, just like any other young +bachelor: took leave of Phryne and Aspasie in the coulisses, and proposed to +devote himself henceforth to his charming young wife. +</p> + +<p> +The affreux catastrophe of July arrived. The ancient Bourbons were once more on +the road to exile (save one wily old remnant of the race, who rode grinning +over the barricades, and distributing poignees de main to the stout fists that +had pummelled his family out of France). M. le Duc d’Ivry, who lost his +place at court, his appointments which helped his income very much, and his +peerage would no more acknowledge the usurper of Neuilly, than him of Elba. The +ex-peer retired to his <i>terres</i>. He barricaded his house in Paris against +all supporters of the citizen king; his nearest kinsman, M. de Florac, among +the rest, who for his part cheerfully took his oath of fidelity, and his seat +in Louis Philippe’s house of peers, having indeed been accustomed to +swear to all dynasties for some years past. +</p> + +<p> +In due time Madame la Duchesse d’Ivry gave birth to a child, a daughter, +whom her noble father received with but small pleasure. What the Duke desired, +was an heir to his name, a Prince of Moncontour, to fill the place of the sons +and grandsons gone before him, to join their ancestors in the tomb. No more +children, however, blessed the old Duke’s union. Madame d’Ivry went +the round of all the watering-places: pilgrimages were tried: vows and gifts to +all saints supposed to be favourable to the d’Ivry family, or to families +in general:—but the saints turned a deaf ear; they were inexorable since +the true religion and the elder Bourbons were banished from France. +</p> + +<p> +Living by themselves in their ancient castles, or their dreary mansion of the +Faubourg St. Germain, I suppose the Duke and Duchess grew tried of one another, +as persons who enter into a <i>mariage de convenance</i> sometimes, nay, as +those who light a flaming love-match, and run away with one another, will be +found to do. A lady of one-and-twenty, and a gentleman of sixty-six, alone in a +great castle, have not unfrequently a third guest at their table, who comes +without a card, and whom they cannot shut out, though they keep their doors +closed ever so. His name is Ennui, and many a long hour and weary night must +such folks pass in the unbidden society of this Old Man of the Sea; this daily +guest at the board; this watchful attendant at the fireside; this assiduous +companion who <i>will</i> walk out with you; this sleepless restless bedfellow. +</p> + +<p> +At first, M. d’Ivry, that well-conserved nobleman who never would allow +that he was not young, exhibited no sign of doubt regarding his own youth +except an extreme jealousy and avoidance of all other young fellows. Very +likely Madame la Duchesse may have thought men in general dyed their hair, wore +stays, and had the rheumatism. Coming out of the convent of the Sacré Cœur, how +was the innocent young lady to know better? You see, in these <i>mariages de +convenance</i>, though a coronet may be convenient to a beautiful young +creature, and a beautiful young creature may be convenient to an old gentleman, +there are articles which the marriage-monger cannot make to convene at all: +tempers over which M. de Foy and his like have no control; and tastes which +cannot be put into the marriage settlements. So this couple were unhappy, and +the Duke and Duchess quarrelled with one another like the most vulgar pair who +ever fought across a table. +</p> + +<p> +In this unhappy state of home affairs, madame took to literature, monsieur to +politics. She discovered that she was a great unappreciated soul, and when a +woman finds that treasure in her bosom of course she sets her own price on the +article. Did you ever see the first poems of Madame la Duchesse d’Ivry, +Les Cris de l’Ame? She used to read them to her very intimate friends, in +white, with her hair a good deal down her back. They had some success. Dubufe +having painted her as a Duchess, Scheffer depicted her as a Muse. That was in +the third year of her marriage, when she rebelled against the Duke her husband, +insisted on opening her saloons to art and literature, and, a fervent devotee +still, proposed to unite genius and religion. Poets had interviews with her. +Musicians came and twanged guitars to her. +</p> + +<p> +Her husband, entering her room, would fall over the sabre and spurs of Count +Almaviva from the boulevard, or Don Basilio with his great sombrero and +shoe-buckles. The old gentleman was breathless and bewildered in following her +through all her vagaries. He was of old France, she of new. What did he know of +the Ecole Romantique, and these <i>jeunes gens</i> with their Marie Tudors and +Tours de Nesle, and sanguineous histories of queens who sewed their lovers into +sacks, emperors who had interviews with robber captains in Charlemagne’s +tomb, Buridans and Hernanis, and stuff? Monsieur le Vicomte de Chateaubriand +was a man of genius as a writer, certainly immortal; and M. de Lamartine was a +young man extremely <i>bien pensant</i>, but, <i>ma foi</i>, give him +<i>Crébillon fils</i>, or a bonne farce of M. Vade to make laugh; for the great +sentiments, for the beautiful style, give him M. de Lormian (although +Bonapartist) or the Abbé de Lille. And for the new school! bah! these little +Dumass, and Hugos, and Mussets, what is all that? “M. de Lormian shall be +immortal, monsieur,” he would say, “when all these +<i>freluquets</i> are forgotten.” After his marriage he frequented the +coulisses of the opera no more; but he was a pretty constant attendant at the +Théatre Français, where you might hear him snoring over the +<i>chefs-d’œuvres</i> of French tragedy. +</p> + +<p> +For some little time after 1830, the Duchesse was as great a Carlist as her +husband could wish; and they conspired together very comfortably at first. Of +an adventurous turn, eager for excitement of all kinds, nothing would have +better pleased the Duchesse than to follow M<small>ADAME</small> in her +adventurous courses in La Vendee, disguised as a boy above all. She was +persuaded to stay at home, however, and aid the good cause at Paris; while +Monsieur le Duc went off to Brittany to offer his old sword to the mother of +his king. But M<small>ADAME</small> was discovered up the chimney at Rennes, +and all sorts of things were discovered afterwards. The world said that our +silly little Duchess of Paris was partly the cause of the discovery. Spies were +put upon her, and to some people she would tell anything. M. le Duc, on paying +his annual visit to august exiles at Goritz, was very badly received: Madame la +Dauphine gave him a sermon. He had an awful quarrel with Madame la Duchesse on +returning to Paris. He provoked Monsieur le Comte Tiercelin, le beau Tiercelin, +an officer of ordonnance of the Duke of Orleans, into a duel, <i>à propos</i> +of a cup of coffee in a salon; he actually wounded the beau Tiercelin—he +sixty-five years of age! his nephew, M. de Florac, was loud in praise of his +kinsman’s bravery. +</p> + +<p> +That pretty figure and complexion which still appear so captivating in M. +Dubufe’s portrait of Madame la Duchesse d’Ivry, have long +existed—it must be owned only in paint. “<i>Je la préfère à +l’huile</i>,” the Vicomte de Florac said of his cousin. “She +should get her blushes from Monsieur Dubufe—those of her present +furnishers are not near so natural.” Sometimes the Duchess appeared with +these postiches roses, sometimes of a mortal paleness. Sometimes she looked +plump, on other occasions wofully thin. “When she goes into the +world,” said the same chronicler, “ma cousine surrounds herself +with <i>jupons</i>—c’est pour défendre sa vertu: when she is in a +devotional mood, she gives up rouge, roast meat, and crinoline, and <i>fait +maigre absolument</i>.” To spite the Duke her husband, she took up with +the Vicomte de Florac, and to please herself she cast him away. She took his +brother, the Abbé de Florac, for a director, and presently parted from him. +“Mon frère, ce saint homme ne parle jamais de Madame la Duchesse, +maintenant,” said the Vicomte. “She must have confessed to him des +choses affreuses—oh, oui!—affreuses ma parole +d’honneur!” +</p> + +<p> +The Duke d’Ivry being archiroyaliste, Madame la Duchesse must make +herself ultra-Philippiste. “Oh, oui! tout ce qu’il y a de plus +Madame Adélaide au monde!” cried Florac. “She raffoles of M. le +Régent. She used to keep a fast of the day of the supplice of Philippe Egalité, +Saint and Martyr. I say used, for to make to enrage her husband, and to recall +the Abbé my brother, did she not advise herself to consult M. le Pasteur +Grigou, and to attend the preach at his Temple? When this sheep had brought her +shepherd back, she dismissed the Pasteur Grigou. Then she tired of M. +l’Abbé again, and my brother is come out from her, shaking his good head. +Ah! she must have put things into it which astonished the good Abbé! You know +he has since taken the Dominican robe? My word of honour! I believe it was +terror of her that drove him into a convent. You shall see him at Rome, Clive. +Give him news of his elder, and tell him this gross prodigal is repenting +amongst the swine. My word of honour! I desire but the death of Madame la +Vicomtesse de Florac, to marry and range myself! +</p> + +<p> +“After being Royalist, Philippist, Catholic, Huguenot, Madame +d’Ivry must take to Pantheism, to bearded philosophers who believe in +nothing, not even in clean linen, eclecticism, republicanism, what know I? All +her changes have been chronicled by books of her composition. Les Démons, poem +Catholic; Charles IX. is the hero and the demons are shot for the most part at +the catastrophe of St. Bartholomew. My good mother, all good Catholic as she +is, was startled by the boldness of this doctrine. Then there came Une +Dragonnade, par Mme. la Duchesse d’Ivry, which is all on your side. That +was of the time of the Pastor Grigou, that one. The last was Les Dieux déchus, +poème en 20 chants, par Mme. la D—— d’I. Guard yourself well +from this Muse! If she takes a fancy to you she will never leave you alone. If +you see her often, she will fancy you are in love with her, and tell her +husband. She always tells my uncle—afterwards—after she has +quarrelled with you and grown tired of you! Eh, being in London once, she had +the idea to make herself a <i>Quakre;</i> wore the costume, consulted a +minister of that culte, and quarrelled with him as of rule. It appears the +Quakers do not beat themselves, otherwise my poor uncle must have paid of his +person. +</p> + +<p> +“The turn of the philosophers then came, the chemists, the natural +historians, what know I? She made a laboratory in her hotel, and rehearsed +poisons like Madame de Brinvilliers—she spent hours in the Jardin des +Plantes. Since she has grown <i>affreusement maigre</i> and wears mounting +robes, she has taken more than ever to the idea that she resembles Mary Queen +of Scots. She wears a little frill and a little cap. Every man she loves, she +says, has come to misfortune. She calls her lodgings Lochleven. Eh! I pity the +landlord of Lochleven! She calls ce gros Blackball, vous savez, that pillar of +estaminets, that prince of mauvais-ton, her Bothwell; little Mijaud, the poor +little pianist, she named her Rizzio; young Lord Greenhorn who was here with +governor, a Monsieur of Oxfort, she christened her Darnley, and the Minister +Anglican, her John Knox! The poor man was quite enchanted! Beware of this +haggard siren, my little Clive!—mistrust her dangerous song! Her cave is +<i>jonchée</i> with the bones of her victims. Be you not one!” +</p> + +<p> +Far from causing Clive to avoid Madame la Duchesse, these cautions very likely +would have made him only the more eager to make her acquaintance, but that a +much nobler attraction drew him elsewhere. At first, being introduced to Madame +d’Ivry’s salon, he was pleased and flattered, and behaved himself +there merrily and agreeably enough. He had not studied Horace Vernet for +nothing; he drew a fine picture of Kew rescuing her from the Arabs, with a +plenty of sabres, pistols, burnouses, and dromedaries. He made a pretty sketch +of her little girl Antoinette, and a wonderful likeness of Miss O’Grady, +the little girl’s governess, the mother’s dame de +compagnie;—Miss O’Grady, with the richest Milesian brogue, who had +been engaged to give Antoinette the pure English accent. But the French +lady’s great eyes and painted smiles would not bear comparison with +Ethel’s natural brightness and beauty. Clive, who had been appointed +painter in ordinary to the Queen of Scots, neglected his business, and went +over to the English faction; so did one or two more of the Princess’s +followers, leaving her Majesty by no means well pleased at their desertion. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +There had been many quarrels between M. d’Ivry and his next-of-kin. +Political differences, private differences—a long story. The Duke, who +had been wild himself, could not pardon the Vicomte de Florac for being wild. +Efforts at reconciliation had been made which ended unsuccessfully. The Vicomte +de Florac had been allowed for a brief space to be intimate with the chief of +his family, and then had been dismissed for being too intimate. Right or wrong, +the Duke was jealous of all young men who approached the Duchesse. “He is +suspicious,” Madame de Florac indignantly said, “because he +remembers: and he thinks other men are like himself.” The Vicomte +discreetly said, “My cousin has paid me the compliment to be jealous of +me,” and acquiesced in his banishment with a shrug. +</p> + +<p> +During the emigration the old Lord Kew had been very kind to exiles, M. +d’Ivry amongst the number; and that nobleman was anxious to return to all +Lord Kew’s family when they came to France the hospitality which he had +received himself in England. He still remembered or professed to remember Lady +Kew’s beauty. How many women are there, awful of aspect, at present, of +whom the same pleasing legend is not narrated! It must be true, for do not they +themselves confess it? I know of few things more remarkable or suggestive of +philosophic contemplation than those physical changes. +</p> + +<p> +When the old Duke and the old Countess met together and talked confidentially, +their conversation bloomed into a jargon wonderful to hear. Old scandals woke +up, old naughtinesses rose out of their graves, and danced, and smirked, and +gibbered again, like those wicked nuns whom Bertram and Robert le Diable evoke +from their sepulchres whilst the bassoon performs a diabolical incantation. The +Brighton Pavilion was tenanted; Ranelagh and the Pantheon swarmed with dancers +and masks; Perdita was found again, and walked a minuet with the Prince of +Wales. Mrs. Clarke and the Duke of York danced together—a pretty dance. +The old Duke wore a <i>jabot</i> and <i>ailes-de-pigeon</i>, the old Countess a +hoop, and a cushion on her head. If haply the young folks came in, the elders +modified their recollections, and Lady Kew brought honest old King George and +good old ugly Queen Charlotte to the rescue. Her ladyship was sister of the +Marquis of Steyne: and in some respects resembled that lamented nobleman. Their +family had relations in France (Lady Kew had always a pied-a-terre at Paris, a +bitter little scandal-shop, where <i>les bien-pensants</i> assembled and +retailed the most awful stories against the reigning dynasty). It was she who +handed over le petit Kiou, when quite a boy, to Monsieur and Madame +d’Ivry, to be <i>lancé</i> into Parisian society. He was treated as a son +of the family by the Duke, one of whose many Christian names, his lordship, +Francis George Xavier, Earl of Kew and Viscount Walham, bears. If Lady Kew +hated any one (and she could hate very considerably) she hated her +daughter-in-law, Walham’s widow, and the Methodists who surrounded her. +Kew remain among a pack of psalm-singing old women and parsons with his mother! +Fi donc! Frank was Lady Kew’s boy; she would form him, marry him, leave +him her money if he married to her liking, and show him life. And so she showed +it to him. +</p> + +<p> +Have you taken your children to the National Gallery in London, and shown them +the “Marriage a la Mode?” Was the artist exceeding the privilege of +his calling in painting the catastrophe in which those guilty people all +suffer? If this fable were not true, if many and many of your young men of +pleasure had not acted it, and rued the moral, I would tear the page. You know +that in our Nursery Tales there is commonly a good fairy to counsel, and a bad +one to mislead the young prince. You perhaps feel that in your own life there +is a Good Principle imploring you to come into its kind bosom, and a Bad +Passion which tempts you into its arms. Be of easy minds good-natured people! +Let us disdain surprises and <i>coups-de-théâtre</i> for once; and tell those +good souls who are interested about him, that there is a Good Spirit coming to +the rescue of our young Lord Kew. +</p> + +<p> +Surrounded by her court and royal attendants, La Reine Marie used graciously to +attend the play-table, where luck occasionally declared itself for and against +her Majesty. Her appearance used to create not a little excitement in the +Saloon of Roulette, the game which she patronised, it being more “fertile +of emotions” than the slower trente-et-quarante. She dreamed of numbers, +had favourite incantations by which to conjure them: noted the figures made by +peels of peaches and so forth, the numbers of houses, on +hackney-coaches—was superstitious <i>comme toutes les rimes +poétiques</i>. She commonly brought a beautiful agate bonbonniere full of gold +pieces, when she played. It was wonderful to see her grimaces: to watch her +behaviour: her appeals to heaven, her delight and despair. Madame la Baronne de +la Cruchecassée played on one side of her, Madame la Comtesse de Schlangenbad +on the other. When she had lost all her money her Majesty would condescend to +borrow—not from those ladies:—knowing the royal peculiarity, they +never had any money; they always lost; they swiftly pocketed their winnings and +never left a mass on the table, or quitted it, as courtiers will, when they saw +luck was going against their sovereign. The officers of her household were +Count Punter, a Hanoverian, the Cavaliere Spada, Captain Blackball of a +mysterious English regiment, which might be any one of the hundred and twenty +in the Army List, and other noblemen and gentlemen, Greeks, Russians, and +Spaniards. Mr. and Mrs. Jones (of England), who had made the princess’s +acquaintance at Bagneres (where her lord still remained in the gout) and +perseveringly followed her all the way to Baden, were dazzled by the splendour +of the company in which they found themselves. Miss Jones wrote such letters to +her dearest friend Miss Thompson, Cambridge Square, London, as caused that +young person to crever with envy. Bob Jones, who had grown a pair of mustachios +since he left home, began to think slightingly of poor little Fanny Thompson, +now he had got into “the best Continental society.” Might not he +quarter a countess’s coat on his brougham along with the Jones arms, or, +more slap-up still, have the two shields painted on the panels with the coronet +over? “Do you know the princess calls herself the Queen of Scots, and she +calls me Julian Avenel?” says Jones delighted, to Clive, who wrote me +about the transmogrification of our schoolfellow, an attorney’s son, whom +I recollected a snivelling little boy at Grey Friars. “I say, Newcome, +the princess is going to establish an order,” cried Bob in ecstasy. Every +one of her aides-de-camp had a bunch of orders at his button, excepting, of +course, poor Jones. +</p> + +<p> +Like all persons who beheld her, when Miss Newcome and her party made their +appearance at Baden, Monsieur de Florac was enraptured with her beauty. +“I speak of it constantly before the Duchesse. I know it pleases +her,” so the Vicomte said. “You should have seen her looks when +your friend M. Jones praised Miss Newcome! She ground her teeth with fury. +Tiens ce petit sournois de Kiou! He always spoke of her as a mere sac +d’argent that he was about to marry—an ingot of the cité—une +fille de Lord Maire. Have all English bankers such pearls of daughters? If the +Vicomtesse de Florac had but quitted the earth, dont elle fait +l’ornement—I would present myself to the charmante meess and ride a +steeple-chase with Kiou!” That he should win it the Viscount never +doubted. +</p> + +<p> +When Lady Anne Newcome first appeared in the ballroom at Baden, Madame la +Duchesse d’Ivry begged the Earl of Kew (<i>notre filleul</i>, she called +him) to present her to his aunt miladi and her charming daughter. “My +<i>filleul</i> had not prepared me for so much grace,” she said, turning +a look towards Lord Kew, which caused his lordship some embarrassment. Her +kindness and graciousness were extreme. Her caresses and compliments never +ceased all the evening. She told the mother and the daughter too that she had +never seen any one so lovely as Ethel. Whenever she saw Lady Anne’s +children in the walks she ran to them (so that Captain Blackball and Count +Punter, A.D.C., were amazed at her tenderness), she <i>étouffé’d</i> them +with kisses. What lilies and roses! What lovely little creatures! What +companions for her own Antoinette. “This is your governess, Miss Quigli; +mademoiselle, you must let me present you to Miss O’Gredi, your +compatriot, and I hope your children will be always together.” The Irish +Protestant governess scowled at the Irish Catholic—there was a Boyne +Water between them. +</p> + +<p> +Little Antoinette; a lonely little girl, was glad to find any companions. +“Mamma kisses me on the promenade,” she told them in her artless +way. “She never kisses me at home!” One day when Lord Kew with +Florac and Clive were playing with the children, Antoinette said, +“Pourquoi ne venez-vous plus chez nous, M. de Kew? And why does mamma say +you are a <i>lâche?</i> She said so yesterday to ces messieurs. And why does +mamma say thou art only a vaurien, mon cousin? Thou art always very good for +me. I love thee better than all those messieurs. Ma tante Florac a été bonne +pour moi à Paris aussi—Ah! qu’elle a été bonne!” +</p> + +<p> +“C’est que les anges aiment bien les petits chérubins, and my +mother is an angel, seest thou,” cries Florac, kissing her. +</p> + +<p> +“Thy mother is not dead,” said little Antoinette, “then why +dost thou cry, my cousin?” And the three spectators were touched by this +little scene and speech. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Anne Newcome received the caresses and compliments of Madame la Duchesse +with marked coldness on the part of one commonly so very good-natured. +Ethel’s instinct told her that there was something wrong in this woman, +and she shrank from her with haughty reserve. The girl’s conduct was not +likely to please the French lady, but she never relaxed in her smiles and her +compliments, her caresses, and her professions of admiration. She was present +when Clara Pulleyn fell; and, prodigal of <i>câlineries</i> and consolation, +and shawls and scent-bottles, to the unhappy young lady, she would accompany +her home. She inquired perpetually after the health of <i>cette pauvre petite +Miss Clara</i>. Oh, how she railed against <i>ces Anglaises</i> and their +prudery! Can you fancy her and her circle, the tea-table set in the twilight +that evening, the court assembled, Madame de la Cruchecassée and Madame de +Schlangenbad; and their whiskered humble servants, Baron Punter and Count +Spada, and Marquis Iago, and Prince Iachimo, and worthy Captain Blackball? Can +you fancy a moonlight conclave, and ghouls feasting on the fresh corpse of a +reputation:—the gibes and sarcasms, the laughing and the gnashing of +teeth? How they tear the dainty limbs, and relish the tender morsels! +</p> + +<p> +“The air of this place is not good for you, believe me, my little Kew; it +is dangerous. Have pressing affairs in England; let your château burn down; or +your intendant run away, and pursue him. Partez, mon petit Kiou; partez, or +evil will come of it.” Such was the advice which a friend of Lord Kew +gave the young nobleman. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0032"></a> +CHAPTER XXXII.<br> +Barnes’s Courtship</h2> + +<p> +Ethel had made various attempts to become intimate with her future +sister-in-law; had walked, and ridden, and talked with Lady Clara before +Barnes’s arrival. She had come away not very much impressed with respect +for Lady Clara’s mental powers; indeed, we have said that Miss Ethel was +rather more prone to attack women than to admire them, and was a little hard +upon the fashionable young persons of her acquaintance and sex. In after life, +care and thought subdued her pride, and she learned to look at society more +good-naturedly; but at this time, and for some years after, she was impatient +of commonplace people, and did not choose to conceal her scorn. Lady Clara was +very much afraid of her. Those timid little thoughts, which would come out, and +frisk and gambol with pretty graceful antics, and advance confidingly at the +sound of Jack Belsize’s jolly voice, and nibble crumbs out of his hand, +shrank away before Ethel, severe nymph with the bright eyes, and hid themselves +under the thickets and in the shade. Who has not overheard a simple couple of +girls, or of lovers possibly, pouring out their little hearts, laughing at +their own little jokes, prattling and prattling away unceasingly, until mamma +appears with her awful didactic countenance, or the governess with her dry +moralities, and the colloquy straightway ceases, the laughter stops, the chirp +of the harmless little birds is hushed. Lady Clara being of a timid nature, +stood in as much awe of Ethel as of her father and mother; whereas her next +sister, a brisk young creature of seventeen, who was of the order of romps or +tomboys, was by no means afraid of Miss Newcome, and indeed a much greater +favourite with her than her placid elder sister. +</p> + +<p> +Young ladies may have been crossed in love, and have had their sufferings, +their frantic moments of grief and tears, their wakeful nights, and so forth; +but it is only in very sentimental novels that people occupy themselves +perpetually with that passion: and, I believe, what are called broken hearts +are very rare articles indeed. Tom is jilted—is for a while in a dreadful +state—bores all his male acquaintance with his groans and his +frenzy—rallies from the complaint—eats his dinner very +kindly—takes an interest in the next turf event, and is found at +Newmarket, as usual, bawling out the odds which he will give or take. Miss has +her paroxysm and recovery—Madame Crinoline’s new importations from +Paris interest the young creature—she deigns to consider whether pink or +blue will become her most—she conspires with her maid to make the spring +morning dresses answer for the autumn—she resumes her books, piano, and +music (giving up certain songs perhaps that she used to sing)—she waltzes +with the Captain—gets a colour—waltzes longer, better, and ten +times quicker than Lucy, who is dancing with the Major—replies in an +animated manner to the Captain’s delightful remarks—takes a little +supper—and looks quite kindly at him before she pulls up the carriage +windows. +</p> + +<p> +Clive may not like his cousin Barnes Newcome, and many other men share in that +antipathy, but all ladies do not. It is a fact that Barnes, when he likes, can +make himself a very pleasant fellow. He is dreadfully satirical, that is +certain; but many persons are amused by those dreadful satirical young men: and +to hear fun made of our neighbours, even of some of our friends, does not make +us very angry. Barnes is one of the very best waltzers in all society, that is +the truth; whereas it must be confessed Some One Else was very heavy and slow, +his great foot always crushing you, and he always begging your pardon. Barnes +whirls a partner round a room ages after she is ready to faint. What wicked fun +he makes of other people when he stops! He is not handsome, but in his face +there is something odd-looking and distinguished. It is certain he has +beautiful small feet and hands. +</p> + +<p> +He comes every day from the City, drops in, in his quiet unobtrusive way, and +drinks tea at five o’clock; always brings a budget of the funniest +stories with him, makes mamma laugh, Clara laugh, Henrietta, who is in the +schoolroom still, die of laughing. Papa has the highest opinion of Mr. Newcome +as a man of business: if he had had such a friend in early life his affairs +would not be where they now are, poor dear kind papa! Do they want to go +anywhere, is not Mr. Newcome always ready? Did he not procure that delightful +room for them to witness the Lord Mayor’s show; and make Clara die of +laughing at those odd City people at the Mansion House ball? He is at every +party, and never tired though he gets up so early: he waltzes with nobody else: +he is always there to put Lady Clara in the carriage: at the drawing-room he +looked quite handsome in his uniform of the Newcome Hussars, bottle-green and +silver lace: he speaks Politics so <i>exceedingly</i> well with papa and +gentlemen after dinner: he is a sound conservative, full of practical good +sense and information, with no dangerous new-fangled ideas, such as young men +have. When poor dear Sir Brian Newcome’s health gives way quite, Mr. +Newcome will go into Parliament, and then he will resume the old barony which +has been in abeyance in the family since the reign of Richard the Third. They +had fallen quite, quite low. Mr. Newcome’s grandfather came to London +with a satchel on his back, like Whittington. Isn’t it romantic? +</p> + +<p> +This process has been going on for months. It is not in one day that poor Lady +Clara has been made to forget the past, and to lay aside her mourning. Day +after day, very likely, the undeniable faults and many peccadilloes of—of +that other person, have been exposed to her. People around the young lady may +desire to spare her feelings, but can have no interest in screening Poor Jack +from condign reprobation. A wild prodigal—a disgrace to his order—a +son of old Highgate’s leading such a life, and making such a scandal! +Lord Dorking believes Mr. Belsize to be an abandoned monster and fiend in human +shape; gathers and relates all the stories that ever have been told to the +young man’s disadvantage, and of these be sure there are enough, and +speaks of him with transports of indignation. At the end of months of unwearied +courtship, Mr. Barnes Newcome is honestly accepted, and Lady Clara is waiting +for him at Baden, not unhappy to receive him; when walking on the promenade +with her father, the ghost of her dead love suddenly rises before her, and the +young lady faints to the ground. +</p> + +<p> +When Barnes Newcome thinks fit he can be perfectly placable in his demeanour +and delicate in his conduct. What he said upon this painful subject was +delivered with the greatest propriety. He did not for one moment consider that +Lady Clara’s agitation arose from any present feeling in Mr. +Belsize’s favour, but that she was naturally moved by the remembrance of +the past, and the sudden appearance which recalled it. “And but that a +lady’s name should never be made the subject of dispute between +men,” Newcome said to Lord Dorking, with great dignity, “and that +Captain Belsize has opportunely quitted the place, I should certainly have +chastised him. He and another adventurer, against whom I have had to warn my +own family, have quitted Baden this afternoon. I am glad that both are gone, +Captain Belsize especially; for my temper, my lord, is hot, and I do not think +I should have commanded it.” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Kew, when the elder lord informed him of this admirable speech of Barnes +Newcome’s, upon whose character, prudence, and dignity the Earl of +Dorking pronounced a fervent eulogium, shook his head gravely, and said, +“Yes, Barnes was a dead shot, and a most determined fellow:” and +did not burst out laughing until he and Lord Dorking had parted. Then to be +sure he took his fill of laughter, he told the story to Ethel, he complimented +Barnes on his heroic self-denial; the joke of the thundering big stick was +nothing to it. Barnes Newcome laughed too; he had plenty of humour, Barnes. +“I think you might have whopped Jack when he came out from his interview +with the Dorkings,” Kew said: “the poor devil was so bewildered and +weak, that Alfred might have thrashed him. At other times you would find it +more difficult, Barnes my man.” Mr. B. Newcome resumed his dignity; said +a joke was a joke, and there was quite enough of this one; which assertion we +may be sure he conscientiously made. +</p> + +<p> +That meeting and parting between the old lovers passed with a great deal of +calm and propriety on both sides. Miss’s parents of course were present +when Jack at their summons waited upon them and their daughter, and made his +hang-dog bow. My Lord Dorking said (poor Jack in the anguish of his heart had +poured out the story to Clive Newcome afterwards), “Mr. Belsize, I have +to apologise for words which I used in my heat yesterday, and which I recall +and regret, as I am sure you do that there should have been any occasion for +them.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Belsize looking at the carpet said he was very sorry. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Dorking here remarked, that as Captain Belsize was now at Baden, he might +wish to hear from Lady Clara Pulleyn’s own lips that the engagement into +which she had entered was formed by herself, certainly with the consent and +advice of her family. “Is it not so, my dear?” +</p> + +<p> +Lady Clara said, “Yes, mamma,” with a low curtsey. +</p> + +<p> +“We have now to wish you good-bye, Charles Belsize,” said my lord, +with some feeling. “As your relative, and your father’s old friend, +I wish you well. I hope your future course in life may not be so unfortunate as +the past year. I request that we may part friends. Good-bye, Charles. Clara, +shake hands with Captain Belsize. My Lady Dorking, you will please to give +Charles your hand. You have known him since he was a child; +and—and—we are sorry to be obliged to part in this way.” In +this wise Mr. Jack Belsize’s tooth was finally extracted; and for the +moment we wish him and his brother-patient a good journey. +</p> + +<p> +Little lynx-eyed Dr. Von Finck, who attends most of the polite company at +Baden, drove ceaselessly about the place that day, with the <i>real</i> version +of the fainting-fit story, about which we may be sure the wicked and malicious, +and the uninitiated, had a hundred absurd details. Lady Clara ever engaged to +Captain Belsize? Fiddle-de-dee! Everybody knew the Captain’s affairs, and +that he could no more think of marrying than flying. Lady Clara faint at seeing +him! she fainted before he came up; she was always fainting, and had done so +thrice in the last week to his knowledge. Lord Dorking had a nervous affection +of his right arm, and was always shaking his stick. He did not say Villain, he +said William; Captain Belsize’s name is William. It is not so in the +Peerage? Is he called Jack in the Peerage? Those Peerages are always wrong. +These candid explanations of course had their effect. Wicked tongues were of +course instantaneously silent. People were entirely satisfied; they always are. +The next night being Assembly night, Lady Clara appeared at the rooms and +danced with Lord Kew and Mr. Barnes Newcome. All the society was as gracious +and good-humoured as possible, and there was no more question of fainting than +of burning down the Conversation-house. But Madame de Cruchecassée, and Madame +de Schlangenbad, and those horrid people whom the men speak to, but whom the +women salute with silent curtseys, persisted in declaring that there was no +prude like an English prude; and to Dr. Finck’s oaths, assertions, +explanations, only replied, with a shrug of their bold shoulders, +“Taisez-vous, Docteur, vous n’êtes qu’une vieille +bête.” +</p> + +<p> +Lady Kew was at the rooms, uncommonly gracious. Miss Ethel took a few turns of +the waltz with Lord Kew, but this nymph looked more <i>farouche</i> than upon +ordinary days. Bob Jones, who admired her hugely, asked leave to waltz with +her, and entertained her with recollections of Clive Newcome at school. He +remembered a fight in which Clive had been engaged, and recounted that action +to Miss Newcome, who seemed to be interested. He was pleased to deplore +Clive’s fancy for turning artist, and that Miss Newcome recommended him +to have his likeness taken, for she said his appearance was exceedingly +picturesque. He was going on with further prattle, but she suddenly cut Mr. +Jones short, making him a bow, and going to sit down by Lady Kew. “And +the next day, sir,” said Bob, with whom the present writer had the +happiness of dining at a mess dinner at the Upper Temple, “when I met her +on the walk, sir, she cut me as dead as a stone. The airs those swells give +themselves is enough to make any man turn republican.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Ethel indeed was haughty, very haughty, and of a difficult temper. She +spared none of her party except her kind mother, to whom Ethel always was kind, +and her father, whom, since his illnesses, she tended with much benevolence and +care. But she did battle with Lady Kew repeatedly, coming to her Aunt +Julia’s rescue, on whom her mother as usual exercised her powers of +torturing. She made Barnes quail before her by the shafts of contempt which she +flashed at him; and she did not spare Lord Kew, whose good-nature was no shield +against her scorn. The old queen-mother was fairly afraid of her; she even left +off beating Lady Julia when Ethel came in, of course taking her revenge in the +young girl’s absence, but trying in her presence to soothe and please +her. Against Lord Kew the young girl’s anger was most unjust, and the +more cruel because the kindly young nobleman never spoke a hard word of any one +mortal soul, and, carrying no arms, should have been assaulted by none. But his +very good-nature seemed to make his young opponent only the more wrathful; she +shot because his honest breast was bare; it bled at the wounds which she +inflicted. Her relatives looked at her surprised at her cruelty, and the young +man himself was shocked in his dignity and best feelings by his cousin’s +wanton ill-humour. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Kew fancied she understood the cause of this peevishness, and remonstrated +with Miss Ethel. “Shall we write a letter to Lucerne, and order Dick +Tinto back again?” said her ladyship. “Are you such a fool, Ethel, +as to be hankering after that young scapegrace, and his yellow beard? His +drawings are very pretty. Why, I think he might earn a couple of hundred a year +as a teacher, and nothing would be easier than to break your engagement with +Kew, and whistle the drawing-master back again.” +</p> + +<p> +Ethel took up the whole heap of Clive’s drawings, lighted a taper, +carried the drawings to the fireplace, and set them in a blaze. “A very +pretty piece of work,” says Lady Kew, “and which proves +satisfactorily that you don’t care for the young Clive at all. Have we +arranged a correspondence? We are cousins, you know; we may write pretty +cousinly letters to one another.” A month before the old lady would have +attacked her with other arms than sarcasm, but she was scared now, and dared to +use no coarser weapons. “Oh!” cried Ethel in a transport, +“what a life ours is, and how you buy and sell, and haggle over your +children! It is not Clive I care about, poor boy. Our ways of life are +separate. I cannot break from my own family, and I know very well how you would +receive him in it. Had he money, it would be different. You would receive him, +and welcome him, and hold out your hands to him; but he is only a poor painter, +and we forsooth are bankers in the City; and he comes among us on sufferance, +like those concert-singers whom mamma treats with so much politeness, and who +go down and have supper by themselves. Why should they not be as good as we +are?” +</p> + +<p> +“M. de C——, my dear, is of a noble family,” interposed +Lady Kew; “when he has given up singing and made his fortune, no doubt he +can go back into the world again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Made his fortune, yes,” Ethel continued, “that is the cry. +There never were, since the world began, people so unblushingly sordid! We own +it, and are proud of it. We barter rank against money, and money against rank, +day after day. Why did you marry my father to my mother? Was it for his wit? +You know he might have been an angel and you would have scorned him. Your +daughter was bought with papa’s money as surely as ever Newcome was. Will +there be no day when this mammon-worship will cease among us?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not in my time or yours, Ethel,” the elder said, not unkindly; +perhaps she thought of a day long ago before she was old herself. +</p> + +<p> +“We are sold,” the young girl went on, “we are as much sold +as Turkish women; the only difference being that our masters may have but one +Circassian at a time. No, there is no freedom for us. I wear my green ticket, +and wait till my master comes. But every day as I think of our slavery, I +revolt against it more. That poor wretch, that poor girl whom my brother is to +marry, why did she not revolt and fly? I would, if I loved a man sufficiently, +loved him better than the world, than wealth, than rank, than fine houses and +titles,—and I feel I love these best,—I would give up all to follow +him. But what can I be with my name and my parents? I belong to the world like +all the rest of my family. It is you who have bred us up; you who are +answerable for us. Why are there no convents to which we can fly? You make a +fine marriage for me; you provide me with a good husband, a kind soul, not very +wise, but very kind; you make me what you call happy, and I would rather be at +the plough like the women here.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, you wouldn’t, Ethel,” replies the grandmother, drily. +“These are the fine speeches of schoolgirls. The showers of rain would +spoil your complexion—you would be perfectly tired in an hour, and come +back to luncheon—you belong to your belongings, my dear, and are not +better than the rest of the world:—very good-looking, as you know +perfectly well, and not very good-tempered. It is lucky that Kew is. Calm your +temper, at least before marriage; such a prize does not fall to a pretty +girl’s lot every day. Why, you sent him away quite seared by your +cruelty; and if he is not playing at roulette, or at billiards, I dare say he +is thinking what a little termagant you are, and that he had best pause while +it is yet time. Before I was married, your poor grandfather never knew I had a +temper; of after-days I say nothing; but trials are good for all of us, and he +bore his like an angel.” +</p> + +<p> +Lady Kew, too, on this occasion at least, was admirably good-humoured. She also +when it was necessary could put a restraint on her temper, and, having this +match very much at heart, chose to coax and to soothe her granddaughter rather +than to endeavour to scold and frighten her. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you desire this marriage so much, grandmamma,” the girl +asked. “My cousin is not very much in love,—at least I should fancy +not,” she added, blushing. “I am bound to own Lord Kew is not in +the least eager, and I think if you were to tell him to wait for five years he +would be quite willing. Why should you be so very anxious?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, my dear? Because I think young ladies who want to go and work in +the fields, should make hay while the sun shines; because I think it is high +time that Kew should <i>ranger</i> himself; because I am sure he will make the best +husband, and Ethel the prettiest Countess in England.” And the old lady, +seldom exhibiting any signs of affection, looked at her granddaughter very +fondly. From her Ethel looked up into the glass, which very likely repeated on +its shining face the truth her elder had just uttered. Shall we quarrel with +the girl for that dazzling reflection; for owning that charming truth, and +submitting to the conscious triumph? Give her her part of vanity, of youth, of +desire to rule and be admired. Meanwhile Mr. Clive’s drawings have been +crackling in the fireplace at her feet, and the last spark of that combustion +is twinkling out unheeded. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0033"></a> +CHAPTER XXXIII.<br> +Lady Kew at the Congress</h2> + +<p> +When Lady Kew heard that Madame d’Ivry was at Baden, and was informed at +once of the French lady’s graciousness towards the Newcome family, and of +her fury against Lord Kew, the old Countess gave a loose to that energetic +temper with which nature had gifted her; a temper which she tied up sometimes +and kept from barking and biting; but which when unmuzzled was an animal of +whom all her ladyship’s family had a just apprehension. Not one of them +but in his or her time had been wounded, lacerated, tumbled over, otherwise +frightened or injured by this unruly brute. The cowards brought it sops and +patted it; the prudent gave it a clear berth, and walked round so as not to +meet it; but woe be to those of the family who had to bring the meal, and +prepare the litter, and (to speak respectfully) share the kennel with Lady +Kew’s “Black Dog!” Surely a fine furious temper, if +accompanied with a certain magnanimity and bravery which often go together with +it, is one of the most precious and fortunate gifts with which a gentleman or +lady can be endowed. A person always ready to fight is certain of the greatest +consideration amongst his or her family circle. The lazy grow tired of +contending with him; the timid coax and flatter him; and as almost every one is +timid or lazy, a bad-tempered man is sure to have his own way. It is he who +commands, and all the others obey. If he is a gourmand, he has’ what he +likes for dinner; and the tastes of all the rest are subservient to him. She +(we playfully transfer the gender, as a bad temper is of both sexes) has the +place which she likes best in the drawing-room; nor do her parents, nor her +brothers and sisters, venture to take her favourite chair. If she wants to go +to a party, mamma will dress herself in spite of her headache; and papa, who +hates those dreadful soirées, will go upstairs after dinner and put on his poor +old white neckcloth, though he has been toiling at chambers all day, and must +be there early in the morning—he will go out with her, we say, and stay +for the cotillon. If the family are taking their tour in the summer, it is she +who ordains whither they shall go, and when they shall stop. If he comes home +late, the dinner is kept for him, and not one dares to say a word though ever +so hungry. If he is in a good humour, how every one frisks about and is happy! +How the servants jump up at his bell and run to wait upon him! How they sit up +patiently, and how eagerly they rush out to fetch cabs in the rain! Whereas for +you and me, who have the tempers of angels, and never were known to be angry or +to complain, nobody cares whether we are pleased or not. Our wives go to the +milliners and send us the bill, and we pay it; our John finishes reading the +newspaper before he answers our bell, and brings it to us; our sons loll in the +arm-chair which we should like; fill the house with their young men, and smoke +in the dining-room; our tailors fit us badly; our butchers give us the youngest +mutton; our tradesmen dun us much more quickly than other people’s, +because they know we are good-natured; and our servants go out whenever they +like, and openly have their friends to supper in the kitchen. When Lady Kew +said <i>Sic volo, sic jubeo</i>, I promise you few persons of her +ladyship’s belongings stopped, before they did her biddings, to ask her +reasons. +</p> + +<p> +If, which very seldom happens, there are two such imperious and domineering +spirits in a family, unpleasantries of course will arise from their +contentions; or, if out of doors the family Bajazet meets with some other +violent Turk, dreadful battles ensue, all the allies on either side are brought +in, and the surrounding neighbours perforce engaged in the quarrel. This was +unluckily the case in the present instance. Lady Kew, unaccustomed to have her +will questioned at home, liked to impose it abroad. She judged the persons +around her with great freedom of speech. Her opinions were quoted, as +people’s sayings will be; and if she made bitter speeches, depend on it +they lost nothing in the carrying. She was furious against Madame la Duchesse +d’Ivry, and exploded in various companies whenever that lady’s name +was mentioned. “Why was she not with her husband? Why was the poor old +Duke left to his gout, and this woman trailing through the country with her +vagabond court of billiard-markers at her heels? She to call herself Mary Queen +of Scots, forsooth!—well, she merited the title in some respects, though +she had not murdered her husband as yet. Ah! I should like to be Queen +Elizabeth if the Duchess is Queen of Scots!” said the old lady, shaking +her old fist. And these sentiments being uttered in public, upon the promenade, +to mutual friends, of course the Duchess had the benefit of Lady Kew’s +remarks a few minutes after they were uttered; and her grace, and the +distinguished princes, counts, and noblemen in her court, designated as +billiard-markers by the old Countess, returned the latter’s compliments +with pretty speeches of their own. Scandals were dug up respecting her +ladyship, so old that one would have thought them forgotten these forty +years,—so old that they happened before most of the Newcomes now extant +were born, and surely therefore are out of the province of this contemporary +biography. Lady Kew was indignant with her daughter (there were some moments +when any conduct of her friends did not meet her ladyship’s approbation) +even for the scant civility with which Lady Anne had received the +Duchess’s advances. “Leave a card upon her!—yes, send a card +by one of your footmen; but go in to see her—because she was at the +window and saw you drive up.—Are you mad, Anne? That was the very reason +you should not have come out of your carriage. But you are so weak and +good-natured, that if a highwayman stopped you, you would say, ‘Thank +you, sir,’ as you gave him your purse: yes, and if Mrs. Macheath called +on you afterwards you would return the visit!” +</p> + +<p> +Even had these speeches been made <i>about</i> the Duchess, and some of them +not addressed to her, things might have gone on pretty well. If we quarrelled +with all the people who abuse us behind our backs, and began to tear their eyes +out as soon as we set ours on them, what a life it would be, and when should we +have any quiet? Backbiting is all fair in society. Abuse me, and I will abuse +you; but let us be friends when we meet. Have not we all entered a dozen rooms, +and been sure, from the countenances of the amiable persons present, that they +had been discussing our little peculiarities, perhaps as we were on the stairs? +Was our visit, therefore, the less agreeable? Did we quarrel and say hard words +to one another’s faces? No—we wait until some of our dear friends +take their leave, and then comes our turn. My back is at my neighbour’s +service; as soon as that is turned let him make what faces he thinks proper: +but when we meet we grin and shake hands like well-bred folk, to whom clean +linen is not more necessary than a clean sweet-looking countenance, and a +nicely got-up smile, for company. +</p> + +<p> +Here was Lady Kew’s mistake. She wanted, for some reason, to drive Madame +d’Ivry out of Baden; and thought there were no better means of effecting +this object than by using the high hand, and practising those frowns upon the +Duchess which had scared away so many other persons. But the Queen of Scots was +resolute, too, and her band of courtiers fought stoutly round about her. Some +of them could not pay their bills, and could not retreat: others had courage, +and did not choose to fly. Instead of coaxing and soothing Madame d’Ivry, +Madame de Kew thought by a brisk attack to rout and dislodge her. She began on +almost the very first occasion when the ladies met. “I was so sorry to +hear that Monsieur le Duc was ill at Bagneres, Madame la Duchesse,” the +old lady began on their very first meeting, after the usual salutations had +taken place. +</p> + +<p> +“Madame la Comtesse is very kind to interest herself in Monsieur +d’Ivry’s health. Monsieur le Duc at his age is not disposed to +travel. You, dear miladi, are more happy in being always able to retain the +<i>goût des voyages!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“I come to my family! my dear Duchess.” +</p> + +<p> +“How charmed they must be to possess you! Miladi Anne, you must be +inexpressibly consoled by the presence of a mother so tender! Permit me to +present Madame la Comtesse de la Cruchecassée to Madame la Comtesse de Kew. +Miladi is sister to that amiable Marquis of Steyne, whom you have known, +Ambrosine! Madame la Baronne de Schlangenbad, Miladi Kew. Do you not see the +resemblance to milor? These ladies have enjoyed the hospitalities—the +splendours of Gaunt House. They were of those famous routs of which the +charming Mistress Crawley, <i>la semillante Becki</i>, made part! How sad the +Hôtel de Gaunt must be under the present circumstances! Have you heard, miladi, +of the charming Mistress Becki? Monsieur le Duc describes her as the most +<i>spirituelle</i> Englishwoman he ever met.” The Queen of Scots turns +and whispers her lady of honour, and shrugs and taps her forehead. Lady Kew +knows that Madame d’Ivry speaks of her nephew, the present Lord Steyne, +who is not in his right mind. The Duchess looks round, and sees a friend in the +distance whom she beckons. “Comtesse, you know already monsieur the +Captain Blackball? He makes the delight of our society!” A dreadful man +with a large cigar, a florid waistcoat, and billiards written on his +countenance, swaggers forward at the Duchess’s summons. The Countess of +Kew has not gained much by her attack. She has been presented to Cruchecassée +and Schlangenbad. She sees herself on the eve of becoming the acquaintance of +Captain Blackball. +</p> + +<p> +“Permit me, Duchess, to choose my <i>English</i> friends at least for +myself,” says Lady Kew, drumming her foot. +</p> + +<p> +“But, madam, assuredly! You do not love this good Monsieur de Blackball? +Eh! the English manners are droll, pardon me for saying so. It is wonderful how +proud you are as a nation, and how ashamed you are of your compatriots!” +</p> + +<p> +“There are some persons who are ashamed of nothing, Madame la +Duchesse,” cries Lady Kew; losing her temper. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that <i>gracieuseté</i> for me? How much goodness! This good Monsieur +de Blackball is not very well bred; but, for an Englishman, he is not too bad. +I have met with people who are more ill-bred than Englishmen in my +travels.” +</p> + +<p> +“And they are?” said Lady Anne, who had been in vain endeavouring +to put an end to this colloquy. +</p> + +<p> +“Englishwomen, madam! I speak not for you. You are kind; you—you +are too soft, dear Lady Anne, for a persecutor.” +</p> + +<p> +The counsels of the worldly woman who governed and directed that branch of the +Newcome family of whom it is our business to speak now for a little while, bore +other results than those which the elderly lady desired and foresaw. Who can +foresee everything and always? Not the wisest among us. When his Majesty Louis +XIV., jockeyed his grandson on to the throne of Spain (founding thereby the +present revered dynasty of that country), did he expect to peril his own, and +bring all Europe about his royal ears? Could a late King of France, eager for +the advantageous establishment of one of his darling sons, and anxious to +procure a beautiful Spanish princess, with a crown and kingdom in reversion, +for the simple and obedient youth, ever suppose that the welfare of his whole +august race and reign would be upset by that smart speculation? We take only +the most noble examples to illustrate the conduct of such a noble old personage +as her ladyship of Kew, who brought a prodigious deal of trouble upon some of +the innocent members of her family, whom no doubt she thought to better in life +by her experienced guidance and undoubted worldly wisdom. We may be as deep as +Jesuits, know the world ever so well, lay the best-ordered plans, and the +profoundest combinations, and by a certain not unnatural turn of fate, we, and +our plans and combinations, are sent flying before the wind. We may be as wise +as Louis Philippe, that many-counselled Ulysses whom the respectable world +admired so; and after years of patient scheming, and prodigies of skill, after +coaxing, wheedling, doubling, bullying, wisdom, behold yet stronger powers +interpose: and schemes, and skill and violence, are nought. +</p> + +<p> +Frank and Ethel, Lady Kew’s grandchildren, were both the obedient +subjects of this ancient despot: this imperious old Louis XIV. in a black front +and a cap and ribbon, this scheming old Louis Philippe in tabinet; but their +blood was good and their tempers high; and for all her bitting and driving, and +the training of her <i>manége</i>, the generous young colts were hard to break. +Ethel, at this time, was especially stubborn in training, rebellious to the +whip, and wild under harness; and the way in which Lady Kew managed her won the +admiration of her family: for it was a maxim among these folks that no one +could manage Ethel but Lady Kew. Barnes said no one could manage his sister but +his grandmother. He couldn’t, that was certain. Mamma never tried, and +indeed was so good-natured, that rather than ride the filly, she would put the +saddle on her own back and let the filly ride her; no, there was no one but her +ladyship capable of managing that girl, Barnes owned, who held Lady Kew in much +respect and awe. “If the tightest hand were not kept on her, +there’s no knowing what she mightn’t do,” said her brother. +“Ethel Newcome, by Jove, is capable of running away with the +writing-master.” +</p> + +<p> +After poor Jack Belsize’s mishap and departure, Barnes’s own bride +showed no spirit at all, save one of placid contentment. She came at call and +instantly, and went through whatever paces her owner demanded of her. She +laughed whenever need was, simpered and smiled when spoken to, danced whenever +she was asked; drove out at Barnes’s side in Kew’s phaeton, and +received him certainly not with warmth, but with politeness and welcome. It is +difficult to describe the scorn with which her sister-in-law regarded her. The +sight of the patient timid little thing chafed Ethel, who was always more +haughty and flighty and bold when in Clara’s presence than at any other +time. Her ladyship’s brother, Captain Lord Viscount Rooster, before +mentioned, joined the family party at this interesting juncture. My Lord +Rooster found himself surprised, delighted, subjugated by Miss Newcome, her wit +and spirit. “By Jove, she is a plucky one,” his lordship exclaimed. +“To dance with her is the best fun in life. How she pulls all the other +girls to pieces, by Jove, and how splendidly she chaffs everybody! But,” +he added with the shrewdness and sense of humour which distinguished the young +officer, “I’d rather dance with her than marry her—by a +doosid long score—I don’t envy you that part of the business, Kew, +my boy.” Lord Kew did not set himself up as a person to be envied. He +thought his cousin beautiful: and with his grandmother, that she would make a +very handsome Countess; and he thought the money which Lady Kew would give or +leave to the young couple a very welcome addition to his means. +</p> + +<p> +On the next night, when there was a ball at the room, Miss Ethel chose to +appear in a toilette the very grandest and finest which she had ever assumed, +who was ordinarily exceedingly simple in her attire, and dressed below the mark +of the rest of the world. Her clustering ringlets, her shining white shoulders, +her splendid raiment (I believe indeed it was her court-dress which the young +lady assumed) astonished all beholders. She <i>écrasé’d</i> all other +beauties by her appearance; so much so that Madame d’Ivry’s court +could not but look, the men in admiration, the women in dislike, at this +dazzling young creature. None of the countesses, duchesses, princesses, Russ, +Spanish, Italian, were so fine or so handsome. There were some New York ladies +at Baden as there are everywhere else in Europe now. Not even these were more +magnificent than Miss Ethel. General Jeremiah J. Bung’s lady owned that +Miss Newcome was fit to appear in any party in Fourth Avenue. She was the only +well-dressed English girl Mrs. Bung had seen in Europe. A young German +Durchlaucht deigned to explain to his aide-de-camp how very handsome he thought +Miss Newcome. All our acquaintances were of one mind. Mr. Jones of England +pronounced her stunning; the admirable Captain Blackball examined her points +with the skill of an amateur, and described them with agreeable frankness. Lord +Rooster was charmed as he surveyed her, and complimented his late +companion-in-arms on the possession of such a paragon. Only Lord Kew was not +delighted—nor did Miss Ethel mean that he should be. She looked as +splendid as Cinderella in the prince’s palace. But what need for all this +splendour? this wonderful toilette? this dazzling neck and shoulders, whereof +the brightness and beauty blinded the eyes of lookers-on? She was dressed as +gaudily as an actress of the Varietes going to a supper at Trois Frères. +“It was Mademoiselle Mabille en habit de cœur,” Madame d’Ivry +remarked to Madame Schlangenbad. Barnes, who with his bride-elect for a partner +made a vis-a-vis for his sister and the admiring Lord Rooster, was puzzled +likewise by Ethel’s countenance and appearance. Little Lady Clara looked +like a little schoolgirl dancing before her. +</p> + +<p> +One, two, three, of the attendants of her Majesty the Queen of Scots were +carried off in the course of the evening by the victorious young beauty, whose +triumph had the effect, which the headstrong girl perhaps herself anticipated, +of mortifying the Duchesse d’Ivry, of exasperating old Lady Kew, and of +annoying the young nobleman to whom Miss Ethel was engaged. The girl seemed to +take a pleasure in defying all three, a something embittered her, alike against +her friends and her enemies. The old dowager chaffed and vented her wrath upon +Lady Anne and Barnes. Ethel kept the ball alive by herself almost. She refused +to go home, declining hints and commands alike. She was engaged for ever so +many dances more. Not dance with Count Punter? it would be rude to leave him +after promising him. Not waltz with Captain Blackball? He was not a proper +partner for her? Why then did Kew know him? Lord Kew walked and talked with +Captain Blackball every day. Was she to be so proud as not to know Lord +Kew’s friends? She greeted the Captain with a most fascinating smile as +he came up whilst the controversy was pending, and ended it by whirling round +the room in his arms. +</p> + +<p> +Madame d’Ivry viewed with such pleasure as might be expected the +defection of her adherents, and the triumph of her youthful rival, who seemed +to grow more beautiful with each waltz, so that the other dancers paused to +look at her, the men breaking out in enthusiasm, the reluctant women being +forced to join in the applause. Angry as she was, and knowing how Ethel’s +conduct angered her grandson, old Lady Kew could not help admiring the +rebellious beauty, whose girlish spirit was more than a match for the imperious +dowager’s tough old resolution. As for Mr. Barnes’s displeasure, +the girl tossed her saucy head, shrugged her fair shoulders, and passed on with +a scornful laugh. In a word, Miss Ethel conducted herself as a most reckless +and intrepid young flirt, using her eyes with the most consummate effect, +chattering with astounding gaiety, prodigal of smiles, gracious thanks and +killing glances. What wicked spirit moved her? Perhaps had she known the +mischief she was doing, she would have continued it still. +</p> + +<p> +The sight of this wilfulness and levity smote poor Lord Kew’s honest +heart with cruel pangs of mortification. The easy young nobleman had passed +many a year of his life in all sorts of wild company. The <i>chaumière</i> knew +him, and the balls of Parisian actresses, the coulisses of the opera at home +and abroad. Those pretty heads of ladies whom nobody knows, used to nod their +shining ringlets at Kew, from private boxes at theatres, or dubious Park +broughams. He had run the career of young men of pleasure, and laughed and +feasted with jolly prodigals and their company. He was tired of it: perhaps he +remembered an earlier and purer life, and was sighing to return to it. Living +as he had done amongst the outcasts, his ideal of domestic virtue was high and +pure. He chose to believe that good women were entirely good. Duplicity he +could not understand; ill-temper shocked him: wilfulness he seemed to fancy +belonged only to the profane and wicked; not to good girls, with good mothers, +in honest homes. Their nature was to love their families; to obey their +parents; to tend their poor; to honour their husbands; to cherish their +children. Ethel’s laugh woke him up from one of these simple reveries +very likely, and then she swept round the ballroom rapidly, to the brazen notes +of the orchestra. He never offered to dance with her more than once in the +evening; went away to play, and returned to find her still whirling to the +music. Madame d’Ivry remarked his tribulation and gloomy face, though she +took no pleasure at his discomfiture, knowing that Ethel’s behaviour +caused it. +</p> + +<p> +In plays and novels, and I dare say in real life too sometimes, when the wanton +heroine chooses to exert her powers of fascination, and to flirt with Sir Harry +or the Captain, the hero, in a pique, goes off and makes love to somebody else: +both acknowledge their folly after a while, shake hands, and are reconciled, +and the curtain drops, or the volume ends. But there are some people too noble +and simple for these amorous scenes and smirking artifices. When Kew was +pleased he laughed, when he was grieved he was silent. He did not deign to hide +his grief or pleasure under disguises. His error, perhaps, was in forgetting +that Ethel was very young; that her conduct was not design so much as girlish +mischief and high spirits; and that if young men have their frolics, sow their +wild oats, and enjoy their pleasure, young women may be permitted sometimes +their more harmless vagaries of gaiety, and sportive outbreaks of wilful +humour. +</p> + +<p> +When she consented to go home at length, Lord Kew brought Miss Newcome’s +little white cloak for her (under the hood of which her glossy curls, her +blushing cheeks, and bright eyes looked provokingly handsome), and encased her +in this pretty garment without uttering one single word. She made him a saucy +curtsey in return for this act of politeness, which salutation he received with +a grave bow; and then he proceeded to cover up old Lady Kew, and to conduct her +ladyship to her chariot. Miss Ethel chose to be displeased at her +cousin’s displeasure. What were balls made for but that people should +dance? She a flirt? She displease Lord Kew? If she chose to dance, she would +dance; she had no idea of his giving himself airs; besides it was such fun +taking away the gentlemen of Mary Queen of Scots’ court from her; such +capital fun! So she went to bed, singing and performing wonderful roulades as +she lighted her candle and retired to her room. She had had such a jolly +evening!! such famous fun, and, I dare say (but how shall a novelist penetrate +these mysteries?), when her chamber door was closed, she scolded her maid and +was as cross as two sticks. You see there come moments of sorrow after the most +brilliant victories; and you conquer and rout the enemy utterly, and then +regret that you fought. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0034"></a> +CHAPTER XXXIV.<br> +The End of the Congress of Baden</h2> + +<p> +Mention has been made of an elderly young person from Ireland, engaged by +Madame la Duchesse d’Ivry, as companion and teacher of English for her +little daughter. When Miss O’Grady, as she did some time afterwards, +quitted Madame d’Ivry’s family, she spoke with great freedom +regarding the behaviour of that duchess, and recounted horrors which she, the +latter, had committed. A number of the most terrific anecdotes issued from the +lips of the indignant Miss, whose volubility Lord Kew was obliged to check, not +choosing that his countess, with whom he was paying a bridal visit to Paris, +should hear such dreadful legends. It was there that Miss O’Grady, +finding herself in misfortune, and reading of Lord Kew’s arrival at the +Hôtel Bristol, waited upon his lordship and the Countess of Kew, begging them +to take tickets in a raffle for an invaluable ivory writing-desk, sole relic of +her former prosperity, which she proposed to give her friends the chance of +acquiring: in fact, Miss O’Grady lived for some years on the produce of +repeated raffles for this beautiful desk: many religious ladies of the Faubourg +St. Germain taking an interest in her misfortunes, and alleviating them by the +simple lottery system. Protestants as well as Catholics were permitted to take +shares in Miss O’Grady’s raffles; and Lord Kew, good-natured then +as always, purchased so many tickets, that the contrite O’Grady informed +him of a transaction which had nearly affected his happiness, and in which she +took a not very creditable share. “Had I known your lordship’s real +character,” Miss O’G was pleased to say, “no tortures would +have induced me to do an act for which I have undergone penance. It was that +black-hearted woman, my lord, who maligned your lordship to me: that woman whom +I called friend once, but who is the most false, depraved, and dangerous of her +sex.” In this way do ladies’ companions sometimes speak of ladies +when quarrels separate them, when confidential attendants are dismissed, +bearing away family secrets in their minds, and revenge in their hearts. +</p> + +<p> +The day after Miss Ethel’s feats at the assembly, old Lady Kew went over +to advise her granddaughter, and to give her a little timely warning about the +impropriety of flirtations; above all, with such men as are to be found at +watering-places, persons who are never seen elsewhere in society. “Remark +the peculiarities of Kew’s temper, who never flies into a passion like +you and me, my dear,” said the old lady (being determined to be +particularly gracious and cautious); “when once angry he remains so, and +is so obstinate that it is almost impossible to coax him into good-humour. It +is much better, my love, to be like us,” continued the old lady, +“to fly out in a rage and have it over; but que voulez-vous? such is +Frank’s temper, and we must manage him.” So she went on, backing +her advice by a crowd of examples drawn from the family history; showing how +Kew was like his grandfather, her own poor husband; still more like his late +father, Lord Walham; between whom and his mother there had been differences, +chiefly brought on by my Lady Walham, of course, which had ended in the almost +total estrangement of mother and son. Lady Kew then administered her advice, +and told her stories with Ethel alone for a listener; and in a most edifying +manner, she besought Miss Newcome to <i>ménager</i> Lord Kew’s +susceptibilities, as she valued her own future comfort in life, as well as the +happiness of a most amiable man, of whom, if properly managed, Ethel might make +what she pleased. We have said Lady Kew managed everybody, and that most of the +members of her family allowed themselves to be managed by her ladyship. +</p> + +<p> +Ethel, who had permitted her grandmother to continue her sententious advice, +while she herself sat tapping her feet on the floor, and performing the most +rapid variations of that air which is called the Devil’s Tattoo, burst +out, at length, to the elder lady’s surprise, with an outbreak of +indignation, a flushing face, and a voice quivering with anger. +</p> + +<p> +“This most amiable man,” she cried out, “that you design for +me, I know everything about this most amiable man, and thank you and my family +for the present you make me! For the past year, what have you been doing? Every +one of you! my father, my brother, and you yourself, have been filling my ears +wit cruel reports against a poor boy, whom you chose to depict as everything +that was dissolute and wicked, when there was nothing against him; nothing, but +that he was poor. Yes, you yourself, grandmamma, have told me many and many a +time, that Clive Newcome was not a fit companion for us; warned me against his +bad courses, and painted him as extravagant, unprincipled, I don’t know +how bad. How bad! I know how good he is; how upright, generous, and +truth-telling: though there was not a day until lately, that Barnes did not +make some wicked story against him,—Barnes, who, I believe, is bad +himself, like—like other young men. Yes, I am sure there was something +about Barnes in that newspaper which my father took away from me. And you come, +and you lift up your hands, and shake your head, because I dance with one +gentleman or another. You tell me I am wrong; mamma has told me so this +morning. Barnes, of course, has told me so, and you bring me Frank as a +pattern, and tell me to love and honour and obey <i>him!</i> Look here,” +and she drew out a paper and put it into Lady Kew’s hands. “Here is +Kew’s history, and I believe it is true; yes, I am sure it is +true.” +</p> + +<p> +The old dowager lifted her eyeglass to her black eyebrow, and read a paper +written in English, and bearing no signature, in which many circumstances of +Lord Kew’s life were narrated for poor Ethel’s benefit. It was not +a worse life than that of a thousand young men of pleasure, but there were +Kew’s many misdeeds set down in order: such a catalogue as we laugh at +when Leporello trolls it, and sings his master’s victories in France, +Italy, and Spain. Madame d’Ivry’s name was not mentioned in this +list, and Lady Kew felt sure that the outrage came from her. +</p> + +<p> +With real ardour Lady Kew sought to defend her grandson from some of the +attacks here made against him; and showed Ethel that the person who could use +such means of calumniating him, would not scruple to resort to falsehood in +order to effect her purpose. +</p> + +<p> +“Her purpose!” cries Ethel. “How do you know it is a +woman?” Lady Kew lapsed into generalities. She thought the handwriting +was a woman’s—at least it was not likely that a man should think of +addressing an anonymous letter to a young lady, and so wreaking his hatred upon +Lord Kew. “Besides, Frank has had no rivals—except—except one +young gentleman who has carried his paint-boxes to Italy,” says Lady Kew. +“You don’t think your dear Colonel’s son would leave such a +piece of mischief behind him? You must act, my dear,” continued her +ladyship, “as if this letter had never been written at all; the person +who wrote it no doubt will watch you. Of course we are too proud to allow him +to see that we are wounded; and pray, pray do not think of letting poor Frank +know a word about this horrid transaction.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then the letter is true?” burst out Ethel. “You know it is +true, grandmamma, and that is why you would have me keep it a secret from my +cousin; besides,” she added, with a little hesitation, “your +caution comes too late, Lord Kew has seen the letter.” +</p> + +<p> +“You fool!” screamed the old lady, “you were not so mad as to +show it to him?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure the letter is true,” Ethel said, rising up very +haughtily. “It is not by calling me bad names that your ladyship will +disprove it. Keep them, if you please, for my Aunt Julia; she is sick and weak, +and can’t defend herself. I do not choose to bear abuse from you, or +lectures from Lord Kew. He happened to be here a short while since, when the +letter arrived. He had been good enough to come to preach me a sermon on his +own account. He to find fault with my actions!” cried Miss Ethel, +quivering with wrath and clenching the luckless paper in her hand. “He to +accuse me of levity, and to warn me against making improper acquaintances! He +began his lectures too soon. I am not a lawful slave yet, and prefer to remain +unmolested, at least as long as I am free.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you told Frank all this, Miss Newcome, and you showed him that +letter?” said the old lady. +</p> + +<p> +“The letter was actually brought to me whilst his lordship was in the +midst of his sermon,” Ethel replied. “I read it as he was making +his speech,” she continued, gathering anger and scorn as she recalled the +circumstances of the interview. “He was perfectly polite in his language. +He did not call me a fool or use a single other bad name. He was good enough to +advise me and to make such virtuous pretty speeches, that if he had been a +bishop he could not have spoken better; and as I thought the letter was a nice +commentary on his lordship’s sermon, I gave it to him. I gave it to +him,” cried the young woman, “and much good may it do him. I +don’t think my Lord Kew will preach to me again for some time.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think he will indeed,” said Lady Kew, in a hard dry +voice. “You don’t know what you may have done. Will you be pleased +to ring the bell and order my carriage? I congratulate you on having performed +a most charming morning’s work.” +</p> + +<p> +Ethel made her grandmother a very stately curtsey. I pity Lady Julia’s +condition when her mother reached home. +</p> + +<p> +All who know Lord Kew may be pretty sure that in that unlucky interview with +Ethel, to which the young lady has alluded, he just said no single word to her +that was not kind, and just, and gentle. Considering the relation between them, +he thought himself justified in remonstrating with her as to the conduct which +she chose to pursue, and in warning her against acquaintances of whom his own +experience had taught him the dangerous character. He knew Madame d’Ivry +and her friends so well that he would not have his wife-elect a member of their +circle. He could not tell Ethel what he knew of those women and their history. +She chose not to understand his hints—did not, very likely, comprehend +them. She was quite young, and the stories of such lives as theirs had never +been told before her. She was indignant at the surveillance which Lord Kew +exerted over her, and the authority which he began to assume. At another moment +and in a better frame of mind she would have been thankful for his care, and +very soon and ever after she did justice to his many admirable +qualities—his frankness, honesty, and sweet temper. Only her high spirit +was in perpetual revolt at this time against the bondage in which her family +strove to keep her. The very worldly advantages of the position which they +offered her served but to chafe her the more. Had her proposed husband been a +young prince with a crown to lay at her feet, she had been yet more indignant +very likely, and more rebellious. Had Kew’s younger brother been her +suitor, or Kew in his place, she had been not unwilling to follow her +parents’ wishes. Hence the revolt in which she was engaged—the +wayward freaks and outbreaks her haughty temper indulged in. No doubt she saw +the justice of Lord Kew’s reproofs. That self-consciousness was not +likely to add to her good-humour. No doubt she was sorry for having shown Lord +Kew the letter the moment after she had done that act, of which the poor young +lady could not calculate the consequences that were now to ensue. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Kew, on glancing over the letter, at once divined the quarter whence it +came. The portrait drawn of him was not unlike, as our characters described by +those who hate us are not unlike. He had passed a reckless youth; indeed he was +sad and ashamed of that past life, longed like the poor prodigal to return to +better courses, and had embraced eagerly the chance afforded him of a union +with a woman young, virtuous, and beautiful, against whom and against heaven he +hoped to sin no more. If we have told or hinted at more of his story than will +please the ear of modern conventionalism, I beseech the reader to believe that +the writer’s purpose at least is not dishonest, nor unkindly. The young +gentleman hung his head with sorrow over that sad detail of his life and its +follies. What would he have given to be able to say to Ethel, “This is +not true.” +</p> + +<p> +His reproaches to Miss Newcome of course were at once stopped by this terrible +assault on himself. The letter had been put in the Baden post-box, and so had +come to its destination. It was in a disguised handwriting. Lord Kew could form +no idea even of the sex of the scribe. He put the envelope in his pocket, when +Ethel’s back was turned. He examined the paper when he left her. He could +make little of the superscription or of the wafer which had served to close the +note. He did not choose to caution Ethel as to whether she should burn the +letter or divulge it to her friends. He took his share of the pain, as a boy at +school takes his flogging, stoutly and in silence. +</p> + +<p> +When he saw Ethel again, which he did in an hour’s time, the generous +young gentleman held his hand out to her. “My dear,” he said, +“if you had loved me you never would have shown me that letter.” It +was his only reproof. After that he never again reproved or advised her. +</p> + +<p> +Ethel blushed. “You are very brave and generous, Frank,” said, +bending her head, “and I am captious and wicked.” He felt the hot +tear blotting on his hand from his cousin’s downcast eyes. +</p> + +<p> +He kissed her little hand. Lady Anne, who was in the room with her children +when these few words passed between the two in a very low tone, thought it was +a reconciliation. Ethel knew it was a renunciation on Kew’s +part—she never liked him so much as at that moment. The young man was too +modest and simple to guess himself what the girl’s feelings were. Could +he have told them, his fate and hers might have been changed. +</p> + +<p> +“You must not allow our kind letter-writing friend,” Lord Kew +continued, “to fancy we are hurt. We must walk out this afternoon, and we +must appear very good friends.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, always, Kew,” said Ethel, holding out her hand again. The +next minute her cousin was at the table carving roast-fowls, and distributing +the portions to the hungry children. +</p> + +<p> +The assembly of the previous evening had been one of those which the <i>fermier +des jeux</i> at Baden beneficently provides for the frequenters of the place, +and now was to come off a much more brilliant entertainment, in which poor +Clive, who is far into Switzerland by this time, was to have taken a share. The +Bachelors had agreed to give a ball, one of the last entertainments of the +season: a dozen or more of them had subscribed the funds, and we may be sure +Lord Kew’s name was at the head of the list, as it was of any list, of +any scheme, whether of charity or fun. The English were invited, and the +Russians were invited; the Spaniards and Italians, Poles, Prussians, and +Hebrews; all the motley frequenters of the place, and the warriors in the Duke +of Baden’s army. Unlimited supper was set in the restaurant. The +dancing-room glittered with extra lights, and a profusion of cut-paper flowers +decorated the festive scene. Everybody was present, those crowds with whom our +story has nothing to do, and those two or three groups of persons who enact +minor or greater parts in it. Madame d’Ivry came in a dress of stupendous +splendour, even more brilliant than that in which Miss Ethel had figured at the +last assembly. If the Duchess intended to <i>écraser</i> Miss Newcome by the +superior magnificence of her toilet, she was disappointed. Miss Newcome wore a +plain white frock on the occasion, and resumed, Madame d’Ivry said, her +<i>rôle</i> of <i>ingenue</i> for that night. +</p> + +<p> +During the brief season in which gentlemen enjoyed the favour of Mary Queen of +Scots, that wandering sovereign led them through all the paces and vagaries of +a regular passion. As in a fair, where time is short and pleasures numerous, +the master of the theatrical booth shows you a tragedy, a farce, and a +pantomime, all in a quarter of an hour, having a dozen new audiences to witness +his entertainments in the course of the forenoon; so this lady with her +platonic lovers went through the complete dramatic course,—tragedies of +jealousy, pantomimes of rapture, and farces of parting. There were billets on +one side and the other; hints of a fatal destiny, and a ruthless, lynx-eyed +tyrant, who held a demoniac grasp over the Duchess by means of certain secrets +which he knew: there were regrets that we had not known each other sooner: why +were we brought out of our convent and sacrificed to Monsieur le Duc? There +were frolic interchanges of fancy and poesy: pretty <i>bouderies;</i> sweet +reconciliations; yawns finally—and separation. Adolphe went out and +Alphonse came in. It was the new audience; for which the bell rang, the band +played, and the curtain rose; and the tragedy, comedy, and farce were repeated. +</p> + +<p> +Those Greenwich performers who appear in the theatrical pieces above-mentioned, +make a great deal more noise than your stationary tragedians; and if they have +to denounce a villain, to declare a passion, or to threaten an enemy, they +roar, stamp, shake their fists, and brandish their sabres, so that every man +who sees the play has surely a full pennyworth for his penny. Thus Madame la +Duchesse d’Ivry perhaps a little exaggerated her heroines’ parts +liking to strike her audiences quickly, and also to change them often. Like +good performers, she flung herself heart and soul into the business of the +stage, and was what she acted. She was Phedre, and if in the first part of the +play she was uncommonly tender to Hippolyte, in the second she hated him +furiously. She was Medea, and if Jason was <i>volage</i>, woe to Creusa! +Perhaps our poor Lord Kew had taken the first character in a performance with +Madame d’Ivry; for his behaviour in which part it was difficult enough to +forgive him; but when he appeared at Baden the affianced husband of one of the +most beautiful young creatures in Europe,—when his relatives scorned +Madame d’Ivry,—no wonder she was maddened and enraged, and would +have recourse to revenge, steel, poison. +</p> + +<p> +There was in the Duchess’s court a young fellow from the South of France, +whose friends had sent him to <i>faire son droit</i> at Paris, where he had +gone through the usual course of pleasure and studies of the young inhabitants +of the Latin Quarter. He had at one time exalted republican opinions, and had +fired his shot with distinction at St. Méri. He was a poet of some little +note—a book of his lyrics, Les Râles d’un Asphyxié, having made a +sensation at the time of their appearance. He drank great quantities of +absinthe of a morning; smoked incessantly; played roulette whenever he could +get a few pieces; contributed to a small journal, and was especially great in +his hatred of <i>l’infame Angleterre. Delenda est Carthago</i> was +tattooed beneath his shirt-sleeves. Fifine and Clarisse, young milliners of the +students’ district, had punctured this terrible motto on his manly right +arm. <i>Le léopard</i>, emblem of England, was his aversion; he shook his fist +at the caged monster in the Garden of Plants. He desired to have “Here +lies an enemy of England” engraved upon his early tomb. He was skilled at +billiards and dominoes, adroit in the use of arms, of unquestionable courage +and fierceness. Mr. Jones of England was afraid of M. de Castillonnes, and +cowered before his scowls and sarcasms. Captain Blackball, the other English +aide-de-camp of the Duchesse d’Ivry, a warrior of undoubted courage, who +had been “on the ground” more than once, gave him a wide berth, and +wondered what the little beggar meant when he used to say, “Since the +days of the Prince Noir, monsieur, my family has been at feud with +l’Angleterre!” His family were grocers at Bordeaux, and his +father’s name was M. Cabasse. He had married a noble in the revolutionary +times; and the son at Paris called himself Victor Cabasse de Castillonnes; +then Victor C. de Castillonnes; then M. de Castillonnes. One of the followers +of the Black Prince had insulted a lady of the house of Castillonnes, when the +English were lords of Guienne; hence our friend’s wrath against the +Leopard. He had written, and afterwards dramatised a terrific legend describing +the circumstances, and the punishment of the Briton by a knight of the +Castillonnes family. A more awful coward never existed in a melodrama than that +felon English knight. His <i>blanche-fille</i>, of course, died of hopeless +love for the conquering Frenchman, her father’s murderer. The paper in +which the feuilleton appeared died at the sixth number of the story. The +theatre of the Boulevard refused the drama; so the author’s rage against +<i>l’infame Albion</i> was yet unappeased. On beholding Miss Newcome, +Victor had fancied a resemblance between her and Agnes de Calverley, the +blanche Miss of his novel and drama, and cast an eye of favour upon the young +creature. He even composed verses in her honour (for I presume that the +“Miss Betti” and the Princess Crimhilde of the poems which he +subsequently published, were no other than Miss Newcome, and the Duchess, her +rival). He had been one of the lucky gentlemen who had danced with Ethel on the +previous evening. On the occasion of the ball, he came to her with a highflown +compliment, and a request to be once more allowed to waltz with her—a +request to which he expected a favourable answer, thinking, no doubt, that his +wit, his powers of conversation, and the <i>amour qui flambait dans son +regard</i>, had had their effect upon the charming Meess. Perhaps he had a copy +of the very verses in his breast-pocket, with which he intended to complete his +work of fascination. For her sake alone, he had been heard to say that he would +enter into a truce with England, and forget the hereditary wrongs of his race. +</p> + +<p> +But the blanche Miss on this evening declined to waltz with him. His +compliments were not of the least avail. He retired with them and his unuttered +verses in his crumpled bosom. Miss Newcome only danced in one quadrille with +Lord Kew, and left the party quite early, to the despair of many of the +bachelors, who lost the fairest ornament of their ball. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Kew, however, had been seen walking with her in public, and particularly +attentive to her during her brief appearance in the ballroom; and the old +Dowager, who regularly attended all places of amusement, and was at twenty +parties and six dinners the week before she died, thought fit to be +particularly gracious to Madame d’Ivry upon this evening, and, far from +shunning the Duchesse’s presence or being rude to her, as on former +occasions, was entirely smiling and good-humoured. Lady Kew, too, thought there +had been a reconciliation between Ethel and her cousin. Lady Anne had given her +mother some account of the handshaking. Kew’s walk with Ethel, the +quadrille which she had danced with him alone, induced the elder lady to +believe that matters had been made up between the young people. +</p> + +<p> +So, by way of showing the Duchesse that her little shot of the morning had +failed in its effect, as Frank left the room with his cousin, Lady Kew gaily +hinted, “that the young earl was aux petits soins with Miss Ethel; that +she was sure her old friend, the Duc d’Ivry, would be glad to hear that +his godson was about to range himself. He would settle down on his estates. He +would attend to his duties as an English peer and a country gentleman. We shall +go home,” says the benevolent Countess, “and kill the veau gras, +and you shall see our dear prodigal will become a very quiet gentleman.” +</p> + +<p> +The Duchesse said, “my Lady Kew’s plan was most edifying. She was +charmed to hear that Lady Kew loved veal; there were some who thought that meat +rather insipid.” A waltzer came to claim her hand at this moment; and as +she twirled round the room upon that gentleman’s arm, wafting odours as +she moved, her pink silks, pink feathers, pink ribands, making a mighty +rustling, the Countess of Kew had the satisfaction of thinking that she had +planted an arrow in that shrivelled little waist, which Count Punter’s +arms embraced, and had returned the stab which Madame d’Ivry had +delivered in the morning. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Barnes, and his elect bride, had also appeared, danced, and disappeared. +Lady Kew soon followed her young ones; and the ball went on very gaily, in +spite of the absence of these respectable personages. +</p> + +<p> +Being one of the managers of the entertainment, Lord Kew returned to it after +conducting Lady Anne and her daughter to their carriage, and now danced with +great vigour, and with his usual kindness, selecting those ladies whom other +waltzers rejected because they were too old, or too plain, or too stout, or +what not. But he did not ask Madame d’Ivry to dance. He could condescend +to dissemble so far as to hide the pain which he felt; but did not care to +engage in that more advanced hypocrisy of friendship, which for her part, his +old grandmother had not shown the least scruple in assuming. +</p> + +<p> +Amongst other partners, my lord selected that intrepid waltzer, the Gräfinn von +Gumpelheim, who, in spite of her age, size, and large family, never lost a +chance of enjoying her favourite recreation. “Look with what a camel my +lord waltzes,” said M. Victor to Madame d’Ivry, whose slim waist he +had the honour of embracing to the same music. “What man but an +Englishman would ever select such a dromedary?” +</p> + +<p> +“Avant de se marier,” said Madame d’Ivry, “il faut +avouer que my lord se permet d’enormes distractions.” +</p> + +<p> +“My lord marries himself! And when and whom?” cried the +Duchesse’s partner. +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Newcome. Do not you approve of his choice? I thought the eyes of +Stenio” (the Duchess called M. Victor, Stenio) “looked with some +favour upon that little person. She is handsome, even very handsome. Is it not +so often in life, Stenio? Are not youth and innocence (I give Miss Ethel the +compliment of her innocence, now surtout that the little painter is +dismissed)—are we not cast into the arms of jaded roues? Tender young +flowers, are we not torn from our convent gardens, and flung into a world of +which the air poisons our pure life, and withers the sainted buds of hope and +love and faith? Faith! The mocking world tramples on it, n’est-ce pas? +Love! The brutal world strangles the heaven-born infant at its birth. Hope! It +smiled at me in my little convent chamber, played among the flowers which I +cherished, warbled with the birds that I loved. But it quitted me at the door +of the world, Stenio. It folded its white wings and veiled its radiant face! In +return for my young love, they gave me—sixty years, the dregs of a +selfish heart, egotism cowering over its fire, and cold for all its mantle of +ermine! In place of the sweet flowers of my young years, they gave me these, +Stenio!” and she pointed to her feathers and her artificial roses. +“Oh, I should like to crush them under my feet!” and she put out +the neatest little slipper. The Duchesse was great upon her wrongs, and paraded +her blighted innocence to every one who would feel interested by that piteous +spectacle. The music here burst out more swiftly and melodiously than before; +the pretty little feet forgot their desire to trample upon the world. She +shrugged the lean little shoulders—“Eh!” said the Queen of +Scots, “dansons et oublions;” and Stenio’s arm once more +surrounded her fairy waist (she called herself a fairy; other ladies called her +a skeleton); and they whirled away in the waltz again and presently she and +Stenio came bumping up against the stalwart Lord Kew and the ponderous Madame +de Gumpelheim, as a wherry dashes against the oaken ribs of a steamer. +</p> + +<p> +The little couple did not fall; they were struck on to a neighbouring bench, +luckily: but there was a laugh at the expense of Stenio and the Queen of +Scots—and Lord Kew, settling his panting partner on to a seat, came up to +make excuses for his awkwardness to the lady who had been its victim. At the +laugh produced by the catastrophe, the Duchesse’s eyes gleamed with +anger. +</p> + +<p> +“M. de Castillonnes,” she said to her partner, “have you had +any quarrel with that Englishman?” +</p> + +<p> +“With ce milor? But no,” said Stenio. +</p> + +<p> +“He did it on purpose. There has been no day but his family has insulted +me!” hissed out the Duchesse, and at this moment Lord Kew came up to make +his apologies. He asked a thousand pardons of Madame la Duchesse for being so +maladroit. +</p> + +<p> +“Maladroit! et tres maladroit, monsieur,” says Stenio, curling his +moustache; “c’est bien le mot, monsieur! +</p> + +<p> +“Also, I make my excuses to Madame la Duchesse, which I hope she will +receive,” said Lord Kew. The Duchesse shrugged her shoulders and sunk her +head. +</p> + +<p> +“When one does not know how to dance, one ought not to dance,” +continued the Duchesse’s knight. +</p> + +<p> +“Monsieur is very good to give me lessons in dancing,” said Lord +Kew. +</p> + +<p> +“Any lessons which you please, milor!” cries Stenio; “and +everywhere where you will them.” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Kew looked at the little man with surprise. He could not understand so +much anger for so trifling an accident, which happens a dozen times in every +crowded ball. He again bowed to the Duchesse, and walked away. +</p> + +<p> +“This is your Englishman—your Kew, whom you vaunt +everywhere,” said Stenio to M. de Florac, who was standing by and +witnessed the scene. “Is he simply bête, or is he poltroon as well? I +believe him to be both.” +</p> + +<p> +“Silence, Victor!” cried Florac, seizing his arm, and drawing him +away. “You know me, and that I am neither one or the other. Believe my +word, that my Lord Kew wants neither courage nor wit!” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you be my witness, Florac?” continues the other. +</p> + +<p> +“To take him your excuses? yes. It is you who have insulted—” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, parbleu, I have insulted!” says the Gascon. +</p> + +<p> +“—A man who never willingly offended soul alive. A man full of +heart: the most frank: the most loyal. I have seen him put to the proof, and +believe me he is all I say.” +</p> + +<p> +“Eh! so much the better for me!” cried the Southron. “I shall +have the honour of meeting a gallant man: and there will be two on the +field.” +</p> + +<p> +“They are making a tool of you, my poor Gascon,” said M. de Florac, +who saw Madame d’Ivry’s eyes watching the couple. She presently +took the arm of the noble Count de Punter, and went for fresh air into the +adjoining apartment, where play was going on as usual; and Lord Kew and his +friend Lord Rooster were pacing the room apart from the gamblers. +</p> + +<p> +My Lord Rooster, at something which Kew said, looked puzzled, and said, +“Pooh, stuff, damned little Frenchman! Confounded nonsense!” +</p> + +<p> +“I was searching you, milor!” said Madame d’Ivry, in a most +winning tone, tripping behind him with her noiseless little feet. “Allow +me a little word. Your arm! You used to give it me once, mon filleul! I hope +you think nothing of the rudeness of M. de Castillonnes; he is a foolish +Gascon: he must have been too often to the buffet this evening.” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Kew said, No, indeed, he thought nothing of de Castillonnes’ +rudeness. +</p> + +<p> +“I am so glad! These heroes of the salle-d’armes have not the +commonest manners. These Gascons are always flamberge au vent. What would the +charming Miss Ethel say, if she heard of the dispute?” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed there is no reason why she should hear of it,” said Lord +Kew, “unless some obliging friend should communicate it to her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Communicate it to her—the poor dear! who would be so cruel as to +give her pain?” asked the innocent Duchesse. “Why do you look at me +so, Frank?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I admire you,” said her interlocutor, with a bow. “I +have never seen Madame la Duchesse to such advantage as to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +“You speak in enigmas! Come back with me to the ballroom. Come and dance +with me once more. You used to dance with me. Let us have one waltz more, Kew. +And then, and then, in a day or two I shall go back to Monsieur le Duc, and +tell him that his filleul is going to marry the fairest of all Englishwomen and +to turn hermit in the country, and orator in the Chamber of Peers. You have +wit! ah si—you have wit!” And she led back Lord Kew, rather amazed +himself at what he was doing, into the ballroom; so that the good-natured +people who were there, and who beheld them dancing, could not refrain from +clapping their hands at the sight of this couple. +</p> + +<p> +The Duchess danced as if she was bitten by that Neapolitan spider which, +according to the legend, is such a wonderful dance-incentor. She would have the +music quicker and quicker. She sank on Kew’s arm, and clung on his +support. She poured out all the light of her languishing eyes into his face. +Their glances rather confused than charmed him. But the bystanders were +pleased; they thought it so good-hearted of the Duchesse, after the little +quarrel, to make a public avowal of reconciliation! +</p> + +<p> +Lord Rooster looking on, at the entrance of the dancing-room, over Monsieur de +Florac’s shoulder, said, “It’s all right! She’s a +clipper to dance, the little Duchess.” +</p> + +<p> +“The viper!” said Florac, “how she writhes!” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose that business with the Frenchman is all over,” says Lord +Rooster. “Confounded piece of nonsense.” +</p> + +<p> +“You believe it finished? We shall see!” said Florac, who perhaps +knew his fair cousin better. When the waltz was over, Kew led his partner to a +seat, and bowed to her; but though she made room for him at her side, pointing +to it, and gathering up her rustling robes so that he might sit down, he moved +away, his face full of gloom. He never wished to be near her again. There was +something more odious to him in her friendship than her hatred. He knew hers +was the hand that had dealt that stab at him and Ethel in the morning. He went +back and talked with his two friends in the doorway. “Couch yourself, my +little Kiou,” said Florac. “You are all pale. You were best in bed, +mon garçon!” +</p> + +<p> +“She has made me promise to take her in to supper,” Kew said, with +a sigh. +</p> + +<p> +“She will poison you,” said the other. “Why have they +abolished the roue chez nous? My word of honour they should retabliche it for +this woman.” +</p> + +<p> +“There is one in the next room,” said Kew, with a laugh, +“Come, Vicomte, let us try our fortune,” and he walked back into +the play-room. +</p> + +<p> +That was the last night on which Lord Kew ever played a gambling game. He won +constantly. The double zero seemed to obey him; so that the croupiers wondered +at his fortune. Florac backed it; saying with the superstition of a gambler, +“I am sure something goes to arrive to this boy.” From time to time +M. de Florac went back to the dancing-room, leaving his mise under Kew’s +charge. He always found his heaps increased; indeed the worthy Vicomte wanted a +turn of luck in his favour. On one occasion he returned with a grave face, +saying to Lord Rooster, “She has the other one in hand. We are going to +see.” “Trente-six encor! et rouge gagne,” cried the croupier +with his nasal tone, Monsieur de Florac’s pockets overflowed with double +Napoleons, and he stopped his play, luckily, for Kew putting down his winnings, +once, twice, thrice, lost them all. +</p> + +<p> +When Lord Kew had left the dancing-room, Madame d’Ivry saw Stenio +following him with fierce looks, and called back that bearded bard. “You +were going to pursue M. de Kew,” she said: “I knew you were. Sit +down here, sir,” and she patted him down on her seat with her fan. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you wish that I should call him back, madame?” said the poet, +with the deepest tragic accents. +</p> + +<p> +“I can bring him when I want him, Victor,” said the lady. +</p> + +<p> +“Let us hope others will be equally fortunate,” the Gascon said, +with one hand in his breast, the other stroking his moustache. +</p> + +<p> +“Fi, monsieur, que vous sentez le tabac! je vous le défends, +entendez-vous, monsieur?” +</p> + +<p> +“Pourtant, I have seen the day when Madame la Duchesse did not disdain a +cigar,” said Victor. “If the odour incommodes, permit that I +retire.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you also would quit me, Stenio? Do you think I did not mark your +eyes towards Miss Newcome? your anger when she refused you to dance? Ah! we see +all. A woman does not deceive herself, do you see? You send me beautiful +verses, Poet. You can write as well of a statue or a picture, of a rose or a +sunset, as of the heart of a woman. You were angry just now because I danced +with M. de Kew. Do you think in a woman’s eyes jealousy is +unpardonable?” +</p> + +<p> +“You know how to provoke it, madame,” continued the tragedian. +</p> + +<p> +“Monsieur,” replied the lady, with dignity, “am I to render +you an account of all my actions, and ask your permission for a walk?” +</p> + +<p> +“In fact, I am but the slave, madame,” groaned the Gascon, “I +am not the master.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are a very rebellious slave, monsieur,” continues the lady, +with a pretty moue, and a glance of the large eyes artfully brightened by her +rouge. “Suppose—suppose I danced with M. de Kew, not for his +sake—Heaven knows to dance with him is not a pleasure—but for +yours. Suppose I do not want a foolish quarrel to proceed. Suppose I know that +he is ni sot ni poltron as you pretend. I overheard you, sir, talking with one +of the basest of men, my good cousin, M. de Florac: but it is not of him I +speak. Suppose I know the Comte de Kew to be a man, cold and insolent, +ill-bred, and grossier, as the men of his nation are—but one who lacks no +courage—one who is terrible when roused; might I have no occasion to +fear, not for him, but——” +</p> + +<p> +“But for me! Ah, Marie! Ah, madame! Believe you that a man of my blood +will yield a foot to any Englishman? Do you know the story of my race? do you +know that since my childhood I have vowed hatred to that nation? Tenez, madame, +this M. Jones who frequents your salon, it was but respect for you that has +enabled me to keep my patience with this stupid islander. This Captain +Blackball, whom you distinguish, who certainly shoots well, who mounts well to +horse, I have always thought his manners were those of the marker of a +billiard. But I respect him because he has made war with Don Carlos against the +English. But this young M. de Kew, his laugh crisps me the nerves; his insolent +air makes me bound; in beholding him I said to myself, I hate you; think +whether I love him better after having seen him as I did but now, +madame!” Also, but this Victor did not say, he thought Kew had laughed at +him at the beginning of the evening, when the blanche Miss had refused to dance +with him. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, Victor, it is not him, but you that I would save,” said the +Duchess. And the people round about, and the Duchess herself, afterwards said, +yes, certainly, she had a good heart. She entreated Lord Kew; she implored M. +Victor; she did everything in her power to appease the quarrel between him and +the Frenchman. +</p> + +<p> +After the ball came the supper, which was laid at separate little tables, where +parties of half a dozen enjoyed themselves. Lord Kew was of the Duchess’s +party, where our Gascon friend had not a seat. But being one of the managers of +the entertainment, his lordship went about from table to table, seeing that the +guests at each lacked nothing. He supposed too that the dispute with the Gascon +had possibly come to an end; at any rate, disagreeable as the other’s +speech had been, he had resolved to put up with it, not having the least +inclination to drink the Frenchman’s blood, or to part with his own on so +absurd a quarrel. He asked people in his good-natured way to drink wine with +him; and catching M. Victor’s eye scowling at him from a distant table, +he sent a waiter with a champagne-bottle to his late opponent, and lifted his +glass as a friendly challenge. The waiter carried the message to M. Victor, +who, when he heard it, turned up his glass, and folded his arms in a stately +manner. “M. de Castillonnes dit qu’il refuse, milor,” said +the waiter, rather scared. “He charged me to bring that message to +milor.” Florac ran across to the angry Gascon. It was not while at Madame +d’Ivry’s table that Lord Kew sent his challenge and received his +reply; his duties as steward had carried him away from that pretty early. +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile the glimmering dawn peered into the windows of the refreshment-room, +and behold, the sun broke in and scared all the revellers. The ladies scurried +away like so many ghosts at cock-crow, some of them not caring to face that +detective luminary. Cigars had been lighted ere this; the men remained smoking +them with those sleepless German waiters still bringing fresh supplies of +drink. Lord Kew gave the Duchesse d’Ivry his arm, and was leading her +out; M. de Castillonnes stood scowling directly in their way, upon which, with +rather an abrupt turn of the shoulder, and a “Pardon, monsieur,” +Lord Kew pushed by, and conducted the Duchesse to her carriage. She did not in +the least see what had happened between the two gentlemen in the passage; she +ogled, and nodded, and kissed her hands quite affectionately to Kew as the fly +drove away. +</p> + +<p> +Florac in the meanwhile had seized his compatriot, who had drunk champagne +copiously with others, if not with Kew, and was in vain endeavouring to make +him hear reason. The Gascon was furious; he vowed that Lord Kew had struck him. +“By the tomb of my mother,” he bellowed, “I swear I will have +his blood!” Lord Rooster was bawling out, “D—— him, +carry him to bed, and shut him up;” which remarks Victor did not +understand, or two victims would doubtless have been sacrificed on his +mamma’s mausoleum. +</p> + +<p> +When Kew came back (as he was only too sure to do), the little Gascon rushed +forward with a glove in his hand, and having an audience of smokers round about +him, made a furious speech about England, leopards, cowardice, insolent +islanders, and Napoleon at St. Helena; and demanded reason for Kew’s +conduct during the night. As he spoke, he advanced towards Lord Kew, glove in +hand, and lifted it as if he was actually going to strike. +</p> + +<p> +“There is no need for further words,” said Lord Kew, taking his +cigar out of his mouth. “If you don’t drop that glove, upon my word +I will pitch you out of the window. Ha!—Pick the man up, somebody. +You’ll bear witness, gentlemen, I couldn’t help myself. If he wants +me in the morning, he knows where to find me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I declare that my Lord Kew has acted with great forbearance, and under +the most brutal provocation—the most brutal provocation, entendez-vows, +M. Cabasse?” cried out M. de Florac, rushing forward to the Gascon, who +had now risen; “monsieur’s conduct has been unworthy of a Frenchman +and a gallant homme.” +</p> + +<p> +“D—— it, he has had it on his nob, though,” said Lord +Viscount Rooster, laconically. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, Roosterre! ceci n’est pas pour rire,” Florac cried +sadly, as they both walked away with Lord Kew; “I wish that first blood +was all that was to be shed in this quarrel” +</p> + +<p> +“Gaw! how he did go down!” cried Rooster, convulsed with laughter. +</p> + +<p> +“I am very sorry for it,” said Kew, quite seriously; “I +couldn’t help it. God forgive me.” And he hung down his head. He +thought of the past, and its levities, and punishment coming after him <i>pede +claudo</i>. It was with all his heart the contrite young man said “God +forgive me.” He would take what was to follow as the penalty of what had +gone before. +</p> + +<p> +“Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas immolat, mon pauvre Kiou,” said his +French friend. And Lord Rooster, whose classical education had been much +neglected, turned round and said, “Hullo, mate, what ship’s +that?” +</p> + +<p> +Viscount Rooster had not been two hours in bed, when the Count de Punter +(formerly of the Black Jägers) waited upon him upon the part of M. de +Castillonnes and the Earl of Kew, who had referred him to the Viscount to +arrange matters for a meeting between them. As the meeting must take place out +of the Baden territory, and they ought to move before the police prevented +them, the Count proposed that they should at once make for France; where, as it +was an affair of honneur, they would assuredly be let to enter without +passports. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Anne and Lady Kew heard that the gentlemen after the ball had all gone out +on a hunting-party, and were not alarmed for four-and-twenty hours at least. On +the next day none of them returned; and on the day after, the family heard that +Lord Kew had met with rather a dangerous accident; but all the town knew he had +been shot by M. de Castillonnes on one of the islands on the Rhine, opposite +Kehl, where he was now lying. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0035"></a> +CHAPTER XXXV.<br> +Across the Alps</h2> + +<p> +Our discursive muse must now take her place in the little britzska in which +Clive Newcome and his companions are travelling, and cross the Alps in that +vehicle, beholding the snows on St. Gothard, and the beautiful region through +which the Ticino rushes on its way to the Lombard lakes, and the corn-covered +great plains of the Milanese; and that royal city, with the cathedral for its +glittering crown, only less magnificent than the imperial dome of Rome. I have +some long letters from Mr. Clive, written during this youthful tour, every step +of which, from the departure at Baden, to the gate of Milan, he describes as +beautiful; and doubtless, the delightful scenes through which the young man +went, had their effect in soothing any private annoyances with which his +journey commenced. The aspect of nature, in that fortunate route which he took, +is so noble and cheering, that our private affairs and troubles shrink away +abashed before that serene splendour. O sweet peaceful scene of azure lake, and +snow-crowned mountain, so wonderfully lovely is your aspect, that it seems like +heaven almost, and as if grief and care could not enter it! What young +Clive’s private cares were I knew not as yet in those days; and he kept +them out of his letters; it was only in the intimacy of future life that some +of these pains were revealed to me. +</p> + +<p> +Some three months after taking leave of Miss Ethel, our young gentleman found +himself at Rome, with his friend Ridley still for a companion. Many of us, +young or middle-aged, have felt that delightful shock which the first sight of +the great city inspires. There is one other place of which the view strikes one +with an emotion even greater than that with which we look at Rome, where +Augustus was reigning when He saw the day, whose birthplace is separated but by +a hill or two from the awful gates of Jerusalem. Who that has beheld both can +forget that first aspect of either? At the end of years the emotion occasioned +by the sight still thrills in your memory, and it smites you as at the moment +when you first viewed it. +</p> + +<p> +The business of the present novel, however, lies neither with priest nor pagan, +but with Mr. Clive Newcome, and his affairs and his companions at this period +of his life. Nor, if the gracious reader expects to hear of cardinals in +scarlet, and noble Roman princes and princesses, will he find such in this +history. The only noble Roman into whose mansion our friend got admission was +the Prince Polonia, whose footmen wear the liveries of the English royal +family, who gives gentlemen and even painters cash upon good letters of credit; +and, once or twice in a season, opens his transtiberine palace and treats his +customers to a ball. Our friend Clive used jocularly to say, he believed there +were no Romans. There were priests in portentous hats; there were friars with +shaven crowns; there were the sham peasantry, who dressed themselves out in +masquerade costumes, with bagpipe and goatskin, with crossed leggings and +scarlet petticoats, who let themselves out to artists at so many pauls per +sitting; but he never passed a Roman’s door except to buy a cigar or to +purchase a handkerchief. Thither, as elsewhere, we carry our insular habits +with us. We have a little England at Paris, a little England at Munich, +Dresden, everywhere. Our friend is an Englishman, and did at Rome as the +English do. +</p> + +<p> +There was the polite English society, the society that flocks to see the +Colosseum lighted up with blue fire, that flocks to the Vatican to behold the +statues by torchlight, that hustles into the churches on public festivals in +black veils and deputy-lieutenants’ uniforms, and stares, and talks, and +uses opera-glasses while the pontiffs of the Roman Church are performing its +ancient rites, and the crowds of faithful are kneeling round the altars; the +society which gives its balls and dinners, has its scandal and bickerings, its +aristocrats, parvenus, toadies imported from Belgravia; has its club, its hunt, +and its Hyde Park on the Pincio: and there is the other little English world, +the broad-hatted, long-bearded, velvet-jacketed, jovial colony of the artists, +who have their own feasts, haunts, and amusements by the side of their +aristocratic compatriots, with whom but few of them have the honour to mingle. +</p> + +<p> +J. J. and Clive engaged pleasant lofty apartments in the Via Gregoriana. +Generations of painters had occupied these chambers and gone their way. The +windows of their painting-room looked into a quaint old garden, where there +were ancient statues of the Imperial time, a babbling fountain and noble +orange-trees with broad clustering leaves and golden balls of fruit, glorious +to look upon. Their walks abroad were endlessly pleasant and delightful. In +every street there were scores of pictures of the graceful characteristic +Italian life, which our painters seem one and all to reject, preferring to +depict their quack brigands, contadini, pifferari, and the like, because +Thompson painted them before Jones, and Jones before Thompson, and so on, +backwards into time. There were the children at play, the women huddled round +the steps of the open doorways, in the kindly Roman winter; grim, portentous +old hags, such as Michael Angelo painted, draped in majestic raggery; mothers +and swarming bambins; slouching countrymen, dark of beard and noble of +countenance, posed in superb attitudes, lazy, tattered, and majestic. There +came the red troops, the black troops, the blue troops of the army of priests; +the snuffy regiments of Capuchins, grave and grotesque; the trim French abbés; +my lord the bishop, with his footman (those wonderful footmen); my lord the +cardinal, in his ramshackle coach and his two, nay three, footmen behind +him;—flunkeys, that look as if they had been dressed by the costumier of +a British pantomime; coach with prodigious emblazonments of hats and +coats-of-arms, that seems as if it came out of the pantomime too, and was about +to turn into something else. So it is, that what is grand to some +persons’ eyes appears grotesque to others; and for certain sceptical +persons, that step, which we have heard of, between the sublime and the +ridiculous, is not visible. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish it were not so,” writes Clive, in one of the letters +wherein he used to pour his full heart out in those days. “I see these +people at their devotions, and envy them their rapture. A friend, who belongs +to the old religion, took me, last week, into a church where the Virgin lately +appeared in person to a Jewish gentleman, flashed down upon him from heaven in +light and splendour celestial, and, of course, straightway converted him. My +friend bade me look at the picture, and, kneeling down beside me, I know prayed +with all his honest heart that the truth might shine down upon me too; but I +saw no glimpse of heaven at all. I saw but a poor picture, an altar with +blinking candles, a church hung with tawdry strips of red and white calico. The +good, kind W—— went away, humbly saying ‘that such might have +happened again if heaven so willed it.’ I could not but feel a kindness +and admiration for the good man. I know his works are made to square with his +faith, that he dines on a crust, lives as chaste as a hermit, and gives his all +to the poor. +</p> + +<p> +“Our friend J. J., very different to myself in so many respects, so +superior in all, is immensely touched by these ceremonies. They seem to answer +to some spiritual want of his nature, and he comes away satisfied as from a +feast, where I have only found vacancy. Of course our first pilgrimage was to +St. Peter’s. What a walk! Under what noble shadows does one pass; how +great and liberal the houses are, with generous casements and courts, and great +grey portals which giants might get through and keep their turbans on. Why, the +houses are twice as tall as Lamb Court itself; and over them hangs a noble +dinge, a venerable mouldy splendour. Over the solemn portals are ancient mystic +escutcheons—vast shields of princes and cardinals, such as +Ariosto’s knights might take down; and every figure about them is a +picture by himself. At every turn there is a temple: in every court a brawling +fountain. Besides the people of the streets and houses, and the army of priests +black and brown, there’s a great silent population of marble. There are +battered gods tumbled out of Olympus and broken in the fall, and set up under +niches and over fountains; there are senators namelessly, noselessly, +noiselessly seated under archways, or lurking in courts and gardens. And then, +besides these defunct ones, of whom these old figures may be said to be the +corpses, there is the reigning family, a countless carved hierarchy of angels, +saints, confessors of the latter dynasty which has conquered the court of Jove. +I say, Pen, I wish Warrington would write the history of the Last of the +Pagans. Did you never have a sympathy for them as the monks came rushing into +their temples, kicking down their poor altars, smashing the fair calm faces of +their gods, and sending their vestals a-flying? They are always preaching here +about the persecution of the Christians. Are not the churches full of martyrs +with choppers in their meek heads; virgins on gridirons; riddled St. +Sebastians, and the like? But have they never persecuted in their turn? O me! +You and I know better, who were bred up near to the pens of Smithfield, where +Protestants and Catholics have taken their turn to be roasted. +</p> + +<p> +“You pass through an avenue of angels and saints on the bridge across +Tiber, all in action; their great wings seem clanking, their marble garments +clapping; St. Michael, descending upon the Fiend, has been caught and +bronzified just as he lighted on the Castle of St. Angelo: his enemy doubtless +fell crushing through the roof and so downwards. He is as natural as blank +verse—that bronze angel-set, rhythmic, grandiose. You’ll see, some +day or other, he’s a great sonnet, sir, I’m sure of that. Milton +wrote in bronze; I am sure Virgil polished off his Georgics in +marble—sweet calm shapes! exquisite harmonies of line! As for the Aeneid; +that, sir, I consider to be so many bas-reliefs, mural ornaments which affect +me not much. +</p> + +<p> +“I think I have lost sight of St. Peter’s, haven’t I? Yet it +is big enough. How it makes your heart beat when you first see it! Ours did as +we came in at night from Civita Vecchia, and saw a great ghostly darkling dome +rising solemnly up into the grey night, and keeping us company ever so long as +we drove, as if it had been an orb fallen out of heaven with its light put out. +As you look at it from the Pincio, and the sun sets behind it, surely that +aspect of earth and sky is one of the grandest in the world. I don’t like +to say that the facade of the church is ugly and obtrusive. As long as the dome +overawes, that facade is supportable. You advance towards it—through, oh, +such a noble court! with fountains flashing up to meet the sunbeams; and right +and left of you two sweeping half-crescents of great columns; but you pass by +the courtiers and up to the steps of the throne, and the dome seems to +disappear behind it. It is as if the throne was upset, and the king had toppled +over. +</p> + +<p> +“There must be moments, in Rome especially, when every man of friendly +heart, who writes himself English and Protestant, must feel a pang at thinking +that he and his countrymen are insulated from European Christendom. An ocean +separates us. From one shore or the other one can see the neighbour cliffs on +clear days: one must wish sometimes that there were no stormy gulf between us; +and from Canterbury to Rome a pilgrim could pass, and not drown beyond Dover. +Of the beautiful parts of the great Mother Church I believe among us many +people have no idea; we think of lazy friars, of pining cloistered virgins, of +ignorant peasants worshipping wood and stones, bought and sold indulgences, +absolutions, and the like commonplaces of Protestant satire. Lo! yonder +inscription, which blazes round the dome of the temple, so great and glorious +it looks like heaven almost, and as if the words were written in stars, it +proclaims to all the world, this is that Peter, and on this rock the Church +shall be built, against which Hell shall not prevail. Under the bronze canopy +his throne is lit with lights that have been burning before it for ages. Round +this stupendous chamber are ranged the grandees of his court. Faith seems to be +realised in their marble figures. Some of them were alive but yesterday; +others, to be as blessed as they, walk the world even now doubtless; and the +commissioners of heaven, here holding their court a hundred years hence, shall +authoritatively announce their beatification. The signs of their power shall +not be wanting. They heal the sick, open the eyes of the blind, cause the lame +to walk to-day as they did eighteen centuries ago. Are there not crowds ready +to bear witness to their wonders? Isn’t there a tribunal appointed to try +their claims; advocates to plead for and against; prelates and clergy and +multitudes of faithful to back and believe them? Thus you shall kiss the hand +of a priest to-day, who has given his to a friar whose bones are already +beginning to work miracles, who has been the disciple of another whom the +Church has just proclaimed a saint,—hand in hand they hold by one another +till the line is lost up in heaven. Come, friend, let us acknowledge this, and +go and kiss the toe of St. Peter. Alas! there’s the Channel always +between us; and we no more believe in the miracles of St. Thomas of Canterbury, +than that the bones of His Grace John Bird, who sits in St. Thomas’s +chair presently, will work wondrous cures in the year 2000: that his statue +will speak, or his portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence will wink. +</p> + +<p> +“So, you see, at those grand ceremonies which the Roman Church exhibits +at Christmas, I looked on as a Protestant. Holy Father on his throne or in his +palanquin, cardinals with their tails and their train-bearers, mitred bishops +and abbots, regiments of friars and clergy, relics exposed for adoration, +columns draped, altars illuminated, incense smoking, organs pealing, and boxes +of piping soprani, Swiss guards with slashed breeches and fringed +halberts;—between us and all this splendour of old-world ceremony, +there’s an ocean flowing: and yonder old statue of Peter might have been +Jupiter again, surrounded by a procession of flamens and augurs, and Augustus +as Pontifex Maximus, to inspect the sacrifices,—and my feelings at the +spectacle had been, doubtless, pretty much the same. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I utter any more heresies? I am an unbeliever in Raphael’s +‘Transfiguration’—the scream of that devil-possessed boy, in +the lower part of the figure of eight (a stolen boy too), jars the whole music +of the composition. On Michael Angelo’s great wall, the grotesque and +terrible are not out of place. What an awful achievement! Fancy the state of +mind of the man who worked it—as alone, day after day, he devised and +drew those dreadful figures! Suppose in the days of the Olympian dynasty, the +subdued Titan rebels had been set to ornament a palace for Jove, they would +have brought in some such tremendous work: or suppose that Michael descended to +the Shades, and brought up this picture out of the halls of Limbo. I like a +thousand and a thousand times better to think of Raphael’s loving spirit. +As he looked at women and children, his beautiful face must have shone like +sunshine: his kind hand must have caressed the sweet figures as he formed them. +If I protest against the ‘Transfiguration,’ and refuse to worship +at that altar before which so many generations have knelt, there are hundreds +of others which I salute thankfully. It is not so much in the set harangues (to +take another metaphor), as in the daily tones and talk that his voice is so +delicious. Sweet poetry, and music, and tender hymns drop from him: he lifts +his pencil, and something gracious falls from it on the paper. How noble his +mind must have been! it seems but to receive, and his eye seems only to rest +on, what is great, and generous, and lovely. You walk through crowded +galleries, where are pictures ever so large and pretentious; and come upon a +grey paper, or a little fresco, bearing his mark-and over all the brawl and the +throng recognise his sweet presence. ‘I would like to have been +Giulio Romano,’ J. J. says (who does not care for Giulio’s +pictures), ‘because then I would have been Raphael’s favourite +pupil.’ We agreed that we would rather have seen him and William +Shakspeare, than all the men we ever read of. Fancy poisoning a fellow out of +envy—as Spagnoletto did! There are some men whose admiration takes that +bilious shape. There’s a fellow in our mess at the Lepre, a clever enough +fellow too—and not a bad fellow to the poor. He was a Gandishite. He is a +genre and portrait painter, by the name of Haggard. He hates J. J. because Lord +Fareham, who is here, has given J. J. an order; and he hates me, because I wear +a clean shirt, and ride a cock-horse. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you could come to our mess at the Lepre. It’s such a +dinner: such a tablecloth: such a waiter: such a company! Every man has a beard +and a sombrero: and you would fancy we were a band of brigands. We are regaled +with woodcocks, snipes, wild swans, ducks, robins, and owls and +οἰωνοῖσι τε +πᾶσι for dinner; and with three pauls’ worth of +wines and victuals the hungriest has enough, even Claypole the sculptor. Did +you ever know him? He used to come to the Haunt. He looks like the +Saracen’s head with his beard now. There is a French table still more +hairy than ours, a German table, an American table. After dinner we go and have +coffee and mezzo-caldo at the Café Greco over the way. Mezzo-caldo is not a bad +drink—a little rum—a slice of fresh citron—lots of pounded +sugar, and boiling water for the rest. Here in various parts of the cavern (it +is a vaulted low place) the various nations have their assigned quarters, and +we drink our coffee and strong waters, and abuse Guido, or Rubens, or Bernini +<i>selon les goûts</i>, and blow such a cloud of smoke as would make +Warrington’s lungs dilate with pleasure. We get very good cigars for a +bajoccho and half—that is very good for us, cheap tobaccanalians; and +capital when you have got no others. M’Collop is here: he made a great +figure at a cardinal’s reception in the tartan of the M’Collop. He +is splendid at the tomb of the Stuarts, and wanted to cleave Haggard down to +the chine with his claymore for saying that Charles Edward was often drunk. +</p> + +<p> +“Some of us have our breakfasts at the Café Greco at dawn. The birds are +very early birds here; and you’ll see the great sculptors—the old +Dons, you know, who look down on us young fellows—at their coffee here +when it is yet twilight. As I am a swell, and have a servant, J. J. and I +breakfast at our lodgings. I wish you could see Terribile our attendant, and +Ottavia our old woman! You will see both of them on the canvas one day. When he +<i>hasn’t</i> blacked our boots and has got our breakfast, Terribile the +valet-de-chambre becomes Terribile the model. He has figured on a hundred +canvases ere this, and almost ever since he was born. All his family were +models. His mother having been a Venus, is now a Witch of Endor. His father is +in the patriarchal line: he has himself done the cherubs, the shepherd-boys, +and now is a grown man, and ready as a warrior, a pifferaro, a capuchin, or +what you will. +</p> + +<p> +“After the coffee and the Café Greco we all go to the Life Academy. After +the Life Academy, those who belong to the world dress and go out to tea-parties +just as if we were in London. Those who are not in society have plenty of fun +of their own—and better fun than the tea-party fun too. Jack Screwby has +a night once a week, sardines and ham for supper, and a cask of Marsala in the +corner. Your humble servant entertains on Thursdays: which is Lady +Fitch’s night too; and I flatter myself some of the London dandies who +are passing the winter here, prefer the cigars and humble liquors which we +dispense, to tea and Miss Fitch’s performance on the pianoforte. +</p> + +<p> +“What is that I read in <i>Galignani</i> about Lord K— and an +affair of honour at Baden? Is it my dear kind jolly Kew with whom some one has +quarrelled? I know those who will be even more grieved than I am, should +anything happen to the best of good fellows. A great friend of Lord +Kew’s, Jack Belsize commonly called, came with us from Baden through +Switzerland, and we left him at Milan. I see by the paper that his elder +brother is dead and so poor Jack will be a great man some day. I wish the +chance had happened sooner if it was to befall at all. So my amiable cousin, +Barnes Newcome Newcome, Esq., has married my Lady Clara Pulleyn; I wish her joy +of her bridegroom. All I have heard of that family is from the newspaper. If +you meet them, tell me anything about them.—We had a very pleasant time +altogether at Baden. I suppose the accident to Kew will put off his marriage +with Miss Newcome. They have been engaged, you know, ever so +long.—And—do, do write to me and tell me something about London. +It’s best I should—should stay here and work this winter and the +next. J. J. has done a famous picture, and if I send a couple home, +you’ll give them a notice in the <i>Pall Mall +Gazette</i>—won’t you?—for the sake of old times and yours +affectionately, Clive Newcome.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0036"></a> +CHAPTER XXXVI.<br> +In which M. de Florac is promoted</h2> + +<p> +However much Madame la Duchesse d’Ivry was disposed to admire and praise +her own conduct in the affair which ended so unfortunately for poor Lord Kew, +between whom and the Gascon her grace vowed that she had done everything in her +power to prevent a battle, the old Duke, her lord, was, it appeared, by no +means delighted with his wife’s behaviour, nay, visited her with his very +sternest displeasure. Miss O’Grady, the Duchesse’s companion, and +her little girl’s instructress, at this time resigned her functions in +the Ivry family; it is possible that in the recriminations consequent upon the +governess’s dismissal, the Miss Irlandaise, in whom the family had put so +much confidence, divulged stories unfavourable to her patroness, and caused the +indignation of the Duke, her husband. Between Florac and the Duchesse there was +also open war and rupture. He had been one of Kew’s seconds in the +latter’s affair with the Vicomte’s countryman. He had even cried +out for fresh pistols, and proposed to engage Castillonnes, when his gallant +principal fell; and though a second duel was luckily averted as murderous and +needless, M. de Florac never hesitated afterwards, and in all companies, to +denounce with the utmost virulence the instigator and the champion of the +odious original quarrel. He vowed that the Duchesse had shot <i>le petit +Kiou</i> as effectually as if she had herself fired the pistol at his breast. +Murderer, poisoner, Brinvilliers, a hundred more such epithets he used against +his kinswoman, regretting that the good old times were past—that there +was no Chambre Ardente to try her, and no rack and wheel to give her her due. +</p> + +<p> +The biographer of the Newcomes has no need (although he possesses the fullest +information) to touch upon the Duchesse’s doings, further than as they +relate to that most respectable English family. When the Duke took his wife +into the country, Florac never hesitated to say that to live with her was +dangerous for the old man, and to cry out to his friends of the Boulevards or +the Jockey Club, “Ma parole d’honneur, cette femme le tuera!” +</p> + +<p> +Do you know, O gentle and unsuspicious readers, or have you ever reckoned as +you have made your calculation of society, how many most respectable husbands +help to kill their wives—how many respectable wives aid in sending their +husbands to Hades? The wife of a chimney-sweep or a journeyman butcher comes +shuddering before a police magistrate—her head bound up—her body +scarred and bleeding with wounds, which the drunken ruffian, her lord, has +administered: a poor shopkeeper or mechanic is driven out of his home by the +furious ill-temper of the shrill virago his wife—takes to the +public-house—to evil courses—to neglecting his business—to +the gin-bottle—to <i>delirium tremens</i>—to perdition. Bow Street, +and policemen, and the newspaper reporters, have cognisance and a certain +jurisdiction over these vulgar matrimonial crimes; but in politer company how +many murderous assaults are there by husband or wife—where the woman is +not felled by the actual fist, though she staggers and sinks under blows quite +as cruel and effectual; where, with old wounds yet unhealed, which she strives +to hide under a smiling face from the world, she has to bear up and to be +stricken down and to rise to her feet again, under fresh daily strokes of +torture; where the husband, fond and faithful, has to suffer slights, coldness, +insult, desertion, his children sneered away from their love for him, his +friends driven from his door by jealousy, his happiness strangled, his whole +life embittered, poisoned, destroyed! If you were acquainted with the history +of every family in your street, don’t you know that in two or three of +the houses there such tragedies have been playing? Is not the young mistress of +Number 20 already pining at her husband’s desertion? The kind master of +Number 30 racking his fevered brains and toiling through sleepless nights to +pay for the jewels on his wife’s neck, and the carriage out of which she +ogles Lothario in the Park? The fate under which man or woman falls, blow of +brutal tyranny, heartless desertion, weight of domestic care too heavy to +bear—are not blows such as these constantly striking people down? In this +long parenthesis we are wandering ever so far away from M. le Duc and Madame la +Duchesse d’Ivry, and from the vivacious Florac’s statement +regarding his kinsman, that that woman will kill him. +</p> + +<p> +There is this at least to be said, that if the Duc d’Ivry did die he was +a very old gentleman, and had been a great viveur for at least threescore years +of his life. As Prince de Moncontour in his father’s time before the +Revolution, during the Emigration, even after the Restoration, M. le Duc had +vecu with an extraordinary vitality. He had gone through good and bad fortune: +extreme poverty, display and splendour, affairs of love—affairs of +honour,—and of one disease or another a man must die at the end. After +the Baden business—and he had dragged off his wife to Champagne—the +Duke became greatly broken; he brought his little daughter to a convent at +Paris, putting the child under the special guardianship of Madame de Florac, +with whom and with whose family in these latter days the old chief of the house +effected a complete reconciliation. The Duke was now for ever coming to Madame +de Florac; he poured all his wrongs and griefs into her ear with garrulous +senile eagerness. “That little Duchesse is a monstre, a femme +d’Eugene Sue,” the Vicomte used to say; “the poor old Duke he +cry—ma parole d’honneur, he cry and I cry too when he comes to +recount to my poor mother, whose sainted heart is the <i>asile</i> of all +griefs, a real Hotel Dieu, my word the most sacred, with beds for all the +afflicted, with sweet words, like Sisters of Charity, to minister to +them:—I cry, mon bon Pendennis, when this <i>vieillard</i> tells his +stories about his wife and tears his white hairs to the feet of my +mother.” +</p> + +<p> +When the little Antoinette was separated by her father from her mother, the +Duchesse d’Ivry, it might have been expected that that poetess would have +dashed off a few more <i>cris de l’âme</i>, shrieking according to her +wont, and baring and beating that shrivelled maternal bosom of hers, from which +her child had been just torn. The child skipped and laughed to go away to the +convent. It was only when she left Madame de Florac that she used to cry; and +when urged by that good lady to exhibit a little decorous sentiment in writing +to her mamma, Antoinette would ask, in her artless way, “Pourquoi? Mamma +used never to speak to me except sometimes before the world, before ladies, +that understands itself. When her gentleman came, she put me to the door; then +she gave me tapes, <i>oh oui</i>, she gave me tapes! I cry no more; she has so +much made to cry M. le Duc, that it is quite enough of one in a family.” +So Madame la Duchesse d’Ivry did not weep, even in print, for the loss of +her pretty little Antoinette; besides, she was engaged, at that time, by other +sentimental occupations. A young grazier of their neighbouring town, of an +aspiring mind and remarkable poetic talents, engrossed the Duchesse’s +platonic affections at this juncture. When he had sold his beasts at market, he +would ride over and read Rousseau and Schiller with Madame la Duchesse, who +formed him. His pretty young wife was rendered miserable by all these readings, +but what could the poor little ignorant countrywoman know of Platonism? Faugh! +there is more than one woman we see in society smiling about from house to +house, pleasant and sentimental and formosa superne enough; but I fancy a +fish’s tail is flapping under her fine flounces, and a forked fin at the +end of it! +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Finer flounces, finer bonnets, more lovely wreaths, more beautiful lace, +smarter carriages, bigger white bows, larger footmen, were not seen, during all +the season of 18—, than appeared round about St. George’s, Hanover +Square, in the beautiful month of June succeeding that September when so many +of our friends the Newcomes were assembled at Baden. Those flaunting carriages, +powdered and favoured footmen, were in attendance upon members of the Newcome +family and their connexions, who were celebrating what is called a marriage in +high life in the temple within. Shall we set down a catalogue of the dukes, +marquises, earls, who were present; cousins of the lovely bride? Are they not +already in the <i>Morning Herald</i> and <i>Court Journal</i>, as well as in +the <i>Newcome Sentinel</i> and <i>Independent</i>, and the <i>Dorking +Intelligence</i> and <i>Chanticlere Weekly Gazette?</i> There they are, all +printed at full length sure enough; the name of the bride, Lady Clara Pulleyn, +the lovely and accomplished daughter of the Earl and Countess of Dorking; of +the beautiful bridesmaids, the Ladies Henrietta, Belinda, Adelaide Pulleyn, +Miss Newcome, Miss Alice Newcome, Miss Maude Newcome, Miss Anna Maria (Hobson) +Newcome; and all the other persons engaged in the ceremony. It was performed by +the Right Honourable Viscount Gallowglass, Bishop of Ballyshannon, +brother-in-law to the bride, assisted by the Honourable and Reverend Hercules +O’Grady, his lordship’s chaplain, and the Reverend John Bulders, +Rector of St. Mary’s, Newcome. Then follow the names of all the nobility +who were present, and of the noble and distinguished personages who signed the +book. Then comes an account of the principal dresses, chefs-d’œuvre of +Madame Crinoline; of the bride’s coronal of brilliants, supplied by +Messrs. Morr and Stortimer;—of the veil of priceless Chantilly lace, the +gift of the Dowager Countess of Kew. Then there is a description of the +wedding-breakfast at the house of the bride’s noble parents, and of the +cake, decorated by Messrs. Gunter with the most delicious taste and the +sweetest hymeneal allusions. +</p> + +<p> +No mention was made by the fashionable chronicler of a slight disturbance which +occurred at St. George’s, and which was indeed out of the province of +such a genteel purveyor of news. Before the marriage service began, a woman of +vulgar appearance and disorderly aspect, accompanied by two scared children who +took no part in the disorder occasioned by their mother’s proceeding, +except by their tears and outcries to augment the disquiet, made her appearance +in one of the pews of the church, was noted there by persons in the vestry, was +requested to retire by a beadle, and was finally induced to quit the sacred +precincts of the building by the very strongest persuasion of a couple of +policemen; X and Y laughed at one another, and nodded their heads knowingly as +the poor wretch with her whimpering boys was led away. They understood very +well who the personage was who had come to disturb the matrimonial ceremony; it +did not commence until Mrs. De Lacy (as this lady chose to be called) had +quitted this temple of Hymen. She slunk through the throng of emblazoned +carriages, and the press of footmen arrayed as splendidly as Solomon in his +glory. John jeered at Thomas, William turned his powdered head, and signalled +Jeames, who answered with a corresponding grin, as the woman with sobs, and +wild imprecations, and frantic appeals, made her way through the splendid crowd +escorted by her aides-de-camp in blue. I dare say her little history was +discussed at many a dinner-table that day in the basement story of several +fashionable houses. I know that at clubs in St. James’s the facetious +little anecdote was narrated. A young fellow came to Bays’s after the +marriage breakfast and mentioned the circumstance with funny comments; although +the <i>Morning Post</i>, in describing this affair in high life, naturally +omitted all mention of such low people as Mrs. De Lacy and her children. +</p> + +<p> +Those people who knew the noble families whose union had been celebrated by +such a profusion of grandees, fine equipages, and footmen, brass bands, +brilliant toilets, and wedding favours, asked how it was that Lord Kew did not +assist at Barnes Newcome’s marriage; other persons in society inquired +waggishly why Jack Belsize was not present to give Lady Clara away. +</p> + +<p> +As for Jack Belsize, his clubs had not been ornamented by his presence for a +year past. It was said he had broken the bank at Hombourg last autumn; had been +heard of during the winter at Milan, Venice, and Vienna; and when, a few months +after the marriage of Barnes Newcome and Lady Clara, Jack’s elder brother +died, and he himself became the next in succession to the title and estates of +Highgate, many folks said it was a pity little Barney’s marriage had +taken place so soon. Lord Kew was not present, because Kew was still abroad; he +had had a gambling duel with a Frenchman, and a narrow squeak for his life. He +had turned Roman Catholic, some men said; others vowed that he had joined the +Methodist persuasion. At all events Kew had given up his wild courses, broken +with the turf, and sold his stud off; he was delicate yet, and his mother was +taking care of him; between whom and the old dowager of Kew, who had made up +Barney’s marriage, as everybody knew, there was no love lost. +</p> + +<p> +Then who was the Prince de Moncontour, who, with his princess, figured at this +noble marriage? There was a Moncontour, the Duc d’Ivry’s son, but +he died at Paris before the revolution of ’30: one or two of the oldsters +at Bays’s, Major Pendennis, General Tufto, old Cackleby—the old +fogies, in a word—remembered the Duke of Ivry when he was here during the +Emigration, and when he was called Prince de Moncontour, the title of the +eldest son of the family. Ivry was dead, having buried his son before him, and +having left only a daughter by that young woman whom he married, and who led +him such a life. Who was this present Moncontour? +</p> + +<p> +He was a gentleman to whom the reader has already been presented, though when +we lately saw him at Baden he did not enjoy so magnificent a title. Early in +the year of Barnes Newcome’s marriage, there came to England, and to our +modest apartment in the Temple, a gentleman bringing a letter of recommendation +from our dear young Clive, who said that the bearer, the Vicomte de Florac, was +a great friend of his, and of the Colonel’s, who had known his family +from boyhood. A friend of our Clive and our Colonel was sure of a welcome in +Lamb Court; we gave him the hand of hospitality, the best cigar in the box, the +easy-chair with only one broken leg; the dinner in chambers and at the club, +the banquet at Greenwich (where, <i>ma foi</i>, the little <i>whites baites</i> +elicited his profound satisfaction); in a word, did our best to honour that +bill which our young Clive had drawn upon us. We considered the young one in +the light of a nephew of our own; we took a pride in him, and were fond of him; +and as for the Colonel, did we not love and honour him; would we not do our +utmost in behalf of any stranger who came recommended to us by Thomas +Newcome’s good word? So Florac was straightway admitted to our +companionship. We showed him the town, and some of the modest pleasures +thereof; we introduced him to the Haunt, and astonished him by the company +which he met there. Between Brent’s “Deserter” and Mark +Wilder’s “Garryowen,” Florac sang— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Tiens voici ma pipe, voilà mon bri—quet;<br> +Et quand la Tulipe fait le noir tra—jet<br> +Que tu sois la seule dans le régi—ment<br> +Avec la brûle-gueule de ton cher z’a—mant; +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +to the delight of Tom Sarjent, who, though he only partially comprehended the +words of the song, pronounced the singer to be a rare gentleman, full of most +excellent differences. We took our Florac to the Derby; we presented him in +Fitzroy Square, whither we still occasionally went, for Clive’s and our +dear Colonel’s sake. +</p> + +<p> +The Vicomte pronounced himself strongly in favour of the blanche misse little +Rosey Mackenzie, of whom we have lost sight for some few chapters. Mrs. Mac he +considered, my faith, to be a woman superb. He used to kiss the tips of his own +fingers, in token of his admiration for the lovely widow; he pronounced her +again more pretty than her daughter; and paid her a thousand compliments, which +she received with exceeding good-humour. If the Vicomte gave us to understand +presently that Rosey and her mother were both in love with him, but that for +all the world he would not meddle with the happiness of his dear little Clive, +nothing unfavourable to the character or constancy of the before-mentioned +ladies must be inferred from M. de Florac’s speech; his firm conviction +being, that no woman could pass many hours in his society without danger to her +subsequent peace of mind. +</p> + +<p> +For some little time we had no reason to suspect that our French friend was not +particularly well furnished with the current coin of the realm. Without making +any show of wealth, he would, at first, cheerfully engage in our little +parties: his lodgings in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, though dingy, +were such as many noble foreign exiles have inhabited. It was not until he +refused to join some pleasure-trip which we of Lamb Court proposed, honestly +confessing his poverty, that we were made aware of the Vicomte’s little +temporary calamity; and, as we became more intimate with him, he acquainted us, +with great openness, with the history of all his fortunes. He described +energetically that splendid run of luck which had set in at Baden with +Clive’s loan: his winnings, at that fortunate period, had carried him +through the winter with considerable brilliancy, but bouillotte and +Mademoiselle Atala, of the Variétés (<i>une ogresse, mon cher!</i> who devours +thirty of our young men every year in her cavern, in the Rue de Bréda), had +declared against him, and the poor Vicomte’s pockets were almost empty +when he came to London. +</p> + +<p> +He was amiably communicative regarding himself, and told us his virtues and his +faults (if indeed a passion for play and for women could be considered as +faults in a gay young fellow of two or three and forty), with a like engaging +frankness. He would weep in describing his angel mother: he would fly off again +into tirades respecting the wickedness, the wit, the extravagance, the charms +of the young lady of the Variétés. He would then (in conversation) introduce us +to Madame de Florac, <i>née</i> Higg, of Manchesterre. His prattle was +incessant, and to my friend Mr. Warrington especially he was an object of +endless delight and amusement and wonder. He would roll and smoke countless +paper cigars, talking unrestrainedly when we were not busy, silent when we were +engaged; he would only rarely partake of our meals, and altogether refused all +offers of pecuniary aid. He disappeared at dinner-time into the mysterious +purlieus of Leicester Square, and dark ordinaries only frequented by Frenchmen. +As we walked with him in the Regent Street precincts, he would exchange marks +of recognition with many dusky personages, smoking bravos; and whiskered +refugees of his nation. +</p> + +<p> +“That gentleman,” he would say, “who has done me the honour +to salute me, is a coiffeur of the most celebrated; he forms the <i>delices</i> +of our table-d’hôte. ‘Bon jour, mon cher monsieur!’ We are +friends, though not of the same opinion. Monsieur is a republican of the most +distinguished; conspirator of profession, and at this time engaged in +constructing an infernal machine to the address of His Majesty, Louis Philippe, +King of the French.” “Who is my friend with the scarlet beard and +the white paletot? My good Warrington! you do not move in the world; you make +yourself a hermit, my dear! Not know monsieur!—monsieur is secretary to +Mademoiselle Caracoline, the lovely rider at the circus of Astley; I shall be +charmed to introduce you to this amiable society some day at our +table-d’hôte.” +</p> + +<p> +Warrington vowed that the company of Florac’s friends would be infinitely +more amusing than the noblest society ever chronicled in the <i>Morning +Post;</i> but we were neither sufficiently familiar with the French language to +make conversation in that tongue as pleasant to us as talking in our own; and +so were content with Florac’s description of his compatriots, which the +Vicomte delivered in that charming French-English of which he was a master. +</p> + +<p> +However threadbare in his garments, poor in purse, and eccentric in morals our +friend was, his manners were always perfectly gentlemanlike, and he draped +himself in his poverty with the grace of a Spanish grandee. It must be +confessed, that the grandee loved the estaminet where he could play billiards +with the first comer; that he had a passion for the gambling-house; that he was +a loose and disorderly nobleman: but, in whatever company he found himself, a +certain kindness, simplicity, and politeness distinguished him always. He bowed +to the damsel who sold him a penny cigar, as graciously as to a duchess; he +crushed a <i>manant’s</i> impertinence or familiarity as haughtily as his +noble ancestors ever did at the Louvre, at Marli, or Versailles. He declined to +<i>obtempérer</i> to his landlady’s request to pay his rent, but he +refused with a dignity which struck the woman with awe; and King Alfred, over +the celebrated muffin (on which Gandish and other painters have exercised their +genius), could not have looked more noble than Florac in a robe-de-chambre, +once gorgeous, but shady now as became its owner’s clouded fortunes; +toasting his bit of bacon at his lodgings, when the fare even of his +table-d’hôte had grown too dear for him. +</p> + +<p> +As we know from Gandish’s work, that better times were in store for the +wandering monarch, and that the officers came acquainting him that his people +demanded his presence <i>à grands cris</i>, when of course King Alfred laid +down the toast and resumed the sceptre; so in the case of Florac, two humble +gentlemen, inhabitants of Lamb Court, and members of the Upper temple, had the +good luck to be the heralds as it were, nay indeed, the occasion, of the rising +fortunes of the Prince de Moncontour. Florac had informed us of the death of +his cousin the Duc d’Ivry, by whose demise the Vicomte’s father, +the old Count de Florac, became the representative of the house of Ivry, and +possessor, through his relative’s bequest, of an old château still more +gloomy and spacious than the count’s own house in the Faubourg St. +Germain—a château, of which the woods, domains, and appurtenances had +been lopped off by the Revolution. “Monsieur le Comte,” Florac +says, “has not wished to change his name at his age; he has shrugged his +old shoulder, and said it was not the trouble to make to engrave a new card; +and for me,” the philosophical Vicomte added, “of what good shall +be a title of prince in the position where I find myself?” It is +wonderful for us who inhabit a country where rank is worshipped with so +admirable a reverence, to think that there are many gentlemen in France who +actually have authentic titles and do not choose to bear them. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. George Warrington was hugely amused with this notion of Florac’s +ranks and dignities. The idea of the Prince purchasing penny cigars; of the +Prince mildly expostulating with his landlady regarding the rent; of his +punting for half-crowns at a neighbouring hall in Air Street, whither the poor +gentleman desperately ran when he had money in his pocket, tickled +George’s sense of humour. It was Warrington who gravely saluted the +Vicomte, and compared him to King Alfred, on that afternoon when we happened to +call upon him and found him engaged in cooking his modest dinner. +</p> + +<p> +We were bent upon an excursion to Greenwich, and on having our friend’s +company on that voyage, and we induced the Vicomte to forgo his bacon, and be +our guest for once. George Warrington chose to indulge in a great deal of +ironical pleasantry in the course of the afternoon’s excursion. As we +went down the river, he pointed out to Florac the very window in the Tower +where the captive Duke of Orleans used to sit when he was an inhabitant of that +fortress. At Greenwich, which palace Florac informed us was built by Queen +Elizabeth, George showed the very spot where Raleigh laid his cloak down to +enable Her Majesty to step over a puddle. In a word, he mystified M. de Florac; +such was Mr. Warrington’s reprehensible spirit. +</p> + +<p> +It happened that Mr. Barnes Newcome came to dine at Greenwich on the same day +when our little party took place. He had come down to meet Rooster and one or +two other noble friends whose names he took care to give us, cursing them at +the same time for having thrown him over. Having missed his own company, Mr. +Barnes condescended to join ours, Warrington gravely thanking him for the great +honour which he conferred upon us by volunteering to take a place at our table. +Barnes drank freely, and was good enough to resume his acquaintance with +Monsieur de Florac, whom he perfectly well recollected at Baden, but had +thought proper to forget on the one or two occasions when they had met in +public since the Vicomte’s arrival in this country. There are few men who +can drop and resume an acquaintance with such admirable self-possession as +Barnes Newcome. When, over our dessert, by which time all tongues were unloosed +and each man talked gaily, George Warrington feelingly thanked Barnes in a +little mock speech, for his great kindness in noticing us, presenting him at +the same time to Florac as the ornament of the City, the greatest banker of his +age, the beloved kinsman of their friend Clive, who was always writing about +him; Barnes said, with one of his accustomed curses, he did not know whether +Mr. Warrington was “chaffing” him or not, and indeed could never +make him out. Warrington replied that he never could make himself out: and if +ever Mr. Barnes could, George would thank him for information on that subject. +</p> + +<p> +Florac, like most Frenchmen very sober in his potations, left us for a while +over ours, which were conducted after the more liberal English manner, and +retired to smoke his cigar on the terrace. Barnes then freely uttered his +sentiments regarding him, which were not more favourable than those which the +young gentleman generally emitted respecting gentlemen whose backs were turned. +He had known a little of Florac the year before at Baden: he had been mixed up +with Kew in that confounded row in which Kew was hit; he was an adventurer, a +pauper, a blackleg, a regular Greek; he had heard Florac was of old family, +that was true; but what of that? He was only one of those d—— +French counts; everybody was a count in France confound ’em! The claret +was beastly—not fit for a gentleman to drink!—He swigged off a +great bumper as he was making the remark: for Barnes Newcome abuses the men and +things which he uses, and perhaps is better served than more grateful persons. +</p> + +<p> +“Count!” cries Warrington, “what do you mean by talking about +beggarly counts? Florac’s family is one of the noblest and most ancient +in Europe. It is more ancient than your illustrious friend, the barber-surgeon; +it was illustrious before the house, ay, or the pagoda of Kew was in +existence.” And he went on to describe how Florac by the demise of his +kinsman, was now actually Prince de Moncontour, though he did not choose to +assume that title. Very likely the noble Gascon drink in which George had been +indulging, imparted a certain warmth and eloquence to his descriptions of +Florac’s good qualities, high birth, and considerable patrimony; Barnes +looked quite amazed and scared at these announcements, then laughed and +declared once more that Warrington was chaffing him. +</p> + +<p> +“As sure as the Black Prince was lord of Acquitaine—as sure as the +English were masters of Bordeaux—and why did we ever lose the +country?” cries George, filling himself a bumper,—“every word +I have said about Florac is true;” and Florac coming in at this juncture +havin just finished his cigar, George turned round and made him a fine speech +in the French language, in which he lauded his constancy and good-humour under +evil fortune, paid him two or three more cordial compliments, and finished by +drinking another great bumper to his good health. +</p> + +<p> +Florac took a little wine, replied “with effusion” to the toast +which his excellent, his noble friend had just carried. We rapped our glasses +at the end of the speech. The landlord himself seemed deeply touched by it as +he stood by with a fresh bottle. “It is good wine—it is honest +wine—it is capital wine” says George, “and honni soit qui mal +y pence! What business have you, you little beggar, to abuse it? My ancestor +drank the wine and wore the motto round his leg long before a Newcome ever +showed his pale face in Lombard Street.” George Warrington never bragged +about his pedigree except under certain influences. I am inclined to think that +on this occasion he really did find the claret very good. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mean to say,” says Barnes, addressing Florac in +French, on which he piqued himself, “que vous avez un tel manche à votre +nom, et que vous ne l’usez pas?” +</p> + +<p> +Florac shrugged his shoulders; he at first did not understand that familiar +figure of English speech, or what was meant by “having a handle to your +name.” “Moncontour cannot dine better than Florac,” he said. +“Florac has two louis in his pocket, and Moncontour exactly forty +shillings. Florac’s proprietor will ask Moncontour to-morrow for five +weeks’ rent; and as for Florac’s friends, my dear, they will burst +out laughing to Moncontour’s nose!” “How droll you English +are!” this acute French observer afterwards said, laughing, and recalling +the incident. Did you not see how that little Barnes, as soon as he knew my +title of Prince, changed his manner and became all respect towards me? This, +indeed, Monsieur de Florac’s two friends remarked with no little +amusement. Barnes began quite well to remember their pleasant days at Baden, +and talked of their acquaintance there: Barnes offered the Prince the vacant +seat in his brougham, and was ready to set him down anywhere that he wished in +town. +</p> + +<p> +“Bah!” says Florac; “we came by the steamer, and I prefer the +<i>péniboat</i>.” But the hospitable Barnes, nevertheless, called upon +Florac the next day. And now having partially explained how the Prince de +Moncontour was present at Mr. Barnes Newcome’s wedding, let us show how +it was that Barnes’s first-cousin, the Earl of Kew, did not attend that +ceremony. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0037"></a> +CHAPTER XXXVII.<br> +Returns to Lord Kew</h2> + +<p> +We do not propose to describe at length or with precision the circumstances of +the duel which ended so unfortunately for young Lord Kew. The meeting was +inevitable: after the public acts and insult of the morning, the maddened +Frenchman went to it convinced that his antagonist had wilfully outraged him, +eager to show his bravery upon the body of an Englishman, and as proud as if he +had been going into actual war. That commandment, the sixth in our decalogue, +which forbids the doing of murder, and the injunction which directly follows on +the same table, have been repealed by a very great number of Frenchmen for many +years past; and to take the neighbour’s wife, and his life subsequently, +has not been an uncommon practice with the politest people in the world. +Castillonnes had no idea but that he was going to the field of honour; stood +with an undaunted scowl before his enemy’s pistol; and discharged his own +and brought down his opponent with a grim satisfaction, and a comfortable +conviction afterwards that he had acted <i>en galant homme</i>. “It was +well for this milor that he fell at the first shot, my dear,” the +exemplary young Frenchman remarked; “a second might have been yet more +fatal to him; ordinarily I am sure of my <i>coup</i>, and you conceive that in +an affair so grave it was absolutely necessary that one or other should remain +on the ground.” Nay, should M. de Kew recover from his wound, it was M. +de Castillonnes’ intention to propose a second encounter between himself +and that nobleman. It had been Lord Kew’s determination never to fire +upon his opponent, a confession which he made not to his second, poor scared +Lord Rooster, who bore the young Earl to Kehl, but to some of his nearest +relatives, who happened fortunately to be not far from him when he received his +wound, and who came with all the eagerness of love to watch by his bedside. +</p> + +<p> +We have said that Lord Kew’s mother, Lady Walham, and her second son were +staying at Hombourg, when the Earl’s disaster occurred. They had proposed +to come to Baden to see Kew’s new bride, and to welcome her; but the +presence of her mother-in-law deterred Lady Walham, who gave up her +heart’s wish in bitterness of spirit, knowing very well that a meeting +between the old Countess and herself could only produce the wrath, pain, and +humiliation which their coming together always occasioned. It was Lord Kew who +bade Rooster send for his mother, and not for Lady Kew; and as soon as she +received those sad tidings, you may be sure the poor lady hastened to the bed +where her wounded boy lay. +</p> + +<p> +The fever had declared itself, and the young man had been delirious more than +once. His wan face lighted up with joy when he saw his mother; he put his +little feverish hand out of the bed to her—“I knew you would come, +dear,” he said, “and you know I never would have fired upon the +poor Frenchman.” The fond mother allowed no sign of terror or grief to +appear upon her face, so as to disturb her first-born and darling; but no doubt +she prayed by his side as such loving hearts know how to pray, for the +forgiveness of his trespass, who had forgiven those who sinned against him. +“I knew I should be hit, George,” said Kew to his brother when they +were alone; “I always expected some such end as this. My life has been +very wild and reckless; and you, George, have always been faithful to our +mother. You will make a better Lord Kew than I have been, George. God bless +you.” George flung himself down with sobs by his brother’s bedside, +and swore Frank had always been the best fellow, the best brother, the kindest +heart, the warmest friend in the world. Love—prayer—repentance, +thus met over the young man’s bed. Anxious and humble hearts, his own the +least anxious and the most humble, awaited the dread award of life or death; +and the world, and its ambition and vanities, were shut out from the darkened +chamber where the awful issue was being tried. +</p> + +<p> +Our history has had little to do with characters resembling this lady. It is of +the world, and things pertaining to it. Things beyond it, as the writer +imagines, scarcely belong to the novelist’s province. Who is he, that he +should assume the divine’s office; or turn his desk into a +preacher’s pulpit? In that career of pleasure, of idleness, of crime we +might call it (but that the chronicler of worldly matters had best be chary of +applying hard names to acts which young men are doing in the world every day), +the gentle widowed lady, mother of Lord Kew, could but keep aloof, deploring +the course upon which her dear young prodigal had entered; and praying with +that saintly love, those pure supplications, with which good mothers follow +their children, for her boy’s repentance and return. Very likely her mind +was narrow; very likely the precautions which she had used in the lad’s +early days, the tutors and directors she had set about him, the religious +studies and practices to which she would have subjected him, had served only to +vex and weary the young pupil, and to drive his high spirit into revolt. It is +hard to convince a woman perfectly pure in her life and intentions, ready to +die if need were for her own faith, having absolute confidence in the +instruction of her teachers, that she and they (with all their sermons) may be +doing harm. When the young catechist yawns over his reverence’s +discourse, who knows but it is the doctor’s vanity which is enraged, and +not Heaven which is offended? It may have been, in the differences which took +place between her son and her, the good Lady Walham never could comprehend the +lad’s side of the argument; or how his Protestantism against her +doctrines should exhibit itself on the turf, the gaming-table, or the stage of +the opera-house; and thus but for the misfortune under which poor Kew now lay +bleeding, these two loving hearts might have remained through life asunder. But +by the boy’s bedside; in the paroxysms of his fever; in the wild talk of +his delirium; in the sweet patience and kindness with which he received his +dear nurse’s attentions; the gratefulness with which he thanked the +servants who waited on him; the fortitude with which he suffered the +surgeon’s dealings with his wounds;—the widowed woman had an +opportunity to admire with an exquisite thankfulness the generous goodness of +her son; and in those hours, those sacred hours passed in her own chamber, of +prayers, fears, hopes, recollections, and passionate maternal love, wrestling +with fate for her darling’s life;—no doubt the humbled creature +came to acknowledge that her own course regarding him had been wrong; and, even +more for herself than for him, implored forgiveness. +</p> + +<p> +For some time George Barnes had to send but doubtful and melancholy bulletins +to Lady Kew and the Newcome family at Baden, who were all greatly moved and +affected by the accident which had befallen poor Kew. Lady Kew broke out in +wrath, and indignation. We may be sure the Duchesse d’Ivry offered to +condole with her upon Kew’s mishap the day after the news arrived at +Baden; and, indeed, came to visit her. The old lady had just received other +disquieting intelligence. She was just going out, but she bade her servant to +inform the Duchess that she was never more at home to the Duchesse +d’Ivry. The message was not delivered properly, or the person for whom it +was intended did not choose to understand it, for presently, as the Countess +was hobbling across the walk on her way to her daughter’s residence, she +met the Duchesse d’Ivry, who saluted her with a demure curtsey and a +commonplace expression of condolence. The Queen of Scots was surrounded by the +chief part of her court, saving of course MM. Castillonnes and Punter absent on +service. “We were speaking of this deplorable affair,” said Madame +d’Ivry (which indeed was the truth, although she said it). “How we +pity you, madame!” Blackball and Loder, Cruchecassée and Schlangenbad, +assumed sympathetic countenances. +</p> + +<p> +Trembling on her cane, the old Countess glared out upon Madame d’Ivry. +“I pray you, madame,” she said in French, “never again to +address me the word. If I had, like you, assassins in my pay, I would have you +killed; do you hear me?” and she hobbled on her way. The household to +which she went was in terrible agitation; the kind Lady Anne frightened beyond +measure, poor Ethel full of dread, and feeling guilty almost as if she had been +the cause, as indeed she was the occasion, of Kew’s misfortune. And the +family had further cause of alarm from the shock which the news had given to +Sir Brian. It has been said that he had had illnesses of late which caused his +friends much anxiety. He had passed two months at Aix-la-Chapelle, his +physicians dreading a paralytic attack; and Madame d’Ivry’s party +still sauntering on the walk, the men smoking their cigars, the women breathing +their scandal, now beheld Dr. Finck issuing from Lady Anne’s apartments, +and wearing such a face of anxiety, that the Duchesse asked with some emotion, +“Had there been a fresh bulletin from Kehl?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, there had been no fresh bulletin from Kehl; but two hours since Sir +Brian Newcome had had a paralytic seizure.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is he very bad?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” says Dr. Finck, “he is not very bad.” +</p> + +<p> +“How inconsolable M. Barnes will be!” said the Duchesse, shrugging +her haggard shoulders. Whereas the fact was that Mr. Barnes retained perfect +presence of mind under both of the misfortunes which had befallen his family. +Two days afterwards the Duchesse’s husband arrived himself, when we may +presume that exemplary woman was too much engaged with her own affairs to be +able to be interested about the doings of other people. With the Duke’s +arrival the court of Mary Queen of Scots was broken up. Her Majesty was +conducted to Lochleven, where her tyrant soon dismissed her very last +lady-in-waiting, the confidential Irish secretary, whose performance had +produced such a fine effect amongst the Newcomes. +</p> + +<p> +Had poor Sir Brian Newcome’s seizure occurred at an earlier period of the +autumn, his illness no doubt would have kept him for some months confined at +Baden; but as he was pretty nearly the last of Dr. Von Finck’s bath +patients, and that eminent physician longed to be off to the Residenz, he was +pronounced in a fit condition for easy travelling in rather a brief period +after his attack, and it was determined to transport him to Mannheim, and +thence by water to London and Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +During all this period of their father’s misfortune no sister of charity +could have been more tender, active, cheerful, and watchful than Miss Ethel. +She had to wear a kind face, and exhibit no anxiety when occasionally the +feeble invalid made inquiries regarding poor Kew at Baden; to catch the phrases +as they came from him; to acquiesce, or not to deny, when Sir Brian talked of +the marriages—both marriages—taking place at Christmas. Sir Brian +was especially eager for his daughter’s, and repeatedly, with his broken +words, and smiles, and caresses, which were now quite senile, declared that his +Ethel would make the prettiest countess in England. There came a letter or two +from Clive, no doubt, to the young nurse in her sick-room. Manly and generous, +full of tenderness and affection, as those letters surely were, they could give +but little pleasure to the young lady—indeed, only add to her doubts and +pain. +</p> + +<p> +She had told none of her friends as yet of those last words of Kew’s, +which she interpreted as a farewell on the young nobleman’s part. Had she +told them they were likely would not have understood Kew’s meaning as she +did, and persisted in thinking that the two were reconciled. At any rate, +whilst he and her father were still lying stricken by the blows which had +prostrated them both, all questions of love and marriage had been put aside. +Did she love him? She felt such a kind pity for his misfortune, such an +admiration for his generous gallantry, such a remorse for her own wayward +conduct and cruel behaviour towards this most honest, and kindly, and +affectionate gentleman, that the sum of regard which she could bestow upon him +might surely be said to amount to love. For such a union as that contemplated +between them, perhaps for any marriage, no greater degree of attachment was +necessary as the common cement. Warm friendship and thorough esteem and +confidence (I do not say that our young lady calculated in this matter-of-fact +way) are safe properties invested in the prudent marriage stock, multiplying +and bearing an increasing value with every year. Many a young couple of +spendthrifts get through their capital of passion in the first twelve months, +and have no love left for the daily demands of after life. O me! for the day +when the bank account is closed, and the cupboard is empty, and the firm of +Damon and Phyllis insolvent! +</p> + +<p> +Miss Newcome, we say, without doubt, did not make her calculations in this +debtor and creditor fashion; it was only the gentlemen of that family who went +to Lombard Street. But suppose she thought that regard, and esteem, and, +affection being sufficient, she could joyfully, and with almost all her heart +bring such a portion to Lord Kew; that her harshness towards him as contrasted +with his own generosity, and above all with his present pain, infinitely +touched her; and suppose she fancied that there was another person in the world +to whom, did fates permit, she could offer not esteem, affection, pity only, +but something ten thousand times more precious? We are not in the young +lady’s secrets, but if she has some as she sits by her father’s +chair and bed, who day or night will have no other attendant; and, as she +busies herself to interpret his wants, silently moves on his errands, +administers his potions, and watches his sleep, thinks of Clive absent and +unhappy, of Kew wounded and in danger, she must have subject enough of thought +and pain. Little wonder that her cheeks are pale and her eyes look red; she has +her cares to endure now in the world, and her burden to bear in it, and somehow +she feels she is alone, since that day when poor Clive’s carriage drove +away. +</p> + +<p> +In a mood of more than ordinary depression and weakness Lady Kew must have +found her granddaughter, upon one of the few occasions after the double mishap +when Ethel and her elder were together. Sir Brian’s illness, as it may be +imagined, affected a lady very slightly, who was of an age when these +calamities occasion but small disquiet, and who, having survived her own +father, her husband, her son, and witnessed their lordships’ respective +demises with perfect composure, could not reasonably be called upon to feel any +particular dismay at the probable departure from this life of a Lombard Street +banker, who happened to be her daughter’s husband. In fact, not Barnes +Newcome himself could await that event more philosophically. So, finding Ethel +in this melancholy mood, Lady Kew thought a drive in the fresh air would be of +service to her, and Sir Brian happening to be asleep, carried the young girl +away in her barouche. +</p> + +<p> +They talked about Lord Kew, of whom the accounts were encouraging, and who is +mending in spite of his silly mother and her medicines, “and as soon as +he is able to move we must go and fetch him, my dear,” Lady Kew +graciously said, “before that foolish woman has made a methodist of him. +He is always led by the woman who is nearest him, and I know one who will make +of him just the best little husband in England.” Before they had come to +this delicate point the lady and her grandchild had talked Kew’s +character over, the girl, you may be sure, having spoken feelingly and +eloquently about his kindness and courage, and many admirable qualities. She +kindled when she heard the report of his behaviour at the commencement of the +fracas with M. de Castillonnes, his great forbearance and good-nature, and his +resolution and magnanimity when the moment of collision came. +</p> + +<p> +But when Lady Kew arrived at that period of her discourse in which she stated +that Kew would make the best little husband in England, poor Ethel’s eyes +filled with tears; we must remember that her high spirit was worn down by +watching and much varied anxiety, and then she confessed that there had been no +reconciliation, as all the family fancied, between Frank and herself—on +the contrary, a parting, which she understood to be final; and she owned that +her conduct towards her cousin had been most captious and cruel, and that she +could not expect they should ever again come together. Lady Kew, who hated +sick-beds and surgeons except for herself, who hated her daughter-in-law above +all, was greatly annoyed at the news which Ethel gave her; made light of if, +however, and was quite confident that a very few words from her would place +matters on their old footing, and determined on forthwith setting out for Kehl. +She would have carried Ethel with her, but that the poor Baronet with cries and +moans insisted on retaining his nurse, and Ethel’s grandmother was left +to undertake this mission by herself, the girl remaining behind acquiescent, +not unwilling, owning openly a great regard and esteem for Kew, and the wrong +which she had done him, feeling secretly a sentiment which she had best +smother. She had received a letter from that other person, and answered it with +her mother’s cognisance, but about this little affair neither Lady Anne +nor her daughter happened to say a word to the manager of the whole family. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0038"></a> +CHAPTER XXXVIII.<br> +In which Lady Kew leaves his Lordship quite convalescent</h2> + +<p> +Immediately after Lord Kew’s wound, and as it was necessary to apprise +the Newcome family of the accident which had occurred, the good-natured young +Kew had himself written a brief note to acquaint his relatives with his mishap, +and had even taken the precaution to antedate a couple of billets to be +despatched on future days; kindly forgeries, which told the Newcome family and +the Countess of Kew, that Lord Kew was progressing very favourably, and that +his hurt was trifling. The fever had set in, and the young patient was lying in +great danger, as most of the laggards at Baden knew, when his friends there +were set at ease by this fallacious bulletin. On the third day after the +accident, Lady Walham arrived with her younger son, to find Lord Kew in the +fever which ensued after the wound. As the terrible anxiety during the illness +had been Lady Walham’s, so was hers the delight of the recovery. The +commander-in-chief of the family, the old lady at Baden, showed her sympathy by +sending couriers, and repeatedly issuing orders to have news of Kew. Sick-beds +scared her away invariably. When illness befell a member of her family she +hastily retreated from before the sufferer, showing her agitation of mind, +however, by excessive ill-humour to all the others within her reach. +</p> + +<p> +A fortnight passed, a ball had been found and extracted, the fever was over, +the wound was progressing favourably, the patient advancing towards +convalescence, and the mother, with her child once more under her wing, happier +than she had been for seven years past, during which her young prodigal had +been running the thoughtless career of which he himself was weary, and which +had occasioned the fond lady such anguish. Those doubts which perplex many a +thinking man, and, when formed and uttered, give many a fond and faithful woman +pain so exquisite, had most fortunately never crossed Kew’s mind. His +early impressions were such as his mother had left them, and he came back to +her, as she would have him, as a little child; owning his faults with a hearty +humble repentance, and with a thousand simple confessions, lamenting the errors +of his past days. We have seen him tired and ashamed of the pleasures which he +was pursuing, of the companions who surrounded him, of the brawls and +dissipations which amused him no more; in those hours of danger and doubt, when +he had lain, with death perhaps before him, making up his account of the vain +life which probably he would be called upon to surrender, no wonder this +simple, kindly, modest, and courageous soul thought seriously of the past and +of the future; and prayed, and resolved, if a future were awarded to him, it +should make amends for the days gone by; and surely as the mother and son read +together the beloved assurance of the divine forgiveness, and of that joy which +angels feel in heaven for a sinner repentant, we may fancy in the happy +mother’s breast a feeling somewhat akin to that angelic felicity, a +gratitude and joy of all others the loftiest, the purest, the keenest. Lady +Walham might shrink with terror at the Frenchman’s name, but her son +could forgive him, with all his heart, and kiss his mother’s hand, and +thank him as the best friend of his life. +</p> + +<p> +During all the days of his illness, Kew had never once mentioned Ethel’s +name, and once or twice as his recovery progressed, when with doubt and tremor +his mother alluded to it, he turned from the subject as one that was +disagreeable and painful. Had she thought seriously on certain things? Lady +Walham asked. Kew thought not, “but those who are bred up as you would +have them, mother, are often none the better,” the humble young fellow +said. “I believe she is a very good girl. She is very clever, she is +exceedingly handsome, she is very good to her parents and her brothers and +sisters; but—” he did not finish the sentence. Perhaps he thought, +as he told Ethel afterwards, that she would have agreed with Lady Walham even +worse than with her imperious old grandmother. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Walham then fell to deplore Sir Brian’s condition, accounts of whose +seizure of course had been despatched to the Kehl party, and to lament that a +worldly man as he was should have such an affliction, so near the grave and so +little prepared for it. Here honest Kew, however, held out. “Every man +for himself, mother,” says he. “Sir Brian was bred up very +strictly, perhaps too strictly as a young man. Don’t you know that that +good Colonel, his elder brother, who seems to me about the most honest and good +old gentleman I ever met in my life, was driven into rebellion and all sorts of +wild courses by old Mrs. Newcome’s tyranny over him? As for Sir Brian, he +goes to church every Sunday: has prayers in the family every day: I’m +sure has led a hundred times better life than I have, poor old Sir Brian. I +often have thought, mother, that though our side was wrong, you could not be +altogether right, because I remember how my tutor, and Mr. Bonner, and Dr. +Laud, when they used to come down to us at Kewbury, used to make themselves so +unhappy about other people.” So the widow withdrew her unhappiness about +Sir Brian; she was quite glad to hope for the best regarding that invalid. +</p> + +<p> +With some fears yet regarding her son,—for many of the books with which +the good lady travelled could not be got to interest him; at some he would +laugh outright,—with fear mixed with the maternal joy that he was +returned to her, and had quitted his old ways; with keen feminine triumph, +perhaps, that she had won him back, and happiness at his daily mending health, +all Lady Walham’s hours were passed in thankful and delighted occupation. +George Barnes kept the Newcomes acquainted with the state of his +brother’s health. The skilful surgeon from Strasbourg reported daily +better and better of him, and the little family were living in great peace and +contentment, with one subject of dread, however, hanging over the mother of the +two young men, the arrival of Lady Kew, as she was foreboding, the fierce old +mother-in-law who had worsted Lady Walham in many a previous battle. +</p> + +<p> +It was what they call the summer of St. Martin, and the weather was luckily +very fine; Kew could presently be wheeled into the garden of the hotel, whence +he could see the broad turbid current of the swollen Rhine: the French bank +fringed with alders, the vast yellow fields behind them, the great avenue of +poplars stretching away to the Alsatian city, and its purple minster yonder. +Good Lady Walham was for improving the shining hour by reading amusing extracts +from her favourite volumes, gentle anecdotes of Chinese and Hottentot converts, +and incidents from missionary travel. George Barnes, a wily young diplomatist, +insinuated <i>Galignani</i>, and hinted that Kew might like a novel; and a +profane work called Oliver Twist having appeared about this time, which George +read out to his family with admirable emphasis, it is a fact that Lady Walham +became so interested in the parish boy’s progress, that she took his +history into her bedroom (where it was discovered, under Blatherwick’s +Voice from Mesopotamia, by her ladyship’s maid), and that Kew laughed so +immensely at Mr. Bumble, the Beadle, as to endanger the reopening of his wound. +</p> + +<p> +While, one day, they were so harmlessly and pleasantly occupied, a great +whacking of whips, blowing of horns, and whirring of wheels was heard in the +street without. The wheels stopped at their hotel gate; Lady Walham started up; +ran through the garden door, closing it behind her; and divined justly who had +arrived. The landlord was bowing; the courier pushing about; waiters in +attendance; one of them, coming up to pale-faced Lady Walham; said, “Her +Excellency the Frau Gräfinn von Kew is even now absteiging.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will you be good enough to walk into our salon, Lady Kew?” said +the daughter-in-law, stepping forward and opening the door of that apartment. +The Countess, leaning on her staff, entered that darkened chamber. She ran up +towards an easy-chair, where she supposed Lord Kew was. “My dear +Frank!” cries the old lady; “my dear boy, what a pretty fright you +have given us all! They don’t keep you in this horrid noisy room facing +that——Ho—what is this?” cries the Countess, closing her +sentence abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“It is not Frank. It is only a bolster, Lady Kew, and I don’t keep +him in a noisy room towards the street,” said Lady Walham. +</p> + +<p> +“Ho! how do you do? This is the way to him, I suppose;” and she +went to another door—it was a cupboard full of the relics of +Frank’s illness, from which Lady Walham’s mother-in-law shrunk back +aghast. “Will you please to see that I have a comfortable room, Maria; +and one for my maid, next me? I will thank you to see yourself,” the +Empress of Kew said, pointing with her stick, before which many a time the +younger lady had trembled. +</p> + +<p> +This time Lady Walham only rang the bell. “I don’t speak German; +and have never been on any floor of the house but this. Your servant had better +see to your room, Lady Kew. That next is mine; and I keep the door, which you +are trying, locked on other side.” +</p> + +<p> +“And I suppose Frank is locked up there!” cried the old lady, +“with a basin of gruel and a book of Watts’s hymns.” A +servant entered at this moment, answering Lady Walham’s summons. +“Peacock, the Countess of Kew says that she proposes to stay here this +evening. Please to ask the landlord to show her ladyship rooms,” said +Lady Walham; and by this time she had thought of a reply to Lady Kew’s +last kind speech. +</p> + +<p> +“If my son were locked up in my room, madam, his mother is surely the +best nurse for him. Why did you not come to him three weeks sooner, when there +was nobody with him?” +</p> + +<p> +Lady Kew said nothing, but glared and showed her teeth—those pearls set +in gold. +</p> + +<p> +“And my company may not amuse Lord Kew—” +</p> + +<p> +“He-e-e!” grinned the elder, savagely. +</p> + +<p> +“—But at least it is better than some to which you introduced my +son,” continued Lady Kew’s daughter-in-law, gathering force and +wrath as she spoke. “Your ladyship may think lightly of me, but you can +hardly think so ill of me as of the Duchesse d’Ivry, I should suppose, to +whom you sent my boy, to form him, you said; about whom, when I +remonstrated—for though I live out of the world I hear of it +sometimes—you were pleased to tell me that I was a prude and a fool. It +is you I thank for separating my child from me—yes, you—for so many +years of my life; and for bringing me to him when he was bleeding and almost a +corpse, but that God preserved him to the widow’s prayers;—and you, +you were by, and never came near him.” +</p> + +<p> +“I—I did not come to see you—or—or—for this kind +of scene, Lady Walham,” muttered the other. Lady Kew was accustomed to +triumph, by attacking in masses, like Napoleon. Those who faced her routed her. +</p> + +<p> +“No; you did not come for me, I know very well,” the daughter went +on. “You loved me no better than you loved your son, whose life, as long +as you meddled with it, you made wretched. You came here for my boy. +Haven’t you done him evil enough? And now God has mercifully preserved +him, you want to lead him back again into ruin and crime. It shall not be so, +wicked woman! bad mother! cruel, heartless parent!—George!” (Here +her younger son entered the room, and she ran towards him with fluttering robes +and seized his hands.) “Here is your grandmother; here is the Countess of +Kew, come from Baden at last; and she wants—she wants to take Frank from +us, my dear, and to—give—him—back to the—Frenchwoman +again. No, no! Oh, my God! Never! never!” And she flung herself into +George Barnes’s arms, fainting with an hysteric burst of tears. +</p> + +<p> +“You had best get a strait-waistcoat for your mother, George +Barnes,” Lady Kew said, scorn and hatred in her face. (If she had been +Iago’s daughter, with a strong likeness to her sire, Lord Steyne’s +sister could not have looked more diabolical.) “Have you had advice for +her? Has nursing poor Kew turned her head? I came to see <i>him</i>. Why have I +been left alone for half an hour with this madwoman? You ought not to trust her +to give Frank medicine. It is positively——” +</p> + +<p> +“Excuse me,” said George, with a bow; “I don’t think +the complaint has as yet exhibited itself in my mother’s branch of the +family. (She always hated me,” thought George; “but if she had by +chance left me a legacy, there it goes.) You would like, ma’am, to see +the rooms upstairs? Here is the landlord to conduct your ladyship. Frank will +be quite ready to receive you when you come down. I am sure I need not beg of +your kindness that nothing may be said to agitate him. It is barely three weeks +since M. de Castillonnes’s ball was extracted; and the doctors wish he +should be kept as quiet as possible.” +</p> + +<p> +Be sure that the landlord, the courier, and the persons engaged in showing the +Countess of Kew the apartments above spent an agreeable time with Her +Excellency the Frau Gräfinn von Kew. She must have had better luck in her +encounter with these than in her previous passages with her grandson and his +mother; for when she issued from her apartment in a new dress and fresh cap, +Lady Kew’s face wore an expression of perfect serenity. Her attendant may +have shook her fist behind her, and her man’s eyes and face looked Blitz +and Donnerwetter; but their mistress’s features wore that pleased look +which they assumed when she had been satisfactorily punishing somebody. Lord +Kew had by this time got back from the garden to his own room, where he awaited +grandmamma. If the mother and her two sons had in the interval of Lady +Kew’s toilette tried to resume the history of Bumble the Beadle, I fear +they could not have found it very comical. +</p> + +<p> +“Bless me, my dear child! How well you look! Many a girl would give the +world to have such a complexion. There is nothing like a mother for a nurse! +Ah, no! Maria, you deserve to be the Mother Superior of a House of Sisters of +Charity, you do. The landlord has given me a delightful apartment, thank you. +He is an extortionate wretch; but I have no doubt I shall be very comfortable. +The Dodsburys stopped here, I see by the travellers’ book-quite right, +instead of sleeping at that odious buggy Strasbourg. We have had a sad, sad +time, my dears, at Baden. Between anxiety about poor Sir Brian, and about you, +you naughty boy, I am sure I wonder how I have got through it all. Doctor Finck +would not let me come away to-day; would I but come.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am sure it was uncommonly kind, ma’am,” says poor Kew, +with a rueful face. +</p> + +<p> +“That horrible woman against whom I always warned but you—but young +men will not take the advice of old grandmammas—has gone away these ten +days. Monsieur le Duc fetched her; and if he locked her up at Moncontour, and +kept her on bread-and-water; for the rest of her life, I am sure he would serve +her right. When a woman once forgets religious principles, Kew, she is sure to +go wrong. The Conversation-room is shut up. The Dorkings go on Tuesday. Clara +is really a dear little artless creature; one that you will like, +Maria—and as for Ethel, I really think she is an angel. To see her +nursing her poor father is the most beautiful sight; night after night she has +sate up with him. I know where she would like to be, the dear child. And if +Frank falls ill again, Maria, he won’t need a mother or useless old +grandmother to nurse him. I have got some pretty messages to deliver from her; +but they are for your private ears, my lord; not even mammas and brothers may +hear them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do not go, mother! Pray stay, George!” cried the sick man (and +again Lord Steyne’s sister looked uncommonly like that lamented marquis). +“My cousin is a noble young creature,” he went on. “She has +admirable good qualities, which I appreciate with all my heart; and her beauty, +you know how I admire it. I have thought of her a great deal as I was lying on +the bed yonder” (the family look was not so visible in Lady Kew’s +face), “and—and—I wrote to her this very morning; she will +have the letter by this time, probably.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bien! Frank!” Lady Kew smiled (in her supernatural way) almost as +much as her portrait, by Harlowe, as you may see it at Kewbury to this very +day. She is represented seated before an easel, painting a miniature of her +son, Lord Walham. +</p> + +<p> +“I wrote to her on the subject of the last conversation we had +together,” Frank resumed, in rather a timid voice, “the day before +my accident. Perhaps she did not tell you, ma’am, of what passed between +us. We had had a quarrel; one of many. Some cowardly hand, which we both of us +can guess at, had written to her an account of my past life, and she showed me +the letter. Then I told her, that if she loved me she never would have showed +it me: without any other words of reproof. I bade her farewell. It was not +much, the showing that letter; but it was enough. In twenty differences we have +had together, she had been unjust and captious, cruel towards me, and too +eager, as I thought, for other people’s admiration. Had she loved me, it +seemed to me Ethel would have shown less vanity and better temper. What was I +to expect in life afterwards from a girl who before her marriage used me so? +Neither she nor I could be happy. She could be gentle enough, and kind, and +anxious to please any man whom she loves, God bless her! As for me, I suppose, +I’m not worthy of so much talent and beauty, so we both understood that +that was a friendly farewell; and as I have been lying on my bed yonder, +thinking, perhaps, I never might leave it, or if I did, that I should like to +lead a different sort of life to that which ended in sending me there, my +resolve of last month was only confirmed. God forbid that she and I should lead +the lives of some folks we know; that Ethel should marry without love, perhaps +to fall into it afterwards; and that I, after this awful warning I have had, +should be tempted to back into that dreary life I was leading. It was wicked, +ma’am, I knew it was; many and many a day I used to say so to myself, and +longed to get rid of it. I am a poor weak devil, I know, I am only too easily +led into temptation, and I should only make matters worse if I married a woman +who cares for the world more than for me, and would not make me happy at +home.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ethel care for the world!” gasped out Lady Kew; “a most +artless, simple, affectionate creature; my dear Frank, she——” +</p> + +<p> +He interrupted her, as a blush came rushing over his pale face. +“Ah!” said he, “if I had been the painter, and young Clive +had been Lord Kew, which of us do you think she would have chosen? And she was +right. He is a brave, handsome, honest young fellow, and is a thousand times +cleverer and better than I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not better, dear, thank God,” cried his mother, coming round to +the other side of his sofa, and seizing her son’s hand. +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t think he is better, Frank,” said the +diplomatist, walking away to the window. And as for grandmamma at the end of +this little speech and scene, her ladyship’s likeness to her brother, the +late revered Lord Steyne, was more frightful than ever. +</p> + +<p> +After a minute’s pause, she rose up on her crooked stick, and said, +“I really feel I am unworthy to keep company with so much exquisite +virtue. It will be enhanced, my lord, by the thought of the pecuniary sacrifice +which you are making, for I suppose you know that I have been +hoarding—yes, and saving, and pinching,—denying myself the +necessities of life, in order that my grandson might one day have enough to +support his rank. Go and live and starve in your dreary old house, and marry a +parson’s daughter, and sing psalms with your precious mother; and I have +no doubt you and she—she who has thwarted me all through life, and whom I +hated,—yes, I hated from the moment she took my son from me, and brought +misery into my family, will be all the happier when she thinks that she has +made a poor, fond, lonely old woman more lonely and miserable. If you please, +George Barnes, be good enough to tell my people that I shall go back to +Baden,” and waving her children away from her, the old woman tottered out +of the room on her crutch. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +So the wicked fairy drove away disappointed in the chariot with the very +dragons which had brought her away in the morning, and just had time to get +their feed of black bread. I wonder whether they were the horses Clive and J. +J. and Jack Belsize had used when they passed on their road to Switzerland? +Black Care sits behind all sorts of horses, and gives a trinkgelt to +postillions all over the map. A thrill of triumph may be permitted to Lady +Walham after her victory over her mother-in-law. What Christian woman does not +like to conquer another? and if that other were a mother-in-law, would the +victory be less sweet? Husbands and wives both will be pleased that Lady Walham +has had the better of this bout: and you, young boys and virgins, when your +turn comes to be married, you will understand the hidden meaning of this +passage. George Barnes got Oliver Twist out, and began to read therein. Miss +Nancy and Fanny again were summoned before this little company to frighten and +delight them. I dare say even Fagin and Miss Nancy failed with the widow, so +absorbed was she with the thoughts of the victory which she had just won. For +the evening service, in which her sons rejoiced her fond heart by joining, she +lighted on a psalm which was as a <i>Te Deum</i> after the battle—the +battle of Kehl by Rhine, where Kew’s soul, as his mother thought, was the +object of contention between the enemies. I have said, this book is all about +the world and a respectable family dwelling in it. It is not a sermon, except +where it cannot help itself, and the speaker pursuing the destiny of his +narrative finds such a homily before him. O friend, in your life and mine, +don’t we light upon such sermons daily?—don’t we see at home +as well as amongst our neighbours that battle betwixt Evil and Good? Here on +one side is Self and Ambition and Advancement; and Right and Love on the other. +Which shall we let to triumph for ourselves—which for our children? +</p> + +<p> +The young men were sitting smoking the vesper cigar. (Frank would do it, and +his mother actually lighted his cigar for him now, enjoining him straightway +after to go to bed.) Kew smoked and looked at a star—shining above in the +heaven. “Which is that star?” he asked: and the accomplished young +diplomatist answered it was Jupiter. +</p> + +<p> +“What a lot of things you know, George!” cries the senior, +delighted; “you ought to have been the elder, you ought, by Jupiter! But +you have lost your chance this time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, thank God!” says George. +</p> + +<p> +“And I am going to be all right—and to turn over a new leaf, old +boy—and paste down the old ones, eh? I wrote to Martins this morning to +have all my horses sold; and I’ll never beg—so help me—so +help me, Jupiter. I made a vow—a promise to myself, you see, that I +wouldn’t if I recovered. And I wrote to Cousin Ethel this +morning.—As I thought over the matter yonder, I felt quite certain I was +right, and that we could never, never pull together. Now the Countess is gone, +I wonder whether I was right—to give up sixty thousand pounds, and the +prettiest girl in London?” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I take horses and go after her? My mother’s gone to bed, she +won’t know,” asked George. “Sixty thousand is a lot of money +to lose.” +</p> + +<p> +Kew laughed. “If you were to go and tell our grandmother that I could not +live the night through, and that you would be Lord Kew in the morning, and your +son Viscount Walham, I think the Countess would make up a match between you and +the sixty thousand pounds, and the prettiest girl in England: she would, +by—by Jupiter. I intend only to swear by the heathen gods now, +Georgy.—No, I am not sorry I wrote to Ethel. What a fine girl she +is!—I don’t mean her beauty merely, but such a noble-bred one! And +to think that there she is in the market to be knocked down to—I say, I +was going to call that three-year-old, Ethelinda.—We must christen her +over again for Tattersall’s, Georgy.” +</p> + +<p> +A knock is heard through an adjoining door, and a maternal voice cries, +“It is time to go to bed.” So the brothers part, and, let us hope, +sleep soundly. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +The Countess of Kew, meanwhile, has returned to Baden; where, though it is +midnight when she arrives, and the old lady has had two long bootless journeys, +you will be grieved to hear, that she does not sleep a single wink. In the +morning she hobbles over to the Newcome quarters; and Ethel comes down to her +pale and calm. How is her father? He has had a good night: he is a little +better, speaks more clearly, has a little more the use of his limbs. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish <i>I</i> had had a good night!” groans out the Countess. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you were going to Lord Kew, at Kehl,” remarked her +granddaughter. +</p> + +<p> +“I did go, and returned with wretches who would not bring me more than +five miles an hour! I dismissed that brutal grinning courier; and I have given +warning to that fiend of a maid.” +</p> + +<p> +“And Frank is pretty well, grandmamma?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well! He looks as pink as a girl in her first season! I found him, and +his brother George, and their mamma. I think Maria was hearing them their +catechism,” cries the old lady. +</p> + +<p> +“N. and M. together! Very pretty,” says Ethel, gravely. +“George has always been a good boy, and it is quite time for my Lord Kew +to begin.” +</p> + +<p> +The elder lady looked at her descendant, but Miss Ethel’s glance was +impenetrable. “I suppose you can fancy, my dear, why I came back?” +said Lady Kew. +</p> + +<p> +“Because you quarrelled with Lady Walham, grandmamma. I think I have +heard that there used to be differences between you.” Miss Newcome was +armed for defence and attack; in which cases we have said Lady Kew did not care +to assault her. “My grandson told me that he had written to you,” +the Countess said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes: and had you waited but half an hour yesterday, you might have +spared me the humiliation of that journey.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i>—the humiliation—Ethel!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, <i>me</i>,” Ethel flashed out. “Do you suppose it is +none to have me bandied about from bidder to bidder, and offered for sale to a +gentleman who will not buy me? Why have you and all my family been so eager to +get rid of me? Why should you suppose or desire that Lord Kew should like me? +Hasn’t he the Opera; and such friends as Madame la Duchesse d’Ivry, +to whom your ladyship introduced him in early life? He told me so: and she was +good enough to inform me of the rest. What attractions have I in comparison +with such women? And to this man from whom I am parted by good fortune; to this +man who writes to remind me that we are separated—your ladyship must +absolutely go and entreat him to give me another trial! It is too much, +grandmamma. Do please to let me stay where I am; and worry me with no more +schemes for my establishment in life. Be contented with the happiness which you +have secured for Clara Pulleyn and Barnes; and leave me to take care of my poor +father. Here I know I am doing right. Here, at least, there is no such sorrow, +and doubt, and shame, for me, as my friends have tried to make me endure. There +is my father’s bell. He likes me to be with him at breakfast and to read +his paper to him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Stay a little, Ethel,” cried the Countess, with a trembling voice. +“I am older than your father, and you owe me a little +obedience—that is, if children do owe any obedience to their parents +nowadays. I don’t know. I am an old woman—the world perhaps has +changed since my time; and it is you who ought to command, I dare say, and we +to follow. Perhaps I have been wrong all through life, and in trying to teach +my children to do as I was made to do. God knows I have had very little comfort +from them: whether they did or whether they didn’t. You and Frank I had +set my heart on; I loved you out of all my grandchildren—was it very +unnatural that I should wish to see you together? For that boy I have been +saving money these years past. He flies back to the arms of his mother, who has +been pleased to hate me as only such virtuous people can; who took away my own +son from me; and now his son—towards whom the only fault I ever committed +was to spoil him and be too fond of him. Don’t leave me too, my child. +Let me have something that I can like at my years. And I like your pride, +Ethel, and your beauty, my dear; and I am not angry with your hard words; and +if I wish to see you in the place in life which becomes you—do I do +wrong? No. Silly girl! There—give me the little hand. How hot it is! Mine +is as cold as a stone—and shakes, doesn’t it?—Eh! it was a +pretty hand once! What did Anne—what did your mother say to Frank’s +letter. +</p> + +<p> +“I did not show it to her,” Ethel answered. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me see it, my dear,” whispered Lady Kew, in a coaxing way. +</p> + +<p> +“There it is,” said Ethel pointing to the fireplace, where there +lay some torn fragments and ashes of paper. It was the same fireplace at which +Clive’s sketches had been burned. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0039"></a> +CHAPTER XXXIX.<br> +Amongst the Painters</h2> + +<p> +When Clive Newcome comes to be old, no doubt he will remember his Roman days as +amongst the happiest which fate ever awarded him. The simplicity of the +student’s life there, the greatness and friendly splendour of the scenes +surrounding him, the delightful nature of the occupation in which he is +engaged, the pleasant company of comrades, inspired by a like pleasure over a +similar calling, the labour, the meditation, the holiday and the kindly feast +afterwards, should make the Art-students the happiest of youth, did they but +know their good fortune. Their work is for the most part delightfully easy. It +does not exercise the brain too much, but gently occupies it, and with a +subject most agreeable to the scholar. The mere poetic flame, or jet of +invention, needs to be lighted up but very seldom, namely, when the young +painter is devising his subject, or settling the composition thereof. The +posing of figures and drapery; the dexterous copying of the line; the artful +processes of cross-hatching, of stumping, of laying on lights, and what not; +the arrangement of colour, and the pleasing operations of glazing and the like, +are labours for the most part merely manual. These, with the smoking of a +proper number of pipes, carry the student through his day’s work. If you +pass his door you will very probably hear him singing at his easel. I should +like to know what young lawyer, mathematician, or divinity scholar can sing +over his volumes, and at the same time advance with his labour? In every city +where Art is practised there are old gentlemen who never touched a pencil in +their lives, but find the occupation and company of artists so agreeable that +they are never out of the studios; follow one generation of painters after +another; sit by with perfect contentment while Jack is drawing his pifferaro, +or Tom designing his cartoon, and years afterwards when Jack is established in +Newman Street, and Tom a Royal Academician, shall still be found in their +rooms, occupied now by fresh painters and pictures, telling the youngsters, +their successors, what glorious fellows Jack and Tom were. A poet must retire +to privy places and meditate his rhymes in secret; a painter can practise his +trade in the company of friends. Your splendid <i>chef d’école</i>, a +Rubens or a Horace Vernet, may sit with a secretary reading to him; a troop of +admiring scholars watching the master’s hand; or a company of court +ladies and gentlemen (to whom he addresses a few kind words now and again) +looking on admiringly; whilst the humblest painter, be he ever so poor, may +have a friend watching at his easel, or a gentle wife sitting by with her work +in her lap, and with fond smiles or talk or silence cheering his labour. +</p> + +<p> +Amongst all ranks and degrees of painters assembled at Rome, Mr. Clive found +companions and friends. The cleverest man was not the best artist very often: +the ablest artist not the best critic nor the best companion. Many a man could +give no account of the faculty within him, but achieved success because he +could not help it; and did, in an hour and without effort, that which another +could not effect with half a life’s labour. There were young sculptors +who had never read a line of Homer, who took on themselves nevertheless to +interpret and continue the heroic Greek art. There were young painters with the +strongest natural taste for low humour, comic singing, and Cyder-Cellar +jollifications, who would imitate nothing under Michael Angelo, and whose +canvases teemed with tremendous allegories of fates, furies, genii of death and +battle. There were long-haired lads who fancied the sublime lay in the +Peruginesque manner, and depicted saintly personages with crisp draperies, +crude colours, and haloes of gold-leaf. Our friend marked all these +practitioners of Art with their various oddities and tastes, and was welcomed +in the ateliers of all of them, from the grave dons and seniors, the senators +of the French and English Academy, down to the jovial students who railed at +the elders over their cheap cups at the Lepre. What a gallant, starving, +generous, kindly life, many of them led! What fun in their grotesque airs, what +friendship and gentleness in their poverty! How splendidly Carlo talked of the +marquis his cousin, and the duke his intimate friend! How great Federigo was on +the subject of his wrongs, from the Academy at home, a pack of tradesmen who +could not understand high art, and who had never seen a good picture! With what +haughtiness Augusto swaggered about at Sir John’s soirées, though he was +known to have borrowed Fernando’s coat, and Luigi’s dress-boots! If +one or the other was ill, how nobly and generously his companions flocked to +comfort him, took turns to nurse the sick man through nights of fever, +contributed out of their slender means to help him through his difficulty. Max, +who loves fine dresses and the carnival so, gave up a costume and a carriage so +as to help Paul, when he sold his picture (through the agency of Pietro, with +whom he had quarrelled, and who recommended him to a patron), gave a third of +the money back to Max, and took another third portion to Lazaro, with his poor +wife and children, who had not got a single order all that winter—and so +the story went on. I have heard Clive tell of two noble young Americans who +came to Europe to study their art; of whom the one fell sick, whilst the other +supported his penniless comrade, and out of sixpence a day absolutely kept but +a penny for himself, giving the rest to his sick companion. “I should +like to have known that good Samaritan, Sir,” our Colonel said, twirling +his mustachios, when we saw him again, and his son told him that story. +</p> + +<p> +J. J., in his steady silent way, worked on every day, and for many hours every +day. When Clive entered their studio of a morning, he found J. J. there, and +there he left him. When the Life Academy was over, at night, and Clive went out +to his soirées, J. J. lighted his lamp and continued his happy labour. He did +not care for the brawling supper-parties of his comrades; liked better to stay +at home than to go into the world, and was seldom abroad of a night except +during the illness of Luigi before mentioned, when J. J. spent constant +evenings at the other’s bedside. J. J. was fortunate as well as skilful: +people in the world took a liking to the modest young man, and he had more than +one order for pictures. The Artists’ Club, at the Lepre, set him down as +close with his money; but a year after he left Rome, Lazaro and his wife, who +still remained there, told a different tale. Clive Newcome, when he heard of +their distress, gave them something—as much as he could spare; but J. J. +gave more, and Clive was as eager in acknowledging and admiring his +friend’s generosity as he was in speaking of his genius. His was a +fortunate organisation indeed. Study was his chief amusement. Self-denial came +easily to him. Pleasure, or what is generally called so, had little charm for +him. His ordinary companions were pure and sweet thoughts; his out-door +enjoyment the contemplation of natural beauty; for recreation, the hundred +pleasant dexterities and manipulations of his craft were ceaselessly +interesting to him: he would draw every knot in an oak panel, or every leaf in +an orange-tree, smiling, and taking a gay delight over the simple feats of +skill: whenever you found him he seemed watchful and serene, his modest +virgin-lamp always lighted and trim. No gusts of passion extinguished it; no +hopeless wandering in the darkness afterwards led him astray. Wayfarers through +the world, we meet now and again with such purity; and salute it, and hush +whilst it passes on. +</p> + +<p> +We have it under Clive Newcome’s own signature, that he intended to pass +a couple of years in Italy, devoting himself exclusively to the study of his +profession. Other besides professional reasons were working secretly in the +young man’s mind, causing him to think that absence from England was the +best cure for a malady under which he secretly laboured. But change of air may +cure some sick people more speedily than the sufferers ever hoped; and also it +is on record, that young men with the very best intentions respecting study, do +not fulfil them, and are led away from their scheme by accident, or pleasure, +or necessity, or some good cause. Young Clive worked sedulously two or three +months at his vocation at Rome, secretly devouring, no doubt, the pangs of +sentimental disappointment under which he laboured; and he drew from his +models, and he sketched round about everything that suited his pencil on both +sides of Tiber; and he laboured at the Life Academy of nights—a model +himself to other young students. The symptoms of his sentimental malady began +to abate. He took an interest in the affairs of Jack, and Tom, and Harry round +about him: Art exercised its great healing influence on his wounded spirit, +which to be sure had never given in. The meeting of the painters at the Café +Greco, and at their private houses, was very jovial, pleasant, and lively. +Clive smoked his pipe, drank his glass of Marsala, sang his song, and took part +in the general chorus as gaily as the jolliest of the boys. He was the cock of +the whole painting school, the favourite of all; and to be liked by the people, +you may be pretty sure that we for our parts must like them. +</p> + +<p> +Then, besides the painters, he had, as he has informed us, the other society of +Rome. Every winter there is a gay and pleasant English colony in that capital, +of course more or less remarkable for rank, fashion, and agreeability with +every varying year. In Clive’s year some very pleasant folks set up their +winter quarters in the usual foreigners’ resort round about the Piazza di +Spagna. I was amused to find, lately, looking over the travels of the +respectable M. de Poellnitz, that, a hundred and twenty years ago, the same +quarter, the same streets and palaces, scarce changed from those days, were +even then polite foreigners’ resort. Of one or two of the gentlemen Clive +had made the acquaintance in the hunting-field; others he had met during his +brief appearance in the London world. Being a youth of great personal agility, +fitted thereby to the graceful performance of polkas, etc.; having good +manners, and good looks, and good credit with Prince Poloni, or some other +banker, Mr. Newcome was thus made very welcome to the Anglo-Roman society; and +as kindly received in genteel houses, where they drank tea and danced the +galop, as in those dusky taverns and retired lodgings where his bearded +comrades, the painters held their meetings. +</p> + +<p> +Thrown together every day, and night after night; flocking to the same +picture-galleries, statue-galleries, Pincian drives, and church functions, the +English colonists at Rome perforce became intimate, and in many cases friendly. +They have an English library where the various meets for the week are +placarded: on such a day the Vatican galleries are open: the next is the feast +of Saint So-and-so: on Wednesday there will be music and vespers at the Sistine +Chapel—on Thursday, the Pope will bless the animals—sheep, horses, +and what-not: and flocks of English accordingly rush to witness the benediction +of droves of donkeys. In a word, the ancient city of the Cæsars, the august +fanes of the Popes, with their splendour and ceremony, are all mapped out and +arranged for English diversion; and we run in a crowd to high mass at St. +Peter’s, or to the illumination on Easter Day, as we run when the bell +rings to the Bosjesmen at Cremorne, or the fireworks at Vauxhall. +</p> + +<p> +Running to see fireworks alone, rushing off to examine Bosjesmen by one’s +self, is a dreary work: I should think very few men would have the courage to +do it unattended, and personally would not prefer a pipe in their own rooms. +Hence if Clive went to see all these sights, as he did, it is to be concluded +that he went in company; and if he went in company and sought it, we may +suppose that little affair which annoyed him at Baden no longer tended to hurt +his peace of mind very seriously. The truth is, our countrymen are pleasanter +abroad than at home; most hospitable, kindly, and eager to be pleased and to +please. You see a family half a dozen times in a week in the little Roman +circle, whom you shall not meet twice in a season afterwards in the enormous +London round. When Easter is over and everybody is going away at Rome, you and +your neighbour shake hands, sincerely sorry to part: in London we are obliged +to dilute our kindness so that there is hardly any smack of the original milk. +As one by one the pleasant families dropped off with whom Clive had spent his +happy winter; as Admiral Freeman’s carriage drove away, whose pretty +girls he had caught at St. Peter’s kissing St. Peter’s toe; as Dick +Denby’s family ark appeared with all Denby’s sweet young children +kissing farewells to him out of the window; as those three charming Miss +Baliols with whom he had that glorious day in the Catacombs; as friend after +friend quitted the great city with kind greetings, warm pressures of the hand, +and hopes of meeting in a yet greater city on the banks of the Thames, young +Clive felt a depression of spirit. Rome was Rome, but it was pleasanter to see +it in company; our painters are smoking still at the Oafs Greco, but a society +all smoke and all painters did not suit him. If Mr. Clive is not a Michael +Angelo or a Beethoven, if his genius is not gloomy, solitary, gigantic, shining +alone, like a lighthouse, a storm round about him, and breakers dashing at his +feet, I cannot help myself: he is as Heaven made him, brave, honest, gay, and +friendly, and persons of a gloomy turn must not look to him as a hero. +</p> + +<p> +So Clive and his companion worked away with all their hearts from November +until far into April when Easter came, and the glorious gala with which the +Roman Church celebrates that holy season. By this time Clive’s books were +full of sketches. Ruins, imperial and mediæval; peasants and bagpipemen; +Passionists with shaven polls; Capuchins and the equally hairy frequenters of +the Café Greco; painters of all nations who resort there; Cardinals and their +queer equipages and attendants; the Holy Father himself (it was Gregory +sixteenth of the name); the dandified English on the Pincio and the wonderful +Roman members of the hunt—were not all these designed by the young man +and admired by his friends in after-days? J. J.’s sketches were few, but +he had painted two beautiful little pictures, and sold them for so good a price +that Prince Polonia’s people were quite civil to him. He had orders for +yet more pictures, and having worked very hard, thought himself authorised to +accompany Mr. Clive upon a pleasure-trip to Naples, which the latter deemed +necessary after his own tremendous labours. He for his part had painted no +pictures, though he had commenced a dozen and turned them to the wall; but he +had sketched, and dined, and smoked, and danced, as we have seen. So the little +britzska was put behind horses again, and our two friends set out on their +tour, having quite a crowd of brother-artists to cheer them, who had assembled +and had a breakfast for the purpose at that comfortable osteria near the +Lateran Gate. How the fellows flung their hats up, and shouted, “Lebe +wohl,” and “Adieu,” and “God bless you, old boy,” +in many languages! Clive was the young swell of the artists of that year, and +adored by the whole of the jolly company. His sketches were pronounced on all +hands to be admirable: it was agreed that if he chose he might do anything. +</p> + +<p> +So with promises of a speedy return they left behind them the noble city, which +all love who once have seen it, and of which we think afterwards ever with the +kindness and the regard of home. They dashed across the Campagna and over the +beautiful hills of Albano, and sped through the solemn Pontine Marshes, and +stopped to roost at Terracing (which was not at all like Fra Diavolo’s +Terracing at Covent Garden, as J. J. was distressed to remark), and so, +galloping onwards through a hundred ancient cities that crumble on the shores +of the beautiful Mediterranean, behold, on the second day as they ascended a +hill about noon. Vesuvius came in view, its great shape shimmering blue in the +distant haze, its banner of smoke in the cloudless sky. And about five +o’clock in the evening (as everybody will who starts from Terracing early +and pays the postboy well), the travellers came to an ancient city walled and +fortified, with drawbridges over the shining moats. +</p> + +<p> +“Here is C<small>APUA</small>,” says J. J., and Clive burst out +laughing: thinking of <i>his</i> Capua which he had left—how many +months—years it seemed ago! From Capua to Naples is a fine straight road, +and our travellers were landed at the latter place at suppertime; where, if +they had quarters at the Vittoria Hotel, they were as comfortable as any +gentlemen painters need wish to be in this world. +</p> + +<p> +The aspect of the place was so charming and delightful to Clive:—the +beautiful sea stretched before his eyes when waking, Capri a fairy island in +the distance, in the amethyst rocks of which Sirens might be playing—that +fair line of cities skirting the shore glittering white along the purple +water—over the whole brilliant scene Vesuvius rising with cloudlets +playing round its summit, and the country bursting out into that glorious +vegetation with which sumptuous nature decorates every spring—this city +and scene of Naples were so much to Clive’s liking that I have a letter +from him dated a couple of days after the young man’s arrival, in which +he announces his intention of staying there for ever, and gives me an +invitation to some fine lodgings in a certain palazzo, on which he has cast his +eye. He is so enraptured with the place, that he says to die and be buried +there even would be quite a treat, so charming is the cemetery where the +Neapolitan dead repose. +</p> + +<p> +The Fates did not, however, ordain that Clive Newcome should pass all his life +at Naples. His Roman banker presently forwarded a few letters to his address; +some which had arrived after his departure, others which had been lying at the +Poste Restante, with his name written in perfectly legible characters, but +which the authorities of the post, according to their custom, would not see +when Clive sent for them. +</p> + +<p> +It was one of these letters which Clive clutched the most eagerly. It had been +lying since October, actually, at the Roman post, though Clive had asked for +letters there a hundred times. It was that little letter from Ethel, in reply +to his own, whereof we have made mention in a previous chapter. There was not +much in the little letter. Nothing, of course, that Virtue or Grandmamma might +not read over the young writer’s shoulder. It was affectionate, simple, +rather melancholy; described in a few words Sir Brian’s seizure and +present condition; spoke of Lord Kew, who was mending rapidly, as if Clive, of +course, was aware of his accident; of the children, of Clive’s father, +and ended with a hearty “God bless you,” to Clive, from his sincere +Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +“You boast of its being over. You see it is not over,” says +Clive’s monitor and companion. “Else, why should you have dashed at +that letter before all the others, Clive?” J. J. had been watching, not +without interest, Clive’s blank face as he read the young lady’s +note. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you know who wrote the letter?” asks Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“I can read the signature in your face,” says the other; “and +I could almost tell the contents of the note. Why have you such a tell-tale +face, Clive?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is over; but when a man has once, you know, gone through an affair +like that,” says Clive, looking very grave, “he—he’s +anxious to hear of Alice Grey, and how she’s getting on, you see, my good +friend.” And he began to shout out as of old— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Her heart it is another’s, +she—never—can—be—mine;” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +and to laugh at the end of the song. “Well, well,” says he; +“it is a very kind note, a very proper little note; the expression +elegant, J. J., the sentiment is most correct. All the little t’s most +properly crossed, and all the little i’s have dots over their little +heads. It’s a sort of a prize note, don’t you see; and one such, as +in the old spelling-book story, the good boy received a plum-cake for writing. +Perhaps you weren’t educated on the old spelling-book, J. J.? My good old +father taught me to read out of his—I say, I think it was a shame to keep +the old boy waiting whilst I have been giving an audience to this young lady. +Dear old father!” and he apostrophised the letter. “I beg your +pardon, sir; Miss Newcome requested five minutes’ conversation, and I was +obliged, from politeness, you know, to receive. There’s nothing between +us; nothing but what’s most correct, upon my honour and +conscience.” And he kissed his father’s letter, and calling out +again, “Dear old father!” proceeded to read as follows:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“‘Your letters, my dearest Clive, have been the greatest comfort to +me. I seem to hear you as I read them. I can’t but think that this, the +<i>modern and natural style</i>, is a great progress upon the +<i>old-fashioned</i> manner of my day, when we used to begin to our fathers, +‘Honoured Father,’ or even ‘Honoured Sir’ some +<i>precisians</i> used to write still from Mr. Lord’s Academy, at +Tooting, where I went before Grey Friars—though I suspect parents were no +more <i>honoured</i> in those days than nowadays. I know one who had rather be +trusted than honoured; and you may call me what you please, so as you do that. +</p> + +<p> +“‘It is not only to me your letters give pleasure. Last week I took +yours from Baden Baden, No. 3, September 15, into Calcutta, and could not help +showing it at Government House, where I dined. Your sketch of the old Russian +Princess and her little boy, gambling, was <i>capital</i>. Colonel Buckmaster, +Lord Bagwig’s private secretary, knew her, and says it is to a <i>T</i>. +And I read out to some of my young fellows what you said about play, and how +you had given it over. I very much fear some of the young rogues are at dice +and brandy-pawnee before tiffin. What you say of young Ridley, I take <i>cum +grano</i>. His sketches I thought very agreeable; but to compare them to <i>a +certain gentleman’s</i>——Never mind, I shall not try to make +him think too well of himself. I kissed dear Ethel’s hand in your letter. +I write her a long letter by this mail. +</p> + +<p> +“‘If Paul de Florac in any way resembles his mother, between you +and him there ought to be a very warm regard. I knew her when I was a boy, long +before you were born or thought of; and in wandering forty years through the +world since, I have seen no woman in my eyes so good or so beautiful. Your +cousin Ethel reminded me of her; as handsome, but not so <i>lovely</i>. Yes, it +was that pale lady you saw at Paris, with eyes full of care, and hair streaked +with grey. So it will be the turn of you young folks, come eight more +<i>lustres</i>, and your heads will be bald like mine, or grey like Madame de +Florac’s, and bending over the ground where we are lying in quiet. I +understand from you that young Paul is not in very flourishing circumstances. +If he still is in need, mind and be his banker, and <i>I will be yours</i>. Any +child of hers must never want when I have a spare guinea. I do not mind telling +you, sir, that I cared for her more than millions of guineas once; and half +broke my heart about her when I went to India, as a young chap. So, if any such +misfortunes happen to <i>you</i>, consider, my boy, you are not the <i>only</i> +one. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Binnie writes me word that he has been ailing. I hope you are a +good correspondent with him. What made me turn to him just after speaking of +unlucky love affairs? Could I be thinking about little Rosie Mackenzie? She is +a sweet little lass, and James will leave her a pretty piece of money. +<i>Verbum sap</i>. I should like you to marry; but God forbid you should marry +for a million of gold mohurs. +</p> + +<p> +“‘And gold mohurs bring me to another subject. Do you know I +narrowly missed losing half a lakh of rupees which I had at an agent’s +here? And who do you think warned me about him? Our friend Rummun Loll, who has +lately been in England, and with whom I made the voyage from Southampton. He is +a man of wonderful tact and observation. I used to think meanly of the honesty +of natives and treat them haughtily, as I recollect doing this very gentleman +at your Uncle Newcome’s in Bryanstone Square. He heaped coals of fire on +my head by saving my money for me; and I have placed it with interest in his +house. If I would but listen to him, my capital might be trebled in a year, he +says, and the interest immensely increased. He enjoys the greatest esteem among +the moneyed men here; keeps a splendid establishment and house here in +Barrackpore; is princely in his benefactions. He talks to me about the +establishment of a bank, of which the profits are so enormous and the scheme so +(seemingly) clear, that I don’t know whether I mayn’t be tempted to +take a few shares. <i>Nous verrons</i>. Several of my friends are longing to +have a finger in it; but be sure this, I shall do nothing rashly and without +the very <i>best advice</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I have not been frightened yet by your draughts upon me. Draw as +many of these as you please. You know I don’t half like the other kind of +drawing, except as a <i>délassement:</i> but if you chose to be a weaver, like +my grandfather, I should not say you nay. Don’t stint yourself of money +or of honest pleasure. Of what good is money, unless we can make those we love +happy with it? There would be no need for me to save, if you were to save too. +So, and as you know as well as I what our means are, in every honest way use +them. I should like you not to pass the whole of next year in Italy, but to +come home and pay a visit to honest James Binnie. I wonder how the old barrack +in Fitzroy Square looks without me? Try and go round by Paris on your way home, +and pay your visit, and carry your father’s fond remembrances to Madame +la Comtesse de Florac. I don’t say remember me to my brother, as I write +Brian by this mail. Adieu, mon fils! je t’embrasse!—and am always +my Clive’s affectionate father, T. N.’” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“Isn’t he a noble old trump?” That point had been settled by +the young men any time these three years. And now Mr. J. J. remarked that when +Clive had read his father’s letter once, then he read Ethel’s over +again, and put it in his breast-pocket, and was very disturbed in mind that +day, pishing and pshawing at the statue-gallery which they went to see at the +Museo. +</p> + +<p> +“After all,” says Clive, “what rubbish these second-rate +statues are! what a great hulking abortion is this brute of a Farnese Hercules! +There’s only one bit in the whole gallery that is worth a +twopenny-piece.” +</p> + +<p> +It was the beautiful fragment called Psyche. J. J. smiled as his comrade spoke +in admiration of this statue—in the slim shape, in the delicate formation +of the neck, in the haughty virginal expression, the Psyche is not unlike the +Diana of the Louvre—and the Diana of the Louvre we have said was like a +certain young lady. +</p> + +<p> +“After all,” continues Clive, looking up at the great knotted legs +of that clumsy caricatured porter which Glykon the Athenian sculptured in bad +times of art surely,—“she could not write otherwise than she +did—don’t you see? Her letter is quite kind and affectionate. You +see she says she shall always hear of me with pleasure: hopes I’ll come +back soon, and bring some good pictures with me, since pictures I will do. She +thinks small beer of painters, J. J.—well, we don’t think small +beer of ourselves, my noble friend. I—I suppose it must be over by this +time, and I may write to her as the Countess of Kew.” The custode of the +apartment had seen admiration and wonder expressed by hundreds of visitors to +his marble Giant: but he had never known Hercules occasion emotion before, as +in the case of the young stranger; who, after staring a while at the statue, +dashed his hand across his forehead with a groan, and walked away from before +the graven image of the huge Strongman, who had himself been made such a fool +by women. +</p> + +<p> +“My father wants me to go and see James and Madame de Florac,” says +Clive, as they stride down the street to the Toledo. +</p> + +<p> +J. J. puts his arm through his companion’s, which is deep the pocket of +his velvet paletot. “You must not go home till you hear it is over, +Clive,” whispers J. J. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course not, old boy,” says the other, blowing tobacco out of +his shaking head. +</p> + +<p> +Not very long after their arrival, we may be sure they went to Pompeii, of +which place, as this is not an Italian tour, but a history of Clive Newcome, +Esquire, and his most respectable family, we shall offer to give no +description. The young man had read Sir Bulwer Lytton’s delightful story, +which has become the history of Pompeii, before they came thither, and +Pliny’s description, <i>apud</i> the Guide-Book. Admiring the wonderful +ingenuity with which the English writer had illustrated the place by his text, +as if the houses were so many pictures to which he had appended a story, Clive, +the wag, who was always indulging his vein for caricature, was proposing that +that they should take the same place, names, people, and make a burlesque +story: “What would be a better figure,” says he, “than +Pliny’s mother, whom the historian describes as exceedingly corpulent, +and walking away from the catastrophe with slaves holding cushions behind her, +to shield her plump person from the cinders! Yes, old Mrs Pliny shall be my +heroine!” says Clive. A picture of her on a dark grey paper and touched +up with red at the extremities, exists in Clive’s album to the present +day. +</p> + +<p> +As they were laughing, rattling, wondering, mimicking, the cicerone attending +them with his nasal twaddle, anon pausing and silent, yielding to the +melancholy pity and wonder which the aspect of that strange and smiling place +inspires,—behold they come upon another party of English, two young men +accompanying a lady. +</p> + +<p> +“What, Clive!” cries one. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear, dear Lord Kew!” shouts the other; and as the young man +rushes up and grasps the two hands of the other, they begin to +blush—— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Lord Kew and his family resided in a neighbouring hotel on the Chiafa at +Naples; and that very evening on returning from the Pompeian excursion, the two +painters were invited to take tea by those friendly persons. J. J. excused +himself, and sate at home drawing all night. Clive went, and passed a pleasant +evening; in which all sorts of future tours and pleasure-parties were projected +by the young men. They were to visit Pæstum, Capri, Sicily; why not Malta and +the East? asked Lord Kew. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Walham was alarmed. Had not Kew been in the East already? Clive was +surprised and agitated too. Could Kew think of going to the East, and making +long journeys when he had—he had other engagements that would necessitate +his return home? No, he must not go to the East, Lord Kew’s mother +avowed; Kew had promised to stay with her during the summer at Castellammare, +and Mr. Newcome must come and paint their portraits there—all their +portraits. She would like to have an entire picture-gallery of Kews, if her son +would remain at home during the sittings. +</p> + +<p> +At an early hour Lady Walham retired to rest, exacting Clive’s promise to +come to Castellammare; and George Barnes disappeared to array himself in an +evening costume, and to pay his round of visits as became a young diplomatist. +This part of diplomatic duty does not commence until after the opera at Naples; +and society begins when the rest of the world has gone to bed. +</p> + +<p> +Kew and Clive sate till one o’clock in the morning, when the latter +returned to his hotel. Not one of those fine parties at Pæstum, Sicily, etc. +was carried out. Clive did not go to the East at all, and it was J. J, who +painted Lord Kew’s portrait that summer at Castellammare. The next day +Clive went for his passport to the embassy; and a steamer departing direct for +Marseilles on that very afternoon, behold Mr. Newcome was on board of her; Lord +Kew and his brother and J. J. waving their hats to him as the vessel left the +shore. +</p> + +<p> +Away went the ship cleaving swiftly through the azure waters; but not swiftly +enough for Clive. J. J. went back with a sigh to his sketchbook and easels. I +suppose the other young disciple of Art had heard something which caused him to +forsake his sublime mistress for one who was much more capricious and earthly. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0040"></a> +CHAPTER XL.<br> +Returns from Rome to Pall Mall</h2> + +<p> +One morning in the month of July, when there was actually sunshine in Lamb +Court, and the two gentlemen who occupied the third-floor chambers there in +partnership, were engaged, as their custom was, over their pipes, and their +manuscripts, and their <i>Times</i> newspaper, behold a fresh sunshine burst +into their room in the person of a young Clive, with a bronzed face, and a +yellow beard and mustachios, and those bright cheerful eyes, the sight of which +was always so welcome to both of us. “What, Clive! What, the young one! +What, Benjamin!” shout Pendennis and Warrington. Clive had obtained a +very high place indeed in the latter’s affections, so much so, that if I +could have found it in my heart to be jealous of such a generous brave fellow, +I might have grudged him his share of Warrington’s regard. He blushed up +with pleasure to see us again. Pidgeon, our boy, introduced him with a jubilant +countenance; and Flanagan, the laundress, came smirking out of the bedroom, +eager to get a nod of recognition from him, and bestow a smile of welcome upon +everybody’s favourite, Clive. +</p> + +<p> +In two minutes an arm-chair full of magazines, slips of copy, and books for +review, was emptied over the neighbouring coal-scuttle, and Clive was in the +seat, a cigar in his mouth, as comfortable as if he had never been away. When +did he come? Last night. He was back in Charlotte Street, at his old lodgings: +he had been to breakfast in Fitzroy Square that morning; James Binnie chirped +for joy at seeing him. His father had written to him desiring him to come back +and see James Binnie; pretty Miss Rosey was very well, thank you: and Mrs. +Mack? Wasn’t Mrs. Mackenzie delighted to behold him? “Come, sir, on +your honour and conscience, didn’t the widow give you a kiss on your +return?” Clive sends an uncut number of the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> +flying across the room at the head of the inquirer; but blushes as sweetly, +that I have very little doubt some such pretty meeting had taken place. +</p> + +<p> +What a pity it is he had not been here a short while since for a marriage in +high life, to give away his dear Barnes, and sign the book, along with the +other dignitaries! We described that ceremony to him, and announced the +promotion of his friend, Florac, now our friend also, Director of the Great +Anglo-Gallic Railway, the Prince de Moncontour. Then Clive told us of his deeds +during the winter; of the good fun he had had at Rome, and the jolly fellows he +had met there. Was he going to astonish the world by some grand pictures? He +was not. The more he worked, the more discontented he was with his performances +somehow: but J. J. was coming out very strong, J. J. was going to be a stunner. +We turned with pride and satisfaction to that very number of the <i>Pall Mall +Gazette</i> which the youth had flung at us, and showed him a fine article by +F. Bayham, Esq., in which the picture sent home by J. J. was enthusiastically +lauded by the great critic. +</p> + +<p> +So he was back amongst us, and it seemed but yesterday he had quitted us. To +Londoners everything seems to have happened but yesterday; nobody has time to +miss his neighbour who goes away. People go to the Cape, or on a campaign, or +on a tour round the world, or to India, and return with a wife and two or three +children, and we fancy it was only the other day they left us, so engaged is +every man in his individual speculations, studies, struggles; so selfish does +our life make us:—selfish but not ill-natured. We are glad to see an old +friend, though we do not weep when he leaves us. We humbly acknowledge, if fate +calls us away likewise, that we are no more missed than any other atom. +</p> + +<p> +After talking for a while, Mr. Clive must needs go into the City, whither I +accompanied him. His interview with Messrs. Jolly and Baines, at the house in +Fog Court, must have been very satisfactory; Clive came out of the parlour with +a radiant countenance. “Do you want any money, old boy?” says he; +“the dear old governor has placed a jolly sum to my account, and Mr. +Baines has told me how delighted Mrs. Baines and the girls will be to see me at +dinner. He says my father has made a lucky escape out of one house in India, +and a famous investment in another. Nothing could be more civil; how uncommonly +kind and friendly everybody is in London! Everybody!” Then bestowing +ourselves in a hansom cab, which had probably just deposited some other +capitalist in the City, we made for the West End of the town, where Mr. Clive +had some important business to transact with his tailors. He discharged his +outstanding little account with easy liberality, blushing as he pulled out of +his pocket a new chequebook, page 1 of which he bestowed on the delighted +artist. From Mr. B.’s shop to Mr. Truefitt’s, is but a step. Our +young friend was induced to enter the hairdresser’s, and leave behind him +a great portion of the flowing locks and the yellow beard, which he had brought +with him from Rome. With his mustachios he could not be induced to part; +painters and cavalry officers having a right to those decorations. And why +should not this young fellow wear smart clothes, and a smart moustache, and +look handsome, and take his pleasure, and bask in his sun when it shone? Time +enough for flannel and a fire when the winter comes; and for grey hair and +cork-soled boots in the natural decline of years. +</p> + +<p> +Then we went to pay a visit at a hotel in Jermyn Street to our friend Florac +who was now magnificently lodged there. A powdered giant lolling in the hall, +his buttons emblazoned with prodigious coronets, took our cards up to the +Prince. As the door of an apartment on the first floor opened, we heard a cry +as of joy; and that nobleman in a magnificent Persian dressing-gown, rushing +from the room, plunged down the stairs, and began kissing Clive, to the +respectful astonishment of the Titan in livery. +</p> + +<p> +“Come that I present you, my friends,” our good little Frenchman +exclaimed “to Madame la—to my wife!” We entered the +drawing-room; a demure little little lady, of near sixty years of age, was +seated there, and we were presented in form to Madame Princesse de Moncontour, +nee Higg, of Manchester. She made us a stiff little curtsey, but looked not +ill-natured; indeed, few women could look at Clive Newcome’s gallant +figure and brave smiling countenance and keep a frown on their own very long. +</p> + +<p> +“I have ’eard of you from somebodys else besides the Prince,” +said the lady, with rather a blush “Your uncle has spoke to me hoften +about you, Mr. Clive, and about your good father.” +</p> + +<p> +“C’est son Directeur,” whispers Florac to me. I wondered +which of the firm of Newcome had taken that office upon him. +</p> + +<p> +“Now you are come to England,” the lady continued (whose Lancashire +pronunciation being once indicated, we shall henceforth, out of respect to the +Princess’s rank generally pretermit),—“now you are come to +England we hope to see you often. Not here in this noisy hotel, which I +can’t bear, but in the country. Our house is only three miles from +Newcome—not such a grand place as your uncle’s; but I hope we shall +see you there a great deal, and your friend Mr Pendennis, if he is passing that +way.” The invitation to Mr. Pendennis, I am bound to say, was given in +terms by no means so warm as those in which the Princess’s hospitality to +Clive were professed. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall we meet you at your Huncle ’Obson’s?” the lady +continued to Clive; “his wife is a most charming, well-informed woman, +has been most kind and civil and we dine there to-day. Barnes and his wife is +gone to spend the honeymoon at Newcome. Lady Clara is a sweet dear thing, and +her pa and ma most affable, I am sure. What a pity Sir Brian couldn’t +attend the marriage! There was everybody there in London, a’most. Sir +Harvey Diggs says he is mending very slowly. In life we are in death, Mr. +Newcome! Isn’t it sad to think of him, in the midst of all his splendour +and prosperity, and he so infirm and unable to enjoy them! But let us hope for +the best, and that his health will soon come round!” +</p> + +<p> +With these and similar remarks, in which poor Florac took but a very small +share (for he seemed dumb and melancholy in the company of the Princess, his +elderly spouse), the visit sped on. Mr. Pendennis, to whom very little was +said, having leisure to make his silent observations upon the person to whom he +had been just presented. +</p> + +<p> +As there lay on the table two neat little packages, addressed “The +Princess de Moncontour”—an envelope to the same address, with +“The Prescription, No. 9396,” further inscribed on the paper, and a +sheet of notepaper, bearing cabalistic characters, and the signature of that +most fashionable physician, Sir Harvey Diggs, I was led to believe that the +lady of Moncontour was, or fancied herself, in a delicate state of health. By +the side of the physic for the body was medicine for the soul—a number of +pretty little books in middle-age bindings, in antique type many of theist, +adorned with pictures of the German school, representing demure ecclesiastics, +with their heads on one side, children in long starched nightgowns, virgins +bearing lilies, and so forth, from which it was to be concluded that the owner +of the volumes was not so hostile to Rome as she had been at an earlier period +of her religious life; and that she had migrated (in spirit) from Clapham to +Knightsbridge—so many wealthy mercantile families have likewise done in +the body. A long strip of embroidery, of the Gothic pattern, furthermore +betrayed her present inclinations; and the person observing these things, +whilst nobody was taking any notice of him, was amused when the accuracy of his +conjectures was confirmed by the reappearance of the gigantic footman, calling +out “’Oneyman,” in a loud voice, and preceding that divine +into the room. +</p> + +<p> +“C’est le Directeur. Venez fumer dans ma chambre, Pen,” +growled Florac as Honeyman came sliding over the carpet, his elegant smile +changing to a blush when he beheld Clive, his nephew, seated by the +Princess’s side. This, then, was the uncle who had spoken about Clive and +his father to Madame de Florac. Charles seemed in the best condition. He held +out two bran-new lavender-coloured kid gloves to shake hands with his dear +Clive; Florac and Mr. Pendennis vanished out of the room as he appeared, so +that no precise account can be given of this affecting interview. +</p> + +<p> +When I quitted the hotel, a brown brougham, with a pair of beautiful horses, +the harness and panels emblazoned with the neatest little ducal coronets you +ever saw, and a cypher under each crown as easy to read as the arrow-headed +inscriptions on one of Mr. Layard’s Assyrian chariots, was in waiting, +and I presumed that Madame la Princesse was about to take an airing. +</p> + +<p> +Clive had passed the avuncular banking-house in the City, without caring to +face his relatives there. Mr. Newcome was now in sole command, Mr. Barnes being +absent at Newcome, the Baronet little likely ever to enter bank-parlour again. +But his bounden duty was to wait on the ladies; and of course, only from +duty’s sake, he went the very first day and called in Park Lane. +</p> + +<p> +“The family was habsent ever since the marriage simminery last +week,” the footman, who had accompanied the party to Baden, informed +Clive when he opened the door, and recognised that gentleman. “Sir Brian +pretty well, thank you, sir. The family was at Brighting. That is Miss Newcome +is in London staying with her grandmamma in Queen Street, Mayfear, sir.” +The varnished doors closed upon Jeames within; the brazen knockers grinned +their familiar grin at Clive, and he went down the blank steps discomfited. +Must it be owned that he went to a Club, and looked in the Directory for the +number of Lady Kew’s house in Queen Street? Her ladyship had a furnished +house for the season. No such noble name to be found among the inhabitants of +Queen Street. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Hobson was from home; that is, Thomas had orders not to admit strangers on +certain days, or before certain hours; so that Aunt Hobson saw Clive without +being seen by the young man. I cannot say how much he regretted that mischance. +His visits of propriety were thus all paid; and he went off to dine dutifully +with James Binnie, after which meal he came to a certain rendezvous given to +him by some bachelors friends for the evening. +</p> + +<p> +James Binnie’s eyes lightened up with pleasure on beholding his young +Clive; the youth, obedient to his father’s injunction, had hastened to +Fitzroy Square immediately after taking possession of his old +lodgings—his, during the time of his absence. The old properties and +carved cabinets, the picture of his father looking melancholy out of the +canvas, greeted Clive strangely on the afternoon of his arrival. No wonder he +was glad to get away from a solitude peopled with a number of dismal +recollections, to the near hospitality of Fitzroy Square and his guardian and +friend there. +</p> + +<p> +James had not improved in health during Clive’s ten months’ +absence. He had never been able to walk well, or take his accustomed exercise, +after his fall. He was no more used to riding than the late Mr. Gibbon, whose +person James’s somewhat resembled, and of whose philosophy our Scottish +friend was an admiring scholar. The Colonel gone, James would have arguments +with Mr. Honeyman over their claret, bring down the famous XVth and XVIth +chapters of the Decline and Fall upon him, and quite get the better of the +clergyman. James, like many other sceptics, was very obstinate, and for his +part believed that almost all parsons had as much belief as the Roman augurs in +their ceremonies. Certainly, poor Honeyman, in their controversies, gave up one +article after another, flying from James’s assault; but the battle over, +Charles Honeyman would pick up these accoutrements which he had flung away in +his retreat, wipe them dry, and put them on again. +</p> + +<p> +Lamed by his fall, and obliged to remain much within doors, where certain +society did not always amuse him, James Binnie sought excitement in the +pleasures of the table, partaking of them the more freely now that his health +could afford them the less. Clive, the sly rogue, observed a great improvement +in the commissariat since his good father’s time, ate his dinner with +thankfulness, and made no remarks. Nor did he confide to us for a while his +opinion that Mrs. Mack bored the good gentleman most severely; that he pined +away under her kindnesses; sneaked off to his study-chair and his nap; was only +too glad when some of the widow’s friends came, or she went out; seeming +to breathe more freely when she was gone, and drink his wine more cheerily when +rid of the intolerable weight of her presence. +</p> + +<p> +I protest the great ills of life are nothing—the loss of your fortune is +a mere flea-bite; the loss of your wife—how many men have supported it +and married comfortably afterwards? It is not what you lose, but what you have +daily to bear that is hard. I can fancy nothing more cruel, after a long easy +life of bachelorhood, than to have to sit day after day with a dull, handsome +woman opposite; to have to answer her speeches about the weather, housekeeping +and what not; to smile appropriately when she is disposed to be lively (that +laughing at the jokes is the hardest part), and to model your conversation so +as to suit her intelligence, knowing that a word used out of its downright +signification will not be understood by your fair breakfast-maker. Women go +through this simpering and smiling life, and bear it quite easily. Theirs is a +life of hypocrisy. What good woman does not laugh at her husband’s or +father’s jokes and stories time after time, and would not laugh at +breakfast, lunch, and dinner, if he told them? Flattery is their +nature—to coax, flatter and sweetly befool some one is every +woman’s business. She is none if she declines this office. But men are +not provided with such powers of humbug or endurance—they perish and pine +away miserably when bored—or they shrink off to the club or public-house +for comfort. I want to say as delicately as I can, and never liking to use +rough terms regarding a handsome woman, that Mrs. Mackenzie, herself being in +the highest spirits and the best humour, extinguished her half-brother, James +Binnie, Esq.; that she was as a malaria to him, poisoning his atmosphere, +numbing his limbs, destroying his sleep—that day after day as he sate +down at breakfast, and she levelled commonplaces at her dearest James, her +dearest James became more wretched under her. And no one could see what his +complaint was. He called in the old physicians at the Club. He dosed himself +with poppy, and mandragora and blue pill—lower and lower went poor +James’s mercury. If he wanted to move to Brighton or Cheltenham, well and +good. Whatever were her engagements, or whatever pleasures darling Rosey might +have in store, dear thing!—at her age, my dear Mrs. Newcome, would not +one do all to make a young creature happy?—under no circumstances could I +<i>think</i> of leaving my poor brother. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Mackenzie thought herself a most highly principled woman, Mrs. Newcome had +also a great opinion of her. These two ladies had formed a considerable +friendship in the past months, the captain’s widow having an unaffected +reverence for the banker’s lady and thinking her one of the best informed +and most superior women in the world. When she had a high opinion of a person +Mrs. Mack always wisely told it. Mrs. Newcome in her turn thought Mrs. +Mackenzie a very clever, agreeable, ladylike woman,—not accomplished, but +one could not have everything. “No, no, my dear,” says simple +Hobson, “never would do to have every woman as clever as you are, Maria. +Women would have it all their own way then.” +</p> + +<p> +Maria, as her custom was, thanked God for being so virtuous and clever, and +graciously admitted Mrs. and Miss Mackenzie into the circle of adorers of that +supreme virtue and talent. Mr. Newcome took little Rosey and her mother to some +parties. When any took place in Bryanstone Square, they were generally allowed +to come to tea. +</p> + +<p> +When on the second day of his arrival the dutiful Clive went to dine with Mr. +James, the ladies, in spite of their raptures at his return and delight at +seeing him, were going in the evening to his aunt. Their talk was about the +Princess all dinner-time. The Prince and Princess were to dine in Bryanstone +Square. The Princess had ordered such and such things at the +jeweller’s—the Princess would take rank over an English +Earl’s daughter—over Lady Anne Newcome, for instance. “Oh, +dear! I wish the Prince and Princess were smothered in the Tower,” +growled James Binnie; “since you have got acquainted with ’em I +have never heard of anything else.” +</p> + +<p> +Clive, like a wise man, kept his counsel about the Prince and Princess, with +whom we have seen that he had had the honour of an interview that very day. But +after dinner Rosey came round and whispered to her mamma, and after +Rosey’s whisper mamma flung her arms round Rosey’s neck and kissed +her, and called her a thoughtful darling. “What do you think this +creature says, Clive?” says Mrs. Mack, still holding her darling’s +little hand. “I wonder I had not thought of it myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, Mrs. Mackenzie?” asks Clive, laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“She says why should not you come to your aunt’s with us? We are +sure Mrs. Newcome would be most happy to see you.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosey, with a little hand put to mamma’s mouth, said, “Why did you +tell?—you naughty mamma! Isn’t she a naughty mamma, Uncle +James?” More kisses follow after this sally, of which Uncle James +receives one with perfect complacency: mamma crying out as Rosey retires to +dress, “That darling child is always thinking of +others—always!” +</p> + +<p> +Clive says, “he will sit and smoke a cheroot with Mr. Binnie, if they +please.” James’s countenance falls. “We have left off +<i>that</i> sort of thing here, my dear Clive, a long time,” cries Mrs. +Mackenzie, departing from the dining-room. +</p> + +<p> +“But we have improved the claret, Clive, my boy!” whispers Uncle +James. “Let us have another bottle, and we will drink to the dear +Colonel’s good health and speedy return—God bless him! I say, +Clive, Tom seems to have had a most fortunate escape out of Winter’s +house—thanks to our friend Rummun Loll, and to have got into a capital +good thing with this Bundelcund bank. They speak famously of it at Hanover +Square, and I see the <i>Hurkara</i> quotes the shares at a premium +already.” +</p> + +<p> +Clive did not know anything about the Bundelcund bank, except a few words found +in a letter from his father, which he had in the City this morning, “and +an uncommonly liberal remittance the governor has sent me home, sir.” +Upon which they fill another bumper to the Colonel’s health. +</p> + +<p> +Mamma and Rosey come and show their pretty pink dresses before going to Mrs. +Newcome’s, and Clive lights a cigar in the hall—and isn’t +there a jubilation at the Haunt when the young fellow’s face appears +above the smoke-clouds there? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0041"></a> +CHAPTER XLI.<br> +An Old Story</h2> + +<p> +Many of Clive’s Roman friends were by this time come to London, and the +young man renewed his acquaintance with them, and had speedily a considerable +circle of his own. He thought fit to allow himself a good horse or two, and +appeared in the Park among other young dandies. He and Monsieur de Moncontour +were sworn allies. Lord Fareham, who had purchased J. J.’s picture, was +Clive’s very good friend: Major Pendennis himself pronounced him to be a +young fellow of agreeable manners, and very favourably vu (as the Major +happened to know) in some very good quarters. +</p> + +<p> +Ere many days Clive had been to Brighton to see Lady Anne and Sir Brian, and +good Aunt Honeyman, in whose house the Baronet was lodged: and I suppose he +found out, by some means or other, where Lady Kew lived in Mayfair. +</p> + +<p> +But her ladyship was not at home, nor was she at home on the second day, nor +did there come any note from Ethel to her cousin. She did not ride in the Park +as of old. Clive, <i>bien vu</i> as he was, did not belong to that great world +as yet, in which he would be pretty sure to meet her every night at one of +those parties where everybody goes. He read her name in the paper morning after +morning, as having been present at Lady This’s entertainment and Lady +That’s ministerial <i>réunion</i>. At first he was too shy to tell what +the state of the case was, and took nobody into his confidence regarding his +little <i>tendre</i>. +</p> + +<p> +There he was riding through Queen Street, Mayfair, attired in splendid raiment: +never missing the Park; actually going to places of worship in the +neighbourhood; and frequenting the opera—a waste of time which one would +never have expected in a youth of his nurture. At length a certain observer of +human nature remarking his state, rightly conjectured that he must be in love, +and taxed him with the soft impeachment—on which the young man, no doubt +anxious to open his heart to some one, poured out all that story which has +before been narrated; and told how he thought his passion cured, and how it was +cured; but when he heard from Kew at Naples that the engagement was over +between him and Miss Newcome, Clive found his own flame kindle again with new +ardour. He was wild to see her. He dashed off from Naples instantly on +receiving the news that she was free. He had been ten days in London without +getting a glimpse of her. “That Mrs. Mackenzie bothers me so I hardly +know where to turn,” said poor Clive, “and poor little Rosey is +made to write me a note about something twice a day. She’s a good dear +little thing—little Rosey—and I really had thought once +of—of—oh, never mind that! Oh, Pen! I’m up another tree now! +and a poor miserable young beggar I am!” In fact, Mr. Pendennis was +installed as confidant, <i>vice</i> J. J.—absent on leave. +</p> + +<p> +This is a part, which, especially for a few days, the present biographer has +always liked well enough. For a while, at least, I think almost every man or +woman is interesting when in love. If you know of two or three such affairs +going on in any soirée to which you may be invited—is not the party +straightway amusing? Yonder goes Augustus Tomkins, working his way through the +rooms to that far corner where demure Miss Hopkins is seated, to whom the +stupid grinning Bumpkins thinks he is making himself agreeable. Yonder sits +Miss Fanny <i>distraite</i>, and yet trying to smile as the captain is talking +his folly, the parson his glib compliments. And see, her face lights up all of a +sudden: her eyes beam with delight at the captain’s stories, and at that +delightful young clergyman likewise. It is because Augustus has appeared; their +eyes only meet for one semi-second, but that is enough for Miss Fanny. Go on, +captain, with your twaddle!—Proceed, my reverend friend, with your +smirking commonplaces! In the last two minutes the world has changed for Miss +Fanny. That moment has come for which she has been fidgeting and longing and +scheming all day! How different an interest, I say, has a meeting of people for +a philosopher who knows of a few such little secrets, to that which your vulgar +looker-on feels who comes but to eat the ices, and stare at the ladies’ +dresses and beauty! There are two frames of mind under which London society is +bearable to a man—to be an actor in one of those sentimental performances +above hinted at; or to be a spectator and watch it. But as for the mere +<i>dessus de cartes</i>—would not an arm-chair and the dullest of books +be better than that dull game? +</p> + +<p> +So I not only became Clive’s confidant in this affair, but took a +pleasure in extracting the young fellow’s secrets from him, or rather in +encouraging him to pour them forth. Thus was the great part of the previous +tale revealed to me: thus Jack Belsize’s misadventures, of the first part +of which we had only heard in London (and whither he returned presently to be +reconciled to his father, after his elder brother’s death). Thus my Lord +Kew’s secret history came into my possession; let us hope for the +public’s future delectation, and the chronicler’s private +advantage. And many a night until daylight did appear has poor Clive stamped +his chamber or my own, pouring his story out to me, his griefs and raptures; +recalling, in his wild young way, recollections of Ethel’s sayings and +doings; uttering descriptions of her beauty, and raging against the cruelty +which she exhibited towards him. +</p> + +<p> +As soon as the new confidant heard the name of the young lover’s charmer, +to do Mr. Pendennis justice, he endeavoured to fling as much cold water upon +Clive’s flame as a small private engine could be brought to pour on such +a conflagration. “Miss Newcome! my dear Clive,” says the confidant, +“do you know what you are aspiring to? For the last three months Miss +Newcome has been the greatest lioness in London: the reigning beauty winning +the horse: the first favourite out of the whole Belgravian harem. No young +woman of this year has come near her: those of past seasons she has distanced +and utterly put to shame. Miss Blackcap, Lady Blanch Blackcap’s daughter, +was (as perhaps you are not aware) considered by her mamma the great beauty of +last season; and it was considered rather shabby of the young Marquis of +Farintosh to leave town without offering to change Miss Blackcap’s name. +Heaven bless you! this year Farintosh will not look at Miss Blackcap! <i>He</i> +finds people at home when (ha! I see you wince, my suffering +innocent!)—when he calls in Queen Street; yes, and Lady Kew, who is one +of the cleverest women in England, will listen for hours to Lord +Farintosh’s conversation; than whom the Rotten Row of Hyde Park cannot +show a greater booby. Miss Blackcap may retire, like Jephthah’s daughter, +for all Farintosh will relieve her. Then, my dear fellow, there were, as +possibly you do not know, Lady Hermengilde and Lady Yseult, Lady +Rackstraw’s lovely twins, whose appearance created such a sensation at +Lady Hautbois’ first—was it her first or was it her +second?—yes, it was her second—breakfast. Whom weren’t they +going to marry? Crackthorpe was mad, they said, about both.—Bustington, +Sir John Fobsby, the young Baronet with the immense Northern property—the +Bishop of Windsor was actually said to be smitten with one of them, but did not +like to offer, as her present M—y, like Qu—n El-z-b-th of gracious +memory, is said to object to bishops, as bishops, marrying. Where is +Bustington? Where is Crackthorpe? Where is Fobsby, the young Baronet of the +North? My dear fellow, when those two girls come into a room now, they make no +more sensation than you or I. Miss Newcome has carried their admirers away from +them: Fobsby has actually, it is said, proposed for her: and the real reason of +that affair between Lord Bustington and Captain Crackthorpe of the Royal Horse +Guards Green, was a speech of Bustington’s, hinting that Miss Newcome had +not behaved well in throwing Lord Kew over. Don’t you know what old Lady +Kew will do with this girl, Clive? She will marry Miss Newcome to the best man. +If a richer and better <i>parti</i> than Lord Farintosh presents +himself—then it will be Farintosh’s turn to find that Lady Kew is +not at home. Is there any young man in the Peerage unmarried and richer than +Farintosh? I forget. Why does not some one publish a list of the young male +nobility and baronetage, their names, weights, and probable fortunes? I +don’t mean for the matrons of Mayfair—they have the list by heart +and study it in secret—but for young men in the world; so that they may +know what their chances are, and who naturally has the pull over them. Let me +see—there is young Lord Gaunt, who will have a great fortune, and is +desirable because you know his father is locked up—but he is only ten +years old—no—they can scarcely bring him forward as +Farintosh’s rival. +</p> + +<p> +“You look astonished, my poor boy? You think it is wicked in me to talk +in this brutal way about bargain and sale; and say that your heart’s +darling is, at this minute, being paced up and down the Mayfair market to be +taken away by the best bidder. Can you count purses with Sultan Farintosh? Can +you compete even with Sir John Fobsby of the North? What I say is wicked and +worldly, is it? So it is; but it is true, as true as +Tattersall’s—as true as Circassia or Virginia. Don’t you know +that the Circassian girls are proud of their bringing up, and take rank +according to the prices which they fetch? And you go and buy yourself some new +clothes, and a fifty-pound horse, and put a penny rose in your button-hole, and +ride past her window, and think to win this prize? Oh, you idiot! A penny +rosebud! Put money in your purse. A fifty-pound hack when a butcher rides as +good a one!—Put money in your purse. A brave young heart, all courage and +love and honour! Put money in thy purse—t’other coin don’t +pass in the market—at least, where old Lady Kew has the stall.” +</p> + +<p> +By these remonstrances, playful though serious, Clive’s adviser sought to +teach him wisdom about his love affair; and the advice was received as advice +upon those occasions usually is. +</p> + +<p> +After calling thrice and writing to Miss Newcome, there came a little note from +that young lady, saying, “Dear Clive,—We were so sorry we were out +when you called. We shall be at home to-morrow at lunch, when Lady Kew hopes +you will come, and see yours ever, E. N.” +</p> + +<p> +Clive went—poor Clive! He had the satisfaction of shaking Ethel’s +hand and a finger of Lady Kew; of eating a mutton-chop in Ethel’s +presence; of conversing about the state of art at Rome with Lady Kew, and +describing the last works of Gibson and Macdonald. The visit lasted but for +half an hour. Not for one minute was Clive allowed to see Ethel alone. At three +o’clock Lady Kew’s carriage was announced, and our young gentleman +rose to take his leave, and had the pleasure of seeing the most noble Peer, +Marquis of Farintosh and Earl of Rossmont, descend from his lordship’s +brougham and enter at Lady Kew’s door, followed by a domestic bearing a +small stack of flowers from Covent Garden. +</p> + +<p> +It befell that the good-natured Lady Fareham had a ball in these days; and +meeting Clive in the Park, her lord invited him to the entertainment. Mr. +Pendennis had also the honour of a card. Accordingly Clive took me up at +Bays’s, and we proceeded to the ball together. +</p> + +<p> +The lady of the house, smiling upon all her guests, welcomed with particular +kindness her young friend from Rome. “Are you related to <i>the</i> Miss +Newcome, Lady Anne Newcome’s daughter? Her cousin? She will be here +to-night.” Very likely Lady Fareham did not see Clive wince and blush at +this announcement, her ladyship having to occupy herself with a thousand other +people. Clive found a dozen of his Roman friends in the room, ladies young and +middle-aged, plain and handsome, all glad to see his kind face. The house was +splendid; the ladies magnificently dressed; the ball beautiful, though it +appeared a little dull until that event took place whereof we treated two pages +back (in the allegory of Mr. Tomkins and Miss Hopkins), and Lady Kew and her +granddaughter made their appearance. +</p> + +<p> +That old woman, who began to look more and more like the wicked fairy of the +stories, who is not invited to the Princess’s Christening Feast, had this +advantage over her likeness, that she was invited everywhere; though how she, +at her age, could fly about to so many parties, unless she was a fairy, no one +could say. Behind the fairy, up the marble stairs, came the most noble +Farintosh, with that vacuous leer which distinguishes his lordship. Ethel +seemed to be carrying the stack of flowers which the Marquis had sent to her. +The noble Bustington (Viscount Bustington, I need scarcely tell the reader, is +the heir of the house of Podbury), the Baronet of the North, the gallant +Crackthorpe, the first men in town, in a word, gathered round the young beauty, +forming her court; and little Dick Hitchin, who goes everywhere, you may be +sure was near her with a compliment and a smile. Ere this arrival, the twins +had been giving themselves great airs in the room—the poor twins! when +Ethel appeared they sank into shuddering insignificance, and had to put up with +the conversation and attentions of second-rate men, belonging to second-rate +clubs in heavy dragoon regiments. One of them actually walked with a dancing +barrister; but he was related to a duke, and it was expected the Lord +Chancellor would give him something very good. +</p> + +<p> +Before he saw Ethel, Clive vowed he was aware of her. Indeed, had not Lady +Fareham told him Miss Newcome was coming? Ethel, on the contrary, not expecting +him, or not having the prescience of love, exhibited signs of surprise when she +beheld him, her eyebrows arching, her eyes darting looks of pleasure. When +grandmamma happened to be in another room, she beckoned Clive to her, +dismissing Crackthorpe and Fobsby, Farintosh and Bustington, the amorous youth +who around her bowed, and summoning Mr. Clive to an audience with the air of a +young princess. +</p> + +<p> +And so she was a princess; and this the region of her special dominion. The +wittiest and handsomest, she deserved to reign in such a place, by right of +merit and by general election. Clive felt her superiority, and his own +shortcomings: he came up to her as to a superior person. Perhaps she was not +sorry to let him see how she ordered away grandees and splendid Bustingtons, +informing them, with a superb manner, that she wished to speak to her +cousin—that handsome young man with the light moustache yonder. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know many people? This is your first appearance in society? Shall +I introduce you to some nice girls to dance with?” What very pretty +buttons!” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that what you wanted to say?” asked Clive, rather bewildered. +</p> + +<p> +“What does one say at a ball? One talks conversation suited to the place. +If I were to say to Captain Crackthorpe, ‘What pretty buttons!’ he +would be delighted. But you—you have a soul above buttons, I +suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +“Being, as you say, a stranger in this sort of society, you see I am not +accustomed to—to the exceeding brilliancy of its conversation,” +said Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“What! you want to go away, and we haven’t seen each other for near +a year!” cries Ethel, in quite a natural voice. “Sir John Fobsby, +I’m very sorry—but do let me off this dance. I have just met my +cousin, whom I have not seen for a whole year, and I want to talk to +him.” +</p> + +<p> +“It was not my fault that you did not see me sooner. I wrote to you that +I only got your letter a month ago. You never answered the second I wrote you +from Rome. Your letter lay there at the post ever so long, and was forwarded to +me at Naples.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Where?</i>” asked Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +“I saw Lord Kew there.” Ethel was smiling with all her might, and +kissing her hand to the twins, who passed at that moment with their mamma. +“Oh, indeed, you saw—how do you do?—Lord Kew.” +</p> + +<p> +“And, having seen him, I came over to England,” said Clive. +</p> + +<p> +Ethel looked at him, gravely. “What am I to understand by that, +Clive?—You came over because it was very hot at Naples, and because you +wanted to see your friends here, n’est-ce pas? How glad mamma was to see +you! You know she loves you as if you were her own son.” +</p> + +<p> +“What, as much as that angel, Barnes!” cries Clive, bitterly; +“impossible.” +</p> + +<p> +Ethel looked once more. Her present mood and desire was to treat Clive as a +chit, as a young fellow without consequence—a thirteenth younger brother. +But in his looks and behaviour there was that which seemed to say not too many +liberties were to be taken with him. +</p> + +<p> +“Why weren’t you here a month sooner, and you might have seen the +marriage? It was a very pretty thing. Everybody was there. Clara, and so did +Barnes really, looked quite handsome.” +</p> + +<p> +“It must have been beautiful,” continued Clive; “quite a +touching sight, I am sure. Poor Charles Belsize could not be present because +his brother was dead; and——” +</p> + +<p> +“And what else, pray, Mr. Newcome!” cries Miss, in great wrath, her +pink nostrils beginning to quiver. “I did not think, really, that when we +met after so many months, I was to be insulted; yes, insulted, by the mention +of that name.” +</p> + +<p> +“I most humbly ask pardon,” said Clive, with a grave bow. +“Heaven forbid that I should wound your sensibility, Ethel! It is, as you +say, my first appearance in society. I talk about things or persons that I +should not mention. I should talk about buttons, should I? which you were good +enough to tell me was the proper subject of conversation. Mayn’t I even +speak of connexions of the family? Mr. Belsize, through this marriage, has the +honour of being connected with you; and even I, in a remote degree, may boast +of a sort of an ever—so—distant cousinship with him. What an honour +for me!” +</p> + +<p> +“Pray, what is the meaning of all this?” cries Miss Ethel, +surprised, and perhaps alarmed. Indeed, Clive scarcely knew. He had been +chafing all the while he talked with her; smothering anger as he saw the young +men round about her; revolting against himself for the very humility of his +obedience, and angry at the eagerness and delight with which he had come at her +call. +</p> + +<p> +“The meaning is, Ethel”—he broke out, seizing the +opportunity—“that when a man comes a thousand miles to see you, and +shake your hand, you should give it him a little more cordially than you choose +to do to me; that when a kinsman knocks at your door, time after time, you +should try and admit him; and that when you meet him you should treat him like +an old friend: not as you treated me when my Lady Kew vouchsafed to give me +admittance; not as you treat these fools that are fribbling round about +you,” cries Mr. Clive, in a great rage, folding his arms, and glaring +round on a number of the most innocent young swells; and he continued looking +as if he would like to knock a dozen of their heads together. “Am I +keeping Miss Newcome’s admirers from her?” +</p> + +<p> +“That is not for me to say,” she said, quite gently. He was; but to +see him angry did not displease Miss Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +“That young man who came for you just now,” Clive went +on—“that Sir John——” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you angry with me because I sent him away?” said Ethel, +putting out a hand. “Hark! there is the music. Take me in and waltz with +me. Don’t you know it is not <i>my</i> door at which you knocked?” +she said, looking up into his face as simply and kindly as of old. She whirled +round the dancing-room with him in triumph, the other beauties dwindling before +her: she looked more and more beautiful with each rapid move of the waltz, her +colour heightening and her eyes seeming to brighten. Not till the music stopped +did she sink down on a seat, panting, and smiling radiant—as many many +hundred years ago I remember to have seen Taglioni after a conquering <i>pas +seul</i>. She nodded a “thank you” to Clive. It seemed that there +was a perfect reconciliation. Lady Kew came in just at the end of the dance, +scowling when she beheld Ethel’s partner; but in reply to her +remonstrances, Ethel shrugged her fair shoulders, with a look which seemed to +say <i>je le veux</i>, gave an arm to her grandmother, an walked off, saucily +protecting her. +</p> + +<p> +Clive’s friend had been looking on observingly and curiously as the scene +between them had taken place, and at the dance with which the reconciliation +had been celebrated. I must tell you that this arch young creature had formed +the object of my observation for some months past, and that I watched her as I +have watched a beautiful panther at the Zoological Gardens, so bright of eye, +so sleek of coat, so slim in form, so sweet and agile in her spring. +</p> + +<p> +A more brilliant young coquette than Miss Newcome, in her second season, these +eyes never looked upon, that is the truth. In her first year, being engaged to +Lord Kew, she was perhaps a little more reserved and quiet. Besides, her mother +went out with her that first season, to whom Miss Newcome except for a little +occasional flightiness, was invariably obedient and ready to come to call. But +when Lady Kew appeared as her duenna, the girl’s delight seemed to be to +plague the old lady, and she would dance with the very youngest sons merey to +put grandmamma in a passion. In this way poor young Cubley (who has two hundred +a year of allowance, besides eighty, and an annual rise of five in the +Treasury) actually thought that Ethel was in love with him, and consulted with +the young men in his room in Downing Street, whether two hundred and eighty a +year, with five pound more next year, would be enough for them to keep house +on? Young Tandy of the Temple, Lord Skibbereen’s younger son, who sate in +the House for some time on the Irish Catholic side, was also deeply smitten, +and many a night in our walks home from the parties at the other end of the +town, would entertain me with his admiration and passion for her. +</p> + +<p> +“If you have such a passion for her, why not propose?” it was asked +of Mr. Tandy. +</p> + +<p> +“Propose! propose to a Russian Archduchess,” cries young Tandy. +“She’s beautiful, she’s delightful, she’s witty. I have +never seen anything like her eyes; they send me wild—wild,” says +Tandy—(slapping his waistcoat under Temple Bar)—“but a more +audacious little flirt never existed since the days of Cleopatra.” +</p> + +<p> +With this opinion likewise in my mind, I had been looking on during +Clive’s proceedings with Miss Ethel—not, I say, without admiration +of the young lady who was leading him such a dance. The waltz over, I +congratulated him on his own performance. His Continental practice had greatly +improved him. “And as for your partner, it is delightful to see +her,” I went on. “I always like to be by when Miss Newcome dances. +I had sooner see her than anybody since Taglioni. Look at her now, with her +neck up, and her little foot out, just as she is preparing to start! Happy Lord +Bustington!” +</p> + +<p> +“You are angry with her because she cut you,” growls Clive. +“You know you said she cut you, or forgot you; and your vanity’s +wounded, that is why you are so satirical.” +</p> + +<p> +“How can Miss Newcome remember all the men who are presented to +her?” says the other. “Last year she talked to me because she +wanted to know about you. This year she doesn’t talk: because I suppose +she doesn’t want to know about you any more.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hang it. Do—on’t, Pen,” cries Clive, as a schoolboy +cries out to another not to hit him. +</p> + +<p> +“She does not pretend to observe: and is in full conversation with the +amiable Bustington. Delicious interchange of noble thoughts! But she is +observing us talking, and knows that we are talking about her. If ever you +marry her, Clive, which is absurd, I shall lose you for a friend. You will +infallibly tell her what I think of her: and she will order you to give me +up.” Clive had gone off in a brown study, as his interlocutor continued. +“Yes, she is a flirt. She can’t help her nature. She tries to +vanquish every one who comes near her. She is a little out of breath from +waltzing, and so she pretends to be listening to poor Bustington, who is out of +breath too, but puffs out his best in order to make himself agreeable, with +what a pretty air she appears to listen! Her eyes actually seem to +brighten.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>What?</i>” says Clive, with a start. +</p> + +<p> +I could not comprehend the meaning of the start: nor did I care much to know: +supposing that the young man was waking up from some lover’s reverie: and +the evening sped away, Clive not quitting the ball until Miss Newcome and the +Countess of Kew had departed. No further communication appeared to take place +between the cousins that evening. I think it was Captain Crackthorpe who gave +the young lady an arm into her carriage; Sir John Fobsby having the happiness +to conduct the old Countess, and carrying the pink bag for the shawls, +wrappers, etc., on which her ladyship’s coronet and initials are +emblazoned. Clive may have made a movement as if to step forward, but a single +finger from Miss Newcome warned him back. +</p> + +<p> +Clive and his two friends in Lamb Court had made an engagement for the next +Saturday to dine at Greenwich; but on the morning of that day there came a note +from him to say that he thought of going down to see his aunt, Miss Honeyman, +and begged to recall his promise to us. Saturday is a holiday with gentlemen of +our profession. We had invited F. Bayham, Esquire, and promised ourselves a +merry evening, and were unwilling to baulk ourselves of the pleasure on account +of the absence of our young Roman. So we three went to London Bridge Station at +an early hour, proposing to breathe the fresh air of Greenwich Park before +dinner. And, at London Bridge, by the most singular coincidence, Lady +Kew’s carriage drove up to the Brighton entrance, and Miss Ethel and her +maid stepped out of the brougham. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +When Miss Newcome and her maid entered the Brighton station, did Mr. Clive, by +another singular coincidence, happen also to be there? What more natural and +dutiful than that he should go and see his aunt, Miss Honeyman? What more +proper than that Miss Ethel should pass the Saturday and Sunday with her sick +father; and take a couple of wholesome nights’ rest after those five +weary past evenings, for each of which we may reckon a couple of soirées and a +ball? And that relations should travel together, the young lady being protected +by her <i>femme-de-chambre;</i> that surely, as every one must allow, was +perfectly right and proper. +</p> + +<p> +That a biographer should profess to know everything which passes, even in a +confidential talk in a first-class carriage between two lovers, seems perfectly +absurd; not that grave historians do not pretend to the same wonderful degree +of knowledge—reporting meetings of the most occult of conspirators; +private interviews between monarchs and their ministers, even the secret +thoughts and motives of those personages, which possibly the persons themselves +did not know;—all for which the present writer will pledge his known +character for veracity is, that on a certain day certain parties had a +conversation, of which the upshot was so-and-so. He guesses, of course, at a +great deal of what took place; knowing the characters, and being informed at +some time of their meeting. You do not suppose that I bribed the +<i>femme-de-chambre</i>, or that those two City gents, who sate in the same +carriage with our young friends, and could not hear a word they said, reported +their talk to me? If Clive and Ethel had had a coupe to themselves, I would yet +boldly tell what took place, but the coupe was taken by other three young City +gents who smoked the whole way. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then,” the bonnet begins close up to the hat, “tell +me, sir, is it true that you were so very much <i>épris</i> of the Miss +Freemans at Rome; and that afterwards you were so wonderfully attentive to the +third Miss Baliol? Did you draw her portrait? You know you drew her portrait. +You painters always pretend to admire girls with auburn hair, because Titian +and Raphael painted it. Has the Fornarina red hair? Why, we are at Croydon, I +declare!” +</p> + +<p> +“The Fornarina”—the hat replies to the bonnet, “if that +picture at the Borghese Palace be an original, or a likeness of her—is +not a handsome woman, with vulgar eyes and mouth, and altogether a most +mahogany-coloured person. She is so plain, in fact, I think that very likely it +is the real woman; for it is with their own fancies that men fall in +love,—or rather every woman is handsome to the lover. You know how old +Helen must have been.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know any such thing, or anything about her. Who was +Helen?” asks the bonnet; and indeed she did not know. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a long story, and such an old scandal now, that there is no +use in repeating it,” says Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“You only talk about Helen because you wish to turn away the conversation +from Miss Freeman,” cries the young lady—“from Miss Baliol, I +mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“We will talk about whichever you please. Which shall we begin to pull to +pieces?” says Clive. You see, to be in this carriage—to be actually +with <i>her</i>—to be looking into those wonderful lucid eyes—to +see her sweet mouth dimpling, and hear her sweet voice ringing with its +delicious laughter—to have that hour and a half his own, in spite of all +the world-dragons, grandmothers, <i>convenances</i>, the future—made the +young fellow so happy, filled his whole frame and spirit with a delight so +keen, that no wonder he was gay, and brisk, and lively. +</p> + +<p> +“And so you knew of my goings-on?” he asked. O me! they were at +Reigate by this time; there was Gatton Park flying before them on the wings of +the wind. +</p> + +<p> +“I know of a number of things,” says the bonnet, nodding with +ambrosial curls. +</p> + +<p> +“And you would not answer the second letter I wrote to you? +</p> + +<p> +“We were in great perplexity. One cannot be always answering young +gentlemen’s letters. I had considerable doubt about answering a note I +got from Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square,” says the lady’s +chapeau. “No, Clive, we must not write to one another,” she +continued more gravely, “or only very, very seldom. Nay, my meeting you +here to-day is by the merest chance, I am sure; for when I mentioned at Lady +Fareham’s the other evening that I was going to see papa at Brighton +to-day, I never for one moment thought of seeing you in the train. But as you +are here, it can’t be helped; and I may as well tell you that there are +obstacles.” +</p> + +<p> +“What, <i>other</i> obstacles?” Clive gasped out. +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense—you silly boy! No other obstacles but those which always +have existed, and must. When we parted—that is, when you left us at +Baden, you knew it was for the best. You had your profession to follow, and +could not go on idling about—about a family of sick people and children. +Every man has his profession, and you yours, as you would have it. We are so +nearly allied that we may—we may like each other like brother and sister +almost. I don’t know what Barnes would say if he heard me! Wherever you +and your father are, how can I ever think of you but—but you know how? I +always shall, always. There are certain feelings we have which I hope never can +change; though, if you please, about them I intend never to speak any more. +Neither you nor I can alter our conditions, but must make the best of them. You +shall be a fine clever painter; and I,—who knows what will happen to me? +I know what is going to happen to-day; I am going to see papa and mamma, and be +as happy as I can till Monday morning.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know what I wish would happen now,” said Clive,—they were +going screaming through a tunnel. +</p> + +<p> +“What?” said the bonnet in the darkness: and the engine was roaring +so loudly, that he was obliged to put his head quite close to say— +</p> + +<p> +“I wish the tunnel would fall in and close upon us, or that we might +travel on for ever and ever.” +</p> + +<p> +Here there was a great jar of the carriage, and the lady’s-maid, and I +think Miss Ethel, gave a shriek. The lamp above was so dim that the carriage +was almost totally dark. No wonder the lady’s-maid was frightened! but +the daylight came streaming in, and all poor Clive’s wishes of rolling +and rolling on for ever were put an end to by the implacable sun in a minute. +</p> + +<p> +Ah, why was it the quick train? Suppose it had been the parliamentary +train?—even that too would have come to an end. They came and said, +“Tickets, please,” and Clive held out the three of their +party—his, and Ethel’s, and her maid’s. I think for such a +ride as that he was right to give up Greenwich. Mr. Kuhn was in waiting with a +carriage for Miss Ethel. She shook hands with Clive, returning his pressure. +</p> + +<p> +“I may come and see you?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“You may come and see mamma—yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“And where are you staying?” +</p> + +<p> +“Bless my soul—they were staying at Miss Honeyman’s!” +Clive burst into a laugh. Why, he was going there too! Of course Aunt Honeyman +had no room for him, her house being quite full with the other Newcomes. +</p> + +<p> +It was a most curious coincidence their meeting; but altogether Lady Anne +thought it was best to say nothing about the circumstance to grandmamma. I +myself am puzzled to say which would have been the better course to pursue +under the circumstances; there were so many courses open. As they had gone so +far, should they go on farther together? Suppose they were going to the same +house at Brighton, oughtn’t they to have gone in the same carriage, with +Kuhn and the maid of course? Suppose they met by chance at the station, ought +they to have travelled in separate carriages? I ask any gentleman and father of +a family, when he was immensely smitten with his present wife, Mrs. Brown, if +he had met her travelling with her maid, in the mail, when there was a vacant +place, what would he himself have done? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0042"></a> +CHAPTER XLII.<br> +Injured Innocence</h2> + +<p> +From Clive Newcome, Esq., to Lieut.-Col. Newcome, C.B. +</p> + +<p> +“Brighton, June 12, 18—. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>more serious</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“At our meeting he told me of what had happened between him and Ethel, of +whom he spoke <i>most kindly and generously</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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>I +ran away</i>. 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 <i>fresh eruption</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>h</i>’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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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 <i>this</i> house, +Clive,—not in this house, I beg you to understand <i>that!</i>” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>You</i> know very well what I mean, sir! Don’t try to turn +<i>me</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Git long, Master Clive,” says Hannah, patting the cloth. +</p> + +<p> +“Get along! why get along, and where am I to get along to?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bear <i>what?</i> you old goose!” cries Clive, who by these +playful names had been wont to designate Hannah these twenty years past. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Newcome remarked, “If he said so upon his honour, of course she was +satisfied.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Lady Anne said, “Sir Brian’s bad state of health prevented her from +going out this season, or receiving at home.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you for my mother,” said Lady Anne. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“So were we, my lord,” says Miss Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes, I forgot! But you’re of an old family—very old +family.” +</p> + +<p> +“We can’t help it,” said Miss Ethel, archly. Indeed, she +thought she was. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +“Go? Don’t I? But don’t call it horrid; really, now, +don’t call it horrid!” cried the noble Marquis. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“What are you doing, Clive?” she asks. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you have made him like Punch!” cries the young lady. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a shame caricaturing one’s own flesh and blood, +isn’t it?” asked Clive, gravely. +</p> + +<p> +“What a droll, funny picture!” exclaims Lady Anne. +“Isn’t it capital, Lord Farintosh?” +</p> + +<p> +“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>I</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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course she is my aunt.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am an artist,” says Clive, turning very red. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>tête-à-tête</i> with the +beautiful Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>tête-à-tête</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>chef d’œuvre</i> +of Miss Honeyman, for which she had seen him absolutely cry in his childhood, +the good Martha was alarmed. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s doosid good,” remarked Lord Farintosh. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“The cook! dear me, it’s not the <i>cook!</i>” cries Miss +Ethel. “Don’t you remember the princess in the Arabian Nights, who +was such a stunner for tarts, Lord Farintosh?” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Farintosh couldn’t say that he did. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And she is my aunt, at your lordship’s service,” said Mr. +Clive, with great dignity. +</p> + +<p> +“Upon my honour! <i>did</i> you make ’em, Lady Anne?” asked +my lord. +</p> + +<p> +“The Queen of Hearts made tarts!” cried out Miss Newcome, rather +eagerly, and blushing somewhat. +</p> + +<p> +“My good old aunt, Miss Honeyman, made this one,” Clive would go on +to say. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Honeyman’s sister, the preacher, you know, where we go on +Sunday,” Miss Ethel interposed. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you,” said Miss Newcome, with a curtsey. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want a horse like a lamb,” replied the young lady. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—she’ll go like blazes now: and over timber she’s +splendid now. She is, upon my honour.” +</p> + +<p> +“When I come to London perhaps you may trot her out,” said Miss +Ethel, giving him her hand and a fine smile. +</p> + +<p> +Clive came up biting his lips. “I suppose you don’t condescend to +ride Bhurtpore any more now?” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense!” Miss Ethel here made Clive a sign in her most imperious +manner to stay a moment when Lord Farintosh had departed. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0043"></a> +CHAPTER XLIII.<br> +Returns to some Old Friends</h2> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you go round by the cliff?” asked Clive’s friend. +</p> + +<p> +“That is not the way from the Steyne Arms to the railroad.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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—<i>you</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Women are like that, my ingenuous youth,” says Clive’s +counsellor. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> won’t stand it. <i>I</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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +(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.) +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did she scald you? What a cruel chambermaid! I see you have shaven the +mustachios off.” +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“Have you ever asked her to marry you?” asked Clive’s friend. +</p> + +<p> +“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——” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you <i>did?</i> I thought, when we were at Baden, we were so modest +that we did not even whisper our condition?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“That was a very prudent saying for a young lady of eighteen,” +remarks Clive’s friend. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +“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 +<i>Racahout des Arabes</i>. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>will</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should think so. J. J.’s pictures will be worth five times a +hundred guineas ere five years are over,” says Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“You, F. B.! and how?” we asked. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>distingué</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +“It <i>is</i> 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!” +</p> + +<p> +“What, George?” asked Warrington’s friend. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>lusus naturæ</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>her?</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I give you up Barnes,” said Clive, laughing; “anybody may +shy at him and I shan’t interfere.” +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Capital head that is Newcome has done of Jack Belsize!” says +Crackthorpe, from out of his cigar. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s such a heavy swell, he don’t want to make his +fortune,” ejaculates Butts. +</p> + +<p> +“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: +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0044"></a> +CHAPTER XLIV.<br> +In which Mr. Charles Honeyman appears in an Amiable Light</h2> + +<p> +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 <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, 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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Forbidden by the Inquisition,” says Clive, delighted; “and +at Naples the king furious against it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>don’t wonder</i> 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 <i>P. M. G.?</i> +Slight sketches, mental and corporeal, of our chief divines now in +London—and signed Latimer?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t do much in that way,” said Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“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>I</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.” +</p> + +<p> +“So you are the famous Laud Latimer?” cries Clive, who had, in +fact, seen letters signed by those right reverend names in our paper. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>think</i> a man is jealous, who was himself the cause of +my engagement at the <i>P. M. G.</i>,—perhaps my powers were not +developed then.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pen thinks he writes better now than when he began,” remarked +Clive; “I have heard him say so.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Ridley is not the only man I have helped in this world,” F. B. +continued. “Perhaps I should blush to own it—I <i>do</i> 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?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am delighted to hear it,” cried Clive; “and how, F. B., +have you wrought this miracle?” +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +“‘Dash it, you don’t mean a hurdy-gurdy?’” +</p> + +<p> +“‘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, <i>entre nous</i>, Sherrick contracts for them with Nathan, or some one in +Covent Garden. And—don’t tell this now, upon your honour!” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell what, F. B.?” asks Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>P. M. G.;</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes; come back again,” said Clive, and was gone. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Clive made bows to the ladies, who acknowledged him by graceful curtsies. +Miss Sherrick was always looking to the vestry-door. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“We shall be most ’appy to see Mr. Newcome, I’m sure,” +says the handsome and good-natured Mrs. Sherrick. “Won’t we, +Julia?” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“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?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes,” says Julia, whose hand the pastor is now pressing. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“We had a loss more than ten years ago,” whispers Sherrick to Clive +gravely. “And she’s always thinking of it. Women are so.” +</p> + +<p> +Clive was touched and pleased by this exhibition of kind feeling. +</p> + +<p> +“You know his mother was an Absalom,” the good wife continues, +pointing to her husband. “Most respectable diamond merchants +in——” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, when will you two gents come up to my shop to ’ave a family +dinner?” asks Sherrick. +</p> + +<p> +“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? +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Should you like that Mendelssohn for the Sunday after next? Julia sings +it splendid!” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I don’t, ma.” +</p> + +<p> +“You do, dear! She’s a good, good <i>dear</i>, Mr. H., that’s +what she is.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must not call—a—him, in that way. <i>Don’t</i> say +Mr. H., ma,” says Julia. +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>me</i> 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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Clive remarked, with a smile, the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, uncle!” says little Rosey, and the old gentleman stopped her +remonstrances with a kiss. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” says he, “your mother <i>does</i> 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?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, never, uncle,” said Rosey. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>We</i> 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?” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Quasty peecoly Rosiny,” says James, in a fine Scotch Italian, +“e la piu bella, la piu cara, ragazza ma la mawdry e il +diav——” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t, uncle!” cried Rosey, again; and Clive laughed at +Uncle James’s wonderful outbreak in a foreign tongue. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +Charles sighed out that there was a German print, the “Two +Leonoras,” which put him in mind of their various styles of beauty. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I could paint them,” said Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“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!” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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:” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but Miss Sherrick is so handsome, that you will succeed better with +her than with my round face, Mr. Newcome.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. <i>What?</i>” cries Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Clive, then,” says Rosey, in a little voice. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>his</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, evidently from F. B.’s hand, to the following +effect:— +</p> + +<p> +“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 <i>Ivry</i>. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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?” +</p> + +<p> +Binnie burst into a loud guffaw, and cried out, “O vanitas +vanitawtum!” Rosa laughed too. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think it any joke at all,” said Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed, and how?” asked Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“By—by the way she looked at him,” said little Rosey. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0045"></a> +CHAPTER XLV.<br> +A Stag of Ten</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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, <i>bon Dieu!</i> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>beau-monde</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>tendre</i>, 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>début</i>. 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, “<i>J’ai +votre secret, mon ami;</i>” 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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0046"></a> +CHAPTER XLVI.<br> +The Hotel de Florac</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +That paragraph, respecting a conversion in high life, which F. B. in his +enthusiasm inserted in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, caused no small excitement +in the Florac family. The Florac family read the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>pituite</i>. 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, <i>mon ami;</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>dévote</i>, 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 +<i>parti</i> 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 <i>brouillée</i> with that party +of late years.” +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>fadaises</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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, <i>les Meess</i> 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; “<i>à preuve</i> 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 <i>Odalisque Obélisque</i>, 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 +<i>coulisses</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what did he answer?” asked the Countess. +</p> + +<p> +“I attended myself to a <i>soufflet</i>,” replied Florac; +“but his reply was much more agreeable. The young insulary, with many +blushes and a <i>gros juron</i>, 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>entrained</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>nunc in ovilia, mox in reluctantes dracones</i>, 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 +<i>quite</i> 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! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0047"></a> +CHAPTER XLVII.<br> +Contains two or three Acts of a Little Comedy</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>perron</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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 (<i>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.</i>) +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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—— +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. Don’t be a goose. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. Unkind and unjust!—ungenerous to make taunts which common +people make: and to repeat to me those silly sarcasms which your low <i>Radical +literary</i> 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? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Léonore</i>. 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? +</p> + +<p class="right"> +[<i>Exit little</i> LÉONORE <i>down an alley.</i> +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. I remember all about our youth, Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. Tell me what you remember? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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—— +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. Because why? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. Ah, Clive! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i> (<i>innocently</i>). 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! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. What do you mean with all his chances? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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.—(<i>Hurriedly</i>.) 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de Florac</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +[<i>Exeunt</i> CLIVE, ETHEL, <i>and</i> Madame DE F. <i>into the house</i>. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +CONVERSATION II.—<i>Scene</i> I. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Miss Newcome arrives in Lady Kew’s carriage, which enters the court of +the Hôtel de Florac.</i> +</p> + +<p> +<i>Saint Jean</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Miss Newcome</i>. Madame de Préville is at home? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Saint Jean</i>. 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. (<i>Bell +rings</i>.) +</p> + +<p> +<i>Miss Newcome</i>. Madame la Prince—Madame la Vicomtesse is at home, +Monsieur St. Jean? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Saint Jean</i>. I go to call the people of Madame la Vicomtesse. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +[<i>Exit Old</i> SAINT JEAN <i>to the carriage: a Lackey comes presently in a +gorgeous livery, with buttons like little cheese plates</i>. +</p> + +<p> +<i>The Lackey</i>. The Princess is at home, miss, and will be most appy to see +you, miss. (<i>Miss trips up the great stair: a gentleman out of livery has +come forth to the landing, and introduces her to the apartments of</i> Madame +la Princesse.) +</p> + +<p> +<i>The Lackey to the Servants on the box</i>. Good morning, Thomas. How +dy’ do, old Backystopper? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Backystopper</i>. 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! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive Newcome</i> (<i>by the most singular coincidence</i>). Madame la +Princesse? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Lackey</i>. We, Munseer. (<i>He rings a bell: the gentleman in black appears +as before on the landing-place up the stair</i>.) +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +[<i>Exit</i> CLIVE. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Backystopper</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Lackey</i>. 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? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Backystopper</i>. They say this young gent is sweet on Miss N.; which, I +guess, I wish he may git it. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Tommy</i>. He! he! he! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Backystopper</i>. Brayvo, Tommy. Tom ain’t much of a man for +conversation, but he’s a precious one to drink. <i>Do</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Tommy</i>. 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. (<i>He lapses into silence</i>.) +</p> + +<p> +<i>Lackey</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Tommy</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Lackey</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +[<i>Exit Lackey</i>. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Backystopper</i>. Not a bad chap that. Sports his money very +free—sings an uncommon good song. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Thomas</i>. Pretty voice, but no cultiwation. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Lackey</i> (<i>who re-enters</i>). Be here at two o’clock for Miss N. +Take anything? Come round the corner.—There’s a capital shop round +the corner. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +[<i>Exeunt Servants</i>. +</p> + +<p class="center"> +SCENE II. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. But not you, Ethel? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. You say Barnes’s wife is not. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Enter Madame de Moncontour</i>. 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! +</p> + +<p> +<i>The Clock</i>. Ting, ting! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Princess</i>. I’ve put on the velvet, you see, Clive—though +it’s very ’ot in May. Good-bye, my dear. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +[<i>Exit</i> ETHEL. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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— +</p> + +<p class="center"> +CONVERSATION III. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de Florac</i> (<i>at work</i>). And so you like to quit the world and +to come to our <i>triste</i> old hotel. After to-day you will find it still +more melancholy, my poor child. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. And why? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. Some one who has been here to <i>égayer</i> our little +meetings will come no more. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. Is the Abbé de Florac going to quit Paris, madam? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. 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! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i> (<i>smiling</i>). Indeed, dear lady, I think with you. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. 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—<i>n’est-ce +pas?</i>—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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i> (<i>blushing, and thinking, perhaps, how she esteems her father, +how her mother, and how much they esteem each other</i>). 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—(<i>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</i>.) +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. (<i>sadly</i>). One will pray for thee, my child. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i> (<i>sadly</i>). 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? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. My father was an usher in a school. Monsieur de Florac gave +lessons in the emigration. Do you know in what? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. Oh, the old nobility! that is different, you know. That Mr. +Honeyman is so affected that I have no patience with him! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. (<i>with a sigh</i>). I wish you could attend the services +of a better church. And when was it you thought you might be good, Ethel? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. Who—who was that, Ethel? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i> (<i>looking up at Gerard’s picture of the Countess de +Florac</i>). 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 +<i>fraises!</i> (MADAME DE FLORAC <i>kisses</i> ETHEL. <i>Tableau</i>.) +</p> + +<p> +<i>Enter</i> SAINT JEAN, <i>preceding a gentleman with a drawing-board under +his arm</i>. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Saint Jean</i>. Monsieur Claive! [<i>Exit</i> SAINT JEAN. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. How do you do, Madame la Comtesse? Mademoiselle, j’ai +l’honneur de vous souhaiter le bon jour. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. Do you come from the Louvre? Have you finished that +beautiful copy, mon ami? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. I have brought it for you. It is not very good. There are always +so many <i>petites demoiselles</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. (<i>surveying the sketch</i>). It is +charming—charming! What shall we give to our painter for his +chef-d’œuvre? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i> (<i>kisses her hand</i>). 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. Mr. Butts—quel nom! Je ne connois aucun M. Butts! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. He has a famous head to draw. They refused Crackthorpe +and—and one or two other heads I sent in. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i> (<i>tossing up hers</i>). Miss Mackenzie’s, I suppose! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. Yes, Miss Mackenzie’s. It is a sweet little face; too +delicate for my hand, though. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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. (<i>She goes to a window that looks into the +court</i>.) +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i> (<i>to the Countess</i>). 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. (<i>aside</i>). 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? (<i>He kisses her ladyship’s hand again</i>.) +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Miss N</i>. I was looking to see if the carriage had come for me. It is time +that I return home. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Miss N</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. You can take mine without my company, as that seems not to please +you. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Miss N</i>. Your company is sometimes very pleasant—when you please. +Sometimes, as last night, for instance, when you particularly lively. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Miss N</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. It were best I had gone. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Miss N</i>. If you think so, I cannot but think so. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Miss N</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. A man in the army may pretend to anything, <i>n’est-ce +pas?</i> 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? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i> (<i>musing</i>). Barnes would not, perhaps, but papa might even +still, and you have friends who are fond of you. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. And that is? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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 <i>Morning +Post</i>, 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—— +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. Sir, if you please, no calling names. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. No—never. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. And—and—you will never give up painting? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i> (<i>with a sigh</i>). Yes. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. 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?” +</p> + +<p> +<i>Ethel</i>. 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, <i>brother</i>, why you must speak to me so no +more? There is the carriage. God bless you, dear Clive. +</p> + +<p> +(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.) +</p> + +<p> +<i>Enter Madame de Florac</i> (<i>She goes to him with anxious looks</i>.) What +hast thou, my child? Hast thou spoken? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i> (<i>very steadily</i>). Yes. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. And she loves thee? I know she loves thee. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. You hear the organ of the convent? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. Qu’as tu? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. I might as well hope to marry one of the sisters of yonder +convent, dear lady. (<i>He sinks down again, and she kisses him</i>.) +</p> + +<p> +<i>Clive</i>. I never had a mother; but you seem like one. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Madame de F</i>. Mon fils! Oh, mon fils! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0048"></a> +CHAPTER XLVIII.<br> +In which Benedick is a Married Man</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>chroniques scandaleuses</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>in Cœlo Quies</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 +<i>large</i> parties as yet could be received in that house of mourning. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>only</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0049"></a> +CHAPTER XLIX.<br> +Contains at least six more Courses and two Desserts</h2> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Pendennis flung up her head as much as to say, “and so she +is.” +</p> + +<p> +<i>Mr. Pendennis</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Mrs. Pendennis</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Pendennis</i>. I think she is very pretty, and very innocent, and artless. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Mrs. P</i>. Not very pretty, and perhaps not so very artless. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Pendennis</i>. How can you tell, you wicked woman? Are you such a profound +deceiver yourself, that you can instantly detect artifice in others? O Laura! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Mrs. P</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Pendennis</i>. How do you know that, my dear? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Mrs. P</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Pendennis</i>. 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.” +</p> + +<p> +<i>Mrs. P</i>. 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. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Pendennis. Tout vient à fin, à qui sait</i>—— +</p> + +<p> +<i>Mrs. P</i>. 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! +</p> + +<p> +<i>Pendennis</i>. What? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Mrs. P</i>. 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—— +</p> + +<p> +<i>Pendennis</i>. For what? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Mrs. P</i>. For nothing. But you heard yourself that he had a bad temper, +and spoke sneeringly to his wife. What could make her marry him? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Pendennis</i>. 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? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Mrs. P</i>. Lord Highgate was very attentive to Miss Newcome, was he? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Pendennis</i>. 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? +</p> + +<p> +<i>Mrs. P</i>. I am thinking that I should not like to live in London, Arthur. +</p> + +<p> +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? +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>la belle</i> 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 <i>aux soins</i> with <i>la belle Banquière</i>, 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 <i>belle Banquière</i> 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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“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; <i>that</i>, let us be thankful, is the only true +title to distinction in our country nowadays.” +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +At this, two of the children cry out “Oh! oh!” with such a +melancholy accent that Miss Newcome and Lady Clara burst out laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“Got a dreadful toothache,” said Mr. Hobson; “here’s +his letter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hang it, what a bore!” cries artless young King’s College. +</p> + +<p> +“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. +</p> + +<p> +“Hang it, why didn’t he have it out?” says Samuel. +</p> + +<p> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know <i>one</i> 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. +</p> + +<p> +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 <i>en vein</i>, 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? +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p> +“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.” +</p> + +<p> +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. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +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.” +</p> + +<p> +May I not inscribe the words with a grateful heart? Blessed he—blessed +though maybe undeserving—who has the love of a good woman. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0050"></a> +CHAPTER L.<br> +Clive in New Quarters</h2> + +<p> +My wife was much better pleased with Clive than with some of his relatives to +whom I had presented her. His face carried a recommendation with it that few +honest people could resist. He was always a welcome friend in our lodgings, and +even our uncle the Major signified his approval of the lad as a young fellow of +very good manners and feelings, who, if he chose to throw himself away and be a +painter, <i>ma foi</i>, was rich enough no doubt to follow his own caprices. +Clive executed a capital head of Major Pendennis, which now hangs in our +drawing-room at Fairoaks, and reminds me of that friend of my youth. Clive +occupied ancient lofty chambers in Hanover Square now. He had furnished them in +an antique manner, with hangings, cabinets, carved work, Venice glasses, fine +prints, and water-colour sketches of good pictures by his own and other hands. +He had horses to ride, and a liberal purse full of paternal money. Many fine +equipages drew up opposite to his chambers: few artists had such luck as young +Mr. Clive. And above his own chambers were other three which the young +gentleman had hired, and where, says he, “I hope ere very long my dear +old father will be lodging with me. In another year he says he thinks he will +be able to come home; when the affairs of the Bank are quite settled. You shake +your head! why? The shares are worth four times what we gave for them. We are +men of fortune, Pen, I give you my word. You should see how much they make of +me at Baynes and Jolly’s, and how civil they are to me at Hobson +Brothers’! I go into the City now and then, and see our manager, Mr. +Blackmore. He tells me such stories about indigo, and wool, and copper, and +sicca rupees, and Company’s rupees. I don’t know anything about the +business, but my father likes me to go and see Mr. Blackmore. Dear cousin +Barnes is for ever asking me to dinner; I might call Lady Clara Clara if I +liked, as Sam Newcome does in Bryanstone Square. You can’t think how kind +they are to me there. My aunt reproaches me tenderly for not going there +oftener—it’s not very good fun dining in Bryanstone Square, is it? +And she praises my cousin Maria to me—you should hear my aunt praise her! +I have to take Maria down to dinner; to sit by the piano and listen to her +songs in all languages. Do you know Maria can sing Hungarian and Polish, +besides your common German, Spanish, and Italian? Those I have at our +<i>other</i> agents’, Baynes and Jolly’s—Baynes’s that +is in the Regent’s Park, where the girls are prettier and just as civil +to me as at Aunt Hobson’s.” And here Clive would amuse us by the +accounts which he gave us of the snares which the Misses Baynes, those young +sirens of Regent’s Park, set for him; of the songs which they sang to +enchant him, the albums in which they besought him to draw—the thousand +winning ways which they employed to bring him into their cave in York Terrace. +But neither Circe’s smiles nor Calypso’s blandishments had any +effect on him; his ears were stopped to their music, and his eyes rendered dull +to their charms by those of the flighty young enchantress with whom my wife had +of late made acquaintance. +</p> + +<p> +Capitalist though he was, our young fellow was still very affable. He forgot no +old friends in his prosperity; and the lofty antique chambers would not +unfrequently be lighted up at nights to receive F. B. and some of the old +cronies of the Haunt, and some of the Gandishites, who, if Clive had been of a +nature that was to be spoiled by flattery, had certainly done mischief to the +young man. Gandish himself, when Clive paid a visit to that illustrious +artist’s Academy, received his former pupil as if the young fellow had +been a sovereign prince almost, accompanied him to his horse; and would have +held his stirrup as he mounted; whilst the beautiful daughters of the house +waved adieus to him from the parlour-window. To the young men assembled in his +studio, Gandish was never tired of talking about Clive. The Professor would +take occasion to inform them that he had been to visit his distinguished young +friend, Mr. Newcome, son of Colonel Newcome; that last evening he had been +present at an elegant entertainment at Mr. Newcome’s new apartments. +Clive’s drawings were hung up in Gandish’s gallery, and pointed out +to visitors by the worthy Professor. On one or two occasions, I was allowed to +become a bachelor again, and participate in these jovial meetings. How guilty +my coat was on my return home; how haughty the looks of the mistress of my +house, as she bade Martha carry away the obnoxious garment! How grand F. B. +used to be as president of Clive’s smoking-party, where he laid down the +law, talked the most talk, sang the jolliest song, and consumed the most drink +of all the jolly talkers and drinkers! Clive’s popularity rose +prodigiously; not only youngsters, but old practitioners of the fine arts, +lauded his talents. What a shame that his pictures were all refused this year +at the Academy! Alfred Smee, Esq., R.A., was indignant at their rejection, but +J. J. confessed with a sigh, and Clive owned good-naturedly, that he had been +neglecting his business, and that his pictures were not so good as those of two +years before. I am afraid Mr. Clive went to too many balls and parties, to +clubs and jovial entertainments, besides losing yet more time in that other +pursuit we wot of. Meanwhile J. J. went steadily on with his work, no day +passed without a line: and Fame was not very far off, though this he heeded but +little; and Art, his sole mistress, rewarded him for his steady and fond +pursuit of her. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at him,” Clive would say with a sigh. “Isn’t he +the mortal of all others the most to be envied! He is so fond of his art that +in all the world there is no attraction like it for him. He runs to his easel +at sunrise, and sits before it caressing his picture all day till nightfall. He +takes leave of it sadly when dark comes, spends the night in a Life Academy, +and begins next morning <i>da capo</i>. Of all the pieces of good fortune which +can befall a man, is not this the greatest: to have your desire, and then never +tire of it? I have been in such a rage with my own shortcomings that I have +dashed my foot through the canvases, and vowed I would smash my palette and +easel. Sometimes I succeed a little better in my work, and then it will happen +for half an hour that I am pleased, but pleased at what? pleased at drawing Mr. +Muggins’s head rather like Mr. Muggins. Why, a thousand fellows can do +better, and when one day I reach my very best, yet thousands will be able to do +better still. Ours is a trade for which nowadays there is no excuse unless one +can be great in it: and I feel I have not the stuff for that. No. 666. +‘Portrait of Joseph Muggins, Esq., Newcome, Great George Street.’ +No. 979. ‘Portrait of Mrs. Muggins, on her grey pony, Newcome.’ No. +579. ‘Portrait of Joseph Muggins Esq.’s dog Toby, +Newcome’—this is—what I’m fit for. These are the +victories I have set myself on achieving. Oh, Mrs. Pendennis, isn’t it +humiliating? Why isn’t there a war? Why can’t I go and distinguish +myself somewhere and be a general? Why haven’t I a genius? I say, Pen, +sir, why haven’t I a genius? There is a painter who lives hard by, and +who sends sometimes, to beg me to come and look at his work. He is in the +Muggins line too. He gets his canvases with a good light upon them: excludes +the contemplation of all other objects, stands beside his pictures in an +attitude himself, and thinks that he and they are masterpieces. Masterpieces! +Oh me, what drivelling wretches we are! Fame!—except that of just the one +or two—what’s the use of it? I say, Pen, would you feel +particularly proud now if you had written Hayley’s poems? And as for a +second place in painting, who would care to be Caravaggio or Caracci? I +wouldn’t give a straw to be Caracci or Caravaggio. I would just as soon +be yonder artist who is painting up Foker’s Entire over the public-house +at the corner. He will have his payment afterwards, five shillings a day, and a +pot of beer. Your head a little more to the light, Mrs. Pendennis, if you +please. I am tiring you, I dare say, but then, oh, I am doing it so +badly!” +</p> + +<p> +I, for my part, thought Clive was making a very pretty drawing of my wife, and +having affairs of my own to attend to, would often leave her at his chambers as +a sitter, or find him at our lodgings visiting her. They became the very +greatest friends. I knew the young fellow could have no better friend than +Laura; and not being ignorant of the malady under which he was labouring, +concluded naturally and justly that Clive grew so fond of my wife, not for her +sake entirely, but for his own, because he could pour his heart out to her, and +her sweet kindness and compassion would soothe him in his unhappy condition. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Ethel, I have said, also professed a great fondness for Mrs. Pendennis; +and there was that charm in the young lady’s manner which speedily could +overcome even female jealousy. Perhaps Laura determined magnanimously to +conquer it; perhaps she hid it so as to vex me and prove the injustice of my +suspicions: perhaps, honestly, she was conquered by the young beauty, and gave +her a regard and admiration which the other knew she could inspire whenever she +had the will. My wife was fairly captivated by her at length. The untameable +young creature was docile and gentle in Laura’s presence; modest, +natural, amiable, full of laughter and spirits, delightful to see and to hear; +her presence cheered our quiet little household; her charm fascinated my wife +as it had subjugated poor Clive. Even the reluctant Farintosh was compelled to +own her power, and confidentially told his male friends, that, hang it, she was +so handsome, and so clever, and so confoundedly pleasant and fascinating, and +that—that he had been on the point of popping the fatal question ever so +many times, by Jove. “And hang it, you know,” his lordship would +say, “I don’t want to marry until I have had my fling, you +know.” As for Clive, Ethel treated him like a boy, like a big brother. +She was jocular, kind, pert, pleasant with him, ordered him on her errands, +accepted his bouquets and compliments, admired his drawings, liked to hear him +praised, and took his part in all companies; laughed at his sighs, and frankly +owned to Laura her liking for him and her pleasure in seeing him. +“Why,” said she, “should not I be happy as long as the +sunshine lasts? To-morrow, I know, will be glum and dreary enough. When +grandmamma comes back I shall scarcely be able to come and see you. When I am +settled in life—eh! I shall be settled in life! Do not grudge me my +holiday, Laura. Oh, if you knew how stupid it is to be in the world, and how +much pleasanter to come and talk, and laugh, and sing, and be happy with you, +than to sit in that dreary Eaton Place with poor Clara!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you stay in Eaton Place?” asks Laura. +</p> + +<p> +“Why? because I must go out with somebody. What an unsophisticated little +country creature you are! Grandmamma is away, and I cannot go about to parties +by myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“But why should you go to parties, and why not go back to your +mother?” says Mrs. Pendennis, gently. +</p> + +<p> +“To the nursery, and my little sisters, and Miss Cann? I like being in +London best, thank you. You look grave? You think a girl should like to be with +her mother and sisters best? My dear mamma wishes me to be here, and I stay +with Barnes and Clara by grandmamma’s orders. Don’t you know that I +have been made over to Lady Kew, who has adopted me? Do you think a young lady +of my pretensions can stop at home in a damp house in Warwickshire and cut +bread-and-butter for little schoolboys? Don’t look so very grave and +shake your head so, Mrs. Pendennis! If you had been bred as I have, you would +be as I am. I know what you are thinking, madam.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am thinking,” said Laura, blushing and bowing her +head—“I am thinking, if it pleases God to give me children, I +should like to live at home at Fairoaks.” My wife’s thoughts, +though she did not utter them, and a certain modesty and habitual awe kept her +silent upon subjects so very sacred, went deeper yet. She had been bred to +measure her actions by a standard which the world may nominally admit, but +which it leaves for the most part unheeded. Worship, love, duty, as taught her +by the devout study of the Sacred Law which interprets and defines it—if +these formed the outward practice of her life, they were also its constant and +secret endeavours and occupation. She spoke but very seldom of her religion, +though it filled her heart and influenced all her behaviour. Whenever she came +to that sacred subject, her demeanour appeared to her husband so awful that he +scarcely dared to approach it in her company, and stood without as this pure +creature entered into the Holy of Holies. What must the world appear to such a +person? Its ambitious rewards, disappointments, pleasures, worth how much? +Compared to the possession of that priceless treasure and happiness +unspeakable, a perfect faith, what has Life to offer? I see before me now her +sweet grave face, as she looks out from the balcony of the little Richmond +villa we occupied during the first happy year after our marriage, following +Ethel Newcome, who rides away, with a staid groom behind her, to her +brother’s summer residence, not far distant. Clive had been with us in +the morning, and had brought us stirring news. The good Colonel was by this +time on his way home. “If Clive could tear himself away from +London,” the good man wrote (and we thus saw he was acquainted with the +state of the young man’s mind), “why should not Clive go and meet +his father at Malta?” He was feverish and eager to go; and his two +friends strongly counselled him to take the journey. In the midst of our talk +Miss Ethel came among us. She arrived flushed and in high spirits; she rallied +Clive upon his gloomy looks; she turned rather pale, as it seemed to us, when +she heard the news. Then she coldly told him she thought the voyage must be a +pleasant one, and would do him good: it was pleasanter than that journey she +was going to take herself with her dreary grandmother, to those German springs +which the old Countess frequented year after year. Mr. Pendennis having +business, retired to his study, whither presently Mrs. Laura followed, having +to look for her scissors, or a book she wanted, or upon some pretext or other. +She sate down in the conjugal study; not one word did either of us say for a +while about the young people left alone in the drawing-room yonder. Laura +talked about our own home at Fairoaks, which our tenants were about to vacate. +She vowed and declared that we must live at Fairoaks; that Clavering, with all +its tittle-tattle and stupid inhabitants, was better than this wicked London. +Besides, there were some new and very pleasant families settled in the +neighbourhood. Clavering Park was taken by some delightful +people—“and you know, Pen, you were always very fond of +fly-fishing, and may fish the Brawl, as you used in old days, +when—” The lips of the pretty satirist who alluded to these +unpleasant bygones were silenced as they deserved to be by Mr. Pendennis. +“Do you think, sir, I did not know,” says the sweetest voice in the +world, “when you went out on your fishing excursions with Miss +Amory?” Again the flow of words is checked by the styptic previously +applied. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder,” says Mr. Pendennis, archly, bending over his +wife’s fair hand—“I wonder whether this kind of thing is +taking place in the drawing-room?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense, Arthur. It is time to go back to them. Why, I declare, I have +been three-quarters of an hour away!” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think they will much miss you, my dear,” says the +gentleman. +</p> + +<p> +“She is certainly very fond of him. She is always coming here. I am sure +it is not to hear you read Shakspeare, Arthur; or your new novel, though it is +very pretty. I wish Lady Kew and her sixty thousand pounds were at the bottom +of the sea.” +</p> + +<p> +“But she says she is going to portion her younger brothers with a part of +it; she told Clive so,” remarks Mr. Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +“For shame! Why does not Barnes Newcome portion his younger brothers? I +have no patience with that——Why! Goodness! There is Clive going +away, actually! Clive! Mr. Newcome!” But though my wife ran to the +study-window and beckoned our friend, he only shook his head, jumped on his +horse, and rode away gloomily. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“Ethel had been crying when I went into the room,” Laura afterwards +told me. “I knew she had; but she looked up from some flowers over which +she was bending, began to laugh and rattle, would talk about nothing but Lady +Hautboi’s great breakfast the day before, and the most insufferable +Mayfair jargon; and then declared it was time to go home and dress for Mrs. +Booth’s <i>déjeûner</i>, which was to take place that afternoon.” +</p> + +<p> +And so Miss Newcome rode away—back amongst the roses and the +rouges—back amongst the fiddling, flirting, flattery, falseness—and +Laura’s sweet serene face looked after her departing. Mrs. Booth’s +was a very grand <i>déjeûner</i>. We read in the newspapers a list of the +greatest names there. A Royal Duke and Duchess; a German Highness, a Hindoo +Nabob, etc.; and, amongst the Marquises, Farintosh; and, amongst the Lords, +Highgate; and Lady Clara Newcome, and Miss Newcome, who looked killing, our +acquaintance Captain Crackthorpe informs us, and who was in perfectly stunning +spirits. “His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke of Farintosh is wild about +her,” the Captain said, “and our poor young friend Clive may just +go and hang himself. Dine with us at the Gar and Starter? Jolly party. Oh! I +forgot! married man now!” So saying, the Captain entered the hostelry +near which I met him, leaving this present chronicler to return to his own +home. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0051"></a> +CHAPTER LI.<br> +An Old Friend</h2> + +<p> +I might open the present chapter as a contemporary writer of Romance is +occasionally in the habit of commencing his tales of Chivalry, by a description +of a November afternoon falling leaves, tawny forests, gathering storms, and +other autumnal phenomena; and two horsemen winding up the romantic road which +leads from—from Richmond Bridge to the Star and Garter. The one rider is +youthful, and has a blonde moustache. The cheek of the other has been browned +by foreign suns; it is easy to see by the manner in which he bestrides his +powerful charger that he has followed the profession of arms. He looks as if he +had faced his country’s enemies on many a field of Eastern battle. The +cavaliers alight before the gate of a cottage on Richmond Hill, where a +gentleman receives them with eager welcome. Their steeds are accommodated at a +neighbouring hostelry,—I pause in the midst of the description, for the +reader has made the acquaintance of our two horsemen long since. It is Clive +returned from Malta, from Gibraltar, from Seville, from Cadiz, and with him our +dear old friend the Colonel. His campaigns are over, his sword is hung up, he +leaves Eastern suns and battles to warm younger blood. Welcome back to England, +dear Colonel and kind friend! How quickly the years have passed since he has +been gone! There is a streak or two more silver in his hair. The wrinkles about +his honest eyes are somewhat deeper, but their look is as steadfast and kind as +in the early, almost boyish days when first we knew them. +</p> + +<p> +We talk a while about the Colonel’s voyage home, the pleasures of the +Spanish journey, the handsome new quarters in which Clive has installed his +father and himself, my own altered condition in life, and what not. During the +conversation a little querulous voice makes itself audible above-stairs, at +which noise Mr. Clive begins to laugh, and the Colonel to smile. It is for the +first time in his life Mr. Clive listens to the little voice; indeed, it is +only since about six weeks that that small organ has been heard in the world at +all. Laura Pendennis believes its tunes to be the sweetest, the most +interesting, the most mirth-inspiring, the most pitiful and pathetic, that ever +baby uttered; which opinions, of course, are backed by Mrs. Hokey, the +confidential nurse. Laura’s husband is not so rapturous; but, let us +trust, behaves in a way becoming a man and a father. We forgo the description +of his feelings as not pertaining to the history at present under +consideration. A little while before the dinner is served, the lady of the +cottage comes down to greet her husband’s old friends. +</p> + +<p> +And here I am sorely tempted to a third description, which has nothing to do +with the story, to be sure, but which, if properly hit off, might fill half a +page very prettily. For is not a young mother one of the sweetest sights which +life shows us? If she has been beautiful before, does not her present pure joy +give a character of refinement and sacredness almost to her beauty, touch her +sweet cheeks with fairer blushes, and impart I know not what serene brightness +to her eyes? I give warning to the artist who designs the pictures for this +veracious story, to make no attempt at this subject. I never would be satisfied +with it were his drawing ever so good. +</p> + +<p> +When Sir Charles Grandison stepped up and made his very beautifullest bow to +Miss Byron, I am sure his gracious dignity never exceeded that of Colonel +Newcome’s first greeting to Mrs. Pendennis. Of course from the very +moment they beheld one another they became friends. Are not most of our likings +thus instantaneous? Before she came down to see him, Laura had put on one of +the Colonel’s shawls—the crimson one, with the red palm-leaves and +the border of many colours. As for the white one, the priceless, the gossamer, +the fairy web, which might pass through a ring, <i>that</i>, every lady must be +aware, was already appropriated to cover the cradle, or what I believe is +called the bassinet, of Master Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +So we all became the very best of friends; and during the winter months whilst +we still resided at Richmond, the Colonel was my wife’s constant visitor. +He often came without Clive. He did not care for the world which the young +gentleman frequented, and was more pleased and at home by my wife’s +fireside than at more noisy and splendid entertainments. And, Laura being a +sentimental person interested in pathetic novels and all unhappy attachments, +of course she and the Colonel talked a great deal about Mr. Clive’s +little affair, over which they would have such deep confabulations that even +when the master of the house appeared, Pater Familias, the man whom, in the +presence of the Rev. Dr. Portman, Mrs. Laura had sworn to love and honour these +two guilty ones would be silent, or change the subject of conversation, not +caring to admit such an unsympathising person as myself into their conspiracy. +</p> + +<p> +From many a talk which they have had together since the Colonel and his son +embraced at Malta, Clive’s father had been led to see how strongly the +passion which our friend had once fought and mastered, had now taken possession +of the young man. The unsatisfied longing left him indifferent to all other +objects of previous desire or ambition. The misfortune darkened the sunshine of +his spirit, and clouded the world before his eyes. He passed hours in his +painting-room, though he tore up what he did there. He forsook his usual +haunts, or appeared amongst his old comrades moody and silent. From +cigar-smoking, which I own to be a reprehensible practice, he plunged into +still deeper and darker dissipation; for I am sorry to say, he took to pipes +and the strongest tobacco, for which there is <i>no</i> excuse. Our young man +was changed. During the last fifteen or twenty months, the malady had been +increasing on him, of which we have not chosen to describe at length the +stages; knowing very well that the reader (the male reader at least) does not +care a fig about other people’s sentimental perplexities, and is not +wrapped up heart and soul in Clive’s affairs like his father, whose rest +was disturbed if the boy had a headache, or who would have stripped the coat +off his back to keep his darling’s feet warm. +</p> + +<p> +The object of this hopeless passion had, meantime, returned to the custody of +the dark old duenna, from which she had been liberated for a while. Lady Kew +had got her health again, by means of the prescriptions of some doctors, or by +the efficacy of some baths; and was again on foot and in the world, tramping +about in her grim pursuit of pleasure. Lady Julia, we are led to believe, had +retired upon half-pay, and into an inglorious exile at Brussels, with her +sister, the outlaw’s wife, by whose bankrupt fireside she was perfectly +happy. Miss Newcome was now her grandmother’s companion, and they had +been on a tour of visits in Scotland, and were journeying from country-house to +country-house about the time when our good Colonel returned to his native +shores. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel loved his nephew Barnes no better than before, perhaps, though we +must say that since his return from India the young Baronet’s conduct had +been particularly friendly. “No doubt marriage had improved him; Lady +Clara seemed a good-natured young woman enough; besides,” says the +Colonel, wagging his good old head knowingly, “Tom Newcome, of the +Bundelcund Bank, is a personage to be conciliated; whereas Tom Newcome, of the +Bengal Cavalry, was not worth Master Barnes’s attention. He has been very +good and kind on the whole; so have his friends been uncommonly civil. There +was Clive’s acquaintance, Mr. Belsize that was, Lord Highgate who is now, +entertained our whole family sumptuously last week—wants us and Barnes +and his wife to go to his country-house at Christmas—is as hospitable, my +dear Mrs. Pendennis, as man can be. He met you at Barnes’s, and as soon +as we are alone,” says the Colonel, turning round to Laura’s +husband, “I will tell you in what terms Lady Clara speaks of your wife. +Yes. She is a good-natured, kind little woman, that Lady Clara.” Here +Laura’s face assumed that gravity and severeness, which it always wore +when Lady Clara’s name was mentioned, and the conversation took another +turn. +</p> + +<p> +Returning home from London one afternoon, I met the Colonel, who hailed me on +the omnibus, and rode on his way towards the City, I knew, of course, that he +had been colloquying with my wife; and taxed that young woman with these +continued flirtations. “Two or three times a week, Mrs. Laura, you dare +to receive a Colonel of Dragoons. You sit for hours closeted with the young +fellow of sixty; you change the conversation when your own injured husband +enters the room, and pretend to talk about the weather, or the baby. You little +arch hypocrite, you know you do. Don’t try to humbug me, miss; what will +Richmond, what will society, what will Mrs. Grundy in general say to such +atrocious behaviour?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! Pen,” says my wife, closing my mouth in a way which I do not +choose further to particularise; “that man is the best, the dearest, the +kindest creature. I never knew such a good man; you ought to put him into a +book. Do you know, sir, that I felt the very greatest desire to give him a kiss +when he went away; and that one which you had just now, was intended for him. +</p> + +<p> +“Take back thy gift, false girl!” says Mr Pendennis; and then, +finally, we come to the particular circumstance which had occasioned so much +enthusiasm on Mrs. Laura’s part. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Newcome had summoned heart of grace, and in Clive’s behalf had +regularly proposed him to Barnes, as a suitor to Ethel, taking an artful +advantage of his nephew Barnes Newcome, and inviting that Barnes to a private +meeting, where they were to talk about the affairs of the Bundelcund Banking +Company. +</p> + +<p> +Now this Bundelcund Banking Company, in the Colonel’s eyes, was in +reality his son Clive. But for Clive there might have been a hundred banking +companies established, yielding a hundred per cent, in as many districts of +India, and Thomas Newcome, who had plenty of money for his own wants, would +never have thought of speculation. His desire was to see his boy endowed with +all the possible gifts of fortune. Had he built a palace for Clive, and been +informed that a roc’s egg was required to complete the decoration of the +edifice, Tom Newcome would have travelled to the world’s end in search of +the wanting article. To see Prince Clive ride in a gold coach with a princess +beside him, was the kind old Colonel’s ambition; that done, he would be +content to retire to a garret in the prince’s castle, and smoke his +cheroot there in peace. So the world is made. The strong and eager covet honour +and enjoyment for themselves; the gentle and disappointed (once, they may have +been strong and eager, too) desire these gifts for their children. I think +Clive’s father never liked or understood the lad’s choice of a +profession. He acquiesced in it as he would in any of his son’s wishes. +But, not being a poet himself, he could not see the nobility of that calling; +and felt secretly that his son was demeaning himself by pursuing the art of +painting. “Had he been a soldier, now,” thought Thomas Newcome, +“(though I prevented that) had he been richer than he is, he might have +married Ethel, instead of being unhappy as he now is, God help him! I remember +my own time of grief well enough: and what years it took before my wound was +scarred over.” +</p> + +<p> +So with these things occupying his brain Thomas Newcome artfully invited +Barnes, his nephew, to dinner under pretence of talking of the affairs of the +great B. B. C. With the first glass of wine at dessert, and according to the +Colonel’s good old-fashioned custom of proposing toasts, they drank the +health of the B. B. C. Barnes drank the toast with all his generous heart. The +B. B. C. sent to Hobson Brothers and Newcome a great deal of business, was in a +most prosperous condition, kept a great balance at the bank, a balance that +would not be overdrawn, as Sir Barnes Newcome very well knew. Barnes was for +having more of these bills, provided there were remittances to meet the same. +Barnes was ready to do any amount of business with the Indian bank, or with any +bank, or with any individual, Christian or heathen, white or black, who could +do good to the firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome. He spoke upon this subject +with great archness and candour: of course as a City man he would be glad to do +a profitable business anywhere, and the B. B. C.’s business was +profitable. But the interested motive which he admitted frankly as a man of the +world, did not prevent other sentiments more agreeable. “My dear +Colonel,” says Barnes, “I am happy, most happy, to think that our +house and our name should have been useful, as I know they have been, in the +establishment of a concern in which one of our family is interested; one whom +we all so sincerely respect and regard.” And he touched his glass with +his lips and blushed a little, as he bowed towards his uncle. He found himself +making a little speech, indeed; and to do so before one single person seems +rather odd. Had there been a large company present Barnes would not have +blushed at all, but have tossed off his glass, struck his waistcoat possibly, +and looked straight in the face of his uncle as the chairman; well, he +<i>did</i> very likely believe that he respected and regarded the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel said—“Thank you, Barnes, with all my heart. It is +always good for men to be friends, much more for blood relations, as we +are.” +</p> + +<p> +“A relationship which honours me, I’m sure!” says Barnes, +with a tone of infinite affability. You see, he believed that Heaven had made +him the Colonel’s superior. +</p> + +<p> +“And I am very glad,” the elder went on, “that you and my boy +are good friends.” +</p> + +<p> +“Friends! of course. It would be unnatural if such near relatives were +otherwise than good friends.” +</p> + +<p> +“You have been hospitable to him, and Lady Clara very kind, and he wrote +to me telling me of your kindness. Ahem! this is tolerable claret. I wonder +where Clive gets it?” +</p> + +<p> +“You were speaking about that indigo, Colonel!” here Barnes +interposes. “Our house has done very little in that way, to be sure but I +suppose that our credit is <i>about</i> as good as Baines and Jolly’s, +and if——” but the Colonel is in a brown study. +</p> + +<p> +“Clive will have a good bit of money when I die,” resumes +Clive’s father. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you are a hale man—upon my word, quite a young man, and may +marry again, Colonel,” replies the nephew fascinatingly. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall never do that,” replies the other. “Ere many years +are gone, I shall be seventy years old, Barnes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing in this country, my dear sir! positively nothing. Why, there was +Titus, my neighbour in the country—when will you come down to +Newcome?—who married a devilish pretty girl, of very good family, too, +Miss Burgeon, one of the Devonshire Burgeons. He looks, I am sure, twenty years +older than you do. Why should not you do likewise?” +</p> + +<p> +“Because I like to remain single, and want to leave Clive a rich man. +Look here, Barnes, you know the value of our bank shares, now?” +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed I do; rather speculative; but of course I know what some sold for +last week,” says Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +“Suppose I realise now. I think I am worth six lakhs. I had nearly two +from my poor father. I saved some before and since I invested in this affair; +and could sell out to-morrow with sixty thousand pounds.” +</p> + +<p> +“A very pretty sum of money, Colonel,” says Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +“I have a pension of a thousand a year.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Colonel, you are a capitalist! we know it very well,” +remarks Sir Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +“And two hundred a year is as much as I want for myself,” continues +the capitalist, looking into the fire, and jingling his money in his pockets. +“A hundred a year for a horse; a hundred a year for pocket-money, for I +calculate, you know, that Clive will give me a bedroom and my dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +“He! he! If your son won’t, your nephew will, my dear +Colonel!” says the affable Barnes, smiling sweetly. +</p> + +<p> +“I can give the boy a handsome allowance, you see,” resumes Thomas +Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +“You can make him a handsome allowance now, and leave him a good fortune +when you die!” says the nephew, in a noble and courageous +manner,—and as if he said Twelve times twelve are a hundred and +forty-four and you have Sir Barnes Newcome’s authority—Sir Barnes +Newcome’s, mind you—to say so. +</p> + +<p> +“Not when I die, Barnes,” the uncle goes on. “I will give him +every shilling I am worth to-morrow morning, if he marries as I wish +him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tant mieux pour lui!” cries the nephew; and thought to himself, +“Lady Clara must ask Clive to dinner instantly. Confound the fellow. I +hate him—always have; but what luck he has!” +</p> + +<p> +“A man with that property may pretend to a good wife, as the French say; +hey Barnes?” asks the Colonel, rather eagerly looking up in his +nephew’s face. +</p> + +<p> +That countenance was lighted up with a generous enthusiasm. “To any +woman, in any rank—to a nobleman’s daughter, my dear sir!” +exclaims Sir Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +“I want your sister; I want dear Ethel for him, Barnes,” cries +Thomas Newcome, with a trembling voice, and a twinkle in his eyes. “That +was the hope I always had till my talk with your poor father stopped it. Your +sister was engaged to my Lord Kew then; and my wishes of course were +impossible. The poor boy is very much cut up, and his whole heart is bent upon +possessing her. She is not, she can’t be, indifferent to him. I am sure +she would not be, if her family in the least encouraged him. Can either of +these young folks have a better chance of happiness again offered to them in +life? There’s youth, there’s mutual liking, there’s wealth +for them almost—only saddled with the encumbrance of an old dragoon, who +won’t be much in their way. Give us your good word, Barnes, and let them +come together; and upon my word the rest of my days will be made happy if I can +eat my meal at their table.” +</p> + +<p> +Whilst the poor Colonel was making his appeal, Barnes had time to collect his +answer; which, since in our character of historians we take leave to explain +gentlemen’s motives as well as record their speeches and actions, we may +thus interpret. “Confound the young beggar!” thinks Barnes, then. +“He will have three or four thousand a year, will he? Hang him, but +it’s a good sum of money. What a fool his father is to give it away! Is +he joking? No, he was always half crazy—the Colonel. Highgate seemed +uncommonly sweet on her, and was always hanging about our house. Farintosh has +not been brought to book yet; and perhaps neither of them will propose for her. +My grandmother, I should think, won’t hear of her making a low marriage, +as this certainly is: but it’s a pity to throw away four thousand a year, +ain’t it?” All these natural calculations passed briskly through +Barnes Newcome’s mind, as his uncle, from the opposite side of the +fireplace, implored him in the above little speech. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Colonel,” said Barnes, “my dear, kind Colonel! I +needn’t tell you that your proposal flatters us, as much as your +extraordinary generosity surprises me. I never heard anything like +it—never. Could I consult my own wishes I would at once—I would, +permit me to say, from sheer admiration of your noble character, say yes, with +all my heart, to your proposal. But, alas, I haven’t that power.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is—is she engaged?” asks the Colonel, looking as blank and +sad as Clive himself when Ethel had conversed with him. +</p> + +<p> +“No—I cannot say engaged—though a person of the very highest +rank has paid her the most marked attention. But my sister has, in a way, gone +from our family, and from my influence as the head of it—an influence +which I, I am sure, had most gladly exercised in your favour. My grandmother, +Lady Kew, has adopted her; purposes, I believe, to leave Ethel the greater part +of her fortune, upon certain conditions; and, of course, expects the—the +obedience, and so forth, which is customary in such cases. By the way, Colonel, +is our young soupirant aware that papa is pleading his cause for him?” +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel said no; and Barnes lauded the caution which his uncle had +displayed. It was quite as well for the young man’s interests (which Sir +Barnes had most tenderly at heart) that Clive Newcome should not himself move +in the affair, or present himself to Lady Kew. Barnes would take the matter in +hand at the proper season; the Colonel might be sure it would be most eagerly, +most ardently pressed. Clive came home at this juncture, whom Barnes saluted +affectionately. He and the Colonel had talked over their money business; their +conversation had been most satisfactory, thank you. “Has it not, +Colonel?” The three parted the very best of friends. +</p> + +<p> +As Barnes Newcome professed that extreme interest for his cousin and uncle, it +is odd he did not tell them that Lady Kew and Miss Ethel Newcome were at that +moment within a mile of them, at her ladyship’s house in Queen Street, +Mayfair. In the hearing of Clive’s servant, Barnes did not order his +brougham to drive to Queen Street, but waited until he was in Bond Street +before he gave the order. +</p> + +<p> +And, of course, when he entered Lady Kew’s house, he straightway asked +for his sister, and communicated to her the generous offer which the good +Colonel had made. +</p> + +<p> +You see, Lady Kew was in town, and not in town. Her ladyship was but passing +through, on her way from a tour of visits in the North, to another tour of +visits somewhere else. The newspapers were not even off the blinds. The +proprietor of the house cowered over a bed-candle and a furtive teapot in the +back drawing-room. Lady Kew’s <i>gens</i> were not here. The tall canary ones +with white polls, only showed their plumage and sang in spring. The solitary +wretch who takes charge of London houses, and the two servants specially +affected to Lady Kew’s person, were the only people in attendance. In +fact, her ladyship was not in town. And that is why, no doubt, Barnes Newcome +said nothing about her being there. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0052"></a> +CHAPTER LII.<br> +Family Secrets</h2> + +<p> +The figure cowering over the furtive teapot glowered grimly at Barnes as he +entered; and an old voice said—“Ho, it’s you!” +</p> + +<p> +“I have brought you the notes, ma’am,” says Barnes, taking a +packet of those documents from his pocket-book. “I could not come sooner, +I have been engaged upon bank business until now.” +</p> + +<p> +“I dare say! You smell of smoke like a courier.” +</p> + +<p> +“A foreign capitalist: he would smoke. They will, ma’am. <i>I</i> +didn’t smoke, upon my word.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see why you shouldn’t, if you like it. You will +never get anything out of me whether you do or don’t. How is Clara? Is +she gone to the country with the children? Newcome is the best place for +her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Doctor Bambury thinks she can move in a fortnight. The boy has had a +little——” +</p> + +<p> +“A little fiddlestick! I tell you it is she who likes to stay, and makes +that fool, Bambury, advise her not going away. I tell you to send her to +Newcome. The air is good for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“By that confounded smoky town, my dear Lady Kew?” +</p> + +<p> +“And invite your mother and little brothers and sisters to stay Christmas +there. The way in which you neglect them is shameful, it is, Barnes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Upon my word, ma’am, I propose to manage my own affairs without +your ladyship’s assistance,” cries Barnes, starting up, “and +did not come at this time of night to hear this kind of——” +</p> + +<p> +“Of good advice. I sent for you to give it you. When I wrote to you to +bring me the money I wanted it was but a pretext; Barkins might have fetched it +from the City in the morning. I want you to send Clara and the children to +Newcome. They ought to go, sir. That is why I sent for you; to tell you that. +Have you been quarrelling as much as usual?” +</p> + +<p> +“Pretty much as usual,” says Barnes, drumming on his hat. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t beat that devil’s tattoo; you agacez my poor old +nerves. When Clara was given to you she was as well broke a girl as any in +London.” +</p> + +<p> +Sir Barnes responded by a groan. +</p> + +<p> +“She was as gentle and amenable to reason, as good-natured a girl as +could be; a little vacant and silly, but you men like dolls for your wives; and +now in three years you have utterly spoiled her. She is restive, she is artful, +she flies into rages, she fights you and beats you. He! he! and that comes of +your beating her!” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t come to hear this, ma’am,” says Barnes, livid +with rage +</p> + +<p> +“You struck her, you know you did, Sir Barnes Newcome. She rushed over to +me last year on the night you did it, you know she did.” +</p> + +<p> +“Great God, ma’am! You know the provocation,” screams Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +“Provocation or not, I don’t say. But from that moment she has beat +you. You fool, to write her a letter and ask her pardon. If I had been a man I +would rather have strangled my wife, than have humiliated myself so before her. +She will never forgive that blow.” +</p> + +<p> +“I was mad when I did it; and she drove me mad,” says Barnes. +“She has the temper of a fiend, and the ingenuity of the devil. In two +years an entire change has come over her. If I had used a knife to her I should +not have been surprised. But it is not with you to reproach me about Clara. +Your ladyship found her for me.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you spoilt her after she was found, sir. She told me part of her +story that night she came to me. I know it is true, Barnes. You have treated +her dreadfully, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know that she makes my life miserable, and there is no help for +it,” says Barnes, grinding a curse between his teeth. “Well, well, +no more about this. How is Ethel? Gone to sleep after her journey? What do you +think, ma’am, I have brought for her? A proposal.” +</p> + +<p> +“Bon Dieu! You don’t mean to say Charles Belsize was in +earnest!” cries the dowager. “I always thought it was +a——” +</p> + +<p> +“It is not from Lord Highgate, ma’am,” Sir Barnes said, +gloomily. “It is some time since I have known that he was not in earnest; +and he knows that I am now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gracious goodness! come to blows with him, too? You have not? That would +be the very thing to make the world talk,” says the dowager, with some +anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +“No,” answers Barnes. “He knows well enough that there can be +no open rupture. We had some words the other day at a dinner he gave at his own +house; Colonel Newcome and that young beggar, Clive, and that fool, Mr. Hobson, +were there. Lord Highgate was confoundedly insolent. He told me that I did not +dare to quarrel with him because of the account he kept at our house. I should +like to have massacred him! She has told him that I struck her,—the +insolent brute—he says he will tell it at my clubs; and threatens +personal violence to me, there, if I do it again. Lady Kew, I’m not safe +from that man and that woman,” cries poor Barnes, in an agony of terror. +</p> + +<p> +“Fighting is Jack Belsize’s business, Barnes Newcome; banking is +yours, luckily,” said the dowager. “As old Lord Highgate was to die +and his eldest son, too, it is a pity certainly they had not died a year or two +earlier, and left poor Clara and Charles to come together. You should have +married some woman in the serious way; my daughter Walham could have found you +one. Frank, I am told, and his wife go on very sweetly together; her +mother-in-law governs the whole family. They have turned the theatre back into +a chapel again: they have six little ploughboys dressed in surplices to sing +the service; and Frank and the Vicar of Kewbury play at cricket with them on +holidays. Stay, why should not Clara go to Kewbury?” +</p> + +<p> +“She and her sister have quarrelled about this very affair with Lord +Highgate. Some time ago it appears they had words about it and when I told Kew +that bygones had best be bygones, that Highgate was very sweet upon Ethel now, +and that I did not choose to lose such a good account as his, Kew was very +insolent to me; his conduct was blackguardly, ma’am, quite blackguardly, +and you may be sure but for our relationship I would have called him +to——” +</p> + +<p> +Here the talk between Barnes and his ancestress was interrupted by the +appearance of Miss Ethel Newcome, taper in hand, who descended from the upper +regions enveloped in a shawl. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, Barnes? How is Clara? I long to see my little nephew. Is +he like his pretty papa?” cries the young lady, giving her fair cheek to +her brother. +</p> + +<p> +“Scotland has agreed with our Newcome rose,” says Barnes, +gallantly. “My dear Ethel, I never saw you in greater beauty.” +</p> + +<p> +“By the light of one bedroom candle! what should I be if the whole room +were lighted? You would see my face then was covered all over with wrinkles, +and quite pale and woebegone, with the dreariness of the Scotch journey. Oh, +what a time we have spent! haven’t we, grandmamma? I never wish to go to +a great castle again; above all, I never wish to go to a little shooting-box. +Scotland may be very well for men; but for women—allow me to go to Paris +when next there is talk of a Scotch expedition. I had rather be in a +boarding-school in the Champs Elysées than in the finest castle in the +Highlands. If it had not been for a blessed quarrel with Fanny Follington, I +think I should have died at Glen Shorthorn. Have you seen my dear, dear uncle, +the Colonel? When did he arrive?” +</p> + +<p> +“Is he come? Why is he come?” asks Lady Kew. +</p> + +<p> +“Is he come? Look here, grandmamma! did you ever see such a darling +shawl! I found it in a packet in my room.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it is beautiful,” cries the Dowager, bending her ancient +nose over the web. “Your Colonel is a galant homme. That must be said of +him; and in this does not quite take after the rest of the family. Hum! hum! is +he going away again soon?” +</p> + +<p> +“He has made a fortune, a very considerable fortune for a man in that +rank in life,” says Sir Barnes. “He cannot have less than sixty +thousand pounds.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is that much?” asks Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +“Not in England, at our rate of interest; but his money is in India, +where he gets a great percentage. His income must be five or six thousand +pounds, ma’am,” says Barnes, turning to Lady Kew. +</p> + +<p> +“A few of the Indians were in society in my time, my dear,” says +Lady Kew, musingly. “My father has often talked to me about Barbell of +Stanstead, and his house in St. James’s Square; the man who ordered more +curricles when there were not carriages enough for his guests. I was taken to +Mr. Hastings’s trial. It was very stupid and long. The young man, the +painter, I suppose will leave his paint-pots now, and set up as a gentleman. I +suppose they were very poor, or his father would not have put him to such a +profession. Barnes, why did you not make him a clerk in the bank, and save him +from the humiliation?” +</p> + +<p> +“Humiliation! why, he is proud of it. My uncle is as proud as a +Plantagenet; though he is as humble as—as what! Give me a simile Barnes. +Do you know what my quarrel with Fanny Follington was about? She said we were +not descended from the barber-surgeon, and laughed at the Battle of Bosworth. +She says our great-grandfather was a weaver. Was he a weaver?” +</p> + +<p> +“How should I know? and what on earth does it matter, my child? Except +the Gaunts, the Howards, and one or two more, there is scarcely any good blood +in England. You are lucky in sharing some of mine. My poor Lord Kew’s +grandfather was an apothecary at Hampton Court, and founded the family by +giving a dose of rhubarb to Queen Caroline. As a rule, nobody is of a good +family. Didn’t that young man, that son of the Colonel’s, go about +last year? How did he get in society? Where did we meet him? Oh! at Baden, yes; +when Barnes was courting, and my grandson—yes, my grandson, acted so +wickedly.” Here she began to cough, and to tremble so, that her old stick +shook under her hand. “Ring the bell for Ross. Ross, I will go to bed. Go +you too, Ethel. You have been travelling enough to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +“Her memory seems to fail her a little,” Ethel whispered to her +brother; “or she will only remember what she wishes. Don’t you see +that she has grown very much older?” +</p> + +<p> +“I will be with her in the morning. I have business with her,” said +Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +“Good night. Give my love to Clara, and kiss the little ones for me. Have +you done what you promised me, Barnes?” +</p> + +<p> +“What?” +</p> + +<p> +“To be—to be kind to Clara. Don’t say cruel things to her. +She has a high spirit, and she feels them, though she says nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Doesn’t</i> she?” said Barnes, grimly. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, Barnes, be gentle with her. Seldom as I saw you together, when I +lived with you in the spring, I could see that you were harsh, though she +affected to laugh when she spoke of your conduct to her. Be kind. I am sure it +is the best, Barnes; better than all the wit in the world. Look at grandmamma, +how witty she was and is; what a reputation she had, how people were afraid of +her; and see her now—quite alone.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll see her in the morning quite alone, my dear,” says +Barnes, waving a little gloved hand. “Bye-bye!” and his brougham +drove away. While Ethel Newcome had been under her brother’s roof, where +I and friend Clive, and scores of others, had been smartly entertained, there +had been quarrels and recriminations, misery and heart-burning, cruel words and +shameful struggles, the wretched combatants in which appeared before the world +with smiling faces, resuming their battle when the feast was concluded and the +company gone. +</p> + +<p> +On the next morning, when Barnes came to visit his grandmother, Miss Newcome +was gone away to see her sister-in-law, Lady Kew said, with whom she was going +to pass the morning; so Barnes and Lady Kew had an uninterrupted +<i>tête-à-tête</i>, in which the former acquainted the old lady with the +proposal which Colonel Newcome had made to him on the previous night. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Kew wondered what the impudence of the world’s would come to. An +artist propose for Ethel! One of her footmen might propose next, and she +supposed Barnes would bring the message. “The father came and proposed +for this young painter, and you didn’t order him out of the room!” +</p> + +<p> +Barnes laughed. “The Colonel is one of my constituents. I can’t +afford to order the Bundelcund Banking Company out of its own room.” +</p> + +<p> +“You did not tell Ethel this pretty news, I suppose?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course I didn’t tell Ethel. Nor did I tell the Colonel that +Ethel was in London. He fancies her in Scotland with your ladyship at this +moment.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish the Colonel were at Calcutta, and his son with him. I wish he was +in the Ganges, I wish he was under Juggernaut’s car,” cried the old +lady. “How much money has the wretch really got? If he is of importance +to the bank, of course you must keep well with him. Five thousand a year, and +he says he will settle it all on his son? He must be crazy. There is nothing +some of these people will not do, no sacrifice they will not make, to ally +themselves with good families. Certainly you must remain on good terms with him +and his bank. And we must say nothing of the business to Ethel, and trot out of +town as quickly as we can. Let me see? We go to Drummington on Saturday. This +is Tuesday. Barkins, you will keep the front drawing-room shutters shut, and +remember we are not in town, unless Lady Glenlivat or Lord Farintosh should +call.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think Farintosh will—will call, ma’am?” asked +Sir Barnes demurely. +</p> + +<p> +“He will be going through to Newmarket. He has been where we have been at +two or three places in Scotland,” replies the lady, with equal gravity. +“His poor mother wishes him to give up his bachelor’s life—as +well she may—for you young men are terribly dissipated. Rossmont is quite +a regal place. His Norfolk house is not inferior. A young man of that station +ought to marry, and live at his places, and be an example to his people, +instead of frittering away his time at Paris and Vienna amongst the most odious +company.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is he going to Drummington?” asks the grandson. +</p> + +<p> +“I believe he has been invited. We shall go to Paris for November: he +probably will be there,” answered the Dowager casually; “and tired +of the dissipated life he has been leading, let us hope he will mend his ways, +and find a virtuous, well-bred young woman to keep him right.” With this +her ladyship’s apothecary is announced, and her banker and grandson takes +his leave. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Barnes walked into the City with his umbrella, read his letters, conferred +with his partners and confidential clerks; was for a while not the exasperated +husband, or the affectionate brother, or the amiable grandson, but the shrewd, +brisk banker, engaged entirely with his business. Presently he had occasion to +go on ’Change, or elsewhere, to confer with brother-capitalists, and in +Cornhill behold he meets his uncle, Colonel Newcome, riding towards the India +House, a groom behind him. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel springs off his horse, and Barnes greets him in the blandest +manner. “Have you any news for me, Barnes?” cries the officer. +</p> + +<p> +“The accounts from Calcutta are remarkably good. That cotton is of +admirable quality really. Mr. Briggs, of our house, who knows cotton as well as +any man in England, says——” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s not the cotton, my dear Sir Barnes,” cries the other. +</p> + +<p> +“The bills are perfectly good; there is no sort of difficulty about them. +Our house will take half a million of ’em, if——” +</p> + +<p> +“You are talking of bills, and I am thinking of poor Clive,” the +Colonel interposes. “I wish you could give me good news for him, +Barnes.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I could. I heartily trust that I may some day. My good wishes you +know are enlisted in your son’s behalf,” cries Barnes, gallantly. +“Droll place to talk sentiment in—Cornhill, isn’t it? But +Ethel, as I told you, is in the hands of higher powers, and we must conciliate +Lady Kew if we can. She has always spoken very highly of Clive; very.” +</p> + +<p> +“Had I not best go to her?” asks the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“Into the North, my good sir? She is—ah—she is travelling +about. I think you had best depend upon me, Good morning. In the City we have +no hearts, you know, Colonel. Be sure you shall hear from me as soon as Lady +Kew and Ethel come to town.” +</p> + +<p> +And the banker hurried away, shaking his finger-tips to his uncle, and leaving +the good Colonel utterly surprised at his statements. For the fact is, the +Colonel knew that Lady Kew was in London, having been apprised of the +circumstance in the simplest manner in the world, namely, by a note from Miss +Ethel, which billet he had in his pocket, whilst he was talking with the head +of the house of Hobson Brothers:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“My dear Uncle” (the note said), “how glad I shall be to see +you! How shall I thank you for the beautiful shawl, and the kind, kind +remembrance of me? I found your present yesterday evening, on our arrival from +the North. We are only here <i>en passant</i>, and see <i>nobody</i> in Queen +Street but Barnes, who has just been about business, and he does not count, you +know. I shall go and see Clara to-morrow, and make her take me to see your +pretty friend, Mrs. Pendennis. How glad I should be if you <i>happened</i> to +pay Mrs. P. a visit <i>about two!</i> Good-night. I thank you a thousand times, +and am always your affectionate E.” +</p> + +<p> +“Q<small>UEEN</small> S<small>TREET</small>. Tuesday night. <i>Twelve +o’clock</i>.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +This note came to Colonel Newcome’s breakfast-table, and he smothered the +exclamation of wonder which was rising to his lips, not choosing to provoke the +questions of Clive, who sate opposite to him. Clive’s father was in a +woeful perplexity all that forenoon. “Tuesday night, twelve +o’clock,” thought he. “Why, Barnes must have gone to his +grandmother from my dinner-table; and he told me she was out of town, and said +so again just now when we met in the City.” (The Colonel was riding +towards Richmond at this time.) “What cause had the young man to tell me +these lies? Lady Kew may not wish to be at home for me, but need Barnes Newcome +say what is untrue to mislead me? The fellow actually went away simpering, and +kissing his hand to me, with a falsehood on his lips! What a pretty villain! A +fellow would deserve, and has got, a horse-whipping for less. And to think of a +Newcome doing this to his own flesh and blood; a young Judas!” Very sad +and bewildered, the Colonel rode towards Richmond, where he was to happen to +call on Mrs. Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +It was not much of a fib that Barnes had told. Lady Kew announcing that she was +out of town, her grandson, no doubt, thought himself justified in saying so, as +any other of her servants would have done. But if he had recollected how Ethel +came down with the Colonel’s shawl on her shoulders, how it was possible +she might have written to thank her uncle, surely Barnes Newcome would not have +pulled that unlucky long-bow. The banker had other things to think of than +Ethel and her shawl. +</p> + +<p> +When Thomas Newcome dismounted at the door of Honeymoon Cottage, Richmond, the +temporary residence of A. Pendennis, Esq., one of the handsomest young women in +England ran into the passage with outstretched arms, called him her dear old +uncle, and gave him two kisses, that I dare say brought blushes on his lean +sunburnt cheeks. Ethel clung always to his affection. She wanted that man, +rather than any other in the whole world, to think well of her. When she was +with him, she was the amiable and simple, the loving impetuous creature of old +times. She chose to think of no other. Worldliness, heartlessness, eager +scheming, cold flirtations, marquis-hunting and the like, disappeared for a +while—and were not, as she sate at that honest man’s side. O me! +that we should have to record such charges against Ethel Newcome! +</p> + +<p> +“He was come home for good now? He would never leave that boy he spoiled +so, who was a good boy, too: she wished she could see him oftener. At Paris, at +Madame de Florac’s—I found out all about Madame de Florac, +sir,” says Miss Ethel, with a laugh—“we used often to meet +there; and here, sometimes, in London. But in London it was different. You know +what peculiar notions some people have; and as I live with grandmamma, who is +most kind to me and my brothers, of course I must obey her, see her,” +etc. etc. That the young lady went on talking, defending herself, whom nobody +attacked, protesting her dislike to gaiety and dissipation—you would have +fancied her an artless young country lass, only longing to trip back to her +village, milk her cows at sunrise, and sit spinning of winter evenings by the +fire. +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you come and spoil my <i>tête-à-tête</i> with my uncle, Mr. +Pendennis?” cries the young lady to the master of the house, who happens +to enter “Of all the men in the world the one I like best to talk to! +Does he not look younger than when he went to India? When Clive marries that +pretty little Miss Mackenzie, you will marry again, uncle, and I will be +jealous of your wife.” +</p> + +<p> +“Did Barnes tell you that we had met last night, my dear?” asks the +Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“Not one word. Your shawl and your dear kind note told me you were come. +Why did not Barnes tell us? Why do you look so grave?” +</p> + +<p> +“He has not told her that I was here, and would have me believe her +absent,” thought Newcome, as his countenance fell. “Shall I give +her my own message, and plead my poor boy’s cause with her?” I know +not whether he was about to lay his suit before her; he said himself +subsequently that his mind was not made up; but at this juncture, a procession +of nurses and babies made their appearance, followed by the two mothers, who +had been comparing their mutual prodigies (each lady having her own private +opinion)—Lady Clara and my wife—the latter for once gracious to +Lady Clara Newcome, in consideration of the infantine company with which she +came to visit Mrs. Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +Luncheon was served presently. The carriage of the Newcomes drove away, my wife +smilingly pardoning Ethel for the assignation which the young person had made +at our house. And when those ladies were gone, our good Colonel held a council +of war with us his two friends, and told us what had happened between him and +Barnes on that morning and the previous night. His offer to sacrifice every +shilling of his fortune to young Clive seemed to him to be perfectly simple +(though the recital of the circumstance brought tears into my wife’s +eyes)—he mentioned it by the way, and as a matter that was scarcely to +call for comment, much less praise. +</p> + +<p> +Barnes’s extraordinary statements respecting Lady Kew’s absence +puzzled the elder Newcome; and he spoke of his nephew’s conduct with much +indignation. In vain I urged that her ladyship desiring to be considered absent +from London, her grandson was bound to keep her secret. “Keep her secret, +yes! Tell me lies, no!” cries out the Colonel. Sir Barnes’s conduct +was in fact indefensible, though not altogether unusual—the worst +deduction to be drawn from it, in my opinion, was, that Clive’s chance +with the young lady was but a poor one, and that Sir Barnes Newcome, inclined +to keep his uncle in good-humour, would therefore give him no disagreeable +refusal. +</p> + +<p> +Now this gentleman could no more pardon a lie than he could utter one. He would +believe all and everything a man told him until deceived once, after which he +never forgave. And wrath being once roused in his simple mind and distrust +firmly fixed there, his anger and prejudices gathered daily. He could see no +single good quality in his opponent; and hated him with a daily increasing +bitterness. +</p> + +<p> +As ill luck would have it, that very same evening, at his return to town, +Thomas Newcome entered Bays’s club, of which, at our request, he had +become a member during his last visit to England, and there was Sir Barnes, as +usual, on his way homewards from the City. Barnes was writing at a table, and +sealing and closing a letter, as he saw the Colonel enter; he thought he had +been a little inattentive and curt with his uncle in the morning; had remarked, +perhaps, the expression of disapproval on the Colonel’s countenance. He +simpered up to his uncle as the latter entered the clubroom, and apologised for +his haste when they met in the City in the morning—all City men were so +busy! “And I have been writing about that little affair, just as you came +in,” he said; “quite a moving letter to Lady Kew, I assure you, and +I do hope and trust we shall have a favourable answer in a day or two.” +</p> + +<p> +“You said her ladyship was in the North, I think?” said the +Colonel, drily. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes—in the North, at—at Lord +Wallsend’s—great coal-proprietor, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“And your sister is with her?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ethel is always with her.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you will send her my very best remembrances,” said the +Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll open the letter, and add ’em in a postscript,” +said Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +“Confounded liar?” cried the Colonel, mentioning the circumstance +to me afterwards, “why does not somebody pitch him out of the +bow-window?” +</p> + +<p> +If we were in the secret of Sir Barnes Newcome’s correspondence, and +could but peep into that particular letter to his grandmother, I dare say we +should read that he had seen the Colonel, who was very anxious about his +darling youth’s suit, but, pursuant to Lady Kew’s desire, Barnes +had stoutly maintained that her ladyship was still in the North, enjoying the +genial hospitality of Lord Wallsend. That of course he should say nothing to +Ethel, except with Lady Kew’s full permission: that he wished her a +pleasant trip to ——, and was, etc. etc. +</p> + +<p> +Then if we could follow him, we might see him reach his Belgravian mansion, and +fling an angry word to his wife as she sits alone in the darkling drawing-room, +poring over the embers. He will ask her, probably with an oath, why the +—— she is not dressed? and if she always intends to keep her +company waiting? An hour hence, each with a smirk, and the lady in smart +raiment, with flowers in her hair, will be greeting their guests as they +arrive. Then will come dinner and such conversation as it brings. Then at night +Sir Barnes will issue forth, cigar in mouth; to return to his own chamber at +his own hour; to breakfast by himself; to go Citywards, money-getting. He will +see his children once a fortnight, and exchange a dozen sharp words with his +wife twice in that time. +</p> + +<p> +More and more sad does the Lady Clara become from day to day; liking more to +sit lonely over the fire; careless about the sarcasms of her husband; the +prattle of her children. She cries sometimes over the cradle of the young heir. +She is aweary, aweary. You understand, the man to whom her parents sold her +does not make her happy, though she has been bought with diamonds, two +carriages, several large footmen, a fine country-house with delightful gardens, +and conservatories, and with all this she is miserable—is it possible? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0053"></a> +CHAPTER LIII.<br> +In which Kinsmen fall out</h2> + +<p> +Not the least difficult part of Thomas Newcome’s present business was to +keep from his son all knowledge of the negotiation in which he was engaged on +Clive’s behalf. If my gentle reader has had sentimental disappointments, +he or she is aware that the friends who have given him most sympathy under +these calamities have been persons who have had dismal histories of their own +at some time of their lives, and I conclude Colonel Newcome in his early days +must have suffered very cruelly in that affair of which we have a slight +cognisance, or he would not have felt so very much anxiety about Clive’s +condition. +</p> + +<p> +A few chapters back and we described the first attack, and Clive’s manful +cure: then we had to indicate the young gentleman’s relapse, and the +noisy exclamations of the youth under this second outbreak of fever. Calling +him back after she had dismissed him, and finding pretext after pretext to see +him,—why did the girl encourage him, as she certainly did? I allow, with +Mrs. Grundy and most moralists, that Miss Newcome’s conduct in this +matter was highly reprehensible; that if she did not intend to marry Clive she +should have broken with him—altogether; that a virtuous young woman of +high principle, etc. etc., having once determined to reject a suitor, should +separate from him utterly then and there—never give him again the least +chance of a hope, or reillume the extinguished fire in the wretch’s +bosom. +</p> + +<p> +But coquetry, but kindness, but family affection, and a strong, very strong +partiality for the rejected lover—are these not to be taken in account, +and to plead as excuses for her behaviour to her cousin? The least unworthy +part of her conduct, some critics will say, was that desire to see Clive and be +well with him: as she felt the greatest regard for him, the showing it was not +blameable; and every flutter which she made to escape out of the meshes which +the world had cast about her was but the natural effort at liberty. It was her +prudence which was wrong; and her submission wherein she was most culpable. In +the early church story, do we not read how young martyrs constantly had to +disobey worldly papas and mammas, who would have had them silent, and not utter +their dangerous opinions? how their parents locked them up, kept them on +bread-and-water, whipped and tortured them in order to enforce +obedience?—nevertheless they would declare the truth: they would defy the +gods by law established, and deliver themselves up to the lions or the +tormentors. Are not there Heathen Idols enshrined among us still? Does not the +world worship them, and persecute those who refuse to kneel? Do not many timid +souls sacrifice to them; and other bolder spirits rebel and, with rage at their +hearts, bend down their stubborn knees at their altars? See! I began by siding +with Mrs. Grundy and the world, and at the next turn of the see-saw have +lighted down on Ethel’s side, and am disposed to think that the very best +part of her conduct has been those escapades which—which right-minded +persons most justly condemn. At least, that a young beauty should torture a man +with alternate liking and indifference; allure, dismiss, and call him back out +of banishment; practise arts to please upon him, and ignore them when rebuked +for her coquetry—these are surely occurrences so common in young +women’s history as to call for no special censure; and if on these +charges Miss Newcome is guilty, is she, of all her sex, alone in her +criminality? +</p> + +<p> +So Ethel and her duenna went away upon their tour of visits to mansions so +splendid, and among hosts and guests so polite, that the present modest +historian does not dare to follow them. Suffice it to say that Duke This and +Earl That were, according to their hospitable custom, entertaining a brilliant +circle of friends at their respective castles, all whose names the <i>Morning +Post</i> gave; and among them those of the Dowager Countess of Kew and Miss +Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +During her absence, Thomas Newcome grimly awaited the result of his application +to Barnes. That Baronet showed his uncle a letter, or rather a postscript, from +Lady Kew, which probably had been dictated by Barnes himself, in which the +Dowager said she was greatly touched by Colonel Newcome’s noble offer; +that though she owned she had very different views for her granddaughter, Miss +Newcome’s choice of course lay with herself. Meanwhile, Lady K. and Ethel +were engaged in a round of visits to the country, and there would be plenty of +time to resume this subject when they came to London for the season. And, lest +dear Ethel’s feelings should be needlessly agitated by a discussion of +the subject, and the Colonel should take a fancy to write to her privately, +Lady Kew gave orders that all letters from London should be despatched under +cover to her ladyship, and carefully examined the contents of the packet before +Ethel received her share of the correspondence. +</p> + +<p> +To write to her personally on the subject of the marriage, Thomas Newcome had +determined was not a proper course for him to pursue. “They consider +themselves,” says he, “above us, forsooth, in their rank of life +(oh, mercy! what pigmies we are! and don’t angels weep at the brief +authority in which we dress ourselves up!) and of course the approaches on our +side must be made in regular form, and the parents of the young people must act +for them. Clive is too honourable a man to wish to conduct the affair in any +other way. He might try the influence of his <i>beaux yeux</i>, and run off to +Gretna with a girl who had nothing; but the young lady being wealthy, and his +relation, sir, we must be on the point of honour; and all the Kews in +Christendom shan’t have more pride than we in this matter.” +</p> + +<p> +All this time we are keeping Mr. Clive purposely in the background. His face is +so woebegone that we do not care to bring it forward in the family picture. His +case is so common that surely its lugubrious symptoms need not be described at +length. He works away fiercely at his pictures, and in spite of himself +improves in his art. He sent a “Combat of Cavalry,” and a picture +of “Sir Brian the Templar carrying off Rebecca,” to the British +Institution this year; both of which pieces were praised in other journals +besides the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>. He did not care for the newspaper +praises. He was rather surprised when a dealer purchased his “Sir Brian +the Templar.” He came and went from our house a melancholy swain. He was +thankful for Laura’s kindness and pity. J. J.’s studio was his +principal resort; and I dare say, as he set up his own easel there, and worked +by his friend’s side, he bemoaned his lot to his sympathising friend. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Barnes Newcome’s family was absent from London during the winter. His +mother, and his brothers and sisters, his wife and his two children, were gone +to Newcome for Christmas. Some six weeks after seeing him, Ethel wrote her +uncle a kind, merry letter. They had been performing private theatricals at the +country-house where she and Lady Kew were staying. “Captain Crackthorpe +made an admirable Jeremy Diddler in ‘Raising the Wind.’ Lord +Farintosh broke down lamentably as Fusbos in ‘Bombastes +Furioso.’” Miss Ethel had distinguished herself in both of these +facetious little comedies. “I should like Clive to paint me as Miss +Plainways,” she wrote. “I wore a powdered front, painted my face +all over wrinkles, imitated old Lady Griffin as well as I could, and looked +sixty at least.” +</p> + +<p> +Thomas Newcome wrote an answer to his fair niece’s pleasant letter; +“Clive,” he said, “would be happy to bargain to paint her, +and nobody else but her, all the days of his life; and,” the Colonel was +sure, “would admire her at sixty as much as he did now, when she was +forty years younger.” But, determined on maintaining his appointed line +of conduct respecting Miss Newcome, he carried his letter to Sir Barnes, and +desired him to forward it to his sister. Sir Barnes took the note, and promised +to despatch it. The communications between him and his uncle had been very +brief and cold, since the telling of these little fibs concerning old Lady +Kew’s visits to London, which the Baronet dismissed from his mind as soon +as they were spoken, and which the good Colonel never could forgive. Barnes +asked his uncle to dinner once or twice, but the Colonel was engaged. How was +Barnes to know the reason of the elder’s refusal? A London man, a banker, +and a Member of Parliament, has a thousand things to think of; and no time to +wonder that friends refuse his invitations to dinner. Barnes continued to grin +and smile most affectionately when he met the Colonel; to press his hand, to +congratulate him on the last accounts from India, unconscious of the scorn and +distrust with which his senior mentally regarded him. “Old boy is +doubtful about the young cub’s love-affair,” the Baronet may have +thought. “We’ll ease his old mind on that point some time +hence.” No doubt Barnes thought he was conducting the business very +smartly and diplomatically. +</p> + +<p> +I heard myself news at this period from the gallant Crackthorpe, which, being +interested in my young friend’s happiness, filled me with some dismay. +“Our friend the painter and glazier has been hankering about our barracks +at Knightsbridge” (the noble Life Guards Green had now pitched their +tents in that suburb), “and pumping me about <i>la belle cousine</i>. I +don’t like to break it to him—I don’t really, now. But +it’s all up with his chance, I think. Those private theatricals at +Fallowfield have done Farintosh’s business. He used to rave about the +Newcomes to me, as we were riding home from hunting. He gave Bob Henchman the +lie, who told a story which Bob got from his man, who had it from Miss +Newcome’s lady’s-maid, about—about some journey to Brighton, +which the cousins took.” Here Mr. Crackthorpe grinned most facetiously. +“Farintosh swore he’d knock Henchman down; and vows he will be the +death of—will murder our friend Clive when he comes to town. As for +Henchman, he was in a desperate way. He lives on the Marquis, you know, and +Farintosh’s anger or his marriage will be the loss of free quarters, and +ever so many good dinners a year to him.” I did not deem it necessary to +impart Crackthorpe’s story to Clive, or explain to him the reason why +Lord Farintosh scowled most fiercely upon the young painter, and passed him +without any other sign of recognition one day as Clive and I were walking +together in Pall Mall. If my lord wanted a quarrel, young Clive was not a man +to balk him; and would have been a very fierce customer to deal with, in his +actual state of mind. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +A pauper child in London at seven years old knows how to go to market, to fetch +the beer, to pawn father’s coat, to choose the largest fried fish or the +nicest ham-bone, to nurse Mary Jane of three,—to conduct a hundred +operations of trade or housekeeping, which a little Belgravian does not perhaps +acquire in all the days of her life. Poverty and necessity force this +precociousness on the poor little brat. There are children who are accomplished +shoplifters and liars almost as soon as they can toddle and speak. I dare say +little Princes know the laws of etiquette as regards themselves, and the +respect due to their rank, at a very early period of their royal existence. +Every one of us, according to his degree, can point to the Princekins of +private life who are flattered and worshipped, and whose little shoes grown men +kiss as soon almost as they walk upon ground. +</p> + +<p> +It is a wonder what human nature will support: and that, considering the amount +of flattery some people are crammed with from their cradles, they do not grow +worse and more selfish than they are. Our poor little pauper just mentioned is +dosed with Daffy’s Elixir, and somehow survives the drug. Princekin or +lordkin from his earliest days has nurses, dependants, governesses, little +friends, schoolfellows, schoolmasters, fellow-collegians, college tutors, +stewards and valets, led captains of his suite, and women innumerable +flattering him and doing him honour. The tradesman’s manner, which to you +and me is decently respectful, becomes straightway frantically servile before +Princekin. Honest folks at railway stations whisper to their families, +“That’s the Marquis of Farintosh,” and look hard at him as he +passes. Landlords cry, “This way, my lord; this room for your +lordship.” They say at public schools Princekin is taught the beauties of +equality, and thrashed into some kind of subordination. Psha! Toad-eaters in +pinafores surround Princekin. Do not respectable people send their children so +as to be at the same school with him; don’t they follow him to college, +and eat his toads through life? +</p> + +<p> +And as for women—oh, my dear friends and brethren in this vale of +tears—did you ever see anything so curious, monstrous, and amazing as the +way in which women court Princekin when he is marriageable, and pursue him with +their daughters? Who was the British nobleman in old old days who brought his +three daughters to the King of Mercia, that His Majesty might choose one after +inspection? Mercia was but a petty province, and its king in fact a Princekin. +Ever since those extremely ancient and venerable times the custom exists not +only in Mercia, but in all the rest of the provinces inhabited by the Angles, +and before Princekins the daughters of our nobles are trotted out. +</p> + +<p> +There was no day of his life which our young acquaintance, the Marquis of +Farintosh, could remember on which he had not been flattered; and no society +which did not pay him court. At a private school he could recollect the +master’s wife stroking his pretty curls and treating him furtively to +goodies; at college he had the tutor simpering and bowing as he swaggered over +the grass-plat; old men at clubs would make way for him and fawn on +him—not your mere pique-assiettes and penniless parasites, but most +respectable toad-eaters, fathers of honest families, gentlemen themselves of +good station, who respected this young gentleman as one of the institutions of +their country, and the admired wisdom of the nation that set him to legislate +over us. When Lord Farintosh walked the streets at night, he felt himself like +Haroun Alraschid—(that is, he would have felt so had he ever heard of the +Arabian potentate)—a monarch in disguise affably observing and +promenading the city. And let us be sure there was a Mesrour in his train to +knock at the doors for him and run the errands of this young caliph. Of course +he met with scores of men in life who neither flattered him nor would suffer +his airs; but he did not like the company of such, or for the sake of truth +undergo the ordeal of being laughed at; he preferred toadies, generally +speaking. “I like,” says he, “you know, those fellows who are +always saying pleasant things, you know, and who would run from here to +Hammersmith if I asked ’em—much better than those fellows who are +always making fun of me, you know.” A man of his station who likes +flatterers need not shut himself up; he can get plenty of society. +</p> + +<p> +As for women, it was his lordship’s opinion that every daughter of Eve +was bent on marrying him. A Scotch marquis, an English earl, of the best blood +in the empire, with a handsome person, and a fortune of fifteen thousand a +year, how could the poor creatures do otherwise than long for him? He blandly +received their caresses; took their coaxing and cajolery as matters of course; +and surveyed the beauties of his time as the Caliph the moonfaces of his harem. +My lord intended to marry certainly. He did not care for money, nor for rank; +he expected consummate beauty and talent, and some day would fling his +handkerchief to the possessor of these, and place her by his side upon the +Farintosh throne. +</p> + +<p> +At this time there were but two or three young ladies in society endowed with +the necessary qualifications, or who found favour in his eyes. His lordship +hesitated in his selection from these beauties. He was not in a hurry, he was +not angry at the notion that Lady Kew (and Miss Newcome with her) hunted him. +What else should they do but pursue an object so charming? Everybody hunted +him. The other young ladies, whom we need not mention, languished after him +still more longingly. He had little notes from these; presents of purses worked +by them, and cigar-cases embroidered with his coronet. They sang to him in cosy +boudoirs—mamma went out of the room, and sister Ann forgot something in +the drawing-room. They ogled him as they sang. Trembling they gave him a little +foot to mount them, that they might ride on horseback with him. They tripped +along by his side from the Hall to the pretty country church on Sundays. They +warbled hymns: sweetly looking at him the while mamma whispered confidentially +to him, “What an angel Cecilia is!” And so forth, and so +forth—with which chaff our noble bird was by no means to be caught. When +he had made up his great mind, that the time was come and the woman, he was +ready to give a Marchioness of Farintosh to the English nation. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Newcome has been compared ere this to the statue of “Huntress +Diana” at the Louvre, whose haughty figure and beauty the young lady +indeed somewhat resembled. I was not present when Diana and Diana’s +grandmother hunted the noble Scottish stag of whom we have just been writing; +nor care to know how many times Lord Farintosh escaped, and how at last he was +brought to bay and taken by his resolute pursuers. Paris, it appears, was the +scene of his fall and capture. The news was no doubt well known amongst Lord +Farintosh’s brother-dandies, among exasperated matrons and virgins in +Mayfair, and in polite society generally, before it came to simple Tom Newcome +and his son. Not a word on the subject had Sir Barnes mentioned to the Colonel: +perhaps not choosing to speak till the intelligence was authenticated; perhaps +not wishing to be the bearer of tidings so painful. +</p> + +<p> +Though the Colonel may have read in his <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> a paragraph +which announced an approaching <small>MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE</small>, +“between a noble young marquis and an accomplished and beautiful young +lady, daughter and sister of a Northern baronet,” he did not know who +were the fashionable persons about to be made happy, nor, until he received a +letter from an old friend who lived at Paris, was the fact conveyed to him. +Here is the letter preserved by him along with all that he ever received from +the same hand:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“Rue St. Dominique, St. Germain, Paris, 10 Fev. +</p> + +<p> +“So behold you of return, my friend! you quit for ever the sword and +those arid plains where you have passed so many years of your life, separated +from those to whom, at the commencement, you held very nearly. Did it not seem +once as if two hands never could unlock, so closely were they enlaced together? +Ah, mine are old and feeble now; forty years have passed since the time when +you used to say they were young and fair. How well I remember me of every one +of those days, though there is a death between me and them, and it is as across +a grave I review them! Yet another parting, and tears and regrets are finished. +Tenez, I do not believe them when they say there is no meeting for us +afterwards, there above. To what good to have seen you, friend, if we are to +part here, and in Heaven too? I have not altogether forgotten your language, is +it not so? I remember it because it was yours, and that of my happy days. I +radote like an old woman as I am. M. de Florac has known my history from the +commencement. May I not say that after so many of years I have been faithful to +him and to all my promises? When the end comes with its great absolution, I +shall not be sorry. One supports the combats of life, but they are long, and +one comes from them very wounded; ah, when shall they be over? +</p> + +<p> +“You return and I salute you with wishes for parting. How much egotism! I +have another project which I please myself to arrange. You know how I am +arrived to love Clive as own my child. I very quick surprised his secret, the +poor boy, when he was here it is twenty months. He looked so like you as I +repeal me of you in the old time! He told me he had no hope of his beautiful +cousin. I have heard of the fine marriage that one makes her. Paul, my son, has +been at the English Ambassade last night and has made his congratulations to M. +de Farintosh. Paul says him handsome, young, not too spiritual, rich, and +haughty, like all, all noble Montagnards. +</p> + +<p> +“But it is not of M. de Farintosh I write, whose marriage, without doubt, +has been announced to you. I have a little project; very foolish, perhaps. You +know Mr. the Duke of Ivry has left me guardian of his little daughter +Antoinette, whose <i>affreuse</i> mother no one sees more. Antoinette is pretty +and good, and soft, and with an affectionate heart. I love her already as my +infant. I wish to bring her up, and that Clive should marry her. They say you +are returned very rich. What follies are these I write! In the long evenings of +winter, the children escaped it is a long time from the maternal nest, a silent +old man my only company,—I live but of the past; and play with its +souvenirs as the detained caress little birds, little flowers, in their +prisons. I was born for the happiness; my God! I have learned it in knowing +you. In losing you I have lost it. It is not against the will of Heaven I +oppose myself. It is man, who makes himself so much of this evil and misery, +this slavery, these tears, these crimes, perhaps. +</p> + +<p> +“This marriage of the young Scotch Marquis and the fair Ethel (I love her +in spite of all, and shall see her soon and congratulate her, for, do you see, +I might have stopped this fine marriage, and did my best and more than my duty +for our poor Clive) shall make itself in London next spring, I hear. You shall +assist scarcely at the ceremony; he, poor boy, shall not care to be there. +Bring him to Paris to make the court to my little Antoinette: bring him to +Paris to his good friend, Comtesse de Florac.” +</p> + +<p> +“I read marvels of his works in an English journal, which one sends +me.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Clive was not by when this letter reached his father. Clive was in his +painting-room, and lest he should meet his son, and in order to devise the best +means of breaking the news to the lad, Thomas Newcome retreated out of doors; +and from the Oriental he crossed Oxford Street, and from Oxford Street he +stalked over the roomy pavements of Gloucester Place, and there he bethought +him how he had neglected Mrs. Hobson Newcome of late, and the interesting +family of Bryanstone Square. So he went to leave his card at Maria’s +door: her daughters, as we have said, are quite grown girls. If they have been +lectured, and learning, and back-boarded, and practising, and using the globes, +and laying in a store of ’ologies, ever since, what a deal they must +know! Colonel Newcome was admitted to see his nieces, and Consummate Virtue, +their parent. Maria was charmed to see her brother-in-law; she greeted him with +reproachful tenderness: “Why, why,” her fine eyes seemed to say, +“have you so long neglected us? Do you think because I am wise, and +gifted, and good, and you are, it must be confessed, a poor creature with no +education, I am not also affable? Come, let the prodigal be welcomed by his +virtuous relatives: come and lunch with us, Colonel!” He sate down +accordingly to the family tiffin. +</p> + +<p> +When the meal was over, the mother, who had matter <i>of importance to impart +to him</i>, besought him to go to the drawing-room, and there poured out such a +eulogy upon her children’s qualities as fond mothers know how to utter. +They knew this and they knew that. They were instructed by the most eminent +professors; “that wretched Frenchwoman, whom you may remember here, +Mademoiselle Lenoir,” Maria remarked parenthetically, “turned out, +oh, frightfully! She taught the girls the worst accent, it appears. Her father +was not a colonel; he was—oh! never mind! It is a mercy I got rid of that +<i>fiendish woman</i>, and before my precious ones knew <i>what</i> she +was!” And then followed details of the perfections of the two girls, with +occasional side-shots at Lady Anne’s family, just as in the old time. +“Why don’t you bring your boy, whom I have always loved as a son, +and who avoids me? Why does not Clive know his cousins? They are very different +from others of his kinswomen, who think best of the <i>heartless +world</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“I fear, Maria, there is too much truth in what you say,” sighs the +Colonel, drumming on a book on the drawing-room table, and looking down sees it +is a great, large, square, gilt Peerage, open at F<small>ARINTOSH</small>, +M<small>ARQUIS</small> OF.—Fergus Angus Malcolm Mungo Roy, Marquis of +Farintosh, Earl of Glenlivat, in the peerage of Scotland; also Earl of +Rossmont, in that of the United Kingdom. Son of Angus Fergus Malcolm, Earl of +Glenlivat, and grandson and heir of Malcolm Mungo Angus, first Marquis of +Farintosh, and twenty-fifth Earl, etc. etc. +</p> + +<p> +“You have heard the news regarding Ethel?” remarks Hobson. +</p> + +<p> +“I have just heard,” says the poor Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“I have a letter from Anne this morning,” Maria continues. +“They are of course delighted with the match. Lord Farintosh is wealthy, +handsome; has been a little wild, I hear; is not such a husband as I would +choose for my darlings, but poor Brian’s family have been educated to +love the world; and Ethel no doubt is flattered by the prospects before her. I +<i>have</i> heard that some one else was a little <i>épris</i> in that quarter. +How does Clive bear the news, my dear Colonel?” +</p> + +<p> +“He has long expected it,” says the Colonel, rising: “and I +left him very cheerful at breakfast this morning.” +</p> + +<p> +“Send him to see us, the naughty boy!” cries Maria. +“<i>We</i> don’t change; we remember old times, to us he will ever +be welcome!” And with this confirmation of Madame de Florac’s news, +Thomas Newcome walked sadly homewards. +</p> + +<p> +And now Thomas Newcome had to break the news to his son; who received the shot +in such a way as caused his friends and confidants to admire his high spirit. +He said he had long been expecting some such announcement: it was many months +since Ethel had prepared him for it. Under her peculiar circumstances he did +not see how she could act otherwise than she had done. And he narrated to the +Colonel the substance of the conversation which the two young people had had +together several months before, in Madame de Florac’s garden. +</p> + +<p> +Clive’s father did not tell his son of his own bootless negotiation with +Barnes Newcome. There was no need to recall that now; but the Colonel’s +wrath against his nephew exploded in conversation with me, who was the +confidant of father and son in this business. Ever since that luckless day when +Barnes thought proper to—to give a wrong address for Lady Kew, Thomas +Newcome’s anger had been growing. He smothered it yet for a while, sent a +letter to Lady Anne Newcome, briefly congratulating her on the choice which he +had heard Miss Newcome had made; and in acknowledgment of Madame de +Florac’s more sentimental epistle he wrote a reply which has not been +preserved, but in which he bade her rebuke Miss Newcome for not having answered +him when he wrote to her, and not having acquainted her old uncle with her +projected union. +</p> + +<p> +To this message, Ethel wrote back a brief, hurried reply; it said:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“I saw Madame de Florac last night at her daughter’s reception, and +she gave me my dear uncle’s messages. <i>Yes, the news is true</i> which +you have heard from Madame de Florac, and in Bryanstone Square. I did not like +to write it to you, because I know one whom I regard as a brother (and a great, +great deal better), and to whom I know it will give pain. He knows that I have +done <i>my duty</i>, and <i>why</i> I have acted as I have done. God bless him +and his dear father! +</p> + +<p> +“What is this about a letter which I never answered? Grandmamma knows +nothing about a letter. Mamma has enclosed to me that which you wrote to her, +but there has been <i>no letter</i> from T. N. to his sincere and affectionate +E. N. +</p> + +<p> +“Rue de Rivoli. Friday.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +This was too much, and the cup of Thomas Newcome’s wrath overflowed. +Barnes had lied about Ethel’s visit to London: Barnes had lied in saying +that he delivered the message with which his uncle charged him: Barnes had lied +about the letter which he had received, and never sent. With these accusations +firmly proven in his mind against his nephew, the Colonel went down to confront +that sinner. +</p> + +<p> +Wherever he should find Barnes, Thomas Newcome was determined to tell him his +mind. Should they meet on the steps of a church, on the flags of ’Change, +or in the newspaper-room at Bays’s, at evening-paper time, when men most +do congregate, Thomas the Colonel was determined upon exposing and chastising +his father’s grandson. With Ethel’s letter in his pocket, he took +his way into the City, penetrated into the unsuspecting back-parlour of +Hobson’s bank, and was disappointed at first at only finding his +half-brother Hobson there engaged over his newspaper. The Colonel signified his +wish to see Sir Barnes Newcome. “Sir Barnes was not come in yet. +You’ve heard about the marriage,” says Hobson. “Great news +for the Barnes’s, ain’t it? The head of the house is as proud as a +peacock about it. Said he was going out to Samuels, the diamond merchants; +going to make his sister some uncommon fine present. Jolly to be uncle to a +marquis, ain’t it, Colonel? I’ll have nothing under a duke for my +girls. I say, I know whose nose is out of joint. But young fellows get over +these things, and Clive won’t die this time, I dare say.” +</p> + +<p> +While Hobson Newcome made these satiric and facetious remarks, his half-brother +paced up and down the glass parlour, scowling over the panes into the bank +where the busy young clerks sate before their ledgers. At last he gave an +“Ah!” as of satisfaction. Indeed, he had seen Sir Barnes Newcome +enter into the bank. +</p> + +<p> +The Baronet stopped and spoke with a clerk, and presently entered, followed by +that young gentleman into his private parlour. Barnes tried to grin when he saw +his uncle, and held out his hand to greet the Colonel; but the Colonel put both +his behind his back—that which carried his faithful bamboo cane shook +nervously. Barnes was aware that the Colonel had the news. “I was going +to—to write to you this morning, with—with some intelligence that I +am—very—very sorry to give.” +</p> + +<p> +“This young gentleman is one of your clerks?” asked Thomas Newcome, +blandly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes; Mr. Boltby, who has your private account. This is Colonel Newcome, +Mr. Boltby,” says Sir Barnes, in some wonder. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Boltby, brother Hobson, you heard what Sir Barnes Newcome said just +now respecting certain intelligence which he grieved to give me?” +</p> + +<p> +At this the three other gentlemen respectively wore looks of amazement. +</p> + +<p> +“Allow me to say in your presence, that I don’t believe one single +word Sir Barnes Newcome says, when he tells me that he is very sorry for some +intelligence he has to communicate. He lies, Mr. Boltby; he is very glad. I +made up my mind that in whatsoever company I met him, and on the very first day +I found him—hold your tongue, sir; you shall speak afterwards and tell +more lies when I have done—I made up my mind, I say, that on the very +first occasion I would tell Sir Barnes Newcome that he was a liar and a cheat. +He takes charge of letters and keeps them back. Did you break the seal, sir? +There was nothing to steal in my letter to Miss Newcome. He tells me people are +out of town, when he goes to see in the next street, after leaving my table, +and whom I see myself half an hour before he lies to me about their +absence.” +</p> + +<p> +“D—n you, go out, and don’t stand staring there, you +booby!” screams out Sir Barnes to the clerk. “Stop, Boltby. Colonel +Newcome, unless you leave this room I shall—I shall——” +</p> + +<p> +“You shall call a policeman. Send for the gentleman, and I will tell the +Lord Mayor what I think of Sir Barnes Newcome, Baronet. Mr. Boltby, shall we +have the constable in?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sir, you are an old man, and my father’s brother, or you know very +well I would——” +</p> + +<p> +“You would what, Sir? Upon my word, Barnes Newcome” (here the +Colonel’s two hands and the bamboo cane came from the rear and formed in +front), “but that you are my father’s grandson, after a menace like +that, I would take you out and cane you in the presence of your clerks. I +repeat, sir, that I consider you guilty of treachery, falsehood, and knavery. +And if I ever see you at Bays’s Club, I will make the same statement to +your acquaintance at the west end of the town. A man of your baseness ought to +be known, sir; and it shall be my business to make men of honour aware of your +character. Mr. Boltby, will you have the kindness to make out my account? Sir +Barnes Newcome, for fear of consequences that I should deplore, I recommend you +to keep a wide berth of me, sir.” And the Colonel twirled his mustachios, +and waved his cane in an ominous manner, and Barnes started back spontaneously +out of its dangerous circle. +</p> + +<p> +What Mr. Boltby’s sentiments may have been regarding this extraordinary +scene in which his principal cut so sorry a figure;—whether he narrated +the conversation to other gentlemen connected with the establishment of Hobson +Brothers, or prudently kept it to himself, I cannot say, having no means of +pursuing Mr. B.’s subsequent career. He speedily quitted his desk at +Hobson Brothers; and let us presume that Barnes <i>thought</i> Mr. B. had told +all the other clerks of the avuncular quarrel. That conviction will make us +imagine Barnes still more comfortable. Hobson Newcome no doubt was rejoiced at +Barnes’s discomfiture; he had been insolent and domineering beyond +measure of late to his vulgar good-natured uncle, whereas after the above +interview with the Colonel he became very humble and quiet in his demeanour, +and for a long, long time never said a rude word. Nay, I fear Hobson must have +carried an account of the transaction to Mrs. Hobson and the circle in +Bryanstone Square; for Sam Newcome, now entered at Cambridge, called the +Baronet “Barnes” quite familiarly; asked after Clara and Ethel; and +requested a small loan of Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +Of course the story did not get wind at Bays’s; of course Tom Eaves did +not know all about it, and say that Sir Barnes had been beaten black-and-blue. +Having been treated very ill by the committee in a complaint which he made +about the Club cookery, Sir Barnes Newcome never came to Bays’s, and at +the end of the year took off his name from the lists of the Club. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Barnes, though a little taken aback in the morning, and not ready with an +impromptu reply to the Colonel and his cane, could not allow the occurrence to +pass without a protest; and indited a letter which Thomas Newcome kept along +with some others previously quoted by the compiler of the present memoirs. +</p> + +<p> +It is as follows:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Belgrave St., Feb. 15, 18—. +</p> + +<p> +“Colonel Newcome, C.B., <i>private</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“S<small>IR</small>—The incredible insolence and violence of your +behaviour to-day (inspired by whatever causes or mistakes of your own), cannot +be passed without some comment, on my part. I laid before a friend of your own +profession, a statement of the words which you applied to me in the presence of +my partner and one of my clerks this morning; and my adviser is of opinion, +that considering the relationship unhappily subsisting between us, I can take +no notice of insults for which you knew when you uttered them, I could not call +you to account.” +</p> + +<p> +“There is some truth in that,” said the Colonel. “He +couldn’t fight, you know; but then he was such a liar I could not help +speaking my mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“I gathered from the brutal language which you thought fit to employ +towards a disarmed man, the ground of one of your monstrous accusations against +me, that I deceived you in stating that my relative, Lady Kew, was in the +country, when in fact she was at her house in London. +</p> + +<p> +“To this absurd charge I at once plead guilty. The venerable lady in +question was passing through London, where she desired to be free from +intrusion. At her ladyship’s wish I stated that she was out of town; and +would, under the same circumstances, unhesitatingly make the same statement. +Your slight acquaintance with the person in question did not warrant that you +should force yourself on her privacy, as you would doubtless know were you more +familiar with the customs of the society in which she moves. +</p> + +<p> +“I declare upon my honour as a gentleman, that I gave her the message +which I promised to deliver from you, and also that I transmitted a letter with +which you entrusted me; and repel with scorn and indignation the charges which +you were pleased to bring against me, as I treat with contempt the language and +the threats which you thought fit to employ. +</p> + +<p> +“Our books show the amount of <i>x</i>£. <i>xs. xd</i>. to your credit, +which you will be good enough to withdraw at your earliest convenience; as of +course all intercourse must cease henceforth between you and—Yours, etc. +</p> + +<p> +“B. Newcome Newcome.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“I think, sir, he doesn’t make out a bad case,” Mr. Pendennis +remarked to the Colonel, who showed him this majestic letter. +</p> + +<p> +“It would be a good case if I believed a single word of it, +Arthur,” replied my friend, placidly twirling the old grey moustache. +“If you were to say so-and-so, and say that I had brought false charges +against you, I should cry <i>mea culpa</i> and apologise with all my heart. But +as I have a perfect conviction that every word this fellow says is a lie, what +is the use of arguing any more about the matter? I would not believe him if he +brought twenty as witnesses, and if he lied till he was black in the other +liars’ face. Give me the walnuts. I wonder who Sir Barnes’s +military friend was.” +</p> + +<p> +Barnes’s military friend was our gallant acquaintance General Sir George +Tufto, K.C.B., who a short while afterwards talked over the quarrel with the +Colonel, and manfully told him that (in Sir George’s opinion) he was +wrong. “The little beggar behaved very well, I thought, in the first +business. You bullied him so, and in the front of his regiment, too, that it +was almost past bearing; and when he deplored, with tears in his eyes, almost, +the little humbug! that his relationship prevented him calling you out, ecod, I +believed him! It was in the second affair that poor little Barnes showed he was +a cocktail.” +</p> + +<p> +“What second affair?” asked Thomas Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you know? He! he! this is famous!” cries Sir George. +“Why, sir, two days after your business, he comes to me with another +letter and a face as long as my mare’s, by Jove. And that letter, +Newcome, was from your young ’un. Stop, here it is!” and from his +padded bosom General Sir George Tufto drew a pocket-book, and from the +pocket-book a copy of a letter, inscribed, “Clive Newcome, Esq., to Sir +B. N. Newcome.” “There’s no mistake about your fellow, +Colonel. No,——him!” and the man of war fired a volley of +oaths as a salute to Clive. +</p> + +<p> +And the Colonel, on horseback, riding by the other cavalry officer’s side +read as follows:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“George Street, Hanover Square, February 16. +</p> + +<p> +“S<small>IR</small>—Colonel Newcome this morning showed me a letter +bearing your signature, in which you state—1. That Colonel Newcome has +uttered calumnious and insolent charges against you. 2. That Colonel Newcome so +spoke, knowing that you could take no notice of his charges of falsehood and +treachery, on account of the relationship subsisting between you. +</p> + +<p> +“Your statements would evidently imply that Colonel Newcome has been +guilty of ungentlemanlike conduct, and of cowardice towards you. +</p> + +<p> +“As there can be no reason why we should not meet in any manner that you +desire, I here beg leave to state, on my own part, that I fully coincide with +Colonel Newcome in his opinion that you have been guilty of falsehood and +treachery, and that the charge of cowardice which you dare to make against a +gentleman of his tried honour and courage, is another wilful and cowardly +falsehood on your part. +</p> + +<p> +“And I hope you will refer the bearer of this note, my friend, Mr. George +Warrington, of the Upper Temple, to the military gentleman whom you consulted +in respect to the just charges of Colonel Newcome. Waiting a prompt reply, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +“Believe me, sir—Your obedient servant,<br> +Clive Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +“Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., M. P., etc.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“What a blunderhead I am!” cries the Colonel, with delight on his +countenance, spite of his professed repentance. “It never once entered my +head that the youngster would take any part in the affair. I showed him his +cousin’s letter casually, just to amuse him, I think, for he has been +deuced low lately, about—about a young man’s scrape that he has got +into. And he must have gone off and despatched his challenge straightway. I +recollect he appeared uncommonly brisk at breakfast the next morning. And so +you say, General, the Baronet did not like the <i>poulet?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“By no means; never saw a fellow show such a confounded white feather. At +first I congratulated him, thinking your boy’s offer must please him, as +it would have pleased any fellow in our time to have a shot. Dammy! but I was +mistaken in my man. He entered into some confounded long-winded story about a +marriage you wanted to make with that infernal pretty sister of his, who is +going to marry young Farintosh, and how you were in a rage because the scheme +fell to the ground, and how a family duel might occasion unpleasantries to Miss +Newcome; though I showed him how this could be most easily avoided, and that +the lady’s name need never appear in the transaction. ‘Confound it, +Sir Barnes,’ says I, ‘I recollect this boy, when he was a youngster +throwing a glass of wine in your face! We’ll put it upon that, and say +it’s an old feud between you.’ He turned quite pale, and he said +your fellow had apologised for the glass of wine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said the Colonel, sadly, “my boy apologised for the +glass of wine. It is curious how we have disliked that Barnes ever since we set +eyes on him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Newcome,” Sir George resumed, as his mettled charger +suddenly jumped and curvetted, displaying the padded warrior’s +cavalry-seat to perfection. “Quiet, old lady!—easy, my dear! Well, +when I found the little beggar turning tail in this way I said to him, +‘Dash me, sir, if you don’t want me, why the dash do you send for +me, dash me? Yesterday you talked as if you would bite the Colonel’s head +off, and to-day, when his son offers you every accommodation, by dash, sir, +you’re afraid to meet him. It’s my belief you had better send for a +policeman. A 22 is your man, Sir Barnes Newcome.’ And with that I turned +on my heel and left him. And the fellow went off to Newcome that very +night.” +</p> + +<p> +“A poor devil can’t command courage, General,” said the +Colonel, quite peaceably, “any more than he can make himself six feet +high.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why the dash did the beggar send for me?” called out General +Sir George Tufto, in a loud and resolute voice; and presently the two officers +parted company. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +When the Colonel reached home, Mr. Warrington and Mr. Pendennis happened to be +on a visit to Clive, and all three were in the young fellow’s +painting-room. We knew our lad was unhappy, and did our little best to amuse +and console him. The Colonel came in. It was in the dark February days: we +lighted the gas in the studio. Clive had made a sketch from some favourite +verses of mine and George’s: those charming lines of +Scott’s:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“He turned his charger as he spake,<br> + Beside the river shore;<br> +He gave his bridle-rein a shake,<br> + With adieu for evermore,<br> + My dear!<br> + Adieu for evermore!” +</p> + +<p> +Thomas Newcome held up a finger at Warrington, and he came up to the picture +and looked at it; and George and I trolled out: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Adieu for evermore,<br> + My dear!<br> +Adieu for evermore!” +</p> + +<p> +From the picture the brave old Colonel turned to the painter, regarding his son +with a look of beautiful inexpressible affection. And he laid his hand on his +son’s shoulder, and smiled, and stroked Clive’s yellow moustache. +</p> + +<p> +“And—and did Barnes send no answer to that letter you wrote +him?” he said, slowly. +</p> + +<p> +Clive broke out into a laugh that was almost a sob. He took both his +father’s hands. “My dear, dear old father!” says he, +“what a—what an—old—trump you are!” My eyes were +so dim I could hardly see the two men as they embraced. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0054"></a> +CHAPTER LIV.<br> +Has a Tragical Ending</h2> + +<p> +Clive presently answered the question which his father put to him in the last +chapter, by producing from the ledge of his easel a crumpled paper, full of +Cavendish now, but on which was written Sir Barnes Newcome’s reply to his +cousin’s polite invitation. Sir Barnes Newcome wrote, “that he +thought a reference to a friend was quite unnecessary, in the most disagreeable +and painful dispute in which Mr. Clive desired to interfere as a principal; +that the reasons which prevented Sir Barnes from taking notice of Colonel +Newcome’s shameful and ungentlemanlike conduct applied equally, as Mr. +Clive Newcome very well knew, to himself; that if further insult was offered, +or outrage attempted, Sir Barnes should resort to the police for protection; +that he was about to quit London, and certainly should not delay his departure +on account of Mr. Clive Newcome’s monstrous proceedings; and that he +desired to take leave of an odious subject, as of an individual whom he had +striven to treat with kindness, but from whom, from youth upwards, Sir Barnes +Newcome had received nothing but insolence, enmity, and ill-will.” +</p> + +<p> +“He is an ill man to offend,” remarked Mr. Pendennis. “I +don’t think he has ever forgiven that claret, Clive.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pooh! the feud dates from long before that,” said Clive; +“Barnes wanted to lick me when I was a boy, and I declined: in fact, I +think he had rather the worst of it; but then I operated freely on his shins, +and that wasn’t fair in war, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Heaven forgive me,” cries the Colonel; “I have always felt +the fellow was my enemy: and my mind is relieved now war is declared. It has +been a kind of hypocrisy with me to shake his hand and eat his dinner. When I +trusted him it was against my better instinct; and I have been struggling +against it these ten years, thinking it was a wicked prejudice, and ought to be +overcome.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why should we overcome such instincts?” asks Mr. Warrington. +“Why shouldn’t we hate what is hateful in people and scorn what is +mean? From what friend Pen has described to me, and from some other accounts +which have come to my ears, your respectable nephew is about as loathsome a +little villain as crawls on the earth. Good seems to be out of his sphere, and +away from his contemplation. He ill-treats every one he comes near; or, if, +gentle to them, it is that they may serve some base purpose. Since my attention +has been drawn to the creature, I have been contemplating his ways with wonder +and curiosity. How much superior Nature’s rogues are, Pen, to the +villains you novelists put into your books! This man goes about his life +business with a natural propensity to darkness and evil—as a bug crawls, +and stings, and stinks. I don’t suppose the fellow feels any more remorse +than a cat that runs away with a mutton-chop. I recognise the Evil Spirit, sir, +and do honour to Ahrimanes, in taking off my hat to this young man. He seduced +a poor girl in his father’s country town—is it not natural? +Deserted her and her children—don’t you recognise the beast? +married for rank—could you expect otherwise from him? invites my Lord +Highgate to his house in consideration of his balance at the bank;—sir, +unless somebody’s heel shall crunch him on the way, there is no height to +which this aspiring vermin mayn’t crawl. I look to see Sir Barnes Newcome +prosper more and more. I make no doubt he will die an immense capitalist, and +an exalted Peer of this realm. He will have a marble monument, and a pathetic +funeral sermon. There is a divine in your family, Clive, that shall preach it. +I will weep respectful tears over the grave of Baron Newcome, Viscount Newcome, +Earl Newcome; and the children whom he has deserted, and who, in the course of +time, will be sent by a grateful nation to New South Wales, will proudly say to +their brother convicts,—‘Yes, the Earl was our honoured +father.’” +</p> + +<p> +“I fear he is no better than he should be, Mr. Warrington,” says +the Colonel, shaking his head. “I never heard the story about the +deserted children.” +</p> + +<p> +“How should you, O you guileless man!” cries Warrington. +</p> + +<p> +“I am not in the ways of scandal-hearing myself much: but this tale I had +from Sir Barnes Newcome’s own country. Mr. Batters of the <i>Newcome +Independent</i> is my esteemed client. I write leading articles for his +newspaper, and when he was in town last spring he favoured me with the +anecdote; and proposed to amuse the Member for Newcome by publishing it in his +journal. This kind of writing is not much in my line: and, out of respect to +you and your young one, I believe—I strove with Mr. Batters, +and—entreated him and prevailed with him, not to publish the story. That +is how I came to know it.” +</p> + +<p> +I sate with the Colonel in the evening, when he commented on Warrington’s +story and Sir Barnes’s adventures in his simple way. He said his brother +Hobson had been with him the morning after the dispute, reiterating +Barnes’s defence of his conduct: and professing on his own part nothing +but goodwill towards his brother. “Between ourselves the young Baronet +carries matters with rather a high hand sometimes, and I am not sorry that you +gave him a little dressing. But you were too hard upon him, +Colonel—really you were.” “Had I known that child-deserting +story I would have given it harder still, sir,” says Thomas Newcome, +twirling his mustachios: “but my brother had nothing to do with the +quarrel, and very rightly did not wish to engage in it. He has an eye to +business, has Master Hobson too,” my friend continued: “for he +brought me a cheque for my private account, which of course, he said, could not +remain after my quarrel with Barnes. But the Indian bank account, which is +pretty large, he supposed need not be taken away? and indeed why should it? So +that, which is little business of mine, remains where it was; and brother +Hobson and I remain perfectly good friends. +</p> + +<p> +“I think Clive is much better since he has been quite put out of his +suspense. He speaks with a great deal more kindness and good-nature about the +marriage than I am disposed to feel regarding it: and depend on it has too high +a spirit to show that he is beaten. But I know he is a good deal cut up, though +he says nothing; and he agreed willingly enough to take a little journey, +Arthur, and be out of the way when this business takes place. We shall go to +Paris: I don’t know where else besides. These misfortunes do good in one +way, hard as they are to bear: they unite people who love each other. It seems +to me my boy has been nearer to me, and likes his old father better than he has +done of late.” And very soon after this talk our friends departed. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +The Bulgarian minister having been recalled, and Lady Anne Newcome’s +house in park Lane being vacant, her ladyship and her family came to occupy the +mansion for this eventful season, and sate once more in the dismal dining-room +under the picture of the defunct Sir Brian. A little of the splendour and +hospitality of old days was revived in the house: entertainments were given by +Lady Anne: and amongst other festivities a fine ball took place, when pretty +Miss Alice, Miss Ethel’s younger sister, made her first appearance in the +world, to which she was afterwards to be presented by the Marchioness of +Farintosh. All the little sisters were charmed, no doubt, that the beautiful +Ethel was to become a beautiful Marchioness, who, as they came up to womanhood +one after another, would introduce them severally to amiable young earls, +dukes, and marquises, when they would be married off and wear coronets and +diamonds of their own right. At Lady Anne’s ball I saw my acquaintance, +young Mumford, who was going to Oxford next October, and about to leave Rugby, +where he was at the head of the school, looking very dismal as Miss Alice +whirled round the room dancing in Viscount Bustington’s arms;—Miss +Alice, with whose mamma he used to take tea at Rugby, and for whose pretty sake +Mumford did Alfred Newcome’s verses for him and let him off his +thrashings. Poor Mumford! he dismally went about under the protection of young +Alfred, a fourth-form boy—not one soul did he know in that rattling +London ballroom; his young face—as white as the large white tie, donned +two hours since at the Tavistock with such nervousness and beating of heart! +</p> + +<p> +With these lads, and decorated with a tie equally splendid, moved about young +Sam Newcome, who was shirking from his sister and his mamma. Mrs. Hobson had +actually assumed clean gloves for this festive occasion. Sam stared at all the +“Nobs:” and insisted upon being introduced to +“Farintosh,” and congratulated his lordship with much graceful +ease: and then pushed about the rooms perseveringly hanging on to +Alfred’s jacket. “I say, I wish you wouldn’t call me +Al’,” I heard Mr. Alfred say to his cousin. Seeing my face, Mr. +Samuel ran up to claim acquaintance. He was good enough to say he thought +Farintosh seemed devilish haughty. Even my wife could not help saying, that Mr. +Sam was an odious little creature. +</p> + +<p> +So it was for young Alfred, and his brothers and sisters, who would want help +and protection in the world, that Ethel was about to give up her independence, +her inclination perhaps, and to bestow her life on yonder young nobleman. +Looking at her as a girl devoting herself to her family, her sacrifice gave her +a melancholy interest in our eyes. My wife and I watched her, grave and +beautiful, moving through the rooms, receiving and returning a hundred +greetings, bending to compliments, talking with this friend and that, with my +lord’s lordly relations, with himself, to whom she listened +deferentially; faintly smiling as he spoke now and again; doing the honours of +her mother’s house. Lady after lady of his lordship’s clan and +kinsfolk complimented the girl and her pleased mother. Old Lady Kew was radiant +(if one can call radiance the glances of those darkling old eyes). She sate in +a little room apart, and thither people went to pay their court to her. +Unwillingly I came in on this levee with my wife on my arm: Lady Kew scowled at +me over her crutch, but without a sign of recognition. “What an awful +countenance that old woman has!” Laura whispered as we retreated out of +that gloomy presence. +</p> + +<p> +And Doubt (as its wont is) whispered too a question in my ear, “Is it for +her brothers and sisters only that Miss Ethel is sacrificing herself? Is it not +for the coronet, and the triumph, and the fine houses?” “When two +motives may actuate a friend, we surely may try and believe in the good +one,” says Laura. “But, but I am glad Clive does not marry +her—poor fellow—he would not have been happy with her. She belongs +to this great world: she has spent all her life in it: Clive would have entered +into it very likely in her train; and you know, sir, it is not good that we +should be our husbands’ superiors,” adds Mrs. Laura, with a +curtsey. +</p> + +<p> +She presently pronounced that the air was very hot in the rooms, and in fact +wanted to go home to see her child. As we passed out, we saw Sir Barnes +Newcome, eagerly smiling, smirking, bowing, and in the fondest conversation +with his sister and Lord Farintosh. By Sir Barnes presently brushed +Lieutenant-General Sir George Tufto, K.C.B., who, when he saw on whose foot he +had trodden, grunted out, “H’m, beg your pardon!” and turning +his back on Barnes, forthwith began complimenting Ethel and the Marquis. +“Served with your lordship’s father in Spain; glad to make your +lordship’s acquaintance,” says Sir George. Ethel bows to us as we +pass out of the rooms, and we hear no more of Sir George’s conversation. +</p> + +<p> +In the cloak-room sits Lady Clara Newcome, with a gentleman bending over her, +just in such an attitude as the bride is in Hogarth’s “Marriage à +la Mode” as the counsellor talks to her. Lady Clara starts up as a crowd +of blushes come into her wan face, and tries to smile, and rises to greet my +wife, and says something about its being so dreadfully hot in the upper rooms, +and so very tedious waiting for the carriages. The gentleman advances towards +me with a military stride, and says, “How do you do, Mr. Pendennis? +How’s our young friend, the painter?” I answer Lord Highgate +civilly enough, whereas my wife will scarce speak a word in reply to Lady Clara +Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Clara asked us to her ball, which my wife declined altogether to attend. +Sir Barnes published a series of quite splendid entertainments on the happy +occasion of his sister’s betrothal. We read the names of all the clan +Farintosh in the <i>Morning Post</i>, as attending these banquets. Mr. and Mrs. +Hobson Newcome, in Bryanstone Square, gave also signs of rejoicing at their +niece’s marriage. They had a grand banquet followed by a tea, to which +latter amusement the present biographer was invited. Lady Anne, and Lady Kew +and her granddaughter, and the Baronet and his wife, and my Lord Highgate and +Sir George Tufto attended the dinner; but it was rather a damp entertainment. +“Farintosh,” whispers Sam Newcome, “sent word just before +dinner that he had a sore throat, and Barnes was as sulky as possible. Sir +George wouldn’t speak to him, and the Dowager wouldn’t speak to +Lord Highgate. Scarcely anything was drank,” concluded Mr. Sam, with a +slight hiccup. “I say, Pendennis, how sold Clive will be!” And the +amiable youth went off to commune with others of his parents’ guests. +</p> + +<p> +Thus the Newcomes entertained the Farintoshes, and the Farintoshes entertained +the Newcomes. And the Dowager Countess of Kew went from assembly to assembly +every evening, and to jewellers and upholsterers and dressmakers every morning; +and Lord Farintosh’s town-house was splendidly re-decorated in the newest +fashion; and he seemed to grow more and more attentive as the happy day +approached, and he gave away all his cigars to his brother Rob; and his sisters +were delighted with Ethel, and constantly in her company, and his mother was +pleased with her, and thought a girl of her spirit and resolution would make a +good wife for her son: and select crowds flocked to see the service of plate at +Handyman’s, and the diamonds which were being set for the lady; and Smee, +R.A., painted her portrait, as a <i>souvenir</i> for mamma when Miss Newcome +should be Miss Newcome no more; and Lady Kew made a will leaving all she could +leave to her beloved granddaughter, Ethel, daughter of the late Sir Brian +Newcome, Baronet; and Lord Kew wrote an affectionate letter to his cousin, +congratulating her, and wishing her happiness with all his heart; and I was +glancing over <i>The Times</i> newspaper at breakfast one morning; when I laid +it down with an exclamation which caused my wife to start with surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it?” cries Laura, and I read as follows:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“‘Death of the Countess Dowager of Kew.—We regret to have to +announce the awfully sudden death of this venerable lady. Her ladyship, who had +been at several parties of the nobility the night before last, seemingly in +perfect health, was seized with a fit as she was waiting for her carriage, and +about to quit Lady Pallgrave’s assembly. Immediate medical assistance was +procured, and her ladyship was carried to her own house, in Queen Street, +Mayfair. But she never rallied, or, we believe, spoke, after the first fatal +seizure, and sank at eleven o’clock last evening, The deceased, Louisa +Joanna Gaunt, widow of Frédéric, first Earl of Kew, was daughter of Charles, +Earl of Gaunt, and sister of the late and aunt of the present Marquis of +Steyne. The present Earl of Kew is her ladyship’s grandson, his +lordship’s father, Lord Walham, having died before his own father, the +first earl. Many noble families are placed in mourning by this sad event. +Society has to deplore the death of a lady who has been its ornament for more +than half a century, and who was known, we may say, throughout Europe for her +remarkable sense, extraordinary memory, and brilliant wit.’” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0055"></a> +CHAPTER LV.<br> +Barnes’s Skeleton Closet</h2> + +<p> +The demise of Lady Kew of course put a stop for a while to the matrimonial +projects so interesting to the house of Newcome. Hymen blew his torch out, put +it into the cupboard for use on a future day, and exchanged his garish +saffron-coloured robe for decent temporary mourning. Charles Honeyman improved +the occasion at Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel hard by; and “Death at the +Festival” was one of his most thrilling sermons; reprinted at the request +of some of the congregation. There were those of his flock, especially a pair +whose quarter of the fold was the organ-loft, who were always charmed with the +piping of that melodious pastor. +</p> + +<p> +Shall we too, while the coffin yet rests on the earth’s outer surface, +enter the chapel whither these void remains of our dear sister departed are +borne by the smug undertaker’s gentlemen, and pronounce an elegy over +that bedizened box of corruption? When the young are stricken down, and their +roses nipped in an hour by the destroying blight, even the stranger can +sympathise, who counts the scant years on the gravestone, or reads the notice +in the newspaper corner. The contrast forces itself on you. A fair young +creature, bright and blooming yesterday, distributing smiles, levying homage, +inspiring desire, conscious of her power to charm, and gay with the natural +enjoyment of her conquests—who in his walk through the world has not +looked on many such a one; and, at the notion of her sudden call away from +beauty, triumph, pleasure; her helpless outcries during her short pain; her +vain pleas for a little respite; her sentence, and its execution; has not felt +a shock of pity? When the days of a long life come to its close, and a white +head sinks to rise no more, we bow our own with respect as the mourning train +passes, and salute the heraldry and devices of yonder pomp, as symbols of age, +wisdom, deserved respect and merited honour; long experience of suffering and +action. The wealth he may have achieved is the harvest which he sowed; the +titles on his hearse, fruits of the field he bravely and laboriously wrought +in. But to live to fourscore years, and be found dancing among the idle +virgins! to have had near a century of allotted time, and then be called away +from the giddy notes of a Mayfair fiddle! To have to yield your roses too, and +then drop out of the bony clutch of your old fingers a wreath that came from a +Parisian bandbox! One fancies around some graves unseen troops of mourners +waiting; many and many a poor pensioner trooping to the place; many weeping +charities; many kind actions; many dear friends beloved and deplored, rising up +at the toll of that bell to follow the honoured hearse; dead parents waiting +above, and calling, “Come, daughter!” lost children, heaven’s +fondlings, hovering round like cherubim, and whispering, “Welcome, +mother!” Here is one who reposes after a long feast where no love has +been; after girlhood without kindly maternal nurture; marriage without +affection; matronhood without its precious griefs and joys; after fourscore +years of lonely vanity. Let us take off our hats to that procession too as it +passes, admiring the different lots awarded to the children of men, and the +various usages to which Heaven puts its creatures. +</p> + +<p> +Leave we yonder velvet-palled box, spangled with fantastic heraldry, and +containing within the aged slough and envelope of a soul gone to render its +account. Look rather at the living audience standing round the shell;—the +deep grief on Barnes Newcome’s fine countenance; the sadness depicted in +the face of the most noble the Marquis of Farintosh; the sympathy of her +ladyship’s medical man (who came in the third mourning carriage); better +than these, the awe, and reverence, and emotion, exhibited in the kind face of +one of the witnesses of this scene, as he listens to those words which the +priest rehearses over our dead. What magnificent words! what a burning faith, +what a glorious triumph; what a heroic life, death, hope, they record! They are +read over all of us alike; as the sun shines on just and unjust. We have all of +us heard them; and I have fancied, for my part, that they fell and smote like +the sods on the coffin. +</p> + +<p> +The ceremony over, the undertaker’s gentlemen clamber on the roof of the +vacant hearse, into which palls, tressels, trays of feathers, are inserted, and +the horses break out into a trot, and the empty carriages, expressing the deep +grief of the deceased lady’s friends, depart homeward. It is remarked +that Lord Kew hardly has any communication with his cousin, Sir Barnes Newcome. +His lordship jumps into a cab, and goes to the railroad. Issuing from the +cemetery, the Marquis of Farintosh hastily orders that thing to be taken off +his hat, and returns to town in his brougham, smoking a cigar. Sir Barnes +Newcome rides in the brougham beside Lord Farintosh as far as Oxford Street, +where he gets a cab, and goes to the City. For business is business, and must +be attended to, though grief be ever so severe. +</p> + +<p> +A very short time previous to her demise, Mr. Rood (that was Mr. +Rood—that other little gentleman in black, who shared the third mourning +coach along with her ladyship’s medical man) had executed a will by which +almost all the Countess’s property was devised to her granddaughter, +Ethel Newcome. Lady Kew’s decease of course delayed the marriage projects +for a while. The young heiress returned to her mother’s house in Park +Lane. I dare say the deep mourning habiliments in which the domestics of that +establishment appeared, were purchased out of the funds left in his hands, +which Ethel’s banker and brother had at her disposal. +</p> + +<p> +Sir Barnes Newcome, who was one of the trustees of his sister’s property, +grumbled no doubt because his grandmother had bequeathed to him but a paltry +recompense of five hundred pounds for his pains and trouble of trusteeship; but +his manner to Ethel was extremely bland and respectful: an heiress now, and to +be a marchioness in a few months, Sir Barnes treated her with a very different +regard to that which he was accustomed to show to other members of his family. +For while this worthy Baronet would contradict his mother at every word she +uttered, and take no pains to disguise his opinion that Lady Anne’s +intellect was of the very poorest order, he would listen deferentially to +Ethel’s smallest observations, exert himself to amuse her under her +grief, which he chose to take for granted was very severe, visit her +constantly, and show the most charming solicitude for her general comfort and +welfare. +</p> + +<p> +During this time my wife received constant notes from Ethel Newcome, and the +intimacy between the two ladies much increased. Laura was so unlike the women +of Ethel’s circle, the young lady was pleased to say, that to be with her +was Ethel’s greatest comfort. Miss Newcome was now her own mistress, had +her carriage, and would drive day after day to our cottage at Richmond. The +frigid society of Lord Farintosh’s sisters, the conversation of his +mother, did not amuse Ethel, and she escaped from both with her usual +impatience of control. She was at home every day dutifully to receive my +lord’s visits; but though she did not open her mind to Laura as freely +regarding the young gentleman as she did when the character and disposition of +her future mother and sisters-in-law was the subject of their talk, I could +see, from the grave look of commiseration which my wife’s face bore after +her young friend’s visits, that Mrs. Pendennis augured rather ill of the +future happiness of this betrothed pair. Once, at Miss Newcome’s special +request, I took my wife to see her in Park Lane, where the Marquis of Farintosh +found us. His lordship and I had already a half-acquaintance, which was not, +however, improved after my regular presentation to him by Miss Newcome: he +scowled at me with a countenance indicative of anything but welcome, and did +not seem in the least more pleased when Ethel entreated her friend Laura not to +take her bonnet, not to think of going away so soon. She came to see us the +very next day, stayed much longer with us than usual, and returned to town +quite late in the evening, in spite of the entreaties of the inhospitable +Laura, who would have had her leave us long before. “I am sure,” +says clear-sighted Mrs. Laura, “she is come out of bravado, and after we +went away yesterday that there were words between her and Lord Farintosh on our +account.” +</p> + +<p> +“Confound the young man,” breaks out Mr. Pendennis in a fume; +“what does he mean by his insolent airs?” +</p> + +<p> +“He may think we are partisans de l’autre,” says Mrs. +Pendennis, with a smile first, and a sigh afterwards, as she said “poor +Clive!” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you ever talk about Clive?” asks the husband. +</p> + +<p> +“Never. Once, twice, perhaps, in the most natural manner in the world we +mentioned where he is; but nothing further passes. The subject is a sealed one +between us. She often looks at his drawings in my album (Clive had drawn our +baby there and its mother in a great variety of attitudes), and gazes at his +sketch of his dear old father: but of him she never says a word.” +</p> + +<p> +“So it is best,” says Mr. Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—best,” echoes Laura, with a sigh. +</p> + +<p> +“You think, Laura,” continues the husband, “you think +she——” +</p> + +<p> +“She what?” What did Mr. Pendennis mean? Laura his wife certainly +understood him, though upon my conscience the sentence went no +further—for she answered at once: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—I think she certainly did, poor boy! But that, of course, is +over now: and Ethel, though she cannot help being a worldly woman, has such +firmness and resolution of character, that if she has once determined to +conquer any inclination of that sort I am sure she will master it, and make +Lord Farintosh a very good wife.” +</p> + +<p> +“Since the Colonel’s quarrel with Sir Barnes,” cries Mr. +Pendennis, adverting by a natural transition from Ethel to her amiable brother, +“our banking friend does not invite us any more: Lady Clara sends you no +cards. I have a great mind to withdraw my account.” +</p> + +<p> +Laura, who understands nothing about accounts, did not perceive the fine irony +of this remark: but her face straightway put on the severe expression which it +chose to assume whenever Sir Barnes’s family was mentioned, and she said, +“My dear, I am very glad indeed that Lady Clara sends us no more of her +invitations. You know very well why I disliked them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“I hear baby crying,” says Laura. Oh, Laura, Laura! how could you +tell your husband such a fib?—and she quits the room without deigning to +give any answer to that “Why?” +</p> + +<p> +Let us pay a brief visit to Newcome in the north of England, and there we may +get some answer to the question of which Mr. Pendennis had just in vain asked a +reply from his wife. My design does not include a description of that great and +flourishing town of Newcome, and of the manufactures which caused its +prosperity; but only admits of the introduction of those Newcomites who are +concerned in the affairs of the family which has given its respectable name to +these volumes. +</p> + +<p> +Thus in previous pages we have said nothing about the Mayor and Corporation of +Newcome the magnificent bankers and manufacturers who had their places of +business in the town, and their splendid villas outside its smoky precincts; +people who would give their thousand guineas for a picture or a statue, and +write you off a cheque for ten times the amount any day; people who, if there +was a talk of a statue to the Queen or the Duke, would come down to the Town +All and subscribe their one, two, three undred apiece (especially if in the +neighbouring city of S<small>LOWCOME</small> they were putting up a statue to +the Duke or the Queen)—not of such men have I spoken, the magnates of the +place; but of the humble Sarah Mason in Jubilee Row—of the Reverend Dr. +Bulders the Vicar, Mr. Vidler the apothecary, Mr. Puff the baker—of Tom +Potts, the jolly reporter of the <i>Newcome Independent</i>, and —— +Batters, Esq., the proprietor of that journal—persons with whom our +friends have had already, or will be found presently to have, some connexion. +And it is from these that we shall arrive at some particulars regarding the +Newcome family, which will show us that they have a skeleton or two in +<i>their</i> closets, as well as their neighbours. +</p> + +<p> +Now, how will you have the story? Worthy mammas of families—if you do not +like to have your daughters told that bad husbands will make bad wives; that +marriages begun in indifference make homes unhappy; that men whom girls are +brought to swear to love and honour are sometimes false, selfish, and cruel; +and that women forget the oaths which they have been made to swear—if you +will not hear of this, ladies, close the book, and send for some other. Banish +the newspaper out of your houses, and shut your eyes to the truth, the awful +truth, of life and sin. Is the world made of Jennies and Jessamies; and passion +the play of schoolboys and schoolgirls, scribbling valentines and interchanging +lollipops? Is life all over when Jenny and Jessamy are married; and are there +no subsequent trials, griefs, wars, bitter heart-pangs, dreadful temptations, +defeats, remorses, sufferings to bear, and dangers to overcome? As you and I, +friend, kneel with our children round about us, prostrate before the Father of +us all, and asking mercy for miserable sinners, are the young ones to suppose +the words are mere form, and don’t apply to us?—to some outcasts in +the free seats probably, or those naughty boys playing in the churchyard? Are +they not to know that we err too, and pray with all our hearts to be rescued +from temptation? If such a knowledge is wrong for them, send them to church +apart. Go you and worship in private; or if not too proud, kneel humbly in the +midst of them, owning your wrong, and praying Heaven to be merciful to you a +sinner. +</p> + +<p> +When Barnes Newcome became the reigning Prince of the Newcome family, and after +the first agonies of grief for his father’s death had subsided, he made +strong attempts to conciliate the principal persons in the neighbourhood, and +to render himself popular in the borough. He gave handsome entertainments to +the townsfolk and to the county gentry; he tried even to bring those two +warring classes together. He endeavoured to be civil to the <i>Newcome +Independent</i>, the Opposition paper, as well as to the <i>Newcome +Sentinel</i> that true old Uncompromising Blue. He asked the Dissenting +clergyman to dinner, and the Low Church clergyman, as well as the orthodox +Doctor Bulders and his curates. He gave a lecture at the Newcome Athenæum, +which everybody said was very amusing, and which <i>Sentinel</i> and +<i>Independent</i> both agreed in praising. Of course he subscribed to that +statue which the Newcomites were raising; to the philanthropic missions which +Reverend Low Church gentlemen were engaged in; to the races (for the young Newcomite +manufacturers are as sporting as any gents in the North), to the hospital, the +People’s Library, the restoration of the rood-screen and the great +painted window in Newcome Old Church (Rev. J. Bulders), and he had to pay in +fine a most awful price for his privilege of sitting in Parliament as +representative of his native place—as he called it in his speeches +“the cradle of his forefathers, the home of his race,” etc., though +Barnes was in fact born at Clapham. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Clara could not in the least help this young statesman in his designs upon +Newcome and the Newcomites. After she came into Barnes’s hands, a +dreadful weight fell upon her. She would smile and simper, and talk kindly and +gaily enough at first, during Sir Brian’s life; and among women, when +Barnes was not present. But as soon as he joined the company, it was remarked +that his wife became silent, and looked eagerly towards him whenever he +ventured to speak. She blundered, her eyes filled with tears; the little wit +she had left her in her husband’s presence: he grew angry, and tried to +hide his anger with a sneer, or broke out with gibe and an oath, when he lost +patience, and Clara, whimpering, would leave the room. Everybody at Newcome +knew that Barnes bullied his wife. +</p> + +<p> +People had worse charges against Barnes than wife-bullying. Do you suppose that +little interruption which occurred at Barnes’s marriage was not known in +Newcome? His victim had been a Newcome girl, the man to whom she was betrothed +was in a Newcome factory. When Barnes was a young man, and in his occasional +visits to Newcome, lived along with those dashing young blades Sam Jollyman +(Jollyman Brothers and Bowcher), Bob Homer, Cross Country Bill, Al Rackner (for +whom his father had to pay eighteen thousand pounds after the Leger, the year +Toggery won it) and that wild lot, all sorts of stories were told of them, and +of Barnes especially. Most of them were settled, and steady business men by +this time. Al, it was known had become very serious, besides making his fortune +in cotton. Bob Homer managed the Bank; and as for S. Jollyman, Mrs. S. J. took +uncommon good care that he didn’t break out of bounds any more; why, he +was not even allowed to play a game at billiards; or to dine out without +her——I could go on giving you interesting particulars of a hundred +members of the Newcome aristocracy, were not our attention especially directed +to one respectable family. +</p> + +<p> +All Barnes’s endeavours at popularity were vain, partly from his own +fault, and partly from the nature of mankind, and of the Newcome folks +especially, whom no single person could possibly conciliate. Thus, suppose he +gave the advertisements to the <i>Independent;</i> the old Blue paper the +<i>Sentinel</i> was very angry: suppose he asked Mr. Hunch, the Dissenting +minister, to bless the tablecloth after dinner, as he had begged Dr. Bulders to +utter a benediction on the first course, Hunch and Bulders were both angry. He +subscribed to the races—what heathenism! to the missionaries—what +sanctimonious humbug! And the worst was that Barnes being young at that time, +and not able to keep his tongue in order, could not help saying not to but of +such and such a man, that he was an infernal ass, or a confounded old idiot, +and so forth—peevish phrases, which undid in a moment the work of a dozen +dinners, countless compliments, and months of grinning good-humour. +</p> + +<p> +Now he is wiser. He is very proud of being Newcome of Newcome, and quite +believes that the place is his hereditary principality. But still, he says, his +father was a fool for ever representing the borough. “Dammy, sir,” +cries Sir Barnes, “never sit for a place that lies at your park-gates, +and above all never try to conciliate ’em. Curse ’em! Hate +’em well, sir! Take a line, and flog the fellows on the other side. Since +I have sate in Parliament for another place, I have saved myself I don’t +know how much a year. I never go to High Church or Low; don’t give a +shillin’ to the confounded races, or the infernal souptickets, or to the +miserable missionaries; and at last live in quiet.” +</p> + +<p> +So, in spite of all his subscriptions, and his coaxing of the various orders of +Newcomites, Sir Barnes Newcome was not popular among them; and while he had +enemies on all sides, had sturdy friends not even on his own. Scarce a man but +felt Barnes was laughing at him; Bulders in his pulpit, Holder who seconded him +in his election, the Newcome society; and the ladies, even more than the men, +were uneasy under his ominous familiarity, and recovered their good-humour when +he left them. People felt as if it was a truce only, and not an alliance with +him, and always speculated on the possibility of war: when he turned his back +on them in the market, men felt relieved, and, as they passed his gate, looked +with no friendly glances over his park-wall. +</p> + +<p> +What happened within was perfectly familiar to many persons. Our friend was +insolent to all his servants; and of course very well served, but very much +disliked, in consequence. The butler was familiar with Taplow—the +housekeeper had a friend at Newcome; Mrs Taplow, in fact, of the King’s +Arms—one of the grooms at Newcome Park kept company with Mrs. +Bulder’s maid: the incomings and outgoings, the quarrels and tears, the +company from London, and all the doings of the folks at Newcome Park were thus +known to the neighbourhood round about. The apothecary brought an awful story +back from Newcome. He had been called to Lady Clara in strong hysterical fits. +He found her ladyship with a bruise on her face. When Sir Barnes approached her +(he would not allow the medical man to see her except in his presence) she +screamed and bade him not come near her. These things did Mr. Vidler weakly +impart to Mrs. Vidler: these, under solemn vows of secrecy, Mrs. Vidler told to +one or two friends. Sir Barnes and Lady Clara were seen shopping together very +graciously in Newcome a short time afterwards; persons who dined at the Park +said the Baronet and his wife seemed on very good terms; but—but that +story of the bruised cheek remained in the minds of certain people, and lay by +at compound interest as such stories will. +</p> + +<p> +Now, say people quarrel and make it up; or don’t make it up, but wear a +smirking face to society, and call each other “my dear” and +“my love,” and smooth over their countenances before John, who +enters with the coals as they are barking and biting, or who announces the +dinner as they are tearing each other’s eyes out? Suppose a woman is ever +so miserable, and yet smiles, and doesn’t show her grief? “Quite +right,” say her prudent friends, and her husband’s relations above +all. “My dear, you have too much propriety to exhibit your grief before +the world, or above all, before the darling children.” So to lie is your +duty, to lie to your friends, to yourself if you can, to your children. +</p> + +<p> +Does this discipline of hypocrisy improve any mortal woman? Say she learns to +smile after a blow, do you suppose in this matter alone she will be a +hypocrite? Poor Lady Clara! I fancy a better lot for you than that to which +fate handed you over. I fancy there need have been no deceit in your fond +simple little heart, could it but have been given into other keeping. But you +were consigned to a master, whose scorn and cruelty terrified you; under whose +sardonic glances your scared eyes were afraid to look up, and before whose +gloomy coldness you dared not be happy. Suppose a little plant, very frail and +delicate from the first, but that might have bloomed sweetly and borne fair +flowers, had it received warm shelter and kindly nurture; suppose a young +creature taken out of her home, and given over to a hard master whose caresses +are as insulting as his neglect; consigned to cruel usage; to weary loneliness; +to bitter, bitter recollections of the past; suppose her schooled into +hypocrisy by tyranny—and then, quick, let us hire an advocate to roar out +to a British jury the wrongs of her injured husband, to paint the agonies of +his bleeding heart (if Mr. Advocate gets plaintiff’s brief in time, and +before defendant’s attorney has retained him), and to show Society +injured through him. Let us console that martyr, I say, with thumping damages; +and as for the woman—the guilty wretch!—let us lead her out and +stone her. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0056"></a> +CHAPTER LVI.<br> +Rosa quo locorum sera moratur</h2> + +<p> +Clive Newcome bore his defeat with such a courage and resolution as those who +knew the young fellow’s character were sure he would display. It was +whilst he had a little lingering hope still that the poor lad was in the worst +condition; as a gambler is restless and unhappy whilst his last few guineas +remain with him, and he is venturing them against the overpowering chances of +the bank. His last piece, however, gone, our friend rises up from that unlucky +table beaten at the contest but not broken in spirit. He goes back into the +world again and withdraws from that dangerous excitement; sometimes when he is +alone or wakeful, tossing in his bed at nights, he may recall the fatal game, +and think how he might have won it—think what a fool he was ever to have +played it at all—but these cogitations Clive kept for himself. He was +magnanimous enough not even to blame Ethel much, and to take her side against +his father, who it must be confessed now exhibited a violent hostility against +that young lady and her belongings. Slow to anger and utterly beyond deceit +himself, when Thomas Newcome was once roused, or at length believed that he was +cheated woe to the offender! From that day forth, Thomas believed no good of +him. Every thought or action of his enemy’s life seemed treason to the +worthy Colonel. If Barnes gave a dinner-party, his uncle was ready to fancy +that the banker wanted to poison somebody; if he made a little speech in the +House of Commons (Barnes did make little speeches in the House of Commons), the +Colonel was sure some infernal conspiracy lay under the villain’s words. +The whole of that branch of the Newcomes fared little better at their +kinsman’s hands—they were all deceitful, sordid, heartless, +worldly;—Ethel herself no better now than the people who had bred her up. +People hate, as they love, unreasonably. Whether is it the more mortifying to +us, to feel that we are disliked or liked undeservedly? +</p> + +<p> +Clive was not easy until he had the sea between him and his misfortune: and now +Thomas Newcome had the chance of making that tour with his son, which in early +days had been such a favourite project with the good man. They travelled +Rhineland and Switzerland together—they crossed into Italy—went +from Milan to Venice (where Clive saluted the greatest painting in the +world—the glorious ‘Assumption’ of Titian)—they went to +Trieste and over the beautiful Styrian Alps to Vienna—they beheld Danube, +and the plain where the Turk and Sobieski fought. They travelled at a +prodigious fast pace. They did not speak much to one another. They were a +pattern pair of English travellers: I dare say many persons whom they met +smiled to observe them; and shrugged their shoulders at the aspect of <i>ces +Anglais</i>. They did not know the care in the young traveller’s mind; +and the deep tenderness and solicitude of the elder. Clive wrote to say it was +a very pleasant tour, but I think I should not have liked to join it. Let us +dismiss it in this single sentence. Other gentlemen have taken the same +journey, and with sorrow perhaps as their silent fellow-traveller. How you +remember the places afterwards, and the thoughts which pursued you! If in after +days, when your grief is dead and buried, you revisit the scenes in which it +was your companion, how its ghost rises and shows itself again! Suppose this +part of Mr. Clive’s life were to be described at length in several +chapters, and not in a single brief sentence, what dreary pages they would be! +In two or three months our friends saw a number of men, cities, mountains, +rivers, and what not. It was yet early autumn when they were back in France +again, and September found them at Brussels, where James Binnie, Esq., and his +family were established in comfortable quarters, and where we may be sure Clive +and his father were very welcome. +</p> + +<p> +Dragged abroad at first sorely against his will, James Binnie had found the +Continental life pretty much to his liking. He had passed a winter at Pau, a +summer at Vichy, where the waters had done him good. His ladies had made +several charming foreign acquaintances. Mrs. Mackenzie had quite a list of +counts and marchionesses among her friends. The excellent Captain Goby, +wandered about the country with them. Was it to Rosey, was it to her mother, +the Captain was most attached? Rosey received him as a godpapa; Mrs. Mackenzie +as a wicked, odious, good-for-nothing, dangerous, delightful creature. Is it +humiliating, is it consolatory, to remark, with what small wit some of our +friends are amused? The jovial sallies of Goby appeared exquisite to +Rosey’s mother, and to the girl probably; though that young Bahawder of a +Clive Newcome chose to wear a grave face (confound his insolent airs!) at the +very best of the Goby jokes. +</p> + +<p> +In Goby’s train was his fervent admirer and inseparable young friend, +Clarence Hoby. Captain Hoby and Captain Goby travelled the world together, +visited Hombourg and Baden, Cheltenham and Leamington, Paris and Brussels, in +company, belonged to the same club in London—the centre of all pleasure, +fashion, and joy, for the young officer and the older campaigner. The jokes at +the Flag, the dinners at the Flag, the committee of the Flag, were the theme of +their constant conversation. Goby fifty years old, unattached, and with dyed +moustaches, was the affable comrade of the youngest member of his club: when +absent, a friend wrote him the last riddle from the smoking-room; when present, +his knowledge of horses, of cookery, wines, and cigars, and military history, +rendered him a most acceptable companion. He knew the history and achievements +of every regiment in the army; of every general and commanding officer. He was +known to have been ‘out’ more than once himself, and had made up a +hundred quarrels. He was certainly not a man of an ascetic life or a profound +intellectual culture: but though poor he was known to be most honourable; +though more than middle-aged he was cheerful, busy, and kindly; and though the +youngsters called him Old Goby, he bore his years very gaily and handsomely, +and I dare say numbers of ladies besides Mrs. Mackenzie thought him delightful. +Goby’s talk and rattle perhaps somewhat bored James Binnie, but Thomas +Newcome found the Captain excellent company; and Goby did justice to the good +qualities of the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +Clive’s father liked Brussels very well. He and his son occupied very +handsome quarters, near the spacious apartments in the Park which James +Binnie’s family inhabited. Waterloo was not far off, to which the Indian +officer paid several visits with Captain Goby for a guide; and many of +Marlborough’s battlefields were near, in which Goby certainly took but a +minor interest; but on the other hand Clive beheld these with the greatest +pleasure, and painted more than one dashing piece, in which Churchill and +Eugene, Cutts and Cadogan, were the heroes; whose flowing periwigs, huge boots, +and thundering Flemish chargers were, he thought, more novel and picturesque +than the Duke’s surtout, and the French Grenadiers’ hairy caps, +which so many English and French artists have portrayed. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis were invited by our kind Colonel to pass a +month—six months if they chose—at Brussels, and were most +splendidly entertained by our friends in that city. A suite of handsome rooms +was set apart for us. My study communicated with Clive’s atelier. Many an +hour did we pass, and many a ride and walk did we take together. I observed +that Clive never mentioned Miss Newcome’s name, and Laura and I agreed +that it was as well not to recall it. Only once, when we read the death of Lady +Glenlivat, Lord Farintosh’s mother, in the newspaper, I remember to have +said, “I suppose that marriage will be put off again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Qu’est ce que cela me fait?” says Mr. Clive gloomily, over +his picture—a cheerful piece representing Count Egmont going to +execution; in which I have the honour to figure as a halberdier, Captain Hoby +as the Count, and Captain Goby as the Duke of Alva, looking out of window. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Mackenzie was in a state of great happiness and glory during this winter. +She had a carriage, and worked that vehicle most indefatigably. She knew a +great deal of good company at Brussels. She had an evening for receiving. She +herself went to countless evening-parties, and had the joy of being invited to +a couple of court balls, at which I am bound to say her daughter and herself +both looked very handsome. The Colonel brushed up his old uniform and attended +these entertainments. M. Newcome fils, as I should judge, was not the +worst-looking man in the room; and, as these young people waltzed together (in +which accomplishment Clive was very much more skilful than Captain Goby) I dare +say many people thought he and Rosey made a pretty couple. +</p> + +<p> +Most persons, my wife included, difficult as that lady is to please, were +pleased with the pretty little Rosey. She sang charmingly now, and looked so +while singing. If her mother would but have omitted that chorus, which she +cackled perseveringly behind her daughter’s pretty back: about +Rosey’s angelic temper; about the compliments Signor Polonini paid her; +about Sir Horace Dash, our minister, <i>insisting</i> upon her singing +“Batti Batti” over again, and the Archduke clapping his hands and +saying, “Oh, yes!” about Count Vanderslaapen’s attentions to +her, etc. etc.; but for these constant remarks of Mrs. Mack’s, I am sure +no one would have been better pleased with Miss Rosey’s singing and +behaviour than myself. As for Captain Hoby, it was easy to see how <i>he +was</i> affected towards Miss Rosalind’s music and person. +</p> + +<p> +And indeed few things could be pleasanter than to watch the behaviour of this +pretty little maid with her Uncle James and his old chum the Colonel. The +latter was soon as fond of her as James Binnie himself, whose face used to +lighten with pleasure whenever it turned towards hers. She seemed to divine his +wants, as she would trip across the room to fulfil them. She skipped into the +carriage and covered his feet with a shawl. James was lazy and chilly now, when +he took his drive. She sate opposite to him and smiled on him; and, if he +dozed, quick, another handkerchief was round his neck. I do not know whether +she understood his jokes, but she saluted them always with a sweet kind smile. +How she kissed him, and how delighted she was if he bought her a bouquet for +her ball that night! One day, upon occasion of one of these balls, James and +Thomas, those two old boys, absolutely came into Mrs. Mackenzie’s +drawing-room with a bouquet apiece for Miss Rosey; and there was a fine +laughing. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, you little Susanna!” says James, after taking his usual +payment; “now go and pay t’other elder.” Rosey did not quite +understand at first, being, you see, more ready to laugh at jokes than to +comprehend them: but when she did, I promise you she looked uncommonly pretty +as she advanced to Colonel Newcome and put that pretty fresh cheek of hers up +to his grizzled moustache. +</p> + +<p> +“I protest I don’t know which of you blushes the most,” +chuckles James Binnie—and the truth is, the old man and the young girl +had both hung out those signals of amiable distress. +</p> + +<p> +On this day, and as Miss Rosey was to be overpowered by flowers, who should +come presently to dinner but Captain Hoby, with another bouquet? on which Uncle +James said Rosey should go to the ball like an American Indian with her scalps +at her belt. +</p> + +<p> +“Scalps!” cries Mrs. Mackenzie. +</p> + +<p> +“Scalps! Oh law, uncle!” exclaims Miss Rosey. “What can you +mean by anything so horrid?” +</p> + +<p> +Goby recalls to Mrs. Mack, Hook-ee-ma-goosh the Indian chief, whom she must +have seen when the Hundred and Fiftieth were at Quebec, and who had his lodge +full of them; and who used to lie about the barracks so drunk, and who used to +beat his poor little European wife: and presently Mr. Clive Newcome joins this +company, when the chirping, tittering, joking, laughing, cease somehow. +</p> + +<p> +Has Clive brought a bouquet too? No. He has never thought about a bouquet. He +is dressed in black, with long hair, a long moustache, and melancholy imperial. +He looks very handsome, but as glum as an undertaker. And James Binnie says, +“Egad, Tom, they used to call you the knight of the woeful countenance, +and Clive has just inherited the paternal mug.” Then James calls out in a +cheery voice, “Dinner, dinner!” and trots off with Mrs. Pendennis +under his arm; Rosey nestles up against the Colonel; Goby and Mrs. Mack walk +away arm-in-arm very contentedly; and I don’t know with which of her +three nosegays pretty Rosey appears at the ball. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Our stay with our friends at Brussels could not be prolonged beyond a month, +for at the end of that period we were under an engagement to other friends in +England, who were good enough to desire the presence of Mrs. Pendennis and her +suite of baby, nurse, and husband. So we presently took leave of Rosey and the +Campaigner, of the two stout elders, and our melancholy young Clive, who bore +us company to Antwerp, and who won Laura’s heart by the neat way in which +he took her child on board ship. Poor fellow! how sad he looked as he bowed to +us and took off his hat! His eyes did not seem to be looking at us, though they +and his thoughts were turned another way. He moved off immediately, with his +head down, puffing his eternal cigar, and lost in his own meditations; our +going or our staying was of very little importance to the lugubrious youth. +</p> + +<p> +“I think it was a great pity they came to Brussels,” says Laura, as +we sate on the deck, while her unconscious infant was cheerful, and while the +water of the lazy Scheldt as yet was smooth. +</p> + +<p> +“Who? The Colonel and Clive? They are very handsomely lodged. They have a +good maître-d’hôtel. Their dinners, I am sure, are excellent; and your +child, madam, is as healthy as it possibly can be.” +</p> + +<p> +“Blessed darling! Yes!” (Blessed darling crows, moos, jumps in his +nurse’s arms, and holds out a little mottled hand for a biscuit of Savoy, +which mamma supplies.) “I can’t help thinking, Arthur, that Rosey +would have been much happier as Mrs. Hoby than she will be as Mrs. +Newcome.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who thinks of her being Mrs. Newcome?” +</p> + +<p> +“Her mother, her uncle, and Clive’s father. Since the Colonel has +been so rich, I think Mrs. Mackenzie sees a great deal of merit in Clive. Rosey +will do anything her mother bids her. If Clive can be brought to the same +obedience, Uncle James and the Colonel will be delighted. Uncle James has set +his heart on this marriage. (He and his sister agree upon this point.) He told +me, last night, that he would sing ‘Nunc dimittis,’ could he but +see the two children happy; and that he should lie easier in purgatory if that +could be brought about.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what did you say, Laura?” +</p> + +<p> +“I laughed, and told Uncle James I was of the Hoby faction. He is very +good-natured, frank, honest, and gentlemanlike, Mr. Hoby. But Uncle James said +he thought Mr. Hoby was so—well, so stupid—that his Rosey would be +thrown away upon the poor Captain. So I did not tell Uncle James that, before +Clive’s arrival, Rosey had found Captain Hoby far from stupid. He used to +sing duets with her; he used to ride with her before Clive came. Last winter, +when they were at Pau, I feel certain Miss Rosey thought Captain Hoby very +pleasant indeed. She thinks she was attached to Clive formerly, and now she +admires him, and is dreadfully afraid of him. He is taller and handsomer, and +richer and cleverer than Captain Hoby, certainly.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should think so, indeed,” breaks out Mr. Pendennis. “Why, +my dear, Clive is as fine a fellow as one can see on a summer’s day. It +does one good to look at him. What a frank pair of bright blue eyes he has, or +used to have, till this mishap overclouded them! What a pleasant laugh he has! +What a well-built, agile figure it is—what pluck, and spirit, and honour, +there is about my young chap! I don’t say he is a genius of the highest +order, but he is the staunchest, the bravest, the cheeriest, the most +truth-telling, the kindest heart. Compare him and Hoby! Why, Clive is an eagle, +and yonder little creature a mousing owl!” +</p> + +<p> +“I like to hear you speak so,” cries Mrs. Laura, very tenderly. +“People say that you are always sneering, Arthur; but I know my husband +better. We know papa better, don’t we, baby?” (Here my wife kisses +the infant Pendennis with great effusion, who has come up dancing on his +nurse’s arms.) “But,” says she, coming back and snuggling by +her husband’s side again—“But suppose your favourite Clive is +an eagle, Arthur, don’t you think he had better have an eagle for a mate? +If he were to marry little Rosey, I dare say he would be very good to her; but +I think neither he nor she would be very happy. My dear, she does not care for +his pursuits; she does not understand him when he talks. The two captains, and +Rosey and I, and the campaigner, as you call her, laugh and talk, and prattle, +and have the merriest little jokes with one another, and we all are as quiet as +mice when you and Clive come in.” +</p> + +<p> +“What, am I an eagle, too? I have no aquiline pretensions at all, Mrs. +Pendennis.” +</p> + +<p> +“No. Well, we are not afraid of you. We are not afraid of papa, are we, +darling?” this young woman now calls out to the other member of her +family; who, if you will calculate, has just had time to be walked twice up and +down the deck of the steamer, whilst Laura has been making her speech about +eagles. And soon the mother, child, and attendant descend into the lower +cabins: and then dinner is announced: and Captain Jackson treats us to +champagne from his end of the table: and yet a short while, and we are at sea, +and conversation becomes impossible: and morning sees us under the grey London +sky, and amid the million of masts in the Thames. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0057"></a> +CHAPTER LVII.<br> +Rosebury and Newcome</h2> + +<p> +The friends to whom we were engaged in England were Florac and his wife, Madame +la Princesse de Moncontour, who were determined to spend the Christmas holidays +at the Princess’s country seat. It was for the first time since their +reconciliation, that the Prince and Princess dispensed their hospitalities at +the latter’s château. It is situated, as the reader has already been +informed, at some five miles from the town of Newcome; away from the chimneys +and smoky atmosphere of that place, in a sweet country of rural woodlands; over +which quiet villages, grey church spires, and ancient gabled farmhouses are +scattered: still wearing the peaceful aspect which belonged to them when +Newcome was as yet but an antiquated country town, before mills were erected on +its river-banks, and dyes and cinders blackened its stream. Twenty years since +Newcome Park was the only great house in that district; now scores of fine +villas have sprung up in the suburb lying between the town and park. Newcome +New Town, as everybody knows, has grown round the park-gates, and the New Town +Hotel (where the railway station is) is a splendid structure in the Tudor +style, more ancient in appearance than the park itself; surrounded by little +antique villas with spiked gables, stacks of crooked chimneys, and plate-glass +windows looking upon trim lawns; with glistening hedges of evergreens, spotless +gravel walks, and Elizabethan gig-houses. Under the great railway viaduct of +the New Town, goes the old tranquil winding London highroad, once busy with a +score of gay coaches, and ground by innumerable wheels: but at a few miles from +the New Town Station the road has become so mouldy that the grass actually +grows on it; and Rosebury, Madame de Moncontour’s house, stands at one +end of a village-green, which is even more quiet now than it was a hundred +years ago. +</p> + +<p> +When first Madame de Florac bought the place, it scarcely ranked amongst the +country-houses; and she, the sister of manufacturers at Newcome and Manchester, +did not of course visit the county families. A homely little body, married to a +Frenchman from whom she was separated, may or may not have done a great deal of +good in her village, have had pretty gardens, and won prizes at the Newcome +flower and fruit shows; but, of course, she was nobody in such an aristocratic +county as we know ———shire is. She had her friends and +relatives from Newcome. Many of them were Quakers—many were retail +shopkeepers. She even frequented the little branch Ebenezer, on Rosebury Green; +and it was only by her charities and kindness at Christmas-time, that the Rev. +Dr. Potter, the rector at Rosebury, knew her. The old clergy, you see, live +with the county families. Good little Madame de Florac was pitied and +patronised by the Doctor, treated with no little superciliousness by Mrs. +Potter, and the young ladies, who only kept the first society. Even when her +rich brother died, and she got her share of all that money Mrs. Potter said +poor Madame de Florac did well in not trying to move out of her natural sphere +(Mrs. P. was the daughter of a bankrupt hatter in London, and had herself been +governess in a noble family, out of which she married Mr. P., who was private +tutor). Madame de Florac did well, she said, not to endeavour to leave her +natural sphere, and that The County never would receive her. Tom Potter, the +rector’s son, with whom I had the good fortune to be a fellow-student at +Saint Boniface College, Oxbridge—a rattling, forward, and it must be +owned, vulgar youth—asked me whether Florac was not a billiard-marker by +profession? and was even so kind as to caution his sisters not to speak of +billiards before the lady of Rosebury. Tom was surprised to learn that Monsieur +Paul de Florac was a gentleman of lineage incomparably better than that of any, +except two or three families in England (including your own, my dear and +respected reader, of course, if you hold to your pedigree). But the truth is, +heraldically speaking, that union with the Higgs of Manchester was the first +misalliance which the Florac family had made for long long years. Not that I +would wish for a moment to insinuate that any nobleman is equal to an English +nobleman; nay, that an English snob, with a coat-of-arms bought yesterday, or +stolen out of Edmonton, or a pedigree purchased from a peerage-maker, has not a +right to look down upon any of your paltry foreign nobility. +</p> + +<p> +One day the carriage-and-four came in state from Newcome Park, with the +well-known chaste liveries of the Newcomes, and drove up Rosebury Green, +towards the parsonage gate, when Mrs. and the Miss Potters happened to be +standing, cheapening fish from a donkey-man, with whom they were in the habit +of dealing. The ladies were in their pokiest old head-gear and most dingy +gowns, when they perceived the carriage approaching; and considering, of +course, that the visit of the Park people was intended for them, dashed into +the rectory to change their clothes, leaving Rowkins, the costermonger, in the +very midst of the negotiation about the three mackerel. Mamma got that new +bonnet out of the bandbox; Lizzy and Liddy skipped up to their bedroom, and +brought out those dresses which they wore at the <i>déjeûner</i> at the Newcome +Athenæum, when Lord Leveret came down to lecture; into which they no sooner had +hooked their lovely shoulders, than they reflected with terror that mamma had +been altering one of papa’s flannel waistcoats and had left it in the +drawing-room, when they were called out by the song of Rowkins, and the +appearance of his donkey’s ears over the green gate of the rectory. To +think of the Park people coming, and the drawing-room in that dreadful state! +</p> + +<p> +But when they came downstairs the Park people were not in the room—the +woollen garment was still on the table (how they plunged it into the +chiffonier!)—and the only visitor was Rowkins, the costermonger, grinning +at the open French windows, with the three mackerel, and crying, “Make it +sixpence, miss—don’t say fippens, maam, to a pore fellow that has a +wife and family.” So that the young ladies had to +cry—“Impudence!” “Get away, you vulgar insolent +creature!—Go round, sir, to the back door!” “How dare +you?” and the like; fearing lest Lady Anne Newcome, and Young Ethel, and +Barnes should enter in the midst of this ignoble controversy. +</p> + +<p> +They never came at all—those Park people. How very odd! They passed the +rectory gate; they drove on to Madame de Florac’s lodge. They went in. +They stayed for half an hour; the horses driving round and round the gravel +road before the house; and Mrs. Potter and the girls speedily going to the +upper chambers, and looking out of the room where the maids slept, saw Lady +Anne, Ethel, and Barnes walking with Madame de Florac, going into the +conservatories, issuing thence with MacWhirter, the gardener, bearing huge +bunches of grapes and large fasces of flowers; they saw Barnes talking in the +most respectful manner to Madame de Florac: and when they went downstairs and +had their work before them—Liddy her gilt music-book, Lizzy her +embroidered altar-cloth, mamma her scarlet cloak for one of the old +women—they had the agony of seeing the barouche over the railings whisk +by, with the Park people inside, and Barnes driving the four horses. +</p> + +<p> +It was on that day when Barnes had determined to take up Madame de Florac; when +he was bent upon reconciling her to her husband. In spite of all Mrs. +Potter’s predictions, the county families did come and visit the +manufacturer’s daughter; and when Madame de Florac became Madame la +Princesse de Moncontour, when it was announced that she was coming to stay at +Rosebury for Christmas, I leave you to imagine whether the circumstance was or +was not mentioned in the <i>Newcome Sentinel</i> and the <i>Newcome +Independent;</i> and whether Rev. G. Potter, D.D., and Mrs. Potter did or did +not call on the Prince and Princess. I leave you to imagine whether the lady +did or did not inspect all the alterations which Vineer’s people from +Newcome were making at Rosebury House—the chaste yellow satin and gold of +the drawing-room—the carved oak for the dining-room—the chintz for +the bedrooms—the Princess’s apartment—the Prince’s +apartment—the guests’ apartments—the smoking-room, gracious +goodness!—the stables (these were under Tom Potter’s +superintendence), “and I’m finished,” says he one day, +“if here doesn’t come a billiard-table!” +</p> + +<p> +The house was most comfortably and snugly appointed from top to bottom; and +thus it will be seen that Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis were likely to be in very good +quarters for Christmas of 184-. +</p> + +<p> +Tom Potter was so kind as to call on me two days after our arrival; and to +greet me in the Princess’s pew at church on the previous day. Before +desiring to be introduced to my wife, he requested me to present him to my +friend the Prince. He called him your Highness. His Highness, who had behaved +with exemplary gravity, save once when he shrieked an “ah!” as Miss +Liddy led off the children in the organ-loft in a hymn, and the whole pack went +woefully out of tune, complimented Monsieur Tom on the sermon of monsieur his +father. Tom walked with us to Rosebury lodge-gate. “Will you not come in, +and make a party of billiard with me?” says His Highness. “Ah +Pardon! I forgot, you do not play the billiard the Sunday!” “<i>Any +other day</i>, Prince, I shall be delighted,” says Tom; and squeezed His +Highness’s hand tenderly at parting. “Your comrade of college was +he?” asks Florac. “My dear, what men are these comrades of college! +What men are you English! My word of honour, there are some of them +here—if I were to say to them wax my boots, they would take them and wax +them! Didst thou see how the Révérend eyed us during the sermon? He regarded us +over his book, my word of honour!” +</p> + +<p> +Madame de Florac said simply, she wished the Prince would go and hear Mr. Jacob +at the Ebenezer. Mr. Potter was not a good preacher, certainly. +</p> + +<p> +“Savez-vous qu’elle est furieusement belle, la fille du +Révérend?” whispered His Highness to me. “I have made eyes at her +during the sermon. They will be of pretty neighbours these meess!” and +Paul looked unutterably roguish and victorious as he spoke. To my wife, I am +bound to say, Monsieur de Moncontour showed a courtesy, a respect and kindness, +that could not be exceeded. He admired her. He paid her compliments +innumerable, and gave me I am sure sincere congratulations at possessing such a +treasure. I do not think he doubted about his power of conquering her, or any +other of the daughters of women. But I was the friend of his +misfortunes—his guest; and he spared me. +</p> + +<p> +I have seen nothing more amusing, odd, and pleasant than Florac at this time of +his prosperity. We arrived, as this veracious chronicle has already asserted, +on a Saturday evening. We were conducted to our most comfortable apartments; +with crackling fires blazing on the hearths, and every warmth of welcome. +Florac expanded and beamed with good-nature. He shook me many times by the +hand; he patted me; he called me his good—his brave. He cried to his +maître-d’hôtel, “Frédéric, remember monsieur is master here! Run +before his orders. Prostrate thyself to him. He was good to me in the days of +my misfortune. Hearest thou, Frédéric? See that everything be done for Monsieur +Pendennis—for madame sa charmante lady—for her angelic infant, and +the bonne. None of thy garrison tricks with that young person, Frédéric! vieux +scélérat! Garde-toi de là, Frédéric; si non, je t’envoie à Botani Bay; je +te traduis devant le Lord-Maire!” +</p> + +<p> +“En Angleterre je me fais Anglais, vois-tu, mon ami,” continued the +Prince. “Demain c’est Sunday, et tu vas voir! I hear the bell, +dress thyself for the dinner—my friend!”; Here there was another +squeeze of both hands from the good-natured fellow. “It do good to my art +to ’ave you in my ’ouse! Heuh!” He hugged his guest; he had +tears in his eyes as he performed this droll, this kind embrace. Not less kind +in her way, though less expensive and <i>embracive</i>, was Madame de +Moncontour to my wife, as I found on comparing notes with that young woman, +when the day’s hospitalities were ended. The little Princess trotted from +bedchamber to nursery to see that everything was made comfortable for her +guests. She sate and saw the child washed and put to bed. She had never beheld +such a little angel. She brought it a fine toy to play with. She and her grim +old maid frightened the little creature at first, but it was very speedily +reconciled to their countenances. She was in the nursery almost as early as the +child’s mother. “Ah!” sighed the poor little woman, +“how happy you must be to have one!” In fine, my wife was quite +overcome by her goodness and welcome. +</p> + +<p> +Sunday morning arrived in the course of time, and then Florac appeared as a +most wonderful Briton indeed! He wore top-boots and buckskins; and after +breakfast, when we went to church, a white great-coat with a little cape, in +which garment he felt that his similarity to an English gentleman was perfect. +In conversation with his grooms and servants he swore freely,—not that he +was accustomed to employ oaths in his own private talk, but he thought the +employment of these expletives necessary as an English country gentleman. He +never dined without a roast-beef, and insisted that the piece of meat should be +bleeding, “as you love it, you others.” He got up boxing-matches: +and kept birds for combats of cock. He assumed the sporting language with +admirable enthusiasm—drove over to cover with a steppère—rode +across countri like a good one—was splendid in the hunting-field in his +velvet cap and Napoleon boots, and made the Hunt welcome at Rosebury where his +good-natured little wife was as kind to the gentlemen in scarlet as she used to +be of old to the stout Dissenting gentlemen in black, who sang hymns and spake +sermons on her lawn. These folks, scared at the change which had taken place in +the little Princess’s habits of life, lamented her falling away: but in +the county she and her husband got a great popularity, and in Newcome town +itself they were not less liked, for her benefactions were unceasing, and +Paul’s affability the theme of all praise. The <i>Newcome Independent</i> +and the <i>Newcome Sentinel</i> both paid him compliments; the former journal +contrasting his behaviour with that of Sir Barnes, their member. Florac’s +pleasure was to drive his Princess with four horses into Newcome. He called his +carriage his “trappe,” his “drague.” The street-boys +cheered and hurrayed the Prince as he passed through the town. One haberdasher +had a yellow stock called the “Moncontour” displayed in his +windows; another had a pink one marked “The Princely,” and as such +recommended it to the young Newcome gents. +</p> + +<p> +The drague conveyed us once to the neighbouring house of Newcome, whither my +wife accompanied Madame de Moncontour at that lady’s own request, to whom +Laura very properly did not think fit to confide her antipathy for Lady Clara +Newcome. Coming away from a great house, how often she and I, egotistical +philosophers, thanked our fates that our own home was a small one! How long +will great houses last in this world? Do not their owners now prefer a lodging +at Brighton, or a little entresol on the Boulevard, to the solitary ancestral +palace in a park barred round with snow? We were as glad to get out of Newcome +as out of a prison. My wife and our hostess skipped into the carriage, and +began to talk freely as the lodge-gates closed after us. Would we be lords of +such a place under the penalty of living in it? We agreed that the little angle +of earth called Fairoaks was dearer to us than the clumsy Newcome-pile of Tudor +masonry. The house had been fitted up in the time of George IV. and the +quasi-Gothic revival. We were made to pass through Gothic dining-rooms, where +there was now no hospitality,—Gothic drawing-rooms shrouded in brown +hollands, to one little room at the end of the dusky suite, where Lady Clara +sate alone, or in the company of the nurses and children. The blank gloom of +the place had fallen upon the poor lady. Even when my wife talked about +children (good-natured Madame de Moncontour vaunting ours as a prodigy) Lady +Clara did not brighten up! Her pair of young ones was exhibited and withdrawn. +A something weighed upon the woman. We talked about Ethel’s marriage. She +said it was fixed for the new year, she believed. She did not know whether +Glenlivat had been very handsomely fitted up. She had not seen Lord +Farintosh’s house in London. Sir Barnes came down +once—twice—of a Saturday sometimes, for three or four days to hunt, +to amuse himself, as all men do she supposed. She did not know when he was +coming again. She rang languidly when we rose to take leave, and sank back on +her sofa, where lay a heap of French novels. “She has chosen some pretty +books,” says Paul, as we drove through the sombre avenues through the +grey park, mists lying about the melancholy ornamental waters, dingy herds of +huddled sheep speckling the grass here and there; no smoke rising up from the +great stacks of chimneys of the building we were leaving behind us, save one +little feeble thread of white which we knew came from the fire by which the +lonely mistress of Newcome was seated. “Ouf!” cries Florac, playing +his whip, as the lodge-gates closed on us, and his team of horses rattled +merrily along the road, “what a blessing it is to be out of that vault of +a place! There is something fatal in this house—in this woman. One smells +misfortune there.” +</p> + +<p> +The hotel which our friend Florac patronised on occasion of his visits to +Newcome was the King’s Arms, and it happened, one day, as we entered that +place of entertainment in company, that a visitor of the house was issuing +through the hall, to whom Florac seemed as if he would administer one of his +customary embraces, and to whom the Prince called out “Jack,” with +great warmth and kindness as he ran towards the stranger. +</p> + +<p> +Jack did not appear to be particularly well pleased on beholding us; he rather +retreated from before the Frenchman’s advances. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Jack, my good, my brave Ighgate! I am delighted to see +you!” Florac continues, regardless of the stranger’s reception, or +of the landlord’s looks towards us, who was bowing the Prince into his +very best room. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, Monsieur de Florac?” growls the new comer, surlily; +and was for moving on after this brief salutation; but having a second thought +seemingly, turned back and followed Florac into the apartment where our host +conducted us. <i>A la bonne heure!</i> Florac renewed his cordial greetings to +Lord Highgate. “I knew not, mon bon, what fly had stung you,” says +he to my lord. The landlord, rubbing his hands, smirking and bowing, was +anxious to know whether the Prince would take anything after his drive. As the +Prince’s attendant and friend, the lustre of his reception partially +illuminated me. When the chief was not by, I was treated with great attention +(mingled with a certain degree of familiarity) by my landlord. +</p> + +<p> +Lord Highgate waited until Mr. Taplow was out of the room; and then said to +Florac, “Don’t call me by my name here, please, Florac, I am here +incog.” +</p> + +<p> +“Plait-il?” asks Florac. “Where is incog.?” He laughed +when the word was interpreted to him. Lord Highgate had turned to me. +“There was no rudeness, you understand, intended, Mr. Pendennis, but I am +down here on some business, and don’t care to wear the handle to my name. +Fellows work it so, don’t you understand? never leave you at rest in a +country town—that sort of thing. Heard of our friend Clive lately?” +</p> + +<p> +“Whether you ’ave ’andle or no ’andle, Jack, you are +always the bien-venu to me. What is thy affair? Old monster! I +wager——” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no, no such nonsense,” says Jack, rather eagerly. “I +give you my honour, I—I want to—to raise a sum of money—that +is, to invest some in a speculation down here—deuced good the +speculations down here; and, by the way, if the landlord asks you, I’m +Mr. Harris—I’m a civil engineer—I’m waiting for the +arrival of the Canada at Liverpool from America, and very uneasy about my +brother who is on board.” +</p> + +<p> +“What does he recount to us there? Keep these stories for the landlord, +Jack; to us ’tis not the pain to lie. My good Mr. Harris, why have we not +seen you at Rosebury? The Princess will scold me if you do not come; and you +must bring your dear brother when he arrive too. Do you hear?” The last +part of this sentence was uttered for Mr. Taplow’s benefit, who had +re-entered the George bearing a tray of wine and biscuit. +</p> + +<p> +The Master of Rosebury and Mr. Harris went out presently to look at a horse +which was waiting the former’s inspection in the stableyard of the hotel. +The landlord took advantage of his business, to hear a bell which never was +rung, and to ask me questions about the guest who had been staying at his house +for a week past. Did I know that party? Mr. Pendennis said, “Yes, he knew +that party.” +</p> + +<p> +“Most respectable party, I have no doubt,” continues Boniface. +“Do you suppose the Prince of Moncontour knows any but respectable +parties?” asks Mr. Pendennis—a query of which the force was so +great as to discomfit and silence our landlord, who retreated to ask questions +concerning Mr. Harris of Florac’s grooms. +</p> + +<p> +What was Highgate’s business here? Was it mine to know? I might have +suspicions, but should I entertain them or communicate them, and had I not best +keep them to myself? I exchanged not a word on the subject of Highgate with +Florac, as we drove home: though from the way in which we looked at one another +each saw that the other was acquainted with that unhappy gentleman’s +secret. We fell to talking about Madame la Duchesse d’Ivry as we trotted +on; and then of English manners by way of contrast, of intrigues, elopements, +Gretna Grin, etc., etc. “You are a droll nation!” says Florac. +“To make love well, you must absolutely have a chaise-de-poste, and a +scandal afterwards. If our affairs of this kind made themselves on the grand +route, what armies of postillions we should need!” +</p> + +<p> +I held my peace. In that vision of Jack Belsize I saw misery, guilt, children +dishonoured, homes deserted,—ruin for all the actors and victims of the +wretched conspiracy. Laura marked my disturbance when we reached home. She even +divined the cause of it, and charged me with it at night, when we sate alone by +our dressing-room fire, and had taken leave of our kind entertainers. Then, +under her cross-examination, I own that I told what I had seen—Lord +Highgate, under a feigned name staying at Newcome. It might be nothing. +“Nothing! Gracious heavens! Could not this crime and misery be +stopped?” “It might be too late,” Laura’s husband said +sadly, bending down his head into the fire. +</p> + +<p> +She was silent too for a while. I could see she was engaged where pious women +ever will betake themselves in moments of doubt, of grief, of pain, of +separation, of joy even, or whatsoever other trial. They have but to will, and +as it were an invisible temple rises round them; their hearts can kneel down +there; and they have an audience of the great, the merciful untiring Counsellor +and Consoler. She would not have been frightened at Death near at hand. I have +known her to tend the poor round about us, or to bear pain—not her own +merely, but even her children’s and mine, with a surprising outward +constancy and calm. But the idea of this crime being enacted close at hand, and +no help for it—quite overcame her. I believe she lay awake all that +night; and rose quite haggard and pale after the bitter thoughts which had +deprived her of rest. +</p> + +<p> +She embraced her own child with extraordinary tenderness that morning, and even +wept over it, calling it by a thousand fond names of maternal endearment +“Would I leave you, my darling—could I ever, ever, ever quit you, +my blessing, and treasure!” The unconscious little thing, hugged to his +mother’s bosom, and scared at her tones and tragic face, clung frightened +and weeping round Laura’s neck. Would you ask what the husband’s +feelings were as he looked at that sweet love, that sublime tenderness, that +pure Saint blessing the life of him unworthy? Of all the gifts of Heaven to us +below, that felicity is the sum and the chief. I tremble as I hold it lest I +should lose it, and be left alone in the blank world without it: again, I feel +humiliated to think that I possess it; as hastening home to a warm fireside and +a plentiful table, I feel ashamed sometimes before the poor outcast beggar +shivering in the street. +</p> + +<p> +Breakfast was scarcely over when Laura asked for a pony carriage, and said she +was bent on a private visit. She took her baby and nurse with her. She refused +our company, and would not even say whither she was bound until she had passed +the lodge-gate. I may have suspected what the object was of her journey. Florac +and I did not talk of it. We rode out to meet the hounds of a cheery winter +morning: on another day I might have been amused with my host—the +splendour of his raiment, the neatness of his velvet cap, the gloss of his +hunting-boots; the cheers, shouts, salutations, to dog and man; the oaths and +outcries of this Nimrod, who shouted louder than the whole field and the whole +pack too—but on this morning—I was thinking of the tragedy yonder +enacting, and came away early from the hunting-field, and found my wife already +returned to Rosebury. +</p> + +<p> +Laura had been, as I suspected, to Lady Clara. She did not know why, indeed. +She scarce knew what she should say when she arrived—how she could say +what she had in her mind. “I hoped, Arthur, that I should have +something—something told me to say,” whispered Laura, with her head +on my shoulder; and as I lay awake last night thinking of her, +prayed—that is, hoped, I might find a word of consolation for that poor +lady. Do you know, I think she has hardly ever heard a kind word? She said so; +she was very much affected after we had talked together a little. +</p> + +<p> +“At first she was very indifferent; cold and haughty in her manner; asked +what had caused the pleasure of this visit, for I would go in, though at the +lodge they told me her ladyship was unwell, and they thought received no +company. I said I wanted to show our boy to her—that the children ought +to be acquainted—I don’t know what I said. She seemed more and more +surprised—then all of a sudden—I don’t know how—I said, +‘Lady Clara, I have had a dream about you and your children, and I was so +frightened that I came over to you to speak about it.’ And I <i>had</i> +the dream, Pen; it came to me absolutely as I was speaking to her. +</p> + +<p> +“She looked a little scared, and I went on telling her the dream. +‘My dear’ I said, ‘I dreamed that I saw you happy with those +children.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Happy!’ says she—the three were playing in the +conservatory into which her sitting-room opens. +</p> + +<p> +“‘And that a bad spirit came and tore them from you, and drove you +out into the darkness; and I saw you wandering about quite lonely and wretched, +and looking back into the garden where the children were playing. And you asked +and implored to see them; and the Keeper at the gate said ‘No, +never.’ And then—then I thought they passed by you, and they did +not know you.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Ah!’ said Lady Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“‘And then I thought, as we do in dreams, you know, that it was my +child who was separated from me, and who would not know me: and oh, what a pang +that was! Fancy that! Let us pray God it was only a dream. And worse than that, +when you, when I implored to come to the child, and the man said, ‘No, +never,’ I thought there came a spirit—an angel that fetched the +child to heaven, and you said, ‘Let me come too; oh, let me come too, I +am so miserable.’ And the angel said, ‘No, never, never.’ +</p> + +<p> +“By this time Lady Clara was looking very pale. ‘What do you +mean?’ she asked of me,” Laura continued. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Oh, dear lady, for the sake of the little ones, and Him who calls +them to Him, go you with them. Never, never part from them! Cling to His knees, +and take shelter there.’ I took her hands, and I said more to her in this +way, Arthur, that I need not, that I ought not to speak again. But she was +touched at length when I kissed her; and she said I was very kind to her, and +no one had ever been so, and that she was quite alone in the world and had no +friend to fly to; and would I go and stay with her? and I said +‘yes;’ and we must go, my dear. I think you should see that person +at Newcome—see him, and warn him,” cried Laura, warming as she +spoke, “and pray God to enlighten and strengthen him, and to keep him +from this temptation, and implore him to leave this poor, weak, frightened, +trembling creature; if he has the heart of a gentleman and the courage of a +man, he will, I know he will.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think he would, my dearest,” I said, “if he but heard the +petitioner.” Laura’s cheeks were blushing, her eyes brightened, her +voice rang with a sweet pathos of love that vibrates through my whole being +sometimes. It seems to me as if evil must give way, and bad thoughts retire +before that purest creature. +</p> + +<p> +“Why has she not some of her family with her, poor thing!” my wife +continued. “She perishes in that solitude. Her husband prevents her, I +think—and—oh—I know enough of <i>him</i> to know what his +life is. I shudder, Arthur, to see you take the hand of that wicked, selfish +man. You must break with him, do you hear, sir?” +</p> + +<p> +“Before or after going to stay at his house, my love?” asks Mr. +Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +“Poor thing! she lighted up at the idea of any one coming. She ran and +showed me the rooms we were to have. It will be very stupid; and you +don’t like that. But you can write your book, and still hunt and shoot +with our friends here. And Lady Anne Newcome must be made to come back again. +Sir Barnes quarrelled with his mother and drove her out of the house on her +last visit—think of that! The servants here know it. Martha brought me +the whole story from the housekeeper’s room. This Sir Barnes Newcome is a +dreadful creature, Arthur. I am so glad I loathed him from the very first +moment I saw him.” +</p> + +<p> +“And into this ogre’s den you propose to put me and my family, +madam!” says the husband. “Indeed, where won’t I go if you +order me? Oh, who will pack my portmanteau?” +</p> + +<p> +Florac and the Princess were both in desolation when, at dinner, we announced +our resolution to go away—and to our neighbours at Newcome! that was more +extraordinary. “Que diable goest thou to do in this galley?” asks +our host as we sat alone over our wine. +</p> + +<p> +But Laura’s intended visit to Lady Clara was never to have a fulfilment, +for on this same evening, as we sate at our dessert, comes a messenger from +Newcome, with a note for my wife from the lady there:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“<i>Dearest, kindest</i> Mrs. Pendennis,” Lady Clara wrote, with +many italics, and evidently in much distress of mind. “Your visit <i>is +not to be</i>. I spoke about it to Sir B., who <i>arrived this afternoon</i>, +and who has already begun to treat me <i>in his usual way</i>. Oh, I am so +unhappy! Pray, pray do not be angry at this rudeness—though indeed it is +only a kindness to keep you from this wretched place! I feel as <i>if I cannot +bear this much longer</i>. But, whatever happens, I shall always remember your +goodness, your beautiful goodness and kindness; and shall worship you as <i>an +angel</i> deserves to be worshipped. Oh, why had I not such a friend +<i>earlier!</i> But alas! I have none—only <i>his odious family</i> +thrust upon me for companions to the <i>wretched, lonely</i>, C. N. +</p> + +<p> +“P.S.—He does not know of my writing. Do not be surprised if you +get another note from me in the morning, written in a <i>ceremonious style</i> +and regretting that we <i>cannot have the pleasure</i> of receiving Mr. and +Mrs. Pendennis for the present at Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +“P.S.—The hypocrite!” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +This letter was handed to my wife at dinner-time, and she gave it to me as she +passed out of the room with the other ladies. +</p> + +<p> +I told Florac that the Newcomes could not receive us, and that we would remain, +if he willed it, his guests for a little longer. The kind fellow was only too +glad to keep us. “My wife would die without <i>Bébi</i>,” he said. +“She becomes quite dangerous about Bébi.” It was gratifying that +the good old lady was not to be parted as yet from the innocent object of her +love. +</p> + +<p> +My host knew as well as I the terms upon which Sir Barnes and his wife were +living. Their quarrels were the talk of the whole county; one side brought +forward his treatment of her, and his conduct elsewhere, and said that he was +so bad that honest people should not know him. The other party laid the blame +upon her, and declared that Lady Clara was a languid, silly, weak, frivolous +creature; always crying out of season; who had notoriously taken Sir Barnes for +his money and who as certainly had had an attachment elsewhere. Yes, the +accusations were true on both sides. A bad, selfish husband had married a woman +for her rank: a weak, thoughtless girl had been sold to a man for his money; +and the union, which might have ended in a complete indifference, had taken an +ill turn and resulted in misery, cruelty, fierce mutual recriminations, bitter +tears shed in private, husband’s curses and maledictions, and open scenes +of wrath and violence for servants to witness and the world to sneer at. We +arrange such matches every day; we sell or buy beauty, or rank, or wealth; we +inaugurate the bargain in churches with sacramental services, in which the +parties engaged call upon Heaven to witness their vows—we know them to be +lies, and we seal them with God’s name. “I, Barnes, promise to take +you, Clara, to love and honour till death do us part” “I Clara, +promise to take you, Barnes,” etc, etc. Who has not heard the ancient +words; and how many of us have uttered them, knowing them to be untrue: and is +there a bishop on the bench that has not amen’d the humbug in his lawn +sleeves and called a blessing over the kneeling perjurers? +</p> + +<p> +“Does Mr. Harris know of Newcome’s return?” Florac asked, +when I acquainted him with this intelligence. “Ce scelerat de +Highgate—Va!” +</p> + +<p> +“Does Newcome know that Lord Highgate is here?” I thought within +myself, admiring my wife’s faithfulness and simplicity, and trying to +believe with that pure and guileless creature that it was not yet too late to +save the unhappy Lady Clara. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Harris had best be warned,” I said to Florac; “will you +write him a word, and let us send a messenger to Newcome?” +</p> + +<p> +At first Florac said, “Parbleu! No;” the affair was none of his, he +attended himself always to this result of Lady Clara’s marriage. He had +even complimented Jack upon it years before at Baden, when scenes enough +tragic, enough comical, <i>ma foi</i>, had taken place <i>à propos</i> of this +affair. Why should he meddle with it now? +</p> + +<p> +“Children dishonoured,” said I, “honest families made +miserable; for Heaven’s sake, Florac, let us stay this catastrophe if we +can.” I spoke with much warmth, eagerly desirous to avert this calamity +if possible, and very strongly moved by the tale which I had heard only just +before dinner from that noble and innocent creature, whose pure heart had +already prompted her to plead the cause of right and truth, and to try and +rescue an unhappy desperate sister trembling on the verge of ruin. +</p> + +<p> +“If you will not write to him,” said I, in some heat, “if +your grooms don’t like to go out of a night” (this was one of the +objections which Florac had raised), “I will walk.” We were talking +over the affair rather late in the evening, the ladies having retreated to +their sleeping apartments, and some guests having taken leave, whom our +hospitable host and hostess had entertained that night, and before whom I +naturally did not care to speak upon a subject so dangerous. +</p> + +<p> +“Parbleu, what virtue, my friend! what a Joseph!” cries Florac, +puffing his cigar. “One sees well that your wife had made you the sermon. +My poor Pendennis! You are henpecked, my pauvre bon! You become the husband +model. It is true my mother writes that thy wife is an angel!” +</p> + +<p> +“I do not object to obey such a woman when she bids me do right,” I +said; and would indeed at that woman’s request have gone out upon the +errand, but that we here found another messenger. On days when dinner-parties +were held at Rosebury, certain auxiliary waiters used to attend from Newcome +whom the landlord of the King’s Arms was accustomed to supply; indeed, it +was to secure these, and make other necessary arrangements respecting fish, +game, etc., that the Prince de Moncontour had ridden over to Newcome on the day +when we met Lord Highgate, <i>alias</i> Mr. Harris, before the bar of the +hotel. Whilst we were engaged in the above conversation a servant enters, and +says, “My lord, Jenkins and the other man is going back to Newcome in +their cart, and is there anything wanted?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is the Heaven which sends him,” says Florac, turning round to +me with a laugh; “make Jenkins to wait five minutes, Robert; I have to +write to a gentleman at the King’s Arms.” And so saying, Florac +wrote a line which he showed me, and having sealed the note, directed it to Mr. +Harris at the King’s Arms. The cart, the note, and the assistant waiters +departed on their way to Newcome. Florac bade me go to rest with a clear +conscience. In truth, the warning was better given in that way than any other, +and a word from Florac was more likely to be effectual than an expostulation +from me. I had never thought of making it, perhaps; except at the expressed +desire of a lady whose counsel in all the difficult circumstances of life I own +I am disposed to take. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Jenkins’s horse no doubt trotted at a very brisk pace, as +gentlemen’s horses will of a frosty night, after their masters have been +regaled with plentiful supplies of wine and ale. I remember in my bachelor days +that my horses always trotted quicker after I had had a good dinner; the +champagne used to communicate itself to them somehow, and the claret get into +their heels. Before midnight the letter for Mr. Harris was in Mr. +Harris’s hands in the King’s Arms. +</p> + +<p> +It has been said that in the Boscawen Room at the Arms, some of the jolly +fellows of Newcome had a club, of which Parrot the auctioneer, Tom Potts the +talented reporter, now editor of the <i>Independent</i>, Vidler the apothecary, +and other gentlemen, were members. +</p> + +<p> +When we first had occasion to mention that society, it was at an early stage of +this history, long before Clive Newcome’s fine moustache had grown. If +Vidler the apothecary was old and infirm then, he is near ten years older now; +he has had various assistants, of course, and one of them of late years had his +become his partner, though the firm continues to be known by Vidler’s +ancient and respectable name. A jovial fellow was this partner—a capital +convivial member of the Jolly Britons, where he used to sit very late, so as to +be in readiness for any night-work that might come in. +</p> + +<p> +So the Britons were all sitting, smoking, drinking, and making merry, in the +Boscawen Room, when Jenkins enters with a note, which he straightway delivers +to Mr. Vidler’s partner. “From Rosebury? The Princess ill again, I +suppose,” says the surgeon, not sorry to let the company know that he +attends her. “I wish the old girl would be ill in the daytime. Confound +it,” says he, “what’s this——” and he reads +out, “‘Sir Newcome est de retour. Bon voyage, mon +ami.—F.’ What does this mean?” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you knew French, Jack Harris,” says Tom Potts; +“you’re always bothering us with your French songs.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course I know French,” says the other; “but what’s +the meaning of this?” +</p> + +<p> +“Screwcome came back by the five o’clock train. I was in it, and +his royal highness would scarcely speak to me. Took Brown’s fly from the +station. Brown won’t enrich his family much by the operation,” says +Mr. Potts. +</p> + +<p> +“But what do <i>I</i> care?” cries Jack Harris; “we +don’t attend him, and we don’t lose much by that. Howell attends +him, ever since Vidler and he had that row.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hulloh! I say, it’s a mistake,” cries Mr. Taplow, smoking in +his chair. “This letter is for the party in the Benbow. The gent which +the Prince spoke to him, and called him Jack the other day when he was here. +Here’s a nice business, and the seal broke, and all. Is the Benbow party +gone to bed? John, you must carry him in this here note.” John, quite +innocent of the note and its contents, for he that moment had entered the +clubroom with Mr. Potts’s supper, took the note to the Benbow, from which +he presently returned to his master with a very scared countenance. He said the +gent in the Benbow was a most harbitrary gent. He had almost choked John after +reading the letter, and John wouldn’t stand it; and when John said he +supposed that Mr. Harris in the Boscawen—that Mr. Jack Harris, had opened +the letter, the other gent cursed and swore awful. +</p> + +<p> +“Potts,” said Taplow, who was only too communicative on some +occasions after he had imbibed too much of his own brandy-and-water, +“it’s my belief that that party’s name is no more Harris than +mine is. I have sent his linen to the wash, and there was two white +pocket-handkerchiefs with H. and a coronet.” +</p> + +<p> +On the next day we drove over to Newcome, hoping perhaps to find that Lord +Highgate had taken the warning sent to him and quitted the place. But we were +disappointed. He was walking in front of the hotel, where a thousand persons +might see him as well as ourselves. +</p> + +<p> +We entered into his private apartment with him, and there expostulated upon his +appearance in the public street, where Barnes Newcome or any passer-by might +recognise him. He then told us of the mishap which had befallen Florac’s +letter on the previous night. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t go away now, whatever might have happened previously: by +this time that villain knows that I am here. If I go, he will say I was afraid +of him, and ran away. Oh, how I wish he would come and find me!” He broke +out with a savage laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“It is best to run away,” one of us interposed sadly. +</p> + +<p> +“Pendennis,” he said with a tone of great softness, “your +wife is a good woman. God bless her! God bless her for all she has said and +done—would have done, if that villain had let her! Do you know the poor +thing hasn’t a single friend in the world, not one, one—except me, +and that girl they are selling to Farintosh, and who does not count for much. +He has driven away all her friends from her: one and all turn upon her. Her +relations, of course; when did <i>they</i> ever fail to hit a poor fellow or a +poor girl when she was down? The poor angel! The mother who sold her comes and +preaches at her; Kew’s wife turns up her little cursed nose and scorns +her; Rooster, forsooth, must ride high the horse, now he is married and lives +at Chanticlere, and give her warning to avoid my company or his! Do you know +the only friend she ever had was that old woman with the stick—old Kew; +the old witch whom they buried four months ago after nobbling her money for the +beauty of the family? She used to protect her—that old woman; heaven +bless her for it, wherever she is now, the old hag—a good word +won’t do her any harm. Ha! ha!” His laughter was cruel to hear. +</p> + +<p> +“Why did I come down?” he continued in reply to our sad queries. +“Why did I come down, do you ask? Because she was wretched, and sent for +me. Because if I was at the end of the world, and she was to say, ‘Jack, +come!’ I’d come.” +</p> + +<p> +“And if she bade you go?” asked his friends. +</p> + +<p> +“I would go; and I have gone. If she told me to jump into the sea, do you +think I would not do it? But I go; and when she is alone with him, do you know +what he does? He strikes her. Strikes <i>that</i> poor little thing! He has +owned to it. She fled from him and sheltered with the old woman who’s +dead. He may be doing it now. Why did I ever shake hands with him? that’s +humiliation sufficient, isn’t it? But she wished it; and I’d black +his boots, curse him, if she told me. And because he wanted to keep my money in +his confounded bank; and because he knew he might rely upon my honour and hers, +poor dear child, he chooses to shake hands with me—me, whom he hates +worse than a thousand devils—and quite right too. Why isn’t there a +place where we can go and meet, like man to man, and have it over! If I had a +ball through my brains I shouldn’t mind, I tell you. I’ve a mind to +do it for myself, Pendennis. You don’t understand me, Viscount.” +</p> + +<p> +“Il est vrai,” said Florac, with a shrug, “I comprehend +neither the suicide nor the chaise-de-poste. What will you? I am not yet enough +English, my friend. We make marriages of convenance in our country, que diable, +and what follows follows; but no scandal afterwards! Do not adopt our +institutions à demi, my friend. Vous ne me comprenez pas non plus, men pauvre +Jack!” +</p> + +<p> +“There is one way still, I think,” said the third of the speakers +in this scene. “Let Lord Highgate come to Rosebury in his own name, +leaving that of Mr. Harris behind him. If Sir Barnes Newcome wants you, he can +seek you there. If you will go, as go you should, and God speed you, you can +go, and in your own name, too.” +</p> + +<p> +“Parbleu, c’est ça,” cries Florac, “he speaks like a +book—the romancier!” I confess, for my part, I thought that a good +woman might plead with him, and touch that manly not disloyal heart now +trembling on the awful balance between evil and good. +</p> + +<p> +“Allons! let us make to come the drague!” cries Florac. +“Jack, thou returnest with us, my friend! Madame Pendennis, an angel, my +friend, a <i>quakre</i> the most charming, shall roucoule to thee the sweetest +sermons. My wife shall tend thee like a mother—a grandmother. Go make thy +packet!” +</p> + +<p> +Lord Highgate was very much pleased and relieved seemingly. He shook our hands, +he said he should never forget our kindness, never! In truth, the didactic part +of our conversation was carried on at much greater length than as here noted +down: and he would come that evening, but not with us, thank you; he had a +particular engagement, some letters he must write. Those done, he would not +fail us, and would be at Rosebury by dinner-time. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0058"></a> +CHAPTER LVIII.<br> +“One more Unfortunate”</h2> + +<p> +The Fates did not ordain that the plan should succeed which Lord +Highgate’s friends had devised for Lady Clara’s rescue or respite. +He was bent upon one more interview with the unfortunate lady; and in that +meeting the future destiny of their luckless lives was decided. On the morning +of his return home, Barnes Newcome had information that Lord Highgate, under a +feigned name, had been staying in the neighbourhood of his house, and had +repeatedly been seen in the company of Lady Clara. She may have gone out to +meet him but for one hour more. She had taken no leave of her children on the +day when she left her home, and, far from making preparations for her own +departure, had been engaged in getting the house ready for the reception of +members of the family, whose arrival her husband announced as speedily to +follow his own. Ethel and Lady Anne and some of the children were coming. Lord +Farintosh’s mother and sisters were to follow. It was to be a reunion +previous to the marriage which was closer to unite the two families. Lady Clara +said Yes to her husband’s orders; rose mechanically to obey his wishes +and arrange for the reception of the guests; and spoke tremblingly to the +housekeeper as her husband gibed at her. The little ones had been consigned to +bed early and before Sir Barnes’s arrival. He did not think fit to see +them in their sleep; nor did their mother. She did not know, as the poor little +creatures left her room in charge of their nurses, that she looked on them for +the last time. Perhaps, had she gone to their bedsides that evening, had the +wretched panic-stricken soul been allowed leisure to pause, and to think, and +to pray, the fate of the morrow might have been otherwise, and the trembling +balance of the scale have inclined to right’s side. But the pause was not +allowed her. Her husband came and saluted her with his accustomed greetings of +scorn, and sarcasm, and brutal insult. On a future day he never dared to call a +servant of his household to testify to his treatment of her; though many were +ready to attend to prove his cruelty and her terror. On that very last night, +Lady Clara’s maid, a country girl from her father’s house at +Chanticlere, told Sir Barnes in the midst of a conjugal dispute that her lady +might bear his conduct but she could not, and that she would no longer live +under the roof of such a brute. The girl’s interference was not likely to +benefit her mistress much: the wretched Lady Clara passed the last night under +the roof of her husband and children, unattended save by this poor domestic who +was about to leave her, in tears and hysterical outcries, and then in moaning +stupor. Lady Clara put to sleep with laudanum, her maid carried down the story +of her wrongs to the servants’ quarters; and half a dozen of them took in +their resignation to Sir Barnes as he sat over his breakfast the next +morning—in his ancestral hall—surrounded by the portraits of his +august forefathers—in his happy home. +</p> + +<p> +Their mutiny of course did not add to their master’s good-humour; and his +letters brought him news which increased Barnes’s fury. A messenger +arrived with a letter from his man of business at Newcome, upon the receipt of +which he started up with such an execration as frightened the servant waiting +on him, and letter in hand he ran to Lady Clara’s sitting-room. Her +ladyship was up. Sir Barnes breakfasted rather late on the first morning after +an arrival at Newcome. He had to look over the bailiff’s books, and to +look about him round the park and grounds; to curse the gardeners; to damn the +stable and kennel grooms; to yell at the woodman for clearing not enough or too +much; to rail at the poor old workpeople brooming away the fallen leaves, etc. +So Lady Clara was up and dressed when her husband went to her room, which lay +at the end of the house as we have said, the last of a suite of ancestral +halls. +</p> + +<p> +The mutinous servant heard high voices and curses within; then Lady +Clara’s screams; then Sir Barnes Newcome burst out of the room, locking +the door and taking the key with him, and saluting with more curses James, the +mutineer, over whom his master ran. +</p> + +<p> +“Curse your wife, and don’t curse me, Sir Barnes Newcome!” +said James, the mutineer; and knocked down a hand which the infuriated Baronet +raised against him, with an arm that was twice as strong as Barnes’s own. +This man and maid followed their mistress in the sad journey upon which she was +bent. They treated her with unalterable respect. They never could be got to see +that her conduct was wrong. When Barnes’s counsel subsequently tried to +impugn their testimony, they dared him; and hurt the plaintiff’s case +very much. For the balance had weighed over; and it was Barnes himself who +caused what now ensued; and what we learned in a very few hours afterwards from +Newcome, where it was the talk of the whole neighbourhood. +</p> + +<p> +Florac and I, as yet ignorant of all that was occurring, met Barnes near his +own lodge-gate riding in the direction of Newcome, as we were ourselves +returning to Rosebury. The Prince de Moncontour, who was driving, affably +saluted the Baronet, who gave us a scowling recognition, and rode on, his groom +behind him. “The figure of the garçon,” says Florac, as our +acquaintance passed, “is not agreeable. Of pale, he has become livid. I +hope these two men will not meet, or evil will come!” Evil to Barnes +there might be, Florac’s companion thought, who knew the previous little +affairs between Barnes and his uncle and cousin; and that Lord Highgate was +quite able to take care of himself. +</p> + +<p> +In half an hour after Florac spoke, that meeting between Barnes and Highgate +actually had taken place—in the open square of Newcome, within four doors +of the King’s Arms inn, close to which lives Sir Barnes Newcome’s +man of business; and before which, Mr. Harris, as he was called, was walking, +and waiting till a carriage which he had ordered came round from the inn yard. +As Sir Barnes Newcome rode into the place many people touched their hats to +him, however little they loved him. He was bowing and smirking to one of these, +when he suddenly saw Belsize. +</p> + +<p> +He started back, causing his horse to back with him on to the pavement, and it +may have been rage and fury, or accident and nervousness merely, but at this +instant Barnes Newcome, looking towards Lord Highgate, shook his whip. +</p> + +<p> +“You cowardly villain!” said the other, springing forward. “I +was going to your house.” +</p> + +<p> +“How dare you, sir,” cries Sir Barnes, still holding up that +unlucky cane, “how dare you to—to——” +</p> + +<p> +“Dare, you scoundrel!” said Belsize. “Is that the cane you +strike your wife with, you ruffian!” Belsize seized and tore him out of +the saddle, flinging him screaming down on the pavement. The horse, rearing and +making way for himself, galloped down the clattering street; a hundred people +were round Sir Barnes in a moment. +</p> + +<p> +The carriage which Belsize had ordered came round at this very juncture. Amidst +the crowd, shrinking, bustling, expostulating, threatening, who pressed about +him, he shouldered his way. Mr. Taplow, aghast, was one of the hundred +spectators of the scene. +</p> + +<p> +“I am Lord Highgate,” said Barnes’s adversary. “If Sir +Barnes Newcome wants me, tell him I will send him word where he may hear of +me.” And getting into the carriage, he told the driver to go “to +the usual place.” +</p> + +<p> +Imagine the hubbub in the town, the conclaves at the inns, the talks in the +counting-houses, the commotion amongst the factory people, the paragraphs in +the Newcome papers, the bustle of surgeons and lawyers, after this event. +Crowds gathered at the King’s Arms, and waited round Mr. Speers the +lawyer’s house, into which Sir Barnes was carried. In vain policemen told +them to move on; fresh groups gathered after the seceders. On the next day, +when Barnes Newcome, who was not much hurt, had a fly to go home, a factory man +shook his fist in at the carriage window, and, with a curse, said, “Serve +you right, you villain.” It was the man whose sweetheart this Don Juan +had seduced and deserted years before; whose wrongs were well known amongst his +mates, a leader in the chorus of hatred which growled round Barnes Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +Barnes’s mother and sister Ethel had reached Newcome shortly before the +return of the master of the house. The people there were in disturbance. Lady +Anne and Miss Newcome came out with pallid looks to greet him. He laughed and +reassured them about his accident: indeed his hurt had been trifling; he had +been bled by the surgeon, a little jarred by the fall from his horse; but there +was no sort of danger. Still their pale and doubtful looks continued. What +caused them? In the open day, with a servant attending her Lady Clara Newcome +had left her husband’s house; and a letter was forwarded to him that same +evening from my Lord Highgate, informing Sir Barnes Newcome that Lady Clara +Pulleyn could bear his tyranny no longer, and had left his roof; that Lord +Highgate proposed to leave England almost immediately, but would remain long +enough to afford Sir Barnes Newcome the opportunity for an interview, in case +he should be disposed to demand one: and a friend (of Lord Highgate’s +late regiment) was named who would receive letters and act in any way necessary +for his lordship. +</p> + +<p> +The debates of the House of Lords must tell what followed afterwards in the +dreary history of Lady Clara Pulleyn. The proceedings in the Newcome Divorce +Bill filled the usual number of columns in the papers,—especially the +Sunday papers. The witnesses were examined by learned peers whose +business—nay, pleasure—it seems to be to enter into such matters; +and, for the ends of justice and morality, doubtless, the whole story of Barnes +Newcome’s household was told to the British public. In the previous trial +in the Court of Queen’s Bench, how grandly Serjeant Rowland stood up for +the rights of British husbands! with what pathos he depicted the conjugal +paradise, the innocent children prattling round their happy parents, the +serpent, the destroyer, entering into that Belgravian Eden; the wretched and +deserted husband alone by his desecrated hearth, and calling for redress on his +country! Rowland wept freely during his noble harangue. At not a shilling under +twenty thousand pounds would he estimate the cost of his client’s +injuries. The jury was very much affected: the evening papers gave +Rowland’s address <i>in extenso</i>, with some pretty sharp raps at the +aristocracy in general. The <i>Day</i>, the principal morning journal of that +period, came out with a leading article the next morning, in which every party +concerned and every institution was knocked about. The disgrace of the peerage, +the ruin of the monarchy (with a retrospective view of the well-known case of +Gyges and Candaules), the monstrosity of the crime, and the absurdity of the +tribunal and the punishment, were all set forth in the terrible leading article +of the <i>Day</i>. +</p> + +<p> +But when, on the next day, Serjeant Rowland was requested to call witnesses to +prove that connubial happiness which he had depicted so pathetically, he had +none at hand. +</p> + +<p> +Oliver, Q.C., now had his innings. A man, a husband, and a father, Mr. Oliver +could not attempt to defend the conduct of his unfortunate client; but if there +could be any excuse for such conduct, that excuse he was free to confess the +plaintiff had afforded, whose cruelty and neglect twenty witnesses in court +were ready to prove—neglect so outrageous, cruelty so systematic, that he +wondered the plaintiff had not been better advised than to bring this trial, +with all its degrading particulars, to a public issue. On the very day when the +ill-omened marriage took place, another victim of cruelty had interposed as +vainly—as vainly as Serjeant Rowland himself interposed in Court to +prevent this case being made known—and with piteous outcries, in the name +of outraged neglected woman, of castaway children pleading in vain for bread, +had besought the bride to pause, and the bridegroom to look upon the wretched +beings who owed him life. Why had not Lady Clara Pulleyn’s friends +listened to that appeal? And so on, and so on, between Rowland and Oliver the +battle waged fiercely that day. Many witnesses were mauled and slain. Out of +that combat scarce anybody came well, except the two principal champions, +Rowland, Serjeant, and Oliver, Q.C. The whole country looked on and heard the +wretched story, not only of Barnes’s fault and Highgate’s fault, +but of the private peccadilloes of their suborned footmen and conspiring +housemaids. Mr. Justice C. Sawyer charged the jury at great length—those +men were respectable men and fathers of families themselves—of course +they dealt full measure to Lord Highgate for his delinquencies; consoled the +injured husband with immense damages, and left him free to pursue the further +steps for releasing himself altogether from the tie which had been bound with +affecting episcopal benediction at St. George’s, Hanover Square. +</p> + +<p> +So Lady Clara flies from the custody of her tyrant, but to what a rescue! The +very man who loves her, and gives her asylum, pities and deplores her. She +scarce dares to look out of the windows of her new home upon the world, lest it +should know and reproach her. All the sisterhood of friendship is cut off from +her. If she dares to go abroad she feels the sneer of the world as she goes +through it; and knows that malice and scorn whisper behind her. People, as +criminal but undiscovered, make room for her, as if her touch were pollution. +She knows she has darkened the lot and made wretched the home of the man whom +she loves best; that his friends who see her, treat her with but a doubtful +respect; and the domestics who attend her, with a suspicious obedience. In the +country lanes, or the streets of the county town, neighbours look aside as the +carriage passes in which she sits splendid and lonely. Rough hunting companions +of her husband’s come to her table: he is driven perforce to the company +of flatterers and men of inferior sort; his equals, at least in his own home, +will not live with him. She would be kind, perhaps, and charitable to the +cottagers round about her, but she fears to visit them lest they too should +scorn her. The clergyman who distributes her charities, blushes and looks +awkward on passing her in the village, if he should be walking with his wife or +one of his children. Shall they go to the Continent, and set up a grand house +at Paris or at Florence? There they can get society, but of what a sort! Our +acquaintances of Baden,—Madame Schlangenbad, and Madame de Cruchecassée, +and Madame d’Ivry, and Messrs. Loder, and Punter, and Blackball, and +Deuceace, will come, and dance, and flirt, and quarrel, and gamble, and feast +round about her; but what in common with such wild people has this poor, timid, +shrinking soul? Even these scorn her. The leers and laughter on those painted +faces are quite unlike her own sad countenance. She has no reply to their wit. +Their infernal gaiety scares her more than the solitude at home. No wonder that +her husband does not like home, except for a short while in the hunting season. +No wonder that he is away all day; how can he like a home which she has made so +wretched? In the midst of her sorrow, and doubt, and misery, a child comes to +her: how she clings to it! how her whole being, and hope, and passion centres +itself on this feeble infant!——but she no more belongs to our +story; with the new name she has taken, the poor lady passes out of the history +of the Newcomes. +</p> + +<p> +If Barnes Newcome’s children meet yonder solitary lady, do they know her? +If her once-husband thinks upon the unhappy young creature whom his cruelty +drove from him, does his conscience affect his sleep at night? Why should Sir +Barnes Newcome’s conscience be more squeamish than his country’s, +which has put money in his pocket for having trampled on the poor weak young +thing, and scorned her, and driven her to ruin? When the whole of the accounts +of that wretched bankruptcy are brought up for final Audit, which of the +unhappy partners shall be shown to be most guilty? Does the Right Reverend +Prelate who did the benedictory business for Barnes and Clara his wife repent +in secret? Do the parents who pressed the marriage, and the fine folks who +signed the book, and ate the breakfast, and applauded the bridegroom’s +speech, feel a little ashamed? O Hymen Hymenæe! The bishops, beadles, clergy, +pew-openers, and other officers of the temple dedicated to Heaven under the +invocation of St. George, will officiate in the same place at scores and scores +more of such marriages: and St. George of England may behold virgin after +virgin offered up to the devouring monster, Mammon (with many most respectable +female dragons looking on)—may see virgin after virgin given away, just +as in the Soldan of Babylon’s time, but with never a champion to come to +the rescue! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0059"></a> +CHAPTER LIX.<br> +In which Achilles loses Briseis</h2> + +<p> +Although the years of the Marquis of Farintosh were few, he had spent most of +them in the habit of command; and, from his childhood upwards, had been obeyed +by all persons round about him. As an infant he had but to roar, and his mother +and nurses were as much frightened as though he had been a Libyan lion. What he +willed and ordered was law amongst his clan and family. During the period of +his London and Parisian dissipations his poor mother did not venture to +remonstrate with her young prodigal, but shut her eyes, not daring to open them +on his wild courses. As for the friends of his person and house, many of whom +were portly elderly gentlemen, their affection for the young Marquis was so +extreme that there was no company into which their fidelity would not lead them +to follow him; and you might see him dancing at Mabille with veteran +aides-de-camp looking on, or disporting with opera-dancers at a Trois Freres +banquet, which some old gentleman of his father’s age had taken the pains +to order. If his lordship Count Almaviva wants a friend to carry the lanthorn +or to hold the ladder; do you suppose there are not many most respectable men +in society who will act Figaro? When Farintosh thought fit, in the fulness of +time and the blooming pride of manhood, to select a spouse, and to elevate a +marchioness to his throne, no one dared gainsay him. When he called upon his +mother and sisters, and their ladyships’ hangers-on and attendants; upon +his own particular kinsmen, led captains, and toadies; to bow the knee and do +homage to the woman whom he delighted to honour, those duteous subjects +trembled and obeyed; in fact, he thought that the position of a Marchioness of +Farintosh was under heaven, and before men, so splendid, that, had he elevated +a beggar-maid to that sublime rank, the inferior world was bound to worship +her. +</p> + +<p> +So my lord’s lady-mother, and my lord’s sisters, and his captains, +and his players of billiards, and the toadies of his august person, all +performed obeisance to his bride-elect, and never questioned the will of the +young chieftain. What were the private comments of the ladies of the family we +had no means of knowing; but it may naturally be supposed that his +lordship’s gentlemen-in-waiting, Captain Henchman, Jack Todhunter, and +the rest, had many misgivings of their own respecting their patron’s change in +life, and could not view without anxiety the advent of a mistress who might +reign over him and them, who might possibly not like their company, and might +exert her influence over her husband to oust these honest fellows from places +in which they were very comfortable. The jovial rogues had the run of my +lord’s kitchen, stables, cellars, and cigar-boxes. A new marchioness +might hate hunting, smoking, jolly parties, and toad-eaters in general, or +might bring into the house favourites of her own. I am sure any kind-hearted +man of the world must feel for the position of these faithful, doubtful, +disconsolate vassals, and have a sympathy for their rueful looks and demeanour +as they eye the splendid preparations for the ensuing marriage, the grand +furniture sent to my lord’s castles and houses, the magnificent plate +provided for his tables—tables at which they may never have a knife and +fork; castles and houses of which the poor rogues may never be allowed to pass +the doors. +</p> + +<p> +When, then, “the elopement in High Life,” which has been described +in the previous pages, burst upon the town in the morning papers, I can fancy +the agitation which the news occasioned in the faithful bosoms of the generous +Todhunter, and the attached Henchman. My lord was not in his own house as yet. +He and his friends still lingered on in the little house in Mayfair, the dear +little bachelor’s quarters, where they had enjoyed such good dinners, +such good suppers, such rare doings, such a jolly time. I fancy Hench coming +down to breakfast, and reading the <i>Morning Post</i>. I imagine Tod dropping +in from his bedroom over the way, and Hench handing the paper over to Tod, and +the conversation which ensued between those worthy men. Elopement in high +life—excitement in N—come, and flight of Lady Cl— +N—come, daughter of the late and sister of the present Earl of D-rking, +with Lord H—-gate; personal rencontre between Lord H—-gate and Sir +B—nes N—come. Extraordinary disclosures. I say, I can fancy Hench +and Tod over this awful piece of news. +</p> + +<p> +“Pretty news, ain’t it, Toddy?” says Henchman, looking up +from a Perigord-pie, which the faithful creature is discussing. +</p> + +<p> +“Always expected it,” remarks the other. “Anybody who saw +them together last season must have known it. The Chief himself spoke of it to +me.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’ll cut him up awfully when he reads it. Is it in the <i>Morning +Post?</i> He has the <i>Post</i> in his bedroom. I know he has rung his bell: I +heard it. Bowman, has his lordship read his paper yet?” +</p> + +<p> +Bowman, the valet, said, “I believe you, he <i>have</i> read his paper. +When he read it, he jumped out of bed and swore most awful. I cut as soon as I +could,” continued Mr. Bowman, who was on familiar—nay contemptuous +terms with the other two gentlemen. +</p> + +<p> +“Enough to make any man swear,” says Toddy to Henchman; and both +were alarmed in their noble souls, reflecting that their chieftain was now +actually getting up and dressing himself; that he would speedily, and in course +of nature, come downstairs; and, then, most probably, would begin swearing at +<i>them</i>. +</p> + +<p> +The most noble Mungo Malcolm Angus was in an awful state of mind when, at +length, he appeared in the breakfast-room. “Why the dash do you make a +taproom of this?” he cries. The trembling Henchman, who has begun to +smoke—as he has done a hundred times before in this bachelor’s +hall—flings his cigar into the fire. +</p> + +<p> +“There you go—nothing like it! Why don’t you fling some more +in? You can get ’em at Hudson’s for five guineas a pound.” +bursts out the youthful peer. +</p> + +<p> +“I understand why you are out of sorts, old boy,” says Henchman, +stretching out his manly hand. A tear of compassion twinkled in his eyelid, and +coursed down his mottled cheek. “Cut away at old Frank, +Farintosh,—a fellow who has been attached to you since before you could +speak. It’s not when a fellow’s down and cut up, and +riled—naturally riled—as you are—I know you are, Marquis; +it’s not then that I’m going to be angry with you. Pitch into old +Frank Henchman—hit away, my young one.” And Frank put himself into +an attitude as of one prepared to receive a pugilistic assault. He bared his +breast, as it were, and showed his scars, and said, “Strike!” Frank +Henchman was a florid toady. My uncle, Major Pendennis, has often laughed with +me about the fellow’s pompous flatteries and ebullient fidelity. +</p> + +<p> +“You have read this confounded paragraph?” says the Marquis. +</p> + +<p> +“We <i>have</i> read it: and were deucedly cut up, too,” says +Henchman, “for your sake, my dear boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“I remembered what you said, last year, Marquis,” cries Todhunter +(not unadroitly). “You, yourself, pointed out, in this very room, I +recollect, at this very table—that night Coralie and the little Spanish +dancer and her mother supped here, and there was a talk about +Highgate—you, yourself, pointed out what was likely to happen. I doubted +it; for I have dined at the Newcomes’, and seen Highgate and her together +in society often. But though you are a younger bird, you have better eyes than +I have—and you saw the thing at once—at once, don’t you +remember I and Coralie said how glad she was, because Sir Barnes ill-treated +her friend. What was the name of Coralie’s friend, Hench?” +</p> + +<p> +“How should <i>I</i> know her confounded name?” Henchman briskly +answers. “What do I care for Sir Barnes Newcome and his private affairs? +He is no friend of mine. I never said he was a friend of mine. I never said I +liked him. Out of respect for the Chief here, I held my tongue about him, and +shall hold my tongue. Have some of this pate, Chief! No? Poor old boy! I know +you haven’t got an appetite. I know this news cuts you up. I say nothing, +and make no pretence of condolence; though I feel for you—and you know +you can count on old Frank Henchman—don’t you, Malcolm?” And +again he turns away to conceal his gallant sensibility and generous emotion. +</p> + +<p> +“What does it matter to me?” bursts out the Marquis, garnishing his +conversation with the usual expletives which adorned his eloquence when he was +strongly moved. “What do I care for Barnes Newcome, and his confounded +affairs and family? I never want to see him again, but in the light of a +banker, when I go to the City, where he keeps my account. I say, I have nothing +to do with him, or all the Newcomes under the sun. Why, one of them is a +painter, and will paint my dog, Ratcatcher, by Jove! or my horse, or my groom, +if I give him the order. Do you think I care for any one of the pack? +It’s not the fault of the Marchioness of Farintosh that her family is not +equal to mine. Besides two others in England and Scotland, I should like to +know what family is? I tell you what, Hench. I bet you five to two, that before +an hour is over my mother will be here, and down on her knees to me, begging me +to break off this engagement.” +</p> + +<p> +“And what will you do, Farintosh?” asks Henchman, slowly, +“Will you break it off?” +</p> + +<p> +“No!” shouts the Marquis. “Why shall I break off with the +finest girl in England—and the best-plucked one, and the cleverest and +wittiest, and the most beautiful creature, by Jove, that ever stepped, for no +fault of hers, and because her sister-in-law leaves her brother, who I know +treated her infernally? We have talked this matter over at home before. I +wouldn’t dine with the fellow; though he was always asking me; nor meet, +except just out of civility, any of his confounded family. Lady Anne is +different. She is a lady, she is. She is a good woman: and Kew is a most +respectable man, though he is only a peer of George III.’s creation, and +you should hear how <i>he</i> speaks of Miss Newcome, though she refused him. I +should like to know who is to prevent me marrying Lady Anne Newcome’s +daughter?” +</p> + +<p> +“By Jove, you are a good-plucked fellow, Farintosh—give me your +hand, old boy,” says Henchman. +</p> + +<p> +“Heh! am I? You would have said, give me your hand, old boy, whichever +way I determined, Hench! I tell you, I ain’t intellectual, and that sort +of thing. But I know my rank, and I know my place; and when a man of my station +gives his word, he sticks to it, sir; and my lady, and my sisters, may go on +their knees all round; and, by Jove, I won’t flinch.” +</p> + +<p> +The justice of Lord Farintosh’s views was speedily proved by the +appearance of his lordship’s mother, Lady Glenlivat, whose arrival put a +stop to a conversation which Captain Francis Henchman has often subsequently +narrated. She besought to see her son in terms so urgent, that the young +nobleman could not be denied to his parent; and, no doubt, a long and +interesting interview took place, in which Lord Farintosh’s mother +passionately implored him to break off a match upon which he was as resolutely +bent. +</p> + +<p> +Was it a sense of honour, a longing desire to possess this young beauty, and +call her his own, or a fierce and profound dislike to being balked in any +object of his wishes, which actuated the young lord? Certainly he had borne, +very philosophically, delay after delay which had taken place in the devised +union; and being quite sure of his mistress, had not cared to press on the +marriage, but lingered over the dregs of his bachelor cup complacently still. +We all know in what an affecting farewell he took leave of the associates of +his <i>vie de garçon:</i> the speeches made (in both languages), the presents +distributed, the tears and hysterics of some of the guests assembled; the +cigar-boxes given over to this friend, the <i>écrin</i> of diamonds to that, et +cætera, et cætera, et cætera. Don’t we know? If we don’t it is not +Henchman’s fault, who has told the story of Farintosh’s betrothals +a thousand and one times at his clubs, at the houses where he is asked to dine, +on account of his intimacy with the nobility, among the young men of fashion, +or no fashion, whom this two-bottle Mentor, and burly admirer of youth, has +since taken upon himself to form. The farewell at Greenwich was so affecting +that all “traversed the cart,” and took another farewell at +Richmond, where there was crying too, but it was Eucharis cried because fair +Calypso wanted to tear her eyes out; and where not only Telemachus (as was +natural to his age), but Mentor likewise, quaffed the wine-cup too freely. You +are virtuous, O reader! but there are still cakes and ale, Ask Henchman if +there be not. You will find him in the Park any afternoon; he will dine with +you if no better man ask him in the interval. He will tell you story upon story +regarding young Lord Farintosh, and his marriage, and what happened before his +marriage, and afterwards; and he will sigh, weep almost at some moments, as he +narrates their subsequent quarrel, and Farintosh’s unworthy conduct, and +tells you how he formed that young man. My uncle and Captain Henchman disliked +each other very much, I am sorry to say—sorry to add that it was very +amusing to hear either one of them speak of the other. +</p> + +<p> +Lady Glenlivat, according to the Captain, then, had no success in the interview +with her son; who, unmoved by the maternal tears, commands, and entreaties, +swore he would marry Miss Newcome, and that no power on earth should prevent +him. “As if trying to thwart that man—<i>could</i> ever prevent his +having his way!” ejaculated his quondam friend. +</p> + +<p> +But on the next day, after ten thousand men in clubs and coteries had talked +the news over; after the evening had repeated and improved the delightful theme +of our “morning contemporaries;” after Calypso and Eucharis driving +together in the Park, and reconciled now, had kissed their hands to Lord +Farintosh, and made him their compliments—after a night of natural doubt, +disturbance, defiance, fury—as men whispered to each other at the club +where his lordship dined, and at the theatre where he took his +recreation—after an awful time at breakfast in which Messrs. Bowman, +valet, and Todhunter and Henchman, captains of the Farintosh bodyguard, all got +their share of kicks and growling—behold Lady Glenlivat came back to the +charge again; and this time with such force that poor Lord Farintosh was shaken +indeed. +</p> + +<p> +Her ladyship’s ally was no other than Miss Newcome herself; from whom +Lord Farintosh’s mother received, by that day’s post, a letter, +which she was commissioned to read to her son:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“Dear Madam” (wrote the young lady in her firmest +handwriting)—“Mamma is at this moment in a state of such <i>grief +and dismay</i> at the <i>cruel</i> misfortune and <i>humiliation</i> which has +just befallen our family, that she is really not able to write to you as she +<i>ought</i>, and this task, painful as it is, must be <i>mine</i>. Dear Lady +Glenlivat, the kindness and confidence which I have ever received from you and +<i>yours</i>, merit truth, and most grateful respect and regard from <i>me</i>. +And I feel after the late fatal occurrence, what I have often and often owned +to myself though I did not <i>dare</i> to acknowledge it, that I ought to +release Lord F., <i>at once and for ever</i>, from an engagement <i>which he +could never think</i> of maintaining with a family <i>so unfortunate as +ours</i>. I thank him with all my heart for his goodness in bearing with my +humours so long; if I have given him pain, as I <i>know</i> I have sometimes, I +beg his pardon, and would do so <i>on my knees</i>. I hope and pray he may be +happy, as I feared he never could be with me. He has many good and noble +qualities; and, in bidding him farewell, I trust I may retain his friendship, +and that he will believe in the esteem and gratitude of your most sincere, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +Ethel Newcome.” +</p> + +<p> +A copy of this farewell letter was seen by a lady who happened to be a +neighbour of Miss Newcome’s when the family misfortune occurred, and to +whom, in her natural dismay and grief, the young lady fled for comfort and +consolation. “Dearest Mrs. Pendennis,” wrote Miss Ethel to my wife, +“I hear you are at Rosebury; do, do come to your affectionate E. +N.” The next day, it was—“Dearest Laura—If you can, +pray, pray come to Newcome this morning. I want very much to speak to you about +the poor children, to consult you about something most important.” Madame +de Moncontour’s pony-carriage was constantly trotting between Rosebury +and Newcome in these days of calamity. +</p> + +<p> +And my wife, as in duty bound, gave me full reports of all that happened in +that house of mourning. On the very day of the flight, Lady Anne, her daughter, +and some others of her family arrived at Newcome. The deserted little girl, +Barnes’s eldest child, ran, with tears and cries of joy, to her Aunt +Ethel, whom she had always loved better than her mother; and clung to her and +embraced her; and, in her artless little words, told her that mamma had gone +away, and that Ethel should be her mamma now. Very strongly moved by the +misfortune, as by the caresses and affection of the poor orphaned creature, +Ethel took the little girl to her heart, and promised to be a mother to her, +and that she would not leave her; in which pious resolve I scarcely need say +Laura strengthened her, when, at her young friend’s urgent summons, my +wife came to her. +</p> + +<p> +The household at Newcome was in a state of disorganisation after the +catastrophe. Two of Lady Clara’s servants; it has been stated already, +went away with her. The luckless master of the house was lying wounded in the +neighbouring town. Lady Anne Newcome, his mother, was terribly agitated by the +news, which was abruptly broken to her, of the flight of her daughter-in-law +and her son’s danger. Now she thought of flying to Newcome to nurse him; +and then feared lest she should be ill received by the invalid—indeed, +ordered by Sir Barnes to go home, and not to bother him. So at home Lady Anne +remained, where the thoughts of the sufferings she had already undergone in +that house, of Sir Barnes’s cruel behaviour to her at her last visit, +which he had abruptly requested her to shorten, of the happy days which she had +passed as mistress of that house and wife of the defunct Sir Brian; the sight +of that departed angel’s picture in the dining-room and wheel-chair in +the gallery; the recollection of little Barnes as a cherub of a child in that +very gallery, and pulled out of the fire by a nurse in the second year of his +age, when he was all that a fond mother could wish—these incidents and +reminiscences so agitated Lady Anne Newcome, that she, for her part, went off +in a series of hysterical fits, and acted as one distraught: her second +daughter screamed in sympathy with her and Miss Newcome had to take the command +of the whole of this demented household, hysterical mamma and sister, +mutineering servants, and shrieking abandoned nursery, and bring young people +and old to peace and quiet. +</p> + +<p> +On the morrow after his little concussion Sir Barnes Newcome came home, not +much hurt in body, but woefully afflicted in temper, and venting his wrath upon +everybody round about him in that strong language which he employed when +displeased; and under which his valet, his housekeeper, his butler, his +farm-bailiff, his lawyer, his doctor, his dishevelled mother herself—who +rose from her couch and her sal-volatile to fling herself round her dear +boy’s knees—all had to suffer. Ethel Newcome, the Baronet’s +sister, was the only person in his house to whom Sir Barnes did not utter oaths +or proffer rude speeches. He was afraid of offending her or encountering that +resolute spirit, and lapsed into a surly silence in her presence. Indistinct +maledictions growled about Sir Barnes’s chair when he beheld my +wife’s pony-carriage drive up; and he asked what brought <i>her</i> here? +But Ethel sternly told her brother that Mrs. Pendennis came at her particular +request, and asked him whether he supposed anybody could come into that house +for pleasure now, or for any other motive but kindness? Upon which, Sir Barnes +fairly burst out into tears, intermingled with execrations against his enemies +and his own fate, and assertions that he was the most miserable beggar alive. +He would not see his children: but with more tears he would implore Ethel never +to leave them, and, anon, would ask what he should do when she married, and he +was left alone in that infernal house? +</p> + +<p> +T. Potts, Esq., of the <i>Newcome Independent</i>, used to say afterwards that +the Baronet was in the direst terror of another meeting with Lord Highgate, and +kept a policeman at the lodge-gate, and a second in the kitchen, to interpose +in event of a collision. But Mr. Potts made this statement in after days, when +the quarrel between his party and paper and Sir Barnes Newcome was flagrant. +Five or six days after the meeting of the two rivals in Newcome market-place, +Sir Barnes received a letter from the friend of Lord Highgate, informing him +that his lordship, having waited for him according to promise, had now left +England, and presumed that the differences between them were to be settled by +their respective lawyers—infamous behaviour on a par with the rest of +Lord Highgate’s villainy, the Baronet said. “When the scoundrel +knew I could lift my pistol arm,” Barnes said, “Lord Highgate fled +the country;”—thus hinting that death, and not damages, were what +he intended to seek from his enemy. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +After that interview in which Ethel communicated to Laura her farewell letter +to Lord Farintosh, my wife returned to Rosebury with an extraordinary +brightness and gaiety in her face and her demeanour. She pressed Madame de +Moncontour’s hands with such warmth, she blushed and looked so handsome, +she sang and talked so gaily, that our host was struck by her behaviour, and +paid her husband more compliments regarding her beauty, amiability, and other +good qualities, than need be set down here. It may be that I like Paul de +Florac so much, in spite of certain undeniable faults of character, because of +his admiration for my wife. She was in such a hurry to talk to me, that night, +that Paul’s game and Nicotian amusements were cut short by her visit to +the billiard-room; and when we were alone by the cosy dressing-room fire, she +told me what had happened during the day. Why should Ethel’s refusal of +Lord Farintosh have so much elated my wife? +</p> + +<p> +“Ah!” cries Mrs. Pendennis, “she has a generous nature, and +the world has not had time to spoil it. Do you know there are many points that +she never has thought of—I would say problems that she has to work out +for herself, only you, Pen, do not like us poor ignorant women to use such a +learned word as problems? Life and experience force things upon her mind which +others learn from their parents or those who educate them, but, for which she +has never had any teachers. Nobody has ever told her, Arthur, that it was wrong +to marry without love, or pronounce lightly those awful vows which we utter +before God at the altar. I believe, if she knew that her life was futile, it is +but of late she has thought it could be otherwise, and that she might mend it. +I have read (besides that poem of Goethe of which you are so fond) in books of +Indian travels of Bayaderes, dancing-girls brought up by troops round about the +temples, whose calling is to dance, and wear jewels, and look beautiful; I +believe they are quite respected in—in Pagoda-land. They perform before +the priests in the pagodas; and the Brahmins and the Indian princes marry them. +Can we cry out against these poor creatures, or against the custom of their +country? It seems to me that young women in our world are bred up in a way not +very different. What they do they scarcely know to be wrong. They are educated +for the world, and taught to display: their mothers will give them to the +richest suitor, as they themselves were given before. How can these think +seriously, Arthur, of souls to be saved, weak hearts to be kept out of +temptation, prayers to be uttered, and a better world to be held always in +view, when the vanities of this one are all their thought and scheme? +Ethel’s simple talk made me smile sometimes, do you know, and her +<i>strenuous</i> way of imparting her discoveries. I thought of the shepherd +boy who made a watch, and found on taking it into the town how very many +watches there were, and how much better than his. But the poor child has had to +make hers for herself, such as it is; and, indeed, is employed now in working +on it. She told me very artlessly her little history, Arthur; it affected me to +hear her simple talk, and—and I blessed God for our mother, my dear, and +that my early days had had a better guide. +</p> + +<p> +“You know that for a long time it was settled that she was to marry her +cousin, Lord Kew. She was bred to that notion from her earliest youth; about +which she spoke as we all can about our early days. They were spent, she said, +in the nursery and schoolroom for the most part. She was allowed to come to her +mother’s dressing-room, and sometimes to see more of her during the +winter at Newcome. She describes her mother as always the kindest of the kind: +but from very early times the daughter must have felt her own superiority, I +think, though she does not speak of it. You should see her at home now in their +dreadful calamity. She seems the only person of the house who keeps her head. +</p> + +<p> +“She told very nicely and modestly how it was Lord Kew who parted from +her, not she who had dismissed him, as you know the Newcomes used to say. I +have heard that—oh—that man Sir Barnes say so myself. She says +humbly that her cousin Kew was a great deal too good for her; and so is every +one almost, she adds, poor thing!” +</p> + +<p> +“Poor every one! Did you ask about him, Laura?” said Mr. Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +“No; I did not venture. She looked at me out of her downright eyes, and +went on with her little tale. ‘I was scarcely more than a child +then,’ she continued, ‘and though I liked Kew very much—who +would not like such a generous honest creature? I felt somehow that I was +<i>taller</i> than my cousin, and as if I ought not to marry him, or should +make him unhappy if I did. When poor papa used to talk, we children remarked +that mamma hardly listened to him; and so we did not respect him as we should, +and Barnes was especially scoffing and odious with him. Why, when he was a boy, +he used to sneer at papa openly before us younger ones. Now Harriet admires +everything that Kew says, and that makes her a great deal happier at being with +him.’ And then,” added Mrs. Pendennis, “Ethel said, ‘I +hope you respect your husband, Laura: depend on it, you will be happier if you +do.’ Was not that a fine discovery of Ethel’s, Mr. Pen? +</p> + +<p> +“‘Clara’s terror of Barnes frightened me when I stayed in the +house,’ Ethel went on. ‘I am sure <i>I</i> would not tremble before +any man in the world as she did. I saw early that she used to deceive him, and +tell him lies, Laura. I do not mean lies of words alone, but lies of looks and +actions. Oh! I do not wonder at her flying from him. He was dreadful to be +with: cruel, and selfish, and cold. He was made worse by marrying a woman he +did not love; as she was, by that unfortunate union with him. Suppose he had +found a clever woman who could have controlled him, and amused him, and whom he +and his friends could have admired, instead of poor Clara, who made his home +wearisome, and trembled when he entered it? Suppose she could have married that +unhappy man to whom she was attached early? I was frightened, Laura, to think +how ill this worldly marriage had prospered. +</p> + +<p> +“‘My poor grandmother, whenever I spoke upon such a subject, would +break out into a thousand gibes and sarcasms, and point to many of our friends +who had made love-matches, and were quarrelling now as fiercely as though they +had never loved each other. You remember that dreadful case in France Duc de +——, who murdered his duchess? That was a love-match, and I can +remember the sort of screech with which Lady Kew used to speak about it; and of +the journal which the poor duchess kept, and in which she noted down all her +husband’s ill-behaviour.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Hush, Laura! Do you remember where we are? If the Princess were to put +down all Florac’s culpabilities in an album, what a ledger it would +be—as big as Dr. Portman’s Chrysostom!” But this was +parenthetical: and after a smile, and a little respite, the young woman +proceeded in her narration of her friend’s history. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I was willing enough to listen,’ Ethel said, ‘to +grandmamma then: for we are glad of an excuse to do what we like; and I liked +admiration, and rank, and great wealth, Laura; and Lord Farintosh offered me +these. I liked to surpass my companions, and I saw <i>them</i> so eager in +pursuing him! You cannot think, Laura, what meannesses women in the world will +commit—mothers and daughters too, in the pursuit of a person of his great +rank. Those Miss Burrs, you should have seen them at the country-houses where +we visited together, and how they followed him; how they would meet him in the +parks and shrubberies; how they liked smoking though I knew it made them ill; +how they were always finding pretexts for getting near him! Oh, it was +odious!’” +</p> + +<p> +I would not willingly interrupt the narrative, but let the reporter be allowed +here to state that at this point of Miss Newcome’s story (which my wife +gave with a very pretty imitation of the girl’s manner), we both burst +out laughing so loud that little Madame de Moncontour put her head into the +drawing-room and asked what we was a-laughing at? We did not tell our hostess +that poor Ethel and her grandmother had been accused of doing the very same +thing for which she found fault with the Misses Burr. Miss Newcome thought +<i>herself</i> quite innocent, or how should she have cried out at the naughty +behaviour of other people? +</p> + +<p> +“‘Wherever we went, however,’ resumed my wife’s young +penitent, ‘it was easy to see, I think I may say so without vanity, who +was the object of Lord Farintosh’s attention. He followed us everywhere; +and we could not go upon any visit in England or Scotland but he was in the +same house. Grandmamma’s whole heart was bent upon that marriage, and +when he proposed for me I do not disown that I was very pleased and vain. +</p> + +<p> +“‘It is in these last months that I have heard about him more, and +learned to know him better—him and myself too, Laura. Some one—some +one you know, and whom I shall always love as a brother—reproached me in +former days for a worldliness about which you talk too sometimes. But it is not +worldly to give yourself up for your family, is it? One cannot help the rank in +which one is born, and surely it is but natural and proper to marry in it. Not +that Lord Farintosh thinks me or any one of his rank.’ (Here Miss Ethel +laughed.) ‘He is the Sultan, and we, every unmarried girl in society, is +his humblest slave. His Majesty’s opinions upon this subject did not suit +me, I can assure you: I have no notion of such pride! +</p> + +<p> +“‘But I do not disguise from you, dear Laura, that after accepting +him, as I came to know him better, and heard him, and heard of him, and talked +with him daily, and understood Lord Farintosh’s character, I looked +forward with more and more doubt to the day when I was to become his wife. I +have not learned to respect him in these months that I have known him, and +during which there has been mourning in our families. I will not talk to you +about him; I have no right, have I?—to hear him speak out his heart, and +tell it to any friend. He said he liked me because I did not flatter him. Poor +Malcolm! they all do. What was my acceptance of him, Laura, but flattery? Yes, +flattery, and servility to rank, and a desire to possess it. Would I have +accepted plain Malcolm Roy? I sent away a better than him, Laura. +</p> + +<p> +“‘These things have been brooding in my mind for some months past. +I must have been but an ill companion for him, and indeed he bore with my +waywardness much more kindly than I ever thought possible; and when four days +since we came to this sad house, where he was to have joined us, and I found +only dismay and wretchedness, and these poor children deprived of a mother, +whom I pity, God help her, for she has been made so miserable—and is now +and must be to the end of her days; as I lay awake, thinking of my own future +life, and that I was going to marry, as poor Clara had married, but for an +establishment and a position in life; I, my own mistress, and not obedient by +nature, or a slave to others as that poor creature was—I thought to +myself, why shall I do this? Now Clara has left us, and is, as it were, dead to +us who made her so unhappy, let me be the mother to her orphans. I love the +little girl, and she has always loved me, and came crying to me that day when +we arrived, and put her dear little arms round my neck, and said, +‘<i>You</i> won’t go away, will you, Aunt Ethel?’ in her +sweet voice. And I will stay with her; and will try and learn myself that I may +teach her; and learn to be good too—better than I have been. Will praying +help me, Laura? I did. I am sure I was right, and that it is my duty to stay +here.’” +</p> + +<p> +Laura was greatly moved as she told her friend’s confession; and when the +next day at church the clergyman read the opening words of the service I +thought a peculiar radiance and happiness beamed from her bright face. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Some subsequent occurrences in the history of this branch of the Newcome family +I am enabled to report from the testimony of the same informant who has just +given us an account of her own feelings and life. Miss Ethel and my wife were +now in daily communication, and “my-dearesting” each other with +that female fervour, which, cold men of the world as we are—not only +chary of warm expressions of friendship, but averse to entertaining warm +feelings at all—we surely must admire in persons of the inferior sex, +whose loves grow up and reach the skies in a night; who kiss, embrace, console, +call each other by Christian names, in that sweet, kindly sisterhood of +Misfortune and Compassion who are always entering into partnership here in +life. I say the world is full of Miss Nightingales; and we, sick and wounded in +our private Scutaris, have countless nurse-tenders. I did not see my wife +ministering to the afflicted family at Newcome Park; but I can fancy her there +amongst the women and children, her prudent counsel, her thousand gentle +offices, her apt pity and cheerfulness, the love and truth glowing in her face, +and inspiring her words, movements, demeanour. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Pendennis’s husband for his part did not attempt to console Sir +Barnes Newcome Newcome, Baronet. I never professed to have a halfpennyworth of +pity at that gentleman’s command. Florac, who owed Barnes his +principality and his present comforts in life, did make some futile efforts at +condolence, but was received by the Baronet with such fierceness, and evident +ill-humour, that he did not care to repeat his visits, and allowed him to vent +his curses and peevishness on his own immediate dependents. We used to ask +Laura on her return to Rosebury from her charity visits to Newcome about the +poor suffering master of the house. She faltered and stammered in describing +him and what she heard of him; she smiled, I grieve to say, for this +unfortunate lady cannot help having a sense of humour; and we could not help +laughing outright sometimes at the idea of that discomfited wretch, that +overbearing creature overborne in his turn—which laughter Mrs. Laura used +to chide as very naughty and unfeeling. When we went into Newcome the landlord +of the King’s Arms looked knowing and quizzical: Tom Potts grinned at me +and rubbed his hands. “This business serves the paper better than Mr. +Warrington’s articles,” says Mr. Potts. “We have sold no end +of <i>Independents;</i> and if you polled the whole borough, I bet that five to +one would say Sir Screwcome Screwcome was served right. By the way, +what’s up about the Marquis of Farintosh, Mr. Pendennis? He arrived at +the Arms last night; went over to the Park this morning, and is gone back to +town by the afternoon train.” +</p> + +<p> +What had happened between the Marquis of Farintosh and Miss Newcome I am +enabled to know from the report of Miss Newcome’s confidante. On the +receipt of that letter of <i>congé</i> which has been mentioned in a former +chapter, his lordship must have been very much excited, for he left town +straightway by that evening’s mail, and on the next morning, after a few +hours of rest at his inn, was at Newcome lodge-gate demanding to see the +Baronet. +</p> + +<p> +On that morning it chanced that Sir Barnes had left home with Mr Speer, his +legal adviser; and hereupon the Marquis asked to see Miss Newcome; nor could +the lodge-keeper venture to exclude so distinguished a person from the Park. +His lordship drove up to the house, and his name was taken to Miss Ethel. She +turned very pale when she heard it; and my wife divined at once who was her +visitor. Lady Anne had not left her room as yet. Laura Pendennis remained in +command of the little conclave of children, with whom the two ladies were +sitting when Lord Farintosh arrived. Little Clara wanted to go with her aunt as +she rose to leave the room—the child could scarcely be got to part from +her now. +</p> + +<p> +At the end of an hour the carriage was seen driving away, and Ethel returned +looking as pale as before, and red about the eyes. Miss Clara’s +mutton-chop for dinner coming in at the same time, the child was not so +presently eager for her aunt’s company. Aunt Ethel cut up the mutton-chop +very neatly, and then, having seen the child comfortably seated at her meal, +went with her friend into a neighbouring apartment (of course, with some +pretext of showing Laura a picture, or a piece of china, or a new child’s +frock, or with some other hypocritical pretence by which the ingenuous female +attendants pretended to be utterly blinded), and there, I have no doubt, before +beginning her story, dearest Laura embraced dearest Ethel, and vice versa. +</p> + +<p> +“He is gone!” at length gasps dearest Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +“Pour toujours? poor young man!” sighs dearest Laura. “Was he +very unhappy, Ethel?” +</p> + +<p> +“He was more angry,” Ethel answers. “He had a right to be +hurt, but not to speak as he did. He lost his temper quite at last, and broke +out in the most frantic reproaches. He forgot all respect and even +gentlemanlike behaviour. Do you know he used words—words such as Barnes +uses sometimes when he is angry! and dared this language to me! I was sorry +till then, very sorry, and very much moved; but I know more than ever, now, +that I was right in refusing Lord Farintosh.” +</p> + +<p> +Dearest Laura now pressed for an account of all that had happened, which may be +briefly told as follows. Feeling very deeply upon the subject which brought him +to Miss Newcome, it was no wonder that Lord Farintosh spoke at first in a way +which moved her. He said he thought her letter to his mother was very rightly +written under the circumstances, and thanked her for her generosity in offering +to release him from his engagement. But the affair—the painful +circumstance of Highgate, and that—which had happened in the Newcome +family, was no fault of Miss Newcome’s, and Lord Farintosh could not +think of holding her accountable. His friends had long urged him to marry, and +it was by his mother’s own wish that the engagement was formed, which he +was determined to maintain. In his course through the world (of which he was +getting very tired), he had never seen a woman, a lady who was so—you +understand, Ethel—whom he admired so much, who was likely to make so good +a wife for him as you are. “You allude,” he continued, “to +differences we have had—and we have had them—but many of them, I +own, have been from my fault. I have been bred up in a way different to most +young men. I cannot help it if I have had temptations to which other men are +not exposed; and have been placed by—by Providence—in a high rank +of life; I am sure if you share it with me you will adorn it, and be in every +way worthy of it, and make me much better than I have been. If you knew what a +night of agony I passed after my mother read that letter to me—I know +you’d pity me, Ethel,—I know you would. The idea of losing you +makes me wild. My mother was dreadfully alarmed when she saw the state I was +in; so was the doctor—I assure you he was. And I had no rest at all, and +no peace of mind, until I determined to come down to you; and say that I adored +you, and you only; and that I would hold to my engagement in spite of +everything—and prove to you that—that no man in the world could +love you more sincerely than I do.” Here the young gentleman was so +overcome that he paused in his speech, and gave way to an emotion, for which, +surely no man who has been in the same condition with Lord Farintosh will blame +him. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Newcome was also much touched by this exhibition of natural feeling; and, +I dare say, it was at this time that her eyes showed the first symptoms of that +malady of which the traces were visible an hour after. +</p> + +<p> +“You are very generous and kind to me, Lord Farintosh,” she said. +“Your constancy honours me very much, and proves how good and loyal you +are; but—but do not think hardly of me for saying that the more I have +thought of what has happened here,—of the wretched consequences of +interested marriages; the long union growing each day so miserable, that at +last it becomes intolerable and is burst asunder, as in poor Clara’s +case;—the more I am resolved not to commit that first fatal step of +entering into a marriage without—without the degree of affection which +people who take that vow ought to feel for one another.” +</p> + +<p> +“Affection! Can you doubt it? Gracious heavens, I adore you! Isn’t +my being here a proof that I do?” cries the young lady’s lover. +</p> + +<p> +“But I?” answered the girl. “I have asked my own heart that +question before now. I have thought to myself,—If he comes after +all,—if his affection for me survives this disgrace of our family, as it +has, and every one of us should be thankful to you—ought I not to show at +least gratitude for so much kindness and honour, and devote myself to one who +makes such sacrifices for me? But, before all things I owe you the truth, Lord +Farintosh. I never could make you happy; I know I could not: nor obey you as +you are accustomed to be obeyed; nor give you such a devotion as you have a +right to expect from your wife. I thought I might once. I can’t now! I +know that I took you because you were rich, and had a great name; not because +you were honest, and attached to me as you show yourself to be. I ask your +pardon for the deceit I practised on you.—Look at Clara, poor child, and +her misery! My pride, I know, would never have let me fall as far as she has +done; but oh! I am humiliated to think that I could have been made to say I +would take the first step in that awful career.” +</p> + +<p> +“What career, in God’s name?” cries the astonished suitor. +“Humiliated, Ethel? Who’s going to humiliate you? I suppose there +is no woman in England who need be humiliated by becoming my wife. I should +like to see the one that I can’t pretend to—or to royal blood if I +like: it’s not better than mine. Humiliated, indeed! That <i>is</i> news. +Ha! ha! You don’t suppose that your pedigree, which I know all about, and +the Newcome family, with your barber-surgeon to Edward the Confessor, are equal +to——” +</p> + +<p> +“To yours? No. It is not very long that I have learned to disbelieve in +that story altogether. I fancy it was an odd whim of my poor father’s, +and that our family were quite poor people. +</p> + +<p> +“I knew it,” said Lord Farintosh. “Do you suppose there was +not plenty of women to tell it me?” +</p> + +<p> +“It was not because we were poor that I am ashamed,” Ethel went on. +“That cannot be our fault, though some of us seem think it is, as they +hide the truth so. One of my uncles used to tell me that my grandfather’s +father was a labourer in Newcome: but I was a child then, and liked to believe +the prettiest story best.” +</p> + +<p> +“As if it matters!” cries Lord Farintosh. +</p> + +<p> +“As if it matters in your wife? <i>n’est-ce pas?</i> I never +thought that it would. I should have told you, as it was my duty to tell you +all. It was not my ancestors you cared for; and it is you yourself that your +wife must swear before heaven to love.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course it’s me,” answers the young man, not quite +understanding the train of ideas in his companion’s mind. “And +I’ve given up everything—everything—and have broken off with +my old habits and—and things, you know—and intend to lead a regular +life—and will never go to Tattersall’s again; nor bet a shilling; +nor touch another cigar if you like—that is, if you don’t like; for +I love you so, Ethel—I do, with all my heart I do!” +</p> + +<p> +“You are very generous and kind, Lord Farintosh,” Ethel said. +“It is myself, not you, I doubt. Oh, I am humiliated to make such a +confession!” +</p> + +<p> +“How humiliated?” Ethel withdrew the hand which the young nobleman +endeavoured to seize. +</p> + +<p> +“If,” she continued, “if I found it was your birth, and your +name, and your wealth that I coveted, and had nearly taken, ought I not to feel +humiliated, and ask pardon of you and of God? Oh, what perjuries poor Clara was +made to speak,—and see what has befallen her! We stood by and heard her +without being shocked. We applauded even. And to what shame and misery we +brought her! Why did her parents and mine consign her to such ruin! She might +have lived pure and happy but for us. With her example before me—not her +flight, poor child—I am not afraid of <i>that</i> happening to +me—but her long solitude, the misery of her wasted years,—my +brother’s own wretchedness and faults aggravated a hundredfold by his +unhappy union with her—I must pause while it is yet time, and recall a +promise which I know I should make you unhappy if I fulfilled. I ask your +pardon that I deceived you, Lord Farintosh, and feel ashamed for myself that I +could have consented to do so.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean,” cried the young Marquis, “that after my +conduct to you—after my loving you, so that even this—this disgrace +in your family don’t prevent my going on—after my mother has been +down on her knees to me to break off, and I wouldn’t—no, I +wouldn’t—after all White’s sneering at me and laughing at me, +and all my friends, friends of my family, who would go to—go anywhere for +me, advising me, and saying, ‘Farintosh, what a fool you are! break off +this match,’—and I wouldn’t back out, because I loved you so, +by Heaven, and because, as a man and a gentleman, when I give my word I keep +it—do you mean that you throw me over? It’s a +shame—it’s a shame!” And again there were tears of rage and +anguish in Farintosh’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“What I did was a shame, my lord,” Ethel said, humbly; “and +again I ask your pardon for it. What I do now is only to tell you the truth, +and to grieve with all my soul for the falsehood—yes the +falsehood—which I told you, and which has given your kind heart such +cruel pain.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it was a falsehood!” the poor lad cried out. “You +follow a fellow, and you make a fool of him, and you make him frantic in love +with you, and then you fling him over! I wonder you can look me in the face +after such an infernal treason. You’ve done it to twenty fellows before, +I know you have. Everybody said so, and warned me. You draw them on, and get +them to be in love, and then you fling them away. Am I to go back to London and +be made the laughing-stock of the whole town—I, who might marry any woman +in Europe, and who am at the head of the nobility of England?” +</p> + +<p> +“Upon my word, if you will believe me after deceiving you once,” +Ethel interposed, still very humbly, “I will never say that it was I who +withdrew from you, and that it was not you who refused me. What has happened +here fully authorises you. Let the rupture of the engagement come from you, my +lord. Indeed, indeed, I would spare you all the pain I can. I have done you +wrong enough already, Lord Farintosh.” +</p> + +<p> +And now the Marquis burst forth with tears and imprecations, wild cries of +anger, love, and disappointment, so fierce and incoherent that the lady to whom +they were addressed did not repeat them to her confidante. Only she generously +charged Laura to remember, if ever she heard the matter talked of in the world, +that it was Lord Farintosh’s family which broke off the marriage; but +that his lordship had acted most kindly and generously throughout the whole +affair. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +He went back to London in such a state of fury, and raved so wildly amongst his +friends against the whole Newcome family, that many men knew what the case +really was. But all women averred that that intriguing worldly Ethel Newcome, +the apt pupil of her wicked old grandmother, had met with a deserved rebuff; +that, after doing everything in her power to catch the great <i>parti</i>, Lord +Farintosh, who had long been tired of her, flung her over, not liking the +connexion; and that she was living out of the world now at Newcome, under the +pretence of taking care of that unfortunate Lady Clara’s children, but +really because she was pining away for Lord Farintosh, who, as we all know, +married six months afterwards. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0060"></a> +CHAPTER LX.<br> +In which we write to the Colonel</h2> + +<p> +Deeming that her brother Barnes had cares enough of his own presently at hand, +Ethel did not think fit to confide to him the particulars of her interview with +Lord Farintosh; nor even was poor Lady Anne informed that she had lost a noble +son-in-law. The news would come to both of them soon enough, Ethel thought; and +indeed, before many hours were over, it reached Sir Barnes Newcome in a very +abrupt and unpleasant way. He had dismal occasion now to see his lawyers every +day; and on the day after Lord Farintosh’s abrupt visit and departure, +Sir Barnes, going into Newcome upon his own unfortunate affairs, was told by +his attorney, Mr. Speers, how the Marquis of Farintosh had slept for a few +hours at the King’s Arms, and returned to town the same evening by the +train. We may add, that his lordship had occupied the very room in which Lord +Highgate had previously slept; and Mr. Taplow recommends the bed accordingly, +and shows pride it with to this very day. +</p> + +<p> +Much disturbed by this intelligence, Sir Barnes was making his way to his +cheerless home in the evening, when near his own gate he overtook another +messenger. This was the railway porter, who daily brought telegraphic messages +from his uncle and the London bank. The message of that day +was,—“Consols, so-and-so. French Rentes, so much. +<i>Highgate’s and Farintosh’s accounts withdrawn</i>.” The +wretched keeper of the lodge owned, with trembling, in reply to the curses and +queries of his employer, that a gentleman, calling himself the Marquis of +Farintosh, had gone up to the house the day before, and come away an hour +afterwards,—did not like to speak to Sir Barnes when he came home, Sir +Barnes looked so bad like. +</p> + +<p> +Now, of course, there could be no concealment from her brother, and Ethel and +Barnes had a conversation, in which the latter expressed himself with that +freedom of language which characterised the head of the house of Newcome. +Madame de Moncontour’s pony-chaise was in waiting at the hall door, when +the owner of the house entered it; and my wife was just taking leave of Ethel +and her little people when Sir Barnes Newcome entered the lady’s +sitting-room. +</p> + +<p> +The livid scowl with which Barnes greeted my wife surprised that lady, though +it did not induce her to prolong her visit to her friend. As Laura took leave, +she heard Sir Barnes screaming to the nurses to “take those little +beggars away,” and she rightly conjectured that some more unpleasantries +had occurred to disturb this luckless gentleman’s temper. +</p> + +<p> +On the morrow, dearest Ethel’s usual courier, one of the boys from the +lodge, trotted over on his donkey to dearest Laura at Rosebury, with one of +those missives which were daily passing between the ladies. This letter +said:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“Barnes m’a fait une scène terrible hier. I was obliged to tell him +everything about Lord F., and <i>to use the plainest language</i>. At first, he +forbade you the house. He thinks that you have been the cause of F.’s +dismissal, and charged me, <i>most unjustly</i>, with a desire to bring back +poor C. N. I replied <i>as became me</i>, and told him fairly I would leave the +house if <i>odious insulting charges</i> were made against me, if my friends +were not received. He stormed, he cried, he employed<i> his usual +language</i>,—he was in a dreadful state. He relented and asked pardon. +He goes to town to-night by the mail-train. <i>Of course</i> you come as usual, +dear, dear Laura. I am miserable without you; and you know I cannot leave poor +mamma. Clarykin sends a <i>thousand kisses</i> to little Arty; and I am <i>his +mother’s</i> always affectionate—E. N. +</p> + +<p> +“Will the gentlemen like to shoot our pheasants? Please ask the Prince to +let Warren know when. I sent a brace to poor dear old Mrs. Mason, and had such +a nice letter from her!” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“And who is poor dear Mrs. Mason” asks Mr. Pendennis, as yet but +imperfectly acquainted with the history of the Newcomes. +</p> + +<p> +And Laura told me—perhaps I had heard before, and forgotten—that +Mrs. Mason was an old nurse and pensioner of the Colonel’s, and how he +had been to see her for the sake of old times; and how she was a great +favourite with Ethel; and Laura kissed her little son, and was exceedingly +bright, cheerful, and hilarious that evening, in spite of the affliction under +which her dear friends at Newcome were labouring. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +People in country-houses should be exceedingly careful about their +blotting-paper. They should bring their own portfolios with them. If any kind +readers will bear this simple little hint in mind, how much mischief may they +save themselves,—nay, enjoy possibly, by looking at the pages of the next +portfolio in the next friend’s bedroom in which they sleep. From such a +book I once cut out, in Charles Slyboots’ well-known and perfectly clear +handwriting, the words, “Miss Emily Hartington, James Street, Backingham +Gate, London,” and produced as legibly on the blotting-paper as on the +envelope which the postman delivered. After showing the paper round to the +company, I enclosed it in a note and sent it to Mr. Slyboots, who married Miss +Hartington three months afterwards. In such a book at the club I read, as +plainly as you may read this page, a holograph page of the Right Honourable the +Earl of Bareacres, which informed the whole club of a painful and private +circumstance, and said, “My dear Green,—I am truly sorry that I +shall not be able to take up the bill for eight hundred and fifty-six pounds, +which becomes due next Tu——” and upon such a book, going to +write a note in Madame de Moncontour’s drawing-room at Rosebury, what +should I find but proofs that my own wife was engaged in a clandestine +correspondence with a gentleman residing abroad! +</p> + +<p> +“Colonel Newcome, C.B., Montagne de la Cour, Brussels,” I read, in +this young woman’s handwriting; and asked, turning round upon Laura, who +entered the room just as I discovered her guilt: “What have you been +writing to Colonel Newcome about, miss?” +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted him to get me some lace,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“To lace some nightcaps for me, didn’t you, my dear? He is such a +fine judge of lace! If I had known you had been writing, I would have asked you +to send him a message. I want something from Brussels. Is the +letter—ahem—gone?” (In this artful way, you see, I just +hinted that I should like to see letter.). +</p> + +<p> +“The letter is—ahem—gone,” says Laura. “What do +you want from Brussels, Pen?” +</p> + +<p> +“I want some Brussels sprouts, my love—they are so fine in their +native country.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I write to him to send the letter back?” palpitates poor +little Laura; for she thought her husband was offended, by using the ironic +method. +</p> + +<p> +“No, you dear little woman! You need not send for letter the back: and +you need not tell me what was in it: and I will bet you a hundred yards of lace +to a cotton nightcap—and you know whether <i>I</i>, madam, am a man <i>à +bonnet-de-coton</i>—I will let you that I know what you have been writing +about, under pretence of a message about lace, to our Colonel.” +</p> + +<p> +“He promised to send it me. He really did. Lady Rockminster gave me +twenty pounds——” gasps Laura. +</p> + +<p> +“Under pretence of lace, you have been sending over a love-message. You +want to see whether Clive is still of his old mind. You think the coast is now +clear, and that dearest Ethel may like him. You think Mrs. Mason is growing +very old and infirm, and the sight of her dear boy would——” +</p> + +<p> +“Pen! Pen! <i>did you open my letter?</i>” cries Laura; and a laugh +which could afford to be good-humoured (followed by yet another expression of +the lips) ended this colloquy. No; Mr Pendennis did not see the +letter—but he knew the writer;—flattered himself that he knew women +in general. +</p> + +<p> +“Where did you get your experience of them, sir?” asks Mrs. Laura. +Question answered in the same manner as the previous demand. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my dear; and why should not the poor boy be made happy?” +Laura continues, standing very close up to her husband. “It is evident to +me that Ethel is fond of him. I would rather see her married to a good young +man whom she loves, than the mistress of a thousand palaces and coronets. +Suppose—suppose you had married Miss Amory, sir, what a wretched worldly +creature you would have been by this time; whereas now——” +</p> + +<p> +“Now that I am the humble slave of a good woman there is some chance for +me,” cries this model of husbands. “And all good women are +match-makers, as we know very well; and you have had this match in your heart +ever since you saw the two young people together. Now; madam, since I did not +see your letter to the Colonel—though I have guessed part of +it—tell me, what have you said in it? Have you by any chance told the +Colonel that the Farintosh alliance was broken off?” +</p> + +<p> +Laura owned that she had hinted as much. +</p> + +<p> +“You have not ventured to say that Ethel is well inclined to +Clive?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, no—oh <i>dear</i>, no!” But after much cross-examining +and a little blushing on Laura’s part, she is brought to confess that she +has asked the Colonel whether he will not come and see Mrs. Mason, who is +pining to see him, and is growing very old. And I find out that she has been to +see this Mrs. Mason; that she and Miss Newcome visited the old lady the day +before yesterday; and Laura thought from the manner in which Ethel looked at +Clive’s picture, hanging up in the parlour of his father’s old +friend, that she really was very much, etc. etc. So, the letter being gone, +Mrs. Pendennis is most eager about the answer to it, and day after day examines +the bag, and is provoked that it brings no letter bearing the Brussels +post-mark. +</p> + +<p> +Madame de Moncontour seems perfectly well to know what Mrs. Laura has been +doing and is hoping. “What, no letters again to-day? Ain’t it +provoking?” she cries. She is in the conspiracy too; and presently Florac +is one of the initiated. “These women wish to <i>bacler</i> a marriage +between the belle miss and le petit Claive,” Florac announces to me. He +pays the highest compliments to Miss Newcome’s person, as he speaks +regarding the marriage. “I continue to adore your Anglaises,” he is +pleased to say. “What of freshness, what of beauty, what roses! And then +they are so adorably good! Go, Pendennis, thou art a happy +<i>coquin!</i>” Mr. Pendennis does not say No. He has won the +twenty-thousand-pound prize; and we know there are worse blanks in that +lottery. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0061"></a> +CHAPTER LXI.<br> +In which we are introduced to a New Newcome</h2> + +<p> +No answer came to Mrs. Pendennis’s letter to Colonel Newcome at Brussels, +for the Colonel was absent from that city, and at the time when Laura wrote was +actually in London, whither affairs of his own had called him. A note from +George Warrington acquainted me with this circumstance; he mentioned that he +and the Colonel had dined together at Bays’s on the day previous, and +that the Colonel seemed to be in the highest spirits. High spirits about what? +This news put Laura in a sad perplexity. Should she write and tell him to get +his letters from Brussels? She would in five minutes have found some other +pretext for writing to Colonel Newcome, had not her husband sternly cautioned +the young woman to leave the matter alone. +</p> + +<p> +The more readily perhaps because he had quarrelled with his nephew Sir Barnes, +Thomas Newcome went to visit his brother Hobson and his sister-in-law; bent on +showing that there was no division between him and this branch of his family. +And you may suppose that the admirable woman just named had a fine occasion for +her virtuous conversational powers in discoursing upon the painful event which +had just happened to Sir Barnes. When we fail, how our friends cry out for us! +Mrs. Hobson’s homilies must have been awful. How that outraged virtue +must have groaned and lamented, gathered its children about its knees, wept +over them and washed them; gone into sackcloth and ashes and tied up the +knocker; confabulated with its spiritual adviser; uttered commonplaces to its +husband; and bored the whole house! The punishment of worldliness and vanity, +the evil of marrying out of one’s station, how these points must have +been explained and enlarged on! Surely the Peerage was taken off the +drawing-room table and removed to papa’s study, where it could not open, +as it used naturally once, to Highgate, Baron, or Farintosh, Marquis of, being +shut behind wires and closely jammed in on an upper shelf between +Blackstone’s Commentaries and the Farmer’s Magazine! The breaking +of the engagement with the Marquis of Farintosh was known in Bryanstone Square; +and you may be sure interpreted by Mrs. Hobson in the light the most +disadvantageous to Ethel Newcome. A young nobleman—with grief and pain +Ethel’s aunt must own the fact—a young man of notoriously +dissipated habits but of great wealth and rank, had been pursued by the unhappy +Lady Kew—Mrs. Hobson would not say by her <i>niece</i>, that were +<i>too</i> dreadful—had been pursued, and followed, and hunted down in +the most notorious manner, and finally made to propose! Let Ethel’s +<i>conduct</i> and <i>punishment</i> be a warning to my dearest girls, and let +them bless <i>Heaven</i> they have parents who are not worldly! After all the +trouble and pains, Mrs. Hobson did not say <i>disgrace</i>, the Marquis takes +<i>the very first pretext</i> to break off the match, and leaves the +unfortunate girl for ever! +</p> + +<p> +And now we have to tell of the hardest blow which fell upon poor Ethel, and +this was that her good uncle Thomas Newcome believed the charges against her. +He was willing enough to listen now to anything which was said against that +branch of the family. With such a traitor, double-dealer, dastard as Barnes at +its head, what could the rest of the race be? When the Colonel offered to endow +Ethel and Clive with every shilling he had in the world, had not Barnes, the +arch-traitor, temporised and told him falsehoods, and hesitated about throwing +him off until the Marquis had declared himself? Yes. The girl he and poor Clive +loved so was ruined by her artful relatives, was unworthy of his affection and +his boy’s, was to be banished, like her worthless brother, out of his +regard for ever. And the man she had chosen in preference to his Clive!—a +roue, a libertine, whose extravagances and dissipations were the talk of every +club, who had no wit, nor talents, not even constancy (for had he not taken the +first opportunity to throw her off?) to recommend him—only a great title +and a fortune wherewith to bribe her! For shame, for shame! Her engagement to +this man was a blot upon her—the rupture only a just punishment and +humiliation. Poor unhappy girl! let her take care of her wretched +brother’s abandoned children, give up the world, and amend her life. +</p> + +<p> +This was the sentence Thomas Newcome delivered: a righteous and tender-hearted +man, as we know, but judging in this case wrongly, and bearing much too hardly, +as we who know her better must think, upon one who had her faults certainly, +but whose errors were not all of her own making. Who set her on the path she +walked in? It was her parents’ hands which led her, and her +parents’ voices which commanded her to accept the temptation set before +her. What did she know of the character of the man selected to be her husband? +Those who should have known better brought him to her, and vouched for him. +Noble, unhappy young creature! are you the first of your sisterhood who has +been bidden to traffic your beauty, to crush and slay your honest natural +affections, to sell your truth and your life for rank and title? But the Judge +who sees not the outward acts merely, but their causes, and views not the wrong +alone, but the temptations, struggles, ignorance of erring creatures, we know +has a different code to ours—to ours, who fall upon the fallen, who fawn +upon the prosperous so, who administer our praises and punishments so +prematurely, who now strike so hard, and, anon, spare so shamelessly. +</p> + +<p> +Our stay with our hospitable friends at Rosebury was perforce coming to a +close, for indeed weeks after weeks had passed since we had been under their +pleasant roof; and in spite of dearest Ethel’s remonstrances it was clear +that dearest Laura must take her farewell. In these last days, besides the +visits which daily took place between one and other, the young messenger was +put in ceaseless requisition, and his donkey must have been worn off his little +legs with trotting to and fro between the two houses, Laura was quite anxious +and hurt at not hearing from the Colonel; it was a shame that he did not have +over his letters from Belgium and answer that one which she had honoured him by +writing. By some information, received who knows how? our host was aware of the +intrigue which Mrs. Pendennis was carrying on; and his little wife almost as +much interested in it as my own. She whispered to me in her kind way that she +would give a guinea, that she would, to see a certain couple made happy +together; that they were born for one another, that they were; she was for +having me go off to fetch Clive: but who was I to act as Hymen’s +messenger, or to interpose in such delicate family affairs? +</p> + +<p> +All this while Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., remained absent in London, attending +to his banking duties there, and pursuing the dismal inquiries which ended, in +the ensuing Michaelmas term, in the famous suit of Newcome <i>v</i>. Lord +Highgate. Ethel, pursuing the plan which she had laid down for herself from the +first, took entire charge of his children and house: Lady Anne returned to her +own family: never indeed having been of much use in her son’s dismal +household. My wife talked to me of course about her pursuits and amusements at +Newcome, in the ancestral hall which we have mentioned. The children played and +ate their dinner (mine often partook of his infantine mutton, in company with +little Clara and the poor young heir of Newcome) in the room which had been +called my lady’s own, and in which her husband had locked her, forgetting +that the conservatories were open, through which the hapless woman had fled. +Next to this was the baronial library, a side of which was fitted with the +gloomy books from Clapham, which old Mrs. Newcome had amassed; rows of tracts, +and missionary magazines, and dingy quarto volumes of worldly travel and +history which that lady had admitted into her collection. +</p> + +<p> +Almost on the last day of our stay at Rosebury, the two young ladies bethought +them of paying a visit to the neighbouring town of Newcome, to that old Mrs. +Mason who has been mentioned in a foregoing page in some yet earlier chapter of +our history. She was very old now, very faithful to the recollections of her +own early time, and oblivious of yesterday. Thanks to Colonel Newcome’s +bounty, she had lived in comfort for many a long year past; and he was as much +her boy now as in those early days of which we have given but an outline. There +were Clive’s pictures of himself and his father over her little +mantelpiece, near which she sat in comfort and warmth by the winter fire which +his bounty supplied. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Mason remembered Miss Newcome, prompted thereto by the hints of her little +maid, who was much younger, and had a more faithful memory than her mistress. +Why, Sarah Mason would have forgotten the pheasants whose very tails decorated +the chimney-glass, had not Keziah, the maid, reminded her that the young lady +was the donor. Then she recollected her benefactor, and asked after her father, +the Baronet; and wondered, for her part, why her boy, the Colonel, was not made +baronet, and why his brother had the property? Her father was a very good man; +though Mrs. Mason had heard he was not much liked in those parts. “Dead +and gone, was he, poor man?” (This came in reply to a hint from Keziah, +the attendant, bawled in the old lady’s ears, who was very deaf.) +“Well, well, we must all go; and if we were all good, like the Colonel, +what was the use of staying? I hope his wife will be good. I am sure such a +good man deserves one,” added Mrs. Mason. +</p> + +<p> +The ladies thought the old woman doting, led thereto by the remark of Keziah, +the maid, that Mrs. Mason have a lost her memory. And she asked who the other +bonny lady was, and Ethel told her that Mrs. Pendennis was a friend of the +Colonel’s and Clive’s. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Clive’s friend! Well, she was a pretty lady, and he was a dear +pretty boy. He drew those pictures; and he took off me in my cap, with my old +cat and all—my poor old cat that’s buried this ever so long +ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“She has had a letter from the Colonel, miss,” cries out Keziah. +“Haven’t you had a letter from the Colonel, mum? It came only +yesterday.” And Keziah takes out the letter and shows it to the ladies. +They read as follows:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“London, Feb. 12, 184-. +</p> + +<p> +“My Dear Old Mason—I have just heard from a friend of mine who has +been staying in your neighbourhood, that you are well and happy, and that you +have been making inquiries after <i>your young scapegrace</i>, Tom Newcome, who +is well and happy too, and who proposes to be <i>happier still</i> before any +very long time is over. +</p> + +<p> +“The letter which was written to me about you was sent to me <i>in +Belgium</i>, at Brussels, where I have been living—a town near the place +where the famous <i>Battle of Waterloo</i> was fought; and as I had run away +from Waterloo it <i>followed me to England</i>. +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot come to Newcome just now to shake my dear old friend and nurse +<i>by the hand</i>. I have business in London; and there are those of my name +<i>living in Newcome</i> who would not be very happy to see me and mine. +</p> + +<p> +“But I promise you a visit before very long, and Clive will come with me; +and when we come I shall introduce a new friend to you, a very pretty little +<i>daughter-in-law</i>, whom you must promise to love very much. She is a +<i>Scotch lassie</i>, niece of my oldest friend, James Binnie, Esquire, of the +Bengal Civil Service, who will give her a <i>pretty bit of siller</i>, and her +present name is Miss Rosa Mackenzie. +</p> + +<p> +“We shall send you a <i>wedding cake</i> soon, and a new gown for Keziah +(to whom remember me), and when I am gone, my grandchildren after me will hear +what a dear friend you were to your affectionate Thomas Newcome.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Keziah must have thought that there was something between Clive and my wife, +for when Laura had read the letter she laid it down on the table, and sitting +down by it, and hiding her face in her hands, burst into tears. +</p> + +<p> +Ethel looked steadily at the two pictures of Clive and his father. Then she put +her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Come, my dear,” she said, +“it is growing late, and I must go back to my children.” And she +saluted Mrs. Mason and her maid in a very stately manner, and left them, +leading my wife away, who was still exceedingly overcome. +</p> + +<p> +We could not stay long at Rosebury after that. When Madame de Moncontour heard +the news, the good lady cried too. Mrs. Pendennis’s emotion was renewed +as we passed the gates of Newcome Park on our way to the railroad. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0062"></a> +CHAPTER LXII.<br> +Mr. and Mrs. Clive Newcome</h2> + +<p> +The friendship between Ethel and Laura, which the last narrated sentimental +occurrences had so much increased, subsists very little impaired up to the +present day. A lady with many domestic interests and increasing family, etc. +etc., cannot be supposed to cultivate female intimacies out of doors with that +ardour and eagerness which young spinsters exhibit in their intercourse; but +Laura, whose kind heart first led her to sympathise with her young friend in +the latter’s days of distress and misfortune, has professed ever since a +growing esteem for Ethel Newcome, and says, that the trials and perhaps grief +which the young lady now had to undergo have brought out the noblest qualities +of her disposition. She is a very different person from the giddy and worldly +girl who compelled our admiration of late in the days of her triumphant +youthful beauty, of her wayward generous humour, of her frivolities and her +flirtations. +</p> + +<p> +Did Ethel shed tears in secret over the marriage which had caused Laura’s +gentle eyes to overflow? We might divine the girl’s grief, but we +respected it. The subject was never mentioned by the ladies between themselves, +and even in her most intimate communications with her husband that gentleman is +bound to say his wife maintained a tender reserve upon the point, nor cared to +speculate upon a subject which her friend held sacred. I could not for my part +but acquiesce in this reticence; and, if Ethel felt regret and remorse, admire +the dignity of her silence, and the sweet composure of her now changed and +saddened demeanour. +</p> + +<p> +The interchange of letters between the two friends was constant, and in these +the younger lady described at length the duties, occupations, and pleasures of +her new life. She had quite broken with the world, and devoted herself entirely +to the nurture and education of her brother’s orphan children. She +educated herself in order to teach them. Her letters contain droll yet touching +confessions of her own ignorance and her determination to overcome it. There +was no lack of masters of all kinds in Newcome. She set herself to work like a +schoolgirl. The little piano in the room near the conservatory was thumped by +Aunt Ethel until it became quite obedient to her, and yielded the sweetest +music under her fingers. When she came to pay us a visit at Fairoaks some two +years afterwards she played for our dancing children (our third is named Ethel, +our second Helen, after one still more dear), and we were in admiration of her +skill. There must have been the labour of many lonely nights when her little +charges were at rest, and she and her sad thoughts sat up together, before she +overcame the difficulties of the instrument so as to be able to soothe herself +and to charm and delight her children. +</p> + +<p> +When the divorce was pronounced, which came in due form, though we know that +Lady Highgate was not much happier than the luckless Lady Clara Newcome had +been, Ethel’s dread was lest Sir Barnes should marry again, and by +introducing a new mistress into his house should deprive her of the care of her +children. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Newcome judged her brother rightly in that he would try to marry, but a +noble young lady to whom he offered himself rejected him, to his surprise and +indignation, for a beggarly clergyman with a small living, on which she elected +to starve; and the wealthy daughter of a neighbouring manufacturer whom he next +proposed to honour with his gracious hand, fled from him with horror to the +arms of her father, wondering how such a man as that should ever dare to +propose marriage to an honest girl. Sir Barnes Newcome was much surprised at +this outbreak of anger; he thought himself a very ill-used and unfortunate man, +a victim of most cruel persecutions, which we may be sure did not improve his +temper or tend to the happiness of his circle at home. Peevishness, and selfish +rage, quarrels with servants and governesses, and other domestic disquiet, +Ethel had of course to bear from her brother, but not actual personal +ill-usage. The fiery temper of former days was subdued in her, but the haughty +resolution remained, which was more than a match for her brother’s +cowardly tyranny: besides, she was the mistress of sixty thousand pounds, and +by many wily hints and piteous appeals to his sister Sir Barnes sought to +secure this desirable sum of money for his poor dear unfortunate children. +</p> + +<p> +He professed to think that she was ruining herself for her younger brothers, +whose expenses the young lady was defraying, this one at college, that in the +army, and whose maintenance he thought might be amply defrayed out of their own +little fortunes and his mother’s jointure: and, by ingeniously proving +that a vast number of his household expenses were personal to Miss Newcome and +would never have been incurred but for her residence in his house, he +subtracted for his own benefit no inconsiderable portion of her income. Thus +the carriage-horses were hers, for what need had he, a miserable bachelor, of +anything more than a riding-horse and a brougham? A certain number of the +domestics were hers, and as he could get no scoundrel of his own to stay with +him, he took Miss Newcome’s servants. He would have had her pay the coals +which burned in his grate, and the taxes due to our sovereign lady the Queen; +but in truth, at the end of the year, with her domestic bounties and her +charities round about Newcome, which daily increased as she became acquainted +with her indigent neighbours, Miss Ethel, the heiress, was as poor as many +poorer persons. +</p> + +<p> +Her charities increased daily with her means of knowing the people round about +her. She gave much time to them and thought; visited from house to house, +without ostentation; was awestricken by that spectacle of the poverty which we +have with us always, of which the sight rebukes our selfish griefs into +silence, the thought compels us to charity, humility, and devotion. The priests +of our various creeds, who elsewhere are doing battle together continually, lay +down their arms in its presence and kneel before it; subjugated by that +overpowering master. Death, never dying out; hunger always crying; and children +born to it day after day,—our young London lady, flying from the +splendours and follies in which her life had been past, found herself in the +presence of these; threading darkling alleys which swarmed with wretched life; +sitting by naked beds, whither by God’s blessing she was sometimes +enabled to carry a little comfort and consolation; or whence she came +heart-stricken by the overpowering misery, or touched by the patient +resignation of the new friends to whom fate had directed her. And here she met +the priest upon his shrift, the homely missionary bearing his words of +consolation, the quiet curate pacing his round; and was known to all these, and +enabled now and again to help their people in trouble. “Oh! what good +there is in this woman!” my wife would say to me, as she laid one of Miss +Ethel’s letters aside; “who would have thought this was the girl of +your glaring London ballroom? If she has had grief to bear, how it has +chastened and improved her!” +</p> + +<p> +And now I have to confess that all this time, whilst Ethel Newcome has been +growing in grace with my wife, poor Clive has been lapsing sadly out of favour. +She has no patience with Clive. She drubs her little foot when his name is +mentioned and turns the subject. Whither are all the tears and pities fled now? +Mrs. Laura has transferred all her regard to Ethel, and when that lady’s +ex-suitor writes to his old friend, or other news is had of him, Laura flies +out in her usual tirades against the world, the horrid wicked selfish world, +which spoils everybody who comes near it. What has Clive done, in vain his +apologist asks, that an old friend should be so angry with him? +</p> + +<p> +She is not angry with him—not she. She only does not care about him. She +wishes him no manner of harm—not the least, only she has lost all +interest in him. And the Colonel too, the poor good old Colonel, was actually +in Mrs. Pendennis’ black books, and when he sent her the Brussels veil +which we have heard of, she did not think it was a bargain at all—not +particularly pretty, in fact, rather dear at the money. When we met Mr. and +Mrs. Clive Newcome in London, whither they came a few months after their +marriage, and where Rosey appeared as pretty, happy, good-humoured a little +blushing bride as eyes need behold, Mrs. Pendennis’s reception of her was +quite a curiosity of decorum. “I, not receive her well?” cried +Laura. “How on earth would you have me receive her? I talked to her about +everything, and she only answered yes or no. I showed her the children, and she +did not seem to care. Her only conversation was about millinery and Brussels +balls, and about her dress at the drawing-room. The drawing-room! What business +has she with such follies?” +</p> + +<p> +The fact is, that the drawing-room was Tom Newcome’s affair, not his +son’s, who was heartily ashamed of the figure he cut in that astounding +costume, which English private gentlemen are made to sport when they bend the +knee before their gracious Sovereign. +</p> + +<p> +Warrington roasted poor Clive upon the occasion, and complimented him with his +usual gravity, until the young fellow blushed and his father somewhat testily +signified to our friend that his irony was not agreeable. “I +suppose,” says the Colonel, with great hauteur, “that there is +nothing ridiculous in an English gentleman entertaining feelings of loyalty and +testifying his respect to his Queen: and I presume that Her Majesty knows best, +and has a right to order in what dress her subjects shall appear before her and +I don’t think it’s kind of you, George, I say, I don’t think +it’s kind of you to quiz my boy for doing his duty to his Queen and to +his father too, sir,—for it was at my request that Clive went, and we +went together, sir—to the levee and then to the drawing-room afterwards +with Rosey, who was presented by the lady of my old friend, Sir George Tufto, a +lady of rank herself, and the wife of as brave an officer as ever drew a +sword.” +</p> + +<p> +Warrington stammered an apology for his levity, but no explanations were +satisfactory, and it was clear George had wounded the feelings of our dear +simple old friend. +</p> + +<p> +After Clive’s marriage, which was performed at Brussels, Uncle James and +the lady, his sister, whom we have sometimes flippantly ventured to call the +Campaigner, went off to perform that journey to Scotland which James had +meditated for ten years past; and, now little Rosey was made happy for life, to +renew acquaintance with little Josey. The Colonel and his son and +daughter-in-law came to London, not to the bachelor quarters, where we have +seen them, but to an hotel, which they occupied until their new house could be +provided for them, a sumptuous mansion in the Tyburnian district, and one which +became people of their station. +</p> + +<p> +We have been informed already what the Colonel’s income was, and have the +gratification of knowing that it was very considerable. The simple gentleman +who would dine off a crust, and wear a coat for ten years, desired that his +children should have the best of everything: ordered about upholsterers, +painters, carriage-makers, in his splendid Indian way; presented pretty Rosey +with brilliant jewels for her introduction at Court, and was made happy by the +sight of the blooming young creature decked in these magnificences, and admired +by all his little circle. The old boys, the old generals, the old colonels, the +old qui-his from the club, came and paid her their homage; the directors’ +ladies, and the generals’ ladies, called upon her, and feasted her at +vast banquets served on sumptuous plate. Newcome purchased plate and gave +banquets in return for these hospitalities. Mrs. Clive had a neat close +carriage for evenings, and a splendid barouche to drive in the Park. It was +pleasant to see this equipage at four o’clock of an afternoon, driving up +to Bays’s, with Rosey most gorgeously attired reclining within; and to +behold the stately grace of the old gentleman as he stepped out to welcome his +daughter-in-law, and the bow he made before he entered her carriage. Then they +would drive round the Park; round and round and round; and the old generals, +and the old colonels, and old fogies, and their ladies and daughters, would nod +and smile out of <i>their</i> carriages as they crossed each other upon this +charming career of pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +I confess that a dinner at the Colonel’s, now he appeared in all his +magnificence, was awfully slow. No peaches could look fresher than +Rosey’s cheeks,—no damask was fairer than her pretty little +shoulders. No one, I am sure, could be happier than she, but she did not impart +her happiness to her friends; and replied chiefly by smiles to the conversation +of the gentlemen at her side. It is true that these were for the most part +elderly dignitaries, distinguished military officers with blue-black whiskers, +retired old Indian judges, and the like, occupied with their victuals, and +generally careless to please. But that solemn happiness of the Colonel, who +shall depict it:—that look of affection with which he greeted his +daughter as she entered, flounced to the waist, twinkling with innumerable +jewels, holding a dainty pocket-handkerchief, with smiling eyes, dimpled +cheeks, and golden ringlets! He would take her hand, or follow her about from +group to group, exchanging precious observations about the weather, the Park, +the exhibition, nay, the opera, for the old man actually went to the opera with +his little girl, and solemnly snoozed by her side in a white waistcoat. +</p> + +<p> +Very likely this was the happiest period of Thomas Newcome’s life. No +woman (save one perhaps fifty years ago) had ever seemed so fond of him as that +little girl. What pride he had in her, and what care he took of her! If she was +a little ailing, what anxiety and hurrying for doctors! What droll letters came +from James Binnie, and how they laughed over them: with what respectful +attention he acquainted Mrs. Mack with everything that took place: with what +enthusiasm that Campaigner replied! Josey’s husband called a special +blessing upon his head in the church at Musselburgh; and little Jo herself sent +a tinful of Scotch bun to her darling sister, with a request from her husband +that he might have a few shares in the famous Indian Company. +</p> + +<p> +The Company was in a highly flourishing condition, as you may suppose, when one +of its directors, who at the same time was one of the honestest men alive, +thought it was his duty to live in the splendour in which we now behold him. +Many wealthy City men did homage to him. His brother Hobson, though the Colonel +had quarrelled with the chief of the firm, yet remained on amiable terms with +Thomas Newcome, and shared and returned his banquets for a while. Charles +Honeyman we may be sure was present at many of them, and smirked a blessing +over the plenteous meal. The Colonel’s influence was such with Mr. +Sherrick that he pleaded Charles’s cause with that gentleman, and +actually brought to a successful termination that little love-affair in which +we have seen Miss Sherrick and Charles engaged. Mr. Sherrick was not disposed +to part with much money during his lifetime—indeed, he proved to Colonel +Newcome that he was not so rich as the world supposed him. But, by the +Colonel’s interest, the chaplaincy of Boggley Wollah was procured for the +Rev. C. Honeyman, who now forms the delight of that flourishing station. +</p> + +<p> +All this while we have said little about Clive, who in truth was somehow in the +background in this flourishing Newcome group. To please the best father in the +world; the kindest old friend who endowed his niece with the best part of his +savings; to settle that question about marriage and have an end of +it;—Clive Newcome had taken a pretty and fond young girl, who respected +and admired him beyond all men, and who heartily desired to make him happy. To +do as much would not his father have stripped his coat from his +back,—have put his head under Juggernaut’s chariot-wheel, have +sacrificed any ease, comfort, or pleasure for the youngster’s benefit? +One great passion he had had and closed the account of it: a worldly ambitious +girl—how foolishly worshipped and passionately beloved no +matter—had played with him for years; had flung him away when a dissolute +suitor with a great fortune and title had offered himself. Was he to whine and +despair because a jilt had fooled him? He had too much pride and courage for +any such submission; he would accept the lot in life which was offered to him, +no undesirable one surely; he would fulfil the wish of his father’s +heart, and cheer his kind declining years. In this way the marriage was brought +about. It was but a whisper to Rosey in the drawing-room, a start and a blush +from the little girl as he took the little willing hand, a kiss for her from +her delighted old father-in-law, a twinkle in good old James’s eyes, and +double embrace from the Campaigner as she stood over them in a benedictory +attitude;—expressing her surprise at an event for which she had been +jockeying ever since she set eyes on young Newcome; and calling upon Heaven to +bless her children. So, as a good thing when it is to be done had best be done +quickly, these worthy folks went off almost straightway to a clergyman, and +were married out of hand—to the astonishment of Captains Hoby and Goby +when they came to hear of the event. Well, my gallant young painter and friend +of my boyhood! if my wife chooses to be angry at your marriage, shall her +husband not wish you happy? +</p> + +<p> +Suppose we had married our first loves, others of us, were we the happier now? +Ask Mr. Pendennis, who sulked in his tents when his Costigan, his Briseis, was +ravished from him. Ask poor George Warrington, who had his own way, Heaven help +him! There was no need why Clive should turn monk because number one refused +him; and, that charmer removed, why he should not take to his heart number two. +I am bound to say, that when I expressed these opinions to Mrs. Laura, she was +more angry and provoked than ever. +</p> + +<p> +It is in the nature of such a simple soul as Thomas Newcome, to see but one +side of a question, and having once fixed Ethel’s worldliness in his +mind, and her brother’s treason, to allow no argument of advocates of the +other side to shake his displeasure. Hence the one or two appeals which Laura +ventured to make on behalf of her friend, were checked by the good Colonel with +a stern negation. If Ethel was not guiltless, she could not make him see at +least that she was not guilty. He dashed away all excuses and palliations. +Exasperated as he was, he persisted in regarding the poor girl’s conduct +in its most unfavourable light. “She was rejected, and deservedly +rejected, by the Marquis of Farintosh,” he broke out to me once, who was +not indeed authorised to tell all I knew regarding the story; “the whole +town knows it; all the clubs ring with it. I blush, sir, to think that my +brother’s child should have brought such a stain upon our name.” In +vain, I told him that my wife, who knew all the circumstances much better, +judged Miss Newcome far more favourably, and indeed greatly esteemed and loved +her. “Pshaw! sir,” breaks out the indignant Colonel, “your +wife is an innocent creature, who does not know the world as we men of +experience do,—as I do, sir;” and would have no more of the +discussion. There is no doubt about it, there was a coolness between my old +friend’s father and us. +</p> + +<p> +As for Barnes Newcome, we gave up that worthy, and the Colonel showed him no +mercy. He recalled words used by Warrington, which I have recorded in a former +page, and vowed that he only watched for an opportunity to crush the miserable +reptile. He hated Barnes as a loathsome traitor, coward, and criminal; he made +no secret of his opinion; and Clive, with the remembrance of former injuries, +of dreadful heart-pangs; the inheritor of his father’s blood, his honesty +of nature, and his impetuous enmity against wrong; shared to the full his +sire’s antipathy against his cousin, and publicly expressed his scorn and +contempt for him. About Ethel he would not speak. “Perhaps what you say, +Pen, is true,” he said. “I hope it is. Pray God it is.” But +his quivering lips and fierce countenance, when her name was mentioned or her +defence attempted, showed that he too had come to think ill of her. “As +for her brother, as for that scoundrel,” he would say, clenching his +fist, “if ever I can punish him I will. I shouldn’t have the soul +of a dog, if ever I forgot the wrongs that have been done me by that vagabond. +Forgiveness? Pshaw! Are you dangling to sermons, Pen, at your wife’s +leading-strings? Are you preaching that cant? There are some injuries that no +honest man should forgive, and I shall be a rogue on the day I shake hands with +that villain.” +</p> + +<p> +“Clive has adopted the Iroquois ethics,” says George Warrington, +smoking his pipe sententiously, “rather than those which are at present +received among us. I am not sure that something is not to be said, as against +the Eastern, upon the Western, or Tomahawk, or Ojibbeway side of the question. +I should not like,” he added, “to be in a vendetta or feud, and to +have you, Clive, and the old Colonel engaged against me.” +</p> + +<p> +“I would rather,” I said, “for my part, have half a dozen +such enemies as Clive and the Colonel, than one like Barnes. You never know +where or when that villain may hit you.” And before a very short period +was over, Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., hit his two hostile kinsmen such a blow, +as one might expect from such a quarter. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0063"></a> +CHAPTER LXIII.<br> +Mrs. Clive at Home</h2> + +<p> +Clive and his father did not think fit to conceal their opinions regarding +their kinsman, Barnes Newcome, and uttered them in many public places when Sir +Barnes’s conduct was brought into question, we may be sure that their +talk came to the Baronet’s ears, and did not improve his already angry +feeling towards those gentlemen. For a while they had the best of the attack. +The Colonel routed Barnes out of his accustomed club at Bays’s; where +also the gallant Sir George Tufto expressed himself pretty openly with respect +to the poor Baronet’s want of courage: the Colonel had bullied and +browbeaten Barnes in the parlour of his own bank, and the story was naturally +well known in the City; where it certainly was not pleasant for Sir Barnes, as +he walked to ’Change, to meet sometimes the scowls of the angry man of +war, his uncle, striding down to the offices of the Bundelcund Bank, and armed +with that terrible bamboo cane. +</p> + +<p> +But though his wife had undeniably run away after notorious ill-treatment from +her husband; though he had shown two white feathers in those unpleasant little +affairs with his uncle and cousin; though Sir Barnes Newcome was certainly +neither amiable nor popular in the City of London, his reputation as a most +intelligent man of business still stood; the credit of his house was deservedly +high, and people banked with him, and traded with him, in spite of faithless +wives and hostile colonels. +</p> + +<p> +When the outbreak between Colonel Newcome and his nephew took place, it may be +remembered that Mr. Hobson Newcome, the other partner of the firm of Hobson +Brothers, waited upon Colonel Newcome, as one of the principal English +directors of the B. B. C., and hoped that although private differences would, +of course, oblige Thomas Newcome to cease all personal dealings with the bank +of Hobson, the affairs of the Company in which he was interested ought not to +suffer on this account; and that the Indian firm should continue dealing with +Hobsons on the same footing as before. Mr. Hobson Newcome represented to the +Colonel, in his jolly frank way, that whatever happened between the latter and +his nephew Barnes, Thomas Newcome had still one friend in the house; that the +transactions between it and the Indian Company were mutually advantageous; +finally, that the manager of the Indian bank might continue to do business with +Hobsons as before. So the B. B. C. sent its consignments to Hobson Brothers, +and drew its bills, which were duly honoured by that firm. +</p> + +<p> +More than one of Colonel Newcome’s City acquaintances, among them his +agent, Mr. Jolly, and his ingenuous friend, Mr. Sherrick, especially, hinted to +Thomas Newcome to be very cautious in his dealings with Hobson Brothers, and +keep a special care lest that house should play him an evil turn. They both +told him that Barnes Newcome had said more than once, in answer to reports of +the Colonel’s own speeches against Barnes. “I know that hot-headed, +blundering Indian uncle of mine is furious against me, on account of an absurd +private affair and misunderstanding, which he is too obstinate to see in the +proper light. What is my return for the abuse and rant which he lavishes +against me? I cannot forget that he is my grandfather’s son, an old man, +utterly ignorant both of society and business here; and as he is interested in +this Indian Banking Company, which must be preciously conducted when it +appointed him as the guardian and overseer of its affairs in England, I do my +very best to serve the Company, and I can tell you, its blundering, +muddleheaded managers, black and white, owe no little to the assistance which +they have had from our house. If they don’t like us, why do they go on +dealing with us? We don’t want them and their bills. We were a leading +house fifty years before they were born, and shall continue to be so long after +they come to an end.” Such was Barnes’s case, as stated by himself. +It was not a very bad one, or very unfairly stated, considering the advocate. I +believe he has always persisted in thinking that he never did his uncle any +wrong. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Jolly and Mr. Sherrick, then, both entreated Thomas Newcome to use his best +endeavours, and bring the connexion of the B. B. C. and Hobson Brothers to a +speedy end. But Jolly was an interested party; he and his friends would have +had the agency of the B. B. C., and the profits thereof, which Hobsons had +taken from them. Mr. Sherrick was an outside practitioner, a guerilla amongst +regular merchants. The opinions of one and the other, though submitted by +Thomas Newcome duly to his co-partners, the managers and London board of +directors of the Bundelcund Banking Company, were overruled by that assembly. +</p> + +<p> +They had their establishment and apartments in the City; they had their clerks +and messengers, their managers’ room and board-room, their meetings, +where no doubt great quantities of letters were read, vast ledgers produced; +where Tom Newcome was voted into the chair, and voted out with thanks; where +speeches were made, and the affairs of the B. B. C. properly discussed. These +subjects are mysterious, terrifying, unknown to me. I cannot pretend to +describe them. Fred Bayham, I remember, used to be great in his knowledge of +the affairs of the Bundelcund Banking Company. He talked of cotton, wool, +copper, opium, indigo, Singapore, Manilla, China, Calcutta, Australia, with +prodigious eloquence and fluency. His conversation was about millions. The most +astounding paragraphs used to appear in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, regarding +the annual dinner at Blackwall, which the directors gave, and to which he, and +George, and I, as friends of the court, were invited. What orations were +uttered, what flowing bumpers emptied in the praise of this great Company; what +quantities of turtle and punch did Fred devour at its expense! Colonel Newcome +was the kindly old chairman at these banquets; the prince, his son, taking but +a modest part in the ceremonies, and sitting with us, his old cronies. +</p> + +<p> +All the gentlemen connected with the board, all those with whom the B. B. C. +traded in London, paid Thomas Newcome extraordinary respect. His character for +wealth was deservedly great, and of course multiplied by the tongue of Rumour. +F. B. knew to a few millions of rupees, more or less, what the Colonel +possessed, and what Clive would inherit. Thomas Newcome’s distinguished +military services, his high bearing, lofty courtesy, simple but touching +garrulity;—for the honest man talked much more now than he had been +accustomed to do in former days, and was not insensible to the flattery which +his wealth brought him,—his reputation as a keen man of business, who had +made his own fortune by operations equally prudent and spirited, and who might +make the fortunes of hundreds of other people, brought the worthy Colonel a +number of friends, and I promise you that the loudest huzzahs greeted his +health when it was proposed at the Blackwall dinners. At the second annual +dinner after Clive’s marriage some friends presented Mrs. Clive Newcome +with a fine testimonial. There was a superb silver cocoa-nut tree, whereof the +leaves were dexterously arranged for holding candle and pickles; under the +cocoa-nut was an Indian prince on a camel, giving his hand to a cavalry officer +on horseback—a howitzer, a plough, a loom, a bale of cotton, on which +were the East India Company’s arms, a Brahmin, Britannia, and Commerce +with a cornucopia were grouped round the principal figures: and if you would +see a noble account of this chaste and elegant specimen of British art, you are +referred to the pages of the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> of that year, as well as +to Fred Bayham’s noble speech in the course of the evening, when it was +exhibited. The East and its wars, and its heroes, Assaye and Seringapatam +(“and Lord Lake and Laswaree too,” calls out the Colonel greatly +elated), tiger-hunting, palanquins, Juggernaut, elephants, the burning of +widows—all passed before us in F. B.’s splendid oration. He spoke +of the product of the Indian forest, the palm-tree, the cocoa-nut tree, the +banyan-tree. Palms the Colonel had already brought back with him, the palms of +valour, won in the field of war (cheers). Cocoa-nut trees he had never seen, +though he had heard wonders related regarding the milky contents of their +fruit. Here at any rate was one tree of the kind, under the branches of which +he humbly trusted often to repose—and, if he might be so bold as to carry +on the Eastern metaphor, he would say, knowing the excellence of the +Colonel’s claret and the splendour of his hospitality, that he would +prefer a cocoa-nut day at the Colonel’s to a banyan day anywhere else. +Whilst F. B.’s speech went on, I remember J. J. eyeing the trophy, and +the queer expression of his shrewd face. The health of British Artists was +drunk a propos of this splendid specimen of their skill, and poor J. J. Ridley, +Esq., A.R.A., had scarce a word to say in return. He and Clive sat by one +another, the latter very silent and gloomy. When J. J. and I met in the world, +we talked about our friend, and it was easy for both of us to see that neither +was satisfied with Clive’s condition. +</p> + +<p> +The fine house in Tyburnia was completed by this time, as gorgeous as money +could make it. How different it was from the old Fitzroy Square mansion with +its ramshackle furniture, and spoils of brokers’ shops, and Tottenham +Court Road odds and ends! An Oxford Street upholsterer had been let loose in +the yet virgin chambers; and that inventive genius had decorated them with all +the wonders his fancy could devise. Roses and cupids quivered on the ceilings, +up to which golden arabesques crawled from the walls; your face (handsome or +otherwise) was reflected by countless looking-glasses, so multiplied and +arranged as, as it were, to carry you into the next street. You trod on velvet, +pausing with respect in the centre of the carpet, where Rosey’s cypher +was worked in the sweet flowers which bear her name. What delightful crooked +legs the chairs had! What corner cupboards there were filled with Dresden +gimcracks, which it was a part of this little woman’s business in life to +purchase! What etageres, and bonbonnieres, and chiffonnieres! What awfully bad +pastels there were on the walls! What frightful Boucher and Lancret shepherds +and shepherdesses leered over the portieres! What velvet-bound volumes, +mother-of-pearl albums, inkstands representing beasts of the field, prie-dieu +chairs, and wonderful knick-knacks I can recollect! There was the most +magnificent piano, though Rosey seldom sang any of her six songs now; and when +she kept her couch at a certain most interesting period, the good Colonel, ever +anxious to procure amusement for his darling, asked whether she would not like +a barrel-organ grinding fifty or sixty favourite pieces, which a bearer could +turn? And he mentioned how Windus, of their regiment, who loved music +exceedingly, had a very fine instrument of this kind out to Barrackpore in the +year 1810, and relays of barrels by each ship with all the new tunes from +Europe. The Testimonial took its place in the centre of Mrs. Clive’s +table, surrounded by satellites of plate. The delectable parties were +constantly gathered together, the grand barouche rolling in the Park, or +stopping at the principal shops. Little Rosey bloomed in millinery, and was +still the smiling little pet of her father-in-law, and poor Clive, in the midst +of all these splendours, was gaunt, and sad, and silent; listless at most +times, bitter and savage at others, pleased only when he was out of the society +which bored him, and in the company of George and J. J., the simple friends of +his youth. +</p> + +<p> +His careworn look and altered appearance mollified my wife towards +him—who had almost taken him again into favour. But she did not care for +Mrs. Clive, and the Colonel, somehow, grew cool towards us, and to look askance +upon the little band of Clive’s friends. It seemed as if there were two +parties in the house. There was Clive’s set—J. J., the shrewd, +silent little painter; Warrington, the cynic; and the author of the present +biography, who was, I believe, supposed to give himself contemptuous airs; and +to have become very high and mighty since his marriage. Then there was the +great, numerous, and eminently respectable set, whose names were all registered +in little Rosey’s little visiting-book, and to whose houses she drove +round, duly delivering the cards of Mr. and Mrs. Clive Newcome, and Colonel +Newcome;—the generals and colonels, the judges and the fogies. The only +man who kept well with both sides of the house was F. Bayham, Esq., who, having +got into clover, remained in the enjoyment of that welcome pasture; who really +loved Clive and the Colonel too, and had a hundred pleasant things and funny +stories (the droll old creature!) to tell to the little lady for whom we others +could scarcely find a word. The old friends of the student-days were not +forgotten, but they did not seem to get on in the new house. The Miss Gandishes +came to one of Mrs. Clive’s balls, still in blue crape, still with +ringlets on their wizened old foreheads, accompanying papa, with his +shirt-collars turned down—who gazed in mute wonder on the splendid scene. +Warrington actually asked Miss Gandish to dance, making woeful blunders, +however, in the quadrille, while Clive, with something like one of his old +smiles on his face, took out Miss Zoe Gandish, her sister. We made Gandish +overeat and overdrink himself in the supper-room, and Clive cheered him by +ordering a full length of Mrs. Clive Newcome from his distinguished pencil. +Never was seen a grander exhibition of white satin and jewels. Smee, R.A., was +furious at the preference shown to his rival. +</p> + +<p> +We had Sandy M’Collop, too, at the party, who had returned from Rome, +with his red beard, and his picture of the murder of the Red Comyn, which made +but a dim effect in the Octagon Room of the Royal Academy, where the bleeding +agonies of the dying warrior were veiled in an unkind twilight. On Sandy and +his brethren little Rosey looked rather coldly. She tossed up her little head +in conversation with me, and gave me to understand that this party was only an +<i>omnium gatherum</i>, not one of the select parties, from which Heaven defend +us. “We are Poins, and Nym, and Pistol,” growled out George +Warrington, as he strode away to finish the evening in Clive’s painting- +and smoking-room. “Now Prince Hal is married, and shares the paternal +throne, his Princess is ashamed of his brigand associates of former +days.” She came and looked at us with a feeble little smile, as we sat +smoking, and let the daylight in on us from the open door, and hinted to Mr. +Clive that it was time to go to bed. +</p> + +<p> +So Clive Newcome lay in a bed of down and tossed and tumbled there. He went to +fine dinners, and sat silent over them; rode fine horses, and black Care jumped +up behind the moody horseman. He was cut off in a great measure from the +friends of his youth, or saw them by a kind of stealth and sufferance; was a +very lonely, poor fellow, I am afraid, now that people were testimonialising +his wife, and many an old comrade growling at his haughtiness and prosperity. +</p> + +<p> +In former days, when his good father recognised the difference which fate, and +time, and temper, had set between him and his son, we have seen with what a +gentle acquiescence the old man submitted to his inevitable fortune, and how +humbly he bore that stroke of separation which afflicted the boy lightly +enough, but caused the loving sire so much pain. Then there was no bitterness +between them, in spite of the fatal division; but now, it seemed as if there +was anger on Thomas Newcome’s part, because, though come together again, +they were not united, though with every outward appliance of happiness Clive +was not happy. What young man on earth could look for more? a sweet young wife, +a handsome home, of which the only encumbrance was an old father, who would +give his last drop of blood in his son’s behalf. And it was to bring +about this end that Thomas Newcome had toiled and had amassed a fortune. Could +not Clive, with his talents and education, go down once or twice a week to the +City and take a decent part in the business by which his wealth was secured? He +appeared at the various board-rooms and City conclaves, yawned at the meetings, +and drew figures on the blotting-paper of the Company; had no interest in its +transactions, no heart in its affairs; went away and galloped his horse alone; +or returned to his painting-room, put on his old velvet jacket, and worked with +his palettes and brushes. Palettes and brushes! Could he not give up these toys +when he was called to a much higher station in the world? Could he not go talk +with Rosey;—drive with Rosey, kind little soul, whose whole desire was to +make him happy? Such thoughts as these, no doubt, darkened the Colonel’s +mind, and deepened the furrows round his old eyes. So it is, we judge men by +our own standards; judge our nearest and dearest often wrong. +</p> + +<p> +Many and many a time did Clive try and talk with the little Rosey, who chirped +and prattled so gaily to his father. Many a time would she come and sit by his +easel, and try her little powers to charm him, bring him little tales about +their acquaintances, stories about this ball and that concert, practise artless +smiles upon him, gentle little bouderies, tears, perhaps, followed by caresses +and reconciliation. At the end of which he would return to his cigar; and she, +with a sigh and a heavy heart, to the good old man who had bidden her to go and +talk with him. He used to feel that his father had sent her; the thought came +across him in their conversations, and straightway his heart would shut up and +his face grew gloomy. They were not made to mate with one another. This was the +truth; the shoe was a very pretty little shoe, but Clive’s foot was too +big for it. +</p> + +<p> +Just before the testimonial, Mr. Clive was in constant attendance at home, and +very careful and kind and happy with his wife, and the whole family party went +very agreeably. Doctors were in constant attendance at Mrs. Clive +Newcome’s door; prodigious care was taken by the good Colonel in wrapping +her and in putting her little feet on sofas, and in leading her to her +carriage. The Campaigner came over in immense flurry from Edinburgh (where +Uncle James was now very comfortably lodged in Picardy Place with the most +agreeable society round about him), and all this circle was in a word very +close and happy and intimate; but woe is me, Thomas Newcome’s fondest +hopes were disappointed this time: his little grandson lived but to see the +light and leave it: and sadly, sadly, those preparations were put away, those +poor little robes and caps, those delicate muslins and cambrics over which many +a care had been forgotten, many a fond prayer thought, if not uttered. Poor +little Rosey! she felt the grief very keenly; but she rallied from it very +soon. In a very few months, her cheeks were blooming and dimpling with smiles +again, and she was telling us how her party was an <i>omnium gatherum</i>. +</p> + +<p> +The Campaigner had ere this returned to the scene of her northern exploits; +not, I believe, entirely of the worthy woman’s own free will. Assuming +the command of the household, whilst her daughter kept her sofa, Mrs. Mackenzie +had set that establishment into uproar and mutiny. She had offended the butler, +outraged the housekeeper, wounded the sensibilities of the footmen, insulted +the doctor, and trampled on the inmost corns of the nurse. It was surprising +what a change appeared in the Campaigner’s conduct, and how little, in +former days, Colonel Newcome had known her. What the Emperor Napoleon the First +said respecting our Russian enemies, might be applied to this lady, Grattez-la, +and she appeared a Tartar. Clive and his father had a little comfort and +conversation in conspiring against her. The old man never dared to try, but was +pleased with the younger’s spirit and gallantry in the series of final +actions which, commencing over poor little Rosey’s prostrate body in the +dressing-room, were continued in the drawing-room, resumed with terrible vigour +on the enemy’s part in the dining-room, and ended, to the triumph of the +whole establishment, at the outside of the hall-door. +</p> + +<p> +When the routed Tartar force had fled back to its native north, Rosey made a +confession, which Clive told me afterwards, bursting with bitter laughter. +“You and papa seem to be very much agitated,” she said. (Rosey +called the Colonel papa in the absence of the Campaigner.) “I do not mind +it a bit, except just at first, when it made me a little nervous. Mamma used +always to be so; she used to scold and scold all day, both me and Josey, in +Scotland, till grandmamma sent her away; and then in Fitzroy Square, and then +in Brussels, she used to box my ears, and go into such tantrums; and I +think,” adds Rosey, with one of her sweetest smiles, “she had +quarrelled with Uncle James before she came to us.” +</p> + +<p> +“She used to box Rosey’s ears,” roars out poor Clive, +“and go into such tantrums, in Fitzroy Square and Brussels afterwards, +and the pair would come down with their arms round each other’s waists, +smirking and smiling as if they had done nothing but kiss each other all their +mortal lives! This is what we know about women—this is what we get, and +find years afterwards, when we think we have married a smiling, artless young +creature! Are you all such hypocrites, Mrs. Pendennis?” and he pulled his +mustachios in his wrath. +</p> + +<p> +“Poor Clive!” says Laura, very kindly. “You would not have +had her tell tales of her mother, would you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, of course not,” breaks out Clive; “that is what you all +say, and so you are hypocrites out of sheer virtue.” +</p> + +<p> +It was the first time Laura had called him Clive for many a day. She was +becoming reconciled to him. We had our own opinion about the young +fellow’s marriage. +</p> + +<p> +And, to sum up all, upon a casual rencontre with the young gentleman in +question, whom we saw descending from a hansom at the steps of the Flag, Pall +Mall, I opined that dark thoughts of Hoby had entered into Clive +Newcome’s mind. Othello-like, he scowled after that unconscious Cassio as +the other passed into the club in his lacquered boots. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0064"></a> +CHAPTER LXIV.<br> +Absit Omen</h2> + +<p> +At the first of the Blackwall festivals, Hobson Newcome was present, in spite +of the quarrel which had taken place between his elder brother and the chief of +the firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome. But it was the individual Barnes and +the individual Thomas who had had a difference together; the Bundelcund Bank +was not at variance with its chief house of commission in London; no man drank +prosperity to the B. B. C., upon occasion of this festival, with greater +fervour than Hobson Newcome, and the manner in which he just slightly alluded, +in his own little speech of thanks, to the notorious differences between +Colonel Newcome and his nephew, praying that these might cease some day, and, +meanwhile, that the confidence between the great Indian establishment and its +London agents might never diminish, was appreciated and admired by +six-and-thirty gentlemen, all brimful of claret and enthusiasm, and in that +happy state of mind in which men appreciate and admire everything. +</p> + +<p> +At the second dinner, when the testimonial was presented, Hobson was not +present. Nor did his name figure amongst those engraven on the trunk of Mr. +Newcome’s allegorical silver cocoa-nut tree. As we travelled homewards in +the omnibus, Fred Bayham noticed the circumstance to me. “I have looked +over the list of names,” says he, “not merely that on the trunk, +sir, but the printed list; it was rolled up and placed in one of the nests on +the top of the tree. Why is Hobson’s name not there?—Ha! it +mislikes me, Pendennis.” +</p> + +<p> +F. B., who was now very great about City affairs, discoursed about stocks and +companies with immense learning, and gave me to understand that he had +transacted one or two little operations in Capel Court on his own account, with +great present, and still larger prospective, advantages to himself. It is a +fact that Mr. Ridley was paid, and that F. B.’s costume, though still +eccentric, was comfortable, cleanly, and variegated. He occupied the apartments +once tenanted by the amiable Honeyman. He lived in ease and comfort there. +“You don’t suppose,” says he, “that the wretched +stipend I draw from the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> enables me to maintain this +kind of thing? F. B., sir, has a station in the world; F. B. moves among +moneyers and City nobs, and eats cabobs with wealthy nabobs. He may marry, sir, +and settle in life.” We cordially wished every worldly prosperity to the +brave F. B. +</p> + +<p> +Happening to descry him one day in the Park, I remarked that his countenance +wore an ominous and tragic appearance, which seemed to deepen as he neared me. +I thought he had been toying affably with a nursery-maid the moment before, who +stood with some of her little charges watching the yachts upon the Serpentine. +Howbeit, espying my approach, F. B. strode away from the maiden and her +innocent companions, and advanced to greet his old acquaintance, enveloping his +face with shades of funereal gloom. +</p> + +<p> +“Yon were the children of my good friend Colonel Huckaback of the Bombay +Marines! Alas! unconscious of their doom, the little infants play. I was +watching them at their sports. There is a pleasing young woman in attendance +upon the poor children. They were sailing their little boats upon the +Serpentine; racing and laughing, and making merry; and as I looked on, Master +Hastings Huckaback’s boat went down! <i>Absit omen</i>, Pendennis! I was +moved by the circumstance. F. B. hopes that the child’s father’s +argosy may not meet with shipwreck!” +</p> + +<p> +“You mean the little yellow-faced man whom we met at Colonel +Newcome’s?” says Mr. Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +“I do, sir,” growled F. B. “You know that he is a brother +director with our Colonel in the Bundelcund Bank?” +</p> + +<p> +“Gracious Heavens!” I cried, in sincere anxiety, “nothin has +happened, I hope, to the Bundelcund Bank?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” answers the other, “nothing has happened, the good ship +is safe, sir, as yet. But she has narrowly escaped a great danger, +Pendennis,” cries F. B., gripping my arm with great energy, “there +was a traitor in her crew—she has weathered the storm nobly—who +would have sent her on the rocks, sir, who would have scuttled her at +midnight.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pray drop your nautical metaphors, and tell me what you mean,” +cries F. B.’s companion, and Bayham continued his narration. +</p> + +<p> +“Were you in the least conversant with City affairs,” he said, +“or did you deign to visit the spot where merchants mostly congregate, +you would have heard the story, which was over the whole City yesterday, and +spread dismay from Threadneedle Street to Leadenhall. The story is, that the +firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome, yesterday refused acceptance of thirty +thousand pounds’ worth of bills of the Bundelcund Banking Company of +India. +</p> + +<p> +“The news came like a thunderclap upon the London Board of Directors, who +had received no notice of the intentions of Hobson Brothers, and caused a +dreadful panic amongst the shareholders of the concern. The board-room was +besieged by colonels and captains, widows and orphans; within an hour after +protest of bills were taken up, and you will see, in the City article of the +<i>Globe</i> this very evening, an announcement that henceforward the house of +Baines and Jolly, of Job Court, will meet engagements of the Bundelcund Banking +Company of India, being provided with ample funds to do honour to every +possible liability of that Company. But the shares fell, sir, in consequence of +the panic. I hope they will rally. I trust and believe they will rally. For our +good Colonel’s sake and that of his friends, for the sake of the innocent +children sporting by the Serpentine yonder. +</p> + +<p> +“I had my suspicions when they gave that testimonial,” said F. B. +“In my experience of life, sir, I always feel rather shy about +testimonials, and when a party gets one, somehow look out to hear of his +smashing the next month. <i>Absit omen!</i> I will say again. I like not the +going down of yonder little yacht.” +</p> + +<p> +The <i>Globe</i> sure enough contained a paragraph that evening announcing the +occurrence which Mr. Bayham had described, and the temporary panic which it had +occasioned, and containing an advertisement stating that Messrs. Baines and +Jolly would henceforth act as agents of the Indian Company. Legal proceedings +were presently threatened by the solicitors of the Company against the banking +firm which had caused so much mischief. Mr. Hobson Newcome was absent abroad +when the circumstance took place, and it was known that the protest of the +bills was solely attributable to his nephew and partner. But after the break +between the two firms, there was a rupture between Hobson’s family and +Colonel Newcome. The exasperated Colonel vowed that his brother and his nephew +were traitors alike, and would have no further dealings with one or the other. +Even poor innocent Sam Newcome, coming up to London from Oxford, where he had +been plucked, and offering a hand to Clive, was frowned away by our Colonel, +who spoke in terms of great displeasure to his son for taking the least notice +of the young traitor. +</p> + +<p> +Our Colonel was changed, changed in his heart, changed in his whole demeanour +towards the world, and above all towards his son, for whom he had made so many +kind sacrifices in his old days. We have said how, ever since Clive’s +marriage, a tacit strife had been growing up between father and son. The +boy’s evident unhappiness was like a reproach to his father. His very +silence angered the old man. His want of confidence daily chafed and annoyed +him. At the head of a large fortune, which he rightly persisted in spending, he +felt angry with himself because he could not enjoy it, angry with his son, who +should have helped him in the administration of his new estate, and who was but +a listless, useless member of the little confederacy, a living protest against +all the schemes of the good man’s past life. The catastrophe in the City +again brought father and son together somewhat, and the vindictiveness of both +was roused by Barnes’s treason. Time was when the Colonel himself would +have viewed his kinsman more charitably, but fate and circumstance had angered +that originally friendly and gentle disposition; hate and suspicion had +mastered him, and if it cannot be said that his new life had changed him, at +least it had brought out faults for which there had hitherto been no occasion, +and qualities latent before. Do we know ourselves, or what good or evil +circumstance may bring from us? Did Cain know, as he and his younger brother +played round their mother’s knee, that the little hand which caressed +Abel should one day grow larger, and seize a brand to slay him? Thrice +fortunate he, to whom circumstance is made easy: whom fate visits with gentle +trial, and kindly Heaven keeps out of temptation. +</p> + +<p> +In the stage which the family feud now reached, and which the biographer of the +Newcomes is bound to describe, there is one gentle moralist who gives her +sentence decidedly against Clive’s father; whilst on the other hand a +rough philosopher and friend of mine, whose opinions used to have some weight +with me, stoutly declares that they were right. “War and justice are good +things,” says George Warrington, rattling his clenched fist on the table. +“I maintain them, and the common sense of the world maintains them, +against the preaching of all the Honeymans that ever puled from the pulpit. I +have not the least objection in life to a rogue being hung. When a scoundrel is +whipped I am pleased, and say, serve him right. If any gentleman will horsewhip +Sir Barnes Newcome, Baronet, I shall not be shocked, but, on the contrary, go +home and order an extra mutton-chop for dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah! revenge is wrong, Pen,” pleads the other counsellor. +</p> + +<p> +“Let alone that the wisest and best of all Judges has condemned it. It +blackens the hearts of men. It distorts their views of right. It sets them to +devise evil. It causes them to think unjustly of others. It is not the noblest +return for injury, not even the bravest way of meeting it. The greatest courage +is to bear persecution, not to answer when you are reviled, and when wrong has +been done you to forgive. I am sorry for what you call the Colonel’s +triumph and his enemy’s humiliation. Let Barnes be as odious as you will, +he ought never to have humiliated Ethel’s brother; but he is weak. Other +gentlemen as well are weak, Mr. Pen, although you are so much cleverer than +women. I have no patience with the Colonel, and I beg you to tell him, whether +he asks you or not that he has lost my good graces, and that I for one will not +huzzah at what his friends and flatterers call his triumphs, and that I +don’t think in this instance he has acted like the dear Colonel, and the +good Colonel, and the good Christian that I once thought him.” +</p> + +<p> +We must now tell what the Colonel and Clive had been doing, and what caused two +such different opinions respecting their conduct from the two critics just +named. The refusal of the London Banking House to accept the bills of the Great +Indian Company of course affected very much the credit of that Company in this +country. Sedative announcements were issued by the Directors in London; +brilliant accounts of the Company’s affairs abroad were published; proof +incontrovertible was given that the B. B. C. was never in so flourishing a +state as at that time when Hobson Brothers had refused its drafts; there could +be no question that the Company had received a severe wound and was deeply if +not vitally injured by the conduct of the London firm. +</p> + +<p> +The propensity to sell out became quite epidemic amongst the shareholders. +Everybody was anxious to realise. Why, out of the thirty names inscribed on +poor Mrs. Clive’s cocoa-nut tree no less than twenty deserters might be +mentioned, or at least who would desert could they find an opportunity of doing +so with arms and baggage. Wrathfully the good Colonel scratched the names of +those faithless ones out of his daughter’s visiting-book: haughtily he +met them in the street; to desert the B. B. C. at the hour of peril was, in his +idea, like applying for leave of absence on the eve of an action. He would not +see that the question was not one of sentiment at all, but of chances and +arithmetic; he would not hear with patience of men quitting the ship, as he +called it. “They may go, sir,” says he, “but let them never +more be officers of mine.” With scorn and indignation he paid off one or +two timid friends, who were anxious to fly, and purchased their shares out of +his own pocket. But his purse was not long enough for this kind of amusement. +What money he had was invested in the Company already, and his name further +pledged for meeting the engagements from which their late London bankers had +withdrawn. +</p> + +<p> +Those gentlemen, in the meanwhile, spoke of their differences with the Indian +Bank as quite natural, and laughed at the absurd charges of personal hostility +which poor Thomas Newcome publicly preferred. “Here is a hot-headed old +Indian dragoon,” says Sir Barnes, “who knows no more about business +than I do about cavalry tactics or Hindostanee; who gets into a partnership +along with other dragoons and Indian wiseacres, with some uncommonly wily old +native practitioners; and they pay great dividends, and they set up a bank. Of +course we will do these people’s business as long as we are covered, but +I have always told their manager that we would run no risks whatever, and close +the account the very moment it did not suit us to keep it: and so we parted +company six weeks ago, since when there has been a panic in the Company, a +panic which has been increased by Colonel Newcome’s absurd swagger and +folly. He says I am his enemy; enemy indeed! So I am in private life, but what +has that to do with business? In business, begad, there are no friends and no +enemies at all. I leave all my sentiment on the other side of Temple +Bar.” +</p> + +<p> +So Thomas Newcome, and Clive the son of Thomas, had wrath in their hearts +against Barnes, their kinsman, and desired to be revenged upon him, and were +eager after his undoing, and longed for an opportunity when they might meet him +and overcome him, and put him to shame. +</p> + +<p> +When men are in this frame of mind, a certain personage is said always to be at +hand to help them and give them occasion for indulging in their pretty little +passion. What is sheer hate seems to the individual entertaining the sentiment +so like indignant virtue, that he often indulges in the propensity to the full, +nay, lauds himself for the exercise of it. I am sure if Thomas Newcome in his +present desire for retaliation against Barnes, had known the real nature of his +sentiments towards that worthy, his conduct would have been different, and we +should have heard of no such active hostilities as ensued. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0065"></a> +CHAPTER LXV.<br> +In which Mrs. Clive comes into her Fortune</h2> + +<p> +Speaking of the affairs of B. B. C., Sir Barnes Newcome always took care to +maintain his candid surprise relating to the proceedings of that Company. He +set about evil reports against it! He endeavour to do it a wrong—absurd! +If a friend were to ask him (and it was quite curious what a number did manage +to ask him) whether he thought the Company was an advantageous investment, of +course he would give an answer. He could not say conscientiously he thought +so—never once had said so—in the time of their connexion, which had +been formed solely with a view of obliging his amiable uncle. It was a +quarrelsome Company; a dragoon Company; a Company of gentlemen accustomed to +gunpowder, and fed on mulligatawny. He, forsooth, be hostile to it! There were +some Companies that required no enemies at all, and would be pretty sure to go +to the deuce their own way. +</p> + +<p> +Thus, and with this amiable candour, spake Barnes, about a commercial +speculation, the merits of which he had a right to canvass as well as any other +citizen. As for Uncle Hobson, his conduct was characterised by a timidity which +one would scarcely have expected from a gentleman of his florid, jolly +countenance, active habits, and generally manly demeanour. He kept away from +the cocoa-nut feast, as we have seen: he protested privily to the Colonel that +his private goodwill continued undiminished but he was deeply grieved at the B. +B. C. affair, which took place while he was on the Continent—confound the +Continent, my wife would go—and which was entirely without his +cognisance. The Colonel received his brother’s excuses, first with awful +bows and ceremony, and finally with laughter. “My good Hobson,” +said he, with the most insufferable kindness, “of course you intended to +be friendly; of course the affair was done without your knowledge. We +understand that sort of thing. London bankers have no hearts—for these +last fifty years past that I have known you and your brother, and my amiable +nephew, the present commanding officer, has there been anything in your conduct +that has led me to suppose you had?” and herewith Colonel Newcome burst +out into a laugh. It was not a pleasant laugh to hear. Worthy Hobson took his +hat, and walked away, brushing it round and round, and looking very confused. +The Colonel strode after him downstairs, and made him an awful bow at the hall +door. Never again did Hobson Newcome set foot in that Tyburnian mansion. +</p> + +<p> +During the whole of that season of the testimonial the cocoa-nut figured in an +extraordinary number of banquets. The Colonel’s hospitalities were more +profuse than ever, and Mrs. Clive’s toilettes more brilliant. Clive, in +his confidential conversations with his friends, was very dismal and gloomy. +When I asked City news of our well-informed friend F. B., I am sorry to say, +his countenance became funereal. The B. B. C. shares, which had been at an +immense premium twelve months since, were now slowly falling, falling. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish,” said Mr. Sherrick to me, “the Colonel would +realise, even now, like that Mr. Ratray who has just come out of the ship, and +brought a hundred thousand pounds with him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Come out of the ship! You little know the Colonel, Mr. Sherrick, if you +think he will ever do that.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Ratray, though he had returned to Europe, gave the most cheering accounts +of the B. B. C. It was in the most flourishing state. Shares sure to get up +again. He had sold out entirely on account of his liver. Must come +home—the doctor said so. +</p> + +<p> +Some months afterwards, another director, Mr. Hedges, came home. Both of these +gentlemen, as we know, entertained the fashionable world, got seats in +Parliament, purchased places in the country, and were greatly respected. Mr. +Hedges came out, but his wealthy partner, Mr. M’Gaspey, entered into the +B. B. C. The entry of Mr. M’Gaspey into the affairs of the Company did +not seem to produce very great excitement in England. The shares slowly fell. +However, there was a prodigious indigo crop. The London manager was in perfect +good-humour. In spite of this and that, of defections, of unpleasantries, of +unfavourable whispers, and doubtful friends—Thomas Newcome kept his head +high, and his face was always kind and smiling, except when certain family +enemies were mentioned, and he frowned like Jove in anger. +</p> + +<p> +We have seen how very fond little Rosey was of her mamma, of her uncle, James +Binnie, and now of her papa, as she affectionately styled Thomas Newcome. This +affection, I am sure, the two gentlemen returned with all their hearts, and but +that they were much too generous and simple-minded to entertain such a feeling, +it may be wondered that the two good old boys were not a little jealous of one +another. Howbeit it does not appear that they entertained such a feeling; at +least it never interrupted the kindly friendship between them, and Clive was +regarded in the light of a son by both of them, and each contented himself with +his moiety of the smiling little girl’s affection. +</p> + +<p> +As long as they were with her, the truth is, little Mrs. Clive was very fond of +people, very docile, obedient, easily pleased, brisk, kind, and good-humoured. +She charmed her two old friends with little songs, little smiles,—little +kind offices, little caresses; and having administered Thomas Newcome’s +cigar to him in the daintiest, prettiest way, she would trip off to drive with +James Binnie, or sit at his dinner, if he was indisposed, and be as gay, +neat-handed, watchful, and attentive a child as any old gentleman could desire. +</p> + +<p> +She did not seem to be very sorry to part with mamma, a want of feeling which +that lady bitterly deplored in her subsequent conversation with her friends +about Mrs. Clive Newcome. Possibly there were reasons why Rosey should not be +very much vexed at quitting mamma; but surely she might have dropped a little +tear as she took leave of kind, good old James Binnie. Not she. The +gentleman’s voice faltered, but hers did not in the least. She kissed him +on the face, all smiles, blushes, and happiness, and tripped into the railway +carriage with her husband and father-in-law, leaving the poor old uncle very +sad. Our women said, I know not why, that little Rosey had no heart at all. +Women are accustomed to give such opinions respecting the wives of their newly +married friends. I am bound to add (and I do so during Mr. Clive +Newcome’s absence from England, otherwise I should not like to venture +upon the statement), that some men concur with the ladies’ opinion of +Mrs. Clive. For instance, Captains Goby and Hoby declare that her treatment of +the latter, her encouragement, and desertion of him when Clive made his +proposals, were shameful. +</p> + +<p> +At this time Rosey was in a pupillary state. A good, obedient little girl, her +duty was to obey the wishes of her dear mamma. How show her sense of virtue and +obedience better than by promptly and cheerfully obeying mamma, and at the +orders of that experienced Campaigner, giving up Bobby Hoby, and going to +England to a fine house, to be presented at Court, to have all sorts of +pleasure with a handsome young husband and a kind father-in-law by her side? No +wonder Rosey was not in a very active state of grief at parting from Uncle +James. He strove to console himself with these considerations when he had +returned to the empty house, where she had danced, and smiled, and warbled; and +he looked at the chair she sat in; and at the great mirror which had so often +reflected her fresh pretty face;—the great callous mirror, which now only +framed upon its shining sheet the turban, and the ringlets, and the plump +person, and the resolute smile of the old Campaigner. +</p> + +<p> +After that parting with her uncle at the Brussels railway, Rosey never again +beheld him. He passed into the Campaigner’s keeping, from which alone he +was rescued by the summons of pallid death. He met that summons like a +philosopher; rejected rather testily all the mortuary consolations which his +nephew-in-law, Josey’s husband, thought proper to bring to his bedside; +and uttered opinions which scandalised that divine. But as he left Mrs. +M’Craw only 500 pounds, thrice that sum to his sister, and the remainder +of his property to his beloved niece, Rosa Mackenzie, now Rosa Newcome, let us +trust that Mr. M’Craw, hurt and angry at the ill-favour shown to his +wife, his third young wife, his best-beloved Josey, at the impatience with +which the deceased had always received his, Mr. M’Craw’s, own +sermons;—let us hope, I say, that the reverend gentleman was mistaken in +his views respecting the present position of Mr. James Binnie’s soul; and +that Heaven may have some regions yet accessible to James, which Mr. +M’Craw’s intellect has not yet explored. Look, gentlemen! Does a +week pass without the announcement of the discovery of a new comet in the sky, +a new star in the heaven, twinkling dimly out of a yet farther distance, and +only now becoming visible to human ken though existent for ever and ever? So +let us hope divine truths may be shining, and regions of light and love extant, +which Geneva glasses cannot yet perceive, and are beyond the focus of Roman +telescopes. +</p> + +<p> +I think Clive and the Colonel were more affected by the news of James’s +death than Rosey, concerning whose wonderful strength of mind good Thomas +Newcome discoursed to my Laura and me, when, fancying that my friend’s +wife needed comfort and consolation, Mrs. Pendennis went to visit her. +“Of course we shall have no more parties this year,” sighed Rosey. +She looked very pretty in her black dress. Clive, in his hearty way, said a +hundred kind feeling things about the departed friend. Thomas Newcome’s +recollections of him, and regret, were no less tender and sincere. +“See,” says he, “how that dear child’s sense of duty +makes her hide her feelings! Her grief is most deep, but she wears a calm +countenance. I see her looking sad in private, but I no sooner speak than she +smiles.” “I think,” said Laura, as we came away, “that +Colonel Newcome performs all the courtship part in the marriage, and Clive, +poor Clive, though he spoke very nobly and generously about Mr. Binnie, I am +sure it is not his old friend’s death merely, which makes him so +unhappy.” +</p> + +<p> +Poor Clive, by right of his wife, was now rich Clive; the little lady having +inherited from her kind relative no inconsiderable sum of money. In a very +early part of this story, mention has been made of a small sum producing one +hundred pounds a year, which Clive’s father had made over to the lad when +he sent him from India. This little sum Mr. Clive had settled upon his wife +before his marriage, being indeed all he had of his own; for the famous bank +shares which his father presented to him, were only made over formally when the +young man came to London after his marriage, and at the paternal request and +order appeared as a most inefficient director of the B. B. C. Now Mrs. Newcome, +of her inheritance, possessed not only B. B. C. shares, but moneys in bank, and +shares in East India Stock, so that Clive in the right of his wife had a seat +in the assembly of East India shareholders, and a voice in the election of +directors of that famous company. I promise you Mrs. Clive was a personage of +no little importance. She carried her little head with an aplomb and gravity +which amused some of us. F. B. bent his most respectfully down before her; she +sent him on messages, and deigned to ask him to dinner. He once more wore a +cheerful countenance; the clouds which gathered o’er the sun of Newcome +were in the bosom of the ocean buried, Bayham said, by James Binnie’s +brilliant behaviour to his niece. +</p> + +<p> +Clive was a proprietor of East India Stock, and had a vote in electing the +directors of that Company; and who so fit to be a director of his affairs as +Thomas Newcome, Esq., Companion of the Bath, and so long a distinguished +officer in its army? To hold this position of director, used, up to very late +days, to be the natural ambition of many East Indian gentlemen. Colonel Newcome +had often thought of offering himself as a candidate, and now openly placed +himself on the lists, and publicly announced his intention. His interest was +rather powerful through the Indian bank, of which he was a director, and many +of the shareholders of which were proprietors of the East India Company. To +have a director of the B. B. C. also a member of the parliament in Leadenhall +Street, would naturally be beneficial to the former institution. Thomas +Newcome’s prospectuses were issued accordingly, and his canvass received +with tolerable favour. +</p> + +<p> +Within a very short time another candidate appeared in the field—a +retired Bombay lawyer, of considerable repute and large means—and at the +head of this gentleman’s committee appeared the names of Hobson Brothers +and Newcome, very formidable personages at the East India House, with which the +bank of Hobson Brothers have had dealings for half a century past, and where +the old lady, who founded or consolidated that family, had had three stars +before her own venerable name, which had descended upon her son Sir Brian, and +her grandson, Sir Barnes. +</p> + +<p> +War was thus openly declared between Thomas Newcome and his nephew. The canvass +on both sides was very hot and eager. The number of promises was pretty equal. +The election was not to come off yet for a while; for aspirants to the +honourable office of director used to announce their wishes years before they +could be fulfilled, and returned again and again to the contest before they +finally won it. Howbeit, the Colonel’s prospects were very fair, and a +prodigious indigo crop came in to favour the B. B. C., with the most brilliant +report from the board at Calcutta. The shares, still somewhat sluggish, rose +again, the Colonel’s hopes with them, and the courage of gentlemen at +home who had invested their money in the transaction. +</p> + +<p> +We were sitting one day round the Colonel’s dinner-table; it was not one +of the cocoa-nut-tree days; that emblem was locked up in the butler’s +pantry, and only beheld the lamps on occasions of state. It was a snug family +party in the early part of the year, when scarcely anybody was in town; only +George Warrington, and F. B., and Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis; and the ladies having +retired, we were having such a talk as we used to enjoy in quiet old days, +before marriages and cares and divisions had separated us. +</p> + +<p> +F. B. led the conversation. The Colonel received his remarks with great +gravity, and thought him an instructive personage. Others considered him rather +as amusing than instructive, and so his eloquence was generally welcome. The +canvass for the directorship was talked over. The improved affairs of a certain +great Banking Company, which shall be nameless, but one which F. B. would take +the liberty to state, would, in his opinion, for ever unite the mother country +to our great Indian possessions;—the prosperity of this great Company was +enthusiastically drunk by Mr. Bayham in some of the very best claret. The +conduct of the enemies of that Company was characterised in terms of bitter, +but not undeserved, satire. F. B. rather liked to air his oratory, and +neglected few opportunities for making speeches after dinners. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel admired his voice and sentiments not the less, perhaps, because the +latter were highly laudatory of the good man. And not from interest, at least, +as far as he himself knew—not from any mean or selfish motives, did F. B. +speak. He called Colonel Newcome his friend, his benefactor: kissed the hem of +his garment: he wished fervently that he could have been the Colonel’s +son: he expressed, repeatedly, a desire that some one would speak ill of the +Colonel, so that he, F. B., might have the opportunity of polishing that +individual off in about two seconds. He covered the Colonel with all his heart; +nor is any gentleman proof altogether against this constant regard and devotion +from another. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel used to wag his head wisely, and say Mr. Bayham’s suggestions +were often exceedingly valuable, as indeed the fact was, though his conduct was +no more of a piece with his opinions than those of some other folks +occasionally are. +</p> + +<p> +“What the Colonel ought to do, sir, to help him in the direction,” +says F. B., “is to get into Parliament. The House of Commons would aid +him into the Court of Directors, and the Court of Directors would help him in +the House of Commons.” +</p> + +<p> +“Most wisely said,” says Warrington. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel declined. “I have long had the House of Commons in my +eye,” he said; “but not for me. I wanted my boy to go there. It +would be a proud day for me if I could see him there.” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t speak,” says Clive, from his end of the table. +“I don’t understand about parties, like F. B. here.” +</p> + +<p> +“I believe I do know a thing or two,” Mr. Bayham here interposes. +</p> + +<p> +“And politics do not interest me in the least,” Clive sighs out, +drawing pictures with his fork on his napkin, and not heeding the other’s +interruption. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish I knew what would interest him,” his father whispers to me, +who happened to be at his side. “He never cares to be out of his +painting-room; and he doesn’t seem to be very happy even in there. I wish +to God, Pen, I knew what had come over the boy.” I thought I knew; but +what was the use of telling, now there was no remedy? +</p> + +<p> +“A dissolution is expected every day,” continued F. B. “The +papers are full of it. Ministers cannot go on with this majority—cannot +possibly go on, sir. I have it on the best authority; and men who are anxious +about their seats are writing to their constituents, or are subscribing at +missionary meetings, or are gone down to lecturing at Athenæums, and that sort +of thing.” +</p> + +<p> +Here Warrington burst out into a laughter much louder than the occasion of the +speech of F. B. seemed to warrant; and the Colonel, turning round with some +dignity, asked the cause of George’s amusement. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think your darling, Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, has been +doing during the recess?” cries Warrington. “I had a letter this +morning, from my liberal and punctual employer, Thomas Potts, Esquire, of the +<i>Newcome Independent</i>, who states, in language scarcely respectful, that +Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome is trying to come the religious dodge, as Mr. Potts +calls it. He professes to be stricken down by grief on account of late family +circumstances; wears black, and puts on the most piteous aspect, and asks +ministers of various denominations to tea with him; and the last announcement +is the most stupendous of all. Stop, I have it in my greatcoat;” and, +ringing the bell, George orders a servant to bring him a newspaper from his +great-coat pocket. “Here it is, actually in print,” Warrington +continues, and reads to us:—“‘Newcome Athenæum. 1, for the +benefit of the Newcome Orphan Children’s Home, and 2, for the benefit of +the Newcome Soup Association, without distinction of denomination. Sir Barnes +Newcome Newcome, Bart., proposes to give two lectures, on Friday the 23rd, and +Friday the 30th, instant. No. 1, The Poetry of Childhood: Doctor Watts, Mrs. +Barbauld, Jane Taylor, No. 2, The Poetry of Womanhood, and the Affections: Mrs. +Hemans, L. E. L. Threepence will be charged at the doors, which will go to the +use of the above two admirable Societies.’ Potts wants me to go down and +hear him. He has an eye to business. He has had a quarrel with Sir Barnes, and +wants me to go down and hear him, and smash him, he kindly says. Let us go +down, Clive. You shall draw your cousin as you have drawn his villainous little +mug a hundred times before; and I will do the smashing part, and we will have +some fun out of the transaction.” +</p> + +<p> +“Besides, Florac will be in the country; going to Rosebury is a journey +worth the taking, I can tell you; and we have old Mrs. Mason to go and see, who +sighs after you, Colonel. My wife went to see her,” remarks Mr. +Pendennis, “and——” +</p> + +<p> +“And Miss Newcome, I know,” says the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“She is away at Brighton, with her little charges, for sea air. My wife +heard from her to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, indeed. Mrs. Pendennis corresponds with her?” says our host, +darkling under his eyebrows; and, at this moment, my neighbour, F. B., is kind +enough to scrunch my foot under the table with the weight of his heel, as much +as to warn me, by an appeal to my own corns, to avoid treading on so delicate a +subject in that house. “Yes,” said I, in spite, perhaps in +consequence, of this interruption. “My wife does correspond with Miss +Ethel, who is a noble creature, and whom those who know her know how to love +and admire. She is very much changed since you knew her, Colonel Newcome; since +the misfortunes in Sir Barnes’s family, and the differences between you +and him. Very much changed and very much improved. Ask my wife about her, who +knows her most intimately, and hears from her constantly.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very likely, very likely,” cried the Colonel, hurriedly, “I +hope she is improved, with all my heart. I am sure there was room for it. +Gentlemen, shall we go up to the ladies and have some coffee?” And +herewith the colloquy ended, and the party ascended to the drawing-room. +</p> + +<p> +The party ascended to the drawing-room, where no doubt both the ladies were +pleased by the invasion which ended their talk. My wife and the Colonel talked +apart, and I saw the latter looking gloomy, and the former pleading very +eagerly, and using a great deal of action, as the little hands are wont to do, +when the mistress’s heart is very much moved. I was sure she was pleading +Ethel’s cause with her uncle. +</p> + +<p> +So indeed she was. And Mr. George, too, knew what her thoughts were. +“Look at her!” he said to me. “Don’t you see what she +is doing? She believes in that girl whom you all said Clive took a fancy to +before he married his present little placid wife; a nice little simple +creature, who is worth a dozen Ethels.” +</p> + +<p> +“Simple certainly,” says Mr. P., with a shrug of the shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“A simpleton of twenty is better than a roue of twenty. It is better not +to have thought at all, than to have thought such things as must go through a +girl’s mind whose life is passed in jilting and being jilted; whose eyes, +as soon as they are opened, are turned to the main chance, and are taught to +leer at earl, to languish at a marquis, and to grow blind before a commoner. I +don’t know much about fashionable life. Heaven help us (you young +Brummell! I see the reproach in your face!) Why, sir, it absolutely appears to +me as if this little hop-o’-my-thumb of a creature has begun to give +herself airs since her marriage and her carriage. Do you know, I rather thought +she patronised me? Are all women spoiled by their contact with the world, and +their bloom rubbed off in the market? I know one who seems to me to remain +pure! to be sure, I only know her, and this little person, and Mrs. Flanagan +our laundress, and my sisters at home, who don’t count. But that Miss +Newcome to whom once you introduced me? Oh, the cockatrice! only that poison +don’t affect your wife, the other would kill her. I hope the Colonel will +not believe a word which Laura says.” And my wife’s +<i>tête-à-tête</i> with our host coming to an end about this time, Mr. +Warrington in high spirits goes up to the ladies, recapitulates the news of +Barnes’s lecture, recites “How doth the little busy bee,” and +gives a quasi-satirical comment upon that well-known poem, which bewilders Mrs. +Clive, until, set on by the laughter of the rest of the audience, she laughs +very freely at that odd man, and calls him “you droll satirical creature +you!” and says “she never was so much amused in her life. Were you, +Mrs. Pendennis?” +</p> + +<p> +Meanwhile Clive, who has been sitting apart moodily biting his nails, not +listening to F. B.’s remarks, has broken into a laugh once or twice, and +gone to a writing-book, on which, whilst George is still disserting, Clive is +drawing. +</p> + +<p> +At the end of the other’s speech, F. B. goes up to the draughtsman, looks +over his shoulder, makes one or two violent efforts as of inward convulsion, +and finally explodes in an enormous guffaw. “It’s capital! By Jove, +it’s capital! Sir Barnes would never dare to face his constituents with +that picture of him hung up in Newcome!” +</p> + +<p> +And F. B. holds up the drawing, at which we all laugh except Laura. As for the +Colonel, he paces up and down the room, holding the sketch close to his eyes, +holding it away from him, patting it, clapping his son delightedly on the +shoulder. “Capital! capital! We’ll have the picture printed, by +Jove, sir; show vice its own image; and shame the viper in his own nest, +sir. That’s what we will.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Mrs. Pendennis came away with rather a heavy heart from this party. She chose +to interest herself about the right or wrong of her friends; and her mind was +disturbed by the Colonel’s vindictive spirit. On the subsequent day we +had occasion to visit our friend J. J. (who was completing the sweetest little +picture, No. 263 in the Exhibition, “Portrait of a Lady and +Child”), and we found that Clive had been with the painter that morning +likewise; and that J. J. was acquainted with his scheme. That he did not +approve of it we could read in the artist’s grave countenance. “Nor +does Clive approve of it either!” cried Ridley, with greater eagerness +than he usually displayed, and more openness than he was accustomed to exhibit +in judging unfavourably of his friends. +</p> + +<p> +“Among them they have taken him away from his art,” Ridley said. +“They don’t understand him when he talks about it; they despise him +for pursuing it. Why should I wonder at that? my parents despised it too, and +my father was not a grand gentleman like the Colonel, Mrs. Pendennis. Ah! why +did the Colonel ever grow rich? Why had not Clive to work for his bread as +have? He would have done something that was worthy of him then; now his time +must be spent in dancing attendance at balls land operas, and yawning at City +board-rooms. They call that business: they think he is idling when he comes +here, poor fellow! As if life was long enough for our art; and the best labour +we can give, good enough for it! He went away groaning this morning, and quite +saddened in spirits. The Colonel wants to set up himself for Parliament, or to +set Clive up; but he says he won’t. I hope he won’t; do not you, +Mrs. Pendennis?” +</p> + +<p> +The painter turned as he spoke; and the bright northern light which fell upon +the sitter’s head was intercepted, and lighted up his own as he addressed +us. Out of that bright light looked his pale thoughtful face, and long locks +and eager brown eyes. The palette on his arm was a great shield painted of many +colours: he carried his mall-stick and a sheaf of brushes along with the +weapons of his glorious but harmless war. With these he achieves conquests, +wherein none are wounded save the envious: with that he shelters him against +how much idleness, ambition, temptations! Occupied over that consoling work, +idle thoughts cannot gain mastery over him: selfish wishes or desires are kept +at bay. Art is truth: and truth is religion: and its study and practice a daily +work of pious duty. What are the world’s struggles, brawls, successes, to +that calm recluse pursuing his calling? See, twinkling in the darkness round +his chamber, numberless beautiful trophies of the graceful victories which he +has won:—sweet flowers of fancy reared by him:—kind shapes of +beauty which he has devised and moulded. The world enters into the +artist’s studio, and scornfully bids him a price for his genius, or makes +dull pretence to admire it. What know you of his art? You cannot read the +alphabet of that sacred book, good old Thomas Newcome! What can you tell of its +glories, joys, secrets, consolations? Between his two best-beloved mistresses, +poor Clive’s luckless father somehow interposes; and with sorrowful, even +angry protests. In place of Art the Colonel brings him a ledger; and in lieu of +first love, shows him Rosey. +</p> + +<p> +No wonder that Clive hangs his head; rebels sometimes, desponds always: he has +positively determined to refuse to stand for Newcome, Ridley says. Laura is +glad of his refusal, and begins to think of him once more as of the Clive of +old days. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0066"></a> +CHAPTER LXVI.<br> +In which the Colonel and the Newcome Athenæum are both lectured</h2> + +<p> +At breakfast with his family, on the morning after the little entertainment to +which we were bidden, in the last chapter, Colonel Newcome was full of the +projected invasion of Barnes’s territories, and delighted to think that +there was an opportunity of at last humiliating that rascal. +</p> + +<p> +“Clive does not think he is a rascal at all, papa,” cries Rosey, +from behind her tea-urn; “that is, you said you thought papa judged him +too harshly; you know you did, this morning!” And from her +husband’s angry glances, she flies to his father’s for protection. +Those were even fiercer than Clive’s. Revenge flashed from beneath Thomas +Newcome’s grizzled eyebrows, and glanced in the direction where Clive +sat. Then the Colonel’s face flushed up, and he cast his eyes down +towards his tea-cup, which he lifted with a trembling hand. The father and son +loved each other so, that each was afraid of the other. A war between two such +men is dreadful; pretty little pink-faced Rosey, in a sweet little morning cap +and ribbons, her pretty little fingers twinkling with a score of rings, sat +simpering before her silver tea-urn, which reflected her pretty little pink +baby face. Little artless creature! what did she know of the dreadful wounds +which her little words inflicted in the one generous breast and the other? +</p> + +<p> +“My boy’s heart is gone from me,” thinks poor Thomas Newcome; +“our family is insulted, our enterprises ruined, by that traitor, and my +son is not even angry! he does not care for the success of our plans—for +the honour of our name even; I make him a position of which any young man in +England might be proud, and Clive scarcely deigns to accept it.” +</p> + +<p> +“My wife appeals to my father,” thinks poor Clive; “it is +from him she asks counsel, and not from me. Be it about the ribbon in her cap, +or any other transaction in our lives, she takes her colour from his opinion, +and goes to him for advice, and I have to wait till it is given, and conform +myself to it. If I differ from the dear old father, I wound him; if I yield up +my opinion, as I do always, it is with a bad grace, and I wound him still. With +the best intentions in the world, what a slave’s life it is that he has +made for me!” +</p> + +<p> +“How interested you are in your papers!” resumes the sprightly +nosey. “What can you find in those horrid politics?” Both gentlemen +are looking at their papers with all their might, and no doubt cannot see one +single word which those brilliant and witty leading articles contain. +</p> + +<p> +“Clive is like you, Rosey,” says the Colonel, laying his paper +down, “and does not care for politics.” +</p> + +<p> +“He only cares for pictures, papa,” says Mrs. Clive. “He +would not drive with me yesterday in the Park, but spent hours in his room, +while you were toiling in the City, poor papa!—spent hours painting a +horrid beggar-man dressed up as a monk. And this morning, he got up quite +early, quite early, and has been out ever so long, and only came in for +breakfast just now! just before the bell rung.” +</p> + +<p> +“I like a ride before breakfast,” says Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“A ride! I know where you have been, sir! He goes away morning after +morning, to that little Mr. Ridley’s—his chums, papa, and he comes +back with his hands all over horrid paint. He did this morning; you know you +did, Clive.” +</p> + +<p> +“I did not keep any one waiting, Rosa,” says Clive. “I like +to have two or three hours at my painting when I can spare time.” Indeed, +the poor fellow used so to run away of summer meetings for Ridley’s +instructions, and gallop home again, so as to be in time for the family meal. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” cries Rosey, tossing up the cap and ribbons, “he gets +up so early in the morning, that at night he falls asleep after dinner; very +pleasant and polite, isn’t he, papa?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am up betimes too, my dear,” says the Colonel (many and many a +time he must have heard Clive as he left the house); “I have a great many +letters to write, affairs of the greatest importance to examine and conduct. +Mr. Betts from the City is often with me for hours before I come down to your +breakfast-table. A man who has the affairs of such a great bank as ours to look +to, must be up with the lark. We are all early risers in India.” +</p> + +<p> +“You dear kind papa!” says little Rosey, with unfeigned admiration; +and she puts out one of the plump white little jewelled hands, and pats the +lean brown paw of the Colonel which is nearest to her. +</p> + +<p> +“Is Ridley’s picture getting on well, Clive?” asks the +Colonel, trying to interest himself about Ridley and his picture. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well; it is beautiful; he has sold it for a great price; they must +make him an Academician next year,” replies Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“A most industrious and meritorious young man; he deserves every honour +that may happen to him,” says the old soldier. “Rosa, my dear, it +is time that you should ask Mr. Ridley to dinner, and Mr. Smee, and some of +those gentlemen. We will drive this afternoon and see your portrait.” +</p> + +<p> +“Clive does not go to sleep after dinner when Mr. Ridley comes +here,” cries Rosa. +</p> + +<p> +“No; I think it is my turn then,” says the Colonel, with a glance +of kindness. The anger has disappeared from under his brows; at that moment the +menaced battle is postponed. +</p> + +<p> +“And yet I know that it must come,” says poor Clive, telling me the +story as he hangs on my arm, and we pace through the Park. “The Colonel +and I are walking on a mine, and that poor little wife of mine is perpetually +flinging little shells to fire it. I sometimes wish it were blown up, and I +were done for, Pen. I don’t think my widow would break her heart about +me. No; I have no right to say that; it’s a shame to say that; she tries +her very best to please me, poor little dear. It’s the fault of my +temper, perhaps, that she can’t. But they neither understand me, +don’t you see? the Colonel can’t help thinking I am a degraded +being, because I am fond of painting. Still, dear old boy, he patronises +Ridley; a man of genius, whom those sentries ought to salute, by Jove, sir, +when he passes. Ridley patronised by an old officer of Indian dragoons, a +little bit of a Rosey, and a fellow who is not fit to lay his palette for him! +I want sometimes to ask J. J.’s pardon, after the Colonel has been +talking to him in his confounded condescending way, uttering some awful bosh +about the fine arts. Rosey follows him, and trips round J. J.’s studio, +and pretends to admire, and says, ‘How soft; how sweet!’ recalling +some of mamma-in-law’s dreadful expressions, which make me shudder when I +hear them. If my poor old father had a confidant into whose arm he could hook +his own, and whom he could pester with his family griefs as I do you, the dear +old boy would have his dreary story to tell too. I hate banks, bankers, +Bundelcund, indigo, cotton, and the whole business. I go to that confounded +board, and never hear one syllable that the fellows are talking about. I sit +there because he wishes me to sit there; don’t you think he sees that my +heart is out of the business; that I would rather be at home in my +painting-room? We don’t understand each other, but we feel each other, as +it were by instinct. Each thinks in his own way, but knows what the other is +thinking. We fight mute battles, don’t you see, and, our thoughts, though +we don’t express them, are perceptible to one another, and come out from +our eyes, or pass out from us somehow, and meet, and fight, and strike, and +wound.” +</p> + +<p> +Of course Clive’s confidant saw how sore and unhappy the poor fellow was, +and commiserated his fatal but natural condition. The little ills of life are +the hardest to bear, as we all very well know. What would the possession of a +hundred thousand a year, or fame, and the applause of one’s countrymen, +or the loveliest and best-beloved woman,—of any glory, and happiness, or +good-fortune avail to a gentleman, for instance, who was allowed to enjoy them +only with the condition of wearing a shoe with a couple of nails or sharp +pebbles inside it? All fame and happiness would disappear, and plunge down that +shoe. All life would rankle round those little nails. I strove, by such +philosophic sedatives as confidants are wont to apply on these occasions, to +soothe my poor friend’s anger and pain; and I dare say the little nails +hurt the patient just as much as before. +</p> + +<p> +Clive pursued his lugubrious talk through the Park, and continued it as far as +the modest-furnished house which we then occupied in the Pimlico region. It so +happened that the Colonel and Mrs. Clive also called upon us that day, and +found this culprit in Laura’s drawing-room, when they entered it, +descending out of that splendid barouche in which we have already shown Mrs. +Clive to the public. +</p> + +<p> +“He has not been here for months before; nor have you Rosa; nor have you, +Colonel; though we have smothered our indignation, and been to dine with you, +and to call, ever so many times!” cries Laura. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel pleaded his business engagements; Rosa, that little woman of the +world, had a thousand calls to make, and who knows how much to do? since she +came out. She had been to fetch papa, at Bays’s, and the porter had told +the Colonel that Mr. Clive and Mr. Pendennis had just left the club together. +</p> + +<p> +“Clive scarcely ever drives with me,” says Rosa; “papa almost +always does.” +</p> + +<p> +“Rosey’s is such a swell carriage, that I feel ashamed,” says +Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t understand you young men. I don’t see why you need +be ashamed to go on the Course with your wife in her carriage, Clive,” +remarks the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“The Course! the Course is at Calcutta, papa!” cries Rosey. +“<i>We</i> drive in the Park.” +</p> + +<p> +“We have a park at Barrackpore too, my dear,” says papa. +</p> + +<p> +“And he calls his grooms saices! He said he was going to send away a +saice for being tipsy, and I did not know in the least what he could mean, +Laura!” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Newcome! you must go and drive on the Course with Rosa now; and the +Colonel must sit and talk with me, whom he has not been to see for such a long +time.” Clive presently went off in state by Rosey’s side, and then +Laura showed Colonel Newcome his beautiful white Cashmere shawl round a +successor of that little person who had first been wrapped in that web, now a +stout young gentleman whose noise could be clearly heard in the upper regions. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you could come down with us, Arthur, upon our electioneering +visit.” +</p> + +<p> +“That of which you were talking last night? Are you bent upon it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I am determined on it.” +</p> + +<p> +Laura heard a child’s cry at this moment, and left the room with a +parting glance at her husband, who in fact had talked over the matter with Mrs. +Pendennis, and agreed with her in opinion. +</p> + +<p> +As the Colonel had opened the question, I ventured to make a respectful +remonstrance against the scheme. Vindictiveness on the part of a man so simple +and generous, so fair and noble in all his dealings as Thomas Newcome, appeared +in my mind unworthy of him. Surely his kinsman had sorrow and humiliation +enough already at home. Barnes’s further punishment, we thought, might be +left to time, to remorse, to the Judge of right and wrong; Who better +understands than we can do, our causes and temptations towards evil actions, +Who reserves the sentence for His own tribunal. But when angered, the best of +us mistake our own motives, as we do those of the enemy who inflames us. What +may be private revenge, we take to be indignant virtue and just revolt against +wrong. The Colonel would not hear of counsels of moderation, such as I bore him +from a sweet Christian pleader. “Remorse!” he cried out with a +laugh, “that villain will never feel it until he is tied up and whipped +at the cart’s tail! Time change that rogue! Unless he is wholesomely +punished, he will grow a greater scoundrel every year. I am inclined to think, +sir,” says he, his honest brows darkling as he looked towards me, +“that you too are spoiled by this wicked world, and these heartless, +fashionable, fine people. You wish to live well with the enemy, and with us +too, Pendennis. It can’t be. He who is not with us is against us. I very +much fear, sir, that the women, the women, you understand, have been talking +you over. Do not let us speak any more about this subject, for I don’t +wish that my son, and my son’s old friend, should have a quarrel.” +His face became red, his voice quivered with agitation, and he looked with +glances which I was pained to behold in those kind old eyes: not because his +wrath and suspicion visited myself, but because an impartial witness, nay, a +friend to Thomas Newcome in that family quarrel, I grieved to think that a +generous heart was led astray, and to see a good man do wrong. So with no more +thanks for his interference than a man usually gets who meddles in domestic +strifes, the present luckless advocate ceased pleading. +</p> + +<p> +To be sure, the Colonel and Clive had other advisers, who did not take the +peaceful side. George Warrington was one of these; he was for war <i>à +l’outrance</i> with Barnes Newcome; for keeping no terms with such a +villain. He found a pleasure in hunting him, and whipping him. “Barnes +ought to be punished,” George said, “for his poor wife’s +misfortune; it was Barnes’s infernal cruelty, wickedness, selfishness, +which had driven her into misery and wrong.” Mr. Warrington went down to +Newcome, and was present at that lecture whereof mention has been made in a +previous chapter. I am afraid his behaviour was very indecorous; he laughed at +the pathetic allusions of the respected Member for Newcome; he sneered at the +sublime passages; he wrote an awful critique in the <i>Newcome Independent</i> +two days after, whereof the irony was so subtle, that half the readers of the +paper mistook his grave scorn for respect, and his gibes for praise. +</p> + +<p> +Clive, his father, and Frederick Bayham, their faithful aide-de-camp, were at +Newcome likewise when Sir Barnes’s oration was delivered. At first it was +given out at Newcome that the Colonel visited the place for the purpose of +seeing his dear old friend and pensioner, Mrs. Mason, who was now not long to +enjoy his bounty, and so old, as scarcely to know her benefactor. Only after +her sleep, or when the sun warmed her and the old wine with which he supplied +her, was the good old woman able to recognise her Colonel. She mingled father +and son together in her mind. A lady who now often came in to her, thought she +was wandering in her talk, when the poor old woman spoke of a visit she had had +from her boy; and then the attendant told Miss Newcome that such a visit had +actually taken place, and that but yesterday Clive and his father had been in +that room, and occupied the chair where she sat. “The young lady was +taken quite ill, and seemed ready to faint almost,” Mrs. Mason’s +servant and spokeswoman told Colonel Newcome when that gentleman arrived +shortly after Ethel’s departure, to see his old nurse. “Indeed! he +was very sorry.” The maid told many stories about Miss Newcome’s +goodness and charity; how she was constantly visiting the poor now; how she was +for ever engaged in good works for the young, the sick, and the aged. She had +had a dreadful misfortune in love; she was going to be married to a young +marquis; richer even than Prince de Moncontour down at Rosebury; but it was all +broke off on account of that dreadful affair at the Hall. +</p> + +<p> +Was she very good to the poor? did she come often to see her +grandfather’s old friend? it was no more than she ought “to +do,” Colonel Newcome said; without, however, thinking fit to tell his +informant that he had himself met his niece Ethel, five minutes before he had +entered Mrs. Mason’s door. +</p> + +<p> +The poor thing was in discourse with Mr. Harris, the surgeon, and talking (as +best she might, for no doubt the news which she had just heard had agitated +her), talking about blankets, and arrowroot, wine, and medicaments for her +poor, when she saw her uncle coming towards her. She tottered a step or two +forwards to meet him; held both her hands out, and called his name; but he +looked her sternly in the face, took off his hat and bowed, and passed on. He +did not think fit to mention the meeting even to his son, Clive; but we may be +sure Mr. Harris, the surgeon, spoke of the circumstance that night after the +lecture, at the club, where a crowd of gentlemen were gathered together, +smoking their cigars, and enjoying themselves according to their custom, and +discussing Sir Barnes Newcome’s performance. +</p> + +<p> +According to established usage in such cases, our esteemed representative was +received by the committee of the Newcome Athenæum, assembled in their +committee-room, and thence marshalled by the chairman and vice-chairman to his +rostrum in the lecture-hall, round about which the magnates of the institution +and the notabilities of the town were rallied on this public occasion. The +Baronet came in some state from his own house, arriving at Newcome in his +carriage with four horses, accompanied by my lady his mother, and Miss Ethel +his beautiful sister, who now was mistress at the Hall. His little girl was +brought—five years old now; she sate on her aunt’s knee, and slept +during a greater part of the performance. A fine bustle, we may be sure, was +made on the introduction of these personages to their reserved seats on the +platform, where they sate encompassed by others of the great ladies of Newcome, +to whom they and the lecturer were especially gracious at this season. Was not +Parliament about to be dissolved, and were not the folks at Newcome Park +particularly civil at that interesting period? So Barnes Newcome mounts his +pulpit, bows round to the crowded assembly in acknowledgment of their buzz of +applause or recognition, passes his lily-white pocket-handkerchief across his +thin lips, and dashes off into his lecture about Mrs. Hemans and the poetry of +the affections. A public man, a commercial man as we well know, yet his heart +is in his home, and his joy in his affections; the presence of this immense +assembly here this evening; of the industrious capitalists; of the intelligent +middle class; of the pride and mainstay of England, the operatives of Newcome; +these, surrounded by their wives and their children (a graceful bow to the +bonnets to the right of the platform), show that they too have hearts to feel, +and homes to cherish; that they, too, feel the love of women, the innocence of +children, the love of song! Our lecturer then makes a distinction between +man’s poetry and woman’s poetry, charging considerably in favour of +the latter. We show that to appeal to the affections is after all the true +office of the bard; to decorate the homely threshold, to wreathe flowers round +the domestic hearth, the delightful duty of the Christian singer. We glance at +Mrs. Hemans’s biography, and state where she was born, and under what +circumstances she must have at first, etc. etc. Is this a correct account of +Sir Barnes Newcome’s lecture? I was not present, and did not read the +report. Very likely the above may be a reminiscence of that mock lecture which +Warrington delivered in anticipation of the Baronet’s oration. +</p> + +<p> +After he had read for about five minutes, it was remarked the Baronet suddenly +stopped and became exceedingly confused over his manuscript: betaking himself +to his auxiliary glass of water before he resumed his discourse, which for a +long time was languid, low, and disturbed in tone. This period of disturbance, +no doubt, must have occurred when Sir Barnes saw before him F. Bayham and +Warrington seated in the amphitheatre; and, by the side of those fierce +scornful countenances, Clive Newcome’s pale face. +</p> + +<p> +Clive Newcome was not looking at Barnes. His eyes were fixed upon the lady +seated not far from the lecturer—upon Ethel, with her arm round her +little niece’s shoulder, and her thick black ringlets drooping down over +a face paler than Clive’s own. +</p> + +<p> +Of course she knew that Clive was present. She was aware of him as she entered +the hall; saw him at the very first moment; saw nothing but him, I dare say, +though her eyes were shut and her head was turned now towards her mother, and +now bent down on the little niece’s golden curls. And the past and its +dear histories, and youth and its hopes and passions, and tones and looks for +ever echoing in the heart, and present in the memory—these, no doubt, +poor Clive saw and heard as he looked across the great gulf of time, and +parting, and grief, and beheld the woman he had loved for many years. There she +sits; the same, but changed: as gone from him as if she were dead; departed +indeed into another sphere, and entered into a kind of death. If there is no +love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied. Strew round it the +flowers of youth. Wash it with tears of passion. Wrap it and envelop it with +fond devotion. Break heart, and fling yourself on the bier, and kiss her cold +lips and press her hand! It falls back dead on the cold breast again. The +beautiful lips have never a blush or a smile. Cover them and lay them in the +ground, and so take thy hatband off, good friend, and go to thy business. Do +you suppose you are the only man who has had to attend such a funeral? You will +find some men smiling and at work the day after. Some come to the grave now and +again out of the world, and say a brief prayer, and a “God bless +her!” With some men, she gone, and her viduous mansion your heart to let, +her successor, the new occupant, poking in all the drawers and corners, and +cupboards of the tenement, finds her miniature and some of her dusty old +letters hidden away somewhere, and says—Was this the face he admired so? +Why, allowing even for the painter’s flattery, it is quite ordinary, and +the eyes certainly do not look straight. Are these the letters you thought so +charming? Well, upon my word, I never read anything more commonplace in my +life! See, here’s a line half blotted out. Oh, I suppose she was crying +then—some of her tears, idle tears—Hark, there is Barnes +Newcome’s eloquence still plapping on like water from a cistern—and +our thoughts, where have they wandered? far away from the lecture—as far +away as Clive’s almost. And now the fountain ceases to trickle; the mouth +from which issued that cool and limpid flux ceases to smile; the figure is seen +to bow and retire; a buzz, a hum, a whisper, a scuffle, a meeting of bonnets +and wagging of feathers and rustling of silks ensues. “Thank you! +delightful, I am sure!” “I really was quite overcome;” +“Excellent;” “So much obliged,” are rapid phrases heard +amongst the polite on the platform. While down below, “Yaw! quite enough +of <i>that;</i>” “Mary Jane, cover your throat up, and don’t +kitch cold, and don’t push me, please, sir;” “’Arry! +coom along and ’av’ a pint a ale,” etc., are the remarks +heard, or perhaps not heard, by Clive Newcome, as he watches at the private +entrance of the Athenæum, where Sir Barnes’s carriage is waiting with its +flaming lamps, and domestics in state liveries. One of them comes out of the +building bearing the little girl in his arms, and lays her in the carriage. +Then Sir Barnes, and Lady Anne, and the Mayor; then Ethel issues forth, and as +she passes under the lamps, beholds Clive’s face as pale and sad as her +own. +</p> + +<p> +Shall we go visit the lodge-gates of Newcome Park the moon shining on their +carving? Is there any pleasure in walking by miles of grey paling, and endless +palisades of firs? Oh, you fool, what do you hope to see behind that curtain? +Absurd fugitive, whither would you run? Can you burst the tether of fate: and +is not poor dear little Rosey Mackenzie sitting yonder waiting for you by the +stake? Go home, sir; and don’t catch cold. So Mr. Clive returns to the +King’s Arms, and goes up to his bedroom, and he hears Mr. F. +Bayham’s deep voice as he passes by the Boscawen Room, where the Jolly +Britons are as usual assembled. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0067"></a> +CHAPTER LXVII.<br> +Newcome and Liberty</h2> + +<p> +We have said that the Baronet’s lecture was discussed in the midnight +senate assembled at the King’s Arms, where Mr. Tom Potts showed the +orator no mercy. The senate of the King’s Arms was hostile to Sir Barnes +Newcome. Many other Newcomites besides were savage and inclined to revolt +against the representative of their borough. As these patriots met over their +cups, and over the bumper of friendship uttered the sentiments of freedom, they +had often asked of one another, where should a man be found to rid Newcome of +its dictator? Generous hearts writhed under the oppression: patriotic eyes +scowled when Barnes Newcome went by: with fine satire, Tom Potts at Brown the +hatter’s shop, who made the hats for Sir Barnes Newcome’s +domestics, proposed to take one of the beavers—a gold-laced one with a +cockade and a cord—and set it up in the market-place and bid all Newcome +come bow to it, as to the hat of Gessler. “Don’t you think, +Potts,” says F. Bayham, who of course was admitted into the King’s +Arms club, and ornamented that assembly by his presence and discourse, +“Don’t you think the Colonel would make a good William Tell to +combat against that Gessler?” Ha! Proposal received with +acclamation—eagerly adopted by Charles Tucker, Esq., Attorney-at-Law, who +would not have the slightest objection to conduct Colonel Newcome’s, or +any other gentleman’s electioneering business in Newcome or elsewhere. +</p> + +<p> +Like those three gentlemen in the plays and pictures of William Tell, who +conspire under the moon, calling upon liberty and resolving to elect Tell as +their especial champion—like Arnold, Melchthal, and Werner—Tom +Potts, Fred Bayham, and Charles Tucker, Esqs., conspired round a punch-bowl, +and determined that Thomas Newcome should be requested to free his country. A +deputation from the electors of Newcome, that is to say, these very gentlemen +waited on the Colonel in his apartment the very next morning, and set before +him the state of the borough; Barnes Newcome’s tyranny, under which it +groaned; and the yearning of all honest men to be free from that usurpation. +Thomas Newcome received the deputation with great solemnity and politeness, +crossed his legs, folded his arms, smoked his cheroot, and listened moat +decorously, as now Potts, now Tucker, expounded to him; Bayham giving the +benefit of his emphatic “hear, hear,” to their statements, and +explaining dubious phrases to the Colonel in the most affable manner. +</p> + +<p> +Whatever the conspirators had to say against Barnes, Colonel Newcome was only +too ready to believe. He had made up his mind that that criminal ought to be +punished and exposed. The lawyer’s covert innuendoes, who was ready to +insinuate any amount of evil against Barnes which could safely be uttered, were +by no means strong enough for Thomas Newcome. “‘Sharp practice! +exceedingly alive to his own interests—reported violence of temper and +tenacity of money’—say swindling at once, sir—say falsehood +and rapacity—say cruelty and avarice,” cries the Colonel. “I +believe, upon my honour and conscience, that unfortunate young man to be guilty +of every one of those crimes.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Bayham remarks to Mr. Potts that our friend the Colonel, when he does utter +an opinion, takes care that there shall be no mistake about it. +</p> + +<p> +“And I took care there should be no mistake before I uttered it at all, +Bayham!” cries F. B.’s patron. “As long as I was in any doubt +about this young man, I gave the criminal the benefit of it, as a man who +admires our glorious constitution should do, and kept my own counsel, +sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“At least,” remarks Mr. Tucker, “enough is proven to show +that Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Baronet, is scarce a fit person to represent +this great borough in Parliament.” +</p> + +<p> +“Represent Newcome in Parliament! It is a disgrace to that noble +institution the English House of Commons, that Barnes Newcome should sit in it. +A man whose word you cannot trust; a man stained with every private crime. What +right has he to sit in the assembly of the legislators of the land, sir?” +cries the Colonel, waving his hand as if addressing a chamber of deputies. +</p> + +<p> +“You are for upholding the House of Commons?” inquires the lawyer. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, sir, of course.” +</p> + +<p> +“And for increasing the franchise, Colonel Newcome, I should hope?” +continues Mr. Tucker. +</p> + +<p> +“Every man who can read and write ought to have a vote, sir; that is my +opinion!” cries the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“He’s a Liberal to the backbone,” says Potts to Tucker. +</p> + +<p> +“To the backbone!” responds Tucker to Potts. “The Colonel +will do for us, Potts.” +</p> + +<p> +“We want such a man, Tucker; the <i>Independent</i> has been crying out +for such a man for years past. We ought to have a Liberal as second +representative of this great town—not a sneaking half-and-half +Ministerialist like Sir Barnes, a fellow with one leg in the Carlton and the +other in Brookes’s. Old Mr. Bunce we can’t touch. His place is +safe; he is a good man of business: we can’t meddle with Mr. +Bunce—I know that, who know the feeling of the country pretty +well.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pretty well! Better than any man in Newcome, Potts!” cries Mr. +Tucker. +</p> + +<p> +“But a good man like the Colonel,—a good Liberal like the +Colonel,—a man who goes in for household suffrage——” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly, gentlemen.” +</p> + +<p> +“And the general great Liberal principles—we know, of +course—such a man would assuredly have a chance against Sir Barnes +Newcome at the coming election! could we find such a man! a real friend of the +people!” +</p> + +<p> +“I know a friend of the people if ever there was one,” F. Bayham +interposes. +</p> + +<p> +“A man of wealth, station, experience; a man who has fought for his +country; a man who is beloved in this place as you are, Colonel Newcome: for +your goodness is known, sir—<i>You</i> are not ashamed of your origin, +and there is not a Newcomite old or young, but knows how admirably good you +have been to your old friend, Mrs.—Mrs. +What-d’-you-call’-em.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Mason,” from F. B. +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Mason. If such a man as you, sir, would consent to put himself in +nomination at the next election, every true Liberal in this place would rush to +support you; and crush the oligarchy who rides over the liberties of this +borough!” +</p> + +<p> +“Something of this sort, gentlemen, I own to you had crossed my +mind,” Thomas Newcome remarked. “When I saw that disgrace to my +name, and the name of my father’s birthplace, representing the borough in +Parliament, I thought for the credit of the town and the family, the Member for +Newcome at least might be an honest man. I am an old soldier; have passed all +my life in India; and am little conversant with affairs at home” (cries +of “You are, you are”). “I hoped that my son, Mr. Clive +Newcome, might have been found qualified to contest this borough against his +unworthy cousin, and possibly to sit as your representative in Parliament. The +wealth I have had the good fortune to amass will descend to him naturally, and +at no very distant period of time, for I am nearly seventy years of age, +gentlemen.” +</p> + +<p> +The gentlemen are astonished at this statement. +</p> + +<p> +“But,” resumed the Colonel; “my son Clive, as my friend +Bayham knows, and to my own regret and mortification, as I don’t care to +confess to you, declares he has no interest or desire in politics, or for +public distinction—prefers his own pursuits—and even these I fear +do not absorb him—declines the offer which I made him, to present himself +in opposition to Sir Barnes Newcome. It becomes men in a certain station, as I +think, to assert that station; and though a few years back I never should have +thought of public life at all, and proposed to end my days in quiet as a +retired dragoon officer, since—since it has pleased Heaven to increase +very greatly my pecuniary means, to place me, as a director and manager of an +important banking company, in a station of great public responsibility, I and +my brother-directors have thought it but right that one of us should sit in +Parliament, if possible, and I am not a man to shirk from that or from any +other duty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Colonel, will you attend a meeting of electors which we will call, and +say as much to them and as well?” cries Mr. Potts. “Shall I put an +announcement in my paper to the effect that you are ready to come +forward?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am prepared to do so, my good sir.” +</p> + +<p> +And presently this solemn palaver ended. +</p> + +<p> +Besides the critical article upon the Baronet’s lecture, of which Mr. +Warrington was the author, there appeared in the leading columns of the ensuing +number of Mr. Potts’ <i>Independent</i>, some remarks of a very smashing +or hostile nature, against the Member for Newcome. “This gentleman has +shown such talent in the lecturing business,” the <i>Independent</i> +said, “that it is a great pity he should not withdraw himself from +politics, and cultivate what all Newcome knows are the arts which he +understands best; namely, poetry and the domestic affections. The performance +of our talented representative last night was so pathetic as to bring tears +into the eyes of several of our fair friends. We have heard, but never believed +until now, that Sir Barnes Newcome possessed such a genius <i>for making women +cry</i>. Last week we had the talented Miss Noakes, from Slowcome, reading +Milton to us; how far superior was the eloquence of Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, +Bart., even to that of the celebrated jestress! Bets were freely offered in the +room last night that Sir Barnes would <i>beat any woman</i>,—bets which +were not taken, as we scarcely need say, so well do our citizens appreciate the +character of our excellent, our admirable representative.—Let the Baronet +stick to his lectures, and let Newcome relieve him of his political +occupations. He is not fit for them, he is too sentimental a man for us; the +men of Newcome want a sound practical person; the Liberals of Newcome have a +desire to be represented. When we elected Sir Barnes, he talked liberally +enough, and we thought he would do, but you see the honourable Baronet is so +poetical! we ought to have known that, and not to have believed him. Let us +have a straightforward gentleman. If not a man of words, at least let us have a +practical man. If not a man of eloquence, one at any rate whose word we can +trust, and we can’t trust Sir Barnes Newcome’s; we have tried him, +and we can’t really. Last night when the ladies were crying, we could not +for the souls of us help laughing. We hope we know how to conduct ourselves as +gentlemen. We trust we did not interrupt the harmony of the evening; but Sir +Barnes Newcome, prating about children and virtue, and affection and poetry, +this is really too strong. +</p> + +<p> +“The <i>Independent</i>, faithful to its name, and ever actuated by +principles of honour, has been, as our thousands of readers know, disposed to +give Sir Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., a fair trial. When he came forward +after his father’s death, we believed in his pledges and promises, as a +retrencher and reformer, and we stuck by him. Is there any man in Newcome, +except, perhaps, our twaddling old contemporary the <i>Sentinel</i>, who +believes in Sir B. N. any more? We say no, and we now give the readers of the +<i>Independent</i>, and the electors of this borough, fair notice, that when +the dissolution of Parliament takes place, a good man, a true man, a man of +experience, no dangerous Radical, or brawling tap orator—Mr. +Hicks’s friends well understand whom we mean—but a gentleman of +Liberal principles, well-won wealth, and deserved station and honour, will ask +the electors of Newcome whether they are, or are not discontented with their +present unworthy Member. The <i>Independent</i> for one, says, we know good men +of your family, we know in it men who would do honour to any name; but you, Sir +Barnes Newcome Newcome, Bart., we trust no more.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +In the electioneering matter, which had occasioned my unlucky interference, and +that subsequent little coolness upon the good Colonel’s part, Clive +Newcome had himself shown that the scheme was not to his liking; had then +submitted as his custom was: and doing so with a bad grace, as also was to be +expected, had got little thanks for his obedience. Thomas Newcome was hurt at +his son’s faint-heartedness, and of course little Rosey was displeased at +his hanging back. He set off in his father’s train, a silent, unwilling +partisan. Thomas Newcome had the leisure to survey Clive’s glum face +opposite to him during the whole of their journey, and to chew his mustachios, +and brood upon his wrath and wrongs. His life had been a sacrifice for that +boy! What darling schemes had he not formed in his behalf, and how +superciliously did Clive meet his projects! The Colonel could not see the harm +of which he had himself been the author. Had he not done everything in +mortal’s power for his son’s happiness, and how many young men in +England were there with such advantages as this moody, discontented, spoiled +boy? As Clive backed out of the contest, of course his father urged it only the +more vehemently. Clive slunk away from committees and canvassing, and lounged +about the Newcome manufactories, whilst his father, with anger and bitterness +in his heart, remained at the post of honour, as he called it, bent upon +overcoming his enemy and carrying his point against Barnes Newcome. “If +Paris will not fight, sir,” the Colonel said, with a sad look following +his son, “Priam must.” Good old Priam believed his cause to be a +perfectly just one, and that duty and his honour called upon him to draw the +sword. So there was difference between Thomas Newcome and Clive his son. I +protest it is with pain and reluctance I have to write that the good old man +was in error—that there was a wrong-doer, and that Atticus was he. +</p> + +<p> +Atticus, be it remembered, thought himself compelled by the very best motives. +Thomas Newcome, the Indian banker, was at war with Barnes, the English banker. +The latter had commenced the hostilities by a sudden and cowardly act of +treason. There were private wrongs to envenom the contest, but it was the +mercantile quarrel on which the Colonel chose to set his declaration of war. +Barnes’s first dastardly blow had occasioned it, and his uncle was +determined to carry it through. This I have said was also George +Warrington’s judgment, who, in the ensuing struggle between Sir Barnes +and his uncle, acted as a very warm and efficient partisan of the latter. +“Kinsmanship!” says George, “what has old Tom Newcome ever +had from his kinsman but cowardice and treachery? If Barnes had held up his +finger, the young one might have been happy; if he could have effected it, the +Colonel and his bank would have been ruined. I am for war, and for seeing the +old boy in Parliament. He knows no more about politics than I do about dancing +the polka; but there are five hundred wiseacres in that assembly who know no +more than he does, and an honest man taking his seat there, in place of a +confounded little rogue, at least makes a change for the better.” +</p> + +<p> +I dare say Thomas Newcome, Esq. would by no means have concurred in the above +estimate of his political knowledge, and thought himself as well informed as +another. He used to speak with the greatest gravity about our constitution as +the pride and envy of the world, though he surprised you as much by the +latitudinarian reforms, which he was eager to press forward, as by the most +singular old Tory opinions which he advocated on other occasions. He was for +having every man to vote; every poor man to labour short time and get high +wages; every poor curate to be paid double or treble; every bishop to be docked +of his salary, and dismissed from the House of Lords. But he was a staunch +admirer of that assembly, and a supporter of the rights of the Crown. He was +for sweeping off taxes from the poor, and as money must be raised to carry on +government, he opined that the rich should pay. He uttered all these opinions +with the greatest gravity and emphasis, before a large assembly of electors, +and others convened in the Newcome Town Hall, amid the roars of applause of the +non-electors, and the bewilderment and consternation of Mr. Potts, of the +<i>Independent</i>, who had represented the Colonel in his paper as a safe and +steady reformer. Of course the <i>Sentinel</i> showed him up as a most +dangerous radical, a sepoy republican, and so forth, to the wrath and +indignation of Colonel Newcome. He a republican! he scorned the name! He would +die as he had bled many a time for his sovereign. He an enemy of our beloved +Church! He esteemed and honoured it, as he hated and abhorred the superstitions +of Rome. (Yells, from the Irish in the crowd.) He an enemy of the House of +Lords! He held it to be the safeguard of the constitution and the legitimate +prize of our most illustrious, naval, military, and—and—legal +heroes (ironical cheers). He repelled with scorn the dastard attacks of the +journal which had assailed him; he asked, laying his hands on his heart, if as +a gentleman, an officer bearing Her Majesty’s commission, he could be +guilty of a desire to subvert her empire and to insult the dignity of her +crown? +</p> + +<p> +After this second speech at the Town Hall, it was asserted by a considerable +party in Newcome, that Old Tom (as the mob familiarly called him) was a Tory, +while an equal number averred that he was a Radical. Mr. Potts tried to +reconcile his statements, a work in which I should think the talented editor of +the <i>Independent</i> had no little difficulty. “He knows nothing about +it,” poor Clive said with a sigh; “his politics are all sentiment +and kindness; he will have the poor man paid double wages, and does not +remember that the employer would be ruined: you have heard him, Pen, talking in +this way at his own table, but when he comes out armed <i>cap-à-pied</i>, and +careers against windmills in public, don’t you see that as Don +Quixote’s son I had rather the dear brave old gentleman was at +home?” +</p> + +<p> +So this <i>fainéant</i> took but little part in the electioneering doings, +holding moodily aloof from the meetings, and councils, and public-houses, where +his father’s partisans were assembled. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0068"></a> +CHAPTER LXVIII.<br> +A Letter and a Reconciliation</h2> + +<p> +Miss Ethel Newcome to Mrs. Pendennis: +</p> + +<p> +“Dearest Laura,—I have not written to you for many weeks past. +There have been some things too trivial, and some too sad, to write about; some +things I know I shall write of if I begin, and yet that I know I had best +leave; for of what good is looking to the past now? Why vex you or myself by +reverting to it? Does not every day bring its own duty and task, and are these +not enough to occupy one? What a fright you must have had with my little +goddaughter! Thank heaven she is well now, and restored to you. You and your +husband I know do not think it essential, but I do, <i>most essential</i>, and +am very grateful that she was taken to church before her illness. +</p> + +<p> +“Is Mr. Pendennis proceeding with his canvass? I try and avoid a certain +subject, but it <i>will</i> come. You know who is canvassing against us here. +My poor uncle has met with very considerable success amongst the lower classes. +He makes them rambling speeches at which my brother and his friends laugh, but +which the people applaud. I saw him only yesterday, on the balcony of the +King’s Arms, speaking to a great mob, who were cheering vociferously +below. I had met him before. He would not even stop and give his Ethel of old +days his hand. I would have given him I don’t know what, for one kiss, +for one kind word; but he passed on and would not answer me. He thinks +me—what the world thinks me, worldly and heartless; what I <i>was</i>. +But at least, dear Laura, you know that I always truly loved <i>him</i>, and do +now, although he is our enemy, though he believes and utters the most cruel +things against Barnes, though he says that Barnes Newcome, my father’s +son, my brother, Laura, is not an honest man. Hard, selfish, worldly, I own my +poor brother to be, and pray Heaven to amend him; but dishonest! and to be so +maligned by the person one loves best in the world! This is a hard trial. I +pray a proud heart may be bettered by it. +</p> + +<p> +“And I have seen my cousin; once at a lecture which poor Barnes gave, and +who seemed very much disturbed on perceiving Clive; once afterwards at good old +Mrs. Mason’s, whom I have always continued to visit for uncle’s +sake. The poor old woman, whose wits are very nearly gone, held both our hands, +and asked when we were going to be married? and laughed, poor old thing! I +cried out to her that Mr. Clive had a wife at home, a young dear wife, I said. +He gave a dreadful sort of laugh, and turned away into the window. He looks +terribly ill, pale, and oldened. +</p> + +<p> +“I asked him a great deal about his wife, whom I remember a very pretty, +sweet-looking girl indeed, at my Aunt Hobson’s, but with a not agreeable +mother as I thought then. He answered me by monosyllables, appeared as though +he would speak, and then became silent. I am pained, and yet glad that I saw +him, I said, not very distinctly, I dare say, that I hoped the difference +between Barnes and uncle would not extinguish his regard for mamma and me, who +have always loved him; when I said loved him, he give one of his bitter laughs +again; and so he did when I said I hoped his wife was well. You never would +tell me much about Mrs. Newcome; and I fear she does not make my cousin happy. +And yet this marriage was of my uncle’s making: another of the +unfortunate marriages in our family. I am glad that I paused in time, before +the commission of that sin; I strive my best, and to amend my temper, my +inexperience, my shortcomings, and try to be the mother of my poor +brother’s children. But Barnes has never forgiven me my refusal of Lord +Farintosh. He is of the world still, Laura. Nor must we deal too harshly with +people of his nature, who cannot perhaps comprehend a world beyond. I remember +in old days, when we were travelling on the Rhine, in the happiest days of my +whole life, I used to hear Clive and his friend Mr. Ridley, talk of art and of +nature in a way that I could not understand at first, but came to comprehend +better as my cousin taught me; and since then, I see pictures, landscapes, and +flowers, with quite different eyes, and beautiful secrets as it were, of which +I had no idea before. The secret of all secrets, the secret of the other life, +and the better world beyond ours, may not this be unrevealed to some? I pray +for them all, dearest Laura, for those nearest and dearest to me, that the +truth may lighten their darkness, and Heaven’s great mercy defend them in +the perils and dangers of their night. +</p> + +<p> +“My boy at Sandhurst has done very well indeed; and Egbert, I am happy to +say, thinks of taking orders; he has been very moderate at College. Not so +Alfred; but the Guards are a sadly dangerous school for a young man; I have +promised to pay his debts, and he is to exchange into the line. Mamma is coming +to us at Christmas with Alice; my sister is very pretty indeed, I think, and I +am rejoiced she is to marry young Mr. Mumford, who has a tolerable living, and +who has been attached to her ever since he was a boy at Rugby School. +</p> + +<p> +“Little Barnes comes on bravely with his Latin; and Mr. Whitestock, <i>a +most excellent and valuable</i> person in this place, where there is so much +Romanism and Dissent, speaks highly of him. Little Clara is so like her unhappy +mother in a thousand ways and actions, that I am shocked often; and see my +brother starting back and turning his head away, as if suddenly wounded. I have +heard the most deplorable accounts of Lord and Lady Highgate. Oh, dearest +friend and sister!-save you, I think I scarce know any one that is happy in the +world: I trust you may continue so-you who impart your goodness and kindness to +all who come near you-you in whose sweet serene happiness I am thankful to be +allowed to repose sometimes. You are the island in the desert, Laura! and the +birds sing there, and the fountain flows; and we come and repose by you for a +little while, and to-morrow the march begins again, and the toil, and the +struggle, and the desert. Good-bye, fountain! Whisper kisses to my dearest +little ones from their affectionate Aunt Ethel. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“A friend of his, a Mr. Warrington, has spoken against us several times +with extraordinary ability, as Barnes owns. Do you know Mr. W.? He wrote a +dreadful article in the <i>Independent</i>, about the last poor lecture, which +was indeed sad, sentimental, commonplace: and the critique is terribly comical. +I could not help laughing, remembering some passages in it, when Barnes +mentioned it: and my brother became so angry! They have put up a dreadful +caricature of B. in Newcome: and my brother says he did it, but I hope not. It +is very droll, though: he used to make them very funnily. I am glad he has +spirits for it. Good-bye again.—E. N.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“He says he did it!” cries Mr. Pendennis, laying the letter down. +“Barnes Newcome would scarcely caricature himself, my dear?” +</p> + +<p> +“‘He’ often means—means Clive—I think,” +says Mrs. Pendennis, in an offhand manner. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! he means Clive, does he, Laura?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—and you mean goose, Mr. Pendennis!” that saucy lady +replies. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +It must have been about the very time when this letter was written, that a +critical conversation occurred between Clive and his father, of which the lad +did not inform me until much later days; as was the case—the reader has +been more than once begged to believe—with many other portions of this +biography. +</p> + +<p> +One night the Colonel, having come home from a round of electioneering visits, +not half satisfied with himself; exceedingly annoyed (much more than he cared +to own) with the impudence of some rude fellows at the public-houses, who had +interrupted his fine speeches with odious hiccups and familiar jeers, was +seated brooding over his cheroot by the chimney-fire; friend F. B. (of whose +companionship his patron was occasionally tired) finding much better amusement +with the Jolly Britons in the Boscawen Room below. The Colonel, as an +electioneering business, had made his appearance in the club. But that ancient +Roman warrior had frightened those simple Britons. His manners were too awful +for them: so were Clive’s, who visited them also under Mr. Pott’s +introduction; but the two gentlemen, each being full of care and personal +annoyance at the time, acted like wet blankets upon the Britons—whereas +F. B. warmed them and cheered them, affably partook of their meals with them, +and graciously shared their cups. So the Colonel was alone, listening to the +far-off roar of the Britons’ choruses by an expiring fire, as he sate by +a glass of cold negus and the ashes of his cigar. +</p> + +<p> +I dare say he may have been thinking that his fire was well-nigh out,—his +cup of the dregs, his pipe little more now than dust and ashes—when +Clive, candle in hand, came into their sitting-room. +</p> + +<p> +As each saw the other’s face, it was so very sad and worn and pale, that +the young man started back; and the elder, with quite the tenderness of old +days, cried, “God bless me, my boy, how ill you look! Come and warm +yourself—look, the fire’s out. Have something, Clivy!” +</p> + +<p> +For months past they had not had a really kind word. The tender old voice smote +upon Clive, and he burst into sudden tears. They rained upon his father’s +trembling old brown hand, and stooped down and kissed it. +</p> + +<p> +“You look very ill too, father,” says Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“Ill? not I!” cries the father, still keeping the boy’s hand +under both his own on the mantelpiece. “Such a battered old fellow as I +am has a right to look the worse for wear; but you, boy; why do you look so +pale?” +</p> + +<p> +“I have seen a ghost, father,” Clive answered. Thomas, however, +looked alarmed and inquisitive as though the boy was wandering in his mind. +</p> + +<p> +“The ghost of my youth, father, the ghost of my happiness, and the best +days of my life,” groaned out the young man. “I saw Ethel to-day. I +went to see Sarah Mason, and she was there.” +</p> + +<p> +“I had seen her, but I did not speak of her,” said the father. +“I thought it was best not to mention her to you, my poor boy. And +are—are you fond of her still, Clive?” +</p> + +<p> +“Still! once means always in these things, father, doesn’t it? Once +means to-day, and yesterday, and forever and ever.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nay, my boy, you mustn’t talk to me so, or even to yourself so. +You have the dearest little wife at home, a dear little wife and child.” +</p> + +<p> +“You had a son, and have been kind enough to him, God knows. <i>You</i> +had a wife: but that doesn’t prevent other—other thoughts. Do you +know you never spoke twice in your life about my mother? You didn’t care +for her.” +</p> + +<p> +“I—I did my duty by her; I denied her nothing. I scarcely ever had +a word with her, and I did my best to make her happy,” interposed the +Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“I know, but your heart was with the other. So is mine. It’s fatal; +it runs in the family, father.” +</p> + +<p> +The boy looked so ineffably wretched that the father’s heart melted still +more. “I did my best, Clive,” the Colonel gasped out. “I went +to that villain Barnes and offered him to settle every shilling I was worth on +you—I did—you didn’t know that—I’d kill myself +for your sake, Clivy. What’s an old fellow worth living for? I can live +upon a crust and a cigar. I don’t care about a carriage, and only go in +it to please Rosey. I wanted to give up all for you, but he played me false, +that scoundrel cheated us both; he did, and so did Ethel.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, sir; I may have thought so in my rage once, but I know better now. +She was the victim and not the agent. Did Madame de Florac play <i>you</i> +false when she married her husband? It was her fate, and she underwent it. We +all bow to it, we are in the track and the car passes over us. You know it +does, father.” The Colonel was a fatalist: he had often advanced this +Oriental creed in his simple discourses with his son and Clive’s friends. +</p> + +<p> +“Besides,” Clive went on, “Ethel does not care for me. She +received me to-day quite coldly, and held her hand out as if we had only parted +last year. I suppose she likes that marquis who jilted her—God bless her! +How shall we know what wins the hearts of women? She has mine. There was my +Fate. Praise be to Allah! It is over.” +</p> + +<p> +“But there’s that villain who injured you. His isn’t over +yet,” cried the Colonel, clenching his trembling hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, father! Let us leave him to Allah too! Suppose Madame de Florac had +a brother who insulted you. You know you wouldn’t have revenged yourself. +You would have wounded her in striking him.” +</p> + +<p> +“You called out Barnes yourself, boy,” cried the father. +</p> + +<p> +“That was for another cause, and not for my quarrel. And how do you know +I intended to fire? By Jove, I was so miserable then that an ounce of lead +would have done me little harm!” +</p> + +<p> +The father saw the son’s mind more clearly than he had ever done +hitherto. They had scarcely ever talked upon that subject which the Colonel +found was so deeply fixed in Clive’s heart. He thought of his own early +days, and how he had suffered, and beheld his son before him racked with the +same cruel pangs of enduring grief. And he began to own that he had pressed him +too hastily in his marriage; and to make an allowance for an unhappiness of +which he had in part been the cause. +</p> + +<p> +“Mashallah! Clive, my boy,” said the old man, “what is done +is done.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let us break up our camp before this place, and not go to war with +Barnes, father,” said Clive. “Let us have peace—and forgive +him if we can.” +</p> + +<p> +“And retreat before this scoundrel, Clive?” +</p> + +<p> +“What is a victory over such a fellow? One gives a chimney-sweep the +wall, father.” +</p> + +<p> +“I say again—What is done is done. I have promised to meet him at +the hustings, and I will. I think it is best: and you are right: and you act +like a high-minded gentleman—and my dear old boy—not to meddle in +the quarrel—though I didn’t think so—and the difference gave +me a great deal of pain—and so did what Pendennis said—and +I’m wrong—and thank God I am wrong—and God bless you, my own +boy!” the Colonel cried out in a burst of emotion; and the two went to +their bedrooms together, and were happier as they shook hands at the doors of +their adjoining chambers than they had been for many a long day and year. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0069"></a> +CHAPTER LXIX.<br> +The Election</h2> + +<p> +Having thus given his challenge, reconnoitred the enemy, and pledged himself to +do battle at the ensuing election, our Colonel took leave of the town of +Newcome, and returned to his banking affairs in London. His departure was as +that of a great public personage; the gentlemen of the Committee followed him +obsequiously down to the train. “Quick,” bawls out Mr. Potts to Mr. +Brown, the station-master, “Quick, Mr. Brown, a carriage for Colonel +Newcome!” Half a dozen hats are taken off as he enters into the carriage, +F. Bayham and his servant after him, with portfolios, umbrellas, shawls, +despatch-boxes. Clive was not there to act as his father’s aide-de-camp. +After their conversation together the young man had returned to Mrs. Clive and +his other duties in life. +</p> + +<p> +It has been said that Mr. Pendennis was in the country, engaged in a pursuit +exactly similar to that which occupied Colonel Newcome. The menaced dissolution +of Parliament did not take place so soon as we expected. The Ministry still +hung together, and by consequence, Sir Barnes Newcome kept the seat in the +House of Commons, from which his elder kinsman was eager to oust him. Away from +London, and having but few correspondents, save on affairs of business, I heard +little of Clive and the Colonel, save an occasional puff of one of Colonel +Newcome’s entertainments in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, to which +journal F. Bayham still condescended to contribute; and a satisfactory +announcement in a certain part of that paper, that on such a day, in Hyde Park +Gardens, Mrs. Clive Newcome had presented her husband with a son. Clive wrote +to me presently, to inform me of the circumstance, stating at the same time, +with but moderate gratification on his own part, that the Campaigner, Mrs. +Newcome’s mamma, had upon this second occasion made a second lodgment in +her daughter’s house and bedchamber, and showed herself affably disposed +to forget the little unpleasantries which had clouded over the sunshine of her +former visit. +</p> + +<p> +Laura, with a smile of some humour, said she thought now would be the time +when, if Clive could be spared from his bank, he might pay us that visit at +Fairoaks which had been due so long, and hinted that change of air and a +temporary absence from Mrs. Mackenzie might be agreeable to my old friend. +</p> + +<p> +It was, on the contrary, Mr. Pendennis’s opinion that his wife artfully +chose that period of time when little Rosey was, perforce, kept at home and +occupied with her delightful maternal duties, to invite Clive to see us. Mrs. +Laura frankly owned that she liked our Clive better without his wife than with +her, and never ceased to regret that pretty Rosey had not bestowed her little +hand upon Captain Hoby, as she had been very well disposed at one time to do. +Against all marriages of interest this sentimental Laura never failed to utter +indignant protests; and Clive’s had been a marriage of interest, a +marriage made up by the old people, a marriage which the young man had only +yielded out of good-nature and obedience. She would apostrophise her +unconscious young ones, and inform those innocent babies that <i>they</i> +should never be made to marry except for love, never—an announcement +which was received with perfect indifference by little Arthur on his +rocking-horse, and little Helen smiling and crowing in her mother’s lap. +</p> + +<p> +So Clive came down to us, careworn in appearance, but very pleased and happy, +he said, to stay for a while with the friends of his youth. We showed him our +modest rural lions; we got him such sport and company as our quiet +neighbourhood afforded, we gave him fishing in the Brawl, and Laura in her +pony-chaise drove him to Baymouth, and to Clavering Park and town, and visit +the famous cathedral at Chatteris, where she was pleased to recount certain +incidents of her husband’s youth. +</p> + +<p> +Clive laughed at my wife’s stories; he pleased himself in our home; he +played with our children, with whom he had became a great favourite; he was +happier, he told me with a sigh, than he had been for many a day. His gentle +hostess echoed the sigh of the poor young fellow. She was sure that his +pleasure was only transitory, and was convinced that many deep cares weighed +upon his mind. +</p> + +<p> +Ere long my old schoolfellow made me sundry confessions, which showed that +Laura’s surmises were correct. About his domestic affairs he did not +treat much; the little boy was said to be a very fine little boy; the ladies +had taken entire possession of him. “I can’t stand Mrs. Mackenzie +any longer, I own,” says Clive; “but how resist a wife at such a +moment? Rosa was sure she would die, unless her mother came to her, and of +course we invited Mrs. Mack. This time she is all smiles and politeness with +the Colonel: the last quarrel is laid upon me, and in so far I am easy, as the +old folks get on pretty well together.” To me, considering these things, +it was clear that Mr. Clive Newcome was but a very secondary personage indeed +in his father’s new fine house which he inhabited, and in which the poor +Colonel had hoped they were to live such a happy family. +</p> + +<p> +But it was about Clive Newcome’s pecuniary affairs that I felt the most +disquiet when he came to explain these to me. The Colonel’s capital and +that considerable sum which Mrs. Clive had inherited from her good old uncle, +were all involved in a common stock, of which Colonel Newcome took the +management. “The governor understands business so well, you see,” +says Clive; “is a most remarkable head for accounts: he must have +inherited that from my grandfather, you know, who made his own fortune: all the +Newcomes are good at accounts, except me, a poor useless devil who knows +nothing but to paint a picture, and who can’t even do that.” He +cuts off the head of a thistle as he speaks, bites his tawny mustachios, +plunges his hands into his pockets and his soul into reverie. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mean to say,” asks Mr. Pendennis, “that your +wife’s fortune has not been settled upon herself?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course it has been settled upon herself; that is, it is entirely her +own—you know the Colonel has managed all the business, he understands it +better than we do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you say that your wife’s money is not vested in the hands of +trustees, and for her benefit?” +</p> + +<p> +“My father is one of the trustees. I tell you he manages the whole thing. +What is his property is mine and ever has been; and I might draw upon him as +much as I liked: and you know it’s five times as great as my +wife’s. What is his is ours, and what is ours is his, of course; for +instance, the India Stock, which poor Uncle James left, that now stands in the +Colonel’s name. He wants to be a Director: he will be at the next +election—he must have a certain quantity of India Stock, don’t you +see?” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear fellow, is there then no settlement made upon your wife at +all?” +</p> + +<p> +“You needn’t look so frightened,” says Clive. “I made a +settlement on her: with all my worldly goods I did her endow three thousand +three hundred and thirty-three pounds six and eightpence, which my father sent +over from India to my uncle, years ago, when I came home.” +</p> + +<p> +I might well indeed be aghast at this news, and had yet further intelligence +from Clive, which by no means contributed to lessen my anxiety. This worthy old +Colonel, who fancied himself to be so clever a man of business, chose to +conduct it in utter ignorance and defiance of law. If anything happened to the +Bundelcund Bank, it was clear that not only every shilling of his own property, +but every farthing bequeathed to Rosa Mackenzie would be lost; only his +retiring pension, which was luckily considerable, and the hundred pounds a year +which Clive had settled on his wife, would be saved out of the ruin. +</p> + +<p> +And now Clive confided to me his own serious doubts and misgivings regarding +the prosperity of the Bank itself. He did not know why, but he could not help +fancying that things were going wrong. Those partners who had come home, having +sold out of the Bank, and living in England so splendidly, why had they quitted +it? The Colonel said it was a proof of the prosperity of the company, that so +many gentlemen were enriched who had taken shares in it. “But when I +asked my father,” Clive continued, “why he did not himself +withdraw, the dear old Colonel’s countenance fell: he told me such things +were not to be done every day; and ended, as usual, by saying that I do not +understand anything about business. No more I do: that is the truth. I hate the +whole concern, Pen! I hate that great tawdry house in which we live; and those +fearfully stupid parties:—Oh, how I wish we were back in Fitzroy Square! +But who can recall bygones, Arthur; or wrong steps in life? We must make the +best of to-day, and to-morrow must take care of itself. ‘Poor little +child!’ I could not help thinking, as I took it crying in my arms the +other day, ‘what has life in store for you, my poor weeping baby?’ +My mother-in-law cried out that I should drop the baby, and that only the +Colonel knew how to hold it. My wife called from her bed; the nurse dashed up +and scolded me; and they drove me out of the room amongst them. By Jove, Pen, I +laugh when some of my friends congratulate me on my good fortune! I am not +quite the father of my own child, nor the husband of my own wife, nor even the +master of my own easel. I am managed for, don’t you see? boarded, lodged, +and done for. And here is the man they call happy. Happy! Oh!!! Why had I not +your strength of mind; and why did I ever leave my art, my mistress?” +</p> + +<p> +And herewith the poor lad fell to chopping thistles again; and quitted Fairoaks +shortly, leaving his friends there very much disquieted about his prospects, +actual and future. +</p> + +<p> +The expected dissolution of Parliament came at length. All the country papers +in England teemed with electioneering addresses; and the country was in a +flutter with particoloured ribbons. Colonel Thomas Newcome, pursuant to his +promise, offered himself to the independent electors of Newcome in the Liberal +journal of the family town, whilst Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., addressed himself +to his old and tried friends, and called upon the friends of the constitution +to rally round him, in the Conservative print. The addresses of our friend were +sent to us at Fairoaks by the Colonel’s indefatigable aide-de-camp, Mr. +Frederick Bayham. During the period which had elapsed since the Colonel’s +last canvassing visit and the issuing of the writs now daily expected for the +new Parliament, many things of great importance had occurred in Thomas +Newcome’s family—events which were kept secret from his biographer, +who was, at this period also, pretty entirely occupied with his own affairs. +These, however, are not the present subject of this history, which has Newcome +for its business, and the parties engaged in the family quarrel there. +</p> + +<p> +There were four candidates in the field for the representation of that borough. +That old and tried member of Parliament, Mr. Bunce, was considered to be +secure; and the Baronet’s seat was thought to be pretty safe on account +of his influence in the place. Nevertheless, Thomas Newcome’s supporters +were confident for their champion, and that when the parties came to the poll, +the extreme Liberals of the borough would divide their votes between him and +the fourth candidate, the uncompromising Radical, Mr. Barker. +</p> + +<p> +In due time the Colonel and his staff arrived at Newcome, and resumed the +active canvass which they had commenced some months previously. Clive was not +in his father’s suite this time, nor Mr. Warrington, whose engagements +took him elsewhere. The lawyer, the editor of the <i>Independent</i>, and F. +B., were the Colonel’s chief men. His headquarters (which F. B. liked +very well) were at the hotel where we last saw him, and whence issuing with his +aide-de-camp at his heels, the Colonel went round to canvass personally, +according to his promise, every free and independent elector of the borough. +Barnes too was canvassing eagerly on his side, and was most affable and active; +the two parties would often meet nose to nose in the same street, and their +retainers exchange looks of defiance. With Mr. Potts of the <i>Independent</i>, +a big man, on his left; with Mr. Frederick, a still bigger man, on his right; +his own trusty bamboo cane in his hand, before which poor Barnes had shrunk +abashed ere now, Colonel Newcome had commonly the best of these street +encounters, and frowned his nephew Barnes, and Barnes’s staff, off the +pavement. With the non-electors the Colonel was a decided favourite; the boys +invariably hurrayed him; whereas they jeered and uttered ironical cries after +poor Barnes, asking, “Who beat his wife? Who drove his children to the +workhouse?” and other unkind personal questions. The man upon whom the +libertine Barnes had inflicted so cruel an injury in his early days, was now +the Baronet’s bitterest enemy. He assailed him with curses and threats +when they met, and leagued his brother-workmen against him. The wretched Sir +Barnes owned with contrition that the sins of his youth pursued him; his enemy +scoffed at the idea of Barnes’s repentance; he was not moved at the +grief, the punishment in his own family, the humiliation and remorse which the +repentant prodigal piteously pleaded. No man was louder in his cries of <i>mea +culpa</i> than Barnes: no man professed a more edifying repentance. He was hat +in hand to every black-coat, established or dissenting. Repentance was to his +interest, to be sure, but yet let us hope it was sincere. There is some +hypocrisy, of which one does not like even to entertain the thought; especially +that awful falsehood which trades with divine truth, and takes the name of +Heaven in vain. +</p> + +<p> +The Roebuck Inn at Newcome stands in the market-place, directly facing the +King’s Arms, where, as we know, Colonel Newcome and uncompromising +toleration held their headquarters. Immense banners of blue and yellow floated +from every window of the King’s Arms, and decorated the balcony from +which the Colonel and the assistants were in the habit of addressing the +multitude. Fiddlers and trumpeters, arrayed in his colours, paraded the town +and enlivened it with their melodious strains. Other trumpeters and fiddlers, +bearing the true-blue cockades and colours of Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., would +encounter the Colonel’s musicians, on which occasions of meeting, it is +to be feared, small harmony was produced. They banged each other with their +brazen instruments. The warlike drummers thumped each other’s heads in +lieu of the professional sheepskin. The townboys and street-blackguards +rejoiced in these combats, and exhibited their valour on one side or the other. +The Colonel had to pay a long bill for broken brass when he settled the little +accounts of the election. +</p> + +<p> +In after times, F. B. was pleased to describe the circumstances of a contest in +which he bore a most distinguished part. It was F. B.’s opinion that his +private eloquence brought over many waverers to the Colonel’s side, and +converted numbers of the benighted followers of Sir Barnes Newcome. +Bayham’s voice was indeed magnificent, and could be heard from the +King’s Arm’s balcony above the shout and roar of the multitude, the +gongs and bugles of the opposition bands. He was untiring in his +oratory—undaunted in the presence of the crowds below. He was immensely +popular, F. B. Whether he laid his hand upon his broad chest, took off his hat +and waved it, or pressed his blue and yellow ribbons to his bosom, the crowd +shouted, “Hurra: silence! bravo! Bayham for ever!” “They +would have carried me in triumph,” said F. B.; “if I had but the +necessary qualification I might be member for Newcome this day or any other I +chose.” +</p> + +<p> +I am afraid in this conduct of the Colonel’s election Mr. Bayham resorted +to acts of which his principal certainly would disapprove, and engaged +auxiliaries whose alliance was scarcely creditable. Whose was the hand which +flung the potato which struck Sir Barnes Newcome, Bart., on the nose as he was +haranguing the people from the Roebuck? How came it that whenever Sir Barnes +and his friends essayed to speak, such an awful yelling and groaning took place +in the crowd below, that the words of those feeble orators were inaudible? Who +smashed all the front windows of the Roebuck? Colonel Newcome had not words to +express his indignation at proceedings so unfair. When Sir Barnes and staff +were hustled in the market-place and most outrageously shoved, jeered, and +jolted, the Colonel from the King’s Arms organised a rapid sally, which +he himself headed with his bamboo cane; cut out Sir Barnes and his followers +from the hands of the mob, and addressed those ruffians in a noble speech, of +which bamboo-cane—Englishman—shame—fair-play, were the most +emphatic expressions. The mob cheered Old Tom as they called him—they +made way for Sir Barnes, who shrunk pale and shuddering back into his hotel +again—who always persisted in saying that that old villain of a dragoon +had planned both the assault and the rescue. +</p> + +<p> +“When the dregs of the people—the scum of the rabble, sir, banded +together by the myrmidons of Sir Barnes Newcome, attacked us at the +King’s Arms, and smashed ninety-six pounds’ worth of glass at one +volley, besides knocking off the gold unicorn head and the tail of the British +lion; it was fine, sir,” F. B. said, “to see how the Colonel came +forward, and the coolness of the old boy in the midst of the action. He stood +there in front, sir, with his old hat off, never so much as once bobbing his +old head, and I think he spoke rather better under fire than he did when there +was no danger. Between ourselves, he ain’t much of a speaker, the old +Colonel; he hems and haws, and repeats himself a good deal. He hasn’t the +gift of natural eloquence which some men have, Pendennis. You should have heard +my speech, sir, on the Thursday in the Town Hall—that was something like +a speech. Potts was jealous of it, and always reported me most +shamefully.” +</p> + +<p> +In spite of his respectful behaviour to the gentlemen in black coats, his +soup-tickets and his flannel-tickets, his own pathetic lectures and his +sedulous attendance at other folk’s sermons, poor Barnes could not keep +up his credit with the serious interest at Newcome, and the meeting-houses and +their respective pastors and frequenters turned their backs upon him. The case +against him was too flagrant: his enemy, the factory-man, worked it with an +extraordinary skill, malice, and pertinacity. Not a single man, woman, or child +in Newcome but was made acquainted with Sir Barnes’s early peccadillo. +Ribald ballads were howled through the streets describing his sin, and his +deserved punishment. For very shame, the reverend dissenting gentlemen were +obliged to refrain from voting for him; such as ventured, believing in the +sincerity of his repentance, to give him their voices, were yelled away from +the polling-places. A very great number who would have been his friends, were +compelled to bow to decency and public opinion, and supported the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +Hooted away from the hustings, and the public places whence the rival +candidates addressed the free and independent electors, this wretched and +persecuted Sir Barnes invited his friends and supporters to meet him at the +Athenæum Room—scene of his previous eloquent performances. But, though +this apartment was defended by tickets, the people burst into it; and Nemesis, +in the shape of the persevering factory-man, appeared before the scared Sir +Barnes and his puzzled committee. The man stood up and bearded the pale +Baronet. He had a good cause, and was in truth a far better master of debate +than our banking friend, being a great speaker amongst his brother-operatives, +by whom political questions are discussed, and the conduct of political men +examined, with a ceaseless interest and with an ardour and eloquence which are +often unknown in what is called superior society. This man and his friends +round about him fiercely silenced the clamour of “Turn him out,” +with which his first appearance was assailed by Sir Barnes’s hangers-on. +He said, in the name of justice he would speak up; if they were fathers of +families and loved their wives and daughters he dared them to refuse him a +hearing. Did they love their wives and their children? it was a shame that they +should take such a man as that yonder for their representative in Parliament. +But the greatest sensation he made was when, in the middle of his speech, after +inveighing against Barnes’s cruelty and parental ingratitude, he asked, +“Where were Barnes’s children?” and actually thrust forward +two, to the amazement of the committee and the ghastly astonishment of the +guilty Baronet himself. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at them,” says the man: “they are almost in rags, they +have to put up with scanty and hard food; contrast them with his other +children, whom you see lording in gilt carriages, robed in purple and fine +linen, and scattering mud from their wheels over us humble people as we walk +the streets; ignorance and starvation is good enough for these, for those +others nothing can be too fine or too dear. What can a factory-girl expect from +such a fine, high-bred, white-handed, aristocratic gentleman as Sir Barnes +Newcome, Baronet, but to be cajoled, and seduced, and deserted, and left to +starve! When she has served my lord’s pleasure, her natural fate is to be +turned into the street; let her go and rot there and her children beg in the +gutter. +</p> + +<p> +“This is the most shameful imposture,” gasps out Sir Barnes, +“these children are not—are not——” +</p> + +<p> +The man interrupted him with a bitter laugh. “No,” he says; +“they are not his; that’s true enough, friends. It’s Tom +Martin’s girl and boy, a precious pair of lazy little scamps. But, at +least he <i>thought</i> they were his children. See how much he knows about +them! He hasn’t seen his children for years; he would have left them and +their mother to starve, and did, but for shame and fear. The old man, his +father, pensioned them, and he hasn’t the heart to stop their wages now. +Men of Newcome, will you have this man to represent you in Parliament?” +And the crowd roared “No;” and Barnes and his shamefaced committee +slunk out of the place, and no wonder the dissenting clerical gentlemen were +shy of voting for him. +</p> + +<p> +A brilliant and picturesque diversion in Colonel Newcome’s favour was due +to the inventive genius of his faithful aide-de-camp, F. B. On the polling-day, +as the carriages full of voters came up to the market-place, there appeared +nigh to the booths an open barouche, covered all over with ribbon, and +containing Frederick Bayham, Esq., profusely decorated with the Colonel’s +colours, and a very old woman and her female attendant, who were similarly +ornamented. It was good old Mrs. Mason, who was pleased with the drive and the +sunshine, though she scarcely understood the meaning of the turmoil, with her +maid by her side, delighted to wear such ribbons, and sit in such a post of +honour. Rising up in the carriage, F. B. took off his hat, bade his men of +brass be silent, who were accustomed to bray “See the Conquering Hero +come,” whenever the Colonel, or Mr. Bayham, his brilliant aide-de-camp, +made their appearance;—bidding, we say, the musicians and the universe to +be silent, F. B. rose, and made the citizens of Newcome a splendid speech. Good +old unconscious Mrs. Mason was the theme of it, and the Colonel’s virtues +and faithful gratitude in tending her. “She was his father’s old +friend. She was Sir Barnes Newcome’s grandfather’s old friend. She +had lived for more than forty years at Sir Barnes Newcome’s door, and how +often had he been to see her? Did he go every week? No. Every month? No. Every +year? No. Never in the whole course of his life had he set his foot into her +doors!” (Loud yells, and cries of ‘Shame!’) “Never had +he done her one single act of kindness. Whereas for years and years past, when +he was away in India, heroically fighting the battles of his country, when he +was distinguishing himself at Assaye, and—and—Mulligatawny, and +Seringapatam, in the hottest of the fight and the fiercest of the danger, in +the most terrible moment of the conflict, and the crowning glory of the +victory, the good, the brave, the kind old Colonel,—why should he say +Colonel? why should he not say Old Tom at once?” (immense roars of +applause) “always remembered his dear old nurse and friend. Look at that +shawl, boys, which she has got on! My belief is that Colonel Newcome took that +shawl in single combat, and on horseback, from the prime minister of Tippoo +Sahib.” (Immense cheers and cries of ‘Bravo, Bayham!’) +“Look at that brooch the dear old thing wears!” (he kissed her hand +whilst so apostrophising her). “Tom Newcome never brags about his +military achievements, he is the most modest as well as the bravest man in the +world. What if I were to tell you that he cut that brooch from the throat of an +Indian rajah? He’s man enough to do it.” (‘He is! he +is!’ from all parts of the crowd.) “What, you want to take the +horses out, do you?” (to the crowd, who were removing those quadrupeds). +“I ain’t agoing to prevent you; I expected as much of you. Men of +Newcome, I expected as much of you, for I know you! Sit still, old lady; +don’t be frightened, ma’am: they are only going to pull you to the +King’s Arms, and show you to the Colonel.” +</p> + +<p> +This, indeed, was the direction in which the mob (whether inflamed by +spontaneous enthusiasm, or excited by cunning agents placed amongst the +populace by F. B., I cannot say), now took the barouche and its three +occupants. With a myriad roar and shout the carriage was dragged up in front of +the King’s Arms, from the balconies of which a most satisfactory account +of the polling was already placarded. The extra noise and shouting brought out +the Colonel, who looked at first with curiosity at the advancing procession, +and then, as he caught sight of Sarah Mason, with a blush and a bow of his kind +old head. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at him, boys!” cried the enraptured F. B., pointing up to the +old man. “Look at him; the dear old boy! Isn’t he an old trump? +which will you have for your Member, Barnes Newcome or Old Tom?” +</p> + +<p> +And as might be supposed, an immense shout of “Old Tom!” arose from +the multitude; in the midst of which, blushing and bowing still, the Colonel +went back to his committee-room: and the bands played “See the Conquering +Hero” louder than ever; and poor Barnes in the course of his duty having +to come out upon his balcony at the Roebuck opposite, was saluted with a yell +as vociferous as the cheer for the Colonel had been; and old Mrs. Mason asked +what the noise was about; and after making several vain efforts, in dumb show, +to the crowd, Barnes slunk back into his hole again as pale as the turnip which +was flung at his head: and the horses were brought, and Mrs. Mason driven home; +and the day of election came to an end. +</p> + +<p> +Reasons of personal gratitude, as we have stated already, prevented His +Highness the Prince de Moncontour from taking a part in this family contest. +His brethren of the House of Higg, however, very much to Florac’s +gratification, gave their second votes to Colonel Newcome, carrying with them a +very great number of electors: we know that in the present Parliament, Mr. Higg +and Mr. Bunce sit for the borough of Newcome. Having had monetary transactions +with Sir Barnes Newcome, and entered largely into railway speculations with +him, the Messrs. Higg had found reason to quarrel with the Baronet; accuse him +of sharp practices to the present day, and have long stories to tell which do +not concern us about Sir Barnes’s stratagems, grasping, and extortion. +They their following, deserting Sir Barnes, whom they had supported in previous +elections, voted for the Colonel, although some of the opinions of that +gentleman were rather too extreme for such sober persons. +</p> + +<p> +Not exactly knowing what his politics were when he commenced the canvass, I +can’t say to what opinions the poor Colonel did not find himself +committed by the time when the election was over. The worthy gentleman felt +himself not a little humiliated by what he had to say and to unsay, by having +to answer questions, and submit to familiarities, to shake hands which, to say +truth, he did not care for grasping at all. His habits were aristocratic; his +education had been military; the kindest and simplest soul alive, he yet +disliked all familiarity, and expected from common people the sort of deference +which he had received from his men in the regiment. The contest saddened and +mortified him; he felt that he was using wrong means to obtain an end that +perhaps was not right (for so his secret conscience must have told him); he was +derogating from his own honour in tampering with political opinions, submitting +to familiarities, condescending to stand by whilst his agents solicited vulgar +suffrages or uttered claptraps about retrenchment and reform. “I felt I +was wrong,” he said to me, in after days, “though <i>I</i> was too +proud to own my error in those times, and you and your good wife and my boy +were right in protesting against that mad election.” Indeed, though we +little knew what events were speedily to happen, Laura and I felt very little +satisfaction when the result of the Newcome election was made known to us, and +we found Sir Barnes Newcome third, and Col. Thomas Newcome second upon the +poll. +</p> + +<p> +Ethel was absent with her children at Brighton. She was glad, she wrote, not to +have been at home during the election. Mr. and Mrs. C. were at Brighton, too. +Ethel had seen Mrs. C. and her child once or twice. It was a very fine child. +“My brother came down to us,” she wrote, “after all was over. +He is furious against M. de Moncontour, who, he says, persuaded the Whigs to +vote against him, and turned the election.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0070"></a> +CHAPTER LXX.<br> +Chiltern Hundreds</h2> + +<p> +We shall say no more regarding Thomas Newcome’s political doings; his +speeches against Barnes, and the Baronet’s replies. The nephew was beaten +by his stout old uncle. +</p> + +<p> +In due time the <i>Gazette</i> announced that Thomas Newcome, Esq., was +returned as one of the Members of Parliament for the borough of Newcome; and +after triumphant dinners, speeches, and rejoicings, the Member came back to his +family in London, and to his affairs in that city. +</p> + +<p> +The good Colonel appeared to be by no means elated by his victory. He would not +allow that he was wrong in engaging in that family war, of which we have just +seen the issue; though it may be that his secret remorse on this account in +part occasioned his disquiet. But there were other reasons, which his family +not long afterwards came to understand, for the gloom and low spirits which now +oppressed the head of their home. +</p> + +<p> +It was observed (that is, if simple little Rosey took the trouble to observe) +that the entertainments at the Colonel’s mansion were more frequent and +splendid even than before; the silver cocoa-nut tree was constantly in +requisition, and around it were assembled many new guests, who had not formerly +been used to sit under those branches. Mr. Sherrick and his wife appeared at +those parties, at which the proprietor of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel made +himself perfectly familiar. Sherrick cut jokes with the master of the house, +which the latter received with a very grave acquiescence; he ordered the +servants about, addressing the butler as “Old Corkscrew,” and +bidding the footman, whom he loved to call by his Christian name, to +“look alive.” He called the Colonel “Newcome” +sometimes, and facetiously speculated upon the degree of relationship +subsisting between them now that his daughter was married to Clive’s +uncle, the Colonel’s brother-in-law. Though I dare say Clive did not much +relish receiving news of his aunt, Sherrick was sure to bring such intelligence +when it reached him; and announced, in due time, the birth of a little cousin +at Boggley Wollah, whom the fond parents designed to name “Thomas Newcome +Honeyman.” +</p> + +<p> +A dreadful panic and ghastly terror seized poor Clive on occasion which he +described to me afterwards. Going out from home one day with his father, he +beheld a wine-merchant’s cart, from which hampers were carried down the +area gate into the lower regions of Colonel Newcome’s house. +“Sherrick and Co., Wine Merchants, Walpole Street,” was painted +upon the vehicle. +</p> + +<p> +“Good heavens! sir, do you get your wine from <i>him?</i>” Clive +cried out to his father, remembering Honeyman’s provisions in early +times. The Colonel, looking very gloomy and turning red, said, “Yes, he +bought wine from Sherrick, who had been very good-natured and serviceable; and +who—and who, you know, is our connexion now.” When informed of the +circumstance by Clive, I too, as I confess, thought the incident alarming. +</p> + +<p> +Then Clive, with a laugh, told me of a grand battle which had taken place in +consequence of Mrs. Mackenzie’s behaviour to the wine-merchant’s +wife. The Campaigner had treated this very kind and harmless, but vulgar woman, +with extreme <i>hauteur</i>—had talked loud during her singing—the +beauty of which, to say truth, time had considerably impaired—had made +contemptuous observations regarding her upon more than one occasion. At length +the Colonel broke out in great wrath against Mrs. Mackenzie—bade her to +respect that lady as one of his guests—and, if she did not like the +company which assembled at his house, hinted to her that there were many +thousand other houses in London where she could find a lodging. For the sake of +her grandchild, and her adored child, the Campaigner took no notice of this +hint; and declined to remove from the quarter which she had occupied ever since +she had become a grandmamma. +</p> + +<p> +I myself dined once or twice with my old friends, under the shadow of the +pickle-bearing cocoa-nut tree; and could not but remark a change of personages +in the society assembled. The manager of the City branch of the B. B. C. was +always present—an ominous-looking man, whose whispers and compliments +seemed to make poor Clive, at his end of the table, very melancholy. With the +City manager came the City manager’s friends, whose jokes passed gaily +round, and who kept the conversation to themselves. Once I had the happiness to +meet Mr. Ratray, who had returned, filled with rupees from the Indian Bank; who +told us many anecdotes of the splendour of Rummun Loll at Calcutta, who +complimented the Colonel on his fine house and grand dinners with sinister +good-humour. Those compliments did not seem to please our poor friend; that +familiarity choked him. A brisk little chattering attorney, very intimate with +Sherrick, with a wife of dubious gentility, was another constant guest. He +enlivened the table by his jokes, and recounted choice stories about the +aristocracy, with certain members of whom the little man seemed very familiar. +He knew to a shilling how much this lord owed—and how much the creditors +allowed to that marquis. He had been concerned with such and such a nobleman, +who was now in the Queen’s Bench. He spoke of their lordships affably and +without their titles—calling upon “Louisa, my dear,” his +wife, to testify to the day when Viscount Tagrag dined with them, and Earl +Bareacres sent them the pheasants. F. B., as sombre and downcast as his hosts +now seemed to be, informed me demurely that the attorney was a member of one of +the most eminent firms in the City—that he had been engaged in procuring +the Colonel’s parliamentary title for him—and in various important +matters appertaining to the B. B. C.; but my knowledge of the world and the law +was sufficient to make me aware that this gentleman belonged to a well-known +firm of money-lending solicitors, and I trembled to see such a person in the +home of our good Colonel. Where were the generals and the judges? Where were +the fogies and their respectable ladies? Stupid they were, and dull their +company; but better a stalled ox in their society, than Mr. Campion’s +jokes over Mr. Sherrick’s wines. +</p> + +<p> +After the little rebuke administered by Colonel Newcome, Mrs. Mackenzie +abstained from overt hostilities against any guests of her daughter’s +father-in-law; and contented herself by assuming grand and princess-like airs +in the company of the new ladies. They flattered her and poor little Rosa +intensely. The latter liked their company, no doubt. To a man of the world +looking on, who has seen the men and morals of many cities, it was curious, +almost pathetic, to watch that poor little innocent creature fresh and smiling, +attired in bright colours and a thousand gewgaws, simpering in the midst of +these darkling people—practising her little arts and coquetries, with +such a court round about her. An unconscious little maid, with rich and rare +gems sparkling on all her fingers, and bright gold rings as many as belonged to +the late Old Woman of Banbury Cross—still she smiled and prattled +innocently before these banditti—I thought of Zerlina and the Brigands, +in Fra Diavolo. +</p> + +<p> +Walking away with F. B. from one of these parties of the Colonel’s, and +seriously alarmed at what I had observed there, I demanded of Bayham whether my +conjectures were not correct, that some misfortune overhung our old +friend’s house? At first Bayham denied stoutly or pretended ignorance; +but at length, having reached the Haunt together, which I had not visited since +I was a married man, we entered that place of entertainment, and were greeted +by its old landlady and waitress, and accommodated with a quiet parlour. And +here F. B., after groaning and sighing—after solacing himself with a +prodigious quantity of bitter beer—fairly burst out, and, with tears in +his eyes, made a full and sad confession respecting this unlucky Bundelcund +Banking Company. The shares had been going lower and lower, so that there was +no sale now for them at all. To meet the liabilities, the directors must have +undergone the greatest sacrifices. He did know—he did not like to think +what the Colonel’s personal losses were. The respectable solicitors of +the Company had retired, long since, after having secured payment of a most +respectable bill; and had given place to the firm of dubious law-agents of whom +I had that evening seen a partner. How the retiring partners from India had +been allowed to withdraw, and to bring fortunes along with them, was a mystery +to Mr. Frederick Bayham. The great Indian millionnaire was in his, F. +B.’s eyes, “a confounded mahogany-coloured heathen humbug.” +These fine parties which the Colonel was giving, and that fine carriage which +was always flaunting about the Park with poor Mrs. Clive and the Campaigner, +and the nurse and the baby, were, in F. B.’s opinion, all decoys and +shams. He did not mean to say that the meals were not paid, and that the +Colonel had to plunder for his horses’ corn; but he knew that Sherrick, +and the attorney, and the manager, insisted upon the necessity of giving these +parties, and keeping up this state and grandeur, and opined that it was at the +special instance of these advisers that the Colonel had contested the borough +for which he was now returned. “Do you know how much that contest +cost?” asks F. B. “The sum, sir, was awful! and we have ever so +much of it to pay. I came up twice myself from Newcome to Campion and Sherrick +about it. I betray no secrets—F. B., sir, would die a thousand deaths +before he would tell the secrets of his benefactor!—But, Pendennis, you +understand a thing or two. You know what o’clock it is, and so does yours +truly, F. B., who drinks your health. <i>I</i> know the taste of +Sherrick’s wine well enough. F. B., sir, fears the Greeks and all the +gifts they bring. Confound his Amontillado! I had rather drink this honest malt +and hops all my life than ever see a drop of his abominable sherry. Golden? F. +B. believes it <i>is</i> golden—and a precious deal dearer than gold +too”—and herewith, ringing the bell, my friend asked for a second +pint of the just-named and cheaper fluid. +</p> + +<p> +I have of late had to recount portions of my dear old friend’s history +which must needs be told, and over which the writer does not like to dwell. If +Thomas Newcome’s opulence was unpleasant to describe, and to contrast +with the bright goodness and simplicity I remembered in former days, how much +more painful is that part of his story to which we are now come perforce, and +which the acute reader of novels has, no doubt, long foreseen? Yes, sir or +madam, you are quite right in the opinion which you have held all along +regarding that Bundelcund Banking Company, in which our Colonel has invested +every rupee he possesses, <i>Solvuntur rupees</i>, etc. I disdain, for the most +part, the tricks and surprises of the novelist’s art. Knowing, from the +very beginning of our story, what was the issue of this Bundelcund Banking +concern, I have scarce had patience to keep my counsel about it; and whenever I +have had occasion to mention the Company, have scarcely been able to refrain +from breaking out into fierce diatribes against that complicated, enormous, +outrageous swindle. It was one of many similar cheats which have been +successfully practised upon the simple folks, civilian and military, who toil +and struggle—who fight with sun and enemy—who pass years of long +exile and gallant endurance in the service of our empire in India. Agency +houses after agency houses have been established, and have flourished in +splendour and magnificence, and have paid fabulous dividends—and have +enormously enriched two or three wary speculators—and then have burst in +bankruptcy, involving widows, orphans, and countless simple people who trusted +their all to the keeping of these unworthy treasurers. +</p> + +<p> +The failure of the Bundelcund Bank which we now have to record, was one only of +many similar schemes ending in ruin. About the time when Thomas Newcome was +chaired as Member of Parliament for the borough of which he bore the name, the +great Indian merchant who was at the head of the Bundelcund Banking +Company’s affairs at Calcutta, suddenly died of cholera at his palace at +Barackpore. He had been giving of late a series of the most splendid banquets +with which Indian prince ever entertained a Calcutta society. The greatest and +proudest personages of that aristocratic city had attended his feasts. The +fairest Calcutta beauties had danced in his halls. Did not poor F. B. transfer +from the columns of the <i>Bengal Hurkaru</i> to the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> +the most astounding descriptions of those Asiatic Nights Entertainments, of +which the very grandest was to come off on the night when cholera seized Rummun +Loll in its grip? There was to have been a masquerade outvying all European +masquerades in splendour. The two rival queens of the Calcutta society were to +have appeared each with her court around her. Young civilians at the College, +and young ensigns fresh landed, had gone into awful expenses and borrowed money +at interest from the B. B. C. and other banking companies, in order to appear +with befitting splendour as knights and noblemen of Henrietta Maria’s +Court (Henrietta Maria, wife of Hastings Hicks, Esq., Sudder Dewanee Adawlut), +or as princes and warriors surrounding the palanquin of Lalla Rookh (the lovely +wife of Hon. Cornwallis Bobus, Member of Council): all these splendours were +there. As carriage after carriage drove up from Calcutta, they were met at +Rummun Loll’s gate by ghastly weeping servants, who announced their +master’s demise. +</p> + +<p> +On the next day the Bank at Calcutta was closed, and the day after, when heavy +bills were presented which must be paid, although by this time Rummun Loll was +not only dead but buried, and his widows howling over his grave, it was +announced throughout Calcutta that but 800 rupees were left in the treasury of +the B. B. C. to meet engagements to the amount of four lakhs then immediately +due, and sixty days afterwards the shutters were closed at No. 175 Lothbury, +the London offices of the B. B. C. of India, and 35,000 pounds worth of their +bills refused by their agents, Messrs. Baines, Jolly and Co., of Fog Court. +</p> + +<p> +When the accounts of that ghastly bankruptcy arrived from Calcutta, it was +found, of course, that the merchant-prince Rummun Loll owed the B. B. C. +twenty-five lakhs of rupees, the value of which was scarcely even represented +by his respectable signature. It was found that one of the auditors of the +bank, the generally esteemed Charley Conder (a capital fellow, famous for his +good dinners, and for playing low-comedy characters at the Chowringhee +Theatre), was indebted to the bank in 90,000 pounds; and also it was discovered +that the revered Baptist Bellman, Chief Registrar of the Calcutta Tape and +Sealing-Wax Office (a most valuable and powerful amateur preacher who had +converted two natives, and whose serious soirées were thronged at Calcutta), +had helped himself to 73,000 pounds more, for which he settled in the +Bankruptcy Court before he resumed his duties in his own. In justice to Mr. +Bellman, it must be said that he could have had no idea of the catastrophe +impending over the B. B. C. For, only three weeks before that great bank closed +its doors, Mr. Bellman, as guardian of the children of his widowed sister Mrs. +Green, had sold the whole of the late Colonel’s property out of +Company’s paper and invested it in the bank, which gave a high interest, +and with bills of which, drawn upon their London correspondents, he had +accommodated Mrs. Colonel Green when she took her departure for Europe with her +numerous little family on board the Burrumpooter. +</p> + +<p> +And now you have the explanation of the title of this chapter, and know +wherefore Thomas Newcome never sat in Parliament. Where are our dear old +friends now? Where are Rosey’s chariots and horses? Where her jewels and +gewgaws? Bills are up in the fine new house. Swarms of Hebrew gentlemen with +their hats on are walking about the drawing-rooms, peering into the bedrooms, +weighing and poising the poor old silver cocoa-nut tree, eyeing the plate and +crystal, thumbing the damask of the curtains, and inspecting ottomans, mirrors, +and a hundred articles of splendid trumpery. There is Rosey’s boudoir +which her father-in-law loved to ornament—there is Clive’s studio +with a hundred sketches—there is the Colonel’s bare room at the top +of the house, with his little iron bedstead and ship’s drawers, and a +camel trunk or two which have accompanied him on many an Indian march, and his +old regulation sword, and that one which the native officers of his regiment +gave him when he bade them farewell. I can fancy the brokers’ faces as +they look over this camp wardrobe, and that the uniforms will not fetch much in +Holywell Street. There is the old one still, and that new one which he ordered +and wore when poor little Rosey was presented at court. I had not the heart to +examine their plunder, and go amongst those wreckers. F. B. used to attend the +sale regularly, and report its proceedings to us with eyes full of tears. +“A fellow laughed at me,” says F. B., “because when I came +into the dear old drawing-room I took my hat off. I told him that if he dared +say another word I would knock him down.” I think F. B. may be pardoned +in this instance for emulating the office of auctioneer. Where are you, pretty +Rosey and poor little helpless baby? Where are you, dear Clive—gallant +young friend of my youth? Ah! it is a sad story—a melancholy page to pen! +Let us pass it over quickly—I love not to think of my friend in pain. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0071"></a> +CHAPTER LXXI.<br> +In which Mrs. Clive Newcome’s Carriage is ordered</h2> + +<p> +All the friends of the Newcome family, of course, knew the disaster which had +befallen the good Colonel, and I was aware, for my own part, that not only his +own, but almost the whole of Rosa Newcome’s property was involved in the +common ruin. Some proposals of temporary relief were made to our friends from +more quarters than one, but were thankfully rejected—and we were led to +hope that the Colonel, having still his pension secured to him, which the law +could not touch, might live comfortably enough the retirement to which, of +course, he would betake himself, when the melancholy proceedings consequent on +the bankruptcy were brought to an end. It was shown that he had been +egregiously duped in the transaction—that his credulity had cost him and +his family a large fortune—that he had given up every penny which +belonged to him—that there could not be any sort of stain upon his honest +reputation. The judge before whom he appeared spoke with feeling and regard of +the unhappy gentleman—the lawyer who examined him respected the grief and +fall of that simple old man. Thomas Newcome took a little room near the court +where his affairs and the affairs of the company were adjudged—lived with +a frugality which never was difficult to him—And once when perchance I +met him in the City, avoided me, with a bow and courtesy that was quite humble, +though proud and somehow inexpressibly touching to me. Fred Bayham was the only +person whom he admitted. Fred always faithfully insisted upon attending him in +and out of court. J. J. came to me immediately after he heard of the disaster, +eager to place all his savings at the service of his friends. Laura and I came +to London, and were urgent with similar offers. Our good friend declined to see +any of us. F. B., again, with tears trickling on his rough cheeks, and a break +in his voice, told me he feared that affairs must be very bad indeed, for the +Colonel absolutely denied himself a cheroot to smoke. Laura drove to his +lodgings and took him a box, which was held up to him as he came to open the +door to my wife’s knock by our smiling little boy, He patted the child on +his golden head and kissed him. My wife wished he would have done as much for +her—but he would not—though she owned she kissed his hand. He drew +it across his eyes and thanked her in a very calm and stately manner—but +he did not invite her within the threshold of his door, saying simply, that +such a room was not a fit place to receive a lady, “as you ought to know +very well, Mrs. Smith,” he said to the landlady, who had accompanied my +wife up the stairs. “He will eat scarcely anything,” the woman told +us, “his meals come down untouched; his candles are burning all night, +almost, as he sits poring over his papers.” +</p> + +<p> +“He was bent—he who used to walk so uprightly,” Laura said. +He seemed to have grown many years older, and was, indeed, quite a decrepit old +man. +</p> + +<p> +“I am glad they have left Clive out of the bankruptcy,” the Colonel +said to Bayham; it was almost the only time when his voice exhibited any +emotion. “It was very kind of them to leave out Clive, poor boy, and I +have thanked the lawyers in court.” Those gentlemen, and the judge +himself, were very much moved at this act of gratitude. The judge made a very +feeling speech to the Colonel when he came up for his certificate. He passed +very different comments on the conduct of the Manager of the Bank, when that +person appeared for examination. He wished that the law had power to deal with +those gentlemen who had come home with large fortunes from India, realised but +a few years before the bankruptcy. Those gentlemen had known how to take care +of themselves very well; and as for the Manager, is not his wife giving elegant +balls at her elegant house at Cheltenham at this very day? +</p> + +<p> +What weighed most upon the Colonel’s mind, F. B. imagined, was the +thought that he had been the means of inducing many poor friends to embark +their money in this luckless speculation. Take J. J.’s money after he had +persuaded old Ridley to place 200 pounds in Indian shares! Good God, he and his +family should rather perish than he would touch a farthing of it! Many fierce +words were uttered to him by Mrs. Mackenzie, for instance—by her angry +daughter at Musselburgh—Josey’s husband, by Mr. Smee, R.A., and two +or three Indian officers, friends of his own, who had entered into the +speculation on his recommendation. These rebukes Thomas Newcome bore with an +affecting meekness, as his faithful F. B. described to me, striving with many +oaths and much loudness to carry off his own emotion. But what moved the +Colonel most of all, was a letter which came at this time from Honeyman in +India, saying that he was doing well—that of course he knew of his +benefactor’s misfortune, and that he sent a remittance which, <i>D. +V.</i>, should be annual, in payment of his debt to the Colonel, and his good +sister at Brighton. “On receipt of this letter,” said F. B., +“the old man was fairly beaten—the letter, with the bill in it, +dropped out of his hands. He clasped them together, shaking in every limb, and +his head dropped down on his breast as he said, ‘I thank my God Almighty +for this!’ and he sent the cheque off to Mrs. Honeyman by the post that +night, sir, every shilling of it; and he passed his old arm under +mine—and we went out to Tom’s Coffee-House, and he ate some dinner +the first time for ever so long, and drank a couple of glasses of port wine, +and F. B. stood it, sir, and would stand his heart’s blood that dear old +boy.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +It was on a Monday morning that those melancholy shutters were seen over the +offices of the Bundelcund Bank in Lothbury, which were not to come down until +the rooms were handed over to some other, and, let us trust, more fortunate +speculators. The Indian bills had arrived, and been protested in the City on +the previous Saturday. The Campaigner and Mrs. Rosey had arranged a little +party to the theatre that evening, and the gallant Captain Goby had agreed to +quit the delights of the Flag Club, in order to accompany the ladies. Neither +of them knew what was happening in the City, or could account otherwise than by +the common domestic causes, for Clive’s gloomy despondency and his +father’s sad reserve. Clive had not been in the City on this day. He had +spent it, as usual, in his studio, <i>boudé</i> by his wife, and not disturbed +by the messroom raillery of the Campaigner. They had dined early, in order to +be in time for the theatre. Goby entertained them with the latest jokes from +the smoking-room at the Flag, and was in his turn amused by the brilliant plans +for the season which Rosey and her mamma sketched out the entertainments which +Mrs. Clive proposed to give, the ball—she was dying for a masked ball +just such a one as that was described in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> of last +week, out of that paper with the droll title, the <i>Bengal Hurkaru</i>, which +the merchant-prince, the head of the bank, you know, in India, had given at +Calcutta. “We must have a ball, too,” says Mrs. Mackenzie; +“society demands it of you.” “Of course it does,” +echoes Captain Goby, and he bethought him of a brilliant circle of young +fellows from the Flag, whom he would bring in splendid uniform to dance with +the pretty Mrs. Clive Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +After the dinner—they little knew it was to be their last in that fine +house—the ladies retired to give their parting kiss to baby—a +parting look to the toilettes, with which they proposed to fascinate the +inhabitants of the pit and the public boxes at the Olympic. Goby made vigorous +play with the claret-bottle during the brief interval of potation allowed to +him; he, too, little deeming that he should never drink bumper there again; +Clive looking on with the melancholy and silent acquiescence which had, of +late, been his part in the household. The carriage was announced—the +ladies came down—pretty capotes on the lovely Campaigner, Goby vowed, +looking as young and as handsome as her daughter, by Jove, and the ball door +was opened to admit the two gentlemen and ladies to their carriage, when, as +they were about to step in, a hansom cab drove up rapidly, in which was +perceived Thomas Newcome’s anxious face. He got out of the +vehicle—his own carriage making way for him—the ladies still on the +steps. “Oh, the play! I forgot,” said the Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course we are going to the play, papa,” cries little Rosey, +with a gay little tap of her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“I think you had better not,” Colonel Newcome said gravely. +</p> + +<p> +“Indeed my darling child has set her heart upon it, and I would not have +her disappointed for the world in her situation,” cries the Campaigner, +tossing up her head. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel for reply bade his coachman drive to the stables, and come for +further orders; and, turning to his daughter’s guest, expressed to +Captain Goby his regret that the proposed party could not take place on that +evening, as he had matter of very great importance to communicate to his +family. On hearing these news, and understanding that his further company was +not desirable, the Captain, a man of great presence of mind, arrested the +hansom cabman, who was about to take his departure, and who blithely, knowing +the Club and its inmates full well, carried off the jolly Captain to finish his +evening at the Flag. +</p> + +<p> +“Has it come, father?” said Clive with a sure prescience, looking +in his father’s face. +</p> + +<p> +The father took and grasped the hand which his son held out. “Let us go +back into the dining-room,” he said. They entered it, and he filled +himself a glass of wine out of the bottle still standing amidst the dessert. He +bade the butler retire, who was lingering about the room and sideboard, and +only wanted to know whether his master would have dinner, that was all. And, +this gentleman having withdrawn, Colonel Newcome finished his glass of sherry +and broke a biscuit; the Campaigner assuming an attitude of surprise and +indignation, whilst Rosey had leisure to remark that papa looked very ill, and +that something must have happened. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel took both her hands and drew her towards him and kissed her, whilst +Rosey’s mamma, flouncing down on a chair, beat a tattoo upon the +tablecloth with her fan. “Something has happened, my love,” the +Colonel said very sadly; “you must show all your strength of mind, for a +great misfortune has befallen us.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good heavens, Colonel, what is it? don’t frighten my beloved +child,” cries the Campaigner, rushing towards her darling, and enveloping +her in her robust arms. “What can have happened, don’t agitate this +darling child, sir,” and she looked indignantly towards the poor Colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“We have received the very worst news from Calcutta, a confirmation of +the news by the last mail, Clivey, my boy.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is no news to me. I have always been expecting it, father,” +says Clive, holding down his head. +</p> + +<p> +“Expecting what? What have you been keeping back from us? In what have +you been deceiving us, Colonel Newcome?” shrieks the Campaigner; and +Rosa, crying out, “Oh, mamma, mamma!” begins to whimper. +</p> + +<p> +“The chief of the bank in India is dead,” the Colonel went on. +“He has left its affairs in worse than disorder. We are, I fear, ruined, +Mrs. Mackenzie.” And the Colonel went on to tell how the bank could not +open on Monday morning, and its bills to a great amount had already been +protested in the City that day. +</p> + +<p> +Rosey did not understand half these news, or comprehend the calamity which was +to follow; but Mrs. Mackenzie, rustling in great wrath, made a speech, of which +the anger gathered as he proceeded; in which she vowed and protested that her +money, which the Colonel, she did not know from <i>what motives</i>, had +induced her to subscribe, should not be sacrificed, and that have it she would, +the bank shut or not, the next Monday morning—that her daughter had a +fortune of her own which her poor dear brother James should have divided and +would have divided much more fairly, had he not been wrongly +influenced—she would not say by whom, and she commanded Colonel Newcome +upon that <i>instant</i>, if he was, as he always pretended to be, an +<i>honourable</i> man, to give an account of her blessed darling’s +property, and to pay back her own, every sixpence of it. She would not lend it +for an hour longer, and to see that that dear blessed child now sleeping +unconsciously upstairs, and his dear brothers and sisters who might follow, for +Rosey was a young woman, a poor innocent creature, too young to be married, and +never would have been married had she listened to her mamma’s advice. She +demanded that the baby, and all succeeding babies, should have their +<i>rights</i>, and should be looked to by their grandmother, if their +father’s father was so <i>unkind</i>, and so <i>wicked</i>, and so +<i>unnatural</i>, as to give their money to rogues, and deprive them of their +just bread. +</p> + +<p> +Rosey began to cry more loudly than ever during the utterance of mamma’s +sermon, so loudly that Clive peevishly cried out, “Hold your +tongue,” on which the Campaigner, clutching her daughter to her breast +again, turned on her son-in-law, and abused him as she had abused his father +before him, calling out that they were both in a conspiracy to defraud her +child, and the little darling upstairs of its bread, and she would speak, yes, +she would, and no power should prevent her, and her money she would have on +Monday, as sure as her poor dear husband, Captain Mackenzie, was dead, and she +never would have been <i>cheated</i> so, yes, <i>cheated</i>, if he had been +alive. +</p> + +<p> +At the word “cheated” Clive broke out with an execration—the +poor Colonel with a groan of despair—the widow’s storm continued, +and above that howling tempest of words rose Mrs. Clive’s piping scream, +who went off into downright hysterics at last, in which she was encouraged by +her mother, and in which she gasped out frantic ejaculations regarding baby; +dear, darling, ruined baby, and so forth. +</p> + +<p> +The sorrow-stricken Colonel had to quell the women’s tongues and shrill +anger, and his son’s wrathful replies, who could not bear the weight of +Mrs. Mackenzie upon him; and it was not until these three were allayed, that +Thomas Newcome was able to continue his sad story, to explain what had +happened, and what the actual state of the case was, and to oblige the +terror-stricken women at length to hear something like reason. +</p> + +<p> +He then had to tell them, to their dismay, that he would inevitably be declared +a bankrupt in the ensuing week; that the whole of his property in that house, +as elsewhere, would be seized and sold for the creditors’ benefit; and +that his daughter had best immediately leave a home where she would be +certainly subject to humiliation and annoyance. “I would have Clive, my +boy, take you out of the country, and—and return to me when I have need +of him, and shall send for him,” the father said fondly in reply to a +rebellious look on his son’s face. “I would have you quit this +house as soon as possible. Why not to-night? The law blood-hound may be upon us +ere an hour is over—at this moment for what I know.” +</p> + +<p> +At that moment the door-bell was heard to ring, and the women gave a scream +apiece, as if the bailiffs were actually coming to take possession. Rosey went +off in quite a series of screams, peevishly repressed by her husband, and +always encouraged by mamma, who called her son-in-law an unfeeling wretch. It +must be confessed that Mrs. Clive Newcome did not exhibit much strength of +mind, or comfort her husband much at a moment when he needed consolation. +</p> + +<p> +From angry rebellion and fierce remonstrance, this pair of women now passed to +an extreme terror and desire for instantaneous flight. They would go that +moment—they would wrap the blessed child up in its shawls—and nurse +should take it anywhere—anywhere, poor neglected thing. “My +trunks,” cries Mrs. Mackenzie, “you know are ready packed—I +am sure it is not the treatment which I have received—it is nothing but +my <i>duty</i> and my <i>religion</i>—and the protection which I owe to +this blessed unprotected—yes, <i>unprotected</i>, and <i>robbed</i>, and +<i>cheated</i>, darling child—which have made me stay a <i>single day</i> +in this house. I never thought I should have been <i>robbed</i> in it, or my +darlings with their fine fortunes flung naked on the world. If my Mac was here, +you never had dared to have done this, Colonel Newcome—no, never. He had +his faults—Mackenzie had—but he would never have robbed his own +children! Come away, Rosey, my blessed love, come let us pack your things, and +let us go and <i>hide</i> our <i>heads</i> in sorrow somewhere. Ah! +didn’t I tell you to beware of all <i>painters</i>, and that Clarence was +a true gentleman, and loved you with all his heart, and would never have +cheated you out of your money, for which I will have justice as sure as there +is justice in England.” +</p> + +<p> +During this outburst the Colonel sat utterly scared and silent, supporting his +poor head between his hands. When the harem had departed he turned sadly to his +son. Clive did not believe that his father was a cheat and a rogue. No, thank +God! The two men embraced with tender cordiality and almost happy emotion on +the one side and the other. Never for one moment could Clive think his dear old +father meant wrong—though the speculations were unfortunate in which he +had engaged—though Clive had not liked them; it was a relief to his mind +that they were now come to an end; they should all be happier now, thank God! +those clouds of distrust being removed. Clive felt not one moment’s doubt +but that they should be able to meet fortune with a brave face; and that +happier, much happier days were in store for him than ever they had known since +the period of this confounded prosperity. +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s a good end to it,” says Clive, with flashing eyes and +a flushed face, “and here’s a good health till to-morrow, +father!” and he filled into two glasses the wine still remaining in the +flask. “Good-bye to our fortune, and bad luck go with her—I puff +the prostitute away—<i>Si celeres quatit pennas</i>, you remember what we +used to say at Grey Friars—<i>resigno quæ dedit, et mea virtute me +involvo, probamque pauperiem sine dote quæro</i>.” And he pledged his +father, who drank his wine, his hand shaking as he raised the glass to his +lips, and his kind voice trembling as he uttered the well-known old school +words, with an emotion that was as sacred as a prayer. Once more, and with +hearts full of love, the two men embraced. Clive’s voice would tremble +now if he told the story, as it did when he spoke it to me in happier times, +one calm summer evening when we sat together and talked of dear old days. +</p> + +<p> +Thomas Newcome explained to his son the plan, which, to his mind, as he came +away from the City after the day’s misfortunes, he thought it was best to +pursue. The women and the child were clearly best out of the way. “And +you too, my boy, must be on duty with them until I send for you, which I will +do if your presence can be of the least service to me, or is called for +by—by—our honour,” said the old man with a drop in his voice. +“You must obey me in this, dear Clive, as you have done in everything, +and been a good and dear, and obedient son to me. God pardon me for having +trusted to my own simple old brains too much, and not to you who know so much +better. You will obey me this once more, my boy—you will promise me +this?” and the old man as he spoke took Clive’s hand in both his, +and fondly caressed it. +</p> + +<p> +Then with a shaking hand he took out of his pocket his old purse with the steel +rings, which he had worn for many and many a long year. Clive remembered it, +and his father’s face how it would beam with delight, when he used to +take that very purse out in Clive’s boyish days and tip him just after he +left school. “Here are some notes and some gold,” he said. +“It is Rosey’s, honestly, Clive dear, her half-year’s +dividend, for which you will give an order, please, to Sherrick. He has been +very kind and good, Sherrick. All the servants were providentially paid last +week—there are only the outstanding week’s bills out—we shall +manage to meet those, I dare say. And you will see that Rosey only takes away +such clothes for herself and her baby as are actually necessary, won’t +you, dear? the plain things, you know—none of the fineries—they may +be packed in a petara or two, and you will take them with you—but the +pomps and vanities, you know, we will leave behind—the pearls and +bracelets, and the plate, and all that rubbish—and I will make an +inventory of them to-morrow when you are gone, and give them up, every +rupee’s worth, sir, every anna, by Jove, to the creditors.” +</p> + +<p> +The darkness had fallen by this time, and the obsequious butler entered to +light the dining-room lamps. “You have been a very good and kind servant +to us, Martin,” says the Colonel, making him a low bow. “I should +like to shake you by the hand. We must part company now, and I have no doubt +you and your fellow servants will find good places, all of you, as you merit, +Martin—as you merit. Great losses have fallen upon our family—we +are ruined, sir—we are ruined! The great Bundelcund Banking Company has +stopped payment in India, and our branch here must stop on Monday. Thank my +friends downstairs for their kindness to me and my family.” Martin bowed +in silence with great respect. He and his comrades in the servants’-hall +had been expecting this catastrophe, quite as long as the Colonel himself who +thought he had kept his affairs so profoundly secret. +</p> + +<p> +Clive went up into his women’s apartments, looking with but little +regret, I dare say, round those cheerless nuptial chambers with all their gaudy +fittings; the fine looking-glasses, in which poor Rosey’s little person +had been reflected; the silken curtains under which he had lain by the poor +child’s side, wakeful and lonely. Here he found his child’s nurse, +and his wife, and wife’s mother, busily engaged with a multiplicity of +boxes; with flounces, feathers, fal-lals, and finery, which they were stowing +away in this trunk and that; while the baby lay on its little pink pillow +breathing softly, a little pearly fist placed close to its mouth. The aspect of +the tawdry vanities scattered here and there chafed and annoyed the young man. +He kicked the robes over with his foot. When Mrs. Mackenzie interposed with +loud ejaculations, he sternly bade her to be silent, and not wake the child. +His words were not to be questioned when he spoke in that manner. “You +will take nothing with you, Rosey, but what is strictly necessary—only +two or three of your plainest dresses, and what is required for the boy. What +is in this trunk?” Mrs. Mackenzie stepped forward and declared, and the +nurse vowed upon her honour, and the lady’s-maid asserted really now upon +honour too, that there was nothing but what was most strictly necessary in that +trunk, to which affidavits, when Clive applied to his wife, she gave a rather +timid assent. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are the keys of that trunk?” Upon Mrs. Mackenzie’s +exclamation of “What nonsense!” Clive, putting his foot upon the +flimsy oil-covered box, vowed he would kick the lid off unless it was instantly +opened. Obeying this grim summons, the fluttering women produced the keys, and +the black box was opened before him. +</p> + +<p> +The box was found to contain a number of objects which Clive pronounced to be +by no means necessary to his wife’s and child’s existence. +Trinket-boxes and favourite little gimcracks, chains, rings and pearl +necklaces, the tiara poor Rosey had worn at court—the feathers and the +gorgeous train which had decorated the little person—all these were found +packed away in this one receptacle; and in another box, I am sorry to say, were +the silver forks and spoons (the butler wisely judging that the rich and +splendid electrotype ware might as well be left behind)—all the silver +forks, spoons, and ladles, and our poor old friend the cocoa-nut tree, which +these female robbers would have carried out of the premises. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Clive Newcome burst out into fierce laughter when he saw the cocoa-nut +tree; he laughed so loud that baby woke, and his mother-in-law called him a +brute, and the nurse ran to give its accustomed quietus to the little screaming +infant. Rosey’s eyes poured forth a torrent of little protests, and she +would have cried yet more loudly than the other baby, had not her husband, +again fiercely checking her, sworn with a dreadful oath, that unless she told +him the whole truth, “By heavens she should leave the house with nothing +but what covered her.” Even the Campaigner could not make head against +Clive’s stern resolution; and the incipient insurrection of the maids and +the mistresses was quelled by his spirit. The lady’s-maid, a flighty +creature, received her wages and took her leave: but the nurse could not find +it in her heart to quit her little nursling so suddenly, and accompanied +Clive’s household in the journey upon which those poor folks were bound. +What stolen goods were finally discovered when the family reached foreign parts +were found in Mrs. Mackenzie’s trunks, not in her daughter’s: a +silver filigree basket, a few teaspoons, baby’s gold coral, and a costly +crimson velvet-bound copy of the Hon. Miss Grimstone’s Church Service, to +which articles, having thus appropriated them, Mrs. Mackenzie henceforward laid +claim as her own. +</p> + +<p> +So when the packing was done a cab was called to receive the modest trunks of +this fugitive family—the coachman was bidden to put his horses to again, +and for the last time poor Rosey Newcome sate in her own carriage, to which the +Colonel conducted her with his courtly old bow, kissing the baby as it slept +once more unconscious in its nurse’s embrace, and bestowing a very grave +and polite parting salute upon the Campaigner. +</p> + +<p> +Then Clive and his father entered a cab on which the trunks were borne, and +they drove to the Tower Stairs, where the ship lay which was to convey them out +of England; and, during that journey, no doubt, they talked over their altered +prospects, and I am sure Clive’s father blessed his son fondly, and +committed him and his family to a good God’s gracious keeping, and +thought of him with sacred love when they had parted, and Thomas Newcome had +returned to his lonely house to watch and to think of his ruined fortunes, and +to pray that he might have courage under them; that he might bear his own fate +honourably; and that a gentle one might be dealt to those beloved beings for +whom his life had been sacrificed in vain. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0072"></a> +CHAPTER LXXII.<br> +Belisarius</h2> + +<p> +When the sale of Colonel Newcome’s effects took place, a friend of the +family bought in for a few shillings those two swords which had hung, as we +have said, in the good man’s chamber, and for which no single broker +present had the heart to bid. The head of Clive’s father, painted by +himself, which had always kept its place in the young man’s studio, +together with a lot of his oil-sketchings, easels, and painting apparatus, were +purchased by the faithful J. J., who kept them until his friend should return +to London and reclaim them, and who showed the most generous solicitude in +Clive’s behalf. J. J. was elected of the Royal Academy this year, and +Clive, it was evident, was working hard at the profession which he had always +loved; for he sent over three pictures to the Academy, and I never knew man +more mortified than the affectionate J. J., when two of these unlucky pieces +were rejected by the committee for the year. One pretty little piece, called +“The Stranded Boat,” got a fair place on the Exhibition walls, and, +you may be sure, was loudly praised by a certain critic in the <i>Pall Mall +Gazette</i>. The picture was sold on the first day of the exhibition at the +price of twenty-five pounds, which the artist demanded; and when the kind J. J. +wrote to inform his friend of this satisfactory circumstance, and to say that +he held the money at Clive’s disposal, the latter replied with many +expressions of sincere gratitude, at the same time begging him directly to +forward the money, with our old friend Thomas Newcome’s love, to Mrs. +Sarah Mason, at Newcome. But J. J. never informed his friend that he himself +was the purchaser of the picture; nor was Clive made acquainted with the fact +until some time afterwards, when he found it hanging in Ridley’s studio. +</p> + +<p> +I have said that we none of us were aware at this time what was the real state +of Colonel Newcome’s finances, and hoped that, after giving up every +shilling of his property which was confiscated to the creditors of the Bank, he +had still, from his retiring pension and military allowances, at least enough +reputably to maintain him. On one occasion, having business in the City, I +there met Mr. Sherrick. Affairs had been going ill with that gentleman—he +had been let in terribly, he informed me, by Lord Levant’s +insolvency—having had large money transactions with his lordship. +“There’s none of them so good as old Newcome,” Mr. Sherrick +said with a sigh; “that was a good one—that was an honest man if +ever I saw one—with no more guile, and no more idea of business than a +baby. Why didn’t he take my advice, poor old cove?—he might be +comfortable now. Why did he sell away that annuity, Pendennis? I got it done +for him when nobody else perhaps could have got it done for him—for the +security ain’t worth twopence if Newcome wasn’t an honest +man;—but I know he is, and would rather starve and eat the nails off his +fingers than not keep his word, the old trump. And when he came to me, a good +two months before the smash of the Bank, which I knew it, sir, and saw that it +must come—when he came and raised three thousand pounds to meet them +d—d electioneering bills, having to pay lawyers, commission, premium, +life-insurance—you know the whole game, Mr. P.—I as good as went +down on my knees to him—I did—at the North and South American +Coffee-house, where he was to meet the party about the money, and said, +‘Colonel, don’t raise it—I tell you, let it stand +over—let it go in along with the bankruptcy that’s +a-coming,’—but he wouldn’t—he went on like an old +Bengal tiger, roaring about his honour; he paid the bills every +shilling—infernal long bills they were, and it’s my belief that, at +this minute, he ain’t got fifty pounds a year of his own to spend. I +would send him back my commission—I would by Jove—only times is so +bad, and that rascal Levant let me in. It went to my heart to take the old +cock’s money—but it’s gone—that and ever so much +more—and Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel too, Mr. P. Hang that young +Levant.” +</p> + +<p> +Squeezing my hand after this speech, Sherrick ran across the street after some +other capitalist who was entering the Diddlesex Insurance Office, and left me +very much grieved and dismayed at finding that my worst fears in regard to +Thomas Newcome were confirmed. Should we confer with his wealthy family +respecting the Colonel’s impoverished condition? Was his brother Hobson +Newcome aware of it? As for Sir Barnes, the quarrel between him and his uncle +had been too fierce to admit of hopes of relief from that quarter. Barnes had +been put to very heavy expenses in the first contested election; had come +forward again immediately on his uncle’s resignation, but again had been +beaten by a more liberal candidate, his quondam former friend, Mr. +Higg—who formally declared against Sir Barnes, and who drove him finally +out of the representation of Newcome. From this gentleman it was vain of course +for Colonel Newcome’s friends to expect relief. +</p> + +<p> +How to aid him? He was proud—past work—nearly seventy years old. +“Oh, why did those cruel Academicians refuse Clive’s +pictures?” cries Laura. “I have no patience with them—had the +pictures been exhibited I know who might have bought them—but that is +vain now. He would suspect at once, and send her money away. Oh, Pen! why, why +didn’t he come when I wrote that letter to Brussels?” +</p> + +<p> +From persons so poorly endowed with money as ourselves, any help, but of the +merest temporary nature, was out of the question. We knew our friends too well +not to know that they would disdain to receive it. It was agreed between me and +Laura that at any rate I should go and see Clive. Our friends indeed were at a +very short distance from us, and, having exiled themselves from England, could +yet see its coasts from their windows upon any clear day. Boulogne was their +present abiding-place—refuge of how many thousands of other unfortunate +Britons—and to this friendly port I betook myself speedily, having the +address of Colonel Newcome. His quarters were in a quiet grass-grown old street +of the Old Town. None of the family were at home when I called. There was +indeed no servant to answer the bell, but the good-natured French domestic of a +neighbouring lodger told me that the young monsieur went out every day to make +his designs, and that I should probably find the elder gentleman upon the +rampart, where he was in the custom of going every day. I strolled along by +those pretty old walks and bastions, under the pleasant trees which shadow +them, and the grey old gabled houses from which you look down upon the gay new +city, and the busy port, and the piers stretching into the shining sea, dotted +with a hundred white sails or black smoking steamers, and bounded by the +friendly lines of the bright English shore. There are few prospects more +charming than the familiar view from those old French walls—few places +where young children may play, and ruminating old age repose more pleasantly +than on those peaceful rampart gardens. +</p> + +<p> +I found our dear old friend seated on one of the benches, a newspaper on his +knees, and by his side a red-cheeked little French lass, upon whose lap Thomas +Newcome the younger lay sleeping. The Colonel’s face flushed up when he +saw me. As he advanced a step or two towards me I could see that he trembled in +his walk. His hair had grown almost quite white. He looked now to be more than +his age—he whose carriage last year had been so erect, whose figure had +been so straight and manly. I was very much moved at meeting him, and at seeing +the sad traces which pain and grief had left in the countenance of the dear old +man. +</p> + +<p> +“So you are come to see me, my good young friend,” cried the +Colonel, with a trembling voice. “It is very, very kind of you. Is not +this a pretty drawing-room to receive our friends in? We have not many of them +now; Boy and I come and sit here for hours every day. Hasn’t he grown a +fine boy? He can say several words now, sir, and can walk surprisingly well. +Soon he will be able to walk with his grandfather, and then Marie will not have +the trouble to wait upon either of us.” He repeated this sentiment in his +pretty old French, and turning with a bow to Marie. The girl said monsieur knew +very well that she did not desire better than to come out with baby; that it +was better than staying at home, pardieu; and, the clock striking at this +moment, she rose up with her child, crying out that it was time to return or +madame would scold. +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Mackenzie has rather a short temper,” the Colonel said with a +gentle smile. “Poor thing, she has had a great deal to bear in +consequence, Pen, of my imprudence. I am glad you never took shares in our +bank. I should not be so glad to see you as I am now, if I had brought losses +upon you as I have upon so many of my friends.” I, for my part, trembled +to hear the good old man was under the domination of the Campaigner. +</p> + +<p> +“Bayham sends me the paper regularly; he is a very kind faithful +creature. How glad I am that he has got a snug berth in the City! His company +really prospers, I am happy to think, unlike some companies you know of, Pen. I +have read your two speeches, sir, and Clive and I liked them very much. The +poor boy works all day at his pictures. You know he has sold one at the +exhibition, which has given us a great deal of heart—and he has completed +two or three more—and I am sitting to him now for—what do you +think, sir? for Belisarius. Will you give Belisarius and the Obolus kind +word?” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear, dear old friend,” I said in great emotion, “if you +will do me the kindness to take my Obolus or to use my services in any way, you +will give me more pleasure than ever I had from your generous bounties in old +days. Look, sir, I wear the watch which you gave me when you went to India. Did +you not tell me then to look over Clive and serve him if I could? Can’t I +serve him now?” and I went on further in this strain, asseverating with +great warmth and truth that my wife’s affection and my own were most +sincere for both of them, and that our pride would be to be able to help such +dear friends. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel said I had a good heart, and my wife had, +though—though—he did not finish this sentence, but I could +interpret it without need of its completion. My wife and the two ladies of +Colonel Newcome’s family never could be friends, however much my poor +Laura tried to be intimate with these women. Her very efforts at intimacy +caused a frigidity and hauteur which Laura could not overcome. Little Rosey and +her mother set us down as two aristocratic personages; nor for our parts were +we very much disturbed at this opinion of the Campaigner and little Rosa. +</p> + +<p> +I talked with the Colonel for half an hour or more about his affairs, which +indeed were very gloomy, and Clive’s prospects, of which he strove to +present as cheering a view as possible. He was obliged to confirm the news +which Sherrick had given me, and to own, in fact, that all his pension was +swallowed up by a payment of interest and life insurance for sums which he had +been compelled to borrow. How could he do otherwise than meet his engagements? +Thank God, he had Clive’s full approval for what he had done—had +communicated the circumstance to his son almost immediately after it took +place, and that was a comfort to him—an immense comfort. “For the +women are very angry,” said the poor Colonel; “you see they do not +understand the laws of honour, at least as we understand them: and perhaps I +was wrong in hiding the truth as I certainly did from Mrs. Mackenzie, but I +acted for the best—I hoped against hope that some chance might turn in +our favour. God knows, I had a hard task enough in wearing a cheerful face for +months, and in following my little Rosa about to her parties and balls; but +poor Mrs. Mackenzie has a right to be angry, only I wish my little girl did not +side with her mother so entirely, for the loss of her affection gives me great +pain.” +</p> + +<p> +So it was as I suspected. The Campaigner ruled over this family, and added to +all their distresses by her intolerable presence and tyranny. “Why, +sir,” I ventured to ask, “if, as I gather from you—and I +remember,” I added with a laugh, “certain battles-royal which Clive +described to me in old days—if you and the Campai—Mrs. Mackenzie do +not agree, why should she continue to live with you, when you would all be so +much happier apart?” +</p> + +<p> +“She has a right to live in the house,” says the Colonel; “It +is I who have no right in it. I am a poor old pensioner, don’t you see, +subsisting on Rosey’s bounty? We live on the hundred a year, secured to +her at her marriage, and Mrs. Mackenzie has her forty pounds of pension which +she adds to the common stock. It is I who have made away with every shilling of +Rosey’s 17,000 pounds, God help me, and with 1500 pounds of her +mother’s. They put their little means together, and they keep us—me +and Clive. What can we do for a living? Great God! What can we do? Why, I am so +useless that even when my poor boy earned 25 pounds for his picture, I felt we +were bound to send it to Sarah Mason, and you may fancy when this came to Mrs. +Mackenzie’s ears, what a life my boy and I led. I have never spoken of +these things to any mortal soul—I even don’t speak of them with +Clive—but seeing your kind and honest face has made me talk—you +must pardon my garrulity—I am growing old, Arthur. This poverty and these +quarrels have beaten my spirit down—there, I shall talk on this subject +no more. I wish, sir, I could ask you to dine with us, but”—and +here he smiled—“we must get the leave of the higher powers.” +</p> + +<p> +I was determined, in spite of prohibitions and Campaigners, to see my old +friend Clive, and insisted on walking back with the Colonel to his lodgings, at +the door of which we met Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter. Rosa blushed up a +little—looked at her mamma—and then greeted me with a hand and a +curtsey. The Campaigner also saluted me in a majestic but amicable manner, made +no objection even to my entering her apartments and seeing <i>the condition to +which they were reduced:</i> this phrase was uttered with particular emphasis +and a significant look towards the Colonel, who bowed his meek head and +preceded me into the lodgings, which were in truth very homely, pretty, and +comfortable. The Campaigner was an excellent manager—restless, bothering, +brushing perpetually. Such fugitive gimcracks as they had brought away with +them decorated the little salon. Mrs. Mackenzie, who took the entire command, +even pressed me to dine and partake, if so fashionable a gentleman would +<i>condescend</i> to partake, of a humble exile’s fare. No fare was +perhaps very pleasant to me in company with that woman, but I wanted to see my +dear old Clive, and gladly accepted his voluble mother-in-law’s not +disinterested hospitality. She beckoned the Colonel aside; whispered to him, +putting something into his hand; on which he took his hat and went away. Then +Rosey was dismissed upon some other pretext, and I had the felicity to be left +alone with Mrs. Captain Mackenzie. +</p> + +<p> +She instantly improved the occasion; and with great eagerness and volubility +entered into her statement of the present affairs and position of this +unfortunate family. She described darling Rosey’s delicate state, poor +thing—nursed with tenderness and in the lap of luxury—brought up +with every delicacy and the fondest mother—never knowing in the least how +to take care of herself, and likely to fall down and perish unless the kind +Campaigner were by to prop and protect her. She was in delicate +health—very delicate—ordered cod-liver oil by the doctor. Heaven +knows how he could be paid for those expensive medicines out of the pittance to +which the <i>imprudence</i>—the most culpable and designing +<i>imprudence</i>, and <i>extravagance</i>, and <i>folly</i> of Colonel Newcome +had reduced them! Looking out from the window as she spoke I saw—we both +saw—the dear old gentleman sadly advancing towards the house, a parcel in +his hand. Seeing his near approach, and that our interview was likely to come +to an end, Mrs. Mackenzie rapidly whispered to me that she knew I had a good +heart—that I had been blessed by Providence with a fine fortune, which I +knew how to keep better than <i>some</i> folks—and that if, as no doubt +was my intention—for with what other but a charitable view could I have +come to see them?—“and most generous and noble was it of you to come, and +I always thought it of you, Mr. Pendennis, whatever <i>other</i> people said to +the contrary—if I proposed to give them relief, which was most +needful—and for which a <i>mother’s blessings</i> would follow +me—let it be to her, the Campaigner, that my loan should be +confided—for as for the Colonel, he is not fit to be trusted with a +shilling, and has already flung away <i>immense sums</i> upon some old woman he +keeps in the country, leaving his darling Rosey without the actual necessaries +of life. +</p> + +<p> +The woman’s greed and rapacity—the flattery with which she chose to +belabour me at dinner, so choked and disgusted me, that I could hardly swallow +the meal, though my poor old friend had been sent out to purchase a pâté from +the pastrycook’s for my especial refection. Clive was not at the dinner. +He seldom returned till late at night on sketching days. Neither his wife nor +his mother-in-law seemed much to miss him; and seeing that the Campaigner +engrossed the entire share of the conversation, and proposed not to leave me +for five minutes alone with the Colonel, I took leave rather speedily of my +entertainers, leaving a message for Clive, and a prayer that he would come and +see me at my hotel. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0073"></a> +CHAPTER LXXIII.<br> +In which Belisarius returns from Exile</h2> + +<p> +I was sitting in the dusk in my room at Hotel des Bains, when the visitor for +whom I hoped made his appearance in the person of Clive, with his broad +shoulders, and broad hat, and a shaggy beard, which he had thought fit in his +quality of painter to assume. Our greeting it need not be said was warm; and +our talk, which extended far into the night, very friendly and confidential. If +I make my readers confidants in Mr. Clive’s private affairs, I ask my +friend’s pardon for narrating his history in their behoof. The world had +gone very ill with my poor Clive, and I do not think that the pecuniary losses +which had visited him and his father afflicted him near so sorely as the state +of his home. In a pique with the woman he loved, and from that generous +weakness which formed part of his character, and which led him to acquiesce in +most wishes of his good father, the young man had gratified the darling desire +of the Colonel’s heart, and taken the wife whom his two old friends +brought to him. Rosey, who was also, as we have shown, of a very obedient and +ductile nature, had acquiesced gladly enough in her mamma’s opinion, that +she was in love with the rich and handsome young Clive, and accepted him for +better or worse. So undoubtedly would this good child have accepted Captain +Hoby, her previous adorer, have smilingly promised fidelity to the Captain at +church, and have made a very good, happy, and sufficient little wife for that +officer,—had not mamma commanded her to jilt him. What wonder that these +elders should wish to see their two dear young ones united? They began with +suitable age, money, good temper, and parents’ blessings. It is not the +first time that, with all these excellent helps to prosperity and happiness, a +marriage has turned out unfortunately—a pretty, tight ship gone to wreck +that set forth on its voyage with cheers from the shore, and every prospect of +fair wind and fine weather. +</p> + +<p> +We have before quoted poor Clive’s simile of the shoes with which his +good old father provided him—as pretty a little pair of shoes as need +be—only they did not fit the wearer. If they pinched him at first, how +they blistered and tortured him now! If Clive was gloomy and discontented even +when the honeymoon had scarce waned, and he and his family sat at home in state +and splendour under the boughs of the famous silver cocoa-nut tree, what was +the young man’s condition now in poverty, when they had no love along +with a scant dinner of herbs; when his mother-in-law grudged each morsel which +his poor old father ate—when a vulgar, coarse-minded woman pursued with +brutal sarcasm and deadly rancour one of the tenderest and noblest gentlemen in +the world—when an ailing wife, always under some one’s domination, +received him with helpless hysterical cries and reproaches—when a coarse +female tyrant, stupid, obstinate, utterly unable to comprehend the son’s +kindly genius, or the father’s gentle spirit, bullied over both, using +the intolerable undeniable advantage which her actual wrongs gave her to +tyrannise over these two wretched men! He had never heard the last of that +money which they had sent to Mrs. Mason, Clive said. When the knowledge of the +fact came to the Campaigner’s ears, she raised such a storm as almost +killed the poor Colonel, and drove his son half mad. She seized the howling +infant, vowing that its unnatural father and grandfather were bent upon +starving it—she consoled and sent Rosey into hysterics—she took the +outlawed parson to whose church they went, and the choice society of bankrupt +captains, captains’ ladies, fugitive stockbrokers’ wives, and dingy +frequenters of billiard-rooms, and refugees from the Bench, into her councils; +and in her daily visits amongst these personages, and her walks on the pier, +whither she trudged with poor Rosey in her train, Mrs. Mackenzie made known her +own wrongs and her daughter’s—showed how the Colonel, having robbed +and cheated them previously, was now living upon them; insomuch that Mrs. +Bolter, the levanting auctioneer’s wife, would not make the poor old man +a bow when she met him—that Mrs. Captain Kitely, whose husband had lain +for seven years past in Boulogne gaol ordered her son to cut Clive; and when, +the child being sick, the poor old Colonel went for arrowroot to the +chemist’s, young Snooks, the apothecary’s assistant, refused to +allow him to take the powder away without previously depositing the money. +</p> + +<p> +He had no money, Thomas Newcome. He gave up every farthing. After having +impoverished all around him, he had no right, he said, to touch a sixpence of +the wretched pittance remaining to them—he had even given up his cigar, +the poor old man, the companion and comforter of forty years. He was “not +fit to be trusted with money,” Mrs. Mackenzie said, and the good man +owned as he ate his scanty crust, and bowed his noble old head in silence under +that cowardly persecution. +</p> + +<p> +And this, at the end of threescore and seven or eight years, was to be the +close of a life which had been spent in freedom and splendour, and kindness and +honour; this the reward of the noblest heart that ever beat—the tomb and +prison of a gallant warrior who had ridden in twenty battles—whose course +through life had been a bounty wherever it had passed—whose name had been +followed by blessings, and whose career was to end here—here—in a +mean room, in a mean alley of a foreign town—a low furious woman standing +over him and stabbing the kind defenceless heart with killing insult and daily +outrage! +</p> + +<p> +As we sat together in the dark, Clive told me this wretched story, which was +wrung from him with a passionate emotion that I could not but keenly share. He +wondered the old man lived, Clive said. Some of the women’s taunts and +gibes, as he could see, struck his father so that he gasped and started back as +if some one had lashed him with a whip. “He would make away with +himself,” said poor Clive, “but he deems this is his punishment, +and that he must bear it as long as it pleases God. He does not care for his +own losses, as far as they concern himself: but these reproaches of Mrs. +Mackenzie, and some things which were said to him in the Bankruptcy Court, by +one or two widows of old friends, who were induced through his representations, +to take shares in that infernal bank, have affected him dreadfully. I hear him +lying awake and groaning at night, God bless him. Great God! what can I +do—what can I do?” burst out the young man in a dreadful paroxysm +of grief. “I have tried to get lessons—I went to London on the deck +of a steamer, and took a lot of drawings with me—tried +picture-dealers—pawnbrokers—Jews—Moss, whom you may remember +at Gandish’s, and who gave me for forty-two drawings, eighteen pounds. I +brought the money back to Boulogne. It was enough to pay the doctor, and bury +our last poor little dead baby. <i>Tenez</i>, Pen, you must give me some +supper: I have had nothing all day but a <i>pain de deux sous;</i> I +can’t stand it at home. My heart’s almost broken—you must +give me some money, Pen, old boy. I know you will. I thought of writing to you, +but I wanted to support myself, you see. When I went to London with the +drawings I tried George’s chambers, but he was in the country, I saw +Crackthorpe on the street in Oxford Street, but I could not face him, and +bolted down Hanway Yard. I tried, and I could not ask him, and I got the 18 +pounds from Moss that day, and came home with it.” +</p> + +<p> +Give him money? of course I would give him money—my dear old friend! And, +as an alternative and a wholesome shock to check that burst of passion and +grief in which the poor fellow indulged, I thought fit to break into a very +fierce and angry invective on my own part, which served to disguise the extreme +feeling of pain and pity that I did not somehow choose to exhibit. I rated +Clive soundly, and taxed him with unfriendliness and ingratitude for not having +sooner applied to friends who would think shame of themselves whilst he was in +need. Whatever he wanted was his as much as mine. I could not understand how +the necessity of the family should, in truth, be so extreme as he described it, +for after all many a poor family lived upon very much less; but I uttered none +of these objections, checking them with the thought that Clive, on his first +arrival at Boulogne, entirely ignorant of the practice of economy, might have +imprudently engaged in expenses which had reduced him to this present +destitution.* +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +* I did not know at the time that Mrs. Mackenzie had taken entire +superintendence of the family treasury—and that this exemplary woman was +putting away, as she had done previously, sundry little sums to meet rainy +days. +</p> + +<p> +I took the liberty of asking about debts, and of these Clive gave me to +understand there were none—at least none of his or his father’s +contracting. “If we were too proud to borrow, and I think we were wrong, +Pen, my dear old boy—I think we were wrong now—at least, we were +too proud to owe. My colourman takes his bill out in drawings, and I think owes +me a trifle. He got me some lessons at fifty sous a ticket—a pound the +ten—from an economical swell who has taken a château here, and has two +flunkeys in livery. He has four daughters, who take advantage of the lessons, +and screws ten per cent upon the poor colourman’s pencils and +drawing-paper. It’s pleasant work to give the lessons to the children; +and to be patronised by the swell; and not expensive to him, is it, Pen? But I +don’t mind that, if I could but get lessons enough: for, you see, besides +our expenses here, we must have some more money, and the dear old governor +would die outright if poor old Sarah Mason did not get her 50 pounds a +year.” +</p> + +<p> +And now there arrived a plentiful supper, and a bottle of good wine, of which +the giver was not sorry to partake after the meagre dinner at three +o’clock, to which I had been invited by the Campaigner; and it was +midnight when I walked back with my friend to his house in the upper town; and +all the stars of heaven were shining cheerily; and my dear Clive’s face +wore an expression of happiness, such as I remembered in old days, as we shook +hands and parted with a “God bless you.” +</p> + +<p> +To Clive’s friend, revolving these things in his mind, as he lay in one +of those most snug and comfortable beds at the excellent Hotel des Bains, it +appeared that this town of Boulogne was a very bad market for the +artist’s talents; and that he had to bring them to London, where a score +of old friends would assuredly be ready to help him. And if the Colonel, too, +could be got away from the domination of the Campaigner, I felt certain that +the dear old gentleman could but profit by his leave of absence. My wife and I +at this time inhabited a spacious old house in Queens Square, Westminster, +where there was plenty of room for father and son. I knew that Laura would be +delighted to welcome these guests—may the wife of every worthy gentleman +who reads these pages be as ready to receive her husband’s friends. It +was the state of Rosa’s health, and the Campaigner’s authority and +permission, about which I was in doubt, and whether this lady’s two +slaves would be allowed to go away. +</p> + +<p> +These cogitations kept the present biographer long awake, and he did not +breakfast next day until an hour before noon. I had the coffee-room to myself +by chance, and my meal was not yet ended when the waiter announced a lady to +visit Mr. Pendennis, and Mrs. Mackenzie made her appearance. No signs of care +or poverty were visible in the attire or countenance of the buxom widow. A +handsome bonnet, decorated within with a profusion of poppies, bluebells; and +ears of corn; a jewel on her forehead, not costly, but splendid in appearance, +and glittering artfully over that central spot from which her wavy chestnut +hair parted to cluster in ringlets round her ample cheeks; a handsome India +shawl, smart gloves, a rich silk dress, a neat parasol of blue with pale yellow +lining, a multiplicity of glittering rinks, and a very splendid gold watch and +chain, which I remembered in former days as hanging round poor Rosey’s +white neck;—all these adornments set off the widow’s person, so +that you might have thought her a wealthy capitalist’s lady, and never +could have supposed that she was a poor, cheated, ruined, robbed, unfortunate +Campaigner. +</p> + +<p> +Nothing could be more gracious than the <i>accueil</i> of this lady. She paid +me many handsome compliments about my literary work—asked most +affectionately for dear Mrs. Pendennis and the dear children—and then, as +I expected, coming to business, contrasted the happiness and genteel position +of my wife and family with the misery and wrongs of her own blessed child and +grandson. She never could call that child by the odious name which he received +at his baptism. <i>I</i> knew what bitter reasons she had to dislike the name +of Thomas Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +She again rapidly enumerated the wrongs she had received at the hands of that +gentleman; mentioned the vast sums of money out of which she and her +soul’s darling had been tricked by that poor muddle-headed creature, to +say no worse of him; and described finally their present pressing need. The +doctors, the burial, Rosey’s delicate condition, the cost of sweetbreads, +calf’s-foot jelly, and cod-liver oil, were again passed in a rapid +calculation before me; and she ended her speech by expressing her gratification +that I had attended to her advice of the previous day, and not given Clive +Newcome a direct loan; that the family wanted it, the Campaigner called upon +Heaven to witness; that Clive and his absurd poor father would fling guineas +out of the window was a fact equally certain; the rest of the argument was +obvious, namely, that Mr. Pendennis should administer a donation to herself. +</p> + +<p> +I had brought but a small sum of money in my pocket-book, though Mrs. +Mackenzie, intimate with bankers, and having, thank Heaven, in spite of all her +misfortunes, the utmost confidence of <i>all</i> her tradesmen, hinted a +perfect willingness on her part to accept an order upon her friends, Hobson +Brothers of London. +</p> + +<p> +This direct thrust I gently and smilingly parried by asking Mrs. Mackenzie +whether she supposed a gentleman who had just paid an electioneering bill, and +had, at the best of times, but a very small income, might sometimes not be in a +condition to draw satisfactorily upon Messrs. Hobson or any other bankers? Her +countenance fell at this remark, nor was her cheerfulness much improved by the +tender of one of the two bank-notes which then happened to be in my possession. +I said that I had a use for the remaining note, and that it would not be more +than sufficient to pay my hotel bill, and the expenses of my party back to +London. +</p> + +<p> +My party? I had here to divulge, with some little trepidation, the plan which I +had been making overnight; to explain how I thought that Clive’s great +talents were wasted at Boulogne, and could only find a proper market in London; +how I was pretty certain, through my connection with booksellers, to find some +advantageous employment for him, and would have done so months ago had I known +the state of the case; but I had believed, until within a very few days since, +that the Colonel, in spite of his bankruptcy, was still in the enjoyment of +considerable military pensions. +</p> + +<p> +This statement, of course, elicited from the widow a number of remarks not +complimentary to my dear old Colonel. He might have kept his pensions had he +not been a fool—he was a baby about money matters—misled himself +and everybody—was a log in the house, etc. etc. etc. +</p> + +<p> +I suggested that his annuities might possibly be put into some more +satisfactory shape—that I had trustworthy lawyers with whom I would put +him in communication—that he had best come to London to see to these +matters—and that my wife had a large house where she would most gladly +entertain the two gentlemen. +</p> + +<p> +This I said with some reasonable dread—fearing, in the first place, her +refusal; in the second, her acceptance of the invitation, with a proposal, as +our house was large, to come herself and inhabit it for a while. Had I not seen +that Campaigner arrive for a month at poor James Binnie’s house in +Fitzroy Square, and stay there for many years? Was I not aware that when she +once set her foot in a gentleman’s establishment, terrific battles must +ensue before she could be dislodged? Had she not once been routed by Clive? and +was she not now in command and possession? Do I not, finally, know something of +the world; and have I not a weak, easy temper? I protest it was with terror +that I awaited the widow’s possible answer to my proposal. +</p> + +<p> +To my great relief, she expressed the utmost approval of both my plans. I was +uncommonly kind, she was sure, to interest myself about the two gentlemen, and +for her blessed Rosa’s sake, a fond mother thanked me. It was most +advisable that he should earn some money by that horrid profession which he had +chosen to adopt—<i>trade, she</i> called it. She was clearly anxious get +rid both of father and son, and agreed that the sooner they went the better. +</p> + +<p> +We walked back arm-in-arm to the Colonel’s quarters in the Old Town, Mrs. +Mackenzie, in the course of our walk, doing me the honour to introduce me by +name to several dingy acquaintances, whom we met sauntering up the street, and +imparting to me, as each moved away, the pecuniary cause of his temporary +residence in Boulogne. Spite of Rosey’s delicate state of health, Mrs. +Mackenzie did not hesitate to break the news to her of the gentlemen’s +probable departure, abruptly and eagerly, as if the intelligence was likely to +please her:—and it did, rather than otherwise. The young woman, being in +the habit of letting mamma judge for her, continued it in this instance; and +whether her husband stayed or went, seemed to be equally content or apathetic. +“And is it not most kind and generous of dear Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis to +propose to receive Mr. Newcome and the Colonel?” This opportunity for +gratitude being pointed out to Rosey, she acquiesced in it straightway—it +was very kind of me, Rosey was sure. “And don’t you ask after dear +Mrs. Pendennis and the dear children—you poor dear suffering darling +child?” Rosey, who had neglected this inquiry, immediately hoped Mrs. +Pendennis and the children were well. The overpowering mother had taken utter +possession of this poor little thing. Rosey’s eyes followed the +Campaigner about, and appealed to her at all moments. She sat under Mrs. +Mackenzie as a bird before a boa-constrictor, +doomed—fluttering—fascinated—scared and fawning as a whipt +spaniel before a keeper. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +The Colonel was on his accustomed bench on the rampart at this sunny hour. I +repaired thither, and found the old gentleman seated by his grandson, who lay, +as yesterday, on the little bonne’s lap, one of his little purple hands +closed round the grandfather’s finger. “Hush!” says the good +man, lifting up his other finger to his moustache, as I approached, +“Boy’s asleep. Il est bien joli quand il dort—le Boy, +n’est-ce pas, Marie?” The maid believed monsieur well—the boy +was a little angel. “This maid is a most trustworthy, valuable person, +Pendennis,” the Colonel said, with much gravity. +</p> + +<p> +The boa-constrictor had fascinated him, too—the lash of that woman at +home had cowed that helpless, gentle, noble spirit. As I looked at the head so +upright and manly, now so beautiful and resigned—the year of his past +life seemed to pass before me somehow in a flash of thought. I could fancy the +accursed tyranny—the dumb acquiescence—the brutal jeer—the +helpless remorse—the sleepless nights of pain and recollection—the +gentle heart lacerated with deadly stabs—and the impotent hope. I own I +burst into a sob at the sight, and thought of the noble suffering creature, and +hid my face, and turned away. +</p> + +<p> +He sprang up, releasing his hand from the child’s, and placing it, the +kind shaking hand, on my shoulder. “What is it, Arthur—my dear +boy?” he said, looking wistfully in my face. “No bad news from +home, my dear? Laura and the children well?” +</p> + +<p> +The emotion was mastered in a moment, I put his arm under mine, and as we +slowly sauntered up and down the sunny walk of the old rampart, I told him how +I had come with special commands from Laura to bring him for a while to stay +with us, and to settle his business, which I was sure had been wofully +mismanaged, and to see whether we could not find the means of getting some +little out of the wreck of the property for the boy yonder. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +At first Colonel Newcome would not hear of quitting Boulogne, where Rosey would +miss him—he was sure she would want him—but before the ladies of +his family, to whom we presently returned, Thomas Newcome’s resolution +was quickly recalled. He agreed to go, and Clive coming in at this time was put +in possession of our plan and gladly acquiesced in it. On that very evening I +came with a carriage to conduct my two friends to the steamboat. Their little +packets were made and ready. There was no pretence of grief at parting on the +women’s side, but Marie, the little maid, with Boy in her arms, cried +sadly; and Clive heartily embraced the child; and the Colonel, going back to +give it one more kiss, drew out of his neckcloth a little gold brooch which he +wore, and which, trembling, he put into Marie’s hand, bidding her take +good care of Boy till his return. +</p> + +<p> +“She is a good girl—a most faithful, attached girl, Arthur, do you +see,” the kind old gentleman said; “and I had no money to give +her—no, not one single rupee.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0074"></a> +CHAPTER LXXIV.<br> +In which Clive begins the World</h2> + +<p> +We are ending our history, and yet poor Clive is but beginning the world. He +has to earn the bread which he eats henceforth; and, as I saw his labours, his +trials, and his disappointments, I could not but compare his calling with my +own. +</p> + +<p> +The drawbacks and penalties attendant upon our profession are taken into full +account, as we well know, by literary men, and their friends. Our poverty, +hardships, and disappointments are set forth with great emphasis, and often +with too great truth by those who speak of us; but there are advantages +belonging to our trade which are passed over, I think, by some of those who +exercise it and describe it, and for which, in striking the balance of our +accounts, we are not always duly thankful. We have no patron, so to +speak—we sit in ante-chambers no more, waiting the present of a few +guineas from my lord, in return for a fulsome dedication. We sell our wares to +the book-purveyor, between whom and us there is no greater obligation than +between him and his paper-maker or printer. In the great towns in our country +immense stores of books are provided for us, with librarians to class them, +kind attendants to wait upon us, and comfortable appliances for study. We +require scarce any capital wherewith to exercise our trade. What other +so-called learned profession is equally fortunate? A doctor, for example, after +carefully and expensively educating himself, must invest in house and +furniture, horses, carriage, and menservants, before the public patient will +think of calling him in. I am told that such gentlemen have to coax and wheedle +dowagers, to humour hypochondriacs, to practise a score of little subsidiary +arts in order to make that of healing profitable. How many many hundreds of +pounds has a barrister to sink upon his stock-in-trade before his returns are +available? There are the costly charges of university education—the +costly chambers in the Inn of Court—the clerk and his +maintenance—the inevitable travels on circuit—certain expenses all +to be defrayed before the possible client makes his appearance, and the chance +of fame or competency arrives. The prizes are great, to be sure, in the law, +but what a prodigious sum the lottery-ticket costs! If a man of letters cannot +win, neither does he risk so much. Let us speak of our trade as we find it, and +not be too eager in calling out for public compassion. +</p> + +<p> +The artists, for the most part, do not cry out their woes as loudly as some +gentlemen of the literary fraternity, and yet I think the life of many of them +is harder; their chances even more precarious, and the conditions of their +profession less independent and agreeable than ours. I have watched Smee, Esq., +R.A., flattering and fawning, and at the same time boasting and swaggering, +poor fellow, in order to secure a sitter. I have listened to a Manchester +magnate talking about fine arts before one of J. J.’s pictures, assuming +the airs of a painter, and laying down the most absurd laws respecting the art. +I have seen poor Tomkins bowing a rich amateur through a private view, and +noted the eager smiles on Tomkins’ face at the amateur’s slightest +joke, the sickly twinkle of hope in his eyes as Amateur stopped before his own +picture. I have been ushered by Chipstone’s black servant through hall +after hall peopled with plaster gods and heroes, into Chipstone’s own +magnificent studio, where he sat longing vainly for an order, and justly +dreading his landlord’s call for the rent. And, seeing how severely these +gentlemen were taxed in their profession, I have been grateful for my own more +fortunate one, which necessitates cringing to no patron; which calls for no +keeping up of appearances; and which requires no stock-in-trade save the +workman’s industry, his best ability, and a dozen sheets of paper. +</p> + +<p> +Having to turn with all his might to his new profession, Clive Newcome, one of +the proudest men alive, chose to revolt and to be restive at almost every stage +of his training. He had a natural genius for his art, and had acquired in his +desultory way a very considerable skill. His drawing was better than his +painting (an opinion which, were my friend present, he of course would utterly +contradict); his designs and sketches were far superior to his finished +compositions. His friends, presuming to judge of this artist’s +qualifications, ventured to counsel him accordingly, and were thanked for their +pains in the usual manner. We had in the first place to bully and browbeat +Clive most fiercely, before he would take fitting lodgings for the execution of +those designs which we had in view for him. “Why should I take expensive +lodgings?” says Clive, slapping his fist on the table. “I am a +pauper, and can scarcely afford to live in a garret. Why should you pay me for +drawing your portrait and Laura’s and the children? What the deuce does +Warrington want with the effigy of his old mug? You don’t want them a +bit—you only want to give me money.—It would be much more honest of +me to take the money at once and own that I am a beggar; and I tell you what, +Pen, the only money which I feel I come honestly by, is that which is paid me +by a little printseller in Long Acre who buys my drawings, one with another, at +fourteen shillings apiece, and out of whom I can earn pretty nearly two hundred +a year. I am doing Coaches for him, sir, and Charges of Cavalry; the public +like the Mail Coaches best—on a dark paper—the horses and miles +picked out white—yellow dust—cobalt distance, and the guard and +coachman of course in vermilion. That’s what a gentleman can get his +bread by—portraits, pooh! it’s disguised beggary, Crackthorpe, and +a half-dozen men of his regiment came, like good fellows as they are, and sent +me five pounds apiece for their heads, but I tell you I am ashamed to take the +money.” Such used to be the tenor of Clive Newcome’s conversation +as he strode up and down our room after dinner, pulling his moustache, and +dashing his long yellow hair off his gaunt face. +</p> + +<p> +When Clive was inducted into the new lodgings at which his friends counselled +him to hang up his ensign, the dear old Colonel accompanied his son, parting +with a sincere regret from our little ones at home, to whom he became greatly +endeared during his visit to us, and who always hailed him when he came to see +us with smiles and caresses and sweet infantile welcome. On that day when he +went away, Laura went up and kissed him with tears in her eyes. “You know +how long I have been wanting to do it,” this lady said to her husband. +Indeed I cannot describe the behaviour of the old man during his stay with us, +his gentle gratitude, his sweet simplicity and kindness, his thoughtful +courtesy. There was not a servant in our little household but was eager to wait +upon him. Laura’s maid was as tender-hearted at his departure as her +mistress. He was ailing for a short time, when our cook performed prodigies of +puddings and jellies to suit his palate. The youth who held the offices of +butler and valet in our establishment—a lazy and greedy youth whom Martha +scolded in vain—would jump up and leave his supper to carry a message to +our Colonel. My heart is full as I remember the kind words which he said to me +at parting, and as I think that we were the means of giving a little comfort to +that stricken and gentle soul. +</p> + +<p> +Whilst the Colonel and his son stayed with us, letters of course passed between +Clive and his family at Boulogne, but my wife remarked that the receipt of +those letters appeared to give our friend but little pleasure. They were read +in a minute, and he would toss them over to his father, or thrust them into his +pocket with a gloomy face. “Don’t you see,” groans out Clive +to me one evening, “that Rosa scarcely writes the letters, or if she +does, that her mother is standing over her? That woman is the Nemesis of our +life, Pen. How can I pay her off? Great God! how can I pay her off?” And +so having spoken, his head fell between his hands, and as I watched him I saw a +ghastly domestic picture before me of helpless pain, humiliating discord, +stupid tyranny. +</p> + +<p> +What, I say again, are the so-called great ills of life compared to these small +ones? +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel accompanied Clive to the lodgings which we had found for the young +artist, in a quarter not far removed from the old house in Fitzroy Square, +where some happy years of his youth had been spent. When sitters came to +Clive—as at first they did in some numbers, many of his early friends +being anxious to do him a service—the old gentleman was extraordinarily +cheered and comforted. We could see by his face that affairs were going on well +at the studio. He showed us the rooms which Rosey and the boy were to occupy. +He prattled to our children and their mother, who was never tired of hearing +him, about his grandson. He filled up the future nursery with a hundred little +knick-knacks of his own contriving; and with wonderful cheap bargains, which he +bought in his walks about Tottenham Court Road. He pasted a most elaborate book +of prints and sketches for Boy. It was astonishing what notice Boy already took +of pictures. He would have all the genius of his father. Would he had had a +better grandfather than the foolish old man who had ruined all belonging to +him! +</p> + +<p> +However much they like each other, men in the London world see their friends +but seldom. The place is so vast that even next door is distant; the calls of +business, society, pleasure, so multifarious that mere friendship can get or +give but an occasional shake of the hand in the hurried moments of passage. Men +must live their lives; and are perforce selfish, but not unfriendly. At a great +need you know where to look for your friend, and he that he is secure of you. +So I went very little to Howland Street, where Clive now lived; very seldom to +Lamb Court, where my dear old friend Warrington still sate in his old chambers, +though our meetings were none the less cordial when they occurred, and our +trust in one another always the same. Some folks say the world is heartless: he +who says so either prates commonplaces (the most likely and charitable +suggestion), or is heartless himself, or is most singular and unfortunate in +having made no friends. Many such a reasonable mortal cannot have: our nature, +I think, not sufficing for that sort of polygamy. How many persons would you +have to deplore your death; or whose death would you wish to deplore? Could our +hearts let in such a harem of dear friendships, the mere changes and +recurrences of grief and mourning would be intolerable, and tax our lives +beyond their value. In a word, we carry our own burthen in the world; push and +struggle along on our own affairs; are pinched by our own shoes—though +Heaven forbid we should not stop and forget ourselves sometimes, when a friend +cries out in his distress, or we can help a poor stricken wanderer in his way. +As for good women—these, my worthy reader, are different from +us—the nature of these is to love, and to do kind offices, and devise +untiring charities:—so I would have you to know, that, though Mr. +Pendennis was <i>parcus suorum cultor et infrequens</i>, Mrs. Laura found +plenty of time to go from Westminster to Bloomsbury; and to pay visits to her +Colonel and her Clive, both of whom she had got to love with all her heart +again, now misfortune was on them; and both of whom returned her kindness with +an affection blessing the bestower and the receiver; and making the husband +proud and thankful whose wife had earned such a noble regard. What is the +dearest praise of all to a man? his own—or that you should love those +whom he loves? I see Laura Pendennis ever constant and tender and pure, ever +ministering in her sacred office of kindness—bestowing love and followed +by blessings. Which would I have, think you; that priceless crown hymeneal, or +the glory of a Tenth Edition? +</p> + +<p> +Clive and his father had found not only a model friend in the lady above +mentioned, but a perfect prize landlady in their happy lodgings. In her house, +besides those apartments which Mr. Newcome had originally engaged, were rooms +just sufficient to accommodate his wife, child, and servant, when they should +come to him, with a very snug little upper chamber for the Colonel, close by +Boy’s nursery, where he liked best to be. “And if there is not room +for the Campaigner, as you call her,” says Mrs. Laura, with a shrug of +her shoulders, “why, I am very sorry, but Clive must try and bear her +absence as well as possible. After all, my dear Pen, you know he is married to +Rosa and not to her mamma; and so, and so I think it will be quite best that +they shall have their <i>ménage</i> as before.” +</p> + +<p> +The cheapness of the lodgings which the prize landlady let, the quantity of +neat new furniture which she put in, the consultations which she had with my +wife regarding these supplies, were quite singular to me. “Have you +pawned your diamonds, you reckless little person, in order to supply all this +upholstery?” “No, sir, I have not pawned my diamonds,” Mrs. +Laura answers; and I was left to think (if I thought on the matter at all) that +the landlady’s own benevolence had provided these good things for Clive. +For the wife of Laura’s husband was perforce poor; and she asked me for +no more money at this time than at any other. +</p> + +<p> +At first, in spite of his grumbling, Clive’s affairs looked so +prosperous, and so many sitters came to him from amongst his old friends, that +I was half inclined to believe with the Colonel and my wife, that he was a +prodigious genius, and that his good fortune would go on increasing. Laura was +for having Rosey return to her husband. Every wife ought to be with her +husband. J. J. shook his head about the prosperity. “Let us see whether +the Academy will have his pictures this year, and what a place they will give +him,” said Ridley. To do him justice, Clive thought far more humbly of +his compositions than Ridley did. Not a little touching was it to us, who had +known the young men in former days, to see them in their changed positions. It +was Ridley, whose genius and industry had put him in the rank of a +patron—Ridley, the good industrious apprentice, who had won the prize of +his art—and not one of his many admirers saluted his talent and success +with such a hearty recognition as Clive, whose generous soul knew no envy, and +who always fired and kindled at the success of his friends. +</p> + +<p> +When Mr. Clive used to go over to Boulogne from time to time to pay his dutiful +visits to his wife, the Colonel did not accompany his son, but, during the +latter’s absence, would dine with Mrs. Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +Though the preparations were complete in Howland Street, and Clive dutifully +went over to Boulogne, Mrs. Pendennis remarked that he seemed still to hesitate +about bringing his wife to London. +</p> + +<p> +Upon this Mr. Pendennis observed that some gentlemen were not particularly +anxious about the society of their wives, and that this pair were perhaps +better apart. Upon which Mrs. Pendennis, drubbing on the ground with a little +foot, said, “Nonsense, for shame, Arthur! How can you speak so +flippantly? Did he not swear before Heaven to love and cherish her, never to +leave her, sir? Is not his <i>duty</i> his <i>duty</i>, sir?” (a most +emphatic stamp of the foot). “Is she not his for better, or for +worse?” +</p> + +<p> +“Including the Campaigner, my dear?” says Mr. P. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t laugh, sir! She <i>must</i> come to him. There is no room in +Howland Street for Mrs. Mackenzie.” +</p> + +<p> +“You artful scheming creature! We have some spare rooms. Suppose we ask +Mrs. Mackenzie to come and live with us, my dear? and we could then have the +benefit of the garrison anecdotes, and mess jocularities of your favourite, +Captain Goby.” +</p> + +<p> +“I could never bear the horrid man!” cried Mrs. Pendennis. And how +can I tell why she disliked him? +</p> + +<p> +Everything being now ready for the reception of Clive’s little family, we +counselled our friend to go over to Boulogne, and bring back his wife and +child, and then to make some final stipulation with the Campaigner. He saw, as +well as we, that the presence and tyranny of that fatal woman destroyed his +father’s health and spirits—that the old man knew no peace or +comfort in her neighbourhood, and was actually hastening to his grave under +that dreadful and unremitting persecution. Mrs. Mackenzie made Clive scarcely +less wretched than his father—she governed his household—took away +his weak wife’s allegiance and affection from him—and caused the +wretchedness of every single person round about her. They ought to live apart. +If she was too poor to subsist upon her widow’s pension, which, in truth, +was but a very small pittance, let Clive give up to her, say, the half of his +wife’s income of one hundred pounds a year. His prospects and present +means of earning money were such that he might afford to do without that +portion of his income; at any rate, he and his father would be cheaply ransomed +at that price from their imprisonment to this intolerable person. “Go, +Clive,” said his counsellors, “and bring back your wife and child, +and let us all be happy together.” For, you see, those advisers opined +that if we had written over to Mrs. Newcome—“Come”—she +would have come with the Campaigner in her suite. +</p> + +<p> +Vowing that he would behave like a man of courage—and we knew that Clive +had shown himself to be such in two or three previous battles—Clive +crossed the water to bring back his little Rosey. Our good Colonel agreed to +dine at our house during the days of his son’s absence. I have said how +beloved he was by young and old there—and he was kind enough to say +afterwards, that no woman had made him so happy as Laura. We did not tell +him—I know not from what reticence—that we had advised Clive to +offer a bribe of fifty pounds a year to Mrs. Mackenzie; until about a fortnight +after Clive’s absence, and a week after his return, when news came that +poor old Mrs. Mason was dead at Newcome, whereupon we informed the Colonel that +he had another pensioner now in the Campaigner. +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Newcome was thankful that his dear old friend had gone out of the world +in comfort and without pain. She had made a will long since, leaving all her +goods and chattels to Thomas Newcome—but having no money to give, the +Colonel handed over these to the old lady’s faithful attendant, Keziah. +</p> + +<p> +Although many of the Colonel’s old friends had parted from him or +quarrelled with him in consequence of the ill success of the B. B. C., there +were two old ladies who yet remained faithful to him—Miss Cann, namely, +and honest little Miss Honeyman of Brighton, who, when she heard of the return +to London of her nephew and brother-in-law, made a railway journey to the +metropolis (being the first time she ever engaged in that kind of travelling), +rustled into Clive’s apartments in Howland Street in her neatest silks, +and looking not a day older than on that when we last beheld her; and after +briskly scolding the young man for permitting his father to enter into money +affairs—of which the poor dear Colonel was as ignorant as a +baby—she gave them both to understand that she had a little sum at her +banker’s at their disposal—and besought the Colonel to remember +that her house was his, and that she should be proud and happy to receive him +as soon and as often and for as long a time as he would honour her with his +company. “Is not my house full of your presents”—cried the +stout little old lady—“have I not reason to be grateful to all the +Newcomes—yes, to all the Newcomes;—for Miss Ethel and her family +have come to me every year for months, and I don’t quarrel with them, and +I won’t, although you do, sir? Is not this shawl—are not these +jewels that I wear,” she continued, pointing to those well-known +ornaments, “my dear Colonel’s gift? Did you not relieve my brother +Charles in this country and procure for him his place in India? Yes, my dear +friend—and though you have been imprudent in money matters, my +obligations towards you, and my gratitude, and my affection are always the +same.” Thus Miss Honeyman spoke, with somewhat of a quivering voice at +the end of her little oration, but with exceeding state and dignity—for +she believed that her investment of two hundred pounds in that unlucky B. B. +C., which failed for half a million, was a sum of considerable importance, and +gave her a right to express her opinion to the Managers. +</p> + +<p> +Clive came back from Boulogne in a week, as we have said—but he came back +without his wife, much to our alarm, and looked so exceedingly fierce and glum +when we demanded the reason of his return without his family, that we saw wars +and battles had taken place, and thought that in this last continental campaign +the Campaigner had been too much for her friend. +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel, to whom Clive communicated, though with us the poor lad held his +tongue, told my wife what had happened:—not all the battles; which no +doubt raged at breakfast, dinner, supper, during the week of Clive’s +visit to Boulogne,—but the upshot of these engagements. Rosey, not +unwilling in her first private talk with her husband to come to England with +him and the boy, showed herself irresolute on the second day at breakfast, when +the fire was opened on both sides; cried at dinner when fierce assaults took +place, in which Clive had the advantage; slept soundly, but besought him to be +very firm, and met the enemy at breakfast with a quaking heart; cried all that +day during which, pretty well without cease, the engagement lasted; and when +Clive might have conquered and brought her off, but the weather was windy and +the sea was rough, and he was pronounced a brute to venture on it with a wife +in Rosey’s situation. +</p> + +<p> +Behind that “situation” the widow shielded herself. She clung to +her adored child, and from that bulwark discharged abuse and satire at Clive +and his father. He could not rout her out of her position. Having had the +advantage on the first two or three days, on the four last he was beaten, and +lost ground in each action. Rosey found that in her situation she could not +part from her darling mamma. The Campaigner for her part averred that she might +be reduced to beggary; that she might be robbed of her last farthing and +swindled and cheated; that she might see her daughter’s fortune flung +away by unprincipled adventurers, and her blessed child left without even the +comforts of life; but desert her in such a situation, she never would—no, +never! Was not dear Rosa’s health already impaired by the various shocks +which she had undergone? Did she not require every comfort, every attendance? +Monster! ask the doctor! She would stay with her darling child in spite of +insult and rudeness and vulgarity. (Rosey’s father was a King’s +officer, not a Company’s officer, thank God!) She would stay as long at +least as Rosey’s situation continued, at Boulogne, if not in London, but +with her child. They might refuse to send her money, having robbed her of all +her own, but she would pawn her gown off her back for her child. Whimpers from +Rosey—cries of “Mamma, mamma, compose +yourself,”—convulsive sobs—clenched knuckles—flashing +eyes—embraces rapidly +clutched—laughs—stamps—snorts—from the dishevelled +Campaigner; grinding teeth—livid fury and repeated breakages of the third +commandment by Clive—I can fancy the whole scene. He returned to London +without his wife, and when she came she brought Mrs. Mackenzie with her. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0075"></a> +CHAPTER LXXV.<br> +Founder’s Day at the Grey Friars</h2> + +<p> +Rosey came, bringing discord and wretchedness with her to her husband, and the +sentence of death or exile to his dear old father, all of which we +foresaw—all of which Clive’s friends would have longed to +prevent—all of which were inevitable under the circumstances. +Clive’s domestic affairs were often talked over by our little set. +Warrington and F. B. knew of his unhappiness. We three had strongly opined that +the women being together at Boulogne, should stay there and live there, Clive +sending them over pecuniary aid as his means permitted. “They must hate +each other pretty well by this time,” growls George Warrington. +“Why on earth should they not part?” “What a woman that Mrs. +Mackenzie is!” cries F. B. “What an infernal tartar and catamaran! +She who was so uncommonly smiling and soft-spoken, and such a fine woman, by +jingo! What puzzles all women are!” F. B. sighed, and drowned further +reflection in beer. +</p> + +<p> +On the other side, and most strongly advocating Rosey’s return to Clive, +was Mrs. Laura Pendennis; with certain arguments for which she had chapter and +verse, and against which we of the separatist party had no appeal. “Did +he marry her only for the days of her prosperity?” asked Laura. “Is +it right, is it manly, that he should leave her now she is unhappy—poor +little creature—no woman had ever more need of protection; and who should +be her natural guardian save her husband? Surely, Arthur, you forget—have +you forgotten them yourself, sir?—the solemn vows which Clive made at the +altar. Is he not bound to his wife to keep only unto her so long as they both +shall live, to love and comfort her, honour her, and keep her in sickness and +health?” +</p> + +<p> +“To keep her, yes—but not to keep the Campaigner,” cries Mr. +Pendennis. “It is a moral bigamy, Laura, which you advocate, you wicked, +immoral young woman!” +</p> + +<p> +But Laura, though she smiled at this notion, would not be put off from her +first proposition. Turning to Clive, who was with us, talking over his doleful +family circumstances, she took his hand, and pleaded the cause of right and +religion with sweet artless fervour. She agreed with us that it was a hard lot +for Clive to bear. So much the nobler the task, and the fulfilment of duty in +enduring it. A few months too would put an end to his trials. When his child +was born Mrs. Mackenzie would take her departure. It would even be +Clive’s duty to separate from her then, as it now was to humour his wife +in her delicate condition, and to soothe the poor soul who had had a great deal +of ill-health, of misfortune, of domestic calamity to wear and shatter her. +Clive acquiesced with a groan, but—with a touching and generous +resignation as we both thought. “She is right, Pen,” he said, +“I think your wife is always right. I will try, Laura, and bear my part, +God help me! I will do my duty and strive my best to soothe and gratify my poor +dear little woman. They will be making caps and things, and will not interrupt +me in my studio. Of nights I can go to Clipstone Street and work at the Life. +There’s nothing like the Life, Pen. So you see I shan’t be much at +home except at meal-times, when by nature I shall have my mouth full, and no +opportunity of quarrelling with poor Mrs. Mac.” So he went home, followed +and cheered by the love and pity of my dear wife, and determined stoutly to +bear this heavy yoke which fate had put on him. +</p> + +<p> +To do Mrs. Mackenzie justice, that lady backed up with all her might the +statement which my wife had put forward, with a view of soothing poor Clive, +viz., that the residence of his mother-in-law in his house was only to be +temporary. “Temporary!” cries Mrs. Mac (who was kind enough to make +a call on Mrs. Pendennis, and treat that lady to a piece of her mind). +“Do you suppose, madam, that it could be otherwise? Do you suppose that +worlds would induce me to stay in a house where I have received such +<i>treatment;</i> where, after I and my daughter had been robbed of every +shilling of our fortune, where we are daily insulted by Colonel Newcome and his +son? Do you suppose, ma’am, that I do not know that Clive’s friends +hate me, and give themselves airs and look down upon my darling child, and try +and make differences between my sweet Rosa and me—Rosa who might have +been dead, or might have been starving, but that her dear mother came to her +rescue? No, I would never stay. I loathe every day that I remain in the +house—I would rather beg my bread—I would rather sweep the streets +and starve—though, thank God, I have my pension as the widow of an +officer in Her Majesty’s Service, and I can live upon that—and of +<i>that</i> Colonel Newcome <i>cannot</i> rob me; and when my darling love +needs a mother’s care no longer, I will leave her. I will shake the dust +off my feet and leave that house. I will—And Mr. Newcome’s friends +may then sneer at me and abuse me, and blacken my darling child’s heart +towards me if they choose. And I thank you, Mrs. Pendennis, for all your +<i>kindness</i> towards my daughter’s family, and for the furniture which +you have sent into the house, and for the <i>trouble</i> you have taken about +our family arrangements. It was for this I took the liberty of calling upon +you, and I wish you a very good morning.” So speaking, the Campaigner +left my wife; and Mrs. Pendennis enacted the pleasing scene with great spirit +to her husband afterwards, concluding the whole with a splendid curtsey and +toss of the head, such as Mrs. Mackenzie performed as her parting salute. +</p> + +<p> +Our dear Colonel had fled before. He had acquiesced humbly with the decree of +fate; and, lonely, old and beaten, marched honestly on the path of duty. It was +a great blessing, he wrote to us, to him to think that in happier days and +during many years he had been enabled to benefit his kind and excellent +relative, Miss Honeyman. He could thankfully receive her hospitality now, and +claim the kindness and shelter which this old friend gave him. No one could be +more anxious to make him comfortable. The air of Brighton did him the greatest +good; he had found some old friends, some old Bengalees there, with whom he +enjoyed himself greatly, etc. How much did we, who knew his noble spirit, +believe of this story? To us Heaven had awarded health, happiness, competence, +loving children, united hearts, and modest prosperity. To yonder good man, +whose long life shone with benefactions, and whose career was but kindness and +honour, fate decreed poverty, disappointment, separation, a lonely old age. We +bowed our heads, humiliated at the contrast of his lot and ours; and prayed +Heaven to enable us to bear our present good fortune meekly, and our evil days, +if they should come, with such a resignation as this good Christian showed. +</p> + +<p> +I forgot to say that our attempts to better Thomas Newcome’s money +affairs were quite in vain, the Colonel insisting upon paying over every +shilling of his military allowances and retiring pension to the parties from +whom he had borrowed money previous to his bankruptcy. “Ah! what a good +man that is,” says Mr. Sherrick with tears in his eyes, “what a +noble fellow, sir! He would die rather than not pay every farthing over. +He’d starve, sir, that he would. The money ain’t mine, sir, or if +it was do you think I’d take it from the poor old boy? No, sir; by Jove! +I honour and reverence him more now he ain’t got a shilling in his +pocket, than ever I did when we thought he was a-rolling in money.” +</p> + +<p> +My wife made one or two efforts at Samaritan visits in Howland Street, but was +received by Mrs. Clive with such a faint welcome, and by the Campaigner with so +grim a countenance, so many sneers, innuendoes, insults almost, that +Laura’s charity was beaten back, and she ceased to press good offices +thus thanklessly received. If Clive came to visit us, as he very rarely did, +after an official question or two regarding the health of his wife and child, +no further mention was made of his family affairs. His painting, he said, was +getting on tolerably well; he had work, scantily paid it is true, but work +sufficient. He was reserved, uncommunicative, unlike the frank Clive of former +times, and oppressed by his circumstances, as it was easy to see. I did not +press the confidence which he was unwilling to offer, and thought best to +respect his silence. I had a thousand affairs of my own; who has not in London? +If you die to-morrow, your dearest friend will feel for you a hearty pang of +sorrow, and go to his business as usual. I could divine, but would not care to +describe, the life which my poor Clive was now leading; the vulgar misery, the +sordid home, the cheerless toil, and lack of friendly companionship which +darkened his kind soul. I was glad Clive’s father was away. The Colonel +wrote to us twice or thrice; could it be three months ago?—bless me, how +time flies! He was happy, he wrote, with Miss Honeyman, who took the best care +of him. +</p> + +<p> +Mention has been made once or twice in the course of this history of the Grey +Friars school,—where the Colonel and Clive and I had been brought +up,—an ancient foundation of the time of James I., still subsisting in +the heart of London city. The death-day of the founder of the place is still +kept solemnly by Cistercians. In their chapel, where assemble the boys of the +school, and the fourscore old men of the Hospital, the founder’s tomb +stands, a huge edifice: emblazoned with heraldic decorations and clumsy carved +allegories. There is an old Hall, a beautiful specimen of the architecture of +James’s time; an old Hall? many old halls; old staircases, passages, old +chambers decorated with old portraits, walking in the midst of which we walk as +it were in the early seventeenth century. To others than Cistercians, Grey +Friars is a dreary place possibly. Nevertheless, the pupils educated there love +to revisit it; and the oldest of us grow young again for an hour or two as we +come back into those scenes of childhood. +</p> + +<p> +The custom of the school is, that on the 12th of December, the Founder’s +Day, the head gown-boy shall recite a Latin oration, in praise of <i>Fundatoris +Nostri</i>, and upon other subjects; and a goodly company of old Cistercians is +generally brought together to attend this oration: after which we go to chapel +and hear a sermon; after which we adjourn to a great dinner, where old +condisciples meet, old toasts are given, and speeches are made. Before marching +from the oration-hall to chapel, the stewards of the day’s dinner, +according to old-fashioned rite, have wands put into their hands, walk to +church at the head of the procession, and sit there in places of honour. The +boys are already in their seats, with smug fresh faces, and shining white +collars; the old black-gowned pensioners are on their benches; the chapel is +lighted, and Founder’s Tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, +heraldries, darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows and lights. +There he lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the great +Examination Day. We oldsters, be we ever so old, become boys again as we look +at that familiar old tomb, and think how the seats are altered since we were +here, and how the doctor—not the present doctor, the doctor of our +time—used to sit yonder, and his awful eye used to frighten us shuddering +boys, on whom it lighted; and how the boy next us <i>would</i> kick our shins +during service time, and how the monitor would cane us afterwards because our +shins were kicked. Yonder sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking about home +and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit some threescore old gentlemen pensioners of +the hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms. You hear them coughing +feebly in the twilight,—the old reverend blackgowns. Is Codd Ajax alive, +you wonder?—the Cistercian lads called these old gentlemen Codds, I know +not wherefore—I know not wherefore—but is old Codd Ajax alive, I +wonder? or Codd Soldier? or kind old Codd Gentleman, or has the grave closed +over them? A plenty of candles lights up this chapel, and this scene of age and +youth, and early memories, and pompous death. How solemn the well-remembered +prayers are, here uttered again in the place wherein childhood we used to hear +them! How beautiful and decorous the rite; how noble the ancient words of the +supplications which the priest utters, and to which generations of fresh +children and troops of bygone seniors have cried Amen! under those arches! The +service for Founder’s Day is a special one; one of the psalms selected +being the thirty-seventh, and we hear— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his +way.<br> +24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth +him with his hand.<br> +25. I have been young, and now am old: yet have I not seen the righteous +forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread. +</p> + +<p> +As we came to this verse, I chanced to look up from my book towards the swarm +of black-coated pensioners: and amongst them—amongst them—sate +Thomas Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +His dear old head was bent down over his prayer-book—there was no +mistaking him. He wore the black gown of the pensioners of the Hospital of Grey +Friars. His order of the Bath was on his breast. He stood there amongst the +poor brethren, uttering the responses to the psalm. The steps of this good man +had been ordered him hither by Heaven’s decree: to this almshouse! Here +it was ordained that a life all love, and kindness, and honour, should end! I +heard no more of prayers, and psalms, and sermon, after that. How dared I to be +in a place of mark, and he, he yonder among the poor? Oh, pardon, you noble +soul! I ask forgiveness of you for being of a world that has so treated +you—you my better, you the honest, and gentle, and good! I thought the +service would never end, or the organist’s voluntaries, or the +preacher’s homily. +</p> + +<p> +The organ played us out of chapel at length, and I waited in the ante-chapel +until the pensioners took their turn to quit it. My dear, dear old friend! I +ran to him with a warmth and eagerness of recognition which no doubt showed +themselves in my face and accents, as my heart was moved at the sight of him. +His own face flushed up when he saw me, and his hand shook in mine. “I +have found a home, Arthur,” said he. “Don’t you remember +before I went to India, when we came to see the old Grey Friars, and visited +Captain Scarsdale in his room?—a poor brother like me—an old +Peninsular man. Scarsdale is gone now, sir, and is where the wicked cease from +troubling and the weary are at rest; and I thought then, when we saw +him,—here would be a place for an old fellow when his career was over, to +hang his sword up; to humble his soul, and to wait thankfully for the end. +Arthur. My good friend, Lord H., who is a Cistercian like ourselves, and has +just been appointed a governor, gave me his first nomination. Don’t be +agitated, Arthur my boy, I am very happy. I have good quarters, good food, good +light and fire, and good friends; blessed be God! my dear kind young +friend—my boy’s friend; you have always been so, sir; and I take it +uncommonly kind of you, and I thank God for you, sir. Why, sir, I am as happy +as the day is long.” He uttered words to this effect as he walked through +the courts of the building towards his room, which in truth I found neat and +comfortable, with a brisk fire crackling on the hearth; a little tea-table laid +out, a Bible and spectacles by the side of it, and over the mantelpiece a +drawing of his grandson by Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“You may come and see me here, sir, whenever you like, and so may your +dear wife and little ones, tell Laura, with my love;—but you must not +stay now. You must go back to your dinner.” In vain I pleaded that I had +no stomach for it. He gave me a look, which seemed to say he desired to be +alone, and I had to respect that order and leave him. +</p> + +<p> +Of course I came to him on the very next day; though not with my wife and +children, who were in truth absent in the country at Rosebury, where they were +to pass the Christmas holidays; and where, this school-dinner over, I was to +join them. On my second visit to Grey Friars my good friend entered more at +length into the reasons why he had assumed the Poor Brother’s gown; and I +cannot say but that I acquiesced in his reasons, and admired that noble +humility and contentedness of which he gave me an example. +</p> + +<p> +“That which had caused him most grief and pain,” he said, “in +the issue of that unfortunate bank, was the thought that poor friends of his +had been induced by his representations to invest their little capital in that +speculation. Good Miss Honeyman, for instance, meaning no harm, and in all +respects a most honest and kindly-disposed old lady, had nevertheless alluded +more than once to the fact that her money had been thrown away; and these +allusions, sir, made her hospitality somewhat hard to bear,” said the +Colonel. “At home—at poor Clivey’s, I mean—it was even +worse,” he continued; “Mrs. Mackenzie for months past, by her +complaints, and—and her conduct, has made my son and me so +miserable—that flight before her, and into any refuge, was the best +course. She too does not mean ill, Pen. Do not waste any of your oaths upon +that poor woman,” he added, holding up his finger, and smiling sadly. +“She thinks I deceived her, though Heaven knows it was myself I deceived. +She has great influence over Rosa. Very few persons can resist that violent and +headstrong woman, sir. I could not bear her reproaches, or my poor sick +daughter, whom her mother leads almost entirely now, and it was with all this +grief on my mind, that, as I was walking one day upon Brighton cliff, I met my +schoolfellow, my Lord H——, who has ever been a good friend of +mine—and who told me how he had just been appointed a governor of Grey +Friars. He asked me to dine with him on the next day, and would take no +refusal. He knew of my pecuniary misfortunes, of course—and showed +himself most noble and liberal in his offers of help. I was very much touched +by his goodness, Pen,—and made a clean breast of it to his lordship; who +at first would not hear of my coming to this place—and offered me out of +the purse of an old brother-schoolfellow and an old brother soldier as +much—as much as should last me my time. Wasn’t it noble of him, +Arthur? God bless him! There are good men in the world, sir, there are true +friends, as I have found in these later days. Do you know, +sir”—here the old man’s eyes twinkled,—“that Fred +Bayham fixed up that bookcase yonder—and brought me my little boy’s +picture to hang up? Boy and Clive will come and see me soon.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean they do not come?” I cried. +</p> + +<p> +“They don’t know I am here, sir,” said the Colonel, with a +sweet, kind smile. “They think I am visiting his lordship in Scotland. +Ah! they are good people! When we had had a talk downstairs over our bottle of +claret—where my old commander-in-chief would not hear of my plan—we +went upstairs to her ladyship, who saw that her husband was disturbed, and +asked the reason. I dare say it was the good claret that made me speak, sir; +for I told her that I and her husband had had a dispute and that I would take +her ladyship for umpire. And then I told her the story over, that I had paid +away every rupee to the creditors, and mortgaged my pensions and retiring +allowances for the same end, that I was a burden upon Clivey, who had enough, +poor boy, to keep his own family, and his wife’s mother, whom my +imprudence had impoverished,—that here was an honourable asylum which my +friend could procure for me, and was not that better than to drain his purse? +She was very much moved, sir—she is a very kind lady, though she passed +for being very proud and haughty in India—so wrongly are people judged. +And Lord H. said, in his rough way, ‘that, by Jove, if Tom Newcome took a +thing into his obstinate old head no one could drive it out.’ And +so,” said the Colonel, with his sad smile, “I <i>had</i> my own +way. Lady H. was good enough to come and see me the very next day—and do +you know, Pen, she invited me to go and live with them for the rest of my +life—made me the most generous, the most delicate offers. But I knew I +was right, and held my own. I am too old to work, Arthur: and better here +whilst I am to stay, than elsewhere. Look! all this furniture came from H. +House—and that wardrobe is full of linen, which she sent me. She has been +twice to see me, and every officer in this hospital is as courteous to me as if +I had my fine house.” +</p> + +<p> +I thought of the psalm we had heard on the previous evening, and turned to it +in the opened Bible, and pointed to the verse, “Though he fall, he shall +not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him.” Thomas Newcome +seeing my occupation, laid a kind, trembling hand on my shoulder; and then, +putting on his glasses, with a smile bent over the volume. And who that saw him +then, and knew him and loved him as I did—who would not have humbled his +own heart, and breathed his inward prayer, confessing and adoring the Divine +Will, which ordains these trials, these triumphs, these humiliations, these +blest griefs, this crowning Love? +</p> + +<p> +I had the happiness of bringing Clive and his little boy to Thomas Newcome that +evening; and heard the child’s cry of recognition and surprise, and the +old man calling the boy’s name, as I closed the door upon that meeting; +and by the night’s mail I went down to Newcome, to the friends with whom +my own family was already staying. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Of course, my conscience-keeper at Rosebury was anxious to know about the +school-dinner, and all the speeches made, and the guests assembled there; but +she soon ceased to inquire about these when I came to give her the news of the +discovery of our dear old friend in the habit of a Poor Brother of Grey Friars. +She was very glad to hear that Clive and his little son had been reunited to +the Colonel; and appeared to imagine at first, that there was some wonderful +merit upon my part in bringing the three together. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—no great merit, Pen, as you <i>will</i> put it,” says +the Confessor; “but it was kindly thought, sir—and I like my +husband when he is kind best; and don’t wonder at your having made a +stupid speech at the dinner, as you say you did, when you had this other +subject to think of. That is a beautiful psalm, Pen, and those verses which you +were reading when you saw him, especially beautiful.” +</p> + +<p> +“But in the presence of eighty old gentlemen, who have all come to decay, +and have all had to beg their bread in a manner, don’t you think the +clergyman might choose some other psalm?” asks Mr. Pendennis. +</p> + +<p> +“They were not forsaken <i>utterly</i>, Arthur,” says Mrs. Laura, +gravely: but rather declines to argue the point raised by me; namely, that the +selection of that especial thirty-seventh psalm was not complimentary to those +decayed old gentlemen. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>All</i> the psalms are good, sir,” she says, “and this +one, of course, is included,” and thus the discussion closed. +</p> + +<p> +I then fell to a description of Howland Street, and poor Clive, whom I had +found there over his work. A dubious maid scanned my appearance rather eagerly +when I asked to see him. I found a picture-dealer chaffering with him over a +bundle of sketches, and his little boy, already pencil in hand, lying in one +corner of the room, the sun playing about his yellow hair. The child looked +languid and pale, the father worn and ill. When the dealer at length took his +bargains away, I gradually broke my errand to Clive, and told him from whence I +had just come. +</p> + +<p> +He had thought his father in Scotland with Lord H.: and was immensely moved +with the news which I brought. +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t written to him for a month. It’s not pleasant the +letters I have to write, Pen, and I can’t make them pleasant. Up, +Tommykin, and put on your cap.” Tommykin jumps up. “Put on your +cap, and tell them to take off your pinafore, tell +grandmamma——” +</p> + +<p> +At that name Tommykin begins to cry. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at that!” says Clive, commencing to speak in the French +language, which the child interrupts by calling out in that tongue. “I +speak also French, papa.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my child! You will like to come out with papa, and Betsy can dress +you.” He flings off his own paint-stained shooting-jacket as he talks, +takes a frock-coat out of a carved wardrobe, and a hat from a helmet on the +shelf. He is no longer the handsome splendid boy of old times. Can that be +Clive, with that haggard face and slouched handkerchief? “I am not the +dandy I was, Pen,” he says bitterly. +</p> + +<p> +A little voice is heard crying overhead—and giving a kind of gasp the +wretched father stops in some indifferent speech he was trying to make. +“I can’t help myself,” he groans out; “my wife is so +ill, she can’t attend to the child. Mrs. Mackenzie manages the house for +me—and—here! Tommy, Tommy! papa is coming!” Tommy has been +crying again; and flinging open the studio door, Clive calls out, and dashes +upstairs. +</p> + +<p> +I hear scuffling, stamping, loud voices, poor Tommy’s scared little +pipe—Clive’s fierce objurgations, and the Campaigner’s voice +barking out—“Do, sir, do! with my child suffering in the next room. +Behave like a brute to me, do. He shall not go! He shall not have the +hat”—“He shall”—“Ah—ah!” A +scream is heard. It is Clive tearing a child’s hat out of the +Campaigner’s hands, with which, and a flushed face, he presently rushes +downstairs, bearing little Tommy on his shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +“You see what I am come to, Pen,” he says with a heartbroken voice, +trying, with hands all of a tremble, to tie the hat on the boy’s head. He +laughs bitterly at the ill success of his endeavours. “Oh, you silly +papa!” laughs Tommy, too. +</p> + +<p> +The door is flung open, and the red-faced Campaigner appears. Her face is +mottled with wrath, her bandeaux of hair are disarranged upon her forehead, the +ornaments of her cap, cheap, and dirty, and numerous, only give her a wilder +appearance. She is in a large and dingy wrapper, very different from the lady +who had presented herself a few months back to my wife—how different from +the smiling Mrs. Mackenzie of old days! +</p> + +<p> +“He shall not go out of a winter day, sir,” she breaks out. +“I have his mother’s orders, whom you are <i>killing</i>. Mr. +Pendennis!” She starts, perceiving me for the first time, and her breast +heaves, and she prepares for combat, and looks at me over her shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +“You and his father are the best judges upon this point, +ma’am,” said Mr. Pendennis, with a bow. +</p> + +<p> +“The child is delicate, sir,” cries Mrs. Mackenzie; “and this +winter——” +</p> + +<p> +“Enough of this,” says Clive with a stamp, and passes through her +guard with Tommy, and we descend the stairs, and at length are in the free +street. Was it not best not to describe at full length this portion of poor +Clive’s history? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0076"></a> +CHAPTER LXXVI.<br> +Christmas at Rosebury</h2> + +<p> +We have known our friend Florac under two aristocratic names, and might now +salute him by a third, to which he was entitled, although neither he nor his +wife ever chose to assume it. His father was lately dead, and M. Paul de Florac +might sign himself Duc d’Ivry if he chose, but he was indifferent as to +the matter, and his wife’s friends indignant at the idea that their +kinswoman, after having been a Princess, should descend to the rank of a mere +Duchess. So Prince and Princess these good folks remained, being exceptions to +that order, inasmuch as their friends could certainly put their trust in them. +</p> + +<p> +On his father’s death Florac went to Paris, to settle the affairs of the +paternal succession; and, having been for some time absent in his native +country, returned to Rosebury for the winter, to resume that sport of which he +was a distinguished amateur. He hunted in black during the ensuing season; and, +indeed, henceforth laid aside his splendid attire and his <i>allures</i> as a +young man. His waist expanded, or was no longer confined by the cestus which +had given it a shape. When he laid aside his black, his whiskers, too, went +into a sort of half-mourning, and appeared in grey. “I make myself old, +my friend,” he said, pathetically; “I have no more neither twenty +years nor forty.” He went to Rosebury Church no more; but, with great +order and sobriety, drove every Sunday to the neighbouring Catholic chapel at +C—— Castle. We had an ecclesiastic or two to dine with us at +Rosebury, one of whom I inclined to think was Florac’s director. +</p> + +<p> +A reason, perhaps, for Paul’s altered demeanour, was the presence of his +mother at Rosebury. No politeness or respect could be greater than Paul’s +towards the Countess. Had she been a sovereign princess, Madame de Florac could +not have been treated with more profound courtesy than she now received from +her son. I think the humble-minded lady could have dispensed with some of his +attentions; but Paul was a personage who demonstrated all his sentiments, and +performed his various parts in life with the greatest vigour. As a man of +pleasure, for instance, what more active roué than he? As a <i>jeune homme</i>, +who could be younger, and for a longer time? As a country gentleman, or an +<i>homme d’affaires</i>, he insisted upon dressing each character with +the most rigid accuracy, and an exactitude that reminded one somewhat of +Bouffé, or Ferville, at the play. I wonder whether, when is he quite old, he +will think proper to wear a pigtail, like his old father? At any rate, that was +a good part which the kind fellow was now acting, of reverence towards his +widowed mother, and affectionate respect for her declining days. He not only +felt these amiable sentiments, but he imparted them to his friends most freely, +as his wont was. He used to weep freely,—quite unrestrained by the +presence of the domestics, as English sentiment would be:—and when Madame +de Florac quitted the room after dinner, would squeeze my hand and tell me with +streaming eyes, that his mother was an angel. “Her life has been but a +long trial, my friend,” he would say. “Shall not I, who have caused +her to shed so many tears, endeavour to dry some?” Of course the friends +who liked him best encouraged him in an intention so pious. +</p> + +<p> +The reader has already been made acquainted with this lady by the letters of +hers, which came into my possession some time after the events which I am at +present narrating: my wife, through our kind friend, Colonel Newcome, had also +had the honour of an introduction to Madame de Florac at Paris; and, on coming +to Rosebury for the Christmas holidays, I found Laura and the children greatly +in favour with the good Countess. She treated her son’s wife with a +perfect though distant courtesy. She was thankful to Madame de Moncontour for +the latter’s great goodness to her son. Familiar with but very few +persons, she could scarcely be intimate with her homely daughter-in-law. Madame +de Moncontour stood in the greatest awe of her; and, to do that good lady +justice, admired and reverenced Paul’s mother with all her simple heart. +In truth, I think almost every one had a certain awe of Madame de Florac, +except children, who came to her trustingly, and, as it were, by instinct. The +habitual melancholy of her eyes vanished as they lighted upon young faces and +infantile smiles. A sweet love beamed out of her countenance: an angelic smile +shone over her face, as she bent towards them and caressed them. Her demeanour +then, nay, her looks and ways at other times;—a certain gracious sadness, +a sympathy with all grief, and pity for all pain; a gentle heart, yearning +towards all children; and, for her own especially, feeling a love that was +almost an anguish: in the affairs of the common world only a dignified +acquiescence, as if her place was not in it, and her thoughts were in her Home +elsewhere;—these qualities, which we had seen exemplified in another +life, Laura and her husband watched in Madame de Florac, and we loved her +because she was like our mother. I see in such women, the good and pure, the +patient and faithful, the tried and meek, the followers of Him whose earthly +life was divinely sad and tender. +</p> + +<p> +But, good as she was to us and to all, Ethel Newcome was the French +lady’s greatest favourite. A bond of extreme tenderness and affection +united these two. The elder friend made constant visits to the younger at +Newcome; and when Miss Newcome, as she frequently did, came to Rosebury, we +used to see that they preferred to be alone; divining and respecting the +sympathy which brought those two faithful hearts together. I can imagine now +the two tall forms slowly pacing the garden walks, or turning, as they lighted +on the young ones in their play. What was their talk! I never asked it. Perhaps +Ethel never said what was in her heart, though, be sure, the other knew it. +Though the grief of those they love is untold, women hear it; as they soothe it +with unspoken consolations. To see the elder lady embrace her friend as they +parted was something holy—a sort of saintlike salutation. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Consulting the person from whom I had no secrets, we had thought best at first +not to mention to our friends the place and position in which we had found our +dear Colonel; at least to wait for a fitting opportunity on which we might +break the news to those who held him in such affection. I told how Clive was +hard at work, and hoped the best for him. Good-natured Madame de Moncontour was +easily satisfied with my replies to her questions concerning our friend. Ethel +only asked if he and her uncle were well, and once or twice made inquiries +respecting Rosa and her child. And now it was that my wife told me, what I need +no longer keep secret, of Ethel’s extreme anxiety to serve her distressed +relatives, and how she, Laura, had already acted as Miss Newcome’s +almoner in furnishing and hiring those apartments, which Ethel believed were +occupied by Clive and his father, and wife and child. And my wife further +informed me with what deep grief Ethel had heard of her uncle’s +misfortune, and how, but that she feared to offend his pride, she longed to +give him assistance. She had even ventured to offer to send him pecuniary help; +but the Colonel (who never mentioned the circumstance to me or any other of his +friends), in a kind but very cold letter, had declined to be beholden to his +niece for help. +</p> + +<p> +So I may have remained some days at Rosebury, and the real position of the two +Newcomes was unknown to our friends there. Christmas Eve was come, and, +according to a long-standing promise, Ethel Newcome and her two children had +arrived from the Park, which dreary mansion, since his double defeat, Sir +Barnes scarcely ever visited. Christmas was come, and Rosebury hall was +decorated with holly. Florac did his best to welcome his friends, and strove to +make the meeting gay, though in truth it was rather melancholy. The children, +however, were happy: and they had pleasure enough, in the school festival, in +the distribution of cloaks and blankets to the poor, and in Madame de +Moncontour’s gardens, delightful and beautiful though the winter was +there. +</p> + +<p> +It was only a family meeting, Madame de Florac’s widowhood not permitting +her presence in large companies. Paul sate at his table between his mother and +Mrs. Pendennis; Mr. Pendennis opposite to him, with Ethel and Madame de +Moncontour on each side. The four children were placed between these +personages, on whom Madame de Florac looked with her tender glances, and to +whose little wants the kindest of hosts ministered with uncommon good-nature +and affection. He was very soft-hearted about children. “Pourquoi +n’en avons-nous pas, Jeanne? He! quoi n’en avons-nous pas?” +he said, addressing his wife by her Christian name. The poor little lady looked +kindly at her husband, and then gave a sigh, and turned and heaped cake upon +the plate of the child next to her. No mamma or Aunt Ethel could interpose. It +was a very light wholesome cake. Brown made it on purpose for the children, +“the little darlings!” cries the Princess. +</p> + +<p> +The children were very happy at being allowed to sit up so late to dinner, at +all the kindly amusements of the day, at the holly and mistletoe clustering +round the lamps—the mistletoe, under which the gallant Florac, skilled in +all British usages, vowed he would have his privilege. But the mistletoe was +clustered round the lamp, the lamp was over the centre of the great round +table—the innocent gratification which he proposed to himself was denied +to M. Paul. +</p> + +<p> +In the greatest excitement and good-humour, our host at the dessert made us +<i>des speech</i>. He carried a toast to the charming Ethel, another to the +charming Mistriss Laura, another to his good fren’, his brave +frren’, his ’appy fren’, Pendennis—’appy as +possessor of such a wife, ’appy as writer of works destined to the +immortality, etc. etc. The little children round about clapped their happy +little hands, and laughed and crowed in chorus. And now the nursery and its +guardians were about to retreat, when Florac said he had yet a speech, yet a +toast—and he bade the butler pour wine into every one’s +glass—yet a toast—and he carried it to the health of our dear +friends, of Clive and his father,—the good, the brave Colonel! “We +who are happy,” says he, “shall we not think of those who are good? +We who love each other, shall we not remember those whom we all love?” He +spoke with very great tenderness and feeling. “Ma bonne mere, thou too +shalt drink this toast!” he said, taking his mother’s hand, and +kissing it. She returned his caress gently, and tasted the wine with her pale +lips. Ethel’s head bent in silence over her glass; and, as for Laura, +need I say what happened to her! When the ladies went away my heart was opened +to my friend Florac, and I told him where and how I had left my dear +Clive’s father. +</p> + +<p> +The Frenchman’s emotion on hearing this tale was such that I have loved +him ever since. Clive in want! Why had he not sent to his friend? Grands Dieux! +Clive who had helped him in his greatest distress! Clive’s father, ce +<i>preux chevalier, ce parfait gentilhomme!</i> In a hundred rapid exclamations +Florac exhibited his sympathy, asking of Fate, why such men as he and I were +sitting surrounded by splendours—before golden vases crowned with +flowers—with valets to kiss our feet—(those were merely figures of +speech in which Paul expressed his prosperity)—whilst our friend the +Colonel, so much better than we, spent his last days in poverty, and alone. +</p> + +<p> +I liked Florac none the less, I own, because that one of the conditions of the +Colonel’s present life, which appeared the hardest to most people, +affected Florac but little. To be a Pensioner of an Ancient Institution? Why +not? Might not a man retire without shame to the Invalides at the close of his +campaigns, and, had not Fortune conquered our old friend, and age and disaster +overcome him? It never once entered Thomas Newcome’s head; nor +Clive’s, nor Florac’s, nor his mother’s, that the Colonel +demeaned himself at all by accepting that bounty; and I recollect Warrington +sharing our sentiment and trowling out those noble lines of the old +poet:— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“His golden locks time hath to silver turned;<br> + O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!<br> +His youth ’gainst time and age hath ever spurned,<br> + But spurned in vain; youth waneth by encreasing.<br> +Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen.<br> +Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.<br> +<br> +“His helmet now shall make a hive for bees,<br> + And lovers’ songs be turned to holy psalms;<br> +A man at arms must now serve on his knees,<br> + And feed on prayers, which are old age’s alms.” +</p> + +<p> +These, I say, respected our friend, whatever was the coat he wore; whereas, +among the Colonel’s own kinsfolk, dire was the dismay, and indignation +even, which they expressed when they came to hear of this, what they were +pleased to call degradation to their family. Clive’s dear mother-in-law +made outcries over the good old man as over a pauper, and inquired of Heaven, +what she had done that her blessed child should have a mendicant for a father? +And Mrs. Hobson, in subsequent confidential communication with the writer of +these memoirs, improved the occasion religiously as her wont was; referred the +matter to Heaven too, and thought fit to assume that the celestial powers had +decreed this <i>humiliation</i>, this <i>dreadful trial</i> for the Newcome +family, as a warning to them all that they should not be too much puffed up +with prosperity, nor set their affections too much upon things of this earth. +Had they not already received <i>one</i> chastisement in Barnes’s +punishment, and Lady Clara’s awful falling away? They had taught her a +lesson, which the Colonel’s <i>lamentable errors</i> had +<i>confirmed</i>,—the vanity of trusting in all earthly grandeurs! Thus +it was this worthy woman plumed herself, as it were, on her relative’s +misfortunes; and was pleased to think the latter were designed for the special +warning and advantage of her private family. But Mrs. Hobson’s philosophy +is only mentioned by the way. Our story, which is drawing to its close, has to +busy itself with other members of the house of The Newcomes. +</p> + +<p> +My talk with Florac lasted for some time: at its close, when we went to join +the ladies in the drawing-room, we found Ethel cloaked and shawled, and +prepared for her departure with her young ones, who were already asleep. The +little festival was over, and had ended in melancholy—even in weeping. +Our hostess sate in her accustomed seat by her lamp and her worktable; but, +neglecting her needle, she was having perpetual recourse to her +pocket-handkerchief, and uttering ejaculations of pity between the intervals of +her gushes of tears. Madame de Florac was in her usual place, her head cast +downwards, and her hands folded. My wife was at her side, a grave commiseration +showing itself in Laura’s countenance, whilst I read a yet deeper sadness +in Ethel’s pale face. Miss Newcome’s carriage had been announced; +the attendants had already carried the young ones asleep to the vehicle; and +she was in the act of taking leave. We looked round at this disturbed party, +guessing very likely what the subject of their talk had been, to which, +however, Miss Ethel did not allude: but, announcing that she had intended to +depart without disturbing the two gentlemen, she bade us farewell and good +night. “I wish I could say a merry Christmas,” she added gravely, +“but none of us, I fear, can hope for that.” It was evident that +Laura had told the last chapter of the Colonel’s story. +</p> + +<p> +Madame de Florac rose up and embraced Miss Newcome, and, that farewell over, +she sank back on the sofa exhausted, and with such an expression of affliction +in her countenance, that my wife ran eagerly towards her. “It is nothing, +my dear,” she said, giving a cold hand to the younger lady, and sate +silent for a few moments, during which we heard Florac’s voice without +crying Adieu! and the wheels of Miss Newcome’s carriage when it drove +away. +</p> + +<p> +Our host entered a moment afterwards; and remarking, as Laura had done, his +mother’s pallor and look of anguish, went up and spoke to her with the +utmost tenderness and anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +She gave her hand to her son, and a faint blush rose up out of the past as it +were, and trembled upon her wan cheek. “He was the first friend I ever +had in the world, Paul,” she said “the first and the best. He shall +not want, shall he, my son?” +</p> + +<p> +No signs of that emotion in which her daughter-in-law had been indulging were +as yet visible in Madame de Florac’s eyes, but, as she spoke, holding her +son’s hand in hers, the tears at length overflowed, and with a sob, her +head fell forwards. The impetuous Frenchman flung himself on his knees before +his mother, uttered a hundred words of love and respect for her, and with tears +and sobs of his own called God to witness that their friend should never want. +And so this mother and son embraced each other, and clung together in a sacred +union of love, before which we who had been admitted as spectators of that +scene, stood hushed and respectful. +</p> + +<p> +That night Laura told me, how, when the ladies left us, the talk had been +entirely about the Colonel and Clive. Madame de Florac had spoken especially, +and much more freely than was her wont. She had told many reminiscences of +Thomas Newcome, and his early days; how her father taught him mathematics when +they were quite poor, and living in their dear little cottage at Blackheath; +how handsome he was then, with bright eyes, and long black hair flowing over +his shoulders; how military glory was his boyish passion, and he was for ever +talking of India, and the famous deeds of Clive and Lawrence. His favourite +book was a history of India—the history of Orme. “He read it, and I +read it also, my daughter,” the French lady said, turning to Ethel; +“ah! I may say so after so many years.” +</p> + +<p> +Ethel remembered the book as belonging to her grandmother, and now in the +library at Newcome. Doubtless the same sympathy which caused me to speak about +Thomas Newcome that evening, impelled my wife likewise. She told her friends, +as I had told Florac, all the Colonel’s story; and it was while these +good women were under the impression of the melancholy history, that Florac and +his guest found them. +</p> + +<p> +Retired to our rooms, Laura and I talked on the same subject until the clock +tolled Christmas, and the neighbouring church bells rang out a jubilation. And, +looking out into the quiet night, where the stars were keenly shining, we +committed ourselves to rest with humbled hearts; praying, for all those we +loved, a blessing of peace and goodwill. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0077"></a> +CHAPTER LXXVII.<br> +The Shortest and Happiest in the Whole History</h2> + +<p> +In the ensuing Christmas morning I chanced to rise betimes, and entering my +dressing-room, opened the windows and looked out on the soft landscape, over +which mists were still lying; whilst the serene sky above, and the lawns and +leafless woods in the foreground near, were still pink with sunrise. The grey +had not even left the west yet, and I could see a star or two twinkling there, +to vanish with that twilight. +</p> + +<p> +As I looked out, I saw the not very distant lodge-gate open after a brief +parley, and a lady on horseback, followed by a servant, rode rapidly up to the +house. This early visitor was no other than Miss Ethel Newcome. The young lady +espied me immediately. “Come down; come down to me this moment, Mr. +Pendennis,” she cried out. I hastened down to her, supposing rightly that +news of importance had brought her to Rosebury so early. +</p> + +<p> +The news were of importance indeed. “Look here!” she said, +“read this;” and she took a paper from the pocket of her habit. +“When I went home last night, after Madame de Florac had been talking to +us about Orme’s India, I took the volumes from the bookcase and found +this paper. It is in my grandmother’s—Mrs. +Newcome’s—handwriting; I know it quite well, it is dated on the +very day of her death. She had been writing and reading in her study on that +very night; I have often heard papa speak of the circumstance. Look and read. +You are a lawyer, Mr. Pendennis; tell me about this paper.” +</p> + +<p> +I seized it eagerly, and cast my eyes over it; but having read it, my +countenance fell. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Miss Newcome, it is not worth a penny,” I was obliged to +own. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it is, sir, to honest people!” she cried out. “My +brother and uncle will respect it as Mrs. Newcome’s dying wish. They +<i>must</i> respect it.” +</p> + +<p> +The paper in question was a letter in ink that had grown yellow from time, and +was addressed by the late Mrs. Newcome, to “my dear Mr. Luce.” +</p> + +<p> +“That was her solicitor, my solicitor still,” interposes Miss +Ethel. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +“T<small>HE</small> H<small>ERMITAGE</small>, March 14, 182-. +</p> + +<p> +“My Dear Mr. Luce” (the defunct lady wrote)—“My late +husband’s grandson has been staying with me lately, and is a most +pleasing, handsome, and engaging little boy. He bears a strong likeness to his +grandfather, I think; and though he has no claims upon me, and I know is +sufficiently provided for by his father Lieutenant-Colonel Newcome, C.B., of +the East India Company’s Service, I am sure my late dear husband will be +pleased that I should leave his grandson, Clive Newcome, a token of <i>peace +and goodwill;</i> and I can do so with the more readiness, as it has pleased +Heaven greatly to increase my means since my husband was called away hence. +</p> + +<p> +“I desire to bequeath a sum equal to that which Mr Newcome willed to my +eldest son, Brian Newcome, Esq., to Mr. Newcome’s grandson, Clive +Newcome; and furthermore, that a token of my esteem and affection, a ring, or a +piece of plate, of the value of one £100, be given to Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas +Newcome, my stepson, whose excellent conduct <i>for many years</i>, and whose +repeated acts of gallantry in the <i>service of his sovereign</i>, have long +obliterated the just feelings of displeasure with which I could not but view +his early <i>disobedience and misbehaviour</i>, before he quitted England +against my will, and entered the military service. +</p> + +<p> +“I beg you to prepare immediately a codicil to my will providing for the +above bequests; and desire that the amount of these legacies should be taken +from the property bequeathed to my eldest son. You will be so good as to +prepare the necessary document, and bring it with you when you come on +Saturday, to +</p> + +<p class="right"> +yours very truly,<br> +“Sophia Alethea Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +“Tuesday night.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +I gave back the paper with a sigh to the finder. “It is but a wish of +Mrs. Newcome, my dear Miss Ethel,” I said. “Pardon me, if I say, I +think I know your elder brother too well to supposes that he will fulfil +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“He <i>will</i> fulfil it, sir, I am sure he will,” Miss Newcome +said, in a haughty manner. “He would do as much without being asked, I am +certain he would, did he know the depth of my dear uncle’s misfortune. +Barnes is in London now, and——” +</p> + +<p> +“And you will write to him? I know what the answer will be.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will go to him this very day, Mr. Pendennis! I will go to my dear, +dear uncle. I cannot bear to think of him in that place,” cried the young +lady, the tears starting into her honest eyes. “It was the will of +Heaven. Oh, God be thanked for it! Had we found my grandmamma’s letter +earlier, Barnes would have paid the legacy immediately, and the money would +have gone in that dreadful bankruptcy. I will go to Barnes to-day. Will you +come with me? Won’t you come to your old friends? We may be at +his—at Clive’s house this evening; and oh, praise be to God! there +need be no more want in his family.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear friend, I will go with you round the world on such an +errand,” I said, kissing her hand. How beautiful she looked; the generous +colour rose in her face, her voice thrilled with happiness. The music of +Christmas church bells leaped up at this moment with joyful gratulations; the +face of the old house, before which we stood talking, shone out in the morning +sun. +</p> + +<p> +“You will come I thank you! I must run and tell Madame de Florac,” +cried the happy young lady, and we entered the house together. “How came +you to be kissing Ethel’s hand, sir; and what is the meaning of this +early visit?” asks Mrs. Laura, as soon as I had returned to my own +apartments. +</p> + +<p> +“Martha, get me a carpet-bag! I am going to London in an hour,” +cries Mr. Pendennis. If I had kissed Ethel’s hand just now, delighted at +the news which she brought to me, was not one a thousand times dearer to me, as +happy as her friend? I know who prayed with a thankful heart that day as we +sped, in the almost solitary train, towards London. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0078"></a> +CHAPTER LXXVIII.<br> +In which the Author goes on a Pleasant Errand</h2> + +<p> +Before I parted with Miss Newcome at the station, she made me promise to see +her on the morrow at an early hour at her brother’s house; and having +bidden her farewell and repaired to my own solitary residence, which presented +but a dreary aspect on that festive day, I thought I would pay Howland Street a +visit; and, if invited, eat my Christmas dinner with Clive. +</p> + +<p> +I found my friend at home, and at work still, in spite of the day. He had +promised a pair of pictures to a dealer for the morrow. “He pays me +pretty well, and I want all the money he will give me, Pen,” the painter +said, rubbing on at his canvas. “I am pretty easy in my mind since I have +become acquainted with a virtuous dealer. I sell myself to him, body and soul, +for some half-dozen pounds a week. I know I can get my money, and he is +regularly supplied with his pictures. But for Rosey’s illness we might +carry on well enough.” +</p> + +<p> +Rosey’s illness? I was sorry to hear of that: and poor Clive, entering +into particulars, told me how he had spent upon doctors rather more than a +fourth of his year’s earnings. “There is a solemn fellow, to whom +the women have taken a fancy, who lives but a few doors off in Gower Street; +and who, for his last sixteen visits, has taken sixteen pounds sixteen +shillings out of my pocket, and as if guineas grew there, with the most +admirable gravity. He talks the fashions to my mother-in-law. My poor wife +hangs on every word he says. Look! There is his carriage coming up now! and +there is his fee, confound him!” says Clive, casting a rueful look +towards a little packet lying upon the mantelpiece, by the side of that skinned +figure in plaster of Paris which we have seen in most studios. +</p> + +<p> +I looked out of window and saw a certain Fashionable Doctor tripping out of his +chariot; that Ladies’ Delight, who has subsequently migrated from +Bloomsbury to Belgravia; and who has his polite foot now in a thousand +nurseries and boudoirs. What Confessors were in old times, Quackenboss and his +like are in our Protestant country. What secrets they know! into what mystic +chambers do they not enter! I suppose the Campaigner made a special toilette to +receive her fashionable friend, for that lady attired in considerable +splendour, and with the precious jewel on her head, which I remembered at +Boulogne, came into the studio two minutes after the Doctor’s visit was +announced, and made him a low curtsey. I cannot describe the overpowering +civilities of that woman. +</p> + +<p> +Clive was very gracious and humble to her. He adopted a lively air in +addressing her—“Must work, you know, Christmas Day and +all—for the owner of the pictures will call for them in the morning. +Bring me a good report about Rosey, Mrs. Mackenzie, please—and if you +will have the kindness to look by the <i>écorché</i> there, you will see that +little packet which I have left for you.” Mrs. Mack, advancing, took the +money. “I thought that plaster of Paris figure was not the only +<i>écorché</i> in the room.” +</p> + +<p> +“I want you to stay to dinner. You must stay, Pen, please,” cried +Clive; “and be civil to her, will you? My dear old father is coming to +dine here. They fancy that he has lodgings at the other end of the town, and +that his brothers do something for him. Not a word about Grey Friars. It might +agitate Rosa, you know. Ah! isn’t he noble, the dear old boy! and +isn’t it fine to see him in that place?” Clive worked on as he +talked, using up the last remnant of the light of Christmas Day, and was +cleaning his palette and brushes, when Mrs. Mackenzie returned to us. +</p> + +<p> +Darling Rosey was very delicate, but Doctor Quackenboss was going to give her +the very same medicine which had done the charming young Duchess of +Clackmannanshire so much good, and he was not in the least disquiet. +</p> + +<p> +On this I cut into the conversation with anecdotes concerning the family of the +Duchess of Clackmannanshire, remembering early days, when it used to be my +sport to entertain the Campaigner with anecdotes of the aristocracy, about +whose proceedings she still maintained a laudable curiosity. Indeed, one of few +the books escaped out of the wreck of Tyburn Gardens was a Peerage, now a +well-worn volume, much read by Rosa and her mother. +</p> + +<p> +The anecdotes were very politely received—perhaps it was the season which +made Mrs. Mack and her son-in-law on more than ordinarily good terms. When, +turning to the Campaigner, Clive said he wished that she could persuade me to +stay to dinner, she acquiesced graciously and at once in that proposal, and +vowed that her daughter would be delighted if I could condescend to eat their +<i>humble</i> fare. “It is not such a dinner as you <i>have</i> seen at +her house, with six side-dishes, two flanks, that splendid epergne, and the +silver dishes top and bottom; but such as my Rosey <i>has</i> she offers with a +willing <i>heart</i>,” cries the Campaigner. +</p> + +<p> +“And Tom may sit to dinner, mayn’t he, grandmamma?” asks +Clive, in a humble voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, if you wish it, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“His grandfather will like to sit by him,” said Clive. “I +will go out and meet him; he comes through Guildford Street and Russell +Square,” says Clive. “Will you walk, Pen?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, pray don’t let us detain you,” says Mrs. Mackenzie, with +a toss of her head: and when she retreated Clive whispered that she would not +want me; for she looked to the roasting of the beef and the making of the +pudding and the mince-pie. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought she might have a finger in it,” I said; and we set forth +to meet the dear old father, who presently came, walking very slowly, along the +line by which we expected him. His stick trembled as it fell on the pavement: +so did his voice, as he called out Clive’s name: so did his hand, as he +stretched it to me. His body was bent, and feeble. Twenty years had not +weakened him so much as the last score of months. I walked by the side of my +two friends as they went onwards, linked lovingly together. How I longed for +the morrow, and hoped they might be united once more! Thomas Newcome’s +voice, once so grave, went up to a treble, and became almost childish, as he +asked after Boy. His white hair hung over his collar. I could see it by the gas +under which we walked—and Clive’s great back and arm, as his father +leaned on it, and his brave face turned towards the old man. Oh, Barnes +Newcome, Barnes Newcome! Be an honest man for once, and help your kinsfolk! +thought I. +</p> + +<p> +The Christmas meal went off in a friendly manner enough. The Campaigner’s +eyes were everywhere: it was evident that the little maid who served the +dinner, and had cooked a portion of it under their keen supervision, cowered +under them, as well as other folks. Mrs. Mack did not make more than ten +allusions to former splendours during the entertainment, or half as many +apologies to me for sitting down to a table very different from that to which I +was <i>accustomed</i>. Good, faithful F. Bayham was the only other guest. He +complimented the mince-pies, so that Mrs. Mackenzie owned she had made them. +The Colonel was very silent, but he tried to feed Boy, and was only once or +twice sternly corrected by the Campaigner. Boy, in the best little words he +could muster, asked why grandpapa wore a black cloak? Clive nudged my foot +under the table. The secret of the Poor Brothership was very nearly out. The +Colonel blushed, and with great presence of mind said he wore a cloak to keep +him warm in winter. +</p> + +<p> +Rosey did not say much. She had grown lean and languid: the light of her eyes +had gone out: all her pretty freshness had faded. She ate scarce anything, +though her mother pressed her eagerly, and whispered loudly that a woman in her +situation ought to strengthen herself. Poor Rosey was always in a situation. +</p> + +<p> +When the cloth was withdrawn, the Colonel bending his head said, “Thank +God for what we have received,” so reverently, and with an accent so +touching, that Fred Bayham’s big eyes as he turned towards the old man +filled up with tears. When his mother and grandmother rose to go away, poor +little Boy cried to stay longer, and the Colonel would have meekly interposed, +but the domineering Campaigner cried, “Nonsense, let him go to +bed!” and flounced him out of the room: and nobody appealed against that +sentence. Then we three remained, and strove to talk as cheerfully as we might, +speaking now of old times, and presently of new. Without the slightest +affectation, Thomas Newcome told us that his life was comfortable, and that he +was happy in it. He wished that many others of the old gentlemen, he said, were +as contented as himself, but some of them grumbled sadly, he owned and +quarrelled with their bread-and-butter. He, for his part, had everything he +could desire: all the officers of the Establishment were most kind to him; an +excellent physician came to him when wanted; a most attentive woman waited on +him. “And if I wear a black gown,” said he, “is not that +uniform as good as another, and if we have to go to church every day, at which +some of the Poor Brothers grumble, I think an old fellow can’t do better; +and I can say my prayers with a thankful heart, Clivey my boy, and should be +quite happy but for my—for my past imprudence, God forgive me. Think of +Bayham here coming to our chapel to-day!—he often comes—that was +very right, sir—very right.” +</p> + +<p> +Clive, filling a glass of wine, looked at F. B. with eyes that said God bless +you. F. B. gulped down another bumper. “It is almost a merry +Christmas,” said I; “and oh, I hope it will be a happy New +Year!” +</p> + +<p> +Shortly after nine o’clock the Colonel rose to depart, saying he must be +“in barracks” by ten; and Clive and F. B. went a part of the way +with him. I would have followed them, but he whispered me to stay and talk to +Mrs. Mack, for Heaven’s sake, and that he would be back ere long. So I +went and took tea with the two ladies; and as we drank it, Mrs. Mackenzie took +occasion to tell me she did not know what amount of income the Colonel had from +his <i>wealthy brother</i>, but that <i>they</i> never received any benefit +from it; and again she computed to me all the sums, principal and interest, +which ought at that moment to belong to her darling Rosey. Rosey now and again +made a feeble remark. She did not seem pleased or sorry when her husband came +in; and presently, dropping me a little curtsey, went to bed under charge of +the Campaigner. So Bayham and I and Clive retired to the studio, where smoking +was allowed, and where we brought that Christmas day to an end. +</p> + +<p> +At the appointed time on the next forenoon I called upon Miss Newcome at her +brother’s house. Sir Barnes Newcome was quitting his own door as I +entered it, and he eyed me with such a severe countenance, as made me augur but +ill of the business upon which I came. The expression of Ethel’s face was +scarcely more cheering: she was standing at the window, sternly looking at Sir +Barnes, who yet lingered at his own threshold, having some altercation with his +cab-boy ere he mounted his vehicle to drive into the City. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Newcome was very pale when she advanced and gave me her hand. I looked +with some alarm into her face, and inquired what news? +</p> + +<p> +“It is as you expected, Mr. Pendennis,” she said—“not +as I did. My brother is averse to making restitution. He just now parted from +me in some anger. But it does not matter; the restitution must be made, if not +by Barnes, by one of our family—must it not?” +</p> + +<p> +“God bless you for a noble creature, my dear, dear Miss Newcome!” +was all I could say. +</p> + +<p> +“For doing what is right? Ought I not to do it? I am the eldest of our +family after Barnes: I am the richest after him. Our father left all his +younger children the very sum of money which Mrs. Newcome here devises to +Clive; and you know, besides, I have all my grandmother’s, Lady +Kew’s, property. Why, I don’t think I could sleep if this act of +justice were not done. Will you come with me to my lawyer’s? He and my +brother Barnes are trustees of my property; and I have been thinking, dear Mr. +Pendennis—and you are very good to be so kind, and to express so kind an +opinion of me, and you and Laura have always, always been the best friends to +me”—(she says this, taking one of my hands and placing her other +hand over it)—“I have been thinking, you know, that this transfer +had better be made through Mr. Luce, you understand, and as coming from the +<i>family</i>, and then I need not appear in it at all, you see; and—and +my dear good uncle’s pride need not be wounded.” She fairly gave +way to tears as she spoke—and for me, I longed to kiss the hem of her +robe, or anything else she would let me embrace, I was so happy, and so touched +by the simple demeanour and affection of the noble young lady. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear Ethel,” I said, “did I not say I would go to the end of +the world with you—and won’t I go to Lincoln’s Inn?” +</p> + +<p> +A cab was straightway sent for, and in another half-hour we were in the +presence of the courtly little old Mr. Luce in his chambers in Lincoln’s +Inn Fields. +</p> + +<p> +He knew the late Mrs. Newcome’s handwriting at once. He remembered having +seen the little boy at the Hermitage, had talked with Mr. Newcome regarding his +son in India, and had even encouraged Mrs. Newcome in her idea of leaving some +token of goodwill to the latter. “I was to have dined with your +grandmamma on the Saturday, with my poor wife. Why, bless my soul! I remember +the circumstance perfectly well, my dear young lady. There can’t be a +doubt about the letter, but of course the bequest is no bequest at all, and +Colonel Newcome has behaved so ill to your brother that I suppose Sir Barnes +will not go out of his way to benefit the Colonel.” +</p> + +<p> +“What would you do, Mr. Luce?” asks the young lady. +</p> + +<p> +“H’m! And pray why should I tell you what I should do under the +circumstances?” replied the little lawyer. “Upon my word, Miss +Newcome, I think I should leave matters as they stand. Sir Barnes and I, you +are aware, are not the very best of friends—as your father’s, your +grandmother’s old friend and adviser, your own too, my dear young lady, I +and Sir Barnes Newcome remain on civil terms. But neither is over much pleased +with the other, to say the truth; and, at any rate, I cannot be +accused—nor can any one else that I know of—of being a very warm +partisan of your brother’s. But candidly, were his case mine—had I +a relation who had called me unpleasant names, and threatened me I don’t +know with what, with sword and pistol—who had put me to five or six +thousand pounds’ expense in contesting an election which I had +lost,—I should give him, I think, no more than the law obliged me to give +him; and that, my dear Miss Newcome, is not one farthing.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am very glad you say so,” said Miss Newcome, rather to my +astonishment. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, my dear young lady; and so you need not be alarmed at showing +your brother this document. Is not that the point about which you came to +consult me? You wished that I should prepare him for the awful disclosure, did +you not? You know, perhaps, that he does not like to part with his money, and +thought the appearance of this note might agitate him? It has been a long time +coming to its address, but nothing can be done, don’t you see? and be +sure Sir Barnes Newcome will not be the least agitated when I tell him its +contents.” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean I am very glad you think my brother is not called upon to obey +Mrs. Newcome’s wishes, because I need not think so hardly of him as I was +disposed to do,” Miss Newcome said. “I showed him the paper this +morning, and he repelled it with scorn; and not kind words passed between us, +Mr. Luce, and unkind thoughts remained in my mind. But if he, you think, is +justified, it is I who have been in the wrong for saying that he was +self—for upbraiding him as I own I did.” +</p> + +<p> +“You called him selfish!—You had words with him! Such things have +happened before, my dear Miss Newcome, in the best-regulated families.” +</p> + +<p> +“But if he is not wrong, sir, holding his opinions, surely I should be +wrong, sir, with mine, not to do as my conscience tells me; and having found +this paper only yesterday at Newcome, in the library there, in one of my +grandmother’s books, I consulted with this gentleman, the husband of my +dearest friend, Mrs. Pendennis—the most intimate friend of my uncle and +cousin Clive; and I wish, and I desire and insist, that my share of what my +poor father left us girls should be given to my cousin, Mr. Clive Newcome, in +accordance with my grandmother’s dying wishes.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear, you gave away your portion to your brothers and sisters ever so +long ago!” cried the lawyer. +</p> + +<p> +“I desire, sir, that six thousand pounds may be given to my +cousin,” Miss Newcome said, blushing deeply. “My dear uncle, the +best man in the world, whom I love with all my heart, sir, is in the most +dreadful poverty. Do you know where he is, sir? My dear, kind, generous +uncle!”—and, kindling as she spoke, and with eyes beaming a bright +kindness, and flushing cheeks, and a voice that thrilled to the heart of those +two who heard her, Miss Newcome went on to tell of her uncle’s and +cousin’s misfortunes, and of her wish, under God, to relieve them. I see +before me now the figure of the noble girl as she speaks; the pleased little +old lawyer, bobbing his white head, looking up at her with his twinkling +eyes—patting his knees, patting his snuff-box—as he sits before his +tapes and his deeds, surrounded by a great background of tin boxes. +</p> + +<p> +“And I understand you want this money paid as coming from the family, and +not from Miss Newcome?” says Mr. Luce. +</p> + +<p> +“Coming from the family—exactly,” answers Miss Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Luce rose up from his old chair—his worn-out old horsehair +chair—where he had sat for half a century and listened to many a speaker, +very different from this one. “Mr. Pendennis,” he said, “I +envy you your journey along with this young lady. I envy you the good news you +are going to carry to your friends—and, Miss Newcome, as I am an +old—old gentleman who have known your family these sixty years, and saw +your father in his long-clothes, may I tell you how heartily and sincerely +I—I love and respect you, my dear? When should you wish Mr. Clive Newcome +to have his legacy?” +</p> + +<p> +“I think I should like Mr. Pendennis to have it this instant, Mr. Luce, +please,” said the young lady—and her veil dropped over her face as +she bent her head down, and clasped her hands together for a moment, as if she +was praying. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Luce laughed at her impetuosity; but said that if she was bent upon having +the money, it was at her instant service; and before we left the room, Mr. Luce +prepared a letter, addressed to Clive Newcome, Esquire, in which he stated, +that amongst the books of the late Mrs. Newcome a paper had only just been +found, of which a copy was enclosed, and that the family of the late Sir Brian +Newcome, desirous to do honour to the wishes of the late Mrs. Newcome, had +placed the sum of 6000 pounds at the bank of Messrs. H. W——, at the +disposal of Mr. Clive Newcome, of whom Mr. Luce had the honour to sign himself +the most obedient servant, etc. And, the letter approved and copied, Mr. Luce +said Mr. Pendennis might be the postman thereof; if Miss Newcome so willed it; +and, with this document in my pocket, I quitted the lawyer’s chambers, +with my good and beautiful young companion. +</p> + +<p> +Our cab had been waiting several hours in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and I +asked Miss Ethel whither I now should conduct her? +</p> + +<p> +“Where is Grey Friars?” she said. “Mayn’t I go to see +my uncle?” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0079"></a> +CHAPTER LXXIX.<br> +In which Old Friends come together</h2> + +<p> +We made the descent of Snowhill, we passed by the miry pens of Smithfield; we +travel through the street of St. John, and presently reach the ancient gateway, +in Cistercian Square, where lies the old Hospital of Grey Friars. I passed +through the gate, my fair young companion on my arm, and made my way to the +rooms occupied by brother Newcome. +</p> + +<p> +As we traversed the court the Poor Brothers were coming from dinner. A couple +of score, or more, of old gentlemen in black gowns, issued from the door of +their refectory, and separated over the court, betaking themselves to their +chambers. Ethel’s arm trembled under mine as she looked at one and +another, expecting to behold her dear uncle’s familiar features. But he +was not among the brethren. We went to his chamber, of which the door was open: +a female attendant was arranging the room; she told us Colonel Newcome was out +for the day, and thus our journey had been made in vain. +</p> + +<p> +Ethel went round the apartment and surveyed its simple decorations; she looked +at the pictures of Clive and his boy; the two sabres crossed over the +mantelpiece, the Bible laid on the table, by the old latticed window. She +walked slowly up to the humble bed, and sat down on a chair near it. No doubt +her heart prayed for him who slept there; she turned round where his black +pensioner’s cloak was hanging on the wall, and lifted up the homely +garment, and kissed it. The servant looked on admiring, I should think, her +melancholy and her gracious beauty. I whispered to the woman that the young +lady was the Colonel’s niece. “He has a son who comes here, and is +very handsome, too,” said the attendant. +</p> + +<p> +The two women spoke together for a while. “Oh, miss!” cried the +elder and humbler, evidently astonished at some gratuity which Miss Newcome +bestowed upon her, “I didn’t want this to be good to him. Everybody +here loves him for himself; and I would sit up for him for weeks—that I +would.” +</p> + +<p> +My companion took a pencil from her bag, and wrote “Ethel” on a +piece of paper, and laid the paper on the Bible. Darkness had again fallen by +this time, feeble lights were twinkling in the chamber windows of the Poor +Brethren as we issued into the courts;—feeble lights illumining a dim, +grey, melancholy old scene. Many a career, once bright, was flickering out here +in the darkness; many a night was closing in. We went away silently from that +quiet place; and in another minute were in the flare and din and tumult of +London. +</p> + +<p> +“The Colonel is most likely gone to Clive’s,” I said. Would +not Miss Newcome follow him thither? We consulted whether she should go. She +took heart and said yes. “Drive, cabman, to Howland Street!” The +horse was, no doubt, tired, for the journey seemed extraordinarily long; I +think neither of us spoke a word on the way. +</p> + +<p> +I ran upstairs to prepare our friends for the visit. Clive, his wife, his +father, and his mother-in-law were seated by a dim light in Mrs. Clive’s +sitting-room. Rosey on the sofa, as usual; the little boy on his +grandfather’s knees. +</p> + +<p> +I hardly made a bow to the ladies, so eager was I to communicate with Colonel +Newcome. “I have just been to your quarters at Grey Friars, sir,” +said I. “That is——” +</p> + +<p> +“You have been to the Hospital, sir! You need not be ashamed to mention +it, as Colonel Newcome is not ashamed <i>to go there</i>,” cried out the +Campaigner. “Pray speak in your own language, Clive, unless there is +something <i>not fit</i> for ladies to hear.” Clive was growling out to +me in German that there had just been a terrible scene, his father having, a +quarter of an hour previously, let slip the secret about Grey Friars. +</p> + +<p> +“Say at once, Clive!” the Campaigner cried, rising in her might, +and extending a great strong arm over her helpless child, “that Colonel +Newcome owns that he has gone to live as a pauper in a hospital! He who has +squandered his own money. He who has squandered my money. He who has squandered +the money of that darling helpless child—compose yourself, Rosey my +love!—has completed the disgrace of the family, by his present mean and +unworthy—yes, I say, mean and <i>unworthy</i> and <i>degraded</i> +conduct. Oh, my child, my blessed child! to think that your husband’s +father should have come to a <i>workhouse!</i>” Whilst this maternal +agony bursts over her, Rosa, on the sofa, bleats and whimpers amongst the faded +chintz cushions. +</p> + +<p> +I took Clive’s hand, which was cast up to his head striking his forehead +with mad impotent rage, whilst this fiend of a woman lashed his good father. +The veins of his great fist were swollen, his whole body was throbbing and +trembling with the helpless pain under which he writhed. “Colonel +Newcome’s friends, ma’am,”, I said, “think very +differently from you; and that he is a better judge than you, or any one else, +of his own honour. We all, who loved him in his prosperity, love and respect +him more than ever for the manner in which he bears his misfortune. Do you +suppose that his noble friend, the Earl of H——, would have +counselled him to a step unworthy of a gentleman; that the Prince de Moncontour +would applaud his conduct as he does, if he did not think it admirable?” +I can hardly say with what scorn I used this argument, or what depth of +contempt I felt for the woman whom I knew it would influence. “And at +this minute,” I added, “I have come from visiting the Gray Friars +with one of the Colonel’s relatives, whose love and respect for him is +boundless; who longs to be reconciled to him, and who is waiting below, eager +to shake his hand, and embrace Clive’s wife.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who is that?” says the Colonel, looking gently up, as he pats +Boy’s head. +</p> + +<p> +“Who is it, Pen?” says Clive. I said in a low voice, +“Ethel;” and starting up and crying “Ethel! Ethel!” he +ran from the room. +</p> + +<p> +Little Mrs. Rosa started up too on her sofa, clutching hold of the table-cover +with her lean hand, and the two red spots on her cheeks burning more fiercely +than ever. I could see what passion was beating in that poor little heart. +“Heaven help us! what a resting-place had friends and parents prepared +for it! for shame!” +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Newcome, is it? My darling Rosa, get on your shawl!” cried +the Campaigner, a grim smile lighting her face. +</p> + +<p> +“It is Ethel; Ethel is my niece. I used to love her when she was quite a +little girl,” says the Colonel, patting Boy on the head; “and she +is a very good, beautiful little child—a very good child.” The +torture had been too much for that kind old heart: there were times when Thomas +Newcome passed beyond it. What still maddened Clive, excited his father no +more; the pain yonder woman inflicted, only felled and stupefied him. +</p> + +<p> +As the door opened, the little white-headed child trotted forward towards the +visitor, and Ethel entered on Clive’s arm, who was as haggard and pale as +death. Little Boy, looking up at the stately lady, still followed beside her, +as she approached her uncle, who remained sitting, his head bent to the ground. +His thoughts were elsewhere. Indeed he was following the child, and about to +caress it again. +</p> + +<p> +“Here is a friend, father!” says Clive, laying a hand on the old +man’s shoulder. “It is I, Ethel, uncle!” the young lady said, +taking his hand; and kneeling down between his knees, she flung her arms round +him, and kissed him, and wept on his shoulder. +</p> + +<p> +His consciousness had quite returned ere an instant was over. He embraced her +with the warmth of his old affection, uttering many brief words of love, +kindness, and tenderness, such as men speak when strongly moved. +</p> + +<p> +The little boy had come wondering up to the chair whilst this embrace took +place, and Clive’s tall figure bent over the three. Rosa’s eyes +were not good to look at, as she stared at the group with a ghastly smile. Mrs. +Mackenzie surveyed the scene in haughty state, from behind the sofa cushions. +She tried to take one of Rosa’s lean hot hands. The poor child tore it +away, leaving her rings behind her; lifted her hands to her face: and cried, +cried as if her little heart would break. Ah me! what a story was there! what +an outburst of pent-up feeling! what a passion of pain! The ring had fallen to +the ground; the little boy crept towards it, and picked it up, and came towards +his mother, fixing on her his large wondering eyes. “Mamma crying. +Mamma’s ring!” he said, holding up the circle of gold. With more +feeling than I had ever seen her exhibit, she clasped the boy in her wasted +arms. Great Heaven! what passion, jealousy, grief, despair, were tearing and +trying all these hearts, that but for fate might have been happy? +</p> + +<p> +Clive went round, and with the utmost sweetness and tenderness hanging round +his child and wife, soothed her with words of consolation, that in truth I +scarce heard, being ashamed almost of being present at this sudden scene. No +one, however, took notice of the witnesses; and even Mrs. Mackenzie’s +voice was silent for the moment. I dare say Clive’s words were +incoherent; but women have more presence of mind; and now Ethel, with a noble +grace which I cannot attempt to describe, going up to Rosa, seated herself by +her, spoke of her long grief at the differences between her dearest uncle and +herself; of her early days, when he had been as a father to her; of her wish, +her hope that Rosa should love her as a sister; and of her belief that better +days and happiness were in store for them all. And she spoke to the mother +about her boy so beautiful and intelligent, and told her how she had brought up +her brother’s children, and hoped that this one too would call her Aunt +Ethel. She would not stay now, might she come again? Would Rosa come to her +with her little boy? Would he kiss her? He did so with a very good grace; but +when Ethel at parting embraced the child’s mother, Rosa’s face wore +a smile ghastly to look at, and the lips that touched Ethel’s cheeks, +were quite white. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall come and see you again to-morrow, uncle, may I not? I saw your +room to-day, sir, and your housekeeper; such a nice old lady, and your black +gown. And you shall put it on to-morrow, and walk with me, and show me the +beautiful old buildings of that old hospital. And I shall come and make tea for +you, the housekeeper says I may. Will you come down with me to my carriage? No, +Mr. Pendennis must come;” and she quitted the room, beckoning me after +her. “You will speak to Clive now, won’t you?” she said, +“and come to me this evening, and tell me all before you go to +bed?” I went back, anxious in truth to the messenger of good tidings to +my dear old friends. +</p> + +<p> +Brief as my absence had been, Mrs. Mackenzie had taken advantage of that moment +again to outrage Clive and his father, and to announce that Rosa might go to +see this Miss Newcome, whom people respected because she was rich, but whom +<i>she</i> would never visit; no, never! “An insolent, proud, impertinent +thing! Does she take me for a housemaid?” Mrs. Mackenzie had inquired. +</p> + +<p> +“Am I dust to be trampled beneath her feet? Am I a dog that she +can’t throw me a word?” Her arms were stretched out, and she was +making this inquiry as to her own canine qualities as I re-entered the room, +and remembered that Ethel had never once addressed a single word to Mrs. +Mackenzie in the course of her visit. +</p> + +<p> +I affected not to perceive the incident, and presently said that I wanted to +speak to Clive in his studio. Knowing that I had brought my friend one or two +commissions for drawings, Mrs. Mackenzie was civil to me, and did not object to +our colloquies. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you come too, and smoke a pipe, father?” says Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Of course</i> your father intends to stay to <i>dinner?</i>” +says the Campaigner, with a scornful toss of her head. Clive groaned out as we +were on the stair, “that he could not bear this much longer, by heavens +he could not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Give the Colonel his pipe, Clive,” said I. “Now, sir, down +with you in the sitter’s chair, and smoke the sweetest cheroot you ever +smoked in your life! My dear, dear old Clive! you need not bear with the +Campaigner any longer; you may go to bed without this nightmare to-night if you +like; you may have your father back under your roof again.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Arthur! I must be back at ten, sir, back at ten, military time; +drum beats; no—bell tolls at ten, and gates close;” and he laughed +and shook his old head. “Besides, I am to see a young lady, sir; and she +is coming to make tea for me, and I must speak to Mrs. Jones to have all things +ready—all things ready;” and again the old man laughed as he spoke. +</p> + +<p> +His son looked at him and then at me with eyes full of sad meaning. “How +do you mean, Arthur,” Clive said, “that he can come and stay with +me, and that that woman can go?” +</p> + +<p> +Then feeling in my pocket for Mr. Luce’s letter, I grasped my dear Clive +by the hand and bade him prepare for good news. I told him how providentially, +two days since, Ethel, in the library at Newcome, looking into Orme’s +History of India, a book which old Mrs. Newcome had been reading on the night +of her death, had discovered a paper, of which the accompanying letter enclosed +a copy, and I gave my friend the letter. +</p> + +<p> +He opened it, and read it through. I cannot say that I saw any particular +expression of wonder in his countenance, for somehow, all the while Clive +perused this document, I was looking at the Colonel’s sweet kind face. +“It—it is Ethel’s doing,” said Clive, in a hurried +voice. “There was no such letter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Upon my honour,” I answered, “there was. We came up to +London with it last night, a few hours after she had found it. We showed it to +Sir Barnes Newcome, who—who could not disown it. We took it to Mr. Luce, +who recognised it at once, who was old Mrs. Newcome’s man of business, +and continues to be the family lawyer, and the family recognises the legacy and +has paid it, and you may draw for it to-morrow, as you see. What a piece of +good luck it is that it did not come before the B. B. C. time! That confounded +Bundelcund Bank would have swallowed up this like all the rest.” +</p> + +<p> +“Father! father! do you remember Orme’s History of India?” +cries Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“Orme’s History! of course I do, I could repeat whole pages of it +when I was a boy,” says the old man, and began forthwith. +“‘The two battalions advanced against each other cannonading, until +the French, coming to a hollow way, imagined that the English would not venture +to pass it. But Major Lawrence ordered the sepoys and artillery—the +sepoys and artillery to halt and defend the convoy against the +Morattoes’—Morattoes Orme calls ’em. Ho! ho! I could repeat +whole pages, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is the best book that ever was written,” calls out Clive. The +Colonel said he had not read it, but he was informed Mr. Mill’s was a +very learned history; he intended to read it. “Eh! there is plenty of +time now,” said the good Colonel. “I have all day long at Grey +Friars,—after chapel, you know. Do you know, sir, when I was a boy I used +what they call to tib out and run down to a public-house in Cistercian +Lane—the Red Cowl sir,—and buy rum there? I was a terrible wild +boy, Clivy. You weren’t so, sir, thank Heaven! A terrible wild boy, and +my poor father flogged me, though I think it was very hard on me. It +wasn’t the pain, you know: it wasn’t the pain, +but——” Here tears came into his eyes and he dropped his head +on his hand, and the cigar from it fell on to the floor, burnt almost out, and +scattering white ashes. +</p> + +<p> +Clive looked sadly at me. “He was often so at Boulogne, Arthur,” he +whispered; “after a scene with that—that woman yonder, his head +would go: he never replied to her taunts; he bore her infernal cruelty without +an unkind word—Oh! I pay her back, thank God I can pay her! But who shall +pay her,” he said, trembling in every limb, “for what she has made +that good man suffer?” +</p> + +<p> +He turned to his father, who still sate lost in his meditations. “You +need never go back to Grey Friars, father!” he cried out. +</p> + +<p> +“Not go back, Clivy? Must go back, boy, to say Adsum, when my name is +called. Newcome! Adsum! Hey! that is what we used to say—we used to +say!” +</p> + +<p> +“You need not go back, except to pack your things, and return and live +with me and Boy,” Clive continued, and he told Colonel Newcome rapidly +the story of the legacy. The old man seemed hardly to comprehend it. When he +did, the news scarcely elated him; when Clive said “they could now pay +Mrs. Mackenzie,” the Colonel replied, “Quite right, quite +right,” and added up the sum, principal and interest, in which they were +indebted to her—he knew it well enough, the good old man. “Of +course we shall pay her, Clivy, when we can!” But in spite of what Clive +had said he did not appear to understand the fact that the debt to Mrs. +Mackenzie was now actually to be paid. +</p> + +<p> +As we were talking, a knock came to the studio door, and that summons was +followed by the entrance of the maid, who said to Clive, “If you please, +sir, Mrs. Mackenzie says, how long are you a-going to keep the dinner +waiting?” +</p> + +<p> +“Come, father, come to dinner!” cries Clive; “and, Pen, you +will come too, won’t you?” he added; “it may be the last time +you dine in such pleasant company. Come along,” he whispered hurriedly. +“I should like you to be there, it will keep her tongue quiet.” As +we proceeded to the dining-room, I gave the Colonel my arm; and the good man +prattled to me something about Mrs. Mackenzie having taken shares in the +Bundelcund Banking Company, and about her not being a woman of business, and +fancying we had spent her money. “And I have always felt a wish that +Clivy should pay her, and he will pay her, I know he will,” says the +Colonel; “and then we shall lead a quiet life, Arthur; for, between +ourselves, some women are the deuce when they are angry, sir.” And again +he laughed, as he told me this sly news, and he bowed meekly his gentle old +head as we entered the dining-room. +</p> + +<p> +That apartment was occupied by little Boy already seated in his high chair, and +by the Campaigner only, who stood at the mantelpiece in a majestic attitude. On +parting with her, before we adjourned to Clive’s studio, I had made my +bow and taken my leave in form, not supposing that I was about to enjoy her +hospitality yet once again. My return did not seem to please her. “Does +Mr. Pendennis favour us with his company to dinner again, Clive?” she +said, turning to her son-in-law. Clive curtly said, Yes, he had asked Mr. +Pendennis to stay. +</p> + +<p> +“You might at least have been <i>so kind</i> as to give me notice,” +says the Campaigner, still majestic, but ironical. “You will have but a +poor meal, Mr. Pendennis; and one such as I’m not accustomed to give my +guests.” +</p> + +<p> +“Cold beef! what the deuce does it matter;” says Clive, beginning +to carve the joint, which, hot, had served our yesterday’s Christmas +table. +</p> + +<p> +“It does matter, sir! I am not accustomed to treat my guests in this way. +Maria! who has been cutting that beef? Three pounds of that beef have been cut +away since one o’clock to-day,” and with flashing eyes, and a +finger twinkling all over with rings, she pointed towards the guilty joint. +</p> + +<p> +Whether Maria had been dispensing secret charities, or kept company with an +occult policeman partial to roast-beef, I do not know; but she looked very much +alarmed, and said, Indeed, and indeed, mum, she had not touched a morsel of +it!—not she. +</p> + +<p> +“Confound the beef!” says Clive, carving on. +</p> + +<p> +“She <i>has</i> been cutting it!” cries the Campaigner, bringing +her fist down with a thump upon the table. “Mr. Pendennis! you saw the +beef yesterday; eighteen pounds it weighed, and this is what comes up of it! As +if there was not already ruin enough in the house!” +</p> + +<p> +“D—n the beef!” cries out Clive. +</p> + +<p> +“No! no! Thank God for our good dinner! Benedicti benedicamus, Clivy my +boy,” says the Colonel, in a tremulous voice. +</p> + +<p> +“Swear on, sir! let the child hear your oaths! Let my blessed child, who +is too ill to sit at table and picks her bite! sweetbread on her +sofa,—which her poor mother prepares for her, Mr. Pendennis,—which +I cooked it, and gave it to her with <i>these hands</i>,—let <i>her</i> +hear your curses and blasphemies, Clive Newcome! They are loud enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do let us have a quiet life,” groans out Clive; and for me, I must +confess, I kept my eyes steadily down upon my plate, nor dared to lift them +until my portion of cold beef had vanished. +</p> + +<p> +No further outbreak took place until the appearance of the second course, which +consisted, as the ingenious reader may suppose, of the plum-pudding, now in a +grilled state, and the remanent of mince-pies from yesterday’s meal. +Maria, I thought, looked particularly guilty as these delicacies were placed on +the table: she set them down hastily, and was for operating an instant retreat. +</p> + +<p> +But the Campaigner shrieked after her, “Who has eaten that pudding? I +insist upon knowing who has eaten it. I saw it at two o’clock when I went +down to the kitchen and fried a bit for my darling child, and there’s +pounds of it gone since then! There were five mince-pies! Mr. Pendennis! you +saw yourself there were five that went away from table +yesterday—where’s the other two Maria? You leave the house this +night, you thieving, wicked wretch—and I’ll thank you to come back +to me afterwards for a character. Thirteen servants have we had in nine months, +Mr. Pendennis, and this girl is the worst of them all, and the greatest liar +and the greatest thief.” +</p> + +<p> +At this charge the outraged Maria stood up in arms, and as the phrase is, gave +the Campaigner as good as she got. Go! wouldn’t she go? Pay her her +wages, and let her go out of that ell upon hearth, was Maria’s prayer. +“It isn’t you, sir,” she said, turning to Clive. +“<i>You</i> are good enough, and works hard enough to git the guineas +which you give out to pay that doctor; and she don’t pay him—and I +see five of them in her purse wrapped up in paper, myself I did, and she abuses +you to him—and I heard her, and Jane Black, who was here before, told me +she heard her. Go! won’t I just go, I dispises your puddens and +pies!” and with a laugh of scorn this rude Maria snapped her black +fingers in the immediate vicinity of the Campaigner’s nose. +</p> + +<p> +“I will pay her her wages, and she shall go this instant!” says +Mrs. Mackenzie, taking her purse out. +</p> + +<p> +“Pay me with them suvverings that you have got in it, wrapped up in +paper. See if she haven’t, Mr. Newcome,” the refractory +waiting-woman cried out, and again she laughed a strident laugh. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Mackenzie briskly shut her portemonnaie, and rose up from table, quivering +with indignant virtue. “Go!” she exclaimed, “go and pack your +trunks this instant! you quit the house this night, and a policeman shall see +to your boxes before you leave it!” +</p> + +<p> +Whilst uttering this sentence against the guilty Maria, the Campaigner had +intended, no doubt, to replace her purse in her pocket,—a handsome +filagree gimcrack of poor Ross’s, one of the relics of former +splendours,—but, agitated by Maria’s insolence, the trembling hand +missed the mark, and the purse fell to the ground. +</p> + +<p> +Maria dashed at the purse in a moment, with a scream of laughter shook its +contents upon the table, and sure enough, five little packets wrapped in paper +rolled out upon the cloth, besides bank-notes and silver and golden coin. +“I’m to go, am I? I’m a thief, am I?” screamed the +girl, clapping her hands. “<i>I</i> sor ’em yesterday when I was +a-lacing of her; and thought of that pore young man working night and day to +get the money;—me a thief, indeed!—I despise you, and <i>I</i> give +you warning.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you wish to see me any longer insulted by this woman, Clive? Mr. +Pendennis, I am shocked that you should witness such horrible vulgarity,” +cries the Campaigner, turning to her guest. “Does the wretched creature +suppose that I, I who have given <i>thousands</i>, I who have denied myself +<i>everything</i>, I who have spent my <i>all</i> in support of this house; and +Colonel Newcome <i>knows</i> whether I have given thousands or not, and +<i>who</i> has spent them, and <i>who</i> has been robbed, I say, +and——” +</p> + +<p> +“Here! you! Maria! go about your business,” shouted out Clive +Newcome, starting up; “go and pack your trunks if you like, and pack this +woman’s trunks too. Mrs. Mackenzie, I can bear you no more; go in peace, +and if you wish to see your daughter she shall come to you; but I will never, +so help me God! sleep under the same roof with you; or break the same crust +with you; or bear your infernal cruelty; or sit to hear my father insulted; or +listen to your wicked pride and folly more. There has not been a day since you +thrust your cursed foot into our wretched house, but you have tortured one and +all of us. Look here, at the best gentleman, and the kindest heart in all the +world, you fiend! and see to what a condition you have brought him! Dearest +father! she is going, do you hear? She leaves us, and you will come back to me, +won’t you? Great God, woman,” he gasped out, “do you know +what you have made me suffer—what you have done to this good man? Pardon, +father, pardon!”—and he sank down by his father’s side, +sobbing with passionate emotion. The old man even now did not seem to +comprehend the scene. When he heard that woman’s voice in anger, a sort +of stupor came over him. +</p> + +<p> +“I am a <i>fiend</i>, am I?” cries the lady. “You hear, Mr. +Pendennis, this is the language to which I am accustomed; I am a widow, and I +trusted my child and my all to that old man; he robbed me and my darling of +almost every farthing we had; and what has been my return for such baseness? I +have lived in this house and toiled like a <i>slave;</i> I have acted as +servant to my blessed child; night after night I have sat with her; and month +after month, when <i>her husband</i> has been away, I have nursed that poor +innocent; and the father having robbed me, the son turns me out of +doors!” +</p> + +<p> +A sad thing it was to witness, and a painful proof how frequent were these +battles, that, as this one raged, the poor little boy sat almost careless, +whilst his bewildered grandfather stroked his golden head. “It is quite +clear to me, madam,” I said, turning to Mrs. Mackenzie, “that you +and your son-in-law are better apart; and I came to tell him to-day of a most +fortunate legacy, which has been left to him, and which will enable him to pay +you to-morrow morning every shilling, every shilling which he does NOT owe +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I will not leave this house until I am paid every shilling of which I +have been robbed,” hissed out Mrs. Mackenzie; and she sat down, folding +her arms across her chest. +</p> + +<p> +“I am sorry,” groaned out Clive, wiping the sweat off his brow, +“I used a harsh word; I will never sleep under the same roof with you. +To-morrow I will pay you what you claim; and the best chance I have of +forgiving you the evil which you have done me, is that we never should meet +again. Will you give me a bed at your house, Arthur? Father, will you come out +and walk? Good night, Mrs. Mackenzie; Pendennis will settle with you in the +morning. You will not be here, if you please, when I return; and so God forgive +you, and farewell.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Mackenzie in a tragic manner dashed aside the hand which poor Clive held +out to her, and disappeared from the scene of this dismal dinner. Boy presently +fell a-crying; in spite of all the battle and fury, there was sleep in his +eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Maria is too busy, I suppose, to put him to bed,” said Clive, with +a sad smile; “shall we do it, father? Come, Tommy, my son!” and he +folded his arms round the child, and walked with him to the upper regions. The +old man’s eyes lighted up; his seared thoughts returned to him; he +followed his two children up the stairs, and saw his grandson in his little +bed; and, as we walked home with him, he told me how sweetly Boy said +“Our Father,” and prayed God bless all those who loved him, as they +laid him to rest. +</p> + +<p> +So these three generations had joined in that supplication: the strong man, +humbled by trial and grief, whose loyal heart was yet full of love;—the +child, of the sweet age of those little ones whom the Blessed Speaker of the +prayer first bade to come unto Him;—and the old man, whose heart was +well-nigh as tender and as innocent; and whose day was approaching, when he +should be drawn to the bosom of the Eternal Pity. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a id="link2HCH0080"></a> +CHAPTER LXXX.<br> +In which the Colonel says “Adsum” when his Name is called</h2> + +<p> +The vow which Clive had uttered, never to share bread with his mother-in-law, +or sleep under the same roof with her, was broken on the very next day. A +stronger will than the young man’s intervened, and he had to confess the +impotence of his wrath before that superior power. In the forenoon of the day +following that unlucky dinner, I went with my friend to the banking-house +whither Mr. Luce’s letter directed us, and carried away with me the +principal sum, in which the Campaigner said Colonel Newcome was indebted to +her, with the interest accurately computed and reimbursed. Clive went off with +a pocketful of money to the dear old Poor Brother of Grey Friars; and he +promised to return with his father, and dine with my wife in Queen Square. I +had received a letter from Laura by the morning’s post, announcing her +return by the express train from Newcome, and desiring that a spare bedroom +should be got ready for a friend who accompanied her. +</p> + +<p> +On reaching Howland Street, Clive’s door was opened, rather to my +surprise, by the rebellious maid-servant who had received her dismissal on the +previous night; and the doctor’s carriage drove up as she was still +speaking to me. The polite practitioner sped upstairs to Mrs. Newcome’s +apartment. Mrs. Mackenzie, in a robe-de-chambre and cap very different from +yesterday’s, came out eagerly to meet the physician on the landing. Ere +they had been a quarter of an hour together, arrived a cab, which discharged an +elderly person with her bandbox and bundles; I had no difficulty in recognising +a professional nurse in the new-comer. She too disappeared into the sick-room, +and left me sitting in the neighbouring chamber, the scene of the last +night’s quarrel. +</p> + +<p> +Hither presently came to me Maria, the maid. She said she had not the heart to +go away now she was wanted; that they had passed a sad night, and that no one +had been to bed. Master Tommy was below, and the landlady taking care of him: +the landlord had gone out for the nurse. Mrs. Clive had been taken bad after +Mr. Clive went away the night before. Mrs. Mackenzie had gone to the poor young +thing, and there she went on, crying, and screaming, and stamping, as she used +to do in her tantrums, which was most cruel of her, and made Mrs. Clive so ill. +And presently the young lady began: my informant told me. She came screaming +into the sitting-room, her hair over her shoulders, calling out she was +deserted, deserted, and would like to die. She was like a mad woman for some +time. She had fit after fit of hysterics: and there was her mother, kneeling, +and crying, and calling out to her darling child to calm herself;—which +it was all her own doing, and she had much better have held her own tongue, +remarked the resolute Maria. I understood only too well from the girl’s +account what had happened, and that Clive, if resolved to part with his +mother-in-law, should not have left her, even for twelve hours, in possession +of his house. The wretched woman, whose Self was always predominant, and who, +though she loved her daughter after her own fashion, never forgot her own +vanity or passion, had improved the occasion of Clive’s absence: worked +upon her child’s weakness, jealousy, ill-health, and driven her, no +doubt, into the fever which yonder physician was called to quell. +</p> + +<p> +The doctor presently enters to write a prescription, followed by Clive’s +mother-in-law, who had cast Rosa’s fine Cashmere shawl over her +shoulders, to hide her disarray. “You here still, Mr. Pendennis!” +she exclaims. She knew I was there. Had not she changed her dress in order to +receive me? +</p> + +<p> +“I have to speak to you for two minutes on important business, and then I +shall go,” I replied gravely. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, sir! to what a scene you have come! To what a state has +Clive’s conduct last night driven my darling child!” +</p> + +<p> +As the odious woman spoke so, the doctor’s keen eyes, looking up from the +prescription, caught mine. “I declare before Heaven, madam,” I said +hotly, “I believe you yourself are the cause of your daughter’s +present illness, as you have been of the misery of my friends.” +</p> + +<p> +“Is this, sir,” she was breaking out, “is this language to be +used to——?” +</p> + +<p> +“Madam, will you be silent?” I said. “I am come to bid you +farewell on the part of those whom your temper has driven into infernal +torture. I am come to pay you every halfpenny of the sum which my friends do +not owe you, but which they restore. Here is the account, and here is the money +to settle it. And I take this gentleman to witness, to whom, no doubt, you have +imparted what you call your wrongs” (the doctor smiled, and shrugged his +shoulders) “that now you are paid.” +</p> + +<p> +“A widow—a poor, lonely, insulted widow!” cries the +Campaigner, with trembling hands taking possession of the notes. +</p> + +<p> +“And I wish to know,” I continued, “when my friend’s +house will be free to him, and he can return in peace.” +</p> + +<p> +Here Rosa’s voice was heard from the inner apartment, screaming, +“Mamma, mamma!” +</p> + +<p> +“I go to my child, sir,” she said. “If Captain Mackenzie had +been alive, you would not have <i>dared</i> to insult me so.” And +carrying off her money, she left us. +</p> + +<p> +“Cannot she be got out of the house?” I said to the doctor. +“My friend will never return until she leaves it. It is my belief she is +the cause of her daughter’s present illness.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not altogether, my dear sir. Mrs. Newcome was in a very, very delicate +state of health. Her mother is a lady of impetuous temper, who expresses +herself very strongly—too strongly, I own. In consequence of unpleasant +family discussions, which no physician can prevent, Mrs. Newcome has been +wrought up to a state of—of agitation. Her fever is, in fact, at present +very high. You know her condition. I am apprehensive of ulterior consequences. +I have recommended an excellent and experienced nurse to her. Mr. Smith, the +medical man at the corner, is a most able practitioner. I shall myself call +again in a few hours, and I trust that, after the event which I apprehend, +everything will go well. +</p> + +<p> +“Cannot Mrs. Mackenzie leave the house, sir?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Her daughter cries out for her at every moment. Mrs. Mackenzie is +certainly not a judicious nurse, but in Mrs. Newcome’s present state I +cannot take upon myself to separate them. Mr. Newcome may return, and I do +think and believe that his presence may tend to impose silence and restore +tranquillity.” +</p> + +<p> +I had to go back to Clive with these gloomy tidings. The poor fellow must put +up a bed in his studio, and there await the issue of his wife’s illness. +I saw Thomas Newcome could not sleep under his son’s roof that night. +That dear meeting, which both so desired, was delayed, who could say for how +long? +</p> + +<p> +“The Colonel may come to us,” I thought; “our old house is +big enough.” I guessed who was the friend coming in my wife’s +company; and pleased myself by thinking that two friends so dear should meet in +our home. Bent upon these plans, I repaired to Grey Friars, and to Thomas +Newcome’s chamber there. +</p> + +<p> +Bayham opened the door when I knocked, and came towards me with a finger on his +lip, and a sad, sad countenance. He closed the door gently behind him, and led +me into the court. “Clive is with him, and Miss Newcome. He is very ill. +He does not know them,” said Bayham with a sob. “He calls out for +both of them: they are sitting there and he does not know them.” +</p> + +<p> +In a brief narrative, broken by more honest tears, Fred Bayham, as we paced up +and down the court, told me what had happened. The old man must have passed a +sleepless night, for on going to his chamber in the morning, his attendant +found him dressed in his chair, and his bed undisturbed. He must have sat all +through the bitter night without a fire: but his hands were burning hot, and he +rambled in his talk. He spoke of some one coming to drink tea with him, pointed +to the fire, and asked why it was not made; he would not go to bed, though the +nurse pressed him. The bell began to ring for morning chapel; he got up and +went towards his gown, groping towards it as though he could hardly see, and +put it over his shoulders, and would go out, but he would have fallen in the +court if the good nurse had not given him her arm; and the physician of the +hospital, passing fortunately at this moment, who had always been a great +friend of Colonel Newcome’s, insisted upon leading him back to his room +again, and got him to bed. “When the bell stopped, he wanted to rise once +more; he fancied he was a boy at school again,” said the nurse, +“and that he was going in to Dr. Raine, who was schoolmaster here ever so +many years ago.” So it was, that when happier days seemed to be dawning +for the good man, that reprieve came too late. Grief, and years, and +humiliation, and care, and cruelty had been too strong for him, and Thomas +Newcome was stricken down. +</p> + +<p> +Bayham’s story told, I entered the room, over which the twilight was +falling, and saw the figures of Clive and Ethel seated at each end of the bed. +The poor old man within it was calling incoherent sentences. I had to call +Clive from the present grief before him, with intelligence of further sickness +awaiting him at home. Our poor patient did not heed what I said to his son. +“You must go home to Rosa,” Ethel said. “She will be sure to +ask for her husband, and forgiveness is best, dear Clive. I will stay with +uncle. I will never leave him. Please God, he will be better in the morning +when you come back.” So Clive’s duty called him to his own sad +home; and, the bearer of dismal tidings, I returned to mine. The fires were lit +there and the table spread; and kind hearts were waiting to welcome the friend +who never more was to enter my door. +</p> + +<p> +It may be imagined that the intelligence which I brought alarmed and afflicted +my wife and Madame de Florac, our guest. Laura immediately went away to +Rosa’s house to offer her services if needed. The accounts which she +brought thence were very bad: Clive came to her for a minute or two, but Mrs. +Mackenzie could not see her. Should she not bring the little boy home to her +children? Laura asked; and Clive thankfully accepted that offer. The little man +slept in our nursery that night, and was at play with our young ones on the +morrow—happy and unconscious of the fate impending over his home. +</p> + +<p> +Yet two more days passed, and I had to take two advertisements to <i>The +Times</i> newspaper on the part of poor Clive. Among the announcements of +Births was printed, “On the 28th, in Howland Street, Mrs. Clive Newcome +of a son, still-born.” And a little lower, in the third division of the +same column, appeared the words, “On the 29th, in Howland Street, aged +26, Rosa, wife of Clive Newcome, Esq.” So, one day, shall the names of +all of us be written there; to be deplored by how many?—to be remembered +how long?—to occasion what tears, praises, sympathy, censure?—yet +for a day or two, while the busy world has time to recollect us who have passed +beyond it. So this poor little flower had bloomed for its little day, and +pined, and withered, and perished. There was only one friend by Clive’s +side following the humble procession which laid poor Rosa and her child out of +sight of a world that had been but unkind to her. Not many tears were there to +water her lonely little grave. A grief that was akin to shame and remorse +humbled him as he knelt over her. Poor little harmless lady! no more childish +triumphs and vanities, no more hidden griefs are you to enjoy or suffer; and +earth closes over your simple pleasures and tears! The snow was falling and +whitening the coffin as they lowered it into the ground. It was at the same +cemetery in which Lady Kew was buried. I dare say the same clergyman read the +same service over the two graves, as he will read it for you or any of us +to-morrow, and until his own turn comes. Come away from the place, poor Clive! +Come sit with your orphan little boy; and bear him on your knee, and hug him to +your heart. He seems yours now, and all a father’s love may pour out upon +him. Until this hour, Fate uncontrollable and homely tyranny had separated him +from you. +</p> + +<p> +It was touching to see the eagerness and tenderness with which the great strong +man now assumed the guardianship of the child, and endowed him with his entire +wealth of affection. The little boy now ran to Clive whenever he came in, and +sat for hours prattling to him. He would take the boy out to walk, and from our +windows we could see Clive’s black figure striding over the snow in St. +James’s Park, the little man trotting beside him, or perched on his +father’s shoulder. My wife and I looked at them one morning as they were +making their way towards the City. +</p> + +<p> +“He has inherited that loving heart from his father,” Laura said; +“and he is paying over the whole property to his son.” +</p> + +<p> +Clive, and the boy sometimes with him, used to go daily to Grey Friars, where +the Colonel still lay ill. After some days the fever which had attacked him +left him, but left him so weak and enfeebled that he could only go from his bed +to the chair by his fireside. The season was exceedingly bitter, the chamber +which he inhabited was warm and spacious; it was considered unadvisable to move +him until he had attained greater strength, and till warmer weather. The +medical men of the House hoped he might rally in spring. My friend, Dr. +Goodenough, came to him; he hoped too: but not with a hopeful face. A chamber, +luckily vacant, hard by the Colonel’s, was assigned to his friends, where +we sate when we were too many for him. Besides his customary attendant, he had +two dear and watchful nurses, who were almost always with him—Ethel and +Madame de Florac, who had passed many a faithful year by an old man’s +bedside; who would have come, as to a work of religion, to any sick couch, much +more to this one, where he lay for whose life she would once gladly have given +her own. +</p> + +<p> +But our Colonel, we all were obliged to acknowledge, was no more our friend of +old days. He knew us again, and was good to every one round him, as his wont +was; especially when Boy came, his old eyes lighted up with simple happiness, +and, with eager trembling hands, he would seek under his bedclothes, or the +pockets of his dressing-gown, for toys or cakes, which he had caused to be +purchased for his grandson. There was a little laughing, red-cheeked, +white-headed gown-boy of the school, to whom the old man had taken a great +fancy. One of the symptoms of his returning consciousness and recovery, as we +hoped, was his calling for this child, who pleased our friend by his archness +and merry ways; and who, to the old gentleman’s unfailing delight, used +to call him, “Codd Colonel.” “Tell little F——, +that Codd Colonel wants to see him;” and the little gown-boy was brought +to him; and the Colonel would listen to him for hours; and hear all about his +lessons and his play; and prattle almost as childishly about Dr. Raine, and his +own early school-days. The boys of the school, it must be said, had heard the +noble old gentleman’s touching history, and had all got to know and love +him. They came every day to hear news of him; sent him in books and papers to +amuse him; and some benevolent young souls,—God’s blessing on all +honest boys, say I,—painted theatrical characters, and sent them in to +Codd Colonel’s grandson. The little fellow was made free of gown-boys, +and once came thence to his grandfather in a little gown, which delighted the +old man hugely. Boy said he would like to be a little gown-boy; and I make no +doubt, when he is old enough, his father will get him that post, and put him +under the tuition of my friend Dr. Senior. +</p> + +<p> +So, weeks passed away, during which our dear old friend still remained with us. +His mind was gone at intervals, but would rally feebly; and with his +consciousness returned his love, his simplicity, his sweetness. He would talk +French with Madame de Florac, at which time, his memory appeared to awaken with +surprising vividness, his cheek flushed, and he was a youth again,—a +youth all love and hope,—a stricken old man, with a beard as white as +snow covering the noble careworn face. At such times he called her by her +Christian name of Léonore; he addressed courtly old words of regard and +kindness to the aged lady; anon he wandered in his talk, and spoke to her as if +they still were young. Now, as in those early days, his heart was pure; no +anger remained in it; no guile tainted it; only peace and goodwill dwelt in it. +</p> + +<p> +Rosa’s death had seemed to shock him for a while when the unconscious +little boy spoke of it. Before that circumstance, Clive had even forbore to +wear mourning, lest the news should agitate his father. The Colonel remained +silent and was very much disturbed all that day, but he never appeared to +comprehend the fact quite; and, once or twice afterwards, asked, why she did +not come to see him? She was prevented, he supposed—she was prevented, he +said, with a look of terror: he never once otherwise alluded to that unlucky +tyrant of his household, who had made his last years so unhappy. +</p> + +<p> +The circumstance of Clive’s legacy he never understood: but more than +once spoke of Barnes to Ethel, and sent his compliments to him, and said he +should like to shake him by the hand. Barnes Newcome never once offered to +touch that honoured hand, though his sister bore her uncle’s message to +him. They came often from Bryanstone Square; Mrs. Hobson even offered to sit +with the Colonel, and read to him, and brought him books for his improvement. +But her presence disturbed him; he cared not for her books; the two nurses whom +he loved faithfully watched him; and my wife and I were admitted to him +sometimes, both of whom he honoured with regard and recognition. As for F. B., +in order to be near his Colonel, did not that good fellow take up his lodging +in Cistercian Lane, at the Red Cow? He is one whose errors, let us hope, shall +be pardoned, <i>quia multum amavit</i>. I am sure he felt ten times more joy at +hearing of Clive’s legacy, than if thousands had been bequeathed to +himself. May good health and good fortune speed him! +</p> + +<p> +The days went on, and our hopes, raised sometimes, began to flicker and fail. +One evening the Colonel left his chair for his bed in pretty good spirits, but +passed a disturbed night, and the next morning was too weak to rise. Then he +remained in his bed, and his friends visited him there. One afternoon he asked +for his little gown-boy, and the child was brought to him, and sate by the bed +with a very awestricken face; and then gathered courage, and tried to amuse him +by telling him how it was a half-holiday, and they were having a cricket-match +with the St. Peter’s boys in the green, and Grey Friars was in and +winning. The Colonel quite understood about it; he would like to see the game; +he had played many a game on that green when he was a boy. He grew excited; +Clive dismissed his father’s little friend, and put a sovereign into his +hand; and away he ran to say that Codd Colonel had come into a fortune, and to +buy tarts, and to see the match out. <i>I, curre</i>, little white-haired +gown-boy! Heaven speed you, little friend! +</p> + +<p> +After the child had gone, Thomas Newcome began to wander more and more. He +talked louder; he gave the word of command, spoke Hindustanee as if to his men. +Then he spoke words in French rapidly, seizing a hand that was near him and +crying, “Toujours, toujours!” But it was Ethel’s hand which +he took. +</p> + +<p> +Ethel and Clive and the nurse were in the room with him; the latter came to us, +who were sitting in the adjoining apartment; Madame de Florac was there, with +my wife and Bayham. +</p> + +<p> +At the look in the woman’s countenance Madame de Florac started up. +“He is very bad, he wanders a great deal,” the nurse whispered. The +French lady fell instantly on her knees, and remained rigid in prayer. +</p> + +<p> +Some time afterwards Ethel came in with a scared face to our pale group. +“He is calling for you again, dear lady,” she said, going up to +Madame de Florac, who was still kneeling; “and just now he said he wanted +Pendennis to take care of his boy. He will not know you.” She hid her +tears as she spoke. +</p> + +<p> +She went into the room, where Clive was at the bed’s foot; the old man +within it talked on rapidly for a while: then again he would sigh and be still: +once more I heard him say hurriedly, “Take care of him while I’m in +India;” and then with a heart-rending voice he called out, +“Léonore, Léonore!” She was kneeling by his side now. The +patient’s voice sank into faint murmurs; only a moan now and then +announced that he was not asleep. +</p> + +<p> +At the usual evening hour the chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas +Newcome’s hands outside the bed feebly beat a time. And just as the last +bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his +head a little, and quickly said, “Adsum!” and fell back. It was the +word we used at school, when names were called; and lo, he, whose heart was as +that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of +The Master. +</p> + +<hr> + +<p> +Two years ago, walking with my children in some pleasant fields, near to Berne +in Switzerland, I strayed from them into a little wood; and, coming out of it +presently, told them how the story had been revealed to me somehow, which for +three-and-twenty months the reader has been pleased to follow. As I write the +last line with a rather sad heart, Pendennis and Laura, and Ethel and Clive, +fade away into Fable-land. I hardly know whether they are not true: whether +they do not live near us somewhere. They were alive, and I heard their voices, +but five minutes since was touched by their grief. And have we parted with them +here on a sudden, and without so much as a shake of the hand? Is yonder line +(——), which I drew with my own pen, a barrier between me and Hades +as it were, across which I can see those figures retreating and only dimly +glimmering? Before taking leave of Mr. Arthur Pendennis, might he not have told +us whether Miss Ethel married anybody finally? It was provoking that he should +retire to the shades without answering that sentimental question. +</p> + +<p> +But though he has disappeared as irrevocably as Eurydice, these minor questions +may settle the major one above mentioned. How could Pendennis have got all that +information about Ethel’s goings-on at Baden, and with Lord Kew, unless +she had told somebody—her husband, for instance, who, having made +Pendennis an early confidant in his amour, gave him the whole story? Clive, +Pendennis writes expressly, is travelling abroad with his wife. Who is that +wife? By a most monstrous blunder, Mr. Pendennis killed Lord Farintosh’s +mother at one page and brought her to life again at another; but Rosey, who is +so lately consigned to Kensal Green, it is not surely with <i>her</i> that +Clive is travelling, for then Mrs. Mackenzie would probably be with them to a +live certainty, and the tour would be by no means pleasant. How could Pendennis +have got all those private letters, etc., but that the Colonel kept them in a +teak box, which Clive inherited and made over to his friend? My belief then is, +that in Fable-land somewhere Ethel and Clive are living most comfortably +together: that she is immensely fond of his little boy, and a great deal +happier now than they would have been had they married at first, when they took +a liking to each other as young people. That picture of J. J.’s of Mrs. +Clive Newcome (in the Crystal Palace Exhibition in Fable-land), is certainly +not in the least like Rosey, who we read was fair; but it represents a tall, +handsome, dark lady, who must be Mrs. Ethel. +</p> + +<p> +Again, why did Pendennis introduce J. J. with such a flourish, giving us, as it +were, an overture, and no piece to follow it? J. J.’s history, let me +confidentially state, has been revealed to me too, and may be told some of +these fine summer months, or Christmas evenings, when the kind reader has +leisure to hear. +</p> + +<p> +What about Sir Barnes Newcome ultimately? My impression is that he is married +again, and it is my fervent hope that his present wife bullies him. Mrs. +Mackenzie cannot have the face to keep that money which Clive paid over to her, +beyond her lifetime; and will certainly leave it and her savings to little +Tommy. I should not be surprised if Madame de Moncontour left a smart legacy to +the Pendennis children; and Lord Kew stood godfather in case—in case Mr. +and Mrs. Clive wanted such an article. But have they any children? I, for my +part, should like her best without, and entirely devoted to little Tommy. But +for you, dear friend, it is as you like. You may settle your Fable-land in your +own fashion. Anything you like happens in Fable-land. Wicked folks die apropos +(for instance, that death of Lady Kew was most artful, for if she had not died, +don’t you see that Ethel would have married Lord Farintosh the next +week?)—annoying folks are got out of the way; the poor are +rewarded—the upstarts are set down in Fable-land,—the frog bursts +with wicked rage, the fox is caught in his trap, the lamb is rescued from the +wolf, and so forth, just in the nick of time. And the poet of Fable-land +rewards and punishes absolutely. He splendidly deals out bags of sovereigns, +which won’t buy anything; belabours wicked backs with awful blows, which +do not hurt; endows heroines with preternatural beauty, and creates heroes, +who, if ugly sometimes, yet possess a thousand good qualities, and usually end +by being immensely rich; makes the hero and heroine happy at last, and happy +ever after. Ah, happy, harmless Fable-land, where these things are! Friendly +reader! may you and the author meet there on some future day. He hopes so; as +he yet keeps a lingering hold of your hand, and bids you farewell with a kind +heart. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +P<small>ARIS</small>, 28th June 1855. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 7467 ***</div> +</body> + +</html> + diff --git a/7467-h/images/cover.jpg b/7467-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4c0f305 --- /dev/null +++ b/7467-h/images/cover.jpg |
