[Illustration: CLIVE AND ETHEL NEWCOME.]
When one is about to write the biography of a certain person, it seems
but fair to give as its background such facts concerning the hero's
antecedents as place the details of his life in their proper setting. And
so, having the honour to be the juvenile biographer of Mr. Clive Newcome,
I deem it wise to preface the story of his life with a brief account of
events and persons antecedent to his birth.
Thomas Newcome, Clive's grandfather, had been a weaver in his native
village, and 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-manufacturers; afterwards Hobson & Newcome. When Thomas
Newcome had been some time in London, he quitted the house of Hobson, to
begin business for himself. And no sooner did his business prosper than
he married a pretty girl from his native village. What seemed an
imprudent match, as his wife had no worldly goods to bring him, turned
out a very lucky one for Newcome. The whole countryside was pleased to
think of the marriage of the prosperous London tradesman with 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, and Susan Newcome would have been the wife of a
rich man had she not died a year after her marriage, at the birth of her
son, Thomas.
Newcome had a nurse for the child, and a cottage at Clapham, hard by Mr.
Hobson's house, and being held in good esteem by his former employers,
was sometimes invited by them to tea. When his wife died, Miss Hobson,
who since her father's death had become a partner in the firm, met Mr.
Newcome with his little boy as she was coming out of meeting one Sunday,
and the child looked so pretty, and Mr. Newcome so personable, that Miss
Hobson invited him and little Tommy into the grounds; let the child frisk
about in the hay on the lawn, and at the end of the visit gave him a
large piece of pound-cake, a quantity of the finest hot-house grapes, and
a tract in one syllable. Tommy was ill the next day; but on the next
Sunday his father was at meeting, and not very long after that Miss
Hobson became Mrs. Newcome.
After his father's second marriage, Tommy and Sarah, his nurse, who was
also a cousin of Mr. Newcome's first wife, were transported from the
cottage, where they had lived in great comfort, to the palace hard by,
surrounded by lawns and gardens, graperies, aviaries, luxuries of all
kinds. This paradise 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, on passing that lodge fell into an undertaker's pace,
and delivered his joints and sweetbreads silently at the servant's
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 birds usually do. The lodge-keeper was serious,
and a clerk at the neighbouring chapel. The pastor, who entered at that
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. On a Sunday the household marched away to sit under his
or her favourite minister, the only man who went to church being Thomas
Newcome, with Tommy, his little son. Tommy was taught hymns suited to his
tender age, pointing out the inevitable fate of wicked children and
giving him a description of the punishment of little sinners, which poems
he repeated to his step-mother 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 if he said well, or rebuked him if he was
bold, as he often was.
Then came the birth of Mrs. Newcome's twin boys, Hobson and Bryan, and
now there was no reason why young Newcome, their step-brother, should not
go to school, 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 new place. The pleasures of school-life
were such to him that he did not care to go home for a holiday; for by
playing tricks and breaking windows, by taking the gardener's peaches and
the housekeeper's jam, by upsetting his two little brothers in a go-cart
(of which injury the Baronet's nose bore marks to his dying day), by
going to sleep during the sermons, and treating reverend gentlemen with
levity, he drew down on himself the merited anger of his step-mother; and
many punishments. To please Mrs. Newcome, his father whipped Tommy for
upsetting his little brothers in the go-cart; but, upon being pressed to
repeat the whipping for some other prank, Mr. Newcome refused, saying
that the boy got flogging enough at school, with which opinion Master
Tommy fully agreed. His step-mother, however, determined to make the
young culprit smart for his offences, and one day, when Mr. Newcome was
absent, and Tommy refractory as usual, summoned the butler and footman to
flog the young criminal. But he dashed so furiously against the butler's
shins as to cause that menial to limp and suffer for many days after;
and, seizing the decanter, he threatened to discharge it at Mrs.
Newcome's head before he would submit to the punishment she desired
administered. When Mr. Newcome returned, he was indignant at his wife's
treatment of Tommy, and said so, to her great displeasure. This affair,
indeed, almost caused a break in their relations, and friends and clergy
were obliged to interfere to allay the domestic quarrel. At length Mrs.
Newcome, who was not unkind, and could be brought to own that she was
sometimes in fault, was induced to submit to the decrees of her husband,
whom she had vowed to love and honour. When Tommy fell ill of scarlet
fever she nursed him through his illness, and uttered no reproach to her
husband when the twins took the disease. And even though Tommy in his
delirium vowed that he would put on his clothes and run away to his old
nurse Sarah, Mrs. Newcome's kindness to him never faltered. What the boy
threatened in his delirium, a year later he actually achieved. He ran
away from home, and appeared one morning, gaunt and hungry, at Sarah's
cottage two hundred miles away from Clapham. She housed the poor prodigal
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 instinct,
backed by Mrs. Newcome's intelligence, had made him at once aware whither
the young runaway had fled. Seeing a horsewhip in his parent's hand,
Tommy, scared out of a sweet sleep and a delightful dream of cricket,
knew his fate; and getting 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 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, whereupon the father
burst into a passion of tears, and embraced the boy, and kissed him,
besought 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. But the truce was only a
temporary one. War very soon broke out again between the impetuous lad
and his rigid, domineering step-mother. It was not that he was very bad,
nor she so very stern, but the two could not agree. The boy sulked and
was miserable at home, and, after a number of more serious escapades than
he had before indulged in, he was sent to a tutor for military
instruction, where he was prepared for the army and received a fairly
good professional education. He cultivated mathematics and fortification,
and made rapid progress in his study of the French language. But again
did our poor Tommy get into trouble, and serious trouble indeed this
time, for it involved his French master's pretty young daughter as well
as himself. Frantic with wrath and despair at the unfortunate climax of
events, young Newcome embarked for India, and quitted the parents whom he
was never more to see. His name was no more mentioned at Clapham, but he
wrote constantly to his father, who sent Tom liberal private remittances
to India, and was in turn made acquainted with the fact of his son's
marriage, and later received news of the birth of his grandson, Clive.
Old Thomas Newcome would have liked to leave all his private fortune to
his son Thomas, for the twins were only too well provided for, but he
dared not, for fear of his wife, and he died, and poor Tom was only
secretly forgiven.
So much for the history of Clive Newcome's father and grandfather. Having
related it in full detail, we can now proceed to the narrative of Clive's
life, he being the hero of this tale.
From the day of his birth until he was some seven years old, Clive's
English relatives knew nothing about him. Then, Colonel Newcome's wife
having died, and having kept the boy with him as long as the climate
would allow, Thomas Newcome, now Lieutenant-Colonel, decided that it was
wise to send Clive to England, to entrust him to the boy's maternal aunt,
Miss Honeyman, who was living at Brighton, that Clive might have the
superior advantages of school days in England.
Let us glance at a few extracts from letters received by Colonel Newcome
after his boy had reached England. The aunt to whose care he was
entrusted wrote as follows:
* * * * *
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 dearest
and handsomest little boy who, I am sure, ever came from India. Little
Clive is in perfect health. He speaks English wonderfully well. He cried
when he parted from Mr. Sneid, the supercargo, who most kindly brought
him from Southhampton in a postchaise, but these tears in childhood are
of very brief duration!...
You may be sure that the most liberal sum which you have placed to
my credit with the Messrs. Hobson & Co. shall be faithfully expended
on my dear little charge. Of course, unless Mrs. Newcome,--who can
scarcely be called his grandmamma, I suppose,--writes to invite dear
Clive to Clapham, I shall not think of sending him there. 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,
Your grateful and affectionate,