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.

“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 _his opera-hat_ on

when he went to chapel with her ladyship the next morning—that very

morning, as sure as my name’s John Giles.

“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.”

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 _Gazette_ 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.

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.

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?

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 _bon jour_. 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.

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_ 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_ 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 _a son of her

own_. 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?

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.

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 _Gazettes_, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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—_Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes emollunt mores, nec

sinuisse feros_. 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. _He_ 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.”

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.

_Ingenuas didicisse_, hey, Doctor! you know the rest,—_emollunt mores

nec_——”

“_Emollunt mores!_ 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?”

“Well, he was a great cavalry officer,” answers the Colonel, “and he

left a great collection of prints—_that_ 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!”

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.

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.

CHAPTER VI.

Newcome Brothers

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

“I will bring Clive,” says Colonel Newcome, rather disturbed at this

reception. “After his illness my sister-in-law was very kind to him.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.

“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.

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.”

“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.”

“Do you?” says the Colonel. “I am going down there to see a relation.”

“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.”

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.”

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.

“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.”

“To-day it’s really as hot as I should thing it must be in India,” says

young Mr. Barnes Newcome.

“Hot!” says the Colonel, with a grin. “It seems to me you are all cool

enough here.”

“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.”

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.

“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?”

“Did you ever hear of Sarah Mason?” says the Colonel.

“Really, I never did,” the Baronet answered.

“Sarah Mason? No, upon my word, I don’t think I ever did, said the

young man.

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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.”

“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.

“Pardon me if I don’t see the necessity,” said Sir Brian. “_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_ 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.”

“Very,” says the Colonel.

“Mind and send for me whenever you want me, now.”

“Oh, of course,” said the elder brother, and thought when will that

ever be!

“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.

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.

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.

“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.”

“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.

“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.

“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.

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.

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.

“Here’s little Newcome coming,” says Mr. Horace Fogey. “He and the

muffin-man generally make their appearance in public together.”

“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.

“He amuses me; he’s such a mischievous little devil,” says good-natured

Charley Heavyside.

“It takes very little to amuse you,” remarks Fogey.

“_You_ 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.”

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?”

“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.”

“Dash the little puppy,” growls Sir de Boots, swelling in his

waistband.

“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?”

“How should I know?” asks Barney. “Ain’t it all in the evening paper?”

“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.”

“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.

“_You_ 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.

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.

“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.”

“Is Colonel Newcome, of the Bengal Cavalry, your uncle?” asks Sir

Thomas de Boots.

“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?”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.

“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.

CHAPTER VII.

In which Mr. Clive’s School-days are over

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.

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.

“Tell me about your uncles, Clive,” said the Colonel, as they walked on

arm in arm.

“What about them, sir?” asks the boy. “I don’t think I know much.”

“You have been to stay with them. You wrote about them. Were they kind

to you?”

“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.”

“Well, he must see you to give you the sovereign,” says Clive’s father,

laughing.

The boy blushed rather.

“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 _comme il faut_.”

“Why, how are you to judge?” asks the father, amused at the lad’s

candid prattle, “and where does the difference lie?”

“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 _he’s_ 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.”

“Oh, she’s not the ticket,” says the Colonel, much amused.

“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——”

“I thought we were going to speak no ill of them?” says the Colonel,

smiling.

“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.”

“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.”

“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—

“Say what you say,” said the father.

“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.”

“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.”

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.

“My brother said he was engaged to dinner to-day,” said the Colonel.

“Does Mrs. Newcome give parties when he is away?”

“She invites all the company,” answered Clive. “My uncle never asks any

one without aunt’s leave.”

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.

A hot menial, in a red waistcoat, came and opened the door; and without

waiting for preparatory queries, said, “Not at home.”

“It’s my father, John,” said Clive; “my aunt will see Colonel Newcome.”

“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.

“Upon my life, they actually shut the door in our faces,” said the poor

gentleman.

“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.”

“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.

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.”

“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 _retenue_ 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.

“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.

“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.

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.

“No,” says Maria.

“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 _méchantes_ we should be sent to

our uncle in India. I think I should like to go with you.”

“O you silly child!” cries Maria.

“Yes I should, if Clive went too,” says little Fanny.

“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.

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.

Clive, with a queer twinkle of his eyes, ran towards his aunt.

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?”

“It is a holiday,” says he. “My father is come; and he is come to see

you.”

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.

“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.”

“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:

“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. _This_

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 _like_ 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.

“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 _him_. 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 _them_. 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.

_Good_-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.

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

_intellectual_ parties too quiet for him. Else, what young man in his

senses could refuse such entertainment and instruction?

CHAPTER VIII.

Mrs. Newcome at Home (a Small Early Party)

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?

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.

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.

The Doctor McGuffog, Professor Bodgers, Count Poski, and all the lions

present at Mrs. Newcome’s _réunion_ 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 _Morning Post_ 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 _entrée_.

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.

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?”

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.

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!

“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.

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——”

“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.”

“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?”

“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?”

“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.

“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.”

“But isn’t this society?” asked the Colonel.

“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.”

“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.”

“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.

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.

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?”

“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!”

“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.

“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!”

“D—— the humbug,” muttered Barnes, who knew him perfectly well. “The

fellow is always in the pulpit.”

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——”

“Never mind that, Honeyman!” cried the Colonel.

“But I _do_ mind, my dear Colonel,” answers Mr. Honeyman. “I should be

a very bad man, and a very ungrateful brother, if I _ever_ forgot your

kindness.”

“For God’s sake leave my kindness alone.”

“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.

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.”

“Who is that cavalry officer in a white waistcoat talking to the Jew

with the beard?” asks the Colonel.

“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.”

“Never wrote a verse in my life,” says the Colonel, laughing, and

stroking his own.

“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 _confrère_,

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 _tongs_ 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 _notabilities_. 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 _Trimestrial Review_. 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, _desipere in

loco_—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!”

“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 _humble_ means—to bring men of genius together—mind to

associate with mind—men of all nations to mingle in _friendly unison_—I

shall not have lived _altogether_ 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 _no more_. 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 _this_ 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 _your sister_ to

go down to the dining-room supported by your _gallant_ 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?”

“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.

“Done with it—ye’re never done with it!” cries the civilian.

“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.”

“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?”

“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?

“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.”

“Binnie!” says the Colonel gravely, “you are always sneering at the

cloth.”

“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.”

“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.

“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.”

“My dear Binnie, is it possible? You, the best scholar in all India!”

“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. _Acce segnum!_” says the

little wag, daintily taking up the tail of his friend’s coat.

“There’s never any knowing whether you are in jest or in earnest,

Binnie,” the puzzled Colonel said.

“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.

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.

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.

“What’s in the wind now?” asks the little Scot; “and what for have ye

not got your shoes on?”

“Clive’s asleep,” says the Colonel, with a countenance full of extreme

anxiety.

“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?”

“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.

“Have ye been breathing a prayer over your rosy infant’s slumbers,

Tom?” asks Mr. Binnie.

“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.”

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.

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.

CHAPTER IX.

Miss Honeyman’s

In Steyne Gardens, Brighton, the lodging-houses are among the most

frequented in that city of lodging-houses. These mansions have

bow-windows in front, bulging out with gentle prominences, and

ornamented with neat verandahs, from which you can behold the tide of

humankind as it flows up and down the Steyne, and that blue ocean over

which Britannia is said to rule, stretching brightly away eastward and

westward. The chain-pier, as every body knows, runs intrepidly into the

sea, which sometimes, in fine weather, bathes its feet with laughing

wavelets, and anon, on stormy days, dashes over its sides with roaring

foam. Here, for the sum of twopence, you can go out to sea and pace

this vast deck without need of a steward with a basin. You can watch

the sun setting in splendour over Worthing, or illuminating with its

rising glories the ups and downs of Rottingdean. You see the citizen

with his family inveigled into the shallops of the mercenary native

mariner, and fancy that the motion cannot be pleasant; and how the

hirer of the boat, _otium et oppidi laudat rura sui_, haply sighs for

ease, and prefers Richmond or Hampstead. You behold a hundred

bathing-machines put to sea; and your naughty fancy depicts the

beauties splashing under their white awnings. Along the rippled sands

(stay, are they rippled sands or shingly beach?) the prawn-boy seeks

the delicious material of your breakfast. Breakfast-meal in London

almost unknown, greedily devoured in Brighton! In yon vessels now

nearing the shore the sleepless mariner has ventured forth to seize the

delicate whiting, the greedy and foolish mackerel, and the homely sole.

Hark to the twanging horn! it is the early coach going out to London.

Your eye follows it, and rests on the pinnacles built by the beloved

GEORGE. See the worn-out London roué pacing the pier, inhaling the sea

air, and casting furtive glances under the bonnets of the pretty girls

who trot here before lessons! Mark the bilious lawyer, escaped for a

day from Pump Court, and sniffing the fresh breezes before he goes back

to breakfast and a bag full of briefs at the Albion! See that pretty

string of prattling schoolgirls, from the chubby-cheeked, flaxen-headed

little maiden just toddling by the side of the second teacher, to the

arch damsel of fifteen, giggling and conscious of her beauty, whom Miss

Griffin, the stern head-governess, awfully reproves! See Tomkins with a

telescope and marine jacket; young Nathan and young Abrams, already

bedizened in jewellery, and rivalling the sun in oriental splendour;

yonder poor invalid crawling along in her chair; yonder jolly fat lady

examining the Brighton pebbles (I actually once saw a lady buy one),

and her children wondering at the sticking-plaister portraits with gold

hair, and gold stocks, and prodigious high-heeled boots, miracles of

art, and cheap at seven-and-sixpence! It is the fashion to run down

George IV., but what myriads of Londoners ought to thank him for

inventing Brighton! One of the best of physicians our city has ever

known, is kind, cheerful, merry Doctor Brighton. Hail, thou purveyor of

shrimps and honest prescriber of Southdown mutton! There is no mutton

so good as Brighton mutton; no flys so pleasant as Brighton flys; nor

any cliff so pleasant to ride on; no shops so beautiful to look at as

the Brighton gimcrack shops, and the fruit shops, and the market. I

fancy myself in Mrs. Honeyman’s lodgings in Steyne Gardens, and in

enjoyment of all these things.

If the gracious reader has had losses in life, losses not so bad as to

cause absolute want, or inflict upon him or her the bodily injury of

starvation, let him confess that the evils of this poverty are by no

means so great as his timorous fancy depicted. Say your money has been

invested in West Diddlesex bonds, or other luckless speculations—the

news of the smash comes; you pay your outlying bills with the balance

at the banker’s; you assemble your family and make them a fine speech;

the wife of your bosom goes round and embraces the sons and daughters

_seriatim;_ nestling in your own waistcoat finally, in possession of

which, she says (with tender tears and fond quotations from Holy Writ,

God bless her!), and of the darlings round about, lies all _her_

worldly treasure: the weeping servants are dismissed, their wages paid

in full, and with a present of prayer- and hymn-books from their

mistress; your elegant house in Harley Street is to let, and you

subside into lodgings in Pentonville, or Kensington, or Brompton. How

unlike the mansion where you paid taxes and distributed elegant

hospitality for so many years!

You subside into lodgings, I say, and you find yourself very tolerably

comfortable. I am not sure that in her heart your wife is not happier

than in what she calls her happy days. She will be somebody hereafter:

she was nobody in Harley Street: that is, everybody else in her

visiting-book, take the names all round, was as good as she. They had

the very same entrees, plated ware, men to wait, etc., at all the

houses where you visited in the street. Your candlesticks might be

handsomer (and indeed they had a very fine effect upon the

dinner-table), but then Mr. Jones’s silver (or electro-plated) dishes

were much finer. You had more carriages at your door on the evening of

your delightful soirées than Mrs. Brown (there is no phrase more

elegant, and to my taste, than that in which people are described as

“seeing a great deal of carriage company”); but yet Mrs. Brown, from

the circumstance of her being a baronet’s niece, took precedence of

your dear wife at most tables. Hence the latter charming woman’s scorn

at the British baronetcy, and her many jokes at the order. In a word,

and in the height of your social prosperity, there was always a lurking

dissatisfaction, and a something bitter, in the midst of the fountain

of delights at which you were permitted to drink.

There is no good (unless your taste is that way) in living in a society

where you are merely the equal of everybody else. Many people give

themselves extreme pains to frequent company where all around them are

their superiors, and where, do what you will, you must be subject to

continual mortification—(as, for instance, when Marchioness X. forgets

you, and you can’t help thinking that she cuts you on purpose; when

Duchess Z. passes by in her diamonds, etc.). The true pleasure of life

is to live with your inferiors. Be the cock of your village; the queen

of your coterie; and, besides very great persons, the people whom Fate

has specially endowed with this kindly consolation are those who have

seen what are called better days—those who have had losses. I am like

Cæsar, and of a noble mind: if I cannot be first in Piccadilly, let me

try Hatton Garden, and see whether I cannot lead the ton there. If I

cannot take the lead at White’s or the Travellers’, let me be president

of the Jolly Bandboys at the Bag of Nails, and blackball everybody who

does not pay me honour. If my darling Bessy cannot go out of a

drawing-room until a baronet’s niece (ha! ha! a baronet’s niece,

forsooth!) has walked before her, let us frequent company where we

shall be the first; and how can we be the first unless we select our

inferiors for our associates? This kind of pleasure is to be had by

almost everybody, and at scarce any cost. With a shilling’s-worth of

tea and muffins you can get as much adulation and respect as many

people cannot purchase with a thousand pounds’ worth of plate and

profusion, hired footmen, turning their houses topsy-turvy, and suppers

from Gunter’s. Adulation!—why, the people who come to you give as good

parties as you do. Respect!—the very menials, who wait behind your

supper-table, waited at a duke’s yesterday, and actually patronise you!

O you silly spendthrift! you can buy flattery for twopence, and you

spend ever so much money in entertaining your equals and betters, and

nobody admires you!

Now Aunt Honeyman was a woman of a thousand virtues; cheerful, frugal,

honest, laborious, charitable, good-humoured, truth-telling, devoted to

her family, capable of any sacrifice for those she loved; and when she

came to have losses of money, Fortune straightway compensated her by

many kindnesses which no income can supply. The good old lady admired

the word gentlewoman of all others in the English vocabulary, and made

all around her feel that such was her rank. Her mother’s father was a

naval captain; her father had taken pupils, got a living, sent his son

to college, dined with the squire, published his volume of sermons, was

liked in his parish, where Miss Honeyman kept house for him, was

respected for his kindness and famous for his port wine; and so died,

leaving about two hundred pounds a year to his two children, nothing to

Clive Newcome’s mother who had displeased him by her first marriage (an

elopement with Ensign Casey) and subsequent light courses. Charles

Honeyman spent his money elegantly in wine-parties at Oxford, and

afterwards in foreign travel;—spent his money and as much of Miss

Honeyman’s as that worthy soul would give him. She was a woman of

spirit and resolution. She brought her furniture to Brighton (believing

that the whole place still fondly remembered her grandfather, Captain

Nokes, who had resided there and his gallantry in Lord Rodney’s action

with the Count de Grasse), took a house, and let the upper floors to

lodgers.

The little brisk old lady brought a maid-servant out of the country

with her, who was daughter to her father’s clerk, and had learned her

letters and worked her first sampler under Miss Honeyman’s own eye,

whom she adored all through her life. No Indian begum rolling in

wealth, no countess mistress of castles and townhouses, ever had such a

faithful toady as Hannah Hicks was to her mistress. Under Hannah was a

young lady from the workhouse, who called Hannah “Mrs. Hicks, mum,” and

who bowed in awe as much before that domestic as Hannah did before Miss

Honeyman. At five o’clock in summer, at seven in winter (for Miss

Honeyman, a good economist, was chary of candlelight), Hannah woke up

little Sally, and these three women rose. I leave you to imagine what a

row there was in the establishment if Sally appeared with flowers under

her bonnet, gave signs of levity or insubordination, prolonged her

absence when sent forth for the beer, or was discovered in flirtation

with the baker’s boy or the grocer’s young man. Sally was frequently

renewed. Miss Honeyman called all her young persons Sally; and a great

number of Sallies were consumed in her house. The qualities of the

Sally for the time-being formed a constant and delightful subject of

conversation between Hannah and her mistress. The few friends who

visited Miss Honeyman in her back-parlour had _their_ Sallies, in

discussing whose peculiarities of disposition these good ladies passed

the hours agreeably over their tea.