Many persons who let lodgings in Brighton have been servants

themselves—are retired housekeepers, tradesfolk, and the like. With

these surrounding individuals Hannah treated on a footing of equality,

bringing to her mistress accounts of their various goings on; “how No.

6 was let; how No. 9 had not paid his rent again; how the first floor

at 27 had game almost every day, and made-dishes from Mutton’s; how the

family who had taken Mrs. Bugsby’s had left as usual after the very

first night, the poor little infant blistered all over with bites on

its little dear face; how the Miss Learys was going on shameful with

the two young men, actially in their setting-room, mum, where one of

them offered Miss Laura Leary a cigar; how Mrs. Cribb _still_ went

cuttin’ pounds and pounds of meat off the lodgers’ jints, emptying

their tea-caddies, actially reading their letters. Sally had been told

so by Polly the Cribb’s maid, who was kep, how that poor child was kep,

hearing language perfectly hawful!” These tales and anecdotes, not

altogether redounding to their neighbours’ credit, Hannah copiously

collected and brought to her mistress’s tea-table, or served at her

frugal little supper when Miss Honeyman, the labours of the day over,

partook of that cheerful meal. I need not say that such horrors as

occurred at Mrs. Bugsby’s never befell in Mrs. Honeyman’s

establishment. Every room was fiercely swept and sprinkled, and watched

by cunning eyes which nothing could escape; curtains were taken down,

mattresses explored, every bone in bed dislocated and washed as soon as

a lodger took his departure. And as for cribbing meat or sugar, Sally

might occasionally abstract a lump or two, or pop a veal-cutlet into

her mouth while bringing the dishes downstairs:—Sallies would—giddy

creatures bred in workhouses; but Hannah might be entrusted with untold

gold and uncorked brandy; and Miss Honeyman would as soon think of

cutting a slice off Hannah’s nose and devouring it, as of poaching on

her lodgers’ mutton. The best mutton-broth, the best veal-cutlets, the

best necks of mutton and French beans, the best fried fish and plumpest

partridges, in all Brighton, were to be had at Miss Honeyman’s—and for

her favourites the best Indian curry and rice, coming from a

distinguished relative, at present an officer in Bengal. But very few

were admitted to this mark of Miss Honeyman’s confidence. If a family

did not go to church they were not in favour: if they went to a

Dissenting meeting she had no opinion of them at all. Once there came

to her house a quiet Staffordshire family who ate no meat on Fridays,

and whom Miss Honeyman pitied as belonging to the Romish superstition;

but when they were visited by two corpulent gentlemen in black, one of

whom wore a purple underwaistcoat, before whom the Staffordshire lady

absolutely sank down on her knees as he went into the

drawing-room,—Miss Honeyman sternly gave warning to these idolaters.

She would have no Jesuits in her premises. She showed Hannah the

picture in Howell’s Medulla of the martyrs burning at Smithfield: who

said, “Lord bless you, mum,” and hoped it was a long time ago. She

called on the curate: and many and many a time, for years after,

pointed out to her friends, and sometimes to her lodgers, the spot on

the carpet where the poor benighted creature had knelt down. So she

went on, respected by all her friends, by all her tradesmen, by herself

not a little, talking of her previous “misfortunes” with amusing

equanimity; as if her father’s parsonage-house had been a palace of

splendour, and the one-horse chaise (with the lamps for evenings) from

which she had descended, a noble equipage. “But I know it is for the

best, Clive,” she would say to her nephew in describing those

grandeurs, “and, thank heaven, can be resigned in that station in life

to which it has pleased God to call me.”

The good lady was called the Duchess by her fellow-tradesfolk in the

square in which she lived. (I don’t know what would have come to her

had she been told she was a tradeswoman!) Her butchers, bakers, and

market-people paid her as much respect as though she had been a

grandee’s housekeeper out of Kemp Town. Knowing her station, she yet

was kind to those inferior beings. She held affable conversations with

them, she patronised Mr. Rogers, who was said to be worth a hundred

thousand—two-hundred-thousand pounds (or lbs. was it?), and who said,

“Law bless the old Duchess, she do make as much of a pound of veal

cutlet as some would of a score of bullocks, but you see she’s a lady

born and a lady bred: she’d die before she’d owe a farden, and she’s

seen better days, you know.” She went to see the grocer’s wife on an

interesting occasion, and won the heart of the family by tasting their

candle. Her fishmonger (it was fine to hear her talk of “my

fishmonger”) would sell her a whiting as respectfully as if she had

called for a dozen turbots and lobsters. It was believed by those good

folks that her father had been a Bishop at the very least; and the

better days which she had known were supposed to signify some almost

unearthly prosperity. “I have always found, Hannah,” the simple soul

would say, “that people know their place, or can be very very easily

made to find it if they lose it; and if a gentlewoman does not forget

herself, her inferiors will not forget that she is a gentlewoman.” “No

indeed, mum, and I’m sure they would do no such thing, mum,” says

Hannah, who carries away the teapot for her own breakfast (to be

transmitted to Sally for her subsequent refection), whilst her mistress

washes her cup and saucer, as her mother had washed her own china many

scores of years ago.

If some of the surrounding lodging-house keepers, as I have no doubt

they did, disliked the little Duchess for the airs which she gave

herself, as they averred; they must have envied her too her superior

prosperity, for there was scarcely ever a card in her window, whilst

those ensigns in her neighbours’ houses would remain exposed to the

flies and the weather, and disregarded by passers-by for months

together. She had many regular customers, or what should be rather

called constant friends. Deaf old Mr. Cricklade came every winter for

fourteen years, and stopped until the hunting was over; an invaluable

man, giving little trouble, passing all day on horseback, and all night

over his rubber at the club. The Misses Barkham, Barkhambury, Tunbridge

Wells, whose father had been at college with Mr. Honeyman, came

regularly in June for sea air, letting Barkhambury for the summer

season. Then, for many years, she had her nephew, as we have seen; and

kind recommendations from the clergymen of Brighton, and a constant

friend in the celebrated Dr. Goodenough of London, who had been her

father’s private pupil, and of his college afterwards, who sent his

patients from time to time down to her, and his fellow-physician, Dr.

H——, who on his part would never take any fee from Miss Honeyman,

except a packet of India curry-powder, a ham cured as she only knew how

to cure them, and once a year, or so, a dish of her tea.

“Was there ever such luck as that confounded old Duchess’s?” says Mr.

Gawler, coal-merchant and lodging-house keeper, next door but two,

whose apartments were more odious in some respects than Mrs. Bugsby’s

own. “Was there ever such devil’s own luck, Mrs. G.? It’s only a

fortnight ago as I read in the _Sussex Advertiser_ the death of Miss

Barkham, of Barkhambury, Tunbridge Wells, and thinks I, there’s a spoke

in your wheel, you stuck-up little old Duchess, with your cussed airs

and impudence. And she ain’t put her card up three days; and look yere,

yere’s two carriages, two maids, three children, one of them wrapped up

in a Hinjar shawl—man hout a livery,—looks like a foring cove I

think—lady in satin pelisse, and of course they go to the Duchess, be

hanged to her! Of course it’s our luck, nothing ever was like our luck.

I’m blowed if I don’t put a pistol to my ’ead, and end it, Mrs. G.

There they go in—three, four, six, seven on ’em, and the man. That’s

the precious child’s physic I suppose he’s a-carryin’ in the basket.

Just look at the luggage. I say! There’s a bloody hand on the first

carriage. It’s a baronet, is it? I ’ope your ladyship’s very well; and

I ’ope Sir John will soon be down yere to join his family.” Mr. Gawler

makes sarcastic bows over the card in his bow-window whilst making this

speech. The little Gawlers rush on to the drawing-room verandah

themselves to examine the new arrivals.

“This is Mrs. Honeyman’s?” asks the gentleman designated by Mr. Gawler

as “the foring cove,” and hands in a card on which the words, “Miss

Honeyman, 110, Steyne Gardens. J. Goodenough,” are written in that

celebrated physician’s handwriting. “We want five bet-rooms, six bets,

two or dree sitting-rooms. Have you got dese?”

“Will you speak to my mistress?” says Hannah. And if it is a fact that

Miss Honeyman does happen to be in the front parlour looking at the

carriages, what harm is there in the circumstance, pray? Is not Gawler

looking, and the people next door? Are not half a dozen little boys

already gathered in the street (as if they started up out of the

trap-doors for the coals), and the nursery maids in the stunted little

garden, are not they looking through the bars of the square? “Please to

speak to mistress,” says Hannah, opening the parlour-door, and with a

curtsey, “A gentleman about the apartments, mum.”

“Five bet-rooms,” says the man, entering. “Six bets, two or dree

sitting-rooms? We gome from Dr. Goodenough.”

“Are the apartments for you, sir?” says the little Duchess, looking up

at the large gentleman.

“For my lady,” answers the man.

“Had you not better take off your hat?” asks the Duchess, pointing out

of one of her little mittens to “the foring cove’s” beaver, which he

has neglected to remove.

The man grins, and takes off the hat. “I beck your bardon, ma’am,” says

he. “Have you fife bet-rooms?” etc. The doctor has cured the German of

an illness, as well as his employers, and especially recommended Miss

Honeyman to Mr. Kuhn.

“I have such a number of apartments. My servant will show them to you.”

And she walks back with great state to her chair by the window, and

resumes her station and work there.

Mr. Kuhn reports to his mistress, who descends to inspect the

apartments, accompanied through them by Hannah. The rooms are

pronounced to be exceedingly neat and pleasant, and exactly what are

wanted for the family. The baggage is forthwith ordered to be brought

from the carriages. The little invalid wrapped in his shawl is brought

upstairs by the affectionate Mr. Kuhn, who carries him as gently as if

he had been bred all his life to nurse babies. The smiling Sally (the

Sally for the time-being happens to be a very fresh pink-cheeked pretty

little Sally) emerges from the kitchen and introduces the young ladies,

the governess, the maids, to their apartments. The eldest, a slim

black-haired young lass of thirteen, frisks about the rooms, looks at

all the pictures, runs in and out of the verandah, tries the piano, and

bursts out laughing at its wheezy jingle (it had been poor Emma’s

piano, bought for her on her seventeenth birthday, three weeks before

she ran away with the ensign; her music is still in the stand by it:

the Rev. Charles Honeyman has warbled sacred melodies over it, and Miss

Honeyman considers it a delightful instrument), kisses her languid

little brother laid on the sofa, and performs a hundred gay and agile

motions suited to her age.

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

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

laugh.

“What funny pictures, mamma! Action with Count de Grasse; the death of

General Wolfe; a portrait of an officer, an old officer in blue, like

grandpapa; Brazen Nose College, Oxford: what a funny name!”

At the idea of Brazen Nose College, another laugh comes from the

invalid. “I suppose they’ve all got _brass noses_ there,” he says; and

explodes at this joke. The poor little laugh ends in a cough, and

mamma’s travelling-basket, which contains everything, produces a bottle

of syrup, labelled “Master A. Newcome. A teaspoonful to be taken when

the cough is troublesome.”

“‘Oh, the delightful sea! the blue, the fresh, the ever free,’” sings

the young lady, with a shake. (I suppose the maritime song from which

she quoted was just written at this time.) “How much better this is

than going home and seeing those horrid factories and chimneys! I love

Doctor Goodenough for sending us here. What a sweet house it is!

Everybody is happy in it, even Miss Quigley is happy, mamma. What nice

rooms! What pretty chintz! What a—oh, what a—comfortable sofa!” and she

falls down on the sofa, which, truth to say, was the Rev. Charles

Honeyman’s luxurious sofa from Oxford, presented to him by young Cibber

Wright of Christchurch, when that gentleman-commoner was eliminated

from the University.

“The person of the house,” mamma says, “hardly comes up to Dr.

Goodenough’s description of her. He says he remembers her a pretty

little woman when her father was his private tutor.”

“She has grown very much since,” says the girl. And an explosion takes

place from the sofa, where the little man is always ready to laugh at

any joke, or anything like a joke, uttered by himself or by any of his

family or friends. As for Doctor Goodenough, he says laughing has saved

that boy’s life.

“She looks quite like a maid,” continues the lady. “She has hard hands,

and she called me mum always. I was quite disappointed in her.” And she

subsides into a novel, with many of which kind of works, and with other

volumes, and with workboxes, and with wonderful inkstands, portfolios,

portable days of the month, scent-bottles, scissor-cases, gilt

miniature easels displaying portraits, and countless gimcracks of

travel, the rapid Kuhn has covered the tables in the twinkling of an

eye.

The person supposed to be the landlady enters the room at this

juncture, and the lady rises to receive her. The little wag on the sofa

puts his arm round his sister’s neck, and whispers, “I say, Eth, isn’t

she a pretty girl? I shall write to Doctor Goodenough and tell him how

much she’s grown.” Convulsions follow this sally, to the surprise of

Hannah, who says, “Pooty little dear!—what time will he have his

dinner, mum?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Honeyman, at two o’clock,” says the lady with a bow of

her head. “There is a clergyman of your name in London; is he a

relation?” The lady in her turn is astonished, for the tall person

breaks out into a grin, and says, “Law, mum, you’re speakin’ of Master

Charles. He’s in London.”

“Indeed!—of Master Charles?”

“And you take me for missis, mum. I beg your pardon, mum,” cries

Hannah. The invalid hits his sister in the side with a weak little

fist. If laughter can cure, _Salva est res_. Doctor Goodenough’s

patient is safe. “Master Charles is missis’s brother, mum. I’ve got no

brother, mum—never had no brother. Only one son, who’s in the police,

mum, thank you. And law bless me, I was going to forget! If you please,

mum, missis says, if you are quite rested, she will pay her duty to

you, mum.”

“Oh, indeed,” says the lady, rather stiffly; and, taking this for an

acceptance of her mistress’s visit, Hannah retires.

“This Miss Honeyman seems to be a great personage,” says the lady. “If

people let lodgings, why do they give themselves such airs?”

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

girl.

“Monsieur de Boigne, my dear Ethel! Monsieur de Boigne is very well.

But—” here the door opens, and in a large cap bristling with ribbons,

with her best chestnut front, and her best black silk gown, on which

her gold watch shines very splendidly, little Miss Honeyman makes her

appearance, and a dignified curtsey to her lodger.

That lady vouchsafes a very slight inclination of the head indeed,

which she repeats when Miss Honeyman says, “I am glad to hear your

ladyship is pleased with the apartments.”

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

gravely.

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

“As if all the houses hadn’t a view of the sea, Ethel! The price has

been arranged, I think? My servants will require a comfortable room to

dine in—by themselves, ma’am, if you please. My governess and the

younger children will dine together. My daughter dines with me—and my

little boy’s dinner will be ready at two o’clock precisely, if you

please. It is now near one.”

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

“Oh! I have no doubt we shall understand each other, ma’am,” cried Lady

Anne Newcome (whose noble presence the acute reader has no doubt ere

this divined and saluted). “Doctor Goodenough has given me a most

satisfactory account of you—more satisfactory perhaps than—than you are

aware of.” Perhaps Lady Anne’s sentence was not going to end in a very

satisfactory way for Miss Honeyman; but, awed by a peculiar look of

resolution in the little lady, her lodger of an hour paused in whatever

offensive remark she might have been about to make. “It is as well that

I at last have the pleasure of seeing you, that I may state what I

want, and that we may, as you say, understand each other. Breakfast and

tea, if you please, will be served in the same manner as dinner. And

you will have the kindness to order fresh milk every morning for my

little boy—ass’s milk—Doctor Goodenough has ordered ass’s milk.

Anything further I want I will communicate through the person who spoke

to you—Kuhn, Mr. Kuhn; and that will do.”

A heavy shower of rain was descending at this moment, and little Mrs.

Honeyman looking at her lodger, who had sate down and taken up her

book, said, “Have your ladyship’s servants unpacked your trunks?”

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

“They will be put to the trouble of packing again, I fear. I cannot

provide—three times five are fifteen—fifteen separate meals for seven

persons—besides those of my own family. If your servants cannot eat

with mine, or in my kitchen, they and their mistress must go elsewhere.

And the sooner the better, madam, the sooner the better!” says Mrs.

Honeyman, trembling with indignation, and sitting down in a chair

spreading her silks.

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

“Perfectly well, madam,” says the other. “And had I known, you should

never have come into my house, that’s more.”

“Madam!” cries the lady, on which the poor little invalid, scared and

nervous, and hungry for his dinner, began to cry from his sofa.

“It will be a pity that the dear little boy should be disturbed. Dear

little child, I have often heard of him, and of you, miss,” says the

little householder, rising. “I will get you some dinner, my dear, for

Clive’s sake. And meanwhile your ladyship will have the kindness to

seek for some other apartments—for not a bit shall my fire cook for any

one else of your company.” And with this the indignant little landlady

sailed out of the room.

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

insulted in my life.”

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

Alfred dear!—Hush, my darling!”

“Oh, it was mamma began! I’m so hungry! I’m so hungry!” howled the

little man on the sofa—or off it rather—for he was now down on the

ground, kicking away the shawls which enveloped him.

“What is it, my boy? What is it, my blessed darling? You _shall_ have

your dinner! Give her all, Ethel. There are the keys of my desk—there’s

my watch—there are my rings. Let her take my all. The monster! the

child must live! It can’t go away in such a storm as this. Give me a

cloak, a parasol, anything—I’ll go forth and get a lodging. I’ll beg my

bread from house to house—if this fiend refuses me. Eat the biscuits,

dear! A little of the syrup, Alfred darling; it’s very nice, love! and

come to your old mother—your poor old mother.”

Alfred roared out, “No—it’s not n-ice: it’s n-a-a-asty! I won’t have

syrup. I _will_ have dinner.” The mother, whose embraces the child

repelled with infantine kicks, plunged madly at the bells, rang them

all four vehemently, and ran downstairs towards the parlour, whence

Miss Honeyman was issuing.

The good lady had not at first known the names of her lodgers, but had

taken them in willingly enough on Dr. Goodenough’s recommendation. And

it was not until one of the nurses entrusted with the care of Master

Alfred’s dinner informed Miss Honeyman of the name of her guest, that

she knew she was entertaining Lady Anne Newcome; and that the pretty

girl was the fair Miss Ethel; the little sick boy, the little Alfred of

whom his cousin spoke, and of whom Clive had made a hundred little

drawings in his rude way, as he drew everybody. Then bidding Sally run

off to St. James’s Street for a chicken—she saw it put on the spit, and

prepared a bread sauce, and composed a batter-pudding as she only knew

how to make batter-puddings. Then she went to array herself in her best

clothes, as we have seen,—as we have heard rather (Goodness forbid that

we should see Miss Honeyman arraying herself, or penetrate that chaste

mystery, her toilette!)—then she came to wait upon Lady Anne, not a

little flurried as to the result of that queer interview; then she

whisked out of the drawing-room as before has been shown; and, finding

the chicken roasted to a turn, the napkin and tray ready spread by

Hannah the neat-handed, she was bearing them up to the little patient

when the frantic parent met her on the stair.

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

bannister.

“Yes, it’s for the child,” says Miss Honeyman, tossing up her head.

“But nobody else has anything in the house.”

“God bless you—God bless you! A mother’s bl-l-essings go with you,”

gurgled the lady, who was not, it must be confessed, a woman of strong

moral character.

It was good to see the little man eating the fowl. Ethel, who had never

cut anything in her young existence, except her fingers now and then

with her brother’s and her governess’s penknives, bethought her of

asking Miss Honeyman to carve the chicken. Lady Anne, with clasped

hands and streaming eyes, sate looking on at the ravishing scene.

“Why did you not let us know you were Clive’s aunt?” Ethel asked,

putting out her hand. The old lady took hers very kindly, and said,

“Because you didn’t give me time. And do you love Clive, my dear?”

The reconciliation between Miss Honeyman and her lodger was perfect.

Lady Anne wrote a quire of notepaper off to Sir Brian for that day’s

post—only she was too late, as she always was. Mr. Kuhn perfectly

delighted Miss Honeyman that evening by his droll sayings, jokes, and

pronunciation, and by his praises of Master Glife, as he called him. He

lived out of the house, did everything for everybody, was never out of

the way when wanted, and never in the way when not wanted. Ere long

Miss Honeyman got out a bottle of the famous Madeira which her Colonel

sent her, and treated him to a glass in her own room. Kuhn smacked his

lips and held out the glass again. The honest rogue knew good wine.

CHAPTER X.

Ethel and her Relations

For four-and-twenty successive hours Lady Anne Newcome was perfectly in

raptures with her new lodgings, and every person and thing which they

contained. The drawing-rooms were fitted with the greatest taste; the

dinner was exquisite. Were there ever such delicious veal-cutlets, such

verdant French beans? “Why do we have those odious French cooks, my

dear, with their shocking principles—the principles of all Frenchmen

are shocking—and the dreadful bills they bring us in; and their

consequential airs and graces? I am determined to part with Brignol. I

have written to your father this evening to give Brignol warning. When

did he ever give us veal-cutlets? What can be nicer?”

“Indeed they were very good,” said Miss Ethel, who had mutton five

times a week at one o’clock. “I am so glad you like the house, and

Clive, and Mrs. Honeyman.”

“Like her! the dear little old woman. I feel as if she had been my

friend all my life! I feel quite drawn towards her. What a wonderful

coincidence that Dr. Goodenough should direct us to this very house! I

have written to your father about it. And to think that I should have

written to Clive at this very house, and quite forgotten Mrs.

Honeyman’s name—and such an odd name too. I forget everything,

everything! You know I forgot your Aunt Louisa’s husband’s name; and

when I was godmother to her baby, and the clergyman said, ‘What is the

infant’s name?’ I said, ‘Really I forget.’ And so I did. He was a

London clergyman, but I forget at what church. Suppose it should be

this very Mr. Honeyman! It may have been, you know, and then the

coincidence would be still more droll. That tall, old, nice-looking,

respectable person, with a mark on her nose, the housekeeper—what is

her name?—seems a most invaluable person. I think I shall ask her to

come to us. I am sure she would save me I don’t know how much money

every week; and I am certain Mrs. Trotter is making a fortune by us. I

shall write to your papa, and ask him permission to ask this person.”

Ethel’s mother was constantly falling in love with her new

acquaintances; their man-servants and their maid-servants, their horses

and ponies, and the visitor within their gates. She would ask strangers

to Newcome, hug and embrace them on Sunday; not speak to them on

Monday; and on Tuesday behave so rudely to them, that they were gone

before Wednesday. Her daughter had had so many governesses—all darlings

during the first week, and monsters afterwards—that the poor child

possessed none of the accomplishments of her age. She could not play on

the piano; she could not speak French well; she could not tell you when

gunpowder was invented: she had not the faintest idea of the date of

the Norman Conquest, or whether the earth went round the sun, or vice

versa. She did not know the number of counties in England, Scotland,

and Wales, let alone Ireland; she did not know the difference between

latitude and longitude. She had had so many governesses: their accounts

differed: poor Ethel was bewildered by a multiplicity of teachers, and

thought herself a monster of ignorance. They gave her a book at a

Sunday School, and little girls of eight years old answered questions

of which she knew nothing. The place swam before her. She could not see

the sun shining on their fair flaxen heads and pretty faces. The rosy

little children holding up their eager hands, and crying the answer to

this question and that, seemed mocking her. She seemed to read in the

book, “O Ethel, you dunce, dunce, dunce!” She went home silent in the

carriage, and burst into bitter tears on her bed. Naturally a haughty

girl of the highest spirit, resolute and imperious, this little visit

to the parish school taught Ethel lessons more valuable than ever so

much arithmetic and geography. Clive has told me a story of her in her

youth, which, perhaps, may apply to some others of the youthful female

aristocracy. She used to walk, with other select young ladies and

gentlemen, their nurses and governesses, in a certain reserved plot of

ground railed off from Hyde Park, whereof some of the lucky dwellers in

the neighbourhood of Apsley House have a key. In this garden, at the

age of nine or thereabout, she had contracted an intimate friendship

with the Lord Hercules O’Ryan.—as every one of my gentle readers knows,

one of the sons of the Marquis of Ballyshannon. The Lord Hercules was a

year younger than Miss Ethel Newcome, which may account for the passion

which grew up between these young persons; it being a provision in

nature that a boy always falls in love with a girl older than himself,

or rather, perhaps, that a girl bestows her affections on a little boy,

who submits to receive them.

One day Sir Brian Newcome announced his intention to go to Newcome that

very morning, taking his family, and of course Ethel, with him. She was

inconsolable. “What will Lord Hercules do when he finds I am gone?” she

asked of her nurse.

The nurse endeavouring to soothe her, said, “Perhaps his lordship would

know nothing about the circumstance.” “He will,” said Miss

Ethel—“_he’ll read it in the newspaper_.” My Lord Hercules, it is to be

hoped, strangled this infant passion in the cradle; having long since

married Isabella, only daughter of ——— Grains, Esq., of Drayton

Windsor, a partner in the great brewery of Foker and Co.

When Ethel was thirteen years old, she had grown to be such a tall

girl, that she overtopped her companions by a head or more, and morally

perhaps, also, felt herself too tall for their society. “Fancy myself,”

she thought, “dressing a doll like Lily Putland or wearing a pinafore

like Lucy Tucker!” She did not care for their sports. She could not

walk with them: it seemed as if every one stared; nor dance with them

at the academy, nor attend the Cours de Littérature Universelle et de

Science Compréhensive of the professor then the mode—the smallest girls

took her up in the class. She was bewildered by the multitude of things

they bade her learn. At the youthful little assemblies of her sex,

when, under the guide of their respected governesses, the girls came to

tea at six o’clock, dancing, charades, and so forth, Ethel herded not

with the children of her own age, nor yet with the teachers who sit

apart at these assemblies, imparting to each other their little wrongs;

but Ethel romped with the little children—the rosy little trots—and

took them on her knees, and told them a thousand stories. By these she

was adored, and loved like a mother almost, for as such the hearty

kindly girl showed herself to them; but at home she was alone,

_farouche_ and intractable, and did battle with the governesses, and

overcame them one after another. I break the promise of a former page,

and am obliged to describe the youthful days of more than one person

who is to take a share in this story. Not always doth the writer know

whither the divine Muse leadeth him. But of this be sure—she is as

inexorable as Truth. We must tell our tale as she imparts it to us, and

go on or turn aside at her bidding.

Here she ordains that we should speak of other members of the family,

whose history we chronicle, and it behoves us to say a word regarding

the Earl of Kew, the head of the noble house into which Sir Brian

Newcome had married.

When we read in the fairy stories that the King and Queen, who lived

once upon a time, build a castle of steel, defended by moats and

sentinels innumerable, in which they place their darling only child,

the Prince or Princess, whose birth has blessed them after so many

years of marriage, and whose christening feast has been interrupted by

the cantankerous humour of that notorious old fairy who always persists

in coming, although she has not received any invitation to the

baptismal ceremony: when Prince Prettyman is locked up in the steel

tower, provided only with the most wholesome food, the most edifying

educational works, and the most venerable old tutor to instruct and to

bore him, we know, as a matter of course, that the steel bolts and

brazen bars one day will be of no avail, the old tutor will go off in a

doze, and the moats and drawbridges will either be passed by His Royal

Highness’s implacable enemies, or crossed by the young scapegrace

himself, who is determined to outwit his guardians, and see the wicked

world. The old King and Queen always come in and find the chambers

empty, the saucy heir-apparent flown, the porter and sentinels drunk,

the ancient tutor asleep; they tear their venerable wigs in anguish,

they kick the major-domo downstairs, they turn the duenna out of

doors—the toothless old dragon! There is no resisting fate. The

Princess will slip out of window by the rope-ladder; the Prince will be

off to pursue his pleasures, and sow his wild oats at the appointed

season. How many of our English princes have been coddled at home by

their fond papas and mammas, walled up in inaccessible castles, with a

tutor and a library, guarded by cordons of sentinels, sermoners, old

aunts, old women from the world without, and have nevertheless escaped

from all these guardians, and astonished the world by their

extravagance and their frolics? What a wild rogue was that Prince

Harry, son of the austere sovereign who robbed Richard the Second of

his crown,—the youth who took purses on Gadshill, frequented Eastcheap

taverns with Colonel Falstaff and worse company, and boxed Chief

Justice Gascoigne’s ears! What must have been the venerable Queen

Charlotte’s state of mind when she heard of the courses of _her_

beautiful young Prince; of his punting at gambling-tables; of his

dealings with horse-jockeys; of his awful doings with Perdita? Besides

instances taken from our Royal Family, could we not draw examples from

our respected nobility? There was that young Lord Warwick, Mr.

Addison’s stepson. We know that his mother was severe, and his

stepfather a most eloquent moralist, yet the young gentleman’s career

was shocking, positively shocking. He boxed the watch; he fuddled

himself at taverns; he was no better than a Mohock. The chronicles of

that day contain accounts of many a mad prank which he played, as we

have legends of a still earlier date of the lawless freaks of the wild

Prince and Poins. Our people has never looked very unkindly on these

frolics. A young nobleman, full of life and spirits, generous of his

money, jovial in his humour, ready with his sword, frank, handsome,

prodigal, courageous, always finds favour. Young Scapegrace rides a

steeplechase or beats a bargeman, and the crowd applauds him. Sages and

seniors shake their heads, and look at him not unkindly; even stern old

female moralists are disarmed at the sight of youth and gallantry, and

beauty. I know very well that Charles Surface is a sad dog, and Tom

Jones no better than he should be; but, in spite of such critics as Dr.

Johnson and Colonel Newcome, most of us have a sneaking regard for

honest Tom, and hope Sophia will be happy, and Tom will end well at

last.

Five-and-twenty years ago the young Earl of Kew came upon the town,

which speedily rang with the feats of his lordship. He began life time

enough to enjoy certain pleasures from which our young aristocracy of

the present day seem, alas! to be cut off. So much more peaceable and

polished do we grow, so much does the spirit of the age appear to

equalise all ranks; so strongly has the good sense of society, to which

in the end gentlemen of the very highest fashion must bow, put its veto

upon practices and amusements with which our fathers were familiar. At

that time the Sunday newspapers contained many and many exciting

reports of boxing-matches. Bruising was considered a fine manly old

English custom. Boys at public schools fondly perused histories of the

noble science, from the redoubtable days of Broughton and Slack, to the

heroic times of Dutch Sam and the Game Chicken. Young gentlemen went

eagerly to Moulsey to see the Slasher punch the Pet’s head, or the

Negro beat the Jew’s nose to a jelly. The island rang as yet with the

tooting horns and rattling teams of mail-coaches; a gay sight was the

road in merry England in those days, before steam-engines arose and

flung its hostelry and chivalry over. To travel in coaches, to drive

coaches, to know coachmen and guards, to be familiar with inns along

the road, to laugh with the jolly hostess in the bar, to chuck the

pretty chambermaid under the chin, were the delight of men who were

young not very long ago. Who ever thought of writing to the Times then?

“Biffin,” I warrant, did not grudge his money, and “A Thirsty Soul”

paid cheerfully for his drink. The road was an institution, the ring

was an institution. Men rallied round them; and, not without a kind

conservatism, expatiated upon the benefits with which they endowed the

country, and the evils which would occur when they should be no

more:—decay of English spirit, decay of manly pluck, ruin of the breed

of horses, and so forth, and so forth. To give and take a black eye was

not unusual nor derogatory in a gentleman; to drive a stage-coach the

enjoyment, the emulation of generous youth. Is there any young fellow

of the present time who aspires to take the place of a stoker? You see

occasionally in Hyde Park one dismal old drag with a lonely driver.

Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O rattling Quicksilver, O

swift Defiance? You are passed by racers stronger and swifter than you.

Your lamps are out, and the music of your horns has died away.

Just at the ending of that old time, Lord Kew’s life began. That kindly

middle-aged gentleman whom his county knows that good landlord, and

friend of all his tenantry round about; that builder of churches, and

indefatigable visitor of schools; that writer of letters to the farmers

of his shire, so full of sense and benevolence; who wins prizes at

agricultural shows, and even lectures at county town institutes in his

modest, pleasant way, was the wild young Lord Kew of a quarter of a

century back; who kept racehorses, patronised boxers, fought a duel,

thrashed a Life Guardsman, gambled furiously at Crockford’s, and did

who knows what besides?

His mother, a devout lady, nursed her son and his property carefully

during the young gentleman’s minority: keeping him and his younger

brother away from all mischief, under the eyes of the most careful

pastors and masters. She learnt Latin with the boys, she taught them to

play on the piano: she enraged old Lady Kew, the children’s

grandmother, who prophesied that her daughter-in-law would make

milksops of her sons, to whom the old lady was never reconciled until

after my lord’s entry at Christchurch, where he began to distinguish

himself very soon after his first term. He drove tandems, kept hunters,

gave dinners, scandalised the Dean, screwed up the tutor’s door, and

agonised his mother at home by his lawless proceedings. He quitted the

University after a very brief sojourn at that seat of learning. It may

be the Oxford authorities requested his lordship to retire; let bygones

be bygones. His youthful son, the present Lord Walham, is now at

Christchurch, reading with the greatest assiduity. Let us not be too

particular in narrating his father’s unedifying frolics of a quarter of

a century ago.

Old Lady Kew, who, in conjunction with Mrs. Newcome, had made the

marriage between Mr. Brian Newcome and her daughter, always despised

her son-in-law; and being a frank, open person, uttering her mind

always, took little pains to conceal her opinion regarding him or any

other individual. “Sir Brian Newcome,” she would say, “is one of the

most stupid and respectable of men; Anne is clever, but has not a grain

of common sense. They make a very well assorted couple. Her flightiness

would have driven any man crazy who had an opinion of his own. She

would have ruined any poor man of her own rank; as it is, I have given

her a husband exactly suited for her. He pays the bills, does not see

how absurd she is, keeps order in the establishment, and checks her

follies. She wanted to marry her cousin, Tom Poyntz, when they were

both very young, and proposed to die of a broken heart when I arranged

her match with Mr. Newcome. A broken fiddlestick! she would have ruined

Tom Poyntz in a year; and has no more idea of the cost of a leg of

mutton, than I have of algebra.”

The Countess of Kew loved Brighton, and preferred living there even at

the season when Londoners find such especial charms in their own city.

“London after Easter,” the old lady said, “was intolerable. Pleasure

becomes a business, then so oppressive, that all good company is

destroyed by it. Half the men are sick with the feasts which they eat

day after day. The women are thinking of the half-dozen parties they

have to go to in the course of the night. The young girls are thinking

of their partners and their toilettes. Intimacy becomes impossible, and

quiet enjoyment of life. On the other hand, the crowd of _bourgeois_

has not invaded Brighton. The drive is not blocked up by flys full of

stockbrokers’ wives and children; and you can take the air in your

chair upon the chain-pier, without being stifled by the cigars of the

odious shop-boys from London.” So Lady Kew’s name was usually amongst

the earliest which the Brighton newspapers recorded amongst the

arrivals.

Her only unmarried daughter, Lady Julia, lived with her ladyship. Poor

Lady Julia had suffered early from a spine disease, which had kept her

for many years to her couch. Being always at home, and under her

mother’s eyes, she was the old lady’s victim, her pincushion, into

which Lady Kew plunged a hundred little points of sarcasm daily. As

children are sometimes brought before magistrates, and their poor

little backs and shoulders laid bare, covered with bruises and lashes

which brutal parents have inflicted, so, I dare say, if there had been

any tribunal or judge, before whom this poor patient lady’s heart could

have been exposed, it would have been found scarred all over with

numberless ancient wounds, and bleeding from yesterday’s castigation.

Old Lady Kew’s tongue was a dreadful thong which made numbers of people

wince. She was not altogether cruel, but she knew the dexterity with

which she wielded her lash, and liked to exercise it. Poor Lady Julia

was always at hand, when her mother was minded to try her powers.

Lady Kew had just made herself comfortable at Brighton, when her little

grandson’s illness brought Lady Anne Newcome and her family down to the

sea. Lady Kew was almost scared back to London again, or blown over the

water to Dieppe. She had never had the measles. “Why did not Anne carry

the child to some other place? Julia, you will on no account go and see

that little pestiferous swarm of Newcomes, unless you want to send me

out of the world—which I dare say you do, for I am a dreadful plague to

you, I know, and my death would be a release to you.”

“You see Doctor H., who visits the child every day,” cries poor

Pincushion; “you are not afraid when he comes.”

“Doctor H.? Doctor H. comes to cure me, or to tell me the news, or to

flatter me, or to feel my pulse and to pretend to prescribe, or to take

his guinea; of course Dr. H. must go to see all sorts of people in all

sorts of diseases. You would not have me be such a brute as to order

him not to attend my own grandson? I forbid you to go to Anne’s house.

You will send one of the men every day to inquire. Let the groom

go—yes, Charles—he will not go into the house. He will ring the bell

and wait outside. He had better ring the bell at the area—I suppose

there is an area—and speak to the servants through the bars, and bring

us word how Alfred is.” Poor Pincushion felt fresh compunctions; she

had met the children, and kissed the baby, and held kind Ethel’s hand

in hers, that day, as she was out in her chair. There was no use,

however, to make this confession. Is she the only good woman or man of

whom domestic tyranny has made a hypocrite?

Charles, the groom, brings back perfectly favourable reports of Master

Alfred’s health that day, which Doctor H., in the course of his visit,

confirms. The child is getting well rapidly; eating like a little ogre.

His cousin Lord Kew has been to see him. He is the kindest of men, Lord

Kew; he brought the little man Tom and Jerry with the pictures. The boy

is delighted with the pictures.

“Why has not Kew come to see me? When did he come? Write him a note,

and send for him instantly, Julia. Did you know he was here?”

Julia says, that she had but that moment read in the Brighton papers

the arrival of the Earl of Kew and the Honourable J. Belsize at the

Albion.

“I am sure they are here for some mischief,” cries the old lady,

delighted. “Whenever George and John Belsize are together, I know there

is some wickedness planning. What do you know, Doctor? I see by your

face you know something. Do tell it me, that I may write it to his

odious psalm-singing mother.”

Doctor H.’s face does indeed wear a knowing look. He simpers and says,

“I did see Lord Kew driving this morning, first with the Honourable Mr.

Belsize, and afterwards”—here he glances towards Lady Julia, as if to

say, “Before an unmarried lady, I do not like to tell your ladyship

with whom I saw Lord Kew driving, after he had left the Honourable Mr.

Belsize, who went to play a match with Captain Huxtable at tennis.”

“Are you afraid to speak before Julia?” cries the elder lady. “Why,

bless my soul, she is forty years old, and has heard everything that

can be heard. Tell me about Kew this instant, Doctor H.”

The Doctor blandly acknowledges that Lord Kew had been driving Madame

Pozzoprofondo, the famous contralto of the Italian Opera, in his

phaeton, for two hours, in the face of all Brighton.

“Yes, Doctor,” interposes Lady Julia, blushing; “but Signor

Pozzoprofondo was in the carriage too—a-a-sitting behind with the

groom. He was indeed, mamma.”

“Julia, _vous n’êtes qu’une bête_,” says Lady Kew, shrugging her

shoulders, and looking at her daughter from under her bushy black

eyebrows. Her ladyship, a sister of the late lamented Marquis of

Steyne, possessed no small share of the wit and intelligence, and a

considerable resemblance to the features, of that distinguished

nobleman.

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

“_Monsieur le Mauvais Sujet_,—Gentlemen who wish to take the sea air in

private, or to avoid their relations, had best go to other places than

Brighton, where their names are printed in the newspapers. If you are

not drowned in a pozzo—”

“Mamma!” interposes the secretary.

“—in a pozzo-profondo, you will please come to dine with two old women,

at half-past seven. You may bring Mr. Belsize, and must tell us a

hundred stories.—Yours, etc., L. Kew.”

Julia wrote all the letter as her mother dictated it, save only one

sentence, and the note was sealed and despatched to my Lord Kew, who

came to dinner with Jack Belsize. Jack Belsize liked to dine with Lady

Kew. He said, “she was an old dear, and the wickedest old woman in all

England;” and he liked to dine with Lady Julia, who was “a poor

suffering dear, and the best woman in all England.” Jack Belsize liked

every one, and every one liked him.

Two evenings afterwards the young men repeated their visit to Lady Kew,

and this time Lord Kew was loud in praises of his cousins of the house

of Newcome.

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

“No, confound him! not Barnes.”

“No, d—— it, not Barnes. I beg your pardon, Lady Julia,” broke in Jack

Belsize. “I can get on with most men; but that little Barney is too

odious a little snob.”

“A little what—Mr. Belsize?”

“A little snob, ma’am. I have no other word, though he is your

grandson. I never heard him say a good word of any mortal soul, or do a

kind action.”

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

“But the others are capital. There is that little chap who has just had

the measles—he’s a clear little brick. And as for Miss Ethel——”

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

knee.

“Ethel is a brick, and Alfred is a trump, I think you say,” remarks

Lady Kew, nodding approval; “and Barnes is a snob. This is very

satisfactory to know.”

“We met the children out to-day,” cries the enthusiastic Kew, “as I was

driving Jack in the drag, and I got out and talked to ’em.”

“Governess an uncommonly nice woman—oldish, but—I beg your pardon, Lady

Julia,” cries the inopportune Jack Belsize—“I’m always putting my foot

in it.”

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

“Well, we met the whole posse of children; and the little fellow wanted

a drive, and I said I would drive him and Ethel too, if she would come.

Upon my word she is as pretty a girl as you can see on a summer’s day.

And the governess said ‘No,’ of course. Governesses always do. But I

said I was her uncle, and Jack paid her such a fine compliment, that

the young woman was mollified, and the children took their seats beside

me, and Jack went behind.”

“Where Monsieur Pozzoprofondo sits, _bon_.”

“We drove on to the Downs, and we were nearly coming to grief. My

horses are young, and when they get on the grass they are as if they

were mad. It was very wrong; I know it was.”

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

“And my brother Frank would have been Lord Kew,” continued the young

Earl, with a quiet smile. “What an escape for him! The horses ran

away—ever so far—and I thought the carriage must upset. The poor little

boy, who has lost his pluck in the fever, began to cry; but that young

girl, though she was as white as a sheet, never gave up for a moment,

and sate in her place like a man. We met nothing, luckily; and I pulled

the horses in after a mile or two, and I drove ’em into Brighton as

quiet as if I had been driving a hearse. And that little trump of an

Ethel, what do you think she said? She said, ‘I was not frightened, but

you must not tell mamma.’ My aunt, it appears, was in a dreadful

commotion—I ought to have thought of that.”

“Lady Anne is a ridiculous old dear. I beg your pardon, Lady Kew,” here

breaks in Jack the apologiser.

“There is a brother of Sir Brian Newcome’s staying with them,” Lord Kew

proceeds; “an East India Colonel—a very fine-looking old boy.”

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

“This gentleman was on the look-out for us, it appears, for when we

came in sight he despatched a boy who was with him, running like a

lamplighter back to my aunt, to say all was well. And he took little

Alfred out of the carriage, and then helped out Ethel, and said, ‘My

dear, you are too pretty to scold; but you have given us all a _belle

peur_.’ And then he made me and Jack a low bow, and stalked into the

lodgings.”

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

“We went up and made our peace with my aunt, and were presented in form

to the Colonel and his youthful cub.”

“As fine a fellow as ever I saw: and as fine a boy as ever I saw,”

cries Jack Belsize. “The young chap is a great hand at drawing—upon my

life the best drawings I ever saw. And he was making a picture for

little What-d’you-call-’em. And Miss Newcome was looking over them. And

Lady Anne pointed out the group to me, and said how pretty it was. She

is uncommonly sentimental, you know, Lady Anne.”

“My daughter Anne is the greatest fool in the three kingdoms,” cried

Lady Kew, looking fiercely over her spectacles. And Julia was

instructed to write that night to her sister, and desire that Ethel

should be sent to see her grandmother:—Ethel, who rebelled against her

grandmother, and always fought on her Aunt Julia’s side, when the

weaker was oppressed by the older and stronger lady.

CHAPTER XI.

At Mrs. Ridley’s

Saint Peter of Alcantara, as I have read in a life of St. Theresa,

informed that devout lady that he had passed forty years of his life

sleeping only an hour and a half each day; his cell was but four feet

and a half long, so that he never lay down: his pillow was a wooden log

in the stone wall: he ate but once in three days: he was for three

years in a convent of his order without knowing any one of his brethren

except by the sound of their voices, for he never during this period

took his eyes off the ground: he always walked barefoot, and was but

skin and bone when he died. The eating only once in three days, so he

told his sister Saint, was by no means impossible, if you began the

regimen in your youth. To conquer sleep was the hardest of all

austerities which he practised:—I fancy the pious individual so

employed, day after day, night after night, on his knees, or standing

up in devout meditation in the cupboard—his dwelling-place; bareheaded

and barefooted, walking over rocks, briars, mud, sharp stones (picking

out the very worst places, let us trust, with his downcast eyes), under

the bitter snow, or the drifting rain, or the scorching sunshine—I

fancy Saint Peter of Alcantara, and contrast him with such a personage

as the Incumbent of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel, Mayfair.

His hermitage is situated in Walpole Street, let us say, on the second

floor of a quiet mansion, let out to hermits by a nobleman’s butler,

whose wife takes care of the lodgings. His cells consist of a

refectory, a dormitory, and an adjacent oratory where he keeps his

shower-bath and boots—the pretty boots trimly stretched on boot-trees

and blacked to a nicety (not varnished) by the boy who waits on him.

The barefooted business may suit superstitious ages and gentlemen of

Alcantara, but does not become Mayfair and the nineteenth century. If

St. Pedro walked the earth now with his eyes to the ground he would

know fashionable divines by the way in which they were shod. Charles

Honeyman’s is a sweet foot. I have no doubt as delicate and plump and

rosy as the white hand with its two rings, which he passes in

impassioned moments through his slender flaxen hair.

A sweet odour pervades his sleeping apartment—not that peculiar and

delicious fragrance with which the Saints of the Roman Church are said

to gratify the neighbourhood where they repose—but oils, redolent of

the richest perfumes of Macassar, essences (from Truefitt’s or

Delcroix’s) into which a thousand flowers have expressed their sweetest

breath, await his meek head on rising; and infuse the

pocket-handkerchief with which he dries and draws so many tears. For he

cries a good deal in his sermons, to which the ladies about him

contribute showers of sympathy.

By his bedside are slippers lined with blue silk and worked of an

ecclesiastical pattern, by some of the faithful who sit at his feet.

They come to him in anonymous parcels: they come to him in silver

paper: boys in buttons (pages who minister to female grace!) leave them

at the door for the Rev. C. Honeyman, and slip away without a word.

Purses are sent to him—penwipers—a portfolio with the Honeyman arms;

yea, braces have been known to reach him by the post (in his days of

popularity); and flowers, and grapes, and jelly when he was ill, and

throat comforters, and lozenges for his dear bronchitis. In one of his

drawers is the rich silk cassock presented to him by his congregation

at Leatherhead (when the young curate quitted that parish for London

duty), and on his breakfast-table the silver teapot, once filled with

sovereigns and presented by the same devotees. The devo-teapot he has,

but the sovereigns, where are they?

What a different life this is from our honest friend of Alcantara, who

eats once in three days! At one time if Honeyman could have drunk tea

three times in an evening, he might have had it. The glass on his

chimneypiece is crowded with invitations, not merely cards of ceremony

(of which there are plenty), but dear little confidential notes from

sweet friends of his congregation. “Ob, dear Mr. Honeyman,” writes

Blanche, “what a sermon that was! I cannot go to bed to-night without

thanking you for it.” “Do, _do_, dear Mr. Honeyman,” writes Beatrice,

“lend me that delightful sermon. And can you come and drink tea with me

and Selina, and my aunt? Papa and mamma dine out, but you know I am

always your faithful Chesterfield Street.” And so on. He has all the

domestic accomplishments; he plays on the violoncello: he sings a

delicious second, not only in sacred but in secular music. He has a

thousand anecdotes, laughable riddles, droll stories (of the utmost

correctness, you understand) with which he entertains females of all

ages; suiting his conversation to stately matrons, deaf old dowagers

(who can hear his clear voice better than the loudest roar of their

stupid sons-in-law), mature spinsters, young beauties dancing through

the season, even rosy little slips out of the nursery, who cluster

round his beloved feet. Societies fight for him to preach their charity

sermon. You read in the papers, “The Wapping Hospital for Wooden-legged

Seamen.—On Sunday the 23rd, Sermons will be preached in behalf of this

charity, by the Lord Bishop of Tobago in the morning, in the afternoon

by the Rev. C. Honeyman, A.M., Incumbent of,” etc. “Clergymen’s

Grandmothers’ Fund.—Sermons in aid of this admirable institution will

be preached on Sunday, 4th May, by the Very Rev. the Dean of Pimlico,

and the Rev. C. Honeyman, A.M.” When the Dean of Pimlico has his

illness, many people think Honeyman will have the Deanery; that he

ought to have it, a hundred female voices vow and declare: though it is

said that a right reverend head at headquarters shakes dubiously when

his name is mentioned for preferment. His name is spread wide, and not

only women but men come to hear him. Members of Parliament, even

Cabinet Ministers, sit under him. Lord Dozeley of course is seen in a

front pew: where was a public meeting without Lord Dozeley? The men

come away from his sermons and say, “It’s very pleasant, but I don’t

know what the deuce makes all you women crowd so to hear the man.” “Oh,

Charles! if you would but go oftener!” sighs Lady Anna Maria. “Can’t

you speak to the Home Secretary? Can’t you do something for him?” “We

can ask him to dinner next Wednesday if you like,” Says Charles. “They

say he’s a pleasant fellow out of the wood. Besides there is no use in

doing anything for him,” Charles goes on. “He can’t make less than a

thousand a year out of his chapel, and that is better than anything any

one can give him. A thousand a year, besides the rent of the

wine-vaults below the chapel.”

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

things in that way.

“Confound it! there are wine-vaults under the chapel!” answers

downright Charles. “I saw the name, Sherrick and Co.; offices, a green

door, and a brass plate. It’s better to sit over vaults with wine in

them than coffins. I wonder whether it’s the Sherrick with whom Kew and

Jack Belsize had that ugly row?”

“What ugly row?—don’t say ugly row. It is not a nice word to hear the

children use. Go on, my darlings. What was the dispute of Lord Kew and

Mr. Belsize, and this Mr. Sherrick?”

“It was all about pictures, and about horses, and about money, and

about one other subject which enters into every row that I ever heard

of.”

“And what is that, dear?” asks the innocent lady, hanging on her

husband’s arm, and quite pleased to have led him to church and brought

him thence. “And what is it, that enters into every row, as you call

it, Charles?”

“A woman, my love,” answers the gentleman, behind whom we have been in

imagination walking out from Charles Honeyman’s church on a Sunday in

June: as the whole pavement blooms with artificial flowers and fresh

bonnets; as there is a buzz and cackle all around regarding the sermon;

as carriages drive off; as lady-dowagers walk home; as prayer-books and

footmen’s sticks gleam in the sun; as little boys with baked mutton and

potatoes pass from the courts; as children issue from the public-houses

with pots of beer; as the Reverend Charles Honeyman, who has been

drawing tears in the sermon, and has seen, not without complacent

throbs, a Secretary of State in the pew beneath him, divests himself of

his rich silk cassock in the vestry, before he walks away to his

neighbouring hermitage—where have we placed it?—in Walpole Street. I

wish St. Pedro of Alcantara could have some of that shoulder of mutton

with the baked potatoes, and a drink of that frothing beer. See, yonder

trots little Lord Dozeley, who has been asleep for an hour with his

head against the wood, like St. Pedro of Alcantara.

An East Indian gentleman and his son wait until the whole chapel is

clear, and survey Lady Whittlesea’s monument at their leisure, and

other hideous slabs erected in memory of defunct frequenters of the

chapel. Whose was that face which Colonel Newcome thought he

recognised—that of a stout man who came down from the organ-gallery?

Could it be Broff the bass singer, who delivered the “Red Cross Knight”

with such applause at the Cave of Melody, and who has been singing in

this place? There are some chapels in London, where, the function over,

one almost expects to see the sextons put brown hollands over the pews

and galleries, as they do at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.

The writer of these veracious pages was once walking through a splendid

English palace, standing amidst parks and gardens, than which none more

magnificent has been seen since the days of Aladdin, in company with a

melancholy friend, who viewed all things darkly through his gloomy

eyes. The housekeeper, pattering on before us from chamber to chamber,

was expatiating upon the magnificence of this picture; the beauty of

that statue; the marvellous richness of these hangings and carpets; the

admirable likeness of the late Marquis by Sir Thomas; of his father,

the fifth Earl, by Sir Joshua, and so on; when, in the very richest

room of the whole castle, Hicks—such was my melancholy companion’s

name—stopped the cicerone in her prattle, saying in a hollow voice,

“And now, madam, will you show us the closet _where the skeleton is?_”

The seared functionary paused in the midst of her harangue; that

article was not inserted in the catalogue which she daily utters to

visitors for their half-crown. Hicks’s question brought a darkness down

upon the hall where we were standing. We did not see the room: and yet

I have no doubt there is such an one; and ever after, when I have

thought of the splendid castle towering in the midst of shady trees,

under which the dappled deer are browsing; of the terraces gleaming

with statues, and bright with a hundred thousand flowers; of the

bridges and shining fountains and rivers wherein the castle windows

reflect their festive gleams, when the halls are filled with happy

feasters, and over the darkling woods comes the sound of music;—always,

I say, when I think of Castle Bluebeard:—it is to think of that dark

little closet, which I know is there, and which the lordly owner opens

shuddering—after midnight—when he is sleepless and _must_ go unlock it,

when the palace is hushed, when beauties are sleeping around him

unconscious, and revellers are at rest. O Mrs. Housekeeper: all the

other keys hast thou: but that key thou hast not!

Have we not all such closets, my jolly friend, as well as the noble

Marquis of Carabas? At night, when all the house is asleep but you,

don’t you get up and peep into yours? When you in your turn are

slumbering, up gets Mrs. Brown from your side, steals downstairs like

Amina to her ghoul, clicks open the secret door, and looks into her

dark depository. Did she tell you of that little affair with Smith long

before she knew you? Psha! who knows any one save himself alone? Who,

in showing his house to the closest and dearest, doesn’t keep back the

key of a closet or two? I think of a lovely reader laying down the page

and looking over at her unconscious husband, asleep, perhaps, after

dinner. Yes, madam, a closet he hath: and you, who pry into everything,

shall never have the key of it. I think of some honest Othello pausing

over this very sentence in a railroad carriage, and stealthily gazing

at Desdemona opposite to him, innocently administering sandwiches to

their little boy—I am trying to turn off the sentence with a joke, you

see—I feel it is growing too dreadful, too serious.

And to what, pray, do these serious, these disagreeable, these almost

personal observations tend? To this simply, that Charles Honeyman, the

beloved and popular preacher, the elegant divine to whom Miss Blanche

writes sonnets, and whom Miss Beatrice invites to tea; who comes with

smiles on his lip, gentle sympathy in his tones, innocent gaiety in his

accent; who melts, rouses, terrifies in the pulpit; who charms over the

tea-urn and the bland bread-and-butter: Charles Honeyman has one or two

skeleton closets in his lodgings, Walpole Street, Mayfair; and many a

wakeful night, whilst Mrs. Ridley, his landlady, and her tired husband,

the nobleman’s major-domo, whilst the lodger on the first floor, whilst

the cook and housemaid and weary little bootboy are at rest (mind you,

they have all got _their_ closets, which they open with their

skeleton-keys); he wakes up, and looks at the ghastly occupant of that

receptacle. One of the Reverend Charles Honeyman’s grisly

night-haunters is—but stop; let us give a little account of the

lodgings, and of some of the people frequenting the same.

First floor, Mr. Bagshot, Member for a Norfolk borough. Stout jolly

gentleman;—dines at the Carlton Club; greatly addicted to Greenwich and

Richmond, in the season: bets in a moderate way: does not go into

society, except now and again to the chiefs of his party, when they

give great entertainments; and once or twice to the houses of great

country dons who dwell near him in the country. Is not of very good

family; was, in fact, an apothecary: married a woman with money, much

older than himself, who does not like London, and stops at home at

Hummingham, not much to the displeasure of Bagshot; gives every now and

then nice little quiet dinners, which Mrs. Ridley cooks admirably, to

exceedingly stupid jolly old Parliamentary fogies, who absorb, with

much silence and cheerfulness, a vast quantity of wine. They have just

begun to drink ’24 claret now, that of ’15 being scarce, and almost

drunk up. Writes daily, and hears every morning from Mrs. Bagshot; does

not read her letters always: does not rise till long past eleven

o’clock of a Sunday, and has _John Bull_ and _Bell’s Life_, in bed:

frequents the Blue Posts sometimes; rides a stout cob out of his

county, and pays like the Bank of England.

The house is a Norfolk house. Mrs. Ridley was housekeeper to the great

Squire Bayham, who had the estate before the Conqueror, and who came to

such a dreadful crash in the year 1825, the year of the panic. Bayhams

still belongs to the family, but in what a state, as those can say who

recollect it in its palmy days! Fifteen hundred acres of the best land

in England were sold off: all the timber cut down as level as a

billiard-board. Mr. Bayham now lives up in one corner of the house,

which used to be filled with the finest company in Europe. Law bless

you! the Bayhams have seen almost all the nobility of England come in

and go out, and were gentlefolks when many a fine lord’s father of the

present day was sweeping a counting-house.

The house will hold genteelly no more than these two inmates; but in

the season it manages to accommodate Miss Cann, who too was from

Bayhams, having been a governess there to the young lady who is dead,

and who now makes such a livelihood as she can best raise, by going out

as a daily teacher. Miss Cann dines with Mrs. Ridley in the adjoining

little back-parlour. Ridley but seldom can be spared to partake of the

family dinner, his duties in the house and about the person of my Lord

Todmorden keeping him constantly near that nobleman. How little Miss

Cann can go on and keep alive on the crumb she eats for breakfast, and

the scrap she picks at dinner, du astonish Mrs. Ridley, that it _du!_

She declares that the two canary-birds encaged in her window (whence is

a cheerful prospect of the back of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel) eat more

than Miss Cann. The two birds set up a tremendous singing and

chorussing when Miss Cann, spying the occasion of the first-floor

lodger’s absence, begins practising her music-pieces. Such trills,

roulades, and flourishes go on from the birds and the lodger! it is a

wonder how any fingers can move over the jingling ivory so quickly as

Miss Cann’s. Excellent a woman as she is, admirably virtuous, frugal,

brisk, honest, and cheerful, I would not like to live in lodgings where

there was a lady so addicted to playing variations. No more does

Honeyman. On a Saturday, when he is composing his valuable sermons (the

rogue, you may be sure, leaves his work to the last day, and there are,

I am given to understand, among the clergy many better men than

Honeyman, who are as dilatory as he), he begs, he entreats with tears

in his eyes, that Miss Cann’s music may cease. I would back little Cann

to write a sermon against him, for all his reputation as a popular

preacher.

Old and weazened as that piano is, feeble and cracked her voice, it is

wonderful what a pleasant concert she can give in that parlour of a

Saturday evening, to Mrs. Ridley, who generally dozes a good deal, and

to a lad, who listens with all his soul, with tears sometimes in his

great eyes, with crowding fancies filling his brain and throbbing at

his heart, as the artist plies her humble instrument. She plays old

music of Handel and Haydn, and the little chamber anon swells into a

cathedral, and he who listens beholds altars lighted, priests

ministering, fair children swinging censers, great oriel windows

gleaming in sunset, and seen through arched columns and avenues of

twilight marble. The young fellow who hears her has been often and

often to the opera and the theatres. As she plays Don Juan, Zerlina

comes tripping over the meadows, and Masetto after her, with a crowd of

peasants and maidens: and they sing the sweetest of all music, and the

heart beats with happiness, and kindness, and pleasure. Piano,

pianissimo! the city is hushed. The towers of the great cathedral rise

in the distance, its spires lighted by the broad moon. The statues in

the moonlit place cast long shadows athwart the pavement: but the

fountain in the midst is dressed out like Cinderella for the night, and

sings and wears a crest of diamonds. That great sombre street all in

shade, can it be the famous Toledo?—or is it the Corso?—or is it the

great street in Madrid, the one which leads to the Escurial where the

Rubens and Velasquez are? It is Fancy Street—Poetry Street—Imagination

Street—the street where lovely ladies look from balconies, where

cavaliers strike mandolins and draw swords and engage, where long

processions pass, and venerable hermits, with long beards, bless the

kneeling people: where the rude soldiery, swaggering through the place

with flags and halberts, and fife and dance, seize the slim waists of

the daughters of the people, and bid the pifferari play to their

dancing. Blow, bagpipes, a storm of harmony! become trumpets,

trombones, ophicleides, fiddles, and bassoons! Fire, guns sound,

tocsins! Shout, people! Louder, shriller and sweeter than all, sing

thou, ravishing heroine! And see, on his cream-coloured charger

Massaniello prances in, and Fra Diavolo leaps down the balcony,

carabine in hand; and Sir Huon of Bordeaux sails up to the quay with

the Sultan’s daughter of Babylon. All these delights and sights, and

joys and glories, these thrills of sympathy, movements of unknown

longing, and visions of beauty, a young sickly lad of eighteen enjoys

in a little dark room where there is a bed disguised in the shape of a

wardrobe, and a little old woman is playing under a gas-lamp on the

jingling keys of an old piano.

For a long time Mr. Samuel Ridley, butler and confidential valet to the

Right Honourable John James Baron Todmorden, was in a state of the

greatest despair and gloom about his only son, the little John James,—a

sickly and almost deformed child “of whom there was no making nothink,”

as Mr. Ridley said. His figure precluded him from following his

father’s profession, and waiting upon the British nobility, who

naturally require large and handsome men to skip up behind their

rolling carriages, and hand their plates at dinner. When John James was

six years old his father remarked, with tears in his eyes, he wasn’t

higher than a plate-basket. The boys jeered at him in the streets—some

whopped him, spite of his diminutive size. At school he made but little

progress. He was always sickly and dirty, and timid and crying,

whimpering in the kitchen away from his mother; who, though she loved

him, took Mr. Ridley’s view of his character, and thought him little

better than an idiot until such time as little Miss Cann took him in

hand, when at length there was some hope of him.

“Half-witted, you great stupid big man,” says Miss Cann, who had a fine

spirit of her own. “That boy half-witted! He has got more wit in his

little finger than you have in all your great person! You are a very

good man, Ridley, very good-natured I’m sure, and bear with the teasing

of a waspish old woman: but you are not the wisest of mankind. Tut,

tut, don’t tell me. You know you spell out the words when you read the

newspaper still, and what would your bills look like if I did not write

them in my nice little hand? I tell you that boy is a genius. I tell

you that one day the world will hear of him. His heart is made of pure

gold. You think that all the wit belongs to the big people. Look at me,

you great tall man! Am I not a hundred times cleverer than you are?

Yes, and John James is worth a thousand such insignificant little chits

as I am; and he is as tall as me too, sir. Do you hear that! One day I

am determined he shall dine at Lord Todmorden’s table, and he shall get

the prize at the Royal Academy, and be famous, sir—famous!”

“Well, Miss C., I wish he may get it; that’s all I say,” answers Mr.

Ridley. “The poor fellow does no harm, that I acknowledge; but _I_

never see the good he was up to yet. I wish he’d begin it; I _du_ wish

he would now.” And the honest gentleman relapses into the study of his

paper.

All those beautiful sounds and thoughts which Miss Cann conveys to him

out of her charmed piano, the young artist straightway translates into

forms; and knights in armour, with plume, and shield, and battle-axe;

and splendid young noblemen with flowing ringlets, and bounteous plumes

of feathers, and rapiers, and russet boots; and fierce banditti with

crimson tights, doublets profusely illustrated with large brass

buttons, and the dumpy basket-hilted claymores known to be the

favourite weapon with which these whiskered ruffians do battle;

wasp-waisted peasant girls, and young countesses with oh, such large

eyes and the lips!—all these splendid forms of war and beauty crowd to

the young draughtsman’s pencil, and cover letter-backs, copybooks,

without end. If his hand strikes off some face peculiarly lovely, and

to his taste, some fair vision that has shone on his imagination, some

houri of a dancer, some bright young lady of fashion in an opera-box,

whom he has seen, or fancied he has seen (for the youth is

short-sighted, though he hardly as yet knows his misfortune)—if he has

made some effort extraordinarily successful, our young Pygmalion hides

away the masterpiece, and he paints the beauty with all his skill; the

lips a bright carmine, the eyes a deep, deep cobalt, the cheeks a

dazzling vermilion, the ringlets of a golden hue; and he worships this

sweet creature of his in secret, fancies a history for her; a castle to

storm, a tyrant usurper who keeps her imprisoned, and a prince in black

ringlets and a spangled cloak, who scales the tower, who slays the

tyrant, and then kneels gracefully at the princess’s feet, and says,

“Lady, wilt thou be mine?”

There is a kind lady in the neighbourhood, who takes in dressmaking for

the neighbouring maid-servants, and has a small establishment of

lollipops, theatrical characters, and ginger-beer for the boys in

Little Craggs Buildings, hard by the Running Footman public-house,

where father and other gentlemen’s gentlemen have their club: this good

soul also sells Sunday newspapers to the footmen of the neighbouring

gentry; and besides, has a stock of novels for the ladies of the upper

servants’ table. Next to Miss Cann, Miss Flinders is John James’s

greatest friend and benefactor. She has remarked him when he was quite

a little man, and used to bring his father’s beer of a Sunday. Out of

her novels he has taught himself to read, dull boy at the day-school

though he was, and always the last in his class, there. Hours, happy

hours, has he spent cowering behind her counter, or hugging her books

under his pinafore when he had leave to carry them home. The whole

library has passed through his hands, his long, lean, tremulous hands,

and under his eager eyes. He has made illustrations to every one of

those books, and been frightened at his own pictures of Manfroni or the

One-handed Monk, Abellino the Terrific Bravo of Venice, and Rinaldo

Rinaldini Captain of Robbers. How he has blistered Thaddeus of Warsaw

with his tears, and drawn him in his Polish cap, and tights, and

Hessians! William Wallace, the Hero of Scotland, how nobly he has

depicted him! With what whiskers and bushy ostrich plumes!—in a tight

kilt, and with what magnificent calves to his legs, laying about him

with his battle-axe, and bestriding the bodies of King Edward’s

prostrate cavaliers! At this time Mr. Honeyman comes to lodge in

Walpole Street, and brings a set of Scott’s novels, for which he

subscribed when at Oxford; and young John James, who at first waits

upon him and does little odd jobs for the reverend gentleman, lights

upon the volumes, and reads them with such a delight and passion of

pleasure as all the delights of future days will scarce equal. A fool,

is he?—an idle feller, out of whom no good will ever come, as his

father says. There was a time when, in despair of any better chance for

him, his parents thought of apprenticing him to a tailor, and John

James was waked up from a dream of Rebecca and informed of the cruelty

meditated against him. I forbear to describe the tears and terror, and

frantic desperation in which the poor boy was plunged. Little Miss Cann

rescued him from that awful board, and Honeyman likewise interceded for

him, and Mr. Bagshot promised that, as soon as his party came in, he

would ask the Minister for a tide-waitership for him; for everybody

liked the solemn, soft-hearted, willing little lad, and no one knew him

less than his pompous and stupid and respectable father.

Miss Cann painted flowers and card-screens elegantly, and “finished”

pencil-drawings most elaborately for her pupils. She could copy prints,

so that at a little distance you would scarcely know that the copy in

stumped chalk was not a bad mezzotinto engraving. She even had a little

old paint-box, and showed you one or two ivory miniatures out of the

drawer. She gave John James what little knowledge of drawing she had,

and handed him over her invaluable recipes for mixing

water-colours—“for trees in foregrounds, burnt sienna and indigo”—“for

very dark foliage, ivory black and gamboge”—“for flesh-colour,” etc.

etc. John James went through her poor little course, but not so

brilliantly as she expected. She was forced to own that several of her

pupils’ “pieces” were executed much more dexterously than Johnny

Ridley’s. Honeyman looked at the boy’s drawings from time to time, and

said, “Hm, ha!—very clever—a great deal of fancy, really.” But Honeyman

knew no more of the subject than a deaf and dumb man knows of music. He

could talk the art cant very glibly, and had a set of Morghens and

Madonnas as became a clergyman and a man of taste; but he saw not with

eyes such as those wherewith Heaven had endowed the humble little

butler’s boy, to whom splendours of Nature were revealed to vulgar

sights invisible, and beauties manifest in forms, colours, shadows of

common objects, where most of the world saw only what was dull, and

gross, and familiar. One reads in the magic story-books of a charm or a

flower which the wizard gives, and which enables the bearer to see the

fairies. O enchanting boon of Nature, which reveals to the possessor

the hidden spirits of beauty round about him! spirits which the

strongest and most gifted masters compel into painting or song. To

others it is granted but to have fleeting glimpses of that fair

Art-world; and tempted by ambition, or barred by faint-heartedness, or

driven by necessity, to turn away thence to the vulgar life-track, and

the light of common day.

The reader who has passed through Walpole Street scores of times, knows

the discomfortable architecture of all, save the great houses built in

Queen Anne’s and George the First’s time; and while some of the

neighbouring streets, to wit, Great Craggs Street, Bolingbroke Street,

and others, contain mansions fairly coped with stone, with little

obelisks before the doors, and great extinguishers wherein the torches

of the nobility’s running footmen were put out a hundred and thirty or

forty years ago:—houses which still remain abodes of the quality, and

where you shall see a hundred carriages gather of a public night;

Walpole Street has quite faded away into lodgings, private hotels,

doctors’ houses, and the like; nor is No. 23 (Ridley’s) by any means

the best house in the street. The parlour, furnished and tenanted by

Miss Cann as has been described; the first floor, Bagshot, Esq., M.P.;

the second floor, Honeyman; what remains but the garrets, and the ample

staircase and the kitchens? and the family being all put to bed, how

can you imagine there is room for any more inhabitants?

And yet there is one lodger more, and one who, like almost all the

other personages mentioned up to the present time (and some of whom you

have no idea yet), will play a definite part in the ensuing history. At

night, when Honeyman comes in, he finds on the hall-table three wax

bedroom candles—his own, Bagshot’s, and another. As for Miss Cann, she

is locked into the parlour in bed long ago, her stout little

walking-shoes being on the mat at the door. At 12 o’clock at noon,

sometimes at 1, nay at 2 and 3—long after Bagshot is gone to his

committees, and little Cann to her pupils—a voice issues from the very

topmost floor, from a room where there is no bell; a voice of thunder

calling out “Slavey! Julia! Julia, my love! Mrs. Ridley!” And this

summons not being obeyed, it will not unfrequently happen that a pair

of trousers enclosing a pair of boots with iron heels, and known by the

name of the celebrated Prussian General who came up to help the other

christener of boots at Waterloo, will be flung down from the topmost

story, even to the marble floor of the resounding hall. Then the boy

Thomas, otherwise called Slavey, may say, “There he goes again;” or

Mrs. Ridley’s own back-parlour bell rings vehemently, and Julia the

cook will exclaim, “Lor, it’s Mr. Frederick.”

If the breeches and boots are not understood, the owner himself appears

in great wrath dancing on the upper story; dancing down to the lower

floor; and loosely enveloped in a ragged and flowing _robe de chambre_.

In this costume and condition he will dance into Honeyman’s apartment,

where that meek divine may be sitting with a headache or over a novel

or a newspaper; dance up to the fire flapping his robe-tails, poke it,

and warm himself there; dance up to the cupboard where his reverence

keeps his sherry, and help himself to a glass.

“_Salve, spes fidei, lumen ecclesiæ_,” he will say; “here’s towards

you, my buck. I knows the tap. Sherrick’s Marsala bottled three months

after date, at two hundred and forty-six shillings the dozen.”

“Indeed, indeed it’s not” (and now we are coming to an idea of the

skeleton in poor Honeyman’s closet—not that this huge handsome jolly

Fred Bayham is the skeleton, far from it. Mr. Frederick weighs fourteen

stone). “Indeed, indeed it isn’t, Fred, I’m sure,” sighs the other.

“You exaggerate, indeed you do. The wine is not dear, not by any means

so expensive as you say.”

“How much a glass, think you?” says Fred, filling another bumper. “A

half-crown, think ye?—a half-crown, Honeyman? By cock and pye, it is

not worth a bender.” He says this in the manner of the most celebrated

tragedian of the day. He can imitate any actor, tragic or comic; any

known Parliamentary orator or clergyman; any saw, cock, cloop of a cork

wrenched from a bottle and guggling of wine into the decanter

afterwards, bee buzzing, little boy up a chimney, etc. He imitates

people being ill on board a steam-packet so well that he makes you die

of laughing: his uncle the Bishop could not resist this comic

exhibition, and gave Fred a cheque for a comfortable sum of money; and

Fred, getting cash for the cheque at the Cave of Harmony, imitated his

uncle the Bishop and his Chaplain, winding up with his Lordship and

Chaplain being unwell at sea—the Chaplain and Bishop quite natural and

distinct.

“How much does a glass of this sack cost thee, Charley?” resumes Fred,

after this parenthesis. “You say it is not dear. Charles Honeyman, you

had, even from your youth up, a villainous habit. And I perfectly well

remember, sir, in boyhood’s breezy hour, when I was the delight of his

school, that you used to tell lies to your venerable father. You did,

Charles. Excuse the frankness of an early friend, it’s my belief you’d

rather lie than not. Hm”—he looks at the cards in the chimney-glass

“Invitations to dinner, proffers of muffins. Do lend me your sermon.

Oh, you old impostor! you hoary old Ananias! I say, Charley, why

haven’t you picked out some nice girl for yours truly? One with lauds

and beeves, with rents and consols, mark you? I have no money, ’tis

true, but then I don’t owe as much as you. I am a handsomer man than

you are. Look at this chest” (he slaps it), “these limbs; they are

manly, sir, manly.”

“For Heaven’s sake, Bayham,” cries Mr. Honeyman, white with terror; “if

anybody were to come——”

“What did I say anon, sir? that I was manly, ay, manly. Let any

ruffian, save a bailiff, come and meet the doughty arm of Frederick

Bayham.”

“Oh, Lord, Lord, here’s somebody coming into the room!” cries Charles,

sinking back on the sofa, as the door opens.

“Ha! dost thou come with murderous intent?” and he now advances in an

approved offensive attitude. “Caitiff, come on, come on!” and he walks

off with a tragic laugh, crying, “Ha, ha, ha, ’tis but the slavey!”

The slavey has Mr. Frederick’s hot water, and a bottle of sodawater on

the same tray. He has been instructed to bring soda whenever he hears

the word slavey pronounced from above. The bottle explodes, and

Frederick drinks, and hisses after his drink as though he had been all

hot within.

“What’s o’clock now, slavey—half-past three? Let me see, I breakfasted

exactly ten hours ago, in the rosy morning, off a modest cup of coffee

in Covent Garden Market. Coffee, a penny; bread, a simple halfpenny.

What has Mrs. Ridley for dinner?”

“Please, sir, roast pork.”

“Get me some. Bring it into my room, unless, Honeyman, you insist upon

my having it here, kind fellow!”

At the moment a smart knock comes to the door, and Fred says, “Well,

Charles, it may be a friend or a lady come to confess, and I’m off; I

knew you’d be sorry I was going. Tom, bring up my things; brush ’em

gently, you scoundrel, and don’t take the nap off. Bring up the roast

pork, and plenty of apple-sauce, tell Mrs. Ridley, with my love; and

one of Mr. Honeyman’s shirts, and one of his razors. Adieu, Charles!

Amend! Remember me.” And he vanishes into the upper chambers.

CHAPTER XII.

In which everybody is asked to Dinner

John James had opened the door hastening to welcome a friend and

patron, the sight of whom always gladdened the youth’s eyes; no other

than Clive Newcome—in young Ridley’s opinion, the most splendid,

fortunate, beautiful, high-born, and gifted youth this island

contained. What generous boy in his time has not worshipped somebody?

Before the female enslaver makes her appearance, every lad has a friend

of friends, a crony of cronies, to whom he writes immense letters in

vacation, whom he cherishes in his heart of hearts; whose sister he

proposes to marry in after life; whose purse he shares; for whom he

will take a thrashing if need be: who is his hero. Clive was John

James’s youthful divinity: when he wanted to draw Thaddeus of Warsaw, a

Prince, Ivanhoe, or some one splendid and egregious, it was Clive he

took for a model. His heart leapt when he saw the young fellow. He

would walk cheerfully to Grey Friars, with a letter or message for

Clive, on the chance of seeing him, and getting a kind word from him,

or a shake of the hand. An ex-butler of Lord Todmorden was a pensioner

in the Grey Friars Hospital (it has been said that at that ancient

establishment is a college for old men as well as for boys), and this

old man would come sometimes to his successor’s Sunday dinner, and

grumble from the hour of that meal until nine o’clock, when he was

forced to depart, so as to be within Grey Friars’ gates before ten;

grumble about his dinner—grumble about his beer—grumble about the

number of chapels he had to attend, about the gown he wore, about the

master’s treatment of him, about the want of plums in the pudding, as

old men and schoolboys grumble. It was wonderful what a liking John

James took to this odious, querulous, graceless, stupid, and snuffy old

man, and how he would find pretexts for visiting him at his lodging in

the old hospital. He actually took that journey that he might have a

chance of seeing Clive. He sent Clive notes and packets of drawings;

thanked him for books lent, asked advice about future reading—anything,

so that he might have a sight of his pride, his patron, his paragon.

I am afraid Clive Newcome employed him to smuggle rum-shrub and cigars

into the premises; giving him appointments in the school precincts,

where young Clive would come and stealthily receive the forbidden

goods. The poor lad was known by the boys, and called Newcome’s Punch.

He was all but hunchbacked; long and lean in the arm; sallow, with a

great forehead, and waving black hair, and large melancholy eyes.

“What, is it you, J. J.?” cries Clive gaily, when his humble friend

appears at the door. “Father, this is my friend Ridley. This is the

fellow what can draw.”

“I know whom I will back against any young man of his size at _that_,”

says the Colonel, looking at Clive fondly. He considered there was not

such a genius in the world; and had already thought of having some of

Clive’s drawings published by M’Lean of the Haymarket.

“This is my father just come from India—and Mr. Pendennis, an old Grey

Friars’ man. Is my uncle at home?” Both these gentlemen bestow rather

patronising nods of the head on the lad introduced to them as J. J. His

exterior is but mean-looking. Colonel Newcome, one of the

humblest-minded men alive, has yet his old-fashioned military notions;

and speaks to a butler’s son as to a private soldier, kindly, but not

familiarly.

“Mr. Honeyman is at home, gentlemen,” the young lad says, humbly. “Shall

I show you up to his room?” And we walk up the stairs after our guide.

We find Mr. Honeyman deep in study on his sofa, with Pearson on the

Creed before him. The novel has been whipped under the pillow. Clive

found it there some short time afterwards, during his uncle’s temporary

absence in his dressing-room. He has agreed to suspend his theological

studies, and go out with his brother-in-law to dine.

As Clive and his friends were at Honeyman’s door, and just as we were

entering to see the divine seated in state before his folio, Clive

whispers, “J. J., come along, old fellow, and show us some drawings.

What are you doing?”

“I was doing some Arabian Nights,” says J. J., “up in my room; and

hearing a knock which I thought was yours, I came down.”

“Show us the pictures. Let’s go up into your room,” cries Clive.

“What—will you?” says the other. “It is but a very small place.”

“Never mind, come along,” says Clive; and the two lads disappear

together, leaving the three grown gentlemen to discourse together, or

rather two of us to listen to Honeyman, who expatiates upon the beauty

of the weather, the difficulties of the clerical calling, the honour

Colonel Newcome does him by a visit, etc., with his usual eloquence.

After a while Clive comes down without J. J., from the upper regions.

He is greatly excited. “Oh, sir,” he says to his father, “you talk

about my drawings—you should see J. J.’s! By Jove, that fellow is a

genius. They are beautiful, sir. You seem actually to read the Arabian

Nights, you know, only in pictures. There is Scheherazade telling the

stories, and—what do you call her?—Dinarzade and the Sultan sitting in

bed and listening. Such a grim old cove! You see he has cut off ever so

many of his wives’ heads. I can’t think where that chap gets his ideas

from. I can beat him in drawing horses, I know, and dogs; but I can

only draw what I see. Somehow he seems to see things we don’t, don’t

you know? Oh, father, I’m determined I’d rather be a painter than

anything.” And he falls to drawing horses and dogs at his uncle’s

table, round which the elders are seated.

“I’ve settled it upstairs with J. J.,” says Clive, working away with

his pen. “We shall take a studio together; perhaps we will go abroad

together. Won’t that be fun, father?”

“My dear Clive,” remarks Mr. Honeyman, with bland dignity, “there are

degrees in society which we must respect. You surely cannot think of

being a professional artist. Such a profession is very well for your

young _protégé;_ but for you——”

“What for me?” cries Clive. “We are no such great folks that I know of;

and if we were, I say a painter is as good as a lawyer, or a doctor, or

even a soldier. In Dr. Johnston’s Life—which my father is always

reading—I like to read about Sir Joshua Reynolds best: I think he is

the best gentleman of all in the book. My! wouldn’t I like to paint a

picture like Lord Heathfield in the National Gallery! _Wouldn’t_ I

just! I think I would sooner have done that, than have fought at

Gibraltar. And those Three Graces—oh, aren’t they graceful! And that

Cardinal Beaufort at Dulwich!—it frightens me so, I daren’t look at it.

Wasn’t Reynolds a clipper, that’s all! and wasn’t Rubens a brick! He

was an ambassador, and Knight of the Bath; so was Vandyck. And Titian,

and Raphael, and Velasquez?—I’ll just trouble you to show me better

gentlemen than them, Uncle Charles.”

“Far be it from me to say that the pictorial calling is not

honourable,” says Uncle Charles; “but as the world goes there are other

professions in greater repute; and I should have thought Colonel

Newcome’s son——”

“He shall follow his own bent,” said the Colonel; “as long as his

calling is honest it becomes a gentleman; and if he were to take a

fancy to play on the fiddle—actually on the fiddle—I shouldn’t object.”

“Such a rum chap there was upstairs!” Clive resumes, looking up from

his scribbling. “He was walking up and down on the landing in a

dressing-gown, with scarcely any other clothes on, holding a plate in

one hand, and a pork-chop he was munching with the other. Like this”

(and Clive draws a figure). “What do you think, sir? He was in the Cave

of Harmony, he says, that night you flared up about Captain Costigan.

He knew me at once; and he says, ‘Sir, your father acted like a

gentleman, a Christian, and a man of honour. _Maxima debetur puero

reverentia_. Give him my compliments. I don’t know his highly

respectable name.’ His highly respectable name,” says Clive, cracking

with laughter—“those were his very words. ‘And inform him that I am an

orphan myself—in needy circumstances’—he said he was in needy

circumstances; ‘and I heartily wish he’d adopt me.’”

The lad puffed out his face, made his voice as loud and as deep as he

could; and from his imitation and the picture he had drawn, I knew at

once that Fred Bayham was the man he mimicked.

“And does the Red Rover live here,” cried Mr. Pendennis, “and have we

earthed him at last?”

“He sometimes comes here,” Mr. Honeyman said with a careless manner.

“My landlord and landlady were butler and housekeeper to his father,

Bayham of Bayham, one of the oldest families in Europe. And Mr.

Frederick Bayham, the exceedingly eccentric person of whom you speak,

was a private pupil of my own dear father in our happy days at

Borehambury.”

He had scarcely spoken when a knock was heard at the door, and before

the occupant of the lodgings could say “Come in!” Mr. Frederick Bayham

made his appearance, arrayed in that peculiar costume which he

affected. In those days we wore very tall stocks, only a very few

poetic and eccentric persons venturing on the Byron collar; but Fred

Bayham confined his neck by a simple ribbon, which allowed his great

red whiskers to curl freely round his capacious jowl. He wore a black

frock and a large broad-brimmed hat, and looked somewhat like a

Dissenting preacher. At other periods you would see him in a green coat

and a blue neckcloth, as if the turf or the driving of coaches was his

occupation.

“I have heard from the young man of the house who you were, Colonel

Newcome,” he said with the greatest gravity, “and happened to be

present, sir, the other night; for I was aweary, having been toiling

all the day in literary labour, and needed some refreshment. I happened

to be present, sir, at a scene which did you the greatest honour, and

of which I spoke, not knowing you, with something like levity to your

son. He is an _ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris_—Pendennis, how

are you? And I thought, sir, I would come down and tender an apology if

I had said any words that might savour of offence to a gentleman who

was in the right, as I told the room when you quitted it, as Mr.

Pendennis, I am sure, will remember.”

Mr. Pendennis looked surprise and perhaps negation.

“You forget, Pendennis? Those who quit that room, sir, often forget on

the morrow what occurred during the revelry of the night. You did right

in refusing to return to that scene. We public men are obliged often to

seek our refreshment at hours when luckier individuals are lapt in

slumber.”

“And what may be your occupation, Mr. Bayham?” asks the Colonel, rather

gloomily, for he had an idea that Bayham was adopting a strain of

_persiflage_ which the Indian gentleman by no means relished. Never

saying aught but a kind word to any one, he was on fire at the notion

that any should take a liberty with him.

“A barrister, sir, but without business—a literary man, who can but

seldom find an opportunity to sell the works of his brains—a gentleman,

sir, who has met with neglect, perhaps merited, perhaps undeserved,

from his family. I get my bread as best I may. On that evening I had

been lecturing on the genius of some of our comic writers, at the

Parthenopæon, Hackney. My audience was scanty, perhaps equal to my

deserts. I came home on foot to an egg and a glass of beer after

midnight, and witnessed the scene which did you so much honour. What is

this? I fancy a ludicrous picture of myself”—he had taken up the sketch

which Clive had been drawing—“I like fun, even at my own expense; and

can afford to laugh at a joke which is meant in good-humour.” This

speech quite reconciled the honest Colonel. “I am sure the author of

that, Mr. Bayham, means you or any man no harm. Why! the rascal, sir,

has drawn me, his own father; and I have sent the drawing to Major

Hobbs, who is in command of my regiment. Chinnery himself, sir,

couldn’t hit off a likeness better; he has drawn me on horseback, and

he has drawn me on foot, and he has drawn my friend, Mr. Binnie, who

lives with me. We have scores of his drawings at my lodgings; and if

you will favour us by dining with us to-day, and these gentlemen, you

shall see that you are not the only person caricatured by Clive here.”

“I just took some little dinner upstairs, sir. I am a moderate man, and

can live, if need be, like a Spartan; but to join such good company I

will gladly use the knife and fork again. You will excuse the

traveller’s dress? I keep a room here, which I use only occasionally,

and am at present lodging—in the country.”

When Honeyman was ready, the Colonel, who had the greatest respect for

the Church, would not hear of going out of the room before the

clergyman, and took his arm to walk. Bayham then fell to Mr.

Pendennis’s lot, and they went together. Through Hill Street and

Berkeley Square their course was straight enough; but at Hay Hill, Mr.

Bayham made an abrupt tack larboard, engaging in a labyrinth of

stables, and walking a long way round from Clifford Street, whither we

were bound. He hinted at a cab, but Pendennis refused to ride, being,

in truth, anxious to see which way his eccentric companion would steer.

“There are reasons,” growled Bayham, “which need not be explained to

one of your experience, why Bond Street must be avoided by some men

peculiarly situated. The smell of Truefitt’s pomatum makes me ill. Tell

me, Pendennis, is this Indian warrior a rajah of large wealth? Could

he, do you think, recommend me to a situation in the East India

Company? I would gladly take any honest post in which fidelity might be

useful, genius might be appreciated, and courage rewarded. Here we are.

The hotel seems comfortable. I never was in it before.”

When we entered the Colonel’s sitting-room at Nerot’s, we found the

waiter engaged in extending the table. “We are a larger party than I

expected,” our host said. “I met my brother Brian on horseback leaving

cards at that great house in ——— Street.”

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

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

Colonel.

“Am I to understand, Colonel Newcome,” says Mr. Frederick Bayham, “that

you are related to the eminent banker, Sir Brian Newcome, who gives

such uncommonly swell parties in Park Lane?”

“What is a swell party?” asks the Colonel, laughing. “I dined with my

brother last Wednesday; and it was a very grand dinner certainly. The

Governor-General himself could not give a more splendid entertainment.

But, do you know, I scarcely had enough to eat? I don’t eat side

dishes; and as for the roast beef of Old England, why, the meat was put

on the table and whisked away like Sancho’s inauguration feast at

Barataria. We did not dine till nine o’clock. I like a few glasses of

claret and a cosy talk after dinner; but—well, well”—(no doubt the

worthy gentleman was accusing himself of telling tales out of school

and had come to a timely repentance). “Our dinner, I hope, will be

different. Jack Binnie will take care of that. That fellow is full of

anecdote and fun. You will meet one or two more of our service; Sir

Thomas de Boots, who is not a bad chap over a glass of wine; Mr.

Pendennis’s chum, Mr. Warrington, and my nephew, Barnes Newcome—a dry

fellow at first, but I dare say he has good about him when you know

him; almost every man has,” said the good-natured philosopher. “Clive,

you rogue, mind and be moderate with the champagne, sir!”

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

“I say, Pendennis,” here Bayham remarked, “it is my deliberate opinion

that F. B. has got into a good thing.”

Mr. Pendennis seeing there was a great party was for going home to his

chambers to dress. “Hm!” says Mr. Bayham, “don’t see the necessity.

What right-minded man looks at the exterior of his neighbour? He looks

_here_, sir, and examines _there_,” and Bayham tapped his forehead,

which was expansive, and then his heart, which he considered to be in

the right place.

“What is this I hear about dressing?” asks our host. “Dine in your

frock, my good friend, and welcome, if your dress-coat is in the

country.”

“It is at present at an uncle’s,” Mr. Bayham said, with great gravity,

“and I take your hospitality as you offer it, Colonel Newcome,

cordially and frankly.”

Honest Mr. Binnie made his appearance a short time before the appointed

hour for receiving the guests, arrayed in a tight little pair of

trousers, and white silk stockings and pumps, his bald head shining

like a billiard-ball, his jolly gills rosy with good-humour. He was

bent on pleasure. “Hey, lads!” says he; “but we’ll make a night of it.

We haven’t had a night since the farewell dinner off Plymouth.”

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

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

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

“And I think you beat iny one I iver hard in ‘Tom Bowling,’ yourself,

Tom!” cries the Colonel’s delighted chum. Mr. Pendennis opened the eyes

of astonishment at the idea of the possibility of renewing these

festivities, but he kept the lips of prudence closed. And now the

carriages began to drive up, and the guests of Colonel Newcome to

arrive.

CHAPTER XIII.

In which Thomas Newcome sings his Last Song

The earliest comers were the first mate and the medical officer of the

ship in which the two gentlemen had come to England. The mate was a

Scotchman: the doctor was a Scotchman; of the gentlemen from the

Oriental Club, three were Scotchmen.

The Southrons, with one exception, were the last to arrive, and for a

while we stood looking out of the windows awaiting their coming. The

first mate pulled out a penknife and arranged his nails. The doctor and

Mr. Binnie talked of the progress of medicine. Binnie had walked the

hospitals of Edinburgh before getting his civil appointment to India.

The three gentlemen from Hanover Square and the Colonel had plenty to

say about Tom Smith of the Cavalry, and Harry Hall of the Engineers:

how Topham was going to marry poor little Bob Wallis’s widow; how many

lakhs Barber had brought home, and the like. The tall grey-headed

Englishman, who had been in the East too, in the King’s service, joined

for a while in this conversation, but presently left it, and came and

talked with Clive; “I knew your father in India,” said the gentleman to

the lad; “there is not a more gallant or respected officer in that

service. I have a boy too, a stepson, who has just gone into the army;

he is older than you, he was born at the end of the Waterloo year, and

so was a great friend of his and mine, who was at your school, Sir

Rawdon Crawley.”

“He was in Gown Boys, I know,” says the boy; “succeeded his uncle Pitt,

fourth Baronet. I don’t know how his mother—her who wrote the hymns,

you know, and goes to Mr. Honeyman’s chapel—comes to be Rebecca, Lady

Crawley. His father, Colonel Rawdon Crawley, died at Coventry Island,

in August, 182-, and his uncle, Sir Pitt, not till September here. I

remember, we used to talk about it at Grey Friars, when I was quite a

little chap; and there were bets whether Crawley, I mean the young one,

was a Baronet or not.”

“When I sailed to Rigy, Cornel,” the first mate was speaking—nor can

any spelling nor combination of letters of which I am master, reproduce

this gentleman’s accent when he was talking his best—“I racklackt they

used always to sairve us a drem before denner. And as your frinds are

kipping the denner, and as I’ve no watch to-night, I’ll jist do as we

used to do at Rigy. James, my fine fellow, jist look alive and breng me

a small glass of brandy, will ye? Did ye iver try a brandy cocktail,

Cornel? Whin I sailed on the New York line, we used jest to make bits

before denner and—thank ye, James:” and he tossed off a glass of

brandy.

Here a waiter announces, in a loud voice, “Sir Thomas de Boots,” and

the General enters, scowling round the room according to his fashion,

very red in the face, very tight in the girth, splendidly attired with

a choking white neckcloth, a voluminous waistcoat, and his orders on.

“Stars and garters, by jingo!” cries Mr. Frederick Bayham; “I say,

Pendennis, have you any idea, is the Duke coming? I wouldn’t have come

in these Bluchers if I had known it. Confound it, no—Hoby himself, my

own bootmaker, wouldn’t have allowed poor F. B. to appear in Bluchers,

if he had known that I was going to meet the Duke. My linen’s all

right, anyhow.”

F. B. breathed a thankful prayer for that. Indeed, who but the very

curious could tell that not F. B.’s, but C. H.’s—Charles Honeyman’s—was

the mark upon that decorous linen?

Colonel Newcome introduced Sir Thomas to every one in the room, as he

had introduced us all to each other previously, and as Sir Thomas

looked at one after another, his face was kind enough to assume an

expression which seemed to ask, “And who the devil are you, sir?” as

clearly as though the General himself had given utterance to the words.

With the gentleman in the window talking to Clive he seemed to have

some acquaintance, and said not unkindly, “How d’you do, Dobbin?”

The carriage of Sir Brian Newcome now drove up, from which the Baronet

descended in state, leaning upon the arm of the Apollo in plush and

powder, who closed the shutters of the great coach, and mounted by the

side of the coachman, laced and periwigged. The Bench of Bishops has

given up its wigs; cannot the box, too, be made to resign that insane

decoration? Is it necessary for our comfort, that the men who do our

work in stable or household should be dressed like Merry-Andrews? Enter

Sir Brian Newcome, smiling blandly: he greets his brother

affectionately, Sir Thomas gaily; he nods and smiles to Clive, and

graciously permits Mr. Pendennis to take hold of two fingers of his

extended right hand. That gentleman is charmed, of course, with the

condescension. What man could be otherwise than happy to be allowed a

momentary embrace of two such precious fingers? When a gentleman so

favours me, I always ask, mentally, why he has taken the trouble at

all, and regret that I have not had the presence of mind to poke one

finger against his two. If I were worth ten thousand a year, I cannot

help inwardly reflecting, and kept a large account in Threadneedle

Street, I cannot help thinking he would have favoured me with the whole

palm.

The arrival of these two grandees has somehow cast a solemnity over the

company. The weather is talked about: brilliant in itself, it does not

occasion very brilliant remarks among Colonel Newcome’s guests. Sir

Brian really thinks it must be as hot as it is in India. Sir Thomas de

Boots, swelling in his white waistcoat, in the armholes of which his

thumbs are engaged, smiles scornfully, and wishes Sir Brian had ever

felt a good sweltering day in the hot winds in India. Sir Brian

withdraws the untenable proposition that London is as hot as Calcutta.

Mr. Binnie looks at his watch, and at the Colonel. “We have only your

nephew, Tom, to wait for,” he says; “I think we may make so bold as to

order the dinner,”—a proposal heartily seconded by Mr. Frederick

Bayham.

The dinner appears steaming, borne by steaming waiters. The grandees

take their places, one on each side of the Colonel. He begs Mr.

Honeyman to say grace, and stands reverentially during that brief

ceremony, while de Boots looks queerly at him from over his napkin. All

the young men take their places at the farther end of the table, round

about Mr. Binnie; and at the end of the second course Mr. Barnes

Newcome makes his appearance.

Mr. Barnes does not show the slightest degree of disturbance, although

he disturbs all the company. Soup and fish are brought for him, and

meat, which he leisurely eats, while twelve other gentlemen are kept

waiting. We mark Mr. Binnie’s twinkling eyes, as they watch the young

man. “Eh,” he seems to say, “but that’s just about as free-and-easy a

young chap as ever I set eyes on.” And so Mr. Barnes was a cool young

chap. That dish is so good, he must really have some more. He discusses

the second supply leisurely; and turning round simpering to his

neighbour, says, “I really hope I’m not keeping everybody waiting.”

“Hem!” grunts the neighbour, Mr. Bayham; “it doesn’t much matter, for

we had all pretty well done dinner.” Barnes takes a note of Mr.

Bayham’s dress—his long frock-coat, the ribbon round his neck; and

surveys him with an admirable impudence. “Who are these people,” thinks

he, “my uncle has got together?” He bows graciously to the honest

Colonel, who asks him to take wine. He is so insufferably affable, that

every man near him would like to give him a beating.

All the time of the dinner the host was challenging everybody to drink

wine, in his honest old-fashioned way, and Mr. Binnie seconding the

chief entertainer. Such was the way in England and Scotland when they

were young men. And when Binnie, asking Sir Brian, receives for reply

from the Baronet—“Thank you, no, my dear sir. I have exceeded already,

positively exceeded,” the poor discomfited gentleman hardly knows

whither to apply: but, luckily, Tom Norris, the first mate, comes to

his rescue, and cries out, “Mr. Binnie, _I’ve_ not had enough, and I’ll

drink a glass of anything ye like with ye.” The fact is, that Mr.

Norris has had enough. He has drunk bumpers to the health of every

member of the company; his glass has been filled scores of times by

watchful waiters. So has Mr. Bayham absorbed great quantities of drink;

but without any visible effect on that veteran toper. So has young

Clive taken more than is good for him. His cheeks are flushed and

burning; he is chattering and laughing loudly at his end of the table.

Mr. Warrington eyes the lad with some curiosity; and then regards Mr.

Barnes with a look of scorn, which does not scorch that affable young

person.

I am obliged to confess that the mate of the Indiaman, at an early

period of the dessert, and when nobody had asked him for any such

public expression of his opinion, insisted on rising and proposing the

health of Colonel Newcome, whose virtues he lauded outrageously, and

whom he pronounced to be one of the best of mortal men. Sir Brian

looked very much alarmed at the commencement of this speech, which the

mate delivered with immense shrieks and gesticulation: but the Baronet

recovered during the course of the rambling oration, and at its

conclusion gracefully tapped the table with one of those patronising

fingers; and lifting up a glass containing at least a thimbleful of

claret, said, “My dear brother, I drink your health with all my heart,

I’m su-ah.” The youthful Barnes had uttered many “Hear, hears!” during

the discourse, with an irony which, with every fresh glass of wine he

drank, he cared less to conceal. And though Barnes had come late he had

drunk largely, making up for lost time.

Those ironical cheers, and all his cousin’s behaviour during dinner,

had struck young Clive, who was growing very angry. He growled out

remarks uncomplimentary to Barnes. His eyes, as he looked towards his

kinsman, flashed out challenges, of which we who were watching him

could see the warlike purport. Warrington looked at Bayham and

Pendennis with glances of apprehension. We saw that danger was

brooding, unless the one young man could be restrained from his

impertinence, and the other from his wine.

Colonel Newcome said a very few words in reply to his honest friend the

chief mate, and there the matter might have ended: but I am sorry to

say Mr. Binnie now thought it necessary to rise and deliver himself of

some remarks regarding the King’s service, coupled with the name of

Major-General Sir Thomas de Boots, K.C.B., etc.—the receipt of which

that gallant officer was obliged to acknowledge in a confusion

amounting almost to apoplexy. The glasses went whack whack upon the

hospitable board; the evening set in for public speaking. Encouraged by

his last effort, Mr. Binnie now proposed Sir Brian Newcome’s health;

and that Baronet rose and uttered an exceedingly lengthy speech,

delivered with his wine-glass on his bosom.

Then that sad rogue Bayham must get up, and call earnestly and

respectfully for silence and the chairman’s hearty sympathy, for the

few observations which he had to propose. “Our armies had been drunk

with proper enthusiasm—such men as he beheld around him deserved the

applause of all honest hearts, and merited the cheers with which their

names had been received. (‘Hear, hear!’ from Barnes Newcome

sarcastically. ‘Hear, hear, HEAR!’ fiercely from Clive.) But whilst we

applauded our army, should we forget a profession still more exalted?

Yes, still more exalted, I say in the face of the gallant General

opposite; and that profession, I need not say, is the Church.

(Applause.) Gentlemen, we have among us one who, while partaking

largely of the dainties on this festive board, drinking freely of the

sparkling wine-cup which our gallant hospitality administers to us,

sanctifies by his presence the feast of which he partakes, inaugurates

with appropriate benedictions, and graces it, I may say, both before

and after meat. Gentlemen, Charles Honeyman was the friend of my

childhood, his father the instructor of my early days. If Frederick

Bayham’s latter life has been chequered by misfortune, it may be that I

have forgotten the precepts which the venerable parent of Charles

Honeyman poured into an inattentive ear. He too, as a child, was not

exempt from faults; as a young man, I am told, not quite free from

youthful indiscretions. But in this present Anno Domini, we hail

Charles Honeyman as a precept and an example, as a _decus fidei_ and a

_lumen ecclesiæ_ (as I told him in the confidence of the private circle

this morning, and ere I ever thought to publish my opinion in this

distinguished company). Colonel Newcome and Mr. Binnie! I drink to the

health of the Reverend Charles Honeyman, A.M. May we listen to many

more of his sermons, as well as to that admirable discourse with which

I am sure he is about to electrify us now. May we profit by his

eloquence; and cherish in our memories the truths which come mended

from his tongue!” He ceased; poor Honeyman had to rise on his legs, and

gasp out a few incoherent remarks in reply. Without a book before him,

the Incumbent of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel was no prophet, and the truth

is he made poor work of his oration.

At the end of it, he, Sir Brian, Colonel Dobbin, and one of the Indian

gentlemen quitted the room, in spite of the loud outcries of our

generous host, who insisted that the party should not break up. “Close

up, gentlemen,” called out honest Newcome, “we are not going to part

just yet. Let me fill your glass, General. You used to have no

objection to a glass of wine.” And he poured out a bumper for his

friend, which the old campaigner sucked in with fitting gusto. “Who

will give us a song? Binnie, give us the ‘Laird of Cockpen.’ It’s

capital, my dear General. Capital,” the Colonel whispered to his

neighbour.

Mr. Binnie struck up the “Laird of Cockpen,” without, I am bound to

say, the least reluctance. He bobbed to one man, and he winked to

another, and he tossed his glass, and gave all the points of his song

in a manner which did credit to his simplicity and his humour. You

haughty Southerners little know how a jolly Scotch gentleman can

_desipere in loco_, and how he chirrups over his honest cups. I do not

say whether it was with the song or with Mr. Binnie that we were most

amused. It was a good commonty, as Christopher Sly says; nor were we

sorry when it was done.

Him the first mate succeeded; after which came a song from the

redoubted F. Bayham, which he sang with a bass voice which Lablache

might envy, and of which the chorus was frantically sung by the whole

company. The cry was then for the Colonel; on which Barnes Newcome, who

had been drinking much, started up with something like an oath, crying,

“Oh, I can’t stand this.”

“Then leave it, confound you!” said young Clive, with fury in his face.

“If our company is not good for you, why do you come into it?”

“What’s that?” asks Barnes, who was evidently affected by wine. Bayham

roared “Silence!” and Barnes Newcome, looking round with a tipsy toss

of the head, finally sate down.

The Colonel sang, as we have said, with a very high voice, using freely

the falsetto, after the manner of the tenor singers of his day. He

chose one of his maritime songs, and got through the first verse very

well, Barnes wagging his head at the chorus, with a “Bravo!” so

offensive that Fred Bayham, his neighbour, gripped the young man’s arm,

and told him to hold his confounded tongue.