“The cases are not quite similar,” says Lord Kew, languidly. “You are

no doubt fully equal to Praxiteles; but I don’t see my resemblance to

the other party. I should not look well as a hero, and Smee could not

paint me handsome enough.”

“I would try, my dear lord,” cries Mr. Smee.

“I know you would, my dear fellow,” Lord Kew answered, looking at the

painter with a lazy scorn in his eyes. “Where is Colonel Newcome, Mr.

Gandish?” Mr. Gandish replied that our gallant host was dancing a

quadrille in the next room; and the young gentleman walked on towards

that apartment to pay his respects to the giver of the evening’s

entertainment.

Newcome’s behaviour to the young peer was ceremonious, but not in the

least servile. He saluted the other’s superior rank, not his person, as

he turned the guard out for a general officer. He never could be

brought to be otherwise than cold and grave in his behaviour to John

James; nor was it without difficulty, when young Ridley and his son

became pupils at Gandish’s, he could be induced to invite the former to

his parties. “An artist is any man’s equal,” he said. “I have no

prejudice of that sort; and think that Sir Joshua Reynolds and Doctor

Johnson were fit company for any person, of whatever rank. But a young

man whose father may have had to wait behind me at dinner, should not

be brought into my company.” Clive compromises the dispute with a

laugh. “First,” says he, “I will wait till I am asked; and then I

promise I will not go to dine with Lord Todmoreton.”

CHAPTER XX.

Contains more Particulars of the Colonel and his Brethren

Clive’s amusements, studies, or occupations, such as they were, filled

his day pretty completely, and caused the young gentleman’s time to

pass rapidly and pleasantly, his father, it must be owned, had no such

resources, and the good Colonel’s idleness hung heavily upon him. He

submitted very kindly to this infliction, however, as he would have

done to any other for Clive’s sake; and though he may have wished

himself back with his regiment again, and engaged in the pursuits in

which his life had been spent, he chose to consider these desires as

very selfish and blameable on his part, and sacrificed them resolutely

for his son’s welfare. The young fellow, I dare say, gave his parent no

more credit for his long self-denial, than many other children award to

theirs. We take such life-offerings as our due commonly. The old French

satirist avers that, in a love affair, there is usually one person who

loves, and the other, _qui se laisse aimer;_ it is only in later days,

perhaps, when the treasures of love are spent, and the kind hand cold

which ministered them, that we remember how tender it was; how soft to

soothe; how eager to shield; how ready to support and caress. The ears

may no longer hear, which would have received our words of thanks so

delightedly. Let us hope those fruits of love, though tardy, are yet

not all too late; and though we bring our tribute of reverence and

gratitude, it may be to a gravestone, there is an acceptance even there

for the stricken heart’s oblation of fond remorse, contrite memories,

and pious tears. I am thinking of the love of Clive Newcome’s father

for him (and, perhaps, young reader, that of yours and mine for

ourselves); how the old man lay awake, and devised kindnesses, and gave

his all for the love of his son; and the young man took, and spent, and

slept, and made merry. Did we not say at our tale’s commencement that

all stories were old? Careless prodigals and anxious elders have been

from the beginning:—and so may love, and repentance, and forgiveness

endure even till the end.

The stifling fogs, the slippery mud, the dun dreary November mornings,

when the Regent’s Park, where the Colonel took his early walk, was

wrapped in yellow mist, must have been a melancholy exchange for the

splendour of Eastern sunrise, and the invigorating gallop at dawn, to

which, for so many years of his life, Thomas Newcome had accustomed

himself. His obstinate habit of early waking accompanied him to

England, and occasioned the despair of his London domestics, who, if

master wasn’t so awful early, would have found no fault with him; for a

gentleman as gives less trouble to his servants; as scarcely ever rings

the bell for his self; as will brush his own clothes; as will even boil

his own shaving-water in the little hetna which he keeps up in his

dressing-room; as pays so regular, and never looks twice at the

accounts; such a man deserved to be loved by his household, and I dare

say comparisons were made between him and his son, who do ring the

bells, and scold if his boots ain’t nice, and horder about like a young

lord. But Clive, though imperious, was very liberal and good-humoured,

and not the worse served because he insisted upon exerting his youthful

authority. As for friend Binnie, he had a hundred pursuits of his own,

which made his time pass very comfortably. He had all the Lectures at

the British Institution; he had the Geographical Society, the Asiatic

Society, and the Political Economy Club; and though he talked year

after year of going to visit his relations in Scotland, the months and

seasons passed away, and his feet still beat the London pavement.

In spite of the cold reception his brothers gave him, duty was duty,

and Colonel Newcome still proposed, or hoped to be well with the female

members of the Newcome family; and having, as we have said, plenty of

time on his hands, and living at no very great distance from either of

his brothers’ town houses, when their wives were in London, the elder

Newcome was for paying them pretty constant visits. But after the good

gentleman had called twice or thrice upon his sister-in-law in

Bryanstone Square—bringing, as was his wont, a present for this little

niece, or a book for that—Mrs. Newcome, with her usual virtue, gave him

to understand that the occupation of an English matron, who, besides

her multifarious family duties, had her own intellectual culture to

mind, would not allow her to pass the mornings in idle gossips: and of

course took great credit to herself for having so rebuked him. “I am

not above instruction of any age,” says she, thanking Heaven (or

complimenting it, rather, for having created a being so virtuous and

humble-minded). “When Professor Schroff comes, I sit with my children,

and take lessons in German,—and I say my verbs with Maria and Tommy in

the same class!” Yes, with curtsies and fine speeches she actually

bowed her brother out of doors; and the honest gentleman meekly left

her, though with bewilderment, as he thought of the different

hospitality to which he had been accustomed in the East, where no

friend’s house was ever closed to him, where no neighbour was so busy

but he had time to make Thomas Newcome welcome.

When Hobson Newcome’s boys came home for the holidays, their kind uncle

was for treating them to the sights of the town, but here Virtue again

interposed and laid its interdict upon pleasure. “Thank you, very much,

my dear Colonel,” says Virtue, “there never was surely such a kind,

affectionate, unselfish creature as you are, and so indulgent for

children, but my boys and yours are brought up on a _very different_

plan. Excuse me for saying that I do not think it is advisable that

they should even see too much of each other. Clive’s company is not

good for them.”

“Great heavens, Maria!” cries the Colonel, starting up, “do you mean

that my boy’s society is not good enough for any boy alive?”

Maria turned very red: she had said not more than she meant, but more

than she meant to say. “My dear Colonel, how hot we are! how angry you

Indian gentlemen become with us poor women! Your boy is much older than

mine. He lives with artists, with all sorts of eccentric people. Our

children are bred on _quite a different plan_. Hobson will succeed his

father in the bank, and dear Samuel I trust will go into the Church. I

told you, before, the views I had regarding the boys: but it was most

kind of you to think of them—most generous and kind.”

“That nabob of ours is a queer fish,” Hobson Newcome remarked to his

nephew Barnes. “He is as proud as Lucifer, he is always taking huff

about one thing or the other. He went off in a fume the other night

because your aunt objected to his taking the boys to the play. She

don’t like their going to the play. My mother didn’t either. Your aunt

is a woman who is uncommon wideawake, I can tell you.”

“I always knew, sir, that my aunt was perfectly aware of the time of

the day,” says Barnes, with a bow.

“And then the Colonel flies out about his boy, and says that my wife

insulted him! I used to like that boy. Before his father came he was a

good lad enough—a jolly brave little fellow.”

“I confess I did not know Mr. Clive at that interesting period of his

existence,” remarks Barnes.

“But since he has taken this madcap freak of turning painter,” the

uncle continues, “there is no understanding the chap. Did you ever see

such a set of fellows as the Colonel had got together at his party the

other night? Dirty chaps in velvet coats and beards? They looked like a

set of mountebanks. And this young Clive is going to turn painter!”

“Very advantageous thing for the family. He’ll do our pictures for

nothing. I always said he was a darling boy,” simpered Barnes.

“Darling jackass!” growled out the senior. “Confound it, why doesn’t my

brother set him up in some respectable business? I ain’t proud. I have

not married an earl’s daughter. No offence to you, Barnes.”

“Not at all, sir. I can’t help it if my grandfather is a gentleman,”

says Barnes, with a fascinating smile.

The uncle laughs. “I mean I don’t care what a fellow is if he is a good

fellow. But a painter! hang it—a painter’s no trade at all—I don’t

fancy seeing one of our family sticking up pictures for sale. I don’t

like it, Barnes.”

“Hush! here comes his distinguished friend, Mr. Pendennis,” whispers

Barnes; and the uncle growling out, “Damn all literary fellows—all

artists—the whole lot of them!” turns away. Barnes waves three languid

fingers of recognition towards Pendennis: and when the uncle and nephew

have moved out of the club newspaper room, little Tom Eaves comes up

and tells the present reporter every word of their conversation.

Very soon Mrs. Newcome announced that their Indian brother found the

society of Bryanstone Square very little to his taste, as indeed how

should he? being a man of a good harmless disposition certainly, but of

small intellectual culture. It could not be helped. She had done her

utmost to make him welcome, and grieved that their pursuits were not

more congenial. She heard that he was much more intimate in Park Lane.

Possibly the superior rank of Lady Anne’s family might present charms

to Colonel Newcome, who fell asleep at her assemblies. His boy, she was

afraid, was leading the most _irregular life_. He was growing a pair of

mustachios, and going about with all sorts of wild associates. She

found no fault; who was she, to find fault with any one? But she had

been compelled to hint that her children must not be too intimate with

him. And so, between one brother who meant no unkindness, and another

who was all affection and goodwill, this undoubting woman created

difference, distrust, dislike, which might one day possibly lead to

open rupture. The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and

they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the

mischief which the very virtuous do?

To her sister-in-law, Lady Anne, the Colonel’s society was more

welcome. The affectionate gentleman never tired of doing kindnesses to

his brother’s many children; and as Mr. Clive’s pursuits now separated

him a good deal from his father, the Colonel, not perhaps without a

sigh that fate should so separate him from the society which he loved

best in the world, consoled himself as best he might with his nephews

and nieces, especially with Ethel, for whom his _belle passion_

conceived at first sight never diminished. If Uncle Newcome had a

hundred children, Ethel said, who was rather jealous of disposition, he

would spoil them all. He found a fine occupation in breaking a pretty

little horse for her, of which he made her a present, and there was no

horse in the Park that was so handsome, and surely no girl who looked

more beautiful than Ethel Newcome with her broad hat and red ribbon,

with her thick black locks waving round her bright face, galloping

along the ride on Bhurtpore. Occasionally Clive was at their

riding-parties, when the Colonel would fall back and fondly survey the

young people cantering side by side over the grass: but by a tacit

convention it was arranged that the cousins should be but seldom

together; the Colonel might be his niece’s companion and no one could

receive him with a more joyous welcome, but when Mr. Clive made his

appearance with his father at the Park Lane door, a certain _gêne_ was

visible in Miss Ethel, who would never mount except with Colonel

Newcome’s assistance, and who, especially after Mr. Clive’s famous

mustachios made their appearance, rallied him, and remonstrated with

him regarding those ornaments, and treated him with much distance and

dignity. She asked him if he was going into the army? she could not

understand how any but military men could wear mustachios; and then she

looked fondly and archly at her uncle, and said she liked none that

were not grey.

Clive set her down as a very haughty, spoiled, aristocratic young

creature. If he had been in love with her, no doubt he would have

sacrificed even those beloved new-born whiskers for the charmer. Had he

not already bought on credit the necessary implements in a fine

dressing-case, from young Moss? But he was not in love with her;

otherwise he would have found a thousand opportunities of riding with

her, walking with her, meeting her, in spite of all prohibitions tacit

or expressed, all governesses, guardians, mamma’s punctilios, and kind

hints from friends. For a while, Mr. Clive thought himself in love with

his cousin; than whom no more beautiful young girl could be seen in any

park, ball, or drawing-room; and he drew a hundred pictures of her, and

discoursed about her beauties to J. J., who fell in love with her on

hearsay. But at this time Mademoiselle Saltarelli was dancing at Drury

Lane Theatre, and it certainly may be said that Clive’s first love was

bestowed upon that beauty: whose picture of course he drew in most of

her favourite characters; and for whom his passion lasted until the end

of the season, when her night was announced, tickets to be had at the

theatre, or of Mademoiselle Saltarelli, Buckingham Street, Strand. Then

it was that with a throbbing heart and a five-pound note, to engage

places for the houri’s benefit, Clive beheld Madame Rogomme,

Mademoiselle Saltarelli’s mother, who entertained him in the French

language in a dark parlour smelling of onions. And oh! issuing from the

adjoining dining-room (where was a dingy vision of a feast and pewter

pots upon a darkling tablecloth), could that lean, scraggy, old,

beetle-browed yellow face, who cried, “Ou es tu donc, maman?” with such

a shrill nasal voice—could that elderly vixen be that blooming and

divine Saltarelli? Clive drew her picture as she was, and a likeness of

Madame Rogomme, her mamma; a Mosaic youth, profusely jewelled, and

scented at once with tobacco and eau-de-cologne, occupied Clive’s stall

on Mademoiselle Saltarelli’s night. It was young Mr. Moss, of Gandish’s

to whom Newcome ceded his place, and who laughed (as he always did at

Clive’s jokes) when the latter told the story of his interview with the

dancer. “Paid five pound to see that woman! I could have took you

behind the scenes” (or “beide the seeds,” Mr. Moss said) “and showed

her to you for nothing.” Did he take Clive behind the scenes? Over this

part of the young gentleman’s life, without implying the least harm to

him—for have not others been behind the scenes; and can there be any

more dreary object than those whitened and raddled old women who

shudder at the slips?—over this stage of Clive Newcome’s life we may

surely drop the curtain.

It is pleasanter to contemplate that kind old face of Clive’s father,

that sweet young blushing lady by his side, as the two ride homewards

at sunset. The grooms behind in quiet conversation about horses, as men

never tire of talking about horses. Ethel wants to know about battles;

about lovers’ lamps, which she has read of in Lalla Rookh. “Have you

ever seen them, uncle, floating down the Ganges of a night?” About

Indian widows. “Did you actually see one burning, and hear her scream

as you rode up?” She wonders whether he will tell her anything about

Clive’s mother: how she must have loved Uncle Newcome! Ethel can’t

bear, somehow, to think that her name was Mrs. Casey, perhaps he was

very fond of her; though he scarcely ever mentions her name. She was

nothing like that good old funny Miss Honeyman at Brighton. Who could

the person be?—a person that her uncle knew ever so long ago—a French

lady, whom her uncle says Ethel often resembles? That is why he speaks

French so well. He can recite whole pages out of Racine. Perhaps it was

the French lady who taught him. And he was not very happy at the

Hermitage (though grandpapa was a very kind good man), and he upset

papa in a little carriage, and was wild, and got into disgrace, and was

sent to India? He could not have been very bad, Ethel thinks, looking

at him with her honest eyes. Last week he went to the Drawing-room, and

papa presented him. His uniform of grey and silver was quite old, yet

he looked much grander than Sir Brian in his new deputy-lieutenant’s

dress. “Next year, when I am presented, you must come too, sir,” says

Ethel. “I insist upon it, you must come too!”

“I will order a new uniform, Ethel,” says her uncle.

The girl laughs. “When little Egbert took hold of your sword, uncle,

and asked you how many people you had killed, do you know I had the

same question in my mind; and I thought when you went to the

Drawing-room, perhaps the King will knight him. But instead he knighted

mamma’s apothecary, Sir Danby Jilks: that horrid little man, and I

won’t have you knighted any more.”

“I hope Egbert won’t ask Sir Danby Jilks how many people HE has

killed,” says the Colonel, laughing; but thinking the joke too severe

upon Sir Danby and the profession, he forthwith apologises by narrating

many anecdotes he knows to the credit of surgeons. How, when the fever

broke out on board the ship going to India, their surgeon devoted

himself to the safety of the crew, and died himself, leaving directions

for the treatment of the patients when he was gone! What heroism the

doctors showed during the cholera in India; and what courage he had

seen some of them exhibit in action: attending the wounded men under

the hottest fire, and exposing themselves as readily as the bravest

troops. Ethel declares that her uncle always will talk of other

people’s courage, and never say a word about his own; “and the only

reason,” she says, “which made me like that odious Sir Thomas de Boots,

who laughs so, and looks so red, and pays such horrid compliments to

all ladies, was, that he praised you, uncle, at Newcome, last year,

when Barnes and he came to us at Christmas. Why did you not come? Mamma

and I went to see your old nurse; and we found her such a nice old

lady.” So the pair talk kindly on, riding homewards through the

pleasant summer twilight. Mamma had gone out to dinner; and there were

cards for three parties afterwards. “Oh, how I wish it was next year!”

says Miss Ethel.

Many a splendid assembly, and many a brilliant next year, will the

ardent and hopeful young creature enjoy; but in the midst of her

splendour and triumphs, buzzing flatterers, conquered rivals, prostrate

admirers, no doubt she will think sometimes of that quiet season before

the world began for her, and that dear old friend, on whose arm she

leaned while she was yet a young girl.

The Colonel comes to Park Street early in the forenoon, when the

mistress of the house, surrounded by her little ones, is administering

dinner to them. He behaves with splendid courtesy to Miss Quigley, the

governess, and makes a point of taking wine with her, and of making a

most profound bow during that ceremony. Miss Quigley cannot help

thinking Colonel Newcome’s bow very fine. She has an idea that his late

Majesty must have bowed in that way: she flutteringly imparts this

opinion to Lady Anne’s maid; who tells her mistress, who tells Miss

Ethel, who watches the Colonel the next time he takes wine with Miss

Quigley, and they laugh, and then Ethel tells him; so that the

gentleman and the governess have to blush ever after when they drink

wine together. When she is walking with her little charges in the Park,

or in that before-mentioned paradise nigh to Apsley House, faint

signals of welcome appear on her wan cheeks. She knows the dear Colonel

amongst a thousand horsemen. If Ethel makes for her uncle purses,

guard-chains, antimacassars, and the like beautiful and useful

articles, I believe it is in reality Miss Quigley who does four-fifths

of the work, as she sits alone in the schoolroom, high, high up in that

lone house, when the little ones are long since asleep, before her

dismal little tea-tray, and her little desk containing her mother’s

letters and her mementos of home.

There are, of course, numberless fine parties in Park Lane, where the

Colonel knows he would be very welcome. But if there be grand

assemblies, he does not care to come. “I like to go to the club best,”

he says to Lady Anne. “We talk there as you do here about persons, and

about Jack marrying, and Tom dying, and so forth. But we have known

Jack and Tom all our lives, and so are interested in talking about

them. Just as you are in speaking of your own friends and habitual

society. They are people whose names I have sometimes read in the

newspaper, but whom I never thought of meeting until I came to your

house. What has an old fellow like me to say to your young dandies or

old dowagers?”

“Mamma is very odd and sometimes very captious, my dear Colonel,” said

Lady Anne, with a blush; “she suffers so frightfully from tic that we

are all bound to pardon her.”

Truth to tell, old Lady Kew had been particularly rude to Colonel

Newcome and Clive. Ethel’s birthday befell in the spring, on which

occasion she was wont to have a juvenile assembly, chiefly of girls of

her own age and condition; who came, accompanied by a few governesses,

and they played and sang their little duets and choruses together, and

enjoyed a gentle refection of sponge-cakes, jellies, tea, and the

like.—The Colonel, who was invited to this little party, sent a fine

present to his favourite Ethel; and Clive and his friend J. J. made a

funny series of drawings, representing the life of a young lady as they

imagined it, and drawing her progress from her cradle upwards: now

engaged with her doll, then with her dancing-master; now marching in

her back-board; now crying over her German lessons: and dressed for her

first ball finally, and bestowing her hand upon a dandy, of

preternatural ugliness, who was kneeling at her feet as the happy man.

This picture was the delight of the laughing happy girls; except,

perhaps, the little cousins from Bryanstone Square, who were invited to

Ethel’s party, but were so overpowered by the prodigious new dresses in

which their mamma had attired them, that they could admire nothing but

their rustling pink frocks, their enormous sashes, their lovely new

silk stockings.

Lady Kew coming to London attended on the party, and presented her

granddaughter with a sixpenny pincushion. The Colonel had sent Ethel a

beautiful little gold watch and chain. Her aunt had complimented her

with that refreshing work, Alison’s History of Europe, richly

bound.—Lady Kew’s pincushion made rather a poor figure among the gifts,

whence probably arose her ladyship’s ill-humour.

Ethel’s grandmother became exceedingly testy when, the Colonel

arriving, Ethel ran up to him and thanked him for the beautiful watch,

in return for which she gave him a kiss, which, I dare say, amply

repaid Colonel Newcome; and shortly after him Mr. Clive arrived,

looking uncommonly handsome, with that smart little beard and mustachio

with which nature had recently gifted him. As he entered, all the

girls, who had been admiring his pictures, began to clap their hands.

Mr. Clive Newcome blushed, and looked none the worse for that

indication of modesty.

Lady Kew had met Colonel Newcome a half-dozen times at her daughter’s

house: but on this occasion she had quite forgotten him, for when the

Colonel made her a bow, her ladyship regarded him steadily, and

beckoning her daughter to her, asked who the gentleman was who has just

kissed Ethel? Trembling as she always did before her mother, Lady Anne

explained. Lady Kew said “Oh!” and left Colonel Newcome blushing and

rather _embarrassé de sa personne_—before her.

With the clapping of hands that greeted Clive’s arrival, the Countess

was by no means more good-humoured. Not aware of her wrath, the young

fellow, who had also previously been presented to her, came forward

presently to make her his compliments. “Pray, who are you?” she said,

looking at him very earnestly in the face. He told her his name.

“Hm,” said Lady Kew, “I have heard of you, and I have heard very little

good of you.”

“Will your ladyship please to give me your informant?” cried out

Colonel Newcome.

Barnes Newcome, who had condescended to attend his sister’s little

fête, and had been languidly watching the frolics of the young people,

looked very much alarmed.

CHAPTER XXI.

Is Sentimental, but Short

Without wishing to disparage the youth of other nations, I think a

well-bred English lad has this advantage over them, that his bearing is

commonly more modest than theirs. He does not assume the tail-coat and

the manners of manhood too early: he holds his tongue, and listens to

his elders: his mind blushes as well as his cheeks: he does not know

how to make bows and pay compliments like the young Frenchman: nor to

contradict his seniors as I am informed American striplings do. Boys,

who learn nothing else at our public schools, learn at least good

manners, or what we consider to be such; and with regard to the person

at present under consideration, it is certain that all his

acquaintances, excepting perhaps his dear cousin Barnes Newcome, agreed

in considering him as a very frank, manly, modest, and agreeable young

fellow.—My friend Warrington found a grim pleasure in his company; and

his bright face, droll humour, and kindly laughter were always welcome

in our chambers. Honest Fred Bayham was charmed to be in his society;

and used pathetically to aver that he himself might have been such a

youth, had he been blest with a kind father to watch, and good friends

to guide, his early career. In fact, Fred was by far the most didactic

of Clive’s bachelor acquaintances, pursued the young man with endless

advice and sermons, and held himself up as a warning to Clive, and a

touching example of the evil consequences of early idleness and

dissipation. Gentlemen of much higher rank in the world took a fancy to

the lad. Captain Jack Belsize introduced him to his own mess, as also

to the Guard dinner at St. James’s; and my Lord Kew invited him to

Kewbury, his lordship’s house in Oxfordshire, where Clive enjoyed

hunting, shooting, and plenty of good company. Mrs. Newcome groaned in

spirit when she heard of these proceedings; and feared, feared very

much that that unfortunate young man was going to ruin; and Barnes

Newcome amiably disseminated reports amongst his family that the lad

was plunged in all sorts of debaucheries: that he was tipsy every

night: that he was engaged, in his sober moments, with dice, the turf,

or worse amusements: and that his head was so turned by living with Kew

and Belsize, that the little rascal’s pride and arrogance were

perfectly insufferable. Ethel would indignantly deny these charges;

then perhaps credit a few of them; and she looked at Clive with

melancholy eyes when he came to visit his aunt; and I hope prayed that

Heaven might mend his wicked ways. The truth is, the young fellow

enjoyed life, as one of his age and spirit might be expected to do; but

he did very little harm, and meant less; and was quite unconscious of

the reputation which his kind friends were making for him.

There had been a long-standing promise that Clive and his father were

to go to Newcome at Christmas: and I dare say Ethel proposed to reform

the young prodigal, if prodigal he was, for she busied herself

delightedly in preparing the apartments which they were to inhabit

during their stay—speculated upon it in a hundred pleasant ways,

putting off her visit to this pleasant neighbour, or that pretty scene

in the vicinage, until her uncle should come and they should be enabled

to enjoy the excursion together. And before the arrival of her

relatives, Ethel, with one of her young brothers, went to see Mrs.

Mason; and introduced herself as Colonel Newcome’s niece; and came back

charmed with the old lady, and eager once more in defence of Clive

(when that young gentleman’s character happened to be called in

question by her brother Barnes), for had she not seen the kindest

letter, which Clive had written to old Mrs. Mason, and the beautiful

drawing of his father on horseback and in regimentals, waving his sword

in front of the gallant --th Bengal Cavalry, which the lad had sent down

to the good old woman? He could not be very bad, Ethel thought, who was

so kind and thoughtful for the poor. His father’s son could not be

altogether a reprobate. When Mrs. Mason, seeing how good and beautiful

Ethel was, and thinking in her heart nothing could be too good or

beautiful for Clive, nodded her kind old head at Miss Ethel, and said

she should like to find a husband for her, Miss Ethel blushed, and

looked handsomer than ever; and at home, when she was describing the

interview, never mentioned this part of her talk with Mrs. Mason.

But the _enfant terrible_, young Alfred, did: announcing to all the

company at dessert, that Ethel was in love with Clive—that Clive was

coming to marry her—that Mrs. Mason, the old woman at Newcome, had told

him so.

“I dare say she has told the tale all over Newcome!” shrieked out Mr.

Barnes. “I dare say it will be in the Independent next week. By Jove,

it’s a pretty connexion—and nice acquaintances this uncle of ours

brings us!” A fine battle ensued upon the receipt and discussion of

this intelligence: Barnes was more than usually bitter and sarcastic:

Ethel haughtily recriminated, losing her temper, and then her firmness,

until, fairly bursting into tears, she taxed Barnes with meanness and

malignity in for ever uttering stories to his cousin’s disadvantage,

and pursuing with constant slander and cruelty one of the very best of

men. She rose and left the table in great tribulation—she went to her

room and wrote a letter to her uncle, blistered with tears, in which

she besought him not to come to Newcome.—Perhaps she went and looked at

the apartments which she had adorned and prepared for his reception. It

was for him and for his company that she was eager. She had met no one

so generous and gentle, so honest and unselfish, until she had seen

him.

Lady Anne knew the ways of women very well; and when Ethel that night,

still in great indignation and scorn against Barnes, announced that she

had written a letter to her uncle, begging the Colonel not to come at

Christmas, Ethel’s mother soothed the wounded girl, and treated her

with peculiar gentleness and affection; and she wisely gave Mr. Barnes

to understand, that if he wished to bring about that very attachment,

the idea of which made him so angry, he could use no better means than

those which he chose to employ at present, of constantly abusing and

insulting poor Clive, and awakening Ethel’s sympathies by mere

opposition. And Ethel’s sad little letter was extracted from the

post-bag: and her mother brought it to her, sealed, in her own room,

where the young lady burned it: being easily brought by Lady Anne’s

quiet remonstrances to perceive that it was best no allusion should

take place to the silly dispute which had occurred that evening; and

that Clive and his father should come for the Christmas holidays, if

they were so minded. But when they came, there was no Ethel at Newcome.

She was gone on a visit to her sick aunt, Lady Julia. Colonel Newcome

passed the holidays sadly without his young favourite, and Clive

consoled himself by knocking down pheasants with Sir Brian’s keepers:

and increased his cousin’s attachment for him by breaking the knees of

Barnes’s favourite mare out hunting. It was a dreary entertainment;

father and son were glad enough to get away from it, and to return to

their own humbler quarters in London.

Thomas Newcome had now been for three years in the possession of that

felicity which his soul longed after; and had any friend of his asked

him if he was happy, he would have answered in the affirmative no

doubt, and protested that he was in the enjoyment of everything a

reasonable man could desire. And yet, in spite of his happiness, his

honest face grew more melancholy: his loose clothes hung only the

looser on his lean limbs: he ate his meals without appetite: his nights

were restless: and he would sit for hours silent in the midst of his

family, so that Mr. Binnie first began jocularly to surmise that Tom

was crossed in love; then seriously to think that his health was

suffering and that a doctor should be called to see him; and at last to

agree that idleness was not good for the Colonel, and that he missed

the military occupation to which he had been for so many years

accustomed.

The Colonel insisted that he was perfectly happy and contented. What

could he want more than he had—the society of his son, for the present;

and a prospect of quiet for his declining days? Binnie vowed that his

friend’s days had no business to decline as yet; that a sober man of

fifty ought to be at his best; and that Newcome had grown older in

three years in Europe, than in a quarter of a century in the East—all

which statements were true, though the Colonel persisted in denying

them.

He was very restless. He was always finding business in distant

quarters of England. He must go visit Tom Barker who was settled in

Devonshire, or Harry Johnson who had retired and was living in Wales.

He surprised Mrs. Honeyman by the frequency of his visits to Brighton,

and always came away much improved in health by the sea air, and by

constant riding with the harriers there. He appeared at Bath and at

Cheltenham, where, as we know, there are many old Indians. Mr. Binnie

was not indisposed to accompany him on some of these jaunts—“provided,”

the civilian said, “you don’t take young Hopeful, who is much better

without us; and let us two old fogies enjoy ourselves together.”

Clive was not sorry to be left alone. The father knew that only too

well. The young man had occupations, ideas, associates, in whom the

elder could take no interest. Sitting below in his blank, cheerless

bedroom, Newcome could hear the lad and his friends talking, singing,

and making merry overhead. Something would be said in Clive’s

well-known tones, and a roar of laughter would proceed from the

youthful company. They had all sorts of tricks, bywords, waggeries, of

which the father could not understand the jest nor the secret. He

longed to share in it, but the party would be hushed if he went in to

join it—and he would come away sad at heart, to think that his presence

should be a signal for silence among them; and that his son could not

be merry in his company.

We must not quarrel with Clive and Clive’s friends, because they could

not joke and be free in the presence of the worthy gentleman. If they

hushed when he came in, Thomas Newcome’s sad face would seem to look

round—appealing to one after another of them, and asking, “Why don’t

you go on laughing?” A company of old comrades shall be merry and

laughing together, and the entrance of a single youngster will stop the

conversation—and if men of middle age feel this restraint with our

juniors, the young ones surely have a right to be silent before their

elders. The boys are always mum under the eyes of the usher. There is

scarce any parent, however friendly or tender with his children, but

must feel sometimes that they have thoughts which are not his or hers;

and wishes and secrets quite beyond the parental control: and, as

people are vain, long after they are fathers, ay; or grandfathers, and

not seldom fancy that mere personal desire of domination is overweening

anxiety and love for their family, no doubt that common outcry against

thankless children might often be shown to prove, not that the son is

disobedient, but the father too exacting. When a mother (as fond

mothers often will) vows that she knows every thought in her daughter’s

heart, I think she pretends to know a great deal too much; nor can

there be a wholesomer task for the elders, as our young subjects grow

up, naturally demanding liberty and citizen’s rights, than for us

gracefully to abdicate our sovereign pretensions and claims of absolute

control. There’s many a family chief who governs wisely and gently, who

is loth to give the power up when he should. Ah, be sure, it is not

youth alone that has need to learn humility! By their very virtues, and

the purity of their lives, many good parents create flatterers for

themselves, and so live in the midst of a filial court of parasites—and

seldom without a pang of unwillingness, and often not at all, will they

consent to forgo their autocracy, and exchange the tribute they have

been wont to exact of love and obedience for the willing offering of

love and freedom.

Our good Colonel was not of the tyrannous, but of the loving order of

fathers: and having fixed his whole heart upon this darling youth, his

son, was punished, as I suppose such worldly and selfish love ought to

be punished (so Mr. Honeyman says, at least, in his pulpit), by a

hundred little mortifications, disappointments, and secret wounds,

which stung not the less severely though never mentioned by their

victim.

Sometimes he would have a company of such gentlemen as Messrs.

Warrington, Honeyman, and Pendennis, when haply a literary conversation

would ensue after dinner; and the merits of our present poets and

writers would be discussed with the claret. Honeyman was well enough

read in profane literature, especially of the lighter sort; and, I dare

say, could have passed a satisfactory examination in Balzac, Dumas, and

Paul de Kock himself, of all whose works our good host was entirely

ignorant,—as indeed he was of graver books, and of earlier books, and

of books in general—except those few which we have said formed his

travelling library. He heard opinions that amazed and bewildered him.

He heard that Byron was no great poet, though a very clever man. He

heard that there had been a wicked persecution against Mr. Pope’s

memory and fame, and that it was time to reinstate him; that his

favourite, Dr. Johnson, talked admirably, but did not write English:

that young Keats was a genius to be estimated in future days with young

Raphael: and that a young gentleman of Cambridge who had lately

published two volumes of verses, might take rank with the greatest

poets of all. Doctor Johnson not write English! Lord Byron not one of

the greatest poets of the world! Sir Walter a poet of the second order!

Mr. Pope attacked for inferiority and want of imagination; Mr. Keats

and this young Mr. Tennyson of Cambridge, the chief of modern poetic

literature! What were these new dicta, which Mr. Warrington delivered

with a puff of tobacco-smoke: to which Mr. Honeyman blandly assented

and Clive listened with pleasure? Such opinions were not of the

Colonel’s time. He tried in vain to construe Oenone, and to make sense

of Lamia. Ulysses he could understand; but what were these prodigious

laudations bestowed on it? And that reverence for Mr. Wordsworth, what

did it mean? Had he not written Peter Bell, and been turned into

deserved ridicule by all the reviews? Was that dreary Excursion to be

compared to Goldsmith’s Traveller, or Doctor Johnson’s Imitation of the

Tenth Satire of Juvenal? If the young men told the truth, where had

been the truth in his own young days, and in what ignorance had our

forefathers been brought up?—Mr. Addison was only an elegant essayist,

and shallow trifler! All these opinions were openly uttered over the

Colonel’s claret, as he and Mr. Binnie sate wondering at the speakers,

who were knocking the gods of their youth about their ears. To Binnie

the shock was not so great; the hard-headed Scotchman had read Hume in

his college days, and sneered at some of the gods even at that early

time. But with Newcome the admiration for the literature of the last

century was an article of belief: and the incredulity of the young men

seemed rank blasphemy. “You will be sneering at Shakspeare next,” he

said: and was silenced, though not better pleased, when his youthful

guests told him, that Doctor Goldsmith sneered at him too; that Dr.

Johnson did not understand him, and that Congreve, in his own day and

afterwards, was considered to be, in some points, Shakspeare’s

superior. “What do you think a man’s criticism is worth, sir,” cries

Mr. Warrington, “who says those lines of Mr. Congreve, about a church—

‘How reverend is the face of yon tall pile,

Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads,

To bear aloft its vast and ponderous roof,

By its own weight made steadfast and immovable;

Looking tranquillity. It strikes an awe

And terror on my aching sight’—et cætera

what do you think of a critic who says those lines are finer than

anything Shakspeare ever wrote?” A dim consciousness of danger for

Clive, a terror that his son had got into the society of heretics and

unbelievers, came over the Colonel,—and then presently, as was the wont

with his modest soul, a gentle sense of humility. He was in the wrong,

perhaps, and these younger men were right. Who was he, to set up his

judgment against men of letters, educated at college? It was better

that Clive should follow them than him, who had had but a brief

schooling, and that neglected, and who had not the original genius of

his son’s brilliant companions. We particularise these talks, and the

little incidental mortifications which one of the best of men endured,

not because the conversations are worth the remembering or recording,

but because they presently very materially influenced his own and his

son’s future history.

In the midst of the artists and their talk the poor Colonel was equally

in the dark. They assaulted this Academician and that; laughed at Mr.

Haydon, or sneered at Mr. Eastlake, or the contrary; deified Mr. Turner

on one side of the table, and on the other scorned him as a madman—nor

could Newcome comprehend a word of their jargon. Some sense there must

be in their conversation: Clive joined eagerly in it and took one side

or another. But what was all this rapture about a snuffy brown picture

called Titian, this delight in three flabby nymphs by Rubens, and so

forth? As for the vaunted Antique, and the Elgin Marbles—it might be

that that battered torso was a miracle, and that broken-nosed bust a

perfect beauty. He tried and tried to see that they were. He went away

privily and worked at the National Gallery with a catalogue: and passed

hours in the Museum before the ancient statues, desperately praying to

comprehend them, and puzzled before them as he remembered he was

puzzled before the Greek rudiments as a child when he cried over ὁ, και

ἡ ἀληθής, και τὸ ἀληθὲς. Whereas when Clive came to look at these same

things his eyes would lighten up with pleasure, and his cheeks flush

with enthusiasm. He seemed to drink in colour as he would a feast of

wine. Before the statues he would wave his finger, following the line

of grace, and burst into ejaculations of delight and admiration. “Why

can’t I love the things which he loves?” thought Newcome; “why am I

blind to the beauties which he admires so much—and am I unable to

comprehend what he evidently understands at his young age?”

So, as he thought what vain egotistical hopes he used to form about the

boy when he was away in India—how in his plans for the happy future,

Clive was to be always at his side; how they were to read, work, play,

think, be merry together—a sickening and humiliating sense of the

reality came over him: and he sadly contrasted it with the former fond

anticipations. Together they were, yet he was alone still. His thoughts

were not the boy’s: and his affections rewarded but with a part of the

young man’s heart. Very likely other lovers have suffered equally. Many

a man and woman has been incensed and worshipped, and has shown no more

feeling than is to be expected from idols. There is yonder statue in

St. Peter’s, of which the toe is worn away with kisses, and which sits,

and will sit eternally, prim and cold. As the young man grew, it seemed

to the father as if each day separated them more and more. He himself

became more melancholy and silent. His friend the civilian marked the

ennui, and commented on it in his laughing way. Sometimes he announced

to the club that Tom Newcome was in love: then he thought it was not

Tom’s heart but his liver that was affected, and recommended blue pill.

O thou fond fool! who art thou, to know any man’s heart save thine

alone? Wherefore were wings made, and do feathers grow, but that birds

should fly? The instinct that bids you love your nest, leads the young

ones to seek a tree and a mate of their own. As if Thomas Newcome by

poring over poems or pictures ever so much could read them with Clive’s

eyes!—as if by sitting mum over his wine, but watching till the lad

came home with his latchkey (when the Colonel crept back to his own

room in his stockings), by prodigal bounties, by stealthy affection, by

any schemes or prayers, he could hope to remain first in his son’s

heart!

One day going into Clive’s study, where the lad was so deeply engaged

that he did not hear the father’s steps advancing, Thomas Newcome found

his son, pencil in hand, poring over a paper, which, blushing, he

thrust hastily into his breast-pocket, as soon as he saw his visitor.

The father was deeply smitten and mortified. “I—I am sorry you have any

secrets from me, Clive,” he gasped out at length.

The boy’s face lighted up with humour. “Here it is, father, if you

would like to see:”—and he pulled out a paper which contained neither

more nor less than a copy of very flowery verses, about a certain young

lady, who had succeeded (after I know not how many predecessors) to the

place of _prima donna assoluta_ in Clive’s heart. And be pleased,

madam, not to be too eager with your censure, and fancy that Mr. Clive

or his chronicler would insinuate anything wrong. I dare say you felt a

flame or two before you were married yourself: and that the Captain or

the Curate, and the interesting young foreigner with whom you danced,

caused your heart to beat, before you bestowed that treasure on Mr.

Candour. Clive was doing no more than your own son will do when he is

eighteen or nineteen years old himself—if he is a lad of any spirit and

a worthy son of so charming a lady as yourself.

CHAPTER XXII.

Describes a Visit to Paris; with Accidents and Incidents in London

Mr. Clive, as we have said, had now begun to make acquaintances of his

own; and the chimney-glass in his study was decorated with such a

number of cards of invitation, as made his ex-fellow-student of

Gandish’s, young Moss, when admitted into that sanctum, stare with

respectful astonishment. “Lady Bary Rowe at obe,” the young Hebrew read

out; “Lady Baughton at obe, dadsig! By eyes! what a tip-top swell

you’re a gettid to be, Newcome! I guess this is a different sort of

business to the hops at old Levison’s, where you first learned the

polka; and where we had to pay a shilling a glass for negus!”

“_We_ had to pay! _You_ never paid anything, Moss,” cries Clive,

laughing; and indeed the negus imbibed by Mr. Moss did not cost that

prudent young fellow a penny.

“Well, well; I suppose at these swell parties you ’ave as bush champade

as ever you like,” continues Moss. “Lady Kicklebury at obe—small early

party. Why, I declare you know the whole peerage! I say, if any of

these swells want a little tip-top lace, a real bargain, or diamonds,

you know, you might put in a word for us, and do us a good turn.”

“Give me some of your cards,” says Clive; “I can distribute them about

at the balls I go to. But you must treat my friends better than you

serve me. Those cigars which you sent me were abominable, Moss; the

groom in the stable won’t smoke them.”

“What a regular swell that Newcome has become!” says Mr. Moss to an old

companion, another of Clive’s fellow-students: “I saw him riding in the

Park with the Earl of Kew, and Captain Belsize, and a whole lot of

’em—_I_ know ’em all—and he’d hardly nod to me. I’ll have a horse next

Sunday, and _then_ I’ll see whether he’ll cut me or not. Confound his

airs! For all he’s such a count, I know he’s got an aunt who lets

lodgings at Brighton, and an uncle who’ll be preaching in the Bench if

he don’t keep a precious good look-out.”

“Newcome is not a bit of a count,” answers Moss’s companion,

indignantly. “He don’t care a straw whether a fellow’s poor or rich;

and he comes up to my room just as willingly as he would go to a

duke’s. He is always trying to do a friend a good turn. He draws the

figure capitally: he _looks_ proud, but he isn’t, and is the

best-natured fellow I ever saw.”

“He ain’t been in our place this eighteen months,” says Mr. Moss: “I

know that.”

“Because when he came you were always screwing him with some bargain or

other,” cried the intrepid Hicks, Mr. Moss’s companion for the moment.

“He said he couldn’t afford to know you: you never let him out of your

house without a pin, or a box of eau-de-cologne, or a bundle of cigars.

And when you cut the arts for the shop, how were you and Newcome to go

on together, I should like to know?”

“I know a relative of his who comes to our ’ouse every three months, to

renew a little bill,” says Mr. Moss, with a grin: “and I know this, if

I go to the Earl of Kew in the Albany, or the Honourable Captain

Belsize, Knightsbridge Barracks, _they_ let me in soon enough. I’m told

his father ain’t got much money.”

“How the deuce should I know? or what do I care?” cries the young

artist, stamping the heel of his blucher on the pavement. “When I was

sick in that confounded Clipstone Street, I know the Colonel came to

see me, and Newcome too, day after day, and night after night. And when

I was getting well, they sent me wine and jelly, and all sorts of jolly

things. I should like to know how often you came to see me, Moss, and

what you did for a fellow?”

“Well, I kep away because I thought you wouldn’t like to be reminded of

that two pound three you owe me, Hicks: that’s why I kep away,” says

Mr. Moss, who, I dare say, was good-natured too. And when young Moss

appeared at the billiard-room that night, it was evident that Hicks had

told the story; for the Wardour Street youth was saluted with a roar of

queries, “How about that two pound three that Hicks owes you?”

The artless conversation of the two youths will enable us to understand

how our hero’s life was speeding. Connected in one way or another with

persons in all ranks, it never entered his head to be ashamed of the

profession which he had chosen. People in the great world did not in

the least trouble themselves regarding him, or care to know whether Mr.

Clive Newcome followed painting or any other pursuit: and though Clive

saw many of his schoolfellows in the world, these entering into the

army, others talking with delight of college, and its pleasures or

studies; yet, having made up his mind that art was his calling, he

refused to quit her for any other mistress, and plied his easel very

stoutly. He passed through the course of study prescribed by Mr.

Gandish, and drew every cast and statue in that gentleman’s studio.

Grindley, his tutor, getting a curacy, Clive did not replace him; but

he took a course of modern languages, which he learned with

considerable aptitude and rapidity. And now, being strong enough to

paint without a master, it was found that there was no good light in

the house in Fitzroy Square; and Mr. Clive must needs have an atelier

hard by, where he could pursue his own devices independently.

If his kind father felt any pang even at this temporary parting, he was

greatly soothed and pleased by a little mark of attention on the young

man’s part, of which his present biographer happened to be a witness;

for having walked over with Colonel Newcome to see the new studio, with

its tall centre window, and its curtains, and carved wardrobes, china

jars, pieces of armour, and other artistical properties, the lad, with

a very sweet smile of kindness and affection lighting up his honest

face, took one of two Bramah’s house-keys with which he was provided,

and gave it to his father: “That’s your key, sir,” he said to the

Colonel; “and you must be my first sitter, please, father; for though

I’m a historical painter, I shall condescend to do a few portraits, you

know.” The Colonel took his son’s hand, and grasped it; as Clive fondly

put the other hand on his father’s shoulder. Then Colonel Newcome

walked away into the next room for a minute or two, and came back

wiping his moustache with his handkerchief, and still holding the key

in the other hand. He spoke about some trivial subject when he

returned; but his voice quite trembled; and I thought his face seemed

to glow with love and pleasure. Clive has never painted anything better

than that head, which he executed in a couple of sittings; and wisely

left without subjecting it to the chances of further labour.

It is certain the young man worked much better after he had been

inducted into this apartment of his own. And the meals at home were

gayer; and the rides with his father more frequent and agreeable. The

Colonel used his key once or twice, and found Clive and his friend

Ridley engaged in depicting a life-guardsman,—or a muscular negro,—or a

Malay from a neighbouring crossing, who would appear as Othello,

conversing with a Clipstone Street nymph, who was ready to represent

Desdemona, Diana, Queen Ellinor (sucking poison from the arm of the

Plantagenet of the Blues), or any other model of virgin or maiden

excellence.

Of course our young man commenced as a historical painter, deeming that

the highest branch of art; and declining (except for preparatory

studies) to operate on any but the largest canvasses. He painted a

prodigious battle-piece of Assaye, with General Wellesley at the head

of the 19th Dragoons charging the Mahratta Artillery, and sabring them

at their guns. A piece of ordnance was dragged into the back-yard, and

the Colonel’s stud put into requisition to supply studies for this

enormous picture. Fred Bayham (a stunning likeness) appeared as the

principal figure in the foreground, terrifically wounded, but still of

undaunted courage, slashing about amidst a group of writhing Malays,

and bestriding the body of a dead cab-horse, which Clive painted, until

the landlady and rest of the lodgers cried out, and for sanitary

reasons the knackers removed the slaughtered charger. So large was this

picture that it could only be got out of the great window by means of

artifice and coaxing; and its transport caused a shout of triumph among

the little boys in Charlotte Street. Will it be believed that the Royal

Academicians rejected the “Battle of Assaye”? The masterpiece was so

big that Fitzroy Square could not hold it; and the Colonel had thoughts

of presenting it to the Oriental Club; but Clive (who had taken a trip

to Paris with his father, as a _délassement_ after the fatigues

incident on this great work), when he saw it, after a month’s interval,

declared the thing was rubbish, and massacred Britons, Malays,

Dragoons, Artillery and all.

“Hôtel de la Terrasse, Rue de Rivoli,

“April 27—May 1, 183-.

“My Dear Pendennis—You said I might write you a line from Paris; and if

you find in my correspondence any valuable hints for the _Pall Mall

Gazette_, you are welcome to use them gratis. Now I am here, I wonder I

have never been here before, and that I have seen the Dieppe packet a

thousand times at Brighton pier without thinking of going on board her.

We had a rough little passage to Boulogne. We went into action as we

cleared Dover pier—when the _first gun_ was fired, and a stout old lady

was carried off by a steward to the cabin; half a dozen more dropped

immediately, and the crew bustled about, bringing basins for the

wounded. The Colonel smiled as he saw them fall. ‘I’m an old sailor,’

says he to a gentleman on board. ‘I was coming home, sir, and we had

plenty of rough weather on the voyage, I never thought of being unwell.

My boy here, who made the voyage twelve years ago last May, may have

lost his sea-legs; but for me, sir—’ Here a great wave dashed over the

three of us; and would you believe it? in five minutes after, the dear

old governor was as ill as all the rest of the passengers. When we

arrived, we went through a line of ropes to the custom-house, with a

crowd of snobs jeering at us on each side; and then were carried off by

a bawling commissioner to an hotel, where the Colonel, who speaks

French beautifully, you know, told the waiter to get us a _petit

déjeuner soigné;_ on which the fellow, grinning, said, a ‘nice fried

sole, sir,—nice mutton-chop, sir,’ in regular Temple Bar English; and

brought us Harvey sauce with the chops, and the last _Bell’s Life_ to

amuse us after our luncheon. I wondered if all the Frenchmen read

_Bell’s Life_, and if all the inns smell so of brandy-and-water!

“We walked out to see the town, which I dare say you know, and

therefore shan’t describe. We saw some good studies of fishwomen with

bare legs, and remarked that the soldiers were very dumpy and small. We

were glad when the time came to set off by the diligence; and having

the coupe to ourselves, made a very comfortable journey to Paris. It

was jolly to hear the postillions crying to their horses, and the bells

of the team, and to feel ourselves really in France. We took in

provender at Abbeville and Amiens, and were comfortably landed here

after about six-and-twenty hours of coaching. Didn’t I get up the next

morning and have a good walk in the Tuileries! The chestnuts were out,

and the statues all shining, and all the windows of the palace in a

blaze. It looks big enough for the king of the giants to live in. How

grand it is! I like the barbarous splendour of the architecture, and

the ornaments profuse and enormous with which it is overladen. Think of

Louis XVI. with a thousand gentlemen at his back, and a mob of yelling

ruffians in front of him, giving up his crown without a fight for it;

leaving his friends to be butchered, and himself sneaking into prison!

No end of little children were skipping and playing in the sunshiny

walks, with dresses as bright and cheeks as red as the flowers and

roses in the parterres. I couldn’t help thinking of Barbaroux and his

bloody pikemen swarming in the gardens, and fancied the Swiss in the

windows yonder; where they were to be slaughtered when the King had

turned his back. What a great man that Carlyle is! I have read the

battle in his History so often, that I knew it before I had seen it.

Our windows look out on the obelisk where the guillotine stood. The

Colonel doesn’t admire Carlyle. He says Mrs. Graham’s Letters from

Paris are excellent, and we bought Scott’s Visit to Paris, and Paris

Re-visited, and read them in the diligence. They are famous good

reading; but the Palais Royal is very much altered since Scott’s time:

no end of handsome shops; I went there directly,—the same night we

arrived, when the Colonel went to bed. But there is none of the fun

going on which Scott describes. The _laquais-de-place_ says Charles X.

put an end to it all.

“Next morning the governor had letters to deliver after breakfast, and

left me at the Louvre door. I shall come and live here, I think. I feel

as if I never want to go away. I had not been ten minutes in the place

before I fell in love with the most beautiful creature the world has

ever seen. She was standing silent and majestic in the centre of one of

the rooms of the statue-gallery; and the very first glimpse of her

struck one breathless with the sense of her beauty. I could not see the

colour of her eyes and hair exactly, but the latter is light, and the

eyes I should think are grey. Her complexion is of a beautiful warm

marble tinge. She is not a clever woman, evidently; I do not think she

laughs or talks much—she seems too lazy to do more than smile. She is

only beautiful. This divine creature has lost an arm, which has been

cut off at the shoulder, but she looks none the less lovely for the

accident. She maybe some two-and-thirty years old; and she was born

about two thousand years ago. Her name is the Venus of Milo. O Victrix!

O lucky Paris! (I don’t mean this present Lutetia, but Priam’s son.)

How could he give the apple to any else but this enslaver—this joy of

gods and men? at whose benign presence the flowers spring up, and the

smiling ocean sparkles, and the soft skies beam with serene light! I

wish we might sacrifice. I would bring a spotless kid, snowy-coated,

and a pair of doves and a jar of honey—yea, honey from Morel’s in

Piccadilly, thyme-flavoured, narbonian, and we would acknowledge the

Sovereign Loveliness, and adjure the Divine Aphrodite. Did you ever see

my pretty young cousin, Miss Newcome, Sir Brian’s daughter? She has a

great look of the huntress Diana. It is sometimes too proud and too

cold for me. The blare of those horns is too shrill and the rapid

pursuit through bush and bramble too daring. O thou generous Venus! O

thou beautiful bountiful calm! At thy soft feet let me kneel—on

cushions of Tyrian purple. Don’t show this to Warrington, please: I

never thought when I began that Pegasus was going to run away with me.

“I wish I had read Greek a little more at school: it’s too late at my

age; I shall be nineteen soon, and have got my own business; but when

we return I think I shall try and read it with Cribs. What have I been

doing, spending six months over a picture of sepoys and dragoons

cutting each other’s throats? Art ought not to be a fever. It ought to

be a calm; not a screaming bull-fight or a battle of gladiators, but a

temple for placid contemplation, rapt worship, stately rhythmic

ceremony, and music solemn and tender. I shall take down my Snyders and

Rubens when I get home; and turn quietist. To think I have spent weeks

in depicting bony life-guardsmen delivering cut one, or Saint George,

and painting black beggars off a crossing!

“What a grand thing it is to think of half a mile of pictures at the

Louvre! Not but that there are a score under the old pepper-boxes in

Trafalgar Square as fine as the best here. I don’t care for any Raphael

here, as much as our own St. Catharine. There is nothing more grand.

Could the Pyramids of Egypt or the Colossus of Rhodes be greater than

our Sebastian? and for our Bacchus and Ariadne, you cannot beat the

best you know. But if we have fine jewels, here there are whole sets of

them: there are kings and all their splendid courts round about them.

J. J. and I must come and live here. Oh, such portraits of Titian! Oh,

such swells by Vandyke! I’m sure he must have been as fine a gentleman

as any he painted! It’s a shame they haven’t got a Sir Joshua or two.

At a feast of painters he has a right to a place, and at the high table

too. Do you remember Tom Rogers, of Gandish’s? He used to come to my

rooms—my other rooms in the Square. Tom is here with a fine carrotty

beard, and a velvet jacket, cut open at the sleeves, to show that Tom

has a shirt. I dare say it was clean last Sunday. He has not learned

French yet, but pretends to have forgotten English; and promises to

introduce me to a set of the French artists his _camarades_. There

seems to be a scarcity of soap among these young fellows; and I think I

shall cut off my mustachios; only Warrington will have nothing to laugh

at when I come home.

“The Colonel and I went to dine at the Café de Paris, and afterwards to

the opera. Ask for _huitres de Marenne_ when you dine here. We dined

with a tremendous French swell, the Vicomte de Florac, _officier

d’ordonnance_ to one of the princes, and son of some old friends of my

father’s. They are of very high birth, but very poor. He will be a duke

when his cousin, the Duc d’Ivry, dies. His father is quite old. The

vicomte was born in England. He pointed out to us no end of famous

people at the opera—a few of the Fauxbourg St. Germain, and ever so

many of the present people:—M. Thiers, and Count Molé, and Georges

Sand, and Victor Hugo, and Jules Janin—I forget half their names. And

yesterday we went to see his mother, Madame de Florac. I suppose she

was an old flame of the Colonel’s, for their meeting was uncommonly

ceremonious and tender. It was like an elderly Sir Charles Grandison

saluting a middle-aged Miss Byron. And only fancy! the Colonel has been

here once before since his return to England! It must have been last

year, when he was away for ten days, whilst I was painting that

rubbishing picture of the Black Prince waiting on King John. Madame de

F. is a very grand lady, and must have been a great beauty in her time.

There are two pictures by Gerard in her salon—of her and M. de Florac.

M. de Florac, old swell, powder, thick eyebrows, hooked nose; no end of

stars, ribbons, and embroidery. Madame also in the dress of the

Empire—pensive, beautiful, black velvet, and a look something like my

cousin’s. She wore a little old-fashioned brooch yesterday, and said,

‘_Voilà, la reconnoissez-vous?_ Last year when you were here, it was in

the country;’ and she smiled at him: and the dear old boy gave a sort

of groan and dropped his head in his hand. I know what it is. I’ve gone

through it myself. I kept for six months an absurd ribbon of that

infernal little flirt Fanny Freeman. Don’t you remember how angry I was

when you abused her?

“‘Your father and I knew each other when we were children, my friend,’

the Countess said to me (in the sweetest French accent). He was looking

into the garden of the house where they live, in the Rue Saint

Dominique. ‘You must come and see me often, always. You remind me of

him,’ and she added, with a very sweet kind smile, ‘Do you like best to

think that he was better-looking than you, or that you excel him?’ I

said I should like to be like him. But who is? There are cleverer

fellows, I dare say; but where is there such a good one? I wonder

whether he was very fond of Madame de Florac? The old Count does not

show. He is quite old, and wears a pigtail. We saw it bobbing over his

garden chair. He lets the upper part of his house; Major-General the

Honourable Zeno F. Pokey, of Cincinnati, U.S., lives in it. We saw Mrs.

Pokey’s carriage in the court, and her footmen smoking cigars there; a

tottering old man with feeble legs, as old as old Count de Florac,

seemed to be the only domestic who waited on the family below.

“Madame de Florac and my father talked about my profession. The

Countess said it was a _belle carrière_. The Colonel said it was better

than the army. ‘_Ah oui, monsieur_,’ says she very sadly. And then he

said, ‘that presently I should very likely come to study at Paris, when

he knew there would be a kind friend to watch over _son garçon_.’

“‘But you will be here to watch over him yourself, _mon ami?_’ says the

French lady.

“Father shook his head. ‘I shall very probably have to go back to

India,’ he said. ‘My furlough is expired. I am now taking my extra

leave. If I can get my promotion, I need not return. Without that I

cannot afford to live in Europe. But my absence in all probability will

be but very short,’ he said. ‘And Clive is old enough now to go on

without me.’

“Is this the reason why father has been so gloomy for some months past?

I thought it might have been some of my follies which made him

uncomfortable; and you know I have been trying my best to amend—I have

not half such a tailor’s bill this year as last. I owe scarcely

anything. I have paid off Moss every halfpenny for his confounded rings

and gimcracks. I asked father about this melancholy news as we walked

away from Madame de Florac.

“He is not near so rich as we thought. Since he has been at home he

says he has spent greatly more than his income, and is quite angry at

his own extravagance. At first he thought he might have retired from

the army altogether; but after three years at home, he finds he cannot

live upon his income. When he gets his promotion as full Colonel, he

will be entitled to a thousand a year; that, and what he has invested

in India, and a little in this country, will be plenty for both of us.

He never seems to think of my making money by my profession. Why,

suppose I sell the ‘Battle of Assaye’ for 500 pounds? that will be

enough to carry me on ever so long, without dipping into the purse of

the dear old father.

“The Viscount de Florac called to dine with us. The Colonel said he did

not care about going out: and so the Viscount and I went together.

_Trois Frères Provençaux_—he ordered the dinner and of course I paid.

Then we went to a little theatre, and he took me behind the scenes—such

a queer place! We went to the _loge_ of Mademoiselle Fine who acted the

part of ‘Le petit Tambour,’ in which she sings a famous song with a

drum. He asked her and several literary fellows to supper at the Café

Anglais. And I came home ever so late, and lost twenty napoleons at a

game called bouillotte. It was all the change out of a twenty-pound

note which dear old Binnie gave me before we set out, with a quotation

out of Horace, you know, about _Neque tu choreas sperne puer_. O me!

how guilty I felt as I walked home at ever so much o’clock to the Hotel

de la Terrasse, and sneaked into our apartment! But the Colonel was

sound asleep. His dear old boots stood sentries at his bedroom door,

and I slunk into mine as silently as I could.

“P.S.—Wednesday.—There’s just one scrap of paper left. I have got J.

J.’s letter. He has been to the private view of the Academy (so that

his own picture is in), and the ‘Battle of Assaye’ is refused. Smee

told him it was too big. I dare say it’s very bad. I’m glad I’m away,

and the fellows are not condoling with me.

“Please go and see Mr. Binnie. He has come to grief. He rode the

Colonel’s horse; came down on the pavement and wrenched his leg, and

I’m afraid the grey’s. Please look at his legs; we can’t understand

John’s report of them. He, I mean Mr. B., was going to Scotland to see

his relations when the accident happened. You know he has always been

going to Scotland to see his relations. He makes light of the business,

and says the Colonel is not to think of coming to him: and _I_ don’t

want to go back just yet, to see all the fellows from Gandish’s and the

Life Academy, and have them grinning at my misfortune.

“The governor would send his regards, I dare say, but he is out, and I

am always yours affectionately, Clive Newcome.”

“P.S.—He tipped me himself this morning; isn’t he a kind, dear old

fellow?”

Arthur Pendennis, Esq., to Clive Newcome, Esq.

“‘Pall Mall Gazette,’ Journal of Politics, Literature and Fashion, 225

Catherine Street, Strand,

“Dear Clive—I regret very much for Fred Bayham’s sake (who has lately

taken the responsible office of Fine Arts Critic for the _P. G._) that

your extensive picture of the ‘Battle of Assaye’ has not found a place

in the Royal Academy Exhibition. F. B. is at least fifteen shillings

out of pocket by its rejection, as he had prepared a flaming eulogium

of your work, which of course is so much waste paper in consequence of

this calamity. Never mind. Courage, my son. The Duke of Wellington you

know was best back at Seringapatam before he succeeded at Assaye. I

hope you will fight other battles, and that fortune in future years

will be more favourable to you. The town does not talk very much of

your discomfiture. You see the parliamentary debates are very

interesting just now, and somehow the ‘Battle of Assaye’ did not seem

to excite the public mind.

“I have been to Fitzroy Square; both to the stables and the house. The

Houyhnhnm’s legs are very well; the horse slipped on his side and not

on his knees, and has received no sort of injury. Not so Mr. Binnie;

his ankle is much wrenched and inflamed. He must keep his sofa for many

days, perhaps weeks. But you know he is a very cheerful philosopher,

and endures the evils of life with much equanimity. His sister has come

to him. I don’t know whether that may be considered as a consolation of

his evil or an aggravation of it. You know he uses the sarcastic method

in his talk, and it was difficult to understand from him whether he was

pleased or bored by the embraces of his relative. She was an infant

when he last beheld her, on his departure to India. She is now (to

speak with respect) a very brisk, plump, pretty little widow; having,

seemingly, recovered from her grief at the death of her husband,

Captain Mackenzie in the West Indies. Mr. Binnie was just on the point

of visiting his relatives, who reside at Musselburgh, near Edinburgh,

when he met with the fatal accident which prevented his visit to his

native shores. His account of his misfortune and his lonely condition

was so pathetic that Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter put themselves

into the Edinburgh steamer, and rushed to console his sofa. They occupy

your bedroom and sitting-room, which latter Mrs. Mackenzie says no

longer smells of tobacco smoke, as it did when she took possession of

your den. If you have left any papers about, any bills, any

billets-doux, I make no doubt the ladies have read every single one of

them, according to the amiable habits of their sex. The daughter is a

bright little blue-eyed fair-haired lass, with a very sweet voice, in

which she sings (unaided by instrumental music, and seated on a chair

in the middle of the room) the artless ballads of her native country. I

had the pleasure of hearing the ‘Bonnets of Bonny Dundee’ and ‘Jack of

Hazeldean’ from her ruby lips two evenings since; not indeed for the

first time in my life, but never from such a pretty little singer.

Though both ladies speak our language with something of the tone

usually employed by the inhabitants of the northern part of Britain,

their accent is exceedingly pleasant, and indeed by no means so strong

as Mr. Binnie’s own; for Captain Mackenzie was an Englishman, for whose

sake his lady modified her native Musselburgh pronunciation. She tells

many interesting anecdotes of him, of the West Indies, and of the

distinguished regiment of infantry to which the captain belonged. Miss

Rosa is a great favourite with her uncle, and I have had the good

fortune to make their stay in the metropolis more pleasant, by sending

them orders, from the _Pall Mall Gazette_, for the theatres, panoramas,

and the principal sights in town. For pictures they do not seem to care

much; they thought the National Gallery a dreary exhibition, and in the

Royal Academy could be got to admire nothing but the picture of

M’Collop of M’Collop, by our friend of the like name; but they think

Madame Tussaud’s interesting exhibition of waxwork the most delightful

in London; and there I had the happiness of introducing them to our

friend Mr. Frederick Bayham; who, subsequently, on coming to this

office with his valuable contributions on the Fine Arts, made

particular inquiries as to their pecuniary means, and expressed himself

instantly ready to bestow his hand upon the mother or daughter,

provided old Mr. Binnie would make a satisfactory settlement. I got the

ladies a box at the opera, whither they were attended by Captain Goby

of their regiment, godfather to Miss, and where I had the honour of

paying them a visit. I saw your fair young cousin Miss Newcome in the

lobby with her grandmamma Lady Kew. Mr. Bayham with great eloquence

pointed out to the Scotch ladies the various distinguished characters

in the house. The opera delighted them, but they were astounded at the

ballet, from which mother and daughter retreated in the midst of a fire

of pleasantries of Captain Goby. I can fancy that officer at mess, and

how brilliant his anecdotes must be when the company of ladies does not

restrain his genial flow of humour.

“Here comes Mr. Baker with the proofs. In case you don’t see the _P.

G._ at Galignani’s, I send you an extract from Bayham’s article on the

Royal Academy, where you will have the benefit of his opinion on the

works of some of your friends:—

“‘617. “Moses Bringing Home the Gross of Green Spectacles,” Smith,

R.A.—Perhaps poor Goldsmith’s exquisite little work has never been so

great a favourite as in the present age. We have here, in a work by one

of our most eminent artists, an homage to the genius of him “who

touched nothing which he did not adorn:” and the charming subject is

handled in the most delicious manner by Mr. Smith. The chiaroscuro is

admirable: the impasto is perfect. Perhaps a very captious critic might

object to the foreshortening of Moses’s left leg; but where there is so

much to praise justly, the _Pall Mall Gazette_ does not care to

condemn.

“‘420. Our (and the public’s) favourite, Brown, R.A., treats us to a

subject from the best of all stories, the tale “which laughed Spain’s

chivalry away,” the ever new Don Quixote. The incident which Brown has

selected is the “Don’s Attack on the Flock of Sheep;” the sheep are in

his best manner, painted with all his well-known facility and _brio_.

Mr. Brown’s friendly rival, Hopkins, has selected “Gil Blas” for an

illustration this year; and the “Robber’s Cavern” is one of the most

masterly of Hopkins’ productions.

“‘Great Rooms. 33. “Portrait of Cardinal Cospetto,” O’Gogstay, A.R.A.;

and “Neighbourhood of Corpodibacco—Evening—a Contadina and a

Trasteverino dancing at the door of a Locanda to the music of a

Pifferaro.”—Since his visit to Italy Mr. O’Gogstay seems to have given

up the scenes of Irish humour with which he used to delight us; and the

romance, the poetry, the religion of “Italia la bella” form the

subjects of his pencil. The scene near Corpodibacco (we know the spot

well, and have spent many a happy month in its romantic mountains) is

most characteristic. Cardinal Cospetto, we must say, is a most

truculent prelate, and not certainly an ornament to his church.

“‘49, 210, 311. Smee, R.A.—Portraits which a Reynolds might be proud

of,—a Vandyke or Claude might not disown. “Sir Brian Newcome, in the

costume of a Deputy-Lieutenant,” “Major-General Sir Thomas de Boots,

K.C.B.,” painted for the 50th Dragoons, are triumphs, indeed, of this

noble painter. Why have we no picture of the Sovereign and her august

consort from Smee’s brush? When Charles II. picked up Titian’s

mahl-stick, he observed to a courtier, “A king you can always have; a

genius comes but rarely.” While we have a Smee among us, and a monarch

whom we admire,—may the one be employed to transmit to posterity the

beloved features of the other! We know our lucubrations are read in

_high places_, and respectfully insinuate _verbum sapienti_.

“‘1906. “The M’Collop of M’Collop,”—A. M’Collop,—is a noble work of a

young artist, who, in depicting the gallant chief of a hardy Scottish

clan, has also represented a romantic Highland landscape, in the midst

of which, “his foot upon his native heath,” stands a man of splendid

symmetrical figure and great facial advantages. We shall keep our eye

on Mr. M’Collop.

“‘1367. “Oberon and Titania.” Ridley.—This sweet and fanciful little

picture draws crowds round about it, and is one of the most charming

and delightful works of the present exhibition. We echo the universal

opinion in declaring that it shows not only the greatest promise, but

the most delicate and beautiful performance. The Earl of Kew, we

understand, bought the picture at the private view; and we congratulate

the young painter heartily upon his successful _début_. He is, we

understand, a pupil of Mr. Gandish. Where is that admirable painter? We

miss his bold canvasses and grand historic outline.’

“I shall alter a few inaccuracies in the composition of our friend F.

B., who has, as he says, ‘drawn it uncommonly mild in the above

criticism.’ In fact, two days since, he brought in an article of quite

a different tendency, of which he retains only the two last paragraphs;

but he has, with great magnanimity, recalled his previous observations;

and, indeed, he knows as much about pictures as some critics I could

name.

“Good-bye, my dear Clive! I send my kindest regards to your father; and

think you had best see as little as possible of your bouillotte-playing

French friend and his friends. This advice I know you will follow, as

young men always follow the advice of their seniors and well-wishers. I

dine in Fitzroy Square to-day with the pretty widow and her daughter,

and am yours always, dear Clive, A. P.”

CHAPTER XXIII.

In which we hear a Soprano and a Contralto

The most hospitable and polite of Colonels would not hear of Mrs.

Mackenzie and her daughter quitting his house when he returned to it,

after six weeks’ pleasant sojourn in Paris; nor, indeed, did his fair

guest show the least anxiety or intention to go away. Mrs. Mackenzie

had a fine merry humour of her own. She was an old soldier’s wife, she

said and knew when her quarters were good; and I suppose, since her

honeymoon, when the captain took her to Harrogate and Cheltenham,

stopping at the first hotels, and travelling in a chaise-and-pair the

whole way, she had never been so well off as in that roomy mansion near

Tottenham Court Road. Of her mother’s house at Musselburgh she gave a

ludicrous but dismal account. “Eh, James,” she said, “I think if you

had come to mamma, as you threatened, you would not have staid very

long. It’s a wearisome place. Dr. M’Craw boards with her; and it’s

sermon and psalm-singing from morning till night. My little Josey takes

kindly to the life there, and I left her behind, poor little darling!

It was not fair to bring three of us to take possession of your house,

dear James; but my poor little Rosey was just withering away there.

It’s good for the dear child to see the world a little, and a kind

uncle, who is not afraid of us now he sees us, is he?” Kind Uncle James

was not at all afraid of little Rosey; whose pretty face and modest

manners, and sweet songs, and blue eyes, cheered and soothed the old

bachelor. Nor was Rosey’s mother less agreeable and pleasant. She had

married the captain (it was a love-match, against the will of her

parents, who had destined her to be the third wife of old Dr. M’Mull)

when very young. Many sorrows she had had, including poverty, the

captain’s imprisonment for debt, and his demise; but she was of a gay

and lightsome spirit. She was but three-and-thirty years old, and

looked five-and-twenty. She was active, brisk, jovial, and alert; and

so good-looking, that it was a wonder she had not taken a successor to

Captain Mackenzie. James Binnie cautioned his friend the Colonel

against the attractions of the buxom siren; and laughingly would ask

Clive how he would like Mrs. Mackenzie for a mamaw?

Colonel Newcome felt himself very much at ease regarding his future

prospects. He was very glad that his friend James was reconciled to his

family, and hinted to Clive that the late Captain Mackenzie’s

extravagance had been the cause of the rupture between him and his

brother-in-law, who had helped that prodigal captain repeatedly during

his life; and, in spite of family quarrels, had never ceased to act

generously to his widowed sister and her family. “But I think, Mr.

Clive,” said he, “that as Miss Rosa is very pretty, and you have a

spare room at your studio, you had best take up your quarters in

Charlotte Street as long as the ladies are living with us.” Clive was

nothing loth to be independent; but he showed himself to be a very good

home-loving youth. He walked home to breakfast every morning, dined

often, and spent the evenings with the family. Indeed, the house was a

great deal more cheerful for the presence of the two pleasant ladies.

Nothing could be prettier than to see the two ladies tripping

downstairs together, mamma’s pretty arm round Rosey’s pretty waist.

Mamma’s talk was perpetually of Rosey. That child was always gay,

always good, always happy! That darling girl woke with a smile on her

face, it was sweet to see her! Uncle James, in his dry way, said, he

dared to say it was very pretty. “Go away, you droll, dear old kind

Uncle James!” Rosey’s mamma would cry out. “You old bachelors are

wicked old things!” Uncle James used to kiss Rosey very kindly and

pleasantly. She was as modest, as gentle, as eager to please Colonel

Newcome as any little girl could be. It was pretty to see her tripping

across the room with his coffee-cup, or peeling walnuts for him after

dinner with her white plump little fingers.

Mrs. Irons, the housekeeper, naturally detested Mrs. Mackenzie, and was

jealous of her: though the latter did everything to soothe and coax the

governess of the two gentlemen’s establishment. She praised her

dinners, delighted in her puddings, must beg Mrs. Irons to allow her to

see one of those delicious puddings made, and to write the receipt for

her, that Mrs. Mackenzie might use it when she was away. It was Mrs.

Irons’ belief that Mrs. Mackenzie never intended to go away. She had no

ideer of ladies, as were ladies, coming into her kitchen. The maids

vowed that they heard Miss Rosa crying, and mamma scolding in her

bedroom for all she was so soft-spoken. How was that jug broke, and

that chair smashed in the bedroom, that day there was such a awful row

up there?

Mrs. Mackenzie played admirably, in the old-fashioned way, dances,

reels, and Scotch and Irish tunes, the former, of which filled James

Binnie’s soul with delectation. The good mother naturally desired that

her darling should have a few good lessons of the piano while she was

in London. Rosey was eternally strumming upon an instrument which had

been taken upstairs for her special practice; and the Colonel, who was

always seeking to do harmless jobs of kindness for his friends,

bethought him of little Miss Cann, the governess at Ridley’s, whom he

recommended as an instructress. “Anybody whom you recommend I’m sure,

dear Colonel, we shall like,” said Mrs. Mackenzie, who looked as black

as thunder, and had probably intended to have Monsieur Quatremains or

Signor Twankeydillo; and the little governess came to her pupil. Mrs.

Mackenzie treated her very gruffly and haughtily at first; but as soon

as she heard Miss Cann play, the widow was pacified—nay, charmed.

Monsieur Quatremains charged a guinea for three-quarters of an hour;

while Miss Cann thankfully took five shillings for an hour and a half;

and the difference of twenty lessons, for which dear Uncle James paid,

went into Mrs. Mackenzie’s pocket, and thence probably on to her pretty

shoulders and head in the shape of a fine silk dress and a beautiful

French bonnet, in which Captain Goby said, upon his life, she didn’t

look twenty.

The little governess trotting home after her lesson would often look in

to Clive’s studio in Charlotte Street, where her two boys, as she

called Clive and J. J., were at work each at his easel. Clive used to

laugh, and tell us, who joked him about the widow and her daughter,

what Miss Cann said about them. Mrs. Mack was not all honey, it

appeared. If Rosey played incorrectly, mamma flew at her with

prodigious vehemence of language, and sometimes with a slap on poor

Rosey’s back. She must make Rosey wear tight boots, and stamp on her

little feet if they refused to enter into the slipper. I blush for the

indiscretion of Miss Cann; but she actually told J. J., that mamma

insisted upon lacing her so tight, as nearly to choke the poor little

lass. Rosey did not fight: Rosey always yielded; and the scolding over

and the tears dried, would come simpering downstairs with mamma’s arm

round her waist, and her pretty artless happy smile for the gentlemen

below. Besides the Scottish songs without music, she sang ballads at

the piano very sweetly. Mamma used to cry at these ditties. “That

child’s voice brings tears into my eyes, Mr. Newcome,” she would say.

“She has never known a moment’s sorrow yet! Heaven grant, heaven grant,

she may be happy! But what shall I be when I lose her?”

“Why, my dear, when ye lose Rosey, ye’ll console yourself with Josey,”

says droll Mr. Binnie from the sofa, who perhaps saw the manœuvre of

the widow.

The widow laughs heartily and really. She places a handkerchief over

her mouth. She glances at her brother with a pair of eyes full of

knowing mischief. “Ah, dear James,” she says, “you don’t know what it

is to have a mother’s feelings.”

“I can partly understand them,” says James. “Rosey, sing me that pretty

little French song.” Mrs. Mackenzie’s attention to Clive was really

quite affecting. If any of his friends came to the house, she took them

aside and praised Clive to them. The Colonel she adored. She had never

met with such a man or seen such a manner. The manners of the Bishop of

Tobago were beautiful, and he certainly had one of the softest and

finest hands in the world; but not finer than Colonel Newcome’s. “Look

at his foot!” (and she put out her own, which was uncommonly pretty,

and suddenly withdrew it, with an arch glance meant to represent a

blush)—“my shoe would fit it! When we were at Coventry Island, Sir

Peregrine Blandy, who succeeded poor dear Sir Rawdon Crawley—I saw his

dear boy was gazetted to a lieutenant-colonelcy in the Guards last

week—Sir Peregrine, who was one of the Prince of Wales’s most intimate

friends, was always said to have the finest manner and presence of any

man of his day; and very grand and noble he was, but I don’t think he

was equal to Colonel Newcome—I don’t really think so. Do you think so,

Mr. Honeyman? What a charming discourse that was last Sunday! I know

there were two pair of eyes not dry in the church. I could not see the

other people just for crying myself. Oh, but I wish we could have you

at Musselburgh! I was bred a Presbyterian, of course; but in much

travelling through the world with my dear husband, I came to love his

church. At home we sit under Dr. M’Craw, of course; but he is so awfully

long! Four hours every Sunday at least, morning and afternoon! It

nearly kills poor Rosey. Did you hear her voice at your church? The

dear girl is delighted with the chants. Rosey, were you not delighted

with the chants?”

If she is delighted with the chants, Honeyman is delighted with the

chantress and her mamma. He dashes the fair hair from his brow: he sits

down to the piano, and plays one or two of them, warbling a faint vocal

accompaniment, and looking as if he would be lifted off the screw

music-stool, and flutter up to the ceiling.

“Oh, it’s just seraphic!” says the widow. “It’s just the breath of

incense and the pealing of the organ at the Cathedral at Montreal.

Rosey doesn’t remember Montreal. She was a wee wee child. She was born

on the voyage out, and christened at sea. You remember, Goby.”

“Gad, I promised and vowed to teach her her catechism; ’gad, but I

haven’t,” says Captain Goby. “We were between Montreal and Quebec for

three years with the Hundredth, and the Hundred Twentieth Highlanders,

and the Thirty-third Dragoon Guards a part of the time; Fipley

commanded them, and a very jolly time we had. Much better than the West

Indies, where a fellow’s liver goes to the deuce with hot pickles and

sangaree. Mackenzie was a dev’lish wild fellow,” whispers Captain Goby

to his neighbour (the present biographer, indeed), “and Mrs. Mack was

as pretty a little woman as ever you set eyes on.” (Captain Goby winks,

and looks peculiarly sly as he makes this statement.) “Our regiment

wasn’t on your side of India, Colonel.”

And in the interchange of such delightful remarks, and with music and

song, the evening passes away. “Since the house had been adorned by the

fair presence of Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter,” Honeyman said,

always gallant in behaviour and flowery in expression, “it seemed as if

spring had visited it. Its hospitality was invested with a new grace;

its ever welcome little _réunions_ were doubly charming. But why did

these ladies come, if they were to go away again? How—how would Mr.

Binnie console himself (not to mention others) if they left him in

solitude?”

“We have no wish to leave my brother James in solitude,” cries Mrs.

Mackenzie, frankly laughing. “We like London a great deal better than

Musselburgh.”

“Oh, that we do!” ejaculates the blushing Rosey.

“And we will stay as long as ever my brother will keep us,” continues

the widow.

“Uncle James is so kind and dear,” says Rosey. “I hope he won’t send me

and mamma away.”

“He were a brute—a savage, if he did!” cries Binnie, with glances of

rapture towards the two pretty faces. Everybody liked them. Binnie

received their caresses very good-humouredly. The Colonel liked every

woman under the sun. Clive laughed and joked and waltzed alternately

with Rosey and her mamma. The latter was the briskest partner of the

two. The unsuspicious widow, poor dear innocent, would leave her girl

at the painting-room, and go shopping herself; but little J. J. also

worked there, being occupied with his second picture: and he was almost

the only one of Clive’s friends whom the widow did not like. She

pronounced the quiet little painter a pert, little, obtrusive,

underbred creature.

In a word, Mrs. Mackenzie was, as the phrase is, “setting her cap” so

openly at Clive, that none of us could avoid seeing her play: and Clive

laughed at her simple manœuvres as merrily as the rest. She was a merry

little woman. We gave her and her pretty daughter a luncheon in Lamb

Court, Temple; in Sibwright’s chambers—luncheon from Dick’s Coffee

House—ices and dessert from Partington’s in the Strand. Miss Rosey, Mr.

Sibwright, our neighbour in Lamb Court, and the Reverend Charles

Honeyman sang very delightfully after lunch; there was quite a crowd of

porters, laundresses, and boys to listen in the court; Mr. Paley was

disgusted with the noise we made—in fact, the party was perfectly

successful. We all liked the widow, and if she did set her pretty

ribbons at Clive, why should not she? We all liked the pretty, fresh,

modest Rosey. Why, even the grave old benchers in the Temple church,

when the ladies visited it on Sunday, winked their reverend eyes with

pleasure, as they looked at those two uncommonly smart, pretty,

well-dressed, fashionable women. Ladies, go to the Temple church. You

will see more young men, and receive more respectful attention there

than in any place, except perhaps at Oxford or Cambridge. Go to the

Temple church—not, of course, for the admiration which you will excite

and which you cannot help; but because the sermon is excellent, the

choral services beautifully performed, and the church so interesting as

a monument of the thirteenth century, and as it contains the tombs of

those dear Knights Templars!

Mrs. Mackenzie could be grave or gay, according to her company: nor

could any woman be of more edifying behaviour when an occasional

Scottish friend bringing a letter from darling Josey, or a

recommendatory letter from Josey’s grandmother, paid a visit in Fitzroy

Square. Little Miss Cann used to laugh and wink knowingly, saying, “You

will never get back your bedroom, Mr. Clive. You may be sure that Miss

Josey will come in a few months; and perhaps old Mrs. Binnie, only no

doubt she and her daughter do not agree. But the widow has taken

possession of Uncle James; and she will carry off somebody else if I am

not mistaken. Should you like a stepmother, Mr. Clive, or should you

prefer a wife?”

Whether the fair lady tried her wiles upon Colonel Newcome the present

writer has no certain means of ascertaining: but I think another image

occupied his heart: and this Circe tempted him no more than a score of

other enchantresses who had tried their spells upon him. If she tried

she failed. She was a very shrewd woman, quite frank in her talk when

such frankness suited her. She said to me, “Colonel Newcome has had

some great passion, once upon a time, I am sure of that, and has no

more heart to give away. The woman who had his must have been a very

lucky woman: though I daresay she did not value what she had; or did

not live to enjoy it—or—or something or other. You see tragedies in

some people’s faces. I recollect when we were in Coventry Island—there

was a chaplain there—a very good man—a Mr. Bell, and married to a

pretty little woman who died. The first day I saw him I said, ‘I know

that man has had a great grief in life. I am sure that he left his

heart in England.’ You gentlemen who write books, Mr. Pendennis, and

stop at the third volume, know very well that the real story often

begins afterwards. My third volume ended when I was sixteen, and was

married to my poor husband. Do you think all our adventures ended then,

and that we lived happy ever after? I live for my darling girls now.

All I want is to see them comfortable in life. Nothing can be more

generous than my dear brother James has been. I am only his

half-sister, you know, and was an infant in arms when he went away. He

had differences with Captain Mackenzie, who was headstrong and

imprudent, and I own my poor dear husband was in the wrong. James could

not live with my poor mother. Neither could by possibility suit the

other. I have often, I own, longed to come and keep house for him. His

home, the society he sees, of men of talents like Mr. Warrington

and—and I won’t mention names, or pay compliments to a man who knows

human nature so well as the author of Walter Lorraine: this house is

pleasanter a thousand times than Musselburgh—pleasanter for me and my

dearest Rosey, whose delicate nature shrunk and withered up in poor

mamma’s society. She was never happy except in my room, the dear child!

She’s all gentleness and affection. She doesn’t seem to show it: but

she has the most wonderful appreciation of wit, of genius, and talent

of all kinds. She always hides her feelings, except from her fond old

mother. I went up into our room yesterday, and found her in tears. I

can’t bear to see her eyes red or to think of her suffering. I asked

her what ailed her, and kissed her. She is a tender plant, Mr.

Pendennis! Heaven knows with what care I have nurtured her! She looked

up smiling on my shoulder. She looked so pretty! ‘Oh, mamma,’ the

darling child said, ‘I couldn’t help it. I have been crying over Walter

Lorraine.’ (Enter Rosey.) Rosey, darling! I have been telling Mr.

Pendennis what a naughty, naughty child you were yesterday, and how you

read a book which I told you you shouldn’t read; for it is a very

wicked book; and though it contains some sad sad truths, it is a great

deal too misanthropic (is that the right word? I’m a poor soldier’s

wife, and no scholar, you know), and a great deal too _bitter;_ and

though the reviews praise it, and the clever people—we are poor simple

country people—we won’t praise it. Sing, dearest, that little song”

(profuse kisses to Rosey), “that pretty thing that Mr. Pendennis

likes.”

“I am sure that I will sing anything that Mr. Pendennis likes,” says

Rosey, with her candid bright eyes—and she goes to the piano and

warbles “Batti, Batti,” with her sweet fresh artless voice.

More caresses follow. Mamma is in a rapture. How pretty they look—the

mother and daughter—two lilies twining together! The necessity of an

entertainment at the Temple-lunch from Dick’s (as before mentioned),

dessert from Partington’s, Sibwright’s spoons, his boy to aid ours,

nay, Sib himself, and his rooms, which are so much more elegant than

ours, and where there is a piano and guitar: all these thoughts pass in

rapid and brilliant combination in the pleasant Mr. Pendennis’s mind.

How delighted the ladies are with the proposal! Mrs. Mackenzie claps

her pretty hands, and kisses Rosey again. If osculation is a mark of

love, surely Mrs. Mack is the best of mothers. I may say, without false

modesty, that our little entertainment was most successful. The

champagne was iced to a nicety. The ladies did not perceive that our

laundress, Mrs. Flanagan, was intoxicated very early in the afternoon.

Percy Sibwright sang admirably, and with the greatest spirit, ditties

in many languages. I am sure Miss Rosey thought him (as indeed he is)

one of the most fascinating young fellows about town. To her mother’s

excellent accompaniment Rosey sang her favourite songs (by the way, her

stock was very small—five, I think, was the number). Then the table was

moved into a corner, where the quivering moulds of jelly seemed to keep

time to the music; and whilst Percy played, two couple of waltzers

actually whirled round the little room. No wonder that the court below

was thronged with admirers, that Paley the reading man was in a rage,

and Mrs. Flanagan in a state of excitement. Ah! pleasant days, happy

gold dingy chambers illuminated by youthful sunshine! merry songs and

kind faces—it is pleasant to recall you. Some of those bright eyes

shine no more: some of those smiling lips do not speak. Some are not

less kind, but sadder than in those days: of which the memories revisit

us for a moment, and sink back into the grey past. The dear old Colonel

beat time with great delight to the songs; the widow lit his cigar with

her own fair fingers. That was the only smoke permitted during the

entertainment—George Warrington himself not being allowed to use his

cutty-pipe—though the gay little widow said that she had been used to

smoking in the West Indies and I dare say spoke the truth. Our

entertainment lasted actually until after dark: and a particularly neat

cab being called from St. Clement’s by Mr. Binnie’s boy, you may be

sure we all conducted the ladies to their vehicle: and many a fellow

returning from his lonely club that evening into chambers must have

envied us the pleasure of having received two such beauties.

The clerical bachelor was not to be outdone by the gentlemen of the

bar; and the entertainment at the Temple was followed by one at

Honeyman’s lodgings, which, I must own, greatly exceeded ours in

splendour, for Honeyman had his luncheon from Gunter’s; and if he had

been Miss Rosey’s mother, giving a breakfast to the dear girl on her

marriage, the affair could not have been more elegant and handsome. We

had but two bouquets at our entertainment; at Honeyman’s there were

four upon the breakfast-table, besides a great pineapple, which must

have cost the rogue three or four guineas, and which Percy Sibwright

delicately cut up. Rosey thought the pineapple delicious. “The dear

thing does not remember the pineapples in the West Indies!” cries Mrs.

Mackenzie; and she gave us many exciting narratives of entertainments

at which she had been present at various colonial governors’ tables.

After luncheon, our host hoped we should have a little music. Dancing,

of course, could not be allowed. “That,” said Honeyman with his

soft-bleating sigh, “were scarcely clerical. You know, besides, you are

in a _hermitage;_ and” (with a glance round the table) “must put up

with Cenobite’s fare.” The fare was, as I have said, excellent. The

wine was bad, as George, and I, and Sib agreed; and in so far we

flattered ourselves that _our_ feast altogether excelled the parson’s.

The champagne especially was such stuff, that Warrington remarked on it

to his neighbour, a dark gentleman, with a tuft to his chin, and

splendid rings and chains.

The dark gentleman’s wife and daughter were the other two ladies

invited by our host. The elder was splendidly dressed. Poor Mrs.

Mackenzie’s simple gimcracks, though she displayed them to the most

advantage, and could make an ormolu bracelet go as far as another

woman’s emerald clasps, were as nothing compared to the other lady’s

gorgeous jewellery. Her fingers glittered with rings innumerable. The

head of her smelling-bottle was as big as her husband’s gold snuff box,

and of the same splendid material. Our ladies, it must be confessed,

came in a modest cab from Fitzroy Square; these arrived in a splendid

little open carriage with white ponies, and harness all over brass,

which the lady of the rings drove with a whip that was a parasol. Mrs.

Mackenzie, standing at Honeyman’s window, with her arm round Rosey’s

waist, viewed this arrival perhaps with envy. “My dear Mr. Honeyman,

whose are those beautiful horses?” cries Rosey, with enthusiasm.

The divine says with a faint blush—“It is—ah—it is Mrs. Sherrick and

Miss Sherrick who have done me the favour to come to luncheon.”

“Wine-merchant. Oh!” thinks Mrs. Mackenzie, who has seen Sherrick’s

brass plate on the cellar door of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel; and hence,

perhaps, she was a trifle more magniloquent than usual, and entertained

us with stories of colonial governors and their ladies, mentioning no

persons but those who “had handles to their names,” as the phrase is.

Although Sherrick had actually supplied the champagne which Warrington

abused to him in confidence, the wine-merchant was not wounded; on the

contrary, he roared with laughter at the remark, and some of us smiled

who understood the humour of the joke. As for George Warrington, he

scarce knew more about the town than the ladies opposite to him; who,

yet more innocent than George, thought the champagne very good. Mrs.

Sherrick was silent during the meal, looking constantly up at her

husband, as if alarmed and always in the habit of appealing to that

gentleman, who gave her, as I thought, knowing glances and savage

winks, which made me augur that he bullied her at home. Miss Sherrick

was exceedingly handsome: she kept the fringed curtains of her eyes

constantly down; but when she lifted them up towards Clive, who was

very attentive to her (the rogue never sees a handsome woman but to

this day he continues the same practice)—when she looked up and smiled,

she was indeed a beautiful young creature to behold—with her pale

forehead, her thick arched eyebrows, her rounded cheeks, and her full

lips slightly shaded,—how shall I mention the word?—slightly pencilled,

after the manner of the lips of the French governess, Mademoiselle

Lenoir.

Percy Sibwright engaged Miss Mackenzie with his usual grace and

affability. Mrs. Mackenzie did her very utmost to be gracious, but it

was evident the party was not altogether to her liking. Poor Percy,

about whose means and expectations she had in the most natural way in

the world asked information from me, was not perhaps a very eligible

admirer for darling Rosey. She knew not that Percy can no more help

gallantry than the sun can help shining. As soon as Rosey had done

eating up her pineapple, artlessly confessing (to Percy Sibwright’s

inquiries) that she preferred it to the rasps and hinnyblobs in her

grandmamma’s garden, “Now, dearest Rosey,” cries Mrs. Mack, “now, a

little song. You promised Mr. Pendennis a little song.” Honeyman whisks

open the piano in a moment. The widow takes off her cleaned gloves

(Mrs. Sherrick’s were new, and of the best Paris make), and little

Rosey sings No. 1, followed by No. 2, with very great applause. Mother

and daughter entwine as they quit the piano. “Brava! brava!” says Percy

Sibwright. Does Mr. Clive Newcome say nothing? His back is turned to

the piano, and he is looking with all his might into the eyes of Miss

Sherrick.

Percy sings a Spanish seguidilla, or a German lied, or a French

romance, or a Neapolitan canzonet, which, I am bound to say, excites

very little attention. Mrs. Ridley is sending in coffee at this

juncture, of which Mrs. Sherrick partakes, with lots of sugar, as she

has partaken of numberless things before. Chicken, plovers’ eggs,

prawns, aspics, jellies, creams, grapes, and what-not. Mr. Honeyman

advances, and with deep respect asks if Mrs. Sherrick and Miss Sherrick

will not be persuaded to sing? She rises and bows, and again takes off

the French gloves, and shows the large white hands glittering with

rings, and, summoning Emily her daughter, they go to the piano.

“Can she sing,” whispers Mrs. Mackenzie, “can she sing after eating so

much?” Can she sing, indeed! Oh, you poor ignorant Mrs. Mackenzie! Why,

when you were in the West Indies, if you ever read the English

newspapers, you must have read of the fame of Miss Folthorpe. Mrs.

Sherrick is no other than the famous artist, who, after three years of

brilliant triumphs at the Scala, the Pergola, the San Carlo, the opera

in England, forsook her profession, rejected a hundred suitors, and

married Sherrick, who was Mr. Cox’s lawyer, who failed, as everybody

knows, as manager of Drury Lane. Sherrick, like a man of spirit, would

not allow his wife to sing in public after his marriage; but in private

society, of course, she is welcome to perform: and now with her

daughter, who possesses a noble contralto voice, she takes her place

royally at the piano, and the two sing so magnificently that everybody

in the room, with one single exception, is charmed and delighted; and

that little Miss Cann herself creeps up the stairs, and stands with

Mrs. Ridley at the door to listen to the music.

Miss Sherrick looks doubly handsome as she sings. Clive Newcome is in a

rapture; so is good-natured Miss Rosey, whose little heart beats with

pleasure, and who says quite unaffectedly to Miss Sherrick, with

delight and gratitude beaming from her blue eyes, “Why did you ask me

to sing, when you sing so wonderfully, so beautifully, yourself? Do not

leave the piano, please—do sing again!” And she puts out a kind little

hand towards the superior artist, and, blushing, leads her back to the

instrument. “I’m sure me and Emily will sing for you as much as you

like, dear,” says Mrs. Sherrick, nodding to Rosey good-naturedly. Mrs.

Mackenzie, who has been biting her lips and drumming the time on a

side-table, forgets at last the pain of being vanquished in admiration

of the conquerors. “It was cruel of you not to tell us, Mr. Honeyman,”

she says, “of the—of the treat you had in store for us. I had no idea

we were going to meet professional people; Mrs. Sherrick’s singing is

indeed beautiful.”

“If you come up to our place in the Regent’s Park, Mr. Newcome,” Mr.

Sherrick says, “Mrs. S. and Emily will give you as many songs as you

like. How do you like the house in Fitzroy Square? Anything wanting

doing there? I’m a good landlord to a good tenant. Don’t care what I

spend on my houses. Lose by ’em sometimes. Name a day when you’ll come

to us; and I’ll ask some good fellows to meet you. Your father and Mr.

Binnie came once. That was when you were a young chap. They didn’t have

a bad evening, I believe. You just come and try us—I can give you as

good a glass of wine as most, I think,” and he smiles, perhaps thinking

of the champagne which Mr. Warrington had slighted. “I’ve ad the close

carriage for my wife this evening,” he continues, looking out of window

at a very handsome brougham which has just drawn up there. “That little

pair of horses steps prettily together, don’t they? Fond of horses? I

know you are. See you in the Park; and going by our house sometimes.

The Colonel sits a horse uncommonly well: so do you, Mr. Newcome. I’ve

often said, ‘Why don’t they get off their horses and say, Sherrick,

we’re come for a bit of lunch and a glass of Sherry?’ Name a day, sir.

Mr. P., will you be in it?”

Clive Newcome named a day, and told his father of the circumstance in

the evening. The Colonel looked grave. “There was something which I did

not quite like about Mr. Sherrick,” said that acute observer of human

nature. “It was easy to see that the man is not quite a gentleman. I

don’t care what a man’s trade is, Clive. Indeed, who are we, to give

ourselves airs upon that subject? But when I am gone, my boy, and there

is nobody near you who knows the world as I do, you may fall into

designing hands, and rogues may lead you into mischief: keep a sharp

look-out, Clive. Mr. Pendennis, here, knows that there are designing

fellows abroad” (and the dear old gentleman gives a very knowing nod as

he speaks). “When I am gone, keep the lad from harm’s way, Pendennis.

Meanwhile Mr. Sherrick has been a very good and obliging landlord; and

a man who sells wine may certainly give a friend a bottle. I am glad

you had a pleasant evening, boys. Ladies, I hope you have had a

pleasant afternoon. Miss Rosey, you are come back to make tea for the

old gentlemen? James begins to get about briskly now. He walked to

Hanover Square, Mrs. Mackenzie, without hurting his ankle in the

least.”

“I am almost sorry that he is getting well,” says Mrs. Mackenzie

sincerely. “He won’t want us when he is quite cured.”

“Indeed, my dear creature!” cries the Colonel, taking her pretty hand

and kissing it; “he will want you, and he shall want you. James no more

knows the world than Miss Rosey here; and if I had not been with him,

would have been perfectly unable to take care of himself. When I am

gone to India, somebody must stay with him; and—and my boy must have a

home to go to,” says the kind soldier, his voice dropping. “I had been

in hopes that his own relatives would have received him more, but never

mind about that,” he cried more cheerfully. “Why, I may not be absent a

year! I perhaps need not go at all—I am second for promotion. A couple

of our old generals may drop any day; and when I get my regiment I come

back to stay, to live at home. Meantime, whilst I am gone, my dear

lady, you will take care of James; and you will be kind to my boy.”

“That I will!” said the widow, radiant with pleasure, and she took one

of Clive’s hands and pressed it for an instant; and from Clive’s

father’s kind face there beamed out that benediction which always made

his countenance appear to me among the most beautiful of human faces.

CHAPTER XXIV.

In which the Newcome Brothers once more meet together in Unity

His narrative, as the judicious reader no doubt is aware, is written

maturely and at ease, long after the voyage is over, whereof it

recounts the adventures and perils; the winds adverse and favourable;

the storms, shoals, shipwrecks, islands, and so forth, which Clive

Newcome met in his early journey in life. In such a history events

follow each other without necessarily having a connection with one

another. One ship crosses another ship, and after a visit from one

captain to his comrade, they sail away each on his course. The Clive

Newcome meets a vessel which makes signals that she is short of bread

and water; and after supplying her, our captain leaves her to see her

no more. One or two of the vessels with which we commenced the voyage

together, part company in a gale, and founder miserably; others, after

being wofully battered in the tempest, make port, or are cast upon

surprising islands where all sorts of unlooked-for prosperity awaits

the lucky crew. Also, no doubt, the writer of the book, into whose

hands Clive Newcome’s logs have been put, and who is charged with the

duty of making two octavo volumes out of his friend’s story, dresses up

the narrative in his own way; utters his own remarks in place of

Newcome’s; makes fanciful descriptions of individuals and incidents

with which he never could have been personally acquainted; and commits

blunders, which the critics will discover. A great number of the

descriptions in Cook’s Voyages, for instance, were notoriously invented

by Dr. Hawkesworth, who “did” the book: so in the present volumes,

where dialogues are written down, which the reporter could by no

possibility have heard, and where motives are detected which the

persons actuated by them certainly never confided to the writer, the

public must once for all be warned that the author’s individual fancy

very likely supplies much of the narrative; and that he forms it as

best he may, out of stray papers, conversations reported to him, and

his knowledge, right or wrong, of the characters of the persons

engaged. And, as is the case with the most orthodox histories, the

writer’s own guesses or conjectures are printed in exactly the same

type as the most ascertained patent facts. I fancy, for my part, that

the speeches attributed to Clive, the Colonel, and the rest, are as

authentic as the orations in Sallust or Livy, and only implore the

truth-loving public to believe that incidents here told, and which

passed very probably without witnesses, were either confided to me

subsequently as compiler of this biography, or are of such a nature

that they must have happened from what we know happened after. For

example, when you read such words as QVE ROMANVS on a battered Roman

stone, your profound antiquarian knowledge enables you to assert that

SENATVS POPVLVS was also inscribed there at some time or other. You

take a mutilated statue of Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, or Virorum, and you

pop him on a wanting hand, an absent foot, or a nose which time or

barbarians have defaced. You tell your tales as you can, and state the

facts as you think they must have been. In this manner, Mr. James

(historiographer to Her Majesty), Titus Livius, Professor Alison,

Robinson Crusoe, and all historians proceeded. Blunders there must be

in the best of these narratives, and more asserted than they can

possibly know or vouch for.

To recur to our own affairs, and the subject at present in hand, I am

obliged here to supply from conjecture a few points of the history,

which I could not know from actual experience or hearsay. Clive, let us

say, is Romanus, and we must add Senatus Populusque to his inscription.

After Mrs. Mackenzie and her pretty daughter had been for a few months

in London, which they did not think of quitting, although Mr. Binnie’s

wounded little leg was now as well and as brisk as ever it had been, a

redintegration of love began to take place between the Colonel and his

relatives in Park Lane. How should we know that there had ever been a

quarrel, or at any rate a coolness? Thomas Newcome was not a man to

talk at length of any such matter; though a word or two occasionally

dropped in conversation by the simple gentleman might lead persons who

chose to interest themselves about his family affairs to form their own

opinions concerning them. After that visit of the Colonel and his son

to Newcome, Ethel was constantly away with her grandmother. The Colonel

went to see his pretty little favourite at Brighton, and once, twice,

thrice, Lady Kew’s door was denied to him. The knocker of that door

could not be more fierce than the old lady’s countenance, when Newcome

met her in her chariot driving on the cliff. Once, forming the

loveliest of a charming Amazonian squadron, led by Mr. Whiskin, the

riding-master, when the Colonel encountered his pretty Ethel, she

greeted him affectionately, it is true; there was still the sweet look

of candour and love in her eyes; but when he rode up to her she looked

so constrained, when he talked about Clive, so reserved, when he left

her, so sad, that he could not but feel pain and commiseration. Back he

went to London, having in a week only caught this single glance of his

darling.

This event occurred while Clive was painting his picture of the “Battle

of Assaye” before mentioned, during the struggles incident on which

composition he was not thinking much about Miss Ethel, or his papa, or

any other subject but his great work. Whilst Assaye was still in

progress, Thomas Newcome must have had an explanation with his

sister-in-law, Lady Anne, to whom he frankly owned the hopes which he

had entertained for Clive, and who must as frankly have told the

Colonel that Ethel’s family had very different views for that young

lady to those which the simple Colonel had formed. A generous early

attachment, the Colonel thought, is the safeguard of a young man. To

love a noble girl; to wait a while and struggle, and haply do some

little achievement in order to win her; the best task to which his boy

could set himself. If two young people so loving each other were to

marry on rather narrow means, what then? A happy home was better than

the finest house in Mayfair; a generous young fellow, such as, please

God, his son was—loyal, upright, and a gentleman—might pretend surely

to his kinswoman’s hand without derogation; and the affection he bore

Ethel himself was so great, and the sweet regard with which she

returned it, that the simple father thought his kindly project was

favoured by Heaven, and prayed for its fulfilment, and pleased himself

to think, when his campaigns were over, and his sword hung on the wall,

what a beloved daughter he might have to soothe and cheer his old age.

With such a wife for his son, and child for himself, he thought the

happiness of his last years might repay him for friendless boyhood,

lonely manhood, and cheerless exile; and he imparted his simple scheme

to Ethel’s mother, who no doubt was touched as he told his story; for

she always professed regard and respect for him, and in the differences

which afterwards occurred in the family, and the quarrels which divided

the brothers, still remained faithful to the good Colonel.

But Barnes Newcome, Esquire, was the head of the house, and the

governor of his father and all Sir Brian’s affairs; and Barnes Newcome,

Esquire, hated his cousin Clive, and spoke of him as a beggarly

painter, an impudent snob, an infernal young puppy, and so forth; and

Barnes with his usual freedom of language imparted his opinions to his

Uncle Hobson at the bank, and Uncle Hobson carried them home to Mrs.

Newcome in Bryanstone Square; and Mrs. Newcome took an early

opportunity of telling the Colonel her opinion on the subject, and of

bewailing that love for aristocracy which she saw actuated some folks;

and the Colonel was brought to see that Barnes was his boy’s enemy, and

words very likely passed between them, for Thomas Newcome took a new

banker at this time, and, as Clive informed me, was in very great

dudgeon because Hobson Brothers wrote to him to say that he had

overdrawn his account. “I am sure there is some screw loose,” the

sagacious youth remarked to me; “and the Colonel and the people in Park

Lane are at variance, because he goes there very little now; and he

promised to go to Court when Ethel was presented, and he didn’t go.”

Some months after the arrival of Mr. Binnie’s niece and sister in

Fitzroy Square, the fraternal quarrel between the Newcomes must have

come to an end—for that time at least—and was followed by a rather

ostentatious reconciliation. And pretty little Rosey Mackenzie was the

innocent and unconscious cause of this amiable change in the minds of

the three brethren, as I gathered from a little conversation with Mrs.

Newcome, who did me the honour to invite me to her table. As she had

not vouchsafed this hospitality to me for a couple of years previously,

and perfectly stifled me with affability when we met,—as her invitation

came quite at the end of the season, when almost everybody was out of

town, and a dinner to a man is no compliment,—I was at first for

declining this invitation, and spoke of it with great scorn when Mr.

Newcome orally delivered it to me at Bays’s Club.

“What,” said I, turning round to an old man of the world, who happened

to be in the room at the time, “what do these people mean by asking a

fellow to dinner in August, and taking me up after dropping me for two

years?”