Sam and Clarissa were worshipful people now. Uncle Barnet no longer
invited them to his second-rate parties; Uncle Barnet was really proud
to visit them in their own home. Sam Winnington was a discerning
mortal; he had a faculty for discovering genius, especially that
work-a-day genius which is in rising men; and he certainly had
bird-lime wherewith he could fix their feet under his hospitable
table. The best of the sages and wits of the day were to be met in Sam
Winnington's house; the best of the sages and wits of the day thought
Clary a fine woman, though a little lofty, and Sam a good fellow, an
honest chum, a delightful companion, and at the same time the prince
of portrait-painters. What an eye he had! what a touch! How much
perception of individual character, and at the same time, what sober
judgment and elegant taste to preserve his sitters, ladies and
gentlemen, as well as men and women! Cavaliers would have it, the
ladies and gentlemen, like Sam's condescension at his wedding-feast,
overtopped the mark; but it was erring on the safe side. Who would not
sink the man in the gentleman? After all, perhaps the sages and wits
were not altogether disinterested: almost every one of them filled Sam
Winnington's famous sitter's chair, and depended on Sam's tasteful
pencil handing down their precious noses and chins to posterity.
Sam and Clary were going abroad, in that coach, which had made Dulcie
Locke look longingly after it, and ponder what it would be for one of
her frail children to have "a ride" on the box as far as Kensington.
They were bound for the house of one of the lordly patrons of arts and
letters. They were bound for my Lord Burlington's, or the Earl of
Mulgrave's, or Sir William Beechey's--for a destination where they were
a couple of mark and distinction, to be received with the utmost
consideration. Sam reared smartly his round but not ill-proportioned
person in his rich brocade coat, and Clary towered in the corner with
her white throat, and her filmy ivory-coloured laces.
We won't see many more distinguished men and women than the members of
the set who frequented the old London tea-parties; and Sam Winnington
and Clary were in it and of it, while Will Locke and Dulcie were
poverty-stricken and alone with their bantlings in the garret in St.
Martin's Lane. What becomes of the doctrine of happiness being equally
divided in this world, as so many comfortable persons love to opine?
Possibly we don't stand up for it; or we may have our loophole, by which
we may let ourselves out and drag it in. Was that illustrious voyage all
plain sailing? Sam Winnington used to draw a long sigh, and lay back his
head and close his eyes in his coach, after the rout was over. He was
not conscious of acting; he was not acting, and one might dare another,
if that other were not a cynic, to say that the motive was unworthy. He
wanted to put his sitters on a good footing with themselves; he wanted
to put the world on a good footing with itself; it was the man's nature.
He did not go very far down; he was not without his piques, and like
other good-natured men--like Will Locke, for that matter--when he was
once offended he was apt to be vindictive; but he was buoyant, and that
little man must have had a great fund of charity about him somewhere to
be drawn upon at first sight. Still this popularity was no joke. There
were other rubs. The keen love of approbation in the little man, which
was at the bottom of his suavity, was galled by the least condemnation
of his work and credit; he was too manly to enact the old man and the
ass, but successful Sam Winnington was about as soon pricked as a man
who wears a fold of silk on his breast instead of the old plate armour.
Clary had her own aggravations: with all her airs Clary was not a match
for the indomitable, unhesitating, brazen (with a golden brazenness)
women of fashion. Poor Clary had been the beauty at Redwater, the most
modish, the best informed woman there; and here, in this world of
London, to which Sam had got her an introduction, she was a nobody;
scarcely to be detected among the host of ordinary fine women, except by
Sam's reflected glory. This was a doubtful boon, an unsatisfactory rise
in the social scale. Then Clary had nobody beyond Sam to look to, and
hope and pray for: she had not even sickly children to nurse, like
Dulcie. Sam would only live to future generations in his paintings. Ah,
well! it was fortunate that Sam was a man of genius.
You may believe, for all the grand company, the coach, the cut velvet,
the laces, and the black boy, that this world was but a mighty sorry,
uneasy place to Sam and Clarissa as they rolled home over the pavement,
while Will and Dulcie slept with little betwixt them and the stars.