He who would know mankind must be at home with all men.
STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
We left Clarence safely deposited in his little lodgings. Whether
from the heat of his apartment or the restlessness a migration of beds
produces in certain constitutions, his slumbers on the first night of
his arrival were disturbed and brief. He rose early and descended to the
parlour; Mr. de Warens, the nobly appellatived foot-boy, was laying
the breakfast-cloth. From three painted shelves which constituted the
library of “Copperas Bower,” as its owners gracefully called their
habitation, Clarence took down a book very prettily bound; it was “Poems
by a Nobleman.” No sooner had he read two pages than he did exactly what
the reader would have done, and restored the volume respectfully to its
place. He then drew his chair towards the window, and wistfully eyed
sundry ancient nursery maids, who were leading their infant charges to
the “fresh fields and pastures new” of what is now the Regent’s Park.
In about an hour Mrs. Copperas descended, and mutual compliments were
exchanged; to her succeeded Mr. Copperas, who was well scolded for his
laziness: and to them, Master Adolphus Copperas, who was also chidingly
termed a naughty darling for the same offence. Now then Mrs. Copperas
prepared the tea, which she did in the approved method adopted by all
ladies to whom economy is dearer than renown, namely, the least possible
quantity of the soi-disant Chinese plant was first sprinkled by the
least possible quantity of hot water; after this mixture had become as
black and as bitter as it could possibly be without any adjunct from the
apothecary’s skill, it was suddenly drenched with a copious diffusion,
and as suddenly poured forth--weak, washy, and abominable,--into four
cups, severally appertaining unto the four partakers of the matutinal
nectar.
Then the conversation began to flow. Mrs. Copperas was a fine lady, and
a sentimentalist,--very observant of the little niceties of phrase and
manner. Mr. Copperas was a stock-jobber and a wit,--loved a good hit
in each capacity; was very round, very short, and very much like a John
Dory; and saw in the features and mind of the little Copperas the exact
representative of himself.
“Adolphus, my love,” said Mrs. Copperas, “mind what I told you, and sit
upright. Mr. Linden, will you allow me to cut you a leetle piece of this
roll?”
“Thank you,” said Clarence, “I will trouble you rather for the whole of
it.”
Conceive Mrs. Copperas’s dismay! From that moment she saw herself eaten
out of house and home; besides, as she afterwards observed to her friend
Miss Barbara York, the “vulgarity of such an amazing appetite!”
“Any commands in the city, Mr. Linden?” asked the husband; “a coach will
pass by our door in a few minutes,--must be on ‘Change in half an hour.
Come, my love, another cup of tea; make haste; I have scarcely a
moment to take my fare for the inside, before coachee takes his for the
outside. Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Linden.”
“Lord, Mr. Copperas,” said his helpmate, “how can you be so silly?
setting such an example to your son, too; never mind him, Adolphus, my
love; fie, child! a’n’t you ashamed of yourself? never put the spoon
in your cup till you have done tea: I must really send you to school to
learn manners. We have a very pretty little collection of books
here, Mr. Linden, if you would like to read an hour or two after
breakfast,--child, take your hands out of your pockets,--all the best
English classics I believe,--‘Telemachus,’ and Young’s ‘Night Thoughts,’
and ‘Joseph Andrews,’ and the ‘Spectator,’ and Pope’s Iliad, and
Creech’s Lucretius; but you will look over them yourself! This is
Liberty Hall, as well as Copperas Bower, Mr. Linden!”
“Well, my love,” said the stock-jobber, “I believe I must be off. Here
Tom,” Tom (Mr. de Warens had just entered the room with some more hot
water, to weaken still further “the poor remains of what was once”--the
tea!), “Tom, just run out and stop the coach; it will be by in five
minutes.”
“Have not I prayed and besought you, many and many a time, Mr.
Copperas,” said the lady, rebukingly, “not to call De Warens by his
Christian name? Don’t you know that all people in genteel life, who only
keep one servant, invariably call him by his surname, as if he were the
butler, you know?”
“Now, that is too good, my love,” said Copperas. “I will call poor Tom
by any surname you please, but I really can’t pass him off for a butler!
Ha--ha--ha--you must excuse me there, my love!”
“And pray, why not, Mr. Copperas? I have known many a butler bungle
more at a cork than he does; and pray tell me who did you ever see wait
better at dinner?”
“He wait at dinner, my love! it is not he who waits.”
“Who then, Mr. Copperas?”
“Why we, my love; it’s we who wait for dinner; but that’s the cook’s
fault, not his.”
“Pshaw! Mr. Copperas; Adolphus, my love, sit upright, darling.”
Here De Warens cried from the bottom of the stairs,--“Measter, the coach
be coming up.”
“There won’t be room for it to turn then,” said the facetious Mr.
Copperas, looking round the apartment as if he took the words literally.
“What coach is it, boy?”
Now that was not the age in which coaches scoured the city every half
hour, and Mr. Copperas knew the name of the coach as well as he knew his
own.
“It be the Swallow coach, sir.”
“Oh, very well: then since I have swallowed in the roll, I will now roll
in the Swallow--ha--ha--ha! Good-by, Mr. Linden.”
No sooner had the witty stock-jobber left the room than Mrs. Copperas
seemed to expand into a new existence. “My husband, sir,” said she,
apologetically, “is so odd, but he’s an excellent sterling character;
and that, you know, Mr. Linden, tells more in the bosom of a family than
all the shining qualities which captivate the imagination. I am sure,
Mr. Linden, that the moralist is right in admonishing us to prefer the
gold to the tinsel. I have now been married some years, and every year
seems happier than the last; but then, Mr. Linden, it is such a pleasure
to contemplate the growing graces of the sweet pledge of our mutual
love.--Adolphus, my dear, keep your feet still, and take your hands out
of your pockets!”
A short pause ensued.
“We see a great deal of company,” said Mrs. Copperas, pompously, “and of
the very best description. Sometimes we are favoured by the society
of the great Mr. Talbot, a gentleman of immense fortune and quite the
courtier: he is, it is true, a little eccentric in his dress: but then
he was a celebrated beau in his young days. He is our next neighbour;
you can see his house out of the window, just across the garden--there!
We have also, sometimes, our humble board graced by a very elegant
friend of mine, Miss Barbara York, a lady of very high connections, her
first cousin was a lord mayor.--Adolphus, my dear, what are you about?
Well, Mr. Linden, you will find your retreat quite undisturbed; I
must go about the household affairs; not that I do anything more
than superintend, you know, sir; but I think no lady should be above
consulting her husband’s interests; that’s what I call true old English
conjugal affection. Come, Adolphus, my dear.”
And Clarence was now alone. “I fear,” thought he, “that I shall get on
very indifferently with these people. But it will not do for me to be
misanthropical, and (as Dr. Latinas was wont to say) the great merit of
philosophy, when we cannot command circumstances, is to reconcile us to
them.”