MR. WAFFLES
Among a host of most meritorious young men--(any of whom would get up
behind a bill for five hundred pounds without looking to see that it wasn't
a thousand)--among a host of most meritorious young men who made their
appearance at Laverick Wells towards the close of Mr. Slocdolager's reign,
was Mr. Waffles; a most enterprising youth, just on the verge of arriving
of age, and into the possession of a very considerable amount of charming
ready money.
Were it not that a 'proud aristocracy,' as Sir Robert Peel called them,
have shown that they can get over any little deficiency of birth if there
is sufficiency of cash, we should have thought it necessary to make the
best of Mr. Waffles' pedigree, but the tide of opinion evidently setting
the other way, we shall just give it as we had it, and let the proud
aristocracy reject him if they like. Mr. Waffles' father, then, was either
a great grazier or a great brazier--which, we are unable to say, 'for a
small drop of ink having fallen,' not 'like dew,' but like a black beetle,
on the first letter of the word in our correspondent's communication, it
may do for either--but in one of which trades he made a 'mint of money,'
and latish on in life married a lady who hitherto had filled the honourable
office of dairy-maid in his house; she was a fine handsome woman and a year
or two after the birth of this their only child, he departed this life,
nearer eighty than seventy, leaving an 'inconsolable,' &c., who
unfortunately contracted matrimony with a master pork-butcher, before she
got the fine flattering white monument up, causing young Waffles to be
claimed for dry-nursing by that expert matron the High Court of Chancery;
who, of course, had him properly educated--where, it is immaterial to
relate, as we shall step on till we find him at college.
Our friend, having proved rather too vivacious for the Oxford Dons, had
been recommended to try the effects of the Laverick Wells, or any other
waters he liked, and had arrived with a couple of hunters and a hack, much
to the satisfaction of the neighbouring master of hounds and his huntsman;
for Waffles had ridden over and maimed more hounds to his own share, during
the two seasons he had been at Oxford, than that gentleman had been in the
habit of appropriating to the use of the whole university. Corresponding
with that gentleman's delight at getting rid of him was Mr. Slocdolager's
dismay at his appearance, for fully satisfied that Oxford was the seat of
fox-hunting as well as of all the other arts and sciences, Mr. Waffles
undertook to enlighten him and his huntsman on the mysteries of their
calling, and 'Old Sloc,' as he was called, being a very silent man, while
Mr. Waffles was a very noisy one, Sloc was nearly talked deaf by him.
Mr. Waffles was just in the hey-day of hot, rash, youthful indiscretion and
extravagance. He had not the slightest idea of the value of money, and
looked at the fortune he was so closely approaching as perfectly
inexhaustible. His rooms, the most spacious and splendid at that most
spacious and splendid hotel, the 'Imperial,' were filled with a profusion
of the most useless but costly articles. Jewellery without end, pictures
innumerable, pictures that represented all sorts of imaginary sums of
money, just as they represented all sorts of imaginary scenes, but whose
real worth or genuineness would never be tested till the owner wanted to
'convert them.'
Mr. Waffles was a 'pretty man.' Tall, slim, and slight, with long curly
light hair, pink and white complexion, visionary whiskers, and a tendency
to moustache that could best be seen sideways. He had light blue eyes;
while his features generally were good, but expressive of little beyond
great good-humour. In dress, he was both smart and various; indeed, we feel
a difficulty in fixing him in any particular costume, so frequent and
opposite were his changes. He had coats of every cut and colour. Sometimes
he was the racing man with a bright-button'd Newmarket brown cut-away, and
white-cord trousers, with drab cloth-boots; anon, he would be the officer,
and shine forth in a fancy forage cap, cocked jauntily over a profusion of
well-waxed curls, a richly braided surtout, with military overalls strapped
down over highly varnished boots, whose hypocritical heels would sport a
pair of large rowelled long-necked, ringing, brass spurs. Sometimes he was
a Jack tar, with a little glazed hat, a once-round tie, a checked shirt, a
blue jacket, roomy trousers, and broad-stringed pumps; and, before the
admiring ladies had well digested him in that dress, he would be seen
cantering away on a long-tailed white barb, in a pea-green duck-hunter,
with cream-coloured leather and rose-tinted tops. He was
'All things by turns, and nothing long.'
Such was the gentleman elected to succeed the silent, matter-of-fact Mr.
Slocdolager in the important office of Master of the Laverick Wells Hunt;
and whatever may be the merits of either--upon which we pass no opinion--it
cannot be denied that they were essentially different. Mr. Slocdolager was
a man of few words, and not at all a ladies' man. He could not even talk
when he was crammed with wine, and though he could hold a good quantity,
people soon found out they might just as well pour it into a jug as down
his throat, so they gave up asking him out. He was a man of few coats, as
well as of few words; one on, and one off, being the extent of his
wardrobe. His scarlet was growing plum-colour, and the rest of his hunting
costume has been already glanced at. He lodged above Smallbones, the
veterinary surgeon, in a little back street, where he lived in the quietest
way, dining when he came in from hunting,--dressing, or rather changing,
only when he was wet, hunting each fox again over his brandy-and-water, and
bundling off to bed long before many of his 'field' had left the
dining-room. He was little better than a better sort of huntsman.
Waffles, as we said before, had made himself conspicuous towards the close
of Mr. Slocdolager's reign, chiefly by his dashing costume, his reckless
riding, and his off-hand way of blowing up and slanging people.
Indeed, a stranger would have taken him for the master, a delusion that was
heightened by his riding with a formidable-looking sherry-case, in the
shape of a horn, at his saddle. Save when engaged in sucking this, his
tongue was never at fault. It was jabber, jabber, jabber; chatter, chatter,
chatter; prattle, prattle, prattle; occasionally about something, oftener
about nothing, but in cover or out, stiff country or open, trotting or
galloping, wet day or dry, good scenting day or bad, Waffles' clapper never
was at rest. Like all noisy chaps, too, he could not bear any one to make a
noise but himself. In furtherance of this, he called in the aid of his
Oxfordshire rhetoric. He would halloo _at_ people, designating them by some
peculiarity that he thought he could wriggle out of, if necessary, instead
of attacking them by name. Thus, if a man spoke, or placed himself where
Waffles thought he ought not to be (that is to say, anywhere but where
Waffles was himself), he would exclaim, 'Pray, sir, hold your tongue!--you,
sir!--no, sir, not you--the man that speaks as if he had a brush in his
throat!'--or, '_Do_ come away, sir!--you, sir!--the man in the
mushroom-looking hat!'--or, 'that gentleman in the parsimonious boots!'
looking at some one with very narrow tops.
[Illustration: MR. WAFFLES, THE PRESENT MASTER OF THE LAVERICK WELLS
HOUNDS]
Still, he was a rattling, good-natured, harum-scarum fellow; and
masterships of hounds, memberships of Parliament--all expensive
unmoney-making offices,--being things that most men are anxious to foist
upon their friends, Mr. Waffles' big talk and interference in the field
procured him the honour of the first refusal. Not that he was the man to
refuse, for he jumped at the offer, and, as he would be of age before the
season came round, and would have got all his money out of Chancery, he
disdained to talk about a subscription, and boldly took the hounds as his
own. He then became a very important personage at Laverick Wells.
He had always been a most important personage among the ladies, but as the
men couldn't marry him, those who didn't want to borrow money of him, of
course, ran him down. It used to be, 'Look at that dandified ass, Waffles,
I declare the sight of him makes me sick'; or, 'What a barber's apprentice
that fellow is, with his ringlets all smeared with Macassar.'
Now it was Waffles this, Waffles that, 'Who dines with Waffles?' 'Waffles
is the best fellow under the sun! By Jingo, I know no such man as Waffles!'
'_Most deserving_ young man!'
In arriving at this conclusion, their judgement was greatly assisted by the
magnificent way he went to work. Old Tom Towler, the whip, who had toiled
at his calling for twenty long years on fifty pounds and what he could
'pick up,' was advanced to a hundred and fifty, with a couple of men under
him. Instead of riding worn-out, tumble-down, twenty-pound screws, he was
mounted on hundred-guinea horses, for which the dealers were to have a
couple of hundred, _when they were paid_. Everything was in the same
proportion.
Mr. Waffles' succession to the hunt made a great commotion among the
fair--many elegant and interesting young ladies, who had been going on the
pious tack against the Reverend Solomon Winkeyes, the popular bachelor
preacher of St. Margaret's, teaching in his schools, distributing his
tracts, and collecting the penny subscriptions for his clothing club, now
took to riding in fan-tailed habits and feathered hats, and talking about
leaping and hunting, and riding over rails. Mr. Waffles had a pound of
hat-strings sent him in a week, and muffatees innumerable. Some, we are
sorry to say, worked him cigar-cases. He, in return, having expended a vast
of toil and ingenuity in inventing a 'button,' now had several dozen of
them worked up into brooches, which he scattered about with a liberal hand.
It was not one of your matter-of-fact story-telling buttons--a fox with
'TALLY-HO,' or a fox's head grinning in grim death--making a red
coat look like a miniature butcher's shamble, but it was one of your
queer-twisting lettered concerns, that may pass either for a military
button or a naval button, or a club button, or even for a livery button.
The letters, two W's, were so skilfully entwined, that even a
compositor--and compositors are people who can read almost anything--would
have been puzzled to decipher it. The letters were gilt, riveted on steel,
and the wearers of the button-brooches were very soon dubbed by the
non-recipients, 'Mr. Waffles' sheep.'
[Illustration]
A fine button naturally requires a fine coat to put it on, and many were
the consultations and propositions as to what it should be. Mr. Slocdolager
had done nothing in the decorative department, and many thought the failure
of funds was a good deal attributable to that fact. Mr. Waffles was not the
man to lose an opportunity of adding another costume to his wardrobe, and
after an infinity of trouble, and trials of almost all the colours of the
rainbow, he at length settled the following uniform, which, at least, had
the charm of novelty to recommend it. The morning, or hunt-coat, was to be
scarlet, with a cream-coloured collar and cuffs; and the evening, or dress
coat, was to be cream-colour, with a scarlet collar and cuffs, and scarlet
silk facings and linings, looking as if the wearer had turned the morning
one inside out. Waistcoats, and other articles of dress, were left to the
choice of the wearer, experience having proved that they are articles it is
impossible to legislate upon with any effect.
The old ladies, bless their disinterested hearts, alone looked on the hound
freak with other than feelings of approbation.
They thought it a pity he should take them. They wished he mightn't injure
himself--hounds were expensive things--led to habits of
irregularity--should be sorry to see such a nice young man as Mr. Waffles
led astray--not that it would make any difference to them, _but_--(looking
significantly at their daughters). No fox had been hunted by more hounds
than Waffles had been by the ladies; but though he had chatted and prattled
with fifty fair maids--any one of whom he might have found difficult to
resist, if 'pinned' single-handed by, in a country house, yet the
multiplicity of assailants completely neutralized each other, and verified
the truth of the adage that there is 'safety in a crowd.'
If pretty, lisping Miss Wordsworth thought she had shot an arrow home to
his heart over night, a fresh smile and dart from little Mary Ogleby's dark
eyes extracted it in the morning, and made him think of her till the
commanding figure and noble air of the Honourable Miss Letitia Amelia
Susannah Jemimah de Jenkins, in all the elegance of first-rate millinery
and dressmakership, drove her completely from his mind, to be in turn
displaced by some one more bewitching. Mr. Waffles was reputed to be made
of money, and he went at it as though he thought it utterly impossible to
get through it. He was greatly aided in his endeavours by the fact of its
being all in the funds--a great convenience to the spendthrift. It keeps
him constantly in cash, and enables him to 'cut and come again,' as quick
as ever he likes. Land is not half so accommodating; neither is money on
mortgage. What with time spent in investigating a title, or giving notice
to 'pay in,' an industrious man wants a second loan by the time, or perhaps
before, he gets the first. Acres are not easy of conversion, and the mere
fact of wanting to sell implies a deficiency somewhere. With money in the
funds, a man has nothing to do but lodge a power of attorney with his
broker, and write up for four or five thousand pounds, just as he would
write to his bootmaker for four or five pairs of boots, the only difference
being, that in all probability the money would be down before the boots.
Then, with money in the funds, a man keeps up his credit to the far
end--the last thousand telling no more tales than the first, and making
just as good a show.
We are almost afraid to say what Mr. Waffles' means were, but we really
believe, at the time he came of age, that he had 100,000_l._ in the funds,
which were nearly at 'par'--a term expressive of each hundred being worth a
hundred, and not eighty-nine or ninety pounds as is now the case, which
makes a considerable difference in the melting. Now a real _bona fide_
100,000_l._ always counts as three in common parlance, which latter sum
would yield a larger income than gilds the horizon of the most mercenary
mother's mind, say ten thousand a-year, which we believe is generally
allowed to be 'v--a--a--ry handsome.'
No wonder, then, that Mr. Waffles was such a hero. Another great
recommendation about him was, that he had not had time to be much plucked.
Many of the young men of fortune that appear upon town have lost half their
feathers on the race-course or the gaming-table before the ladies get a
chance at them; but here was a nice, fresh-coloured youth, with all his
downy verdure full upon him. It takes a vast of clothes, even at Oxford
prices, to come to a thousand pounds, and if we allow four or five thousand
for his other extravagances, he could not have done much harm to a hundred
thousand.
Our friend, soon finding that he was 'cock of the walk,' had no notion of
exchanging his greatness for the nothingness of London, and, save going up
occasionally to see about opening the flood-gates of his fortune, he spent
nearly the whole summer at Laverick Wells. A fine season it was, too--the
finest season the Wells had ever known. When at length the long London
season closed, there was a rush of rank and fashion to the English
watering-places, quite unparalleled in the 'recollection of the oldest
inhabitants.' There were blooming widows in every stage of grief and woe,
from the becoming cap to the fashionable corset and ball flounce--widows
who would never forget the dear deceased, or think of any other
man--_unless he had at least five thousand a year_. Lovely girls, who
didn't care a farthing if the man was 'only handsome'; and smiling mammas
'egging them on,' who would look very different when they came to the
horrid L s. d. And this mercantile expression leads us to the observation
that we know nothing so dissimilar as a trading town and a watering-place.
In the one, all is bustle, hurry, and activity; in the other, people don't
seem to know what to do to get through the day. The city and west-end
present somewhat of the contrast, but not to the extent of manufacturing or
sea-port towns and watering-places. Bathing-places are a shade better than
watering-places in the way of occupation, for people can sit staring at the
sea, counting the ships, or polishing their nails with a shell, whereas at
watering-places, they have generally little to do but stare at and talk of
each other, and mark the progress of the day, by alternately drinking at
the wells, eating at the hotels, and wandering between the library and the
railway station. The ladies get on better, for where there are ladies there
are always fine shops, and what between turning over the goods, and
sweeping the streets with their trains, making calls, and arranging
partners for balls, they get through their time very pleasantly; but what
is 'life' to them is often death to the men.