LET us make a slight sketch of our amiable friend, Mr. Felix Nixon. We
are strongly disposed to think, that if we put him in this place, he will
answer our purpose without another word of comment.
Felix, then, is a young gentleman who lives at home with his mother, just
within the twopenny-post office circle of three miles from St.
Martin-le-Grand. He wears Indiarubber goloshes when the weather is at
all damp, and always has a silk handkerchief neatly folded up in the
right-hand pocket of his great-coat, to tie over his mouth when he goes
home at night; moreover, being rather near-sighted, he carries spectacles
for particular occasions, and has a weakish tremulous voice, of which he
makes great use, for he talks as much as any old lady breathing.
The two chief subjects of Felix’s discourse, are himself and his mother,
both of whom would appear to be very wonderful and interesting persons.
As Felix and his mother are seldom apart in body, so Felix and his mother
are scarcely ever separate in spirit. If you ask Felix how he finds
himself to-day, he prefaces his reply with a long and minute bulletin of
his mother’s state of health; and the good lady in her turn, edifies her
acquaintance with a circumstantial and alarming account, how he sneezed
four times and coughed once after being out in the rain the other night,
but having his feet promptly put into hot water, and his head into a
flannel-something, which we will not describe more particularly than by
this delicate allusion, was happily brought round by the next morning,
and enabled to go to business as usual.
Our friend is not a very adventurous or hot-headed person, but he has
passed through many dangers, as his mother can testify: there is one
great story in particular, concerning a hackney coachman who wanted to
overcharge him one night for bringing them home from the play, upon which
Felix gave the aforesaid coachman a look which his mother thought would
have crushed him to the earth, but which did not crush him quite, for he
continued to demand another sixpence, notwithstanding that Felix took out
his pocket-book, and, with the aid of a flat candle, pointed out the fare
in print, which the coachman obstinately disregarding, he shut the
street-door with a slam which his mother shudders to think of; and then,
roused to the most appalling pitch of passion by the coachman knocking a
double knock to show that he was by no means convinced, he broke with
uncontrollable force from his parent and the servant girl, and running
into the street without his hat, actually shook his fist at the coachman,
and came back again with a face as white, Mrs. Nixon says, looking about
her for a simile, as white as that ceiling. She never will forget his
fury that night, Never!
To this account Felix listens with a solemn face, occasionally looking at
you to see how it affects you, and when his mother has made an end of it,
adds that he looked at every coachman he met for three weeks afterwards,
in hopes that he might see the scoundrel; whereupon Mrs. Nixon, with an
exclamation of terror, requests to know what he would have done to him if
he _had_ seen him, at which Felix smiling darkly and clenching his right
fist, she exclaims, ‘Goodness gracious!’ with a distracted air, and
insists upon extorting a promise that he never will on any account do
anything so rash, which her dutiful son—it being something more than
three years since the offence was committed—reluctantly concedes, and his
mother, shaking her head prophetically, fears with a sigh that his spirit
will lead him into something violent yet. The discourse then, by an easy
transition, turns upon the spirit which glows within the bosom of Felix,
upon which point Felix himself becomes eloquent, and relates a thrilling
anecdote of the time when he used to sit up till two o’clock in the
morning reading French, and how his mother used to say, ‘Felix, you will
make yourself ill, I know you will;’ and how _he_ used to say, ‘Mother, I
don’t care—I will do it;’ and how at last his mother privately procured a
doctor to come and see him, who declared, the moment he felt his pulse,
that if he had gone on reading one night more—only one night more—he must
have put a blister on each temple, and another between his shoulders; and
who, as it was, sat down upon the instant, and writing a prescription for
a blue pill, said it must be taken immediately, or he wouldn’t answer for
the consequences. The recital of these and many other moving perils of
the like nature, constantly harrows up the feelings of Mr. Nixon’s
friends.
[Picture: The Domestic Young Gentleman]
Mrs. Nixon has a tolerably extensive circle of female acquaintance, being
a good-humoured, talkative, bustling little body, and to the unmarried
girls among them she is constantly vaunting the virtues of her son,
hinting that she will be a very happy person who wins him, but that they
must mind their P’s and Q’s, for he is very particular, and terribly
severe upon young ladies. At this last caution the young ladies resident
in the same row, who happen to be spending the evening there, put their
pocket-handkerchiefs before their mouths, and are troubled with a short
cough; just then Felix knocks at the door, and his mother drawing the
tea-table nearer the fire, calls out to him as he takes off his boots in
the back parlour that he needn’t mind coming in in his slippers, for
there are only the two Miss Greys and Miss Thompson, and she is quite
sure they will excuse _him_, and nodding to the two Miss Greys, she adds,
in a whisper, that Julia Thompson is a great favourite with Felix, at
which intelligence the short cough comes again, and Miss Thompson in
particular is greatly troubled with it, till Felix coming in, very faint
for want of his tea, changes the subject of discourse, and enables her to
laugh out boldly and tell Amelia Grey not to be so foolish. Here they
all three laugh, and Mrs. Nixon says they are giddy girls; in which stage
of the proceedings, Felix, who has by this time refreshened himself with
the grateful herb that ‘cheers but not inebriates,’ removes his cup from
his countenance and says with a knowing smile, that all girls are;
whereat his admiring mamma pats him on the back and tells him not to be
sly, which calls forth a general laugh from the young ladies, and another
smile from Felix, who, thinking he looks very sly indeed, is perfectly
satisfied.
Tea being over, the young ladies resume their work, and Felix insists
upon holding a skein of silk while Miss Thompson winds it on a card.
This process having been performed to the satisfaction of all parties, he
brings down his flute in compliance with a request from the youngest Miss
Grey, and plays divers tunes out of a very small music-book till
supper-time, when he is very facetious and talkative indeed. Finally,
after half a tumblerful of warm sherry and water, he gallantly puts on
his goloshes over his slippers, and telling Miss Thompson’s servant to
run on first and get the door open, escorts that young lady to her house,
five doors off: the Miss Greys who live in the next house but one
stopping to peep with merry faces from their own door till he comes back
again, when they call out ‘Very well, Mr. Felix,’ and trip into the
passage with a laugh more musical than any flute that was ever played.
Felix is rather prim in his appearance, and perhaps a little priggish
about his books and flute, and so forth, which have all their peculiar
corners of peculiar shelves in his bedroom; indeed all his female
acquaintance (and they are good judges) have long ago set him down as a
thorough old bachelor. He is a favourite with them however, in a certain
way, as an honest, inoffensive, kind-hearted creature; and as his
peculiarities harm nobody, not even himself, we are induced to hope that
many who are not personally acquainted with him will take our good word
in his behalf, and be content to leave him to a long continuance of his
harmless existence.