CHAPTER I.
The Bachelor of Beak Street.
Who shall be the hero of this tale? Not I who write it. I am but the Chorus of the Play. I make remarks on the conduct of the characters: I narrate their simple story. There is love and marriage in it: there is grief and disappointment: the scene is in the parlour, and the region beneath the parlour. No: it may be the parlour and kitchen, in this instance, are on the same level. There is no high life, unless, to be sure, you call a baronet’s widow a lady in high life; and some ladies may be, while some certainly are not. I don’t think there’s a villain in the whole performance. There is an abominable selfish old woman, certainly: an old highway robber; an old sponger on other people’s kindness; an old haunter of Bath and Cheltenham boarding-houses (about which how can I know anything, never having been in a boarding-house at Bath or Cheltenham in my life?); an old swindler of tradesmen, tyrant of servants, bully of the poor—who, to be sure, might do duty for a villain, but she considers herself as virtuous a woman as ever was born. The heroine is not faultless (ah! that will be a great relief to some folks, for many writers’ good women are, you know, so very insipid). The principal personage you may very likely think to be no better than a muff. But is many a respectable man of our acquaintance much better? and do muffs know that they are what they are, or, knowing it, are they unhappy? Do girls decline to marry one if he is rich? Do we refuse to dine with one? I listened to one at Church last Sunday, with all the women crying and sobbing; and, oh, dear me! how finely he preached! Don’t we give him great credit for wisdom and eloquence in the House of Commons? Don’t we give him important commands in the army? Can you, or can you not, point out one who has been made a peer? Doesn’t your wife call one in the moment any of the children are ill? Don’t we read his dear poems, or even novels? Yes; perhaps even this one is read and written by—Well? Quid rides? Do you mean that I am painting a portrait which hangs before me every morning in the looking-glass when I am shaving? Après? Do you suppose that I suppose that I have not infirmities like my neighbours? Am I weak? It is notorious to all my friends there is a certain dish I can’t resist; no, not if I have already eaten twice too much at dinner. So, dear sir, or madam, have you your weakness—your irresistible dish of temptation? (or if you don’t know it, your friends do). No, dear friend, the chances are that you and I are not people of the highest intellect, of the largest fortune, of the most ancient family, of the most consummate virtue, of the most faultless beauty in face and figure. We are no heroes nor angels; neither are we fiends from abodes unmentionable, black assassins, treacherous Iagos, familiar with stabbing and poison—murder our amusement, daggers our playthings, arsenic our daily bread, lies our conversation, and forgery our common handwriting. No, we are not monsters of crime, or angels walking the earth—at least I know one of us who isn’t, as can be shown any day at home if the knife won’t cut or the mutton comes up raw. But we are not altogether brutal and unkind, and a few folks like us. Our poetry is not as good as Alfred Tennyson’s, but we can turn a couplet for Miss Fanny’s album: our jokes are not always first-rate, but Mary and her mother smile very kindly when papa tells his story or makes his pun. We have many weaknesses, but we are not ruffians of crime. No more was my friend Lovel. On the contrary, he was as harmless and kindly a fellow as ever lived when I first knew him. At present, with his changed position, he is, perhaps, rather fine (and certainly I am not asked to his best dinner-parties as I used to be, where you hardly see a commoner—but stay! I am advancing matters). At the time when this story begins, I say, Lovel had his faults—which of us has not? He had buried his wife, having notoriously been henpecked by her. How many men and brethren are like him! He had a good fortune—I wish I had as much—though I daresay many people are ten times as rich. He was a good-looking fellow enough; though that depends, ladies, upon whether you like a fair man or a dark one. He had a country house, but it was only at Putney. In fact, he was in business in the city, and being a hospitable man, and having three or four spare bed-rooms, some of his friends were always welcome at Shrublands, especially after Mrs. Lovel’s death, who liked me pretty well at the period of her early marriage with my friend, but got to dislike me at last and to show me the cold shoulder. That is a joint I never could like (though I have known fellows who persist in dining off it year after year, who cling hold of it, and refuse to be separated from it). I say, when Lovel’s wife began to show me that she was tired of my company, I made myself scarce: used to pretend to be engaged when Fred faintly asked me to Shrublands; to accept his meek apologies, proposals to dine en garçon at Greenwich, the club, and so forth; and never visit upon him my wrath at his wife’s indifference—for after all, he had been my friend at many a pinch: he never stinted at Hart’s or Lovegrove’s, and always made a point of having the wine I liked, never mind what the price was. As for his wife, there was, assuredly, no love lost between us—I thought her a lean, scraggy, lackadaisical, egotistical, consequential, insipid creature: and as for his mother-in-law, who stayed at Fred’s as long and as often as her daughter would endure her, has anyone who ever knew that notorious old Lady Baker at Bath, at Cheltenham, at Brighton,—wherever trumps and frumps were found together; wherever scandal was cackled; wherever fly-blown reputations were assembled, and dowagers with damaged titles trod over each other for the pas;—who, I say, ever had a good word for that old woman? What party was not bored where she appeared? What tradesman was not done with whom she dealt? I wish with all my heart I was about to narrate a story with a good mother-in-law for a character; but then you know, my dear madam, all good women in novels are insipid. This woman certainly was not. She was not only not insipid, but exceedingly bad tasted. She had a foul, loud tongue, a stupid head, a bad temper, an immense pride and arrogance, an extravagant son, and very little money. Can I say much more of a woman than this? Aha! my good Lady Baker! I was a mauvais sujèt, was I?—I was leading Fred into smoking, drinking, and low bachelor habits, was I? I, his old friend, who have borrowed money from him any time these twenty years, was not fit company for you and your precious daughter? Indeed! I paid the money I borrowed from him like a man; but did you ever pay him, I should like to know? When Mrs. Lovel was in the first column of The Times, then Fred and I used to go off to Greenwich and Blackwall, as I said; then his kind old heart was allowed to feel for his friend; then we could have the other bottle of claret without the appearance of Bedford and the coffee, which in Mrs. L.’s time used to be sent in to us before we could ring for a second bottle, although she and Lady Baker had had three glasses each out of the first. Three full glasses each, I give you my word! No, madam, it was your turn to bully me once—now it is mine, and I use it. No, you old Catamaran, though you pretend you never read novels, some of your confounded good-natured friends will let you know of this one. Here you are, do you hear? Here you shall be shown up. And so I intend to show up other women and other men who have offended me. Is one to be subject to slights and scorn, and not have revenge? Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries!—what worthy man does not keep those in mind?
Before entering upon the present narrative, may I take leave to inform a candid public, that though it is all true, there is not a word of truth in it; that though Lovel is alive and prosperous, and you very likely have met him, yet I defy you to point him out; that his wife (for he is Lovel the Widower no more) is not the lady you imagine her to be, when you say (as you will persist in doing), “Oh, that character is intended for Mrs. Thingamy, or was notoriously drawn from Lady So-and-so.” No. You are utterly mistaken. Why, even the advertising-puffers have almost given up that stale stratagem of announcing “Revelations from High Life.—The beau monde will be startled at recognizing the portraits of some of its brilliant leaders in Miss Wiggins’s forthcoming Roman de Société.” Or, “We suspect a certain ducal house will be puzzled to guess how the pitiless author of May Fair Mysteries has become acquainted with (and exposed with a fearless hand) certain family secrets which were thought only to be known to a few of the very highest members of the aristocracy.” No, I say; these silly baits to catch an unsuspecting public shall not be our arts. If you choose to occupy yourself with trying to ascertain if a certain cap fits one amongst ever so many thousand heads, you may possibly pop it on the right one: but the cap-maker will perish before he tells you; unless, of course, he has some private pique to avenge, or malice to wreak, upon some individual who can’t by any possibility hit again;—then, indeed, he will come boldly forward and seize upon his victim—(a bishop, say, or a woman without coarse, quarrelsome male relatives, will be best)—and clap on him, or her, such a cap, with such ears, that all the world shall laugh at the poor wretch, shuddering, and blushing beet-root red, and whimpering deserved tears of rage and vexation at being made the common butt of society. Besides, I dine at Lovel’s still; his company and cuisine are amongst the best in London. If they suspected I was taking them off, he and his wife would leave off inviting me. Would any man of a generous disposition lose such a valued friend for a joke, or be so foolish as to show him up in a story? All persons with a decent knowledge of the world will at once banish the thought, as not merely base, but absurd. I am invited to his house one day next week: vous concevez I can’t mention the very day, for then he would find me out—and of course there would be no more cards for his old friend. He would not like appearing, as it must be owned he does in this memoir, as a man of not very strong mind. He believes himself to be a most determined, resolute person. He is quick in speech, wears a fierce beard, speaks with asperity to his servants (who liken him to a—to that before-named sable or ermine contrivance, in which ladies insert their hands in winter), and takes his wife to task so smartly, that I believe she believes he believes he is the master of the house. “Elizabeth, my love, he must mean A, or B, or D,” I fancy I hear Lovel say; and she says, “Yes; oh! it is certainly D—his very image!” “D to a T,” says Lovel (who is a neat wit). She may know that I mean to depict her husband in the above unpretending lines: but she will never let me know of her knowledge except by a little extra courtesy; except (may I make this pleasing exception?) by a few more invitations; except by a look of those unfathomable eyes (gracious goodness! to think she wore spectacles ever so long, and put a lid over them as it were!), into which, when you gaze sometimes, you may gaze so deep, and deep, and deep, that I defy you to plumb half-way down into their mystery.
When I was a young man, I had lodgings in Beak Street, Regent Street (I no more have lived in Beak Street than in Belgrave Square: but I choose to say so, and no gentleman will be so rude as to contradict another)—I had lodgings, I say, in Beak Street, Regent Street. Mrs. Prior was the landlady’s name. She had seen better days—landladies frequently have. Her husband—he could not be called the landlord, for Mrs. P. was manager of the place,—had been, in happier times, captain or lieutenant in the militia; then of Diss, in Norfolk, of no profession; then of Norwich Castle, a prisoner for debt; then of Southampton Buildings, London, law-writer; then of the Bom-Retiro Cacadores, in the service of H. M. the Queen of Portugal, lieutenant and paymaster; then of Melina Place, St. George’s Fields, &c.—I forbear to give the particulars of an existence which a legal biographer has traced step by step, and which has more than once been the subject of judicial investigation by certain commissioners in Lincoln’s-inn Fields. Well, Prior, at this time, swimming out of a hundred shipwrecks, had clambered on to a lighter, as it were, and was clerk to a coal-merchant, by the river-side. “You conceive, sir,” he would say, “my employment is only temporary—the fortune of war, the fortune of war!” He smattered words in not a few foreign languages. His person was profusely scented with tobacco. Bearded individuals, padding the muddy hoof in the neighbouring Regent Street, would call sometimes of an evening, and ask for “the captain.” He was known at many neighbouring billiard-tables, and, I imagine, not respected. You will not see enough of Captain Prior to be very weary of him and his coarse swagger, to be disgusted by his repeated requests for small money-loans, or to deplore his loss, which you will please to suppose has happened before the curtain of our present drama draws up. I think two people in the world were sorry for him: his wife, who still loved the memory of the handsome young man who had wooed and won her; his daughter Elizabeth, whom for the last few months of his life, and up to his fatal illness, he every evening conducted to what he called her “academy.” You are right. Elizabeth is the principal character in this story. When I knew her, a thin, freckled girl of fifteen, with a lean frock, and hair of a reddish hue, she used to borrow my books, and play on the First Floor’s piano, when he was from home—Slumley his name was. He was editor of the Swell, a newspaper then published; author of a great number of popular songs, a friend of several music-selling houses; and it was by Mr. Slumley’s interest that Elizabeth was received as a pupil at what the family called “the academy.”
Captain Prior then used to conduct his girl to the Academy, but she often had to conduct him home again. Having to wait about the premises for two, or three, or five hours sometimes, whilst Elizabeth was doing her lessons, he would naturally desire to shelter himself from the cold at some neighbouring house of entertainment. Every Friday, a prize of a golden medal, nay, I believe sometimes of twenty-five silver medals, was awarded to Miss Bellenden and other young ladies for their good conduct and assiduity at this academy. Miss Bellenden gave her gold medal to her mother, only keeping five shillings for herself, with which the poor child bought gloves, shoes, and her humble articles of millinery.
Once or twice the captain succeeded in intercepting that piece of gold, and I daresay treated some of his whiskered friends, the clinking trampers of the Quadrant pavement. He was a free-handed fellow when he had anybody’s money in his pocket. It was owing to differences regarding the settlement of accounts that he quarrelled with the coal-merchant, his very last employer. Bessy, after yielding once or twice to his importunity, and trying to believe his solemn promises of repayment, had strength of mind to refuse her father the pound which he would have taken. Her five shillings—her poor little slender pocket-money, the representative of her charities and kindnesses to the little brothers and sisters, of her little toilette ornaments, nay necessities; of those well-mended gloves, of those oft-darned stockings, of those poor boots, which had to walk many a weary mile after midnight; of those little knicknacks, in the shape of brooch or bracelet, with which the poor child adorned her homely robe or sleeve—her poor five shillings, out of which Mary sometimes found a pair of shoes, or Tommy a flannel jacket, and little Bill a coach and horse—this wretched sum, this mite, which Bessy administered among so many poor—I very much fear her father sometimes confiscated. I charged the child with the fact, and she could not deny me. I vowed a tremendous vow, that if ever I heard of her giving Prior money again, I would quit the lodgings, and never give those children lolly-pop, nor peg-top, nor sixpence; nor the pungent marmalade, nor the biting gingerbread-nut, nor the theatre-characters, nor the paint-box to illuminate the same; nor the discarded clothes, which became smaller clothes upon the persons of little Tommy and little Bill, for whom Mrs. Prior, and Bessy, and the little maid, cut, clipped, altered, ironed, darned, mangled, with the greatest ingenuity. I say, considering what had passed between me and the Priors—considering those money transactions, and those clothes, and my kindness to the children—it was rather hard that my jam-pots were poached, and my brandy-bottles leaked. And then to frighten her brother with the story of the inexorable creditor—oh, Mrs. Prior!—oh, fie, Mrs. P.!
So Bessy went to her school in a shabby shawl, a faded bonnet, and a poor little lean dress flounced with the mud and dust of all weathers, whereas there were some other young ladies, fellow-pupils of hers, who laid out their gold medals to much greater advantage. Miss Delamere, with her eighteen shillings a week (calling them “silver medals,” was only my wit, you see), had twenty new bonnets, silk and satin dresses for all seasons, feathers in abundance, swansdown muffs and tippets, lovely pocket handkerchiefs and trinkets, and many and many a half-crown mould of jelly, bottle of sherry, blanket, or what not, for a poor fellow-pupil in distress; and as for Miss Montanville, who had exactly the same sal—well, who had a scholarship of exactly the same value, viz. about fifty pounds yearly—she kept an elegant little cottage in the Regent’s Park, a brougham with a horse all over brass harness, and a groom with a prodigious gold lace hat-band, who was treated with frightful contumely at the neighbouring cab-stand: an aunt or a mother, I don’t know which (I hope it was only an aunt), always comfortably dressed, and who looked after Montanville: and she herself had bracelets, brooches, and velvet pelisses of the very richest description. But then Miss Montanville was a good economist. She was never known to help a poor friend in distress, or give a fainting brother and sister a crust or a glass of wine. She allowed ten shillings a week to her father, whose name was Boskinson, said to be clerk to a chapel in Paddington; but she would never see him—no, not when he was in hospital, where he was so ill; and though she certainly lent Miss Wilder thirteen pounds, she had Wilder arrested upon her promissory note for twenty-four, and sold up every stick of Wilder’s furniture, so that the whole academy cried shame! Well, an accident occurred to Miss Montanville, for which those may be sorry who choose. On the evening of the 26th of December, Eighteen hundred and something, when the conductors of the academy were giving their grand annual Christmas Pant—I should say examination of the Academy pupils before their numerous friends—Montanville, who happened to be present, not in her brougham this time, but in an aërial chariot of splendour drawn by doves, fell off a rainbow, and through the roof of the Revolving Shrine of the Amaranthine Queen, thereby very nearly damaging Bellenden, who was occupying the shrine, attired in a light-blue spangled dress, waving a wand, and uttering some idiotic verses composed for her by the Professor of Literature attached to the academy. As for Montanville, let her go shrieking down that trap-door, break her leg, be taken home, and never more be character of ours. She never could speak. Her voice was as hoarse as a fishwoman’s. Can that immense stout old box-keeper at the —— theatre, who limps up to ladies on the first tier, and offers that horrible footstool, which everybody stumbles over, and makes a clumsy curtsey, and looks so knowing and hard, as if she recognized an acquaintance in the splendid lady who enters the box—can that old female be the once brilliant Emily Montanville? I am told there are no lady box-keepers in the English theatres. This, I submit, is a proof of my consummate care and artifice in rescuing from a prurient curiosity the individual personages from whom the characters of the present story are taken. Montanville is not a box-opener. She may, under another name, keep a trinket-shop in the Burlington Arcade, for what you know: but this secret no torture shall induce me to divulge. Life has its rises and its downfalls, and you have had yours, you hobbling old creature. Montanville, indeed! Go thy ways! Here is a shilling for thee. (Thank you, sir.) Take away that confounded footstool, and never let us see thee more!
Now the fairy Amarantha was like a certain dear young lady of whom we have read in early youth. Up to twelve o’clock, attired in sparkling raiment, she leads the dance with the prince (Gradini, known as Grady in his days of banishment at the T. R. Dublin). At supper, she takes her place by the prince’s royal father (who is alive now, and still reigns occasionally, so that we will not mention his revered name). She makes believe to drink from the gilded pasteboard, and to eat of the mighty pudding. She smiles as the good old irascible monarch knocks the prime minister and the cooks about: she blazes in splendour: she beams with a thousand jewels, in comparison with which the Koh-i-noor is a wretched lustreless little pebble: she disappears in a chariot, such as a Lord Mayor never rode in:—and at midnight, who is that young woman tripping homeward through the wet streets in a battered bonnet, a cotton shawl, and a lean frock fringed with the dreary winter flounces?
Our Cinderella is up early in the morning: she does no little portion of the house-work: she dresses her sisters and brothers: she prepares papa’s breakfast. On days when she has not to go to morning lessons at her academy, she helps with the dinner. Heaven help us! She has often brought mine when I have dined at home, and owns to having made that famous mutton-broth when I had a cold. Foreigners come to the house—professional gentlemen—to see Slumley on the first floor; exiled captains of Spain and Portugal, companions of the warrior her father. It is surprising how she has learned their accents, and has picked up French and Italian, too. And she played the piano in Mr. Slumley’s room sometimes, as I have said; but refrained from that presently, and from visiting him altogether. I suspect he was not a man of principle. His Paper used to make direful attacks upon individual reputations; and you would find theatre and opera people most curiously praised and assaulted in the Swell. I recollect meeting him, several years after, in the lobby of the opera, in a very noisy frame of mind, when he heard a certain lady’s carriage called, and cried out with exceeding strong language, which need not be accurately reported, “Look at that woman! Confound her! I made her, sir! Got her an engagement when the family was starving, sir! Did you see her, sir! She wouldn’t even look at me!” Nor indeed was Mr. S. at that moment a very agreeable object to behold.
Then I remembered that there had been some quarrel with this man, when we lodged in Beak Street together. If difficulty there was, it was solved ambulando. He quitted the lodgings, leaving an excellent and costly piano as security for a heavy bill which he owed to Mrs. Prior, and the instrument was presently fetched away by the music-sellers, its owners. But regarding Mr. S.’s valuable biography, let us speak very gently. You see it is “an insult to literature” to say that there are disreputable and dishonest persons who write in newspapers.
Nothing, dear friend, escapes your penetration: if a joke is made in your company, you are down upon it instanter, and your smile rewards the wag who amuses you: so you knew at once, whilst I was talking of Elizabeth and her academy, that a theatre was meant, where the poor child danced for a guinea, or five-and-twenty shillings per week. Nay, she must have had not a little skill and merit to advance to the quarter of a hundred; for she was not pretty at this time, only a rough, tawny-haired filly of a girl, with great eyes. Dolphin, the manager, did not think much of her, and she passed before him in his regiment of Sea-nymphs, or Bayadères, or Fairies, or Mazurka maidens (with their fluttering lances and little scarlet slyboots!) scarcely more noticed than private Jones standing under arms in his company when his Royal Highness the Field-marshal gallops by. There were no dramatic triumphs for Miss Bellenden: no bouquets were flung at her feet: no cunning Mephistopheles—the emissary of some philandering Faustus outside—corrupted her duenna, or brought her caskets of diamonds. Had there been any such admirer for Bellenden, Dolphin would not only not have been shocked, but he would very likely have raised her salary. As it was, though himself, I fear, a person of loose morals, he respected better things. “That Bellenden’s a good hhonest gurl,” he said to the present writer: “works hard: gives her money to her family: father a shy old cove. Very good family, I hear they are!” and he passes on to some other of the innumerable subjects which engage a manager.
Now, why should a poor lodging-house keeper make such a mighty secret of having a daughter earning an honest guinea by dancing at a theatre? Why persist in calling the theatre an academy? Why did Mrs. Prior speak of it as such, to me who knew what the truth was, and to whom Elizabeth herself made no mystery of her calling?
There are actions and events in its life over which decent Poverty often chooses to cast a veil that is not unbecoming wear. We can all, if we are minded, peer through this poor flimsy screen: often there is no shame behind it:—only empty platters, poor scraps, and other threadbare evidence of want and cold. And who is called on to show his rags to the public, and cry out his hunger in the street? At this time (her character has developed itself not so amiably since), Mrs. Prior was outwardly respectable; and yet, as I have said, my groceries were consumed with remarkable rapidity; my wine and brandy bottles were all leaky, until they were excluded from air under a patent lock;—my Morel’s raspberry jam, of which I was passionately fond, if exposed on the table for a few hours, was always eaten by the cat, or that wonderful little wretch of a maid-of-all-work, so active, yet so patient, so kind, so dirty, so obliging. Was it the maid who took those groceries? I have seen the Gazza Ladra, and know that poor little maids are sometimes wrongfully accused; and besides, in my particular case, I own I don’t care who the culprit was. At the year’s end, a single man is not much poorer for this house-tax which he pays. One Sunday evening, being confined with a cold, and partaking of that mutton broth which Elizabeth made so well, and which she brought me, I entreated her to bring from the cupboard, of which I gave her the key, a certain brandy-bottle. She saw my face when I looked at her: there was no mistaking its agony. There was scarce any brandy left: it had all leaked away: and it was Sunday, and no good brandy was to be bought that evening.
Elizabeth, I say, saw my grief. She put down the bottle, and she cried: she tried to prevent herself from doing so at first, but she fairly burst into tears.
“My dear—dear child,” says I, seizing her hand, “you don’t suppose I fancy you——”
“No—no!” she says, drawing the large hand over her eyes. “No—no! but I saw it when you and Mr. Warrington last ’ad some. Oh! do have a patting lock!”
“A patent lock, my dear?” I remarked. “How odd that you, who have learned to pronounce Italian and French words so well, should make such strange slips in English? Your mother speaks well enough.”
“She was born a lady. She was not sent to be a milliner’s girl, as I was, and then among those noisy girls at that—oh! that place!” cries Bessy, in a sort of desperation clenching her hand.
Here the bells of St. Beak’s began to ring quite cheerily for evening service. I heard “Elizabeth!” cried out from lower regions by Mrs. Prior’s cracked voice. And the maiden went her way to Church, which she and her mother never missed of a Sunday; and I daresay I slept just as well without the brandy-and-water.
Slumley being gone, Mrs. Prior came to me rather wistfully one day, and wanted to know whether I would object to Madame Bentivoglio, the opera-singer, having the first floor? This was too much, indeed! How was my work to go on with that woman practising all day and roaring underneath me? But after sending away so good a customer, I could not refuse to lend the Priors a little more money; and Prior insisted upon treating me to a new stamp, and making out a new and handsome bill for an amount nearly twice as great as the last: which he had no doubt under heaven, and which he pledged his honour as an officer and a gentleman that he would meet. Let me see: That was how many years ago?—Thirteen, fourteen, twenty? Never mind. My fair Elizabeth, I think if you saw your poor old father’s signature now, you would pay it. I came upon it lately in an old box I haven’t opened these fifteen years, along with some letters written—never mind by whom—and an old glove that I used to set an absurd value by; and that emerald-green tabinet waistcoat which kind old Mrs. Macmanus gave me, and which I wore at the L—d L—t—nt’s ball, Ph-n-x Park, Dublin, once, when I danced with her there! Lord!—Lord! It would no more meet round my waist now than round Daniel Lambert’s. How we outgrow things!
But as I never presented this united bill of 43l. odd (the first portion of 23l., &c. was advanced by me in order to pay an execution out of the house),—as I never expected to have it paid any more than I did to be Lord Mayor of London,—I say it was a little hard that Mrs. Prior should write off to her brother (she writes a capital letter), blessing Providence that had given him a noble income, promising him the benefit of her prayers, in order that he should long live to enjoy his large salary, and informing him that an obdurate creditor, who shall be nameless (meaning me), who had Captain Prior in his power (as if being in possession of that dingy scrawl, I should have known what to do with it), who held Mr. Prior’s acceptance for 43l. 14s. 4d. due on the 3rd July (my bill), would infallibly bring their family to RUIN, unless a part of the money was paid up. When I went up to my old college, and called on Sargent, at Boniface Lodge, he treated me as civilly as if I had been an undergraduate; scarcely spoke to me in hall, where, of course, I dined at the Fellows’ table; and only asked me to one of Mrs. Sargent’s confounded tea-parties during the whole time of my stay. Now it was by this man’s entreaty that I went to lodge at Prior’s; he talked to me after dinner one day, he hummed, he ha’d, he blushed, he prated in his pompous way, about an unfortunate sister in London—fatal early marriage—husband, Captain Prior, Knight of the Swan with two Necks of Portugal, most distinguished officer, but imprudent speculator—advantageous lodgings in the centre of London, quiet, though near the Clubs—if I was ill (I am a confirmed invalid), Mrs. Prior, his sister, would nurse me like a mother. So, in a word, I went to Prior’s: I took the rooms: I was attracted by some children: Amelia Jane (that little dirty maid before mentioned) dragging a go-cart, containing a little dirty pair; another marching by them, carrying a fourth well nigh as big as himself. These little folks, having threaded the mighty flood of Regent Street, debouched into the quiet creek of Beak Street, just as I happened to follow them. And the door at which the small caravan halted,—the very door I was in search of,—was opened by Elizabeth, then only just emerging from childhood, with tawny hair falling into her solemn eyes.
The aspect of these little people, which would have deterred many, happened to attract me. I am a lonely man. I may have been ill-treated by some one once, but that is neither here nor there. If I had had children of my own, I think I should have been good to them. I thought Prior a dreadful vulgar wretch, and his wife a scheming, greedy little woman. But the children amused me: and I took the rooms, liking to hear overhead in the morning the patter of their little feet. The person I mean has several;—husband, judge in the West Indies. Allons! now you know how I came to live at Mrs. Prior’s.
Though I am now a steady, a confirmed old bachelor (I shall call myself Mr. Batchelor, if you please, in this story; and there is some one far—far away who knows why I will NEVER take another title), I was a gay young fellow enough once. I was not above the pleasures of youth: in fact, I learned quadrilles on purpose to dance with her that long vacation when I went to read with my young friend Lord Viscount Poldoody at Dub—psha! Be still, thou foolish heart! Perhaps I mis-spent my time as an undergraduate. Perhaps I read too many novels, occupied myself too much with “elegant literature” (that used to be our phrase), and spoke too often at the Union, where I had a considerable reputation. But those fine words got me no college prizes: I missed my fellowship: was rather in disgrace with my relations afterwards, but had a small independence of my own, which I eked out by taking a few pupils for little goes and the common degree. At length, a relation dying, and leaving me a farther small income, I left the university, and came to reside in London.
Now, in my third year at college, there came to St. Boniface a young gentleman, who was one of the few gentlemen-pensioners of our society. His popularity speedily was great. A kindly and simple youth, he would have been liked, I daresay, even though he had been no richer than the rest of us; but this is certain, that flattery, worldliness, mammon-worship, are vices as well known to young as to old boys; and a rich lad at school or college has his followers, tuft-hunters, led-captains, little courts, just as much as any elderly millionary of Pall-Mall, who gazes round his club to see whom he shall take home to dinner, while humble trencher-men wait anxiously, thinking—Ah! will he take me this time? or will he ask that abominable sneak and toady Henchman again? Well—well! this is an old story about parasites and flatterers. My dear good sir, I am not for a moment going to say that you ever were one; and I daresay it was very base and mean of us to like a man chiefly on account of his money. “I know”—Tom Lovel used to say—“I know fellows come to my rooms because I have a large allowance, and plenty of my poor old governor’s wine, and give good dinners: I am not deceived; but, at least, it is pleasanter to come to me and have good dinners, and good wine, than to go to Jack Highson’s dreary tea and turnout, or to Ned Roper’s abominable Oxbridge port.” And so I admit at once that Lovel’s parties were more agreeable than most men’s in the college. Perhaps the goodness of the fare, by pleasing the guests, made them more pleasant. A dinner in hall, and a pewter-plate is all very well, and I can say grace before it with all my heart; but a dinner with fish from London, game, and two or three nice little entrées, is better—and there was no better cook in the university than ours at St. Boniface, and ah, me! there were appetites then, and digestions which rendered the good dinner doubly good.
Between me and young Lovel a friendship sprang up, which, I trust, even the publication of this story will not diminish. There is a period, immediately after the taking of his bachelor’s degree, when many a university-man finds himself embarrassed. The tradesmen rather rudely press for a settlement of their accounts. Those prints we ordered calidi juventâ; those shirt-studs and pins which the jewellers would persist in thrusting into our artless bosoms; those fine coats we would insist on having for our books, as well as ourselves; all these have to be paid for by the graduate. And my father, who was then alive, refusing to meet these demands, under the—I own—just plea, that my allowance had been ample, and that my half-sisters ought not to be mulcted of their slender portions, in consequence of my extravagance, I should have been subject to very serious inconvenience—nay, possibly, to personal incarceration, had not Lovel, at the risk of rustication, rushed up to London to his mother (who then had especial reasons for being very gracious with her son), obtained a supply of money from her, and brought it to me at Mr. Shackell’s horrible hotel, where I was lodged. He had tears in his kind eyes; he grasped my hand a hundred and hundred times as he flung the notes into my lap; and the recording tutor (Sargent was only tutor then) who was going to bring him up before the Master for breach of discipline, dashed away a drop from his own lid, when, with a moving eloquence, I told what had happened, and blotted out the transaction with some particular old 1811 Port, of which we freely partook in his private rooms that evening. By laborious instalments, I had the happiness to pay Lovel back. I took pupils, as I said; I engaged in literary pursuits: I became connected with a literary periodical, and I am ashamed to say, I imposed myself upon the public as a good classical scholar. I was not thought the less learned, when my relative dying, I found myself in possession of a small independency; and my Translations from the Greek, my Poems by Beta, and my articles in the paper of which I was part proprietor for several years, have had their little success in their day.
Indeed at Oxbridge, if I did not obtain university honours, at least I showed literary tastes. I got the prize essay one year at Boniface, and plead guilty to having written essays, poems, and a tragedy. My college friends had a joke at my expense (a very small joke serves to amuse those port-wine-bibbing fogies, and keeps them laughing for ever so long a time)—they are welcome, I say, to make merry at my charges—in respect of a certain bargain which I made on coming to London, and in which, had I been Moses Primrose purchasing green spectacles, I could scarcely have been more taken in. My Jenkinson was an old college acquaintance, whom I was idiot enough to imagine a respectable man: the fellow had a very smooth tongue, and sleek, sanctified exterior. He was rather a popular preacher, and used to cry a good deal in the pulpit. He, and a queer wine-merchant and bill-discounter, Sherrick by name, had somehow got possession of that neat little literary paper, the Museum, which, perhaps, you remember; and this eligible literary property my friend Honeyman, with his wheedling tongue, induced me to purchase. I bear no malice: the fellow is in India now, where I trust he pays his butcher and baker. He was in dreadful straits for money when he sold me the Museum. He began crying when I told him some short time afterwards that he was a swindler, and from behind his pocket-handkerchief sobbed a prayer that I should one day think better of him; whereas my remarks to the same effect produced an exactly contrary impression upon his accomplice, Sherrick, who burst out laughing in my face, and said, “The more fool you.” Mr. Sherrick was right. He was a fool, without mistake, who had any money-dealing with him; and poor Honeyman was right, too; I don’t think so badly of him as I did. A fellow so hardly pinched for money could not resist the temptation of extracting it from such a greenhorn. I daresay I gave myself airs as editor of that confounded Museum, and proposed to educate the public taste, to diffuse morality and sound literature throughout the nation, and to pocket a liberal salary in return for my services. I daresay I printed my own sonnets, my own tragedy, my own verses (to a Being who shall be nameless, but whose conduct has caused a faithful heart to bleed not a little). I daresay I wrote satirical articles, in which I piqued myself upon the fineness of my wit, and criticisms, got up for the nonce, out of encyclopædias and biographical dictionaries; so that I would be actually astounded at my own knowledge. I daresay I made a gaby of myself to the world: pray, my good friend, hast thou never done likewise? If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou wilt never be a wise man.
I think it was my brilliant confrère on the first floor (he had pecuniary transactions with Sherrick, and visited two or three of her Majesty’s metropolitan prisons at that gentleman’s suit) who first showed me how grievously I had been cheated in the newspaper matter. Slumley wrote for a paper printed at our office. The same boy often brought proofs to both of us—a little bit of a puny bright-eyed chap, who looked scarce twelve years old, when he was sixteen; who in wit was a man, when in stature he was a child,—like many other children of the poor.
This little Dick Bedford used to sit many hours asleep on my landing-place or Slumley’s, whilst we were preparing our invaluable compositions within our respective apartments. S. was a good-natured reprobate, and gave the child of his meat and his drink. I used to like to help the little man from my breakfast, and see him enjoy the meal. As he sate, with his bag on his knees, his head sunk in sleep, his little high-lows scarce reaching the floor, Dick made a touching little picture. The whole house was fond of him. The tipsy captain nodded him a welcome as he swaggered down stairs, stock, and coat, and waistcoat in hand, to his worship’s toilette in the back kitchen. The children and Dick were good friends; and Elizabeth patronized him, and talked with him now and again, in her grave way. You know Clancy, the composer?—know him better, perhaps, under his name of Friedrich Donner? Donner used to write music to Slumley’s words, or vice versâ; and would come now and again to Beak Street, where he and his poet would try their joint work at the piano. At the sound of that music, little Dick’s eyes used to kindle. “Oh, it’s prime!” said the young enthusiast. And I will say, that good-natured miscreant of a Slumley not only gave the child pence, but tickets for the play, concerts, and so forth. Dick had a neat little suit of clothes at home; his mother made him a very nice little waistcoat out of my undergraduate’s gown; and he and she, a decent woman, when in their best raiment, looked respectable enough for any theatre-pit in England.
Amongst other places of public amusement which he attended, Mr. Dick frequented the academy where Miss Bellenden danced, and whence poor Elizabeth Prior issued forth after midnight in her shabby frock. And once, the captain, Elizabeth’s father and protector, being unable to walk very accurately, and noisy and incoherent in his speech, so that the attention of Messieurs of the police was directed towards him, Dick came up, placed Elizabeth and her father in a cab, paid the fare with his own money, and brought the whole party home in triumph, himself sitting on the box of the vehicle. I chanced to be coming home myself (from one of Mrs. Wateringham’s elegant tea soirées, in Dorset Square), and reached my door just at the arrival of Dick and his caravan. “Here, cabby!” says Dick, handing out the fare, and looking with his brightest eyes. It is pleasanter to look at that beaming little face, than at the captain yonder, reeling into his house, supported by his daughter. Dick cried, Elizabeth told me, when, a week afterwards, she wanted to pay him back his shilling; and she said he was a strange child, that he was.
I revert to my friend Lovel. I was coaching Lovel for his degree (which, between ourselves, I think he never would have attained), when he suddenly announced to me, from Weymouth, where he was passing the vacation, his intention to quit the university, and to travel abroad. “Events have happened, dear friend,” he wrote, “which will make my mother’s home miserable to me (I little knew when I went to town about your business, what caused her wonderful complaisance to me). She would have broken my heart, Charles (my Christian name is Charles), but its wounds have found a consoler!”
Now, in this little chapter, there are some little mysteries propounded, upon which, were I not above any such artifice, I might easily leave the reader to ponder for a month.
1. Why did Mrs. Prior, at the lodgings, persist in calling the theatre at which her daughter danced the Academy?
2. What were the special reasons why Mrs. Lovel should be very gracious with her son, and give him 150l. as soon as he asked for the money?
3. Why was Fred Lovel’s heart nearly broken? and 4. Who was his consoler?
I answer these at once, and without the slightest attempt at delay or circumlocution. 1. Mrs. Prior, who had repeatedly received money from her brother, John Erasmus Sargent, D.D., Master of St. Boniface College, knew perfectly well that if the Master (whom she already pestered out of his life) heard that she had sent a niece of his on the stage, he would never give her another shilling.
2. The reason why Emma, widow of the late Adolphus Loeffel, of Whitechapel Road, sugar-baker, was so particularly gracious to her son, Adolphus Frederic Lovel, Esq., of St. Boniface College, Oxbridge, and principal partner in the house of Loeffel aforesaid, an infant, was that she, Emma, was about to contract a second marriage with the Rev. Samuel Bonnington.
3. Fred Lovel’s heart was so very much broken by this intelligence, that he gave himself airs of Hamlet, dressed in black, wore his long fair hair over his eyes, and exhibited a hundred signs of grief and desperation: until—
4. Louisa (widow of the late Sir Popham Baker, of Bakerstown, Co. Kilkenny, Baronet,) induced Mr. Lovel to take a trip on the Rhine with her and Cecilia, fourth and only unmarried daughter of the aforesaid Sir Popham Baker, deceased.
My opinion of Cecilia I have candidly given in a previous page. I adhere to that opinion. I shall not repeat it. The subject is disagreeable to me, as the woman herself was in life. What Fred found in her to admire, I cannot tell: lucky for us all that tastes, men, women, vary. You will never see her alive in this history. That is her picture, painted by the late Mr. Gandish. She stands fingering that harp with which she has often driven me half mad with her Tara’s Halls and her Poor Marianne. She used to bully Fred so, and be so rude to his guests, that in order to pacify her, he would meanly say, “Do, my love, let us have a little music!” and thrumpty—thrumpty, off would go her gloves, and Tara’s Halls would begin. “The harp that once” indeed! the accursed catgut scarce knew any other music, and “once” was a hundred times at least in my hearing. Then came the period when I was treated to the cold joint which I have mentioned; and, not liking it, I gave up going to Shrublands.
So, too, did my Lady Baker, but not of her own free will, mind you. She did not quit the premises because her reception was too cold, but because the house was made a great deal too hot for her. I remember Fred coming to me in high spirits, and describing to me, with no little humour, a great battle between Cecilia and Lady Baker, and her ladyship’s defeat and flight. She fled, however, only as far as Putney village, where she formed again, as it were, and fortified herself in a lodging. Next day she made a desperate and feeble attack, presenting herself at Shrublands lodge-gate, and threatening that she and sorrow would sit down before it; and that all the world should know how a daughter treated her mother. But the gate was locked, and Barnet, the gardener, appeared behind it, saying, “Since you are come, my lady, perhaps you will pay my missis the four-and-twenty shillings you borrowed of her.” And he grinned at her through the bars, until she fled before him, cowering. Lovel paid the little forgotten account; the best four-and-twenty shillings he had ever laid out, he said.
Eight years passed away; during the last four of which I scarce saw my old friend, except at clubs and taverns, where we met privily, and renewed, not old warmth and hilarity, but old kindness. One winter he took his family abroad; Cecilia’s health was delicate, Lovel told me, and the doctor had advised that she should spend a winter in the south. He did not stay with them: he had pressing affairs at home; he had embarked in many businesses besides the paternal sugar-bakery; was concerned in companies, a director of a joint-stock bank, a man in whose fire were many irons. A faithful governess was with the children; a faithful man and maid were in attendance on the invalid; and Lovel, adoring his wife, as he certainly did, yet supported her absence with great equanimity.
In the spring I was not a little scared to read amongst the deaths in the newspaper:—“At Naples, of scarlet fever, on the 25th ult., Cecilia, wife of Frederick Lovel Esq., and daughter of the late Sir Popham Baker, Bart.” I knew what my friend’s grief would be. He had hurried abroad at the news of her illness; he did not reach Naples in time to receive the last words of his poor Cecilia.
Some months after the catastrophe, I had a note from Shrublands. Lovel wrote quite in the old affectionate tone. He begged his dear old friend to go to him, and console him in his solitude. Would I come to dinner that evening?
Of course I went off to him straightway. I found him in deep sables in the drawing-room with his children, and I confess I was not astonished to see my Lady Baker once more in that room.
“You seem surprised to see me here, Mr. Batchelor!” says her ladyship, with that grace and good breeding which she generally exhibited; for if she accepted benefits, she took care to insult those from whom she received them.
“Indeed, no,” said I, looking at Lovel, who piteously hung down his head. He had his little Cecy at his knee: he was sitting under the portrait of the defunct musician, whose harp, now muffled in leather, stood dimly in the corner of the room.
“I am here not at my own wish, but from a feeling of duty towards that—departed—angel!” says Lady Baker, pointing to the picture.
“I am sure when mamma was here, you were always quarrelling,” says little Popham, with a scowl.
“This is the way those innocent children have been taught to regard me,” cries grandmamma.
“Silence Pop!” says papa, “and don’t be a rude boy.”
“Isn’t Pop a rude boy?” echoes Cecy.
“Silence, Pop,” continues papa, “or you must go up to Miss Prior.”