How well I can remember the feelings with which I entered London, and took possession of the apartments prepared for me at Mivart’s. A year had made a vast alteration in my mind; I had ceased to regard pleasure for its own sake, I rather coveted its enjoyments, as the great sources of worldly distinction. I was not the less a coxcomb than heretofore, nor the less a voluptuary, nor the less choice in my perfumes, nor the less fastidious in my horses and my dress; but I viewed these matters in a light wholly different from that in which I had hitherto regarded them. Beneath all the carelessness of my exterior, my mind was close, keen, and inquiring; and under the affectations of foppery, and the levity of a manner almost unique, for the effeminacy of its tone, I veiled an ambition the most extensive in its object, and a resolution the most daring in the accomplishment of its means.
I was still lounging over my breakfast, on the second morning of my arrival, when Mr. N—, the tailor, was announced.
“Good morning, Mr. Pelham; happy to see you returned. Do I disturb you too early? shall I wait on you again?”
“No, Mr. N—, I am ready to receive you; you may renew my measure.”
“We are a very good figure, Mr. Pelham; very good figure,” replied the Schneider, surveying me from head to foot, while he was preparing his measure; “we want a little assistance though; we must be padded well here; we must have our chest thrown out, and have an additional inch across the shoulders; we must live for effect in this world, Mr. Pelham; a leetle tighter round the waist, eh?”
“Mr. N—,” said I, “you will take, first, my exact measure, and, secondly, my exact instructions. Have you done the first?”
“We are done now, Mr. Pelham,” replied my man-maker, in a slow, solemn tone.
“You will have the goodness then to put no stuffing of any description in my coat; you will not pinch me an iota tighter across the waist than is natural to that part of my body, and you will please, in your infinite mercy, to leave me as much after the fashion in which God made me, as you possibly can.”
“But, Sir, we must be padded; we are much too thin; all the gentlemen in the Life Guards are padded, Sir.”
“Mr. N—,” answered I, “you will please to speak of us, with a separate, and not a collective pronoun; and you will let me for once have my clothes such as a gentleman, who, I beg of you to understand, is not a Life Guardsman, can wear without being mistaken for a Guy Fawkes on a fifth of November.”