Some of us are yet alive who recollect the little saccharine poems, the plaintive little sonnets, the--well, yes, to speak the truth--the washy three-volume novels which were composed in that sturdy old building and dated thence. Sturdy outside, but lovely within. Such furniture: white satin and gold, black satin and red trimming; such pictures, and statues, and busts; such looking-glasses let into the walls at every conceivable place; such hanging baskets and ormolu clocks, and Dresden and Sèvres china; such Chinese fans, and Indian screens, and Turkish yataghans and Malay creeses; such books--at least, such bindings; such a satinwood desk, at which the Countess penned her inspirations; such a solemn-sounding library clock, which had belonged to Marie Antoinette; such lion-skins and leopard-skins for rugs; such despatch-boxes with the Della Cruscan coronet and cipher; such waste-paper baskets always littered with proof-sheets! The garden! never was anything seen like that! It was not much more than half an acre, but Smiff, the great landscape gardener, made it look more like a square mile. Delightfully rustic and English here, quaintly Dutch there, Italian terraced a little lower down, small avenue, vista broken by the fountain; might be a thousand miles away from London, so everyone said. Everyone said so, because everyone came there. Who was everyone? Well, the Grand-Duke of Schweinerei was someone, at all events. Ex-Grand-Duke, I should have said, recollecting that some years before, the people of Schweinerei, although by no means a strait-laced people, grew so disgusted at the "goings-on" of their reigning potentate, that they rose in revolt, and incontinently kicked him out. Then he came to England, where he has remained ever since, dwelling in a big house, and occupying his spare time with fighting newspapers for libelling him in a very blackguard and un-English manner. His highness is an elderly, short, fat man, with admirably-fitting wig and whiskers of the Tyrian purple. He has dull bleary eyes, pendulous cheeks, and a great fat double chin. He is covered all over with diamonds: his studs are diamonds; he wears a butterfly diamond brooch on the knot of his white cravat; his waistcoat-buttons are diamonds; his sleeve-links are diamonds; and he resembles the old woman of Banbury Cross in having (diamond) rings on his fingers, and probably, for all the historian knows to the contrary, on his toes.
Who else came there? A tall, thin, dark man, with a long face like a sheep's head, a full dull eye, a long nose, a very long upper lip, arid a retreating chin. Prince Bernadotte of the Lipari Isles, also an exile, but one who has since been recalled to his kingdom. Nobody thought much of Prince Bernadotte in those days. He lived in cheap chambers in London, and used to play billiards with coiffeurs and agents de change and commis voyageurs from the hotels in Leicester Square; and who went into a very little English society, where he always sat silent and reserved, and where they thought very little of him. He must have been marvellously misunderstood then, or must have grown into quite a different kind of man when he sat smoking his cigar with his feet on the fender in the Elysée, and to all inquiries made but the one reply, "Qu'on exécute mes orders!"--those "ordres" being fulfilled in the massacre of the Boulevards.
Who else? Savans, philosophers, barristers, poets, newspaper-writers, novelists, caricaturists, eminent physicians and surgeons, fiddlers, foreigners, anybody who had done anything which had given him the merest temporary notoriety was welcome, so long as he came at the time. And they never failed to do that. The society was so delightful, the welcome was so warm, the eating and drinking were so good, that there was never any chance of an invitation to Marston Moor House being refused. Thither came Fermez, the opera impresario, driving down a couple of lords in his phaeton; and Tom Gilks, the scene-painter of Covent Garden, who arrived per omnibus; and Whiston, who had just written that tremendous pamphlet on the religious controversy of the day; and Rupert Robinson, who had sat up all the previous night to finish his burlesque, and who was so enchanted with the personal appearance of the Grand-Duke of Schweinerei, that he wanted to carry him off bodily--rings, diamonds, wig, whiskers, and all--to Madame Tussaud's Exhibition. Dinners and balls, conversazioni and fêtes--with the garden illuminated with Italian lamps, and supper served in extemporised pavilions--two royal dukes, in addition to standard celebrities, and foreign princes in town for the season--without end.
Vain transitory splendour! could not all Retain the tott'ring mansion from its fall?
Apparently not. One morning the servants at Marston Moor House got up, to find their mistress had risen before them, or rather had not been to bed at all, having decamped during the night with the plate and all the portable valuables, and left an enormous army of creditors behind her. There was weeping and wailing round the neighbourhood for months; but tears and outcries did not pay the defrauded tradespeople, and they never had any money. Nobody ever knew who received the money realised by the sale of the furniture, &c, though that ought to have been something considerable, for there never was a sale so tremendously attended, or at which things fetched such high prices. All the ladies of high rank who combined frightful stupidity with rigid virtue, and who would as soon have thought of walking into Tophet as of crossing Madame Della Crusca's threshold, rushed to Marston Moor House so soon as its proprietress had fled, and bought eagerly at the sale. The large looking-glass which formed the back of the alcove in which Madame Delia Crusca's bed was placed now figures in the boudoir, or, as it is generally called, the work-room, of the Countess of Textborough, and is scarcely so happy in its reflections as in former days. The satinwood desk fell to the nod of Mrs. Quisby, who used to follow the Queen's hounds in a deep-pink jacket and a short skirt, and who now holds forth on Sunday afternoons at the infant schools in Badger's Buildings, Mayfair, and is especially hard on the Scarlet Woman. Many of the old habitués attended, and bought well-remembered scraps for souvenirs. Finally everything, down to the kitchen pots and pans, the stable buckets and the gardeners' implements, were cleared off, and a big painted board frowned in the great courtyard, informing the British public that that eligible mansion was to let.
Not for long did that black-and-white board blossom in that flinty soil. Within three weeks of the sale a rumour ran through London that an al-fresco place of entertainment on a magnificent scale was about to be opened on what had been the Della-Cruscan property, and that Wuff, the great Wuff, the most enterprising man of his day, was at the back of it. Straightway the board was pulled down, and an army of painters, and decorators, and plumbers, and builders, and Irish gentlemen in flannel jackets, and Italian gentlemen in slouch wideawakes and paint-stained gaberdines, took possession of the place. Big rooms were converted into supper and dining-rooms, and small rooms into cabinets particuliers; a row of supper-boxes on the old Vauxhall pattern sprang up in the grounds, which, moreover, were tastefully planted with gas-lamps, with plaster-of-Paris statues, with two or three sham fountains, and with grottos made of slag and shiny-faced bricks. Then, on an Easter Monday, the place was opened with a ballet, with dancing on the circular platform, with Signor Simioso's performing monkeys, and with a grand display of fireworks. Very good, all this; but somehow it didn't draw. The great Wuff did all he could; sent an enormous power of legs into the ballet; engaged the most excruciatingly funny comic singers, put silver rosettes into the button-holes and silver-gilt wands into the hands of all the masters of the ceremonies on the circular platform; and had Guffino il Diavolo flying from the top of the pasteboard Leaning Tower of Pisa into the canvas Lake of Geneva, down a wire, with a squib in his cap, and one in each of his heels--and yet the public would not come. The great Wuff tried it for two seasons, and then gave it up in despair.
Up went the black-and-white board again; to be taken down at the bidding of Mrs. Trimmer, who, having a very good boarding-school for young ladies at Highgate, thought she might increase her connection by establishing herself in a more eligible neighbourhood. The board had been up so long, that the proprietor of the house was willing, not merely to take a reduced rent, but to pull up the gas-lamps, and pull down the supper-boxes, and restore the garden, not indeed to its original state of beauty, but to decency and order. The rooms were repapered (it must be owned that Wuff's taste in decoration had been loud), and the name of the house changed from Marston Moor to Cornelia. Then Mrs. Trimmer took possession, and brought her young friends with her, and they throve and multiplied exceedingly; and all went well until Mrs. Trimmer died, and there was no one to carry on the business; and the board went up, and remained up longer than ever.
No one knew exactly when or how the house was taken again. The proprietor, hoping to get another school-keeper for a tenant, the house being too large for ordinary domestic purposes, had bought Mrs. Trimmer's furniture--the iron bedsteads and school fittings--for a song, and had placed an old woman in charge. One day this old woman put her luggage, consisting of a blue bundle, and herself into a cab, and went away. A few carpenters had arrived from town in the morning, and had occupied themselves in fitting iron bars to the interior of some of the windows. During the greater portion of that night carriages were heard rolling up the lane in which the back entrance to the house was situated, and the next day smoke was seen issuing from the chimneys; a big brass plate with the name of "Dr. Bulph" was screwed on to the iron gates of the carriage-drive, and two or three strong-built men were noticed going in and out of the premises. Gradually it became known that Dr. Bulph was a physician celebrated for his treatment of the insane, a "mad-doctor," as the neighbours called him; and women and children used to skurry past the old red garden-walls as though they thought the inmates were climbing over to get at them. But the house was so thoroughly well-conducted, so quietly and with such excellent discipline, that people soon thought nothing of it, any more than of any other of the big mansions in the neighbourhood; and when Dr. Bulph retired, and Dr. Wainwright succeeded him, the door-plate had actually been changed for some days before the neighbours noticed it.
Dr. Wainwright made many changes in the establishment. He was a man of great fame for several specialities, and was constantly being called away to patients in the country. He considerably enlarged the old house, and brought to it a better and wealthier class of patients, who were attended, under his supervision, by two resident surgeons. Dr. Wainwright did not live in the house. In addition to his practice he worked very hard with his pen, contributing largely to the principal medical Scientific reviews and journals, and corresponding with many continental savans. For all this work he required solitude and silence; and, as he was a widower, he was able to enjoy both in a set of chambers in the Albany, where he could go in and out as he liked, and where no unwelcome visitor could get at him. He had consulting-rooms in Grosvenor Square; and when in town, was to be found there between ten and one; but after those hours it was impossible to know where to catch him.
But George Wainwright lived at the old house, or rather in an outbuilding in the grounds, sole remainder of Mr. Wuff's erections; which had been converted to his use, and which yielded him a large, high-roofed, roomy studio, and a capital bedroom, both on the ground floor. The studio was no misnomer for the living-room; for, in addition to his Civil-Service work, George followed art with deep and earnest devotion, and was known and recognised as one of the best amateurs of the day. Men whose names stood very high in the art-world were his friends; and on winter nights the studio would be filled with members of that pleasant Bohemian society, discussing their craft and its members and such cognate subjects. George was a great reader also, and had a goodly store of books littering the tables or ranged on common shelves, disputing possession of the walls with choice bits of his friends' painting or half-finished attempts of his own. In the middle of the room stood a quaintly-carved old black-oak desk, ink-blotted and penknife-hacked, with some pages of manuscript and some slips of proof lying on it--for George, who had been educated in Germany, was in the habit of contributing essays on abstruse questions of German philosophy and metaphysics to a monthly review of very portentous weight--and in the corner was a cabinet piano, covered with loose leaves of music, scraps from oratorios, studenten-lieder, bits of Bach and Glück, glees of Purcell and Arne, and even ballads by Claribel. Some of George's painter friends had formed themselves into a singing-club and sang very sweetly; and the greatest treat that could be offered to the inmates of the house was these fellows' musical performances. The young swells of the Stannaries Office wondered why George Wainwright was never seen at casino, singing and supper-houses, or other of those resorts which they specially affected. They looked upon him as somewhat of a fogey, and could not understand what a bright, genial, jolly fellow like Paul Derinzy could see to like in him. He was kind and good-natured and all that, they owned, as indeed they had often proved by loans of "sovs" and "fivers," when the end of the quarter had left them dry; but he was an uncomfortable sort of chap, they said, and was always by himself.