In a few minutes the domestic, who had left Mr. Styles alone during that interval, returned with the intimation that Mr. Podgson would see him at once; and the railway projector was forthwith conducted up a wide and handsome marble stair-case—through a splendidly furnished ante-room—into a sumptuous apartment, where the great man was seated at a table covered with railway plans, letters, maps, newspapers, visitors’ cards, and Acts of Parliament, all scattered about in a confusion that had been admirably well studied and purposely arranged.
The impression of the newness of every thing in the mansion was strengthened in the mind of Mr. Bubbleton Styles at every pace which he had taken from the hall-door into the room where he now found himself. It appeared as if Mr. Podgson—or Mr. Podgson’s wife—or both, had endeavoured to the utmost of human power to crowd the apartments, the stair-cases, the landings, and, in fact, every nook and corner, with as many evidences of wealth as possible. Fine paintings by old masters, set in bran new glittering frames, were hung in the very worst lights, and without the least regard to their relative styles, colouring, or subjects. Each room had two or three time-pieces in it; and as they were not in accordance with respect to the hour, Mr. Bubbleton Styles’s ideas of precision and punctuality received a severe shock when he heard ten o’clock proclaimed half-a-dozen different times during the first twenty minutes which elapsed after he first set foot in the mansion. In a word, the entire aspect of the house was a reflection of the vulgar, untasteful, and self-sufficient minds of the “stuck-up people” who, having grown suddenly rich, did not know how to render their dwelling elegant and comfortable without making it gaudy and ridiculously ostentatious in its appointments.
Mr. Podgson was a short, stout, thick-set man, with an enormous stomach, a very wide back, and little stumpy legs. His head seemed to be stuck on his shoulders without the intervening aid of any neck at all; and his features were coarsely ugly, and totally inexpressive of even the slightest spark of intelligence. His tongue appeared to be much too large for his mouth, his speech being remarkably disagreeable: indeed, his free utterance seemed to be impeded as if he were always sucking a large lollipop, or had an enormous quid of tobacco stuck in his cheek. When he walked, it was with the most ungainly waddle that can possibly be conceived; and his clothes, though no doubt made by a fashionable tailor, sate upon him just as if they had been thrown on with a pitch-fork. Had this man been invested with regal robes,—had he arrayed himself in the Tyrian purple which Rome’s Emperors were wont to wear,—he could not have looked otherwise than a low vulgarian,—which he was!
We shall not pause for a moment to give any account of the rise of Mr. Podgson from obscurity to that renown which the sudden acquisition of great wealth established for him. Having sprung from the people, he turned against the people when he became a rich man. His property enabled him to purchase a borough; and the instant he found himself in Parliament, he joined the Protectionists—the bitter enemies of the popular cause!
Had this man taken his place amongst the Liberals, we should not have remembered his physical ugliness and his immense vulgarity of manners: we should have admired and esteemed him. But he to associate with aristocrats,—to squeeze that squat, podgy form amongst the “exquisites” and the “exclusives” of the West End,—to affect the most refined notions, and ape every thing fashionable,—for him to do all this——Oh! it is really too ridiculous—too ludicrous—too absurd to permit us to keep our countenance when we think of it!
Persons cannot help being naturally vulgar, any more than they can help being ugly: but the vulgar should not thrust themselves into those scenes and spheres where they are certain to stand out in most ignoble prominency, thereby forcing on all beholders the effect of the ludicrous contrast;—neither should the ugly adopt such an awful swagger and assume an air of such insufferable self-complacency as to render themselves most disagreeably remarkable and conspicuous.
Mr. Podgson had acquired his immense wealth by railway speculations; and the disgusting sycophants who invariably attach themselves to rich men with weak minds, had nonsensically dubbed him the Railway Lion! Had they called him the Railway Elephant, in allusion to his unwieldy proportions—or the Railway Bear, in reference to his manners—or the Railway Donkey, in respect to his intelligence,—they would have been more faithful to truth. But the Railway Lion he was;—and it was now in the presence of this tremendous animal that Mr. Bubbleton Styles stood.
Without rising from his chair, Mr. Podgson, M.P., waved his hand with all the majesty of a stage-monarch; and as this gesticulation was intended to be a fashionable—no, a dignified mode of desiring Mr. Bubbleton Styles to be seated, Mr. Bubbleton Styles seated himself accordingly.
Mr. Podgson then stared very hard at his visitor; and this was the Railway Lion’s method of intimating that he was “all attention.”
“I believe, sir,” said Mr. Styles, in a very polite and courteous manner—but without any thing like cringing servility,—“I believe, sir, that you last night received a letter from Alderman Tripes——”