Drone’s fly is homeward bound, heavily laden. The young men of the party have dived into “The Welsh Rarebit Warren,” there to spend the early hours of the morning, listening to sentimental songs chanted amid fumes of tobacco and spirits, to hear sorry wit, and make vapid remarks. The great feature of the evening being a melodramatic
dirge, supposed to be sung by a condemned felon—a triumphant lamentation and delineation of brutal character,—so eloquent and thrilling, in its monosyllabic groans of anguish, that it is a wonder the kidneys, consumed in such numbers, are ever digested. But, alas!—such is life—those most swayed by animal propensities see the least warning therein:—as, the thief combines business and pleasure at the gallow’s foot; so, with the frequenters of the “Warren”—they imbue their sentiment and supper,—only digesting the latter. Wellesley has devoured several “rabbits,” and Latimer disposed of numberless kidneys, whilst young Brown has had to wait the usual forty minutes for a steak; and, in the interim, had five “stouts,” four “goes,” and several cigars, i.e., with assistance from the De Camps; who have made free, ay, to order goblets of champagne, and, in the end, not having change to repair the “damage” (a mean, but true, term, as often applied), they get young Brown to pay the complicated sum added up by the waiter, upon a mahogany ditto, in lieu of a slate, with stale stout spilled in the corner, receipted with a wipe of the towel:—and so, home in the “safety” cab, with large wheels and a spanking grey,—lettered along the side “Nil desperandum,” thinking “handsome is as Hansom does;” tumbling into bed just before the peep o’ day, and five hours after Mr. Brown had made up his Diary—writing against December the 27th., Thursday, that he had taken Tom and the girls to a pantomime; been agreeably surprised to find the De Camps there, especially the sons, who did sit in front, with
Jemy. and Angel., looking made as much for one another as he could desire:—Tom behaving very sadly; and, were it not for his mother, the boy should spend the vacations at a Yorkshire school;—twice every year—in the Dog-days and December—is the house turned topsy-turvy,—it may be sport to you, Master Tom, but ’tis death to us.
Thus older grew the year, and fuller got the Diary—Mr. Brown graphically recounting the doings and disasters of “December 28th, Friday.—Unpropitious, fatal, Friday! I never knew it lucky save once, and then it was—I let the Albert. ‘Christmas comes but once a year,’ with a train of nasty bills, not to be bilk’d; and sorry consolation is it thinking you ‘paid at the time,’ when the receipt is not to be found. Miss-Fortune, that never came single, now visits with a large family of little pests—out of season and uninvited!—Here is Needy, the pianist, who, one would think, had married her; for he has children enough to fill a charity school. Needy, of No. 9, Brown Terrace, has absconded without paying the rent—sending the key, and £12. 10s., instead of £14., with a shabby excuse about hoping to be able to make up the difference some day:—this is the return for showing compassion to a poor devil!—I ought to have known, when I took the cottage-piano for last quarter, though Spohf did say it was a six-and-three-quarters, worth three times the money!—I am a good-natured fool, and ought, in justice to my family, to be a little more selfish—these mean professionals estimating their rubbish far beyond all reason!—My spirits are damped—and so are we all, for the water-pipes
that that rascal Plummer fixed, at the low contract, have burst with this evening’s thaw, and were discovered just as the water was coming in; having played, I know not how long, a fountain in the bathroom, tumbling down the stairs like the falls of the Niagara, obliging us to insert tobacco-pipes all over the drawing-room ceiling, to drain the
inundation:—it has spoilt the watered paper, stained the aquatint of the Aqueduct, and ‘Wellington at Waterloo,’ done for the water-gilding, and saturated the ‘Momentous Question;’ the ‘Heart’s Misgivings’ is a sop; and the water-colour of the ‘Flood’ is washed away. Alphonso is sitting up in goloshes to empty the pots, and I doubt much if I shall sleep over the dropping-well.”
How Mr. Brown slept we do not know, but can imagine, for here is the Diurnal Record, made up in bed:—“December 29th, Saturday.—Dreamed Victoria Villa turned into a hydropathic establishment—that I was being frozen, thawed, and suffocated; did wake, this day, with an enlarged cheek—the influenza compelling me to keep my bed, bathe my chilblains, and anoint my nose; I take slops internally, and wear a heart upon the outside of my chest. The kind, considerate Captain called, smoking a cigar, that made me cough, and think his visit a visitation.”