You saw him at this era as a strapping young Celt of thirty, with thick sandy whiskers and a thicker brogue, who could top the regulation three bottles of port with a jorum or so of whisky-punch; walk home to his quarters while men of weaker head were being conveyed to theirs in wheelbarrows; and consume vast quantities of bacon and eggs, washed down by bitter ale, at breakfast, when hardened seniors were calling for green apples and glasses of gin, and pallid juniors nibbled captain’s biscuits as they quenched their red-hot coppers with soda-water. But what did my Aunt Julietta see in him, I should like to know?
Why did not her gentle affections rather twine about the Captain’s younger brother, Lieutenant Thady, who sang Irish ballads with the sweetest of tenor voices, played juvenile leading parts in private theatricals, and won regimental steeplechases on his leggy Irish thoroughbred, to the admiration of the gentler sex and the envy of the males? Or Ensign Con, who had the biggest blue eyes and the smallest waist you can imagine; wrote poetry which was understood to be of home manufacture, in feminine albums—painted groups of impossible flowers and marvelous landscapes upon fans and fire-screens—waltzed like an angel, and was generally admitted to be a ladies’ man.
Why should my gentle Aunt adore Captain Goliath, who gambled, and swore horribly when he lost; who loved strong liquors, to the detriment of his figure and complexion; who had fought duels and perforated with pistol-bullets the bodies of two gentlemen who had impugned his honor; who kept fighting-cocks in his quarters, and the steel spurs wherewith he armed these feathered warriors for the combat in a neat leather pocket-case; who would consume raw beefsteaks, bend pokers, and lift ponies for wagers, and win them; and spend the money in carousing with his friends; and who had once—oh, hideous thought!—backed himself to kill three rats with his teeth against the Major’s bull-terrier bitch Fury, and accounted for the rodents with half-a-minute out of five to spare?...
In the lifetime of my grandfather, thrice Mayor of Dullingstoke, a peppery old sea-dog, who had settled down as far from his professional element as possible,—had amassed a considerable fortune in the tanning-trade, and had made it the business of his later years to keep his large family of daughters single—no young men were ever admitted within his doors. It is on record that no sooner had the sable border of woe upon the edge of my widowed grandmother’s notepaper narrowed to the quarter-inch significant of tempered sorrow than—each of my aunts having inherited a nice little landed property under the paternal will—in addition to a snug sum, comfortably invested in Three Per Cent. Consols—the bachelor officers of the “Rathkeale Ragamuffins” began to buzz like hungry wasps about the six fair honey-pots that adorned my grandmother’s tea-table.
Ordinarily of a frugal mind, she is said to have been lavish in her expenditure of plum-cake, home-made jams, preserved ginger, and best Souchong upon these festal occasions, accounting for her prodigality to a female friend in these words:
“I grudge nothing, Georgiana, that helps to get rid of the girls!”
Honest Captain Goliath, introduced at the ladies’ tea-table by Lieutenant Thady—who had a knack at making acquaintances which the clumsier Captain did not possess, was at first attracted by the showier charms of my Aunt Marietta, which, you will perhaps remember?—were of the lofty, aquiline, disdainful kind. He stared at the young lady a good deal, and tugged his sandy whiskers, and breathed hard, as he paid her clumsy compliments, punctuated with “Egad!” and “By Jove!” He was rather at a loss when his long legs were inserted under my grandmother’s polished mahogany. He liked the rich plum-cake, but tea was a beverage abhorred of his manly soul.
“Women’s slops,” the young officer mentally termed the infusion beloved of the sex, as he took three lumps of sugar, and stirred the boiling liquid so clumsily with a fiddle-headed silver teaspoon that—splash!—he overset the cup.... My Aunts Harrietta and Emmelina, who were timid, screamed aloud.... My Aunts Elisabetta and Claribella, who were sitting upon either side of Lieutenant Thady, tittered, being giddily inclined.
My Aunt Marietta, who was wearing a sweet new pink barége, suffered the complete ruin of a beflounced side-breadth, and, it must be owned, took the unlucky incident with a very bad grace; even permitting herself to utter the word “Clumsy,” and toss her head in contempt of the crimson Captain’s profuse if incoherently expressed regrets. While my Aunt Julietta, in whose lap the agitated sweep of the young man’s elbow had deposited a plate of bread-and-butter, butter side down—bade him “Never mind!” in so soft a tone of kindness, accompanying the words with a glance so bright and gentle, that the utterance and the look bowled Goliath over as completely as the elder Philistine, his namesake, was, cycles of centuries ago, by the brook-stone hurled from the young David’s sling.
“Indeed and indeed, Miss Juley,” the Captain stuttered, “with all the good-will in the worruld a man can do no more than apologize, that has had the bad luck to do damage to a young lady’s dress. And though you’re so kind and amiable as to make no very great shakes of it, begad! I see your own elegant gown is spoilt entirely by the clumsy divvle—begging your pardon for the word!—that would walk from here to London—supposing you’d accept it!—to get you a purtier gown!”