"The efforts made to deprive the public of the interesting and peculiar scenes contained in the forthcoming novel, and—in short—to suppress it, have entirely failed, owing to the resolution of the gifted author, and the determination of the spirited publisher; and their only effect has been to accelerate the appearance of the work. It will bear the exciting and piquant title—'Tippetiwink;' and is said to be founded on the remarkable circumstances attending the recent trial of a great ejectment cause at York. More than one noble family's history is believed to be involved in some of the details which will be found in the forthcoming publication, for which, we are assured, there are already symptoms of an unprecedented demand. The 'favored few' who have seen it, predict that it will produce a prodigious sensation. The happy audacity with which facts are adhered to, will, we trust, not lead to the disagreeable consequences that appear to be looked for, in certain quarters, with no little anxiety and dismay. When we announce that its author is the gifted writer of 'The Silver Spoons'—'Spinnach'—'The Pirouette'—'Tittle-Tattle'—'Fitz-Giblets'—'Squint,' &c. &c. &c., we trust we are violating no literary confidence."
There was no resisting this sort of thing. In that day, a skilfully directed play of puffs laid prostrate the whole of the sagacious fashionable world; producing the excitement of which they affected to chronicle the existence. The artilleryman, in the present instance, was, in fact, a hack writer, hired by Mr. Bubble—in fact, kept by him entirely—to perform services of this degrading description—and he sat from morning to night in a back-room on Mr. Bubble's premises, engaged in spinning out these villanous and lying paragraphs concerning every work published, or about to be published, by Mr. Bubble. Then that gentleman hit upon another admirable device. He had seven hundred copies printed off; and allowing a hundred for a first edition, he varied the title-pages of each of the remaining six hundred by the words: "Second Edition"—"Third Edition"—"Fourth Edition"—"Fifth Edition"—"Sixth Edition"—and "Seventh Edition."
By the time, however, that the fourth edition had been announced, there existed a real rage for the book. The circulating libraries at the West End of the town were besieged by applicants for a perusal of the work; and "notices," "reviews," and "extracts," began to make their appearance with increasing frequency in the newspapers. The idea of the work was admirable. Tippetiwink, the hero, was a young gentleman of ancient family—an only child—kidnapped away in his infancy by the malignant agency of "the demon Mowbray," a distant relative, of a fierce temper and wicked character, who by these means had succeeded to the enjoyment of the estate, and would have come, in time, to the honors and domains of the most ancient and noble family in the kingdom, that of the Earl of Frizzleton. Poor Tippetiwink was at length, however, discovered by his illustrious kinsman, by mere accident, in an obscure capacity, in the employ of a benevolent linen-draper, Black-bag, who was described as one of the most amiable and generous of linen-drapers; and, after a series of wonderful adventures, in which the hero displayed the most heroic constancy, the earl succeeded in reinstating his oppressed and injured kinsman in the lofty station which he ought always to have occupied. His daughter—a paragon of female loveliness—the Lady Sapphira Sigh-away—evinced the deepest interest in the success of Tippetiwink; and at length—the happy result may be guessed by the astute and experienced novel-reader. Out of these few and natural incidents, Mr. Bladdery Pip was pronounced at length, by those (i. e. the aforesaid newspaper scribes) who govern, if they do not indeed constitute, PUBLIC OPINION, to have produced an imperishable record of his genius; avoiding all the faults, and combining all the excellences, of all his former productions. The identity between Titmouse and Tippetiwink, Lord Dreddlington and Lord Frizzleton, Lady Cecilia and Lady Sapphira, and Mr. Aubrey and the "demon Mowbray," was quickly established. The novel passed speedily into the tenth edition! An undoubted, and a very great sensation was produced; extracts descriptive of the persons, particularly that of Titmouse, and the earl, and Lady Cecilia, figuring in the story, were given in the London papers, and thence transferred into those all over the country. The very author of the book, Mr. Bladdery Pip, became a prodigious LION, and dressing himself in the most elaborate and exquisite style, had his portrait, looking most intensely intellectual, prefixed to the tenth edition. Then came portraits of "Tittlebat Titmouse, Esq.," (for which he had never sat,) giving him large melting eyes, a very pensive face, and a most fashionable appearance. The Earl of Dreddlington and Lady Cecilia became also a lion and lioness. Hundreds of opera-glasses were directed, at once, to their opera-box; innumerable were the anxious salutations they received as they drove round the Park—and round it they went three or four times as often as they had ever done before. 'Twas whispered that the king had read the book, and drank the earl's health, under the name of Lord Frizzleton—while the queen did the same for Lady Cecilia as Lady Sapphira. Their appearance produced a manifest sensation at both the levee and drawing-room.—Majesty looked blander than usual as they approached. Poor Lord Dreddlington, and Lady Cecilia, mounted in a trice into the seventh heaven of rapturous excitement; for there was that buoyant quality about their heads which secured them a graceful and rapid upward motion. They were both unutterably happy; living in a gentle delicious tumult of exalted feeling. Irrepressible exultation glistened in the earl's eyes; he threw an infinite deal of blandness and courtesy into his manners wherever he was, and whomsoever he addressed; as if he could now easily afford it, confident in the inaccessible sublimity of his position. It was slightly laughable to observe, however, the desperate efforts he made to maintain his former frigid composure of manner—but in vain; his nervousness looked almost like a sudden, though gentle accession of St. Vitus's dance. Innumerable were the inquiries after Titmouse—his person—his manners—his character—his dress, made of Lady Cecilia by her friends. Young ladies tormented her for his autograph. 'T was with her as if the level surface of the Dead Sea had been stirred by the freshening breeze.
When a thing of this sort is once fairly set going, where is it to end? When fashion does go mad, her madness is wonderful; and she very soon turns the world mad. Presently the young men appeared everywhere in black satin stocks, embroidered, some with flowers, and others with gold, and which went by the name of "Titmouse-Ties;" and in hats, with high crowns and rims a quarter of an inch in depth, called "Tittlebats." All the young blades about town, especially the clerks and shopmen in the city, dressed themselves in the most extravagant style; an amazing impetus was given to the cigar trade—whose shops were crowded, especially at nights; and every puppy that walked the streets puffed cigar-smoke in your eyes. In short, pert and lively Titmice might be seen hopping about the streets in all directions. As for Tag-rag, wonders befell him. A paragraph in a paper pointed him out as the original of Black-bag, and his shop in Oxford Street as the scene of Titmouse's service. Thither quickly poured the tide of fashionable curiosity, and custom. His business was soon trebled. He wore his best clothes every day, and smirked and smiled, and bustled about amid the crowd in his shop, in a perfect fever of excitement. He began to think of buying the adjoining premises, and adding them to his own; and set his name down as a subscriber of a guinea a-year to the "Decayed Drapers' Association." Those were glorious times for Mr. Tag-rag. He was forced to engage a dozen extra hands; there were seldom less than fifty or a hundred persons in his shop at once; strings of carriages stood before his door, sometimes two deep, and continual strugglings occurred between the coachmen for precedence. In fact, Mr. Tag-rag believed that the Millennium (about which he had often heard wonders from Mr. Dismal Horror, who, it seemed, knew all about it—a fact of which he had first persuaded his congregation, and then himself) was coming in earnest.
[CHAPTER IX.]
The undulations of the popular excitement in town, were not long in reaching the calm retreat of Mr. Titmouse in Yorkshire. To say nothing of his having on several occasions observed artists busily engaged in sketching different views of the Hall and its surrounding scenery, and, on inquiry, discovered that they had been sent from London for the express purpose of presenting to the excited public sketches of the "residence of Mr. Titmouse," a copy of the inimitable performance of Mr. Bladdery Pip—viz. "Tippetiwink," (tenth edition) was sent down to Mr. Titmouse by Gammon; who also forwarded to him, from time to time, newspapers containing those paragraphs which identified Titmouse with the hero of the novel, and also testified the profound impression which it was making upon the thinking classes of the community. Was Titmouse's wish to witness the ferment he had so unconsciously produced in the metropolis, unreasonable? Yatton was beginning to look duller daily, even before the arrival of this stimulating intelligence from town; Titmouse feeling quite out of his element. So—Gammon non contradicente—up came Titmouse to town. If he had not been naturally a fool, the notice he attracted in London must soon have made him one. He had been for coming up in a post-chaise and four; but Gammon, in a letter, succeeded in dissuading him from incurring so useless an expense, assuring him that men of even as high consideration as himself, constantly availed themselves of the safe and rapid transit afforded by the royal mail. His valet, on being appealed to, corroborated Mr. Gammon's representations; adding, that the late hour in the evening at which that respectable vehicle arrived in town would effectually shroud him from public observation. Giving strict and repeated orders to his valet to deposit him at once "in a first-rate West-End hotel," the haughty lord of Yatton, plentifully provided with cigars, stepped into the mail, his valet perching himself upon the box-seat. That gifted functionary was well acquainted with town, and resolved on his master's taking up his quarters at the Harcourt Hotel, in the immediate vicinity of Bond Street.
The mail passed the Peacock, at Islington, about half-past eight o'clock; and long before they had reached even that point, the eager and anxious eye of Titmouse had been on the look-out for indications of his celebrity. He was, however, compelled to own that both people and places seemed much as usual—wearing no particular air of excitement. At this he was a little chagrined, till he reflected on the vulgar ignorance of the movements of the great, for which the eastern regions of the metropolis were proverbial, and also on the increasing duskiness of the evening, the rapid pace at which the mail rattled along, and the circumstance of his being concealed inside. When his humble hackney-coach (its driver a feeble old man, with a wisp of straw for a hat-band, and sitting on the rickety box like a heap of dirty old clothes, and the flagging and limping horses looking truly miserable objects) had rumbled slowly up to the lofty and gloomy door of the Harcourt Hotel, it seemed to excite no notice whatever. A tall waiter, in a plain suit of black evening dress, with his hands stuck behind his coat-tails, continued standing in the ample doorway, eying the plebeian vehicle which had drawn up, with utter indifference—conjecturing, probably, that it had come to the wrong door. With the same air of provoking superciliousness he stood till the valet, having jumped down from his seat beside the driver, ran up, and in a peremptory sort of way exclaimed, "Mr. Titmouse of Yatton!" This stirred the waiter into something like energy.