Newboy’s I pronounce to be the jolliest house in the street. He has only of late had a rush of prosperity, and turned Parliament man; for his distant cousin, of the ancient house of Newboy of ——shire dying, Fred—then making believe to practice at the bar, and living with the utmost modesty in Gray’s Inn Road—found himself master of a fortune, and a great house in the country, of which getting tired, as in the course of nature he should, he came up to London, and took that fine mansion in our Gardens. He represents Mumborough in Parliament, a seat which has been time out of mind occupied by a Newboy.
Though he does not speak, being a great deal too rich, sensible, and lazy, he somehow occupies himself with reading blue books, and indeed talks a great deal too much good sense of late over his dinner-table, where there is always a cover for the present writer.
He falls asleep pretty assiduously too after that meal—a practice which I can well pardon in him—for, between ourselves, his wife, Maria Newboy, and his sister, Clarissa, are the loveliest and kindest of their sex, and I would rather hear their innocent prattle, and lively talk about their neighbours, than the best wisdom from the wisest man that ever wore a beard.
Like a wise and good man he leaves the question of his household entirely to the woman. They like going to the play. They like going to Greenwich. They like coming to a party at bachelor’s hall. They are up to all sorts of fun, in a word; in which taste the good-natured Newboy acquiesces, provided he is left to follow his own.
It was only on the 17th of the month that, having had the honour to dine at the house, when, after dinner, which took place at eight, we left Newboy to his blue books, and went up stairs and sang a little to the guitar afterwards—it was only on the 17th December, the night of Lady Sowerby’s party, that the following dialogue took place in the boudoir, whither Newboy, blue books in hand, had ascended.
He was curled up with his House of Commons boots on his wife’s arm-chair, reading his eternal blue books, when Mrs. N. entered from her apartment, dressed for the evening.
THE STREET DOOR KEY.
Mrs. N.—Frederic, wont you come?