He wears studs, hair-oil, jewellery, and linen shirt fronts, very finely embroidered but not particular for whiteness. He generally appears in faded velvet waistcoats of a morning, and is always perfumed with stale tobacco. He wears large rings on his hands, which look as if he kept them up the chimney.
He does not appear to do anything earthly for Clarence Bulbul, except to smoke his cigars, and to practise on his guitar. He will not answer a bell, nor fetch a glass of water, nor go of an errand, on which, au reste, Clarence dares not send him, being entirely afraid of his servant, and not daring to use him, or to abuse him, or to send him away.
3. Adams—Mr. Champignon’s man—a good old man in an old livery coat with old worsted lace—so very old, deaf, surly, and faithful, that you wonder how he should have got into the family at all, who never kept a footman till last year, when they came into the street.
Miss Clapperclaw says she believes Adams to be Mrs. Champignon’s father, and he certainly has a look of that lady, as Miss C. pointed out to me at dinner one night, whilst old Adams was blundering about amongst the hired men from Gunter’s, and falling over the silver dishes.
4. Fipps, the buttoniest page in all the street, walks behind Mrs. Grimsby with her prayer-book, and protects her.
“If that woman wants a protector” (a female acquaintance remarks), “Heaven be good to us—she is as big as an ogress, and has an upper lip which many a Cornet of the Life Guards might envy. Her poor dear husband was a big man, and she could beat him easily, and did too. Mrs. Grimsby, indeed! Why, my dear Mr. Titmarsh, it is Glumdalca walking with Tom Thumb.”
This observation of Miss C.’s is very true, and Mrs. Grimsby might carry her prayer-book to church herself. But Miss Clapperclaw, who is pretty well able to take care of herself too, was glad enough to have the protection of the page when she went out in the fly to pay visits: and before Mrs. Grimsby and she quarrelled at whist at Lady Pocklington’s.
After this merely parenthetic observation, we come to 4, one of her ladyship’s large men, Mr. Jeames—a gentleman of vast stature and proportions, who is almost nose to nose with us as we pass her ladyship’s door on the outside of the omnibus. I think Jeames has a contempt for a man whom he witnesses in that position. I have fancied something like that feeling showed itself (as far as it may in a well-bred gentleman accustomed to society) in his behaviour, while waiting behind my chair at dinner.
But I take Jeames to be, like most giants, good-natured, lazy, stupid, soft-hearted, and extremely fond of drink. One night, his lady being engaged to dinner at Nightingale House, I saw Mr. Jeames resting himself on a bench at the Pocklington Arms: where, as he had no liquor before him, he had probably exhausted his credit.
Little Spitfire, Mr. Clarence Bulbul’s boy, the wickedest little varlet that ever hung on to a cab, was “chaffing” Mr. Jeames,