CHAPTER V.
Clive’s Uncles
The dinner so hospitably offered by the Colonel was gladly accepted, and followed by many more entertainments at the cost of that good-natured friend. He and an Indian chum of his lived at this time at Nerot’s Hotel, in Clifford Street, where Mr. Clive, too, found the good cheer a great deal more to his taste than the homely, though plentiful, fare at Grey Friars, at which, of course, when boys, we all turned up our noses, though many a poor fellow, in the struggles of after-life, has looked back with regret very likely to that well-spread youthful table. Thus my intimacy with the father and the son grew to be considerable, and a great deal more to my liking than my relations with Clive’s City uncles, which have been mentioned in the last chapter, and which were, in truth, exceedingly distant and awful.
If all the private accounts kept by those worthy bankers were like mine, where would have been Newcome Hall and Park Lane, Marblehead and Bryanstone Square? I used, by strong efforts of self-denial, to maintain a balance of two or three guineas untouched at the bank, so that my account might still remain open; and fancied the clerks and cashiers grinned when I went to draw for money. Rather than face that awful counter, I would send Larkins, the clerk, or Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress. As for entering the private parlour at the back, wherein behind the glazed partition I could see the bald heads of Newcome Brothers engaged with other capitalists or peering over the newspaper, I would as soon have thought of walking into the Doctor’s own library at Grey Friars, or of volunteering to take an armchair in a dentist’s studio, and have a tooth out, as of entering into that awful precinct. My good uncle, on the other hand, the late Major Pendennis, who kept naturally but a very small account with Hobsons’, would walk into the parlour and salute the two magnates who governed there with the ease and gravity of a Rothschild. “My good fellow,” the kind old gentleman would say to his nephew and pupil, “il faut se faire valoir. I tell you, sir, your bankers like to keep every gentleman’s account. And it’s a mistake to suppose they are only civil to their great moneyed clients. Look at me. I go in to them and talk to them whenever I am in the City. I hear the news of ’Change, and carry it to our end of the town. It looks well, sir, to be well with your banker; and at our end of London, perhaps, I can do a good turn for the Newcomes.”
It is certain that in his own kingdom of Mayfair and St. James’s my revered uncle was at least the bankers’ equal. On my coming to London, he was kind enough to procure me invitations to some of Lady Anne Newcome’s evening parties in Park Lane, as likewise to Mrs. Newcome’s entertainments in Bryanstone Square; though, I confess, of these latter, after a while, I was a lax and negligent attendant. “Between ourselves, my good fellow,” the shrewd old Mentor of those days would say, “Mrs. Newcome’s parties are not altogether select; nor is she a lady of the very highest breeding; but it gives a man a good air to be seen at his banker’s house. I recommend you to go for a few minutes whenever you are asked.” And go I accordingly did sometimes, though I always fancied, rightly or wrongly, from Mrs. Newcome’s manner to me, that she knew I had but thirty shillings left at the bank. Once and again, in two or three years, Mr. Hobson Newcome would meet me, and ask me to fill a vacant place that day or the next evening at his table; which invitation I might accept or otherwise. But one does not eat a man’s salt, as it were, at these dinners. There is nothing sacred in this kind of London hospitality. Your white waistcoat fills a gap in a man’s table, and retires filled for its service of the evening. “Gad,” the dear old Major used to say, “if we were not to talk freely of those we dine with, how mum London would be! Some of the pleasantest evenings I have ever spent have been when we have sate after a great dinner, en petit comité, and abused the people who are gone. You have your turn, mon cher; but why not? Do you suppose I fancy my friends haven’t found out my little faults and peculiarities? And as I can’t help it, I let myself be executed, and offer up my oddities de bonne grâce. Entre nous, Brother Hobson Newcome is a good fellow, but a vulgar fellow; and his wife—his wife exactly suits him.”
Once a year Lady Anne Newcome (about whom my Mentor was much more circumspect; for I somehow used to remark that as the rank of persons grew higher, Major Pendennis spoke of them with more caution and respect)—once or twice in a year Lady Anne Newcome opened her saloons for a concert and a ball, at both of which the whole street was crowded with carriages, and all the great world, and some of the small, were present. Mrs. Newcome had her ball too, and her concert of English music, in opposition to the Italian singers of her sister-in-law. The music of her country, Mrs. N. said, was good enough for her.
The truth must be told, that there was no love lost between the two ladies. Bryanstone Square could not forget the superiority of Park Lane’s rank; and the catalogue of grandees at dear Anne’s parties filled dear Maria’s heart with envy. There are people upon whom rank and worldly goods make such an impression, that they naturally fall down on their knees and worship the owners; there are others to whom the sight of Prosperity is offensive, and who never see Dives’ chariot but to growl and hoot at it. Mrs. Newcome, as far as my humble experience would lead me to suppose, is not only envious, but proud of her envy. She mistakes it for honesty and public spirit. She will not bow down to kiss the hand of a haughty aristocracy. She is a merchant’s wife and an attorney’s daughter. There is no pride about her. Her brother-in-law, poor dear Brian—considering everybody knows everything in London, was there ever such a delusion as his?—was welcome, after banking-hours, to forsake his own friends for his wife’s fine relations, and to dangle after lords and ladies in Mayfair. She had no such absurd vanity—not she. She imparted these opinions pretty liberally to all her acquaintances in almost all her conversations. It was clear that the two ladies were best apart. There are some folks who will see insolence in persons of rank, as there are others who will insist; that all clergymen are hypocrites, all reformers villains, all placemen plunderers, and so forth; and Mrs. Newcome never, I am sure, imagined that she had a prejudice, or that she was other than an honest, independent, high-spirited woman. Both of the ladies had command over their husbands, who were of soft natures easily led by woman, as, in truth, are all the males of this family. Accordingly, when Sir Brian Newcome voted for the Tory candidate in the City, Mr. Hobson Newcome plumped for the Reformer. While Brian, in the House of Commons, sat among the mild Conservatives, Hobson unmasked traitors and thundered at aristocratic corruption, so as to make the Marylebone Vestry thrill with enthusiasm. When Lady Anne, her husband, and her flock of children fasted in Lent, and declared for the High Church doctrines, Mrs. Hobson had paroxysms of alarm regarding the progress of Popery, and shuddered out of the chapel where she had a pew, because the clergyman there, for a very brief season, appeared to preach in a surplice.
Poor bewildered Honeyman! it was a sad day for you, when you appeared in your neat pulpit with your fragrant pocket-handkerchief (and your sermon likewise all millefleurs), in a trim, prim, freshly mangled surplice, which you thought became you! How did you look aghast, and pass your jewelled hand through your curls, as you saw Mrs. Newcome, who had been as good as five-and-twenty pounds a year to you, look up from her pew, seize hold of Mr. Newcome, fling open the pew-door, drive out with her parasol her little flock of children, bewildered but not ill-pleased to get away from the sermon, and summon John from the back seats to bring away the bag of prayer-books! Many a good dinner did Charles Honeyman lose by assuming that unlucky ephod. Why did the high-priest of his diocese order him to put it on? It was delightful to view him afterwards, and the airs of martyrdom which he assumed. Had they been going to tear him to pieces with wild beasts next day, he could scarcely have looked more meek, or resigned himself more pathetically to the persecutors. But I am advancing matters. At this early time of which I write, a period not twenty years since, surplices were not even thought of in conjunction with sermons: clerical gentlemen have appeared in them, and under the heavy hand of persecution have sunk down in their pulpits again, as Jack pops back into his box. Charles Honeyman’s elegant discourses were at this time preached in a rich silk Master of Arts’ gown, presented to him, along with a teapot full of sovereigns, by his affectionate congregation at Leatherhead.
But that I may not be accused of prejudice in describing Mrs. Newcome and her family, and lest the reader should suppose that some slight offered to the writer by this wealthy and virtuous banker’s lady was the secret reason for this unfavourable sketch of her character, let me be allowed to report, as accurately as I can remember them, the words of a kinsman of her own, —— Giles, Esquire, whom I had the honour of meeting at her table, and who, as we walked away from Bryanstone Square, was kind enough to discourse very freely about the relatives whom he had just left.
“That was a good dinner, sir,” said Mr. Giles, puffing the cigar which I offered to him, and disposed to be very social and communicative. “Hobson Newcome’s table is about as good a one as any I ever put my legs under. You didn’t have twice of turtle, sir, I remarked that—I always do, at that house especially, for I know where Newcome gets it. We belong to the same livery in the City, Hobson and I, the Oystermongers’ Company, sir, and we like our turtle good, I can tell you—good, and a great deal of it, you say. Hay, hay, not so bad!
“I suppose you’re a young barrister, sucking lawyer, or that sort of thing. Because you was put at the end of the table and nobody took notice of you. That’s my place too; I’m a relative and Newcome asks me if he has got a place to spare. He met me in the City to-day, and says, ‘Tom,’ says he, ‘there’s some dinner in the Square at half-past seven: I wish you would go and fetch Louisa, whom we haven’t seen this ever so long.’ Louisa is my wife, sir—Maria’s sister—Newcome married that gal from my house. ‘No, no,’ says I, ‘Hobson; Louisa’s engaged nursing number eight’—that’s our number, sir. The truth is, between you and me, sir, my missis won’t come any more at no price. She can’t stand it; Mrs. Newcome’s dam patronising airs is enough to choke off anybody. ‘Well, Hobson, my boy,’ says I, ‘a good dinner’s a good dinner; and I’ll come though Louisa won’t, that is, can’t.’”