“And what is that, dear?” asks the innocent lady, hanging on her husband’s arm, and quite pleased to have led him to church and brought him thence. “And what is it, that enters into every row, as you call it, Charles?”
“A woman, my love,” answers the gentleman, behind whom we have been in imagination walking out from Charles Honeyman’s church on a Sunday in June: as the whole pavement blooms with artificial flowers and fresh bonnets; as there is a buzz and cackle all around regarding the sermon; as carriages drive off; as lady-dowagers walk home; as prayer-books and footmen’s sticks gleam in the sun; as little boys with baked mutton and potatoes pass from the courts; as children issue from the public-houses with pots of beer; as the Reverend Charles Honeyman, who has been drawing tears in the sermon, and has seen, not without complacent throbs, a Secretary of State in the pew beneath him, divests himself of his rich silk cassock in the vestry, before he walks away to his neighbouring hermitage—where have we placed it?—in Walpole Street. I wish St. Pedro of Alcantara could have some of that shoulder of mutton with the baked potatoes, and a drink of that frothing beer. See, yonder trots little Lord Dozeley, who has been asleep for an hour with his head against the wood, like St. Pedro of Alcantara.
An East Indian gentleman and his son wait until the whole chapel is clear, and survey Lady Whittlesea’s monument at their leisure, and other hideous slabs erected in memory of defunct frequenters of the chapel. Whose was that face which Colonel Newcome thought he recognised—that of a stout man who came down from the organ-gallery? Could it be Broff the bass singer, who delivered the “Red Cross Knight” with such applause at the Cave of Melody, and who has been singing in this place? There are some chapels in London, where, the function over, one almost expects to see the sextons put brown hollands over the pews and galleries, as they do at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.
The writer of these veracious pages was once walking through a splendid English palace, standing amidst parks and gardens, than which none more magnificent has been seen since the days of Aladdin, in company with a melancholy friend, who viewed all things darkly through his gloomy eyes. The housekeeper, pattering on before us from chamber to chamber, was expatiating upon the magnificence of this picture; the beauty of that statue; the marvellous richness of these hangings and carpets; the admirable likeness of the late Marquis by Sir Thomas; of his father, the fifth Earl, by Sir Joshua, and so on; when, in the very richest room of the whole castle, Hicks—such was my melancholy companion’s name—stopped the cicerone in her prattle, saying in a hollow voice, “And now, madam, will you show us the closet where the skeleton is?” The seared functionary paused in the midst of her harangue; that article was not inserted in the catalogue which she daily utters to visitors for their half-crown. Hicks’s question brought a darkness down upon the hall where we were standing. We did not see the room: and yet I have no doubt there is such an one; and ever after, when I have thought of the splendid castle towering in the midst of shady trees, under which the dappled deer are browsing; of the terraces gleaming with statues, and bright with a hundred thousand flowers; of the bridges and shining fountains and rivers wherein the castle windows reflect their festive gleams, when the halls are filled with happy feasters, and over the darkling woods comes the sound of music;—always, I say, when I think of Castle Bluebeard:—it is to think of that dark little closet, which I know is there, and which the lordly owner opens shuddering—after midnight—when he is sleepless and must go unlock it, when the palace is hushed, when beauties are sleeping around him unconscious, and revellers are at rest. O Mrs. Housekeeper: all the other keys hast thou: but that key thou hast not!
Have we not all such closets, my jolly friend, as well as the noble Marquis of Carabas? At night, when all the house is asleep but you, don’t you get up and peep into yours? When you in your turn are slumbering, up gets Mrs. Brown from your side, steals downstairs like Amina to her ghoul, clicks open the secret door, and looks into her dark depository. Did she tell you of that little affair with Smith long before she knew you? Psha! who knows any one save himself alone? Who, in showing his house to the closest and dearest, doesn’t keep back the key of a closet or two? I think of a lovely reader laying down the page and looking over at her unconscious husband, asleep, perhaps, after dinner. Yes, madam, a closet he hath: and you, who pry into everything, shall never have the key of it. I think of some honest Othello pausing over this very sentence in a railroad carriage, and stealthily gazing at Desdemona opposite to him, innocently administering sandwiches to their little boy—I am trying to turn off the sentence with a joke, you see—I feel it is growing too dreadful, too serious.
And to what, pray, do these serious, these disagreeable, these almost personal observations tend? To this simply, that Charles Honeyman, the beloved and popular preacher, the elegant divine to whom Miss Blanche writes sonnets, and whom Miss Beatrice invites to tea; who comes with smiles on his lip, gentle sympathy in his tones, innocent gaiety in his accent; who melts, rouses, terrifies in the pulpit; who charms over the tea-urn and the bland bread-and-butter: Charles Honeyman has one or two skeleton closets in his lodgings, Walpole Street, Mayfair; and many a wakeful night, whilst Mrs. Ridley, his landlady, and her tired husband, the nobleman’s major-domo, whilst the lodger on the first floor, whilst the cook and housemaid and weary little bootboy are at rest (mind you, they have all got their closets, which they open with their skeleton-keys); he wakes up, and looks at the ghastly occupant of that receptacle. One of the Reverend Charles Honeyman’s grisly night-haunters is—but stop; let us give a little account of the lodgings, and of some of the people frequenting the same.
First floor, Mr. Bagshot, Member for a Norfolk borough. Stout jolly gentleman;—dines at the Carlton Club; greatly addicted to Greenwich and Richmond, in the season: bets in a moderate way: does not go into society, except now and again to the chiefs of his party, when they give great entertainments; and once or twice to the houses of great country dons who dwell near him in the country. Is not of very good family; was, in fact, an apothecary: married a woman with money, much older than himself, who does not like London, and stops at home at Hummingham, not much to the displeasure of Bagshot; gives every now and then nice little quiet dinners, which Mrs. Ridley cooks admirably, to exceedingly stupid jolly old Parliamentary fogies, who absorb, with much silence and cheerfulness, a vast quantity of wine. They have just begun to drink ’24 claret now, that of ’15 being scarce, and almost drunk up. Writes daily, and hears every morning from Mrs. Bagshot; does not read her letters always: does not rise till long past eleven o’clock of a Sunday, and has John Bull and Bell’s Life, in bed: frequents the Blue Posts sometimes; rides a stout cob out of his county, and pays like the Bank of England.
The house is a Norfolk house. Mrs. Ridley was housekeeper to the great Squire Bayham, who had the estate before the Conqueror, and who came to such a dreadful crash in the year 1825, the year of the panic. Bayhams still belongs to the family, but in what a state, as those can say who recollect it in its palmy days! Fifteen hundred acres of the best land in England were sold off: all the timber cut down as level as a billiard-board. Mr. Bayham now lives up in one corner of the house, which used to be filled with the finest company in Europe. Law bless you! the Bayhams have seen almost all the nobility of England come in and go out, and were gentlefolks when many a fine lord’s father of the present day was sweeping a counting-house.
The house will hold genteelly no more than these two inmates; but in the season it manages to accommodate Miss Cann, who too was from Bayhams, having been a governess there to the young lady who is dead, and who now makes such a livelihood as she can best raise, by going out as a daily teacher. Miss Cann dines with Mrs. Ridley in the adjoining little back-parlour. Ridley but seldom can be spared to partake of the family dinner, his duties in the house and about the person of my Lord Todmorden keeping him constantly near that nobleman. How little Miss Cann can go on and keep alive on the crumb she eats for breakfast, and the scrap she picks at dinner, du astonish Mrs. Ridley, that it du! She declares that the two canary-birds encaged in her window (whence is a cheerful prospect of the back of Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel) eat more than Miss Cann. The two birds set up a tremendous singing and chorussing when Miss Cann, spying the occasion of the first-floor lodger’s absence, begins practising her music-pieces. Such trills, roulades, and flourishes go on from the birds and the lodger! it is a wonder how any fingers can move over the jingling ivory so quickly as Miss Cann’s. Excellent a woman as she is, admirably virtuous, frugal, brisk, honest, and cheerful, I would not like to live in lodgings where there was a lady so addicted to playing variations. No more does Honeyman. On a Saturday, when he is composing his valuable sermons (the rogue, you may be sure, leaves his work to the last day, and there are, I am given to understand, among the clergy many better men than Honeyman, who are as dilatory as he), he begs, he entreats with tears in his eyes, that Miss Cann’s music may cease. I would back little Cann to write a sermon against him, for all his reputation as a popular preacher.
Old and weazened as that piano is, feeble and cracked her voice, it is wonderful what a pleasant concert she can give in that parlour of a Saturday evening, to Mrs. Ridley, who generally dozes a good deal, and to a lad, who listens with all his soul, with tears sometimes in his great eyes, with crowding fancies filling his brain and throbbing at his heart, as the artist plies her humble instrument. She plays old music of Handel and Haydn, and the little chamber anon swells into a cathedral, and he who listens beholds altars lighted, priests ministering, fair children swinging censers, great oriel windows gleaming in sunset, and seen through arched columns and avenues of twilight marble. The young fellow who hears her has been often and often to the opera and the theatres. As she plays Don Juan, Zerlina comes tripping over the meadows, and Masetto after her, with a crowd of peasants and maidens: and they sing the sweetest of all music, and the heart beats with happiness, and kindness, and pleasure. Piano, pianissimo! the city is hushed. The towers of the great cathedral rise in the distance, its spires lighted by the broad moon. The statues in the moonlit place cast long shadows athwart the pavement: but the fountain in the midst is dressed out like Cinderella for the night, and sings and wears a crest of diamonds. That great sombre street all in shade, can it be the famous Toledo?—or is it the Corso?—or is it the great street in Madrid, the one which leads to the Escurial where the Rubens and Velasquez are? It is Fancy Street—Poetry Street—Imagination Street—the street where lovely ladies look from balconies, where cavaliers strike mandolins and draw swords and engage, where long processions pass, and venerable hermits, with long beards, bless the kneeling people: where the rude soldiery, swaggering through the place with flags and halberts, and fife and dance, seize the slim waists of the daughters of the people, and bid the pifferari play to their dancing. Blow, bagpipes, a storm of harmony! become trumpets, trombones, ophicleides, fiddles, and bassoons! Fire, guns sound, tocsins! Shout, people! Louder, shriller and sweeter than all, sing thou, ravishing heroine! And see, on his cream-coloured charger Massaniello prances in, and Fra Diavolo leaps down the balcony, carabine in hand; and Sir Huon of Bordeaux sails up to the quay with the Sultan’s daughter of Babylon. All these delights and sights, and joys and glories, these thrills of sympathy, movements of unknown longing, and visions of beauty, a young sickly lad of eighteen enjoys in a little dark room where there is a bed disguised in the shape of a wardrobe, and a little old woman is playing under a gas-lamp on the jingling keys of an old piano.