(CORNELL; V UNIVBRSl'fY SLii LIBRARY tl( m. Cornell University Library PR5614.A1 1898 The Newcomes; memoirs of a most respectab 3 1924 013 562 354 DATE DUE jUa^-g-iMfft^ JAW^^^^?_1 DEC o vfjn ^ ISk Uan, ^:^r^ M CAYLORD PRINTEOINU.S.A. The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013562354 THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION THE WORKS OF WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY WITH BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTIONS BY HIS DAUGHTER, ANNE RITCHIE IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES Volume VIII. THE NEWCOMES THE EFFECT OP THE GENERAL S SONG. THE NE WCOMES MEMOIRS OF A MOST RESPECTABLE FAMILY EDITED BY ARTHUR PENDENNIS, Esq. BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY RICHARD DOYLE HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON 1899 ,,,SNN^'>""^'^"'///,,^ Al /h, 9^^'7^y '/., V * 7' ^^^ rzghts reserved. .^l' CONTENTS PAQB INTRODUCTION. . . .... xiii CHAP. I. THE OVERTDEE AFTER 'WHICH THE CURTAIN RISES UPON A DRINKING CHORUS .... 1 II. COLONEL NBWCOME's WILD OATS . . . .13 III. COLONEL NEWCOME's LETTER-BOX ... 26 IV. IN WHICH THE AUTHOR AND THE HERO RESUME THEIR ACQUAINTANCE 35 V. olive's uncles ....... 43 VI. NEWCOME BROTHERS .... .58 VII. IN WHICH MR. olive's SCHOOL-DAYS ARE OVER . 68 VIII. MRS. NEWCOME AT HOME (a SMALL EARLY PAETy) 76 IX. MISS honeyman's . . . . . .91 X. ETHEL AND HER RELATIONS . . .104 XI. AT MRS. Ridley's . . . . . .115 XII. IN WHICH everybody IS ASKED TO DINNER . 129 XIII. IN WHICH THOMAS NEWCOME SINGS HIS LAST SONG 137 XIV. PARK LANE .144 XV. THE OLD LADIES . . . . . . .155 XVI. IN WHICH MR. SHERRICK LETS HIS HOUSE IN FITZROY SQUARE 165 XVII. A SCHOOL OF ART . . . . 171 XVIII. NEW COMPANIONS .... .180 VIU CHAP. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. XLIII. CONTENTS THE COLONEL AT HOME . . . • • CONTAINS MOEE PAETICULAKS OF THE COLONEL AND HIS BRETHREN . . . ■ IS SENTIMENTAL, BUT SHORT . DESCRIBES A VISIT TO PARIS ; WITH ACCIDENTS AND INCIDENTS IN LONDON IN WHICH WE HEAR A SOPRANO AND A CON TEALTO ... . . IN WHICH THE NEWCOME BROTHERS ONCE MOEE MEET TOGETHER IN UNITY IS PASSED IN A PUBLIC-HOUSE IN WHICH COLONEL NEWCOMe's HORSES ARE SOLD youth and sunshine .... in which clive begins to see the world in which barnes comes a-wooing a eeteeat ...... madame la duchesse .... Barnes's couetship .... lady kew at the congress . the end of the congeess of baden aceoss the alps ..... in which m. de ploeac is peomoted eeturns to lord kew .... in which lady kew leaves his lordship quite convalescent . . . . amongst the painters . returns from rome to pall mall an old story injured innocence returns to some old friends PAGE 185 193 203 211 224 237 250 261 271 280 298 307 321 332 340 349 367 375 387 394 406 418 426 439 451 CONTENTS ix CHAP. PAQE XLIV. IN WHICH ME. CHAELES HONEYMAN APPEARS IN AN AMIABLE LIGHT . . . .461 XLV. A STAG OF TEN . .... 474 XLVI. THE HOTEL DE FLOEAC ... 481 XLVII. CONTAINS TWO OR THREE ACTS OF A LITTLE COMEDY . . .... 491 XLVIII. IN WHICH BENEDICK IS A MARRIED MAN . 509 XLIX. CONTAINS AT LEAST SIX MORE COURSES AND TWO DESSERTS . . ... 518 L. OLIVE IN NEW QUARTERS . . 526 LI. AN OLD FRIEND ... . . 533 UI. FAMILY SECRETS . . 542 LIII. IN WHICH KINSMEN FALL OUT . . 553 IIV. HAS A TRAGICAL ENDING . . . .571 Lv. Barnes's skeleton closet . . .577 LVI. ROSA QUO locoeum seea moratur . . 586 LVII. ROSEBURY AND NEWCOME . . . .593 Lvm. "one more unfortunate" . 611 LIX. IN WHICH ACHILLES LOSES BRISEIS . . .618 LX. IN WHICH WE WRITE TO THE COLONEL . .637 LXI. IN WHICH WE ARE INTRODUCED TO A NEW NEWCOME ...... 642 LXn. MR. AND MRS. CLIVE NEWCOME . . . 647 LXIII. MRS. CLIVE AT HOME .... 655 LXIV. ABSIT OMEN . . . , 664 LXV. IN WHICH MRS. CLIVE COMES INTO HER FORTUNE 670 LXVI. IN WHICH THE COLONEL AND THE NEWCOME ATHEN^UM ARE BOTH LECTURED . .681 LXVII. NEWCOME AND LIBERTY . . . .690 LXVIII. A LETTER AND A RECONCILIATION . .697 X CONTENTS CHAP. PAOB LXIX. THE ELECTION ... . 703 LXX. CHILTEEN HUNDREDS . . . . .715 LXXI. IN WHICH MRS. CLIVE NEWCOME's CARRIAGE IS ORDERED .... . . 722 LXXII. BELISARItrS . . . . . .732 LXXIII. IN WHICH BELISAEIUS RETURNS FROM EXILE . 739 LXXIV. IN WHICH CLIVE BEGINS THE WORLD . . 747 LXXV. founder's day AT GREY FRIARS . . . 756 LXXVI. CHRISTMAS AT ROSEBURY . . . 767 LXXVII. THE SHORTEST AND HAPPIEST IN THE WHOLE HISTORY .... ... 774 LXXVIII. IN WHICH THE AUTHOR GOES ON A PLEASANT ERRAND .... . . 777 LXXIX. IN WHICH OLD FRIENDS COME TOGETHER . . 785 LXXX. IN WHICH THE COLONEL SAYS " ADSUM " WHEN HIS NAME IS CALLED . . . ,796 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE EFFECT OF THE GENEEAL's SONG JOHN HAEMAN BECHEE EUNJHEET SINGH AND MAJOE TOOMBS A PICKLE AND A EOD . AM EHEIN 1. AM EHEIN II. MUSICIANS A TEAVELLEE A BENCH IN SWITZERLAND BERNE MAL DE MEE BLOWING A LITTLE FEESH LE POETEAIT (cLIVE NEWCOME) • Frontispiece To face page xiv H page xix XX xxiii xxiii xxiv XXV xxvi xxvii xxviii xxix ME. BAENES NEWCOME AT HIS CLUB AN ASTOUNDING PIECE OF INTELLIGENCE AN EVENING AT ASTLEY's .... gandish's ....... "have you killed many men with this SWOED, UNCLE?" ..... ME. HONEYMAN AT HOME .... " PAEEWELL "...... FAEEWELL ....... 'oface page 66 )J 150 )) 166 >J 176 )J 198 j; 234 jj 270 320 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE EXPLOSION .... . To face page 364 LADY WHITTLESEa's CHAPEL — LADY KEW's CARRIAGE STOPS THE WAY ... „ 466 A PROPOSAL ... . . „ 538 THE COLONEL TELLS SIB BARNES A BIT OF HIS MIND „ 564 ROSA RETURNS THANKS .... „ 590 SIB BARNES NEWCOME IN TBOUBLE . . „ 613 SENTENCE IN THE CASE OP THE MARQUIS OF FARINTOSH „ 634 " SIR BARNES NEWCOME ON THE AFFECTIONS " „ 688 NEWCOME VERSUS NEWCOME .... „ 7O8 " TO BE SOLD "...... „ 733 A FRIEND IN NEED ... . „ 774 INTRODUCTION TO THE NEWCOMES 1853-1855 Part I. The old aunt with whom my grandmother had lived as a child, and to whose care my father also had been sent from India, was still living at Farehara, in Hampshire, when my sister and I, children of a fourth generation, succeeded to all the old traditions — to the little white beds in the upper room, to the gooseberry bushes and raspberries in the garden that stretched to the river-bank ; we too made cowslip-balls in the meadows (how often we had heard of them before we came to Fareham). We too had pattens to wear when the rain swept along the village street, and willow plates of our own, and cherry-pie on Sundays. We were in cheerful awe of the old aunt, but very fond of her. We called her Aunt Becher, but her other name I do believe was Miss Martha Honeyman. She was very strict and outspoken, but very kind. She used to net little silk purses to give us, with half sovereigns shining through the meshes, and she would send us charming letters in her delicate handwriting. Her old house stood in the village, with a high roof, and a garden full of flowers ; it was as fragrant within as without. I can remember the great blue china pot of pot-pourri standing in the corner of the shallow carved staircase, up and down which my father had run as a little boy at the beginning of the century. In the low-pitched parlour hung the pictures — a Sir Joshua among them — portraits of a generation not so far removed from my childish days as now, hidden away, as it is, by succeeding xiv THE NEWCOMES lives, " ou sous son pere on retrouve encore son pere, corarae I'onde sous I'onde, dans une nier sans fond." The stern rule of those Spartan times at the end of the last century did not always quell the wild spirits of that rising genera- tion. I have heard that the Bechers were adventurous and excit- able people ; many of them went to India, where their names are still remembered. My grandmother has often told me that in her youth the mother of the family never called the eldest daughter anything but " Miss Becher " ; as for the little granddaughters, they were invariably " Miss Harriet " and " Miss Nancy." There is a pretty description of Mrs. Becher in the " Roundabout Papers." She was my father's great-grandmother. " She was eighty years of age," he says ; " a most lovely and picturesque old lady, with a long tortoishell cane, with a little puff or tour of snow-white (or was it powdered?) hair under her cap, with the prettiest little black velvet slippers and high heels you ever saw. She had a grandson a lieutenant in the navy ; son of her son, a captain in the navy ; grandson of her husband, a captain in the navy. She lived for scores and scores of years in a dear little old Hamp- shire town inhabited by the wives, widows, daughters of navy captains, admirals, lieutenants. . . ." " Miss Becher," as her mother called her, was, when I knew her, nearly forty years after, a little dignified old lady, in a flaxen front, with apple cheeks and a blue shawl, holding out her wel- coming arms to the various generations in turn as they ran into them. When she died she left the Sir Joshua to her eldest nephew, the Admiral, and her brother's picture out of the parlour to my grandmother, the only surviving daughter, once Miss Nancy. Now in turn it hangs with its red coat upon our parlour wall. We are all very fond of our great-grandfather, with his red coat and lace ruffles. We think perhaps he may have been painted by Coates. He is a young man, some five-and-twenty years of age, with an oddly familiar face, impulsive, inquisitive. His name was John Harman Becher, and he too went out to India, and did good work, and died young, along with so many others belonging to those eventful days. He was born in April 1764, and died about 1800. Fareham itself, with its tall church spire and its ringing chimes, was a Miss Austen-like village, peopled by naval oflBcers and JOHN HAKMAN BECHEK INTRODUCTION xv spirited old ladies, who played whist every night of their lives, and kept up the traditions of England not without some asperity.* Among other things which my grandmother has often described to us was the disastrous news of Nelson's death, which brought them all to tears in that same sunny parlour where a few years later a little boy sat laboriously writing to his mother in India. One letter, the earliest we have, is addressed to " Mrs. R. Thack- eray, care of Messrs. Palmer, Calcutta, per Prince of Orange." It took a long time to-write, and six months to reach its journey's end, and is dated from Fareham in 1817. " My dear Mama, — I hope you are quite virell. I have given ray dear grandmama a kiss ; my Aunt Ritchie is very good to me. I like Chiswick ; there are so many good boys to play with. St. James's Park is a very fine place. St. Paul's Church too I like very much ; it is a finer place than I expected. I hope Captain Smyth is well ; give my love to him, and tell him that he must bring you home to your aSectionate son, William Thackeray." " William got so tired of his pen, he could not write longer with it," says his great-aunt Becher, in a postscript to this Ind- ian letter, " so he hopes you will be able to read his pencil. . . . He drew me your house in Calcutta, not omitting his mon- key looking out of the window and black Betty at the top dry- ing towels, and he told me of the numbers you collected on his birthdays in that large room he pointed out to us !" There are also a few words from an Uncle Charles, written under the seal : " My dear sister Anne, I have seen my dear little nephew, and am delighted with him." How all this recalls the early chap- ters of the " Newcomes !" Besides these postscripts, there is a faintly pencilled little picture representing, as I imagine, Captain Carmichael- Smyth on horseback. That gentleman was then just about to be mar- ried to my grandmother, and was to be the kindest of parents to my father and to all of us coming after. * I have the little card-table at which night after night Miss Becher sat down to play her game of whist with her neighbours. " Miss Nancy," as a little girl, used to be made to take her hand with the old ladies, and to the last she could make the cards fly through her fingers with most masterly precision. xvi THE NEWCOMES After drawing Captain Smyth, and the house in Calcutta, to show his friends on his first arrival, the little boy went on to sketch everything else that struck his fancy. We have a book, of which I have already spoken, compiled for private circulation by a member of our family, in which there is an account of my father as a child. " His habit of observation be- gan very early," says Mrs. Bayne. " His mother told me that once when only three or four years old, and while sitting on her knee at the evening hour, she observed him gazing upward, and lost in admiration. 'Ecco !' he exclaimed, pointing to the evening star, which was shining like a diamond over the crescent moon. This struck her the more, as she had herself noticed the same beauti- ful combination on the night of his birth. ' Ecco ' was probably decco, which is Hindustanee for ' look !' I have often heard that when he first came to London and was driving through the city he called out, ' That is St. Paul's !' He had recognized it from a picture. He was with his father's sister, Mrs. Ritchie, at the time, and she was alarmed by noticing that his uncle's hat, which he had put on in play, quite fitted him. She took him to see Sir Charles Clarke, the great physician of the day, who examined him, and said, ' Don't be afraid, he has a large head, but there is a great deal in it.' " The second of these very early letters is addressed to Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth, Agra. It is written in a painstaking, cop- per-plate hand, but it is so evidently under superintendence, that it is of much less interest than others. The little boy was then barely seven years old : — " April 2i, 1818. " My DEAR Mama, — I received your kind letter which Mrs. was so good as to read to me, as I am not able to read your letters yet, and hope I shall soon. I have been twice with George and Richmond to dine with Mr. Shakespear. He was very kind, and gave me a great many pretty books to read, and promised I should go every time George and Richmond went. I wrote a long letter in February, and sent it to Aunt Becher to send to you. I have learnt geography a long time, and have begun Latin and ciphering, which I like very mucli. Pray give my love to papa. — I remain, dear mama, your dutiful son, W. Thackeray." INTRODUCTION xvii My father never spoke with any pleasure of his early school- days. His first school was in Hampshire, where his cousins, the Shakespears, were also pupils. " I can remember George coming and flinging himself down on my bed the first night," he wrote long after to the sister of George and EichmondShakespear. . . . This was that place of which he writes in the " Roundabout Papers," " A school of which our deluded parents had heard favourable reports, but which was governed by a horrible little tyrant, who made our young lives so miserable, that I remember kneeling by my little bed of a night and saying, ' Pray God, I may dream of my mother.' " He often sufEered in health and in spirits. It was after one of these passing illnesses that he seems to have been sent to Fareham for change. " My dearest of all mamas," he writes, " I have much pleasure in writing to you again from Fareham, to tell you how happy I am. I went to Roche Court to see Mr. and Mrs. Thresher. I saw a bird's nest with young ones in it, and a beautiful honey- succle bush, and the Robbins in another place." " This has been Neptune day with me : I call it so, because I go into the water and am like Neptune. Your old acquaintances are very kind to me, and give me a great many cakes and a great many kisses. But I do not let Charles Becher kiss me ; I only take those from the ladies ; I don't have many from grandmama. " I should like yo'u to have such another pretty house as Mrs. O'Brien's, there is such a beautiful garden. I am grown a great boy ; I am three feet eleven inches high. I learn some poems, which you was very fond of, such as the ' Ode on Music' I shall go on Monday to Chiswick and hear the boys speak ; I in- tend to be one of those heroes in time. . . . " I have lost my cough, and am quite well, strong, saucy, and hearty, and can eat grandmama's gooseberry-pyes famously, after which I drink yours and my papa's good health and speedy re- turn. — Believe me, my dear mama, your dutiful son, „ „ „ r 1, ., " W. Thackeray. Fareham, Hants, June 11. But his troubles were nearly over. When his mother came home not very long after, he had no need to dream of her dear presence any more. 8 6 xviii THE NEWCOMES Her account of that speechless, happy meeting has been given already. " He was not at Chatham when we arrived," she writes to her sister in India, "but Mr. Langslow brought him from Chiswick the next morning. ... He remembers you all perfect- ly. Aunt Maria, I think, is his favourite still. . . ." I never heard my father speak of his aunt, Maria Knox, who from her letters to ray grandmother must have been a most charming and sensitive person ; but he used sometimes to de- scribe his own father to us. He remembered him as a very tall man, rising out of a bath. In August 1831 my grandmother, writing to India, to another sister, Mrs. Graham, says, " My Billy-man is quite well. I must trespass and give him a day or two of holidays. You would laugh to hear what a grammarian he is. We were talking about odd characters ; some one was mentioned. Billy said, ' Un- doubtedly he is a Noun-Substantive.' ' Why, my dear ?' ' Be- cause he stands by himself.' . . ." Not of his first school, but of Chiswick, where he went after- wards, my grandmother also writes : — " I don't think there could be a better school for young boys. My William is now sixth in the school, though out of the twenty- six there are only four that are not older than himself. He promises to fag hard till midsummer, that he may obtain a medal, and after that I think of placing him at the Charter- house. He tells me he has seen the Prince Regent's yacht in Southampton Water, and the bed on which his Royal Highness breathes his royal snore.^'' " Our time is limited to the 19th, when I must be at Chiswick to hear my little hero hold forth. They have not selected an interesting speech — Hannibal's Address to his Soldiers, which you must all read. . . . " His drawing is wonderful," the mother says in one of her letters. He liked to draw not so much the things he saw, as the things he thought about — knights with heraldic shields, soldiers, brigands, dragons, demons ; his schoolbooks were ornamented with funny, fanciful designs, his papers were covered with them. When he was still quite a little fellow he used to manufacture small postilions out of wafers, with the topboots in ink, and the red water-coats neatly stuck on. As he grew older he took to a INTRODUCTION xix flourishing style, sketching gentlemen with magnificent wreaths of hair and flaps to their coats, ladies with wonderful eyes and lips, in a curly and flourishing style. All his early history is certainly very like that of Olive New- come when he is first introduced to us at Grey Friars. My father went to Grey Friars in January 1822 ; little Olive must have been sent there about 1828. It will be remembered .cJ^^ J^n. Join^^ BUNJHEET SINGH AND MAJOll TOOMBS. (Olive's early di-awiugs.) that Olive was six years younger than Arthur Pendennis, to whose good oflJces he was recommended by Mr. Oharles Honeyman. I have already spoken of Charterhouse days in the chapter for " Pendennis." My father once took us there, and showed us the old haunts, and the house where he lived— Penny's house, they called it— and the cloister, and the playground where he XX THE NEWCOMES fought and played. " Venables is coming to dine here o^ Tues- day— my old school-fellow, you know, who spoilt my P^nle, he writes on one occasion. There were many things he liked to remember about Grey Friars, as well as those he wished to for- get He certainly liked to go back and be young again with his old friends on Founder's Day-with his old friends and his young friends too, who are now in their turn grave and reverend signors, rulers of the State, Members of Parliament. A PICKLE AND A ROD. It will be seen that my father sent most of his characters to Charterhouse — Pendennis and Clive and Philip all went there in turn. In my father's time there was a master " called Dicken, or Dickens," as he says in a schoolboy letter, and a friend has shown me a subsequent letter of his, addressed to Mr. Dicken, which describes a somewhat grim episode in the experience of poor little Rawdon Crawley, who was klso a Carthusian. The letter is illustrated. There is a picture of the headmaster in his robes of office, as well as of the small culprit, and of the offici- INTRODUCTION xxi ating executioner; also an ominous-looking step is indicated. "I forget how the bloet was made," says my father in this postscript. That block was a very common sight in my father's time. The boys used to be led up day after day, — and compare notes afterwards, he used to say. Was not Charterhouse school in Smithfield then ? Now that the school has left its ancient haunts, and transmigrated into a newer and more perfect incarnation, let us hope some of the old superstitions may have disappeared, together with associations which one cannot help regretting. There is a pretty story of my father's own early Charterhouse days, which 1 have often heard him tell — of the small John Leech, coming first to school, and being put up upon a table in a little blue jacket and high buttoned trousers, and made to sing to the other boys, as they stood all round about. John Leech was only seven when he came to Charterhouse, and his poor mother, who felt it was wiser not to disturb him by visits, took a window in a house close by from which she could overlook the playground, and watch her little son at his games. A very faithful Carthusian, Canon Irvine, has written an in- teresting account in the Nineteenth Century of a visit my father paid to Charterhouse at the time he was finishing the " New- comes." Canon Irvine, the son of an old friend and connexion of our family, was one of the elder boys at Charterhouse then, and he describes how he met my father by appointment at the door leading into Gown - boys Quad. My father asked him whether he knew any of the " Codds," and whether he could take him to see one of them ; and then told him that Colonel Newcome was going to be a " Codd." " I knew Captain Light," writes the Canon, " an old ofiBcer of fine profile and a ' gran' frosty pow,' who had served her Majesty and her royal predecessors in an infantry regiment, and had lost his sight from the glare of the rock at Gibraltar. Blindness had brought him to seek the shelter of Thomas Sutton's Hospital, where he lived with the respect of old and young, tended loving- ly through all the hours of daylight by his daughter, who went back at night to some neighbouring lodging. To the quarters of xxii THE NEWCOMES this good old gentleman I led Thackeray. ... He sat down and conversed very pleasantly, ever and anon relapsing into reverie, where the Colonel and EtheJ, we may be sure, took their places, and then he would rouse himself to talk courteously again. . . ." The ancient " Codds " remain unmolested, although there was once some scheme for bringing a street through the grounds of Charterhouse. May the remembrance of Thomas Newcome long divert the cruel experiment. Part II. The " Newcomes " was written in the years that came between my father's first and second journey to America. He began the preface at Baden on the Vth of July 1863, he finished his book at Paris on the 28th of June 1855, and in the autumn of that year he returned to America. The story had been in his mind for a long time. While still writing " Esmond " he speaks of a new novel " opening with something like Fareham and the old people there," and of " a hero who will be born in India, and have a half-brother and sister." And there is also the descrip- tion to be read of the little wood near to Berne, in Switzerland, into which he strayed one day, and where, as he tells us, "the story was actually revealed to him." Some moments have their special characteristics, and I can still remember that day, and the look of the fields in which we were walking, and the silence of the hour, and the faint, sultry summer mountains, with the open wood at the foot of the slop- ing stubble. My father had been silent and preoccupied when we first started, and was walking thoughtfully apart. We wait- ed till he came back to us, saying he now saw his way quite clearly, and he was cheerful and in good spirits as we returned to the inn. I have a note-book of his for 1853, in which there are some memoranda of that time. We were travelling in Switzerland and Germany. We had come to Baden first of all, where he records various excursions and drives, and notes the books which he is reading, as well as the people he meets : — " Ith July 1853. — Began preface of ' Newcomes.' " INTRODUCTION xxiii " Wrote introduction ' N.' — Walk to old Schloss with the chil- dren. Read ' Don Quixote.' " AM KHEIN. — I. AM KHEIN. — n. "ll!(A.— Wrote Chap. 1. Eead ' Don Quixote.' 'Tacitus' at night. . . ." xxiv THE NEWCOMES •• Tuesday 12' /a I I'm'/'/ -^ -■■-'•-',,■ -^1- ;-^/, . \- A BENCH IN SWITZERLAND. Heidelberg, writing in the railway, he reaches Frankfort. He must have been working too hard, for he was seized at Frank- fort with an attack of illness which lasted some days. By Sep- tember we were home again in London. There are still a few more memoranda in the little book; such as a visit to Blenheim with Mr. and Mrs. Higgins, with whom we went to stay soon after our return from abroad. It is in this same autumn of 1 853 that my father writes to his mother : " I only got last night the proof-sheets of No. 1 of the 'Newcomes' ; Doyle has been three weeks doing the en- gravings. . . . This naorning comes a letter, which may defer the Roman trip altogether — a proposal from a publisher to edit Horace Walpole's letters, which is just the sort of work I shoul4 INTRODUCTION xxvii like ; such as would keep rne at home pleasantly employed some evenings, and pottering over old volumes (I am flying from pen to pen to see which will answer best) of old biographies and his- tories. When the imagination work is over that is the kind of occupation I often propose to myself for my old age. "We had a pleasant little journey to Oxfordshire — did the children tell you ? — and as for Brighton, it is wonderful how it seems to answer with me. I found myself longing to get to work, and wrote a ballad there the day before yesterday with quite a juvenile pluck.'' This ballad was the " Organ Boy's La- ment," the last poem he ever published in Punch. The late autumn was spent at Paris in an apartment in the Champs Elysees, where the fifth number of the "Newcomes" was finished, and whence, on the 27th of November, we started, my father, my sister and I, for Italy, by Chalons, by Lyons, by Avignon to Marseilles, where we went on board the Valetta, skirting along the coast, and reaching Rome on the .3rd of De- cember 1853, xxviii THE NEWCOMES The " Newcomes," it will be seen, led a wandering life ever since that day in the little wood at Berne, where my father first marshalled the various impressions which had come to him from time to time. At home in London, in Paris sunshine, through the Roman winter (which was trying in many ways), the work kept steadily on. I can remember writing constantly to his dic- tation all this year, though the details only come to me in a con- fused sort of way. On one occasion he was at work in some MAL DF, MER — BLOWING A LITTLK FRESH. room in which he slept, high up in a hotel ; the windows looked out upon a wide and pleasant prospect, but I cannot put a name to my remembrance ; and then he walked up and down, he paused and then he paced the room again, stopping at last at the foot of the bed, where he stood rolling his hand over the brass ball at the end of the bedstead. He was at the moment dictating that scene in which poor Jack Belsize pours out his story to Clive and 3. J. at Baden. " Yes," my father said, with a sort of laugh, looking down at his own hand (he was very much excited at the moment), " this is just the sort of thing a man might do at such a time." It was in this same room, in this hotel in past-land, that he christened his heroine, still walking up and down the room, and making up his mind what her name should be. I wonder INTRODtJCTlON XXlX how many thousands of Ethels were christened by him, and how many have Miss Yonge for a godmother ! He used, as I have said, to dictate very constantly, but when he came to a critical point he would send his secretary away and write for himself. He always said he could think best with a pen in his hand. A pen to an author is like the wand of a necromancer, it compels the spell. LE PORTRAIT. (Clive Newcome.) Our stay in Rome was not unmixed pleasure, though it was full of delightful sights and people and remembrances, which, as my father predicted, lasted a life-time. There too I remember writing for him on a marble table in a great room with many windows, and with walls hung with pictr nres and ornamented with swinging lamps and classic columns, where pigeons perched on the deep window-sills, voices called. XXX THE NEWCOMES and piferari droned from the street far below, and charming people came to call and to interrupt us — brides and bride- grooms, beautiful ladies, poets, muses, painters with beards and cloaks. That was the time when my father went for a walk on the Pincio with Mr. Doyle's friend, Mr. Pollen, and three or four monks and priests in their robes. He admired the convents, but he never ceased wondering at the creed for which they gave up everything. W. M. T. to Mrs. Carmichael-Smyth. " Rome, December 1863. "This shall serve as an envelope to the girl's letter, which I see is full of raptures and pleasure ; and that is something worth travelling for. We went to St. Peter's yesterday, and agreed Pisa is the best ; the other is a huge heathen parade, all the statues represent lies almost ; and the Founder of the religion utterly dis- appears under the enormous pile of fiction and ceremony that has been built round Him. I'm not quite sure that I think St. Peter's handsome : yes, as handsome as one of those women I saw at the ball at Paris. The front is positively ugly, that's cer- tain; but nevertheless, the city is glorious. I had a famous walk on the Pincio, and the sun set for us with a splendour quite imperial. " I wasn't sorry when the journey from Civita Vecchia was over. Having eighty or ninety louis in my pocket, I should have been good meat for the brigands had they chosen to come. Everybody I have met is more or less a thief or a beggar. Ev- ery miserable official at every post-house, customs, what not, holds out his swindling hand and begs ; and the earth swarms with myriads of priests and friars, who neither toil nor spin, but live on the people, and perform fetish, and interpret the will of the gods. Quam diu f I wonder when it will be over ? And I wonder when my daughters are coming to breakfast ? " Breakfast, writing, go to the club and read newspapers, walks with the girls, dinner at home or out three times a week, sometimes a tea-party, always early to bed, and a something in the air (or in the mind, is it ?) which causes a perpetual languor. A man who has been a-pleasuring for twenty years begins to INTRODUCTION xxxi settle down as a sort of domestic character — not gloomy nor ill- tempered, nor peevish nor unkind, but a sort of mild melancholy. There are only about six pictures and statues of all I have seen here that I care to see again. Ah ! where are the joyful eyes and bright perceptions of youth ? The girls have many kind friends — Mrs. Sartoris, Mrs. Browning. I wish I was not think- ing of No. 8 the minute No. 7 is done. But so is the condition of man, I suppose, until the end comes, and peace. If I have a blue devil, he is of such a faint blue, that you can hardly see it ; and when I look him steadily in the face, he presently vanishes, and I feel that I am very fairly happy. Who can say more, or how many as much ? I have made acquaintance with a convert, an Oxford man, whom I like, and who interests me. And I am trying to pick my Oxford man's brains, and see from his point of view. But it isn't mine ; and old popery and old paganism seem to me as dead the one as the other. " I don't seem to care much more about the ' Newcoraes' than about other sublunary things. I never hear except your verdict, and perhaps that's the very best way, to write it and leave it. As for posterity, be sure that will have its own authors to read, and I know one wbo has very little anxiety about its verdict. I have broken my ruby pen, which wouldn't write upright, and finish my scrap with the gold one that won't write slanting." W. M. T. to Mrs. Procter. " Via della Croce 81, Romk, '■^January 1854. " You are quite right that I might have done my work just as well at Brompton as at Rome. I haven't seen Rome, and don't know a single Roman except the housemaid and my landlord, who speaks English. " But the girls are as happy as young women need be. If I am glum myself, their good spirits give me pleasure; and if I can't leave them a fortune, why, we nmst try and leave them the memory of having had a good time. ... I go and look at the pictures, statues, churches, and so forth, but what has come to them or the eyes that behold them ? I declare that a Dying Gladiator is very well, but it is no such wonder. As for the xxxii THE NEWCOMES Domenichino (it is at the Capitol you know, over the way), pish ! it is a great clumsy woman, affected, ogling, and in a great turban. The best thing at Rome is the sunset over St. Peter's every evening. Gods, what a flaming splendour it is! The worst thing, that one can't drink wine as in Weymouth Street — not though it's ever so good, which it isn't. No wine is so good as Weymouth Street wine. "Yours and my mother's have been the only criticisms that have come to me. Pollen says Newman read the two first num- bers, and thought the style the right sort of thing. The Colonel is going to India the day after to-morrow. You'll be glad to hear that, I know. He is a dear old boy, but confess you think he is rather a twaddler. . . . " The most interesting man I have met here is a convert, Mr. Pollen, whom Doyle sent with a letter, and we have neutral grounds on the fine arts, books, and so forth, and I try to understand from him what can be the secret of the religion for which he has given up rank, chances, and all good things of this life. . . . " I am glad to have seen him and other converts, and to have been touched by their goodness, piety, and self-negation. Tell Adelaide, with my respectful remembrance, that on Candlemas Day I met at breakfast the Abbot of St. Bernard's (England) and Father Ignatius in white Cistercian habits. Dr. Manning — he has just been doctored by his Holiness — Messrs. Vaughan and Wynn in minor orders, with hats like Don Basilic. And yesterday I met the Holy Father in the street, and had a most comfortable bow from him." February 4. " It is a shame how long this letter has been in completion. " I lost it, and find it only in the midst of a heap of No. 8 which has been completed, thank the stars, and now since seven o'clock this morning am at work on No. 9. Seven o'clock in the morning. That is your true secret. Early to bed, have the day to myself from twelve o'clock till eleven at night, and then go to sleep. But with this regimen the author may flourish, but the friend perishes, the writing of letters becomes impossible, and the sight of ink odious. . . . We have had a dear little frost, and my health has braced up wonderfully with the cold weather. Lord ! how the stars shine in the ' evans,' those luminous ob- INTRODUCTION xxxiii jects said to be worlds by some. I don't think you see them in London. You only see coals and gas, and fogs, and mud and snow — but then Madeira and that bottle of Crockford which B. C. will bring out, and a snug talk by the fire 1" It will be seen from these letters that he was tired and out of spirits. He fell ill after a time with an attack of Roman fever, and when he recovered was already beginning to make ready for leaving Rome, when he heard of his aunt, Mrs. Ritchie's death. He was very much moved, and he told us to pack up quickly and hurry our departure by two or three days. To her daugh- ter he writes — W. M. T. to Miss Charlotte Ritchie. " Who could be of help in this grief ? God forbid you should not feel it, and I sympathise in it, who recollect my dearest aunts' sweet face when I came to her as a child from India. For six and thirty years up to yesterday, almost always sweet and kind and tender. O the pure living heart, does it not make yours thrill with thanks and devout gratitude to God our Fa- ther, to think that hers was so guileless, so gentle, so full of dear kindness to all human creatures, as well as to her children and to me, who was almost one of them ? As we love and bless them when they are gone, may we hope that their love too en- dures for us in that awful future into which the Divine Good- ness has called them. Can't you imagine the reunion with those she continued to love after their departure with such a beautiful fidelity — the beloved father, husband, children ? " Now I shall go up and see the sun set for the last time over St. Peter's. Shall I ever see it again I wonder ? — the grand old usurper, who trampled the pagan tyrant down, and has had his own reign of nigh 1 500 years, barbarous and bloody and splen- did. Who is to follow ? . . . " So the generations of men pass away and are called rank after rank by the Divine Goodness out of the reach of time and age, and grief and struggle and parting, leaving these to their successors, who go through their appointed world-work, and are resumed presently by the Awful Power of us all. Whose will is xxxiv THE NEWCOMES done on earth as it is in heaven, and Whose kingdona and glory are for ever and ever." We left Eome very early one morning and drove all day through the Campagna on our way to Naples. We slept at Terracina, and started before sunrise next morning. How well I can remember the first flaming rays flooding the shadowy plains as we came out of the hotel in the early morning, and the cigar my father lit as we drove away ! W. M. T. to his Mother. " It is a most strange thing, that our fambly is not to be ex- empted from the evils which befall other and more wulgar fam- ilies, so this is to tell you that we have been wiling away the gay hours for the past week with a little scarlatina. . . . Luckily we had had a fortnight's hard work before these attacks, during which two numbers were polished off. I had a week of illness myself, the old complaint brought on without rhyme or reason by the beautiful air of this country. ... It is certain that I might have stayed at home for any good to the 'Newcomes' which this journey has done. What jolly rooms we have 1 Capri out of window looks like an amethyst island. The weath- er for a month has been bitterly cold, but is now turning, I think. The people here are as kind as the people everywhere." Writing still of this time he says, " And I now understand the anxiety of some parents, whose careful faces when I was ill myself used to make me wonder. So the Father of all sends ill- ness, death, care, grief, out of which come love, steadfastness, consolation, nor could these things have been if men had not been made mortal, and even erring and sinful and wayward. Suppose Eve had not eaten of that apple, and her children and their papa had gone on living for ever quite happy in a smirking paradisical nudity, it wouldn't have been half the world it is." After our return journey, my sister and I remained in Paris with our grandparents, and my father went over to England im- mediately. He had just given up the old house in Young Street and was moving into Onslow Square, which was in Brompton in those days and not yet in South Kensington. "I have been to see the Brompton House," be writes in April INTRODUCTION xxxv 1854, "and am well pleased with the purchase, and am poking about for furniture, and leave home at eleven every day and don't come back till midnight. I had a famous passage and a good dinner and sleep at Folkestone, dined at the Shakespeare dinner here on Saturday, and am very glad I came, if only that Dickens, who was in the chair, made a complimentary speech, and though I don't care for the compliments, I do for the good- will and peace among men. " I have been to call on no one, but dining with old cronies, companions, bachelors. I wonder whether I shall see you in Paris in a few days after all ? " But do another ' Newcomes,' sir, or two if you can, before you take thought of pleasuring. That truth looks me steadily in the face, and how can I bolt from it ? " I don't know when I am to get Brompton ready. I have bought at a sale a lot of goods, and still want ever so much more, being desirous to have good handsome things this time, and the old traps looking very decrepit in the new house." The result of my father's furnishings was a pleasant, bowery- sort of home, with green curtains and carpets, looking out upon the elm-trees of Onslow Square. We lived for seven years at No. 36, and it was there he wrote the " Lectures on the Georges," and the end of " The Newcomes," and the " Virginians," part of " Philip," and many of the " Roundabout Papers." His study was over the drawing-room and looked out upon the elm trees. In 1854 my father went North, to give the lecture on " Charity and Humour," which he kept specially for charities. He had written the lecture in one day in America — dictating it to Mr. Crowe. A young lady, not then married, the friend of Mr. and Mrs. Bray, who were George Eliot's friends, has left the following in- teresting description of my father at this time : — "Thackeray came to Coventry to give us his lecture on the ' English Humourists.' He was the Brays' guest and, would you believe it, they asked me, and me only, to tea, to be smuggled in as one of themselves with no introduction. ... He usually goes to an inn, hating to be made a lion of, but the Lewes' as- sured him that the Brays would not lionise him, and so he ac- xxxvi THE NEWCOMES cepted the invitation. ... I met Miss Hennell in the garden, who talked in an undertone, as if fearful of disturbing the lion who was then in his room writing the coming number of ' The Newcomes ' and then went into the house anxiously awaiting his appearance ; Mr. Bray, Mrs. Bray, Sarah Hennell, Mrs. Head and myself, all intensely excited. "At last he came, very quietly, but such a presence! "Wc had to look up a long way, he was so tall. . . . He talked in a pleasant friendly way. The coming number of ' The Newcomes' of course, was in all our minds. Miss Hennell, as our spoke- woman said, ' Mr. Thackeray, we want you to let Clive marry Ethel. Do let them be happy.' He was surprised at our in- terest in his characters. ' What a fuss you make about my yellow books here in the country ! In town no one cares for them. They haven't the time. The characters once created lead me, and I follow where they direct. I cannot tell the events that wait on Ethel and Clive.' The high world was full of Ethels who sold themselves voluntarily. ' I was talking,' he said, ' to a very nice girl at a party in London, when I saw her start as a gentleman — an artist — entered the room. " Oh, that's it," I said, " is it ?" She coloured and said, " What is the use ? He hasn't a farthing," and walked away. They were following each other about, evidently in love, but in three weeks or so, it was announced that a marriage had been arranged between this young lady and some Lord Farintosh. . . .' "He told Miss Hennell that he did not like ' dearest Laura' and that he made his women without character, or else so bad, because that was as he knew them. I was told that next morn- ing, when they asked him whether he had had a good night, he answered, ' How could I with Colonel Newcome making a fool of himself as he has done V " Mrs. Bray : ' But why did you let him ?' " Thackeray : ' Oh, it was in him to do it. He must.' " They talked of orthodoxy, and whether there was any tal- ented person on the orthodox side. He said he was going to spend the next day with of Birmingham. ' A good fellow —0 Heavens, if I could write three lines of that man's ortho- doxy I could make £20,000, but I couldn't do it.' The conver- sation then turned upon personal piety, and Thackeray gave us INTRODUCTION xxxvii his own beautifully simple faith — in conclusion saying, half in way of apology for his old-fashioned belief (for the Brays were of very different ways of thinking, as he was aware), ' But I have a dear old Gospel mother who is a good Christian, and who has always chapter and verse to prove everything. Poor dear !' "Talked of Newman. Called him a saint, in a way that was a blessing to hear, so heartily and truly did he utter it. Said that somewhere in his heart he (Newman) was a sceptic, but that he had shut it down and locked it up as with Solomon's Seal, and went on really believing in the Catholic faith. "The Lecture was given in our beautiful old Hall (scene of the Trial in ' Adam Bede '), which we found so well filled that we had to take side seats. It was quietly and well delivered — no action — read as a book. He gave a slight sketch of the early Humourists, but when he came to Dickens, he spoke with affec- tionate enthusiasm, saying, ' I have a little maid at home who is never happy without one of his books beneath her pillow.' His benediction on Dickens became almost a thanksgiving so devout was it. He also read from Punch an extract from ' The Curate's Walk ' so touching and humourous that it alone would almost prove the principle that true 'humour is always charitable.' He had written it himself as he told us very simply." It is almost touching to realise how many people have found the original of Colonel Newcome, to their personal satisfaction, in various individuals. I could almost laugh sometimes when one old friend after another says, " Have you never thought that So-and-so may have suggested the original character, that your father must have meant to describe " I never heard my father say that when he wrote Colonel Newcome, any special person was in his mind, but it was always an understood thing that my step-grandfather had many of Colonel Newcome's char- acteristics, and there was also a brother of the Major's, General Charles Carmichael, who was very like Colonel Newcome in looks ; a third family Colonel Newcome was Sir Richmond Shakespear, and how many more are there not, present, and yet to come ? According to a friendly biographer of the Thackeray family, they abound in India ! It was of one of these oflBcers in later years that my father wrote : — xxxviii THE NEWCOMES "I was shocked, not surprised, to find the other day that Colonel Newcome of House had been speculating unluck- ily, that his Gutta Percha Company had swallowed a thousand up, and is calling out for a thousand more. He wrote to me, desiring me to buy all his wine— £100 worth, that is. I wanted him to take the money without sending me the wine, but this he utterly refused, declining to have anything but a bargain between us." I remember writing the last chapters of " The Newcomes " to my father's dictation. I wrote on as he dictated more and more slowly until he stopped short altogether, in the account of Colonel Newcome's last illness, when he said that he must now take the pen into his own hand, and he sent me away. The very last page of " The Newcomes " was written not in the study in Onslow Square, but at Paris on the 20th of June 1855. That line " " which he draws with his own pen, " the barrier " across which he can see the figures retreating, was drawn one hot summer's day in the Rue Godot de Mauroy, in a big shady room looking towards the old street. His cousins, Charlotte and Jane Ritchie, had lent us their apartment for a few days, together with their housekeeper to look after us, and to prepare such chickens and fillets as she only knew how to evoke out of poultry and beef. The manuscript of the " Newcomes " is now at Charterhouse, in the museum, and wishing to verify my own impressions, I wrote to a friend there, asking him whereabouts ray father's handwriting came in, in the last chapter. He answered, that he had been to look at the manuscript, and that my writing left off, as I imagined, with the account of the illness in chapter fifty-two. My father then continued with his own hand, and it was with his cousin Charlotte's pen and on her writing-table, that he completed his work. It is well known how " The Newcomes " was received and welcomed, and yet, looking over old reviews and notices, it would seem that authors were more smartly lectured twenty years ago than they are now. "There has been a loud cry raised," says the North British Review, taking up the gauntlet for my father, " and in the name INTRODUCTION xxxix of religion too, that this writer represents men and women worse than they are. But why do we go on calling ourselves miserable sinners on Sunday, if we are to abuse Mr. Thackeray on week-days for making out many of us to be somewhat less than saints ?" Sir Edward Burne Jones, who was still an undergraduate at Oxford in 1856, wrote an essay on the " Newcomes " for the first number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. The view that "Thackeray was great because he depicted poor human nature as it is, because he studied from life and reproduced life, and was both sorry for it, and proud for it," became, we are told, a credo of the school of young artists to which Burne Jones belonged. Northern reviewers were generally favourable to him. " Thack- eray's peculiar style," says this one, " reaches perfection in the ' Newcomes,' and to appreciate it properly, the degrees through which this writer has passed should be examined." He then proceeds to compare my father to Fielding, " whose breadth of treatment, impossible for the modern novelist, is represented in Mr. Thackeray's works by a subtlety of handling which is al- most equally admirable." My father took his writing as seriously as any reviewer could do. He looked upon himself as a lay preacher even more than as a maker of stories. A letter written long before (I think to Mr. Sortain, the Brighton clergyman) puts all this very clearly : — "13 YouNu Street, Kensington, ''May 15, 1850. " My dear Sir, — I shall value your book very much, not only as the work of the most accomplished orator I ever heard in my life, but if you will let me so take it, as a token of goodwill and interest on your part in my own literary pursuits. " I want, too, to say in my way, that love and truth are the greatest of Heaven's commandments and blessings to us ; that the best of us, the many especially who pride themselves on their virtue most, are wretchedly weak, vain, and selfish ; and at least to preach such a charity, as a common sense of our shame and unworthiness might inspire to us poor people. " I hope men of my profession do no harm who talk this doc- trine out of doors to people in drawing-rooms and in the world. Your duty in church takes you a step higher, — that awful step xl THE NEWCOMES beyond ethics, which leads you up to God's revealed truth. What a tremendous responsibility his is who has that mystery to ex- plain ! What a prodigious boon the faith which makes it clear to him ! I am glad to think that I have kind thoughts from you, and to have the opportunity of offering you my sincere re- spect and regard. — Believe me, most truly yours, my dear sir, " W. M. Thackeray." A. I. R. THE NEWCOMES CHAPTER I THE OVERTURE— AFTER WHICH THE CURTAIN RISES UPON A DRINKING CHORUS A CROW, who had flown away with a cheese from a dairy window, sat perched on a tree looking down at a great big frog in a pool underneath him. The fr-og's hideous large eyes were goggling out of his head in a manner which appeared quite ridiculous to the old blackamooi', who watched the splay-footed slimy wretch with that peculiar grim humour belonging to crows. Not far from the frog a fat ox was browsing ; whilst a few lambs frisked about the meadow, or nibbled the grass and buttercups there. Who should come in to the farther end of the field but a wolf? He was so cunningly dressed up in sheep's clothing that the very lambs did not know Master Wolf; nay, one of them, whose dam the wolf had just eaten, after which he had thrown her skin over his shoulders, ran up innocently towards the devouring monster, mis- taking him for her mamma. " He he ! " says a fox, sneaking round the hedge-paling, over which the tree grew, whereupon the crow was perched looking down on the frog, who was staring with his goggle eyes fit to burst with envy, and croaking abuse at the ox. "How absurd those lambs are ! Yonder siUy little knock-knee'd baah-ling does not know the old wolf dressed in the sheep's fleece. He is the same old rogue who gobbled up little Red Riding-Hood's grandmother for lunch, and swallowed little Red Riding-Hood for supper. Tirez la hobinette et la chevillette cherra. He he ! " An owl that was hidden in the hollow of the tree woke np. " Oho, Master Fox," says she, " I cannot see you, but I smell you ! If some folks like lambs, other folks like geese," says the owl. "And your ladyship is fond of mice," says the fox. 8 A 2 THE NEWCOMES "The Chinese eat them," says the owl; "and I have read that they are very fond of dogs," continued the old lady. "I wish they would exterminate every cur of them off the face of the earth," said the fox. "And I have also read, in works of travel, that the French eat frogs," continued the owl. " Aha, my friend Crapaud ! are you there 1 That was a very pretty concert we sang together last night ! " " If the French devour my brethren, the English eat beef,' croaked out the frog, — "great big, brutal, bellowing oxen." " Ho, whflo ! " says the owl, " I have heard that the English are toad-eaters too ! " " But who ever heard of them eating an owl or a fox, madam 1 " says Reynard ; " or their sitting down and taking a crow to pick 1 " adds the polite rogue, with a bow to the old crow who was perched above them with the cheese in his mouth. "We are privileged animals, all of us ; at least we never furnish dishes for the odious orgies of man." " I am the bird of wisdom," says the owl ; " I was the com- panion of Pallas Minerva; I am frequently represented in the Egyptian monuments." " I have seen you over the British barn-doors," said the fox, with a grin. " You have a deal of scholarship, Mrs. Owl. I know a thing or two myself; but am, I confess it, no scholar — a mere man of the world — a fellow that lives by his wits — a mere country gentleman." " You sneer at scholarship," continues the owl, with a sneer on her venerable face. " I read a good deal of a night." " When I am engaged deciphering the cocks and hens at roost," says the fox. " It's a pity for all that you can't read ; that board nailed over my head would give you some information." " What does it say ? " says the fox. " I can't spell in the daylight," answered the owl ; and, giving a yawn, went back to sleep till evening in the hollow of her tree. "A fig for her hieroglyphics ! " said the fox, looking up at the crow in the tree. "What airs our slow neighbour gives herself! She pretends to all the wisdom; whereas your reverences the crows are endowed with gifts far superior to those benighted old bigwigs of owls, who blink in the darkness, and caU their hooting singing. How noble it is to hear a chorus of crows ! There are twenty-four brethren of the Order of St. Oorvinus, who have builded themselves a convent near a wood which I frequent ; what a droning and a chanting they keep up ! I protest their reverences' THE NEWCOMES 3 singiug is nothing to yours ! You sing so deliciously in parts, do for the love of harmony favour me with a solo ! " While this conversation was going on, the ox was chumping the grass ; the frog was eyeing him in such a rage at his superior pro- portions, that he would have spurted venom at him if he could, and that he would have burst, only that is impossible, from sheer envy ; the little lambkin was lying vmsuspiciously at the side of the wolf in fleecy hosiery, who did not as yet molest her, being replenished with the mutton her mamma. But now the wolf's eyes began to glare, and his sharp white teeth to show, and he rose up with a growl, and began to think he should like lamb for supper. " What large eyes you have got ! " bleated out the lamb, with rather a timid look. " The better to see you with, my dear." " What large teeth you have got ! " " The better to " At this moment such a terrific yell filled the field, that all its inhabitants started with terror. It was from a donkey, who had somehow got a lion's skin, and now came in at the hedge, pursued by some men and boys with sticks and guns. When the wolf in sheep's clothing heard the bellow of the ass in the lion's skin, fancying that the monarch of the forest was near, he ran away as fast as his disguise would let him. When the ox heard the noise he dashed round the meadow-ditch, and with one trample of his hoof squashed the frog who had been abusing him. When the crow saw the people with guns coming, he in- stantly dropped the cheese out of his mouth, and took to wing. When the fox saw the cheese drop, he immediately made a jump at it (for he knew the donkey's voice, and that his asinine bray was not a bit like his royal master's roar), and making for the cheese, fell into a steel trap, which snapped off his tail; without which he was obUged to go into the world, pretending, forsooth, that it was the fashion not to wear tails any more ; and that the fox-party were better without 'em. Meanwhile, a boy with a stick came np, and belaboured Master Donkey until he roared louder than ever. The wolf, with the sheep's clothing draggling about his legs, could not run fast, and was detected and shot by one of the men. The blind old owl, whirring out of the hollow tree, quite amazed at the disturbance, flounced into the face of a ploughboy, who knocked her down with a pitchfork. The butcher came and quietly led ofi' the ox and the lamb; and the farmer finding the fox's brush in the trap, hung it up over his mantelpiece, and always bragged that he had been in at his death. 4. THE NEWOOMES " What a farrago of old fables is this ! What a dressing Up in old clothes ! " says the critic. (I think I see such a one— a Solomon that sits in judgment over us authors and chops up our children.) "As sure as I am just and wise, modest, learned, and religious, so surely I have read something very like this stuff and nonsense, about jackasses and foxes, before. That wolf in sheep s clothing 1— do I not know him? That fox discoursing with the crow ?— have I not previously heard of him 1 Yes, in Lafontaine's fables : let us get the Dictionary and the Fable and the ' Biographie Universelle,' article Lafontaine, and confound the impostor." " Then in what a contemptuous way," may Solomon go on to remark, " does this author speak of himian nature ! There is scarce one of these characters he represents but is a villain. The fox is a flatterer ; the frog is an emblem of impotence and envy ; the wolf in sheep's clothing, a bloodthirsty hypocrite, wearing the garb of innocence; the ass in the lion's skin, a quack trying to terrify, by assuming the appearance of a forest monarch (does the writer, writhing under merited castigation, mean to sneer at critics in this character ? We laugh at the impertinent comparison) ; the ox, a stupid commonplace; the only innocent being in the writer's (stolen) apologue is a fool — the idiotic lamb, who does not know his own mother ! " And then the critic, if in a virtuous mood, may indulge in some fine writing regarding the holy beauteousness of maternal affection Why not? If authors sneer, it is the critic's business to sneer at them for sneering. He must pretend to be their superior, or who would care about his opinion ? And his livelihood is to find fault. Besides, he is right sometimes ; and the stories he reads, and the characters drawn in them, are old sure enough. What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables : tremblers and boasters ; victims and bullies ; dupes and knaves; long-eared Neddies, giving themselves leonine airs; Tar- tuffes wearing virtuous clothing; lovers and their trials, their blindness, their foUy and constancy. With the very first page of the human story do not love, and lies too, begin? So the tales were told ages before ^sop ; and asses under lions' manes roared in Hebrew ; and sly foxes flattered in Etruscan ; and wolves in sheep's clothing gnashed their teeth in Sanscrit, no doubt. The sun shines to-day as he did when he first began shining ; and the birds in the tree overhead, while I am writing, sing very much the same note they have sung ever since there were finches. Nay, since last he besought good-natured friends to listen once a month to his talking, a friend of the writer has seen the New World, and found the (featherless) birds there exceedingly like their brethren of THE NEWOOMES 6 Europe. There may be nothing new under and including the sun ; but it looks fresh every morning, and we rise with it to toil, hope, scheme, laugh, struggle, love, suffer, until the night comes and quiet. And then will wake Morrow and the eyes that look on it ; and so da capo. This, then, is to be a story, may it please you, in which jack- daws will wear peacocks' feathers, and awaken the just ridicule of the peacocks ; in which, while every justice is done to the peacocks themselves, the splendour of their plumage, the gorgeousness of their dazzling necks, and the magnificence of their tails, exception will yet be taken to the absurdity of their rickety strut, and the foohsh discord of their pert squeaking ; in which lions in love will have their claws pared by sly vu'gins ; in which rogues will some- times triumph, and honest folks, let us hope, come by their own ; in which there will be black crape and white favours : in which there will be tears under orange-flower wreaths, and jokes in mourn- ing coaches ; in which there will be dinners of herbs with content- ment and without, and banquets of stalled oxen where there is care and hatred — ay, and kindness and friendship too, along with the feast. It does not follow that all men are honest because they are poor; and I have known some who were friendly and generous, although they had plenty of money. There are some great land- lords who do not grind down their tenants ; there are actually bishops who are not hypocrites ; there are liberal men even among the Whigs, and the Eadicals themselves are not all Aristocrats at heart. But who ever heard of giving the Moral before the Fable 1 Children are only led to accept the one after their delectation over the other : let us take care lest our readers skip both ; and so let us bring them on quickly — our wolves and lambs, our foxes and hons, our roaring donkeys, our billing ringdoves, our motherly partlets, and crowing chanticleers. There was once a time when the sun used to shine brighter than it appears to do in this latter half of the nineteenth century ; when the zest of life was certainly keener; when tavern wines seemed to be delicious, and tavern dinners the perfection of cookery ; when the perusal of novels was productive of immense delight, and the monthly advent of magazine-day was hailed as an exciting holiday; when to know Thompson, who had written a magazine- article, was an honour and a privilege; and to see Brown, the author of the last romance, in the flesh, and actually walking in the Park with his umbrella and Mrs. Brown, was an event remarkable, and to the end of life to be perfectly well remembered ; when the women of this world were a thousand times more beautiful than those of the present time ; and the houris of the theatres especially 6 THE NEWOOMES so ravishing and angelic, that to see them was to set the heart in motion, and to see them again was to struggle for half-an-hour previously at the door of the pit ; when tailors called at a man's lodgings to dazzle him with cards of fancy-waistcoats : when it seemed necessary to purchase a grand silver dressing-case, so as to be ready for the beard which was not yet bom (as yearling brides provide lace caps, and work rich clothes for the expected darling) ; when to ride in the Park on a ten-shUhng hack seemed to be the height of fashionable enjoyment, and to splash your college tutor as you were driving down Kegent Street in a hired cab the triumph of satire ; when the acme of pleasure seemed to be to meet Jones of Trinity at the Bedford, and to make an arrangement with him, and with King of Corpus (who was staying at the Colonnade), and Martin of Trinity Hall (who was with his family in Bloomsbury Square), to dine at the Piazza, go to the play and see Braham in " Fra Diavolo," and end the frolic evening by partaking of supper and a song at the " Cave of Harmony." — It was in the days of my own youth, then, that I met one or two of the characters who are to iigure in this history, and whom I must ask leave to accompany for a short while, and until, familiarised with the public, they can make their own way. As I recall them the roses bloom again, and the nightingales sing by the calm Bendemeer. Going to the play then, and to the pit, as was the fashion in those merry days, with some young fellows of my own age, having listened delighted to the most cheerful and brilliant of operas, and laughed enthusiastically at the farce, we became naturally hungry at twelve o'clock at night, and a desire for welsh-rabbits and good old glee-singing led us to the " Cave of Harmony," then kept by the celebrated Hoskins, among whose friends we were proud to count. We enjoyed such intimacy with Mr. Hoskins that he never failed to greet us with a kind nod ; and John the waiter made room for us near the President of the convivial meeting. We knew the three admirable glee-singers, and many a time they partook of brandy-and-water at our expense. One of us gave his call dinner at Hoskins's, and a merry time we had of it. Where are you, Hoskins, bird of the night '? Do you warble your songs by Acheron, or troll your choruses by the banks of black Avernus ? The goes of stout, " The Chough and Crow," the welsh-rabbit, "The Eed-Cross Knight," the hot brandy-and-water (the brown, the strong !), " The Bloom is on the Eye " (the bloom isn't on the rye any more !) — the song and the cup, in a word, passed round merrily; and, I dare say, the songs and bumpers were encored. It happened that there was a very small attendance at the " Cave " THE NEWCOMES 7 that night, and we were all more sociable and friendly because the company was select. The songs were chiefly of the sentimental class ; such ditties were much in vogue at the time of which I speak. There came into the " Cave " a gentleman with a lean brown face and long black mustachios, dressed in very loose clothes, and evidently a stranger to the place. At least he had not visited it for a long time. He was pointing out changes to a lad who was in his company ; and, calling for sherry-and-water, he listened to the music, and twirled his mustachios with great enthusiasm. At the very first glimpse of me the boy jumped up from the table, bounded across the room, ran to me with his hands out, and, blushing, said, "Don't you know me?" It was little Newcome, my schoolfellow, whom I had not seen for six years, grown a fine tall young stripling now, with the same bright blue eyes which I remembered when he was quite a little boy. " What the deuce brings you here ? " said I. He laughed and looked roguish. "My father — that's my father — would come. He's just come back from India. He says all the wits used to come here, — Mr. Sheridan, Captain Morris, Colonel Hanger, Professor Porson. I told him your name, and that you used to be very kind to me when I first went to Smith- field. I've left now : I'm to have a private tutor. I say, I've got such a jolly pony. It's better fun than old Smiflie." Here the whiskered gentleman, Newcome's father, pointing to a waiter to follow him with his glass of sherry-and-water, strode across the room twirling his mustachios, and came up to the table where we sat, making a salutation with his hat in a very stately and polite manner, so that Hoskins himself was, as it were, obliged to bow; the glee-singers murmured among themselves (their eyes rolling over their glasses towards one another as they sucked brandy-and-water), and that mischievous little wag, little Nadab the Improvisatore (who had just come in), began to mimic him, feeling his imaginary whiskers, after the manner of the stranger, and flapping about his pocket-handkerchief in the most ludicrous manner. Hoskins checked this ribaldry by sternly looking towards Nadab, and at the same time calling upon the gents to give their orders, the waiter being in the room, and Mr. Bellew about to sing a song. Newcome's father came up and held out his hand to me. I dare say I blushed, for I had been comparing him to the admirable Harley in the "Critic," and had christened him Don Ferolo Whiskerandos. 8 THE NEWCOMES He spoke in a voice exceedingly soft and pleasant, and with a cordiaKty so simple and sincere, that my laughter shrank away ashamed; and gave place to a feeling much more respectful and friendly. In youth, you see, one is touched by kindness. A man of the world may, of course, be grateful or not as he chooses. " I have heard of your kindness, sir," says he, " to my boy. And whoever is kind to him is kind to me. Will you allow me to sit down by you 1 and may I beg you to try my cheroots 1 " We were friends in a minute — young Newcome snuggling by my side, his father opposite, to whom, after a minute or two of conversation, I presented my three college friends. " You have come here, gentlemen, to see the wits," says the Colonel. " Are there any celebrated persons in the room 1 I have been five-and-thirty years from home, and want to see all that is to be seen." King of Corpus (who was an incorrigible wag) was on the point of pulling some dreadful longbow, and pointing out a half-dozen of people in the room, as Eogers, and Hook, and Luttrel, &c., the most celebrated wits of that day ; but I cut King's shins under the table, and got the fellow to hold his tongue. " Maxima dehetur pueris," says Jones (a fellow of very kind feeling, who has gone into the Church since), and, writing on his card to Hoskins, hinted to him that a boy was in the room, and a gentleman who was quite a greenhorn : hence that the songs had better be carefully selected. And so they were. A lady's school might have come in, and, but for the smell of the cigars and brandy-and-water, have taken no harm by what happened. Why should it not always be so? If there are any " Caves of Harmony " now, I warrant Messieurs the landlords, their interests would be better consulted by keeping their singers within bounds. The very greatest scamps like pretty songs, and are melted by them ; so are honest people. It was worth a guinea to see the simple Colonel, and his delight at the music. He forgot all about the distinguished wits whom he had expected to see in his ravishment over the glees. "I say, Olive, this is delightful. This is better than your aunt's concert with all the Squallinis, hey? I shall come here often. Landlord, may I venture to ask those gentlemen if they will take any refreshment 1 What are their names ? " (to one of his neighbours). " I was scarcely allowed to hear any singing before I went out, except an oratorio, where I fell asleep ; but , this, by George, is as fine as Incledon ! " He became quite excited over his sherry-and-water — ("I'm sorry to see you, gentlemen, drinking brandy-pawnee," says he; "it plays the deuce with our THE NEWOOMES 9 young men in India.") He joined in all the choruses with an exceedingly sweet voice. He laughed at "The Derby Earn" so that it did you goiid to hear him ; and wlien Hoskins sang (as he did admirably) "The Old English Gentleman," and described, in measured cadence, the death of that venerable aristocrat, tears trickled down the honest warrior's cheek, while he held out his hand to Hoskins and said, " Thank you, sir, for that song ; it is an honour to human nature." On which Hoskins began to cry too. And now young Nadab, having been cautioned, commenced one of those surprising feats of improvisation with which he used to charm audiences. He took us all off, and had rhymes pat about all the principal persons in the room : King's pins (which he wore very splendid), Martin's red waistcoat, &c. The Colonel was charmed with each feat, and joined delighted with the chorus — " Eitolderol- ritolderol ritolderolderay " {bis). And, when coming to the Colonel himself, Nadab burst out — ■ " A military gent I see — And while his face I scan, I think you'll all agree with me — He came from Hindostan. And by his side sits laughing free — A youth with curly head, I think you'll all agree with me — That he was best in bed. Ritolderol," &o. The Colonel laughed immensely at this sally, and clapped his son, young Olive, on the shoulder : " Hear what he says of you, sir? Olive, best be off to bed, my boy — ho, ho ! No, no. We know a trick worth two of that. 'We won't go home till morning, till daylight does appear.' Why should wel Why shouldn't my boy have innocent pleasure ? I was allowed none when I was a young chap, and the severity was nearly the ruin of me. I must go and speak with that young man — the most astonishing thing I ever heard in my life. What's his name 1 Mr. Nadab ? Mr. Nadab ; sir, you have delighted me. May I make so free as to ask you to come and dine with me to-morrow at six? Colonel Newcome, if you please, Nerot's Hotel, Clifford Street. I am always proud to make the acquaintance of men of genius, and you are one, or my name is not Newcome I " " Sir, you do me Hhonour," says Mr. Nadab, pulling up his shirt-collars, " and per'aps the day will come when the world will do me justice. May I put down your hhonoured name for my book of poems 1 " " Of course, my dear sir,'' says the enthusiastic Colonel, " I'll send them all over India. Put me down for six copies, and do me the favour to bring them to-morrow when you come to dinner." And now Mr. Hoskins, asking if any gentleman would volunteer 10 THE NEWOOMES a song, what was our amazement when the simple Colonel offered to sing himself, at which the room applauded vociferously ; whilst methought poor Olive Newcome hung down his head, and blushed as red as a peony. I felt for tlie young lad, and thought what my own sensations would have been if, in that place, my own uncle. Major Pendeunis, had suddenly proposed to exert his lyrical powers. The Colonel selected the ditty of "Wapping Old Stairs" (a ballad so sweet and touching that siu-ely any English poet might be proud to be the father of it), and he sang this quaint and charm- ing old song in an exceedingly pleasant voice, with flourishes and roulades in the old lucledon manner, which has pretty nearly passed away. The singer gave liis heart and soul to the simple ballad, and delivered Molly's gentle appeal so pathetically that even the professional gentlemen hummed and buzzed a sincere applause; and some wags, who were inclined to jeer at the beginning of the performance, clinked their glasses and rapped their sticks with quite a respectful enthusiasm. When the song was over, Olive held up his head too ; after the shock of the first verse, looked round with surprise and pleasure in his eyes ; and we, I need not say, backed our friend, delighted to see him come out of his queer scrape so triumphantly. The Colonel bowed and smiled with very pleasant good-nature at our plaudits. It was like Dr. Primrose preaching his sermon in the prison. There was something touching in the naivete and kindness of the placid and simple gentleman. Great Hoskins, placed on high, amidst the tuneful choir, was pleased to signify his approbation, and gave his guest's health in his usual dignified manner. "I am much obliged to you, sir," says Mr. Hoskins; "the room ought to be much obliged to you: I drink your 'ealth and song, sir;" and he bowed to the Colonel politely over his glass of brandy-and-water, of which he absorbed a little in his customer's honour. " I have not heard that song," he was kind enough to say, " better performed since Mr. Incledon sung it. He was a great singer, sir, and I may say, in the words of our immortal Shakspeare, that, take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again." The Colonel blushed in his turn, and turning round to his boy with an arch smile, said, "I learnt it from Incledon. I used to slip out from Grey Friars to hear him. Heaven bless me, forty years ago; and I used to be flogged afterwards, and served me right too. Lord ! Lord ! how the time passes ! " He drank off his sherry-and-water, and fell back in his chair; we could see he was thinking about his youth— the golden time— the happy, the bright, the unforgotten. I was myself nearly two-and-twenty years of age at that period, and felt as old as, ay, older than the Colonel. THE NEWCOMES 11 Whilst he was singing his ballad, there had walked, or rather reeled, into the roona, a gentleman in a military frock-coat and duck trousers of dubious hue, with whose name and person some of my readers are perhaps aheady acquainted. In fact, it was my friend Captain Costigan, in his usual condition at this hour of the night. Holding on by various tables, the Captain had sidled up, with- out accident to himself or any of the jugs and glasses round about him, to the table where we sat, and had taken his place near the writer, his old acquaintance. He warbled the refrain of the Colonel's song, not inharmoniously ; and saluted its pathetic con- clusion with a subdued hiccup, and a plentiful efi'usion of tears. " Bedad, it is a beautiful song," says he, " and many a time I heard poor Harry Incledon sing it." " He's a great character," whispered that imlucky King of Corpus to his neighbour the Colonel ; " was a Captain in the army. We call him the General. Captain Costigan, will you take something to drink ? " " Bedad, I will," says the Captain, " and I'll sing ye a song tu." And, having procured a glass of whisky-and-water from the passing waiter, the poor old man, settling his face into a horrid grin, and leering, as he was wont, when he gave what he called one of his prime songs, began his music. The unlucky wretch, who scarcely knew what he was doing or saying, selected one of the most outrageous performances of his repertoire, fired off a tipsy howl by way of overture, and away he went. At the end of the second verse the Colonel started up, clapping on his hat, seizing his stick, and looking as ferocious as though he had been going to do battle with a Pindaree. "Silence!" he roared out. " Hear, hear ! " cried certain wags at a farther table. " Go on, Costigan ! " said others. " Go on ! " cries the Colonel, in his high voice, trembling with anger. "Does any gentleman say 'Go onT Does any man who has a wife and sisters, or children at home, say 'Go on ' to such disgusting ribaldry as this ? Do you dare, sir, to call yourself a gentleman, and to say that you hold the king's commission, and to sit down amongst Christians and men of honour, and defile the ears of young boys with this wicked balderdash ? " " Why do you bring young boys here, old boy 1 " cries a voice of the malcontents. "Why? Because I thought I was coming to a society of gentlemen," cried out the indignant Colonel. "Because I never could have believed that Englishmen could meet together and allow 12 THE NEWCOMES a man, and an old man, so to disgrace himself. For shame, you old wretch ! Gro home to your bed, you hoary old sinner ! And for my part, I'm not sorry that my son should see, for once in his life, to what shame and degradation and dishonour, drunkenness and whisky may bring a man. Never mind the change, sir ! — Curse the change ! " says the Colonel, facing the amazed waiter. " Keep it till you see me in this place again ; which will be never — by George, never!" And shouldering his stick, and scowling round at the company of scared bacchanalians, the indignant gentle- man stalked away, his boy after him. Clive seemed rather shamefaced; but I fear the rest of the company looked still more foolish. "Aussi que diable venait-il faire dans cette galfere?" says King of Corpus to Jones of Trinity ; and Jones gave a shrug of his shoulders, which were smarting, perhaps ; for that uplifted cane of the Colonel's had somehow fallen on the back of every man in the room. CHAPTER II COLONEL NEWCOME'S WILD OATS AS the young gentleman who has just gone to bed is to be the hero of the following pages, we had best begin our ^ account of him with his family history, which luckUy is not very long. When pigtails stiU grew on the backs of the British gentry, and their wives wore cushions on their heads, over which they tied their own hair, and disguised it with powder and pomatum : when Ministers went in their stars and orders to the House of Commons, and the orators of the Opposition attacked nightly the noble lord in the blue riband : when Mr. Washington was heading the American rebels with a courage, it must be confessed, worthy of a Tsetter cause : there came up to London, out of a Northern county, Mr. Thomas Newcome, afterwards Thomas Newcome, Esq., and sheriff of London, afterwards Mr. Alderman Newcome, the founder of the family whose name has given the title to this history. It was but in the reign of George III. that Mr. New- come first made his appearance in Cheapside ; having made his entry into London on a waggon, which landed him and some bales of cloth, all his fortune, in Bishopsgate Street : though, if it could be proved that the Normans wore pigtails under William the Conqueror, and Mr. Washington fought against the English under King Richard in Palestine, I am sure some of the present Newcomes would pay the Heralds' OflBce handsomely, living, as they do, amongst the noblest of the land, and giving entertain- ments to none but the very highest nobility and elite of the fashionable and diplomatic world, as you may read any day in the newspapers. For though these Newcomes have got a pedigree from the College, which is printed in Budge's " Landed Aristo- cracy of Great Britain," and which proves that the Newcome of Cromwell's army, and the Newcome who was among the last six who were hanged by Queen Mary for Protestantism, were ancestors of this house ; of which a member distinguished himself at Bosworth Field; and the founder, slain by King Harold's side at Hastings, had been surgeon-barber to King Edward the Confessor; yet, li THE NEWCOMES between ourselves, I think that Sir Brian Newcome, of Newcome, could not believe a word of the story, any more than the rest of the world does, although a number of his children bear names out of the Saxon Calendar. Was Thomas Newcome a foundling — a workhouse child out of that village, which has now become a great manufacturing town, and which bears his name ? Such was the report set about at the last election, when Sir Brian, in the Conservative interest, contested the borough; and Mr. Yapp, the out-and-out Liberal candidate, had a picture of the old workhouse placarded over the town as the birthplace of the Newcomes ; and placards ironically exciting free- men to vote for Newcome and union — Newcome and the parish interests, &c. Who cares for these local scandals? It matters very little to those who have the good fortune to be invited to Lady Ann Newcome's parties whether her beautiful daughters can trace their pedigrees no higher than to the alderman, their grand- father; or whether, through the mythic ancestral barber-surgeon, they hang on to the chin of Edward, Confessor and King. Thomas Newcome, who had been a weaver in his native village, brought the very best character for honesty, thrift, and ingenuity with him to London, where he was taken into the house of Hobson Brothers, cloth-factors ; afterwards Hobson and Newcome. This fact may suffice to indicate Thomas Newcome's story. Like Whittington, and many other London apprentices, he began poor and ended by marrying his master's daughter, and becoming sheriff and alderman of the City of London. But it was only en secondes noces that he espoused the wealthy and religious, and eminent (such was the word applied to certain professing Christians in these days) Sophia Alethea Hobson — a woman who, considerably older than Mr. Newcome, had the advan- tage of surviving him many years. Her mansion at Clapham was long the resort of the most favoiu-ed amongst the religious world. The most eloquent expounders, the most gifted missionaries, the most interesting converts from foreign islands, were to be found at her sumptuous table, spread with the produce of her magnificent gardens. Heaven indeed blessed those gardens with plenty, as many reverend gentlemen remarked ; there were no finer grapes, peaches, or pine- apples in all England. Mr. Whitfield himself christened her ; and it was said generally in the City, and by her friends, that Miss Hobson's two Christian names, Sophia and Alethea, were two Greek words, which, being interpreted, meant wisdom and truth. She, her villa and gardens, are now no more ; but Sophia Ter race. Upper and Lower Alethea Eoad, and Hobson's Buildings, Square, &c., show every quarter-day that the ground sacred to her THE NEWCOMES 15 (and freehold) still bears plenteous fruit for the descendants of this eminent woman. We are, however, advancing matters. When Thomas Newcome had been some time in London he quitted the house of Hobsou, finding an opening, though in a much smaller way, for himself And no sooner did his business prosper, than he went down into the north, like a man, to a pretty girl whom he had left there, and whom he had promised to marry. What seemed an imprudent match (for his wife had nothing but a pale face, that had grown older and paler with long waiting) turned out a very lucky one for Newcome. The whole country side was pleased to think of the prosperous London tradesman returning to keep his promise to the penniless girl whom he had loved in the days of his own poverty ; the great country clothiers, who knew his prudence and honesty, gave him much of their business when he went back to London. Susan Newcome would have lived to be a rich woman had not fate ended her career, within a year after her marriage, when she died giving birth to a son. Newcome had a nurse for the child, and a cottage at Clapham, hard by Mr. Hobson's house, where he had often walked in the garden of a Sunday, and been invited to sit down to take a glass of wine. Since he had left their service, the house had added a banking business, which was greatly helped by the Quakers and their religious connection ; and Newcome, keeping his account there, and gradually increasing his business, was held in very good est«em by his former employers, and invited sometimes to tea at the Hermitage ; for which entertainments he did not, in truth, much care at first, being a City man, a good deal tired with his business during the day, and apt to go to sleep over the sermons, expoundings, and hymns, with which the gifted preachers, mis- sionaries, &c., who were always at the Hermitage, used to wind up the evening, before supper. Nor was he a supping man (in which case he would have found the parties pleasanter, for in Egypt itself there were not more savoury fleshpots than at Clap- ham) ; he was very moderate in his meals, of a bilious temperament, and, besides, obliged to be in town early in the morning, always setting off to walk an hour before the first coach. But when his poor Susan died. Miss Hobson, by her father's demise, having now become a partner in the house, as well as heiress to the pious and childless Zechariah Hobson, her uncle : Mr. Newcome, with his little boy in his hand, met Miss Hobson as she was coming out of meeting one Sunday; and the child looked so pretty (Mr. N. was a very personable, fresh-coloured man himself; he wore powder to the end, and topboots and brass- 16 THE NEWCOMES buttons : in his later days, after he had been sheriff— indeed, one of the finest specimens of the old London merchant) : Miss Hobson, I say, invited him and httle Tommy into the grounds of the Hermitage; did not quarrel with the innocent child for frisking about on the hay on the lawn, which lay basking in the Sabbath sunshine, and at the end of the visit gave him a large piece of pound-cake, a quantity of the finest hothouse grapes, and a tract in one syllable. Tommy was ill the next day ; but on the next Sunday his father was at meeting. He became very soon after this an awakened man; and the tittling and tattling, and the sneering and gossiping, all over Glap- ham, and the talk on 'Change, and the pokes in the waistcoat administered by the wags to Newcome— " Newcome, give you joy, my boy;" "Newcome, new partner in Hobson's;" "Newcome, just take in this paper to Hobson's, they'll do it, I warrant," &c. &c. ; and the groans of the Eev. Gideon Bawls, of the Eev. Athanasius O'Grady, that eminent convert from Popery, who, quarrelling with each other, yea, striving one against another, had yet two sentiments in common, their love for Miss Hobson, and their dread, their hatred of the worldly Newcome ; all these squabbles and jokes, and pribbles and prabbles, look you, may be omitted. As gallantly as he had married a woman without a penny, as gallantly as he had conquered his poverty and achieved his own independence, so bravely he went in and won the great City prize with a fortune of a quarter of a million. And every one of his old friends, and every honest-hearted fellow who likes to see shrewdness, and honesty, and courage succeed, was glad of his good fortune, and said, " Newcome, my boy," (or " Newcome, my buck," if they were old city cronies, and very familiar), " I give you joy." Of course Mr. Newcome might have gone into Parliament : of course before the close of his life he might have been made a Baronet : but he eschewed honours senatorial or blood-red hands. " It wouldn't do," with his good sense he said ; " the Quaker connection wouldn't like it." His wife never cared about being called Lady Newcome. To manage the great house of Hobson Brothers and Newcome ; to attend to the interests of the enslaved negro ; to awaken the benighted Hottentot to a sense of the truth ; to convert Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Papists ; to arouse the in- different and often blasphemous mariner ; to guide the washerwoman in the right way ; to head all the public charities of her sect, and do a thousand secret kindnesses that none knew of; to answer myriads of letters, pension endless ministers, and supply their teeming wives with continuous baby-linen ; to hear preachers daily bawhng for hours, and listen untired on her knees after a long day's THE NEWCOMES 17 labour, while florid rhapsodists belaboured cushions above her with wearisome benedictions ; all these things had this woman to do, and for near fourscore years she fought her fight womanfuUy : imperious but deserving to rule, hard but doing her duty, severe but charitable, and untiring in generosity as in labour : unforgiving in but one instance — that of her husband's eldest son, Thomas Newcome ; the little boy who had played on the hay, and whom at first she had loved very sternly and fondly. Mr. Thomas Newcome, the father of his wife's twin boys, the junior partner of the house of Hobson Brothers & Co., lived several years after winning the great prize about which all his friends so congratulated him. But he was, after all, only the junior partner of the house. His wife was manager in Threadneedle Street and at home : when the clerical gentlemen prayed they importuned Heaven for that sainted woman a long time before they thought of asking any favour for her husband. The gardeners touched their hats, the clerks at the bank brought him the books, but they took their orders from her, not from him. I think he grew weary of the prayer- meetings, he yawned over the sufferings of the negroes, and wished the converted Jews at Jericho. About the time the French Emperor was meeting with his Russian reverses Mr. Newcome died : his mausoleum is in Clapham Churchyard, near the modest grave where his first wife reposes. When his father married, Mr. Thomas Newcome, jun., and Sarah his nurse were transported from the cottage where they had lived in great comfort to the palace hard by, surrounded by lawns and gardens, pineries, graperies, aviaries, luxuries of all kinds. This paradise, five miles from the Standard at Oornhill, was separated from the outer world by a thick hedge of tall trees, and an ivy-covered porter's gate, through which they who travelled to London on the top of the Clapham coach could only get a glimpse of the bliss within. It was a serious paradise. As you entered at the gate, gravity fell on you ; and decorum wrapped you in a garment of starch. The butcher-boy who galloped his horse and cart madly about the adjoining lanes and common whistled wild melodies (caught up in abominable play-house galleries), and joked with a hundred cookmaids, on passing that lodge fell into an undertaker's pace, and delivered his joints and sweetbreads silently at the servants' entrance. The rooks in the elms cawed sermons at morning and evening; the peacocks walked demurely on the terraces; the guinea-fowls looked more quaker-Mke than those savoury birds usually do. The lodge-keeper was serious, and, a clerk at a neigh- bouring chapel. The pastors who entered at that gate, and greeted his comely wife and children, fed the little lambkins with tracts. 18 THE NEWCOMES The head-gardener was a Scotch Oalvinist, after the strictest order, only occupying himself with the melons and pines provisionally, and until the end of the world, which event, he could prove by infallible calculations, was to come off in two or three years at farthest. Wherefore, he asked, should the butler brew strong ale to be drunken three years hence ; or the housekeeper (a follower of Joanna Southcote) make provisions of fine linen and lay up stores of jams 1 On a Sunday (which good old Saxon word was scarcely known at the Hermitage) the household marched away in separate couples or groups to at least half-a-dozen of religious edifices, each to sit under his or her favourite minister, the only man who went to Church being Thomas Newcome, accompanied by Tommy his little son, and Sarah his nurse, who was, I believe, also his aunt, or, at least, his mother's first cousin. Tommy was taught hymns, very soon after he could speak, appropriate to his tender age, pointing out to him the inevitable fate of wicked children, and giving him the earliest possible warning and description of the punishment of little sinners. He repeated these poems to his stepmother after dinner, before a great shining mahogany table, covered with grapes, pineapples, plum-cake, port-wine, and Madeira, and surrounded by stout men in black, with baggy white neckcloths, who took the little man between their knees, and questioned him as to his right understand- ing of the place whither naughty boys were bound. They patted his head with their fat hands if he said well, or rebuked him if he was bold, as he often was. Nurse Sarah or Aunt Sarah would have died had she remained many years in that stifling garden of Eden. She could not bear to part from the child whom her mistress and kinswoman had confided to her (the women had worked in the same room at Newcome's, and loved each other always, when Susan became a merchant's lady, and Sarah her servant). She was nobody in the pompous new household but Master Tommy's nurse. The honest soul never mentioned her relationship to the boy's mother, nor indeed did Mr. Newcome acquaint his new family with that circumstance. The housekeeper called her an Erastian : Mrs. Newcome's own serious maid informed against her for telling Tommy stories of Lancashire witches, and believing in the same. The black footman (Madam's maid and the butler were of course privately united) persecuted her with his addresses, and was even encouraged by his mistress, who thought of sending him as a missionary to the Niger. No little love, and fidelity, and constancy did honest Sarah show and use during the years she passed at the Hermitage, and until Tommy went to school. Her master, with many private ^prayers and entreaties, in which he passionately recalled liis former wife's memory and aftection, implored THE NEWCOMES 19 his friend to stay with him; and Tommy's fondness for her and artless caresses, and the scrapes he got into, and the howls he uttered over the hymns and catechisms which he was hidden to learn (by Rev. T. Clack, of Highbury College, his daily tutor, who was commissioned to spare not the rod, neither to spoil the child), all these causes induced Sarah to remain with her young master until such time as he was sent to school. Meanwhile an event of prodigious importance, a wonderment, a blessing and a delight, had happened at the Hermitage. About two years after Mrs. Newcome's marriage, the lady being then forty-three years of age, no less than two little cherubs appeared in the Clapham Paradise — the twins, Hobson Newcome and Brian Newcome, called after their uncle and late grandfather, whose name and rank they were destined to perpetuate. And now there was no reason why yoimg Newcome should not go to school. Old Mr. Hobson and his brother had been educated at that school of Grey Friars, of which mention has been made in former works : and to Grey Friars Thomas Newcome was accordingly sent, exchanging— ye Gods ! with what delight — the splendour of Clapham for the rough, plentiful fare of the place, blacking his master's shoes with perfect readiness, till he rose in the school, and the time came when he should have a fag of his owa ; tibbing out and receiving the penalty therefor ; bartering a black eye, per bearer, against a bloody nose drawn at sight, with a schoolfellow, and shaking hands the next day ; playing at cricket, hockey, prisoners' base, and football, according to the season ; and gorging himself and friends with tarts when he had money (and of this he had plenty) to spend. I have seen his name carved upon the Gown Boys' arch ; but he was at school long before my time ; his son showed me the name when we were boys together, in some year when George the Fourth was king. The pleasures of this school-life were such to Tommy Newcome, that he did not care to go home for a holiday : and indeed, by insubordination and boisterousness ; by playing tricks and breaking windows ; by marauding upon the gardener's peaches and the house- keeper's jam ; by upsetting his two little brothers in a go-cart (of which wanton and careless injury the Baronet's nose bore marks to his dying day) ; by going to sleep during the sermons, and treating reverend gentlemen with levity, he drew down on himself the merited wrath of his stepmother; and many punishments in this present life, besides those of a future and much more durable kind, which the good lady did not fail to point that he must undoubtedly inherit. His father, at Mrs. Newcome's instigation, certainly whipped Tommy for upsetting his little brothers m the go-cart; 20 THE NEWOOMES but, upon being pressed to repeat the whipping for some other peccadillo performed soon after, Mr. Newcome refused at once, using a wicked, worldly expression, which might well shock any serious lady : saying, in fact, that he would be d — d if he beat the boy any more, and that he got flogging enough at school, in which opinion Master Tommy fully coincided. The undaunted woman, his stepmother, was not to be made to forego her plans for the boy's reform by any such vulgar ribaldries; and Mr. Newcome being absent in the City on his business, and Tommy refractory as usual, she summoned the serious butler and the black footman (for the lashings of whose brethren she felt an unaffected pity) to operate together in the chastisement of this young criminal. But he dashed so furiously against the butler's shins as to draw blood from his comely limbs, and to cause that serious and overfed menial to limp and suffer for many days after ; and, seizing the decanter, he swore he would demolish blaoky's ugly face with it ; nay, he threatened to discharge it at Mrs. Newcome's own head before he would submit to the coercion which she desired her agents to administer. High words took place between Mr. and Mrs. Newcome that night on the gentleman's return home from the City, and on his learning the events of the morning. It is to be feared he made use of further oaths, which hasty ejaculations need not be set down in this place ; at any rate, he behaved with spirit and manliness as master of the house, vowed that, if any servant laid a hand on the child, he would thrash him first and then discharge him ; and, I dare say, expressed himself with bitterness and regret that he had married a wife who would not be obedient to her husband, and had entered a house of which he was not suffered to be the master. Friends were called in — the interference, the supplications of the Clapham clergy, some of whom dined constantly at the Hermitage, prevailed to allay this domestic quarrel ; and, no doubt, the good sense of Mrs. Newcome — who, though imperious, was yet not un- kind ; and who, excellent as she was, yet could be brought to own that she was sometimes in fault, — induced her to make at least a temporary submission to the man whom she had placed at the head of her house, and whom, it must be confessed, she had vowed to love and honour. When Tommy fell ill of the scarlet fever, which afflicting event occurred presently after the above dispute, his own nurse, Sarah, could not have been more tender, watchful, and affectionate, than his stepmother showed herself to be. She nursed him through his illness : allowed his food and medicine to be udministered by no other hand; sat up with the boy through a night of his fever, and uttered not one single reproach to her THE NEWCOMES 21 husband (who watched with her) when the twins took the disease (from which we need not say they happily recovered) ; and though young Tommy, in his temporary dehrium, mistaking her for Nurse Sarah, addressed her as his dear Fat Sally — whereas no whipping- post to which she ever would have tied him could have been leaner than Mrs. Newcome — and, under this feverish delusion, actually abused her to her face, calling her an old cat, an old Methodist ; and, jumping up in his little bed, forgetful of his previous fancy, vowed that he would put on his clothes and run away to Sally. Sally was at her northern home by this time, with a liberal pension which Mr. Newcome gave her, and which his son and his son's son after him, through all their difficulties and distresses, always found means to pay. What the boy threatened in his delirium he had thought of, no doubt, more than once in his solitary and unhappy holidays. A year after, he actually ran away, not from school, but from home ; and appeared one morning, gaunt and hungry, at Sarah's cottage, two hundred miles away from Clapham, who housed the poor prodigal, and killed her calf for him — washed him, with many tears and kisses, and put him to bed and to sleep; from which slumber he was aroused by the appearance of his father, whose sure instinct backed by Mrs. Newcome's own quick intelligence, had made him at once aware whither the young runaway had fled. The poor father came horsewhip in hand — he knew of no other law or means to maintain his authority ; many and many a time had his own father, the old weaver, whose memory he loved and honoured, strapped and beaten him. Seeing this instrument in his parent's hand, as Mr. Newcome thrust out the weeping, trem- bling Sarah and closed the door upon her. Tommy, scared out of a sweet sleep and a delightful dream of cricket, knew his fate ; and, getting up out of bed, received his punishment without a word. Very likely the father suffered more than the child; for, when the punishment was over, the little man, yet trembling and quivering with the pain, held out his httle bleeding hand and said, "I can — I can take it from you, sir;" saying which his face flushed, and his eyes filled for the first time ; whereupon the father burst into a passion of tears, embraced the boy and kissed him, besought and prayed him to be rebelUous no more — flung the whip away from him and swore, come what would, he would never strike him again. The quarrel was the means of a great and happy reconciliation. The three dined together in Sarah's cottage. Per- haps the father would have liked to walk that evening in the lanes and fields where he had wandered as a young fellow: where he had first courted and first kissed the young girl he loved— poor £2 THE NEWCOMES child— who had waited for him so faithfully and fondly, who had passed so many a day of patient want and meek expectance, to be repaid by such a scant holiday and brief fruition. Mrs. Newcome never made the slightest allusion to Tom's absence after his return, but was quite gentle and affectionate with him, and that night read the parable of the Prodigal in a very low and quiet voice. This, however, was only a temporary truce. War very soon broke out again between the impetuous lad and his rigid domineer- ing stepmother. It was not that he was very bad, or she perhaps more stern than other ladies, but the two could not agree. The boy sulked and was miserable at home. He fell to drinking with the grooms in the stables. I think he went to Epsom races, and was discovered after that act of rebellion. Driving from a most interesting breakfast at Eoehampton (where a delightful Hebrew convert had spoken, oh ! so graciously !) Mrs. Newcome — in her state carriage, with her bay horses — met Tom, her stepson, in a tax-cart, excited by drink, and accompanied by all sorts of friends, male and female. John, the black man, was bidden to descend from the carriage and bring him to Mrs. Newcome. He came : his voice was thick with drink ; he laughed wildly ; he described a fight at which he had been present. It was not possible that such a castaway as this should continue in a house where her two little cherubs were growing up in innocence and grace. The boy had a great fancy for India ; and " Orme's History," containing the exploits of Olive and Lawrence, was his favourite book of all in his father's library. Being offered a writership, he scouted the idea of a civil appointment, and would be contented with nothing but a uniform. A cavalry cadetship was procured for Thomas Newcome ; and the young man's future career being thus determined, and his stepmother's unwilling consent procured, Mr. Newcome thought fit to send his son to a tutor for military instruction, and removed him from the London school, where, in truth, he had made but very little progress in the humaner letters. The lad was placed with a professor who prepared young men for the army, and received rather a better professional education than fell to the lot of most young soldiers of his day. He cultivated the mathematics and fortification with more assiduity than he had ever bestowed on Greek and Latin, and especially made such a progress in the French tongue as was very uncommon among the British youth his contemporaries. In the study of this agreeable language, over which young Newcome spent a great deal of his time, he unluckily had some instructors who were destined to bring the poor lad into yet further THE NEWCOMES 23 trouble at home. His tutor, an easy gentleman, lived at Black- heath, and, not far from thence, on the road to Woolwich, dwelt the little Chevalier de Blois, at whose house the young man much preferred to take his French lessons rather than to receive them under his tutor's own roof. For the fact was that the little Chevalier de Blois had two pretty young daughters, with whom he had fled from his country along with thousands of French gentlemen at the period of revolu- tion and emigration. He was a cadet of a very ancient family, and his brother, the Marquis de Blois, was a fugitive like himself, but with the army of the princes on the Ehine, or with his exiled sovereign at Mittau. The Chevalier had seen the wars of the Great Frederick : what man could be found better to teach young Newcome the French language, and the art military '2 It was surprising with what assiduity he pursued his studies. Made- moiselle L^onore, the Chevalier's daughter, would carry on her httle industry very undisturbedly in the same parlour with her father and his pupil. She painted card-racks ; laboured at em- broidery; was ready to employ her quick little brain or fingers in any way by which she could find means to add a few shiUings to the scanty store on which this exiled family supported them- selves in their day of misfortune. I suppose the Chevalier was not in the least unquiet about her, because she was promised in marriage to the Comte de Florae, also of the emigration, a distin- guished officer like the Chevalier, than whom he was a year older, and, at the time of which we speak, engaged in London in giving private lessons on the fiddle. Sometimes, on a Sunday, he would walk to Blackheath with that instrument in his hand, and pay his court to his young Jiance'e, and talk over happier days with his old companion in arms. Tom Newcorae took no French lessons on a Sunday. He passed that day at Clapham generally, where, strange to say, he never said a word about Mademoiselle de Blois. What happens when two young folks of eighteen, handsome and ardent, generous and impetuous, alone in the world, or with- out strong afifections to bind them elsewhere, — what happens when they meet daily over French dictionaries, embroidery frames, or, indeed, upon any business whatever? No doubt Mademoiselle L^onore was a young lady perfectly bien devee, and ready, as every well-elevated young Frenchwoman should be, to accept a husband of her parents' choosing ; but while the elderly M. de Florae was fiddling in London, there was that handsome young Tom Newcome ever present at Blackheath. To make a long matter short, Tom declared his passion, and was for marrying Ldonore off'-hand, if she would but come with him to the little Catholic chapel at Woolwich. 24 THE NEWOOMES Why should they not go out to India together and be happy ever after? The innocent little amour may have been several months in transaction, and was discovered by Mrs. Newcome, whose keen spectacles nothing could escape. It chanced that she drove to Blackheath to Tom's tutor. Tom was absent taking his French and drawing lesson of M. de Blois. Thither Tom's stepmother followed him, and found the young man sure enough with his instructor over his books and plans of fortification. Mademoiselle and her card-screens were in the room, but behind those screens she could not hide her blushes and confusion from Mrs. Newcome's sharp glances. In one moment the banker's wife saw the whole affair — the whole mystery which had been passing for months under poor M. de Blois' nose, without his having the least notion of the truth. Mrs. Newcome said she wanted her son to return home with her upon private affairs ; and, before they had reached the Hermitage, a fine battle had ensvted between them. His mother had charged him with being a wretch and a monster, and he had replied fiercely, denying the accusation with scorn, and announcing his wish instantly to marry the most virtuous, the most beautiful of her sex. To marry a Papist ! This was all that was wanted to make poor Tom's cup of bitterness run over. Mr. Newcome was called in, and the two elders passed a great part of the night in an assault upon the lad. He was grown too tall for the cane ; but Mrs. Newcome thonged him with the lash of her indignation for many an hour that evening. He was forbidden to enter M. de Blois' house, a prohibition at which the spirited young fellow snapped his fingers, and laughed in scorn. Nothing, he swore, but death should part him from the young lady. On the next day his father came to him alone and plied him with entreaties, but he was as obdurate as before. He would have her ; nothing should prevent him. He cocked his' hat and walked out of the lodge-gate, as his father, quite beaten by the young man's obstinacy, with haggard face and tearful eyes, went his own way into town. He was not very angry himself: in the course of their talk overnight the boy had spoken bravely and honestly, and Newcome could remember how, in his own early life, he, too, had courted and loved a young lass. It was Mrs. Newcome the father was afraid of. Who shall depict her wrath at the idea that a child of her house was about to marry a Popish girl ? So young Newcome went his way to Blackheath, bent iipon falling straightway down upon his knees before Lfenore, and THE NEWOOMES • 25 having the Chevalier's blessing. That old fiddler in London scarcely seemed to him to be an obstacle : it seemed monstrous that a young creature should be given away to a man older than her own father. He did not know the law of honour, as it obtained amongst French gentlemen of those days, or how religiously their daughters were bound by it. But Mrs. Newcome had been beforehand with him, and had visited the Chevalier de Blois almost at cock-crow. She charged him insolently with being privy to the attachment between the young people; pursued him with vulgar rebukes about beggary, Popery, and French adventurers. Her husband had to make a very contrite apology afterwards for the language which his wife had thought fit to employ. " You forbid me," said the Chevalier, " you forbid Mademoiselle de Blois to marry your son Mr. Thomas ! No, madam, she comes of a race which is not accustomed to ally itself with persons of your class ; and is promised to a gentleman whose ancestors were dukes and peers when Mr. Newcome's were blacking shoes ! " Instead of finding his pretty blushing girl on arriving at Woolwich, poor Tom only found his French master, hvid with rage and quivering under his ailes de pigeon. We pass over the scenes that followed : the young man's passionate entreaties, and fury, and despair. In his own defence, and to prove his honour to the world, M. de Blois determined that his daughter should instantly marry the Count. The poor girl yielded without a word, as became her ; and it was with this marriage effected almost before his eyes, and frantic with wrath and despair, that young Newcome embarked for India, and quitted the parents whom he was never more to see. Tom's name was no more mentioned at Clapham. His letters to his father were written to the City ; very pleasant they were, and comforting to the father's heart. He sent Tom liberal private remittances to India, until the boy wrote to say that he wanted no more. Mr. Newcome would have liked to leave Tom all his private fortune, for the twins were only too well cared for; but he dared not on account of his terror of Sophia Alethea, his wife ; and he died, and poor Tom was only secretly forgiven. CHAPTER III COLONEL NEWCOME'S LETTER-BOX WITH the most heartfelt joy, my dear Major, I take up my pen to announce to you the happy arrival of the Ramchimder, and the dearest and handsomest little boy who, I am sure, ever came from India. Little Olive is in perfect health. He speaks English wonderfully well. He cried when he parted from Mr. Sneid, the supercargo, who most kindly brought him from Southampton in a post-chaise, but these tears in childhood are of very brief duration ! The voyage, Mr. Sneid states, was most favourable, occupying only four months and eleven days. How different from that more lengthened and dangerous passage of eight months, and almost perpetual searsickness, in which my poor dear sister Emma went to Bengal, to become the wife of the best of husbands and the mother of the dearest of little boys, and to enjoy these inestimable blessings for so brief an interval ! She has quitted this wicked and wretched world for one where all is peace. The misery and ill-treatment which she en- dured from Captain Casey, her first odious husband, were, I am sure, amply repaid, my dear Colonel, by your subsequent affection. If the most sumptuous dresses which London, even Paris, could supply, jewellery the most costly, and elegant lace, and everything lovely and fashionable could content a woman, these, I am sure, during the last four years of her life, the poor girl had. Of what avail are they when this scene of vanity is closed ? " Mr. Sneid announces that the passage was most favourable. They stayed a week at the Cape, and three days at St. Helena, where they visited Bonaparte's tomb (another instance of the vanity of all things !) and their voyage was enlivened off Ascension by the taking of some delicious turtle ! " You may be sure that the most liberal sum which you have placed to my credit with the Messrs. Hobson & Co., shall he faithfully expended on my dear little charge. Mi-s. Newcome can scarcely be called his grandmamma, I suppose ; and I dare say her methodistical ladyship will not care to see the daughter and grand- THE NEWCOMES 27 son of a clergyman of the Church of England ! My brother Charles took leave to wait upon her when he presented your last most generous bill at the bank. She received him most rvdehj, and said a fool and his money are soon parted ; and when Charles said, ' Madam, I am the brother of the late Mrs. Major Newcome,' 'Sir," says she, 'I judge nobody; but from all accounts, you 'are the brother of a very vain, idle, thoughtless, extravagant woman ; and Thomas Newcome was as foolish about his wife as about his money.' Of course, unless Mrs. JST. writes to invite dear Chve, I shall not think of sending him to Clapham. " It is such hot weather that I cannot wear the beautiful shawl you have sent me, and shall keep it in lavender till next winter ! My brother, who thanks you for your continuous bounty, will write next month, and report progress as to his dear pupil. Clive will add a postscript of his own, and I am, my dear Major, with a thousand thanks for your kindness to me, your grateful and aflfectionate Maetha Honeyman." In a round hand and on lines ruled with pencil : — " Dearest Papa i am very well i hope you are Very Well. Mr. Sneed brought me in a postchaise i like Mr. Sneed very much, i like Aunt Martha i like Hannah. There are no ships here i am yoiu' affectionate son Clive Newcome." II "EuE St. Dominique St. Germain, Paris, ••Jfov. 15, 1820. " Long separated from the country which was the home of my youth, I carried from her tender recollections, and bear her always a lively gratitude. The Heaven has placed me in a position very different from that in which I knew you. I have been the mother of many children. My husband has recovered a portion of the property which the Eevolution tore from us ; and France, in re- turning to its legitimate sovereign, received once more the nobility which accompanied his august house into exile. We, however, preceded his Majesty, more happy than many of our companions. Believing further resistance to be useless, — dazzled, perhaps, by the brilliancy of that genius which restored order, submitted Europe, and governed France, — M. de Florae, in the first days, was recon- ciled to the Conqueror of Marengo and Austerlitz, and held a posi- tion in his Imperial Court. This submission, at first attributed to infidelity, has subsequently been pardoned to my husband. His sufferings during the Hundred Days made to pardon his adhesion 28 THE NEWCOMES to him who T7as Emperor. My husband is now an old man. He was of the disastrous campaign of Moscow, as one of the chamber- lains of Napoleon. Withdrawn from the world he gives his time to his feeble health — to his family — to Heaven. " I have not forgotten a time before those days, when, accord- ing to promises given by my father, I became the wife of M. de Florae. Sometimes I have heard of your career. One of my parents, M. de F., who took service in the English India, ha« entertained me of you; he informed me how, yet a young man, you won laurels at Argom and Bhartpour ! how you escaped to death at Laswari. I have followed them, sir, on the map. I have taken part in your victories and your glory. Ah ! I am not so cold but my heart has trembled for your dangers ! not so aged but I remember the young man who learned from the pupil of Frederic the first rudiments of war. Your great heart, your love of truth, your courage were your own. None had to teach you those qualities, of which a good God had endowed you. My good father is dead since many years. He, too, was permitted to see France before to die. "I have read in the English journals not only that you are married, but that you have a son. Permit me to send to your wife, to your child, these accompanying tokens of an old friend- ship. I have seen that Mrs. Newcome was widow, and am not sorry of it. My friend, I hope there was not that difference of age between your wife and you that I have known in other unions. I pray the good God to bless yours. I hold you always in my memory. As I write the past comes back to me. I see a noble young man, who has a soft voice and brown eyes. I see the Thames, and the smiling plains of Blackheath. I listen and pray at my chamber-door as my father talks to you in our little cabinet of studies. I look from my window, and see you depart. " My sons are men : one follows the profession of arms, one has embraced the ecclesiastical state ; my daughter is herself a mother. I remember this was your birthday ; I have made myself a little f^te in celebrating it, after how many years of absence, of silence ! Comtesse de Floeac. " {Nie L. de Blois.)" Ill "My deae Thomas, — Mr. Sneid, supercargo of the Ram- chunder East Indiaman, handed over to us yesterday your letter, and, to-day, I have purchased three thousand three hundred and twenty-three pounds 6 and M. three per cent. Consols, in our joint names (H. and B. Newcome), held for your little boy. Mr. S. gives a very favourable account of the little man, and left him in THE NEWCOMES 29 perfect health two days since, at the house of his aunt, Miss Honey- man. We have placed £200 to that lady's credit, at your desire. "Lady Ann is charmed with the present which she received yesterday, and says the white shawl is a great deal too handsome. My mother is also greatly pleased with hers, and has forwarded, by the coach to Brighton, to-day, a packet of books, tracts, &c., suited for his tender age, for your little boy. She heard of you lately from the Rev. T. Sweatenham, on his return from India. He spoke of your kindness, and of the hospitable manner in which you had re- ceived him at your house, and alluded to you in a very handsome way in the course of the thanksgiving that evening. I dare say my mother will ask your little boy to the Hermitage ; and, when we have a house of our own, I am sure Ann and I will be very happy to see him. — Yours affectionately, B. Newcome. " Major Newcome.' rv "My dear Coloitel, — Did I not know the generosity of your heart, and the bountiful means which Heaven has put at your disposal in order to gratify that noble disposition ; were I not certain that the small sum I require will permanently place me beyond the reach of the difficulties of life, and will infallibly be repaid before six months are over, believe me I never would have ventui'ed upon that bold step which our friendship (carried on epistolarily as it has been), our relationship, and your admirable disposition, have induced me to venture to take. " That elegant and commodious chapel, known as Lady Whittle- sea's, Denmark Street, Mayfair, being for sale, I have determined on venturing my all in its acquisition, and in laying, as I hope, the foundation of a competence for myself and excellent sister. What is a lodging-house at Brighton but an uncertain maintenance 1 The mariner on the sea before those cliffs is no more sure of wind and wave, or of fish to his laborious net, than the Brighton house-owner (bred in affluence she may have been, and used to unremitting plenty) to the support of the casual travellers who visit the city. On one day they come in shoals, it is true, but where are they on the nextl For many months my poor sister's first-floor was a desert, until occupied by your noble little boy, my nephew and pupil. Olive is everything that a father's, an uncle's (who loves him as a father), a pastor's, a teacher's, affection could desire. He is not one of those premature geniuses whose much-vaunted infantine talents disappear along with adolescence ; he is not, I frankly own, more advanced in his classical and mathematical studies than some so THE NEWCOMKS children even younger than himself; but he has acquired the rudi- ments of health ; he has laid in a store of honesty and good-humour, which are not less Ukely to advance him in life than mere science and language, than the as in prcesenti, or the pons asinorvmi. " But I forget, in thinking of my dear little friend and pupil, the subject of this letter— namely, the acquisition of the proprietary chapel to which I have alluded, and the hopes, nay, certainty of a fortune, if aught below is certain, which that acquisition holds out. What is a curacy but a synonym for starvation 1 If we accuse the Eremites of old of wasting their lives in unprofitable wildernesses, what shall we say to many a hermit of Protestant, and so-called civilised times, who hides his head in a solitude in Yorkshire, and buries his probably fine talents in a Lincolnshire fen? Have I genius ? Am I blessed with gifts of eloquence to thrill and soothe, to arouse the sluggish, to terrify the sinful, to cheer and convince the timid, to lead the blind groping in darkness, and to trample the audacious sceptic in the dust 1 My own conscience, besides a hundred testimonials from places of popular, most popular worship, from reverend prelates, from distinguished clergy, tell me I have these gifts. A voice within me cries, ' Go forth, Charles Honeyman, fight the good fight ; wipe the tears of the repentant sinner ; sing of hope to the agonised criminal ; whisper courage, brother, courage, at the ghastly deathbed, and strike down the infidel with the lance of evidence and the shield of reason ! ' In a pecuniary point of view I am confident, nay, the calculations may be established as irresis- tibly as an algebraic equation, that I can realise, as incumbent of Lady Whittlesea's chapel, the sum of not less than one thousand pounds per annum. Such a sum, with economy (and without it what sum were sufficient T) will enable me to provide amply for my wants, to discharge my obligations to you, to my sister, and some other creditors very, very unlike you, and to place Miss Honeyman in a home more worthy of her than that which she now occupies, only to vacate it at the beck of every passing stranger ! " My sister does not disapprove of my plan, into which enter some modifications which I have not, as yet, submitted to her, being anxious at first that they should be sanctioned by you. From the income of the Whittlesea chapel I propose to allow Miss Honeyman the sum of two hundred pounds per annum, paid quarterly. This, with her private property, which she has kept more thriftily than her unfortunate and confiding brotlier guarded his (for whenever I had a guinea a tale of distress would melt it into half), vrill enable Miss Honeyman to live in a way becoming my father's daughter. " Comforted with this provision as my sister will be, I would suggest that our dearest young Clive should be transferred from her THE NEWCOMES 31 petticoat government, and given up to the care of his affectionate uncle and tutor. His present allowance will most liberally suffice for his expenses, board, lodging, and education while under my roof, and I shall be able to exert a paternal, a pastoral influence over his studies, his conduct, and his highest %velfare, which I cannot so conveniently exercise at Brighton, where I am but Miss Honeyman's stipendiary, and where I often have to submit in cases where I know, for dearest Olive's own welfare, it is I, and not my sister, should be paramount. " I have given, then, to a friend, the Eev. Marcus Flather, a draft for two hundred and fifty pounds sterling, drawn upon you at your agent's in Calcutta, which sum will go in liquidation of dear Olive's first year's board with me, or, upon my word of honour as a gentleman and clergyman, shall be paid back at three months after sight, if you will draw upon me. As I never — no, were it my last penny in the world — would dishonour your draft, I implore you, my dear Colonel, not to refuse mine. My credit in this city, where credit is everything, and the awful future so little thought of, my engagements to Mr. Flather, my own pros- pects in Ufe, and the comfort of my dear sister's declining years, all — all depend upon this bold, this eventful mea- sure. My ruin or my earthly happiness lies entirely in your hands. Can I doubt which way your kind heart will lead you, and that you will come to the aid of your affectionate brother-in-law, "Charles Honeyman. '