The writer of these veracious pages was once walking through a splendid English palace, standing amidst parks and gardens, than which none more magnificent has been seen since the days of Aladdin, in company with a melancholy friend, who viewed all things darkly through his gloomy eyes.
The housekeeper, pattering on before us from chamber to chamber, was expatiating upon the magnificence of this picture; the beauty of that statue; the marvellous richness of these hangings and carpets; the admirable likeness of the late Marquis by Sir Thomas; of his father, the fifth Earl, by Sir Joshua, and so on; when, in the very richest room of the whole castle, Hicks--such was my melancholy companion"s name--stopped the cicerone in her prattle, saying in a hollow voice, "And now, madam, will you show us the closet where the skeleton is?" The seared functionary paused in the midst of her harangue; that article was not inserted in the catalogue which she daily utters to visitors for their half-crown. Hicks"s question brought a darkness down upon the hall where we were standing. We did not see the room: and yet I have no doubt there is such an one; and ever after, when I have thought of the splendid castle towering in the midst of shady trees, under which the dappled deer are browsing; of the terraces gleaming with statues, and bright with a hundred thousand flowers; of the bridges and shining fountains and rivers wherein the castle windows reflect their festive gleams, when the halls are filled with happy feasters, and over the darkling woods comes the sound of music;--always, I say, when I think of Castle Bluebeard:--it is to think of that dark little closet, which I know is there, and which the lordly owner opens shuddering--after midnight--when he is sleepless and must go unlock it, when the palace is hushed, when beauties are sleeping around him unconscious, and revellers are at rest. O Mrs. Housekeeper: all the other keys hast thou: but that key thou hast not!
Have we not all such closets, my jolly friend, as well as the n.o.ble Marquis of Carabas? At night, when all the house is asleep but you, don"t you get up and peep into yours? When you in your turn are slumbering, up gets Mrs. Brown from your side, steals downstairs like Amina to her ghoul, clicks open the secret door, and looks into her dark depository. Did she tell you of that little affair with Smith long before she knew you? Psha! who knows any one save himself alone? Who, in showing his house to the closest and dearest, doesn"t keep back the key of a closet or two? I think of a lovely reader laying down the page and looking over at her unconscious husband, asleep, perhaps, after dinner.
Yes, madam, a closet he hath: and you, who pry into everything, shall never have the key of it. I think of some honest Oth.e.l.lo pausing over this very sentence in a railroad carriage, and stealthily gazing at Desdemona opposite to him, innocently administering sandwiches to their little boy--I am trying to turn off the sentence with a joke, you see--I feel it is growing too dreadful, too serious.
And to what, pray, do these serious, these disagreeable, these almost personal observations tend? To this simply, that Charles Honeyman, the beloved and popular preacher, the elegant divine to whom Miss Blanche writes sonnets, and whom Miss Beatrice invites to tea; who comes with smiles on his lip, gentle sympathy in his tones, innocent gaiety in his accent; who melts, rouses, terrifies in the pulpit; who charms over the tea-urn and the bland bread-and-b.u.t.ter: Charles Honeyman has one or two skeleton closets in his lodgings, Walpole Street, Mayfair; and many a wakeful night, whilst Mrs. Ridley, his landlady, and her tired husband, the n.o.bleman"s major-domo, whilst the lodger on the first floor, whilst the cook and housemaid and weary little bootboy are at rest (mind you, they have all got their closets, which they open with their skeleton-keys); he wakes up, and looks at the ghastly occupant of that receptacle. One of the Reverend Charles Honeyman"s grisly night-haunters is--but stop; let us give a little account of the lodgings, and of some of the people frequenting the same.
First floor, Mr. Bagshot, Member for a Norfolk borough. Stout jolly gentleman;--dines at the Carlton Club; greatly addicted to Greenwich and Richmond, in the season: bets in a moderate way: does not go into society, except now and again to the chiefs of his party, when they give great entertainments; and once or twice to the houses of great country dons who dwell near him in the country. Is not of very good family; was, in fact, an apothecary: married a woman with money, much older than himself, who does not like London, and stops at home at Hummingham, not much to the displeasure of Bagshot; gives every now and then nice little quiet dinners, which Mrs. Ridley cooks admirably, to exceedingly stupid jolly old Parliamentary fogies, who absorb, with much silence and cheerfulness, a vast quant.i.ty of wine. They have just begun to drink "24 claret now, that of "15 being scarce, and almost drunk up. Writes daily, and hears every morning from Mrs. Bagshot; does not read her letters always: does not rise till long past eleven o"clock of a Sunday, and has John Bull and Bell"s Life, in bed: frequents the Blue Posts sometimes; rides a stout cob out of his county, and pays like the Bank of England.
The house is a Norfolk house. Mrs. Ridley was housekeeper to the great Squire Bayham, who had the estate before the Conqueror, and who came to such a dreadful crash in the year 1825, the year of the panic. Bayhams still belongs to the family, but in what a state, as those can say who recollect it in its palmy days! Fifteen hundred acres of the best land in England were sold off: all the timber cut down as level as a billiard-board. Mr. Bayham now lives up in one corner of the house, which used to be filled with the finest company in Europe. Law bless you! the Bayhams have seen almost all the n.o.bility of England come in and go out, and were gentlefolks when many a fine lord"s father of the present day was sweeping a counting-house.
The house will hold genteelly no more than these two inmates; but in the season it manages to accommodate Miss Cann, who too was from Bayhams, having been a governess there to the young lady who is dead, and who now makes such a livelihood as she can best raise, by going out as a daily teacher. Miss Cann dines with Mrs. Ridley in the adjoining little back-parlour. Ridley but seldom can be spared to partake of the family dinner, his duties in the house and about the person of my Lord Todmorden keeping him constantly near that n.o.bleman. How little Miss Cann can go on and keep alive on the crumb she eats for breakfast, and the sc.r.a.p she picks at dinner, du astonish Mrs. Ridley, that it du! She declares that the two canary-birds encaged in her window (whence is a cheerful prospect of the back of Lady Whittlesea"s Chapel) eat more than Miss Cann. The two birds set up a tremendous singing and chorussing when Miss Cann, spying the occasion of the first-floor lodger"s absence, begins practising her music-pieces. Such trills, roulades, and flourishes go on from the birds and the lodger! it is a wonder how any fingers can move over the jingling ivory so quickly as Miss Cann"s.
Excellent a woman as she is, admirably virtuous, frugal, brisk, honest, and cheerful, I would not like to live in lodgings where there was a lady so addicted to playing variations. No more does Honeyman. On a Sat.u.r.day, when he is composing his valuable sermons (the rogue, you may be sure, leaves his work to the last day, and there are, I am given to understand, among the clergy many better men than Honeyman, who are as dilatory as he), he begs, he entreats with tears in his eyes, that Miss Cann"s music may cease. I would back little Cann to write a sermon against him, for all his reputation as a popular preacher.
Old and weazened as that piano is, feeble and cracked her voice, it is wonderful what a pleasant concert she can give in that parlour of a Sat.u.r.day evening, to Mrs. Ridley, who generally dozes a good deal, and to a lad, who listens with all his soul, with tears sometimes in his great eyes, with crowding fancies filling his brain and throbbing at his heart, as the artist plies her humble instrument. She plays old music of Handel and Haydn, and the little chamber anon swells into a cathedral, and he who listens beholds altars lighted, priests ministering, fair children swinging censers, great oriel windows gleaming in sunset, and seen through arched columns and avenues of twilight marble. The young fellow who hears her has been often and often to the opera and the theatres. As she plays Don Juan, Zerlina comes tripping over the meadows, and Masetto after her, with a crowd of peasants and maidens: and they sing the sweetest of all music, and the heart beats with happiness, and kindness, and pleasure. Piano, pianissimo! the city is hushed. The towers of the great cathedral rise in the distance, its spires lighted by the broad moon. The statues in the moonlit place cast long shadows athwart the pavement: but the fountain in the midst is dressed out like Cinderella for the night, and sings and wears a crest of diamonds. That great sombre street all in shade, can it be the famous Toledo?--or is it the Corso?--or is it the great street in Madrid, the one which leads to the Escurial where the Rubens and Velasquez are? It is Fancy Street--Poetry Street--Imagination Street--the street where lovely ladies look from balconies, where cavaliers strike mandolins and draw swords and engage, where long processions pa.s.s, and venerable hermits, with long beards, bless the kneeling people: where the rude soldiery, swaggering through the place with flags and halberts, and fife and dance, seize the slim waists of the daughters of the people, and bid the pifferari play to their dancing. Blow, bagpipes, a storm of harmony!
become trumpets, trombones, ophicleides, fiddles, and ba.s.soons! Fire, guns sound, tocsins! Shout, people! Louder, shriller and sweeter than all, sing thou, ravishing heroine! And see, on his cream-coloured charger Ma.s.saniello prances in, and Fra Diavolo leaps down the balcony, carabine in hand; and Sir Huon of Bordeaux sails up to the quay with the Sultan"s daughter of Babylon. All these delights and sights, and joys and glories, these thrills of sympathy, movements of unknown longing, and visions of beauty, a young sickly lad of eighteen enjoys in a little dark room where there is a bed disguised in the shape of a wardrobe, and a little old woman is playing under a gas-lamp on the jingling keys of an old piano.
For a long time Mr. Samuel Ridley, butler and confidential valet to the Right Honourable John James Baron Todmorden, was in a state of the greatest despair and gloom about his only son, the little John James,--a sickly and almost deformed child "of whom there was no making nothink,"
as Mr. Ridley said. His figure precluded him from following his father"s profession, and waiting upon the British n.o.bility, who naturally require large and handsome men to skip up behind their rolling carriages, and hand their plates at dinner. When John James was six years old his father remarked, with tears in his eyes, he wasn"t higher than a plate-basket. The boys jeered at him in the streets--some whopped him, spite of his diminutive size. At school he made but little progress.
He was always sickly and dirty, and timid and crying, whimpering in the kitchen away from his mother; who, though she loved him, took Mr.
Ridley"s view of his character, and thought him little better than an idiot until such time as little Miss Cann took him in hand, when at length there was some hope of him.
"Half-witted, you great stupid big man," says Miss Cann, who had a fine spirit of her own. "That boy half-witted! He has got more wit in his little finger than you have in all your great person! You are a very good man, Ridley, very good-natured I"m sure, and bear with the teasing of a waspish old woman: but you are not the wisest of mankind. Tut, tut, don"t tell me. You know you spell out the words when you read the newspaper still, and what would your bills look like if I did not write them in my nice little hand? I tell you that boy is a genius. I tell you that one day the world will hear of him. His heart is made of pure gold.
You think that all the wit belongs to the big people. Look at me, you great tall man! Am I not a hundred times cleverer than you are? Yes, and John James is worth a thousand such insignificant little chits as I am; and he is as tall as me too, sir. Do you hear that! One day I am determined he shall dine at Lord Todmorden"s table, and he shall get the prize at the Royal Academy, and be famous, sir--famous!"
"Well, Miss C., I wish he may get it; that"s all I say," answers Mr.
Ridley. "The poor fellow does no harm, that I acknowledge; but I never see the good he was up to yet. I wish he"d begin it; I du wish he would now." And the honest gentleman relapses into the study of his paper.
All those beautiful sounds and thoughts which Miss Cann conveys to him out of her charmed piano, the young artist straightway translates into forms; and knights in armour, with plume, and shield, and battle-axe; and splendid young n.o.blemen with flowing ringlets, and bounteous plumes of feathers, and rapiers, and russet boots; and fierce banditti with crimson tights, doublets profusely ill.u.s.trated with large bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, and the dumpy basket-hilted claymores known to be the favourite weapon with which these whiskered ruffians do battle; wasp-waisted peasant girls, and young countesses with oh, such large eyes and the lips!--all these splendid forms of war and beauty crowd to the young draughtsman"s pencil, and cover letter-backs, copybooks, without end. If his hand strikes off some face peculiarly lovely, and to his taste, some fair vision that has shone on his imagination, some houri of a dancer, some bright young lady of fashion in an opera-box, whom he has seen, or fancied he has seen (for the youth is short-sighted, though he hardly as yet knows his misfortune)--if he has made some effort extraordinarily successful, our young Pygmalion hides away the masterpiece, and he paints the beauty with all his skill; the lips a bright carmine, the eyes a deep, deep cobalt, the cheeks a dazzling vermilion, the ringlets of a golden hue; and he worships this sweet creature of his in secret, fancies a history for her; a castle to storm, a tyrant usurper who keeps her imprisoned, and a prince in black ringlets and a spangled cloak, who scales the tower, who slays the tyrant, and then kneels gracefully at the princess"s feet, and says, "Lady, wilt thou be mine?"
There is a kind lady in the neighbourhood, who takes in dressmaking for the neighbouring maid-servants, and has a small establishment of lollipops, theatrical characters, and ginger-beer for the boys in Little Craggs Buildings, hard by the Running Footman public-house, where father and other gentlemen"s gentlemen have their club: this good soul also sells Sunday newspapers to the footmen of the neighbouring gentry; and besides, has a stock of novels for the ladies of the upper servants"
table. Next to Miss Cann, Miss Flinders is John James"s greatest friend and benefactor. She has remarked him when he was quite a little man, and used to bring his father"s beer of a Sunday. Out of her novels he has taught himself to read, dull boy at the day-school though he was, and always the last in his cla.s.s, there. Hours, happy hours, has he spent cowering behind her counter, or hugging her books under his pinafore when he had leave to carry them home. The whole library has pa.s.sed through his hands, his long, lean, tremulous hands, and under his eager eyes. He has made ill.u.s.trations to every one of those books, and been frightened at his own pictures of Manfroni or the One-handed Monk, Abellino the Terrific Bravo of Venice, and Rinaldo Rinaldini Captain of Robbers. How he has blistered Thaddeus of Warsaw with his tears, and drawn him in his Polish cap, and tights, and Hessians! William Wallace, the Hero of Scotland, how n.o.bly he has depicted him! With what whiskers and bushy ostrich plumes!--in a tight kilt, and with what magnificent calves to his legs, laying about him with his battle-axe, and bestriding the bodies of King Edward"s prostrate cavaliers! At this time Mr.
Honeyman comes to lodge in Walpole Street, and brings a set of Scott"s novels, for which he subscribed when at Oxford; and young John James, who at first waits upon him and does little odd jobs for the reverend gentleman, lights upon the volumes, and reads them with such a delight and pa.s.sion of pleasure as all the delights of future days will scarce equal. A fool, is he?--an idle feller, out of whom no good will ever come, as his father says. There was a time when, in despair of any better chance for him, his parents thought of apprenticing him to a tailor, and John James was waked up from a dream of Rebecca and informed of the cruelty meditated against him. I forbear to describe the tears and terror, and frantic desperation in which the poor boy was plunged.
Little Miss Cann rescued him from that awful board, and Honeyman likewise interceded for him, and Mr. Bagshot promised that, as soon as his party came in, he would ask the Minister for a tide-waitership for him; for everybody liked the solemn, soft-hearted, willing little lad, and no one knew him less than his pompous and stupid and respectable father.
Miss Cann painted flowers and card-screens elegantly, and "finished"
pencil-drawings most elaborately for her pupils. She could copy prints, so that at a little distance you would scarcely know that the copy in stumped chalk was not a bad mezzotinto engraving. She even had a little old paint-box, and showed you one or two ivory miniatures out of the drawer. She gave John James what little knowledge of drawing she had, and handed him over her invaluable recipes for mixing water-colours--"for trees in foregrounds, burnt sienna and indigo"--"for very dark foliage, ivory black and gamboge"--"for flesh-colour,"
etc. etc. John James went through her poor little course, but not so brilliantly as she expected. She was forced to own that several of her pupils" "pieces" were executed much more dexterously than Johnny Ridley"s. Honeyman looked at the boy"s drawings from time to time, and said, "Hm, ha!--very clever--a great deal of fancy, really." But Honeyman knew no more of the subject than a deaf and dumb man knows of music. He could talk the art cant very glibly, and had a set of Morghens and Madonnas as became a clergyman and a man of taste; but he saw not with eyes such as those wherewith Heaven had endowed the humble little butler"s boy, to whom splendours of Nature were revealed to vulgar sights invisible, and beauties manifest in forms, colours, shadows of common objects, where most of the world saw only what was dull, and gross, and familiar. One reads in the magic story-books of a charm or a flower which the wizard gives, and which enables the bearer to see the fairies. O enchanting boon of Nature, which reveals to the possessor the hidden spirits of beauty round about him! spirits which the strongest and most gifted masters compel into painting or song. To others it is granted but to have fleeting glimpses of that fair Art-world; and tempted by ambition, or barred by faint-heartedness, or driven by necessity, to turn away thence to the vulgar life-track, and the light of common day.
The reader who has pa.s.sed through Walpole Street scores of times, knows the discomfortable architecture of all, save the great houses built in Queen Anne"s and George the First"s time; and while some of the neighbouring streets, to wit, Great Craggs Street, Bolingbroke Street, and others, contain mansions fairly coped with stone, with little obelisks before the doors, and great extinguishers wherein the torches of the n.o.bility"s running footmen were put out a hundred and thirty or forty years ago:--houses which still remain abodes of the quality, and where you shall see a hundred carriages gather of a public night; Walpole Street has quite faded away into lodgings, private hotels, doctors" houses, and the like; nor is No. 23 (Ridley"s) by any means the best house in the street. The parlour, furnished and tenanted by Miss Cann as has been described; the first floor, Bagshot, Esq., M.P.; the second floor, Honeyman; what remains but the garrets, and the ample staircase and the kitchens? and the family being all put to bed, how can you imagine there is room for any more inhabitants?
And yet there is one lodger more, and one who, like almost all the other personages mentioned up to the present time (and some of whom you have no idea yet), will play a definite part in the ensuing history. At night, when Honeyman comes in, he finds on the hall-table three wax bedroom candles--his own, Bagshot"s, and another. As for Miss Cann, she is locked into the parlour in bed long ago, her stout little walking-shoes being on the mat at the door. At 12 o"clock at noon, sometimes at 1, nay at 2 and 3--long after Bagshot is gone to his committees, and little Cann to her pupils--a voice issues from the very topmost floor, from a room where there is no bell; a voice of thunder calling out "Slavey! Julia! Julia, my love! Mrs. Ridley!" And this summons not being obeyed, it will not unfrequently happen that a pair of trousers enclosing a pair of boots with iron heels, and known by the name of the celebrated Prussian General who came up to help the other christener of boots at Waterloo, will be flung down from the topmost story, even to the marble floor of the resounding hall. Then the boy Thomas, otherwise called Slavey, may say, "There he goes again;" or Mrs.
Ridley"s own back-parlour bell rings vehemently, and Julia the cook will exclaim, "Lor, it"s Mr. Frederick."
If the breeches and boots are not understood, the owner himself appears in great wrath dancing on the upper story; dancing down to the lower floor; and loosely enveloped in a ragged and flowing robe de chambre.
In this costume and condition he will dance into Honeyman"s apartment, where that meek divine may be sitting with a headache or over a novel or a newspaper; dance up to the fire flapping his robe-tails, poke it, and warm himself there; dance up to the cupboard where his reverence keeps his sherry, and help himself to a gla.s.s.
"Salve, spes fidei, lumen ecclesiae," he will say; "here"s towards you, my buck. I knows the tap. Sherrick"s Marsala bottled three months after date, at two hundred and forty-six shillings the dozen."
"Indeed, indeed it"s not" (and now we are coming to an idea of the skeleton in poor Honeyman"s closet--not that this huge handsome jolly Fred Bayham is the skeleton, far from it. Mr. Frederick weighs fourteen stone). "Indeed, indeed it isn"t, Fred, I"m sure," sighs the other. "You exaggerate, indeed you do. The wine is not dear, not by any means so expensive as you say."
"How much a gla.s.s, think you?" says Fred, filling another b.u.mper. "A half-crown, think ye?--a half-crown, Honeyman? By c.o.c.k and pye, it is not worth a bender." He says this in the manner of the most celebrated tragedian of the day. He can imitate any actor, tragic or comic; any known Parliamentary orator or clergyman; any saw, c.o.c.k, cloop of a cork wrenched from a bottle and guggling of wine into the decanter afterwards, bee buzzing, little boy up a chimney, etc. He imitates people being ill on board a steam-packet so well that he makes you die of laughing: his uncle the Bishop could not resist this comic exhibition, and gave Fred a cheque for a comfortable sum of money; and Fred, getting cash for the cheque at the Cave of Harmony, imitated his uncle the Bishop and his Chaplain, winding up with his Lordship and Chaplain being unwell at sea--the Chaplain and Bishop quite natural and distinct.
"How much does a gla.s.s of this sack cost thee, Charley?" resumes Fred, after this parenthesis. "You say it is not dear. Charles Honeyman, you had, even from your youth up, a villainous habit. And I perfectly well remember, sir, in boyhood"s breezy hour, when I was the delight of his school, that you used to tell lies to your venerable father. You did, Charles. Excuse the frankness of an early friend, it"s my belief you"d rather lie than not. Hm"--he looks at the cards in the chimney-gla.s.s "Invitations to dinner, proffers of m.u.f.fins. Do lend me your sermon. Oh, you old impostor! you h.o.a.ry old Ananias! I say, Charley, why haven"t you picked out some nice girl for yours truly? One with lauds and beeves, with rents and consols, mark you? I have no money, "tis true, but then I don"t owe as much as you. I am a handsomer man than you are. Look at this chest" (he slaps it), "these limbs; they are manly, sir, manly."
"For Heaven"s sake, Bayham," cries Mr. Honeyman, white with terror; "if anybody were to come----"
"What did I say anon, sir? that I was manly, ay, manly. Let any ruffian, save a bailiff, come and meet the doughty arm of Frederick Bayham."
"Oh, Lord, Lord, here"s somebody coming into the room!" cries Charles, sinking back on the sofa, as the door opens.
"Ha! dost thou come with murderous intent?" and he now advances in an approved offensive att.i.tude. "Caitiff, come on, come on!" and he walks off with a tragic laugh, crying, "Ha, ha, ha, "tis but the slavey!"
The slavey has Mr. Frederick"s hot water, and a bottle of sodawater on the same tray. He has been instructed to bring soda whenever he hears the word slavey p.r.o.nounced from above. The bottle explodes, and Frederick drinks, and hisses after his drink as though he had been all hot within.
"What"s o"clock now, slavey--half-past three? Let me see, I breakfasted exactly ten hours ago, in the rosy morning, off a modest cup of coffee in Covent Garden Market. Coffee, a penny; bread, a simple halfpenny.
What has Mrs. Ridley for dinner?"
"Please, sir, roast pork."
"Get me some. Bring it into my room, unless, Honeyman, you insist upon my having it here, kind fellow!"
At the moment a smart knock comes to the door, and Fred says, "Well, Charles, it may be a friend or a lady come to confess, and I"m off; I knew you"d be sorry I was going. Tom, bring up my things; brush "em gently, you scoundrel, and don"t take the nap off. Bring up the roast pork, and plenty of apple-sauce, tell Mrs. Ridley, with my love; and one of Mr. Honeyman"s shirts, and one of his razors. Adieu, Charles! Amend!
Remember me." And he vanishes into the upper chambers.
CHAPTER XII. In which everybody is asked to Dinner
John James had opened the door hastening to welcome a friend and patron, the sight of whom always gladdened the youth"s eyes; no other than Clive Newcome--in young Ridley"s opinion, the most splendid, fortunate, beautiful, high-born, and gifted youth this island contained. What generous boy in his time has not worshipped somebody? Before the female enslaver makes her appearance, every lad has a friend of friends, a crony of cronies, to whom he writes immense letters in vacation, whom he cherishes in his heart of hearts; whose sister he proposes to marry in after life; whose purse he shares; for whom he will take a thrashing if need be: who is his hero. Clive was John James"s youthful divinity: when he wanted to draw Thaddeus of Warsaw, a Prince, Ivanhoe, or some one splendid and egregious, it was Clive he took for a model. His heart leapt when he saw the young fellow. He would walk cheerfully to Grey Friars, with a letter or message for Clive, on the chance of seeing him, and getting a kind word from him, or a shake of the hand. An ex-butler of Lord Todmorden was a pensioner in the Grey Friars Hospital (it has been said that at that ancient establishment is a college for old men as well as for boys), and this old man would come sometimes to his successor"s Sunday dinner, and grumble from the hour of that meal until nine o"clock, when he was forced to depart, so as to be within Grey Friars" gates before ten; grumble about his dinner--grumble about his beer--grumble about the number of chapels he had to attend, about the gown he wore, about the master"s treatment of him, about the want of plums in the pudding, as old men and schoolboys grumble. It was wonderful what a liking John James took to this odious, querulous, graceless, stupid, and snuffy old man, and how he would find pretexts for visiting him at his lodging in the old hospital. He actually took that journey that he might have a chance of seeing Clive. He sent Clive notes and packets of drawings; thanked him for books lent, asked advice about future reading--anything, so that he might have a sight of his pride, his patron, his paragon.
I am afraid Clive Newcome employed him to smuggle rum-shrub and cigars into the premises; giving him appointments in the school precincts, where young Clive would come and stealthily receive the forbidden goods.
The poor lad was known by the boys, and called Newcome"s Punch. He was all but hunchbacked; long and lean in the arm; sallow, with a great forehead, and waving black hair, and large melancholy eyes.
"What, is it you, J. J.?" cries Clive gaily, when his humble friend appears at the door. "Father, this is my friend Ridley. This is the fellow what can draw."
"I know who I will back against any young man of his size at that," says the Colonel, looking at Clive fondly. He considered there was not such a genius in the world; and had already thought of having some of Clive"s drawings published by M"Lean of the Haymarket.
"This is my father just come from India--and Mr. Pendennis, an old Grey Friars" man. Is my uncle at home?" Both these gentlemen bestow rather patronising nods of the head on the lad introduced to them as J. J.
His exterior is but mean-looking. Colonel Newcome, one of the humblest-minded men alive, has yet his old-fashioned military notions; and speaks to a butler"s son as to a private soldier, kindly, but not familiarly.
"Mr Honeyman is at home, gentlemen," the young lad says, humbly. "Shall I show you up to his room?" And we walk up the stairs after our guide.
We find Mr. Honeyman deep in study on his sofa, with Pearson on the Creed before him. The novel has been whipped under the pillow. Clive found it there some short time afterwards, during his uncle"s temporary absence in his dressing-room. He has agreed to suspend his theological studies, and go out with his brother-in-law to dine.
As Clive and his friends were at Honeyman"s door, and just as we were entering to see the divine seated in state before his folio, Clive whispers, "J. J., come along, old fellow, and show us some drawings.
What are you doing?"