must have been uncommonly strong in itself, which could survive such an
advocate. He passed a frightful night of torture before appearing in committee
room. During that night, he says, his hair grew grey. His old college friend and
comrade Pinkerton, who was with him in the case, "coached" him on the day
previous; and indeed it must be owned that the work which he had to perform was
not of a nature to impair the inside or the outside of his skull. A great man
was his leader; his friend Pinkerton followed; and all Mr. Philip's business was
to examine a half-dozen witnesses by questions previously arranged between them
and the agents.
When you hear that, as a reward of his services in this case, Mr. Firmin
received a sum of money sufficient to pay his modest family expenses for some
four months, I am sure, dear and respected literary friends, that you will wish
the lot of a parliamentary barrister had been yours, or that your immortal works
could be paid with such a liberality as rewards the labours of these lawyers.
"Nimmer erscheinen die G?tter allein." After one agent had employed Philip,
another came and secured his valuable services: him two or three others
followed, and our friend postively had money in bank. Not only were
apprehensions of poverty removed for the present, but we had every reason to
hope that Firmin's prosperity would increase and continue. And when a little son
and heir was born, which blessing was conferred upon Mr. Philip about a year
after his daughter, our godchild, saw the light, we should have thought it shame
to have any misgivings about the future, so cheerful did Philip's prospects
appear. "Did I not tell you," said my wife, with her usual kindling romance,
"that comfort and succour would be found for these in the hour of their need?"
Amen. We were grateful that comfort and succour should come. No one I am sure
was more humbly thankful than Philip himself for the fortunate chances which
befel him.
He was alarmed rather than elated by his sudden prosperity. "It can't last," he
said. "Don't tell me. The attorneys must find me out before long. They cannot
continue to give their business to such an ignoramus; and I really think I must
remonstrate with them." You should have seen the Little Sister's indignation
when Philip uttered this sentiment in her presence. "Give up your business? Yes,
do!" she cried, tossing up Philip's youngest born. "Fling this baby out of
window, why not indeed, which heaven has sent it you!??You ought to go down on
your knees and ask pardon for having thought anything so wicked." Philip's heir,
by the way, immediately on his entrance into the world, had become the prime
favourite of this unreasoning woman. The little daughter was passed over as a
little person of no account, and so began to entertain the passion of jealousy
at almost the very earliest age at which even the female breast is capable of
enjoying it.
And though this Little Sister loved all these people with an almost ferocious
passion of love, and lay awake, I believe, hearing their infantine cries, or
crept on stealthy feet in darkness to their mother's chamber-door, behind which
they lay sleeping; though she had, as it were, a range for these infants, and
was wretched out of their sight, yet, when a third and a fourth brief came to
Philip, and he was enabled to put a little money aside, nothing would content
Mrs. Brandon but that he should go into a house of his own. "A gentleman," she
said, "ought not to live in a two-pair lodging; he ought to have a house of his
own." So, you see, she hastened on the preparations for her own execution. She
trudged to the brokers' shops and made wonderful bargains of furniture. She cut
chintzes, and covered sofas, and sewed, and patched, and fitted. She found a
house and took it??Milman Street, Guildford Street, opposite the Fondling (as
the dear little soul called it), a most genteel, quiet little street, "and quite
near for me to come," she said, "to see my dears." Did she speak with dry eyes?
Mine moisten sometimes when I think of the faith, of the generosity, of the
sacrifice, of that devoted, loving creature.
I am very fond of Charlotte. Her sweetness and simplicity won all our hearts at
home. No wife or mother ever was more attached and affectionate; but I own there
was a time when I hated her, though of course that highly principled woman, the
wife of the author of the present memoirs, says that the statement I am making
here is stuff and nonsense, not to say immoral and irreligious. Well, then, I
hated Charlotte for the horrible eagerness which she showed in getting away from
this Little Sister, who clung round those children, whose first cries she had
heard. I hated Charlotte for a cruel happiness which she felt as she hugged the
children to her heart: her own children in their own room, whom she would dress,
and watch, and wash, and tend; and for whom she wanted no aid. No aid,
entendez-vous? Oh, it was a shame, a shame! In the new house, in the pleasant
little trim new nursery (fitted up by whose fond hands we will not say), is the
mother glaring over the cot, where the little soft round cheeks are pillowed;
and yonder in the rooms in Thornhaugh Street, where she has tended them for two
years, the Little Sister sits lonely, as the moonlight streams in. God help
thee, little suffering, faithful heart! Never but once in her life before had
she known so exquisite a pain.
Of course, we had an entertainment in the new house; and Philip's friends, old
and new, came to the house-warming. The family coach of the Ringwoods blocked up
that astonished little street. The powder on their footmen's heads nearly
brushed the ceiling, as the monsters rose when the guests passed in and out of
the hall. The Little Sister merely took charge of the tea-room. Philip's
'library' was that usual little cupboard beyond the dining-room. The little
drawing-room was dreadfully crowded by an ex-nursery piano, which the Ringwoods
bestowed upon their friends; and somebody was in duty bound to play upon it on
the evening of this soir?e; though the Little Sister chafed downstairs at the
music. In fact, her very words were "Rat that piano!" She "ratted" the
instrument, because the music would wake her little dears upstairs. And that
music did wake them; and they howled melodiously, and the Little Sister, who was
about to serve Lady Jane Tregarvan with some tea, dashed upstairs to the
nursery: and Charlotte had reached the room already: and she looked angry when
the Little Sister came in: and she said, "I am sure, Mrs. Brandon, the people
downstairs will be wanting their tea;" and she spoke with some asperity. And
Mrs. Brandon went downstairs without one word; and, happening to be on the
landing, conversing with a friend, and a little out of the way of the duet which
the Miss Ringwoods were performing??riding their great old horse, as it were,
and putting it through its paces in Mrs. Firmin's little paddock; happening, I
say, to be on the landing when Caroline passed, I took a hand as cold as stone,
and never saw a look of grief more tragic than that worn by h
er poor little face
as it passed. "My children cried," she said, "and I went up to the nursery. But
she don't want me there now." Poor Little Sister! She humbled herself and
grovelled before Charlotte. You could not help trampling upon her then, madam;
and I hated you??and a great number of other women. Ridley and I went down to
her tea-room, where Caroline resumed her place. She looked very nice and pretty,
with her pale sweet face, and her neat cap and blue ribbon. Tortures I know she
was suffering. Charlotte had been stabbing her. Women will use the edge
sometimes, and drive the steel in. Charlotte said to me, some time afterwards,
"I was jealous of her, and you were right; and a dearer, more faithful creature
never lived." But who told Charlotte I said she was jealous? O fool! I told
Ridley, and Mr. Ridley told Mrs. Firmin.
If Charlotte stabbed Caroline, Caroline could not help coming back again and
again to the knife. On Sundays, when she was free, there was always a place for
her at Philip's modest table; and when Mrs. Philip went to church, Caroline was
allowed to reign in the nursery. Sometimes Charlotte was generous enough to give
Mrs. Brandon this chance. When Philip took a house??a whole house to
himself??Philip's mother-in-law proposed to come and stay with him, and said
that, wishing to be beholden to no one, she would pay for her board and lodging.
But Philip declined this treat, representing, justly, that his present house was
no bigger than his former lodgings. "My poor love is dying to have me," Mrs.
Baynes remarked on this. "But her husband is so cruel to her, and keeps her
under such terror, that she dares not call her life her own." Cruel to her!
Charlotte was the happiest of the happy in her little house. In consequence of
his parliamentary success, Philip went regularly to chambers now, in the fond
hope that more briefs might come. At chambers he likewise conducted the chief
business of his Review: and, at the accustomed hour of his return, that usual
little procession of mother and child and nurse would be seen on the watch for
him; and the young woman??the happiest young woman in Christendom ??would walk
back clinging on her husband's arm.
All this while letters came from Philip's dear father at New York, where, it
appeared, he was engaged not only in his profession, but in various
speculations, with which he was always about to make his fortune. One day Philip
got a newspaper advertising a new insurance company, and saw, to his
astonishment, the announcement of "Counsel in London, Philip Firmin, Esq.,
Parchment Buildings, Temple." A paternal letter promised Philip great fees out
of this insurance company, but I never heard that poor Philip was any the
richer. In fact, his friends advised him to have nothing to do with this
insurance company, and to make no allusion to it in his letters. "They feared
the Danai, and the gifts they brought," as old Firmin would have said. They had
to impress upon Philip an abiding mistrust of that wily old Greek, his father.
Firmin senior always wrote hopefully and magnificently, and persisted in
believing or declaring that ere very long he should have to announce to Philip
that his fortune was made. He speculated in Wall Street, I don't know in what
shares, inventions, mines, railways. One day, some few months after his
migration to Milman Street, Philip, blushing and hanging down his head, had to
tell me that his father had drawn upon him again. Had he not paid up his shares
in a certain mine, they would have been forfeited, and he and his son after him
would have lost a certain fortune, old Danaus said. I fear an artful, a
long-bow-pulling Danaus. What, shall a man have birth, wealth, friends, high
position, and end so that we dare not leave him alone in the room with our
spoons? "And you have paid this bill which the old man drew?" we asked. Yes,
Philip had paid the bill. He vowed he would pay no more. But it was not
difficult to see that the doctor would draw more bills upon this accommodating
banker. "I dread the letters which begin with a flourish about the fortune which
he is just going to make," Philip said. He knew that the old parent prefaced his
demands for money in that way.
Mention has been made of a great medical discovery which he had announced to his
correspondent, Mrs. Brandon, and by which the doctor declared as usual that he
was about to make a fortune. In New York and Boston he had tried experiments
which had been attended with the most astonishing success. A remedy was
discovered, the mere sale of which in Europe and America must bring an immense
revenue to the fortunate inventors. For the ladies whom Mrs. Brandon attended,
the remedy was of priceless value. He would send her some. His friend, Captain
Morgan, of the Southampton packet-ship, would bring her some of this astonishing
medicine. Let her try it. Let her show the accompanying cases to Doctor
Goodenough??to any of his brother physicians in London. Though himself an exile
from his country, he loved it, and was proud in being able to confer upon it one
of the greatest blessings with which science had endowed mankind.
Goodenough, I am sorry to say, had such a mistrust of his confr?re that he chose
to disbelieve any statement Firmin made. "I don't believe, my good Brandon, the
fellow has nous enough to light upon any scientific discovery more useful than a
new sauce for cutlets. He invent anything but fibs, never!" You see this
Goodenough is an obstinate old heathen; and when he has once found reason to
mistrust a man, he for ever after declines to believe him.
However, the doctor is a man for ever on the lookout for more knowledge of his
profession, and for more remedies to benefit mankind: he hummed and ha'd over
the pamphlet, as the Little Sister sat watching him in his study. He clapped it
down after a while, and slapped his hands on his little legs as his wont is.
"Brandon," he says, "I think there is a great deal in it, and I think so the
more because it turns out that Firmin has nothing to do with the discovery,
which has been made at Boston." In fact, Dr. Firmin, late of London, had only
been present in the Boston hospital, where the experiments were made with the
new remedy. He had cried "Halves," and proposed to sell it as a secret remedy,
and the bottle which he forwarded to our friend the Little Sister was labelled
"Firmin's Anodyne." What Firmin did, indeed, was what he had been in the habit
of doing. He had taken another man's property, and was endeavouring to make a
flourish with it. The Little Sister returned home, then, with her bottle of
Chloroform??for this was what Dr. Firmin chose to call his discovery, and he had
sent home a specimen of it; as he sent home a cask of petroleum from Virginia;
as he sent proposals for new railways upon which he promised Philip a munificent
commission, if his son could but place the shares amongst his friends.
And with regard to these valuables, the sanguine doctor got to believe that he
really was endowing his son with large sums of money. "My boy has set up a
house, and has a wife and two children, th
e young jackanapes!" he would say to
people in New York; "as if he had not been extravagant enough in former days!
When I married, I had private means, and married a nobleman's niece with a large
fortune. Nither of these two young folks has a penny. Well, well, the old father
must help them as well as he can!" And I am told there were ladies who dropped
the tear of sensibility, and said, "What a fond father this doctor is! How he
sacrifices himself for that scapegrace of a son! Think of the dear doctor at his
age, toiling cheerfully for that young man, who helped to ruin him!" And Firmin
sighed; and passed a beautiful white handkerchief over his eyes with a beautiful
white hand; and, I believe, really cried; and thought himself quite a good,
affectionate, injured man. He held the plate at Church; he looked very handsome
and tall, and bowed with a charming melancholy grace to the ladies as they put
in their contributions. The dear man! His plate was fuller than other
people's??so a traveller told us who saw him in New York; and described a very
choice dinner which the doctor gave to a few friends, at one of the smartest
hotels just then opened.
With all the Little Sister's good management Mr. and Mrs. Philip were only able
to instal themselves in their new house at a considerable expense, and beyond
that great Ringwood piano which swaggered in Philip's little drawing-room, I am
constrained to say that there was scarce any furniture at all. One of the
railway accounts was not paid as yet, and poor Philip could not feed upon mere
paper promises to pay. Nor was he inclined to accept the offers of private
friends, who were willing enough to be his bankers. "One in a family is enough
for that kind of business," he said, gloomily; and it came out that again and
again the interesting exile at New York who was deploring his son's extravagance
and foolish marriage, had drawn bills upon Philip which our friend accepted and
paid??bills, who knows to what amount? He has never told; and the engaging
parent who robbed him??must I use a word so unpolite???will never now tell to
what extent he helped himself to Philip's small means. This I know, that when
autumn came??when September was past?? we in our cosy little retreat at the
seaside received a letter from the Little Sister, in her dear little bad
spelling, (about which there used to be somehow a pathos which the very finest
writing does not possess;)?? there came, I say, a letter from the Little Sister
in which she told us, with many dashes, that dear Mrs. Philip and the children
were pining and sick in London, and 'that Philip, he had too much pride and
sperit to take money from any one; that Mr. Tregarvan was away travelling on the
continent, and that wretch??that monster, you know who??have drawn upon Philip
again for money, and again he have paid, and the dear, dear children can't have
fresh air.'
"Did she tell you," said Philip, brushing his hands across his eyes when a
friend came to remonstrate with him, "did she tell you that she brought me money
herself, but we would not use it? Look! I have her little marriage gift yonder
in my desk, and pray God I shall be able to leave it to my children. The fact
is, the doctor has drawn upon me, as usual; he is going to make a fortune next
week. I have paid another bill of his. The parliamentary agents are out of town,
at their moors in Scotland, I suppose. The air of Russell Square is uncommonly
wholesome, and when the babies have had enough of that, why, they must change it
for Brunswick Square. Talk about the country! what country can be more quiet
than Guildford Street in September? I stretch out of a morning, and breathe the
mountain-air on Ludgate Hill." And with these dismal pleasantries and jokes our
friend chose to put a good face upon bad fortune. The kinsmen of Ringwood