Fashion I do not worship. You may meet that amongst other branches of our
family; but genius and talent I do reverence. And if I can be the means--
the humble means--to bring men of genius together--mind to associate with
mind--men of all nations to mingle in friendly unison--I shall not have
lived altogether in vain. They call us women of the world frivolous,
Colonel Newcome. So some may be; I do not say there are not in our own
family persons who worship mere worldly rank, and think but of fashion
and gaiety; but such, I trust, will never be the objects in life of me
and my children. We are but merchants; we seek to be no more. If I can
look around me and see as I do"-(she waves her fan round, and points to
the illustrations scintillating round the room)--"and see as I do now--a
Poski, whose name is ever connected with Polish history--an Ettore, who
has exchanged a tonsure and a rack for our own free country--a
Hammerstein, and a Quartz, a Miss Rudge, our Transatlantic sister (who I
trust will not mention this modest salon in her forthcoming work on
Europe), and Miss Pinnifer, whose genius I acknowledge, though I deplore
her opinions; if I can gather together travellers, poets, and painters,
princes and distinguished soldiers from the East, and clergymen
remarkable for their eloquence, my humble aim is attained, and Maria
Newcome is not altogether useless in her generation. Will you take a
little refreshment? Allow your sister to go down to the dining-room
supported by your gallant arm." She looked round to the admiring
congregation, whereof Honeyman, as it were acted as clerk, and flirting
her fan, and flinging up her little head. Consummate Virtue walked down
on the arm of the Colonel.
The refreshment was rather meagre. The foreign artists generally dashed
downstairs, and absorbed all the ices, creams, etc. To those coming late
there were chicken-bones, table-cloths puddled with melted ice, glasses
hazy with sherry, and broken bits of bread. The Colonel said he never
supped; and he and Honeyman walked away together, the former to bed, the
latter, I am sorry to say, to his club; for he was a dainty feeder, and
loved lobster, and talk late at night, and a comfortable little glass of
something wherewith to conclude the day.
He agreed to come to breakfast with the Colonel, who named eight or nine
for the meal. Nine Mr. Honeyman agreed to with a sigh. The incumbent of
Lady Whittlesea's chapel seldom rose before eleven. For, to tell the
truth, no French abbot of Louis XV. was more lazy and luxurious, and
effeminate, than our polite bachelor preacher.
One of Colonel Newcome's fellow-passengers from India was Mr. James
Binnie of the Civil Service, a jolly young bachelor of two- or
three-and-forty, who, having spent half of his past life in Bengal, was
bent upon enjoying the remainder in Britain or in Europe, if a residence
at home should prove agreeable to him. The Nabob of books and tradition
is a personage no longer to be found among us. He is neither as wealthy
nor as wicked as the jaundiced monster of romances and comedies, who
purchases the estates of broken-down English gentlemen, with rupees
tortured out of bleeding rajahs, who smokes a hookah in public, and in
private carries about a guilty conscience, diamonds of untold value, and
a diseased liver; who has a vulgar wife, with a retinue of black servants
whom she maltreats, and a gentle son and daughter with good impulses and
an imperfect education, desirous to amend their own and their parents'
lives, and thoroughly ashamed of the follies of the old people. If you go
to the house of an Indian gentleman now, he does not say, "Bring more
curricles," like the famous Nabob of Stanstead Park. He goes to
Leadenhall Street in an omnibus, and walks back from the City for
exercise. I have known some who have had maid-servants to wait on them at
dinner. I have met scores who look as florid and rosy as any British
squire who has never left his paternal beef and acres. They do not wear
nankeen jackets in summer. Their livers are not out of order any more;
and as for hookahs, I dare swear there are not two now kept alight within
the bills of mortality; and that retired Indians would as soon think of
smoking them, as their wives would of burning themselves on their
husbands' bodies at the cemetery, Kensal Green, near to the Tyburnian
quarter of the city which the Indian world at present inhabits. It used
to be Baker Street and Harley Street; it used to be Portland Place, and
in more early days Bedford Square, where the Indian magnates flourished;
districts which have fallen from their pristine state of splendour now,
even as Agra, and Benares, and Lucknow, and Tippoo Sultan's city are
fallen.
After two-and-twenty years' absence from London, Mr. Binnie returned to
it on the top of the Gosport coach with a hatbox and a little
portmanteau, a pink fresh-shaven face, a perfect appetite, a suit of
clothes like everybody else's, and not the shadow of a black servant. He
called a cab at the White Horse Cellar, and drove to Nerot's Hotel,
Clifford Street; and he gave the cabman eightpence, making the fellow,
who grumbled, understand that Clifford Street was not two hundred yards
from Bond Street, and that he was paid at the rate of five shillings and
fourpence per mile--calculating the mile at only sixteen hundred yards.
He asked the waiter at what time Colonel Newcome had ordered dinner, and
finding there was an hour on his hands before the meal, walked out to
examine the neighbourhood for a lodging where he could live more quietly
than in a hotel. He called it a hotel. Mr. Binnie was a North Briton, his
father having been a Writer to the Signet, in Edinburgh, who had procured
his son a writership in return for electioneering services done to an
East Indian Director. Binnie had his retiring pension, and, besides, had
saved half his allowances ever since he had been in India. He was a man
of great reading, no small ability, considerable accomplishment,
excellent good sense and good humour. The ostentatious said he was a
screw; but he gave away more money than far more extravagant people: he
was a disciple of David Hume (whom he admired more than any other
mortal), and the serious denounced him as a man of dangerous principles,
though there were, among the serious, men much more dangerous than James
Binnie.
On returning to his hotel, Colonel Newcome found this worthy gentleman
installed in his room in the best arm-chair sleeping cosily; the evening
paper laid decently over his plump waistcoat, and his little legs placed
on an opposite chair. Mr. Binnie woke up briskly when the Colonel
entered. "It is you, you gad-about, is it?" cried the civilian. "How has
the beau monde of London treated the Indian Adonis? Have you made a
sensation, Newcome? Gad, Tom, I remember you a buck of bucks when that
coat first came out to Calcutta--just a Barrackpore Brummell--in Lord
Minto's reign, was it, or when Lord Hastings was satrap over us?"
"A man must have one good coat," says the Colonel; "I don't profess to b
e
a dandy; but get a coat from a good tailor, and then have done with it."
He still thought his garment was as handsome as need be.
"Done with it--ye're never done with it!" cries the civilian.
"An old coat is an old friend, old Binnie. I don't want to be rid of one
or the other. How long did you and my boy sit up together--isn't he a
fine lad, Binnie? I expect you are going to put him down for something
handsome in your will."
"See what it is to have a real friend now, Colonel! I sate up for ye, or
let us say more correctly, I waited for you--because I knew you would
want to talk about that scapegrace of yours. And if I had gone to bed, I
should have had you walking up to No. 28, and waking me out of my first
rosy slumber. Well, now confess; avoid not. Haven't ye fallen in love
with some young beauty on the very first night of your arrival in your
sister's salong, and selected a mother-in-law for young Scapegrace?"
"Isn't he a fine fellow, James?" says the Colonel, lighting a cheroot as
he sits on the table. Was it joy, or the bedroom candle with which he
lighted his cigar, which illuminated his honest features so, and made
them so to shine?
"I have been occupied, sir, in taking the lad's moral measurement: and
have pumped him as successfully as ever I cross-examined a rogue in my
court. I place his qualities thus:--Love of approbation sixteen.
Benevolence fourteen. Combativeness fourteen. Adhesiveness two.
Amativeness is not yet of course fully developed, but I expect will be
prodeegiously strong. The imaginative and reflective organs are very
large--those, of calculation weak. He may make a poet or a painter, or
you may make a sojer of him, though worse men than him's good enough for
that--but a bad merchant, a lazy lawyer, and a miserable mathematician.
He has wit and conscientiousness, so ye mustn't think of making a
clergyman of him."
"Binnie!" says the Colonel gravely, "you are always sneering at the
cloth."
"When I think that, but for my appointment to India, I should have been a
luminary of the faith and a pillar of the church! grappling with the
ghostly enemy in the pulpit, and giving out the psawm. Eh, sir, what a
loss Scottish Divinity has had in James Binnie!" cries the little
civilian with his most comical face. "But that is not the question. My
opinion, Colonel, is, that young Scapegrace will give you a deal of
trouble; or would, only you are so absurdly proud of him that you think
everything he does is perfaction. He'll spend your money for you: he'll
do as little work as need be. He'll get into scrapes with the sax. He's
almost as simple as his father, and that is to say that any rogue will
cheat him; and he seems to me to have got your obstinate habit of telling
the truth, Colonel, which may prevet his getting on in the world, but on
the other hand will keep him from going very wrong. So that, though there
is every fear for him, there's some hope and some consolation."
"What do you think of his Latin and Greek?" asks the Colonel. Before
going out to his party, Newcome had laid a deep scheme with Binnie, and
it had been agreed that the latter should examine the young fellow in his
humanities.
"Wall," cries the Scot, "I find that the lad knows as much about Greek
and Latin as I knew myself when I was eighteen years of age."
"My dear Binnie, is it possible? You, the best scholar in all India!"
"And which amounted to exactly nothing. He has acquired in five years,
and by the admirable seestem purshood at your public schools, just about
as much knowledge of the ancient languages as he could get by three
months' application at home. Mind ye, I don't say he would apply; it is
most probable he would do no such thing. But at the cost of--how much?
two hundred pounds annually--for five years--he has acquired about
five-and-twenty guineas' worth of classical leeterature--enough, I dare
say, to enable him to quote Horace respectably through life, and what
more do ye want from a young man of his expectations? I think I should
send him into the army, that's the best place for him--there's the least
to do, and the handsomest clothes to wear. Acce segnum!" says the little
wag, daintily taking up the tail of his friend's coat.
"There's never any knowing whether you are in jest or in earnest,
Binnie," the puzzled Colonel said.
"How should you know, when I don't know myself?" answered the Scotchman.
"In earnest now, Tom Newcome, I think your boy is as fine a lad as I ever
set eyes on. He seems to have intelligence and good temper. He carries
his letter of recommendation in his countenance; and with the honesty--
and the rupees, mind ye--which he inherits from his father, the deuce is
in it if he can't make his way. What time's the breakfast? Eh, but it was
a comfort this morning not to hear the holystoning on the deck. We ought
to go into lodgings, and not fling our money out of the window of this
hotel. We must make the young chap take us about and show us the town in
the morning, Tom. I had but three days of it five-and-twenty years ago,
and I propose to reshoome my observations to-morrow after breakfast.
We'll just go on deck and see how's her head before we turn in, eh,
Colonel?" and with this the jolly gentleman nodded over his candle to his
friend, and trotted off to bed.
The Colonel and his friend were light sleepers and early risers, like
most men that come from the country where they had both been so long
sojourning, and were awake and dressed long before the London waiters had
thought of quitting their beds. The housemaid was the only being stirring
in the morning when little Mr. Binnie blundered over her pail as she was
washing the deck. Early as he was, his fellow-traveller had preceded him.
Binnie found the Colonel in his sitting-room arrayed in what are called
in Scotland his stocking-feet, already puffing the cigar, which in truth
was seldom out of his mouth at any hour of the day.
He had a couple of bedrooms adjacent to this sitting-room, and when
Binnie, as brisk and rosy about the gills as chanticleer, broke out in a
morning salutation, "Hush," says the Colonel, putting a long finger up to
his mouth, and advancing towards him as noiselessly as a ghost.
"What's in the wind now?" asks the little Scot; "and what for have ye not
got your shoes on?"
"Clive's asleep," says the Colonel, with a countenance full of extreme
anxiety.
"The darling boy slumbers, does he?" said the wag; "mayn't I just step in
and look at his beautiful countenance whilst he's asleep, Colonel?"
"You may if you take off those confounded creaking shoes," the other
answered, quite gravely; and Binnie turned away to hide his jolly round
face, which was screwed up with laughter.
"Have ye been breathing a prayer over your rosy infant's slumbers, Tom?"
asks Mr. Binnie.
"And if I have, James Binnie," the Colonel said gravely, and his sallow
face blushing somewhat, "if I have, I hope I've done no harm. The last
time I saw him asleep was nine years ago, a sickl
y little pale-faced boy
in his little cot, and now, sir, that I see him again, strong and
handsome, and all that a fond father can wish to see a boy, I should be
an ungrateful villain, James, if I didn't--if I didn't do what you said
just now, and thank God Almighty for restoring him to me."
Binnie did not laugh any more. "By George, Tom Newcome," said he, "you're
just one of the saints of the earth. If all men were like you there'd be
an end of both our trades; there would be no fighting and no soldiering,
no rogues and no magistrates to catch them." The Colonel wondered at his
friend's enthusiasm, who was not used to be complimentary; indeed what so
usual with him as that simple act of gratitude and devotion about which
his comrade spoke to him? To ask a blessing for his boy was as natural to
him as to wake with the sunrise, or to go to rest when the day was over.
His first and his last thought was always the child.
The two gentlemen were home in time enough to find Clive dressed, and his
uncle arrived for breakfast. The Colonel said a grace over that meal: the
life was begun which he had longed and prayed for, and the son smiling
before his eyes who had been in his thoughts for so many fond years.
CHAPTER IX
Miss Honeyman's
In Steyne Gardens, Brighton, the lodging-houses are among the most
frequented in that city of lodging-houses. These mansions have
bow-windows in front, bulging out with gentle prominences, and ornamented
with neat verandahs, from which you can behold the tide of humankind as
it flows up and down the Steyne, and that blue ocean over which Britannia
is said to rule, stretching brightly away eastward and westward. The
chain-pier, as every body knows, runs intrepidly into the sea, which
sometimes, in fine weather, bathes its feet with laughing wavelets, and
anon, on stormy days, dashes over its sides with roaring foam. Here, for
the sum of twopence, you can go out to sea and pace this vast deck
without need of a steward with a basin. You can watch the sun setting in
splendour over Worthing, or illuminating with its rising glories the ups
and downs of Rottingdean. You see the citizen with his family inveigled
into the shallops of the mercenary native mariner, and fancy that the
motion cannot be pleasant; and how the hirer of the boat, otium et oppidi
laudat rura sui, haply sighs for ease, and prefers Richmond or Hampstead.
You behold a hundred bathing-machines put to sea; and your naughty fancy
depicts the beauties splashing under their white awnings. Along the
rippled sands (stay, are they rippled sands or shingly beach?) the
prawn-boy seeks the delicious material of your breakfast. Breakfast-meal
in London almost unknown, greedily devoured in Brighton! In yon vessels
now nearing the shore the sleepless mariner has ventured forth to seize
the delicate whiting, the greedy and foolish mackerel, and the homely
sole. Hark to the twanging horn! it is the early coach going out to
London. Your eye follows it, and rests on the pinnacles built by the
beloved GEORGE. See the worn-out London roue pacing the pier, inhaling
the sea air, and casting furtive glances under the bonnets of the pretty
girls who trot here before lessons! Mark the bilious lawyer, escaped for
a day from Pump Court, and sniffing the fresh breezes before he goes back
to breakfast and a bag full of briefs at the Albion! See that pretty
string of prattling schoolgirls, from the chubby-cheeked, flaxen-headed
little maiden just toddling by the side of the second teacher, to the
arch damsel of fifteen, giggling and conscious of her beauty, whom Miss
Griffin, the stern head-governess, awfully reproves! See Tomkins with a
telescope and marine jacket; young Nathan and young Abrams, already
bedizened in jewellery, and rivalling the sun in oriental splendour;