The Newcomes

revealed to me (as who would not who has read the Arabian Nights in his

  youth?), yet I would not choose the moment when the Brahmin of the house

  was dead, his women howling, his priests doctoring his child of a widow,

  now frightening her with sermons, now drugging her with bang, so as to

  push her on his funeral pile at last, and into the arms of that carcase,

  stupefied, but obedient and decorous. And though I like to walk, even in

  fancy, in an earl's house, splendid, well ordered, where there are feasts

  and fine pictures and fair ladies and endless books and good company; yet

  there are times when the visit is not pleasant; and when the parents in

  that fine house are getting ready their daughter for sale, and

  frightening away her tears with threats, and stupefying her grief with

  narcotics, praying her and imploring her, and dramming her and coaxing

  her, and blessing her, and cursing her perhaps, till they have brought

  her into such a state as shall fit the poor young thing for that deadly

  couch upon which they are about to thrust her. When my lord and lady are

  so engaged I prefer not to call at their mansion, Number 1000 in

  Grosvenor Square, but to partake of a dinner of herbs rather than of that

  stalled ox which their cook is roasting whole. There are some people who

  are not so squeamish. The family comes, of course; the Most Reverend the

  Lord Arch-Brahmin of Benares will attend the ceremony; there will be

  flowers and lights and white favours; and quite a string of carriages up

  to the pagoda; and such a breakfast afterwards; and music in the street

  and little parish boys hurrahing; and no end of speeches within and tears

  shed (no doubt), and His Grace the Arch-Brahmin will make a highly

  appropriate speech, just with a faint scent of incense about it as such a

  speech ought to have; and the young person will slip away unperceived,

  and take off her veils, wreaths, orange-flowers, bangles and finery, and

  will put on a plain dress more suited for the occasion, and the

  house-door will open--and there comes the SUTTEE in company of the body:

  yonder the pile is waiting on four wheels with four horses, the crowd

  hurrahs and the deed is done.

  This ceremony amongst us is so stale and common that to be sure there is

  no need to describe its rites, and as women sell themselves for what you

  call an establishment every day; to the applause of themselves, their

  parents, and the world, why on earth should a man ape at originality and

  pretend to pity them? Never mind about the lies at the altar, the

  blasphemy against the godlike name of love, the sordid surrender, the

  smiling dishonour. What the deuce does a mariage de convenance mean but

  all this, and are not such sober Hymeneal torches more satisfactory often

  than the most brilliant love matches that ever flamed and burnt out? Of

  course. Let us not weep when everybody else is laughing: let us pity the

  agonised duchess when her daughter, Lady Atalanta, runs away with the

  doctor--of course, that's respectable; let us pity Lady Iphigenia's

  father when that venerable chief is obliged to offer up his darling

  child; but it is over her part of the business that a decorous painter

  would throw the veil now. Her ladyship's sacrifice is performed, and the

  less said about it the better.

  Such was the case regarding an affair which appeared in due subsequence

  in the newspapers not long afterwards under the fascinating title of

  "Marriage in High Life," and which was in truth the occasion of the

  little family Congress of Baden which we are now chronicling. We all

  know--everybody at least who has the slightest acquaintance with the army

  list--that, at the commencement of their life, my Lord Kew, my Lord

  Viscount Rooster, the Earl of Dorking's eldest son, and the Honourable

  Charles Belsize, familiarly called Jack Belsize, were subaltern officers

  in one of His Majesty's regiments of cuirassier guards. They heard the

  chimes at midnight like other young men, they enjoyed their fun and

  frolics as gentlemen of spirit will do; sowing their wild oats

  plentifully, and scattering them with boyish profusion. Lady Kew's luck

  had blessed him with more sacks of oats than fell to the lot of his noble

  young companions. Lord Dorking's house is known to have been long

  impoverished; an excellent informant, Major Pendennis, has entertained me

  with many edifying accounts of the exploits of Lord Rooster's grandfather

  "with the wild Prince and Poins," of his feats in the hunting-field, over

  the bottle, over the dice-box. He played two nights and two days at a

  sitting with Charles Fox, when they both lost sums awful to reckon. He

  played often with Lord Steyne, and came away, as all men did, dreadful

  sufferers from those midnight encounters. His descendants incurred the

  penalties of the progenitor's imprudence, and Chanticlere, though one of

  the finest castles in England, is splendid but for a month in the year.

  The estate is mortgaged up to the very castle windows. "Dorking cannot

  cut a stick or kill a buck in his own park," the good old Major used to

  tell with tragic accents, "he lives by his cabbages, grapes, and

  pineapples, and the fees which people give for seeing the place and

  gardens, which are still the show of the county, and among the most

  splendid in the island. When Dorking is at Chanticlere, Ballard, who

  married his sister, lends him the plate and sends three men with it. Four

  cooks inside, and four maids and six footmen on the roof, with a butler

  driving, come down from London in a trap, and wait the month. And as the

  last carriage of the company drives away, the servants' coach is packed,

  and they all bowl back to town again. It's pitiable, sir, pitiable."

  In Lord Kew's youth, the names of himself and his two noble friends

  appeared on innumerable slips of stamped paper, conveying pecuniary

  assurances of a promissory nature; all of which promises, my Lord

  Kew singly and most honourably discharged. Neither of his two

  companions-in-arms had the means of meeting these engagements. Ballard,

  Rooster's uncle, was said to make his lordship some allowance. As for

  Jack Belsize: how he lived; how he laughed; how he dressed himself so

  well, and looked so fat and handsome; how he got a shilling to pay for a

  cab or a cigar; what ravens fed him; was a wonder to all. The young men

  claimed kinsmanship with one another, which those who are learned in the

  peerage may unravel.

  When Lord Dorking's eldest daughter married the Honourable and Venerable

  Dennis Gallowglass, Archdeacon of Bullintubber (and at present Viscount

  Gallowglass and Killbrogue, and Lord Bishop of Ballyshannon), great

  festivities took place at Chanticlere, whither the relatives of the high

  contracting parties were invited. Among them came poor Jack Belsize, and

  hence the tears which are dropping at Baden at this present period of our

  history. Clara Pulleyn was then a pretty little maiden of sixteen, and

  Jack a handsome guardsman of six or seven and twenty. As she had been

  especially warned against Jack as a wicked young rogue, whose antecedents

  were wofully against him; as she was never allow
ed to sit near him at

  dinner, or to walk with him, or to play at billiards with him, or to

  waltz with him; as she was scolded if he spoke a word to her, or if he

  picked up her glove, or touched her hand in a round game, or caught him

  when they were playing at blindman's-buff; as they neither of them had a

  penny in the world, and were both very good-looking, of course Clara was

  always catching Jack at blindman's-buff; constantly lighting upon him in

  the shrubberies or corridors, etc. etc. etc. She fell in love (she was

  not the first) with Jack's broad chest and thin waist; she thought his

  whiskers as indeed they were, the handsomest pair in all His Majesty's

  Brigade of Cuirassiers.

  We know not what tears were shed in the vast and silent halls of

  Chanticlere, when the company were gone, and the four cooks, and four

  maids, six footmen, and temporary butler had driven back in their private

  trap to the metropolis, which is not forty miles distant from that

  splendid castle. How can we tell? The guests departed, the lodge-gates

  shut; all is mystery:--darkness with one pair of wax candles blinking

  dismally in a solitary chamber; all the rest dreary vistas of brown

  hollands, rolled Turkey carpets, gaunt ancestors on the walls scowling

  out of the twilight blank. The imagination is at liberty to depict his

  lordship, with one candle, over his dreadful endless tapes and papers;

  her ladyship with the other, and an old, old novel, wherein perhaps, Mrs.

  Radcliffe describes a castle as dreary as her own; and poor little Clara

  sighing and crying in the midst of these funereal splendours, as lonely

  and heart-sick as Oriana in her moated grange:--poor little Clara!

  Lord Kew's drag took the young men to London; his lordship driving, and

  the servants sitting inside. Jack sat behind with the two grooms, and

  tooted on a cornet-a-piston in the most melancholy manner. He partook of

  no refreshment on the road. His silence at his clubs was remarked:

  smoking, billiards, military duties, and this and that, roused him a

  little, and presently Jack was alive again. But then came the season,

  Lady Clara Pulleyn's first season in London, and Jack was more alive than

  ever. There was no ball he did not go to; no opera (that is to say, no

  opera of certain operas) which he did not frequent. It was easy to see by

  his face, two minutes after entering a room, whether the person he sought

  was there or absent; not difficult for those who were in the secret to

  watch in another pair of eyes the bright kindling signals which answered

  Jack's fiery glances. Ah! how beautiful he looked on his charger on the

  birthday, all in a blaze of scarlet, and bullion, and steel. O Jack! tear

  her out of yon carriage, from the side of yonder livid, feathered,

  painted, bony dowager! place her behind you on the black charger; cut

  down the policeman, and away with you! The carriage rolls in through St.

  James's Park; Jack sits alone with his sword dropped to the ground, or

  only atra cura on the crupper behind him; and Snip, the tailor, in the

  crowd, thinks it is for fear of him Jack's head droops. Lady Clara

  Pulleyn is presented by her mother, the Countess of Dorking; and Jack is

  arrested that night as he is going out of White's to meet her at the

  Opera.

  Jack's little exploits are known in the Insolvent Court, where he made

  his appearances as Charles Belsize, commonly called the Honourable

  Charles Belsize, whose dealings were smartly chronicled by the indignant

  moralists of the press of those days. The Scourge flogged him heartily.

  The Whip (of which the accomplished editor was himself in Whitecross

  Street prison) was especially virtuous regarding him; and the Penny Voice

  of Freedom gave him an awful dressing. I am not here to scourge sinners;

  I am true to my party; it is the other side this humble pen attacks; let

  us keep to the virtuous and respectable, for as for poor sinners they get

  the whipping-post every day. One person was faithful to poor Jack through

  all his blunders and follies and extravagance and misfortunes, and that

  was the pretty young girl of Chanticlere, round whose young affections

  his luxuriant whiskers had curled. And the world may cry out at Lord Kew

  for sending his brougham to the Queen's Bench prison, and giving a great

  feast at Grignon's to Jack on the day of his liberation, but I for one

  will not quarrel with his lordship. He and many other sinners had a jolly

  night. They said Kew made a fine speech, in hearing and acknowledging

  which Jack Belsize wept copiously. Barnes Newcome was in a rage at Jack's

  manumission, and sincerely hoped Mr. Commissioner would give him a couple

  of years longer; and cursed and swore with a great liberality on hearing

  of his liberty.

  That this poor prodigal should marry Clara Pulleyn, and by way of a dowry

  lay his schedule at her feet, was out of the question. His noble father,

  Lord Highgate, was furious against him; his eldest brother would not see

  him; he had given up all hopes of winning his darling prize long ago, and

  one day there came to him a great packet bearing the seal of Chanticlere,

  containing a wretched little letter signed C. P., and a dozen sheets of

  Jack's own clumsy writing, delivered who knows how, in what crush-rooms,

  quadrilles, bouquets, balls, and in which were scrawled Jack's love and

  passion and ardour. How many a time had he looked into the dictionary at

  White's, to see whether eternal was spelt with an e, and adore with one a

  or two! There they were, the incoherent utterances of his brave longing

  heart; and those two wretched, wretched lines signed C., begging that

  C.'s little letters might too be returned or destroyed. To do him

  justice, he burnt them loyally every one along with his own waste paper.

  He kept not one single little token which she had given him or let him

  take. The rose, the glove, the little handkerchief which she had dropped

  to him, how he cried over them! The ringlet of golden hair--he burnt them

  all, all in his own fire in the prison, save a little, little bit of the

  hair, which might be any one's, which was the colour of his sister's. Kew

  saw the deed done; perhaps he hurried away when Jack came to the very

  last part of the sacrifice, and flung the hair into the fire, where he

  would have liked to fling his heart and his life too.

  So Clara was free, and the year when Jack came out of prison and went

  abroad, she passed the season in London dancing about night after night,

  and everybody said she was well out of that silly affair with Jack

  Belsize. It was then that Barnes Newcome, Esq., a partner of the wealthy

  banking firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome, son and heir of Sir Brian

  Newcome, of Newcome, Bart., and M. P., descended in right line from Bryan

  de Newcomyn, slain at Hastings, and barber-surgeon to Edward the

  Confessor, etc. etc., cast the eyes of regard on the Lady Clara Pulleyn,

  who was a little pale and languid certainly, but had blue eyes, a

  delicate skin, and a pretty person, and knowing her previous history as

  well as you who have just perused it, deigned to entertain matrimonial

  intenti
ons towards her ladyship.

  Not one of the members of these most respectable families, excepting poor

  little Clara perhaps, poor little fish (as if she had any call but to do

  her duty, or to ask a quelle sauce elle serait mangee), protested against

  this little affair of traffic; Lady Dorking had a brood of little

  chickens to succeed Clara. There was little Hennie, who was sixteen, and

  Biddy, who was fourteen, and Adelaide, and who knows how many more? How

  could she refuse a young man, not very agreeable it is true, nor

  particularly amiable, nor of good birth, at least on his father's side,

  but otherwise eligible, and heir to so many thousands a year? The

  Newcomes, on their side, think it a desirable match. Barnes, it must be

  confessed, is growing rather selfish, and has some bachelor ways which a

  wife will reform. Lady Kew is strongly for the match. With her own family

  interest, Lord Steyne and Lord Kew, her nephews, and Barnes's own

  father-in-law, Lord Dorking, in the Peers, why shall not the Newcomes sit

  there too, and resume the old seat which all the world knows they had in

  the time of Richard III.? Barnes and his father had got up quite a belief

  about a Newcome killed at Bosworth, along with King Richard, and hated

  Henry VII. as an enemy of their noble race. So all the parties were

  pretty well agreed. Lady Anne wrote rather a pretty little poem about

  welcoming the white Fawn to the Newcome bowers, and "Clara" was made to

  rhyme with "fairer," and "timid does and antlered deer to dot the glades

  of Chanticlere," quite in a picturesque way. Lady Kew pronounced that the

  poem was very pretty indeed.

  The year after Jack Belsize made his foreign tour he returned to London

  for the season. Lady Clara did not happen to be there; her health was a

  little delicate, and her kind parents took her abroad; so all things went

  on very smoothly and comfortably indeed.

  Yes, but when things were so quiet and comfortable, when the ladies of

  the two families had met at the Congress of Baden, and liked each other

  so much, when Barnes and his papa the Baronet, recovered from his

  illness, were actually on their journey from Aix-la-Chapelle, and Lady

  Kew in motion from Kissingen to the Congress of Baden, why on earth

  should Jack Belsize, haggard, wild, having been winning great sums, it

  was said, at Hombourg, forsake his luck there, and run over frantically

  to Baden? He wore a great thick beard, a great slouched hat--he looked

  like nothing more or less than a painter or an Italian brigand.

  Unsuspecting Clive, remembering the jolly dinner which Jack had procured

  for him at the Guards' mess in St. James's, whither Jack himself came

  from the Horse Guards--simple Clive, seeing Jack enter the town, hailed

  him cordially, and invited him to dinner, and Jack accepted, and Clive

  told him all the news he had of the place; how Kew was there, and Lady

  Anne Newcome, and Ethel; and Barnes was coming. "I am not very fond of

  him either," says Clive, smiling, when Belsize mentioned his name. So

  Barnes was coming to marry that pretty little Lady Clara Pulleyn. The

  knowing youth! I dare say he was rather pleased with his knowledge of the

  fashionable world, and the idea that Jack Belsize would think he, too,

  was somebody.

  Jack drank an immense quantity of champagne, and the dinner over, as they

  could hear the band playing from Clive's open windows in the snug clean

  little Hotel de France, Jack proposed they should go on the promenade. M.

  de Florac was of the party; he had been exceedingly jocular when Lord

  Kew's name was mentioned, and said, "Ce petit Kiou! M. le Duc d'Ivry, mon

  oncle, l'honore d'une amitie toute particuliere." These three gentlemen

  walked out; the promenade was crowded, the was band playing "Home, sweet

  Home" very sweetly, and the very first persons they met on the walk were

  the Lords of Kew and Dorking, on the arm of which latter venerable peer