Christmas Books

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  In the course of the afternoon, all parties, as it may be supposed, emerged upon deck again, and Miss Fanny and her mamma began walking the quarter-deck with a quick pace, like a couple of post-captains. When Miss Fanny saw me, she stopped and smiled, and recognized the gentleman who had amused her so at Mrs. Perkins's. What a dear sweet creature Eliza Perkins was! They had been at school together. She was going to write to Eliza everything that happened on the voyage.

  "EVERYTHING?" I said, in my particularly sarcastic manner.

  "Well, everything that was worth telling. There was a great number of things that were very stupid, and of people that were very stupid. Everything that YOU say, Mr. Titmarsh, I am sure I may put down. You have seen Mr. Titmarsh's funny books, mamma?"

  Mamma said she had heard—she had no doubt they were very amusing. "Was not that—ahem—Lady Knightsbridge, to whom I saw you speaking, sir?"

  "Yes; she is going to nurse Lord Knightsbridge, who has the gout at Rougetnoirbourg."

  "Indeed! how very fortunate! what an extraordinary coincidence! We are going too," said Lady Kicklebury.

  I remarked "that everybody was going to Rougetnoirbourg this year; and I heard of two gentlemen—Count Carambole and Colonel Cannon—who had been obliged to sleep there on a billiard-table for want of a bed."

  "My son Kicklebury—are you acquainted with Sir Thomas Kicklebury?" her ladyship said, with great stateliness—"is at Noirbourg, and will take lodgings for us. The springs are particularly recommended for my daughter, Mrs. Milliken and, at great personal sacrifice, I am going thither myself: but what will not a mother do, Mr. Titmarsh? Did I understand you to say that you have the—the entree at Knightsbridge House? The parties are not what they used to be, I am told. Not that I have any knowledge. I am but a poor country baronet's widow, Mr. Titmarsh; though the Kickleburys date from Henry III., and MY family is not of the most modern in the country. You have heard of General Guff, my father, perhaps? aide-de-camp to the Duke of York, and wounded by his Royal Highness's side at the bombardment of Valenciennes. WE move IN OUR OWN SPHERE."

  "Mrs. Perkins is a very kind creature," I said, "and it was a very pleasant ball. Did you not think so, Miss Kicklebury?"

  "I thought it odious," said Miss Fanny. "I mean, it WAS pleasant until that—that stupid man—what was his name?—came and took me away to dance with him."

  "What! don't you care for a red coat and moustaches?" I asked.

  "I adore genius, Mr. Titmarsh," said the young lady, with a most killing look of her beautiful blue eyes, "and I have every one of your works by heart—all, except the last, which I can't endure. I think it's wicked, positively wicked—My darling Scott—how can you? And are you going to make a Christmas-book this year?"

  "Shall I tell you about it?"

  "Oh, do tell us about it," said the lively, charming creature, clapping her hands: and we began to talk, being near Lavinia (Mrs. Milliken) and her husband, who was ceaselessly occupied in fetching and carrying books, biscuits, pillows and cloaks, scent-bottles, the Italian greyhound, and the thousand and one necessities of the pale and interesting bride. Oh, how she did fidget! how she did grumble! how she altered and twisted her position! and how she did make poor Milliken trot!

  After Miss Fanny and I had talked, and I had told her my plan, which she pronounced to be delightful, she continued:—"I never was so provoked in my life, Mr. Titmarsh, as when that odious man came and interrupted that dear delightful conversation."

  "On your word? The odious man is on board the boat: I see him smoking just by the funnel yonder, look! and looking at us."

  "He is very stupid," said Fanny; "and all that I adore is intellect, dear Mr. Titmarsh."

  "But why is he on board?" said I, with a fin sourire.

  "Why is he on board? Why is everybody on board? How do we meet? (and oh, how glad I am to meet you again!) You don't suppose that I know how the horrid man came here?"

  "Eh! he may be fascinated by a pair of blue eyes, Miss Fanny! Others have been so," I said.

  "Don't be cruel to a poor girl, you wicked, satirical creature," she said. "I think Captain Hicks odious—there! and I was quite angry when I saw him on the boat. Mamma does not know him, and she was so angry with me for dancing with him that night: though there was nobody of any particular mark at poor dear Mrs. Perkins's—that is, except YOU, Mr. Titmarsh."

  "And I am not a dancing man," I said, with a sigh.

  "I hate dancing men; they can do nothing but dance."

  "O yes, they can. Some of them can smoke, and some can ride, and some of them can even spell very well."

  "You wicked, satirical person. I'm quite afraid of you!"

  "And some of them call the Rhine the 'Whine,'" I said, giving an admirable imitation of poor Hicks's drawling manner.

  Fanny looked hard at me, with a peculiar expression on her face. At last she laughed. "Oh, you wicked, wicked man," she said, "what a capital mimic you are, and so full of cleverness! Do bring up Captain Hicks—isn't that his name?—and trot him out for us. Bring him up, and introduce him to mamma: do now, go!"

  Mamma, in the meanwhile, had waited her time, and was just going to step down the cabin stairs as Lady Knightsbridge ascended from them. To draw back, to make a most profound curtsy, to exclaim, "Lady Knightsbridge! I have had the honor of seeing your ladyship at—hum—hum—hum" (this word I could not catch)—"House,"—all these feats were performed by Lady Kicklebury in one instant, and acknowledged with the usual calmness by the younger lady.

  "And may I hope," continues Lady Kicklebury, "that that most beautiful of all children—a mother may say so—that Lord Pimlico has recovered his hooping-cough? We were so anxious about him. Our medical attendant is Mr. Topham, and he used to come from Knightsbridge House to Pocklington Square, often and often. I am interested about the hooping-cough. My own dear boy had it most severely; that dear girl, my eldest daughter, whom you see stretched on the bench—she is in a very delicate state, and only lately married—not such a match as I could have wished: but Mr. Milliken is of a good family, distantly related to your ladyship's. A Milliken, in George the Third's reign, married a Boltimore, and the Boltimores, I think, are your first-cousins. They married this year, and Lavinia is so fond of me, that she can't part with me, and I have come abroad just to please her. We are going to Noirbourg. I think I heard from my son that Lord Knightsbridge was at Noirbourg."

  "I believe I have had the pleasure of seeing Sir Thomas Kicklebury at Knightsbridge House," Lady Knightsbridge said, with something of sadness.

  "Indeed!" and Kicklebury had never told her! He laughed at her when she talked about great people: he told her all sorts of ridiculous stories when upon this theme. But, at any rate, the acquaintance was made: Lady Kicklebury would not leave Lady Knightsbridge; and, even in the throes of sea-sickness, and the secret recesses of the cabin, WOULD talk to her about the world, Lord Pimlico, and her father, General Guff, late aide-de-camp to the Duke of York.

  That those throes of sickness ensued, I need not say. A short time after passing Ramsgate, Serjeant Lankin, who had been exceedingly gay and satirical—(in his calm way; he quotes Horace, my favorite bits as an author, to myself, and has a quiet snigger, and, so to speak, amontillado flavor, exceedingly pleasant)—Lankin, with a rueful and livid countenance, descended into his berth, in the which that six foot of serjeant packed himself I don't know how.

  When Lady Knightsbridge went down, down went Kicklebury. Milliken and his wife stayed, and were ill together on deck. A palm of glory ought to be awarded to that man for his angelic patience, energy, and suffering. It was he who went for Mrs. Milliken's maid, who wouldn't come to her mistress; it was he, the shyest of men, who stormed the ladies' cabin—that maritime harem—in order to get her mother's bottle of salts; it was he who went for the brandy-and-water, and begged, and prayed, and besought his adored Lavinia to taste a leetle drop. Lavinia's reply was, "Don't—go away—don't tease, Horace," and so forth. And, when not wanted, the gentle cre
ature subsided on the bench, by his wife's feet, and was sick in silence.

  [Mem—In married life, it seems to me, that it is almost always Milliken and wife, or just the contrary. The angels minister to the tyrants; or the gentle, hen-pecked husband cowers before the superior partlet. If ever I marry, I know the sort of woman I will choose; and I won't try her temper by over-indulgence, and destroy her fine qualities by a ruinous subserviency to her wishes.]

  Little Miss Fanny stayed on deck, as well as her sister, and looked at the stars of heaven, as they began to shine there, and at the Foreland lights as we passed them. I would have talked with her; I would have suggested images of poesy, and thoughts of beauty; I would have whispered the word of sentiment—the delicate allusion—the breathing of the soul that longs to find a congenial heart—the sorrows and aspirations of the wounded spirit, stricken and sad, yet not QUITE despairing; still knowing that the hope-plant lurked in its crushed ruins—still able to gaze on the stars and the ocean, and love their blazing sheen, their boundless azure. I would, I say, have taken the opportunity of that stilly night to lay bare to her the treasures of a heart that, I am happy to say, is young still; but circumstances forbade the frank outpouring of my poet soul: in a word, I was obliged to go and lie down on the flat of my back, and endeavor to control OTHER emotions which struggled in my breast.

  Once, in the night-watches, I arose, and came on deck; the vessel was not, methought, pitching much; and yet—and yet Neptune was inexorable. The placid stars looked down, but they gave me no peace. Lavinia Milliken seemed asleep, and her Horace, in a death-like torpor, was huddled at her feet. Miss Fanny had quitted the larboard side of the ship, and had gone to starboard; and I thought that there was a gentleman beside her; but I could not see very clearly, and returned to the horrid crib, where Lankin was asleep, and the German fiddler underneath him was snoring like his own violoncello.

  In the morning we were all as brisk as bees. We were in the smooth waters of the lazy Scheldt. The stewards began preparing breakfast with that matutinal eagerness which they always show. The sleepers in the cabin were roused from their horse-hair couches by the stewards' boys nudging, and pushing, and flapping table-cloths over them. I shaved and made a neat toilette, and came upon deck just as we lay off that little Dutch fort, which is, I dare say, described in "Murray's Guide-book," and about which I had some rare banter with poor Hicks and Lady Kicklebury, whose sense of humor is certainly not very keen. He had, somehow, joined her ladyship's party, and they were looking at the fort, and its tri-colored flag—that floats familiar in Vandevelde's pictures—and at the lazy shipping, and the tall roofs, and dumpy church towers, and flat pastures, lying before us in a Cuyplike haze.

  I am sorry to say, I told them the most awful fibs about that fort. How it had been defended by the Dutch patriot, Van Swammerdam, against the united forces of the Duke of Alva and Marshal Turenne, whose leg was shot off as he was leading the last unsuccessful assault, and who turned round to his aide-de-camp and said, "Allez dire an Premier Consul, que je meurs avec regret de ne pas avoir assez fait pour la France!" which gave Lady Kicklebury an opportunity to placer her story of the Duke of York, and the bombardment of Valenciennes; and caused young Hicks to look at me in a puzzled and appealing manner and hint that I was "chaffing."

  "Chaffing indeed!" says I, with a particularly arch eye-twinkle at Miss Fanny. "I wouldn't make fun of you, Captain Hicks! If you doubt my historical accuracy, look at the 'Biographie Universelle.' I say—look at the 'Biographie Universelle.'"

  He said, "O—ah—the 'Biogwaphie Universelle' may be all vewy well, and that; but I never can make out whether you are joking or not, somehow; and I always fancy you are going to CAWICKACHAW me. Ha, ha!" And he laughed, the good-natured dragoon laughed, and fancied he had made a joke.

  I entreated him not to be so severe upon me; and again he said, "Haw haw!" and told me, "I mustn't expect to have it all MY OWN WAY, and if I gave a hit, I must expect a Punch in return. Haw haw!" Oh, you honest young Hicks!

  Everybody, indeed, was in high spirits. The fog cleared off, the sun shone, the ladies chatted and laughed, even Mrs. Milliken was in good humor ("My wife is all intellect," Milliken says, looking at her with admiration), and talked with us freely and gayly. She was kind enough to say that it was a great pleasure to meet with a literary and well-informed person—that one often lived with people that did not comprehend one. She asked if my companion, that tall gentleman—Mr. Serjeant Lankin, was he?—was literary. And when I said that Lankin knew more Greek, and more Latin, and more law, and more history, and more everything, than all the passengers put together, she vouchsafed to look at him with interest, and enter into a conversation with my modest friend the Serjeant. Then it was that her adoring husband said "his Lavinia was all intellect;"—Lady Kicklebury saying that SHE was not a literary woman: that in HER day few acquirements were requisite for the British female; but that she knew THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE, and her DUTY AS A MOTHER, and that "Lavinia and Fanny had had the best masters and the best education which money and constant maternal solicitude could impart." If our matrons are virtuous, as they are, and it is Britain's boast, permit me to say that they certainly know it.

  The conversation growing powerfully intellectual under Mrs. Milliken, poor Hicks naturally became uneasy, and put an end to literature by admiring the ladies' head-dresses. "Cab-heads, hoods, what do you call 'em?" he asked of Miss Kicklebury. Indeed, she and her sister wore a couple of those blue silk over-bonnets, which have lately become the fashion, and which I never should have mentioned but for the young lady's reply.

  "Those hoods!" she said—"WE CALL THOSE HOODS UGLIES! Captain Hicks."

  Oh, how pretty she looked as she said it! The blue eyes looked up under the blue hood, so archly and gayly; ever so many dimples began playing about her face; her little voice rang so fresh and sweet, that a heart which has never loved a tree or flower but the vegetable in question was sure to perish—a heart worn down and sickened by repeated disappointment, mockery, faithlessness—a heart whereof despair is an accustomed tenant, and in whose desolate and lonely depths dwells an abiding gloom, began to throb once more—began to beckon Hope from the window—began to admit sunshine—began to—O Folly, Folly! O Fanny! O Miss K., how lovely you looked as you said, "We call those hoods Uglies!" Ugly indeed!

  This is a chronicle of feelings and characters, not of events and places, so much. All this time our vessel was making rapid way up the river, and we saw before us the slim towers of the noble cathedral of Antwerp soaring in the rosy sunshine. Lankin and I had agreed to go to the "Grand Laboureur," or the Place de Meir. They give you a particular kind of jam-tarts there—called Nun's tarts, I think—that I remember, these twenty years, as the very best tarts—as good as the tarts which we ate when we were boys. The "Laboureur" is a dear old quiet comfortable hotel; and there is no man in England who likes a good dinner better than Lankin.

  "What hotel do you go to?" I asked of Lady Kicklebury.

  "We go to the 'Saint Antoine' of course. Everybody goes to the 'Saint Antoine,'" her ladyship said. "We propose to rest here; to do the Rubens's; and to proceed to Cologne to-morrow. Horace, call Finch and Bowman; and your courier, if he will have the condescension to wait upon ME, will perhaps look to the baggage."

  "I think, Lankin," said I, "as everybody seems going to the 'Saint Antoine,' we may as well go, and not spoil the party."

  "I think I'll go too," says Hicks; as if HE belonged to the party.

  And oh, it was a great sight when we landed, and at every place at which we paused afterwards, to see Hirsch over the Kicklebury baggage, and hear his polyglot maledictions at the porters! If a man sometimes feels sad and lonely at his bachelor condition, if SOME feelings of envy pervade his heart, at seeing beauty on another's arm, and kind eyes directed towards a happier mug than his own—at least there are some consolations in travelling, when a fellow has but one little portmanteau or bag which he can easily shoulder, and thinks of the i
nnumerable bags and trunks which the married man and the father drags after him. The married Briton on a tour is but a luggage overseer: his luggage is his morning thought, and his nightly terror. When he floats along the Rhine he has one eye on a ruin, and the other on his luggage. When he is in the railroad he is always thinking, or ordered by his wife to think, "is the luggage safe?" It clings round him. It never leaves him (except when it DOES leave him, as a trunk or two will, and make him doubly miserable). His carpet-bags lie on his chest at night, and his wife's forgotten bandbox haunts his turbid dreams.

  I think it was after she found that Lady Kicklebury proposed to go to the "Grand Saint Antoine" that Lady Knightsbridge put herself with her maid into a carriage and went to the other inn. We saw her at the cathedral, where she kept aloof from our party. Milliken went up the tower, and so did Miss Fanny. I am too old a traveller to mount up those immeasurable stairs, for the purpose of making myself dizzy by gazing upon a vast map of low countries stretched beneath me, and waited with Mrs. Milliken and her mother below.

  When the tower-climbers descended, we asked Miss Fanny and her brother what they had seen.

  "We saw Captain Hicks up there," remarked Milliken. "And I am very glad you didn't come, Lavinia my love. The excitement would have been too much for you, quite too much."

  All this while Lady Kicklebury was looking at Fanny, and Fanny was holding her eyes down; and I knew that between her and this poor Hicks there could be nothing serious, for she had laughed at him and mimicked him to me half a dozen times in the course of the day.

  We "do the Rubens's," as Lady Kicklebury says; we trudge from cathedral to picture-gallery, from church to church. We see the calm old city, with its towers and gables, the bourse, and the vast town-hall; and I have the honor to give Lady Kicklebury my arm during these peregrinations, and to hear a hundred particulars regarding her ladyship's life and family. How Milliken has been recently building at Pigeoncot; how he will have two thousand a year more when his uncle dies; how she had peremptorily to put a stop to the assiduities of that unprincipled young man, Lord Roughhead, whom Lavinia always detested, and who married Miss Brent out of sheer pique. It was a great escape for her darling Lavinia. Roughhead is a most wild and dissipated young man, one of Kicklebury's Christchurch friends, of whom her son has too many, alas! and she enters into many particulars respecting the conduct of Kicklebury—the unhappy boy's smoking, his love of billiards, his fondness for the turf: she fears he has already injured his income, she fears he is even now playing at Noirbourg; she is going thither to wean him, if possible, from his companions and his gayeties—what may not a mother effect? She only wrote to him the day before they left London to announce that she was marching on him with her family. He is in many respects like his poor father—the same openness and frankness, the same easy disposition: alas! the same love of pleasure. But she had reformed the father, and will do her utmost to call back her dear misguided boy. She had an advantageous match for him in view—a lady not beautiful in person, it is true, but possessed of every good principle, and a very, very handsome fortune. It was under pretence of flying from this lady that Kicklebury left town. But she knew better.