by R S Surtees
From this clause soldiers should be excepted; in the extreme of country retirement they perhaps constitute the staple of flirtation, in contradistinction to the cousin-marrying, quid-pro-quo-ing ordinary businesslike routine of family arrangements. Indeed we often feel for soldiers — infantrymen particularly; and numbering among our pupils, as no doubt we shall, many nice young men in the army, we will devote a few words to the hardships and peculiarity of their situation.
They are in the unfortunate position of Lord Byron’s critic; they
“Stand, soldiers — hated, yet caress’d,” hated by fathers as unlicensed and notorious poachers on their (daughters’) preserves — fêted by mothers on account of their conversation and lace-bedaubed coats. The consequence is that old Mr Curmudgeon is driven to scattering his cards down the mess-table, or picking out names in the Army List, to write on his pasteboards; and then comes the usual invitation to dinner, which we understand in country quarters involves (in honour at least) the inviteds’ appearance at Mrs Curmudgeon’s tea and turn-out, or little carpet dance whenever she chooses to give it.
Now, we put it to any sensible, practical, matter-of-factical man — for what purpose a jolly young sub can consider he is invited to old Mr Curmudgeon’s but to fall in love with one of the Miss Curmudgeons? Can the invitation, we ask, admit of any other construction? If we were Lord Chief Justice of England charging a jury — special jury, even — we would lay that down as straight as a railway. Well then, d — mn me! (Heaven forgive me for swearing) what right has old Mr Curmudgeon to express surprise when he comes to the first question in Papa’s catechism, “What have you got, &c.?” and is told “Nothing but my pay,” and the usual “Great expectations from an uncle.” What right, we repeat, has old Mr Curmudgeon to be angry, seeing that the grievance was entirely of his own seeking? Would not the young gentleman deserve to be broke if he had not done as he did — made fierce love to the lady? Assuredly he would. Add to Curmudgeon’s audacity Mrs Curmudgeon’s craftiness in “holding a young man on” under such circumstances, and we have a display of depravity and wickedness too great for calm consideration.
Our honest indignation boils over. We adjourn the subject.
III.
DOCTORS COMMONS IS the accredited bazaar for matrimonial information of all sorts. We really wonder that, in these hard-working, income-taxtaking times, no proctor or doctor or proctor’s clerk has been at the trouble of collating and arranging from the volumes in their possession all the details, contingencies and particulars relating to ladies’ fortunes, instead of making nice young men take their measly shilling’s-worth at high stands where they flounder among legal metaphors for what cannot be too simply stated. How easy it would be to draw up a schedule for each county, containing a good, working outline of all the fortunes in it, the whereabouts, the histories and particulars of each. Talk of John Murray’s Handbooks for foreign countries or the Sporting Magazine’s maps of hunting countries! What would they be compared to such valuable information as this? No man would grudge a guinea for so useful a vade mecum; and it would be an immense saving of trouble and expense to the Doctors Commons staff in looking for and handing about books that few of us are much the wiser for reading. It would also be a cent per cent saving to nice young men, who now must either go blushing to an attorney, or smirking to St Paul’s Churchyard, oppressed by the conviction that everybody they meet says by their look, “Ay, there you go to see what Miss Wiggins has got!” The Clerk too, as he hands down the book in return for the shilling’s-worth of letter, slams it on the desk with an air that looks very like saying, “You’ll not be much wiser for that!”
There is an old Hebrew, Greek or Latin saying, we don’t know which, but the pith of it is that people tell infernal lies about girls’ fortunes; so we fear it has been a practice from the beginning of the world and will continue so till the end of Time. Doctors Commons, we grieve to say, is not infallible. We know a nice young man who took many a shilling’s-worth there and at last — but we had better begin at the beginning: —
Simon Gullington, Esquire of Camelford, had paid the debt of Nature — the only debt, by the way, that some people ever do pay — and his four daughters cut Camelford and went to Tunbridge Wells. There, as they were enjoying exhilarating donkey-rides on the common, Miss Seraphina Gullington, who was mounted on an animal very unusual at a watering-place — a donkey with some kick in him, — got trundled over his head just at the point where Grosvenor Road joins Ephraim Terrace. Now, Captain Arthur O’Brian O’Blatherington, of the 191st Regiment, was passing at the moment and most providentially met and arrested the progress of the high-spirited donkey as he went boring along, regardless of Miss Seraphina’s screams and the mess he was making of her petticoats. Captain O’Blatherington, we say, stopped the donkey, and, having smoothed down Miss Seraphina’s feathers, found she was nothing the worse; he then gave the sinful animal a kick, offered his arm to the lady and with her proceeded to seek the lost sisters — weird sisters, we might call them, for they were almost plain enough to stop a saw-mill or a nigger’s funeral.
Miss Seraphina had at least a pair of goodish eyes and her figure was not far amiss; but the others — well, perhaps we need only say they had been at Tunbridge Wells four weeks and devil a man had attempted to look under their bonnets; thus Captain O’Blatherington was a regular godsend. They struck up a most voluble discourse — all at it together — as he escorted them home to their lodgings at Mount Pleasant, where they were admitted by a fair-sized footman, powdered, and dressed in black with epaulettes on his shoulders and well-tied white neck-cloth. He opened the door with an air and held himself like a man who knew what was what; he could not be estimated at less than thirty pounds a year.
Now the captain, though young, had all his wits about him; and having started life with the fixed determination to marry an heiress, he had kept his thoughts rigidly to that aim, never suffering himself to be led astray by blue eyes or black eyes or brown, or any other eyes; or running the risk of falling in love till he had ascertained clearly what a girl had. Indeed, he had run for some very good stakes; and though he had certainly lost hitherto it was always owing to the jostling of uncles or crossing of aunts; for the captain was accounted an “insinuating beggar,” and he possessed a most mellifluous brogue.
Exactly at what he estimated himself we never heard, but he was reckoned the most killing man of the regiment wherever it went. Many quarters had the 191st been in, and many tender hearts had deplored deficiency of fortune, and sighed at the rat-tat-tan of the drum as the regiment marched away. It had now taken its last British march, and was lying at Chatham preparatory to embarking for India.
Captain O’Blatherington, the admired of all jolly subs., had resolved upon a last desperate throw in England before encountering a tiger, or a coup de soleil at Madras or Calcutta. He had scoured Margate, Ramsgate, Broadstairs — all the essentially City places, when a thought and a hack-horse took him to Tunbridge. He had been there scarcely four-and-twenty hours when the adventure we have recorded befell him. His quick mind darted to a monetary conclusion—” Powdered footman!” A powdered footman bespoke a butler also. It was a clear case of money. He had the assessed tax-table by heart, and judged that no person to whom money was an object would throw away one pound, three and sixpence a year.
Moreover, the ladies looked like heiresses; there was no attempt at ostentation; though living in a large house with green Venetian blinds and mignonette boxes at the windows, they took him into their little, quiet back drawing-room where the sun did not intrude. They chirped and talked and gave him some gooseberry tart; and when at last he took his departure, he was quite convinced that the ladies were well worth looking after. A pretty little maid in black with a British lace collar and white flowers in her cap opened the door to let him out; and as he got clear of the garden a most important, respectable-looking, large-stomached man in black touched his hat and stood by to let him pass. To him the captain immediately a
ssigned the office of butler.
Having by this time no doubt but that the ladies were what he wanted, he determined to do the thing as quietly as possible. “Snug” should be the word; nobody should know anything about it. Arrived at the Pantiles, he fell into conversation with one of the “dippers,” as they call the old women who hand out the fluid for which Tunbridge is famous; he talked about the water — the number of drinkers — the quantity they took — the effect it had on them, and so forth. Well, it so happened that the old woman had regularly at heart the honour of the place, and among other wonderful cures the water had wrought, she instanced that of the youngest Miss Gullington, whose face was perfectly well, while the faces of her sisters were wonderfully better.
Captain O’Blatherington being, as we said, a tolerably sharp fellow — fit to be a fox-hunter or superintendent of police — thought that might be the line of his fox; he held the old dipper’s tongue on in the direction of Mount Pleasant, and very soon established the fact that the water-wrought cure was on the face of that sister he had rescued from the donkey. Tipping the old woman a joey for her garrulity, he cheerfully repaired to the gloomy coffee-room of the Royal Victoria and Sussex Hotel, where he managed to get through the usual variety — beef-steak, mutton-chop dinner, just as Mr Stockdale’s swell coach was starting for the Metropolis.
Consigning his “three-and-sixpence-a-side” to the care of the ostler until his return on the morrow, he mounted beside that classical coachman, whose dog-latin he d — d for interrupting thoughts of the speculation on which he was embarking. The Tunbridge Road is favourable to sentimental, or at all events Plutonic reflections. It is a nice, light, airy sort of road; the villages are trim and smart, and on this particular occasion the golden laburnum hung in huge bunches over the villa walls; emblematical, as the captain augured, of the success of his enterprise. How men speculate under such circumstances! Upon our life, it’s enough to make demonologists of us all!
Now for London! Ride, sir, ride! London, dear delightful London! Noble, independent place! How joyous is every avenue of approach to your overgrown monstrosity — how the tide of population begins to swell and roll and ebb and flow, as, entering upon your water-besprinkled streets, the rush of your outpourings meets the arrival!
Arrived at that then coach-crowded, but alas! now deserted, hostelry, the Belle Sauvage on Ludgate Hill, the captain took a light coflee-room supper, and repaired early to rest in one of its yard-encircling corridors.
A barrack is not the quietest place in the world, least of all, we believe, that from which our hero had come; but barracks were as the stillness of the tomb compared to the racket of an old coaching inn. Blessed bug-biting old places!— “A night’s rest” was a misnomer. “A night’s scratch” would be more like the truth — not that we mean to insinuate that the Belle Sauvage is a place of that sort. However, the captain did not care a copper for all the horns and horses’ hoofs that sounded in the busy yard below from daybreak; no, for all the knocks and inquiries of boots whether he was the “gemman” for the Ipswich heavy, or the Falmouth light, or if he wasn’t going to Edinburgh, or hadn’t booked a place for Bath. He didn’t care! At the delivery of each negative he turned in his little cot, and hugged himself with the idea of lofty four-post beds with damask hangings, marble wash-stands with china jugs, and Windsor or Castile soap. We believe the luxurious dog even thought of a swing-mirror; but this, we trust, was for the Missis.
As St Paul’s clock struck the hour of nine, the captain was contemplating his person in the large plate-glass windows of the noble shops on Ludgate Hill, and ere the last thrill had spent itself on the morning air, the gallant youth was at the archway leading to Doctors Commons.
And here let us exhort all nice young men to emulate the Captain’s method. It is a good thing, especially at Doctors Commons, to go early; the clerks look upon nice young men as interlopers who interfere with their friends, the six-and-eight-pence-worths, and would rather throw them over than assist them. The novice’s awkwardness is troublesome when they are busy, whereas a little polite palaver will gain you even assistance if you go early. Captain O’Blatherington knew this, and it would ill become a gentleman of his nationality to be wanting in politeness. Accordingly, having threaded his way down Dean’s Court, across Great Carter Lane and through Bell Yard, “Prerogative Will Office” stared at him above a door in Great Knightrider Street. Entering, he addressed himself in the blandest manner to a young gentleman in a green cut-away coat and arm-sleeves; and in a very short time a volume of wills was laid upon the desk, with the very one he wanted among its parchment pages. It was just proved, and scarce a thumb-mark soiled its fairness.
How the captain’s heart beat as he recognised the now well-known name of Simon Gullington! Thus he read: —
This is the last will and testament of me Simon Gullington of Camelford in the County of Cornwall Esquire one of His Majesty’s Justices of the Peace and a Deputy Lieutenant of the said County (“What a respectable gentleman!” exclaimed the captain at this point); and continued his perusal, to read how Simon Gullington, after reciting that he was of sound and disposing mind though rather sick in body, set to and gave his sound and disposing mind a gallop. He gave £2000 a year to his dear wife Rebecca for the term of her natural life, and all the rest, residue and remainder of his personal estate, tin mines etc he gave, devised and bequeathed to his four daughters in equal shares and proportions, with what he called “crossremainders”; a term we do not exactly understand. The testator also directed that after the decease of his said dear wife, Rebecca, her £2000 a year should merge into, and form part of, the residue of his estate and effects, and be divided as before directed — cross-remainders etc. Then, by a codicil made shortly after, he recited that his said dear wife had, in vulgar parlance, “cut the stick”; therefore her £2000 a year the daughters would have among them. Simon Gullington also wished to provide for some meritorious servants, particularly his housekeeper, to whom he left £500 a year to be paid quarterly; £5 to his butler, £5 to his footman, £5 to his groom, £5 to his keeper, £2, 10s to his coachman and a guinea to his gardener: — all sums (except the house keeper’s) insignificant in themselves, but bespeaking an establishment commensurate with wealth.
Captain O’Blatherington read it all (“That’ll cut a hole in the fortune, I fear,” was his comment as he read the bequest of £2000 to Simon Gullington’s dear wife, Rebecca), and pondered the cross-remainders, which he took to be a sort of testamentary handicap to bring all the daughters to equal weight. Then he came to that codicil and found that Mrs Gullington was also dead. How delighted he was! He could never sufficiently commend Simon Gullington’s prudence in leaving his house-keeper £500 a year instead of marrying her; and very likely giving her that £2000 a year.
It was almost too much for him. What a monument he would put up to Simon Gullington’s memory! Then his consideration for his servants! Butler, footman, groom, coachman, gardener and keeper!
At what figure would Barber Beaumont or Mr Morgan, the actuary, estimate the deceased gentleman’s means? Surely not less than £6000 a year! Call it £4000 for safety; £1000 apiece for the daughters! Tin mines too! A money pit in fact! Divil take the cross-remainders, whatever they might be.
Never had the captain made so satisfactory a search. The number of servants, the real and personal estate, the tin mines mentioned in the will, blended in his mind with the powdered footman and fat butler at Tunbridge Wells, and formed so delightful a picture of money-pots without end that the Captain strode out of Doctors Commons and down Ludgate Hill a perfect exemplar of happiness. What a chance it was! A chance to make not only himself but friends! Who should they be? There was dear old O’Keefe, still a lieutenant, thirty years in the service and the Waterloo medal, and nothing but his pay. He should be one. And Barney Brallagan; and little Billy O’Leary; and Arthur O’Brady and Harry O’Brady. But that was one too many! Never mind; they should draw lots, and the fortunate winner give the los
er £1000 — say £1000 or a share in a tin mine; both, perhaps.
Returning to Chatham by one of those amalgamations of English coach and French diligence — a double-bodied vehicle with fat and heavy horses which travelled at a most tedious pace for a man in our hero’s state of mind — he singled out three meritorious brother officers as determined, to whom he appropriated the three peony-faced Miss Gullingtons.
“Quick” being the word they soon had their traps packed, and sunset saw the four of them entering Tunbridge Wells in a yellow barouche behind four posters.
No time was lost; and, as soon as might be, a double file marched across the common: the captain with Miss Seraphina; Lieut. O’Keefe with Miss Susannah; Barney Brallaghan with Miss Henrietta; and Billy O’Leary with Miss Louisa. The girls thought a miracle had been wrought in their favour!
“News, girls, news! I’ve got great news to tell,
A waggon-load of sweethearts are come to town to sell.”
But our fair friends, whose thoughts in these matters travel much faster than our pen, will have jumped to the conclusion that a quadripartite alliance, as Lord Ashburton would call it, took place; and our dear male pupils, we know, will be anxious to hear how the affair turned out. Well, the devil and all be in it if those tin mines weren’t the ruin of the whole thing! Simon Gullington — Gullington he was well called, for he was as big a flat as ever was foaled — not content with the manor or lordship of Wingway Towers and the noble, well-timbered estate of Lightcomelightgo near Norton Fitzwarren in the county of Somerset, with the perpetual advowson of Tieim-up-tight in the county of York, which brought him in a clear net rental of £6000 a year, must needs try his luck in a tin mine.
