intimate friendship with the Lord Hercules O'Ryan.--as every one of my
gentle readers knows, one of the sons of the Marquis of Ballyshannon. The
Lord Hercules was a year younger than Miss Ethel Newcome, which may
account for the passion which grew up between these young persons; it
being a provision in nature that a boy always falls in love with a girl
older than himself, or rather, perhaps, that a girl bestows her
affections on a little boy, who submits to receive them.
One day Sir Brian Newcome announced his intention to go to Newcome that
very morning, taking his family, and of course Ethel, with him. She was
inconsolable. "What will Lord Hercules do when he finds I am gone?" she
asked of her nurse.
The nurse endeavouring to soothe her, said, "Perhaps his lordship would
know nothing about the circumstance." "He will," said Miss Ethel--"he'll
read it in the newspaper." My Lord Hercules, it is to be hoped, strangled
this infant passion in the cradle; having long since married Isabella,
only daughter of ------ Grains, Esq., of Drayton Windsor, a partner in
the great brewery of Foker and Co.
When Ethel was thirteen years old, she had grown to be such a tall girl,
that she overtopped her companions by a head or more, and morally
perhaps, also, felt herself too tall for their society. "Fancy myself,"
she thought, "dressing a doll like Lily Putland or wearing a pinafore
like Lucy Tucker!" She did not care for their sports. She could not walk
with them: it seemed as if every one stared; nor dance with them at the
academy, nor attend the Cours de Litterature Universelle et de Science
Comprehensive of the professor then the mode--the smallest girls took her
up in the class. She was bewildered by the multitude of things they bade
her learn. At the youthful little assemblies of her sex, when, under the
guide of their respected governesses, the girls came to tea at six
o'clock, dancing, charades, and so forth, Ethel herded not with the
children of her own age, nor yet with the teachers who sit apart at these
assemblies, imparting to each other their little wrongs; but Ethel romped
with the little children--the rosy little trots--and took them on her
knees, and told them a thousand stories. By these she was adored, and
loved like a mother almost, for as such the hearty kindly girl showed
herself to them; but at home she was alone, farouche and intractable, and
did battle with the governesses, and overcame them one after another. I
break the promise of a former page, and am obliged to describe the
youthful days of more than one person who is to take a share in this
story. Not always doth the writer know whither the divine Muse leadeth
him. But of this be sure--she is as inexorable as Truth. We must tell our
tale as she imparts it to us, and go on or turn aside at her bidding.
Here she ordains that we should speak of other members of the family,
whose history we chronicle, and it behoves us to say a word regarding the
Earl of Kew, the head of the noble house into which Sir Brian Newcome had
married.
When we read in the fairy stories that the King and Queen, who lived once
upon a time, build a castle of steel, defended by moats and sentinels
innumerable, in which they place their darling only child, the Prince or
Princess, whose birth has blessed them after so many years of marriage,
and whose christening feast has been interrupted by the cantankerous
humour of that notorious old fairy who always persists in coming,
although she has not received any invitation to the baptismal ceremony:
when Prince Prettyman is locked up in the steel tower, provided only with
the most wholesome food, the most edifying educational works, and the
most venerable old tutor to instruct and to bore him, we know, as a
matter of course, that the steel bolts and brazen bars one day will be of
no avail, the old tutor will go off in a doze, and the moats and
drawbridges will either be passed by His Royal Highness's implacable
enemies, or crossed by the young scapegrace himself, who is determined to
outwit his guardians, and see the wicked world. The old King and Queen
always come in and find the chambers empty, the saucy heir-apparent
flown, the porter and sentinels drunk, the ancient tutor asleep; they
tear their venerable wigs in anguish, they kick the major-domo
downstairs, they turn the duenna out of doors--the toothless old dragon!
There is no resisting fate. The Princess will slip out of window by the
rope-ladder; the Prince will be off to pursue his pleasures, and sow his
wild oats at the appointed season. How many of our English princes have
been coddled at home by their fond papas and mammas, walled up in
inaccessible castles, with a tutor and a library, guarded by cordons of
sentinels, sermoners, old aunts, old women from the world without, and
have nevertheless escaped from all these guardians, and astonished the
world by their extravagance and their frolics? What a wild rogue was that
Prince Harry, son of the austere sovereign who robbed Richard the Second
of his crown,--the youth who took purses on Gadshill, frequented
Eastcheap taverns with Colonel Falstaff and worse company, and boxed
Chief Justice Gascoigne's ears! What must have been the venerable Queen
Charlotte's state of mind when she heard of the courses of her beautiful
young Prince; of his punting at gambling-tables; of his dealings with
horse-jockeys; of his awful doings with Perdita? Besides instances taken
from our Royal Family, could we not draw examples from our respected
nobility? There was that young Lord Warwick, Mr. Addison's stepson. We
know that his mother was severe, and his stepfather a most eloquent
moralist, yet the young gentleman's career was shocking, positively
shocking. He boxed the watch; he fuddled himself at taverns; he was no
better than a Mohock. The chronicles of that day contain accounts of many
a mad prank which he played, as we have legends of a still earlier date
of the lawless freaks of the wild Prince and Poins. Our people has never
looked very unkindly on these frolics. A young nobleman, full of life and
spirits, generous of his money, jovial in his humour, ready with his
sword, frank, handsome, prodigal, courageous, always finds favour. Young
Scapegrace rides a steeplechase or beats a bargeman, and the crowd
applauds him. Sages and seniors shake their heads, and look at him not
unkindly; even stern old female moralists are disarmed at the sight of
youth and gallantry, and beauty. I know very well that Charles Surface is
a sad dog, and Tom Jones no better than he should be; but, in spite of
such critics as Dr. Johnson and Colonel Newcome, most of us have a
sneaking regard for honest Tom, and hope Sophia will be happy, and Tom
will end well at last.
Five-and-twenty years ago the young Earl of Kew came upon the town, which
speedily rang with the feats of his lordship. He began life time enough
to enjoy certain pleasures from which our young aristocracy of the
present day seem, alas! to be cut off. So much more peaceable and
polished do we grow, so much does the spiri
t of the age appear to
equalise all ranks; so strongly has the good sense of society, to which
in the end gentlemen of the very highest fashion must bow, put its veto
upon practices and amusements with which our fathers were familiar. At
that time the Sunday newspapers contained many and many exciting reports
of boxing-matches. Bruising was considered a fine manly old English
custom. Boys at public schools fondly perused histories of the noble
science, from the redoubtable days of Broughton and Slack, to the heroic
times of Dutch Sam and the Game Chicken. Young gentlemen went eagerly to
Moulsey to see the Slasher punch the Pet's head, or the Negro beat the
Jew's nose to a jelly. The island rang as yet with the tooting horns and
rattling teams of mail-coaches; a gay sight was the road in merry England
in those days, before steam-engines arose and flung its hostelry and
chivalry over. To travel in coaches, to drive coaches, to know coachmen
and guards, to be familiar with inns along the road, to laugh with the
jolly hostess in the bar, to chuck the pretty chambermaid under the chin,
were the delight of men who were young not very long ago. Who ever
thought of writing to the Times then? "Biffin," I warrant, did not grudge
his money, and "A Thirsty Soul" paid cheerfully for his drink. The road
was an institution, the ring was an institution. Men rallied round them;
and, not without a kind conservatism, expatiated upon the benefits with
which they endowed the country, and the evils which would occur when they
should be no more:--decay of English spirit, decay of manly pluck, ruin
of the breed of horses, and so forth, and so forth. To give and take a
black eye was not unusual nor derogatory in a gentleman; to drive a
stage-coach the enjoyment, the emulation of generous youth. Is there any
young fellow of the present time who aspires to take the place of a
stoker? You see occasionally in Hyde Park one dismal old drag with a
lonely driver. Where are you, charioteers? Where are you, O rattling
Quicksilver, O swift Defiance? You are passed by racers stronger and
swifter than you. Your lamps are out, and the music of your horns has
died away.
Just at the ending of that old time, Lord Kew's life began. That kindly
middle-aged gentleman whom his county knows that good landlord, and
friend of all his tenantry round about; that builder of churches, and
indefatigable visitor of schools; that writer of letters to the farmers
of his shire, so full of sense and benevolence; who wins prizes at
agricultural shows, and even lectures at county town institutes in his
modest, pleasant way, was the wild young Lord Kew of a quarter of a
century back; who kept racehorses, patronised boxers, fought a duel,
thrashed a Life Guardsman, gambled furiously at Crockford's, and did who
knows what besides?
His mother, a devout lady, nursed her son and his property carefully
during the young gentleman's minority: keeping him and his younger
brother away from all mischief, under the eyes of the most careful
pastors and masters. She learnt Latin with the boys, she taught them to
play on the piano: she enraged old Lady Kew, the children's grandmother,
who prophesied that her daughter-in-law would make milksops of her sons,
to whom the old lady was never reconciled until after my lord's entry at
Christchurch, where he began to distinguish himself very soon after his
first term. He drove tandems, kept hunters, gave dinners, scandalised the
Dean, screwed up the tutor's door, and agonised his mother at home by his
lawless proceedings. He quitted the University after a very brief sojourn
at that seat of learning. It may be the Oxford authorities requested his
lordship to retire; let bygones be bygones. His youthful son, the present
Lord Walham, is now at Christchurch, reading with the greatest assiduity.
Let us not be too particular in narrating his father's unedifying frolics
of a quarter of a century ago.
Old Lady Kew, who, in conjunction with Mrs. Newcome, had made the
marriage between Mr. Brian Newcome and her daughter, always despised her
son-in-law; and being a frank, open person, uttering her mind always,
took little pains to conceal her opinion regarding him or any other
individual. "Sir Brian Newcome," she would say, "is one of the most
stupid and respectable of men; Anne is clever, but has not a grain of
common sense. They make a very well assorted couple. Her flightiness
would have driven any man crazy who had an opinion of his own. She would
have ruined any poor man of her own rank; as it is, I have given her a
husband exactly suited for her. He pays the bills, does not see how
absurd she is, keeps order in the establishment, and checks her follies.
She wanted to marry her cousin, Tom Poyntz, when they were both very
young, and proposed to die of a broken heart when I arranged her match
with Mr. Newcome. A broken fiddlestick! she would have ruined Tom Poyntz
in a year; and has no more idea of the cost of a leg of mutton, than I
have of algebra."
The Countess of Kew loved Brighton, and preferred living there even at
the season when Londoners find such especial charms in their own city.
"London after Easter," the old lady said, "was intolerable. Pleasure
becomes a business, then so oppressive, that all good company is
destroyed by it. Half the men are sick with the feasts which they eat day
after day. The women are thinking of the half-dozen parties they have to
go to in the course of the night. The young girls are thinking of their
partners and their toilettes. Intimacy becomes impossible, and quiet
enjoyment of life. On the other hand, the crowd of bourgeois has not
invaded Brighton. The drive is not blocked up by flys full of
stockbrokers' wives and children; and you can take the air in your chair
upon the chain-pier, without being stifled by the cigars of the odious
shop-boys from London." So Lady Kew's name was usually amongst the
earliest which the Brighton newspapers recorded amongst the arrivals.
Her only unmarried daughter, Lady Julia, lived with her ladyship. Poor
Lady Julia had suffered early from a spine disease, which had kept her
for many years to her couch. Being always at home, and under her mother's
eyes, she was the old lady's victim, her pincushion, into which Lady Kew
plunged a hundred little points of sarcasm daily. As children are
sometimes brought before magistrates, and their poor little backs and
shoulders laid bare, covered with bruises and lashes which brutal parents
have inflicted, so, I dare say, if there had been any tribunal or judge,
before whom this poor patient lady's heart could have been exposed, it
would have been found scarred all over with numberless ancient wounds,
and bleeding from yesterday's castigation. Old Lady Kew's tongue was a
dreadful thong which made numbers of people wince. She was not altogether
cruel, but she knew the dexterity with which she wielded her lash, and
liked to exercise it. Poor Lady Julia was always at hand, when her mother
was minded to try her powers.
Lady Kew had just made herse
lf comfortable at Brighton, when her little
grandson's illness brought Lady Anne Newcome and her family down to the
sea. Lady Kew was almost scared back to London again, or blown over the
water to Dieppe. She had never had the measles. "Why did not Anne carry
the child to some other place? Julia, you will on no account go and see
that little pestiferous swarm of Newcomes, unless you want to send me out
of the world--which I dare say you do, for I am a dreadful plague to you,
I know, and my death would be a release to you."
"You see Doctor H., who visits the child every day," cries poor
Pincushion; "you are not afraid when he comes."
"Doctor H.? Doctor H. comes to cure me, or to tell me the news, or to
flatter me, or to feel my pulse and to pretend to prescribe, or to take
his guinea; of course Dr. H. must go to see all sorts of people in all
sorts of diseases. You would not have me be such a brute as to order him
not to attend my own grandson? I forbid you to go to Anne's house. You
will send one of the men every day to inquire. Let the groom go--yes,
Charles--he will not go into the house. He will ring the bell and wait
outside. He had better ring the bell at the area--I suppose there is an
area--and speak to the servants through the bars, and bring us word how
Alfred is." Poor Pincushion felt fresh compunctions; she had met the
children, and kissed the baby, and held kind Ethel's hand in hers, that
day, as she was out in her chair. There was no use, however, to make this
confession. Is she the only good woman or man of whom domestic tyranny
has made a hypocrite?
Charles, the groom, brings back perfectly favourable reports of Master
Alfred's health that day, which Doctor H., in the course of his visit,
confirms. The child is getting well rapidly; eating like a little ogre.
His cousin Lord Kew has been to see him. He is the kindest of men, Lord
Kew; he brought the little man Tom and Jerry with the pictures. The boy
is delighted with the pictures.
"Why has not Kew come to see me? When did he come? Write him a note, and
send for him instantly, Julia. Did you know he was here?"
Julia says, that she had but that moment read in the Brighton papers the
arrival of the Earl of Kew and the Honourable J. Belsize at the Albion.
"I am sure they are here for some mischief," cries the old lady,
delighted. "Whenever George and John Belsize are together, I know there
is some wickedness planning. What do you know, Doctor? I see by your face
you know something. Do tell it me, that I may write it to his odious
psalm-singing mother."
Doctor H.'s face does indeed wear a knowing look. He simpers and says, "I
did see Lord Kew driving this morning, first with the Honourable Mr.
Belsize, and afterwards"--here he glances towards Lady Julia, as if to
say, "Before an unmarried lady, I do not like to tell your ladyship with
whom I saw Lord Kew driving, after he had left the Honourable Mr.
Belsize, who went to play a match with Captain Huxtable at tennis."
"Are you afraid to speak before Julia?" cries the elder lady. "Why, bless
my soul, she is forty years old, and has heard everything that can be
heard. Tell me about Kew this instant, Doctor H."
The Doctor blandly acknowledges that Lord Kew had been driving Madame
Pozzoprofondo, the famous contralto of the Italian Opera, in his phaeton,
for two hours, in the face of all Brighton.
"Yes, Doctor," interposes Lady Julia, blushing; "but Signor Pozzoprofondo
was in the carriage too--a-a-sitting behind with the groom. He was
indeed, mamma."
"Julia, vous n'etes qu'une panache," says Lady Kew, shrugging her
shoulders, and looking at her daughter from under her bushy black
eyebrows. Her ladyship, a sister of the late lamented Marquis of Steyne,
possessed no small share of the wit and intelligence, and a considerable
resemblance to the features, of that distinguished nobleman.
The Newcomes Page 16
