The Newcomes

by William Makepeace Thackeray

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.