'Laocoon' which he was copying. The Scotchman's superior weight and age
might have given the combat a different conclusion, had it endured long
after Clive's brilliant opening attack with his right and left; but
Professor Gandish came out of his painting-room at the sound of battle,
and could scarcely credit his own eyes when he saw those of poor M'Collop
so darkened. To do the Scotchman justice, he bore Clive no rancour. They
became friends there, and afterwards at Rome, whither they subsequently
went to pursue their studies. The fame of Mr. M'Collop as an artist has
long since been established. His pictures of 'Lord Lovat in Prison,' and
'Hogarth painting him,' of the 'Blowing up of the Kirk of Field' (painted
for M'Collop of M'Collop), of the 'Torture of the Covenanters,' the
'Murder of the Regent,' the 'Murder of Rizzio,' and other historical
pieces, all of course from Scotch history, have established his
reputation in South as well as in North Britain. No one would suppose
from the gloomy character of his works that Sandy M'Collop is one of the
most jovial souls alive. Within six months after their little difference,
Clive and he were the greatest of friends, and it was by the former's
suggestion that Mr. James Binnie gave Sandy his first commission, who
selected the cheerful subject of 'The Young Duke of Rothsay starving in
Prison.'
During this period, Mr. Clive assumed the toga virilis, and beheld with
inexpressible satisfaction the first growth of those mustachios which
have since given him such a marked appearance.
Being at Gandish's, and so near the dancing academy, what must he do but
take lessons in the terpsichorean art too?--making himself as popular
with the dancing folks as with the drawing folks, and the jolly king of
his company everywhere. He gave entertainments to his fellow-students in
the upper chambers in Fitzroy Square, which were devoted to his use,
inviting his father and Mr. Binnie to those parties now and then. And
songs were sung, and pipes were smoked, and many a pleasant supper eaten.
There was no stint: but no excess. No young man was ever seen to quit
those apartments the worse, as it is called, for liquor. Fred Bayham's
uncle the Bishop could not be more decorous than F. B. as he left the
Colonel's house, for the Colonel made that one of the conditions of his
son's hospitality, that nothing like intoxication should ensue from it.
The good gentleman did not frequent the parties of the juniors. He saw
that his presence rather silenced the young men; and left them to
themselves, confiding in Clive's parole, and went away to play his honest
rubber of whist at the Club. And many a time he heard the young fellows'
steps tramping by his bedchamber door, as he lay wakeful within, happy to
think his son was happy.
CHAPTER XVIII
New Companions
Clive used to give droll accounts of the young disciples at Gandish's,
who were of various ages and conditions, and in whose company the young
fellow took his place with that good temper and gaiety which have seldom
deserted him in life, and have put him at ease wherever his fate has led
him. He is, in truth, as much at home in a fine drawing-room as in a
public-house parlour; and can talk as pleasantly to the polite mistress
of the mansion, as to the jolly landlady dispensing her drinks from her
bar. Not one of the Gandishites but was after a while well inclined to
the young fellow; from Mr. Chivers, the senior pupil, down to the little
imp Harry Hooker, who knew as much mischief at twelve years old, and
could draw as cleverly as many a student of five-and-twenty; and Bob
Trotter, the diminutive fag of the studio, who ran on all the young men's
errands, and fetched them in apples, oranges, and walnuts. Clive opened
his eyes with wonder when he first beheld these simple feasts, and the
pleasure with which some of the young men partook of them. They were
addicted to polonies; they did not disguise their love for Banbury cakes;
they made bets in ginger-beer, and gave and took the odds in that
frothing liquor. There was a young Hebrew amongst the pupils, upon whom
his brother-students used playfully to press ham sandwiches, pork
sausages, and the like. This young man (who has risen to great wealth
subsequently, and was bankrupt only three months since) actually bought
cocoa-nuts, and sold them at a profit amongst the lads. His pockets were
never without pencil-cases, French chalk, garnet brooches, for which he
was willing to bargain. He behaved very rudely to Gandish, who seemed to
be afraid before him. It was whispered that the Professor was not
altogether easy in his circumstances, and that the elder Moss had some
mysterious hold over him. Honeyman and Bayham, who once came to see Clive
at the studio, seemed each disturbed at beholding young Moss seated there
(making a copy of the Marsyas). "Pa knows both those gents," he informed
Clive afterwards, with a wicked twinkle of his Oriental eyes. "Step in,
Mr. Newcome, any day you are passing down Wardour Street, and see if you
don't want anything in our way." (He pronounced the words in his own way,
saying: "Step id, Bister Doocob, ady day idto Vordor Street," etc.) This
young gentleman could get tickets for almost all the theatres, which he
gave or sold, and gave splendid accounts at Cavendish's of the brilliant
masquerades. Clive was greatly diverted at beholding Mr. Moss at one of
these entertainments, dressed in a scarlet coat and top-boots, and
calling out, "Yoicks! Hark forward!" fitfully to another Orientalist, his
younger brother, attired like a midshipman. Once Clive bought a
half-dozen of theatre tickets from Mr. Moss, which he distributed to the
young fellows of the studio. But, when this nice young man tried further
to tempt him on the next day, "Mr. Moss," Clive said to him with much
dignity, "I am very much obliged to you for your offer, but when I go to
the play, I prefer paying at the doors."
Mr. Chivers used to sit in one corner of the room, occupied over a
lithographic stone. He was an uncouth and peevish young man; for ever
finding fault with the younger pupils, whose butt he was. Next in rank
and age was M'Collop, before named: and these two were at first more than
usually harsh and captious with Clive, whose prosperity offended them,
and whose dandified manners, free-and-easy ways, and evident influence
over the younger scholars, gave umbrage to these elderly apprentices.
Clive at first returned Mr. Chivers war for war, controlment for
controlment; but when he found Chivers was the son of a helpless widow;
that be maintained her by his lithographic vignettes for the
music-sellers, and by the scanty remuneration of some lessons which he
gave at a school at Highgate;--when Clive saw, or fancied he saw, the
lonely senior eyeing with hungry eyes the luncheons of cheese and bread,
and sweetstuff, which the young lads of the studio enjoyed, I promise you
Mr. Clive's wrath against Chivers was speedily turned into compassion and
kindness, and he sought, and no doubt found, means of feeding Chivers
> without offending his testy independence.
Nigh to Gandish's was, and perhaps is, another establishment for teaching
the art of design--Barker's, which had the additional dignity of a life
academy and costume; frequented by a class of students more advanced than
those of Gandish's. Between these and the Barkerites there was a constant
rivalry and emulation, in and out of doors. Gandish sent more pupils to
the Royal Academy; Gandish had brought up three medallists; and the last
R.A. student sent to Rome was a Gandishite. Barker, on the contrary,
scorned and loathed Trafalgar Square, and laughed at its art. Barker
exhibited in Pall Mall and Suffolk Street: he laughed at old Gandish and
his pictures, made mincemeat of his "Angli and Angeli," and tore "King
Alfred" and his muffins to pieces. The young men of the respective
schools used to meet at Lundy's coffee-house and billiard-room, and smoke
there, and do battle. Before Clive and his friend J. J. came to
Gandish's, the Barkerites were having the best of that constant match
which the two academies were playing. Fred Bayham, who knew every
coffee-house in town, and whose initials were scored on a thousand tavern
doors, was for a while a constant visitor at Lundy's, played pool with
the young men, and did not disdain to dip his beard into their
porter-pots, when invited to partake of their drink; treated them
handsomely when he was in cash himself; and was an honorary member of
Barker's academy. Nay, when the guardsman was not forthcoming, who was
standing for one of Barker's heroic pictures, Bayham bared his immense
arms and brawny shoulders, and stood as Prince Edward, with Philippa
sucking the poisoned wound. He would take his friends up to the picture
in the Exhibition, and proudly point to it. "Look at that biceps, sir,
and now look at this--that's Barker's masterpiece, sir, and that's the
muscle of F. B., sir." In no company was F. B. greater than in the
society of the artists, in whose smoky haunts and airy parlours he might
often be found. It was from F. B. that Clive heard of Mr. Chivers'
struggles and honest industry. A great deal of shrewd advice could F. B.
give on occasion, and many a kind action and gentle office of charity was
this jolly outlaw known to do and cause to be done. His advice to Clive
was most edifying at this time of our young gentleman's life, and he owns
that he was kept from much mischief by this queer counsellor.
A few months after Clive and J. J. had entered at Gandish's, that academy
began to hold its own against its rival. The silent young disciple was
pronounced to be a genius. His copies were beautiful in delicacy and
finish. His designs were for exquisite grace and richness of fancy. Mr.
Gandish took to himself the credit for J. J.'s genius; Clive ever and
fondly acknowledged the benefit he got from his friend's taste and bright
enthusiasm and sure skill. As for Clive, if he was successful in the
academy he was doubly victorious out of it. His person was handsome, his
courage high, his gaiety and frankness delightful and winning. His money
was plenty and he spent it like a young king. He could speedily beat all
the club at Lundy's at billiards, and give points to the redoubted F. B.
himself. He sang a famous song at their jolly supper-parties: and J. J.
had no greater delight than to listen to his fresh voice, and watch the
young conqueror at the billiard-table, where the balls seemed to obey
him.
Clive was not the most docile of Mr. Gandish's pupils. If he had not come
to the studio on horseback, several of the young students averred,
Gandish would not always have been praising him and quoting him as that
professor certainly did. It must be confessed that the young ladies read
the history of Clive's uncle in the Book of Baronets, and that Gandish
jun., probably with an eye to business, made a design of a picture, in
which, according to that veracious volume, one of the Newcomes was
represented as going cheerfully to the stake at Smithfield, surrounded by
some very ill-favoured Dominicans, whose arguments did not appear to make
the least impression upon the martyr of the Newcome family. Sandy
M'Collop devised a counter picture, wherein the barber-surgeon of King
Edward the Confessor was drawn, operating upon the beard of that monarch.
To which piece of satire Clive gallantly replied by a design,
representing Sawney Bean M'Collop, chief of the clan of that name,
descending from his mountains into Edinburgh, and his astonishment at
beholding a pair of breeches for the first time. These playful jokes
passed constantly amongst the young men of Gandish's studio. There was no
one there who was not caricatured in one way or another. He whose eyes
looked not very straight was depicted with a most awful squint. The youth
whom nature had endowed with somewhat lengthy nose was drawn by the
caricaturists with a prodigious proboscis. Little Bobby Moss, the young
Hebrew artist from Wardour Street, was delineated with three hats and an
old-clothes bag. Nor were poor J. J.'s round shoulders spared, until
Clive indignantly remonstrated at the hideous hunchback pictures which
the boys made of his friend, and vowed it was a shame to make jokes at
such a deformity.
Our friend, if the truth must be told regarding him, though one of the
most frank, generous, and kind-hearted persons, is of a nature somewhat
haughty and imperious, and very likely the course of life which he now
led and the society which he was compelled to keep, served to increase
some original defects in his character, and to fortify a certain
disposition to think well of himself, with which his enemies not unjustly
reproach him. He has been known very pathetically to lament that he was
withdrawn from school too early, where a couple of years' further course
of thrashings from his tyrant, old Hodge, he avers, would have done him
good. He laments that he was not sent to college, where if a young man
receives no other discipline, at least he acquires that of meeting with
his equals in society and of assuredly finding his betters: whereas in
poor Mr. Gandish's studio of art, our young gentleman scarcely found a
comrade that was not in one way or other his flatterer, his inferior, his
honest or dishonest admirer. The influence of his family's rank and
wealth acted more or less on all those simple folks, who would run on his
errands and vied with each other in winning the young nabob's favour. His
very goodness of heart rendered him a more easy prey to their flattery,
and his kind and jovial disposition led him into company from which he
had been much better away. I am afraid that artful young Moss, whose
parents dealt in pictures, furniture, gimcracks, and jewellery,
victimised Clive sadly with rings and chains, shirt-studs and flaming
shirt-pins, and such vanities, which the poor young rogue locked up in
his desk generally, only venturing to wear them when he was out of his
father's sight or of Mr. Binnie's, whose shrewd eyes watched him very
keenly.
Mr. Clive used to leave home every day shor
tly after noon, when he was
supposed to betake himself to Gandish's studio. But was the young
gentleman always at the drawing-board copying from the antique when his
father supposed him to be so devotedly engaged? I fear his place was
sometimes vacant. His friend J. J. worked every day and all day. Many a
time the steady little student remarked his patron's absence, and no
doubt gently remonstrated with him, but when Clive did come to his work
he executed it with remarkable skill and rapidity; and Ridley was too
fond of him to say a word at home regarding the shortcomings of the
youthful scapegrace. Candid readers may sometimes have heard their friend
Jones's mother lament that her darling was working too hard at college:
or Harry's sisters express their anxiety lest his too rigorous attendance
in chambers (after which he will persist in sitting up all night reading
those dreary law books which cost such an immense sum of money) should
undermine dear Henry's health; and to such acute persons a word is
sufficient to indicate young Mr. Clive Newcome's proceedings. Meanwhile
his father, who knew no more of the world than Harry's simple sisters or
Jones's fond mother, never doubted that all Clive's doings were right,
and that his boy was the best of boys.
"If that young man goes on as charmingly as he has begun," Clive's
cousin, Barnes Newcome, said of his kinsman, "he will be a paragon. I saw
him last night at Vauxhall in company with young Moss, whose father does
bills and keeps the bric-a-brac shop in Wardour Street. Two or three
other gentlemen, probably young old-clothes-men, who had concluded for
the day the labours of the bag, joined Mr. Newcome and his friend, and
they partook of rack-punch in an arbour. He is a delightful youth, cousin
Clive, and I feel sure he is about to be an honour to our family."
CHAPTER XIX
The Colonel at Home
Our good Colonel's house had received a coat of paint, which, like Madame
Latour's rouge in her latter days, only served to make her careworn face
look more ghastly. The kitchens were gloomy. The stables were gloomy.
Great black passages; cracked conservatory; dilapidated bathroom, with
melancholy waters moaning and fizzing from the cistern; the great large
blank stone staircase--were all so many melancholy features in the
general countenance of the house; but the Colonel thought it perfectly,
cheerful and pleasant, and furnished it in his rough-and-ready way. One
day a cartload of chairs; the next a waggonful of fenders, fire-irons,
and glass and crockery--a quantity of supplies, in a word, he poured into
the place. There were a yellow curtain in the back drawing-room, and
green curtains in the front. The carpet was an immense bargain, bought
dirt cheap, sir, at a sale in Euston Square. He was against the purchase
of a carpet for the stairs. What was the good of it? What did men want
with stair-carpets? His own apartment contained a wonderful assortment of
lumber. Shelves which he nailed himself, old Indian garments, camphor
trunks. What did he want with gewgaws? anything was good enough for an
old soldier. But the spare bedroom was endowed with all sorts of
splendour: a bed as big as a general's tent, a cheval glass--whereas the
Colonel shaved in a little cracked mirror, which cost him no more than
King Stephen's breeches--and a handsome new carpet; while the boards of
the Colonel's bedchamber were as bare--as bare as old Miss Scragg's
shoulders, which would be so much more comfortable were they covered up.
Mr. Binnie's bedchamber was neat, snug, and appropriate. And Clive had a
study and bedroom at the top of the house, which he was allowed to
furnish entirely according to his own taste. How he and Ridley revelled
in Wardour Street! What delightful coloured prints of hunting, racing,
and beautiful ladies, did they not purchase, mount with their own hands,
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