The Newcomes

by William Makepeace Thackeray

and all sorts of things were discovered afterwards. The world said that

  our silly little Duchess of Paris was partly the cause of the discovery.

  Spies were put upon her, and to some people she would tell anything. M.

  le Duc, on paying his annual visit to august exiles at Goritz, was very

  badly received: Madame la Dauphine gave him a sermon. He had an awful

  quarrel with Madame la Duchesse on returning to Paris. He provoked

  Monsieur le Comte Tiercelin, le beau Tiercelin, an officer of ordonnance

  of the Duke of Orleans, into a duel, a propos of a cup of coffee in a

  salon; he actually wounded the beau Tiercelin--he sixty-five years of

  age! his nephew, M. de Florac, was loud in praise of his kinsman's

  bravery.

  That pretty figure and complexion which still appear so captivating in M.

  Dubufe's portrait of Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry, have long existed--it

  must be owned only in paint. "Je la prefere a l'huile," the Vicomte de

  Florac said of his cousin. "She should get her blushes from Monsieur

  Dubufe--those of her present furnishers are not near so natural."

  Sometimes the Duchess appeared with these postiches roses, sometimes of a

  mortal paleness. Sometimes she looked plump, on other occasions wofully

  thin. "When she goes into the world," said the same chronicler, "ma

  cousine surrounds herself with jupons--c'est pour defendre sa vertu: when

  she is in a devotional mood, she gives up rouge, roast meat, and

  crinoline, and fait maigre absolument." To spite the Duke her husband,

  she took up with the Vicomte de Florac, and to please herself she cast

  him away. She took his brother, the Abbe de Florac, for a director, and

  presently parted from him. "Mon frere, ce saint homme ne parle jamais de

  Madame la Duchesse, maintenant," said the Vicomte. "She must have

  confessed to him des choses affreuses--oh, oui!--affreuses ma parole

  d'honneur!"

  The Duke d'Ivry being archiroyaliste, Madame la Duchesse must make

  herself ultra-Philippiste. "Oh, oui! tout ce qu'il y a de plus Madame

  Adelaide au monde!" cried Florac. "She raffoles of M. le Regent. She used

  to keep a fast of the day of the supplice of Philippe Egalite, Saint and

  Martyr. I say used, for to make to enrage her husband, and to recall the

  Abbe my brother, did she not advise herself to consult M. le Pasteur

  Grigou, and to attend the preach at his Temple? When this sheep had

  brought her shepherd back, she dismissed the Pasteur Grigou. Then she

  tired of M. l'Abbe again, and my brother is come out from her, shaking

  his good head. Ah! she must have put things into it which astonished the

  good Abbe! You know he has since taken the Dominican robe? My word of

  honour! I believe it was terror of her that drove him into a convent. You

  shall see him at Rome, Clive. Give him news of his elder, and tell him

  this gross prodigal is repenting amongst the swine. My word of honour! I

  desire but the death of Madame la Vicomtesse de Florac, to marry and

  range myself!

  "After being Royalist, Philippist, Catholic, Huguenot, Madame d'Ivry must

  take to Pantheism, to bearded philosophers who believe in nothing, not

  even in clean linen, eclecticism, republicanism, what know I? All her

  changes have been chronicled by books of her composition. Les Demons,

  poem Catholic; Charles IX. is the hero and the demons are shot for the

  most part at the catastrophe of St. Bartholomew. My good mother, all good

  Catholic as she is, was startled by the boldness of this doctrine. Then

  there came Une Dragonnade, par Mme. la Duchesse d'Ivry, which is all on

  your side. That was of the time of the Pastor Grigou, that one. The last

  was Les Dieux dechus, poeme en 20 chants, par Mme. la D---- d'I. Guard

  yourself well from this Muse! If she takes a fancy to you she will never

  leave you alone. If you see her often, she will fancy you are in love

  with her, and tell her husband. She always tells my uncle--afterwards--

  after she has quarrelled with you and grown tired of you! Eh, being in

  London once, she had the idea to make herself a Quakre; wore the costume,

  consulted a minister of that culte, and quarrelled with him as of rule.

  It appears the Quakers do not beat themselves, otherwise my poor uncle

  must have paid of his person.

  "The turn of the philosophers then came, the chemists, the natural

  historians, what know I? She made a laboratory in her hotel, and

  rehearsed poisons like Madame de Brinvilliers--she spent hours in the

  Jardin des Plantes. Since she has grown affreusenent maigre and wears

  mounting robes, she has taken more than ever to the idea that she

  resembles Mary Queen of Scots. She wears a little frill and a little cap.

  Every man she loves, she says, has come to misfortune. She calls her

  lodgings Lochleven. Eh! I pity the landlord of Lochleven! She calls ce

  gros Blackball, vous savez, that pillar of estaminets, that prince of

  mauvais-ton, her Bothwell; little Mijaud, the poor little pianist, she

  named her Rizzio; young Lord Greenhorn who was here with governor, a

  Monsieur of Oxfort, she christened her Darnley, and the Minister

  Anglican, her John Knox! The poor man was quite enchanted! Beware of this

  haggard siren, my little Clive!--mistrust her dangerous song! Her cave is

  jonchee with the bones of her victims. Be you not one!"

  Far from causing Clive to avoid Madame la Duchesse, these cautions very

  likely would have made him only the more eager to make her acquaintance,

  but that a much nobler attraction drew him elsewhere. At first, being

  introduced to Madame d'Ivry's salon, he was pleased and flattered, and

  behaved himself there merrily and agreeably enough. He had not studied

  Horace Vernet for nothing; he drew a fine picture of Kew rescuing her

  from the Arabs, with a plenty of sabres, pistols, burnouses, and

  dromedaries. He made a pretty sketch of her little girl Antoinette, and a

  wonderful likeness of Miss O'Grady, the little girl's governess, the

  mother's dame de compagnie;--Miss O'Grady, with the richest Milesian

  brogue, who had been engaged to give Antoinette the pure English accent.

  But the French lady's great eyes and painted smiles would not bear

  comparison with Ethel's natural brightness and beauty. Clive, who had

  been appointed painter in ordinary to the Queen of Scots, neglected his

  business, and went over to the English faction; so did one or two more of

  the Princess's followers, leaving her Majesty by no means well pleased at

  their desertion.

  There had been many quarrels between M. d'Ivry and his next-of-kin.

  Political differences, private differences--a long story. The Duke, who

  had been wild himself, could not pardon the Vicomte de Florac for being

  wild. Efforts at reconciliation had been made which ended unsuccessfully.

  The Vicomte de Florac had been allowed for a brief space to be intimate

  with the chief of his family, and then had been dismissed for being too

  intimate. Right or wrong, the Duke was jealous of all young men who

  approached the Duchesse. "He is suspicious," Madame de Florac indignantly

  said, "because he remembers: and he thinks other men are like himself."

  The Vicomte discreetly said, "My co
usin has paid me the compliment to be

  jealous of me," and acquiesced in his banishment with a shrug.

  During the emigration the old Lord Kew had been very kind to exiles, M.

  d'Ivry amongst the number; and that nobleman was anxious to return to all

  Lord Kew's family when they came to France the hospitality which he had

  received himself in England. He still remembered or professed to remember

  Lady Kew's beauty. How many women are there, awful of aspect, at present,

  of whom the same pleasing legend is not narrated! It must be true, for do

  not they themselves confess it? I know of few things more remarkable or

  suggestive of philosophic contemplation than those physical changes.

  When the old Duke and the old Countess met together and talked

  confidentially, their conversation bloomed into a jargon wonderful to

  hear. Old scandals woke up, old naughtinesses rose out of their graves,

  and danced, and smirked, and gibbered again, like those wicked nuns whom

  Bertram and Robert le Diable evoke from their sepulchres whilst the

  bassoon performs a diabolical incantation. The Brighton Pavilion was

  tenanted; Ranelagh and the Pantheon swarmed with dancers and masks;

  Perdita was found again, and walked a minuet with the Prince of Wales.

  Mrs. Clarke and the Duke of York danced together--a pretty dance. The old

  Duke wore a jabot and ailes-de-pigeon, the old Countess a hoop, and a

  cushion on her head. If haply the young folks came in, the elders

  modified their recollections, and Lady Kew brought honest old King George

  and good old ugly Queen Charlotte to the rescue. Her ladyship was sister

  of the Marquis of Steyne: and in some respects resembled that lamented

  nobleman. Their family had relations in France (Lady Kew had always a

  pied-a-terre at Paris, a bitter little scandal-shop, where les bien

  pensants assembled and retailed the most awful stories against the

  reigning dynasty). It was she who handed over le petit Kiou, when quite a

  boy, to Monsieur and Madame d'Ivry, to be lanced into Parisian

  society. He was treated as a son of the family by the Duke, one of whose

  many Christian names, his lordship, Francis George Xavier, Earl of Kew

  and Viscount Walham, bears. If Lady Kew hated any one (and she could hate

  very considerably) she hated her daughter-in-law, Walham's widow, and the

  Methodists who surrounded her. Kew remain among a pack of psalm-singing

  old women and parsons with his mother! Fi donc! Frank was Lady Kew's boy;

  she would form him, marry him, leave him her money if he married to her

  liking, and show him life. And so she showed it to him.

  Have you taken your children to the National Gallery in London, and shown

  them the "Marriage a la Mode?" Was the artist exceeding the privilege of

  his calling in painting the catastrophe in which those guilty people all

  suffer? If this fable were not true, if many and many of your young men

  of pleasure had not acted it, and rued the moral, I would tear the page.

  You know that in our Nursery Tales there is commonly a good fairy to

  counsel, and a bad one to mislead the young prince. You perhaps feel that

  in your own life there is a Good Principle imploring you to come into its

  kind bosom, and a Bad Passion which tempts you into its arms. Be of easy

  minds good-natured people! Let us disdain surprises and coups-de-theatre

  for once; and tell those good souls who are interested about him, that

  there is a Good Spirit coming to the rescue of our young Lord Kew.

  Surrounded by her court and royal attendants, La Reine Marie used

  graciously to attend the play-table, where luck occasionally declared

  itself for and against her Majesty. Her appearance used to create not a

  little excitement in the Saloon of Roulette, the game which she

  patronised, it being more "fertile of emotions" than the slower

  trente-et-quarante. She dreamed of numbers, had favourite incantations by

  which to conjure them: noted the figures made by peels of peaches and so

  forth, the numbers of houses, on hackney-coaches--was superstitious comme

  toutes les rimes poetiques. She commonly brought a beautiful agate

  bonbonniere full of gold pieces, when she played. It was wonderful to see

  her grimaces: to watch her behaviour: her appeals to heaven, her delight

  and despair. Madame la Baronne de la Cruchecassee played on one side of

  her, Madame la Comtesse de Schlanigenbad on the other. When she had lost

  all her money her Majesty would condescend to borrow--not from those

  ladies:--knowing the royal peculiarity, they never had any money; they

  always lost; they swiftly pocketed their winnings and never left a mass on

  the table, or quitted it, as courtiers will, when they saw luck was going

  against their sovereign. The officers of her household were Count Punter,

  a Hanoverian, the Cavaliere Spada, Captain Blackball of a mysterious

  English regiment, which might be any one of the hundred and twenty in the

  Army List, and other noblemen and gentlemen, Greeks, Russians, and

  Spaniards. Mr. and Mrs. Jones (of England), who had made the princess's

  acquaintance at Bagneres (where her lord still remained in the gout) and

  perseveringly followed her all the way to Baden, were dazzled by the

  splendour of the company in which they found themselves. Miss Jones wrote

  such letters to her dearest friend Miss Thompson, Cambridge Square,

  London, as caused that young person to crever with envy. Bob Jones, who

  had grown a pair of mustachios since he left home, began to think

  slightingly of poor little Fanny Thompson, now he had got into "the best

  Continental society." Might not he quarter a countess's coat on his

  brougham along with the Jones arms, or, more slap-up still, have the two

  shields painted on the panels with the coronet over? "Do you know the

  princess calls herself the Queen of Scots, and she calls me Julian

  Avenel?" says Jones delighted, to Clive, who wrote me about the

  transmogrification of our schoolfellow, an attorney's son, whom I

  recollected a snivelling little boy at Grey Friars. "I say, Newcome, the

  princess is going to establish an order," cried Bob in ecstasy. Every one

  of her aides-de-camp had a bunch of orders at his button, excepting, of

  course, poor Jones.

  Like all persons who beheld her, when Miss Newcome and her party made

  their appearance at Baden, Monsieur de Florac was enraptured with her

  beauty. "I speak of it constantly before the Duchesse. I know it pleases

  her," so the Vicomte said. "You should have seen her looks when your

  friend M. Jones praised Miss Newcome! She ground her teeth with fury.

  Tiens ce petit sournois de Kiou! He always spoke of her as a mere sac

  d'argent that he was about to marry--an ingot of the cite--une fille de

  Lord Maire. Have all English bankers such pearls of daughters? If the

  Vicomtesse de Florac had but quitted the earth, dont elle fait

  l'ornement--I would present myself to the charmante meess and ride a

  steeple-chase with Kiou!" That he should win it the Viscount never

  doubted.

  When Lady Anne Newcome first appeared in the ballroom at Baden, Madame la

  Duchesse d'Ivry begged the Earl of Kew (notre filleul, she called him) to

  p
resent her to his aunt miladi and her charming daughter. "My filleul had

  not prepared me for so much grace," she said, turning a look towards Lord

  Kew, which caused his lordship some embarrassment. Her kindness and

  graciousness were extreme. Her caresses and compliments never ceased all

  the evening. She told the mother and the daughter too that she had never

  seen any one so lovely as Ethel. Whenever she saw Lady Anne's children in

  the walks she ran to them (so that Captain Blackball and Count Punter,

  A.D.C., were amazed at her tenderness), she etouffed them with kisses.

  What lilies and roses! What lovely little creatures! What companions for

  her own Antoinette. "This is your governess, Miss Quigli; mademoiselle,

  you must let me present you to Miss O'Gredi, your compatriot, and I hope

  your children will be always together." The Irish Protestant governess

  scowled at the Irish Catholic--there was a Boyne Water between them.

  Little Antoinette; a lonely little girl, was glad to find any companions.

  "Mamma kisses me on the promenade," she told them in her artless way.

  "She never kisses me at home!" One day when Lord Kew with Florac and Clive

  were playing with the children, Antoinette said, "Pourquoi ne venez-vous

  plus chez nous, M. de Kew? And why does mamma say you are a lache? She

  said so yesterday to ces messieurs. And why does mamma say thou art only

  a vaurien, mon cousin? Thou art always very good for me. I love thee

  better than all those messieurs. Ma tante Florac a ete bonne pour moi a

  Paris aussi--Ah! qu'elle a ete bonne!"

  "C'est que les anges aiment bien les petits cherubins, and my mother is

  an angel, seest thou," cries Florac, kissing her.

  "Thy mother is not dead," said little Antoinette, "then why dost thou

  cry, my cousin?" And the three spectators were touched by this little

  scene and speech.

  Lady Anne Newcome received the caresses and compliments of Madame la

  Duchesse with marked coldness on the part of one commonly so very

  good-natured. Ethel's instinct told her that there was something wrong in

  this woman, and she shrank from her with haughty reserve. The girl's

  conduct was not likely to please the French lady, but she never relaxed

  in her smiles and her compliments, her caresses, and her professions of

  admiration. She was present when Clara Pulleyn fell; and, prodigal of

  calineries and consolation, and shawls and scent-bottles, to the unhappy

  young lady, she would accompany her home. She inquired perpetually after

  the health of cette pauvre petite Miss Clara. Oh, how she railed against

  ces Anglaises and their prudery! Can you fancy her and her circle, the

  tea-table set in the twilight that evening, the court assembled, Madame

  de la Cruchecassee and Madame de Schlangenbad; and their whiskered humble

  servants, Baron Punter and Count Spada, and Marquis Iago, and Prince

  Iachimo, and worthy Captain Blackball? Can you fancy a moonlight

  conclave, and ghouls feasting on the fresh corpse of a reputation:--the

  gibes and sarcasms, the laughing and the gnashing of teeth? How they tear

  the dainty limbs, and relish the tender morsels!

  "The air of this place is not good for you, believe me, my little Kew; it

  is dangerous. Have pressing affairs in England; let your chateau burn

  down; or your intendant run away, and pursue him. Partez, mon petit Kiou;

  partez, or evil will come of it." Such was the advice which a friend of

  Lord Kew gave the young nobleman.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  Barnes's Courtship

  Ethel had made various attempts to become intimate with her future

  sister-in-law; had walked, and ridden, and talked with Lady Clara before

  Barnes's arrival. She had come away not very much impressed with respect

  for Lady Clara's mental powers; indeed, we have said that Miss Ethel was

  rather more prone to attack women than to admire them, and was a little

  hard upon the fashionable young persons of her acquaintance and sex. In