‘Thunder and oons, Old Bags!’ quoth mine host of the Jolly Angler, ‘this will never do: we’re all met here to be merry, and not to listen to your mullancolly taratarantarums. I says, Ned Pepper, s’pose you tips us a song, and I’ll beat time with my knuckles.’
Long Ned, taking the pipe from his mouth, attempted, like Walter Scott’s Lady Heron, one or two pretty excuses; these being drowned by an universal shout, the handsome purloiner gave the following song, to the tune of ‘Time has not thinned my flowing hair.’
LONG NED’S SONG
1
Oh, if my hands adhere to cash,
My gloves at least are clean,
And rarely have the gentry flash
In sprucer clothes been seen.
2
Sweet Public, since your coffers must
Afford our wants relief,
Oh! Soothes it not to yield the dust
To such a charming thief?
3
I never robbed a single coach
But with a lover’s air;
And though you might my course reproach,
You never could my hair.
4
John Bull, who loves a harmless joke,
Is apt at me to grin,
But why be cross with laughing folk,
Unless they laugh and win?
5
John Bull has money in his box;
And though his wit’s divine,
Yet let me laugh at Johnny’s locks –
And John may laugh at mine!
‘“And John may laugh at mine,” excellent!’ cried Gentleman George, lighting his pipe and winking at Attie, ‘I hears as how you be a famous fellow with the lasses.’
Ned smiled and answered, – ‘No man should boast; but –’ Pepper paused significantly, and then glancing at Attie, said – ‘Talking of lasses, it is my turn to knock down a gentleman for a song, and I knock down Fighting Attie.’
‘I never sing,’ said the warrior.
‘Treason, treason,’ cried Pepper. ‘It is the law, and you must obey the law; – so begin.’
‘It is true, Attie,’ said Gentleman George.
There was no appeal from the honest publican’s fiat; so, in a quick and laconic manner, it being Attie’s favourite dogma, that the least said is the soonest mended, the warrior sung as follows: –
FIGHTING ATTIE’S SONG
Air: – ‘He was famed for deeds of arms.’
Rise at six – dine at two –
Rob your man without ado –
Such my maxims – if you doubt
Their wisdom, to the rightabout!
Signing to a sallow gentleman on the same side of the table to send up the brandy bowl:–
Pass round the bingo, — of a gun,
You musty, dusky, husky son!*
The sallow gentleman in a hoarse voice:–
Attie – the bingo’s now with me,
I can’t resign it yet, d’ye see!
Attie, seizing the bowl:–
Resign, resign it – cease your dust!
Wresting it away, and fiercely regarding the sallow gentleman:–
You have resigned it – and you must.
CHORUS
You have resigned it – and you must.
While the chorus, laughing at the discomfited tippler, yelled forth the emphatic words of the heroic Attie, that personage emptied the brandy at a draught, resumed his pipe, and, in as few words as possible, called on Bagshot for a song. The excellent old highwayman, with great diffidence, obeyed the request, cleared his throat, and struck off with a ditty somewhat to the tune of ‘The Old Woman.’
OLD BAGS’ SONG
Are the days then gone, when on Hounslow Heath,
We flashed our nags?
When the stoutest bosoms quail’d beneath
The voice of Bags?
Ne’er was my work half undone, lest
I should be nabb’d:
Slow was old Bags, but he never ceased
’Till the whole was grabb’d.
CHORUS
’Till the whole was grabb’d.
When the slow coach paused, and the gemmen storm’d,
I bore the brunt –
And the only sound which my grave lips form’d
Was ‘blunt’ – still ‘blunt!’
Oh! Those jovial days are ne’er forgot! –
But the tape lags –
When I be’s dead, you’ll drink one pot
To poor old Bags!
CHORUS
To poor old Bags!
‘Ay, that we will, my dear Bagshot,’ cried Gentleman George, affectionately; but, observing a tear in the fine old fellow’s eye, he added, ‘Cheer up. What, ho! Cheer up! Times will improve, and Providence may yet send us one good year, when you shall be as well off as ever! You shakes your poll. Well, don’t be humdurgeoned, but knock down a gemman.’
Dashing away the drop of sensibility, the veteran knocked down Gentleman George himself.
‘Oh, dang it!’ said George, with an air of dignity, ‘I ought to skip, since I finds the lush: but howsomever here goes.’
GENTLEMAN GEORGE’S SONG
Air:– ‘Old King Cole.’
I be’s the cove – the merry old cove,
Of whose max all the rufflers sing.
And a lushing cove, I thinks, by Jove,
Is as great as a sober king!
CHORUS
Is as great as a sober king.
Whatever the noise as is made by the boys,
At the bar as they lush away;
The devil a noise my peace alloys,
As long as the rascals pay!
CHORUS
As long as the rascals pay!
What if I sticks my stones and my bricks
With mortar I takes from the snobbish?
All who can feel for the public weal,
Likes the public-house to be bobbish.
CHORUS
Likes the public-house to be bobbish.
‘There, gemmen!’ said the publican, stopping short, ‘that’s the pith of the matter, and split my wig but I’m short of breath now. So, send round the brandy, Augustus; you sly dog, you keeps it all to yourself.’
By this time the whole conclave were more than half-seas over, or, as Augustus Tomlinson expressed it, ‘their more austere qualities were relaxed by a pleasing and innocent indulgence.’ Paul’s eyes reeled, and his tongue ran loose. By degrees the room swam round, the faces of his comrades altered, the countenance of Old Bags assumed an awful and menacing air. He thought Long Ned insulted him, and that Old Bags took the part of the assailant, doubled his fists, and threatened to put the plaintiff’s nob into chancery, if he disturbed the peace of the meeting. Various other imaginary evils beset him. He thought he had robbed a mail-coach in company with Pepper; that Tomlinson informed against him, and that Gentleman George ordered him to be hanged; in short, he laboured under a temporary delirium, occasioned by a sudden reverse of fortune – from water to brandy; and the last thing of which he retained any recollection, before he sunk under the table, in company with Long Ned, Scarlet Jem, and Old Bags, was, the bearing his part in the burden, of what appeared to him a chorus of last dying speeches and confessions, but what in reality was a song made in honour of Gentleman George, and sung by his grateful guests as a finale to the festivities. It ran thus: –
THE ROBBER’S GRAND TOAST
A tumbler of blue ruin, fill, fill for me!
Red tape those as likes it may drain,
But whatever the lush, it a bumper must be,
If we ne’er drinks a bumper again!
Now – now in the crib, where a ruffler may lie,
Without fear that the traps should distress him,
With a drop in the mouth, and a drop in the eye,
Here’s to Gentleman George – God bless him!
God bless him – God bless him!
Here’s to Gentleman George – God bless him!
&n
bsp; ’Mong the pals of the Prince, I have heard it’s the go,
Before they have tippled enough,
To smarten their punch with the best curaçao,
More conish to render the stuff!
I boast not such lush! – but whoever his glass
Does not like, I’ll be hanged if I press him!
Upstanding, my kiddies – round, round let it pass!
Here’s to Gentleman George – God bless him!
God bless him – God bless him!
Here’s to Gentleman George – God bless him!
See – see – the fine fellow grows weak on the stumps,
Assist him, ye rascals, to stand!
Why, ye stir not a peg! – Are you all in the dumps? –
Fighting Attie, go, lend him a hand!
The robbers crowd around Gentleman George, each, under pretence of supporting him, pulling him first one way and then another.
Come, lean upon me – at your service I am!
Get away from his elbow, you whelp! – Him
You’ll only upset – them ’ere fellows but sham!
Here’s to Gentleman George, – God help him!
God help him – God help him! –
Here’s to Gentleman George – God help him!
Chapter XI
I boast no song in magic wonders rife,
But yet, O Nature! is there nought to prize,
Familiar in thy bosom scenes of life?
And dwells in daylight truth’s salubrious skies
No form with which the soul may sympathize?
Young, innocent, on whose sweet forehead mild
The parted ringlet shone in simplest guise,
An inmate in the home of Albert smiled,
Or blest his noonday walk – she was his only child.
Gertrude of Wyoming
O time, thou hast played strange tricks with us! And we bless the stars that made us a novelist, and permit us now to retaliate. Leaving Paul to the instructions of Augustus Tomlinson and the festivities of the Jolly Angler, and suffering him, by slow but sure degrees, to acquire the graces and the reputation of the accomplished and perfect appropriator of other men’s possessions, we shall pass over the lapse of years with the same heedless rapidity with which they have glided over us, and summon our reader to a very different scene from those which would be likely to greet his eyes, were he following the adventures of our new Telemachus. Nor wilt thou, dear reader, whom we make the umpire between ourself and those who never read – the critics; – thou who hast, in the true spirit of gentle breeding, gone with us among places where the novelty of the scene has, we fear, scarcely atoned for the coarseness, not giving thyself the airs of a dainty abigail, – not prating, lacquey-like, on the low company thou hast met; – nor wilt thou, dear and friendly reader, have cause to dread that we shall weary thy patience by a ‘damnable iteration’ of the same localities. Pausing for a moment to glance over the divisions of our story, which lies before us like a map, we feel that we may promise in future to conduct thee among aspects of society more familiar to thy habits; – where events flow to their allotted gulf through landscapes of more pleasing variety, and among tribes of a more luxurious civilization.
Upon the banks of one of fair England’s fairest rivers, and about fifty miles distant from London, still stands an old-fashioned abode, which we shall here term Warlock Manor-house. It is a building of brick, varied by stone copings, and covered in great part with ivy and jasmine. Around it lie the ruins of the elder part of the fabric, and these are sufficiently numerous in extent, and important in appearance, to testify that the mansion was once not without pretensions to the magnificent. These remains of power, some of which bear date as far back as the reign of Henry the Third, are sanctioned by the character of the country immediately in the vicinity of the old manor-house. A vast tract of waste land, interspersed with groves of antique pollards, and here and there irregular and sinuous ridges of green mound, betoken to the experienced eye the evidence of a dismantled chase or park, which must originally have been of no common dimensions. On one side of the house the lawn slopes towards the river, divided from a terrace, which forms the most important embellishment of the pleasure-grounds, by that fence to which has been given the ingenious and significant name of ‘ha-ha!’ A few scattered trees of giant growth are the sole obstacles that break the view of the river, which has often seemed to us, at that particular passage of its course, to glide with unusual calmness and serenity. On the opposite side of the stream there is a range of steep hills, celebrated for nothing more romantic than their property of imparting to the flocks that browse upon their short, and seemingly stinted herbage, a flavour peculiarly grateful to the lovers of that pastoral animal which changes its name into mutton after its decease. Upon these hills the vestige of human habitation is not visible; and at times, when no boat defaces the lonely smoothness of the river, and the evening has stilled the sounds of labour and of life, we know few scenes so utterly tranquil, so steeped in quiet, as that which is presented by the old, quaint-fashioned house and its antique grounds, – the smooth lawn, the silent, and (to speak truly, though disparagingly) the somewhat sluggish river, together with the large hills (to which we know, from simple, though metaphysical causes, how entire an idea of quiet, and immovability, peculiarly attaches itself ), and the white flocks – those most peaceful of God’s creatures, – that in fleecy clusters stud the ascent.
In Warlock House, at the time we refer to, lived a gentleman of the name of Brandon. He was a widower, and had attained his fiftieth year, without casting much regret on the past, or feeling much anxiety for the future. In a word, Joseph Brandon was one of those careless, quiescent, indifferent men, by whom a thought upon any subject is never recurred to without a very urgent necessity. He was good-natured, inoffensive, and weak; and if he was not an incomparable citizen, he was, at least, an excellent vegetable. He was of a family of high antiquity, and formerly of considerable note. For the last four or five generations, however, the proprietors of Warlock House, gradually losing something alike from their acres and their consequence, had left to their descendants no higher rank than that of a small country squire. One had been a Jacobite, and had drunk out half a dozen farms in honour of Charley over the water; – Charley over the water was no very dangerous person, but Charley over the wine was rather more ruinous. The next Brandon had been a fox-hunter, and fox-hunters live as largely as patriotic politicians. Pausanias tells us, that the same people who were the most notorious for their love of wine, were also the most notorious for their negligence of affairs. Times are not much altered since Pausanias wrote, and the remark holds as good with the English as it did with the Phigalei. After this Brandon came one who, though he did not scorn the sportsman, rather assumed the fine gentleman. He married an heiress, who, of course, assisted to ruin him: wishing no assistance in so pleasing an occupation, he overturned her (perhaps not on purpose), in a new sort of carriage which he was learning to drive, and the good lady was killed on the spot. She left the fine gentleman two sons, Joseph Brandon, the present thane, and a brother some years younger. The elder, being of a fitting age, was sent to school, and somewhat escaped the contagion of the paternal mansion. But the younger Brandon, having only reached his fifth year at the time of his mother’s decease, was retained at home. Whether he was handsome, or clever, or impertinent, or like his father about the eyes (that greatest of all merits), we know not; but the widower became so fond of him, that it was at a late period, and with great reluctance, that he finally entrusted him to the providence of a school.
Among harlots, and gamblers, and lords, and sharpers, and gentlemen of the guards, together with their frequent accompaniments – guards of the gentlemen – viz., bailiffs, William Brandon passed the first stage of his boyhood. He was about thirteen when he was sent to school; and being a boy of remarkable talents, he recovered lost time so well, that when, at the age of nineteen, he adjourned to the university, he had scarcely re
sided there a single term before he had borne off two of the highest prizes awarded to academical merit. From the university he departed on the ‘grand tour,’ at that time thought so necessary to complete the gentleman: he went in company with a young nobleman, whose friendship he had won at the university, stayed abroad more than two years, and on his return he settled down to the profession of the law.
Meanwhile his father died, and his fortune, as a younger brother, being literally next to nothing, and the family estate (for his brother was not unwilling to assist him) being terribly involved, it was believed that he struggled for some years with very embarrassed and penurious circumstances. During this interval of his life, however, he was absent from London, and by his brother supposed to have returned to the Continent: at length, it seems, he profited by a renewal of his friendship with the young nobleman who had accompanied him abroad, reappeared in town, and obtained, through his noble friend, one or two legal appointments of reputable emolument: soon afterwards he got a brief on some cause where a major had been raising a corps to his brother officer, with the better consent of the brother-officer’s wife than of the brother officer himself. Brandon’s abilities here, for the first time in his profession, found an adequate vent; his reputation seemed made at once, he rose rapidly in his profession, and, at the time we now speak of, he was sailing down the full tide of fame and wealth, the envy and the oracle of all young Templars and barristers, who, having been starved themselves for ten years, began now to calculate on the possibility of starving their clients. At an early period in his career he had, through the good offices of the nobleman we have mentioned, obtained a seat in the House of Commons; and though his eloquence was of an order much better suited to the bar than the senate, he had nevertheless acquired a very considerable reputation in the latter, and was looked upon by many as likely to win to the same brilliant fortunes as the courtly Mansfield – a great man, whose political principles and urbane address Brandon was supposed especially to affect as his own model. Of unblemished integrity in public life – for, as he supported all things that exist with the most unbending rigidity, he could not be accused of inconsistency – William Brandon was (as we have said in a former place of unhappy memory to our hero) esteemed in private life the most honourable, the most moral, even the most austere of men; and his grave and stern repute on this score, joined to the dazzle of his eloquence and forensic powers, had baffled in great measure the rancour of party hostility, and obtained for him a character for virtues almost as high and as enviable as that which he had acquired for abilities.
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