much fright as fury.
"You d-d ungrateful villain!" says he, "what do you stand there
laughing for?"
"I'm waiting your orders for Timbuctoo, sir," says I, and laughed
fit to die; and so did my Lord Tiptoff and his party, who joined us
on the lawn: and Jeames the footman came forward and helped Mr.
Preston out of the water.
"Oh, you old sinner!" says my Lord, as his brother-in-law came up
the slope. "Will that heart of yours be always so susceptible, you
romantic, apoplectic, immoral man?"
Mr. Preston went away, looking blue with rage, and ill-treated his
wife for a whole month afterwards.
"At any rate," says my Lord, "Titmarsh here has got a place through
our friend's unhappy attachment; and Mrs. Titmarsh has only laughed
at him, so there is no harm there. It's an ill wind that blows
nobody good, you know."
"Such a wind as that, my Lord, with due respect to you, shall never
do good to me. I have learned in the past few years what it is to
make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness; and that out of
such friendship no good comes in the end to honest men. It shall
never be said that Sam Titmarsh got a place because a great man was
in love with his wife; and were the situation ten times as
valuable, I should blush every day I entered the office-doors in
thinking of the base means by which my fortune was made. You have
made me free, my Lord; and, thank God! I am willing to work. I can
easily get a clerkship with the assistance of my friends; and with
that and my wife's income, we can manage honestly to face the
world."
This rather long speech I made with some animation; for, look you,
I was not over well pleased that his Lordship should think me
capable of speculating in any way on my wife's beauty.
My Lord at first turned red, and looked rather angry; but at last
he held out his hand and said, "You are right, Titmarsh, and I am
wrong; and let me tell you in confidence, that I think you are a
very honest fellow. You shan't lose by your honesty, I promise
you."
Nor did I: for I am at this present moment Lord Tiptoff's steward
and right-hand man: and am I not a happy father? and is not my
wife loved and respected by all the country? and is not Gus Hoskins
my brother-in-law, partner with his excellent father in the leather
way, and the delight of all his nephews and nieces for his tricks
and fun?
As for Mr. Brough, that gentleman's history would fill a volume of
itself. Since he vanished from the London world, he has become
celebrated on the Continent, where he has acted a thousand parts,
and met all sorts of changes of high and low fortune. One thing we
may at least admire in the man, and that is, his undaunted courage;
and I can't help thinking, as I have said before, that there must
be some good in him, seeing the way in which his family are
faithful to him. With respect to Roundhand, I had best also speak
tenderly. The case of Roundhand v. Tidd is still in the memory of
the public; nor can I ever understand how Bill Tidd, so poetic as
he was, could ever take on with such a fat, odious, vulgar woman as
Mrs. R., who was old enough to be his mother.
As soon as we were in prosperity, Mr. and Mrs. Grimes Wapshot made
overtures to be reconciled to us; and Mr. Wapshot laid bare to me
all the baseness of Mr. Smithers's conduct in the Brough
transaction. Smithers had also endeavoured to pay his court to me,
once when I went down to Somersetshire; but I cut his pretensions
short, as I have shown. "He it was," said Mr. Wapshot, "who
induced Mrs. Grimes (Mrs. Hoggarty she was then) to purchase the
West Diddlesex shares: receiving, of course, a large bonus for
himself. But directly he found that Mrs. Hoggarty had fallen into
the hands of Mr. Brough, and that he should lose the income he made
from the lawsuits with her tenants and from the management of her
landed property, he determined to rescue her from that villain
Brough, and came to town for the purpose. He also," added Mr.
Wapshot, "vented his malignant slander against me; but Heaven was
pleased to frustrate his base schemes. In the proceedings
consequent on Brough's bankruptcy, Mr. Smithers could not appear;
for his own share in the transactions of the Company would have
been most certainly shown up. During his absence from London, I
became the husband--the happy husband--of your aunt. But though,
my dear sir, I have been the means of bringing her to grace, I
cannot disguise from you that Mrs. W. has faults which all my
pastoral care has not enabled me to eradicate. She is close of her
money, sir--very close; nor can I make that charitable use of her
property which, as a clergyman, I ought to do; for she has tied up
every shilling of it, and only allows me half-a-crown a week for
pocket-money. In temper, too, she is very violent. During the
first years of our union, I strove with her; yea, I chastised her;
but her perseverance, I must confess, got the better of me. I make
no more remonstrances, but am as a lamb in her hands, and she leads
me whithersoever she pleases."
Mr. Wapshot concluded his tale by borrowing half-a-crown from me
(it was at the Somerset Coffee-house in the Strand, where he came,
in the year 1832, to wait upon me), and I saw him go from thence
into the gin-shop opposite, and come out of the gin-shop half-an-
hour afterwards, reeling across the streets, and perfectly
intoxicated.
He died next year: when his widow, who called herself Mrs.
Hoggarty-Grimes-Wapshot, of Castle Hoggarty, said that over the
grave of her saint all earthly resentments were forgotten, and
proposed to come and live with us; paying us, of course, a handsome
remuneration. But this offer my wife and I respectfully declined;
and once more she altered her will, which once more she had made in
our favour; called us ungrateful wretches and pampered menials, and
left all her property to the Irish Hoggarties. But seeing my wife
one day in a carriage with Lady Tiptoff, and hearing that we had
been at the great ball at Tiptoff Castle, and that I had grown to
be a rich man, she changed her mind again, sent for me on her
death-bed, and left me the farms of Slopperton and Squashtail, with
all her savings for fifteen years. Peace be to her soul! for
certainly she left me a very pretty property.
Though I am no literary man myself, my cousin Michael (who
generally, when he is short of coin, comes down and passes a few
months with us) says that my Memoirs may be of some use to the
public (meaning, I suspect, to himself); and if so, I am glad to
serve him and them, and hereby take farewell: bidding all gents
who peruse this, to be cautious of their money, if they have it; to
be still more cautious of their friends' money; to remember that
great profits imply great risks; and that the great shrewd
capitalists of this country would not be content with four per
cent. for their mon
ey, if they could securely get more: above all,
I entreat them never to embark in any speculation, of which the
conduct is not perfectly clear to them, and of which the agents are
not perfectly open and loyal.
The Great Hoggarty Diamond Page 16
